After Steve Spence
- Maps
At the interview they sit us down one by one in front of a wire loop game, the kind we used to play when we were kids. “Each of you must guide the metal probe along the length of wire without touching it”: they want to see if we have a steady hand. I get in. The whole project is made of six people, and our job is to transfer details of Ordnance Survey maps on to computer files. The managers reckon it will take a year.
The map splayed out in front of me, I trace details related to Roadfwrd, Colifwd, Wimb’lbal, Stithians, Bur’tr and Blakpwl water reservoirs. I decide to start with Roadfwrd and enlarge the details on screen; it’s very fiddly. It takes three to four days to complete a single area. When I finish the map, it is sent off. Three weeks later, I get the same map back and have to do it again.
I work on the same map of Roadfwrd reservoir for six months. After a year, the management decides to scrap the project. We are paid a pittance, anyway, and work in flimsy prefabs. Sometimes I am so tired I go to sleep on the floor. Once an executive in the nice building says to me with a smile: “I’ve been sending smoke signals… not done a stroke of work in five years.” That’s the mindset everywhere.
- hediŋton hil Hell
One year, I worked at pergamon pres in oksfᵹd. makswel had a tennis court outside for his posh friends and for the rušan kriminlz he was pally with. One afternoon, a couple of guys from the studio went over the fence to play tennis and were caught. Security took their mugs and their shoes.
In the middle of the tennis court, there was a big hole caused by a mushroom. The hole just kept expanding until it was the size of a paddling pool. makswel finally decided to have it filled in. Nothing happened. The hole kept growing, so he had another go at the maintenance people. He came every day to watch things progress, until the hole got so big it swallowed the whole court. Somebody in the office suggested that the hole be turned into an Olympic pool. He was sacked on the spot. To be honest, the hole was more of a crater at that stage, like something out of Goya or Jules Verne.
There had been a fire the week before my interview, and the building was gutted. It’s been suggested that makswel set the fire himself. I am just saying. I started the job three weeks later, and in that time there was another fire. That’s the sort of place it was. I kept quiet (and my shoes). I got to take my mug when I left.
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Mélisande Fitzsimons
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