suggzy

This isn’t much of a travel story, as it only involved going from Cambridge to RAF Alconbury, to Milton Keynes, to Stony Stratford and back again in reverse order. However limited a voyage it might have been, it was not a 36 hours without incident.

Late on in 1997. I was 23 and had recently come to the end of what proved to be my penultimate period on the dole. It’s fair to say I was lacking direction. However I had spied the possibility of getting work as a security guard – nine nights on and five nights off, paid fortnightly, and about £15,000 pa, which was a bit more than a King’s ransom to me, at that stage. My sparkling rise up the ranks of University bureaucracy was still nearly two years from starting. It would get me up off the floor a bit whilst I worked out what do with my life. Probably.

I was to take up residency at Compass House, a big office building in Histon, just north of Cambridge where I lived at the time. The building was empty, as Anglian Water had moved out, but needed to protect the asset via the services of little old me. Strangely enough, a couple of years later when my glamorous Higher Education life began, it was that building to which I returned to first ply my trade.

But before any that, I required training in how to be a security guard. This meant a trip to the company’s training HQ in Milton Keynes, and a night away, as it was training one day and more training and an EXAM the second day. This meant packing bags, planning routes, Full English Breakfasts and, frankly, appeared to be the most exotic of adventures of which one could conceive.

I was told by my Manager to be that I needed to drive to RAF Alconbury, first, just up the A1, to collect a chap who would take the training and exam at the same time. He was to drive down there from Norfolk to meet me, at 6.00am, and onwards we would go to MK. Fine. I had no idea at that stage that he would prove to be The Worst Man In The World (TWMITW).

I wrenched myself from bed in the darkness of the pre-Autumnal dawn, and drove my cold, leaking Skoda in a pea-souper up to Alconbury. Could barely see a thing. I arrived at 5.50am and sat there for forty minutes. I knocked on the office door, and no one was there. I was very cold, and running out of cigarettes. My new career looked less ritzy and full of excitement than it had done the day before. Eventually an elderly green estate car pulled-up near to me, and out stepped TWMITW, dressed in a suit, carrying a holdall. Tallish, red-haired, glasses, about 47 or 48 or so. We introduced ourselves, and began motoring, wiping furiously at steamed-up windows. He seemed amiable enough, at this point – there was no reason to suspect that he was TWMITW.

Of course, after the delay, we quickly became late. We rattled through Bedford, where I learned he had wanted to be a Vicar but “it hadn’t worked out”, and was married with four children. Realising we were going to be late, we attempted, on arriving at the many roundabouts that dot the outer rings of MK, to cheer ourselves up by trying to spot the concrete cows. But there were none. We gloomily burrowed on into the inner workings of MK. Soon, the impression one gained was of what the first human colony on Mars would look like. Every street a duplicate of the last, nothing indicating anything as distinct from anything else. Eventually we simply abandoned the car down a side alley and went off on foot looking for the training centre, finally arriving, funnily enough, forty minutes late. Sweaty, dishevelled and out of breath. Not to mention hungry, tired and not particularly enamoured of our new base. However, we got through the day, and were given simply oodles of pointless information about fire extinguishers, safety risks and descriptions of types of exit. It was excruciatingly boring, and the cheese sandwiches arrived, dry and turned up at the corners, the small matter of nine hours after I had got up. My head was pounding and I didn’t want to either be in MK or to contemplate being a security guard any longer. I ate, felt a bit better, and completed the day’s work.

We were given a map for where to go that evening. A place called Stony Stratford, where an elderly lady had two spare rooms for the night, in her little house. Funnily enough, we actually made it over to there without a hitch, and I seem to recall that TWMITW was quite a help… but that was to be the last time he was. Our elderly hostess mixed things up a bit for us by announcing she had “nothing in” and that we would have to go across the road in the morning to her friend’s house if we wanted breakfast. As one does. If we needed food, there was the village, or the petrol station nearby. I was all for a shower, a petrol station buffet, some study of the paperwork for the morning and a much needed nine hours sleep. But TWMITW was not having this, and started asking elderly lady about pubs and curry houses and all sorts of nonsense.

I suppose, in retrospect, I probably felt like I deserved a pint; for it had been a trying day, for sure. Fine, I thought; freshen up, quick beer with this chap, grab some nosebag and off to bed. To the pub we went.

And this is where the chaos began.

I’ll concede I can be easily led, at times like this, and Lord knows I have been the architect of some occasions of booze-related mayhem. But not like this. At least not the night before an exam we needed to pass, to gain employment. In the company of someone I had known about 12 hours. TWMITW led the way into some fairly average boozer, ordered himself a pint of bitter and tore through it in five minutes, leaving me standing, agog. He was ordering the next one whilst I was halfway down my first, and his ‘lead’ grew at an alarming rate, over the next hour. He must have sunk five pints during this period of time, and I don’t really recall getting a word in edgeways. I heard all about his prospective employment at the Court, in Norwich, where his new career as a security guard was to shortly begin. Then we moved on to his family; wife and four children, of whom he spoke, initially, fondly.

We were still on that topic when he declared we should move to the busier, grottier, pub next door. I started to make noises about a spot of dinner, but he waved this away and was through the door before I knew it. I resolved to have a final drink with him, announce I was tired, and to get off. However this was the point at which the bitter hit his bloodstream and his mood began to darken, considerably. His back-references to his religious past began to grow in number, and volume. He had been “fucking forced out”, it seemed, and he was NOT happy. Neither was he happy about the support he had got on the home front, and he was far from quiet on that subject either. Particularly at the point at when he got hold of some change from behind the bar, and used the payphone (yes, this was 1997) to “report in”. This phone call soon descended into him shouting at his loved ones down the blower, whilst an uneasy quiet built around us. I found myself like a fly trapped in amber, at this point, somehow unable to get free from the developing events. The phone crashed down, and he declared it was dinner time.

I remember naively thinking at this point that things might improve. A few solids might mop up the seven or eight pints he’d thrown down. Into the nearby Indian restaurant he strode. A restaurant, I now remember, that seemed to go back and back and back forever. And he took us to the darkest, furthest corner he could find. More beer was ordered, and I managed to scare up a glass of water. A curry was incoherently ordered, and truly, when it arrived, it was beyond ghastly. A plate of red fluid, mushy overcooked rice grains, and what appeared to be roasted squash balls, afloat in the middle. This was the point at which TWMITW revealed his inner gourmand, and proceeded to berate the staff on the quality of the food. At many decibels, and in the most uncomplicated language. There was no placating to be done… so he left. Just upped and buggered off, leaving me there, wondering whose dream I was now in.

I sat there for a while, in a state of utter bewilderment. Would he come back? I stirred the hideous food on my plate. No, he wasn’t coming back. Waiters started to hover. I realised, in horror, that I had insufficient funds to pay for the curry myself. I had no credit card, only cash. I had to apologise to the staff, leave them my car keys by way of insurance and wander off into the freezing night in search of a cashpoint. Which took forever.  Finally, I got the necessary, wandered biliously back to the curry house and paid our bill. And walked slowly back to our quarters, all the while scanning the horizon for TWMITW, wondering what he was up to now.

No sign, anywhere. Knocked on his bedroom door; nothing. I went to bed, and lay there, unable to sleep for some time, until simple exhaustion took over.

Day two began early, as I was determined to review what we had learned the day before. This was a job I badly needed. I made a cup of horrid instant coffee and forced in facts about the provision of security services, and forced out thoughts of how one goes about bailing out former Vicars who turn out to be wild-tempered, drunken novice security personnel.

I crossed the road, and had breakfast alone, with the friend of the elderly landlady. She had cooked all of the bacon and eggs in the wider metropolitan area, and was rather annoyed that TWMITW was not there to attempt to tackle the North Face of the breakfast Eiger with me. I chewed, gamely, for a good 25 minutes, until I feared something might tear. I bid the lady good morning, and waddled across the road to get my bag and attend to the car. I assumed I was now going on alone, TWMITW being apparently AWOL, and wondering how the hell to find my way back to training HQ. I hauled myself into the driver’s seat, and looked up to realise that the windscreen was covered in the ice. My head dropped, as I remembered I had no de-icer, and no scraper, and an increasing absence of hope.

“Good morning”, said TWMITW, emerging at my window. “I can sort that for you”. He opened my door, reached in, grabbed a cassette box and set about the windscreen with the edge of it. He looked horrific. It was about two degrees, and he poured with sweat. His hair was matted to his scalp, and a grim psoriasis had come over his countenance during the night watches, wherever he had spent them. I had no words. I let him work.

We drove back into suburban MK. We found the place. We were late, again. Eyebrows were raised, as we blundered in and took our seats.

We were trained for a further hour and a bit, before breaktime, which preceded an hour of review, and the written exam, results, and departure.

It was at the moment breaktime came that TWMITW did it. The worst thing he did the whole time we were away. I still can’t believe I witnessed it. The call came from the instructor for a ten minute coffee break, and TWMITW hauled himself to his feet. “Thank God”, he said, and brushed passed me into the Gents, just behind our desks. He threw the door open, marched in, and commenced the loudest, wettest, most gaseous and faintly curried bowel movement you could possibly summon from your imagination. The counterpoint to it was just the occasional little grunts of pleasure, the sound of which has never left me, and never will. AND ALL THE WHILE THE TOILET DOOR WAS FUCKING OPEN.

I’m struggling to go on, here. I might give up blogging. Why the hell did I start with this story?

It just went on, and on, and on. It came in waves. I began to gag. A cloud of disbelief descended upon everyone. I felt damned by my apparent association with TWMITW.

Eventually, the storm ceased, and TWMITW emerged, whistling and making for the kettle. As with our reintroduction earlier that morning, it was, for him, as if nothing had happened. My sense of what was actually real was dissolving. I could not look at him, or acknowledge him.

Mercifully, the examination proved easy. I’d never scored 94% in anything before, and haven’t since. But I could not celebrate, because TWMITW had just taken a crap eight feet behind me. And now I had to drive him back to RAF Alconbury, so we could collect our uniforms, and him his car, to go and recommence his Norwich life.

It poured with rain, all the way. TWMITW offered jocularity all the way, as lumps of his skin found their way into the upholstery and sweat dripped down his shirt. The air was dank with the flavour of the lost evening. I barely spoke, as the miles went by at glacial speed. He didn’t have a word to say about what had happened. Not one. And I couldn’t offer a rebuke, a request for financial reparation, even a question. I simply wanted the day to end, and to be free of the company of TWMITW.

At last, we were back to where we started. The office was manned. We received our shirts, epaulettes and polyester trousers. I was laughed at for not scoring 100%.

I bade TWMITW farewell, turned 90 degrees, walked to my car, and drove home. And began to try to forget.

I haven’t yet.