Well I have been doing this for 20 years nearly and the punch line never changes

When I was 23 I decided to pack in my job as a compere/entertainer for holiday organisations across Europe. One of the reasons I decided to call it a day at such a young age was the worry that in 20 years I'd still be cracking mother in law jokes and leaning on a mic stand telling the same jokes I told 20 years ago. It was a brave decision as at the time I was earning a lot more money than most 23 year olds and I was being paid to see parts of the world my friends couldn't afford to visit. However with mind made up I decided to do a job that made a difference. A job that was going to challenge me in different ways and a job that I would enjoy all the time. Enter teaching. Well even if I say so myself I have always been a good teacher (the compere experience gave me supreme confidence in my own ability and I have carried this forward into teaching) I developed a unique style and success (relatively) has followed. Yet now I still feel like the old compere. The audience changes but the jokes remain the same. The challenges that were different everyday are no longer fun challenges. Beauracracy (sic) targets, SATS, ECM, APP, etc etc etbleedincetra. The individuality that I bought to teaching has been drained out of me, the risks I take when teaching whilst once applauded, are now challenged because they don 't conform to prescriptive nonsense that fits in with people who wouldn't know a good teacher if it landed on them riding a brontasaurus. I wonder if I should open my own free school, move abroad, become a writer of second rate plays or do a Stephen Fry and disappear. Life and many aspects of it have long been controlled by a style of governance that tells us what to think, when to think it and how to think it. For the masses of tabloid, non feeling, non thinking individuals (what a term, 'individual')this is fine. But I must think there is more to life than this. I may live 90 years and be dead 96 trillion years and counting. What might I say before the day of my lowering into the abyss? I finished my APP? I got the floor targets for SATS? Good lord it makes me want to run for the hills. There is more to life, it is for living, I have to work but alongside that I have to live. I will do just that and find the life that is worth living. It is out there somewhere, a suit of life armour that is a perfect fit for John Bell.

John