An Autobiography in Blog Posts: IV. Oxford Redux. | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

A picture of our house from the back garden

And here’s the last installment

So we left to England, ostensibly for 9 months, but I had plans and schemes and dreams… and hoped never to live in America again. We were all excited, including the girls who loved and laughed and wept and thrilled and chilled over Harry Potter.

We went to Manchester in 2004, where Roy was a distinguished visiting fellow at the University of Manchester for a year. It was a lovely interlude. We arrived with 8 suitcases, and so housekeeping was easy. Then Roy visited America, and returned with 2 suitcases–housekeeping a little harder–and then, the shipment he’d sent arrived. Never again got on top of things. Lesson: Declutter, declutter, declutter—and housework is easy. I still have weekly decluttering sessions—as I have been doing for the last four years!!

We lived in Didsbury, Manchester, and found a good welcoming church, Ivy Manchester, and a good school, Didsbury C of E: an oasis of a year, friendly, open people, and lots of reading and writing.

And then Roy got another dream fellowship—an inter-disciplinary fellowship from the US National Science Foundation, to study a new discipline, anywhere he liked.

And well (of course) we picked Oxford—the Mathematical Institute at Oxford University, where he studied Mathematical Biology.

And then he was offered a chair, a Professorship of Applied Mathematics at the University of Birmingham in 2006.

And I flatly refused to move to Birmingham.

I had found a dream house where we still live, in Oxford, which I love. “Have no interest in Birmingham, won’t live there,” I said, dreading another 12 years in a place in which I’d rather not live. So, Roy sadly shrugged and agreed to commute.

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And so I buy the dream house, though, after using the proceeds from our house in America as a down payment, the mortgage was six times Roy’s then salary. And we put both girls in an expensive all girls’ private school, Oxford High school.

And so I guess for the first time in my life, I needed to work to finance this expensive life-style we had committed ourselves too.

So, were these two financial decisions, the too expensive house and the too expensive school errors?

Lol! I don’t know if I would recommend them to anyone else. But as Roy will tell you with great sorrow, I can be a bit of a holy fool where money is concerned. You see, I truly believe that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, that he is a loving father, that he will release money for the home which is just right for a family; the school which is just right for children. (Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t turn to me to me for financial advice. Or, perhaps you should!)

* * *

I am convinced that God has a sense of humour. He always has the last laugh.

In Williamsburg, where I was bored and lacking stimulation and full of self-pity, I was able to read and write (albeit not very much since I was depressed). In Oxford, one of the most literary cities in the world, for the first 3.5 years in business, I was not able to read or write, because I was consumed by business. Yeah, have done more reading and literary writing in Williamsburg, Virginia, than in literary Oxford, England, irony of ironies.

(Come on, Lord, this is not humour. This is irony! What are you trying to teach me? To rely on you alone for the fulfilment of my dreams?  And well, if heartbreak be the pencil to teach me that, then heartbreak is worth it. )

 I did however join Writers in Oxford, a social organization founded by Philip Pullman, yeah, 140 writers, and went to fortnightly drinks parties and social events, including one he hosted. Met several interesting, stimulating writers. Going there reminded me that I wanted to be a writer—ontologically wasa writer–and sometimes made me cry that I was not writing.

Ironically this September, I decided to focus on my blogging and writing, and so each evening became precious, and I dropped out. “Mum, why have you dropped out of Writers in Oxford now that you’ve become a real writer?” Zoe asks. Yeah, one can never get conceited in this family!!

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I didn’t think I could raise the kind of money I needed in a salaried job, and since I needed serious money, I decided to start a business. We are natural entrepreneurs, and have always been toying with ideas for businesses. I thought having a bookshop would be so cool, so I founded an online one, selling antiquarian books.

Well, the romance of books never died for me, even over that exhausting 14 months, though my hands quite literally gave out with all that typing, pricing and repricing.

Eventually we transitioned from working hard to working smart. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad (which stresses the importance of creating assets which keep giving, rather than working for a salary, which gets spent up and needs to be re-earned). And The Lazy Man’s Guide to Riches which stresses that the way to work smart in business is to leverage your time, your money, your talents, or your products (create books or iPads which sell millions of times over through third parties, rather than sell thousands of Apple’s iPads…)

So I decided to found a publishing company and publish the best of the antiquarian books I was selling. Okay, founding business #2, while running business #1=exhaustion. I would talkabout my life, and cry, like a silly weepy woman, which I then was.

My predominant thought in the maelstrom of the complexities of publishing was, “I just want life to be easier” though I knew it should be “I just want Jesus.” That was the greatest period of stress I’ve ever known–financial stress, work stress, and health stress, since my immune system unhelpfully buckled, and I developed a stress-related illness, now cured. It’s given me a great understanding and sympathy for other people in financial stress.

* * *

Yes, yes, it’s getting high time for this dire tale to have a fairy tale ending, and thankfully it does. 15 months into publishing, we got our break with an author which did well, and we paid off our business loan, and were well into profit.

We thought we would stop publishing and go back to Math and writing, but in early 2009, a hugely popular BBC serial, The Victorian Farm kept mentioning a poetic, long out of print Victorian Farming manual called The Book of the Farm. I read that every second-hand copy available was snapped up even as the credits rolled on the first evening.

Roy said, “Let’s publish it.” I said, “But we have retired from publishing. We are going to be a writer and a mathematician again. Remember?” Roy who, like me, is an entrepreneur at heart, said, “Let’s publish it!” And so we did.

Magical days! I had been praying for a conservatory since October. We were quoted £21,000 for a classy one. Didn’t have a penny extra, but still prayed faithfully. We published this three volume book in mid-Jan, sold hundreds, then thousands of copies, and signed a contract for that 30 square metre, sunny, four season longed-for conservatory in February. It is my favourite room, my proof that miracles do happen.

Irene’s (in red) 12th birthday party in our conservatory

The business grew rapidly!! “It’s like being on a fast-moving train,” a friend who worked with us said. We got a group of 12 friends from church and Oxford to work with us, some full, some part time. And in July 2010, Roy at last retired from mathematics–obsessive, consuming work so incompatible with family life (so much like, err… err… serious writing!) and decided to run the company, and the home, and the children, and well, me, if he could! And I gradually stopped working in the business.

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Taking up writing again was not easy. I had got out of the habit, had forgotten what was in my book.

I had “churts,” church-related hurts at church, which talking to other friends who’ve left (okay, not a reliable control group) was indeed toxic for them too. I had led three Bible studies there, and while leading one fell out my co-leader and the Rector’s wife, and was unfairly and sadistically untreated. The sadness and anger caused a kind of creative paralysis, and so, unable to start writing again, I mechanically went on working in the business and making money, past the point at which we needed it to pay bills.

The sadness of not using that one talent which is death to hide was affecting my health. My wonderful GP referred me to an NHS therapist who thought she could break the writers’ block in 5 sessions. In fact, it took 4.

* * *

On a walk on a beach in Royan, France, I felt God calling me to blog, and I have always felt God’s blessing on it, though I don’t know what he is going to do with it.

And, not fully aware of how many people in that church were following my blog through our facebook friendships, I wrote a series of satires on church leaders who are ambitious, cynical, manipulative, ego-driven, neurotic, insecure, concerned with growth over shepherding. It was called “The Screwtape Lectures,” and Screwtape advises his acolytes to do the very things I had observed.

“You are saying we run the church as the Devil would advise?” the priest asked me in shock. Well, actually, Screwtape was (and satire needs exaggeration to work). I am told not to blog about the church if I want to stay, even in the form of allegory!!

And so three years after I should have made that decision, I decide to leave.  A vicar I know through blogging wrote to me, “à la Elijah, ‘You’re likely to starve there. Time to move on to somewhere safe.’

I moved to a normal healthy church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford .

I found a lovely supportive group of kind, intelligent, educated,  successful women, a group I am now co-leading. I felt happy in both this group and our couples’ group. And desperately wished I had left that unhappy toxic church three years earlier. Though I do believe in the value of desert experiences, and being in the wrong place at the right time.

Who is this who comes out of the desert leaning on her beloved? (Song of Songs 8:5).  My desert experience in that chaotic, badly run Charismatic church deepened my relationship with Christ. I spent more time with him in the anonymous quietness of the desert, and got to know him and hear his voice far more clearly.

Challenges ahead: Creatively, to learn to combine blogging and literary writing. Physically: by exercise and healthy eating to recover the physical health which has been compromised over several sedentary, stressful years. Emotionally and spiritually, I am happy after several turbulent years, and for that I am grateful!!