God, just standing here in this queue is the most monumental reality check you’ll ever get. Dole queues really are the great leveller. By the look of these people, I’m guessing some of them have mortgages to pay and young families to look after. Some of them might even have bought houses at ridiculously over-inflated prices at the height of the property boom and now find themselves in dreaded negative equity situations with absolutely no hope of ever getting out of it. Loads of young people are queuing up as well, looking like they just left school. In fact, there’s more boob tubes and hoop earrings here than you’d normally see in late-night bars in town any night of the week. A few enterprising barrow women from nearby Moore Street have come round too and are now working their way down the queue selling everything from pineapples to kids’ toys.
‘Six mandarin oranges for the price of five, only one Euro, Dolebusters’ Special’ one of them is yelling. But they’re not doing much in the way of trade. The business types just bury their heads in their newspapers, desperately trying to blend into the background and look invisible. Just like me, hoping and praying that no one sees them.
Tell you something else: I’m bloody glad to have Sharon with me. Turns out she was on the dole, or ‘the scratch’ as she calls it, for almost two years. Then they threatened to stop it on her, unless she did a CERT back-to-work course.
‘But can they do that?’ I ask her innocently.
‘Course they can, you eejit,’ she says, lighting up her third fag since we got here. ‘The whole point of being on the scratch is that the government want to get you off it as quick as they can. They made me go on a personal development course with a load of women who were out of their heads on methadone half the time. A few of them had even been in prison. Then I got the job at Smiley Burger which paid me more than I ever got on the scratch anyway, so that was the end of that. Best day of my life, the day I was able to tell the aul’ bitch of a welfare officer where to shove her personal development course.’
To Sharon’s credit, she’s really keeping up her side of our little Faustian pact and has been amazing about all this whole signing-on lark. I hate to put a hex on it but I think we’re actually starting to get on reasonably well. But then, I figure, if Robbie Williams and Take That can put their differences aside, why can’t we?
Anyway, according to her, the doors don’t even properly open until 9.30, so to pass the time in the queue, I start to ask her loose, broad questions about her dating history/ideal man/perfect relationship. Fair’s fair and I’ve gotta keep up my end of the bargain. Least I can do after she’s sacrificed her lie-in and more importantly, all her early morning TV shows.
‘Right then. The way I look on the whole dating game,’ is my opener, ‘is that it’s a bit like buying a house. You’ve got to work out a list of what you absolutely refuse to compromise on, versus things that may drive you mad in the short term, but that you’re ultimately prepared to put up with.’
‘Is that what you did with Sam?’
Sam.Although he’s never out of my mind, just hearing someone else say his name still is like a kick right in the solar plexus. Funny, how a heart can be broken and yet still beat. ‘No, no it was never like that with Sam,’ I eventually force myself to answer her. ‘He was…well…pretty much perfect.’
Well, OK, so maybe not perfect, I mean, come on, what bloke is? Yes, he was a bit work obsessive and yes, all his talk about winners versus losers and mental discipline could drive me scatty at times, but then…but then in the end, he wasn’t the problem, was he? I was. And now the best I can hope for is that he’ll get bolter’s regret and come crawling back to me. It’s been weeks now and yet every single time my mobile rings, I keep silently hoping that it’s him to say that he’s made a terrible mistake and that he wants nothing more than for us to get back together again. Whereupon I’ll finally get a chance to vent my anger and chew the face off him for ignoring me/airbrushing me out of his life running to the papers etc. Whereupon he’ll grovel and crawl and declare undying love…whereupon we’ll both live happily ever after and treat this whole miserable episode as an amusing anecdote to tell our grandkids. I’ve the entire fantasy conversation all worked out in my head. But then that would be asking for miracles wouldn’t it? And miracles don’t happen in dole queues.
Anyway, something in my expression must give Sharon the hint that this is one of those deeply painful, out of bounds topics because next thing she’s looking at me, almost with kindness in her eyes. ‘Do you want a Crunchie?’ she offers, fishing one out from the pocket of her tracksuit. Like a baby gorilla in a zoo thrusting out a spare banana at a teary child.
‘No, thanks.’
‘I don’t care what you say,’ she says firmly. ‘Sam can’t have been that bleeding perfect. There must have been some things about him that annoyed you. You know, the kind of things women are always bitching about in problem pages. Are you telling me that he never once, ever…like left the toilet seat up, or something?’
She means well, so I haven’t the heart to tell her that his house has approximately seven bathrooms at the last count, so toilet seats were never really that much of an issue. I’ll say this much though, I’m getting to like this more humane side of Sharon. The side you never get to see when Maggie’s around.
‘It’ll get easier, you know,’ she eventually says, stubbing out her fag on the pavement.
‘It is easier. Look at me, I’m dressed. And out of the house.’
Anyway, right now a subject change would be really good, so I get back to asking Sharon what’s on her boyfriend ‘cosmic ordering’ shopping list.
‘OK then. I’m assuming you’re going after the big three?’ I ask her, trying to sound efficient and business-like. ‘Looks, manners and money.’
‘Jessie, I’m a realist. I live at home with my mother and sister and I flip burgers for a living. What the feck do you think I’m doing with my life anyway, living the dream? And you might have been too dazzled by personality to notice, but I’m not exactly Scarlett Johansson in the looks department either. Now if women’s magazines have taught me anything it’s that you have to punch your weight in relationships. So all I really want is…just…just someone who doesn’t make me miserable.’
‘Come on, you’re setting the bar way too low! You can do far better than that. What you want to find is a soulmate.’
‘Anyway,’ she says, but she’s gone off on a bit of a tangent. ‘I’m back on my diet. I lost three whole pounds when I was sick, you know. And I was doing really well yesterday too. I’d a Smiley Salad in work for lunch and then the low-fat Smiley Chicken Soup for dinner. You saw me, didn’t you?’
‘Yes…yes…I did. You were, emm…a model of discipline and self-control.’ We’re getting on well here so it’s probably not the best time to remind her about the fish supper she had right before she went to bed. Washed down with three tins of Bulmers.
‘And I might join Weight Watchers too. They have meetings in the Whitehall Parish Centre and that’s only five minutes away from us. ’Cos, be honest with me now, Jessie. Do you think I’ve a better chance of meeting a fella if I can get a stone off me?’
‘Emm…’
‘Tell me the truth, now.’
‘Well…you see…’ There’s just no right answer to that question.
‘Then on the other hand, I look at you and think, sure you’re skin and bone. You go around the place looking like all you weigh is your keys and clothes and you’ve no fella to show for yourself either, do you?’ A vintage Sharon comment, but to be fair to her, she’s being honest, not cruel.
‘Do you want a Polo mint?’ I ask her, rooting around in my bag, all this talk about dieting making me suddenly aware that I’d no breakfast.