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Self-Sufficiency in Style 

The man who saved Christmas

A memoir of 

  Christmas's long ago

Each year I write something, celebrating the English tradition of short stories at Christmas, for circulation to my friends.

 I thought my well of Christmas experiences had run dry, until I remembered this strange anecdote.

It was a chance meeting in a pub with a man that used to handle fumigation that reminded me.

 The story still circulates in one form or another and I suppose that eventually someone will find out just who it was.

I might just as well own up and correct the record.

I was " The man who saved Christmas."

Almost forty years ago, my small office was responsible for handling the import of a large proportion of England’s dried fruit.

It is hard, in these more cosmopolitan days, to recall just how important dried fruit was to the English diet then.

From the prunes at breakfast, to the current bun at lunch, the rich fruit cake at teatime and the sultana pudding for dinner, dried fruit was a major item on the menu.

At Christmas time, it was even more so.

Christmas or plum pudding, with a hidden sixpence, was an indispensable part of every festive meal. Mince pies followed and a Christmas cake laden with cherries was the teatime objective of every child.

Dates and dried figs, with little wooden forks, covered the sideboard, with crystallised fruits and some nuts. It was a very Dickensian scene in most homes.

We handled about 40,000 tons of currants and sultanas, mostly from Greece and Turkey, but with some smaller quantities of these, and other items, from the Middle East.

The shipping season was short. The crop was dried and ready early in the Mediterranean autumn and it was needed, cleaned and ready, in the English shops and packers before early December.

The ships were loaded in the heat of the Peloponnese and Asia Minor before wending their way north to a dark and dank England.

When the hatches were opened, the smell was of warmer climes, orange oil and wine, lemon and herbs; an intoxicating and mixture mingling with the first English frosts.

We became busy. Very soon the quaysides and warehouses were slippery with the juice leaking from the 28lb cardboard boxes.

Our office became littered with samples, the windowsills stacked with the debris, the carpets studded with semi dried pieces from boots and shoes.

Dates found their way into the in-tray and the filing cabinets inexplicably stored dried apricots.

We worked long hard days. I took myself and my job very seriously, desperately pushing the cargo through a busy port onto lorry and railway.

If it was not delivered by the last week in November, it missed the Christmas market.

Suddenly, each year, the last of many vessels was unloaded and a few days later the last lorry would leave. The season was over.

And it was time to party!

And how we partied! It was a night at the Waldorf and dinner at the Savoy.

Dinner jacket and posh frock made their way to the annual jamboree. There were merchants and buyers, growers and inspectors, seamen and hauliers.

Armenians sat with Greek ship-owners and Turkish growers, Arab date merchants with Persian diplomats.  A little Jewish merchant beamed at everyone. There were South Africans, Australians and a Californian raisin producer.

All the people who had worked together, and sometimes in competition, to produce an English Christmas were there. Many, not even Christians.

The centrepiece was when the lights dimmed and the bagpiper entered leading the chef, bearing the largest Christmas pudding ablaze with brandy.

The assembled company rose applauding the traditional feast that they had provided.

One year, things went badly wrong, the season was nearly wrecked.

I got the blame.

It happened like this:

Britain’s now defunct Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food would make occasional checks on any foodstuffs from abroad.

From time to time they would find infestations of alien insects and would order the offending cargo to be fumigated.

We would receive a notice pushed through the office door from the inspector; we would phone the importer who had to pay for the stacking, sheeting and gassing, before the fruit could leave the port.

The importer would usually complain but half-heartedly. They knew that there was no appeal and that, despite the fact that the fruit would be washed; the Ministry instruction had to be obeyed.

I didn’t mind, we got a fee for arranging the fumigation. It was just an occasional task that needed attention.

The first sign of trouble brewing came in a phone call from the stevedore’s office.

The conversation went something like this.

“You will have to have a word with the Ministry, they are disturbing the men.”

I was not impressed. “Everything disturbs your men, especially the thought of work.”

“You won’t get the ship away, if this goes on.”

“Alright, what have the Ministry done?”

The voice was full of shock and indignation. “They have sent a woman inspector and she is wearing yellow trousers.”

Now this was serious. Britain’s seaports were a male preserve and yellow trousers were clearly a provocation.

“What do you expect her to wear in the hold, a skirt? If you want to complain, you talk to the Ministry!”

In the end, nobody talked to the Ministry and the inspector became a familiar and unremarkable sight on the quayside. She became known as the “Bugs Lady.”

She had kicked the first brick from a maritime wall of male supremacy and exclusivity.

With the passing of the years, I can’t recall what she looked like, but do remember the trousers which came in alternative bright colours.

The Bugs Lady was certainly politer than her male predecessor. There was no terse form pushed through the office door.

She always telephoned first, and then came to the office to explain exactly why she wanted a batch of fruit fumigated.

She would detail the extent of the infestation, the nature of the insect, sometimes producing either a dead specimen or an illustration from the “Ministry Guide to Insects Not Allowed.”

I can recall an earnest and very conscientious woman of roughly my own age. 

The trouble was that more and more fruit was being fumigated.

I assumed it was just a bad year for insects abandoning the Mediterranean for our colder climate.

The importers, traders and dealers were not so happy with their increased fumigation bills.

In fact, it was getting worse.

We overran the capacity of the fumigation company and the port to cope. Currants and sultanas awaiting fumigation filled every warehouse and corner. There was nowhere to put the cargo from incoming ships.

The port began to talk of refusing dried fruit ships.

This was a disaster; England was going to run out of dried fruit before Christmas.

An already overloaded system was about to break.

There would be no plum pudding this year, no minced pies, no Christmas fruit cake for children to dig out the coveted glacé cherries. The unthinkable was about to happen.

My office, feeling very much in the front line, began to panic and inexplicably seemed to have little patience with either myself or the Bugs Lady.

I could sense a strange atmosphere. There was whispering. 

Finally they cracked; a male colleague asked to see me in my office. It was all very peculiar; through the glass partition, I could see the rest of the staff giggling.

 He had the air of a spokesman for a deputation, which indeed he was.

“Something has got to be done about this fumigation!”

It had the air of an accusation.

“It’s not my fault.”

“But that’s just it, it is. If you did not encourage her….”

“But I don’t encourage her!”

He sighed, turning to look for support from his smirking colleagues.

“The Bugs Lady fancies you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

He sighed again.

“I’m surprised you did not notice. She rings first and asks for you by name. If you are in, she turns up complete with Fumigation Orders to discuss the matter. If you are away for the day, there are no problems and the cargo moves.” 

I was floored. “Are you sure?”

He nodded his head and indicating the support group, “we are all sure.”

“I don’t believe it. I have never heard such rubbish in all my life and will prove it. Next time she phones I will be out and we will see what happens.”

And that was what I did, on every occasion she rang; I went and hid in the dockside pub; definitely a no-go area for any lady.

There were no more Fumigation Orders, but the cold weather had arrived. 

But the story spread and changed, as such things do in small closed communities.

Happy Christmas from the man who saved Christmas by hiding in a pub.

- from Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.