From Scotland to London

After just over a year in Scotland, I was getting browned off. I was not particularly happy, Claudia was not interested in coming over, work prospects were poor for me. It was time to pull the plug on the place. My next move was to London. I would be closer to Claudia, it would be cheaper for us to see each other, I would be able to get better work and there would be more opportunities for Claudia.

Starting to see a pattern here? Well I didn't.

It was tough to make a start in London. To begin with I worked on building sites as a general hand. It was minimum wage stuff and hard work again. Pay rates were kept low by the massive influx of former communists from Eastern Europe. The most skilled tradesmen lived on top of each other in the same way backpackers did and populated all the construction jobs in central London. It was not unusual to be on a site with twenty or thirty tradesmen, none of whom spoke a word of English. I did often wonder how well controlled the tax/National Insurance/ Health and Safety/Trade Guild side of things was, but then we all trust our civil servants to do a great job and I am sure they are doing just that. The site foreman would have a bossboy who spoke enough English to translate what needed to be translated. This leading hand would generally be Russian posing as a Lithuanian/Estonian/Latvian - actually they were very often Georgian or Ukranian - I say Russian loosely. They would have tattoos with orthodox Christian themes, but done in indian ink that had gone a shitty green against fish-belly white skin. They wore gold and often had frontal gold fillings. They worked every hour that God gave and their womenfolk made their lunch sandwiches and coffees in affordable chains like Benjy's or else cleaned hotels and office blocks. Funny lot - those reformed commies. We love them all now, of course; an influx of hard-working foreign tradesmen is just the kick-in-the-arse that the local tradesmen needed to improve their own service ethos - or lack thereof. Places like France have had the local tradesmen pressure the government to keep the foreigners out (isn't that such a typically French thing to do? ) and the Poles have countered with advertising campaigns to smooth the waters.

Enough of all that. I was on these sites labouring for less than twice my weekly rent - see my second-ever post. For me the main thing was that I was out of Scotland and closer to Claudia and I was somewhere where I could smell opportunity and not stale fish suppers, stagnant hope and decaying dreams.