Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated May 19, 2004
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Regency
Today I received a surprise E-Mail from a person who used to work in my parents restaurant through the summer as a waitress. I do not know even yet how she found my E-Mail address, but my mind went back to thirty years ago when it all happened.
My parents already owned a small café-come-shop where both my sister and I had to help out from an early age. In fact we grew up in a business type environment which made us different to all the other kids.
I had just left school and was attending a technical college as a full-time student doing pre-apprentice engineering when my parents bought the Regency as it came to be known. The property was in the High Street and was in a bad state of repair - it had been a chemist shop before it closed down. The top two stories were in a really bad state and full of wet and dry rot. My parents knew that it was going to cost them a vast amount of money to bring that building back up to standard, so they did most of the work themselves which included us as well. In fact it was during that time that I learned all my skills; I did everything from demolition to paper hanging. It was long hours, even working through till the early hours of the morning at times, and it took us two years before the restaurant and guest house was opened.
I had gone through a bad patch at this time and really wanted to leave my home town and join the Navy. Both my parents were against this and made me stay in my job as an apprentice welder after I had finished my course at college. Things came to a head and, to cut a long story short and to miss out the worst bits, I ended up running away to join the Navy. I was living at a friends house and used to sneak into the rear of the Regency and ask one of the girls who worked there if there had been any mail for me. I had previously applied to join up and had to give that as my home address.
Then one day my letter came and I was away. It was not until a few months later that I got leave and went home. To my surprise I was made welcome though, looking back on it now, I am sure that was more to do with all the lasses that worked there. Most of them stayed on and the part-time ones returned every summer to help out. It was a really busy restaurant and my mother was not the easiest person to get along with, as I knew to my cost.
My father, on the other hand, was a quiet calm man and seemed to have the knack of calming my mother down when she got upset. I only really found this out the night I left home when he came to my room for a chat and offered me a cigarette. I think that was the only time in my life when I felt close to my father.
All the staff really liked my father as he never got flustered even when the restaurant was really busy. He just remained calm and carried on with his cooking. The kitchen was the centre point of all the chaos that went with a busy spell. All the lasses would be running in and out of the swinging kitchen doors and, of course, my mother was the anchor point.
There was a quiet enclosed garden at the rear of the property where all the lasses used to go out for a smoke break; it was a world away from all the noise and chaos inside.
I returned home on a few more leaves during my time in the Navy and there always seemed to be a couple of regular faces amongst the staff that were still there. Of course there would be new ones that I had never known, yet they seemed to know about my story, and how things had been. I think the story was handed down to every new start by a couple of the full time lasses.
What ever it was nothing appeared to change. Every summer without fail the restaurant would be busy and the guest house would be full. I think looking back on it now it was a good time probably due to all the characters and the lasses that worked there. It never brought us any closer together as a family, but then again we never really were.
I was sad to see the place being taken over after my parents had died, only because of all the work we had put into it. I never classed it as my home, although it was to some of the lasses who lived and worked there. Even now after all these years, I still remember it as the place I was in before I joined up, a place where I learned a lot of different skills, the place where I once came close to my father.
