Half Life – 11 - work
January 8th 2021
As we start to emerge from our holiday cocoons, put the tinsel and fairy lights away, and plan the first weeks of the year in yet another lockdown, I think about those far-off days when I heaved myself out of bed at 5.00 in the morning to catch a train and got paid for something I’m sure was very important. As we waited for our early morning ride into The Big City to arrive, standing with the same faces at exactly the place we knew the doors would be, silence was compulsory. God forbid some jolly newcomer, fresh with smiles totally inappropriate to the time of day, would attempt conversation when we all would have preferred to have been asleep. By the time the creaking carriages pulled away they had usually been freeze-stared out of their mistake and were reading the BBC website on their phone for the fourth time. Only as we reached the final couple of stops had any form of conversation been permitted. Warming up for the day ahead, office small-talk kicked in and, by the time we’d arrived and streamed off towards the ticket barriers, you would have been fooled into believing that good natured conversation, even with the newcomers, had been going on for the whole hour before. Once on the Tube, poems and adverts have never been so interesting as when standing in a packed carriage, trying hard not to be seen looking down the cleavage of the woman sitting right in front of you. I don’t miss it.
Dreams don’t need reasons. It took me until my 50th birthday to wake up and decide to map out a full new working life based on the long-held passions I’d been too scared to chase. Frightened and excited by my own bravery, and supported by the equally brave Wife, I launched into the void and started a tiny, irreverent, wine events business, combined with a long-held ambition to write down the stories I’d felt bouncing around my head for years. A geek level passion for wine, beyond simply drinking it, had been sending friends to sleep on a regular basis, so turning that into some form of work, while at the same time scratching the writing itch, was too attractive to turn away any longer. I’d heard the ‘If not now, then when?” voice in my head too many times.
Chapter after chapter rolled off my laptop as my novel took shape. My website for the wine events was being built as I learned why I used to pay other people to create them. Piles of tasting glasses filled corners of the house, spittoons were stacked on my desk, and I drafted different types of fun games to play with wine, while hunting down where I would find the bottles I needed. Tasting potential samples allowed midday cork-pulling to be described as work. Contacting former colleagues and friends in shameless self-promotion, the first few requests for wine events, advice, and buying started to trickle in. Some of the work was paid, some not, but the customer list had started to grow. I rehearsed my wine games and my spontaneity, dreaming up wine-themed dad jokes to throw in as, my soon to be, customers laughed as I told silly stories about the wines in their hands.
Nobby had other ideas. He took hold of my spine and started to squeeze. Sitting for any length of time became painful, so I stood as I chased those first few clients and created a standing desk from empty wine boxes. He squeezed harder and harder, and by the end of the year, although the book was done and the website up and running, it was obvious the new career was joining the spat-out wine samples in the sink and the rejection notes from agents and publishers in the bin.
The life that replaced those vinous dreams, as a semi-incapacitated parent at home, bears some frightening similarities to the experiences I used to have when trapsing into an office. My early morning dash for the train has been replaced by an equivalent dash, but this time for a pee. When living with a problematic prostate, you don’t lie in bed and play the how long can I ignore it game. In the office, reasons presented for work not being done were highly creative and unbelievable; now it’s about homework. I’m still pestered with endless requests for money for unplanned and stupid ideas, although, luckily, my time in employment equipped me with many different ways of saying ‘no’ which work on teenagers too. The bombardment of pointless emails remains, but it’s now from Nigerian widows, scam changes to my email account, and unmissable investment offers. The Wife’s home working allows me to keep my hand in with the good old days as I provide her with my sage-like advice and deep wisdom on her work conundrums. Like a Shakespeare-typing monkey I’m sure I will come up with something she uses eventually, it’s just a matter of time. My contributions when in real work were, I hope, more valuable and taken more seriously.
My fantasies about being a gentleman of leisure, frequently harboured when half-awake on those dark winter morning train rides, were misplaced. Being forced into retirement by being unable to work felt more like hitting the crash barriers than a gentle glide to a comfortable stop. The structure, friendships, jokes, stimulation, and purpose that work brought was more important than I had realised at the time. Exhaustion, Nobby’s daily handcuff on everything I do, has thwarted attempts to take on even small projects or roles. As I look at the suits, formal shirts, and ties that hang expectantly in the wardrobe, waiting for an early morning call to duty that is never going to come, I know I will, at some point, have to clear them out and accept a new reality.
Send me the book Charlie, I would love to read it.
🤣🤣 think I was one of those fresh faced commuters - I soon learnt!!! 🙄😳🤣