Читать книгу The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries - Tom Cutler, Tom Cutler - Страница 28

The mystery

During the early part of the 20th century, when people had less money to throw around than they do now, manufacturing firms, especially in the industrial north of England, used to organise works outings for their employees. They would send their grateful staff to seaside resorts or other out-of-town destinations to blow the cotton fluff out of their hair and the coal dust out of their lungs.

In the earliest days workers were ferried to Blackpool and other exotic destinations in charabancs. The strange name of these vehicles comes from the French char-à-bancs, meaning, ‘carriage with seats’, and your typical charabanc was an open-topped horse-drawn contraption that over time gave way to the modern motor coach, with two decks, toilets, tinted windows, air conditioning, entertainment facilities, vast luggage capacity and fat driver.

The first charabanc in Britain was presented to Queen Victoria by Louis Philippe of France and is today kept in the Royal Mews. Just the sort of present every queen needs. It is part of history now, and the word itself is seldom heard any more, though some older people still refer to modern coaches as ‘charabancs’.

Works outings are a thing of the past too. Nowadays, tradesmen such as plumbers and painters seem quite flush with the old wonga, unfurling great curled wads of the stuff in the pub on a Saturday night, or flying off to Crete, Cuba and Thailand for what are now called ‘breaks’. Many of them also seem to have second homes in Malaga or Florida, and zoom around town in flash cars and dark glasses, iPhones clapped to their ears. Am I straying into the land of caricature here?