When I start a temp job I try and remain inconspicuous, keeping quiet in the corner and not drawing too much attention to myself. You never know what kind of people you’re going to be working with and what kind of mood they’ll be in. So far I’ve been okay, against my expectations to be honest, but I still play the quiet game. Fact is I’m pretty much a stereotypical middle class kinda guy and while I’m not particularly well off or well qualified (I still have only one A level at grade E and an Access course certificate to my name) I have been to University and most of my working life has been in the rarified environment of Waterstone’s. I am not your typical unskilled manual labourer. Generally people assume I’m a student, partly because of my youthful good looks (I’m actually 31) but also, I think, because why else would I be doing this kind of job?
So I always find it a slightly momentous occasion when I openly read a broadsheet newspaper at work. Usually this happens after a week when I’m pretty sure I won’t get the Waffle Waitress response and when I feel I proved myself, kind of a “look, I can do this job as well as you without complaint and still read the Guardian – if you have a problem with that then fuck you”. Again, I’ve never had to actually say this, though during my white-van-man experience last August I did get a bemused “so you don’t like the Sun then?”
Anyway, on Wednesday I bought the Independent before going to the cafe for breakfast. I hadn’t read it for a while and there was an interesting looking feature on Roy Lichtenstein I fancied checking out. I’ve had issues with the Indy in the past for being far too smug and annoying but on the evidence of this edition it’s much better. No-one in the cafe really notices my massive spread of newsprint (they didn’t have the tabloid edition in the shop) but Andy, my fellow temp, is quite intrigued. He’s pretty switched on for a 19 year old and we get on fine, but there are, shall we say, some gaps in his knowledge. Put it this way, on reading an article about an increase in teenage suicides in Belfast he asked me if Sinn Fein was the president of Russia. “Andy,” I said, “you’re not stupid and this kinda worries me.” He smiled and agreed and I explained what Sinn Fein is and who the president of Russia is. Later in the cab he picks up the Indy and pretty much reads it from cover to cover. I’m sitting there smiling and fully aware that I’m about to come over all patronising so I say nothing but it occurs that this guy has probably never seen a quality newspaper before. Not because he’s an idiot but because it’s just never happened.
Thursday I want to get a Guardian for the Online supplement but the only newsagent in the semi-industrial wasteland doesn’t have any left at 8.45am. No Indy’s either. The Times is out of the question (I get enough Murdoch from the copies of the Sun scattered around the place) so it’s got to be the Telegraph, which it has to be said is in no way a bad paper, just not my usual cup of ideology and, again, I found it a lot more bearable and readable than I had done in the past. I wonder if it’s because I’m generally working in an intellectual vacuum that I’m finding anything with an intelligent opinion appealing no matter how much I might disagree with it. But anyway, I’m quietly ranting and raving about how I can’t buy my newspaper of choice and Andy’s finding this highly amusing, like I’m some kind of novelty, a guy who doesn’t want to buy a crappy tabloid and knows the all the different political and economic slants of all the different papers. I know I can be a little obsessive about this kind of thing but here I might as well be from Mars.
Is there a point to this ramble? I suppose it’s this. I work in “waste management” driving around in a dirty dump truck wearing a hi-viz jacket picking up trash from the streets. And it’s probably the best job I’ve had in a long while. I like it. Why does this mean I should read the Sun? Or rather, why should it be strange that I have a fucking brain?
Okay, I’m listening to a lot of Bill Hicks at the moment, but you get my point.
I get this sort of thing at work too. During breaks, the women read ‘Hello’ and ‘OK’ type things, while the blokes read car magazines, or god help me, ‘Zoo’ or ‘Nuts’. I read ‘New Scientist’. I tell them it’s to stop my brain from falling to bits.
Didn’t a London cabbie become Brain of Britain a few years back? I doubt if he got that prize by reading the Sun!
I’m not surprised you got noticed by the Guarniad… unlike most blogs, yours has actual content…
Yeah, I remember a few years back working on building sites in London, I used to get the same responses when I’d open the Guardian or the Independent. I used to wonder did the other guys on the sites just buy tabloids so that they could fold them up and stick them in the back-pocket of their jeans. (Far better reason to buy a tabloid than to actually read it, if you ask me). Yeah, for some reason they used to all walk around on site with the sun folded up, and stuck in their back pocket. Anyway, I came via the guardian, and will certainly return. Good blog.