The way we were in1992.
It was 20 years ago today . . . actually Sergeant Pepper taught me nothing but I’ve been living in Paris for that long. Double crikey with knobs on!
How has this come about? When I left the Daily Telegraph and London in 1992 I had vaguely thought my French wife and I might live in Paris for two or three years; I hadn’t envisaged anything beyond that.
After a six-week tour of Australia, we pitched up in Paris with no jobs and no children. My wife found a job soon enough and I set out to be a best-selling novelist.
I dashed off two 100,000-word novels and even got a publisher (Hodder Headline) to read one of them. A polite rejection note followed; there were more of those notes to come.
Dreams and life seem to get tangled up and stuff happens. I put aside the writing. We decided to have a baby (or, rather, my wife decided to do the business end of that endeavour) and in 1994 our son Brainbox popped into the world.
Why am I reminiscing about this? I’ve been thinking about the passage of time lately -yes, I’m getting old(er) – and especially so this month because in nine days’ time my son will be 18. What? How did that happen? And my daughter Princess Perfect is rapidly catching up and is already 14. Golly gosh.
The past 20 years has been a great adventure although I’m now in a bit of a slump as I haven’t worked for two years and prospects look bleak in the newspaper game. Luckily, the Frog Queen works and supports us all.
I make no complaints about my employment status – I worked for 10 years at the International Herald Tribune before taking a buyout because it seemed like a good idea at the time – but it made me laugh when I read in the press today that Lord Hutton of Furness, the UK pensions tsar, has urged people to stop assuming they will retire by 65 like their parents and grandparents. He said workers could be forced to delay retirement until they hit 70.
Well, your lordship, chance would be a fine thing. There are hundreds of thousands of us who are nowhere near retirement and can’t find any work.
Of course, I’m a special case in that I’m in the wrong country for what I do. Having said that, the newspaper industry is in such decline I’d be lucky to get a slot as an intern in Fleet Street.
It was my wife’s idea that I started a blog as she thought it would get me writing again. Well, sort of. Blogging is easy, fiction writing ain’t. And the beauty of blogging is you see your “work” published immediately.
I used to blog about three times a week or sometimes more but I probably blogpost about once a week now. Why?
I blame Facebook. Again, my wife introduced me to FB and I soon enjoyed all it had to offer – especially the silly, free, time-consuming games like Gardens of Time and the Goobox collection.
And recently I have added Twitter to my list of non-essential things to do all the time. I rarely tweet myself but I read the many weird and wonderful tweets. Utter waste of time really. Time, there’s that word again. Tempus fugit.
Well, I really must get on – umpteen chores to do. That is, after I’ve been to Facebook and Twitter.
Twenty years in France here too…before messing off to Costa Rica.
I used to work via the fax machine for the first few years, but as my husband’s health declined I had to give it up as I could not guarantee to be available.
Yes, the ‘working into your seventies’ thing annoyed me too….I’ve too many younger friends who are over the magic age (about 35) for getting a job but have plenty to offer.
My impression is that the pinheads who hire people only hire other pinheads – otherwise how come the levels of incompetence encountered when dealing with firms.
I’m on twatter, but rarely post. I’m on Facebook all evening, but only playing scrabble and poker!
I’m just glad I was able to retire at 60, I couldn’t envisage working until I’m 70 I’d be on my knees!
Wait until Brainbox is 41 like my eldest, then it’s time to worry!
I started on Gardens at Christmas, when my sister introduced me to it. I’m actually getting somewhat bored with it now.
Yeah, I was happy to get out at 60, too. My wife, fortunately, is still on full-time staff at the paper so I’m on her health plan. And freelancing keeps me as busy I want to be. Couldn’t imagine doing it in a second language, though. Facebook is the perfect replacement for how I used to work in the office: write for 20 minutes or so and then wander around the newsroom and gossip for a while to refocus myself. FB is the equivalent of perching on the edge of someone’s desk and bothering them!
I didn’t do that when I was on deadline, of course! But as a feature-writer, I seldom was.
Julian, I saw that piece on the BBC site too and wondered. I recently took a low-paying (but convenient for me and for them) part time job at the local preschool and apparently they had applications from places 45 minutes away by car – for a part time job at just above the minimum wage. These are desperate people!
Fly,
Yes, it’s ridiculous that people like me in their fifties and people much younger are overlooked. All that experience wasted. Still, wot me worry?
Johng,
I’m a sucker for the FB games too!
Akela,
And from reading your blog and FB comments, you certainly seem to be enjoying life to the full.
Jazz,
Gardens of Time has become a bit samey, I must admit. And who are the people who actually hand over real money to get extra gold bars?! Nuts.
Bill,
I miss the newsroom chats and gossip but, of course, newsrooms aren’t like the ones we worked in back in the day; they are fairly joyless places where journalists are working nonstop and are always in fear of losing their jobs. I realise now that I was very lucky in my provincial and national career – worked hard but had a lot of fun along the way.
Meg,
That paints a vivid picture of just how much people are hurting out there. I’m glad it works wll for you though.
Meg,
“works WELL for you.” What sort of journo am I? I wouldn’t hire me!
I think it’s the same with lots of people/jobs – they are thankful to have one. I was moaning about changes to my pension (as a teacher) but felt firmly put in my place by people saying I was a) lucky to have a pension, and b) lucky to have a job. It’s certainly not the job-for-life-retire-with-a-decent-pension scenario out there that it was when I started working in the late 70s.
I decided to retire at age 56 (awww shame!) because if I didn’t, my company pension would have dropped by a whole lot. This was because my pension was based on my best 5 earning years in the previous 10 years, and I had to take a drop in pay when the company reorganised…. so my best 5 years were the first 5, not the last 5, as would normally be the case! It would have taken me another 10 working years to get the same pension amount. So I went, and I’m glad I did!