Farewell Is A Lonely Sound

www.paulcoia.com

I guess if you’ve read this blog even once before you’ll have expectations of coming here again this week and finding my spirits up as usual, as I try to find some sort of fun in the things around me, and generally have a good time, even if I have a go sometimes at life’s absurdities. Well, sorry to change the plot line but you find me feeling I may have been wrong all along.

I’ve always banged on in this blog about staying positive and how I hate being dragged down by people who are the “glass half empty” type. I even devoted one blog to several reasons to be cheerful in this awful, world wide, recession. But I confess that I have found this week very difficult. The smile is gone, the spirits low, the voice not as confident and the jaunty walk just a little bit less John Travolta because, for the first time, I have been present when job losses have hit people I like and work with.

I realise I may sound innocent and naïve in saying this but I just wasn’t prepared for the feelings that bubbled up when one company I work with announced last week that, due to the worst recession in living memory, people would have to leave.

I suppose for anyone faced with a similar experience the first thought, selfishly, would be whether they were going to be one of the ones to go, but then this gives way pretty quickly to sympathy and empathy as, one by one, friends are called in and given the bad news.

Ever since I left school I have been freelance, going from one contract to another in a solo fight through the employment battlefield with no security and no possibility of sickness pay, annual leave or fringe benefits. This self obsession has meant me blithely, and self absordedly, moving on from places while forgetting that many people devote their adult lives to one company, putting their faith, and their family’s future, in the hands of a few people who they need to trust.

In the past I have, of course, seen individuals after they have been taken aside and told that they have to walk the plank and it has always been painful, but this week I saw what seemed like a never ending series of calls and meetings as people waited to find out whether they had a future with the company. It was truly dreadful and still, a few days later, occupies my every thought.

Speaking to some of those who had to make the decision I know just how agonising it has been for them and how upset they have felt at breaking the news, so it seems there is misery on both sides. But while those delivering the bad news have been universally subdued and sensitive, I have been surprised, in my inexperienced way, by the different ways people have reacted when receiving the kiss off.

At one end of the spectrum are the ones who are very philosophical and understand it is not personal but simply a way of saving money and keeping the company going in the hope it will prosper after the crunch is over and welcome them back with open arms. But others are bitter and feel betrayed, a natural reaction to their new worry of survival.

So I’m thinking that now I personally know people who are caught up in this mess, how dare I possibly carry on glibly in my weekly musings here telling all and sundry that we should be cheerful? If you had lost your job would you react well to someone saying “well, at least you’ve got your health” or “perhaps this is the kick in the pants you needed to find something you really like”?

In the UK we have currently around two million people unemployed, a rate not seen for twelve years and it is tipped to reach over three million, or ten percent of the population, by the end of the year. Just pause for a moment and think of all the people who currently have no job, and then picture another fifty per cent joining them by Christmas day. The last time we had three million unemployed here was in 1982, and before that, it was the Depression of the Thirties. It’s as if the politicians and economists have learned nothing.

And prospects for new jobs are bleak with vacancies at the lowest since records began. With banks hovering like desert vultures over people who can no longer pay their mortgages the whole economic situation is about to go even more horribly pear shaped. Statistics show that, during periods of high job losses, crime increases and the next generation loses hope of finding work and they then become resigned to the fate of their parents.

So, why should I carry on being positive? Why should I return here every week and try to raise a smile while pretending that I’ve never grown up?

I believe the answer is that it’s because it is my layer of protection from the bad stuff out there, an overcoat against the draught of misery that’s blowing so many away. You may be more practical, mature and capable of dealing with these times but I’m afraid that I’m not. I’m fighting the temptation to disappear, as I do each week, back to the days of my comic books and warm bed time drinks, of real fires, flannel sheets and felted tartan dressing gowns. I want to pretend that I’m being looked after and have nothing to worry about except which premier league football team I’ll play for in my school holidays, which Top Ten band I’ll sing with at weekends or whether I’ll ever be tall enough to reach the pedals of a Ferrari.

Next week it’s back to the frivolity and nonsense that’s usually here but, for this week only, I feel I should grow up. And I don’t like it one little bit.