A worker and loving it

2 weeks working as a labourer and loving it. Mind you, being outside every day all day, the weather has its effects. Living in the tropics the rain can be torential, and my job is mowing lawns and whipper snipping, but we just keep going, drenched or not. I don't wear my skin gear at work, rather I wear navy work pants, orange hi-viz shirt and 14 hole steel caps. We look after the city council water and sewage plants, water and sewerage pumping stations and the roads leading up to these areas as well as the local dump site. As you can imagine the work is dirty, muddy and in most cases wet. Your boots fill with water, your clothes are drenched and the only thing dry is your tobacco because it's wrapped in plastic.

Apart from mowing etc, we also spray weeds, and cut down trees and bushes with chain saws. Work is usually a 12 hour day 6 days a week, starting at 6am and seldom finishing till 6pm. Hard, hot and steamy but the money is good, not the hourly pay but the long hours give you heaps in the hand. Yeah I know I got a brain I can use for better jobs than labouring but I like what I do and who cares, I'm not a snob and don't care what others think. A skinhead is a worker from working class roots and even if he climbs out of the mire, he is always a working man. I am a labourer and a skinhead. That's who I am so get over it.

A job at last

Yep, I'm finally working for a living. A job is a job and I'm cutting grass and whipper snipping with a gang of eight other labourers. My new boss has a contract for the local City Council to maintain the water and sewerage plants and we work like trojans from sun up to sun down or whenever we finish and in all weather. It's hard, hot, sweaty work, often soaked to the skin because of rain, but I am happy; I am earning a quid. When I get home I stink from the mud and shit sprayed on me, look like I just got out of a mud bath and am covered in grass, but as a skinhead it don't matter. My work gear is navy work pants, orange and navy hi-viz long sleeve shirt and 10-hole steel capped work boots. Pay is not big, but with the hours I work the pay packet at the end of the week is good. I work 50 to 60 hours at $15 (about 7 pounds) an hour it is more than I ever dreamed of. It took me 7 months on unemployment to find this job and I lived hand to mouth, finding the odd job here and there, some weeks only 6 hours, others maybe 15 or 20 but I made it through.

Poverty is a soul destroying thing and it nearly destroyed me, but never my faith in the brotherhood. As low as I went there was always a skin brother to help me along the way, buy me a beer when I was broke, cheer me up when I was down even to buy me a sandwich when I had not eaten in a couple of days. Unemployment gives you little. It is an amount to survive not to get rich on. My rent took most of the payment and I was left with virtually nothing to live on. But I am a skin and I can survive. Like the skinhead movement, it went through some rough patches but came back better and stronger in the 80's. I am a skinhead, long live the brotherhood.