Latest news with #Zona
Spectator
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
‘Sitting the 11-plus was the most momentous event of my life'
Geoff Dyer, eh? Geoff Bloody Dyer – without doubt one of contemporary Eng. Lit.'s most successful, intellectually playful and stylistically distinctive voices. His extraordinary oeuvre spans fiction, non-fiction, memoir, criticism and genre-defying hybrids, often likened – I don't know by who, but by me at least now – to greats such as W.G. Sebald or Roland Barthes. Dyer expertly navigates the tricky territory between high culture and everyday experience, balancing erudition with comic digression in books ranging from Out of Sheer Rage (a hilarious study of not writing a book about D.H. Lawrence) to But Beautiful (a genre-blending and largely non-irritating meditation on jazz) to Zona (a mercifully unpretentious personal exegesis of Stalker, the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece). He skilfully dismantles conventional boundaries between the subject and the self, between artist and critic, forever restlessly inquiring into the nature of literary form and identity… Basically, Geoff Dyer went and did it. He got there first: modest, funny, clever, inventive. He is the deracinated writer's deracinated writer. And now he's done it again with Homework, which is a memoir about growing up in post-war England and is exactly the kind of memoir just about anyone who grew up in post-war England might want to write. Born in 1958 and brought up in Cheltenham, Dyer's was an archetypal mid-to-late-20th-century English childhood. Two up, two down? Check. Outside toilet? Check. Mum a dinner lady? Check. Dad a manual worker? Check. Odd and interesting aunts and uncles? Check. Fond memories of playing war with your friends on the estate? Check. And Airfix models, comics, bubblegum cards, conkers, the little drinks cabinet with drinks that no one drank, Robinson Crusoe on the telly, the corner shops, the tinkers and blade sharpeners who used to come to the door, verrucas, the buzzer in the doctor's surgery, Action Man, heaped spoons of sugar in your tea and coffee? Check, check, check, check.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
St. Johns County deputies voting to unionize for ‘seat at the table' and higher wages
Change may soon be coming to the way the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office deals with rank-and-file deputies, with a vote to unionize all deputies scheduled for Thursday, February 20, and Friday, February 21. Steve Zona with the Florida Fraternal Order of Police told Action News Jax Thursday the departments' deputies feel they have been left behind in negotiations for far too long. 'They really want to have a seat at the table,' Zona said. 'To have discussions with the sheriff and have communications, and they don't feel like they're getting that right now.' According to a recent study by the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce, the average affordable rent budget for a St. Johns County law enforcement officer sits at around $1,375 a month -- calculated by taking 30% of the average monthly income of SJC law enforcement officers. The issue: that figure falls about $300 shy of the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in St. Johns County. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks] For those economic reasons, Zona said pay and fair wages remain another key factor that he hopes unionization will improve for St. Johns County law enforcement officials. 'That's always one of the top items that we wanna take care of for the people we represent,' Zona said. 'And that is wages, benefits, health insurance, everything else, but also just consistency across the board. Whether it has to do with discipline, job assignments, transfers, leave, all those types of things.' Action News Jax also reached out for an interview, statement, or response to the effort to unionize from St. John's County Sheriff Rob Hardwick's office, but are awaiting a statement at this time. [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.
