Career Opportunities (Part Two)

September 1986 is fast approaching and my parents are telling me I have to get a job. My Dad circles a job in the West Sussex County Times for a job as a meat packer in Partridge Green. £91 a week. Partridge Green is a village on the bus route to Brighton and I’m sitting on the bus in trousers, a shirt and tie and my grey ‘interview’ jacket’. “Just think about the money,” my Dad says. “Ask if the job has any prospects,” my Mum says. This stumps the girl at the interview who basically just wants to know if I want the job and can I start on Monday? No, of course I can’t start on Monday, I’m only here to get my parents off my back. I ask her what the hours are and she tells me it’s a 7am start. I tell her I’ll think about it and phone later, with no intention of doing either. I miss the bus by two minutes and walk the eight miles home. As I walk through the countryside I’m thinking of that £91 a week. A small fortune. A few months back I was earning £8 a week, from two paper rounds. This job will do for now.

Monday morning my Dad drives me to the St Leonard’s pub car park where the van picks me up at 6.15. I approach it nervously.

“Glengrove?” the old retired guy, Burt asks.

“Yes.” Was that the name of the factory?

“Get in the back then”.

In the back of the van nobody says hello. Nobody moves for you. You have to climb over people to get a seat. Everyone has their own seat. The lad and girl with the leather jackets always sit at the top end. The girl with glasses and perm always sits in the middle, Ivy always sits at the end by the door. Everyone sits facing each other and staring at the floor, saying little.

Once inside the factory gates the new people, there are 8 of us, are ushered into the canteen and given a cup of tea. I am too nervous to drink mine. We are issued with clocking in cards, a white butcher’s jacket and hat each. On the factory floor I’m trying not to breathe in the heavy smell of meat. It’s incredible noisy in here. I’m taken to work in the Gammon department. My first job is to line bags of gammon up in a machine where they are sealed. The next machine along dunks them in boiling water and shrink-wraps them. The smell of boiling plastic fills the senses. I’m working on a machine with three others including Ivy, who’s a total pain in the arse. She keeps blaming me and another new person for the fact the bags aren’t sealing properly. As usual I am innocent. It turns out they need a new machine, which turns up a few weeks later.

The work is dull, the hours long; 7am – 4.30 pm, but it’s not hard. On Friday you finish at 11.30 am. "Not long now," the butchers say, from about 9am onwards. You spend time trying to ignore the clock on the wall, eventually giving in, expecting an hour to have passed but finding its only been ten minutes.

In the paper it said they were taking on more staff due to expansion. This is nonsense; it’s because nobody ever stays in the place. People come and go all the time. I don't blame them, I myself will be leaving soon. A new guy starts, Trevor Turrell, who everyone knows from the village. He’s a tall gangly fellow, with a daft simple humour. “I’m going on a course,” he says, “intercourse.” Another guy, Dave Parkes also starts around this time. He looks like one of the villians from Mad Max. He’s worked at the factory on and off and his hobby is drinking in pubs every night. All these people are nineteen, twenty and they seem really old to me.

The other end of the production line is where the fun is. A guy called Matthew Clark works at that end with a girl called Dilkie. They weigh the gammon packets, put the price label on and pack the gammon into boxes. Matt seems to be forever running up to someone and making a kind of aaargggh noise, describing all his friends as mad, or playing imaginary drums to the sounds of ZZ Top from his Walkman. I like Matt. He is 20 and lives in a world still out of my grasp. He drives cars, drinks in pubs and has girlfriends. He doesn’t drive very well though. He crashes his Beetle and comes back to consciousness on the back seats. He borrows a white Mazda from his neighbour and is all set to buy it, but crashes it before he gets the chance. Drunk, he also manages to fall over the banister in his house. Matt needs help one day and the supervisor, Bill sends me down to work with him. I take it as a permanent move. It’s cleaner down that end but I worry I’m too quiet and he’ll request someone else.

Thursday afternoon is the day to look forward to because Thursday means pay day and the notes arrive folded in a clear paper bag. I get dropped off in town on Thursdays and head to Our Price. The music in the charts is; Status Quo’s ‘In the army now’, Paul Simon’s ‘You can call me Al’, Queen’s ‘a kind of magic, Aha’s ‘Cry Wof” and 'Hip to be Square' by Huey Lewis and the News. I fall for some of this but I’m looking for something better.

One Monday I decide to take the day off and go down to Brighton. The bus goes into the Star Road industrial estate where it turns round, passing the meat factory twice, and I’m glad I’m not there and hoping they can’t see me. I buy, ‘Before I Get Old’ the biography of the Who, which begins my Who and especially Keith Moon obsession. I decide I want to be Keith Moon. The drums can wait, I’ll start with the drinking.

“Where’ve you been?” asks Matt, the next day.

“Brighton – shopping,” I reply.

Matt likes this, it breaks the ice and we get chatting. Pretty soon I’ve been invited to the Partridge on Friday night, the village pub on the corner of the high street. I’m worried I won’t get served. I am sixteen but with real effort could pass for fifteen. Matt orders the drinks, a pint of cider for me - I can’t fathom drinking lager in such quantities. The landlord puts the pints on the wooden bar. This guy is actually serving me, he’s not even asked for ID. Could this be the start of a new social life? could this be goodbye to hanging round the street on a Saturday night or staying in to watch boring Saturday night TV? I may even meet some girls. I put the pint to my lips and take a sip.

We go through to the back room, which smells of smoke, aftershave and beer. There are a bunch of people from work there; The manager of the bacon department, Tony Adsett, a great bloke, Mole, a friendly guy who works downstairs, Dave Parkes, Trevor Turrell, Joanne, Jackie. Andy a’Hearne the guy on the bus with the leather jacket is there, a pretty sarcastic fellow with a tache that makes him look older than his nineteen years. Outside of work though he’s pretty friendly. There’s a nice camaraderie in the Partridge and it gets more pleasant with each drink.

Three pints of cider later I’m paralytic.

In the gammon department we start to have a laugh. I have the job of putting labels on the boxes and writing the best before dates in marker pen. I write things like’ best before breakfast’, ‘best before 10am’ and ‘best before eaten’.

Christmas approaches and they are announcing redundancies. I am one of them. They tend to do this, lay people off at Christmas when it goes quiet, and then re-advertise the jobs in the spring when things pick up again. This is not quite the good news I thought it would be. I feel pretty dejected. Especially as a girl who started after me is being kept on. I’ve managed to lose two jobs in the same year. A couple of days later it turns out the manager has got me mixed up with someone else and I’m not to be laid off after all.

‘Oh you dozey pillock,’ Matt says to the superviser – Nick, who’d made the screw up.

The only trouble is we have to be back in work on the 29^th. I take the free Christmas turkey we are given home to my Mum. I’ve been at Glengrove for four months. I will be there another 16 months.