Repeating Transitions

I know a healer who uses Native American rattles to rattle away your grief and intuits your family trauma.
When I told her I had four and half year cycles instead of celebrating it she said lets see if we can get rid of them.
It surprised me.
I now understand she was unhooking me from a life of premeditation.
But back then I waited for the resetting of four and a half years. It meant I transitioned from one job to another.
I knew where I was in my life.
The first time I recognised the pattern was in 1987.
Four and a half years earlier I started being a mouthy presenter on TVam.
I’d been spotted by a green toothed jurnalist who chased me up the corridors of ATV, an old tv company in Boreham Wood.
I ignored him and then took his offer it was easier.
In 1987 I breast fed the dawter on telly and all hell broke loose. Page three gels could show their enhanced boobies but breast feeding mothers had to keep them to themselves.
I transitioned to LWT.
‘You look like shit but we like you.’ Said the producer I screen tested for.
So I borrowed fifteen quid and went to Lionel Anthony who gave me a blow job and lacquered my luscious locks.
Four and a half years of Danny Baker and Frank Bough.
Four and a half years of gardening and location work.
Four and a half years of learning how to be a different version of me.
And then I got sacked for being anarchic and anti authoritarian.
Repeating my transition I ended up at the BBC.
Four and a half years of travelling and anonymous hotels.
Four and a half years interviewing and learning the BBC way.
Ideas in the back of a taxi and then manifesting them on the screen with brilliant camera operators and a team of BBC boffins.
You can knock the BBC as much as you like, but the brains behind television lived in White City and taught me everything I knew.
I left after four and a half years.
Repeating my transition was easy.
I stopped work and went to live back home with the old git and the dawter. I hadn’t known her really so getting a job as a playground help was joyous for both of us. I watched her grow and I earnt pocket money.
Four four and a half years I chopped carrots in a Rudolph Steiner kitchen and formed Choirs for The East Sussex Music Service.
It was easier to get a job then. I was enthusiastic and they were willing to take a punt on me. Now its all computer driven and I wouldn’t be able to get a job for love nor money.
And then my agent called. Took me out to dinner in a club on Shaftsbury Avenue.
‘They’re offering £500.’ he said
‘If I pull my finger out I cn make £500 quid a week without the agrravation of cameras and image.’
‘£500 a day, you idiot’
I gave up Choirs and accepted Good Food Live.
The best job in the world.
I knew nothing about food but they did and so began 6 years of overeating and laughter, meeting the crazy chefs and discovering wine sniffing.
I had broken the four and a half year cycle.
But it was still a transition.
In my time of kitchens and children I kept my hair short and wore painters and decorators overalls.
‘You look like a lesbian from Belsize Park’ said my boss.

So I grew my salt and pepper hair and had it dyed so it was all shiny and Claudia Winkleman like.
Six years of wine and cheese, cooking on the bone and Mary Berry. And then I got sacked.
Of course I did.
I was a lippy madam who didn’t give a tuppenny about audience research.
I stood with my researchers and crew. Wonderful people.

LBC was just shy of four and a half years.
Radio, as cut throat as telly, if not worse.
Getting sacked on a Thursday they invited me back on Friday to say what a wonderful time I’d had but it was time to move on.
I declined
I went to BBC London.
The cycle was skewered. I didn’t last very long. Was magnanimous when I left even though deep down I seethed.
And so began another repeating transition.
No apartment on the Thames.
No money.
No status
No disposable income.
But my own bed.
And an introduction to the seasons.
I hadn’t seen spring segue into summer. I hadn’t experienced the joy of autumn
I was new to winter and the build up to Christmas.
I’d only know them through seasonal programming. Now it was real.

And now. Well now is a different kind of transition altogether.
Nothing is the same.
Pacemakers and drugs.
Dialysis and dry cleaning.
It’s coming up to two years and then I’ll have another two and a half to go before I repeat some kind of pattern. Or will I?
If I’ve learnt anything over the past months is that living in the moment is the only way to survive.
Not any moment but a slither of time. Managing a bar line of surrender.
The orange cock wobble – sorry the new Messiah – is testing all of us.
But it seems like the western world is holding its breath. Waiting for someone to punch his lights out. Waiting for some brave human to face him and tell him what a giant creep he is. Given half a chance I would face him and tell him myself. The glorious moment of unpeeling his ego.
But the repeated transitions have taught me that this is the time thats in it and that there is strength in change
I’m having to deal with a diaphragm that is in spasm, lack of energy and a face thats turning into my mothers.
I have to sink into the knowledge that the discomfort will pass and there’s always somebody who will say my face is ok.
Having to cope with a body that is repairing itself.
Having to wait, and wait and wait again for a new transition. The fucking old bird version of my life.
I need to stay alive to see the deposing of the diabolical king of kitsch.
The moment of schadenfreude when I shall rejoice in his misfortune.
And then there will be another transition of peace and stability.
All being well I will be alive enough to enjoy it.