It was a crisp, spring afternoon and the sun was shining proudly over a cobalt blue sky. With the last traces of a long, arduous winter now behind us and summer in the post, that magical buzz was back in the city. Tables and chairs were beginning to appear on the pavements outside of cafés and bars, heavy winter coats were now making way for the lighter, spring variety and people were smiling again. In Sweden the winters can be long and gruelling, sometimes greedily hogging up to six of the year's twelve months. Up here in the north we savour spring time...
Considering it was Friday and I was working this evening, I was in a surprisingly up-beat mood. Amazing what a bit of sunshine can do for your spirit. I'd been working all week, eleven hour shifts, but after tonight I was free for the weekend. Jen works “regular” office hours so a lot of the time we're like two ships passing in the night, or in our case, in the morning, with me taking her place in our bed as she gets up for work. This routine is always most taxing come Friday night. Jen comes home to an empty house whilst I'm dealing with drunks at work. Working in the bar on a Friday, serving nothing but merry nine-to-fivers can really fill you with bitter envy, if you let it... But today I'm just concentrating on that sun in the sky and my weekend which will start in roughly eight hours time.
There are positives to working the Friday shift though. The atmosphere in the bar is brimming and with their being lots to do, the hours fly by. And today I was working the “b-shift”, which starts a little later. There is a resounding, psychological difference between working an eight hour shift and an eleven hour shift. After spending the day at home relaxing, hanging out with my dog and listening to records, my buoyant mood was such that I almost bounced down to the train station in Sundbyberg. One short Friday shift and I'm free for the weekend. I rang Sara, who was opening the bar, on the way to the train, just to check how things were. “It's cool”, she says, “No stress in getting here”. Good. I parked my arse on the train and settled into the latest copy of Maximumrocknroll for the fifteen minute ride into Söder.
I must have sat there reading for about five minutes before I realised the train was still sat still at Sundbyberg, such was the enthralling content of my MRR. Hmm.. Five more minutes passed without so much as an explanation from the train driver. Fucking SL, truly cunts of the highest order. Just as I'm thinking about getting up and heading over to the tube station, the train begrudgingly shunts into life. Ok, back to my MRR...
The train advances all of fifty feet before it stops again. For. Fuck. Sakes! How many times do you have to go through this nonsense? It's not like a monthly travel card is cheap either! For eight hundred kronor you're as well taking yourself down to SL's head office, dropping your pants and bending over once a month.
The train stands still for another few minutes. Amazingly, when it does start to move again, it's in reverse. The train backs up a few feet back to the platform and upon arrival the conductor announces the train is fucked. Un-fucking-believable! I make a run for it to the tube station at Sundbyberg, along with about four hundred other people, all of whom squeeze themselves on to the next arriving train in a state of frenzy. Packed in like a fucking sardine in a tin, I'm at last making my way to town. I wonder how Sara is doing...
I hastily make my way from Skanstull station along Skånegatan. The sun is still blazing in the sky, seemingly refusing to call it a day, despite it now being six thirty pm. I arrive at work and it's as I feared, only worse. The place is packed. I squeeze my way through the crowd towards the bar and look to Sara to see how she's doing. She just shakes her head. Balls. By the time I get myself behind the bar I see that chaos has ensued. Sara tells me the cash register has froze. She's doing her best to keep a float. She has a list that she's written by hand with the sales she's made since the till has been out of action. Sat along the bar is the usual gang of regulars and friends, all of whom seem to be in high spirits and completely oblivious to the sea of shite Sara has been wading through for the last twenty minutes. Nice start to the day. I get on the phone to Cashpoint's support service whilst Sara holds the fort, serving people and keeping track of the sales on her list. “Welcome to Cashpoint support service, you are currently in a cue. Your number is...thank you for waiting!”. Brilliant...
It's no secret that drinking alcohol blurs the senses. I know this, everyone knows this. But even with that knowledge firmly in mind, I'm still astounded by the fact that the telephone I currently have glued to my ear appears to be invisible to the line of regulars sat along the bar. I'm stood there, talking to Cashpoint's support service, frantically tapping away at the cash register and yet still, our friends, the regulars, try to engage me in conversation. I shoot them a few half arsed smiles but they don't seem to get the hint. The trouble is, there is always one thing or another going tits up in this bar and this is obviously comical to them. I know they mean no harm though and I reign in my temper...unlike Sara and I, they're just happy it's Friday...
Amidst this chaos, with Cashpoint in one ear, the regulars in another and Sara running around like a blue arsed fly, one guy's voice stands out amongst all others, his annoying little face a clear, sharp picture against what is now the blur of the humdrum around him. It's like everything else suddenly tunes out and fades away to nothingness.
I don't know who he is but something looks familiar about him. He's also sat at the bar, just to the left of the gang of regulars. He looks a bit like the actor Simon Pegg, but with silly aviator sunglasses that are tinted yellow. He's obviously one of those people who takes up a lot of whatever room he enters, his voice fighting to be heard over all others. An annoying cunt basically. From the moment I walked into the bar and got on the phone, he's been trying to catch my ear, now and then reaching his hand out in the hope of shaking mine. I can't tell if he's drunk, high or just a bit slow. My gut feeling tells me it's most likely a mixture of all three...
“How are you doing man?”, Pegg inquires, whilst winking in my direction. I try batting him off with the cursory smile that the regulars received. This isn't enough for Pegg though. For the next fifteen or so minutes he continues to attempt contact with me, everything from “Good to see you again,” to “You're a good guy, thanks for being here.” Utter, random shite, but for a while Pegg almost has me wondering if I know the cunt. With Cashpoint's somewhat inadequate support service finally fixing the problem with our till, I'm left to the mercy of Pegg's babbling. He's talking to me like he knows me and rather stupidly I'm going along with it. When I free myself from his verbal clutch, Sara and I agree that he won't be having any more to drink..
A while later, whilst I'm busy serving someone else, Pegg asks Sara for his bill. It's now that all hell breaks loose...
Pegg is dismayed by the total his bill amounts to. As I'm dealing with someone else, I hear him, as does every other patron of the bar, shouting and cursing at Sara. Apparently he's upset about the price of the beer he's been drinking. His disclaimer is that he's been ordering his beer by the gallopan... Ah, the fucking gallopan!
Technically a gallopan is 12.5 cl of beer, which were it originates, in France, is just shy of a wine glass. The problem is, the whole thing gets lost in translation here in Sweden. When people here order a gallopan, and it's usually pretentious wankers like Pegg, what they want is a beer in a wine glass. And to muddy the waters still, the wine glasses we have at Snotty are of the large kind, larger in fact than our normal beer glasses. Now Pegg sure as fuck didn't want 12.5 cl of beer every time he ordered, he wanted beer in a wine glass. And he was charged by Sara accordingly. But now Pegg is screaming bloody murder, claiming that when he orders a gallopan he means that he wants a beer for the sum of twenty five kronor. I can't help but indulge myself and engage this twat in debate.
“I actually work in this business!”... If there is one thing that brings me close to physically shitting myself with laughter, it is when a customer, who has drank long beyond the limit of alcohol they can handle, hits you with that one! “I actually work in the business...” Pegg, unashamedly repeats himself..
“Everyone knows that a gallopan means twenty five kronor!” Seriously, the absurdity of this argument is astounding. I ask him if when he ordered his beer, did he actually want it in a small glass, to the measure of 12.5 cl. Negative. No, he wanted his beer in a wine glass.. I point out to him that, regardless of what poncey fucking title you give it, we charge beer by the volume, and that is what his bill reflects. Simply having you're beer in a wine glass does not make it cheaper, especially when said wine glass is forty nine fucking centilitres! The argument to's and fro's for a while. Sara tries to talk to him, since it's her that's served him the whole time, but he rudely refuses to talk to her, saying he will only talk to the man in the bar, pointing at me. Sara has to walk out back before she throws something at him.
Whom I assume is Pegg's girlfriend is stood behind him the whole time, gently trying to coax him away from the embarrassing scene he's making, reasoning that she can pay the bill. It seems to be a matter of principle for Pegg though and he's not giving.
He actually starts to get threatening for a second and it seems that only then do the other regulars, our friends, understand what's going on. And then in the blink of an eye, Pegg's expression changes. He now has an expression of complete and utter shame hung over him like a dark cloud. He begins to apologise profusely, saying he doesn’t know what's come over him. This is getting weird now. He starts to fumble around with his wallet and empties it's rather meagre contents. He's only got about one hundred and fifty kronor. Even if we'd gave into the prick and changed the price of each of his beers to twenty five a piece, he wouldn't have been able to cover it...
He's now shaming himself further by sheepishly asking his girlfriend to loan him the money. She happily covers it with her debit card whilst he continues to apologise, repeating that he doesn't know what came over him. He then leaves an eighty kronor tip. And then he fucks off. I want to tell him he can shove his eighty kronor tip up his arse, but I don't, it goes straight in the tip glass. Eighty kronor is eighty kronor at the end of the day and I've got no problem with taking this sap's money...
What a fucking start to the evening! I make myself a stiff, black coffee and with Pegg now gone, and with the till now working, give Sara a hug and we get back on with work.
But it's just one of those nights where everything seems to go wrong. Glasses are smashed on the floor by drunk retards who can't even move out of the way when you're trying to sweep up the broken glass they're standing in, some lady smashes a champagne glass on the bar and wants a new one for free, the card machine runs out of receipt paper and when we attempt to refill it, the new paper rolls the owner has bought are too big and we can't close the fucking machine, the top on the antiseptic spray is loose and when I go to pick it up I'm left with just the top in my hand whilst the bottle drops to the floor and empties it's contents all over the place, all three beer kegs run out simultaneously on one occasion, some fucker blocks the toilet with a gigantic turd that I have to fight away with a plunger whilst oblivious, pissed up punters bang on the door wanting in...it's Friday night and for a while it's mayhem basically. Around midnight, with about a hour to go, Sara and I look at each other and burst out laughing! What else can you do? It is shit, but it could be worse. It's not exactly working in a sweat shop in China...
We close the bar at one am. When we turn on the main lights and usher everyone out, we're left with what looks like a bomb site. After an hour or so's cleaning we sit down and pour ourselves a well earned drink and simply enjoy the silence for a while. It's not so strange that a lot of people I know who work in the bar business entertain healthy drinking habits. After a night like tonight, sitting down to a cold beer tastes indefinably good. Sara and I snack on some food and laugh about the night's events. We sit for almost an hour, just chatting and winding down before heading our separate ways. And then it's time to go home.
Taking the tube home at three am. on a Friday night is an absolute fucking nightmare. If you're sober...as I am.. I walk to Medborgarplatsen tube station hoping to cash in some karma from SL. Not a fucking chance. Next train, eighteen minutes. I must have just missed the last one. I put in my headphones and spectate the carnage that is Pissed Stockholm Three AM, willing away those eighteen minutes.
My attention is caught almost immediately by two young girls about ten feet away, who are absolutely steamboats and literally shovelling McDonald’s into their mouths. One of them, a rather large girl dressed in the miniest of mini-skirts is rocking back and forth dangerously close to the platform's edge, hopelessly trying to kick some garbage onto the tracks below. I stand there watching her for about five minutes, as does her friend. Although determined, she just doesn't seem to have the required eye to foot co-ordination for this particular task in her present state. She finally gives up. As she turns around and walks back to the platform's centre, she drops her box of chicken nuggets, or whatever the fuck they are, at her feet and they spill out onto the minging floor. Before I can even manage a snigger it's stiffled by an expression of shock, as she bends over, baring her arse to all and with what turns out to be an gigantic effort, picks up each one of her nuggets and clumsily stuffs them into her mouth, not even bothering to stand up straight whilst doing so. I can barely believe what I'm seeing...what a weird end to a shitty night.
The train finally arrives and I take it to Central Station, praying to a God I don't believe in that I'll make my connecting train to Sundbyberg and not have to wait another half hour. Thankfully it's only a short wait.
Finally on my way home now. Looking forward to my free weekend. I check the weather forecast for tomorrow on my phone. Apparently it's going to rain. Go figure.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
A Tragic Week...
It's been a tragic week in the world of music. No, I'm not talking about the death of Whitney Houston, I'm talking about the rumours currently circulating that Herätys have split up.
A quick note on the subject of Whitney though. I'm not sure how she died although I'm guessing it wasn't due to natural causes, depending on your definition of natural causes I suppose. I guess if somebody puts an axe through your head then it's quite natural to die consequently of the wounds such an action would inflict, just as if you spend every day of your life eating dinner at McDonald’s then it's also quite natural to die of a heart attack, just as if you spend the best part of your adult life shovelling cocaine up your nose then maybe it's natural to die lying in your bath tub sooner or later...I don't know. But I'm losing my train of thought. The thing that caught my attention about Whitney's death was not the actual fact that she'd kicked the bucket, but rather the fact that within thirty minutes of the bucket being kicked, Itunes had raised the price of her Greatest Hits album from five quid up to eight quid. Thirty minutes.. I know it's a cut throat business but that strikes me as pretty cold...
A quick note on the subject of Whitney though. I'm not sure how she died although I'm guessing it wasn't due to natural causes, depending on your definition of natural causes I suppose. I guess if somebody puts an axe through your head then it's quite natural to die consequently of the wounds such an action would inflict, just as if you spend every day of your life eating dinner at McDonald’s then it's also quite natural to die of a heart attack, just as if you spend the best part of your adult life shovelling cocaine up your nose then maybe it's natural to die lying in your bath tub sooner or later...I don't know. But I'm losing my train of thought. The thing that caught my attention about Whitney's death was not the actual fact that she'd kicked the bucket, but rather the fact that within thirty minutes of the bucket being kicked, Itunes had raised the price of her Greatest Hits album from five quid up to eight quid. Thirty minutes.. I know it's a cut throat business but that strikes me as pretty cold...
No, the real tragic news this week is that apparently Herätys have played their last ever show! Only last weekend they played at the OCCII in Amsterdam for Seein' Red's own farewell show (in itself a sad occasion even though we were prepared for it). I've been told by a few friends that were in attendance that night that it was an amazing show. The latest we heard from the Herätys camp was that they'd recorded some new songs for an upcoming 7” and that they'd be playing the Chaos in Tejas Festival this summer, so the rumours that are now abound that they've called it a day come as a bit of a shock.
In my opinion the Herätys lp is not only one of the best hardcore records of the last few years, it's one of the best records of the last few years full stop! Unfortunately I only had the chance to see them live the one time, when they played with us at the Punk Illegal Festival in Göteborg a couple of years ago. They were absolutely amazing that day! One of the best shows I've ever seen. It was one of those shows that created that buzz, when you walk away knowing you've just witnessed something a bit special.
There doesn't seem to be any official word yet, so I can only hope that the rumours turn out to be heinous tittle-tattle, but the trusted sources on the hardcore grapevine all seem to be saying the same thing...
A couple of the guys already play in Hårda Tider (who also played the Seein' Red show), who themselves are a great live band, but I really hope to see Janne back on stage again soon. He's a frighteningly good front-man and a great vocalist, not to mention a gentleman and a scholar.
It appears, as is too often the case in the world of hardcore punk, that Herätys' era was a short one. They did at least leave us with a couple of killer releases, and they will continue to remain a proud part of my record collection. I hope that the new songs they recorded will still see the light of day, even if we never get to see them played live..
R.I.P.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Release Party
A couple of weeks ago we played a show at Kafe 44 in Stockholm. It was a show organised by ourselves in celebration of our last record, A Dissident. One could not really call it a release party since the album was released in May last year, and since then we've toured Europe and the States.
It was the first show we've played Stockholm in a couple of years, I think the last time was with Municipal Waste at Debaser. In the tradition of the great London bus, we'll now be playing three times in six months, with shows with Black Breath and Poison Idea coming up.
We had a great time playing at the wonderful Kafe 44 though and it was great to see so many friends in the small, sweaty crowd. The sets from Swarm and Blackwhitesnake were both great, although it seems not everybody would agree with that. One drunken, “punk” chap took particular protest to the Swarm set, so much so he felt it necessary to express his feelings to the band whilst on stage. “Have you guys ever liked raw punk? D-beat punk?” he shouted continuously, whilst shaking his head in disgust at Swarm's post-punk beats. Obviously the three particular guys on stage to whom he was aiming this question lent the whole affair a fantastic sense of irony, completely lost on him of course. To be fair, “Punk” could hardly keep his eyes open whilst posing this particular question, and had to sit down on the front of the stage as his legs were not up to the job of supporting him. I don't know who the twat was, but to be honest, after initially finding him vaguely amusing, he quickly got on my tits. I was praying Johan would give him a boot to the head, but alas it didn't happen. It's not like “Drunk and obnoxious punk at Victims show!” is shocking news, there was just something about this guy that really pissed me off. Thankfully he fucked off and fell asleep in another part of the venue by the time Blackwhitesnake started.
Since my first ever gig at sixteen years old with my then band Sect, I've clocked up something like eight hundred shows. The only shows that ever give me nerves are those that are on home turf. There is something about playing to a room full of friends and familiar faces. When we played Ozfest with Speedhorn, in front of fifty thousand people, I didn't feel a thing. Actually, I literally didn't feel a thing given the weight of my hangover that day, so that's maybe not the best example. But I've played other big festivals in front of thousands and not had any nerves. I guess the crowds at those shows are so big that it's too surreal for your head to process it. But... put me in a small room with a hundred or so friends and my arse starts twitching.. I'm the same with heights. Stand me at the top of the Eiffel Tower and I'm fine. Stand me at the top of a ladder and my legs turn to jelly.
We played what I thought was a pretty good show. The sound felt great on stage, and it was fun to see a room full of friends and broad smiles. We played predominantly songs from A Dissident with a couple of oldies thrown in at the end. With it being a party there were some faces in the crowd that were new to Victims. I had a bunch of people from work there. It was a bit weird showing them this side of me, but they seemed to enjoy it. Must be weird for them to see me on stage doing this whole other thing...
I called Andy the next day to see how he was, and to check what time we were meeting up to load out the gear from the Kafe. “Shite!” was his answer. He told me he'd slipped on the ice on the way home and scuffed his face. Of course, he wasn't drunk and neither was he hungover today. He never is. The next call was to Johan who quickly informed me that Andy had fallen over about ten times last night. I guess it really was icy...
I'm now really looking forward to going on tour with Black Breath. We start at the end of March and play around twenty shows. Most of the dates are now booked and I'm getting that familiar buzz from looking through the list of cities we'll be visiting. I'm really looking forward to playing Spain again, I think the last time I played there was in 2003. As always, playing the UK will be a lot of fun, if not economically rewarding... I'm hoping we can find time to swing by Corby and visit my parents place. And the Rock of course...
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Work Experience - Part II
Everything had changed by the summer of ´94. The year before we'd spent our six weeks of school holiday pissing about in the woods, playing football, listening to metal and generally living the good life. Now we were all working factory shifts. What the fuck had happened?
Webb's had scarred me somewhat, and the thought of spending one more summer's day locked up inside a factory made me feel nauseous, but it dawned on me during those few days of freedom after leaving the chicken factory that all of my other mates were still working, some place or another. And not only was I actually bored after a few days, I was skint. And being skint meant no money for Channel 2 on Friday night's and worse, no money for records.
The plan was to find an employment agency that dealt with non-food companies. When I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Simple really. What I couldn't figure out was why my mates hadn't thought of it too, why most of them seemed to be at the dreaded Solway Foods factory. The stories I'd heard about Solway put the fucking shits up me and I swore to myself I'd exhaust all other possibilities before I ended up in that hell hole.
I was there within a month...
I managed to get a few days work through another agency called Quest, who promised the highest paid agency work in Corby. I was placed at a company called Corby Corlon, which made cardboard boxes. Most of the people that worked there were older men and I was one of a small handful of agency workers amongst them. The place was dry, and more importantly warm, but in all honesty the work was fucking boring.. It didn't help that I was there on my todd and all the permanent staff treated us agency workers like twats. It beat sifting through chicken wings any day of the fucking week, but I felt pretty lonely standing there folding cardboard boxes on a conveyor belt all day. I was willing to stick it out all the same, but as it happens the work dried up and that was the end of that place.
It was the same story at another couple of places and although I wasn't exactly gutted on those occasions when the people from Quest would call and tell me, “Unfortunately there is no work for you today Mr. Smith”, I still felt the pressure of having no money whilst all my mates were earning. That heavy feeling once again reared it's ugly presence in the pit of my stomach... I knew I'd have to go back to the food factories if I wanted regular money in my pocket.
Webb's was out of the fucking question, and I was determined to steer clear of Solway, so I gave Ashbury's Sweets a go. One positive about Ashbury's was that John, who was my mate Beany's dad, worked there. He was a maintenance engineer and had a firm standing at the place, so I thought my chances of being looked after were good. One negative, of many actually, was the fact that I was working twelve hour night shifts, Sunday to Thursday, six pm to six am. Even with a fifteen minute break every two hours, they were long nights.. John seemed like he had it pretty cushy in there though, I only ever saw him sat in the canteen reading the paper, on call, but seemingly never called upon. He looked more than chuffed with his lot.
I was of course working one of the conveyor lines although I honestly don't remember what it was I was supposed to be doing. All I remember is being stood there staring at foil wrapped assorted chocolates, the kind you get in Quality Street and the like, travelling past on the line for hours on end. They told you that you could eat as many as you liked but nobody seemed to be eating anything. They were long nights... Now and again John would say hello, if he was on his way to the bog, otherwise it was once again, like Corby Corlon, a lonely existence.
Just as Webb's had, Ashbury's too deemed it necessary to place a huge clock on the wall at one end of the factory. What's with that really? It's like they are trying to crush your very existence with this shit. I spent a couple of weeks looking at that clock and the endless stream of sweets, my brain slowly being pulped into submission. It wasn't long before I started to wonder how bad Solway could really be.. At least I had a group of mate's who were working there, surely that would compensate for whatever hell the place had to dish out? I thought about it.. Fuck it, worse case scenario I could always come back to Ashbury's...
Hallmark Employment Agency solely served Solway Foods and it's three factories. Almost the entire Solway workforce was provided by Hallmark with only a handful of supervisors and other management types employed there on a permanent basis. What a great deal they'd struck together. Solway got an endless stream of workers with no rights, whilst Hallmark got a monopoly on one of Corby's largest factories and kept half of the wages paid out. What we got was practically guaranteed work, as much as we wanted of it, for the princely wage of three pound fifty an hour.
I'll never forget that first dark morning, waiting at the top of Studfall Hill outside of the Rockingham Arms at five thirty am. for the Hallmark bus to pick me up. The town was silent and I stood there filled with regret and fear. Five thirty turned into five thirty-five and then five forty and for a second I began to imagine how great it would feel if somehow they'd forgotten about me and I could just go home and crawl back into bed. And then I saw the headlights slowly creeping towards me up the hill.. The mini-bus pulled up beside the curb and waited for me to hop in. I pulled the sliding door open and timidly climbed into the back of the van. The driver looks at me and asks my name, I tell him and he ticks off a box on a form attached to a clip-board. I look around the van which seems to be full. I steal a glance at the fifteen or so seats and the depressed figures occupying them, not a single pair of eyes meet mine. I spot a free seat at the back and awkwardly shift my way to it. What the fuck have I let myself in for? And off we go.
The van pulls up outside of Solway Foods, which is more of a compound than a factory. There are three large buildings, named Factory One through Three respectively. The van has dropped us off outside a small Porta Cabin which is Hallmark's on-site office. We shuffle out of the van and into the cabin where we're told one by one which factory we'll be working in today. It's still dark, although the birds are beginning to sing. I hear their joyful song and it cheers me not one iota, in fact, I envy them with every grain of my being. I wait in line and when it comes to my turn, the guy behind the desk simply asks my name and then says, “Gareth Smith? Factory One. High Risk”, without so much as looking up at me. It actually feels like I've been sent to prison. “Who the fuck are these people?” I wonder to myself as I follow a few others that have been sent to Factory One.
It's the same deal as Webbs. First the changing room, overalls, hairnets, boots and then it's in to the sterile white room that is the factory. Unlike Webbs though, this place is a collection of smaller rooms, with conveyor belts snaking through holes in the walls and onto places unknown. Just like Webbs on the other hand, it's fucking freezing. I stand there taking in the place, wondering where Beany and my other mates are. A supervisor soon approaches me and is straight on my case, “Don't stand there looking lost, there's plenty of work mate.” With that he tells me to follow him, which I do, like a lost puppy. I walk behind him along one of the conveyor lines until he stops beside a large, steel vat which is full to the brim with a substance I assume is mayonnaise. Judging by the smell, it has a vicious dose of vinegar in it. The stink is so strong that my eyes are already watering. He gives me a large spoon and tells me to stir. I'm guessing this is Solway's very own initiation test. He walks off looking chuffed with himself. I begin to stir. Fuck me, if I'm going to survive this place then I'm going to have to hook up with one of my mates somehow, wherever the fuck they are..
I stir for a half hour or so until someone else comes along, takes the vat away to somewhere else and replaces it with another. And I continue to stir. This goes on for a couple of hours and just when I'm beginning to wonder if Jeremy Beadle is hiding somewhere filming me, the supervisor guys comes back, pats me on the back, and tells me he has another job for me. I may be paranoid but it feels like I've just passed some sort of test...
Those first couple of days were pretty shit, but thankfully I never went back to the mayo vat and soon enough Beany and I had found each other and for the most part we managed to stick it out together in there, through thin and thin. I wouldn't have lasted long on my own, that's for fucking sure.
As with all food factories, dispatch, that haven of warmth and cleanliness, was the place to be. I only got to work there once, but it coincided with an occasion when Bean was sent to the hell that is the mayo vat. The dispatch department was one of those places the conveyor lines went through the walls to, and the one and only day I had there was spent with a huge grin spread across my face since I spent it staring through the window in the wall at Beany, who was stirring mayonnaise in the refrigerated high risk room. He looked fucking furious and I made sure that every time he looked in my direction he'd find me grinning at him as I packed cardboard boxes. In Solway you take the small pleasures whenever you get the chance. I knew fine well Beany would have taken the exact same pleasure in my torture had he been given the chance.
Another peach of a job in Factory One was the sandwich line. On more than one occasion Bean and I were put on tomato duty. We stood there, eight hours a day, placing sliced tomatoes onto slices of white bread layered with a sorry slice of cheese, whizzing past on the belt. It was my job to put a tom on the two upper corners of the bread, whilst Bean's responsibility was to make sure the bottom two corners were taken care of. Four tomatoes to each slice of bread. We stood there for hours on end, performing this soul destroying task. It felt like prison labour. Sometimes, just to kill the boredom, I would start dumping handfuls of tomatoes onto the bread and take great amusement in watching Bean scurrying to remove them and leave nothing but the mandatory four pieces as they continued their journey to becoming sandwiches. It wouldn't take long before he'd start getting seriously backed up and there would be tomatoes all over the place.
One day, with the two of us at the point of cracking, one of the supervisors comes up behind us and tells us we're doing the job wrong! He re-briefs us on the exact placement required for the tomatoes, us standing there looking like a right pair of cunts. The supervisor walks off and we silently continue our work with heightened diligence. A few minutes pass before Bean grunts, “This is fucking bullshit”. I look at him, look back at the conveyor belt and the never-ending blur of sliced bread whizzing past, and the two of us break into a frenzied, depraved laughter. We literally stand there pissing ourselves laughing, tears running down our cheeks, the poor sap beside us who is on cucumber duty or something, looking at us confused. That laughter is something I'll never forget and it came to us every day, more as a method of keeping the madness at bay than anything else. Nowhere would we need that laughter more than the time we would later spend in Factory Three...
This place was high-risk and me and my loyal companion Beany spent the best part of two summers there. The chill of Factory One paled in comparison with this place. And it was wet. To add to the torture, the shifts ran on a system all of it's own. It wasn't the simple six am. to two pm here, rather it was six am. until “finish”. And “finish” could be as late as seven pm if necessary. The shift was over when the days orders were taken care of. Of course, the up-side of this is that “finish” could, in theory at least, come before two pm. I think that happened once the whole time we were there, and even then we only finished an hour early.
Our job in this hell hole was cabbages. To be exact, chopping cabbages in half, then cutting away the core in the middle before throwing them into a huge, steel container filled with water, where they would be washed and moved along through a hole in the wall and into Solway's orbit. We'd stand at a large white table in front of this wash basin, the supervisor would come with a large plastic skip filled with water and cabbages and we'd go about our work. We were given a machete to chop with and a steel chain-mail glove for our non-chopping hand, to avoid said hand being chopped.
The water from the cabbage skip was cold and it didn't take long for the freeze in the place to seep into our souls. That steel chain-mail glove was fucking torture once it was wet. Chop, throw. Chop, throw. Hours and hours on end. Misery. To add to the torture, the radio broadcasting through the speaker system in the factory played the same shite playlist of songs, roughly going on about an hour's rotation. I'm sure most of the cunts working in this place thought it was nice to have the radio on, but it drove Beany and I to the brink of insanity. Every single shift, every fucking day, you'd hear, at least eight or nine times, songs such as Ironic by Alanis Morisette, I Am, I Feel by Alicia's Attic (I think), the fucking Friends theme tune by the Rembrandts amongst other shite. Even to this day, when I hear one of those songs somewhere in passing, my mind goes straight back to Solway and that sick feeling in my stomach resurfaces. Another song that was on continuous rotation was the Mike and the Mechanics song, How Long Has This Been Going On?. Without fail, every time that line in the song was sung, I'd turn to Beany and ask, “How long has this been going on Bean?”. He'd look back and reply, “Too long Gaz, too long...” We'd smirk to ourselves every single time..
One song that never, ever raised a smirk though, was the heinous piece of shit by Boo Radley's, Wake Up, with the chorus line, “Wake up it's a beautiful morning..” Seriously, was this poisonous shit supposed to cheer us up? I always remember Beany cracking one day as he was chopping cabbages, taking off his chain mail glove and placing it to the side, before hissing, “I fucking hate the Radleys!!” I looked at him concerned, and tried to talk him down, “Bean, put the glove back on mate. Come on, it's not worth it.” His gaze never leaving the cabbages at task, he replied, “Mate, I wouldn't even fucking notice if I chopped my hand off it's so fucking numb!”. What could I say to that? He was right after all.
There were some permanent staff in this factory, real, salt of the earth people I'll never forget. One of the supervisors, Danny, was a right dreg. He wasn't a bad looking bloke really, although he'd let himself go badly. His shoulder length, blond hair looked like it had been washed in a chip pan, he had a constant pluke on the side of his nose and his teeth were yellow from the endless chain of roll-ups he smoked at break time. He did have the best tattoo I've ever seen though. On his neck, written in biro-thin ink, three names. Karen, with a single line going through it, under that, Tracy, again with a line going through it and below that, Michelle, the name of his current love, who happened to be a supervisor in Factory One. The darling couple of Solway...
Another character was an old Irish boy called Henry. He could have been anything from forty to seventy years old, the ruggedness of his alcohol abused, red face making it hard to decipher. He was a permanent member of staff and worked day in, day out at the cabbage station. If things got blocked, or backed up, Henry was the first to climb up to the wash basin and sort it out, seemingly taking great pride in his work. He was also constantly arguing with the management, much to our amusement. I remember standing there with him one day, me, Beany and another mate, Scrivener. Henry proudly tells us that the day after he's going on holiday for two weeks. Scrivener asks him where he's going, to which he replies, “Every fucking pub in Corby!”. “Resort” chortles Scrivener, giving him the thumbs up. Henry, oblivious to our opinion, looked chuffed. It's been years now but I'm guessing Henry is sadly, no longer of this world..
Getting through the shift was all about staving off the monotony of the work. You had to find ways of making the work interesting, otherwise you'd implode. What got us through most days at the cabbage station was a game we invented, where you'd get a varying amount of points depending on how the cabbages landed in the wash basin. One point for direct hit, two points for bouncing the cabbage off the back wall and into the basin, minus points if the cabbage landed on the floor etc. etc. Of course, we'd end up with a shit load of cabbages either on the floor, which would incur the wrath of Danny, or stuck on the rim of the wash basin, which would mean old Henry climbing up there, calling us cunts whilst he picked them off. That was worth ten points.. The match would last the entire shift and sometimes get quite exciting in a pitiful kind of way...
I like to think that I've always been able to get my head down and just get on with things, no matter how shit the circumstances. I've always had the knack to plough on, telling myself that how ever shit it is, it's not forever. And of course, I knew Solway wouldn't be forever. Bean had a solid point referring Solway, or any other place like it, and that was that instead of schools sending kids out on so called “work experience”, where they go sit in a warm office and stare at a computer all day, fantasising about the women that work there, they should send them to work at one of these places for a week, right before they start studying for their GCSE's. That should be all the fucking inspiration they'd need to get their heads down into the books.
As with most things though, it's not the actual doing that's the problem, although the doing being chopping cabbages all day was pretty fucking shite, no, it's the moments before the doing. The calm before the storm, the waiting for the bus to appear at the bottom of Studfall hill...
Nothing can compare to that feeling of those headlights appearing in the dark distance. Being that there was no other traffic around at that time of morning, there was no mistaking them. And if it was bad enough waiting outside the Rock at five thirty am. for the day shift, it was absolute torture if you were on night shift, watching people go into the pub at nine thirty as you're preparing for a night of tomatoes or cabbages...
We lasted a couple of summers but by the end of the second term our spirit wasn't really in Solway any longer and we had a hard time taking it seriously. One particular Thursday night, Bean and I were stood outside the Rock waiting for the bus to pick us up for our night shift. We stood there watching pissed up punters going in and out of the pub and the thought of going to Solway to chop cabbages for eight hours suddenly seemed quite obscene. As the lights appeared at the bottom of the hill, Beany caved in. “Fuck this!” he says, before walking towards the pub with great determination. “Come on Bean”, I reasoned, “Don't be like that, we need the money..” He ignored me and walked through the door and into the warm atmosphere of the pub. I stood there a few moments, my eyes twitching back and forth between the Rock door and the rapidly approaching headlights of the Hallmark van. Fuck it.
When I walk into the pub, Bean is stood at the bar staring forward, making no comment on my arrival, concentrated solely on the ale in his hand. He's taken the liberty of ordering me a pint which is waiting for me, in all it's glory, by the time I take my place beside him. I smirk, take a hold of the pint and throw about half of it down my neck in one big swig. Lager has never tasted this good. “I knew you'd buckle”, Bean says without breaking his forward gaze.
To make the matter of the Hallmark van even worse, the driver, Steve, was a complete wanker. He seemed to fucking love his job! Arrogance seeped out of his every pore as he drove us to hell each day. He'd obviously never worked a shift in Solway in his life. Never more was my hatred for Steve amplified than on one certain morning when we were working the six to “finish” shift.
Bean had slept at mine and we'd arranged for the van to pick the pair of us up outside the Rock as usual. Of course, we'd sat up the night before until the early hours shooting the breeze, eventually getting our heads down some time around two am. The alarm clock went off at five and obviously we felt like shite. We lay there and discussed the possibilities of just lying in bed and hoping for the best. After a tug-of-war with my conscience we turned the alarm off and went back to an uneasy sleep. At five forty-five the phone downstairs starts to ring. I start awake. Shit... The pair of us slumber downstairs to the dining room where the phone is ringing and stare at it, wondering how to handle this delicate situation. It stops. We stare at each other. Relief. It starts to ring again. That bastard Steve is one determined fucker! Bean and I stand there arguing over who is going to answer the phone, giving each other all sorts of reasons for why the other should take on the duty. Bean finally answers the phone. “Hello... Gareth? Yeah he's here, one second.” Fuck. Didn't see that coming.
I sheepishly take the phone from Bean, who now has a smile the width of the fucking Grand Canyon spread across his face. Steve sounds pissed off. “Where are you guys?” he asks. I've never been that good at talking shite on the spot, “Er, we were there waiting but the bus never came. We were stood around the other side on Clydesdale Road.” Even as I said it I heard how lame it was. “Well I find that hard to believe,” he tells it to me straight. “Get your arses there now and I'll pick you up in ten minutes.” I put the phone back on the hook and Bean and I burst out laughing. It was a laughter tinted by desperation but nonetheless we laughed long and hard, and from that point on Steve became known as Hard To Believe Steve. He also became our mortal enemy. I never could figure out his fucking beef.
The final straw was eventually drawn for me and Bean one day in Factory Three. We were working the dreaded six to finish shift, chopping cabbages in half all fucking day. There were no windows in the Factory, lending the place that purgatorial feel. We'd made the mistake of heading outside on our lunch break. It was a glorious day in late July. As much as the fresh air was welcome it made going back in for the rest of the shift all that more agonising.
We stood there chopping away, listening to the usual cack on the radio, by now I had an almost morbid hatred of Alanis Morisette and that fucking Ironic song, watching the clock slowly tick towards two pm. Urging it all the while to pick up the pace.
When two pm. arrived, we finished up what was hopefully the last skip of cabbages and looked around for signs of the supervisor, praying to fuck that we'd be told the shift was over. No supervisor came, but then, neither did a new skip of cabbages.. Two-ten pm. Still no sign of either supervisor or cabbage skip. Bean decides that's enough for him and heads out to the changing room. I follow him, knowing fine well in my heart of hearts that if the shift was over then the supervisor would have told us so, and also the rest of the workers would be heading out the door with us. It didn't feel right as the two of us strided towards the exit.
We walk outside into the blazing sunshine and sure enough, there is no van waiting to take us home. “It's beautiful out today, let's walk home,” Bean suggests. “I dunno mate, I don't think the shift is over.” “It is, we were stood there waiting for fifteen minutes scratching our arses waiting for cabbages, and it's two pm. They probably just forgot to tell us that's it for the day,” Bean replies, sounding like he has a hard time even convincing himself. “Nah, I'm knackered mate, can't be arsed walking home, let's just sit here in the sun and wait for the van, it'll be here soon,” I say. We argue for about ten minutes before Beany gives in and the two of us sit there on the pavement, backs against the wall, basking in the sunshine.
For a moment it's absolutely wonderful. And then Danny the supervisor bursts through the door with a face like a slapped arse. “What the fuck are you two ladies doing, shift's not over yet!” Bean looks at me like he wants to slowly and methodically tear me limb from limb. My stomach plummets into the depths of regret. We trudge back in for what turns out to be another four hours of chopping cabbages, the whole while Bean refusing to talk to me. “Isn't it ironic, don't you think? It's like ray-ay-ain, on a summer's day...” Fuck you Morisette. Fuck you.
That turned out to be the last day I ever worked in Solway. On many an occasion during our time there, Bean and I fantasised about going back to the place, later on in life, once we'd made successes of ourselves. The plan was, we'd book a shift back in Factory One, walk in, take a piss on the sandwich line and walk out again. That dream, which we'd discuss at length, kept us going through many a shit day.
Needless to say, the dream never materialised. It didn't need to. It was just something to take strength from then, to get us through those long, cold days. Looking back at it now, I understand that the experience I gained has put me in good stead for the rest of my life. As much as I thought it was hell then, I'm glad for the experience now. It's shaped me in a way only real, hard work can. Solway is still going strong today and hundreds of people are still working there, day in, day out. And I have nothing but respect for every single one of them. Except Steve. I still fucking hate Steve.
These days, when I hear friends in Stockholm complaining about working a stressful forty hour week in an office, it makes me laugh. They wouldn't last ten minutes in Solway. Then again, I don't know if I would any more...
Webb's had scarred me somewhat, and the thought of spending one more summer's day locked up inside a factory made me feel nauseous, but it dawned on me during those few days of freedom after leaving the chicken factory that all of my other mates were still working, some place or another. And not only was I actually bored after a few days, I was skint. And being skint meant no money for Channel 2 on Friday night's and worse, no money for records.
The plan was to find an employment agency that dealt with non-food companies. When I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Simple really. What I couldn't figure out was why my mates hadn't thought of it too, why most of them seemed to be at the dreaded Solway Foods factory. The stories I'd heard about Solway put the fucking shits up me and I swore to myself I'd exhaust all other possibilities before I ended up in that hell hole.
I was there within a month...
I managed to get a few days work through another agency called Quest, who promised the highest paid agency work in Corby. I was placed at a company called Corby Corlon, which made cardboard boxes. Most of the people that worked there were older men and I was one of a small handful of agency workers amongst them. The place was dry, and more importantly warm, but in all honesty the work was fucking boring.. It didn't help that I was there on my todd and all the permanent staff treated us agency workers like twats. It beat sifting through chicken wings any day of the fucking week, but I felt pretty lonely standing there folding cardboard boxes on a conveyor belt all day. I was willing to stick it out all the same, but as it happens the work dried up and that was the end of that place.
It was the same story at another couple of places and although I wasn't exactly gutted on those occasions when the people from Quest would call and tell me, “Unfortunately there is no work for you today Mr. Smith”, I still felt the pressure of having no money whilst all my mates were earning. That heavy feeling once again reared it's ugly presence in the pit of my stomach... I knew I'd have to go back to the food factories if I wanted regular money in my pocket.
Webb's was out of the fucking question, and I was determined to steer clear of Solway, so I gave Ashbury's Sweets a go. One positive about Ashbury's was that John, who was my mate Beany's dad, worked there. He was a maintenance engineer and had a firm standing at the place, so I thought my chances of being looked after were good. One negative, of many actually, was the fact that I was working twelve hour night shifts, Sunday to Thursday, six pm to six am. Even with a fifteen minute break every two hours, they were long nights.. John seemed like he had it pretty cushy in there though, I only ever saw him sat in the canteen reading the paper, on call, but seemingly never called upon. He looked more than chuffed with his lot.
I was of course working one of the conveyor lines although I honestly don't remember what it was I was supposed to be doing. All I remember is being stood there staring at foil wrapped assorted chocolates, the kind you get in Quality Street and the like, travelling past on the line for hours on end. They told you that you could eat as many as you liked but nobody seemed to be eating anything. They were long nights... Now and again John would say hello, if he was on his way to the bog, otherwise it was once again, like Corby Corlon, a lonely existence.
Just as Webb's had, Ashbury's too deemed it necessary to place a huge clock on the wall at one end of the factory. What's with that really? It's like they are trying to crush your very existence with this shit. I spent a couple of weeks looking at that clock and the endless stream of sweets, my brain slowly being pulped into submission. It wasn't long before I started to wonder how bad Solway could really be.. At least I had a group of mate's who were working there, surely that would compensate for whatever hell the place had to dish out? I thought about it.. Fuck it, worse case scenario I could always come back to Ashbury's...
Hallmark Employment Agency solely served Solway Foods and it's three factories. Almost the entire Solway workforce was provided by Hallmark with only a handful of supervisors and other management types employed there on a permanent basis. What a great deal they'd struck together. Solway got an endless stream of workers with no rights, whilst Hallmark got a monopoly on one of Corby's largest factories and kept half of the wages paid out. What we got was practically guaranteed work, as much as we wanted of it, for the princely wage of three pound fifty an hour.
I'll never forget that first dark morning, waiting at the top of Studfall Hill outside of the Rockingham Arms at five thirty am. for the Hallmark bus to pick me up. The town was silent and I stood there filled with regret and fear. Five thirty turned into five thirty-five and then five forty and for a second I began to imagine how great it would feel if somehow they'd forgotten about me and I could just go home and crawl back into bed. And then I saw the headlights slowly creeping towards me up the hill.. The mini-bus pulled up beside the curb and waited for me to hop in. I pulled the sliding door open and timidly climbed into the back of the van. The driver looks at me and asks my name, I tell him and he ticks off a box on a form attached to a clip-board. I look around the van which seems to be full. I steal a glance at the fifteen or so seats and the depressed figures occupying them, not a single pair of eyes meet mine. I spot a free seat at the back and awkwardly shift my way to it. What the fuck have I let myself in for? And off we go.
The van pulls up outside of Solway Foods, which is more of a compound than a factory. There are three large buildings, named Factory One through Three respectively. The van has dropped us off outside a small Porta Cabin which is Hallmark's on-site office. We shuffle out of the van and into the cabin where we're told one by one which factory we'll be working in today. It's still dark, although the birds are beginning to sing. I hear their joyful song and it cheers me not one iota, in fact, I envy them with every grain of my being. I wait in line and when it comes to my turn, the guy behind the desk simply asks my name and then says, “Gareth Smith? Factory One. High Risk”, without so much as looking up at me. It actually feels like I've been sent to prison. “Who the fuck are these people?” I wonder to myself as I follow a few others that have been sent to Factory One.
It's the same deal as Webbs. First the changing room, overalls, hairnets, boots and then it's in to the sterile white room that is the factory. Unlike Webbs though, this place is a collection of smaller rooms, with conveyor belts snaking through holes in the walls and onto places unknown. Just like Webbs on the other hand, it's fucking freezing. I stand there taking in the place, wondering where Beany and my other mates are. A supervisor soon approaches me and is straight on my case, “Don't stand there looking lost, there's plenty of work mate.” With that he tells me to follow him, which I do, like a lost puppy. I walk behind him along one of the conveyor lines until he stops beside a large, steel vat which is full to the brim with a substance I assume is mayonnaise. Judging by the smell, it has a vicious dose of vinegar in it. The stink is so strong that my eyes are already watering. He gives me a large spoon and tells me to stir. I'm guessing this is Solway's very own initiation test. He walks off looking chuffed with himself. I begin to stir. Fuck me, if I'm going to survive this place then I'm going to have to hook up with one of my mates somehow, wherever the fuck they are..
I stir for a half hour or so until someone else comes along, takes the vat away to somewhere else and replaces it with another. And I continue to stir. This goes on for a couple of hours and just when I'm beginning to wonder if Jeremy Beadle is hiding somewhere filming me, the supervisor guys comes back, pats me on the back, and tells me he has another job for me. I may be paranoid but it feels like I've just passed some sort of test...
Those first couple of days were pretty shit, but thankfully I never went back to the mayo vat and soon enough Beany and I had found each other and for the most part we managed to stick it out together in there, through thin and thin. I wouldn't have lasted long on my own, that's for fucking sure.
As with all food factories, dispatch, that haven of warmth and cleanliness, was the place to be. I only got to work there once, but it coincided with an occasion when Bean was sent to the hell that is the mayo vat. The dispatch department was one of those places the conveyor lines went through the walls to, and the one and only day I had there was spent with a huge grin spread across my face since I spent it staring through the window in the wall at Beany, who was stirring mayonnaise in the refrigerated high risk room. He looked fucking furious and I made sure that every time he looked in my direction he'd find me grinning at him as I packed cardboard boxes. In Solway you take the small pleasures whenever you get the chance. I knew fine well Beany would have taken the exact same pleasure in my torture had he been given the chance.
Another peach of a job in Factory One was the sandwich line. On more than one occasion Bean and I were put on tomato duty. We stood there, eight hours a day, placing sliced tomatoes onto slices of white bread layered with a sorry slice of cheese, whizzing past on the belt. It was my job to put a tom on the two upper corners of the bread, whilst Bean's responsibility was to make sure the bottom two corners were taken care of. Four tomatoes to each slice of bread. We stood there for hours on end, performing this soul destroying task. It felt like prison labour. Sometimes, just to kill the boredom, I would start dumping handfuls of tomatoes onto the bread and take great amusement in watching Bean scurrying to remove them and leave nothing but the mandatory four pieces as they continued their journey to becoming sandwiches. It wouldn't take long before he'd start getting seriously backed up and there would be tomatoes all over the place.
One day, with the two of us at the point of cracking, one of the supervisors comes up behind us and tells us we're doing the job wrong! He re-briefs us on the exact placement required for the tomatoes, us standing there looking like a right pair of cunts. The supervisor walks off and we silently continue our work with heightened diligence. A few minutes pass before Bean grunts, “This is fucking bullshit”. I look at him, look back at the conveyor belt and the never-ending blur of sliced bread whizzing past, and the two of us break into a frenzied, depraved laughter. We literally stand there pissing ourselves laughing, tears running down our cheeks, the poor sap beside us who is on cucumber duty or something, looking at us confused. That laughter is something I'll never forget and it came to us every day, more as a method of keeping the madness at bay than anything else. Nowhere would we need that laughter more than the time we would later spend in Factory Three...
This place was high-risk and me and my loyal companion Beany spent the best part of two summers there. The chill of Factory One paled in comparison with this place. And it was wet. To add to the torture, the shifts ran on a system all of it's own. It wasn't the simple six am. to two pm here, rather it was six am. until “finish”. And “finish” could be as late as seven pm if necessary. The shift was over when the days orders were taken care of. Of course, the up-side of this is that “finish” could, in theory at least, come before two pm. I think that happened once the whole time we were there, and even then we only finished an hour early.
Our job in this hell hole was cabbages. To be exact, chopping cabbages in half, then cutting away the core in the middle before throwing them into a huge, steel container filled with water, where they would be washed and moved along through a hole in the wall and into Solway's orbit. We'd stand at a large white table in front of this wash basin, the supervisor would come with a large plastic skip filled with water and cabbages and we'd go about our work. We were given a machete to chop with and a steel chain-mail glove for our non-chopping hand, to avoid said hand being chopped.
The water from the cabbage skip was cold and it didn't take long for the freeze in the place to seep into our souls. That steel chain-mail glove was fucking torture once it was wet. Chop, throw. Chop, throw. Hours and hours on end. Misery. To add to the torture, the radio broadcasting through the speaker system in the factory played the same shite playlist of songs, roughly going on about an hour's rotation. I'm sure most of the cunts working in this place thought it was nice to have the radio on, but it drove Beany and I to the brink of insanity. Every single shift, every fucking day, you'd hear, at least eight or nine times, songs such as Ironic by Alanis Morisette, I Am, I Feel by Alicia's Attic (I think), the fucking Friends theme tune by the Rembrandts amongst other shite. Even to this day, when I hear one of those songs somewhere in passing, my mind goes straight back to Solway and that sick feeling in my stomach resurfaces. Another song that was on continuous rotation was the Mike and the Mechanics song, How Long Has This Been Going On?. Without fail, every time that line in the song was sung, I'd turn to Beany and ask, “How long has this been going on Bean?”. He'd look back and reply, “Too long Gaz, too long...” We'd smirk to ourselves every single time..
One song that never, ever raised a smirk though, was the heinous piece of shit by Boo Radley's, Wake Up, with the chorus line, “Wake up it's a beautiful morning..” Seriously, was this poisonous shit supposed to cheer us up? I always remember Beany cracking one day as he was chopping cabbages, taking off his chain mail glove and placing it to the side, before hissing, “I fucking hate the Radleys!!” I looked at him concerned, and tried to talk him down, “Bean, put the glove back on mate. Come on, it's not worth it.” His gaze never leaving the cabbages at task, he replied, “Mate, I wouldn't even fucking notice if I chopped my hand off it's so fucking numb!”. What could I say to that? He was right after all.
There were some permanent staff in this factory, real, salt of the earth people I'll never forget. One of the supervisors, Danny, was a right dreg. He wasn't a bad looking bloke really, although he'd let himself go badly. His shoulder length, blond hair looked like it had been washed in a chip pan, he had a constant pluke on the side of his nose and his teeth were yellow from the endless chain of roll-ups he smoked at break time. He did have the best tattoo I've ever seen though. On his neck, written in biro-thin ink, three names. Karen, with a single line going through it, under that, Tracy, again with a line going through it and below that, Michelle, the name of his current love, who happened to be a supervisor in Factory One. The darling couple of Solway...
Another character was an old Irish boy called Henry. He could have been anything from forty to seventy years old, the ruggedness of his alcohol abused, red face making it hard to decipher. He was a permanent member of staff and worked day in, day out at the cabbage station. If things got blocked, or backed up, Henry was the first to climb up to the wash basin and sort it out, seemingly taking great pride in his work. He was also constantly arguing with the management, much to our amusement. I remember standing there with him one day, me, Beany and another mate, Scrivener. Henry proudly tells us that the day after he's going on holiday for two weeks. Scrivener asks him where he's going, to which he replies, “Every fucking pub in Corby!”. “Resort” chortles Scrivener, giving him the thumbs up. Henry, oblivious to our opinion, looked chuffed. It's been years now but I'm guessing Henry is sadly, no longer of this world..
Getting through the shift was all about staving off the monotony of the work. You had to find ways of making the work interesting, otherwise you'd implode. What got us through most days at the cabbage station was a game we invented, where you'd get a varying amount of points depending on how the cabbages landed in the wash basin. One point for direct hit, two points for bouncing the cabbage off the back wall and into the basin, minus points if the cabbage landed on the floor etc. etc. Of course, we'd end up with a shit load of cabbages either on the floor, which would incur the wrath of Danny, or stuck on the rim of the wash basin, which would mean old Henry climbing up there, calling us cunts whilst he picked them off. That was worth ten points.. The match would last the entire shift and sometimes get quite exciting in a pitiful kind of way...
I like to think that I've always been able to get my head down and just get on with things, no matter how shit the circumstances. I've always had the knack to plough on, telling myself that how ever shit it is, it's not forever. And of course, I knew Solway wouldn't be forever. Bean had a solid point referring Solway, or any other place like it, and that was that instead of schools sending kids out on so called “work experience”, where they go sit in a warm office and stare at a computer all day, fantasising about the women that work there, they should send them to work at one of these places for a week, right before they start studying for their GCSE's. That should be all the fucking inspiration they'd need to get their heads down into the books.
As with most things though, it's not the actual doing that's the problem, although the doing being chopping cabbages all day was pretty fucking shite, no, it's the moments before the doing. The calm before the storm, the waiting for the bus to appear at the bottom of Studfall hill...
Nothing can compare to that feeling of those headlights appearing in the dark distance. Being that there was no other traffic around at that time of morning, there was no mistaking them. And if it was bad enough waiting outside the Rock at five thirty am. for the day shift, it was absolute torture if you were on night shift, watching people go into the pub at nine thirty as you're preparing for a night of tomatoes or cabbages...
We lasted a couple of summers but by the end of the second term our spirit wasn't really in Solway any longer and we had a hard time taking it seriously. One particular Thursday night, Bean and I were stood outside the Rock waiting for the bus to pick us up for our night shift. We stood there watching pissed up punters going in and out of the pub and the thought of going to Solway to chop cabbages for eight hours suddenly seemed quite obscene. As the lights appeared at the bottom of the hill, Beany caved in. “Fuck this!” he says, before walking towards the pub with great determination. “Come on Bean”, I reasoned, “Don't be like that, we need the money..” He ignored me and walked through the door and into the warm atmosphere of the pub. I stood there a few moments, my eyes twitching back and forth between the Rock door and the rapidly approaching headlights of the Hallmark van. Fuck it.
When I walk into the pub, Bean is stood at the bar staring forward, making no comment on my arrival, concentrated solely on the ale in his hand. He's taken the liberty of ordering me a pint which is waiting for me, in all it's glory, by the time I take my place beside him. I smirk, take a hold of the pint and throw about half of it down my neck in one big swig. Lager has never tasted this good. “I knew you'd buckle”, Bean says without breaking his forward gaze.
To make the matter of the Hallmark van even worse, the driver, Steve, was a complete wanker. He seemed to fucking love his job! Arrogance seeped out of his every pore as he drove us to hell each day. He'd obviously never worked a shift in Solway in his life. Never more was my hatred for Steve amplified than on one certain morning when we were working the six to “finish” shift.
Bean had slept at mine and we'd arranged for the van to pick the pair of us up outside the Rock as usual. Of course, we'd sat up the night before until the early hours shooting the breeze, eventually getting our heads down some time around two am. The alarm clock went off at five and obviously we felt like shite. We lay there and discussed the possibilities of just lying in bed and hoping for the best. After a tug-of-war with my conscience we turned the alarm off and went back to an uneasy sleep. At five forty-five the phone downstairs starts to ring. I start awake. Shit... The pair of us slumber downstairs to the dining room where the phone is ringing and stare at it, wondering how to handle this delicate situation. It stops. We stare at each other. Relief. It starts to ring again. That bastard Steve is one determined fucker! Bean and I stand there arguing over who is going to answer the phone, giving each other all sorts of reasons for why the other should take on the duty. Bean finally answers the phone. “Hello... Gareth? Yeah he's here, one second.” Fuck. Didn't see that coming.
I sheepishly take the phone from Bean, who now has a smile the width of the fucking Grand Canyon spread across his face. Steve sounds pissed off. “Where are you guys?” he asks. I've never been that good at talking shite on the spot, “Er, we were there waiting but the bus never came. We were stood around the other side on Clydesdale Road.” Even as I said it I heard how lame it was. “Well I find that hard to believe,” he tells it to me straight. “Get your arses there now and I'll pick you up in ten minutes.” I put the phone back on the hook and Bean and I burst out laughing. It was a laughter tinted by desperation but nonetheless we laughed long and hard, and from that point on Steve became known as Hard To Believe Steve. He also became our mortal enemy. I never could figure out his fucking beef.
The final straw was eventually drawn for me and Bean one day in Factory Three. We were working the dreaded six to finish shift, chopping cabbages in half all fucking day. There were no windows in the Factory, lending the place that purgatorial feel. We'd made the mistake of heading outside on our lunch break. It was a glorious day in late July. As much as the fresh air was welcome it made going back in for the rest of the shift all that more agonising.
We stood there chopping away, listening to the usual cack on the radio, by now I had an almost morbid hatred of Alanis Morisette and that fucking Ironic song, watching the clock slowly tick towards two pm. Urging it all the while to pick up the pace.
When two pm. arrived, we finished up what was hopefully the last skip of cabbages and looked around for signs of the supervisor, praying to fuck that we'd be told the shift was over. No supervisor came, but then, neither did a new skip of cabbages.. Two-ten pm. Still no sign of either supervisor or cabbage skip. Bean decides that's enough for him and heads out to the changing room. I follow him, knowing fine well in my heart of hearts that if the shift was over then the supervisor would have told us so, and also the rest of the workers would be heading out the door with us. It didn't feel right as the two of us strided towards the exit.
We walk outside into the blazing sunshine and sure enough, there is no van waiting to take us home. “It's beautiful out today, let's walk home,” Bean suggests. “I dunno mate, I don't think the shift is over.” “It is, we were stood there waiting for fifteen minutes scratching our arses waiting for cabbages, and it's two pm. They probably just forgot to tell us that's it for the day,” Bean replies, sounding like he has a hard time even convincing himself. “Nah, I'm knackered mate, can't be arsed walking home, let's just sit here in the sun and wait for the van, it'll be here soon,” I say. We argue for about ten minutes before Beany gives in and the two of us sit there on the pavement, backs against the wall, basking in the sunshine.
For a moment it's absolutely wonderful. And then Danny the supervisor bursts through the door with a face like a slapped arse. “What the fuck are you two ladies doing, shift's not over yet!” Bean looks at me like he wants to slowly and methodically tear me limb from limb. My stomach plummets into the depths of regret. We trudge back in for what turns out to be another four hours of chopping cabbages, the whole while Bean refusing to talk to me. “Isn't it ironic, don't you think? It's like ray-ay-ain, on a summer's day...” Fuck you Morisette. Fuck you.
That turned out to be the last day I ever worked in Solway. On many an occasion during our time there, Bean and I fantasised about going back to the place, later on in life, once we'd made successes of ourselves. The plan was, we'd book a shift back in Factory One, walk in, take a piss on the sandwich line and walk out again. That dream, which we'd discuss at length, kept us going through many a shit day.
Needless to say, the dream never materialised. It didn't need to. It was just something to take strength from then, to get us through those long, cold days. Looking back at it now, I understand that the experience I gained has put me in good stead for the rest of my life. As much as I thought it was hell then, I'm glad for the experience now. It's shaped me in a way only real, hard work can. Solway is still going strong today and hundreds of people are still working there, day in, day out. And I have nothing but respect for every single one of them. Except Steve. I still fucking hate Steve.
These days, when I hear friends in Stockholm complaining about working a stressful forty hour week in an office, it makes me laugh. They wouldn't last ten minutes in Solway. Then again, I don't know if I would any more...
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Work Experience - Part I
I got my first job when I was thirteen years old, delivering papers for the local newsagent. It was my first experience of getting up early for work. I hated it. I'd get up a seven in the morning for my round which would take about half an hour, then I'd go to school. I realised pretty early on that I was a night owl.
My second job was at a social club called the Silver Band Club. I was a glass collector, or as my friend Stuart always calls it, a pot man. I love that expression... Anyway, I was fourteen when I started at the Silver Band Club. Upon turning eighteen I would graduate to the lofty position of bartender, something I would return to later in life.. But it's those days collecting empty glasses that hold a dear memory for me. I worked every Sunday, the same night my dad worked extra on the taxis. We'd finish at the same time and he'd come and pick me up in the cab. We'd get home in time for the start of MTV's Headbanger's Ball. I'd have a cup of tea, my dad would have a beer and there we'd sit and watch what was in those days a great show. My dad would normally head off to bed after a half hour or so whilst I'd sit up and watch the programme in it's entirety. The presenter, Vanessa Warwick, was my first love...
Neither Raj's paper shop or the Silver Band Club felt like real jobs though, which at the time suited me just fine. I earned around eighteen pound a week from the SBC, which was five pounds more than Raj paid me. It was pocket money. That eighteen quid covered a night out at Channel 2, the place where all us “freaks”, “long hairs” or “grungers” as the jocks at school called us, hung out every Friday. Two pound-fifty entrance fee, two pound a pint. Eighteen quid was more than enough to get pissed up on.. Things were good. I felt then that I never wanted anything to change. Life could stay this way forever.
And then come the summer of '94.
That summer was the first time I heard the term “Employment Agency”. I wasn't quite sure what the deal was, but a couple of my mates were suddenly working on these agencies which provided work in a selection of the many factories scattered around the town's many industrial estates. Until this time I'd never ventured into these areas of Corby, they were just a dubious grey shadow on the outskirts of town where all the grown-ups worked. The first of us to go to work was my mate Leon. He told us it was fucking horrible. He'd have to get on this bus with all these scumbags, that would shuttle them to the factory, where he'd work a mind numbing eight hours a day. The thing was, it paid three pound fifty an hour. A week's work would earn you around one hundred and forty pounds a week. That was a hell of an improvement on eighteen fucking quid!
It's just, this was supposed to be the time when we were on our summer holiday. I wasn't prepared for this. Nobody had warned me the previous summer that it would be the last time I'd know freedom. But still, one hundred and forty quid! How bad could it really be? I took myself down to Staff Line's office on George Street.
What got me was how arrogant the people who worked at the Agency were. I had to sit and fill in a questionnaire while this smarmy bastard sat behind his desk with a smirk on his face. There was all the mandatory stuff like name, address, national insurance number and such, but when that was out of the way came the next section, which dealt directly with the type of work you would be involved with. One question was, “Will you work with food?”. For some reason I felt compelled to say no, but Smarmy Cunt made it quite clear that unless you ticked that particular yes box your chances of getting any work were practically nil. With a heavy heart I drew a tick. I had a horrible feeling I knew what was coming next.
After completing the form and going through a quick interview, I'm told I'll be called if they can find any work for me. I left the place hoping I'd never hear from them again. Within in a hour Smarmy Cunt is on the phone telling me that I'll be happy to hear that he has found me work at Webb's Chicken Factory, starting at six am the next day. I felt like I'd just been sentenced to life imprisonment. Life as I knew it was officially over.
The first thing that hits you is the smell. That smell could turn your stomach like a kick in the bollocks. And this was before you even stepped out onto the factory floor. This was in the changing room, where you'd adorn a protective white suit with rubber boots and rubber gloves, topped off with a hairnet and white hat. For a couple of seconds I actually forgot about the smell and concerned myself more with the fact that I looked like a right twat. When I actually walked through the heavy steel door into the factory though, that particular worry subsided. That stink of dead chicken. I'll never forget it. That and the look of absolute depression on the faces of the other people working there.
As I enter the factory floor, trying to keep the puke down, I'm greeted by a guy called Mark who tells me he is the supervisor. He seems very proud as he tells me this and I learn quickly enough that he takes his job very fucking seriously. He gives me a quick tour of the factory floor, telling me about the different lines and stations. As I follow him about like a lost puppy trying my best to avoid the eyes of my fellow co-workers for fear of being devoured by the weight of their gaze, my gag reflex slowly adjusts to the smell. It's then that I notice how fucking cold it is in here.
I finally reach the station where Mark tells me I'll be working. The chicken wing line. It's like this:
The line starts with somebody opening a vat of raw chicken wings and shovelling them onto the start of the conveyor belt. A little further down the line somebody is stood spreading the wings out before they enter a machine that covers them in breadcrumbs. Upon leaving the breadcrumb machine, they continue along the belt where someone else, in this case yours truly, gives them a further inspection, separating any that are stuck together, before they continue along into another machine that rapidly freezes them, from where they exit into a funnel system, dropping into plastic container bags that are then sealed by someone else stood at the end of the line and thrown into a cage. Mark tells me it's of the utmost importance that I don't let any wings by that are stuck together. Ok boss. And that's me. I look down the line and notice there is a huge fucking clock on the wall at the end of the factory. Six fifteen am. First break is at eight-thirty. I just have to think about that first break. If I think about two pm I won't make it. If I think about the fact that I'll be here tomorrow, and again the day after, I'll probably break down and cry.
I stand there in silence sifting through cold, soggy, breadcrumb coated chicken wings, making sure they all go into the freezer separately. I look down the line at the two guys bagging the finished product and I'm hit by a wave of jealousy. What I wouldn't give to be on that position. I put my head back down and try not to think about it. Another thirty minutes or so go by before my gaze starts to wonder again. I have a scan of the factory. It's a pretty big place. And it's very white. White walls, white ceiling, white tiled floor. Everything is white, except for the various types of chicken flesh that have dropped to the floor, but they're quickly removed by people who have the job of constantly hosing the floor down with freezing cold water and shovelling up the waste, hence the rubber boots I'm wearing. As I make a one hundred and eighty degree scan around this misery, I do a double take at a face on the other side of the factory smiling back at me. It's my mate Heg. An almost euphoric relief washes over me. A friend. And furthermore, it's Heg, who has the talent of laughing in the face of almost any hardship. We make signals to each other across the factory floor and we arrange to take our breaks together. Maybe this is survivable after all. Just as things are starting to feel better, Mark creeps up behind me and tells me to get on with my work. And alas, misery returns.
At break Heg tells me that he's been here for about a week. He's worked on most of the stations and he tells me the place to be is dispatch, which is by far the best job in this joint. Dispatch is basically the warehouse side of the factory where the products are packed into boxes and then onto pallets, ready for shipping. It's warmer there and you don't have to wear all this protective gear. I need to get myself in there somehow.
The line Heg is working on at the moment though, where he's been for a few days, is unmistakeable at the other end of the Webb's spectrum. He's on the first line, where whole chickens, plucked and minus a head, come in to the factory. Heg's job is to stick these carcasses arse first onto a metal clamp which then moves them along the line to be chopped up and dissected into various pieces. As we sit there over a cup of tea and a sandwich I wonder what they fuck I'm doing here. I just try to convince myself that it will all be worth it at the end of the week when I have a hundred and forty quid in my bank account.
The trouble is, it never really turned out that way. The elation at that first wage had all but subsided by the following Monday. The best it got for me on Webb's chicken factory ladder was working on the bags at the end of the wing line. By day three I was fantasising about ways of murdering Mark and getting away with it. Even my parents, doing their best to install some sort of work ethic in me (my dad worked for years at the steel plant for fuck sakes), couldn't hide the pity in their eyes. My dad told me he felt awful picking me up at the end of the day in his Royal Mail van, seeing the despair in my face as I climbed into the passenger seat, my shoulder length hair stinking of chicken guts. It would take about an hour in the shower to even get near feeling clean again.
I only lasted three weeks, although it felt like an eternity. The end came on one dark hungover morning. Me and Heg had been out the night before at Reflections in Kettering, which had an alternative night every Monday. We'd had a few drinks by the time we left there around midnight. It was a great feeling being there with all our mates, dancing to good music, doing our best to impress the girls we knew. For a few hours Webb's was the furthest thing from our minds. As we were sat in our mate Mike's car on the way home though, the doom started to filter back to conscious thought. Heg suddenly turns round, half pissed and tells me he can't go to work tomorrow, or actually today, in five hours time. On certain days you would get picked up by a taxi, paid for by the Agency, today being such an occasion. Heg begged me to tell the cab driver he was sick. I disgruntledly agreed.
The taxi pulls up outside of my parents house around five thirty. It's dark and cold. I hop in the back and tell the driver not to bother going to Heg's place since he's called and said he was sick. I don't know why he gave a piss, but he tells me that he'll just go and double check anyway. “What the fuck is this?” I wonder, although secretly I'm chuffed. He pulls up outside Heg's place, a few streets away, and beeps his horn. Nothing. He beeps again. And again. “Fucking hell, this cunt is evil!” I think to myself, a smile by now spreading across my face. Eventually a light turns on in the house. Within a few minutes Heg appears at the door and I can swear I see his dad's boot kicking him up the arse on the way out. He looks absolutely destroyed as he collapses beside me on the taxi bench seat. We drive to Webb's in silence. By the time we're sat in the canteen at five-fifty, Heg is in tears. It's only then I realise how fucked up this situation is. Today will be my last day in Webb's. I don't give a fuck what my parents say, I'm willing to face the shame of quitting.
When I leave at the end of the day and get in my dad's Royal Mail van I tell him I'm not going back. “Don't fucking blame you boy!” he says. We drive away from the place and I feel like I've just gained my freedom back. I'm almost in tears myself by this point, but they are tears of relief. I only hope Heg's dad is as understanding as mine...
Still, that money in bank is bankrolling what is the beginning of a life-long obsession, namely collecting records. I have to think of another plan. There has to be better alternatives to working than Webb's. I decide that I'll give it another go and hope for something better at another agency. And this time I'll stand my ground and abstain from ticking that fucking yes box...
My second job was at a social club called the Silver Band Club. I was a glass collector, or as my friend Stuart always calls it, a pot man. I love that expression... Anyway, I was fourteen when I started at the Silver Band Club. Upon turning eighteen I would graduate to the lofty position of bartender, something I would return to later in life.. But it's those days collecting empty glasses that hold a dear memory for me. I worked every Sunday, the same night my dad worked extra on the taxis. We'd finish at the same time and he'd come and pick me up in the cab. We'd get home in time for the start of MTV's Headbanger's Ball. I'd have a cup of tea, my dad would have a beer and there we'd sit and watch what was in those days a great show. My dad would normally head off to bed after a half hour or so whilst I'd sit up and watch the programme in it's entirety. The presenter, Vanessa Warwick, was my first love...
Neither Raj's paper shop or the Silver Band Club felt like real jobs though, which at the time suited me just fine. I earned around eighteen pound a week from the SBC, which was five pounds more than Raj paid me. It was pocket money. That eighteen quid covered a night out at Channel 2, the place where all us “freaks”, “long hairs” or “grungers” as the jocks at school called us, hung out every Friday. Two pound-fifty entrance fee, two pound a pint. Eighteen quid was more than enough to get pissed up on.. Things were good. I felt then that I never wanted anything to change. Life could stay this way forever.
And then come the summer of '94.
That summer was the first time I heard the term “Employment Agency”. I wasn't quite sure what the deal was, but a couple of my mates were suddenly working on these agencies which provided work in a selection of the many factories scattered around the town's many industrial estates. Until this time I'd never ventured into these areas of Corby, they were just a dubious grey shadow on the outskirts of town where all the grown-ups worked. The first of us to go to work was my mate Leon. He told us it was fucking horrible. He'd have to get on this bus with all these scumbags, that would shuttle them to the factory, where he'd work a mind numbing eight hours a day. The thing was, it paid three pound fifty an hour. A week's work would earn you around one hundred and forty pounds a week. That was a hell of an improvement on eighteen fucking quid!
It's just, this was supposed to be the time when we were on our summer holiday. I wasn't prepared for this. Nobody had warned me the previous summer that it would be the last time I'd know freedom. But still, one hundred and forty quid! How bad could it really be? I took myself down to Staff Line's office on George Street.
What got me was how arrogant the people who worked at the Agency were. I had to sit and fill in a questionnaire while this smarmy bastard sat behind his desk with a smirk on his face. There was all the mandatory stuff like name, address, national insurance number and such, but when that was out of the way came the next section, which dealt directly with the type of work you would be involved with. One question was, “Will you work with food?”. For some reason I felt compelled to say no, but Smarmy Cunt made it quite clear that unless you ticked that particular yes box your chances of getting any work were practically nil. With a heavy heart I drew a tick. I had a horrible feeling I knew what was coming next.
After completing the form and going through a quick interview, I'm told I'll be called if they can find any work for me. I left the place hoping I'd never hear from them again. Within in a hour Smarmy Cunt is on the phone telling me that I'll be happy to hear that he has found me work at Webb's Chicken Factory, starting at six am the next day. I felt like I'd just been sentenced to life imprisonment. Life as I knew it was officially over.
The first thing that hits you is the smell. That smell could turn your stomach like a kick in the bollocks. And this was before you even stepped out onto the factory floor. This was in the changing room, where you'd adorn a protective white suit with rubber boots and rubber gloves, topped off with a hairnet and white hat. For a couple of seconds I actually forgot about the smell and concerned myself more with the fact that I looked like a right twat. When I actually walked through the heavy steel door into the factory though, that particular worry subsided. That stink of dead chicken. I'll never forget it. That and the look of absolute depression on the faces of the other people working there.
As I enter the factory floor, trying to keep the puke down, I'm greeted by a guy called Mark who tells me he is the supervisor. He seems very proud as he tells me this and I learn quickly enough that he takes his job very fucking seriously. He gives me a quick tour of the factory floor, telling me about the different lines and stations. As I follow him about like a lost puppy trying my best to avoid the eyes of my fellow co-workers for fear of being devoured by the weight of their gaze, my gag reflex slowly adjusts to the smell. It's then that I notice how fucking cold it is in here.
I finally reach the station where Mark tells me I'll be working. The chicken wing line. It's like this:
The line starts with somebody opening a vat of raw chicken wings and shovelling them onto the start of the conveyor belt. A little further down the line somebody is stood spreading the wings out before they enter a machine that covers them in breadcrumbs. Upon leaving the breadcrumb machine, they continue along the belt where someone else, in this case yours truly, gives them a further inspection, separating any that are stuck together, before they continue along into another machine that rapidly freezes them, from where they exit into a funnel system, dropping into plastic container bags that are then sealed by someone else stood at the end of the line and thrown into a cage. Mark tells me it's of the utmost importance that I don't let any wings by that are stuck together. Ok boss. And that's me. I look down the line and notice there is a huge fucking clock on the wall at the end of the factory. Six fifteen am. First break is at eight-thirty. I just have to think about that first break. If I think about two pm I won't make it. If I think about the fact that I'll be here tomorrow, and again the day after, I'll probably break down and cry.
I stand there in silence sifting through cold, soggy, breadcrumb coated chicken wings, making sure they all go into the freezer separately. I look down the line at the two guys bagging the finished product and I'm hit by a wave of jealousy. What I wouldn't give to be on that position. I put my head back down and try not to think about it. Another thirty minutes or so go by before my gaze starts to wonder again. I have a scan of the factory. It's a pretty big place. And it's very white. White walls, white ceiling, white tiled floor. Everything is white, except for the various types of chicken flesh that have dropped to the floor, but they're quickly removed by people who have the job of constantly hosing the floor down with freezing cold water and shovelling up the waste, hence the rubber boots I'm wearing. As I make a one hundred and eighty degree scan around this misery, I do a double take at a face on the other side of the factory smiling back at me. It's my mate Heg. An almost euphoric relief washes over me. A friend. And furthermore, it's Heg, who has the talent of laughing in the face of almost any hardship. We make signals to each other across the factory floor and we arrange to take our breaks together. Maybe this is survivable after all. Just as things are starting to feel better, Mark creeps up behind me and tells me to get on with my work. And alas, misery returns.
At break Heg tells me that he's been here for about a week. He's worked on most of the stations and he tells me the place to be is dispatch, which is by far the best job in this joint. Dispatch is basically the warehouse side of the factory where the products are packed into boxes and then onto pallets, ready for shipping. It's warmer there and you don't have to wear all this protective gear. I need to get myself in there somehow.
The line Heg is working on at the moment though, where he's been for a few days, is unmistakeable at the other end of the Webb's spectrum. He's on the first line, where whole chickens, plucked and minus a head, come in to the factory. Heg's job is to stick these carcasses arse first onto a metal clamp which then moves them along the line to be chopped up and dissected into various pieces. As we sit there over a cup of tea and a sandwich I wonder what they fuck I'm doing here. I just try to convince myself that it will all be worth it at the end of the week when I have a hundred and forty quid in my bank account.
The trouble is, it never really turned out that way. The elation at that first wage had all but subsided by the following Monday. The best it got for me on Webb's chicken factory ladder was working on the bags at the end of the wing line. By day three I was fantasising about ways of murdering Mark and getting away with it. Even my parents, doing their best to install some sort of work ethic in me (my dad worked for years at the steel plant for fuck sakes), couldn't hide the pity in their eyes. My dad told me he felt awful picking me up at the end of the day in his Royal Mail van, seeing the despair in my face as I climbed into the passenger seat, my shoulder length hair stinking of chicken guts. It would take about an hour in the shower to even get near feeling clean again.
I only lasted three weeks, although it felt like an eternity. The end came on one dark hungover morning. Me and Heg had been out the night before at Reflections in Kettering, which had an alternative night every Monday. We'd had a few drinks by the time we left there around midnight. It was a great feeling being there with all our mates, dancing to good music, doing our best to impress the girls we knew. For a few hours Webb's was the furthest thing from our minds. As we were sat in our mate Mike's car on the way home though, the doom started to filter back to conscious thought. Heg suddenly turns round, half pissed and tells me he can't go to work tomorrow, or actually today, in five hours time. On certain days you would get picked up by a taxi, paid for by the Agency, today being such an occasion. Heg begged me to tell the cab driver he was sick. I disgruntledly agreed.
The taxi pulls up outside of my parents house around five thirty. It's dark and cold. I hop in the back and tell the driver not to bother going to Heg's place since he's called and said he was sick. I don't know why he gave a piss, but he tells me that he'll just go and double check anyway. “What the fuck is this?” I wonder, although secretly I'm chuffed. He pulls up outside Heg's place, a few streets away, and beeps his horn. Nothing. He beeps again. And again. “Fucking hell, this cunt is evil!” I think to myself, a smile by now spreading across my face. Eventually a light turns on in the house. Within a few minutes Heg appears at the door and I can swear I see his dad's boot kicking him up the arse on the way out. He looks absolutely destroyed as he collapses beside me on the taxi bench seat. We drive to Webb's in silence. By the time we're sat in the canteen at five-fifty, Heg is in tears. It's only then I realise how fucked up this situation is. Today will be my last day in Webb's. I don't give a fuck what my parents say, I'm willing to face the shame of quitting.
When I leave at the end of the day and get in my dad's Royal Mail van I tell him I'm not going back. “Don't fucking blame you boy!” he says. We drive away from the place and I feel like I've just gained my freedom back. I'm almost in tears myself by this point, but they are tears of relief. I only hope Heg's dad is as understanding as mine...
Still, that money in bank is bankrolling what is the beginning of a life-long obsession, namely collecting records. I have to think of another plan. There has to be better alternatives to working than Webb's. I decide that I'll give it another go and hope for something better at another agency. And this time I'll stand my ground and abstain from ticking that fucking yes box...
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Bloodshed Fest
There is some footage bandying around of our show a couple of weeks ago at the wonderful Bloodshed Fest in Eindhoven. Here is a little taster. Thanks again to Luc for a great night!
Eindhoven
The plane touches down and as soon as it's come under controlled speed and taxiing to the gate I turn on my phone. “Just landed darling. What's the score?”.
Liverpool are at home to Man Utd. today and typically enough we're flying during the fucking game. I'm nervous as I await the plinging sound of a text message coming in. Within a minute Jen has texted me back. Half time, 0-0. I'm hoping Stachel is late so Johan and I can at least catch the end of the game.
Schiphol is an absolutely huge airport but unbelievably enough, there isn't a bar anywhere that is showing the game. There are a couple of places with television's showing tennis, but no football. Only one of the biggest games in club football anywhere in the world... Tennis for fuck sakes?
Resigned to the fact that we're not going to see any of the game, we retire to the toilets. Just as I'm zipping up I get another text through. “Gerrard! 1-0 Liverpool!” I almost catch my knob in my zipper as I'm half pulling up my jeans, half dancing with joy. I shout to Johan who is sat in the adjacent cubicle. “Yes get in!” he says, followed by the sound of turd splashing down in to the water below.
Stachel texts and tells us he's twenty minutes away. By the time he arrives the Scum have equalised and the game ends 1-1. Can't help being a little disappointed, but the main feeling, as is always the case when we play that shower of shite, is relief that we didn't let them beat us.
The drive to Eindhoven is a short one. We're playing a slot on a festival called Bloodshed Fest, which is at the renowned Dynamo Club. It being a predominantly grindcore festival, Jon has obviously played it before. He's psyched about the show, promising us it's going to be good. There are a few other punk bands playing, like Doom and Vogue, the latter of which I'm particularly looking forward to seeing since they are splitting up and this is one of their last shows. We're playing second to last on the smaller stage in the basement which should be a great slot. To top things off, there will be a contingent from the UK in attendance, led by Bloody Kev and Goy. I'm looking forward to hanging out with them tonight. It's far too seldom an occurrence these days..
We arrive at the festival about five hours before our stage time. We meet Luc, the promoter of the show, outside. He tells us that yesterday went really well but today has already done over a hundred more tickets and it's still early. He is of the consensus that our show tonight is going to be wild. It seems that tonight has a lot to live up to. I head inside the venue and find Kev and Goy almost immediately, hanging out in the foyer area of the club where the distros, bar and kitchen are situated. Everything I need. It's great to see the guys. These two were the reason I wanted two lead singers in Raging Speedhorn, their band Hard To Swallow being one of my all time favourite hardcore bands. Funny really that Kev would become one of the Speedhorn singers years later.
They're both looking a bit worse for wear, although Kev is looking particularly pale. Goy tells me the old fucker hasn't slept for three days. Apparently it all started when he hooked up with a feisty Italian girl at the Bird's Nest. He shows me the top of his left arm, which is covered in bruises after a rough night with this girl, who beat the shit out of him in the sack. Kev is like Benjamin fucking Button, he just seems to get younger as the years go by. Whereas I of course seem to be ageing like a dog.
I hang out with the pair of them for a while, the two of them ensuring me that by what they witnessed yesterday in the basement room, our show tonight is going to be mental. This is shaping up to be a good night. Goy tells me that Dennis Doom has been on at him, asking when the Swedes are getting here. He's on the look out for some snus. Dennis lives in Göteborg these days and has become an avid fan apparently.
I see Dennis later on downstairs, he looks the worse for wear. Apparently they'd been at the 1 in 12 Festival at the club in Bradford last night, which was quite a heavy night obviously. The rest of the Doom lads had refused to get on the same plane as Dennis this morning, instead sending him ahead on an earlier flight. Not quite sure that was such a good idea. He's made it here though, barely. He's stood there, hunched over like Ozzy, with a sad look on his face. When he sees Andy, he comes over to our merch table and in his broad northern accent, asks Andy if he has any snus, a hint of desperation in his voice.
We'd set up the merch in the room downstairs, opposite the gig room where we're playing. The gig room is just the right size. Decent enough size stage, low to the ground, the room itself capable of holding around two hundred and fifty people. The room upstairs, where the main stage is, is more akin to a school assembly hall with a capacity of around six hundred. I'm glad we're playing downstairs. We spend the next few hours flitting around between the stages, watching various bands. The Vogue show is great, shame they're splitting up. I watch their set with Kev, who had put them on in London earlier this year. I ask him why they're splitting up to which he replies, “Ahh, they've been together five years!” I laugh at the thought. What an unusually long existence Victims have had it seems. Credit to them.
It hits me as we're watching Vogue that my guitar, which has been in Germany since we played Ieper Fest a couple of months ago, is missing a strap. Or, missing a strap that isn't gaffa taped together in the middle. I'd totally forgot that I snapped the fucking thing in half during our set at Ieper. Kev rescues the day and kindly asks the Vogue bass player after their show if I can borrow his strap, who is only happy to help me out. I'm very grateful and very relieved.
At one point during the evening I happen to go for a piss just as Jon is himself going to the Gents. I need to relieve myself of the two beers I've consumed. Jon is blowing the cold he's had for the last couple of days out of his nose. I'm standing there pissing and just happen to catch Jon out of the corner of my eye. As he blows his nose one of the lenses in his glasses falls out on to the dirty floor below. He bends down with a big sigh and picks up the lens, wiping it with some tissue paper. I laugh and say to him “Time for some new glasses maybe?”, to which he grunts, “Time for some new gaffa tape...” and then goes on to inform me how much glasses cost. In all fairness, the cost of spectacles is indeed a scandal. Jon puts the lens back in place and heads off to our merch table in search of some new gaffa tape to replace the current-past it's-sell-by-date tape that currently holds his glasses together.
The tokens Luc gave us are good for a small glass of a beer. He's kindly given us more than enough to get us through the night. Although it's actually a very good idea drinking small beers as opposed to pints, after four or five I realise that I should get some food in my stomach and then take it easy until after our show.
If there is one thing the Dutch do quite brilliantly, actually there are a few things the Dutch are good at to be fair... but fuck me do they make good peanut sauce! Earlier this summer our friend Jos changed my life by introducing me to chips and peanut sauce. I'm delighted to see one of the options from the vegan kitchen at the festival is Fried Rice Satay. I shovel it down sat by our merchandise table. The snot-thick peanut sauce is absolutely stunning.
From Vogue onwards the line up starts to really get interesting. We're sandwiched between the sets of Doom and Bastard Noise. The system they have here is that the shows on the main and basement stages overlap seamlessly so knowing that we have to get our gear on stage sorted out, I can only stick around for the beginning of the Doom set. They manage a couple of songs before something happens with Bri's guitar. It just cuts out. After a few seconds of silence Stick starts up with some sort of of hip hop beat and lo and fucking behold, Dennis starts rapping over the top of it. This goes on for about two minutes. Dennis is actually banging out verse for a while, the chorus following it consisting of “Fuck da police!”, all in a quite terrible American accent. I stand there with my face cusped in my hands barely able to watch whilst Andy is stood beside me with his phone in the air filming the scene, “This is going straight on Youtube!” After a while Dennis's vocabulary fails him and all that's left is the randomly spaced “Fuck da police!” chant. Thankfully Bri eventually gets his guitar sound back and they break into some good old Doom. The place erupts again and normality is restored. We check out one more song before heading downstairs to start setting up.
The backline gear is all rented and it takes a while for us to locate everything, but there doesn't seem to be any stress with stage times. When everything is set up and we're on stage tuning our guitars, the small basement room starts to fill up. It's already as hot as the devil in here. This is going to be a real test of endurance.
By the time we're ready to go, the place is packed, with members of the crowd already spilling on to the stage. We blast into V5 and the place goes nuts. By the time we get to the end of the second block of songs I'm gasping for water. The energy in the place is amazing though, the crowd going crazy and singing along with the songs. During This Is The End I almost get sucked in to them as if by force of vacuum. I'm up on the monitor singing along with crowd, pumping one fist in the air as I play the chorus with the other hand. It's a great feeling as I see friends like Kev and Goy, Loffe and Luc, dotted around the crowd. In fact Loffe and Kev are down the front going for it, Kev having wisely taken his glasses off. Another couple of friends of ours, Nathalie and her sister Esther, who run the Crowbar in Groningen, are also packed in near the front of the crowd. I think it's Esther I hear shouting between songs, “Why the fuck is this not on the main stage?”. I'm glad it isn't.
During Nowhere In Time Jon gets pulled into the crowd and lofted on to a sea of hands, whilst somehow managing to keep up with the rest of us on stage. This has to be the best show we've played this year, a great way to cap off 2011. By the time we get to the last block of three songs, I feel like I'm about to puke up, such is the heat on stage. I can see we're all struggling. I'm relieved to hear Johan say that we're scratching Broken Bones and going straight to Circles/Scars. Two short, fast songs and then we're done...
I put my guitar down, turn the amp off and slumber behind the drum set and into a tiny squared room behind the stage that is full of equipment. It's offers only a slither of fresh air but I happily take it. I feel sick. The rest of the guys gradually join me in the small room. The crowd is boisterously chanting for more, but we all agree we've had enough.
A couple of minutes later the crowd is still chanting, and just as enthusiastically. Some punk kid appears in the doorway and tells us we have to go back on stage. We collectively shake our heads. Jon says to the kid, “Tell the dj to put the music on.” The kid quick-fires back at him, “You put the music on!”. That seems to win the argument because at that the four of us trudge back on stage. Broken Bones. Fuck am I happy that it's only a minute long! We blast through it, the crowd kicks off for one last time and then that really is us. If they want to hear more they can fucking play the songs themselves!
There seems to be some confusion as to what is going on with the sleeping arrangements tonight. Stachel had gone and checked out the hostel with Luc but is now back saying that there wasn't enough beds reserved. Actually, there are three bands, Doom included, that are each supposed to have a room. What in fact appears to be the case is there are only three beds reserved. That's one bed per band. Luc seems a bit stressed by the situation. He tells us he's going to look for another hotel and that he'll be back. We tell him it's no stress. It's two am. and I'm hungry. I'm thinking chips and peanut sauce...
Liverpool are at home to Man Utd. today and typically enough we're flying during the fucking game. I'm nervous as I await the plinging sound of a text message coming in. Within a minute Jen has texted me back. Half time, 0-0. I'm hoping Stachel is late so Johan and I can at least catch the end of the game.
Schiphol is an absolutely huge airport but unbelievably enough, there isn't a bar anywhere that is showing the game. There are a couple of places with television's showing tennis, but no football. Only one of the biggest games in club football anywhere in the world... Tennis for fuck sakes?
Resigned to the fact that we're not going to see any of the game, we retire to the toilets. Just as I'm zipping up I get another text through. “Gerrard! 1-0 Liverpool!” I almost catch my knob in my zipper as I'm half pulling up my jeans, half dancing with joy. I shout to Johan who is sat in the adjacent cubicle. “Yes get in!” he says, followed by the sound of turd splashing down in to the water below.
Stachel texts and tells us he's twenty minutes away. By the time he arrives the Scum have equalised and the game ends 1-1. Can't help being a little disappointed, but the main feeling, as is always the case when we play that shower of shite, is relief that we didn't let them beat us.
The drive to Eindhoven is a short one. We're playing a slot on a festival called Bloodshed Fest, which is at the renowned Dynamo Club. It being a predominantly grindcore festival, Jon has obviously played it before. He's psyched about the show, promising us it's going to be good. There are a few other punk bands playing, like Doom and Vogue, the latter of which I'm particularly looking forward to seeing since they are splitting up and this is one of their last shows. We're playing second to last on the smaller stage in the basement which should be a great slot. To top things off, there will be a contingent from the UK in attendance, led by Bloody Kev and Goy. I'm looking forward to hanging out with them tonight. It's far too seldom an occurrence these days..
We arrive at the festival about five hours before our stage time. We meet Luc, the promoter of the show, outside. He tells us that yesterday went really well but today has already done over a hundred more tickets and it's still early. He is of the consensus that our show tonight is going to be wild. It seems that tonight has a lot to live up to. I head inside the venue and find Kev and Goy almost immediately, hanging out in the foyer area of the club where the distros, bar and kitchen are situated. Everything I need. It's great to see the guys. These two were the reason I wanted two lead singers in Raging Speedhorn, their band Hard To Swallow being one of my all time favourite hardcore bands. Funny really that Kev would become one of the Speedhorn singers years later.
They're both looking a bit worse for wear, although Kev is looking particularly pale. Goy tells me the old fucker hasn't slept for three days. Apparently it all started when he hooked up with a feisty Italian girl at the Bird's Nest. He shows me the top of his left arm, which is covered in bruises after a rough night with this girl, who beat the shit out of him in the sack. Kev is like Benjamin fucking Button, he just seems to get younger as the years go by. Whereas I of course seem to be ageing like a dog.
I hang out with the pair of them for a while, the two of them ensuring me that by what they witnessed yesterday in the basement room, our show tonight is going to be mental. This is shaping up to be a good night. Goy tells me that Dennis Doom has been on at him, asking when the Swedes are getting here. He's on the look out for some snus. Dennis lives in Göteborg these days and has become an avid fan apparently.
I see Dennis later on downstairs, he looks the worse for wear. Apparently they'd been at the 1 in 12 Festival at the club in Bradford last night, which was quite a heavy night obviously. The rest of the Doom lads had refused to get on the same plane as Dennis this morning, instead sending him ahead on an earlier flight. Not quite sure that was such a good idea. He's made it here though, barely. He's stood there, hunched over like Ozzy, with a sad look on his face. When he sees Andy, he comes over to our merch table and in his broad northern accent, asks Andy if he has any snus, a hint of desperation in his voice.
We'd set up the merch in the room downstairs, opposite the gig room where we're playing. The gig room is just the right size. Decent enough size stage, low to the ground, the room itself capable of holding around two hundred and fifty people. The room upstairs, where the main stage is, is more akin to a school assembly hall with a capacity of around six hundred. I'm glad we're playing downstairs. We spend the next few hours flitting around between the stages, watching various bands. The Vogue show is great, shame they're splitting up. I watch their set with Kev, who had put them on in London earlier this year. I ask him why they're splitting up to which he replies, “Ahh, they've been together five years!” I laugh at the thought. What an unusually long existence Victims have had it seems. Credit to them.
It hits me as we're watching Vogue that my guitar, which has been in Germany since we played Ieper Fest a couple of months ago, is missing a strap. Or, missing a strap that isn't gaffa taped together in the middle. I'd totally forgot that I snapped the fucking thing in half during our set at Ieper. Kev rescues the day and kindly asks the Vogue bass player after their show if I can borrow his strap, who is only happy to help me out. I'm very grateful and very relieved.
At one point during the evening I happen to go for a piss just as Jon is himself going to the Gents. I need to relieve myself of the two beers I've consumed. Jon is blowing the cold he's had for the last couple of days out of his nose. I'm standing there pissing and just happen to catch Jon out of the corner of my eye. As he blows his nose one of the lenses in his glasses falls out on to the dirty floor below. He bends down with a big sigh and picks up the lens, wiping it with some tissue paper. I laugh and say to him “Time for some new glasses maybe?”, to which he grunts, “Time for some new gaffa tape...” and then goes on to inform me how much glasses cost. In all fairness, the cost of spectacles is indeed a scandal. Jon puts the lens back in place and heads off to our merch table in search of some new gaffa tape to replace the current-past it's-sell-by-date tape that currently holds his glasses together.
The tokens Luc gave us are good for a small glass of a beer. He's kindly given us more than enough to get us through the night. Although it's actually a very good idea drinking small beers as opposed to pints, after four or five I realise that I should get some food in my stomach and then take it easy until after our show.
If there is one thing the Dutch do quite brilliantly, actually there are a few things the Dutch are good at to be fair... but fuck me do they make good peanut sauce! Earlier this summer our friend Jos changed my life by introducing me to chips and peanut sauce. I'm delighted to see one of the options from the vegan kitchen at the festival is Fried Rice Satay. I shovel it down sat by our merchandise table. The snot-thick peanut sauce is absolutely stunning.
From Vogue onwards the line up starts to really get interesting. We're sandwiched between the sets of Doom and Bastard Noise. The system they have here is that the shows on the main and basement stages overlap seamlessly so knowing that we have to get our gear on stage sorted out, I can only stick around for the beginning of the Doom set. They manage a couple of songs before something happens with Bri's guitar. It just cuts out. After a few seconds of silence Stick starts up with some sort of of hip hop beat and lo and fucking behold, Dennis starts rapping over the top of it. This goes on for about two minutes. Dennis is actually banging out verse for a while, the chorus following it consisting of “Fuck da police!”, all in a quite terrible American accent. I stand there with my face cusped in my hands barely able to watch whilst Andy is stood beside me with his phone in the air filming the scene, “This is going straight on Youtube!” After a while Dennis's vocabulary fails him and all that's left is the randomly spaced “Fuck da police!” chant. Thankfully Bri eventually gets his guitar sound back and they break into some good old Doom. The place erupts again and normality is restored. We check out one more song before heading downstairs to start setting up.
The backline gear is all rented and it takes a while for us to locate everything, but there doesn't seem to be any stress with stage times. When everything is set up and we're on stage tuning our guitars, the small basement room starts to fill up. It's already as hot as the devil in here. This is going to be a real test of endurance.
By the time we're ready to go, the place is packed, with members of the crowd already spilling on to the stage. We blast into V5 and the place goes nuts. By the time we get to the end of the second block of songs I'm gasping for water. The energy in the place is amazing though, the crowd going crazy and singing along with the songs. During This Is The End I almost get sucked in to them as if by force of vacuum. I'm up on the monitor singing along with crowd, pumping one fist in the air as I play the chorus with the other hand. It's a great feeling as I see friends like Kev and Goy, Loffe and Luc, dotted around the crowd. In fact Loffe and Kev are down the front going for it, Kev having wisely taken his glasses off. Another couple of friends of ours, Nathalie and her sister Esther, who run the Crowbar in Groningen, are also packed in near the front of the crowd. I think it's Esther I hear shouting between songs, “Why the fuck is this not on the main stage?”. I'm glad it isn't.
During Nowhere In Time Jon gets pulled into the crowd and lofted on to a sea of hands, whilst somehow managing to keep up with the rest of us on stage. This has to be the best show we've played this year, a great way to cap off 2011. By the time we get to the last block of three songs, I feel like I'm about to puke up, such is the heat on stage. I can see we're all struggling. I'm relieved to hear Johan say that we're scratching Broken Bones and going straight to Circles/Scars. Two short, fast songs and then we're done...
I put my guitar down, turn the amp off and slumber behind the drum set and into a tiny squared room behind the stage that is full of equipment. It's offers only a slither of fresh air but I happily take it. I feel sick. The rest of the guys gradually join me in the small room. The crowd is boisterously chanting for more, but we all agree we've had enough.
A couple of minutes later the crowd is still chanting, and just as enthusiastically. Some punk kid appears in the doorway and tells us we have to go back on stage. We collectively shake our heads. Jon says to the kid, “Tell the dj to put the music on.” The kid quick-fires back at him, “You put the music on!”. That seems to win the argument because at that the four of us trudge back on stage. Broken Bones. Fuck am I happy that it's only a minute long! We blast through it, the crowd kicks off for one last time and then that really is us. If they want to hear more they can fucking play the songs themselves!
It takes a while to cool down, but once the sick feeling in my stomach subsides, the buzz of what was a really fun show starts to revive me. After throwing about a litre of water down my gullet, I'm ready for a beer.
We hang out in the side room where we have our merch. The cold beer tasted magic. There is some crust punk guy from Singapore hanging about, wanting a photo with us. I haven't really caught what's going on, I just hear Jon saying to Johan in Swedish, “Shall we get this photo done and get rid of this guy?”. I crack up, typical him. He doesn't really mean anything by it. We take a couple of photos with the guy, who is actually a really nice guy. He talks to us about putting on a South East Asian tour. It's sounds like a dream but until it happens, until I see the flight tickets in my hand, I'll treat it as just that. I know bands that have gone over, like Fy Fan and War All The Time. By all accounts the shows were fucking wild. Who knows? One day maybe...
Andy and I check out a little bit of Bastard Noise, but in all honesty I can't really get into it. I've had enough by now and all I want to do is drink a few beers and hang out with friends. Which is exactly what I do. The guys from Reproach are here too. It's always great to see them. We put our drink tokens to use by trading them for shots and beer, although I seem to have an endless amount since the tokens just never run out. I'm feeling that nice warm buzz now. Not too drunk, just good. Happy.
As we're stood at the bar, Dennis Doom slides over to us, looking tired and sad. He says something about snus in between a lot of sighing. Andy asks him how their show was, “It was alright”, he replies in the least enthusiastic manner possible. He rests his head on Andy's arm, saying he's fucked.
We're all back in the merch room as the night draws to an end. Jon is hanging out with the Bastard Noise people, getting his photos taken with them. I guess now he's that guy. He tells me later that when he asked the bass player for a photo together, the response he got was, “Well if you want a picture with someone who sucks, just do it!”. Jon was chuffed.
Kev has now finally fallen asleep, sat upright in the chair beside me, with that silly grin he always has on his face when he passes out drunk. Three days of partying finally catching up with the old boy. Goy, pretty drunk himself, is laughing at him.
There seems to be some confusion as to what is going on with the sleeping arrangements tonight. Stachel had gone and checked out the hostel with Luc but is now back saying that there wasn't enough beds reserved. Actually, there are three bands, Doom included, that are each supposed to have a room. What in fact appears to be the case is there are only three beds reserved. That's one bed per band. Luc seems a bit stressed by the situation. He tells us he's going to look for another hotel and that he'll be back. We tell him it's no stress. It's two am. and I'm hungry. I'm thinking chips and peanut sauce...
After numerous goodbye's and drunken hugs with Kev and Goy, Johan, Stachel and I head off in search of food. The venue is slap bang in the middle of Eindhoven and the streets are now packed with drunk people, with the three of us adding to those numbers. Actually Stachel is sober, which seems to be depressing him a bit..he hasn't really been able to party tonight. I feel bad for him.
We find a large fast-food joint which serves just what I'm looking for. I'm completely chuffed with my chips ad peanut sauce and devour them like a buzzard. My joy turns sour though when I meet Stachel outside on the busy street and he has what seems like a portion twice the size of the one I just ate. I go back and forth, drunkenly debating with myself whether I have time to run back in a buy more chips. It turns out that the time I spend farting about on the street looking at the long cue inside the shop would have been more than sufficient to get another hit. Alas, I go back to the venue with Stachel and Johan, convincing myself I'm still hungry...disappointed with myself.
We're stood out on the street by the van, waiting for Luc to return with news of where we're sleeping. It's three-thirty am now. The booze is ever so slightly starting to wear off and hanging about doesn't seem as fun any more. Eventually Luc returns though, and with a reservation for an expensive hotel. He feels bad about everything, which in turn makes me feel bad for him. He's put on an amazing festival and the fuck up with the hostel was in no part his fault. He needn't feel bad, he's done a great job.
We get an address for the hotel and drive off in search of it. It takes a little while. When we locate the hotel and we're driving into the car park, the Doom guys pass us in their van, heading in the opposite direction, giving us a thumbs up as they do so. It doesn't really register, we just return the thumbs and keep driving, looking for a space in the car park. It's really cold now. Or, it's a bit nippy and I'm tired and drunk and have a shiver convulsing through my torso. The hotel looks very dark and there seems to be nobody at the reception desk. We knock.
And we knock...
I start losing my rag. Johan, keeps his cool as always though, telling me that if I do go through with my shallow threat of putting my foot through the door then we won't have anywhere but the van to sleep tonight. I just grumble like a kid that's been put in his place, feeling like a tit. After about ten minutes of aimlessly knocking fists on cold glass, it dawns on us to check out where the Doom guys were heading to. We find them in another reception on the other side of the building, Dennis spread out on his back across the floor. They've been waiting for us since Luc gave Johan the booking details.
The Doom guys still seem in the mood to party, and for a split second I think Andy and Jon are going to take them up on it, but it's four thirty in the morning and we're getting up at nine thirty.
Johan, Stachel and I share a room. I decide to shower before I go to sleep so I can have a longer lie- in in the morning. All cleaned up, I curl up into what is an astoundingly comfortable bed. What a fucker that I'm only going to be in it for about four and half hours.
The alarm goes off at nine-thirty. My head is thumping a familiar beat...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Learning to Drive
Our US tour ended six weeks ago. Since I came home from my three day vacation with Jen in New York, directly after the tour ended, my time, or at least my thoughts, have been dominated by one thing. My driving test. With that, work and school starting up for the autumn, I've hardly felt inspired to write anything, never mind had the time. Until now, where I find myself back in the company of my fellow Victims, on board a KLM Boeing 737-800 series bound for Amsterdam.
We're playing the Bloodshed Fest at the Dynamo Club in Eindhoven tonight...
But back to the driving test.
It's completely ridiculous, but this process began in Corby over ten years ago with a nice old guy called Jim Scales. He was my first driving instructor. I was nineteen years old, quite late to be starting my driving lessons compared with the average age of learner drivers in Corby. The driving licence is essential to anybody living in small town England who wants to get out and explore further afield. Most of my friends by that time had had their licence a couple of years, but nonetheless, I was finally taking a grip on the issue.
After six months of weekly driving lessons, it was time for the theory test. My younger sister, who was also driving with Jim, took the test the same day. My dad gave the pair of us a lift in his post van to the test centre in Kettering. I remember we were both pretty nervous. The theory test had recently been made a lot harder. In the past the test had consisted of nothing more than a few verbal questions from the test instructor, sat in the car at the end of the actual driving test. Now it was our turn, they had transformed the fucking thing into a sixty five question multiple choice nightmare, which you would undergo sat in front of a computer in a, soulless, sterile room somewhere.
As it happened, for the first time in my life I had actually taken the time to study for a test and both my sister and I passed without any major issues. We were both chuffed as we waited outside for my dad to come along and pick us up again in his post van to take us back home. My dad has always taken full advantage of the post vans and trucks he's had at his disposal during his years of service to Her Majesty's Royal Mail...
So that was that. Now it was just the actual driving test to conquer.
Thanks to Raging Speedhorn, I never even attempted it. I had my driving test booked and was raring to go. My sister too. I couldn't wait to get my own car and break free from the shackles of Corby. When I had my car I'd be able to drive anywhere to see bands play. That was my overriding inspiration. As it happened though, we'd formed Speedhorn somewhere during the period of my driving lessons and of course, just as I was gearing up to take my driving test, the band was busy booking it's first real tour. A two week shunt around the UK with Ninth Circle from Scotland. The date for my driving fell right in the middle of it. As much as I was desperate to get my licence, I didn't even hesitate to cancel the date for my test, in order to go on tour. I didn't care if we were playing toilet venues in front of fifteen people a night, we were doing our first ever tour. Shows every night, beer would be flowing freely (or so I naively assumed), sleeping on people's floors, the adventure of it all consumed me. The driving test could wait.
If I knew then that it would wait another twelve years I may have felt differently...it's probably my only major regret in life. I don't regret the tour of course, even if the beer didn't flow freely and the shows were indeed attended by an average of about fifteen people a night, that tour set me on my path in life. My regret is that I never got off my arse and picked up the momentum again. Instead of booking a new test, I just waited. Even the driving lessons stopped. The thing is, we got home from the Ninth Circle tour and within a week or two we were back out again, this time with Breakneck from Kent. And then shortly after that we landed our first “big” tour, opening up for Earthtone 9 on a four week tour that took in the entire UK. Shortly after that we landed some support dates with Will Haven. Before I knew it a few months had passed and my cancelled driving test was nothing but a distant memory. - I'll sort it out at some point, I told myself.
Like said, it took over ten years to happen. I didn't even get around to booking a driving test at the first time of trying here in Sweden. Although, for different reasons entirely. Ten years on, and in another country, learning to drivng had become a whole other science. Not to mention insanely expensive!
Jim Scales' lessons, back in 1997, set me back fifteen quid for an hour's lesson. Now I know you have to take in to account the small matter of inflation, but an hour and twenty minutes of driving lesson in Sweden costs you the arse raping sum of ninety fucking quid! Even if the pound, low as it is now, would veer a little back towards it's usual rate, it would still work out at around seventy five quid per lesson. It just doesn't make sense to me.
All the same, I'd decided to finally get off my arse and sort my driving licence out, once a for all, aged thirty two years old. Those costs though, are simply not economically viable. I bought a couple of “ four lesson packages” for around four hundred and fifty quid, but when the robbing bastard sat beside me in the car told me I'd need at least another twenty lessons, I told him no fucking thanks. Time for plan B.
Plan B came in the form of my good friend Olle, who plays bass in our band Battle of Santiago. For the nominal sum of about one hundred quid per person, you can go on a course where you sit in a room for four hours whilst a speaker tells you the dos and donts of being a passenger driving instructor, a “handledare” as it's called in Swedish. This worked out great for a while. I drove with Olle on a weekly basis and just as once again, I felt progress was being made, things went off track. Olle and his brother opened their own restaurant, the wonderful Parkliv, right in our neighbourhood. That was great but the driving lessons with Olle dried up as he was forced into working two hundred hours a month to make his restaurant float.
I decided to take up with another driving school, a few months later, once it became apparent that driving with Olle wasn't happening. Olle felt that I was as good as ready anyway, but I felt that it would be a good idea to book a few more professional lessons just to touch up on things before I booked a test. The first lesson I took with this new driving school, although a little nervous whilst driving around with the teacher watching me, went well. Or so I thought. At the end of the lesson the driving instructor, a middle aged man called Amir, told me that I would need at least twenty lessons, at ninety quid a pop. He may as well have asked me to bend over and drop my fucking kecks!
After another couple of “package lessons”, the mandatory courses of “halkbanan” (where you drive around on an ice track and try to steer the car without crashing it, actually really good fun) and “riskettan” (another afternoon spent in a classroom, this time the speaker informing you that drinking alcohol and taking drugs are not activities one should mix with driving a car...I kid you not) all for another couple of hundred quid, and it was time for Plan C. The final push.
Jen had by this time been driving for five years and with that, was now eligible to be my “handledare”.
Since we have a car I could now drive constantly, practically every time we went out in the car together. Within a couple of weeks Jen thought I should apply for my test. Time for the fucking albatross to be removed from around my neck. I thought to myself that ready or not, always prone to self doubt, I had to at least experience what a driving test is all about. It had now been over ten years since my sister passed her test at the second attempt. How the fuck did I let it go this long?
It was only a couple of weeks before Victims were going to the States for a three week tour, so the theory and practical tests would have to wait until I got back. What the fuck, I'd waited this long, what's another few weeks? The usual inner rationalising rearing it's ugly head. The truth is, just thinking about the test made me nervous. They say it's the most nerve-racking experience one can go through...just the fact that “they” say that had my arse twitching.
By the time I got back from tour I had four weeks until D-Day. Driving Test Day... Doomsday, both fit perfectly well. The weird thing is, I was really nervous before my theory test. The fucking theory test is what pained me the most. I'd already done this once, and now I have to do it all over again, in a second language. Talk about doing things the hard way. The trouble is, studying driving theory was as boring as shit back then and it was just as fucking boring now. I've never been the most disciplined when it comes to studying, and this was no exception. With everything else happening, such as work and school (I'm studying Maths for some reason...), I found it hard to get inspired to open that damned theory book. It took until the week before the actual test to really start cracking on with things, reading the book and trying out old theory tests on the internet.
I packed it in that last week and by the time the test came around I felt confident. I still couldn't shake the nerves though. I felt that it would be far more humiliating to fail the theory test, as opposed to the driving part. After all, nobody can really expect to pass their driving test first time around, we all know it's a fucking scam and chances are you've failed it before you set foot in the car.
Case in point. My mum failed her test first time around because apparently she looked in her mirrors too much! Not that she didn't have her eyes on the road, just that the inspector was grasping at straws for something to fail her on. She drove just fine, but it's a fact that they can't pass everybody, they have statistics to adhere to and my mum just happened to be on the wrong end of them that day. Her driving teacher was so furious that he wanted to lodge an official complaint...
Anyway, the theory test came and went. I passed it. I felt that I could breathe out, even if only a shallow, trepidatious breath. Your theory test certificate is only valid for two months. If you haven't passed your driving test by that time, you have to re-take it. Of course, it can take up to six weeks to get a time for a new driving test so really the whole thing is a piss take, just another way of fleecing money from you. It's not like once you have your licence you have to take a theory test every year. You never have to take the fucking thing again so where do they get this two month bullshit from?
The weird thing is, with the theory test passed, almost all of the nerves I'd been feeling had disappeared. One week to go.
The weekend before the theory test we'd taken the car, with me at the wheel, over to Jakobsberg, where I'd be taking the driving test. Outside of the driving test centre, at the very first junction, is a heavily trafficked roundabout. What I hadn't noticed whilst driving around the fucking thing was the fact that it had pedestrian crossings at each exit. I drove right through a red light. Jenny had called it but I panicked and drove right through. Fuck, I had been a bit of a wreck after that. I could only reason with myself that it was better to make such a colossal fuck up then than on the day of my test.
The weekend before D-Day, we spent the Saturday driving around Jakobsberg. I must have drove around that roundabout twenty times. I wasn't falling into it's trap again. That day in Jakobsberg went well and I felt, for the first time, that I might just have a chance of passing my driving test.
Two days to go and I still felt no nerves. I had drilled it into my head that it wasn't the end of the world. The percentage of first time passers wasn't very high. It would be no great shame if I fucked it. Everybody gets nervous whilst taking their driving test. It's OK Gareth.. I spoke to my parents a couple of days before who were full of encouragement for me. My mum, for not the first time in my life, knocked me sideways with a couple of pearlers.
I asked her again about her driving test episode. She told me about the first time and how she was robbed. The thing is, she'd felt no nerves whatsoever then and was shocked when she failed it. The second time around she was a nervous wreck. So nervous in fact, that she took a shot of vodka before leaving the house! I almost spat my tea out as she revealed this to me. My mum is this little woman who would have you believe that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but every now and again she'll tell you something that stuns you. Who the hell would drink a shot of vodka before a driving test? My mum, that's who. Obviously she failed the second time around, and in spectacular fashion. She was still so nervous, despite the vodka, that she couldn't stop her leg from shaking. Whilst performing a manoeuvre, the engine stalled. It put her in pieces. She couldn't keep the engine ticking over and eventually started balling, telling the inspector that he would have to drive the car back. “Get a hold of yourself Mrs. Smith!” boomed the inspector, but it gave no effect. He had to drive the car back and my mum failed the test again.
She passed at the third time of asking, this time with the help of a valium pill. She was totally chilled for that one apparently. Again, tea shooting out of my mouth, I insinuated that she must surely be joking. “Ah, it was only half a pill”, she reasoned. Somebody down the Rock had given it to her... It didn't really make much difference by that point anyway since she'd discarded the Learner Plates from her car long before that third and final test, at my dad's insistence. My dad, a law unto himself apparently, had thought the whole thing a complete rip-off, and with only my dad's approval of her driving ability, my mum did indeed take herself to work every day in her little red Mini.
The day for my driving test finally arrived. Still no nerves. I almost started wondering if something was up with that. Jen had decided to work at home for the day and she came with me to the test centre. I drove over there as one last practice. It was only when I stepped out of the car and started the walk towards the doors of that very nondescript building that the faint pang in my stomach started to appear. By the time I was sat in the waiting room, along with six others, although not paralysing, the nerves were well and truly in the fucking building!
I'd arrived far too early. There was a big clock on the wall. My test was in twenty minutes. Tick. Tock.
Eventually a gang of inspectors walked out of a side door into the waiting room, all of them holding clip-boards. I quickly scanned their faces. A couple of middle aged guys who looked normal enough. An older lady, stern look, not the kind you'd want to fuck with. Surely not her! They started to call the names of the other testees in the room. My name was called last, by a young man, well, my age at least, appearing through the crowd with a friendly smile spread across his face. Thank you Jesus! I felt my chances had just greatly improved.
We sit in the car, I await to hear which safety check I will be asked to perform. These checks have been whizzing around my head for the last few days. There is an outer check, and inner check and a pre-drive check. Each check has about eight or nine points that needs to be attended to. Or so I thought. In actual fact the only thing this friendly inspector, who's name is Magnus, asks of me, is to check the hand-brake is functioning properly. No problem. That cleared, it's time to drive. My thoughts go straight to that fucking roundabout. If he asks me to go left, I'm praying there is no traffic and the light is green.
He asks me to go right. Shit, haven't been this way before... He calmly asks me to drive towards Jakobsberg. OK, there's the sign, straight on. I move into lane and ease my foot on to the gas. Magnus politely tells me that Jakobsberg was actually the first right. Right? What fucking right? I weakly mumble a “Sorry”. Don't really know why I said sorry, I feel like a right tit already. “It's OK, just head towards Viksjö instead”, he calmly says. I don't know if he's patronising me now or just being nice. Shite, I'm guessing I've already fucked it. Within sixty seconds. What a fucking waste of eleven hundred kronors! I've heard people say it before, but it's true, because from the moment I'm sure I've fucked this test, before I've even really got started, I completely relax and just start driving. It crosses my mind that now and again those people have gone on to pass their test, since they were so sure they'd fucked it that they just relaxed and ended up driving well. I'm sure that that only happens to others though. One thought is rapidly crushing the other.
This car feels weird. It's a six geared Volvo, quite a big car. I'm having trouble getting a feel for second and third gear since there doesn't seem to be much pull in them. I drive relatively well for the next fifteen minutes and when it comes for the time to pull into a car park and perform a manoeuvre, in this case reverse parking, it goes flawlessly. I'm pleased with that but can't help feeling that it's a waste since I've already failed this test.
It's what happens next that assures me I'm not going to make it this time. Magnus asks me to take the next exit, which is heading towards the motorway. I'm on the acceleration lane heading towards the E18 and I'm flouncing around somewhere between second and fourth gear. I can't seem to get any speed and by the time I arrive in the three-laned 110 clicks and hour zone I'm chugging along like a dehydrated slug at around sixty-five. Embarrassing. I know exactly what Magnus is jotting down on his clipboard. We're soon off of the motorway and we've pulled over again. As if to confirm my fears, Magnus gives me a time-out pep-talk.
“Stop driving like you think I want you to drive, and just drive how you would normally in your own car, how you feel for it. And for fuck sakes, when you hit the motorway, keep it in a low gear and get your speed up.” He says it in a friendly, encouraging tone, but I'm guessing that he's just kindly handing out words of advice that I can take with me into attempt two.
I start the engine again, and resigned to failure, just kick back and drive the car back to the test centre via the same strip of motorway. I pass that fucking roundabout on the way back in. See you next time, I think to myself.
Even as I pull into the car park, I miss the parking space and have to readjust a couple of times. Fuck this, get me out of this monstrosity of a car! Magnus, with a voice now a prophecy of doom, says, “Well then, that was that.” I just let out a big, frustrated sigh. “Yeah...” I'm already thinking about when I can book another test, sure that I'll pass second time around now that I know what to expect. I only hope I can squeeze it in before I have to take another fucking theory test.
“I have to say, it wasn't the most eco-friendly driving experience I've had, and it's a close call, but you've passed.”
For a moment I can't quite gather what he's just said. I start to laugh, as much in shock as anything else. I look at him to check if he's taking the piss out of me. He has a wide smile across his face, as if he's genuinely happy for me. I almost hug him. I can't fucking believe it! Even as he's filling out the certificate, I have to double check that he's ticked the green “Approved” box. Fuck me. He has.
We talk for a while longer but none of it registers. All I can think about is how kind this Magnus is, how lucky I am that I didn't have that old boot inspecting me. I almost ask him if he's on Facebook, maybe we could go for a drink sometime. I can't think straight. And then that feeling of jubilation turns to panic. I want to get away from the test centre as soon as possible just in case they realise they've made a mistake.
I thank Magnus one last time, wish him a good day and hop off out of there. When I get to the next street I realise what a glorious autumn day it is we're having. The sun is shining high in a clear blue sky and the air is as crisp as a packet of Walker's. A feeling of relief washes over me. I've never, ever experienced such a weight being lifted from my shoulders.
I call Jenny, who I know is nervously waiting for the phone to ring. I consider for a second about pulling off the classic Smith parp and pretending to sound all depressed when she picks up. Jen answers and hesitantly asks how it went. “I got my driving licence!” I scream down the phone, tears of joy welling in my eyes. I haven't felt this good since Liverpool won the European Cup in 2005.
So that's that. I finally did it. And as the messages of congratulations began to flood in via my phone and online through the various social medias I have an account with, a recurring theme kept coming to the fore. “Congrats on your test, just think, now you can drive the van on tour!”
Shit.
We're playing the Bloodshed Fest at the Dynamo Club in Eindhoven tonight...
But back to the driving test.
It's completely ridiculous, but this process began in Corby over ten years ago with a nice old guy called Jim Scales. He was my first driving instructor. I was nineteen years old, quite late to be starting my driving lessons compared with the average age of learner drivers in Corby. The driving licence is essential to anybody living in small town England who wants to get out and explore further afield. Most of my friends by that time had had their licence a couple of years, but nonetheless, I was finally taking a grip on the issue.
After six months of weekly driving lessons, it was time for the theory test. My younger sister, who was also driving with Jim, took the test the same day. My dad gave the pair of us a lift in his post van to the test centre in Kettering. I remember we were both pretty nervous. The theory test had recently been made a lot harder. In the past the test had consisted of nothing more than a few verbal questions from the test instructor, sat in the car at the end of the actual driving test. Now it was our turn, they had transformed the fucking thing into a sixty five question multiple choice nightmare, which you would undergo sat in front of a computer in a, soulless, sterile room somewhere.
As it happened, for the first time in my life I had actually taken the time to study for a test and both my sister and I passed without any major issues. We were both chuffed as we waited outside for my dad to come along and pick us up again in his post van to take us back home. My dad has always taken full advantage of the post vans and trucks he's had at his disposal during his years of service to Her Majesty's Royal Mail...
So that was that. Now it was just the actual driving test to conquer.
Thanks to Raging Speedhorn, I never even attempted it. I had my driving test booked and was raring to go. My sister too. I couldn't wait to get my own car and break free from the shackles of Corby. When I had my car I'd be able to drive anywhere to see bands play. That was my overriding inspiration. As it happened though, we'd formed Speedhorn somewhere during the period of my driving lessons and of course, just as I was gearing up to take my driving test, the band was busy booking it's first real tour. A two week shunt around the UK with Ninth Circle from Scotland. The date for my driving fell right in the middle of it. As much as I was desperate to get my licence, I didn't even hesitate to cancel the date for my test, in order to go on tour. I didn't care if we were playing toilet venues in front of fifteen people a night, we were doing our first ever tour. Shows every night, beer would be flowing freely (or so I naively assumed), sleeping on people's floors, the adventure of it all consumed me. The driving test could wait.
If I knew then that it would wait another twelve years I may have felt differently...it's probably my only major regret in life. I don't regret the tour of course, even if the beer didn't flow freely and the shows were indeed attended by an average of about fifteen people a night, that tour set me on my path in life. My regret is that I never got off my arse and picked up the momentum again. Instead of booking a new test, I just waited. Even the driving lessons stopped. The thing is, we got home from the Ninth Circle tour and within a week or two we were back out again, this time with Breakneck from Kent. And then shortly after that we landed our first “big” tour, opening up for Earthtone 9 on a four week tour that took in the entire UK. Shortly after that we landed some support dates with Will Haven. Before I knew it a few months had passed and my cancelled driving test was nothing but a distant memory. - I'll sort it out at some point, I told myself.
Like said, it took over ten years to happen. I didn't even get around to booking a driving test at the first time of trying here in Sweden. Although, for different reasons entirely. Ten years on, and in another country, learning to drivng had become a whole other science. Not to mention insanely expensive!
Jim Scales' lessons, back in 1997, set me back fifteen quid for an hour's lesson. Now I know you have to take in to account the small matter of inflation, but an hour and twenty minutes of driving lesson in Sweden costs you the arse raping sum of ninety fucking quid! Even if the pound, low as it is now, would veer a little back towards it's usual rate, it would still work out at around seventy five quid per lesson. It just doesn't make sense to me.
All the same, I'd decided to finally get off my arse and sort my driving licence out, once a for all, aged thirty two years old. Those costs though, are simply not economically viable. I bought a couple of “ four lesson packages” for around four hundred and fifty quid, but when the robbing bastard sat beside me in the car told me I'd need at least another twenty lessons, I told him no fucking thanks. Time for plan B.
Plan B came in the form of my good friend Olle, who plays bass in our band Battle of Santiago. For the nominal sum of about one hundred quid per person, you can go on a course where you sit in a room for four hours whilst a speaker tells you the dos and donts of being a passenger driving instructor, a “handledare” as it's called in Swedish. This worked out great for a while. I drove with Olle on a weekly basis and just as once again, I felt progress was being made, things went off track. Olle and his brother opened their own restaurant, the wonderful Parkliv, right in our neighbourhood. That was great but the driving lessons with Olle dried up as he was forced into working two hundred hours a month to make his restaurant float.
I decided to take up with another driving school, a few months later, once it became apparent that driving with Olle wasn't happening. Olle felt that I was as good as ready anyway, but I felt that it would be a good idea to book a few more professional lessons just to touch up on things before I booked a test. The first lesson I took with this new driving school, although a little nervous whilst driving around with the teacher watching me, went well. Or so I thought. At the end of the lesson the driving instructor, a middle aged man called Amir, told me that I would need at least twenty lessons, at ninety quid a pop. He may as well have asked me to bend over and drop my fucking kecks!
After another couple of “package lessons”, the mandatory courses of “halkbanan” (where you drive around on an ice track and try to steer the car without crashing it, actually really good fun) and “riskettan” (another afternoon spent in a classroom, this time the speaker informing you that drinking alcohol and taking drugs are not activities one should mix with driving a car...I kid you not) all for another couple of hundred quid, and it was time for Plan C. The final push.
Jen had by this time been driving for five years and with that, was now eligible to be my “handledare”.
Since we have a car I could now drive constantly, practically every time we went out in the car together. Within a couple of weeks Jen thought I should apply for my test. Time for the fucking albatross to be removed from around my neck. I thought to myself that ready or not, always prone to self doubt, I had to at least experience what a driving test is all about. It had now been over ten years since my sister passed her test at the second attempt. How the fuck did I let it go this long?
It was only a couple of weeks before Victims were going to the States for a three week tour, so the theory and practical tests would have to wait until I got back. What the fuck, I'd waited this long, what's another few weeks? The usual inner rationalising rearing it's ugly head. The truth is, just thinking about the test made me nervous. They say it's the most nerve-racking experience one can go through...just the fact that “they” say that had my arse twitching.
By the time I got back from tour I had four weeks until D-Day. Driving Test Day... Doomsday, both fit perfectly well. The weird thing is, I was really nervous before my theory test. The fucking theory test is what pained me the most. I'd already done this once, and now I have to do it all over again, in a second language. Talk about doing things the hard way. The trouble is, studying driving theory was as boring as shit back then and it was just as fucking boring now. I've never been the most disciplined when it comes to studying, and this was no exception. With everything else happening, such as work and school (I'm studying Maths for some reason...), I found it hard to get inspired to open that damned theory book. It took until the week before the actual test to really start cracking on with things, reading the book and trying out old theory tests on the internet.
I packed it in that last week and by the time the test came around I felt confident. I still couldn't shake the nerves though. I felt that it would be far more humiliating to fail the theory test, as opposed to the driving part. After all, nobody can really expect to pass their driving test first time around, we all know it's a fucking scam and chances are you've failed it before you set foot in the car.
Case in point. My mum failed her test first time around because apparently she looked in her mirrors too much! Not that she didn't have her eyes on the road, just that the inspector was grasping at straws for something to fail her on. She drove just fine, but it's a fact that they can't pass everybody, they have statistics to adhere to and my mum just happened to be on the wrong end of them that day. Her driving teacher was so furious that he wanted to lodge an official complaint...
Anyway, the theory test came and went. I passed it. I felt that I could breathe out, even if only a shallow, trepidatious breath. Your theory test certificate is only valid for two months. If you haven't passed your driving test by that time, you have to re-take it. Of course, it can take up to six weeks to get a time for a new driving test so really the whole thing is a piss take, just another way of fleecing money from you. It's not like once you have your licence you have to take a theory test every year. You never have to take the fucking thing again so where do they get this two month bullshit from?
The weird thing is, with the theory test passed, almost all of the nerves I'd been feeling had disappeared. One week to go.
The weekend before the theory test we'd taken the car, with me at the wheel, over to Jakobsberg, where I'd be taking the driving test. Outside of the driving test centre, at the very first junction, is a heavily trafficked roundabout. What I hadn't noticed whilst driving around the fucking thing was the fact that it had pedestrian crossings at each exit. I drove right through a red light. Jenny had called it but I panicked and drove right through. Fuck, I had been a bit of a wreck after that. I could only reason with myself that it was better to make such a colossal fuck up then than on the day of my test.
The weekend before D-Day, we spent the Saturday driving around Jakobsberg. I must have drove around that roundabout twenty times. I wasn't falling into it's trap again. That day in Jakobsberg went well and I felt, for the first time, that I might just have a chance of passing my driving test.
Two days to go and I still felt no nerves. I had drilled it into my head that it wasn't the end of the world. The percentage of first time passers wasn't very high. It would be no great shame if I fucked it. Everybody gets nervous whilst taking their driving test. It's OK Gareth.. I spoke to my parents a couple of days before who were full of encouragement for me. My mum, for not the first time in my life, knocked me sideways with a couple of pearlers.
I asked her again about her driving test episode. She told me about the first time and how she was robbed. The thing is, she'd felt no nerves whatsoever then and was shocked when she failed it. The second time around she was a nervous wreck. So nervous in fact, that she took a shot of vodka before leaving the house! I almost spat my tea out as she revealed this to me. My mum is this little woman who would have you believe that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but every now and again she'll tell you something that stuns you. Who the hell would drink a shot of vodka before a driving test? My mum, that's who. Obviously she failed the second time around, and in spectacular fashion. She was still so nervous, despite the vodka, that she couldn't stop her leg from shaking. Whilst performing a manoeuvre, the engine stalled. It put her in pieces. She couldn't keep the engine ticking over and eventually started balling, telling the inspector that he would have to drive the car back. “Get a hold of yourself Mrs. Smith!” boomed the inspector, but it gave no effect. He had to drive the car back and my mum failed the test again.
She passed at the third time of asking, this time with the help of a valium pill. She was totally chilled for that one apparently. Again, tea shooting out of my mouth, I insinuated that she must surely be joking. “Ah, it was only half a pill”, she reasoned. Somebody down the Rock had given it to her... It didn't really make much difference by that point anyway since she'd discarded the Learner Plates from her car long before that third and final test, at my dad's insistence. My dad, a law unto himself apparently, had thought the whole thing a complete rip-off, and with only my dad's approval of her driving ability, my mum did indeed take herself to work every day in her little red Mini.
The day for my driving test finally arrived. Still no nerves. I almost started wondering if something was up with that. Jen had decided to work at home for the day and she came with me to the test centre. I drove over there as one last practice. It was only when I stepped out of the car and started the walk towards the doors of that very nondescript building that the faint pang in my stomach started to appear. By the time I was sat in the waiting room, along with six others, although not paralysing, the nerves were well and truly in the fucking building!
I'd arrived far too early. There was a big clock on the wall. My test was in twenty minutes. Tick. Tock.
Eventually a gang of inspectors walked out of a side door into the waiting room, all of them holding clip-boards. I quickly scanned their faces. A couple of middle aged guys who looked normal enough. An older lady, stern look, not the kind you'd want to fuck with. Surely not her! They started to call the names of the other testees in the room. My name was called last, by a young man, well, my age at least, appearing through the crowd with a friendly smile spread across his face. Thank you Jesus! I felt my chances had just greatly improved.
We sit in the car, I await to hear which safety check I will be asked to perform. These checks have been whizzing around my head for the last few days. There is an outer check, and inner check and a pre-drive check. Each check has about eight or nine points that needs to be attended to. Or so I thought. In actual fact the only thing this friendly inspector, who's name is Magnus, asks of me, is to check the hand-brake is functioning properly. No problem. That cleared, it's time to drive. My thoughts go straight to that fucking roundabout. If he asks me to go left, I'm praying there is no traffic and the light is green.
He asks me to go right. Shit, haven't been this way before... He calmly asks me to drive towards Jakobsberg. OK, there's the sign, straight on. I move into lane and ease my foot on to the gas. Magnus politely tells me that Jakobsberg was actually the first right. Right? What fucking right? I weakly mumble a “Sorry”. Don't really know why I said sorry, I feel like a right tit already. “It's OK, just head towards Viksjö instead”, he calmly says. I don't know if he's patronising me now or just being nice. Shite, I'm guessing I've already fucked it. Within sixty seconds. What a fucking waste of eleven hundred kronors! I've heard people say it before, but it's true, because from the moment I'm sure I've fucked this test, before I've even really got started, I completely relax and just start driving. It crosses my mind that now and again those people have gone on to pass their test, since they were so sure they'd fucked it that they just relaxed and ended up driving well. I'm sure that that only happens to others though. One thought is rapidly crushing the other.
This car feels weird. It's a six geared Volvo, quite a big car. I'm having trouble getting a feel for second and third gear since there doesn't seem to be much pull in them. I drive relatively well for the next fifteen minutes and when it comes for the time to pull into a car park and perform a manoeuvre, in this case reverse parking, it goes flawlessly. I'm pleased with that but can't help feeling that it's a waste since I've already failed this test.
It's what happens next that assures me I'm not going to make it this time. Magnus asks me to take the next exit, which is heading towards the motorway. I'm on the acceleration lane heading towards the E18 and I'm flouncing around somewhere between second and fourth gear. I can't seem to get any speed and by the time I arrive in the three-laned 110 clicks and hour zone I'm chugging along like a dehydrated slug at around sixty-five. Embarrassing. I know exactly what Magnus is jotting down on his clipboard. We're soon off of the motorway and we've pulled over again. As if to confirm my fears, Magnus gives me a time-out pep-talk.
“Stop driving like you think I want you to drive, and just drive how you would normally in your own car, how you feel for it. And for fuck sakes, when you hit the motorway, keep it in a low gear and get your speed up.” He says it in a friendly, encouraging tone, but I'm guessing that he's just kindly handing out words of advice that I can take with me into attempt two.
I start the engine again, and resigned to failure, just kick back and drive the car back to the test centre via the same strip of motorway. I pass that fucking roundabout on the way back in. See you next time, I think to myself.
Even as I pull into the car park, I miss the parking space and have to readjust a couple of times. Fuck this, get me out of this monstrosity of a car! Magnus, with a voice now a prophecy of doom, says, “Well then, that was that.” I just let out a big, frustrated sigh. “Yeah...” I'm already thinking about when I can book another test, sure that I'll pass second time around now that I know what to expect. I only hope I can squeeze it in before I have to take another fucking theory test.
“I have to say, it wasn't the most eco-friendly driving experience I've had, and it's a close call, but you've passed.”
For a moment I can't quite gather what he's just said. I start to laugh, as much in shock as anything else. I look at him to check if he's taking the piss out of me. He has a wide smile across his face, as if he's genuinely happy for me. I almost hug him. I can't fucking believe it! Even as he's filling out the certificate, I have to double check that he's ticked the green “Approved” box. Fuck me. He has.
We talk for a while longer but none of it registers. All I can think about is how kind this Magnus is, how lucky I am that I didn't have that old boot inspecting me. I almost ask him if he's on Facebook, maybe we could go for a drink sometime. I can't think straight. And then that feeling of jubilation turns to panic. I want to get away from the test centre as soon as possible just in case they realise they've made a mistake.
I thank Magnus one last time, wish him a good day and hop off out of there. When I get to the next street I realise what a glorious autumn day it is we're having. The sun is shining high in a clear blue sky and the air is as crisp as a packet of Walker's. A feeling of relief washes over me. I've never, ever experienced such a weight being lifted from my shoulders.
I call Jenny, who I know is nervously waiting for the phone to ring. I consider for a second about pulling off the classic Smith parp and pretending to sound all depressed when she picks up. Jen answers and hesitantly asks how it went. “I got my driving licence!” I scream down the phone, tears of joy welling in my eyes. I haven't felt this good since Liverpool won the European Cup in 2005.
So that's that. I finally did it. And as the messages of congratulations began to flood in via my phone and online through the various social medias I have an account with, a recurring theme kept coming to the fore. “Congrats on your test, just think, now you can drive the van on tour!”
Shit.
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