Dispatches From a Dilettante (26 page)

Home team players were informed of this in an oblique way and sure enough with two minutes to go the game was petering out with the score at 0-0. Tragedy struck when a half hearted and speculative long shot from our man at the bar telling the tale, slipped through the hands of the away team’s keeper and trickled over the line for a goal. Relegation, and all that implied, was now staring them in the face with no time to remedy the situation. The home team’s manager was apoplectic on the touchline screaming at our hero “What the fuck are you doing you moron…..I’ve given my word…I’ve given my fucking word”.

The irony of a man dishonest enough to fix a game, yet furious that his honour had somehow been compromised by a freak goal, was deliciously told with exquisite timing by our footballer at the bar who clearly had a second career waiting in entertainment.

Apart from that it was pretty routine stuff. At night it was couples out for a pre-Christmas drink, a few girls out for a night on the town but nothing like the scenes played out in city centre pubs today. On my penultimate evening there was a big crowd in and a different, but difficult to define, atmosphere. Unusually the marine, normally a lunchtime drinker, was on his barstool and clearly ‘under the influence’. A boisterous group of three men were in the corner, and they were loud but not actually causing trouble.

When taking an order off those men one of them got up to go the gents. In doing so he must have passed the marine, who I could see whipping out his photograph to ask the standard question. What happened next was to prove for me a practical reminder to beat a retreat in future when intuitively you feel that discretion may well prove to be the better part of valour. I think the marine must have taken offence to the photograph question from a man who had clearly been asked it before, and decked him with one punch. His two mates rushed in to take retribution knocking the girls group over in the rush to get to their friend. Pandemonium ensued much in the fashion of one of the bar room brawls you see in early cowboy films. The difference being that these were real punches resulting in real blood flowing and accompanied by screams and epithets. I barely noticed the shutters until they were almost down - and far too late for me to get on the right side of them.

Stuck in the melee my unease turned to fear when someone was glassed. Just as quickly fear was replaced by relief as a path momentarily opened to the door and I beat a retreat outside. There I remained, until the police arrived, shivering in my little maroon acrylic barman’s jacket which was my only protection against the freezing cold and biting wind. I only noticed when a passing reveller called out derisively “three pints of bitter and two Babychams please” that I was still holding my tray.

Barman - Fourteen Days 1968

It was during this more up market job at the Mansion House in Roundhay Park Leeds that what my friends refer to as the ‘Eddie Waring incident’ took place. The head waiter, at what was a formal dining room where there was ‘dancing after supper’, used to attend the same Catholic church as my mother. Remarking on my nonappearances at mass and then hearing my mother’s lament that I ‘was going off the rails’ Michael, who was an old school martinet but a kind man beneath his austere demeanour, took pity. He said that he would willingly get me a job for the Christmas holidays if only I would get my haircut. This was not even up for discussion as far as I was concerned despite my mother’s pleas. However two regular staff left at short notice and, with Michael now in a desperate hole during the busiest period of the year, he relented. After an hour’s instruction on the intricacies of silver service, I started next day at lunchtime.

Waiting on tables is hard work in any setting but at the top end in a busy restaurant with demanding clientele it required a fair amount of skill. An amount of skill, I freely admit, that an hour’s training had not enabled me to achieve. Dining out in 1969 was a much less relaxed affair than it is now and the choice was not much more than fish and chips in paper or a formal sit down English meal.

Grasping steaks between a spoon and fork, serving from the left, taking the wine order, clearing up from the right, not smashing into waiters exiting the kitchen as you were entering and a dozen other things were all proving a bit much for me on that first day.

After about half an hour Eddie Waring, the legendary rugby league commentator, walked in. He was the man who made the game famous, or an object of fun depending on your point of view, with his idiosyncratic commentary style. Latterly mine is now the former view despite reservations. He was accompanied by three colleagues and they sat down at one of the tables under my ‘command’.

Ordering went without incident with all four men opting for steaks. I remembered correctly how they wanted them done and even managed some small talk as I took the wine order. I walked from the kitchen with increasing confidence carrying the great man’s steak on a silver platter. The steak was cooked in a jus, or as the chef still called it ‘gravy’ and he had applied a liberal amount. As I smilingly leant over to serve Mr Waring while simultaneously, and I felt effortlessly, gripping the steak smoothly between my spoon and fork, he emitted an orgasmic grunt which I felt it polite to ignore.

That, I can see with the wisdom of hindsight, was a mistake because in leaning over I had unknowingly allowed the ‘gravy’ to slide off the platter resulting in serious burns to what I think in medical terms is referred to as the genital area. In the circumstances I think Mr Waring’s stoic reaction was to be admired. Michael came to my rescue and I beat a retreat. You can say what you want about his commentating style but he was charming about the whole incident while obviously in considerable discomfort. They left without dessert and it was three days before Michael let me serve anyone else.

Barman – Twenty Days 1970

It was about as good as it could be in 1970. I had finished the first year at an undemanding college in Liverpool where my rare appearances at the third rate lectures were the only blot on the social horizon. A summer of indolence loomed, England were at the World Cup in Mexico and, untroubled by the need to do any ‘academic’ work, I was looking forward to staying up each and every night to watch the live games which were to be shown at the college bar.

Although I was flat broke I had survived the year and just about scraped through the exams which, in truth, any hard working fifteen year old would have passed. It was the ‘hard working’ bit that flummoxed me as at this point I had never been motivated enough to explore the possible benefits of ‘hard work’. Sitting anxiously in the exam hall on the week before the World Cup I had panicked when turning over the anatomy paper and my mind had gone blank.

Carefully noting the movements of the invigilators I scrawled on a piece of paper ‘What is a sensory motor action?’ Scrunching the paper up into tiny ball I waited for the right moment and, when the coast was clear, passed it to my friend sitting at the desk in front of me. After what seemed an age he opened and scrutinized the note. After a further pause he wrote something down on the same paper. Salvation was at hand although I was risking a lot and the chance of humiliating discovery was a thought I could not entirely put aside.

Choosing his moment carefully, and without turning round, a hand was extended and I quickly grabbed back the paper. An invigilator sauntered past and when he had moved up the aisle I opened the note and furtively and read his response which was ‘Haven’t got a fucking clue mate’.

Was this a sort of karmic payback for our recent attempt to muck about in the divinity paper which all students at this Catholic college had to take? In a hopeless effort to make up for the fact that we had not been to a single lecture the same friend and I thought we might impress in the exam by quoting a non-existent theological paper and thus prove our diligence. We hatched this brainless idea after a night’s drinking when it all made perfect sense to our alcohol addled brains. Nowadays, of course, a quick Google search would have rumbled us but we were still using pen and ink in those pre-computer, pre-internet days.

So it was that we dreamed up the fictional Professor Whitworth who came into existence at the same time as his seminal paper on the Greek apostolic teaching entitled ‘Fundamentals of Kerygma’. As I recall it I embellished this further in the exam by ending with a quote from the noble professor. We scraped a pass somehow but for weeks I kept getting notes in my pigeon hole from the Head of Religious Studies asking for the source paper and the name of the Prof’s publishers.

All that was history now and, as I walked into the bar at eleven o’clock in the evening to get ready for the first game, I knew my luck was in. As the last of the evening drinkers left, a hard core of about fifty student football fans started to order their drinks in preparation for an all night session watching World Cup football. My closest pal was on bar duties. The student bar at this small teacher training establishment had only one full time bar steward and a couple of cleaners. Students earned spare cash by filling in as bar staff and my pal worked the longest hours of any. I shall refer to him as ‘my pal’ in view of the fact that he went on to become a highly respected head teacher and to name him would be to shame him.

Every time when the bar was heaving, which was usually every night, I would push through the throng straining to order and get served. I would then hand my money over to pay for the drinks, whereupon he would go to the till and bring me ‘change’. The change was always a pound or so more than I had given him. As a very efficient and trusted barman he had worked out the amount that was acceptable to write off each evening as ’spillage’ and this was what I got. Drinks for free and the extra quid each time was what I used to buy him his cigarettes. Everyone was a winner, or so we told ourselves.

With a confusing moral argument dreamt up to rid ourselves of the last vestiges of Catholic guilt, our self justification was that we were in fact
saving
the college money by never having been seen at breakfast and consuming the food that was rightfully ours.

The World Cup that summer seemed to be played on a different planet. The Mexican sun, as viewed in the middle of the night from a dark room on a small new specially bought colour television set, seemed impossibly bright. We drank, and ate stale warm pies, as we discussed the efficiency of England’s new blue breathable shirts worn to combat the Mexican heat. Magnanimously I ‘bought’ a large round after Alan Clarke converted a penalty and was shocked to not get any ’change’ from my friend behind the bar. It was his way of saying ‘don’t be greedy’.

By the time England got knocked out we were sent up to Plas y Brennan in Snowdonia for an outdoor pursuits’ course. Determined to watch the final, we ‘got lost’ during an orienteering session and with kick off approaching frantically knocked on doors just outside Capel Curig to see if someone would let us in to watch the game. We were very picky and rejected two offers from kindly people with black and white sets, before opting for someone who had a twenty one inch colour screen.

All good things come to an end and on return for the start of year two there was a new full time bar steward and a much stricter regime. It may not have been a proper bar job in that summer of 1970 but it was certainly an enterprise, albeit one operating with a wonky moral compass.

Market Man– Eight Days 1967

Setting the alarm for 2.45am was definitely a first. That is to say 2.45am to
get up
after which I drove to the wholesale market and worked from 3.30am -10.30am as the ‘gofer’ for a small fruit and vegetable importer. Huge transporters arriving from all over the UK and from Europe had to be unloaded, which was the first task. Market traders and shopkeepers arrived after 4am to buy fresh produce for the day. At the breakfast break at about 6.30am I was usually so hungry from the hard physical graft that most of my meagre wages went on a full fried cholesterol laden blowout, the preparation of which sent delicious and enticing aromas wafting through the stalls.

The major decision of the day was where to take breakfast. The two cafes at the wholesale market were loyally named ‘Headingley’ and ‘Elland Road’ but the lure of the superior fried bread at ‘Elland Road’ usually made it the preferred choice. All the regulars knew the few extra hands that had been taken on for the holiday rush and we were subjected to mild and often funny abuse about our student status and general inability. Chatting to another stallholder, my boss enquired as to the effectiveness of the student working with him and elicited the following succinct summation of progress to date. “Not worth a wank”. I kept my head down to avoid any mastubatory comparisons coming my way, and it seemed initially to do the trick.

After a few days, I was allowed to drive the motorised three-wheeler, to collect heavier loads from the incoming wagons. At the end of the morning I put the bins from our stall, overflowing with residue produce, on the three-wheeler and drove it to the incinerator. I joined the vehicles doing the same thing from other stalls and edged my way up the ramp. At the top the guys waiting unloaded the bins, during which period we exchanged what passed, in market parlance, for pleasantries. These pleasantries usually went along the lines of “Get your end away last night young’un?” At this stage of my life my end had never been got away and as I was getting up at 2.45am I would not have had the energy in the unlikely event of an opportunity presenting itself. No matter, this banter proved that I was one of the lads - or that’s what I told myself.

My employers were careful with their money and I noticed one morning that they had bought five brand spanking new aluminium bins. Thinking nothing of it I loaded them up as normal at the end of the morning and headed for the incinerator. At the top of the ramp the lads were even more friendly than usual and one chatted to me about the previous night’s Leeds game, while the other two emptied the contents of the bins. A bang on the door meant that all was done and as the next load got into position as I drove away down the ramp and back to my stall.