Biscuits

Davey in my work was telling me he has a mate that goes for cock and ball torture somewhere in Govan. Just passed comment like it was the dentist or something, then sauntered off to get some crisps from the vending machine. When he came back he told me that he had me for the secret santa and would I want a gift voucher for the cock and ball torture place? I laughed but he just stood there, staring at me, eating beef hula hoops a fistful at a time. The bag was done in seconds. He tied it in a tight knot and aimed it at the bin. It faded at the last, landing on the floor to the left.

The biscuit factory is my Uncle John’s place. We make the traybakes they sell in supermarkets, we do caramel shortcake, mars bar slices, a whole bunch of stuff. It’s boring as fuck but the pay’s alright. I wasnae working much before it, just wee things that came up now and then, cash in hand bits. Danielle didn’t say anything but you could tell she wanted me to get my shit together. So I asked if he had any work going. He said no at first. I told Danielle he said no, and she probably told my mum, and then a few days later I got a text saying to come in on Tuesday at nine.

‘I hired a couple of guys last month,’ he said, when I came in. ‘Young lads.’

I nodded.

‘Two positions. And guess how many folk applied for those two positions.’

I shrugged.

‘Six hundred and fifty two folk applied for those two jobs in four days. And now you’re getting a job without an interview and you didn’t even apply. You wee shite.’ He smiled. He had a point. Who didn’t get by on favours but?

‘Don’t expect any more special treatment,’ he said.

There were about fifty of us, all wearing the same white apron and they hats that stop your hair getting into the cakes. That would be bad for business. On the first day I caught a wee look at myself in the staff room mirror and I looked like a surgeon. What a job that’d be, I thought. Saving lives and being a hero. Although you wouldn’t always get it right. That’d be a lot to deal with, things going wrong. I was just glad to be bringing money in and showing Danielle I was going somewhere.

***

I got to know the workplace cliques quick.

First there were the old boys. Most of them were Uncle John’s pals and they’d been in the biscuit factory forever. They’d played five-a-side and drank together for about twenty year. They never showed any emotions or got excited about anything. They were mostly sound except big Scott who was a prick. Uncle John was always making excuses for him, saying he was a nice guy really, but it just seemed like he spoke to everyone like shite and no one ever called him out on it.

Then you had the young lads. The youngest was 17, and the oldest 26, so a few years younger than me. They talked about football all the time, did you watch so and so last night, I didn’t know how they had the time, they watched games that they didn’t care about. Just something to do. They were constantly getting me to listen to music that I thought was pish. They’d be like ‘have you heard this’ and play me some Gerry Cinnamon or whatever his name is. It was like The Singing Kettle for cunts old enough to drink. Music was much worse for them than it was when I was a wee guy, which is saying something.

After that you had the outliers, the oddballs, the lone wolves. Guys like Davey who just said fucking weird stuff like the thing about cock and ball torture, and who was always getting big things of mail sent to the factory and was always mysterious about it. I asked him once what a package was and he looked down at me and said ‘it’s a dartboard.’ But it was a tube-shaped thing about 8 feet long. So it couldn’t have been a dartboard. Or Lynsey who wisnae all there god bless her, she just walked around talking to herself all the time and getting in everyone’s way and seemed like she was constantly on the verge of shiteing herself about something. She was the longest serving member of staff even though it felt like she actually slowed stuff down. Uncle John was a loyal guy.

I was probably in this category, but I dinnae really think of myself as a weird guy.

Not like Davey is, anyway.

Then there were the Poles. I think they were Poles. Five eastern European lassies who all hung about together and spoke to each other in a different language. They were good workers. Hard not to get on with folk who get their head down to be honest.

***

After a month I got chatting to Uncle John’s new woman Jenny, who would just come in from time to time and flirt with the older guys. Who were all horney bastards that, on some level, resented their wives or were divorced. They loved it, she loved it.

She was a character, mind. She came and stood next to me and told me stories about how wild she was in her youth, and laughed like a maniac at all of them.

Things like

‘You know that subway on Great Western?’

‘Which one, Kelvinbridge?’

‘Aye that’s the one. I remember once I came up the stairs, and — wait for this — I thought I saw the Taj Mahal. I was on acid. I was nineteen.

‘You think it was the Uni you were looking at?

‘No idea. But I remember getting chips from the Philadelphia and seeing all this mad writing everywhere.’

Wee things like that. She told me that for years her pal had shagged the guy who was in charge of changing Eric Clapton’s guitar strings, and had actually been a bit of a stalker and she didn’t really talk to her anymore. She told me that the taxi driver she’d had this morning had found Allah ten weeks ago, the one true god he kept calling him, and kept turning round in his seat to tell her how his life had changed.

‘What did you say to that?

‘I told him to keep his eyes on the road.’

‘Haha.’ I always tried to laugh as she was Uncle John’s woman and he was the boss.

‘He was in that full Indian gear. I didn’t think they were meant to drink at all, that religion, but he says he was drinking and womanizing flat out until ten weeks ago. That’s when he found Allah.’

The next day Uncle John said she wouldn’t shut up about me and that I was a lovely boy. I asked Uncle John if I could have her number and he said I’d be doing him a favour because she was a nightmare and wouldn’t shut up. She wasnae bad for her age, actually.

***

The Polish lassies started bringing me bread and stuff into work. One of them brought these dumplings that had potato and cheese and some sort of meat.

I found her in the staff room.

‘Thanks for the dumplings, by the way. You shouldn’t have.’

She smiled at me, all sweet. ‘Is no problem. I make them for my husband. His favourite.’

‘What do you call them?’

‘Per oh gee’.

‘Per oh gee. Well they are fucking amazing. You’re very good.

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m Ross,’ by the way. Don’t think I ever said.

‘Al-eet-ya’.

‘Al-eet-ya,’ I said.

‘Alicja.’

I came home with the loaf of bread and used it for dinner, to mop up the stew Mum had made.

‘That bread is gorgeous Ross,’ she said.

‘You must be flirting with them,’ Danielle said. Half joking.

‘I don’t,’ I said, holding my hands up. ‘I honestly don’t know what’s going on.’

‘I know what you’re like.’

‘Look they’ve all got husbands and all.’

‘If you keep bringing all this stuff back then I’m all for the flirting with the Polish lassies’, Mum laughed. ‘Gotta do what you’ve got to do.’

Danielle laughed but then gave me a look that meant we’d be talking about it later. I just wanted to watch Sopranos and go to bed. We were getting to the end of the second season with that cunt Richie Aprile giving everyone grief. Hated that guy and couldn’t wait to see him get fucking done in. But it would have to wait.

***

Things kicked off one morning at the end of November when big Scott grabbed one of the young guys by the throat. He’d been giving him a hard time for weeks, taking the piss and and the wee man just lost the rag and said to him ‘fuck off stupid fat cunt’, and then big Scott went for him and had him up against the wall next to vat where we mix the caramel. The wee guy’s face went this horrible purple colour and I thought he was going to pass out. It was fucking scary. A couple of the younger lads managed to break it up. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and were all watching, trance like.

‘That guy needs help,’ Davey said to me when everything calmed down a bit.

‘You’re not wrong,’ I said, thinking Davey had quite a high tolerance for strange behaviour and if he was saying you needed help you should probably get it.

I went to the staff room to take five and got a packet of wine gums from the vendies for a wee bit of sugar to tide me through ’til lunch. Alicja was there.

‘Fucking hell what about that,’ she said in this funny half Glasgow half Polish voice that really got me.

‘Guy’s a maniac.’ I said.

‘Really is, she said, taking a bite out of an apple and carrying on talking with her mouthful. ‘He never talks to us. I ask him how his weekend is and he just ignores me.’

‘He really is a prick,’ I said. ‘Just ignore him.’

‘Everyone’s like that in here. All the old guys. Just act like we’re not here but keep us around because we get things done quicker.’ She sighed and then gave a shrug. ‘It is life. It is to be a woman.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t be sorry. You are always so sweet.’

I felt myself blushing.

‘What you eating away at?’ she said.

‘Wine gums.’

‘I’ve never had Wine Gums.’

‘They’re class.’ I thought I’d give her a Wine Gum, but when I looked down at the table I’d finished the pack.

When I left that day all the old guys and Uncle John were having a laugh in the smoking bit, Jenny was there too and they were all fawning over her like a bunch of idiots. Nothing would get done about him trying to strangle that wee guy. I knew at some point I’d bring it up and would get fobbed off. That’s how it would go.

***

On the way home Mum sent me a text.

Can u pick up bread? Unless one of ur girlfriends has given u haha xo

I laughed.

No bread today sorry I let u down haha

I rummaged around the white bread til I found a loaf that was going out of date in five days time and picked up some crisps that were on special offer at the end of one of the aisles. The self-service wasn’t working so I went to the lad at the checkout.

‘Cashback?’ he said.

‘All good thanks.’

‘Two twenty nine.’

I handed over a fiver and then something caught my eye.

‘Wait a second,’ I said, and half jogged to another one of the special offer displays.

Two big bags of Wine Gums.

‘Wine Gums,’ the lad said.

‘Aye. Wine Gums.’