The Best Bloody Job in the World

The narrator of The Best Bloody Job in the World describes the excavation of a large hole in the Earlham Road, Norwich. He has an obsessive interest in the men and the machinery ("snail fan, crawler crane, an iron thing like a great meat grinder") which they operate so skilfully or casually. Through the narrator's descriptions of the tunnelers we come to realise he is ill. Despite their missing fingers, the tunnelers have enthusiasm and strength, "a brag and judder to their work" which the narrator is jealous of and also admires. Below, you can read some poems from the start of the sequence...

The First Day With the delicacy of big men accustomed to tight trousers they eased their trucks past the bollards, fenced off the walkway levered up pavement slabs disclosed a hole; right where I'd trodden that very morning they dealt with the absence of something.

The Men For The Job One with six fingers (not counting the halves), one with a glass eye that weeps in the breeze, one with a hacking cough, one with a dodgy back; these men understand what it means to remove spadeload by spadeload by spadeload.

The Cranedriver Lands A Whopper As anyone knows if they've waded through dawn mist along riverbanks and seen stoic fishermen hypnotised by their motionless floats, the more gear you've got the longer you'll wait. So why should the cranedriver fret as his cabin creaks in the sun, the waffling engine thrums through the joysticks and its offbeat expletives rock his seat ? A man at the hole's edge flicks out a hand-signal. The crane's guy wires judder the engine house shakes as the driver reels in. The pulleys run smoothly hawsers focused with their unseen load which, long minutes later rises, stately into the light: a yellow skip as bright as Cleopatra's barge. The crane trembles like a man doing pull-ups, iron pride barely keeping him there. The driver breaks no sweat: deftly scissoring the joysticks he swings his catch round and sets it down so gently it is an act of courtesy.