The Idler

Marquee Erection

During my Student years (having not yet become accustomed to a life of poverty) I got a summer job in a Marquee erection company in Thornton Heath. My reasoning being that:

1. I would earn money so would make friends and have fun.
2. I would be working outside so I would get a tan making me gorgeous and irresistable.
3. I would be doing manual work so would grow muscles making me gorgeous and irresistable.
4. And I had heard from my elders that its good to work like a bitch when you’re young.

The reality of this job however was very different from my idealised version:

1. I earned a paltry amount of money for the hours I was working and was too knackered every day to make friends and have fun. The only people I did meet mostly called me ‘cunt’ rather than remember my name and were either tired angry worn down old men who never spoke and drank large quantities of ale every night so as to forget their miserable lives, or angry jumped up idiots who liked to wield their small amount of power over me like a whip so that they could feel that there was someone residing lower than their pathetic place in the world. None of which was improved when I explained that I was studying Illustration in Brighton. (”What are you some kind of poof? pick that up and carry it over there, and then do the same with those 500 over there before the next load gets here you cunt!”)
2. My delicate flesh bubbled and burned under the glaring summer sun, I then had to carry huge heavy canvas bags, metal poles and wooden flooring on my red shoulders, and when the blisters came through I was advised to burst them and piss on them so as to build up hard leathery skin.
3. I did grow muscles but strange ones in weird places and I hadn’t considered the hours of repetitive and painful heavy things carrying and chain gang style sledge hammering under the angry shouts of idiots neccesary to make this happen, and I was too tired to ever get the opportunity to show them off to any young ladies until they had broken down and turned back into fat.
4. And that’s nonsense.