The F-Word

My thirties and forties were busy. Madette arrived one day into my 30th year. Junior Mad came along about two years later. After the death of my father, my mother settled into being old and demanding. As someone once said, "your mother enjoys bad health". She lived in daily expectation of death.

I returned to work and somehow found the groove. As opportunities came along in work, I took them on and relished the challenge. I found a confidence that was missing in my twenties. Professional qualifications were collected like Green Shield stamps. If you get that, you're really old too. We joked that I needed a fold-up business card.

Just after my mother died, I became a member a professional body and I did put the M word on the card. Every year I renew the membership but, to be honest, in the last couple of years I have fallen out of love with the world of work and spend a deal of time plotting the escape.

This year I received the membership renewals and, tucked in the envelope was a note about applying for fellowship. I ummed a bit since it seems pointless to do that if I don't really want to stay around in my field. But I thought, what the heck. You've got all the qualifications and experience so it is just a case of collating the evidence and submitting it. So after the right amount of faffing about, I sent it all off. The certificates all came back after about three days with a "we'll get round to considering" proforma letter. Yeah, right. That's gone in the bin. Forget about it. And I did.

When I got back from work on Wednesday I was all set up to head There. Loading the car, dog, garden chair (another story) and enough junk to keep me happy for a week. Grabbed the post and stuffed it into my bag, having sifted the obvious junk mail. I chucked one letter into the recyling and then retrieved it.

Over breakfast on Thursday morning, I remembered the maybe junk mail. Fumbling with the envelope, trying to avoid dragging it into the porridge, I edged out a letter. "I am pleased to inform you .... invites you to become a Fellow of the Institute". You will be entitled to use the designation Fellow.

Blimey. The F-word.

Now here's a thing. There's another four letter word: "Work". It's made me realise that it's not the work that I hate. It's the dismal organisation.

So I'm going to have to deal with the situation. It may involve another F-word.