Why I Can Never Go Back To Castro Urdiales (Part One)

It was November 1990 and unfancied outsider John Major was vying with housewive's favourite Michael Heseltine to take over running the country following the sudden and spectacular demise of the hitherto-impregnable Iron Lady.  Myself, I couldn't care less who took over the helm of the sinking ship of Thatcherism.  I was getting out.

Most likely I told anyone who would listen that it was the prospect of several more years of Tory misrule that had led me to flee the country in righteous protest.  In reality the thinking was somewhat less highly principled.  Five months had passed since my graduation from Wolverhampton Polytechnic, and life away from the cossetted world of the Student Union was proving just as harsh and cheerless as I had spent the last four years fearing it would be.

I was eking out a living back home, reprising my summertime vacation role as a clearer of tables in the cafeteria of Newcastle Airport.  This was just as soul-destroying an existence as it sounds.  The early shifts used to start at 5AM.  On six days a week I (and everyone else in my mam and dad's suburban cul-de-sac) would be woken at 4:20AM precisely by the impatient beeping of a NODA taxi. Three minutes later, half-dressed and still munching on a slice of toast, I would dive headlong into the backseat and try to squeeze myself into a space between piles of unironed clothing that on closer inspection proved to contain an indeterminate number of my semi-comatose colleagues.  Six miles later, via pick-up points in Godforsaken outposts of the far West End such as Blakelaw and Newbiggin Hall, our sorry cargo would be deposited at the Newcastle International Airport (Tradesman's Entrance).  None of us would have spoken a word in the interim.

Six hours into the shift, mind you, I would be looking back at the wordless commute as the undisputed highpoint of the morning.  Typically, three hours of sleepless tedium at the controls of a wonky-wheeled table-clearing trolley would have been interrupted by the Duty Manager's sudden, shrill cry of 'Delay!  Five Pound Delay!'.  This was the cue for what looked like three thousand hungover Glaswegians to ascend the steps into the deserted cafeteria from the main concourse, each of them bearing a token for five pounds worth of refreshments, doled out to them by their tour operator as statutory recompense for the unforeseen tardiness of their departure. 

These fearsome Caledonians, already somewhat put out by having to spend the first precious hours of their annual holiday slumming it in the bowels of a foreign airport, would find their mood in no measure improved by the positively scandalous prices charged for the menial fare on offer.  Somehow, I always seemed to be saddled with till duty during delays, and my requests for £3.80 for a limp bacon butty and a pot of tea would be met by bursts of Glaswegian invective that made Billy Connolly sound like Noel Coward.  On bad days (say when the main departures to both Tenerife and Alicante had been delayed by twelve hours each) the masses of slumbering, ill-tempered Highlanders littering the linoleum made the shopfloor resemble a deleted battescene from Braveheart, only with added swearing, and the claymores replaced by overpriced steak and onion baguettes.    

As autumn gave way to winter the thought of even one more week of this relentless minimum wage suffering became unbearable.  Thankfully the Guardian Situations Vacant column brought news of an escape route, in the form of a two-week crash course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language staged by Inlingua Academies, Inc at their Birmingham HQ. Bakc at the cafeteria, I handed in my notice to a duty manager too far gone with sleep deprivation even to notice, squeezed the wonky-wheeled trolley into a space between two prone families of unshaven Glaswegians, and caught the first train south.  My Spanish adventure (well OK, it was a West Midlands adventure for now, but if I passed the course and signed the appropriate forms it would become a Spanish adventure) had begun.      

.........

To be continued...

Comments

[looby]

Oh goody...we've not really had this in detail yet.