D WRITES ON…WORKING (FILA BRAZILLIA / ENVOY)
In which D considers pregnancy and work avoidance techniques.
March 94: I’m presently recovering from a hard day’s slog at you-know-where having utilised my talents crawling around on the floor picking up bits of fluff with sellotape (I kid you not) and dealing with waddling women with grossly distended abdomens. I’m now more convinced than ever that, far from being a beautiful, natural state, pregnancy is an alien, obscene affront to decency and good manners. And women who insist on attaining this state should be obligated to stay indoors three months into their term. Their husbands can shop for them if need be and we’ll have no more of this knocking weary shop assistants to one side with their enormous bellies.
Just to elaborate on my crawling around on my hands and knees that I mentioned earlier. There was a competition, and I use the word loosely, in the shop to find the cleanest department. However, the word ‘competition’ is a complete misnomer since, even if you won, you din’t get shit. Basically, it’s a good way for those at the top to get the shop cleaned thoroughly at no extra cost.
I’m almost certain that if we wanted to we could refuse on the grounds that being a shop assistant / cashier does not involve cans of furniture polish or imitations of the Catholic faithful celebrating the Angelus. But despite my woeful attempts to forment anarchy in the department we all had to do our bit.
The section managers are the most enthusiastic because they’re all brown-nosing for promotion and, ultimately, this pathetic charade was encouraged by them with gusto. I’m please, nay, proud, to report that these same find me a real trial.
Being the new kid on the block, I naturally know less than nothing about such delights as Mamas and Papas prams or PVC knickers and neither do I care to. This means of course that when an unwitting customer approaches me with an enquiry regarding such obets d’art, I more often than not fix them with a look not entirely dissimilar to a native of the Appalachians of dubious parentage. I either pass them on to a more experienced member of staff or, on the pretext of finding someone of this calibre, go off to the toilet to while away several contented minutes sitting on the bog considering my options. This sends the suckbutts that are the section managers into something approaching apoplexy. You can see them heading towards me usually when I’ve ballsed up on a grand scale or trying to look busy messing up the frocks and then rearranging them with expressions of barely controlled fury, only to send me to some other part of the department to do something equally useless.
I think you’ll agree that my prospects for promotion, or even survival come to think of it, are fairly slim.
And tracks from Hull’s finest downtempoists Fila Brazillia (previously here) and Envoy who records for Slam’s Soma Records label. His biog says: Who exactly is Envoy? Is he the modern day techno soul man, the singer who pours out his heart on tracks like ‘Emotional?’ Or is he the ‘king of strings’, the musical genius who makes club symphonies like ‘Dark Manoeuvres’? Perhaps he’s a sexy, Chicago house legend with a penchant for carnal classics like ‘Sex Drive’ – or a robotic machine funker with little regard for humanity? Maybe Envoy is really the fly in pop music’s ointment, the vocalist who looks to shatter the manufactured boy band stranglehold with his soulful, spiritual intonations on the soon to be huge ‘Move On’?
Fila Brazillia – Bulls Dozing
Envoy – Hopeless Romantic
Buy Fila Brazillia
ACID TED 