Blue Collar (5 page)

I dug out the Yellow Pages to look for bars but mine stopped just north of New Cross, so I gave Jason a quick bell and asked
him if he knew any pubs in Leicester Square. He didn’t but Sandra had been to a place called All Bar One right in the Square
itself with a couple of the girls one night and she sold it to me completely when she told me that this place belonged to
a chain of boozers that were specifically designed for women. No grungy little fleapits with frosted windows, tattered carpets
and blokes swapping guns under the table, these were big, airy places with a fine selection of wines and more handbag handles
than you could catch your coat pockets on.

It sounded like just the ticket.

I phoned up Charley all excitedly and gave her the itinerary.

She paused for a moment, then chuckled and asked me if I was serious.

I had been up until she’d chuckled and asked me if I was serious, but now I was just plain confused. What was wrong with that?
It had all the basic components that any date should have: booze, food, bright lights and handbag handles.

Charley stopped chuckling when I didn’t start and told me she didn’t mean to mock.

‘Oh, well, no, it sounds lovely, and Leicester Square’s great and all, but I was thinking of somewhere a little less touristy,’
she said, making me wish I’d suggested the Lamb and the fucking bookie’s after all. ‘I’ll tell you what, do you know the Workers’
Social?’ she asked.

‘Which one?’ I asked.

‘No, silly, it’s a bar. In Noho.’

Noho? Where the hell was Noho? And what did she want to go to a Workers’ Social for? I figured Charley was probably still
on her ironic kick but I suddenly didn’t mind. I’d take a date of darts and dominoes and having a sing-song round the piano
in the corner over a night of spilling egg fried rice all down my front any day of the week given the choice. With this in
mind, I told her I knew it well and that I’d see her there at eight sharp and hung up the phone sporting the first smile my
face had seen since I’d left her place two days earlier.

5 The workers ain’t that social

‘Shit place it is. What you want to go there for?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, what’s wrong with the British Legion in Wowo?’ Jason smiled, all pleased with himself for about five minutes until
it started pissing down again. ‘Oh, what is this?’

Wednesday proved a bit more productive and we actually got eight hours under our belts, much to everyone’s relief. I beamed
with excitement and whistled ‘Zip-a-dee-doo-dah’ all day long until a vote was taken and the lads packed me off to the other
end of the site to fill in joists. I couldn’t wait to see Charley again and as much as the clock tried to drag its heels,
it couldn’t hold our date off for ever and the wait was finally over.

Well, almost. I arrived in Noho half an hour early and found the Worker’s Social right where Robbie’s brother had left it.

It wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting. From the outside it was all neon signs, blacked-out windows and miked-up bouncers,
a light year away from the working men’s clubs I remembered going to with my old man when I first left school. But that was
like nothing compared to what I saw when I actually walked through the door. The place wasn’t even half finished. It was all
breeze-block walls, exposed lintels and concrete floors. Cables and pipes ran between exposed wooden joists in the ceiling
and even the bar was just a slapdash, badly pointed bare brick wall topped off with an old scuffed-oak surface. Most astonishing
of all, though, were the seats in this place. They’d all been cast out of concrete. Even the tables. I could see the impressions
where the wooden frames had been dismantled after they’d set.

Forget about a piano in the corner, this place needed a muck mixer.

Still, I’m not such a big lug that I can’t appreciate a bit of variety and I recognised this place for the cutting-edge trendy
theme bar it was. Did seem a bit odd calling it the Workers’ Social, though. Wasn’t exactly the sort of place I could see
my dad heading down after a hard day on the sites. It also wasn’t subsidised.

‘How much?’ I almost choked.

‘Three seventy-five,’ the expressionless barman repeated.

‘Three seventy-five for half a lager?’

That’s right, half a lager. The builders hadn’t got around to putting any pumps in yet either so the only beers they sold
came in bottles, which meant the price of a pint worked out at about £7.50. Oh yeah, my old man would’ve fucking loved this
place, all right.

I found a vacant Flintstones table with a clear line of sight to the entrance and sat myself down.

It was now a quarter to eight, which meant Charley would be here in fifteen minutes and this realisation released a thousand
butterflies to buffet me from the insides. I don’t think I’m naturally a cowardly sort of bloke and will happily scale the
tallest scaffolding, stand up to the biggest bully and tackle the meatiest spiders, but women were another matter altogether
and about the only thing on this planet that could reduce me to a tear-streaked gibbering wreck. My nerves soon started showing
on the surface and I fidgeted and palpitated, shivered and wheezed as my limited-edition collector’s beer sprinted through
my body at breakneck speed.

Fortunately it was so dark and noisy with a constant thump thump thump of monotonous DJ funk that no one around me even afforded
me a glance, and when my watch finally struck eight, I lifted my eyes to the entrance and kept them there for a full ten minutes.

No one even resembling Charley came in during that time and when my watch just kept on ticking away regardless, my anticipation
finally cracked and my hopes began to crumble.

She wasn’t coming, was she? Charley wasn’t coming.

We got to quarter past and I couldn’t hold on any longer. I bought the second instalment of my pint and retook my seat to
wait some more.

Twenty past.

I ripped it out of my pocket and pressed half a dozen wrong buttons before I realised the keypad was still locked. I took
a deep breath, carefully typed in the correct code to unlock the keypad, then read my message.

Fucking Car Phone Warehouse.

Apparently I was entitled to two free ring tones if I upgraded my handset with them in the next month. All I had to do was
pop into my nearest store for details and give them a share of my wages for the next year.

‘You big cunts!’ I shouted into my phone, then looked up to see Charley standing in front of me and smiling.

‘Good news?’ she enquired.

‘Yeah, please. A glass of dry white wine would be nice.’

I rushed to the bar and almost strangled some bloke next to me when he cut in front of me, ordered half a dozen different
cocktails, a cup of espresso, asked what crisps they did, asked the barman if he knew a guy called Curtis – played the bongos
apparently – paid by credit card, then got so sidetracked comparing record bags with some other sandal-wearing dipstick that
he didn’t notice the barman waiting patiently for him to tap in his PIN number to the little handheld verification machine.

In fact, we would’ve probably both still been there today had one of us not pointed out to the other that all his records
and/or teeth were likely to get smashed in if he didn’t sort himself out and fucking hurry up.

That shifted things along nicely.

‘Sorry about that,’ I told Charley when I finally retook the seat opposite her. ‘A right palaver that was.’

Charley said it was no problem and thanked me for the wine, then smooched momentarily with the rim of her glass and smacked
her ruby red lips with satisfaction.

‘Lovely,’ she sighed.

And I had to agree, she certainly was.

In fact, she was more lovely than I remembered. Tall, crisp, sparkling and sharp. Charley scrubbed up great and looked more
like the sort of girl you’d see in a catalogue than anyone you’d normally find opposite me. She blazed with femininity and
wore herself better than any woman I think I’ve ever been on a date with before. OK, let’s not get carried away here, I was
only five minutes into our date and I admit that I still knew very little about her, but judging by her cover, she looked
like a fantastic read.

‘Who were you talking to up at the bar?’ she asked while I was still collecting my thoughts.

‘Oh, no one, just having a bit of a laugh with old matey, that’s all,’ I explained. ‘Anyway, cheers. You finally made it.’

‘What? Oh, yeah, sorry, I’m late. Were you waiting long?’

She’d turned up at twenty-eight minutes past eight. The maths were pretty simple.

‘No, I just got here myself,’ I decided to tell her.

Charley said that was good, because she was a bit of a klutz with time. All her friends were always saying that she was always
late but that wasn’t fair because she really tried. I lied and told her that I completely understood, then asked her if she’d
had a good week so far.

‘It’s been such hard work,’ she told me. ‘I’ve been in meetings with the client all this week about the upcoming campaign
and even though they green-lit the overall strategy months ago, we can’t get them to agree on the key targets. How can you
push a campaign forward if you can’t even agree on the basics?’

I was fucked if I knew, so I told her she just had to try and make the best of it, then asked her what she did and what she
was talking about?

‘I’m an advertising account manager. Don’t you remember?’

‘Let’s just pretend, for the purposes of this conversation, that I don’t,’ I said, then came clean when she asked me what
that meant.

‘Well, anyway, I handle a particular advertising account and liaise between the client and our team who plan and run the
campaign.’

I nodded anyway.

‘And it’s just been a bit of a nightmare getting the client to agree to our proposals. There’s always something they don’t
like and they’re forever insisting on last-minute changes.’

‘I see,’ I saw. ‘Er… so who’s your client? Would I have heard of them?’ I asked.

‘Naldesco. They make food products, cooking sauces, tinned meals, condiments, that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘They’re very
big.’

‘Well, you’re doing a bang-up job because I eat nothing but Naldesco tinned pies,’ I reassured her.

‘Christ, I hope not, for your sake. Anyway, there’s no such thing as a Naldesco tinned pie. They make tinned pies but they’re
marketed under the brand name of Auntie Kate.’

‘Urgh, hang on a minute, I’ve had one of those, they’re horrible,’ I blurted out, before I could get the cat back in the basket.

Luckily Charley agreed.

‘Yes, they are, but I don’t work on that account. Naldesco’s got a lot of brand names and subsidiaries: Auntie Kate’s pies,
Cotswold Country Sauces, Highland Heaven Puddings, Tonbridge Traditional Treacle…’

‘All knocked up in a big decommissioned missile silo next to Sellafield, I expect,’ I joked, but Charley just nodded and said
pretty much. ‘So which account do you work on?’ I asked.

‘I’m handling a new account for a new range of table sauces. Rocket Man Sauces.’ She smiled apologetically, then added, when
she saw I was slightly confused, ‘You put them on your chips and suchlike. The bottles are shaped like rockets and we’re considering
releasing a range of action figures to be sold alongside them so that children can wash out the bottles when they’re done
and use them as toys.’

‘Well, you can’t argue with that,’ I said.

‘It’s an age-old trick, give away a free toy and kids will pester their mums to buy them it regardless of whether they like
the product or not.’

Charley sympathised and agreed it had been a bad time for everyone.

‘Do you think they deliberately held some figures back so that people kept buying and buying and buying Weetabix to complete
the set?’

‘Now there’s a thought.’ She smiled knowingly. Bastards, I knew it.

‘So, it’s not going well, then? With your client?’

‘They want to go saturation right away, but we’re concerned about a negative backlash and want to build up, targeting individual
towns and cities first of all to give the main campaign a launching pad, so to speak.’

‘That’s right,’ I agreed. I tried to think of a follow-up question to ask, about saturating launching pads and stuff like
that, but I didn’t really understand what she was talking about and I was worried if I pressed her further on the subject
she might twig this, so I settled on a more obvious line of questioning. ‘So what flavours do you do, then?’

‘It’s not me,’ she assured me, but told me that for the moment Rocket Man Sauces came in spicy tomato, barbecue, curry and
sweet & sour flavours, otherwise known as lunar, solar, cosmic and galactic space fuels.

‘And are they nice?’

‘No.’

‘Oh,’ I said, somewhat surprised. ‘I bet that makes your job a bit harder, then, doesn’t it?’

‘Not really. Not from a marketing point of view anyway. It’s not the taste angle of this product we’re pushing,’ she explained,
confusing me even more.

‘But hang on, the moment someone buys this stuff and ruins their dinner with it, it’s game over, isn’t it? No matter how many
laser guns you’ve got on the bottle,’ I pointed out.

‘There are no laser guns on the bottle, the designers have gone more retro space exploration rather than sci-fi with the look
of the packaging.’

Charley didn’t think it was all that important, though. It wasn’t in her brief so it wasn’t her concern.

‘Besides, we can’t do anything about that aspect of the product, so why worry about it? We have to focus the campaign on the
positives and let Naldesco concern themselves with that side of things.’

It was a fair point, I guess. Me and Jason simply laid the bricks we were told to by our governors. It wasn’t down to us what
shape the houses were, how many bedrooms they had or even what bond we laid. That had all been decided years before between
the architects, the building firm and the local authority. We were the monkeys. They were the organ grinders. Charley didn’t
quite see herself as a monkey but didn’t get a chance to expand on her point of view because at that moment some shaven-headed
bouncer came over and told me I had to hop it.

‘What?’

‘Come on, let’s go. No arguments,’ he said, giving me directions over his shoulder with one of his stumpy thumbs.