The perks of being a residential caretaker, are that they give you at least a two bedroom flat, they charge you no council tax or rent, and they even paid about 75% of your phone bill, and to top it all off they actually pay you a very decent wage. I started in November 1985 on a housing estate in Shepherds Bush called Edward Woods Estate. The Woods consisted of three, 22 story tower blocks designed and built in the 1960's and 4 long blocks of maisonettes. We were given a 2 bed flat in one of the tower blocks, on the first floor at 7 Stebbing House. It was a typical council estate in that it housed an awful lot of really nice down to earth people along with the most alcoholic's, drug users and care in the community (nutters) that I had ever encountered. My work colleagues were two guys called Mick and Ray (who thought he was the boss) and another two guys who have become friends to this day Peter Bull and Brian Palmer, on the first morning I did not know what to expect and was told that I had to sweep and mop the entrance of the block I lived in and to sweep the front and rear of the block, I started at 8.00am and by 9.15am I had done most of this but had spent 20 minutes or so sweeping leaves underneath a tree at the rear, Brian came towards me and told me it was tea time, we went up to Micks flat and spent close on an hour and a quarter having tea, when we went back out we spent the best part of another hour and a half chatting and then Mick said "Well that's enough for today" well you could of blown me over, I thought I am going to like this job.
We used to work three shifts 8am to 1pm, 1pm to 9pm and all day Thursday and Friday one week, the same but all day Saturday and Sunday the next.
I encountered some funny things at the Woods, a lady who knocked on my door one day to inform me that her floor was electrified, I went with her to see and she walked in whilst I tiptoed round like a fool, as you can see one of us was potty. People would call for the silliest things at the silliest times of the day, a woman called at 11pm to ask had I watched the news as she had missed it and another time to have her hearing aid batteries changed at approx 1am. One of the funniest things that happened was when a Dog who was quite feared named Skipper sat outside our block at midnight howling for a bitch on heat within the block, I had just got into bed when this started and thought that it had to stop, I went downstairs with a long length of string which I attached to Skippers collar and dragged him about 800 yards away, I tried to flag down a police car but was ignored, so I tied him to some railings and ran like hell all the way home, as I got in bed laughing I was greeted by a howling noise outside and was stunned to see old Skipper sitting there. In the morning a fella who lived in the block told me he had seen a funny thing as he left for work, a dog emerging from the lift with about 6 foot of string round his neck.
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