Gunstones’ Smoke Shelter

In relation to the posts I wrote about working at Gunstones Bakery, the smoke shelter attached to the factory was a place to let the smoke blow out of the anus if anyone was having a shitty night or to swap funny stories.

The smoke shelter was built like a cage to keep the tigers from running back into the free world and there were always the same faces dotted around the cage, the smoke was often dense and the humour raw and imaginative. Some extremely intelligent individuals worked there and I guess if Brexit had been negotiated by everyone in that smoke shelter (Multiple nationalities) then there would have been no deal, but nobody would have cared or held a grudge, we’d have just smoked the shit out of it. Joe, Matt and Jimmy were mainstays, especially Jimmy, who spent most of his time smoking when he should have been working! Joe was there more often than not with his aunt Karen. Matt always assumed the same position, leaning on a waist high steel barrier, ploughing his way through 2 or 3 cigarettes, chipping in with funny quips before returning to the factory floor.

The banter was always lively and no holds barred, each foreign individual firing out a one-liner in their own pigeon English, which gave it even more of a comedic edge. Marian, a large jovial Romanian man mountain, would chip into the banter by referring to people as superheroes. He was the Hulk, then there was Batman and Spider-Man. He often referred to me as Batman or Freddie Mercury simply because I wore a moustache. Marian once or twice smuggled in a small bottle of Romanian liquor (Against company policy) he called Palinka, which he described in a funny way. He discovered myself and Joe liked Whiskey and he told us that Whiskey was for children, holding his hand to his waist, and that Palinka was for men, holding his hand above his head. We had a quick gulp on a couple of occasions and it went down the gullet like molten lava, casually stripped away the stomach lining and rushing to the head like a hungry T-Rex, feasting on our senses! A Bloody good alternative to dynamite!

We had some great laughs down there talking utter bollocks that somehow made sense to everyone there. I remember me, Joe and Karen sharing a joke about something or other and I had an itch on the back of my neck. For some reason I scratched it with the fingers that held my cigarette and burnt my neck, dropping the fag into the puddle of rain I was standing in. We laughed because I had been stupid enough to use the burning fag hand and not my free hand.

Me and Matt would torment Jimmy, joking about Jimmy’s taut little bottom and openly discussing what we would do to him sexually whilst we kept straight faces! Jimmy would always rear up and defend his Virginial bottom which just threw petrol onto the fire!

In the most genial way we took the piss and had the urine extracted which enabled all of us to bond naturally.

Great times, thanks for the memories Mr Smoke Shelter.