My week on the Chain Gang

I suppose that my willingness to work, and I refer to my stint as a Newspaper Delivery Boy, left me open to potential exploitation in the big wide world of employment.

I had for my early morning paper round seen the real colour of money, cash that I had earned through my own endeavours and that heady feeling of having £2.50 per week in my pocket made me hungry for more.

One of my school friends had been offered a job during the summer holidays and he had been asked by, well it must have been the equivalent of the modern day Gang Master to recruit others for a guaranteed 5 days of work.

The wages on offer were £3 per day as long as you could make your own way to the place and provided your own lunch and refreshments.

I don't think that I had, at the age of 14 or 15, even held the tantalising prospect of £15 in my sweaty palms.

So, bright and early on a monday morning in August I met up with my friend in the town centre and we cycled the three miles to, at that time, a venue unknown to me.

I must have made a convincing case to my parents to explain what would be my complete absence for up to 8 hours a day for the duration. Their trust and faith in me to be sensible and safe was a big boost to my otherwise immature and unworldly-wise character at that age.

The bike ride took us to the nearest village, coincidentally where my Grandparents had moved from down South and then out the other side and down a narrow lane that led to a small foot bridge over a small river or a land drain.

All I knew about the job had been explained, in gasping breath, by my friend as he cycled ahead of me. It was helping in the potato harvest on a small farm.

I accepted the idea without any perception of what I would have to do.

That £15 incentive was the only thing in my mind.

We arrived at a field.

There was a bedraggled group of other youths, astride their push bikes, none of whom I recognised.

The only adult present was the driver of a tractor who arrived shortly after pulling a large single axle trailer. This was decoupled and left on the headland. He busied himself attaching an implement, a bladed object onto the back of the vehicle.

Most of us youths must have been townies as we gaped at the process in silence.

The actual instruction for what we had sort of contracted ourselves to for the next five days was simple.

We had, collectively, to follow the tractor as it moved up and down the furrows of the potato crop and pick up the spuds which the aforementioned blade threw out of the greenery and soil.

Our only equipment consisted of a wire shopping basket each.

The first day was a painful blur to me. It was arduous and back breaking physical labour. I had to stoop and scramble in an almost rugby scrum to collect up the dirt  encrusted vegetables until my basket was full. This had to be then taken to the location of the trailer and hauled up, over and in which was an effort in itself for my rather slight and puny form. Then it was back to more of the same.

I think that our group was under the impression that we were on piece work as in we would be paid for how much individual work we did but one of us, not me, must have quickly realised and informed those present that we would all be paid the same weekly rate and a race or competition was not necessary.

The second day was less frenetic and a bit more structured and orderly.

Gradually we became used to the bodily contortions that picking up loose spuds entailed but we were, as a group, demoralised by the lack of actual progress in the field.

I have only recently, in my mid fifties, tried to trace that field using Google Maps. My vague recollections of the daily bike ride led me to pinpoint that tract of land. As a farmers field it was most unusual in that it was wedge or triangular in shape.

The Gang Master had set us to work on the longest furrow lengths which explained that we had only cleared about 8 rows in the first two days. However, as the planted rows shortened we had a sensation of a sudden increase in speed and that was a huge boost to our morale and spirits.

By day 3 all of us saw ourselves as sons of the soil.

Never mind that our respective parents and guardians could not explain their fatigued sons and dirt engrained skin and clothing or the deposits of grainy clay at the bottom of bathtubs and shower cubicles but as a team we began to feel invincible. Our progress felt rapid and easy.

We developed muscles where before there had been none.

I learned a few new expletives and quite a lot from pooled adolescent sex talk.

I began to hate the sight of a potato.

Days 4 and 5 were a joy. The weather had been cool and dry. There is something quite special about a packed lunch being eaten in the open. Even the bike ride home took on a triumphant status.

On the friday we easily finished the field and were rewarded with a handful, each, of notes totalling the promised £15.

I still recall that moment of leaving the field with a sense of having achieved something great. Apart from my friend I did not meet any of the other youths ever again.

I remember that crisps were repellent to me for a few months afterwards,