Mini Auschwitz - The apple experience

So it was from a smelly sticky phone booth, decorated with lovely pictures of naked women saying 'call me for a good time', well, they really said 'porta estuida saleh blah blah blah', but I guess that's about right. Anyway, so phone booth in Faro, Portugal, when we got the deal-clencher re the apple farm. Pure delight seeped into our sunburnt faces as we jumped up and down and up again at the prospect of a job. We knew our money situation was tighter than - well tight, and so our only option on our return was to find a live-in job - easier said than done. As this generally narrows it down to bar work and prostitution, we were in trouble. The bar work we'd done in our highschool/early university days was not enough for the bar managers and there were thousands of people fighting over these jobs like the last sausage. And then prostitution, well the hours didn't suit me. :)
So to have a snooty, silver-spoon-up-orriface man finally give the go ahead to our job on the apple farm, with pay and accomodation the instant we returned, we were thrilled. And the lengthy struggle to get in there must lend it some credibility...
So we were collected from the airport by the wonderful Lesley, and returned to their home for a night. We were going to visit friends Kylie met on her Contikki trip before departing on the monday for the farm in Kent. This was quite fun - rather hilarious actually... We went to a German pub in the evening for a very good reason - jelly wrestling. Two girls would face eachother in the pit wearing whatever they didn't mind getting drenched (some seemed to mind a whole lot...) and would wrestle in two rounds of this really advanced sport, to be voted by the crowd as to who the winner was. This often included flashing certain bits to up there chances, as winners claimed a £50 bar tab. Rumour has it Kylie partook in this peculiar sport but that's all I'm going to say.
Anyway, so on the monday we hopped on a train and tottled out to the countryside and slumped out with our luggage at a one-street town, it was bitterly cold, and I was growing rather concerned as this was the beginning of May and supposed to be the end of Spring... This must be the villiage the farm borders. No, from here one gets a taxi to the village the farm borders, and then taxis into the farm. So quite far out, we weren't too fussed - we'd become pretty thick-skinned after our travels so we could handle whatever was thrown our way.
We climbed out the taxi choking on the charge and found ourselves infront of a very grey building with a little doorbell that didn't work. Thumping on the door, the weasily little bespectacled secretary who had put me on hold while she ate her breakfast, combed her hair etc numerous times peered at us through the glass door before opening it. 'Hi, I'm here to see James Simpson.' 'Mr Simpson?' 'Well ok then, if James is out' Sigh, that one went over her head. Apparently we were to wait outside in the chill for a big guy called 'Steven', who would show us around. He lumbered over and introduced himself as he lead us to our accommodation so that we could leave our bags. Leaning his full weight against the handle, our caravan, yes c-a-r-a-v-a-n shuddered as the narrow door creaked open. I think all doors in caravans are really narrow because if they were any wider, the cardboard they make them out of would crumple at the lack of support.
So we peered into the musty 'lounge', using the term most loosely you understand, and down the 'passage' which doubled up as a kitchen, toward the master bedroom, hehehe, and to the far 'wall', all about 5 metres. So we optimistically threw in our bags and tried not to think of the weird fact that our caravan was a tad lonely - where did all the other fun, lively students stay? Next it was to the ablutions, hoho, teehehe, that were an 800m walk - to one toilet and one shower thingy, that was shared by all the other people who lived on the farm. Note - bring own toilet paper. He showed us the pack house where we were to meet him the following morning and said good bye. We had already discovered that it would be apple 'packing', before apple 'picking' at the end of the summer. Leaving us in the middle of the day rather baffled. So we ambled back to our shell and searched the cupboards for anything resembling a cup, a spoon or a plate. Nothing. No radio, no TV. So we sat and looked at eachother for some time, looked a little more and were saved by the arrival of a car later in the afternoon.
A very afrikaans man hopped out, 'Stefan', and asked if our caravan was ok and in order? I'm not quite sure what this would mean - in my opinion it would never really be 'in order' but at least he resurrected the bar fridge lying down in the lounge and got it working. He said he'd be back later with a few plates and things and could drop us off at the shops on his way to gym and was off. He returned an hour later with some odd remains of cutlery and crockery, two toasters and things we weren't sure what to do with, but we smiled and thanked him and hopped in the car to go buy silly little things from the shops like a pillow and some budget food.
Now although we were both too proud to admit it at such an early stage, our first day did not leave a happy impression, but we'd have work the next day and would be ok once we met some people. So bored as anything, we climbed into bed and froze as we slept in our cardboard box. Neither of us slept from the cold so work was a bit of a dreary thought, but we got ourselves together and went to the pack house. We did find a heater the following night but were too afraid to leave it on during the night for fear of us catching alight.
At the pack house we met the other people on the farm - Iliana, Katalana, Diana, Milana, etc-ana - we only know the names from the role call, no none of them could speak any English - honestly I tried. A bus came in every morning from town to drop the Latvians off. The mojority of them were over 40 and had a permanent snarl and peculiar smelling hair. We were assigned pack lines and told our job - apples come on conveyor belt, sort bad from good, toss the bad and put good in packets - 8 in each. And that was it. It did not deviate in the slightest. That was it. We were stationed at our own lines and the apples never stopped coming. Unless you were in fast forward mode, you were up to your eyeballs in apples. I tried throwing them back up the ramp, eating them, hiding them, packing more in a bag but they still kept coming - like Micky mouse and the brooms. Anyway, by the end of the first day, our wrists and backs ached and we were rather miserable. The problem was, as we had no money at all as we spent it getting there and buying food for the week, we had nothing to do, nowhere to go and no choice but to stay there. Gone were our little romantic images of a chubby happy farmer's wife calling us 'mischief-makers' in for some fresh apple pie and cream. This was mini Auschwitz, the apple farm in hell. For breakfast and lunch we had marmite toast, and for dinner it was scrambled egg on toast, if we were lucky.
We spent most of the day in solitude, working amongst people who we could not speak to, getting home with nothing really to talk about - we'd exhausted all that in our backpacking, so we just kind of existed. After a few days, although we knew exactly what to do, it never got easier on our bodies or our minds - I found myself doing my tables, spelling big words and going insane whilst throwing apples in a bag. This must be when I put an extra apple in one of the million bags I packed that just happened to get checked, and I got repremanded by the manager. I had visions of the extra one in his mouth as he rotated on a little spit. I was really going mad, and glum as glum could be. We tried not to drink much in the evening as we would have to cross the deserted dark farm to get to the toilet. Though sometimes we would squat on the edge of the pear orchard. So don't buy Tesco pears - haha, we'd get them back :)
But after one week, we had had enough, we just couldn't take it anymore, and topless waitressing shined in the sunshine. Not really, I'm just being dramatic. But it was tough - I take my hat off to those ladies who work damn hard! So we were 'rescued' by our lively knight, Ryan from Pamplona, in a red Punto and were whisked away to Leyton Buzzard, to spend the weekend in a little country home that was beautiful. It was a lovely weekend to shake off the apple farm slump, but we were still in a rather pathetic situation but much more enthusiastic about it...