Right, my first day as a “cable puller”. Though I didn’t actually pull any cables. I carried a few boxes of cables to the van though. And I screwed in four (count ‘em) socket boxes. And that was it. For this I will get paid, before tax, about £45. Which is nice. Or would have been. Let’s start at the beginning…
My job this week is to be to the best of my abilities a cable puller. Essentially I am assisting the bloke what fits computer cables and the casings they live in. We’ll call him Psycho, not because he was but because he could easily be, and also because I’ve forgotten his name. So me and Psycho go to the Andover site where we’re due to fit cables n’shit. I think. Psycho wanders around moaning with the sparkies (that’s electricians to you) about how the whole job is going down the pan and stuff and I trail behind looking innocuous, which is not hard really. After half an hour of this the site manager turns up and they have a meeting to make sure they’re all “singing from the same song sheet”. The end result of this was we were not needed on the Andover site today. No. Today we were going elsewhere. Today we were going to Dartford.
Yes.
So, up the M3 and round the bottom of the M25 with me sleeping most of the way and, narrowly avoiding going into the Dartford Tunnel, we arrive at the head office of a major chain of off-licenses at around 11.30. By 12.30 we’d finished the job, though it actually took all of ten minutes to do, and were on our way back west.
First disaster was the aforementioned tunnel which Psycho found himself driving towards with no way to turn around. So we went through the tunnel cursing and swearing. Then we came back over the bridge cursing a little less because the view was quite stunning, but still rather miffed at having to pay the toll.
And then the traffic jam. Suffice to say we got to Farnborough to pick up boxes of cable at about 3.00pm. The van was not air conditioned, it was bloody hot, we were not moving and there was no wind. At all. It was like being roasted slowly in an oven to the sound of Kiss FM at full volume. I couldn’t feel it but I could tell my body temperature was rising and boiling my innards. The final 50 miles back to Winchester went fairly smoothly though there was the final insult of a rubbernecking jam just before out exit. Bastards.
Psycho asked me if I fancied a pint. How could I refuse? I guess he likes me.
So, that was my day. Stuck in a white van with a Sun reading bloke who hates his job, his boss and a world which keeps throwing shit at him (his debit card was declined in the pub, to pick one calamity at random), dodging the casual racism, sexism and homophobia and, well, swearing a lot.
I think it’s going to be an interesting week.
This is a really badly written post. Sorry, but I think my brain is still fried…