Daily Routine Orders 3
I’ve been out tonight. I took the tube down to Charing Cross and walked about a bit. Tour of inspection, you might say. And I found them, as I’d known I would. Hundreds of the scruffy blighters, lying around making the place look manky. I marched along the Strand and there they were, dossing in all the doorways – even Lloyds Bank and the Law Courts. One cheeky little bugger – couldn’t have been more than seventeen – actually asked me for money. Have you got any change, he says. I looked him up and down and I said, ‘Change? I’d change you, my lad, if I had you in khaki for six weeks.’ It didn’t go in, though. He just smiled and said have a nice night. Cracker up his arse, that’s what he wants. That’d wake him up. That, or six weeks at Strensall.
National Service. That was the thing. It brought ’em all in – the teds, the rockers, the Mammy’s boys. And it changed ’em, by golly it did. In six weeks. There were no teddy boys on that passing-out parade I can tell you, and no rockers, either. Soldiers, that’s what it made of ’em. There were no exceptions.
And that was my mission in life – to turn dirty, scruffy, pimply youths into soldiers. Into men. And I did it too. Year after year.
Yes, and what thanks do I get? I’ll tell you. They chuck me out. Twenty-nine years’ service and they turn round and chuck me out. Medical grounds, it says on the chit. Discharged on medical grounds. And there’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing. I’m forty-seven and fit as a butcher’s dog.
Medical grounds is just an excuse, of course. I know why they really chucked me out. They chucked me out because their mission in life is exactly the opposite of mine. They think I don’t know that, but I do. They’re all part of the plot, see? There’s a plot – it’s been hatching a long time now – to undermine the country by clogging it up with dossers and junkies and drunks. Some of the top politicians are in it, and civil servants and social workers and even the church. They want to flood the country with winos and crims and down-and-outs and drag it down till it’s no better than some of the filthy holes I’ve served in all these years. They’re powerful, and they’ll stop at nothing. What’s the career of one Sergeant-Major to them? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing.
They’re not going to stop me, though. Oh, no. They abolished National Service, and they’ve put me where I can’t turn garbage into men any more, but I can clean up the garbage, can’t I? They can’t stop me doing that, and I will. By golly I will.
Now – where did we get to? Oh, yes – I remember. Time to move on.
I’d applied for loads of jobs in the months since I’d left school. Office work. Supermarkets. Catering. Filling stations – you name it. Most employers wanted experience, and some ads actually said unemployed persons need not apply, which is criminal, in my opinion. I’d started applying in August and I’d had a couple of interviews, but as I said before, sleeping in your clothes makes you look scruffy, and by Christmas I looked like a tramp. I knew nobody was going to take me on looking like that, and I started getting really depressed.
Christmas didn’t help. I spent it at Carole’s, which was kind of her and Chris, but it was still the worst Christmas I’d ever had. For a start, there was my present. Carole and Mum had put their money together and got me this sleeping bag. A really posh job. Quilted, waterproof, the lot. It must have cost a bomb and I knew they only meant to be kind, but it said something to me. It said they thought of me as a dosser – as someone who might always be a dosser, so he might as well be as comfy as possible. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t let them see. And I’ve got to admit it’s come in handy ever since.
Anyway, there was that, and then there was Boxing Day. Boxing Day Mum came round, and she brought Vince with her. I can only think that Carole had never told Chris the full story about him, or surely Chris wouldn’t have had him in the house. Anyway, they came for dinner and stayed till one o’clock next morning, and of course everybody got drunk. Everybody except me. And once he got a skinful, Vince started making cracks about me. The ghost of Christmas past, he called me. Don’t ask me why. I was a disgrace, he said, stuffing myself with my sister’s grub. Sitting there with my long hair and tatty clothes, making Mum feel guilty when she’d had nothing to feel guilty about. I was a scrounger, a sponger and a layabout, and I ought to be looking for work instead of sitting with a face as long as a fiddle, spoiling everybody’s Christmas.
It didn’t feel like peace on earth, I can tell you that. There wasn’t a lot of goodwill towards men floating about. And the worst thing was, nobody stuck up for me. Not even my sister. It was then I knew I’d worn out my welcome, even here. So.
On December 28th I borrowed the price of a one-way ticket to London. Carole lent me the money. She even came to see me off at the station, and hugged me before I climbed on board with my backpack and my bedroll. The next hug I got was from a stinky old ciderhead in Lincoln’s Inn Fields when I gave him twenty pence so he’d leave me alone.