Catering

It was 1967, I was 19 and my days at University had come to an end, so with my City & Guilds qualifications in hand, I found a temporary position as second chef, while ‘Mad Jimmy’ took a months leave to tour Northern Europe. The Talbot Hotel, was a 17th century coaching inn, complete with two well concealed priest holes and a ‘ghost’, and was situated in the High Street of the little Worcestershire (now the West Midlands), town of Stourbridge, a town with two small cinemas, an Odeon and an ABC. The Danilo was by now a Bingo Hall and the shell of The Kings was being used as a DIY store, even now, after 45 years, many of the locals still remember the Kings with great fondness and all its 3D films! With the long hours (6.30am- 2.30pm / 5.30pm- 8.30pm) and only Sundays free, I didn’t get much time to visit either of them, but it wasn’t as if the hours were something unexpected, the catering trade was well known to be made up of long and unsociable hours. Wages were £6/10/00d (£6.50p) a week, but I did live in and food was always available. It was part of the Bank’s group, a Wolverhampton based Brewery, who were really tight fisted as far as money was concerned. When it was decided to turn the residents breakfast room into an evening ‘grill room’, all they did was put a sign on the door, get the staff to put candles into Mateous Rose bottles, after making sure that the wax had dribbled down the sides and turn off the lights! But I got on well with David, the head chef and the regular waitresses Carol, the chefs girlfriend, There was also the mature Flora, who liked her Guinness and had wondering hands!!!. As I’d previously said I’d been taken on as a temp, while the regular second Chef, Jimmy was on holiday, and when he’d returned they had been pleased enough with my work to offer me a position as commis-chef. It was now I discovered the reason they had called him ‘Mad’ Jimmy. He was a whirlwind of energy with even the most mundane chore being completed with an exuberance that verged on madness! However my real problems started after around 8/9 months, when it was decided they needed my bedroom for additional customer/residential accommodation and I was asked to seek outside lodgings. With the help of Dolly a cleaner at the Talbot, I found a room, not 10 minutes walk from where I live now, where my elderly landlord and his wife, who loved their TV and never missed an episode of ‘The Invaders’, charged me just £5.00 a week. But as £1:10 shillings (£1.50p) was all that that I had left after paying them, I couldn’t manage to live on that and asked for a raise and was offered just a further 10 shilling, so as sorry as I was, I handed in my notice.