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WRITING SOME WRONGS

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Alan Rutherford
Hand Over Fist Press: 2007: £15
ISBN 9780954051716

Excerpt

SMITHS

1974

Bishops Cleeve, the dormitory village to Smiths Industries, population enough for a town but amenities only sufficient for a small village. Overgrown housing estates twitching around and over what was once a cute little village before Smiths arrived. Smiths Industries, a well planned slack of grey flat-roofed concrete sheds on the edge of the Cotswolds. One of them, the Machine shop, CH1, a fat slab of retarded maleness, filled with noise, the smell of coolant and industrious green and blue besmocked men whose every third syllabel was prefixed with ‘fukin’, no matter even if it was mid-word – this was where I was variously employed for eleven years on capstan lathes, drills, deburr bench, grinders and polishing bench as a setter-operator. Drudge, enlivened only by friendships, comeraderie and a good wage – without a doubt I am a product of that environment, as much as the precision ‘foreigners’ and the odd aerospace trinket that came out of that site.

A deep dark Gloucestershire winter mid-week morning in the 1970s, xmas had gone and now we looked forward to the Summer, but this was just like the day before. A jab in sleepy ribs and that awful panic as the realisation swept through my second wakening – the alarm had already gone off, but was switched off whilst still in that nowhere-land between dream and reality. In hindsight I can only suppose that my truly sensible self had convinced my utterly gullible brain to snuggle down in the covers and put off that mad dash in the freezing cold of an unheated house from unclothed to overdressed – but now it was urgent. A rebellious minute of remaining still followed where I vainly tried to persuede myself it was Saturday, before frantic movement, a two-fingers at the world and Smiths Industries.
Without breakfast, sleep still in my eyes, but warmly wrapped up, I lept into the saddle of my bicycle and set off on the short, but potentially lethal, ride to Smiths. No lights, brakes that needed attention, tyres with just enough of a hint of air-pressure and tread to keep the wheel rims from the tarmac, and with James Taylor in my head – Going to Carolina in my mind – now there’s a thought. Chain slipping, gut-wrenching, stupidly dangerous moments later I am extremely lucky to be pushing the front wheel into a slot in the bike shed behind the canteen. My main concern now is to get clocked-in before 7.30 otherwise this mad rush was for nothing. From the silhouetted steamy mingled-breath of the shed, where rude greetings are being exchanged between familiar shapes as they came to recognise each other, and dodging the incoming, I stride out for the backdoor of the machine shop, wind moves in my empty belly and I fart loudly and rhythmically as I take the next four steps, adjusting my hips to feel the benefit and satisfaction of a multi-toned belter. Its louder than I wanted it to be, I turn to see if anyone is close – two older guys are right behind me and they confuse my checking glance with an accusing one. Their initial guilty looks instantly replaced with indignant repudiation.

I think of this event often, never tire of its baseness, and always laugh out loud.







Moths and Butterflies

1999

September, the backgarden is looking good in as much as its tidy. My dad is on a visit from South Africa. He’s a Scotsman who, after over 50 years in South Africa, still has a scots accent. His views are tempered by surviving the Apartheid years and, like my sister, he is old white South African and all that implies, but to his credit were his trade unionist activities. Before he arrived I wondered what we would talk about and how we would deal with our differing views on South Africa, but now he was here it didn’t seem to be so important, I loved the man.

Ann and I had the week off work and awoke mornings to find him sat out back in his dressing gown under the gazeebo, staring at blue skies criss-crossed with vapour trails, smoking endlessly and being fascinated by the butterflies attracted to the wild budlia which overgrew each year beside the high fence on the left side of the garden. The days he was with us, started with me making us a cup of tea and taking it out to him, and then at the hint of a question long answers which filled my head with things I never knew about him. Ann, I think by design, left us to it, and some mornings gloriously just went on for ages – and then later I would try to remember our conversation for Ann, and fail miserably to capture the moment, making it all seem very pedestrian. Now several years later it is the occasion that has stayed, the detail has become fudged.

Upon my joking about his tattoo, and the fact that he’d always maintained he didn’t know what it was of, his mood changed. He was immediately serious with that so very familiar look of paternalistic reproval, catching me unawares, mid-chuckle and genuinely happy and in awe to be in his company after so many years. Too late I realised I was barefoot on eggshells, and more than a hint of annoyance edged his ‘OK I’ll tell you about it’

Here is the potted version. He was in the RAF during the war and at one point was stationed in Montrose in Scotland. He was part of the groundcrew, a fitter, and him and his pals serviced Tiger Moths. This also meant going up on test flights. One of his friends (name?) went up and the plane crashed and he was killed. When this happened the others had to go and clear up the wreckage, on this occassion my dad got very drunk on the way to and from picking up bits of his friend, so drunk that he went off and had a tattoo done on his left arm, too drunk to later recall what the tattoo was of, and all that remains of that night is a large blue blurry mark on his arm as a constant reminder.

We sat in silence for a while and then turned our attention to the butterflies.