by Steve Marshall

Created on: July 09, 2010   Last Updated: November 17, 2011

At twenty one, I was still pretty green about the real ways of the world. One year earlier, I had bombed out from college, and I had hit pretty hard, the unemployment ranks.

For nine long painful months after that, I awaited the birth of a new job.

I was rewarded, and obtained this job on the 25 September, about three weeks before my twenty first birthday. I was to stay in this same job for twenty more years after that!

I had wanted to take a year or two off before entering the University course, but my Dad had insisted persistently that I enrol.

On the day of enrolment, funnily enough he had taken a day off work, and he actually then drove me the twenty odd miles over to the campus to enrol. He really wanted me to be the first person in our family to  have ever gone to University. His father had wanted him to, but he had left school at around sixteen, and my father then had got a job in a bank.

Being pushed around like this, even by our father's is perhaps only ever a recipe for disaster, as it was in my case too.

I had wanted to earn a bit of money first, before deciding on what course it really was that I had wanted to do. I was undecided about the direction of my life, and I wanted to test a few different pools of water first, to see which one suited me best. I had obtained my car driving licence already a few years earlier, and just as soon as I had been old enough to do so.

I could not of course afford a car at that time though. Even after now obtaining employment, it would still take a few years of saving to even put together a deposit for a car. Salaries were much lower in those days.

My life was about to change however, and I was now to obtain my first car much earlier than I had ever anticipated.

My father's only brother gave me a very substantial twenty first birthday gift. He was unmarried, and had wanted to splash out on his favourite nephew. My father was always very tight and calculated with his own money. He would never have ever done this, even within his own wildest dreams, yet alone within my dreams.

But my Uncle, well he was like a fairy God mother to me. When we obtain things without earning them, they can of course actually cause us then much angst, perhaps we were not really ready for them yet after all.

My favourite Uncle had come to the office where I worked to give it to me, not wanting my father to even know about this transaction taking place. This was only good thing that had happened to me up until now, except for the offer

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