The Voiceover above is for this month’s episode. I can’t move it to where I want it to be! Maybe don’t listen to this if you haven’t read or listened to Escape from Glasgow!
If you haven’t read the first part of this account of my season in a Blackpool boarding house, I suggest you read or listen to
Here’s part two, starting on my first morning after an uncomfortable night sleeping in the same bed as a girl I’d never met before, worrying about:
a) the amount of space I was taking up in the bed;
b) the amount of work I was expected to do from 6:30 am every day until I finished;
c) the fact that I was not entitled to have a day off during the season;
d) the reaction of Mrs Braddock when I said I had to go to Mass on Sundays. Hostility sparked out of her;
e) the peculiar noises that were coming from the grandmother side of the bedroom. I didn’t know it that first night, but the old lady had a potty under the bed which she used every night for one or more purposes, and the sounds and smells were, at best, very unpleasant.
The first morning the alarm went off at 6 am. I got up, washed in cold water, dressed and went to the top of the second floor. My tools were a feather duster, a stiff brush and a dustpan and soft brush. Under strict supervision, I started brushing the stair carpet and after each section, I was instructed to push the feather duster through each of the banisters. When I got all the way to the bottom, the next job was to clean the toilets. Maybe it’s time to describe the layout of the house.
On the ground floor was a resident’s lounge with TV and behind that the dining room with eleven tables of four. The first floor had doubles, singles and a couple of rooms that held four people, usually a family, but it was well-known among the Blackpool landladies, that, in high season, putting two couples who didn’t know one another, in the same room was fair game. These rooms had a curtain down the middle for ‘privacy’. Couples would come, maybe having booked late or turned up on the doorstep, and were prepared to spend a week or a fortnight in the same room as strangers, sharing the wash handbasin and goodness knows what else. They would arrive even if the sign in the window read ‘No Vacancies’. When I arrived in May I had no idea that all these houses would be more or less full from then until September. The boarding house was the lowest form of holiday home; one step up from that was the guest house with chintz curtains and more toilets, maybe even a free bath.
The second floor was a duplicate of the first, except that the only bathroom in the house was on the first floor, for which the guests paid 6d to have a bath as long as they had brought their own towels. I was grudgingly allowed a bath on Sunday afternoons, all other days it was a cold-water wash. The bathroom door was kept locked, and residents had to apply for the key. Bizarrely, there was an extension to the house phone on the wall in there, which residents were forbidden to touch while in the bathroom.
There was one toilet to each floor and in peak weeks we had forty-three guests. I cleaned the toilets before the guests got up, checked them when they came down to breakfast, (9am sharp), cleaned them after the guests went out for the morning, checked them again when they came in for lunch, (dinner as it was called, 1230 sharp), cleaned them again after the guests went out in the afternoon, checked them when the guests were in the dining room for tea and cleaned them for the last time after they went out in the evening.
I was not allowed to wait on in the dining room, that was a privilege reserved for Gillian. My domain was a scullery on the ground floor behind the dining room, with a dumbwaiter, so apart from cleaning toilets, my job at mealtimes was washing up, drying and putting away, a long and boring job when we were full, which was most of the time. After I had been there a few weeks, I bought myself a small leather-bound transistor radio and I paid it off with a pound a week until, after four weeks, it was mine. It seemed very grown up to buy something that wasn’t just clothes but was almost a piece of furniture. I was thrilled to think I could listen to pop music while washing up, just when the Beatles, Stones and loads of other groups were becoming popular. The landlady didn’t approve but I don’t think she knew on what grounds to ban it.
“Last year’s ‘elp didn’t see the need for one of them things.” She said, disgust written all over her face.
Once breakfast was cleared away, and the scullery floor washed, it was time to go upstairs to clean the rooms, although there was one little quirk that took me by surprise. Each table had a pot of tea at each meal, (there was no alcohol or any drinks, except water, served, and coffee was unheard of). Mrs Braddock informed me with a little sniff, that although she didn’t cut corners like other landladies did, there was a little exception here. We didn’t throw away the tea leaves or tea left in the teapot. No, to my dismay, we emptied it into a great big catering teapot (the type you’d find in a church hall used by the Mother’s Union), topping it up after every meal, so that anyone coming into the resident’s lounge in the evening would be offered a cup of tea reheated on the gas ring in the scullery. I always felt very guilty on the one in three nights it was my turn to do the teas in case people thought I was lacking in the teamaking department, but no-one ever complained. It was free, not part of their bed and board deal. “there’s no harm in it”, Mrs Braddock said, “and it saves a bit of money”.
In those days, the guests were not given a key. The front door stayed open until 10 pm, which was why one of us had to be on duty every night, sitting in the lounge window, checking people in and repelling non-residents. We often had drunks arriving at the wrong front door, some were even in the wrong street. After 10 pm, we locked the door and latecomers had to ring the bell. I was instructed to ask standard questions.
“Have you been to a show?” and “What did you see?” and “Did you enjoy it?”
If they were going to see a show that finished late, they had to get special permission from the landlady, otherwise it was lights off, lounge shut, cups washed up and to bed by 11pm.
The bedrooms were spartan, (it being long before tea and coffee-making facilities were offered), but they did have a wash handbasin in each. When she showed me around Mrs Braddock said in a superior tone, with that little sniff again,
“Of course, we don’t cut corners here like other establishments do, but there’s a potty under each bed. Now see, it’s daft carrying all of them to the toilet, so just tip the contents down the sink and then clean it well. Not if there’s solids of course, but that rarely happens.”
I must have turned green at this point. I dreaded going into the rooms and peering under beds. The worst time turned out to be May, because that was bargain month for old age pensioners. Bed and board was 17/6d per day. The normal rate was £1 a day bed and board, which would in today’s money be £24.90 (still a bargain!). As she was telling me about the OAP’s coming in May, we stopped at a bedroom door, and she said,
“We found an old man dead in bed in this room last year. Died in his sleep, poor soul. “
Hells teeth! I just wanted out of this mad house of teapots, potties and dead people. But I didn’t know how to extricate myself. From then on through the month of May, I was terrified that I would discover dead bodies, and eyed guests with suspicion in case they were about to drop at my feet. Fortunately, it didn’t happen, although some of them looked as though it had happened before they arrived. I was reassured by Mrs Braddock’s assertion, that “all the OAPs appear for a meal, so if they’re not there, you can be sure there’s something wrong. So we send Mr Braddock up to see what’s to do.”
That would be the ethereal Mr Braddock who floated around rearranging the storeroom, doing Cash & Carry, and was the only person qualified to use the big potato peeling machine with the lovely deep rumble outside the back door, and who only ever said two words to me at any one time, “How do?”
One thing that could be said for the OAPs was that they ate and enjoyed everything put in front of them. When they finished tea in peak holiday times, guests trooped upstairs to get ready for the big night out. At that time Blackpool was full of shows, and maybe still is, shows on the piers, shows in the Tower, the Opera House and other theatres in town. OAPs, on the other hand, might go out once or twice to a show, or more likely to bingo, during their week’s holiday, but quite often were content to sit in the lounge and watch the television as if they were at home. The lounge was always packed for ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’. No fighting over channels then, we only had 2 - BBC and ITV and fortunately, everyone wanted to watch the same thing.
Younger people went to pubs which shut at 10:30, so you could gather them all in safely by 11 pm. Almost everyone went to the pleasure beach, well, the OAPs talked of it in days gone by. Most had been coming to Blackpool all their lives and ruefully recounted the changes they had seen. There was always a lot of ‘Eee, I don’t know. It were never like this, you know.’ accompanied by much shaking of heads as they staggered off up two flights of stairs to bed.
thanks for listening or reading. Join me next month with your bucket and spade and we’ll get through the rest of this season together!
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What I’ve read or listened to
This month i’ve been busy with a new season starting. Yes i’m back working in hospitality, but I hope our offering is slightly more luxurious than Blackpool. So I’ve listened to more on Audible than I've read.
Geneva by Richard Armitage, read by him and the fabulous Nicola Walker. I didn’t think I was going to like it at first, but I did warm to Nicola’s character. Then it had a soggy middle, but I persevered and enjoyed the twists and turns. Briefly, a man persuades his famous scientist wife who has just been diagnosed with dementia, to speak at a conference in Geneva to endorse a new product. Sounds a bit dry when said like that, but it romps along and has a satisfying, (if some improbable eyebrows raised on the way), ending.
Weyward by Emilia Hart. Told in three time periods, sadly it was stereotyped in its portrayal of men, and there were many factual errors in it, which undermined the validity of the story. A historical novel published with great hoohah either this year or last. An abused woman escapes to live in a cottage she’s inherited and the past meets her. It was OK, that’s all.
Dark Whispers by Gwyn Bennett. This series of crime thrillers is getting better with each one in the series. This is number 8 in the Harrison Lane Mysteries, in which we see our favourite psychologist heading up the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit again.
that’s all for this month you lovely people. look forward to seeing you in a months time. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and enjoy the summer.
Another classic, Sue! All that toilet checking and cleaning, not to mention the cold water washing (and people having to pay for a hot bath - eeek!) but not you, you lucky thing, fancy getting a free one on a Saturday. You were spoilt!!! Seriously, thanks for sharing your hideous but hilarious escapades. A great read.