Hmm. I'm wide awake in The Far Out.
I need to neutralise some of this freedom shite from the content of this blog.
I'll do that by recalling my years of work.
I started work at 10 years old.
Helping my mother on the outdoor market stall we had in Cannock.
It was really cold in the winter.
I used to wear plastic bags on my feet to help keep them warm and fingerless gloves which had 'just come out'.
What a great invention!
Every Saturday I'd be on the market whilst my half-sister, The Beast,
would be at the home of her grandparents watching Saturday TV.
Even though, at the time, I'd rather have been watching Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
which aired between 1976 and 1982 and involved kids 'swapping' their stuff with others, in hindsight, I'm glad that I worked and didn't watch TV each Saturday, like what The Beast did, because working on the market taught me lots.
It taught me about work.
We'd arrive at the crack of dawn, get dropped off by Eric the Living Legend (my first step dad) in our bright yellow/orange VW van, put the rope up, erect the trellis,
get the boxes out, take the lids off the boxes, tidy the boxes, put the granny cardies up on the trellis with 'the pole', 'Where's the pole? Where's the fcking pole?' could often be heard coming from behind the Simon shirts and Honeysuckle jumpers, and yah, so working from such a young age taught me lots of things.
Like how to curse. Actually, I never used to swear. I was a really good kid.
This period in my life is probably where I got my gift of the gab.
Having to deal with customers and so on.
Mum also liked me being there because it meant she could go off and shag Fred on the records stall.
At the end of the day, the Living Legend would pick us up and we'd swing past his parent's house, which was next to a pig slaughterhouse (the smell was awful), pick up The Beast, squeeze into the front of the van, and go and get a Chinese Take-Away to eat once we got home, which was about a 45 mile drive away down the A38.
The A38, part of which is also known as the Devon Expressway, is a major A-classtrunk road in England.
I loved the smell in the van on a Saturday. Mum loved Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls and we'd sneak a couple of them out of the bag on the way home.
During the school holidays I'd go 'buying in' with mum and the Living Legend, which was usually to a wholesale place in Leicester.
I remember we were once invited to the home of one of the wholesalers - they were usually from Pakistan or India, indeed, my stepfather was half-Indian - and blimey, the house was a true mansion, really, an old Georgian mansion set in huge grounds.
Yep, there was, and is, a lot of money in wholesale clothes.
So that was my first job.
Enough for now.
Time to finish this beer.
I need to neutralise some of this freedom shite from the content of this blog.
I'll do that by recalling my years of work.
 |
| This is me at 10 |
I started work at 10 years old.
Helping my mother on the outdoor market stall we had in Cannock.
 |
| Cannock in 1965 |
I used to wear plastic bags on my feet to help keep them warm and fingerless gloves which had 'just come out'.
What a great invention!
Every Saturday I'd be on the market whilst my half-sister, The Beast,
Even though, at the time, I'd rather have been watching Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
which aired between 1976 and 1982 and involved kids 'swapping' their stuff with others, in hindsight, I'm glad that I worked and didn't watch TV each Saturday, like what The Beast did, because working on the market taught me lots.
It taught me about work.
We'd arrive at the crack of dawn, get dropped off by Eric the Living Legend (my first step dad) in our bright yellow/orange VW van, put the rope up, erect the trellis,
get the boxes out, take the lids off the boxes, tidy the boxes, put the granny cardies up on the trellis with 'the pole', 'Where's the pole? Where's the fcking pole?' could often be heard coming from behind the Simon shirts and Honeysuckle jumpers, and yah, so working from such a young age taught me lots of things.
Like how to curse. Actually, I never used to swear. I was a really good kid.
This period in my life is probably where I got my gift of the gab.
Having to deal with customers and so on.
Mum also liked me being there because it meant she could go off and shag Fred on the records stall.
At the end of the day, the Living Legend would pick us up and we'd swing past his parent's house, which was next to a pig slaughterhouse (the smell was awful), pick up The Beast, squeeze into the front of the van, and go and get a Chinese Take-Away to eat once we got home, which was about a 45 mile drive away down the A38.
The A38, part of which is also known as the Devon Expressway, is a major A-classtrunk road in England.
I loved the smell in the van on a Saturday. Mum loved Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls and we'd sneak a couple of them out of the bag on the way home.
During the school holidays I'd go 'buying in' with mum and the Living Legend, which was usually to a wholesale place in Leicester.
I remember we were once invited to the home of one of the wholesalers - they were usually from Pakistan or India, indeed, my stepfather was half-Indian - and blimey, the house was a true mansion, really, an old Georgian mansion set in huge grounds.
Yep, there was, and is, a lot of money in wholesale clothes.
So that was my first job.
Enough for now.
Time to finish this beer.
6 comments:
mmm chinese food. Now I have a hankering for sweet and sour fried pork!
I didn't realise you and beastie grew up in the same house.
Uh, yeah, it was a nightmare. I virtually brought her up the first 8 years. Was relieved when she went with the Living Legend when she was 8 and I was 16.
I tried again this year to get some kind of relationship going but she's still hurting that I didn't 'share' the money left to me from Grampy, despite the fact I never whinged about her granddad not leaving me anything.
God, it would have sickened me to have given her half and then to have watched it getting swallowed up in one swoop by a dumb mortgage.
Anyway, she's a true kant so I've given up.
Family will treat you worse than an enemy if you let them. At least you know what's coming from an enemy. Family will blind-side you.
I still think she resembles Peter Sellers.
Not really a good look on a woman, when you get right down to it.
She does rather.
When she was young she was really cute and I was a bit jealous. She had this lovely long dark hair and was quite pretty. And here was me, the exact blueprint of my Grampy aka Boris Yeltsin.
I'm not sure what happened to her. Maybe it was watching too much WWW wrestling stuff that morphed her into what she is now.
Ugly on the inside makes for uglier on the outside.
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