What Counts as Work?

I’ve come to the conclusion that we all have different definitions of what the word ‘work’ means. Traditionally it’s meant being paid for your time to fulfil tasks for your employer – being rewarded for working 9-5. Until the last few decades most people would have been involved in some sort of manual work in the agricultural or manufacturing sectors. Since the 1980s our economy has pivoted to becoming more of a service oriented economy, although sometimes we seem to forget that we are still the 9th biggest manufacturing country in the world.

When people ask if I’ve got bored over the last five weeks of being off work, I am able to truthfully tell them that I haven’t. It is true that I cancelled everything in August and a lot of the things I had planned in September, mainly because I was told that until the operation I would be operating at 60% of my normal capacity. That was certainly the case initially, although as I type this I feel perfectly normal.

So how have I filled my time? Surprisingly, I haven’t been glued to the TV screen, apart from when the Olympics were on. I have read quite a lot and finished three books. I’m currently half way through Norman Fowler’s diaries of the Thatcher government, but have also completed the Tim Shipman ‘No Way Out’ book, Andrew Pierce’s book on finding his birth mother and Nadhim Zahawi’s memoir. All three recommended!

But also, and this is relevant to the opening paragraph, I’ve been writing more of my short biography of Margaret Thatcher, due to be delivered by the end of the year, and published in June 2025. It will have fourteen chapters and I’ve nearly finished the 6th. By the time I return to the airwaves on Monday 16 September I hope to have completed at least another two, or maybe three. Some of my friends have remonstrated and told me I should be completely resting, and not doing any work whatsoever. The thing is, I don’t regard it as work. Just as I don’t regard packing up books for Politicos and sending them out as work. It’s more like therapy. Just as I don’t regard recording podcasts as work. I took a break from podcasting for August, but I have now recorded two ‘For the Many’ podcasts. Again, I don’t see this as work. People say, well if you can do that, why aren’t you back doing your radio show already? Doing a three hour radio show requires much more brain input than an hour long podcast, I can assure you, but in addition, once the operation has taken place, I’ll have to have another week off to recover. The doctors say two, but they tell me that is if the patient has an active or heavy job. I don’t, so a week should be OK – well, it’s nine days actually.

I’m very lucky in that I do work that I enjoy and have never really regarded it as work in the traditional sense. I have only ever had one job where I’d constantly look at my watch wondering how long it would be before I could decently leave and go home.

So think of me on Friday. I’ve got to arrive at Benenden Hospital by 7am. Assuming it all goes well, I’ll be able to go home at the end of the day. They will use keyhole surgery to remove my gall bladder, and I’ll be under a general anaesthetic for ninety minutes. A lot of people who have had this operation have been in touch with varying advice and tales of their own experiences, for which I am grateful.