Nothing is ever wasted....

Resources from my past still keep making themselves available in the most unlikely ways, even my brief holiday employment at J.J. Craig's in the mid sixties.

I drove an ancient flat-top Bedford, and one of my principal tasks was collecting cattle hides from the railway station and carting them off to Collyer Watson's hide store about twenty minutes drive away in Penrose.

Now these hides had been sitting in the summer sun for several days on their way up from freezing works (I think that's meat packers for US readers) all over the upper half of the North Island, and besides stinking to high heaven, they were covered in large maggots. I had to manhandle these from the railway truck onto my truck, and then help unload them at the other end.

I frequently tell clients about coming home from work ponging like a skunk, peeling off my clothes and dropping them in the washing machine, and stepping gratefully into the shower.

At that job it was easy to know what I had brought home from work with me and take appropriate steps so that it did not interfere with the rest of my life.

Not all jobs are as easy or as obvious to deal with, yet the stuff you bring home from them is frequently just as offensive.