A LONELY JOB

Northern Advocate, 12 June 1926, Page 3

A LONELY JOB

300 EMPTY BEDROOMS. CARETAKER >S SECLUSION. For three years Tom Long has been the loneliest man lu London. Ho has been the caretaker and sole occupant of the first Avenue Hotel, in Holburn, all the time it has been closed. It has lately been refurnished for rc-oponing, ‘‘My only companion,” ho told an interviewer, ‘‘was my dog Jack, a mongrel, but a. good ’un. What I should have done without him I do not know. “Wo have 300 bedrooms in the hotel, and I had charge of the lot. My own room was furnished with a bed, a chair and table. Sometimes I had my meals there, and sometimes off a shelf. It was a queer life. I used to go for a constitutional down the corridors and up and down the stairs. For a change, I would go in the big lounge and the billiard room. I have walked round and round the place and listened to the echoes. There was nothing else to listen to.” Tom is a short man with a dapper air, and has been in the service of the hotel for twenty years. Except on days off, to go and see his family, he has been practically an exile, although in one of the busiest parts of London. ‘‘l have often wondered what he did with himself all the time,” said an old waiter friend who has. been thirty-four years in the same service. ‘‘Sometimes when he was a bit more than usually fed-up, he used to go and play ‘Home, Sweet Home’ on the grand piano, and then ho would go upstairs to bed. If only there had been a ghost in the place, that he and Jack could have chased about, they could have had a bit of sport, but the hotel was built in ISS2, and ghosts never came there. ‘‘All the time he never had a fire, nor a cat-burglar, nor an accident. The only caller was about two years ago, when somebody knocked at the door. But he wont away again before Tom could get down the second flight of stairs. ’ ’