The Rest of My Life: First Day...

            Monday, 8th September 1975

            That was the day the then callow 16-year-old me started work. 

            Fifty years ago, bar the shouting.

            We were living in Devon at the time, having moved there from London the year before for the sake of dad's health.  He'd gone from being a caretaker on a bleak Battersea high-rise estate to farm labourer in a tied cottage - earning a pittance, but happy at last.  It had seemed like a small miracle at the time.  A dream.  It wasn't to last, and within four years it was all over.  But that's another story for another time.

            So there I was, with my first job.  Assistant Cellarman at Dale's Devon Cider in Landscove - a tiny hamlet on the edge of Dartmoor.  Through a gap in the hedge outside the gate, the knuckle-bone of Hay Tor was visible just a few miles away over the hills and meadows.

            Dale's was the largest of the few remaining independent cider makers in Devon - producing about 100,000 gallons a year for distribution to pubs and clubs throughout the South Devon area.  Dad used to drink it at our local club.  It was about 12p a pint, I think.  A quid in today's money.  Potent stuff, too.  7.3%.  You could get wasted pretty cheaply in those days.  Just as well, because no one had much money. Most people worked on farms or in shops.

            The cider works was a gathering of old stone buildings surrounding a farm yard (it was also an active dairy farm) - nestling alone there at the bottom of a hill, with a narrow lane running past.  Next to it was the ancestral pile - the manor house of the owner.  It had all been in the family for centuries.  They traced their lineage back to the Domesday Book.

            That day is as clear in my head as yesterday...

 

            I left extra early that morning for the eight-mile ride on my hire-purchase moped.  I was waiting in the yard at 7:30 am when the other workers arrived.  Three of them, walking down from the crossroads in wellingtons and overalls, each swinging a small milk churn.  They grinned when they saw me. 

            "Yer's our new boy, prompt and early!" said one.

            I felt like what they probably saw: a long streak of piss in wellies with a cabbage for a head.

            One of them came straight up to me and held out his hand.

            "I'm Sam," he said.  "Head cellarman.  You'll be working with me."

            He was about thirty, lean and swarthy, with a wave of black hair that stood up at the front like he'd been out in a gale for too long. He had what dad called a 'lantern jaw' - long and square, with a chin like the toe of a boot. It was smudged already with 5 o'clock shadow, like he'd rubbed it with old newspapers.

            The other two were a middle-aged man and one not much older than I was.  They introduced themselves in turn as Matt and Ed.  Then they went off down the yard.  Sam looked at my moped.

            "Stick 'er in pound 'ouse," he said.  "We won't be using it for a few weeks yet."

            He led me into a tall building attached to the cellar.  It was full of weird-looking machinery.  Something that looked like a playground slide, but without the ladder to get up to it.  A large wooden contraption at the top, with a square hatch underneath.  Lots of big iron wheels connected by belts. Chains hanging down. It was like pictures I'd seen in a book of Heath Robinson inventions.  There was a kind of railway track in the floor - like tram lines - leading from the slide thing to three huge hydraulic presses along the back wall.  Everything was painted red. It all looked very old.

            Matt appeared again with the cellar key and a cash tin, both of which he gave to Sam.  Matt was about forty, I thought - a stocky chap with neat hair, wire-framed glasses and blue dungarees.  He had a smouldering cigarette end stuck in the corner of his mouth.

            "Enjoy your first day," he grinned, going off again.  There was something in that grin, I thought.  I'd seen it before.  Piss-takey.

            Sam opened up the cellar door and we went in. It was like a cave inside, with white-painted stone walls, as if it had been carved from a cliff face.  Two banks of fluorescent tubes flickered to life, but didn't do much to lift the gloom.  Lines of wooden barrels of varying sizes were ranged along the long back wall, behind a drain gutter. There was also a stack of 5-gallon poly-jars like the one dad got every week at home.

            "This is where we do most of the job," Sam said. "Wash out and clean the empties and refill 'em."

            He showed me to a small room at the end where they kept all the labels, corks, bungs and other things.  Beside that, a dark archway led through to a huge sub-cellar which housed a vat - the biggest thing like it I'd ever seen, more than twice my height and about the same wide.  It was like a miniature gas holder.  The oak sides were black with pitch, and it was hooped like a barrel.

            My mouth dropped open.  Sam grinned.

            "I'll show you the big ones later.  This one only holds ten-thousand gallons."

            Ten-thousand!  That would keep dad happy for a while, I thought.

            We went back outside as Matt drove up the yard in a red flat-bed lorry. Dale's Devon Cider was painted in white along the side boards.  On the back were dozens of barrels and poly-jars.  He waved as he drove out - cigarette smoke wafting from his side window.

            "Matt does the deliveries.  We do all the cellar work here.  When he gets back later, we unload his empties, load him up for tomorrow, and that's it."

            The empties from Friday were stacked outside the cellar door - about twenty oak barrels of different sizes.

            "First job is to get these cleaned and filled," Sam said. 

            He got two club hammers and two cold chisels from the cellar and gave me one of each.

            "Just copy what I do," he said.

            We chiselled out the wooden bungs on each barrel.  Then we rolled the barrels over a drain to empty out any dregs.  Finally, we set them on their sides in a row, bung-hole up, and Sam went along with a bucket of hot water and poured some in each.  He then took the first barrel and set it on a low wooden bench - the 'rocker', he called it.

            He took a heavy steel chain from a hook on the wall, then fed it into the barrel.  He sealed the bunghole with a large cork.  Then he began to rock the barrel from side to side on the rocker, turning it slowly as he did.  The chain shifted inside - left, right, left, right - in a constant rhythm, like someone slowly playing maracas.  After two rotations, he stood the barrel upright on the floor and rocked it around again.  Then on the other end.  Finally, he laid it down by the drain and pulled out the cork.  He fished the chain out with a hook fashioned from a wire coat hanger, then fed it into the next barrel.  He turned the first one bunghole-down over the drain.  Water the colour of bile came out.

            "The chain scrapes all the gunge off the insides, see?"

            He poured some cold water in then, sloshed it around, emptied that out.  Then he set the barrel bunghole up in the drain gutter.

            "That's it, ready for filling.  Your turn."

            I did as he'd shown me.  Up on the rocker.  Chain and cork in.  Rock and turn.  It took me a few goes to get in the rhythm.  But then I got it.  While I carried on with that, Sam filled the barrels from an arm-thick hose with a huge brass tap.  The hose looped off through a hatchway in the ceiling.

            "It's connected to a small feeder vat upstairs," Sam said.  "There's eight of them.  Two thousand gallons each."

            Cider vats everywhere.  Thousands and thousands of gallons. Sam poured some into a glass.

            "Try this," he said.

            It was a pale amber colour - cold and naturally sparkling. I hadn't ever drunk much before - mainly at Christmas - but I took a good mouthful.  My mouth tingled.  I could sense my eyes brightening.  Fireworks went off in my head.

            "Good, eh?" said Sam.

            I nodded.

            "I'd better not drink too much."

            He grinned.

            "Ah... you won't be like Jacko, then?"

            "Who's Jacko?"

            "Chap whose job you've now got.  Just retired.  He'll miss it, though, so I 'spect 'e'll be back before long."

            He took a sup himself, swilled it around his mouth like a wine buff, swallowed it.  He stared into space a moment, as if in thought.  Then he nodded approvingly.

            "That's how we like it.  Racy."

            We carried on with the cleaning and filling, sometimes swapping roles.  The tap needed careful use as the cider flowed fast.  We hammered new bungs into the filled barrels and stood them in their respective lines along the back wall - 4.5-gallon 'pins', 9-gallon 'firkins', 18-gallon 'kilderkins.'  We filled some of the poly-jars, too.  It was just before nine when we finished. 

            "We'll stop now for breakfast," Sam said. 

            Breakfast was a half-hour break.  Sam went home.  He had one of the tied cottages up at the crossroads in the village.  But he showed me to a store room across the yard before he went.  Inside, it was cluttered with piles of sacks, farm tools, oil cans. There were some old chairs and crates in one corner, just behind the door.  A make-shift staff room.  A couple of others arrived as I got there - one of them driving in the yard in a tractor and parking it by the weighbridge.  He looked like my every idea of a farm labourer: muddy wellingtons and jeans, and a battered brown jacket without buttons - tied around the middle with orange bale twine.  He had a thicket of brown hair, flapping around his head in the wind like a couple of restless birds. 

            "I'm Ben," he said

            We shook hands.  His hand felt like it was made of concrete.

            The other one was an older chap, shorter and stockier.  He was dressed similarly, though somehow smarter-looking.  His jacket had buttons, at least.  He had a tweed flat cap pulled low over a face criss-crossed with red veins.  He was Joe.

            "First day at work for 'ee, boy?" he said, as we sat and opened our tea flasks.

            "My first proper job, yes."

            "Ah," he said.  "Keep 'ee nose clean, you got a job fer life 'ere."

            A job for life.  It wasn't something I wanted to think about especially.  Life was too long a time.  It sounded like a prison sentence.

            "Joe should know," said Ben through a mouthful of sandwich.  He swallowed.  "How long you been here, Joe?"

            "Fifty-fi' year, comin' up," Joe said, staring at the ground.  He didn't sound too enthusiastic about it. 

            Ben chuckled.  I looked up at him.  He grinned - silently mouthing the words Joe said next.

            "Man 'n' boy," said Joe.  "Man 'n' boy."

            And there I was - a boy-man, or maybe a man-boy.

            Just starting the journey...