Fatima and Me

My last 2 blogs were super positive about life, having recently reached the magical stage of free nursery hours. I had so many hopes and plans and I had a brilliant first day off where I did a long cycle and another day off where I went out for brunch with my good friend Katie. But in between those days has not been great. I've mainly spent them working on lots of things that haven't resulted in actually earning money. 

Being self-employed means I am often going to meetings and planning projects, or spending time on advertising or emailing, and not all of that results in actual paid work in schools. The majority of the time it does, so I don't mind if sometimes I go to a meeting to pitch my ideas, or even design a mural and in the end the school doesn't want anything. That's just self-employed life and that's why my day rate is quite high, because there is a lot of work that happens outside of a days work. I won't bore you with all the details, but the last few weeks have all been filled with planning, emailing, spending ages on designs for several different school and a cafe, that have all resulted in absolutely no work, even though some of it looked like it would be certain to go ahead.

So I thought it's time to Rethink Reskill Reboot, as the government would like me to. Except that the things I have thought about reskilling in are things you can't teach on zoom. Like plastering for example I've though about learning that. And I need money now, I've got no time to re-train, so I've signed up to a teaching assistant supply agency. A lot of people are off sick at the moment so I thought there might be some work going there. I've also signed up to be a modern day Santa's elf. (Christmas temp work at a Royal Mail sorting office.) This has resulted in me having 3 DBS checks this month. I paid £23 for one a while ago when I thought the big mural project was very likely to go ahead. Then when I joined the school supply agency they told me if I only paid £23 than thats just a basic DBS and would be no good to me, if I wanted to work in schools I had to pay £50 for an enhanced one. At the same time Royal Mail did me another basic one, because there was no box to tick for "I already have a basic one". I now also have to pay £13 for the update service, so that I continually have a DBS forever. But that's no big deal, to quote a worker from the agency "it's less than £1 a month." I was so angry about all this work I'd lost and money I'd spent on DBS checks, I went out and committed loads of crimes, to make my money back.

While I'm over here grieving the loss of what was once a great career, my 5 year old son has endless enthusiasm and confidence about his future job prospects. He came out of school one day saying something like this:

"Mummy when I'm bigger I'm going to save the world. I've got a 3 step plan. Step 1: save the animals. Step 2: plant some trees and Step 3: clean up the oceans." 

He thinks that no one has bothered trying these things before and that he single handedly can do it and fix the world. Of course I've told him theres no money in saving the world and he should retrain in cyber.

Which brings us on to Fatima. A lot has been said already about this dream crushing government campaign, but the best thing about pissing off a load of creatives is all the wonderful memes that have come out of this. Here are a few faves:

I just feel like I can't help being creative, it's how my brain works. It would be great if I had a passion for economics like my Dad and just learned to move money around in a way that creates more magical money and end up retired early in a lovely riverside house. But we can't all be magical money movers can we? You need someone to design and make the lovely riverside houses.

My neighbours left an old broken globe on the street at the weekend, and I knocked on to ask if I could have it. 

I could have just repaired it but we don't have much room for it so I've decided to make it into a lamp shade and a small side table. I just can't help myself when I see something beautiful, and I've stopped the globe going in landfill and I've stopped myself from buying a side table. I was always a maker, it's what makes me happy, and I haven't made physical stuff for ages because I spent the last 2 years making comedy, but now the comedy scene is not what it was and all my work has been canceled, making art again is keeping me sane. And I'd rather take a minimum wage day job that pays the bills and doesn't take up too much brain space so I have the time to create, than retrain in a "proper career" that I have to give my all to, just so that I can have the money to pay for all the extra childcare I'd need and afford to buy new side tables off Amazon.

In other making news me and Dan are making a podcast. It's called "I wouldn't watch". We take it in turns to force each other to watch film we love but our spouse wouldn't watch. So far I've made Dan watch Titantic and Moulin Rouge and he's made me watch The Matrix and I'll soon be watching Gladiator. After watching then have a big chat about the film and some of the themes of the film, surprising facts, silly stories and we do a credit shout out to a minor character with a silly title. Once we've got those 4 done we'll start releasing them weekly. I hope you will enjoy it!

This is Dan giving Rose a Hi 5 in that well known hand print Scene.

Shout out to all my creative friends, working hard, living their dream, we need you! xx