Sleight of hand. In one place I worked the boss had the theory that everyone made at least one mistake in anything he did. Give the boss a sheaf of drawings to check and approve, he would look at every one of them until he found a mistake, which was not blatant. It could take hours. It was sometime before I was let into the secret of how to combat this, even if it might prove that one was less than perfect – it was the intentional mistake. Subtly, one put one in, not too blatantly and not too difficult to find. Then everyone was satisfied.

The Dolman And The Fairy Tree. Nearly all the sites we developed in those days, were green field sites and almost all were farms which had been in families for generations. Ireland is a country with more than its fair share of myth and legend. Articles, which might have mystical connotations, or could be connected in any way with necromancy, are given a wide berth when it comes to disruption. On one site there was a dolman in the middle of the field. For days the contractor responsible for the site could get no work done on that part of the job because a road was proposed where the dolman stood. The contractor told the Housing Engineer that there was not a man on his payroll who would shift it, could the road not be diverted? The answer to that was an unequivocal ‘No!’ – even if for no other reason than the ridicule he would receive back in the office in Belfast. Stalemate! Then up spoke an Englishman labouring on the site. He would shift it, and he did, on his own. Whether true or inevitably made up to prove a point we never knew, but the story goes, that when the man returned to England he took ill and never worked again.

We always had the same trouble with Fairy Trees, those stumpy hawthorns one finds leading a lonely life somewhere in a field, which have survived because no one has had the temerity to dig them out and make ploughing or hay-cutting so much easier.

Scotch & Turkeys It was Christmas, I worked for the Admiralty and I was deputy on a construction site, we were buying stone by the thousand tons rather than the lorry load. Conforming to convention, two days before we were to pack up, at the end of the day, out of the darkness came a car loaded with good cheer – the contractor who supplied the stone – and he was there that night, to show his appreciation in a material sense. No matter what was stated on our contract of employment, we applauded. There was a turkey and a bottle of Irish whiskey for each man in the office. I told the boss. “Hand it back..’ he said, ‘Say a polite thanks, but no thanks,” was the order and that was how it finished. The whole lot went back where it came from, Next day was that silly day when everyone turns up to work, nothing is done, and near lunch time tongues are hanging out for the ‘heavy’ which is standing, row on row, on the boss’s table, waiting for the twelve o’clock kick off. When all our glasses had been charged, the obligatory ‘thank you for all the good work’ had been said, the boss raised the matter of the turkeys. He had been liberal with the Scotch. “About the turkeys and Irish,” he said while lifting a wash-leather pouch from an inner pocket. “I received this, from the same source, it is etched with my name.” He held in his hand a beautiful gold cigarette case. “This is something I have always coveted, but it too has to go back, engraved name or not.” I like a man who is even handed, even if he would like to cut off his own hand – perhaps especially so.

If the wide screen is to be believed, in the days of the great railroad expansion in the USA, there was a tradition that on the completion of a section of track, a golden spike was ceremoniously driven into the last tie. In the Navy there was a legend that every wooden warship had a golden spike driven into the keel for luck during construction. This yarn was then perpetuated in steel ships as a ruse to inveigle the young, the unsophisticated and the unwary into the darker corners of the hull for nefarious purposes. The cry on the Mess-decks when a new recruit came aboard was often, ‘Take him to see the golden rivet!’

At the end of one convoy we arrived at Rosyth to find cardboard boxes of knitted articles, most of which were in an unsuitable khaki. There were long scarves which seemed to go on for ever, pullovers, roll-necked sweaters and even long-johns, and many were the epitome of clich?s which often accompanies amateur knitting. The articles had been made by the WRACS manning, (if that’s the right word), an Ack Ack battery on the outskirts of Edinburgh. They had asked the Commodore for permission to adopt a ship and we were it. What followed would have made an Oscar Hammerstein musical, it
was that predictable.

An invitation to visit was sent by the Captain to the Commanding Officer and it was arranged that at the end of our next trip the WRACs would come aboard. From that point until we next docked there was only one topic of conversation and one outcome. Every section of the ship spent its off-duty hours preparing The place had never been cleaner and tidier. In my section we had a few advantages and we made good use of them. The screen of the radar display tube was a brilliant blue, while the warning lights throughout the small office were a bright red and green. Overhead was a white light. With our resident artist on hand we made a drawing of a voluptuous woman fully clothed in red, green and blue garments. The effect was that, without the overhead light, when we doused the screen or changed the lights, she lost some of the garments in each transformation. After some trial and error it was a great success, well we thought so and the girls were polite enough to applaud.

The crew had organised a meal in the canteen in the dockyard accompanied by a hogshead of beer (54 gallons). In due course a lorry arrived and the ship was inundated with khaki. It was interesting to see how polite the sailors were in allowing the girls to precede them up ladders. Couples and groups were everywhere, in the engine-room, the boiler-room, our wireless offices. They turned the gun turrets, stood on the bridge and conned the ship from the Coxswain’s wheel. And all the time as one sailor passed another, each guiding his bevy of beauties, the question was always asked, “Have they seen the Golden Rivet yet?” followed by a dirty laugh.

The girls were finally dispatched back to camp and the ship got back to normal until it was time, on the following day, for ‘Liberty Men’ being piped and the ‘Off Watch’ to line up for inspection to go ashore. Then the fun started, lies were bandied about with all the sincerity of a politician on the stump. No one was going anywhere near the gun battery, some were going for a walk, some to the cinema in Dunfermline, but there must have been a considerable change of heart because, when it was time for the WRACS to come off duty, there was half our crew lined up at the gate, looking sheepish.

When I left the ship some of the men were still making pilgrimages to Edinburgh and the gun battery. It is amazing what can result from the kind act of presenting sailors with badly knitted woollens in the wrong colour.

Recently there have been a number of changes in national policy which seem to have neither rhyme nor reason, but the most arrogant of them all, apart from the wars, is the proposal to extend the school leaving age across the board. In the 30s, some of my friends matriculated, and others left at 14 to take up apprenticeships in various trades. One joined the Daily Express as a trainee press photographer, the job he was very successful in, until he retired. Another went into a butcher’s shop and finally owned one. In those days there was no stigma at leaving at 14, as the majority did so. In engineering of every type, as in printing, shop-keeping, and many other trades, starting at 14 enabled one, with the right guidance, to become professional in one’s chosen trade, during a period in life when personal responsibilities are generally at a minimum. As one who has had to study for 4 years, while maintaining a growing family, the latter would clearly have had some advantageous aspects.

There is no shadow of doubt that this proposal has more to do with teenage criminal behaviour than concern for their educational capabilities. In consequence the schoolteachers are to become surrogate parents, as the chiid’s parents have to work to maintain the standard of living which is considered the norm. I am convinced a youth, either not wishing, or not able to take advantage of higher education, should have the opportunity to start at around 15 years of age as an apprentice. He or she should be apprenticed to a recognised journeyman-tradesman, who has the breadth of experience, and all related standards set by, and approved by an appropriate authority, for the required period – not kept on at school at great national cost, in order to keep him or her off the streets, possibly with little to show for the added years. The men I worked with, started as apprentices and became gangers, foreman, and general foreman, with good wages and prospects. It was my experience in the later years of my working life that the quality of the tradesman who were available for short-term working, not part of an organised company, were not of the standard I was used to, their training had been shortened for convenience.

I changed my job on six occasions and each time it took time to find my feet and understand the routine of the new company. This period was tiring for me and I was not providing the productivity that I was capable of. From this, one can draw the conclusion that change is inevitably unproductive for a period of time until the new system has bedded down. Untried change, for a whim, and the wrong reasons, is letting down those involved in the implementation, probably going to have to be countermanded, and those promoting it will not bear the brunt.

Lewes – A Place Apart In retrospect there was something almost magical about the months I spent there. I was not aware of this at the time, I was often unhappy, but who is sublimely happy all the time, contrast gives colour. Lewes, the Town, was the hub, but it was really the district which was wonderfully anachronistic, such a revelation to the Town boy, contrasting to all he knew yet a living encapsulation of all he had read in novels, heard on the radio and imagined – it was pure Noel Coward and Ivor Novello

Incorporated into Lewes Grammar we resumed our education,. I was billeted in a village nestling against the South Downs in the Ouse Valley with a married couple, the Baileys. At first I didn’t like the idea of cycling 3 miles each way, every day, but later I realised I had been presented with a unique experience, one I would never have had if I had been billeted in the town. The village, just a collection of houses bordering the main street, itself a cul-de-sac, culminated in a path leading up into the Downs. There was a church hall for whist drives, the annual Christmas festival, the local drama group, in time the LDV; in fact, everything a village hall is expected to sustain. Opposite was the post office cum village shop, the hub of village gossip. In warm weather the village street acted as a funnel. Sitting high up on the hill studying, I found I could hear a conversation taking place below. Understanding what was said, I looked round and the only people in sight were women, half a mile below me, talking at the gate of the post office – they were gossiping. When they stopped and left, the sound stopped.

The Charm Of The Ouse Valley. On a map of the area between Lewes and Newhaven, you will see the Ouse valley with such lovely village names as North Ease, South Ease, Rodmel, and on the other side, Glynde with Glyndebourne. In 1939-40 it was an area given over to agriculture. There was a poet called Pound, who lived in Rodmel. Not Ezra Pound, but a local focus of interest. He had named all his children with Christian names beginning with ‘P’, so everyone opened the mail. This was typical of eccentricities I found in the Ouse Valley. There were marked social differences in the Valley. There were the farm labourers, maids and their families. Then there were the traders, the post mistress and shopkeepers in Lewes and also some of the farmers. Then there were the professional classes, the Baileys fell into this category, maybe the vicar, next came the gentlemen farmers, the inherited wealth and finally the dignitaries such as the MP and the squire. By association I was part of the professional group, but though I was never truly comfortable, I learned much through socialising. The general air of the whole area was ‘County’ with a capital ‘C’. In our own village was the local Squire. Whether he really was, I never knew, but with the name of Sir Amhurst Selby-Bigge he had every right to be. He and his wife would give out prizes at do’s and in the summer he generously threw his personal tennis court open to the village and we had tournaments there with breaks for Robinson’s Barley Water. There were wealthy farmers who were sociable and as we went to school with their children we had an ‘in’ to the higher echelons of farm life. We went to market with them, helped with the harvest and generally mucked in, but these were not the farmers we had helped prior to coming to Lewes, these were ‘gentlemen farmers’.

The winter of ’39-’40 was particularly severe, to the extent that when cycling to school the only way of turning the corner at the bottom of a particularly steep hill was to ride straight into a six foot high drift, extract oneself and then head off on the next leg. Later there was a sudden thaw followed by an equally quick freeze which left the roads coated in about an inch of ice. We evacuees made slides and the locals had ice skates and were to be seen pirouetting and twirling past us. We slowly integrated.
Even though the war had gone badly and there was the threat of invasion hanging over us, one cannot live in a state of frightened paralysis. Slowly our lives became normal as we entered into a routine and with the routine, helped by the friendship of the people of the Valley, came a wonderful period of my life which was totally foreign to what I had known before. While I was rubbing shoulders with the English class system at its most rigid, what I found there probably knocked any snobbery I might have had out of my outlook for all time. I think I must have seen it for what it was and eschewed it because instinctively, from a social aspect, I became classless.