My Mother's CV
4 January 1990, Thursday, Ampthill
Today there were a great many Appointments sections in the papers. I answered a couple of ads for jobs teaching English abroad as well as a job at Foyles1 in London. In the past couple of days I’ve also submitted poems to numerous magazines. The last time I really did this was almost exactly one year ago. I sent a book of poems that I titled ‘Initials’ to the Hippopotamus Press. I need a little help at the moment. I had less published in 1989 than in 1988. I did spend much of the year not submitting. It takes me so long to realise the things I sense should be got rid of are things that should be got rid of. Once I get away from home it will hopefully be easier to begin subsistence living. In the evening I phoned Charles2, he wasn’t in. I spoke to his mother. They’ve just returned from Greece. Charles is working ten hours a day doing animation.
Yet, undetermined to what course of life
I should adhere, and seeming to possess
A little space of intermediate time
At full command, to London first I turned,
In no disturbance of excessive hope,
By personal ambition unenslaved
Furgal as there was need, and, though self-willed,
From dangerous passions free.
Bk 7, l.58-64, Prelude [Wordsworth]
MUM3. Born 13.12.41
Hereford High School for Girls – 1953-60 – A Levels in Biology/Maths
University of Reading – 1960-1963 – BSc Degree Class II in Microbiology, Zoology and Chemistry
Information Scientist – 1963-1967 – Smith, Kline & French, Welwyn Gdn City, Herts.
Antiques Business – 1967-1972
Treasurer (one year) and Chairman (two years) of the Ampthill pre-School Playgroup Committee – 1973-1976
Organiser of the Ampthill Summer Holiday Playscheme – 1976-1977
Dealer in and restorer of old Persian rugs (own business) – 1976-1979
Qualified Adviser with Ampthill Citizens Advice Bureau – 1978-1981
Cranfield School of Management – 1986 -
Young-Toby does become a bookseller, for a couple of years, after he comes back from Prague. But not for Foyles. He works for Fielders, Wimbledon. Foyles bookshop is where he (learning from the other staff) sends very difficult, insistent customers — because as well as there being a tiny chance they’ll find the book they are demanding there, there is also large a chance they’ll become so dispirited they will never return. Sending them to Foyles is like sending them to Purgatory. At this time, Foyles — still family-run — was operating its policy of asking customers to pay for their books at a different till from the one they handed it over to buy it. A similar system operated in several food shops in Prague. Toby assumed this was a hangover of Communism, designed to increase job opportunities; but Foyles were well known for treating their staff appallingly, and sacking them the day before they were due to gain employment rights.
An art student friend from at university.
I am moved by this. Although I can’t remember the scene, I must have sat down with my mother and asked her to go through her life. I wasn’t writing her CV to any purpose, only getting to know her better — even though, at this point, I wasn’t getting on with my parents. After leaving Cranfield, where she worked in the Centre for Research in Economics and Finance and helped create the first House Price Index for the UK, she returned to the Citizens Advice Bureau, and continued working for them until she became too unwell.