Essential
On the day they crowned their new king I had 90 quid in the bank, 50 on the electric meter, 20 on the gas. I had just enough petrol in my 13 year-old car to get me back & fore to work the required number of times before payday, so long as no major body parts fell off, so long as I didn’t get a puncture, so long as I kept the revs low & nothing mechanical or electrical failed. If I pranged the car I was f*ckt.
If the 10 year old gas boiler in my house gave up the ghost, I was f*ckt. Or perhaps not so much f*ckt as there would be no hot water for a bath & after a few days I would begin to pong & have to resort to boiling my 5 year old kettle, marching up & down the stairs until there was enough hot water in the tub that I could at least get the face washed, the feet, groin & armpits scrubbed. If the fuse blew or the element in the kettle went I was f*ckt.
There was food in the cupboard but not much & I was bored of eating the same tinned stuff day after day. Often I didn’t eat till I was famished. The work troosers, which were my only troosers, were loose enough around my waist that I had to wear a belt & tighten it to the second last notch. I could not afford to get dizzy & fall over at work. So, like a good soldier, I filled a flask & packed a sandwich every morning before I went out the door.
I had been in the job just over a year & had fewer rights than some of the roadkill I passed driving to or from my place of work. It was a precarious situation but one I had become accustomed to. Whenever I seemed to get that little bit ahead, that little bit closer to being in a more financially secure & therefore more psychologically stable position, something happened. As though the powers that be had it in not only for me but for every worker that made it through the pandemic even though they had constantly informed us that we were essential. Essential in what way, one was tempted to ask. Essential to the continuation of their authority.
That same authority that kept essential persons such as myself in precarious positions where we could be more easily manipulated & therefore controlled. But surely that couldn’t be true. Surely the powers that be were not deliberately targeting folk such as myself in order to make their own lives easier. Surely they did not believe in sacrificing folk such as myself in order that they might enjoy the finest available luxuries, live a stress free existence well into their 90s while folk such as myself dropped dead 2 years into retirement if they were lucky enough to last until they received permission to retire.
Surely the political system in these islands had not been engineered in such a way so as to ensure folk such as myself dropped dead as close as possible to that particular point in time when the authorities deemed our duty to be done, our services no longer required. Surely it was not the case that essential folk should die so that authoritarian c*nts both elected & unelected could thrive, become ever more powerful in their non-essential positions to the point where they evolved from the non-essential to the inconsequential, became decadent, extravagant, irreverent beings of no usefulness whatsoever.
The aim of the game being the creation, promotion & subsequent adulation of a specimen almost as useful as that union jack tea cosy you purchased on a whim the other day & might live long enough to consider, not just a frivolous purchase but a tad culturally insensitive on that fateful day when an essential worker such as myself appears in your line of vision tasked with making an instant decision on whether, seeing you terrified, writhing, gasping like a stranded haddock on your bathroom floor, he or she deems you essential enough to bother their arse about, or not.
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essential reading, this,
thankyou !
Only the people of Scotland can change the way things are, why it isn’t happening is beyond my comprehension.
That the stone of Scone was allowed to be taken back to westminster for this stamp of oppression to be condoned by the Scottish government, tells you all you need know about the SNPs none-commitment to independance. Get behind SALVO and the Scottish liberation movement, it’s the way foreward.
Yes..and yes again..
Shut up ! Sit down ! Appreciate !
Food ? Hot water ? Heating ?
Appreciate the good fortune that has made you a subject of the greatest Royal Family since Caligula was a boy !
You are just the sort who give the poor a bad name !
Brilliant. Hope you got a hot meal today Mark.
I maintain we must FIGHT the injustice being perpetrated against the Scottish nation. FIGHT in the truest sense of the word. ..dump that selfish grasping pathetic pantomime of a monarchy and go after those who betray Scotland. There is only one way out of this..UDI. Illegal? tough so is what is being done to our nation. Overheard intelligent Scots..yes I did say Scots… say they just love watching the ‘lovely royals’ drive about in the golden coach…should these halfwits be sectioned I have to ask myself.?
Salvo..Is it Scots who run this? ..where is it based? I read the info on it..is someone making money out of this..and for the right reasons?
UDI
For Scotland!
PS Not impressed with Humza in his fancy kilt. A plain seviceable tartan would have sufficed. Careful Humza..you’re starting to look like the ‘lovely royals’.
Indeed Mark thanks.
https://youtu.be/r6tGpyay0D4
Is the monarchy part of the upper estate of politics and power in the UK? Of course it is. But is the monarchy responsible for the policies and failures of successive UK governments? I think that’s an unfair charge. Recall after WW2 a Labour government managed to make vast strides in socialist policies, including the NHS and the nationalisation of coal, rail and utilities. As far as I’m aware, King George V! was still breakfasting in Buckingham Palace. By all means, if the Monarchy offends you politically, then you’re certainly entitled to your views, and should definitely not be arrested for them, as happened in London. For me, I don’t object to the Monarchy at all, but I do object to all the nonsense and consequent decay in the country that is now happening in their name. Reform of the House of Lords, of the Westminster voting system, reform of regulations or de-privatisation of rail, water, electricity, tax reform including wealth tax and on international corporations etc, can all still take place under a monarchy, without causing more trouble than anyone needs . Such measures could equally inclu the independence of Scotland. You could become a republic, but you could keep a constitutional monarchy under King Charles 1st of Scotland, Charles III of England. I don’t suppose my views will get much support in these web pages, but there you are, old men like me can get quite attached to long-standing ways of doing things. Additionally, it’s not as if the country hasn’t previously tried a form of republican government, and that didn’t last long. Perhaps we could learn from this history? Cheers.
John – an independent Scotland would probably have a referendum on whether to retain monarchy as there less support for monarchy north of border and having this as a policy would not adverse effect a parties chance of election.
If the people of Scotland wished to retain monarch I would accept that.
Remaining in UK there is little chance of being given the option on retaining or abolishing monarchy in foreseeable future as none of Westminster parties will offer this as a policy as this would be unpopular and probably regarded as disloyal to large sections of electorate in England & Wales.
Correct
6 days after they crowned their new king, I had 60 quid in the bank, 40 on the electric, 17 on the gas. During the drive to work the fuel gauge pinged & went down a bar so I had one glowing bar left. It was a 12 mile round trip every time I went to work & I had 3 shifts to do before my next day off. My car, having remained parked outside the house for almost a week due to budgetary constraints, was not feeling or sounding as confident as I would have liked.
For the past few years the powers that be had been concentrating their efforts on transforming Elgin into what they were calling a central hub for the district. Or, at least that’s the story their mates in the media were promoting. As far as I could tell all that was happening was constant construction of new housing schemes on the periphery of every major toun in the area by a handful of property developers. At the same time, f*ck all was happening in terms of investment in infrastructure to alleviate the increasing strain on local services. A direct result of this drive towards centralisation was more or less permanent rush hour traffic anytime one attempted to reach one’s place of employment.
In addition, with it beginning to be tourist season, there were all sorts of semi sedated specimens behind the wheels of what you might call poser motors hired for the day, week or fortnight, poser motors borrowed by young whipper snappers from their (one would imagine) financially secure parents & of course, the increasingly familiar sight of great muckle 4×4 poser motors no doubt purchased to hide inherited wealth prior to the taxman turning up on the doorstep of some slyly concealed new build set amongst the pines & overlooking a tastefully landscaped body of water that had recently become home to a pair of mallard ducks whom the owners considered vermin & were determined to have exterminated at the earliest opportunity, at least if the current rules pertaining to pest control were to permit any such measure. If not, some highly skilled out of work post-traumatic stress suffering ex-military assassin might possibly be employed to do the deed as a tax free homer. As for myself, the here & now was proving more than enough of a challenge to be getting on with.
Having said that, with 30 years’ experience under my belt, 20 of those as a professional, I was, in spite of being a little rusty after a fortnight’s rest & recuperation, still by several country miles the finest driver Moray district had ever known. The way I managed to zip in front of a semi sedated poser approaching from the right whilst making a clockwise 90 degree turn at the toun hall roundabout was a piece of derring-do that if not captured on CCTV certainly should have been, & immediately uploaded to YouTube for enthusiastic youngsters, old fogies & homeworking layabouts to gawp at incredulously while tucked up in the comfort of those newly built homes they were paying monthly instalments to fat cat mortgage lenders for the pleasure of residing in & would continue to reside in for as long as they turned up on time & did their duty at one of the nearby military bases.
Not that I was bitter but some of these punters were customers of mine & had about as much personality as a bag of flour, & not an interesting bag of flour either. Not a bag of flour in brightly coloured packaging that guaranteed you a loaf or cake that had risen like a golden sun full of nutritious goodness but a bog standard bag of plain white flour in cheaply produced badly designed packaging that threatened to burst at the slightest touch so the flour leaked all over your kitchen worktop if it hadn’t already burst & emptied its contents into one of those bags for life certain supermarkets were charging 30 pence apiece for.
Some might argue that with me being a little out of practice & my motor not having moved for a considerable number of days, I should have been proceeding a trifle more cautiously. The fact of the matter, however, was that my manager had given me the full hauling over the coals a month previously & concluded her sermon with the warning that if I did not substantially buck up my ideas & clock in at least 15 minutes prior to my official start time I was destined to be booted out the door as soon as she could find a reasonable enough excuse to justify her application of the boot.
Given my reputation outside the workplace & my less than exemplary record within it, the general consensus was that her renowned ability to detect behaviours &/or mannerisms contravening company policy would soon win the day & that this fateful day would soon be making its appearance on the horizon. All one could do under such circumstances was to try to remain positive & I do believe that if she had observed the manner in which I was negotiating the perimeter of Elgin’s illustrious & historically fascinating high street she would have been, if not ecstatic, perhaps at least semi-impressed at the confident yet never verging into the haughty or arrogant style in which I was negotiating the many vehicular perils that threatened to ruin my day before it even started. After all, it was she herself who had taken the decision to employ me & thereby give her seal of approval to my navigation of any one of the company’s substantial fleet of delivery vehicles.
After the fortnight’s annual leave which she insisted I take, no doubt in part due to her concerns vis-à-vis my psychological well-being, this would be my first day back. Not with both guns blazing, dagger clenched between my teeth, but near as dammit, if you know what I mean. & with such thoughts swirling around what was left of my intellect I parked my car & popped my physical form out into what I had for some time come to regard less than fondly as World War 3.
You’re right to be angry Mark. The “world of work” for many people is effed-up.
I watched with dismay my son’s experience, during the pandemic and beyond, working in the kitchens of a global “restaurant” chain selling type-2 diabetes to the world.
No PPE, no health & safety, no accident book, no union, no contracted hours, no sick pay, no choice of holidays, no HR support, no compensation for anti-social hours worked at zero notice. Social life destroyed, sleep pattern disrupted, health damaged, relationships damaged, mental health compromised. £8.60/hr, when he could get it. And scoldings from the boss for not being enthusiastic enough about the brand and it’s “mission”.
The sandwiches had been made, a combination of grated cheese & tuna. When I pulled the lid off the tuna tin I managed to smack the knuckle ae my left thumb with the sharp edge of the circular lid. I saw the skin was scratched & sure enough after a moment or 2 the blood began to seep. I had to rack my brains for where I might find a sticky plaster, pulling out drawers, opening cupboards afore the ald memory kicked in. I went out to the car, raided the survival kit I kept under the driver’s seat for the smallest sticky plaster I could find, knowing wee sticky plasters cost less than bigger anes & you could always cut up bigger anes tae make 2 or 3 wee anes. I wis ay cutting or bruising mysel’ at work. No doubt the gossip mongers in the warehuis would see my hand & think I’d been fighting again. But I had not been fighting. I was a very well behaved person these days. You had to be careful though, you could not risk an open wound becoming infected. I mind the ole dear was working as a home help, in & out ae ald c*nts huises half the day, some of whom wir barely able tae tend tae thimsels & whose huises wur in a less than hygienic state. The ole dear hud a wee scratch on her nose. While cleaning ae day she musta reached up tae gie it a scratch, next thing ye kaint she wis hospitalised wi a staphylococcus infection.
Right, that’s it, I says when I went thru tae the Deen, seen her sat up in the hospital bed wi the drip set up, flooding her veins wi antibiotics tae flush the infection oot. That is you retired! Tell the c*nts tae git tae f*ck afore I do!
It wis ane ae they rare instances far the ole dear actually listened tae fit I wis saying. Mind you, she wis near enough 60 & had been born long enough ago tae retire at that age. Long afore studenty c*nts started banging on aboot equal rights & the powers that be bumped the retirement age up tae 65 regardless ae whether ye wur born wi a c*ck or a f*nny. A’right fur the likes ae them that nivir set foot ootside the office. As for the rest ae us that did a’ the wurk, as per usual we could jist git tae f*ck. My ain generation wis destined tae retire at 67 if we survived that long. I dare say if the wurk force evolved & developed yon extra pair ae hanns the powers that be expected us tae hae they’d bump it up tae 82 and 3 quarters.
These office c*nts wur blind tae wur existence. Or if we existed at all we existed on a level below that ae the multitude ae domesticated animals they routinely tortured tae death wi their weirdo sadistic tendencies. It was almost as though, consciously or subconsciously, they were conducting experiments on their pets to see how best they might inflict the most suffering on all the folk that did the actual graft.
away to post final draft of the full thing for anyone interested, cheery stuff for a Sunday 🙂
ESSENTIAL
On the day they crowned their new king I had 90 quid in the bank, 50 on the electric meter, 20 on the gas. I was fairly sure I had enough petrol in my 13 year old car to get me back & fore to work the required number of times before payday, so long as no major body parts fell off, so long as I didn’t get a puncture, so long as I kept the revs low & nothing mechanical or electrical failed. If I pranged the car I was f*ckt.
If the 10 year old gas boiler in my house gave up the ghost, I was f*ckt. Or perhaps not so much f*ckt as there would be no hot water for a bath & after a few days I would begin to pong & have to resort to boiling my 5 year old kettle, marching up & down the stairs until there was enough hot water in the tub that I could at least get the face washed, the feet, groin & armpits scrubbed. If the fuse blew or the element in the kettle went I was f*ckt.
There was food in the cupboard but not much & I was tired of eating the same tinned stuff day after day. Often I didn’t eat till I was famished. The work troosers, which were my only troosers, were loose enough around my waist that I had to wear a belt & tighten it to the second last notch. I could not afford to be getting dizzy & fall over at work. So, like a good soldier, I filled a flask & packed a sandwich before I went out the door.
I had been in the job just over a year & had fewer rights than some of the roadkill I passed driving to or from my place of work. It was a precarious situation I was in but one I had become accustomed to. Whenever I seemed to get that little bit ahead, that little bit closer to being in a more financially secure & therefore more psychologically stable position, something happened. As though the powers that be had it in not only for me but for every worker that made it through the pandemic even though we had constantly been informed that we were essential. Essential in what way, one was tempted to ask. Essential to the continuation of their authority.
That same authority that kept essential persons such as myself in precarious positions where we could be more easily manipulated & therefore controlled. But surely that couldn’t be true. Surely the powers that be were not deliberately targeting folk such as myself in order to make their own lives easier. Surely they did not believe in sacrificing folk such as myself in order that they might enjoy the finest available luxuries, live a stress free existence well into their 90s while folk such as myself dropped dead 2 years into retirement if they were lucky enough to last long enough to receive permission to retire.
Surely the political system in these islands had not been engineered in such a way so as to ensure folk such as myself dropped dead as close as possible to that particular point in time when the authorities deemed our duty done, our services no longer required. Surely it was not the case that essential folk should die so that authoritarian c*nts both elected & unelected could thrive, become ever more powerful in their non-essential positions to the point where they evolved from the non-essential to the inconsequential, became decadent, extravagant, irrelevant beings of no usefulness whatsoever.
The aim of the game being the creation, promotion & subsequent adulation of a specimen almost as useful as that union jack tea cosy you purchased on a whim the other day & might live long enough to consider, not only a frivolous purchase but a tad culturally insensitive on that fateful day when an essential worker such as myself appears in your line of vision tasked with making an instant decision on whether, seeing you terrified, writhing, gasping like a stranded haddock on your bathroom floor, he or she deems you essential enough to bother their arse about, or not.
*
6 days after they crowned their new king, I had 60 quid in the bank, 40 on the electric, 17 on the gas. During the drive to work the fuel gauge pinged & went down to one glowing bar. It was a 12 mile round trip every time I went to work & I had 3 shifts to do before my next day off. My car, having been parked outside the house for almost a week due to budgetary constraints, was not feeling or sounding as confident as I would have liked.
For the past few years the powers that be had been concentrating their efforts on transforming Elgin into what they were calling a central hub for the district. Or, at least that’s the story their mates in the media were promoting. As far as I could tell the only thing happening was the constant construction of new housing schemes on the periphery of every major toun in the area by a handful of property developers. At the same time, f*ck all was happening in terms of investment in infrastructure to alleviate the increasing strain on local services. A direct result of this so-called drive towards centralisation was more or less permanent rush hour traffic anytime one attempted to reach one’s place of employment.
In addition, with it beginning to be tourist season, there were all sorts of semi sedated specimens behind the wheels of what you might call poser motors hired for the day, week or fortnight, poser motors borrowed by young whipper snappers from their (one would imagine) financially secure parents, whose ancestors no doubt made a significant contribution to Scotland’s less publicised & less celebrated role in the slave trade, tea & tobacco plantations, various land grabs, backroom deals, PoW style factory & distillery schemes, in short, any morally dubious endeavour such despicable specimens could conjure up, invest & re-invest in, passing on down thru the generations the murky secrets ae foo tae mak a poun, keep wur wunderful sels in thi style tae fitch wiv becum accustomed, keep the ald despicable flock ae anglo norman jocks tae fitch wi belang in thi great wee gemme we like tae pritend is a’ bin played oot above board, fitch in a sense it is, since it has on the surface & for appearances sake, the full backing ae king, queen, kirk, country, & of course a great many descendants ae thi relations frae generations back fa wur banished, captured as children & deported, spread far & wide around the globe tae exterminate the natives, cause as much chaos, do as much damage tae the natural world as ‘humanly’ or, should I say, ‘mechanistically’ possible afore dropping deid like the gude God fearing Christians they hud bin indoctrinated intae believing wis the only acceptable way tae conduct wan’s existence.
Any wonder then that the same man as God arrogance persists even in the relatively tiny district of Moray with the increasingly familiar sight of great muckle 4×4 poser motors no doubt purchased to hide inherited wealth prior to the taxman turning up on the doorstep of some slyly concealed new build set amongst the pines, or overlooking a tastefully landscaped body of water that recently became home to a pair of mallard ducks the owners consider vermin & are determined to have exterminated at the first available opportunity, at least if the rules pertaining to pest control will permit any such occurrence. If not, some highly skilled out of work post-traumatic stress suffering ex-military assassin would no doubt be persuaded to carry out the task as a tax free homer. As for myself, the here & now was proving more than enough to be getting on with.
Having said that, with 30 years’ experience under my belt, 20 of those as a professional, I was, in spite of being a little rusty after a fortnight’s rest & recuperation, still by several country miles the finest driver Moray district had ever known. The way I managed to zip in front of a semi sedated poser approaching from the right whilst making a clockwise 90 degree turn at the toun hall roundabout was a piece of derring-do that if not captured on CCTV certainly should have been, & immediately uploaded to YouTube for enthusiastic youngsters, old fogies & homeworking layabouts to gawp at incredulously while tucked up in the comfort of the newly built homes they were paying monthly instalments to fat cat mortgage lenders for the pleasure of residing in & would continue to reside in for as long as a substantial enough percentage of their number turned up on the dot & did their duty at one of the nearby military camps.
Not that I was bitter but some of these punters were customers of mine & had about as much personality as a bag of flour, & not a very interesting bag of flour. Not a bag of flour in brightly coloured packaging that guaranteed you a piping hot loaf or cake risen like a golden sun full of nutritious goodness, but a bog standard bag of plain flour in cheaply produced badly designed packaging that threatened to burst at the slightest touch so the flour went all over your kitchen floor if it hadn’t already burst & emptied its contents into one of those bags for life certain supermarkets were charging 30 pence apiece for.
Some might argue that with me being a little out of practice & my motor not having moved for a considerable number of days, I should have been proceeding a trifle more cautiously. However, the fact of the matter was that my manager had given me the full hauling over the coals a month previously & concluded her sermon with the warning that if I did not substantially buck up my ideas & clock in at least 15 minutes prior to my official start time I was destined to be booted out the door as soon as she could find a reasonable enough excuse to justify her application of the boot.
Given my reputation outside the workplace & my less than exemplary record within it, the general consensus was that her renowned ability to detect behaviours &/or mannerisms that contravened company policy would soon win the day & that this fateful day would soon be making its appearance on the horizon. All one could do under such circumstances was to try to remain positive & I do believe that if she had observed the manner in which I was navigating the perimeter of Elgin’s illustrious, historically fascinating high street she would have been, if not ecstatic, perhaps slightly more than semi-impressed at the confident yet never haughty or arrogant style with which I was negotiating the many vehicular perils that threatened to ruin my day before it really began. After all, it was she herself who had employed me & given her seal of approval to my navigation of any one of the company’s substantial fleet of delivery vehicles.
After a fortnight’s annual leave which she insisted I take, no doubt due to her concerns vis-à-vis my psychological well-being, this would be my first day back at work. Not with both guns blazing, dagger clenched between my teeth, but near as dammit, if you know what I mean. & with just such thoughts swirling around what was left of my intellect I parked the car & popped my physical form out into what I had come to regard less than fondly as World War 3.
The sandwiches had been made, a combination of grated cheese & tuna. When I pulled the lid off the tin of tuna I managed to smack the knuckle of my left thumb with the sharp edge of the circular lid. I saw the skin was scratched & sure enough after a moment or 2 the blood began to seep. I had to rack my brains for where I might find a sticky plaster, pulling out drawers, opening cupboards afore the ald memory kicked in.
I went out to the car, raided the survival kit I kept under the driver’s seat for the smallest sticky plaster I could find, knowing wee sticky plasters cost less than bigger anes & you could always cut up bigger anes tae make 2 or 3 wee anes. I wis ay cutting or bruising myself at wurk. Half the time I didn’t even notice till I got in the bath. No doubt the gossip mongers in the warehuis would see my hand & think I’d been fighting again. But I had not been fighting. I was a very well behaved person these days. You had to be careful though, you could not risk an open wound becoming infected.
I mind the ole dear was wurking as a home help, having to go into ald c*nts huises day after day, some of whom wir barely able tae tend tae thimsels & whose huises wur in a less than hygienic state. The ole dear hud a wee scratch on her nose. While cleaning ae day she musta reached up & touched her nose, next thing ye kaint she’d been hospitalised.
Right, that’s it, I says when I saw her in the hospital bed, the drip set up tae flood her veins wi antibiotics & flush the infection oot. That is you retired! Tell the c*nts tae git tae f*ck afore I do!
It wis ane ae they rare instances far the ole dear actually listened tae fit I wis saying. Mind you, she wis near enough 60 & had been born long enough ago tae retire at that age. Long afore studenty c*nts started banging on aboot equal rights & the powers that be bumped the retirement age up tae 65 regardless ae whether ye wur born wi a c*ck or a f*nny. A’right fur the likes ae them that nivir set foot ootside the office. As for us that did a’ the wurk, as usual we could jist git tae f*ck. My ain generation wis permitted tae retire at 67, at least those ae us lucky enough tae live that long. I dare say if the likes ae masel evolved & developed that extra pair ae hands the powers that be expected us tae hae they’d bump it up tae 82 & 3 quarters.
These office c*nts wur blind tae oor existence. If we existed at all we existed at some obscure level below that ae the domesticated animals they routinely tortured tae death wi their sadistic techniques. It wis almost as though, consciously or subconsciously, they were conducting experiments on their pets in order tae test how best they might inflict the most suffering on all those folk that did the actual graft.