Fran Macilvey

About Fran Macilvey

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March 6, 2014

Brian 2 – continued

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Brian 2 – continued

I wis a good kid. In primary I did well and enjoyed bein’ at school, but at the end of second year in the high school, I got bored. There was too much banter in class, disrespect and not what I was used tae, so I just left. Started bunking off a couple of days a week, but I would amuse myself, you know, go to the museums and that. I used to read all about everything, and I remembered a lot o’ it. That was interesting, not like being in class where the teacher threatened you all the time and the boys never sat still. Which was worse than doing nothing, really. I got used to making do for myself, and though I have no exams and that, I did well, learning to cook. It was just something I could do easily, after watching my ma cook for eleven of us all those years. It came naturally to me, and I enjoyed thinking what I could do with food. So I got a great job in one of the big hotels, really good money, got all the stuff, you know. I had the wife, the kids, the flash car and the great house. I used to think nothing of going for a drive with ma wife on my weekends off, somewhere to a nice restaurant for lunch, maybe. She would look at me as if I was mad, said she could easily cook us up something, but I liked treating her special when I got the chance. I always told her the money wasnae a problem and it wasn’t, not while I was working and bringing in maybe hundreds of pounds a week, especially with overtime and bonuses and all that. It was going well for me, and I was still young. When you’re young you feel like nothing can get to you.

The job was stressful. I recon I was sweating maybe ten hours a day, making meals over and over, and you just get to feel strong, a bit like a machine. Just plug it in and on we go. So when one of the lads started larking about with the white stuff, I took a hit and thought nothing of it. I could control what I was doing and anyway, that first time was a Saturday, after my shift. I remember it so clearly, now, that I didn’t even really think. I never had that feeling of, “What are you doing here, do you want to do this?” Nah, I just took what I was given and said, “Ta, mate” and “I’ll see you right” and all the things you say, when you think someone has done you a favour.

I got on with my life, with going home to the family and getting into work, but now I had two secrets. I had the drink, which was creeping up on me, and I had the new drug, which I didn’t take often, but then, you don’t need to, do you? It is never the same as the first time, though, and you have to keep taking more to get the same high. Just tiny bits more and more, so you hardly notice. No-one said anything to me, and my wife just thought it was the booze. A couple of times her face swam in and out of focus when I was driving, so she took the wheel, but she just let me cool off after. It crept up that slowly, by the time she noticed, I was far gone and didn’t care about anything much except earning enough to keep my habit going. As far as I knew, I was earning, so that was alright, and so long as I could do that, no-one could complain, could they?

Until the boss found me weaving about the kitchen, sweating and swearing and brandishing knives. Paranoia is not good in any kitchen. Straight away he knew what it was, and he warned me, said he would be within his rights to fire me on the spot. Can’t have chefs threatening to slice open the waiters, can we? But he gave me one more chance and, of course, I blew it. I was all mixed up, completely out of control most of the time. Charging around like a demented dog, it is no wonder I was run out of there very quickly after he found me threatening to slice a delivery man into pieces. That would have done nothing for the reputation of his hotel, would it? I can smile now, but actually, I feel ashamed that people have given me such good chances and I’ve let them down.

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March 5, 2014

Brian 2

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Brian 2

“Oy! Watch where you’re going, won’t ya?!” Suddenly, there was this woman yelling at me to keep out of her way, rolling forward on the balls of her feet and standing over me, the bulk of her body blocking out the draining light of a late afternoon in August. She had a fag in her fingers and the smell was drifting unpleasantly up my nostrils, but you know, the burnt heat of it sort of woke me up. Dozing on my patch where I always sit, she had just walked up and almost past me, about to kick me and then thinking better of it. “Gerra life, ya lazy bag of shite…” she mumbled, suddenly aware of her mistake and that I was alert and not actually a dope-head. I pulled on Gazza’s chain and just waited.  Maybe she hadn’t seen him tucked under the blanket at my side, or maybe she felt caught out, but she mumbled, hocked and spat just next to me, and then moved on, taking her shopping bag, her dripping fag and her bad attitude away with her.

I am getting used to it, but after more than twelve years on the streets, and being settled here where most people know me and respect my patch – I leave theirs well alone, too – angry outbursts from stupid people are getting a bit predictable, you know? Like, I have a brain in my head, I have good eyesight, and I know all the best places to get a warm bed or a meal for under a fiver. I can spot trouble at forty paces so I’m quite savvy enough. It’s a wonder to me, that people see me sitting peacefully here, just minding my own business, but they think I’m out of it, a fuck-head, witless, away with the fairies. I’m not, as it happens, and what happened to me could happen to any of youse, too.

I was the youngest of nine children. Me mum was always after me to tidy my side of the room, to brush my hair or my teeth, wash my face, make myself neat. Though her pestering annoyed me, something must have stayed, because I find myself becoming more house-proud as the years pass, which is daft. My house is currently a static caravan looking out onto a field in Midlothian. I’m renting it, courtesy of a friend of my da’s who has two of them, and lets me have that one for me and my dog.  It looks out onto a big field at the back. And I have my pitch here, just next to the bank and down from the High Street. It is a good place to sit, though I would not call it comfortable being on my arse for hours at a time. I’m thin under my padded jacket, I know, and I don’t much like it when well fed people point that out to me, either. It’s not as if I don’t know about food, after all.

People sometimes don’t see me, like when it’s crowded, like just at this time of year when the streets are mobbed and nobody’s looking where they’re goin’. They really don’t notice me down here and I get kicked in the shins. My dog, he gets stepped on, which isnae fair on him. People throw things too, bottles, cartons of half-finished food, they just throw them down and expect the Council to collect them up and take them away. Or they leave half-finished bottles of alcohol on the sill next to my head and the smell sends me back a few years.

I was a drinker, but it wasnae that did for me. Not really. Yes, I was mixing my drinks, drinking at work, but it was the coke that finally got tae me. One mistake. Really, that’s all it was, because with some drugs, ye just cannae dae it the once and expect tae leave it. It comes efter ye like a cloud of promises that make your mouth dry and your body sweat and your eyes see things that areney there. That’s the worst, the not feeling right and not knowing how long it will tak tae feel solid again.

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March 4, 2014

Brian

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I’m just sitting on the window ledge – smooth, warm marble, generous deep recesses and near the ground so I can comfortably rest – having a chat with my pal. I think his name’s Brian. I’m around most Thursdays and Sundays and now that summer is slowly coming out of her shell I like to sit here with my face tilted up to the sun. I can see why Brian likes it too – it’s is a great spot for being warm. When I reluctantly rise to go, I leave a few coins or a five and then I’m on my way. On the return leg I try to remember to turn back and wave goodbye, but with the thinking going on in my head, sometimes I forget.

It was his dog that I first saw, a barrel-chested black Staffie with a great big grin and a tail that wags so hard, he skites all over the place when he comes to say hello. I’ve always liked Staffordshire Bull Terriers. My mother had one, Susie, who was so excitable that Mum got rid of her. Anyway, I like this fella, who does the same dance with his back end when he is pleased. Took me ages to realise it was a boy, not a girl. But that is me. Always slow to know these things.

Brian is about my age, I guess. Just something about the flecks of grey in his hair which, despite being so badly cut, is thick and shiny when it has just been washed. The sun catches it, and it’s good to see him looking like himself. He looks better with his hoodie off his face, less caught up inside his poor clothes.

Anyway, one morning we were sitting just having a chat, and two young men came up, abruptly stopped and stood opposite us. They were moaning something unintelligible about getting together, being pals and doing stuff. Not looking at me, just at Brian and waving their hands about. From his spot on the ground he quietly looked up at them and said little. Nodded, agreed, doing nothing to aggravate them. He looked so vulnerable sitting on the ground, but if he was anxious, he hid it well. Maybe the dog concealed under the blanket at his side helped with that. I said after they left, “Pissed, you think?” and he said, “A bit of the other….”

How vulnerable the homeless are to being abused. Almost every encounter is with someone standing over them, in front of them, above them. I am glad I was sitting near him that morning, watching the strange interview.

After that, the whole story came out. How he’d had a great life, the fancy car, the big house, a wife and kids and a great job as a chef with a top hotel making obscene amounts of money. He had it all, and I asked if it was a slide into booze…Naw, though he was drinking, it was one mistake with drugs. Cocaine. Just the word terrifies me. Not a great idea being a chef in a kitchen with sharp knives when the paranoia starts to bite either, he said. It didn’t take long to lose the job, the car, the wife and the kids, though his daughter still comes up from South to see him when she can. It takes her twenty-four hours travelling on the bus. She stays the weekend and then she’s off again on another long bus ride home. I said she must love him very much.

I caught myself tearful later on that week, wondering what I might do to help. Would he prefer a large sum, or a smaller weekly amount, I asked? He is realistic, and said that he would prefer the small weekly amount, or it would all just get spent very quickly. So it’s harder to leave the street then. But maybe he would not want a job with a pay-packet. He gets bored easily and he likes being at his pitch, meeting his regulars and having his independence. He can take his dog for a walk in the middle of a sunny day whenever he likes. What will it be like for him when he gets older, though? I wonder about that as I get to the car and drive home.

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March 3, 2014

The Welfare State

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The Welfare State was conceived as a cushion to protect those affected by disability, poverty and misfortune. It is not coincidental that it was introduced in the aftermath of World War II, as it became recognised that disability and illness as a result of the war effort were not necessarily anyone’s particular “fault”; and to compensate returning servicemen and women for disadvantage in the job market.

That compassionate understanding has been gradually eroded and lost as the old world of privilege and opinionated politics has reasserted itself. The wealthy have always punished the poor, justifying in harsh policies and political rhetoric the belief that poverty is punishment for fecklessness, feeble character or moral defectiveness. And so we see a move towards increasingly punitive and divisive assessments in terms of which its claimants are required to justify their claims – and highlight their suffering – rather than having their needs assessed objectively according to enlightened benchmarks that signal poverty or incapacity. The old-world view in which the rich punish the poor and reward themselves is being reasserted.

A retrogressive tax system is revealed. The bedroom tax is cruel and falls most sharply upon the poor and disabled; PIP introduces tests for mobility and personal care that are almost meaningless; and yet, our MP’s can claim the most exorbitant “expenses” and take umbrage when legitimate public scrutiny suggests their self-awarded compensation schemes are excessive or dishonest.

Different rules now apply in dishonesty. If you wish to be excused, make dishonesty glaring. If you want to get caught, filch fish fingers for the kids’ tea. Righteous indignation sounds loudest from those upstanding members of the establishment who themselves enjoy the most lavish privileges and exemptions. That was the state of play that Welfare reforms were intended to mitigate. Instead, we have a situation in which the most abject poverty is not only tolerated but, in a deliberate policy to divide and conquer, is now blamed on those who live in substandard housing and eke out a living on the minimum wage.

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February 28, 2014

Waiting

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She sat and waited, trying to draw interest from the usual chic lit plot, in a fat book that drooped into her lap as she slept, and woke with a start, desperately hoping for something to happen. These situations always brought out the worst in her, she reflected: her books that were going to be delivered, but had not yet arrived. Should she stay in for them, forfeiting whole days of sunshine for the slim chance that a burly chap with a large box would arrive to signal the end of this latest, small obsession? Or the email that would signal a trip to a studio – which could be anywhere – and some recording time that she felt, would have filled last month in nicely.

These situations brought out the worst, the very worst of her fears, her impatience. Others, seeming to hold her life in abeyance, appeared heedless of her silent endurance. They were so busy, while she waited for them, and suffered, as she felt she had suffered in many previous lifetimes, crucified, just waiting for something to happen.

The answer to powerlessness, she recalled, was not to react like a scared rabbit frozen in the headlights. It was to ask, “What would a powerful person do, now?” What indeed. Go out, and not wait for others to come. Finish the countless stories waiting for an ending. Prepare, rest, write and pray: she knew that the Universe was constantly conspiring to work things out in her favour. Now all she had to do was believe it.

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February 25, 2014

What to wear?

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What to wear?

I am not your usual girlie shopper. I dread spending all day at the shops, browsing, though there is nothing I like more than yummy clothes and shoes. Because my days seem to pass so quickly, I find that I go clothes shopping about once every two years, so getting time for that is a big deal.

Yet on my day out being daring, nothing I try on is the right size, shape or colour. I seem to have missed the more generous, subtle mulberries and rich, dark blues that were the hallmarks of last season, according to a sales assistant who looks young enough to be my daughter and who struggles to be heard above the sound system. I lose myself in the chaos of a noisy disco, where all the latest trends are eye-wateringly pink or purple, and several sizes too small or too large. I have discovered – why me? – I am a size thirteen; or a size fifteen, which are nice and easy, in-the-middle nothing quite fits sizes. Ladies march confidently past with armfuls of delicious dresses, trousers and tops, while I content myself with a six pack of undies and a new jumper from the menswear section.

I do have my favourite shops which stock my favourite styles, where the chances of success are much higher, though my visits to them have to be carefully planned for when I have some real cash to spend. For a spontaneous day out “doing” the shops, I am most definitely not your girl. The odds are that I will find nothing that fits, “give” five pounds to a threatening, “Big Issue” seller who “forgets” to give me change and then have to pay for a taxi to take me home empty-handed because, after three hours of conspicuous non-expenditure I am simply too sore, tired and dispirited to wait forty minutes for the next bus. I’ve just seen one pulling away from the kerb about ten yards away, but there’s no chance of my running to catch it.

For a trip to one of the out-of-town shopping centres, we spend forty minutes in the car negotiating heavy traffic, with our daughter in the back seat asking, “Are we there yet” every minute or so; we cannot work out which cul-de-sac on this industrial estate will lead us to the one way system where there may be a junction that takes you to M & S….When we arrive, I remember I am wearing my reading glasses. I have to watch out for Seline – who moves as fast as a whippet through the crowds of coat hangers and slippery off-the-shoulder evening gowns and racks of clothes that cover the vast expanse of shop floor. My chance to acquire a new top or dress whizzes past me so fast that, before I have checked which isle I’m in, it has vanished. The world looks fuzzy and is moving too fast. Did someone turn up the speed of life and forget to tell me?

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February 24, 2014

Menopausal Mama

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Menopausal Mama

When I was a child I confidently declared that I would marry the man of my dreams. These things would happen easily and tidily to order: fall in love, marry, have kids, peacefully grow old and journey in bliss towards the bright light of old age, with heaven waiting at the end of the tunnel. All little girls paint this kind of picture as they compare notes, asking, “How many kids will you have?”

The story turned out less organised. Not many boys were interested in me during my teens and twenties. Their eyes were all over other longer-limbed beauties with looks that would make them quite at home in a Hollywood movie, strolling nonchalantly across the deck of some hundred-metre pleasure cruiser. When I lifted my eyes from my books and found true love, I was into my thirties, trying to hold down a crummy job, clinging to the wreckage of my independent, lonely life.

Luckily, Eddie came to me single and unburdened by heavy personal belongings. Still we put off marrying: life was fine, so why change it? And babies? What about them? Even after we married, they were something that came later and most probably to other people, not to me: not to an undomesticated, complicated woman with a disability, whose only physical blessings were dark hair and good teeth. Not until I was peering over the horizon towards the big Four Oh, were we blessed with a child. We spent ages calculating: “Do you REALISE that when she is twenty-one I will be almost sixty? If she waits ‘til our age to have kids, we will be too doddery to babysit.” The sums made me both wistful and rather grateful.

I flung myself into motherhood. One drawback of being an older mum is that doting grandmas and grandpas are rather rare. Not being blessed with lots of family around, I had little choice but to immerse myself in the practicalities. One of these was breastfeeding. If my daughter ever reads this she will blush, but the point is that nature’s nurture acts as a natural contraceptive. An older woman might watch out for irregular or non-existent periods signalling early menopause, but patchy periods at this time could equally have been caused by breastfeeding so when nothing started happening every month I rather carelessly ignored it. At the other extreme, I was too tired to care that bleeding for six weeks was unusual, a hint that my body clock was erratic. When my bleeding stopped for good, I was just forty-two. At first, I was simply so grateful not to be haemorrhaging blood down the toilet. Then, when the hot flushes and waking at four am became a regular feature, I reluctantly conceded that I was menopausal. And I had a three-year-old to look after.

For a day or two, I railed against Fate. Menopause was supposed to fill the gap, the space of quiet after the kids have grown tall and gone off to broaden their minds or to set up home in the Urals. Menopause happened to youthful-looking women in their mid-fifties, not to careworn hags just after being forty. Where was the justice in discovering that I was quite a good mummy BUT I couldn’t contemplate having any more kids, sorry about that?

Ever the realist, I made the best of my shameful situation. Feeling ancient before my time, I dropped, “Of course, when you are menopausal, as I am…” into conversations, just to test the reactions of my friends. No-one fainted, or gave any sign of being surprised, but then, I probably looked older than my age: knackered from lack of sleep and chasing a breezy pre-schooler, my baggy tops and dark elasticated trousers splotched with cheesy mashed potatoes and toilet training traumas.

Loving and caring for children is exhausting, and often there is no-one to turn to. The loss of workplace networks, the loss of status, of income, and the isolation of being the main or sole carer for many hours at a time, are just some of the burdens of modern motherhood. I could have found childcare and gone back to work – in theory – but on top of everything else, menopause flicked a switch in my internal systems and changed everything around just enough to be a total nuisance. Sleep was a piecemeal affair and my energy and emotions swung about. Night sweats, hot flushes and the loss of my appetites didn’t bother me, but the pain did. Suddenly my right foot could not take my weight and it sang with nerve-juddering agony almost continuously. If I wanted to stay awake during the day, popping pain relief pills didn’t work.

No-one wants to be seen crawling around on their knees when their neighbour pops in for a chat. Even for a mother with mobility issues, this just wasn’t the example I was hoping to set my daughter. Crawling, rocking and howling in agony were what she should have been doing, not me. She watched as I wept. A useless visit to an orthopaedic surgeon gave me the shot of indignation I needed to go on a quest for a pain-free life. It helped to galvanise me, when I realised that no-one knew me better than I did.

Looking back, I can see how lucky I was. Timing is everything, and when Seline started weaning and demanding lots to eat, that was when the pain in my joints really kicked in. From first noticing that sugar gave me mood swings, I began to re-educate myself about eating healthily, not just once and a while when I was feeling virtuous, but all the time. Having responsibilities forced me to grow up. I also pondered the whole subject of ageing, reading books which offered plenty of food for thought. Bathroom cosmetics were in at the start of my campaign. Squinting down the long list of ingredients written in tiny writing  on a bottle of frothy shampoo, I discovered a skin irritant….that got me thinking.

Since menopause, there are foods I avoid, because eating them makes my body hurt like hell. I used to enjoy them anytime, anywhere, but they now go on the rampage through my system and cause acute pain or coughing, wheezing and general discomfort. I have arthritis all over my joints and live with knowing that “someone like me” is often confined to a wheelchair by the age of forty. So taking care with what I eat is a small price to pay.

Whenever I feel deprived and wish I could have that double choc-chip burger with chips and salsa which everyone else is chomping with such relish, I take the plunge and eat some. What the hell – it can’t hurt, can it? If the answer is OUCH – YES IT CAN, I nod and sigh. The pain and irritation convince me, once again, that I am not “making it up”. If I wait a day or two, the pain leaves.

Tea and coffee, sugar, milk, beef, potatoes, tomatoes and a few other bruisers are all rare visitors to my plate. I count that a small price to pay for being able to walk with my daughter, live independently and sleep well without taking medication.

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February 18, 2014

A Life of Compromise

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A Life of Compromise

Despite all the fancy words, labels and categories, it seems that no-one really understands cerebral palsy, though its effects show up in many different ways. None is predictable, linear or without added complications which in themselves can be unexpected and disabling.

For example, I can get myself a short distance from A to B on a good day, provided I am used to the terrain and provided there is not too much wind or rain about, both of which are hard to predict. Why, you might ask, does weather make such a difference? Well, where I live, gusts of wind could easily blow me over, which is obvious enough. So to help steady myself, I walk with an elbow crutch. Otherwise, I wobble and fall over at the drop of a hat. Indeed it is a miracle that, thus far, I have not been run over by a bus. My angels are kept very active ensuring I come to no harm.

The rain, which is a frequent visitor in these parts, makes the rubber stopper at the end of my walking aid slip and slide, so that a wet pavement becomes rather like an ice-rink. In the rain, using my walking aid is, all of a sudden, an unexpected and major problem. Falling full length with an arm outstretched may look elegant but it is painful, an agony hardly deserved because I happened to lean on an elbow crutch on a wet patch at precisely the wrong moment. At times, a walking aid is a real liability. But the alternatives are not attractive either. I don’t wish to remain cloistered indoors whenever there is rain, and why should I? I have to get a life, or so David Cameron and George Osborne keep telling me.

Because I keep trying, because I am as stubborn as an ox, and because I have learned not to cry too loudly when I fall and bang my hip – God, the agony! – I do have a life, which I have hewn from the unrelenting cliff-face of trial, error, compromise and heartache. I try to take the best from being the unusual one who takes twenty minutes instead of five, to walk to the bus-stop. I put a brave face on chronic arthritis, the debilitating pain that invades me when I eat too many potatoes, drink orange juice or eat cheese two days in a row. I have learned to enjoy drinking barley coffee instead of the real McCoy and feign disinterest in patisserie because both of these reduce me to a screaming wreck. I go swimming to keep fit and I walk as much as I can, precisely so that I may counter accusations that I am a beneficiary of a benefits system that perpetuates laziness and complacency.

Now the new PIP assessments have arrived, asking a series of questions which require me to demonstrate exactly what I can and cannot do. That varies, but, for the sake of argument, and assuming that the questions are fair and can be answered easily, does staggering dangerously count as walking? How do I prove that my whole life is a tightrope, that whatever I physically achieve is the outcome of painful deliberation? More fundamentally, why should I have to lay open the embarrassing compromises of my life to public scrutiny? Do we motivate disabled people by demoralising them? By asking about toileting needs and whether we can stand or walk? These are precisely the wrong sorts of tests to be setting, if we want to encourage our differently-abled citizens to leave their homes and join the wider community. Questions about night-time supervision, medication and whether someone is socially isolated enough by their disability to qualify to receive certain state benefits, are at best sensitive issues, and at worst, likely to send vulnerable claimants down the last road to hell. How many claimants, on being reassessed, will feel so put down that they attempt suicide, rather than face the continual stigma of being told, “We saw you going to put out the rubbish, so obviously, you can manage.”

If a citizen is bequeathed a life-altering condition which is not in dispute; and where it is clear that this condition leads to increased costs not encountered by able-bodied contemporaries, the increased costs of living with disability are the only legitimate concern of government charged with administering any benefit which is avowedly in place to cushion the blow of financial inequality. If the intention of the new Personal Independence Payment is to enable and empower independence, then why does someone who can manage his or her condition to enable their independence find themselves penalised?

Since the harshness of the current descriptors suggests that a successful award depends on complete incapacity of one sort or another, clearly the intention is not to motivate or empower, or even to compensate for financial burdens, but to save money by reducing the number of claimants to those the State decides are profoundly incapacitated and least likely to achieve independent living. The severity of the new assessment works to reinforce a stereotype that a recipient of this state largesse is irretrievably pitiable. What a shame, then, that it is called Personal Independence Payment. Clearly, it is nothing of the kind.

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February 14, 2014

Career for a collapsing woman 2

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Career for a collapsing woman 2

It is simply thrilling, having a writing career which seems set to unfold in gentle ripples around me. It seems quite astonishing that I, of all people, should be able to say, with truth as well as conviction, “I am a writer” and be able to point to some evidence of success in that line.

Ahead of publication in less than three weeks, I feel so happy, very excited, more than a little scared and plagued with self-doubt: The changeable moods that flood through me are disorientating, yet I rediscover every day the power of relaxing and letting go. I may as well relax, wait and see what happens after “Trapped” is published. In some ways, the hard bits have already been done, since writing my magnum opus has been rather like having an operation on my heart without the benefit of anaesthetic. I have to trust that it will all work out well.

The audio script for ‘Trapped’ is also more or less sorted, ready for reading, ready for whenever I am told the studio is ready for me. If I had a retentive kind of mind, I would have the text word-perfect by now, and could recite it without the script at all. The words and the sentiments, the voices, are as familiar to me as vanilla ice-cream; so of course I want to read it. But it is so very intimate, in parts, so very private, that I occasionally feel as if the whole world will witness my humiliation and my pain. Reading a paper book is usually a private affair, but if I am also speaking aloud, I feel as if I am handing myself and all my intimate secrets over on very public plate. Does that feel humiliating? Yes, occasionally, and I don’t know why.

I am aware that ‘exposure’ and ‘humiliation’ narratives are only one side of the coin, the other side perhaps etched with ‘candour’, ‘bravery’ or ‘sharing’.  Nevertheless, from a place of relative calm, I observe a bewildering array of emotions, spilled like pins from a sewing box, which threaten to pierce my peace of mind at every hand and turn. Sometimes, caught unaware, it feels as if an unknown person is standing outside the room flicking the light switch on and off, on and off, just for fun. Should I get bereavement counselling for my poor old life?

What most readers may notice goes beyond the shame. Perhaps, reading aloud now will help me to have another period of coming to terms. I intend to give a reading to be proud of.

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February 13, 2014

Career for a collapsing woman?

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Career for a collapsing woman

When I was a growing girl, a fifteen-year-old with sleepy eyes and squint legs, my mother would occasionally throw me this comfort, “Well, at least you are not black!” I wondered….what would she have said if I had piped up, “Well, Mum, I have a new girlfriend….Meet Amanda…” Not just female and disabled, but from an ethnic minority and a lesbian: that would have been a challenge!

Actually, being female and disabled was quite enough of a challenge, as it turned out. For one thing, my choice of careers has been entirely restricted, not just by my intellectual bent – I can’t understand algebra, I’m squeamish at the dissection table and have no memory for chemistry or physics – but by my physical bents as well: not being able to stand up straight, balance, or carry trays actually cuts down my choices considerably.

From a deep desire to be taken seriously, I opted to study law at Aberdeen University and remember thinking, as all starry-eyed first-year students do, that now – at last – I might do something worthwhile. In those first weeks and months, as our tutors commended our intelligence in starting studies for our grand vocation, gradually the blinkers came off. It was a long, painful journey towards the realisation that while academics were gently introducing us to grand theories, the money making went on, the men were vastly superior, and opinionated women were only tolerated up to a point. Sexism in the 1990’s was still alive and kicking, but because lawyers generally had it quite good, the women were allowed on board the ship, so long as they worked hard and looked pretty.

When I came along, no-one knew what to do with me: I was not pretty in the conventional sense, but rather – get this – “strangely beautiful” according to my opinionated older sister. Oh, God, no! What I would have given – my right arm, my last Rolo – just to be an ordinary piece of okay-ish totty. It was more a case of, watch out for me tottering, and if I happen to fall in your lap, I hope you won’t be too offended. I was always extremely careful to fall as gracefully as possible, and in the split second after I tripped and before I fell, I would arrange my features in a smile, and hope that they would agree, landing in a lap was infinitely more elegant than collapsing on the floor. Other legal eagles don’t have to worry about such trivia.

I wear sensible shoes with no heel and I am grateful that I can still walk. I have grown into the habit of wearing sensible clothes too, as the short-backed, busty and bright polyester-cotton blouses which hang in the women’s section of the clothing stores look like a painful mistake, draped over my muscly shoulders – all that heaving myself around in infancy – and across my flat, boyish chest. I experimented once, wearing a “feminine” blouse in a shade of yellow that my boss spent the day sniggering at, pointedly calling me “daffodil”. That was the end of my dalliance with femininity. His mockery wounded me. Checking in the mirror later that evening, I had to agree that the high collar, the blown out sleeves and the flared waist did look very like my favourite flower. What a shame that, since he disliked it
so much, I hadn’t the courage to unbutton it slowly, remove it and ask, “So, what would you like me to do with this?” That would have gone down well, if I had happened to land in his lap.

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