The Witch
It has to be said that giving the witch a job was a mistake. To be fair she had passed the tests developed over several years of recruiting staff for our children activity holiday centres. Obviously, she was willing to work for pocket money food and accommodation as did all our seasonal staff. We were almost politically correct in the days when these words had no meaning. We had no interest at all in gender or race. Gay or lesbian people had not been invented but if they had we would not have cared. We did however in general look for potential staff to have arms legs and other useful appendages in quantities divisible by two on the basis that what we did and how we lived was simply impractical for what we then thought of as handicapped people.
The final two tests were not often an issue but bitter experience has led to them being non-negotiable. Vegans who did not like chips were completely unacceptable. Given our basic child orientated catering arrangements the one and only vegan chip hater had nearly died of starvation. Neither was having someone who appeared on the verge of death due to a wasting disease conducive to a convivial atmosphere.
Equally unacceptable recruits were members of the territorial army or more probably people who claimed to be members of the TA and who carried a visible weapon. Being located close to Hereford, the then home of the SAS made certain people think that being a hard solider was cool. My general feeling was that real SAS soldiers maintained a low profile, were confident in their physical abilities and might easily be mistaken for school teachers albeit possibly PE teachers. Anyone who felt the need to present a tough exterior was suspect. The last straw was Reg. He always had a sheath knife strapped to his ankle. Starting a fire with petrol might have been unwise but given some basic instinct for self-preservation might have been just about acceptable. Pouring petrol on an existing if reluctant fire was stupid. Standing there motionless with a bemused look on his face ignoring frantic shouts to run while the flame made its way back up the petrol stream to the Jerrycan was just no on. I had had to physically drag him away to avoid joining his innovative attempt to become a supremely unattractive flavour crisp and this was an experience I had no intention of repeating.
To return to the witch the decider was that the she was very up front about her interests and skills and made it very clear indeed that she was white witch. She helped people. It is just possible that the fact that we were short of staff played a part. The fact that she was undoubtably an attractive lady, and that I had vague memories that witches danced naked from time to time formed no part of the decision process.
The witch joined our happy band and for a couple of days all was well.
The nature of a holiday centre is that it runs 24/7. If you own the centre and are operating on a shoestring budget there is not a lot of chance to get time off. After evening activities were finished and the hundred or so children were being shepherded to their beds, I headed for the pub for an hour’s relaxation. Drinking and driving was not then a real consideration and mobile phones had not been invented. The publican called me to the bar and handed over the phone. A rather panicked voice told me there was a crisis and I was needed. Amidst the background clamour and screaming I could not grasp the nature of the problem but it was obvious I was needed.
10 minutes later as I approached the house up its long private road, I could see the flashing blue lights of the ambulance reflected against the windows. Not good news.
To enter the house, I had to force my way past a mob of over excited and in some cases distressed children clustered round the door of the kitchen. Inside, two slightly bemused ambulance men were speaking to Ron, a young staff member who was lying full length on stainless steel food preparation table minus his trousers but fortunately still in possession of his underpants. He was screaming. There was no sign of blood and one of the ambulance men was lifting his leg which then simply fell back onto the table accompanied by more screams. I then realised that almost inaudible amongst the general clamour the witch was quietly chanting.
You don’t have responsibility for many thousands of other people’s children without gaining some ability in crisis management. Step one is to get rid of all kids not actually bleeding. An audience never helps so step 2 is to get rid of the staff ineffectually milling about. I was then able to establish that Ron had lost, or thought he had lost, the use of his legs. He was despatched in the ambulance with someone to accompany him and report back. Sanity and silence now reigned and I interrogated the participants. It emerged that Ron has some minor problem with his leg that the witch felt she could fix. This explained the missing trousers and the prone position on the kitchen table. Apparently, the healing process involved chanting and candles. Somehow in the process Ron, possibly not the brightest of young people, had been persuaded that his legs would not work. Perhaps understandably he had been vocal in expressing his dismay at this outcome from the healing and the crisis has developed from there. Julie an eminently sensible and practical person who subsequently worked with me for some 30 years had been left in charge. No one had thought to fetch here and she had slept through the whole event. Possibly some instinct for self-preservation had been at work.
A call from the hospital explained that once in A & E functioning legs were once again available. It was all some hysterical reaction – mind over matter.
Having staff with dysfunctional legs would obviously impede the effectiveness of the kitchen so It seemed an exorcism was the obvious answer. I dismissed the witch on the spot. She did not exactly curse me but did explain that if I did dismiss her misfortune might ensue. If there is dissent amongst a close-knit staff team who live together its vital to get the dissenter off the premises as quickly as possible or the morale and stability of the whole team is threatened. By now it was the early hours of the morning and I told the witch to be packed. The next day we would take her to the station first thing and provide her with wages due and the train fare to anywhere reasonable. That seemed to be the end of the matter.
I was up early and headed for the kitchen to make a cup of tea. On entering the kitchen corridor, I encountered a horse. While one might not claim this was normal neither was it quite as rare an occurrence as might be the case in the suburbs. We kept a varying number of horses and ponies for our trekking holidays. Most animals and especially horses only stay where you want them to be on the basis of mutual agreement and the provision of food. Our fencing was not of the best so wandering horses were far from unknown. I persuade the horse to back down the corridor and out of the door into the yard there not being enough room for it to readily turn. I then noticed a horse on the roof of an adjacent building. This was unusual even for us. It was single story building roofed in corrugated sheets and adjacent to some higher-level ground so the feat of levitation was not quite as startling as it might have been. That said if for some reason you had wanted to persuade the horse onto that roof the chances of success would have been slight. At that moment the roof collapsed and the horse disappeared completely. This activity had generated interest in the horse community and the disappearance was observed by 6 or seven horses who having been spooked by the noise were now milling about in the yard. The potential for injury increased. I was wondering if we were about to have another horse removal episode to rival the one where we had to break the legs of dead horse with a sledgehammer to load him in a 15-cwt van with a JCB but I digress.
Returning to the yard of milling horses I was still clutching my tea and wondering how on earth we were to get the horse out of a shed with a door rather smaller than the horse. The shed was used for the storage of a large number of BMX bikes used on a track within our grounds. The shed was pretty packed and it seemed unlikely that the horse would be uninjured. I was pondering fire brigades and vets when the horse took matters into it own hands …er feet. The rather rickety door was kicked open and its head appeared under the lintel. The horse raised it head and bucked, the lintel gave up the unequal struggle and a horse, decorated rather in the fashion of Christmas tree with bike parts emerged into the yard. Realising it had an audience of its peers it gave several dismissive shrugs to rid itself of most of the bike parts and walked over to stand with its mates positively radiating a sense of having put one over on those stupid bikes and while remaining completely uninjured.
The advancing time and the noise had now attracted staff including those known as the trekkers. They were the horsey young women who looked after the horses and taught the kids to ride. As an employer I was always rather fond of trekkers. That sort of girl or young woman was almost invariably practical, willing to work hard and do dirty jobs. They were mostly fearless amongst horses even in potentially dangerous situations. Two or three of them waded in and soon with the help of feed buckets the yard returned to something like normality.
By this time our general ‘Mr fix it builder and handyman’ Norman had arrived. He had been tasked with taking the witch to the station. Norman had the mannerisms and appearance of a slow thinking slow talking countryman belying his sociology degree and ready wit. He glanced into the wreckage of the bike shed and mumbled quietly – Of course I don’t believe in any of this witchcraft nonsense but I will certainly be putting my seat belt on for the drive to the station.
It seemed to me this episode was over except for the insurance claim. To be fair they paid up at once as the assessor, after recovering from his uncontrollable laughter felt that no one could possibly have made the story up. However, I still had one lesson to learn.
A couple of days later a letter arrived from the benefits office. It appeared the witch was claiming benefits and I was required to state the reasons for her dismissal. Thinking I would give those dull folks buried in a gloomy office in Newcastle a puzzle I just wrote witchcraft. A couple of days later another pre-printed form arrived. Please provide details of how the applicants religion was a reason for dismissal. An hour spent explaining the whole episode on a hand written form persuaded me that the dull folks in Newcastle had had the last laugh. From then on whatever the circumstances the bland reason for terminating employment would always be ‘the end of a temporary or seasonal contract’ even if they had burned the place down. Actually when the place was set on fire staf were innocent it was one of the kids but that, as they say is another story.