Nosy Josie mosey in Hot town, summery in the city - 2017

11. How old were you when you got your first job? What was it? Did you like it?

Aahhhh, in days of old, days gone by. In the wee small hours at the beginning of the world…

I grew up in a ruraly industrial area and a friend of mine’s boyfriend’s dad had a farm. November was potato pickin’ time. And we all pitched in as casual staff for three weeks.

Essentially, two tractors went up and down the field next to one another. One was loosening the Earth and churning the taties out of the ground, the other tractor was towing a covered ‘hut’ with a conveyer belt in it. There were four of us, all friends, wearing loads of layers, with woolly gloves and rubber gloves on top in the ‘hut’. My friend’s boyfriend was driving the tractor that was chucking the tatos down a chute and onto the conveyer belt which trundled the rotund veg in front of us. We, then, had to rapidly sort them out. Good/bad/big/small etc. The bigger the potato, the more likely it is to be rotten in the middle!

Anyway, we did this for three weeks. I was 20 years old, with a bunch of mates and we sang and laughed for the entire time. It was bloody freezing so dancing kept us going, singing songs about sunshine (even if they weren’t actually about sunshine we changed the lyrics). It was brilliant but I wouldn’t do it again!

Ah, reminiscence of days before fungus!!!