Confessions from a Holiday Camp

“Go on! Go on!” she bleats and it is going to take a battalion of Gurkhas to stop me. Rising up in the litter of questionnaires and pausing only to tuck Inga and Horst discreetly down the side of the settee, I launch myself into her like a nuclear sub gliding down a narrow slipway. Her hands close around my backside like she is frightened it might suddenly drop off and we start beating out the theme from Ravel’s Bolero in a way that would bring tears to the composer’s eyes. Powerful stuff it is, too, and once into our stride we are not easily disturbed.

This is something I realise when I hear Mum’s voice from the hall.

“I can smell burning,” she says.

Now we have been going at it a bit – but burning? I don’t think so. Not that I would be prepared to argue with her because at that moment I am riding a tidal wave of passion and would not be diverted from my purpose if the Dagenham Girl Pipers started marching around the room. My friend obviously feels the same because she is carving finger holds in my shoulder blades and making a noise like a donkey with hiccups. A few mighty thrusts and the deed is done with a mutual shriek of ecstasy that must rupture eardrums as far away as Balham High Road.

Mum certainly hears it because I look up to see her peering down on us with a face turning the colour of a baboon’s bum. As is always the case with me, I now begin to wonder what I was getting so worked up about and my passion evaporates like spit on a stove-top. Not so with Mum.

“Timmy!” she screams. “Oh no! How could you? It’s horrible! Oh no! Oh no! no! no!” I have never known her behave like this before and it is really quite disturbing. We uncouple and I scramble to my feet just in time to give Mrs. Wagstaff a glimpse of the full frontals which obviously takes her back a bit – about forty years I should think. Mrs. Wagstaff is one of Mum’s friends and the biggest gossip and ratbag in the neighbourhood. The last person Mum would have chosen to witness our little domestic upheaval. She is carrying my friend’s skirt which is soaking wet – what is left of it, that is. A quick glance at the charred remains convince me that it was a bad idea to drape it over the oven to dry.

‘Ooh!!” says Mrs. Wagstaff. “OOoooh!”

“My skirt!!” squeals Miss Aerosol. “It’s ruined; ruined!!”

“How could you do this to me?” howls Mum. “How could you?!! On the sitting room carpet as well.”

I don’t really see what that has to do with it but I don’t argue the point. After all, one doesn’t want to upset one’s own mother too much, does one?

CHAPTER TWO

It was as a direct result of this little incident that I found myself pacing up and down in the reception of Funfrall Enterprises a few days later. Mum has been decidedly stroppy about my little flirtation on the hearth rug and has passed the ill tidings on to Dad who has reacted in characteristic fashion and done his nut. Like all dyed in the wool dirty old men, Dad has a deep-rooted objection to anyone else but himself getting their end away, and is very quick to come an attack of the total outrage.

It is perhaps a trifle unfortunate that he discovered me breaking down racial barriers with one, Matilda NGobla, on that self-same rug a few months before. She was one of our next door neighbours and never a favourite with my parents who are so bigoted they drape a blanket over the tele during the Black and White Minstrel Show. Anyway it has now got to the stage where Mum and Dad start going over the seat covers with a vacuum cleaner before they sit down and I have clearly got to head for the wide open spaces again.

I don’t fancy volunteering to become callus fodder down at the Labour Exchange so, bearing in mind what Mum has said about Sidney wringing gravy out of his turn-ups, I pad round to get the gen from sister Rosie. I am fortunate enough to find her between the slimming salon and the hairdresser’s and a glance round the eye-level grills and the louvred cupboard tells me that Mum has not exaggerated. Sidney must be on to a good thing. Rosie fills in the plot by telling me how Sidney sold the window cleaning business for a ridiculous sum of money and moved into Funfrall on the strength of a contact – Sidney has contacts like dogs have fleas. It is painful to listen to and I am quick to down my cup of Blend 37 and leave Rosie to wrestle with her Boeuf Strogonoff.

The reception area of Funfrall Enterprises is like an ice rink which may have something to do with the personality of the receptionist who would turn a cupboard into a refrigerator by sitting in it. She is like one of those frigid bints you see photographed in opticians’ windows, and watches me as if she reckons I am going to start nicking the magazines. With a choice of “The Director” or “The Investors’ Chronicle” she must be joking. Her makeup looks as if it has been put on with a spray gun and it can hardly withstand the strain of her telling me that Mr. Noggett’s secretary will be waiting for me by the lift on the fifth floor.

This girl is easy to recognise because she is breathing heavily and there is a large red flush on one side of her neck. I look at this pointedly and watch her tucking in her blouse as I follow her tight little arse down the corridor. It looks as if Sidney hasn’t changed much.

The man himself is staring out of the window with his back to me when I come into his office and I notice that on his desk there is a photograph of Rosie clasping the infant Jason to her bosom. There is also a strong whiff of perfume, aftershave lotion and togetherness, but perhaps I am imagining it.

“It suits you,” I say when Sidney turns round.

“What? Oh, you mean this?” He fingers his moustache as if he hadn’t realised what I was talking about. “Rosie nagged me into growing it.”

He is looking well, there is no doubt about it. A bit plumper round the chops but still a fine figure of a conman in his Burton Executive suit. I wonder if I am actually turning green.

“So you’re back again,” he says. “Decided that being a driving instructor wasn’t quite your line?” I nod. “I don’t know how many jobs you expect me to find you before you settle down.” When he says that I wish I hadn’t come, but I keep my mouth shut.

“Still, you’ve got to make allowances for your brother-in-law, haven’t you?”

“That’s what I always say about you.” I mean, there is a limit, isn’t there?

“Saucy, saucy.” Sid wags his finger at me.

“Don’t bite the hand that lays the golden egg.”

The news that Sidney had problems with his Eleven Plus will surprise nobody.

“Look, Sid,” I say. “I don’t want to grovel. Have you got anything that might be up my street?”

‘Well, I don’t know. It all depends.” Sidney fiddles with his cigarette case. “You know I’m Promotions Manager for our holiday camp circuit?”

“Mum said something about it.”

“Yes, well amongst other things, that means I have to recruit our Holiday Hosts.”

“You mean Redcoats?”

Sidney’s face turns white and he darts a glance around the room as if he expects Fu Manchu to leap out of the air conditioning.

“Don’t mention those words,” he hisses. “There is no other Holiday Host than a Funfrall holiday Host. We do not recognise the existence of any competition.”

He sounds as if he is reading the words off a fiery tablet and I don’t mean the kind you take for tummy upsets.

“O.K. O.K.” I say. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I was only asking. What the the chances of me becoming a—a Holiday Host?”

Sidney leans back in his swivel chair and puts his finger tips together in a gesture he must have borrowed from “The Power Game”.

“It depends,” he says. “Do you play any musical instruments?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Can you do conjuring tricks?’

“No.”

“Are you of instructor standard at any popular recreational activities?”

“Well—I—er—”

“I didn’t mean that! What about children. Do you like children?”

“I like little Jason,” I lisp untruthfully.

“That’s why he bursts into tears every time he sees you, I suppose?”

“I think he’s a bit highly strung,” I murmur, thinking that about six feet off the ground would be favourite.

“What about dancing. Tap or Modern Ballroom?”

“You know I don’t go for that kind of thing.” Rape, arson, murder, yes. But ballroom dancing? Do me a favour!

“And women. How do you reckon you would get on with our lady visitors?”

“Birds? Now you’re talking, Sid. All those love-lorn little darlings looking for a bit of slap and tickle. I’ll be in there like a vat of Enos. You know me Sid—I’ll—”

“Forget it!” Sidney bashes his hand down on his paper knife and bites back the pain.

“As a Holiday Host for Funfrall Enterprises, you would be the repository of a sacred trust. Your role is that of a happy holiday guide, counsellor and friend – not some sex-mad raver trying to shove his nasty up every bint on the camp.”

“Beautifully put, Sid,” I observe. “At least, the first part was. Straight out of the text book. But, how can you say it. I mean you of all people! Do you remember Liz and the toolshed. How you—”

“Yes, yes,” he gabbled, rising to his feet, “but things have changed since then. You’ve got to develop a sense of responsibility in this business, I’ve got a position to think of.”

“Quite a few of them, if I remember rightly,” I observe, “and by the way, your flies are undone.”

You don’t often see Sidney lost for words but his mouth gapes open like a serving hatch and he strikes sparks as he yanks his zip up.

“I bet she leaves the cover off her typewriter, too,” I say. For a second I think he is going to belt me but then he relaxes and the veins go underground again.

“Sit down and shut up,” he says. “Go on, sit down. I want to talk to you. Look, Timmy. I’m going to be honest with you.”

When Sidney says that, strong men start checking their wallets. “If it wasn’t for Rosie, I wouldn’t give you a job cleaning up after an elephant act. But I know that if I don’t, she’ll nag the bleeding arse off me.”

“Thank you, Sid,” I say, interpreting the way things are going.

“Don’t thank me. I’m only doing it because I like sleeping at night. And let me make it quite clear. You cock this one up, and Rosie or no Rosie, I’ll flog your balls to a driving range. Are you with me?”

“Yes, Sidney. How do you see me fitting in?”

Sidney snorts and fiddles in one of his drawers. “Don’t tempt me. I’ve got a job here for a Host at Melody Bay. The last one—oh, it doesn’t matter what happened to the last one.”

“Melody Bay? I’ve never heard of it.”

Sidney goes over to a wall map of the British Isles and jabs his finger at it.

“I didn’t know they had seaside up there.”

Sidney jabs again.

“This blue bit is sea and it stretches all round the country. That’s why we’re an island.”

“I knew that, Sidney. It’s just that I never—oh well, it doesn’t matter. What do I have to do?”

“I’ll give you a book about that and they’ll tell you when you get there. It’s what you don’t do that I’m interested in.”

“Yes, Sidney.”

“Lay off the campers. If you’re caught on the job with a guest, you’re out of one. Got it?”

“Yes, Sidney.”

“It isn’t always easy. By gawd it isn’t.”

Sidney gazes ceilingwards like a man who has had to withstand terrible temptations in his time.

“If you must indulge choose a Funfrall employee.”

“Like your secretary, Sid?”

Sidney momentarily closes his eyes as he controls himself.

“There are Funfrall Hostesses, and you are, of course, free to make such arrangements with them out of working hours as you may mutually deem fitting.”

“Where did you learn to speak like that?” I ask, because this is a new dimension to the Sid I used to know.

“We use all the latest training techniques from the States,” says Sid smugly.

“I’ve just come back from a Method in Management course and we pay a lot of attention to organisation and forward planning.”

“How did you get taken on in the first place?”

“I knew somebody.”

I have a lot more questions, like how much bread I am going to get, but suddenly Sidney’s telephone lets out a non-stop high-pitched shriek and a red light on the top starts flashing angrily. Sidney snatches it up like it might explode at any second and the expression on his phizog combines elements of fear and panic.

“Yes, Sir Giles,” he yelps. “Yes, yes—I have—nearly finished —it’s right—” He tears open another drawer and starts throwing files on to the floor until he finds what he wants.

“I was just completing the figures—interview—yes—no—yes—alright. I’ll just look it up.” He presses a buzzer on his desk and his secretary shoots through the door like from a catapult. “Is the Miss Globe file up to date?” he screeches, slamming his mit over the mouthpiece. The girl shakes her head and I am glad to see that the red flush on her neck has subsided, leaving only a couple of toothmarks. “I haven’t had time—I—”

“Oh my God!”

Sidney applies his quivering lips to the mouthpiece again. “Hello, Sir Giles. I’m afraid it’s not here. I lent it to Jefferson to have a look at. Yes. Yes. I know—Yes, yes—I know—I know—Yes, I know, I know.”

“Why doesn’t he come right out with it and say he knows?” I remark to the girl, “I hate people who are always beating around the bush.”

“Bugger,” says Sidney, slamming down the telephone.

“Have you got the up-to-date entry figures? Thank God. Add ’em up quick will you, darling, otherwise I’m up the schittenstrasse mitout ein paddle.” He turns back to me. “Right, I’ve got to go now.”

“So I gather.”

“We’ll send you a form to fill in, but that’s just a formality. Consider yourself hired.”

“Thanks, Sid—”

“Don’t thank me. Just don’t drop me in it, that’s all. I’ve got enough problems at the moment.” All the time he is talking, he is walking me to the door and the next moment I find myself alone in the corridor wondering which way it is to the lift. Poor Sid. I have never known him like this before. Big business has certainly taken its toll of Clapham’s answer to Paul Newman. If this is what Sir Giles and Funfrall Enterprises do for you I am not sure whether it is worth the fringe benefits.

The thought is still playing on my mind three weeks later as I stand at King’s Cross Station weighing up the paperback covers. Honestly, I have never seen so much tit in my life. It is getting so if you see a cover with five naked birds plastered across it, you know it is a reprint of “Little Women”.

I am supposed to be catching the 15.30 to Nowheresville and, as at all such moments of decision, my feet are colder than a penguin’s chuff. What with Sid’s list of ‘dont’s’ and the memory of his face when he was talking to Mr. Big on the telephone I feel like jacking it all in and sliding off home for a cup of tea and a wad. Trouble is that leprosy would be more welcome there than me at the moment. Mum has made it clear that she will never forgive the matted hairs on her fireside rug and Dad keeps throwing out offensive remarks about the stain on the sofa and making a great show of examining every chair in the place before he sits on it. All in all, it is more than a person of my sensitive nature can stand.

Luckily the path of duty is made smoother for me by the sight of a right little darling sweeping past and pausing only to totally ignore me. Sid always reckoned that when a bird really fancied you she went out of her way to treat you like air and I think he had something. I have known chicks who would cross the road when they saw me coming. Anyway, this particular specimen is carrying a suitcase and she gives a lift to my Y-fronts by getting into my train. Pausing only to slam down 30p for an epic entitled “Terrible Hard Says Alice” which I remember Sidney raving about, I slope in after her and wander down the corridor casually glancing into the compartments until I find her. My luck is in, because she has discovered an empty compartment and is just struggling to get her case on to the rack as I appear. Nice curve to her calves there is too as she teeters with the case at shoulder height. Nearly doing myself a nasty injury in my haste, I gallop through the door and prepare to show her how strong and gentlemanly I am.

“Here, let me do that,” I yodel, snatching the case from her fumbling fingers, pausing only to destroy her with the fruits of about half a ton of Colgate and years of hard brushing (children, please note), I toss it lightly on to the rack and follow up with another flash of the gnashers. She has a nice smile too, and we stand there beaming at each other so it might make you feel sick. She is blonde and she has big blue eyes and mouth so generous it looks as if it might give away kisses to strangers. I wouldn’t mind receiving the rest of her as a free gift, either. Smashing tits, as Wordsworth would say, and all the better for nestling under one of those thick woolly sweaters which make you think of stroking animals – or what you thought of stroking in the first place. I wouldn’t complain to my M.P. about her legs, either. Speaking as I find, all in all and putting it bluntly, she is definitely a looker who could well have her way with me if she played her cards right.

“Oh, thank you so much.”

“No trouble.”

We have another little smile and I make sure to sit down in the opposite corner to her. I want to fill up the compartment and I don’t want to crowd her too much to begin with. After all, we have six hours alone together.

But I speak too soon. Just as I am beginning to feel the first little electric thrill of anticipation as she crosses her legs, and the train gives a sympathetic jerk forward, so the compartment door slides open and a strong contender for the Upper Class Twit of the Year award hoves into view. In fact, I do him an injustice. If I was betting money I would put the lot on his nose – all fourteen inches of it.

“Phew, oh I say,” he chortles, “damn close thing, eh what?” He crashes one of his great nobbly brown shoes onto my multi-patterned suedes without giving any sign that the encounter has caused him pain, bashes his pigskin case against my knees and slumps down opposite my bird. I can see that she is no more pleased to see him than I am and this makes his presence doubly choking.

He is wearing a sort of poor man’s Sherlock Holmes uniform with a check cloak and a non-flap Deerstalker that looks as if it ought to be covered in trout flies. In fact, any kind of fly could cover the whole blooming lot of him without feeling it was living above its station.

“Had the devil’s own job finding a cab,” he confided, as if we cared. “There must have been a garden party at Buck House, or something.”

There is nothing there for me so I exchange a commiserating glance with Big Eyes and look out across the corridor to where there is a large expanse of tunnel on which to project my thoughts.

Captain Chinless is obviously desperate for conversation because he slips into full bore.

“My own, fault, I suppose. Didn’t leave enough time, eh, wha-a-at?” He strings out the last word so that it sounds like someone gargling. “But demned if I was going to rush my lunch. Very bad for the indigestion, that’s what nanny used to say. Chew each mouthful sixty five times – or was it fifty five? No, I think it was sixty five – that’s the only sound way to digest it, wha-a-at?”

If he is going to keep on like this to Newcastle I’m going to swing for him and that is the honest truth.

“The family never missed a train when nanny was around. Nanny Pecksmith; that was her name. I can still see her as if it was yesterday. Remarkable woman. Tremendous disciplinarian. Hated television. Used to read Pilgrims Progress to us all the time and the next one, what was that called?”

“Carry on Pilgrims Progress?” I say.

“No, it wasn’t that.”

“Onward Pilgrims Progress?”

“No, no. That’s a hymn.”

“Oh, of course.”

Tragic isn’t it? The world’s most attractive male animal thwarted by this throwback from Berks peerage and I don’t mean Burke’s. The poor Lea-besotted bird in the corner must be heartbroken.

“Tea is now being served,” says the waiter in the pumice stone coloured white jacket.

“Oh, super. Just what the doctor ordered. Would you care to join me for a spot of tea?” says Sherlock Twit.

“I’d love to,” says my bird.

And the consequence is that they have disappeared up the corridor before I can say Fascist Hyena. It is diabolical, isn’t it? The titled twit hasn’t even asked me if I fancy a cup of tea. I try and immerse myself in my book but even the multiple talents of Christopher Wood fail to wrest my uneasy mind from the thought of Sherlock and Big Eyes grappling over the tea table. She is obviously the kind of chubbycheeked scrubber that hands it out to everybody and I did not move fast enough. The thought of losing out to Lord Shagnasty is more than I can stand.

I consider wandering down there after them but I can’t see where it is going to get me, apart from outside one of British Railways’ diabolically expensive excuses for the traditional vicar-ridden and clotty.

One hour I have waited before they stumble through the door and it is obvious that the tea has degenerated into a drop of the hard stuff. My tip for the Upper Class Twit of the Year stakes is registering symptoms of an attack of the galloping knee-trembles and Big-Eyes is totally giggly and droopy.

“Awfully funny,” says Shagnasty raking his eyes across my face is if he expects me to break into spontaneous applause. “Oh, yes, capital wheeze, eh wha-a-at?”

Only the lack of a primed twelve-bore materialising in my hands prevents me from turning his mug into scarlet wallpaper.

I sit there pretending to give my all to “Terrible Hard, Says Alice”, whilst my evil cock-orientated little mind seeks a means of reducing the human equation to a simple one plus one equals minus supertwit.

Fortunately, Fate chooses that moment to play into my hands. The train shoves on the anchors and I notice a flurry of activity in the corridor which denotes the fact that disembarkation is imminent.

Whilst my two companions flop out in their seats making fish-pouting noises to each other, I cast a casual eye over Shagnasty’s baggage. This clearly reveals that my rival is bound for Leeds. This is something of a surprise, but I have a better one in store. The sign on the platform describes a place well short of that fair city and is obscured by a trolley-load of mail bags as we grind to a halt. Quick as a flash I dart onto the platform and take up a position behind the mail bags. “Leeds,” I shout. “Change here for Leeds. We are the champions.” Whether my final utterance gives a gloss of truth to the rabbit I do not know, but my erstwhile rival is soon stumbling out of one door as I get in the other. I lean out of the window and can savour with genuine ecstasy the sight of his drunken mincepies colliding with the sign saying “Crewe” as the train begins to pull away. He reaches back as if trying to stay our progress and then is snatched from my sight. Now it is just me and the crumpet in seat number A7.

She looks up as I come through the door and our eyes meet like they are connected by dotted lines.

“Newcastle?”

“Soon,” I say. “Oh my God!” This latter phrase may seem a bit uncalled for but I can vouch for its effectiveness if delivered with sufficient passion. Basically, what it means is: “I find you so paralysingly beautiful that I am temporarily robbed of the power of speech.” Such utterances are usually very well received by the kind of bird who finds it difficult to string five words into a sentence.

“What do you mean?” she says.

“You’re beautiful, aren’t you?” Few women will deny this.

“Oh,” she squeaks. I snatch up her hand and squeeze it passionately.

“When I first saw you—oh, I don’t know, it seems ridiculous saying this because we’ve only just met but I—I felt this strange thing happening to me. Do you know what I mean?”