When I was about ten, our home gained a new warmth when my grandad married a friend of my mum’s. She lived just across the road from us, and though she was older than mum, she fell gently into the role of looking after us — cooking dinners, watching us kids, helping out when needed. On many evenings, grandad would come round for dinner, and she would cook for him just the same.
She had three sons — all about ten to fifteen years older than me — and I always used to call them “uncle.” Having them around added a strange sort of extended-family.
I finished secondary school without anything to show for it — a few short-term jobs here and there, but nothing that stuck. In the evenings and at the weekends I drifted with friends: laughing, drinking, smoking, chasing that sense of freedom that felt just out of grasp. The streets were our playground, the nights our escape.
Every now and then I’d see Nathaniel — one of my “uncles,” though not by blood — driving past in his work van. He was a bricklayer. Sometimes he’d pull up, engine still idling, and we’d have one of those quick chats under the yellow glow of a streetlamp. A smoke, a nod, a half-smile. Then he'd disappear into the night again, off to wherever work was waiting for him.
When Nathaniel was around eighteen, he came out to the family as gay. I never treated him any differently — he was always funny, dependable, someone who’d show up if family needed a hand, or just laugh with us when we hung out. He wasn’t defined by who he loved, but by how good-natured and caring he was. I guess I respected that. We got on really well. It didn’t change a thing between us — in fact, it just added another layer to the quiet bond we already had.
One night when I was just wandering around with nothing to do, I heard a van pull up down the road. It was Nathaniel — dusty from a day laying bricks. He wound down the window and just asked how I was doing.
I told him I didn’t have a proper job and pretty much had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. He didn’t judge or give me that pity look. Instead, he goes: “Fancy helping me out on the site — being a builder’s mate? I could use an extra set of hands.”
That offer hit me like a lifeline. Good money for someone my age. I jumped at it. Suddenly, those nights of roaming about with nothing much happening — that uncertainty — turned into early mornings, concrete dust under my nails, bricks stacked high, and the steady rhythm of real work.
Walking beside Nathaniel — van, site, van — it felt like I’d finally got something solid under me. Not just a job — a chance to be more than wasted time and empty weekends.
After maybe six months on the tools with Nathaniel, he told me one evening he was seeing someone new. He was going to move away to live with him — and help run his pub, about an hour and a half from where we lived. When I asked what that meant for me (because I was jobless at the time), he surprised me: he said I could come and work behind the bar for them.
I’d never worked behind a bar, I’d never even lived away from home before — but in my head I was already thinking about girls, getting out of the house, and not having to share a room with my brother anymore. So I said, “Yeah, I’m down. Let’s do it.”
That was it — from builders’ mate-boots and brick dust, to potentially pouring drinks, living away, and starting something completely different. It felt like a gamble... but also like a chance. |
