Image: Kingfisher Centre, Redditch | Source: BBC Domesday Project
When I came home from college for the first Christmas holiday, I had a shock. My mother told me I'd got to get a job for at least some of the time. Blimey! Oh well, I'd just spent a year on the dole and they were paying a hefty chunk in maintenance for me to be at drama school, so I went down the job centre. The only thing vaguely suitable was washing up in the café at Owen Owen, in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre in Redditch about seven miles from where we lived. She wouldn't make me do that, it would be torture, having to get the bus and then be standing up all day before getting the bus home.
But she did.
It wasn't so bad. I remember the smell of fried food first thing in the morning when I got there and the memory of breakfast was rapidly fading. And I was just operating a big dishwasher, it was great, so regular and monotonous. Stack the plates, slot in all the cups, bring down the cover and press wash. Pull the last lot out and put them everything on the shelves for the servers to use. Wait for a minute or two (in slack periods) for the cycle to finish and then repeat. Over and over again for 8 hours. It was only for a few weeks anyway.
The bonus was that once I was trusted (ie they knew I wasn't going to just nick money out of the till and run off) I got to serve in the staff canteen which was on the other side of the kitchen. This meant flirting with shop girls. Yes I also got flirted with by the shop grannies (who must have been like 40 years old!) but we all like a bit of attention, don't we and there were some very pleasant girls of my age working there too. Lots of double entendres and winking and smiling and waving across the canteen, nothing too naughty.
It would have been uneventful except for New Year's Eve. I'd gone to a party, I can't remember who's it was but it was someone from school, I think and it was walkable from my house. As I sat on my own, nursing a can of some grim Midlands bitter, I realised that the girl sitting opposite was one of the shop girls from work. She came over. to chat. She was very drunk and started telling me how all the girls fancied me and that I could have my pick of any of them on their lunch break and so on and so on. I liked this!
I don't think anything happened at the party, but after midnight, she asked me to walk her to her car. She was going to drive back to Redditch and she was still quite tipsy. So we walked. It was freezing cold. And then she did something that no other woman has done, especially while walking along a footpath in the middle of the night. She said "Oh god, I can't hold it in anymore, I've got to pee!" I said "Well go round the bushes there" and she said "No, there's no point, I'll never get these jeans off in time, I'll just have to wet myself." And she did. I just looked at her, I didn't know what to say really.
So I walked her back to her car, which was on the other side of town and she said she'd give me a lift home. I wasn't sober enough myself to say no, so I got in and she immediately drove the wrong way round a roundabout. I put my seatbelt on and prayed.
It was alright, but I made her come in for some strong coffee, (really, that was all!) to sober up a little before she drove home.
She was back in work a couple of days later, blushing and horribly embarrassed every time I spoke to her.
The following weeks were, much less eventful, as those first weeks of January invariably are and I went off back to college, still laughing and shaking my head when I thought of her out in the freezing night in soaking wet jeans.
Bonus Link : Kevin Turvey was knocking around Redditch at about the same time!
I'm writing a series of short memoirs about everywhere I've ever worked, from the early 1980s till today. If you enjoyed this one, you might like earlier stories too.
Beach Café, Bowleaze Cove
Swan Theatre, Worcester
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