how long?

I don’t warm to

Diane Abbott. The voice alone, plus the thin skinned recall that she is the only person in all those years to have got my name wrong twice on air.   Sad to see her looking weary and unwell, head wrapped in a turban, only to reappear for the faithful in wig and bad leather jacket and start to inveigh about being blocked from standing as a Labour candidate in the seat she has long held.    Where did all this come from – the Labour party, its leader, the executive ?  I doubt it.  It came from Dianne Abbott.   If she is as clever as we are always being told she is, this was to be anticipated.  Left or right, power play is not kind to everybody. Times change.

She might learn from a not untactfully written story about Jennifer Lopez,

who parlayed some success in to brand bonanza – never underestimate the sheer graft of that, even if the financial rewards are magnificent.  She and Ben Affleck eventually married so she set up a record, a show and a film about the Love of Her Life – only for the whole lot to falter massively – tour cancelled, film sold to television after failure in cinemas, record going nowhere.

I hesitate to say nothing lasts forever.  The sea and the mountains

last forever but they change constantly.   Graveyards were supposed to provide a monument to the dead forever – and we discover that stone degrades, weeds consume, land shifts.  There are manmade monuments that endure – Egyptian pyramids are the obvious example – but there are many more unheard of settlements, road, water and garden systems conceived for immortality which, over time, falter into dust.

The lucky among us have our “go”.    Mine lasted far longer that anybody thought it was going to,including me, though I never gave serious thought to what I would do next, except I would… I remember the lovely Linda ringing me to say  “Anna, I can’t go on putting  up ideas and having them turned down.  There is a ceiling to this, it will damage how you are thought of.”  God bless Linda.  Let it be good and go.

I had to get on with it.

It was shocking.  Intellectually, I had thought about it but emotionally – it was out there with melting icebergs and unicorns.   Nothing to do with me.  But it was.

There was a small matter of what I was going to live on but if you have to, you do.  Heaven was kind and two or three things I had never aspired to made me think and kept me going.  I was still struggling to find work because I couldn’t yet claim my pension.    And I wrote about it for the magazine of a paper that no longer exists – thus making more money than Jobseekers Allowance paid me  – which was taxed anyway.  I wrote about that too.

And somewhere at the back of my mind, I reached for the memory of my father

going from educational executive to stockman in a wine and spirits company and back to his beloved teaching for the last few years of his working life. I remembered his comment when I missed out on something at school – “Not your turn”.  And beyond that to being a child always talking to people. I had always done this but it became my “how to be”.   Nobody gave a damn about who I was and neither did I. 

When I was recognised, I was handsomely greeted.  But most of the people to whom I spoke preferred a grin and a bit of exchange.  I met and was disappointed – you can’t make friends like pastry – and I met and was fulfilled. I made acquaintance, people at the bus stop, on the bus, in the street. Putting my voice forward for all those years worked for me, smiling, laughing, teasing exchange.          

When I was a child, I wanted to be a star – I had no idea what was involved.   Now, I want to be a light because I see and hear the reflected shine.  Embracing change is hard but setting your face against it in yourself is stupid.   How long ?  For as long as I can.