EARLY LUNCH

The sense of humour of other ages has always seemed bad. 

David Berman

We stopped for lunch at twelve. We’d been smoking weed since six and were burnt out. I don’t remember eating much, maybe some chips. Our boss drank four pints of lager and then feasted wantonly on a packet of beef flavoured crisps. We never did much work in the afternoon.

On rainy days we would sit in the break room watching daytime TV and smoking fags. It was a small room and there were five or six of us. We drank tea. No one drank coffee in those days, apart from my parents who drank Nescafe out of a jar. Our boss was a racist and every time Trisha came on the screen would refer to her racistly as “That black cow”. The room would slowly fill with smoke, and somehow we used to think that was better than being outside in the rain.

Our boss had a boss. He was called Angus. I always thought he was Scottish but I don’t think he was. I don’t remember him having a Scottish accent, and Scottish accents were things I remembered in those days. His occasional visits would send our boss into a panic. “Angus is coming down!” he would say in a strangled voice. It was always unclear, however, exactly what we were supposed to do with this information, and without specific instructions to guide us we would just sit up a bit straighter wearing expressions of readiness like an ill-fitting coat.

It was in the days when a group of friends could all get the same job together. I don’t remember any process being involved. You just had to go to an office - which was above one of those shops where everything was really cheap because it was useless and badly made - tell them your name and where you lived, and you were in.

Sometimes our boss would stay out all night and turn up to work in his evening wear. On those mornings when he inhaled on his cigarette his whole face would scrunch up until it looked like an arsehole, and he would carry on drinking from imported cans of lager that he’d bought off a guy in a car park. I’ve never seen anyone drink lager before breakfast and was secretly quite impressed.

The pub where we used to spend our lunch breaks is a Tesco now. Oh, how the times have changed.

My cousin Tom had worked there longer than the rest of us. “Tom’ll tell ya,” our boss used to say whenever the past came up in conversation.

One of our tasks was to keep the prom clear of sand. Our boss used a petrol blower, but all we had were brooms and we would sweep in neat little rows. The pointlessness of it was immensely soothing. “That’s a job for life,” passing wits would comment. But no, it wasn’t. It was seasonal work. In the winter months, much to our dismay, they just let the sand pile up.

The last I heard our boss was working in a bar in Spain. Tom told us that he’d died there. His name was Paul.