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.