On friday night, my friend Richard, a socially bold man, advanced the argument that humans are most happy doing repetitive tasks. He was shot down by everyone. Until he started talking about rendering – then people started coming round. Rendering is basically icing a wall. Its quite challenging, and so gives you status in the world of menial work.
I still couldn't quite agree that repetitive tasks are best for us, and don't expect resolution from this piece of writing. Sometimes my work is so boring that I have to play True Love Waits really loudly, many times, to pretend that this is the reason I am crying.
On my run this morning, I started thinking about repetitive work, again and then again. The irony that I was passing over the same ground as I do almost every morning; thinking the same thoughts about the same mistakes I repeat; having the same conversation with my friends who are guarding the same cars along the way, was not lost on me.
I have done a lot of repetitive jobs in my life and I am glad I did them. There were great spin-offs. Where this leaves us, I am not sure, but here is a list:
1. Picker and packer for GAME stores, Banbury. My one regret is that I didn't stay long enough to take my fork-lift driving exam and get a promotion. This job allowed me to buy cost price games. One of these was a card game called Grass which is the best card game in the world, and until we lost the really really bad card Totally Wiped Out, we played it every day and every night for at least a decade.
2. Director for MAP Travel, Oxford. MAP Travel moved premises. I was employed to sit at the old premises and direct people to the new one, which was just around the corner. During this time, thanks to a cost-price game boy from my previous job, I championed Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Cart. The dexterity that this takes cannot be over-stated. Any activity that you use both the left and right hand to do is very beneficial and staves off terrible diseases of the brain later in life. Knitting, playing the piano, computer games. I know because my dad wrote a book about it. Using your left hand stimulates your right brain, making you a better, more peaceful person.
3. Greeting card cleaner and polisher, Regents Park. I have to confess that my friend Margaret and I fled from this job after one day, tearing off our masks and forensic suits as we went. We ran from a private secret garden in Regent's Park, where we had been wiping away the tears that stained the sympathy cards for the recently deceased Princess Diana, left by the public in Kensington Gardens. But the decision to run was political, not necessarily due to the task at hand.
4. Plug point maker at Lucy's Steelworks, Oxford. At this factory, every day, I made about 1000 plug points. I counted them. The machine I operated was hot and heavy and I burnt through at least one pair of gloves an hour. I worked with three other people in my section. None of them had been there for fewer than 17 years. I left before I became institutionalised, when I had enough money to buy the man I loved a pair of second-hand levis. Next to the Lucy's Steelworks factory on the river in North Oxford, is a Lucy's Steelworks graveyard.
5. Potwasher, Parsonage Hotel, Oxford. This was hard. White South Africans don't generally wash many pots, or any other kind of dishes. So learned a new skill and developed fresh empathy. I liked being working class. I met Simon who was a waiter, who after 25 years is still one of my best friends.
During this time I also met Colin, who did very well at school and is now an architect, just like Richard from the first paragraph. Colin confessed to me the other day that what he really wanted to be was a builder so he could lay bricks all day, but his parents wouldn't let him.