Stains on the Heartland

It's interesting, for want of a better word, to actually be living through a recession as an adult. Though I can just about remember the 80s and early 90s and the effects on my hometown, I was one of the lucky ones in that my dad was never out of work.

Not so lucky were two of my mother's elder brothers, who worked at the last coal mine in West Cumbria until that was shut down in 1986. Some 15 years later, I went to the place, now operating as a mining museum, and the anger in the voice of my guide (an ex-miner) was still strong. My mother to this day refers to Thatcher as "that woman", which isn't that surprising considering she comes from a family where mining was the family profession over many generations.

That was then, though. The 80s were pretty much all about Matchbox toy cars, my Sinclair +2 computer and Bryan Robson for me. This time round, it's personal. The last week, I've been hearing constant talk about "restructuring" and "corporate visions" in the place I work. Euphemistic bollocks, of course - may as well call fucking you over by it's correct term.

For a brief moment, I considered asking about voluntary redundancy, even if any offer would be around £1.50 and a bag of chips. Then I remembered my own two years on the dole and watching Alan Bleasdale's brilliant Boys From The Blackstuff to know that signing on is never a good option when it comes to maintaining some sense of pride in self.

More worrying was a conversation with my landlord the other week (on being told he had to put the rent up a few quid a week). A chap in his early 60s, he informed me this was looking like the worst recession he could remember. Worrying times indeed. The point of me writing this? I think it's in setting down a marker in terms of my own life, and on a bigger scale, of when things either started getting better, or a whole lot worse.