IN SIGHT OF THE TIDE: End of Term

My first semester at university is over. Well, not quite. I’ve still got two module submissions to write by January 9th. But Fiction and Poetry seminars have finished and I went into Plymouth this week for my last tutorial of 2022.

The usual gamble with public transport in Cornwall didn’t pay off that day. I thought I’d played my cards well – checked the train time availability the night before then waited to the morning to check again and book. Half an hour later, just as I was nearing the station, I got a notification that my train was cancelled. “You can always get the next one” it said. Not unless I wanted to miss my tutorial. I went back home and defrosted the car.

I’m gad I took the car. It gave me the flexibility to give a friend a lift home after our group study. I say group study: a long conversation about Dr Who and a discussion of the various merits of our tutors took up much of the time. But at least we analysed the Time Lord’s story arc and character developments, so that’s sort of work, isn’t it?

We talked about how we wished the semester were longer. We have made progress but there is so much more to learn. It’s been the most enjoyable learning experience I’ve ever had.

It’s not just that the lectures have been stimulating. Or that I’ve amazed myself with the direction my writing has gone in. Or been gobsmacked by the positive feedback.

It’s the camaraderie. I’m the oldest in my group but I don’t feel it (except when I have to explain something from the 1980s to one of the youngsters!) We are counsellors, shop assistants, baristas, youth workers, carers, fulltime students. We’ve lived in Plymouth, Cornwall, London, Africa, Australia. We’re gay, straight, and trans. We have different interests in writing: middle reader pony stories, Shetland folk tales, travel, horror.

But in the end, we’re all just writers, students here to learn together.

Many of us have been labelled ‘overthinkers’. But here, that’s a strength. We observe detail closely. We analyse patterns and links. We look at life with a magnifying glass, a shovel, an awkward angle. We put ourselves in others’ situations to see what that feels like. We constantly ask ourselves ‘what if…?’ And all this gives birth to what we write.

And it’s a wonderfully supportive group. We have become mutual cheerleaders and honest critics of each other. There’s no competition between us. So we’re not afraid to ‘borrow’ a technique from each other. When someone said they’d been inspired by the way I’d written a piece to try something similar themselves, I felt honoured. St Paul tells the early church in Rome about the ‘gift of encouragement’ – my course mates have this gift in spades.

So I’m sad to reach the end of my first semester. Because of the mix of full and part time students, we won’t be in the same seminar groups come January. But I am so thankful for all I’ve gained. Especially for learning that the lonely job of writing works so much better in the company of like-minded and encouraging friends.

I’m going to take a couple of weeks’ break from the blog as I really do have to prioritise my assignments. But I look forward to being back with you in the New Year. In the meantime, I pray you have a peaceful Christmas.

IN SIGHT OF THE TIDE: When Your Calling Isn’t Your Calling Anymore

Like many healthcare professionals, my job was always more than a job. It was a vocation. I believed this was the career God wanted me to do. I believed every position I got, He opened the door to it.

I loved it. I loved problem solving, visiting different homes, getting to know patients and their families, making their lives a little easier in some small way. When my parents became ill it gave me new eyes and I made sure I by listened and included my patient’s carers more. When I struggled with my own mental health, the lessons I learned found their ways into my teaching and group work.

It was so much more than a job.

But somewhere along the line, the job changed. And so did I. I’ve written elsewhere about what happened https://thestufflifeismadeofblog.wordpress.com/2022/09/04/in-sight-of-the-tide-how-did-we-get-to-this/. I stopped loving it. More to the point, I lost my calling for it. It took me a long time to realise that.

How do you know that your calling for something has been withdrawn? Or simply come to a natural end? I wish I could give you a straightforward answer.

I do think it’s a mistake to assume all callings, in terms of jobs, are for life (or until retirement). Situations change. People grow. New skills develop. Old skills are revived. Callings may adapt.

Sometimes God speaks dramatically. Sometimes He speaks in increments, like water wearing away a rock or like a drip-by-drip growing stalactite. Sometimes we hear and obey immediately. Sometimes we don’t listen or we don’t understand what He’s saying. It’s hard to give up a calling, especially if it’s become integral to our very identity.

So what happens when one calling is replaced by another? For me, I’ve gone through four stages:

1. Rejecting my old calling: All of it. The relief of walking away from all the stress. The excitement of my new life and identity. All the little benefits like wearing jewellery, my own clothes, nail varnish again. I was so glad I wasn’t an Occupational Therapist.
2. Questioning who or what I was now: I didn’t know what to write under Occupation on my new GP’s registration form. Nothing seemed to fit. I’m still registered as an OT legally. But was I a student or a writer? Or both? Or all three?
3. Embracing my new calling: I love being a student and a writer. I love the life. I love my craft improving and developing in directions I never dreamed of. I love being with like-minded people. I know what I am now – the next form I fill in will have WRITER in the Occupation box, no question.
4. Integrating old and new callings: Before I started my course, I planned all the extra things I would do to keep up my OT registration: HCPC and RCOT online training events, join the OT Society at the university, write the odd journal article. Instead, I’m using OT in my MA. My novel’s protagonist is an OT – why has no one used a story to explain what OTs do? (Actually, I’ve found one person who has but least said about that the better!) I’m including OT models as part of the critical reflection for my poetry submission. And I have some subject ideas for my upcoming screen writing module – Holby Hospice anyone?

All this has made me think of one of my favourite Bible verses, which one translation puts this way: God intermingles all things together for good.

So maybe God hasn’t withdrawn my first calling. He’s just found a way to marry it with my new one.

IN SIGHT OF THE TIDE: An Institution

Coming back to Hampshire for a weekend visit, we stop off for lunch at Cartgate Lodge. If you know the A303, you’ll know Cartgate. Or at least have seen the signs for it near Yeovilton.

It’s a one off, an anomaly, and yet also clearly successful. Which is quite the accomplishment following the restrictions of Covid on travel and gives me hope for its survival through the current cost of living crisis.

Turning off the roundabout, we see the first reason for this: a spacious area for lorry parking. But this is no ordinary transport café. Pass the lorries and find a designated car space along the road that circumferences a lush green picnic area. Water bowls and lead loops are available under the trees. A majestic stag carved out of curved smooth golden branches holds court.

Walk past the brutalist toilet block with its incongruous silk flowers on a chair inside, past the Somerset tourist office, and across a Mediterranean inspired patio with more picnic tables and chalkboard signs advertising today’s specials, to the main building.

It looks like an airy ski lodge, no cold-white empty space like a corporate motorway service station. An assortment lights hang down from the beamed ceiling, some suspended from a cruciform of old wooden ladders, like an industrial chandelier.

Everywhere you look, there’s art. It’s a gallery of recycling and reinvention. The enormous windows are framed with curtains made of rusty chains, a twist on Swiss shutters. I examine a horse’s head on a nearby plinth as I sip my hot tea – the tip of its nose is a bicycle bell. A bird of prey hovers above us, spreading it knife-feathered wings. Wooden dragonflies and butterflies float on the walls and a snail of small logs slimes along a doorframe. It won’t be to everyone’s taste but it makes me smile.

And yet this is also a commercial, functional space. A large TV in one corner. The food counter takes up the opposite, efficient uniformed serving staff flanked by enormous menu noticeboards. We glimpse chef’s whites bobbing to and fro behind the kitchen counter beyond. Another counter to the side of it has cutlery and napkins, and a choice of milk dispensers. It’s the first time I’ve seen such an alternative to the disappointing black thermos jugs of places like Costa or Starbucks. These are bright white, wall mounted cubes, covered in dairy advertising and cow pictures. Place your mug under its teat and press a button. It’s joyfully kitsch.

This place reminds me of a destination shopping mall today. I look around and every other table has elderly couples or parents with a middle aged daughter. So many lunchtime outings. It reminds me of Trago Mills, a department store with distinct architecture and added ‘features. Trago’s ‘art’, I will tactfully say, is not on the same level as Cartgate’s.

On summer weekends, this place will be filled inside and out with young families on route to and from the West Country. Everyone who hates motorways or whose satnavs have directed them down the stop-start clotted artery that is the A303. On Monday nights, there’s a weekly get together for bikers.

Cartgate reminds me of Cornwall, functional as well as beautiful. But it needs investment beyond tourism. Not just in terms of supporting year long industries like fishing and farming, or bringing in new enterprises like the Virgin Spaceport in Newquay, but providing the infrastructure for this county and its people to flourish. We need affordable homes, reliable and regular public transport, better mobile phone coverage.

The Cornish people are as innovative, industrious, creative as Jill and Chris, who own Cartgate and still run this flourishing business more than thirty years after building it. But we need the rest of the UK to know we are not just a summer destination at the end of the road.