Labour of Love

Ever woken up in the morning and thought to yourself, "What the hell happened to me?". Well, this Monday thats when it hit, yep, for years I'd said to myself, I'm quite a rugid bloke, I've spent a number of years doing manual work in supermarkets, yep, if the worse comes to the worse I'll see myself right, I can always nip down the local construction site and get a job labouring.
Unfortunately two weeks ago, on my return from Tahiti, I had to live out my backup plan and don the hard hat and steel toe cap boots and test every extreme that I'd held up as an ideal. I'll tell you something, if someone is bending your ear on how much they're haiting their mundane office job and longing for something a little more physical and interactive, well I'd at least throw them a cautionary glance, for the reality is a little less rosy than protrade in the daydreams.
I wake at 5.00am in preparation for the 6.00am start, it's not the time I start work you understand, that detail hasn't been determined yet, it's the time I have to be down the docks for the gannet huddle. The gannet huddle is an interesting affair, where a mixure of local(tends to be large polynesians, paticularly good at huddling) blokes and travellers alike gather round a boarded pool table and pick up work as and when it's thrown to them. Most of the work tends to be heavy lifting, or if you're lucky as my "friend" on the health and safety course appears to be, 12 hours industrial drilling on a jack hammer, but beggars can't be choosers, as I'm rapidly finding out.
Vince wasn't lying, this appears to be a particularly dry part of the year as far as office temping goes but who could really argue with the fantastic lure of the 0800 labour complete pay and conditions package on offer. I've never missed my stapler so much.
So there I was jostling and fighting my way to the front, trying to look a little neady and a little nontionlaunt at the same time, I'm pretty sure the supervisor picked up on it, and there he was thinking, there's a guy who I want to give a job to, confident but not so much so it would interfere to the extent of a hard days work, and like a salmon tickled, he played right into my plan and he popped a timesheet into my hand and pointed me in the direction of a minibus which was waiting to wisk me away to my location for the day, and like a jackrabbit I flew across the converted warehouse floor and into my awaiting chariot. I was later to realise that 0800 labour have on average 40 jobs a day and on average 30 labourers, do the maths but all in all that adds up to a wasted few minutes looking a little neady yet still nontionlaunt, hey, we'll put that down to first day nerves.
As we drive away to our destination, a local marina, I ask my fellow worker a few probing questions, I think he picked up on my nervousness, as in a broken French accent "Don't worry piece of cake" We weren't even there yet and already my wellies were starting to chafe, and I noticed a few odd looks from the other guys as I sat there for duration of the ride in my bright orange hard hat. We turn up at the front gates to the site, "could be worse" I thought, sun is shining and and I'm working out on a marina, how hard can it be. Our foreman seemed nice, an experienced 65year old, who was waiting out his retirement and working on his own. He was welcoming and the job appeared straight forward enough, just fitting some plastic slabs into some wooden frames and then screwing them down. Straight forward enough unless you haven't previously used either an electric screwdriver or a ratchet wrench, but didn't want to come across as incompitant, and honestly how hard can it be, well hard enough to look stupid for the first few goes, hard enough for your colleague to tut at you and then in a particularly patrinising voice "doooo yooo want me to show you how it's done" Not being a proud man, "sure, it handles a little differently than the photocopier" "you just need to put a little weight down on it, like this" And he was right, next go did it fine. This went on for the whole day, and subsequently each day of my 10 days I was on site. Each day my body notched a step further to breakdown, and each day a new gapping wound somehow appeared. My hands now have a sandpaper quality and my hair is home to a large number of industrial glues and poxies. But strangely on the other hand, I feel quite proud of my efforts to diversify, I even feel a little more manly, I've learned new skills, well to some extent, and I now know if the worst comes to the worst, I can pop down the nearest construction site and pick up a job labouring.