Working then and now

Have you written your CV? Do you have a job? What is a job? If it's some action that you get paid for, then you probably count it as a job, rather than a chore.

I've worked since I was 16. As soon as I finished taking my GCE exams, I walked down Chorlton high street going in every garage, hairdresser and shop asking for a job until I got one in the local supermarket. The supermarket manager must have asked me about my background because someone got excited about me having taken (I hadn't yet got the results) maths 'O' level. Consequently, they put me on green groceries. This required weighing produce and then doing complicated arithmetical calculations in your head, like if apples are one and seven pence ha'penny a pound, and this customer wants six ounces of apples, then how much must you write on the brown paper bag?*
Maths is not arithmetic; maths is patterns and logic. I can do patterns and logic (though I didn't know it at sixteen). I cannot do mental arithmetic, and I particularly cannot do mental arithmetic when under stress. Can you?

I was rapidly taken off the green grocery counter and put on the tills instead. The tills were fairly amusing because you met lots of customers, usually women and you had a machine to add up all the purchases, even the extra carrier bag that they asked for after you'd totalled. The first day, I used to put the total back in the till again and then add the few pennies for the bag so I could be sure the sum was correctly calculated. Unfortunately, this meant that at the end of the day, the till was short of the money for all the extra times I'd used it as a calculating machine.

Despite these disasters, the manager kept me on for the next five weeks of the summer holiday, paying me five pounds a week; and he took me back for the next two years of sixth form employing me on Saturdays and school holidays. Thus, I earned my tiny fortune that I spent on my two guinea pigs, one rabbit and twenty pet mice, or on Sunday train fares to the peak district, to trek for my Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme efforts. My brother got jobs in university vacations when he worked on roads along with Irish navvies. He earned a fortune compared to me, but that always was the differential between male and female wages.

What 16 year old now can get a summer job so easily? Over ten years ago, I encouraged my teenagers to look for something, but they came home explaining that everywhere they went, they were told, "Come back with your CV". They didn't get paid work till they went to uni where they got part-time jobs as librarians, tutors or lab assistants. One of our kids spent a year between uni and her first professional job working in B&Q, coming home grubby and proud that she'd earned.
My grandmother started working in a china shop at 14, my mother started teaching in an inner city school at 19, and I was 21 when I started teaching. Yet none of our children started working until at least 22. Several took gap years. One did a foundation year before uni. All of them have done masters degrees. So they're all highly educated, and took years about it.

But it seems hard for them to find and keep jobs.  I suspect my fourteen year old grandmother needed some way of earning her keep, some job that would pay her for her efforts so her auntie didn't have to keep her (her father having died and her mother emigrated). My mother wanted a qualification so she could support herself whether or not she found a husband who could keep her. Similarly, girls of my generation were encouraged to work before marriage, expecting to do hairdressing, secretarial or clerical work, and if they were a bit brighter they could be nurses or teachers. Most of them were not expected to go to university and some were actively discouraged. I started by East End primary kids with the enthusiasm of a twenty year old that thought she was doing good. Then I found teaching English as a Foreign Language was fun because of the intellectual challenge of explaining my own language. (You tend to take it for granted, automatically knowing things like the difference between "I do" and "I'm doing" or "you must" and "you don't have to" or "I could have done" and "I was able to do). A a job was a means of earning a living, of paying the rent, eventually a mortgage and contributing to society.
You used to aim to find a job. And you didn't always have to submit a CV.

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*BTW, one shilling and seven pence ha'penny for a pound (twelve pence in a shilling and sixteen ounces in a pound) means that I probably should have written 7d on that paper bag. It'd be an easier sum at 1/4 (one and four) a pound because that would be 16d a pound or a penny an ounce.

Father's day

Yesterday was Father's day, the first year I've had no father.  I am not complaining though because some, like my children, lost their father before they hit double figures. I knew mine for decades.
He taught me to swim, taking me to Southport baths when I was tiny.

Father-of-the-bride

He advised me in my teens, "if you can't be good, be careful". He joked, with reference to our gliding, in his father-of-bride speech , "may all your thermals be little ones".
He proudly held up my gown hood when I achieved my OU degree in my thirties.
He enjoyed playing with our children in the following decades, taking them swimming at Richmond baths.

Achieved my first degree

As my mother's sight faded, my dad came into my life more and more, still supporting my life, as he helped our mother. His relationship with and attitude to Mum was the model I wanted for the men I chose as my husbands, my children's father and their step father. I'm lucky I had a good father, a father I knew, a father who loved me. I'm lucky I had him so long.
I wish my children could have had the same experiences.

Stories of middle-aged women

"As a woman of 50, I’m surrounded by my contemporaries and what women of that age go through: parental loss, cancer, dealing with Alzheimer’s, children growing up. All these issues that are here in our lives and they’re invisible."

thus spake Samantha Bond recently, here, when bemoaning the lack of stories of middle-aged women.

Such am I.  I and my peers are coping with aging relatives, taking on legal powers of attorney, mourning those we are losing alive to Alzheimer's, and vicariously taking on the troubles of our grown-up children.  Our children may be living the dreams we once had: emigrating, studying fantastic university courses.  Or they may be worrying us with troubled relationships, dangerous driving, failing exams, not working. 

Is there not drama in such lives?  Apparently not, and hence Bond's moan.  There are few theatre, film or stage productions of the lives of people like me.  Despite the bulk of theatre audiences being made up of middle-aged women, despite the novels written by and for us, there are not the productions, and hence there are not the roles for the actresses like Bond. 

Middle-aged women are like the main supporting wall of a house, central and sustaining, but hidden.

Children gone

Since both the youngest have now gone on a more permanent basis than before, the house feels a bit empty and large. Before, I could expect one or both of them back at university vacations because they got thrown out of their accommodation, which is a particular problem at Oxford. But now both of them have signed long term leases.

Weird.

But then, I've known grown children come home before, like my brother. One year married daughter with husband and two children came here for six months. I liked that because I got to know them well, and I could take the toddler out to story time in the library and toddler groups.

Husband has had a good idea for curtaining off part of the house to keep the heat in the part we use. I'd show you a photo but have lost my battery charger.

a Good Day

June 17th
Both my children today are having good days. Although neither has spoken to me, I've heard from them electronically. One texted that she's:

"Off to Bordeaux! :))"

which means she's got good end of second year university exam results. The other has Facebooked:

"Done"

which means he has taken his last university exam this morning and is relieved.

It's beautiful weather.

And a Good Day.

Dancing for Children in Need

The OU belly dancing club made over £400 for Children in Need. See some of the photos here.

Old friends, new places

I met an old friend today, at work, a friend I haven't seen for perhaps ten years, someone whose son is around the same age as mine. We used to live near each other, but lost face to face contact when I moved here. But she's now a full-time post grad student at the OU studying for a doctorate too. So we met over lunch and chatted for an hour, and could have talked longer, but I had to get on and do stuff. (See Frustrating Day).

A colleague commented that it was weird that we'd both ended up here, but it's not really weird. We've got similar children, we have a similar approach to learning, a similar view of life and what's important - that's why we got on ten years ago. And that's why we're doing similar things now.

Inefficient services

A colleague was telling about her young son having had several ear operations recently. He's all right but what she noticed with her manager's eye, was that for a twenty minute procedure they had to sit around in the hospital for eight hours. Of course, she's grateful for the care but surely they can organise people's work and lives better than that.

On a similar theme of how to use time efficiently, she explained that before her son was off school, she got some work for him to do at home. They spent only half an hour a day on it, but when he got back to school the teacher announced that he was right up to where the class was. How can it take five hours of class work to match thirty minutes of one to one work, she asks? Why should it take ten times as long to cover material in class as it does at home? No wonder some home educators seem to hot house their children. I do think that schools need more teachers and smaller groups more than they need extra expensive computer equipment.

Leprechauns, fairies and elves in the garden

One evening I hear a knock at the door. It's the second one of the evening my husband who'd answered the first one is now at the bottom of the garden collecting blackberries.

"My brother, he came here and, I don't know his name, he .."
"You don't know your brother's name?"
"No, the man, here, he told my brother he could collect apples and my brother didn't know we was collecting apples so he said 'no', and we are collecting apples, and we've come to collect apples".

They're local children. A few minutes earlier they'd lost a wooden 'sword' over our wall, and their brother had come to retrieve it.

So I let them down the garden, giving them bags for collecting apples and they were so happy that they went and called the brother back and another friend and they all went round saying the garden was wonderful, and look at the rubber horse, and swinging on the swing as high as possible till the birch tree rocked, and they'd filled their bags. Then they scuttled away, promising to come back for more, and they came back. They picked and played and climbed trees till dusk, then scampered off with their apples and plums, looking like mischievous and happy elves in the evening gloom.

Blessings

Amongst my blessings are my children - more than my fair share perhaps because I have my children, my husband's children and the grandchildren too.

One child gave me this rose bush some years ago. Look how it's blossomed, like the children blossom as they grow up.

Just a mum

When I was doing my MBA, I did a thesis with a research element. I had to arrange interviews from home with a toddler and baby around while I phoned. If I had a fellow mum around when a call came through unexpectedly, I'd apologise that I was in a meeting at the moment.

One of my British Computer Society colleagues occasionally has problems when she says she's a mother. She posted this on the BCS women's forum:

A woman, renewing her driver's licence was asked by the woman at Registry to state her occupation. She hesitated, uncertain how to classify herself. 'What I mean is, ' explained the woman at Registry, 'do you have a job or are you just a ...?'

'Of course I have a job,' snapped the woman. 'I'm a Mum.'

'We don't list 'Mum' as an occupation, 'housewife' covers it,' said the recorder emphatically.

I forgot all about her story until one day I found myself in the same situation. The Clerk was obviously a career woman, poised, efficient, and possessed of a high sounding title like, 'Official Interrogator' or 'City Registrar.'

'What is your occupation?' she probed. What made me say it? I do not know. The words simply popped out:

'I'm a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations.'

The clerk paused, ball-point pen frozen in midair and looked up as though she had not heard right. I repeated the title slowly emphasizing the most significant words. Then I stared with wonder as my pronouncement was written, in bold, black ink on the official questionnaire.

'Might I ask,' said the clerk with new interest, 'just what you do in your field?'

Coolly, without any trace of fluster in my voice, I heard myself reply, 'I have a continuing program of research, (what mother doesn't) in the laboratory and in the field, (normally I would have said indoors and out) 'I'm working for my Masters, (first the Lord and then the whole family) And already have four credits (all daughters). Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities, (any mother care to disagree?) And I often work 14 hours a day, (24 is more like it). But the job is more challenging than most run-of-the-mill careers and the rewards are more of a satisfaction rather than just money.'

There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk's voice as she completed the form, stood up, and personally ushered me to the door.

As I drove into our driveway, buoyed up by my glamorous new career, I was greeted by my lab assistants -- ages 13, 7, and 3. Upstairs I could hear our new experimental model, (a 6 month old baby) in the child development program, testing out a new vocal pattern.

I felt I had scored a beat on bureaucracy! And I had gone on the official records as someone more distinguished and indispensable to mankind than 'just another Mum.'

Motherhood! What a glorious career! Especially when there's a title on the door.

Does this make grandmothers 'Senior Research associates in the field of Child Development and Human Relations' And great grandmothers 'Executive Senior Research Associates?' I think so!!!

I also think it makes Aunts 'Associate Research Assistants.'

I'd answer my colleague, but the forum's on yahoo and a pain to read, especially as I frequently forget my password.

All the children gone

Husband and I took son back to uni this afternoon, and now the house has no children living here all the time any more. I suggested going round to step daughter #1 for a dose of children and a cup of tea, but husband declined suggestion.

I know they've not quite all flown the nest; they'll be back from university during holidays, and there's the boomerang child. My brother came home in his late twenties. Step daughter #1 came back for six months with her husband and children and that was nice. But now my two are teetering out of the nest on their own. I've managed to get them this far, with help from their father for eight years, on my own for four years and their step father for the last eight . Here's hoping they'll all fly.

Children around

We had a couple of the grandchildren for a sleepover last week whilst their parents celebrated their wedding anniversary. I was reminded of the time when our male au-pair gave 6 year-old daughter the green paint. "Can I have the paint?" she requested, pointing at the pot on the top shelf. Ever willing, he passed her the pot and went back to watching Wimbledon (he had dreams of sporting fame) and 6 year old painted the kitchen table, the work surface, the drawers, the floor, the wall, her clothes, face and hair.

Last week eldest granddaughter wanted Marmite sandwiches, and grandson wanted Ribena. The Ribena glass somehow missed the table and still half-full, smashed on the floor. His sister was so absorbed in other things that the Marmite missed her bread so I'm still finding it on the chairs, dresser and cushions. Then, grandson desperately wanted to find the dymo to check how it worked, and pulled out the stationery drawer so far that it fell on the floor.

I must appreciate my now 16-year old daughter being so tidy, clean and unsticky.