Saturday, March 11, 2006

Scenes from a life past.....5

When it was time for breakfast they all went together leaving me alone in the lab, Jane was nowhere to be seen. I was frantic, the phone was ringing, numerous tanker samples kept appearing and then some chap in blue overalls arrived with a crate full of cardboard and asked me to test his cartons for bleeders. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“You know the red dye, or didn’t they teach you that yet?” I admitted I didn’t know.

“OK I’ll do it for you then,” His eyes twinkled he took a large dark brown jar from the cupboard and tipped a small amount of the contents into each milk carton. He carefully shook each around then held them over the sink and squeezed hard. We then examined each carton along it’s seams to see if we could see the dye.

“Bleeders, look. If the carton leaks you can see the dye ‘bleed’ out,” I thanked this little kindly man who had said his name was Howard. “Well you have to learn somehow and this lot won’t help you much, miserable gits,” with that parting shot he left and returned to the dairy.

About ten minutes later there was a lull in the proceedings and I tried to quickly tidy up the mess I had all around me. I grabbed a lot of used samples and tipped them into the pig churn. It was only as I let the last carton drain I realised what I had done. The rest of the lab staff arrived back from their break in time to see me hastily shoving the pig churn out of the door and onto the steps where it would be collected later. The contents were a bright shade of raspberry pink.

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