Community Service Ch. 12

Ch. 12: David Smith's sudden and surprising summons.

It was the start of another new week in the Sock Room.

I'd had no reason to suppose today was going to be any different from any other day. Just another lousy load of same old, same old.

The only thing that changed was the size of my gruesome workload: the daunting and demoralising backlog of the females of Canford's dirty socks. Which, continuously being added to, grew bigger and more insurmountable with every passing day - even though for more than three months now I'd been working relentlessly in the Sock Room for seven days a week.

I suppose it was inevitable that eventually I would get jaded, that my strength and stamina would become depleted.

And that's not to mention the mental strain ...

It was a struggle to stay motivated.

And I could feel myself becoming more and more run down; could sense that both my physical energies and mental fortitude were close to being spent and extinguished. That I was on my last reserves.

In fact, I believed that I was now beginning to succumb to the same debilitating and demoralising condition that was reportedly afflicting Sock Room community servants nationwide, termed by the doctors who treated the new widespread phenomenon as 'Community Servant Burnout Syndrome'.

In about equal measure I was being defeated and ground down by the casual cruelties of the sock-changing, Sock Room attending females, and by the stresses and strains of the soul-crushing futility and utter pointlessness of not only trying to cope with the unmanageable overrun but also actually endeavouring to reduce it.

Extra holding capacity was again urgently needed; the number of previously added wheelie bin containers had proved woefully insufficient to cope with the unremittingly escalating demands upon my sock-washing remit.

Some further additional colour-coded wheelie bin receptacles had been brought in, that brought the total up to twenty, and took up all of the remaining holding room.

But it was to little avail.

Such was the relentlessness of the sock-changing females' dirty sock deposits that these other new wheelie bins too had soon become full to overflowing from the incessant build-up; their hinged lids too left hanging down in an admission of overwhelming defeat to the irreducible cascades of dirty socks.

And that's not to mention the also spilling over industrial-sized hopper, marked: 'White Socks Only!'

The turning inside out, hand-washing, rinsing, hanging out on clotheslines to dry, and steam-ironing of hundreds and hundreds of pairs of mostly white but also countless pairs of Girls' Highschool black, navy blue, and other types of coloured and multicoloured dirty socks was too much for one person.

Of course, it didn't help my productivity output that the sock-changing, Sock Room attending females of Canford were constantly interrupting my work.

Ordering me to drop whatever I might be doing, and demanding my immediate attendance at the foot of their recliners so as to avail themselves of some of their constrained and compelled Sock Room community servant's other, extra-laundry, services.

*

I was up past my elbows in the temperature-controlled three-feet-deep stainless steel hot-and-soapy-water sink, hand-washing yet another gruesome batch of the females of Canford's dirty white socks when, behind me, in the upper level of the Sock Room, I heard the familiar warbling sound of the wall-mounted black bakelite phone.

I risked pausing a moment, just to straighten my grievously protesting back ... ah, what a relief.

I'd been bent over that damned hellish steamy sink now for two hours solid. Bent on rubbing and agitating all of the yellow-tinged foot sweat and ground-in dirt and snagging flaky dead skin from countless pairs of turned inside out dirty white socks.

Still, I daren't overindulge in this rare opportune moment of most welcome respite.

The ringing telephone would distract, but only momentarily, the attentive vigil of the reclining but ever watchful and performance monitoring Sock Room attending females. Who, taking it upon themselves to act as enforcers, at the first sign of slacking would harangue and rebuke me and, sometimes, even trouble themselves to alight from their recliners and come down the six wooden steps to yell unladylike reproachful words right in my face.

When the Sock Room phone rang it meant one of two things, and neither augered well: One of my two young supervisors CSOs Karen and Linda were calling from their office, or someone was calling from an outside line.

Mrs Norma Newlove - my neighbour from hell, one of the Sock Room regulars, and who had long considered herself Acting Superintendent in the absence of my two supervisors - got up from her padded black leather recliner behind the two-barred safety rail of the 'Spectators' Gallery' overlook to answer the phone.

Norma's voluptuous body moved with a fluid, eye-arresting grace. And it was with reluctant admiration that I watched her sedate progress as, padding barefoot the nine or ten strides to the ringing phone, her naturally olive-skinned soles and the pads of her customarily cherry-red painted toes picked up bits and pieces of dust and new sock lint from the dark-grey linoleum Sock Room floor.

Within days of its well advertised and much-trumpeted opening, responding to popular demand the Community Service Liaison Officer and MP for Canford, Harriet Harmman, had called in South London Telecoms engineers to make the Sock Room's phone contactable from external lines.

One of the brainchild Work Motivation Scheme projects of Prime Minister Caroline Flynt, lauded by her Authoritarian Female Party Cabinet colleagues as ingeniously conceived and radically innovative, the town centre situated establishment was far from being just merely an AFP inspired 'functional', decidedly drab community-servant-operated 'female-friendly' facility.

In common with Sock Rooms all over the UK, Canford Sock Room's success had far exceeded even the insightful hopes and expectations of Caroline Flynt. Turning out to be not only a highly popular girls-only meeting place and a convenient and most congenial rendezvous point for ladies going about town, but an increasingly used, well-attended, and much-valued attraction in itself.

Caroline Flynt's Sock Room initiative had in fact created much more than a Getting-the-career-claimants-to-work, sock-changing institution.

To Canford's Sock Room 'regulars', of whom by now I estimated their 'membership' to be into triple figures, the Sock Room was their free membership Social Club.

After six months of Sock Room service, it was not unusual for frequent-user sock-changing females, grown accustomed by now to a little occasional or even regular foot pampering - particularly of the sort they were unable to get from their less amenable or indulgent or malleable husbands or boyfriends - to ring in on the off-chance. Asking if any of the Sock Room's comfortable padded black leather recliners were free at present, or perhaps were soon to be vacated.

I especially remember one time, well into the afternoon of yet another consecutive diabolically demanding day of slaving over the temperature-controlled hot-and-soapy water sink and working my fingers to the bone, I heard Gina Stainham reply in response to such a caller: "Yes - come on in! He's doing nothing at the moment."

'Doing nothing'!

Such spur-of-the-moment calls were quite run-of-the-mill, made by hopeful half-an-hour-to-spare Sock Room attendees, desirous of treating themselves to a little special attention from the Sock Room community servant.

Or, in the cases of the more mean-minded and sour-spirited - and sometimes, malicious and outright cruel - sock-changing females of Canford, to come and give me a hard time, humiliating me at their dirty, stinky feet just for the sheer, passing-the-time hell of it.

But as the self-appointed 'Chief-Overseer-In-Absentia' Norma Newlove officiously went to pick up the phone, I knew by the distinctive warbling ring tone that the call was internal.

The call was coming from one of the two desk phones (reachable on different numbers) in my two supervisors' lower-level office, situated on the other side of my ironing station.

As she customarily did on these phone answering occasions, initially Norma stood with her right ankle crossed over her left. And as she was at the moment barefoot, the sole of her right foot arched and wrinkled a little as now with bended knee, in her relaxed habitual phone answering attitude she rested the tops of her toes on the dirty, lint-specked linoleum floor.

During phone calls lasting any length of time, I'd noticed that every twenty seconds or so Norma would switch her standing foot, resting one ankle over the other in her usual characteristic manner.

Sometimes, depending on what was being said to her on the other end of the line, responsively Norma would alter her stance and absentmindedly scrunch and wiggle her bare or white-socked toes and in doing so, give some outward 'readable' expression to her private thoughts and emotions as might be occasioned by the caller.

It was surprising how much 'language' I could intuit, or decipher, by the close observance of such absentminded responsive actions by Norma - and, for that matter, also by any other such similarly distracted Sock Room attending phone call respondents.

But this time, the call was over in just a few seconds.

And 'Acting Superintendent' Norma Newlove - Norma's tacitly self-awarded supervisory appointment, that my two supervisors also tacitly acknowledged and approved of and so did absolutely nothing to dissuade or discourage the Sock Room doyenne's assumption of authority in their absence - replaced the phone receiver and glared down at me.

"Community servant David double-oh-seven!" yelled Norma authoritatively. "Report to CSOs Karen and Linda's office - now!"

There's no need to shout - like some parade-ground regimental sergeant-major at some cadet with his beret tilted at the wrong angle! I thought - but didn't dare say.

It was well instilled into me by now that, whatever the provocation, by neither look, word, or deed must I in the slightest disrespect Norma - or, come to that, any of the sock-changing, Sock Room attending females.

They might well insist upon my being administered the Standard Six: the summarily sanctioned six-stroke, bare bottom caning punishment, often prescribed as a first resort, on the spot chastisement.

Which upon request, after positioning me facing the wall and restraining my wrists to the two-barred safety rail at the foot of an occupied recliner, my supervisors would hand over their cane to the offended vengeful female.

Who would then pull my white uniform shorts down to my ankles, and with the delighted chosen reclinant's socked or bare soles right in my face and to the ensuing encouraging cheers and gleeful shouts of her onlooking sock-changing sisters, exult in performing the corrective measure herself.

For some reason, the Sock Room brought out the bitch in them, and I didn't need to make matters any worse - invariably it was in my best interests to just compliantly submit to whatever might be coming.

Norma hadn't yet returned to her recliner.

She was glaring down at me, waiting for an answer.

And not just an answer: respectful acknowledgement of her harshly issued order.

Norma Newlove was the bane of my life - her, and her original Sock Room cronies Gina Stainham and Cheryl Chubb.

Right from Day One, matching Norma's high-90s% Sock Room attendance, if not her seemingly total obsessive vindictiveness, Gina and Cheryl have been Norma's moral support stalwart companions: malicious and malevolently imaginative contributors to and cruel and merciless instigators and inflictors of my daily Sock Room miseries and misadventures.

Though by now as just mentioned, quite a few other cruel-minded collaborators and perfidious participants had joined the wicked witches' coven, considerably swelling the Sock Room 'regular' ranks.

I looked along the long row of well-padded black leather recliners, situated on the upper level behind the two-barred safety rail in the 'Spectators' Gallery' overlook - the overlook, that afforded an elevated and unimpeded view of the asinine assemblage of ludicrous apparatuses in my one-man-laundry domain.

As was the case most of the time, the recliners were all occupied.

Occupied, by a sock-changing, Sock Room attending female of Canford, the soles of her dirty white-socked or bare feet, facing out toward my workstation as though as an ever present taunting and tormenting reminder of my Sock Room community servant's sock-washing/foot-pampering preposterous purpose.

Only one or two of them, I didn't know or recognise.

But the rest of the townswomen were familiar ... some of them, very familiar.

Gina Stainham: The soles of her white sports-socked feet were the dirtiest and filthiest of all. The areas around the toes, the balls of the feet, and the heels, were almost black.

Barely any white was left to be seen. Even the midsection lesser impacting arches were an almost equally impenetrable charcoal grey: from Gina's predilection for going about shoeless; and from her pleasure-deriving penchant for making my already difficult, disgusting dreadful work as unnecessarily diabolical and disheartening as possible.

Cheryl Chubb: The chubby-toed soles of her fleshy bare feet, spotlessly clean ... after earlier I had routinely tongue-bathed her 'Monday-morning feet': Her 'traditionally' days' left unwashed dirty, stinky Monday-morning feet.

The terrible 'tradition', harking back to the now seemingly years ago days when the Sock Room was only open Monday to Friday. But that Cheryl had nevertheless kept up, despite the introduction more than three months ago of seven-day opening.

As a constant all-day reminder to me of exactly what I had 'consented' to do for her - and what sometimes she would 'request' me to repeat, just for the sheer power-trip pleasure of it - Cheryl would often leave until home-time, selecting from the shelves a clean pair of white sports socks.

There were others, vying for my reluctant notice and respectful acknowledgement of their personage and presence.

Not the least, expectant of my immediate recognition and prompt silent servile salutations, were the three 'regular' college girls: Anita, Trudi and Naomi.

Anita - who greatly enjoyed pressing her bare feet into my face; rubbing her reddish-pink soles in, so that her vaguely vinegary foot scent would linger as a long-lasting reminder.

Trudi - who liked to make me sniff her feet. First, her white-socked feet. And then her bare feet; particularly under and in between her toes, where the ripe blue-cheesy odour was strongest.

Naomi - who loved to have her soles licked and her toes sucked. First, she'd have me lick upwards; watching me intently as I licked from heel to toes. She would then turn over on her recliner, lying on her front with her head resting on her forearms and her feet depending just beyond the end, her toes pointing downward. And, standing against the bare brick wall below the two-barred safety rail away I'd go again. Licking upwards - this time from toes to heel and working my tongue as hard as I could - listening to her sighs of bliss that I didn't know whether or not she wanted me to hear but suspected she did.

But, by the relative standards of Canford's sock-changing, Sock Room attending females, Anita, Trudi and Naomi were pussy cats.

None of them had yet caned me, either personally or by proxy.

If initially they'd been disappointed or dissatisfied with my first fumbling efforts and maladroit attentions and further displeased with an unenthusiastic and lacklustre application that also left a lot to be desired, apparently they were all pleased and satisfied with my responsive attitude adjustment and subsequent much-improved performances at their direction.

I suppose the three 'regular' college students were what my girlfriend Tina might term as 'passive abusive'.

Anita, Trudi and Naomi behaved no differently from by far the greater majority of females these days, who, untroubled by conscience, took casual advantage: scrupled to unremorsefully avail themselves, of the many various AFP-sponsored male-served female-friendly facilities on offer.

Put simply: They saw no harm in it.

The three of them, unusually all here together today, their free periods apparently coinciding, seemed to attend the Sock Room whenever they weren't attending their college classes.

Making eye contact with any of the Sock Room attendees was just asking for trouble.

But none of the reclining females liked to be ignored; didn't like that I was trying to blank out the unpleasant and disconcerting fact of their watchful and overbearing presence. Didn't like, that I was hoping to avoid their demands.

But what they did like, was that glumly and despondently I routinely studied the immutable reality of the dirty soles of their white-socked feet, in assessing the level of sock-washing difficulty they were - whether gleefully, amusedly, or simply because principally that was what I was there for - inflicting upon me.

Apparently, that didn't count as slacking.

But I looked up to Norma Newlove, my across the road neighbour from hell, now standing and staring down at me expectantly for an answer from the top of the six wooden steps.

The six wooden steps, dividing the long row of closely spaced black leather recliners, and leading down to my miserable workplace environment.

Where, eight hours a day (ten at weekends), seven days a week, to earn my Unemployment Benefits I scrupulously turned inside out and meticulously hand-washed and steam-ironed to exacting inspection-passing standards the participant sock-changing females of Canford's dirty socks.

An unsettling vision of barely bottled-up belligerence, Norma Newlove's eyes glinted ominously as impatiently she stood with hands on hips, staring daggers at me from the top of the six wooden steps: another of Norma's non-verbal 'languages' that I could intuitively interpret.

Norma was still waiting for an answer.

And not just any old answer: my bowed, cowed, submissively acquiescent response, conveying clear, unambiguous acknowledgement of her unquestioned and unchallengeable authority and indicating obedient prompt conformity to her sharply spoken command.

And I knew that if she didn't get it pronto, she wouldn't tell me again: The soles of her descending bare feet thudding against those six wooden steps, she would come haring down them in two seconds flat to severely 'chastise' me.

Norma inched forward.

From my lower vantage point, I could see that, overhanging the top step, the pads of Norma's toes were now very grubby.

Every evening, my last duty before going home was to sweep and mop the Sock Room's dark-grey linoleum floor.

But now by midmorning, from the street-dirty footwear of the almost constant comings and goings of sock-changing females, the floor was all dirtied up again.

In her tacitly appointed capacity of Acting Superintendent, of a manner and means of her own discretion and discernment, Norma was hair-trigger ready to administer summary 'correction' ... and she was still waiting for an answer.

Norma had been letting her lustrous black hair grow long.

Complimenting my neighbour from hell nemesis rather went against the grain. But I had to admit to myself that her now very long hair really suited her.

Richly dark and silky, and attractively black-blue highlighted from the harsh white glare of the Sock Room's chain-hung fluorescent light tubes, hanging straight, her crowning glory now reached all the way down to just above the elasticated waistband of her blue- with white leg-stripes tracksuit-bottoms, Norma's usual leisure wear.