Challenges

I have to remind myself throughout history, people have lived with a sense of crisis. Flick through an account of the world and one thing becomes evident: conflict and disease have set the tone of most eras. The 30 Years War, the 100 Years War, the World Wars and Cold War, Black Deaths and Blue Deaths, bad things come in every length, temperature and colour. So, I should bear that in mind when trying to make sense of the heaviness that has grown since the pandemic. Crisis has been the world’s watchword, I just hadn’t lived long enough to recognise the pattern.

There is some comfort in knowing that this is probably the standard way of things and the relative idyll of my former years, was either the result of a protective, ignorant bubble or a momentary respite from the status quo. Difficulties are not a worrying new phenomenon, rather they are a fundamental component of life, adding context to the question of human existence - what are we to do with our time?

Life is a challenge. Watching my child develop has been a demonstration of this. Within the space of 18 months a mewling, downy creature has learnt to roll, sit, crawl and stand. His limbs have grown long and teeth have erupted through his gums, causing much misery and much joy. What at first appeared to be a hairless guinea pig has transformed into a little boy who can run, sing and chomp on apples and crackers with gusto. But each step was hard-earnt, the result of countless hours of practice and trying.

And for what? Has he learnt it all yet? Is he done? Not by any stretch of the imagination. There is so much more to come. Yes, he can run, but can he skip yet? Can he hop? Can he do the long jump and the foxtrot and the macarena? No, that’ll all have to be learnt. And then there is language - so many words that need to be coded into his brain! He needs to learn how to form a sentence and form a rhyme and the most precious challenge of all, learn to read.

The difficulty is not done with. It will be a lifelong process, something I have had to remind myself of, as I sit down to reflect on my own year of surprising challenge. I thought by now I’d have it all figured out and I’d finally be settled in all aspects of my life. Maybe it was naive to think that by the age of 36 there would be no more obstacles to overcome and I would instead cruise out the rest of my days, doing the same job in the same location. But circumstances in and out of my control have made a mockery of that thought. Even if I were able to control most of the factors in my own life, I have no control over other people’s fates or the greater changes in the world at large.

I have had to learn this lesson over the past year and it has been a startling epiphany. Things may not go my way, loved ones might die and I might (actually probably will) live in difficult times. This realisation has had the effect of being cast out of Eden, but now am beginning to see the way past disillusionment. I have found consolation in many different places, not least literature.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Lord of the Rings, J. R. R Tolkien

In the end, all we have is our time. I am grateful for the gift of another year, for more opportunity to decide what to do and how to overcome the obstacles set before me. I am not done with challenge yet, I suspect I won’t be for some time to come.

Networking

Have I added you recently on LinkedIn? If so, hi! It’s been a while, huh?

There’s a certain awkwardness that comes from reaching out to people who you’ve not contacted for ages. A prickly, nervous feeling that is reminiscent of the neglected responsibilities of youth: the unwritten thank you card-type sensation. The longer you leave it, the worse that sensation gets, proving like dough until there’s only one action to deal with the enormous guilt loaf that’s formed in the airing cupboard of your soul (who on earth has an airing cupboard btw?) You knock it back and repress it into a small hard ball and chuck it deep down inside your personal psychological rubbish bin, where you ignore it as much as possible.

Until two decades later and you decide you want to change careers and need to network again.

Entering the ‘real’ working world is bizarre. Medicine is such a familiar career path, I know exactly how it works and what to do next, were I to want a job or even a whole change of speciality. Say I wanted to retrain as a plastic surgeon (no fear, I do not want to retrain as a plastic surgeon, it’s just an example), I know applications occur at specific times in the year and I could even pre-populate the portal’s first few pages of details from my submissions to other training programs. In this respect, at least, there is some joined up thinking in the NHS.

But as I emerge blinking from the Platonic medical cave, I see other professions are different. First of all, the job field is much more nebulous. I spend a lot of time on Indeed and Glassdoor, scrolling through bland-looking adverts that leave me a little confused as to what exactly the job does. There seems to be a separate technical language for a lot of jobs, that reads as though it’s been lifted from a Marvel comic book.

‘Accelerate key transformational change programmes!’

‘Ensure the highest quality of deliverables!’

And then I look at the person specification and realise that although I can catheterise the jugular vein and manage 2 full GP clinics each day, I cannot apply for a position as an assistant in many fields because I do not have 3+ years of experience in the role. It’s frustrating but not devastating. Everyone keeps telling me I have transferrable skills and I know that’s true. Not many people can stomach weekly night shifts in an evolving pandemic, but having that badge on my lapel gives me a certain amount of confidence.

It really is a brave new world out there with many more roles than the butcher, baker and candlestick maker professions of my youth. And in amongst the inscrutable job titles is the question, if I’m not a doctor, what do I want to be? This is easier to figure out than I thought it would be. My caring sensibilities die-hard and I realise there always is a health-related aspect to the job specifications that I’m drawn to. It’s wondrous to read of medical devices that are trying to help you lose weight by shocking your brain whilst you sleep or to hear of new technologies that may revolutionise triage, paper notes or even the care system. There can be a new approach to healthcare, something aspirational to contrast with the learned helplessness of the current day NHS.

Which brings me on to LinkedIn. Something I considered as a defunct social media account, reveals itself as the place where all the grown-ups are, flaunting their CVs, advertising their jobs and most importantly networking. The rows of professional photos present themselves like a hall of fame. Everyone seems incredibly impressive with a wealth of experiences and accolades galore. Reading some CVs reminds me of the job adverts I’ve seen, obviously built on the same superhero language that I now need to learn. I add connections (friends are sooo Facebook 2012) and marvel at the things they have accomplished, whilst hoping they’ll ignore the 15+ years interval before contact.

And now, to add to their ranks is this humble NHS doctor, my unique skills ready to be transduced into something that the corporate world can recognise and value.

Hello friends, I’m ready to step out of the cave. Someone hold my hand and teach me.

The True Spirit of Halloween

Tis the season - ignore the advent calendars and Santa effigies crowding the supermarkets, we still have a few festivals to go before big daddy Christmas comes round. No, I’m talking about the time of doorstep jack o’ lanterns and the inevitable guilt that comes from throwing 5kg of pumpkin flesh into the bin because you’re too intimidated to make soup with it. Halloween is here again, ready to fright and delight those who partake in another Pagan-cum-Christian festival.

I wasn’t much for Halloween as it simply wasn’t a big deal in the UK until recently. Three decades ago, when I was growing up, I don’t remember there being much autumnification of households. Nowadays, a walk around my neighbourhood reveals ever more ghoulish accessories in windows and if last year is anything to go by, there will likely be more trick-or-treaters calling tonight than there will be December carollers. As Halloween’s stock rises, it seems as if Christmas’ falls.

I suppose with less financial and familial obligation to Halloween, it is a more attractive option for parents and partiers, who need only splash out on a cheap costume, a pumpkin and a box of Quality Street to be ready for the event, rather than having to furnish all the trappings of Christmas. And now that many fireworks events have been cancelled due to local council cutbacks, a self-directed celebration on October 31st has also overtaken the traditional UK Bonfire Night as the main feature of the early winter season.

It really didn’t make much of a difference to me until this year. An occasion I had seen as superfluous and a bit silly, has taken on much more meaning for the saddest of reasons. Earlier in the year I lost a dear friend. Actually, that’s a euphemism used purely for writing etiquette. I didn’t want to startle you by suddenly dumping the coarse, brutal concept of death in a blog about a seemingly fun festival.

Earlier in the year, an incredibly dear friend of mine died. Not that age makes a difference to the perceived tragedy of loss, but he was the same age as me. He had so much ahead of him.

It’s not so much the general pity of losing a young adult that affects me, my grief is altogether more selfish. What will I do without him*?* I can’t help seeing the loss (that word again) in personal terms. Yes, I am stricken for the world at large, which will be infinitely poorer for him not being in it, but I care more for his absence in my world. Where once there was my friend, all I have now is the imitation product of memory. Remembering someone is wholly inadequate compared to a real life interaction. I would like to be more benevolent in my reaction to his death, to be satisfied with the memories and to just be grateful for having known him as long as I did, but I am not there yet. I am not there.

So instead, I have cast about for other things to get me through my irritated, disbelieving grief. I now understand why every hospital has access to chaplaincy services. In exceptional times, the pull toward the spiritual is great. I long for so much that only the mystical can pretend to provide. I want there to be meaning behind the darkness and insanity of circumstances. I want there to be comfort from some all-knowing, all-powerful-but-kind being, who can whisper ‘don’t worry, I have the cheat sheet to life and it’s all good because...’ And most of all, I crave a magical loophole that allows me to interact with my friend again.

Allhallowtide is a span of three days from 31st October to 2nd November, and in the Christian tradition, is a time of remembrance for the dead and the saints. If Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book and Disney’s Coco are to be believed (more familiar terms of reference for me), then it is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. This echoes the Pagan festival of Samhain, where a lot of Halloween traditions come from.

For me, I’ll take it. I don’t care about Dracula dentures and cobweb decorations (I’ve got plenty of the latter anyway), I yearn for the true meaning of Halloween, which is a time when the spiritual world is closer, or at least given more attention than usual. It’s still an affront that these are the realms I am now interested in, given the unacceptable context of the death of my friend, however, if it is a chance to focus on him, or at best, feel closer to him, then I’ll certainly take it.

So yes, there’ll be a pumpkin this year, but more important than the carving, will be the lighting of the candle in memory of my friend. And if I can put aside my sceptical nature, maybe Halloween will provide me with something not necessarily associated with the occasion: some comfort.

The Fall

Everyone wants to know why. Why did he do it? Why did he cut down a tree, that tree? It’s on the news - a tree! On the telly! Not the standard war and shitty politics, today it was a tree that made the headlines, my tree.

Now everyone wants in on it. They’re posting their photos all over the internet, crying and wailing about a fucking tree, when they hadn’t thought about that tree since seeing it once on their rained-out holiday ten years ago. They talk about it like it was their best friend, for fuck’s sake. Liars.

They don’t know. They didn’t grow up round here. It’s not their tree, it’s nothing to do with those glory hunters. It could have stood for another hundred years and they wouldn’t have thought of it ever again. But me? I’ve thought about it every day for months now. Longer, actually. I’ve thought about that tree more than you’d believe, more than’s right. I know that tree. If you cut the back of my hand off and cut that tree down, I know which I’d recognise more. Those leaves, that bark, I know it better than the veins in my body and the dark insides of my guts.

So why then? Why did I cut it? Why did I kill it? Even my mates are asking. The word’s out that it was me who did it. Stealing off in the middle of the night with my friend’s dad’s chainsaw, even though no one saw me. It didn’t help that the police made a show of coming to our house and hauling me away in handcuffs for all the curtain twitchers to see. I felt for my mum, of course, seeing her at the window crying, as the cops drove me away. She won’t be able to face the neighbours, let alone go to the shops, but it’s not her fault. It’s nothing to do with her.

I can’t even tell you what it’s to do with. There was no dare from my friends, although that’s what they’re all saying. ‘I dared him to chop it down,’ they say, as if they were the mastermind and I was just their servant. But it was nothing to do with them, it was just me in the dark and the tree.

It feels like it’s always been me in the dark with the tree. Recently it’s all I could think about. Going to bed at night, I’d be thinking how I’d do it, how I’d cut it down. And then I’d plan. I’d plan and plan and plan. First thing in the morning I’d be thinking about what I’d need, what kind of saw, how I’d get there. I’d think about it on my way to school, during class, even when I was talking to my mates. They never knew what was going on, I kept up just fine, agreeing about whatever stupid thing they were talking about. But underneath I was thinking and planning. I’ve never thought about anything as much - not girls, not video games, not even porn. Just the tree, that bloody gorgeous tree.

Who’d have thought, the first time I saw it on a school trip to the ‘heritage of our area,’ that it’d lead to this? I remember saying that the tree didn’t look as good as on tv, but I was lying. As everyone else went around taking selfies I just sat there, pretending I didn’t care and tearing up one of the tree’s leaves into little little pieces.

What started as a tiny thought, something you have a million times a day but just scroll past, turned into an idea, which turned into a dream. You know, I’d actually dream about it - I’d see it there in front of me, perfect and real, even though I knew it was a dream. I’d want it. It was as good as in real life, not better. Just as good. Stunning, actually.

Everyone knows it’s stunning. They make movies with that tree in it, people love it in a way they could never love me. That tree gets more attention than most kids. They pose by it and protect it and send photos of it in magazines to the posh twats down south, who saw it once on a walk. But they don’t think about it day in, day out like I do. They like it in the way they like ice cream on holiday - something sweet but forgotten five seconds after you’ve finished. It’s not their life. It’s not their every thought like it is mine. I gave more to that tree than anyone on this earth, I reckon.

And what do I get in return? Nothing. Nobody gives me a medal for feeling so much for that tree, for devoting my head to it. They look at me and think ‘piece of shit, what would he know about caring?’ Fuck them. That tree was my life. That tree was mine but no one saw it. Everyone thought it was their’s, as if a pretty photo in a frame proves it, but their love was lukewarm piss in a plastic bottle. Mine was the real stuff.

Mine was everyday and everything. That tree was mine, fucking mine. And I knew the only way to show it was to have it for myself. I had to do away with it, so that last moment when it was whole was mine and mine alone. Everyone thinks I did it as a fuck you to the rest of the world, but no one knows the real truth. How having it there before me, just before it was ruined, was the only act of worship I’ll ever have in my life.

The thing is, I thought that’d be the end of it, when it was finally down. Once I saw them carting off the twigs in binliners, I thought that would be that. They’d build a great bonfire, burn the branches and the ashes would drift off and it’d finally be done. Maybe I’d feel better or sad or something, but I thought I’d be free of the tree.

But I’m not.

Maybe it’s because I left the stump? If I could, if I’d had more time, I would have torn out the roots, leaving not one piece of it behind. Imagine the stuff you’d need to do that and the planning it would take. Organising that would see me through most of my 20s.

But I can’t get rid of it, that feeling under my skin and the never-ending thoughts about that tree. And I don’t know what to do next. It’s still there. That bloody tree is haunting me. And even now, sat in this cell with no windows, all I can smell is woodsmoke.

Choices

11 years later and I am finally done.

It’s been 11 years since I graduated as a doctor and first stepped on to the wards of a seaside hospital, terrified and trying not to show it. In the intervening years I have undergone ‘training,’ a word wholly insufficient to describe the crucible-like experience of being a junior doctor. What comprises ‘training’ in today’s NHS is a gruelling obstacle course of shift-work, exams and stress, lasting, at a minimum, half a decade.

My 11 years of time served included periods away from the pressure cooker, spells abroad or on maternity leave, but I always had to return to complete my training.

No more. I have earned my stripes with the coveted acronym of CCT, the ‘certificate of completion of training’ and am finally fully accredited. No more ‘junior’ status for me; I can just be.

Any momentous transition comes with a period of reflection and this one is no different. As I finish this part of my career, I can’t help but look back and acknowledge the people who influenced me. Like the end scene in Titanic, I see past figures, colleagues and some patients, as I walk down the staircase, back in time.

Training, by definition, means being taught, therefore, after 11 years I am left with an army of mentors. Some of my most formative were in my first few years of training, where, with little experience of my own, I looked to my superiors for guidance rather like a baby looks to its parents. I remember one formidable medical registrar from my first year as a doctor who took to the parental role like a duck to water. Gathering a brood of junior doctor ducklings under his wing, he would take us to the hospital Costa and then over Americanos and Red Berry Refreshers would impart his own personal take on how to practice medicine.

‘Never forget it’s a job,’ he said. ‘You do some work and then you go home, no different from any other person. There’s no point in staying late if you’re not being paid for it.’

I remember feeling incredulous at this. Us first-year doctors were regularly staying many hours after our shifts ended to get everything done. Downing tools at the day’s end may have been possible with other jobs but not with medicine, surely? What about the patients? What about being a good doctor? At the time, I ‘hmmmed’ politely at the registrar’s comments but dismissed them as that of an eccentric.

And here we are 11 years later. The health system I work in is not the one in which my registrar waxed lyrical over a Costa coffee. It may still be the NHS but it is not the one of 2012. It is not even the NHS of 2020. It is a beleaguered institution being kneecapped whilst tied to chair, a shadow of its former self. I recognise it, but in the way I would recognise a patient presenting after years of chronic disease: gaunt, frail, tired.

Tiredness. Yes, that’s the word. We are all so very tired. The country in general is tired of the state of the NHS. With little let-up between a pandemic and the plunge in living standards, no one had a chance to recover. People are dissatisfied and squeezed. Strikes (not just in health) are now so commonplace as to hardly make the news and years-long waiting lists are the norm. This is the healthcare system I now step into.

The registrar’s echoing words take on new meaning.

‘It’s a job.’

It is. Medicine is a job. It can be found in any career’s directory, but those who go into it often regard it as something more. That is why most doctors will go above and beyond e.g. staying long after a shift’s end, to complete their job to the highest standards. The problem is, in today’s system, the job cannot be done to the highest standards. Access to timely specialist care is so much of a lottery these days, even if one practitioner works to the highest standards, they can only do so much in isolation.

As the system clogs, the workload falling to each individual practitioner increases. To do the minimum for all the patients on the list and crucially to practice safely, necessitates many more man hours than are scheduled. Little wonder then, that clinicians, who have been under sustained pressure for years even before the pandemic, have finally had enough and are looking for jobs with better working conditions.

These are thoughts I turn to as I graduate into the next chapter of my career. Can I sustain another 40 years in a healthcare system like this one? What are the alternates for me? As I go about my daily life I look at every working adult and size up their job, trying it on in my imagination. Could I become a stocks trader, I think to myself, seeing the fancy-suited business people hopping off at Canary Wharf? What about a librarian? Or a baker?

Not all careers are estimable. The other day I was watching a banal children’s video on YouTube at the behest of my 3-year-old nephew. A presenter walked round the zoo, squealing at the animals.

‘You know he’s worth millions?’ says my sister. ‘He created it himself then sold it to the people who own CoCoMelon.’

I look disbelievingly at the man prancing on the screen and rue the choices that landed me as a medic as opposed to a multi-millionaire YouTuber.

I trained for six years to become a doctor and I still believe the job is one of the most valuable in the world and yet, we have swung back to the pre-pandemic status quo. On one hand, public servants, previously lauded key workers, are now treated with contempt as they strike for better working conditions and pay. On the other hand, a children’s influencer is worth millions.

‘Why didn’t you do something like that?’ my mother asks, pointing at the screen.

Although it’s said in jest, we’re all wondering whether it was the right decision to become a doctor as opposed to another career that has less risk and better pay.

‘I was too busy getting a medical degree,’ is my dry reply.

Not for the first time in these 11 years, I question my choices.

Do you have a moment to talk about poetry?

My YouTube ads have begun to show a disturbing trend recently. Instead of the colic drops and self-rocking cribs of last year, the algorithm has begun to spout 30 second promos from self-help gurus. These influencers have apparently overturned the second law of thermodynamics and from their beachfront properties, explain how I too can redirect my life away from entropy by following their simple plan. Worryingly, I have fallen for it, turning over my precious attention to people who promise to create more time for me, even as they steal it away.

Awful though this sounds, some good has come of it. At their urging (and from the more tried and tested recommendation of friends) I have tried to incorporate more small pleasures into my day. Yes, I now have an illicit pack of chocolate digestives stashed in my drawer at work, but more recently, my pleasure of choice has been, wait for it, poetry.

Bear with me, here.

Poetry has a bad rep, and those who read (or God forbid, write) it, are often looked upon with the same raised eyebrow reserved for naturists. Like nudism, poetry strips literature bare, and the result can be uncomfortable.

But for me, in this current crush of daily life, I’ve found myself turning to the (dis)comfort of poetry. Short snippets of verse, rich with images, are like a tonic in the mundanity of admin and chores. Poetry is a distillate, boiling down the fluff and padding of thought into a few concentrated lines, which you can swig from surreptitiously - a whiskey of words.

Like many people, I struggled to like poetry in school. Unless carefully instructed, I found it hard to analyse a poem and the more abstract forms passed me by entirely. If I am at all stretched, I will default to something easy to read, namely prose. Poetry isn’t normally intuitive for me which is why I am surprised that in these current difficult times, I am turning to it above all other written forms.

This is where anthologies help. Curated to offer poems that speak to a certain mood or feeling, you can take your pick from a selection complied by those who know. Better still, certain anthologies e.g. the Poetry Pharmacy contain short, relatable interpretations of the poem, which can make the process of reading the poem that much easier.

As a birthday gift to my son, I bought him (read, me) a poetry anthology containing a poem for every day of the year. As we cuddle up at bedtime, I thrill to read which old favourite or new jewel will be today’s poem. He tries to flick through the book, but like it or not, I fix the page down and recite the poem out loud. Sometimes he settles, but more often than not, he continues to fidget until I put him down, his baby attention span no match for ‘The Listeners’ by Walter de la Mare.

But I trust that something transfers in those few minutes of spell-casting as I read the poem. Spoken out loud, poetry takes on added emphasis, the rhythm of the lines or the satisfaction of a rhyme can be as powerful as a chant. After all, what are hymns and prayers but holy poetry? By reading aloud attention is drawn to the page, to breath and to the meaning of the words, something that cannot be as succinctly done by reading prose.

As the days turn warmer I have found a personal poet laureate in Mary Oliver, an American poet, who wrote predominantly about nature. Her life was spent in contemplation in the outdoors and she would start her days with long walks to gain inspiration and peace. I now try and follow her example and set the alarm earlier than the baby, to sit in the garden before the day starts. Sitting in the morning light, I try and recite a poem, muttering words to myself like a prayer. And it works. My pulse slows and my brain quiets, the anxieties of the day stilled for a little while at least.

It may not solve global warming but there is power and possibly even magic in poetry. There is a reason the form has been lauded throughout civilisation from Calliope of Greece, all the way back to the Vedas of India. Throughout the ages, writers and holy men worshipped poetry, so it seems reasonable then that I, mere mortal that I am, would become a convert.

Sour Grapes

Since January I’ve had Freddie Mercury in my head. Each time I struggle out of the door with the ever heavier buggy (the baby adores food), I hear ‘Under Pressure’s’ famous bassline begin:

‘Dun dun dun da da dun dun.’

This usually continues as I rush down the hill, already late to drop my son off at nursery and then as I run for the bus that will get me to work, if not on time, then only 5 minutes late. The song progresses as I open up the electronic timetable of appointments. Freddie starts scatting around as I see the bales of admin I’ll have to do in my lunchbreak and by the time I call the first patient, the lyrics begin.

‘Pressure, pushing down on me…’

I am back at work, yes. And it’s not the malaise of a post-pandemic, politically-vandalised NHS that is getting to me. Well, not just that. No, it’s trying to fit working in such conditions into a life already busting at the seams with baby and household. As my maternity leave was ending I wondered how I was going to manage another massive time commitment. Today, amidst the scattered toys and stacked journals I’m meant to read, I’m still wondering.

Efficiency is the watchword. Try as I might to hack life, there are only so many tricks I can use. The food processor helps, as does roasting every single weekday meal on Sunday evening, however, when it comes to the frenzied routine bookending a busy work day, there’s only so much fat to be trimmed. The baby will always need his nappy changed, his parents will always need dinner and by the time that’s all done, it’s time to roll into bed and then get up for another day.

Welcome to the world of the working family. As a result of trying to manage three full time roles (doctor, mother and housekeeper) I feel like I have slipped down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Before I had a baby, I flirted with self-actualisation by asserting my voice through writing. Now, most of my energy is spent on making sure we have enough clean clothes for the week and that I have at least half an hour of quality time with the baby before he goes to sleep. In this airtight schedule, I hardly have time to sit down at a desk, let alone create the mental space needed to write.

As I run around trying to find a solution to this eternal time poverty, I think of all the things I am trying to achieve. I want to be an effective mother/friend/wife/daughter, but I also have to manage a household and perform an intense job. I want to stay relatively fit and pursue my hobbies (I’ve pared that back to the one, writing) but I also need to earn enough money to live in London and afford crippling childcare costs to allow me to fund all of the above. None of these categories can be neglected for long without a knock-on effect on the others. Now to fit this in 168 hours each week, can it be done?

Honestly, the answer is no.

But the problem is that culture/society/propaganda makes you think that it can be done. ‘Let things slide,’ is the go-to phrase for the working mother, as if sacrificing a few chores is the solution for a person working effectively four full-time jobs. It’s misleading and infuriating. The term ‘work-life’ balance is an illusion touted to make women feel as if the deficiencies of the childcare and economic system are actually personal failings of their own.

The solution here is not personal resilience or a bigger Filofax, it is, amongst other things, wholesale reform of the childcare system. It’s makes no sense that swathes of young, productive people are being priced out of returning to work due to exorbitant childcare costs. The Government’s March Budget, whilst promising more childcare provision than previously, lacks the vision needed for a real improvement in the system.

A 2021 investigation by the Early Years Alliance showed that the Government knowingly underfunded the ‘free’ childcare provision for 3-5 year olds (1). By paying local authorities just £4.89 of the expected costs of £7.49/hour/child, the shortfall in expenditure had to be made up in other ways, for example, by raising the costs of nursery care for younger children, which the government acknowledged in its Early Years Funding Rate Negotiations (2). If nurseries refused to pass on the costs, or wanted to pay their staff a competitive wage, there was a high likelihood that they would go under (3). The effect of this government kneecapping is felt to this day, as the number of Ofsted registered childcare providers drop by thousands each year leaving parents scrambling for limited unaffordable places(4). No wonder many parents are forced to stay at home looking after the children in the early years.

It strikes me as a loss of vision when a government will bend its will to reward bankers, but demean and demoralise carers and public service workers by cost-cutting their pay at any opportunity. To unleash pension rewards on the richest few, whilst the struggling backbone of the country compresses under an economic pressure of the government’s own making, seems short-sighted at best, punitive at worst. I feel as though I am paying for the sins of the figures who denounce the striking masses whilst harvesting their own comfortable salaries.

As I rush into my son’s nursery, red-faced and flustered, to collect him after a day run against the clock and under pressure, I turn off the audio summary of Prime Minister’s Questions that I have been listening to. Those who howl and crow on the leather seats of Westminster would do well to pick up Steinbeck and be warned:

“In the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

(1) https://www.eyalliance.org.uk/news/2021/06/new-data-shows-ministers-knew-early-years-was-underfunded

(2) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jahv701milmpf2e/AAA_Phys_CmdCLtid91TwUzZa?dl=0&preview=191021+EYF+Rate+Negotiations+-+note+to+Mins.pdf

(3) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/27/uk-nurseries-30-hours-free-childcare-parents-providers-think-again

(4) https://www.eyalliance.org.uk/news/2022/11/ofsted-data-reveals-closure-5400-early-years-settings-last-year