So let’s get this straight, you get 4 weeks off a year, plus bank holidays and weekends and that’s it, rolling on into the future till you’re 65, which in my case is 48 years off. You work one job until you get another. And get this, you have to be grateful because in today’s climate you’re lucky to have a job. These are the unwritten rules.
At work I’m considered quite thick. You’re being watched, they’re waiting for you to make a mistake, because thick people work here and just as long as it’s you and not them everybody’s happy. I’m starting to believe the hype. I’m short sighted but too vain to wear glasses, so when people gesticulate to me from far away, I just squint and wave. I’m insulated in my own world to escape the boredom, with ‘Tommy’ going round my head. I wear the worst clothes; an unwanted jumper I got as a Christmas present, tight faded jeans, all hidden under the blue overalls anyway, with steel toecap Dr Martin shoes - a good grip against the greasy floors. People tend to write their name on the white caps we have to wear. I’ve written ‘Hat’ on mine. Whenever the inspectors come over we have to wear hairnets, the rest of the time we don’t bother. My clothes stink of meat and when I get home I change immediately, part of the process of separating work from home life. But the smell of meat never quite goes away.
1987 doesn’t get off to a good start. I’m sent to work downstairs in the beef department, amongst a bunch of butchers where the piss taking is turned up to ten. I start the morning breaking ice off slabs of meat with an iron bar. I’m trying to blend in with the walls to avoid the butchers’ attention. I move over to the EDL department, the wall blending fails when Mole lets me use his donkey (which is basically a couple of forks with an electric steering handle used to pick up pallets). I think I’m getting the hang of it when I come through the plastic partition the same time as Mole comes the other way and I smash into his ankle. Poor guy, he’s flat out and bleeding. Mole is off work for a week.
By the time he returns I’m sent up to work in the bacon department. In the bacon department you queue in the morning and Steph dishes the jobs out. I always try to get put on the weighing machines. You put the packaged bacon on the machine, it produces a label with the price, you stick it the price on and put the package in a box. Box full, you send it down the production line and start on another. A guy at the end makes the boxes and you shout ‘boxes’ at him when you want more. For amusement I put the bacon on the scale and lift the scale up slightly to see how much I can reduce the price. One time I send a big slab of bacon out priced at 4p.
The days are depressing me, you live for the feeling of relief that you’re going home. Sunday nights I lie awake unable to sleep wondering what I’m going to do with my life. I lose myself in a world of books and music. I have a CD player but there aren’t that many CDs available. The Beatles being Beatles do it properly. George Martin pops into Abbey road to clean up the master tapes and the CDs are released in order, Sgt Pepper being released on CD exactly 20 years after the original was released. I’m getting intrigued and start buying the CDs as they come out. I’m not that bothered by ‘Please, Please Me’ so I wait for ‘Help’ then get ‘Revolver’, and I’m starting to get hooked. It’s not that far from the Who, and you can hear sounds in it that people like Paul Weller picked up on. I start listening to the Sex Pistols and the Clash. I work in a meat factory. ‘Career Opportunities’ says more to me about my life than anything else around. I’m looking for something new though, something you can go and see rather than just read about.
The Beastie Boys are beginning to hit big. Matt and I have tickets to see them with Run DMC at Brighton Arena. A few others have promised to come down too. I’m not sure about it, this is my first ever gig. When people ask me in ten years time what my first gig was I’m going to have to remind them of a long forgotten one hit wonder comedy white rap act. But I’m beginning to love them. They have a song called ‘Girls’ which is them rapping over a cheap keyboard pre-tune. It is clearly the best song ever. They appear on TV, jumping up and down on stage, a girl in a cage behind them. Then they turn up at the airport and swear at the British reporters. It doesn’t get any better than this. Mike D has a VW sign around his neck. People start to copy him, it becomes a craze. Mole’s VW gets beastied.
At the Liverpool gig a riot ensues when the Beasties take to the stage. Suddenly no-one is going to the Beastie Boys gig anymore. Matt is talking of driving there later and just seeing Run DMC. I’m naïve; who cares about a riot? I want to see the Beastie Boys. He eventually agrees and drives us there in his white beetle.
We stand near the back to watch the Beastie Boys. Matt does his neck strutting dance and I copy him. After a couple of drinks I head into the crowd for Run DMC. I’m right in the thick of it and as the band take the stage the mosh pit pushes backwards and forwards violently. I lose my balance and fall into the masses. All I can see is legs. Great, first gig and I’m going to get crushed to…
A huge guy lunges in and pulls me out of the crowd.
“You alright mate?” he asks.
“Yeah, cheers.”
Back at work things are as oppressive as ever, but we do manage to have a laugh sometimes. Rik Mayall is the biggest comedian ever and we are all huge Rik fans. Me and Paul are re-enacting some Dangerous Brothers stuff at the weighing machines one day when this guy Jamie turns round and starts joining in with the quotes. He could recite word for word the lot. He’d been to art school for a year then due to parental pressure got a job. He was pretty shy and ate his lunch in the locker room alone. But mention Rik Mayall and he sprang to life. We become friends and meet up to go to Brighton to buy records some Saturdays.
People come and go from the factory but not me. Icontact one agency and they ring back enthusiastically about a job in a hi-fi shop, because I’ve told them I'm interested in music. I ask them to put me forward for it. Leave it to me they reply. It sounds like I'm in good hands. It’s my first dealings with agencies. I never hear from them again.
I take a week off. I’ve nothing planned I just don’t want to go to work. Walking along Hurst Road I hear my name being called from a loudspeaker. It’s Mole, who’s hooked up a speaker to his car so he can sing ‘Are you lonesome tonight’ to passing girls. We hang around for the week playing pitch and putt and drinking in the Crown.
Eventually they put me onto the end of the production line. This is a pretty good job because you get to work under the radio speaker, which is virtually the only place you can hear it due to the noise from the machines. You weigh the boxes of meat, write the weight on the box and put it on a pallet, until the pallet was full. Den, a mad ex-teddy boy from the fifties picks them up and delivers your pallets to you. He always sits in the same place in the canteen. He has this method for catching flies.
“You just got to follow it along the table then clap your hands in the air above where you think they’ll be, ‘coz they’re fast and then they’ll fly into your hands.”
One day a butcher called Wally comes up to me and says:
“Why do you work here?”
I ask myself this regularly but nobody else ever does.
“Well it’s money isn’t it?” I shrug.
“This place is alright for people like him,” he says, pointing to someone a bit backward, “but you’re wasting your time here. You’re not stupid.”
1987 is disappearing out of sight to the sound of the Proclaimers and T’Pau’s ‘China in your Hand’, and still I work in a meat factory. I’m looking down the production line at the lads cutting the meat, the housewives loading up the vat pack, the lads and girls on the weighing machines. They say you should be grateful for a job in this day and age, there’s some who can’t get work. They say it’s easier to get a job if you’ve already got a job, you don’t want any gaps on your CV.
I apply for a couple of jobs, my hard work rewarded with two rejection letters. So you don’t want a meat packer with four CSEs working in your office ‘eh, penpusher? Something has to change. I’ll be eighteen next year. There’s no way I’m working here when I’m eighteen.
No comments:
Post a Comment