A Wistful Week
It's been a strange week. Time is being eaten in huge chunks by an exciting European football championship (well for me anyway), a very gradual campervan transformation and the oldest enemy of all - work of course. It's now three weeks since I last packed the camera into the bag, considered what I wanted to achieve before making my lens selections and setting off in the car. I've completely missed the sea thrift and the poppies this year. I'm going to need to reacquaint myself with the buttons and dials on the camera before too much longer or I'll forget what they're all for. Also, with another academic year finished yesterday, I really just want to sit and gaze into space for a while with an empty mind. May and June are always full of improbable deadlines that can only be achieved by engaging what's left of the tired old brain cells into hyperdrive and trusting that we'll somehow get through it all one more time.
Yesterday brought one of those landmark moments in my life. Most of the day was spent clearing twenty-one years of memories from my office as I prepared to hand it over to my successor who joins us on Monday. Finally, after all of those years I'm no longer a finance manager and I'm no longer responsible for the working lives of the people around me - now I'm a teacher of a kind. And that's only for two months until I become whatever I want to be instead of what the need to pay bills forces me to be. Ironic that after all these years supporting teachers, I finally end up in front of the chalk board myself don't you think? Occasionally colleagues would pop in to see if I was crying yet. I wasn't. I was smiling because I was far more excited about what lies ahead than I was wistful about the reflections on what I'm leaving behind. From time to time I would find a note or a photo of some team caper that would make me laugh and rush into the team office to show to the ones who might remember the back story.
And then I happened across one of Sue's old notebooks. In the pages I found a list of names, mine included. Next to them she'd written our ages and future dates. She'd been working out when she might be able to retire, based on what she knew about the plans of her closest colleagues. We'd always loosely agreed that we wouldn't go at the same time. She was my boss for seventeen years - elevated to the boardroom when her predecessor retired, with me involuntarily promoted to her old position in her wake. Neither of us really wanted the responsibility we were being burdened with, but that's what sometimes happens during a period of austerity. Universally loved, the whole college was devastated when Sue was taken from us by pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 a couple of years ago. It all happened frighteningly quickly. One moment she was full of energy and plans, the next she felt ill, and a few months later we all wept at her funeral. Of course it hit us harder than everyone else because we'd worked so closely alongside her for so long. I thought she was indestructible, but of course we're all just visitors here for a while, and some don't get as much of a stay as they might reasonably have expected to. She'd watched over us with so much care throughout the years. When she was no longer able to work I'd had to step even further up those near vertical rungs to do finance at a strategic level and Katie moved into my role. Two of us doing the work of three for a year - the memory of it still makes me shudder. I wasn't born to hobnob with the politickers and shakers and movers of this world. I just wanted to look out of the window and dream about mountains and rivers, forests and oceans.
Every so often, a moment such as finding the notebook brings the sadness of that terrible year jolting back into sharp focus. That eternal sense of dread - "what are they going to ask me at this Governors' meeting now? Will I sit there opening and closing my mouth silently like a goldfish? Sue would have known what to say." In her last ever message to me, her main concern was that I was being paid the right amount for the additional workload I'd had no option but to take on. Typically for Sue, she was thinking about other people instead of herself, even though she only had such a short time left. Of the many gifts she gave me in life, the very last one was that the pay review she campaigned for meant I could knock a whole year off the date she'd written next to my name on the page in front of me. The date she'd evidently written not long before she became unwell.
Late in the afternoon as the contents of the filing cabinets evolved into bulging bin liners and shredding bags, Katie came and sat in my office to go though some invoices. She looked sad. I'll miss lots of people from work, but none anywhere near as much as her. She has been my rock and my best friend - always right there with me during the hardest times, making sure I never felt alone when there were storms all around us. I'm not sure whether I would have survived those storms without her. I know she's worried about a future without me and there's almost nothing that I wouldn't do for her. Except that I can't carry on working anymore of course. The job needs fresh input from an enthusiastic newcomer. But she knows she can come and see me whenever she needs to. I'll always be there for her with hot coffee and whatever I can muster to pass for wisdom.
Of course these tributes to two people who've become so important to me has nothing to do with this picture of Holywell Bay, taken on a stunning winter evening when everyone was at the beach because everywhere else was closed. I've already told the story of that evening in another image, and somehow today the one I've just shared is the one that resonates right now. Sometimes everything very quickly changes so suddenly and drastically in peoples' lives. Our futures are unscripted, no matter what plans we make. If we can make good memories along the way then that's got to be something worthwhile surely?
A Wistful Week
It's been a strange week. Time is being eaten in huge chunks by an exciting European football championship (well for me anyway), a very gradual campervan transformation and the oldest enemy of all - work of course. It's now three weeks since I last packed the camera into the bag, considered what I wanted to achieve before making my lens selections and setting off in the car. I've completely missed the sea thrift and the poppies this year. I'm going to need to reacquaint myself with the buttons and dials on the camera before too much longer or I'll forget what they're all for. Also, with another academic year finished yesterday, I really just want to sit and gaze into space for a while with an empty mind. May and June are always full of improbable deadlines that can only be achieved by engaging what's left of the tired old brain cells into hyperdrive and trusting that we'll somehow get through it all one more time.
Yesterday brought one of those landmark moments in my life. Most of the day was spent clearing twenty-one years of memories from my office as I prepared to hand it over to my successor who joins us on Monday. Finally, after all of those years I'm no longer a finance manager and I'm no longer responsible for the working lives of the people around me - now I'm a teacher of a kind. And that's only for two months until I become whatever I want to be instead of what the need to pay bills forces me to be. Ironic that after all these years supporting teachers, I finally end up in front of the chalk board myself don't you think? Occasionally colleagues would pop in to see if I was crying yet. I wasn't. I was smiling because I was far more excited about what lies ahead than I was wistful about the reflections on what I'm leaving behind. From time to time I would find a note or a photo of some team caper that would make me laugh and rush into the team office to show to the ones who might remember the back story.
And then I happened across one of Sue's old notebooks. In the pages I found a list of names, mine included. Next to them she'd written our ages and future dates. She'd been working out when she might be able to retire, based on what she knew about the plans of her closest colleagues. We'd always loosely agreed that we wouldn't go at the same time. She was my boss for seventeen years - elevated to the boardroom when her predecessor retired, with me involuntarily promoted to her old position in her wake. Neither of us really wanted the responsibility we were being burdened with, but that's what sometimes happens during a period of austerity. Universally loved, the whole college was devastated when Sue was taken from us by pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 a couple of years ago. It all happened frighteningly quickly. One moment she was full of energy and plans, the next she felt ill, and a few months later we all wept at her funeral. Of course it hit us harder than everyone else because we'd worked so closely alongside her for so long. I thought she was indestructible, but of course we're all just visitors here for a while, and some don't get as much of a stay as they might reasonably have expected to. She'd watched over us with so much care throughout the years. When she was no longer able to work I'd had to step even further up those near vertical rungs to do finance at a strategic level and Katie moved into my role. Two of us doing the work of three for a year - the memory of it still makes me shudder. I wasn't born to hobnob with the politickers and shakers and movers of this world. I just wanted to look out of the window and dream about mountains and rivers, forests and oceans.
Every so often, a moment such as finding the notebook brings the sadness of that terrible year jolting back into sharp focus. That eternal sense of dread - "what are they going to ask me at this Governors' meeting now? Will I sit there opening and closing my mouth silently like a goldfish? Sue would have known what to say." In her last ever message to me, her main concern was that I was being paid the right amount for the additional workload I'd had no option but to take on. Typically for Sue, she was thinking about other people instead of herself, even though she only had such a short time left. Of the many gifts she gave me in life, the very last one was that the pay review she campaigned for meant I could knock a whole year off the date she'd written next to my name on the page in front of me. The date she'd evidently written not long before she became unwell.
Late in the afternoon as the contents of the filing cabinets evolved into bulging bin liners and shredding bags, Katie came and sat in my office to go though some invoices. She looked sad. I'll miss lots of people from work, but none anywhere near as much as her. She has been my rock and my best friend - always right there with me during the hardest times, making sure I never felt alone when there were storms all around us. I'm not sure whether I would have survived those storms without her. I know she's worried about a future without me and there's almost nothing that I wouldn't do for her. Except that I can't carry on working anymore of course. The job needs fresh input from an enthusiastic newcomer. But she knows she can come and see me whenever she needs to. I'll always be there for her with hot coffee and whatever I can muster to pass for wisdom.
Of course these tributes to two people who've become so important to me has nothing to do with this picture of Holywell Bay, taken on a stunning winter evening when everyone was at the beach because everywhere else was closed. I've already told the story of that evening in another image, and somehow today the one I've just shared is the one that resonates right now. Sometimes everything very quickly changes so suddenly and drastically in peoples' lives. Our futures are unscripted, no matter what plans we make. If we can make good memories along the way then that's got to be something worthwhile surely?