Doubt ate my words so the first version of this went in the bin. I was worried about the self-pity, you see. Here’s a second try. Hope it’s better.

Five years ago the newspaper where I’d worked for 27 years made me redundant; many tiles have been blown off that roof. My first dislodged year was spent freelancing. Although I was paid for writing features, you couldn’t call it a living. So I started two part-time jobs, one in newspaper production and the other as a journalism lecturer.

With the freelancing, occasional lecturing at another university, bits of copywriting and editing, life was thinner but OK. Now my two main jobs are going, bringing back memories of that first redundancy.

I’ve known about the editing job for a while, as the contract I work on isn’t being renewed. The possibility of other work has been mentioned, but everything has been pushed back by Covid-19.

It is the loss of the main university job that stings. That’s because I never thought I could stand in front of a roomful of students and do that job, but I did and loved it.

I did half-worry that Chief Inspector Course might interrupt a lecture one day and ask what I was doing in there.

I am from the proper lecturing police and would like you to accompany me to the academic station…

Here are some snatched images from four years of teaching…

One creative writing student on a feature writing module wants to jump ship to English. The course she is on isn’t for her, she says, but mine is the only module where she’d learned anything useful all year. I go home with a glow that day.

I like your class best because you get to write a lot, is a common line from students across those four years.

It is good when students grow in confidence. Some write great pieces because they are smart and work hard; some write great pieces because you’ve shown them how to.

It isn’t all encouraging. Some students sit and natter to their friends during lectures; or they don’t turn up half the time and then throw a massive hissy fit about their portfolio deadline, shouting, crying and shoving a wheeled chair across the room at speed.

Well, that only happened the once but it was quite the scene.

Universities are struggling and I half-suspected it might be over. The end was still a shock . It came in a brief phone call: nothing personal, it’s not about your work, everybody likes you, the other lecturers like you, the students like you.

“I’ve worked with you and I like you,” the man making the call said. Two minutes later he rang off, and that was that. Apart from an email from the HR department – “Hi Julian, please find attached a letter about your contract not being renewed.”

On Twitter you will often find a thread from academics, usually but not always young, about the casual nature of their work, the lack of security, strung along on annual contracts, promised this and promised that.

My experience of teaching for a university was positive and enjoyable, until it ended in the blink of an accountant’s eye, without a thought for where that leaves me. Even small cogs have feelings, you know.

I do not remotely claim to be an academic, just someone who likes to teach; someone who writes often and enjoys showing others how to improve their writing; just a man who bats words around and has a life’s worth of wordy tips and tricks up what threatens soon to be his frayed sleeve.

If you hear of any work suitable for an ageing man of words, a page-designing, article-writing, blog-pushing lecturing man, do let me know.

At the moment I am feeling fairly useless, to be honest. Drifting towards the end of next month and wondering what happens when we go over that waterfall. I always think something will turn up, fate will provide, but sometimes even a foolish optimist can see the limits of cheerful buoyancy.