Categories: uncategorized
Date: 21 August 2008 22:49:36
After six months signing on and not really getting anywhere with looking for work - it's amazing how many jobs there were that I didn't want to do, and how few there were that I did want to do - I found myself placed onto the New Deal prgramme. This was basically a government initiative by which anyone who'd been out of work for six months or more was given an individual support person who looked for work for them and suggested potential jobs. Although it doesn't sound like much, it actually really helped. My New Deal advisor was a lady called Nancy, who was pretty much an English version of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted (smudged lipstick, outdated clothes, always asked if I wanted a cup of tea) but did a great job of tapping into the one part of my work life I'd overlooked - admin.
On my year out projects I'd had to take care of some basic office tasks, and I'd found that I really enjoyed that side of things. As full time youth work posts are hard to come by if you don't have any specific qualifications, Nancy encouraged me to look into the admin side of things more. I followed up a couple of jobs which didn't come off, and then Nancy found something pretty much ideal - a community centre looking for someone who could do a mixture of youth work and admin support. It was only a three-month contract, but they were able to offer me sessional youth work and some maternity office cover beyond that; and with some temp work for the local county council (again found by Nancy) I was soon keeping myself occupied and earning a bit of money.
Then in the autumn of 1999, the big break finally arrived. A large NHS hospital was looking for someone to work in their finance department, and were interested in taking a New Deal person. I had an interview, and within a few weeks I started work initially on a six-month contract. When the six months was up, I was asked if I would stay on for another two months due to staff shortages. Then another three months. Then there was a specific project they asked if I wanted to work on for the next four months. Then I was asked if I'd provide support for a team who had a member of staff on long-term sick. Then that member of staff left and I pretty much ended up covering his post. All in all, my six-month contract lasted two and a half years, before one of my colleagues discovered I was still not permanent, went to see the boss and said, "look, we've obviously got enough work to keep Steve here, why don't you just give him a proper job?" So the boss did, and I spent another eighteen months there.
Meanwhile, I was getting more involved in things at church, and particularly youth things. As well as The Point, I was now helping to run a youth Bible study, plus the Sunday morning youth group, who were sometimes hard to keep on topic, but at least provided many entertaining and surreal tangents (my personal favourite: "You know how, in some Middle Eastern countries, they get people trying to buy women in exchange for camels? Well, what if you actually sold your wife or daughter or whoever; how would you get the camels back to Britain? Would they have to have passports? Where would you keep them when you get home?"). I had a great bunch of mates who I loved hanging out with (and I'm not just saying that because they keep telling me they're reading this) and life was good.
But there was change afoot at home. Tina had been away to uni (mostly while I was away from home on my year out youth stuff) and was now home again, and I loved having her around. But then she met a Strange Man From The Internet, cleared off to London and got married. And as soon as she'd left home, it felt like there was suddenly a big gap. Maybe it was because of the age difference between me and her, but it always seemed that Tina was a bit of a bridge between me and my parents, particularly after I'd hit my teens. Now she'd gone, me and my folks were just rattling around in a house together, and I was starting to feel that my life was stagnating.
So, a couple of months after Tina had moved out, I hatched a plan. Dad had taken early retirement several years earlier, and Mum was due to retire in two years' time, by when I would be almost 26. If I could move out by then, I could have more independence and Mum and Dad could have the house to themselves to enjoy their retirement with. I was ready to ask around my friends and see whether there was anyone who fancied sharing a house with me. But if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that God tends to know better than me, and usually gets His way...