Shingle
One of the many jobs I’ve had was working on the motorway. It was a short gig. My friend’s brother was asked to bring some extra hands to be part of the team. Me and another guy - a school friend - turned up at the designated house at 4.30am and we were put into the back of a van. We were cramped among spades and pick axes and tools. There were no windows. And we were driven off like hostages. In the front of the van, where there was a view of the suburb going past, was my friend’s brother and his friend. They were two local troublemakers. They were known to be a bit lively and liked a scrap and were plugged into the community of dodgy locals who would be in pubs. An established network of the local postcode ne’er-do-wells. A lineage of vagabonds you could trace back to poachers and highwayman who’d lurk the same crossroads in this town.
We shot along whilst me and my friend were thrown around in the back. Half asleep and with our heads bumping against the inside of the white van. They stopped to get breakfast of Ribenas and Twixes and cans of Coke and Wotsits. “Wait here” they said as they went to the shop. We stayed locked in the back of the van. I ate both my cheese sandwiches I’d made, meaning I’d have nothing for lunch. They got back in and we drove off. There was a bit of conversation. It was the most bizarre meeting of different worlds the town had seen. People who did dodgy things with someone who didn’t want to punch strangers. It was like we were different classes simply because I read books, even though I came from a family of cab drivers. I’d get called Einstein because I was going to go to university in a few weeks.
We were on the motorway now and arrived at a heavily coned area and pulled over. My friend was dropped off by the side of the motorway and was given a shovel. I had to remain in the van. Because I was Einstein I had a different destiny. I was driven off somewhere else. Eventually we arrived in some laybay. I got out and was surrounded by a nowhere place where there were mountains of shingle. There were lots of peaks and mounds of sand, pebbles and rocks. I was told I had to spend the day here alone. Whenever a lorry came and loaded up with shingle, I had to mark it down in the book. There was one other guy in this empty, motorway wilderness. He operated the digger that would lift shingle into the backs of lorries. He was an Irish guy and he stayed in his cab. Everyone left and the Irish guy started drinking at 5.30 am.
And so I stayed alone in some tiny cabin. And occasionally stood outside the cabin to look at mountains of shingle. And I was alone. And it was boring. And it was no longer the holiness of morning. It was the tedious reality of normal light. The day was simply the world and it was dreary.
And not very often a lorry would pull in. And the drunk operating the digger would load the back of the lorry with shingle. And then the lorry would drive off. And I would mark a score in the book to denote one lorry had come.
And I was there all day. And the guy in the digger who started the day drunk got drunker. And by the afternoon, when lorries came he’d be sloppier and miss and spill shingle over the sides of the lorries. And on one occasion the driver of a lorry looked at me and shook his head at the drunk loading his truck. And I marked one more score as he drove off.
And I was alone for ages. And I was so bored. And any poetry had died. And the world was just shingle. The same shingle that had threshed waves in prehistoric times. And shingle has nothing to say. It doesn’t want to contribute anything to the planet. It’s just rock. It can’t even conceive of lobotomy.
And then at one point the drunk old man got out his cab and came down to me. He lit a fag and we spoke. And I don’t understand what he said. But he was laughing and friendly and pissed. And I just happened to see an old road sign attached to its pole and a lump of concrete - like a plant that had been pulled out of the ground and was lying unearthed on its side with the roots attached. And I said, “Oh look, that’s cool.” And the Irish guy said, “You want it now, do ya? I’ll get it for ya”. And he got back in his cab and then started to swing the arm of the digger - which would have killed me instantly if it connected - and started smashing it down into the pole of the sign trying to sever it. And he kept raising and smashing down the arm of the digger trying to sever the head of this sign. But the metal pole simply dented inwards but wouldn’t be severed. And the lorry that had come earlier came again and looked at him smashing the ground with his digger and he made eye contact with me and shook his head. And we eventually persuaded the drunk guy to leave the sign for the time being and load up one more consignment of shingle. Which he sloppily did, and the lorry driver drove off shaking his head. And somehow the slow ticking of time managed to crawl on it’s hands and knees to the finishing line and the day was done.
The boss came to me and said, “You’ve done a good job and should consider not going to university as you could get on doing this kind of thing.” And I looked around at the mountains of shingle and I genuinely didn’t mind this strange space but I knew that if I kept having to come back I’d go insane and so I just thanked him and told him I had to go to uni as it was already organised. And he said, “Well it’d be a shame. Think about it.” And I said I would. And then we looked up at the old guy who was asleep in his cab with empty cans lining the window.
The two characters returned to pick me up and then we drove to pick up my friend. He still had a shovel in his hand and was absolutely fucked. He got in the back of the van with me. And we sat there with the tools which rattled like skeletons and were driven around with no windows. The van stopped and they opened up the back. “We’re getting KFC. Do you want anything?” I can’t remember if we got anything but the two of them sat in the front and ate a ton of wings and drank more Coke. My friend was teased because apparently he didn’t know how to use a shovel properly. Then we arrived back at the designated house and were let out the back of the van. “See you tomorrow at half four.” Me and my friend went home.
Two of the people in that van are no longer alive. One died in police custody. The other died at his own hand. We were young men then and we should have still been young men now. The world is full of people and stories. And young and old people die and our bodies join those of medieval people and the Mesopotamians. Sediment and layers of bone on top of skull. The sea creates more shingle and it doesn’t give a fuck what era it’s in. That day we had Ribenas and Twixes. Others leave swords and bucklers. I remembered this time and wrote notes for this piece in my car before going to the gym. Sat in the car park of Sainsburys at 8am. It’s the same car park where I once saw one of the characters chasing someone to beat them up. I went to the gym and now I’m sitting in the coffee shop in my shit town. It’s worse than it was back then and back then it was really bad. Everything just goes where it’s gonna go. You can’t stop anything going where it goes. Outside, one of the local mental health dudes is rolling up a cigarette. He has fingerless gloves and a coat. No one is so insane they don’t realise it’s cold. Things are changing. Leaves are revisiting the corners of the neighborhood. There’s a damp wind afoot. October next. If anyone reads this many years from now, these are just some things that happened.