If you know of a better 'ole...then go to it pt6

There was a massive cull at Arcus after the Broad Street gig had finished. This is typical of shortsighted archaeological contractors. A big job finishes and rather than finding all the well trained staff something to do, like cleaning finds or other post excavation work, they let them all go. Two weeks later another big job comes up and they have to start hiring again, but by that time all the well trained and competent ones have already got off their arses and found themselves a new job. This leaves the useless lazy cunts as the only ones that take the new work. The other positions are filled by students and new people who are untrained. Like I said, most archaeological companies can't see past their own fucking noses. Being one of the former I had already found myself a new job, in the form of a Bomb Disposal Technician at the Seletar East Base in Singapore:


It's a lot more glamorous than it sounds, but here's how I got the job. I was in Poland on holiday when Bill contacted me. I couldn't take the call and called him back when I got home, Bill had worked as NML's EOD cover at Vimy and various other sites, so I knew him well. He had mentioned when we worked together at Vimy that he had a job in North Wales coming up and if I was interested on working on it. So I thought that was the job he was calling about. Turns out the North Wales job was over (thank fuck, I wouldn't have to go back to Wales again...) and he had a position in Singapore if I wanted it. It took me about two seconds to think it over. One of the main reasons was I'd never been to Singapore before. The other, the money was about three times more than I was earning at Arcus. Food and accommodation was all included, as were the flights. I was rubbing my hands together with glee.

Singapore, shit. I'm still in Singapore...

Like I said the job sounded a lot more glamorous than it actually was. For the most part we were running a magnetometry survey over the disused airbase looking for anomalies that might or might not (more often the case) be explosives. We had a wonderful digger driver, Ang, he had his own machine that we hired along with him. He had some brilliant turns of phrase, the lanky streak of piss Dr David Kenyon joined us for two weeks. When he left Ang asked after him 'Where's Big Foot?'. Brilliant. We also had the dodgy Mr Wong who drove one of the other larger machines and his simple minded work mate who's name I forget but who smiled all the time. The Malaysian Mr Wong and Laughing Boy mistrusted the Chinese Ang and vice versa. Politics between digger drivers who would have thought it?

Boss Man Ang sitting in his 'wife'

I had some good times in Singapore, but I ended getting fired for writing a blog about it on Myspace. I'm not going to go into details but I still believe there was a lot more to it than just the blog, but whatever; there can't be many people who have been pinpointed by the Singapore Secret Services... If there is enough demand for it I will publish the post that got me fired. I was back in Rotherham and jobless, so I did what every part of me told me not to do. I took a job with Arcus. This time at Garden Street in Sheffield:


I was working again with a few old colleagues, Izzie was running the site but as is usual for archaeologists, not getting paid the proper amount for the job she was doing. It was during my time at Garden Street that I also started to work at Brodsworth, but only on the weekends. I was needing to work all the hours God could send to get things off my mind so being able to work Saturday and Sunday was great. It was also during my time on Garden Street that Nick from Onsite got in touch and hired me to work on the Barbican project he had running at the time. I jumped ship from Arcus and piled up to York:


The site was a medieval cemetery with nearly six hundred skeletons in the area indicated. There was also a couple of Roman skeletons and features, but it was mainly dominated by the Civil War mass graves and recut medieval graveyard. Added to this was the medieval church foundations, preceded by the Anglo-Saxon wooden church. This is were I met all the lads from Onsite, Tim, Sir Stanners (with whom I had worked before as you will no doubt remember...), Berny, Barry Onions, Alice and Wincey. I also helped Lauren get a job with Onsite whilst on this site (she's never thanked me for it...). Robot the Bruce was running the site under high levels of stress and we were made to dig the graves under the yellow light of streetlights one morning before the sun had risen. We had a shitty cabin with no electricity in the middle of a rat infested carpark and one gas heater around which we would all huddle during breaks. The rats had become so used to us they would stand at the cabin door watching us eat our lunch. A tramp once broke in and slept in the place overnight. I even think he was appalled at the squalor we were working in and tidied the place up for us...

BONE FRENZY!!!

We didn't have a site toilet at the Barbican as the site was over the road from Kent Street toilets (the building directly south on the photo, the one with the trees surrounding it). Kent Street toilet was a notorious cottaging spot in York and we had to run the gauntlet of grimy middle aged bummers trying to crack onto us every time we wanted a piss. Believe it or not, it was the first time I've been confronted with the seedy underbelly of homosexual lifestyles and not something I want to repeat. There was a guy who would always bring his dogs down to the toilets as he pursued his hobby. We called him Dweezil as he bore an uncanny resemblance to Frank Zappa. At Christ's Mass, he would bring the dogs down with tinsel tied around their leads, bless him for getting into the spirit of the season. At other times in late summer he would wear tight cycling shorts as he snoozed on the benches waiting for clients.

It's going to be a wet one, boys...

Everyday there was an advert scrawled across the cubicles for the particular fetish that was in demand that day. Sir Stanners was freaked out to see 'I want a Young Builder in a Lilac Bra', being the youngest male on site it seemed that the shitty finger was pointing at him. Another time I found a post-it note on the floor of the cubicle, with delicate fingers I took the offending item over the road for the others to see. It was covered in a scrawl which looked like a spider had fallen into an ink well and crawled across the page. The note was covered on both sides with a story about an eighteen year old boy meeting a middle aged man in the toilets, it ended with the ominous phrase 'Roll on meat week'. It quickly became our site catch phrase. There was a shopping list in the same script that was plucked from the toilets for our amusement, it was calling for 'limons' and 'wharter'. Kent Street toilets has now been closed down by the Police, but during our time there someone tried to burn the place down, we never found out who this was, but I do remember a particularly angry scally running up and down the road threatening to stab someone after he'd been propositioned in the toilets. Maybe he'd got a posse together and tried to exact some mob justice. I could fill a whole blog post just on the Barbican, but I'll leave it there. I was off to Lichfield, but that's to come in the next part! If you missed the previous posts of this story find them here:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

And to finish another plug, here is a link to Ashley's rather good blog of writings: Dangerous Ideas from the Wood