D - Job Club Diary 4: October 22nd 2002

It felt like I'd never left the Programme Centre when I got there
this morning, even though I'd not gone in yesterday. Everything was the
same. I did what everyone does when they first arrive and looked at the
newspapers, coming across an advert for a part-time counter assistant
at a university library. As I rang to request an application form there
was a heavy silence in the room, even though it was almost full. There
wasn't even the sound of newspaper pages crinkling as I tapped the
number into the grubby white telephone, taking great care to check the
number with the one quoted in the advert. There was a click as the call
connected, then a trumpet fanfare followed by a breathy woman's voice
saying 'congratulations'. Interesting I thought, readying myself to
speak, I'm well used to the attempts at hipness and informality that
universities use in their drive to appear 'accessible'.

"You guys have come to the right place," the breathy voice continued.
"I'm five feet six with great breasts&;#8230;"

Brilliant, I'd managed to ring a prostitute rather than an institute. I
slammed the phone down as if it had just bitten me. When I got through
to the actual university twenty-four hour answering service, the
message was slightly more staid, though oddly, no less breathy.

I couldn't face Job Club yesterday, just flat out couldn't do it. It
was a beautiful autumn day, echoing with the sound of the breeze
blowing leaves down the pavements. Even though the sky was grey,
somehow all of the buildings and trees seemed to fizz and sparkle with
light. I got up really late, woken up by the sun inching across my face
as I lay. Outside the world had a kind of scuffed splendour, the trees
in the distance shivering, the slates of the houses opposite our flat
reflecting the sky like mirrors. I just needed to get out, to walk
around, to retrace the steps that made up the map of my world, reassert
my ownership of it, my authority to shape it in my head in the way that
I chose.

I didn't sleep too well last night, but I stayed up all of Sunday
night, until about six in the morning, just to taste that magic,
special, place that's only there in the early hours. It's as if, once
everyone else goes to bed, the world is replaced with a facsimile of
itself, almost perfectly the same but not quite. This replica world is
full of microscopic differences and there is no way of finding them, so
you feel that everything is exactly the same, but in some way you can't
hold onto for long enough to think about, totally different. Everything
feels altered at that time in the morning when you haven't slept, even
yourself.

It's as if dreams and fancies are closer to the surface, as if, for
those few hours before sunrise, the forces that shape the world into
certain patterns are sleeping. When my parents were away when I was a
kid, I would always go out walking through the empty streets during
those hours, the cold that pinched my skin somehow cleansing, pinning
my eyes open and making them clear.

When I was worse than I am now I would always stay up through the
night, only going to sleep once the sun had come up. The sun rising
would always look so beautiful then, seeming so symbolic of a fresh
start, like a great orange full stop.

Staying up gave me a glimpse of what I'd been missing in the time that
I've managed to get my condition under control. At around four o'clock
a great stillness descended on me, as if a great river inside me had
just stopped, the water just hanging, waiting patiently to continue its
journey. Everything slowed, even the smoke from my cigarette in the dim
light seeming to unfurl with magisterial grace. It was a kind of peace,
not a real peace, but an illusory one, a dangerous trap. I used to want
to stay awake forever so I could hold onto that liquid stasis, that
cessation of all movement.

Mental illness is like a different place, a place within a place, a
world within a world. It's a different country that I still have a
passport and travel documents for. I felt it again, visited there again
on Sunday. The slowness feels warm and hazy against my skin, like being
immersed in a cloudy fluid, but somehow it chills me and makes me
empty, my insides a vast wasteland, cold winds icing the rocks and
turning the grass into slivers of silver.

In contrast to the soft, fake peace of Sunday night, rain tapped at the
windows as I set off this morning, cars hissing loudly on the wet
roads, all of the buildings sharp with the detail and contrast that
rain brings out. Everything around me seemed to be in deep greys and
browns. On Deptford Broadway a car, bonnet collapsed like a concertina,
stuck out into the oncoming traffic, surrounded by a couple of orange
cones. The way the headlamps had impacted into the rest of the body
made it look sad, like a wounded animal. Walking slowly up Greenwich
High Road as if on the way to school, feet dragging, umbrella jumping
and twisting in the wind, I noticed a carved inscription on the front
of a nineteen thirties industrial building which I'd never noticed
before. Above long windows that curved around the edges of the building
there was a long piece of sandstone with a sculpted flaming torch at
each end. Between them, neatly inscribed in the kind of script that
graces war memorials was the word 'Merryweather'. Despite my umbrella,
I could feel the tiny drops of water dust my face like glitter as the
wind carried them. The cylindrical steeple of St. Alfege's was dark on
one side in the distance, as if shaded in pencil, the golden weather
vane turning quickly.

Inside the Programme Centre, the air was stiflingly hot and smelled of
drying clothes. A big flower of dark blue spread out on the pale blue
carpet around the water dispenser, much to the consternation of the Job
Club women. I sat opposite the man who looks like a Hampstead Guardian
reader, who continues to stare at his newspaper, not looking up.

As I sat and scanned all of the newspapers I've not seen yet, I looked
up to catch Cath, the adviser who I had my review with, glancing at me.
Today she was wearing a kind of grey double-breasted jacket that
overlapped itself at the front and was tied together at the back. Her
darted, black dress trousers tapered to her court shoes that terminated
in an almond shaped section of her foot clad in flesh coloured tights.
The way in which her clothes were cut made her look as if she was made
from a collection of cones, the sleeves of her jacket tapering at the
wrist, her trousers coming to a point at her feet which, along with her
pointed face, made her look like a simplified figure on an ornate
clock, ready to come out at the turn of the hour and hit the chime with
a hammer.

I excused myself to the Job Centre, more to kill time than anything,
plodding slowly up the stairs, looking down into the stairwell as I
went. Getting to the landing when the door to the Job Centre was, the
door to the rest of the clock tower was open again.

Going in it struck me why the Job Centre seemed so different to the one
in Deptford. At Deptford the majority of the staff and clients are
black, at Greenwich the percentage is reversed, betraying the
historical split between bosses and workers. Along with Peckham and
Brixton, Deptford had been a cheap area to settle in when people first
came over, whether from Jamaica or Africa, a place where the battles
for acceptance and the fight to establish community took place.
Greenwich by contrast was a relatively rich area, a place to work not
to live. It's still rare that you see black people in Greenwich in any
numbers, as if it's symbolic place as the seat of the Empire still
holds a secret threat.

Back in the Programme Centre, Cath was conducting a review with a woman
in her fifties, who talked in a quiet but aggrieved Irish accent.
Blonde, she still possessed a rugged beauty, still showing a kind of
radiance. They both sat opposite each other at the review desk, looking
down at pieces of paper, exchanging urgent, hushed, sentences followed
by long silences. Rather than simply acquiescing, the woman was
fighting her corner.

"So, will you send me on an I.T. course?"

"Not until the Job Centre thinks that you've shown a commitment."

"So how many hours?"

"You've got be here for at least twelve hours a week."

"How will I get on a course?"

"Once you've shown that you're actively looking for work."

"But how can I look for work if I haven't got a CV?"

"You can do your CV here, on the computers."

"But how can I use the computers if I haven't been on an I.T.
course?"

"We'll type it for you here."

"But what if I get a job? I won't be able to go on an I.T. course
then."

"But then you won't need a course because you'll have a job."

Cath stood up and left the woman looking at a newspaper, going through
to the office. When she came back the woman asked about whether she
could do a Home Care GNVQ. Cath told her that she would have to speak
to her employment adviser at the Job Centre about that. It was horrible
to overhear all of that conversation, because it was the sound of
someone flailing around, grabbing at anything that looked solid, trying
desperately to find a way out of the situation.

When I was inducted into the Programme Centre, the Job Club woman
giving the introduction gave vague hints that the rules for us were
changing. Today I found some leaflets on one of the desks that
clarified the situation. Once our time at the Programme Centre
finishes, we are then put on New Deal Gateway, where the Employment
Service tries to get us into work. If this hasn't worked after four
months we are given four options: Subsidised employment, Full-time
Education and training, work in the Voluntary Sector or with the
Environment task force. Any failure or refusal to take part in any of
these options can lead to a twenty-six week cessation of benefits. I'm
pretty sure that none of those possible outcomes would fit my
skills.

Time ticked slowly past. A man sat and worked on an essay, quoting from
a thick history book. One of the Job Club women stood and photocopied
the crosswords from a pile of old Evening Standards. I could almost
hear the cogs in the clock tower turning, pushing time on.

While I was drafting a letter and staring out of the window, past the
wilted plants and up at the sheer face of the clock tower, heavy and
solid against the grey sky, Cath the adviser sat next to me, looking at
me for a second or two before offering me a local paper, folded over at
a job advert. I politely explained that I didn't think that the vacancy
was right for me, because although it was in a museum, it was in a
sales environment, in the gift shop, and that I didn't think that I'd
be able to cope with it. Awkwardly she got up, and walked away looking
slightly put out.

"I just thought I'd show you because I thought that it might be the
kind of thing that you would like, after our conversation the other
day."

She seemed acutely uncomfortable with her role, trying desperately to
strike up conversation with my fellow jobseekers. It was as if she felt
the divide between her and us acutely, feeling the pricks of our
resentment as we looked at her sullenly. It's a sad fact that it is
often people like yourself that have to dole out the decisions made by
those in authority. It seemed today that the responsibility and
isolation weighed heavily on her square, grey shoulders.

Standing to get a cup of water from the dispenser, I saw that outside
the window a great wide rainbow hung in the grey sky, starting at the
side of the clock tower, stretching over the steeple of St. Alfege's
which was bleached as white as bone by the sun, the weather cock
winking and glinting as it turned.

Despite everything, it cheered me up.