Old Gaffer

Month: August 2007

  • Random Thoughts, 24a, Why Is Inflation?

    A strangely couched phrase, for a complicated subject. During WW 2, I used to laugh when I read that Montgomery said he was a simple soldier, he was about as simple as a Chubb lock. I, on the other hand, am a simple fellow, who, when he is not on top of a subject, goes back to first principles. I’m not a accountant, and I am not an economist, and perhaps that is why I don’t understand inflation. When I was a boy the pound sterling could be broken down into 960 farthings, so a small boy, at the school gate could buy any number of sweets for a farthing, At the time the average labouring wage was about three pounds a week. At the end of WW2 the average labouring wage was little, if any more, In 1950, I at 28, with a wife and two children, and a university degree, earned five pounds a week. So how was it in all those years there was so little change if any. Certainly there was no great development, the War had seen to that. Since then we have had mass production, mechanisation, stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap, imports at unbelievably, impossibly cheap prices, when you take into account transportation, and profits at either end. So I wonder why, the basic wage today, at say, £150 a week, is 50 times higher, in a lapse of 60 years, when the rise was zero in 20 years, and everything is theoretically so much cheaper. Assuming that taxes are proportional to wages, that government purchase equates to costs in the high Street, where is all this extra money going? .True, in those dark old days, we didn’t have a health service, or the plethora of viruses and germs we have today, of course a lot of us had TB, but perhaps we didn’t know enough about getting sick, we hadn’t all those germ advertisements. Only a few of the middle-class bought their own houses, the rest, and the working-class rented houses that had been handed down since Victorian times. Our pleasures, simple, by today’s standards, almost childish, kept us amused. We did have railway trains which ran on time, carried vast quantities of materials, and people into the nether reaches of the country, that’s gone, maybe its transport charge? I cannot think of a valid reason why inflation should still be with us, it should be deflation, because costs appear to have come down over the years.

    This diatribe started because I was looking at the plight of the prison staff and failed to understand the reasoning that had brought it about. I assume the government, annually bases its taxation partially on the current cost of living, and sets a figure that I often think is arbitrary, as being the rise in inflation. If government employees, or any employees come to that, have their wages assessed annually by whatever company they are paid by, inflation is naturally, or should naturally be taken into account on the same basis – annually, not piecemeal. Once the rate has been set, it is an indication that the level of inflation has risen to that point, so I fail to see any justification for adjusting the wage other than by the set level and paid on a weekly or monthly basis in those moieties. I suspect it is because we have central government now, with a vast wage bill, due to overstaffing in many cases, that some crank has put forward the proposition that if the cost of living increase is provided in increments, it will save money, which of course is true, but could be construed as theft, and the wage bill would not appear so large. I can not believe that! It doesn’t make sense, we’re talking about a 1% integer. The fact that it is unreasonable in the true sense of unreasonable, contrary to reason, or even that the judges have upheld it, doesn’t alter the fact that it doesn’t make sense and is totally unfair, so there must be a more devious reason for this action. I am not necessarily on the side of the prison officers, as I don’t know enough about their situation vis a vi the employer, I just think on basic principle the whole thing is extremely odd. Perhaps it is a toehold to introduce another system of assessing and paying the increase in the cost of living – after all it would affect wages, pensions, benefit, and think what the monthly bill is for that lot!

  • Belfast 1946 to ’50 in order, Chicanery in The Old Days

    In spite of what follows, I still stand by what I have previously said, working for the Council is still preferable to direction from Central Government. Not only for the worker who has immediate contacts and sees the work in detail, but for the public he serves.

    When I was looking for my first engineering job I had taken part in an interview at the City Hall where I was faced by a phalanx of councillors, probably about fifteen. They had asked a number of questions without getting to the meat, when I decided I would ask the question in the forefront of my mind – How much? The answer appalled me, they were only offering two hundred and fifty pounds a year for a graduate, aged 28, with a wife and two children to support. I refused and went and took a job with a consultant at two hundred and sixty. Those were hard times.

    Thinking of the phalanx reminds me of when Sophie was looking for a teaching job and the occasion when I tried to help my boss-of-the-day to get a job in a rural County Council. In Sophie’s case we had to write out her application, her CV, have her references photocopied and send copies of everything to twenty-six councillors. We were not so much surprised as astounded, but even that was nothing to the indignity suffered by John, a friend, and my boss at one stage. He had never learned to drive, or if he had he had allowed his licence to expire. For whatever reason he had no car and so he asked me to chauffeur him around from councillor’s house to councillor’s house. The councillors were mostly farmers and their homes were scattered over a whole county. The weather had been wet for some time with the result the lanes were like scrambler tracks.

    We started after work and finished in complete darkness with the humiliation of sliding into a gate post and damaging the car. That, however was not the real humiliation. At each house we came to, he went and knocked the door while I stayed in the car. As the evening wore on, when he returned to the car he became progressively disheartened at the berating he received from some who resented being canvassed and said that they were totally against it, while others told him it was a good thing he had come because they would not have voted for him if he hadn’t. The only way he could have succeeded was to have learned more about the system and done his homework better. He should have sought out someone on the Council to advise him of whom to canvass and whom not to, all he had been told was that if he hoped to get the job he should canvass all, which he did; but then he was English, with the mistaken idea that professional people were employed purely on their merits and that interviews were above board. He didn’t get the job.

    I remember a case where the engineer to a road contractor fell out with that contractor and resigned. A while later he answered an advertisement for a job with a Council and was told by a senior member of the staff that it was a walk-over as he was more experienced and better qualified than the other candidates. When he asked later why he had not been successful he was told, in confidence, that the contractor had objected to his candidature, saying he, the contractor, would not get fair treatment from the engineer in future dealings, and the Council then appointed another candidate. As I have said before, such is the way of the world. I remember when a senior member of staff canvassed the liftman, because the latter had political influence. Everyone knew – they tend to in a council, and probably in consequence that was why he was not appointed.

    These days there are rumbles in the jungles of local authorities on many counts, Water tax at the head, but those Councils are no longer as autonomous as they were until the 70’s. It was then Central Government lived up to its name and took over most of the powers and things have gone down hill ever since. Local Government means by the people for the people, if you have a beef about something, you can actually hammer on the Councillor’s own front door, or vote with your feet at the next election. Central Government is remote, can’t see the local detail, can’t address local problems – paints with a broad brush. There is the iniquity of the Manifesto, which few read for National Elections and is a license to do anything, as voting is on Party lines not policy; but is devoured for local ones because it is local

  • Belfast 1946 to 50 in order. Change should not be inspirational

    It Is A Prescription For Disaster I worked with a man, Fred, who, upon demob, took a temporary job to feed himself and his family. He became a civilian clerk to the Royal Army Service Corp. The barracks where he worked was a ‘Holding Company’, somewhere to take soldiers in between periods of active service. Their stay was minimal, a few days or a few weeks at most.

    When they arrived they brought with them all their relevant papers, about ten in all, history, medical, dental, punishment, and so on, and Fred had to annotate each paper with the details of the man’s arrival, place, date and time. He then had to place these sheets in folders designated for the category of each sheet. On departure he took all the sheets from the folders for each soldier leaving, annotated them all accordingly, and then put them together in an envelope to follow the soldier.

    Fred, hated the repetition, even though that was what he was paid to do. He decided that initially, if every man had a personal envelope, with his main information printed on the cover, including the arrival and departure dates etc., this would save time at every new appointment. Very logical as far as it went. So logical that he managed to persuade his boss, another demobbed, temporary clerk, that it should be implemented, and it was. However, they had forgotten one vital component of this utopian scheme, ‘Human Nature!’

    Fred thought he had everything covered, he supplied bits of paper for those using the papers to insert in the envelopes saying who, which and to where the papers had been withdrawn, the slip being removed on return. But then people are always in a hurry and full of good intentions, They didn’t need slips of paper, they only needed the papers for a moment. Within a fortnight there was chaos, some men had departed with a few papers missing, others remained but no amount of searching replaced their history. Today there would be no bits of paper, but the computer would probably crash.

    To make radical changes presupposes the new ideas really are new, and have not been tried and rejected. The fabric of life has been arrived at over generations by attrition, and modification by experience, not instant inspiration, followed by sweeping implementation, further followed by chaotic tweaking of something which should never have been broached, a prescription for serious cost and chaos.

  • Royal Navy 1941 to 46 in order, Glenlea and the Doodle Bug

    My mother was living in a house called Glenlea in Dulwich. It was a huge house standing within its own grounds and had been taken over by whatever Department of the War Office was responsible for receiving, training and returning Dutch escapees from German occupied Holland, who wished to become saboteurs and Resistance Fighters. A cousin of ours who was a ship’s captain pre-war, and had lost a leg in an action earlier in the war, was now a Commander in the Navy, liaising with the exiled, Dutch government officials. It was uncharitably suggested by some in the family that he had been a smuggler before the war, so this might account for his close association with the Netherlands. For whatever reason, he set up this sort of spy school and then persuaded my mother to take charge as housekeeper. When I went home on leave, I had permission to stay there at Glenlea with the ‘Dutch Boys’, as she called them, and was privy to much that went on. They had a radio room where they learned to use radio transmitters and, one assumes, code books although that was never discussed. On one side of the garden was a very tall tree growing close to a wall and from the tree a thick rope hung. I understand that the routine was to climb onto the wall with the rope and then, swing like Tarzan, until fully extended, let go and thus learn the technique of landing with a parachute.

    Every Sunday evening, a ritual was performed. The BBC would play, in turn, the National Anthem of each country in exile. The radio was on, the evening meal was over and we sat, smoking, drinking, all were listening. When it was the National Anthem of the Netherlands, the men would stand, some would sing, and at the end they would toast Queen Wilhelmina in unison. Over weeks the men would disappear from time to time to go on courses elsewhere and then return, all without comment. The idea was that no one should know if they had left on an operation or merely a course. In spite of these precautions many were caught as they landed in Holland. It was said later that one of the men I used to go to London with for nights out was a Nazi spy passing information. I was never able to confirm that.

    I remember one of the men in particular, but not his name. He had been caught by the Nazis and had escaped. He arrived in England, either through Sweden and the North Sea, or through Europe to Spain and then London. When he arrived in England he had a large strawberry mark, on his face, yet he was so keen to get back into the fray he was prepared to undergo a skin graft. When I last saw him his face had not healed enough for him to leave our country. Many of the men had come from the Dutch East Indies.

    The Doodle-Bug Sophie and I were just married, on our honeymoon and staying in a hotel almost opposite Glenlea. We would travel to the City by train,. Each night, coming home from London, as we handed in the ticket to the collector on the station at Dulwich he would say ‘Sorry you’ve got to walk!’ until this became a family saying. It was while we were at the hotel that Sophie first became acquainted with the Buzz Bomb. During one night, as she was a lighter sleeper than I, the siren must have woken her and then she heard the wavering, sometimes stuttering buzz of the bomb, sounding for all the world like a two-stroke motorbike with fuel troubles.

    Unsurprisingly she woke me and then followed a conversation for which she has never really forgiven me. She has always considered that I acted boorishly, while I was only being logical. The difference between our outlooks rested with the facts that while I had become hardened to the vagaries of war in all its guises, she had only experienced a few air raids, and, being half asleep I reacted normally instead of in my new role as protector of the Soph.

    “What’s that?” Soph – fearful. “It’s a Doodle-bug.” “It’s a what?” “It’s a Doodle-bug, a flying bomb.” “Oh my God!” “Don’t worry, Dear, if you can hear it you’re safe and if you can’t its too late to do anything about it.” “You’re dead?” “Yes. Go back to sleep, it’ll be all right, we get hundreds of them all the time.” “You expect me to go to sleep? Shouldn’t we be in a shelter?” Then followed the placation, the reassurance, all of which was worth being woken up for, but in spite of that I was never really forgiven.

  • Royal navy 1941 to 46 in order, Hypnotism

    Since my Naval days I have never been remotely interested in hypnotism as entertainment. I would go so far as to say that I disapprove of the practice. When my daughters were young and we were on holiday, on more than one occasion they and Sophie went to the theatre to see a hypnotist and, while I did not openly object, I refused to go with them. I did though warn them not to go on the stage as subjects.

    At Leydene, there was a theatre where films were shown in the evenings and occasionally ENSA would put on a show. Sometimes the Entertainment’s Officer would call on talent within the camp and we would have an amateur show, although to use the word amateur is unfair as many of the men and women who performed had been professionals before joining up.

    One such was a hypnotist. We had first come across him on the Isle of Man where he had performed there in a similar type of concert made up of Naval and RAF talent. I attended the show and found him very competent. It was the first time I had ever seen hypnotism demonstrated and somehow even at the show I had misgivings. I disliked the idea of needles being pushed into people without their knowledge or permission, and I was always suspicious of what effect the process would have on the brain long term, I have a thing about the amount of respect which should be attendant on the brain. The hypnotist was on another course running parallel with ours and therefore several weeks after we arrived at Leydene he turned up.

    By the time he arrived I was an instructor, but did not teach his class, and as he was below the rank of Petty Officer our paths never crossed, so for some time the stories I heard of him were gossip, unsubstantiated. It was said that he held court each evening in his Nissan hut and using anyone who was there, including a resident of the hut, he would practice his skills to entertain those who packed the hut to the doors. Then the rumour became rife, which worried some of us on the staff,. It was purported that there was one man the hypnotist could put under at a distance of a hundred feet, just by clapping his hands.

    Leydene had been a large country house, before being taken over by the Admiralty and had a huge stable complex with stalls and a saddling area the size of any which could be seen at the best horse trainer’s yard. The area had been converted into small demonstration rooms. The hypnotist and his acolytes and the subject all arrived at the same time. My colleague and I were standing talking in the yard when we saw the hypnotist walking towards us with a group surrounding him, and in the distance was the man whom we had heard could be hypnotised at long range. As Arthur Askey of Radio, film and TV fame used to say, ‘Before our very eyes’, and so it was, the hypnotist clapped his hands, the man in the distance stopped and seemed to become trance-like, another clap and he was on his way as if nothing had happened. It was frightening.

    Apparently we were not the only ones to have seen the demonstration. We heard that next day the two men, the hypnotist and his main subject left the camp. What happened to them was never divulged, but the Navy was no place for a man with those skills, who used them for his own aggrandisement, with such irresponsibility and inhumanity. I have been left with the conviction that hypnotism is never a plaything to be used just to amuse, amaze and titillate.

  • I Answer to Comments on Random Thoughts 22

    Before replying to the comments, I would like to tell of an occurrence which has a bearing. A friend of very long standing, started life as a tea planter in Assam,, only to have to return to takeover the family business. Within a short time he had expanded what had been a fairly large grocery shop in County Down, to become a wide ranging business which included mobile shops travelling the countryside, selling them wares, while at the same time collecting eggs and other produce for sale in the shop. In due course he retired and to show his appreciation of the men working for him, he offered to those who had been driving the mobile shops, a gift of the shops fully stocked for them to take over and run themselves. I know for certain that at least one of the men refused, because he had not the confidence to do the buying necessary.

    I received comments from someone called Wyn, who is puzzled by my comments about landed gentry, and feels that their wealth was at the expense of generations of tenants. In the early 30s, I spent a lot of holidays on farms and in the country, in areas where there were large estates, and I lived for a year in Sussex in 1939, mixing with the local farmers, gentlemen farmers and going to school with their children. In retrospect, while in the 30s we called all the land owners ‘landed gentry’, a generic term for people whose ancestry on specific tracts of land goes back hundreds of years, we used it for anyone who had a large estate, many of whom had become wealthy through business, and had purchased the land from choice. I don’t remember any resentment such as Wyn seems to have, on the contrary we enjoyed walking over their land, knew some of the tenants and helped at harvest time. From my own experience I saw there was a balance between the tenant farmers, the labourers on the farms, the locals and the landowner, each had its place in the system, and the system seemed to work. The point I was making in the piece I wrote, was, there were occasions when successive deaths created levels of taxation that impoverished the landowner, and in consequence the system could be disrupted. Because I had seen this happen, with a big house empty and deteriorating, it made me feel sad for the loss of a system of which I was only at the periphery, but was convinced was working. Like the driver of the mobile shop, not everyone who works on the land wishes to be his own boss and take responsibility for all that implies. A high proportion prefer to be wage earners, if possible have a tied cottage, and love the land because it’s inherent in their upbringing. Wyn states that my land has appreciated over the years through the efforts and presence of my entire community. I feel it is more likely that financial pressures enhance the value of land, and some of these have nothing to do with the land nor all the people on it, but is purely speculative. The piece I wrote was really about the problems that we might face once the government started its building programme, which in itself will enhance the value of land, and inheritance tax was a side issue.

    Wyn, I’m afraid, is out of date, as I probably am. His rhetoric reminds me of the sort of things uni students were repeating from Communist leaflets at the end of WW2 when Russia was popular. There are very few Landed Gentry now, but a vast number of millionaires. Some I have come across, started humbly, but are now buying up the estates of landowners who have gone broke, either through taxes, changes in legislation or mismanagement, and the millionaires are selling off parcels of the land to other millionaires for development and a few more millions. The entertainment industry, football, television, the cinema and promotion, has created a legion of millionaires, while the poor people he is so worried about, are building a level of debt, as in the US, which will crash quite a few of these millionaires if they have invested in the Market, so once again we will be back to that old adage of the Victorian era, ‘Clogs to clogs in three generations!’

    There is one rider, however, if these poor people go on spending and the market does crash, not only they will suffer, the pension funds will crash too, and other poor people will be disadvantaged as well as the spenders and the millionaires.

  • Randon Thoughts 24, Dont believe evertyhing!

    Don’t Believe a word they say dear!’ was something my grandmother said to me regularly. She was a tough old bird with the heart of a Raspberry Ruffle – you would have liked her. Yet, clearly not new, I still am taken off guard by the sheer level of current deception, Take waiting times for hospital services. The government’s new strategy enables it to lie through its teeth. A friend of mine, in his 80s, suffering from severe arthritis, finds sleeping in one position extremely uncomfortable. Painful. skin cancer of the ear has resulted in him only being able to lay his head on a pillow on one side, and so must sleep in one position. In January he discovered the cancer, in mid-February he was referred to the hospital, in March he was re-assessed, and told he would have to wait two months. He thought he would go private, but a waiting list of nearly 2 months made him see no point in the extra expense. He wrote to the hospital explaining his loss of sleep and asked if he could be seen earlier Instead he received his appointment for operation which was three-month hence, not two. He decided to stick it out, only to discover that the date given had again been increased for reasons unspecified, by another three weeks. Out old curiosity, I telephoned a doctor friend in Scotland and ask him what the waiting time was there, he said four weeks, rarely more. I give this to make the point that waiting times are far more protracted than the government pretends. Logically, from the day the GP has written requesting a surgical appointment, the period until that is met is the waiting time. A second assessment implies the doctor’s diagnosis is inadequate, perhaps occasionally, but putting in an additional assessment could be a ruse to enable a waiting time of a maximum of three months to be increased to seven months – in my friend’s case, seven months of painful discomfort – it clearly also adds to the overall cost. I realise the surgeon wishies to allocate times related to seriousness, but surely the doctor using a simple grading system would generally be adequate.

    Untrustworthiness is prevalent in all walks of life. Bush and Blair telling lies, television quiz shows being fake, and I have it on got good authority that where a member of the panel doesn’t know the answer to a question, the filming can stop, he is given the answer, and the filming reinstated, and this is common. How often have you been short changed, or found the bill is inaccurate? There’s a growing culture that some women are buying clothes on approval, wearing them for an evening, and then returning, allegedly unsuitable, only for some other person to discover smears of makeup and the smell of antiperspirant having made a purchase. There are thousands of pensioners who have last their pension, which should have been stamped on by government legislation, on the very first occasion.

    Recently I have been watching films made in the 60s, to 80s, and those made after 2000. The difference in quality, quality of sound, speech, clarity of speech, and attention to detail is incredible. A lot of the techniques induced by electronic simulation, cross-cutting in the editing room, and cost-cutting are producing films that are mudled and confusing, and I believe the public is paying for a cheaper and poorer article. I looked at two films recently, Becket made 30 years ago and a cowboy made about 2000. Becket was beautiful in every way, The cowboy was allegedly a comedy film, but if having between 30 to 40 people shot dead is comedy, without a laugh in the whole film, there must be something wrong. John Cleese was given a very weak and simple role, totally out of context, and even he was as boring as ditchwater. Incidentally, the protagonists were supposed to be using Winchester rifles, but I think the technicians rather than the producer had became overzealous because certainly the Winchesters were firing like an Uzi. I find it unsurprising that there is so much aggression among young people today, the films themselves carry aggression, vicious wounding and murder to extremes that would never have been permitted in the past. I also find today that so many films have to incorporate sexual encounters, more like rape even than lust. Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons and many others could impart love, attraction and fulfilment in the old days, without sexual callisthenics, and nudity in the most uncomfortable surroundings such as on a grand piano or the back of a hired car. Why can the act of love not be portrayed as a gentle, loving and delicate experience, as it should be, and not a brutal attack on the senses.

    We should vote with our feet instead of being ripped off, even though it might costs a little extra. If we’re not getting value for money we should complain. There must be a web site where we could all write what we feel and name and shame. The problem of course is if you are wrong, you can be pouring money into the pockets of the legal profession. On second thoughts I will just tell my friends what I think, and not risk being sued for slander.

  • Royal Navy 1941 to ’46 in order, Living Ashore

    I don’t think I ever entirely accepted the Navy philosophy of calling any accommodation, be it a house or a concrete bottomed wreck, a ship. I could never thought of myself as being ashore when I went out the gate. In fact I thought the whole concept childish and foolish, but it was surprising how simply it rolled off the tongue without thinking, and does even now when talking how the Naval Instructors and senior staff at Leydene were allowed to live ‘ashore’. This gave the married men the opportunity to have their families with them, which I think was at the back of the privilege, but the single men also profited. I was not at Leydene long before I was introduced to Madam Spirella and her concentration camp. Although we were given a living allowance and still enjoyed all the facilities of Leydene, including retaining our bunks and being fed, living ‘ashore’ was inevitably dearer, added to which there were the local attractions in the form of the pub, The Jolly Sailor, the cinema and Portsmouth just down the road, all were a drain on an insubstantial income.

    My mate Frank had suggested Madam Spirella’s as a suitable pied a terre and I was duly ensconced. I rented a single room on the first floor, furnished with a narrow, single steel-framed hospital bed, a card table, two cane dining chairs, a dressing table and a wardrobe which trebled as a food cupboard cum cleaning store. With linoleum on the floor and a worn mat in front of the fireplace which contained a 500 watt cooking ring that doubled as a heater, for which we paid some extortionate sum – this was to be home for quite some time. It was bleak, inhospitable, but a relief from the years of communal living, the claustrophobic atmosphere of mass humanity, repeated expletives, noise, perpetual noise, the constant demands of the public address system and Vera Lynn at every hour of the day from the wake-up call to lights out. Don’t believe all they tell you about the popularity of the Stars of the past, even they had a sell-by date and constant repetition can pall Madam Spirella was our name for the woman who ran the house. I say ran, that is an overstatement because all she did was collect the rent, the tenants had days when they were responsible for the cleanliness of the hall and stairs and they were totally responsible for their own rooms. On the front of the house was a brass plate which said ‘Madam XXX, Corsetier and Spirella Specialist’, or words to that effect. She was not unlike Madam Arcarti in the film Blithe Spirit, detached from reality, on a higher plane of artistic genius, but that didn’t stop her coming down to earth with a thump if anyone digressed from the list of do’s and don’ts pinned up everywhere, or on rent day. We were a happy band of refugees from authority. One of our number played the trumpet in a dance band at a nearby seaside town on the weekends when he was not on duty. He constantly amazed me how every night he would take out the sheet music of the latest tune to hit the streets and proceed to orchestrate all the parts for the band, without playing a single note. Frank and a one-time school teacher from Huddersfield called Don, also had rooms and the three of us would sometimes eat together, generally on the first day of the weekly ration. At that time, 1944, with the Second Front in full swing, rations were fairly strict and only those in the know could take advantage of the black market, with the result that on Monday of every week we had a blow-out of almost all the week’s ration at one go, and then ate in the local Salvation Army canteen for the rest of the week.

    Sophie, coming from Ireland, when she came over to stay at Christmas, she brought a good deal of food she had gathered up, for the two of us, or so she thought. What she had not realised was that we, at Madam Spirella’s, tended to share and share alike and so her precious butter and eggs were destined not only for us, but my mates. It was more than a shock to her, I think it took her a day or two to get over it, especially as in our chauvinist society she was expected to cook her provender as well. It was the first morning after Sophie had arrived in Madam Spirella’s prison camp when, as I knew the ropes, I decided I would make the breakfast. Staying there were two Wrens and one was in the kitchen when I arrived downstairs. It was clear she was not in the best of form by her posture, from the way her dressing gown was holding her up rather than the reverse, and by her reaction to my breezy ‘good morning’. When I asked her what was the matter
    she looked at me with the most jaundiced look I have ever seen and said, ‘I hate this place,’ meaning Petersfield, ‘its full of Irish and Plymouth Brethren.’ For a moment there was silence, but she was totally unaware of her gaff. For me, there was no way I could let that go, it was too good an opportunity to be a chauvinist, so I made her bad day even worse, I told her my wife was Irish. The size of the hole which opened at her feet and into which she disappeared was just enough to accommodate her and make my day.

  • Random Thoughts 23 , Booze

    I come from a family that thought it was wicked even on Christmas Day to drink more than one Sherry. I was first introduced to real alcohol when I joined the Navy and I never turned back. I find the subject fascinating because it has so many facets, there is the pleasure of drinking, there is the urge to drink, one can make alcohol in its many forms, and one can talk about it endlessly

    This piece started because a young acquaintance of mine is talking about the pleasure he got from wine he had bought at something like £50 a bottle, or six pounds a glass if you like. This took me back to the 50s, when I earned so little I could not afford to drink except on special occasions. Sophie and I played bridge with some close friends, who were probably as poor as we were, we played for a penny a hundred – losers pay. The money was used to buy half bottles of good wine, as recommended by the vintner, because we were tyros in this matter. We drank it with a celebratory meal, when we had gathered enough from the kitty for the wine. I see these wines on wine lists, they never cost less than £25 a bottle, and I am afraid that I want more from life and in particular from my £25 than a bottle of wine. This particular friend and I started making wine, he from the fruit of the field, I from tinned grape juice, and packaged fruit juice – 60 gallons a year. We really took it seriously, recording everything you could think of, daily temperature, weather, specific gravity and a host of other things which in consequence enabled us to steadily improve the quality of the wine, until at parties when we had blind tasting, and brought in reasonably priced commercial wine, we were pleased to discover that the tasters didn’t all go for the bought wine. One thing I did discover, which has been a policy of mine ever since, is that, not going into the higher echelons of the very best, but in the general run-of-the-mill wines, especially home made, the outcome of two wines carefully mixed is generally better in flavour than either of the constituents.

    Have you ever sat watching television, drinking wine? Firstly the act of lifting the glass and taking a swallow becomes reflex, secondly, when the glass is empty filling it becomes a reflex, you taste little, you drink a lot, assuming it’s there to be poured, and if it’s home-made it will be in a huge jug, so alcoholism can also become a reflex. My brother also made wine, and like all winemakers some of the brews were not up to scratch. He took a pressure cooker, made a spiral, inserted a thermometer and distilled those wines he didn’t like two or three times, to make a very good alcohol. This he mixed with brown sugar and coffee to make Tia Maria and from then on his Tia Maria parties were legendary. The fact that most people suggested he supplied a white stick with every third bottle, didn’t detract from the pleasure.

    Like all pleasures, there are pitfalls, and in excess – problems. When I was in the Navy, and 18, totally broke, I was invited to a party and had to buy something to take with me. Remember I was an ing?nue where it came to drink, hadn’t even had my first tot, and was looking to buy something I could afford. I was persuaded to buy barley wine, which I believe is not a wine but a strong – Oh how strong, beer, and when I gave it to my host he roared with laughter and suggested that I drink it. I woke up on his settee the following morning having no idea of what had happened at the party. I was told later that it was considered locally as dynamite. (See also The Passing Out Parade on Old Gaffer)

    Living in Ireland one inevitably comes in contact – shall we say – with that dangerous brew from potato mash – poteen. The first time I tasted it, there was no indication of its proof, it was in a hip flask which was basically a medicine bottle with a screw top, but I suspect it was very high because as soon as it came in contact with the tongue one had a sensation of the whole contents of the mouth expanding – a little unnerving..

    As someone who lived through the age when drink-driving was acceptable, and who appreciates for that very reason the necessity of having a ban, the one thing that I believe has resulted has been a reduction in the spontaneity, the conviviality, and if you like, some of the absurdity of the parties in those days. When people sitting around a table where half the guests are throwing it back as if there’s no tomorrow, and the other half are drinking some pallid soft drink, I suppose this is inevitable. Of course there are always taxis, but it’s amazing how often this fact is forgotten.

  • Royal Navy 1941 to ’46 in order, Teaching Navy Style

    The examination techniques we adopted at the Royal Naval Signal School should have been the norm for the Country’s education system in genera . Education is not a case of knowing information, but knowing where to find it and how to apply it. The Leydene examination organisers had obviously taken this theory to heart. We, the students, were a mixed lot. If we qualified we were going to be far from land and advice for weeks on end and solely dependent upon our own resources, so while we were thoroughly taught how to carry out repairs and the basic fundamentals of radio technology, the course was based around the fact that the Mechanic would have a text book at his elbow. The examiners also knew that cheating had to be lived with as, for the students, passing the exam was the aim, how was secondary. To combat cheating, talking during exams was forbidden, but any written matter was allowed in with us to the examination, on the principal that if we had to look anything up it would waste valuable time, compared with those who knew it all. As the students ranged from the school-leaver to the hardened telegraphist, with a few university graduates thrown in to make the life of the instructor that little bit more difficult, they designed the papers with the questions graded, starting easily and then progressing in difficulty with each question. They tried to maintain a fair balance between pure knowledge and a sensible amount of referral. The person who knew the answers would have the advantage while a reasonable referral would not place a person beyond passing. The marking system was equally advanced The lecturers had a good idea who would come out on top, and the general quality of his work. Having marked all the papers they examined the top three of four, first to make sure there was no doubt of reaching the standard expected, then they took the highest mark and proportioned it to receive between 90 – 95 percent, depending on the candidate’s ability and the quality of his paper. They then graded all the papers by the same factor. Someone hopeless who spent much time referring to cogs and text books would fail miserably.

    The Vagaries Of Teaching At Leydene It is one thing to sit in a classroom and criticise the poor devil standing in front trying to teach and another thing entirely being that poor devil, especially if it is what the Navy terms a ‘pier-head jump’, being volunteered without a word to say about it. Some of the instructors had been teachers in civvy life, but I was chucked in at the deep end to make the best of it. We had a day’s instruction which I totally forget, but one little jewel did stick. They told us that students learned one third through what they heard, one third through touch and one third through what they saw, and we were to instruct accordingly.

    I was teaching people to be practical technicians, not theorists and if truth be known, when I started, my theoretical knowledge was a lot more sketchy than my grasp of the innards of the great many sets I was teaching. Initially this left me open to attack from men who had just come down from university with bright shiny degrees and who proposed to run rings round me for the aggrandisement of their own egos and the delectation of the rest of the class, a not uncommon syndrome, especially among university students.

    That I was at a disadvantage was patent, what I was to do about it was more difficult and gave me hours of discomfort in the beginning. I had two aspects in my favour, the classes ran only for a matter of weeks, or a couple of months at the most, and then my tormentors would have left and any reputation I had created left with them and I started with a clean slate. The other plus was that I am a quick study and with every encounter I learned – oh how I bloody well learned! The one stance I had to avoid was the Uriah Heap affliction, the ‘I’m not as well educated as you’ ploy, seeking sympathy. I soon discovered that the best method of defence is attack and I also learned how to dig a hole and then lead the charging bull elephants into it. I had the advantage of knowing the sets inside out and soon discovered the difficulties the students were finding. Sympathy with the difficulties the class was encountering and a feigned amusement when I might be tripped up by a brain-box, tended to balance the class attitude in my favour and as time elapsed I was very often able to impart what these university graduates had taught me as if I had known it all along. One situation did frighten me, though. We were not supplied with duplicated notes, we spent hours dictating. The routine was such, we could predict what we’d be teaching at any time weeks or months ahead and the same was true of the dictation. It was so repetitive I was able to talk and think of something entirely different, my brain on auto-pilot. So that I had to lift an exercise book from time to time to see exactly what I had been saying. I never remember having to alter a word, but, it says something about the loss of spontaneity short repetitive courses can produce in the teaching staff if it is not watched.