I rested my head on the steering wheel as the engine continued to run. Would people think less of me if I killed myself? Probably not. Would people think less of me if I killed myself because I didn’t want to work in a poultry factory? Probably.
An eight foot dagger tipped fence snaked around the ubiquitous factory. Is that to keep people in or out? The sun had yet to shine since I’d returned from a heady year in Australia.
Technically it was my decision. Emotionally I couldn’t be further removed from the establishment I was heading towards for the first of five induction days. I had attempted to find employment elsewhere, but no one else would have me. I had applied to Forest’s for a job making garden fencing, which only involved nailing pieces of wood together. I assumed I had been under qualified for that one. I thought the interview had gone well. This was my only option.
The funds had been savaged on the streets of Sydney and in pubs and clubs of Melbourne and had disappeared without a trace into the red. Only a solid summer in Hereford, wrapping dead birds in plastic, could paint the money black. That resonant sunset over Uluru seemed the other side of the world away. Rain steadily fell.
I have never been to prison. I hope one day not to. My only reference of incarceration is the ‘Shawshank Redemption’ which I watched in a packed Adelaide hostel. The film etched a tattoo on my mind. Of bullying, regret, guilt and fear. How every day behind the high fences was just another tilt at survival. The scene that disturbed me the most was of the recently convicted arriving at the prison and being leered at by established prisoners who view them as their new play thing. I entered through the gates of the factory and the scene replayed itself.
“Fresh meat!” a helmeted worker clad in white called out and the taunt was replicated down the corridors. It was an undying echo added to by fellow workers spilling from doorways.
“You sure you’re in the right place, mate?” a faceless man asked from within his snood.
“Yes?” I replied.
“Positive?”
“Yes?”
“You’re HIV positive?” and the laughter cackled on. I could have run but there was nowhere to hide. Blood stained, barbeque sauce stained, sweat stained identical people flowed passed me. Some stopped and glared, others continued and glared, others glared and glared. I felt a wet hand on my shoulder and a voice boomed,
“One’s escaped! Grab ‘is wings an’ we’ll chop ‘is ‘ead off!”
The door I sought could not have come sooner. The cries and heckles continued for another fresh fish swimming the corridor gauntlet as I ducked into the safety of the induction room. I was back in class. Rows of plastic orange chairs and desks spread out in front of me. Eyes glaring everywhere. A small, slight, hair netted woman in wellingtons handed out sheets of paper. She looked like she had been terrified of every day of her waking life. She didn’t say anything just indented her fingernails within the clutched sheets and stared at me. Everyone else was sat down and so I assumed this was my first move.
The door opened at regular intervals as I read the sheets on my desk and more fresh fish flopped in. ‘What it means to be a T.F.L. Foods employee’ read the top sheet. I engaged the trusted skim and flip routine employed during my A-level studies, assuming the information laid before me held little importance. From what I read, I was right, though ‘pride’ confusingly appeared several times. I definitely caught the word ‘career’ and my stomach knotted. Silence. Eyes flitted among the ‘team’ and a motley crew we were. The mouse like woman accomplished the sheets hand out then scurried back to her desk sanctuary. She reappeared again with a handful of folded card. Without so much as a squeak she placed a piece of card on each of the desks. There was a large cardboard box behind her desk at the head of the room underneath a large flip pad on legs. I scanned it for signs of a nibbled hole where she came and went. She was successful with the card handout and breathed a sigh of relief. She was so meek that a house fly could have mugged her.
I risked a closer study of the people I would spend this week with. A hollow-cheeked jaundiced woman sat two desks and miles away. She didn’t look like she had ever known where she was. A beetroot faced man in a tidy checked shirt was seated to the side of the room. He hadn’t long landed on the same planet as the yellow woman. A very attractive girl with full boobs was nearer the front. To her right were three lads, their relaxed attitude and rye smiles suggested they were acquaintances; either that or they had arrived early and cemented a pact to stay together; whatever happened. I took a punt that they too were students in waiting. An Asian man sat a row behind them. He had turned his sheets over so that blank paper faced up and stared straight ahead.
The Mouse still hadn’t squeaked. She tugged the lid off a black marker, looked relieved to have done so and approached the board. A collective breath held as she began to write. ‘T.F.L.’ was all she managed before picking up a piece of card in her tiny claws. She wrote and presented her achievement. ‘Sandra’ the card whispered. Then lo and behold she spoke.
“Hello?” she wasn’t sure, “could you all write on your cards like this please?” Yellow woman was the first to look utterly confused, but after ten seconds she got down to it.
“And surnames?” a bright young lady asked at the back of the room. Sandra Mouse screwed her beady eyes, slit open a wee smile and shook her head, but she wasn’t totally sure. Some took awhile, others were instant, two people even had time to draw a little image. One drew a flower, the other what looked like a small chicken. Job for life right there. Huh, what would you know: yellow woman has the same name as the Mouse and so too did an Eastern European woman extreme right front of the class.
Mousey eyed all the cards then moved over to the board to write again, but a sudden voice made her spill the pen.
“Fuck off you twat!” a white splodge blurred through the glass of the door. It was joined by another and both shapes jostled and collided. They were either fighting or kissing or both. The door briefly opened, banged shut, opened and slammed shut again. Mousey shot a glance at the box. She looked keen to take cover.
“Millsy!” the voice continued with door half open, “you up Edgar Street to watch United later? Eh?! Burton Albion. Good lad we’ll fuckin’ ‘ave ‘em. Meet you in the Kerry for a couple of looseners? Tidy!” The voice exploded into the room. “Alright Sand?” A worker, totally at home in his own world and bedecked in white, swaggered in. Mousey nodded like a hummingbird’s wing as he sat at the side of the room.
“This is Michael Rose everybody. Michael has been with T.F.L. for, how long?”
“Call me Rosey, Sand, for fuck’s sake. I’ve been ‘ere too fuckin’ long love,” his legs were dangerously spread.
Mousey was horribly caught in the headlights. She was about to extol the virtues of this wonderful company and her right hand man couldn’t give a severed head. “Eight years sterling service, I believe?”
“That’s what I said, Sand. Too fuckin’ long.” Mousey glanced at the box. The three lads sniggered. Five whole days of this. Mousey composed herself and wrote ‘what is’ above her initial effort of ‘T.F.L.’ then penned ‘foods?’ underneath.
“What is T.F.L. foods?” she asked, though in such a manner it seemed she had forgotten. She looked longingly over the class. Five whole days. Rosey rocked his head back and audibly blew out. Mousey afforded him a terrified glance. She fixed her eyes on us once more. Silence. Please, someone answer....
“Yes!” she squeaked with relief pointing a claw to somewhere behind me.
“It’s a food processing company,” a confident female voice said. Mousey’s relief could have lit a thousand lamps. She wrote down ‘food procesing’ and turned to say more.
“There’s two s’s in processing, actually,” one of the three lads said in a hugely intimidating and patronising manner. Shaken, but persistent she corrected her mistake.
“Thank you, Luke.”
“No problem. Just don’t do it again,” Luke bit back. The other two sniggered. I’d give it one hour before the three of them broke her.
“But what kind of food?” she continued stoically. She does know we all know, doesn’t she? Surely everyone knows they have come to work in a poultry factory?
“Poultry!” was shouted out. At least someone else knew. ‘Poultry’ was written up and advanced to ‘chicken and turkey.’ “What three specific pieces are processed at T.F.L.?”
“The feet!” Luke yelled.
“Nooooo. Anyone else?”
“The Chinese eat them,” one of the other lads informed.
“But they don’t enter the food chain here, Ben,” Mousey said with little conviction. As she bought some time to write ‘food chain’ the remaining nameless lad added that the Chinese were also fond of dogs.
“Do T.F.L. process dogs as well?” Luke asked as innocently as he could conjure. The question spun Mousey into such a tizzy she almost wrote ‘dogs’. I wanted to intervene, but luckily ‘thighs’ was offered up. Mousey consumed one of the holy trinity and added it to the flip pad. Yellow woman fancied her chances and tentatively raised an arm.
“Yes, Sandra?” Mousey asked her. Yellow woman looked blank, then over her shoulder. “Sssandra?” Mousey asked. Yellow woman looked over the other. Mousey moved gently towards her. “What is your name?”
“Claire,” Yellow woman said. Mousey pitifully picked up her folded card and wrote ‘Claire’ in big black thick letters. Then crossed out ‘Sandra’.
“Brilliant,” Luke said as the Eastern European woman tried as subtly as possible to amend her identical boob. She instantly became Marie.
Mousey restored herself and as if nothing had happened said, “yes, Claire?”
“Wings?”
“Excellent.” Two down. “And the final one?”
“Breasts?” someone asked.
“Whey!” Luke, Ben and nameless chorused together and Mousey searched the floor for a trap to kill herself in.
The minutes up to lunch gummed together. Time morphed into a shapeless stodge. I learnt only two things before we were dismissed: that we would only be packing fresh meat, as, apparently, the ‘bread and batter cooked section’ was ‘advanced’ and that Beetroot man was pissed. The astonishing revelation was that he too hadn’t written ‘Sandra’. He hadn’t written anything.
“Excuse me?” Mousey had asked him around noon, but the poor bugger was asleep and possibly dreaming of his next drink. We all looked, but he never stirred and Mousey allowed him to come too in his own time.
Lunch
An un-missable sign on a corridor wall pointed the way to the canteen. Two workers stood either side were deep in conversation, but broke off as Yellow Claire asked which way to the canteen. In a heartbeat one of them gestured in the opposite direction to the arrow and she obliviously drifted off. They re-engaged without so as much as a smirk.
The canteen was purely functional. Blocks of bolted down chairs were screwed to bolted down tables. Bolted down workers ate bolted down food from bolted down plates. The smell of fresh cellophane married fried bread. The smoking room was packed. The sprawling factory was visible through every inch of the square metalled frame windows. Between the edges of two buildings, far away on the horizon of a Herefordshire green field, stood a lone oak tree. Right then I knew I was to have a special relationship with that tree. It would be a constant antidote to plastic and metal.
Our class were eyed by the workers as if we were explorers stumbling upon an undiscovered tribe. Nudges and nods were offered our way. I believe it was my bleached blonde hair that afforded me particular attention. Oh how great it had looked as I strolled along Manly beach with it glowing in the Australian sunshine. Right now, I wish I had cancer. As a result of the contorted faces and hand signals I could not help but think that at some point over the next few weeks my dissected body would crop up in various T.F.L. food products.
Education did not for stop at lunch. Firstly I learnt that the canteen food was actually pretty good, but then I spent a useless amount of time considering if I should be so surprised that it was for a food processing factory. The second gem was that the nameless lad, of Mousey’s tormenting trio, was called Arnan.
The lads had saved me from utter humiliation as I had wandered aimlessly searching for a seat amid suggestions that I was a ‘poof’, that I enjoyed ‘cock sucking’ in my spare time and that, confusingly, I was a ‘lesbian’. Ben had also bleached his hair, but it was short enough to look natural.
“The moment it grows out I’m cutting it off,” he said absorbing the glares that my beaconed lid was attracting. I would have happily cut my head off right there and then if my knife hadn’t been as blunt as a pig’s tail.
Ben was on the cusp of a set design degree, Arnan was off to Loughborough to study biomechanics and Luke, well, Luke just didn’t give a fuck.
“His dad’s an executive of T.F.L.,” Ben said.
“Here? Why are you going to pack chickens then?”
“Or sit in the office with him looking at spreadsheets and wheat tables? Fuck that. I’ll end up in there one day. May as well piss about downstairs while I can.”
“Did you see that girl sat near us? The one with the nice tits?” Ben said. I nodded. “Kate. I’m going to have a stab at that.”
“Ben’s got a massive cock,” Arnan grinned and spooned a dollop of spotted dick with smooth custard.
The three of them had spent five years at Bishops Bluecoat School in Hereford hence the familiarity.
“Where’d you go?”
“Cathedral school,” I whispered, in case I took a fork in the head from a native for my private education.
“But you look as thick as shit,” Luke replied.
“I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am that I’ve spent four hours of my life learning that a chicken has wings.” Ben said with his hands pressed in pray.
“You wait ‘til this afternoon. We get taught how to pick up a box.”
Afternoon
Luke had called it right.
Mousey had found a television and VCR on legs. She wheeled it around like a mobile drip until everyone was satisfied with the view.
“Your safety is paramount,” she proclaimed sliding a cassette into the machine. She had not wasted her lunch break and had started a new page with ‘health and safty’. Luke would have pulled her up, but he too had lost the will. She drew the blinds, but left the lights on.
As the picture flickered Claire entered the room.
“Sorry. I got lost.”
“Brilliant,” Luke said.
“Easily done,” Sandra said. Too right. It would take a mouse weeks to find its way round this factory.
The educational programme started. “Your safety is paramount,” an enthusiastic, yet inwardly depressed actor echoed from somewhere in the eighties. The following twenty minutes was stretched over four years as a mulleted hick in dungarees incorrectly, then correctly demonstrated how and how not to, pick up a box. His showpiece was how not to trip over a ladder.
.......There was a fascinating story told to our tour group by an Uluru guide about a curse placed on anyone, who took a piece of sacred Ayers Rock as a souvenir, by an Aboriginal elder. The same elder had placed another curse on an RFL team after they had banned an Aboriginal player for going walkabout. The team went from top of the table to bottom over the space of four months. The panicked team lifted the curse by restoring the player and winning ways returned. In the same week that the story made international news eight tonnes of Ayers Rock was returned by air, land and sea from all over the world....
It was the rush of the blinds that made me realise the video had finished.
“Ok?” Mousey asked. “Michael will now demonstrate what we all witnessed on the video.”
Rosey hauled himself up. He looked as depressed as the actor had felt. Mousey brought her box into the limelight and Michael sized it up. He lowered one knee to the floor, drew the box into his body keeping his back straight and stood up.
“Text book,” Mousey enthused. “Thank you Michael. Now can I have someone else to pick up the box?” Silence. “Alison?”
Alison had been watching.
“Well done, Alison. Text book. Someone else?” Silence. “Luke?”
He walked straight up to the box and in one motion picked it up by a corner with one hand.
“No, no Luke, you’ll injure your back like that.”
“But there’s nothing in the box.” Ben and Arnan’s shoulders were jiggling.
“Ah, my fault, I should have said that you are to imagine that the box is heavy.”
“Oh sorry, sorry, my bad.” He replaced the box, lowered a knee, drew it into his body and froze. He winced, tried to stand, but remained rooted. “Christ what’s in here?” He tried again, but just could not get it off the ground. Mousey was utterly lost. Luke tried again, but to no avail. He returned to his seat. Mousey paused, considered impaling herself on her pen and then re-gathered.
The pissed fellow had woken up during the lunch break and had managed to write his name.
“William?” William was lost somewhere between the bliss of happy hour and last orders.
“You what?” he asked the person next to him.
Mousey waved a tiny claw to attract his attention. “Could you come and pick up the box, please?” William looked around the room for a clue of where he was. When none could be located he stood up regardless. He made a purposeful bee line for the offending box, bashed into the corner of a table, over balanced and put his foot straight through it.
“Fuck this,” Rosey spat and exited.
Tuesday, May 4th
Mousey did not reappear. I occupied vacant minutes considering whether she had been pulled from the line of fire or whether T.F.L. employed a squad rotation system. Maybe she had been eaten by a manky eyed tabby on her way home. Instead we had a butch woman named Sue. If she’d been brought in to quell Luke’s fire we would never know, because he hadn’t turned up either.
“He couldn’t be fucked,” Ben confirmed. In fact there were several missing faces. The bright lady, Alison, a man with a white moustache and even William had thrown the towel in. At least Yellow Claire had found her way back.
“Where is everyone else?” I asked Butch Sue.
“Some people spend the first day considering if T.F.L. is for them. Some take the decision that it is not.”
I felt dirtily ashamed. We had spent a day learning how many thighs could be found on a chicken and how best to teach a stationary box a damn good lesson and some people thought it was all beneath them. But not me, Butch Sue, I’m back and hungry for more.
I had signed fifteen separate sheets of paper the previous day and before I’d warmed my seat I was at it again. None of the signatures had been in my favour and this one was no different. Arnan had signed all of his as different characters from the Marvel comics. He handed the morning’s first sheet back as ‘Ironman’. At least it sounded like his name. Yesterday ‘The Juggernaut’ had accepted all responsibility for any back pain that the beastly boxes might inflict.
Another video. Butch Sue wrote ‘hygiene’ with an artistic flourish. The actor was back. We watched him transform as he added protective clothing like Strider before the battle of Helm’s Deep. White trousers, white jacket, wellington boots, snood or hairnet (you mean there’s a choice?), hard hat, blue gloves and green armbands, all finished off with the look of a man who was ashamed to go home in the evening’s.
“Jesus Christ!” I imagined him saying as the video finished, “I played Mercutio at the National!” Butch Sue wheeled the television away and William entered. Good old Will’s, I knew he wouldn’t desert us. He was totally smashed though and did well to find a seat.
“How’s he going to know how to put his snood on?” Ben whispered.
“How’s he going to know how to put his snood on?” Ben whispered.
“I think that’s the least of his troubles.”
Lunch
Claire found lunch, though judging by her stick frame, lunch had never found Claire. She should have received a laurel wreath and a bottle of champagne for her feat.
My dalliance over what to consume saw me separated from Ben and Arnan. Kate was with them. She had a wonderful impish, freckled face. Ben was talking right at her chest. The running of the gauntlet. Where do I go? I was less of a ‘poof’ today although someone recalled me a ‘lesbian’. I ended up seated next to a bearded man called Tinker. I left it there. He was from Pontypridd.
“So how along ago did you leave Pontypridd?”
Tinker studied his watch, “eight hours.”
“You commute?”
“One ‘undred miles a day for eighteen years,” he proudly pronounced. He reckoned that on the occasions he took overtime he’d only have three hours sleep before he got back in the car to do it all again.
“Why don’t you move to Hereford?”
“Pridd born and bred. Besides I fuckin’ ‘ate England.” I left that one there too.
A large old woman with panda eyes rolled into the canteen with a packet of jaffa cakes. She was a perfect circle and shoehorned into a seat opposite me. She had a face of misery, but it lightened briefly when Tinker introduced me.
“This Olwen. She been ‘ere twenty two years.”
“Twenty three in November,” she said with equal pride and then sadness returned. A blonde thirty-something woman weaved among the tables to a seat near a window. “There is she,” Olwen said with venom, “flouncin’ about.”
“Jeanette, Olwen’s daughter-in-law,” Tinker informed. “Married last year.”
“Worse day of my life.” Olwen was firing eye arrows when Jeanette caught one and waved back from the wrist. A smile exploded onto Olwen’s face, “hiya love!” then the gloom returned.
“Trollope,” she sneered and a jaffa cake disappeared.
Afternoon
Plasters are blue with a thin metal strip running through them so that they can be seen or detected should they fall into a product. We watched another video showing how to reduce back strain whilst standing at a machine. The sun still hadn’t shone since my return.
On Christmas day I had swum with a penguin in crystal water off Manly beach. On this day Butch Sue demonstrated how to apply a hair net. Yellow Claire was called up to repeat.
Friday, May 7th
Luke had decided that the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday weren’t for him either.
“But how’s he going to know how to put a hair net on?” Arnan asked Ben.
Ben clasped his hand. “We’ll be there for him.”
We had had Butch Sue all week which led me to believe that Mousey had scrambled for her hole on Monday evening and refused to come out. In contrast, Butch Sue had had a really first class week. Her size meant that quips were reduced to a minimum and the gusto she employed to the most menial acts suggested she had never questioned the meaning of life. We had signed well over thirty pieces of paper. Arnan had run out of comic heroes and had turned to the Liverpool double winning side of the 1989/90 season. He had been Bruce Grobelaar plus the entire back four and finished the day as Ronnie Whelan.
“And so come Monday you are ready to enter the T.F.L. family,” Butch Sue beamed like a new mother.
“She did say family, right?” Arnan asked with a frown.
“Yes! I made it!” Ben screamed and punched the air. Butch Sue bought it and offered him a loving smile. It had been a gruelling week and we’d lost many men and women. Asian man had seen the light and so had Sandra-Marie. Big Nick had defected to Wiggins Wire and four others had opted to brew cider with Bulmers.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Arnan looked crestfallen.
“There’s still time.”
“Not after what I’ve just been through. I owe it to myself to get my money’s worth.”
Butch Sue presented us with locker room keys and orange hard hats.
“You may have noticed that the majority of workers wear white hats,” I had, “you advance to a white hat after four months assuming you meet the grade. You should look at it as a carrot.” But until then we’d don one on our heads.
“And to aid communication among the family you can have your name put on them. Or a nickname.... should you have one!” I asked for ‘Help’, but Butch Sue was less than amused. The first crack had appeared in what was to be a strained relationship.
