A Job for Life
To have the same job for 70 years is beyond remarkable – sure, the money looks good and the accommodation is second to none – but there’s a human quality to be greatly admired in being able to stick at something which carries such huge responsibility for such a long time. There used to be a phrase, not much used these days, ‘a job for life’. And when your job becomes your life, it stops being a job – it just becomes an extension to your life, and the characteristics and attributes for doing that job become the characteristics and attributes for living a life and vice versa. And what’s interesting about being a head of state is that you sort of have to create your own job, you’ll have to find the love within it and the reasons for sticking at it. There’ll be protocols to follow, traditions to uphold, people to meet and events you don’t particularly want to attend, but pretty much everything is down to what you put in – and what you put in is what you get out.
The Queen has set such a good example – she may not set the rules (but she most certainly hasn’t broken them!) and to have worked with what she’s been presented with, particularly these last few years of both national and personal hardship, there is much she has given to her job which is be admired – the respect she has put in is an indication of the respect she receives in return. Those small, incremental, almost imperceptible, changes and improvements to our world she and her husband have made are testament to a light touch influence and the connection she has with the people over which she rules.
We’re lucky to have the head of state we have, there are others around the World whose touch is not so light, their connection with their citizens tenuous and one-sided – there’ll be no voluntary street parties in Moscow any day soon. So, this is a weekend we should celebrate not just the Queen’s staying power, but the ability she has demonstrated in doing a job well – even one she never applied for.
Work (What are we set on earth for? …) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil –
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,
For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines,
And Death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines.
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand,
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God’s grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimmning cup, may stand.
And share its dew-drop with another near.
Richard Coles (no connection) is a multi-talented chap – pop-star, presenter, parson – and now a job which doesn’t start with ‘P’ – as a novelist his first venture into storytelling is the much anticipated ‘Murder Before Evensong’ and we have plenty of our Coles Signed 1st Editions of Coles’s First Edition! There are tales of bravery and there are the tales of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, the story of Servicewomen who always put themselves second, despite the danger they faced; we have more great novels from Sandra Newman and Johka Alharthi; we dive deep into the Ocean’s with National Geographic and Sylvia A. Earle; the portrait photography of Andy Gotts is, like his subjects, immediately recognisable and playful; the modern day dandy, Harry Styles is at his stylish best in Terry Newman’s new work; Chetna Makan and is adding the spice to the baking and we’ve added another couple of the wonderfully illustrated books by Robert Ingpen; the memoir of Esme Young, from the Great British Sewing Bee has been a runaway success and more signed editions arrived this week as did a number of John Nichol’s ‘Lancaster’, and as this is a weekend for celebrating the Queen, we thought we’d also celebrate a few Queens of the Silver Screen – Sharon Stone, Sally Fields and Sharon Gless share the stories of their working lives, and finally the memoir from the man behind Island Records, Chris Blackwell.
The complete Newsletter can be found HERE
