A new story from Ray in Australia!

 Many thanks to Ray Morris for another one of his memorable stories from the days he worked in Lloret and Tossa de Mar. Ray is now living in Australia but it seems that his days of working in Spain are never far from his mind! ……..

I spent several hours watching footage of Tossa and Lloret on You Tube and it left me feeling like I had actually travelled there.    In the footage of Lloret it looked like they had demolished most of the buildings and built a new town on the site.   I got a kick out of seeing the old town hall building where I spent two hours in the jail looking out the window at people frolicing on the beach.   Otherwise it was a large bustling city that I had never seen before.

Tossa was a different story where I recognized many places from 55 years ago.   I saw the bar/nightclub where I had worked as a barman in 1962 fronting onto the beach and recognizable by its distinctive round top windows on the upper floor.   It is no longer named "Chez Biel".   Several doors down was the Bar Corisco which used to be named "Bar Coris" back in the old days.   The Hotel Ramira is still there but I could not find the Hotel Reymar among the cluster of new waterfront buildings at the north end of the main beach.   The garage and petrol station owned by the uncle of a friend had been replaced by a shop.   I was favourably impressed by how they had turned the rock filled Codolar beach into a nice place to go and I got a good lock at the Rocamar building where I worked as a drink waiter in 1963.   The beach was so crowded and there were lots and lots of anchored boats that did not exist back in the 1960s.   I saw no evidence of the Cruceros and Escursiones passenger boats that used to be the main form of transport between Lloret, Tossa and San Feliu.   Back then the winding dirt road between Lloret and Tossa was a slow bumpy trip.   

I am now aged 88 so I would be unlikely to find anybody that I used to know in Tossa if I were to visit Spain after the COVID thing is over.   The YouTube footage brought back so many memories of Tossa.

May you leave COVID behind and resume a normal life Jacqui.

Hammy’s photos

 Thanks to Hammy for letting me publish his photos which he came across while sorting through his brother Ian’s apartment. For those of you that haven’t heard Ian has sadly died recently after suffering an illness for a few years…RIP Ian 

Back to the 1990s with Richie

Many thanks to Richie for sending these fantastic photos for the blog. 

 

Richie’s pics from the Sportsman

 Many thanks to Richie for sending this great selection of photos featuring the Sportsman back in 1988/89.

A story from Ray Morris

This morning  I’ve received another story from Ray Morris who lives in Australia, he used to work in Lloret and Tossa de Mar back in the 60s! This story tells about is from his time in Tossa....Many thanks to Ray! 

In 1962 whilst working as a barman in the beach-front bar  named “Chez Biel” at Tossa de Mar I was known to the locals as “el Australiano”.   That year the only other foreigners working in Tossa were the Englishmen Tony Batey and Eric Richards and the American Chuck ….who jointly ran the Club Internacional inside the fortification walls.   The white two-storey building that was “Chez Biel” still stands on the corner of Calle Mar and the beachfront building with its distinctive rounded windows on the upper floor remains today but its side entrance and the entrance to the cellar are now covered by a postcard stall named Carte d'or opposite a restaurant named Es Congre.

 

San Miguel was the most popular beer at the time and Estrella Dorada and Moritz were available.   One afternoon a drink waiter took several bottles of San Miguel out to customers on the terrace, preparing to open and pour the beer but just in time he noticed that there was a dead lizard in one of the San Miguel bottles and he concealed this from the customers.   The staff marvelled at the large lizard in the bottle with its mouth open revealing its teeth.   The following morning when the San Miguel delivery man came you never saw a beer bottle disappear so fast.    I switched to drinking Estrella Dorada for a week or two before returning to San Miguel.

Photos from Eileen

Today we have a couple of photos from Eileen...from when they had the Laurel & Hardy.

What a shame we don’t see crowds like that these days!

Today we have a couple of photos from Eileen...from when they had the Laurel & Hardy. 

What a shame we don’t see crowds like that these days!

Rays story from Tossa de Mar 62’

Many thanks to Ray for sending us a story from when he was working in Tossa de Mar. Ray has also worked in Lloret and has sent many photos and stories from his time here!

Tossa de Mar 1962, 1963

Having arrived in England on the S.S. Iberia on the final day of 1961 I lived in Winchester and formed a friendship with a Spaniard man named Miguel Collell.   I accompanied him to Tossa in May 1962 and he persuaded a bar owner to give me a week’s trial without pay as a barman.   I got the job and worked there until the end of the summer tourist season in early October.   So for about six months I worked as a barman at Chez Biel fronting onto the beach at Tossa owned by Senor Emelio Alberti.   Each evening it became a night club with live music and dancing but during the day people came in from the beach for refreshments.   My working hours seven days per week were 8 a.m. to midnight with a two hour lunch break and a one hour supper break totaling 13 hours per day and 91 hours per week.   The pay was reasonable and I got tips.

We had two incidents that year when a customer refused to leave when told to.   An Italian trying to pick up a girl one the dance floor refused to buy the obligatory one drink so they stopped the music and the guitar player was trying unsuccessful to push the man out the door and down a few steps to Carrer Mar.   I climbed over the bar and went to push the man out the door but while I was doing that a waiter threw an almost empty gin bottle and bounced off my head.   It didn’t interrupted what I was doing but there was some bleeding.    On another occasion the boss was trying to push a man out the same door but the man was hanging onto both doorposts.   I grabbed him behind both knees and heaved upward.   To my horror I saw the man upside down in the air outside the door and just beyond the steps were Carte d’or now exists.    He landed in the gravel unhurt but he did not attempt to come back in.   I am only 166 cm tall and I never would have got away with that stuff in England where men tend to be bigger.

I recently looked up Google Earth street view and saw that big changes had occurred in that area.   The two storey building with large round topped windows on the upper floor is at the corner of Carrer Mar and a promenade line with leafy trees.   A new building on the southern corner now houses  El Congre restaurant.    I see that a small postcard shop named Carte d’or has been built on what used to be a small piece of land where we stored the empty bottles in 1962 and there was a side entrance to Chez Biel that is now blocked by Carte d’or.   When I returned to Tossa in 1963 I was shown a large cellar built beneath the Chez Biel bar and the empty bottles were no longer stored outside.   I lined up a job at Chez Biel in 196 but was persuaded to go and work in a newly opened English pub named the Captains Arms in Lloret de Mar run by Tony Batey and Eric Richards instead.

In 1963 I worked at the newly opened El Rocamar in Tossa through August and September.   The stone building had been built for Londoner Arthur Rubens and his wife and 15 year old daughter whose name I forget.   They had been led to believe that some Spanish ownership was a requirement so they took a man named Julian as their silent partner.   Later on they found that there was not requirement for part Spanish ownership and I think they bought out Julian at the end of 1963.

The stone building had three floors.   In the ground floor there was a bodega and living quarters for Julian’s family.   The next floor contain a dance floor and a bar and there was an open balcony area.   The top floor contained the living quarters for the Rubens family.    Arthur had got workmen to install a stone base with a spotlight lighting up the nearby tower on the fortifications but the town council had made him remove the spotlight.   They had a light  reflecting globe above the dance floor and they used to play a lot of Beatles music.   I was a drink waiter, not a barman.