An exciting start

My first day at my first proper job. In London just off Oxford Street.

I have previously recorded how I got involved in the Hotel & Catering business. My first work experience had been at college in the summer term 1973, working as a student apprentice for the then dominant UK & Worldwide hotel chain "Trust House Forte" (THF) built from scratch by the Italian born, Scottish raised Charles Forte later to be knighted and become a peer after his services supporting Mrs Thatcher. He has some remarkable events in his CV after he set up his first Milk Bar in London in 1935 he managed to own London Piccadilly's "Cafe Royal" by 1954. He opened the first catering facility at Heathrow and the first motorway service station for cars at Newport Pagnell.- Little Chef, Travelodge, Happy Eater, Post House Hotels and some of the most luxurious hotels in London and throughout the world.

After the summer term, I stayed on for the holidays to earn a bit. I seem to remember £15/week i.e equivalent to around £800 p.a.


The following 1974 summer term I wanted to be in London because I was “going out with” ("courting" was "out" by then) a girl who worked there and luckily very close to the hotel I landed up in near Oxford Circus. I was still only a student on placement so earned little but got free board at the company’s employees hostel near Paddington Station, a very worthwhile perk.  I got on there well and at some stage had to do my bit in the accounts department. Dreadful – all I knew from college was that debit was on the window side and credit on the corridor side. Just hoped my new desk had the same directional configuration. The accounts clerk who taught me was a young, ever so funny Ceylonese guy called Fuzzy Razeen. We got on really well and spent much of our free time together.
 
I enjoyed the work strangely and it was a lot safer than the murderous kitchens up in the Panorama Restaurant. Not a good place to be when tempers got wrought. The Personnel Manager asked me if I wanted to stay and join THFs executive Hotel Management Trainee Programme – he would sort it out with HQ but could take a while until the new years intake started. So I took up the offer and plodded away at the accounts.
 
One doesn’t earn well at the bottom in the hotel & catering industry and the Personnel Manager said we didn’t need any contracts so I have nothing to show what I earnt back then. But seemingly it couldn’t have been all that bad as I was running a car and was able to afford a tiny bedsit flat in Knightsbridge just down from Harrods and opposite the V&A Museum at the very swish sounding Egerton Gardens. Me living in a hostel and Annie in a nurses home was not exactly conducive to having a bit of private time together!
 
Out of the blue Fuzzy announced he was leaving and going to the competition, Grand Metropolitan Hotels, built up by Max(well) Joseph after the war from his estate agents beginnings, by buying the London Mandeville Hotel just after WWII. He didn’t live long enough to be part of Mrs Thatcher's inner circle so didn’t get any titles by the time he died in 1982, leaving then a very big mixed empire of businesses.
 
I was shocked awake by Fuzzy’s news and reviewed my own situation. When was the Executive Trainee programme finally going to start? And as the Personnel Manager was “moved on” overnight and I without a contract, the decision was made. I was leaving too, would return home to Norfolk and look around. I finished there on Thursday 13th November 1975 and celebrated that night by going to the musical “Billy” with Annie and a “night” at the Ivanhoe Hotel!
 
So what next? And as if he had heard me, Fuzzy called from London,  his boss was looking for another person.
“What is it you do, Fuzzy?”.... “Audit? What on earth is that?”
So it came to pass on Wednesday 10th December I had an interview with Rod Kerns the audit manager. I didn’t even have a CV prepared. And then two days later Rod sat down at the typing machine in the satellite offices we had with no secretary, not even a photocopier but back then they didn’t exist! One can tell he did it himself by the initials top left “RTK/rtk”. Typing was a skill I was to learn although I was actually better at using tippex especially on the three carbon copy versions we used to write gthe reports and distribute the copies.

Back then if you wanted to have a standard form of some sort and make lots of copies, you had to prepare the form using a typewriter and a special type of paper in A4 format but a bit longer with lots of holes along the top. Making frames to form boxes had to be done using whatever keys were on the typewriter. So a box would typically be formed fro the "I" and "_" keys but lining them up was a master craft and making a mistake a nightmare. The form was then affixed by the holes on to a circular drum and with great care the typed part fitted around the drum. And then with the ink pads filled, the hand wrench was whizzed around and the copies flew out. Getting the speed right was crucial to prevent smears. Later we were to get an electric motor driven version. Indeed one day we heard there was a "photocopier" in the nearby HQ's and the key to it could be requested but only if the need to copy it had been authorised.

The offer letter doesn’t say much about the job itself. It involved travelling around the entire UK, I think we had about 50 hotels. From the luxury St. George’s Hotel in Edinburgh to the Mayfair Hotel in London, the Europa in Belfast (the most frequently IRA bombed building there) to the medieval pub, restaurant and hotel “The Rose & Crown” in the sleepy meadows overlooking Salisbury Cathedral, where the worse crime committed that century was Mr Brownrigg not stopping at a pedestrian crossing. (I am writing this the night Mrs May threw 23 Russian diplomats out of the UK for the nerve agent attack there, 10 days before).
 
So we were often away from London for the week usually travelling by one of the two company cars. Rod had one car for himself, a Hillman (Chrysler) Hunter GLS and we had a pool car a very basic Chrysler Avenger 1.3L that the senior person got to keep at the weekend for personal use but had to pass down when on holiday. All lunches were free at any of the company hotels one was working in, and if in the office at the next door Mandeville Hotel where Max Joseph often popped into lunch too in his first acquisition. Apart from that, no notable benefits.
 
We were a mixed bag:
#1 Rod Kerns lived in Northampton (ex Truman Breweries) and would commute if in London. Married.
#2 Claude Porcheron a Frenchman with strong accent lived in Camden – non-driver. Divorced and single.
#3 Anil Poojar of Indian descent from I think Hounslow (car always smelt of Joss sticks on Monday) Single

#4 Keith Boiling, Croydon lad but living near Godalming. In a long standing patnership
#5 Fuzzy Razeen from Ceylon lived in Finchley, Single and always on the lookout.
#6 Myself living in central London South Kensington at that time. In a 2+ year relationship to end later this year.
 
We always worked in teams, either pairs or when a big job, all of us.
Well, let’s see how long we can do this lark. Not really my thing. Perhaps something less “dry” will come along.