Of course they weren’t really wolves, only two of the
biggest Alsatians I’d seen in my sixteen year old life. All hunched and stalking muscle. Teeth in a
permanent snarl, and eyes that never left you as you past them by. I can’t remember ever seeing a human being
unless of course the wolves weren’t wolves but werewolves.
The two monsters stalked the Scrap merchants and weren’t
chained. They roamed the broken up cars and machinery that lay scattered
amongst the yard. The dirty black and
rust brown of their coats a perfect camouflage amongst the mashed and broken
backed machinery.
Sometimes when I walked along I would be drawn into thinking
that they had been taken away in the night, that my dad’s complaining about
them roaming free had finally borne fruit.
Then the rush of black and brown muscled fur would kick the
heart into fifth gear.
So every morning I strolled past them, mouth dry, eyes
straight ahead, trying to stop myself breaking into a run. Every morning it was past them to the loading
bay where that morning’s papers where getting loaded onto vans to be
distributed to the various Menzies shops in Airdrie and Coatbridge and
beyond. Every morning it was into the
office alongside the loading bay, and the lady behind the desk, with a good
morning, and what year would I be going back to after the summer holidays; this
while she handed me my dad’s papers—the Glasgow Herald and Daily Record—and
took the money if it was that time in the month for bringing the account up to
date.
She was like something out of the sixties, or maybe it was
the fifties. Hair lacquered into a bowl shape; make up that creased and cracked
as she struggled to work the skin underneath; her eyes huge under black
pencilled eyebrows. She could have been
anything from thirty to sixty.
The walk back to the factory was just as nerve wracking and
it never got any better.
Still I always volunteered to get the papers and was
disappointed if I was late and someone had gone before me.
A test of nerve?
I delivered the papers to my dad who was sitting behind his beech
desk; grey telephone sitting to his right, those days’ orders in neat piles on
the desk.
He would read the Herald and I would take the Record out to
Jim and Eddie in the Ducat. The kettle
would be whistling, cups already milked and sugared; bacon would be sizzling on
the ancient stove. Rolls would lay open all buttered and ready. Bottles of sauce, both red and brown, and
grimy with use, would sit waiting on the small table by the window. The sixteen inch TV would be on, the sound
low.
In a space that could barely squeeze in two, never mind
three, I watched the TV, Jim read the Record, and Eddie sat his sixteen stone
frame in the leather seat marked and cut with age.
After the tea and rolls I would know if I was spending a day
in the factory, or going out in one of the Lorries. If it was the Lorries I would hope it was up
to Perth, or down Ayrshire way. That
would take the whole day.
No farm roads though.
Hospitals; factories; high street shops.
And let the sun shine.
Lovely evocative writing of a more leisurely era in the workplace. Took me back to my first job in the 70s where elevenses was also bacon rolls.
ReplyDeleteLovely evocative writing of a more leisurely era in the workplace. Took me back to my first job in the 70s where elevenses was also bacon rolls.
ReplyDelete