Monday

I spent the weekend cleaning the house and getting ready for winter - putting summer stuff away and clearing out clothes that either don’t fit or don’t suit me. It took about 2 days and I still have about 2 more days to go. I need a lot of dry cleaning but I can’t afford it - I’ll have to make do with sponges and crossed fingers. I never fail to marvel at how much dog hair my two they shed - it’s like something from a horror film.

I have a lot of quite ‘big’ jobs to do - and then a lot of ‘huge’ jobs - both of which cost money and are quite hard work. I’m putting them off.

I’ve started getting letters from people trying to sell me special offer insurance for the ‘over 50’s’ - full of pictures of smiling geriatrics - with false teeth and stripped T shirts, sailing off into the sunset on a small yacht. Apparently I’m old now and I need the reassurance - this includes always having my picture taken smiling and holding a coffee cup as if my life depended on it (in reality - it maybe my only source of heat). Most of them talk about the money I can leave after I’m dead. I have news for them. I don’t care. They can fuck off.

Today, of course, I should have been starting a new job - if I hadn’t had the common sense to realise it wasn’t the job they promised me and was actually a bit of a nightmare. I’m really glad I turned it down - no matter how grim things are (and they are grim) - it was the smartest thing I’ve done in years. I don’t think people realise just how badly paid teaching is - I would have ended cup having to turn down work all year - to be paid very little, to do an incredibly hard job - for no thanks, under very difficult situations. Basically being asked to paper over the cracks. I would also clearly be paving the way for someone to come in from the outside to take advantage of all my hard work. I left teaching last time because it was impossible to tell students they were getting value for money - it’s much worse now.

I accidentally forgot to cancel a subscription for a picture library on time and I’ve been billed for the whole of next year - they have given me 60 days free as compensation - but that’s not the point, I’m quite angry with myself.. ‘quite’ probably being the wrong word.

I’m very wrapped up with trying to get a Creative Quarter / District established in Claremont - it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of politics but hopefully it can raise the professional profile of Hastings so that we can attract more work down here - rather than constantly apologising to people because I’m not in Brighton or London. We really need to get this working - I hate ‘putting myself out there’ but it’s something I need to do, or at least start - someone else is bound to step in if they think they can profit from it all.

A friends mother died this week - I cleaned up and retouched a load of photographs for her so she can create an order of service for the funeral next week. She was brought up in North Liverpool - the photographs were very much of their time, and strongly - it could have been my family in them - they looked so familiar. Everything from the clothes to the hair to the environments - even the types of photographic paper (always ‘Boots’) and faded orange and brown hue to everything. I can take exceptional quality photographs on my phone, but they are almost disposable - back then every images was important - they cost too much and took too long to process to be anything else. There must be billions of digital images out there that are lost and forgotten, and have no value - because nobody will ever look at them again.

I didn’t eat properly last week, didn’t have the time - and ended up with stomach ache all weekend as a result. I went for a drink on Friday night for friends’ birthday, which was very nice, but I spent 15 quid and went home in a bad mood. Could have been worse. There was a man in the pub, clearly a big drinker - who was in a lot of pain because he’d met two women in a bar the week before, both as drunk as him, and gone home with them for some kind of strange sexual encounter - and woken up covered in bite marks. He was now in great pain because they had all gone septic. we tried explaining the plot of ‘Dawn of The Dead’ but he was too far gone. The barman called him a taxi. Typical Hastings.

I am owed money at the moment and have a couple of jobs that I know are coming in - which makes up for the lack of funds in the bank right now and the urgency to pay a few bills - and my insurance - so I shouldn’t feel so grim - perhaps it’s a Monday thing.

In other news, and it’s a strange one - Natalie Bennet - former leader of the Green party, is following me on Twitter. Not sure why - I never tweet.