Gallowglass
Gallowglass is a UK-based monkey rental organisation.
Background[edit | edit source]
Gallow monkeys can be rented for almost any reason, but they are most commonly tasked with pointlessly putting together enormous great big things of one shape or another, and then later taking them apart again. They are particularly skilled at putting out lots and lots and lots of chairs, and laying down dirty great sheets of metal for people to walk on. How many chairs, or dirty great sheets of metal a given monkey can carry in one go implies relative dominance within the group.
Monkeys generally come pre-trained to some degree or another, and are graded at either Elite, General or Fucking New Guy level. A Crew Chief is for the most part undistinguishable from a subordinate monkey, but a Regional Manager can be readily identified as the laziest of the group.
Gallow monkeys were most famously hired to star in television advertisements for PG Tips teabags.
Becoming a Gallow Monkey[edit | edit source]
There is always a need for new monkeys in Gallowglass. This is because some of the older monkeys get new, better paid jobs in other zoos. Some monkeys even fly planes now, whilst others are learning to be plumbers. It is very difficult to leave the tribe however, as life in Gallowglass allows plenty of time for monkey-snowboarding and other non-work simian pursuits.
The first stage of becoming a Gallow monkey is to appear in front of, and impress a Regional Manager monkey. The bigger and harder a monkey is, as well as his propensity to drink and smoke more than any other monkey, ensure recruitment.
Monkeys must then attend a compulsory, but unpaid induction session. This is to ensure that new monkeys know how to lift, drop and move things properly, while smoking and screeching on their phones. The better a monkey is at this, the more bananas it will be paid.
Monkeys can come from anywhere. In London they are often antipodeans. This is because Southern hemisphere monkeys are a bit daft and don't like their native warm weather, hot lady monkeys or BBQ's. Instead they come to Britain to lift steel-deck all day and night.
Soon, monkeys will be required to join a crew. A crew is a select group of monkeys who help techs to put stuff together. Techs are skinny, wiry monkeys who whilst not strong enough to be proper Gallow monkeys are really good at wiring, and at fannying around with lights and speakers.
Life as a Gallow Monkey[edit | edit source]
Life as a Gallow monkey has many rewards, but no-one knows what they are. This is often termed living the Gallow Dream (see below), essentially a delusional state of fulfilment. The ultimate aspiration of the dream is to become a Gnarly Awesomator. To achieve this is to achieve the pinnacle of stength and skill - monkeys effectively can no longer distinguish between being on-site and off-site. Such monkeys might succeed at all tasks (or bosch everything), work topless and be fuelled by Buckfast.
The promise of the dream ensures that monkeys always try to work harder than any other monkey. This ensures that Gallowglass have only the best monkeys and do more monkeying than anyone else.
There are even monkeys in Spain and France. No-one is very sure about these monkeys as they are very new. Hard working monkeys earn the most bananas, but again rarely achieve the full dream.
Monkeys get to wear blue clothes, which are generally many sizes too big for them. Some monkeys do not even have their own clothes anymore, as there is no longer any need for them.
Monkeys must be prepared to work all of the time. Student monkeys (being not fully subscribed to the dream) aren't as inclined to do this and as a result are usually disliked by their Regional Manager monkeys.
Monkeys often drive around in specially manufactured silver monkey Land-Rovers. These are identical to regular Land-Rovers, but are produced to 1/3 scale to accommodate their simian drivers and passengers. Aside from the smaller size, these are easily recognisable by the ridiculous pictures of other monkeys pretending to do techy stuff. What these pictures don't show however, are the disastrous explosions created in such situations, as monkeys will invarably attempt to wire up car batteries to video walls etc. Such disasters are primarily caused through initiative (see below). The punishment for such things is a strike and a fine of one banana. A monkey with too many strikes is fit only for the circus, or organ grinding work.
Initiative[edit | edit source]
This is a very dangerous concept bred out of monkeys as soon as possible. As soon as monkeys are left unattended, they often exercise initiative. This can only result in disaster and double-handling. This is when monkeys do the same task more than once because there has been a problem somewhere.
Monkeys must do only as their Crew Chief tells them. This must not be confused with doing what their Crew Chief does. When this happens, monkeys will be found standing around, smoking, screetching on their phones and pointing/shouting at each other. This is very much a case of too many chiefs and not enough monkeys - disasterous!
Terms and Conditions of Rental[edit | edit source]
Customers may rent crews of anything between one and one thousand monkeys at a time.
Monkeys are on-hire for a minimum four hour call. This means that there is time to sober up before the job, or at least cram a few more in before the client notices.
Monkeys can work as long as the organ-grinder wishes them to, and indeed monkeys may work on a given task for days and days on end with nothing but their contractual 10 minute breaks at precisely 4:20 (am and pm).
The Gallow Dream[edit | edit source]
The Gallow Dream is a utopian ideal that Gallow monkeys subscribe to in order to justify their way of life. Sort of like a lesser version of the American Dream, monkeys believe that through working hard they will be achieve untold quantities of bananas, everlasting monkey-snowboarding holidays and their monkeychicks-for-free. Monkeys are not people however, and so the outlook for achieving the dream in reality is very bleak indeed.
This psychosis of 'the dream' was recently studied by Dr. Veginald von Viperhausen in his paper "Delusion, Steel Deck and the Sub-Human Simian at Work (2003)". In this Nobel Prize winning work, Dr. Viperhausen proposed that the Gallow monkey was a deeply brainwashed creature that yearned only for hard work (or graft), smoking materials, Tennents Lager and regular sponsored piss-ups in the Millennium Splatter banana curry shop in the West End of Glasgow. When fully enraptured by the dream, a monkey would do almost anything, anywhere and at any time, and seemingly enjoy it. In addition, the subject would not be concerned with such hardships as having to live in the back of a Ford Transit van, feeding only on Ginsters pastries, or having no discernible future. The paper was of course met with international consternation, but due to the confusing status of these wage-earning primates, no-one could really give a shit, and went back to burning gypsies.
HQ[edit | edit source]
Monkeys are hired through Gallowglass HQ. HQ is a big tree in the mystical forest of London village, where an elaborate network of cup and string telephones and alpen-horns communicate round the kingdom where monkeys are to go. No-one really knows what goes on in the HQ tree, but it is thought that there are wild banana parties.
It is alleged that there is a huge room that the Chief Monkey Gods swim amongst all the bananas that the monkeys have earned them.