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Just a bit about my working life for you to read about if you can be arsed...
Leaving School
When I first left school, I didn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to do. After a couple of terrible jobs working in those places that exploit young labour, I used my hobby as a guide and took a YTS course in computer programming for a games software company.
I was at this company for a year, working on the programming and design of games such as Winter/Summer Games, Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble and many others for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad and computers of that era. Here also I was taught the great game of poker by my bosses, and we sometimes stayed in the office for days on end just programming computers and playing poker.
This was in 1987/8, which was pretty, much at the height of the IRA troubles in Northern Ireland. There had been a drop in the number of people joining the army and there was a general ‘call to arms’ from the government. I applied to join and was put through a series of tests.
Army Days
I’d originally wanted to be involved with tanks (no idea why, they asked me what part I was most interested in and that’s what popped in my head), but one of the tests I had to do was an IQ test on which my score gave out an IQ of 155, so some captain interviewed me and suggested I go into intelligence. At this point, I should clarify that when someone in the army ‘suggests’ something to you, they are basically telling you that’s what you are doing. So, I was shoved into the Royal Signals in a special intelligence role (can’t say more than that though it is certainly nothing very exciting).
Basic training in the British army, even for non-combat soldier such as myself, is really quite rigorous, even somewhat disconcerting. I remember the padre (they made us go to church) saying ‘and when your sergeant wakes you up on a morning with your cup of tea….’ I pictured in my head our sergeant booting the door down screaming at the top of his lungs and turning anyone out of bed if they weren’t already up by literally flinging their bed on top of them. That was fine by me, I was always first up anyway.
I didn’t even mind the runs, we ran and ran and ran and ran, mile after mile. Not jogging it must be noted…this was running. I was exceedingly fit then and could do these runs without a problem. The assault course was also fine. It turned out we had the hardest one in the country and even the SAS used to come and train on it from time to time (we had to get out of the way then of course). One time, the sergeant had actually said to me as I passed him on the assault course, ‘Good effort Gerrard, keep going son’.
When we got back to barracks, the guy next to me, a big lumbering hulk, about 6 foot 8 and built bigger than Frank Bruno, but a very unfit man, was sweating profusely even though he hadn’t even done the full assault course (he couldn’t make it). The sergeant who had just praised me, said ‘Now Gerrard, why is he sweating, and you aren’t?’
I thought about it, and if I said, ‘because he is a big unfit lummox’ it could quite possibly have been my final words, so I chose to say nothing, preferring to stand there looking stupid.
‘Guardhouse, Gerrard’
This order meant that you were being sent to the guardhouse for punishment, they marched you there by shouting ‘left, right’ at a totally unrealistically fast speed. When you got there, they then gave you this big double ‘buffer’ that after just a few minutes use caused blisters and bleeding down your hands, it was so big and bulky to move about. They gave you a 4 x 4 section of floor tiles to wax and buff. When you had finished, they made you ‘mark time’ (marching on the spot) with your knees banging against the wall on every step, while they rather disappointingly, removed your polishing efforts with wire wool, and you had to start all over again. The second and third times were worse as the blood and blisters on your hands were exceptionally sore by this time.
This, I didn’t like. I would have been quite happy to observe my punishment had I been guilty of the alleged offence (in this case, slacking). However, I was full of blood and guts bravado and patriotism at that age, so I put up with it.
After a couple of foul ups during drill, I got sent there again. My body started complaining about the things they made me do there. My legs were about shot to hell, but still I carried on.
They worked us until around 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning. They woke us up at 4 or 5 in the morning. This was day after day after day, week after week. Myself, and a couple of other men, fell asleep in the (particularly boring) map reading class. Guardhouse.
I was so tired, ironing wasn’t on my major agenda on an evening, they made us run in mud with our best boots, and then we had to polish them. By the time that was done, it was around 3am, so the choice of ironing or bed meant that bed won and ironing didn’t. I just ironed my shirt collars and cuffs. I got my jumper lifted up (I guess they knew that trick). Guardhouse.
Our new hats came for our dress uniform (the peaked caps known in the army as ‘twat hats’ – ‘because you looked a twat in them’), we had to wear our (tailored) dress uniforms for a parade to see if any cuts etc were needed. With my hat being brand new I reckoned it didn’t need any polishing or anything so I put it on straight out of the box. There was (the tiniest ever) bit of fluff on the blooming hat. Guardhouse.
In one weekend, due to becoming increasingly and exponentially tired, and different people sending me (unaware of how often I had been there) to the guardhouse, I broke the regimental record of going to the guardhouse more times in one weekend (eight) than had ever happened before. I was well past the point of exhaustion, there was literally no energy left in my body. I gave in, and looking back, I think any man would. I was put through something akin to SAS selection and I wasn’t even a combat soldier.
When you leave the army, they don’t actually let you go just like that. You have to prove (or did then) that you have a job to go to first. Subsequently I was put on guard duty for the following two or three weeks. Guard duty isn’t just standing at the gate, though that can be horrendous on your legs for 12 hours a day…no, it involved patrols and searching of cars for bombs. Guard duty truly was a new form of pain.
We were told that there was an IRA cell in the area and we were put on a higher alert, which meant us guards were given an even more horrendous time of it. This was the time I came face to face with an IRA member and I had a rifle with no rounds in it (we had to get the rounds from the guardhouse which was too far away). That is a story for another time.
I was put in the troop of people with no other troop. There were a couple of good men there who were like myself just waiting to get out. There were also some of the weirdest people on the planet, including a brigadiers son who, when he fired on the firing range (we were using self loading rifles - or SLR’s), he let the (phenomenal) recoil of the weapon force him sideways, which was where we all were, which in turn caused us all to duck rather quickly every time he took a shot. The guy was definitely a spanner short of a toolset and the word ‘inbreeding’ passed more than one set of lips.
My dad, on hearing that I needed a job to get out, managed to get me a job working with him, as a Fire Protection Engineer. So, I left the army on the Sunday, and on the Monday morning I found myself on a train, heading for London.
Fire Protection Engineer
I learned that being a Fire Protection Engineer was incredibly hard, backbreaking work. Sprinklers are fed via a system of pipes; these pipes are steel and very heavy. On my first few weeks of pipefitting, we were installing a lot of six-inch pipe (six inch inside diameter) which is like picking up a tree.
Not only is sprinkler fitting heavy work, it is also mentally demanding. There is a rulebook several inches thick that governs the installation of sprinklers, and the person doing the fitting has to know it all by heart. The official union guideline is a minimum of seven years time served to be classed as a ‘fitter’.
I worked that first year in London, and then did a year in Didcot (Oxfordshire). The days were spent working exceptionally hard, the nights we spent drinking heavily. And I do mean heavily, though that was soon to be shadowed.
In 1991, I got an offer to work on the Olympic Village (La Villa Olympica) in Barcelona prior to the Olympic Games in 1992. I found myself on a 45-storey building working in unbelievable heat by day, and drinking very strong beers at night. We always drank until the pub closed, which was 3am over there.
It must be noted, in those days, and especially in Spain, there was a major drinking culture (people could afford it for one thing), indeed they even sold beer in the site canteen.
One man was Pat, an Irishman who I got on marvellously with (there was a lot of fighting between the British and Irish, but I got on well with all of them and they described me as ‘a good paddy’ – one wonders if our relationship would have been quite so good had I told them of my prior job in the army). Now Pat, to grossly understate the matter, liked a drink. The man drank continuously almost 24 hours a day. He would clock in at 7am and go straight to the beach bar and get himself a beer. One day, he was missing; nobody seemed to know where he was. He turned up at around 2 in the afternoon wearing a white gown and white slippers. After being asked where he’d been, he replied that he didn’t know but he had to climb a fence to get out of there. There was some writing on his slippers, which we got translated. It turned out he’d somehow found his way inside the Barcelona lunatic asylum after a particularly heavy night on the beer. Pat also slept during the day while he was supposed to be working. He eventually got sacked, and we all knew he had to be, but he was one of those men that everyone got on well with and it was sad to see him go.
We were earning around £1200 per week in Barcelona, which was good money then, especially as you could get a three-course meal with as much wine as you could drink for around £2.50. However, the company we worked for went bust, and that was the end of that.
Recession
I was then a victim of the early nineties recession. Work in the construction industry was very hard to come by; it was a bit here and a bit there, with long gaps in between. It was the first time I realised that this train didn’t always have gravy on it.
I eventually found a permanent job with a fire sprinkler company in South Yorkshire. They were small, and (bless them) they didn’t have the faintest idea what they were doing. Every job we went on they had made errors, ordering the wrong gear. Sending us equipment designed for wood, when the reality was concrete, things of that ilk. Despite having (in their words) a ‘job for life’, I finally left when they sent a young man to work with me who was both a thief and drug abuser (facts of which he openly talked about and indeed seemed quite proud of). This youth was also a nephew of the owner, so I reckoned if one had to go, it had to be me, so I went.
Within a week, I had found new employment with a fire sprinkler company in Leeds. Now these guys were professional and knew what they were doing. The money was good, and there were a lot of good guys there.
At this time, I was living in a street in Leeds that was a sort of social experiment. They had taken one of the highest crime streets in England, got rid of the people that lived there, and only accepted working families to live in the newly done up houses. We were the first people to move in (I had a 6 week old son when we moved there) and were in the local paper. The experiment was a success, the crime rate disappeared completely and the street became a nice place to live.
Then one day, someone came out of prison and was allowed to live on the street. In the middle of the night he went in the street and started shouting at the top of his lungs. Everybody heard what he said, and that was that this was his street and if he would just come in your house and take what he wanted whenever he pleased.
Two days later, someone knocked on my door advertising the local karate club. I nearly snapped the guys hand off.
Over the coming years I kept training in karate, indeed went on to ‘sempai’ (assistant instructor) and later, got a class of my own in Harrogate. I was still working for the same company, and had had a daughter by this time too.
Open University
I even started taking up a degree at the Open University. Turned out, that in our study group, I was the only one paying for it. Everyone else was either getting it paid by the state, their employer, or by the church (some of them were training to become vicars).
I did really well on my course, easily passing each and every TMA (essay) with flying colours, and subsequently went on to pass the end of year exam too. This is equivalent to an ‘A’ level.
I was going to continue and go on to achieve a degree, but with an extra baby in the house, and hours being cut at work, I just couldn’t afford it any more.
The hours at work were starting to become a major problem. Working away from home is expensive, just to eat; you are talking a minimum of like £15 per day. Also, not many people can spend a night in a hotel looking at four walls, so the vast majority of people go out for a drink. This was now starting to get ridiculously expensive. When I first started with this company, you would earn 72 hours Monday to Friday. Now it was closer to 50 hours and costs were going up and up.
I got on very well with my boss, and (as always) was totally honest with him. I said to him, if we work an extra hour each day, Monday to Thursday, instead of working four hours on a Friday, then getting stuck in traffic until 6, 7 or even 8pm Friday night, can we go home on the Thursday evening and have the Friday off? He thought this was a good idea and even said we could keep the Thursday night lodge money, but officially, we had to hand time sheets in saying we had worked the Friday, which he would then sign off. Everyone on my team (and other teams started doing this too) was much happier for this. It also meant they were more likely to go the extra mile when I needed them to. For example, I had to ask them to work a 36 hour shift, which they straight away agreed to, despite having other plans. It increased their loyalty tenfold; despite their having to endure the overall wage cuts.
Then our company got trackers put in the vans, they said for insurance purposes only. The instigator of this idea was the newly arrived owners nephew, who was of a similar disposition as the brigadiers son. There was no job for him to do, he was just given a desk and a salary, so he set about with this idea, and spent his days watching each van,
The office staff would text us saying that George was watching our van at that very moment.
It meant that the Thursday thing was now over, which meant a financial loss of at least £50 per week, coupled with less time at home; and working away from home already puts a strain on any relationship. I knew that as my own relationship was severely breaking down at this point.
I was offered a job with my karate club. I took it.
Professional Karate Instructor
After going through the initial training, I was promoted to Regional Manager and given the Teesside region to run. During this time I had left my previous partner and found a new one, she came to Teesside with me, bringing her two daughters also.
We lived in Ingleby Barwick for the two years that I ran the region.
Now running a karate region involves more than just turning up at class and teaching. I had to liase with local councils, voluntary groups and charities to establish new classes. I had to oversee the marketing of the classes and make sure we had ‘bums on seats’.
I started with 193 students and built it up to over 500 students training regularly each week, making my karate club the biggest in Teesside. The turnover was over a quarter of a million pounds.
I also had to oversee the training of the instructors, and make sure every class was run smoothly, and that everyone was happy. If I found someone not happy, I made sure I did all in my power to make it right. I never had one single person still unhappy after I had dealt with their particular issue.
My day involved quite a bit of paperwork, telephone calls, personal visits and various other duties. I would start at 8am and not really get much time to myself until I had faxed the daily report off at 11pm (this was supposed to be faxed at this time). On Mondays I faxed the 17 page weekly report off at midnight. These reports were done on either Excel or Word.
On Thursdays I had to go to a training session in Manchester, which was followed by a meeting. On these days, my days started at 530am. On tournament days, I also had to be there early, as well as conferences four times a year, teamwork days etc etc.
In short, for two years I worked from 8am (sometimes 5am) until 11pm (sometimes midnight) for seven days a week without any holidays or days off. I even had to work through tonsillitis, the keyboard brought next to the bed to I could type my reports while in a good deal of pain. A lot of what we had to do, such as conferences, had to be funded ourselves, so that came out of the ‘pot’, so in essence, I was doing all this work for around £16,000 per year.
My partner is an accountant, so her income made it not a problem. When she got pregnant with our son and had to stop work, it became a problem. We simply couldn’t afford to live where we were living. We owed back-payments of over £4,000 very quickly. We tried to get a house with the council but that took an age.
In the meantime, I married my then partner, Julia. The whole lot done for less than £350 start to finish. And most of that was spent on the rings.
I had to go in for a hernia operation (where the stomach wall loosens so your guts start to hang out causing a lump), where they put a gauze in to strengthen your stomach wall via keyhole surgery. I can tell you now that the pain this brings is immense. I felt like I’d been machine gunned where they’d cut into me (either side of my ‘belly button’ and the belly button itself). I had decided to quit the karate, as we simply couldn’t afford for me to do that work any more, so the operation seemed a good time to quit (as I would be on my back anyway so they’d be paying me for nothing which I wasn’t comfortable with). So, I gave in my notice. They tried to talk me out of it, calling me to a meeting in Manchester, but I told them I simply couldn’t do it.
Hard Times
A few weeks after that, while I was still bandaged up, and barely able to move, we finally got evicted (they were great to be as patient as they were). This isn’t a pleasant experience, and when you are down, it always seems like someone else wants to come along and give you a kick in the teeth.
After our family were split up living here and there we finally got our house in Thornaby. Almost immediately we were shocked to find that Julia was pregnant again, we had a girl.
I didn’t want to go back to being a sprinkler fitter, as I knew that working away from home wasn’t worth it any more. Besides that, I didn’t want any strain putting on our otherwise good relationship. Some things aren’t worth it.
So I tried to find a ‘normal’ job. In truth, I didn’t really care what I did, so long as it paid the bills and I was home every night. I started looking through the job ads and began the process of sending CV’s off. At this point I would like to say that I have never had to do a CV in my life, but I made one and started applying.
I couldn’t even get an interview. What was I doing wrong? I didn’t know. Job seeking isn’t really something I’ve had to do much of.
I ended up back in sprinkler fitting. Luckily, I managed to get on a big contract in Leeds, which meant I’d be home every night. I was starting at like 5am and not home until 7pm but at least I was home every night. I have been doing this for the last year. That contract has now ended, so here I am again.
I would like a job that I can settle in, I am still only just turned 36. I am very fit and have an awful lot left in me, another 30 years at least.
So, where will I go next?
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a good read 
