The sweet life on the bakery floor

PAV’S PATCH: I’VE always known that a particular piece of music can transport you back, but until recently I never realised that a smell could.

As I waited at the lights near Ashton Police Station, the aroma of biscuits wafted into my car from nearby Hill’s and I was immediately reminded of the summer jobs I did at Park Cake between 1976 and 1980. The first thing that struck me there was the sweet, sugary smell. It was everywhere. I could even smell it in my sleep.

In an ideal world I think every student should have to spend a couple of months on a bakery floor. Talk about a reality check. If I had a quid for every worker who told me: “I don’t like students. I have to pay tax so that you can spend three years doing nothing.”

Being a student also meant tricks would be played on you. I knew they were tricks all along. But I was prepared to be ridiculed just to fit in.

The jobs. Ah, they were so glamorous and interesting. You might be asked to remove dirt from the cracks between tiles. However, the one I really disliked was mopping the deck. You’d spend an hour, get to the end, return to your foreman, and be told to start all over again . . . and again . . . and again.

But I loved the unpredictability. Michael from Belfast was Irish Mick. Thomas from Nigeria was Rock-on Tommy and Peter from Warsaw was Polish Pete. You can’t buy that sort of wit.

I loaded angel cake into ovens in Dowry Street, helped with the Swiss roll in Beehive, made custard in Marlborough and shoved cake through slicers in Hathershaw.

I even had a spell scraping Battenburg off tins — not to mention creating synthetic cream. It was the sultry summer of 1976 and the icing sugar turned to treacle as it mixed with the sweat on my face.

In 1980, Hathershaw still had old-fashioned ovens and I was sent to work on them. What a waste of time I proved to be. Red-hot tins of cake would be hurtled at me and I was supposed to catch them and put them on a rack.

About 2.30pm, I returned from a brew break and was told to go for another one. I came back 15 minutes later and was told to go home. “But it’s 3 o’clock,” I said. “I have another hour to do.” I was politely pushed towards the changing rooms.

I was holding the job up so badly that they were prepared to do anything to get rid of me.