10 Minutes from Tragedy in Tokyo:A Survivor’s Story

James Smith

I had decided to go travelling before Uni and all of the tens of thousands of debt that come with it! I knew that if I didn’t go now, then my chance would be gone. I’d spend the rest of my life chained to a desk to pay off my student debts with no chance of a week in Butlins never mind Barcelona or Buenos Aires!

The first stop in the East was Tokyo. I didn’t know what to expect but when I got there I realised it was just like that film Lost in Translation: all bright lights and oceans of people all scurrying about going somewhere in a hurry.

I arrived on 8th March 2011.

But for what happened next that date probably wouldn’t have been any more special than any other on the calendar. But that was the day when, for me at least, things would completely change.

I was in a youth hostel in the centre of the city when the quake struck. It was a surreal experience. I’d never experienced anything like it. The ground began shuffling beneath my feet. Then it stopped. It was a second, not even that, but it felt like eternity. I didn’t know what to expect next.

Then it came.

The earth rocked underneath me as the building shuddered on its foundations. Suddenly, my brain clicked into gear: I’d seen disaster movies where they always run into door frames to protect themselves. I leapt for the nearest doorway.

And there I froze again.

What now? Do I just wait? What if the building comes down on top of me? What if I never leave the city again? I don’t remember looking at what anyone else was doing. They didn’t seem to matter.

But what about me?

Almost as if by magic I found myself in the street outside the hostel. It was a strange kind of magic – one that didn’t require me to think. It just happened. I started walking amongst the rushing crowds away from the hostel.

Jamie Oliver's school dinners shown to have improved academic results

Research has shown that the healthier school dinners introduced by Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef, have not only improved pupils’ test results, but also cut the number of days they were off sick.

The proportion of 11-year-olds in Greenwich, south London, who did well in English and science rose after Oliver swept "turkey twizzlers" and chicken dinosaurs off canteen menus in favour of creamy coconut fish and Mexican bean wraps, according to a study of results.

The number of "authorised absences" — which are generally due to illness – fell by 15% in the wake of his 2004 Feed Me Better campaign, brought into the nation's sitting rooms via the Channel 4 series Jamie's School Dinners.

But the poorest pupils – those who are eligible for free school meals – did not seem to benefit. Instead it was mainly children from more middle class homes who saw their scores boosted after Oliver's junk food ban was put in place.

The researchers estimated that the proportion of students who got level 4 in their English Sats at key stage 2 increased by 4.5% after his intervention.

The number who got level 5 in science was up 6%, they reported.

Oliver described the research results as "fantastic". "It's the first time a proper study has been done into the positive effects of the campaign and it strongly suggests we were right all along," he said.

"Even while doing the programme, we could see the benefits to children's health and teachers. We could see that asthmatic kids weren't having to use the school inhalers so often, for example.

"We could see that it made them calmer and therefore able to learn."

The chef said it was further evidence that faster movement was needed towards improving take-up of nutritious, home-cooked school meals across the country by training dinner ladies, getting kitchens and dining halls up to scratch and educating children and parents.

Rafting on the Grand Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde

“Just two rules!” our guide Ed shouted. “Rule Number One – stay in the boat! Rule Number Two – stay in the boat!”

It was early July, and we (me, my husband and our three teenage children) were in the middle of a 13-day, 225-mile trip down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon. On the first day, the 22 of us stood at the starting point, blinking at the sight before us: a long line of 6m rafts, masses of gear, an army of river guides scurrying about. This would be our world for the next two weeks.

We were a mixed group: our fellow passengers ranged from our 13-year-old twin daughters to a couple in their mid-70s. You can’t be shy on a Grand Canyon river trip. Not when you’re spending two weeks with two dozen strangers, floating down one of the biggest rivers in North America. You’re on the water for five to eight hours every day, and when you’re off the water, you’re eating, sleeping, and bathing together in one of the most spectacular environments on earth.

Our party filled five inflatable rafts, each rowed by a guide and four or six passengers. All the gear we could possibly need was strapped into these boats. It’s the tightest packing system I’ve ever seen, so that passengers ride perched on the side tubes – prime seats with great views.

Rock, rocks, everywhere. During the calmer stretches our guides pointed out the various layers towering above us. Terracotta sandstone, flaky grey shale, massive maroon cliffs streaked with black – I kept straining my neck gazing up at the steep walls closing in on us.

Riding the rapids in the Grand Canyon is a Disneyland-like experience – one second you’re plunging straight down into the trough of a wave, the next you’re getting drenched with cold spray as the boat shoots up and over the crest. It’s a white-knuckle, roller-coaster ride that has people screaming with the thrill of it.

Which brings us back to Ed’s Rules. The only one who violated them during the trip was me. We hit one rapid at the wrong angle, and the boat rose up and pretty much ejected me into the foaming madness. For the next 45 seconds, I got sucked down and spun around and finally spat up into sunlight, gasping for air. Was I scared? A little. Exhilarated? More than I’ve ever been.

By the time we rowed the last stretch, toward Diamond creek, our clothes and hair held about a pound of silt each, but nobody cared. I welcomed the chance for a shower, but the trip left me with a desire to run away and become a river guide.

In a burka you’re cutting me off as well as you

Alice Thomson

A ban would go too far, but covering the face makes normal human contact impossible. It is not right for 21st-century life

I confess that I once fell over on the job. In 2001 I was sent near the Pakistan border to interview fleeing Afghans and the local imam asked me to wear an extra-large faded blue burka in the refugee camp. I was taken to interview a woman who had lost five of her six children before managing to walk with her baby across the mountains to safety.

As she described the pain of losing four daughters and her only son, one by one, to mines, malnutrition and a motorcycle accident, I couldn’t see her anguish. Until finally, from behind her burka, I heard a sob.

Stuck in my own diaphanous garment, I couldn’t communicate, I couldn’t even put an arm out or blink at her, so I stood up and waddled over. But I tripped, half-blind from the veil and we ended up sprawled on the ground together. I couldn’t see her reaction, but then she started to giggle as we lay like two penguins, unable to stand up.

That’s when I realised that the burka was wrong. It allows for no communication, no empathy and it’s deeply impractical.

In Hyde Park on the only hot day of last summer, I was sitting on a bench in a pair of shorts, watching my child stalking pigeons with another boy. His mother sat opposite me in her burka. From her eyes I couldn’t tell whether she was frowning in disgust at my bare legs or smiling as our children squealed. When her son ran in front of a swing, she sat helpless as I scooped him up. When I offered her an ice cream, I realised that she couldn’t eat it. We had sons the same age and were both wearing ballet pumps, but we were divided by the piece of cloth across her face.

The American psychologist Paul Ekman, the author of Emotions Revealed, explains that our ability to read faces is the key to our understanding of other people as well as our ability to get on with others. Professor Peter Butler, who is working on Britain’s first face transplant, says that people can adjust to artificial limbs without losing their sense of identity, but their face is vital for self-belief: “The face is the first feature we look at. It’s about survival, it’s how we work out whether someone will attack or embrace us. Even sunglasses can create a barrier.”

The burka is not an invisibility cloak, it’s a passive- aggressive statement, a rejection of the community. The person wearing it is signalling that either she or her family wants her to

remain apart from society. It implies that wearers believes that British men may become dangerously lecherous if they see their faces and that British women are too provocatively clad. Like smoking, wearing a burka doesn’t affect just the wearers, but those around them, who may feel shunned. With full-body tattoos, face piercing and a hoody, you can still smile to show that you are a friend.

That doesn’t mean that Britain should ban the burka in public places. We don’t want the police stripping off women’s outer garments in the street. The French have gone too far by prohibiting the wearing of a full veil on public transport. But we should make it clear that people should not be allowed to cover their faces when it impinges on others, That includes women working in schools, hospitals, courtrooms, shops and the service industries. Women could wear the burka in private, when travelling and around their neighbourhood, but the law should send out a message that it is antisocial behaviour and that when women are paid to communicate with colleagues or the public they should be expected to take it off.

Mr Blair, our liberal prime minister, refused to debate the question. He feared the racism tag. The UK Independence Party has reinforced those fears by announcing that it wants to ban the burka. It immediately sounded racist as well as opportunistic, particularly as it also adds that Muslims are breeding too fast. This sounds like the BNP in blazers.

This shouldn’t be about race, religion — or even feminism. It’s about what is socially acceptable. And covering women’s faces was a medieval practice that should never have been resurrected.

Why I will be a striking teacher on 30 NovemberMy profession gets a lot of stick, but teachers work damned hard for our money and deserve respect – not a pensions cut

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Caroline Ryder

Teachers joined thousands of public sector workers in a one-day strike over pensions and government cuts during the summer. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

I am a teacher. You must remember – they had them when you were at school: tall person, stood at the front, usually shouting, that kind of thing. I'm one of those. And though Wednesday 30 November should be a normal, boring school day, it's highly likely that I will not be going into work and neither will most of my colleagues, because we will be on strike. The last time we went on strike, a lot of otherwise seemingly pleasant people seemed rather angry with us and made comments, which, on the whole, did not show much understanding of our motivation for striking. Because I'd like that not to happen this time, I've made my own little contribution toward the task of explaining exactly why we are likely to strike on 30 November.

I got out a calculator and worked out that superficially, on my current income, I earn around £18 an hour – if you think I work a standard 40 hour week, that is. Imagining I get to school at 8am and leave every day at 4pm, and do this for 40 weeks (because I have so very many weeks off every year, of course), the total number of hours worked is 1,600. How lazy of me – the OECD worked out that in 2010 the average worker in the UK actually put in 1,647 hours.

Except that we need to add in some other bits.

Presentation and parents' evenings easily add about 30 hours a year to my total (and that's a fairly generous underestimate, in truth). I leave school at 4pm on a Friday if I'm lucky – there are department meetings, year team meetings, development team meetings, after-school detentions and after-school clubs pretty much

every other day of the week, which make 5pm a much more likely time to leave school most days. Marking 30 books or essays doesn't happen quickly and has to be done regularly; likewise, lessons do not plan themselves, especially if you have learners with special needs. A conservative estimate of the time I spend working outside normal school hours would be around 15 hours per week – multiplied by 40 weeks, there's an extra 600 hours on my total. These are hours almost all of us work, all the time, whether you realise it or not. There is a reason we tend to get frosty when people snidely comment on our "long holidays" and "3 o'clock hometimes".

Not counting the days I give up of my own volition, for the likes of weekend trips and extra coursework sessions, my hours-per-year work total is closer to 2,250 than 1,600 – that's over 25% more working time than the average UK worker, no matter how the holidays average out (and yes, we put in some work in the holidays, too). It also means I'm earning something like £12.88 per hour. That is by no means to be sniffed at – I have a good standard of living and I am grateful for it – but perhaps you get the message that I, and every other teacher I know, work damned hard for that money.

I would modestly state that I do my job quite well. In terms of targets, which the government seems to think are the ultimate measure of whether one is a good teacher or not, the number of GCSE students in my department achieving a grade C or above surpassed our set goal by 10%. My sixth-form students succeeded, and two went on to university to further study the subject I taught them. But there were other things that went well, things the government doesn't measure. I stopped a child from being bullied and got another into counselling, for example. I got a class full of badly behaved boys to settle down and actually try to achieve something; they now want to learn, something they scorned a year ago. I coached colleagues who were going through tough times to help them pull it together and do their best for their students.

No one gave me a bonus for these things, and I didn't ask for one because I don't expect or need it. The idea, however, that bankers who did their jobs so spectacularly badly that the whole country is suffering for it went on to receive hundreds of thousands, even millions of pounds in bonuses, is one I find a teensy bit irksome – particularly when the government then proposes cutting my pension to help mop up the mess.

I may moan about having no time, and get stressed out about marking and record keeping, and roll my eyes at initiatives to cajole Ofsted into rating our school better than average – but I do love my job. Some days I come home and am too physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted to do anything but get straight into bed, but I can't imagine enjoying any other profession as much as mine. I want to carry on doing it as long as I can, and I want to have the enthusiasm and energy necessary to help young people learn as much as they can, as well as they can.

This is why it's hard to carry on regardless when you are consistently put down as not being good enough, and given more to do with less time in which to do it, and told you are worth less money for your efforts. This is why it's demoralising to be told you should keep giving as much of your time and energy as you do already until you are nearly 70. This is why I'm fed up enough with the way my profession is being treated to do something about it.

I can't say for sure whether the coffers are empty or not. But does that mean I shouldn't strike? Not even slightly.

Striking is not a dirty word. Striking is not the fallback of the workshy. Striking is not lazy, selfish, stupid, pointless, antagonistic, communist nor any of the other criticisms I heard levelled at us last time we downed tools. Going on strike is one of the very last ways we have in the current world of work to make people who might otherwise forget remember the fact that we are doing our best. A strike is not unreasonable – it is a stand for belief in yourself and your coworkers. It is a demand that those at the top remember they would not be there without you. It is a thoroughly timely reminder that you will not be ridden over roughshod and keep smiling through it. It is a powerful weapon that we do not wield often, and it should not be scorned and denigrated by those with whom the government reminds us "we're all in this together".

We do a good job. We deserve respect. Going on strike is our chance to remind the government of this, whether it changes anything for us in real terms or not – and I for one can't wait to stand up and shout it at them.

Typical teacher, eh?

Tim Lott – My father's final moments

He led a fulfilled life and was a good man, adored by his wife and family. I will miss him, but I will never mourn him

Tim Lott: 'Death is so intimate – more intimate than first love. I could hold his hand, gaze into his eyes, stare unhindered at his tender face.'

The call came on a Sunday afternoon. My 87-year-old father, who was in a hospital on the Welsh borders, had kidney failure. I had to get there fast. I set off on the four-hour drive immediately. The weather worsened to a buffeting, vicious swirl. The snow was a million white scrawls etched on the night. Fog and mist and rain and sleet joined the chorus of weather.

I reached the small cottage hospital after the dark had enfolded everything. I entered the ward where my father lay. He was parchment and bone but still handsome, noble, even.

I leaned over him. His eyes were open, cornflowers frosted with death. My tears fell, and ran down his cheek, leaving a glistening channel. He recognised me and broadcast a smile that blistered like desert sunlight. He could hardly speak any more. But even the clearing of his throat was specific and familiar, recognisably him. I told him I loved him. An answering rasp emerged from the depths. I understood the broken words completely. I smiled in acknowledgement.

It took two more days before the end came. That time passed differently from how I had expected. Sad, but also tender and positive and beautiful. Death is so intimate – more intimate than first love. I could hold his hand, gaze into his eyes, stare unhindered at his tender face, stroke his frosty hair.

He was very thin, skin the colour of a dried corn husk. His mouth a dark tunnel. The jagged mountain ranges of his ruined teeth. The petrified forests of his hair. The failing locomotive of his breath. The sadness of the black bobbled socks on his calves. Yet he was irreducibly who he had always been.

Much of the time he seemed unaware of what was happening. Then the veil lifted and he saw us and the sun shone through the pores and creases of his face. Such a smile. He would raise his eyebrows quizzically, as he always did, as if to say, "Isn't this absurd?"

My brother arrived, then my eldest daughter. We grabbed sleep where we could. His wife, my stepmother, who adored him, slept on the floor by his bed. There was laughter, reminiscence, an unexpected joy.

My father's wife was appearing in a pantomime that week, as the villainess, all dressed in green silk with a feather headdress. She sashayed into his room on the last afternoon in full costume. Wonderfully, unexpectedly, my father laughed. I never admired her so much as at that moment.

It was 3.15am when the call from the hospital came. I had finally retired to a hotel around the corner. I went to join my stepmother. She stared at me when I arrived, but she didn't see me. I tried to tell her of her bravery.

We gathered our belongings and left him his blue tracksuit to be dressed in for the last journey. He always loved that tracksuit. I gave my father a last kiss.

The next day the snow had come again. We went to the small churchyard, visible from the window of his modest house. Everything was cold and beautiful. His widow – how odd that word sounds – pointed out where she would like his plot. Where he could be seen from his home.

I wept – we all wept – but not for his life. He was fulfilled. He had spent his working life, happily, as a greengrocer. He was a good man, adored, almost revered, by his wife and family. He accepted himself. Not least of all, he loved his country and wanted to be nowhere else. He was fully content with his life.

The funeral will be soon. Black is to be prohibited. The daffodils will be rising and my father will be distributed there, through the earth and the trees and the air. I will miss him, but I will never mourn him. His death, was, like the man himself, profoundly average yet utterly exceptional.