I was going to write about how last week, I saw The Trials, a play set in the near future, in which the climate has collapsed and any adult aged over 18 in the year 2018, with an above-average salary and an excessive carbon footprint, could be tried and executed for their part in all this. But I thought that might be a bit depressing.
The jury, made up of 12 teenagers, has 15 minutes to judge each case based on a single recorded plea from each defendant. The accused were my generation. The accusers, my children’s.
Thought-provoking, frightening and a wake-up call. It did not take a great leap to imagine the play’s depiction of revolution and an end of democracy really playing out if governments do not tackle climate change. But it wasn’t really end-of-August blog post material, so I thought nah – let it go.
And politics. Not a jolly summer holiday subject either. To be honest, I’ve never been a great one for politics, although I know which side of the fence I stand and have diligently voted since I was 18. But, apart from the odd sexy scandal flashing onto my radar from my teen years and beyond (think Cecil Parkinson and Sarah Keays, Jeffrey Archer and the prostitutes, Edwina Currie and the eggs, Edwina Currie and John Major, David Mellor and Antonia de Sancha), and the Three-Day Week in the 70s – when power cuts meant I didn’t have to do my homework and we ate dinner by candlelight, my interest in politics was more Sidebar of Shame than in-depth, intelligent or informed.
And this got me thinking, while I was trying to come up with something more upbeat to write about, how, before I moved to the Middle East, I was blasé about democracy, the right to vote, (women’s right to vote), human rights and freedom of speech. We had them, lucky us, so what?
And, as for weather… If it was hot, that’s all that mattered. I envied anywhere south of Dover where summers were reliable, you could plan a barbecue three weeks in advance and hair stayed frizz-free. Which, in the scheme of things, is a little bit important. Or at least it was in my first job. Because my manager told me so. But more on that in due course. And, as an aside, I still prefer hot weather to cold, but maybe with a tinge of concern about climate change…
Anyway, hot weather, frizzy hair, the Middle East (not obvious word associations, but if you’ve lived there, you’ll understand), as my thoughts were meandering this way and that, it occurred to me that while I was based there for seven years, I got the hair under control and developed an interest in politics.
For I was witness to despotic rule and a corrupt police system, a lack of human rights and modern slavery, the power of the censor and restriction of opinion. And 45 degrees heat which burns your eyeballs. And the irony of a ski slope with snow and penguins and an ‘Alpine’ cafe warmed by overhead patio heaters, in an air-conditioned shopping mall, in the desert.
For the first time in my life, I understood the importance of democracy and a fair judicial system. And how much easier it is to be a writer when the media, social media and the internet are not monitored or blocked, and you can write without fear of recrimination. Or jail. Or deportation.
Inching further down the rabbit hole (might as well for a few paras longer), it occurred to me that nine years after returning home from my expat adventure, I’m starting to feel like we’re sliding backwards here in the UK. Our democracy is a joke. Our government’s an embarrassment. Poverty is soaring. People are suffering. And a hot climate is no longer a source of envy but concern.
When I lived in Bahrain, I was at an American friend’s house for dinner. ‘We don’t discuss politics with our friends,’ she told me as the conversation turned to politics.
Never having had a problem talking about politics with my friends in the UK (admittedly of the gossipy kind), I wondered at this warning, until a fisticuffs-at-dawn debate then rapidly ensued between one guest who was a Democrat and another who was a Republican. And in an instant, I learned an interesting lesson on cultural differences and the rules of expat life.
Acquaintances from Jordan, Bahrain and the UAE were less circumspect. It was 2006, emotions were running high. ‘Do you support Bush?’ I’d be asked, the moment introductions were out the way.
But with my newfound understanding of diplomacy and what can and can’t be said, I got good at sidestepping minefield topics and moving small talk back to safer ground.
But now (promise my ramblings are nearly done), even in the UK, politics are divisive in a way they weren’t before. Brexit created fractures among family and friends, and getting vaccinated for Covid became a moral issue. And we’re confronted with disrespectful, out-of-touch politicians, national strikes, soaring inflation rates, an unmanageable cost of living, and a false autumn which might be followed by a second spring.
So, there we are.
A glimpse of what I was going to write about. But it’s the start of September. The sun’s trying to shine. No one wants ranting and raving, doom and gloom.
So, to brighten things up, let me pull up the notes I made on some topics of a lighter nature.
- Yoga. (Lovely and mindful, clears away the worries. Did a nice outdoor session in the landscaped garden of the Red House, in Suffolk. Am attempting an every-other-day session online with Adriene).
- Nature. (Trees – restorative, calming, good for the soul. Walked through wetlands and woods, across beaches and fields – Suffolk again. I step out into the garden when the dog wakes me up, to feel calm and thankful when I’d rather stay in bed.)
- ASOS. (A sneaky online shop when I should be writing this. I’ve a wedding in October and monochrome’s the thing. A maxi dress in burnt orange or hot pink and a jacket to match.)
- Makeup. (LOVE it, makes me happy, I do it just for me.)
- A trip down memory lane. (Because sometimes a look back over my shoulder helps to see how far I’ve come.)
But just quickly, before I forget – The Trials, a play for our time, should be studied in every school, seen by every adult, and heeded. We owe it to future generations. We all have our part to play.
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Memories are interesting; the ones we retain often vivid and so clear. Frequently a segment of a much larger picture, we create with them a curated version of our dim and distant pasts. This week, I went to Birmingham, where I was a student over 30 years ago. My youngest is at the same university and I moved her into her second-year house in an area I had known so well.
The Selly Oak I remembered consisted of a curry house called the Dilshad, a few small Asian food and hardware stores, a kebab place, and two pubs, which I remember as The Brook, and (I think the Bournbrooke) but which later became the Old Varsity Tavern (OVT). Though I could have got that wrong.
In my very student-focused world, Selly Oak, the scene of countless nights out, inhabited only by student people aged between 18 and 21, and shop owners, was just a narrow, grungy, road, a few minutes from the university, with a few offshoot streets where all the students lived.
Yesterday, I revisited to find a transformation had taken place. The only building that even had the same name, though totally unrecognisable in any other way, was the OVT, now called Goose at the OVT.
The Selly Oak of my past had completely disappeared. Instead, I found a huge, sprawling district of large houses and student gaffs, little streets and wide residential roads. And vast retail parks – at least three. (We were kitting out a student house. We visited them all.) And wide, traffic-jammed several-lane highways. And people of all ages, all ethnicities.
Google Maps may have saved me from physically getting lost. But emotionally I was all misplaced.
It’s not the fact that years have passed or that my memory may not be what it was. I’m reassured by the fact that the town where I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and where my parents still live, is pretty much the same. I could take you round all the streets as if it were yesterday, despite not having lived there since I was 18.
No, this was very different. So much development. So many new builds. So very changed. I remembered just two places – a park I went to here, a road I lived in there. But the area has been transformed, regenerated, restructured beyond recognition, and nothing was the same.
My layer cake of memories crumbled, confronted by all that was new. With a touch of regret, although I could share anecdotes with my daughter about my way-back-then, I realised I could not literally walk down memory lane.
But it consoled me to think that my 20-year-old daughter’s version of student life will play out on the ghostly urban blueprint of the area where 20-year-old me lived mine. And in an imagined timeslip, two 20-year-old girls would cross paths on the Bristol Road in Selly Oak, experience a brief flash of recognition or déjà vu, then continue on their way, returning, within moments, to the order of their current lives.
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Way back in the real past, when my future was still unknown, I was a graduate at the T-junction of my life. Responsibility and adulthood in one direction, freedom and self-discovery in the other.
‘GET A JOB!‘ ringing in my ears, but travel and not settling down my priorities, I applied (rather cleverly, so I thought) to be a ‘courier’ at PGL Adventure Holidays, which, if you remember from the previous blog, was, after my return from India and a stint waitressing at Pizza Hut, my vacay of questionable choice.
Holiday and work combined; here was a win-win situation if ever there was one.
Not a courier in any usual sense of the word, a PGL Courier took charge of groups of 16 to 18-year-olds on their journey from Victoria Coach Station down to the South of France, and then back again for the return. Long before the existence of the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), I got the job without an interview, without human contact from anyone at PGL HQ, without anything like a security check. I merely filled in an application form and mailed it back. And a few weeks later I got the job, based (I imagine) on my teaching experience in India and the fact that I could speak fluent French.
Armed with brief instructions to arrive at Victoria Coach Station at a specific time, all I knew was that I was to meet the coach in Bay X and be responsible for the lives of 50 teenagers only a few years younger than myself. I was clueless but keen, and my role looked something like this:
- Coach/ferry/coach to the South of France.
- 1 week sailing in the Med.
- 1 week canoeing in the Ardèche.
- Head-counter by the hour • Teen-counsellor by day • Bonk-patroller by night.
- Bus/ferry/bus back to London.
Repeat
Priding myself on my ingenuity, I thought my new career was the absolute dream.
My parents on the other hand (when parents still had control), did not. Within a matter of weeks, they had somehow managed to summon me home to ‘GET A PROPER JOB’.
And being more compliant then than perhaps I would be now, that’s exactly what I did. At a video training company – John Cleese’s Video Arts. In Sales. For which I had little ambition and even less aptitude. To remind myself that this office lark was merely a blip, I joined a canoe club in Richmond too. I worked the 8am to 4pm shift in Sales and canoed every afternoon on the Thames.
‘Are you training for the Olympics?’ my fellow Olympian canoeists asked, as I was the only girl my age at the club. The idea, while far-fetched, tickled me a lot. But I was diligent and got quite good, graduating, over the months, from a flat hull (stable) to a round hull (fast), from group paddles to adventures on my own. And so it came to pass, one beautiful, frosty, freezing, January Saturday morning, when I was paddling downstream, enjoying the birdsong, the nature, the river, the peace, that the wake of a passing boat caused my canoe to lurch rather violently, and before I could steady it, I was over the side.
We didn’t wear wetsuits at our club – just plimsolls, Helly Hansens and trackie bottoms. And had I not been wearing a lifejacket, I probably would have drowned. The water was glacial; it snatched my breath away. Through my panic, I had to force myself to breathe, tread water, regain calm and retrieve my oar before I could get back into the canoe from the water not the land, and paddle back to the boathouse trying not to cry or die.
What I probably should have done was dry off, warm up, and go straight back out. But I did not. The experience shattered my confidence, I stopped canoeing that day, and to my regret, I never returned.
Meanwhile, back in Video Arts Land, a vacancy came up in the International Team to manage the network of international distributors. I had languages (a first in International Sales, because why would you need another language when you could speak English) and a desire to escape telesales. So it was bye-bye First Floor, bonjour Second. The world, in International Sales, was split into Hot Europe and Africa, Cold Europe and the Middle East. With French and Spanish up my sleeve, I got all the Mediterranean countries, with Belgium thrown in for good measure, and work was transformed. I went to Belgium and France, Italy and Spain, Malta and Jersey, and Belgium (again) a lot. I taught business French to the sales team – because actually, no one in France could speak English back then, and learnt how to use a telex machine so I could communicate with Africa. I regularly got stopped at Customs with my suitcase full of videos, and travelled everywhere first class.
There were expense accounts and company cars, in-house chefs, and – because it was John Cleese’s company – film shoots and the chance to meet the cream of 80s TV comedy.
But travel and glamour aside, corporate life and I were not a natural fit. For various reasons, I was living in a squat which made Trainspotting seem a bit tame. Finding a balance between the chaos of this ‘home’ life and the respectability of work was a balancing act. And my new manager’s demands seemed unimportant and irrelevant.
‘Danielle, our clients need to see your face. Can you tame your curls and tie them back?’
‘Danielle, can your suits be more neutral/less colourful/more formal/more suit-ish?’
‘Trousers! Do you think they’re suitable or even acceptable?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Danielle! When will you realise this is a career, not a job?’
So many confounding questions. And only four clear answers:
No! No! Yes! Never!
Four years in a world of corporate constraints, and the path I had to take could not have been more clear.
Leave the squat for a flat share with friends. And start to look for another job.
Then, as life was looking up, I met Mr S on a staircase (back in Birmingham). I liked his sense of humour and the fact that he could give me a lift to the station so I could get home. It was 1990, during the World Cup, and in the car, he shared a couple of pearls. That football was more than a game, it was a spiritual experience. And one day, we would get married.
His confidence about our future was very appealing. His love of football – not so much.
We bought a house and got engaged, and I said adiós corporate world, hello charity sector.
But the day I was offered my new job, at Shelter, as a Corporate Fundraiser, (so, not a complete escape from all things corporate) I discovered (rather thrillingly) that I was pregnant.
Confronted with a moral dilemma, I sought advice from those who knew more than me.
‘Don’t tell,’ they said, ‘Wait until you reach the 12-week mark.’
So, I didn’t until I did, and I discovered, in a let’s-generalise-massively sort of a way, that people who worked in charities were a lot nicer than those in the commercial sector.
‘You’re not going to give up work, are you?’ friends asked when Baby One was born. But childcare and train fares would cost more than I earned, and work was not as interesting as Baby One. It seemed clear, to me at least, that ‘having it all’ was so 1980s. I did want it all. But not all at once.
After the shocking realisation that life was never going to be the same, I embraced motherhood and settled in for the ride. But after Baby Three (Baby Two had a heart defect, that story’s way too sad), life started to feel a bit samey.
I reflected upon my (not very extensive) skill-base: juggling kids, counting groups of teenagers, a few languages, creating training materials, teaching… And with the encouragement of a friend, I set up Le Cirque Magique – a French language club for kids.
It took off with a bang, though it soon became clear, that to avoid parents’ disappointment, I’d have to (gently) lower their expectations. So, I created a disclaimer that I included with their bill:
JUST TO SAY…
I’m so happy to welcome your child/ren to my classes. In the same way that you’d not expect your children to be concert pianists after a term of weekly piano lessons, neither will they be able to speak fluent French after a term of weekly French lessons. They might be able to say a few words and understand a little more.
That out the way, it was a great success. Such a success, that four years later, I decided to go large. I’d employ other teachers, set up in schools, franchise it out, take over the world…
During one long summer, I drew up a business model, recruited staff, signed contracts with headteachers across the county and neglected my children. Getting cross with them one too many times for interrupting Mummy, I had a moment of clarity. I didn’t love other people’s children. I didn’t want to be a teacher. And I didn’t want to run my own business. (It still wasn’t clear what I did want to do, but I knew, for sure, it wasn’t this.)
Embarrassed at letting people down, nevertheless, I pulled the plug. And discovered, to my surprise, that the majority (mainly women) understood my struggle to juggle.
I did a glass-painting course, got a few commissions, decided I was quite arty, and, with an urge to learn something new, returned to college to study Art and Design. Not quite the talented creative I thought I was, not bad at textiles and photography, quite bad at everything else, my final term’s project was eclipsed by a different creation – Baby Four.
Meanwhile, Desire to Travel still topping my list, my monthly suggestion to move overseas was relentlessly unheeded and my collection of Living and Working in Various Flipping Countries Around the World books gathered dust. The only place I got to move to was a new house to fit our expanding family, while Mr S, his career blissfully uninterrupted, was travelling monthly overseas, living my dream.
Then – one day, the boxes barely unpacked in our new home, Mr S returned from yet another week away and finally popped the question: ‘Would you like to live abroad?’
Did summer follow spring? Was the world round? Did Mary have a little lamb?
Maybe, all this time, I’d not been shouting into the void.
To be continued….
daniellesimpson 