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Chapter One

IN THE BEGINNING …

    After the BANG, the heavy van swerved erratically from left to right as Jean, her short arms flailing across the wheel, strove to keep control. How she managed it, I'll never know! There was a moment of utter silence, when eventually we stopped our mad helter-skelter and poor Liza came to rest on the verge, with a groan. \"Liza\", for that was the name of our ancient and long-suffering lorry, had obviously got another flat tyre!
    We had started out at the crack of dawn, full of the joys of spring and the van full of neatly cellophaned packets of sandwiches and mountains of frankfurter sausages. It had been a bit of a squash - four of us crushed into the two front seats but we had offered Barbara and Joyce the chance to ride in the back with the crates of Coke and churns of water but somehow they didn't seem too keen! So, there we were, an old rug forced down between the bucket seats to spread the load, as it were.
    Joyce and Barbara, two of the small bevy of girls who came out with us at the weekends when we needed some extra help, had both been very eager when we had mentioned the Warwick expedition.Previously they had only been on the short trips but this was going to be a long day, we'd told them - little did we know it was going to be a long night as well!
    The dawn was one of those smoky, misty ones that promise a beautiful day and so we were in good spirits as we did the final check on Liza. We had worked like mad things the evening before, cutting and packing sandwiches, slicing rolls and finally, whilst I cleaned up the small galley on the boat, Jean had unrolled a long hose and filled the big churns in which we carried our water supplies.
    Now we were all set. Joyce arrived, her bright round face wreathed in smiles. Still no sign of Barbara. Had she forgotten? That would not be like her - oversleep, yes, but let us down - NEVER! Suddenly, through the morning haze came a trudging figure. She had overslept! In fact, if there had been, at that un-godly hour, any objective passerby, they would have thought she was still asleep! But we knew Barbara. That head, now encased in a woolly hat, looking like some sad snowdrop, would gradually rise as the morning progressed until we found ourselves accompanied by a very different flower. Barbara had one of the most expressive faces I have ever come across. If you told her a story, her face faithfully mirrored each emotion of the tale. At the sad points, its' every feature had a downward droop. When things began to improve, the corners of her generous mouth would begin to curl upwards and her eyes start to smile. If the story ended in disaster, then she would have to get out her handkerchief and have a really good blow! Being such a kind soul, she just couldn't bear anyone to be unhappy.
    We knew the route to Warwickshire, as we had already been there a few weeks before on Tilly, our scooter, so called because it was a Vespa, therefore named after ‘Vesta Tilley’ the well known music hall artist my mother and my Aunt Rose were always twittering on about! It was a long ride, me driving and Jean on the pillion but we had been offered the job to cater for a fete and fair expecting 4,000 people. As they were asking quite a sum of money for the privilege, we felt we had better see the lie of the land before accepting. They wanted several feeding points and this was why we had launched out and were taking Joyce and Barbara with us. We could not have picked a better pair of warriors for this particular adventure.
    The morning journey was fairly uneventful. Liza seemed to be in one of her better moods. Being quite fair and taking into account her great age, a 1936 Bedford with a crash gearbox (and I may say, when I was learning to drive her, that was just the right name for it) she was a good old soul most of the time. Jean and Joyce chatted about skating. It was through Jean going dancing at Richmond Ice Rink that we met Joyce. They were both pretty adept at it but I’m afraid that all our friends’ efforts never did prevent me spending ninety percent of my time sitting on the ice.
    Barbara was now beginning to wake up and interspersing the conversation with her celebrated impersonations from the Goon Show! At about the halfway mark she was dispatched into the back of Liza to brew up some coffee but we could still hear such Goon like remarks as, “Ah, he’s fallen in the water,” and “Min, Min, where are you Min?”
    We didn’t take long over coffee because we were getting a bit worried about the time. The function was due to start at mid-day and we had to get everything ready by that time. The traffic was pretty heavy and you couldn’t do much overtaking at speed with Liza, especially when she was loaded to the gunnels with water, women and bread pudding!
    However, we skidded into the fete grounds at about nine o’clock but were surprised to see that we were not the only ones who would have to make some pretty smart moves to be ready in time. Very few of the stalls were completed and those working on them seemed to be taking things quite easy. Then the blow fell! One of the organizers came up and said casually, “Oh, by the way, things won’t be starting until two o’clock. We’ve changed the arrangements slightly.”
    So what? I can hear you say, that gives extra time to get ready. The quiet lunch, even a little snooze before the rush. Ah, yes but what about all the quiet lunches our potential customers will be eating at home, instead of forming a nice orderly queue to buy those delicious sandwiches we had spent hours preparing the night before, all those tasty hot dogs and gallons and gallons of milk specially humped into Liza and driven with loving care, all the way from Ducks’ Walk, Richmond! Then, to add insult to injury, we discovered that the committee had sold the concession for Coke directly to Pepsi Cola. So that was another marathon task we need not have bothered with, heaving endless crates of minerals into the van.
    However, we were there and had to save the day as best we could. The girls cheered us up and pointed out that everyone would be ravenous by tea time. So, we made the best of a bad job and got cracking with the unloading. Now you will be wondering why a mobile tea truck should need unloading. Well, you see, if we only had for sale the food we had on display, we might as well have stayed at home. That wouldn’t even have paid for our petrol. No, every available inch of the floor was covered with trays of sandwiches and polythene bags full of sliced and buttered rolls, all ready for filling with juicy frankfurter sausages. So, on arrival at a site, out we would all pop and dodging back and forth like demented rabbits, stack the bundles and trays on to the front seat of Liza in some semblance of order.
    It was no good, on being confronted with a raucous queue of ‘Teds’ (Teddy Boys), demanding, “Give us an ‘ot dog, darlin’,” finding your last bag of rolls squashed flat beneath ten trays of ham and egg sandwiches. Anyway, all spare eatables were safely stowed out of our way and crates of Coke and milk stacked underneath the van in the shade. Then Jean filled the water boiler, lit the Calor gas and set out the cups. I lit my little Calor stove and put the sausages on to heat whilst setting out a display of sandwiches and cakes. The last task was to open up the side hatch in the van and put up the sun awning, we were now quite ready for the rush!
    Leaving Jean busy ‘milking’ the cups, Barbara, Joyce and I staggered off with the heavy old folding table and spare gas cylinder which we grandly called our ‘Second Feeding Point’.
    This we established in the furthest corner of the field, hoping to draw off some of the hordes from the ‘main feeding point’. We must have been joking! The corner of the field, when we arrived, contained two small boys and a pale spotted dog. I may say the situation did not change much during the whole of that long day!
    When we were all set up, urn boiling and sausages steaming, we decided to go over and chat to the Pepsi man who was parked opposite. After all, poor fella, it wasn’t his fault that his company had cut our throats by buying the Cola franchise. The day was getting very hot and if anyone was going to do business, it would be him. However, we had always found that it was better to be friendly rather than petty, and in this case it was just as well, because before the day was out, we were very glad of our friend Pepsi’s help.
    As we chatted, we kept a keen eye on old Liza across the way. Her urn hissed softly, the hot dog pan steamed and the flowers in the bowl on the high counter moved gently in the warm breeze. Those were the only signs of life, not a customer stirred.
    Jean went across to see Barbara and Joyce. When she returned her only news was the sale of one chocolate biscuit to the two small boys (which they asked to be cut in half so they could share it). The pale spotted dog was to be seen sniffing each leg of the folding table in turn, before deciding which one was the most suitable for his purpose.
    At about four o’clock there was the usual tea-time ‘rush’. The majority of the customers being very impatient to get hold of their threepenny cup of tea, in order to settle on the grass with a large packet of sandwiches, packed with loving care no doubt, by their mum or aunty or missus, anyone except us.
    By six o’clock the last remnants of the visitors were leaving the grounds. We had decided that the organizers had slipped in an extra nought when they visualized four thousand attendances. The day had been disasterous. Now came the task of putting all those trays of sandwiches into the back of Liza once more and heaving up dozens of Coke bottles, crates of unused milk, not to mention Calor gas cylinders. Somehow when we had a good day, they all seemed so light (that reckons I suppose, since they were empty), but now they weighed a ton.
    The girls came trailing back with the table, having given the legs a good wash at a nearby stand-pipe, they were nothing if not hygienic. It was when Barbara was sitting on the grass unscrewing the little wing nuts on the table legs, ready for stowing, that we noticed it.
    “What’s wrong with de tyre, Min..n..?” She called as she pointed to Liza’s rear. It was all too obvious what was wrong, the tyre was flat. There were lots of “oh, no,” and “I just don’t believe it,” from Jean and I, before we finally got down to it and found the jack and spanners. Let’s face it, we’d never changed a wheel before, not even on a Morris Minor, let alone a 30 cwt. truck. Still, we’d seen it done and there was no alternative but to have a go.
    We did manage to undo the butterfly nuts on the spare wheel and we did manage to get the jack under and the flat tyre off the ground, but budge those wheel nuts, impossible! Barbara and Joyce held tight to the tyre and Jean and I heaved and strained on the wheel brace, but that wheel had not been off for many a moon and it was not going to move for us! Exploding with frustration, we threw ourselves down on the grass whilst deciding what to do next.
    Suddenly, behind us a voice said, “You’ll never do it like that, let the jack down ‘til the tyre is just resting on the ground, then it won’t spin.”
    There was good old ‘Pepsi-Cola’ fresh back from the pub, giving us one of those manly secrets that most keep to themselves, to put us poor weak females in their power. It was obvious that he didn’t know us very well, we would struggle on our own if we had to, but turn down the help of a strong handsome man! Never!
    When the wheel was changed, we brewed up a quick last cuppa and plied our Sir Gallahad with hot dogs in return for all his help and instruction. In future, we felt, we would know how to cope with a flat tyre.
    Packing the final bits and pieces, we waved a fond farewell to ‘Pepsi’ and drove out of the ground. We were so relieved at being on our way home, we were even laughing. It had been an absolutely disasterous day, but that was life and things would be better tomorrow. What optimists we were!
    The roads were quieter now and we were making good progress, all four of us piled into Liza’s front seats once more. The sky was turning a delicate golden pink and the light was beginning to fade. Jean switched on the sidelights and we struck up a chorus of “The Foggy, Foggy Dew.”
    Things could have been worse, we had a marvellous friend, Don. We’d got to know him through another skating friend of Jean’s, named Jock. We were always popping into odd garages when we had troubles with Liza and it had been costing a fortune, especially as often, she came out worse than when she went in. One day, Jock said, “You ought to get old Don to take on your maintenance for you!”
    We took his advice and Liza never looked back. We could say to Don, “there’s a chug .. chug .. chug .. thump .. thrrump, coming from under there …” We would be pointing vaguely in the direction of the carburetor or something.
    “Ah ye .. s,” from Don. He was not over talkative. Then he would give a crooked grin and his head would disappear under the bonnet. He had the knack of instantly interpreting our instinctive descriptions into mechanical terms and quickly putting his finger on the cause of Liza’s troubles.
    Anyway, we knew we could depend on Don to fix our flat tyre. Fortunately he had recently come across a couple of old wheels together with fairly presentable tyres, at a breaker’s yard. These would be just right for Liza, as she was such an antique, and we had asked him to keep them in reserve for us.
    “Oh, I am a bachelor, I live with my son …” we sang out lustily and then came the bang which started this story!!
    For a few seconds there was silence, only the ticking, creaking sort of steaming noise which always came out of old Liza when she stopped. We all held our breath, somehow expecting something else to happen, the Calor gas to blow us sky-high, or the roof to cave in. It just never occurred to us that it could be another puncture, but it was. We all piled out of the cab and stood gazing in horror at our old warrior leaning to one side like some lame cart horse, her front off-side tyre squashed as flat as a pancake.
    “Well,” I said, “at least we know how to change a wheel now,” and started towards the back of the van.
    “And the best of British luck,” said my dear partner (she was always the one with the witty quip). “What are you going to do, change one flat tyre for another?”
    Only then did it dawn on me. Out of five tyres, we had two flats. Three wheels were not going to get us anywhere, however seriously we had taken our tyre changing course from ‘Pepsi’.
    Barbara and Joyce, sensible and intelligent as they were, were silent. If you can’t say something constructive, don’t say anything at all was their motto.
    Fortunately, Jean had managed to pull up the lurching van, not many yards from a ‘phone box. The problem was, who could we ‘phone? It was by now about eleven o’clock at night and we shuddered to think what a local garage would charge us to come out, collect the wheel, take it back, repair and return it to us, at nearly midnight. Our only alternative was to ‘phone Don who, although over a hundred miles away, had the spare wheels and also knew all of Liza’s funny little ways.
    We were lucky. Don had just arrived home, having been out all the evening on another break down. “Oh dear, oh dear, you girls. I don’t know how you manage it,” he groaned.
    “Do you think you could come out to us tomorrow morning, Don?” I asked him nervously and added, “I know it’s a long run but …”
    “Leave it with me, I’ll do my best,” he said.
    That was good enough for me, Don’s best was good enough for me anytime. I gave him careful descriptions of our resting place, fortunately I’d got the road number and then I rang off.
    Well, there’s one thing about the mobile catering business, you may get tired and cold, but you rarely starve. With several hundred hot dogs and quietly curling egg sandwiches in the back of the van, we were soon eating our supper.
    The main problem was sleeping accommodation. We decided that four of us trying to sleep in the cab would be impossible for everybody. A big re-organisation went on in the rear of Liza and a quite passable bed was constructed down the centre gangway. It was somewhat like a bed of nails but with the polythene bags full of stale rolls lodged in crucial places in one’s anatomy, it was just possible to stretch out in a degree of comfort. Joyce, drawing the short straw, disappeared into the back. We started the long night, Jean, Barbara and I in the cab, leaning like a cluster of bedraggled sheep, our woolly jumpers pulled well down over our knees and hands, any knitted hats or scarves we happened, in our wisdom, to have brought with us, used to advantage on either hands or feet.
    Joyce was making puffing noises from the back, but eventually, apart from the ‘shushing’ of the occasional passing car, all was peace. But my goodness, was it a long night! We had intended to take it in turns to sleep in the back, but every time we looked at Joyce through the little hatch, she was sleeping so peacefully we hadn’t the heart to disturb her. So at regular intervals throughout the night, we moved like zombies, first leaning on each other’s left shoulder, then all leaning to the right. Talk about, “When father says turn, we all turn!”
    At last, a glimmer of light showed through the windscreen and the first sound of the dawn chorus struck up. Jean opened the door and we all fell out onto the verge, bent into the shape of crescent moons and chilled to the marrow. Now we had no mercy on the still sleeping Joyce and out she had to stagger so that we could get the kettle boiling for some warming coffee.
    Strangely, it wasn’t until we were sitting there on the roadside, our hands wrapped tightly around our hot cups, that Jean and I suddenly realized what a desperate situation we were in. Our whole venture was being run on a shoe-string and now it seemed that even that had snapped.

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