Acme Time Travel Incorporated - Volume 1

Clacton-on-Sea Job Centre

It was Tuesday morning, and Reginald White, 50-ish, slightly paunchy and going bald, was sitting at his desk in the open-plan office that he shared with Smithy and Claire.

Their joint office space was on the first floor of the Clacton-on-Sea Job Centre building. It was an ugly 60s building of no redeeming features and had been built near the centre of the town; presumably as a joke by the town planners, to add a touch of functionality ... coupled with architectural bleakness.

On his desk, his tear-off ‘Famous Quotes Calendar’ told him that it was Tuesday 6th June 2017, and proffered him the advice

do not keep watering dead plants

He felt that this might have just summed up the bulk of his career, trying to match people who largely seemed to be un-employable against a scant trickle of dead-end or zero-hour ‘job opportunities’. His wife had always told him that he loved and cared for his job more than he loved her, and since she had left him on the 7th June 2015, he felt that she had probably been right. That day’s famous quote had been

If you don’t have good intentions, please just leave me alone. I’m tired.

Reg rifled through the client notes on his desk. He had always tried his best to get people a job of some kind. It mattered to him. He didn’t much enjoy most parts of his own job, but he always felt better for having one. He believed that the same would be true for most people (apart from one or two truly lazy bastards, who he had long since giving up on any hope of finding work). He had seen people who lives had been utterly bleak, and a bit of regular work had turned them around. It had given them some self-respect, and dug them out of the mire they had found themselves in.

He looked up at the wall on which he had pinned up a quote from several months ago. It sometimes helped him when things got tricky, sometimes with his own problems and sometimes for other people in what he perceived were their problems.

It stated: -

Sometimes what you’re afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free

He pulled out one of the client sheets from the pile in front of him and reviewed the case. The guy was called Gabriel Jones, and he had called into the Job Centre last week. The guy was nineteen years old, literate, numerate, very articulate, but with what sounded like a bleak background. Gabriel was mixed race, with a Nigerian mother and a white father. This probably meant that he was assumed (by the Clacton Town police force, anyway) to be a drug dealer. That in turn probably meant that he got picked up more frequently than most, whether he had done anything or not.

Maybe this was what had left him with a manner that would probably not help him find work.

Reg had seen Gabriel’s written application and called Gabriel in for an appointment. The kid had turned up on time, but his manner was surly and cynical. Reg understood why people would choose to be cynical (both generally ... and specifically in the Job Centre), but something suggested to him that the kid could maybe make something of himself.

When the kid had turned up, he had slouched into Reg’s shared office, and sat in the client chair next to Reg’s desk. He had immediately assumed a vague sprawl. Reg had assumed that this was meant to show disdain, but Reg felt that he was affecting a role that he imagined his friends would admire. However, having affected this initial ‘what the fuck am I doing here’ posture, he had then looked uncomfortable.

Maybe he was wishing he hadn’t started out in this manner.

Reg guessed that Gabriel was somewhere just over six feet tall, with a slim build. His skin was lightly coloured, with a complexion not dissimilar to Will Smith, the actor. He had dark, spiky hair, that Reg thought was called ‘coily’; it was not frizzy or wiry, but more like tufted clumps. His clothes looked clean, and in general Reg would have felt that Gabriel would have been in with at least a fighting chance of getting some sort of work, but his demeanor would be the real challenge.

Reg’s usual questions (designed to flesh out the info initially provided by the client) had unleashed a torrent of information. It was as if Gabriel needed to get this stuff off his chest. Reg had stopped trying to make notes ... he could barely keep up with the quantity of information, and maybe he could write up a summary afterwards.

Gabriel had been born in London. His mother had learning difficulties and struggled to keep their place tidy or manage what little money they had. His two older sisters had been taken into care. He did not know where they lived now. When he was five years old, his father had been found to have had been having repeated sex with an eleven-year-old girl living next door, who had become pregnant by him. The girl’s mother shopped him to the police. Gabriel’s father was tried and sent down. Gabriel hadn’t seen him since. At the age of seven, social services tried to put Gabriel into foster care. He was placed with a couple, a serving military policeman and a nurse. They gave him a good home, regular nice meals and loving care. A few months later, his mother ‘clawed him back’. He had since lost contact with his foster parents; a source of some evident sadness. Somehow, he had been found a placement in a reasonable school. He couldn’t imagine it was due to his mother’s efforts. He had never liked it there, but he guessed that it “kept him out of harm’s way”. And it also meant that he did get a reasonable education, unlike many of his peers living in the same area.

Growing up, he had begun self-harming, until he realised that his mother neither noticed nor cared. He had taken an overdose of painkillers, and when he subsequently threw them up, his mother did not even turn away from watching the TV soaps that seemed to be her mainstay.

The year before, his mother had decided to move to Clacton. He wasn’t sure if they had relatives in the area, but since they never contacted any, he assumed not. She had now become a Jehovah’s Witness, and now spent her time either watching TV or at the Kingdom Hall in Wellesley Road. In the area they now lived in they had a small and grimy flat. His mother slept in the only bed. He slept on a pull-down sofa that he had found in a skip. None of the kids in his vicinity had jobs. They would roam the streets like a feral pack. They hadn’t really accepted him. He saw little in connection with them. He tended to stay out of their way.

Reg had looked up. Gabriel seemed to have run dry. His eyes were bright, glittering almost, but not in any drug-related way that Reg could ascertain. It seemed to Reg that Gabriel had maybe never told this stuff to anyone before.

Reg had told Gabriel that he would collate some notes from their discussion and see if he could find some appropriate work that might suit him. Gabriel’s earlier intensity seemed to have now left him, and the boy had stood up and walked away as if they had never spoken.

Reg had made himself a coffee from the small kitchen adjacent to his office and sat and reflected on the boy’s story. It wasn’t often that Reg felt particularly moved by anybody’s personal circumstances, and certainly few of his everyday clients gave him much reason to be sympathetic, but this one ...

. . . . . . .

It had been three working days since he had interviewed Gabriel (five days, if you counted the intervening weekend), and Reg felt that somehow Gabriel had passed him the baton. The reality was that there were no jobs (at least not real jobs) in the area right now, and he didn’t wish to push Gabriel into working for companies that would get him knocking on innumerable doors trying to flog a dubious product or service, and then fail to pay him two weeks down the line.

Reg looked at the phone on his desk. It was an old-fashioned Trim-phone, with raised creamy-white numeric keypad buttons on it. He picked up the ear-piece and tapped in a number he knew well. He could hear the ‘brrng brrng brrng’ and hoped that Barney was there. He could picture the office, the desk swamped in papers, crumpled up notes and flyers for tombolas, fetes and garden parties.

Barney was the owner/editor of the Frinton and Dovercourt Gazette. Reg had known Barney for years, and he had often thought that he looked like the editor of the newspaper that Spiderman worked for, ie grumpy, stressed out and argumentative.

Reg heard the click of the line becoming active and, feigning what he hoped was a very BBC accent, said “Good day to you sir. I am hoping that I am speaking to the Frinton and Dovercourt Gazette. If so, can I please speak to the most senior member on your illustrious organ?”

Reg heard Barney’s low rumble back down the phone.

“Is that you, Reg, ’cos if it is, you can fuck off right now?”

“Come on Barney,” Reg replied, dropping the fancy accent. “Ok. I owe you a beer. How about The Olde Swan, about nine o’clock?”

Reg could almost hear the cogs whirring down the phone.

“You smooth talking bastard,” Barney finally muttered.

Reg put down the phone, allowing himself a faint smile of hope.