£17,000?! I wondered if I was hearing things, but like the average salary of £27,000, this is a classic example of how statistics can be used to make things look better (or worse) than they are. Of course an average doesn't lie, but it seems important to understand how it works, because reports such as this could leave most of us feeling hard done by and undervalued, and that's not a greatly inspiring message, right?
If there are ten people working for a company and nine earn £11,000 a year while the manager earns £901,000, the average salary will be £100,000. If the average is the only figure you are given, you will automatically think, 'Wow – that's a good company to work for!' but in reality it's only good for one employee out of the ten.
So to get a more representative view, we could look at the median. This figure is the middle figure of a set of figures if they are listed in order from lowest to highest. Therefore exactly 50% would be above this figure and exactly 50% below. Thus, we can all know where we really are in the great scheme of things, should we wish to know, that is!
Moving on, on the weekend of my fortieth birthday I decided that it would be a real treat to check out The Archway Tavern in North London. My fiancée was with me and we caught a bus from Oxford Street, which promptly broke down. Upon reaching Archway I was somewhat disappointed to find a boarded up pub with a load of junk inside. The pub (pictured above) was of course a famous haunt among fans of The Kinks, for the interior features on the cover of their excellent Muswell Hillbillies album (1971). It's really the next choice for doing the album cover tour of London once you've been to Abbey Road (Beatles), Battersea Power Station (Pink Floyd) and Berwick Street (Oasis).
Back to The Kinks, I recently read a rather gritty biography of Ray Davies, and having admired his songwriting for many years, I was somewhat surprised by the volatile and thrifty character I was reading about. As they always say, don't meet your heroes, although I might say, just don't try to go to their old pubs. In the end I'd say 'let the music do the talking,' and in my opinion the band's underrated classics like 'Arthur,' 'Village Green Preservation Society,' 'Lola versus Powerman,' and even 'Schoolboys in Disgrace' are up there alongside more well-known albums from bands of their era such as Sgt. Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon.
Catching a bus to the aforementioned Muswell Hill, we then decided to walk to Alexandra Palace, which is famous for hosting the world darts championship as well as being the site of the first regular public television broadcast in the world, made by the BBC in 1936. The view from its high vantage point is also well worth visiting for, with the various shards and gherkins pointing into the sky like surreal concrete fingers on the horizon.
There was a free bus service to Wood Green, from where we caught the underground to Angel for a delicious sushi meal. Sitting next to us was a famous bearded French chef, who I seemed to recognise from TV, not that I watch those cooking shows. The owner came over to him and opened the conversation with, 'Excuse me for saying, but I recognise you...' From this, our perceptions that we were dining in a place of quality seemed to be confirmed. And thus, I began my fifth decade on Planet Earth.
