It’s probably not well known that I’m an alcoholic but I make no secret of it. I abstained from alcohol for 12 years until I returned to Yorkshire from Australia in 1998 but would have probably started drinking again anyway.

I worked as a barman for awhile on a Sunday afternoon shift when I expected to be in the pub socialising and had no objection to being paid for it, I usually had another job and my pay went back in the till before I left!

The landlord I worked for prided himself on turning alcoholics into barmen and thought he knew I was an alcoholic before I did. Like hell he did! He wasn’t at the AA meeting, over a decade earlier, when I stood up and said “My name’s Mike and I’m an alcoholic”

The job started as hobby for me, as it was for the landlord! He lost interest and started treating me as an employee, even though he left me (illegally) in charge of the pub overnight!

Only my friends called me Mike in the pub because that was the landlord’s name. I was always called Aussie Mick or Mick Dundee, which caused some confusion when I visited the a few years later with a Kiwi friend.

It was a karaoke night and I entered my name as Aussie Mick as that was the name I had been known by when I worked there but the landlady, with no prior knowledge, mistook my friends New Zealand accent for Australian one. But she did end up duetting with me on this song

Friends I’ve met don’t recognise me as an alcoholic, I don’t appear to be drinking differently from them. The difference is that I don’t know when to stop!

I rarely visit a pub these days, it’s cheaper to buy a carton of beer to drink at home where I can’t get into an argument. Well that’s the idea. I can be having a friendly discussion with someone in a pub and someone will butt in! Same on social media although they feel protected here.

A long time ago when I first started on Twitter I received an actual death threat. It apparently didn’t breach Twitter rules, presumably because the person threatening me was in Australia with no means of carrying out his threat.

I was homeless but managed to graduate from the University of Newcastle NSW with a BA in Philosophy. It hasn’t helped me to a career, I sometimes feel it’s done the opposite – I was rejected for a job at a university because I was deemed overqualified for the job!

I did get a job with DSS, equivalent of DWP, and in 5 years I went from receiving JSA to processing them and back to receiving it. I couldn’t prove it but I believe ageism and sexism were involved – women over 40 were already established but the manager was the only man older than me and he blocked my progress. He admitted that I was best suited for a job at his level but blocked every chance I had to get there. On one occasion I volunteered to stay behind after the Christmas Party while I was sober and he attended the front desk while drunk!

This manager was clearly provoking me to resign but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I applied for a transfer, as recommended by a psychiatrist, but was denied it until my performance improved. That’s like giving you medication when you no longer need it.

I had a job interview for at Sydney University for which I was considered overqualified. They didn’t think about that in temporary jobs I’ve had in U.K. Best one was in DWP Human Resources Centre in Leeds where all of my colleagues, especially my boss, hoped I’ld get a permanent job. I failed my interview and my boss had to tell me off for going around with a sad face while a colleague I had trained felt guilty at having got a job. I had to teach her from scratch, she wasn’t stupid but hadn’t even turned on a computer before I met her. I did a good job of building her confidence and turned out to be quite a good trainer and could write simple and brief explanatory notes, using illustrations to avoid a dozen words – a skill I discovered that I put to use in my blogs.

I’ve had other temporary jobs since then including one where I was collecting paperwork from a central printer and distributing it to those who had sent it to the printer! My job was shared between two teams, and I was denied a request to be trained on the same job as a kid on work experience!

During my lunch break I went to the agency that employed me and said that it was brain numbing, some of my colleagues were surprised I stuck it out so long. Asked how long I had I answered “As long as it takes.” The lady in the agency got on the phone and I went back to work and announced I had a different job with the same company. I didn’t need to be interviewed, my BA got me the job.

There were aspects of that job I disliked, like phoning a competitor company pretending to be a potential customer to learn what their offers were so we could match them, but I did leave a legacy behind when I moved on to another job with the same company – my Jargon Buster

Words and acronyms are not universally understood even within a company. A former colleague bumped into me in my later job and said that he read something he didn’t understand until he read my explanation.

This was my last job, still with the same company, and I was given a fixed term contract which meant I was employed directly by the company instead of the agency. This meant I could take a day off sick without it counting towards my statutory annual leave – which also excludes Bank Holidays, if you’ve used up your annual leave you don’t get paid!

Even when directly employed I had to undergo counselling after a day off sick. My supervisors noticed whisky on my breath when I came to work but stated quite clearly that it didn’t affect my work. In fact the boss didn’t like me using my own initiative to provide a more efficient system for accessing files stored offsite – I had to grant her permission to make enquiries.

I’m 75 now, in reasonable health but lack mobility. I’m not hard up thanks to a compensation payment for missold PPI and living a frugal lifestyle, despite having a debt that I’m paying off at a rate that will finally see it cleared when I’m 110 years old. I rarely leave my flat now because my legs are so weak that just going downstairs is a struggle. I don’t drive and public transport where I live is abysmal. I have a self-propelled wheelchair (barely used) if I want to join a rally or picket line, but I’ld still need transport to get there.

I’ve been having digestive problems lately that have caused me to switch from drinking lager, which I could manage, to spirits which are more of a problem. I don’t have to be drunk for trolls to annoy me but I’m more sensitive after a few drinks than I would be otherwise. My natural empathy is heightened, if I hear of another creature’s suffering I feel their pain! Politicians often tell us “our thoughts and prayers are with them”, a bland meaningless statement. True empathy means putting yourself in another person’s shoes and experiencing their pain, the cowards card can’t do it and I can’t avoid it except by becoming more reclusive than I already am.