The Smell of Burning

A little ironic, that title, given I have no sense of smell but this summer I have doused my bridges in hope, courage and determination and left them flaming and crackling behind me. So why, after years of wailing and moaning and grinding of teeth, now? Several reasons. Last year, at my son's graduation ceremony, Greg Dyke (former Director-General of the BBC, currently - amongst other things - Chancellor of York University)spoke with wit and wisdom to the assembled ranks of proud and hopeful young people before him. The piece of advice which most struck a chord with me was 'Never stay in a job you hate'. It's all very well for him, I thought at the time. Easy for people like you. But it stuck, and as the months went by I remembered those words less with cynicism than with a growing sense of possibility. And in the imploding school, people I cared about were destroyed by falling rubble. My own temporary place of safety was to be exposed to the bombs and the poison gas. I walked away. Enough finally became enough. Then for a weekend towards the end of July, I attended the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. The sun shone. Writers whose work I admired spoke with humour and passion for their craft. One very talented, successful and lovely writer offered to back my approach to her agent. Following this, I received a cheque from the US arm of Amazon for the Kindle sales of my novel. Another agent has asked to see the whole book. Following this again, the prospect of volunteering and blogging at The Manchester Literature Festival in October shines as a beacon in the hazy and uncertain months ahead. I feel as if I'm becoming myself, liberated and inspired. And very, very nervous. But if not now, when?

Shrink

The school in which I work/suffer/despair is shrinking.  When I joined it, half a dozen or so years ago, there were around a thousand pupils on roll.  Now there are not much more than six hundred and September's intake looks smaller still.  The popular (among Senior Management) view is that we have a grammar school down the road and 'outstanding' comprehensives a couple of miles away.  These are all over-subscribed of course, and their rejects trail dejected towards us.  But this coming year they have been granted extra classes, in what is quite possibly a government incentive to boost higher achieving schools and demoralise the rest until they close.

What is it like to work in a demoralised school?

Well, there is no money.  So the top floor of one of the buildings is to be shut down and its teachers relocated.  Whole areas of the school are being sold off.  Experienced - and therefore expensive - staff are bullied to the point of breakdown and forced to take early retirement.  No one is replaced.  Other staff take longterm sick leave and their classes are left to fail.  Email is the communication method of choice, removing the option for staff to talk to each other, to support each other in a comforting and sympathetic way, unlike the 'support' offered by Senior Management, which involves sticks and ropes.  Feelings, opinions and points of view are not tolerated in any way.  The children themselves exist only as units of achievement and their 'progress' used as a club to beat the staff not as an aspiration for the pupils.

When I think of the school as shrinking, in terms of morale as well as numbers, I think of the shrunken heads of the Amazonian rain forests.  It might not be quite what we look like yet.  But it is how we feel.

Brave New World

Unable, until tomorrow, to take down the Christmas tree and completely consign the festive season once more unto the loft, I am sitting in my living room contemplating emptiness.  The emptiness of the shelves which a few days ago were crowded with Christmas cards, of the velvet tablecloth and runner waiting to go in the wash and the cinnamon candles back in the cupboard.  The emptiness of the house now that my daughter has returned to her university life and my son is about to embark on a new adventure.  And I think - now what?

For I sense this could be a year of change.

Already we are straining at the ties which bound us to this semi-rural market town while our children were growing up: the ties of schools and stability and childhood friendships. Now those ties are financial ones, and our own future is too knotted up with the economic decisions of governments.  At present we need a small lottery win or a serious promotion to free ourselves from the weights of debts and the vagaries of the housing market.  But by the end of 2013 we will have choices again; a move back south might be less fraught with potential disaster, might, indeed, be a real possibility.

But what now for me?

I have been reading, this week, of the lives of women in magazines.  They have their own businesses or media careers.  They live in the south east in converted country farmhouses or flash city apartments.  Their concerns are fashion and beauty and Smartphone addictions.  I think of the world in which I live and it bears no resemblance.  Setting aside my impatience - for these are the women who read and reject my writing, who patronise and pass judgement - I hanker for a little of this myself.  I want my own business, writing scripts and novels.  I want to be able to make choices and decisions which take me forward instead of leaving me stranded in the mire.  I want this year to be about success.

There.  I've said it.  All I have to do now is make it come true.