uwillneverplayalone.icu
Hey, my name’s Henry. I’m 27, born and lived my whole life in Grimsby. Whenever you tell people you’re from Grimsby, you almost always hear the same crap: “Ohhh, that place from the movie with Sacha Baron Cohen?” And then they start laughing about drunk lads in pubs who just sit there smashing pints and watching football. Like we’re all some kind of hopeless alcoholics wasting our lives. Honestly, that’s bullshit. Grimsby’s just a normal post-industrial town on the east coast. Yeah, it’s not rich. Yeah, it’s tough here. But there’s hundreds of places like this across the UK. I’ve been working at Pelagia Grimsby for 6 years now. Fish processing — cutting and cleaning white fish. Shifts are 10–12 hours, a lot of nights. Hands constantly in freezing water, and the smell of fish… it gets into you. I swear I feel like f*cking Aquaman at this point. Even after a shower it doesn’t go away — it’s in your skin, your hair, your clothes. Girls used to joke about it. Now they don’t even bother. Pay is about £28k a year gross. Take home is like £1900–2100 depending on overtime. Sounds alright, yeah? But once you pay rent, bills, food, petrol and try to save something… you end up with nothing. Or even minus. I live in an old council flat in East Marsh. 70s building. Winter there is brutal. Walls are cold, windows are shit, ventilation’s basically non-existent. Every year mold comes back — black spots in the corners, on the bathroom ceiling, behind the wardrobe. I tried fixing it myself like 3 times, it just comes back. Then last November the boiler completely died. Like, done. Had to use electric heaters. Bills instantly jumped to £320–350 a month. I started cutting everything — less hot water, lights off all the time, eating pasta and rice on repeat. Then my car broke down. Old Vauxhall Corsa 2009. Gearbox started whining, then just died. Without a car getting to work is like 1.5 hours with two buses one way. Missed two shifts. Lost money. And that’s when I did probably t
