The Night My £50,000 Celebration Became a Six-Year Argument
Or, How to Put Yourself First (if you're a woman) and Still Stay Married.
The night I won over £50,000 in PhD funding—one of only 7 creative writing PhDs funded across the entire UK that year—I booked a babysitter and a table at a country pub to celebrate.
I’d spent six months perfecting my 500-word application. The reward was over £100 per word. A friend in the poetry world had heard someone say, “There is NO WAY they’re funding Ros Barber. She just isn’t good enough.”
But they did fund me.
My husband, Paul, had fallen ill with chronic fatigue. It was his relapse, the first time he was well enough to take a new contract, that made me realise I’d have to step up. The relapse was worse than the initial illness. A ten-minute walk was too much for him. A ten-minute conversation would exhaust him for 24 hours. He couldn’t get up and down stairs without a stick. I realised it was likely that he’d never work again. I needed to up my game and my earning potential. So I’d come up with a very amb…
