Part 1: The Mystery Shitter
The museum was empty and silent as it usually was at
midnight. Mike pushed the cleaning cart up to the bathroom door and took a deep
breath before adjusting his mask, putting on a fresh pair of disposable gloves
and going to put a stopper in front of the door of the women’s
bathroom. The strength of the stench made his eyes water. He had no
idea what some of these women were eating but someone definitely had some bowel
issues going on.
Whistling ‘Give A Little Whistle’ under his breath he
armed himself with his cleaning products and headed to the final stall where he
knew that the stench was coming from. For the past two weeks someone had left
an excremental explosion in the final stall and because Mike only cleaned the
museum at night after everyone had gone home he had no idea who the mystery
shitter was.
He constantly had to find his happy place whenever he
had to do his job. He thought of his children. Craig had just turned nine and
Alice was eleven so they both still loved him. Cullum, on the other hand, was
approaching the horizon of nineteen and had stopped communicating with Mike
three years ago.
Being the child of divorced parents had taken the
hardest toll on Cullum, mainly because this was a case where the mother hadn’t
wanted anything to do with the children at all and hadn’t left because she’d
found someone else but simply because she wanted a life of her own; preferably
one without any children in it. Cullum had resented that, and hated
his mother, and basically the entire world, because of that.
Another night cleaning up other people’s shit. It was
very difficult for Mike not to complain as he got to work cleaning up the
aftermath of the explosion. He’d wanted to be the manager of his own bed and
breakfast when he was younger, a dream that had set him apart from his friends
who’d wanted to be lawyers or scientists. But then the kids came along, and
well, the instruction manual wasn’t included with them. All he had to go on was
his father, who’d retired after thirty years as a mailman.
Mike loved his dad and the highlight of his day as a
child had been hearing his dad tell him about all the people he delivered mail
to. It saddened him to know that it had taken a pandemic for most people to
appreciate the postal workers of the planet. His father had taught him how to
take pride in anything he did, including cleaning the bathrooms.
He had his health, his children loved him, mostly, and
he worked by himself, something he enjoyed immensely so although people might
not see Mike he knew that he was an important cog in the machine of humanity.
Part 2: Get Off My Grass
She
has to step on the grass to get to the door and as it swings open Mrs Crombie
shouts out, ‘Get off my grass.’
Alice
passed her the parcel and sighs. ‘Right away, Mrs Crombie.’ Alice was glad that
she didn’t have to smile under her mask as the cantankerous Mrs Crombie
snatched her parcel out of Alice’s outstretched hands and then slammed the door
in her face. Alice turned around, just as the door opened again and the first
sentence was screamed out a second time before the door was slammed shut again.
Alice
shook her head from side to side as she headed back to her Union Jack red
postal van. She had no idea how Mr Crombie put up with it. This week had been a
bit rough. Harry was self-isolating and so Alice had to cover his route, plus
she still needed to finish her thesis on the examples of sexism in the fashion
industry, plus that week was her turn to look after her autistic twelve year
old cousin, which she knew would be the highlight of her week. But dealing with
people like Mrs Crombie after hectic traffic could be draining, plus Ben was
giving her a hard time about wanting to face-time and she really didn’t want to
see any part of his face, or any other part of his body for that matter.
Mrs
Crombie felt like the last nail in the coffin to seal the end of a bad start to
the day so as Alice sat behind the wheel she counted to ten and breathed
deeply; glad she didn’t need to wear her mask while driving. Her phone pinged
and she glanced at the notification.
‘Who’s
a penguin’s favourite relative? Aunt Arctica.’
Alice
smiled at the terrible joke her best friend Mavis had sent her as she started
the van and began to carefully manoeuvre out of the parking space. Sometime
people just know when you need a reason to smile without you having to say a
single word.
Part 3:
Beatrice’s Beat
There was
only one downside to the road sweeper as far as its driver Owen was concerned,
and that was the fact that it didn’t buzz. You decorate a giant sweeper to look
like a bee and you get a loud swooshing sound and a loud thrumming.
In the
safety of his cabin he got to see some right messes cleaned up under the front
scrubbers of his vehicle, which he’d lovingly called Beatrice. Owen loved his
job and getting to spend four days a week inside Beatrice was the highlight of
his life, and balanced out the sometimes difficult job he had the remaining
three days of being a street cleaner on foot and empting the city’s rubbish
bins or ‘bee toilets’ as Owen called them.
If
Richard passed up the Monday shift to operate the rubbish truck then Owen was
definitely putting his own name forward for the job.
It wasn’t
that he looked down on empting the receptacles, but he did find it a bit
stressful because the recyclable ones were usually only found in the smart parts
of the city, so anywhere near a university and you can’t go two steps without
stubbing a toe on one of those three sectioned metal bins but everywhere else
it was simply the bee toilets and no one could be bothered to either wait to
find one or take their rubbish home with them. Plus, sometimes the smell from
those little black baggies haunted his dreams.
Not one
to knock the Council, since he was grateful for his job, but if they could
build swanky offices surely they could get more sectional bins installed
everywhere as well as smooth out some of the roads? Not that he notices the
dips, dents and holes while inside Beatrice but on foot he certainly did. At
least on foot he got to listen to his music in his earbuds, and he knew he
wouldn’t last long if he didn’t have Kathleen Battle to sing him through it
all, especially when the Manchester rain, true to its form, started sleeting
down.
Part 4:
Lesson Learnt
Marie
missed the smell, the sound, being able to look into the eyes of her students
and ask if they were okay. Sure, they were all doing it through Zoom now,
scrabbling into a panic over teams with the other teachers to try and sort out
the upended curriculum, scoring homework through word and google docs, plus
what in the bishop’s trousers was that all about going back before term ended?
Marie had
never had such bad migraines as she had during lockdown. It was bittersweet to
be appreciated while people were dying, as if people only just realized that
teachers did a lot more than just teaching their students.
The
structure of school is preparing you to follow orders and apparently for the
big wide world outside, although hearing Lewis’ stories teaching a class
of sixteen year olds you might be teaching a whole load of zombies
how to look like their functioning well while on autopilot due to exhaustion.
Teachers
were handed these minds and expected to mould them. Marie had always loved
teaching the year eights and every year brought the same crop of personalities
in different bodies and faces. There was always the book worm, the
Lego/building enthusiast, the one who’d just started learning about their
bodies, another in the same predicament who’d started wearing makeup, the quiet
one who would probably end up being a guitarist in some band, the funny
insecure clown, and the one that could never sit still. Marie knew and loved
them all and so the Zooms and isolation hit her hard, but putting on a smile to
sit in the black box of the screen was okay because she’d known that it wasn’t
forever.
One of
the unexpected joys had been the household pets that got to join in on the
virtual classrooms; and in some cases, where anxiety had been an issue in
classes in the past, Marie could see the calming quality that learning with
their pets had on some of her students.
But now,
slowly returning to the building and to actual classes as cautious as she had
been she mentally told Boris to shove it as she hugged Simon when he returned
to class. His gran, who he adored, hadn’t made it through the pandemic and
because of it the family hadn’t been able to have a proper goodbye.
Part 5:
The Wheels Of The Community
The
change had been drastic in the beginning. Almost deserted roads and an empty
city centre. It looked like a ghost town and if Alex hadn’t seen their fellow
bus drivers passing they’d have been sure that the zombie apocalypse had
finally arrived.
Smiling
behind their mask was nothing new as they’d spent years doing it before the
fabric was mandatory. But they had the early dawn route, and so driving a
quarter filled bus on the way through an empty city as the grey clouds grew
lighter overhead was actually the happiest time of their life.
Despite
the Plexiglas protection of their cubicle Alex could feel the anxiety roll off
in waves from their passengers during the first few months. And Alex understood
all too well, which was why they smiled even if no one could tell, wishing each
person as much good health as they possibly could.
Just
before Freedom Day fate decided to be a bitch and hit them and their partner
with COVID, and they wished they could say the rest was nice but the thing
about it was even the rest had a feeling of bone-deep exhaustion. On the plus
side, though, it had brought them and their partner closer together because if
a pandemic doesn’t test the strength your relationship then not many other
things will.
Part 6: Everyday Back Ache
Friday’s
were the worst. Everyone was in a hurry, clocking out early to hit the centre,
where the lights glowed and the beer flowed and you forgot your worries and
sorrows. For the staying in crown it meant picking up a few things for tea
during the afternoon rush, one item turning into half of a trolley full.
Despite
the strain on her arms and back Sara preferred to stack the shelves, scanning
the barcodes with the scanning gun, putting the trays neatly on the shelves,
double checking the inventory list after. At least with the stacking she was
doing something and moving. But being chained to the till was her worst
nightmare, the continual ping got on her nerves and then the occasional
arguments with customers. She’d been working there long enough to have
memorized the prices but apparently the customer was always right. Most of the
customers were either nice or just focused on getting home which suited Sara
perfectly, but what made it so draining was having to continually sit there
checking out a mile long row of customers because she was the only one on a
till if Mark wasn’t doing the same shift as her. Despite the cushioning of the
office chair she sat on it offered very little support for her aching back, but
she grinned and bore it all through gritted teeth because, frankly, she was a
woman and when had there ever been another option available? It didn’t help
that because she was mostly the one on the tills all the time she had developed
a rhythm that decreased the not so socially distanced line (what was the point
of those stickers?) at a moderate pace….which made her boss very happy.
She’d
taken up the matter of needing to have a longer lunch break with her boss but
she might as well been talking to a wall. No one in their right mind
volunteered to man a till either. If
you’re not a people person having people tell you their drama is not the best
situation to be in and you can’t tune out because you’ve got to make sure the
computer logs the barcodes properly. Sara wasn’t a mean person but there was
one point in a day where she wished whoever invented coupons to get COVID and
recover because that was as close to Hell as they could possibly get. Sometimes
it just hurt to keep smiling behind the Plexiglas when she felt like total
shit. It was the least undesirable job in the place, coming in at a close
second was the job of a shelf scanner; someone who went and scanned every shelf
to check for stolen items and misplaced products left by customers as well as
the rubbish they left on the shelves as well. But Sara had bills to pay and her
hope was that one day she’d be in a better job, and if she never had to step
foot inside another supermarket for the rest of her life it wouldn’t bother her
in the slightest.
Part 7:
Peter
I
don’t like it when they get upset. Sometimes Lindsay just sits in the dark and
cries. I snuggle up to her and she holds on to me and repeatedly tells me that
everything is going to be all right, that we’re going to get through this. I
don’t understand but by ‘this’ I think she means that coughing thingy that man
in the suit with the funny hair keeps talking about on the news. We’ve been
seeing him a lot on the telly, to a point where Jill has switched it off
whenever he’s appeared, saying I’m the only male whose face she wants to see in
the house from now on and Lindsay nods in agreement.
They
both look very tired. Jill works for the NHS as a doctor. I always forget if it’s
the kidney or the liver but it’s one of those parts. I remember it was the
season when the weather was still nippy and it was raining puppies and kittens
all the time and suddenly Lindsay, who worked at the job centre, was home a lot
more than usual, almost every day and then it was every day. And it was a similar
thing for Jill. She still went into work every day, but I remember her coming
home one evening and saying that five scheduled surgeries had had to be pushed
back and the hospital had run out of beds because they were all filled with
something nineteen patients. I’m not very good with names and numbers but I do
try my best.
And
then there were the cleaning products. Every time Jill came home she used these
funny cloth things to wipe the door handle, her keys, her phone, and it took
about ten minutes before she could step off the indoor mat and come and give me
a hug. I must admit I did like watching her even though that stuff she sprayed
on her boots made me sneeze. After a few weeks Lindsay was working from home
which meant I got to have an afternoon jog with her during her lunch break.
I was delighted of course. I love my mums with
all of my heart and family time is the best thing ever, but something was very
wrong. Our routine was upended and as happy as they were for us all to be
together I knew that they were very worried about something but I just couldn’t
put my paw on it.
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