It was an old camp, built in the years immediately following the War, an unkempt, gerry-built, sprawling, dispiriting kind of place. Tower Hamlets-sur-mer. Toxteth-by-the-sea. Accommodation was in low-rise tenements with flooded landings, and weather-warped, candy-coloured doors. With steep cliffs on one side and high, barbed-wire-topped fences on the other three, there was little chance of unauthorised persons gaining entry. In fact, and hardly surprising given the conditions, traffic was very much the other way. As soon as they had been eliminated from the tournament, the tendency was for players to sling their keys into the concrete hangar marked 'Reception', and make an immediate escape.
Those remaining hung around the games hall, whether they were competing or just killing time between matches, because it was the only refuge from the cold. It was a huge area, as wide and as high as one level of multi-storey car park, and as about as inviting. It was heated by roaring electric braziers the size of crematoria, and kept to human proportions by sets of heavy black-out drapes. Behind one set was a bowling alley and a television; behind another was a television and a video featuring non-stop Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris, or a small stage featuring musical cabaret, depending on the time of day.
The only real activity occurred at 1:00 and again at 5:30 when there was a stampede for the stairs leading down to the canteen. There, local girls with chilblained legs and plastic hairnets dispensed bread and marge, brown sauce in plastic sachets, and gluey soup and lumpy custard from big aluminium jugs. Twenty-year-old Christmas decorations had been strung up to take the chill off the slabs of icy Formica.
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