The Final Countdown

Devoted fans of ITV4’s daytime offerings such as The Professionals and The Sweeney might be of the generation who, like me, grew up in front of a tiny television stuck in the corner of the front room.  Every Thursday night, I abandoned food, drink and homework for the thrilling theme music of Thunderbirds and adding to the drama, we were treated to snippets of puppet action, the hypnotic eyes of The Hood and the voice of Jeff Tracy dramatically counting down from “Five!”  A bit like my last week in the Retail Cathedral … Shift No5 found me looking like Lady Penelope and smelling like Parker, locked in the boiling stockroom for three hours counting shower gels conscious of the looming presence of our annual stock-take.  I counted boxes of individual products with miniscule numbers etched on their wee bottoms until my eyes felt like raw meatballs.

I was having so much fun I nearly missed my bus and certainly wasn’t going to run in heels.  Not clutching an enormous bouquet of South African exotic blooms, a large Gregg’s bloomer, my uniform and a handbag big enough to unbalance the Woolwich Ferry.  In the precious quiet of the back seat, I was listening to Edna O’Brien talking about her autobiography, The Country Girl, and something she said really stuck a chord with my inner blogger “You have to learn to love the things you write about.”  So …after a year of writing from my Raven’s perspective and with only four more shifts to complete I’m finally learning to love the job that’s almost driven round the bend.

No need to engage ‘panic mode’ – I’ve not changed my mind or written a begging letter to the management.  We certainly won’t be waving a tearful farewell to each other as I escape into the fresh air.  Oddly, I’m beginning to miss the management and the dying orchid plants already.  However, I won’t miss the monstrous kids …

On Friday I’d been to see The [new] Sweeney with Grimy and loved it.  Don’t tell anyone but I felt liberated by it’s swearing, heavy drinking, fast driving, gratuitous violence and odd sex scenes that were a feature of the classic John Thaw/Dennis Waterman dynamic in the seventies.  And what a fabulous antidote it is to the frustrations of modern life where we spend so much time repressing our real feelings, resulting in chronic face ache.  And when a Somalian youth started dragging a makeup chair across the newly tiled floor, I abandoned my customer-facing face on Saturday and spoke as Jack Regan would, thus.

“Oi! You! Stop that.”

It startled the hell out of everyone nearby and won’t get me 100% score on a ‘mystery shop’ but in a sneaky kind of way, I loved the passion expressed in that one moment when ‘authentic Raven’ came roaring up to the surface.  Thankfully … freedom is a few short days away.

Tip of the Blog:  I hesitate to mention The Sweeney as I’m still having flashbacks of Ray Winstone lying on a settee in his underpants.  I may need therapy sometime in the future– in the meantime, bring on The Sweeney II.

Raven