So…
Dusting it off again, looking to see how long since… oh, wow. That’s quite some time.
Anyhow, what’s been occurring? (Rhetorical question; don’t answer) Well, we moved from The Old Co-op in Somerset having renovated it and sold it to some nice people from Bristol who wanted to get out of the city and swapped it for a smaller house in a town in Devon in order to be nearer to ageing relatives – we seem to be entering that looking-after-teenagers-and-elderly-parents phase of life. And after the difficulties in selling the house and a pretty challenging year (new jobs, school disasters, house sales falling through, etc) I’ve decided I need to experience the joys of a regular salary again, so am starting to look for work – who knows what that will bring. I never suspected that being a novelist was something you did for money, but the sound of universally disinterested silence from literary agents has just about beaten me, so imma dustin’ off them work chaps and saddlin’ back up.
What else? Well, I considered teaching for a while and spent some time in the spring doing some work experience in a school: all the teachers I know had told me how great it was– actually scratch that; some of the teachers I know had told me how great it was and some of them had told me how terrible it was and how much they hated it. But I’d always wondered, so decided to give it a go.
The lovers (even the haters, tbh) identified the kids as the best part, and they were a lot of fun, but the moments teachers talk about, when a kid ‘gets’ an idea you’re trying to explain, as the best moments, when you see it in their eyes… well. I got a couple of those ‘clicks’ from a couple of kids, but I just didn’t feel the excitement real teachers describe: all I thought was, ‘I wish I was writing’ . Added to which, you need English, Maths and Science GCSEs and I only have grade two CSE physics so would need to do quite a lot of studying just to apply and the training is ridiculously intense and so is the money and the amount of work involved… I just didn’t love it enough to commit. So in the end, it was a ‘no’ from me.
We shall what October brings, I guess. Watch the space.
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The Bush of Goats 