Chapter 24
Our ominous drive home from the airport after our holiday in Rhodes with the automatic gearbox struggling to change from third to fourth gear, and returning to our bedsit to find we were day three into an eventual seven-day post-storm power outage at the manor, was the moment we should have listened to the universe, got back in the car, and continued to France.
Instead, with three weeks before our chalet job started, we decided to look for two weeks’ work and fix and sell the car.
Six kilometres from Nottingham on the Hedges in nearby Wickham on the Grove, we found work at a warehouse, picking and packing science-related educational toys. We saw the job advertised from the road and went in.
Because we had a pulse and no criminal record, human resources presented us an application form. After impressing with our ability to write and not misspell our own names, we had an interview to prove we spoke English, weren’t retarded and could carry a conversation. In the interview we discussed availability dates and signed a two-week contract.
Being organised people, before starting our new job, we took our car to one of the two garages in the village. The first garage was booked solid for a week. The second garage had no customers.
The second garage’s owner dressed like a nineteen-eighties real estate agent in a black leather jacket and pleated grey dress pants. The mechanic fixed our car so that, instead of occasionally struggling to change from fourth to fifth gear, the car never changed beyond second.
“The car was like that when you brought it in,” were the real estate agent’s words.
What two non-mechanic twenty-two-year-old foreign girls can say in rebuttal to the contrary, is nothing.
Driving home on the busy main road between Wickham on the Grove and Nottingham on the Hedges, at nana speed with our hazard lights flashing and traffic backing up behind us, the engine screamed and the rev counter needle threatened to snap from the dashboard.
Back at the power-less manor, we parked our Ford Escort in the driveway where it stood, like us, marooned. Our plans to sell the car foiled, we paid someone to tow it away and found alternative transport to work.
We were bus people.
In my home town Halstead, New Zealand, long-term bus users were at least two of the following: poor, students, old, crazy, or travellers. We were travellers living in a manor with no power. Poor and travellers, we were bus people.
The bus driver in her fifties, had permanent angry face-creases and her body folded over the driver’s seat. Catching the bus each morning, we smiled and said, “Hello how are you?” while presenting the exact change, after appropriately waving down the bus and behaving like all-round good citizens. Before we got to our seats, she floored the bus. She would not be charmed.
In our new jobs as warehouse pickers and packers, we packed science into boxes. After pulling trolleys around a warehouse plucking product from shelves, we scanned each item and packed the product into large brown boxes for couriering to branches.
Compared to the fish factory, the job was markedly better: we didn’t work in a fridge or smell like fish.
The trouble started when, every time we returned to the factory front to connect our barcode scanner to the computer, the manager retaught us the process.
When the woman retaught me how to dock my barcode scanner, I didn’t get frustrated. I nodded and repeated the last four words of her sentences to give the impression I was listening, when really, I was thinking how my new skis would cut through fresh powder in France.
“You put the barcode scanner in the docking station,” said Mrs Been There Forever.
“In the docking station,” I repeated and nodded. I looked forward to those blue sky windless days on the mountain.
“And then you wait for this light to flash on the hand piece.”
“On the hand piece,” I said, imagining slipping on my new ski pants, they would be perfect for winter and spring skiing.
“Then, see this code here? You need to write it on the piece of paper on this clipboard.”
“On this clipboard.”
Ellie did not cope well with being retaught.
Sometimes Ellie was at the barcode docking station at the same time as me and I watched her interacting with Mrs Been There Forever, growing exponentially frustrated.
“I know,” she would say every time the woman reminded her how to dock the barcode scanner and each time her “I know” got shorter, harsher and more abrupt.
“I know. Yeah I know. I know.”
“I am just trying to explain to you what to do!” I heard Mrs Been There Forever snap back.
Standing watching Ellie at the docking station with Mrs Been There Forever, I imagined Ellie with “panda eyes”, a look one gets after wearing ski goggles and having their face tanned but not the skin around their eyes.
The fish factory taught me resilience. My epiphany had been realising boredom, like grief, is a staged process. A realisation which made me stronger along with Ellie’s support which carried me through my difficult time. At the fish factory, Ellie had put her suffering to the side; now it was my turn to support her and help her realise the boredom-grief staged process. I think my mother had realised it, she knew the “Acceptance” stage well. “Accept my lot,” she would say.
“I got it the first time,” said Ellie, after Mrs Been There Forever pointed to where on the clipboard she should write.
I kept an eye on Ellie and pointed out the positives, “It’s not a fridge and no smell.” She scowled back. I thought harder. “It’s not a fridge and no smell,” I repeated.
My supermarket Tetris-packing skills came into use, and once again, I could hear the Tetris song in my head as I packed the boxes. Ellie, not a Tetris fan and being somewhat of a perfectionist, was told by Mrs Been There Forever to pack faster, she was trying to get everything into the box when she could instead, pack one shipment into two boxes. She would put things in, take things out, rotate something and take it out again.
Things got better because we got closer to the end and the power came on in the manor. I analogised to Ellie that not packing a box perfectly can be likened to leaving little pieces of brown flesh on smoked salmon. At the warehouse, I told Ellie, they accepted brown flesh on smoked salmon.
This analogy in mind, the remaining few days passed.