Menial Labour 2

And so, for the first time ever in this blog, and in my twenty four point seven five years of life I ask the question: what the cock have I done with my life?

This morning (now not actually this morning) I fought my way through two and a half hours of work in the RADA canteen. Yes, that's just two and a half hours. A hundred and fifty minutes. An average play. A slightly flabby film. An extremely short german opera. And I have never wanted to die more.

Wearing a fetching chef's jacket with blue checked sailors trousers I was employed to rinse pots, pans, trays and implements, and load them into an industrial dishwasher. Again and again. There was an absurdly huge pile of assorted pots; a bit like the episode of spaced where daisy gets the job in a restaurant. In fact, it was so huge, I wondered whether environmental health ought to know, if only because there might have been new species in its foody depths. Every time I cleared out the slop I walked through to the kitchen bin, and the chef kept staring at me like i was mad. After the thirteenth dishwasher load, I realised that this was because there was a bin right next to the sink, but which had been utterly obscured by the dirty colossus of my labour.

After the endless envelopes had proved merely mind-numbing, I realised that there was a whole new layer of brainless that I had previously never even considered. I mean, someone actually does this as their job. The poor poor bastards. The only tiny bit of amusement was from the chef. He's a malaysian (I think) guy called Ron, and I shall be eternally grateful for his enthusiastic and slightly inaccurate renditions of the odd chorus from the radio. 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight' from the Lion King only just topped by Wham!'s 'Careless Whisper' in high pitched and only minutely imperfect english. Thank christ for you Ron. Even if your gitty feet have got no ribbon.

Anyway, I bailed out and palmed off the other two days I was supposed to do on someone else. I feel slightly guilty for exposing any human being to that task, but it is every man for himself as far as I'm concerned. I will NEVER, NEVER do it again.