Gainfully employed

 A bad day yesterday. I woke from a dream in which I'd been helping to prepare for some sort of celebration, and had suddenly realised that David was missing.  In a panic, I asked the people around me if they'd seen him?  Oh yes, he was here about an hour ago .  Where did he go?  They weren't sure.  I ran from room to room, looking for him.  I'd just hit on the idea of sending him a text (although I was sure that he hadn't turned his phone on) when I woke up.  It upset me out of all proportion and I teared up whenever I thought of it.  

So let's dwell on the happy memories.  

People who knew both of us often assumed that we'd met at work, or at least worked at the same place when we met, but that came later and it was all David's fault.  He loved the idea of us going in to work and coming home together, but I wasn't sure that working in the civil service was something I wanted to do.  I'd had a summer job working for the Inland Revenue and it hadn't been a good experience.  

David himself had started out to be a medical laboratory technician.  He spent some time on job placement and had really enjoyed the experience, even though he was nearly killed when an oxygen cylinder lost its valve and turned into a missile.  He managed to jump over it before it buried itself in the wall.  However, once he'd got his certificate, the entry qualifications had been raised.  That was when  he took a temporary post in the civil service to support himself while he studied for the certificates he needed.  The temporary job became permanent- he was there for more than 30 years -  and he never went back to finish his studies.  

My qualifications are in teaching  but I'd had all sorts of jobs in my life, ranging from tea lady/toilet cleaner (yes, it was the same job!) to adult education lecturer. In my student days I washed dishes, worked on factory production lines, worked as a barmaid; I'd done Youth Work, been a director of the UK branch of an international charity...I've always said that a moving target was harder to hit.  

I'd left my teaching post when we moved in together and realised that I didn't want to go back to the profession.  I still have the occasional nightmare where the Education Authority has discovered that I owe them two weeks teaching and I have to go back into the classroom!  David took great delight in announcing "Hi honey, I'm home!" when arriving back from work in those days when I was between jobs.  

I found a job working in an after-school club, which I loved - although I once almost set the house on fire by falling asleep while waiting for my food to cook after a busy day working on a playscheme.  However, we were trying to save up to get married and the job was part-time  and paid part-time money - I really needed something full-time.

One day when we'd been living together for almost a year, David came home from work waving a copy of the staff newsletter saying "There are jobs going at our place, you need to apply for one!"   I shrugged my shoulders, thought "I can stand it for 6 months" - that being the length of the fixed term contract - so I applied and was invited for an interview.  A couple of weeks later, I got a phone call asking me if I'd be able to start work the following week.   I said yes, and 23 years later I'm still there.

As I said, it's all his fault.  

Soppiness Alert

I don't have many letters or notes from our early days together - as our relationship had to be kept secret, any notes he did pass to me (usually under the cover of the table when we were in the pub) had to be destroyed.  I only have the lyrics of a Billy Joel song (David was a big fan) that he wrote out for me.  Hope you enjoy it.