La Belle Epoque Part 8 Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

La Belle Epoque Part 8
by Robert Fullarton

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

The Underground sector had been opened, the people rejoiced, spirits were high, expectations ran wild and the allegiances of the people were firmly rested and tucked comfortably within the bosom of the state. The lights shone out from the tunnels, the sights of clouds and of faint dust rose up from where the construction teams were busy night and day. Man rested on the seventh day not in lofty admiration of what he had made, but in exhaustion at what he had been coerced into completing. Surely there was no time for aesthetic comforts. 

The labour marks, the bruises and the long hours had taken their toll in the bodies of the workers. The workers rested in muddy huts, like caves etched into the side of the earth, the faces comprehending the future and nothing but the future, based on the radiant hopes that were offered by the establishment.

The curriculum was based on the repression of information for state purposes. Scientific Evangelism was promoted for the utility and mechanics of human production and labour. The information and the sources were mere footnotes to the real records and annals of the “lost civilisation” that once existed before its own inexorable destruction. For all anybody knew, every book on the curriculum could have been forged or re-written by state censors in the Northern Sector.

When Zero had returned to his dormitory that evening he found the room filled with twelve more beds, single beds pressed and pushed against each other. The smell of sweat, the sounds of grown men moaning and leaving their washing out to dry on the railings above, the muck off labourers boots that left wet trails and marks on the floors and the sight of half naked men screeching at the sight of Zero arriving in through the door.

“Oh damn it!”

Said one man, whose armpits were almost as hairy as the greasy brown mullet on his head.

“Not another tenant to rob us of the last cubic metre of space!”

“Well”, said a stocky brown skinned man beside him. “Next thing we know well be sharing our beds, two man a bed and I believe that’s the beginning of the end.”

“I did hear that once upon a time married men were allowed to sleep in the same bed with their wife and even exchange in the business together.”

Muttered another man randomly at the back of the room.

Zero’s face grew bright red with anger, he had held himself together before in the past, but now things had gone catastrophic.

“You lot, are the intruders here, not me. I have been living in this dormitory for ten years now. Everything was different this morning when I left for work; there were twelve of us here, now there are 24 beds with twelve sweaty, disgusting labourers that have mouths that never quit. I have my lease signed and agreed to by the landlord and you can see it if you like. I’ll put my foot in your ass if you don’t shut up and stop harassing me.”

“Hey”, said the hairy man with the mullet. “You come in smelling of soap and bath oils, because you can afford it, you come in with more food rations and tokens because your richer than we are, I can see that, I don’t need to guess it. Your blue overalls look like they've been specially stitched in the Northern Sector, ours have been stitched badly by the feeble sore hands of working children. Do you know what that smell is that you detest so much? It’s the smell of labour, the smell of two hundred men stooped down in the tunnels together, in the semi-darkness covered several times a day in several inches of thick muck.”

“Well, I work for my existence too, you damn Yeti.”

“What’s that?” Asked the man with the brown mullet.

“You don’t know because you don’t possess any books or have any knowledge of history and the way the old world was!”

“Why do you?”

“Yes, because I’m a social educator, I too work, I was apparently born to work this role as you were all meant to be miners and to live and suffer the miners fate.”

“Well”, said the leader of the group of moaning new tenants, “I do apologise then if I have over stepped the boundary with my comments and my behaviour.”

“No, I don’t care what you say, its your physical presence that irritates me. Your in my bed for a start, you have fouled it with your body odour and done this all at 6pm in the evening before I have even had my dinner.”

“Well think of it from our point of view, twelve miners were contacted by your landlord and given the right to move another eleven beds into the dormitory, with the right to sleep after 12 hours of hard labour, he told us that we could become a permanent fixture so long as we paid him the rent each week.”

“Ahh..but you have not got the right to take my bed, for I pay my rent as well, under a signed agreement, I’ll give you ten minutes to move, I’ll go and have a word with the landlord about this and if things deteriorate I’ll contact the authorities as well.”

Zero left the room hastily and sat in the landlord’s office of administration for over an hour trying to argue his case and understand why the landlord had broken their original landlord and tenant agreement. These men were squatters and under the new squatters’ legislation, squatters had the right to overthrow a tenant so long as they could prove that they were squatters and that they could oblige the landlord in either rent or labour. Zero however could not be left without a bed that night- it was a contractual obligation for a tenant of a stature such as himself to find an alternative bed in an alternative dormitory. Zero reluctantly agreed and hoped that perhaps he might find himself in a dormitory with a more enlightened bunch of men –and not bunched in with a pack of slacks and hacks- or one with more breathing space.

My First Job- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2015

My First Job

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2015


I rose at dawn in the heart of winter's blackness at age fifteen to go and work in Wendell's butchers
as a kitchen assistant. It was my first job and one of my first experiences of the adult world of labour and menial toil.

I remember the sight of sawdust lining the floors behind the main counters. The smell of the nauseating disinfectant, is still vivid in my mind, as I cleaned regular flow of trays and dishes, that were recycled for the main shop floor. The bleach burned through the gloves and stained my finger tips, the squeaky screech of steel, kitchen equipment rubbed together and a cold wind drafted through the back door and nearly froze the legs, limbs and orifices of my body

 I remember the faces of men,  these grey haired, hardened "veterans of the world" who in age had worked for generations and had known what hard work was really about! I compare myself with my mere "pocket money" with my naive conceptions on life, on work, protected by my family, sensitive and delicate in nature, this business was a show of hard work and even manly toughness for the hours these men worked, for the physical labour they delivered to the systematic running of the business -and it is usually manic during the Christmas period with people queuing up for hours outside the premises and within the building it can be hard to move in the cramped moving conditions. These men never got to enjoy the privilege of an education. Most left school early..one young teen left school at 14 and was to be a butcher's apprentice for the next three years.

Stacks and stacks of large containers had to be disinfected out in the back alley, placed on a forklift, passed on to another employee who then handed me more trays to be washed and prepared for the kitchen- and the dreaded disinfectant burned through my fingers all the while!- but before all this the trays had to be emptied in cold room, where all the various cuts and legs of meat had to be hung on meat cleavers. All the icy, refrigerated spaces had to be thoroughly cleaned and rubbed down, as orders were made, bundles removed and replaced.

Tea brakes and lunches were had in the little poky kitchen where I had been stationed for most of each mornings work. Groups of old men huddled and smoked, drank tea and smoked some more with one man bearing a deathly pale complexion -the beginning of rigor mortis perhaps? This particular individual even handed me a cigarette and i just looked bewildered at him...I didn't drink then nor did I smoke! I was rather sheepish in comparison with the others..who swore and spoke in a language of slang and confidence. They would ask me "what's your name" and "how are you getting on?"
I would just nod politely, smile and say "fine, good, great" and other affirming comments to the faces of supervisors and peers alike.

I remember, I was asked to mince the burgers on my first day and in the process I nearly, lost my fingers when the mincer was jammed, the apparatus was clogged with old bits of meat and in the process it plummeted and nearly took my fingers off in one death blow- it certainly pierced my skin and left a distinct cut through the kitchen gloves!

At the final hours the crowds would swell and the employees worked through a frenzy of constant orders, shouts and movements made.

 At closing time I gathered my pay check in a little brown envelope -fifty pounds for a days' labour and toil- and I departed through the evening din, past the shadows of the shopping centre, where not a sole could be seen on these cold and harsh winter evenings. One could feel that these days were swallowed up by darkness and that the light had been extinguished like a mere candle in a church.

I would moan my childlike moans to my parents when I returned home. I would sleep off the aches of physical labour and I quickly made up my mind that I did not want to be a butcher at any stage in my existence...and i made up my mind at an early age!