Further depuration
I have spent some time today before going to work this afternoon in re-reading some of the letters from his mother he left lying around during the particularly difficult time between our move into this house and September 2001.
September 2001 changed things for us though in unexpected ways that were not immediately obvious, and for the moment at least this is a digression.
After we moved here in November 1998 I secured a move onto the 'fee generating' side of the business; the respectable, serious side of the business. Everyone else, however senior, is just 'back office' and despised.
I started at absolutely the bottom rung of the ladder as a trainee on my previous salary. A few months in I had apparently been promoted because a restructuring eliminated my trainee grade and labelled me an 'assistant' which previously had been the appellation of those on the rung above trainee. I got no pay rise to go with the new title. I had a lap top and a mobile and business cards and a nice little line in small client assignments that after a couple of weeks had already become perilously straightforward.
I was awarded a pay increase in the summer of 1999 but things were still difficult. The fat bastard claimed to be working but he claimed to be working with the MOD and it was pretty much impossible for me to believe that. He'd have had to pass a security check that looked not only at him but his wife. And I'd have been the stumbling block.
Besides he seemed chronically short of money except immediately after he'd been to see his parents. At the time from my salary I was paying the mortgage principle and interest, the covering pension, the council tax, the tv licence and the child care. On top of that I was seemingly expected to find money for food, clothes and the things a toddler needs such as nappies. I was on less than £20,00o per annum before tax and NI.
Our house payments were about £500 including mortgage, pension and council tax; on top of that I paid about £140 per week(around £580 per month) in child care. You do the sums and work out how much I could have left given that I also had to pay to get into and out of London on a daily basis at £270 per month for a ticket.
The pay rise merely narrowed the immense gap between my incomings and our outgoings.
I wanted to be able to work from home occasionally and so toward the end of our first year in the house I set out to establish the technical fault on our telephone line he claimed to be trying to sort out. No such fucking thing, of course. He'd run up a colossal bill with the telephone company and we'd been cut off.
The bill arose from an ill-fated venture with the former Chairman of a private company he'd been employed by briefly. The idea had been for him to run recruitment from home and to do this he'd had broadband installed. I'd agreed to him having the installation done provided the company picked up the costs but, of course, I was lumbered with the bill. Or rather his parents were. They gave us the money that enabled me to pay off the telephone bill. I negotiated with the other utilities for staged payments. A further promotion coming in the following summer would see my salary rise towards the kind of level where I could support us without any input from the fat bastard.
I'm reminded of this by the content of the letters. Some of them, of course, are innocuous enough; the usual stuff between a fretful mother and her only son living some distance apart. But other passages are altogether darker and more difficult.
And since I now have to go to work I'll have to leave them for another time.
September 2001 changed things for us though in unexpected ways that were not immediately obvious, and for the moment at least this is a digression.
After we moved here in November 1998 I secured a move onto the 'fee generating' side of the business; the respectable, serious side of the business. Everyone else, however senior, is just 'back office' and despised.
I started at absolutely the bottom rung of the ladder as a trainee on my previous salary. A few months in I had apparently been promoted because a restructuring eliminated my trainee grade and labelled me an 'assistant' which previously had been the appellation of those on the rung above trainee. I got no pay rise to go with the new title. I had a lap top and a mobile and business cards and a nice little line in small client assignments that after a couple of weeks had already become perilously straightforward.
I was awarded a pay increase in the summer of 1999 but things were still difficult. The fat bastard claimed to be working but he claimed to be working with the MOD and it was pretty much impossible for me to believe that. He'd have had to pass a security check that looked not only at him but his wife. And I'd have been the stumbling block.
Besides he seemed chronically short of money except immediately after he'd been to see his parents. At the time from my salary I was paying the mortgage principle and interest, the covering pension, the council tax, the tv licence and the child care. On top of that I was seemingly expected to find money for food, clothes and the things a toddler needs such as nappies. I was on less than £20,00o per annum before tax and NI.
Our house payments were about £500 including mortgage, pension and council tax; on top of that I paid about £140 per week(around £580 per month) in child care. You do the sums and work out how much I could have left given that I also had to pay to get into and out of London on a daily basis at £270 per month for a ticket.
The pay rise merely narrowed the immense gap between my incomings and our outgoings.
I wanted to be able to work from home occasionally and so toward the end of our first year in the house I set out to establish the technical fault on our telephone line he claimed to be trying to sort out. No such fucking thing, of course. He'd run up a colossal bill with the telephone company and we'd been cut off.
The bill arose from an ill-fated venture with the former Chairman of a private company he'd been employed by briefly. The idea had been for him to run recruitment from home and to do this he'd had broadband installed. I'd agreed to him having the installation done provided the company picked up the costs but, of course, I was lumbered with the bill. Or rather his parents were. They gave us the money that enabled me to pay off the telephone bill. I negotiated with the other utilities for staged payments. A further promotion coming in the following summer would see my salary rise towards the kind of level where I could support us without any input from the fat bastard.
I'm reminded of this by the content of the letters. Some of them, of course, are innocuous enough; the usual stuff between a fretful mother and her only son living some distance apart. But other passages are altogether darker and more difficult.
And since I now have to go to work I'll have to leave them for another time.
posted by Enyo @ 11:43 am
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