I was thirteen years old when I got my first job.
Like most kids my age, I started off by getting a Saturday job. The reason for this was not because I was penniless, which I most certainly was, but because it was high time I got my head out of the clouds, got out into the real world and learnt what a hard day's work was all about, instead of sitting there, playing on those damned computer games every hour god sends, wasting your life and if I haven't told you once I've told you a thousand times to empty the dishwasher.
At the time, I lived in a rural village named Upper Winchendon. Now, if you're an American reader, at this point you probably have fanciful images of the stereotypical English village, nestled in a sweeping green English countryside and roamed by either bearded naturists or funnily-dressed, mounted fox hunters. Also, If you described this imaginary picture to a friend, you’d probably both laugh and use the phrase ‘Oh, those Brits and their quaint eccentricities’.
At this point, I'd like to point out that you're absolutely correct on every single level.
The whole village officially lived under the rule of Lord Rothschild. How English can you get? If the weather was clear enough, I could squint across from my garden and see Lara Croft’s mansion while I had my afternoon tea. Although it was rarely clear enough. It’s always foggy in England.
The only inaccuracy in the tale so far is that I don't think it was quite a village. To meet the criteria for such a thing, I think one of the prerequisites include the clause 'must contain at least five inhabitants or more'. Sure, we had over five residents in Upper Winchendon, but one-hundred-and-eighty year old pensioners who either talk to themselves or smell funny or both don't count as people.
So I guess it was what you'd call a hamlet.
Anyway, when I decided to look for a job in the area (bearing in mind that the only things for thirty miles in any direction was a farm, a post box and a cattle grid) my options for working were limited. They involved at least one, or a combination of all, of the following:
1) working outdoors
2) working outdoors
3) working with animals. Animals which were outdoors.
This didn't really work in my favour, as my rather meagre resume only notes general interests in place of my lack of experience:
1) playing indoors
2) playing indoors
3) playing with computer games. Indoors.
I opened the front door of my house for the first time that weekend. The daylight only burnt my skin and eyes lightly, much to my surprise. I peered across the road at the post box, which was where the villagers went for hoots on a Saturday night. From where I could see, there was a white sign adorning its side. Thinking I might be in luck, I scurried across and looked closer at the sign.
Damnit! Where I'd hoped it had said 'Video Game Testers Please Apply Inside', it gave me some nonsense about last collection times.
I couldn't imagine the cattle grid giving me any more hope.
I had no other option but to go inside, change every instance of the word 'playing' to 'working', 'indoors' to 'outdoors' and 'computer games' to 'animals' on my C.V before returning to the infernal letter box and posting it to the farm.
The next weekend, I found myself standing in the local farmer's front room. He was reading my eleven-word-resume. I think he was trying to humour me by taking a whole five minutes to read it, all the while holding his bearded chin and nodding periodically. Eventually, he spoke.
"So... you like playing computer games?"
"Eh?"
He looked up at me before carrying on. "It says here you like playing computer games... outdoors? How does that work?"
"Oh, no! No, no, no," I said, joining his side and leaning over the scrap of paper in his hand. "That's supposed to say indoors."
"So you spend a lot of time playing computer games at home?"
Arrgh. "No! Heavens no, I can't stand people who sit inside, wasting every hour god sends on their computers," I said, scanning, panicked, over the mess in my never-to-be-at-this-rate-employer's hand. Then I spotted the vital error. "Oh, I didn't mean to type 'computer games'!" I said, and slapped my forehead in a 'whoops, stupid me' manner. "I meant, animals!"
My rapidly-disintegrating-job-giver looked at me, nonplussed. "So... you play with animals indoors?"
"No!"
"You play with them outdoors? I'm confused."
"Arrgh."
"Sorry?"
"I mean, no! No, I don't play with animals anywhere. I don't even like..."
... animals, I very sensibly finished off in the privacy of my own head, before having to try and resume my previous statement as smoothly as possible, "...uh, people who mistreat animals. Which obviously follows, naturally."
He gives me a side-long glance, and said, "We've had four people apply for work at the farm, and only one position to fill."
I was just about to turn around and bend over so he could kick my ass out of the door, when the unexpected happened.
“Well, congratulations. You’ve got the job.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, dead serious. You’re the most impressive applicant we’ve had so far. The others didn’t even bother to bring a C.V.” He then scrunched up his face and squinted closer at the scrap of paper in his hand. “Although it’s worth noting that ‘stick-to-it-iveness’ isn’t a word. A minor detail, though.”
I exhaled in relief, but forgot to open my mouth. The result was a fart-like sound which I hoped he didn’t hear.
“Sorry?” he said.
“Oh, I didn’t say anything. I just did that thing where you blow out, but your lips…”
He seemed non-plussed.
“It doesn’t matter. So, what’s the job?”
“Ah, glad you asked. You’re to be a pheasant beater. Do you know what that is?”
“No, and it sounds terrifying.”
He chuckled in an unnerving way, his massive shoulders shaking ever so slightly. “Nah, you’ll be fine! Basically, it couldn’t be simpler. Every Saturday we got out onto the grounds and shoot game. All you’ve got to do is walk around the outskirts and flush them out of the bushes.”
I nodded reflectively. “Hmmm. That does sound pretty simple.” I was expecting to have to shovel horse crap and muck out stables, so that was a relief.
I was standing in knee-high, soggy grass. My whole body was freezing and my wellies were full of water. This sucked in itself, but I didn’t devote much attention to this as there was a gang of men at the other end of the field firing shotguns in my general direction. Buckshot whizzed past me, and although that high-pitched ‘multitude of bullets flying past and ricocheting’ sound always seems fantastic in the movies, it really isn’t an enjoyable experience in real life. With the gloomy winter sky oppressively bearing down overhead, the whole situation was reminiscent of Vietnam.
My main job responsibility was not getting killed, followed closely by using a tarpaulin flag to make cracking sounds which would subsequently scare pheasants out of the bushes and into the firing line. You might think it stupid of the pheasants to fall for the simple ruse, but on the contrary I think they had some smarts about them: they knew what was going on, otherwise they wouldn’t have flown
towards me. Any normal mammal or whatever the hell pheasants are, when trying to flee an attacker, will generally accelerate their forward motion in the opposite direction. However, these things realised that they had no chance whatsoever and figured they'd might as well get as close to me as possible; I think we both knew that shotgun fire tends to spread, thus taking out the intended target (see: bird) as well as anything in the vicinity (see: me.)
Clever buggers.
The hunters themselves were an alright bunch. Other than blindly firing their guns at pheasants flying past my face, they looked out for me pretty well, sharing coffee and sandwiches with me and stuff. We generally took a break around midday, having already worked for six hours, and we’d sit in one of the barns and share hunting stories.
“… and then the farmer came out and told us all to stop scaring the crows!”
Raucous laughter ensued over something which rates about the same on the funny scales as one of those 'I hate Mondays!' posters you generally find on every single office cubicle wall in the world.
“Ahhh, that’s a good ‘un. Those were good days. Would you like a sandwich?” a hunter would say, nudging me.
“Why, thank you Bill,” I’d invariably say, because most people who have any link or interest in agriculture and farming are called Bill. “Say, does anyone remember that time… mmm, tuna… does anyone remember that time, say a few hours ago, when we were all in that field and you nearly blew my goddamn head off? Eh? Does anyone remember that?"
There was this one guy called Crazy Will. Seriously, that was what everyone called him (though a few people just called him Bill. Naturally.) He was a walking caricature. He was about 600 years old, had Einstein-esque hair cascading from his flat cap, wore a monocle and was, in fact, crazy. He was deaf to boot, and I always expected him to produce an ear trumpet from somewhere inside his ill-fitting tweed overcoat.
One day, the head huntsman (I think that’s what you’d call him, although that kinda sounds like a pygmy war leader) decided that it’d be best to proceed into a small wood. He took some fellow pheasant beaters and most of the hunters in from the East, and told me and Crazy Will to go in from the other side and mop up any game that got pushed back. I wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, because compared to open fields, woodlands are generally confined spaces. Crazy Will and combined spaces was a daunting combination.
“Come on then, Crazy Will,” I said, wanting to get the shoot over with as quickly as possible. He jolted, as if he’d just been woken up with a bucket of water, and swung his shotgun around wildly.
“Eh? What’s that you say, young man?”
“I said come on, let’s see how we do,” I replied, slightly louder this time.
“What? Do what?”
“Pardon?”
“Speak up, young man! My hearing’s not as good as it used to be!”
“I said: what?”
“What what?”
At this point I was aware that he was leaning towards me in an effort to hear better, and his gun was pointing directly at my crotch. I gently pushed it to one side, using my other hand to direct his gaze towards the wood.
“In there! Let’s go kill things!” I screamed at the top of my voice. This seemed to register.
“Good show!” he replied. I wasn’t sure what show he was referring to, but we’d finally reached some level of coherence and set off on our mission.
For the life of me I couldn’t get Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’ speech out of my head.
Once we crossed into the undergrowth, I thought I’d take a moment to try and explain the plan to Crazy Will, although I imagined it was going to be a futile exercise. Whaddaya know? It totally was.
“Right, the others are shooting the other end of the wood, so there should be some birds moving in our direction. You wait here, I’m going to scout up ahead and see if…”
“THERE!” he suddenly screamed at the sight of a pheasant. Before I knew what the hell, he had rested the barrel of his gun on my shoulder and pulled the trigger.
In Saving Private Ryan, when a large explosion occurs on-screen there’s a second or two where the soundtrack goes completely silent. When I saw the movie, I thought it was a really cool way to signify how deafeningly loud these explosions were. I can also say, with a certain degree of authority, that this scenario is incredibly realistic.
My hearing returned with an added, high-pitched ringing after a second or two.
“Jesus Christ! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You’ll have to speak up, young man! My hearing’s not as good as it used to be!”
“What?” I yelled, not being able to hear him over my sudden bout of tinnitus.
“I said, what did you say?” he shouted.
“I said, what the hell do you…”
“THERE!” he screamed, and pointed the gun past my head and pulled the trigger, the end of the barrel about three inches from my cheek. My hands almost made it to my ears, but not quite quick enough.
Everything went silent again.
I didn’t wait until it returned before screeching, “Will, for the love of God just put the bloody gun down!”
When I got my hearing back, all I heard was Crazy Will shout, “Bun? That’s very kind, but I’ve just had my sandwiches.”
“What?” I called back, very aware that I was heading for the ‘what’ circle.
“I’m not hungry, but thanks for the… there! Another one!”
“JESUS!”
All in all, the job wasn’t what I would describe as amazing/altogether safe. I admit, there was a certain level of excitement to be had from the whole Vietnam experience of bloodshed and gunfire (kids at my age were paying shed-loads of money to simulate the experience on their "computer gaming consoles" or whatever - I was living it firsthand and getting paid for it!) But the novelty of the job wore off very quickly, and the effects from being soaked through on a freezing winter’s day at six in the morning took over. All the beaters would finish at about four o’clock, and we’d collect our pay at the end of the day. For our ten-hour day of sludging around muddy fields and being shot at, we got £15. That’s… what? £1.50 an hour? Fantastipants.
I can’t say it was the best job I’ve ever had, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. I may well bore you with that at another time. Right now though, it’s rapidly approaching five o’ clock, which means its time for all of us Brits to stop what we’re doing and have tea and scones on the lawn of Buckingham Palace.
Until next time… toodlepippins!
Zeke
speak_english_or_die_03@hotmail.com
