Dig Your Own Hole (1/9) By Joe Hakim

(1/9), (2/9), (3/9), (4/9), (5/9), (6/9), (7/9), (8/9), (9/9).

Things were going well. We were on schedule and under budget, Chris Chambers, so my boss was chuffed to bits. "It's going to be a good year," he said slapping me on the back, a huge shit-eating grin plastered across his face. As he looked around the building site, he tipped back his hard-hat and his chest expanded like a proud father watching at his children running around. If he was a cartoon character, pound signs would have replaced his pupils at that exact moment. The Ferensway redevelopment project had almost been too easy. We were giving Hull a facelift, and our job was to remove all the old, ugly buildings in the town centre and then build the foundations for the new building developments.

We were part of Hull's 'City-Image' venture, and as such, we had been awarded a lot of money and time. But the fact that we had managed to keep things under control was winning us a lot of political favours. "I'm telling you," my boss continued, "we carry on like this and we will be setting ourselves up for life." Chris was the very embodiment of the capitalist ideal. Portly and red-faced, he had managed to come from a Hessle Road upbringing and rise through the ranks of his building firm to become its chief executive. Although I still had a bit of a socialist hangover from my university days, it was hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.

There was also the fact that I was earning obscene amounts of money. Morals and ethics tend to go out of the window when you find yourself with enough cash to put down a deposit on a Merc. My job was to provide logistics and organisation between the various departments, and so far I had proven myself beyond doubt. Although I was still in my twenties, I had built up enough of a reputation in the last couple of years to be trusted to get things done. Thanks to me, the Ferensway redevelopment project was running like clockwork.

I carried out my last site inspection for the day as the work began to wrap up. We were currently demolishing an old Victorian house at the edge of town that had been slowly crumbling away for as long as anyone could remember. We had encountered a lot of trouble in the beginning from people who wanted to preserve the house, but our 'political friends' had managed to quickly silence any dissenting voices. We were, after all, taking Hull into the twenty-first century, and a bunch of whining, dust-covered, nostalgic liberals weren't going to stop us. I had to laugh at such a sentence running through my head - I really was going over to the 'dark side' - but my ambition and success were turning me into something I once despised. The thing was, I didn't really care.

Geoff, one of the foremen, came running over. His belly slapped against his tool belt as he huffed and puffed and waved his arms at me. I knew then that something had gone wrong. He was completely out of breath by the time he came over, and he had to place his hands on his knees and crouch down to regain his compose. "What the fuck's going on Geoff?" I asked. "You need...you need to..." he wheezed. "Geoff, please," I snapped. "Get your shit together and tell me what's happened." "We've found something," he said pointing back at where he had just come running from. "You need to come and take a look at this, now."

Continued...Next Page (2/9)

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