The world will be my lobster

Another day, another work anniversary. On 16th May 2014, as reported on this blog post, I left the civil service. On 18th May 2021, I departed my last and possibly final employer, the brain injury charity Headway where I was employed as as an outreach worker. As ever, I gave it my everything, the work was occasionally rewarding and I only left when I was instructed to start wiping people’s arses in the Day Centre, a duty that was buried in my contract of employment under the name ‘personal care’. I never returned to say goodbye to my colleagues and was told I must not make say goodbye to former service users because they were ‘vulnerable’ people. Better that they be left in the dark as to why I had suddenly left than me being able to wish them well for the future. That’s the way to treat vulnerable people, eh?

I didn’t receive so much as a farewell card, despite working for them for four years, but then you are talking about a charity and not a professionally run organisation so in all honesty I wasn’t expecting one. But it would have been nice. Still, good luck to them.

I don’t expect to be working again, which is a shame since I’d very much like to do something part time in the third or care sector that doesn’t involve wiping arses. I am not at all snobbish about this essential work carried out by carers. It’s just that the smell of other people’s shit rather makes me feel ill, never mind cleaning someone up afterwards. Once I said this type of work was not up my street, my days were numbered. Thank God there are wonderful people who can do this type of work. I may need it one day.

There’s plenty of work out there, though. More jobs than there are people to do them. Now that we have all but stopped Europeans coming over here to work, the country has turned to countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and India and in the fullness of time perhaps workers from these countries will replace our European friends. I’m not sure that was why people voted to leave Europe but that’s certainly an interesting consequence. And there’s people who are ‘economically inactive’, people like me who are choosing not to enter or re-enter the world of work. I know loads of people, some way below retirement age, who have left the rat race never to return. Their incomes have fallen accordingly but they’re managing and, like with me, time is more valuable than money. I was fortunate to work for excellent managers in the civil service and, with the exception of one brilliant manager I had at the shit show that is the British Red Cross, crap ones ever since. It occurred to me long ago that good managers manage, bad ones merely try to tell you what to do, which is something very different.

I don’t miss working, though. I have always thought it absurd that we spent all our best days flogging our guts out, whether for an employer or even as self-employed, and by the time we finish we’re too old to do many of the things we loved to do. These days, I ache in places I didn’t know were places. As I slip quietly into old age, I realise things are not going to get better or easier.

I know that I must get on with the things I love to do before it is too late. The books I want to read and write, the places and people I want to visit, the big events and occasions – all these things and more. The death of another old friend, the great Rob Dean, at the age of 57, has hit me harder than it might, even though since our paths haven’t crossed so much in recent years and it was another reminder that I need to get out there and do stuff. When I thought about Deaner, who once had us thrown out of the Hatchet Pub in Bristol for singing ‘Barbara Ann’, before a Brian Wilson show in the city that night, following repeated demands from the landlord for us to shut up and it made me smile until I realised that I’d never see him, larger than life and twice as loud. There are plenty of people whose lives were done too soon. If I don’t do the things I do today, there may not be a tomorrow.

So, I’ve booked a ticket for the Rugby League Challenge Cup final at White Hart Lane next week between my beloved Wigan Warriors and Huddersfield Giants. In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to see gigs featuring Rolling Blackouts Coastal Thunder, Courtney Barnett and Midlake, I’m going to Greece next month and sometime this autumn I am going on a combined train and plane spotting week. I’ve got more books and records than space to put them, I’m going to make a golfing comeback, I am going to try to be kinder to people and not treat them with utter contempt if they are Brexiters, Manchester United supporters or admirers of Queen or even all three. Hang on. Maybe not all three.

I’m still depressed and I’m certain I’ve got some ADHD-type shit going on but time is running out. And after my expected lottery win on Saturday night, the world will be my lobster.

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