It always starts on a Monday

It always starts on a Monday


One of the reasons I enjoy a drink is because when I was young and dumb I was lured away from sunny South Afica by the foolish ideals of money and adventure. Before I knew it I was in London and after quickly partying and drinking all my holiday money away, I found myself working one Monday morning on a 28 metre fishing boat off a remote island that was too far north, too windy and a rather brutal introduction to what real winter is. Naive me and four Beardy Wierdies were crammed onto a small fishing boat, working nets and gutting fish for more hours than there are in a day, all whilst scarily dark waves towered above us before the inevitable soaking. When I could, I would dream of a warm, sunny and dry South Africa.

One of the constant fustrations I had to deal with on a daily basis was the rudimentary communication and the dodgy living conditions the four mad men and I shared. Firstly there was the way they spoke: some bizarre local dialect that I never really understood, which made everything sound terrifying. They could be talking about a fluffy puppy they'd just rescued and it would send a cold shiver down your spine. Then there was The Boat. It was cramped, dirty, smelly and the only refuge aboard was the tiny wheel house that was under the constant smog of (and I'm not kidding) "Black Death" cigarettes. For entertainment there were two monitors which beeped out nautical stuff every now and again (nobody ever looked at them) and three other monitors that had a constant run of seriously fucked up Russian amateur hardcore porn. So any downtime that we had was spent tightly holding on to the gaurd rail and drinking weapons-grade vodka and Red Bull. This was when, quite sadly, being violently sea sick was a double edged sword: it meant that you were purging yourself of the daily diet that was a microwave dish of unkown substance (I swear it was cat vomit) and the vodka that burnt as much coming out as it did going in. The sharper edge of this sword was that I would be seen hurling my soul into a bucket (you daren't go near the edge of the boat as getting washed away was all to likely, even if sometimes wished for) and being told to "Get ma self back into da game." I would then be handed a dirty mugg of vodka or Captain Morgan Spiced Gold and Red Bull that had to be drunk there and then. The bunks stank of fish, piss and stale Tennent's Lager, so I would feign sleep in the wheel house, bolt upright, after I had strapped myself into the racing car seat that was nailed to the wall ( lying on the floor was not an option).

On our days off I would go the apartment I rented and would sleep like the dead for a day or two, maybe heading out later to be grey with the dreary locals until it was time to push off to sea again. The days were long and funny, but not as in 'funny haha.'

That changed one day when the ginger Beardie Wierdie came into the bar with an old World War 2 grenade he had found on the beach. He was so chuffed by his find, that our first thoughts were that he had gotten laid the night before on the cheap. After we played a quick game of hot potato with it, where it was dropped more than once with all of us doing animated explosions like school boys, it was left on the bar between us as our drinks took priority. All of a sudden it furiously started fizzing and crackling. Cue: shocked faces all round and five idiots rammed up against a door pushing furiously when it need to be PULLED. Eventually we piled out into the street and behind us the grenade fizzed out. We picked ourselves up and returned to the bar where a very pissed off barmaid had just stood there cleaning glasses the whole time, yelled abuse at us because it gave off a strange smell and leaked gooey shit all over her clean counter!!!

That night we returned to sea with good weather and a few days of good catches and much merriment. Everything was going rather well and it was making me quite nervous. It came as no surprise when late one night/early one morning I was not the only one amazed by the discovery that there was actually a kitchen aboard the boat and that it contained more than just a microwave. One of the Beardy Wierdies had found a gas stove, a deep fat fryer and a force 9 gale. The subsequent rescue from that fiery concoction made an episode of Sea Rescues on the Discovery Channel. The brave helicopter crew couldn't winch us off; a nearby boat threw life rafts out for us and we had to time the jump off our boat at just the right time or else we would end up in the very scary, dark, bottomless ocean. This proved to be a tad more difficult than imagined as our gumboots were melting onto the deck and were a little sticky. Luckily we all survived in one piece. Every now and again I ponder the thought that if I'd gone to London and not drunk all my money away and gotten a proper job I would not have this reccuring nightmare about an old Russian peasant woman and her equally old postman.


As bad as the fishing boat sounds the worst job was when I left the boat to earn some money to escape from the island. This was at a salmon factory and it, too, began on a Monday morning. I never would have thought that any good could have come from my time spent on that accursed boat, but due to my time there I was fortunate enough to avoid being one of the drones on the factory line, who sucked out the guts from the freshly killed salmon like lethargic zombies. I was given the much respected job of a KILLER and, yes, that is the official title. Yours truly and six others would man the killing station. Our tools were tiny, blunt knives and our victims were live, but stunned (nobody told them that they were stunned) salmon. For ten hours a day we were stood at a aluminium table, up to our elbows in icy sea water, grapling with large, wildly flapping salmon as we slit their gills with our blunt knives and tossed them down the chute to the blood tank. All this happened three metres off the factory floor where we were splashed, thumped and bled on by the 3 000+ salmon that we killed every day. In case you didn't know, salt water and salmon blood stings the crap out of your eyes and when it gets into your mouth, that is all you can taste for the rest of the day. When the pump would have its daily breakdown, our psycotic boss would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout abuse and throw salmon heads at us because fundamentally he was an unhappy man at heart. And there was no way he was going to get close to seven very cold, beat up and armed men who wanted off the island at almost any cost. Christmas came early for us one day as we were all fired after one of us got lucky during a work dispute where a volley of live salmon were flung at (still not saying who it exactly it was Mr Policeman) our boss from a height of three metres and duly knocking the ugly Scottish bastard out cold.

The one good thing about that job, though was that I get to have the title KILLER on my CV. It has raised more than one eyebrow, and I have yet to be criticised or questioned hard in a job interview.