Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill by Gervase Phinn Page A

monotony. But there may have been more to it than that. It may have been born out of resentment – the fact that these bright young things would earn a bit of pocket money over the holidays and then swan off to university and end up with fat salaries and company cars. It they ever did return to the bread factory it would be as pen-pushing managers and company accountants, engineers or directors. They needed bringing down a peg or two, showing everyone they were not that clever.
    The perpetrators must have thought their antics were hilarious. Most of them were harmless, such as hiding essential tools and equipment, removing the toilet paper from the lavatory or putting salt instead of sugar in the students’ tea. Some went too far though. One student discovered a dead rat underneath his sandwiches in his snap box and spent most of the shift retching in the lavatory. Another had his bike loaded onto a van with the bread and had to walk all the way home.
    One poor lad, a pale-faced boy with a wispy beard and large glassy eyes, who is now probably an eminent doctor or a university professor, spent the whole of the morning with a tea towel wrapped around his head after following the foreman’s instruction not to enter the factory without covering all facial hair. He only discarded the cloth when the manager, on his daily walk around the factory, asked him if he had a sore tooth.
    I was not immune from the tricks. My first job was to wheel the bread from the factory to the vans, for loading. The loaves would be stacked on sliding metal shelves, on a tall trolley with heavy rubber wheels. At the very bottom was a locking device, triggered by a push of the foot. Of course, Chuck never mentioned the lock and, on my first trip down the long ramp, observed by the foreman with his arms folded over his chest, the trolley gathered speed, then careered out of control, collided with a van and spilt its load. I was panic-stricken and began frantically picking up the bread.
    â€˜Bloody marvellous, that!’ shouted Chuck, drawing everyone’s attention to my distress and embarrassment.
    â€˜Bloody students don’t know their arses from their elbows. All that bloody learnin’ and he can’t push a bloody trolley wi’out dropping all t’bread. Comes out of tha wages that, tha knaas.’
    On the next occasion I was let loose with the trolley, Chuck sidled over, surreptitiously activated the locking device with a secretive flick of his foot and then sauntered off, with the words: ‘And watch what tha’re doin’ this time.’ I spent the next five minutes pushing and pulling to get the trolley moving.
    One of the students who had worked at the factory the previous year, warned me to never, under any circumstances, go down to where the confectionery was prepared by the women, under the supervision of an Amazon of a forewoman called Dora. If I did, it was likely that I would have discarded cakes and pastries stuffed down my overalls or, even worse, be squirted all over with whipped cream.
    One morning, Chuck sidled up. ‘Go down the confectionery and ask Dora for a triple, screw-top, flange extractor,’ he instructed me.
    I set off but spent the next five minutes hiding in a cubicle in the lavatory. I then returned. ‘Dora told me to tell you that she needs a note from you,’ I informed Chuck seriously. ‘She said that the last triple, screw-top, flange extractor she sent up here has gone missing.’
    â€˜Clever bugger,’ mouthed Chuck, ambling off down the factory. ‘I reckon from t’first time I clapped eyes on thee, tha’d end up a bloody teacher. Too clever by ’alf.’
    It was never my ambition to become a teacher. It was another contact who put me in line for the job as a trainee accountant. Mrs Gill, my mother’s best friend, was Company Secretary at Thomas Wilde and Son, in Sheffield, and she arranged for me to have an interview with a