Flinging paint and leaping deep

Monday 10:30am

I am told my maternity cover contract will not be renewed on 29th March. Someone else was marginally better, according to HR scoring system, than me, even though I had been trained in the job for six months (a little bitter? yes!) 1% difference. Was it worse to be so close or affirming that I nearly got it? I still haven't decided.

Ok. Cliche time! The world does stop. The floor does drop from beneath my feet. My legs do turn to jelly. My heart does skip a beat.

I am sent home, a drive I know I won't have to do many more times. I won't miss the tram plant traffic or the Grand Canyon potholes they leave as tarmac surprises for my wheels each day. I won't miss the game of "Where have they put the temporary lights this morning?"

SOUNDTRACK: Devendra Banhart weirdness and Ben Folds Five piano genius

I have been a Laboratory Assistant (spreading sputum on plates), a Medical Receptionist (taking semen pots from shy men), an Admissions Officer, Post Mortem secretary and worked in Student Welfare.

On arriving home I check the website of the company I have continued to return to, for seventeen years of employment. This company is all I have known of the job world and is automatically the place I return to.

UNTIL TODAY!

I scan some agency sites. Nothing tempting.

At The Parlour, a slow pint of something with a daft name and Danny Baker's autobiography "Going to sea in a sieve". How I feel, at this moment, but my concentration is poor and I have to re-read it all again at bedtime.

At Battery Park Cafe, some spicy soup, liquorice tea and familiar faces. My settee corner is free and I begin to plan my re-launch, three hours after I found out. I decide I am being thrown into the sea of uncertainty to test if I can swim, how strong my stroke is and which direction I will choose. Will I pick an easy promontory or take a long back-crawl to an island beyond my imagination?

I plan out my ideal week, the PA in me leaves little space for the spontaneity other parts of me may require.

I make concrete plans with the cafe for writing workshops I was tentatively setting up.

Within a few days I decide to quickly expand this and have now made enquiries in several different regions. I contact venues, secure a creche, design flyers and posters, update my website, social networking and other online forums. I write my first blog in three months.

Also, I have secured 14 hours work from home, employed by a neighbour's company, without the cost of petrol and 9 traffic hours and I will have an extra couple of afternoons with Frank. Within three days things are looking promising.

The Belle and Sebastian pop mope is becoming quieter and is now outside my head. Booker T and the MGs are doing something amazing with my car speakers and the world is suddenly wider.

Friday 16:00h

After an early morning Zumba Boost, I revel in Frank's energy and courage at Head over Heels, a soft play area and leave some flyers on the counter and my heart half way down a slide into an unknown life. my one moment of unadulterated joy this week: a multi-drop slide, like the ones at Alton Towers in 1984 (but without the wicker bag with handles - I can still feel the joy associated with holding these mats in one hand and a cold railing in the other, waiting my turn!) 

Watch this space: it will be full and new and scary and surprising and I will grasp opportunities by the ears and make things happen.

 

 

Medicine Unboxed:Belief A review

Medicine Unboxed: Belief

From the delightful slender flyer deriving beauty from three pictures of brain haemorrhages, to the accessible £45 conference fee to the 12 hours of intense debate tempered with literature, poetry, comedy, music and magic (and that was just Saturday!).

 

From the imaginative leap of Sam Gugliani, Oncologist, to realise there was an audience for this event to the effort and research it is evident he put into co-ordinating the fourth Medicine Unboxed, added to his ability to engage and question with such confidence, knowledge and dexterity.

 

Medicine Unboxed was nothing like I expected. Though I had no idea what to expect.

 

My particular highlights:

 

1) Poetry by Jo Shapcott and her honesty at not knowing exactly what imagination is and John Burnside being beamed in from Ireland.

 

2) Adam Kay's How to be a bogus doctor. Especially loved his idea of making a scan machine by cutting a washing machine in half and putting a lilo on either side and using masking tape to hide the facts and the cracks.

 

3) I returned on Sunday morning for Health and Justice, a debate I imagined would be dry and boring. This was the most engaging and surprising debate of the weekend and  this debate elevated itself above the people on the panel, the people in the Parabola Arts Centre and I feel every delegate carried the memory of this debate with them.

 

I was staggered by the scale and scope of this forum and delighted to have been part of this rewarding and massively ground-breaking experience.

When CBBC is not for you - Day 30 NaPoWriMo Clapping Rhyme

When CBBC is not for you?

When Makka Pakka

makes you want to pack an AK47

Turn it off.

When the Pontipines

make you wish Iggle Piggle

had set some landmines

Turn it off.

When Timmy and his monotone friends

taunt you to hope for your end.

Turn it off.

When Granny Murray

imparts her mottos twee

Turn it off.

When all the names you know

are Tinky Winky, Lala and Po

(and you’ve forgotten the other one)

Turn it off.

When even Abney and Teal

is a massive ordeal.

Turn it off.

Turn it off.

clap your hands

make up your own songs

of real animals and genuine sadness.

NaPoWriMo Day 30 Clapping Rhyme - OK! Some Children's TV is so wet and unrealistic, I particulalry dislike Me Too! and find myself watching it when my 20 month old is already bored and has made his way into a den under the table! Wonderful antidotes - Dip Dap, Octonauts Creature reports (but I couldn't eat a whole one), Tinga Tales, Big and Small (as my husband says the best thing Lenny Henry has ever done!), leo the Lion and  the Koala Brothers. Maybe I will write a praise one when not so angry at it. Oh and I don'd mind the Hamsternauts in Baby Jake. Goodbye for now x

Dissatisfaction of the Green olymic hoop - NaPoWriMo Day 29 - Clerihew

Dissatisfaction

The green Olympic hoop
tired of the group
decided to go solo
advertising a well-known mint.

Day 29 - Oh play with the expectations of the reader, why not? That was fun. I had a four page piece and this says it all really!

Work World 1996 - NaPoWriMo I remember poem Day 28

Work World 1996

Miss Bean, Purple Hair, Chubby digits,

Brazen Hussey, Hairband.

The loving nicknames of my first job.

Shaun and Bryan playing Who’d you rather?

with the famous and the real,

Sarah Q’s clock-watching,

being mothered by the two Sues,

Kate’s scathing

and Mad Max’s hair that was even bigger than mine

I remember Ian’s beard and his quiet ways of management

Christmas Eve old style- One hour’s work,

two hours in The Vine, lots of food

and enough beer to make us dizzy.

back to share a bottle of smoky Valpolicella

staff-room stuffed with light, people, buffet food and 12 packs!

One hour lunches and two half hour breaks every day.

My lab coats were never white long

taking up the crystal violet and scarlet safranin stains

I remember commandeering the Media Room,

and feeling essential.

I remember the satisfying crunch of the antibiotic disc dispensers.

being surprised how many people smoked.

being shocked so many people gave blood.

Chatting up the autoclave man from Skelmersdale,

the infertility samples left unlabelled on the counter

and the embarrassed men I had to chase after to label them.

I remember crying at my interview

I had failed Uni, lost my first boyfriend

and had to find a job in the same week.

I remember the faeces pot that exploded on Day 2

(even though we had to keep them 3)

Mr Mal Teaser’s sample on April Fool’s day

the amputated toe no-one wanted to cultivate.

the pregnancy tests I predicted

the coagulation that meant new life

and no way of knowing if this means joy or despair.

I remember wondering which plates

to assign to a vaginal vault (after a transgender op)

needs pruning and elaborating, I think!
NaPoWriMo - Day 28  Notes and memories really, but I have another two to type tonight, I am passing on the tree one as I will have followed 30 prompts anyway, but will try to fashion a clerihew and a clapping rhyme now. Thanks everyone x

A Mouse Thief, some stolen stars and a round window that is not mine NaPoWriMo Day 25 Centos

A mouse thief, some stolen stars and a round window that is not mine

She bolted the big round window.
He didn't fight,
He hadn't fought at all.
And life slips by like a field mouse
not shaking the grass.

Tell justice of delay:
She turned it to a lovely black,
overnight, very whitely
discreetly, very quietly

she hung herself with stars,
deep as the darkest mine
the thick rocks won't tell
so, the world happened twice -
gives little light.

NaPoWriMo Day 25   Stolen lines from The Rattle Bag  A Cento (totally stolen lines, so the people who have wanted to steal some of my lines and put them to other use, go ahead)

Sarah Beautiful Outlaw - NaPowriMo Day 24

Sarah, Beautiful Outlaw

My title.

Don't let it go.

Tiptoe by it.
Lift it.
Judge it.
Lift it.
Tiptoe by it.

Don't let it go.

My Title.

Not sure what shape this making and it so simple. Is it a poem? I am not sure?  NaPoWriMo Day 24  Still got to catch up with my tree one, but a day ahead from doing 31st March prompt anyway! x Poem not using S-a-r-a-h. Do let me know if I missed one.