Monson Road Laundry

A Memory of Redhill.

From 1964 to 1968 I worked many of my school holidays at the laundry in Monson Road. I earned 2 shillings an hour at first, but by 1968 was making four bob. It was hard work. We dealt with those endless roller towels that they used to have in all kinds of workplaces: hairdressers, fish and chip shops, public toilets, London Airport, and a small amount of household laundry. It was mostly a female workforce with a male manager, Arthur, a couple of lads on the heavier jobs, and one public scholboy (me) doing a variety of monotonous jobs. Later on they took on two or three other schoolboys in the holidays. We had a part-time woman, Kitty, aged about 70, who smoked a clay pipe. Now that was something for a 14-year-old boy to see. There was a shop next door, Mrs Geal's, where you could buy pop, cakes and fruit. Cream horns wre ninepence, ditto peaches.... I have a lot of memories of this place, but will save them for another time. I'm planning to put them into a book I'm writing. I went to look for the old place a few years ago and found no trace of the laundry or the shop, just a pair of not-very-appealing semis - built in the 1970s by the look of them. On reflection, and having had over forty jobs before I became a full-time writer (20 years ago), I'd say it was one of the hardest jobs I ever had.

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