Tramping in Exeter

For the second day running I have stayed up all night and so I set out for Worker Ready at 6 am. They must give me some work sooner or later.

My chances with all of the other employment agencies in Exeter are at an end; they all want references I don’t have and when I step through the front door and into their smart premises they look at me like I am a tramp. There is simply no chance anymore.

The job I was offered at Tesco, Exe Vale – Home Shopping Assistant in the 'dot com' section - has vanished. It was only a matter of time before they realised they’d not taken up my fake references and when they rang last week to enquire that was the last I heard. I am not even suitable to do other people’s shopping. My BT landline phone has been made receive-only and my mobile ran out of credit weeks ago - after several days stuck on 12p - so I can’t phone them to check, even if it were worthwhile.

This morning, by way of preparation, I’ve been reading Orwell’s first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). How depressing. I am now one of the characters in the book, a desperate, unemployable, middle-aged virtual vagrant. I have accommodation but the rent is weeks behind (£500) and it is surely only a matter of time before I truly join the world of the streets. The Nether World (according to George Gissing). If I do, I think I'll hitch up to London and do it properly. If you are to dine at the table of homelessness and despair, then why not make it a banquet at the Ritz?

My last hope, Worker Ready, moved several weeks ago to Sidwell Street. They used to be based in Paris Street but the whole Southernhay side is due for demolition. Perhaps that means some chance of employment; the employment of destruction.

There's something both unsettling and welcoming about Worker Ready. You have to get there early for any chance of work and you meet other desperate people eager for any work even at £5 an hour; many are foreign. It's like one of those scenes from the factory gates during the Great Depression, with masses of workers desperate for even one day's work. The Controller behind the counter has it in his power to save a person or abandon a person - it is that simple. If you are the lucky one, you can spend a whole day in a factory in either Marsh Barton or Sowton; as long as it's not Howmet, you can't complain.

On the other hand, it is a friendly place and they offer free coffee and newspapers. You have either The Sun or the Daily Star and GMTV on the small TV screen high on the wall. I hate GMTV except for Kate Garroway, who is f****** awesome (and only a year younger than me).

I also prefer Sidwell Street to Paris Street. Their new premises are more suited to their purpose, both larger and away from the exposure and ersatz chic of Paris Street. If this agency is the last chance soup kitchen of opportunity, then why not place in the right part of town?

In Sidwell Street, you have more privacy and parking; this far end, near Blackboy roundabout, is the only surviving pre-war architecture this side of Queen Street, nearly a whole mile distant along the great, ancient thoroughfare that runs through Exeter down to the River Exe. It also has extortionate convenience stores such as the Co-op on the corner and the small newsagents opposite which - incredibly - is still going.

There seem to be a lot of people from Yorkshire and Lancashire in Worker Ready, too, both staff and workers. They're a nice bunch, really.

Worker Ready really is to the unemployed and poor what a soup kitchen is to the tramp; it offers same-day cash payment at the end of your shift. Eight hours' work and you suddenly have £40 in your hand, bypassing all those nasty bank overdrafts and managers (or customer service assistants).

This is my salvation. Appropriately, although I am not religious, the Sidwell Street Methodist hall is bang opposite, gleaming from its recent restoration. This building - saved from the destructive hand of the city planners in the immediate post-war period - is a true Exeter gem, an ornate, almost rococo style building, of a kind that would not look out of place in pre-war Dresden. It is a miniature Frauenkirche, though it carries no recognition amongst Exeter people whatsoever. Its recent unveiling coincided not just with its centenary (May 3rd), but also with the inauguration of its spectacular, re-built Dresden equivalent.

The Cafe Royal has two entrances. The public face of this London institution is on Regent Street, a sort of art nouveau, sheltered entrance that welcomes the affluent customer into an expensive interior. The staff entrance is at the back, in Glasshouse Street, and is the opposite in every respect. I once had the misfortune to spend three months working here, twelve hour shifts of wine waiting.

Sidwell Street methodist church. Contains some superb pictures and a history of this excellent building.

http://www.sidwellstreetmethodist.org.uk/