Now the Burma Road. Burma Road was the working alleyway
that went from forward to aft. And those people that were on
the Queen Mary well remember that. It was the working
alleyway where everything was served in the attitude of the chefs
going down from the galleys into the storerooms, the linen rooms
were down there. I didn't smoke in those days but if you
wanted a quick drag you nipped down the galley stairs, down into
the Burma Road working alleyway and had a quick drag.
Question: Did that run into the Pig and Whistle?
That ran into the Pig and Whistle. Actually it ran right down
to the glory holes. The glory holes, and they were glory
holes, were the crew's accommodation. You talk about the
sublime to the ridiculous. When you had come down from the
first class main deck cabins and skated through the Burma Road,
through the Pig and Whistle and down into the glory holes, that was
really going back into the dark ages. Yes. The Pig and
Whistle. This was the general place where those of us that
drank, went and had a pint down there and the nice thing about it
of course is if there were any famous people, famous in the sense
of stars, film stars, variety artists, people like Ella Fitzgerald,
Oscar Petersen, George Shearing, that dates me when I talk about
people like that. They'd come down, do a turn, have a drink
with the boys. Of course they were being accepted as normal people
because, not to be too blasé about it, we were getting these sort
of people travelling backwards and forwards, whether they were
those type of people, diplomats, politicians, whoever they
were. So it was just nice for them to come down, do a quick
turn, and they were getting fabulous money when they were doing it
for commercial reasons. Yes.
Question: And was there some sort of gambling that would
go on?
Well, gambling. Yes. We had the craps, which is the
typical American game. We had Crown and Anchor which was a
good old Naval … and of course poker. What used to happen, as
I can remember it, it always used to be on the last night of
docking. Suppose we were coming into Southampton early in the
morning, 8 o'clock the next morning. We'd finish say quarter past
9, 10 o'clock at night, we were going down to the mess room which
was on the Pig and Whistle, and have our meal and then somebody
would suggest a poker game. In those days, I can remember
anything from four to five hundred pound, and that was a lot of
money in those days, changing hands. You'd get one man that
probably lose two or three hundred pound, not too worried, because
he knew on the way back to New York exactly the same before we go
into New York there'd be another poker game and he'd probably get
it back again then.
Question: Could you drink spirits there?
No, you couldn't, no, it was only beer.
Question: Did people sneak spirits in, I mean there's
all that spirits around?
There was plenty of opportunity. I mean if you were in New York you
could buy spirits but I was a tender … tender young lad, I didn't
know what spirits were in those days (laughs).
