Dogsbody (1)

Something new!  I retire next year after 50 years of work - and almost 40 jobs in total!  I've tried many things - failed at some, succeeded at others: farm work, garage work, sales work, office work, shop work, manual labouring, driving, civil service, care work.  Writer's day jobs!  Bukowski found plenty to write and say about his work experiences, so I thought I'd have a bash, too.

To begin, then, at the beginning...

 

            The man at the Employment Exchange in Totnes looked at me over the top of his spectacles as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing and hearing.  Mum was there with me.  It was a crowded office – lots of other people being interviewed, phones ringing, typewriters clacking.  The man interviewing me had a shirt and tie on, but sleeves rolled up.  He made me think of Bobby Charlton.  Thin strands of grey hair were Brylcreemed across the top of his head, which would have been bald otherwise.  It fascinated me for some reason.  It seemed that he must have one very long flap of it on one side, which would hang down over that ear like a beard when he didn’t have it fixed.  He must wash it like that in the mornings, I thought, then lay it firmly over the top to the other ear and flatten it down with the Brylcreem, which would glue it in place. 

      He’d been making lots of notes as I answered his various questions – his eyes darting from me to the paper, then to me again.  With each answer I gave, his face got longer and more serious.  Then he stopped and looked at what he’d written.  The seconds passed.  I thought of Sherlock Holmes considering a piece of evidence.  A frozen turd, say – neither of man nor any beast known to man.  An alien turd.  Green, perhaps – or maybe purple.  The turn of his nose suggested that it smelled a bit alien, too. 

      Then those eyes shifted to me again.

      “So… you left school with no qualifications whatsoever.  Not a single CSE, even.”

      “No.”

      Mum sat forward.  "We weren't sending him back to that school after what happened."

      The man looked at her.

      "What happened?"

      "Some bullies set on him.  Smashed his cheekbone.  He had to go to hospital.  He could have lost an eye."

      The man shut he eyes and shook his head.  It was the first time his expression seemed to soften a bit.

      "Shocking," he sighed.  "What's the world coming to?"

      “He’s bright, though,” said mum.  “He’s got hobbies.  He loves reading.  He’s always reading at home.  He’s got more books than we have.”

      I could see his tongue moving in his cheek, like it was trying to dislodge a bit of breakfast.  Or perhaps it was a ferret in there trying to escape.  He made a brief note.

      “I like writing, too,” I said, hopefully.

      The eyes swivelled my way again.

      “What kind of writing?”

      “Stories and things.  I’d like to try television scriptwriting.”

      He smiled quickly.  Very quickly.

      “Have you had anything published?”

      “No.”

      He shifted in his chair.

      “If you wanted to get a job on a newspaper or something like that, you’d need to have qualifications.  At least a couple of O levels or good CSEs.”  He was still talking to me, but he was looking at mum again now.  “It’s not the best start to a working life to not have any exams behind you.  You might want to seriously think about getting some.  You could go to night school.  At least get your English and Maths.  They’re the important ones.  It would certainly open up more opportunities.”

      Just the thought of it made me anxious.  I’d never been any good at maths.  I was alright with stuff like addition and subtraction – simple arithmetic.  But all that stuff with circles and triangles and shapes.  Angles.  Log books.  Algebra (or Algie’s Bra, as I called it – whoever Algie was).  Slide rules and protractors – what on earth were they for?  The only thing I’d ever used a ruler for was for drawing a straight line.  This one had a weird bit that slid out, and was covered in all these complicated numbers and signs.  It made no sense.  I didn’t want to try any of that stuff again.  I’d left school.  I didn’t want to go back.

      “My dad hasn’t got any exams and he’s always got jobs alright,” I said.

      He raised his eyebrows.

      “And what does your dad do now?”

      Mum sat forward again.  “My husband works on a farm now.  We came down from London last year.”

      “What did he do up there?”

      “He was a caretaker on the estate where we lived.  Before that he was a London bus driver, and a lorry driver before that.  He’s done all sorts since he came out of the Army.”  Mum liked to talk about this.  It sounded special – like it made us special.  “He was in the Household Cavalry.  He did Trooping the Colour, and he even served on the Queen’s wedding, too.  That’s how he got the farm job.”

      He seemed amused by this.  Or puzzled.  I could never tell.

      “Bit of a jump, wasn’t it? London to here? Wages are much lower here.”

      Mum lowered her voice.  “We had to get out,” she said.  “It was his nerves.  It’s a rat-race now.” Then she added, with a chirp “And money isn’t everything, is it.”

      He smiled again.  Quickly again.

      “True,” he said.  Then he turned back to me.  “So… have you had any thoughts about what you might be looking for job-wise?”

      I hadn’t, really.  There was nothing I wanted to do, except write – and I wasn’t going to get O levels so I could work on a paper.  I didn’t want to work on a paper, anyway.  I just wanted to make some money so I could buy a motorbike.  I remembered how dad said that one of the men at the village pub had a big bike.  A Suzuki GT750.  He was a ‘contract milker’, as dad called it.

      “I’d thought about becoming a contract milker, because they earn good money.”

      Again that look, like I was some species of insect.

      “What on earth’s a contract milker?”

      “Someone who goes around the farms, milking the cows.”

      He just continued to stare at me.  Then he put his pen down and put his hands together on the desk, like he was going to start praying.

      “Anyone can become self-employed.  But to do so, it’s probably best to know something about what you’re going to be self-employed to do.  Plus, you’d be responsible for paying your own tax and National Insurance.  And your income could go up and down, depending on the state of things.  Self-employed dairymen can earn good money, yes.  But you’d need to know an awful lot first before you could do their job.  Have you ever done farm work?”

      “I did haymaking last summer.  On the farm where dad works.  Helping to get the bales in.”

      “Right.  Well, that’s farm work.  But there’s more to it than that.  To be a dairyman, you’d need years of experience.  You’d also need to have some form of qualification.  You don’t have either of those.  So I think it’s a bit early in the game to be thinking about contract milking.  Do you agree?”

      I knew I’d made a fool of myself.  More so than talking about being a writer, probably.  I looked at his hands, still interlaced in front of him.  I thought of the packs of pork sausages mum used to buy.  He had a wedding ring on one of his sausages.  It was easier than looking at his face.

      “Yes,” I said. 

      “So,” he went on, breaking his hand-clasp at last and picking up his pen again.  “Perhaps the best place to start on that career path is to look for jobs on farms.  At least there's no shortage of those around here.  Learn the ropes that way.  Think about the other thing a few years down the line.  When you’ve earned enough to buy a car, which you’ll need to have with all those contracts to travel to.”

      He made some more notes about me, then sat back and stretched.  Mum did, too.  It seemed like the interview was coming to an end.  I was relieved.  We could get the bus back home, and I could go up to my room and carry on making the snooker set I was trying to make out of an old coffee table, a bed sheet, a tin of marbles and a bit of dowel rod.

      “I don’t have anything on my list just now.  But not everyone comes to us with jobs.  Keep checking the local papers.  And do some searching yourself.  Ring up some farmers and ask if they want any workers.  That kind of thing.  Show a bit of initiative.”

      That word.  Initiative.  It was one that dad used all the time.  “You youngsters today… you’ve got no initiative,” he’d say.  “A few years in the army will teach you that.”

      He was always going on about it – about getting me in the army.  He was always pulling me up.  “Hold your back up, boy.  Chest out.  Chin in.  You’ll never get in the army if you slouch around like that.”

      Each time he said it, all he was doing was strengthening my resolve.  I wasn’t going in the army.  Just as I wasn’t going back to any school or college or whatever to get some exams.  I’d had enough of all that.  I was a man now.  Sixteen.  A man in his own right.  I could make my own decisions about what I was going to do.  Even if I didn’t know what I was going to do.

      The meeting finished and the man shook my hand, then mum’s.

      “Good luck,” he said. 

      “Thank you,” mum and I said together.

      Looking back on it now, I can imagine – after seeing what a sorry, hopeless prospect I was to any future employer – he was probably thinking the one thing he wouldn’t be allowed to say:

      “You’re certainly going to need it.”

(continued)