Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 22
Part 2 continued
1956–1966
After a few days we found out that we were unlikely to get work in Denmark, but Sweden was a better option. We managed to hitch a lift quite easily to Stockholm and booked into their rather grand youth hostel aboard a 100-year- old three-masted fully rigged sailing ship called the “Af Chapman.” It has been a famous landmark in the city since 1937 and is moored at Skeppsholmen, a tiny island overlooking the royal palace. It is surrounded by both museums and fine restaurants.
Once settled, in we enquired about work and quickly discovered that the Swedes were reluctant to do the more menial tasks, happily leaving them to foreigners. As a result, we were quickly employed by the Viking Restaurant, a large establishment in the center of Stockholm. Incidentally, I googled to see if it still existed and was directed instead to Aifur –- The Viking Restaurant. It had a different address and the decor was much more aggressively recognizable as a Viking establishment. It was clearly not the same place. Ours had a huge seating area and was extremely popular. Alan and I were assigned to the dishwashing area – we quickly understood why the Swedes left jobs like this to foreigners. We worked in shifts, with Alan and I on different teams. There were altogether six of us, three to a team, three South Africans, two Russians and a German. We were all hitchhikers travelling around Europe. The number of plates and crockery that we had to clean was incredible. By the end of the shift, it felt as though we had just run a marathon. Nevertheless, the job was well-paid and we could eat a substantial meal at the end of the shift.
As soon as we were earning some money, we moved out of the Af Chapman and shared an apartment with an interesting character who was half French and half Welsh. As expected, there were lots of pretty, young girls in Sweden. What we didn’t expect, however, was that because both Alan and I were blonds with Nordic features, they didn’t give us a second glance, whereas our French-Welshman was remarkably ugly although charming. It didn’t take him long to acquire a string of beautiful girls!
But life was pleasant enough. I would frequently go for long walks in the royal Djurgården, described as the world’s first national urban park. It was developed by an earlier king, Karl XIV Johan, as a place where the citizens of Stockholm could enjoy the freedom of nature right on their doorstep. His palace, Rosendal, was built nearby. A canal was dug to establish the park on an island. Apparently, the land in the area had been crushed by the weight of a much earlier ice age. Once the ice melted, the land has been steadily rising with numerous tiny islands becoming part of the mainland. The king felt that Djurgården should be separated from the mainland and commissioned a canal to be built which achieved this. Today the canal is a favorite spot for canoes and other small boats.
While we were busy making dishes sparkle, the world was involved in one of its regular crises. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 threatened the reasonable stability of life on either side of the Iron Curtain. Then to cap it all, the Suez Canal was closed down, creating a crisis amongst the world’s commercial shipping which had to sail all the way around the Cape. I was suddenly concerned that Europe, including Britain, could be engulfed in a major conflict.
Before leaving on our canoe trip and subsequent hitchhiking, I had met a girl, Jenny, at a party in Guildford outside London. She was a ballet dancer and coincidently she had taken a summer job as a show dancer in Jersey at the same time we arrived there at the beginning of our adventure. She and I spent a lot of time together and throughout my journey across Europe I often wondered how she was doing. I even thought that we should get married, if she were still unattached when I returned to the UK. With global unrest building, I suddenly became obsessed with the idea that I should dash back to Britain, marry her and take her to the relative safety of South Africa. Alan thought I was nuts, but he nevertheless gave me some of his money to get me back to Britain. I assured him I would send him the money as soon as I could; either earn it in London or get back to Namibia with my new wife and persuade my parents to help.
The day before I left Stockholm, a very beautiful young American girl took a room in our boarding house. Despite my dream of rescuing Jenny from the turmoil of Europe, I was really attracted to the girl. She had just finished working as an assistant for the famous British film star David Niven and was planning to visit Norway and Finland. After some cozy hours together, she suggested that I rather go with her to Finland. It was incredibly tempting, and I was a whisker away from going with her, but my fond memories of Jenny were also very strong so I stuck to my original plan.
The next day I took a train to Oslo, then a North Sea Ferry to Harwich in Britain. I have always been seasick and often motion sick on other modes of transport. For someone that has travelled as much as I have, it’s a bit like trying to run with a wooden leg – somehow I get there. The North Sea is notoriously rough and the crossing to Harwich was one of the worst I have experienced. Most people get over their mal de mer after a while. I don’t. I’m as sick at the end of a voyage as I was at the beginning. Sigh.
Anyway, I arrived back in Britain, tired and bedraggled, and made my way directly to the home of Jenny and her parents. Despite the fact that I had not written to her or seen her for nearly a year, I received a warm welcome. Even her parents were very friendly. When I said I needed to go and find somewhere to stay, Jenny’s parents very kindly offered to let me stay in their spare room until I got sorted out and found a job. I thought it prudent not to tell them that I had arrived with the intention of spiriting Jenny off to darkest Africa to evade World War III that I felt sure was on its way.
Having a roof over my head, I went job hunting and was offered something at a nearby welding factory. I took it and ended up spot welding the metal frames of lampshades. On a scale of mindless occupations this must rank near the top of the list. I would weld the top and bottom metal circles to form two rings, then weld the struts keeping them apart. The frame was then sent on to the next person who attached the cloth shade as well as the socket that held the bulb. It was thereafter packed for distribution. It takes a special kind of mind to be able to endlessly repeat the process without going completely nuts. I didn’t possess such a mind but hung in for a few weeks to earn enough money to find a place of my own to stay.
Sadly, my reunion with Jenny was not a great success. She was the sweetest person imaginable and her parents incredibly generous as well as patient with the wayward South African who clearly couldn’t make up his mind. The imminent threat of war had receded, along with my desire to spend the rest of my life with Jenny. Fortunately, she had reached a similar conclusion. She was doing very well with her ballet and had been offered a job with a ballet company in Germany, promoting her from the chorus to some minor solo roles. We spoke about it and decided to go our own ways. Her parents, as generous as ever, invited me to remain at the house but I didn’t feel comfortable with that. Their house was also far away from the parts of London that I knew best, so I said my goodbyes, wished Jenny well and took off for Earl’s Court, where I had stayed before my European safari.
I found a cheap room but now I also had to get myself another job. Nothing materialized and I was getting anxious. To be very honest, I did not put much attention on getting money back to Alan in Stockholm. In the meantime, I had joined a Judo club. This was shortly before the Karate craze hit Europe and Britain. I enjoyed the sport up to a point but having been schooled in the rough and tumble of the rugby field, one of the ultimate contact sports, I found that Judo lacked the edge of aggression that I confess I enjoyed. My coach was a hugely powerful but friendly guy, who had previously been the UK heavyweight champion. One day he started testing my physical strength, with various tasks, including his instruction for me to try and choke him. I never succeeded but he was impressed by my efforts. Finally, he asked me did I want a tough job? I was in a frame of mind where I would take on any challenge and immediately said yes. He then sent me to a restaurant and nightclub in Soho. This is a small suburb in central London boasting of a mix of clubs, coffee bars, up-coming pop musical groups and a sprinkling of gangsters. In the 1950s it was the fun place to be, fun with just an edge of danger from the criminal element.
Only when I met the owner of the Cat’s Whisker on Kingly Street did I discover that I had been put forward as a bouncer! As the owner checked me out (and I suspect was disappointed that I wasn’t a 6′ 5″ giant), I assured him that my years of playing rugby and my holding the school heavyweight boxing title, as well as my new-found Judo skills, would keep me out of trouble. He shrugged and told me he’d give me two weeks to prove myself. He told me to watch out for the Greek Cypriots. They were small but usually well-built and often carried knives or knuckle dusters. They were aggressive and dangerous. They often came looking for a fight, unlike most of the characters I would have to remove from the club: the very drunk guys boosted by alcohol and generally being obnoxious to the rest of the customers.
He then introduced me to Jim Peterson, a man in his fifties and a former British light heavyweight boxing champion. Jim was the other bouncer. He and I would alternate during the week, but would both be in duty over the weekend, when things could get rough. The owner said that Jim would show me the ropes. Like so many tough guys, Jim was gentle and friendly most of the time but when aroused he was a tiger. He smiled at me. “I’m going to teach you the most useful weapon any bouncer can use.” I was delighted. So, I would be armed. A baseball bat, a police truncheon perhaps. I doubted it would be a gun. “OK, take a swing at me,” he instructed. I hesitated for a moment. When boxing as a schoolboy, my best weapon had been the speed and power of my punch. My late uncle Nick, an army colonel who fought the Japanese in Burma in World War II, had shown me how to put the full weight of my body into a punch by following through with the shoulder and rest of the upper body. That, combined with my natural speed, gave me a potent weapon that made up for my rather tall and skinny physique. So. do I really try to hit Jim or do I pull my punch? As though reading my thoughts he answered for me. “Don’t pull your punch. Try and hit me for real.”
I put everything I had into the punch, delivered at speed. He easily deflected it and the next thing I knew he had grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, swung me around and applied pressure on my neck forcing me to lean forward. He then grabbed the seat of my pants with his other hand and pushed. I was completely helpless and couldn’t prevent him marching me out of the door of the club. He then let go and chuckled. “There’s your major weapon. It’s called the Bum’s Rush!” And he was right. Most of the customers I ejected after that were given the Bum’s Rush. Then only if they tried to come back into the club did I use my fists.
The other thing Jim taught me was if possible I should try to talk the miscreant out of being violent and get him to quietly to leave the club. To my surprise it often worked but one had to be completely ready to use violence where it was called for. The young Greek Cypriots were not interested in peace treaties. They came there for the action. One of the best Judo moves I had been taught worked well with them. If they came at me with a knife, I would cross my arms and catch the approaching knife in the V thus created. My two arms were always stronger than the knife holding arm and as I forced him back, a well-directed kick in the balls was first prize. Otherwise, a knee in the stomach, whatever!
The was one group of customers that truly terrified me. Once a week, a popstar of the time, Tommy Steele, would come to play guitar and sing in the basement of the club. It was my job to protect him from the horde of screaming hysterical teenage girls who followed him everywhere. They literally wanted a part of him or his clothing and would stop at nothing to get it. I couldn’t hit them or even give them the Bum’s Rush. All I could do was to position myself between them and Tommy and push them away. Scary but both Tommy and I survived! He’s still around today, grown old like me.
Life as a bouncer is a far cry from being part of the ExoTech team. The old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword applies here. Maybe it should read that the laptop is mightier than the sword. Much as I did enjoy the adrenaline rush of physically protecting the club and its customers, the challenge of making ExoTech known to the world raises one’s necessity level even higher!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.