Arbeit Macht Frei

Gravel rocks are not my favourite thing at the moment. However, Maurice has earned his first Kiwi dollars (about time too) by taking the opportunity to bury about half a million of the little blighters in a foundation for a garage extension. Andrew, a builder from the Mount Vineyard, asked me to help him barrow more than a truck load of concrete into a not so shallow footing trench. I jumped at the chance to do something useful. Arbeit Macht Frei.

But I realised I don't have any gear I can get concrete on. So I went on a mission to find charity shop clothes for the occasion. The Salvation Army stores are in pretty much every town and I had spotted one in Tauranga. I went in. Its smell was reminiscent of one of those church hall bric-a-brac sales I remember from the early 80s. The fashions and the niknaks seem hardly to have changed. Misshapen suits and bedraggled woolen cardies hang forlornly, rejected and neglected, waiting for someone not quite as deceased at the previous owner to come along and wear them with pride again. My delusions of grandeur at finding a cheap pair of Levis were swiftly downgraded to delusions of slight apprehension that I might, if I am lucky, find a pair of BeWise seconds which would fit my still less than perfect but nevertheless average form. I was wrong at that.

Forgetting the woolen and polyester monstrosities that made up the men’s trouser rail, I had no choice but to rummage through the ‘unisex’ rail. Elasticated waistbands, drainpipes, stone bleached, more elasticated waistbands. This was going nowhere. 80% of these ‘unisex’ items were clearly marked and made for the larger lady. I don’t want to get concrete on my bootcut H&Ms, I can’t concrete in my underpants, so I have to pick something… I’ve never been on a Kiwi building site, but I can imagine it being a no less brutal place than home, if I were to turn up in slightly camp and effeminate pedal pushers. I looked to see if anyone had noticed me lurking so long in the transvestite’s trouser aisle. The only person near was a not quite deceased old man looking at the men’s trouser rail, facing away. Suddenly he let out a triumphant fart, noticed by no one and ignored by all. Indignant, I grabbed the only pair of men’s jeans on the rail (the 38” waist might just about stay on with a belt) and made a sharp exit via the shoes stand. There I grabbed a pair of tired old trainers marked up at $5 and headed for the door. At the cash desk, bizarrely, I picked up a panoramic camera for $1.50. It turns out that the shoes were on special at only a dollar so for less than a pint of shandy on the Gloucester Road I had scored myself a concrete-carefree builder’s outfit.

I was running late. I zoomed off to the site and went indoors to change. Whilst the 38” waist only just went round my 34” hips, the legs didn’t even make it close to my ankles. Bugger. In my haste I had in fact acquired the slightly camp pedal pushers of my nightmarish prevision. Or make that premonition? So scissors saved my bacon. I chopped the legs at a more trendy and respectable length just over the knee. You can see how I got it just perfect...




I pulled in my stomach, puffed up my chest and went to join the men with the concrete pouring truck. It all went to plan. And I only crashed the barrow a few times.

After a beer and some pizza with the foreman, and half an hour doing spelling homework with his 8 year old lad, I left with a huge sense of satisfaction. The first bit of hard graft in 6 weeks. It’s true. Work makes you free. Or in this case sets your fashion sense free.