Holidays with Pay!

I just saw a Series Called "Blackpool" on the TV, for the first time, and I didn't recognise anything, apart from an odd tram and the Eiffel Tower! The one-arm bandits looked familiar as well, but that was about it!

One of the most difficult things in my own married life was to find time for Holidays, so when the opportunity arose, during contract breaks of 4 months, we profited as much as possible to find small "help-out" contracts. These contracts were found by the International Agency who took care of our other contracts world-wide, and were generally very useful.One of these fill-in contracts was the offer presented by "Pontin's" Holiday Camp, at Blackpool.

We always had to decide very quickly on these fill-ins, because they were always as a result of somebody else either falling ill, being incompetent, or any of the other reasons for giving up a contract, and the employers were therefore always in a hurry!

After a bit of here and there between our Agency and Pontin's, it was decided on a contract for 3 months, myself (as usual) on the Catering side, and my wife taking charge of the mandatory "Health Centre" in the Holiday Camp. This actually suited us down to the ground, saving us the trouble of finding accomodation elsewhere for 4 months, awaiting our new contracts in W Germany, at Stuttgart, and probably having to pay, heftily, for such accomodation, and maybe even pay for a holiday!

Board and lodge were included in the Pontin's offer, and a wage! Oh no, you weren't going to become a rich man, but it was all a lot simpler, and with the beaches,sea and other holidaymaker things just 100metres away, we saw the chance of passing "paid holidays" - so - Off we went! was at the time a sort of "poorer" relation to the large "Butlin's", but very popular nonetheless, and the camp took a maximum of some 350 guests, and around a hundred or so of staff. All had to be fed and watered at least 3 times a day, and all their little holidaymakers blights and "bo-bo's" treated in the Camp Health Centre!

Amazing how many and how often, the British get themselves burnt bright red by their summer (you know, those 5 or 6 days that turn up somewhere between June and September, when it doesn't rain!) and with a mixture of that, heart attacks by elderly gentlemen customers, a few epileptic patients, diabetic people, who all had to have their daily injections or otherwise, my wife was taken up in a sort of "Emergency Ward 10"- herself the sole and unique actress, apart from the doctor who was always on call,but rarely present!An arrangement, legal apparantly, was made with the local Health Council, the Doctor, and my wife, whereby she (my wife) was authorised to inject, issue prescriptions for certain medicaments, although always under "controllable procedure" by the Doctor (which never happened)and generally represent the qualified Doctor. She had been doing this, in any case, in Germany, and knew what traps she must look out for.She actually never had any serious problem in all of her working life, in UK or elsewhere.As I have said before, that's why Guy's Hospital qualified SRN's are looked for - worldwide!

I, for my part, had the normal routine and running of a kitchen "central" catering for roughly 450/500 people daily, almost exactly that which I had been doing in Germany as a civilian Chef attached to the British Army, so a great difference wasn't felt. British holiday food, at the time, was extraordinarily simple, just like the Army.

British breakfast with everything that's bad for you, and some things which are bad for the people around you (I think of the baked beans), lunch with Roast meats, fish and chips, pies, stews etc.

Some cold meat and vegetable dishes for the "kinky" customers, who didn't come from UK, Manchester or Glasgow, and that was it.

A daily input and output of around 300 roasted chickens, every breakfast, trays and trays of grilled bacon, grilled sausages, every morning of 1200 fried eggs, and (again) a few poached, scrambled or boiled eggs for the "kinkies"! All the roast meats to be trimmed,rolled, stuffed, and roasted!

Life as normal!

What was a little different was that Pontin's were trying to "update" their image, and asked me to look at any possibilities of change, within the already existing food chain, preferably costing less, but certainly NOT costing more!

After a week or so of trials within the Staff Canteen (who ate the same food as the guests anyway), I finally was asked to put my idea of serve yourself cold salad buffets at Lunchtimes on offer for everybody. The big chiefs had scrutinised the swill bins, and had realised that there was much less wastage in self service than in any other system of plated meals.

It is a fact that people (apart from the gluttons) often have a bad conscience if they serve themselves too much, and particularly if they then end up throwing it away. The tendency is to take lots of salad, which is not expensive, is quite filling and good for the health. It's also good for the health of the Pontin's budget!

In any case, it all went off very well, all were happy, and the Luncheon Buffet quickly got carried over to the evening meal as well, a logical step.

So far as I am aware. they still use this system at Pontin's - what a claim to fame!

Of course, as usual, I never saw the colour of anything for my efforts. I once heard about a guy working for VW cars who came up with an idea, and was paid 100,000 d-marks for his efforts!

Around this time, the system was more or less working by itself, and time became a little long. The weather, as usual, was not playing the game, and even when the sun shone, the beaches had less and less attraction. I was approached by a gentleman who owned a place called "The Lemon Tree Casino", situated at the end of the main tramway line, just about 300 metres from the Holiday Camp main entrance.

He required a second Chef for his Casino kitchen, since the holiday periods of the large Cities, particularly Glasgow and Manchester, were coming up, which meant an invasion of Blackpool for around 3-4 weeks.

Although his "Casino" or "Players Club" was (as it had to be at the epoch) a private club, there were many "holiday members" who couldn't get enough of one arm bandits, and needed poker parties and the like! They needed food as well, and since the place was "a la carte", I decided that I could fit in 3 nights a week from 21hrs to 0300 in the morning. Well, I was relatively young at the time, and the wife had a couple of night duties a week to attend to anyway!

In the end, we left Blackpool in mid September, with a "new" second-hand car, a little money in the bank, and a whole bunch of new experience in our different metiers!

AND - we had had our HOLIDAY WITH PAY!!!