ABSTRACT
In September 1958 my mother folded her starched white blouse, black pencil skirt and white frilly apron into a Woolworth’s carrier bag, to be put on later in the toilets of Ye Olde White Harte. She did not want the girls at my new school to know that she was a waitress. At that point in her life, when she rode with me on the number 43 bus from the council estate in East Hull where we lived, into town, on to another bus, and out towards the leafy suburbs of the West, on my first day at grammar school, she was working in a pub in town – not far from the Land of Green Ginger in the old part of Hull. It still had a men only bar and a restaurant, which at lunchtime filled up with dark suited solicitors and financiers, wining and dining their way into the late afternoon, whilst my mother tried her best to avoid their tasteless innuendo and condescension. She got good tips, she said, and the uniform was smart. At the same time as she worked at Ye Olde White Harte, she worked during the evening as a barmaid at the Crown, just around the corner from where we lived. Before that she worked part time in a sportswear shop and later as a cleaner in a local authority day centre. None of it was factory work or what she would consider ‘common’. But it did not pay her very much or recognise her potential. She did it to fit around her responsibilities for me and at times when my Dad could baby sit. It compensated for the fact that he was not earning very much – although he had a white collar job ‘with prospects’ (that never materialised) as a clerk in the City Council.
