We work all day, we get no pay.

The thing about the kind of work that we do is that you rarely get paid until you deliver the final report to the satisfaction of the client. That means that after you do all the bidding, negotiation, preparation and the fieldwork (always interesting, often eye-opening and the best bit by far), grind out the analysis, write and submit the 10,000 words (average) report that you sweated late nights to get done, you face a lot of faffing around and big delays while important  very-well paid people agree to a date to get together for presentations of the results. Then, and only then, the client agrees that you can submit your bill and then they take forever weeks and weeks to pay you. 

All this means that the times when you are working like a person that works very hard you are getting paid like a person who never gets paid.  Work and reward are contiguously disconnected and it has been a long time since we got paid for anything at all. 

This afternoon we "threw the head up" and went off to Whitehead for a big blast of good old sea air; a place where the colourful houses are always waiting patiently to model for a camera and never require you to pay in money, blood or time.