Stuffed into the cramped minibus, cigarettes ground out with the soles of Kickers and Wallabees (or scraped on kerb before being popped half-smoked back in the packet) we are off and raring to go. Our voices bounce around the damp interior and steam up the windows making them blank pages upon which we can start drawing knobs from which rivulets of condensation satisfyingly run. Simple pleasures. Were it the 121 bus that took you directly to town, we’d have got our stolen marker pens and compasses out, scrawling and scratching said knobs into the formica backs of the seats in front. But this is the Office Cleaning Services minibus; a vehicle owned by our employers, and no-one wants to lose their job.
Our driver for this evening is Jim. And what Jim wants to know tonight is if we notice anything different about him. We crane our necks as he glances at us in the rearview mirror, coquettishly tilting his chin and elongating his neck so we can make the most of his terrible sideburns.
‘Had a haircut Jim?’
‘Had a shave Jim?’
‘Got a lovebite Jim?’
The answer to our guesses is cheerful ‘No. No. NO! Guess again girls!’
Jim is the same age as that of our fathers and hardly the model of Calvin Klein ad six-pack masculinity that we crave in our 15 year-old way. He has children around the same age as us but sees it as no reason not to flirt good-naturedly with his hairspray-loving, hoody-wearing, hormone-flooded charges. He is no threat to us and, to be fair, his chances in a slanging match or a fist fight against eight of Basingstoke’s finest whose ability to hold their own has graduated from playgrounds to pool rooms, are slim to nothing.
‘Do you give up girls?’
‘YES JIM!’
‘Well’, he says, tapping the lobe of his left ear with a nicotine-stained finger, ‘I had my ear pierced this morning – do you like it?’
“WOOOOOOOOOO!” we all cry and before any comment can be made by us on whether or not we like the discrete gold ring in question, he continues with the line that will become lore in our friendship group: ‘Don’t you think it makes me look like George Michael?’
The minibus erupts. Jim may be many things – kind, on time, trustworthy enough to drive a bunch of schoolgirls, but a George Michael look-a-like he is not.
The rest of the journey is divided between winding Jim up and planning the evening’s festivities. There are cupboards to be raided, pranks to pull and a visit to the shop-that-never-asks-for-ID to buy menthol cigarettes and bottles of Canei and Thunderbird ‘wine’.
We pull up at the office park that plays host to the UK Headquarters of firms that may even one day employ us to sit at desks rather than empty bins, and ready ourselves to put on the tabards and rubber gloves that will protect our clothes and hands from the mysterious cleaning liquid that is MP10.
The side door of the minibus rolls shut behind us with a clunk and Jim leans across the front passenger seat as he reaches to roll the window down.
‘Have a good shift girls!’ he calls out.
‘See ya later….GEORGE!’ we yell in reply.
*****
This is an extract from my current work in progress: Absolute Scenes. A book that will aim to capture what it was like to grow up on a council estate in the ’80 and reclaim and reflect some of the joy of working class culture.
All scenes are based on real events that took place in my life. Names and some of the details are changed to protect the identities of those who really *don’t* want to be identifiable in the recollections of someone with a history of sharing too much information.
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