Look who it is!

by Alan Carr

  Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, and nothing had really happened in my life – of course nothing had happened, you’d chosen to degrease gearboxes for a living, you dickhead! It wasn’t The Apprentice. I was feeling really low, nostalgia and meths had clouded my vision, and in a bolt from the blue it hit me: university isn’t going to interrupt this hell, this is your new life now! If I went on a game show my occupation would be ‘degreaser’. My introduction would be: ‘My name’s Alan Carr, I’m 21, and I wish I were dead.’ I was becoming a statistic. I’d started socialising with the other workers, been invited to the Christmas party, barbecues, you name it. For the first time in my life I was one of the boys, and I didn’t like it.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ shouted Cracker as he burst through the canteen door. It was a bit too early for histrionics, but no one was going to tell him. He marched past the poster of Linda Lusardi, grabbed a chair and told us what he had had enough of. He’d found out that his wife was having an affair with the landlord of the local pub, the Wellington. Cracker had always informed me about his marital shenanigans, whether I wanted to hear them or not. Bored of telling everyone else in the factory, he must have seen me dancing the jig, off my face from the fumes of methylated spirits and gurning, and thought, ‘I’ll tell him about my troubles. He seems like he could put an upbeat twist on my predicament.’ I’d always smiled and nodded and agreed with whatever he had said, avoiding the tattooed fist that he would often waft in my face as he described what he’d do if he ever found the man who had been pumping his wife. After finding the culprit, he had a plan to get revenge on the accused and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t psychological mind games.

  ‘I’ve got balaclavas and baseball bats,’ he shouted aggressively.

  I started looking at Linda Lusardi.

  ‘Who wants to smash up the Wellington after work with me?’

  Most of the men got excited and said, ‘Yeah, Cracker, count us in!’

  There was a pause, and then he asked, ‘And you, Alan?’

  Well, I nearly spat my tea out. After I realised that this wasn’t some sick joke, I replied, ‘Oh yes, count me in,’ raising my mug of tea courageously.

  What was I supposed to do? I’d never been in a fight before, let alone instigated one. How do you smash up a pub? Do you go for the top row? Piss in the pool table pockets? And, let’s be honest, in a police line-up I’d stick out like a sore thumb, firstly because of the voice and secondly because I was the only one wearing a pair of glasses over a balaclava.

  My already awful day had been made worse by the thought of terrorising some poor, admittedly adulterous pub landlord. As it happened, Cracker couldn’t wait till home time and smashed up the pub alone in his lunch break. He came back with a bloodied nose, but a smile on his face – job done. All the lads were furious – ‘You should have waited for us.’ I mumbled something along the lines of, ‘Damn! I was looking forward to that …’ I trailed off at the end of the sentence, just in case he got a second wind.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘IT’S NICE TO KNOW YOU’RE HERE – F*** OFF!’

  Things couldn’t carry on like this. The meths quite literally were doing my head in. The company was diabolical and the prospects were grim, to say the least. Plus, some of the men had started to guess my sexual orientation. One man who was urinating on a pile of palettes waved his penis at me and shouted, ‘Bet you’ve never seen one as big as this before!’ He was right, but this really wasn’t the time or the place. Boy, you can tell you’re in a dead-end job when the highlight of your day is being flashed at by a work colleague. Something had to give.

  Why is it that with a shit job the minutes drag, yet the years fly by, and before you know it you’re not the new boy, but one of the fixtures and fittings? I needed to push myself. My other friends had made progress. My upper school buddy Michael Underwood had started hosting The Ministry of Mayhem on ITV Saturday mornings, and it awoke something in me. It showed me a life that might have been, if I’d been braver and more focused. This niggled me. Everyone seemed to be moving on, yet I was stuck. I could tell my family were embarrassed about my job because when people would ask how I was doing they would say that I’d died.

  You can see how people get stuck in a rut. I couldn’t afford to leave Northampton, and where would I go if I did leave? London? I knew from experience that it’s impossible to live in London if you don’t earn a fortune, and in a weird way it would look like a step back. Then out of the blue I got a phone call from Catherine who had recently returned from her French Business School. Catherine was pissed off and, like me, instantly bored.

  We met up and wanted an adventure. We decided to go travelling. We would save up and go around the world. We thought, ‘Yes, we’re skint, but you might as well be skint and tanned and on a beach with a mojito in your hand.’ That makes sense, I’m sure you’ll agree, so we started saving.

  I decided to leave my gearbox-degreasing job and get a more office-based occupation that was more ‘me’. Smart slacks, a tie, photocopier – yes, it was feeling better already. I joined the temping agency Manpower, and soon I was being sent all over the county performing menial office tasks for very little reward or satisfaction. Obviously, due to my lack of (any) skills, it was mainly data entry or reception work that I would be prostituting myself for, at £4.40 an hour.

  Data entry, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of doing it, is where you sit at a desk and are given a pile of statistics or names, which you have to enter into the company’s database. That’s it. No filing. No water-cooler moments chatting with your colleagues. No bonding. Just entering data. Temping in an office is no different to temping in a factory; you are ignored because you are a temp, you are persona non grata. People talk through you, and when they’re making a cup of tea they don’t ask if you’d like one. I’ve lost track of the number of times a tin of Celebrations has bypassed me.

  What didn’t help was that I was doing data entry for Mr Dog, the old name for Cesar Dog Food. Mr Dog had set up a competition. To win a caravan or whatever the prize was, the dog-owner/mug had to send in their dog’s name, breed and birthday, so Mr Dog could send the beloved pooch a card on its birthday. That’s what I did from nine to five for a month. ‘Pippa, Bearded Collie, 1989’, ‘Mr Tibbs, Chihuahua, 1993’, ‘Sue, Alsatian, 1987’. Some people had up to ten dogs, so imagine if they won the caravan. It didn’t bear thinking about. So my existence as a professional data entry-er continued: Inland Revenue, Barclaycard Fraud, British Gas. The only thing keeping me going would be the holiday brochures which I’d read in my breaks. In just a few months, Catherine and I would be off around the world for a year.

  * * *

  I was desperate to make as much money as possible, so I became a driver’s mate for Wicks’ Conservatories at the weekends. A driver’s mate accompanied a lorry driver on a long journey, keeping him company, map reading. More intriguing, though, was the fact that if you slept with him overnight you got an extra £100. Now I was like you; when I heard I had to sleep with the driver, I was horrified. I don’t mind doing a bit of map reading or taking the cellophane off his sandwiches, but I’m not giving over my body on the M25.

  After I’d stopped dry heaving, the man in the agency told me that because Wicks’ delivered their conservatories the length and breadth of the country, I would have to sleep in a lay-by on the outskirts of London overnight and then carry on to Devon and Cornwall with a hopefully replenished and refreshed driver. The thought of £100 titillated me, and I accepted it. I could live like a king in Thailand on that and, you never know, the driver might be one of those big, burly ones, with thick arms and stubble who holds me tight in the lay-by as the other drivers rush past the window.

  But no, he was a skinny thing with a hairstyle like a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel. Yes, he was minging, bald with two strands of hair that hung down either side of his sorry little grey face like cheap curtains. His breath stank: every time he spoke it was as if someone
had opened the door of a portaloo.

  Never mind, I thought, he could have a great sense of humour, and the miles would fly by as we laughed our way through the various counties, unable to read the map because of the tears in our eyes. No, he was deadly dull, but what’s worse is, he thought he had a sense of humour. Ten minutes into the journey, he wound down his window and shouted to a field of pigs, ‘Where’s your uniform?’ God.

  Jim and I just didn’t get along. We’d got off on the wrong foot because I had turned up in jeans. Hadn’t I been told it was shirt and tie? Shirt and tie? For delivering conservatories?

  ‘Jeans don’t look right.’

  ‘Well, neither does your hair, but you don’t see me complaining.’

  To top it all, he deliberately sped up and drove his lorry into a flock of low-flying seagulls, killing the back one. So I had the remains of a squashed gull in my face for the best part of the M1. If there’s one thing that I am worse at than football, it’s map-reading. I admit it, I don’t get it, the symbols, the lines, the key. What does it all mean? Plus, this was before SatNav, so it was really just me and a map, and the number of times I directed him up a B road to find that a 2-tonne truck or whatever it weighed wasn’t allowed to go over a humpbacked bridge … Every time I would make an innocent mistake he would start kicking off about his bonus; he got an extra pound added to his wages if he got there within 30 minutes. Apparently, being directed the wrong way down a one-way street by me affected his bonus.

  ‘I don’t want to lose my pound,’ he grunted.

  ‘Look, I’ll give you the sodding pound. Just let me find out what these red-coloured roads are.’

  Once we had finally arrived at the houses and carried the conservatory from the back of the lorry, we were asked whether we’d want a cup of tea. As we all know, they were just being polite, but not only did Jim say ‘Yes’, he said ‘Yes’ every time. So Jim and I and the owners of the house would all be standing there in awkward silence nursing a cup of tea in their kitchen. Apart from Jim, none of us wanted to be there. How much small talk can you make about conservatories?

  Well, that fateful time of the day approached. Night fell, and I knew what that meant – I had to sleep with Jim. How do these prostitutes do it? It terrified me having to sleep with Jim, and I knew him – it wasn’t even ‘sleeping’ sleeping, you know. We pulled into this lay-by, and I started unpacking my sleeping bag. I went to use the toilets, brushed my teeth, and started thinking that this so wasn’t worth a hundred quid. Jim undressed and swallowed a tablet – I prayed it wasn’t Viagra – and said, ‘Night night.’

  ‘Night night, Jim,’ I replied.

  I really don’t know who had the most sleep – I, who was uneasy sleeping in a trucker’s cabin with all these cars whizzing past, or Jim, sleeping next to an effeminate temp wearing a velvet eye-mask and Vics on his chest.

  * * *

  I didn’t get any more work being a driver’s mate. I don’t know whether that was Wicks’ doing or that there genuinely weren’t any more jobs. However, in my grey little temp world it was ‘busy, busy, busy’. In fact, a new temporary receptionist job at Horiba Instruments on Moulton Park Industrial Estate had come in, and Manpower thought I’d be perfect. Horiba Instruments dealt in Carbon Dioxide Emission Testing Machines, and scientists would ring the receptionist from all over the world asking for specific parts and advice. The receptionist would then redirect them to the appropriate engineer, so yes, as Manpower had said, I would be perfect for it.

  I turned up at Kyoto Close – apparently Dr Horiba was so into his homeland, he named a cul-de-sac on a Northampton industrial estate after it. I wonder what Dr Horiba would have thought, as his Rolls Royce pulled around the corner and he saw the burnt-out car in the forecourt and the gypsies’ horses neighing around the adjacent fields. I kept thinking ‘Kyoto must be a shit-hole.’

  I turned up on the first day, and told the woman from Horiba that I was from Manpower. After looking me up and down and muttering something about ‘Trade Descriptions Act’, she showed me to my desk in the foyer. It was just me and a potted plant. My job would be to welcome people to Horiba Instruments, answer the phone and open the post. Of course, like the time a few years back when I’d been collecting glasses and working at the Singles Bar at Sywell Motel, Dad decided to start his crank phone calls. So for the first few weeks I had to endure phone calls from a ‘Japanese’ man with very poor English, usually with ridiculous names. That wasn’t really fair for me, because I was already struggling to operate the busy switchboard, plus there were genuine Japanese scientists ringing up with genuinely ridiculous names.

  I remember one called Dr Fukishammy, a name that would have been perfect for Dad’s wind-up, but was, I’m afraid, a bona fide doctor on Horiba’s payroll. The job was pretty mundane, but the people were great, particularly Andrea, the managing director’s PA. She would pop all the purchase orders and invoices in the right in-boxes after I’d messed up again. To this day, I still do not know what a ‘purchase order’ is. Nevertheless, I continued to work there, answering the phone, filing, typing, but ultimately dreaming of Mexico, the newly decided first destination for our round-the-world trip.

  It’s strange commenting on these tedious jobs from the comfort of where I am now. In hindsight, they seem quite funny in their own little mundane way – the gossip, the petty rules, the ridiculous office hierarchy. But I wouldn’t be doing myself justice if I didn’t mention how miserable and depressed I was at the time. To have one dead-end job is unlucky, but to have one dead-end job after another really starts to affect your self-esteem. You do feel that you’re just a statistic.

  You would walk around town and bump into people who you went to school with, all suited and booted, going to jobs where they brokered deals, had power lunches and made decisions. The only decision I ever made was whether it was ‘family bereavement’ or ‘the shits’ when I decided to pull a sickie. You can see why these people find X-Factor or Big Brother attractive, can’t you? There are so many grim jobs out there that any welcome respite from the drab existence of a nine-to-five factory job must be tempting, even if it means spending twelve weeks locked in a house with freaks. I’m not too proud to say that I would have gladly joined them – I had nothing to lose.

  Socially, it wasn’t looking too good, either. My three years down in London had shaken off what remaining friends I had, so I had no one to go out with, Believe me, I wasn’t asking any of my colleagues if they wanted a swift half at the Rat and Parrot. Even my good old friend and drinking partner had gone. Poor old Carolyn had been struck down with MS, had virtually gone blind overnight and had relocated to Worthing to be near her family. That terrible disease had struck at one of the nicest and best friends I had ever had. It really shows, you never know what’s in store, and it puts into perspective my witterings about a couple of crappy jobs.

  Before she moved down south, Carolyn and I partied hard. Even though she was blind, it never stopped her giving it large. She would always get into the thick of it. Her not being able to see was never a hindrance; in fact, we used to be in such states, sometimes I think Carolyn saw more than I did. Whether it was on the dance-floor of a club or at an illegal rave in some dilapidated barn, we would enjoy ourselves. Admittedly, sometimes I lost her, but thankfully I always found her again – although once it was only because I’d found her white stick, brown and bent, wedged in the mud pointing towards the disabled toilets, where she was vomiting. It’s not the classiest thing you’ll read on these pages, but going out with Carolyn and me was never classy – fun, but never classy.

  * * *

  The magical day 7 June 1999, that day which I’d anticipated for what seemed an age, finally dawned. Not only was it Prince’s birthday, it was also the day Catherine and I were about to start our round-the-world trip. After two years of dreariness following university, my life was about to begin again. My life was about to have a good old shot of adventure. We looked the part, we’d both treated ourselves t
o brand new sandals, and with the money that the people of Horiba gave me in a whip-round I bought a brand spanking new rucksack.

  Dad drove us down to Heathrow, and as we pulled up at Departures I was surprised to see my father crying. That, of course, made me start crying, and then Catherine started, too. It was strange seeing him cry. I’d only ever seen him cry over Noel Edmond’s Christmas Presents on Christmas morning. Every year he would be genuinely amazed when the people’s families weren’t in Sydney, Australia, but actually backstage, ready to come through the doors and surprise the awaiting family in the studio. The family would cry, Noel would cry, Dad would cry.

  But this time he was crying about me leaving for a year. I gave him a big hug and told him not to worry. I didn’t dare tell him how worried I was. I put on a brave face and didn’t let it show that I was about to embark on a journey into the wilderness, a journey that would take me across the hostile plains of the Chiapas, the forests of Malaysia and the deserts of Australia. Would my body be ready for this undertaking? Yes, it would, and without much bother, really.

  It’s only when you get to these ‘exotic’ places that you realise that they’re on such well-trodden tourism routes, you feel a bit stupid for picking somewhere so utterly predictable. The travelling infrastructure is so well-oiled that sometimes you wish you could go a bit off the beaten track, and you end up tagging along with Quentin and Pippa, chartered accountants from Surrey trying to find themselves. Great! No, I’m afraid my fears of finding myself alone in a jungle trying to kill an orang-utan for food were well off the mark. These days you’re more likely to find the golden arches or a Tesco Metro squatting in the jungle than a tribe of indigenous cannibals. It’s a shame really, not because of commercialism – I just have a soft spot for cannibals.