Granny's Tales and Treasures
Work up to 1977
Trust House Forte Restaurant, Crystal Palace Stadium
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My first job, when I was fifteen, was at the restaurant at Crystal Palace sports stadium. It was quite exciting because it was used by athletes you’d actually heard of. I remember Kip Keino, the Kenyan runner was there at one point. The restaurant was run by Trust House Forte and like many establishments, once you knew what went on behind the scenes, you wouldn’t have eaten there. We had to work Saturdays and Sundays and it was two bus journeys away, so not very convenient. I got the job through friends who already worked there. There didn’t seem to be much of an interview process, I basically just turned up and started work.
This job only lasted a few weeks as homework made it impossible. Depending on which manager was on duty, you got paid 20p or 25p an hour. There were a few incidents that stick in the mind. Much of the machinery was new to us and a friend who worked there, *, tried to soften hardened butter by putting it in the microwave. This might have been a good plan had he not put it in for several minutes, resulting in melted butter running everywhere. Then there was an incident with frozen chips. This was in the fairly early days of freezers, certainly none of us had freezers at home. Somehow these chips had gone brown in the freezer and they were served, thinking they were cooked. Then I was responsible for putting the coffee beans in the wrong part of the coffee machine, a fact to which I never owned up.
The Pet Shop
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I then had a, fairly short-lived, Saturday job, in the run up to Christmas 1972, in the local pet shop in Shirley, just along from Lovibonds and John Menzies. Mum patronised the shop and I think that is how I got the job; again, I don’t remember any kind of interview. I enjoyed this job and I remember learning to cut the horse meat into portions that were exactly the weight requested. I always wondered why the owner spelt ‘cage’ ‘gage’ on all the signs e.g. ‘large hamster gage’ etc.. I acquired Ariadne the hamster while I was there. I was laid off in the after Christmas lull and there was never the demand for me to be re-employed.
Book-keeping
I also helped mum with her book-keeping at various times, banging out long lists on an adding machine and checking back through called over figures for her. I very briefly helped a friend’s father who published holiday guides.
Postman
I worked as an auxiliary postman, doing the Christmas post for three years in the mid 1970s. The local sorting office at East Croydon employed many students in the run up to Christmas. Each year I vowed never again but after a year you forgot how arduous it was; a bit like having children I suppose. The first year, two students were assigned to help a regular postman with his round. Mine was down Shirley Road. The following year our postie remained behind sorting and two of us did the deliveries and the final year I did all the delivering myself. It was very hard work and I think I ‘went sick’ for the last two days one year. In 1976, the pay was £1.88 an hour. A pay packet shows that I earned £32.19 for the days up to 21st December and there would have been more to come for 22nd-24th. I can remember that some people’s letter boxes were elusive and I vowed never to have one at ground level (some were below single glass panels in doors) as it was a nightmare to bend down with a heavy sack over your shoulder. There were also the inevitable half-naked people who answered the door for parcel deliveries.
Barmaid
Once at college, I had a grant but I was determined to pay mum for my keep in the holidays. I quickly got work behind the college bar. As first years, we were assigned to collecting glasses, my regular night was Wednesdays. I can remember turning them upside-down on the rotating rubber brushes to wash them and the awful smell of wet cigarette ash when we washed the ash trays.
Despite not liking late nights, I enjoyed this and it was a good way to meet people. This bar too was patronised by athletes, who used the college facilities; these were club rather than international athletes though. I soon graduated to serving behind the bar. I liked the Sunday lunch-time shift, especially when there was entertainment in the bar, such as a steel band, who featured fairly regularly. Most nights there were two staff and a glasses collector, with three on Fridays and Saturdays. Prices included vodka at 24p, lemonade, dispensed from a hose 8p, Watney’s Red Barrel was the cheapest beer; I think this was 11p a pint. I seem to remember I was paid £1.25 a shift as a glasses collector and perhaps £2 as a barmaid. When not working, we were known to work our way along the shorts’ optics, having one of each.
The manager was also the manager of one of the university bars and I worked there too for a short while. I lasted behind the college bar for the whole of my college career, despite the fact that my employment seems to regularly feature predatory men or weird women and in this case, it was both. The best nights were the annual college ball, when several temporary bars would be opened in different locations. These might have themes and we were supplied with suitable clothes. I can’t remember what the theme was but one year I was given a very nice, wrap-round black dress, which I wore for many years. That was also the year I got to be in charge of the cocktail bar. We didn’t have cocktail shakers but we produced four or five different cocktails. I can still remember how to make a Tequila Sunrise.
After the May Ball May 1975
Mencap Playgroup
While I was in Reading, I also got paid for working with special needs children, running Saturday morning and holiday playgroups for what was then called Mencap.[i] I really loved this job and took it very seriously. When we were given new rooms to use in the Barracks, several of us spent days painting and cleaning out very stained toilets, readying the premises for use. I always wore a red and white checked smock, to help the children recognise me. It was here that I met sisters * and * who had a disfunctional home background. * was an elective mute, having stopped speaking when her aunt died. Her sister, *, did not qualify for the playgroup on the grounds of any special intellectual need but she was allowed to attend because of her home circumstances.
Unemployment
One summer holidays, perhaps between school and college, I went to the Labour Exchange, not to get unemployment money but for help finding a temporary job. They were completely bemused by someone who actually wanted to work and were no help at all. The only other time I signed on was for a month between my hotel jobs and getting a permanent job on the Isle of Wight. As I was living in Bembridge at the time, I seem to remember that it cost more in bus fare to sign on than I received.
The Hotels
When I left college, I needed a job and ideally wanted to go to the Isle of Wight, my dream location since my childhood holidays there. It was March, so the beginning of the holiday season and I applied for several live-in hotel jobs, including one at The Orchards in Yarmouth. I am sure that I found out about vacancies via the newspaper, although I have no idea how I got hold of a local Isle of Wight paper. I also applied to a children’s home, or was it a holiday camp, in Wickham, near Fareham.
I ended up at The Esplanade Hotel in Sandown, just opposite the pier. I think it has now amalgamated with the hotel next door. From 20 April to 14 July I worked at the Esplanade Hotel as a waitress for £20 a week plus board.
The Esplanade Hotel
They employed six live-in staff and a chef, who also ran his own B & B. The Italian head waiter, *, was lazy, full of himself and always turned up when I and the other waitress had done all the setting up. He could however carry eight plates of food at a time - about all he was good for. Initially, the other waitress was * and she and her partner, the kitchen porter, shared a room, so I had a room to myself up in the attics of the hotel. There were also two chamber maids who shared a room. It turned out that * and her partner had never intended this to be more than a stop gap for a few weeks while they waited for the season to start at a holiday camp where they had been the previous year. They very cleverly spent those few weeks running down the holiday camp and then left abruptly. They were replaced by another KP and a waitress called *, who were not an item, so rooms were changed and * and I shared. I did spend a couple of evenings at Bogey’s nightclub with * and the chamber maids but I went because I thought I should and not because I enjoyed it. By this time, I had outgrown partying, drinking and staying up late.
Our first week ‘training’ was a week during which the hotel opened to a party with learning difficulties. I can remember having to learn to balance a tray from underneath, rather than balance it on my hip and hold it with my arm over the top to the other side. We did not use trays for the evening meals and I can still carry five full bowls or plates. Most of our clients were on coach tours from the Midlands or the north and I remember several conversations about pit closures. We had our own tables and I always made an effort to tell people about the market, bus routes, early closing days and so on, which always helped with the tips. Like all my jobs, I took pride in doing it well and efficiently. We served breakfast and evening meal.
On Sundays, the evening meal was replaced by roast lunch. The weekly menu never varied. Saturday, change-over day, was cheese or ham salad. In fact, I think salad could always be requested as an alternative. Sunday roast beef, Monday trout, Friday fish, the other three days included lamb, pork and I think steak and kidney pie. Starters were always, soup, fruit juice or prawn cocktail and puddings were of the apple pie variety, with ice cream as an alternative. Breakfasts were full English and I enjoyed remembering my guests’ preferences.
The middle of the day was always free and I would take a book and sit on the beach. This was 1977, so there were jubilee celebrations going on. I would buy a Mars bar for 11p from the shop next to the hotel and read. The staff had a small staff room and we were entitled to help ourselves to bread for lunches. I think other meals were eaten after the guests had finished. I seemed to managed to consume six slices of toast on the trot without putting on weight. I also used to gather up the crusts from the sliced white loaves and make marmalade sandwiches to take on walks on my days off, which were Wednesdays. I can remember walking from Arreton to Wroxall on one occasion. I then started going out with the guests on Wednesdays. The firm that used the hotel arranged an itinerary that no one with any knowledge of the island would have dreamed up. Yarmouth one day and Alum Bay the next, Carisbrooke Castle and Osborne House on the same day and so on. They also sent coach drivers with no experience of the island. For several weeks, I went on the Carisbrooke/Osborne Wednesday trip as a voluntary courier and can remember on one occasion having to extricate the driver from attempting an impossible hair-pin bend.
The job came to an abrupt end due to predatory male syndrome. This is not the place for the details!
There was a firm in Shanklin called Shan-cat, who were an employment agency for hotel workers and they found me a job at The Berry Brow Hotel in Shanklin Old Village. This didn’t really come with accommodation and I can vaguely remember looking at a room above a shop in the old village. This seemed to involve a predatory male as well, so it didn’t happen. In the end, they found me a room at the Berry Brow and here I was chamber-maiding and waitressing. I think I was working with a girl called *. Every night we made guests hot drinks at bed-time. I can still recall the smell of Horlicks. While I was at this hotel my friend from home, *, decided she would work on the Isle of Wight too and was at another Shanklin Hotel, so we spent some time off together.
The only other things I can remember from this job is someone using the waste paper basket as a toilet. Although there was no en-suite toilet there was an en-suite shower, which surely would have been a better option. There was also the evening when I was sung to. The rather cheesy entertainer liked to have someone on stage while he was performing certain songs and as I was the only person under sixty I suppose I was the obvious choice; so I was serenaded with Bojangles.
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[i] See also Memories of Reading.