TBK tells- My working life- Act one

Three acts of my working life- Act one, Student days

As I walked by the sea in Bahrain looking back on my working life I realise it was a bit like a three-act play. My student working days were Act one in the UK and Overseas . I worked as needed to support myself at college. Act two was after I graduated and joined the real world of work traveling the UK and running training programmes for a variety of companies. Act 3 were the 11 beautiful years in Bahrain where I lived and worked in the same town, was never away from home and was at home by 5 pm most days. In February 2021 I bought the curtain down on my working life after 44 long years and then I moved to Juffair to rest and reflect while I waited for a visa from the Philippines to begin Act four- RETIREMENT!

So, let me take you on my journey down memory lane, my working life, in 3 blogs, and we will start at the beginning with the student days. 

My dad was very strict with us as boys, if we wanted something, we had to pay for it! If we used his telephone to make a call (in the days before mobiles) he would charge us for the call. Likewise, if we used the car, we had to pay a set fee per mile. Neither were easy to arrange as he was a Doctor and worked from home, so the phone had to be kept clear for patients to call him, and the car was needed for house calls.

However, it did teach us the value of things and made us entrepreneurial to get income to pay his bills. I remember as a kid growing lettuce and selling them to my dad’s patients (his surgery was in our house and they left through our garage so I set up a little stall!). 

I also washed the cars and mowed the lawn to get pocket money. When I was 16 I selected an Independent Schools Careers Organisation (ISCO) two week programme in the hotel Industry and was selected by then Industry Giant Trust house Forte ( THf) to work at the (Deadly) Dudley hotel in Hove , on the south coast of the UK , near where I lived. It was full of wealthy old people who decided to retire by the sea and instead of staying in rest homes stayed in a hotel, permanently.

The Personnel Manager then was called Jane Ward and she started me off in the Basement with a guy called Richard , who happily showed me how to empty the bottles that came back from the bars and put them into crates , so the company could get the deposit back. The bottles, many of which had got broken, stank of the contents which had been left in a container overnight often covered in cigarette ash. It was not a pleasant introduction to the Hotel Industry! However, when people asked me to summarise my industry experience at Interview I used to say “I started as Basement porter at 16 and worked my way up! “As my surname is “Porter” people who heard this story started calling me “Basement!”

Richard, the real basement porter, had never trained anyone before so when he realised that someone else could now do his job he went sick and I remained in the basement for 2 weeks! On the last day a very worried Jane, who had been away, rescued me from the basement and made me Duty Manager with her for the day- what a rise to fame, from Basement Porter to Duty Manager. Then they have me a fabulous encyclopedia of Gastronomy called Larousse Gastronomique and asked if I would like to stay working there, on a paid basis, over Easter. I agreed on condition that it was not in the Basement and I was promoted again to Wash up operator, and later Still room assistant ( making tea , coffee and toast for the guests breakfasts) and Kitchen Porter ( another job with Porter in it, this one involved washing the heavy hot pans in the kitchen). 

I went back every vacation from school and even got to work as a waiter and receptionist and of course with Les as “Hall Porter”. The staff were very friendly, and I was soon one of the long servers!

The beautiful Nadya Milner, my first girlfriend

I met a lovely 16-year-old Chambermaid called Nadya there who later became a Long haul British Airways Hostess.  I met her in Bahrain a few years ago when she was on a stopover. The Barman there, John Vowles, was one of many great characters I met. They all gave me advice (John’s was tragically, “Don’t smoke” which he wheezed out between puffs on his cigarette. “But John, you smoke”, I reasoned. “Yes, but it’s too late for me, I cannot stop” he replied. Some years later he died of cancer ! Eventually I stopped smoking in 2004, having started in 1973 when I was 13. Later on Jane Ward moved onto bigger and better things and a lady then called Caroline Williams became the Personnel Manager at the Dudley.
 

John persuaded me to get a degree in Hotel Management which I did in 1981.

At college I ran a bar and worked in many local hostelries like Arthur Lacey’s Coachouse night cub and John Marsden’s “Johnny’s” Night club, Bistro and wine bar. I also worked for a wonderful Irish Lady called Mary Carroll, who ran a pub called the “Slubbers Arms” and did all the outside bars around town. So after studying all day I would work all night! 

                           The Slubber's arms in Huddersfiemd

At the weekend I would carry barrels of beer, crates of spirits and boxes of glasses to some hall or other , set up the bar, serve beer all night , then at midnight load it all up in the van and take it back to the Pub . Then Mary would make us all Hot Chocolate and sandwiches. As a poor student I would eat all the sandwiches. Years later, when Mary had died and another friend, Dave Green , took over the pub and I called in he would gleefully tell everyone very loudly “ eh up, it’s the man who ate the sandwiches”

                            The Cumberland Hotel, London

Our third year was spent working in Industry and I had a fabulous year working in a thousand-bedroom hotel, with 7 restaurants, and 7 floors below ground called the Cumberland Hotel in London. Kevin O’Connor was my Training Manager and he gave me an incredible programme where I worked in every department including Housekeeping, the kitchen and the Training department where I worked on Standards of Performance manuals. He kept making me do it repeatedly until it was perfect- Lessons Learnt!

In the coffee shop I met a lovely Australian Waitress called Annie and we spent several months traveling Europe, and when we ran out of money, we worked on the Greek Island of Ios. I worked as a cleaner and Annie was a Travel agent. 

 

Relaxing in Greece, age 20 and 63 kg ( now 125 kg!)

Sadly, she returned to Australia in my final year at University and then got married. Happily, we keep in touch and I have visited her and Bruce and the kids many times over the years. I also managed to meet her mum on my last trip and apologised in person for making her daughter sleep under a fig tree one night. It was a great honour to meet her mum before she passed on. It was also great to have Annie at my 21st Birthday celebrations with my brothers. Oh, happy days!

Somehow, I got a degree with commendation and the second highest score in the class next to another long-term friend, Alison Hunt (who is now a Psychiatrist dealing with sex addiction on Harley street in London!) 

From there I moved to Act two of my working life. Read all about it next week in my next blog!