Some of you, The Illuminati, may be thinking that
the double top secret cabal who were structuring my training were a bit ‘off
the mark’ by putting me into such jobs and situations. Once again, it is only with hindsight that we
really can see how brilliant their strategy actually was. In order for them to produce a person who was
capable of becoming the greatest King of Ireland, ever, first of all they would
have to show me how a corrupt and broken society operates, and boy were they
having some fun doing that. It’s very
easy to look at something like the morally reprehensible British class system,
realise how wrong and stupid it is, but that will not fix it. To shake the stupidity out of people’s heads,
you first of all had to understand what their driving factors were. Why are people so happy to pretend that they
were better than someone else?
Now before any of you start writing letters to
the Times of London complaining about what I have said, please understand that the
problems that existed in England also existed in Ireland, you gave them to
us. But we had one or two more problems
heaped on top of us and I was going to have to be able to lead every person in Ireland
out of the mire and into a bright new future.
The air force showed me how the class system operates, in miniature, it
showed me how it punished people and it also showed me how people, without
merit, were constantly rewarded. The mortgages
and life insurance environment introduced me to real people and showed me what
their dreams and aspirations were. It also
introduced me to the criminal underworld and the upper echelons of society, two
worlds not so far apart as they would like to have us believe. The advertising
environment showed me that there are a very many normal and nice, hardworking,
decent people in the United Kingdom who feel totally lost. They feel that they have no voice to
represent them.
I suppose you are now wondering what on earth I
was going to learn from poking about in people’s ears. Well; I sat about for ten or twelve days
before I caught a train down to Birmingham to undergo my basic training as an
audiologist. Scrivens were a huge UK
wide company, you would always see full page adverts in many daily newspaper
for their ‘invisible hearing aids’, so I was happy that, unlike the advertising
job, this position should be legitimate.
It was strange to find myself in a classroom with three other fellows,
but what was even stranger was the fact that the training manager was from
Dundalk. When we met, we immediately
began to talk about home. He said that
it was a pity I hadn’t arrived the month before as the training manager then
had been a fellow called Dessie MaCabe from Warrenpoint. Did I know him? Not only did I know him, but I had knocked
about with him and we had both attended Violent Hell, although when I say attended,
Dessie being from Warrenpoint had been a day pupil while I had been imprisoned
in the place as a border.
My final memory of Dessie was a not a good one
either. Dessie was off to be trained as
a priest so three of us, that’s Mervyn, Dessie and myself went on the rip the night
before he left for the seminary in Maynooth.
For the heathens among you Maynooth, is the National Seminary for
Ireland, where they train young men for the priesthood. Dessie was so drunk he could hardly stand, so
we had to carry him to his house and pour him on to the front step before
knocking the door and running, well I don’t know the correct term for running while
staggering, stuggering away? It certainly
gave me a confidence boost to learn that a Violent Hell man was connected in to
the mix.
I was secretly pleased that I wasn’t going to
meet Dessie as on the way home Mervyn had this grand idea on sobering him up a
little. It involved me holding Dessie
while Mervyn punched him in the stomach.
Now, in the cold and sober light of day, I know how stupid and horrible
that sounds, but at two o clock in the morning when you are completely off your
head, Mervyns’ suggestion that punching Dessie in the stomach would make him
throw up and therefore mean that there would be less alcohol in his system, did
seem to make sense. Whether it made sense
or not, it is an incident that I have always felt embarrassed about as Dessie was
a lovely fellow and although I didn’t hit him, I was still a part of it. I don’t even know if Dessie was hurt, or even
remembered the incident, but I did and I find it strange how these things can
haunt you for ever.
It was during the afternoon of the first day,
after we had spent most of our time filling out forms and contracts that my
suspicions were aroused. We were given
our ‘executive company cars.’ Not only
were these things insured on our behalf and taxed but we were also given a fuel
card. Free fuel! How good was that? Now for me when someone says ‘executive company
car’ I immediately think of Jaguar, or Mercedes or even Audi. I know a lot of people would say BMW but for
me the BMW is a spivs car, the epitome of ignorance. Even today if I find myself behind a brand
new, top of the range, BMW I know that the indicators will not work. So you will understand my concern when I
discover that my ‘executive company car’ is a Ford Fiesta.
I didn’t say anything, I told myself that it
was free and that it was fun, which they were.
Nippy and fast, far from executive though. On the second day the four of us, the students,
wandered off at lunchtime and found a pub.
I think we each had about two pints of beer and a sandwich before
returning to a huge bollocking. We were
young professionals who should not be drinking alcohol at lunchtimes, we had
reputations now. I was aware that something
wasn’t right, but I couldn’t find one specific problem to focus on. The first week went pretty quickly as it was a
combination of practical and theoretical training. The job sounded great, no pun intended. I would be testing somebody’s hearing, then,
if required, taking a mould of their inner ear and having a hearing aid made
for them, which I would fit and monitor the progress off.
It was strange peering into someone’s ear, but
I suppose it was one of those things that if you did it often enough you would
get used to it. We didn’t have real patients,
we practised on each other. When we were
learning how to take a mould of the inner ear, someone asked how we would know
if we had gone too far into the ear and maybe touched the ear drum, which by
the way for us professionals is known as the Tympanic membrane. We were told that we would know if we went too
far into the inner ear as we would be scraping the patient off the ceiling.
Friday was upon us and it was quite exciting. We were to be allowed to go home, in our
little ‘executive company cars’ and spend the weekend with our loved ones. In my
case I was going back to Irene and the children. The other good point was that we were to be
given our first pay packet. Normally we
would have been paid monthly, but as trainees we would be paid weekly, for the first
month, in cash, and then by direct debit into our banks on a monthly
basis. It was quite exciting for eventually
we were going to learn how much we were going to be paid. Some of us had asked exactly how much the ‘competitive
salary’ would be, but we were fobbed off as if it was a social faux pas to
discuss money.
So come on, how much does the term ‘competitive
salary’ mean to you? Let’s say that at
the time the average salary across the United Kingdom was twenty thousand pounds
per year. If twenty thousand is the
average salary, what would you say would be competitive? Let me start.
With the use of so many terms such as executive, or competitive or even sometimes
professional, you would expect the salary to be at least slightly above the
average. I would have said at least twenty
four or five thousand, for you’re getting some of the best people, well; I can
only speak for myself. So if we agree
that twenty four thousand would be competitive, then over a twelve month period
I would expect two thousand pounds per month.
So that Friday I should have been paid about five hundred pounds.
The revelation that my executive company car
was in fact a ladies runabout was bad enough, but now to be given sixty pounds
cash, came in, as they say, a little below the belt. I can assure you that as I drove home I felt
like a complete idiot. I didn’t have the
heart to tell Irene that I might have found another nonstarter but I told
myself that they, Scrivens, had a huge work force, they were known nationally, so
a decent living could be made. I would
just have to knuckle down and get on with it.
I’ll now put my feet up at home and have a beer or two but have you
worked out yet what the double top secret cabal wanted me to learn from this
situation?
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