Just insane – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

“We’ve checked everything out,” the consultant explained with a hint of exasperation, scanning through my notes. “We have found nothing untoward.”

I couldn’t fault them. They had taken me seriously and given me every test they could. I felt a fraud. They’d spent thousands on me and come up with nothing.

Yet I still felt that there had to be something. I still had this nagging pain. It was similar to how my Dad had first reported his illness. Part of me accepted that it was an illusion, created by tension, exactly as the consultant had explained it. My mind was responding to my Father’s illness. I knew that but I couldn’t help thinking that there was something they’d missed. This pain was nagging at my mind, dragging me down. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t focus on anything. It was always there. Could that really be imaginary?

The consultant certainly thought so. They’d carried out all the tests and there was nothing to see. Yet he was not angry. He didn’t seem annoyed or at all short with me.

“I think you’ve got a stress-related pain. I think you have tensed up and created a cramp. Then you’ve worried about it and tensed up more and your stress has maintained it.”

It made sense to me.

“You need to be reassured. You’ve had all the tests and they are all negative. We haven’t missed anything. You need to relax. You’re alright. The pain will gradually go away. It’s muscular!”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I murmured. I could still feel the pain but I knew I had to put it to one side.

I did.

Over the next couple of months, it gradually faded and I stopped worrying about it. I wasn’t going to die.

I still get that same pain occasionally but now that I don’t think it’s going to kill me it fades away.

The strange thing about it, looking back, was that nobody thought to send me to a psychiatrist. That’s probably what I needed. I was merely reacting to my Dad’s death all along. It would have saved a lot of other expensive tests.

There again, that might not have been such a good idea. Who knows what a psychiatrist might have uncovered?

28.10.01

 

Happiness is writing, when that writing is flowing out of what is in your head there is a state of total focussed satisfaction.

3.11.01

Facing death – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Happiness is cheating death.

3.11.01

 

I went to the mass X-ray unit. I wasn’t sleeping. The pain was worse and I kept breaking out in sweats. I wasn’t feeling good. Something was definitely wrong. I wanted to know what it was.

It was a simple procedure, they took a few snapshots and it was over in five minutes flat. The worst thing was the wait. It took over a week for the results to come through.

I had to pick them up from the doctor’s surgery.

I waited in the waiting room in a cold sweat. I was convinced that it was going to be bad news. I could feel the pain continuously now. Sometimes it was really painful. I was convinced I could feel it in the shape of a round tumour. There was no doubt. I tensed myself for the bad news. There was Liz to consider and the kids. I had to fight it. Who knows whether that was possible? Maybe something could be done! I was trying to be philosophical, but I did not want to die. I was too young! I DID NOT WANT TO DIE!!

I was eaten up with anxiety.

The results were clear. There was no tumour. There was nothing untoward.

The diagnosis was that my symptoms were psychosomatic caused by the death of my father the previous year. I had bottled it up. Although, there was a chance that it could be a gastric or bowel problem.

26.10.01

 

Happiness is fulfilment, satiation and love. Ah, to be in love!

3.11.01

 

The diagnosis did not allay my fears. It merely meant that my lungs were clear. There were other organs that a tumour could be gestating in.

The pain did not go away. I went back in for further consultation. The doctor could see I was suffering. He booked an appointment with a specialist.

The consultant examined me. He thought that it was probably psychosomatic but there was a chance that it could be a gastrointestinal problem and talked about displacement pain. He explained that such problems often manifested in the lower chest region. Maybe I had an ulcer. He arranged an endoscopic examination.

I was still convinced that I had cancer. Perhaps the tumour was in my stomach. I thought it was more likely in the liver where my father’s had been. The liver was situated under the rib cage. I reasoned that I would very likely feel it there – just where I was experiencing it.

I arrived at the hospital and undressed. I sat in the waiting room with a sorry bunch of individuals all waiting for the same procedure. We all wore those silly gowns that go on backwards and do not do up at the back so that your arse hangs out of them. What is that all about? I really could not see the practical reason. It certainly did nothing to ease your anxiety.

They wanted to give me an anaesthetic. An anaesthetic? I was quite shocked. I had thought that it was only a little tube down the throat. I didn’t want an anaesthetic. I asked if I could do it without needing a general anaesthetic. That was fine with the doctor.

It was also fine with me, up until I saw the size of the massive tube they were after shoving down my throat. Too late by then!

They sprayed the back of my throat with some local anaesthetic to stop the gagging process, and shoved the gigantic tube down my throat. They prodded and probed as I gasped and gagged. It was uncomfortable, it hurt and it made you feel panicky, but I began to relax and I could watch it on the TV screen which was fascinating and almost made it worthwhile. Once I had become used to it I was OK and the surgeon talked me through what he was looking for and what he was finding. My submucosa was healthy. Even I could not see any sign of a tumour. Neither could the doctor. There was no ulceration, no lumps or abnormalities.

“Looks healthy enough”, he said breezily, “no sign of problems.”

I was back to square one. I suppose I had been hoping for an ulcer. That would explain the pain but was treatable. Now I still had the pain but no explanation. Lungs and stomach/duodenum had been ruled out.

I still worried.

26.10.01

 

We are the biggest disaster that has ever hit this planet! By the time we have run our course we will have killed off a greater percentage of life here than any comet or natural disaster since the beginning of time.

Our priority is to ensure that we change and become less destructive; to ensure that my prophesy of our terrible effect on the rest of life does not come true; to ensure that the destruction we are wreaking is halted and we learn to live in harmony with each other and the world.

There’s nothing daft or soppy about that!

If we don’t learn how to do that we are, along with every other living thing, completely screwed!

11.11.01

 

The major problem is that we are too greedy. We are consuming too much of the world’s resources.

Try telling that to a meathead hell bent on owning the world and consuming it all. “Hey, look how important I am, yah! I own a castle, twenty Rolls Royces and a fleet of Lear Jets!”

But then we are all guilty.

How many tellies do you have?

Crazy isn’t it?

11.11.01

 

Happiness is when your endorphins flood your brain and tingle all your synapses.

3.11.01

The start of the wild life – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Happiness is freedom to do what you want!

3.11.01

 

Looking back I can see that my wild life started when I was fifteen. That was the year I hitch-hiked in France with my mate Foss. We spent the entire summer camping out the back of a Youth Hostel. It was an eye-opener – different food, culture, experiences and freedom. We had to cook, shop and clean up after ourselves. There were girls, wine, cheese and bread. I was adopted by some older Hungarian girls, had a Scottish girlfriend and was befriended by an enormous German guy who adored the Stones album I had brought with me. I made friends with the French guys, discovered yoghurt, and had a

It was also the year that Foss also took me to the local Walton Hop for my first taste of live Rock Music.

The Walton Hop was a notorious dive. It was the haunt of the Walton and Hersham Teddy Boys. There was a knife-fight in the carpark outside the gig that first night. We edged around a baying mob (mainly girls) who were wanting blood as two teds with flick-knives circled and slashed at each other.

The first band I saw was the British Birds who had Ron Wood on guitar. They had the hair, waist-coats and Chelsea boots. I just had to have some of those Chelsea boots. They were loud and raucous with synchronised beat and guitars. They even had someone turn the lights on and off in time to the music like some primitive light show. It was incredible.

Even more incredible were the audience. It was a bit of a time-warp to the fifties. Bottles and glasses flew through the air. Groups of Teds stood around the dance floor looking hard, with their greased hair, siddies, drape jackets with fur trim and brothel creepers. The girls grouped together with their beehive hairdo’s, full skirts, petty-coats and ankle socks. Some couples danced wildly, mainly jiving, spinning and throwing the girls around so that their skirts billowed out showing their knickers. One of them noisily screwed a very blousy looking girl against the wall on the landing of the stairs up to the gallery while a group of his friends stood around them shouting and clapping and egging them on. She looked completely disinterested throughout, chewing gum and looking bored while he thrust away under her lifted skirts. All quite a incredible to a fifteen-year-old lad. Some might have been put off by the experience but for me, it was incredibly exciting.

The next band I saw was Them with Van Morrison. They didn’t jump about quite so much and I remember being a bit disappointed at that. But they did stay behind at the end and sign postcard pictures. I had two of them. I later gave one to Phil at work, who was a big fan, and lost the other. I think my Mum threw it away when I was away at college.

Maybe it was the fighting that was the final straw that broke that camel’s back? The council closed it down, but I’d already got the taste. Live Rock Music set the heart thumping like nothing else.

I wonder what my parents were thinking, letting me go to a place like that at that age? I think they wanted me to live life and enjoy myself. They probably had no idea what it was really like. I’d always been pretty free and wild and they trusted Foss to look after me.

Perhaps they managed it about right. I’m not so sure I would have been happy letting my kids loose in France at fifteen years of age or to go to a dive with mad violent Teddy Boys!

3.11.01

 

Happiness. What the hell is happiness? A chemical rush? A hormonal surge? A state of euphoria? A sense of fulfilment?

3.11.01

Crazy Zen Beat Hipsters – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Rich said we were ‘crazy, Zen, Beat hipsters’ and we didn’t give a fuck. I wrote him a poem and Tim made it into a song. It sent chills down my back to hear my words put into a song.

It was a silly throwaway poem that I wrote in ten minutes – really nowt but doggerel. But I kind of like it. It’s fun.

Thanks Rich. Thanks Tim.

We’re all crazy Zen Beat hipsters, aren’t we?

But then we’re all pretty ordinary nobodies – Jack Kerouac, Roy Harper, Zoot Horn Rollo, Picasso, Captain Beefheart, William Burroughs, Attila the Hun, Gandhi, Hitler, and my Dad.

Maybe we just want to be noticed? We are ordinary guys. Maybe we want to make sense of what it was about? Maybe we want to make things better?

We invented wars and invasions; complete with genocides and so many atrocities we can’t even record them all. We created fashions and styles and tried to capture life and describe it. We have sometimes tried to right wrongs. But maybe we just wanted to be special and we were all fumbling about in the dark, playing with our demons and trying to make a world we could be happy living in.

So many of us just want to feel important, believe we are important, think we deserve so much more than anybody else. None of us do.

If only we had been loved and praised enough all our lives. We’re all so insecure.

3.11.01

 

Happiness is security and not having to worry.

3.11.01

More tests – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

We are the biggest disaster that has ever hit this planet! By the time we have run our course, we will have killed off a greater percentage of life here than any comet or natural disaster since the beginning of time.

Our priority is to ensure that we change and become less destructive; to ensure that my prophecy of our terrible effect on the rest of life does not come true; to ensure that the destruction we are wreaking is halted and we learn to live in harmony with each other and the world.

There’s nothing daft or soppy about that!

If we don’t learn how to do that we are, along with every other living thing, completely screwed!

11.11.01

 

The major problem is that we are too greedy. We are consuming too much of the world’s resources.

Try telling that to a meathead hell-bent on owning the world and consuming it all. “Hey, look how important I am, yah! I own a castle, twenty Rolls Royces and a fleet of Lear Jets!”

But then we are all guilty.

How many tellies do you have?

Crazy isn’t it?

11.11.01

 

Happiness is when your endorphins flood your brain and tingle all your synapses.

3.11.01

 

Right. Despite all my tests, I was not satisfied. I requested a further consultation with the consultant. It wasn’t lungs and it wasn’t stomach, but the pain was still there and getting worse. I had decided that it had to be the colon. A section of the large intestine came up under the ribcage and that had to be the problem. By my calculations, it could be polyps, irritable bowel syndrome, or bowel cancer. I think I had already decided that it was bowel cancer.

Thank heavens we did not have the internet back then. I might have had a long list of possible ailments and have convinced myself I had them all.

The consultant was very sceptical about my condition. He reassured me that it was psychosomatic and would go away of its own accord. He doubted that there was any physical aspect to my pain. I was not convinced and he could see I was not going to let it rest until I had explored every possibility. There was nothing else for it other than a barium enema.

They dressed me in that same stupid backless thingee that you have to wear in hospitals, probably designed to make you feel embarrassed and stupid, so it keeps you in your place as a patient. Then they put me on a medical couch and inserted a hosepipe up my anus.

The nurse hovered closely watching the procedure. It was embarrassing but at least it did not impinge on your breathing and produce panic. The tube was uncomfortable but I could hardly complain. I had requested it.

They then poured a gallon or two of white barium solution down the pipe. It filled your rectum. It was at least warm and not too unpleasant – though it made me feel as if I were suffering from the worst case of diarrhoea I had ever experienced.

I had to lay still while they pawed over their monitor screens and positioned me in exactly the position they required on the X-ray machine. I lay there trying not to produce the biggest wet fart of all time. The major thing that was on my mind was the desperate need to get to the toilet without making a spectacle of yourself.

Once again I was able to see the results on the screen and the doctor talked me through. There were no tumours, polyps or abnormalities.

“It’s alright,” he reassured me, “it is all normal.”

I knew that I had to come to terms with this. Most probably my symptoms were psychosomatic after all? But I still wasn’t totally convinced.

28.10.01

 

Happiness is when your mind is in balance and is not craving for anything.

3.11.01

 

The art of living is doing and being.

11.11,01

 

I went back for a further consultation. The doctor argued his case that he could see no physical reason for my condition but I remained adamant. He recapped through the procedures; they had now checked the lungs and been in from both ends to check my gut, I had had a physical examination of abdomen and liver but he could see that I was still unconvinced, the only thing that was left was to check my abdomen with an ultrasound.

Once again I found myself in a hospital ward wearing one of those strange backless thingees.

The ultrasound technician was a young doctor. She placed me on a surgical couch and immediately lifted up the front of my smock to expose my abdomen. I found myself once again wondering what was the point of having a smock that had no back? but I did not put it in words. She unceremoniously plonked a big dollop of cold gel on my abdomen, which made me jump, and proceeded to smear it around.

I had this strange feeling that I had become pregnant. It was just association, Liz had had it done exactly this when she was pregnant. She began searching around with the sensor. She showed me the images on the screen and I found myself looking for a foetus. Pulling myself back to reality I pointed out where the pain was and she began checked, pushing the sensor over the area, in and out, focussing on the organs and providing me with a commentary of the organs we were looking at. As a biologist I found it easy to identify them and asked all manner of questions. She was very diligent and persisted until I was satisfied. There was nothing to see. Normality, bloody normality!

By this time I was hoping for a nice round tumour. Something they could identify and say- “See!  There!  That was what was causing the problem!” I wanted something they could easily cut out and deal with.

I did not want a negative result.

She checked the kidneys and liver, even had a look at the spleen. I was sure that it had to be lurking there somewhere. Everywhere she looking it came back with normality. The gut checked out, gall bladder had no sign of stones.

We ran out of places to look.

I had to face the truth – I was healthy.

28.10.01

 

Happiness is when you are completely crazy and don’t know what the fuck is going on.

3.11.01

Death in the bakery – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Our vision is only clear in two small pools, like headlights, in front of our sight. Our brain makes up the rest and pretends that it is sharp and clear. Most of us go through all our lives without even knowing this.

Most of the world we live in is made up by our brains.

We males vie with each other in some primordial ritual to establish a pecking order of status. Our position is set by the chemicals we exude from our armpits and groin. Unknowingly we respond to the chemicals exuded from others. Most of what we respond to, we are not even aware of.

Our subliminal responses reveal our disposition. Our status is based upon the respect we command via these chemicals and other subtle messages from our body language. The game never ceases as our position is always precarious. We are only as good as the messages we are sending out. In order to reinforce our status some people in power bully and arrogantly show off.

Females respond to the signals we transmit in different ways to us. They respond to status. Females also respond to the subliminal messages they are putting out. They have their own pecking order.

8.11.01

 

 

According to the rumour in the bakery, two people were horribly killed while I worked in there.

One was a mechanic who was fixing the ovens.

The ovens were long tunnels through which a conveyor belt took the baking trays. There were many of these ovens all lined up next to each other. The bread moved through the ovens in a constant flow. It was all automatic. A machine plopped a lump of dough into a bread-pan and a conveyor belt took the dough through the long tunnel of the oven. The journey took twenty minutes, which was the length of time necessary to cook the bread. It emerged at the other end as a standardised, fully-cooked loaf.

On this occasion, something had gone wrong inside one of the ovens and the only way of dealing with it was to get an engineer to crawl up inside the oven and fix it. Of course, they turned it off and let it cool down first. The trouble was that someone inadvertently turned it on. It wasn’t on long enough to cook the guy it seemed he got mangled up by mechanical arms inside the guts of the oven that were there to keep the bread-pans in line! At least that was the tale that was circulating.

The other tragedy was when a man was killed in the flour storage bins. These were huge storage bins, circular and tapering. They were about thirty foot high and twenty-foot across. When they were emptied someone had to go down into them with a broom on a long handle and dislodge any flour that was sticking to the sides of the hopper. It was a very dusty, unpleasant job.

While this guy was down in the hopper sweeping out, someone, not knowing he was in there, pressed a button and a load of flour was deposited into the hopper, tons and tons of the stuff. The guy was buried and completely suffocated in the fine powder.

5.11.01

 

One push of one button could be enough to finish everything. Easily done.

7.11.01

Working for the Council – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Tribal. We are tribal. We are xenophobic and territorial. We are designed to function in small groups. We have to recognise and fight that if we ever hope to be civilised.

7.11.01

 

When I was eighteen I obtained a job working for the council as a road sweeper. I enjoyed it. The group of road-sweepers I worked with were a bunch of communists and revolutionaries. We met up for two-hour tea-breaks, discussing what was wrong with the country and how the whole social order should be overthrown. Then we went back to work.

Taking a two-hour break was OK as long as you knew the system.

I soon learnt that the foreman came round to check on me at exactly the same time every day. All I had to do was to be working hard for when he turned up.

I also sussed out that the public only saw you when you were working. If they did not see you they forgot you existed. I developed a strategy. I worked extremely hard when I was on the job. I did all manner of things over and above the call of duty. I weeded and cleared litter and leaves from hedges. Then I hid my barrow and headed off home or to the café. I only worked for half the time but whenever anyone saw me I was going at a feverish pace.

People were impressed. They’d never seen such an energetic road sweeper. Some actually phoned in to praise my industry and accomplishments, which was unprecedented. I was the sweeper who was clearing out under hedges and pulling up weeds. Nobody ever rang in to say I was only doing a three hour day and was sitting around drinking tea and gabbing most of the day. That’s because they never knew.

One weekend I wanted to take the Friday off to make a long weekend. There was a Rock festival on that I wanted to get to. I was in a dilemma because I could not afford to lose pay. I had a story sorted for the foreman for when he came on his rounds and I was not to be found. I had been caught short and I’d gone to the loo. I thought I could get away with it.

On the Thursday I worked for five hours and went overboard. I dragged stuff out from under hedges that had been there since Alfred had been worrying about the Danes. By the time I had finished I had left heaps of rubbish all the way along my route to demonstrate how hard I had been working.

On Monday the foreman came round early. He seemed cross. I was preparing myself to confess and take the consequences. I suspected he would dock my pay and give me a ticking off but there was a chance that I would be summarily sacked. Too late now to do anything about it. I was resigned to my fate.

“You realise the problems you’ve caused?” He started, glaring at me.

I hung my head, mulling over what I could possibly say in my defence.

“You collected so much rubbish on Friday that the men refused to pick it all up. We had to give two men three hours overtime to collect it!”

I couldn’t quite believe my ears. I looked up at him in astonishment.

“You’re only here for the summer,” he admonished. “You don’t have to kill yourself. Slow down a bit and take it easy!”

It was quite amusing – I was being bollocked for working too hard on the day I’d skived off.

5.11.01

 

Some people seek out friends in order to gossip about trivia concerning their everyday lives.

11.10.01

 

We humans are strange creatures.

We are obsessed with status and power.

We construct huge edifices to our glory. We swank around dripping with jewellery. We festoon our homes with priceless artwork. We fill our lives with labour-saving devices.

We are also incredibly inquisitive.

We use our skills to travel the web in search of knowledge and entertainment. We analyse atoms and explore the reaches of space. We build machines to explore the bottoms of the oceans, the edges of the stratosphere and the far limits of the solar system. We extend the limits of our senses with instruments and supersede the limits of our powers with machines.

We are ingenious.

We construct vast, complex civilisations with cities, commerce and philosophy. Our ideas exceed our capacity to understand them. Our tools are now so complex few of us now understand the principles upon which they are constructed.

Yet for all our intelligence and cunning we still behave like the most primitive of animals. We are violent, cruel, tribal and belligerent.

Are we ever going to grow up?

8.11.01

The vicious cruelty gene – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

One day I will die and all my things will be divided up. Some will go to friends as mementoes. Some will be distributed to the family. Liz will keep some of them. My kids will have some. I will take pleasure in knowing that things will go to people that might get them out from time to time and think of me. I don’t know why that is? It will not matter to me. I shall be dead.

26.10.01

 

Perhaps it is necessary to wield the bomb and bullet and just eradicate all the evil bastards! Get rid of all the genes that breed fascists and torturers in one fell swoop!

It seems so easy!

But that’s frustration talking. Nothing is easy. It is likely that we all have the nasty genes. We all enjoy destruction, we all love cruelty. It is merely that most of us are better at suppressing it, or have never found ourselves in situations that are conducive to our nasty side becoming developed or expressed. But it is latent in us.

We have descended from the people that built Shakespeare’s Globe – but we also descended from the people who designed the pits for cockfighting, bear-baiting and bull-baiting that took place next door to the Globe. We are still the same as the people who organised the rules for blinding the bears, badgers and dogs and ripping their claws out to make the baiting more of a spectacle.

We designed the bullrings and flocked to them in our thousands, to bring the kids and have a family outing full of laughter and excitement, cheering as the animals were jabbed and speared and stabbed and teased or ripped apart before our eyes. The more bellows of pain and gore the better. What a day out for the family!

We are the descendants of those people. I do not think we have changed much in a few hundred years. The Taliban and Isis demonstrated that very clearly.

You can imagine the conversations around the family table a few hundred years ago. ‘Perhaps tomorrow we could go to the execution? I’ve heard they’ve got some new techniques. There are these wicked curved things they use to rip the entrails out and then they burn the guts while they are still attached and to the dirty criminals. I bet that makes the eyes water. More than merely crushing bollocks or pouring molten lead in ears. Then they have these great shire horses that they use to rip their legs and arms off. Bet that makes them scream?’

‘What fun!’

Perhaps we should just do the world a favour and do away with ourselves, slit our own throat, rip our own nails out, poke red hot pins in our own eyes?

Wouldn’t that be fun?

Sometimes, I think that there is something intrinsically wrong with the whole human race and that the world would be better off without us. Then a crisis comes along and there is always a multitude of kind people risking their own lives to help others or rescue an injured animal – every day a million acts of selfless kindness.

13.10.01

 

You can’t put your own aspirations on your kids. I think my Dad gave me a platform on which to build, but my life is nothing like his.

12.10.01

 

How many times have I let people down?

26.10.01

 

I’m guilty of playing the material game. I’ve surrounded myself with possessions, all of which seem important to me. After I am gone they will not be important at all.

Some of my things will be sold, some given to charity and some thrown in the bin where they belong.

26.10.01

Fred the doper – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Our doper was Fred. He was none too bright. He worked in the lacquer room which was contained behind double doors to cut down on evaporation of the volatile organic solvents in the lacquer.

We made a point of regularly visiting Fred for a few minutes at the beginning and end of sessions. You walked in took a few deep breaths of the heavy solvent laden atmosphere and walked back out as high as a kite for the next half-hour.

Fred worked in there all day.

“I love my job,” he told me. “I don’t take holidays even. I’m never sick. I miss it when I go home. I love my job.”

You felt like telling him to take a tub of the lacquer home with him so he could go away for a week. He could sniff it whenever he got the urge!

Fred must have been a complete addict without even knowing it. Heaven knows what it was doing to his liver or his brain! Perhaps he wasn’t quite so loopy when he started the job! Doesn’t bear thinking about.

You’d never get away with allowing anybody to work in those conditions under Health & Safety these days. Management must have known. They did not care!

5.11.01

 

Some people play sport and run around a field trying to knock a round object between two posts.

11.10.01

 

My friend Bali worked in a different part of the factory. He had a face pitted with smallpox scars. He’d got the disease as a baby in Pakistan and miraculously survived. He was a Muslim.

One day we were in the canteen having lunch. I had sausage and chips and Bali decided he’d have sausage and chips as well.

On the way out of the canteen, a thought came into my head.

“I thought you Muslims didn’t eat pork?”

He looked at me in horror as he digested the content of my words. He’d obviously thought they were beef sausages. Then he violently emptied the contents of his stomach over me and the corridor in one great liquid jet.

I wished I hadn’t asked.

5.11.01

 

Some people gyrate and flail around to rhythmical sounds. Some spend years learning how to use instruments to make rhythmical sounds for others to gyrate to.

11.10.01

 

 

Tribal. We are tribal. We are xenophobic and territorial. We are designed to function in small groups. We have to recognise and fight that if we ever hope to be civilised.

7.11.01

Loudspeaker cones – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

When I was seventeen I took this holiday job at Marconi making loudspeaker cones. It was a horrible, grubby factory. The machines and systems were labour intensive and the whole practice did not seem to have changed for fifty years. What made it worse was that it was a particularly hot summer so you were always sweaty and uncomfortable. It was frustrating as you could get a glimpse through the fanlight windows of a patch of beautiful blue sky. You imagined your friends out there chatting up the girls, swimming, lazing about, while you were stuck inside melting away in tedium. I’d signed up for ten weeks; ten weeks of utter boredom. I was very apprehensive but I needed the money.

The foreman showed me to my machine. It was a horrible squat thing. You sat in a chair in front of it and pressed the red button so it came to life. It was electric and seemed to run on compressed air. You placed a loudspeaker cone on to a template that matched the shape of the cone, pulled a lever and a heavy metal plate thumped down which had the function of trimming the edges off the loudspeaker cones. He demonstrated the procedure, showed me the safety precautions, watched while I did a few, then he nodded to me and disappeared.

I smiled around at the rest of my crew who were all staring at me. They glowered back at me. A good start.

The procedure was simple. Someone brought a heap of untrimmed cones and placed them in a pile at my side. With my left hand, I picked up a cone and placed it on a mould matching the shape of the cone. You withdrew your hand and pulled a lever with your right hand. This was like a fruit machine except it set a process into operation. This process caused a hiss of air and a cutter stamped down and trimmed the edges off the cone and then went up again. This cutter came down with enormous force. You knew that if your hand were in the way it would be taken off, crushed and severed. Fortunately, there was a safety shield that came down when you pulled the lever that was supposed to ensure this couldn’t happen. I didn’t experiment. You then took the trimmed cone off with your right hand and put it in a pile on your right.

There were a number of things that could go wrong. If you put the cone on crookedly it got ruined. If you knocked the pile they went all over the floor. If you were clumsy you could drop your cones. If you weren’t paying attention you lost the rhythm the whole procedure went to pieces. The process required a degree of coordination. You had to learn it in order to get your speed up. Ho hum.

Once you had the hang of it you reached a point where you were picking up, placing, pulling, taking off so that you were doing the two processes simultaneous with both hands doing different things at the same time. But this took a bit of time to get right. It was a bit like tapping your head while rubbing your belly.

You were there from 8.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. and most people then did an hour’s overtime until 6.00 p.m. You worked 5 days and then on Saturday morning up until midday (on time and a quarter). You had a break for fifteen minutes at 10.00 a.m. and lunch was between 12.00 noon and 1.00 p.m. You had to clock in and out. If you were three minutes late they docked you 15 minutes pay, ten minutes late and it was 30 minutes pay etc. We were paid by the hour with a large percentage being based on piecework. This was worked out for the whole line based on the number of completed cones you produced in a day. There was a formula. It meant that the pay of everyone in your line was determined by the speed of the slowest member.

There were a lot of lines. Each line was based on a different size or shape of cone.

My team consisted of a pulper (he prepared and maintained he consistency of the pulp used to make the cone – it had to be kept at a precise density), a sucker (he sucked the wood pulp onto a moulded suction end – this was considered semi-skilled as he had to suck exactly the right thickness onto his moulded end), a drier (he dried the cones), a centre puncher (he had a machine like mine that punched a hole in the middle), a trimmer (me), a doper (he dipped the cones in lacquer) and a gatherer (his job was to move the cones down the line so that you never ran out and pack them at the end). My team, like all the others, were entirely male. The only females in the place worked as secretaries in the office.

My colleagues, involved in making six-inch oval cones, introduced themselves to me in the toilets during the first break. They gathered around me and threatened me, punched me a few times, and generally promised me further attention, with various menaces, if I didn’t speed up. It seemed I was slowing the line down. I was committing the cardinal sin of losing all of them pay. I had better shape up quick and get my speed up or they would assist me by providing me with an incentive (though how you could work faster with broken fingers, fractured ribs and squashed testicles was beyond me). Fortunately, I’d managed to get the rhythm going and by the end of the day and managed to up my rate to that of my fellows. They seemed satisfied.

Once you’d mastered the technique the enemy was boredom. The minutes dragged. To say it was tedious was to understate the mind-numbing monotony. After a week I’d run out of songs to hum.

I designed a chart and stuck it on the wall by my trimmer. I’d plotted all the hours I was going to have to work in my ten weeks. At the end of a session, I crossed the hours off. I could see it slowly melt away – but at least my moment of salvation was visible.

Harry, our sucker and team leader, came past my work station one break. He was retiring at the end of the summer following his sixty-fifth birthday. He’d told me that he had started working there at the age of eleven, sweeping floors, and claimed to have got in fifty-four years without a day’s illness. He looked at my chart and asked what it was. I explained that I was checking off my hours. He glared at it and then ripped it off the wall and threw it in the bin.

5.11.01

 

 

Some people spend their life watching soap operas about the ordinary, everyday life of fictitious characters.

11.10.01

 

 

Ninety per cent of all we do is subliminal. We don’t even understand the reasons for our most basic behaviour. We make it up as we go along. What lies behind the things we do? We go status-seeking, power craving, accruing wealth and impressing the opposite sex (or same-sex).

A lot of our behaviour revolves around getting our genes into the next gene pool. Life is sex. We are ruled by our pheromones!

7.11.01