I got so excited at the prospect of doing my very own blog. But then I thought, ‘Oh no. What shall I write about?’ You see I don’t have any awe-inspiring hobbies, I don’t really do much at weekends. I thought, ‘Chuffin’ ‘eck, I must be boring’. Then I got to really thinking and eventually decided that I wasn’t boring at all, at least my friends and family tell me so. No, I’m not boring I’m just me. And therein lies the subject matter I was looking for.
Now to set your expectations, it’s a long ‘un this blog so you probably need a cuppa and maybe a snack to keep you going. And, before I start, I’d be just tickled pink if you read it and let me know what you think. Anyroadup, if you’re sitting comfortably, I’ll begin.
I really believe that being you/me is the only way to be. We are what makes us unique. We should each stand tall and be proud and never, ever, hang our personalities on the coat hook when we come to work, we should let it shine out, share it.
So let me share with you the consequences of someone pretending to be something they’re not.
Years ago, I used to work with a very odd lady, her name was Sue (not her real name but for the purpose of my story, I’ll call her Sue) and her husband was called Derek (not his real name either). Sue was in her mid 40’s ish, the age I am now. She was quite staid in her appearance, a tad old fashioned, big specs and she was a Personnel Officer. And boy, was she true to the Officer bit of her job title!! Some called her a bulldog which was a bit mean really…I find it’s a really nice breed of dog. Not only was Sue a Personnel Officer, she was also a JP!! Can you believe that? She actually fined folk and stuff. Above all, Sue was a snob. Oh yes, she looked down her long nose at us common folk.
Now, Sue comes from Leigh. Those of you who actually listened in Geography at school will know Leigh is a mining town near Wigan. It’s an alright place, nothing special, no better or worse than any other mining town oop North…but posh it ain’t! A spade is a spade is a spade. The people there tell it like it is. If you’re thinking ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ in Leigh they’ll tell you it does before you even ask the question. Are you getting the picture?
At work, four of us shared an office. Besides Sue and me there was my boss. His real name was (and still is) Cliff. He’s since retired and the world of commerce is all the more empty for it. Cliff was the most inspirational leader I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He was the biggest, single influence on my career and me. He was great fun, really ahead of his time in terms of people engagement, has the best sense of humour/fun/mischief….and he was posh. Yes, he had all the qualifications to make him the biggest snob of his day but he wasn’t, he was posh but down to earth. There’s not many of them about. And he was funny. Even rarer! Cliff liked his wine and his malt whisky and knew quite a bit about both. Sue admired that. In fact, she admired everything Cliff stood for; clever, posh etc. But he frustrated her because she didn’t get the irony in his sense of humour, she just didn’t get that whole sense of humour thing at all. So she wanted to really like Cliff and count him among her carefully chosen friends but he confused her.
So, in our office we had Sue the Snob, Cliff the Clown, me (can’t think of what to call myself. Maybe you can suggest something?) and Peter. Peter doesn’t really feature in my tale much. He was our head of department but he was like a cardboard cut out in the corner that used to grunt now and then. So I’m not talking about him except to tell you that Sue and Derek used to go out for meals and such like with Peter and his wife. Used to jump at the chance whenever the opportunity arose actually. Neither Cliff nor me were ever invited. Cliff was too silly; I was too common.
To explain Sue’s snobbery and how it manifested itself, I’m going to describe a typical day in our office. I’m going to choose a summer’s day and let’s pretend it’s a Monday so we have a bit of ‘what did you do at the weekend’ chatter. All of the events here really happened but they may not have happened all in one day. Hey, it’s not 24, it’s more Corrie, where a day or two are squashed into half an hour, or in this case, a quick read.
I’d be first to arrive and would put the coffee pot on. Oh yes. We had proper coffee, none of yer instant. Sue saw to that. Next in would be the Cardboard Cutout carrying his Financial Times. It’s worth mentioning, as it’s key to the moral of my story, that once, he dropped his paper and a copy of the Daily Mirror fell out of his not-so-carefully folded FT. I don’t think he ever got over the embarrassment. He’d grunt a ‘morning’ before disappearing into his office only to emerge again to go home (I’ve no idea what he did in there), except on Mondays when he went to ‘my Monday meeting’. Don’t know what that was or whom it was with. He used to walk out of the office at about 3pm on Monday carrying a big bundle of papers then walk back in again at about 5pm carrying the same bundle. Every week. Next in would be Sue, carrying a small bunch of flowers freshly picked that morning from her garden. Finally, Cliff, carrying a copy of the first paper that caught his eye in the newsagents, usually a Timeout chocolate bar, sometimes a Yorkie and always, without fail, sporting a huge grin. So we’d all get coffee and start work and catch up on the weekend’s events.
First, Sue would arrange her freshly cut flowers in a little glass on her desk and then sit and sigh at them. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ she’d ask. And they were. I love flowers too. But then she’d spoil it. She’d say ‘This morning Carla (her daughter) was drinking her coffee in the garden before college and she turned to me and said, thanks Mum, for making this garden such a beautiful place’. Now some of you might say, what a lovely thing to say to your Mum. And it is. But not if you live in Leigh. In Leigh you’d say, ‘Garden’s looking reet nice Mum’. There. Just that. No more, no less. You have to remember, it was all for effect, to make us think that their family life was choccy-box perfect and so much better than ours.
The Cardboard Cutout would mutter something from behind his opaque glass wall about having lunch alfresco and it being pastrami on rye or some such delicacy. Sue would talk about what ‘Derek and I’ did. At length. And it was always Derek and I. Never me and Derek, even if Derek and I was grammatically incorrect. Neither of them would ask what Cliff or I did. Which I was glad about as my then childless weekends were spent in the pub or in bed sleeping off the effects of being in the pub. And that wasn’t as exciting as eating pastrami on rye alfresco. Was it?
Now, here come her most significant talking points. I hope you’re still sitting comfortably.
First, she told us all about going supermarket shopping. And she told us all about what she bought and how she used some of what she’d bought to make a salad. And on this salad was mange tout. At this point she paused. Now, to me, a mange tout is a bit pointless. It’s a pea-less pod and it tastes of grass but to Sue it represented posh nosh, something the likes of me and you knew nothing about, in her mind at least. To her at that time, it was the ultimate in haute cuisine. And the pause was for effect. At that point we were supposed to be ‘wow-ed’. Or, what she really wanted us to do, ask ‘what’s a monj too?’ But we didn’t. Cos we already knew.
Sue read The Times. By doing so, it meant that she could, and I quote, ‘mix in any circles’. Er, except those circles where people didn’t read The Times, which wouldn’t be that many in Leigh. But to her, those kind of people didn’t matter, they were common people’s circles anyway and she didn’t want to mix in them. Once Cliff was out and about on the shop floor and he came back to the office with a copy of the Daily Sport. Now don’t get the wrong impression of Cliff. It wasn’t for the smut content, he was a true gent, he didn’t do smut. No, it was for the entertainment factor of the headline that day. It read ‘I dug a pond and ended up in France’. And there was a picture of a bloke popping up out of a hole in his garden wearing a beret, a striped t-shirt and sporting a string of onions round his neck. Oh and he’d grown one of those curly French moustaches. Apparently he’d been missing for two weeks digging this fishpond. Cliff could barely stand up for laughing at this, which is why he’d brought it into the office, to share the funny story. Sue and the Cutout nearly spontaneously combusted on account they were in the same room as a ‘red top’ newspaper, especially That One. In the end the Cutout pulled rank and made Cliff throw it away.
Now sometimes Cliff and I (or should that be me and Cliff) would get silly and become a bit of a double act. Cliff would say things like ‘well the Good Lady Glenys (his term for his wife) and I went shopping at the weekend. And we had lunch out’. That’d be my cue to ask ‘What did you have?’ A bit like the mum in the Royle Family. He’d say ‘Egg n chips and a mug of tea, has to be in a mug. Even better if there’s more chips in the mug than there are on the plate’. Boom Boom. One time he talked about the fact that he’d had a chippy tea on a Friday. I asked him of he’d ate it out of the paper and he said, all posh, ‘Good heavens no. The Good Lady Glenys took our plates with her and asked Barbara behind the counter to warm them’. And we’d titter behind our PCs. You see Sue and the Cutout wouldn’t be seen dead within a five-mile radius of a chippy. Well maybe Harry Ramsden’s but not one called Pat’s Plaice or, like my local chippy, The Crisp E Cod. Not the Crispy Cod. It’s a play on words. The bloke who runs our chippy is called Ernie so it’s The Crisp E (for Ernie) Cod. See?
Allow me a little digression here. Talking about taking plates to the chippy has reminded me of another taking your crockery outside occasion when I was a kid. Sunday tea was always butties. Usually tinned salmon butties and served on a little hostess trolley in the living room, so’s we could watch the telly. Pudding was usually tinned fruit cocktail served with Carnation milk. Sometimes my Mum would get a box of mixed cakes from Sayers and I was allowed first pick, I usually went for the éclair, now and then the vanilla slice. During the summer my Mum (and the other Mums too) would go to the ice-cream man with her best bowl and ask him to fill it so that we could have ice-cream instead of Carnation with our fruit cocktail. Joy. But it makes me laugh out loud thinking about all the Mums standing in a queue displaying ‘bowl envy’. ‘Huh, Doreen only had a Tupperware one!’
Anyway, back to my story. Later that day (remember it’s Monday in summer), Sue made an astonishing statement. She said ‘Do you know what Derek and I did last night?’ Now before you get excited, the answer was ‘We turned off the TV (always TV, never telly) and we talked’. Again, pause for effect. I would say stuff to Cliff like ‘I talk to Dave (my hubby) all the time too, pass the salt, turn the telly over - Corrie’s on’. Thing is, she often used to say derogatory stuff about the ‘people round here, all they do is watch TV and eat chips’. She had us all painted like some string-vest wearing families with gravy stains down our fronts, and all in the name of wanting to be something she wasn’t. Sad – and at that time in my life – more than a tad annoying (I was much younger and not as tolerant!!) So, this talking lark with no telly on. Again it was to make out that theirs was a much more cultured and meaningful relationship than our common ones. I mean, what did me and Dave (Dave and I? It’s confusing!!) have in common aside from a deep and meaningful love of Weatherfield’s wet cobbles? And was it really enough to build a now 24 year relationship on?
Once, Sue found a particular wine she liked in Tesco. She said ‘It’s 13%. Is that good?’ Cliff said ‘Did you like it Sue? Then it was good’.
And this really is the moral of my story.
You see, Sue spent so long trying to impress us with her knowledge, regale us with tales of eating fancy food, drinking fine wines, watching informative/educational programmes….never once did I see her laugh. I mean really laugh till tears ran down her cheeks. She was dull. And when she got things wrong, we couldn’t laugh with her and gently put her right, sadly we laughed at her. Two occasions stick in my mind about her getting things wrong and it was to do with pronunciation. She once went to a dinner party (they just don’t do dinner parties in Leigh so it must have been at the Cutout’s house, I can’t remember. Needless to say, Cliff and I weren’t invited). Anyway, before their meal they had crudites. Only she didn’t say ‘croo-di-tays’. She said crudites. Another time she went out to a restaurant and had ‘the hali-boo’, not the halibut. Oh dear! Did I – or anyone else – bother to correct her? Did we eckerslike! We laughed. And laughed. Till our sides hurt. Behind our PCs. (Incidentally, the same restaurant where she had the ‘haliboo’ got the thumbs down and no tip due to the fact that they had served red wine in white wine glasses. Blinkin’ Nora! Would you know the difference? Furthermore, would you care? When she told us this Cliff responded, ‘Never mind. As long as they’d chilled your red wine that’s the main thing.’ She didn’t get the joke, she just looked confused. I meanwhile had to stuff a hanky into my mouth to quell the guffaw.) I could go on but I’m bordering on a Ronnie Corbett-sized digression.
You may be asking why I didn’t tell her, give her feedback. There were a few reasons. One is that I was very young and not as confident as I am now and she was more than a bit scary and she had the power to have me slung in the Chokey. But the main reason is that she didn’t deserve it. She was truly a horrible woman, would put you down to make you look foolish on purpose. When Dave and I (now that is grammatically correct) bought what is now our home, I took the estate agents blurb in to work to show them the piccies. It’s a terraced house, lovely big garden, high ceilinged big rooms, lovely, at least to my family and me (?). She looked at the pictures and d’you know what she did? She wrinkled her nose and said ‘So you’ve got neighbours joined on?’ And the Cutout added, ‘On both sides?’ And they gave each other a ‘look’. I was mortified until Cliff rescued the situation by asking if I liked it and saying that he hoped we’d be happy in it. And we are. Very.
So my point is this. Celebrate your ordinariness, be yourself and, most importantly, try and have fun doing it. If you read the Sun/Star/Mirror/Sport, so what? If you like vegging in front of car-crash telly, so what? If you like eating egg n chips, so what? (Best if the yolk is runny and you can dip your chips into it) If like me, you have no real hobbies but just like pottering about at home or here and there with your family, so what? If you don’t know any big words with which to impress your colleagues, so what? If you like your red wine chilled and your white wine at room temperature, so what? Hey, if you want to drink it out of a chipped mug, go ahead!
I’m not saying walk around laughing like a drain at anything and everything.That’d be annoying. I’m saying that life is truly a wonderful gift and it’s even better if you can live it with a smile on your face. Being happy in your own skin and being you/me is what makes the world go round.
This is me in a nutshell.
I left school with a few O levels and no real clue as to what I wanted to do however, I’ve worked hard and grabbed every opportunity that’s ever presented itself. I love my job, I love working here, mainly because I love working with the people I work with. I’m married to Dave, have been for 20 years and we have one 12 year-old daughter, Nicola. We go on holiday to Corfu, we love it there, love the place but more than that, we love the people. We went on honeymoon and never looked back. I don’t do anything exciting at weekends, I potter (I love that word) about at home with Dave and Nic and we go to the races if it’s on. I love being in the garden and it is beautiful though no-one ever thanks Dave for making it so. I read the Sun. Mainly because the columnists are hilarious (Jeremy Clarkson and Lorraine Kelly on Saturday, Jane Moore on Wednesday, Jon Gaunt on Friday and more). I like watching Corrie on telly. I also like ‘house-y’ programmes like Grand Designs, Location Location etc. I love music that I can sing along to very loudly and music that I can dance to. My most listened to tracks on my iPod are Shame by Evelyn Champagne King and Dancing on the Floor by Third World. I have no particularly discerning feature, apart from a sunny disposition. If I like something or if I don’t, it’s because it’s my preference and not because it’s the done thing. I love coffee. Fully-loaded, caffeine busting, instant coffee. I’m quite passionate, you’ll know that by the number of times I use the word ‘love’. Basically, I’m nowt special but I am unique and what you see is what you get.
And when I meet you I’d love for it to be the real you.
Thanks for reading, Paula
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