Assistant chef

Then I left there in 1927, went home and my father said to me, ‘Carlo, the chef of the 'Berengaria' has been here, he says if you'd like to go down the docks and see him, he'll give you a job’.  So I got a job on the 'Berengaria' as assistant cook. Quite easy job it was. When you're assistant cook you don't do no cooking, you, like, clean the scullery, wash the pots and pans, that's what assistant cook does, and then I done that for a year, and then I obtained assistant grill cook.  I'd assist the grill cook and his second and meself, and I used to have to peel sides of bacon, cut all the skin off and bone it, and then we used to have to cut it up in rashers on the bacon machines. Everything was cut by hand in those days, you never had no pre-packed stuff.  And then I carried on there until 1931 and then I got married and I went back to sea again on another smaller ship as assistant baker, and we worked nights making the bread ready for the next day.  And we called at Naples and I met my father there, he was there on holiday.  He took me out for the day and he took me to a restaurant and we had a beautiful meal and I remember Mussolini was in power at the time and his photograph was on the wall, Mussolini, and I said 'There's old Mussolini, Dad’, and he said to me, ‘sshh, sshh, be quiet, be quiet you mustn't mention his name’.  Yes, it’s true.  So, he took me round the city of Naples all day, and we sailed the next day and we went to Palermo, Sicily.  From there we came on home and then I got another job as a lorry driver.