Joining the Dance

In tough times, isn’t it a comfort that there are loads of wise sayings out there to help me get through. No, it isn’t. Wise sayings are just one line fairytales designed to keep us from rebellion. I’m a woman on the edge – but wait – ‘What does not kill us makes us stronger’. Oh, that’s fine then.

In employment, in addition to company slogans that are wise sayings in disguise (see above), we are offered comfort from codes of behaviour. Elaborate dances to the tune of authority structures, customs, and values. Few of these are explicit, and a new team member is pretty much set up to trip over and get bruised. The jobs that I’ve lasted in have been the ones I’ve been able to pitch in quickly and prance about laughing until I’ve worked out what everyone else is up to and where I fit in. In those jobs I’ve enjoyed the rhythm, so not knowing the dance hasn’t mattered. I shared in my colleagues’ common joys and trials. This is the way I felt about my first job in Mr Leatherbrother’s (Mr Lee to staff) chippie when I was thirteen. I had a sixth sense about when the teapot was about to run dry, could squeeze between the summer crowds with a pile of crocks in one hand and a rag in the other. I loved the boss and he loved me, especially when I burned the meal of pigs’ trotters that his ex-wife had set on the boil in the back kitchen.  I loved washing up with the boss’s son to Dexy’s Midnight Runners. He was the only black child I knew in Cornwall that was as white as Princess Diana’s wedding dress in 1981, and the only adopted child too. We compared notes about life and disagreed in a good-natured way on everything bar Genome. Most of all, I loved the women who served in the shop, their humour, their hard work, their pragmatism, the way they made allowances for my age but not many and not for long. I loved their stories about their husbands, gossip about their children, their moral values, the liveliness and life in them. One day when I was away at college, Mr Lee did what he had always talked of doing and sold up to retire. I returned to find a clothes shop in place of the chippie over the road from the museum. It was as though I had come home to find that my family had been wiped out by the ravages of an earthquake. I grieved until I found them. The women had set up a refugee camp working at the bakery on the front street, Mr Lee had gone back to Yorkshire after his son had run away having robbed the old man by climbing in over the roof at night. It was a scandal over a saffron bun.

If I fitted in at Mr Lee’s, I did the opposite at the supermarket. Aged sixteen, I had been tempted by the better pay and hours (I was developing a cider-based social life). I was on the checkouts covering the breaks of the other girls. In the time before scanning checkouts, tills were a beige coated cast iron calculator. The task was to find the price label on the item then copy it into the machine by pressing the heavy square keys. After finishing the number it was necessary to depress a bar at the side of the keypad with the edge of the hand, making the till add up. It was all set up for right handed people, and this made me slower and clumsier than average. I never got to know anybody in the subsidised canteen where people chatted and smoked, looking at me with suspicion as I sat alone. Neither did I learn the numerous rules of conduct. I felt bullied by the supervisors who seemed to catch me out in the transgressions routinely overlooked in everyone else. The other checkout girls (the manager had his own policy of employing only pretty young girls, he told us so on our first day along with the fire drill was ‘wear make-up but not too much, tie your hear up nicely and smile’) were all a bit older than me, and wouldn’t let me adjust their seats while they were on their breaks so I was always uncomfortable and sore. I bit back the tears threatening to smudge my blue eyeshadow as the supers ostentatiously re-calculated the value of a trolley of shopping that I had put through, finding me 2p in the wrong. During afternoon tea-break on my sixth day, I walked out, telling no one that I wouldn’t be back, and leaving my overalls by the door of the personnel office. I never went back for my 98p per hour wages and no one ever called to check that I hadn’t been abducted by aliens.

When I fell into learning disability work, mostly by accident, I felt like I already knew the dance of the job. Falling out of it was more about tiredness and ill health than any disenchantment with the tune. Last year, I began mental health nursing with caution about how I would find it. It went well on the last placement, like coming home. It was imperfect, and there were trips and bruises, but I never wanted to walk away. They warn students every placement is different, and that some are difficult. Student nurses have to be exposed to a range of experience so the placements are allocated by a mysterious process to which I’m not privy. Given this, I was certain to be given at least one placement that I wouldn’t have selected. I’m all grown up now though, experienced in the ways of the staffroom, powerful in the way that I thought those middle aged women at Mr Lee’s to be. I ought to be able to join the dance anywhere. And yet, it’s the end of the first week and I have the same feelings of the sixteen year old who dumped the uniform and made a break for the fresh air.

Don’t get me wrong, it is as one of the nurses so aptly put it, a good-hearted place. Adequate or more than so in every respect. It turns out (and why would it not) that people with dementia act in the style of people with severe to profound learning disabilities with life limiting conditions. The staff are people of kindly and efficient nature, doing all they can for people with warmth and affection. There’s a good staffroom, rest breaks and tolerable hours. People have been pleasant to me. It should feel right but something is amiss in the dance between me and this place. I have the wrong shoes, the well worn trainers that encourage people to learn to do all they can, to battle their disabilities, find new pleasures, live to the full. The footwear to compliment this placement’s tune might be slippers in which to sleep out the long last afternoons. I came unprepared by my Nan, now one hundred and a half, who said this last week after telling me her age as she says every time ‘and I want to live’. She has moved into her living room now, unable to manage the stairs but otherwise unchanged. On my first day of placement, a member staff introduced the service by explaining that she thought of it as offering mainly terminal care. This was echoed by a service user who seemed cheerful as she said she was here waiting to die. She laughed at my shock and changed the topic for me. And so I learned a little more about kindness.

One week down, seven to go. There’s no Mr Lee to go back to, so I’m going to have to make it to the end of the tune all be it with bruises. After all, ‘what can’t be cured must be endured’. Oh.

Homesick Student

I left Cornwall when I was eighteen, and never moved back. It was college that took me away, I was running towards expectation, freedom, and difference. Leeds hit me hard. I fell in love with the blackened sandstone churches and the red brick terraces stepping down the hillsides. Already in love with Nick, I missed him terribly, but I didn’t miss the gorse bushes of home. Because I wasn’t always happy, I remember my first year in Leeds in mixed ways, but it left an impression on me. Even now, the street names resonate: The Headrow, Headingley Lane, Roundhay…, and I recall the way the revolving doors to the main building of the Polytechnic would move heavily under my gloved hands. The weather is cold in my memory, although in all of the photographs of myself from that time, I’m in light clothing. Stiletto heels in the evening though, and how they would stick to the floor of the Students Union. There was always Simply Red playing. I hated Hucknall. The Pogues though…


Coming home from Leeds in the holidays was a cliché of student experience. I was barely off the train before I felt constrained. I always saw Nick first, and would lie to Mum that I had caught a later train (or a train the day later). The people who knew me would remark that my hair was different, the buses would be infrequent, my old friends had the same lives without me. My family? Oh, awful, just the worst. Such tensions, so annoying, petty, dull. If I couldn’t be with Nick, then I wanted to be away. I returned less and less over those years, and after I graduated, hardly at all.

When I say I’m from Cornwall, some people say how lovely it is and ask why I left and if I want to go back. ‘You must miss it‘, they remark. I’m generally decisive, replying in the negative. It’s a hard place to make a living, not much happens, the weather is not as good as you might think. In some ways, I’m more sentimental about Leeds than Cornwall. I haven’t been back to Yorkshire for decades, so it’s probably nostalgia for a time when everything was fresh, possible, and safe because eighteen year olds know no fear.

Just lately, I’ve been homesick for Cornwall. I miss the clean air, the gathering of starlings, hills, scrubby heather and gorse with hawks flying over, the smell of damp leaves rotting. I’d like an ice-cream from the stand that’s always been there in Truro Market (they do all kinds but I‘d settle for Cornish Vanilla). I’d go a walk on Portreath beach when the tide’s out and the sand is firm. I’d even like the wind that always hurts my ears. I promise not to say a word about the price of petrol, or be sarcastic about the unavailability of fresh fruit - or I‘d wait until I left the shop. I’d be patient when I get stuck behind farm machinery, drive slowly through the villages, spend my money in locally owned businesses, read the West Briton, participate in community affairs….

A weekend ought to be enough to have me crawling back to Cov. Oh, but it’s grey around here.

Prom Dress

Prom. That was a word I’d never heard in 1984 (the year I turned 16, took my O’levels, first heard a Billy Bragg record and lost my virginity). My younger daughter, H, turned 16 a few months ago and is even now revising for her GCSE’s. She’s already met Billy Bragg twice. Thankfully, I don’t know about the virginity thing.


Of the things that have changed in the last 26 years, the importing of the concept of a prom seems to be for the best. A chance to celebrate together before moving on to other things. A chance to buy a really nice frock and to play at sophistication before kicking off the high heels and rolling down a grass bank fuelled by crafty glugs of WKD. Some girls relish the whole dressing up thing. I wasn’t sure how H, always a jeans, tee shirt and expensive trainers girl, would take it. Since she was four years old, she had bought one dress and that was in denim.

I remember the dress before that. It was a blue gingham school dress with white peter pan collar and cuffs. I bought it in H’s absence and presented it to her, anticipating squeals of delight. There was silence and a furrowed brow. ‘I can’t wear that’ she fretted ‘people will see my legs.’ She did put it on a few times, reluctantly, for my sake. It began the period of her refusal to buy clothes from the girls section of any shop, and her instructing hairdressers to give her boy’s hair cuts. To be mistaken for a boy was her ultimate accolade.

She got feminine again though, but never went girlie, and still never wears pink. Her clothes are neat, simple, always fit well and always suit. I’ve never known her buy anything and not wear it, and she’s never let me buy her anything she doesn’t want. H’s now has a limited collection of garments that last years. She likes quality, and is worth the investment. I’ve been curious to find out what she would choose to wear for the ball, and feared that she may want to wear a dinner suit. I’m not sure how I would have dealt with that. I also speculated that she would perhaps go for a plain black shift dress, or one in the light shell shades that are big this season.

Off we went to Birmingham yesterday, to get the dress. We had a lovely time chatting about all sorts of things. We don’t do enough of that. She’s busy with her own life after all. This time, she was in a mood for openness and we had laughs and serious discussion on school, girlfriends, books, family and clothes. Phew there were a lot of clothes. She was game to browse and try on, modelling ball gowns while keeping her socks on. In the end, she went for the first dress we saw. Neither the style nor the colour I had guessed at. A perfect fit, fun, youthful and suitable for the occasion. Can you tell I’m proud?

I can’t tell you more about it because, like a wedding dress it has to be a surprise (clue: it was from Warehouse). We have yet to get shoes, but H is considering heels. That would be the biggest step yet.

Dorothy and the Sunshine Band

I promised not to write about my diet, but I never gave any guarantees I wouldn’t write about trying on clothes. Now I’ve begun to though, I’m having a crisis of confidence, giving serious consideration to abandoning this theme. It’s just way too girly. All my life I’ve hated conversations about diets, clothes and cosmetics, they leave me bored and isolated. It may be because I’m jealous of women who are successful enough slimmers to look good in Miss Sixty jeans and Rimmel. It may also be because these topics aren’t inherently interesting…but then if that is true, why are dozens of magazines published every month on those subjects?


I seem to have lost my summer clothes. The ones I have left are three years old and too worn even for my standards. Also, I have lost some weight. The scales recorded a little milestone. I went browsing.
Although I distance myself from clothes shopping, there are clothes shops that I rely on. This is in as much as I don’t feel like a freak when I pass through their doors, and I can generally find one thing that fits. I learned in my late teens that where you shop says a lot about who you are. That’s not profound, but it came as a surprise to me as a fresher at Leeds. 1980’s Cornwall had no trendy shops, unless you were counting Etam, which one did, but only in that it was a new-to-Truro chain clothes shop that rivalled the ground floor of Littlewoods. It was at college that I was asked where I bought my donkey jacket (the Pannier Market) and was judged by it. All of the girls seemed to shop in Next, or want to shop there. My housemate spent the whole of her first term’s grant on one shopping spree, then strolled unapologetically down to the phone box to call her Dad, from whence more funds were sent. I didn’t envy her the luxury, those Next clothes looked a bit stiff. I had chunky knit acrylic jumpers made by a firm in St Austell. I seduced her brother in one of those, so it wasn’t all bad.

I shop at the chain stores now, and Coventry is the chain store clothing capital of the nation. You would think I’d fit in. New Look has been a long time favourite. Not too expensive, wide range of sizes, middle of the road fashionability, people of my own age shopping there. That has been the case since New Look opened up on the precinct over a decade ago. It was until now. I spent over an hour looking for stuff. No joy. Nothing that I would wear. There were floral flounces in pale pink. There were leggings. I tried some stuff on. Everything fitted. I should have been celebrating my new dress size (if three things are tried on in a particular size and they fit, I believe you are allowed to call that your size, I am an 18). The trouble is, at my size and age, a frilly racer back blouse and leggings combo is an unseemly choice. I exited the changing room with a queasy feeling and a red face to have another look. Before me were young people. This explained it all. I have out-aged New Look. I’m after Older Look.

I walked a bit further, ending up in Dorothy Perkins. This was a tiny bit better because of the music that was playing. Baby Give It Up by KC and the Sunshine Band. Although I find that it was a 70’s, rather than an 80’s track it made me remember better times at college when I did fit in. I remembered Carrie who was beautiful, well dressed, coconut scented, and who predicted the commercial possibilities of a Subway style meal experience. Some time in 1990 we shared a joke on the hilarity of the chances of her shopping at Dot P’s. You had to be there. I wonder if she’s out-ageing her high end boutiques, and if she bought shares in Subway before there was one in every former shoe shop.

Where does the average mumsy 42 year old shop these days? If you’re out there Carrie, give me a clue. You were so right about the donkey jacket. It was hard wearing though.

Friday 4.9.09

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tuesday 31.3.09

A day of nostalgia chatting to S on Facebook. We bonded over Cornwall County Council's music fro primary schools programme (we both played the flute) in 1978. She was my best friend outside of school from 1979 to 1983. We would meet up at the school gates and walk back to her house where her Mum would serve domestic normality and home made coffee cake. Best cake I ever tasted. Ever, ever, ever. Puberty and the early teens. Orangey-gold makeup and green hair gel, and newfangled mousse. Clothes, but not so many, more the dream of fashion. Boys found out about through gossip and two inch novels by Jackie Collins, pages with the sex scenes folded over. Singing along to Meatloaf (we both still know the words). Impressing each other and egging each other on. Venturing out to the Radio One Roadshow, and missing the bus back from the beach.

We were still friends when she introduced me to Nick in 1984, although growing apart by then, I was at a different school, she had made different friends. I still loved her though for her easy cheerfulness, her confidence around the boys that swarmed around her, her glow of self. Of course, the boys, college for her and sixth form for me, and both of us moving out of Truro finished it. So the rest was marriage, children, love and the history of my life. She came to our wedding reception in 1988, just the same as ever, then we lost touch.

We re-established contact last year, but it was a bit awkward, I think because on my side, I disclosed too much stridently, too soon. On her side, she sent me Facebook Faeries. But, when we get to chatting back and forth as we have today, its fine. I really would like to meet up with her again, and with K, another friend who was my best friend at school. K who let me copy her in maths, who introduced me by proxy to the concept of serious injury, who had a sense of fairness and giving everyone the chance, and who, as it turns out is more sentimental about me than I deserve.

So, today, between my efforts to write something funny, ferry an over-stressed Nick to meetings, and to make a fair enough fish pie, I've thought of my old friends. I thought of how they shaped me, and what I learned from them. It made it a good day.

Just as a follow-up to my recent despair at the rancid plot lines of Holby City, today's was a corking episode. My children talked through it, naturally, but you can't have everything.