Working Class Kids

I used to dream of the high life. The fancy historical buildings, people in small circles drinking rich wine served with mini quiches and green olives. Away from the concrete jungle decorated with graffiti bridges and rows upon rows of tudorsque pubs, run down charity shops and tacky high-street savings.

Until I went to uni, that all changed. I found myself surrounded by high-class people with their Downton Abbey accents pronouncing Bath Spa like Barrrth Sppparrr. Wearing their new branded clothes and their never dirty, always clean shoes.

Suddenly I realised I had no circle. I didn't fit in with typical working class kids, nor did I fit into the posh ones. No matter how well I spoke or held my champagne glass at the stem, raising my pinky while doing so, I will always light my cigarettes off my toaster if my lighter ever fails me. As much as I had developed a taste for cream cheese and salmon with black peppers on salted crackers, I still have a craving for dirty garage hotdogs and oven-cooked potato smiley faces.

I had travelled on a scholarship, mingled with the 'I studied aboard for a semester crowd', but I still went back home, back to my small council estate house, that I have done since I was a baby. My mum has never moved, yet I am always packing my things into the next place. I guess I am a nomad with nowhere to go, no circle to stay and remain.

Yet as I get older, and sadly not wiser. I have come to terms with my humble working-class roots, despite the lavish lifestyle of high society I so desperately craved. I'd rather spend my time with real people, who know what hard work really is, and know what it's like to go without. Therefore, helping anyone, even if it meant you too, might go short. We are all in it together; us working class kids.

In the space of a year I went from interviewing in Italy, to going hungry mid-lockdown. The wheel of fortune turned and left no prisoner. I was at rock bloody bottom, and I wasn't the only one.

I was surrounded by others who had lost their jobs and with that their financial security. If I had some money, I would get food for myself and then share with my neighbours, and them vice versa. If none of us had anything, we all suffered together. We saw many sleepless nights and drowsy mornings. Watching the summer sunrise and waking up to the sunset. It was rough, skint rough.

It wasn't long before I began to appreciate the smallest of things, and I reminded myself that although we may have suffered, we still had clothes on our backs, a roof over our heads and comfy beds to sleep in. Don't get me wrong, the place we were living in was a mould infested cesspit, but it is still better than sleeping in the back of an old rusting car or an old tent that not even a dog would dare to sleep in.

I had seen luxury, experienced it even, yet I have also seen poverty and endured that too. It can happen to any of us, and I guess why I felt the need to write this, is because I ask you, the readers, to always be humble and compassionate. The world is rough at the moment, uncertain and quite turbulent. It's easier to endure discomfort when we are all looking out for one another.

Thankfully at present, things are slowly getting better and beginning to balance out, but I will never forget either of these moments in my life, the luxury or insecurity. I know both sides of the coin, and no matter what may come my way, nothing will beat me down. I make my own circles.

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