A Brush With The Army

[poliphilo]

Joe and I go to the Fulwood army barracks in Preston so he can collect his sick pay.

The army is a big, cumbersome bureaucracy- a bureaucracy plus organised violence.

Julie is our contact person. I guess she's in her upper 20s. She wears her blonde hair in a pony tail. I ask her if she's army. "No, I couldn't stand it. I'm too insubordinate," she says. "I'm a civilian. I can clock off at six and go get drunk."

I like Julie. She's not like the squaddies we run into. She makes eye contact and doesn't act like she expects someone to jump all over her at any second.

We were told to turn up before 10.00, but the Sergeant Major who doles out the sick pay isn't ready for us. He has to make a trip to the bank to collect funds.

Like I said- a bureacracy. "If I had to work in this system," I tell Joe, "I'd cut myself every bit of slack I could get away with."

I'm reminded of boarding school. It's partly the nineteenth century architecture and the way it's built around big squares. But it's also the atmosphere. Boredom, anxiety, bolshiness.

The Sergeant Major comes back from the bank. He speaks so soft and Scottish I can barely hear him. He too avoids eye contact. He opens a big brown envelope and deals out the twenties one by one.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oooh, the creepy atmosphere!

I like Julie, too. I am glad for Joe's sake that in that cold place there was a real person.

They pay in cash? Amazing!

Have you heard about the $2000 debit cards the U.S. is handing out to hurricane survivors?

Before the recipient can get the card, a waiver must be signed stating that the evacuee will not request further aid.

Isn't that nice? Here's a desperate person with nothing, and he's offered an instant $2000, but there is always the Devil's Hook, isn't there?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The moment Joe went AWOL (only he didn't actually go AWOL because he rang them to say where he was) they canceled his standing order- and wiped his bank details off their computer.

With luck these things will be reinstated, but I doubt if they'll be in any hurry.

And until they do he has to go up to Preston once a week to be paid in cash.

I hadn't heard about the debit cards. That thing with the the waivers is really Dickensian- by which I mean in the spirit of Mr Scrooge and Mr Gradgrind.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I thought those debit cards were too good to be true.

Those who are desperate will not care about the fine print.

Every once in awhile, I remember that Joe is out of the army, and I feel glad all over again.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He said it felt good to be around sergeants and sergeant majors and not to have to stand to attention.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Hooray for Joe!

:) He is delightful.

[seaslug-of-doom.livejournal.com]

I was in the Navy, myself, like any self respecting mollusc, and we clocked off at 6 and got drunk. In fact, we didn't wait to clock off.

Now, as you know, the US Navy doesn't usually allow alcohol in its fleet. But when we were in the Persian Gulf we couldn't often get ashore or even drink in most places so we brought along cases of beer which we would have on a barge alongside during those short periods when we were in port. We would put the beer on ice in 55 gallon drums and someone would hang a white bedsheet over the side of the ship onto which we would project movies. Steel Beach.

The beer was kept locked up while we were at sea but a guy I knew from Maine, name of Jim Givens I believe, snuck down into the hold and stole a case of beer. We snuck it into an electronics room behind the radar room, cutting out some insulation and tucking the case into a freezing cold air duct. After we got off duty each day we would go into the electronics room and have a can of beer. We called the place Jim's Bar and Radar.

Matter of fact, we got paid in cash, too, if we wanted.