Listening costs nothing

SIGNING ON:Lending a hand and a sympathetic ear can make the difference between a good day and a bad one

HIS DOLE MONEY does not arrive in his bank account. Naturally, when he rings the dole office they pick up and hang up, four times in row. Naturally, when he is finally put through he’s told the only person who can deal with the issue – the one who organised the application for the Enterprise Allowance scheme – is not in. No one else can help. He asks to speak to a deciding officer who is unusually helpful: three clicks on a computer. The money will arrive next Monday. Apologies.

It is Wednesday. Twenty-two euro in the kitty. The fuel warning lights – petrol has become a real issue since moving to the sticks – are flashing on both car and bike. Still, the creche manager says they can pay next week, no problem; three children have already had to pull out. When he asks for credit at the butcher’s, not only does he get an unequivocal “of course” but the butcher also throws in half a pound of sausages, gratis.

He siphons the remaining petrol from the car, puts it in the bike, heads for his brother’s. But what if you’ve no family to borrow from? What if your family have no money to lend? What if, unlike him, you’re not able to blag and charm your way in local shops? What if you’re defeated, not a good actor, completely alone?

***

He is still on the mailing list of several PR companies. Decides to take up an invitation. Cheaper to take the bike, so he arrives at a posh, corporate-sponsored event in full biker gear – no point changing if proceedings are going to be dull, or if there’s no one there he knows. The PR girl, distinctly unimpressed with his garb, examines his invitation so many times he asks does she suffer from dyslexia.

***

He goes outside for a smoke (yes, he’s failed, again). A 1992 BMW has stalled at the lights. The unemployed man tells the driver that he’ll help push the car. As he does, a taxi driver leans on his horn, calls the unemployed man and the BMW driver a pair of losers, and more.

The unemployed man is, naturally, tempted to pull the shaven-headed fool from his cab. Instead, after listening to the man’s illogical tirade, he smiles. And in his best West Brit accent: “Very sorry. But I don’t speak taxi.”

Even the driver of the Beemer has to laugh.

***

Unemployment makes people sick. Out cycling, he meets a man who has stopped halfway up a hill. Seems to have run out of steam, in more ways than one. They smoke, talk. A builder, he did well, borrowed for a new van, started to lose work, same as everyone. Became ill from worry, all the mounting bills. His hands shake some days, and the physical strength he took for granted seems to have evaporated. The bank is becoming aggressive.

“Bizarre little island, isn’t it? Badgering me for €20,000 while fat cats who owe €20 million are still . . . Ah, to hell with it.”

The unemployed man feels like scarpering but remembers painful days when he needed a sympathetic ear. They walk together to the top, remount. As they pedal furiously downhill the builder lets out a wonderful, life-affirming yell.

Sometimes it takes just a moment of your day.

***

First it was thyroid, then adrenal glands, now they suggest it is his wife’s pituitary gland at fault, that she might have Sheehan’s syndrome, caused by blood loss at childbirth. If he’d been half as lame, or half as vague in his professional response to his clients, he’d have been unemployed decades ago.

***

His eldest is flourishing. Adores her teacher. But is developing an horrific Dort accent, diminishing the “o” in toast so as to sound like Prince Charles. Still, her granny, who was insisting on elocution lessons – he’d have taken the money and used it for something vital, like shoes – is delighted.

“You think you’d have gotten as far as you have, son, if you sounded like Bottler?”

But, realistically, how far has he come? And how much farther is there to go?

The writer of this column wishes to remain anonymous. His identity is known to the editor