Morrissey's autobiography and the art of not-fitting-in

I’ve been reading Morrissey’s autobiography recently.  An odd choice, some might say, since I'm not quite of the generation who were 'there' when the Smiths exploded onto the Eighties' indie scene in a haze of flowers and vegetarianism, and I’m also the sort of person most people would probably think to be outraged by the publishing of said autobiography as a Penguin Classic.  But I’m not, as it happens.  In fact were I a sock-wearer I’d have laughed them swiftly off.

This is probably because I’ve always found Morrissey hugely endearing as a person; someone I've always felt a little bit sorry for, and a little bit jealous of at the same time.  The autobiography, so far, hasn’t changed my opinion aside from perhaps increasing the jealousy when I read about how a young Morrissey had such a hard time holding down a ‘normal’ job.  A nine-to-five lifestyle was never going to suit him, so it was immensely lucky for him that a) he is hugely talented and that b) he was in the right place at the right time.  Because basically, he doesn’t fit in, and I’m jealous of anyone who doesn’t fit in because I’ve always wanted to not fit in in the way people like Morrissey don’t fit in (though the talent and the correct placement are of course incidental!)

I’d love to not be able to cope with a standard nine-to-five life with all its stifling jargon and bland inevitability, and while I tend to feel as though I’m only ever on the brink of coping, I suspect this is the same for 99 per cent of the general population, and in the meantime cope I do.  In fact the very ability to ‘cope’ is something that has always disappointed me about myself.  Because I know, deep down, that no matter how bad things were to get in my life, I will always be able to keep everything safe and stable in the most mediocre way possible.  I’m far too sensible to ever let myself truly stare into a blank, terrifying abyss, and I’m forever afraid that that – the whole terrifying abyss thing – is where true greatness and creativity actually comes from. 

The whole ‘sensibility’ thing is even applying to my writing now; after reading a truly great book on planning (entitled ‘The Clockwork Muse’ if you’re interested) my little corner-office wall is now carefully and accurately adorned with a year-planner on which my writing sessions have been timed, scheduled and marked in with little silver stars.  I get stupidly excited about ticking off these sessions.  And though I’m making progress with my writing, I’m still slightly disappointed; after all you wouldn’t see Morrissey carefully ticking things off on a year-planner, now would you?

On falling in love with a potential killer

My love affair with the drug otherwise known as ‘coffee’ has something of the inevitable about it; like most relationships people have with suspected killers I know it’s not good for me but I’m irresistibly compelled to keep on coming back for more.  Basically I love the stuff, which as I’m an aspiring writer is probably a good thing.  I’ve got a Jewish friend who doesn’t like smoked salmon and so all her Jewish family and friends proclaim that she “isn’t really Jewish”.   It’s the same thing with coffee and writing, so my success must be guaranteed, surely?

Coffee seems to be synonymous with work and productivity – or at least, a chat over a coffee is viewed as more productive than a chat over a cuppa, which you’d assume as more of a therapeutic chat.   The evidence of that is clear in my office, where people’s diaries are littered with “coffee catch-ups” even if they don’t actually drink the stuff.    I can’t start the day without my morning Americano (black and sludgy, as it should be) and as I drink it I feel a potent surge of optimism about the day ahead that is rarely matched by its actual events.  Coffee, for me, inspires potential.  Coffee was partly responsible for the productivity of the Industrial Revolution back in the day, as workers previous to that period tended to drink gin as a pick-me-up instead (this is one of those ‘fascinating’ facts I regale people in the office with from time to time, at which they feign general interest and enlightenment).

The media report its dubious findings on coffee sporadically, in the manner of a long-term schizophrenic everybody's stopped listening to.  A little while ago I read that three cups of coffee a day staved off Alzheimer’s; a week later I read that it can also cause heart attacks (what a dilemma, eh?)  Then last week I read that “3 or more cups of coffee a day can cause death in the under-55s”  in a seemingly unsubstantiated article.  Regardless, we coffee drinkers don’t care.  If anything it gives a sexy, scary edge to our drink of choice that’s utterly conducive to its “hard man” reputation of the soft drink world.   Before long even James Bond will have abandoned his Martini in favour of a “black coffee… ground, not instant”.

Post-birthday musings

How would you define what a “conventional” life is, in this day and age?  Is it still to grow up, learn to drive, get a good education, get married, have a career of sorts, buy a house, celebrate your golden wedding anniversary with your great-grandchildren, then it’s off to see out the rest of your life in a nursing home? 

It sometimes seems to me that a lot of people are desperate to conform to what is already here and known as being “the right way”.  Why do women want to join the clergy; why do gay people want to get married?  Why do people constantly want to join institutions that intrinsically reject them, instead of shrugging their shoulders and forging their own, completely different, ways ahead?  I wonder if people really think about these conformities, or if they’re simply knee-jerk reactions to the humiliation and upset of being rejected.

I ask all this because, at thirty-six, I still haven’t learned to drive.  I also never learned to ride a bicycle.  I haven’t bought a house and have no real plans to do so.  I tried marriage, but it didn’t work out for me.  I don’t want to have children, which is nothing to do with “focusing on my career” because I don’t really consider that I have one in particular; just a job that pays the bills while I concentrate on other, also largely meaningless, things like painting, writing and learning complicated languages I won’t use. 

If you’ll excuse the proclamations here, I don’t tend to shout about these things, or indeed discuss them very often.  But they are markers of being ever-so-slightly different; things I’m aware of especially when asked for the reason I don’t drive, or don’t want children or don’t really care about having a “permanent roof over your head”.  The answer is that in the main, these aspects of life just don’t interest me enough.   But lately I’ve been asking myself; am I just trying to rebel against conformity in my own silly little way?  Or just carry on drifting through life without really committing to anything?  Perhaps it’s a combination of both; I must admit that if I were to take my driving test again and pass (after six fails in between the years 1995 – 2004 when I did half-heartedly attempt it) there would be a tiny part of me that would feel disappointment at having done something so normal; something people would tell me, with a natural note of smugness, would vastly improve my independence.

During the course of my separation and impending divorce I’ve been reading a lot of Stoic philosophy, which has only concreted my “don’t commit to anything in case it doesn’t work out” stance.  It seems silly, applying Stoic philosophy to something like a driving test, but that’s just it – everything is so transient, including driving licences and houses, that it’s hard for me to dredge up a lot of interest in them.  Eventually I won’t be around any more and there’ll be no need for that driving licence, and somebody else will buy and live in my house.   So it’s easy to think “what’s the point?” about everything.

Might as well face it... I'm addicted to change

I bought Tristan Prettyman’s new album, ‘Cedar and Gold’ last week.  It’s hauntingly beautiful and knowing; much more mature and heady than her previous work, which I largely put down to the fact that it’s a break-up album.  And as I listened to it, drinking in all the raw emotion, it dawned on me that some of my favourite things to listen to are indeed break-up albums (Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ and Noah and the Whale’s ‘First Day of Spring’ are two classics that immediately spring to mind).

Which is when it hit me… people effecting major life changes is something of an obsession with me.  Not just in listening fodder, but in books, newspaper articles, bus queues; people’s life stories fascinate me if they contain something about a sea change.  I remember quotes people I’ve never met have made about moving house, getting married, getting divorced, having near-death experiences and trekking the Andes, more than I remember important things people close to me have said.   I watch closely to see how people cope; what happens to them before, during and after these seismic life shifts of theirs.  Perhaps it was only a matter of time, regardless of what I was doing in my life, before I effected a seismic life shift of my own.

And now, after a year of desperately trying to get back on my feet in a stable job and a stable home, (both of which I’ve sort-of managed) I find myself wanting to start another one.  Recently I was out for dinner with two friends who are the same age as me.  The conversation turned, as I’m assuming it often does between as-yet-childless women in their thirties, to whether or not we would have children (for the record, me and one other friend said we definitely wouldn't, while the other ummed and ahhed a bit). 

I said I wanted to make some big changes to my life very soon, and that having a child would limit this (though some would say that’s a supreme irony since having a child probably is the hugest life change a person can make!) - due to the fact that once you’re a parent it’s not your own sea changes that matter anymore, but your child’s.  Call that a selfish perspective if you like, but I like to think of it more as self-awareness.  Cheers.  Anyway, one of my friends stared at me over her glass of sauvignon blanc and said “For God’s sake, hasn’t your life changed enough over the past year?!”  The comment shocked me a bit; not only because she was right but because I’d actually forgotten that my life now is utterly, completely different to what it was this time last year, and even more so from that of the year before last.

I'm getting ever-closer to the mechanics of change by the fact that I even work for a change management consultancy these days, although change in business isn’t a subject I’m so passionate about.  This is mainly because change in business never amounts to very much more than a middle-aged man in a suit telling us all to incorporate more thinking/creativity time into our daily routines (for numerous examples just have a look at the astronomical pile of business change manuals in most bookshops and libraries up and down the country… go on, pick one up and have a look at the author’s picture inside or on the back of the jacket.  Rarely will you feel inspired to do anything different other than roll your eyes and head for the nearest alcohol-selling emporium). 

But back to me and my life… I know a change will be coming again soon.  I’m just buggered if I know what it’ll end up being.

Knock, knock...

I am rubbish at telling jokes, I've discovered over the years.  I think the problem comes from the fact that I have one of those sorts of 'serious' demeanours that means people find hard to decipher when in fact I am telling a joke in the first place (plus I use words like 'demeanour' in everyday conversation). 

My Dad isn't like this at all, and neither is my sister.  Both of them are capable of making even serious stories sound like jokes in the way they tell 'em...being around both of them means you're never far from a smile.  My Auntie is a brilliant mimic.  But people don't so much laugh around me as tell me what's been worrying them, or ask me what to do about something annoying.  One of my friends once remarked to me that "whenever you say something, it always seems a bit profound" (though she was dropped on her head at birth so I tend to ignore her opinions most of the time).  So seriousness seems to be my lot in life, yet there's always been a tiny part of me that wants to be "the fun one".

Case in point: at work the other day someone was talking about how they were going for coffee with someone who knows the Ambassador to some foreign country (I forget where).  Someone else piped up with "I wonder what Ambassadors do all day?" 

The goal was wide...gaping...enticingly open.  I decided to try a funny reply...one that would surely bring the house down and finally rebirth me as "the funny one". 

"I don't think they do much..." I said "...other than sit around eating Ferrero Rocher".

A metaphorical tumbleweed blew its dusty way through the room.  Granted, a few of my colleagues were born later than the early 1900s and therefore may not have got the reference, but even those who did looked blankly at me.  Then one of them replied - and it was obvious she'd got the joke, but hadn't found it particularly funny. 

I think the closest I'll ever get to being "the funny one" anywhere is when people say  "Oh you know...that funny girl nobody can ever understand".  Unless I start wandering around in a jester's outfit, but they might not take too kindly to that at work.

Why my profession is WORTH it!

Trust me when I say I'm not going to use this blog as a means to moan about work, in between frequent bouts of incommunicado-ism (is that even a word?!)   But I've read quite a lot recently, and felt quite a lot recently, how little regard people seem to have for what I do (HR; incidentally, the thing people tend to go "Oh...Human Remains eh?" ...nudge, nudge, wink wink... as though I've never heard that one before; it's like when people do ambulance-siren noises when I tell them my name, then look proudly back at me as though they're the first ever to do that.  Fun!)

I read an article in the paper the other day.  The online paper; as I've mentioned before I am rather partial to the manic 'Have Your Say!' below-the-line comments featured after every article.  This article was vaguely work-and-career related, and the first comment mentioned "HR fuckwits..." closely followed by lots of people agreeing that all HR people were indeed useless and crap at their jobs.   So a nice easy read, then.  I felt tempted to add a vial of cyanide to my morning coffee!

HR is a much-maligned profession...one of many things I've done in my life (call centre work, writing) that people assume anyone could do.  But they can't.  Well, at least not if you're any good at it, and here are some of the main reasons why:

1. Diplomacy has to be your middle name
If you work in HR, you have a role that is finely balanced between the people that run the company and the people who work for it.  Therefore you are subjected to barrages of information every day that must be translated from one side to the other in the least destructive manner possible.  In other words, you're constantly managing the expectations, wishes and egos of a lot of very different people.  To say that this can be difficult sometimes is something of an understatement.

2. Adaptable communication has to be your game
One moment you're talking to the MD about potential redundancies or how to manage a tricky work situation; the next you're managing a disciplinary meeting with someone whose work isn't up to scratch; the next you're comforting someone who's just been criticised by their manager or who's just lost a grandparent or whose childcare provider didn't turn up so they need an unexpected day off.  All of the people you've been speaking to expect that you will do something about it.  And that's generally a good day.

3. You're constantly having to prove your worth to all and sundry
HR, like IT and general admin, tend not to do whatever the company does to make money, and so are often sidelined or thought to be useless.  I veer between caring and not caring about that on a semi-equal basis.

4. People tend to assume your focus is "company first"
So... at the end of the day the company pays your wages.  But your job is to ensure fairness, so a great deal of the time your focus is actually, believe it or not, people first.  There are enough people caring about "company first"; mainly the directors and shareholders.  If you're good at your job then you'll consider the people first - because somebody has to! - then find a nice diplomatic way (or if all else fails, the law) to ensure others at least consider them so that we can all get on with our work feeling nice and happy.

5. You can't have work friends
OK, get the violins out.  And I have made work friends before so this isn't strictly true all the time.  But making friends at the company you work for is fraught with problems...you know what everyone earns, how old they are, and details of some highly personal issues...and they know you know.  Plus the very next week you could be in the unenviable position of having to put them on a redundancy list.  So make sure you have a nice selection of friends in real life otherwise you might find yourself quite isolated.

(NB - I'm lucky in that I'm somewhat of a grumpy, unsociable cow in general so I avoid this issue, due to people not usually rushing to make friends with me in any case!)

I'm not saying I'm great at all these things myself - just that they're things that count for quite a lot.  They're some of the reasons why I wanted to work in HR in the first place, because it's a role in a company that can be useful and rewarding on a personal level as well as a professional one.  Fuckwits definitely need not apply.

Shall I compare jobs with relationships? Let me count the ways!

Jobs are just like relationships, I’ve been thinking.  Directorships are the most committed with high social status and a lot to lose – i.e. the most like a marriage, with temp jobs being akin to a dirty fling in the alleyway behind your local chippy.  You can probably chart your own attitude to relationships not by what you do for a job, but by the level of commitment outlined in your employment contract (and if you don’t have a contract then I’m sorry to tell you this, but he/she doesn’t love you back).

On that sliding scale I’d have to say I’m currently  in the ‘confused’ place; the place where you’re looking to commit but are not sure the thing you’re looking to commit to is actually worthy of your commitment, as it were.  If my working life could be compared with a real romantic relationship I guess I’d be calling it up, asking it to meet me for a pseudo-romantic dinner and then asking it “So…where are we?”

But of course the similarity doesn’t end there.  Job relationships can also be compared with romantic relationships in the following ways:

1.       The recruitment ad is just like an online dating profile – promises of a rewarding relationship and a blissful future with no baggage.   Always written by the very last person who should have written it.

2.       Your colleagues are like your partner’s friends – you start off wanting them to like you, then gradually realise that whether they do or not, they’re not going anywhere so you have to be nice or face a world of hassle.

3.       Talking about past relationships is a no-no…unless you’re trying to make people jealous by using them as a form of passive-aggressive one-upmanship (Oh?  Well, they didn’t do things like that at my last place…)

4.       If you cheat on your relationship by meeting up with recruitment agents or flirting with the online job boards, you’d better be quiet about it.

5.       If you want to leave your relationship for a new one, you hand in your notice, coast for the last few weeks and then get a speech and a nice little gift rewarding all your hard work.

6.       …err, hang on – something about that last bit didn’t read quite right!

'Margaret Thatcher's Maths' - her legacy to an Eighties' playschooler

As I was watching her sombre, half-heartedly controversial funeral yesterday, part-telly and part-live  (I work round the corner from St. Paul's and my boss had raced in to my office, dragging my colleagues and me out to "witness a piece of history") it occurred to me that Mrs. Thatcher has been someone I had always been aware of, almost as far back in my life as I could remember. 

It began when my free school milk was taken away at playschool.  This was actually something my little self felt elated by - the milk had been left on the school's blisteringly hot radiator for the majority of the morning, so was nicely curdled by the time we got it.  In those days, the attitude was still along the lines of anything you got for free mustn't be wasted, so there was no question of not drinking it.  No lactose intolerances, either.  I actually credit playschool for my ensuing hatred of milk, which I eschew to this day.  I must have overheard my Dad talking about the removal of our school milk and in my little mind, assumed 'Thatcher' was a profession rather than a name, as I solemnly proclaimed to my Nan later on that "the Thatcher took our milk away today" to peals of adult laughter that confused me greatly.  I must have been about five years old at the time. 

A few years later my then-best friend Candice and I whiled away the boredom of group maths lessons by making up a stupid game called 'Margaret Thatcher's Maths'.  This amounted to not much more than us reading out the instructions in our maths textbooks in a 'Margaret Thatcher' voice, but it cheered us up no end.  As I thought about that game with a wistful smile, it struck me that there will be no children playing classroom games like 'David Cameron's Diction' or 'Ed Miliband's Motional Verbs'.  Not just because they're stupid games, but because pre-school children won't have a clue who these people are.  They won't have overheard their parents talking about them as though they knew them personally. Their 'Spitting Image' puppets would look and sound exactly the same.  Why would anybody be bothered to characterise them in any way?

But I suppose it might have been these mad childhood events that made me warm to Mrs. Thatcher as I grew older.  To me she was a comforting, stable figure who had always been in the background...someone who was unquestionably in charge of everything and with whom I just felt safe.  Perhaps this wouldn't have been the case had I been brought up in a mining town up North, but there it was (I was hardly from an affluent family either, but that's another story!)  Mrs. Thatcher, admittedly along with my Dad, made me interested enough in politics to do some background reading and form my own opinions about policies and decisions.  To take an interest in my country and how it's governed.

These were my thoughts as the gun-carriage trundled silently past me along Fleet Street yesterday.  I felt a little as though an obscure family member had just died.  That batty old aunt (who I'm sure I'll personalise in a few decades' time) who is always in the background as you grow up, witnessing and putting her own spin on your life events as you go.  A once-living example of how people can be apt to project their thoughts and feelings and ambitions onto a public figure, and how it's a shame that it's vacuous celebrities that will form these canvases now, and not people who are actually in a position to make a difference.  People who, for better or for worse, lead.

So whatever else she may have represented to others, that was her legacy to this particular Eighties' playschooler.  RIP, Mrs. T.