And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine.
There was nothing I particularly wanted to do. You didn't have to do anything. You could just drift and hang out and see what happened, which suited me fine, even more than being a customs officer or a professional footballer or a guitarist.
I'd discovered in life that if you're too eager others tend to get less eager. And if you're less eager it tends to make others more eager. So the more eager I was the less eager I seemed.