Take Me to This Pensioner’s Palace Club
The Pensioner’s Palace Club has always existed. However, until the late seventies it had no official home. It met on Monday and Friday afternoons in the Parish Hall. For a brief period, during and after the War, the Parish Hall was required for the distribution of ration books. For several years the PPC met in exile in the Scout Hut. It was not ideal. The Scout Hut stank of little boys and mouldering tents. It was not as roomy as the Parish Hall and provided no permanent storage facilities so the refreshments committee had to lug the tea urn and crockery into the village every time the PPC met. Did the Pensioner’s complain? They most certainly did not. They had sons and grandsons serving abroad. They were happy enough to do their bit, though when rationing ended and the PPC were invited to return to the Parish Hall they were so delighted to be back in a spacious and reasonably fragrant room, they threw the tea dance to end all tea dances to mark the occasion.
In 1978 two stalwart PPC members passed away. Dorothy Daniels left a substantial chunk of her life savings to the club. Emeline Allison was even more generous. Her will expressly stated that her money-grabbing nieces and nephews wouldn’t see a penny of her substantial estate. She left over a million pounds sterling to the Pensioner’s Palace Club. With the club funds now approaching the two million mark, the committee decided to purchase a permanent building in which to meet. The possibility of another War could never be completely ruled out and they did not want to find themselves homeless again.
Some land was purchased. Plans were drawn up. Ernie Cavendish had a granddaughter who was married to an architect. The PPC paid this young buck through the nose to design the grandest Pensioner’s Club in England; a palace, befitting the PPC. Their clubhouse included chandeliers and polished wood floors, marble pillars and an indoor fountain, a staircase similar to the Titanic’s and enormous sculptures of each of the twelve committee members arranged around a central courtyard. The building sprung up almost overnight. It was situated between the Primary School and the petrol garage, across the road from the Spar. It did not sit well with the general ambience of the village, which was middle-England moderate. It looked better suited to a Vegas night strip. The pensioners were secretly pleased. After so long being resolutely ignored, shuttled from pillar to post at the village’s whim, it was nice to be noticed, nice to be talked about, nice to meet in a proper palace rather than the Parish hall.
In the early part of the 1980s, the members of the Pensioner’s Palace Club began to lose the run of themselves. It was no longer enough to host genteel tea dances and bingo sessions every Friday afternoon. They were too good for bourbon cremes and watery cups of lukewarm tea. Neither did they wish to arrive and depart by public transport, utilising their free bus passes. The PPC met in an absolute palace; the nicest building for miles. Surely this entitled them to royal treatment. They wanted to feel like Kings and Queens.
The PPC programme of activities for 1983 reflected their new and somewhat hedonistic outlook. A chauffeured Bentley now transported each PPC member between the clubhouse and their front door. There were scheduled performances by all the big stars. Tom Jones. Cliff Richards. Little and Large. And a Great Gatsby themed party on Halloween night. Out went the tea urn and in came a champagne and oyster bar. The TV room became a hundred seater cinema screen. A jacuzzi was installed on the upper terrace and a moving walkway between the door and the main hall for those members who, for any reason, preferred not to walk the length of themselves. The Pensioner’s Palace Club was not just the swankiest Senior Citizen’s club in the county, it was the swankiest club outside of London. Young people actually wished they were older, so they could apply for membership.
Inevitably it did not last. Those few PPC members who survived the excesses of their new lifestyle soon realised how quickly two million could go. By New Year’s Eve of 1984 there was nothing left in the Club’s coffers. They were forced to sell the oyster bar and the jacuzzi and the chandeliers and eventually the building itself which went to a young entrepreneur who had visions of turning it into a bijoux hotel. In the end it became a nursing home. The decision made itself. The building was perfectly designed for old people; everything was wide and stairless and accessible. The PPC had enough left over after expenses to buy a new tea urn and a catering-sized packed of chocolate bourbons. They went cap in hand back to the rector and asked for the use of the Parish Hall. The Parish Hall was eventually granted, with a number of new, additional stipulations. No alcohol. No drugs. No strippers. During their brief period in exile, the PPC had developed quite the reputation. It would take them several years of bingo and propriety to live this reputation down.
Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1973 novel, Postern of Fate