March 2014

March 2014

Writings by the Say It Right Writers Circle themed around WORK POEM: Life’s Work (A Folk Song) – Ben Smith FICTION: Small Victories – Alan Marshall FICTION: It Corrodes My Soul – Orzak Bule FICTION: Lights Out – Phil Chokeword POEM: Prophet On A Cigarette Break – Ali H

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Life's Work (A Folk Song)

By Ben Smith I wish for a physical base from which we can plan A strategic break from the norm that I know we can Succeed to move forward with and build so strong That will appease those holes we've carried long I think we both know the daily pressures trapped inside That chained to routine and a desk become amplified The hours apart that limit our ability to love and caress and the temptation to ignore pure need and buy happiness A wish to work less and give the space and freedom to think No need to turn away into people, drugs and drink Provide for food, shelter and heat as directly as we can Share our skills and learn to repair with our hands

Chorus Please marry me darling, Please marry me now I'll pull the horse if you guide the plough Lets move to the mountains, lets run to the hills Live off the land and forget about bills Aspire to give stability enough to allow the freedom to roam Safe that when required we can still return to our home Reinvigorated by our experiences and new knowledge The world is a better teacher than any school or college In our hearts we know hedonism isn't selfish escapism A focused approach to achieve a real concrete vision Aware that from hard work comes a greater reward Than the currency we currently prostitute ourselves for Although I say marry I don't mean in common terms A commitment that is as fluid as it is firm No idea of ownership, no role bound husband and wife Accepting the fragility of connections in life.

Small Victories

By Alan Marshall Dan tapped the blue aluminium door frame and listened to it rattle a response.

“Come in,” Mr Perkin’s nasal voice percolated from inside as Dan opened the door, “Mr Marwood. Take a seat please.”

Dan positioned himself in the plastic chair opposite Mr Perkin’s desk and waited while the man contemplatively returned to his own, significantly larger, seat. His office was stacked high with bulging lever-arch files and garish advertising promos for ‘strawberry ding-dongs’ and ‘chocolate coneios’ but his leather topped desk was bare, with the exception of a trim-phone and a single wooden ice-lolly stick.

Mr Perkin was a short, smug man in an ill-fitting pinstriped suit as shiny as his receding hair, and fat waxy cheeks. He settled in his chair like a vulture that had been to Burtons.

“How long have you worked at Well’s ice-cream factory Mr Marwood?”

Dan drew breath.

“Don’t interrupt. It’s six months. Six months Mr Marwood, and this is the third time I have seen you in my office.” His lip quivered with barely contained rage which made his thin moustache twitch like a dying mouse.

“It is 1985. I am a modern and reasonable man. When you turned up for work with that…hairdo”, he gesticulated broadly toward the limp red Mohawk mostly tucked inside Dan’s regulation hair net, “or …that,” another flippant wave at Dan’s nose-ring concealed behind a lurid blue sticking plaster, “I tried to make you see the error of your ways, but this has gone too far. I would like you to explain this.”

He thrust the small ice-lolly stick across the table and stabbed at it with a chubby wiretaut finger.

Dan looked at the stick, pale and slim, with a line of tan coloured letters burning a joke into one side, and a smile spread across his face. So this was what it was all about.

“It’s a lolly stick. For holding your lolly.” He answered calmly.

“Not the stick. The joke!” Perkin twitched, “Read it.”

“Q - What is the difference between Margaret Thatcher and a clitoris?” he began. “A –A

clitoris is only a bit of a cunt.”

Perkin’s face slowly flushed to a vivid lilac and his lip twitched like he was about to explode.

“And you made these! Didn’t you! You… you degenerate!”

“No Mr Perkin.”

“I know you did, you hooligan! You are the only person who works on the lolly stick machine!” A veneer of calm masked his rage for a second. “How many did you make?”

Dan’s smile broadened. He knew the game was up so he may as well come clean and enjoy it, “Twenty thousand” he admitted “or thereabouts.”

Mr Perkin slumped back in his chair like he had been struck with a wet fish. The colour drained from him to the point where even his suit lost its acrylic lustre.

It seemed a long while before he stopped staring at the ceiling and jabbed hurriedly at the phone on his desk. “Tracey?” he said with a quavering voice, “could you ask security to come up please?”

“Yes Mr Perkin.” The voice chirped through the static.

Perkin silently composed himself and resumed quivering. Through a window in the office wall Dan watched the endless lines and conveyor belts of the production floor below quietly churn out the last of twenty thousand or so profane ice-lollies.

“You, my lad are finished at Well’s ice-creams!” he began quietly, slowly ramping up in ferocity as the waxy sheen returned to his face and his fat-clogged arteries groaned under the strain. “You are a pervert! A disgusting abomination, with your hairdo, and your… thing!” he swept a pointing finger in Dan’s general direction. “How dare you!

How dare you insult that wonderful woman in my factory? She made me the man I am today. You have soiled my ice-lollies for the last time. Get out!”

Dan Smiled as Tracey and two fat security guards pushed through the blue door. He kept smiling down to the factory floor, as he was slung out of the factory gates, and most of the way home.

When he was gone, Mr Perkin looked as though he might cry. Tracey stood in his office feeling uncomfortable in the silence.

“Is there something that you wanted?” he asked eventually, still slightly out of breath from his rant.

“Err… there’s a man on the phone Mr Perkin. Says he wants to speak to you in person.

He sounds very upset. Something about his daughter’s ice-lolly and Norman Tebbit’s cock.

“Mr Perkin… are you ok?”

And It Corrodes My Soul

By Ozark Bule The call centre – on the tenth floor of Profit House – was hardly the dark satanic mill I’d been expecting. People weren’t glued to their desks weeping, but were actually having a party when I arrived. I was interviewed by the young looking manager Danny, and over the next 15 minutes of bluff, fabrication and down-right lying, I presented myself as an excellent communicator and sales person. After wowing Danny with my glowing intellect; so it came as no surprise that I was offered the job and told to come in the next Monday for training.

Our instructor was Liz, and she talked us through the company and our role. Liz seemed to end every point with the rhetorical question: ‘Does that seem fair?’ And the more unfair things got, the more the question was repeated.

‘If you’re over sixty seconds late you lose half an hours pay – does that seem fair?’

‘There is no sick pay – does that seem fair?’

‘In the six hour day you only have two fifteen minute breaks, and these are unpaid…’

No, it didn’t seem fair, but apart from a few private grumbles over our rushed lunch, no one complained.

We were introduced to ‘The Script’, which we read when we phone people up, trying to shift insurance. Towards the end of the day we ‘got on the phones’ and annoyed some ‘real people’.

The next day, we were taught ‘objection handling’ – Liz seemed to believe that the natural mind-set of everyone was to desire TV insurance, and we just had to overcome one or two setbacks to make them see this. Most of the day was spent role playing possible ‘objections’ and our responses.

At lunch I spoke to two existing employees. One had been there for 6 weeks, out of a training group of ten she was the only one left. The managers had only worked there for a few months, there was a continual turnover of staff. No one stayed.

Two of the other people on their first week came back late from lunch – they were quietly taken outside, I imagine to be given their first warning for lateness – one more time and wages will be docked.

As the days turned into two more days, it felt like I was in Azkaban receiving the Dementor’s kiss:

‘They drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air… every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself… soulless and evil’.

From two until eight I must have phoned at least four hundred numbers, but only got past the first line of The Script on a fraction of calls: “According to our information your warranty has expired, is that correct?” – We lie, but the idea is that most people will have no warranty. In those 400 calls we get one or two people who must not understand the policy, must think we’re from their tv manufactures, or that this is something they have to do – so sign up.

All the time evil overseers are walking round listening into our conversations, and when we ‘lose a call’, as we do 398 times a day, they rush up and say we should have pushed harder, should have explained ‘it’s not a fixed term contract’.

With a combination of my poor phone manner and chronic mumbling I only sold one lot of insurance, but I wish I hadn’t. The lady went to get her contact details and I knew the right thing to do would be to hang up the phone. But, in fear of the Dementors, I carried on and took the order, stressing that she could cancel the payment within the first fourteen days.

Out of the ten people I started training with, only Martin, with a wife and two kids to support, was yet to make a sale. I would have loved to give him my sale, and the bonus points that go with them. Martin only made £6.50 p/hour that week, everyone else made a higher rate.

After the sale I realised I would have to quit, it would be back to the demoralisation of unemployment, rushed applications, falsified covering letters and unsuccessful interviews. I tried to talk to people about the poor conditions – one person who had been working there for three months (so was a senior member of staff) got headaches because of the glare on the screens, another worker’s ears hurt at the end of a session because of the tight headphones. Everyone has some grievance, but the possibility of organisation or trade union representation doesn’t seem to have been considered.

Lights Out!

By Phil Chokeword ...I bring the dull metal spike down on his wrist so that he’ll finally let go of my arm return his punch with the metal between my fingers weighing my shot like I’m holding a roll of coins wincing as I split my knuckles breaking his teeth my boss looking up at me from the floor his expression lost in a red spray my forearm red from his grip my split lip swelling thoughts racing about all the motherfuckers I’ve wanted to punch over the years ones who got a letter of resignation instead I kick him hard because I can scuffed steel toes bloody prints making my way back to the fridge... * The night that the lights go out, I walk home from the cafe the long way. It’s a habit of mine. The job is a stop gap until I find something better - but then it seems like the years since Leah have been a stop gap until I find something better and that’s a feeling that I need to walk off regularly to stop it dragging me down. There’s something essentially teenage about pulling on a black marine cap and walking off my angst but that’s where I’m at, 43 years old, pacing the streets in coffee stained Levis with an Aus Rotten tape in my walkman.

When the lights go out, I’m sat on a bench in the park eating a stolen falafel wrap that I snuck out of the fridge. It suddenly gets a bit darker but it doesn’t bother me any and I don’t even notice the sudden lack of traffic despite my batteries dying. I figure that it’s just a power cut, you know? I walk back along the river and it’s really something in the starlight. I remember the city disappearing into the darkness, and hoping work would be shut tomorrow, not knowing that anything that ran on fossil fuels wouldn’t ever work again. * I picked up the spike after a skill share out in the mid-west. Before 9/11, we used to ride the rails. It’s hard to believe now, but you could do it. Hop on a freight and hide from the bulls and see where you ended up. There was a whole community of us.

The skill share was about hitch hiking though. Sometimes you’d have to switch and become a rubber tramp because you were stuck someplace or had been kicked off the train. I didn’t like it as much but it was a fact of life and since I was staying overnight in the house where it was taking place I sat in. Mostly it was just swapping war stories but a girl about my age and build gave me advice that stuck. She told me to get hold of a weapon you used to be able to come by in army surplus shops. It was a fist-sized knobbly metal bar with a dull point at one end. It fitted on a key chain and most people would think it was some kind of white girl tribal junk - even the cops. It was easy to hide. That came in handy when a few pickups went wrong. * I start work at six am and the power is still out so I sit and wait in the cafe with the shutters half down. It was 100 degrees yesterday and it’s not cooled much over night.

The bandana keeping my fringe out my eyes is soaked in sweat. I’m already thinking about the fridges not working and all the sandwiches spoiling and all the food that’ll be useless if we leave it too long. When Sam arrives at 7, the rumours are already kicking in about the power cut being more than a power cut. It’s only then I check my phone and realise it’s not working. The battery is dead even though it should be at least half charged. Sam’s phone is dead too.

It’s the same story for everyone who shows up. Nothing is working. No public transport is running. No cars work. No computers. A man ducks under the shutter and asks if we have any food to give. He can’t get hold of his wages. The ATM’s don’t work. The banks don’t work. The tills are fucked. I can’t take any money and what use is it

anyhow if you can’t spend it? It doesn’t matter anymore. It didn’t ever really matter but it matters even less now. There’s a fridge full of sandwiches going to ruin in a world going to waste. I smile at my boss as I take off my apron and go to grab as much food as I can share...

Prophet on a Cigarette Break

By Ali H 'This fear is bigger than all of that, It will make you burn inside,' he said.

'It’s not a way to live, you can’t go on.'

'Tell me something I don’t know,' I spoke quietly because it was true.

'It’s just something you have to do; it’s your inevitable destination.'

He spoke like a wizard.

'Doesn't it haunt you, everything you do, don't you feel all twisted up?'

'Yes, I do.'

'It does haunt you, I know.

I have seen this happen before And the fear will turn into hatred as you fail to understand its density.'

He was calm like a prophet but all I could say was 'I have felt all of this before.

It can't be dissolved, just like that.'

He sighed.

'Some great things were meant for some great people, but fate is resigned for those who cannot escape it, for reasons I can never explain.'

I didn't understand what he meant.

Then his break was over and he tied up his apron And walked tiredly back behind the till.