Saturday, December 24, 2005

Dreams and a normal day...

Drop a dime before I walk away
Any song you want I'll gladly play
Money feeds my music machine
Now listen while I play
My green tambourine

My Green Tambourine, The Lemon Pipers
Highest chart position no 7 Feb '68


Monday 12th February 1968 : 10.30am
Bob Beck climbs from the cab of his Volkswagon dropside pickup truck, frowning slightly as the engine finally coughs and splutters into silence a full thirty seconds after he switched it off and removed the ignition key, he'll get it seen to at his mate Don's garage but Don will just laugh when he sees that Bob is still driving the twenty year old wreck, this Volkswagon was built only shortly after Herr Hitler had been defeated and in fact was a deposit to the British Government in reparation for the cost of pulverising German industry during the second world war.

Bob has owned the truck for five years now, it suits his business, it sounds like a thousand hand propelled lawn mowers all running at once but the open back allows him to carry whatever materials are needed for the job in hand on any given day. Bob's trade is plumbing, a term which incorporates everything from fitting a new kitchen tap washer to central heating and drain work, but he also turns his hand to any kind of small building work and the back of the pick-up is as likely to be filled with sand and cement as plumbing materials.

But although the VW pick-up is eminently suitable for Bobs trade, Bob does not feel that it projects quite the correct image for a man in his position, after all, since buying the Tomato Dip café last year Bob is now an entrepreneur, a valuable businessman, well respected in the Kirkstall community (in his mind even if not in reality), and Bob is thinking, albeit only briefly, of investing in a vehicle more in keeping with his new status, something like a Jaguar for instance.

He's parked the truck someway down Kirkstall Road today and he's glad that the earlier rain has stopped but even so he turns up the collar on his donkey jacket and fastens the top button, it's a cold wet miserable February morning to match the cold wet miserable buildings around him, but as usual Bob is in a good mood.

He's in a perennial good mood because he is in control of everything in his life, he's lucky in that he is, and always has been, self employed so he has no boss to answer to, no timetable to keep to, no-one to tell him when he can or can't take days off and no-one to dock his wages for being late (for which he is eternally grateful as Bob has never kept to a specific meeting time in his life).

Bob never really knows from one week to the next where he will be working and which jobs he will be working on, his plumbing work is mainly domestic so each job only lasts for a day or so which brings its own uncertainty to your bank balance and grey hairs for your bank manager, but for the last 20 years of his working life Bob has been self employed and has never been short of a bob or two, in fact his wallet always contains twenty or thirty pounds which is considerably more than the average weekly wage, and if his bank manager ever went to Bobs house and looked in the tin marked “sugar” in the small cupboard next to the coal shute in the cellar, he'd find a thick roll of five, ten and twenty pound notes totalling well over five hundred pounds, this is Bobs “float” where the money goes from all the cash jobs, those jobs where receipts and invoices are not required, this is Bobs Jaguar fund.

At the moment the Jaguar fund is doing nicely and he is about a quarter of the way towards a brand new XJ6, Bob has already made enquiries at Appleyards and although the salesman had looked quite disgusted at him as he parked the VW pickup right in front of the showroom he'd been won over by the sight of the fund (temporarily exported to Bobs wallet for the very purpose of winning over the salesman), and he'd left the dealer with lots of brochures and a promise of a phone call if ever a good cash bargain came into stock.

As he reaches the café door Bob pauses and holds the door open to let an old lady out, she thanks him and scrapes the paint off the bottom of the door with her shopping trolley as she goes, causing Bob to wince a little and almost call her back to show her the damage, it his door that she's scraped and its he who will have to repaint it, bloody old woman, she'd better be a regular.

He's still crouched there assesing the damage when an elderly man in a dirty taupe raincoat nudges him from behind with the bottom of his walking stick and asks "if he's bloody coming in or going out , make his mind up because he's gagging for a cup of tea and he didn't fight through the war and get this here gammy leg just to stand out in the rain while young pillocks like him make his mind up whether he's in or out of the bloody cafe".

Bob has apologised to the old timer and stood aside before he realises that its he, Bob, who owns the bloody cafe and if the old git doesn't watch his language he'll have him out on the pavement any time soon, walking stick, war wound and all, bloody hell, what does a man have to do to get respect around here, isn't it enough that he saved their cafe from extinction last year ? They wouldn't have a cafe to stop out of the rain in if it wasn't for him and last years float fund, bloody Kirkstall residents, this place wiped out his float last year, £3400 for this shit heap, that robbing bastard Stan Barlow saw him and his float fund coming that day.

£3400, cash, for the 30 year repairing lease on the building, stock, fixtures and fittings, goodwill and Maureen, £100 a week turnover Stan Barlow had promised, "its a little goldmine" he'd promised Bob and he'd shown Bob the books to prove it, or at least he'd shown him a version of the books to prove it, Stan's "selling the business" version of the books that was, as opposed to Stan's "Inland Revenue declaration" version of the books and the reality, the real version of the books which was stored in Stan's head now safely retired and living in a very nice bungalow up Skipton way, Bob had a mind to drive up to Skipton as soon as he'd done his own version of this years books, £100 a week my sweet fanny adams, £100 a month was more like it, and so Bob still persisted with the plumbing business albeit that Sid Fox, his plumbing partner, had to bear more of the burden whilst Bob kept an eye on Stans "little goldmine".

Bob enters his empire at last and stands at the doorway, hands deeply thrust into his builders donkey jacket pockets and purveys his new domain, his world, his float fund investment, nobody sees him at first until an old woman seated at the nearest table to the door asks him "if he's bloody coming in or going out but either way to shut the door its blowing a bloody gale in here and she's only just got warm since she came in", its the second time in three minutes that Bob has been abused by his customers and for the second time in three minutes he wonders why he ever bothered with this shit heap.

Bob steps further into his cafe and closes the door behind him, no-one looks up, no-one doffs their cap or thanks him once again for saving their community cafe, Bob will never tire of hearing them thank him for saving their community cafe, because no bugger cares about their community cafe and if they know that he's the owner then they don't let on that they know.

Maureen has her back to him, she's frying up an egg for the old soldier who so rudely jabbed Bob in the back with the walking stick, the old soldier himself is taking a seat at the back of the cafe and looks at Bob, scowls, then nods his head over to Maureen, then at the radio with a disapproving raise of his eyebrows as if to convey to Bob that he doesn't approve of Don Partridge the Oportunity Knocks one man band winner belting out his own composition "Rosie", neither does Bob, its a crap song, its a crap television show, but the old soldier has got off on the wrong foot with Bob by poking him in the back with his walking stick and so Bob shouts Maureens name above the din and tells her to "turn it up a bit more, its a good song this one".

Maureen jumps at the sound of her new boss shouting her name, even though its been a year she still can't think of him as just "the boss", Mr Barlow was "the boss", Mr Beck is still "the new boss", she looks over her shoulder and smiles at Mr Beck and shouts "right away Mr Beck, just turn this egg first" and under her breath thinks herself lucky that Mr Beck didn't walk in two minutes earlier as she and that old Mrs Waters were finishing off their argument over whether the bread was stale or not.

"Rosie, whoa Ro-woo-woo-sie", sings Bob at the top of his voice, then looks over at the old soldier and winks at him just as Maureen calls out "egg butty, no broken yolk" and turns to mount the stool to turn up the radio as instructed, Bob tells her to turn it down instead and picks up the plate with the egg butty on it and takes it over to the old soldier,

"Here y'are old timer, keep yer stick ter yerself next time an all" Bob smiles a friendly sort of smile at him and the old soldier just turns away and mutters something to himself that Bob can't hear.

Bob's behind the counter with the till open on No Sale, "did that old git pay for his egg Maureen" he asks, she's confused about the radio now and confirms that yes the old git paid, "how's business then love", Bobs looking for cash in the till, cash in notes in particular, "anything to bank yet love" Maureen tells him its been a bit quiet but its the start of the week see, and he took all the notes out of the till on Saturday, remember.

Bob remembers alright, its just that he likes to keep the paper money at home so that he can filter some of it into his Jaguar fund and he wants Maureen to get used to a regular routine of him taking the paper money away to be "banked", no harm in letting her think that he's security conscious, she'll soon be telling the Kirkstall population how careful he is with the paper money and they won't be trying any till snatches or break-ins if they hear there's no paper money in the till, they'll not find it at home either, hidden in his cellar like it is.

"Got them new money posters up yet Maureen, its next month you know"
"No Mr Beck, they're still in the cupboard, I'll put them up tonight before ah go 'ome"
"Right-oh don't forget though love will you, don't want any mistakes with the change do we?"

"No Mr Beck, I'll manage" although secretly Maureen is very worried about the two new coins due out next month, new one and two shilling coins, she's heard that they are much smaller than the current ones and her pensioner customers want to know "what they won the war for to let them mess about with the money like this, its all that bloody common market nonsense, and this won't be the end of it you mark my words love"

Not finding any paper money in the till Bob closes the till and picking up a large spoon has a poke around in the tomato dip mixture on the left hand griddle, “not cleaning this at all are you love” he asks of Maureen who replies that “no its not been cleaned since before Christmas”, Bob nods his satisfaction and as he can find nothing more constructive to do in here he wipes his hands on a dirty tea towel under the counter and tells Maureen to drop the latch when she leaves as he'll pop in on his way home and lock up properly, Maureen is pleased with this news as it means that Mr Beck has a plumbing job to do this afternoon and she can knock off a bit earlier without him knowing.

Bob closes the café door behind him and turns his back to the wind which is now blowing specks of rain around, he walks back to the VW pickup, opens the unlocked door and steps into the cab then sits and stares around the interior, somewhere in here, somewhere in the mix of sandwich bags, empty milk bottles, scraps of paper with old forgotten notes scribbled on them, invoices and old newspapers, is the current scrap of paper with the address where he is supposed to be meeting up with Foxy this morning, its in Horsforth that much he knows and after a quick rummage around he finds the address written in the margin of yesterdays Daily Mirror, its not in Horsforth, its in Headingley, just a short drive up the hill from Kirkstall, he and Sid Fox his plumbing partner are doing a central heating job in a semi-detached near the cricket ground, a very nice little earner in cash and a nice house to work in, belongs to an asian doctor and his wife who both work so Bob and Foxy can take as long as they like over this job treating the house as their own, makes a change from having to work around a housewife who insists on watching your every movement all day long.

Bob turns the key in the ignition, the VW Pickup does not respond, it does this sometimes. He waits with the ignition still switched on then after 30 seconds he hears a whine from the starter motor as it spins into life, the engine is cranked a few times which shudders the cab and physically throws Bob from side to side, and then with a huge clatter the engine awakens as the first drop of petrol hits the spark plugs, it takes only a feather touch of his foot to disengage the clutch as the pedal is nearly down to the floor anyway, select first gear with a gnash of gear teeth, rev the engine to fever pitch and the VW Pickup moves slowly from the kerb.

There's a scrape and rattle from behind the cab as the wheelbarrow in the open back of the truck slides along the steel corrugated bed and a thud as it hits the drop-down tailgate, and if Bob had bothered to check the speedometer he'd notice that he was already travelling at 60mph, he isn't really, in fact the VW Pickup will do well to hit 30mph at any time today, the speedometer has been broken for years and Bob doesn't bother looking at it any more.

Its a seven minute drive in the VW to St Annes Road and the Azids very nice semi-detached, Bob parks behind Sid Fox's maroon Ford Consul with the back seats taken out so he can use it like a van, and as he walks up the garden path towards the front door he can hear from within the sound of a plumber busy at his work, singing along to Elvis on the portable radio, Foxy thinks he's a good singer but in truth there's more chance of Elvis becoming a plumber than Foxy hitting two consecutive good notes. Bob pauses outside the front door to light up a slim panatella, shielding the lighter flame from the wind which is picking up now and mixing the rain in with a suggestion of ice, pushes the door open with his foot while still lighting the small cigar and calls out to Foxy to "stand by your beds" to which Sid Fox's head peers around the door through to the kitchen at the end of the spacious hallway and enquires, " 'bout fuckin time an all, where yer bin ?"

"Had to call at the caff Foxy, keep 'er on 'er toes y'know, see if theres any paper in the till"
"An was there then ?"
"Nah, its Monday, I emptied it sat'day"
"How much you creaming of t'top then eh ?"
"Enough"
"Jammy bugger"
"You could 'ave 'ad yer share"
"Aye ah kno, jammy bugger"

When Bob bought the caffe off Stan Barlow last year he'd tried to get Foxy involved as well, tried to go a 50/50 share with him, tried to convince Foxy that the cafe was a "little goldmine", and seeing as how they were both long-standing clients of the cafe it'd be only right for the pair of them to be the new owners, but Foxy didn't want to know, Foxy had just got divorced 12 months previous and had claimed in court that he had no money and no assets and as his ex-wife knew no better he'd got away with giving her all the furntiture and transferring the rented council house into her name. Foxy walked out of court with apparently not a penny in savings, not a brick of the house to his name and only the clothes that he stood up in and the wreck of a Ford Consul that he drove around in, his now ex-wife was well pleased but of course she knew nothing of the £4,800 that had been hidden in Foxy's cellar inside the old mildewed navy dufflebag that she'd almost thrown out on several occasions if only she'd been brave enough to pick it up from where it lay stuffed into the corner of the coal hole, Foxy's cash float had survived the divorce but it wouldn't have survived long if his ex-wife had heard of a new business investment not twelve months later, so he'd missed out on a 50% share of the cafe and he was well sickened by it.

Bob removes the builders donkey jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his heavy cotton checked shirt, theres work to do, pipes to lay under the kitchen floor through into the dining room for the Azid's new central heating system, but first Bob puts on the kettle for a cup of tea, Foxy's hands are already dirty from taking the floorboards up and crawling around in the floorspace, Bob'll make the tea with Mrs Azid's nice Denby teapot and some of her nice leaf tea, and we might even find some bourbon biscuits in her cupboard, lets start the day properly.

Bob and Foxy have worked together for twenty years now, they have a lot in common, they're both 42 years old, both served their apprenticeships at Morfitts in Headingley, both left at the end of their apprenticeships to join the Royal Navy at the tail end of the war and on their return they'd spurned old man Morfitts offer of re-employment to go on their own, figuring that they might as well put the money straight into their own pockets instead of old man Morfitts.

Their first job together made them sworn enemies of old man Morfitt when they stole a good job from right under his nose, a complete strip out job it was, replacing lead water pipes with galvanised steel ones, copper being impossible to find after the war. £200 cash in hand for two weeks work that single action had caused nearly ten years of conflict as Morfitt tried to put them out of work, spreading rumours about their solvency, stopping accounts at the builders merchants and trying to get them disbarred from the plumbing and heating engineers association, all to no avail though as Bob and Sid were an amiable pair and could easily handle obstructive builders merchants with a joke, a smoke and the sniff of a roll of cash and they could sweet talk their way around any female client or laugh and joke and smoke their way into any male clients friendship.

Bob is the better looking of the two, barrel chested, a shade under six foot tall, blond hair combed in a side parting which he allows to grow more fashionably longer these days, a sort of chunkier version of Adam Faith he scrubs up well, cleans under his nails every night and is always well presented to his lady friends, of which there are many.

Sid is shorter, stockier, dark hair, with a swarthy complexion, huge hands which are rough and always dirty, he smells of plumbing, that earthy, slightly foul-water smell which some days is also mixed with the bitter stench of solder when he's been working with lead, Sid Fox always has a woodbine behind his ear and without fail never leaves the house without one of several dirty flat caps welded solidly to his head, today its the indestructable leather one and there is a woodbine behind his ear as well as one hanging from the corner of his mouth, they both smoke like chimneys although Bob prefers cigars, even when working on "live" gas pipes, and like electricians who think they'll never be electrocuted Bob and Foxy believe that the gas that they work with will not ignite as long as they don't draw too deeply on their fags, they have of course been proved wrong on many occasions, Foxy the worst when he was once flung across a kitchen in Beeston after igniting his cigarette lighter to see where the hissing noise was coming from.

Although the two have worked together for the last twenty years they are not strictly business partners, both prefering to stay self-employed and handle their own little piles of cash at the end of the week. Bob has a bank account in the name of RoBeck Construction, a business name that he thought up one night when full of beer so when they get paid by cheque by their business customers Bob will cash the cheque and give Foxy his half share in cash after deducting any material costs. Foxy does not have any bank accounts, he deals only in cash as he doesn't trust his ex-wife and her solicitor or the bank employees who will surely tell her every time they see him on the bank premises, and so Foxy only trusts cash and Bob, he's known Bob too long to know that Bob won't fiddle him and if Bob says that Foxy's share of a particular job is ten pound ten shilling and sixpence then Foxy is happy that Bob will have done the sums right, Foxy has never once questioned Bobs calculations.

Cash is in fact the only acceptable currency for their domestic jobs and as most of their jobs are domestic in nature then the books that each one keeps for his own tax records do not show a particularly high level of income, indeed if any inland revenue inspector ever saw their books he would first of all ask why it was that Foxy's books showed a pitiful level of income compared to Bobs, so pitiful indeed that Foxy was technically bereft of any visible means of support and the inspector might ask where Foxy got the money to pay the rent on his small terraced house every week, let alone find money for food.

Bobs book-keeping was only marginally better, his declared income on his tax return every year was borderline poverty and only just above the margin that prevented enquiring eyes down at the revenue offices. Neither one questioned the other on their tax returns both working on the theory that if asked in any official capacity it would be better to be genuinely ignorant of the others money affairs, Bob suspected that Foxy had not filled in a tax return for a few years but would have been suprised to learn that Foxy had not actually declared any income at all since leaving the navy in 1948.

The cash that is not declared in their books is, in their eyes, their cash, and nothing to do with the revenue. the cash that remains in their pockets on a Friday night is for spending over the weekend and if anything is left on a Sunday night then it goes downstairs in the cellar and the float tin.

Bob and Foxy stand in the kitchen leaning against Mrs Azid's new MFI kitchen units which have been examined very closely by the two, the flat pack phenomenon has just started in Leeds and both are scornful of the idea, as tradesmen they simply refuse to believe that ordinary people who have never picked up a hammer and screwdriver in their life will be able to assemble something as complex as a kitchen cupboard, not to mention the plumbing, they look forward to the first call they get when a hapless punter calls them out to assemble their MFI kitchen, the stick they will hand out that day has already been well practised on tea breaks such as the one they are taking now.

Foxy is opening and closing the wall cupboard door in front of him with increasing violence in a demonstration to Bob that chipboard will eventually crack around the hinge joints, “its not even good quality chipboard Bob, look its starting to go already” and indeed it is, a hairline crack is already appearing in the formica covering next to the hinge, “if I keep slamming this door a bit longer I bet it'll fall off completely” and he looks as though he's prepared to do just that until Bob reminds him that they don't want to be repairing Mrs Azids kitchen for the rest of the week, “well I'm going to tell her about it” insists Foxy, determined to make the poor lady guilty at taking food from the mouths of honest tradesmen who could have hand built her a nice kitchen out of proper wood for not much more than twice the price.

And because he's been stopped from breaking Mrs Azids cupboard door just to prove that he could, Foxy drops to his knees and opens the cupbaord door under the sink to inspect the plumbing, Foxy suspects that the Azids did not use a plumber to do the plumbing work and as soon as he moves aside a couple of boxes of Daz, a tube of Ajax and various cleaning aids he confirms his suspicions, "look at this Bob, its bloody rubbish, bloody cowboys she's had in, look at that solder, its a right bloody mess, I'll bet if I shake it here it'll crack to buggery", and he grasps the cold water feed pipe and gives it a good shake just to prove that he can break the cowboys work.

"Foxy for gods sake bloody leave off will you, I don't want to be crawlin' under her bloody sink all mornin, theres all this bloody pipework to get finished this mornin, 'ave you finished yer tea?"

"Aye, well its not bloody right is it, I'll be tellin 'er about 'er pipework under that sink, its bloody atrocious, a right cowboys done that Bob".

"Are you goin under then Foxy", Bobs question is merely confirmation of the way their partnership always works, Foxy always "goes under" the floorboards because he's the shortest of the pair and because he's always mucky anyway, its always been that way, and today is no different and Foxy squirms his way through the narrow gap in Mrs Azids kitchen floor as Bob picks up a length of three quarter inch copper pipe and rubs one end with wire wool ready for Foxy, who is now out of sight under the floor, to solder the joint
which will take hot water into Mrs Azids immaculate lounge with its Parker Knoll recliner armchair, ensuring that next winter she will not have to go around each room lighting the gas fires when she gets in from the hospital every night, its the future is central heating and Bob and Foxy are an integral part of it.

A dull thud from under the floorboards followed by a muffled "You Fuckin Bastard" means that once again Foxy has forgotten that the joist between the dining room and the lounge is lower than all the others and as Bob now knows exactly where Foxy is located he strolls into the lounge with his club hammer and crowbar and sets about lifting one of the floorboards near the bay window.

The rest of the day progresses well, Foxy completes the ground floor pipework just before lunch and they sit in Mrs Azids kitchen with their potted beef sandwiches and two wedges of a jam sponge cake that Bob has liberated from the cafe, whilst drinking the first of four cups of strong tea from Mrs Azids best Denby earthenware, and for amusement Bob watches the filth and solder flux on Foxy's hands gradually migrate to the bread on his sandwich then disappear into his mouth, in all their years together Bob has never known Foxy to wash his hands for something as inconsequential as a sandwich, not even on occasions they've been working on foul water drainpipes.

Which reminds Bob of an incident that happened on a job last year and inbetween a mouth full of potted beef and bread, Bob laughs out loud at the memory of Foxy chasing him down a terraced street of houses in Harehills. They'd been asked to unblock a toilet in a rented back-to-back house by the landlord of the property who used Bob and Foxy for all sorts of odd jobs, neither of them wanted to do the blocked toilet job but the landlord gave them lots of work, small jobs that usually only took a few hours but he paid good rates and he paid in cash, so when the call was made to Bobs house one morning he didn't hesitate.

When they'd arrived at the house they'd found the upstairs toilet completely blocked with turds (goldfish was the polite term that Bob and Foxy used in front of the clients) and almost full of at least four days worth of excrement, but out in the street the drain was empty, showing that the blockage was somewhere in the foul water pipe between the toilet and the street. It was Foxy's turn to get the sweet end of the stick for a change and he had a good laugh at Bob as he watched him struggle into his pair of dirty overalls, the ones that they both saved for these sort of jobs, then pull on a pair of rubber gauntlets and start to screw a large rubber plunger onto a four foot long length of broom handle.

The procedure was quite simple, Bob would pump the plunger up and down inside the toilet bowl in an attempt to get the obstruction to move and Foxy would wait outside observing the drain to make sure that the blockage flowed away properly, when and if Bob could shift it. foxy's part of the job really only involved him standing above the drain manhole with a pole just in case the blockage needed breaking up some more when it reached him, but Foxy loved mucky jobs and so as Bob disappeared into the house he took up his position at the manhole laid down on the pavement with his head inside the hole, and gradually shifted his way down until only the bottom part of his legs were visible from the pavement and his head was almost level with the drainpipe at teh bottom of the hole

There was nothing to see down here, not even a trickle of water in the bottom of the pipe, this was a bad blockage and Foxy suspected that it wasn't in the toilet bowl at all but somewhere down at pavement level, perhaps where the drainpipe turned at ninety degrees before it emerged into this manhole. Foxy heard a dull thud fromthe pipe, then another, then several in succesion, Bob was pumping the plunger up and down in hte toilet bowl but nothing was emerging at this end, just as Foxy suspected, this was a bad blockage and if it was in the toilet it would have shifted by now.

Then on Bobs last plunge, Foxy heard something moving in the pipe, there was still no water coming through but something was definitely moving towards him and twisting his head level with the pipe he thought he could see something white (or something that had once been white) but it seemed to be firmly wedged in there now. Lifting himself clear of the manhole he went to the boot of his car and took out an old wire coathanger to hook the object with and drag it out but before he stuck his head down the hole again he shouted up at the bathroom window to tell Bob not to plunge anymore while he had his head down the hole.

A muffled shout from the bathroom indicated that Bob had heard and so Foxy took up his position again, head first down the drain, no-one else but Foxy would have done this, even when he had the clean end of the job, even when all he had to do was stand and watch, Foxy couldn't resist getting his hands dirty. He was wedged into position, right down in the three foot deep hole with his head turned towards the blocked pipe, arm halfway inside the blocked section trying to get the coathanger hooked into the blockage when he heard the dull thud start up again,

"What the fu..." but before the question left his mouth a blast of foul air came from the pipe straight in his mouth followed by an awful gurgling sound and then four days worth of backed up excrement rushed towards his face and emerged into the open manhole bubbling and boiling, unfortunately unable to escape out of the opposite side of the manhole due to Foxy being in the way. Within seconds he was submerged and his eyes, nose ears and mouth plugged with goldfish and semi-fermented toilet waste, kicking and struggling and all the time trying to curse like he'd never cursed before Foxy managed to extracate himself from the hole and knelt on the pavement desperately trying to wipe the slime from his eyes whilst coughing and hacking up brown gunge from his lungs.

It was that sight that had greeted Bob as he came downstairs to find out if Foxy had seen what was causing the blockage, he'd seen everything drain away from the toilet bowl after Foxy had shouted up at him to have one more go and had flushed the toilet a couple of times to clean out the bowl, and now the sight of Foxy sprawled on the pavement spitting out goldfish was too much for Bob's composure and he burst out an uncontrollable flood of laughter that had him sinking to his knees, wiping his eyes and trying to grab a breath before the fits of laughter started again and again.

Which all seemed a bit disconcerting to the two old ladies over the road who had come to their front door attracted by the smell, only to see two men on their knees on the pavement, one bent double trying desperately to clear his eyes, ears and nose all the while coughing and hacking as though he'd taken a lung full of mustard gas, and the other bent double holding his rib cage with both hands trying desperately to get his breath back in order to fuel another round of hysterical laughter.

And then just at that point Foxy hacked up the last glob from his lungs, snorted the last niblet from his nostril, and with one last vigorous rub his vision came back into some sort of focus, albeit with a slightly brown edge, and he slowly pulled himself upright whilst still kneeling on the pavement and turned his head to target his vision on Bob, who, whilst still struggling for breath, met Foxy's gaze with a face full of mirth,

"You did that on purpose you bastard"

"Did what Foxy ?"

"You plunged when I said not to plunge, you plunged when I had my head down the hole, you bloody did that on purpose you bloody bastard"

"No I bloody didn't, you said to give it one more go"

"I bloody didn't, I bloody said don't do it any bloody more, don't do it any bloody more I said, it sounds nothing like give it one more go"

"Well thats what it sounded like up there"

and with that Bob reached over and ever so carefully picked a small goldfish from the top of Foxy's head and flung it down the manhole,

"Come 'ere yer bastard...." as Foxy sprung to his feet Bob was one second ahead of him and off down the road they both ran, Bob still laughing over his shoulder treating the whole thing as a big joke which just infuriated Foxy even more, as did the fact that his short legs wouldn't catch Bob if he chased him all day.

And as they disappeared down the end of the street the two old ladies, standing with arms folded over ample busoms turned to each other, shook their heads, tutted, and turned and went back into their respective houses.


And when Foxy had finished chasing Bob around the neighbourhood they had returned to the van, sat inside and opened their lunchboxes, and whilst Bob had managed to wash his hands in the house earlier Foxy hadn't, and despite stinking of four days worth of human excrement, his hair still tacky and his fingernails stuffed full of the light brown stuff, Foxy had enjoyed his jam sandwiches and even licked his fingers clean at the end, at which point Bob had to leave the van for some fresh air.

Bob reminds Foxy of the tale now and they lean on Mrs Azids new kitchen units laughing out loud until it starts to hurt, each adding his own little tag to the storyline and when Bob reminds Foxy that he never washed his hands afterwards, Foxy is holding his Denby cup of tea close to his mouth and he throws back his head and laughs so loud that he spills half of it down his overalls and onto Mrs Azids new lino floor, so he puts the cup down on the worktop, spilling more of it in the process and makes a wiping motion with his workboots on the lino, which only suceeds in spreading the tea even further as well as making it dirtier.

They're both laughing so hard now that Foxy belches in the middle of a guffaw and nearly brings his sandwiches up again so he walks out of the back door for air and to calm down a bit, Bob stays in the kitchen, fresh chuckles erupting at random intervals, tears running freely down his face and muttering the occasional "oh dear," and "you daft bugger".


When Mrs Azid returns home at 6pm she is a little upset to see that six of her best Denby teacups are lying in two inches of dirty brown water in her kitchen sink along with her matching Denby teapot and four side plates and when she asks Foxy why they are in the sink Foxy replies that "man cannot live by bread alone love" and thats "its thirsty work plumbing is" and when Mrs Azid asks if they can't bring flasks of tea and workmans mugs with them to work, Foxy confirms that indeed they normally do, but "as she will appreciate, tea tastes much better from a proper tea cup love, and thats a lovely tea service you've got there", Mrs Azid confirms that indeed it is, it was a wedding present from Mr Azids cousin in Burnley, and it was very expensive and is only to be used on special occasions so could he and Bob please ensure that they bring their own pots in future, and by the way, who is going to wash up the valuable Denby tea service, to which Foxy looks agast and resists telling her that washing pots is womens work and instead smiles and informs her that delicate pottery like the Denby needs delicate feminine hands like hers, whilst at the same time displaying his own shovel-like and filthy hands at which point Mrs Azid hurridly agrees with him.

Later, when Bob and Foxy have left for the night Mrs Azid will also notice that her biscuit barrel is empty even though she remembers filling it with two packets of chocolate digestives at the weekend and she wonders just how expensive this central heating job will be by the time the two plumbers have finished.





posted by Gary @ 2:04 PM 2 comments

Chapter One

The Tomato Dip

Sittin' 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