by John King
First job I got was in this kitchen on the trading estate. I was the washer-up in a factory canteen, working ten till four, with an extra hour or two doing odd jobs, shifting boxes around and picking up litter in the car park. I loved that job. It was dirty work, hard graft with the trays and pots stacked up on one side smothered in grease and lard, layers of burnt food that split the Brillo Pads I used, but on the other side of the sink there was always enough room for an ice-cold pint of lager from the work’s bar. The head chef was a fat bastard with this dog he brought in because it got lonely sitting at home, and he used to go around the kitchen fucking and cunting in front of the women, but he was alright, a good boss who didn’t give the likes of me any stick. The two working chefs were a couple of hooligans in their twenties, butcher-coat boys in white aprons, and they treated me well. Everyone had a laugh, but the chefs took their work seriously. They kept an eye on me, made sure I always had a pint on the go, the smooth surface of the glass something from the adverts, a cold glow that kept me reaching over and pouring it down my throat. I was drinking five or six pints a day, and I reckon most of it was coming back out in sweat.
The sinks were always full and I needed boiling water to get rid of the dirt. It was scorching stuff that never ran out, so I was always hot, skin dripping, a long slog with the work piling up. It was one of those jobs that seem like they’re never going to end, at least till two o’clock when I started catching up with the rush. It was the first time I’d really had to graft, and I was starting to wise up. Stacking shelves was easy compared to this, and picking cherries wasn’t really working at all, a summer holiday with some pocket money thrown in. There was this real laugh-a-minute wind-up atmosphere, and when the last of the factory workers finished eating we went and sat at the long tables and had a feast. There was always food left over, and it was free. The chefs would have a drink as a reward for their day’s work. The puddings were good and there was chips every day, as much as I wanted, along with the pies and sausages and cod, all the usual stuff. The bar was next door to the canteen so the chefs went in through the back, the drink subsidised, same as a social club, but the bloke who ran it let us help ourselves for nothing, one of the perks of the job. It was a good time.
I was part of the working population with all the benefits it brings, and stayed in the kitchen for a year before leaving. I’d lean over that sink and the steam would cover my face, and I’d watch white suds turn grey, the colour thickening and going black. I’d empty the sink and start again, the hot water sparking cheap industrial liquid, use one of the serving spoons to get a froth going. I blunted enough knives as well, scratching at the blocks of burnt food, digging in hard to find the silver lining below, knowing every day was the same, a real feeling of victory when the last pot was put away and the draining boards empty and rubbed down. All the time I was thinking of the money I was earning, singing along under my breath as the radio blared out Radio 1 hits, the soggy emotions of the DJs and their shit playlist, dipping into my own music, the Clash song ‘Cheapskates’, the line about being a washer-up and a scrubber-up, and that’s what I was. There was the pride of earning as well. I felt good, felt fucking brilliant, saving for the mini van I bought for seventy-five quid when I turned seventeen.
It was the perfect car, with this long stick that made every gear change a juggling act, and a tank you could fill up for under four quid. Now, instead of nicking cars off people the same as us for a cheap run into London, or bunking the train into Paddington and legging it through the barriers, everyone would come round my house and cram in the back of the van. I’d put my foot down and we’d be in Camden or the West End inside half an hour. It was great having a car, gave us real freedom, and I suppose we felt like we could go anywhere we wanted, do anything. I put some old carpet in the back and had the cassette player going, Smiles playing DJ, Chris knocking off bottles of drink to get everyone going. Dave used to prop himself up in the corner watching his clothes for grease, a real tart, but playing the role a bit, winding us up. The girls were impressed by the van, a lesson I quickly learnt, that women prefer a bloke who’s mobile. We were going to three or four gigs a week after we left school, everyone chipping in for petrol and me doing the driving. I didn’t mind. I liked driving, putting my foot down and burning up other cars. It was good to be on the move instead of standing at bus stops in the pissing rain, a bunch of mugs waiting around for cancelled trains.
Smiles was dossing for ages after we left school, sitting at home listening to music. He was stuck on these reggae albums when he was indoors, Tony’s mate Alfonso getting him interested in dub. He’d sit there for hours listening to all sorts of sounds, honking pigs and fuck knows what else, some mad noises only a nutter or genius could invent. I couldn’t name the music, but it was the same as the stuff we heard when we went and saw punk bands. It was alright for Smiles in the summer, but when it started getting dark and cold he was bored, still didn’t get himself down the job centre, didn’t seem to want to work. And there was jobs around. This was Slough, and the trading estate meant you could usually find something. He said he didn’t want to do a boring job like washing dishes, that he was going to get a proper trade, and this hacked me off because I couldn’t believe it came out of his mouth. This wasn’t the Smiles I knew. Dave asked him where he was getting these airs and graces, but he wasn’t right yet, his head still stuck in the coma and its after-effects, so it didn’t matter. It was just going to take time for things to get back to normal.
Thing was, Smiles didn’t have any money, just what his old man and Tony were subbing him, and most of this went on the records he was buying, so we helped him out, bought tickets to see bands, a drink here and there. He wasn’t sponging, tried to resist, but we told him he’d do the same for us, and he knew it was true. He was a giver, not a taker. He must’ve been getting money off the dole as well, but it’s never enough to live on, never mind what these MPs and millionaire businessmen say from their country houses, sitting around swilling champagne, trying to justify their latest benefit cuts and redundancies. It’s the same with Thatcher today, except now it’s worse, with a righteous edge. We haven’t gone forward at all, just rolled back, this swell of sewage softly running into the shore and gliding back out to sea, leaving the sand stained, cracked plastic and rusty tins stuck in the pebbles.
Dave was working in a clothes shop in the precinct, and it suited him fine, selling dodgy soulboy gear to the sort of dodgy soulboys we took the piss out of, and he was dressing well, got into the rude boy look of 2 Tone. Dave was looking to impress the girls with his fashion sense, and developed a talent for getting his leg over on a regular basis, while the rest of us were spending more time with the five-fingered widow than girls of our own age. He was knocking off gear at the shop, and later on started wearing some of it down the pub. I hated the labels game, seeing logos as a stamp of control like most punks. Chris, meanwhile, was soon out and about, robbing houses. He wanted me to go with him, but I didn’t have it in me, didn’t like the idea of going in someone’s house, even if they were rich, more than that didn’t fancy six months in borstal, marching up and down a parade ground in the freezing cold. I couldn’t handle that. It would be the worst thing going being locked away. It’s the biggest fear I’ve ever had.
Fair dues to Chris, though, because he wasn’t turning over frail old grannies in their ground-floor council flats, or burgling working families in their mortgaged-to-the-hilt terrace castles. He was thieving from the big detached houses over in Maidenhead and Taplow, out on the prowl in Alfonso’s car till one night the Old Bill spot this black man in a half-decent motor and decide to give him a pull. The boys ended up in a ditch and had to leg it across the fields, heading towards Dorney, Chris knee-deep in cow shit with Alfonso and this other bloke, Clem, who’d started hanging around with us. After three hours getting cut up by barbed wire and brambles, then chased by a bull, or at least what they thought was a bull, it was probably a cow, or a calf, could’ve been a rabbit
for all I know, Chris packed in the burglary, went back to petty crime, shoplifting and selling the clothes Dave was supplying.
Looking back, it’s hard to put things in their proper place, but I remember leaving the factory, getting pissed at the sink and going to the pub at opening time. The chefs and a couple of girls who worked in the bar came along. The head chef turned up with his dog and bought me a pint. I talked to him for the first time socially. A nice bloke who wished me well. I was arseholed by nine, and went back with one of the girls. She was tall, over six foot, with long thin legs. She was a bit of a nympho as well, but I went and embarrassed myself, puked up over her couch. She didn’t take it well, and I looked at those long legs and knew she was never going to wrap them round my face now. There I was, seventeen years old, kicked out on the street like a child, back to square one. Except I was moving on, another job lined up, starting Monday. The pay was better and it was half-eight to five. I was going to get some proper training. It was alright washing pots and pans, digging into the grime and striking silver, but I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life. The bloke who worked in the kitchens before me was there for eighteen years. Till he retired. Three months later he had a heart attack and died. It was time to move on.
I spent three and a half years at Manors, and then they made me redundant. They said it was because times were hard, but that wasn’t the reason. The idea was I was going to do general duties and find something I was good at and they would train me. They dealt in electrical equipment, and I thought I might end up making parts, or become an electrician. But I floated along, never pushed myself, and when I tried to get something sorted out they let me go. It was an extra kick in the teeth. I never liked the place, the games the management played. There wasn’t the same spirit as when I was in the kitchens, but I stuck with it because it seemed like the sensible thing to do. The money was better, and most people work to survive, make do, living for the weekends.
The union did its best to help me out, but it wasn’t strong enough. The workers weren’t united, and this was early eighties, when the unions were being murdered in the press and the bosses lining up to gang-bang organised labour. I didn’t have a chance. Nobody was going to down tools and picket the gates, and the management knew they could do what they wanted. I didn’t blame the other people there, it was a no-win situation. It was a small firm and the union just didn’t have enough clout.
The country was in recession, unemployment high, so I went on the piss. There was doom and gloom everywhere. I’d started thinking seriously about politics, about the way big business and the ruling class affect us in everyday life. It wasn’t enough to say it didn’t matter. I suppose it was a natural progression from the music that helped form a lot of our views. It had nothing to do with Marx, Engels and the students in the SWP, more a question of basic fairness. It was obvious the Tories and Tory-controlled press were out to destroy the unity of ordinary working people, but it was mental the number of blokes I knew who were anti-union, ordinary men earning shit wages for long hours but who believed what they were being told. They took the piss out of the posh wankers on the telly, but still accepted what they said as the truth. This was southern England, and there wasn’t the same tradition of trade unionism as in the North. Too many people were accepting dog-eat-dog logic, but more than that they felt that no matter what they did it wouldn’t make any difference.
Chris had given up his thieving ways by now and was working for a builder’s, Dave in the same shop he’d been in since leaving school, hoping he’d be made manager, which was on the cards. Both of them loved Thatcher and hated the unions, but really it was the students and posh wankers they saw running the Labour Party, people without a clue telling them how to behave, that ideology was more important than the rent. The press talked a lot about muggers at the turn of the decade, and pushing the idea that the white man was being pissed on. The Falklands came and went, building up for the miners’ strike of 1984, the collapse of the unions and Labour Party. There was the feeling people were being bought off in the South, as long queues formed for mortgages and tax cuts became more important than welfare.
After Manors I spent a few months on the dole, doing nothing for the first time in years, but I was soon broke and looking for work, found it in a pub. It was alright. I never really made enough to live properly, but ended up staying till I left for Hong Kong, drifting and drinking, listening to Smiles, watching him fall apart. I was in a rut and Hong Kong suited me. That was my working world, and it’s easy to put in order, chunks of routine. The rest of it is harder. By the end I was rooted to the spot, going nowhere.
The train rolls through Manchuria, tall chimney outlines stacked against an orange sky, black rifles and burning nozzles at right angles to the land, furnaces filling the horizon, the ground flat and empty except for the shrubs and stubbed grass that could easily be barbed wire. I lean out of the window and feel the cold air wash my face, force my eyes shut. If there’s such a thing as the edge of the world then this train is going to follow Columbus straight over the side. Sunsets look better when humans are involved, sticking concrete and steel in the postcard shot, messing up the perfect picture. I match the skyscrapers of Hong Kong with the Tibetan Himalayas, glass panels and towers of light topped by ice-white snowcaps. The scene outside has both, industry jarring with the rough spread of the grasslands, Red Army brick soldiers out on parade watching the Trans-Siberian Express rumble towards the Soviet border and a long old hike across Siberia to Russia and Europe.
The name Manchuria has this magic ring, impressions picked up from the telly when I was a kid, images I never knew I carried in my head, opium smokers and armour-plated warlords, sorcerers and horsemen, but from where I’m standing now it looks like another economic zone in the People’s Republic, more than a billion people being forced deeper into industrialisation, a totalitarian state where dissidents are buried away in concentration camps and criminals shot in the head. Hong Kong is more traditional Chinese in a lot of ways, in the back alleys and side streets, away from the air-conditioned shops and chilled expatriate bars, multinational banking centres and electronics outlets. The communist regime has a new plan for mainland China, while in among the trading blocks of Hong Kong people stick to the old ways. I might’ve been in Asia for three years now, but it’s still special travelling through Manchuria like this, Inner Mongolia in the north somewhere, names in a geography book, places you never think you’ll see. I stay by the window for ages, back from the wind most of the time, leaning into it for a while, back and forward, water oozing from my eyes when the pressure builds, blowing the bad memories away.
When night comes it’s proper darkness, pure nothingness, a solid wall of black, reflections cutting into the glass from behind me. The Russian matron who runs the carriage squeezes past, pushing me forward, her accent fresh off a spy film. This is her carriage and I’m one of the people she’s looking after. She pinches my face hard with powerful fingers when I turn my head, showing me I’m in safe hands. There’s nothing to see outside now, and the wind is colder, so I pull the panel up and go back in the compartment I’m sharing with a German and his Taiwanese girlfriend, the spoilt daughter of a gemstone merchant who plays on her looks, excited she’s off to Munich. Then there’s this hippy in the corner, a superior expression covering his ugly mug. Never trust a hippy. I nod anyway and he blanks me, isn’t going to lower himself. He’s dolled up in a Chairman Mao suit, the cap sitting on his rucksack. There’s two Mao choices on offer in China, green and blue, and he’s chosen the green combat look. He thinks he’s the bollocks parading around in peasant wear, and even though his passport says he’s Italian it’s nothing to do with where he comes from. His arrogance is international. I’ve seen enough of these wankers to know what they’re about. He’ll be home soon, running through his adventures, boasting for a couple of years before signing on as a lawyer or banker.
I want to grab him round the throat and shake the cockiness out of his stuck-up hea
d, nut him for fun, but instead I climb up to my bunk, lay flat out staring at the ceiling. I’m a lover not a fighter. That’s what I say anyway, three or four times till I start believing it, even though I haven’t had any sex since Hong Kong, not a sniff. Mind you, when you’re dossing in dormitories trying to make the yuan stretch, you don’t exactly meet the tastiest women. It’s mostly hairies, but I’ve never fancied that sort. I agree with the equality view, of course I do, but I like punk girls. Nothing looks better than a peroxide blonde in a PVC miniskirt, high heels and fishnet stockings, thick black mascara over flashing eyes. The toffs say it’s a tarty look, shows a lack of class, but out in the real world the porn actresses are long-haired dolly birds in thongs and perfect tans, the cocaine sniffers of Miami versus the snakebite drinkers of Britain. It’s a way of thinking, that the mainstream is right no matter what it does, just as long as the trousers are expensive and the hair coiffured. Appearance over content. Same old story.
The carriage ceiling is four feet above my head and I stretch out to get comfortable. I’m on my own, hidden away in a quiet corner. Out of sight, out of mind. I fall in with the rhythm of the train, relaxing at last, taking time to form words, rhymes and songs, picking and choosing. I can make any words I want fit the sound of the train, a long line of piano rolls stretching all the way to the Urals and on to England. I get pulled in deeper but come back out and listen to the voices below. I’m tired, with a head full of pictures and stories. I don’t understand the man and woman, talking in German. I sit up and pull my bag over, go through the cassettes wrapped in the towel, two-dollar bootlegs from a stall in Chungking Mansions. I plug in my headphones and click into Billy Bragg’s Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, fast-forward to ‘Ideology’, the perfect song for China and its dictatorship of the proletariat, even though it’s set in England. The busker guitar pulls me together, the English pronunciation he uses giving the music extra strength. I want to play ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’, but it’s too much of a tear-jerker, about a girl who’s married before she’s entitled to vote. I see the face of this girl I went out with when I was at school, and for a second I don’t remember her name. She got married young. Debbie was her name. The jukebox in my head switches to the Specials’ song ‘Too Much Too Young’. I wonder what happened to her. Go back to ‘Ideology’.