Yesterday was Saturday. Now, in the annals of life on this planet Saturday, in England, as far as I recall, has been a main Market Day. So yesterday, the local market being open an usual, I ventured the heavily falling snow to get there. The van was a ‘no go’ – not worth the time to un-freeze and run for five hours to get the heater working – so I grabbed me bag and walked. I would, I surmised, walk faster than snow-bound traffic anyway. But after the first mile a thought struck me in the snowy silence….
There was no traffic. I mean NO traffic. There were also no other walkers. My footprints in the deepening white were the only ones. There was only ME trudging to ‘work’ yesterday morning. (Around here that is)
At one time the term, ‘Saturday morning’, meant, for many workers, the promise of ‘time and a half’ – 6 hours pay for 4 hours work – and the day, Christmas, Boxing or New Year, didn’t always matter – if asked you went in.
Yet yesterday, on Radcliffe’s empty white pavements, the stark reality of my work status title became suddenly, and rather sadly, apparent in this ‘strange’, ‘new’ England………..
Sole Trader.
