GETTING  TO GRIPS

I must confess that by the age of 15-16 I was just a brat!
Those who knew me then would agree, those who know me now are smiling ruefully thinking "You bloody well still are!"

As you may have read in previous chapters I was very much a bullfighting aficionado. In those days, the 1960s, there used to be a very good and popular bullfighter from La Linea called Carlos Corbacho. His rivals were Miguelin from Algeciras and El Cordobes, obviously from Cordoba. I really cannot remember how but at one of the Corridas in La Linea, Carlos tossed the bull's ear he had won as a trophy for a particularly good "faena", to me. This I treasured for a long time. Of the 3 bullfighters mentioned he, Carlos, was by far the most elegant…. if rather dull. El Cordobes was a rising star and an innovator with some of his passes. Miguelin was the darling of many, yet despite already with a good career, he would snap the “banderillas” into just half their length and take the turn of the banderillero, himself. He was young and very fast and despite having to get far closer to the bull, he always managed to stick these darts in and swerve past the horns by a scant hair's breadth!
Carlos Corbacho had a very sad end to his career. In one of his fights, in La Linea if I recall, the “estoque” the sword used to finally kill the poor bull, somehow missed the bull and got stuck into Carlos’ thigh. It ended with him getting gangrene and needing an amputation of his whole leg. That was the end of his bullfighting life.

But I digress..... let me get back to Corbacho and the Bulls here.

These were the times when "tientas" were organise by local aficionados. A "tienta" is when amateurs hire a Toro Bravo Calf and practiced passes with it, in a small bullring. The calf is never killed nor “bandilleado”, In fact they were rented out time and again till they were far too savvy to be handled any more.
We used to go to the Ganaderia of a man called Gallardo in the Los Barrios area, where we all chipped in and paid, can't remember how much, to play around with the calf in the small bullring there.
There was one excellent Gibraltarian amateur torero, Louis Martinez. I believe he was a school teacher in Gibraltar. He never quite made it to the professional bullfights because he was not allowed to say he was Gibraltarian and he would not accept go on the Carteles (posters) as just another Spanish bullfighter. Louis was the only one who really knew how to execute the passes on the young cows, but that didn't stop any of the others from trying.

(For these Tientas, only cow calves are used. Using bull calves, even at that young age, they would have learnt that behind the waving capes were solid targets, the men, and this would make the adult bulls very dangerous in any future actual corrida)

At 15 I was the youngest and the only one accompanied by his father. The others were the older guys we youngsters hero-worshiped, and of course they would bring their girlfriends of the time to show off their bravery. Needless to say, there was quite a lot of wine and beer around to give us enough Dutch courage. These calves had horns about 6 inches long which didn't do much damage. But boy were they fast!

Dad allowed me a glass of wine or two on those afternoons, and though untested, I did know how to do some of the passes, the basic one of which is called a Veronica.

There I was, in a bull ring that seemed huge, with this very nimble black calf with white horns….. and I stood in front, waved the cape and ...

"Hey toro!"

The words had scarcely left my lips when the calf rushed at me and I passed it with my cape with all the elegance I could muster. Before I had time to change body position and cape to face it, the calf had turned and gored my bum, tossing me over its back and on to the very hard ground!
Did you think anyone would save me???
No!
I scrambled up trying to get the cape somehow in front of me when the rushing calf tossed me up in the air yet again.

It was a lot of fun..... for the others!
But in my next tries I survived three or four passes..... before being tossed in the air once more!

I had bruises on the bruises of my bruises!

I remember Mum, seeing her walking-wounded son arrive, hobbling and obviously bruised, giving Dad an earful!
"Pepe, por Dios! .... How can you let this happen to our son?! Look at him...go on look at the bruises..."

I remember feeling rather heroic, well worth the pains I was going through.

Aahhhh those were very exciting times indeed!

Back to Corbacho's ear.

My youth's "hunting grounds" in those days were the Married Quarters next to HMS Rooke, which were referred to as “Edinburgh” because one of the blocks was called that. Young English girls living there sometimes found the natives (ourselves) more exciting than the English boys living in their Estate. This made us mortal enemies of the English boys. But it spurred us on in our quests for a kiss..... if we got lucky. My heart-throb at that time was one Christine Tope.

Why do I remember her?

Because her brother David was our Head Prefect at the Grammar school. Every Monday morning, knowing Christine & I had met over the week end, he would find some excuse to give me 100 Lines as punishment!
What he did not know was that Christine wrote them for me half the times!

My chat line in those days was that I wanted to be a bullfighter.
That I was practicing to be a bullfighter and by way of proof, out would come Corbacho's ear from my back pocket. And if challenged further I would show my appendix scar which obviously could only have come from the horns of the bull I fought bravely some time or other.  (????)

You can laugh, but I smiled all the way to the next weekend!

The downside to all this was that once I left school and started working with my Dad in old TEO, whenever one of his friends ruffled my hair and asked me whether I liked working with Dad, I would reply with a very "antipatico" disdain:

"No, I want to be a bullfighter!"
Yeah, right …. A Jewish -  Yanito -  Bullfighter …. In Spain!
DUH!
To this day I still feel ashamed at my churlishness.
I acknowledge I deserved "un buen bofeton" from Dad. He was very hard-working and it was his dedication, the many hours of all days working behind the counter, in the stores, doing the many display windows, all in order to re-establish the business "a pulso", that laid the foundation for what TEO later became.
I am sure Dad hated me then, and rightly so!
But instead of the expected bollocking, he used a different tactic.

We used to live above the shop in those days. One morning he told me to accompany him to Barclays Bank to see the Bank Manager. Barclays was in Irish Town opposite the old Police Station at the time. In those days, having an appointment to see the Bank Manager was daunting to say the least. We approached the counter and asked for the Manager and this very English-looking gentleman came out.

He was dressed in in a green and black Herringbone weave Harris Tweed suit, complete with waistcoat and gold chain for his pocket watch. As I recall he looked a bit “David Niven-ish”, only taller.

"Mr Langdon," said Dad, " this is my son David. From now on he signs all the cheques and all the documents for the business!"

WHAT ? ? ?

With that he turned around and left me in the bank with the manager.
Mr Langdon took me to the Holy of Holies, his office, which consisted of a sumptuous mahogany desk with not a paper on it, nor a file, just a pristine white blotting pad  and a Parker 51 lying horizontally in the centre.

"David, I assume you know what a promissory note is?"

Duh!

".... Bills of lading..... invoices.... letters of credit.. squaring a cheque book ….?"

Was this man speaking English?

I was a 16-year-old kid, with the ear of a dead bull in the back pocket of his jeans....
Where had Dad abandoned me?

Mr Langdon spent a good 15 minutes (which felt more like an hour!) giving me a very concise explanation of all that was needed for running a business. When he finally released me from his office, I rushed back to TEO..... but Dad was not there. I went up home:

"Dad ...Dad?"

"Your father has left this note for you" Mum said.

"DAVID, TOMORROW MORNING THE BANK'S BILLS COLLECTOR WILL COME AROUND AND YOU HAVE TO PAY HIM £315/17/6....YOU CANNOT GIVE HIM A CHEQUE AS THERE IS NOT ENOUGH MONEY IN THE ACCOUNT TO COVER THAT."

So read the note.!

For those who don't understand the numbers code, we had to pay the bank £315 ....yes I know you got that part ...17 and 6 that was 17 shillings and 6 pence...about 76.1/2 pennies in today's money.
 (In those days, £1 was made up of 20 shillings and each shilling had 12 pennies….and you cannot add up today without a calculator?? Hahaha)

To put it into context. my weekly wages were £5.... so this amount was just over 63 weeks of my wages!

I rushed down and opened the till of the shop.....
No way was there that amount of money!

I remember having an impromptu staff meeting. Imagine this: a sixteen year old surly son-of-the-boss who hated the shop, giving a pep talk to Carmela and Francisco, either which old enough to have been my parent! I worked seriously all that afternoon, totted up at the end of the day ….. we were still well short!

I went up for supper.....

"Dad?...."

"No. Dad has gone to play bridge and will not come back till late" answered my mother.

I went out that evening with my friends but was not there in spirit.

In the morning I opened the shop because Dad   "...had to go to La Linea that day..."
Again, No Dad!

11 am. and the Bank's bills collector was there. Dressed in a tired suit and carrying his scarred leather briefcase, he brought out the promissory note which had been signed by Dad and asked me for the money.

"Please, can you come back later?" I grovelled.

He did, at 11.30,.... at 12 ....and as his last call, at 12.45 ...by which time we had managed to sell enough to pay the vulture!

This was a Turning Point in my life! The seriousness of running a business, the duty to pay due debts .... REAL LIFE!

And that was when Corbacho's ear was finally put to rest!
If you know Gib you will have sussed out by now that thr Bab Manager, Charlie Langdon, and Dad were very good friends and had staged this so as to knock the ..brattishness (?)…out of my system.
Boy did their plan succeed!

My working week was Monday to Friday, 9 to 1 and 3 to 8. (a 2 hour lunch break which afforded most families time to sit at the table together for lunch, a basic part of family bonding now lost forever)

Saturday evenings, once the Sabbath had finished, another 2 hours.

And every Sunday morning 9 a.m. till 2 pm, redoing the display windows in the corridor.

All this for £5 a week.  No, Dad never paid me overtime, and since he never paid himself that either, how could I dare ask?

The change in me was nothing short of spectacular. I learnt how to do windows (the displays, not the Bill Gates kind!) take stock, do basic accounting and even pin on the individual item prices on the displays.
Felt pens had not yet been invented – nor calculators, for that matter. We used little bottles of red and black poster colours and a paintbrush.
For card, I would go to the Gibraltar Post Printing Works also in Irish Town where Mr Aurelio Montegriffo would gladly give me the cut-off excess from printed cards and which we made excellent use of.
It was about that time that Isaac Attias came to work with us at TEO and it was he who taught me the skills needed to do the 100s of labels required for the new displays each week.
To this day I am very grateful to him for his patience and his tutelage.

Despite it all, they were very good years. Between Isaac and Dad, they encouraged a new attitude in me that was positive and responsible all at once. They made work something to be proud of, achievements to be won .... in fact as the saying goes:

"If you enjoy the work you do, you will never work a day in your life!"

When I finally looked back, I had done 42 years in the “rag trade”.

Thanks to them and to the many wonderful staff, clients and friends that I made both here and in Spain, I retired from that, satisfied, happy and with a great sense of achievement and gratitude.

Then I got bored, I divorced (again), and started all over .... But that will be another chapter.