A New Hard Hat
A New Hard Hat
I met Paddy Pender on a construction site in Hackney, North London. We ran into each other as he was gathering his tools from site stores on a bitterly cold foggy morning. He looked quite rough, and a little unwell. Paddy had a black eye, a split lip and the shredded remains of some cotton wadding hanging from one nostril.
'Jassuss, what happened to you'
'Ahh, bit of hassle last night, he said.
'Oh, what happened then?''
'Yeah, I was shouting at a couple of lads across the road and they were shouting back like. So I yelled, “why don't ye come over here and say that...”
'And,' I said?'
'And the feckers did,' said Paddy.
'Bummer, I said. 'Are you sure you're alright?'
'Ack...Just a bit sore,' said Paddy, feeling for his nose.
Paddy was fond of the “drink.” But that wasn't unusual. It was after all the default setting for many working in the construction industry and of course this was Monday morning. It was also Christmas week and there would be more celebrations to come before construction sites all over the city finally broke up for the traditional two week break. In fact, in two days time we were to begin our own Christmas Holiday's and there was a sense of anticipation, good will and good humour throughout the site.
I saw Paddy again the following morning. There was always a few jobs that needed to be done as a matter of urgency before the site could be locked down tight for the holidays. Paddy, I noticed, was engaged in a particularly tricky endeavour on this cold December day.
Patrick Pender was a shuttering carpenter. Shuttering carpenters are those who create plywood forms used in the pouring of in-situ concrete structures, such as walls, columns and beams.
When the time arrives to remove those pieces of plywood – you'll always find one bit that won't cooperate. A piece of timber that gets pinched, trapped or stuck, and that piece of plywood will test a man's patience and endurance.
So, let me set the scene. Paddy is straddling a concrete beam, one recently poured. He's like a cowboy on a dead rodeo horse trying to kick the beast back to life, He's really going at it while muttering to himself as he alternates between kicking and jamming his crowbar between the piece and the beam. But what gives the whole scene such urgency, and, perhaps goes some way towards explaining his growing despair, is the location. Paddy is astride this thing high above the Great Fleet Sewer. A 12 foot diameter, brick lined Victorian monster running through the heart of North London. It was a miracle of engineering when originally built and still an imposing structure a hundred years later. It formed an integral part of the London faecal circulatory system and our company was performing open heart surgery on this part of it.
He is of course attached to a harness and lanyard in case he should fall in. But still, here he is, sweating and swearing above this evil maelstrom. Poor Paddy Pender has already spent nearly two hours hanging over a mesmerisingly fast moving stream of human waste. Yes, where shit is moved wholesale, every stripe, colour, every ethnicity, every shape and size from man, woman and child as, along with other unspeakable materials, it travels at 15 miles per hour towards the Beckton treatment works. The smell rising from its foul depths is truly horrendous.
I made my way to the office to meet with the man in charge of this site. A young Engineer – Tommy Burke
When nature handed out voices, Tommy crapped out. Nothing at all wrong with having one in a slightly higher register than your peers. But it is rather unfortunate if that voice always stays firmly fixed in some dreary monotone, and does all this in the key of F sharp. Our Tommy had the most whiny irritating vocal output of anybody I had ever met in my life – and he didn't appear to know it. Yes, a droning voice that never went anywhere. A voice that could never express joy or surprise. So utterly depressing that Tommy would be the last man in the world the Samaritans might ever employ in case the suicide rate should rise to apocalyptic proportions.
In addition to this peculiarity, he also sported an unfortunate, plain nondescript expressionless face that matched so well with those grey trousers and that overall Teralene Perm-a-Press dress code of his. You know, the type of trousers, the kind that could so efficiently encapsulate the tail of his cheap nylon shirt.
Above his desk hung a dozen dead pine air fresheners. There, no doubt, to gird himself against the awful stench outside. Beside this, on the magnolia wall was a calendar extolling the virtues of various kinds of submersible electric pump – Yes, even his office was boring.
So, back to the sewer. Paddy's exertions had become so violent that his green hard hat falls from his head and into the flow. A little pea-green boat minus its owl and pussy cat was now speeding towards Beckton.
Paddy left the place of his torment and headed to the site office. I knew a clash of sorts was coming... a serious confrontation. This here was the Titanic screeching and scraping across the gravel and our porta-cabin was to be its unfortunate iceberg.
He stormed into the office. Tommy was filling in his desk top diary.
'I'm after losing me hard hat.'
'What's that Paddy?'
'It fell into the sewer like.
'And... could ya not get it back?'
'What ya mean... get it back...'
There was a pause in the conversation as Tommy continued to fill his daily sheets, while Paddy stood there still sweating. Sweating as much with the drink as the exertions of the last hours of labour.
'Well, have you got another one there or not,' said Paddy sounding slightly irritated.
Reluctantly, Tommy reached into that deep drawer under his desk and withdrew a new shiny helmet. He was saying something about wearing the chinstrap supplied, Particularly important as he explained, if the wearer is bending over a live sewer. Such an approach he continued, would allow the aforementioned user to keep hold of this valuable piece of personal protective equipment so generously provided by the company etc etc...
Then he relinquished his hold and left the hat in Paddy's care with this one final parting piece of advice.
'You won't lose this one now Paddy shurr you won't?' he drawled.
Paddy gave him the briefest grin and accepted the precious hat. He said nothing. Instead he took a few paces to the open door. With the grace and skill of a professional rugby football player Paddy drop kicked his new hat. Drop kicked it with his size nine steel toe cap boot out into a cold winter fog. Off it sailed into the chilly milky yonder. Witnesses would recall the moment with misty eye and trembling voice. They would say that contact between leather work-boot and plastic helmet was nothing short of sublime. Some said it eventually landed south of Greys in Essex – others disagreed and vouched that it dropped short, landing instead in the Thames Estuary. A few would even say that NASA tracked it as it entered low Earth orbit, and track it there still... Fanciful, I know, and we may never really know. In any case it was never ever seen again.
All this of course happened in less than three seconds from the moment he received the thing until it began its epic journey. Paddy, satisfied with the result now turned his attention towards Tommy. The young engineer didn't move. His eyes were wide and his mouth was hanging open. I could see the carpenters hands, and how they hung from those fat hairy wrists like two mini wrecking balls. Thankfully they transformed back to normal appendages before he reached the desk. He placed one calloused paw on Tommy's big open diary and the other on the back of his office chair. Paddy was leaning in, so awfully close, his voice was low, restrained, yet with just a tinge of menace.
'Now Tommy, I've lost that feckin hat too... what are ya going to do about that?'
I needed to intervene. There was a real danger that if Tommy said the wrong thing right now – he would find himself following that new helmet.
It took me some time to get him out of the office. I even managed to steer him as far as the site canteen where he could have a few mugs of tea and get warm again. I would ask the site manager to put him on some other task and tell everybody else to keep out of the carpenters way for the rest of the shift... it was Christmas after all, the season of goodwill and all that. It was also an opportunity to go speak to the young Engineer about his man management skills.
Maybe young Tommy was an academic superstar in college. Maybe he adopted homeless puppies or did the soup run on winter nights, or, perhaps he sang at the local orphanage... who knows. But what Tommy didn't have was an ability to talk to others without those others wanting to beat him to death.
Ah sure, most of us may see those images in our head on occasion, and fantasise about giving some eejit a proper slapping but we are socialised and understand the need for restraint and the norms of social interaction.
But Tommy would need to learn that not all those he would encounter in life would be so accommodating. That the world was full of Paddy Pender's and that Thomas Burke would do well to shut up on occasion.
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