I've had a rich and varied life so far.
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| Cohomology Ring |
Oh well.
A career in NHS finance followed, with many high falutin' job titles, much responsibility, late nights, stress, anxiety and ultimately a breakdown. Next, I worked as a care assistant at a hospital for adults with severe physical disability, then trained as an Alexander Technique teacher. Now I do the AT teaching and work part time as an accounts clerk for a local Accountant.
I deliberately chose the NHS career. I didn't just end up there: I was trying, still try, to live my life in some kind of moral context. I saw the NHS as a force for good in society, and thought it would be a fulfilling environment to work in. I didn't want to spend the few years I have on the planet serving, say, the tobacco industry, or commerce: I was happy to take low pay to serve the greater good. And it was low paid in those days, and the conditions were poor and the hours long. I didn't feel able to engage with patients directly, so did what I could and took a back room job in finance.
Although I did well in the corporate world of NHS Finance - I held management board level posts, ran my own departments, was responsible for budgets of many millions of pounds -I was never really comfortable there. I could see a yawning void between what the public thought the NHS was there for (and what I thought it was for), and what the politicians thought. The public wanted well run local hospitals and community services, staffed by kind and competent staff, with decent food, clean floors and good clinical results. Politicians wanted a kind of metaphorical graffiti wall, a place where they could write their own name and become immortalised. Senior NHS managers, working at the interface, frequently betrayed the public good by cooperating with these grandiose political schemes. As a result, millions and millions of pounds of tax payers money has been wasted on stupid and pointless political projects to no purpose. Any one out there remember Resource Management? Quality circles? Putting Patients First? Tomlinson? The list is endless.
So although my career flourished, because I was good at my job, my heart wasn't in it. My heart was in the other part of my life, the exceedingly non-corporate world of live rock and roll at the Pembury Tavern in Hackney in the early 1980's, then the punk and grunge music scene at The Castle in Brentwood. When we weren't hanging out in live music pubs, we'd go to motor bike rallies: the South and West Custom and Classic, the Kent Custom Bike Show, Bulldog Bash, the MAG event in Upminster, and others: camping in a tiny tent in the middle of a field surrounded by thousands of other bikers, getting sozzled whilst listening to the likes of Dumpy's Rusty Nuts, Never the Bride, Dr Feelgood, Engine and even Blondie (although I think we missed them, they came on really late and it was soooo muddy getting around the site took forever, without exception everyone slipped over and my boots fell apart under the vacuum power of the squelchy mud.
For years later you could tell who'd been at Kent on that occasion because the muddy stains never quite came off the leathers). We went to Tattoo festivals, marvelling at the ink and and ironwork which people adorned themselves with. We had fun.I remember one Friday, going to work in my suit and having important meetings with other senior managers, then suffering some god-awful working lunch wrestling with the financing of new laboratory equipment: millions of pounds of investment at stake. Then I went back to my office, changed out of my suit into my jeans and leathers and snuck out of a back door to where Godfrey was waiting on the Yamaha FJ1200. 2 hours later, while the rest of my colleagues were dreaming of the commute home, we had set up camp in a field near the south coast, rock music blasting out of a marquee a few hundred yards away and the smell of burgers and chips wafting through the sea air.
More recently, well, we've got older. The idea of camping in a muddy field no longer has the appeal it once did. The bikes have gone (yes, plural: I had a licence and a Suzuki RF600, which I thought was beautiful, but which I was also slightly scared of although that didn't stop me charging along the A12 at 150 mph!) as we've become more cautious. The live music pubs have morphed into the soulless drinking dens which blight every High Street in the land, so we don't go there any more. Just recently, my piercing had to go - if I have an MRI scan I'm told it could tear any metal out of my body, so it seemed best to remove it myself first. Still got the tattoo though!
So that's me. I remember once saying to Godfrey that the reason I loved the bike rallies was that everyone there, including us, were lost souls. All of us, fucked up in one way or another. And in a strange way, that made us a community, even if only over the weekend.
