An unexpected hiatus

I suspect that posting is going to be sporadic for some time. That doesn’t matter. This has only ever been a kind of diary, a place to witter on, to no particular audience. In fact, I find myself using Facebook more and more to keep other people informed of the terrible things that happen to me, daily. Narcissistic? Yep. But it keeps my friends amused, as they frequently tell me they “look forward to my updates” which can’t be bad. And obviously I must come across better in bite-sized chunks of 120 characters.

And my life is changing rapidly and unexpectedly, and in a few weeks I shall be moving north to take on a new and exciting venture. Part shop, part social enterprise… details are still being worked out, but I have the capital and nothing to lose.

“People don’t recognise opportunity because it wears overalls and looks like hard work.”

The horse in the door

According to a book I picked up this weekend, if you combine the Chinese characters for “door” and “horse”, putting the horse in the middle of the character for door, the resultant image means “surprise” or “unexpected interruption”.

What could be more surprising than a horse wandering in?

Well, I was fairly surprised this weekend. It was the Winter Folk Festival at Alcester. It’s just a little event, to raise some cash for the main summer festival. When I arrived in this area nearly two years ago, I wanted to make friends so I looked around for various groups to join. I volunteered with the Girl Guides for a year, but found it a little hearty and, to be honest, dull. As a young person I’d been in Guides but quickly tired of the endless peppermint-cream-making, so I left and joined Army Cadets. It was much more fun to hide in trees with guns. However, my maturing views have questioned the combination of impression youngster and loaded weapon, so I didn’t want to go back to that as an adult. I hoped that Guides would have changed over the years. They were certainly a lot scruffier than I remembered! No less dull, unfortunately.

Then I went along to some Vegetarian events. I’m not veggie but I hoped to meet some environmentally-minded folks, but I couldn’t stand having my tea with soya milk so that didn’t last long.

Then, for some bizarre reason I still can’t explain, I joined the local folk music club. Apart from leaping about to the Levellers, I didn’t really have any hankering for folk music. I had vague notions of beards and hurdy-gurdies, which proved to be true. However I also met a great bunch of people, and not all of them were over fifty, which was also reassuring.

I soon found out that I was expected to take part, though. I couldn’t face the thought of singing so they asked me to tell a story.

And before I knew it, I was tellign stories every week, and then I was asked to come to the folk festival and take part in their story telling session there. That wasn’t too bad. It was just a small room, full of people all interested in stories, all of whom would tell one. So there was safety in numbers and I only had to tell a few.

That’s what I expected for this year. A little room, a handful of people, a few stories, and job done.

The horse appeared in the doorway when I picked up the programme on Saturday morning and found myself billed separately for an hour and a half that evening.

Two more horses appeared in the shape of my managers from work (sorry ladies, you’re not really like horses…!) who had heard about my storytelling and wanted to witness it. Now they know what I do in my lessons. I just ramble on for six hours a day.

In the end, I had a really long epic comic tale that lasted twenty minutes, a long and depressing one, and various jokes. With that and cajouling some members of the audience, plus a late start, in the end it turned out all right.

In spite of the horses.

Credit Crunch Craft

Most people have some secret habit that they are ashamed of; or they think they ought to be ashamed of. Mine (one of mine) is knitting. There are some signs that knitting is actually so uncool it has gone right off the spectrum and in some circular way ended up very cool indeed. There is the concept of Stitch n’Bitch where women gather to knit, gossip and swap patterns. There is the rather fantastic practise of yarnbombing, where everyday street furniture items get covered. And there are some great websites – American, mainly – which not only reject the old stereotype of knitted garments being fuddy, dull jumpers, but attack that stereotype with sharpened needles, tie it into a knitted straitjacket and lock it in a cellar. The Anticraft is my favourite.

Even so, there persists a faint hint of metaphorical mothballs about one who knits. It’s generally associated with thrift, though, and that is currently enjoying a resurgence. In this odd economy, being money conscious is now seen as desirable, not tight.

But it’s not necessarily so. I picked up a copy of Let’s Knit magazine recently, and was attracted to the lace-knit bolero pattern. (Never knitted clothing before in my life, except hats. Never done lace pattern either. I like a challenge.) The pattern blurb told me that it was “ideal credit crunch knitting” as it only took four or five balls. Fab! Then I looked at the recommended yarn. Which was about £11 a ball.

This is not credit crunch knitting. I could go into any number of high street stores and pick up a cheap short cardigan for less than a tenner. I substituted the recommended yarn, of course, for some at about a quid a ball. I should think that most people do; they recommend a particular yarn for the advertising revenue.

Mind you, they also gave away some nice yarn which I used for a long, thin scarf which I’ve been wearing at work. It looks homemade, which is something that appeals to me; however there is still that note of derision in some people’s voices when they say, “er… did you make that yourself?” It does imply a lack of skill. “Craft” as something that amateurs play at.

But craft should be on an equal footing with art, and I would be honoured to be called a craftsman.

Sadly, even great skill isn’t rewarded as we all want the cheap, quick, easy-care stuff.

But don’t think that I am insisting that hand-made is always best. Last year I was fed up of my feet freezing to my bare floorboards, and decided that I’d make a rag rug.

Like lace knitting, I’d never made a rag rug in my life. I got some hessian and hacked up some t-shirts, and set to with a crochet hook.

Three hours later, fingers bleeding, I’d covered about four square inches of hessian backing. I know now that I’d packed the strips of fabric far too tightly together, but once I’d started like that I was determined to finish. And, six months down the line, I have completed the rug! Everything in my house is covered in the tiny fibres shed from the hessian, and I used far more of my t-shirts than I should have done, but I do have the satisfaction of a small square of rug to stand on, that would have cost me… oh, at least a fiver in a cheap shop’s sale.

And it does look homemade. In the very worst sense of the word.

Update on the update!

So, remember that I got my final bill from BT on Wednesday? It gave me until 22 Feb to pay. It was dated 15 Feb.

Yeah. On Thursday, I received a red final demand from BT, insisting I pay that bill NOW NOW NOW… (or what? You’ll cut me off?). A mere twenty four hours to pay the heady sum of less than a tenner would seem a little harsh.

And in another news…

The local council sent me a questionnaire recently about my heating and energy efficiency. I dutifully filled it in and returned it. I received a reply this week from the Energy Saving Trust – a detailed report on my home, no less, personalised and everything! I could hardly contain my excitement. If I made the changes they suggested (fit a back-fire boiler, and so on) I’d save £1500!

I’ve sent the letter back, asking how, as I spend about £500 a year on energy. Max.

Update!

Well, well, well. Five months after my problems began with BT, things appear to have finally resolved. Yes, I’ve said that before… but today I received my final bill (the massive sum of nine pounds, since you’re asking). It took dozens of phone calls, letters and blood sacrifice to Mercury (the god of communication, obviously!) but it seems that it’s at an end. Hooray!

The temperatures are rising, too. There is a local wood shortage however; it may even be national. The high gas prices and prolonged winter have pushed many people into returning to solid fuels. My local saw mill is only supplying to existing customers, and last week ran out; hardware shops have no kindling left; coal has gone up in price as demand has risen. According to The Guardian, sales of woodburner stoves are up by at least 40% on last year.

An Australian study in 2003 (this is also gleaned from the Guardian) showed that burning wood produces up to 10 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions per unit of heat than other sources. And my wood is local and from sustainable, managed woodlands. I am both warm, and smug.

My bid to avoid supermarkets persists. Since Christmas, I have had to lapse once, which is pretty good going I feel. Most of my stuff is bought locally now. My one ongoing issue is Earl Grey tea bags! I had bought some from Marks and Spencers, and found that one bag, in a pot, was good for two cups. The equivalent from Co-op barely wrings out enough flavour for one cup. It is far better economy to buy the M and S ones… but does it count as a supermarket? Yes, though not the ‘big four’ I suppose.

Further fuel to my vendetta against supermarkets came last week, when I picked up a copy of Farmer’s Weekly magazine. It was lying on a desk at work, next to Pig World Magazine. Of the two, it looked marginally more interesting. The statistics were frightening. Half of British dairy farmers are now out of business due to low prices being paid for milk, and now we import a million litres a day. This fact was echoed only yesterday on Radio Four, so it wasn’t just a hysterical farmer claiming it; not that farmers are known for their hysteria. The British pig herd has also halved. We have strict welfare codes on livestock rearing and management here (I ought to know, I’ve been learning the welfare codes so I can teach Basic Stocksmanship at work), but not all countries adhere to similar levels of welfare. In fact, 70% of imported pig meat are raised in conditions that would be illegal here. I was aghast, and blurted it to the stockman who came into the office as I read this.

“Yep,” he agreed, “and don’t forget that if the pig is raised and killed somewhere else, but shipped here for packaging then the label can say ‘British’ so you think you’re getting decent meat.”

That’s the really cheap stuff you get in the supermarkets, of course. Families with no time and low incomes have no choice. In the words of New Model Army, “Nobody needs morality when you haven’t enough to eat.” So I’m claiming no moral high ground over those who buy and eat this stuff.

And all the answers I can come up with are rather radical, and involve a complete destroyal and rebuiling of society. Which is not terribly practical. Bugger.

Plans. There to be destroyed.

Right. So, it’s Sunday, and I get up early. I enjoy a leisurely breakfast of porridge while I read yesterday’s newspaper. I think about my day. I have a final job interview on Monday, and I decide I’ll tidy my house then do the ironing and spend the afternoon contemplating good answers to typical interview questions. Perfect all round.

The red light flashes on my mobile – an email. I glance at it. Ebay wants to confirm whether I want to change my password. If not, the message says, ignore this email. I ignore it but two minutes later it flashes again – well done, it assures me, your password has been changed! As I boot up my laptop to get online, a third message comes through; thanks for your listing.

I haven’t used Ebay in many months.

I get online but the emails are not on my webmail account. I try to log in to Ebay but it now won’t let me. I begin firing off frantic emails to their help centre. I also create a duplicate account and email the person pretending to be me, and I get onto the Ebay community discussion boards.

This has all happened as I ate my breakfast, in my pyjamas. I realise I’m cold, so I light the fire and go and get dressed.

As I pull a jumper on, searing pain rips across my upper back and I am left breathless, gasping, paralysed. I have been having some shoulder trouble recently, most likely a trapped nerve the doctor said. As I regain control of my breathing, I realise I must have been tensing a lot recently because of the dodgy nerve, and have pulled some kind of muscle. That’s the explanation I will follow for the moment, at any rate. If it persists, I’ll trog along to the doctor again. I don’t like to think about the osteoporosis I’ve got from steroid medication making my spine crumble. Not at 32.

I inch my way back downstairs and find there have been helpful messages on the discussion boards. They direct me to the live chat. I find the operator very helpful, though I have old addresses on the account and the hijacker has reverted to an old one for which I can’t remember the phone number. He eventually believes I am who I say I am, and he emails me a new password.

But I use a hotmail account for Ebay and there’s something going on. My first fear is that my email has also been compromised – it has, slightly, but I get in via another account and change all my passwords. Luckily I have never used the same for different things.

Then, as I’m on mobile broadband, my connection dies and I’m dumped out of the live chat.

I scoot around with different browsers and find the hotmail problem is affecting a lot of people – I’ve got a virus scan running by now but it seems my computer is ok.

By now it’s lunchtime, the fire is making a half hearted attempt to smoulder some wood but refused to produce any heat, my feet are numb, my back is on fire and hunching over a computer is not helping.

Eventually I get back onto live chat, and get the usurper evicted from my account. Eventually I get back into hotmail. Eventually, by mid afternoon, the fire agrees to heat up a bit.

Six hours ago I had plans to have my feet up by now, and I haven’t even begun what I planned to do today.

What do I need to sacrifice, and to whom, to get a break?

signs and self righteousness

I am no good at reading signs and portents. A flock of birds is a flock of birds. I dreamt, a few nights ago, of vast cargo ships moving silently along a wide and placid canal. This means, as far as I can tell, a surfeit of supper time cheese.

So what did it mean when I opened my front door last weekend, and found by the front fence, a pair of white tracksuit bottoms and two fine china cups?

The tracksuit could be explained by some mad, keen runner, driving out to this beautiful area of the country, stripping down to their running shorts in the car park and leaving the trackies behind, to be collected later.

As for the drinking vessels, I’d not raise an eyebrow at a thermos or discarded drinks can. (Actually, if it were obvious litter, I’d raise both eyebrows and glare around the car park before gingerly putting it in the bin.) But china cups? Ikea, no less.

Two days later, they’d gone.

***

In other news… BT have, as yet, singularly failed in the simple task of providing me with a final bill. I’ve rung them, every fourteen days, four times now. Each time they told me that my account was mysteriously still active but that this time, yes, they’d definitely closed it and my bill was on its way. The last call I made to them was a fortnight ago. I’ve lost the motivation to call them today. I will wait till Monday and then make another fruitless attempt to close my account. Every time I do this, a bit of my soul ebbs away.

***

I was diddled by our local Big Issue seller today. Her name’s Meeta, and she’s from Romania, and she is a very huggy-and-kissy person, which does put some potential buyers off. No-one really expects to be grabbed by the person selling you something. But I don’t know her personal circumstances and I have heard that one thing the socially excluded often really lack is physical contact, so I endure it with a rather smug and self righteous air. Anyway when I got home I found the issue I bought was not the one for this particular region, and it was six weeks old. It was a good read anyway.

Damp

I have recently made a pact with a friend at work. If I start smelling mouldy, she won’t hesitate in telling me.

I feel very reassured. As the winter moves on, and the cold weather persists, the north facing rooms of my cottage are slowly breeding mould. It doesn’t help that I bring my logs in a few days in advance; inevitably they bring in mould spores too. The back door, behind its thick, woollen lined curtain, is spotted with blackness, and the bathroom window frame is likewise measled.

The problems are biggest in my kitchen. I went to do some baking the other day, and found the flour just fell out in a malleable lump. My sugar has also caked solid. I’ve been pounding it, bit by bit, in a pestle, and spreading it on a baking tray to dry by the fire before transferring it to a warmed, sealed container. The water board man raised his eyebrows somewhat, when he saw the heaps of white crystals. I half expected an anonymous tip off to the drugs squad.

On very cold mornings – when it’s been below freezing outside, and there’s ice on the inside of my windows – I’ve put my cold clothes on, and they’ve immediately felt damp as they warmed next to my body. I’ve taken to putting them by the fire overnight, as the living room stays a little warmer and generally doesn’t go below about 6 degrees C. I was alarmed to find a pair of old jeans had gone mouldy at the back of my shelves, though, which prompted me to ask my work mate to smell me, regularly. I also now iron everything before putting it away, to ensure it’s all properly dry. Gah! I hate ironing, and it seems a waste of electricity too.

We’re having another cold snap. I’ve taken to obsessively studying long range forecasts. However, although the temperatures are low, I don’t feel as cold as I used to. I am possibly getting acclimatised to it. I was weighed at a check-up last week (I don’t own a pair of scales, I really have little idea of my day to day weight) and they told me I’d put on a few pounds in the last six months, which was gratifying. Obviously my winter diet of lard and cake is paying off! Huzzah, and bring on the apple pies.

Supermarkets

I had a small crisis outside Iceland last week. Not the country; the supermarket. Is it? A supermarket, I mean?

I have three new year’s resolutions. The first I’ve mentioned; I’m going to get good at this damn tenor recorder if it kills me. If I don’t start remembering to breathe, it just might. The second resolution was made quickly and spontaneously – right, I said. I’m going to stop going into supermarkets.

It was a rash decision and at first my reasons were rather spurious. I had some vague notion of local businesses, and price fixing that I’d heard was detrimental to farmers. Plus their land grabbing antics.

I have since refined my reasoning. Food miles is one issue; and I’d like my food to be local, seasonal, and from small and local businesses who struggle at the best of times. And, anti-social snob though I sound, I hate the huge, cavernous halls exhorting me to buy! Buy! Buy! And the press of rude humanity who are stressed, elbowing their way to the reduced section and never looking at you as real.

I am pretty lucky in living in a rural area, though. I should imagine this would be a hard change to make in the middle of London. All of my vegetables, meat and eggs now come from the local market garden which grows everything as organically as possible. The sheep, pigs and cows are about two miles from my cottage, and go four miles to the abattoir before returning to be butchered and processed on site. Any vegetables I can’t get, and extra bits of fruit, I buy from the local market. Where they get them from is not always clear – oranges clearly aren’t local. The market also sells the most amazing ginger cake, and other bits and pieces, depending on what they’ve obtained from the wholesalers/back of a lorry.

Other stuff is harder. Pasta, toilet rolls, brown sauce. I’ve decided that the Co-op doesn’t count in my supermarket vendetta due to its commitment to local stores, fair-trade produce and relatively ethical standpoint. There’s one quite local – closer than any supermarket – so I support that one. I had a panic for a while as I couldn’t source Earl Grey tea, but luckily the Co-op has started stocking it.

The crisis outside Iceland was when I was shopping in a fairly local town, and trying to buy milk, bread, yoghurts and cereal. Although local the town was unfamiliar to me, and I was having big problems finding what I wanted. The market sold cheap bags and pet food; no groceries. I found bread in a chain-store high street bakery, but the rest eluded me. But there was an Iceland. Was it a supermarket? It wasn’t one of the Big Four, but it tended to stock a variety of things. Eventually I had to go in, but I felt like I was giving up on my resolution a bit.

I will have to plan ahead a bit better, and use Co-op for those things. Planning is everything, especially as my freezer no longer works, and is out of warranty. I do a menu every few days. I couldn’t keep this up if I worked proper full-time and had a family, and paid attention to silly things like housekeeping, ironing, hoovering, that sort of thing. When would I have the time?

And we come to the question of expense. My work mates quizzed me over this – they know my financial situation, and told me it would be more expensive to live like this. I am happy to report that it isn’t the case! Planning, and cooking from raw ingredients, certainly keeps my food bill low anyway. And there hasn’t been any noticeable difference in it. Obviously I miss out on supermarket half price offers, but I rarely used them anyway.

I was extremely pleased yesterday to be in a local greengrocer and bakery, and find they also sold local honey, jam and best of all – milk, from a GM-free herd about 15 miles away. Cheaper than the Co-op. I doubt I can stay out of supermarkets altogether this year. But it’s definitely reasonable to minimise my shopping there, and live perfectly well on local produce. I can also look out of my bedroom window at the sheep on the hill, under the shadow of the church, and decide what recipe I’m going to use for them. Mint sauce! Mint sauce!

Let’s Talk About Money

I have mentioned before that being the Plaything of the Gods doesn’t mean they are out to destroy me. Rather, I am dangled and dandled by them, teased and taunted. I am led to the edge of the abyss, poked, then caught with a laugh.

 

And so it is with my financial situation.

 

Every British person reading this is half horrified and half insanely curious. We just don’t talk about money, but we’re prurient in our interest in it – probably because it is such a personal thing.

 

One of my learners asked what I earned. I thought about it. The jobs are advertised publicly, and stapled up on the notice board too. So it’s no big secret, and I told him, “£21.59 an hour”. He was amazed – “you’re rolling in it!”. I sat him down and outlined the facts – actually, I work 20 hours a week. Technically. In truth, we’re expected to do twenty minutes of planning, preparation and marking for each hour teaching. The hourly rate then looks like about £13 an hour, and it makes me effectively full-time. And if I take any holiday, of course, I don’t get paid. If I take four weeks in a year, my annual salary is £20,000 – which is reasonable, of course, and much better than being out of work. But not exactly rolling in it.

 

My learner went from amazed to appalled, and told me exactly how much he earned as a drug dealer. Even with the almost inevitability of prison at some point, he thought he was onto a better deal than I was. He only had a few months left, and he saw his sentence as a holiday.

 

I did consider a career change, but decided that with my luck, if anyone was going to get caught, it’d be me. Instantly.

 

The gods have been taking a keen delight in messing with my finances. Ah, you think, Philoctetes is in denial! Rather than take responsibility for her own affairs, she blames it on divine interference!

 

Well, yes, I do. Because I constantly teeter on the edge of complete ruin and destitution, but every time something goes badly wrong, I panic for a few days then some miracle happens. Honestly.

 

I’m going to discuss another taboo now, and that’s debt. As a nation and as a world we need to talk about debt, consumption and lifestyle pretty damn urgently; we’ve spent our way into this mess and I can’t see how we can spend our way out. Anyway, I have a huge amount of debt, from a situation a few years ago, where I took out cash on my credit card to cover what I thought was a temporary situation. It was temporary, but for about six months. When I finally dared to look at the interest payments, I realised that in my budget I could only cover the minimum repayments, and at that rate, I’d owe the bank for about 400 years. And I know that all the major high street banks have branches in the Underworld. There is no escape.

 

At that time, my job sucked, I wasn’t getting enough hours to cover my outgoings, and one by one my friends in the area were getting pregnant and retreating into their nests. Or getting other people pregnant and running off. Either way, there was nothing for me. I was at the end of the line.

 

So then, for some unfathomable reason that I can only attribute to divine intervention, I spontaneously applied for a job in a different field of teaching, 100 miles away, with vague promises of hours and overtime, and found myself moving house.

 

And I went to the bank and waved my income (potential) at them until they changed my credit card to a bank loan. The payments are pretty nasty – I repay as much on debt every month as I do on rent – but at least it has an end and that is psychologically very soothing.

 

And since then, I’ve hovered on the edge of penniless but never quite tipped over. I don’t have any disposable income, of course – after rent, bills, debt, car, and so on, there’s £25 for food every week. That’s fine but if I want to go out, or buy a birthday present, or whatever, then I have to cut back the food budget.

 

Which would seem harsh, but to be honest, what the gods have taken away with one hand, they have at least made up for in other ways. Because I have a much wider social life here than I ever have before, and most of it is free, whether I’m singing, drumming, making 20-foot high wicker men from willow, or “doing a Shakespeare” with a bunch of friends.

 

And when crises have occurred that are completely out of my budget, that’s when providence has stepped in. Someone will suddenly and unexpectedly give me some money. Last month, as I gloomily mused on the coming January’s lean pay packet, I was asked by two different people, quietly and discreetly, if I’d tutor them. For cash. Every week. My brother suddenly needed to give me some cash to keep his own bank balance under a certain limit. The garage fixing my exhaust found that they only needed to replace half of it, and when I went to pay, it was half of what they quoted me. The borough council where I used to live transferred an overpayment of council tax into my account. The Inland Revenue sent me some rebate.

 

So all in all, I consider myself lucky really; cash poor but time rich, and content with my lot, and grateful for the kindnesses that people show. And I also reflect on the fact that the nicer people are to me, the more inclined I am to be nice, in turn, to others. Smug, me? Yes, probably. Pass it on.