work and sleep

Being in receipt of benefits is quite hard work especially when it means that anything I do or am asked to do has to be as a volunteer as my spouse is still unwaged after 8 months and if I decided to take pay for the work I could neither support us nor legally do so unless we relinquished our benefits in which case we’d lose the house.  And I simply do not seem to be an attractive prospect to possible employers.  I have been shortlisted once in the last 6 months and have applied for an average of one job a week.  This may sound like a feeble effort but I look for work every day and the jobs are few and far between and I simply am not prepared to work away from home (not that there are prospects to do so).  So last week I was called to an interview at the job centre.  The woman interviewing me was pleasant enough as she explained to me that our benefits would be cut if I didn’t show a willingness to work.  I felt too tired to justify myself or discuss the voluntary work I do as a writer, or the editing or my own writing – or the 6 children I’m looking after and the elderly parents John and I support.  The worst thing about it is the feeling that there’s just no point in trying any more.  I’m tired of worrying about how we’re going to pay the next phone bill or afford a new pair of shoes for the kids.  And I’m tired of being told that I undersell myself.  It’s what happens after years of people expecting you to do work for nothing and being offended when you say you can’t carry on.  If anyone out there has a job for a diligent writer/poet with lots of experience working with people with mental health support needs, dementia and brain injury – with fundraising and management experience – with editing and teaching experience.  Please let me know.  All reasonable offers considered including opportunities to read. And I’ve started thinking about rationing sleep in a more structured way – perhaps I could become a short order chef at night – but I don’t think the rates of pay are worth the sleep deprivation……..

Poetry, Unemployment & Entitlement

My mother casually told me recently that I’d wasted large amounts of my time working in useless jobs – like that “Housing rubbish.”  My mother was a teacher.  And it’s a very long time since I worked in a Local Authority Housing Department.  So long ago that Housing Departments don’t really exist now as they went the way of all decent post-war public services to leave versions of privatised Circumlocution offices where no-one can get help with housing and the forms you have to fill in are completely incomprehensible – especially to the people handing them out.  Any way, in short, my mother thinks I have served no good in the work I’ve done.  And she is rather alarmed that I’ve had 6 children in the 16 years since I’ve been married to John who is equally, in her opinion, feckless and useless not least because he didn’t even go to University.  Little surprise he’s been made redundant in my mother’s world view.  And what can I possibly expect but disappointment in my recent endeavours to get a job – my CV’s been empty for the last 16 years!  I point out that yes, I know I didn’t do teaching – and I know I have a young baby and I’m 48 but that I haven’t got many gaps.  She looks sceptical.  I remind her that I’ve brought up the kids but I’ve also been a school governor for 4 years – and worked in Research Ethics as a Lay Member for another 4 years.  ”But that’s all voluntary!  Another waste of time – fat lot of good it’s done you!”  But I had a pamphlet published, and a book….and did an MA…and a training qualification….and founded a charity….  I’m beginning to feel a little defeated.   It’s dawned on me as well as my mother that no-one’s going to employ me.  I haven’t a hope in hell with a University post.  And I’m not cut out for that in any event.  It seems very little time since I packed my bags after only 6 weeks at York University in 1981.  I recall sitting in some square faced blokes office who tutted and suggested with my background (being from Widnes and working class and female – did he mean?) that I should think of trying to do nursing.  I’d left home and had to fend for myself.  I was surrounded by failed Oxbridge bods who bragged about their failure.  All I could think about as a very lonely 18 year old was that I hadn’t even done an Oxbridge exam.  And then not being able to learn Anglo-Saxon – or believing I couldn’t do so.  I loved the escape to York and my books but left without studying Literature to work as a cleaner in a large Psychiatric Hospital.  I like cleaning.  I enjoyed physical work.   And I read poetry all the time.  Tony Harrison, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes and  - Robert Lowell.   John Berryman, Hart Crane.  But it was Tony Harrison who always got me through.  I suppose I’m thinking about this because my eldest child is now 15 and he’s coming up to preparing for the world.  He’s bright.  Passionate about music and though I must remain loyal to my class and culture  I don’t want my able children to share my sense of being an outsider.   I want them to thrive through their talents without being materialistically ambitious or greedy.   Just as I would like to be considered for a job on my own merits.  My dear friend Jane looked at a recent application I put together.  She’s known me since I was 9 and has a fairly senior job in that London.  She approved my CV and the supporting statement.  ”Well it is all true.”  I protested.  ”Hmmm,”  she didn’t sound very convinced.  ”You need to emphasise that you’ve been doing all this while raising a family.”  I mention the carer support I’ve provided for my frail mother-in-law – “Oh, no. I wouldn’t mention that.”  So I don’t.  ”I think you need to change your mind-set.”  She suggests quite gently.  My mind-set?  It often feels like I have a set of minds.  I’m wondering how I promote the creative work I do with people who have all manner of mental distress and damage and loneliness – brain injury and bi-polar disorder, depression and anxiety.  None of this is sounding like a USP!  So my recent outing was for freelance work with a social enterprise linked to a Local Authority which has just scrapped most of its arts provision.  They want a creative freelancer to work with depressed and anxious people.  I attend an all-day interview set-up – deliver a workshop, buy my own lunch – answer their questions and don’t get the work.  This is all beginning to feel familiar.

What I really need is to become an aristocrat – and then I’ll assume such authority and confidence I won’t care and jobs and offers will fall into my rather ample lap.   Or maybe not.  My mother tells me recently that I’m middle-class – - and I simply roar with laughter.  She is bemused.  Your older sister and younger sister are doing so well……   All that time you’ve wasted….  I don’t envy my older sister’s life in rural Lincolnshire or her job as a Headteacher, nor my younger sister’s life – again in rural Lincolnshire.  She’s a Head of Media in a Grammar school.  I just want us to keep our house – not to be reduced to fear by John’s redundancy – to be able to see my lovely kids into the world full of confidence and hope – and be able to buy them all new shoes for school.

redundancy

My daughter wants a bass guitar and asked me if it’s wrong of her. Of course not I reassure her.  Or myself.  ”But we can’t get one can we?”  No, I tell her.  We don’t know what we’re doing just now because Dad has just lost his job.  I want to be honest but don’t want her to know too much, to panic.  My daughter is quite a cool and logical customer.  And she loves music.  At 12 she’s just become part of a band in school and they want her to be the bass player.  I tell her I think that’s great.  ”But how can I be the bass player if I can’t get a guitar?”  ”We’ll have to try and borrow one or get one second-hand until we know what’s happening.”  ’Where from,” she asks.  ”I’ll think of something,” I say confidently.  I haven’t the first clue but need some time.  She’s not convinced. “There’s no point me wanting this is there? It’s not going to happen.”  ”I’ll try and win a poetry competition,” I declare.  (This is a real measure of desperation but my daughter doesn’t know it.)