Keeping an Ear Out for The Door Bell

Employment and unemployment are states with shifting boundaries here.   This is because everybody has multiple jobs.  There is the posto that carries insurance and employer and employee contributions to pension rights; then there is the self-employed job, usually agricultural or highly-skilled tradesman that carries another set of rights guaranteed (and paid for) from within a trade union protection set that is more like a medioeval guild; then there is the casual, but often fixed for years,  service with a local firm or individual doing a relatively unskilled task; and finally there is the contribution to the household economy - self-build, gardening up to and including market gardening,  deliveries locally, etc.

Frankly how they all manage to have dined and turn themselves out round about nine in the evening, bathed and dressed in fresh clothes, for a stroll to the bar, a game of cards, a chat, an ice cream  a piece of skulduggery, is amazing.  I think that they rely  on what could be called recession-in-turn to manage to get everything done.  No-one is ever sacked except for personal action that asks for it, it's just that attention shifts to another part of the individual and family undertakings as economic tides wash in and out. 

The secret is to keep a close eye on the person whose skills you wish to command, let them know a touch in advance, make sure you have all the permissions, supplies, tools, seeds, clarity of thought lined up, and be ready to take up the offer of some hours of work when it comes.  I've let it be known there are a couple of trees that died of the cold (sigh) to come down and be cleared away from the garden now I'm back.  And then all the external woodwork on the ecohouse is due for a revarnish; it was a dreadful winter.