Well here I am still unemployed (possibly unemployable), and still taking my regular trip up to the Stratford upon Avon job centre to see what work is available for a skilled old fart like me. The trip is never, to say the least, very pleasurable (even in good weather) because I'm afraid I'm one of those people who've always felt 'ashamed' at being without a job. A bit like a Leper, although (thank God), I can ever know what a Leper feels like, but you know what I mean. Although l have no missing digits I do feel a large bell and the cry of 'unclean, unclean' would complete the picture. I'm not a snob, it's just the way I was brought up. Hunter, gatherer all that rubbish.
However, none of my inner pain is the fault of the nice people at the job centre. They make my present predicament and the short stay in their office, bearable. Thanks to their good manners and sympathetic outlook, I survive the ordeal. So first of all I want to say thank you to them and then cast my mind back to my first ever bout of unemployment when I was a young man living in Bristol. When a trip to the Labour Exchange, as it was in those days, was a nightmare.
First of all there there was the queue and I mean queue. The long line of desperately broke (broken) people left the building, went out into the street no matter the weather. The line was mainly comprised of, well, how can I put it, society's rejects, with a liberal sprinkling of men in suits. Men who before their life-change experience worked in retail or in an office. The rest of the line were, Gypsy's, Tramps and Thieves (don't forget the Drunks) to quote a line from a song. All this was a horrible once a week experience, especially for one so young (me). But the queueing wasn't the worst of it.
When you finally got to the window which was behind bars by the way, you were handed your dole money in cash. You then had to walk past the queue on your way out. Imagine. Everyone knew that you were carrying cash. Like I said before, most everyone in that queue were desperate, hungry, drunk.
I was lucky, I never got bothered. I survived. But I know for a fact that there were some who never made it to the end of the queue with their meagre payout intact...and some, who were never seen again.
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