Ten Years Have Passed, Part One : Leaving, Leaving, Leaving.

It’s exactly ten years today since I left the horrible job and set in place the train of events that led me to change my life.

I was at the end of my tether in that job. I’d done four years. The nursery moved buildings after about two and half years.  I fell and cracked my ribs around the same time and I just carried on. Only told two friends. I was painting skirting boards at the new building after my eight hour day in the kitchen. Skirting boards? Someone was having a laugh with me. Ridiculous now I look back on it.

I had been expected to design my own kitchen but most of the work had been done by the owner's DIY-inept husband. We should never assume all men know how to do this stuff. Of course they don’t. I had to get my Dad - who can do that stuff - in to put up shelves. I couldn’t store food on the floor, could I? Everywhere I turned in that building was chaos. Moving day was a nightmare not to be thought about for too long.

There’d been five managers in four years. The staff turnover was so fast one actually left in her morning break. Just walked away. I longed to do that but I was also trying to be the perfect nursery cook. I'd done the job elsewhere for twelve and a half years but the place had closed. This was a brand new nursery & all vegetarian. I loved not cooking meat and the challenge of developing new menus. All systems had to be set up from scratch. Nothing was ever organised or simple and yet I was constantly being told how wonderful it would all be one day, about how much I’d earn, about all the new equipment I would have. I didn't care about that.

I was saying same thing over and over – to manager and owner - and getting nowhere, obsessing, I’ll admit, about little things that didn’t really matter. I used to get home on a Friday, fall asleep watching Corrie then wake up thinking about work. This sometimes made me cry tears of frustration about all the unsolvable stuff, about the lack of communication with the staff, about how disorganised it all was. I often wanted to lie on the floor and weep and, okay, I did do that once.

I would buy a load of crisps, cheese and chocolate, usually from M&S and eat them secretly after I’d cooked a modest tea for myself and my parents. I was rewarding myself for getting through another day, comforting and treating myself. And keeping my weight up, of course.

During this time I was talking to Stella, on our Saturday lunch and theatre trips to Birmingham, about how I wanted to do an MA in Creative writing. I'd been researching this online. I’ve told this story many times now but am so, so, SO glad I sent that email to her in which I mentioned entertaining a fantasy of doing it full time on campus in Lancaster. Her answer ‘why should it just be a fantasy?’ set the ball rolling. But after a while I really felt I had gone on about it so much that I actually had to do just bloody do it. Stella was right; I had savings, no commitments and the kind of job I could do anywhere.

But I had to get out of this horrible job first. For my own sanity if nothing else. After a pathetic attempt to get a job in the Food Technology department of a senior school. (Terrible interview and a feeling of really not wanting to go back to school just yet. Or ever.), I went for another nursery cook’s job. With over sixteen year's experience cooking for pre-school children and babies, it was easy to sell myself in this interview, though I did spill the beans a bit too much about the situation in which I was working, though thankfully it was in a different town and just into Warwickshire. Whole different area. The manager and deputy understood my frustrations and were so kind to me. No,I didn’t cry but I was close. But I got the job, worked my notice and left ten years ago today.

SO HAPPY. 😊😊😊💃

My leaving present was perfume. Can’t stand perfume. I’m damn sure in the four years I was there I never once smelt of perfume. They didn't know me at all.

I had a long commute to the new job in Leamington but loved it from the start. Here’s my dairy entry from 11^th October 2008 …

  ‘Have  now completed the first week. What a beautifully organised nursery. They have a similar amount of staff and children, similar layout & logistics. But G---- can’t do it & T------- can. UNBLEIEVABLE! It is down to good management & staff & a system that everyone follows and passes on to new people.’

Simple as that.

On my first day the manager kept popping back to the kitchen. By teatime she said ‘I don’t have to worry about you, do I?’ I asked her for various things and she sorted them immediately and without fuss. She gave me some money in case I needed to buy anything. In the previous job I had been left doing all the shopping for a 62 place nursery for weeks and weeks and was owed a few hundred pounds which I did eventually get back, after much pestering. I shopped before work, in my break, and after work. I had no car and carried the shopping a good half a mile through town. The nursery proclaimed it was organic. At lot of the time it wasn't. This concerned me. The owner would lie to me about there being no organic vegetables in the supermarket and would tell the manager she must think I was stupid. I scared we would be found out and it would be my reputation.

But back to the new job. I made two stupid mistakes during my first week and managed to happily laugh them off, something I was struggling to do back at the horrible place. I suddenly didn't mind if I'd made a fool of myself. I was amongst friends.

9^th Nov 2008 …

‘It’s Sunday night & it’s so nice not to feel as if I am dreading going to work. I’d rather not but I don’t have a feeling of dread like I did at that place … thank goodness I was brave enough to leave & this is just the start.’

Then I booked a couple of days off. I was heading to Lancaster Uni for an open day. I was doing it. Thinking about doing it. Taking the next step towards doing it. That was the key, not to think too far ahead. Hold your nerve, Sal.

Lancaster was a place I’d passed through umpteen times on the train for years on the way to Cumbria where my Nana lived. I always had to look up the river at the Ashton memorial in Williamson Park. I looked at the little houses and imagined living there. I was drawn to the place and had no idea why.

At the open day, there were various talks about the uni in general. And then there was a room with representatives from different departments. There was a Creative Writing sitting tutor at a table. Dare I speak to him, I asked myself. Time was ticking by. I had to speak to him. This was my window of opportunity. So I did. He waffled excitedly about the course, said the personal statement was the important part of your application and also said something about the different people applying, including the words ‘mid-life crisis’. I laughed at this. I was forty-two years old and not sure whether I’d make it to eighty-four, the age I was halfway to. And was this a crisis? I felt I was being terribly brave and still doubted I could see this through but a crisis? No way!

After I came out from speaking to the tutor (who later became one of the tutors for my course) I texted Stella with the words ‘I have not been put off.’

I came home and began working on my application. I was also at this time getting rid of 25% of my stuff, decluttering in preparation for a move I didn’t know was really happening. I did a short course on Playwriting with the OU (where I'd previously done my first degree) so I could get a reference from the tutor. I enjoyed the course and at that stage, I still wanted to write a play.

My application had to be in by February. I gradually gathered together everything I needed, wrote my personal statement and chose some pieces of example writing to submit.

 15^th Feb 2009 …

‘I am submitting – about to click ‘SUBMIT’. Here goes – DRUM ROLL ……… It said ‘Are you sure you wish to submit?’ YES!!! IT IS DONE!!!’

I planned to apply to Salford, Huddersfield and Northumbria too. That never happened.  I had my heart set on Lancaster. Did I KNOW I would be accepted? No, I didn’t. At the end of March I said …

‘I feel like I’ve been waiting to hear whether I’m going to uni or not forever.’

Then, on 21^st April I received an email and was able to write this in my diary …

‘I DID IT – I HAVE BEEN OFFERED A PLACE ON THE CREATIVE WRITING MA AT LANCASTER!’

Of course, the first thing I did was text Stella. Told my parents. Handed my notice in at work. Planned to leave at the end of August. To have a whole month off, something I hadn’t done since starting work at seventeen. Then it was holding my nerve and making my plans, doing my research, sorting out my finances. I set a budget. I wanted my savings to last as long as possible. My plans went beyond a year at uni. 

In August I had to teach the new chef my job. He had plenty of catering experience but had not worked in a nursery before. I talked and talked at him for two days and gradually stepped back and let him get on with it. He was perfect for the job and that made leaving easy.

On my last day the manager suggested I spent time in the pre-school room. It made a change. I did a bit of play dough stuff with the children and watched the new chef bringing in his Vegetable Lasagne. I was, for now, no longer a nursery cook.

My leaving present was two mugs and a set of pens. And a balloon. They knew me so well. Okay, the balloon was a bit of a liability on the bus but such a great send off after a mere eleven months in the job.

So I’d left my job & I was off to uni at the age of forty-three. I was also leaving my home town and leaving my parent’s house. No big deal.

Er … Massive deal.

At uni, I wrote seventy-seven thousand words in emails to Stella alone. So you see, this isn’t so long after all.

In all of the above I was helped a little by the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway … and a lot by Stella Turner. Thank you, Stella ... and Sybil, your life coach alter ego.

 

 

Fold Out 'Pros & Cons List' & 'To Do List' in my diary of that time.

Coming soon in Part Two … ‘At Uni, Living By The Sea, Queen of the World and the Places Writing Took Me 2010 – 2013’