Cinderella and the forklift trucks

Knowing nobody who would be attending the ball, I was understandably nervous as I made my way down the stairs towards the function suite of the Peterborough Marriott. But, walking tall (helped immensely by a set of bronze heels to complement my turquoise silk dress, sequinned with bronze), I soon found myself at the door of a room bustling with Bucks Fizz, noise and hundreds of well-dressed people. Also at the door, peering in, were two other girls. They asked me what function this was, so I told them, and we went in together. It turned out that they were new, too – if relief wasn’t etched in my face, then I’m a better actress than I know. Soon we were joined by three other newbies, making our group almost complete… the seventh was on a plane back from New Zealand, so she had a good excuse! An evening of jollity, good food (but a most disappointing Crème Brulee – no crack of the sugar whatsoever!), getting to know each other, and dancing into the early hours ensued.

Sunday provided me with an excellent opportunity to drive into Cambridge to spend a couple of hours with my sister, and another couple with an old friend, before the working week began. It was wonderful to see them, but also to be outside in the autumnal weather.

Autumn is my favourite time of year: the rusty colours of the leaves, the evenings growing darker, the temperature creeping down to the point where it is perfectly reasonable to snuggle up in fleeces and slippers. I feel a little bereft of it in Spain’s eternal summer.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in the UK headquarters of the company that I work for in Spain, putting names from emails and telephone conversations to faces, and being introduced to different logistics roles – who knew that organising lorries could be so difficult?! I was also offered a tour of the factory… and I wasn’t about to refuse! So, high-vis jacket, blue coat and hairnet on and jewellery off, I was introduced to celery processing machines, radish packing machines, boxes of baby leaves piled ceiling-high, lorry loading bays, a warehouse full of packaging, freezing cold-storage areas, pallet prioritisation techniques and forklift truck charging docks. I came quickly to the conclusion that forklift trucks are possibly the most terrifying thing in the world – they’re so heavy and they move so fast… usually backwards. I stuck religiously to the designated walkways, but there was still nothing but air between me and the killing machines. Every time I heard one around a pile of pallets, I was on edge.

And, as it transpired, rightly so. The rest of the week was spent in Grantham on a training course (the real reason for me being back in the country), reunited with my new friends from the ball. First aid training, food safety legal awareness, health and safety seminars and far too much food were the order of the day. The images we were shown of forklift truck accidents – and the high percentage of accidents in the workplace that they are responsible for – were shocking and more than a little sickening… although 1^st prize for revulsion went to images of an arm that had been through a mincer after the owner of the arm had tried to remove a blockage while the machine was still running. Amid the intense training sessions there were occasional moments of calm, when we could sit and talk, have a drink in the bar or a cuppa in one of our rooms, finding out more about each other and how we were each finding our different roles – ranging from logistician to junior buyer to agronomist, and amusing the bar staff with our hilarity-inducing pen-and-paper games.

After a week of travelling around East Anglia (becoming a much more competent driver and map-reader in the process!), I returned home for a quick hello, and my family’s annual “Coffee Cakes and Crafts” at-home craft fair, where I met, greeted, socialised, made countless cups of tea, witnessed the demolition of many a cake, and collapsed contentedly onto the settee at the end of it all. Back to Spain. But really, not for long. Time’s going to keep on flying, and it’ll be Christmas before I know it!

Hasta Luego!

Cold Custard

Apologies for the slightly tardy update – I naively thought that internet access might be free in a hotel. I’ve learned that lesson!

So I asked about how to deal with sleazy Spanish men. Responses were as varied as a box of Quality Streets:

“they’re not dangerous, if you want to talk, talk, but just don’t tell them your phone number or where you live the first time you meet them.”

“avoid eye contact and walk on by”

“don’t say anything at all – saying something shows you’re interested”

“Spanish men just want one thing”

“if they’re Spanish, it’s ok. If they’re Moroccon, run.”

“stick to places where there are lots of people, but don’t stray off the beaten track alone.”

Which leaves me in just about the same position as I was before. It looks like I’m going to be playing the dumb foreigner for 6 months. It frustrates me though. I want to feel that I can explore new places on my own – I don’t want to have to rely on finding someone to go with me – but I don’t really feel comfortable on my own anywhere that’s not Touristville. And the staring and the catcalling makes me feel… violated, somehow. A little bit dirty. It angers me that women – of every age and type – are objectified so much, and that it’s considered a cultural norm. I never appreciated the comparative reticence of The British Man enough!

It is with relief that I have started to fall into the routine of the working day. I have begun to feel confident in some aspects of my work, and my colleagues seem confident enough in me to leave me to it. In the afternoons I’m tasked with looking at the daily orders from the Spanish supermarkets whom we supply and calculating how many pallets of goods need to be shipped to each supermarket from the different warehouses, entering this information into a spreadsheet, and letting the hauliers and warehouses know. Once the UK export business has really revved up for the winter, my mornings will be occupied with chasing up problems in the UK with missing goods and late lorries… that will come in a few weeks. It’s amazing how much thought, preparation and work there is behind each lorry on the motorway… and behind each lettuce on the shelves of ASDA!

Lunch in Spain is by far the biggest meal of the day, and it seems to be fairly normal to go out for it. Many restaurants offer lunch menus for between €7.50 and €10, which include a drink, bread, a starter, a main, a pudding and a coffee. I’m yet to get my head around consuming so much in the middle of the day, especially when I have to go back and work after it. Fighting the well-fed snoozy feeling is a challenge! This week my foodie discoveries were Spanish black pudding (which have a much looser consistency than the British varieties, without the lumps of fat and oats, slightly sweet, slightly salty and seasoned with cinnamon), chips with lime juice (seriously, it works!), and the Spanish dessert “Natillas”. Natillas is a dish of cold vanilla custard, with a soggy digestive-like biscuit set into it, sprinkled with cinnamon. I actually rather enjoyed it (I think I’d enjoy anything with cinnamon…), but it amuses me that such an unappetising sounding pud seems to appear on every menu!

Still on the foodie track, I was touched this week to arrive into work to find a pack of porridge oats on my desk from one of my colleages. I’d mentioned last week that I was a porridge girl, and that I’d been surprised not to find oats in any of the supermarkets… but apparently he knew where to find some. So now, if I’m feeling in need of a little breakfast TLC, I can whip up a bowl of warm, yummy comfort. The people in my office are very welcoming. On Wednesday evening I went out to a bar with one of the girls from the finance department, and we spoke in Spanglish – that is, I spoke Spanish and she spoke English, occasionally correcting each other – and it was really good fun (that is, once I got over the embarrassment of having to let her parallel park my car. I’ve only parallel parked a car correctly once – it was in my driving test, and it was a complete fluke. I spent most of my free time on Thursday practicing. I still can’t do it!). It made me feel like I have a friend here, and that’s a really good feeling.

On Friday I finished work a little early at 6, drove to the airport, and by 10 I was back in Leeds Bradford airport, ready for a week in the UK. It seems odd to have only been in my new job for 2 weeks before coming back, but Cinderella had a ball to go to! Well, and a training course, and 2 days in my company’s UK office… I’ll be meeting the other 6 graduates who are being trained up by my employer at the same time as me and “bonding” with them over a night of food, wine and dancing, and a few days of theoretical training. I’ll also get to know some of my colleagues from the UK office – the ones whose names I see on emails and hear over the phone – I’m looking forward to putting names to faces. But more on the week to come next weekend!

Hasta Luego

Week 1 in Spain

Hola!

It’s been a busy week! Less than an hour after landing in Murcia airport I was in work, being kissed by people whose names I immediately forgot – there are around 30 people working in my office. Most of them are Spanish, with a handful of Brits mixed in. Work for me has so far consisted of bursts of intense learning, as I have been taught – in Spanish – how to use logistics-specific computer programmes and do calculations of pallets and cases of salads, and bursts of intense boredom while my superiors get on with answering their hundreds of emails and phone calls. I’m beginning to be trusted with the simplest tasks now, but I still need most things explaining to me. I’ve been on a roadtrip to Alicante to my first business meeting (all about celery, but most of it went over my head…), and visited a couple of packhouses, where the vegetables are brought to from the field, labelled, undergo quality control and are loaded onto the lorries, to give me an insight into the more practical side of the business. I’ve been exhilarated, exhausted, overwhelmed, underwhelmed (but never just straight whelmed), overcome by bouts of sleepiness, insomnia, nausea at how much I still have to learn and incredulous joy at how easy I’m finding the language compared to my expectations.

Before I came out, I had three main worries: work, language, and driving. I’m happy to say that all three were unfounded. Much to my surprise, I do understand the language very well – though I get completely lost when they speak fast to each other – and I can tell that my speaking has improved already since the beginning of the week as the words start coming more quickly. As for driving, well, I’m now the proud renter of a suitably Becky-esque deep turquoise Peugeot 207 left-hand drive. And, past trying to change gear in the door with my left hand rather than with my right, I’ve not had problems yet, so long may that continue!

The town where I’m living, Los Alcazares, is a decidedly odd place (which probably highlights the fact that I’ve never been to this kind of holiday destanation before!). The first things I noticed as I was being driven through on the first day were a Barclays and a Deutsche Bank. I felt right at home! Later, on a walk along the seafront, I passed many more English, French and German conversations than Spanish. There’s a Spanish Quarter in the old part of the town, where the Spaniards have their holiday homes, passed down from generation to generation. I ventured down there yesterday… there are a couple of nice buildings, but it’s nothing to write home about. It’s the views across the Mar Menor (a kind of sea lagoon) which steal the show in this town.

My house itself seems fine so far. What excites me most is the fact that I have a rooftop terrace! It’s tiny, but it’s big enough for a sun lounger, and in a 2-hour lunch break, that’s good enough for me!! Unfortunately it has no internet, so I’m posting this from a café with WIFI in exchange for an orange juice (and what an orange juice! Freshly squeezed from local oranges… delicious). I currently have one housemate, with one to follow later.

Socially, I’ve been taken out by my colleagues for lots of food this week… usually “breakfast” (at about 11am) – a croissant or, even better, “tostada con tomate” – half a toasted baguette spread with tomato pulp, olive oil and salt – surprisingly good! Everything seems to taste better with olive oil… I swear I must have consumed my body weight in the stuff this week! I’ve also been treated to a 3-course lunch, and Friday night tapas (whoever knew that salt cod could taste so good!) and drinks with my boss, who also took me to a local(ish) market this morning – I’m being well looked after.

So in all, a positive first week. Not entirely positive though. I’m tired, and not exactly homesick, but I’m longing to feel comfortable. I’m forming first impressions left, right and centre, but I’m all too aware that people are forming their own first impressions of me, too, and this worries me more than I anticipated it would. And because everything is new – language included – everything is an effort. I’ve found myself wishing I could arrive home to my flatmates from university, with whom I felt at ease and unjudged, instead of an empty house or my new flatmate, whose conversations (in English!!) leave me feeling drained. I don’t feel any particular love yet for my town, although that may well come with time, and I find myself wondering whether I will make any real friends here – my colleagues seem lovely so far, but I’m not sure whether they’ll be so pally once I’m not “the new English girl”. I don’t remember feeling any of this in Germany or France. I know it’s early days yet though!!

At the end of my first week, my biggest question is: how to deal with young Spanish men? I knew they were much more forward than English guys, but still, I was completely unprepared to be repeatedly chatted up as I walked along. I don’t like it. My current strategy is to look terrified and play dumb (there are enough German tourists around who speak no Spanish that I can just about get away with “not understanding” Spanish or English advances). But I’d like to know what the done thing is, really! It’s gone on my list of “Questions For Colleagues”. I’ll let you know.

Hasta Luego

Fears and lace fairs

There’s just one day between me and the departure lounge. The butterflies of terror are fluttering. Moving abroad doesn’t faze me particularly – my accommodation’s been sorted by the company taking me on, and my Spanish is basic, but it’s enough to get by on and I have no doubts that it will improve dramatically once I’m in the situation where I’m having to make phonecalls to Spanish hauliers! Besides, if my sister can spend 6 months living in Norway when she didn’t initially speak the language at all and come away having loved her time there and speaking more or less fluent Norwegian, then I can do the same in Spain with two years of toiling over the grammar books behind me. And it’s not as if I haven’t lived and worked abroad before. My fears are more job-related. Going off to work in an office and for the first time being truly responsible for things that matter… What will it be like? What will I have to do? Will I be good at it? Will I be able to learn all the computer programmes and logisticians tricks as quickly as I’m expected to? Natural worries, I’m sure, but worries nonetheless.

Excitement is playing in the pit of my stomach too. I’m going to Spain! New opportunities for exploration, self-definition, friend-making, horizon-broadening and language-learning. What should I feel if not excited?

A trip to the 20th Great Northern (Not Just Lace) Fair marked the end of my time at home, as my dad and I took my mum’s craft stall to Pudsey. From 10 ‘til 4, more lacemakers that you would believe possible to exist flooded through the doors. The clientele were predominantly silver-haired women, there to browse stalls of thread, lace cushions and pins. Needless to say, our brightly coloured stall of felt stood out, and once the obligatory lace-related purchases had been made, plenty of the lacey ladies revisited us with their spare pennies. I stood behind the stall, demonstrating needle-felting while I created a menagerie of dogs, cats, monkeys and rabbits to turn into brooches, attracting curious glances, questions and conversations in the process. Helping out at craft fairs is certainly something that I’m going to miss once I’m in my own little world of salad-processing work.

Onwards, then, to a suitcase, a satchel, and Spain.

The return of Farmer Becky?

Since discovering that I would be spending the next 6 months working in Spain I’ve had several requests from friends and family, who read my “Farmer Becky” emails while I was WWOOFing in France, for me to write for them about my experiences in Spain and beyond. I felt that writing an email each week until the end of time would be a little intrusive into everyone’s lives, and that as I settle down into a job, I might well not have enough exciting and relevant things to say every seven days. I felt equally uncomfortable at the alternative suggestion, however, which was to set up a blog about my introduction into the world of work. There are too many ethical issues. In a blog about work, if I took due care not to identify the company and its practices, and not be able to identify co-workers, then there would be very little left to say. It’s dangerous territory, and I don’t want to go there.

And yet I want to write. I loved writing my newsletters in France, people seemed to enjoy reading them, and if there’s any chance I might want to write even semi-professionally in the future (which there is), then I would be foolish to pass up on the excitement of my itinerant lifestyle! This is why I’m resurrecting my old blog, with only the faintest glimmer of a blush that what I wrote previously, believing nobody I knew to be reading it, will now be on view to everybody.

I’m not promising that you’ll learn very much about the ins and outs of the fresh produce industry. I’m not promising you insights into the dynamics of my office-to-be. I don't promise to change the style of my blog thus far - so if you're not a fan of philosophising or indulging in Nigella Lawsonesque fits of sentimentality and describing to excess, just ignore those parts! I do promise, however, to try to keep up with frequent, interesting posts about my life. Previously nobody knew I had started blogging – I did it for my own pleasure and to document my final days in Germany – so when I came home from my Year Abroad and lost the habit of writing frequent posts, there was nobody to nudge me. Cue a year’s hiatus from the blogosphere, which is rather a shame, because my final year of university would have been fun to put into words. But now I’m back, and ready to spew my musings once again into the ether of the internet. This time, if I get slack and stop writing, with any luck somebody will nudge me back in the direction of a keyboard. I hope you read my posts, once in a while, and I hope you enjoy them.