I’ve been unemployed, many times, in my twenties and early thirties, and I know the depression that can come with that.

The constant worry about paying bills, the guilt when you go out and hope someone else will get you a round, the way you train your mind to lower expectations, to pass on invitations to go out, to ignore concerts and new albums and new clothes: the good things in life. When even penny-jetsetting weekends away are beyond your reach, never mind a proper holiday. Waiting on buses in the rain, wishing you had a decent winter coat. Putting off the dentist, praying the cashcard will work, this time, at the hole in the wall. The white lies, the invented excuses, the temptation to give in to television at every waking moment. Your life becomes represented by a piece of paper, a CV, which you send out to any address you can find, but still gets ignored. The cheapening experience of signing on, the inane mockery of official job advice and the evidence you’ve to supply to show you’ve been job hunting, like being at school again, having to hand in homework, and being treated just the same. The queues, the endless queues. Lines and lines of people bored out of their skulls.
Thousands of men are joining those lines, who have been let go from the construction industry. I never consider the job, or those men, as simple. Like everything else, there are those who are good at their jobs and those who are not. The builders I know and love are men who take pride in their craftsmanship, the unalloyed pleasure of creating something that lasts on the earth, that becomes someone’s home or workplace or place of entertainment, or something that makes the world run smoother, faster, or better. The satisfaction of your body aching with a hard day’s work, knowing in your bones you’ve been productive, because what you produce is right there in front of you, for everyone to see. No banker, you.
The first gouging out of the green field, digging down to grips with foundations, the bulwarks, the depths. The patterning of brickwork, the slickness of the practised trowel. The celebration of topping off a roof, that crowning moment when a construction site becomes a building. Seeing with your own eyes how well something is set in place, in stone, glass, wood or plaster. The curious simple pleasure of changing the colour of a wall with paint, and how the painstaking effort to edge it off cleanly pays off with pride. The care to make a surface smooth and polished. The mathematical precision needed to get floor or ceramic tiles to fit a difficult space, working out a puzzle that matters. The knack of finding the right material for the job, knowing its strengths and weaknesses. The tools, and how they fit your toughened expert hands. The knowledge of how good a room will look, when the rubble and plastic is swept away to reveal the clean sturdy lines of your team’s handiwork. The pleasure of finishing off the details, getting a lamp to fit snugly into a ceiling; hanging wallpaper so smoothly no one can see the joins. The gratification when you’ve found a way to solve a problem neatly, with ingenuity; you knew that spare piece of piping would come in use some day. The warmth of a new carpet, how it softens a space and makes it welcoming. Switching on lights for the first time in a house, watching the brown murk coughing and spluttering out of a tap, to give way to clear, clean water for the first time. The first mug of tea in the bright new kitchen, echoing empty and loud, peeling off the dusty plastic to reveal the gleaming surfaces. The first controlled explosion of the gas boiler, the creaking and gurgling of the central heating, as warmth races through the icy house for the first time, blood pumping life into a concrete and plaster box. The laying of turf on the levelled muck outside, the final dressing on the earth’s disturbance. Another settlement by humankind, another patch of the world civilized, made habitable, made homely.
The teamwork, the camaraderie. The slagging, and laughter, the whistling at the babes, the whistling while you work. Getting into the same rhythm with each other, as you form a human chain to move things along, when you’re racing to get the concrete down on time, when you need each other to be sure-footed while carrying heavy loads. You look out for each other. The effort you make to try to get to know a few words of someone else’s language, the craic you have with sign language and gestures that bring smiles to all faces from Lagos to Lodz. Knowing you’re doing a decent day’s work with great lads, sorting out the world’s problems, planning to paint the town red on pay day. You work hard, you deserve to play hard. Good clothes, the best clubs, the best sport. You look after yourself and those you love. You’re a working man, and proud of it.
What on Earth is to become of these men?