I never had any business working at a pig farm.

For starters, I was almost entirely unskilled in any discipline useful to a pig farm. I was sensitive and quiet, prone to both perfectionism and procrastination, and had the soft hands of a person who spent most of their time playing video games, reading paperback philosophy books, and tinkering with old computers.

Pigs on the farm seemed so much more keenly aware of the world than other animals.

And yet for one sad, sweaty, smelly week in 2006, I was a pig farmer.

When I was 13 we moved from the suburbs to deep in the country. Every member of my family had the same first impression of our new place; the obvious, aggressively odorous presence of a piggery nearby, though that’s not the one I ended up working at.

After graduating high school, I was left with around a year to fill before uni. I took odd jobs at nearby farms – picking apples, or stooking chaff (which I assure you are both real words) – anything that only required walking, lifting, chatting and occasionally driving. I was sometimes paid in steak breakfasts, but I often did as much daydreaming as working, so that was fair enough.

The pig farm was different. It was a place of real labour. It was owned by my girlfriend’s uncle, and run by his two adult sons. She had suggested I work there, and I was vouched for by a worker who happened to be boarding at my parent’s house.

Honestly, I gave it my all. The smell didn’t bother me. Nor did the pre-sunrise start, the need to shower in and out, or the same gross starchy work clothes every day. The very first thing that bothered me was that I was obviously and irrevocably useless.

The workers were flabbergasted at how long it took me to blast heinous mouldy cheese products off wooden pallets with a power hose, and in disbelief of how much cutting liquid and steel I could waste, simply because I could not measure accurately and was mysteriously afraid of the circular saw. I couldn’t weld. I wasn’t strong. I didn’t have the innate physical abilities of the locals, or the incomprehensible drive to work of the blow-ins who I was advised would disappear after two paychecks.

And, of course, there were the pigs.