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PART TWO

THE LOW POINT

I believed at the age of forty two, a grown man in UK society would be beyond being so humiliated he could cry. I didn’t actually cry – I really didn’t. Neither did I walk out and ask for my money back. I couldn’t. I couldn’t because that would mean I would have to face the fact I been stupid enough to give thousands of pounds of someone else’s money away for nothing.

The is the most painful part of the ‘becoming an electrician’ story. This part is about the week long ‘practical’; in Clerkenwell in London.

Now, I’ve had some low points. We all have. Becoming a teacher. Countless professional rejections; mundane jobs that stretch days into weeks, all the while knowing contemporaries are that precise moment are filming TV or getting writing commissions. Leaving London.

Everyone has lows. However, I have always remained firmly committed to the idea that eventually, one will get through; get to a point one can look back and say – it was tough but we made it. We got there in the end.

I’m still waiting.

I often remember a second hand quote from Nabokov when someone congratulated him on becoming a success. His reply (roughly): ‘yes, but it should have happened twenty years ago.’

So. The week long practical training course to become a qualified electrician.

I had been forewarned. The ‘course’ requested I attend a voluntary weekend pre-practical. I had gone a few months before and although scary, these two days had been possible. It was designed to help those poor souls who had limited practical experience. Or so I believe. I cannot remember anything I experienced but I can definitely state that whatever it was comprises the sum of everything I presently know about being an electrician.

The old 'twin and earth' cable. Lots of this in electricianery

THE WORKSHOP AND THE OVERALLS

Alarm bells began to ring when I turned up. The building was more like a Clerkenwell literary agent’s arty Georgian house.

As ever, I presumed from the off I would not be able to find the front door or any reasonable method of entry, which would involve the beginning of a familiar humiliation involving phone calls to bewildered and hostile call centres imploring me to ‘press buttons’ and so on which I would be unable to fathom until some flustered, angry receptionist would eventually open it for me. At which point I would understand how simple the whole process of getting into the building would have been with an ounce of thought.

But none of that happened.

I went in and immediately the terrifying aura of practical men was palpable. The reception area was un-carpeted and scuffed. There were stained plastic chairs and a coffee machine I knew I would never dare attempt.

A coffee machine roughly like this but much more battered

Tough looking young men in hard hats and boots and leaned against walls. Nobody spoke. Many were rolling cigarettes. They looked like they worked on building sites already. Everyone was waiting, more or less patiently. A few were tough looking Eastern Europeans.

The unease I had experienced when I purchased an alarmingly tight brand new pair of overalls and shiny bright steel work boots on my first ever visit to a Wicks, was entirely justified and now blossoming into proper sick-inducing fear. I had only ever worn them once to try them and realised they were way too small. I didn’t take them back because I don’t take things back. I didn't want to face Wicks again.

The course notes said I had to wear overalls, so I bought overalls. I generally unfailingly do what a course asks me to. 

No one else had. Not one other person waiting here had bought new overalls. 

A South African boy of about twenty was talking to me. I couldn’t really hear. He was saying how he had just rewired his house in Hammersmith and wanted the paperwork from the course so he could sell it on. Apart from that, he repaired motorbikes. What did I do?

I couldn’t tell him I had written some Doctor Who books. I just couldn't. That was it. That was what I did. And what about these overalls?

These overalls from Wicks

I was going to spend a week in the company of young, aggressive practical males. Dressed as an old gay actor.

I could not wear the overalls. To wear the overalls would be suicide.

The waiting was terminated by a squat Cockney, apparently cursed with both narcolepsy (such was his indifference towards us) and Tourette’s. In between the swearing he invited us to follow him to the ‘workshops’. The group nonchalantly stood up and wandered down a drab corridor. Posters of smiling, multi-racial men in yellow helmets smiled at me from a line of posters. They didn’t look like anyone in this building.

The posters had photos very much like these

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

I walked through a corridor of heavy duty plumbing equipment into a room the like of which I had not seen since the few craft lessons at school I'd endured until being selected for  a Latin O level class got me out.

My fellow trainee electricians quickly set themselves up in their booths. They nodded knowingly at the tools, cable and hardware that lay in wait for us. 

At last I realised: the other men here were all actually already electricians. They already worked as a job at being electricians. They needed a certificate in the Seventeenth Edition of the Electrical Regulations to help them sign off work on site. This was the course. They already did this stuff every day. For a living.

An electrician tests something

I was carrying the overalls. I couldn’t put them on.

‘Put them on,’ said Tourette’s man, pointing at me. Already he knew; already he understood. And he didn’t like it. He knew I was going to be inconvenient.

I put the overalls on. The garment stuck to me as I struggled; both the sweat of fear and the wrong size conspiring against dressing. My arms and legs stuck out like oversized clown’s limbs. I looked like an old, gay actor.

Roughly what I looked like to the others

It was literally true that if I passed this course, I would be a qualified electrician. The salesman had not actually lied to me. However, they weren’t here to teach me anything.

Tourette’s man made it very clear in a little speech: get a few practical exercises out of the way and piss off early for a drink. Get everyone home early. 

This was not a week-long practical training course. This was a week-long practical exam.