Breakfast this morning found Mrs H and I discussing our memories of dinner gongs used in holiday accommodation. We both remember them being used but so long ago that we can't recall specific holidays where a bong, bong bong on the gong called guests down to the evening meal.
In the end we concluded that we must have come across them as youngsters in seaside boarding house holidays with our parents.
8 comments:
That's exactly where I remember them from. Specifically, Mr. Knight's boarding house in St. Leonards. The smell of the tinned soup wafting up from the basement kitchen (my parents thought that soup before the main course was the height of sophistication) and the cry of seagulls. If I was really good, I got to actually ring the gong.
I have a memory that Butlin's holiday camps used to broadcast a gong-like sound over the tannoys to call the customers to the canteen.
I spent one university long vacation working at a rural paper mill outside Aberdeen. Youngsters of the company's officer class - including me temporarily - lived on mess terms in a fine granite house. As in: we signed for any booze we consumed, we were gonged for dinner, and so on. I did enjoy it.
Sam - it's interesting to look back at such things as soup before the main course being the height of sophistication. I remember a sitting room becoming a lounge when we moved house.
dearieme - the TV sitcom Hi-di-Hi had a gong-like sound played over the tannoy. They may have copied that from Butlins. I bet your paper mill gong was a genuine one in a wooden stand.
Yup.
To my eternal shame I can't remember the name of the housekeeper who looked after us so well.
I remember holiday boarding houses.
The gong for breakfast. Huge tea pot. One sausage, one bacon rasher., one egg - all cooked to crispy death And then kept warm for half hour under a infra red lamp.
And after that get out and do not come back till half hour before dinner. Not very clean cutlery.
Beds with shoogly frames and mattress springs poised to ping out and stab you. Certainly no conceptions there.
Made going home a relief.
No wonder Butlins and Pontins were a success. Going back to your room / cabin between breakfast and dinner? Jings. Staff who smiled. Children free to roam anywhere within the fenced in camp.
dearieme - I'm not too bad with names of people I knew over a protracted period, but a knowing them over a long vacation possibly wouldn't be long enough.
Doonhamer - I don't remember anything as grim as that, but maybe it's why my parents favoured caravans over boarding houses. But I do remember gongs and you don't get those in caravans.
Yes I remember such a gong, Swanage Dorset around sixty years ago now. Mrs Farra, the name of the landlady. Took all day to drive there from N. London
djc - yes, journeys were more of an adventure sixty years ago. It wasn't a case of tearing down the motorway. We like Swanage, but haven't been there for some time.
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