I read a friend’s blog where she listed her personal decade – ‘what the noughties meant for me’, and it got me thinking. Things have been very different at different times for me in the decade that has just gone. I am definitely a very different person. So, it’s interesting to look back and see what has shaped me. Here’s a few of them.
Minimum Wage Hell (2001-2003)
Immediately after uni I set up a business with my wife Cathy, but way back in 2001 I got my first job where I worked for someone else: at UCI Cinemas. As a stopgap job it lasted longer than I expected. It was frustrating and boring, but occasionally brilliant. I learned first-hand that a far higher percentage of the general public are complete idiots than you would have thought. I made some great friends there, collected a fund of amusing stories, and did my final shift two years to the day I joined. UCI is now an Odeon, so this part of my life can never be repeated, really. (Which I’m not sad about.)
Cardiff Vineyard (2003-2006)
Although my Vineyard experience slowly morphed into more painful memories, I still remember the excitement of being in a small but vibrant ‘faith community’. Again, friends I made there have stuck with me. The generosity shown by some people still challenges me in what I do with life. And one Cardiff Vineyard phrase that has been hugely influential on my subsequent faith walk is ‘Let your heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God’. And of course, if I hadn’t been going to Vineyard I would probably never have replied for my current job…
Current Job (2003-current)
I’ve made it a policy to never mention the current place I work by name on my blog, because sometimes I talk about it in less than flattering terms. I work for a large charity and if you think that means it’s all fun and games, then just you try it!
But genuinely, there have been times here when I have felt in the right place at the right time. Doing what I do has opened up a whole ton of opportunities. I have progressed as a writer and earned recognition and payment for my x-trem skillz outside of work too. Which is useful, because working for a charity doesn’t mean I’m earning top-dollar, if you get my drift.
California (2004)
Our road trip round Southern California remains one of the highlights of mine and Cathy’s life together. The star-strewn skies of Death Valley reawakened a spirituality in me that I hadn’t even realised had atrophied. I learned so much about myself in just two days in the desert – particularly that when it comes down to it I like being hundreds of miles away from other human beings – that I would class it as one of my favourite spots on Earth.
Depression (2005)
I’ve always been of a melancholic bent, but in 2005 I got into a pretty bad spiral of negative thoughts that culminated in suicidal thoughts. It’s hard to describe depression without sounding melodramatic, but it’s a horrible cycle of thinking and you just can’t get it out of your head. Fortunately, I had a very good doctor, very good friends, supportive family. And Prozac.
Glenwood (2006-current)
My downswing into depression coincided with problems in Cardiff Vineyard that eventually led to the church ceasing to exist in 2006. At about the same time Brian McLaren did a day conference at Glenwood Church so I went along to hear him speak. He was awesome, and I encouraged Cathy and friends Ian and Viv to come along and hear him at the Sunday service.
They did and we all liked the service, so we decided to try a ‘normal Sunday’ and went the next week. However, the next week was the end of ’Holiday Club’ and was themed on an ‘Oscars night’. We enjoyed the service though and decided to come back and try a ‘normal Sunday’. But the next Sunday was something else again, so we decided to come back and try a… well you get the idea.
Eventually we realised (after about six Sundays) that ‘normal’ isn’t something that Glenwood does very often. But by then we’d been recruited by a friend to a new ‘life group’ and we were getting settled in. So we stayed. In Autumn 2007 I started helping out with the youth (who I now refer to as ‘my’ youth).
Significant Loss (2002, 2006, 2009)
We have faced some significant bereavements in the noughties. Back in 2002 Cathy’s Dad died as a result of an infection he picked up in Torbay Hospital. The subsequent inquest, as hospital staff covered their backs and tried to shirk responsibility, was extremely upsetting. I wouldn’t wish having to attend an inquest on anyone.
In 2006, Cathy’s Granny P (her mum’s mum) died. This time it was less of a shock but still very hard. I’d always had a good relationship with her and still miss her. Then last year my Granddad died after being incapacitated by a stroke for the best part of a year. I still can’t adequately explain how much that loss has affected me, because I simply don’t know. Occasionally I am ambushed by a memory or an overheard conversation and I’m reminded of him and I feel a weight on my heart.
Utah (2008)
My final staging point for the decade is in the summer of 2008, although, of course, plenty of things happened after it. But Utah marks a significant point for me because a) it was another amazing road trip, and b) I came off Prozac. I have been drug-free now for a year and a half, and despite last year’s bereavement, and some incredible stress at work and two winters, I have not gone mad or returned to the suicide-contemplating depressed state.
I think it was in Moab, driving next to the Green River down the Potash Road to look at ancient rock carvings that I suddenly realised I could see sunlight properly and joyfully for the first time in years. The serotonin-inhibiting drugs were washing out of my system, and the world was alive in colour and light. That memory is one of several from that trip that are etched on my brain. Utah has become my happy place because it’s there that I was able to experience happiness again unaided.
So that’s it for the noughties. Roll on 2020.
Showing posts with label Minimum Wage Hell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minimum Wage Hell. Show all posts
Friday, January 08, 2010
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Working class zero
Went to Starbucks this morning to meet someone. When I got back, Cathy asked me what I'd had.
"Grande Latte with an extra shot of expresso," I said. "Do I sound like a class traitor saying that?"
"Yes," she said encouragingly, "you do."
Class is a funny thing. My parents are very aware of their 'status'. They came from working class backgrounds and both went to university when it was the preserve of the well-off. I don't know whether they're consciously aware of it, but the way they talk about us being a 'doctor's family' shows a bit of insecurity about their status, which I'm sure is linked to being made to feel slightly inferior at university.
A comedy example, which has gone down in the annals of our family is when we were eating toegther once and mum said in all seriousness: "I'm not sure many doctor's families eat meals based around the humble sausage." The 'humble sausage' has entered our family vernacular now, if the conversation is veering towards being classist.
I guess I'm just lucky that for my generation the class system has slowly faded. True there is still a stigma attached to coming from certain places, and it's a tremendous advantage to have a good education, but generally there are more opportunities to advance on merit, rather than on who your father was.
But there is still a division between the working poor and the working wealthy. It's a different type of work for a start. I'm acutely aware, living where I do and mixing with the people I mix with, that my job is indoors and involves no heavy lifting. And we're relatively comfortable and secure, even in worrying economic times like this. But I have done my stint in Minimum Wage Hell and I can tell you that those who are stuck there aren't having it easy.
The thing is, with the exception of going to football matches before that became an acceptable thing in polite society, we were a very middle class family when I grew up. You can tell that by the expectations of my parents that me and my brother would both go to university, and in fact, that was what we both planned to do from very early on.
I can't deny my middle class upbringing, and nor would I want to. That's me and I can't help that. But I have always recognised my ancestral roots among the working class. My one grandad was a baker. My other was a miner, then a rail ganger. Both my grandmas worked in retail. I think there's a certain dignity in that - working hard to provide for your family; to see them take advantage of the opportunities offered to them as the universities opened up to the working class.
I guess my deep antagonism (hatred?) for Tony Blair stems from my deep-rooted conviction that in many respects he was a class traitor. True, he wasn't from a working-class background as far as I can tell, but those who supported him were. The unions, and the long-time Labour voters who stuck with his party when it was suicidally unelectable, have been ill-served by a Labour government.
True there have been more working class students than ever before, but their advantages have been cancelled out by apalling levels of student debt. And those families where a baker or a rail ganger are trying to put bread on the table and shoes on their children's feet, seem to be struggling to make ends meet, pay the rent or mortgage, and keep a car on the road. There is now a minimum wage, but we still have to have a tax credit system and benefits for working families, so obviously the minimum wage is below the minimum levels families need.
Blair might not have betrayed his own class (the middle class) to the same extent. But the people who looked to him as a saviour of the working man have discovered he wasn't a messiah after all. If Labour get horrifically trounced at the next election, and the odds are they will, then frankly the only people they will be able to blame are themselves. When you betray people's trust, you can't be surprised when they don't trust you any more.
"Grande Latte with an extra shot of expresso," I said. "Do I sound like a class traitor saying that?"
"Yes," she said encouragingly, "you do."
Class is a funny thing. My parents are very aware of their 'status'. They came from working class backgrounds and both went to university when it was the preserve of the well-off. I don't know whether they're consciously aware of it, but the way they talk about us being a 'doctor's family' shows a bit of insecurity about their status, which I'm sure is linked to being made to feel slightly inferior at university.
A comedy example, which has gone down in the annals of our family is when we were eating toegther once and mum said in all seriousness: "I'm not sure many doctor's families eat meals based around the humble sausage." The 'humble sausage' has entered our family vernacular now, if the conversation is veering towards being classist.
I guess I'm just lucky that for my generation the class system has slowly faded. True there is still a stigma attached to coming from certain places, and it's a tremendous advantage to have a good education, but generally there are more opportunities to advance on merit, rather than on who your father was.
But there is still a division between the working poor and the working wealthy. It's a different type of work for a start. I'm acutely aware, living where I do and mixing with the people I mix with, that my job is indoors and involves no heavy lifting. And we're relatively comfortable and secure, even in worrying economic times like this. But I have done my stint in Minimum Wage Hell and I can tell you that those who are stuck there aren't having it easy.
The thing is, with the exception of going to football matches before that became an acceptable thing in polite society, we were a very middle class family when I grew up. You can tell that by the expectations of my parents that me and my brother would both go to university, and in fact, that was what we both planned to do from very early on.
I can't deny my middle class upbringing, and nor would I want to. That's me and I can't help that. But I have always recognised my ancestral roots among the working class. My one grandad was a baker. My other was a miner, then a rail ganger. Both my grandmas worked in retail. I think there's a certain dignity in that - working hard to provide for your family; to see them take advantage of the opportunities offered to them as the universities opened up to the working class.
I guess my deep antagonism (hatred?) for Tony Blair stems from my deep-rooted conviction that in many respects he was a class traitor. True, he wasn't from a working-class background as far as I can tell, but those who supported him were. The unions, and the long-time Labour voters who stuck with his party when it was suicidally unelectable, have been ill-served by a Labour government.
True there have been more working class students than ever before, but their advantages have been cancelled out by apalling levels of student debt. And those families where a baker or a rail ganger are trying to put bread on the table and shoes on their children's feet, seem to be struggling to make ends meet, pay the rent or mortgage, and keep a car on the road. There is now a minimum wage, but we still have to have a tax credit system and benefits for working families, so obviously the minimum wage is below the minimum levels families need.
Blair might not have betrayed his own class (the middle class) to the same extent. But the people who looked to him as a saviour of the working man have discovered he wasn't a messiah after all. If Labour get horrifically trounced at the next election, and the odds are they will, then frankly the only people they will be able to blame are themselves. When you betray people's trust, you can't be surprised when they don't trust you any more.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Stay Safe: Stay Mediocre
Kev Kennedy has used some of the material from the still-unpublished Minimum Wage Hell & How to Survive It. This time he explains why you should be aiming for mediocrity.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Nacho Libre
Back in the days when I worked in minimum wage hell, I was a lowly minion in a cinema. It was around this time that I first became aware of Jack Black – mainly because we had posters up advertising Shallow Hal and I apparently bore more then just a passing resemblance to Jack, as he appeared on the poster (hugging Gwyneth Paltrow).
One of the naff ways the cinema tried to be ‘fun’ was that it made you have your favourite movie on your name badge alongside your name. It wasn’t long before some jokers ordered me a name badge saying my favourite film was Shallow Hal.
Recently Shallow Hal had its TV premiere and three people, none of whom knew about my minimum wage hell experience, said that they’d “seen this movie last night which really reminded me of you…”
Then last week, within a 24 hour window, my foster sister told me that she thought I ‘was’ Jack Black, a friend who I’m going to collaborate on writing a film script with told me we could do an autobiographical with Jack Black playing me, and my office’s resident filmaholic asked me what I was doing that evening, because there was this film he wanted to see with me called Nacho Libre.
So, I went to see it last night. What a disappointment.
The thing that got me was that this was a huge missed opportunity. The basic premise is flawless – a monk, wanting to buy decent food for the orphans in his care, ignores the Church’s condemnation of wrestling, dresses up as a (masked) wrestler, and in this secret identity wins enough money to buy the orphans salads for a change. As a concept, it can’t miss. As a film, it did.
Jack Black is a good comic actor. I liked Shallow Hal, despite the constant annoying comparisons. I liked Orange County, which if you haven’t seen it, is just brilliant, mainly because of Jack’s performance as a hippy stoner. I liked Envy, where he outperforms Ben Stiller – no mean feat.
Admittedly he wasn’t great in King Kong, but then King Kong was awful. And I personally thought School of Rock wasn’t that good, although I know people who loved it to bits.
I’m not a huge fan of his band, Tenacious D, although I will admit the video for ‘Tribute’ is funny (especially ‘he asked us “Be you angels” and we said “Nay! We are but men!” ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh’), but the album is ropey at best, with too many ‘spoken word’ segments. Unsurprisingly, there’s a Tenacious D movie in the works.
So, where did Nacho Libre go wrong? Well, firstly the script was poor. It felt as if the actors were improvising. There were lots of standing/sitting around scenes where not much happened. To make scenes ‘funnier’ the director had the brilliant idea of having Jack’s character Ignacio, sitting on a toilet while talking to someone else. Literal toilet humour.
One of the naff ways the cinema tried to be ‘fun’ was that it made you have your favourite movie on your name badge alongside your name. It wasn’t long before some jokers ordered me a name badge saying my favourite film was Shallow Hal.
Recently Shallow Hal had its TV premiere and three people, none of whom knew about my minimum wage hell experience, said that they’d “seen this movie last night which really reminded me of you…”
Then last week, within a 24 hour window, my foster sister told me that she thought I ‘was’ Jack Black, a friend who I’m going to collaborate on writing a film script with told me we could do an autobiographical with Jack Black playing me, and my office’s resident filmaholic asked me what I was doing that evening, because there was this film he wanted to see with me called Nacho Libre.
So, I went to see it last night. What a disappointment.
The thing that got me was that this was a huge missed opportunity. The basic premise is flawless – a monk, wanting to buy decent food for the orphans in his care, ignores the Church’s condemnation of wrestling, dresses up as a (masked) wrestler, and in this secret identity wins enough money to buy the orphans salads for a change. As a concept, it can’t miss. As a film, it did.
Jack Black is a good comic actor. I liked Shallow Hal, despite the constant annoying comparisons. I liked Orange County, which if you haven’t seen it, is just brilliant, mainly because of Jack’s performance as a hippy stoner. I liked Envy, where he outperforms Ben Stiller – no mean feat.
Admittedly he wasn’t great in King Kong, but then King Kong was awful. And I personally thought School of Rock wasn’t that good, although I know people who loved it to bits.
I’m not a huge fan of his band, Tenacious D, although I will admit the video for ‘Tribute’ is funny (especially ‘he asked us “Be you angels” and we said “Nay! We are but men!” ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh’), but the album is ropey at best, with too many ‘spoken word’ segments. Unsurprisingly, there’s a Tenacious D movie in the works.
So, where did Nacho Libre go wrong? Well, firstly the script was poor. It felt as if the actors were improvising. There were lots of standing/sitting around scenes where not much happened. To make scenes ‘funnier’ the director had the brilliant idea of having Jack’s character Ignacio, sitting on a toilet while talking to someone else. Literal toilet humour.
Ignacio and his tag-team partner get beaten up a lot by a variety of dwarf wrestlers/ women wrestlers/ bizarre character wrestlers. He falls in love with a nun who seems to spend most of the film combing her hair while wearing a long nightdress.
I’ve reached the conclusion that there are only so many times you can watch Jack Black getting beaten up in a wrestling ring without it getting deathly dull. That number is somewhere between once and twice. After that, it’s just boring.
Ignacio is a bit of a dunce, and therein lies another missed opportunity. This could have been a powerful comedy drama with a hint of ‘liberation theology’ as a monk takes his calling to stand up for the poor and dispossessed seriously, flouting pious religiosity to become a folk hero. Instead he comes over as a pathetic, misunderstood clown. There are nods to the dramatic. Ignacio asks ‘What is the gospel?’ with the questioning attitude of many who have discovered that religion talks the talk but does not walk the walk. But that’s about it.
Ultimately, the biggest disappointment of Nacho Libre is that it could have been so much better – a great concept, a great comic actor, a huge marketing push.
I’ve reached the conclusion that there are only so many times you can watch Jack Black getting beaten up in a wrestling ring without it getting deathly dull. That number is somewhere between once and twice. After that, it’s just boring.
Ignacio is a bit of a dunce, and therein lies another missed opportunity. This could have been a powerful comedy drama with a hint of ‘liberation theology’ as a monk takes his calling to stand up for the poor and dispossessed seriously, flouting pious religiosity to become a folk hero. Instead he comes over as a pathetic, misunderstood clown. There are nods to the dramatic. Ignacio asks ‘What is the gospel?’ with the questioning attitude of many who have discovered that religion talks the talk but does not walk the walk. But that’s about it.
Ultimately, the biggest disappointment of Nacho Libre is that it could have been so much better – a great concept, a great comic actor, a huge marketing push.
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