Dating : On The Road From Manchester — #1StoryADay

Written By David Hundeyin

We head to the city of Manchester in April 2012 for today’s story. I lived in Bradford at this time, but as you know by now, Bradford is not exactly the easiest place to find work. I was into door-to-door direct sales for a wall cavity insulation outfit called Miller Pattinson and it wasn’t really a job. By the wording of the “contract” I had, I was self-employed.

Now in the UK, if you are on a Tier 2 post study work visa, you are not allowed to be self-employed except you have something exceptional in the form of capital or talent or a world-changing idea. The reasoning is that if for example, you become a plumber, you are taking away a plumbing job from a UK citizen. British jobs for British people and all that stuff. Eventually they will find you. And deport you. Or jail you. Sometimes both. I needed a real job real fast.

Everyday when I got door-knocking, I had it at the back of my mind that just a wrong knock on the wrong door and I could find myself in handcuffs on a Virgin Atlantic flight to Lagos. By this time I had figured out that I had to get back to Africa at some point if I ever wanted to live like a complete human being again, but I didn’t want to go back that way.

So when I came across a job advert in Manchester one day, I considered it. A normal person would think “Bradford to Manchester is 75 miles. That is not a realistic everyday commute.” Me? I thought, well I have a car (which was falling apart, uninsured and had no road tax on it), and I can get up at 5am every morning.

The interviewer at the agency was a lady called Sue. She wanted to know, “Do you live in Manchester?” I took in a bunch of information from her facial cues and body language and I decided that the correct answer to that question was “Yes.” “Where?” she pressed further.

My answer was one word, but it was a case study in how much of an effective liar I can be. I did not know much about Manchester. I just knew the major suburbs and areas around it. I did however know that there was a notorious area of the city called Longsight which is populated by Jamaicans and other black people. The negative of claiming to live here of course, would be that I would be associating myself with drugs and gun crime and all that stuff that went on there. On the plus side, it would be totally believable that this black dude with a broad Southern accent would live in Longsight…which would improve my chances of getting the job.

All this calculation was done in less than a second before I gave my answer “Longsight”.

So I got the job. It was at an outsourcing centre called BSS working on behalf of the Standards Testing Agency. It was a one-month fixed term contract for £6.05/hr and it was the first paid office job I had in my adult life.

Now the story gets interesting here.

I had got myself to Manchester for the interview with my old sputtering uninsured Vauxhall Vectra which had less than a quarter tank of petrol in it. The 75 mile M-62 drive had wiped it out and as I got back onto the M-62 to head back to Bradford, the fuel light came on.

I don’t need to tell you that I did not have a penny of money anywhere in the world at that time, and in fact what I was eating was the food stored in my fridge from my last paycheck.

I kept hoping against all hope that the reserve tank would carry me to Bradford somehow. But fat chance of that happening. Just after the 32nd mile, a few miles to the M1 junction, my trusty old Vauxhall Vectra sputtered and died on the road. Fuel was finished. I parked by the side of the road and held my head in my hands thinking “How the hell will I get out of this one?”

The answer walked in by itself. I just remembered somehow that a few weeks before, while I was at the bank negotiating for an overdraft (which was denied of course), I happened to see in the terms and conditions of my bank account something about free AA Breakdown cover with the Lloyds TSB Silver account.

I googled “AA breakdown number” on the faulty Blackberry Curve 8520 I was using at the time and I called their hotline number. I didn’t know if I qualified or not, it was just a Hail Mary, a hit-and-hope sort of thing. It turned out I was qualified and a breakdown truck was dispatched.

When he got there, I feigned ignorance about the cause of the problem, knowing full well that he would simply bill me for some petrol and I had nothing to pay him with. Eventually he towed my car to a petrol station and ended up paying for £7 of petrol which got me home. That AA bill remained outstanding until the end of 2012.

Oh, and fun fact: while I was waiting at the side of the road for the AA Rescue van to arrive, I saw this white couple park a few metres ahead and disappear into the bushes for about 30 minutes. While they were gone, I occasionally caught a few grunts and shouts blown in my direction by the wind. They eventually reappeared, all dishevelled and rough. The man looked noticeably happier than the woman. They had no idea that I saw them.

Dogging, it’s called.

I was just a 22 year-old Nigerian who was once a rich kid, and now a poor and desperate jobseeker, waiting at the side of the road for some petrol to get me home, becoming a casual voyeur in the process.

That made no sense.

But nothing did anymore.

The world was literally upside down.