No. 27 - Step into a Dream (Part Two)

The booklet welcoming new staff.

As a porter/linesman for Butlin's Staff Accommodation I'd had to clear up pigswill and donkey debris, but worse was to come.

Phantoms and Flatulence

The bathroom block cleaners and I were terrorised by a villain who became known to all as ‘The Phantom Crapper’. At first the culprit would poo into a polystyrene chip carton, stick a wooden fork into it at a jaunty angle and leave it on the chalet line like a piece of art - which he may well have considered it to be. He graduated to breaking into unoccupied chalets and pooing on the mat. His pièce de résistance was to poo in the baths in the communal washing block, which was was mercifully outside my jurisdiction. The Phantom Crapper was never apprehended, but his reign of revulsion ended as suddenly as it started, possibly through the culprit being ‘terminated’ for some unrelated misdemeanour.

Next door to the chalet office lived an older lady who worked as a hairdresser on camp. She was both deaf and flatulent, so when she broke wind, what she fondly imagined was ‘silent but deadly,’ was merely deadly. Whenever it happened, it was hard to keep a straight face, for more than one reason. Jesse pointed out that the grass outside the hairdresser’s door was a darker shade of green than the rest of the lines. I popped my head out to confirm that she was right. Jesse said, "It’s because she uses a jerry at night rather than going up to the toilet block. Then in the morning she just empties it out onto the grass outside her chalet.” I was sure to wear my gloves to pick up litter there from then on.

Further along that line lived a very out gay guy from Bolton. With scarcely contained glee, Jesse used to tell me that he’d watched me working and told her I had a ‘fit arse’. I was secretly gratified that he thought so, but although he was nice enough he wasn’t my type, so I stayed out of his way. Jesse laughed at me for running away to my storeroom to hide from him. Little did she know, that had it been one of a considerable number of other young men on the annex, I might have responded differently.

On laundry changing day, I had to deliver stacks of clean sheets to each chalet line and take away the dirty linen. This I would have to sort into bundles of twenty for them to go off to the laundry. My hands would get dry and horrible with all the sorts of things that young men’s sheets absorbed. Two of the kitchen lads pitied me enough bring me ice cream, which was very sweet of them.

My wage slip - £59.43 including extra for working Sunday and Bank Holiday.

Pillows of Hercules

I once spent two days performing a task that might have flustered Hercules. There was one line of chalets, designed for dual occupation, that had a second storey. For reasons that escape me, the manager decided that all the 36 double beds and mattresses on the upper story needed to be swapped with the 72 single beds and mattresses on the lower. Of course, he assured me that I wouldn’t have to accomplish this on my own, and help would be sent from the Transport unit in due course. It was the hottest day of the year when I started. Carrying a double bed down a staircase single-handed is not easy, and carrying a cheap, bendy double mattress is even worse - but just imagine doing it for 36 of them on a hot July day. And then there were all those singles to carry up the fire escape. And the blooming pillows. The promised help never arrived and it took me two full days - but with a certain satisfaction I did it. It astonishes me now, that not only did I perform a lot of physically demanding work, but I would play tennis for hours on end in my leisure time. We can't fully appreciate the gift of youth until it's gone.

Cold Comfort Chalet

A few weeks before I’d started, a 31-year-old cleaner from Preston had been found dead in his East Annex chalet, which was both shocking and sad. When the keys to his chalet were eventually returned by the police, because new members of staff were arriving all the time, the manager said it needed to be brought back into service as soon as possible. The chalet maids would clean it, but I must first remove the mattress. We couldn’t have anyone sleeping on a mattress someone had died on, not for a few more weeks at least. Gerry agreed to accompany me, but as he'd died of self-inflicted stab wounds, we were both wary of what we might find in there, imagining some horrific, blood-spattered scene.

The tiny chalet was dark and cold, a desperately sad place in which to end a life. There was a little blood, but no more than would have been achieved by a clumsy nick while shaving. I was sad that he'd died in a place that existed for enjoyment, and it was heart-rending to think of him ending himself while everyone around him was out having fun. Who knows, a few words from a colleague or a guest might have saved him – but equally, they might not have. It was a holiday camp - no-one wanted grim tales of a violent death. It was understandable that Butlin’s wanted to forget all about him, but somehow I never could.

The Boys Watch the Girls

Excerpt from the staff booklet. Some rules were taken more seriously than others.

Unofficial opportunities to supplement my meagre wages presented themselves. Some young men used to bribe me to find them a better bed, a nicer mattress or a proper wardrobe. If I had the stock I would oblige, but always with the caveat that any inspection by management might result in the removal of their new furniture, and possibly them too. The boys liked their chalets to be as nice as possible - mostly for the girls. While it was a sack-able offence for any man other than Gerry or me to be found in the female quarters at South Annex, a blind eye was turned towards women illicitly visiting the male quarters at East Annex, and sexual liaisons were commonplace. For some it was notches on bedposts, for others a holiday fling, but I daresay some permanent relationships began there too.

It was no congregation of saints, but increasingly, I detected a strong vein of decency running through many of these young people who worked hard for peanuts, could be sacked at any moment for some minor misdemeanour, but preferred it to languishing on the dole as so many others were forced to do at the time.

The chalet maids or I frequently had to take the keys down to a chalet someone had been locked out of. If the key chains were out, I would sometimes oblige by breaking in for them. I would remove the panes of their louver windows and squeeze my slender frame in headfirst. I doubt I could manage it today. I'm no cat burglar, so I’ve never rented a property with louver windows on the ground floor.

The badges again - in full colour!

Saturdays were changeover days, when one lot of guests left and another arrived. All day long the same tape was played over the camp sound system on a loop and the song I remember most is ‘Music to Watch Girls By’ by Andy Williams, because it seemed right for the place. I was taken away from the staff annexes to help out with servicing the guest camps. I usually cleared the lines of rubbish on Yellow Camp, a much fouler job than doing the staff annexes, because while the staff boys might discard the odd used condom, a few guests thought nothing of throwing dirty disposable nappies out onto the grass. Perhaps this is why I have always valued those who clean up our messes for a living.

As a local, I felt I was treated better than seasonal staff brought in from the cities. The camp bookings fluctuated. I have no concrete proof, but during slacker periods it seemed to us the management would ‘terminate’ people for the slightest thing. If the sacking offence was deemed serious enough, I was instructed not to assist the culprit by conveying their bags from the staff annex to the main gate on my handcart. This was an instruction I largely ignored, because I figured that their day was probably bad enough as it was without having to struggle to catch a bus - and besides, there was often a tip.

Further Adventures

Because I lived in Pwllheli, and the management saw me as trustworthy and capable, I was invited to work over the winter as well, which was a real boon. My duties were whatever I was told to do. This might involve cleaning chalets themselves or scrubbing hundreds of dirty grill pans from the self-catering flatlets. For days, to the sound of Radio One, two of us washed the grill pans in a baby bath full of tepid water, in a large freezing cold warehouse warmed by a one bar electric fire. In the gaudy glamour of The Regency Bar, four of us had to tackle a mountain of dirty blankets that almost reached the ceiling. We had to bundle them in fives for the laundry, and it made the hands so dry that you could hardly wait to plunge them into some cool water. And the most bizarre thing I had to do during this winter employment was the Great Blondin impression, poking bottles off the chalet roofs with an eighteen-foot pole.

I moved on to more administrative off-season work such as telephone sales and later chalet allocations, which extended into the season. From the allocations office I regularly popped out to buy a cake or an ice cream, and on one memorable occasion I returned to find someone sitting in my seat. He immediately stood up when I approached, and was most apologetic. He was a friend of the manager, and as soon as he had turned around, I recognised him as former England captain Bobby Moore, who had been recruited as a celebrity football coach for a few weeks. He was an unassuming guy, with nothing of the 'do you know who I am?' about him.

Whatever the role, a job at Butlin’s involved a great deal of work for not very much money – but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I got so much more from the experience than cash. I turned my hand to tasks I’d never even considered before and found that my contribution was valued - and so was I, which is quite important for an insecure introvert like me. Most of all, it taught me how to get along with a host of different people in a way that college never did. Many came from less privileged backgrounds than my own, but they largely accepted me for who I was, and were kind to me.

If you missed it, here is Step into a Dream (Part One).