🏴‍☠️ Thank God It’s Friday… Apparently 🏴‍☠️

So, it’s Friday. Thank God it’s Friday, I used to think.

I remember when I first started work at the age of 15. Six-day week, nine till five. No lunch breaks, no tea breaks, just relentless graft and being shouted at by sweaty men with nicotine fingers.

I got more in tips than I did in wages. The 70s were truly a magnificent time, weren’t they? If you liked black lung, asbestos ceilings, and managers who called you ‘boy’.

But back then, I could go for two or three job interviews in a day and get offered all three jobs. Insane. The catch? The wages were so bad you’d have to work those three jobs just to afford half a bag of chips and a can of Top Deck shandy.

🍩 The Doughnut Years I had several weird jobs in my teens. Filling doughnuts with jam in a bakery. General humping of flour sacks. Lasted a week – because nothing screams teenage dreams like crusty jam dispensers and yeast infections (of the bakery variety).

🛠️ Then Came The Real Work I was never without a job until this MS health fiasco decided to shred my nervous system like pulled pork.

But before the wheels fell off my life (literally), I was an adult special education teacher. One of the only jobs I ever had where I felt like I was of actual value.

My students had the best of times, and I was there 100% for them – tall, long-haired, long-bearded biker dude, respected and treated as an equal. We laughed so hard tears streamed down our faces. Riotous laughter that could scare pigeons off the roof. My assistants loved it. My students loved it. We tore down barriers like a biker gang with crowbars.

⚽ Gary Lineker and Beyond I had students like Pengi, who thought he was Gary Lineker. Wouldn’t respond unless you called him Gary. Try managing safeguarding reports while shouting “Gary, please put your pants back on”.

We laughed. We cried. We fooking lived.

🎓 The Computer Man After that, I went to uni. Reinvented myself as Comp Man. Teaching people how to use Word, Excel, A+, hardware upgrades, networking – all the digital voodoo that turns mere mortals into keyboard warriors. Ran my own small business for a while. Thought I was doing alright.

💀 Retirement… Or Something Like It And here I am. Retired this year. Totally broke. Destitute nearly. A walking, wheeling monument to how the system rewards graft and compassion with empty pockets and a lifetime supply of codeine.

But hey. The only light left is Albertine. Hell yeah.

Even allegedly Aleister Crowley said the universe was divine love or something equally pompous.

I believe in divine love. And The One.

So wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever grim corridor you’re shuffling down today, I wish you peace, love, and happiness.

Because if you don’t laugh, you cry. And I’m too dehydrated to waste tears these days.

       “The views in this post are based on my personal      
          experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

              “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                     By storm and silence, I survive.”

           @goblinbloggeruk -  sick@mylivinghell.co.uk