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| Innit?-The Boys | |
| By BrianRobertNeal | ||||||||||||||||
| 04 March 2006 | ||||||||||||||||
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This is the first of a series of stories that was written pre the Buncefield Disater. It shows how humanity will impose itself on even the most sterile of environments and deserts bloom. INNIT?-THE BOYS That’s it innit? Wos it innit? That’s it innit? Wos it innit? In the background you can hear Doug and Jim or it could be Jim and Doug. I’ll go into that later. Doug is the Foreman and Jim is the Charge Hand. They’re not called that but I’ll explain that in a minute. There are six of us in our shift and we mind a Petro-Chemical Complex. There are 4 shift teams and we all work a split shift system 4 days on, 3 days off, 3 nights on, 4 days off, 4 nights on, 3 days off, 3 days on and finally 4 days off. We are to shut down for a week over Xmas and New Year and for 2 weeks in August. On top of which we will get an extra weeks leave on a date of our choosing. There is a spare man and he will relieve a shift man on a planned roster so we all get an extra 7 days off. The reason I’m telling you this is because Doug and Jim are arguing the finer points of this new instruction from HR. As usual they’ve asked if I could have a look at it and sort it out. Between you and me we could easily run this plant from a remote station in one our bedrooms at home. However our American Parent Company ran several plants similar to our one but they were unmanned. That was until one of them blew up, so all such Factories will in future be manned: which means that we aren’t going to be made redundant after all. See the Yanks were going to run us from a remote station in Arkansas, just like the one that blew up was! In principle, chemicals are delivered by tanker and under CCTV supervision the Tanker Driver connects up and loads his delivery into the correct storage vessel. From then on the Computer directs and guides the chemicals around the plant, gets them to react and then sends the products and the wastes to the apposite storage vessel. Finished product is then collected by Tanker Drivers and taken away. The wastes are recycled internally. So what do we do? We walk about and ensure that the fail safes are operable, that there are no leaks from the plant and that temperatures and pressures are within control standards. I’ve rigged up a Bluetooth connection and set up a mobile monitoring console. It is disguised as my work case. See the whole plant is rigged with CCTV and the only areas that are not are the Washrooms and the mess room. There is a plant shift office but since the Yankee explosion the link between the CCTV network and Arkansas has been severed. Let’s tell you about the lads. Right Doug; he will be retiring in six months. It’s tragic the things he and his missus were gonna do. She was a great Sound of Music Fan and they were going to see how many of the famous sites they could visit and have sex there. Doug added that to add a bit of savour they would both dress up as Nuns. We think he was joking. She’d cook pies and cakes all sorts of goodies and on the last day of a round of shifts we’d have a party at the plant, no alcoholic drink but all these cakes and things. We use to chip in and Doug would buy her a thank you treat from the Boys. Then two months ago she had her first and only heart attack and Doug came home to find her dead. He phoned me and I went straight round. We were on 4 days off so I arranged the funeral. That was sad there was Doug, Jim, me and the three others and their three wives/girlfriends and that was that. So there were just 10 in all including the Vicar. Doug does not know what he’ll do when he has to retire and HR will not consider him going past 65. He has gone from being a sprightly, trendy middle aged man into a decrepit crinklie. He is drinking very heavily on the off days but sobers up for the on days. Jim has been a brick. He is always phoning Doug up, he pops round and sees him and drags him out to the Pub. Jim’s never married. He never left home and still lives in the Council flat that he grew up in. His thing is Budgies and he has about 30 in his flat. He’s tall, spindly and exceptionally shy. He’s a good charge hand but he’ll never make foreman and god help us if we get a Yank. He wont say how old he his but I reckon he is 54 and so do the HR files that I broke into. Next is Happy Harry, he’s about 40, got four kids and a big buxom blonde wife. She’s Doug’s daughter. He is one of the card school, but I’ll tell you about that later. His real claim to fame is he runs the Quiz Night that we always hold on the first night of a night shift when a new pattern starts. There are two teams, Doug and Sid-The Management and the other three of us-the Oiks. Harry’s the joke man and he keeps us in fits of laughter and stops the rest of us from going mad through sheer boredom. Then there’s Straight man, a young married lad, failed an apprenticeship through exam nerves. Got a wife and three kids and they live with his mother-in-law. He’s Doug’s late wife’s late sister’s boy. She went last year through a heart attack. He was a good Semi-Pro Footballer but his job knocked that on the head and so he just plays when he can for one of three teams he is registered with. Like me he is a fanatic Arsenal fan. The Youngest one of us is TT-(Teenage tearaway). Doug literally found him in the gutter. He had been attacked and knocked senseless by a gang of drunken bastards. Doug took him home, TT had been living rough. He’d been attacked as he slept in a shop doorway. At the time we had two vacancies and nobody wanted the jobs. The anti-social hours and the sheer boredom drove most interviewees away. So he got the Job. Doug put him up for a couple of months then TT got himself a flat and a lady friend and in a few months time, please god, a child. That leaves just me. My nickname is the Prof. My little weakness is that I killed my wife. I came home early from work and caught her and her lover at it. I went berserk and killed them both. I was judged not fit to plead then remanded for psychiatric reports. After 5 years in institutions I was let out as part of the “Care in the Community System”. There was no chance of me going back into my old profession so I stabbed the local paper with a pin and picked this job. I filled the last vacant post. So that’s us what was I gonna tell you about, Oh yes. 1) Doug and Jim are always rowing, about anything, but near the end of the argument one of them will say “That’s it init! and the other one will respond “Wos it innit?” 2) The Yanks when they took over, renamed the foremen-Shift Captains and Charge hands-Leading Hands. Cos of his beard we call Doug-Captain Birdseye. Cos he’d take it personally we call Jim, Jim. 3) Card school-whilst Doug and Jim are holding debates, the rest of us play cards. Before I joined it was quite unpleasant and big sums of money were won and lost. Then I brought in a Pornographic set of cards and the whole atmosphere changed. We play silly games like snap cos we like looking at the girlies. We’ve now got at least 5 different porno packs and so if you win a round you can demand that the next round is played with your favourite pack. Footnote- we have two 15 minute breaks where we all sit and chat and a main 45 minute break were we sit together and nosh and chat. Then Doug and Jim go off and sit in the soft chairs and argue and we stay at the table and play cards. It’s quite a new world for me. I was once director of IT in a blue chip company. Mind, my case console has made me a bit of a hero. Partly cos I can blag into HR’s supposedly ring fenced system. That is how it is, that we are the Red Shift and the other three are Pink, Lilac and Puce. Also according to the Records, Jim’s Hobbies include keeping Badgers! Just imagine thirty badgers in a council flat! Being able to monitor the CCTVs from a mobile console has proved of great value cos when the central monitoring system blew. We from the safety of the Mess room could identify the leek and shut down the plant without exposing ourselves to any danger. That was not how we told the story and we all got a months money as a tax Free Ex-Gratia Payment. Mind I have to go round before the end of shift and remove all my transponders. However I’m helped by the card school so it only takes an hour. Then of course the next shift, it takes an hour to put them all back in place. What else do we do each shift? Wehave an emergency drill, Doug gives tool box talks and we review our Risk Assessment Systems. We all keep the place clean. That’s a laugh we all wear pinnies and silly hats and once Happy Harry went round in drag. You clean up once every second night shift. For the first time in my working life I look forward to going to work. No back stabbing, no taking work home, no politics, no political correctness and bloody good company. Next Tuesday, TT is getting married, I’m giving the wife away, Harry’s Wife and kiddies are gonna be Matron of Honour/Bridesmaids/Page Boys and Straight Man is gonna be “best man”. The “reception” is being held at Doug’s and we’ve all chipped in for the nosh and booze. See she’s a Barnado’s girl and TT has been disowned. So they’ve no family, and neither are locals so they’ve no friends. That’s us, next time I’ll fill in some of the details. One thing I should tell you is that the wife’s lover was my brother. He was the favourite and so my family have cut me dead. So mother’s got no children now. Dad had buggered off years ago but give him his due he couldn’t stand either of us. My children, we never had any, that was probably the problem but you aint gonna conceive if your sterile are you. One of us was and it wasn’t me. So for the moment “that’s it, innit?”
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