"Volume 001" - Entry 002
Entry 02 - Working With My Hands
Filed from South Yorkshire - "the apprenticeship"
I left school with no real qualifications, reading difficulties, and no idea what I wanted to do. Out of that came an apprenticeship with South Yorkshire Police, vehicle body technician, their internal bodyshop garage.
" Worth Remembering "
Seventeen years old at the interview. Sweaty palms. My older cousin's Paul Smith suit, too big for me. Red mohawk. A stretcher in one ear. A tattoo I kept hidden. I thought I was the shit.
Five hundred applicants for that job. What got me it, apparently, was that I shook the boss's hand afterwards and thanked him. My dad and grandad had drilled that into us. Be useful. Be a gentleman. Fix things.
So I started working with my hands.
Ten years, that apprenticeship. I learned metalwork, welding, painting, mechanics, upholstery. All the courses the force would send me on. Growing up I'd idolised Jesse James off Great Biker Build Off, Orange County Choppers, Monster Garage. My dad owned more cars in one lifetime than any sane person should. I got to actually do the thing I'd only watched.
But it was the same five people. Same Ford Focus, repaired a thousand times over. Closest age gap between me and the next person in that garage was twenty years. Six days a week, ten years, the same thing over and over.
That's what broke me. Not the trade. The routine of it.