Confessions from the Shop Floor

by Timothy Lea

  ‘Blimey! It’s blooming heavy, isn’t it?’ I gasp. ‘Don’t let go till I give you the word.’

  ‘You’re so big!’ says Mrs C. rubbing herself against Jack like a lovesick moggy. Honestly, I hardly know where to look. I scamper down the stairs and out into the drive. I will have to find something to stand on if I am going to be at chest height to the lean-to roof. I can’t see the bedroom window from where I am standing. I get hold of a dustbin and clamber on to it. Above me, the bed rocks up and down on the sill. There is no sign of Jack and Mrs Collier. Don’t say they are at it again!

  ‘Yoo hoo!’I trill. ‘Ready when you are.’

  I am still waiting hopefully when a brand new Triumph Stag convertible appears round the side of the house and crunches to a halt nearly knocking me off my dustbin. A nattily dressed middle-aged bloke leaps out carrying a bunch of flowers. We nod at each other.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ he says.

  Mrs Collier has just appeared. Her legs are wrapped round the small of Jack’s back and he is carrying her round the room giving her one. I forget that the newcomer can’t see either of them.

  ‘Very nice,’ I say. I imagine that this new bloke must be one of Mrs C’s regulars who pops round for a grind when the mood takes him.

  ‘Three thousand quid on the road,’ he says.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I say, thinking that however loaded I was I would always have something better to do with the money — and why on the road?

  ‘Goes like a bomb,’ says the bloke. ‘I’ve just had her flat out.’ Join the club, I think to myself. Blimey! This bird can’t get enough, can she? ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m just taking the bed back,’ I say.

  ‘Good,’ says the bloke. ‘My wife got on to you, did she?’

  ‘Not on to me, personally,’ I say, watching Jack and the bird continuing to hump each other round the room. ‘She —’ Wait a minute! ‘Wife!’ Oh my gawd!

  ‘My wife was very disappointed,’ continues Mr Collier. ‘When you lay out so much on an article you expect it to give satisfaction.’

  ‘Very understandable,’ I say. Out of sight of Mr Collier, his lovely wife is being backed towards the open window. Boum! Boum! Boum! Jack is certainly a champion when it comes to duffing the stuffing out of the furry doughnut. He had better mind out where he is taking Mrs Collier, though. Her pear-shaped posterior has just dealt the bed a mighty thwack. A few more of those and — hey! Watch it!

  ‘I bought this new car to cheer her up a bit,’ says Mr C. ‘I think I’ll just pop in and —’

  ‘Look out!!!’

  Jack has just backed Mrs C. on to the window sill and the bed is coming down the roof towards me like it is on the Cresta Run. As I lose my footing and drop into the dustbin, Mr Collier hurls himself to one side and the bed crashes off the roof and smashes through the canvas top of the car. The windscreen is shattered, the bonnet dented, and the chassis buckled. For some reason that I cannot understand the car radio starts playing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’.

  Mr Collier covers his face with his hands and looks as if he is about to burst into tears.

  ‘Oh well,’ I say. ‘At least nobody was in it.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next day I am transferred to the New Product Development Department under Professor Nuttibarm. Twitterton does his nut when he finds that we have destroyed another bed and written off a three thousand pound car to boot and actually tries to get Jack and me the sack. This of course is impossible because it comes under the heading of victimisation. When Umbrage hears about it he nearly brings the whole factory out. In fact, Twitterton is dead lucky not to get sacked himself and ends up being severely reprimanded for exceeding his authority.

  I feel a bit sorry for Twat-Features — as Twitterton is known to the work force — or Slack Wilt as Plantagenet Rightberk calls him. He is the only member of the staff who seems to care about anything other than number one and he is always running about trying to get things moving. In return, everyone hates his guts. Even his own family don’t have any time for him.

  ‘Boy’s a damn liability,’ I overhear Maitland Rightberk saying one morning when he drops in to borrow brother Jeremy’s golf clubs, and receive congratulations for being able to find his way to the factory. ‘I always said there was bad blood there. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those stories about his mother and Mad Carew were true.’

  ‘The chap is a disappointment,’ agrees Jeremy Rightberk. ‘The workers don’t have any respect for him. He doesn’t behave like a gentleman. Never gets drunk or falls down or tries to rape their women. Always moping around the place whining about productivity. They’re not going to follow a chap like that.’

  ‘The deuce they’re not!’ agrees Maitland, lashing out with his riding crop at a passing worker.

  I am very excited about working alongside Professor Nuttibarm, especially after I start reading an article about him in the karsi — I don’t mean that the article is about him in the karsi, just that I start reading it when I am in the karsi. I am skimming through the pieces of toilet paper that Mum cuts up, looking out for staples, when I see this picture of what appears to be a padded ceiling.

  In fact the pads revolve in sections so that they become beds when facing upwards in the room above the ceiling. It is one of the professors many space-saving ideas. Apparently he is much agitated by the population explosion and how we are going to allocate living space to future generations. I am getting quite interested when I find that I have just used the piece of the magazine that continues the article. Since I am prepared to go only so far in my thirst for knowledge I decide that further inquiries will have to be made on the spot.

  The Product Development Centre is situated next to the Cuddle Chamber and I wonder how much of what goes on in the latter is personally supervised by the professor. I suppose that instead of having all those electrodes attached to your body, you find that they have been attached to the bed. A pleasant surprise on entering the building is to find myself cakehole to gob with Jean wearing a white coat.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, registering that an encouraging glint of interest still occupies part of her enormous minces.

  ‘I got a transfer,’ she says. ‘I thought I might find the work more interesting. You get fed up with stuffing all the time.’

  ‘Very much so,’ I say — though that has hardly been my problem of late.

  ‘Are you all right, now?’ Jean glances at my feet as if expecting to see a washer roll across the floor.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. I don’t like to tell her that the last three disappeared when I had the ice cube blow job. It would sound a bit crude coming out with it just like that, wouldn’t it? I remember how worried the bird who was blowing my whistle was. She wanted to know where the nuts and bolts were.

  ‘Where is the professor?’ I say. ‘I’d better tell him I’m here.’

  ‘He’s asleep,’ she says. ‘He spends most of his time asleep — in the winter, sometimes for days at a time. He works in short periods of explosive energy.’

  ‘How fascinating,’ I say. ‘Unfortunately, I wiped my arse —’ I am going to say “on that piece of the article” but l manage to change direction brilliantly ‘— nal, Hibernian, hibernating! That’s what it’s called, isn’t it? I knew it was something like the name of a football team.’

  Jean looks at me warily. ‘Er — yes. But it’s usually animals that hibernate. The professor is most unusual in his sleeping habits.’

  ‘What are you working on at the moment?’ I say. ‘I can hardly see a bed in the place.’

  ‘That’s what we’re working on at the moment,’ says Jean. ‘Space conservation. Look.’

  She walks over to the wall, presses a switch, and a part of the wall drops forward like a drawbridge and becomes a bed.

  ‘Very nice,’ I say. ‘But there’s nothing particularly new about that, is there?’

  ‘Look.’ Jean presses another switch and a second b
ed swings away from the wall. ‘Meet Professor Nuttibarm.’

  There, strapped to the bed and sleeping peacefully, is an old man with a long white beard. He is wearing a nightcap and has a separate strap for his beard.

  ‘How long has he been like that?’ I ask.

  ‘He started growing the beard last summer.’

  ‘I mean, how long has he been sleeping in that thing?’

  ‘Since he came to work yesterday morning. The professor believes that soon population density will force families to share the same limited accommodation. In order to avoid gross overcrowding, working hours will have to be staggered and one family sleep, whilst the family they share with uses the accommodation for normal purposes. In fact, three families might be able to share the same living unit: one sleeping, one occupying and the other one out at work.’

  ‘I don’t fancy that,’ I say. ‘Supposing you want to go to the toilet in the middle of the night?’

  ‘All the sleeping units are equipped with plumbing. You would merely attach yourself to the appropriate apparatus.’

  ‘Suppose you want to indulge the procreative urge?’ I say. At this point I would like to digress for a moment — it’s OK, it doesn’t stunt your growth. Note the use of posh lingo. I don’t say “a bit of the other” or “a spot of in and out”. That would be coarse and unrefined. I use an expression that will not offend and that can only impress the bird with my sensitivity and erudicy. I hope you don’t mind me pointing out these things but they can make so much difference in one’s relationships with the womenkind.

  ‘Yerwhat?’ says Jean.

  ‘What happens if you fancy getting your end away?’ I say — I mean, when in Rome. You can only bend backwards so far, can’t you? When you start bashing your nut on the floor it’s time to call a halt.

  ‘Oh.’ Jean blushes. ‘There may not be any of that. The professor believes that compulsory sterilisation may have to be introduced. Only certain people will be allowed to have urges and see them through to their natural conclusion.’

  Makes your hampton run cold, doesn’t it? These scientific geezers put the mockers on anything if you give them half a chance. What kind of man can he be, this Professor Nuttibarm, that he dares to pit himself against the forces of nature? As if in answer, there is a long drawn out fart from the bed and the professor opens his eyes. For a second, the beginnings of a smile pluck at the corners of his cakehole and then a worried and disappointed expression settles on his face.

  ‘Donner und Blitzen!’ he says. ‘I forgot to attach the pipe again. No wonder I imagined that I was swimming in the China Sea. We have to build in a warning light.’ He undoes the straps that hold him to the bed and gets out, smoothing his beard and shaking one of his legs.

  ‘It is not easy, Professor,’ says Jean.

  ‘You’re telling me it is not easy. Last time we fuse all the lights in Battersea, no?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Jean. ‘Would you like something to eat?’

  ‘No thank you my dear. Just a clean nightshirt.’ The professor looks round the room hopefully. ‘Any more beds that need a comfort rating?’

  No, Professor. They’ve all gone over to the Cuddle Chamber.’

  ‘Damn!’ says the great man. ‘I feel an attack of total torpor coming on. I’ve been driving myself too hard lately.’ He smothers a yawn and sinks into the nearest chair.

  ‘Tell me, Professor,’ I say. ‘What first interested you in beds?’

  ‘Are you from the national press?’ Nuttibarm looks me up and down suspiciously.

  ‘No. I’m Timothy Lea and I’ve been sent to you as assistant.’

  Nuttibarm nods. ‘That’s all right then. If you were from the national press it would cost you fifty guineas to ask questions. Now, to answer you I have to begin right at the beginning. When I was born I was very attached to my mother and she was lying on a bed at the time. I think that this might have had a lot to do with it. First impressions are very important, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. I remember reading an article about it.

  ‘I remember this period very well,’ muses the professor. ‘I used to take meals with my mother and always the bed was very much in evidence. I even had my own little bed which, owing to some inbuilt instability factor was not very secure. It would move about a lot and I found this very disturbing. I became determined to secure a firm foundation for myself.’

  ‘So you were off your rocker from an early age?’ I say with a light laugh.

  The professor does not look as if he finds this as amusing as I hoped he would. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says. ‘If you have anything you want to tell me, please wait until I ask you a question. Now, where was I?’

  ‘You were trying to find a firmer foundation,’ I say.

  ‘About this time, I became so preoccupied with the subject of bed that every night I would go and lie down on one for several hours.’

  ‘Remarkable,’ I say.

  ‘I was an unusual child,’ says Nuttibarm modestly. ‘I wasn’t interested in splitting atoms and inventing penicillin like other children. I think, in my heart of hearts, that I was still looking for the security that I had lacked when I was a tiny baby. Every time I got on a bed I was waiting for it to start moving.’

  ‘But it didn’t,’ I say.

  ‘Oh yes it did. One day I got in it with Fritzi Mousepuss, and boy, did that bed move!’

  ‘So that changed your attitude?’

  ‘You might say that it broadened my terms of reference,’ says the professor thoughtfully. ‘Sharing that experience helped me to conquer my fear and come to terms with what I call the totality of bed. After that, I was able to get much closer to beds — of course, not having Fritzi Mousepuss underneath me helped too. She was a big girl.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ I lie. ‘I understand about the beds, but why are you always sounding off about the population explosion?’

  ‘I don’t just “sound off” about the population explosion,’ says Nuttibarm, smothering a yawn. ‘Anything gloomy will do. It’s the best way of getting people’s attention. If you say anything cheerful, nobody takes any notice of you — or they think you’re mad — but if you say that the world is going to end next Pancake Day or that tea drinking causes athlete’s foot, then you’ll make the top of page three in nearly every paper in the country.’

  ‘Does your work need a lot of publicity?’ I say.

  ‘I need a lot of publicity,’ says Nuttibarm. ‘Or rather, I used to. I was a Father Christmas at Harrods, you know. That’s where I got the idea for the beard. You can go a long way in life on a long white beard — in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone with a long white beard who wasn’t a success. I wrote to Ted Heath about it but he hasn’t done anything.’

  ‘A Father Christmas in Harrods?’ I say.

  Professor Nuttibarm smothers another yawn. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this except that you seem a nice, gullible, stupid-looking sort of boy and one has to find some way of filling in the gaps between the sexy bits.’

  ‘I’m very interested,’ I say. ‘Really I am.’

  ‘Well, it occurred to me one day, while I was sitting there with all these mothers on my lap —’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I say. ‘You’re supposed to sit the children on your lap.’

  ‘Gott in Himmel!’ Nuttibarm smacks his hand against his thigh. ‘So that’s why they sacked me. I could never understand the reason. None of the mothers ever complained.’

  ‘I expect it was one of the children,’ I say. ‘Were you giving the mothers the presents as well?’

  ‘What presents?’ says Nuttibarm. ‘You mean all those toys? I couldn’t give them to a grown woman. She’d have thought I was mad. I used to take them home and sell them.’

  ‘Home is in Germany, is it?’ I ask.

  ‘No. Crouch End. I sprinkle my speech with a few German expressions in order to make myself sound more authentic. Jean keeps me informed of any old war f
ilms on the telly! “Raus, raus, Schweinhunts!” “Ja vole, mein Führer!” “When it’s summertime in Heidelberg!!” ’

  Professor Nuttibarm’s attractive tenor voice soars into the roof and I think what a remarkable man he is. There can be few people who have turned a personal interest into a successful career so easily.

  ‘What about qualifications?’ I ask.

  ‘The only pieces of paper I believe in are found behind the door marked “GENTS” — if you’re lucky,’ says Nuttibarm. ‘My qualifications are in my head — oh, and I do have a test tube stand I made when I was at school.’

  ‘So you’re not really a professor?’ I say.

  ‘My first invention,’ says Nuttibarm proudly. ‘I used to be plain Ron Figgis. It’s so easy. You can change your name to anything in this country.’

  ‘What about the Rightberks?’ I say. ‘Didn’t they ask to see your credentials?’

  ‘Just let them try!’ says the Professor fiercely. ‘My waterworks are my own affair — which reminds me — Jean, have you found another night shirt yet?’ He pats me on the arm. ‘It was nice talking to you, lad. But I’m afraid that it’s taken a lot out of me. I need to get my head down for a few days otherwise my creative juices dry up.’ He looks around the room as Jean appears with what could be a nightshirt over her arm. ‘We must have a bed around here somewhere. I don’t fancy another bash in that wall till it’s dried out a bit.’

  ‘There’s the expandable air bed,’ she says. ‘But that’s got a leak in it.’ She indicates something that looks like a deflated lilo only bigger — much bigger.

  ‘Marvellous invention, that,’ says Nuttibarm proudly. ‘Fill it up with air and it sleeps fourteen people — or twenty-two if you all get on well together — yet it stows away in the back of a mini.’

  ‘How do the twenty-two people travel?’ I ask.

  Nuttibarm spreads his arms. ‘Don’t expect me to solve all the problems,’ he says. ‘I’m only one genius.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a very big leak,’ says Jean. ‘If I plugged it in to the air supply it would probably fill up enough for you to sleep on it.’