Chapter Three
 

I was larder chef and in those days the chef was a big name on the competition circuit and was a judge at Olympia. So it was here that I started doing fat carvings, not that I knew anything about them but at least I had a crack at them. As larder chef I also got to do all the butchery. Once a week the meat would be delivered, when I say meat, I really mean carcasses, and what seemed like lots of them. These days everything comes in pre-prepared and portioned, there are very few chefs out there that would have the first idea of how to bone a leg of veal or split a whole pig or break down a whole lamb. Mind you neither did I when I started but I did by the time I finished there. I also used to save up all the lamb kidney fat, render it down and set it then I used it to carve sculptures from it for adorning buffets. It was heavy work and not really anyone to teach me either, trial and error, the best way to learn. 

The butchery took place in isolation in the basement with the kitchen one floor up. As I say the meat would arrive once a week and I, along with the delivery driver, would have to carry it all in and store it in the walk-in fridge. I then, over a few days, would take it all apart. We would also cure meats, and brine others such as tongues ready for cooking for buffets, things no chef would ever get the opportunity to see or do these days.

In one doorway there were a couple of hooks high up, one in each of the door posts, these were for hanging the whole pigs and whole lambs from in order to split them. There were hooks in the ceiling too and I would hang a whole leg of beef or veal and break it down from there, carefully seam boning the meat away from the bone, that is removing each individual cut without cutting the meat at all just separating each muscle from the next down the natural connective lines. Pieces like the silverside would be brined, the shin of veal cut for Osso Bucco, the rump cut into steaks, topsides trimmed for roasting, cutting escalope’s, carefully removing the marrow from the bones before chopping them up for roasting to make the jus, the marrow salted to remove the blood and the marrow used in dishes, and all by myself most of the time, in fact I do not ever remember having any assistance down there but someone else must have helped out at some point I just don’t remember. Often Jane, if she was off, would come and join me and just watch, at least I had some company!

Having said all that though Eastbourne was pretty much a playground for me, yes I learned a lot but I was after all only 19/20 when I was there and still had a lot of growing up to do but the Cavendish was a great place to work and Eastbourne a great place to live too, it may have had a reputation as a retirement home for ever but I promise you it had a very vibrant night scene back in my day. The staff house round the back of the hotel even had a full-sized snooker table for the staff and I was never off it, morning noon & night, that is when I wasn’t in the pub or the night club, or at work of course! But many nights were taken up with work, then the pub, then down the night club and then playing snooker for the rest of the night before going to work straight from the table, no sleep!

The guys in the kitchen were a young group on the whole and we all got on well and while getting on well used to mess about quite a lot too, or what we used to call fannying around. 

One of the guys had a car, a Morris or Austin 1100 I think it was, and we used to get around in it. One night it was just the two of us in the car, him driving, me in the passenger seat. We had a puncture and we were out in the countryside somewhere, it was evening/night as it was dark. My memory may not be the best, but I will remember that incident for the rest of my days. The car careered off to the left and we smashed into a bus stop sign, how bad could that be you ask? 

This bus stop was a concrete and stone composite post with four metal strengthening rods that ran its length but terminating about 6 inches or so above ground, they were designed like this so that if anything hitting it (like us in a car at what must have been at least 40 miles per hour) would cause it to snap off just above ground level, which it duly did. Trouble was as we hit it and it snapped it then fell forward directly on top of the car, down the car’s length. Now a Morris 1100 was not a big or long car, indeed it was about the same length as the post that now smashed into the roof. All of this happened in super slow motion as far as I was concerned. I clearly recall slipping down into the passengers’ foot well while grabbing hold of my companion and dragging him down with me. At the same time I remember the windscreen breaking into millions of tiny pieces and counting them as each piece hit me. 

The car ended up spinning on its roof in the middle of the road in the dark, the roof was level with the top of the driver’s seat so if I had not pulled him into the footwell he could easily have been killed. We both managed to climb out of the passenger’s door window, thankfully this was before seatbelts become mandatory otherwise it may have been goodnight guys!

I remember the only Christmas I spent there, we put together a buffet the Christmas Day Dinner as most places do. I had made some Smoked Salmon Mousse and set it in two bowls which I had turned out onto a platter surrounded with leaf garnish and each mousse topped with a tomato rose as you did back then. Irene Handle was staying and she came down to the buffet with her friend and clutching a small toy dog in her arms, she took one look at the buffet and burst out laughing, looking at me she said between giggles oh look! a pair of titties!

It could not have been long after that we decided to move on and we both got jobs in a small country house hotel in a place called Weston under Penyard not far from Ross on Wye in Herefordshire.