My mum got me the job when I was fifteen and a half; she worked in the office portacabin outside the factory. The factory was a knocked-together shed of corrugated iron, with holes everywhere and fucking freezing all the time. We had to keep the doors open because of the fumes from the bitumen and the dust from the jute. In the corner was a little hut with a fire and a kettle. We huddled in there in break times. The lads were friendly from the off despite my spiky black hair. They were a mixture of troublemakers and ex-cons a few were Elvis fans. Despite the papers running stories of offs between Teds and punks, they didn’t give a shit. Addo Blout, Teddy boy and fighter. Bunsy Owen, fighter and crook. There were a few non-teds and non-crooks just guys from the poor estates; Mickey Wills, constantly having the piss taken cuss of his long greasy hair. One of the gangers was a pretty straight guy, from the kind of posh area. But mainly the boss believed in giving ex-cons a second chance. And they were always pleasant to my mum who looked after them and sorted out stuff for them as some couldn’t write. One of the most violent guys was Neil Stubbs; been in prison for assaulting his girlfriend with a hammer, he said ‘People will learn not to mess me around. He had been picked on as he attended the catholic school but lived on the mostly protestant estate and walked past Harry Cheshire school every afternoon and soon learned to fight well and people left him alone. He would catch the rats running around the place and play cricket with them; the kind of guy who when his brother was taking a bath would come in and take a shit in the bath. But he was never violent unless provoked. He was a fun guy to have around. But the biggest joker was Tom Carey. One day I arrived to an empty factory and the machines silent. Addo caught me outside. ‘Don’t go in, he has a knife and has threatened everyone and has them sitting in the mechanic pit shitting themselves. They think he has gone mad, so don’t go in.’ He hadn’t gone mad he was just fucking around. The machines made felt paper, for waterproofing roves. You put jute in one end, and sometimes had to prod it with a broom to get it through; these days the whole place would be closed cuss of health and safety. It then went through a garnet which constantly broke and the boss loved to tinker with; then through rollers high and low and then through bitumen and finally through sand and gathered onto the roller in 25 metre tubes. Our job was basically to keep the rolls moving, making sure they didn’t break; we needed full 25m rolls at the end. But the line broke all the time and we could hardly work our fingers they were that cold. We all had layers and layers of clothes on and spots all over our bodies from the jute.
One day the health guy came round to inspect and ask questions. The boss and my mum weren’t there so Tom pretended to be the boss. ‘And does any jute or bitumen get into the canal at all?’ ‘Oh yeah, we often throw bad bales of jute in there and empty old used bitumen in there. The health and safety guy was in heaven busy writing it all down. Tom got a written warning for that.
Eventually, we moved to a new industrial estate with a huge new factory. The machines fit into one side of the place and there was room for stacker trucks to shift bales of jute and pallets of felt paper. On the other side were the offices and our break room. It was modern and huge, so huge we could have races in the stacker trucks at night when the management weren’t there. We had three shifts; 6 till 2 pm, 2 till 10 pm and the night shift 10 till 6 am. The morning shift was tough what with having to get up so early on a freezing morning but on Friday we got paid at 2 and went straight to the pub nearby. The Nightshift was second best; the first two days were hard, you felt zombied out till your body clock got used to it, this was also good for a Friday; you went home at 6 got a few hours kip then joined the morning shift for a beer at 2 pm. The afternoon shift was the worst; you just managed to grab a pint in the week and had to work Friday evenings, we got round this by starting to work on a Sunday, so we also picked up our wages at 2 pm and hit the pub with the other gangs. The night shift was also good as there were no managers around, so we fucked around a lot, stacker truck racing rat cricket and when really bored we let the machine catch fire and stood smoking outside while the fire brigade put the fire out. I always asked for jute duty, that way I could load up the machine and then have half an hour to sit amongst the bales and write punk lyrics for my band. The one night the guys from the pub came back with Graham a reformed criminal now a ganger and we proceeded to have a game of football putting all the windows out in the offices, Graham got sacked and we all got written warnings. Like I said before the boss believed in giving people another chance so after three months Graham got re-employed. I had the chance to go and work in a hotel and train to be a chef, so left. The Job was a terrible job, to be honest but the crack with the lads was one of the best I’ve ever had on a job. A few years later I visited the new factory; out of town and super high tech. The guys just pushed buttons. I could see they missed the mucking in and around but all were now making good money. So they were happy I guess but I think they all missed the old corrugated factory where they had all started, for the ramshackle work and the fucking around and for that little hut where we huddled for warmth and told tall tales.
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