Half
past four in the morning. I think. I don’t know. Only milkmen and vampires get
up in the dark. I had struggled to sleep, but when I did I instantly woke in a
cold sweat.
I
carried it downstairs. Butterflies fluttered somewhere inside me, but they
weren’t of excitement. The Red Hot Chili Peppers had just released
‘Californication’ and the video for ‘Scar Tissue’ played out on MTV. They were
in the Arizona desert looking vague and heading nowhere. I knew how they felt.
How
many of the original team had fallen over the weekend? Had sorted out bar work
or found a job potting plants at a nursery or had killed their selves? They had
my sympathy with anyone of those choices. I would work from six in the morning
until two in the afternoon this week, then from two in the afternoon until ten
at night the following week and then repeat: for four months and four days.
We’d stop for breakfast at eight and lunch at twelve, with a fifteen minute
break in between which was universally known as a ‘wet’. At least the sun
decided to show itself at last.
I
applied the hand brake in the car park and rested my head on the steering
wheel. Is death an option? Surely if my suicide note was detailed enough those
close to me would understand?
I
had foolishly punished myself via teletext before I left the house. It was 33
degrees in Sydney. Hot, young, laissez faire things were drinking cold beer in
the must-be-seen-in bars on Darling Harbour, while on the other side of the
world nightshift workers were leaving the T.F.L. factory blinking at the coming
day.
Everything
sleeps except time and T.F.L.. Twenty to six. I’m going in. Cover me. If I’m
not back in eight hours call my mother and tell her I did it for the best.
We’d
been issued key cards to gain entry, though mine refused admittance. Take the
omen and run, but an escaping worker held the gate and ushered me in. Thanks, mate.
Oh what a
beautiful morning
Everything
smelt of plastic and like every other odour at the factory it collected in the
throat. The corridor in which I’d been baited a week before was dangerously
quiet, but the locker room was a zoo of noise. I’d been severely winded on the
last day of induction to learn that Ben, Arnan and/if/possibly/maybe Luke had
been granted a more social able shift of eight until four throughout the
summer. I thought I’d be all alone, until a familiar face edged into the
changing room.
William
would take on the character of James Bond for the rest of his tenure as T.F.L..
Not for his prowess with the ladies (and not least because Bond girls were in
short supply) or for his coolness in the face of peril, but for the fact that
just when you thought you’d never see him again, he’d show up.
“Morning!”
he either recognised me or was being polite. He removed a litre bottle from his
bag and took a healthy glug.
“Hmmm,
lovely. Orange juice,” he proclaimed to the entire room in various states of
undress, “no better way to start the day.”
Butch
Sue had been adamant that a worker should clock in before or bang on the
starting hour, any later meant the instant loss of an hour’s pay. I would learn
a swift and valuable lesson that a tardy dive into the fresh laundry trolley
could mean coming up with ill fitting work garments. And so it proved. As the
seconds ticked towards six o’clock the best I could muster were exceptionally
tight trousers and a coat that would have been knee length on a mature Cedar
tree. I wore it like a trailing wedding dress. No other clothing options; big
mistake.
I
clocked in with thirty seconds to spare, a feat that I would expertly replicate
for many weeks to come. Hygiene protocol had to be instantly obeyed before a
worker ventured further onto the factory floor. A boot bath was provided for
one to slosh about in, like a sheep with gammy hooves, before washing your mits
under knee worked taps.
As
I turned to survey what would be my second home for the next four months I
instantly discovered that T.F.L. also traded in vultures.
Avid
twitchers can spend months studying a wetland, consistently noting down an array
of ducks and fish feeding birds, but once in a while the tedium can be broken
by something new that can cause frenzy inside the hut. I was an avocet to the
established workers binoculars.
“Where’s
the weddin’?” a faceless male worker cried out whilst tugging hard at my bridal
coat so that the popper buttons snapped open as one. Squawks of laughter
pitched up above the dirge of the machines. Workers peeled away from their
machines to circle around me looking for pieces of the carcass to pull off. Something
thudded against my hard hat and laughter echoed. My trousers were yanked, but
the blood restricting tightness saved them from concertinaing around my ankles.
Another faceless card asked me to, “hold this a sec, will ya?” and before I
could say no or realise or kill myself I found I was the owner of a large dildo
fashioned from parcel tape. Someone else yelled, “why ‘ave you got a black
man’s cock in your ‘and?” and then, “faggot!” and “wanker!” and other recycled
jibes were lost to the noise of the never ceasing machines.
I
would never again be so pleased to see Butch Sue. The vultures scattered over
the Savannah as the Butch hyena Sue approached.
“Making
friends already!” she was serious, “we’ll start you on the turkey steaks to
begin with.” She turned her back and a missile bounced off my head once more. I
dare not look around, but the more I kept my eyes front the more debris rained.
This kind of torment would turn Yellow Claire white. Butch Sue led me to a
waist high conveyor belt. A suspect’s line up stood either side. Faces were a
chisel of bingo concentration.
“Ann,
love,” Butch Sue called out. Ann looked up. “Could you show Tom the ropes?” Ann
looked at me as if I’d shat in her purse. Butch Sue offered a last rites smile
and departed. Ann shook her head and further disappointed me by not showing me
a rope.
“You
lookin’?” she snapped. That I was. A machine at the head of the belt selected
and spat out six slices of breast onto a tray. The belt whizzed scores of them
passed a gantry of workers. “Grab one then!” she bit and I duly did.
“Over
lap one over the other, like this. You reckon you can manage that?” As long as
God is with me, Ann. I had a plucky go and seemed to have conjured a mirror
image, but it wasn’t enough for her. She attracted the attention of a short,
Rubix cubed colleague and gestured towards my effort. The Rubix cube looked at
the tray and then at me as if I was
the turd in said purse. They shook their disgusted heads in tandem. It was five
minutes past six.
Their
eyes stared and their heads shook intermittently for the next hour. The Rubix
cube took glee in intercepting my so-called attempts to ‘correct’ them before
they entered the packing machine. Yellow Claire appeared late, sometime after
seven. She’d probably misplaced the factory, which had caused her tardiness.
I
wanted to save her. Hitch her onto my shoulder and wade her and I to the safety
on the outer world, but I bottled it and allowed her to suffer the indignation
of my tutors. She lost one slice under another and, as Savage Ann and the Rubix
cube dived in to rescue it, I seized the opportunity and inched down the line
out of harm’s way.
I
stood up opposite a plump girl resplendent in ochre make up. ‘Emma’ her white
hat announced. Distain reigned. After the initial panic of my first hour had
subsided, I realised that music was playing under the score of machinery.
Shania Twain’s ‘Man I feel like a Woman’ stepped through the barrier of din.
Emma’s shoulders began to bob and her fingers worked the breasts like the fret
on Twain’s guitar. The line became a choreographed bop of appreciation, even
Savage Ann was selecting some particularly lusty pelvic rolls, despite her
habitual straight face. The tune ended and Emma the plump robin red face gave
the thumbs up and rare smile to the troupe, but it died as she looked to me.
And so the turkey steaks filed passed.
Innervision
There
were no windows. Zombie chickens could have taken over the world and we would
never know. Four different machines with workers magnetized to their sides lay
out in the large rectangle room. A man, who wore his face like a wet tissue on
a doorknob, was weaving between stationary workers making notes of the speeding
meat. A thin, grey and greasy ponytail trailed from underneath his hair net. He
paused behind a worker, ran a furtive hand up the inside of their thigh and
along the crack of their buttocks then lurched off. I assumed the fondled
worker was female.
Butch
Sue emerged from a side room clutching a clipboard. She walked the length of
the room and disappeared through a doorway screened with strips of clear
plastic. Where was she off to? What mystery lay beyond those strips? A boy
leant on the handle of a hydraulic trolley at the finished end of a packing
line, expressionless, yet assured. A pallet, which he waited to spear, was
gradually stacking with boxes of shelf ready product. The floor was an ant farm
of activity.
I
re-engaged with my fellow packers. A smile had returned to Emma’s face, but her
eyes were down. I looked to my side and a female worker had appeared from
nowhere. I looked back to Emma who was now screwing the smile to restrain a
laugh. The other worker too was chuckling. Oh god, what now? Had I eventually
been relieved of my trousers during my impudent survey of the factory life? I daren’t
even look down, though my knees did not register any breeze. I caught the flash
of hand shoot down from behind my head. I looked to Emma, but she glared back.
The workers up and down the line, Savage Ann aside, were in raptures and the
girl next to me was almost bent over with excitement. My hat felt unusually
weighty.
“Got
summin on your mind?” the woman next to me asked.
“No,”
but it would seem I had something on my head. As I removed my hat the practical
joke erupted with the punch line. Six polystyrene trays were tiered atop
attached with brown sellotape. Should I smile? Proclaim that it was a belting
‘joke’ and try to adhere myself to the team? Or hold the jokers face down to
the conveyor belt and show I wasn’t an orange hat to be messed with? Neither. I
placed the multi-storied structure into a bin which drew a long, “woooooooo,
someone can’t take a joke,” from everyone in on the ‘gag’.
Eight
o’clock was a third world away.
Breakfast news
But
it eventually arrived. Luckily William had been an easier target. They had
managed to pile so many trays on top of his oblivious head that they simply
couldn’t reach to attach anymore. Butch Sue had seen the team building, but
opted out of an intervention and retired to her side cave to tick boxes and file
the result. Poor old Will’s only discovered the structure when his hat fell off
at the doorway as the skyscraper caught on the frame, though he was more
concerned with getting to his orange juice.
“I’ve
worked up a thirst this morning.” He drained the bottle of thin looking fruit
juice in a bustling changing room.
The
canteen was packed. I would learn that small matters required big decisions.
Should I wear the hat to hide the hair? Now I was kitted out in worker uniform
I was ‘one of them’, but my orange hat still gave me away as fresh meat. Remove
the hat: become a ‘lesbian’; wear the hat: become a bullied target. Oh Christ.
The biggest decision I’d faced a month ago was whether to have a cold beer in
the sun or in the shade. I went in hatless and hoped for the best.
The
canteen would become my castle. The jibes had slowly relented from the first
day of the induction week. The workers were in a mellower mood when removed
from the factory floor, transformed with the luxuries of seating and natural
light. The breakfast spread was exemplary. It must have been cooked by robots
because I was never to see a charcoaled offering. The hash browns were
glistening and plump, the bacon looked like it might have been owned by a pig
and the mushrooms, although undeniably also conjured in a factory elsewhere,
were a credit to the fungal world. And my tree would always be there for me, a
reminder that there was life beyond these walls.
With
no Ben or Arnan or Luke or tit-tastic Kate I would have to make new friends.
I’d made furtive glances whilst queuing and had spotted one familiar face,
three if you include Yellow Claire and William, but I wasn’t ready for that
level of conversation. I got a half hearted ‘poof’ shouted my way as I
approached a spare seat, but nothing more.
Olwen
remembered my name.
“Hiya
love. This is Tom,” she declared to the table of women. Jeanine was pretty and
smiley and South African, Vicky was black and sultry and Emily could look you
in the eye and read the fire emergency instructions on the adjacent wall at the
same time.
“Have
you got your name on your hat?” Emily asked as a great conversation starter.
“They
won’t do it for an orange hat,” Olwen said with a mouth so screwed there could
have been a citrus defect in her Jaffa cake. “It’s racist, if you ask me.”
Vicky
held up her hand, “That, Olwen, is not racism. Prejudice, possibly.”
“You’d
know plenty about that, Jeanine, down your end of the world.”
“Gosh,
Olwen, the apartheid was way before my time.” Jeanine added. I’d barely split a
banger and I was immersed in a Newsnight debate.
“They
have changed their policy on naming orange hats,” I informed.
“What
did you get put on yours?” Olwen asked.
“Just
Tom.”
“You
should have had a nickname. It’s more fun.”
Jeanine,
Vicky and Emily were barely out of orange hat nappies. Jeanine declared that
Olwen had been their fairy Godmother since they had arrived. She had taken them
under her ample bingo wing.
“Fancy!”
Olwen beamed and the sadness returned.
“Where
are you working, Tom?” Jeanine asked.
“Sliced
turkey breasts.”
“Are
you enjoying it?”
“It’s
right up there with my year in Australia.”
“You
should come over to us. We’re vac packing whole chickens. We have a great
laugh.”
Emily
was smiling avidly towards me. “You’ve got a lovely tan,” she said.
Post breakfast
vacuum
Jeanine
was right. Chicken vac pack was an all-out, pants-off riot. A medium sized
chicken was bound with elastic netting and then suffocated in plastic. I half
wondered if the bird shouldn’t be dressed in a straight jacket such was the
mental fun we were having. I was being picky. At least I wasn’t the foundation
for a polystyrene skyscraper and disgusted looks with these women.
The
music blathered on. The machines ground mercilessly. It was company policy to
wear ear plugs at all times to prevent ear drum perforation. It was one of the
many things I and ‘The Incredible Hulk’ had signed a disclaimer about. All
things considered, Shania Twain was doing well to proclaim that she felt like a
Man/Woman for the fifth time this morning. Jeanine was doing well to uplift the
spirits with constant chat, though while I seemed to find it easy to hear her
questions, she found it increasingly difficult to make out my answers.
“Sorry?”
she said for the billionth time, unscrewing an ear plug to hear my reply. Such
was the formality of de-plugging that a small ball of raw flesh grew from the
left side of her hair net. I admired her willing, but the further into
conversational trepidation we ventured, I felt I had more in common with the
chicken.
Nigel was chief suctioneer. He had
been unmoved from the vacuum packing machine for five years and wore a fixed
stare that travelled to Worcester.
“It
‘asn’t all been dull, mind,” he declared with a kam smile, “I’ve ‘ad some fun
‘ere, cor let me tell you.” Go on then. “I ant just vac packed chickens
y’know.” An uncensored grin broke out.
“No?”
“Na,
I’ve got some right devil in me at times.” He gestured for me to come closer.
“I’ve vac packed pencils, sellotape guns, rubber gloves, tinsel, my mate’s
wallet, though ‘e weren’t best pleased with that, like, ‘Ereford United scarf,
tonnes of stuff, all to the blind eye of the managers, mind, so don’t tell ‘cos
they’ll ‘ave me off this machine an’ I bloody loves ‘er.”
“What
did you do with it all?”
“It’s
all up on my wall at ‘ome. Trophies if you like, like.”
I
waited as he lined up a triple suction. “Are you married?”
“Eh?”
“Doesn’t
matter.” I should have known that Nigel was in a steady relationship with Elvon
.251.
“You
gotta lean on ‘er, not slam ‘er down.” The machine was inevitably female, which
was valuable to know. Each time the display flashed to register a successful
vacuum he’d lift the lid then slide his fingers along the handle bar as if it
were the exposed collar bone of a Dutch girl. On the rare occasion ‘she’ failed
to suck, he’d pat the machine and say, “come on, girl.” He touched the machine
with extra tenderness as Britney replaced Shania and asked to be hit one more
time. When a stray hand smeared bird juice on the machine lid you saw how it ate
him up inside. He wanted to chastise the offender instead he delicately wiped
the stainless steel with the tail of his coat. Maybe he should marry Elvon 251?
She’d always look her best, never answer back and above all give the best blow
job on the market.
As
Lou Bega spurted out a list of girls it occurred to me that Nigel had
considered popping his penis into the machine for every waking moment of his
adult life.
“I’ve
just come back from Australia,” I told him somewhere in the abyss between nine
and ten o clock. “You should go.” He’d probably get Elvon. 251 through customs.
“Australia?
I don’t think so mate. I can’t stick the blacks. They’re always on the fuckin’
pinch,” he replied effortlessly. I looked to Vicky who rolled her beautiful
well trained eyes.
“How
many black people have you met?” I asked him.
He
screwed his face up and nodded towards Vicky. “Only that one, an’ that’s one
too many.”
All
around meat continually appeared, was lost in plastic, lugged away to be
stacked in a fridge, to be removed, to be cooked, to be eaten, to be shat out.
Nigel was just another of life’s cogs.
