Dear readers,
As I sit and sway to the tinny lilt of the jazzy hold music from HMRC (45 minutes and counting), I ponder the notion of connection. The automated voice promises me every 52 seconds that my call is important to her and I will be connected soon.
I think about the other thousands of poor souls on hold with HMRC, the hundreds in the queue ahead of me, the hundreds in the queue behind me. Are they calling about tax codes too? Do they also feel the embarrassment of calling to clarify that, at the ripe age of 24, they have not exceeded the tax-free income of £12,570 and therefore are owed back the deductions taken from their last paycheck? As I type this, I’m not even sure that the above sentence is correct. Is that why I’m calling? Or is there a more profound reason?
These past few weeks have been challenging. I signed up with a supply teaching agency to try and bring in some money. My first placement was as an emergency cover teaching assistant at a local SEND unit within a mainstream primary school. Needless to say, it was a very tough week. Although I’ve had experience working with children with Autism, I had no idea of the extent of the autistic spectrum and the difficulties it can pose for children during their education. My experience there was heavy. I saw children who were unable to communicate their needs, through no fault of their own, suffer, and I didn’t have the knowledge or training to know how to help. In a small class of mixed ages, with each child having diverse and separate educational and emotional needs, it felt like the main task for the teaching assistants was to try and keep them all in the same room and help them focus. Some learners showed violent behaviours towards staff and other students which was extremely distressing to witness. But throughout the week I began to get to know the children and their personalities beyond their neurological differences. Small moments of calm and joy began to seep through the tougher moments. One girl, around 4 years old, who doesn’t use words but sounds instead, was having a bad day. She had decided she could trust me and clung around me all day. In the afternoon we sang a song about the days of the week, and she climbed up my chair to sit on my lap. I asked the main teacher if that was allowed, and she said it was — in mainstream schools, there are strict rules about physical contact with the learners but, in the unit, there are occasions where these rules are relaxed. The girl sat on my lap and, for the first time that day, she was quiet. She grasped my thumb and squeezed it for the duration of the song. Then she turned to face me, looked intently into my eyes and said: ‘Mummy’.
Now, I know she was not calling me mummy, but that was the first recognisable word she had said all week. For a brief moment, there was a glimmer of connection. I gently took her off my lap, excused myself to go to the toilet and had a little cry. Maybe it’s the second puberty of my mid-twenties, maybe it’s maternal instinct, but I was hit with a wave of care and love for these children. I don’t know what will happen to them. I don’t know how far they will go in the systems they find themselves in. What I do know is that the government and the council don’t fund units like these enough, and I do know that the staff are incredibly patient, compassionate and deeply appreciated by the students and their parents, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
My last day at the unit was Valentine’s Day. Unsure whether to ignore the capitalist seduction of the ‘holiday’ or give in to the trashiness of it all, I decided to go full cliche and take myself to watch the new Bridget Jones film after work. Armed with a box of Lindor truffles kindly gifted to me by my galentine and a flask of warm white wine, I was nervous I’d be the only girl by herself in the cinema. Although there were a few reluctant boyfriends in the audience, it was mostly single girls like me, leaning into the tragi-comedy of being a single girl on a day marketed to celebrate traditional romance. The film was excellent, for many reasons. I won’t spoil it for those who have yet to see it, but for those who have, you’ll understand why seeing it alone, drunk and emotionally drained led me to write this substack
.After that week, I returned to my usual routines, scouring Spotlight, Indeed, Instagram and Hinge obsessively. Out of the last 2 dates I have been on, which I didn’t think went terribly, both ghosted me. I didn’t reach out either to be fair, but on both occasions, they asked me out. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love at first sight, or even a second date to be honest, but a simple ‘was nice meeting you’ message would have sufficed. Alas, the cycle continues. The rage I feel when I get sent a like from a 28-year-old research analyst who says he’s interested in ‘short-term relationships only’ is unmatched. How? How does anyone want that? Am I deeply out of step with my generation or is this frustrating others too? The pretence that we aren’t all searching for the same thing, maddens me. It seems we are just too ashamed to admit it.
My lovely friend (and collaborator) Eve recommended an excellent book which picks up on this idea in a wider context. Mudlarking by Laura Maiklem poeticises the act of amateur archaeology as a way of connecting with the past. I can’t think of a better method for the exploration of human history other than literally getting your hands dirty, digging through the silt and mess of the foreshore to uncover buried treasures of times gone by (“or talking to your flatmate with two history degrees” - Niamh). What I like most about Maiklem’s writing is how she focuses on personal history. She is less bothered by finds of worth or attention from museums, instead preferring items like an 18th-century hair comb or a Tudor child’s shoe, neatly preserved by the Thames tide. Through discovering these artefacts of humanity, Maiklem draws these connections between people who lived centuries ago and we who live today.
That Tudor shoe would have belonged to a child of the same age as those in the SEND unit. The comb to a woman equally bemused by the trials and tribulations of the pursuit of love. I like this idea. I take comfort in knowing everything I have ever thought or felt, has been felt millions of times before. It’s why I like poetry - there is a poem for every sensation, every experience. My brother got me the Faber&Faber Poetry diary for Christmas and, serendipitously, the first rays of February sun coincided with this week’s poem, Coming by Philip Larkin:
On longer evenings, Light, chill and yellow, Bathes the serene Foreheads of houses. A thrush sings, Laurel-surrounded In the deep bare garden, Its fresh-peeled voice Astonishing the brickwork. It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon — And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of adult reconciling, And can understand nothing But the unusual laughter, And starts to be happy.
And so the connections live on. Like tin-can phones on a string, every vibration is felt, echoed and received. I believe people move on, move out and move away, but nobody forgets or disappears completely. We are all indubitably connected. And though that is not always a pleasing thought (just last night I saw a man in my gym wearing a hoodie emblazoned with my old college’s hockey team logo), it is comforting in a way. We are all people, just trying to connect with ourselves, each other, and what surrounds us.
Then, after an hour of the tinny jazz, my call to HMRC was connected.
Sylvie helped me through my tax issue and then suddenly, as if a sudden sense of urgency came over her, she said:
‘I see you’ve just graduated from LAMDA. I applied there when I was young. I always wanted to be an actor. Best of luck to you.’
And there it was, connection.
Until next time friends — KTF x