Reluctant Path

By Ashley MacGregor

In the first of the Deity's Diary novels, Rhea emerges from the cocoon of her existence. She's destined to become an individual who’ll eventually grow to discover that the appearance of mortality is as beneficial as the reality of immortality, if she can survive.

As Rhea embarks on the first months of her true voyage of self discovery, the stillborn girl survives to progress through callow, unemployed youth with ‘multiple hang-ups’ and become a hostess with class, style and sophistication in the most convoluted of life journeys.

Previously unknown strengths of character leap forward as she makes her way in under a year from bus hostess to corporate heroine, softly nudged by intuition, belief in a ‘guardian angel’ and a desire to simply ‘help out’. Born a girl, raised a boy, it’s time for the pendulum to swing again, reluctantly resting in a location it should never have deviated from.
Events quickly tumble past the decidedly unwanted award of ‘Miss Easter Egg’ to the unintentional human misery unleashed by her wayward onion, as her life is filled with betrayal and unforeseen consequence while she unwaveringly and humorously travels her reluctant path.

Rhea’s greatest self discovery; it’s simpler to accept your fate than fight your destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashley MacGregor
• Release date: Apr 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311721471

Ashley MacGregor

Ashley's stories have an unexpected twist at the end. They might make you chuckle, or pull at your heart strings, but your reaction is also likely to surprise you. The inspiration for many of Ashley's stories comes from historical events or from travel. Recent travels in the South of France has lead to Ashley's latest book, Natural Instinct. He has recently written about a journey around the Mediterranean set in 1926, an adventure of both body and mind.

Book preview

From ‘Deity’s Diary’ Saga

~Rhea~

The Chronicle

~ Book 1 ~

Reluctant Path

Ashley MacGregor

Copyright 2001

Revised / 2013

First Kindle Edition – January 2014

Dedication(s)

This series of novels is dedicated to those we leave behind, forgotten, often what we might refer to as the detritus of humanity.

To these segments of our myriad millions we dedicate these books, by some of us at least, you are not forgotten.

The injured from our wars

Those injured by society

The infirm

Those with chronic disease

The chemically sensitized

The brain injured

The psychologically traumatized

We’d like to take a minute to recognise that each was once a life very like our own, and hope that perhaps in some future time, some of these might uncover a way to restore themselves to what we all should enjoy – a fulfilling life.

~Deity’s Diary~

The Rhea Chronicles

~

~

Series Foreword

It’s a long way from dynastic supremacy in the ancient world to growing up today, particularly in Liverpool, England. Especially when you’re required to grow up as someone you’re not, in every sense.

Then again, a three bed working class semi is nowhere close to where even this life was supposed to lead, and if you don’t know what you once were?

Pronounced dead at birth before being forced into yet another life of little relative note, and a body she certainly wasn’t born to, this is Rhea’s story.

Her path of growth, discovery, rediscovery and revelation will lead to her development into who she was always destined to be, if she can survive the path she must walk.

The choreographed map of her life unfolds in crisis after crisis before her unknowing eyes while she dances her unintentionally chaotic way across our world. Each dilemma encountered forcing a growth designed to secure the future of humanity itself.

She’s utterly unaware that hers is a dance which for millennia has failed to achieve its promised climax, mainly through her inability to survive long enough to mature.

The feet of this simple healer are constantly redirected through subterfuge and karma is her handmaiden as her utterly irreverent life is initially upended by first a motorcycle ride and then an onion.

Forces she struggles to understand direct her decisions in such a way that only one path perpetually opens.

It’s a path which demands she either grow and develop or die.

Dying, that part just wasn’t in Rhea’s plans, not again anyway.

As her life unfolds Rhea discovers she’s a healer, and one with remarkable talents. It’s these newfound abilities which require her to embark on her life journey of almost comedic self induced mayhem while she unintentionally leaves little bits of her essence stuck to those she contacts.

In an effort to protect her own life against perpetual assassination attempts, she does what none have dared to do before her; she puts a price on her life and that of her family, broadcasting the value for any attempt together with a guarantee of collection. The price for success is rather different.

From a prank with her resurrected child which brings together a Cardinal, an Imam and a Rabbi in unity and harmony to the restoration in this cycle of life of three of her earlier daughters she guarantees that nothing around her will ever be dull for long.

A fascination for the ancient while reveling in the present finally leads her to the hot sands of Jordan, where in the shade of an ancient crusader castle the events which will trigger anything from Armageddon to the ultimate betrayal are finally set in motion.

As those events unfold, a world will stand witness to a soul wrenching scream of grief and mortal loss.

Deity’s Diary Chronicles

Text copyrights 2001-2004, MacGregor

No part of this work of fiction may be reproduced in whole or in part without the authors or publisher’s prior consent.

All rights are reserved.

Characters portrayed in this book are fictitious, no resemblance is intended to actual individuals, any such is purely incidental.

~Rhea-1~

Reluctant Path

~Prologue~

When you’ve kept a journal for almost as long as you can remember, and you’re doing something of an autobiography, sometimes it can be awkward uncovering a specific beginning. I suppose that for me, and the rest of humanity on our little rotating ball, this tale should start pretty much around the time of a certain Easter charity run in Northern England.

Mostly it actually did turn out to be a charity run, on motorcycles; it’s just that no one at the time had any idea that it’d ultimately change the course of human history. At the time it was only supposed to benefit some of the orphans in the area, and it did do that, although an unforeseen side effect was the millions more of them it’d eventually create, but then, it did save even more from appearing, so I suppose one could argue ‘it’s all good in the end’.

You know that ‘butterfly flaps its wings in Asia’ bit, well, in this case it was to be a damned big insect, because within a few short years, every individual on our little spinning ball of rock and water was going to know that butterfly had flapped. It first emerged from the cocoon in Northern England, and I can assure you that it wasn’t very happy about getting forced from its pleasant silken bed, not at first anyway.

It’s also the weekend that started my life hurtling from where I’d grown up, as a relative unknown in one of Liverpool’s lower working class neighborhoods, to where I am today, possibly the wealthiest and most singularly powerful individual around, the one that half the world admires, while the other half wants to kill me, most of them just haven’t figured out it’s the same ‘me’, not yet.

I’m getting ahead of myself here though.

That charity run, it’s also the day, at least it’s the weekend that I’d define as when my life spun utterly, completely and irremediably beyond my control. Then again, as I’ve since come to understand, it really never was in my control, not much anyway. In that way, I’m like everybody else, we do everything we can to make life work out, but sometimes?

It’s also the day Karma and her sister Fate firmly proclaimed their intent to sink their teeth into my now ample bum, and their jaws have been utterly clenched there since. These ladies, by the bye, they’re not exactly for letting go. In fact, there’ve been days when I think they’ve deserted the rest of humanity just to give me their undivided attention.

I’d also say that it was the day that life in general started to spin beyond anyone else’s control too, because it’s the day that the dead also apparently decided to become active participants in my life, at least, looking back, it’s the day I’d identify as when they did. Perhaps it’s best if you decide?

Just for the record, I thought I’d a fairly decent grasp on reality until then. It’s even possible I actually had a good hold on my own reality, until Fate, Karma and those hitherto utterly unknown dearly departed started shaking hard.

Anyway, the charity run itself wasn’t anything unusual that year, nobody was hanging out banners proclaiming ‘world changing’ or ‘utterly unique’. No, it was just supposed to be the usual Easter Sunday fun run, a day when the local motorcycle club here in my little corner of Northern England typically covered some sixty miles, it was a journey which they’d break as they collected donations, finally delivering those goodies in the form of chocolate Easter eggs, toys and a bit of cash to the local orphanage on Easter Sunday. I’d seen the announcements in the local papers for years; I’d just never really paid any attention to them, except afterwards, and then only because there were usually some pretty good pictures of the costumes. The clubs involved tended to enhance it a little bit by doing the ride in Fancy Dress.

To the wider world, this annual charity run meant absolutely nothing; I think I can also conclusively say that no one had any idea of the monumental changes it would bring to our global community either. I certainly wasn’t expecting any of the multitude of alterations it would bring to me on a personal basis, but looking back through the half decade since, I’ve got to say, and smile when I say it as I look at my family around me, ‘It’s all good’, no, really, it is, but I still railed against a lot of those ‘revisions’ at the time.

Mind you, I suppose there’re an awful lot of dead people that might disagree, well, if they could anyway. Perhaps they still can, maybe for the most part it’s that we just can’t hear them anymore.

These changes, they pretty much all came about, well, were initialized anyway, by the scheming and conniving machinations of my erstwhile or sometime girlfriend, Margaret, although I do believe today that she was little but a tool to be used as others drove my path back to a place it shouldn’t ever have left. Because if it’s true that no good deed goes unpunished and please believe me when I tell you, I’m living testimony there, what does this say about the bad ones?

Now, although I’m really going to pick this up on the week before that Easter Sunday, you do need some background, so with that in mind, perhaps it’s best if I simply fill in some holes that’ll bring us all up to the time of this charity event. Mine wasn’t exactly your normal existence until then either, but I’ve since realised, as we’re all unique, what’s ‘normal’ anyway?

I’d best start by giving you a brief overview of myself and my background through to that week, what’s worth knowing anyway; at least how it relates to the way my life unfolds afterwards.

It might also help you to understand how it feels like I’ve come to be the mortal enemy of about half the individuals on our little blue and green globe, certainly amongst those who know about me, basically faced down my personal Armageddon and now appear to cycle through passports and identities faster than numbers on a Chinese menu, and all because I ‘listened’ to my guardian angel, to that little voice prodding me along. That little voice, it’s also sort of my conscience, and it frequently seems to nudge me into dispensing the ultimate justice, in fact it does a bit too often for my own liking. A few folk have tried to bring me to account for that too, but so far it hasn’t worked out very favourably, not for them anyway.

Oh, and don’t forget those bloody good deeds, the ones that just sort of happen along the way, they bite, hard. Some of the consequences from them might even last a lifetime, or two.

I’ve come to understand that this whole mess came also came about because of both my heritage and the fact that I started out life with death, giving me a rather unique advantage or perspective, though I’d be blessed if I could ever figure out how ‘dead’ is an advantage, then at any rate. Even after several subsequent trips ‘beyond the pale’, I still don’t look on it as an advantage by the way. I will let you into a bit of an open secret though, you know that saying, the one which goes ‘if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger?’, well, in my case it needed modified a bit, it should’ve gone more like this ‘if it doesn’t keep you dead, it’ll make you stronger’.

I’ll also let you know, I’m writing this intro, and the story itself using excerpts from my electronic journals, filled in by memory, so what you read, it’s how I saw things on the day that any particular event or series of events took place, though in some cases, I’ll add the odd appropriate bit as I later discerned it when events eventually unfolded.

These days, well, let’s just say these days I’ve a slightly different perspective on life, but then, as my continued existence testifies, life is often full of interesting and unexpected developments. That my existence even continues is just one of those remarkable outcomes.

My name during that February of my twenty third birthday, right after which is where I’ll pick this up, was Sam Croft, like the American Uncle and the small Scottish farm?

Samantha Croft was born on a cold and snowy February morning in Munich, Germany; I came early while my folks were ‘on holiday’. I was raised by my mum just outside Liverpool because dad buggered off barely a week after I made my entrance to this world.

I was officially stillborn, my folks were told they had a stillborn daughter, that was the first big ‘oops’ of what was to become my life. What they were told matched the ultrasounds, so nobody batted an eye. Baby girl in the ultrasounds, became a dead baby girl on the birthing bed. The time of death was called and a death certificate was duly produced a few hours later.

Meanwhile, my tiny body just went downstairs to the morgue.

Eventually a morgue attendant noticed the sheet move, I’m told it was several hours later. It was a week before I was well enough to be discharged. As I was released to return to England a doctor changed my papers from ‘girl’ to ‘boy’ stating firmly to my mum that he was sure a mistake had been made, small, underdeveloped, barely recognizable, but boy. He apparently felt certain ‘my bits’ would ‘drop’ as I aged. As I was going back to England, he just double marked the forms and left it for the NHS to sort out. Actually, ‘changed the forms’ is a bit dramatic, he just marked up the ‘M’ box on the copy of the certificate my mum still had, so both ‘F’ and ‘M’ had circles around them.

Apparently when my mum relayed the story in England to the registrar, they just issued a birth certificate, it said ‘M’. I’d not even been to see a doctor there yet, that appointment was still ten days away, but the registrar was pretty much always ‘open for business’, so even at that tender age, I was a bit of an oddity, Samantha Croft, F, registered in Munich on the twenty-sixth of February that year, and Sam Croft, M, registered in Liverpool on the seventh of March but with the same birth date. Apparently, if the doctor decided it really should be ‘F’, my mum was to go back with a letter.

Just for the record, I’m sorta glad I was a bit young to remember the morgue. It’s often been jokingly said they bet that the morgue attendant still remembers me though.

It’s absolutely been an interesting life ever since, but that ‘death at birth bit’ was the first spark to make the embers glow, at least from what I can deduce, everything after simply fanned the flames.

I’ll skip forwards quite quickly until I pick this up at a point when I’m just past the aforesaid twenty three years old, although it will bounce a little with some relevant background items at first.

The first of those relevancies is that, basically, crud happens around me all the time, I’ve always sort of attracted it but seemed immune. Sometimes it seems like folk just ‘act out’ when I’m around too.

My friends, anybody that’s known me, have pretty much always told me that if I ever fell in a midden, I’d either find a fifty, a diamond or a gold ring, most probably just a large diamond ring set in gold, wrapped up in a fifty. Oh, and it’d be in a sealed sandwich bag.

Me, I never did figure out how landing in a rubbish tip was ‘lucky’ in the first place. It seems like I still do tend to drop in them rather frequently though. It also seems like the same rules still apply. Oh lucky me.

Curious why folk would think that? I’ll give you some quick examples of sort of general areas, you might find entertaining, disturbing or just plain weird.

I more or less picked these incidents for what they meant to me, but I suppose what’s important is that there’s probably hundreds of others I could have chosen. Literally there were many hundreds of other instances. The key thing for you to understand is that no matter what scrape I got into, everything always just seemed to work out in my favour. That had a major impact on my psyche as I grew up.

Giving you just one example each with maybe a last one sort of tying everything together does seem best, because it really breaks down like this, ‘feeling something’, ‘knowing something’ and ‘my guardian angel’. I’ve given a ‘tied together’ in the last instance because the ‘theft’ seemed to get all three working pretty cohesively.

‘Knowing something’, well, for most of us it usually means by experience or having been taught, but sometimes, lots of times, for me, it just ‘is’.

I remember running up a footpath between our corner shop and its outside storage shed. I wasn’t even school age yet. I saw a sparrow land in front of me at the end of the path and I stood on it, its tiny body was crushed by my small brown sandaled foot, its little head turned and looked at me as the life left its poor mangled body.

I was devastated.

Thing is, I’d only just started running up that alley, I ‘ignored’ what I ‘saw’, because for some reason that I don’t remember now, I had to get to the shop quickly. When I got to the end of the alley I’m not going to spell out what happened, let’s just say crying was involved and I didn’t ever ignore something ‘I knew’ again. I was barely four years old and everything unfolded just as I’d ‘seen’ it a few seconds earlier.

Now a quick example of ‘feeling something’; when I was eight I went to the shows with my mum, that’s like a carnival that comes once a year. As usual she was playing bingo.

My mum likes bingo, I mean, that or her cigs, the two things in life she’s addicted to. Me, I could handle the bingo.

Anyway I just looked at her and told her she needed to move to the next board, don’t ask why, I don’t know either, I just ‘knew’ she needed to be on ‘that’ board. She humoured me and moved, and she won. She moved three times when I told her and won three more times. Something told me not to keep doing that though; she was a bit upset when I stopped picking boards. I still ‘knew’ which would win, I just didn’t tell.

I was now her ‘lucky charm’. Me, it made me feel like a blooming leprechaun, and I made the mistake of telling her so. Guess what I was for Halloween that year? Uh-huh, top hat, all in green. Not happy either.

Five days later the ‘Guy’ for the bonfire looked great though; unfortunately my mum wasn’t as amused when she saw it. Apparently my gran had made the costume? As far as I can remember, she never made another.

Then we have my guardian angel, but she’s an odd one is mine, because she seems fine with me suffering if it’s to the greater good. Usually she’ll drop me right in ‘the pooh’ and then make sure I don’t ‘suffer too much’. Me, I’d rather not have ‘the pooh’ at all. I don’t like pooh. Except the bear, he’s okay.

Here’s a for instance, when I was fifteen I had a neighbor, Terry, who had a motorcycle. He used to take me for rides on the odd weekend or evening that he wasn’t busy.

He offered me a ride that early July evening because the next night, he was going to be on holiday. It was just a test ride before he ‘went touring’. I grabbed his spare helmet but as I was walking round the bike I turned my ankle on the kerb. I couldn’t even stand. I waited a long time for Terry to come back.

I’ve never tuned my ankle before or since.

He never did come back.

He made the news next morning though. He got his name into the local paper too, just the one column, it started ‘With deepest regret….’

Now, the three of these ‘extras’ to my psyche sometimes seem to be working together; so much so that I often think they’re bloody well in cahoots, and it drives me bonkers. Nothing I can try works to beat them either, no matter how determined I am, or how ‘on form’ my lucky streak is.

I was eighteen and in Uni by the time of this particular escapade. It sort of made for an interesting day of discovery in itself, but it’s a good example, although, again, there were tons of earlier ones.

I went to Blackpool, you know, the tower, prom, the pier, stuff like that. Tourist season was in full flow. I had my wallet stolen, and no, I never saw it coming, then again, it’s not exactly an everyday happening.

Anyway I went to the police station to report it, and while I was there they brought in a bunch of Hells Angels type guys who’d been causing a riot, right where I’d been headed. Shopkeeper assaulted and others hurt, hospitalised.

Think it was a coincidence? You decide when I’m finished, in a bit.

When I left the police station, I was very fed up, with hardly fifty pence in my pocket and no petrol for my old, make that ancient, white, beater car, a Ka. I’d get the irony of owning a ‘Ka’ later, right then, it was just a pain, and it was a pain that was nearing the end of its very own mortal coil.

Anyway, I was thinking on phoning my mum when I saw an arcade across the street, something ‘pushed me’ in that direction. I walked in and straight to a specific machine, on the third ten pence try ‘jackpot’, I robbed the ‘bandit’, then to another ‘puggy’ four machines up, two ten pence’s got me four lemons. Round the back and it was nine ‘bars’ for a thirty pence investment. I was done. Pockets bulging, I left.

I got back to my old beater car and fuelled up to drive back to Birmingham for Uni next morning [my first year]. That’s when a guy backed out into me from the garage’s shop area. No obvious damage, but we ‘swapped details’ anyway and I tootled of out of Blackpool and, eventually, down the M-6.

I’d not gone far when there was an enormous bang and a hole magically appeared in the bonnet. Unfortunately it wasn’t pixies, my engine had blown up. Again I was lucky, I was just a half mile from the services when it happened so I simply put the old banger (literally now) into neutral and coasted into a parking spot.

I hitch hiked home to Liverpool instead of going back to Uni. That night just about the time I’d have been there, there was a horrible accident on the M-6 south, it was initiated by heavy, unseasonable fog.

I was now fine with it. No, not the poor souls who’d not go home that or any night, I was fine with knowing my buddy Stu could get me an engine fitted in a day, easier to replace an engine for two hundred quid than a life, even if it’d clean me out.

Afterwards Stu told me the engine probably blew ‘cos when the guy backed into me, he’d ‘bent and restricted’ my old banger’s exhaust.

Odd huh? I kept having issues that’d stop me getting to that bit of road, my luck turned it around and I kept beating the issues, eventually one came along I couldn’t work past. In the end I lived, lots didn’t, and I’ve never doubted when and where I’d have been, I simply knew.

Anything else I should tell you, hmm, dunno, there’s a bunch really, but as I reflect, there’re two biggies. About two thirds of everybody always took me for a girl until I was in my mid teens, and that included teachers too. At school everybody just called me ‘Sammi’. My mum did too, which probably didn’t help. By the time I was seven or eight I’d even quit protesting over my mistaken identity, at least a lot of the time it happened, I just sort of let it slide unless I knew I’d see them regularly. Mostly I quit arguing because I really got tired of getting embarrassed, or embarrassing others, but in my mid teens I sorta forced that pendulum to swing, though decidedly without the offered medical aid, simply dress and demeanour.

Speaking of school, I did everything possible to avoid gym class. I liked PE too, but I was so, erm, underdeveloped compared to the other boys, that even in primary one and two, I pretty much came in for some unmerciful teasing, actually, it darn near bordered on abuse. It was so bad that when I had to change schools for a year, it was right after primary three, the admitting teacher just assumed I was a girl, and grans’ friend who’d taken me for registration didn’t object because to her I was just ‘Sammi’. I kept my mouth shut. When mum found out after about a week, I begged for her to not say anything, I didn’t want embarrassed and it would only be temporary. Suddenly nothing got changed except I had a note excusing gym. I’d ended up changing schools because my mum’s job changed due to a temporary assignment. Then her contract was extended a year. For primary five, I was back where I’d been before, except the records that followed me from my temporary school now said ‘Sam Croft, ‘F’’.

Apparently my granddad never got to know about the school mix up thing. I understood there’d have been quite a rumpus if he had. My mum used to joke about that mix-up for a long time, mostly shocked that nobody ever figured it out. Apparently it all came about because there was a teachers strike over privatizing schools that year. The thing is, the paperwork never did get corrected, although everybody knew who I was when I ‘went back’ for primary five. It wasn’t until I went to high school I discovered the computers hadn’t ever been changed back. In the system, I’d effectively stayed ‘Sam Croft, ‘F’’.

The other thing I should also make clear was that my mum and a few others accused me of having ‘healing hands’. This was ever since the time I was eleven, and she’d a blinder of a migraine.

I got the job of getting her a cool damp cloth and as I put it on her forehead she complained about my ‘hot hands’, saying she’d told me to use cold water, but it was the first time she’d ever not needed a nap to get rid of one of ‘her heads’. Anyway, I know I’d used cold water.

As far as naps go, I sure needed one afterwards; it must’ve been a heck of a day. I slept the sleep of the dead that night. Oddly enough, my mum hasn’t had another migraine since then, not that I know of anyway. From that day forward, if she felt poorly she’d shout for ‘my hands’, sometimes it seemed to make a difference, I think mostly not. She always swore it did though.

I just never got sick either. I had perfect attendance right through school, except for one single incident involving a twisted bowel that led to emergency surgery, after which there was an ongoing prescription for ‘testosterone cream and pills’ as supplied by the doctor at the hospital. My mum tried to convince me I should ‘follow doctors orders’, I ignored them both, and refused to take either prescription, my little guardian angel was nudging me. This surgery happened right as I hit my teens, I was actually just a week past my thirteenth birthday.

I remember my refusal and my mum’s support seemed to make that surgeon pretty upset, in fact he spent over an hour trying to convince my mum she ‘needed to do this’. Afterwards she tried to convince me. Again I refused, even when she told me, per the doctor, that I was ‘only producing a few percent of the testosterone I ‘needed’.

She filled the prescription anyway; she felt she was obligated to. My rebellion was total; the creams went into the rubbish on ‘bin morning’ and the pills down the toilet. This was the only big fight I had at home while I was growing up, the only one. I think she was also pretty mad about the ‘wasted money’ that’d gone on that script, I wasn’t buying the guilt trip though, I’d told her before she went to the chemist that I wouldn’t take it.

She finally let the doctor know, she felt she had to in case there were ‘other problems’. There was a fair bit of kerfuffle with our local GP after he consulted the hospital. There were threats of sending me to a psychologist, child services and what-not. In the end it all just sort of died away.

Before my nearly fatal bowel injury I’d also had a ‘chest problem’ as an almost teen as well, it looked like I was starting to get a bit of a ‘puffy chest’. That issue slowly went away after they ‘fixed’ my bowel. Apart from the usual cuts and scrapes I never had another illness, not measles, mumps, chicken-pox, scarlet, nope, none of them. I was often told I’d probably be immune to the plague.

The last bit ‘o background you probably should have is how I ended up at Stellar Holidays. It sort of all ties in.

I left Uni, the youngest in my class, and I applied everywhere for jobs. I either got no response or a ‘thanks but no-thanks’ type form letter. Sometimes they even wished me well in my search, not often though.

After five months my life was going nowhere. I did get the odd interview, but again, always ‘thanks for coming’. It seemed that everybody wanted experience, but I wasn’t getting the chance to get any!

One of these ‘thanks for coming’s’ was in Birmingham, at a travel agents, a little south of Birmingham actually. I’d just started heading home afterwards, had finally made it north of Spaghetti Junction and was barely on the M-6 when my beater of a ‘Ka’ decided to overheat. I barely made it to the services at Hilton Park and pulled in beside a minibus.

The little thermometer dial on my very basic instrument cluster was touching the red when I finally stopped, I remember turning of the key and the engine still went ‘chika-chika-thunk-clink-ping’ afterwards as it slowly stopped.

The minibus driver, a guy named Alan, Al for his mates, heard it, walked over and told me he’d ‘take a quick look’. Within two minutes under the bonnet he appraised me of the facts as he saw them It’s your water pump mate, you’re going no-place.

He seemed to think it was important I knew all about it, all I saw was green goop slowly puking out behind some sort of wheel thing that was stuck, no, let’s make that buried, in the engine.

Al then sat back on the kerb beside his minibus to grab a last fag before heading north again.

I guess the sight of me just sitting beside my dead car with my head in my hands got to him someplace, I’d a full petrol tank but no money left. He finished his smoke and came back over.

The long and short of it was that I got a ride to his depot. I was still most of sixty miles from home, but at least I was on a bus route. I used their phone, called my mate Stu, again, who chatted with Al about the state of my car. Stu eventually agreed to get me a new pump and take me back to fit it the next day.

By the time we’d arrived at his depot, Al knew I was looking for a job, and was direly desperate. He asked if I’d be interested working for his firm and if I was he’d ‘put in a good word’.

Heck yes I’m interested, by now if he’d offered a job shoveling road-kill in camouflage on the M-25, as in London’s orbital superhighway, even during rush hour I’d have been interested.

I was way beyond desperate in my job hunt and almost heading for despair. It was already mid October and I’d been chasing employment since April. With England’s government well into the second decade of ‘austerity’, there were no ‘benefits’ available either. They’d started by cancelling them for under twenty-one’s, then last year it went up to include the under twenty-fives. The first lot of these ‘adjustments’ had been under Labour. This last round was pushed through by the new Tory government, and it’d been benefit’s cancellation that’d effectively ended Labour rule. That’s one I think I’ll die before I figure it out.

Al had disappeared inside and talked to a woman who was in ‘tidying up the books’, Kelsie her name was, and she then talked to me for over an hour. She called her boss, Bill, at home and next thing I know I’ve got a job as a ‘relief guide’ and a promise of eight tours a year, provided of course that everything I said checks out on Monday, and of course I check out with my commitment level when they put me on the road. My first tour would basically only be for tips; I’d ‘shadow’ another hostess and simply learn how they operated and how the company preferred things to be done.

It was filler or ‘cover work’ for them; the pay was lousy for me, one of those ‘zero hours contracts’ with nothing for being on stand-by. The hours, when offered, were going to be long and I’d be away from home an ungodly amount while working. Such is life in England as we slide through our second decade of commonplace food-banks.

You know what; I was so desperate by then that I felt like bells should be ringing across the land, this euphoria held as I left for my mums.

As crazy as it sounds all that kept going through my head, like a song you couldn’t get rid of was Ding dong, Sam has a job, ding dong. If you’ve ever been in this position, you’ll understand. Kelsie, the HR lady, even drove me back home. The other thing I felt on my way back to Liverpool that day was odd, it was that things in my life were actually beginning to get ‘on track’, and I say it was odd, because apart from an intermittent but infrequent sense of, best to say ‘dislocation’, I’d never actually felt things were ‘off track’, if you understand me. I’ll except from that my frustration with my job search, but even then, I’d put things down as ‘normal’ for a freshly graduated student.

I got two tours that year after my ‘shadow tour’ together with a part time job in a restaurant which had an attached pub. My second job was at The Longbow, I needed it to tide me through to next season. The job in The Longbow happened after I moved near the depot and one of the girls at Stellar begged me, well anyone actually, to cover for her pub shifts when she had to take an extra tour. Mostly I’ve worked as a waiter in the restaurant or lounge since then.

I also got a morning job at the local post office and shop, eight through one, six days a week while Stellar was ‘down’ from December through March. There wasn’t much call for bus holidays in the middle of winter but the post sure needed Christmas help.

Back to the pub bit, I got along with the bar staff, ‘subbed in’ a couple of times and was told after about my fourth appearance in two months ‘if I lived close’ they’d hire me for ‘cover shifts’. Before Christmas that year I’d a constant job at ‘The Longbow’ when I was home, but again as an independent contractor and not a full time employee, because I was gone every other week for nearly nine months of the year.

This all only worked out because I’ve got a bedsit from a lady who was renting another of her units to one of the Stellar hostesses, which is how I heard about the room and pub job both. The rent was incredibly affordable even if the landlady, Mrs. Symington, could strike fear into the grim reaper himself. In fact I think ‘Old Nick’ avoided her premises just on principle. I distinctly understood that even dying wasn’t allowed there, at least before the rent was paid up!

When Stellar started again in the spring one girl had quit due to being in the family way, the same girl I’d covered for at the pub, as it happened, and I discovered I was on tours every other week, same schedules as the best of the girls. I say ‘best of the girls’ because the better you were, the more work you got. The company could do that as we weren’t really ‘employees’ more along the lines of ‘independent contractors’. They actually had less than a handful of ‘full timers’. There was also still only one host, me.

That ‘one host’ bit, it did cause me problems at times. This varied from the very good natured teasing I’d get from the girls to the fact that they just didn’t supply uniforms for blokes. The company also had one hard and