Drop Ten, turn and face. Quilty’s football yarns 29

‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ 

Quilty’s Football Yarns 29

London heat and off to Israel to for the first time.

Sometimes things just seem to work out. In mid-1976 I was working as a gardener for Hackney Council up in yard behind Shoreditch Church. It just happened to be the hottest UK summer in about a hundred years! I was part of a team that went out the estates to cut the lawns and turn the flower beds. Our main area was down Hoxton and up to New North Road. We’d get a certain amount of time to do each bed. Depending on how much we did, went theoretically towards our bonus. Theoretically! Working for the council was surreal. Our yard employed about 20 staff and really it was a competition around who could do the least work. Like anywhere there was a work Hierarchy. Tilston was the big boss. McDonald his second in command with Paddy the foreman. Then there was us, the gardeners. In reality the official chain of command bore little in common with where power actuallylay. There were three young blokes I worked with, Terry Horwood an old school mate, Pat Power from Islington and Orley Thorn from Barbados. There were also five or six older blokes who were particularly ‘well in’ with Paddy. We’d be in the yard by 7.00am, sit for half an hour drinking tea and reading the paper before being dropped ‘out on the streets’ at 7.30am by John the van driver. John was probably the slowest driver in the world and never drove quicker than 15 MPH. This was fine but being couped up in the back of the yellow windowless van could be wearing, especially with six or seven cigarette smoking oldies. Arriving at our council estate destination, we got out, waved the van off and chucked our tools in the bushes before going for breakfast at the local café. Minimal work was ever done especially in this scorching summer. Me and two of the other two young blokes actually tried to work as hard as we could one week, to see if could earn a decent bonus. We needn’t have bothered because come Friday we got 12 pound each while the oldies got 21. I confronted Paddy while we in the yard. Everyone was there.

“Hey, Paddy. What’s the go with this bonus? We worked as hard as we could this week and we end up with 12 pound each!”

He replied with” You don’t come into the Duke of York to buy me a drink Friday morning, that’s what these other (old) blokes always do”.

Amazed I came back with “So you are saying, in front of everyone here, that I have to come and bribe you to get a decent bonus?” And yes he was. That was how it worked. In the following weeks we’d go along and see the others collect their pay, pop in the boozer, buy Paddy a drink and then knock-off work at 11.30am. This was every Friday. Of all the management only Mcdonald tried to get people working properly. Unfortunately for him he couldn’t drive and only had a bike to ride around the streets and flats of Hoxton. The big boss Tilston and Vince the union man formed an unholy alliance. They actually ran a business on the side, selling Council potted plants to local cafes and restaurants. To add another level of cheek, John the van driver, in his inconspicuous yellow vehicle, dropped them off! He just did as he was told. I’m sure he’d had some sort of trauma because he never said a word to anyone. There were a very special people working with us. One bloke, ‘Larry the lawnmower’, refused to stop mowing the lawns even in the searing heat. As people will remember the Summer of 76’ was so dry that much of the grass just died. This was the grass not caught fire by Larry.! He was convinced that if he stopped cutting he would not get paid. If you told him to stop he’d just storm off and lock himself in one of the cupboard rooms on the estate. Poor Larry. Probably the funniest thing I saw working on the Gardening Team was when Terry Horwood fell foul of the ‘time and motion man’. Terry always ran his own race not getting involved in Yard politics. Phil another guy who was the same. Why would he? He actually had a newspaper stand right in front of Shoreditch Church and he ran it while he was supposed to be gardening! On this particular day, Terry was being observed by the ‘time and motion man’. He was told to just go through his normal routine, so he did. He worked to 8.30am and then went to the café for breakfast. Of course the ‘time and motion man’ went with him and Terry treated him to a fried breakfast. Only at the end of the week when the blokes report went in did terry discover that he had written down on the sheet, ’worked for hour…went for breakfast for an hour and a quarter’. Obviously, Terry had never been the subject of a productivity study before. 

Towards the end of 76’ I was making plans to go away to work on Kibbutz in Israel and left the Hackney Council gardening job. It had been an eye opener. By the end I was turning up to work in in shorts, flip flops and a towel underneath my arm. After a couple of hours at work we’d shoot off to the swimming pool for the afternoon. The only other thing I carried around with me was a rake so that I could pretend to be working wherever we were. As I left the job I decided to write a ‘pilot’ for a sit-com based on the yard. This I did with my late friend Tony Fuller. It was called ‘On the Borough’. It was of its time and although we sent it to London Weekend TV it never got a run. Reading it today it comes across as being very inappropriate. It was of its time.

On January 4th 1977 my mate Paul Mordecai and myself flew out of London via El Al and into Tel Aviv. As explained previously, going to work on a Kibbutz had been on our minds for quite a while. Project 67’ were the contact group we used and they put us in touch with Kibbutz Representatives in Tel Aviv. I had 100 pound on me and Paul had 150. Leaving a cold London, we were met by an even colder Israel. At the time it was actually snowing in Jerusalem. We were off for about six months and went loaded with all sorts of clothing. In the Kibbutz Representatives office, we were directed toward our assigned destination, Kibbutz Tel Katzir in the Jordan Valley, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. After a few hours bus ride north, we arrived at what I eventually came to consider one of the most beautiful places I’d ever lived. On this day it was bleak and teaming with rain. As we stumbled into the door-way of the chalets where the volunteers lived, there, in front of us, were two blokes sprawling on improvised armchairs, head to foot in muddy, wet clothing. Their boots were laying nearby. For a moment the world stood still. They looked at us and we at them. 

Then Paul spoke, “We are here to volunteer, are we at the right place?”

Our two hosts suddenly broke their stare from these two outside world dandies, replying with,

“Hi, this is ‘John the Pom’ and I’m Steve Rosen, a ‘Saffer’.

As we were to find out slightly later these guys thought we were hilarious in our stiff formal introductions. Here we were about to descend into a wonderful world of freedom, communal living and not a care in the world.

Tel Katzir was the size of a small town with 300-400 regular inhabitants. On our Kibbutz there were usually 40-50 volunteers, some Jewish, some not, from almost everywhere across the globe. We lived nearby to but separate from the ‘Kibbutz members’. Basically, the deal was that you did a day’s work in the fields and got food, beer, cigarettes, chocolate and a few dollars a month with somewhere basic to live. We worked primarily in Bananas although occasionally did irrigation. Our place also kept chickens which had to be transported out at 12 weeks...done at 3.00am and this job should be added to my list of ‘the worst jobs ever’. The chickens were ambushed and carried out to the trucks. They could not be slaughtered on site. It wouldn’t have been kosher. Carrying those birds, four in each hand was ghastly, something I’d never want to do again.

Chickens aside, these were fantastic times. The Kibbutz was a place where you could work, relax and basically sort out your thoughts in idealic surroundings. Tel Katzir outlooked the Sea of Galilee while at the same time being dominated by the Golan Heights. I managed to learn basic Hebrew working alongside Ben Yamin and Levi, the Banana picking experts who were Libyan Jews.  The kibbutz was a place where you could pause your travel, live and work. As mentioned, Tel Katzir gave the volunteers cigarettes, cheap Nesha beer and as much red dinner wine as you wanted! The food was healthy and excellent. The experience was of its time. 

Working on Kibbutz Tel Katzir in 77’ I was taken off site a couple of times. One day I went to the banana co-op that we belonged to, a central packing distribution centre nearby in the Jordan Valley. I was quite a good banana stacker, all in the technique...lots of bigger blokes hurt their backs doing it. Anyway, this day, there I was watching these three giants unloading the hagalah. Eventually when I asked what I was supposed to do. The Israeli just said “Wait until they get tired and you can take over”.

On another occasion, our ‘banana team’, made up of about 15 people, including the Israeli members, were invited to the house of the Arab guy who supplied us with the chicken poo fertiliser. It was wonderful being served a ten-course meal with no luxury spared. All sorts of roast meat, sweat deserts, the best European spirits and Belgium chocolate. We were served by the men of the family only getting a fleeting glimpse of the females of the group. It felt a bit awkward at times because although it was a wonderful spread, a couple of the Israeli’s were abrupt asking for seconds of the cigars. I know it was done ‘tongue in cheek’ but awkward to me.

Another day twenty of us volunteers were taken for the day by truck to work on a place atop a big hill. They were in the first stages on constructing buildings and pathways. Only in later years I realised that this was probably a new settlement somewhere down the Jordan Valley, on the way to the West Bank. As you would imagine quite a few new experiences for a young Londoner. On Tel Katzir I had never driven before but they trusted me to drive the tractor and trailer back up from the fields. I had no idea about the gears! I drove past one of the members who nodded but I knew he had his doubts about my driving ability. Probably the best thing about working on a kibbutz was that material things meant very little. Most of us had just the clothes on our back. You got by on who you were, not what you had. In just a short time people got very close. I can understand the feeling that these reality TV people get in isolation from the real world. Kibbutz was like that. You worked hard, played strongly and were virtually care-free. That is why, in spite of leaving after six months that first time I knew I would return and did so on two more occasions. Leaving in June 77’ I had realised that I wanted to be a school teacher but had return to study in order to do so. The world had also changed somewhat by the time I returned to London. My cousin Tony Beard took me out to film premier up at Tottenham Court Road, as a treat when returning home. “It’s a space film” he said. Going along, it was quite enjoyable. “They may have hit on something there, Tony”. I speculated. And so it was, Star Wars  turned out to be quite a thing.