It’s been a while since…
- I wrote this blog
- worked on my novel
- enjoyed writing
- felt inspired.
But things have changed and I am back. The creative juices may not yet be flowing, but with a little persistence, they are seeping through. And so, each day, I am pushing myself to write, and as a result, am fishing out ‘the block’.
Not blocked ideas, mind you, but blocked confidence. These past two years, while writer friends were being productive, the job I’d enjoyed changed shape for the worse, and a few personal issues muddied the waters. ‘What’s the point?’ and ‘Who cares?’ echoed in my head and my creative and emotional reserves ran dry.
So, for a while, I’m focusing on self-care. A post-it note on the frame of my monitor says: ‘What am I doing for me today?’ An alien concept. An indulgent one, too? But I’m paying attention until it’s my norm.
I’ve gone freelance for work and will be volunteering as a writing mentor at the excellently named Ministry of Stories. I’ve reached out to writer friends – because support and encouragement can only be good. I’m writing each day and am saving an hour just for me.
Keen to try new things, I recently attended an event for A Good Cause. That evening, I learnt many facts, but this was the most startling; people might be accomplished and clever, generous (with time and/or money), interested, even, in Good Causes… But it doesn’t mean they’re kind.
I went on my own, invited by someone I’d recently met. Now, I’m outgoing with my friends and I love a good chat. But I’m no extrovert. That’s Mr S’s superpower. Networking, alone, in a crowd of strangers, catapults me way, way, WAY out of my comfort zone. It always has.
Rewind a lot of years to my first proper job. Back in the days of shoulder pads and Filofaxes, expense accounts and boozy corporate entertaining. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I may have been that person, during a long work lunch, who, by the end of the main course, was so done in with the effort of business small talk, that I went to the loo and stayed there until the bill was being paid.
But, that was a long time ago, and I’d like to think I’ve grown up a bit since then. I can now talk some talk, mingle and mix, and I’ll keep a conversation going after, ‘What is your name?’
So, fast forward to now, and I’m at this event, and I know just two people. The Mrs who’d invited me and the Mr she is married to. Not strangers – I’d been for dinner at their house the weekend before, but not mates – it was only the third time we’d met.
After a quick air-kiss, Mr turned away, and Mrs, while friendly, continued to meet and greet her guests. So, left to my own devices, I ‘did the room’ (a theatre in fact), first tackling Mrs’s other friends, and then braving the unknowns.
It quickly became apparent that the people at this event were the very Great and the Good. By no means ‘unknown’, except, perhaps, to me. Highly Successful in their chosen fields, I was no match for their experience or achievements. But we weren’t there to boast about our credentials, we were there to support.
So, it was disconcerting when the husband of a couple with whom I’d been having (what I thought was) a brief and pleasant chat (about – surprisingly – several shared life experiences), did that thing (when you’re 15) when you don’t want to be stuck with the boring person at a party. He turned his back on me, and, shooting sly glances over his shoulder, whispered in his wife’s ear something along the lines of, ‘Let’s move, I don’t want to be stuck with her.’ At his bidding, Wifey at once stopped being friendly and they sidled away.
I think I’m fairly intuitive. I know when I’ve said too much, or the wrong thing, or bored someone to tears. I don’t have form as a leech or a hanger-on. I tend not to linger when it’s clear my popularity has waned. In fact, my preference is to leave when the going’s good, not stay till the bitter end. But, it was the start of the evening, and we were merely killing a few moments until we had to take our seats.
This man’s snub was so unsettling that I felt clumsy with embarrassment. So I popped to the loo – a good place for time out, then went to my seat, unfortunately next to the Snubs.
The lights went down, presentations were made, we were entertained, and then the lights went up.
‘Wasn’t that interesting?’ I automatically (because that seemed a normal thing to do) turned to say to Mr and Mrs Snub, in the least stalkery way I could. But the husband, again with that glance in my direction, murmured in his wife’s hair. And they got up and scuttled off.
Taking a moment for my humiliation to pass, I too stood up, clicked my heels together and said, ‘There’s no place like home.’ But my shoes weren’t red and sparkly and I didn’t disappear. Fortunately, another person, a few seats up, did what nice people do. She smiled and said, ‘Wasn’t that great, what did you think, blah de blah, blah de blah.’
Then, the Mr of the Mrs who was running the event, walked towards us.
‘Didn’t your wife do an amazing j-’ I started, thinking he was coming over for a chat. But I didn’t get to finish, for he totally ignored me, and continued on his way.
What surprised me the most, apart from the fact that the last time people behaved like this was when I was in my teens, was that no one thought it might just be kind to include someone who was there on their own.
This was an event put on by a Not for Profit organisation made up of people who care passionately about their cause. People like those in the charity sector with whom I’ve worked for many years. My mistake was to think that the people who’d attend such an event would be much the same.
But I was wrong. In the world of philanthropy, it seems to be the prizes you have won, your intellect and IQ, the people you know, and the size of your importance, not to mention wallet, that add cachet. You’re the cream of the crop. Your status is your currency.
There’s diversity because it suits the narrative (and the aesthetic), but those in this club don’t seem to be an inclusive bunch. They may be clever, they may be at the top of their game, and, of course, they are generous. But without kindness, or just the most basic understanding that you don’t exclude someone who’s on their own, it all means significantly less.
The opening of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, however, was a lesson in how to do it right. Inclusive, diverse, accessible, welcoming and friendly, the emphasis was on ‘you, the people’, inclusive working practices, and ‘your museum’.
And, as if she’d been a fly on the wall at the Good Cause event, one of the (job-sharing) CEOs (yes! Job sharing is possible at any level), said, at the end of her welcoming speech (and yes! There was a BSL interpreter for all the speeches), ‘As you know, many people in the museum world are introverts. If you see anyone here on their own tonight, please make an effort to talk to them as it’s very hard attending somewhere on your own.’ Yes! (I cheered in my head).
The contrast could not have been greater.
****
Which leads me neatly (sort of), to a book I’ve just read – Better to Have Gone, Auroville: Love, Death and the Quest for Utopia. Catchy title I know. There was a reason for my read.
Auroville, for those not in the know, is a township in South India, close to Puducherry. Founded in 1968, by someone called ‘the Mother’, (‘the spiritual collaborator of the spiritual visionary Sri Aurobindo’), ‘the purpose of Auroville was to realise human unity – in diversity. To be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.’ Quote, unquote.
Auroville also means City of Dawn and while it was intended as a city for up to 50,000 inhabitants from around the world, today, around 2000 people from some 30 countries live in 100 settlements of varying sizes.
So, why am I sharing this with you? Why did I read this book? Well, there’s a reason, and the reason is this…
You might remember from my previous blog, that back in the day, before the first job and its long boring lunches, I was a mere strip of a girl who had just turned 18. Having messed up my A-Levels, I was faced with a choice:
- Option A: Cram for a year, retake A-Levels and, if I did better than before, study Drama and French.
- Option B: Take a year out, stick with existing grades. Study French and Spanish.
I loved acting, but hated exams more. My Sliding Doors moment – I chose Option B. And here the tale resumes…
****
‘What will you do in your year off?’ asked my best friend (we’ll call her F for ‘Friend’) who was going travelling.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I have an idea!’ said F’s mum, in her typically uncomplicated way, ‘Go to India with F in January, I’d much rather she didn’t travel alone.’
That sounded great, so I went home and told my mum. Who dared to hesitate, as mums sometimes do when their 18-year-olds blurt out that they’re off to India. Emotional, I took my mother’s lack of enthusiasm as a categorical ‘NO!’
‘But I don’t have a problem with you going to India,’ my mum said, a week later, when I would finally talk to her again. ‘I’d just like to meet F and her [uncomplicated] mum.’
So she did. And it was agreed. F and I would get jobs, earn enough to pay for our trip, then embark upon the adventure of a lifetime.
The finer details were this: F’s aunt lived in Puducherry (then known as Pondicherry) (remember the book…) and we’d be teaching English to the children of the workers in her incense factory a few miles away. We’d live on the factory workers’ compound for three months, be loosely supervised by F’s aunt, and then go travelling until our money ran out.
So, I found a job. In Tinseltown.
The Christmas Decorations department in Debenhams. In Harrow.
Not Hollywood.
There, I wore a uniform. A tabard. An apron thing that went over my head and tied under my arms, TINSELTOWN emblazoned across the front, baubles and sleigh bells all over the back. The fabric so stiff, I resembled a knight’s herald bearing Santa’s coat of arms. I enjoyed wearing this tabard as much as I enjoyed taking exams. At the end of each day, I’d take it off and hide it under the Christmas tree display. At the start of each day, Julia, just three years older than me, on the Debenhams Graduate Training Scheme, handed it back and made me put it on.
On one side of Tinseltown was the Luggage Department – a video showing Eight-Ways-To-Pack-A-Suitcase played eight hours a day. On the other – the Record Department, The Jungle Book soundtrack playing on a loop. By December, I was packing the bare necessities in my sleep.
The New Year arrived, and one icy English morning, our suitcases rammed with six-months’ worth of the bulkiest travel-unfriendly sanitary products known to woman (oh, Always, Slimline and Winged, where were you when we needed you most), and unseasonal, modest, summer clothes, instructions NEVER to miss a malaria tablet and the promise that we’d write EVERY week, F and I flew off to India, omnipotent in our naivety, the world our giant oyster.
The first week there, iller than I’d ever been in my life with gastro-never-been-further-than-France-teritis, a combination of western (Immodium) and eastern (dilution of snake venom) medicine helped me live to see another day.
We taught English in the factory compound school,
and, intrepid on our bikes, discovered:
- down-the-road in one direction, New-Age hippy commune Auroville (THAT’S why I read the book – an autobiographical tale of a couple who’d lived there at the same time we were visiting). That spiel on the website, a little more rose-tinted than the Auroville we knew. A successful experiment for those with money, brains and skills, not quite as good for those with drug habits and kids who were now feral,
- down-the-road in the other direction, Old World elegant French colonial settlement Puducherry (Pondy to us locals) with its centre of spirituality – Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and the home of F’s aunt.
Adventures rolled in thick and fast. Befriended by a woman related to a ‘Foxy’ acting dynasty, we’d spend lazy evenings with her as she read our tarot cards and intermittently disappeared to ‘see to’ the handsome, young musicians who hung out at her house.
We camped in Goa, where unplumbed toilets sited in huts provided shelter to the wild boar. A midnight pee, in total darkness, I crouched, it moved, there were squeals. It was a toss-up whose were loudest – the giant pig’s or mine.
By train and motorbike, car and bus, we travelled to Bangalore, Mangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. And ticked off the Taj Mahal and the cities of Rajasthan.
We were extras in films – a Shashi Kapoor Bollywood movie, and David Lean’s A Passage to India.
And became entangled with a religious cult, which, Moonie-fashion, relentlessly, but unsuccessfully, tried to brainwash us and keep us there.
“Are you here to find yourselves?” we were frequently asked. To our uncomplicated teen-selves, a ridiculous notion, but in hindsight, we very likely were.
Believing that a life of adventure would go on forever, when the fifth month arrived, my birthday imminent, F and I thought it might be nice to go home. The plane touched down and we realised we were wrong. England was grey and dreary, and, inseparable for half a year, we missed each other a lot. I’d severed the familial umbilical cord and I wanted to stay free.
So, with three months till university – time for more travel – we found new jobs. As waitresses in Pizza Hut on the Kings Road. Destined for terrible uniforms and music on a loop, we wore brown crackly nylon trousers, aprons and headscarves, and served Benetton-clad yuppies to I Want to Break Free.
Money in our pockets, the world at our feet, for some indistinct reason, we went to France on a PGL Adventure holiday. The canoeing was fun, but India it was not.
September arrived and student life began. I did some studying, some acting, a year in France, my bit for Anglo-French relations and became bilingual. I spent a summer in Athens working at Hotel California (less hotel, more doss house for travellers and the occasional drug addict). I trekked across the Peloponnese, hopped around the Cyclades, au paired in Spain, and backpacked around Europe.
Four years passed and, with French and Spanish now part of my linguistic arsenal, I graduated, my student days now over, but my wanderlust unsated.
At the T-junction of the rest of my life, I had no idea what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be.
Responsibility and adulthood beckoned in one direction. Freedom and self-discovery tempted in the other.
To be continued…
daniellesimpson 