Our son, Sean, starts a new job today after having been out of work for eight months so I hope that means the final obstacle to fulfilling our plans next year is removed. I have said previously that if he had to return home the date might have to be delayed as finding a job in London from a home in Lewis is pretty nigh impossible.
It’s not the best of jobs - being several thousands of pounds a year less in salary than he used to earn - but it’s a job that will get him extra experience and that will hopefully be a stepping stone to better things. For the first few months he will be barely at subsistence level able to just pay the rent and buy food. Going out or buying even the smallest luxury is out but he will at least have a season ticket to London and, as I know well from my youth, you can have a good time just wandering around London looking and not spending. London in the Sixties was a place of magic but even today it has its places and it has its attractions and charms. Just stay away from the tourists.
So that’s the good news. It could be better but then it could be a lot worse. Maybe the time has come now to get off my arse and start doing up the house instead of just sitting here counting the days. The extension roof is already done just got to figure out what to do next. Taking all the old stuff from the roof down to the tip would be a start - but I really don’t want to do that!
Looks like the plans were hardly affected at all as Sandy started a new job last week as manager of a newly opened textiles shop. Same money as her last job with the possibility of a bit more after the initial few weeks. That means she was only out of work for three weeks and a week of that had already been booked as a holiday.
What looked as if it could have been a disaster has actually turned out to be blessing in disguise as we will now have several thousands of pounds in redundancy money to add to ‘the pot’ to begin our life in Lewis. Who would have thought!
Today is a day that we have been looking forward to - a milestone day. Today it should be 500 days until we arrive in Lewis.
Today, however, is also the day that Sandy is out of a job. At Noon today she has been told to walk away and leave everything. Just like that. The department will be left open, the stock on display with no staff to sell it. Pretty daft but that’s what they want and we don’t give a ****. The Administrators are not paying her redundancy money, that is coming from the government.
It’s a bittersweet day but we are sticking to the belief of 500 days.
The Dream was always delicately balanced. We don’t have much money and the only savings we have have been accrued over the past year. The house is worth more than a house in Lewis but, given the way prices have gone in the past five years, not considerably more. We still have a mortgage to pay and over half of our monthly income goes to paying that. I worked it all out though and, assuming nothing changed, August 2010 would be when we could leave a life no longer enjoyed and begin again.
Today my wife, Sandy, found out that she will be made redundant next week as part of the sacrifice of this country’s heritage - the desecration of the famous name of Wedgwood in order that rich Americans can get richer and rich Administrators can get bigger cars and bigger houses. Nobody, certainly not the government, cares any longer about the heritage of this country. The Wedgwood family wanted to buy the company and would have kept it trading but that was not good enough, keeping part of the country’s history counted for nothing at the altar of the money-grabbers. No lessons have been learned from the banking fiasco and money rules now as much as it has done for the past several years. There are many more Fred Goodwins nobody yet knows about and the Prime Minister nobody elected has neither the balls nor the ability to do anything about it.
One day, when Sandy has the money that is due to her, I might tell a bit about the obscene amounts of money that have gone into various pockets as Waterford Wedgwood was cut up and its heritage turned to money for those who have no real understanding of ordinary people’s lives. Where have the days gone when there were honest men as well as thieves?
So what of the future now? We don’t really know yet but the Dream depended on our having enough savings to tide us through the first year and on reducing the mortgage sufficiently to retain enough from the sale of the house for us to buy another house in the Outer Hebrides. Maybe it will still be okay but if our son, aged 24 and with a University degree, has been unable to find a job in over six months what chance is there for someone of retirement age?
Despite my cheery personality over on Island Blogging (feel free to disagree) these are dreary and depressing days for us at the moment. I am heartily sick of having to think each day (most days) of going to work every night doing a job that requires the intellectual capacity of a gnat and getting home at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. I find myself doing nothing but waiting for the next day to be over.
Sandy is in a similar position. Although she quite enjoys much of her job she works for Wedgwood and has spent the last three months living under the spectre of the Wedgwood guillotine. Although the company has now, supposedly, been bought there is no information forthcoming about whether the shops will be kept open or whether she will find herself out of work with little prospect of another job. To top it all our son has been out of work for six months now and is rapidly running out of money to be able to stay in his flat. That alone means that we couldn’t pack up and move now even if we could afford it as we need to be around should he find it necessary to come back home for a while.
I thought that as the day got closer it would be easier to get through life but it’s turning out to be quite the opposite. On top of the present job worries the economic situation means that the meagre pension I have coming will be dimished and interest on cash in the bank will be pitiful. Each day realising the dream seems to get harder but the date is still set and we are not wavering yet!
