Andy's Ramblings

Welcome to www.everfeltlost.co.uk/dunney: a kind of George Monbiot meets Richard Littlejohn of the comment world. Below are a series of tales that I’ve periodically sent out as emails from past and present and which, I hasten to add, are all true. Feel free to browse. Happy reading…

MATT: August 2005

Owing to crippling debts from my croissant bills in France, I enlist for local temp agency Adecco in Summer 2005. Normally they say - “we’ve got you this really easy gaff. The lads are a right laugh and you’ll have a right laugh” – then put you in a 24/7 cheese factory run by psychopaths. This time though, things were a bit different…
Working in the nerve centre of a multi-functioning – grass/hedge/verge/shrub cutting, plus litter collection and weeding - branch of Taunton Deane Council, it’s not unusual to meet the “interesting” character.
Take today for example, when I was introduced – as his driver for two days – to Matt, referred to likeably as, “the village idiot one”.
Matt, 24 from Taunton, I think it’s fair to say, is a compulsive liar ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. But, credit where credit is due, he’s amazingly good at it.
At 7am, keen to impress his new driver (in me), the man in question recalled how he “fractured the skull of a supply teacher” because he’d given his brother “hassle for being Welsh” – which, incidentally, he isn’t, although, to note, he is 4’5”. “Oh”, I reply, wondering how to react, “was he ok?”. “Yeah, pissed off ‘cause he’s not Welsh anyway, but h’was happy I’d stepped in”, he reassured me. “And the supply teacher?”. “Oh, in hospital for a bit, but I saw him later and said, Matt, you were right to do that, I deserved it, is your brother alright? I saw the headteacher too who said no worries ‘cause no one liked him”… so you were well within your rights to “ram his head through a window pane”.
I wondered whether to run at this point, but judging by his vertically-challenged stature (people in glass houses), decided to stick with it, things were getting interesting.
Next on the lines of inquiry came celebrities he’d met. “I saw him in a club with his Mrs, who was really tasty” (on Ryan Giggs and other half). “He came up to me and said, do you want a drink? We spent the rest of the night drinking together – really nice guy – but his Mrs started rubbing her leg up against mine and I thought, I can’t do this, and so left with my brother.” “Oh”, I reply, something of a catchphrase by now, “have you met any others?”. “Alex Ferguson at the race course and I met Tyson. He told me that he’s never raped anyone and believe him. He was a lovely bloke and we were talking for ages about Michael Jackson”. All potentially plausible still, I suppose.

Until it reached “boxing”, spurred on by the Tyson meet. Having already hinted that his big sport was crazy golf – “I’m a bit of a demon”, I was made aware of the strong boxing tradition within the family. “Father, father’s father, his dad, my uncle, my brothers”, if I recall correctly “genes” I’m sure cropped up somewhere too. “So, I was training up to be a marine. They said, Matt you’re one of the best marines we’ve ever had, we need you. So, I did all the training, ran the race for ten hours.” “Ten hours?” I interject, “that’s about two and bit marathons?”. “Yeah”, he continues “Got nine hours fifty out and then dropped down ‘cause my knee gave way.” “What happened?” “Blood clot”, he informs me. “The marines said it was their fault and I was in hospital there for a month. They didn’t get anyone out of my group, but said I should have been there as I was one of the best they’d had.” And so it continued, alongside the worthiest of worthy highlights, “so this marine said so you’re a boxer are you? I said yes. He said, do you want to go into the ring and do a bit of sparring. I said fine. So we went in, he was a big bloke mind probably 6’8”, sparred a bit, then he said Matt hit me as hard as you can. I said, are you sure? He said yes. So I uppercut him, blood everywhere and he was out cold. I thought I’d killed him.” “So, what happened?”, I ask in taking the bait. “Well he surfaced four hours later and said that I was the only person ever to take him down.”

Sexual conquests proved fertile probing ground, if you pardon the mental image created there. “Best fuck I’ve ever had she said”, when a twenty two Irish model asked him “if he could fix the taps in her bathroom. “You’ve tired her out more than I ever could”, said, apparently, this “stunner’s boyfriend”, keen to share his “woman” in the toilets in a local fight club/Yates bar. This anecdote was topped off with the delightful add-on that as he left the toilets the bar maid whistled to say that his flies were undone. “She said, leave it, I’ll do it, and next thing I know she’s pulling me off in front of everyone.”
Although my personal favorite related to him buying fish in a local tropical fish shop. Ahem, I quote. “I walked in with my brother (remember 4’6” – I try and across check but it’s lost in the flow of inspiration) and saw three fish lying on the surface dead. Fucking dead. I get the girl behind the counter and said, those fish are fucking dead. Nice alliteration. She said, it aint my problem, I said, get the manager. He turned up and thanked me. I said, no worries but I’m going to Watermark. Not buying fucking dead fish.” “Fair enough”, I concurred, “you’re within your rights”. So, location changes to Watermark, where he tells the manager about the other place with “fucking” dead fish. He’s, rightly, pleased that Matt has brought his custom there and so, obviously, offers him, “twenty free koi-carps”. “They’re expensive aren’t they?”, I question remembering something from my own days at Watermark. “About two hundred quid each.” “So”, I calculate, “he gave you four thousand pounds worth of fish, for no reason?” “Yes”, he replies answering all my queries. “Anyway, he got this young girl to take me to pick up the fish and she looked really flirty. He’s out the way and she grabs my cock and leads me to the fish. She gets me into this shed and just did everything. I got the fish aswell.”
Anecdote after anecdote continued including his uncles having a spade fight in a swimming pool, being classified as one of the best paintballers “Skirmish, just off the M25” have ever seen, one about his uncle, who killed a policeman, shagged a prostitute while on the run, got thrush, changed his name from Trevor to Dave to evade chase, moved to Winchester, mentioning just at the end, “he works in Tescos now”, driving a digger into a grave, and experiences of “dogging”. Not him I might add, “I wouldn’t, it’s disgusting, unless she was really fit”, moreover glimpses he’d found while on the job – that being the cutting grass one.
And I’ve only done a day with him.

MATT, FUCK IT, TAKE TWO: September 2005

It’s over. The long, hard slog of a eight stroke ten hour day cramped into a transit van, reading the Star, Sudokuing and occasionally weeding or grass-cutting. Although my depleted mental capacities suggest the change will do me good, from the ubiquitous tea-breaks – ‘well, fuck it, I’m not fucking doing that, have a break, chill out’ – to the faux banter – ‘Andy, just had a call from the Union. Apparently we’re working too hard. Time for a cruise around/fanny run/break/tools down’ – to the enlightening conversation – ‘I think at 18 every man should be given a dirty slut to sort out sexual frustration’ – I will (eventually), in a roundabout way, miss it.

I’ve suggested that Matt, who avid readers of these wry takes on public sector work will no doubt remember for his tales of the unexpected, writes (or at least has a ghost writer) an autobiography; ‘My life in a flat bed truck’. In it, doubtlessly, would be chapters referring to the many tales of Uncles becoming Aunties, changing names to Trevor, driving JCBs into graves, meeting a host of A-list celebs, et al and as mentioned last time. To be included could come his ‘newer’ experiences we’ve only recently come to hear about;

Chapter 7, Fuck it Swimming with sharks.

“Did you watch Shark night last night Matt?”, I posed. “Yeah, I did as it goes. Fucking huge weren’t em?”. "Um, weren’t em”, I practice. “Thing is, with sharks and that they’re even bigger when you see em.” “Really”, I ask prompting the hyperbole. “Yeah, well I was swimming you see down in St Ives. Well, I was diving actually. The dive instructor said you might see a couple of sharks, watch out. I said fine. Anyway, we were way out swimming like and this like hammer shape come out of the black. Fucking great bastard hammerhead like.” “Off St Ives?”, I butt-in. “Yeah, loads of em, all swimming by me. Then there was a basking shark.” “Oh, they’re ok aren’t they”, I ask. “Normally, but you got to be careful not to be sucked in like. I was alright in the end.”

Chapter 85 – “Fuck it, I don’t like planes”.

Stemming from a conversation held in an asbestos ridden shed between myself, Matt and the digger driver and the bloke who picks up dog shit (toxocara canis) about aeroplanes, I ask Matt why he’s never flown. “Well, I just don’t trust em. It’s not natural is.” “Well, no I suppose, we don’t naturally fly”, I agree. “Saying that I have been in a plane.” “Oh, I thought you didn’t like them”, I ask. “No normal like but the marines said you’ve got to do it. So, there I am in the back of a Hercules and the door opens out the back.” “What height were you at?”, I wonder. “40 000ft roughly, so the door opens and the marine guy just says run. I said fine, mind I was shitting it like. Next thing I knew I’m flying through the air at 500mph and thinking
fuck where’s the cord. Thing is they hadn’t told me where the parachute cord was”. “Really, you’d not been trained?” “No, they said we didn’t need it. So, luckily I found it just in time otherwise I’d have been a gonner.”

But Matt’s stories are not alone. Alongside Matt is sex obsessed driver and long-suffering John. Porter to the lads. Who else can start conversations with ‘when you’re muff diving do you find’, lyricise away from Dire Straits’ Walk of life, dubbing over instead ‘do her up the shitter’ (Tim Rice watch out), or introduce games as flamboyant as ‘right here’s a game, we all have to pass the swear’ – prompting an outcry over my use of arse-wipe of a legitimate swear word. “Fuck that”, said Matt. Back to John then.

Massive thanks to a host of characters who’ve introduced me to the almost daily terms, ‘dirty arab’, ‘scabrat’, ‘dirty asbo’, ‘ideal’ and enthralled me with the again daily ritual of ‘right, time for a shit I think’.