Chapter 64

As we were all sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast that Sunday morning, Dad offered to drive us over to the factory.

"Mr Johnston said that he'd be there all day catching up on his paperwork, and he'll show you over the caravan if you like."

"Thanks, Dad, that'd be really useful. You sure you don't mind coming?"

"Not at all; you know that your mother will want to see it all for herself anyway!"

Dad had a point. We all knew that Mum would worry about the welfare of her chicks until she had satisfied herself that everything was okay, and besides, she would almost certainly spot several things that we wouldn't. She would also really enjoy going over the housekeeping facilities with TWO daughters in tow...

So we quickly washed up the breakfast dishes while Mum picked up her handbag and notebook, and Dad drove the six of us the few miles to the factory. It was quite a squeeze with four in the back; lucky Hamish had a girl each side, whereas I had a door with a sticking-out window winder pushing into my ribs. But my left side was pressed hard against Julie's softness, with her head on my shoulder, so it wasn't all bad.

Mr Johnston was indeed already at work in his office; he quickly finished what he was doing, and took us round the side of the building to look at the caravan.

"You'll see some big changes since last year; we got a Government contract to store Intervention butter so we built an extension onto the cold store, and that means that we can also handle more vegetables in the summer; and with a bit of luck, now we've got the proven capacity, we'll also win a tender to store Intervention beef over the winter."

Hamish asked him what he meant.

"Oh, Intervention means that there's been overproduction of some commodity, like butter, and the price would drop to be lower than the cost of production if it was all put on the market at the same time. So to protect the home producers, the Government buys up the surplus at an intervention price, pays us to store it for a few months, and then releases it when the price has stabilised. They've been quite crafty about getting rid of the butter; they've issued it to the Army and other institutions like schools, hospitals and prisons, and they're talking about letting pensioners buy it instead of margarine. The Europeans are also doing quite a lot of intervention to keep prices at a sensible level – you must have heard about the EEC wine lake and the beef mountain?"

"Oh yes, I've seen the stories about the wine lake - my Dad was quite worried that they were going to distill the wine and turn it into subsidised brandy, undercutting the Whiskey market."

"I heard that too, but apparently most of it is hardly drinkable in the first place, so they're looking at making industrial alcohols like anti-freeze. I like a drop of Scotch myself, and if a few philistines switch to brandy, then there will just be more for me. Trust me, running this place means that I have to enjoy a quiet drink to wind down when I eventually get home, or my brain would be running at full speed thinking of everything that still needs doing!"

Although I chuckled to myself I said nothing; Dad had mentioned (with some feeling) during dinner the previous evening that they'd tried a cheap French wine from the supermarket and it had been more like paint stripper; they hadn't even tried to have a second glass. If the wine took the lining off your throat, I hated to think what a concentrated solution would do!

We turned the corner of the factory building. Jen stopped dead in surprise, and Julie bumped into her.

It was indeed very different out the back from our memories of the previous summer; a new steel framed barn-like building, twice the size of the old brick cold store, now completely dominated the yard. The previous crushed hardcore surface had been replaced by a wide expanse of clean and bright concrete, and Mr Johnston turned and explained.

"It's been a busy year! Now that we're having frequent deliveries and collections with the big thirty-two foot articulated lorries, which need unloading with a forklift truck, the old surface wasn't firm or level enough. We've heard that the Americans are now using their forty-foot steel shipping containers for exports, so lorries are likely to get even longer. We laid reinforced concrete just in case – this slab is nearly ten inches thick, with a steel grid set into it. I just hope we never have to dig it up! Anyway, here we are!"

There, standing on six piles of breeze blocks, was our accommodation for the summer. Mr Johnston produced a key from his pocket, climbed the two steps, unlocked the door, and stood aside for us to enter.

It's pretty difficult to describe the static caravan of 1974 in terms of modern usage; today's luxury park homes and residential trailers are as far removed from the temporary building of that day as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is from the 707. Heck, it's almost as huge a difference as between the magnetic-tape Milan traffic computer shown in 'The Italian Job' and your smartphone with its WiFi access and far greater processing capacity.

The structure Mr Johnston proudly showed us had a painted steel sheet body on a timber frame, with wide and shallow obscured glass windows set high in the sides. It had none of the double glazed bay windows or patio doors that are an essential feature today!

There was no heating, no TV, no upholstery, and no carpet. The flooring was red lino, the walls were magnolia-painted plywood, and there was a single four-foot fluorescent tube in each bedroom, two in the 'lounge'.

The 'bed' in each of the four bedrooms was a softwood frame with a plywood base, topped with a cheap foam mattress - the type that were banned in the UK in the 1980s because of the fire risk they posed. They weren't proper doubles, being only 3' 6" wide, but they would just about do for two very good friends. Each mattress had a pile of linen on top - a cotton canvas mattress protector, two sheets, two grey woollen blankets and a blue cotton bedcover, all with small safety pins attaching laundry labels. There was also a pile of bed linen on the bench seat at the end of the lounge, which presumably made up into a sofa bed when required as a fifth bedroom. The small windows, almost at the ceiling so that you couldn't see out of them, had one sliding pane for ventilation and no curtain. The rooms were basic, but certainly useable.

The 'facilities' however were sadly lacking. Okay, there was a 'shower room' with tiny shower, miniscule sink and just enough room to open and close the door, and a cubicle with a toilet and another washbasin just big enough to get your fingertips wet. Mr Johnston saw me shaking my head, and grinned.

"It's okay, Jon, I'm one ahead of you here. The reason we sited the caravan on this spot is because the foul drains from the staff changing rooms run this way. Come and have a look!"

This too was new to us; we'd collected our cups of tea from the canteen the previous year, and used the loos, but as casual day labour, we'd never had access to the changing room and showers.

"I've allocated you all a locker each; the storage in the caravan isn't generous, so you might as well keep some of your stuff here. That should save quite a lot of time and trouble."

"Thanks! It certainly will. We'd never have got ten of us through the bathrooms in the caravan."

"Great. I'm afraid that you are going to be more cramped than I thought, but at least you'll have space in the mornings, and hopefully no fights over who is hogging the bathroom."

When we got back to the caravan, Mum expressed her concerns about the cooking; there was a small corner of the 'lounge' with a tiny fridge, a Baby Belling tabletop cooker with two hotplates and an oven, a toaster and an electric kettle. There was a folding table against the wall, which looked as if it required half the diners to sit squashed up on the bench seat, and the others to perch on stools.

"I'm not at all sure this is going to work for ten of you!"

She and Mr Johnston went into a brief huddle, and she came out smiling and writing on her pad.

"I'd forgotten about the canteen! If you can all live on cereal and toast for breakfast, then of course you'll have lunch and dinner in the canteen, and if anyone's peckish for supper when you finish work, then you'll have to knock something up on this. Remind me and I'll get you some bulk cereals from the cash and carry. Mr Johnston says that he can supply milk, bread and butter from the canteen."