[Mirkwood]

I'm posting this story because:

A. I think you will really enjoy it especially Reg.

B. It's relevant to Pattaya. When I worked in Germany, I first came in contact with blokes who went to Pattaya on a regular basis and it made me want to start going.


In the 80's/early 90's the UK had a recession.
Most tradesman were struggling and out of work. The SE and London was bad but anyone north of Watford gap was in trouble.

Around that time it became popular to go to find work in Germany.
It was a boom time over there and all trades were needed. The national newspapers were full of adverts promising big money and easy lives.
Do some of you remember that TV show ' Auf Weidersen Pet?'

My game is spraying. Cars and aircraft.
At best I can say it is a rough old business. Normal crack is you register your details at an agency who will find you work.

You wait a while then one day you get the phone call. The job will always sound great and you imagine yourself either skiing down a mountain in Switzerland, drinking at a beer house in Germany or sitting beside a lake in France eating nice grub.

Reality usually hits you 10 seconds after arriving at the job. The digs are shit, the money isn't what you were promised, the jobs tough etc etc.

On top of that the blokes you are working with normally have a story. Let's be honest most normal people can't just up sticks and go away from their wives and kids for months on end.

It's not all bad. You can sometimes find yourself in with a good crew normally close to either a red light area or the like. The only trouble is you then end up working away and come home with nothing.


The agencies were and still are hit and miss. None of them are great but one will always stand out as the worst in the history of contracting.


Interlord.

Just the name can send shivers down my spine.

Now Interlord supplied all trades to Germany. It looked good, sounded good but by Christ it was hell on earth working for them.

Even today, when you are on a tough job and everyone is moaning. You just mention you worked for Interlord in Germany and the room will go quiet. Everyone knows. You have the same status as a holocaust survivor.
The only guys that could work for Interlord had a problem. It might be drugs or drink. They may be wanted by the police. Lots were running from the Child Support Agency, the Taxman or maybe they had just been released from prison.

It was kind of like the foreign legion for contractors.

Occasionally a normal guy would turn up on a job. His head was full of nonsense along the lines of he was going to make some money to send home to his UK wife.

Normally, he was robbed and broken by the other lads within a week.

Like one of those mentioned above, I found myself in a dire situation around 1989. The year the Berlin wall came down. Life was not going well.

I was at work one particular day and happened to pick up a copy of the Sun newspaper. I noticed the advert ‘Paint sprayers wanted for Euro contract’

There was a London number to call.
I went out and used one of the old public pay phones. The person answering took my details and said they would be in touch.

2 days later I received a registration form through the post. It only asked for my name, address and where I was currently working. I thought it was a bit strange.
I got it filled in and posted it off. That was on a Tuesday.

Thursday I got a message to ring the company Interlord.
I called and got an Irish fella named Pat McGrath on the end of the phone (Actually the comedian Rory McGraths brother).

‘Top of the morning to you young fella. Now you wanting to come and work for me in Germany?’

He sounded a right nice bloke.
We had a chat and he offered me a start.
I told him I had to give my current employer a months’ notice.
He said ‘Are you fookin kidding me? I want you in Berlin on Sunday to start work’

To cut a long story short I decided to go for it. I never went back to my job.

On the Saturday I found myself wandering around Heathrow airport thinking ‘What have I done’

I saw some bloke with a sign ‘Interlord’ around his neck. I headed over and took a look at the other blokes waiting there. It was not good.

Have you seen the film Papillion?
These guys looked like the prison extras.


We boarded the Lufthansa flight and a guy called Steve met us at the other end.
There were around 20 guys in our group.
This was his opening speech.

‘Right, now don’t fuck me about now. Who is actually a car painter?’
Everyone was looking around all nervous but I noticed no hands were in the air.

‘Come on, I don’t give a fuck what you are. If you can’t paint I’ll make sure you get a job sweeping up or something. I just need to know’

I stepped forward. I looked around and I was on my own?????

He asked the other lads what they really did.

I’m a pipefitter

I’m a brickie, (Brick layer)

I’m a steel fabricator,

Steve said ‘For fucks sake, ok no problem’

Now really, having 1 actual painter in a group that is supposed to consist of 20 painters would be a problem to most people but not Interlord. They didn’t give a fuck. If somebody was on site they were getting paid which in turn meant so were Interlord.

The other guys were all told they couldn’t go to Berlin as you had to know what you were doing to work there. They all got taken to Hamburg to work at a massive car factory. They could hide out there sweeping up and stuff and hope nobody noticed they couldn’t do the job.

For me though it was Berlin.
Steve was taking me and we jumped into his XR2 car parked outside.
We get in and he drives like he’s entered the RAC World rally championships. This is in icy conditions.

I didn’t like this bloke from the off. He was a Brummie (From Birmingham) and started telling me how he was a big man back home, carried a gun and was a member of the Zulu’s (Football hooligans).

About 10 minutes out of the airport he chucks me a massive lump of black (Cannabis) and tells me to skin up.

I’m subjected to about 4 hours of this twat. I’m climbing the walls trying to get out.
I find out that we are not only working together we are sharing digs. It sounded bad.

We arrive in a small German town called Wacaw. There was absolutely NOTHING there.
It was like you see on a Dracula horror film. Some tiny village in the country. On top of that it was snowing.
We approach what I think is an old bombed out shop from World War 2. This is it. The digs.
Steve opens up and we go up a windy staircase. There is one shit room with two single beds next to each other. I feel like crying. Is this my place to stay for the next 6 months?
The bathroom was green and black with mould. The kitchen looked like it was copied from the set of the Young Ones. Black depression set in.

I thought things couldn’t get worse but I was wrong.

Steve informs me that he is a heroin addict. He makes two piles on the cupboard next to his bed. One pile contains rolled joints and the other a syringe and all his smack gear.

He’s whacks this loud rave music on, jacks up and lays spark out on the bed. About every couple of hours or so he comes to, smokes a joint then jacks up and is out of it again.

I’m sitting on the next bed thinking ‘Why me lord?’
There was no TV, mobile phone or PC in those days.

Somehow I manage to fall asleep and we go to work the next day.

The company we were working for was called Mosolf. It was immense.
There were loads of English lads there and luckily I knew a couple of them. They put me right about Steve and said I had to get out of the digs. They offered me the settee at their place until I got sorted which I gratefully took. I moved out that night. Put my case in a taxi and I was away.

The job was crazy.

The East Germans had never seen any English before and they thought we were fantastic. We wore Levi’s to work for starters. They loved speaking to us.

The boss was called Herr Brown. He was a lovely bloke and totally out of his depth dealing with Interlord staff.

For starters they had beer machines on site. Yes, you heard right beer machines.

The lads were getting in a 6AM and steaming straight into the beer. By mid morning everyone was pissed. If it could have possibly been worse they managed it by allowing smoking breaks.

Why is that bad?

Well, if you smoked you were actually entitled to a fag break every hour. This would be on top of your already generous tea breaks. Fags were not good enough for our lot. Oh no a smoking break to these guys meant a skunk joint every hour. The German boss used to go in the smoke room laughing, wave his hand in front of his face and say ‘Are you all high today?’

Of course the job was a riot. Nothing ever got done. Blokes were just climbing on top of the spray booths and getting pissed and stoned all day. The thing was everywhere was the same at that time. Fuck knows what it was all about in Germany. Was it a big tax fiddle or something? Holland was the same.

Some bloke cracked up and left. I took over his room so I was sorted.

One night a couple of weeks later we get woken up at 3AM by a knock on the door. It’s Steve the link man.
He was pissed and had driven his car into a wall. It was a total write off. He stayed on the settee for a couple of nights. Wacaw was about 10 KM away from us through country lanes.
One night in a drugged up state he decides to walk back to his digs at 1AM in the morning. This was in the snow and I guess the temperature would have been around minus 15.

Next morning he was not at work and we feared the worst.

Turns out he had been walking down the lanes when a speeding van went past. The driver didn’t see him. BANG.

The metal door mirror caught him right between the shoulder blades. Poor old Steve was poleaxed. Broke his shoulder and more. That was the end of him. Back to UK never to return.

Now the story gets funny. I’m laughing typing it now.

A new guy turns up named Clive.

Now this guy was not fucking right in the head. That was obvious from day one.
Not only is he a big lump he actually looks dangerous.

We get chatting to him at the digs and it turns out he really is a nutter. He suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has an alert plate thing that informs people he should not be allowed out of the UK or something

Hey, this is Interlord. The story must get worse.

Not only is he dangerous. He’s only got another day or so of his medication left. Oh fucking great!

On these jobs the guys had what you could only call extreme sports humour. You had to have to work there. What was normal then would not be considered ok now.

Robbie, tells Clive the nutter ‘Oh don’t worry mate. You don’t need that shit. We’ll sort you out. Your one of us now’

With that he gives him not only a joint but an LSD tablet to go with it.

From that moment forward this Clive was like Frankenstein.
One minute he would be laughing, the next walking around with a carving knife muttering under his breath. We were shit scared but Robbie thought it was great.
Every day you could see he was deteriorating badly. Robbie kept plying him with drugs and beer. His mind must have been scrambled horrific.

On Sundays we used to take turns in going to the local launderette. It was a shit job.

Anyway, this particular Sunday it was Clive’s turn to do the washing.
We all jumped into a taxi and left him to it.

To be fair the guy looked in bad shape when we left. He had big black circles under his eyes and had been crying out in his sleep. Me and another guy were shitting ourselves every night with this guy around. You just knew he was going to do damage.

We all go to this mad place in Berlin called the Squat. I don’t know if it’s there now. It was like a massive empty building where travellers could just go and doss. Really cool place.

Anyway, we have a good day out.

We are in the taxi home all guessing what has happened to Clive.

Has he killed somebody?
Is he sitting in the launderette just looking at the washing going around?

We arrive home and the car goes silent.

Clive is in the garden. He’s standing up to his waist in the middle of the fish pond.

He’s broken the ice. He has a big stick and is stirring all our clothes around. He had even added the washing powder.

It was all over. He was finally kaput.

We helped him out and the agent took him away that night never to be heard from again.

If I had to put money on where he is now it would be Broadmoor.

I had to laugh when I put Interlord into Google. I found a welders forum.
Below was posted on there.

"JESUS!" I didn't think I'd hear those names again.Depike & Interlord.Just the mere mention of those outfits brings me out in sweats.If they were handing out Oscars to agencies that could cheat people out of money,those B******s would sweep the board.But like Captain said, the 'Craic' was brilliant .I could honestly say as a young man they were the best days .
I first worked in Stadthagen,making car seats in a sweat shop separated from the main factory, 'cos the Brits caused too much havoc with the locals.
Then moved down to Dusseldorf building tipper trucks that they couldn't sell because most of them were meant for Iran & the Shah had just been kicked out.Who could forget the the "Altstadt".A square mile of bars & nightclubs & every February 'Rosenmontag'.
Ended up at 'Schaeffers' in Siegen making industrial containers.Wot a s**t-hole & the town wasn't that much better either.But again ,the lads on that job made it bearable.If any of you are still out there & not in re-hab clinics it would be nice to hear from you.
regards Mickthetig



Next chapter.

The punk girl with the green hair.

[penetrator]

Them beer machines are the bollocks, I managed a week on a site in Munich in the 90's that had them before getting sacked

[gonzo]

Quality read mate.

[kuranda_bagman]

Good read Dave

[ferocious]

Funny dave ! That interlord are still on the go under a different name and were touting hamburg the other week , your right about most blokes on contracts having issues that's why my digs are 10 mile from anyone elses here in France to keep my sanity

[Thebomb]

funny shit mirky

[Mirkwood]

The Girl with the Green Hair.

Venue Berlin.

Things changed. People came and went. Every week something mental was happening. A normal day would involve smoking super skunk morning, noon and night. My mates in the digs came up with a great idea. Instead of spending all our money on Skunk every week we would grow our own in the digs.

First we did a research and development program. We bought as many books on the subject as we could get our hands on.
After a month or so we were experts. We took one weekend off and headed for Hamburg. Our mates there had picked up what we wanted from Amsterdam. Interlord were getting into the dope growing business.

My job had been to find the correct strain of gear. Being a bit of a nostalgia freak I had decided on the original hippie skunk Durban Poison. It's fast growing, gives big plants and was supposed to be lethal. Sounded good to us.

images.jpg

Nod my mate was in charge of lighting. Alex concealment. Jocky watering and Linnie diversions and security. We were big time.
The only problem was we were smashed and paranoid all the time but didn't realise it.

The plants needed 24 hours lighting at the start. This would be difficult because people see lights at night. We converted one of the bedrooms into something Anne Frank would have been proud of.
In our secret room went the plants and lighting.

So far so good. We had the special lights and the plants grew and they grew and they grew.

The male plants were seperated from the females. After a few weeks the lights were put on timers 12 hours on and 12 hours off. Jocky was doing his Percy Thrower bit and the harvest festival was fast approaching.

We were all at work minding our own business. Suddenly our names came over the tannoy. We all went to the office. A very angry red faced Pat Mcgrath was standing there with all the bosses.

' What the fook are you bastards trying to do to me?'

To cut a long story short. The landlady at the digs had got her electricity bill. Obviously it was a fair bit higher than usual. She'd complained to the company who sent a man out. First stop was the box where he got dizzy watching the dials spinning around. It was on top. Our Anne Frank room was discovered. Pat had squared everything up and luckily the police weren't involved but we were out on our ear. Our stuff was dumped outside the digs in black plastic bin bags.

A deal was done and we found ourselves back in my original Motley hall digs in Wacow. This time minus the smack head.

It was grim. Very grim. We were back to sharing rooms. In the other place we'd had our own. On top of that the rooms at the back were occupied with the worst animals I had ever seen in my life. There was a team of Brickies from Runcorn. Now I've never been to Runcorn and refuse to ever go there in case I meet guys like these brickies.

I thought us lot were bad but these blokes were much worse. They were on the lash and gear 24/7. Real rough bastards. If they couldn't find any Germans they would start fighting with each other. They would have a massive bundle then shake hands and carry on drinking. Nutters.


Anyway, if the temperature was below a certain level these lads got stood down because the cement wouldn't dry. When this happened they were out of mega benders and everytime it ended in tears.

One night we were woken by loud music. I looked at my clock. It was 4am Sunday morning. They had returned. One of them knocked at our door. He was mullered.

' Do you lads want to come to our party?'

Well, we didn't have a lot of choice so we went over to their rooms. We looked at each other.

They had a girl in there. She was a bit punky looking and had bright green hair. She was proper ting tong as well. They had ' found' her in the squat in Berlin. The deal was, she agreed to come and live with us 'all'. In return for sex, everyone had to keep her in skunk and drink. Trust me it wasn't a good deal. She was an animal and was slugging beer like no tomorrow and steaming into the skunk.

She told us she had been a podium dancer in a nightclub. Everyone took the piss out of her so she got up and showed us her moves. As it goes she was great and beneath the green hair and tramp clothes was a really horny bird.

One of the Runcorn guys grabbed hold of her. He was way OTT and was trying to shag her in front of everyone. She wasn't having it and clocked him one. It all got nasty.

She latched onto me and decided I was her boyfriend. I didn't argue and we all drifted back to our rooms. She had a shower and that and didn't look too bad. I was made up.

We woke up next day around 1pm. Who the fuck was this bird? What were we going to do with her?

We all went to the local guest house up the road for a Sunday drink. Green hair was poleaxed. We left her sleeping in my bed.
Everyone washed their hands of her and told me she was my problem. Great.

We sank a few beers and started having a laugh. Fuck it. Who cares?

All of a sudden there was a commotion at the guest house.

People were shouting 'Fueur Fueur'

All casual, one of our lot said ' Oh there must be a fire somewhere'

We just gave it the ' Oh yeah' and carried on drinking about zero % bothered.

We decided to go and have a look outside. It was weird. The people were running towards were our digs were located. How strange.

FUCK.

It dawned on us. It was our fucking digs that was on fire and it was bad. Really bad.

Mayhem. That's the word.

Again, to cut a long story short the girl with green hair had woken up and decided she wanted to smoke a joint. She didn't have a light so took a Christmas ornament with a candle in it to somebodies room. They lit it for her. Instead of putting it out, the dozy bitch left it on a table then went to sleep. The curtains caught light then Hey Presto so did the rest of the room. It was a serious fire.

The police were called and the whole lot of us were taken to Berlin police station.
It went off and they locked us up for the night.

In the morning they gave us the phone call we wanted.

As it was my bird I got the job of ringing Pat the Interlord agent and explaining what had happened.

Ring ring.

Errr Pat it's Dave here.

Pat...Where the fucking hell are you guys. No bastard is at work.


Errr sorry mate slight problem. We have been arrested and are all in jail.

Poor old Pat nearly blew a gaskit.

Pat...You fucking bastards. You'll never work in Germany again

Pat had to come and bail us out.

One thing Interlord were very good at was smooting shit like this over. We were all read the riot act and told not we were on punishment money only 150 marks a week until the debt for the digs was paid to the landlord.

Nobody got the sack and fuck knows what happened to the girl with green hair.

Where's the gash ?

[ferocious]

Originally Posted by ROLAND

Where's the gash ?

were'nt you once in love with a bird with green hair ?

Originally Posted by ferocious

were'nt you once in love with a bird with green hair ?

Nah, I had a bird with green hair in love with me