Saturday, 27th of May 2000 – Work history
Here I am again. This long weekend I decided not to do any work at home at all and just relax instead. It’s the afternoon and you’re having your nap. You’ve had this chesty cough for a few days now and I don’t want to take you to the doctor again for more antibiotics so I bought some Propolis today, which is a natural antibiotic, and only 2 drops a day should be enough. Of course if that doesn’t work, it’s back to doctors again. This time there has been no fever and no vomiting, just a bit of coughing and lots of snot! I just hope you don’t get asthma…
You have started kissing properly recently. On Wednesday morning you gave me a cuddle and then a kiss, with the sound and everything! I couldn’t believe it, it was so cute. You also have been giving Tracy and Gill a bit of a hard time, you bit baby Daniel really badly on the hand (they thought you broke his fingers) and on some days you require constant supervision (or you just go for everyone and everything – because you are such and explorer), on other days you are a sweetheart, just to balance it out!
The weather has been dreadful, it’s been raining for the last week and it feels more like March then late May. Francis is moving out to Mary’s place and Evelyne’s sister is moving in sometime soon. I’m driving to work every day and I get paid this Wednesday, but I won’t come out of the red yet this month. The childminding fees are crippling me financially. R. starts work (at accommodation services at the university) when his exams are finished (next week) and money problems should be sorted, at least until he goes back to university.
At work I’ve been given a proper job to do: programming in Java! It was so lucky, as there was only one place available for doing it and it was given to me! So I am doing exactly what I enjoy the most, I’ve been doing it for the last 3 weeks and I have written an input Dialog and I am now nearly finishing this special button, from which a toolbar pops out. I find it hard not to bring work home as I just can’t stop doing it… I have to take it easy or else I’ll burn out! My team consists of myself and Pete and that’s that. Steve supervises us and tells us what needs to be done (he’s the head of the GUI design). Other unfortunate people have to do the low level programming (harder) dealing with connections and complicated algorithms. I’ve been twice lucky, first in getting the job with such a nice company, secondly in being assigned such a nice job. I haven’t programmed for a while so most of my time is spent looking at books/internet for bits of code that do something similar to what I want to do and then modifying it to fit my design. If you’re not into programming you won’t have a clue of what I’m talking about… You’ll be falling asleep right about now.
So, let’s talk about the past… How I got here. When I first arrived in England, at the age of 18, I had never worked before in my life. As I had a Brazilian passport getting to university would have cost a fortune (back in Brazil I had done a semester at university doing a degree in Literature). So I couldn’t afford that. Instead my mum enrolled me on English lessons in the evening at Westminster college, in the heart of Soho (where I met my first friend in England, a French girl called Letitia, but that’s another story). We moved into Northolm Road, N5, at the top of Highbury Hill, and I got a job at a delicatessen . My boss, Joe, was from Cyprus and his wife was Irish (her name was Pat). My English was poor, so I wasn’t allowed to serve customers, I was just stacking shelves and cleaning, etc. I really liked it as I got on well with everyone. There was Julie, an Italian lady (she was about 70 years old) who lived in England for six months of the year and then went back to Italy for the winter every year. There was Nick, a 16 year old English boy, mad about Arsenal. On the days Arsenal was playing Joe would shut the shop while the supporters left the stadium, which took about 40 minutes. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but now I know what the supporters are like and I totally understand. I think I worked there for about 5 months, and as my English improved and I realised he was paying me peanuts I started getting angry and not giving a shit about the job. The first thing I bought with my wages was a stereo! And some English clothes so I could ‘fit in’ more.
One day I was grating some cheese, feeling miserable, when Joe came in to tell me something (I can’t remember what) and I just threw the cheese at his belly! The cheese bounced of it and he told me to leave. I said I wouldn’t leave until my shift was finished. I was so fearless at that age, as everyone is at the age of 18… I carried on working and then left, knowing I had lost my job and not caring at all. Pat phoned me later asking me to stay and I did, but only for another week. A Swedish girl I knew worked at a Turkish café across the road and she told me she was leaving the country and I could have her job. The pay was better (£2.50/hour), and the work was Monday-Saturday from 8am to lunch hour. I then started working there. This was around the time I met Patrick. I was also meeting a lot of other people, my English was improving, I was going out a lot and finding it hard to get up in the morning, I was also unofficially living at the squats in 7 sisters, where the capoeira people (Brazilians) and Patrick and his Irish friends lived. I started missing work and nearly got sacked a couple of times. Eventually I left and French Letitia got me a job at the clothes shop where she worked in Portobello Road (Desire was the name of the shop). First I was only working on Saturdays, but eventually I was put in charge of one the branches in Ealing, for the odd day here and there. Patrick and I had got a studio flat in Ealing (this was around December 1990) after living in a lovely one bedroom flat in Seven Sisters. As the job at Desire was for no more than 3x week, I was also doing some cleaning on the other days, in private houses. I got this through Denise (my Capoeira teacher’s girlfriend, his name was Robinson, Muzenza Group).
Robinson had been deported from the country in late summer that year and she eventually went back too, leaving me her clients. The pay was the best I had so far, I started on £5.00 an hour and two years later I was earning £6.50. The cleaning jobs really helped me do other things. I really liked most of the people I worked for. At one point I had 6 houses (which really was too much, I made me very tired), but I met some really interesting people.
There was the gay couple in Stockwell: they had this 4 storey house, with tacky porcelain antiques, all insured for probably a fortune. Their alarm system was top of the range. Cleaning the house was easy because there were only the two of them there. But every week I had to iron about 20 shirts and I hated it. I used to get paid for 4 hours work. I spent 2 hours cleaning and 2 hours ironing, but I used to cut corners every now and then so I could finish earlier. They were always at work so I hardly ever saw them… A teacher and a dentist. Down the road from them was Kate & Richard, and their neighbour, Kate too, with her two children and husband. That Kate left London after I was working for her for 6 months. I worked for Kate & Richard for nearly 2 years and they were just about the nicest people I ever met in my life! I will never ever forget them.
Kate worked for the BBC as the floor manager for Everyman and she wasn’t home very often when I was cleaning, except for when she had her baby (Eleanor), who I took for a buggy ride a couple of times so Kate could rest. I also went to the supermarket for her once, but I probably got all the shopping wrong because she never asked me again… Richard was doing a Masters in Business Management so he was home more often. He worked for charities and had been to South America. He always took the time to sit and chat with me. He used to tell me I shouldn’t be cleaning for the rest of my life and should get an education (I knew that, I just couldn’t afford it). While I was working for them I was also doing my one year Photography course and that put his mind at rest a bit about my future. He also did something really sweet. I was no expert at ironing (or cleaning) when I first started working for them. One day Richard told me (in such a subtle way) that someone had taught him how to iron trousers properly and set out to teach me how to do it!
So, while the gay couple decided to sack me because I couldn’t iron properly, Richard (who knew them well, they were friends) took the time to teach me. Before you think that there was something sick going on, or that he fancied me, don’t. Richard was a genuinely caring person and I miss him. Kate got pregnant again and they told me that she had decided to have an abortion because the baby had down syndrome. They treated me as a friend, not as a cleaner (unlike most of the other people). I had a conversation with Richard once and he asked me if I thought it was a good idea to bring a child up in London (they were thinking of leaving) and I said I didn’t think it was. A few months later they left and went to a town near Manchester. They showed me a picture of their new house and it was beautiful, a proper country house. Kate was pregnant again when they left and on my last day I felt so sad and had little tears when I was kissing them goodbye. I still dream about being in their house and cleaning it!
They gave me their address but I lost it and I would really like to get in touch with them and find out how they are. I’ve tried the Internet but no luck.
There were other people too I enjoyed working for: There was a childless couple, who also lived in Stockwell, who knew Kate and Richard and the gay couple too. He was a photographer and was at home sometimes when I came around. His wife worked with AIDS (not sure of the details) and was always out. At first I was treated like a cleaner, but as I got to know him (can’t remember his name) and told him how I was applying for a photography course, he took his pics out, gave me some tips on how to get in the course and we took a liking to each other. They used to leave the sink piled up with dishes for me to wash and that pissed me off, because nobody else did that. I did ask them buy a new vacuum cleaner, because the one they had was useless and it used to take me ages to get rid of all the cat hairs (they had two cats who didn’t like me much, unusual, as cats usually like me). As I got busy with the course and the other cleaning jobs, I missed a couple of days cleaning. One day he knocked on the gay’s couple door (he knew I would be there) to tell me they had to let me go. I then explained to him how difficult it was because I was so busy but it was probably better that I stopped working for them. He kissed my forehead, wished me luck and left. Why can’t I remember his name?
There was the Jewish family in Stamford Hill… She had 4 kids and expecting her fourth. As a proper orthodox Jewish family there was no television in the house but thousands of books instead. I used to do the ironing most of the time and helped with the ‘getting rid of all the bread in every possible nook and cranny in the house’ fest. As tradition has it they have to clean their houses thoroughly before Easter and not a vestige of food is allowed anywhere. I found myself cleaning inside the kids’ rucksacks with a toothbrush. I was treated well by the lady of the house, but I think we saw each other with suspicion, really, and I felt like an intruder at their house. I only worked for them for a couple of months. I’ve always loved the way the boys had these little curls on their otherwise bald heads. So lovely!
There was Jane who lived in Bethnal Green and worked with Kate at Everyman. Kate once told me that they had already done a program about the Pope’s life because they thought he was going to die soon. That was a good 8 years ago and he’s still alive! Jane lived alone on a 1 bedroom flat and she had done cleaning while at university, so she was the most understanding boss of all. She paid the best wages and her flat was pretty clean so getting to her house after a hard day’s cleaning somewhere else was quite relaxing. I left Jane when I started working as a secretary. Jane’s was the only house I kept cleaning after I started my secretarial course. I did this course because photography was getting me nowhere and I was bored with signing on, and I thought learning how to type in a government funded course would be a good idea. The course lasted 3 months and once I got my first job as a secretary my cleaning days were over for a while.
Then I moved into secretarial land with my 50pm and limited knowledge of computers. My first job, which was a placement (didn’t get paid) was with Parker Young Partership, in Clerkenwell. They were two young product designers (in their early 30s), and very nice people they were indeed. Once the placement was over I got my first real secretarial job at Sevencell Limited (in Liverpool Road, N1). This was a clothes manufacturer based in Taiwan and we were the liaising office, arranging deliveries and doing some of the design of the clothes. They sold stuff to catalogue companies, like Grattams, Littlewoods, etc. Most of the clothes were crap but occasionally something nice would crop up. The boss was the owner’s son (a Chinese woman), Tim, and he had no social skills at all. It was obvious that he hated his job and everyone around him. Penny (the designer) and Sam (the administrator) were really nice girls. Sam left about a month after I joined to travel around the world and after I had an argument with Tim for being rude to me and walking out of the office that was that for that job. I was there for about 3 months, earning a meagre £8,000! Tim actually asked me not to go (only because he would have to find someone else to do my job) but I told him to shove it. As a result I didn’t get a great reference from him for my next job, especially because I took about 20 stamps when I left (just normal first class stamps) and Tim somehow knew it. How the hell did he know how many stamps I had in my drawer?
Then a week later I got my job at Nyeglen, at Great Portland Street. Nyeglen designed baseball caps (NFL – American football), bandanas, sunglasses and even handcuffs; and sold it all over the UK and Europe. It had a decent turnover of £1,000,000 a year and it had 10 employees. The caps/bandanas were designed in the office, by Terry in his computer, and manufactured in the far East. I was the PA to the owner/MD – Mark Stevens, dealt with Spanish/Portuguese costumers, took care of the stock leaving the warehouse… It wasn’t a boring job. I stayed there for 8 months, had a lot of drunken nights with Terry, got on well with everyone. Eventually I got sacked and it was such a shock for me that I ran to the bathroom and cried for ages. Mark said he really liked me but he didn’t think my heart was in the job. When he sacked me I had split up with Patrick, a school friend from Brazil was over here, and I was going out a lot, including during the week, which was affecting my work.
So I got sacked in August, pondered what to do for a week… My mum reminded me that I had had my Italian passport for 3 years (just) which meant I could finally go to university and get a grant! And that is what I did. University it was. Why programming? My mum had given me an old computer of hers (645kb RAM, 20MBytes hard disk!) and I loved playing with it. I had never programmed before in my life and didn’t even know that some people can’t do it (Terry later told me – once I informed him of my future education – that he had done a BTEC in programming but that he didn’t have a programmer’s way of thinking, which worried me a bit as I didn’t know the first thing about programming). Luckily I did have what it takes to program (liking to solve problems & ability to stay up all night coding). I took few tests and was accepted at a Foundation Course at Kingsway College, which led to the degree at the University of North London. That was in the summer of 1994. 6 quick years later and here I am, finally, doing a job I like and getting paid decent money for it! There you have it: a ‘brief’ overview of my career life!
Better take a break, you’ll wake up soon…