My Life Story
Adult Life and Career
Part II
After my secondment in 1989, I had a break from studying to adjust to my new role on the support services in West Kent and Mid Kent, serving a huge variety of schools with different atmospheres, staff and social dynamics. Some were very challenging and not very welcoming, but on the whole I managed to establish relationships in them and thankfully they mostly valued my input and advice. It usually took a little while, as teachers are notorious for not wanting to accept advice, particularly from those younger than them! It was important to discuss what they had tried first rather than just offering advice and strategies, some which may possibly work and others which may not.
I started my MA in 1992 and, as I made my first journey to Canterbury, I distinctly remember hearing on the radio that the Church of England was going to allow, if not welcome, women priests. These journeys were not easy, as I was trying to organise the girls by remote control and I worried about them getting home. It was a long way from Tunbridge Wells to Canterbury each Wednesday evening. Again, I am not sure how I managed it. I bought a mobile phone to enable contact, but this was a source of great ridicule from Peter and his relatives. However, it gave me a sense of security even though it was as heavy as a brick and didn’t often work.
Peter was never very keen on me doing an MA, for the reasons already specified, so he was not very encouraging. He thought that it was a waste of time, pointless and too demanding for me. However, when I graduated eventually in 1995, we went to Canterbury Cathedral for the ceremony and he apologised to me for not having been more supportive. My dad came too, but Debbie refused to come. She never wanted to go back to Canterbury after we once returned home from a shopping trip to find our lovely cat, Sally, missing and later dead under a neighbour’s caravan. Sophie, her sister, grieved for a while but settled to life on her own.
Before I even graduated, I had enrolled on a counselling course in the evening, with a view to a possible change of career. It replaced my Wednesdays in Canterbury and was much more local in Tonbridge. It was easier to manage, although there were weekly assignments. I was looking for a change of direction and I enjoyed the course.
It was on one of these evenings that we heard about the horrific shooting at a school in Dunblane. This event changed security arrangements in schools completely. Until then anyone was able to walk into schools and classrooms freely.
I remember an incident at Hadlow when an estranged parent, known to be violent, walked into my classroom and tried to take his daughter. As he approached, I quickly sent a sensible child to bring the headteacher or deputy, but before they came I managed to talk him out of it, witnessed by all the children. It was a very stressful experience. I adopted a friendly manner and I think that helped. The little girl clearly did not want to go as she made no attempt to get up. Unsurprisingly, she had a lot of problems, was extremely disruptive, very taxing and challenging for all in the class.
On the strength of my MA, I managed to change my job, although I was not shortlisted at first for the Preschool Adviser post for which I applied. I was extremely disappointed, but the upside was that I could keep my school holidays. As I had coveted this post for years, I rang up and spoke to the senior person involved, asking why I had not been shortlisted when I felt that I met all the criteria. She admitted that the shortlisting process was crude but didn’t really give me a reason.
Some weeks later another, lower grade post was advertised involving membership of a different team. I applied for it as did a number of other applicants. I was later told that I did extremely well at the interview. I had done a lot of preparation for the more senior role and I think that helped.
At a subsequent event the senior manager approached me and asked me if I would be interested in the acting post as the Preschool Advisor for West and Mid Kent. I made an instinctive response and said “No thank you”. I was quite happy with what I’d been offered and I would still get my school holidays. She mentioned the pay increase but I repeated that I was happy. My holidays have always been very important to me! She then offered me the post with the school holidays, so I accepted. Unbeknown to me the successful applicant overheard and was furious! She had been part of the second interviewing panel. We were colleagues on the same level. Fortunately we got on well, and made a good team as we had different strengths. We were friends for a while, until we both went for the same post and she was appointed. Again, I was very relieved as, due to yet another reorganisation, I may have been without a job.
She never really forgave me for my better terms, even when I was appointed to a substantive post. Unfortunately she saw me as a rival. This was quite a stressful period, because I’m not very competitive and I didn’t really want her job.
I enjoyed the work, but colleagues thought that I was set up to fail, managing two large areas of Kent and working between two offices. Colleagues in other services also told me that it was an unmanageable job, but I did manage it fortunately, and gained some kudos as I was thought to be a huge improvement on my predecessor. My biggest regret from this period is that I was not able to accept an invitation to sit on the adoption committee, because I was feeling very pressured at work with enormous caseloads, disgruntled staff to manage (one had been demoted) and the logistics of working in two offices miles apart. There was no flexible working in those days apart from sometimes being able to take paperwork home.
I made sure that I took holidays, often on my own as Pete did not have school holidays. During this time, he gained new experiences in travelling to the States and loved that aspect of his work. He flew business class and had a chauffeur to the airport, but given our backgrounds he would have preferred to drive himself to the airport, travel economy and use the cash for a family holiday!
I was appointed by my former friend to a substantive post in East Kent. I did well at the interview and I think she couldn’t turn me down. However, she refused to pay me as much as I had been getting in an acting post. HR advised me of this in a bcc email, but I missed it as I was between posts. I spent my holiday trying to to devise an exit strategy by doing a course in Bromley on Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
I stuck the post out for four years, but it was a stressful period as my manager was always trying to trip me up. She acknowledged my skills, but resented my popularity and the compliments I received from others. She bullied people, so was not very popular and the staff were scared of her. I dealt with it as best I could but in hindsight, I don’t think I handled it very well.
I became unwell; a huge cyst was diagnosed on my pancreas. For the next two years, my manager was always trying to prove I was not fit for work, although occupational health disagreed, and I continued working full-time for another 11 years. One day a friend asked me how much more of this I was going to take. That was a turning point. HR had said they couldn’t change her management style, even though there were so many problems in our small department with several others as well as me.
I embarked on a search for a new post. I was well known across Kent by then and I secured a new post working back in schools with some former colleagues. It was across the Sevenoaks and Swanley areas and nearer to home, albeit at a lower salary. Some months later, yet another reorganisation took place with three interviews in two days and I was back in Early Years. On the support services we frequently had to reapply for our jobs. These processes took months with “consultations”, were very stressful and extremely expensive. They seemed to be a weeding-out exercise as most staff were reappointed, eventually if not initially. However, in this reorganisation, my fourth in 13 years, my former manager was out of a job.
During this period, the girls did their exams and both started university. Gill went to Durham and Debbie, St Andrews, the latter opening up a whole new world in Scotland for us.
Peter was under threat of redundancy in 1995 and had to go to work in Hertfordshire. He didn’t want to move the family there, saying that several people had done this and then been made redundant. The girls were doing A-levels and GCSEs at the time. He therefore commuted which often took over two hours each way in the rush-hour.
My dad was not well at the beginning of 1996. At first the symptoms were vague, but he gradually declined. I was told that he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor downstairs. He was sipping water through a straw and was in a great deal of pain, unable to go upstairs to the toilet.
I decided to go up to Hull and just made the last train on a Friday night after work. I was shocked at what I found. Mavis, a very close family friend, was with him. The GP had visited and had prescribed strong painkillers, but apparently did not seem to have any idea what was wrong. I called an ambulance, but, when it arrived, the crew said that they could not take him into hospital, because he had someone with him and he had seen the GP that day. I protested, saying that Mavis was just visiting and that I could not stay as I was only there for the weekend.
They eventually took him to Hull Royal infirmary where he waited for hours on a trolley. He described the pain with difficulty, pointing to his stomach and his back. No further investigations were done, but I was told to take him home as an “elderly person with back pain is better in their own home”. I was livid and told them that, although I frequently experienced back pain, I had never ever heard my dad complain of it. I said that if he went home, my dad would be alone as I had to go back to Kent. This seemed to help, although it was a lie: I would never have left him in that state.
He was admitted to what was then referred to as a “geriatric ward”. The sister on the ward was shocked that no further investigations had been made and arranged for tests, including an X-ray. Fortunately, these were done quickly and showed that my dad had a rapidly perforating bowel. He was given emergency surgery as time was short.
Fortunately, he survived the operation, but it was not without its traumas as I thought that he had been brain-damaged. I regretted having consented to the operation because he would not have wanted to live like that. He recognised me, but he thought that he was a child and he repeatedly removed his oxygen mask which was taxing for everyone. When I told him that I lived in Kent, he wanted to know why on earth I had gone there! I could not really answer that question! Thank goodness things improved, as the drugs he had been given eventually proved to be responsible for the delirium and confusion.
In 1997, I successfully applied to be part of a “Canadian Exchange” between Kent and Ontario. It was more of a shadowing experience, which many colleagues had enjoyed in previous years. I was paired with Cath, who held a similar position to mine, and her husband Bob, also a teacher. Cath and Bob were very welcoming and I had a fabulous time, both socially and in learning about the Canadian education system upon which I had to write a dissertation. Cath and Bob visited us, at our very much smaller house, the following year. Suffice to say that it was very successful and we followed it up with several more visits.
My godmother died in 1997. I had to arrange the funeral as she did not have any children. I had also been arranging care homes for her after a neighbour had organised her urgent admittance to a very inappropriate one. I remember having to discuss the whole thing from a school secretary’s office with half the staff listening; my mobile phone must not have been working. Auntie Phyllis changed homes three times in four years. I was left some money, so we used that in 1998 to put a deposit on a flat for Peter in Hertfordshire.
I did apply for the post of head of Early Years in Hertfordshire, but by then we were getting used to our own space, working hard in the week and doing lovely things most weekends. I was shortlisted to the last two, but they made the right decision in taking their internal candidate in the end, since we did not have nursery schools in Kent at that time and I would have lacked credibility with the head teachers. As I became ill shortly afterwards, things actually worked out quite well, although it took a while before I realised this.
While Auntie Phyllis was alive, her solicitor was responsible for her money and I took responsibility for her care. It was a big ask from a distance and, when it transpired that the solicitor had stolen her money, it turned into a nightmare. I had had my suspicions and had discussed them with a local solicitor, but he reassured me that it would be highly unlikely that there was a problem. Peter and I embarked on a campaign to get the money back for her beneficiaries. The law firm was mortified that this had happened, so they did compensate us. The solicitor pleaded that he was unfit for trial so it didn’t go to court, but he was struck off.
A very memorable holiday was a cruise to the Caribbean in 2001. We “pushed the boat out” and treated ourselves between our 50th birthdays. The cruise was on a tall ship, the Royal Clipper, so it was indeed special. Pete, who did not particularly care for heights, uncharacteristically decided to climb the mast. I was quite nervous, so I tried to dissuade him in case he got cold feet halfway up! I don’t know whether it was “Dutch courage” after a glass of wine but he really enjoyed it. This cruise was just after 9/11 so a lot of Americans had cancelled and the ship was only half full. We visited many islands and had a wonderful time.
We spent quite a lot of time visiting our parents in Yorkshire. Peter’s mum died in 2000, after a couple of years in a care home following a stroke. My dad died in 2005 from lung cancer. I visited him in Hull almost every weekend. It was the end of an era when all our parents were gone.
Pete had a health scare (prostate cancer) and it was then he decided that he wanted to buy a place in Dartmouth for me to live, in case anything happened to him. He thought that it was an ideal location. He was absolutely right, but it did take me a little while to come round to the idea. We already had the flat in Hertfordshire, and we had bought a flat in St Andrews which we also hugely enjoyed and where we had thought about retiring.
Weekends were very busy. The girls had both graduated and were living with our friends Gillian and David in London, although at separate times. Gill met Tom in 2000 and they married in 2006, in Birling. By then Debbie was engaged to Ewen and they married the following year, in Scotland. Their stories to tell. Peter and I always considered ourselves very fortunate to have such lovely sons-in-law.
In 2006, we found a flat in central Dartmouth after quite a long search. It was a lovely flat and we gradually had building work done and furnished it to our liking. We were very pleased with it and enjoyed living in it, although there was no outside space and parking was difficult. Also in that year we had a special holiday on the Rocky Mountaineer train with our Canadian friends, Cath and Bob.
© 2026 A L Blundred