The Summer of 2004

My first job in Manchester set the tone for the next six years in that it was boring as fuck. Having moved here in a desperate shot at finding work and escaping the dole queue, I'd spied an advert in the Evening News asking for people to work event security. Stewards, basically.

I rang the number and was invited to an interview straight away. This seemed a good sign and I figured it would pay crap, but enough to ensure I could get myself somewhere more permanent to live than the student digs I was crashed in while the usual occupiers were away for summer. Perhaps I'd get to see the odd band or football game as a bonus.

After the briefest of interviews, which seemed to me to be an exercise to prove I could speak decent English and wasn't a complete lunatic, I was invited to start the next day. All I needed to do was wear a white shirt, black trousers and 'smart' shoes. I didn't have the shirt, so on my way home I stopped at BHS and bought the cheapest one possible.

I'd been told to report to the cricket ground at 10am, the first of working at many games there. I hate cricket. Eventually, I settled into it over the remainder of the summer. Four day test matches came around every other week, depending on the rain, working from 10am to 6pm for £5 an hour. Occasional night 20/20 matches brought in an extra £20 or so, enough for me to pay the £60 a week rent for the tiny bedsit I'd found by chance.

After a little while, we were invited to sit this Health and Safety exam that gave us some vague qualification to earn an extra 50p per hour. I copied the answers from the guy next to me, who said he was studying an NVQ in Sport Science, and got the raise.

Generally, I worked around the non-smoking section of the ground, doing a loop of the four exits and the club museum with six other people, doing half an hour at each before a rest period. I soon arranged it so that my break came straight before or after the spell in the museum, where all you had to do was ensure nobody broke anything. I would position myself in a corner that allowed me pre-warning of any incomers (i.e. the boss) through the reflection of the glass boxes that contained prizes and memories of LCCC past.

With the chance to spend an hour out of every two-and-a-half sat on my arse doing nothing, it seemed a good time to get in some reading. I read Love On The Dole over a couple of days (thanks, Red), and a few others.

My main memory of a lot of the games was that the first two days (Thursday and Friday) would generally be mainly attended by pensioners, as most other people would be at work. Part of the job was checking on any spectators who may have dozed off in the sun, just to check they were still breathing. Getting close enough to clarify this, as in enough to hear snoring but not so that you looked like you were trying to rob them, became an art form.

As the summer ended, I finally got a 'proper' job in an office, with a desk and a computer, and I've rotated around several others like this since. When I think back to my first summer in Manchester, I'm sometimes surprised by how much I've changed and whether the distance I've covered has been for the better or not.