Daughter number one is applying for a Saturday job for the summer.
Retail work. I don't want to say "it's about time", but I can't help it. "It's about time." Part of me, though - the part not giving her money every other day - thinks she shouldn't rush into anything. She should enjoy summer while she can.
We don't have summers as adults, do we? For many of us a week or two off work - maybe lying beside a pool somewhere far away - is as much as it amounts to. Those teenage summers that went on and on are a fading, faded memory.
That said, I was working summers from the age of 12. Pure nepotism. I worked with my dad on the building site - making tea, carrying bricks, mixing cement and worrying where I'd pee when there wasn't a usable toilet [1].
When he got tired of me moaning about the lack of facilities he wangled me a summer job with the council. I became a "Womble". That's what we were called because our job was to lift the rubbish off roads and beaches (we didn't have commons). Beaches were best. Roads took you out of town. Beaches were either in town or within walking distance. That meant you could happily while away a few hours shooting pool, or talk rubbish in seaside cafes for hours on end [2]. As long as the Womble wrangler didn't catch you, it was a sweet way to spend the summer.
It was good for a tan as well. The only time I ever actually impressed J was when I came back after a summer on the beaches, bronzed and blonde from being in the sun every day. For a day or two I felt almost attractive.
Oh, we did some work too. The world - or a corner of it, anyway - was a cleaner place because of us. All those disposable nappies sent to landfill. Not that everything would fit in the black plastic bags we were given. Like the dead baby whale that washed up on the sand one day.
On the night before the 12th of July [3] we would be sent to clear the routes of the following day's march. Once we climbed into an outdoor swimming pool at two in the morning. While everyone else dozed off I watched the lights of the boats out on the Atlantic, listened to Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl on Radio Luxembourg and span grandiose future plans in my head. None of which, I don't need to tell you, ever worked out.
When I think of summer, that night comes to mind. Its stillness and fading heat. It's a memory of youth. Summer is youth. And it's long gone.
FOOTNOTES
[1] I must have visited every great aunt I had in the vicinity for toilet breaks.
[2] If it's any consolation it was Northern Ireland's tax-payers who were paying us.
[3] A local thing. You've probably not heard of it.
Twitter: @teddyjamieson
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