You’ve got to have style if you’re one of the London (Odeon) boys

The day I took over as manager of the Odeon in Camden, an inner city suburb of London, was a big step as I would be in charge of a cinema, responsible for the presentation, screenings, staff and all that goes into entertaining the public.

The place had begun life in the 1920s as the Gaumont Palace, a luxury theatre with full stage facilities as well as the cinema screen. In the stalls and the circle there was seating for over 2,700 patrons.

In 1961, in line with the growing trend for popular entertainment, the Gaumont (as it was now called) hosted a bingo session on Sunday afternoons, run by Top Rank Bingo.

Just three years later the Rank Organisation took over the Gaumont and turned the stalls into a fulltime bingo club, with a separate entrance, and the circle was turned into a single screen cinema with almost 1,200 seats.

The foyer still maintained the ticket office and confectionery counter, as well as a stockroom, and the grand staircase led up to where the magic happened.

It was still a large complex upstairs, as well as the main office, with its own manager’s office taking up one section, plus a staffroom, the projection room and a manager’s flat which had been occupied for some years by the local assistant manager.

There was also a large area which had housed a projectionist training centre, with a fully operational projection room, during the 1960s.

In fact the place was big enough to ensure I kept a trim figure, thanks to all the walking I had to do, including going up and down the stairs at least five times a day.

Within my first week I attended the district manager’s regular meeting with managers and soon found out the difference between a London Odeon manager, even if it was in the suburbs, and managers in the rest of the country – we London managers had style.

This was mainly based on the dress code.

As I have said before managers, and assistants, wore a smart lounge suit with a plain shirt, a tie and appropriate shoes, up until 6pm.

At that time the manager would change into evening dress, with shirt and bow tie.

London managers would have the lounge suit, but often with a pastel shirt, rather than white, and tended to wear a silk tie (I’ve had a passion for silk ties ever since and probably have about 40 to 50 these days).

Evening wear was also black but in London we tended to have silk lapels and once again often pastel shirts with a ruffle down the front covering the buttons, and a butterfly style velvet bow tie.

I had shirts in white, light blue, and a pale brown, with a light blue ruffle, edged in black, and embroidered strip down the centre, a white ruffle with black edging, a pale brown ruffle with a dark coffee coloured edge and pale brown centre, and, finally, one similar to the brown only with burgundy edging. My bow ties came in black, navy, chocolate brown, and deep burgundy. I’ve still got them.

Looking back on those days it was really quite an affectation but we were mostly in our late 20s or early 30s and at the time London was still considered the style capital of the world and we felt we had to do our bit.

Mind you I have always been a snappy dresser when it comes to the workplace, normally wearing a suit (sometimes three-piece) with a smart shirt, with cuff links not buttons, and well-polished shoes.

Compare that at the time to the weekend me, in jeans and a roll neck sweater along with a pair of comfortable slip-on shoes, or, in the hot summer of 1976, just a cut-off pair of old faded jeans when I played in the garden with our two girls, or when Marion and I stretched out on sun loungers watching the girls have fun.

This current theatrical style life was a far cry from the Sooty Show.

Creating a construction to baffle even the most cunning of cats

When we first realised hedgehogs used our garden as part of their highway, and decided to put out food and water for them, the weather was still unpredictable.

It didn’t matter about their water, rain would only fill up the bowl. The food, on the other hand, needed to be kept dry as the dry pellets used for hedgehog food would go mushy and even the wet hedgehog food would end up inedible if it got too wet.

The first version was a large terracotta flower pot with a chunk missing on one side. The idea was that a hedgehog could get in easily but a cat might be wary about getting caught on the jagged piece.

The hedgehog feeding station can be seen at the bottom of the picture in the centre. Unfortunately the cats managed to get at the food by hooking out the dish with their paws.

This led to MkII with a rectangular terracotta planter with a broken side covering the food dish and a roof ridge tile which would allow a hedgehog to walk in but would be too low for a cat.

Unfortunately, as can be seen below, the cats could still manoeuvre the dish with their paws. Clearly something more was needed.

What was needed was something long and low which would allow something short and low (like a hedgehog) to enter and access the dining area to one side, but would not admit a wider, longer animal (such as a cat) to get far enough in and turn to get to the food.

This led us to MkIII with a brick tunnel, roofed in slate, with the dining area offset at the centre.

When Horace arrived early in the morning he mad a thorough inspection of the new construction and soon found his way in to the food.

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The real test, of course, would be to see how a cat coped with the situation. Would it get in for some fine dining or would it have to crawl away, frustrated and hungry?

The cat that turned up was not the most cunning of its kind. In fact, when it comes down to it this cat is more on the stupid side.

Yes, it got its0 head in; yes, it even flattened itself down to get its shoulders in. Unfortunately for our dumb chum it could not get in far enough to reach the food and eventually gave up.

If it had only had the sense to realise that if it raised its head the tile would have been knocked off and the others would have followed suit.

This time it only needed some minor alterations and MkIV was catproof.

This version was left in place for a week or more with night time video surveillance and during that time not one of the four or five foolish felines who consider our garden to be a super highway managed to get at the food.

Eventually I created a grander version of the hedgehog feeding station in the area under an ornamental cherry tree by the compost bin and water butt.

This was built in the form of a house with two wings. Both entrance sections were high enough for a hedgehog and in each case there was a sharp right angle turning at the end leading into a slightly higher dining area with food and water under the upturned terracotta planter. All the areas had slate tiles with bricks to weigh them down.

Our little coterie of hedgehogs seem perfectly happy with MkV.

Thanks for all the information – now it’s time for me to say goodbye

By the time Christmas 1975 came round I began to think it was time to put in for a manager’s role at one the Rank Organisation’s Odeon cinemas.

I believed Tony, my manager at Romford, had taught me all he could teach me. This included matters one did not automatically connect with cinemas, such as publicity in the local newspaper.

At first you might think cinemas rivalled newspapers in the matter of local advertising. I am sure you all remember the locally made advertising films which were shown before the film started and, in those days, when adverts appeared in the interval as well.

The point is cinemas also needed to advertise what films they were showing and the times of the showings. There was another way of advertising and that was by running a competition in the local newspaper.

These would be linked to the main film on show in any one week and could consist of a picture for children to colour in; or a spot the difference competition using an image from the film.

The prize on offer might be a pair of tickets to see that week’s film. At other times Rank might have done a deal with a manufacturer and offer prizes of their products.

Bassets offered advertising products based on Jelly Babies – there was a Bassets barrel bag, or Jelly Baby jelly moulds, or similar products.

Sometimes the manufacturer would send enough of the product to make 20 prizes or more, and there were times when the competition would only attract 10-15 entrants.

I’m not sure what Tony did in this situation, apart from the fact that myself and Sheila might receive one of the prizes each, but when I was running my own cinema I would let the contact at the newspaper have a couple of the excess *prizes, give members of the staff some and, depending on the prize itself, I might take a couple home.

In fact almost 50 years later I still have one of the barrel bags, along with a PG Tips tin tea caddy and chef’s apron (in fact we only got rid of the PG Tips tea cosy earlier this year).

As I sad at the beginning I felt it time to get my own cinema and initially I looked at ones up North, especially those that offered a manager’s flat as well. One of these was at Southport, where we had done the Sooty Show, but unfortunately I just missed out on that one.

Early in 1976, however, my application for one of the London cinemas, Camden Town Odeon, was successful which meant I could still travel from Basildon because although there was a flat connected to the theatre, this had been offered to the local assistant manager in the early 60s.

Just a year after leaving Sooty I was getting ready for a new challenge as manager of a London cinema, not a West End one but still London where they had a different breed of managers – with a touch of class.

I’ll tell you all about that next time.

Happy workers are good workers, as long as you’re not a soft touch

I was much happier when my induction course in Birmingham was ended and I could get back to proper work at the three-screen Odeon cinema in Romford, where I had recently become an assistant career manager.

It is not that I have anything against Birmingham. In fact when we lived in Redditch we went to the city a few times, including a trip to a museum. It is just out of the three major cities in that area I prefer Liverpool over Birmingham and Manchester. In fact Liverpool is my favourite city in the world, after all I was born there as was my mother.

No, I just preferred a working environment over what was basically a glorified classroom. Also it meant that I was back with my little family every day, or nigh, depending on my shifts.

With a management team of three, Tony, the boss; Sheila, the local assistant manager; and myself as career assistant manager, two of us would always be rostered on every day (except if someone was on holiday when an assistant from another cinema nearby would do a couple of shifts), and shifts would overlap so that at times all three of us were present.

I actually preferred it when Sheila and I were rostered on together because, although I liked him, I didn’t always agree with the way Tony dealt with some situations.

A prime example was the way he dealt with the cleaning staff.

The cleaners came in every morning, yes, every morning including Saturday and Sunday because cinema audiences to not make less of a mess at weekends, in fact a Saturday night audience could often make more of a mess than the rest of the week put together.

Their shift would start at about 7am and would be almost finished by the time I came in for an early managerial shift at about 10am.

When Tony did his first inspection tour of the day, one of us would always be visible to staff during opening hours, he would note everything that was wrong, or not up to his standards, and if he was not satisfied he would make his displeasure abundantly clear to the cleaners.

I, on the other hand, would keep an eye out for anything that had been done really well so that if I had to point out a flaw I could balance it with a compliment, even if it was only pointing out how clean the ashtrays were, or an extra shiny hand rail.

I generally found, on my observation tour, that conditions were above average as the staff had made an extra effort. It is something that I have kept in mind and utilised ever since.

After all, it is easy to tell a reporter their copy needs a complete rewrite and leave it at that. On the other hand telling the : “There’s a good story in there, with all the facts, but it is not clear enough for readers to understand them.”

Of course a cinema staff has more than managers and cleaners, but the same principle applies to dealing with the ushers and usherettes (yes I know it sounds sexist but that is how they were listed on staff rosters and wages ledgers at that time), the ticket kiosk and confectionery sales staff, and, last but by no means least, the projectionists.

The most important lesson for any would-be manager to keep in mind is that a happy staff makes for a well-run cinema. Just don’t let them see you as a soft touch.

I did learn quite a lot from Tony, sometimes not by what he told me, or the way he did things, but often by doing it by the book (or my interpretation of the book), or the way I felt was best.

Before the year was out I was already applying for managerial vacancies throughout the country.

It didn’t take me too long but that’s a story for another time.

Quick as a flash – in fact it takes a lot longer to do simple tasks nowadays

Strange thing about people, they think they will go on forever, doing the things they do and still doing the things they did when they were younger.

When I was younger I could drink till morning at an all night party; I could get behind the wheel of any car from a 1955 Moggie Minor to a Lamborghini (that’s a tale from the Middle East, I’ll tell you about it later) and drive it straight away; even, in my teens, date three girls at the same time and none of them knew about the others.

Of course once I met the love of my life I forgot about fast cars and loose women, well the women at least, I still like fast cars I just can’t hit the same speeds any more.

In my 40s I slowed down a bit, but just to make the time to enjoy life.

Occasionally I would find it took me a littlie bit longer than usual to finish a crossword or complete a book; nor could I stay awake to watch the dawn.

But it was the rats that really brought it home to me that at 73 I could not do what I did at 23, or 33, or even 53.

Disposing of the vermin who had gnawed through cable coverings in my garage workshop, risking a shortcut and an electrical fire, was the least part of the whole rigmarole which left me realising I can definitely not do things as easily I used to.

The repair job consisted of removing a section of cable on the freezer lead and replacing the plug before removing a similarly gnawed piece of cable on the extension lead and replacing the socket.

That should have taken me about five minutes, 10 at a push.

It took me the best part of an hour.

Stripping the insulation back to bare the actual copper wire in the cable ended up with not stripping it far enough or actually cutting off half the wire strands with the insulation.

Then I had to put each wire to its right socket inside the plug and screw it in before reattaching the plug cover and then going through it all again for the extension cord.

Fifty minutes, 50 minutes for a five-minute task.

Over the years I have rewired three houses, two over here and one in Australia. That, of course, was when you were allowed to carry out this task for yourself. Nowadays you need a certificated electrician to change a fuse. Maybe that is taking it a little bit to the extreme but beyond changing a fuse or changing a light bulb you are definitely restricted to DIY at home.

All that rewiring and never a spot of trouble and now it takes me almost an hour to carry out the simplest of tasks.

Ah well, I suppose I’ll just have to take a little bit longer putting up that new fence, after all it has taken about three months so far so I suppose it’ll be Christmas before I get it finished.

A child’s imagination is a wonderful gift, never take it away from them

Our daughter brought our grandchildren over to see us today, they’re here for a few weeks from the UAE and this week they will be visiting friends but from the weekend will be staying near us so we can spend time together.

My granddaughter, Harriet, wanted to have a look around the garden so I sat on the bench while she wandered through the undergrowth (well not really, it’s well cultivated and there are gravel paths but it’s fun to add in the atmosphere).

Every now and then she would come over to show me a stone, or a shell (all sorts go in to make up the gravel paths) and we would talk about where it might have come from.

There were pebbles split in two showing a reddish centre in its grey shell; or a piece of slate showing the layers of compressed mud that would have created it over the millennia.

She listened intently as I told her how slate mined out of mountains in North Wales had been shipped all over the world as roof tiles used to keep people dry from Patagonia to Perth. from Canada to the Caribbean.

There were even pieces of flint and I explained to her how thousands and thousands of years ago people had used these stones in the same way as we now use knives, axes and anything else which needed a sharp edge.

It is wonderful how the young mind can take in such information and store it for when they might need it.

Soon afterwards she was telling me about fairies and elves – don’t try telling a child that fairies and elves are impossible, after all the Queen told Alice that she could believe six impossible things before breakfast.

This is why children are so wonderful. They have imagination.

The problem is we take that away from them as they get older.

I am happy for my granddaughter to believe in fairies and elves. In fact I added to her imagination by telling her about leprechauns.

Later she asked me if leprechauns were real and I told her: “They are as real as fairies and elves, as real as dragons and unicorns.”

I did not tell her a lie, you shouldn’t lie to children.

When she gets older and possibly no longer believes in fairies and elves she will remember that I did not lie to her about leprechauns, dragons and unicorns.

I smell a rat – well actually I don’t because I chose the final solution

I recently asked you, dear readers, about dealing with rats, having recently Tweeted about it. The viewings of the Tweet have increased since I last mentioned it but there has still not been one comment.

Even you, dear readers, haven’t jumped in calling for the death penalty for rats or calling for mercy and expounding on the intelligence of rats, as discussed in scientific journals.

Under the circumstances, without any other advice on the matter, I decided to take the matter into my own hands. Especially after they gnawed through cabling in the garage; shredded a plastic bag in the potting shed which contained soil; and to put the tin hat on it they got up onto my workbench and chewed into two boxes of wildflower seeds mixed with a sort of sawdust to allow you to broadcast it.

I decided enough was enough and looked up ways to get rid of rats.

I immediately rejected forking out big money for a “humane” cage trap, which would then involve me taking the rat, or rats, for a ride into the country before loosing them in a woodland glade.

In fact I considered that to be the least humane way to deal with them.

Imagine taking a city dealer up to the Highlands of Scotland and letting him loose, no phone, no laptop, no coffee machine, no secretary to run errands. It would be kinder to put a bullet in his brain and free him of that misery.

That means looking for the most humane and quickest form of death.

Poison was ruled out straightaway.

After all these poisons are normally designed to cause a slow death allowing the rat to get back to its nest before dying in absolute agony. I am not that cruel – anyway think of the smell and having to find out where the nest was which contained the rotting corpse.

This really left me with only one alternative.

An old-fashioned, spring-loaded, baited trap.

Not one of these fiddly little wooden and wire traps you see in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

No, the one I ordered had a strong steel bar and solid plastic construction which would go on for years, just in case a future generation of rats decided to nest in the Garage of Death.

They arrived within 24 hours, and as well as two sturdy traps there was a syringe of bait attractant which is apparently irresistible to rats.

The first night I put bait in the traps but did not set them.

Next morning the traps had moved and the bait was gone.

I did the same for the next two nights and then, on the fateful night, I set both traps and the following morning one had been triggered and the plastic-coated steel bar had come clean down on the neck of the medium-sized rat.

Careful to use gloves, I opened the trap over a strong plastic bin bag, rolled the whole thing up and put it in the bin.

The next night I set both traps again and this time I was greeted in the morning by not one, but two rats. One was the same size as the previous night but the second one was more of the size of rat you see in documentaries about life in the sewers.

They were treated to the same plastic shroud as their predecessor.

That night I set a trap in the garage and also one in the shed.

Next day the shed trap had a corpse in it but the garage was still set.

I didn’t jump the gun and declare the place rat-free and for the next few nights, in fact most of the week, I set the traps in garage and shed but there were no further corpses.

Job done and they will have gone to the rat Valhalla.

I do not seek praise, I have not cleared the town of rats like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, just dealt with my problem.

If any of you condemn me for my actions, well I’ll have to live with it.

I do not enjoy taking life but sometimes it is the only, and final, solution.

Horace can be a bit of a bully boy but he knows when it’s time to stay still

One thing we have noticed about our friendly little hedgehog, Horace, that although he bumbles around looking for food he can be quite a little tough guy when he wants to be.

It first came to light not long after we set the camera up.

One night a hedgehog turned up only seconds after Horace had gone off camera in a completely different direction. The newcomer did appear to be a touch smaller than our regular visitor.

Within seconds of him going to the food dish Horace came barreling out of nowhere and headed straight for the intruder who had the good sense to roll up into a ball.

After pushing the prickly ball around for a while Horace went to check on the food dish and positioned himself right over it as though guarding it from predators.

This is why I was not surprised when I viewed the trail camera images a few nights ago to see him come face to face with a cat and the cat . . . . . . .

See for yourself:

As you can see the cat spotted the angry little eyes and then saw the undergrowth rustling and at the last moment decided to turn tail leaving Horace the victor.

Mind you this particular cat is not the most intelligent feline around but more about that another time.

Horace, on the other hand, knows when to leave the field to a more powerful adversary, even if that adversary is the female of the species.

As you can see Horace had only just entered his brick bunker when he stopped having obviously heard Francesca’s approach. He even waited until she had cleared out.

The next shot showed Francesca disappearing to the viewer’s left while Horace stayed put in the entrance to make sure she had gone.

I must admit our garden wildlife gives us lots of fun.

A busy little hedgehog needs his entrances and his exits

One of the most important things you need if you want to make your garden hedgehog friendly is an easy route to get in and out.

Hedgehogs can go a long way in a night, setting out at dusk and hoping to be home by dawn. They will sometimes follow a set route but will also seek new feeding areas, and I don’t mean the ones I put out for our hedgehogs.

We know there is a way in under our front gate, but getting in and having no new way out can be a problem if the front areas is limited.

Fortunately Horace has a hedgehog friendly gate to the back garden (by accident rather than design) where one of the planks on the gate has snapped off just under the lowest strut.

He can then wander round at leisure throughout the back garden before heading off on his next wander.

He must have a good trail to follow because he comes in to the garden almost every hour.

As you will note from the above video, Horace has just the right clearance to get through the gap and, having seen the videos, I know that those darn cats can crawl through this small aperture.

Of course foxes, at least our two, are a lot bigger than than even a cat.

Yet the wily fox can also get through the gap.

Just to show it was not a fluke, this is Ferdinand making the return trip.

Eagle-eyed viewers of Ferdinand heading into the back garden will have probably noticed why I have designated him as a him.

Love them or hate them – surely everyone has an opinion on rats

About 10 days ago I put out a Tweet posing a question about dealing with pests – and I don’t mean Tories, trolls or other such annoyances.

I get involved in various discussions on Twitter, some bring a friendly response while others bring down a tirade of self righteous anger no matter how bland the comment might be,

Very rarely does a comment go without comment.

Except for this one.

In 10 days there were 34 visits to the post, one like and no comments.

What was it about this particular comment that it failed to evoke any reaction?

I asked a simple question:

If a rat invades your garage, chews into plastic containers and electric cabling, should you:

A – set a humane trap and, if successful, drive out to the countryside and release it;

or:

B – set a standard trap and, if it works, wrap it in a plastic shroud ad stick it in the bin?

Surely that is worth a reaction?

There must be hundreds and thousands of Tweeters who have an opinion on rats – you know, those overgrown mice who will chew through everything that is not made of metal or concrete.

Do they deserve a new life in the countryside or a funeral in the bin?

What about you, dear readers, what is the best way to deal with rats?