Berberis' World

Saturday, 5th July, 2014 to Saturday, 28th February, 2015.

I was sitting in the pew at St Stephen & St Mark in Lewisham waiting for the rest of the Lewisham Hospital Choir to arrive when I finally decided to tell Dan that I wouldn’t be attending any more rehearsals for Lewisham Choral Society’s July concert in Cadogan Hall. The programme included James Whitbourn’s ‘Luminosity’, Vaughan Williams’s ‘In Windsor Forest’ and ‘Serenade to Music’.

I’d started practicing these during the rehearsals for Verdi’s Requiem at Croydon and had been, frankly, underwhelmed. However, this wasn’t the main reason for deciding to not participate. The truth was that I’d let the many problems I was having at work affect my not-work life. It seemed easier to ditch the two hours a week I spent doing something I enjoyed for more time doing something I didn’t.

Put like that (and, if I’m going to be honest, this is being written very retrospectively) it sounds mad. I hated ‘African Sanctus’, but went to every rehearsal and gave it my all. I wasn’t even close to hating this programme yet I abandoned it to spend more time in the office. (Cadogan Hall, though lovely, is acoustically dead. This is not a valid reason for not singing there.) Not just that, I was abandoning something that gave me joy for something that was, at the time, quite literally making me ill.

Actually, if that honesty clause is still in effect, it wasn’t something. It was someone. I won’t name them. Not because I’m scared of being sued. I just don’t want to have to type the name and then have to see it in black and white. Or black and blue. (Or is it gold and white..?)

[That last, parenthetical, comment shouldn’t even be here unless I’m time-travelling. Which I’m not. If I could this post wouldn’t exist.]

So, getting back on track. From the start of 2014, the admissions team (which will be referred to henceforth as ‘we’) had had new managers. Both of whom were, by a daily vote with a show of hands, the worst we’d ever known. Ever. Even the one before the one before one of them had been better, and they’d outright lied to us, so that was saying something.

It wasn’t just the emails (each with an unreadable spreadsheet attached) per day, it was that they would then (a) ring to ask if we’d read the emails and the attached unreadable spreadsheet and, after an hour or so, would (b) come to the office to discuss said email and the attached unreadable spreadsheet, now helpfully printed on A4 paper with a font size so small you needed a microscope.

[By ‘unreadable’ I don’t mean it was in a foreign language. That I could have coped with. No, I mean that 95% of the information it contained was irrelevant, and it was set out in such a way that the relevant 5% was almost impossible to find. By ‘helpful’ I mean very, very unhelpful.]

On its own, this was impediment enough to a job that is full-on, head-down, non-stop from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. If you add to this having the one member of the team on whom I could really rely being on various types of leave for six weeks out of the first twelve of 2014, as well as being regularly prevented from leaving on time by a “2 minute” dissection of an unreadable spreadsheet starting at 4.55pm (in reality 30 minutes of the same question being asked over and over again), together with being prevented from leaving the office by someone sitting on the floor with their back to the closed door then you have some idea of the pressure I was under. It wasn’t pretty.

I was, by turns, deeply depressed, extremely angry, and lost-for-words frustrated. In May I fled, in tears, to the HR department where I was almost incoherent in my attempt to try to get someone – anyone – to understand what I was putting up with.

[Just noticed that the word count at the end of that paragraph was 666. If I was superstitious, I might read something into that. I’m not. I do, however, say “Hello, magpie” to solitary magpies. So perhaps I am.]

The cherry on the cake was that, around this time, the one member of team on whom I could really rely told me they were leaving. There would, of course, be a handover to the new team member. Given the complexity of the job and the knowledge which needed to be passed on I suggested two weeks. Not unreasonably, I thought. I was told we could have one. In reality, what we got – what the new team member got – was two and a half days. And that was with the departing team member already doing their new job.

[Later, I learned that, had the incompetent bunglers who called themselves managers and who drew a salary for being thus, the handover could have been four weeks. At this point, I felt that it wasn’t just appalling management, it was an actual conspiracy.]

I took a week off, expecting, on my return, to feel better. I went back and things were, unbelievably, worse.

In August, I learned that a patient with whom I’d had dealings was at death’s door. This is never good to hear, but how much worse it was when I realised that I might have been partly to blame. I was devastated. I’d been asked to do one thing and I’d not done it. And now this patient was dying. It was that simple. It seemed that simple. Of course, these things rarely are and this was no exception.

[I’m not going into detail, save to say that the investigation is nearing its end. The patient reached theirs on Boxing Day, 2014.]

Luminosity, then. Astronomically, 4πd²b. ‘The intrinsic brightness of a celestial object (as distinct from its apparent brightness diminished by distance)’. Or: ‘The rate of emission of radiation, visible or otherwise.’ As opposed to illumination, which is what I badly needed as far as the job was concerned, and which was sadly lacking.

I still have the music. I’ve always purchased scores, only ever hired when purchase – even on the vast-and-getting-exponentially-vaster interweb – wasn’t an option. I may even, as in the case of Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’, get to sing it at some point in the future.

[What was the point of this? Hang on.]

Drift. Actually, I’m not sure this has a point, or even that it needs one. I’m listening to the audio book of Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ at the moment. You have always to bear in mind that it was written in 1974, otherwise it’s just some biker dude banging on about how a cheap brand of baked beans is not, can not, and will never be, as good as Heinz.

It’s not. It’s a lot more, and then some. For those who care, I can be found walking to work with a frown on my face occasionally saying out loud “I have no idea what you’re talking about”. I understood most of Parts 1 & 2. It’s Part 3 that has me frowning.

I also finished listening to ‘Catch 22’. I wasn’t sure what to make of this for a long time. Then there was a lightbulb moment when I actually started to care about the characters. I felt sad when they died. I felt happy when they got a break. And just when I wanted to find out more, it ended. Damn you, Heller. Write more next time. And make me care about them sooner, you bastard.

Audio books do force my thought to focus. And it’s only when they focus that things like this happen. A random focussing of seemingly unfocussed ideas amounting to over a thousand words. I wish my other writing was as easy right now. I’ve heard it said that writer’s block happens because a story isn’t ready. There are analogies to which I will not allude.

The source of many of my work woes actually appeared in the office recently. In person. Even though I expressly asked that they be kept away from me. To my surprise, the urge to punch was absent, even if my fingertips tingled ever-so-slightly. I could not, in all conscience, bid them welcome. This, I am pleased to report, was noticed. You? Yes, you. You sweaty, whey-faced, panicky, incompetent excuse for a human being. I am SO over you. I have more space now, and daylight, and fresh air. And I will have a plant soon. One I have propagated myself.

And you have Croydon.

I win.