Sticking it Out

“The trouble is, Sandra, you’re not a sticker.” Well, I was on the point of saying something sarcastic and (in my opinion) funny on the lines of it never having been my life’s ambition to be a small piece of adhesive paper asking people not to smoke or decorating the correspondence of a teenage girl. But the trouble is, my friend Shona had a point. A very good point. She hadn’t exactly moved heaven and earth to get me into the ceramics class at our local adult learning centre, but technically they already had the numbers they wanted and her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion came into play.

Because the ceramics were only the latest link in a long chain dating back to my childhood. I was about to say I don’t do hobbies. But the thing is, I do. And far too many of them. For far too short a time.

Okay I suppose I could argue that I do have long-term hobbies. I couldn’t imagine life without reading. Or writing for that matter. And I need my crossword fix. But somehow they don’t quite count. A hobby – at least so far as a lot of people are concerned, is something that either has an end product, or improves your fitness or (and no-one will ever persuade me this should be written as one unhyphenated word) well-being. Or even both. I can cook passably if I have to, but don’t enjoy it much and think ready means are much maligned. I could never envision classing it as a hobby.

The first hobby I can consciously remember is ballet. Well, I was one of a line of little girls who thought they were destined to twirl round in tutus in a fairytale land – though I’ve since seen pictures of ballerinas’ feet and realised it’s no fairy tale. And very few little girls who go to ballet school end up as ballerinas. But most of them stick it out for at least a few years. At least until they’ve struggled to a Pass Plus in Grade 4. I only managed a couple of months. Maybe some of it was because they only had the “Show” every two years and there had just been one. Maybe it was because we seemed to do more “limbering up” and learning the five positions than twirling around and there wasn’t a tutu or a pair of pointe shoes in sight. Or maybe I just lost interest and lost patience.

I actually recall that my parents were quite laid back about that and quite happy for me to go to the local swimming club instead. I already could swim – like many children I had learnt on holiday – and as our school didn’t have swimming lessons as such it made sense for me to carry on with it. They probably also, though they never said so, realised that my body shape might be more suited to swimming than ballet.

But I rapidly discovered that the local municipal pool bore a resemblance to the pool at the hotel Playa del Mar only in that it was rectangular and had water in it. Except, some to think of it, the hotel pool hadn’t exactly been rectangular. It wasn’t one of those ultra posh pools but it did have some curves to it, and some bright umbrellas by the side of it, and some sweet-scented trees not that far from it. The municipal pool, by contrast, was lukewarm, smelt of chlorine (which in retrospect I know probably made it healthier than the hotel one but I still hated) and after being initially star struck that one of the coaches at the swimming club was a former Olympic swimmer, discovered that didn’t stop her being irritable and tetchy on occasion. And, I thought resentfully, she had favourites. Again, perhaps I’m misjudging her. She preferred those who actually made some effort at every session which is probably natural enough.

And so the pattern was set, and so it continued. Junior school metamorphosed to secondary school and secondary school to university. I gave dancing another go, but the somewhat amorphously named “modern dancing” and it proved as ephemeral as the ballet. I had a spell in the Girl Guides, which in theory is not only a hobby but the door that opens to a plethora of hobbies, but clearing local woodlands was too much like hard work, and First Aid soon convinced me that I’d never make a nurse or doctor, and even camping was a letdown of soggy eggs and lumpy sleeping bags. Mind you I was reaching the stage when “preferring to concentrate on my studies” was at least a halfway convincing alibi. Perhaps that was what made my parents a bit more tolerant than I had any right to expect as they forked out (and we weren’t poor, but not well of either) for the various uniforms and costumes and equipment my succession of hobbies demanded. I was a fairly good student. As with the hobbies, I soon lost patience with anything that didn’t interest me, but managed to get decent A-level grades in enough subjects that interested me to get into university. I toyed with various hobbies and clubs there, but rapidly discovered I was a pretty poor soccer player (and not too keen on getting wet and muddy and tackled) and that the Drama Society involved as much backstage work as actual acting (though maybe not for people who were more talented than I was) and that the Green Society reminded me entirely too much of those woodland forays when I was in the Girl Guides.

I got a passable degree and did the MA in Creative Writing. Perhaps it was as well that in my mind that was classed as study rather than hobby or I may quite possibly have given up on that, too, as for my taste it involved far too little actually storytelling and far too much work on images and metaphors and structure.

At this point I suppose I had one of my strokes of luck. I had long since realised that though I wouldn’t give up on my ambition to earn my living writing, it wasn’t going to happen quite yet, and I certainly didn’t fancy doing a teacher training course. But a friend of the family owned a bookshop, and the assistant was about to go on maternity leave. “No promises, mind,” the owner, Vincent Hargreaves said, “But Meg has already been saying she’d quite like to spend at least some time as a full time Mum, so it might be for longer than you think.” It was for longer than I thought, and I enjoyed it. Oh, working in a bookshop isn’t all that those who haven’t tried it think it’s cracked up to be, but there were plenty worse jobs.

I still maintain that I wasn’t to blame for the next couple of hobby debacles. One of our best customers, a pleasant, if slightly too hearty woman called Andrea, waxed lyrical about the exercise class she had signed up to at the local gym. “I’m not normally one for exercise, Sandra,” she said, “But this is – well, like a mixture between T’ai Chi and Kettlercise and good fun.” I only vaguely knew what T’ai Chi was, and had no idea about Kettlercise, though I suspected it didn’t involve synchronised coffee drinking. But at times I did have vague conscience pangs about just how unfit I was, and told myself it could do no harm to at least try.

Never presume something can do no harm. Though in all fairness, T’ai Kettle (or whatever it was called) was only indirectly to blame. To register for any courses at the gym, you had to go up to the first floor office. Well, so far as I was concerned, that spiral staircase counted as gymnastic exercise in itself! And on the way down, I fell over my own feet (no point to pretending otherwise) and ended up in an undignified – and painful – heap at the bottom. One thing about gyms, and I don’t know if that could be termed comforting or disconcerting, as that there’s generally someone within hailing distance who knows what to do if anyone is injured. Or what not to do. I had barely made my unplanned quick descent before I heard the kind of voice that you know belongs to someone who knows what they’re doing shout “Don’t move!” I had no intention of doing. Though I have no great body-awareness (a word I had picked up from Andrea) I had a nasty suspicion that I was hurt.

Well, I suppose it was one of those “could have been worse” situations. I had given my left ankle a nasty sprain, but nothing was broken. It’s not to my credit that I was not entirely sorry once the visit to the hospital was over and the painkillers had kicked in to some extent. There were worse things than a few weeks with a support bandage on my ankle and some of it hobbling on crutches. Okay, not exactly hobbling, once I got the hang of it I could manage a reasonably adept hop. And it gave me an absolutely perfect excuse for temporarily putting off my trips to the gym. I think I almost sounded as if I meant it when Andrea said it was such a shame. I could still get to work, and wasn’t above gleaning a bit of sympathy. Unfortunately, with sympathy tends to come well-meant advice. I had long since admired the lovely crochet shawls and scarves a customer called Saidie made – they were positive little masterpieces and not at all old-ladyish (with absolutely no disrespect to old ladies!) “Well, why not have a go?” she asked, “Especially now when you’re laid up for a while – the truth is I started when I’d done my back in and I’ve never once regretted it.” I could have pointed out that I would only be “laid up” for a few weeks, and I wasn’t that laid up, and my lifestyle was pretty sedentary anyway and hadn’t hitherto inspired me to take up any handicraft. But I DID like those scarves and shawls and I had also seen the price of them if you bought them ready made. So I consented to let Saidie find me some wool and an easy pattern and an instruction book and directions to relevant websites, and even to give me some gratis personal tuition. Now I have this theory about crochet – which is a bit presumptuous considering my lamentable brief attempts at it. Everyone who starts it, making those little loops that grow quite quickly into a satisfyingly long chain thinks oh, this is easy, and finds it quite therapeutic. Well, for a while. And anyone who perseveres and has the knack and moves on to making the kind of things Saidie did is well rewarded and a crochet freak for life. It’s the bit in between that’s the problem. Okay, this may apply to most hobbies, but I swear crochet hones it to a fine art. Whether I didn’t persevere enough or didn’t have the knack or both I decided that life was too short for learning how to do double and triple chain when there was a book to read, even if I was still technically laid up. Saidie only made a couple of queries and then gave me up as a bad job. She didn’t bear any grudges, bless her, and gave me a lovely scarf she made that Christmas.

I suppose I have my own vague rules. Knowing my propensity for giving up on things, none of my hobbies have ever involved a living creature, not even a plant, though I do generally have a couple of anaemic looking pot plants somewhere in the house. After one brief flirtation with building a model of Edinburgh castle which lasted for two issues, including the quarter-price initial one, I have never embarked on any of those make your own projects that come with magazines. Mind you I have yet to meet anyone, even those far more tenacious than I am (not hard to find!) who has ever finished one. I have a friend who’s an aviation fan and he told me it would take longer and cost more to build the Spitfire that was on offer last year than the real thing. And I don’t think he was joking. Since the spiral staircase incident I have vowed never to set foot in the gym again, though perhaps I might be open to persuasion concerning the ground floor café. You can keep the kale smoothies, but they do a mean carrot cake. Though I’ve never been entirely convinced that carrots were meant to go in cakes.

You can call it the triumph of hope over experience but I had this notion it would be different with ceramics (which I’m pretty sure is much the same thing that they used to call pottery at adult education classes). Though I felt it at times, of course I wasn’t actually old enough to remember the Potter’s Wheel on the intermission on TV, but had seen clips of it and there was something, well, satisfying. And though I can be a bit squeamish the sort of dirty hands you get with pottery – oops, sorry, ceramics – are not what my unofficial goddaughter Becky calls icky dirty hands.

That was the theory. But in the first couple of sessions very little time was spent on the actual wheel and I discovered that though the residue might not actually qualify as icky it still can be the very devil to get off and as for when it gets in your hair ….. I may not be a sticker but that certainly is. I have also thus far failed to produce anything other than an amorphous lump of clay in a disgusting shade of neutral. I told myself at the start to be realistic, that of course I wasn’t going to immediately produce masterpieces, nor even inexpert but endearing and recognisable pieces like the ones displayed in the cabinet and made by the previous year’s intake. Really, the crochet (not to mention the appliqué and the tie-dye) should have taught me that my talent does not lie in my hands.

Our tutor, Martin, is a model of patience. You never seem to hear the term earth father but it would apply perfectly to him. He can somehow get away with wearing a Guernsey fisherman’s sweater or even a smock and saying things like, “Children,” (even though, I stress, it’s an adult education centre) “There is something in the clay, you will just have to help it out, and it can be a slow process, but it will be worth it” without it being remotely pretentious or irritating. I’ll miss him when I leave.

I was babysitting Becky tonight – except I know better than to use that expression and though, of course, being responsible parents, Julie and Kevin can’t leave her alone in the house at nine years old, I’m secretly inclined to agree with her when she says she would be quite capable of looking after herself. But she doesn’t bear a grudge against me for it, and we hugely enjoy each others’ company. She’s at the stage (and I haven’t the heart to tell her that you never really grow out of it) when bright as she is, working out the complications of honesty and politeness are still baffling. So she pulled off quite a masterstroke when she said, “Auntie Sandra,” (sometimes she calls me Auntie Sandra, sometimes just Sandra, I’m fine with either) “You have something in your hair – but it’s not icky!”

I sighed as I went to look in the mirror, knowing perfectly well what it would be – a grey glob that had already solidified. “Oh shi – bother,” I muttered. “It’s from that ceramics class. I thought I’d got rid of it all. But I’m going to stop going to the course so it won’t happen again.”

She turned an interested face on me, but one with an old-fashioned look. And NOBODY does old-fashioned looks like Becky. Though I knew she has a remarkably wide vocabulary for her age I wondered if she knew what ceramics meant. She apparently did, though she cut it down to size. “That’s like pottery, isn’t it?”

“More or less,” I agreed.

“Oh, Auntie Sandra, please don’t give it up! They say they might start doing it at school, but it would be,” she sorted through that vocabulary and impressed me again, “optional. Mummy isn’t sure as she says it would be messy even though we would wear overalls and …. stuff.” It’s quite reassuring that she still has recourse, as many children (and adults!) do to the handy expression “stuff” on occasion, wide vocabulary or not. “If I told her you were doing it too, I’m sure she would say yes.”

Well, I wasn’t so sure. It’s true that Julie doesn’t know as much about my chequered hobby history as Shona does, and certainly hasn’t made her views known quite as pithily. But it’s hardly a secret that I’m not what you might call a role model in that department.

Still, her faith in me is touching. And she managed to get the clay out of my hair with quite remarkable dexterity and gentleness.

I might stick it out a bit longer! Who knows, I might even make it as far as the display cabinet. Even if only as a “before”!