Chapter 1: Me

I was quite happy alone.

Or as happy as one could be when the only other person you had to talk to at night was yourself. Alone is a relative term. I was not lonely.

I worked every day for anything between eight and sixteen hours a day, five to six days a week rarely taking a holiday even when the company tried to bribe me with a bonus to have my accumulated time off. Look, I myself did not see as important that they owed me five years worth of holiday pay and could not see as relevant that, just because the industrial laws state that I must take my holidays when due, I should. If I had these holidays where would I go, what would I do? Alone.

Previously I'd had a relationship, which had gone badly sour and I did not want to put myself into a position to get as seriously hurt again. After five years alone, the company had become my life and, as I said, I'm happy enough alone.

Whilst at work I was totally surrounded by wall-to-wall women. Not girls, most of them middle aged, timeworn ladies without any illusions left. Or still with the illusion that the extra money they earned would help pay off their mortgage/car/last Christmas's Bankcard or shame husband/live in boyfriend into finding work himself. Purely illusionary.

I live in the same town as they do, cooked cakes for their stalls, helped raise money for their children's schools and reliably bought raffle tickets every time when asked. I picked them up when they fainted due to low blood pressure during heavy period days, got drunk with them at the club or even worse with their husband/lover/boyfriend. I was their boss, foreman, friend or enemy and if you know women sometimes both at the same time. However they were not welcome in my bastion of solitude and myself in my insecurity did not believe they would want to disturb me in my seclusion anyway. Who'd want me?

This attitude sounds strange when I think back about it in a later stage of my life but I truly believed it then. There wasn't a woman who would really want me as I was. And given that exact job description, more than partly correct.

I wasn't ugly though I didn't consider myself good looking. During my misspent youth I had my share of willing partners who were attracted to my wild, independent ways though hardly my good looks. I am six foot two tall, thin medium weight with sandy blonde hair but beginning to darken as I got older. Looking at photos of myself from that era I can see an open ruggedly build young man, in his mid twenties. I had/have a wicked sense of humour ready to erupt at the slightest temptation which was obvious when you looked into my eyes but was extremely self-depreciating and would run myself down way before anyone else had a chance.

They company that employed me was a foreign owned manufacturing company which imported parts from the parent company and put the parts together to sell locally and the surrounding South Seas, and Eastern nation. We were steadily growing and building sales outlets and were perpetually employing new labour and increasing sales staff. Part of my job was to employ both casual and permanent staff but everyone who was employed here, both office and floor staff threw in and did everything. I have personally unloaded many a semi-trailer single-handed or with the office staff stripped down to our shorts in the heat of mid summer.