That's the good news - I have a job. However, it's perfectly possible that I could turn up on site at 8.00am to start work only to be told that no one knows anything about me, no job of the kind described in the contract exists, and if it did, and if I were supposed to be working it, they'd fire me anyway. That sort of thing does actually happen. Not, so far, to me - but to people I have known.

The joys and satisfactions of working as an independent contractor.

But supposing all goes well. The site is less than twenty minutes away (no move, hurrah!), the money is reasonable. The people I've dealt with so far appear to be competent and efficient, and what I've learned of the job appears to indicate that the work might be interesting. My. Interesting work. And money.

We certainly won't be any wealthier. Because with an increase of income will automatically come an expansion of our vices - which are many and, in my case, expensive. I make no apologies for this because I have never believed that abstinence is a virtue. Abstinence is the last refuge of the coward and the hypocrite. I prefer brazen-browed sins, and whoredoms conducted at the burning noon-day. And I have not the least doubt that we will continue to sin, and be improvident, and to luxuriate in our spendtrift ways on the grand scale.

If we don't I shall have words to say on the topic, both pointed and sharp.

The only thing I hate more than work, any work, all work, is unemployment. I hate being unemployed with a passion. The worst, the most tedious occupation, is better than being on the dole. Why? It has nothing to do with the virtue of work, and everything to do with time. A 40 hour work week is carried on in all kinds of ways and is divided up into any number of shifts. But what all these divisions have in common is the fact that they divide up time into 'theirs' and 'mine'. And 'mine' becomes doubly precious and doubly significant precisely because it's not 'theirs'. Unemployment is a curse because it effaces that difference. Now I have all the time in the world - and nothing to do with it. You might think that an unemployed person would use this 'free' (or purposeless) time to improve himself. To learn a trade, or a philosophy, or find God. But why? And what? To what end?

Unemployment is a blank canvas and the absence of paint. It paralyses the spirit, because it's in work, in achievement, in shaping the world to meet goals, that the spirit of a man finds itself. If you don't work you are a dead thing, without point, or purpose, or function. You are a burden to yourself, to those who depend upon you, and to your neighbor. Which makes it difficult to be unemployed for an extended period while not going crazy with frustration and guilt. There are people and creatures that depend on me.

Helping with the housework doesn't cut it. A man should earn a wage.

In former times a man went out and hunted beasts to feed and care for his family. Or he went out into the fields and cultivated the land. Or he put his labor to some industry that enabled him to support those who depended upon him. All these things have one thing in common: that a man should work. And since last October I have not been able to work because no one would employ me - despite my best efforts.

I've found that very difficult, as my wife will attest. I haven't always been the best unemployed husband that I might have been. I have, at times, been something of a cunt. But that's alright. Because there have been times when she's been something of a bitch in return. And that's just as it ought to be. I wouldn't want to have gone through this particular storm with anybody but her.

And it has been a storm, one which isn't definitively over even yet - even though the project manager is expecting me and the recruiter is even now writing the contract.

Trust nothing. Hope for nothing. Have no faith at all. And smile when everything they told you turns out to be a lie. Because if you don't you won't get another contract.

But still, I have a job. 8.00am Monday, the other side of Jeff Davis Highway. And you know what? If they give me half a chance, I'll kick their asses. They're getting me cheap, and I intend to show them so.