Pensions and Passes and the Passion of Politics

This year I turned 65 and five months later can now claim my pension and free bus pass (thank you successive Tory governments for making me wait so long). 

2019 also happens to include the financial year I found myself working 50-60-hour weeks and three weekends out of four in an effort to make what I earned in 2005. Not many organisations pay the Royal Society of Authors’ or the Poetry Society’s recommended fees. Not many, I suspect, can genuinely afford to. But if a plumber or a builder needs to be called in, you can bet that their asking price will be accepted. The UK has never valued the Arts in the same way.

Artists can't afford to live on fees that are pegged back to what we were earning over 10 years ago. Despite this, we slog on, many of us working well past our retirement ages. We do this because we're often passionate about the work we do. You can seldom stop an artist producing their own work anyway. We need to write, paint, compose, sing, dance etc. It's like breathing to us. But our work with people often has a political charge, or at least a moral impetus guiding it, and that is, in some ways, more like collective breathing.

It's generally recognised these days that participation in the Arts has a profoundly positive effect on people’s wellbeing. Care homes, hospitals and day centres, as well as schools and community organisations want us to facilitate workshops in growing numbers, and because they're strapped for cash (thank you again successive Tory governments) they take advantage of our passion and commitment.

I’ve lost count of the requests I've had with a fee offer that's the equivalent of what I was getting in 1995. Yes, you read that figure correctly.  Seriously, would you expect a plumber to work for what she or he was earning 24 years ago? I have friends who are in their 70s working ridiculous hours. The government may be blithely telling us that austerity is over – but over for whom?

To be honest, I don't want to fully retire. However, I would like to look after my health a bit more. Thank you, Freedom from Torture, for inadvertently sparking the opportunity.

As many of you know, I have been working with FfT clients in Newcastle as well as initially in Middleborough. The poet DorothyYamamoto, who is a member of Oxford Stanza II, is also a keen supporter and she edited an anthology of poems to raise money for the charity. I’ve discovered supporters in the village where I live, too. The circles widen and overlap like Venn diagrams.

Enter an email into my Inbox telling me about an initiative by Edinburgh FfT member Moira Dunworth to cycle from Hastings to her hometown to raise much needed funds. Moira is my age and retired and can do these things. She also has political awareness and passion and guts and determination in abundance.

Can I offer my support? Great Dog on a bike! Can I? I must! My other big passion is cycling. No way will my work schedule allow me to volunteer for more than a local stage, but I can at least join Moira and Shelagh King (also retired who has teamed up to do the whole 865 miles).

Before I can change my mind, I sign up, put the word out amongst friends and colleagues for sponsorship, then set about earmarking dates and times in my busy schedule for training.

As the weeks go by and the £s start rolling in, the miles accumulate on my speedo, and, as the miles accumulate and my fitness levels improve, I find I'm spending less time in my office and more sunny summer evenings whizzing past fields filled with bird song. The work still gets done. Somehow, I've managed to compress more in less time. My head is clearer and the £s – my wages – also begin to roll in following some stern reminders to agencies that have mislaid my invoices, or simply mislaid the will to pay me.

On the day I achieve pensionable age and can apply for my free bus pass, I have satisfactorily completed some 200 training miles and an array of local hills, including the White Horse at Uffington, six funerals, three baby namings, one wedding, eight writing workshops in Newcastle, six in Norwich, numerous meetings and endless hours of preparation and planning, a seven-day exchange visit to our sister poets in Bonn, manuscript readings, translations and a handful of scrappy notes for poems that may or may not come to anything.

The stage 5 ride from Oxford to Milton Keynes is a doddle and deeply pleasurable and the company of the riders is warm and generous. Our leader, Joanna, sets the perfect pace. Somehow, we arrive two hours ahead of schedule, and disband in brilliant sunshine after team photos. I’ve raised £564 – thank you, generous friends and colleagues – and the entire team, including Violet Hejazi who has learnt to cycle in order to do an 85-mile stretch, has raised nearly £12,000 to date, plus gift aid. I am painfully aware that the funds really should be coming from central government for the vital work that FfT does, but so should funds for a lot of charities. It’s the same old story – the powers that be taking advantage of people’s passion and commitment, our will to generally improve the lot of humanity.

That evening I meet up with Moira and Shelagh again for an excellent Turkish meal. “Bonne route,” I wish them as we hug and say our goodbyes afterwards. “Work less,” says Moira. “Do good things better.” 

Put that pension to proper use, in other words.