I met my wife twelve years ago. I was single, on my own in London and just a bit lonely. This was Thatcher's Britain and work where I came from, Doncaster, was just a fond memory.
So I packed a case and got on the train. At one of the stops, a guy got off and left his paper. A London Evening Standard, or, "The Jackers Journal", as I came to know it over the next two years. This is due to the columns and columns of jobs advertised. I'm a plumber by trade but can put my hand to just about anything. I'd ringed we'll over a dozen jobs by the time the train pulled into Kings Cross.
I started work on a site in Camden two days later. I could not believe my luck. Fifty quid a day, an absolute fortune by my standards back in 85. After the first fortnight, I paid my dad the 200 quid he had loaned me to come south looking for work.
I had a couple of rooms in Peckham, they were the attic rooms of a house owned by Ivy, an old black lady. She was as good as gold with me and let me keep the old banger of a van I bought in the garage downstairs. That kept my tools safe and therefore kept me in work.
Sally worked behind the bar in a pub called the Shergar named after the Irish horse that was kidnapped around this time.
We didn't work on Friday afternoons. "POETS DAY", Piss Off Early, Tomorows Saturday! and as it was my local and I fancied a pint. When I went in Sally was sitting at the bar, customer side, I bought her a pint. She is still a pint of bitter sort of a girl.
We had a few beers and talked a bit more than usual and six hours later I bought her a curry at The Temple, a curry house in Camberwell. We went back to her place where I learned never to go down on a woman after eating a vindaloo.
About 3 months later her flatmate moved out and I moved in with her. Sex was good but nothing out of the ordinary, which was a bit of a disappointment as my tastes are a little out of the ordinary. I was in love though and she wanted me to take the lead in bed. I wasn't going to fuck it up by asking her to spank me and not be the macho man she wanted.
In the meantime, at work, I'd now discovered plumbers in London made a small fortune on site. There was more development work than you could shake a stick at. Every night when I got home Sal had taken another call asking me to do a job.
About this time I bumped into a big African guy called Albert. He was a painter and decorator but had contacts and was beginning to put together a team of good lads who could build you a palace if you put the right money up.
I'd done a few jobs for him, not only did he always come up with the agreed cash, there was nearly always a "Brown Paper Envelope" after. I was working for him when I first made a thousand pounds in a week. This was the era when Harry Enfield was riding high with the "loadsamoney" character.
Sal and I went to Paris for a week's Holiday. I'd bought her a couple of sets of mucky underwear and a couple of pairs of stilettos she wore once or twice. We took a taxi to La Rue Saint-Denis and we had our heads turned.
I bought her a proper full-blown corset and an ankle-length shiny rubberised trenchcoat to wear with it. She called it her French Whore's mack. What with the corset, the mack and a pair of thigh-length boots with what she described then as "mad" heels? I had a hard-on for the next three days.
Luckily she hadn't figured out the exchange rates or she would have put them back on the hangers. I still had to make the going in bed but she looked tremendous in this sort of gear. She ain't skinny and has a pound or two too much on her by some people's standards but she is perfect in my eyes.
It was a good job we went on the train and ferry, I had to buy two more suitcases to get her new wardrobe home.
We had been home minutes when I went to answer the door and found Albert there. He came in and over coffee told me he had a job but it was a bit secret. He wanted me to go with him there and then to look at a job his friend wanted doing urgently.
He was very unforthcoming in front of Sal but she just laughed and said to me you better go, I may get another corset and coat out of this.