Guest Blogger: Ian Hocking

Hocking's Progress: Part I

Before I became an ice-cream man, I had a different job for a few months. You know the crap that falls out of the Guardian Weekend when you open it? I put that in.

One of my favourite films as a boy - at least, until I watched it - was Condorman. As described by my friend Thomas, it was about a super-spy codenamed Condorman, who flew using a winged suit, carried a cane that doubled as a machine gun, and drove a speedboat with a ginormous laser on the back. When Dad got us a VHS video player from Rumbelows, Condorman was the first film I rented. I had to sit through George Formby - older brother's choice - first. That's how much I wanted to watch Condorman.

Condorman was rubbish.

The title character turned out to be a bored comic book artist, not a super-spy. The special effects were awful.

But here's the thing I've always remembered: At the beginning of the movie, Condorman teetered at the top of the Eiffel Tower, ready to test his mechanical Condor suit. Why? Because he felt that children all over the world valued the realism of his comics. He wouldn't let them down with guesswork. He would find out exactly what it's like to fly in this suit.

He was a proper researcher.

He fell into the Seine.

I spent several, long years as an ice-cream man.

I understand that this is as nothing compared to the decades that Scott put into buying, testing and recalling over tea and cake the various doodads that comprise 21st Century Dodos. Each, however, to his own.

My years as an ice-cream man weren't contiguous. I sandwiched them into the gaps between university terms. Every Easter and summer, I would drive my galaxy-blue Sierra to the ice-cream depot in a town in the middle of Cornwall and ask the scary boss if there was any work. He would reach for a cornet and serve himself a scoop of vanilla much as other men of his age might prepare a pipe. Then he would tell me, for perhaps the twentieth time, how his grandfather had once put axle grease in the ice-cream for an extra kick - until he was invited to stop by 'some ninny from Redruth'. It was health and safety gone mad. His grandfather, said my boss, was from the old country. Those two words were punctuated with a lick and a significant look.

(1) My boss scared me. (2) There was always work. (3) He fired people. So many people.

Over my several years' preparation for the novel Proper Job, several odd things happened. I tried to note them down. One colleague, for instance, hated to leave his van for a toilet break. Instead, he would crouch near the freezer and urinate into an empty five-litre tub. It's worth noting that the customers could probably still see his face over the counter as he relieved himself. Did he make small talk? Offer a throwaway remark about attending a plumbing job? My colleague made a point of finishing this anecdote - as he screwed the cup back on his flask of tea - with the observation that he always washed his hands. Health and safety, you see.

My first day on the job involved being driven to a beach in northern Cornwall by a man who was so drunk his eyeballs no longer moved as one. The van careered through the lanes with a gentle side-to-side motion, and perhaps the outward majesty, of a speed skater. All the while, this man - let's call him 'Davie' - would turn around and try to talk to me for increasingly long spells about the mechanical peculiarities of the van. I tried to monitor the oncoming traffic, but there wasn't much I could do safety-wise, sitting cross-legged on the lino at the back of the van. Davie parked up on the beach and told me to 'self train' while he went to see a friend in a hotel. He returned eight hours later even more drunk. He drove us home. Back at the depot, Davie left me to count the remaining stock. Then he returned to tell me that he'd left his reading glasses on a cardboard box and put both into the paper crusher. He ended this news with 'Gad', which translates roughly as 'Just my luck.' Davie then had a conversation with the nice lady receiving our day's takings - the only person more drunk than he was - and crashed his car on the way home.

I learned that, when the wing-mirrors of two vehicles collide, they explode beautifully; that Rick Stein is a nice bloke; that sometimes the only way to get an overloaded ice-cream van to crest a hill is to reverse up it; that it is possible to drive a van without a clutch cable, but the police don't like it; similarly, they frown on underage bike-boys skidding around the floor of a van like so many hockey pucks.

Despite all my research, some questions remain. Why is a 99 called a 99? Could it really have been Anton Rodgers I served that fateful day in Padstow?

Condorman got Barbara Carrera at the end of the movie.

I got a book, Proper Job. Please read it or these pixies will die.

Comments

[Ngaire BookieMonster]

I thought I was the only person left in the world who remembered Condorman.

[Ian]

Tragically, no. I also remember Howard The Duck.

[Jane]

He urinated into an empty-five litre tub? I trust he did not make his own cider lollies. I used to like those - now I feel a little queasy at the thought.

[Ian]

No, as far as I know there was no freezing involved. I'll save you the stories of what happened inside the factory...