Life's Fare

by Greg Yevko

  Outside of the actual exercise itself, one of the greatest pleasures they enjoyed at the gym was marvelling at the variety of people who would come to the gym for whatever reasons that only they knew deep down inside. Some would come to get fit; some would come to pose; some would come to have a go at trying to look more like the folks in Dynasty; some would come just to get out of the house and whatever horrors there were within; others, just to meet other people. The people in the first group were The Stayers, typified by those who had a genuine interest in getting their bodies into reasonable shape and to do what was good for them, or at least whatever the latest generic fitness advocates advised. There were also some locals in the first group who took things to an altogether different level, and they had nick-names like Punish-me-Pete, and would push themselves to extreme levels that the average SAS recruit would baulk at; these were people to be avoided. Robert and Maria found themselves hooked on the exercises and buzz that came as a result and were firmly in The Stayers.

  It was not long after joining the gym that Robert broke the news to Maria that he had been offered a promotion to supervise a couple of departments up in the north of England.

  “Birkenhead?” said Maria in surprise once Robert had given her some more details. “Where the hell is that?”

  “It’s up in a beautiful part of the country called The Wirral,” Robert had responded. From making some initial enquiries, he knew that Birkenhead itself was well known as being extremely run-down and deprived in a lot of areas, some of which were full of people either in or close to being in poverty, and had spaces which were derelict and badly in need of restoration, but he had rightly reasoned that nobody who worked at the plant actually lived in the town itself. In fact, the manager of the plant who had interviewed Robert for the post had assured him proudly that there were more golf courses per square mile on the Wirral than in any other comparable area in the UK. Robert hated golf, but had correctly linked the accessibility of golf courses with Nice Places To Live.

  Hmmm, thought Maria, I wonder if I can get a job transfer sorted out with The Crabby? Who knows, maybe I could even join a proper running club up there; I’d like to get better at running.

  Umhlabathi 5.4 Early 90s; Up North

  Robert’s assumptions about Nice Places To Live on the Wirral were indeed well founded. They found a well-built 1920s detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac aptly named Private Drive. The purchase was not without its difficulties. What was originally intended as a four-week stay in a very posh hotel in Bromborough, a town a few miles down the M53, courtesy of the usual company relocation package, soon turned into a three-month battle of nerves for the Marleys. This was due to various sets of solicitors having to wrangle over details of the sale between the two current occupants of the house who were unfortunately going through a rather messy divorce.

  “Bloody hell, it would be easier if one of them just killed the other one,” grumbled Robert one evening after opening another letter from the solicitors informing them of yet a further delay.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say,” chided Maria, even though she too was getting fed up being confined to the single hotel room they were occupying in the interim. There was a limit to how much four-star service you could take when the menu in the beautifully appointed in-house restaurant continually cycled on a two-week basis and about the only thing you could manage to make in the room were cups of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate from the ubiquitous purple and blue Cadbury’s sachets. Even the fact that there was a well-equipped gym and training hall at the hotel as it doubled as the local area public leisure centre eventually failed to compensate for the suffocating confinement of living in one room when you were used to your own full living-space. The young girl taking their order at the dining table one evening had been both surprised and horrified when Robert and Maria had pushed the menus to one side and more or less begged her to ask the kitchen to get them some beans on toast as they had had enough of Fine Cuisine for that particular week, thank you very much.

  Eventually the house sale was completed, and the Marleys moved into their first home Up North. Not only was the house exactly the sort of place that Maria had always seen herself making a home in, but the village itself was like something out of Midsomer Murders, but without the murders. It not only boasted a three-hundred-year-old public house with floors of wide, old stone slabs which had signs proclaiming NO JUKE BOX NOR GAMING MACHINES HERE, but also amongst the neighbours living close by there were three former Liverpool FC professionals and one half of a duo of TV pundits who had recently presented a well-known football commentary program on national TV. Robert used to take great delight in trying to be accidentally walking past their huge properties on a Sunday afternoon each weekend in the summer, as they went around grooming their manicured lawns on their sit-upon mowers, in order to try and engineer a casual conversation with them. He knew the sort of kudos that that could bring him in the eyes of his work colleagues – and he needed to amass as much kudos as he could get, just to survive in that environment.

  Robert’s introduction to his new post at the plant was not exactly what he had in mind.

  As one of the oldest plants in the global, multi-national company, it had been built around the turn into the 20th century, and as far as Robert was concerned, some of the attitudes of some of the workers there also belonged in the early 1900s. One of his biggest protagonists there was the local shop steward, who also happened to be foreman of one of the crews that Robert supervised. He went by the nick-name of Red Ted, which always struck Robert as being incongruously amusing, where something usually associated with being a child’s cuddly toy could at the same time be paired with a word to supposedly conjure up hard left-wing attitudes. The result was a barrel of a man in his early fifties, born and bred in one of the less affluent suburbs of Liverpool who, in his own words, would take no shit from no manager.

  There was one notable occasion when Robert had been tasked to introduce a new work pattern for his crews on both the blending and filling lines, and after many weeks of management discussions with Trades Unions to discuss increased payments and potential redundancies, Robert was leading a particularly heated debate amongst his crews over how the implementation of such a scheme might work in practice. Ted sat opposite Robert, arms folded resolutely across his large chest, his eyes locked onto Roberts’ like lasers, his mouth a straight line.

  “But Ted,” Robert had started again for probably the fourth time in the last twenty minutes, trying desperately to keep the exasperation from showing his voice; he knew it wasn’t really working. “Look, pretty much everyone else seems in favour of the new pattern; it means more money for them for a start.”

  “More money for them that stays,” countered Ted

  “Yes, but most of those who don’t want to stay are eligible for early retirement and redundancy pay-outs as agreed already by management,” replied Robert for the umpteenth time.

  “Not everyone,” stated Ted defiantly, still staring at Robert intently, eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Ted, you know we can’t offer everyone the golden wheelbarrow. For starters, even if it was possible, it would hardly be fair to those who were staying to work the new pattern.”

  “That’s the problem,” agreed Ted, “you know that the new pattern won’t work.”

  “Of course it can work, Ted. We’ve been over it with all the crews and everyone agrees that it is not an unreasonable shift, and especially the younger guys with the big mortgages are really pleased with the increased payments. To be honest, it is only you and about three others on your crew who seem to be unhappy.” Robert was finding it hard to keep the control in his voice, as the weeks of stubbornness shown by Ted to any proposals that were suggested to him were starting to grind down his resilience.

  “It’s a load of bollocks,” said Ted flatly.

  “So which bit of it do you really think is bollocks then, Ted?” asked Robert, trying to break the issue down into negotiable pieces as his s
upervisor training had taught him.

  “All of it,” came the response.

  Robert tried again. “So if we started with a clean sheet of paper, what would you really like to see being offered to you then, Ted?”

  “That’s not my job – it’s your job to come up with the ideas, you’re management,” he had replied, and round the argument would go again and again.

  Fortunately, Robert was spared too much more that afternoon as the hooter soon went to signify the end of the working day and everyone was soon on their way home.

  “Shit, you look like you need a drink,” said David, one of Robert’s colleagues from the office upstairs who he used to lift-share with. “Fancy stopping for a quick pint on the way home?”

  “God, love to,” exhaled Robert “That arse-hole Ted has been winding me up all afternoon,” and so the two of them stopped off at The Diver’s Bell, a rundown pub a few hundred yards away from the plant. In what must have been the early hours of an alcohol fuelled morning, some wag had somehow managed to get up to the swinging sign over the door and inscribe the word “End” straight after the word Bell in big black letters. Clearly, the wit of the locals was unbounded.

  Robert stopped up short in horror as they entered the dilapidated bar and saw none other than Red Ted, elbow on bar, seated on a tall stool laughing and joking with four other men, a couple of whom Robert recognised from the plant.

  “Shit, let’s get out of here,” said Robert, hurriedly turning on his heels, but before he could take a step there was a loud, “Hey, Robert, Rob! Come over here son.”

  Robert wasn’t sure if he was hearing things; he spun around, and to his utter amazement, saw Ted with a big grin and a welcoming open arm gesturing at him to come over to the bar. “Come on, don’t be a twat all your life, son, come over and let me get you a pint.”

  Robert’s brain registered confusion; it certainly looked like Ted, though undoubtedly the voice was much softer and definitely a lot warmer. “Come on!”

  Robert went across, closely followed by David, who was equally bemused by what was going on, trying to reconcile this person at the bar with the person from the afternoon that Robert had been describing earlier.

  “Look mate,” said Ted, putting a fatherly hand on Robert’s shoulder. “What we do at work, is what we do at work. It’s us against them, always has been, always will be. I’ll always fight for trying to get the best deal I can for the boys, I know management will always be trying to screw us down as much as they can; it’s the way of the working man’s world. No hard feelings, I hope. But once we’re at the pub, we’re all just the same piss-heads,” and he let out a hearty laugh. “Actually,” he said, “at one stage I thought I might have overdone it a bit and that you were going to burst into tears!” and he thrust a pint into Robert’s hand. Robert drunk two thirds of it down in one go, then looked back into Ted’s face.

  “You bastard!” he said to Ted, then he too burst out laughing.

  The next day at work Robert felt a little lighter in his step than he had done in weeks. As he went on his early morning safety walk about, he saw Ted across the loading platform.

  “Morning Ted!” he called cheerily.

  “Fuck off,” Ted snapped back, glaring angrily at Robert, and turned his attention back to the strapping he was tightening around the pallets.

  At least this time round, Robert felt that he understood the rules of engagement a little better.

  Ironically, Maria noted a number of similarities between life on the Wirral and life in South Africa.

  For sure, the weather definitely was not that similar, but she was wary of the parallels that there seemed to be between the Haves and Have Nots in both places. There certainly were pockets of great wealth on the Wirral, evidenced by the large houses and leafy grounds that were visible as she drove into the small town to where she had been transferred by her home branch back in Southend on Sea. Customers, more often than not dressed in tweed and country brogues, would saunter into the local branch, often stopping to discuss the latest political issues or societal trends before making a transaction of significant size, sometimes depositing, sometimes withdrawing, but always with a friendly smile. This was offset by the few occasions when Maria had been asked to help cover the branch in the centre of Birkenhead itself; staff turnover there was high, and all it took was for one or two of the regular staff to be off sick and reinforcements from other branches had to be sent in.

  Although Maria knew for certain that she would never want to work in a place such as that on a permanent basis, she held a sneaky admiration, both for those who actually did work there regularly and also the majority of customers who came in. A lot of the customers who came into the branch were invariably young mothers, often steering a pram or pushchair whilst having a pre-schooler hanging onto her leg or shopping bag that had been draped over the handles.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the mother could often be heard asking her sniffling child, her voice full of tiredness and exasperation. “You need to cheer up; you’ve got a face like a smacked arse,” and the child would either sulk quietly or cry louder – Maria could never tell which way it was going to go.

  “Right, love. Tell us how much I’ve got in the account would you please?” a mother asked Maria one busy Saturday morning while she was covering in the branch, and she pushed a debit card smeared with something that looked suspiciously like dried raspberry jam across the service counter.

  After checking the system twice to make sure the numbers were correct, Maria replied that she had thirteen pounds and sixty-eight pence available.

  “Jesus effin’ Christ,” the woman responded. “Tell you what love, just give us a fiver out of that would you. I’ll get some more off the old man when he gets home later.”

  Maria slid the single five-pound note back through the gap in the reinforced glass and the woman took it eagerly, folded it neatly twice and put it carefully into her purse along with the collection of coins that were already in there.

  “Thanks love,” she said absent-mindedly as she turned with her young off-spring and navigated her way through the large glass doors back into the drizzling rain outside.

  Maria considered the options that the mother could possibly have in mind for the single five pounds she had just withdrawn from her account and shook her head in wonderment; she couldn’t recall any withdrawal for less than forty pounds that had been requested from her in her regular branch. In an uneasy way, it made her think of the large coffee table books versus the lined exercise books that her respective customers had queued to buy in the two branches of the book shop she had worked in years ago in sunny Durban.

  Running, on the other hand, was something that was not restricted according to wealth, and marathon-running in particular took a special hold for Maria.

  She joined a local running club, and quickly found that the freedom it bestowed upon her gave her a new focus, as well as highlighting something that was extremely gratifying – she was bloody good at it. One of her favourite descriptions of a marathon began with the lines, “A marathon is a race without race; without colour; without religion; without prejudice” and ended with “…where everyone starts as an equal, and everyone finishes as a winner.” Although a very noble concept and beautifully written, the author clearly had never experienced the differences between the Blue versus the Red Start of the London Marathon; start as an equal, my arse.

  Having conceded that his wife was now far superior when it came to pounding the streets, Robert was determined to hold his own in the gym and exercise classes as much as he was able – after all, nobody else was going to hold it for him. The two of them would attend each Tuesday and Thursday at the local gym, and in addition Maria would fit in extra running sessions as her work would allow. Life was as good as Maria had ever recalled it being, with their friendship group ensuring unforgettable fun-filled evenings sharing wine and swapping stories. Having the city of Liverpool in such close proximity enabled them to have many
memorable and varied days out, whether it was exploring the artisan boutiques in the newly refurbished Albert Docks or visiting some of The Beatles’ early haunts where they had started out as fresh-faced youngsters. It seemed odd to Robert that The Beatles had apparently either ate in or had slept in so many different cafes and B&Bs. “Blimey, these boys put it around a bit,” he had exclaimed as they came across yet another plaque. “I guess that was the swinging sixties for you.”

  “Or the additional bull-shit factor to bring in the punters,” Maria added. This northern air is definitely doing her good, thought Robert to himself.

  As so often with all good things in life, when things are going well and you feel you have the wind in your hair, in the next moment, someone breaks wind in your face.

  Robert discovered that his next assignment was rapidly approaching and he would be returning to Essex. The day they left The Wirral, on their drive back down to what was euphemistically labelled The South on the motorway hoardings, Maria sobbed quietly for a large part of the journey.

  Umhlabathi 5.5 Mid 90s; Essex

  They both knew the score by now. Another assignment, another company move, another house.

  “This can get a little depressing at times,” Maria tried to explain to Robert one evening once they were back in the hotel after yet another meal out in yet another androgynous restaurant totally lacking in any atmosphere.

  “Yeah, but look at the bright side,” Robert had tried to convince her, “We get to try out loads of different places to eat -”

  “All of which are pretty bland,” interjected Maria

  “Well maybe we ought to be more adventurous with where we try,” he suggested. “We really should maximise the variation whilst someone else is picking up the tab.”

  “But I don’t want to be wasteful,” Maria protested. “What if we order something we haven’t had before and we end up hating it? We’d have to just leave it and it would be thrown out.”