Back to Bateman
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
The Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 27: Back to Bateman
‘All right now, guys, settle down!’ Bateman, the nightshift
supervisor yells. ‘It’s another busy night tonight, we’ve got
ninety-five thousand to pick, so I want you all to pull your
fingers out of your backsides and get stacking those boxes.
Any questions?’
The time is 6:58pm. It’s getting dark outside and I’m sitting
in a canteen with Chris surrounded by a hundred
exhausted fellow freezer workers. We’re all dressed like
we’re about to ski down Mont Blanc, and are literally
minutes away from throwing ourselves into a 12 hour
nightshift in the harsh conditions of the -30°C freezer.
‘OK,’ Bateman barks. ‘What are you still doing here?
Come on! Move! There’s work to be done!’
A loud groan fills the canteen.
Bateman claps his hands together, and laughs. ‘Don’t look
so miserable! A bit of hard work will soon cheer you up.’
‘He’s such a prick,’ Chris mumbles, as we make our way
out of the canteen.
The two weeks we spent in China had been incredible. It’s
a country bursting with culture, and it’s impossible to
leave the place without a smile on your face or a nice
piece of dog meat in your belly. From the industrial city of
Harbin, we caught a train to Beijing, the Mecca of the
People’s Republic of China, and from there we continued
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directly south to Zhengzhou to see the Shaolin temple and
the 10,000 students who train Kung Fu. Onwards to Xian
to see the Terracotta Warriors, then Chengdu to see the
Pandas, Linjang, Dali and across to Kunming, where we
travelled south and crossed the border into the South East
Asian country of Laos. Travelling by bus to Louangphrabang
and onwards to the capital of Vientiane, we finally crossed
the border into Thailand ‘the land of smiles’, and that is
exactly what greeted us. We caught a train to Bangkok, one
of the craziest cities in the world with its fast-paced sticky
street life, amazing temples, great bars and disturbing
ping-pong shows, and headed south to the paradise island
of Koh Phangan. We spent our last few weeks swimming
in the beautiful blue ocean, eating fresh fish, swinging in
hammocks, drinking buckets of Thai whiskey and becoming
very friendly with a group of incredibly attractive girls
from the north of England. We had certainly ended our
trip in style. We waved goodbye to paradise and headed
back to Bangkok, where we purchased a one-way ticket to
Heathrow via Kuwait City for £195. The Iraq War had been
in full swing for a while now. Baghdad was heavily
bombed only six months ago, so it was crazy to fly over
the desert and see enormous oil fields out of the window
of the plane, and US soldiers in military uniform milling
around the airport terminal.
Much to our relief, we made it back to old Blighty “God
save our Queen” without being blown out of the sky by a
rocket launcher. Catching a National Express coach to our
hometown of Daventry, we walked the last mile to our
mum’s house where our journey had first begun. With dirty
rucksacks over our shoulders we felt like men returning
home from war … well, not quite, but it felt pretty good all
the same. I wanted to shout out to everyone walking down
the street “we’ve just driven to Vladivostok in a £300 Ford
Sierra”, but of course I didn’t. I bottled it up and promised
myself to wait until we’d developed the hundreds of pho-
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tographs we’d taken on our journey, so we could bore the
living shit out of everyone with a three-hour slide show
when we got home. Our family was stood in the kitchen
when we arrived at the house. It was a lovely surprise.
Standing by a busy chute rammed with heavy boxes of
frozen oven chips, I physically and mentally prepare
myself for the long cold night ahead. Glancing around I
notice nothing has changed, it’s all exactly the same. The
Kurdish guys seem really pleased to see us again, and
Lefty is always full of energy and ready to crack a joke,
which is incredible considering he’s been working pretty
much twelve hours a night, seven days a week for five
months now to pay off some debts. In a harsh environment
like this you need characters like Lefty to keep up
your morale, otherwise you’d end up slitting your wrists
before it was time to clock-out.
Chris suddenly appears from across the freezer and
slaps me around the back of the head.
‘Have you heard the gossip?’ he laughs. ‘Savage has been
banged up again for GBH!’
I ignore him and continue to stack boxes into a cage.
‘Hey, and Lefty just told me Shooter’s got his girlfriend
up the duff.’
‘Chris, if Bateman catches us talking we’re fucked!’
‘Fuck, Bateman. It’s not prison!’
Suddenly, a voice cries out from across the factory.
‘RAVENS!’
We turn to see Bateman storming towards us.
‘RAVENS! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE
DOING?’
‘Déjà-fucking-vu!’ Chris laughs.
Bateman slides up beside us and folds his fat arms. ‘Are
you guys deaf, or something? It’s a busy night tonight.
Why aren’t you working?’
‘We are,’ I reply.
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‘Do I look stupid?’ he cries. ‘I know your game, one more
strike and you’re out!’
I watch Lefty tiptoe up behind Bateman and whip his
Everton bobble hat off his head. We both look in surprise,
as a huge mass of curly black hair flops down either side
of his ugly face.
‘Leave them alone, Bateman!’ Lefty cheekily cries disappearing
behind chute 48.
Bateman looks embarrassed and turns red. The whole
hard man image immediately disappears. He quickly
attempts to tidy up his mass of curly locks, but gives up
and smiles awkwardly before chasing after Lefty between
the chutes.
‘What a loser,’ Chris smirks.
We’re interrupted by a voice calling over from the next
chute. ‘Excuse me, please. You help?’
We turn and see a young lad with a dark complexion
cradling a box of frozen vegetables in his arms.
‘You tell me if vegetables go in cage four or six, please?’
‘Cage six is for frozen bread and cage four is for meat,’
Chris shouts back. ‘Vegetables go in cage three.’
‘Thank you,’ the guy smiles.
‘Hey, where are you from?’ Chris asks.
‘I am from São Paulo in Brazil’
Chris turns to me, and grins. ‘Brazil…’
THE END
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