working holidays

Easter Eggs

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                  Easter Eggs; I wonder if I would still remember how to foil wrap them? A skill I learnt one winter many years ago. I had joined a job agency in desperation; a bit of a come down after the Christmas season in Harrods toy department, but then that was the point of a working holiday, different experiences.

Croydon, South London, early on a grey winter’s morning, a disparate group of people get into the agency mini bus. We are being taken to a sweet factory to do the Easter Egg run. ‘Paynes’ it certainly isn’t, Paynes stands large, bold and gleaming white on the main road; we pass it on the way to our factory, shabby and forlorn down a side road. We are going to help produce anonymous eggs, for cheap mugs in unknown shops.

My heart sinks as we walk in, staying on at school and going to college was not meant to lead here; but everyone should experience real life, preferably straight after leaving  school. My ex schoolmates, probably all successfully teaching, nursing or doing post graduate studies, would have been astonished to see me on the factory floor, earning sixteen pounds a week.

The first and only skill we have to learn is how to wrap the egg in foil. There is a knack, you either get it or you don’t; if you think about it you don’t. We take it in turns to wrap or put them in packing boxes. If an egg breaks we are allowed to eat it, the only perk of the job. Everyone says it will put me off chocolate for life, it doesn’t.

The regulars operate the machinery, centrifugal force turning liquid chocolate into eggs. They clean the machinery with the managers torn up old vests.

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Now I cannot remember any names.

The West Indian woman is the most articulate, in contrast to the homely local woman who says all she knows is work; after a full day she goes home to cook separate meals for all her family. I vow never to do that and I don’t.

A tiny coloured woman has tears in her eyes as she tells us her brother is in prison on Robben Island, I have no idea where that is or what it is. A young woman from Ghana has immaculate, copper tinted, strangely straight hair; after several weeks I notice with surprise there is a join, a glimpse of natural Afro hair; why did she want to wear a wig? Her husband is studying in London and they have left their two young children behind in Ghana with their grandparents. I am shocked.

A young local girl wears tight trousers, only West Indian woman has cottoned on that she is four months pregnant and tries to persuade her to tell her parents and wear more comfortable clothes.

Two young French women, friends who love English pop music and giggle a lot, are probably the people I have most in common with.

Lunch is only half an hour, but we don’t want to spend any longer in the so called canteen. I take sandwiches and there is an awful drinks machine, from which unrecognisable hot and cold liquids pour into flimsy plastic cups. A world away from Harrods Staff Restaurant, but we get to meet the regular staff; one lady has spent twenty years dipping bars of nougat into coconut.

Above the basins in the dreadful toilets are notices such as ‘Don’t spit in the Basins’. Who would do that I wonder?

It took two or three buses to get to and from Croydon, most of my journeys were in winter semi darkness. Now I can’t remember where the factory was or what the area looked like. Maybe the new tramline has ploughed through the site. But every Easter I wonder what happened to those people I only knew for a few weeks.

Lines On The Washing

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Winter has the advantage of long dark evenings, but the risk of tripping over on the pavement – if you are nosey and walk with your head turned sideways to see into the windows of homes where they have not closed the curtains. I love seeing choice of colour schemes and furniture, signs of lifestyles; room full of toys, a cello and music stand or a wide screen television hung over the fireplace revealing to the whole street what they are watching.

Being on a train, coach on the motorway or upstairs on a double-decker bus has the extra advantage we can’t be seen spying on the lives of others; peering into their back gardens, watching a farmer walk his cows over a motorway bridge or busy shoppers ignoring a homeless person in a doorway.

When I was 21 and officially on my working holiday, with destination, career path and accommodation vague, I would look down from train or coach windows fascinated, sometimes envious of other people with their real lives. Going to work, pushing prams, shopping, gardening and hanging out the washing; putting washing on the line is one of the few domestic tasks we can observe, from the person leaning over their tiny balcony in a block of flats to a lone cottage on a hill, the wind ready to tear the sheets from their hands.

Hanging the washing up is my favourite domestic task. This is not a discussion about housework and who should do what. Clothes and bedding need to be washed, meals prepared and homes large and small cleaned; somewhere along the line someone has to do it and my favourite job is hanging out the washing. Yes I know towels come out of the tumble drier lovely and fluffy, but it’s hardly a spiritual experience.

When I am in my little garden hanging out the washing this is the real life I observed so long ago. The fact that I am out there means either I’m basking in the sun or being whipped by an exhilarating wind, either way enjoying nature. Looking up at the sky, observing the birds and tidying up the flowers are all part of the experience and an antidote to the internet; though I often grab my phone to take a picture of birds, flowers or clouds to put on Facebook or Instagram.

Of course you will know from books, films and television dramas that secret agents, detectives and important politicians never need to do the washing. But in my novel Brief Encounters of the Third Kind, Susan is a very ordinary woman in an ordinary London suburb. It is when she is in the garden hanging out the washing that something strange happens that will change her life.