POSTY POSTY

Nickknackpaddywhack

We all got a nickname at the Brighton P.O. Well if you managed to stay in the job long enough. When I first started there were machines as well as humans at the North Road depot. There were a lot of temporary staff and shift workers and a hardcore of senior early morning union lads and dads who had their shifts sorted. Some of these guys were grandfathered in.

When the machines moved to a central hub near Gatwick Airport, Brighton’s staff shrank by more than 70 per cent and we started to recognise each other in the mornings. I was moved from machine operator to van driver. This meant less noise and more voices - southern voices at that. Wolfy seemed to be one who was listened to when it came to giving out nick names. There had to be something recogniseable about you, something off the telly or something in The Sun. I read The Guardian but not in front of them in the canteen. That would have been the end of me.

Wolfy was called Wolfy because someone thought he looked like Wolf off Gladiators. Wolf had mad eyebrows and a hard stare. I could see it a bit if I squinted.

Anyway, Wolfy, or Glenn to give him his proper name, was listened to because he was a geezer. He was a lad. He knew all the pubs and was Brighton rock through and through. He was probably good at football when he was at school. Brighton is a small town really - if you forget about the students and the tourists and all those who work in and around that. For those of us who lived and worked there all year long it felt small.

So the names that were dished out by Wolfy, and taken on by others, and then even management, were a shorthand to getting the job done.

Boiled Egg Head was a nice fella, he tolerated it. He had a life outside and used to save up to go scuba diving.

All The Mirrors, I understood this name when I heard it, (he had a big head and short legs) but it was too much to shout out across the sorting room, or the loading dock. They changed it to Dougie.

Then there was Dulux, because he always had two coats on.

Hirsute, chubby Pete was called Teen Wolf’s Dad.

Adam was called Henman, for the tennis player, not chicks.

I already told you about Blue and his porn distribution.

It was a very white male environment. Ranganai Chamoko, a Londoner, was called Pete, because no one could be bothered to pronounce his name.

Mary was called Scottish Mary, even though she was the only Mary there.

No one knew what to make of my accent, which is a cross between Coronation Street and Emmerdale, but my name had me tagged. A lot of older Royal Mail workers were ex-service, and in the army if your name was Murphy, you were Spud, like if your name was Milligan you were Spike.

I didn’t mind it so much as my dad had prepared me for the mindless racism of my own dear race. He was the first to make jokes about Paddy and Mick, he named our budgie Spud. Besides there were a lot of younger workers that had come to Brighton now, students that stayed on as the music scene boomed. It was the days of Fatboy Slim and another Mod/Ska revival. I just became Murph and that’s who I was before anyway. There were a few other attempts at guessing who I looked like but nothing stuck. Our lives were liquid.