When I was 18/19or so...
[Only just realised how long this is – ah well, I’ve just spent 10 minutes typing it so you’re ‘avin’ it ;)]

...one of my older cousins was harping on and on about how much money he was making picking cockles at a beach in our then-native Merseyside. And yes, it was the very beach where years later, those poor illegals got caught and drowned by the tide and spawned various hoo-haa's for a few months. For as long as people remembered enough to give a fuck, anyway.

My brother and I listened to this bragging on my cousin's part and eyed the, at that time, impressive amounts of dosh he had to throw about. After a brief brainstorm we offered our services as he had mentioned that the 'boss' (which, as we found later, translated to the Queen’s English as ‘double-dealing pikey cunt’) was always looking for extra help. Sadly, the phrase ‘high staff turnover’ and the warning bells it should ring weren’t installed in my brain at the time. So, we were waiting on a street corner with our cousin at 5am on a Saturday for the lad with the van to come get us. The van ride was good fun – skinned up, took the piss out of the idiots with windsurfers setting out for a day’s total failure to travel more than 5 yards in an upright position on the Merseyside coast etc. Then the time came to get to work.

I think, unless you’ve actually had to do it in industrial amounts as we did, that ‘picking cockles’ sounds quite light-hearted and jolly - theme tune to The Archers-type stuff, right? Imagine, then, spending the best part of six hours bent double with what was essentially a high-quality seaside-set rake dragging these little fuckers out from below the sand to fill enormous sacks, for which you were paid £7.50 each. Cockles spit at you if disturbed too, and its extra-salty – just try catching a few of those shots in the eye – the novelty wears thin quick. Bear in mind also that Merseyside's beaches aren't the cleanest in the world by a long chalk.

In short, it was fucking backbreaking and highly unpleasant besides.

At the end of the day (about 1pm), I had four sacks to call my own, collected and tagged by another pikey on a quadbike. When my catch was evaluated, the boss bitched illegibly for about five minutes about my now three-quarters full sacks. My protestations that I don’t do half or even three-quarters of a job that I’m being paid for, and that they were full when quad-boy took them from me fell upon deaf ears. I found out from my cousin later that he did this to a random selection of the new ones, skimming about a quarter of their catch off to bolster his own. I say ‘bolster’, but I mean ‘manufacture’ as I didn’t see the craggy bastard on the beach once the entire time, so I was already suspicious when he compared his own magical graft-free sacks to mine. In the end, I was offered £4 per sack. This pissed me off big-time after what I'd been through for the promise of nearly twice as much, so I grabbed the bottom corners of all four sacks and upended them onto his feet – ‘Now they’re worth 4 quid, you shady fucker’. I then retired to the relative warmth of the van to sulk and ache until such time came to go home. I didn’t even get to rest up in the van though because the boss needed to use it as well as his own small flatbed to take the haul to the fishmongers or wherever.

‘Yer still on one wi me lad?’ he asked as I jumped out of the van. ‘Yeah, well being bent over and fucked without even being asked does that to a lad round my way mate’. He laughed and seemed to take a shine to me after that. He came to me a little later saying that he couldn’t fit the quad onto his own ride along with the day’s haul and needed someone to keep an eye on it here at the beach until he dropped the cockles. For this, he would still pay me the 4 notes per sack despite the fact that I turned them into near-roadkill and another fiver for watching the quad. This placated me somewhat.

They were gone for more than 90 minutes, leaving me alone with a knackered-looking but well-maintained and still quite nippy quadbike and an expanse of beach to play with, so I did just that - good fun :)

I was sat there on it enjoying a slightly jury-rigged spliff after I’d finished playing when some middle-class arsehole, his wifey and two spawn came down onto the beach. Looking across at me on the quad he said to his wife but loud enough for me to hear ‘So that’s who was waking me up at seven this morning’, referring to quad-boy’s more industrious use of the ride rather than my own recent larking about. Still, I've always hated it when folk snipe in such a spineless manner - especially blokes who, in my opinion, really should have more balls. So, I started up the quad and rolled up alongside them (probably looking as grizzled as my employer-for-a-day after what I’d been doing all morning), and said ‘What, you mean like this?’, revved it until it screamed and peeled off, showering the four of them with the effluent-encrusted sand. I have to say, that satisfaction alone made the entire day worthwhile.

Eventually the party returned, and the boss asked me (after paying me) if I felt any better, so I told him ‘Yeah, just about’. He laughed again and said ‘See yer again then?’. My reply of ‘Not if my fucking life depends on it mate.’ caused his recent fondness to fade before my eyes and he shuffled off, muttering. True, he had tried to make amends and I'd shined him on but he shouldn't have tried to short-change me in the first place, the theiving prick. At the time I couldn’t give a toss anyway – I just wanted to get home and get in the bath – I ached and stank in equal measure, and the measure was quite a big one.

Cockling; take my advice folks – not a pleasant pastime in any conceivable way, and not worth the money they pay for it even when they don’t fuck you, free quad fun or no. Oh, and if your headman doesn't know or care the first thing about the tides, you could drown too. Better leave it, all things considered.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 12:40, Reply)