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Beans on Toast, 2025

Sam

It’s the last shift.  Everyone is feeling good.  In just a few hours, they’ll be done, work all finished, AND they’ll still have festival to go to.

They’re all chatting about who they’ve seen and who they’re gonna see tonight.  Sam still hasn’t made up his mind about Bryan Ferry.  Many of the girls are excited about seeing Taylor Swift.  Some are up for Christine and the Queens or whatever they’re called now.  Lyn and Lex are talking about this bloke called Hamish Hawk that they’re going to see at the Park.  Everyone is looking forward to making the most of the last day.

They all pull on their PPE and file into the recycling shed.  They’re doing it like clockwork now.  They’ve worked out the order in which to get dressed.  They’ve got the hang of getting those hazmat suits on over their boots.  They’ve planned the right amount of time for one last cuppa before they go in.  And when they get inside, they know exactly what they are doing and where they are going to be standing.

Bill and Mick at the hopper end with Samanfa.  They prefer to be kept busy the whole time and the work there is constant.  Tilly, Lex, and Lyn line up further down the line.  There’s more time for chat (and dancing) there, but the sorting comes in rushes.  If there’s a weighty bag of recycling, much of it gets past Bill and Mick which gives them plenty to do.  Sam’s at the far end.  Like a backstop.  There to catch anything that gets past the others.  It’s all about percentages, this recycling lark.  It ain’t worth trying to catch every last piece of food/can/bottle/whatever.  You get what you can while keeping the conveyor line moving continuously.  When it goes quiet on the line, Sam tidies up the floor or gives Anne a hand taking the bins that have been filled round to the lorries.

Working at the end means that Sam has to deal with one of nature’s biggest challenges: the can stuffed in a cup.  If you were to ask Sam about the average Glastonbury punter, he’d normally tell you they were the salt of the earth: kind, considerate, and open-minded.  Get him after he’s been on the recycling line and he’ll tell you that he’s seen evidence of the worst of humanity: the paper cup stuffer.  

The paper cup stuffer delights in finding a used paper cup and ramming a drinks can down inside as far as it’ll go.  In Inferno, Dante reserved a circle of hell for the Stuffers of Paper Cups, between the Counsellors of Fraud and the Sowers of Discord.  One of Sam’s jobs is to extract the cans.  He squeezes likely looking paper cups as they go past.  Sometimes that’s enough for the can to pop out.  The more expert cup stuffers have used enough force to wedge the can inside, so Sam has to prise it out with his fingers or rip the cup apart.  He’s only got a second or two to grab each passing cup and fights with himself not to take each missed can as a personal failure.  He has to tell himself repeatedly that this is all about percentages.  Sometimes the can is hidden too expertly or is stuck too rigidly to be worth freeing.

The really serious cup stuffers know this.  They’ll stuff the can inside the paper cup and then stuff the remains of their lunch in there.  Or they’ll take the stuffed paper cup and stuff that upside down inside another cup.  It always disappoints Sam to have to admit that, even at Glastonbury, home of kindness and consideration, there exist a handful of two factor authentication cup stuffers.

He’s in a good frame of mind this morning.  Everyone is, what with it being the last shift. And it being sunny. And life just generally being sweet and a bunch of cherries. He’s debagging stuffed cups and managing to get a good ratio.  He’s sorting through a collection of white, green, and yellow cups when he finds a doubled stuffed example.  He’s not sure whether it’s hiding a can or not, so he hesitates over it.  There’s nothing else coming, so he gives it another squeeze.  It ain’t a can, but it could be something else.  The conveyor isn’t bringing him anything worth recycling just now – the waste has become more organic and the rest of the crew are picking out what little is worth getting from this selection.  Sam nags at the paper cups like a frustrated schoolboy trying to unknot his shoelaces.  Gradually the first cup comes off.  Inside the second cup is what looks like a small wallet or maybe a travelcard holder.  Why would you do that?  Anyway, he can pull it out now, so he does.  He flicks it open – as he suspected, it’s empty.  Oh well.

But he doesn’t throw it back on the belt and consign it to the landfill.  It’s a wee bit fatter than it should be, so he puts it on the corner of the pallet behind him next to the unopened cans of booze and minor memorabilia that the others are collecting.  He’ll have more time to check it out when the break arrives.

In fact, he’d forgotten about it when the break did arrive, but then Samanfa came to pick up her rescued booze and Sam, noticing the wallet, picked it up and took it with him so he could examine it more closely.

He gives it a rinse as he’s cleaning his gloves and his hands.  He unzips his hazmat so he can slip it in the back pocket of his trousers and grabs himself a cuppa.  He sits down with the rest of his crew and listens to their stories of Saturday night.  He listens to more arguments about Fontaines and Idles.  He gets out the wallet and starts to investigate.  Nagging at it like a buried splinter.  He was right.  He’s seen one like this before.  Hold it in one hand and it opens like a V.  It’s got a transparent sleeve on each side for a credit card or oyster or whatever.  They’re both empty.  Turn it over and get your fingernail down the spine to separate the bits of velcro and it opens the other way.  Bingo.  Buried treasure.  There are a couple of crisp unused twenty pound notes hidden inside.

He closes it and shows it to Lex who’s nearest.  

“See what I got,” he says.

She opens it quickly, sees nothing and hands it back.  He opens it properly and shows her the cash.  He feels smug like a magician.  His brother had one like this.  But why would you have a wallet that you can’t open easily?  He can’t really see the point of it, unless it’s to show off like his brother does.  He realises he’s doing the same.    

“Drinks are on me, then,” he says.