20 October 2021

Lentran

 

1st August, 1974. Lentran near Inverness

What a horrible job I have let myself in for. This morning I earned just £1.20 working from 8.30 to 2.30. As I told the man at the employment exchange - "It is slave labour". And Jesus - I was not slacking as I picked 'em.

I have begun reading "The Grapes of Wrath"by John Steinbeck. It is very readable - the slow slow life of Oklahoma in mid-century with its prejudices and its changing agricultural methods and its dust storms is well captured. It is an American novel through and through though it is interesting to discover that Steinbeck's mother was Irish.

Inverness with 46 days of the holiday left. I've covered around 1,500 miles since this holiday began in May. What is to become of me? The pain of just living - not a sharp, thrusting,ripping, bloody, cataclysmic pain but a dull, drawn, out, quiet pain. Last night I looked into the milky face of a girl from a village near York - a beautiful, delicate, mystic, milky face which smiled back on a long, slender neck which in turn swept down to the curving breasts of her ripened womanhood. The agony lay between my wanting and her denial.

(p111) "You go steal that tire an you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business."

(p117) "You ain't askin' nothing, you're jus' singin' a kinda song. "What we comin' to?" You don't wanna know."

Public schoolboys aged eighteen earning £1 a day by  picking raspberries, complain about the poor wages and then buy a string of gin and tonics at 33 pence a piece. Public schoolboys talking politics, talking about justice when their own fathers thrive and prosper on profits made at other people's expense. They talk of flogging juvenile delinquents when that's what they are.

August 5th 1974, Lentran

Well Steinbeck's book is now read. As "The Guardian" saId - "The ultimate impression is that of the dignity of the human spirit under the stress of the most desperate conditions".

Perhaps that was the impression that Steinbeck wanted to convey above all others. At the end of the novel when Rose of Sharon suckles the starving man in the black barn, she smiles "mysteriously". That mysterious smile tells us a number of things. It tells us that despite everything the Joads and all families like them will get by, and despite all the many injustices they have suffered things will right themselves in the future. It is a smile that is smiled when the Joads have fallen to their lowest ebb. Their caravan and car are flooded and they are cold and hungry - things can only get better. 

It is a smile which certifies the truth behind Casy's comments earlier in the story: "Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way. Always goin' and  goin'". From that black barn we can be sure that the Joads will move on.

August 7th 1974, Lentran

Yesterday, I decided to walk around the municipal campsite in Inverness just in case Simon* and his pals were there. There was just a faint chance that they might be. I knew they were in Scotland  but had no real idea that they would have come to Inverness. The walk to the campsite was mainly to pass time but there they were putting up their tents! Half an hour later and I'd have missed them..

Last night we had a few beers and then some better stuff that Alan had grown on their farm. We scoffed raspberries back here at the raspberry farm and Simon became paranoiac about getting into trouble and wouldn't shut up. 

I slept like a log in my tent alongside this French guy who decided to move in. I don't even know his name. It's a bit of a crap really - the moving in I mean - not him. He arrived without a tent of his own and I took pity.

I'll probably still be at Lentran next Monday. "Time  passes slowly up here in the mountains. We walk beside bridges and talk beside fountains...." - Bob Dylan.

*Simon - my younger brother

30 comments:

  1. I couldn't have done that job. Raspberries look the same colour as the leaves to me.

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    Replies
    1. Globally, 1 in 12 males are colour blind.

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    2. So you can admire a lady with green eyes Tasker, but not her rosy red raspberry cheeks?
      Jings, ye can buy tinted glasses for that problem at Woolworth.
      Hamel(d).

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    3. Err...It's 2021. Woolworths died in Britain in 2009.

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  2. Never picked raspberries, but I was an expert blueberry picker. I hated picking strawberries--too many slugs in the plants and crouching over was uncomfortable. When I did my tour of Scotland, Inverness was one of my favorite places. I had many.

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    Replies
    1. I wonder if you visited the nearby battlefield at Culloden?

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  3. I read the Grapes of Wrath in the early sixties. I liked it. Maybe I'll have to read it again.

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    Replies
    1. I think it is a great book and easy to read too. Steinbeck had a special way with words.

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  4. You were an introspective young man. I was an unpleasant young woman who had no idea how to ask for what she wanted and I spent most of my time trying to please others. I still struggle with these two things to this day, although I am much better at asking for what I want these days but old habits die hard.

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    Replies
    1. I think there's a sense that our core being - who we are - never really changes.

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  5. Thank you for sharing more of your younger self with us, Neil.

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  6. PS: As for being well behaved and studious as a little girl - sorry to destroy your image of me, but I was anything but!
    I loved reading and learning, but only as far as I found it easy, and I got easily bored. When I was bored, I started chatting to my neighbour, distracting her and other kids. In her desperation, our teacher at elementary school often gave me books to read so that I was occupied and left the other kids alone to and they could pay attention in class.

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  7. August 1974. I had just left school (earlier than planned unfortunately) and had started my first "proper" job, working for Her Majesty's Customs and Excise at Heathrow Airport. So very boring. Raspberry picking it wasn't.

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    Replies
    1. I bet you were paid rather more than I was.

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  8. Anonymous8:46 am

    Interesting. Australia has struggled with fruit picking this year without much foreign labour, with Australians not willing to work with poor conditions, poor pay and back breaking work. The job is better than it was, but it is still a hard way to make a crust.

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    Replies
    1. Maybe university students should be conscripted.

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  9. We have an operation like that in our area. Strawberries. Kids get 'flats', with 8 quart containers. They pick them full. The person in charge of the fields collected the flats, and complained that the berry baskets were not full. She always took one of the baskets and poured it across the others and then told the kids that they had picked seven quarts of berries and not eight. Then, before they set the baskets out to sell, they scraped the berries from the top of the over full baskets and replaced them in an eighth quart contain. The rich owner got eight quarts of berries and only paid to have seven of them picked. I hate predatory businesses and refuse to do business with them.

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    Replies
    1. That is so goddam mean! (Please excuse the use of the adjective "goddam" as I couldn't think of a goddam better adjective)

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  10. This was such an interesting read, Neil. You were lucky to have so many adventures and new experiences when you were young.

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  11. What a great experience! And would you have remembered any of this without your journal to prompt you?

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  12. The Grapes of Wrath is a "classic" that I missed out reading. We didn't cover it in high school and then I gave up on reading fiction and thus missed it. Maybe someday if I ever go back to reading fiction, I'll correct it.

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  13. YOU NEVER READ THE GRAPES OF WRATH????

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I did! I just told you in the blogpost. Doh!... Oh, you mean Mr Ed?

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  14. My late mother-in-law was stationed at Lentran House during the war when she was in the WAAF, we visited it when we took her up north a few years before she died. She still had some mementoes of her time there.

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    Replies
    1. My mother was also in the WAAF. After training she was sent to India. Quite possibly their paths crossed in 1940.

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