Days of Cheese.

When I was young back in the winter of 92,

I worked at an employment agency for a lady named Sue,

She said to me “I have a job for you if you please,

It’s working in a factory packing cheese,”

The very next day I was putting labels on a bag,

Eight hours of that really was a drag,

Soon I’ll be vacuum packing they said,

Under the supervision of a man called Ted,

I figured this is not the career I seek,

So I lasted just the week,

But from then on there was a curious ache in my belly,

Was I destined to go back to that place so smelly?

Sue gave me a call, homing in on my greatest fears,

So I went back there and stayed for six long years,

The thing was after a while you got used to the smell,

And it did pay really rather well,

Looking back on it now factories are just not like this anymore,

Conditions and pay these days are really rather poor,

Anchor looked after me and gave quite a bit,

Even if the job itself was really rather shit,

For the most part I worked in preparation,

Scraping calcium off cheese was the operation,

They armed me with a scraper and a knife,

I saw more cheese in one day then you’ve seen in your life,

A ton of cheddar passed my eyes in less than ten minutes flat,

I scraped and scraped them all like a fucking twat,

The harder the calcium was once the maturity was set,

Still I scraped them all shift long in my wellies and hairnet,

You make up your own entertainment in a job that sucks,

Like sabotage, throwing cheese or racing fork-lift trucks,

There always was a laugh to be had every day,

That is what I would like to say,

That the people that worked there were really the salt of the earth,

Lots of fun, good personalities with ridicule and mirth,

Except for one that wouldn’t ever chill,

He was a twat; I think his name was Neil,

He came to me once angry, wearing a great big frown,

So I turned that hosepipe on him and hosed that fucker down,

Looking back you only see the good times and forget about the worse,

Reflecting closer though that place really had a curse,

They moved the goalposts so often it really was a joke,

Like moving to a 24 hour rotating shift or stopping breaks to smoke,

The new management removed all the perks,

The bunch of fucking jerks,

Finally they out sourced to a company more abundant,

They paid us off and made us all redundant,

I took the cash and went off to Barbados which was really kind of cool,

So as I lay there on my back in the swimming pool,

Looking up at the palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze,

I raised my glass of rum and said “thank you Anchor’s cheese!”