At the tender age of 14 and nine months I began working at a freeway roadhouse. But with an hourly rate of $5.25,buying a CD player was going to take a while.
Gossamer fine,in colours like ‘alabaster’ and ‘chateau’ – pantyhose meant different things to different women,and it was my job to help them find the perfect pair.
Of all the jobs,it is most astonishing that anyone let me be a professional cleaner.
Crossing the city to work in a factory on a revolutionary island was an eye-opening experience. There were no two ways around it:I was simply foul.
The coffee chain probably thought they’d hit the jackpot when my older sister asked them to give me a job. I could be a Solange to her Beyonce. How wrong they were.
With the logic of a barfly who pulls beers to fund a drinking habit,I sought a job at a service station.
Fresh out of school,I’d been appointed groundsman at the country’s most prestigious military college. Rolling pitches was dull apart from one strange day.
After four years it was time for a fresh start. And that fresh start looked like a big blue and white costume that was dirty,unwieldy,and way too hot.
It was here that I learnt two invaluable truths about government red tape:one,it actually exists,and two,it makes for excellent cricket balls.
It wasn’t my idea of fun. I believed school holidays were supposed to be a holiday. But 30 bucks was 30 bucks.
Not for the first and not for the last time,I gritted my teeth and went with it,rather than trying to cross the cultural impasse.