Adventures During The Age Of Aquarius

Part VI

For the story so far click HERE


 “They’re all thieves”, Johnny said, “ anyone of them would nip behind the bar and steal what they could get their hands on. Never leave the till unlocked and always make sure all spirits are safely returned to the top shelf. I wouldn’t put it past them to fill their glass for free.” Johnny had a very low opinion of his customers.

Shortly before eleven - last orders time in those days - he counted the takings and, depending on his mood, the number of customers still drinking and the day of the week, he either locked the doors and continued serving after hours or he would ring the bell and shoo everybody out. If he decided to stay open he advised me to stay too; by this time the customers were becoming more and more generous tippers and to give him his due, Johnny made sure I got all the tips left for me. People still used cash to pay and the later it was the less they counted their change.

Although it must have been totally obvious to the local police what went on behind closed doors in bars and drinking clubs in the seedy areas off Hampstead Lane, they never turned up while I was there. After hours the windows were shut and curtains drawn but the noise became louder. By now the air was thick with cigarette smoke, male dancers took off their jackets, and women, their faces flushed and perspiring, ola’d and opa'd and clapped their hands in time with the shrill sounds of Cypriot music. Tsifteteli is a free form dance which includes both male and female dancers, whereas women danced the Arabiye,  heads thrown back, shoulders and chests shaking and bellies and hips swinging. It’s a very voluptuous dance, a sexy woman could get a whole room of men staring, whistling and clapping. But the best Arabiye I saw was danced by a man, a very tall North African, pale-skinned and quiet. I never saw him with any kind of companion, male or female, although he was friendly enough towards everybody. They called him  "The Arab”. He drank only water; in spite of that Johnny always allowed him entry and treated him with respect.  I was curious about him, tried to involve him in conversation, but he politely but firmly put me in my place.

There were other mysterious men who occasionally came up the stairs to the bar. Three brothers, two older ones and one younger, very tall, well, but soberly dressed in dark suits and crisp white shirts, not at all like the usual customers who were, at best, casually attired, appeared twice a month. They were English, spoke exclusively to Johnny, hung about for a bit, rarely accepted a drink but, if they did, it was on the house. The younger brother tried to flirt with me;  he was telling me how he had had his heart broken and was afraid to become involved with another woman; but, somehow, he felt that I was different, he trusted me and knew that a girl like me wouldn’t let him down. Like his brothers, I found him vaguely threatening and was in no way inclined to take him up on his offer.

His brothers were aware of what he was doing; they called him back, much like you call a dog to heel, and my would-be suitor obeyed quickly, winking at me and mouthing ’sorry'. Negotiations with Johnny over, they left. Johnny, who was often rude to, and dismissive of, most of his customers, treated both “The Arab” and the three English brothers with respect. In fact, while they were around, particularly the three Englishmen, the bar quietened down considerably. Johnny never said what their business with him was, but, in hindsight, I’d go for protection racket as the most likely explanation.

Three months into my employment I had settled into the routine quite well. I felt relatively safe. Johnny never seriously bothered me and he made sure no drunken customer pestered me more than I could cope with. The reason I left was nothing to do with me personally; one night, on the way out, I witnessed a nasty and brutish attack by a man on a woman which made me feel sick to my stomach and caused me to run down the stairs and out the door as fast as my heels would allow. I didn’t even stop to pick up my coat.


to be continued. . . . .

Adventures during the Age of Aquarius

Part V

Click here for  The story so far . . . .


Considering London’s Soho at the time, La Rocca had been a reasonably respectable environment; although George was definitely walking on the shady side of the law, he kept the other waitress and me in the dark about whatever it was he dealt in. I never had the slightest idea what was involved, drugs, fencing, smuggling, or maybe even politics.  Most of the regular customers were young people, students, office clerks and shop workers, and illegally employed foreigners like me, all proudly shabby and determined to rebel. New and exciting music was the common bond.

The Age of Aquarius was still in its infancy, the free and easy sex came later. I was aware that some girls were different; we’d sit and have a chat over a coffee, but when a man came up to speak to them they’d disappear for a short time. They all had steady boyfriends, who turned up several times during the afternoon and evening and took the girls aside without leaving the premises. Once, a girl who was small and slight and very pale, came back to our table after such an encounter, sobbing and shaking and collapsing on her chair. She was obviously very distressed and, foolishly, I said to her that, if her boyfriend made her unhappy, 'why didn’t she just walk out on him?’ For a moment the others stared in disbelief, but nobody chose to enlighten me. It took me weeks to understand.

In the meantime, finding a job which would pay my rent was my first priority. I was told that Johnny, a Cypriot who ran a combined restaurant and drinking club on two floors of an old Victorian house in Robert Street was looking for a waitress. The area north of Soho, between Warren Street and what was to become posh Highgate was seedy and run-down, with rabbit warrens of dank and insalubrious side streets off Hampstead Lane.  Robert Street was one of them. A lot of the area was subsequently flattened and high rise blocks of flats replaced the Victorian houses. It took an army of yuppies to step in and stop the destruction; thanks to their efforts whole streets were rescued from the bulldozers and turned into very desirable residences. Prices rocketed and many of the large houses were sub-divided into flats. In the late eighties and at the beginning of the nineties  Beloved and I lived in the top three floors of one of these houses in a lovely street called Montpelier Grove in Kentish Town, by then thoroughly gentrified.

Johnny looked me up and down. “Have you done waitressing?”, he asked. I had, first in the fish shop for one disastrous day and then several weeks at La Rocca. Johnny was short and square, with a shiny face and restless hands and full, rather moist lips. I didn’t like him at all. Johnny’s wife was running the restaurant downstairs which I found reassuring. Surely, no man would try it on with his wife a short flight of stairs away? He said I could start in the drinking club and we’d see how I got on with the customers. He took me behind the bar and explained the shelves of drinks, the cash register and the baskets of food. The bar served meze and the waitress had to cut up and dish out appetisers on very small plates. There were strict rules as to who got what: the man who came in for a beer had a dish of peanuts and a few olives and under no circumstances was I to give him more. “ Some of them sit all evening over a beer and expect me to feed them”, Johnny said. “You’ll get to know them soon enough”. The customer buying the most expensive drinks, such as a whole bottle of whisky, had a lavish spread, from olives and celery sticks to stuffed vine leaves, freshly grilled sardines, spiced and smoked meats and chunks of Greek bread. Sometimes there were tables of four who had a bottle of wine between them. To begin with they were to be given a reasonably generous array of plates; if they made no effort to buy another bottle, their dishes were not to be replenished.

During the week I was often left alone upstairs, Johnny coming up around ten o’clock to make sure nobody had got drunk and made trouble. He didn’t mind them getting drunk, it was the trouble he objected to. He had impressed on me not to leave my station behind the bar except to serve a table. It was a small room, with the tables ranged around the outside and a small area in the middle left free for dancing. Often it was the men who danced, arms spread wide and interlinked and heels kicking. At weekends a fiddler and a bouzouki player provided live entertainment.

I soon got used to it. Johnny was behaving himself.  Occasionally, just before closing time, he rubbed up against me when he squeezed past to get to the cash register; I could cope with that. Once he himself was behind the bar I was free to move into the room. At times I enjoyed myself.




to be continued . . . . .

Adventures during the Age of Aquarius Part IV

Part I  -  Part II  -  Part III

When I told Lucas that I wouldn't be coming back to his uncle's fish shop he wasn't pleased. He had had great hopes that I'd be available both on and off the job; now he had to renew his efforts to find somebody willing to fall in with his idea of being an employer, while I began to look around the coffee shops of Soho for waitressing work. I lived in the Camden area of London,  a short ride on the No. 24 bus from the Westend. My fares would be low-cost and the coffee would be free, or so I hoped. Perhaps I'd even be given a sandwich as part of my pay.  I knew a lot of the girls working in the area, often spending hours in one café or another, chatting with them and listening to the music. The pay wasn't great and occasionally a customer would become a nuisance, but, on the whole, the environment was pleasant enough.

I needed money urgently. My rent was due weekly and I was already a week in arrears.  I had just cashed Mum and Dad's latest postal order and stupidly left the money, all in crisp £1 notes, open on the bedside table while I was out. The house where I lived was sub-divided into rooms, with a cooker and kitchen sink on the half-landing for the five tenants to share. The landlord and his family lived downstairs. The tenants shared one lavatory in the house and a bathroom in a shed in the garden. The bath had a thick streak of verdigris running from the plughole halfway along the bottom of the tub; the landlord provided scouring cream but the discolouration was permanent. It was all very primitive and run-down. We cleaned our own rooms and were supposed to share the cleaning of the stairs and the communal facilities; the only person who made a real effort was an Irish girl who lived on the floor above; she was always complaining that the cooker was covered in grease. I never used it, so I never cleaned it. My room had been part of a first floor drawing room before the house, which was large and had been quite handsome in its day, became a lodging house. Between my room and the room next door were wide double doors, which would have been thrown open to combine the two rooms for parties and family entertainments in the olden days, but which were now provided with an inadequate lock; a hefty shove would open the door. A young couple were my neighbours, as poor as the rest of us; I never found out who they were or how they earned their living. The Irish girl was a factory worker, and there was another ex-student in a smaller room on my floor, also an illegal waitress.

I have no idea who broke into my room and stole the small pile of pound notes; when I came home that evening the money was gone. I suspected the couple next door; I knocked on their door and accused the woman, who was alone, there and then. She vehemently denied any such theft and kept asking me how I thought she had got in, as she had a chest of drawers across the doorway connecting our rooms. She made rather a point of that chest of drawers, which made me suspect her even more. There was, however, no way I could prove anything and I soon gave up. I mentioned the theft to the landlord when he brought the week's clean sheets and towels; he questioned my sanity for leaving the money lying around in the first place and otherwise shrugged his shoulders. Finding a job was essential.

A lot of the coffee shop owners were foreigners themselves, mainly Italians and some Greeks. Soho was a pretty seedy place, with very few of the elegant restaurants that opened later. It was very mixed, with famous clubs and pubs, as well as Chinese and Italian restaurants, side by side with sex shops and 'working girls' and their protectors. Not so different from today really, except that prices have gone up massively.  The population in the cafés was constantly shifting, proprietors were always looking for new staff willing to work for very low wages; as many of the workers were also illegals, they couldn't complain about the conditions. It didn't take me long to find a job. I think the place was called La Rocca, run by a Greek, a bull of a man, called George. No doubt, both George and La Rocca have long since gone into the great coffee shop in the sky, I cannot be had up for libel. George ran a tight ship when it came to the customers, absolutely no credit and absolutely no hand-outs, but he sometimes forgot to pay the waitresses on time, and always charged us for breakages.  He had his own table in a corner, where other men joined him, some staying for only a few moments, others sitting down with him to discuss business. Sometimes these men became loud, their voices heated; George remained impassive, clicking his worry beads, sipping from a tiny cup of Turkish coffee, an immovable and imperturbable mountain. George had impressed on me, and everybody else he employed, that we were to keep our noses out of the business he conducted in his corner, and that we were to run the coffee shop side of things efficiently and smoothly and only to come to him for help if a customer pestered us.

George wasn't a bad employer, he looked after us in a very hands-off way and often allowed guitar players or one of the many small bands around at the time to come in and play for nothing; he'd switch off the music box for them; when he got tired of their noise he threw them out good-naturedly. The boys didn't seem to mind, they had had a chance to perform, and if they pleased the customers they would be given a tip.

I was quite sad to leave La Rocca. One day several very fit looking young men in very ordinary clothes came in and took a table. We served them their coffee and thought no more about it. They came back two days later, sat, drank their coffee, observed and left again. This happened a few more times. They were quiet, well behaved and, in spite of behaving unobtrusively, stuck out like a pair of maiden aunts visiting one of the sex shops in the area. George saw them and the flow of men to his table stopped. He came out of his corner and chatted amiably with the customers, including the newcomers. After work that day he handed me and the other waitress, both of us illegal aliens, two weeks' wages - which was quite generous under the circumstances - and said "sorry to have to let you go, girls, but you know how it is, better safe than sorry. Can't be seen to be breaking the law. Nothing personal and the best of luck to both of you." George wasn't going to endanger the lucrative side of his private business for the sake of a couple of waitresses. I was once more unemployed.

Adventures during the Age Of Aquarius - Part III

Part I and Part II


Fish 'n' Chips is one of Great Britain's towering successes; 'chippies' are everywhere, not only in the UK but, by virtue of empire and tourism, in far-flung places all over the globe. The first fish-and-chip shop in London was opened in 1860. Nowadays there are chippies who sell you a curry or a 'Chinese', and always saveloys, a highly spiced, reddish brown sausage;  the fried fish shop will probably be the last kind of eatery to go out of business. Fish has become expensive, the seas around the British Isles are overfished and supplies are shrinking, but if you want a cheap and nutritious meal, and lots of it, you can hardly do better than visit the chippy.  The fish comes wrapped in a thick coating of batter, adding weight and a lot of calories to the dish. When it leaves its bath of sizzling oil the portions glisten with grease, the batter now mid-brown, crinkly and blistery. When you break the crust with your fork it comes away with a chunk of hard baked batter, while the fish inside remains pallid and soft. If you eat it quickly enough, before your portion cools, it's edible, even tasty, but once the batter has gone cold and soggy, each mouthful tastes of congealed grease. You need a lot of beer to neutralise the taste of cold fish-and-chips. The true aficionado adds  a side of pickled onion or a 'wally' (a pickled gherkin), and always a generous sprinkling of salt and brown vinegar. Although I have not mentioned chips separately (a thicker kind of French fries), they are an integral part of the dish. The only vegetable allowed in the vicinity of fish-and-chips is a lump of mushy peas, bright green and squashed to a thick pulp, a kind of edible glue.

Take-away fish-and-chips were wrapped in a small sheet of greaseproof white paper and then newspaper. I believe, because I was told by knowledgeable and enthusiastic worshippers of the institution, that fried fish simply never tasted the same once white paper replaced plain newspaper. Apparently, newsprint on oil added the final, indispensable piquancy. These days newspaper has been done away with altogether.

I first came into contact with a fish-and-chip shop by working in one. When I was sacked from the laundry I urgently needed another job. My situation in England remained precarious, I only had permission to stay if I worked in one of the menial jobs foreigners were allowed to take away from the indigenous workers, who didn't want them. I even needed a permit to work in the laundry. My student status had expired and the immigration authorities were always on the look-out for those of us who outstayed our welcome. We made no contribution to the economy and paid no taxes. People were as paranoid about the menace of the foreign worker taking jobs away from the honest British labourer as they are now. Except that the fear of said foreigner scrounging off the Benefits System didn't exist then, because 'illegals' were not registered and therefore unable to make claims.

The laundry was situated off the Holloway Road in North London. The chippy was in Moorgate, in a dingy side street near the famous Moorfield's Eye Hospital in the City of London.  It was owned by a Greek Cypriot couple. I had met their nephew, Lucas, in one of the many coffee bars in Soho; you could sit over coffee or a coke for an hour or more, talking to friends and listening to the music provided by some half-starved young man with a guitar. Lucas fancied me; I didn't particularly like him, but I was willing to consider the job he was offering with his uncle and aunt. He was helping them out himself, but keen to leave again. He'd squared it with them, he said; they weren't bothered about my illegal alien status and just wanted a waitress. "Start on Friday", they said, "that's when we are busiest. Come at 11 am and we'll show you the ropes". Apart from waitressing there were a few light duties like cleaning the tables and helping with the washing up.

I presented myself at 11 am. The place was a narrow rectangle, with three stainless steel  deep fryers ranged along part of the wall  opposite the entrance door, and three rows of  tables, a dozen altogether, each table seating four. It was very basic, it had no washroom other than a little cubbyhole for the staff, the tables were formica topped and the chairs plain, a job lot from the cheapest catering furnishers."Nothing to it", I thought. I had never done any waitressing, but how difficult can it be to take an order, have it filled and carry the plate back to the customer.

Lucas, who spoke good English, explained the menu. Cod and chips, haddock and chips, plaice and chips, saveloys and chips or plain chips. Wallies and onions. Vinegar, salt and pepper stood on each table. No  fancy extras like mushy peas, no tartare sauce, no ketchup; this was before the regular British palate went adventurous and began to trust such luxuries as beer batter or parsley garnishes. "You have to be quick", Lucas said, our customers work shifts and they have a thirty minute dinner break. Take their order as they come in, pass it on to me and uncle; we'll be ready with the first portions by the time they sit down."

"I can do that," I said; I knew that I was naturally quick on my feet and a fast learner to boot. "No problem."

At exactly four minutes past twelve the shop door sprang open and a tsunami of bodies swept into the cafe. "cod and chips, plaice and chips, chips twice, cod and chips . . . . . . . " Each of these bodies shouted at me on the way in, rushed past me to a table and sat down. A blur of men in grey or blue overalls, indistinguishable from each other. I stood by the counter, pad and pencil at the ready, and stared, my welcome smile a frozen grimace. Behind me, the counter was filling up with plates, Lucas and his uncle were shovelling fish and chips as fast as they could.The aunt was filling mugs with tea, several trays of them, and shouting at me too. "Come on, come on," she screeched. Her command of English was limited. I came out of my trance and moved.

Tea trays first, at least they had all demanded tea, there was no problem sorting out who wanted a mug. I simply plonked four of them on each table. The plates of food presented a problem; there was no chance that I'd serve the men in the order in which they had arrived or that they'd get what they wanted.  I dithered for a second and then grabbed two plates at random, slapping them down on the nearest table. Back to the counter and the same again. And again. There was one chance in four or five that at least one customer at each table would be satisfied.  "I ordered cod and chips and you've given me . . ". "Hey, we were first and you've already served that table . . . . ."  "I want a double portion of chips.. " The plates on the counter were piling up and needed shifting. I had no time to worry about correct service etiquette. "Terribly sorry", I said, continuing to work my way back and forth along the two rows between the tables. "Sort it out, can't you." Some of them did, hindering my progress by handing plates to other tables, others switched them round at their own. Lucas came out from behind the counter to placate those most aggrieved. "She's new", he said, unnecessarily. The men settled down to eat fast and furiously, having to make up for the valuable minutes' eating time which my inefficiency had cost them.

Just before twelve thirty the first workers left and were quickly replaced by the next shift, equally undistinguished. We replayed the first sitting, except that Lucas stayed out with me to serve and auntie helped with the frying and shovelling. Had I thought at all what the job might entail, I would have expected concentrated work, a lot of grease and the smell of burning oil, steamed up windows and the odd linguistic misunderstanding; I would also have expected good-natured banter, maybe a flirtatious remark, and, above all, a tip.  I got none of the latter but all of the former. By two o'clock "dinner time" was over, all the men were back at work and the cafe closed.

Lucas was counting the takings.  "You would get used to it",  he said, a question mark in his voice. "Do you feel like coming back on Tuesday? We could go and have a coffee when I'm finished here. Talk it over." He peeled off a couple of pound notes from the wad of cash in his hand. "Here you are, your pay for today," he said. "Enough to buy a fish dinner." He thought it was funny.

This job was worse than ironing shirts. At least there had been music-while-you-work at the laundry and I didn't reek of stale grease at the end of the day. The pay was lousy and Lucas might become a problem. Even if I learned to tell the robots who came to the cafe apart, would serving them fish and chips for half an hour several times a week enhance my knowledge of literary English? Hardly. No, this job was a dead end. But waitressing itself could be fun, couldn't it? Perhaps in one of the coffee bars I spent so much time in? I could always ask.

Adventures During the Age Of Aquarius - Part II

"What!?"

Dumbfounded, I stared at her.

The Nigerians too were rooted to the spot, frozen in mid-movement. Faces of other workers turned to us expectantly.  Lightyears separated hearing the words and grasping their meaning; my face creased with concentration, I repeated "What?"

The concept of whores was fairly new to me; I had an idea that women who sold sex for money were called 'whores' or 'Huren' in German; there were women being called 'whores' in novels, particularly French and Russian ones. I rather enjoyed reading about their usually tragic fate, and was mildly excited by accounts of what went on in French boudoirs and on wild sleigh rides across the frozen Russian tundra, but I had never come across a live practitioner of the profession.  And what had the Nigerians to do with it?

I genuinely wanted her to explain what she meant. I was, even then, a reasonable sort of person, but pretty unlikely to be overly concerned with anyone's opinion of me. I blame my father for that attitude, having inherited his conviction that survival is not only the prerogative of the fittest but also those with impermeable skin. "Pay your way, my girl," he used to say, "stay true to yourself, and hold your head up. You're the equal of anyone". He had survived a lot more than name calling.

What she had said made no sense; I was puzzled, why would she say that? Gradually, the paralysing effect of her words evaporated inside the steamy atmosphere of the 'greasy spoon'. There would be no drama. Blondie herself seemed to be in shock, she literally shook, her face a livid mask of shame, anger and accusation. I observed the phenomenon closely. She looked past me to the open door of the cafe, grabbed her bag and left. I followed, the Nigerians on my heels.

Blondie started to run; so we left her to it. The Nigerians knew what they had had to do with Blondie's outburst. They stopped me at the entrance to the factory and the man who had invited me to the party unsmilingly asked "Will you come?". "No", I said, "thank you very much, but I don't think I will".  "We are black, is that what it is? You whites are all the same, no matter where you come from. We thought you were different"; the man spat out the words angrily. One of the girls said she was sorry they had befriended me and she would never trust me again.  I was angry too, "It's nothing to do with being black," I said, "I have a boyfriend and I can't just go out without him". But, of course, my initial attraction to this close knit group of Nigerians, in their sober black and white outfits so much more neatly and smartly dressed than any of my white fellow workers, was due to their very 'otherness', they were  so very different from anyone I'd ever met.  No black people lived in my home town and although I was seeing every race on earth represented in the streets of London, these people were the first with whom I'd had direct contact. They left me standing on the steps to the laundry's entrance, confused and possibly a little ashamed, without knowing the reason why.

One of the other German girls caught up with me. "Don't let her get to you", she said, "she is very unhappy. Her boyfriend is a nasty brute who knocks her about". Blondie had met him in Germany where he was serving in the British Army, fallen in love, followed him to the UK and now they were engaged to be married. All her hard work and thriftiness came about because of the pressure he put on her. He forced her to hand over her wages and was given a meagre allowance in return. "I have never heard this rumour in the factory", my little German friend said, "she's probably just jealous". She smiled endearingly, then clapped her hands over her mouth and blushed. She was missing her two front teeth and was waiting for new ones to be inserted. Was she too being knocked about? I didn't know, but hoped not. She was a sweet little thing, who attached herself to me for the few weeks of slave labour left before I was sent packing from the factory.

The works doctor had found nothing wrong with my chest or any other ailments. I was as fit as anyone to work wherever it pleased them to put me. The supervisor gave me no peace, her quota needed filling, or else she herself would be in trouble. "Idle cow", she called me. She probably believed the rumour about my second profession, which had now actually spread on the floor. Blondie no longer looked me in the eye, but I couldn't be bothered to challenge her. The only thing that made work at all bearable was the Music-While-You-Work drizzling down on us from the speakers on the ceiling - we were allowed to sing along -  and my new German friend, who came out for lunch with me. She had her new teeth before I left and looked pretty and happy.

Two weeks after the incident at the cafe the supervisor came over and told me to present myself at 'the office' half an hour before the end of the working day. It was Friday, I had my pay packet in my pocket. The Personnel Manager was a grey-haired, friendly man, quite handsome; about the same age as my father. He told me to sit on the chair in front of his desk; I put my heavy library book bag and my much lighter handbag down and waited.

He looked at the bag. "Do you enjoy reading?", he asked. "What have you got there?" For the next twenty minutes we discussed books, with particular emphasis on Dickens, whom I was devouring in great chunks. But I also had a couple of thrillers in the bag, Dorothy L. Sayers was my favourite. Mr. Personnel Manager became interested in me and asked me a number of personal questions. "Where do you come from? What have you done so far? What are you doing in England?" Finally, he came to the point. Very gently, with an apologetic smile, he said "Works Doctor has found nothing wrong with you, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to perform as well as your colleagues, unless it's your attitude to the work. I am sorry, but we can no longer employ you". He was giving me the sack. He then said, "You could be my daughter and I would really ask you to consider going home. You don't belong here". I had lasted for exactly six weeks. He had a point.

But grimy, smelly, noisy, shabby, seedy, vibrant London, with its music, street theatre, coffee bars, and flower power was calling to me. I stayed. A friend got me a job in a fish and chip cafe.





to be continued

Adventures during the Age Of Aquarius - Part I

When a green girl leaves her rigid and narrow home for the first time, all sorts of things can happen, particularly if this clueless innocent moves from a mid sized provincial town in one country to a vast metropolis in another country, which has recently embraced a new, swinging age of free love, drug experimentation and above all, the birth of counter-culture and social revolution.  For as long as this girl lives in the bosom of a respectable family in the new country, attends her classes at college regularly and only goes out at the weekend, she is safe. But then again, who wants to stay safe when all around the old values are breaking up and the whole world is in turmoil.

When the Moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace shall guide the planets, and love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius ....

I am, of course, talking about Friko's adventures in London in the late 60s and early 70s. College finished, a diploma safely tucked into her pocket, the age of Aquarius beckoned. At the time it was all wonderfully exciting, freedom at last. But freedom needed to be paid for: there was rent to find for a single furnished room in  grotty student accommodation and there was also the small matter of keeping body and soul together, as they said then. Before Britain's entry into the EEC in 1973 made travel and moving between Germany and Britain easier, very few occupations were open to foreigners; we could only work as housemaids, cleaners in hospitals, or in other menial jobs, and even that required a permit.

My first legal job was at a laundry, ironing shirts. There was a whole floor of a large building devoted to nothing else but washing and pressing men's shirts. There were girls, mostly foreigners and a few poor English and Irish women, standing all day at large presses, with hot steam rising from them constantly, lifting the heavy lids, arranging the shirts on the wide ironing boards by reaching far in and stretching them tightly, then bringing the lids down again on to the shirts for an exact number of seconds.  Most of the new girls had burn marks on arms and hands and if you were really careless you could burn your forehead on the edge of the lid. The current obsession with Health & Safety hadn't been invented yet. The work was piecework, you got paid per item. If you fell below a certain number of items after the initial training period, the supervisor came to speak to you to encourage you to work a bit faster. If you still showed no sign of improvement, you were called to 'the office', the encouragement turning a little more threatening. The company could afford to hire and fire at will, most of the workers were too poor to rebel and foreigners like me, who, for whatever reason, wanted to stay in the country for a while longer, had no other legal option.

I hated working at the presses. I'd never really done any physical work at all; this was me being thrown in at the deep end. I lagged far behind the other girls' output and was finally called to 'the office'. As a child I had had asthma; I promptly used my childhood illness as a reason for not being able to work at the presses. "OK", they said, "we'll switch you to the finishing line. But you'll have to have a medical examination. The works doctor will take care of that."

The finishing line was less hot and steamy. Here shirt collars and cuffs, the band at the top of backs, sleeves and pleats were finished off by hand. This was also the place where dress shirts and the shirts of people, who were paying for a superior service, were pressed. The job was no better paid, in fact, the painstaking work meant that your tally of shirts was lower than at the presses; some of the hand-pressers were really good at their work, but there were others, me among them, who achieved only creased garments, which then had to be dampened and pressed again. The supervisor kept a close eye on the slackers.

There was little camaraderie amongst the workers. I tagged along with a small group of other Germans, who, together with a group of Nigerians, men and women who worked in a different part of the factory, went for lunch to the nearest 'greasy spoon'  - small cafeterias which served a very basic lunch, a few sandwiches and tea from a large urn on the counter. There were sticky buns and slices of fruitcake under a fly-blown plastic dome for those with a sweet tooth. These cafeterias were everywhere in London, thousands of them; office workers used them, as did factory and shop workers; they were cheap and cheerful, you got what you paid for, and nothing more.

I wasn't quite as dependent on my earnings at the laundry as most of the others. Whenever I was down to my last pound Mum and Dad came to the rescue; they actually still made me a small allowance, although they constantly tried to persuade me to return home. Having these extra pounds in my pocket meant that I still had money at the end of the week to buy my usual lunch, whereas some of the others had to cut back by about Thursday. Payday was Friday. Sometimes I lent a friend a pound or two. But I was by no means well-off, just a little less hard-pressed than some.

Being a total innocent, I was usually cheerful and bright and inclined to chat with all and sundry. I was also bookish and having had an education of sorts made me quite self-confident. The Nigerians fascinated me;  several of them were well educated and articulate and I happily sat with them at lunch in the cafe, having the kind of conversation in which my German fellow workers had no interest. One of the Nigerian men invited me to join their group to celebrate a Nigerian national holiday at their home; although I was innocent, I wasn't foolhardy. I asked them to let me think it over. Besides, I had a boyfriend.

One of the German girls, a very thin, intense, blonde, with a pointy noise and narrow mouth had overheard this invitation. She was one of the best workers at the laundry, earning unheard of piecework rates. She and her boyfriend saved every last penny towards a home of their own, she spent almost nothing and brought her own sandwiches to work. She came to the cafe to have a cup of tea and because there was nowhere cheaper for her to go during our lunch breaks.

The place was busy,  break was nearly over but most of the regulars, including other local workers  were still there. As we were getting ready to leave, this girl stood up, turned to me and said, in English, not German, in a clear voice, designed to penetrate every corner of the small space: "You really need to be more careful who you mix with. And you need to stop throwing your money around. We all know how you earn it. It's all over the factory that you're the "One-Pound-Whore."






to be continued