So! (You might be going) So! Finally a posting, where has she been, what is she doing? Do you know it has been a week (count it – week – one) since the last scrap of writing, call yourself a writer matey? What have you been doing, sitting in the sunshine, huh?
Yes.
I am beginning to suspect that I might be developing wisdom, of a sort. It’s a worry, but there again, part of it is not worrying because I belatedly discovered that worry is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but gets you nowhere. (Though, to be accurate, if you do it on the landing where the rocking chair is situated, it gets the carpet wrinkled and it does move you a couple of inches if you do it really furiously. The carpet, I should add, is at least 25 years old, is beige and has the consistency of an elderly face flannel. I used to long for a new carpet until the two cats, each with a firm belief that you can open a door by digging, took up residence. Now I am grateful for the ancient carpet that allows me to smile and open the door graciously, with a sweet and kindly utterance. This of course, only serves to reinforce the belief of the cats that if you dig at the carpet in front of a door for long enough, it will open, because it does.)
Long ago, in warm weather and a continual run of sunshine lasting more than a week, which in the UK is a wonder and a marvel, I continued working as if nothing untoward were happening.
When I was employed as a teacher I didn’t have much choice. If you turned up several days late, when the rain began, with a note for the head teacher saying ‘Jane couldn’t come to school as it was sunny’, you’d be dismissed on the grounds that the excuse had already been used by most of the children, whose parents liked to stick to the tried and tested formula. I do so wish, at the start of my five years in a slum clearance school that I had had the wit to save the excuse notes. Those that were written on the back of the rent book, numbering two or three per term, had to be returned so the rent could be paid or withheld accordingly, as did those on court notices, police summonses and catalogue weekly payment books. Some parents were, however, aware of other sources of paper; had I chosen to do so I could now have a comprehensive collection of window envelopes of the 1970s. The ‘letters’ from parents varied little in the format (can you get an app for school excuse notes yet?) but predictably in the detail.
Name of child (occasionally spelt correctly) cannot/cant/cnot came/come/go/been/was at school becase/because/becos/pecos/ he she they are is wos on olida/sik/throwin up al nit/brokken leg/ saw am/hand/nee/leg/hed/gut/tumme/fut bin to the doctors/down the hospitl/eemergensy got a rasch/spots/ sined his mum/his dad/his unkle (sometimes one and the same) his gran/nan/dada.
I would enlighten you about the homework excuse notes but I never had any. They just didn’t do either. Notes or homework.
Self employment has several advantages, mostly closely allied to the disadvantages. You’re always at home, which is nice and always at work, which is not. As you are always at home family members expect you to keep up an exhaustive regime of house cleaning, clothes washing, cooking and shopping, whether you have a show in three days or not. You cannot go ‘I am going to work and will be back later, please fend for yourselves for the next eight hours’ because they can see you still sitting there.
On the other hand you waste far less time. No clock watching is involved at all. When you start doing a piece of work you carry on until it is finished or you run out of inspiration. When you run out of inspiration you can vacuum while you’re thinking. If I run out of words badly, with a deadline, I go and stand in the shower. I always find words in the wet. You can combine two types of work, for example, I find it easy to write poetry while rubbing down porcelain, the two go together beautifully.
Once upon a time, when I first gave up being a wage slave in favour of being self unemployed, I worked round the clock often and was more exhausted for less money than I had been previously.
Over the last few years, as I reach pension age, the inland revenue’s microscopic interest in my activities have forced me to reconsider my previous estimate of earning 70p an hour as my norm. Sums on my fingers and my feet lead me to believe it’s probably closer to 10p. So, whereas, once I would have considered this blog to be a thing of necessity, supporting my online shop ( which is still there by the way and will have the 48th scale added when I have finished making it) I now think of it as a bit of a lark.
I love writing and do it better when I want to do it. At present I am writing other things and enjoying them too.
And the sun is shining and I am taking the time to sit in the sunshine and enjoy it. Experience has taught me that, despite weather forecasts in the paper and on television and gloom from the government about saving water, this is Britain. We are quite a small collection of islands, surrounded by water. If I remember correctly, the water cycle involves evaporation, condensation, precipitation and all that, or as we used to say in a less scientific age, what goes up must come down. Round here the rain comes not eventually, or even, next week but usually tomorrow. If you want it to rain a bit sooner, just hang the washing outside.
And if you want to miss the sun, stay indoors working, which I don’t, so I’m not.
At which point, if you are really paying attention, you may go: Aha! But you are! You’re writing this indoors! So Mer!
Mer yourself, I’m writing this in my shed. Indoors out of doors, with electricity.
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JaneLaverick.com – it’s a lot of writing.