Quiet Life Reflections

 

I've been spending quite a lot of time alone (apart from my cats) as my lodgers are away for most of the week. I have really enjoyed it. I really enjoy my house, it has surprised me how easy it has been to keep it looking great when I haven't had to cook and to share it with anyone! One of the lodgers will be moving out in or around October, I hope he will be able to look after himself; I have serious concerns about what I think is his 'institutionalisation' which has left him lacking in basic confidences and unable to 'stand up for himself' in any way! If he ends up somewhere where he can still be supported he will be OK... The other one... Hmm... I confess that a small amount of distrust has crept into my relationship with him- not major, but based in the realisation that there is much he is keeping to himself- which is entirely his prerogative. -I keep getting a feeling of insincerity from him, like he is humouring me. I am more than prepared to accept that what I have felt comes purely from language and cultural differences. In any case, I have almost no worries about him as he is confident and competent. He also has a generally pleasant manner- apart from having a 'resting bitch face' which took time to get used to.

I am proceeding with the fostering registration. I am trying to wean myself away from looking for work as I am STILL failing to secure call-backs or shortlising for jobs I could do easily. It feels like something fundamentally changed in job applications while I was working for Durham and nobody told me! Still: the less I think about these non-existent jobs, the more exciting the fostering appears to be. I intend to make it into my career, with some writing as a sideline. I intend to give any kids assigned to me to sort of childhood I wished I could have had. 

We "found" another potential Sanctuary Project house: ample space, lots of character in 21 heavily wooded acres and only £650,000... It is in Argyll and Bute which is a bit of a downer, but I could definitely see myself retiring there. I've always been attracted to living in a wood or forest and this house gives that. It isn't as big as some we've seen, but then; being so far away will probably limit the groups who want to come. It will need some work, but not huge or daunting amounts  so it looks like we could move in and start welcoming visitors quite quickly. I suspect the whole thing will need £1m to get off the ground (including the purchase price). I'd take the foster kids with me- unless they didn't want to leave Newcastle.

Of course, I have no way of funding it at the moment apart from lottery tickets! I don't trust asking the main group who might want to book the place for money: some of them started a project outside UK which is already in the kind of trouble I expected it would be and is twhy I have tried to do this thing 'on the quiet' until the house was secured. It is hard to 'work' with people who don't believe in organisation and think that "management" is a dirty word! -They get things done by "co-creation" which works well in theory but in practice only works when one or two people brave the criticisms from those too fearful to put themselves in the firing line. Having served so many "committees" that have messed up and delayed things I've tried to do in my past, I am more than reluctant to abdicate similar powers to another one. -They MIGHT be able to help to raise the cash, but they'd want to be able to make decisions about how it would be run in exchange. On past experience, it would take a LOT to persuade me to accept that! I was talking about the money issue with friends yesterday and Idriss Elba came up again. ONLY on the basis that the last time I spoke with him he insisted that I should contact him when/if I needed to. -That was ten years ago! Since then I've tried a few times to contact him through different avenues and got nothing back. I suspect he has more than one person employed to keep 'people like me' away from him, if I were to find out that he had received my messages, but didn't want to contact me I would TOTALLY fine with it. Idriss owes me nothing- though he used to talk about the play I wrote and cast him in as kick-starting his acting career. I met him in 1987 when he was around 19 and after the show I became his vocal coach for about a year. I last saw him when I was CEO at the Actors' Centre; he told me how he would tell casting agents about almost losing the part I offered him because of casual homophobia (it was a gay play!). -He hadn't even found out that there was a BRIEF moment of nudity in the play at that time either. Funnily enough, I saw the other actor who was in in the second production of the play at the Lillian Bayliss Theatre and at the Oval House on a TV advert for insurance: Andrew Francis.

The bubblemate with whom i have had difficulties is back... I now realise that I am not 100% happy with this: all I experience is what I see as their shortcomings and refusals to acknowledge any other experience than their own. They're not intellectually powerful and easily led by any pop culture or media which matches their world view- they quote CHARACTERS from films and TV shows in the way students cross reference their essays, they need to be reminded that the "evidence" they're expounding is actually fiction... I am feeling slightly trapped.