Malcolm Watson

Instructions for Initiates of the inferno

Wear your hard hat at all times, even though it's made of blue
plastic and molten iron is tapped roughly 1300˚C. It'll
help when the boys on the platform drop refractory bricks
on your head when they're bored with nothing to do.

Be careful going around corners, where they might try to
knock off your hat with the high-pressure hose. Avoid
splashes of hot metal, which will not only burn or blind you,
but, being very heavy, will likely break your leg.

Remember, molten slag, unlike pig iron, sticks to your skin.
Make sure you're hard to find towards the end of your 6 – 2, unless you
want to "volunteer" for a double shift. Insist the man behind you in
the queue for minor injuries at the nurse's station goes in front of you.

Get friendly with the loco men You'll find that you can kill
a twenty-minute walk across the site, especially handy on a 2-10.
Make sure (important this) there's not a corner behind you at a tapping,
unless you want to run through molten metal, should there be a spill.

Keep your coat on when you nip down to the pipe room for a kip;
you're hard to spot between the black pipes in the dark on nights.
Except the change-hands know the best spots, and they'll slip
in quietly to bollock you, then chalk you up for shitty shifts.

Never jump the yard-wide troughs of white-hot iron flowing faster
than a river, even if the old hands nonchalantly do. One trip,
one error…Just go the long way round. Watch out for gas leaks; it pays
to move around the platform, especially on windless or misty days.

Take no notice of the old men with their burns and scars
(or the one-legged bloke who's now a weighbridge clerk
who used to work in the casting bay). Or their tales of suicides
and instant disappearances in the pots of molten iron,

leaving nothing. Nothing. Not a hair or bone or jacket button
or hob nail boot, or watch or pen knife, glasses case or buckle
or pennies in their pockets, or anything to bury or to scatter. Only
a smoking film of grease that's gone as quickly as the popping bubbles.

Get your mate to clock your time card when the bus is late. Keep your fingers
off the chains when shovelling sand into the sling, or blue clay for the tap-hole.
Pray for no mistakes, no misunderstandings when the iron begins to run. Do not be
hypnotised to seek a consummation with the beautiful fire. Be awed. Be wary.