Thursday 18th March 2021

Thirty six years ago this very day, I started work at a chicken factory.

Before then there had been a few false starts, as careers as a short order chef, a car mechanic's mate, door to door window salesman and shop assistant at Boots to name some of them, were to be short lived.

But I stuck with the chicken factory for five and a half years until I joined the RAF.

That Monday morning, I waited beside Beccles War Memorial at some ungodly hour. A Lambert's coach came to pick me and other up, and we headed towards Bungay, stopping at Barsham (two stops) and again at Shipmeadow and Mettingham, picking more people up. Lots more got on in Bungay, before the coach trundled down the Waveney Valley to Flixton, past the aircraft museum and pub before turning off and heading up to the factory.

The coach dumped us on a rough area, and from there the unpacking of the alarmed chickens had already begun, and were, quite literally, kicking up a stink about it. That smell would never leave me memory.

Those of us who were starting waited outside the personnel office to be given our coveralls and hard hat, a locker in which to keep our coat and shoes, we but on the coveralls, boots and hat, and were shown into the factory. Past the Buxted whole bird room, where mostly catering boxes of the poorest quality birds were packed, past the forzen line where the smallest birds were put into bags, past the e-room, where the birds were relieved of their organs before being dumped by what was called the Pennine Tunnel, where the carcasses were hung by their ankles and chilled to four degrees.

At which point they would emerge in the chiller, where I would spend all bar a few months working in, sorted and hung from shackles to be taken via a chain line to the M&S room for trussing and packing. This is where I would work, I was told.

I was introdiced to the chargehand, Jenny Nobbs, who told me to sit on a stool: all the birds hanging from shackles marked with yellow tape, you turn their wings over like this. She showed me.

She left me to it.

I did it all that day.

And for the next four days.

And the next five days after that.

The days dragged. Heck the hours and minutes dragged. All we had was a tannoy blaring out Radio 1 on medium wave. When it worked.

I hated it, but I had to stick it.

At the end of the second week I queued up for my pay packet, and it had 37 x four pounds. Money!

I gave mum a tenner, maybe fifteen, and the rest was mine.

Next day I went into town and spent most of it on records.

So it goes, so it goes.

A few weeks later I was asked to go in the chiller, which was an extra 20pence and hour, and i met folks who would become my friends.

It was hard, and cold, but we had a laugh, for the most part.

Anyway, that was the first step on how I ended up here, in the Ugly House near the cliffs in St Maggies. It was quite a journey.

To mark the anniversary I would spend the day reviewing documents.

Jools is up and about before I am, my shoulder is really painful and sometimes I feel like I haven't slept much. Today was one of those days.

But I get up, Jools drinks her coffee, does shome gardening, and I am dressed and ready for work just before seven, ready for whatever work threw at me.

I have second coffee, breakfast with a third, and all is going swimmingly well. But outside it is cold and grey, not as warm as it should be, so I don't go out. IN fact I am so busy I only just remember to have cheese on toast for lunch.

The day carried on, working and drinking tea.

I finish at four, nine hours is enough. Do I feel I achieved anythig? Money in the bank maybe.

Dinner is defrosted what I thought was pasta sauce, but turned out to be paprika spiced since in a lot of gravy. Still nice once warmed up. I make a loaf of stuffed focaccia to share with Jools and boil some pasta. And it was a wine night!

But the truth was, I was shattered. Nights of poor sleep meant I went to bed at quarter past eight, and didn't read.