Mushroom Packing - A Perilous Pursuit?

“Is that a varicose vein in your leg?”, Glam-Nan enquired, leaning forward to squint curiously at Accountant’s lily white leg, poking out of the end of his shorts.

“Yes it is” replied Accountant enthusiastically, perking up at Glam-Nan’s interest in the long term condition that had never caused him a day’s discomfort.

“How’ve you got that then?” said Glam-Nan, not as savvy as I at avoiding any interest in Accountant’s bodily functions.

“I don’t know really” replied Accountant somberly, rubbing the offending vein as if to ease the pain he’d shouldered silently for so many years.

“Well, has anyone in your family got them?” said Glam-Nan. I rolled my eyes at Snowy, who I assumed was finding the pointlessness of her continued enquiries as tedious as I.

“No, I don’t think so” said Accountant, his brow furrowed with the concentration of a man working his way back five generations for any history of knotted legs. “I did work in a mushroom factory once though”

“Oh really?” replied Glam-Nan who I knew was working up to the disclosure of her very own pair of varicose encrusted legs, waiting for the optimum moment to reveal her own personal suffering as she stood for years, without breaks, hairdressing for a shilling a week.

“Yes. There were men and women who had worked there for thirty years and I always remember their legs were all gnarled up from standing for so long” said Accountant, his words tinged with concern as to the toll his time at the factory may have taken on his own health.

"How long did you work there?” I enquired, momentarily interested.

Accountant took a second to calculate, then delivered his answer with the utmost gravity, “About ten weeks”.

Laughing at Accountant continued for about an hour. It stopped for the “America’s Got Talent” Results, and then recommenced in earnest.

Accountant pretended he didn’t care but his sideway evils told a different story.