The story so far…Michael has returned to the North East from London and met up with his brother John and sister Pauline. Pauline has discovered that she is going to be made redundant from her job as an archivist of local and regional history…
A few days later, Michael meets again with John and Pauline over a pot of tea in Pauline’s kitchen.
“So what are you going to do about work, then Pauline, I mean when your notice runs out?”, asked Michael.
“What can I do? I can look for other similar work, but there isn’t much of it about and of course there are many others in my position. I don’t know… I thought that I had managed to survive the austerity drive. 14 years of cuts, cuts, cuts….but they got me in the end.”
Michael sat quietly saying nothing.
“Perhaps I’ll end up in a call centre or something…”
“What with all your qualifications and skills.” Michael began.
“Yeah, well, they don’t seem to count for much anymore…Anyway what are you doing? You haven’t said much about why you’ve moved back up north.”
“Well, it’s only temporary, like…hardly worth mentioning really.”
“So, I see” said John.
“Well, it’s no big deal. I am not going to buy a house or anything. …”
“So where are you living now then?”, asked Pauline. ”You’ve been here for two weeks and haven’t invited us round, or even told us.”.
“No, well it’s just a small flat down at the Quayside..”
“Down at the Quayside? Well, that must be costing you a fair bit of rent then”, remarked John.
“Er, well, no… anyway we should be thinking of Pauline and how she will manage now”.
“Thanks Michael”, Pauline said in a voice which sounded as empty as her newly drained glass.
A sad day at work
Back at work the next day, Pauline looked sadly at some of the photographs and archival writing she had collected over the years she had worked there. There were pictures of men with lamps having just come out of a local mine, women dressed in long dresses, with resolute expressions on their faces, along with minutes from the local cooperative meeting back in the 1800s and meetings of the National Union of Teachers in the 1940s. It had taken Pauline years to compile all this stuff, to give some sort of an impression of how life had evolved in her town and in her region, to tell a story. The people’s story. As she looked at it all, she wondered what would become of it when she left her job a couple of weeks later. Pauline was just looking at a picture of an old pit wheel, when she glanced her boss, Mr Richardson, coming over to speak to her. Pauline dutifully put the photo down and turned her head.
“Ah, Pauline, yes. Just looking at the old archive I see…”
“Yes. Took me years to put all this together…”, she replied.
“Yes, yes, I know. Still time waits for no man… or woman ey…”, Mr Richardson replied, smiling weakly.
“No”, Pauline responded.
“So, er… well, you see this is going to be the area where the bank is going to be in to tell customers about…”
“About what?”
“Well, about good loans and ISAs and all sorts of things like that…”
“I see”,
“So, it seems a shame, but I don’t think we have any room for this archive and we really need to throw it out. There just isn’t room… Not with the bank and everything…”
“So, you want my last job here, to be throwing out all this material, all this archive?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that…”
“No, of course not”.
“Anyway, this whole area needs to be cleared by the end of the week. People from the bank are coming in to look around next week…”
“I see”, responded Pauline, looking directly into Mr Richardson’s eyes, with eyes of her own like pools of the deepest sadness.
“Yes, well, I am sure you will do a good job of sorting it out”, Mr Richardson said quickly before turning on his heels and departing smartly.
Pauline stood and looked at the archive she had spent years putting together. She thought of all the stories the archive told and all the lives it represented that she had given voice to. A tiny tear formed in her right eye. Pauline tutted and wiped it away.
TO BE CONTINUED
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
