The Reminiscences of an Old Nobody

 

 Chapter One    The first 5 Years.

 I  was born on the 3rd of February 1928, weighing in at 11lb 8 oz!   I remember it well, suddenly and forcefully  being ejected down a dark slippery  tunnel from my  warm, cosy and buoyant environment .  I soon became hungry and latched onto the first thing I could find, at least it was sustenance.  After a while I became aware of  colours and shapes and that if I made  a yelling noise food appeared.  This was ok for a while,  but I soon got bored with the liquid diet; unlike today  when I enjoy it.  I wanted something more substantial and was fed some vile gruel,  eventually becoming more solid in its content. What happened after I'd eaten  the food I leave to your imagination.

                Months passed and I found that I could move around under my own steam albeit on all fours,  this was great as it annoyed all those around me.   I Soon found that  I could stand up and pull the tablecloth, so things rattled or fell,  this resulted in being  given a hefty smack. Life wasn't so great after all.   Not keen on this,  I learned to toddle and later to actually walk. Next, came the painful experience of growing  some teeth g,radually  this became less painful and I was able to eat really solid grub at last. My spoon and pusher were  replaced with a knife and fork.

                 Over two  years old now and still growing.   I was able to investigate further afield and unaided.  Life improved when I'd  ditched the nappies  (no Pampers  then).  Mum took me to a place where a man sat me in a huge chair and commenced to remove my lovely curls.  By now I had learned how to have a tantrum and exploited it when I could. This was sometimes counterproductive as it resulted in more smacks being administered.  Mumps and Whooping Cough and Measles came next.    

  At the age of 5 we moved into an upstairs flat, a few streets away that originally had 2 bedrooms , but a stud partition had been removed making for a large sitting room, we didn't have 'lounges'  in those days.  My iron  bed with brass knobs was placed up against a side wall  The sitting room was only used on high-days and at Christmas.   There was one room where we 'lived' and ate.  It had a solitary 5 amp 2 pin plug with a 3 way adapter!  The fire was of  cast iron with an oven to the side  Bath-time in the tin bath was on a Sunday morning in front of the fireDad first  Mum next  and last me.   I was packed off to Sunday School in the afternoon,  can't think why!  The wireless was a GEC  and later a Bush push- button affair. the only other room was the  scullery with an old grey gas stove, a brick built copper  and mangle. A flight of stairs led to the garden. The" loo" was outside  and down the 16 stairs, and was shared with the family below.  The garden was long and narrow and  was divided by a central  path. Our garden was on one side and the folk downstairs had the other side, they  had  a lovely white Lilac tree.  Today I marvel at the tolerance everyone had towards each other,  unlike today. Dad grew flowers, we had a tiny lawn and at the far end was his shed where I was never allowed to enter  He mended our shoes with pieces of leather from a shoe repairer, they were soaked overnight in water,  cut it to shape and nailed to the shoe fitted on a shoe last and then he  'blacked'  the repair.    I began to think life wasn't so bad after all and that proved to be a big mistake.......

   Chapter Two      Five to Eleven

                          

                           Me 1933 At my Mother's Parents home in Bourneville

     .........and here's why, One day  I was taken to this huge brick edifice and presented to a seemingly old and grotesque female whom I was later to find was going to teach me things.  I can't remember much at this stage now  but I do recall  playing with some vile grey  Plasticine  which had loads of hairs and bits  sticking to it on a tin tray.   We also had free milk and in the afternoon  a nap on the canvas beds.  At one time I developed a rather large and painful "boil" on the back of my neck, so my sadistically minded Mother shoved hot poultices on it a and squeezed it until it broke it  was the liberally covered with "basilica" ointment. Heaven knows what that was!  Occasionally  Mum would take me to the 'rec ' at the top of our street where a chap known as Uncle Rex would devise games and keep us amused.       

                      

                                                     Me  1936    Aged 8

 One afternoon while there a large zeppelin passed overhead. Soon I was learning my 2 times tables, the alphabet   and how to write,  this was when I found that I was different to others simply  because I was left-handed.  As the days passed  I was introduced  to a man with this thing round his neck with a cold pad on the end of a tube which he stuck on my chest and said "breathe in" as he  thumped me on my chest and back.   Next on the torture trail came the School Dentist.  He had this foot operated treadle machine which had a flexible cable with bits on the end and made a horrid humming noise.  I was treated to my first 'jab'. I can't recall what he did afterwards  with this evil device but it still hurt so I soon settled his hash with a few hefty kicks at his shins.  I also recall some lady with a metal comb the size of a garden rake scraping and pulling at my hair.  Apparently she was looking for "nits",  whatever they were.  I did offer her some caterpillars  from the matchbox in my pocket  and this  resulted in me receiving yet another clout from  my Mum.  Some of the other kids were walking around with this hideous violet paint (Gentian Violet) on their heads.  I was disappointed that I didn't get the same treatment!  In today's vernacular I thought they were 'real cool'   Time was passing and I was still growing. I could now read and write quite well, I liked drawing.  I would read the "Just William"  books by Richmal Crompton. Christmas came as a pleasant occasion, I hung my sock up to find it filled with orange apple nuts and sweets. I had presents as well , toy soldiers, Meccano,  a clock work Hornby  train and things like that for a boy. 

                  

                                          Me and Friend 1937 At Gt. Yarmouth

        I made some friends and being a normal kid on the block got into a few battles.   We had street 'gangs' and one of our favourites japes  was to tie the knockers on adjacent front doors, knock on one and scarper quick. The houses were all terraced and had no garages, no one owned a car in our street.  We would play 'marbles'  in the gutter trying to avoid the horse dung and pee. Another pastime involved stacking cigarette cards against a wall and flicking at them with more cards, winners added to their album collections this way.  Playing Doctors and Nursed could be interesting!   Street lighting in those days was mainly by  gas and below the glass mantle was a protruding  iron bar for the lamplighter man to rest his ladder.  This was great fun, climbing up the post and swinging upside down from the bar by our knees or throwing a rope over it and swinging round it  like a maypole.  Occasionally we would get caught by a 'copper' on his beat - yes they did that in those halcyon days.  It was either a clip round the ears or being dragged back home and presented to my Mum, receiving yet another box round the ears.  Dad kept a "Wiil Hay" style cane by his chair and occasionally used it.If you can remember him you must be getting on as well.   Life could be hard on us  kids at times. I think his  war wound and the gas affected him in a number of ways.  He never played with me or took me anywhere except sometimes on a Sunday for a walk that ended at "The Greyhound"  pub!.  I did get a lemonade and a packet of crisps.  I stood outside and under an entrance porch along with the parked dogs.  Parents just had to be tolerated, and so it went on.  I was soon to be 11 years old  and about to leave my Primary School which in retrospect wasn't such a bad time after all.   I took my first Examination to determine just how clever I was.  I wasn't clever enough to go to a posh Grammar School, but got into the Central School for Boys by

        My Dad was a  milkman  pushing a barrow loaded with churns, eggs and butter in a wicker basket.   Mum used to do a bit of 'charring' to supplement his meagre income. He was wounded and gassed  in the Great War; so as I grew older  I would help him push the barrow and serve a few customers.  My reward was to get the odd penny tip from customers and at Christmas I could save enough for pocket money for  our annual weeks holiday in a boarding house in Great Yarmouth.

                 I was now 11 and it was July 1939 and I was about to go on my first holiday away from my parents with  the School Journey to Sandown on the Isle of Wight. We stayed at a posh hotel called  The" Sandringham  Hotel" on the promenade.   They threatened to send  us all home if we didn't behave ourselves after sliding down the hotel banisters.  Poor old John Tillman fell down on Boniface Hill and broke his ankle.  I had acquired my first girl friend  Pat, and it was fun to sneak my arm round her waist when the teacher was not looking.  Was this the beginning of the end of my being an only child innocence?

           

             My School Uniform  worn for a few weeks only  War was Declared.

        A few weeks after our return from the Isle of Wight and having started  life at my new school  -   WW11  was Declared in that September.   I had been at my New School for just those few weeks and was settling in to some real learning.  I had a brand new uniform, red blazer, grey short trousers grey socks with red stripes and a red cap, sports shirt and shorts,  oh, and football boots too,  hefty great things with leather studs and hardened toecaps.   After school finished  I would be out on my roller skates, we even have a hockey team of sorts. Our pitch was a stretch of smooth asphalted road at the bottom of the street by the wharves that lined the River Thames.  After the game we would wait for a lorry to emerge from the wharf and hang onto its tail gate until it got to the main road.  Homework  was done after tea, I got no help there from my parents unfortunately, so  it was a real chore. I had a paper round as well to give me some extra pocket money.

              The school was evacuated to the country but I wasn't;  so for me  there was no schooling for a couple of years. We had a Morrison Shelter that took the place of the table, and Dads decision was "If one  goes we all go"

                 I went to a house in Brook Green to collect papers thatwere supposed to be lessons. This didn't work so was forgotten.

The younger men teachers were in the Services or doingsomething else.  Some of the old ones returned when school reopened.

CHAPTER THREE     The Teenage Years

                 In 1941 my old school reopened as a co-ed  with mostly women teachers. It was here I met my eventual  wife to be  when we all went  carol singing for the Aid to Russia Fund.   I was taught Shorthand and Typing, at which I was quite good. Used to have"Pitmans Office Training" each week, it cost 2d.  I hated book-keeping though.  I enjoyed Science lessons and quickly learned the art of making stink-bombs.      

         

                                            My Dad with his barrow on his milk round 1939

           At this time I w   as still able to help my Dad on his rounds before school  and the barrow had since  been replaced with a horse and cart.  In 1943 and after a day having helped him on his round which included the Craven Cottage FulhamFootball Club Iknew all the players and had their autographs. Ronnie Rooke at that time Captain  lived just 200 yards from  the ground he was a customer.       Right next door was a riverside Wharf and in one of the buildings we delivered to was a Laboratory belonging to Geo. Wimpey and Co.   The smell of chemicals  was so powerful that I later applied for a job there and got it as a Lab. Asst..  I can still smell the aroma of Trichlorethylene  and Toluene. If  the 'trichlor got over heated you had a problem, there were no fume chambers in those early days.  There was an old  chemist by the name on Mr.  Inman who dressed like a late Victorian and who kindly  took me under his wing. Shortly afterwards we opened a new Lab. in Southall which had controlled humidity,  modern at that time  balances and a large electric hydraulic press to crush 6 " concrete cubes, the old one was manual with a hefty lever to supply the pressure.  I worked with Asphalt, I would do a full chemical analysis of the cement content analysing the components to ensure they were up to spec. ,also distillation of Tar and Bitumen , viscosity tests with a Redwood Viscometer. After a couple of years I had a portable lab in Norfolk for work on the A11 and lived in digs 5 days then home for week-ends. Some of the lodgings were pretty grotty but others like the "Bull" in Newmarket or the "Bell" in Thetford were very good.    I eventually attended night-school at the Chelsea Poly  studying Chemistry, Physics, Maths and English for  the Matriculation Exam. 

                                My  girlfriend had got her first  job as a  secretary in Mayfair with a Haute Couturiers. and  before my being called up for the forces we used to go to the railway bridge at Putney  or sit on a bench in Parsons Green  watching the searchlights and shell bursts. I collected a load of shrapnel from oil bombs, incendiaries, HE's and shells.  We didn't see the dangers in those days, we just wanted to be together. 

       One Saturday when helping Dad we were fired on by a low flying German fighter plane, I was crouched under a porch and Dad stood by the horse's head to calm him.  On another occasion I  was going down the back stairs to the garden to see what the noise was about which stopped when halfway down the stairs and had just opened the door when a huge ball of light and fire lit the sky that  was followed by  a terrific bang. It was a "doodle-bug" that had landed in the river at the bottom of the street sending up a high spray of water.  We had chunks of gravestones from the nearby cemetery through the front door and an incendiary bomb in the roof next door As with most couples we had our rows and separated a few  times.  I knew a girl  from our school  who was now a junior producer at the BBC and she lived a couple of streets away from my real one.  At times I would to take a girl actress, also from our school who had a part  at the Wimbledon Theatre production of "The Country Girl"  home on the underground, she was still wearing her  stage make-up .  Anyway the  pull of my real girlfriend always drew me back,  I would sit on my bike a few yards away from her home. Sometimes I could see the curtains move slightly.      Once we had cycled to Wimbledon Common and showing off  I climbed a tree,  only  to tear my trousers right down on a twig sticking out and cut my leg.        

           I was exempted from the Services for 1 year whilst studying and  got called up in 1946 for the Army.  I didn't fancy that so tried for the RN, this was full  and  it left the RAF as a last result.  

                    

                                  Day out to Bournmouth from Yatesbury 1947

        So  I  became a "Brillcream  bMy life in the RAF started in 1946 at West Derby for 12 weeks initial training and loads of "bull".  It was during my first leave that we got engaged.   I then went on to RAF School Yatesbury  Number 2 Wing for another  12 weeks  course on Basic Radio training, passing on from there to RAF Cranwell for a further 12 weeks  and passing out as a Wireless Fitter.     I had always liked playing around with bits and pieces and built my first crystal set.  I still have that crystal in its little tin box.  I was given an old German Carbon microphone to play with. It needed a good bashing every now and then to shake up the carbon granules.  Eventually I could make a battery TRF Valve radio with an 120 v HT and a 9v GB

 

                              1948 Mum Dad and Fiancee in the back garden

           I was then posted to RAF Scorton  in Yorkshire for a few weeks in 1947 to await my overseas posting. This station was at one  time a  maintenance unit but now consisted of around 150 personnel and a load of redundant bombs and flares  I landed up helping out  in the Guardroom ; and what a joke that was, all the station keys were kept there and the cookhouse kitchen was next door. We had huge fry ups of liver and bacon cooked on the old heater in the guardroom while listening to the AEF radio music.  My  leave over and I was  off to  Germany, posted in early 1948 to RAF Wunstorf near Hannover to a new unit No. 4 GCA (Ground Control Approach).  I was now a Wireless Fitter and it carried a  good pay rise.   It was soon after I had arrived there that the Cold War began and Wunstorf was one of the three main stations  feeding into Berlin.    To see the full extent of my time there please check out my  Photoblog    http://www.myfinepix.fr/blog/1798/398880  "The Berlin Airlift" .

CHAPTER FOUR      Return to Civvy Street and a new beginning

             

                              Engaged - Us 1949 in back garden of my home

 

                        In 1949 I was demobbed and we were  married a few  weeks later in February.  I wore my demob suit!  Our first daughter (now a Grand Mother herself) was born the following February  in our one tiny kitchen and bedroom her parent's house by gas light with the aid of a very kind mid-wife  another daughter was born 7 years (also now a Grand Mother) later after a previous miscarriage.

  My job in the Lab had been taken over by youngsters now,  so I got a job selling Kleenezee Brushes. That lasted about 8 weeks, so off to the Labour Exchange.  I got work as a composition pressman in a specialised architectural  restoration company.  I was making pressings of composition  casts from very old wood moulds. In all there were over 5 thousand moulds all beautifully carved in reverse, an astounding skill.  I was later to get promoted to a  'compo  mounter'.  As you can probably guess this meant that I mounted the casts onto a  variety of surfaces, and with a rise in pay of 2d per hour!   I  have worked at St. James's Palace, The "Penthouse Suite" at the Dorchester  Hotel designed my Oliver Messel.  On the ceiling of the Old Vic Theatre, Shell Mex House,  Osterley Manor and The Royal Hotel in Bournemouth This was  all  restoration of damage caused by the war. I also took up studies again with  The British Institute of Technology  which was a correspondence course.

                     

                                     Bognor with elder daughter   1954

 

              After 5 years I got a new job as a trainee  radio engineer with a private retail business selling radios, TV's and Domestic goods sales manager and buyer. A few months later I was offered the  flat over one of the showrooms. We were now  able to move out of our two rooms. I stayed there for 17 years working up to Shop Manager and Buyer     My employer later became overly greedy,  having moved from Putney to Chertsey and then to  Paracombe  on the north coast of Devon, it was a lovely place looking out to sea, and later sold on his death to Elkie Brookes.  He had earlier become indifferent to the changes taking place in the industry and refused to acknowledge the growth in rental sales during the mid-late  fifties  boom years with colour television,  FM Radio and Transistors and visited once a year for Audit.

                       

                               Our 2 daughters  again at Bognor  1957

 In 1970 I resigned, and got a job in a major Computer Company  as an Administrator and was offered a house in a new town, I then got promotion to Office and General Services Manager, flew out to Monte Carlo with a group of around 100 with Sir  Freddie Laker and Lord Orr Ewing for a presentation of  the  new Xerox  3600 Photocopier.  With so many technical programming personnel and around 25 typists, I arranged to install  a new system  known as Nymatic, that basically was a multichannel audio recorder whereby data could be sent to it and a typist would then type it up.  This increased the work-flow considerably.

 I left  this position after a break-down through stress due to the severe cut back imposed  in my budget in 1972. I was purchasing all non-technical  goods and furniture for one thousand staff after organizing their relocation from 3 other buildings into this 10 storey new building.This was accomplished in stages over 3 week-ends. The staff leaving their posts on a Friday and taking up their now positions in the new building the following Monday.   In addition to this I was constantly pressured by the top management to buy office furniture from a subsidiary  of the Company, but their prices were way beyond my Budget, which had already been cut to £500,000.  I also had responsibility for the 2 Staff Restaurants.  On one occasion there was a Bomb Alert, all staff were evacuted to the main car park whilst 2 top managers and myself  went through the entire computer hall building trying to find a device, fortunately we were unsuccessful. There were 7 Conference rooms for technical meetings and a Theatre seating 400 for major issues.

So back to the Exchange where  I landed up as a Postman. The following 5 years were the most lucrative.  I would take extra 'walks' as overtime after my own walk was done  and in the afternoons worked  on repairing and maintaining the50 odd  PO bikes. My wife worked  for the Civil Service.  I next  got work for a year as a Post Office Store-man  driving a fork-lift truck and later as a BT Technician working on the Internal Construction of Telephone Exchange. s We were able to  pay off our Mortgage quickly,       Changes were being made and the old  "Strowger"  equipment was made redundant and replaced with System X.   My last job before retiring at 56 from BT was on  RATES Random Access Test Equipment  Services.  

            It was now time for another move so we bought the oldest cottage in a hamlet on the Dorset Coast and stayed there 4 years, I had work as maintenance manager on a Caravan and Camping Site by the beach and enjoyed every minute there; and the pub was just 100 yards away. A neighbour had a small dinghy and outboard and we would go out off the Chesil Bank to fish. A rather large eel took a bite at my boots before being despatched with the priest. I would also go deep sea with a great old sea-salt Jack Lewis in his boat the Tia Maria.  Whilst there we experienced the worst blizzards for decades and were cut off for over a week.   4 years on and we moved again this time to the South Hams in Devon.  This time a  bungalow near the sea. and my next door neighbour had a 30 boat and we fished the coast around Salcombe  We stayed there  for about 4 years during which time I worked in a small business in Kingsbridge repairing  communications equipment between the transporters and the planes for Heath Row.  We eventually moved back to Dorset to be close to our younger  daughter who had  given birth to a son  with Downes Syndrome.   He is now a great lad and joins in everything.    

From then on we just became part of the modern scene.  Now in our mid 80's, we have the  2 daughters, 8 grandchildren and 4 great grand children of which 2 are twinsand another due in May 2012 

             I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into our lives all those years ago and

 Thanks for taking the time to read it.

Here's a recent  update to nowadays  2011

                      Wife and I with the Great Grand Daoughter Twins  2011

                  Thinking of sueing for GBH.     Kids today not like me, perfi!.

 

                       Ted