Strange week

It's very odd to be, as I currently am, in my last week at Kew.  For all its peculiarities, for all the stress and pressure it's put me (& many others) under over the years, I have loved working here and have been deeply committed to the place.  Up until just a few months ago I honestly thought I'd be here till I retired.  The evening of the day I accepted I would have to leave, I cried for hours (all over a very patient friend whose forebearance and loving-kindness I aspire to have one day).  It seemed beyond belief; and in many ways it still does now.  Yet at the same time, part of me just wants this to be over now.

This last week is so weird.  Each day, when I go out at lunch for a stroll, I know I am saying goodbye.  I am losing my connection to these places, these trees and flowers and historic buildings; when next I see them I will just be another visitor, no longer one of their people.  I am saying goodbye to little hidden corners, to short-cuts behind the scenes, to all the secret places that have given me refuge and a moment of peace on hectic days. 

And, of course, I am saying goodbye to people. 

Many of my friends have left already (or been made redundant); many others are away on annual leave at the moment.  Yet others do not work on Fridays; and still others for various reasons I don't see often to begin with.  By now it's very likely I won't see them again before the end of the week.  And I finish on Friday.

I'm trying hard not to get depressed.  I'm also trying not to brood over-much about what will happen, going forward, to this venerable place as it struggles to modernise without killing itself.  It's simply not my look-out anymore.  I have to let go.

But I look at the big, bountiful shapes of trees, cushiony with foliage, delicate with their many-textures of leaves large and small and bark silken or rough; I smell the perfume drifting down from the lindens as they flower in the midsummer warmth; I see the Rose Garden at last really come into its own, six years after being completely replanted; I talk to people I'm fond of, people I've never told how much I like them; I listen to their sense of humour, I laugh and hear their laughter rolling along with mine.  And I miss everything that has been good about Kew.

I won't miss the stress; I have to be honest about that.  I won't miss some of the really arcane and circuitous decision-making practices, either, or the frankly lousy internal comms.  I won't miss waiting in fear to see if the next difficult, business-essential round of cuts will hit me.  But I will miss the place, I will miss knowing I'm contributing to something of real value in the world, and I will miss the people. 

Well, very soon now my life is my own again, to do with as I will.  And who knows what the future holds?  Not me.

My week in Crete, last month, was so blissful and restful that I'm sorely tempted to do it again.  There are (unsurprisingly) some very good special offers around at the moment for trips to Greece.  I'm sure foreign tourism is too important to the Hellenic economy for them to risk anything impacting on visitors from overseas.  I would take cash with me because I always do take cash anyway.  And I could be sitting on a terrace somewhere with a good book, with a long swim in the sea already done and a good supper of fish and salad to come, putting all this behind me for a week.  I know my few hundred quid of spending money is a microscopic drop in the ocean of the Hellene economic woes, but it would still make a tiny scrap of the difference to the individual restaurants and cafes and shops where I spent it.  And I would have sun on my back and pine trees to walk under, the sea to swim in, and  xiphias and sinagridha and horiatikisalata to eat and a glass of good wine or two. 

On the which note, it's extremely silly of me, but I'm enormously encouraged to discover that the person in charge of the Greek Government's economic negotiations at the moment is Euclid Tsakalotos.  I heard him mentioned on the radio a couple of mornings back and did a double take, and stood in the kitchen with a mouthful of cereal, and a silly grin spreading across my face as I listened.

A long time ago - a very long time! - I used to deal with him in my then job; he was an economics lecturer at UKC, and I was the economics buyer at the Uiversity bookshop.  He was a nice man, always courteous and helpful, and friendly, even to a shopgirl like me (he was also terribly ornamental - I had a dreadful crush on him).  I'm very happy he went into politics.  The world needs politicians who have some empathy with people who work in dull jobs.  I know it's completely idiotic of me, but I do feel reassured now I know that he's working on something so vitally important, for a place I love so much. 

Go well and good luck, sir!

And there's another one gone...

I’ve just been downstairs bidding goodbye to Briskwoman, from Kew Foundation (the fundraising arm). Briskwoman is going to be missed – she’s retiring, and has put in above and beyond the call of duty, so one cannot begrudge her her retirement, but she is one of those completely direct people who aren’t afraid to call a spade a spade, and every large organisation needs a few of them. The first time I met her she scared me stiff! – which is a perfect example of why one should always be prepared to move on past a bad first impression.

Her current boss, Moustachioman, made a little speech and tried manfully to disguise a gift-wrapped Kew Gardens flowerpot as a lampshade by waving it about upside down. Everyone who retires here seems to get a flowerpot. In another twenty years, maybe I’ll get one, who knows?

The more serious part of the retirement present from her team wasn’t ready yet, but merely being told it was coming made her jaw drop. They’ve commissioned a painting by Rachel Pedder-Smith for her. In botanical art terms, this is the equivalent of being given a small Matisse.

Happy retirement, Briskwoman, and go well! – you’ve deserved it.

Anyway, I’ve said goodbye and had a glass of Cava and rather more cake and strawberries than were good for me, and come back to the office to print off some letters which I’ll get into the post tomorrow, and now I’m off home, into the bouncy-breezed evening. Sunshine and wind and wild banks of dark cloud are dancing by outside; Mad March weather indeed.

I’m not quite sure why, but I have been fearfully tired this week – the clocks going forward last Sunday seem to have thrown me rather. What a wimp, eh?! At least now it is officially spring. The Gardens are full of early cherry blossom, though this wind will be playing havoc with it, and outside the Orangery is a carpet of Chionodoxa siehei in flower, like cobalt blue paint spilled across the grass. And the air smells sweet, of petals and honey and the first grass-mowing of the year. Spring is heaven.

Friday the 19th, already...

My goodness, how time whips by.
I'm rather embarrassed by my last entry - what a dismal soul I am sometimes, all scratchy and ranting. Proper grumpy little miss, in fact.
Very tired today, with back ache and period pain, and not much sleep after getting home after midnight from "Don Giovanni" to find the house full of people who wanted to talk... to me... Lovely, except I'd prefer to be popular at 10.30 than 12.30 pm! Then tonight is the leaving "do" of my colleague and dear friend Julie, who is going off to do a Phd, half in Durham and half in The Gambia. I'm going to miss her dreadfully, though I know she is going to have a much happier time using her brain to research control measures for the flies that transmit trachoma than she has done answering 'phones at Kew. Our loss is, hopefully, medical science's gain. Well, medical science in the eventual long-term, anyway. Initially just scientific knowledge about flies and their habits. I'm being very decorous here - her field trips are going to involve collecting large amounts of human excrement, so I probably ought to be making all the crap jokes I can. Anyway, I'm going to miss her and want to give her a good send-off. But then I have a free weekend, whoopee...
Which means some R&R, a nice long walk in the park, and some painting.
I started some more greetings cards, with stars and what were meant to be angels. The angels came out rather hefty and, frankly, menacing looking. Since I do not accept that idea that angels are the Almighty's vigilante force, I will have to work back into them again, thoroughly, probably using a lot of glitter, coloured ink washes and maybe snippets of collage. The stars, and some swirling patterns like spiral galaxies, are rather effective, though. I am running out of blank cards, which is a problem, but I'm sure I can track more down somewhere.
I think I will have to add it onto my list of tips for stimulating one's creativity; buy a box of blank greetings cards. The fact that one sees some progress, and so quickly, with card after card suddenly having colours and images on it, is exciting and inspiring.