Smoking

Basingstoke: Guy Fawkes' Night 1986

A gang of children are hanging out in 'the woods' just in front of the old peoples home where local mothers put on pale blue housecoats and aprons to look after the oldies.

The bonfire has a plank running across the centre of it and boys are riding their bikes through the flames.  Children play catch with firelighters bought from the Co-Op - why pretend you've got a hot potato when you can hold real fire in your hands?  We are out in the dark, unsupervised.

A boy (one of a pair of local twins who I am "not allowed to play with") turns to me and asks "do you want one?".  He is tall and slim, thin lips parting to show sharp teeth as he offers a lit cigarette in his bony hand.  I am eleven and impressionable - I take it.

I put the cigarette in my mouth and suck - the smoke enters my mouth and I cough it out.  It's like eating the remnants of an ashtray (and I should know, having been caught doing exactly that as a baby), I hand the cigarette back and run away.

Woodley: Late 1995

It is late evening and I am cold.  I'm wearing a short silver A-line dress, shiny tights and patent black dolly shoes.  I'm going with a colleague to see a DJ at the After Dark Club but we stop at his local pub first to collect his friend.  The pub is full and I am out of place - my short denim jacket not adequately hiding the fact I am dressed for clubbing, not playing darts.  

I clutch the bottle of Becks that is offered to me and stand close to my colleague.  A man correctly observes that I am "not his girlfriend" but is assured via some choice words that I am there as a friend, not a bit on the side, and that I am not up for grabs.

The man we are waiting for arrives.  He has hair like Action Man, dark brown eyes and neat, straight teeth.  "I thought you were going to be a bloke", he says.  He offers me a Silk Cut and I am hooked.

Stop Leaving Stuff on the Stairs!

And this is on a 'good' day

Sometimes I think no-one else cares
About the crap that gets left on the stairs
Coats, jumpers and Crocs
Gloves, homework and socks
That are dirty, and never in pairs

Sometimes I think everyone's blind
To the detritus they leave behind
They sail past each tread
On their way up to bed
While I seethe as I count each new 'find'

Why don't they clean after themselves?
Do they think we've got housework elves?
Well I've had enough
Of picking up stuff
Our staircase shall now be called "shelves"

A Night in a Bookshop

A man shape-shifted into a gangsta Peregrine Falcon
A woman nearly choked to death by being an unsuspecting participant in "Dorito Roulette"
We took a tour of a sales floor
A Kraken cast bones across the ocean
God roared and wept
A one night stand was documented with a flawed jewel
A wedding ring was lost and found
A son was remembered
A bookshop filled to the gills with people
A stack of books toppled onto the toilet floor

Thank you Hungerford Bookshop

Freedom

I missed my own anniversary.  My business anniversary that is; my wedding anniversary is seared into my brain like a brand on a juicy piece of steak because it is a bona fide reason to call on the in-laws to babysit overnight so we can enjoy a night away and a lie-in (children steal your lie-ins forever, that's a fact).  Anyway, I had missed my business anniversary but thanks to the power of LinkedIn, a flurry of messages over the past couple of days have informed me that:

Five years ago I ditched my corporate career

This makes it sound like I threw it out of a moving car (which I would quite happily have done on more than one occasion - and then backed the car up and run it over for good measure.  And then got out of the car and stamped on it.) but in actual fact it was a planned move.  I had decided to go, sought advice, put a (kind of) financial plan in place and then gone to become a "freelancer".  

A freelance what?

Initially I started out offering Alliance Management consultancy because I was good at helping businesses to figure out how to work with Microsoft.  I still do it a little bit, in subtler ways but something happened that I wasn't expecting, and it took me in an entirely different direction to the way I thought I was going to go.

Blog off  

This very blog that I started writing to celebrate my freedom got picked up by Cosmopolitan and then people started asking me if I would consider blogging for them.  And then I started ghost writing for people who simply didn't have the time to write the stuff that they kept getting told they should be putting out there - funnily enough thought leaders and captains of industry are often too busy to spend three hours at a keyboard crafting content.  And because of this, I started getting asked to write other stuff - web copy, eShots, LinkedIn profiles, even poetry for events and off-sites.  

Write on

And the more I wrote, the more I got asked to write.  Luxury brands, small businesses, start-ups, charities and individuals all asked if I'd give them a hand. 

Some days I write about skin aesthetics, others about cloud computing.  The day I had to write both a white paper and a best man's speech was a pretty interesting one.  Every day I get a proper writer's work out, and there's nothing like flexing your writing muscle to make you want to write more.

Lessons Learned

And at the same time that all this was going on I was getting a chance to properly put into play all the things that the corporate training courses that I had attended told me about - especially in the realms of managing cash flow and profitability.  The training was right but the context was wrong.  The theory of running your own P&L is wonderful in helping you understand your customers but it's not until you actually run your own that you really get it (especially that first time you realise that you didn't save enough for your tax bill...).

Tales of the unexpected

Quite aside from the fantastic thing that was realising I had carved my own career as a writer (thus proving my English teacher right - just 20+ years after her initial assertion that I should "do something" with my writing), the past five years have included publishing three books, becoming a trustee of a fantastic charity and making some tentative steps into stand-up comedy, all of which have made a massively positive impact on my life and all of which I don't think I would have had the courage (or time, let's be honest) to try when I was still employed by a corporate.

What's next?

If I've learned anything over the past five years, it's that the best thing about freelancing is in the name - being free.  Free to make choices and mistakes, free to take risks and opportunities, free to create your own definition of success.  Free to decide to spend a day doing stuff that you have chosen to do.  And it's because of this freedom that I can't say for sure what will happen over the next five years - who knows what ripple in my life the next decision will create.  Whatever happens - I'm glad I took that first step.  Happy Anniversary indeed!

Soundtrack: Freedom! '90 by George Michael

When did you get so tall?

When did you get so tall, love?
Your shoulders are now broad
Your limbs so long and lithe, love
Your stance so self assured

What happened to your hands, love?
The dimples are all gone
Their span is close to mine, love
Your fingers lean and strong

Your little button nose, love
Your waterfall of hair
The colour of your eyes, love
Your skin so clear and fair

I heard you laugh last night love
The future came to me
That laugh will bring you love, love
So warm, alive and free

I once carried you within, love
Curled tightly like a ball
Where have those years all gone love?
When did you get so tall?

When Your Sense of Style Reaches Crisis Point

Have you ever found you don't know what you're wearing?
And can't believe you've stepped out in the street
Looking like you're totally past caring
With your daughter's Crocs placed firmly on your feet.

Have you ever got in just after the school run
And deposited your coat inside the hall
To find out that you forgot to put your bra on
And the top you're wearing is a size too small?

When you work from home do you feel motivated

I really *must* stop doing this!

To dress like you've a meeting to go to?
Or do you wear the jeans that you've always hated
With a bleach stain where you once cleaned out the loo

Have you ever left the house in such a hurry
That you've just put on what's closest to the door
Even if it is a jumper stained with curry
Or a coat that has spent ten days on the floor

Have you ever spent the whole day in your gym kit
After just one hour spent on exercise
Pushing trolleys around Waitrose isn't keep fit
But those leggings really do hold in our thighs!

Have you ever thought where did that young girl go to?
Have you ever thought where is my sense of style?
Have you ever thought thank christ that pressure's over
And allowed yourself a great big massive smile?

I know I'm not the only one who's out there
Whose fashion sense has taken such a blow
But I think I've reach the point where I do not care
There are times when it is fine to just let go!

Good Grief?

Facebook often gets criticised (deservedly) for being a place where people post mindless, thoughtless, ill-advised and sometimes downright offensive images and opinions.  It's also a place where I have seen some of the most poignant, beautiful, humane, heart-warming and heart-breaking posts.

A post that struck a chord with me recently was written by a friend that began "Today, I outlived my Dad at the age of 42".  This is a point that I will also reach in the next couple of years and reading his words made me reflect on the nature of the grieving that we go through - or perhaps more specifically that I have gone through. 

So here you have it:  Some Stuff I've Learned About Grief

• It can smash you across the face and leave you struggling for breath
• It can fill you with an energy that will enable you to perform feats of superhuman strength.  Anyone who has seen a man act as pallbearer to his wife or a child follow the coffin of their parent will know what that strength looks like
• It will cause you to run from town centres in tears with nothing but sobs to offer the strangers who stop to ask you what has happened
• It can also cause you to take incredibly large risks that will make you look back at those times and want to protect the person that you were
• You end up finding milestones or markers that you hadn't expected - for me this includes when my son reached the age of my youngest brother when our dad died.  Or when I reached the age of my mother when she was widowed.  It has helped me to empathise more with how things must have been for her and thank my lucky stars for all I currently have.
• The person who has died will crop up in all sorts of places.  I thought the registrar at our wedding was going to insist on a seance, so adamant was she that I needed to recall precisely the job my dead father had before he became terminally ill despite the fact that I had a living, breathing mother in the very next room.  Hopefully that kind of 'awkward' moment will become a thing of the past soon with #mothersonmarriagecerts (read here for more).
• It can send shock waves through families that ripple on for decades and for some the waves never recede
• The people who put up with all of the tears, snot, puffy-eyes, irrational fears, panicking and maudlin moments are keepers
• We know it happens to us all in the end, but it doesn't make it any easier

But it is not all bad.  It can't be all bad.

The experience of loved ones dying and the continual process of grief reminds us that our life can be short.  It helps us to try to remember the things that are important, to put things in perspective or to notice moments of beauty and joy and remember them.

And so I sit here; 26 years to the day that my dad died and whilst I am sad, I am happy for the life that he and my mum gave me, and the life that I now have.  If grief has taught me one thing, it is that life is good.


Footnote:
If you want a more scientific view on grief, you might like to take a look at the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle.  I've come across it twice in my life - once when studying for a psychology A-level (when it came in very bloody handy for helping me understand what the hell was going on) and secondly during an exercise discussing change in teams in a corporate setting (less useful). You can read more here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model