Macaroni Cheese - A Dish to Aid Memory! I. P.

Macaroni Cheese - A Dish to Aid Memory I P

I left school when I was fifteen and got a job as an office junior with an aviation company in High Holborn, London. My wage was Four Pounds ten shillings a week or four hundred and fifty pence. I paid three pounds to my Mum for my keep and ten shillings (fifty pence) for my season ticket to work. That left me with a pound from my first week’s wages which I remember quite clearly spending on an item of clothing. It was a top that cost nineteen shillings and eleven pence from a clothes shop next door to the Gaumont Cinema situated at The Heathway in Dagenham. I can remember because I’ve still got it. Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!

Anyway, I was also fortunate enough to be paid with Luncheon Vouchers to the value of three shillings…fifteen pence in today’s money with one voucher for each day of the week. However, there was one difficulty with these because if I wanted to buy a cup of tea to have with my lunch then there was only one meal I could spend them on in the only restaurant I could afford to frequent in High Holborn. I think the restaurant was called Silver Service or some such name. Anyway, my three shilling Luncheon Voucher was just enough to buy me a cup of tea and a plate of Macaroni Cheese which I had for my lunch every day for the duration of my time spent happily working for Aviation Developments. My boyfriend couldn’t believe that I could eat the same thing every day but then he hadn’t spent a lifetime being subjected to my Mum’s culinary arts. Although, that said, Macaroni Au Gratin as Mum liked to call it (she had worked for Lyons Corner House it might be remembered) was one of her more edible dishes consisting as it did of some macaroni being softened in milk with lumps of cheese thrown in. Mmm I can almost taste it…Now then, where did I put the Rennies?

Anyway, to continue, when I say my time with Aviation Developments was happily spent that is partly because very little of it was spent in the office as my days were mostly filled with collecting very expensive dresses or other items from very exclusive shops for the female Company Secretary. This involved going up West as we Londoners like to call the West End. Up West was probably where the best clothes shops were and probably it’s still the same today. But these little jaunts meant that I was really seeing how the other half lived. One shop I remember was called Cresta Gowns and it has stuck in my memory because it had the most beautiful chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling. I had never seen such opulence and thank God my Mum hadn’t either otherwise she would have moved heaven and earth to try and get one like it. Possibly even, sold me to white slavers though they would soon have realised their error and demanded their money back!

Anyway, to continue, the Company Secretary always gave me money for taxi fares but when you’ve been poor all your life you don’t spend money willy-nilly so thinking I was doing the company a favour I walked everywhere or used the underground. This meant I was mostly out walking in the sunshine instead of being in the office and I loved it. I got to know London quite well but what I didn’t realise and they were too nice to point out was that it was probably cheaper for them if I got a taxi and got back to the office to do what I was really employed to do. However, another thing I remember was that all the people who worked in that company smelled very nice but I’m not sure I did so perhaps, after all, they were grateful for me being a thrifty soul.

Despite probably being the scruffiest Office Junior they had ever encountered, everybody who worked there was very good to me as one lady even gave me some of her daughter’s clothes to wear. They were very good quality too and certainly a welcome change from the sort of get up I usually wore. Although I wasn’t there long enough for them to witness the worst of what the Our Lady of Lourdes Jumble Sales could offer up. One of the girls , I remember, let me try her perfume ‘Apple Blossom’ which I thought smelled divine and although as a worker, I was, in the scheme of things, bottom of the pile, they all treated me with respect and were exceedingly friendly and pleasant towards me. At the time I was very, very shy but not work shy and I had one very important job that I had to do every Thursday so it was the only day of the week that I had to stay in the office.

This job involved using a machine I think was called an Addressograph and it was used for the wages envelopes for the factory in Welwyn Garden City. When I had finished all the envelopes then I would get a signed cheque from the Company Accountant and put it with the envelopes in a type of small sack ready to be collected by a van that would take it to the factory for the men to be paid on Friday.

One Thursday evening as I travelled home by tube I was suddenly hit by a thunderbolt! I had forgotten to put the cheque in with the wage envelopes. Being so young, I was beside myself. How could I have done such a terrible thing? What should I do? Get out at the next stop and throw my self under the train or, next morning, throw my self at the mercy of the Company Accountant, or, plead insanity? Well, what would you have done in the circumstances? They might sack me on the spot or prosecute me for dereliction of duty or…or…sold me into white slavery! And this time they might have hung onto me. No, I kid myself… they would have sent me back…just like all the others!

Anyway the upshot was that I spent a sleepless night worrying about what to do. I thought perhaps I wouldn’t go in and I would get my Mum to phone and say I had had a recurrence of that dreadful, debilitating blood poisoning condition that I had to write and inform my school that I suffered from every September when we went Hop Picking! No, I could not do that, these people had shown me nothing but kindness but still I knew that I had put them in a very bad position as the workers at the factory would need their wages which were paid weekly.

Come the next morning I resolved that I would have to go straight to the Company Accountant and prostrate myself at his feet and confess to my omission. When I got to work, trembling from head to foot, I quietly knocked on his office door, so quietly he never heard and I thought about tiptoeing away but no I knocked again but this time a little harder. Still, nothing…so next I gave the door a thumping good whack and then I heard him say ‘Enter’ in that clipped way that he spoke. So, with trembling hands I turned the handle and poked my head round the door. He beckoned me in without a smile and although he had never been in the least way unkind to me I was frightened by his stern expression. He looked at me enquiringly…

‘Mr Gimlett,’ I said, almost in tears, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake, I’ve…I’ve …I’ve…’

‘Spit it out child, it can’t be that terrible…anyone would think you had forgotten to send the cheque to the factory!’

‘That’s it!’ I said “That’s what I’ve done and now the men will go on strike and you will sack me and my Mum will kill me and the white slavers won’t have me. What am I to do, sir?’

‘Get on a train and take the cheque to the factory is what you will do, young lady, and if you will be so good as to actually get a ticket and take the train instead of walking we might just be able to restrain the men from taking strike action.’

‘Oh, please sir, that is an excellent plan…I’ve never been to Welwyn Garden City. Does it really have a garden?’ I said, relieved that he could think so clearly in moments of extreme decision making.

‘Let’s not worry about that the first thing we must do is get you on a train as quickly as we can before the men are due to be paid.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said now all efficient Office Junior, ready to save the company single handed. Well, in times of crisis one has to take the helm, these people were relying on me and I vowed not to let them down. So off I went on my great adventure to Welwyn Garden City with a very large cheque and money for a taxi at the other end. I got there just in time before the men were due to be paid and they had not the slightest inkling that from the ashes of my disgrace I had snatched a victory that saved the day.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before, and please don’t think it was in any way connected to my little mistake, the company decided it was going to move its Head Office out of London to Welwyn Garden City and so I would be out of a job. I can hardly believe they would have gone to such lengths just to get rid of me although…on second thoughts! However, they gave me one month’s wages and because I was going to night school to learn to type they said I could have an old Royal Typewriter to practise on if I knew someone who could collect it as it was very heavy. Well, I did know someone who would collect it…ME!

And so it was that I carried that old Royal typewriter on the tube all the way from High Holborn to Dagenham bearing in mind in rush hour there were no seats to be had so I stood all the way there hanging on to my precious typewriter, changing at Mile End and then by the time the train reached Barking I got a seat. Then on alighting at Dagenham Heathway I then walked to my home in Broad Street still carrying the precious typewriter but let me tell you I only just made it.

However, the month’s wages came in very handy as my Mum took me to Crisp Street Market where I bought my first new coat and a jumper and a skirt. All of that for ten pounds. The other ten pounds I lent to my boyfriend, now my husband and do you know what…he still bloody well owes me! I think I’ll make a Macaroni Cheese for tea and see if that jogs his memory!

End