Clapham omnibus

every summer and autumn I do a stint as an exam invigilator. I have to get three buses to travel to the college, which leaves me exhausted. But I quite like being knocked out in this rather painless fashion.

Being there is a quiet pleasure. It could be marketed as a therapy: the tonic of staring sternly into space, stealing a surreptitious glance at an attractive candidate, or just fixing one's gaze on the luxuriant flowering of a tree outside the gym or the upstairs window.

I am declaring this work to the dole and, as you're only allowed to earn ?5 a week before the equivalent sum is stopped, I'm hardly getting any money. I am possibly even suffering financially because of the fares and the cost of eating and drinking at the college. Who cares? I've never given so much satisfaction to an employer as I do to the two jolly exam officers.



Invigilating has all the trappings of work without any of the content. I am unclear what its purpose is. I suppose someone has to watch exam candidates, or there would be a free-for-all. But they are allowed so many dictionaries and other aids now that cheating in the traditional sense hardly seems possible. I would never dream of trying to catch a cheat. Nevertheless, in those last two minutes, standing up, with my hands behind my back, watching the clock as if my life depends on it, I perhaps inspire a modest awe.

Just a little more effort would begin to depress me. But this is perfect.

One might expect invigilating to bring troubling thoughts of one's youth. Curiously enough, it doesn't. All that is so far away now. In any case I was brilliant at exams. For my sixth form years, I switched schools from a small to a much bigger comprehensive (my motive was to get to know the beautiful Toby), and I was responsible for half the grade As awarded at A level at that school in 1973.

I had a fascination for the whole process of exams and regarded examiners as gods. I was their chosen one. The results were posted up on the school noticeboard during August and I took to haunting the spot to contemplate the brilliance of my own results compared with the disasters suffered by almost everyone else.

I'm still a bit of an exam ghoul. For some years, I did them as a hobby, adding extra A levels to my capacious store. But I've given that up. I have as little interest in intellectual attainment now as in anything else. Yet something of the savour remains.

The whole atmosphere reassures me that the promise exams once offered was not false. This is still the world of my youth, a world of paper and ballpoint pens. The exam officers have computers, but they seem hardly to use them. It is the same world of competitive exams as they were first known in the 19th century, with the postmodern subject-matter-nutrition, numeracy, public relations-adding an agreeable gloss of futility.

And I am still the star here. The exam officers love to hear me give the final announcement: "That is the end of your exam. Will you stop writing now, leave your papers on your desks, and go as quietly as possible." With what unusual elegance and seriousness I enunciate those words.

Some of the candidates are stroppy, but there are also humble, old-fashioned ones. "Can I keep my box?" one middle-aged lady asks me. "You can see inside it." I wave away her suggestion. This is the sort of candidate who needs a special goodbye when they leave. Well, I'm willing to provide that. But mostly I tend towards severity.

If invigilation were a full-time job, I might contemplate doing it. It would be boring, but the hours soon pass. One can usually summon the exam officers for at least one toilet-break, especially during a three-hour paper. They are stuck with the task of stuffing the papers into envelopes and filling in forms, while I can stroll away into the sunshine when I have finished my "duty."

Yet the beauty of the job is probably its transience. It is not to be enjoyed too often, like a cup of delicate tea, boisson fade et m?lancolique, as Balzac once called it. Like him, I used to prefer coffee. (He never got past that stage, working himself to death like the rest of the 19th- century novelists.)

Let's hope I can invigilate for many more years, although there is now an urgent threat of real work. The government is planning to set up "Jobcentres Plus" this autumn. I don't know what these are, but they sound threatening. Whole teams of people will perhaps be engaged in finding me a job, and not one of them will be able to pronounce the word "invigilation."

Yet I don't take their threat too seriously. The jobseeking people get nearer and nearer, but they never actually arrive. And there is always the protection of my total incompetence. I can't click a mouse; I can't drive; I can't manipulate a chip-pan.

But I can invigilate. n