The Graveyard Shift
Back when I was around 14 or 15, the mode du jour was to spend one's pocket money on cheap cider and evo-stick, and one's dinner money on Benson & Hedges.

Unfortunately, pocket money was not a big thing in our house, and my social life was restricted. Too lazy to get a proper job like a paper round, I stumbled onto an absolute gold mine just when I needed it most.

The local vicar was married to a girl who happened to be a distant relative of my mother's. The vicar was a decidedly dodgy fucker with a business empire that involved creaming a profit off of the Xmas Hamper fund, a scheme that my father was an unwitting stooge in. However, my father came home and said that this guy needed a grave digger. How hard could that be?

So I was employed for the first time ever. Now... the graveyard was pretty much full, and I was not tasked with excavating full size final resting places, no, that would have been too much for the idle-me. It was only allowing ashes caskets to be buried (why anyone wants to bury ashes is beyond me - but this was quite fashionable).

Some of the caskets were like mini coffins - not coffin shaped, but ornate pieces blinged up with brass on fine well carved wood. I would usually have to dig a hole 3 foot by 3 foot by 3 foot, keep the soil tidy. I would have to dig it the day before, then fill it in on or just after the day of the funeral. And for this I would get 10 British Pounds.

Shifting a cubic metre of soil is not easy, and I would often sub-contract out half the work to my mate for 3 pound (a pint of beer was around .50 pound at the time).

It turns out that the vicar was charging families 30 pound for a council grave digger for 2 days work (dig and fill) and he was pocketing 20 quid.

On my last ever grave, I was hiding behind a wall with my shovel, puffing on a Benson, and watching the graveside ceremony take place. When it was over, I waited 20 minutes as instructed and then went to fill it in.

As I was whistling, scooping and treading down the soil on the recently departed, I felt I was being watched. I turned round to see the family watching me through the church railings. I never got any work after that.
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Sun 10 Jul 2011, 6:53, Reply)