Working in a factory - like Germany in 1987, except for the naked showers

I started work in a factory yesterday.  Making frozen desserts.  Yesterday I peeled about a thousand bananas and helped in other ways to make a job lot of banoffee pies.  I did most of the tasks in the production line, although I never got to feed bananas into the banana slicer, but that at least means I've got some goals left for the next time I'm in.

I have worked in a factory before, in Germany in 1987, although that one was packing powdered paint into sacks, and this was making frozen desserts.  Despite the different products, there were similarities.

The shifts are virtually the same.  6 till 2.  2 till 10, and 10 till 6.  Yesterday I was on a 6 till 2, so arriving at the work in the dark, and leaving in the heat of mid-afternoon.  Very like Germany.

I had to wear a white uniform, and standard issues boots.  Same as Germany.  I had to clock in, and out.  Same as Germany.  A large proportion of the factory staff are from countries other than the host nation, same as Germany.

The main differences were that I was working in a production line with others yesterday, so if I didn't keep up, it would affect the whole line, whereas in Germany it was just me and a machine, so as long as I'd emptied the machine by the end of the shift I could go at my own pace.

The other big difference was the absence of naked communal showers at the end of the shift.  In Germany these were necessary because you would be so completely covered in paint dust by the end of the shift that you had to go into a big shower and wash it all off.  And not just with a regular sponge, you had to scour it off.  You got so much paint inside your clothing as well that it was necessary to get someone else to scrub your back clean.  I am not joking.  So, a big communal shower, no clothes on, scrubbing each others' backs with the equivalent of a pan scourer.  And from experience I have to tell you, the thing you do not want in this situation, the thing you absolutely must not get, is an involuntary erection.  Anyway, enough about that.

So, thankfully, the cake factory, no communal showers.  Your feet get cold, especially if you're working near the freezers, and you do get some cake on you, but it mostly washes off quite easily, without the aid of stripping down to your birthday suit.

There are lots of rules, but these all make sense, as they are all to do with not getting food poisoning into the pies, and not letting foreign objects fall into the mix.  I have to say, from a lifetime's experience of eating pies, I consider both these things to be very good ideas.

Everybody has to wear a hairnet, but there is a very sensible colour coding system in operation.  Most people wear white ones, but supervisors wear red ones, first aiders wear green, and the people who come along to clean up and empty the bins wear yellow, so you know who's who, without having to know exactly who everyone is.

I didn't mind that the tasks were repetitive, and this was helped by the fact that you are rotated onto a different task about every half an hour.  I got a half hour break in the middle so I only had to get through 4 hours in one stretch.  There isn't a lot of time to talk, especially on some of the tasks, like the spreading cream around with the back of a spoon task, but the people I did speak to seemed friendly and helpful.  There's a quiet efficiency about the place, which I hope to emulate in due course.  I think I've got the quiet part right, I just need to work on the efficiency.

The main problem I had were that my feet were like blocks of ice.  The temperature at floor level is around 5 degrees C, because of the cold air coming out from the freezers.  This is especially noticeable when you're working near the end of the line, doing the finishing touches.  By then I felt like the liquid metal guy out of Terminator 2 after he'd fallen into a lorry load of liquid nitrogen.  When I started walking again afterwards, my  legs didn't exactly snap off, but I did have trouble getting them going again.  Thermal socks needed, I think.

Anyhoo, there it is.  I've done a day, and it was fine, and I'm going back to do some more on Friday.  I'd like to have warmer feet next time, and I'd like to be better at using the back of a spoon, but apart from that I have no complaints.  Especially not about the lack of showers....

CSI Rudby - I haven't seen a hanging chad since the year 2000

I've ridden nearly 1000 miles by bike this year.  All on the same bike.  200 miles of it was in India.  Until today that is, when I got on a different bike.  And that was my first mistake.

Apart from losing one or two non essential parts which were literally shaken off the bike in India I haven't had any serious mechanicals all year.  I got through the entire Winter, some of it riding around Asia, without a single problem.  And then we passed the Spring Equinox, and things started to unravel.

I never should have changed bikes.  But it's the Spring I thought, so today I got my Spring and Summer bike out.  By the same logic I also wore shorts.  I can't be bothered looking out the window every time I go out, so I have a basic rule with shorts.  If it's Spring or Summer, I wear shorts.  If it's Autumn or Winter I wear longs.  Last weekend it was Winter, so I was out in the blazing sun wearing more lagging than an elderly boiler, today it's the Spring so I was out in the freezing fog in shorts.  Simples!

Anyway, I finished putting my Spring bike back together this morning, after I'd dismantled it in January during a pre-India panic attack.  It all looked fine.

I set off around 8.15 this morning, with Stephen and Adam for company.  It should have been at 8, but I was late.  Partly because of all the things I had to adjust once I'd set off that I thought I'd put together properly before I left, and partly because I had quite a long conversation with my 2 year old friend George once I got to Stephen's house.  His vocabulary has expanded somewhat since a few months ago, when I managed to keep him amused solely by  using combinations of  the words Cheese, Pie and No, so it took me a while to get through his new words before I could leave.

Once we eventually got going, I led out the ride from Stephen's house and I kept up a good pace for about 8 miles until we reached Rudby.  I stopped at the give way line just before the sharp up and down into Hutton Rudby and as I came to a standstill my back tyre exploded.

The three of us decamped to the small triangle of grass next to the road, and began our investigations.  Stephen and Adam kindly agreed not to help, so as not to spoil the broth, and thankfully they had their i-Phones with them to keep themselves amused while I investigated what had gone wrong.

A very strange puncture it was.  It was not unlike a hanging chad.  About six inches from the valve.  I couldn't find any sharp objects in the tyre or in the wheel so I put a new tube in and off we went.  About 10 yards later another identical explosion.  The plot thickens.

Again I took the tyre off and found an even more prominent hanging chad in almost the same place as before.  It was a big hole, but it looked like it had been made from the inside out rather than vice versa.  Like a window smashed from the inside after a murder that's been contrived to look like a burglary gone wrong, this set the minds of CSI Rudby thinking.  There were no sharp objects lodged in the tyre, but as we manipulated the tyre a bit we noticed that the actual tyre wall was split, and although the split was a couple of inches long, there was one point in particular that looking more hole shaped than slit shaped.  Was it possible the puncture had been caused by the tube pushing out through the tyre, ie by air pushing out rather than a foreign object pushing in.  It was not 100% conclusive but the consensus amongst the CSI Rudby team was that it looked plausible.

At this point Stephen offered to lend me his bike so I could ride and get a new tyre from the nearest bike shop.  'Why don't I just get a new bike', I asked?

'Don't you think that buying an entire new bike is an over-reaction, and also a quite expensive solution to the situation?', the guys asked, 'a new tyre would definitely be enough'.  There was clearly a misunderstanding going on.  Although I am not famed for my willingness to spend time maintaining bikes, things have not got so bad, nor am so I flush with funds, to be just throwing faulty bikes down at the roadside, and going off and buying a new one.  Besides, they never have them ready in the bike shop anyway, you always need to leave it with them a couple of days, for them to tighten things up and lube the chain etc, so that was never going to work.

'No, I mean, I could ring Ruth and ask her to bring me another bike', I said.  The one drawback with this, of course was that she would have to lift the replacement bike onto the roof, which since I sent her skidding down the wrong road on a patch of oil, she hasn't been able to do.  So I decided to just bail out.  It's good practice for the Coast to Coast to Coast in the summer, I thought.

I knew Ruth was at home, at least that's where I left her, so I thought.  It'll be simple.  I'll give her a ring.  I wasn't too concerned when her mobile was switched off, I just rang the home phone.  But no answer.  This is where having two companions with i-Phones came in handy.  She's been on Facebook this morning, Stephen said, she's commented on a photo I put on.  At this point Adam was also uploading a fresh photo of me not being able to fix the bike.

Well, the phone isn't working, I said, can you Facebook her or send her an e-mail and tell her I need picking up.  So that's what we did.  We sent her a Facebook message and an e-mail to tell her that the home phone was ringing and she needed to answer it.  And I thought, being rescued in the 21st Century, it's so easy!  Adam had even managed to get on somebody's unsecured wireless network whose house was near the triangle of grass, so we didn't even need mobile phone coverage.

And it worked, eventually after being badgered by social network, Ruth picked up the phone.  The guys kindly waited with me, and when she arrived she looked at me like I was an idiot, and then I took my shorts, and my Spring and Summer bike, and my tyre wall with the big hole in, and I went home, and I thought to myself, why oh why didn't I just wear long trousers and an eiderdown and why didn't I just stick to the Winter bike, that I've done a thousand miles on, and that hasn't gone wrong at all, and why didn't I just leave the Spring bike where it's been for 6 months, leaning up against the garage wall?.

Although sometimes it feels like it's a skill I have, Stephen pointed out with impeccable logic that it isn't by touching the bike that I've broken it.  It's because the tyre is worn out.  After nearly 5000 miles on that tyre, it's not surprising, and if it was worn, no doubt the six months in the garage won't have helped the integrity of the tyre wall, so there it is.

The 8 miles or so we did was fun, and I was really enjoying myself, until my bike blew up.  But if you're going to spend a foggy Saturday morning standing around on a triangular piece of grass hacking into unsecured wireless networks and analysing hanging chads, I can't think of nicer people to do it with.

And if you're going to have to interrupt your wife while she's relaxing, having a nice cup of coffee and enjoying your absence, I can't think of a better way to do it than via a Social Networking Site.  It seems to work so much better than the phone.

I don't need facial recognition software - I've already got some, in my head

I keep getting disappointed at the cinema.  Not necessarily by the films either, although some of the tosh I've seen at the Arc would come into that category.

I keep seeing adverts containing young, vibrant, happy people, and they're all over the world, and they're obviously having an amazing time, and I catch myself thinking, I wouldn't mind a piece of that, and then it turns out that the advert is for a mobile phone, and so then I think, no thanks, I've already got one.  Or it might be an advert for a car that can recognise your mobile phone, and get all your music off it, and Facebook, and in-built satnav and all that jazz.

And it just leaves me thinking.  I don't really like travelling by car, but mostly when I get in the car, it's because I want to go somewhere.  So can't I just go there?  Do I have to be riding in a mobile disco / social networking site / atlas type thing.  All I want is to go round to the chippy.

One of the mobile phone adverts I saw.  I may not have understood it correctly, but it seemed to be about taking a picture of someone else's head, and then using the phone to remember what their head looked like for next time you saw them.  But I don't need one of those.  I usually just use my own head for that.  There's people I haven't seen for years, but if I saw them, I would probably just say 'Hey, I remember you!'.  I doubt they'd say.  'Wow, how do you do it?', but if they did I might say 'Well, I've got this pile of mush inside my skull called a brain, and one of the things it can do is remember what things look like'.

And all the phones are called Galaxy or some other space agey bollocksy name.  If you want to see a galaxy, try looking at the sky with the eyes in your head, not through the hand held device you're carrying.  Your phone might be able to augment reality, and tell you what you're looking at, but have you ever considered just looking at regular reality, without any augmentation?  I mean, does augmentation really make things look better?  It doesn't seem to work on women's boobs, I'm not sure it works with the stars either.

I was out cycling the other day, and when we stopped for a breather, the Chief was checking his work emails while we waited.  My own view about going for a bike ride is that I'd like to get away from stuff, I don't want it following me round.  It's easy for me to say, since I don't have any work to follow me, but hey ho.

I think the message these mobile ads are trying to send me, is that there's a better life out there for me, if only  I had a smart phone, that could do loads of stuff.  Like if I was walking round a city, and I wanted to eat something, I could Google the nearest eating place, and ring them up, and pay for it all over the phone, and just go and collect it.  Which I'm sure for some people would be very handy, but where's the adventure in that?  Where's the pleasure that comes from just wandering about, looking at stuff?  From getting lost?

I didn't even have a mobile phone till I was 37, and I said I wouldn't get one, and I thought texting was absolutely ridiculous, but now I've got one, and I send texts, and I've got music on my phone, so I have embraced technology to some degree, but I'm quite happy to continue to have separate things for separate things.

Like a phone for ringing people up, a car for driving places, a computer for doing email.  I don't need an emailphonecar that does everything.  And I'm quite happy to keep looking at people's faces, for the purposes of finding out who they are.  Sometimes I can remember them, sometimes I can't.  And if I need facial recognition software on my phone to remember who you are, chances are you're not all that important to me, sorry and all that.  To borrow a phrase from Graeme, I don't want to have to start an electronic 'Who the fuck are you'? register.  Life's complicated enough.