Product Description

When factory worker Pinquean Smallcreep, who has slotted a certain type of slot into a certain type of pulley for many years, packs his sandwiches and sets out on a journey to investigate what it is he is producing, his discoveries become increasingly more bizarre and disturbing. Peter Currell Brown's brilliantly surreal satire of automation and alienation is as exhilarating and unforgettable today as when it was first published.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95579 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

John Bowden, Sunday Times
'A most lucidly written nightmare, and a pleasure to read for its prose alone... Apocalyptic. But funny with it.'

About the Author
Peter Currell Brown wrote Smallcreep's Day while working in a Gloucestershire factory. Its success enabled him give up factory work and realise his dream of setting up a craft pottery in rural Gloucestershire. Since then he has been involved in a series of craft enterprises in various parts of the country. He now lives and works in woodlands near Sherwood Forest making spinning-wheels for enthusiasts and museums.

Excerpted from Smallcreep's Day by Peter Currell Brown. Copyright © 2008. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It was late that morning when I moved out of our particular small corner of bearable noise into the body of the factory. The previous evening I had asked my wife to pack me extra sandwiches. This she had done, and had cut the bread and cheese with great generosity - Swiss cheese, which she knows I am very fond of, and bacon fried crisp and allowed to go cold. These I now carried in a knapsack over my shoulder, and in my right-hand pocket was an unopened tin of my usual pipe-tobacco.
I strode forward with what was, I fancy now, a rather exaggerated determination, for I was secretly a little apprehensive. George and Frank, whom I left behind in the slotting section to look after matters while I was away, were completely baffled by my escapade and said so; but I knew that they were very capable men with nearly a century of service to the firm between them, and that they were completely trustworthy. No, I had no anxieties about what I was leaving behind me; it was what lay ahead - all nonsense really, after all, I had worked here in this section of the factory for sixteen years; and yet in all that time I had not been very far from my machine in any direction. There was never any need to, you see; besides, we were busy and I had never had the time. Some of the men, I know, found important looking pieces of paper from time to time in the waste bins and would go walking off carrying them, to show anyone who might stop them. They often came back with strange stories of what they had seen in various parts of the factory, and one or two never came back at all. But, for myself, I believed none of the stories and regarded these men as irresponsible loiterers, capable of any amount of lying. But all those years I had had a secret yearning to know this one particular fact, a yearning which had recently grown so much in intensity that I could neither sleep, nor work, nor eat, nor play with my children: so that I had become no better than a burden to my family and friends and feared that I must fast be becoming a liability to my employers. The question had to be answered; and then the pressure of work eased off, so that I had resolved to set out to find that answer.
I strode between the rows of huge machines. Row upon row came towards me like the waves of the sea which seem to come from the horizon. Soon our own small section of four machines was far behind me, and the noise had risen to a pitch which I found quite painful. I had expected this. I think there can be no noise on earth like the noise of a factory. It is similar to the noise of a talking crowd, in that although one can hear every single syllable uttered one cannot distinguish any separate word. I know the noise of a lathe very well, indeed, I can distinguish a Parkson from a Colchester with no difficulty; I can recognise the sound of a vertical borer and can distinguish it from a horizontal borer; likewise with centred and centreless grinders, shapers and planers, single and multiple-spindled drilling machines, and so on. It is, I should think, rather like bird-spotting. The metal being cut in all these different ways makes sounds very like birds. On the shaper it caws like a persistent crow; pins and small punches being ground sound exactly like quarrelling sparrows, but more regular. Most machines squawk and screech and scream like the parrot house at the zoo, but the parrots all make quite different noises too, I imagine. But now that I was surrounded on all sides and overwhelmed by these machines and many others which I knew, I could hear none of them. There was only a ceaseless roar, which seemed to impinge on the mind not only by way of the ears, but through the nose and mouth and scalp also. I felt contained in some kind of jelly of sound, difficult to walk through and difficult to breathe, even difficult to see through. But I was quite familiar with all this, and had come prepared. I stopped, opened my knapsack and drew out a quantity of cotton wool. This I pushed carefully into each ear. Relief was instantaneous and I strode on, much comforted.

Customer Reviews

A disturbing view on the everyday life of a factory worker
Any spiritually-minded person that has had experience of tedious factory work will relate to this book.
Smallcreep is slightly obsequious worker who knows his rank and place in this huge foundry gives a fascinating commentary . On a quest for the General Parts Stores as he drifts through the workshops and offices which are full of weird surreal characters and machinery you get feelings of absolute loneliness, despair and isolation. Not only is the book damning of factory life and mindless people it also attacks the hum-drum banality of everyday life, consumerism and politics. You are given the impression that the factory is actually portrayed as the tedious circle of life in which we live and Smallcreep's eventual return to his machine after the round tour demonstrates this, the last few pages scream in desperation at the despicable tedium mankind has created for himself.
It appears that this novel was one-off by the author who has obviously written from experience, the sleeve says that he gave up factory work entirely and runs his own pottery.

surreal, strange and misanthropic
I have just re-read this novel after twenty-two years and wonder why I left it for so long.
This book is a strange and surreal commentary as factory worker Pinquean Smallcreep doing a mundane repetetive job as a machine operator attempts to discover what goes on elswhere in his place of work and getting into some very odd situations as a result. This book has a very misanthropic view on the entire structure of 1970's industrial relations, people, and life itself. The storyline would make an excellent art-house film.

Smallcreep's Day rises again
Full marks to Pinter & Martin for republishing this long-unavailable classic. Smallcreep's surreal journey through the inside of a factory is gripping, highly imaginative, and bizarre. Brown worked in R A Lister's engineering works in Dursley when he wrote this book; at one time the factory employed over 4000 but is now much reduced. Curiously, J K Rowling named Harry Potter's boring uncle 'Dursley'. She never knew that it had already inspired Brown's 1960s masterpiece. Brown never wrote another book: he never felt he had to.