Deep rabbit holes

In the previous post, I gave some indication of how we were psychologically or spiritually ‘rewarded’ for taking to the road, how it renewed us, how things that had been stagnant for a while began to work out. I haven’t yet given an indication of quite how well they have worked out, since I can’t believe it myself. But here goes:

When we hitched back to Edinburgh, we had no more cash, our credit cards were maxed out, and we had no where to go, barring a few nights on a friend’s floor. Then, without giving any indication of how direly we were in need, we were offered a place to stay, for free – the kind of place I would have loved, but not been able to afford.

The Scottish engineer who picked us up hitching in Thurso is letting us stay in his place. It is a beautiful warehouse conversion on the shore of Leith, with plasma screen TV and all the fancy modern stuff I have only ever seen in ads before. We don’t have to pay for it, and have it until sometime in October. It really is a wonderful place to live.

So we got back to work: I got a week’s work as a dishwasher at a hotel in West Lothian, about an hour’s commute everyday from Edinburgh. Really a terrible, minimum wage job, but we needed the money. Talitha got a job serving haggis and black pudding at a construction site.

We were down to £1 for the week, which we spent on beans from Lidl, which at 13p per tin is probably the cheapest food in Britian.

So, on my second day at work, I get a phone call on my mobile saying ‘you have an job interview at 9:30 tomorrow morning, are you coming?’. It was the first I had heard of it, as I hadn’t got any post due to moving around. It was an interview for a trade union job I had almost forgotten applying for, since I have applied for so many jobs.

So I washed dishes that day until midnight, got home at one, slept a few hours and then got up early to catch a train to Glasgow for the interview. Obviously, I had no time to prepare, and ended up arriving late because I was so flustered I went to the wrong room.

The interview was painful, and I was really tempted to just say ‘sorry for wasting your time’, and leave, but stuck it out, not having much hope.
Then I got a train back to Edinburgh and was just in time to get to work at my dishwashing shift.

So there I was, washing dishes later that afternoon, when they phoned me to say that I have the job! I will be learning organiser for Scotland and Northern Ireland for the union Amicus – something that totally suits me as it involves travelling the country and setting up education networks. It has a proper salary and everything, and I am due to start in a couple of weeks.

Unbelievable, isn’t it? After months of not even being able to a permanent minimum wage job, I get something amazing like this, and out of the blue. The other thing is, as soon as I realise I won’t have to do this kind of work much longer, I get a bit of perspective on it and begin to find it interesting from a sociological point of view. I am very interested in the world of work and how it is being affected by globalisation, and one of the best ways find out about this is to do first hand participant research by taking whatever low wage jobs are on offer. So I have done call centres and construction sites, and now I am doing kitchens. It is also really interesting to be part of the international working class. Most of the people I work with are from Poland, and I have really enjoyed getting to know them. The Scots workers are pretty sound too, and the writer in me keeps careful note of speech patterns and turns of phrase.

So, if you ever feel stuck: take to the road, literally or metaphorically. The process is everything.