3:AM Magazine

By Wolf Howard.

so here we are
seven o’clock in the morning
sitting in a van being driven to a factory
eight of us all signed up for agency work
there’s four of us to a bench and we’re facing each other so close that I can feel the bloke opposites breath on my face
no one talks
and one by one our names are called out as we stop at various factories
soon it’s just me left
just me and the driver
and the thought of my destination makes me hope to god that this journey goes on forever
and actually it nearly does for he seems to have forgotten me
I cough and he looks round and does a double take
“what the hell are you still doing here? why haven’t you gotten out?”
“why you haven’t told me to!” I say
“oh christ! well there’s a factory just over there
you won’t be on their list but I’m sure
they’ll have some work for you”
“oh good” I say
and he doesn’t care whether I’m being sarcastic or not
he just pulls the van over
I step out and look at the big grey factory
then turn and watch the van grow smaller and smaller in the distance
I take a deep breath and go in
‘luckily’ there is a job for me
a woman hands me an apron and says
“your job is to stand at this conveyor belt
and when these frozen shepherds pies come down
you must hand them to him”
I look opposite me and there on the other side of the belt
is a man who looks both young and extremely thick
he flashes me a dumb smile
“do you think you’ll be able to manage?” asks the woman
“I’ll do my best” I say
she presses a button and leaves us to it
I prepare myself
maybe they come really fast or something
I look up the conveyor belt and see the first one
trundling along like some frozen pastry tortoise
I look to my work mate opposite
he is still grinning only now he is shifting from foot to foot and rubbing his hands together in anticipation
the pie’s getting closer
closer
closer
it’s here!
I pick it up and hand it to him
he happily takes it spins on his heels and stuffs it into the box behind him
we both look back up the belt
him licking his lips
about twelve feet away another pie is making its way towards us
I start to ponder my situation
this is ridiculous
he is just as close to the fucking pies as I am!
he could just as easily pick them up himself!
what the hell is happening to me?
I am in a factory in the middle of god knows where
picking up frozen shepherds pies and passing them all of three
inches to someone who can best be described as the village
idiot
I feel sure I was born to do better things than this!
I could at least be the one who puts them in the box!
then my work colleague talks to me
“what’s your name?”
“oh, er…Simon” I say
“I got a bwover (brother) called Simon!” he says
“well it’s a small world!” I say
and with that I take off my apron
drop it to the floor
walk out of the factory
and get the bus home

without collecting my pay

another dole scam

Maureen, the dole officer, has once again forced me to lie and cheat.
This time, to be able to remain on the dole, I have to pretend to be in part-time work as a personal assistant to my friend - although the dole don’t know he’s my friend - who is a writer and runs a small book company from his house.
Here’s how it works – the dole pay my friend fifty pounds a week to take me on as an employee and he, in return, pays me a wage. We have agreed that he is to pay me fifty pounds a week for fourteen hours work. Of course, in reality, he just gives the fifty pounds the dole are paying him to me and I do absolutely nothing in return. So, basically, he loses nothing and I get exactly the same money I was receiving when signing on.
This is called New Deal.
The only problem is that, three months into the scheme, Maureen, in the mistaken belief that I am one of the few success stories she has had since it began, is coming round to check up on me.

On the day of her visit me, my friend and his wife sit in their house nervously awaiting Maureen’s arrival.
Now, to make things run smoothly, I have set up a spell-check on the computer to enable me to pretend that I am working on my friend’s brand new novel, which is part of my job description. In reality I have not looked at my friend’s novel at all, but Maureen is not to know that, and should be suitably impressed.

At one o’clock the doorbell rings and in she comes.
We lead her to the kitchen where the first slip up occurs
when my friend’s wife offers me a cup of tea and refers to me as Wolf, which is not my signing on name.
Maureen makes the first of many notes in her little book.
I try to ignore this. Perhaps she won’t type my name into her computer later and find out all about my life away from the dole, the playing drums all round the world in rock and roll bands, the painting and pinhole exhibitions and the published poetry books containing many poems about my life on the dole and sometimes, quite specifically, Maureen herself. Poems that do not show her in a good light either.
I usher her into the living room-stroke-office.
“Right, let’s see what you would do during a normal day,” she says.
“O.K., Maureen” I say, my confidence returning, “please, sit yourself down.”
I pull up a seat next to her.
I have set up two things in preparation for today; one is the afore mentioned spell-check and the other is for a friend to ring at half past one to put in a false order for some books - for which I have worked out the correct calculations for retail discount and vat. This will undoubtedly make me appear professional in Maureen’s eyes.

“Today, Maureen, I am spell-checking my friend’s…um…boss’s novel, it is a lengthy process that will take the rest of the week.
Maureen leans forward, her head about one foot from the screen, I hit the spell-check button and up comes the word “CUNT”, right in her face.
I hear myself do a strange laugh and press it again.
This time it says “SPUNKING”.
Maureen sits silent, like an angry aunt who could cut me
out of her will at any moment.
I hit the button again and again.
“SHIT…”
“WANKING…”
“ARSEHOLE…”
“TITS…”
“PISSING…”
“FUCKING…”
The computer recognises none of these words and so repeatedly singles them out.
Maureen is speechless.
The phone rings, I snatch it up, begrudgingly leaving the word “CUNT LIPS” highlighted on the screen.
Thank God, it is my friend.
“Hello, I’d like to place an order for two boxes of books, please.”
He sounds very professional, which is good because Maureen is close enough to hear every word.
“Certainly sir”, I say, “what is your address?”
I write it down.
“And what is yours?” he says, “so I can send the cheque.”
He has started over-acting.
“Erm, it’s seven or eight Chatham Road,” I say, hearing Maureen scribble in her book.
“And the postcode?” he asks happily.
“LISTEN! I say, fighting to stay calm, “…I’ll… er… give you the details later”.
“OK”, he says, “thank you very much.”
Then his voice changes and he is no longer business-like.
“How’s it going?” he says, “is the old bag still there?”
I slam the phone down.
Maureen and I sit in silence. After a moment or two I press the spell-check button and “CUNT LIPS” is
replaced by “BOLLOCKS”.
She writes more notes.
I turn to her.
“Well, that’s pretty much what I get up to. Would you like another cup of tea before you go?”
She declines, saying that she really must get back as she has a report to fill out.
I show her to the door. On the way out she pauses in the hallway to look at a picture hung on the wall. It is of me, my friend and his wife, posing with our instruments for a band photograph. I place my hand between her shoulders and gently push her out of the door. “Thank you so much for coming, Maureen. Have a safe trip back to the office.” I say.
I watch as she disappears down the road, occasionally stopping to look back in my direction. Each time I wave to her and she slowly waves back, scratching her head.

Behind her, in the distance, a large orange sun sinks majestically over Chatham bandstand, heading for the river. And little birds sit hidden in nearby trees, singing their hearts out with not a care in the world.

the diabetic

It is a shock to be told that you are diabetic.
‘But don’t worry!’ say the leaflets, ‘you can still eat all the things you used to! If you want a biscuit then have it, just make sure it’s one of those plain, tasteless ones and that you only have about one a week. Or try two teaspoons of muesli instead!’
“The bad news is that you have to eat all the things you don’t like”, I told my friends “but the good news is you’re not allowed much of it.”
Then you ask the doctor if you can still drink and smoke, even though the leaflets say no. Then you get a second opinion. Then you go on the internet and keep looking until you find the one person who says it’s fine. “If you want to go out drinking then just don’t eat meat that week and it all balances out,” he says, “the only thing you really have to do if you’re diabetic is cut out boiled sweets.” This differs from what the doctors say, but it seems to make sense.
Next, you tell yourself that it could be worse, and that works for about an hour.
Finally, you agree to go on a government-funded lecture to hear all about diabetes and have the chance to meet other people that suffer from this new “epidemic”.
So, a month after discovering my disease, I go to a three-hour meeting at the Medway hospital.

The first depressing thing upon arrival is discovering that I am one of the youngest people at the talk. And the second is that we are all fat bastards.
I should clarify here that this is upsetting because I have been trying to pretend that getting diabetes is not my fault and has only occurred because my father had it. However, everywhere I look in this room points to the fact that it stems from nothing but my having been overweight and unhealthy for many years.
I take a seat at the back. There are about twenty other people in this room. I hate the sight of them and have no pity for them whatsoever.
In comes our teacher or whatever she is.
“Hello everyone, I’m Tina and I’m here to give you lots of information on diabetes,” she smiles.
Tina has come straight from Butlins.
“You have all got diabetes, haven’t you?” she asks cheerily.
“Yes!” everyone happily shouts back, as though we’re at some sort of NHS Punch and Judy show.
I look around me. Despite the happy outburst, you can tell these people come from the Medway Towns, thanks to their general downtrodden and depressed demeanours. Every one of them looks like they are ill – diabetes aside – and they all have greasy hair. Maybe it’s due to inbreeding, or the amount of alcohol consumed by their pregnant mothers. Perhaps it’s not their fault at all and these towns were built on some ancient site of violence and carnage, later cursed by a witch or the devil himself. Or could it be nothing more than the high levels of pollution to be found in the Medway air?
I look to my left. A few yards away are the two fattest people in the room. In truth, I look like a picture of health compared to a lot of the people here, but these two women really take the biscuit. The biggest one has large, pink, blotchy legs that look like massive slabs of corned beef stuffed into a pair of tiny doll’s shoes - the flesh at the bottom flapping over the side of each shoe and leaving no visible sign of ankles. And her friend’s breathing, even from three yards away, resembles that of some great, rutting rhinoceros on heat. They are in deep conversation about the price of doughnuts.
To my right is a man in his early fifties, dressed in a donkey jacket, jeans and large work boots with greased back hair and a roll-up tucked behind his ear. I notice a tattoo of Elvis on the back of his neck and presume him to be an old rocker. He seems every bit as pissed off to be here as I am and constantly checks his watch, moving around uncomfortably in his plastic chair. It is refreshing to see that I am not alone in my suffering.
Actually, I would like to once again clarify a point or two here. For one, I do think it’s a good idea to give people information about their illness (but three hours seems a trifle excessive, and anyway, isn’t that what doctors are for?) And secondly, I am not always this angry and discourteous towards my fellow suffering human beings, but you see, my defences have kicked in and it may be that I am mentally trying to distance myself from them and my new-found affliction.
The good thing though, is that the bloke next to me has become my ally in over-loud sighs and bored looks skywards, which is important to me.
I study the rest of the room. Five rows away, at the front, sit a man and a woman, maybe a married couple, or possibly brother and sister (or both) grinning constantly and wearing matching woollen jumpers. They both have cups of tea, which the woman has poured from a blue, plastic flask, and are munching away on sandwiches, as if they’re at a fucking picnic or something. Out of the whole room, they look the most likely to cause some sort of trouble.

We hear Tina, the nurse, clear her throat and finally the talk starts in earnest.
“OK, today we’re going to learn about the complications to health that can occur as a result of having diabetes. First there is….”
I have to stop listening at this point for I cannot ignore the two fat women to my left who continue to talk to each other in a sort of fast, loud whisper, too quietly for the nurse to hear but, unfortunately, right in my lug-hole. It’s as if they think they’re at home watching the telly, blissfully unaware that the rest of us exist. I listen to see if their conversation is at all connected to what the nurse is telling us;

First fat woman - “…mind you, Doris ‘ad ‘er family dinner at the Manor Farm, well, she thought, it’s easy innit ?… cos of all the parking space … an’ she’d asked for some chocolates to be brought out at a special time… you know, just after the main course … so it’s special-like…an’ you know what ‘appened?…they brought ‘em out at the right time …just after the main course…but they brought ‘em out in a bucket!…a bleedin’ bucket!…it ruined ‘er night it did! …but she was more than happy with the parking!”
Second fat woman - “they do a lovely sponge at the Manor Farm!”
First fat woman – “They do do a lovely sponge at the Manor Farm …but it ain’t as nice as their fruit cake…”

And these women are relentless, not missing a beat, ruining my concentration to the extent that I cannot take in what the nurse is talking about - even if I’d wanted to. Obviously, they have not been out of their house or near other humans for some time. Also, the couple sitting near the front in their matching jumpers have, as predicted, started to become much more annoying. They have begun to put their hands up and ask inane questions at every available opportunity.

NURSE – “If you want to have jam on toast then have it! Just make sure it’s an incredibly small amount. Don’t have toast with your jam is what I always say!”
In her notes it must say “pause for a laugh” for she looks around the room, smiling, but all she sees is the jumper woman’s plump hand tear into the air.
NURSE – “Yes?”
JUMPER WOMAN - “We have jam but we usually only have like a teaspoon or so, don’t we Bernard?”
Bernard nods happily. “Yes, we just make sure we only have a little bit,” he says.
“Jesus Christ!” says the man next to me. I shake my head to show him I am on his side.
NURSE - “That’s very good. And if you have bread then make sure it’s wholemeal because…”
The woman raises her chubby trotter once again.
NURSE – “Yes?”
JUMPER WOMAN – “We have wholemeal Nimble. We never eat white, do we Bernard?”
BERNARD – “No, not unless they’ve run out of Nimble. But then we only have a little bit.”
“Bleedin’ tot me!” says the man next to me, looking once more to his watch.
“That’s fine,” says the nurse. “now, if you want a fizzy drink then opt for one that is sugar-free…”
The jumper woman’s hand flies to the air like she’s an overweight Hitler on speed.
“Yes?” says the nurse, her chirpiness slipping slightly.
“We have diet coke, don’t we Bernard?”
“Yes,” says Bernard, “or sometimes diet pepsi.”
“Bernard likes diet pepsi, but I prefer diet coke,” says the married woman, turning to grin at the rest of the class.
“Fuck me ragged!” says my neighbour and we both look to our watches.
NURSE (gritting her teeth) – “Well done. Now, if it’s Christmas or a birthday then you should treat yourself. There’s no point in denying yourselves all the pleasures of life! Remember, you may not be able to have a whole slice of cake, but you can at least have a really tiny taste of it!”
JUMPER WOMAN (not even bothering to put her hand in the air) – “This Christmas we’re going to have a tablespoon of Christmas pudding each and about a thimble full of custard aren’t we, Bernard?”
BERNARD – “Yes, as a little Christmas treat!”
And he turns to us and licks his lips, as if he’s already tasting it. I look away, overwhelmed with hatred.
This pair are as pleased as Punch to be diabetic. They are positively revelling in this illness, which it seems may have provided them a much-needed common interest in life and no doubt added a new dimension to their long, dwindling marriage of misery. In short, it is a hobby they can enjoy together and they are going to milk this session for all it’s worth, having the intensely upsetting affect of making us all have to stay longer in the process.
The man beside me has begun rocking in his chair. I am considering asking if I can go to the toilet, just to escape for five minutes.

It seems that - the same way it doesn’t take much for humans to revert back to their chimp-like behavioural patterns in certain violent situations - it does not take much for a bunch of adults to slip comfortably back into the roles they once filled as school children, when placed in a classroom environment.
And so the time crawls by, with all the constant interruptions and distractions making three hours seem like a whole day.
The only relief comes with a projector-thing giving us all a handy insight into some of the horrors that may await us in later life (blindness, amputations, kidney and liver failure, and so on) and we get to hear that it is possible for us to lead a perfectly normal life as long as we - a) cut out all of the things we like - b) exercise constantly and - c) leave our feet hanging over the edge when having a bath.

“So, that’s about it”, says the nurse, “we must stop there, we’ve run over time.”
“thank you, Jesus,” says my friend, his head in his hands, “thank you!”
“just remember”, she adds, “that diabetes is different for everyone. We had someone in the other day who, just by eating one tic tac, had his sugar level shoot through the roof, whereas some people can eat substantially more and it doesn’t affect them at all.”

The married woman’s hand is in the air.
“Oh fuck mine!” says the bloke next to me.
“YES!?” says the nurse, angrily.
“When we eat mints we tend to only have one or two, don’t we Bernard?”
“Yes, although I prefer polos to tic tacs”, says Bernard with a smug grin, “sugar free, of course!”
“That’s it, I’m going!” says the man next to me and he leaps to his feet.
“Yes, yes, that’s the end!” says the nurse, “thank you all for coming, I’m sorry we’ve gone fifteen minutes over.” And she glances at our jumper-wearing friends.
We all leave.
On the way out I see the married couple accosting the nurse with more questions and I feel much pity for her.

Once in the hospital corridor my cynicism melts away and peaceful thoughts fill my mind. I pass the two overweight ladies and mentally wish them the best of luck for the future.
Now is the time to take a step back towards the life before I discovered public houses and pushed aside the innocence and energy of youth - to re-acquaint myself with the boy who played football all day and hated the smell of cigarette smoke.
I step outside the hospital and the air tastes fresher than it has in a long time.
And so another life begins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wolf Howard is an artist, pinhole photographer, poet, short story writer and musician, who has drummed in many bands, particularly with Billy Childish. He avoided going to art college, as the thought the effect would be deleterious for his creativity. He has experienced long term unemployment, and this emerges as subject matter in his work. He has an affection for “old” things, whether customs, boots, furniture or typewriters. He was a founder member of the Stuckist art group. He was born in Strood, and lives in Chatham, Kent.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Wednesday, July 16th, 2008.