Secret Diary Club: When you find out you are "redundant"

A final afternoon at my university desk, receiving the news, and a typical day from 'when it was good' in 2018

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Welcome to the Secret Diary Club!

This week’s three behind-the-scenes entries include my first visit to my university office since I got my redundancy notification, the day the news landed, and a June day six years ago to give a flavour of how having this job — as important as the income has been to me — has made it hard to write books.

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Grab a coffee, a herbal tea, or a proper British cuppa, and have a nose!

Friday July 12th

[Extract]

Context: Usually I journal in the mornings, so I’m writing about the day before. I was delivering a conference paper to the Marlowe Society of America on the morning of Friday 12th but the day before, I had spent the afternoon in my office at Goldsmiths for the first time since discovering I am being made redundant as part of huge cuts to the department of English and Creative Writing, where the majority of senior staff are being axed.