I was reminiscing the other day about something that happened back in my bingo calling career. I used to work for Top Rank and at one point the whole company launched a new uniform as part of a complete rebrand. Now, the old uniforms were fairly rank (no pun intended) and consisted of a bright blue pair of nylon trousers with a bright yellow stripe down the leg. These fetching kecks were complimented by a yellow and white striped shirt. To say they were uncomfortable is an understatement, they made you sweat like a pig and glowed in the dark from all the static electricity in them!
Needless to say, we were all really excited when the new uniforms came in. I think it was about 1991(ish), we were thrilled to get out of those horrid yellow and blue atrocities. To be fair the new uniforms weren’t that much better either and still made the same horrid, cheap material as the previous ones, just a little softer. The colours were a little less garish too, greys and blues were the order of the day. But still, after a night running round the bingo hall giving change, you’d find yourself wet through with sweat once more. That’s probably already too much information for you but the reason I bought this story, was because I was thinking about where the old uniforms ended up.
Now, Top Rank being a caring kind of company decided that all those old uniforms we had handed back, were to be recycled and sent somewhere else. They decided that they were going to send the uniforms out to the poor in Africa. What the Africans had done to deserve such a thing I can only guess at. Ever since the event, the thought of those poor people running around with their bright blue and yellow clothes on has brought a smile to my face, bless ’em.
You’ll be pleased to hear that the clothes were washed and pressed before they were sent out, so all that sweat didn’t go out there with them. However, I can see all those people wearing all those old Top Rank uniforms, melting in the sun as the rays beat down on the nylon nightmares we’d once worn around the hall. I sometimes wonder what happened to my uniform, who got hold of it, how long did it last them? More importantly did they not get heatstroke whilst wearing them?
I imagined cargo planes parachuting the parcels of bright blue and yellow uniforms into the water-parched deserts of the continent, clambered over by hordes of unclothed, poor African men and women. On tearing the parcels apart and seeing the state of the clothes within, they collectively rattled their fists at the skies, asking for them to be taken away again and replaced with something more fitting.
If you were in one of these lucky areas of Africa at the time, and saw hordes of people wandering around in cut-off bright blue shorts with yellow stripes, and were wondering why, well, now you know…
