Under my concrete skin

I've ramped up all the best resources.
Pulled all the (f) stops.

I LOVE YOU CONCRETE.

A love story that dates back to 1997, when I qualified as a secondary school teacher... and started working in a concrete gang.
Because the money was better.
Because there was no need to be in the Bishop's good books to get a permanent job.

I have breathed you, smelled you, tasted you, shoveled you, powerfloated you, cupped you, smoothed you, vibrated you o luscious grey matter.

I may have cursed you on these rare occasions when you dripped off my hard hat and fell into my collar, running down my chest or between my shoulder blades.

But all was soon forgotten when the following morning I eagerly waited for the crane to lift the shutters, so that I could see you shrouded in lazily rising steam in the cold morning air, my beautiful smooth and still warm newborn concrete wall.
I caressed you lovingly, assessing your blemish-free hard surface. Adoring you, my monolith of joy.

I will never forget the day of the last big pour, when the final skip was emptied and the 16th floor was completed. We had reached the top. Frank Sinatra had just died and it was a rare sunny day in the land of a Celtic Tiger ready to take on the world. We were all shoveling concrete bare chest, singing My Way. We were happy.

I was never a big fan of ol' blue eyes.

Concrete, I still love you.

Zoe development filled for bankruptcy last year.