Take Care

I am wary of writing about this topic. There are a lot of buttons that might get pressed. But in the last few weeks several things have happened that have made it hard to ignore. I think about this topic constantly, especially as I get older and review my own teenage years and life so far. I sometimes feel I could write a book about it, but I don't know if that would help me. Perhaps it could help others. One day I might try it. My recent desire to take up the topic was prompted in the first place by the poet Lemn Sissay sharing his responses to receiving and opening his care files from the local authority who took him into care as a baby. An obviously bright and lively boy was labelled in ways that had an effect on his teenage years. The level of scrutiny and vocabulary used by the social workers was uncomfortable reading for someone as remote from the situation as me, so what must it have been like for Lemn to read. I was reminded of my own boarding school experience. Those of us who had parents abroad were treated differently from those who had parents close by. I was an intelligent and questioning teenager when I went, though nobody had told me that. This attitude got me labelled as rebellious and sly by the nuns and I started to hide my thoughts and feelings, constantly feeling like an outsider. I had some good friends and a diary. I wrote letters to friends outside of school. These had to be smuggled out and I was sometimes caught doing this. All aspects of our lives, from the underwear we wore to deodorant we used was under scrutiny and disapproval from the nuns. Even washing our hair more than once a week or sneaking an extra bath ( twice a week on a rota) was a punishable offence. You get the picture. I could go on. And the education was poor, except for my wonderful English teacher. A few of us applied for university and the headmistress refused to sign our UCCA forms. Our parents paid for this kind of care and education. So Lemn Sissay revived my memories and then there was a sudden flurry of activity on Facebook. The Daily Mail had done a feature on boarding school memories, and someone from the junior part of my school had written in a damning piece. Coincidentally there is a school reunion planned in September, so there was a lot of response to this. I was amazed to see that some defended the school and the nuns, but others had an equally unhappy experience, including physical punishment and beatings. I went there at the age of 13 , and I would describe the abuse as emotional and psychological, alongside neglect of physical care. Poor food, lack of awareness of health problems teenage girls might be dealing with. Period problems, eating disorders, hormonal imbalances, asthma, excema,etc etc. Then I heard Julian Clary talk about the impact boarding school had on him, and the way he had turned a nightmare into a way to survive, which led eventually to his successful career. It was on Radio 4's Saturday Live programme, and I could hear the incredulity from the presenters that his parents hadn't intervened. And of course, that's the big difference for my generation. Parents didn't believe their children's testimony. Adults were the experts. It's one of the reasons why abuse stories are coming out into the open now, and not when they happened. It's still happening in some areas of life. And this week the troubles of Kids Club has been all over the news. There are going to be a lot of disappointed children as a result. All those children who need someone to support and encourage them, someone to fight their corner,to recognise their abilities and their difficulties. And then there's love. It's about self esteem and confidence. Ironically yesterday's news item on the on the fact that public school pupils earn more than their state school contemporaries within a few years in the workplace highlights one aspect of this. That's why care in this context seems a contradiction in terms. I'm talking about young people in this post, but you can apply all of this to the older generation and their experience of care too.

Family Affairs

I have been listening to the song 'Family Affair' this week as my son Jamie has been working on it. Coincidentally I had booked tickets to go to a talk on the making of 'Long Lost Family'at Sheffield Doc Fest with my daughter. She had introduced me to the ITV programme a couple of series ago and it has become a favourite. It could be voyeuristic, it can be sentimental, but there is always a sense of authenticity and compassion in the way it is filmed and edited. I knew people who made TV programmes when I was younger and I know I can be cynical about what we see on screen and how that story is managed. I had read Nicky Campbell's book about his own adoption and I had seen both Nicky and Davina MacCall on 'Who Do You Think You Are?'I was prepared to accept them as presenters of this particular programme based on that insight into their own experiences. It was fascinating to hear about the genesis of the series and the approach the producers take. There are social workers and adoption experts involved. It is ethical and responsible in its approach to those involved. Some of them were there at the talk at the Crucible, by arrangement and also in the audience. It's a life changing programme. We all know families are complicated and there can't always be happy endings, but what we see in the programmes and the individuals they film is the relief of finding out the answers to questions that have haunted a lifetime. Neither Davina nor Nicky share their own experiences and I often wonder if viewers realise why they were chosen as presenters. There's another aspect that always interests me. The social history of the times is there in the stories but it isn't explored. I am of the generation who had the benefit of an Abortion Act, Family Planning Clinics and the pill. But I was very aware of the experiences of people not many years older than me. Even with new attitudes towards sex and the single woman, contraception and ultimately single parenthood, it was never easy or straightforward. If you found yourself pregnant you could get married, trying to hide the pregnancy and the 'early' baby. Within my social circle I have known women who had babies adopted. I'm sure many more had terminations. One work colleague found out that the woman he thought was his older sister was in fact his mother. It happened to Eric Clapton too. I had friends who had a baby at 16, stayed boyfriend and girlfriend, but she lived at home with her parents. If parents did support their daughter as an unmarried mother it was often support mixed with shame and disapproval. We live in such different times. Pregnancy was confirmed by a doctor, with a consultation. Over the counter sensitive pregnancy testing kits weren't available. Pregnancy was hidden, denied, ignored until there was an inevitable outcome. There's been a similar story on Coronation Street recently. Many of the stories on the programme involve women a few years older than me who gave up babies for adoption because they really believed that was the best thing for them, that they had no economic choice, at great emotional cost to themselves. Their reunions with their now grown up babies are some of the most moving stories in the series. But there are lost siblings, absent fathers, even reunited twins. All that fear of being found out becomes a desperate longing to know. I wonder how the stories will develop as we move into the next generation, who had different choices about giving birth and bringing up their babies. I imagine it is going to be more about missing fathers and the role of social media in tracking people down. My younger son found some of his half siblings by chance because of a YouTube post featuring his father, who had left when he was two, but who had kept in occasional contact. It's an intriguing television programme and it was reassuring to see the care with which it is made. If you haven't discovered it, it's on tonight at 9pm. Have the tissues to hand. It's a powerful shared emotional experience.

Watching the Wheels

Occasionally there are connections which throw up unexpected emotions.I was sorry I missed seeing Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl as Ghosts of Sabre Tooth Tigers last year in Manchester. My lovely photographer friend Melanie Smith took some great photos which she shares on her Mudkiss website. It brought back memories of John Lennon and my awareness of Sean as a longed for child for John and Yoko, an awareness only supported by the media coverage of the time and the album Double Fantasy. When I lived in Morocco I had a borrowed cassette player and a few cassettes to listen to. Stevie Wonder's Hotter Than July, Bowie's Scary Monsters, an NME compilation featuring Scritti Politti, and John and Yoko's wonderful Double Fantasy. Whilst I was living there John Lennon was shot. No online news in those days, just a rumour at the language school one evening, confirmed by an English newspaper the next day. Having listened to Beautiful Boy, my heart went out to him. I follow GOSTT on Facebook and to my surprise I have discovered that they have been shooting a new video in Sheffield this Bank Holiday weekend, in a run down cinema so well known to me, in the area of Sheffield where I used to live, where my son lived for many years, where my former husband still lives. For some reason it seems so strange that the child I thought so much about back in those Double Fantasy days should be in such a familiar neighbourhood in Sheffield. I could never have made that connection all those years ago in Casablanca.

The F word

I spent a day at the Folklore Society's annual conference yesterday . I couldn't sign up for the whole weekend, but I decided a day was better than not going. I am not a member of the Folklore Society, though I follow them on social media. There were familiar faces there, Simon Heywood and Julia Bishop, tutors on my MA course just over ten years ago. I met some people whose work I have admired over the years too, Jaqueline Simpson and David Clarke.I also met new contacts and look forward to keeping in touch with them. I was intrigued and inspired by the papers and presentations, relating some of them to my own areas of knowledge and research. As I listened to the ongoing discussion about collaboration, the lack of academic recognition of folklore and folklife studies, and the future hopes for research and recognition, I realised how lucky I am. I was an undergraduate at Leeds, able to specialise in Folk Life Studies as part of my English degree. There was a Dialect Studies Department within the school of English too. Both had world class reputations and staff, Stewart Sanderson, Tony Green, Stanley Ellis.I then went on to do a diploma in Local History, using oral history as an approach to researching a particular community and way of life as part of my work with Manchester Studies. Just over ten years ago I signed up for an MA in Folklore and Cultural Tradition with NATCECT, based at the University of Sheffield. NATCECT was the National Centre for English Culture and Tradition. It too has closed down, unable to convince the powers that be that there is value in this kind of academic research. Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Archaeology, History - all these overlap with Folk Life Studies. But it is dangerous to mention the F word if you want to be taken seriously as an academic. It's a different situation in Ireland and Scandinavian countries apparently. Here there's a new awareness and interest in folk lore in the art world, including last year's Tate Britain exhibition and Jeremy Deller's work. There were archaeologists at the conference, wishing that they could have studied folklore as part of their course. My daughter studied archaeology at Sheffield when NATCECT was still there, and she had that opportunity. Historians talked about oral history as a bridge between the two disciplines of folklore and history. I felt I had been one of those who had started to build that bridge back in the 1970s, but I didn't realise the possibilities. I do think of myself as a folklorist and I realise it colours the way I look at life and culture on a day to day level. I'm not scared of using the F word.

Grumpy old woman

This morning I was listening to the Today programme on Radio 4. George Osborne was cock a hoop about savings made from the welfare budget, savings made by extending the pensionable age. Now I happen to be one of those women. When I started work at 17 I expected to retire at 60. It seemed a lifetime away and it was. Over the years I have been one of the cohort of women who worked because they wanted to and then because they needed to. Relishing independence and women's lib, we took opportunities to try and build careers, looking for equality with men. As the cost of living rose, house prices hit the roof more than once, and childcare became a commercial business. So many of us had no choice but to work to provide security for ourselves and our families. I guess I knew that my state pension age would alter from 60 to 63 some years ago. Suddenly in 2011 that changed to 65 and a half. Talk about moving the goal posts. I have signed the online petition. I do recognise that I have advantages that others may not have, in that I own my house, but I have no professional or occupational pensions. I am divorced. No opportunity to build up a pension pot in response to these changes. No bus pass at 60, though I can buy a senior Railcard. Unfortunately society and employers aren't dealing with this very well. Grandchildren tend to arrive once you are in your sixties. Parents become elderly and need more support. Women in my situation are chasing jobs that should be for the young ones who need to work and establish themselves. Perhaps there would be less of a care crisis for the elderly if my cohort of women weren't still in employment. And then there's the issue of part time, low paid work as skills don't get updated. In my scheme of things five and a half years worth of a state pension, plus a bus pass, represents a substantial amount of money. I have never earned a lot, but I have kept working. I certainly don't want to hear the Chancellor crowing about how much he has saved by taking away more than five years of my pension and everyone else's in this situation. I realise I have become a grumpy old woman!

Mothers Day

I absolutely understand why my children see this as a commercial opportunity they don't want to take part in. I acknowledge the occasion because my mother expects me to and I don't want to hurt her. Observing the dads and children out buying flowers and presents yesterday brought it home to me that this isn't part of my life as a mother. It also set me thinking about my own personal take on the role and responsibilities. In the last year or so of job applications after my archive traineeship I have been asked more than once if the variety of work on my CV shows a lack of commitment. I have been part time, full time and self employed since I moved here in 1993, in a variety of places, some I have returned to with a different role and job title. Sometimes I have had a combination of employers and self employment. This approach to earning a living hasn't been about a lack of commitment. Quite the opposite. My commitment has been to my family. It's been the search for stability, job security, a better salary, more hours and flexibility when needed as a single parent with three children to care for. I have also looked for work that was going to interest me, knowing life is too short to be doing a job you dislike. So this post goes out to all the mothers who put themselves through the demands of training courses,job application forms,scary interviews, disappointments when they don't even got an acknowledgement,and work they compromise themselves to do all in the hope that they can provide a secure present and a better future for their children.