Greetings, what’s happening, how do you do?
Another week and another one of these. Been keeping it going for roughly six months, now. Big thanks to everyone that has read, listened, commented; or even shared. I enjoy doing this but it does give me a lift and a bit of extra impetus to do more, knowing that there’s a few of you engaging with it. Of course, you may well think it’s dog-shit, but that’s ok, I like dogs.
Speaking of which, my missus and I got a new puppy this week, so I’ve been busy trying to make sure she doesn’t piss in the house; I’ve had mixed results. That’s taken up a lot of my time but thankfully, with it being easter holidays, I’ve not been doing many workshops.
We stayed at my in-laws for a few days, whilst the puppy settled in. Like a bellend I forgot to pack my laptop, so couldn’t get much work done. However, I did have the first half of this show printed out in my bag; so I spent a few days (while she was asleep) going over the words. It felt good, I think it’s getting there; I’m still enjoying the process of editing. I’m now into the material which I’m least confident about, going at it with trepidation.
So this weeks offering, is story number 4, from Make Your Own Bed and Hope for the Best, based on the time I was an apprentice, for an IT company, in the early 2000’s. There’s a few more stories after this one (I’ve had a lot of jobs) so maybe I’ll do something different next week, feel free to say ‘turn it in, Paul, no one cares, mate’ and I’ll change course; perhaps.
As before, if you’re interested in seeing what I’ve already done with this show, you can check my You Tube channel, or if you’re interested in checking some of the plays I’ve co-written, you can now purchase Beats and Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Anthology and while we’re on plugging stuff, fuck it, I’ve still got a few copies of my first book; The Suburban, for sale.
Again, big thankyou to everyone that has engaged with any of this stuff, it means a lot. Sometimes it still feels like it was, back in my early twenties, just rapping to myself, in my bedroom. Probably about the only good thing I did do, back in those days.
If you like, please subscribe, or perhaps even share it? (If you like it of course.) It would be great if we could grow the numbers but I’ll still be doing it regardless. Tortoise and the hare, mate. Have a great weekend.
Zepher tech (5 min 40) by me Paul Cree
In all honesty, I felt embarrassed about being kicked out of college. I’d let mum and dad down. When my tutor brutally pointed out to me, that on the final piece of work I’d handed in, not only was it terrible, I’d even misspelled my own name; it pretty much sealed my fate.
All these college courses seemed like they’d been made up for kids like me; deluding a generation of us that leisure and tourism was a thing. We probably would’ve been better off in a job, earning money, there’s no way we were all going to be computer programmers and engineers. Thanks Tony
So after taking every spare shift going at Waitrose and working as a labourer for a tree Surgeon, I was finally taken on for the National Trainee scheme at Crawley College, which is like an apprenticeship with armbands. I had to spend a couple of months doing a some more made-up IT courses, which were supposed to get us ready for work but were even shitter than the one I just came from. However, I vowed to try harder with these and managed to pass them- and after a successful interview, I was placed into a company called Zepher Technologies. Computers. The future. Finally
Zepher Technologies was in the business of VPNs, which stands for Virtual Private Networks, which I knew virtually nothing about. Thanks Tony
They made these mad-cube-looking machines, which sat in big servers, which ran on this software called Linux, which I’d also never heard of. Thanks Tony. Linux required all these commands to be typed onto a black screen, which to me was like trying to read Russian, backwards, on a blackboard.
I had a boss, Sandy, who interviewed me but was hardly ever there. He was always at the manufacturing plant down in Portsmouth. Once in a while I got to go down there and work on the assembly line; it was a good laugh, I enjoyed the banter with all the lads that worked there. I’m pretty sure that was why Sanday was never in the office –
I was mostly left to my own devices, sat in the small, messy back-room , on my own, where all the equipment was stored. One of the engineers casually said to me one day, that my boss Sandy was mental and they had no idea why I was taken on.
I had no idea either, I did’nt know what I was meant to be doing, it was like one, very-long two-year work experience. I made a lot of tea. Every six weeks my course assessor came to visit me and we often had to make up stuff for me to write about, in order to meet the assessment criteria, for my NVQ qualification.
I made other people tea. I made myself tea. My mates called me the tea-boy, which I hated. I’m a trainee, in computers, the future. I spent a lot of time in the toilet, often just sitting there without even doing anything. I tried to teach myself Linux and understand how to use the products the company made – but it was like going off-roading in a Fiat Panda; I was really stretching the limitations of my brain.
I’d read the big book of LINUX commands and managed to learn a few, the only one I remembered was IPCONFIG – which looked impressive because it suddenly bought up loads of information on the screen, but didn’t really do anything a bit like Politicians when they make their speeches.
I spent a lot of time browsing the internet and planning music events that I’d started running with my mate, Mick from college. The internet was still a novelty to me, as we didn’t really have it at home. I regularly posted on a drum and bass forum called Dogz On Acid, connecting and learning with music heads form all over the UK and wider-world. Through there I found these other forums, which mixed underground music and politics – and started reading conspiracy websites about why we’d gone to war in Iraq. Seems as if Tony had not only invented a load of shite courses for kids like me to do, he’d also invented some shite about weapons, both of which, amounted to nothing.
I wrote a lot of lyrics there too, making good use of the stationary cupboard and my new technical lexicon that I was acquiring
I’m transmitting lyrical data down your XLR
Outputting monologues and blazing through your speaker
I remembered feeling really proud of that and couldn’t wait to test out on a set.
Sat in that back room, I experienced mainly moments of mundane boredom and isolation but it weren’t always the case. A few months before joining the company, two girls I knew had tragically taken their own lives. My best friend had found them, it was at his house. I’d have been there that night, had I not had a chest infection
Things got a bit messy after this and my friend started going off the rails. He’d turn up at my house, or ring my phone all hours of the night, dragging me into these little street beefs he was getting into. There was a period where each time I saw him, either some physical damage had been done to his car: smashed windows, or paintwork keyed or some physical damage had been done to him. He would turn up at work, asking to borrow money, wheel-spinning out the car park blasting garage, while my colleagues looked on, bemused.
I didn’t know how to deal with any of this and I’d get these random fits of rage where I just wanted to smash things. I broke two knuckles punching a hole in the door of some pub. I remember booting a few of those old machines, that were on the floor. One time I remember being sat there in that back room one day, probably browsing the internet and out of nowhere just bursting into tears. Of course, no one saw; probably best.
Despite the dullness of it all, there were one or two good memories. The day I successfully figured out how to use the Zepher Technology VPN products, and configure a VPN tunnel, using two of the redundant cube computers which were just laying around, was monumental, for me.
It had taken my days to figure it out, constantly reading and rereading the instruction manual, feeling like it might as well have been written in Cantonese, until one day something clicked. I was so happy I jumped up throwing my fist in the air and ended up punching our a ceiling tile, which covered my in rubble. Of course, like the tears,n o one was there to see it but I told my boss Sandy. It would probably have taken someone more attuned that sort of thing a matter of minutes to do it but regardless of how long it took me, it gave me a bit of confidence that maybe I wasn’t as thick as I thought I was, I’d achieved something.
The one little bit of success came back to bite me in arse, because I wound up getting pulled into a sales meeting one day, because Sandy wasn’t there, to demonstrate the VPN products and completely messing it up, in front of these three executive types. Not even typing IPCONFIG could impress them. I had no idea who they were, or where they were from but they well-dressed and had cabin bags. I’d made the effort, I’d put on my cream Umbro polo top and my cream jeans. I remember going back to that little room, feeling even worse than I usually did, wishing that they’d just left me alone that day, like they always did.
I didn’t cry that time but it turns out, some bubble called Dot Com was about to burst. Computers may well have been the future but it weren’t mine.
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