Laugh About it Now

ELECTRIC DREAMS - NOTES FROM A SURVIVOR

A surprisingly non-ironic blog. Something personal and painful. Enjoy!

PART ONE

We were that desperate.

This surely is the only possible explanation as to why I would even consider the possibility that I might train to become an electrician. Or, as the outcome was more specifically sold to me: a Domestic Installer.

I should have known it wouldn’t work out. Plenty of other people were telling me. I just didn’t listen; I couldn’t. There was no other option.

2009 was just beginning. 2008 was washed up and gone. Somehow I found myself, and my wife and our twin boys not even at their second birthday, living in Worthing in West Sussex. There were no jobs. No jobs that paid any money, at least. And seemingly no jobs that didn’t.

I will confess now that I’ve always been pretty bad at jobs. I had already retrained twice and both of those ideas had fallen to pieces due to my lack of enthusiasm and any form of entrepreneurial flair. Every evening the television was filled with highly motivated individuals elbowing each other through the market place to make their name as property developers or chocolate factory owners or SEO consultants.

This was clearly what one had to do now; in lieu of an actual job, you invented one. With my ability to be drained of confidence and enthusiasm even in tasks I do like, having to dredge up these qualities for non-existent jobs I didn’t was always going to be an uphill struggle.

Add to this a complete lack of confidence and ability in any physical task; you can see why electricianing had never been a career choice.

And talking of enough. Enough was enough. I was a year into being a father. I hadn’t slept properly in all that time. I had moved out of the capital to this backwater retirement town I’d never even visited until I moved to it. My ‘career’ had ended when both my agents – neither of whom had ever made any money out of me – dumped me in the same week. My life consisted of taking babies to playgroups and being glowered at by tattooed teenage mums. I didn’t know anyone, never went out; had no money and no social life.

I was done with embarrassment and humiliation and poverty. Enough was enough.

Everyone said that the people in short supply were plumbers and electricians. Now, I don’t mind theoretical science but plumbing appeared to involve difficult physical work involving pipes and water systems. A lot of manual labour. Electricity on the other hand was about wires and maths. Surely, I could master that stuff. Also, I was often told the manual stuff would come. One just had to practice enough.

I suppose there was a vision of a future in which I made a couple of hundred a day moving sockets and sorting out fuse boxes in the houses of friends and old people. Not proper electricianing and that: I mean, even I couldn’t dream up the notion I would be repairing hospital generators or pylons, but a little bit of domestic installing between auditions and Doctor Who book writing seemed not impossible.

THE SALESMAN

‘Do you have any manual skills?’ asked the grinning salesman in my front room. He was too clichéd – pressed suit, armful of laptops and folders, silver bracelet and watch combination. ‘Are you practical at home; get on with the little jobs?’

My wife looked at me. Was this time for honesty? I couldn’t tell.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any skills like that.’

‘Perfect,’ said the Salesman. ‘That’s exactly the type of people this new Domestic Installer qualification is designed for. You won’t be bogged down with the old fashioned regulations and ways of working. We’ll teach you how to do those things. Now, do you want the course in Southampton or London?’

‘London.’

‘Great. How would you pay?’

How would we pay? What, the small matter of two and a half thousand pounds to become a Domestic Installer? Don’t ask. But it didn’t matter because after a few old people’s houses and jobs at mate’s rates, I’d quickly pay that off. I’d be working within a year.

We shook hands, the salesman and I. He actually had the nerve to shake my hand.

WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?

The first thing about electricity: I didn’t know what it actually is. A force? A power? How does it make lights work? Ovens? Why does it shock you?

A friend of mine, a practical friend, told me to think of electricity as water and the wires as pipes. This helped. But not really. How do real electricians define this raw thing they work with every day?

However, for the purposes of this course did it actually matter what electricity was? I mean, I have a degree. Surely I could get my head round the theoretical grounding behind this all-powerful force in our lives.

Except I couldn’t. Maybe I was tired but I just could not grasp the concept of electricity. You look it up. Even Wikipedia uses the old Star Wars getout (as in the infamous Return of the Jedi Obi-Wan lie to Luke). Wikipedia states what electricity is depends on what kind of ‘electricity’ you’re talking about.

Thanks. I don’t know what kind of electricity I’m talking about. That’s why I’m – oh never mind.

I didn’t know any electricians at that point so I couldn’t ask them. I kept at bay the advice of the pre-course literature that suggested knowing electricians would be helpful. Truth is: I’m scared of electricians. As I’m scared of any reasonable practical male able to do proper things with their hands.

Call me foolish, but I presumed when the course literature arrived that Part One Section One would consist of a definition of electricity and the general method by which humanity had discovered and mastered this mighty power.

This did not seem to be the case. In fact, Part One of the three inscrutable ring binders was dedicated to something called Part P. This is a certificate about the health and safety aspect of working with electricity in domestic situations like, you know, when you install a boiler.

Littered with jargon, this folder appeared to imply quite a great deal of familiarity with actually already being an electrician. Even more confusing, the rest of the folder seemed to talk a lot about the Electrical Regulations 17^th Edition. What?

None of the ring binders provided any information on what an electrician did.

The student – me – was expected to complete written courses in all three folders, on my own, and send them off for marking. Once I had passed, I was expected to book a date for the week long practical course in London which would be sufficient for me to begin work in my new profession.

I passed the written course. I had to. Two and a half thousand pounds of other people’s money had been invested.  I passed by rote learning every single piece of information in the Electrician’s Handbook. This was one of the hardest, most boring thing I have ever done in my life.

Because I had merely memorized paragraphs I did not understand, as soon as I passed I forgot everything. 

Didn’t matter: I was through to the next stage.

IN PART TWO: 

LEARN HOW A FORTY YEAR OLD MAN CAN BE SO HUMILIATED HE CAN CRY.