I was asked by my former tutor and now editor over coffee recently why I decided to take the adult education course that I did .
At the time I fobbed him off with a boring and mundane answer that probably quite substantially backed up the statement I made later that I write much better than I talk .
I got to thinking afterwards though what a brilliant question it was ,scolding myself for giving such a lacklustre reply and did indeed ponder the thought why journalism ? why, you and i ?
I mean with such a diverse range of subjects on offer it could all too easily have been something completely different and you never know I could now be sitting here blogging to you on the subject of animal husbandry or Mah Jong.
So why journalism ? why that and not say , how to bake absolutely lovely cakes (although former classmates and tutor would probably say I was fairly adept at that as well.... at least I hope they were lovely ,I'm the first to admit I'm no Nigella ).
Well, to start off with, I suppose there was some truth in what I came up with for the original answer .
Of the many women I've admired in my life quite a few of them have come from a background of either writing or journalism , to name but two , Paula Yates and Caitlin Moran.
Two women who combine( or in Paula's case , combined ) razor sharp wit with an amazing amount of intellect and wisdom , while Paula may have faltered in her last few years, in her day she was the epitome of the woman I always wished I could be . A peroxide vision in vintage firing off questions that were wild , intrusive and sometimes down right inappropriate yet she often had interviewees eating out of the palm of her hand with the quick wink of a flirtatious eye.
And then we have Caitlin who reels off great works that while they may be serious are still injected with a slice of humour to lighten the heaviness of the subject in question.
Both ladies candid and honest approach to writing sounded so much like things I would come out with in front of friends that it got me thinking that other people might find my lack of embarrassment filter and don't give a shit what I say out loud defect as funny as they did too.
And while I know my heroines are part of why I made that choice back in the summer of 2012 I must admit there are other far more personal reasons that helped me make that decision as well .
For although I was devoted to my kids and home , it felt like for the ten years since they'd been born I had let go of my own life, that I'd put anything that mattered to me on hold and I hadn't been my greatest priority for a very long time.
My life felt like it had been put in stasis until some future moment when I might have time to fit anything in around school , housework and shopping .
I didn't live so much as existed , I'd had a brief spell for a couple of years as a d.j for a friends indie club night but after recession bit and crowds dwindled the club closed its doors and I had ended up back stuck in mummy limbo once more .
I drifted around , doing my school cleaner job to make ends meet but always having that deflated feeling in my heart that " is this life really all there is for me ?"
As I became more frustrated with myself , my lovely mousy mumsy exterior that I'd always maintained started to show signs of wear and tear.
The walk all over me , I'll do whatever you say , I really don't have any opinion of my own , please dominate my life Nina façade of yes dear no dear 3 bags full dear hid the fact that inside my heart was breaking. All those regrets of not staying on at school , not going to college , not thinking I deserved any better than what I had because I wasn't worth it buzzed round my head goading me in every waking hour and when others started taking the piss saying the things I already taunted myself with , it was only a matter of time before the pressure cooker in my mind would finally blow.
And by jiminy did it blow when one night fed up of being overlooked, forgotten, everyone's favourite laughing stock and failure finally took it toll , exploding with snot, tears and everything in-between in front of my mum on the living room floor of my great aunts house in Whitstable.
I revealed how not only did I regret not living the life I should have had before I'd had kids but also how I was sick of everyone telling me what was the right thing to do . It felt like for years I'd been following everyone else's orders while they never ever questioned if I might have any mind of my own . Feeling constantly overlooked in favour of someone else even when you've more than most played your part doesn't do much for a already fragile ego , I can tell you .
A few " and you are " moments also meant that Invisible woman syndrome didn't even begin to cover how I was starting to feel by then . But that night a seed was planted that meant I wasn't going to be a nonentity for much longer.
It might surprise you to realise that the journalism course wasn't originally the reason I went to the adult ed centre to grab a brochure , back then fuelled by various new crafting publications and as part of the vintage clothing scene I was dabbling in I'd got it into my head that a dressmaking and sewing course was what I really wanted to do , in my head I was going to be the new Kirstie Allsop only a little less patronising and a lot more cool . No matter that any foray into sewing and the like before had ended in horrendously deformed items of the textile variety and that my own sewing machine had the amazing ability to make me cry as it fucked up yet another item of clothing or craft project. No ,I thought " some kind of needle craft is my destiny ".
How wrong I would find that statement to eventually be !
As the first available class was a while off yet though I thought I'd still have a flick through and see if anything else caught my eye that I could do while I waited and that's when the proverbial clichéd lightning bolt hit . As I climbed on the bus that day and sat amid the packed bags of charity shop items that I was probably going to customise with the aid of my new sewing skills once id started my dressmaking course, I found it . In amongst subjects that all sounded a little too much like going back to school again, tucked away in the lifestyle section was the class that jumped out from the page , grabbed me by my vintage coat collar and said " choose me , Nina , choose me "
Introduction to journalism I thought as I circled it with my pen , yeah I can do that and if I can't well I can always transfer the fee over to something else ......
After leaving it a couple of weeks when a bout of self doubt nerves set in my mum kicked my arse down to the post box to post the form I'd filled in , this was it I was definitely going to do it , now I just had to sit back and wait and in the meantime I could let people know just what I was planning to do .
Some thought I'd made two great choices , others weren't so complimentary . What are you doing that for ?The sewing I get ,that is something you do but journalism ? What are you going to do with that , you aren't exactly the brightest person in the world . This is just the sort of stupid irresponsible thing you would do , why cant you do something useful for a change ....as you can imagine this didn't leave me feeling at the top of my game adult education wise and as the comments kept coming even up until the night I was due to start the class its probably no surprise to learn that even at that last moment in time I considered calling the whole thing off .
But what the naysayers hadn't banked on was that the complete breakdown I'd had had fired something up in me that hadn't happened in quite a while .
Whereas before I'd have bowed to their superior knowing what was good for me and letting them control my mind , thoughts and how I felt and gone meekly and apologetically to the adult ed centre to say sorry I made a mistake clearly I'm far too much in danger of making myself look a total tit , please lets forget I ever thought stupidly that I could do this . Now it was replaced as it had been when I'd been told " you cant be a dj , you're too old , you don't know how to do it , people are laughing at you not with you " by a "she who dares " state of mind .
As I was berated all the way to my first class for disrupting everyone including my kids evening because I couldn't drive so needed lifts there and back and thinking " you know maybe they have a point , maybe this all just a waste of time, maybe you are thinking you are much better than you actually really are , maybe you are going to have people pointing and laughing at you for showing them just how thick you really are I yet again toyed with the idea of not going in to the classroom and running all the way home with my tail between my legs .
But then I thought , nah bollocks to that , if they tell me I cant do it then I can just jolly well go and prove it to them that I bloody well can .
I was escorted to the classroom where it was to take place , took a seat at a desk and prepared to take part in the first lesson I'd been to for over 15 years.
As the other new students turned up my worry that I was going to be one of the older members of the class were quashed as ladies and gents of all different ages took their places , got out their note books and started to scribble down notes furiously as we found out what we would be doing.
(Most of the stuff I wrote down that night is fairly illegible as my handwriting looks like it speaks in tongues so its lucky we had a way of printing the notes out from the adult learning website ! ).
After the two hours were up I emerged beaming from the class as I realised I'd really enjoyed it and the homework task we'd been given was already burning a hole in my satchel as I longed to get started on it .
Completing it later that week gave me a real buzz and I couldn't wait to hand it in , however as our printer went tits up that week I had to let Bob, my tutor, know that although I'd done it I wouldn't be able to hand it in till the next week . No problem he said and the following week I handed mine in and we sat and listened as he gave his feedback on everyone else's work . As I heard some of the other versions of the homework by fellow classmates I froze , what had I done , these people had a far better grip on vocabulary and putting words together than I did . Oh Christ, I thought , had I just made a really big mistake ? Was everyone going to be wetting their pants with laughter at the piece I'd cobbled together with my stunted grasp of the English language .
I needn't have worried though as it was passed back to me the following week with the feedback " really good , really well written " , something that to someone who'd eternally been the girl who "could do better " put her on top of the world and as those of you who know me will be aware it just got better from thereon in .
Every compliment on my work , every bit of belief that people started having in me stoked my confidence right up until others started commenting on how much I'd started to change. I had school mums telling me how they wished they could be as brave as me and completely change their lives. Others who'd thought I was just the stupid one with the big tits and the girl with no opinion realise I wasn't who they had always perceived me to be and most importantly I started to believe in my own being .
My kids were proud of me ( they always wanted to know what homework I had or how well I'd done in the class quiz ) and staff at the school I cleaned at started to realise I wasn't just that bird who's only intelligent enough to scrub toilets .
The people who'd really been against the idea in the first place also begrudgingly but not so anyone else could hear started to realise that maybe they had been wrong ( there was no way they were going to actually say it to my face , but I knew ).
There was one casualty in all this happiness though .
Once the introduction to journalism class started to draw to a close I knew I wanted to do more but seeing as I had a budget to stick to moneywise there was one thing that had to give ...
Dressmaking class got the old heave ho in the end in favour of 2 more classes of journalism and after pulling of the major coup of being picked to be a team captain for a class task ( something that never happened in school , I was always in the group of one of the last to be picked for anything be it cos you were too fat , too short , too thick , too crap at everything ) , some revealingly personal from the heart team blog posts and witty observation on life pieces plus picking up on a story that became a major headline grabber in my tutors other line of work as a newspaper editor plus a random thought that instead of a thank you card I came up with the idea that I'd write him a " letter to the editor " meant that sewing's loss went on to become the Medway Messengers gain .
So in the end I suppose the answer to that question about why journalism , why me would be that in the beginning it was just an idea that I might be able to be like people I admired but in the end it turned out to be the thing that let me break out of other peoples domination and control and realise that the person I should most admire is me.
I was no longer the invisible woman , the short fat old one in the trashettes dj duo whos name no-one ever remembered , I wasn't even dee vinyl -dj and vintage seller alter ego either .
I was finally back to being the person I was always supposed to have been
I WAS NINA
GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN
I WAS ME
XXX
The Casino rooms in Rochester, a name more synonymous these
days with lap dancing and dubiously titled theme nights (cleavage night, anyone?)
but back in the 40s this haven of beer goggled misadventures was the setting to
a much simpler love story.