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.

---