Chapter Twenty Four

     During the first four years in our new home, we gradually built up a small catering and consultancy business. We took on only what we wanted to do, leaving some time we hoped for travelling and enjoying other pleasures.

     Ushers Brewery was sorry to see us leave the Duke as it had meant good business for them. We were approached to act as trouble-shooters for their managed chain of small hotels and inns throughout the West Country. Every month some crisis would occur in one or other of their hotels. They might have to fire a Manager at a moment’s notice and need a temporary replacement. There could be a problem through illness or it might be a holiday relief: perhaps the right returns on food and liquor were not being reached. We would go often at a moment’s notice and try to resolve the problem. This was interesting to do but also a challenge. We had to be careful not to bring in changes which the locals might not like or become too popular when temporarily replacing a Manager. We also catered for a few weddings on our home ground. 

     Early on, we had been approached by our Solicitor. He had a client who had died leaving some debts. He wanted to sell a small herb-packing business she had formed, trading under the name Susan Strong. Apart from a small amount of stock, there was the promise of regular orders from Fortnum and Mason of London for a gift pack of Bouquet Garnis. We bought this for £400 and enrolled the help of friends in the village to cut small squares of gingham with pinking shears and pack the mixed herbs in attractive boxes. We then extended the range with Marinating Herbs, Pot Herbs and other packs suitable for gifts.

   I had also some years before joined a fellow ex-WAAF in a small importing business of textiles from China and Spain. Vera Everatt was a great saleswoman and built up a large clientele with agents throughout the company. My contribution was a small amount of capital and the managing of the accounts and VAT returns. It was never very profitable but it did provide a necessary small income for Vera. Our company Younghusband Sales and Development Agency Ltd covered this variety of activities even though the scrap steel sales only lasted three years.                                          

     Clive returned from his adventures in America and stayed with us for a few months before being appointed as General Manager of the Balalaika Hotel in South Africa. Once more he was on the move.

    After the death of my father in 1971, we were a little freer to take longer spells away. In May, 1971, we visited my brother and Jill his wife in Pasadena, California for our first visit to the USA. Many more were to follow in the years to come.

     Dennis with his usual generosity took us on trips to San Francisco, Las Vegas and the desert area around Palm Springs. For us the USA was a new world; new ideas, a new way of living. Some of these I liked others I was not so sure of. People seemed to move frequently and to make and drop friends and relationships so easily. It was very noticeable that Peter’s inherent courtesy was remarked upon as something extraordinary. When a lady entered a room, he immediately stood up. The other people present would invariably remark “Gee, what a gentleman”!

     We returned home after six weeks and took up our routine again. There was always plenty to do. Even if we had no consultancy appointments, the Court Farm House took a lot of maintaining. It was built in 1490, two years before Columbus headed to America. Although the walls were thick, there was always some painting or plastering to be done. Peter was great at these jobs. We soon realised that the roof needed re-thatching. This would be an expensive job but as we were a Schedule 2 historic building, we were able to get some financial help from the Historic Building Trust. It took nearly three months to complete the job. Our thatcher was a true craftsman. He would whittle the hazelwood pegs and tie the wheat reed into dollies before placing them on the roof. I had the delight of designing the ridging pattern which finished off the effect. I kept a diary of his activities and it makes interesting reading of an amazing skilled craft.    

    The garden covered almost a quarter of an acre so that in itself needed a lot of work. We grew much of our fruit and vegetables and enjoyed entertaining friends to dinner with our products. Life went on at a fairly even pace. Then late in 1974 my brother phoned and suggested we might consider moving to the States. He went on to say he could obtain the much prized Green Card for us, through the brother-sister relationship. This would allow us to work there. This was a possibility we had never before considered.

    Peter and I discussed it and we decided to accept the offer. It was quite a decision to make. We were both in our mid-fifties. Three months later the Green Cards arrived. We had by then passed both interviews and medical exams at the US Embassy in London. We became American Residents. Rather than cut all our ties completely, we decided to rent out the Court Farm House for the time being until we had decided whether we really fitted in with American life. The house was leased for a year to a couple we knew. We left the Susan Strong business in the hands of a friend. Our bags were packed and we set off for Los Angeles.

     My brother had an apartment ready and waiting for us in Pasadena. We started a new chapter in our life. I immediately researched the possibility of a post in hotel management. I had no success. The Hotel and Catering Institute was not recognised in the States and my exam results were not accepted. In addition I was a woman. I would have to think again. Both Peter and I passed our driving tests so at least we were mobile.

    It was decided that as Peter was a very good handyman, he and Dennis would invest in a house where we would live. Peter would modernise and spruce it up and then as the market was buoyant, we could sell it for a profit. I could not see Peter fitting in to American work styles, far better he worked on his own and at his own pace. We found a charming house in Sierra Madre, a few miles from Pasadena and moved there. Peter soon found plenty to get on with. I started looking in the press for catering ads. Almost immediately I found Marie’s Gourmet Catering was looking for a kitchen manager so I applied. Having shown I was able to manage and had catering experience plus the fact I could speak Spanish, I was immediately engaged by the owner. Most of her staff consisted of Mexicans. They were excellent workers but spoke little English. She had great difficulty in making them understand her orders!

    This small concern prepared hors d’oeuvres and starters for both domestic and party use and also prepared main courses and desserts for dinner parties. They arranged waitress service but were only responsible for delivering the food to the venue. I recall going to Loretta Young’s house in Hollywood, with our products when she was holding a charity dinner. It was an interesting and I imagine profitable operation for the owner, Joan Clarke.

     Then we had some bad news. The tenants we had left in the Court Farm House left suddenly without paying the last two months rent. We were very concerned as to what to do as we could not leave the house empty and unheated indefinitely and we needed the rent money. We decided we must return to Britain to sort things out and find new tenants. We stayed in Bratton nearly five months trying to decide how best to deal with the problem. During that time, we managed a visit to Clive in South Africa. Our stay coincided with the Soweto riots when many school children were killed or injured in the homesteads there. The rioting spread and caused damage and injury throughout Johannesburg. Many white houses and business were set on fire. Clive’s hotel was the largest area of thatch in South Africa so you can imagine his anxiety. He spent every day together with members of his staff on watch and armed with fire extinguishers. Amazingly, they were not targeted.

    Life in South Africa at that time was a very false one. Apartheid caused much distress to the black population. The wives of the white fraternity lived a strange and useless life, mostly spending their time at coffee mornings and lunches with their friends. I found it difficult to accept this sort of a life. They did no work in the home, having African staff to do everything for them. These people worked from early morning until around nine o’clock at night, sleeping in a small hut in the grounds. They were allowed perhaps a day a month when they could leave the house and return to their families. I found the whole atmosphere unpleasant and was more than pleased when the time came to return to Britain.

    There we eventually found a suitable tenant and made certain this time the financial side was under control. We realised we had to return to the States and get on with the experiment of life there. I was still undecided. Having served in the Forces during the war, I was finding it hard to give up my country.

    Arriving back in California, a friend of Dennis approached me to come and work for him at Radio Shack, owned by the Tandy Corporation. He said “You know all about RADAR, you’ll soon get the hang of it”!

     I’d never worked in a shop but I decided to try it out. First Radio Shack insisted I pass a lie detector test. California State Law forbade this test as part of the requirement for employment but to be employed by Radio Shack, one had to sign a disclaimer and agree to the test. This seemed strange to me but I agreed. The test lasted about twenty minutes. I was wired to my hands and my stomach and then asked a series of questions, the reaction to my answers being displayed on a chart in graph form. As I had been self-employed for so many years, many of the questions did not apply and were difficult to answer. One example was “Have you ever stolen more than $5 from any employer”? I was also asked if I had ever been a prostitute or had taken drugs. I passed the test.      Working at Radio Shack taught me a lot about American business methods, especially in high pressure retail sales. Back to School Offers, Two for the Price of One and many other devices to increase sales, now regular features in Britain were being used in the States more than thirty years ago.

     It was interesting to see the effect the film “Roots” had on the Afro-American population. Many of them seemed to acquire a different air when they approached as customers any salesperson – prouder, sometimes even aggressive. This iconic story of an Afro-American seeking the roots of his slave ancestors gave them a confidence and a pride in their antecedents. What was interesting was that as soon as they heard my British accent, they would completely relax and become friendly even pleasant. They forgot or never knew that many British ships were used to bring the slaves to the Caribbean and on to America.

     Clive was finding life in South Africa far from easy and even dangerous. He wrote and asked if we could get him a Green Card. This was not difficult. As the unmarried child of American Residents, he qualified as a second preference category. Within eight weeks, he had received the necessary permission to enter and work in the USA. He arrived early in 1977, having travelled from Johannesburg via South America. He stopped in Rio de Janeiro for the Carnival and then he visited Cuzco and the fabled Macchu Pichou. He always said this journey was one of the most memorable he had done. Once in the States, with his Savoy credentials, he had no difficulty in finding a job. He was soon appointed to the opening team of the New Otani Hotel in Los Angeles and then took over as Reservations Manager. This was the first venture in the USA of this well-known Japanese Hotel group.

    By this time, I was seriously considering whether I wanted to stay in the United States for the rest of my life. I found Los Angeles a city without a heart. The work I was doing was not what I enjoyed. I missed my friends. Peter seemed undecided. He had not been exposed to the American working atmosphere as I had. He was happy for me to decide. I would be sad not to be near Dennis, my closest family relative and of course we would miss Clive but then Clive had always been somewhere else.

    Reluctantly, I told Dennis I wanted to return to the UK. I know he was disappointed. He had done a lot to help us settle. Perhaps if I had gone when I was younger it would have been easier. If I had had a University degree, it might have been more rewarding. And there was the problem of medical care. We could not afford to pay for private medicine at the sky-high prices they asked and at our age, we might fall ill any time. Public health care was well nigh impossible to obtain and if you managed to find it, the quality and conditions were poor. Weighing all these things up made me make the final decision.

     Late 1977, we returned home to the Court Farm House. Fortunately the last tenant had completed her agreed stay so the house was ours again. We picked up the threads of our old life. From them on, we returned on holiday to many parts of the States. We enjoyed visiting and seeing Dennis and Jill again but never regretted our decision to return home. One of our most interesting visits consisted of a journey throughout many states on the Greyhound bus. We took nine days, stopping off each evening in a motel, and picking up the next morning bus. We started in Washington and travelled                      through Virginia and Kentucky, stopping a Memphis in Tennessee. Then we journeyed up the Mississippi to St. Louis and west through the plains of Kansas to Denver in the Rockies. Cheyenne in Wyoming was our next stop before heading for the Mormon homeland of Salt Lake City in Utah. Then going from the sacred to the sinful, we arrived in Reno, Nevada and on south to Hollywood and Pasadena for a rest at Dennis’s home.

     I enjoy my visits to America, especially to the area were Dennis and Jill retired in San Diego County where they  bought a lovely home in Carlsbad on the Pacific coast. Looking back, I am not sorry for the experience of living in the USA for a couple of years. We learned a lot and with the half profit Peter received when they sold the house in Sierra Madre, we were not out of pocket.

    It was simple on our return to renew our business contacts with the Brewery. Susan Strong had kept going and Minifaldas still produced a small income. We managed to live comfortably if not extravagantly. We continued to take enjoyable holidays to the Continent, visiting most European countries during the next few years.

    Clive had met and married a much younger nurse, who came from a Dutch family which had emigrated to Canada. We attended at the wedding in a Hollywood hotel Clive was then managing. A year later Tiffany our grand daughter was born. Her birth, the same day as mine July 4th, in 1980 coincided with Clive being offered the prestigious position as General Manager of the Chicago Athletic Association and Men’s Clive. This establishment, on the side of Lake Michigan had endured almost one hundred years and was used by Presidents and visiting notabilities. Its members were the elite of Chicago. Clive found the job demanding but most rewarding. We had many interesting and enjoyable visits in the next few years to the Club and to Clive’s new home.

Picking up the threads