Chapter One
The Tomato DipSittin' in the mornin' sun
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' comes
Watchin' the ships roll in
Then i watch 'em roll away again
Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
Highest chart position no 3 Feb '68
Monday 12th February 1968 : 5.55am
A dull, wet morning, it will still be dark for another two hours yet as Maureen Clarke clippy-clops her way down Kirkstall Road to her place of employment, the platform heel and sole on her red “work shoes” aren't the highest ones in her wardrobe and certainly aren't the most comfortable ones for working a nine hour shift on your feet, but they are her favourites, and the damp leather peeling from the cubic wooden heels testifies to this.
Although the hour is early, Kirkstall Road is not quiet, its one of the main arteries out of Leeds, heading northwards eventually towards the Yorkshire Dales and Lakeland beyond that, not that Maureen understands any of this, she has never been further up Kirkstall Road than the occasional bus trip to Horsforth Park which lies only five miles from the city centre but which feels like it is from another, much quieter age.
Maureen's world revolves around a two mile stretch of Kirkstall Road, from her mothers house in the back-to-back terrace streets of Kirkstall (or “borr'um end of 'eadingley” as her grandmother prefers to call it), to the centre of Leeds where the Kirkstall Road bus terminates at City Square, and Maureen spends most of her Saturdays browsing the boutiques and dreaming of what she'd buy if her café job paid her twice as much as it does.
This two mile stretch, which is Maureens world, follows the black sludge of the river Aire as it winds its way down its valley into the very centre of Leeds, but no-one sees the river for it is hidden from view for its full length by the industry which emerged on its banks over two hundred years ago. The glamour of the city centre changes as we travel out of Leeds towards Kirkstall and soon we are among warehouses and mills, old and dirt blackened brick monstrocities all merging into one, their victorian carved stone facades blended together by the grime of 200 years heavy engineering and chemical works. Then after a mile or so of industry Kirkstall Road changes once more to shops, local shops this time not city centre shops, for Kirkstall is heavily populated by row upon row of back-to-back terrace houses too countless to number,rising in identical parrallel rows up the hill on the opposite side of Kirkstall Road to the river.
The shops here are also identical consisting of the actual shop unit on the ground floor and living accomodation on two more floors above, some also having further bedrooms in the attic space. The fifty or so shopowners here are some of the wealthiest and some of the poorest among the Kirkstall population, but no-one in Kirkstall is rich and many are poverty stricken, this is 1968, 23 years since this country beat the might of Hitlers empire builders into submission, but this country is paying dearly for its victory and money is tight all round, its only been ten years since the last of the "luxury" foods came off ration, people around here have manual, hourly paid, labour intensive jobs, overtime and opportunities for earning more than the basic wage are few and far between and there is an aura of wartime "make do and mend" hanging over the whole filthy valley.
None of this politcal intrigue troubles Maureen Clarke as she clippy-clops her way to work in the dark, trying to avoid the puddles on the stone flags of the pavement in case the water finds its way into the gap between the platform sole and the uppers of her left fashion shoe, the walk from her mums house in the Woodside's down to the Tomato Dip Café every day takes her 15 minutes and on mornings like today she seriously considers taking the bus, but its only two stops and so she walks and saves the 3d for Saturday and her trip “to town”.
In the dark the wet streets are illuminated by the weak electric street lighting, it will be a few more years yet before the old gas lamps are removed and although they have been converted to electric, the city council use the smallest, weakest bulbs that they can find so that its hardly worth the bother on a morning like today, at least as she gets further down Kirkstall Road she'll usually find that many of the shopkeepers have left an overnight security light on in their window and the mind numbing dullness of her environment is brightened slightly for a few hundred yards.
The heavy mist is starting to fall as rain again as she arrives at the Tomato Dip Cafe and even at this early hour she finds two Commer builders vans parked at the kerbside waiting for her arrival, three big, hefty daft lads sat in the cab of each, waiting for Maureen to arrive and serve up their breakfast bacon baps.
The windows of each vehicle are misted up completely so Maureen knows that they have been waiting for some time, more fool them, they are regulars and they know that the Tomato Dip doesn't open until 6am, and even then it will take another quarter hour for the griddles to warm up and the food to be ready for serving. She can't see the occupants but she is left in no doubt as to their impatience and hunger pangs as one of the vehicles passenger windows is pushed down by grubby fingernails,
"Aye up Maureen, get them bloody griddles on will tha luv"
"When I'm ready y'impatient buggers, tha knows ah d'unt oppen 'til six" she's fumbling in her carpet bag for the shop keys when the van doors are slammed and six big daft lads brave the damp and trot around the vehicles to stand around Maureen, feet shuffling, donkey jacket collars turned up against the rain which is coming down harder now, these lads will not get to do any work on their building site today if this rain keeps up, another day without pay or bonus, another week of nagging from their wives and girlfriends when the money won't stretch to some of lifes little luxuries like new stockings or a school shirt for one of the kids, and another Friday night trying to make a ten bob note stretch out in the pub.
But for now they're just hungry, their first port of call is always the Tomato Dip Cafe, famous for its tomato dip of course, which is still at least 15 minutes away from being ready as Maureen finally turns the key in the door just as one of the builders digs her under the ribs simultaneously on each side.
"oooh you cheeky bugger" Maureen shrieks, "pack that in or you'll stand out 'ere while I get ready" and as the door opens they all push inside out of the rain so that they surge into the small, musty smelling interior.
Maureen makes her way behind the counter and finds the light switch, the three fluorescent tubes that illuminate the café in a very dingy way flicker slowly into life, one of them humming and buzzing angrily as it will do for the next hour, and the six builders take their seats at two of the eight small tables arranged down the left hand and bottom walls of the 30 by 15 foot shop unit.
Behind the counter, which runs the full length of the right hand side of the room, Maureen is queen, shes back in command, the customers cannot touch her behind the counter and they must listen to her every command as they wait for their order to be called, that's not to say that they don't touch her when she comes around the front of the counter, from 6am to mid-morning her clientele will be exclusively male, men on their way to building sites, men on their way to the factories and warehouse further down Kirkstall Road, men on their way home after working a night shift, and a gaggle of binmen from the depot behind the café who were the rudest, foul-mouthed men she had ever met, but they spent anything up to ten bob each in the café every dinnertime after their morning of emptying other peoples rubbish bins into their roll-top bin cart, working men working to working mans time, every minute of their day already decided in advance for them by the factory hooters that signal start times, break times and home times, and at the end of the day the pub landlords closing bell that signals its time to go home to your families.
It won't be until mid-morning that Maureen sees her first female client of the day and from then on it will be almost exclusively female as the Kirkstall housewives pop in for a cup of tea and a yo-yo biscuit to break up the daily shopping run, Maureen savours this period of the day as this is where she hears all the Kirkstall gossip, there is not one single item of local news or scandal that is not expressed in the café and Maureen does not miss any of it, its quite common for Maureen to burn toast or let the geezer boil dry while she leans on the counter, chin cupped in hand, tuning into a conversation on a table at the bottom end of the café and occasionally trying to join in with a “oooh, never” or “eeeeh, I know 'er”.
Maureen kicks a small stool into the corner near the front window, stands on it and reaches up to switch on a large Bush radio, it has seen better days and the veneer on its wooden case is cracked and peeling off but its large cone speaker fills the cafe with pop music when Maureen has it turned up, today the radio takes a short while to warm up and Maureen keeps the volume down to background music level until 7am when Radio One starts and that groovy DJ Tony Blackburn starts his show with Arnold the dog, then the volume will be turned up as loud as she can get it, at least until someone complains.
Theres is no dedicated heating system in the shop unit at all so without the hotplates and ovens on the room is cold and damp and Maureen quickly lights the gas under both griddles and stands trying to warm her hands on them whilst her six customers shuffle about in their seats and mutter to each other how bloody cold they are and how they won't bloody warm up at all today.
Maureen checks the water level in the huge stainless steel geyser to the left of the griddles and turns the gas knob up full, the geyser ignites from its overnight slumber with a loud “whump” and thirty gallons of water will soon be simmering inside for the rest of the day. The age of this geyser is unknown but it's a masterpiece of stainless steel engineering, a huge cylinder which reaches from the counter top almost to the ceiling, stainless steel pipes emerging at random intervals from its body only to re-enter the cylinder somewhere else, each joint occasionally emitting its own little puff of steam just to prove that its still important to the functionality of this glorified kettle, for that's all the geyser is used for nowadays, a small tap at the bottom is the only bit that Maureen understands, she uses it to fill the two gallon tea kettle with when she's making a new brew.
The two griddles and the stainless steel geyser take up nearly the whole length of the back wall behind the counter so most of Maureens working day is spent either with her back to the customers (when frying) or with her back to the frying (when gossiping with customers), its not an ideal arrangement and often results in food over-cooking on the griddles or the geyser overheating and gushing forth clouds and clouds of steam into the room until Maureen can get to the gas knob to turn it down.
Some warmth is starting to filter through to the top of the griddle plates and because she didn't scrape them last night, (as per instructions), the grease and remaining tomato residue that congealed overnight into a murky red mess, is now slowly becoming liquid again. The griddles are six foot by two foot cast iron plates, two of them side by side, with several large gas burners underneath to heat them until they glow red through the day. They tilt slightly towards each other in the middle so that in theory the fat from each will run downhill to the gutter that sits beneath the conjuncture of the plates, from here the fat drains into a steel bucket under the counter ready for disposal.
In practice nothing drains off the left hand griddle because a cane has been wedged into the plate at the point where the fat would normally drop off into the gutter, it is this feature which gives the café its unique name and makes its “butties” or sandwiches so much in demand, you see the left hand griddle is used exclusively for frying tomatoes in fat, to be used for "dipping" the bread cakes before the sausage, bacon or egg is added - this is the tomato dip griddle and its important that it is never cleaned as the dirt and filth of years has accumulated onto it to give it a unique taste.
Actually it is not true that the left hand griddle is never cleaned, it is in fact cleaned every time that Maureen makes another butty as she places both halves of the breadcake face down into the tomato goo and rubs them firmly into the hotplate in order to soak up as much grease and tomato remnants as possible, its this action that infuses flavour into the bread and “cleans” the plate at the same time.
Of course the cumulative action of this would be to eventually wipe clean the hotplate, and very quickly too, which is why Maureen keeps a tray of tomato slices alongside the griddle so that discrepancies can be filled quickly, and why, when no-one is looking, Maureen removes the waste bucket from underneath the right hand griddle drain and sloshes the gathered waste fat back onto the tomato plate, its this recycling of already used-several-times fat that gives strength to the flavour and makes the Tomato Dip Café so popular, in fact Maureen is very good at recycling in the Tomato Dip Cafe and many an uneaten sausage, and some half eaten ones too, are placed surepticiously back onto the griddle after being left unwanted on a plate by a customer whose eyes were bigger than their belly when perusing the menu.
Ten minutes later and the small cafe is starting to warm up, albeit a damp, humid warmth in which the visitor feels that he or she is eating in the sort of swedish sauna rooms that feature regularly in the "private" films at the Tatler Cinema Club in City Square, not that Maureen knows anything about the Tatler, its not the place for a young lady, or any type of lady for that matter, but Maureen hears enough about the Tatler from her binmen clientele to know what a swedish sauna room looks and feels like, so she comments to the six builders and two road sweepers who have joined them that "its like a swedish sauna room in 'ere", and they laugh and leer at her and one of the road sweepers asks what she knows about swedish sauna rooms, Maureen blushes and wishing that she'd never mentioned the bloody swedish sauna room she turns her back on them and pushes a sausage around on the right hand griddle.
At last the bacon is done to a crisp, the sausages are nicely browned, eggs are white and yellow in the correct ratio and the tomato dip is totally liquid and bubbling, Maureen takes the first of many hundred breadcakes and cutting it in half,she turns each half face down on the left hand griddle, presses down hard and gives each piece a good wipe around until she can feel the first sign of dampness seeping through the bread under her palm. Lifting the now soggy base of the breadcake and turning it over in her left hand she scoops a sausage and a rasher of bacon off the right hand griddle with a wood handled steel slice, tops it off with a fried egg then lifts the top of the breadcake out of the tomato dip and dropping it onto the rest of the butty with a satisfying plop, she places it onto a waiting plate on the front counter and for the first time that day she calls out "breakfast butty lads, 'urry up afore it gets cold".
For the next forty minutes Maureen is kept busy by a constant flow of workers requiring nurishment, sustinance and sometimes just the "bye love" that they don't get from the woman at home before heading off to their manual jobs down the road. At precisely 7am Maureen stands on her stool in the corner and turns up the radio, the BBC Newsreader is still going through his announcements to anyone who'll listen in the cafe, but none are and so his tales of the tragic sinking of another Hull trawler in the North Sea, the influx of Kenyan Asians which is worrying the home secretary and the latest medal results from the Grenoble winter olympics fall on completely deaf ears, Maureen is waiting for the morning to start properly when Arnold the imaginary radio dog barks the start of another Tony Blackburn breakfast show.
At last the news and weather forecast are dispatched by the crisply accented BBC announcer and at 7.03 precisely the network is handed over to the new, youthfull sound of Radio 1, the Governments concession to the under-20's in return for hunting down and scuppering all of the pirate radio ships that had sprung up around the coasts of Britain in the previous few years. Radio 1 was wonderful, so said the jingle that Tony Blackburn started his show with today, and indeed it was, sort of, not as good as Radio Caroline which had been the biggest of the pirate stations, but several of Caroline's DJ's had been clapped in irons when the Department of Trade inspectors had boarded their little boat on the high seas, and had been coerced into working for the British Broadcasting Corporation in their new venture, Tony Blackburn was one such example although Maureen thinks he's a little too posh and a lot too smarmy to have ever been a willing pirate.
Maureen loves music and she fries as she dances, feet twisting back and forth easily on the greasy linoleum floor, and with elbows tucked in close to her ribcage she waves her forearms around in rythmic circles, imitating the tarty dolly birds that dance on the stage at the Mecca Ballroom every Saturday night, occasionally she forgets where she is and when the new Tom Jones record "Delilah" suddenly starts up on the radio then her dance movements become more frenetic, her gaze drops to the floor to watch her feet and her elbows unlock from her sides and are waved around at head height, one hand still clutching the wood handled slice, now dripping fat to add to the slippiness of the lino floor.
All of which is part of the entertainment in the Tomato Dip and four young men stood at the counter waiting for their pack-up cheese sandwiches to take to their work at the Associated Dairies warehouse further down Kirkstall Road suddenly burst into song at the chorus, "My,my,my Dee-li-laah, why,why,why Dee-li-laaah" and two of them turn and take the other in their arms and perform a little waltz in the limited space between the counter and tables.
"Cum 'ere Maureen love, lets 'ave a dance, me and you eh? One of them leers over the counter, mentally trying to undress Maureen even at this early hour, but the all emcompassing blue overall that Maureen wears every day (washed on her day off on Sunday) hides any evidence of her womanly assetts and he is once again disappointed.
"Bugger off George Mason, I turned thee down in t'mecca last sat'dee, I'm not gunna dance with thee 'ere am ah ?"
"Ah nivver asked 'er ter dance wi' me, ah nivver", George turns to protest to his three friends who have heard this news of his romantic overtures to Maureen for the first time and will now ensure that it is all over the Associated Dairies before first break time, George is in for an uncomfortable day today, for lads who get turned down by lasses at the Mecca on a Saturday night are seriously lacking in a department somewhere and one of Georges "friends" is already indicating to George where he thinks that department might be.
"I-eeeeye just couldn't tek any-mooooooore" Maureen's voice is shrill and slightly off key as she shreaks the last line of the Tom Jones ballard, turns to her audience, curtsies and thanks them for their appreciation, "now bugger off to work I've got customers to serve".
By 8am the tradesmans rush has slowed down, the factory and warehouse workers have all clocked in to their places of work by now and the builders are long gone to their building sites, for the next couple of hours Maureen will tend to the self-employed workmen, they who don't have a boss to report to at any set time, the plumbers, electricians and carpenters who tend to do domestic work and who will be frowned upon if they turn up at their clients homes anytime before the kids are off to school and husbands off to work, so these artisans rise later then their hourly paid bretheren and take a leisurely Tomato Dip breakfast, washed down by at least a pint of tea, more if they have time or are engaged in a conversation, even longer still if todays job is only a short one or they're finishing off what they didn't complete yesterday.
10am and the housewifes are drifting in, halfway down Kirkstall Road is the ideal place for a cafe, most of the residents of Kirkstall live "oop top end" and as such the daily shopping starts on one side of the road, works its way right down to the swimming baths and viaduct (which is the demarcation line between shops and factories), then cross over and work your way up the other side, nearly a two mile round trip by the time you get home and if you stop to gossip enough it'll take you nearly all morning, leaving just enough time to have a quick chat with her next door and put your husbands tea on.
The housewifes run is made on most days of the week, less frequent towards the end of the week as the money starts to run dry, but with most Kirkstall houses only having the very basic of refridgerators (for one thing the tiny scullery's in the back-to-back houses just don't have room for a fridge), all the fresh food has to be gathered in every day or two, so its a visit to the greengrocer first who tips the half stone of spuds straight into the housewifes leather shopping bag, followed by the grocer for a bag of broken biscuits and a tin of processed peas, then pop into the Tomato Dip for a chat with Maureen a cup of tea and a fancy, then on down Kirkstall Road to window shop in the dress and fabric shops, a quick look around that new supermarket Fine Fare ("they'll never tek off, you 'ave ter serve yer'sen tha knows, no time for a gossip or 'owt"), cross the road and back up the other side, last stop the bakers for the bread, a comfortable two hour walk, well, a 20 minute walk and a combined 1 hour 40 minute chat.
By now the ceiling in the Tomato Dip is all but invisible above the smog created by the steaming geyser, damp steaming overcoats, and the ever-present cigarette smoke, theres nothing like a Woodbine for the men with their breakfast mug of tea or a Players No 6 for the women and their pots of tea and a fancy, with the occasional old man's Old Holborn pipe thrown in for good measure, and by mid morning Maureens eyes are smarting in the smoky atmosphere so she lights one of her Embassy's to clear her throat and leans on the counter for a chinwag with Mrs Arthur from Woodside Terrace and as Jimmy Young on the radio plays Otis Reddings "Dock of the Bay" Mrs Arthur remarks that "this is that darkie who died afore christmas tha knows luv, such a shame wasn't it, I remember 'earing it on t'news, eeeh it wor dreadful, plane crash wasn't it ? Who was 'ee anyway ?"
"Ah don't know Mrs Arthur, nice song though, must 'ave recorded it before 'is plane crash"
"Aye love, thats right" and she takes a long drag on one of her husbands Woodbines, coughs vigorously for a minute or so then apologises for doing so all over the counter, and whilst wiping the formica top with her raincoat sleeve, she stops to stare at the short stick of pure tobacco in her hand and remarks, "these'll be the death o'me luv"
Maureen is happy in her job, much happier now since that nice Mr Beck bought the business from old Mr Barlow last year, Maureen was only ever a skivvy to Mr Barlow who spent most of his day leaning on the far end of the counter chatting to whoever wanted to pass the time of day with him, and plenty of Kirkstall people were happy to spend most of their day sitting at one of the tables putting the world to rights with Mr Barlow, it never failed to suprise Maureen just how many people in the district had nothing better to do than to sit in a cafe talking to an old man who hadn't strayed beyond the confines of his small cafe other than to go to his home three streets away every night and take a trip to Scarborough once a year at August WhitSunday.
No, Maureen is definitely much happier in her job now, mainly because her new boss, that nice Mr Beck, hardly ever comes into the cafe except for a quick ten minutes in a morning to empty the till of any paper money, he doesn't even check the takings, just removes the one, five and on rare occasions that they have them, ten pound notes, and rolls them around a comb which he keeps in his back pocket before disappearing off for the day to his normal job which is plumbing, or heating engineer as he says they should be called nowadays what with everyone wanting central heating putting in their houses, waste of money her mother calls it whenever Maureen suggests they should have it done, "we've got fireplaces in our bedrooms love", Maureens mother reminds her "and if you're that cold of a morning then put a cardigan on love".
Maureen runs the cafe virtually on her own now, just like she did for Mr Barlow except for the fact that Mr Beck doesn't hover around the counter all day long watching how much margarine she's putting on the breadcakes or counting the ham slices in the workers sandwiches like Mr Barlow used to do, and of course theres no old Mr Barlow around to tell her to turn the volume down on the old radio anymore so she can play it as loud as she likes and keep it tuned into Radio One all day, even when that Pete Brady show is on in the afternoon and he plays all the chart stuff that she likes to dance to down the Mecca in Leeds on a Saturday night if she can keep enough of her wage back from her mother when it comes to handing over her board money and paying back last weeks loans.
"... Home Secretary James Callaghan today announced that a quota system of work vouchers will be introduced shortly to stem the influx of Kenyan Asians arriving in the UK. Mr Callaghan intends to limit the vouchers to 1,500 per year, and in addition the voucher holders will be allowed to bring their families with them. Mr Callaghan said today that we have a responsibility to our own people at home as well as to a million passport holders abroad. Up to 2,500 Kenyan Asians holding British passports have arrived in Britain in the last three weeks. Jean-Claude Killy the French Alpine skier today completed a clean sweep of medals at the Grenoble Winter Olympics ..."
"I don't know where we'll put them all"
Maureen halted her scrubbing of the shelf under the counter and looked up at the old lady sat in the corner at table five wearing a brown winter coat that had seen winters right through the last war, she'd been sat there so long with her glass of milk that Maureen had forgotten all about her, "don't know where we'll put what love ?"
"These blackies love, ah don't know where they're going, they're not coming in my street that for sure, my Bert says he'll be straight around the council if any of them move in our street, and he will an 'all"
"They're not really blackies though are they ? I mean they're Asians aren't they, from India and Pakistan and those sort of places"
"No love, they're proper blackies, from Kenya, thats Africa love, where the blackies come from, we don't want 'em see, where are they going to live eh ? Not in my street anyway, straight round to t'council my Bert'll be"
"No, but they're from India originally, then they just went to live in Kenya, they're British see, from our empire, they've got British passports haven't they?"
"Ah don't care love, if they went to Kenya then thats where they should stay, they can't just wander all over the place 'till they find somewhere they like, they won't like it 'ere anyway, its too cold, its too bloody cold for me for a start, just think how cold it'll be for them poor buggers used to Africa weather, poor buggers'll catch they're death a'cold afore they've chance to pinch our houses and jobs, no love its not right, they should stay in their own country these blackies, its only fair love, only fair."
"Well there's a nice Indian man works on t'number 5 sometimes, he's very nice, talks to all the ladies he does, helps you on the platform with your bags and everything, he once told driver to wait for me when I wor running after t'bus on a sat'day night a few weeks ago, a real gent he is"
"Has he got a turban"
"Yes"
"Aye well they're alright, they speak English, they fought with my Bert in Burma you know, they're our empire lads, they're alright if they've got a turban on, its the blackies we don't want"
"oh ah see" although Maureen didn't really see at all, it was all politics to her and her mother had always said that politics were for men with nothing better to do with their minds, politics caused trouble she said and this immigrant thing was certainly causing a lot of trouble a lately, everyone was talking about it, even the nice bus conductor with the turban on had said that he didn't want the Kenyan Asians coming here and spoiling his country for hard working people like him, but what Maureen couldn't understand was the numbers involved, 1,500 families a year, surely a country like England could find room for 1,500 families a year, I mean there was that empty house on Woodkirk Road that had been empty for years, one family could go there for a start, no it was all a bit too serious for Maureen, all politics was a bit too serious she'd rather listen to her Radio One, serve sandwiches and tea and then dance the weekend away in the Mecca.
All of these thoughts were kept in Maureens head, these thoughts weren't for sharing with customers, that old Mr Barlow had shared everything in his head with customers and he'd got into some right barny's sometimes especially about football and politics and if there were two subjects about which Maureen knew very little it was football and politics.
"Do you think this "I'm backing Britain" campaign will do any good then", Maureen heard herself asking the question of the old lady but at the same time was suprised, she didn't normally discuss politics and didn't want to get into a long debate with this fractious old lady in the even older coat.
"Aye love, we should all do that, we should just buy British stuff, I mean its not right sending our money to other countries is it, not when we need it here, my Bert says once you've bought a Japanese television set then that moneys gone for ever, they don't come back here and spend it do they ?"
"Well what do they do with it then love ?" this was a question that had often puzzled Maureen.
"I'm beggered if I know love" the old lady in the older coat obviously didn't have all the answers, or at least her Bert didn't have all the answers, "I'm beggered if I know but I do know this much, once your British pounds have gone to Japan to pay for this Japanese rubbish thats coming in, then your pound nivver comes back again, we'll have no pounds left in this country if we carry on like this, its not right is it ?"
"No I don't suppose it is" Maureen leaned on the counter, chin cupped in hands and wished she'd never asked a political question, her mother was right, politics was for men with nothing better to do with their time.
"And Hong Kong, thats another thing" the old lady in the older coat was obviously getting into her stride now, "All that plastic rubbish coming from Hong Kong, its rubbish you know, I bought a draining board drainer thing, you know, for standing plates in to dry, not that I like to do that of course, you can't beat drying dishes with a cloth, its not hygene to let them stand wet is it love ?"
"No, I don't suppose it is" mumbled Maureen through cupped hands whilst glancing at the enormous pile of dirty dishes and cups standing by the sink in the corner near the window.
"Anyway, this draining board drainer thing had "Made in Hong Kong" stamped underneath it, my Bert spotted it, he always looks for where something is made now, bloody Hong Kong it wor, eeeeeh said my Bert, its not right, how hard is it to mek one of these in this country eh ? And he's right isn't he ? Why should we pay for bloody Hong Kong-ees, bloody chinamen or whatever they are to make our draining board drainers eh ? Its not bloody right, I bet theres a draining board company in this country going bust right now, eeeeh its awful"
Maureen pushed herself back from the counter and stood upright with a puzzled look on her face, "So you buying a plastic draining board drainer from Hong Kong has made a factory close in this country then ?"
"Well no, not in so many words love, I mean its not my fault is it, I didn't see it was made in Hong Kong until I got it home did I, but I wouldn't have bought it if I'd have known would I ?"
"So did they have any British ones then"
"I don't know love, I nivver looked"
Maureen thought about asking the old lady in the older coat if she had ever considered supporting the indigenous Leeds based tailoring industry by buying a new coat, but just then the old lady looked at the clock on the wall above the griddle plates, looked hard to see the hands behind their film of brown grease and then declared that if that was the right time then she'd better be going or her Bert wouldn't be getting his tea tonight and he'd play 'ummer if she didn't have his tea on the table when he walked in from work, she gathered her leather shopping bags full of British produce (and unknowingly some foreign rubbish as well) from the floor and staggered out into the street to brave the wind and rain back up the hill to her British terraced house with its Japanese television and Hong Kong draining board drainer.
posted by Gary @ 8:50 AM
2 Comments:
I din't read past the first sentance...before I thought 'He needs to get this to an agent NOW!' It is fantastic! I think I might have to hate you because I am so jealous...
Thanks for the comment !
I really must post some more stuff on here but I've been writing the chapters "out of order" and am up to number 14 now without any of them finished properly !
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