At the start of 1983 Mum was still registered with the Job Centre for temporary office work. This included a two-week assignment setting up a new filing system for the tele-sales department of a company which supplied soft drinks to licensed premises all over the north of England.
While Mum was there, they were running a campaign to promote Perrier water and the people in tele-sales had to try and persuade all their customers to take at least one crateful, along with their usual orders.
Now in those days, bottled water wasn’t commonplace like it is now. If people wanted a drink of water, they usually got it out of the kitchen tap, not out of a bottle, and so this wasn’t an easy job.
But to everyone’s surprise, it went well and one landlord after another agreed to give it a try. There was just one exception and that was from a landlord in what was then a very rough area and his answer made everyone in the office laugh out loud as he said, “Nay, lass, I’ve enough trouble getting them to use water to get washed in up here – I’ll never get ’em to drink it!”
Mum enjoyed that job and was a bit sorry to leave, but it wasn’t long before she found another temporary one – this time as an order-picker with a large mail-order company not far from where she lived. Although she’d never done anything like this before, she knew two or three people who’d worked there over the years and they’d seemed to like, so she thought it would be all right.
Within minutes of starting, she knew she’d made a mistake. Though the woman in charge of the section she was working in was nice enough, the other temp working with Mum seemed to think that “Ugh!” was a suitable reply to Mum’s friendly hello and never said another word. Also he went about his work with much speed and little accuracy, whereas Mum went more slowly and got it right first time.
To make it even worse, one of the most popular items in the new catalogue was an imported goatskin rug and the whole area that Mum was working in stank of badly-cured goat hides!
Then, at the end of the first day when Mum made the mistake of asking why they had to queue up to leave the premises, the security woman picked on her to have her pockets and bag searched for stolen property.
At this point Mum drew herself up to her full height – as she’s only 5’ 4”/1.63m tall, this isn’t very impressive unless she’s standing on a buffet – and, in her poshest voice, remarked that she wasn’t in the habit of stealing, but if she was then it would certainly be goods of a higher quality than anything they had in their warehouse.
Only the fact that she needed the money made her go back the next day and the day after that. Then her immediate boss told her she should work faster and not bother about whether she was completing the orders correctly or not.
Mum said that this was a load of nonsense and that getting things right first time actually saved time. She also said she wouldn’t lower her standards to meet theirs – and, to her relief, was told not to go back after the end of that shift.
She still wasn’t regularly earning enough from writing to live on, however, and so she began to look for yet another temporary job. But before she could find one, something wonderful happened. Public Lending Right – the system by which authors are paid a small amount every time their books are borrowed from a library – finally came into being and made its first payment.
To Mum’s amazement, her three novels – Cloughfold, The Romany and The Bradleys of Brookroyd – had earned her over £700 (worth around £2500 today!). Though it wouldn’t last for ever, it would see her through the summer and give her more time to write.
It would also pay for her to go on another writing course with the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank in Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge, where a fellow student put ideas into her head that would once more change her life for the better.
I’ll tell you more about that in my next post, however, along with a little bit about the amazing discovery that eventually led to Mum getting her brain into gear and studying for a degree with the Open University. Meanwhile, as always, take care, stay safe and keep warm – and look out for some more tales from me soon…
Follow my next blog: 125. MY MUM THE STORY-TELLER- PART TWENTY ONE
14/01/2021
Wilf the bear-faced blogger 