Washing up has never been so much fun. And Saturday nights spent washing up when you're 16-18 years old, should never have been THIS good. But they were.
The Halfway House in Carterhatch Lane, Enfield, was the first restaurant to be opened by the Beefeater chain. This fact I only discovered tonight as I looked it up on the internet in a boozy fit of nostalgia for the scene of some of the happiest days of my youth. So, why the beatification of so many hundreds of hours spent scraping unwanted French mustard from plates that were then loaded into plastic trays and pushed into industrial sized dishwashers, sending steam into our sweaty faces? Here's a list of reasons for my unnatural love for this low-paid, unsocial hours, menial job:
1. I worked there with two of my best friends, Chris and John, and they are two of the funniest people I've ever known. They are also two big gigglers. Nothing symbolises our time there more than Chris laughing so much that he collapsed into a heap onto the floor - which was always damp and grimy - drunkenly hysterical over something someone said, caught at that moment by the manager walking through the swing door from the restaurant into the kitchen, who was half-bemused and half-annoyed at the scene.
2. Chris's drunkenness at work was the inevitable result of having a hatch connecting the kitchen to the bar and having a barman called Tony the Animal who passed through that hatch a steady supply of unpaid-for pints of lager that we'd hide behind pots or pans and gulp down whenever the kitchen was momentarily empty of waitresses or managers.
3. Tony the Animal acquired that epithet on account of his graphic descriptions of what he and girlfriend Vicky - a waitress - got up to in the flat they shared. We looked up to him, because he was 19, had a girlfriend and a flat and a remarkable taste in music.
4. To keep morale in the kitchen high, the managers allowed us to bring into work a 80s ghetto blaster to play our music (as long as it couldn't be heard blasting through the hatch into the bar) and this meant that John, Chris and I constantly made compilation tapes for each other in an effort to get each other into another band or artist. At that age, it was a time of huge discovery. Bowie, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Cream, Hendrix - any classic rock from 15-20 years' previous. And Tony the Animal was similarly instrumental in adding to this canon, getting me into Pink Floyd (we even went to see them together at Wembley) and Frank Zappa (Tony's favourite song being, inevitably, Cocksuckers' Ball). No one else liked our music, though; the waitresses would swing in with 'what the fuck is this?' faces and come back 5 minutes later when the WOO WOOs from Sympathy for the Devil were still ringing out.
5. The Waitresses. I had a huge crush on Liz. John had a huge crush on.... shit, I can't remember her name, but we nicknamed her Amos, after Amos Brearly in Emmerdale Farm to tease him about her smoking a pipe, which she didn't.
6. The waitresses would make desserts in the kitchen. There was an ice-cream machine, a hot chocolate fudge machine and wafers. Needless to say, when no one was about, we filled bowls with ice-cream and hot chocolate fudge sauce and wafers and hid these with our pints of lager.
7. Stealing. I don't advocate stealing, but I felt justified in nicking handfuls of Mr Men badges (which were given to kids with their meals) for my little sister back home. We also nicked Scampi Flavour Fries to eat while we waited for our cab home (on which we spent half our wage, as the 217 bus had stopped running by the time we got out.) We had a name for the Scampi flavour fries, but I won't share it. We were 16 year old boys. What can I say?
8. Parties. There were several parties that we got to go to thanks to members of staff. The most cringe-worthingly memorable one for me was one in which Tony the Animal gave me amyl nitrate to sniff and I ended up doing press-ups in my pants to impress Liz. It didn't work. My pants were green and black stripy briefs and she had her boyfriend with her at the party. Probably, not my coolest move.
9. Breaded mushrooms. The chef, a temperamental, greasy haired, unsavoury-looking git, would slam his pots and pans down in the kitchen at the end of the night and we would raid these for the remnants of food that was cooked but not served. Breaded mushrooms proved a tasty dessert after all our other desserts and lagers.
So there you go. I didn't make 10 in my list, but I challenge any of you to list more 9 things you love about your current job.
Friday, 26 July 2019
Sunday, 21 April 2019
Sugar and being a sweet bastard
I saw a photo on Twitter today, Easter Sunday; you know, the sort of thing someone puts up to piss on people's bonfires. Not content to let everyone enjoy their chocolate eggs (or Jesus's resurrection, depending on your own personal wish list of desirable vices), this doom-monger was keen to show us just how much sugar there is in a Cadbury's Crème Egg. The pile of sugar was illogically larger than the actual crème egg, which prompted some scepticism in my mind. But maybe it reduces in volume or something, I don't really care, I wouldn't eat one of the fucking things anyway, because they are more sickly sweet than those inanely grinning Glee-rejects who greet you at the door of a Disney shop.
Anyway, it got me thinking about chocolate and sweets and how I managed to get through the 70s and 80s with all my own teeth and no signs of diabetes or other disorder associated with years of sugar abuse. One filling in all that time. ONE. Remarkable. (Oh and one tooth extraction. But let's ignore that as it might undermine my point.)
Before I recount these sugar-coated tales, let me first clear my mum of any culpability in regard to the shit I shovelled down my throat growing up. She fed us a very healthy, well cooked and delicious diet. But it was the 1970s and you could label the culture as either (a) dangerously disregarding of health and safety (a modern view) or (b) far less over-protective and paranoid than parents of the subsequent generations (a retrospective view of those who survived and enjoyed a childhood of dangerous disregard for health and safety). That means that high levels of sugar consumption were tolerated and often encouraged.
You could best encapsulate the approach to eating with the directive to self, 'Stick some sugar on it!' Whilst I would never subscribe to such eating habits these days, I feel that this sentiment serves as a neat metaphorical summation of the need to cope with life's miseries and gloom. Sugar symbolises escapism. Are you ever distressed by the actions of your fellow human beings, the economy or the impending environmental apocalypse as you watch the news? Stick some sugar on it! Meaning, joke about it, ignore it, turn over to watch some fatuous nonsense on Channel 5 or purge your fears through the therapy of a sardonic tweet or satirical blog post.
In reality, back in the sweet old days, sticking sugar on it was so habitual that it is only now that the lack of logic attached to such a wanton action becomes apparent. Let's start with breakfast cereals. We all sprinkled a spoonful or two of sugar on top of a bowl of cereals. Now that would make sense if someone plonked some corn flakes in front of you, because cornflakes are so lacking in any flavour that their tastelessness leaves you undistracted from the fact that they have the texture of dead foot skin. But we put sugar on Frosties. Frosties come sugar coated. They need a second layer of sugar about as badly as a sheep needs to wear a sheepskin coat from C&A.
Then there was fruit. I was in my 30s before I knew that fruit has its own 'natural sugars'. I grew p eating sliced apple, thickly coated in sugar so that it tasted better. A bowl of strawberries? Cover them in sugar (then some cream). A grapefruit for breakfast? Stick a pyramid of sugar on that fucker. And a cherry. (Actually, I hate grapefruit and no amount of sugar could disguise its foul taste, anymore than spraying air freshener can disguise the smell of a good poo.)
The thing was, we felt we were eating healthily because we were eating fruit. We didn't need to be conditioned by the state / retail/ media/ society (whatever) to believe that '5 a day' was the nirvana of healthy living, we just knew that fruit was good for you. It just tasted a bit boring without sugar. And fruit is high maintenance food, making your hands sticky, needing to be cut up or peeled, etcetera. I tended to stick to those 'Fruit Salad' chewy sweets. In which case (given that they were only a ha'penny each) I had far more than 5 a day. I used to buy them with Black Jacks, but those sweets seem to have been discontinued. Maybe because of the picture on the wrapper, who knows?
The obvious point to make here is that with all that sugar inside us, spending 12 hours a day playing outside, riding bikes and climbing trees and just running for the sake of running, meant that few of us got fat. If you were a fat kid in the 70s, then fuck knows what you must have had to eat to maintain such a physique. A big bowl of sugar for breakfast, with a light sprinkling of crushed corn flake on top, no doubt.
These days, with no desire to spend 12 minutes never mind 12 hours riding a bike, climbing trees or running anywhere - and with no desire EVER to visit a gym, as my brain would explode into a mass of pulped dog meat through sheer utter boredom - I avoid having too conspicuous a middle-aged muffin-top by eating very little chocolate or sugary shit. But I won't get into the psychology behind that, as people's diet descriptions can bring on a coma in the listener after the second sentence. I like to think that I had enough sugar between 1970 and 1988 to provide enough energy to keep me moving about until I am well into my 90s. That's partly due to the 'Stick some sugar on it' philosophy of those days and partly due to limiting my movement these days.
So that's enough of a work out for my fingers for today. I have an arm chair to warm and a chocolate bunny whose arse I might allow myself to bite off tonight as a treat.
Anyway, it got me thinking about chocolate and sweets and how I managed to get through the 70s and 80s with all my own teeth and no signs of diabetes or other disorder associated with years of sugar abuse. One filling in all that time. ONE. Remarkable. (Oh and one tooth extraction. But let's ignore that as it might undermine my point.)
Before I recount these sugar-coated tales, let me first clear my mum of any culpability in regard to the shit I shovelled down my throat growing up. She fed us a very healthy, well cooked and delicious diet. But it was the 1970s and you could label the culture as either (a) dangerously disregarding of health and safety (a modern view) or (b) far less over-protective and paranoid than parents of the subsequent generations (a retrospective view of those who survived and enjoyed a childhood of dangerous disregard for health and safety). That means that high levels of sugar consumption were tolerated and often encouraged.
You could best encapsulate the approach to eating with the directive to self, 'Stick some sugar on it!' Whilst I would never subscribe to such eating habits these days, I feel that this sentiment serves as a neat metaphorical summation of the need to cope with life's miseries and gloom. Sugar symbolises escapism. Are you ever distressed by the actions of your fellow human beings, the economy or the impending environmental apocalypse as you watch the news? Stick some sugar on it! Meaning, joke about it, ignore it, turn over to watch some fatuous nonsense on Channel 5 or purge your fears through the therapy of a sardonic tweet or satirical blog post.
In reality, back in the sweet old days, sticking sugar on it was so habitual that it is only now that the lack of logic attached to such a wanton action becomes apparent. Let's start with breakfast cereals. We all sprinkled a spoonful or two of sugar on top of a bowl of cereals. Now that would make sense if someone plonked some corn flakes in front of you, because cornflakes are so lacking in any flavour that their tastelessness leaves you undistracted from the fact that they have the texture of dead foot skin. But we put sugar on Frosties. Frosties come sugar coated. They need a second layer of sugar about as badly as a sheep needs to wear a sheepskin coat from C&A.
Then there was fruit. I was in my 30s before I knew that fruit has its own 'natural sugars'. I grew p eating sliced apple, thickly coated in sugar so that it tasted better. A bowl of strawberries? Cover them in sugar (then some cream). A grapefruit for breakfast? Stick a pyramid of sugar on that fucker. And a cherry. (Actually, I hate grapefruit and no amount of sugar could disguise its foul taste, anymore than spraying air freshener can disguise the smell of a good poo.)
The thing was, we felt we were eating healthily because we were eating fruit. We didn't need to be conditioned by the state / retail/ media/ society (whatever) to believe that '5 a day' was the nirvana of healthy living, we just knew that fruit was good for you. It just tasted a bit boring without sugar. And fruit is high maintenance food, making your hands sticky, needing to be cut up or peeled, etcetera. I tended to stick to those 'Fruit Salad' chewy sweets. In which case (given that they were only a ha'penny each) I had far more than 5 a day. I used to buy them with Black Jacks, but those sweets seem to have been discontinued. Maybe because of the picture on the wrapper, who knows?
The obvious point to make here is that with all that sugar inside us, spending 12 hours a day playing outside, riding bikes and climbing trees and just running for the sake of running, meant that few of us got fat. If you were a fat kid in the 70s, then fuck knows what you must have had to eat to maintain such a physique. A big bowl of sugar for breakfast, with a light sprinkling of crushed corn flake on top, no doubt.
These days, with no desire to spend 12 minutes never mind 12 hours riding a bike, climbing trees or running anywhere - and with no desire EVER to visit a gym, as my brain would explode into a mass of pulped dog meat through sheer utter boredom - I avoid having too conspicuous a middle-aged muffin-top by eating very little chocolate or sugary shit. But I won't get into the psychology behind that, as people's diet descriptions can bring on a coma in the listener after the second sentence. I like to think that I had enough sugar between 1970 and 1988 to provide enough energy to keep me moving about until I am well into my 90s. That's partly due to the 'Stick some sugar on it' philosophy of those days and partly due to limiting my movement these days.
So that's enough of a work out for my fingers for today. I have an arm chair to warm and a chocolate bunny whose arse I might allow myself to bite off tonight as a treat.
Sunday, 17 February 2019
Swimming Pool Bastards
Swimming pools. Now
there’s a subject that brings a few tales floating to the surface like an
unaccounted-for turd.
The qualifications required for being a female swimming
instructor in the 1970s appears to have been a venomous hatred of children,
calves like a rhino and a voice so gruff you’d imagine she gargled with cat
litter and road salt each morning. The
old dragon who was charged with teaching us to swim during our weekly visits to
Arnos Grove pool when I was in Junior 3 had only one coaching tactic: Jump in and get to the other side! No guidance on how, just 1-2-3-Go! The kids who could
swim (most of them) got no better and those who couldn’t (me, Dalboy and the overweight,
thick and somewhat smelly kid of the class) were given floats and told to hold
them in front of us and kick our legs.
We too made fuck all progress the whole year. Which meant nearly drowning on the occasion
that we all had to swim lengths. I was
absolutely terrified of the deep end, as you would be if you were equally inept
in the water, and yet we were made to kick and claw our way (without floats) along
the side to get there and then turn back, but out of reach of the side. That meant swimming back when you couldn’t
swim. I kicked off and immediately and
somewhat expectedly sunk under the water.
Our own class teacher – not the butch sadist responsible for putting my
life in peril – reached down to grab my arm and saved me. I can’t say I have any fond memories of Arnos
Grove pool (other than once seeing a brown stain on a friend’s bum – I’ll keep
this anonymous – which he claimed was a birthmark, but then failed to explain
its absence the following week.)
Fortunately, the following year we switched to Southgate
pool, where I did learn to swim and speedily accumulated a range of
awards. I say ‘range’. I got my yellow and green ribbons (widths and
lengths) but failed my red as that meant deep end (still scared) and retrieving
a brick from the bottom of the pool (if someone’s stupid enough to throw a
brick in a pool they can fucking well get it themselves).
Then I had a two-year gap of failing to build on my
new-found skills, before moving to St Ignatius Upper School in my 3rd
year and having weekly swimming lessons once more in the school’s own pool this
time. Our teacher was Mr Dover (unoriginally
nicknamed Ben), who also managed to teach me nothing, not quite surpassing the
achievements of Arnos Grove Pool’s dragon insofar as taking 3 years to teach me
nothing while she managed to teach me nothing in just one. Mr Dover will be remembered for making Dave
Bollon swim in the nude once, when he forgot he trunks. (Dave Bollon forgot his trunks, not Mr
Dover. It would have been even harsher
for the teacher to demand that a pupil swims nude because that teacher forgot his
own trunks. Anyway, that’s the 1980s for
you.)
Everything Ben Dover failed to teach me between the 3rd
and 5th year, I taught myself in the 6th form after
finding out that we were allowed to use the pool at lunchtimes. I jumped in the deep end, taught myself to
tread water and no one tried to drown me or make me take my trunks off.
I’m not sure I swam regularly again until my 30s, that age
where you think, shit, I’m getting fat, I need to exercise, but you won’t condescend
to going to a gym (I never have, never will) because the prospect bores me to death. Not that swimming lengths for 45 minutes in
an effort to erase a beer gut holds much excitement. For years I went weekly, and in all that time
I have only two moderately-less-than-dull tales to tell.
Firstly, is the fact that I sometimes worried that I looked like
a bit of a nonce. I went on the way home
from work, but unfortunately this meant coinciding with kids swimming lessons
when I did Tuesday nights in Borehamwood leisure centre. When you’re one of only 2 or 3 adults in the
pool at the same time as loads of kids and all their (rightly protective)
parents are sat watching, you know full well that the question on their minds
is the same as what would be on mine: Why
does that bloke choose to come swimming now?
When all the kids are here?
BECAUSE I JUST FINISHED WORK AND IT’S ON MY WAY HOME AND I
CAN’T AVOID COMING NOW!!!!
At about this time I grew a beard. Then I really did look like I was the man who
took the S’s out of Speedos. I gave up
for a while after a month or so of feeling very self-conscious.
Secondly, the smelliest human being I have encountered in my
whole life was a Chinese bloke sharing a lane with me in Hatfield. The smell was indescribable. Without smelling like shit or piss or BO or
bad breath, it managed to smell ten times worse than a combination of all four. Bear in mind that I prefer breast stroke with
my head out of water, each time we crossed paths I did a little vomit in my
throat. Even changing lanes didn’t help
as that fucking PONG carried. (If that was
his name.) In the end, I’d do a few strokes
under water whenever he came near me, hoping that whatever stinky substance
surrounded him would float on the surface.
Now that I think about it, I did take my kids swimming a good
number of times as well. My daughter –
who would have been about 3 at the time – managed to further incriminate me as
some kind of wrong ‘un. Sharing a
cubicle was unavoidable due to her age, but after getting her dried and dressed
and making her turn her back, while I turned mine to dry and dress myself, she
shouted out loudly, ‘I can see your willy Daddy!’ She couldn’t.
But walking out of that cubicle afterwards certainly drew some glances.
Especially with the beard.
(‘Doesn’t he come here Tuesday nights?’)
Sunday, 13 January 2019
Gender Fluidity
Just as I was planning to embark on a blog post in which the fashionable young male stereotype of our times was the intended dartboard for the cynical arrows of my acerbic, middle-aged scorn, it occurred to me that the main focus for ridicule was something I could hardly dodge accusations of myself. That is, being just a little too much in touch with one's feminine side.
Already the alarm bells would be ringing in the sensitive psyche of any Generation Y reader of this blog, given that I would appear to be on the verge of EXTREME SEXISM for implying something negative about a male's feminine side (not to mention the fact that I am judgementally conforming to binary gender norms), were it not for the fact that your average Generation Y reader would have got no further than reading the second sentence above, before his attention span cracked and the lack of any visual stimulus within the text would have sent him thumbing to You Tube to watch a 30 second video of a skateboarding cat. Because reading is long.
Anyway, before even the older readers amongst you start to fear the onset of some derogatory remarks towards womankind that come straight from an episode of On the Buses, let me just state that the whole concept of being 'in touch with one's feminine side' is something to be applauded. But there is a line in my mind. And it is the crossing of that line that prompts me to smile wryly and cast the following aspersions.
The archetypal fashionable young male of today wears no socks. He chooses to parade a trapezium of smooth tanned skin between the hem of his mum's leggings and his slip-on shoes. That smooth tanned skin remains hairless from the bottom of his skinny legs to the top of his overly-toned, gym-sculpted, triangular torso. Onto any shaving cuts on his chest (and, I daresay, that area where he has only recently been able to achieve some piliferous sprouting) he splashes some after-shave. His beard (How DO they manage such bushes at that age? It took me years) and the perimeter of his hair have been meticulously clipped by a barber.... sorry, a tonsorial artist, who spent two hours applying the techniques of pruning competition bonsai trees to the task of giving the lad a fucking hair cut. But that task was tolerable for our young chap, because the beauty parlour's policy is to encourage customers to play on their phones during grooming and turn some shit music up loud, so it feels more like a cocktail bar, especially when the prick spins the clippers and throws a comb into the air behind his back like a BIG, BLOODY PONCE.
(Pauses to calm down)
Like I said, in preparing to denounce all this metrosexual bollocks as being not just a skinny-jeaned leg-step over the line of my tolerance, but a gymnast's back-flip into the gender-beyond far past it, I reflected that I am equally guilty of doing things that compromise my own manliness.
To start with, I sit down to wee FAR too often. Whatever your political sensibilities are, in respect to gender identity, no one can deny that women sit down to piss and men stand up. In my defence, I sit down for the following reasons:
Already the alarm bells would be ringing in the sensitive psyche of any Generation Y reader of this blog, given that I would appear to be on the verge of EXTREME SEXISM for implying something negative about a male's feminine side (not to mention the fact that I am judgementally conforming to binary gender norms), were it not for the fact that your average Generation Y reader would have got no further than reading the second sentence above, before his attention span cracked and the lack of any visual stimulus within the text would have sent him thumbing to You Tube to watch a 30 second video of a skateboarding cat. Because reading is long.
Anyway, before even the older readers amongst you start to fear the onset of some derogatory remarks towards womankind that come straight from an episode of On the Buses, let me just state that the whole concept of being 'in touch with one's feminine side' is something to be applauded. But there is a line in my mind. And it is the crossing of that line that prompts me to smile wryly and cast the following aspersions.
The archetypal fashionable young male of today wears no socks. He chooses to parade a trapezium of smooth tanned skin between the hem of his mum's leggings and his slip-on shoes. That smooth tanned skin remains hairless from the bottom of his skinny legs to the top of his overly-toned, gym-sculpted, triangular torso. Onto any shaving cuts on his chest (and, I daresay, that area where he has only recently been able to achieve some piliferous sprouting) he splashes some after-shave. His beard (How DO they manage such bushes at that age? It took me years) and the perimeter of his hair have been meticulously clipped by a barber.... sorry, a tonsorial artist, who spent two hours applying the techniques of pruning competition bonsai trees to the task of giving the lad a fucking hair cut. But that task was tolerable for our young chap, because the beauty parlour's policy is to encourage customers to play on their phones during grooming and turn some shit music up loud, so it feels more like a cocktail bar, especially when the prick spins the clippers and throws a comb into the air behind his back like a BIG, BLOODY PONCE.
(Pauses to calm down)
Like I said, in preparing to denounce all this metrosexual bollocks as being not just a skinny-jeaned leg-step over the line of my tolerance, but a gymnast's back-flip into the gender-beyond far past it, I reflected that I am equally guilty of doing things that compromise my own manliness.
To start with, I sit down to wee FAR too often. Whatever your political sensibilities are, in respect to gender identity, no one can deny that women sit down to piss and men stand up. In my defence, I sit down for the following reasons:
- If it is the middle of the night, I am too sleepy to stand and need to remain half-asleep
- Also, in that semi-soporific state, I am more likely than not to have a wayward aim
- Other times, the risk of needing a poo makes it a safer bet, so I consider sitting down to tinkle no different to putting on a seat belt in the car
Undermining my lavatorial masculinity further is my habit of avoiding urinals in public loos and making for a cubicle. Accusations of self-consciousness and inadequacy fear - should a better man stand aside me - are met with my assertion that urinals create splashback, as I once discovered at work whilst wearing a light grey suit.
For several years now I have ceased to drink beer at home and my Friday and Saturday night-in routines include one G&T followed by several glasses of prosecco. Because I prefer the taste, OK? Not that I'd drink one in a pub, I drink beer in pubs, because I'M NOT A BLOODY PANSY (in public).
The division of labour in my house leaves me with the laundry, dusting, hoovering and washing up /loading of the dishwasher. You'd have to go back a long way for anyone to consider those tasks as a woman's, but I sometimes find that the satisfaction I get from them and the nagging of my wife in respect to having to tidy up after her is just a bit removed from the cinematic action heroes that most boys idolise growing up.
And finally, I hate football. I've given up going in order to paint (pictures, not walls like real men) OK, again, not a key indicator on its own, as it has been years since women were alienated from football and since men who professed not to like it were met with the raised eye-brow that implied suspiciousness of their sexuality; but when you add it all together you get this:
A 48 year old man who sits to pee, who prefers prosecco to beer and who has given up spending his Saturdays following the Arsenal to do housework and paint pictures. So who am I to call our male youth unmanly? (Let's just hope there isn't another war, eh.)
Sunday, 30 December 2018
70s & 80s icons we said goodbye to in 2018
Jim Bowen
Sunday tea-time sadly doesn't exist anymore. Tea-time doesn't exist anymore. And Sunday evenings are gloomy affairs now, in which one last gin and tonic only marginally raises my spirits as the weekend dies a slow death and another week at work raises its arse over the parapet and starts to tangibly strain. But once upon a time, Sunday evenings were idyllic; so much so, that not even Gloria Hunniford's twee chat show or Harry Secombe's Highway could detract from it. And that is partly thanks to Mark's and Spencer's and partly thanks to Jim Bowen. My mum's Sunday tea was a lovely, smashing accompaniment to Bullseye. I'd be biting into a Mark's pancake, adorned with a thick layer of Primula cheese spread with ham (and admiring my teeth marks) as Jim welcomed the players, making the correct assumption that the gentleman would be throwing the darts and the lady would be answering the questions. Sometimes, there'd be two ladies and one would have arms like Popeye and a haircut like Bluto and Jim knew she'd be holding the arrows. I'd be drizzling salad cream over my perfectly round chicken slices, tomatoes, pickled red cabbage, pickled onion and mash, as the prizes were announced - 'iiiiiiiiinnnnnnnn one, a toaster and teasmaid' ('that'll save you going downstairs,' Jim would say to the ladies), 'iiiiiiiinnnnnnn two, a drill set for the budding handyman' ('or woman,' Jim would add, winking at Popeye-arms). And I'd be peeling chocolate from a tea-cake and then licking the cream off a chocolate meringue as Jim pulled a wad of notes from his pocket to send one couple on their way as another played on to miss out on a small car or win a speedboat ('We live 60 miles inland, Jim!') And the jaunty theme music would fill you with glee and the glee would get all mixed up with your Mark's tea in your tum and life was wonderful.
Geoffrey Hayes
Geoffrey from Rainbow was the glue that held together the disparate and dysfunctional motley crew of Bungle, George and Zippy, all of whom quite clearly had special needs and who would - without Geoffrey playing single foster parent - have ended up homeless and vulnerable, probably picked up by some unscrupulous circus owner and kept in tiny, excrement-soiled cages that they'd have to share with dwarves and bearded ladies. Geoffrey was a much-respected man of principle, against whom the children of the 70s aligned their moral compasses. If Zippy was being a shit, Geoffrey would say so. If Bungle indulged in one of his bouts of petulance, selfishness or sheer bloody foolishness, Geoffrey would give him a gentle reminder that he was only a phone call away from being shipped to Russia to dance for the communists. And Geoffrey was the only one who didn't perv over Jane from Rod, Jane and Freddy. In a decade in which male disinterest in women would immediately prompt accusations of 'batting for the other side' or being 'a bit dodgy', Geoffrey drew no criticism from any quarter. In some ways, I think he might have been Jesus.
Bill Maynard
'Selwyn Froggitt's on his way, never mind, oh never mind,' went the theme tune. That's all I can remember about it. Couldn't tell you who Selwyn Froggitt was, except that he was played by Bill Maynard, who made a career out of playing shifty buggers. He played a shifty bugger in Heartbeat and The Gaffer and shifty buggers each time he appeared in a Carry On. IMDB uses the more prosaic epithet, 'curmudgeonly reprobate' and that serves to remind us middle-aged shifty buggers that we are exactly that, because we were conditioned to idolise curmudgeonly reprobates back in the 70s. Bill Maynard is probably up to no good with Roy Kinnear and Peter Butterworth in the after-life right now.
Eric Bristow
Eric Bristow looked like your uncle and won some epic battles against the likes of Bobby George (who looked like your other uncle, the flash one with the jewellery that fell off the back of a lorry), Jocky Wilson (who looked like my Scottish grandad) and John Lowe (who looked like most people's grans). And then he went and lost to that young pretender, the cross eyed usurper and spoiler, Keith Deller. Deller ruined the romance of darts and no one's named a baby Keith since.
Chas Hodges
A friend of mine (in her 30s) once told me that her friend (also in her 30s, let's keep this anonymous) was in a relationship with Dave from Chas and Dave (in his 70s). That's some age gap. Not sure that it lasted that long. Maybe there was no pleasing her. Anyway, I didn't know which one Dave was until Chas died and it turned out that Chas was the one on piano with hair that looked like a mid-80s wet-perm. But who can blame her, because everyone loved Chas and Dave. Even if you hated Spurs, the two cup final songs from 1981 and 1982 were good fun and showcased another of the many talents of Ossie Ardiles (the others being acting in Escape to Victory and his lesser known work winning a World Cup medal in '78). Things went downhill after Snooker Loopy (awful awful song) and from then on every Chas and Dave record was released by K-Tel, retailed for 99p and had 200 tracks on it in one long medley.
Burt Reynolds
I found out later on that Burt Reynolds started out as a serious actor - I only saw Deliverance in my 40s and knowing what was coming, I fast forwarded the 'squeal like a pig' scene - and then he grew a moustache and became a comedy actor. Smoky and the Bandit films were ok, but nothing beats the Cannonball Run films. Burt pissing himself laughing with Dom DeLuise (the 70s answer to Jack Black) in the out-takes, shown at the end, is the most infectious laughter in cinema.
Denis Norden
In its first decade or so, It'll Be Alright on the Night WAS funny. Denis Norden standing with a clipboard (yes, fuck you, autocue!) and turning too slowly from one camera to another, always delivered a witty, sardonic nugget of commentary that actually enhanced the comedy of the clips. In later years, that same format and a much shitter script made the show seem tired and the best out-takes had all been used. But credit where credit's due and thanks to Denis, the term 'cock-up' has had an enhanced role in our common vernacular.
Glynn Edwards
Glynn Edwards was in every episode (I suspect) of one of the best TV shows of all time: Minder. He might have always had the same expression on his face - glum resignation - and over numerous years his lines rarely extended further than saying, 'Ello, Arthur,' 'Ello Terry' and making some reference to the former's unpaid tab, but he was integral to the success of the show. Reliable, predictable, routine... you realise later in life that these things are to be aspired towards.
Margot Kidder
The Superman films have never been bettered and never will be bettered, and Margot Kidder played Lois Lane with a voice like Marge's sisters in The Simpsons (that is, with a 60 a day fag habit-induced gruffness) and a fuck-you attitude that made her totally unsexy (which made you wonder why Superman could possibly fancy her). Her Hollywood lifestyle, from what I read, makes Keith Richard seem like a monk.
Sunday tea-time sadly doesn't exist anymore. Tea-time doesn't exist anymore. And Sunday evenings are gloomy affairs now, in which one last gin and tonic only marginally raises my spirits as the weekend dies a slow death and another week at work raises its arse over the parapet and starts to tangibly strain. But once upon a time, Sunday evenings were idyllic; so much so, that not even Gloria Hunniford's twee chat show or Harry Secombe's Highway could detract from it. And that is partly thanks to Mark's and Spencer's and partly thanks to Jim Bowen. My mum's Sunday tea was a lovely, smashing accompaniment to Bullseye. I'd be biting into a Mark's pancake, adorned with a thick layer of Primula cheese spread with ham (and admiring my teeth marks) as Jim welcomed the players, making the correct assumption that the gentleman would be throwing the darts and the lady would be answering the questions. Sometimes, there'd be two ladies and one would have arms like Popeye and a haircut like Bluto and Jim knew she'd be holding the arrows. I'd be drizzling salad cream over my perfectly round chicken slices, tomatoes, pickled red cabbage, pickled onion and mash, as the prizes were announced - 'iiiiiiiiinnnnnnnn one, a toaster and teasmaid' ('that'll save you going downstairs,' Jim would say to the ladies), 'iiiiiiiinnnnnnn two, a drill set for the budding handyman' ('or woman,' Jim would add, winking at Popeye-arms). And I'd be peeling chocolate from a tea-cake and then licking the cream off a chocolate meringue as Jim pulled a wad of notes from his pocket to send one couple on their way as another played on to miss out on a small car or win a speedboat ('We live 60 miles inland, Jim!') And the jaunty theme music would fill you with glee and the glee would get all mixed up with your Mark's tea in your tum and life was wonderful.
Geoffrey Hayes
Geoffrey from Rainbow was the glue that held together the disparate and dysfunctional motley crew of Bungle, George and Zippy, all of whom quite clearly had special needs and who would - without Geoffrey playing single foster parent - have ended up homeless and vulnerable, probably picked up by some unscrupulous circus owner and kept in tiny, excrement-soiled cages that they'd have to share with dwarves and bearded ladies. Geoffrey was a much-respected man of principle, against whom the children of the 70s aligned their moral compasses. If Zippy was being a shit, Geoffrey would say so. If Bungle indulged in one of his bouts of petulance, selfishness or sheer bloody foolishness, Geoffrey would give him a gentle reminder that he was only a phone call away from being shipped to Russia to dance for the communists. And Geoffrey was the only one who didn't perv over Jane from Rod, Jane and Freddy. In a decade in which male disinterest in women would immediately prompt accusations of 'batting for the other side' or being 'a bit dodgy', Geoffrey drew no criticism from any quarter. In some ways, I think he might have been Jesus.
Bill Maynard
'Selwyn Froggitt's on his way, never mind, oh never mind,' went the theme tune. That's all I can remember about it. Couldn't tell you who Selwyn Froggitt was, except that he was played by Bill Maynard, who made a career out of playing shifty buggers. He played a shifty bugger in Heartbeat and The Gaffer and shifty buggers each time he appeared in a Carry On. IMDB uses the more prosaic epithet, 'curmudgeonly reprobate' and that serves to remind us middle-aged shifty buggers that we are exactly that, because we were conditioned to idolise curmudgeonly reprobates back in the 70s. Bill Maynard is probably up to no good with Roy Kinnear and Peter Butterworth in the after-life right now.
Eric Bristow
Eric Bristow looked like your uncle and won some epic battles against the likes of Bobby George (who looked like your other uncle, the flash one with the jewellery that fell off the back of a lorry), Jocky Wilson (who looked like my Scottish grandad) and John Lowe (who looked like most people's grans). And then he went and lost to that young pretender, the cross eyed usurper and spoiler, Keith Deller. Deller ruined the romance of darts and no one's named a baby Keith since.
Chas Hodges
A friend of mine (in her 30s) once told me that her friend (also in her 30s, let's keep this anonymous) was in a relationship with Dave from Chas and Dave (in his 70s). That's some age gap. Not sure that it lasted that long. Maybe there was no pleasing her. Anyway, I didn't know which one Dave was until Chas died and it turned out that Chas was the one on piano with hair that looked like a mid-80s wet-perm. But who can blame her, because everyone loved Chas and Dave. Even if you hated Spurs, the two cup final songs from 1981 and 1982 were good fun and showcased another of the many talents of Ossie Ardiles (the others being acting in Escape to Victory and his lesser known work winning a World Cup medal in '78). Things went downhill after Snooker Loopy (awful awful song) and from then on every Chas and Dave record was released by K-Tel, retailed for 99p and had 200 tracks on it in one long medley.
Burt Reynolds
I found out later on that Burt Reynolds started out as a serious actor - I only saw Deliverance in my 40s and knowing what was coming, I fast forwarded the 'squeal like a pig' scene - and then he grew a moustache and became a comedy actor. Smoky and the Bandit films were ok, but nothing beats the Cannonball Run films. Burt pissing himself laughing with Dom DeLuise (the 70s answer to Jack Black) in the out-takes, shown at the end, is the most infectious laughter in cinema.
Denis Norden
In its first decade or so, It'll Be Alright on the Night WAS funny. Denis Norden standing with a clipboard (yes, fuck you, autocue!) and turning too slowly from one camera to another, always delivered a witty, sardonic nugget of commentary that actually enhanced the comedy of the clips. In later years, that same format and a much shitter script made the show seem tired and the best out-takes had all been used. But credit where credit's due and thanks to Denis, the term 'cock-up' has had an enhanced role in our common vernacular.
Glynn Edwards
Glynn Edwards was in every episode (I suspect) of one of the best TV shows of all time: Minder. He might have always had the same expression on his face - glum resignation - and over numerous years his lines rarely extended further than saying, 'Ello, Arthur,' 'Ello Terry' and making some reference to the former's unpaid tab, but he was integral to the success of the show. Reliable, predictable, routine... you realise later in life that these things are to be aspired towards.
Margot Kidder
The Superman films have never been bettered and never will be bettered, and Margot Kidder played Lois Lane with a voice like Marge's sisters in The Simpsons (that is, with a 60 a day fag habit-induced gruffness) and a fuck-you attitude that made her totally unsexy (which made you wonder why Superman could possibly fancy her). Her Hollywood lifestyle, from what I read, makes Keith Richard seem like a monk.
Saturday, 10 November 2018
Gig Bastards II (or how I learned that I need to stop going out)
Quite a few lessons learnt tonight.
Lesson one. Sometimes you can recreate the past, repeat an experience, infuse it with enough nostalgia to achieve that alchemic synthesis of present and past joys to remind you that life can sometimes be good, REALLY fucking good; but sometimes, an attempt to dig up the past gets a bit too Burke and Hare; and grim.
My second year at university - a year of indulgent post-adolescent over-introspection - was soundtracked by a few appropriately melancholic albums of the time, one being The House of Love's 2nd eponymous album, the one with the butterfly on the sleeve, the one with Shine On and The Beatles and the Stones. They even came to Reading to play the Union and it was a brilliant gig, branded into my memory like all of 1990's highs and lows (and there were a fucking lot of each). So, as I walked past the Roundhouse earlier this year - working opposite it as I do - and seeing a poster advertising their first album on the curved walls of that most beautiful of venues, I was taken aback. The House of Love disappeared after their 3rd, complete turd of an album. Why was that poster there? I looked it up on t'internet and discovered that they were playing a 30th anniversary gig to celebrate their debut album from 1988. Remembering the Reading Uni gig and my love of album #2, I bought myself a ticket. And I went along tonight...
Lesson one, continued and slightly expanded: Remember the bad bits as well as the good! I'd completely forgotten that at some point in the past, I had decided that I really did NOT like the first album and consequently made an unusual decision to actually dispose of my copy of it. Therefore, when I read that the gig would involve the band playing the celebrated 30 year old album in its entirety, I thought to myself, 'Oh, I've not listened to that in a while, that'll be nice'. As opposed to, 'Oh, that album was shit and I threw it away.' That realisation resurfaced a few songs into the gig.
Lesson two. I hate people at gigs (I kind of hate people in general, but at gigs it's a particular form of hatred, as outlined in the 'Gig Bastards' part one post). Now, three days ago, I went to see The Decemberists with my daughter and it was so good that my fellow human attendees could do nothing to spoil it. But tonight, as I grew increasingly bored by The House of Love churning out song after song from an album that I disliked, I had no distraction at all from the insidious anti-social and irritation-inducing machinations of people on the fringes of the audience.
Because that's where I was. With no desire to carve out a space in the front or middle of the crowd, I found a wall to lean against at the side, still close enough to enjoy it, as the Roundhouse's intimate size makes every view a good one. As each wave of gloomy disappointment washed over me a few bars into every song for those first 40 minutes, I found myself tuning in to the gig bastards all around me. The talkers, the spatially unaware, the crisp-cruncher... But I told myself that patience was required, that I would move once the first album had played out and those great songs from the butterfly 2nd album inevitably followed.
As it turned out, I had to move earlier than that, because a bloke who'd opted to plonk himself in front of me, a bit nearer than he would have done had he not been spatially blinkered, dropped a fart that rose through the air and swiftly made that half metre journey from his arse to my nostrils. I moved three times, from one group of talkers to another, at one point being barged into by some rude cunt (I actually saw it coming, so admittedly moved a bit into his path and stiffened my shoulder, anticipating his lack of manners and likelihood of walking into me anyway.... it's been one of those weeks, I'd already tripped up 3 other rude bastards on the commute to work). So, by the time The House of Love trundled sluggishly into the opener from album 2, a wonderful track called 'Hannah' with one of my favourite segues ever when it turns into 'Shine On', I had become so pissed off with 'people' that nothing could have made me enjoy that song. Not even an excellent version of it, which it wasn't. Next up came 'The Beatles and the Stones', a gentle and beautiful song that demanded silence, and yet, the fuckheads who were here as much for the beer and chatter with their friends, considered the music a mere background to their night out and chose to accompany the song with conversation, stabbing through the ambience, pissing all over the magic, nonchalantly ignorant that people would prefer to listen to the band rather than them. Cunts. I left at that point and went home.
Adding a crust of crap to the night was the fact that travelling to the Roundhouse felt like travelling to work, because it pretty much is, plus the train journey throwing up all the usual tribulations of enduring the noise of phones from (other) selfish bastards; and the fact that one pint of lager in the venue was unpleasant enough to make me feel too nauseous to buy another.
So, lessons number three and four: Don't go to gigs unless ALL the circumstances are right; and think carefully about not going out at all, because other people going out are really, very, fucking irritating and I am even more of a misanthrope than I was when I started this blog about 7 years.
Lesson one. Sometimes you can recreate the past, repeat an experience, infuse it with enough nostalgia to achieve that alchemic synthesis of present and past joys to remind you that life can sometimes be good, REALLY fucking good; but sometimes, an attempt to dig up the past gets a bit too Burke and Hare; and grim.
My second year at university - a year of indulgent post-adolescent over-introspection - was soundtracked by a few appropriately melancholic albums of the time, one being The House of Love's 2nd eponymous album, the one with the butterfly on the sleeve, the one with Shine On and The Beatles and the Stones. They even came to Reading to play the Union and it was a brilliant gig, branded into my memory like all of 1990's highs and lows (and there were a fucking lot of each). So, as I walked past the Roundhouse earlier this year - working opposite it as I do - and seeing a poster advertising their first album on the curved walls of that most beautiful of venues, I was taken aback. The House of Love disappeared after their 3rd, complete turd of an album. Why was that poster there? I looked it up on t'internet and discovered that they were playing a 30th anniversary gig to celebrate their debut album from 1988. Remembering the Reading Uni gig and my love of album #2, I bought myself a ticket. And I went along tonight...
Lesson one, continued and slightly expanded: Remember the bad bits as well as the good! I'd completely forgotten that at some point in the past, I had decided that I really did NOT like the first album and consequently made an unusual decision to actually dispose of my copy of it. Therefore, when I read that the gig would involve the band playing the celebrated 30 year old album in its entirety, I thought to myself, 'Oh, I've not listened to that in a while, that'll be nice'. As opposed to, 'Oh, that album was shit and I threw it away.' That realisation resurfaced a few songs into the gig.
Lesson two. I hate people at gigs (I kind of hate people in general, but at gigs it's a particular form of hatred, as outlined in the 'Gig Bastards' part one post). Now, three days ago, I went to see The Decemberists with my daughter and it was so good that my fellow human attendees could do nothing to spoil it. But tonight, as I grew increasingly bored by The House of Love churning out song after song from an album that I disliked, I had no distraction at all from the insidious anti-social and irritation-inducing machinations of people on the fringes of the audience.
Because that's where I was. With no desire to carve out a space in the front or middle of the crowd, I found a wall to lean against at the side, still close enough to enjoy it, as the Roundhouse's intimate size makes every view a good one. As each wave of gloomy disappointment washed over me a few bars into every song for those first 40 minutes, I found myself tuning in to the gig bastards all around me. The talkers, the spatially unaware, the crisp-cruncher... But I told myself that patience was required, that I would move once the first album had played out and those great songs from the butterfly 2nd album inevitably followed.
As it turned out, I had to move earlier than that, because a bloke who'd opted to plonk himself in front of me, a bit nearer than he would have done had he not been spatially blinkered, dropped a fart that rose through the air and swiftly made that half metre journey from his arse to my nostrils. I moved three times, from one group of talkers to another, at one point being barged into by some rude cunt (I actually saw it coming, so admittedly moved a bit into his path and stiffened my shoulder, anticipating his lack of manners and likelihood of walking into me anyway.... it's been one of those weeks, I'd already tripped up 3 other rude bastards on the commute to work). So, by the time The House of Love trundled sluggishly into the opener from album 2, a wonderful track called 'Hannah' with one of my favourite segues ever when it turns into 'Shine On', I had become so pissed off with 'people' that nothing could have made me enjoy that song. Not even an excellent version of it, which it wasn't. Next up came 'The Beatles and the Stones', a gentle and beautiful song that demanded silence, and yet, the fuckheads who were here as much for the beer and chatter with their friends, considered the music a mere background to their night out and chose to accompany the song with conversation, stabbing through the ambience, pissing all over the magic, nonchalantly ignorant that people would prefer to listen to the band rather than them. Cunts. I left at that point and went home.
Adding a crust of crap to the night was the fact that travelling to the Roundhouse felt like travelling to work, because it pretty much is, plus the train journey throwing up all the usual tribulations of enduring the noise of phones from (other) selfish bastards; and the fact that one pint of lager in the venue was unpleasant enough to make me feel too nauseous to buy another.
So, lessons number three and four: Don't go to gigs unless ALL the circumstances are right; and think carefully about not going out at all, because other people going out are really, very, fucking irritating and I am even more of a misanthrope than I was when I started this blog about 7 years.
Saturday, 13 October 2018
Part-time job bastards
Life parades its conveyer belt of human bastardness before your eyes in twisted Generation Game style. The catchphrase is not, 'Didn't you do well,' but instead, 'Aren't they complete wankers?' And although society's undesirables whizz past you in huge numbers as you go about your daily business of commuting or walking round town or driving, these people are not the ones you remember. Bruce won't ask you to list them to win them. The ones you remember most, the ones you experience on a deeper level, who grind sluggishly past you - as if that conveyer belt has a sticky turbine - thereby leaving their stain indelibly on your mind, are the ones you have the misfortune to work with. We are all afflicted with work colleagues who cling tenaciously to our existences like unwelcome clagnets round a hairy bottom. You don't like them, but they're just there.
I've had the good fortune to work exclusively in secondary schools since I was 22. Teaching tends not to attract many bastards (there are a few exceptions) and the same is true of support staff in schools as well. But in the 6 years of doing part-time or temporary jobs prior to this, I endured the company of several objectionable cunts.
Topping this list was the assistant manager at the Turk's Head pub in Reading when I was at university. His name - at least as far as the bar staff was concerned - was 'Shithead'. There's nothing like granting a slither of authority to someone with a chip on his shoulder on account of being a general failure in life, to transform that person into a petty, power-wielding despot, reigning over his kingdom of irrelevance. Shithead looked down on us students serving behind the bar with all the disdain of someone who had fucked up at school and claimed to have more common sense than us sorry academic low-lifes. It's true to say that life is full of people with far more intelligence than someone who is university-educated; but Shithead was not one of them. Throw in his vain and sleazy behaviour towards women and you have someone whose tick-list of qualities remains forever tick-less.
In second place was Mr J, the manager of Palmers Green Tesco, where I spent a year working while doing my PGCE/ teacher training. The J was short for Janus - he was Polish - and really, it would have been more apt not to keep the J from his name and drop the rest, but to do it the other way around. Mr J maintained a sneer that suggested that there was a constant smell of shit under his nose - unsurprising since his mouth was in that area - and he seemed incapable of understanding why any of us part-timers failed to match his level of consideration for a poxy, 5-aisle, fucking supermarket. He paced around slimily barking out orders in a voice much like Boycie from Only Fools and Horses, suffixing every command with the word, 'yeah'.
'Face up cereals, yeah.'
'Clear away those boxes, yeah.'
'Get that mopped up, yeah.'
This streak of piss totally failed to comprehend my level of indifference when issuing me with a formal warning for some misdemeanour or other, I forget what, but I was training to be a teacher, I was actually teaching during the day for parts of that year, and he seemed to expect me to give some small crumb of a shit about his small crumb of a shit supermarket. What a cock.
In third place was the foreman at a sauce factory in Edmonton. He and the factory were like something out of the 60s. The white and black workers had segregated social areas. Not by rule, of course, but down to the fact that none of the black workers smoked and most of the white ones did, so the existence of smoking and non-smoking staff rooms created a situation much like a Mississippi diner in 1955. The foreman was just as much an anachronism, looking like Jack the conductor from On the Buses and to match that face and voice he had a similar personality. We'd been sent to the factory - where we spent the day placing jars of condiments into plastic trays - by an employment agency, we being myself and my mate, Fabio. When we arrived, the foreman's first words to us were, "Oh that's a shame, I thought they'd send me a couple of dolly birds." Dolly birds. Jeez.
But I think I got off lightly overall. Any of you reading this and anyone you know, no doubt, have endured these sort of people in your time. Perhaps you are doing so now. I had other part-time or temporary jobs in which everyone was a delight to work with... The Beefeater Restaurant in Enfield, two different branches of Coutts Bank. I suppose that 3 out about 100 ain't bad. It should almost restore your faith in human nature. But let's not over-react, eh.
I've had the good fortune to work exclusively in secondary schools since I was 22. Teaching tends not to attract many bastards (there are a few exceptions) and the same is true of support staff in schools as well. But in the 6 years of doing part-time or temporary jobs prior to this, I endured the company of several objectionable cunts.
Topping this list was the assistant manager at the Turk's Head pub in Reading when I was at university. His name - at least as far as the bar staff was concerned - was 'Shithead'. There's nothing like granting a slither of authority to someone with a chip on his shoulder on account of being a general failure in life, to transform that person into a petty, power-wielding despot, reigning over his kingdom of irrelevance. Shithead looked down on us students serving behind the bar with all the disdain of someone who had fucked up at school and claimed to have more common sense than us sorry academic low-lifes. It's true to say that life is full of people with far more intelligence than someone who is university-educated; but Shithead was not one of them. Throw in his vain and sleazy behaviour towards women and you have someone whose tick-list of qualities remains forever tick-less.
In second place was Mr J, the manager of Palmers Green Tesco, where I spent a year working while doing my PGCE/ teacher training. The J was short for Janus - he was Polish - and really, it would have been more apt not to keep the J from his name and drop the rest, but to do it the other way around. Mr J maintained a sneer that suggested that there was a constant smell of shit under his nose - unsurprising since his mouth was in that area - and he seemed incapable of understanding why any of us part-timers failed to match his level of consideration for a poxy, 5-aisle, fucking supermarket. He paced around slimily barking out orders in a voice much like Boycie from Only Fools and Horses, suffixing every command with the word, 'yeah'.
'Face up cereals, yeah.'
'Clear away those boxes, yeah.'
'Get that mopped up, yeah.'
This streak of piss totally failed to comprehend my level of indifference when issuing me with a formal warning for some misdemeanour or other, I forget what, but I was training to be a teacher, I was actually teaching during the day for parts of that year, and he seemed to expect me to give some small crumb of a shit about his small crumb of a shit supermarket. What a cock.
In third place was the foreman at a sauce factory in Edmonton. He and the factory were like something out of the 60s. The white and black workers had segregated social areas. Not by rule, of course, but down to the fact that none of the black workers smoked and most of the white ones did, so the existence of smoking and non-smoking staff rooms created a situation much like a Mississippi diner in 1955. The foreman was just as much an anachronism, looking like Jack the conductor from On the Buses and to match that face and voice he had a similar personality. We'd been sent to the factory - where we spent the day placing jars of condiments into plastic trays - by an employment agency, we being myself and my mate, Fabio. When we arrived, the foreman's first words to us were, "Oh that's a shame, I thought they'd send me a couple of dolly birds." Dolly birds. Jeez.
But I think I got off lightly overall. Any of you reading this and anyone you know, no doubt, have endured these sort of people in your time. Perhaps you are doing so now. I had other part-time or temporary jobs in which everyone was a delight to work with... The Beefeater Restaurant in Enfield, two different branches of Coutts Bank. I suppose that 3 out about 100 ain't bad. It should almost restore your faith in human nature. But let's not over-react, eh.
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