Chris Titley

Sometimes, in the middle of a lesson, my trombone teacher would slip away. Physically he remained with me in one of the tiny music rooms so heavily soundproofed by a grateful school. But spiritually he was somewhere else.

His eyes would fall from my floppy embouchure, his ears would glaze over and he would gaze mournfully into the yard.

He would continue staring long after my frenetic slide had fallen still and silence had cautiously reclaimed the room after a brassy massacre.

We would sit there for minutes on end, both enjoying the sound of me not playing. One day he awoke from his reverie and cleared his throat, as if to warn me that a rare insight into the strange mind of the peripatetic music teacher was imminent. Indicating a group of builders strengthening the school's perimeter wall, he said: "Isn't it great to watch other people working?"

Mr Parker was his name. With the sort of imagination that our teachers worked so hard to cultivate, we nicknamed him Nosy. My thoughts have been turning to Nosy a lot recently. Mostly when I have found myself sitting, sighing, behind the wheel of the car. How much, I realised, young Nosy would have enjoyed being a passenger.

Because during these journeys there has been precious little to do other than watch men working. There was certainly no need to plan the route - we were going nowhere - or worry about the traffic, which was as immobile as school custard.

But if watching people working is your thing, this was the place to be. The vista from my windscreen was filled by men in active employ. Some beetled about placing and replacing cones to some intricate masterplan that escaped the uninformed eye.

Others, who stirred huge buckets of bubbling tar, resembled hairy Delia Smiths. Yet more edged slowly forward on their steamrollers, making them the fastest-moving folk for miles.

So it was on Knavesmire Road. And later that day on The Mount. And later still in Dalton Terrace.

For a connoisseur of other people's labours, such as Mr Parker, this was heaven. For the rest of us it is very frustrating. There hasn't been a dig on this scale since Jorvik.

Then it dawned. The financial year ends on Friday. If the council doesn't spend the maintenance budget by then, it wastes the cash. Hence the annual roadworks festival.

Surely there must be a more sensible way to manage our highways. If a former trombonist with a floppy embouchure can see this, why not the powers-that-be?

IN the Press last night Douglas Craig railed against "control freakism", which is akin to Jerry Springer complaining about prurience. After all Mr Craig runs the Bootham Crescent club with a rod of Irn Brew.

The City chairman's tirade suggested he has had it with people complaining about the club's failure to sign up to the Kick It Out anti-racism campaign.

He is right to state that City is not racist. Black players past and present have been happy at the club. The occasional moron who shouts racist abuse from the terraces is usually chucked out. So why not endorse an anti-racist campaign?

Mr Craig accuses Kick It Out of hypocrisy for tacitly supporting exclusively non-white police and legal groups. Positive discrimination may be controversial, but it is nothing compared to the ingrained, institutionalised race-hatred Kick It Out is trying to counter.

All campaigners want is the opportunity to proclaim that the family of football has united against racism. They cannot say this while City maintains its bizarre, isolated stance. As long as it does, the club will attract criticism. And that is the opposite of control freakism, Mr Craig; it is called free speech.

If you have any comments you would like to make, contact Chris Titley directly at chris.titley@ycp.co.uk

29/03/00

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.