The
Seadog's Magic Winkle (Part 1)
By
Dominic Horton
After
cutting my losses and quitting my paper round (see Lowlife 64)
my next career move as a teenager was to work for PMG Forecourts at
the their petrol station in Quinton. To begin with I was employed
as a part-time forecourt assistant and my duties were to clean the
pumps, be a general dogsbody, making tea and the like, and to talk to
the full-time members of staff to stop them dying from boredom. For
this I was paid the princely sum of £1 an hour and you could easily
fritter away your wages by buying snack foods just to pass the
meandering time away. I have little recollection as to how I got the
job but I think it was through a lad called Wearmouth who was a Davie
Bowie nut but looked like he was a member of the band The Jesus and
Mary Chain.
 |
| Gerry Gow |
The
boss was Sandy the Seadog and the big boss was Walker, who was a
doppelgänger for Ian Richardson, the actor who starred in the BBC
political thriller House
of Cards. (Incidentally,
I see that the Yankees have remade the series recently; they just
can't keep their money grabbing hands off our best films and TV
shows, remaking them instead of writing their own stuff).
The Seadog was in charge of the forecourt on a day to day basis and
Walker was a suit from Head Office who would pop in once a day to
collect the takings from the safe, which was supposed to be locked at
all times but when the Seadog was absent and a full-timer called
Ashers was in charge the safe was mostly left unlocked through
negligence. Security was hardly the watchword at PMG.
Walker
always seemed a bit nervous when he turned up as I think he viewed us
Forecourt workers as an earthy and rum lot and although he passed the
time of day with us he couldn't wait to scuttle off in his posh motor
back to the comforts of the surroundings of Head Office, which was a
mythical place as none of us had ever actually been there.
Rose
used from Head Office used to telephone once a day to get the sales
figures and we used to flirt and have a general banter with her and
we all pictured her to be young and highly attractive and we never
considered for one minute that she was otherwise. Months later the
Seadog was summoned to Head Office for some reason or another and
when he returned we were all crushed when he told us that Rose was
knocking on a bit and highly obese but he consoled himself by
pilfering a number of items off Walker's desk when the big boss
wasn't looking. From then on once we had given Rose the sales
figures we made our excuses and cut the telephone calls short.
Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
The
Seadog is from Lyme Regis in Dorset and he is one of those characters
who is a dead ringer for many people, including Freddie Boswell from
Bread, the Bristol City 70's/
80's footballer Gerry Gow and a down-at-heel Des Lynam. He
used to be a fisherman and more than anything he longed to return to
the high seas, so being stuck in a petrol station in the West
Midlands was just about the most un-nautical existence he could have
possibly hoped for.
 |
| Ivan Mauger by request of Toby In-Tents |
The
Seadog ended up living in the Midlands after meeting his wife Pat,
but by the time I joined PMG the marriage seemed less than ideal and
he would escape back to Lyme Regis whenever he could. His kids were
called Sam and Ivan and they were named after the speedway riders Sam
Ermolenko and Ivan Mauger. Speedway had been big when Sam and Ivan
were born but by that time its popularity was fading quicker than the
Seadog's enthusiasm for his marriage.
The
Seadog always superstitiously carried with him a winkle from Lyme Bay
and he used to fret if he had forgotten to put it in his trouser
pocket when he dressed in the morning. He believed that the winkle
had magic properties and that one day it would see him restored to
his rightful place, sailing in the English channel catching fish a
plenty.
The
Seadog rarely served on the till as it was manned by other
full-timers and his duties only took up about 20% of his working
hours, so he mostly idled his time away by smoking, dreaming of
seafaring and drawing moustaches on photographs of women in the daily
newspapers. He probably had the most sedentary job in Britain, even
taking into account Gazza's former 'aid' Jimmy Five Bellies Gardner,
who's only physical activity was walking to the bar and back.
Instead of doing something useful with his time he used to get
himself into a deep malaise and bore himself into a mind numbing
stupor, to such a degree that when his shift ended he could barely
raise the enthusiasm to haul himself off his stool to go home.
 |
| Georgie Fame |
Other
than the Seadog and Ashers the only other full-timer was the Wild Man
of Brummio, who was a large fella with Meatloaf looks who was often
surly and obtuse to customers. But the Wild Man had a bit of nous
and being a boozer he had a keen sense of pub humour so I used to get
on with him. After a while the Wild Man went on long term sick leave
for what the Seadog thought was chronic malingering but was
officially diagnosed as a bad back. Being the longest serving
part-timer I was asked if I wanted to fill the void left by the Wild
Man and work his shifts on a pro tem basis and I gratefully accepted
with pound signs in my eyes.
At
the time I was officially supposed to be attending college full-time
as an A Level student but my devotion to academia had severely waned
and I was barely attending classes. I didn't really mix with the
other kids there and I was a bit of a loner. I was summoned by the
college to see the attendance officer Mr F, who looked so much like
Georgie Fame that when I entered his office I thought that he was
going to burst into an impromptu rendition of “Yeh! Yeh!”
Instead Mr F sat me down and smiling warmly he said, “I know you
don't want to waste your time at this meeting Horton and if the truth
be known neither do I. It is up to you to decide if you want to
attend classes, you are an adult now and you make your own decisions.
But I need to keep you here for at least fifteen minutes to make it
look like we have had a proper meeting. Do you take sugar in your
tea?” At this he made a cuppa and gave it to me with a biscuit and
we leisurely talked about football for a quarter of an hour. I
regarded the sham meeting as effectively being clearance for me to
take up full-time work at PMG and reap the rich rewards of extra beer
money.
Working
full-time meant that I no longer had to work with the other full-time
cashier Ashers as he and I would work opposite shifts to each other,
covering all of the opening hours between us, so our paths only
crossed when the shifts changed. Ashers was a strange but likeable
character who had one gammy eye that was constantly on the move,
uncontrollably rotating in all directions like a manic disco light.
He used to drink foul chicory weed coffee and he wouldn't let us
listen to the racing on the antiquated Invicta radio as he used to
video tape race meetings and watch them late at night when he got
home from his shifts.
All
the part-time staff liked Ashers because if they couldn't be bothered
doing their designated tasks he would do them instead, so he would
scrub the forecourt with the putrid, fishy smelling cleaning fluid
through fear of getting a boll*cking from the Seadog that the job had
not been done. Ashers was too kind hearted to tell the part-time
staff to get off their ar*es and do their jobs themselves so they
just used to loaf around when they worked with him.
Although
Ashers was probably in his 40's his Mom used to look after him and
having always lived with his parents he didn't have the wherewithal
to care for himself. One time Ashers's parents abandoned him by
going on holiday for a week and his worried Mother cooked him a meal
for each of the seven days and bunged them in the freezer, so all he
had to do was cook them in the microwave. Each meal was labelled
with a day of the week.
He
was fretting when he came into work one day and when I asked him what
was up he said, “Mom hasn't left me a meal with a label on it
saying 'WEDNESDAY'.” The Seadog suggested to Ashers that he pops
up the chippy for his tea and Ashers confessed in all seriousness
that he hadn't thought of that. But even this ludicrousness was
usurped by another food based incident when a robber held up the
petrol station and threatened Ashers with a Double Decker chocolate
bar. Given his poor eyesight Ashers thought he was being threatened
with a knife or a gun instead of a piece of harmless confectionery.
Fortunately Ashers had locked the safe for once so the thief only got
away with the minimal amount of money that was in the till and a few
packets of fags. And of course a Double Decker.
Next
week: The Seadog's Magic Winkle (Part 2)
©
Dominic Horton, July 2014.
*
EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com
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