CHAPTER ONE
It was late that morning when I moved out of our particular small corner of bearable noise into the body of the factory. The previous evening I had asked my wife to pack me extra sandwiches. This she had done, and had cut the bread and cheese with great generosity — Swiss cheese, which she knows I am very fond of, and bacon fried crisp and allowed to go cold. These I now carried in a knapsack over my shoulder, and in my right-hand pocket was an unopened tin of my usual pipe-tobacco.
I strode forward with what was, I fancy now, a rather exaggerated determination, for I was secretly a little apprehensive. George and Frank, whom I left behind in the slotting section to look after matters while I was away, were completely baffled by my escapade and said so; but I knew that they were very capable men with nearly a century of service to the firm between them, and that they were completely trustworthy. No, I had no anxieties about what I was leaving behind me; it was what lay ahead - all nonsense really, after all, I had worked here in this section of the factory for sixteen years; and yet in all that time I had not been very far from my machine in any direction. There was never any need to, you see; besides, we were busy and I had never had the time. Some of the men, I know, found important looking pieces of paper from time to time in the waste bins and would go walking off carrying them, to show anyone who might stop them. They often came back with strange stories of what they had seen in various parts of the factory, and one or two never came back at all. But, for myself, I believed none of the stories and regarded these men as irresponsible loiterers, capable of any amount of lying. But all those years I had had a secret yearning to know this one particular fact, a yearning which had recently grown so much in intensity that I could neither sleep, nor work, nor eat, nor play with my children: so that I had become no better than a burden to my family and friends and feared that I must fast be becoming a liability to my employers. The question had to be answered; and then the pressure of work eased off, so that I had resolved to set out to find that answer.
I strode between the rows of huge machines. Row upon row came towards me like the waves of the sea which seem to come from the horizon. Soon our own small section of four machines was far behind me, and the noise had risen to a pitch which I found quite painful. I had expected this. I think there can be no noise on earth like the noise of a factory. It is similar to the noise of a talking crowd, in that although one can hear every single syllable uttered one cannot distinguish any separate word. I know the noise of a lathe very well, indeed, I can distinguish a Parkson from a Colchester with no difficulty; I can recognise the sound of a vertical borer and can distinguish it from a horizontal borer; likewise with centred and centreless grinders, shapers and planers, single and multiple-spindled drilling machines, and so on. It is, I should think, rather like bird-spotting. The metal being cut in all these different ways makes sounds very like birds. On the shaper it caws like a persistent crow; pins and small punches being ground sound exactly like quarrelling sparrows, but more regular. Most machines squawk and screech and scream like the parrot house at the Zoo, but all the parrots all make quite different noises too, I imagine. But now that I was surrounded on all sides and overwhelmed by these machines and many others which I knew, I could hear none of them. There was only a ceaseless roar, which seemed to impinge on the mind not only by way of the ears, but through the nose and mouth and scalp also. I felt contained in some kind of jelly of sound, difficult to walk through and difficult to see through. But I was quite familiar with all this, and had come prepared. I stopped, opened my knapsack and drew out a quantity of cotton wool. This I pushed carefully into each ear. Relief was instantaneous and I strode on, much comforted.
I was also prepared for the next source of discomfort, which was a matter of eyes rather than ears. As I looked around me I saw eyes, many eyes, which stared at me as I passed. They peered from between machines and from the depths of cupboards, from wastebins and from heaps of engine components. They stared through the sooty glass hatches of minute green tin offices, they popped up suddenly over vertical borers, and followed my movement from beneath the beds of great presses. They ranged in rows along the edges of greasy benches. Several pairs suddenly appeared in the darkness beneath a grating under my feet, so that for a moment I was afraid that I might step on them. This phenomenon, peculiar to factories and often remarked upon with concern by visitors to these places, was, I knew, attributable to nothing supernatural or more sinister than the lack of sufficient diversion in factory life; so that any new face or unusual occurrence draws the attention of every worker within sight of it. The fact that it is bad manners to stare is very well known to all these people, who would beat their children and divorce their wives for doing it, just like you and me; but inside a factory one cannot afford to miss anything which might be interesting or significant, and so I told myself that this was in fact a kind of compliment to me: I was considered interesting and possibly significant, and being so seldom considered to be either by anyone who knew me, I resolved to smile courteously at all these people who did not. In a very short time, however, I learned something of the difficulties which members of the royal family must face when appearing in public. Rejecting the idea of a fixed smile, I resolved to look ahead of me, so that I should offend none by preference.
I came to a place where a gangway crossed my own, and, striding across it with my eyes and ears thus preoccupied, I was knocked down by a small runabout truck. The driver stopped the truck, jumped down and sprinted over towards me with great excitement. I was about to apologise, to thank him for his concern and to reassure him that I was unhurt, when he ran past me and began to pick up my sandwiches, which had sprayed out of my knapsack on to the grimy floor. As fast as he could pick them up he stuffed them into his mouth, and in a few seconds my lunch was gone. He then came over to me, gesticulating like a windmill and moving his lips at me. I groped in my ears with the fingers of both hands, but my earplugs seemed to have retreated into my ears. I groped harder. He came and put his face very close to mine, chewing and champing with his jaw and speaking with his lips so that small pieces of cheese and bread jumped out at me from his mouth. From time to time a tiny slice of onion (which my wife must have slipped in as a surprise for me) came into my view as the food rotated in his mouth in the manner of a cement-mixer. I dug for the earplugs, for I was sure that he was saying something important. But then he punched me on the nose, and in a flash of light I realised that he must think that I was pushing my fingers in my ears in order not to hear him. Before I could explain he had remounted his truck and driven off, leaving behind him a cloud of blue smoke.
I was determined to have the earplugs out before doing anything else. I ignored the forest of eyes, and, getting down on hands and knees, searched about under a nearby bench for a piece of wire. There were five eyes under there. Why five I did not know and did not bother to ask, but groped about for wire. I disturbed a large black beetle which scuttled off, with a gait which was remarkably expressive of indignation for an insect, into an old tin from which it made a scrabbling noise at me. There were some cigarette ends and one or two old pieces of toenail there, and then I touched a piece of wire. It was rusty and very twisted, but it was good wire.
I rose and stood in the centre of the corridor where the light was a little better, and spent some time straightening the wire. Then I bent its end round to form a tiny hook, and began to feel around in my left ear. Just then a man in grey overalls came running with extraordinary speed down the corridor and pushed past me roughly without pausing and ran on. I repositioned the wire and tried again. Just as I felt the hook lodge itself in the cotton wool five more men came speeding down the corridor, one of them turning somersaults in his flight. They seemed not to see me and sent me staggering. I was determined not to loose my hold on the cotton wool, but with my arm raised in this position I was spun round like a top by a dozen or so more men who then appeared, some running and some leaping like hares. Hardly had these passed when I was overwhelmed by a great horde of charging men. As I was tossed about among them, gripping my earwire with determination, I saw that some were tumbling and somersaulting, some rolling like footballs along the ground, others running swiftly on their hands. Some bounced along on their stomachs, some cartwheeled and others flew through the air feet first or upside down, flapping their arms like birds and cannoning off their companions like pingpong balls. I was tossed about, sometimes on my head and sometimes on my feet, often colliding with men, whose lips moved briefly in a curse at each impact; but I clung on to my earwire throughout and when at last they had all passed, and I sat on the floor dazed, it was with the certain knowledge that I was in a position to withdraw my leftearplug.
But I hesitated. On either side of me now were machines which were strange to me. Some had great clusters of trombone-like objects all over them, others had enormous wheels sticking out which were all covered in what looked like hundreds of burglar alarms. One machine which towered above me was crowned by a great circle of monstrous sledge-hammers on long arms, all ranged about, so it seemed to me, so that the hammers would swing inwards to strike what looked like a vast upturned church-bell in the centre. What dreadful noises would such machines be making, I thought. I had heard of factories where it was necessary to wear earplugs all the time, and where not to do so would result in some kind of permanent aural injury. Perhaps this was such a place. But my nose had begun to smart, and I thought it better to try to establish contact with my fellow men, so I withdrew the left earplug slowly and tentatively and was amazed to hear no sound at all, save the occasional booming of the corrugated iron roof far above my head. I looked up and saw it rising and falling with the wind outside, but it was so dark up there and the roof so far away that I couldn't decide if this was in any way unusual or dangerous. Every machine was at rest. Then I noticed that the eyes had gone, every pair of them. I was alone. Now this was strange and rather frightening, and all sorts of alarming ideas rattled through my mind. Perhaps there was about to be an earthquake, or a nuclear war, and everyone had gone home to die in the arms of their wives. Perhaps there was a hurricane sweeping through the factory, or a fire. I listened again, but there was only the muffled booming of the roof. I fancied I could hear someone whistling in the distance, but wasn't sure. The most sensible thing would be to follow on in the direction the others had gone, I told myself. I began to walk.
From Wikipedia
Peter Currell Brown is the author of the cult classic 1965 surrealist novel, Smallcreep's Day.
He was born in Colchester, Essex, and went to Colchester Royal Grammar School, which he left at fifteen. His first job working in a factory was the stimulus for Smallcreep's Day. He married in 1962, and his first child was born later that year. The following year he moved to a small cottage in rural Gloucestershire, where he raised his 4 children. He worked at various jobs locally, including Dursley's main factory, Lister's and Peter Scott’s Wildfowl Trust in Slimbridge. In 1966 he set up a craft pottery he called The Snake Pottery. He later gave up employed work to concentrate on the pottery. In 1987 he separated from his wife and moved out of the cottage.
In 1980 Mike Rutherford released an album named after and inspired by Smallcreep's Day.
Smallcreep's Day was republished in September 2008 by Pinter & Martin.
