My Week: Will I, won't I accept the lecturers' shilling?

Monday This is the week I've been dreading. In common with further education lecturers everywhere, I have been offered a new 'flexible' contract and have until 4.30pm on Friday to decide whether to accept. Although the details vary from college to college, such contracts inevitably mean a serious weakening in one's conditions of employment. They can, in theory, increase teaching load by up to 60 per cent, lengthen the working day by about an hour and a half, reduce holiday entitlement by a third - and that's just for starters. Acceptance means a 2.9 per cent pay increase and a one-off lump sum payment - typically pounds 500. Refusal could mean no pay rise at all. Ever.

Tuesday I receive a letter from a friend in another college. He encloses one of those 'spoof sheets' that tend to

be passed around workplaces. This one is a circular letter with the heading 'Screwsbury College'. It is dated Friday 13th and is written in the style of one of those Readers' Digest offers that are just too good to miss. Naturally, it is offering a new contract.

At work the talk is of nothing else. People I haven't spoken to in ages stop me in the corridor to ask, 'Is anyone going to sign in your department?' Trying to spot a 'signer' now has interesting parallels with early Calvinists trying to spot one of the 'elect'.

Wednesday At a meeting of teaching staff, the opening speaker points out all the 5weaknesses of the document and comments that if there is a worse contract he has yet to see it. Someone with a more pro-management viewpoint rises to counter-attack but his kamikaze strategy fails and the mood hardens.

Thursday I wake at 6am after the best night's sleep in a long while. Like many of my colleagues, I have had trouble sleeping recently. At work I set to on a pile of marking until light relief is provided by yet another 'spoof sheet'. As I leave to go home around 5.15pm I pass a 16-year-old student with her own mobile phone. I wonder, not for the first time, if I'm in the wrong job.

My suspicions deepen later when I start chatting to a guy who works in an abattoir. He tells he earns pounds 500 for a 32-hour week. We are both contemplating the wisdom of a university education when he interjects, 'But at least you've got the holidays'. I don't like to point out that his choice of tense might soon be inappropriate.

Friday 'C' Day. I wake early but get back to sleep at around 4am. It's a busy day at work and I temporarily forget the deadline. Around 3pm somebody tells me that a lot of traffic has been reported in the vicinity of the principal's office. I do my last lecture and the deadline passes. As I leave to go home I meet an old friend who smiles sheepishly and says that he is now pounds 10 a week better off. I am not.

Saturday We have dinner with some friends. He teaches at one of the new universities and has been refusing to sign their version of the contract for four years. He is considering early retirement, especially now that his university has decided to stop research in order to save money.

Sunday - I contemplate my future and begin to fantasise about a career that might have been, as a journalist on Fleet Street. Or is it now Wapping? Nothing stays the same in any job, does it?