Look who it is! (12 page)

The whole thing was a complete embarrassment, and quite rightfully I got my worst ever mark for that production. But it taught me a lesson: stick to what you’re good at. If you have got the range, then you can play against type, good for you. But I think my forte is light-hearted, comedic roles. Maybe I should leave infanticide to the experts.

U
nlike some of the richer students, who went back home to chill out and relax, I had to work in the university holidays. My family didn’t really know any businessmen or managers who could get their eldest son a job temping in an office. My father’s social circle only extended to warehouse foremen and forklift drivers. So more often than not, I would find myself in some dreary depot in a hard hat and steel toe-capped boots. Because Dad was held in such high esteem, they would bend over backwards to get me a job – the bastards.

I had never been happy with the recommendations that the career’s adviser had given me at Weston Favell Upper School, but she had never warned me that jobs like this existed. Really boring, mundane, wrist-slittingly dull jobs. My first job was for Laxton’s at Brackmills Industrial Estate. I’d saved up and bought myself a yellow Mini which, sadly, didn’t help change anyone’s perception of me. In fact, driving through Overstone on a summer’s day, I heard one of the kids shout, ‘Look, it’s Mr Bean!’

I loved that car, and it broke my heart when it had to be sold for scrap two years later. You always have a soft spot for your first car, even if it has let you down on numerous occasions. The bonnet would often fly up as I passed the 70 miles
per hour marker. It would be terrifying to know that any minute your windscreen would be obscured by a piece of banana-coloured metal. The heater didn’t work, and the car didn’t have a radio. So I would put my ghetto-blaster on the passenger seat and pop cassettes in and sing along, which wasn’t the safest thing to do, I admit.

Every morning, I’d defrost my car and head off to my job at Laxton’s. The first week, I was packing boxes with video recorders. I was absolutely terrified. How could this effeminate student cope with being flung into this world of machismo and ribaldry? These workers hated students at the best of times, but I was the worst kind of student. I was a Drama student. I thought the best thing was to become mute. As soon as I opened my mouth, the game would be up. I had to get more masculine. I had to become one of them. It was my toughest role since Len. This had to work. I had to create a whole new identity, one that would be believable and one that I could dip into, if I needed a get-out clause. This alter ego would have a steady girlfriend whom I would mention at various times in the conversation – that might throw them off the scent. I just hoped they never saw my yellow Mini parked outside.

We started at 6.15 a.m. I’d been told I was taking over from the night shift. I went into the staff canteen, which was basically a room with one of those revolving food dispensers. What I at first thought was frosted glass was in fact the fumes from twenty-five years of passive smoking smeared on the window. When looked through, the nicotine-stained glass gave the canteen a sepia glow, as if it were from yesteryear, a
Victorian workhouse perhaps. But this warming, nostalgic feel was shattered as soon as I inhaled the smell and saw the hardcore pornography on the television. I couldn’t take my eyes off a shaven-headed woman moaning in ecstasy as she was being masturbated over by a gang of men.

Before I could say anything, one old man turned to me and said of the bald woman being masturbated over, ‘That’ll make her hair grow.’

I nodded and went, ‘Not half!’

That made everyone look, not because it was said in a camp voice – believe me, I deliberately butched up – but because I sounded like someone from a
Carry On
film. I couldn’t have said what I wanted to say – ‘Actually, I think this kind of smut degrades women and puts the suffragette movement back thirty years, if you ask me,’ or alternatively, ‘Don’t you hate it when that happens?’

I could see it was going to be a verbal minefield, this warehouse malarkey. I was going to have to be very careful. I just sat there mute. I didn’t want to get involved in any conversations, so I read and re-read the ingredients on my Ribena carton. Citric Acid and Sodium Benzoate – hmm!

What really pissed me off was that I had a brand-new P.D. James in my bag, but I guessed that was going to have to stay where it was. Well, at least until the men in the porno had come; then maybe I could get some peace and quiet.

It’s a fact, factory workers resent students because they would waltz in every Christmas, Easter and summer holiday, laugh, joke about, take the piss out of the workers and then waltz off back again to their halls of residence, telling their
friends about the ghastly people they were forced to work with – and I was no exception. The trouble is, I was the only student there because Dad was friends with the foreman. To be fair, he was doing me a favour employing me in the first place. A lot of the time, I would be on my own. There were so many occasions when I just wanted to exchange a look or roll my eyes at someone. When I got home, my parents wouldn’t understand what I’d seen that day, and I would be left frustratingly subdued.

My Drama student alter ego didn’t stay under wraps for long. You’d always get some mouthy foreman pre-warning his work colleagues, ‘I’ve got that Graham Carr’s son coming next week.’

Of course, all their ears would prick up, and then he’d deal the fatal blow: ‘He’s a Drama student.’ I knew he’d told them because, a few mornings in, they would start.

‘So,’ they would say, looking over at their colleagues’ faces, ‘I hear you tread the boards. What programmes would I have seen you in?’

Of course, typically, not seeing the trap and relishing the chance to talk about something that wasn’t vagina-based, I would start talking away.

‘Yes, I would like to do television, but theatre is my first love …’ This would be interrupted by a giant howl, and I would think, ‘Damn! They got me when I was weak – the buggers.’

Then as the day progressed, I could see the shift changes. New workers and lorry drivers would come in, and although I couldn’t hear, I knew they were talking about me because
they would nod in my direction, do a mincey walk and then all laugh.

I couldn’t help feeling that if I had some of my university friends working with me, it would be a bit of a morale boost. I craved someone to see this surreal factory double life I was living. The minutes dragged, and there was always an endless supply of videos to be put in boxes. There was no sense of satisfaction (could you ever be satisfied packing boxes?) because, just as the last video was placed in its box, some unsmiling worker would deliver a whole forklift truck more of them. Your heart would sink, and your eyes would look to the clock with its motionless hands and think, ‘Someone’s taken the batteries out of that thing, surely.’

My only saviour was the radio. In Northampton, we had Northants 96.6 blaring out from two speakers that would reverberate through the warehouse. At first, the cheeky banter and cheesy Nineties tunes would be quite uplifting, but then the resentment would start to creep in. Why am I stuck in this dump? Why aren’t I a DJ? I wouldn’t mind being like the travel girl and going up in the helicopter telling everyone about the traffic – anything but packing boxes. It got so bad, I actually got excited when I was moved from packing the boxes to unpacking the boxes. Boxes, boxes, boxes, I was doing everything with boxes, everything but climbing inside one, stamping a faraway postcode on it and hoping a kind lorry driver would take me away from this cardboard hell.

Now, chatting with women and having a good old gossip is my forte. There aren’t many women’s hearts that I can’t melt with my cheeky, bespectacled face and witty repartee. But oh
no, not these ladies. Talking to these women was like talking to Dad. They talked about women’s bits and scratched their crotches more than the men did. One of them, Sue, could give as good as she got when it came to the catcalls and sexist remarks.

On the first day, I asked her to help lift a pallet. As she bent over, she went, ‘Ooh! I’ve touched cloth.’ I didn’t think that was the right moment to ask Sue what finishing school she went to.

I remember walking to my Mini at home time. Sue had decided to cycle to work, and the men had gaffer-taped a huge dildo to her saddle.

‘I bet you’ll enjoy riding home tonight,’ shouted Doug, the resident sex pest.

‘It won’t touch the side, what with the size of my c**t!’ Sue replied wittily.

Everyone laughed, apart from me. I fled to my Mini as if it was a panic room, got inside and quickly shut all the doors. I could see Sue in the wing mirror pretending to fellate the dildo. What is this place? I didn’t want to know any more. I just put my foot down and drove out of the industrial estate.

Factory work after a while slowly numbs you to the outside world. Admittedly, with the fortnightly stints at Christmas and Easter, the light at the end of the tunnel was never more than a weekend away, but during the summer holidays you could be entrenched for up to eight or nine weeks. You slowly started becoming brainwashed into their way of life. It was just little things, like siding with the perms when a temp started (probably a student), getting to know the name of the tuck-van lady and, worse, start sharing
information with her. I would find myself having a chat with her about her family, and worse still, making jokes with her. I had become one of them. I used to sit there scowling at this rough woman with the dyed hair and a sovereign on every finger. Now I was laughing with her, complimenting her on her hair and asking her if the rings were real brass.

Factory life is strange, and petty things take on huge significance. People cling to inanimate objects. I remember being scolded for using Sue’s tape gun, the gun you use to gaffer-tape the box into which you put the videos. I had picked it up without realising that written on the reverse in black marker was ‘S
UE’S
. H
ANDS OFF
!’

One of the temps who joined after me made the mistake of sitting in the wrong chair during the break.

‘I wouldn’t sit there if I was you,’ said Colin, not taking his eyes off the porn. ‘That’s Ken’s seat.’

The temp sheepishly collected his coat and moved to another seat. Everyone smirked and shook their head knowingly, as the temp tried to find a seat that Ken didn’t treasure so highly.

It isn’t just the tools you work with that you develop an attachment to. While I was in the factory, I started developing crushes on my workmates. These people, who outside of the factory I wouldn’t even look at twice, were in those grey dreary shifts my knights in shining armour. The way their paunches hung over their loosely fitting dungarees seemed enchanting, while the cheap earrings dangling from their cauliflower ears were utterly spellbinding and just added to the whole, irresistible package. It was as if my heart was creating this lust to
divert me from the world-weariness that was slowly seeping through the rest of my body. It was trying to stoke some passion in a colourless world.

It was only when I said ‘Phwoar!’ at a fat French pony-tailed lorry driver as he lifted a pallet off the lorry that I realised I had to stop these flights of fancy, and soon. The man looked like Captain Hook, for Christ’s sake.

* * *

When I returned to Middlesex after these stints, I felt like a lifer who had been released from gaol. A sense of redemption came over me every time I clocked out for the last time. I promised myself that I would use my time at university wisely and read all the plays and be more enthusiastic about Ibsen and Steinberg.

As soon as I returned to the halls of residence in Cricklewood, Matthew, Ben, Jo, Melissa and Catherine and I went straight to the pub to catch up on all the gossip, each one desperate to get their stories of degrading jobs out first.

Melissa even beat me to it for the worst temping job. She had been working at a catalogue returns factory in her home town of Peterborough. Her job was to take out the cardboard gusset from the returned swimwear and replace it with a new one for the next unsuspecting customer. Believe me, that isn’t the kind of job where you say to your foreman, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll work through my lunch.’

Naively, I thought that these totally dreary jobs were confined to when you were a student. I honestly thought that
with a BA Hons in Theatre Studies I would be made for life. Businessmen would go, ‘Oh my God, this Alan Carr guy, he can do political theatre and operate a gib. He’s hired!’ My timing was impeccable. I was becoming part of the generation where everybody has a degree, and their value, particularly in Drama and Theatre Studies, was not even worth the paper it was written on. Everyone had a bloody degree. It was like they were giving them away free with the Sunday papers.

The really bright young things were the ones who studied a trade like plumbing and joinery. They would be the ones in the fancy cars and the homes with the electric gates, not me. I’m not saying I made the wrong choice. Plumbing and joinery didn’t even flicker on my occupational radar – oh God, no, joiner was up there with bomb disposal unit and WWF wrestler. I just didn’t know what I wanted. I still don’t think I do. My stints at the factory were a wake-up call – this dreary existence could be your life, if you don’t pull your finger out. What are you going to do? I started to panic. The three years had flown by, and I had no idea what I was going to do, or what in fact I wanted to do. I was staring into the future, jobless, skill-less and useless.

I needed a miracle – or a sugar daddy?

My options were few and things were getting desperate. Hence the thought that I might even be able to toy with the idea of befriending a lonely old heir who would finance my acting ambitions in exchange for a kiss and a cuddle – no sex, that’s extra. Sex, now that you mention it, proved as disappointing as the job prospects. University hadn’t turned into this sexual wonderland that everyone had promised. In fact, it
was one of my more barren periods sexually. Mum had told me not to get any girls pregnant. That might seem laughable, but to be honest, there was more chance of that than of me finding a gentleman caller.