Ruminations

A few weeks ago I went to a reunion of ex-Ottakar's booksellers and met people I hadn't seen for nine years. For a few hours, it felt as if I'd woken up from a bad dream and that we were all back together again. 

To add to the feeling of discombobulation, nobody appeared to have aged, even slightly.

It was a bittersweet evening. It was lovely to see people that I'd once felt a genuine affection for, but it also made me sad that I'd lost an enjoyable and rewarding career. Working alone in a remote barn, for a slowly diminishing income, isn't what I envisaged I'd be doing at this age.

However, I'm not alone. Most of my contemporaries have either experienced 'burn-out' or been made redundant. The world of work is becoming increasingly cut-throat and it's hard to compete with someone who is half your age, full of enthusiasm and willing to accept a lower salary.

Of course, male employees can always crack open the Just For Men, go to a gym and try and seem a little bit crazy, but they'll still come across as embarrasing dads having a midlife crisis. It's an unforgiving world out there.

A friend of mine complains that there is nobody in her office over the age of 35. Where have all the middle aged people gone? I suspect that like me, quite a few of them are eking out an existence, some more comfortably than others, trying to juggle the demands of young children and/or elderly parents.

Next September, my son will hopefully be starting at a new, specialist school, which could be the making of him. I will be taking and collecting him by car every schoolday for the best part of two years, so any work I do will have to fit around that schedule.

At the end of it, my son will hopefully be independent enough to make his own way to appointments and lessons. Legally, he will be an adult and in theory, I'll be free to find a proper job. But what will I do?

Men of my age aren't exactly hot property in the jobs market.

Self-employment can be a godsend if you have a child with 'special needs'. I've lost count of the number of meetings I've had to drive to, or the hours that have been spent coaxing my son back into the outside world. But the erratic income and social isolation can be debilitating.

After sitting alone in a shed for a whole day, I don't come home brimming with energy and my limited repertoire of work-related anecdotes usually involve birds, rodents or invertebrates. I feel bored by myself.

For my own sanity, I need to find something else, even if it's just a succession of temporary or part-time jobs. I can't imagine never working with anyone again.

But, of course, there are also positives to being self-employed. The other afternoon, when I ran out of work, I was able to come home early and go for a walk with my younger son. We stopped here and for the first time in years, I lay on the grass and watched the clouds merging into each other:

The whole afternoon cost nothing and gave us both more pleasure than a visit to any tourist attraction. My son started to tell me about all of the things that were on his mind (most of them involved Lego) and for a while, I felt like a half-decent father.

So I think that answer is to carry on as I am for two years, then look for a part-time job that doesn't involve wearing a green uniform or short trousers. But what, how and where? That is the question.

That Touch of Mink

I thought last week was bad, but this one has been far worse, with one email after another from customers asking where their books are. It has made me realise that however hard you work, if you sell on the internet you can be completely buggered by the postal network. 

I could tell from the emails that some people were very angry. As one person wrote, "How hard is it to put a book in an envelope and post it?" Fortunately, Mark Twain's advice - "When in doubt, tell the truth" - has paid off. Almost every customer has been extremely patient and sympathetic, once they've realised what I've been up against.

In addition to writing apologetic emails to people, I also had to take a van up to Berkshire to collect some stock. It's usually a straightforward journey, but this time my SatNav had a psychotic episode and took me on a terrifying drive along some narrow, snow-bound country lanes. I think it's trying to kill me.

To make things worse, someone had changed the settings so that every traffic direction was given in a Dalek voice. The amusement value of hearing "IN 300 YARDS, TURN LEFT...HUMAN" quickly wore very thin.

Fortunately, I had some CDs of Radio Four podcasts to relieve the tedium of driving along a motorway being shouted at by a Dalek, including a fascinating Desert Island Discs with Jill Balcon - now better known as the mother of Daniel Day Lewis. She was nearly 80 when the programme was recorded, but had the voice and attitude of someone in their 50s, speaking with a great passion and self-effacing humour about her extraordinary life. What a woman.

In truth it was nice to get away from the farm. I have worked in a few unusual places, but never anywhere where it snows indoors. I suppose there must be a hole in the roof, but I can't see where.

Sometimes a robin enters the barn  and sings sweetly. Then it ruins everything by defecating on the books and computers. How many people have to wipe bird droppings off their PC monitor and keyboard  before they can start work?

The week reached a grand finale yesterday, with a fight between a mink and a rat. The mink seemed to have the upper hand, even though it was barely larger than the rat. Then we made the mistake of getting too close and for a second, the mink lost its grip. The rat quickly ran underneath a table and found a small hole near a pile of boxes. Undeterred, the mink strutted around the barn as if it owned the place, oblivious to the presence of four humans. Eventually it got bored and decided to lie in wait under some wheelie bins.

It was all very odd. At the time, we had no idea that we were looking at a mink, but Google images quickly identified the strange, dark, ferret-like creature:

 

Next week I will be dealing with a rat infestation, writing some more apologies and getting to grips with a complicated new postal system. At some point I may even have time to look at some books, like this one:

 But I wouldn't bank on it.

The Dignity of Labour

When I left high street bookselling, I swore that I'd never work on a Saturday again. But that was before I ended up here:

Even on a grey, misty morning, the drive to my cow shed always cheers me up. The fields appear still and empty, but the surrounding hedgerows are full of life and as I approach, rabbits, squirrels and pheasants run for cover, whilst hopeful sparrowhawks hover above. So far I haven't hit any animals, but a man in Spandex cycle shorts almost came a cropper.

The cow shed may be rather spartan, but it is in a beautiful, quiet place, run by an old Sussex 'gentleman farmer', whose family have been there for generations. After years of working in awful places like Slough and Crawley, it seems too good to be true.

I could quite happily stay there forever, but sadly I'm about to leave and move here:

This is a very different sort of farm - one where sullen, limbless people glare at visitors and the ground is littered with dead rats, whilst semi-erect dogs bark half-heartedly. I'm not joking about the limbs, by the way. I saw four people today and only two of them were in full possession of their extremities. I shall steer clear of any farm machinery while I'm here.

Why am I swapping my rural idyll for this post-apocalyptic settlement, you may ask? The answer is simple: money. The new barn is relatively cheap, with enough space to allow the business to expand significantly. It also has doors that are big enough to take lorries, so deliveries and waste collections will no longer involve an absurd, albeit scenic, time-wasting drive around the lanes of East Sussex.

The one downside of a large space is that it will be impossible to heat, so I have spent most of today building a garden shed-cum-office with a carpenter from Brighton:

I'd been a little apprehensive about spending a whole day making something with a complete stranger, but I needn't have been. The carpenter from Brighton was a true gentleman and when the time came to say goodbye, I felt a genuine pang of regret.

As we chatted, he told me that he'd left school at 16 and joined his father's business in the building trade. He loved the work, but hated the environment: "You know, there's only so long that you can work with racist, homophobic Sun readers." He has now set up a silk screen printing business, but still does a bit of carpentry on the side. I wish him well.

The shed may not be the height of luxury, but it will be warm and I'm sure that with a little effort, I can imbue it with the opulence of an Ottoman palace.

It took six hours to build the shed, which was quite long enough for me - I'm not a huge fan of manual labour. When I returned home, my reward was reading the Guardian Weekend magazine in a very deep, hot bath.

I will miss the old farm, with its chocolate box scene of lush green fields and rolling hills in the distance. The new farm is muddy, smelly and unfriendly, but offers me the chance to make hay while the sun is still shining, if you'll forgive the crass metaphor. I've no idea what will happen to the book trade during the next few years, but I have to assume the worst.

In the meantime, I have found a new rural idyll:

While I'm hanging around, waiting for my son to finish his hour of 'farm therapy', I get to brush the mud out of a pony called Lucy. She seems to enjoy it and I'm picking up a useful skill for the post-apocalyptic society that will begin in 2017.

Everyone's a winner.

Private Lives

I have just spent a week working on a farm owned by gypsies, in a remote part of the Weald that seems to have its own subarctic microclimate. On the first day I wore a t-shirt, corduroy shirt, Fair Isle sweater and fleece, thinking that this would be perfectly adequate.

It wasn't.

By yesterday, I had so many layers of clothing on that I moved like an Apollo astronaut. This made it difficult to sort through the boxes of books that were housed in a barn, but at least my teeth were no longer chattering.

Perhaps the most useful things I bought with me were a Russian hat - particularly important if you're thinning on top - and some antibacterial handwash (some of the boxes have rat droppings in them). Next week I'll also have some skiwear, so I should be okay.

The other morning I was alone in the barn when a ruddy-faced man appeared at the door and started talking to me about the state of the floor. I politely said that it was nothing to do with me and continued sorting through the books, but he didn't take the hint.

After telling me the same thing for the third time, he introduced himself as Bob and I caught a very strong whiff of alcohol. My heart sank. This wasn't going to be easy.

For the next hour I tried to get rid of Bob, but the drink had reduced his short-term memory to four seconds and he seemed to be operating on a loop, reintroducing himself to me every few minutes. In the end, I gave up and said I was going home.

The next day the owner of the farm came up to me. "I see you've met Bob then." I nodded. He shrugged his shoulders, adding "Well, he is what he is."

I liked the owner's philosophical attitude. As far as he was concerned, as long as Bob got the job done, that was all that mattered. It was such a contrast to the modern workplace, where HR departments rigorously do everything they can to observe employment law and equal opportunities legislation, but often end up with an environment that doesn't accommodate people's eccentricities.

I think that this is due to a blurring of the line between the public and private parts of our lives.

In the 1950s and 60s, my parents worked at the headquarters of the Post Office Savings Bank in Kew. It was a huge building that employed hundreds of civil servants in vast offices, lined with rows of desks.

According to my parents, the bank was run in an uncompromisingly strict way. Lateness and absenteeism were not tolerated and people's personal circumstances were regarded as irrelevant. When I was born, at 3.30pm on a cold March afternoon, there was no question of my father being allowed to leave work an hour early, or even make a phone call outside the allocated break times.

What a contrast to today's workplace.

But there was an upside to this. If your personal life was irrelevant, it also followed that there was no attempt to own your soul. As long as you were punctual, diligent, hard working and honest, your political views and personal opinions were of no interest to an employer. It didn't matter whether you were a team player and believed in 'brand values' or not.

As a result, the Savings Bank employed a selection of people that was, in many ways, more 'inclusive' and 'diverse' than many modern workplaces. That's putting it politely. All human life was there, from battle-scarred war veterans to people who would now be diagnosed as autistic. The one thing they all had in common was an aptitude for numbers.

My mother said that her colleagues were usually quite circumspect about their personal lives, but when you worked with the same people year after year, little snippets of information gradually built up into a whole picture.

My mother knew that Mr Fortescue occasionally had blackouts and thought he was back in the Burmese jungle. She also knew that Mrs Clutterbuck was afraid of being contaminated by germs and that Miss Snellham and Miss Havering had a 'funny friendship' (my mother's expression). But it was no-one's business. Privacy was respected.

There was one notable exception - my mother didn't know that Mr Christie in room 17B was a serial killer (a man that my father described as "a very quiet chap who kept himself to himself"). That was one example of a private life being a little too private.

I wouldn't want to turn the clock back. I'm grateful that there is legislation that protects people from discrimination and recognises that their personal circumstances should be accommodated, wherever possible. I'm glad that Miss Snellham can now expect compassionate leave if Hiss Havering's mother dies.

But I do mourn the loss of a private life and a growing culture of conformity that would have branded some my mother's colleagues as unemployable.

When the last company I worked for created a human resources department, the new HR manager decided that she needed to foster a 'team' culture. Weekly meetings were set up, with the most excrutiatingly embarrassing team-building activities: "Okay, today I want you to write what each person's strengths and weaknesses are on a post-it note and stick it up on the wall..." (apparently I was 'friendly' and 'polite').

We were also asked to talk about our personal lives. On the one hand, I was moved to discover that a young man in the warehouse lived in a family of drug addicts and loved his job because he wanted to make something of himself, but I could also see how uncomfortable he felt.

I liked the HR manager and respected her motives, but felt terribly exposed by her attempts to make us bond.

Do we always need to have a team spirit in the workplace? What does it actually mean? A culture that once valued experience, honesty, diligence, reliability and maturity has been replaced, in some workplaces at least, with one that rewards conformity, youth, extroversion, enthusiasm and energy. We need a balance between the two and a recognition that a bad team player might nevertheless be a valued employee.

We've legislated against racial and sexual discrimination. Now it's time to protect those who are shy or just odd. Don't make them go tenpin bowling unless they really want to!

We also need to redraw that line between the personal and the private.

Perhaps I'm just saying this because I'm now in my 40s, well on the way to becoming an old git. How can I compete with a 22-year-old who is "hungry for success" (a friend of mine recently heard a young colleague say this without a hint of irony) and untainted by the experience of working for tossers?

Luckily, I'm self-employed, but the tiniest possibility that one day I could find myself in a room full of people again, talking earnestly about 'brand values' (or even worse, a 'brand wheel') still brings me out in a cold sweat.