A QUARTERLY MAGAZINE FOR RAF FAMILIES
IN TIME S A T TITCH
Finding a job that moves with you... The search for an occupation that fits your criteria... Always difficult when you are married to someone in the Services. Here Susie Gibbs shares her solution.
hus I find myself placing increasingly corny adverts in different parish magazines, HIVE circulars, local
papers, corner shop windows... When my husband first joined the RAF, I was working as a freelance editor in the world of children’s publishing.
Then we joined the RAF – neither the babies nor the peripatetic lifestyle of a Service wife suited a career of freelance editing. Having had a fantastic career in publishing, I felt a) nervous of trying something new, especially after a few years of not working at all, b) seriously in need of a creative outlet (other than my two gorgeous children, obviously!) and c) I selfishly craved an area that was mine and separate from family life...
I cast around for something else to bring in some extra pennies. It is said that everybody has the potential for three different careers. Well, publishing was No1 – now it was time for No 2.
The criteria were simple... no set hours, working from home, no capital outlay, no huge bits of machinery, nothing that takes too long to train for, something I’m interested in, something I’m good at, not working with children (!), weekends, evenings and school holidays off, time off
14 Envoy Summer 2011
to walk the dog, go food shopping, clean the house (actually, I think I could waive that one) and do all the administrative stuff involved in moving every other year (or less)... and, obviously, something that’s adaptable to constant relocation, possibly overseas. I looked at lots of things but nothing really inspired me. Then, almost by chance, the most obvious thing came to me. I love mending things – making old things live longer (do you think this will apply to my husband?). I also have a great love of old books. So... put them together and you get: mending books! Yes!
Steeling myself to some time on the net, I googled book repair, mending, conservation, preservation, binding, restoration... and learnt lots of things I didn’t know. For example, did you know that if you send off your favourite book to be ‘restored’, it will come back returned to the glory of its first outing from the printer and perhaps a bit of a stranger?
‘Preservation’ is something else again – it aims simply to stop things deteriorating further and often involves creating a box to house the book safely. But book ‘conservation’ – now, this sounded a bit more practical – right up my street in fact; ‘treating a book to improve its condition and function.’ Treatments range from a ‘cloth re-back’, where the spine of the book
is undone, sometimes re-sewn, re-glued and re-built (you wouldn’t believe how many components constitute a decent spine!), to feeding thirsty, cracked old covers with lovely soothing leather dressing, to taking tiny bits of Japanese tissue (it has exceptionally long, strong fibres) and pasting them on to damaged areas.
So, the Next Step. We peered into the depths of our diminishing resources and found some funds to pay for a three day course at a lovely place called Assington Mill in Suffolk.* The ‘serving member ’ excelled himself by looking after two small boys while I was away. The course was terrific and I came home invigorated and excited by my new skills, ready to attack various of our old (and new) books with gusto. A couple of months (and quite of lot of practice) later, I returned to Assington for the Improver ’s Course which took my skills a level further.
Now for the crunch. Dare I take my scalpel and glue to Someone Else’s Book? And charge them for it? Starting with four books belonging to a friend’s father (to whom I am eternally grateful for trusting me), they began to trickle in. Hurray! A huge old Bible that my neighbour found being used as a doorstop in an antiques shop came next, followed by a very old dictionary belonging to my Pilates teacher. Pilates
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