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>From the IOM we were sent to Petersfield, in Hampshire, to the Naval Signal School called Leydene. We were only to be in Leydene for about ten days and in that time we had to learn the workings of some ten transmitters and receivers together with all the ancillary equipment, so it is unsurprising that I remember nothing of that first trip, except the way we were taught. To a young man who had led a sheltered life and had been tutored mainly by Oxbridge graduates, the spiel of the three-badge Petty Officer or Chief Petty Officer, needed to be experienced and still couldn’t be believed. The three badges denoted a minimum of thirteen years service, but many of these instructors had been brought back from retirement. The classrooms were converted Nissan huts containing the replicas of the radio transmitters we would find on the ships we were destined for. Some were small, not much bigger than today’s work-top washing machine, others occupied the area of the average kitchen and were contained within an earthed steel cage, with access through a door which cut off the power to the high voltage areas when the door was opened. Almost the first thing we were taught was how to circumvent this safety measure so we could test the beast while under full power, from within its bowels, so to speak.

Most of us, who were used to radio receivers which were only one stage advanced from the crystal set, were amazed to see a valve the size of a large vase and resistors almost a foot long. The instructors had little to worry about with respect to discipline, we were so continuously bombarded with facts and so overawed with both the equipment and the prospect that we would, within a few weeks be in sole charge of its welfare, that there was neither the time nor the energy left to mess around. It was cramming taken to a fine art. Each morning we would be marched off to a classroom where we would discover yet another set with its own peculiarities. We carried a huge loose-leaf book containing all the circuitry and hints on repair, together with our class notes and a folder of a few pages of duplicated information supplied by the instructors. This library went everywhere, even to bed, because all spare moments were filled with catching up what we’d missed or mugging up what we had forgotten. I remember one of our class was married and had permission to sleep ashore with his wife. She complained that he spent most of the night sitting up studying this huge tome.

In class we were perched on rows of long, heavy, oak benches, with no desk and no support for the back, like starlings on telephone wires. The keen ones sat in the front row and those who were in the class purely as an alternative to sailing on the Atlantic convoys, were generally either dozing or craftily smoking on the back bench. While what I was being taught was in itself a totally remarkable experience, the method of imparting that knowledge was even more extraordinary. Inside these sets were valves, resistors, coils and condensers in the main, with a few other bits and bobs to make the whole thing work, but our elderly instructors, when pointing to a component on a circuit diagram did not refer to it by its name but merely said “Now this li ‘l f….r ‘ere is connected to that li ‘l bastard there….” and so on. In fact it became such a routine that some of us were caught more than once anticipating and saying which epithet would be applied to what item of electronic hardware and were then promptly, in our turn, referred to by yet another and even more expressive phrase.

Indeed there was the occasion when one of the instructors was inside a transmitter ‘putting on faults’ for an exercise in fault-finding. He was mostly only breaking connections, but sometimes he would insert a faulty component. The thing was that as one became more experienced the sounds of resistors being pulled from their anchorage or valves being released were so distinctive that most of us knew which piece was being tampered with. On this occasion there was a distinctive sound and someone on the front bench named the article in a stage whisper. Suddenly a face, surmounted by a battered cap, peered over the top of the fence round the transmitter and it said “Oh no ‘e F…..in’ ain’t” and disappeared to replace the part and pull out another which was equally recognisable. For me this incident epitomised the teaching in those first months of the war.

As Part of the Newcastle training we had to learn lathe work, forging and bench work at the Metalwork classes, a re-run of my Matriculation syllabus. This was an opportunity for me to relax. One day I was working on a lathe when I found a note complaining that the machine had been left dirty. During the day factory trainees, mainly women would use the equipment and then we would move in at night. The note was in verse. I showed it to those round me and they said I should answer it, which I did, with their help and hindrance. On the next occasion we were there I found another note and this went on for a week or so until there was a suggestion that the writer, a woman, would like to meet the unknown poet. One thing led to another, mostly pressure from my peers, and I agreed to meet her one night in an ice-cream parlour. Remember I was a naïve 18 year old, and this not only shows my inexperience and innocence, but that of the others

The night arrived and I went there, and sat and waited. I was conspicuous by being in uniform. A woman entered who was also conspicuous because she too was in a uniform, but of another kind entirely, but one I was too naive to recognise. She was a lot older than I, heavily made up, and a lot more experienced. I bought her something or other and we sat and talked and then suddenly she got up and said, ‘Come on, we’ll get a tram.’ It was then that I began to have misgivings, I had expected to make what running there might be. We caught a tram, and as we both smoked we went up onto the top deck. Politeness and expediency demanded that I let her precede me. Mainly the latter, because I wanted, to put what little spare cash I had in my shoe. I had no idea what I had let myself in for, but I intended to see it through. Anyway, I could never have lived with myself, not to mention the barracking I would have got from the other ratings, if I had chickened out. When we were seated and I had paid the fare she turned to me, ‘You know’, she said, ‘You’re no good to me, I’ll take you somewhere that will be more in your league.’ This left me completely at sea, and not a little subdued. I took the remark to be a criticism of my manhood. I was now having lurid fancies of being taken and robbed, but I stuck it out.

We left the tram and walked along a road where the terrace house-fronts met the back of the pavement and were like many of the house built during the industrial revolution for mill workers and shipyard workers. Belfast used to have miles of them once, but now has only a few. We stopped, the woman knocked and a man in his shirtsleeves, opened the door and stood aside when we entered,. I was led into a living room cum kitchen and introduced to his wife and daughter. The woman made some excuse and left me there, stranded like a beached whale, feeling totally foolish and out of place. On her way out, I could hear her muttering to the wife at the front door, but as I could not make out what was being said I had to make the best of it. Desultory conversation had me embarrassed and I tried to think of a way of extracting myself without giving offence. I was not allowed to discuss why I was in Newcastle, but I suspected the woman had intimated what she knew. Tea was produced with a cake and then, as so often happens, the appearance of food broke down some of the reserve and we started to chat. I discovered the daughter was the manageress of a cake shop in Newcastle and she suggested that if I liked to call in, she would give me something for me and my friends. Ultimately, when it seemed decently possible without being rude I left and took a tram back into Newcastle.

As can be imagined the class was agog to hear how I had got on, and when I described the woman I had met at the ice-cream parlour there were a few ribald remarks passed. When I told them about the cake shop they nearly had me out the door there and then, on an errand of mercy, – on their behalf. I was not too eager to start a relationship, especially for purely mercenary reasons so I didn’t take the girl up on her offer for some time, I was also feeling a little stupid about the whole incident. I was finally pressured by my hungry friends to go to the cake shop and sure enough, I received a whole cake. For a while after that the young woman and I became friends and went to the cinema and met in the cake shop on a casual basis, but that was about all. My final judgement on the extra-curricular activities of the woman whose lathe I shared was correct. The family who took me in and fed me cake were looking after her daughter. I had had a very strange evening when at times I had been apprehensive. That it worked out well was certainly more luck than judgement. Education comes in many guises

I describe the Cluttons of 1940 because it was a marvellous institution and to set the scene of the Westminster Home Guard. Told, misguidedly, going to university during the war was pointless because of evacuation and being called for service, I was articled as a Valuation Surveyor to the most august Surveyors in Britain, and the inaugurators of the Chartered Surveyors’ Institute – Cluttons. The building, near the Victoria Tower at Westminster, of redbrick and cream sandstone, is at least 150 years old. Then it possessed the most charming lift, in the building centre, built like a wrought-iron bird-cage, with filigree ornamentation The wrought iron safety frame, was open right to the roof with its weights and ropes naked to the eye. and the lift was almost a living eccentric, it had a will of its own. One entered through a door like a garden gate, one pressed the floor button, pulled on a rope and nothing happened. After a few more pulls it grunted into a stately rise, or fall, under sufferance, obliging, but only just. I and my mates were too young to take office life totally seriously, we could stop it at any time by merely opening a gate on another floor and strand the thing between floors. We were also able to drop confetti from the hole-punches down the shaft as the cage had no top, merely a matter of not being caught at it, a fine art one soon acquired.
It is difficult to describe that first day at the office – the transformation from the schoolboy to the worker. I had my first suit, and was absorbed into the closed atmosphere of that office. They successfully fostered a sense of belonging, the man and boy ethos, once a Clutton’s man always a Clutton’s man – and it worked. The building itself had a faint aroma of polish and leather bindings, not unpleasant, which imparted a feeling of familiarity. I was the lowliest of the low. My immediate boss, a Sergeant Commissionaire, in the blue serge uniform, with the patent leather belt and medal ribbons, was a tall, stern, imposing figure, and a punctilious disciplinarian. He guarded the door, was receptionist, part-time telephone operator and post boy, and promptly transferred all that to me. Everything had a place and everything had to be in its place at the right time.
At the top of the building in a nice little self-contained flat lived the Janitor and his wife. He was known affectionately by all as ‘Skipper’ He wore a carpenter’s apron and a fawn, patterned pullover over a collarless shirt, and generally, when you saw him, he had his tool bag in his hand, and was on his way to fix something, He was a jovial, almost fatherly figure, who guided the innocents like myself through the minefield of tinned pipe tobacco, with an eye on the economics of the underpaid. Balkan Sobrani was fine for the older members of staff who could afford such luxuries; we were offered Four Square Yellow or Green, St Bruno, depending on taste, or maybe Erinmore. Every Friday, after we had received our pay packets, he came round with his tray of sweets, cigarettes and tobacco, like an ice-cream vendor in a cinema. During the week the staff had to climb to his flat to make their purchases, but he did run a slate which was an advantage to the juniors like myself, on half a crown a week. Skip knew all the gossip and his weekly sales pitch was a welcome relief to a fairly rigid discipline. A father figure indeed.
Skipper was ex- regular army. His additional duty was to train the section of Home Guard which had been formed from members of staff and a few from other offices. Sam Clutton, a Partner, was the officer in charge and actually had converted a Rolls Royce into a troop carrier, for us, his little band of followers. We paraded in the basement like ‘Dad’s Army’, had bayonet practice and the sergeant’s description, instructions and logistics were so bloody and graphical, I opted for the Navy on the spot. In the office basement Skipper had erected a firing range and had fitted some 1914/18 0.303 rifles with Morse tubes so we could fire 0.22 ammunition. The basement ran some considerable distance under the building so we were able to lie, kneel, and stand and fire at targets which were stationary and moving. Apart from the odd exercise, the visit to see the Northover Projector and standing guard on Buckingham Palace our duties were mainly to swell the numbers of the Grenadier Guards in blockhouses round Westminster.

I started on the Post Book stamping letters with a franking machine and recording each letter in the book, then balancing the costs against the record of the stamper at the end of every day. At the same time I acted as relief telephone operator with the instruction that as no calls were supposed to be private, I could listen into any conversation I cared to so that I might understand the working of the office as a whole. There is nothing more boring than listening to other people’s conversations, especially when one constantly has to break off to answer other calls.
I did that work for about a fortnight and then went to the Cashier’s Department, some times known as ‘Accounts’. We dealt with all the accounts of the properties of the Crown Commissioners and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, for which we were responsible. That meant most of London, with properties as disparate as Park Lane and Kennington and later I was to find they had odours to match. We worked at Dickensian-like desks, at standing height, with sloping tops, an ink pot set into the back of the desk, lids that lifted to reveal one’s personal possessions, such as they were, and a high chair for when a little relief for the back was called for. The ledgers were like the desks – of another age. Leather bound, they were huge and thick, about twice the size of a volume of the Encyclopaedia-Britannica, with pages which were twice as heavy. In these tomes we recorded every payment in and every payment out, we balanced every day, every week, every month and every quarter – and I still got it wrong. I was soon to learn the theory of reciprocal mistakes. This theory states, except that to my knowledge it has never been written anywhere, that if there is the most minute discrepancy, that error must not be covered, it must be found, because it is likely that there are two mistake which nearly cancel one another out What is more I have proved the theory to be true over and again. I have found this to be the case, not only in the field of finance, but in the design of structures as well. On my first balance I had some minuscule difference in the totals and suggested a modification in the pence column would save us all a lot of time and it would never matter in the long run. WRONGGGGG!! It did and when I trudged through the blasted ledger for the umpteenth time, low and behold, two horrendous errors practically cancelled one another out. Years later I was to find the same thing on more than one occasion in calculation which were far more important.
My antique monolith of a desk was one of a contiguous row and my immediate superior in Accounts, I’ll call him Fletcher, seated at the end of the row, was given to wise saws and common instances, (as the Bard said,) he would talk down to me most of the time as if I was the seventh idiot son of a seventh idiot. He was doing a line with a rather nice girl in Filing, housed in the basement, where he would take her off for, what I assumed was a kiss and a caffufle behind the rows of cabinets. As I said, I thought she was nice, she was certainly far too good for him. She had a sister who was a tease. Early on she discovered I blushed and when she felt she had a large enough audience, and most times goaded by the odious Fletcher, she would try one of her many ploys on me to make me go red to the tops of my socks. Sometimes when I would be working at my ledger, we each had a ledger or two to ourselves so we could never claim innocence when anything went wrong, she would come tight beside me and lay her copious bosom gently on the ledger so I could not fail to see it, and the chances were I would bump into it before I was aware of its presence. It was as if it was a gift she had brought me and set down for me to admire, not an appendage to her person. At just seventeen I was deeply embarrassed, as she intended. On other occasions she would squeeze past me so I was fully aware of what bits of her were where and often they were coming in touch with my protrusions. Again she was right on the button, she embarrassed me and was well aware of the fact, she couldn’t have failed to be under the circumstances. In the end, not knowing what I know now about the delicacy of ladies and their appendages, I shut the ledger on her pride and that put an end to my torture.
This was the impecuniary period, a time when my aspirations outstripped my resources, when I had ideas beyond my station, like going to the theatre. In London, at lunch time one could rent a seat for sixpence, to set at the side of a theatre, outside the entrance to the Gods, so that a place in the queue was reserved. In the evening it was claimed and one sat, being amused by the buskers until just before the performance, when the seats were collected. This all cost money and so there had to be economies, and it was then I discovered the Express Dairy in Victoria Street, with its current loaf and butter pats. For a while my lunches consisted of a small loaf of the bread, cut through the middle and buttered. This I would eat in the gardens along the Embankment or in St James’s Park, thereby swapping the rest of the money for a roast with two veg and a sweet, for an evening in the Gods at one of the City’s theatres

I will explain the title later, and for those who do not like rants, I am railing against statements made by the Chancellor to the Treasury. He is bringing in a set of new regulations and procedures to try and bring more people who are on the dole, back into work. A laudable aim, and he does call it an aim, while saying that there will be no targets. In the 70s I worked for local government, was taken over by the civil service, and soon discovered the difference between local government and central government. In that changeover, we lost vast quantities of valuable reference work dating back at least a century, we were uprooted and had to go to a new building, we had new furniture, and our forms had to be redrafted and reprinted, in effect, it was a very expensive experiment, and I personally don’t think we gave the public the same quality of service heretofore. To give you one example, in local government we had small compounds throughout the city and the environs, in which were a few carts, tools and materials, which the men collected every morning and wheeled to their place of work which could be anywhere in a given area. The men were paid an additional sum called ‘Tramp’, because they were pushing the barrow. What they were also doing was looking at the road that they were responsible for and noting where repairs were necessary. When the civil service took over, the men rode in cars or lorries, and the state of the roads diminished. At the same time the financial part of our work was taken over by civil servant, these were people who had no experience of engineering works, and at times make decisions which were contrary to good practice. Senior civil servants only stay in a post for a relatively short time, before moving on, in order to obtain experience. For this reason I have always felt that the men at the top in any given government controlled undertaking, should be professionals in that undertaking, not civil servants

The Chancellor is proposing, as I understand it, to carry out this modification that he proposes right across-the-board, and if this is done in the way in which the one I have quoted was done, it will be a very expensive exercise. When an inventor produces a new product, he carries out trials to see if there are any errors in his judgement. This is done by using a panel of people likely to buy the product, examining and trying out the product, and then have a question and answers session. This whole performance is filmed so that a detailed examination can be made before serious money is put into the project. In the case of the Chancellor, I would have thought it would have been wise to have taken a county, possibly in the North-East, in which the unemployment is high, and carry out an experiment in that area, which would cost little by comparison, and at the same time monitor in some other part of the country another depressed area, which has not been modified, and compare the results after six to nine months. Untried prognosis is not a route to qualified success.

I was on board a corvette in Belfast Harbour; while repairing a set and talking to the wireless operator, an officer stuck his head into the office and said “Williams…” and then he stopped. “I thought you were Williams, ” he said, “You sound just like him.” I smiled, he left and I got on with the job. Then Williams turned up. I discovered I knew him, he had been in my class at school. It was strange meeting him under those circumstances, and later, thinking about what had happened it led me to believe that schools have a stronger moulding influence on their pupils than they are credited with.
In our school, situated as it was in the heartland of the cockney accent, every Friday during a pupil’s first term, all the new entrants were gathered together and taught phonetics and what amounted to elocution. We mimicked the vowels, the consonants, silly phrases about cows, peas and pace which stressed the difference between what was said inside and outside the school. We mimicked the master, Oxbridge to the teeth, so we too were now receiving an Oxbridge slant.
To extend the theme of mass moulding even further, both geographically and educationally, when I started at Queens University Belfast, as a mature, ex-service engineering student, there were only a few English students, most were Northern Irish with just a smattering of foreigners and members of the Commonwealth. Out of forty of us I believe there were something like fifteen of us who were ex-service, many married, some with children, all on grants, all with only one chance, no second bites of the cherry, all ambitious with ground to make up, all studying like mad. For the rest, they were straight from school and within a few weeks they found we were a force to be reckoned with.
>From my perspective as an outsider, both from origin and age, I discovered unconsciously that the men and women who had come straight from school seemed to fall into categories conditioned by their schooling. Their attributes and outlooks seemed the same within each group and yet so disparate group by group. Without being specific, there were schools which produced people who were relatively innocent to a point of being almost naive. One group could have been classed as puppyish; another had the insouciance of the English Public School. There were some who had suffered such a strict and rigid regime that now they were out from under the repressive supervision, they did not seem to know quite what to do with their freedom. There was a tough crowd, polite but hardy, nothing would get past them and there were others who seemed so reserved as to be non-existent. To generalise is unfair to the individual, and probably many would not agree with my assessment. However, the fact that I have convinced myself that I discovered this apparent segregation in attitude and approach subconsciously, and that I believed it to be true at the time, must say something for the mass moulding of character and the responsibility the teacher has for the end product of his school.

My mother, Willie, was always inventive and resourceful and was consequently a horder. Unfortunately she passed the latter tendency on to me and I own a choked workshop to prove it. It was my first scout camp, I had only left the Cubs and been promoted to the Scouts in the late Autumn and here it was Summer, and I was off on the ‘great adventure’. My grandmother had come up with an army kit bag and I was provided with a printed sheet in that greenish-blue ink which had been rolled off from a sheet of impregnated gelatine, the forerunner of the Roneo, the photocopier and the Fax machine. It was slow, messy and prone to human error, but useful, and I suppose, at the time, quite a wonder in its way. On the list was all I had to provide.
I remember the tarry smell of the kit bag, war issue to Sonny, my uncle. There was all the fuss about knives and forks, the enamel mug and plate, and the blankets to sleep in, held by huge safety pins – there were no sleeping bags at our level in those days. The first time I came across a sleeping bag was in 1946 when a cotton liner was de rigueur in the Northern Ireland Youth Hostel Association.
On the day we set off in a lorry, hired from a local merchant, it was very hot. Unfortunately the canvas cover of the lorry was in place and as the mudguard of one of the rear wheels was rubbing on the tyre, we were all ill from rubber fumes. What with the repair to the mudguard and the repair to the passengers, we arrived at the camp site very late and as there was no time to initiate the novices in camp craft, we were relegated to digging the latrine while the more experienced members of the party set up camp, and the tents in particular, as quickly as possible – WW1 bell tents, a real thing of the past. The tents were a great source of fun if you were the perpetrator and annoyance if you were on the receiving end. We all slept, feet to the pole, so our heads and faces were positioned under the triangular segments of the canvas, at the edge. If it had been raining and was still raining, and one ran a finger down the segment, and stopped just above the head of a sleeping comrade, it temporarily ruined the waterproof characteristics of the canvas and would drip, very nicely, inside the tent from where the finger had stopped.
We had had tea, our patois for the evening meal, and the younger members were glad to get to bed, it had been a disappointing and gruelling day. I was still hungry – I was always still hungry – so, with the aid of a torch I searched my kit bag and, low and behold, kind considerate Willie had put a jar of peeled almonds in my kit bag. Greed brought on by hunger made me put a handful in my mouth and I hardly munched before swallowing. It was therefore a moment or two before I discovered the supposed almonds were, in fact, little pieces of soap, those annoying little pieces that fill the soap dish, too small to hold comfortably, about the size of a good almond. It was barely light when I was introduced to the horrors of the scout latrine, with its single pole suspended across a most unpleasant chasm, but the alternative was unthinkable. I later discovered that Willie, the resourceful, had included the ‘almonds’ for putting in a punched baked bean tin, to shake in the washing-up water to make suds. Unfortunately she had forgotten to include the instructions.

To some extent, auto suggestion, prompts a lot of the ills of today. With the vast amount of material needed for TV and the media, editors are less critical of material submitted. I suppose I come into the latter category – so be it. Through their lifestyle young people in the 30s, were not open to these opinions, just sport and their social life, not hunched over a TV, or reading magazines I would never have been allowed to bring into the house.
Prior to World War II we played simple games in the house and outside, and in general terms, the only stresses we suffered, were caused mainly by our schooling. Single-parent children, like myself, suffered more stress than others, but we were unaware that this was detrimental to our psyche, and so I believe, we just accepted our lot and got on with our often unhappy lives. From they were toddlers, sport played a great part in the lives of all children. In those days, throughout the land, areas, such as village greens, parks etc, which had previously been common grazing land, were where we all played. In many of the Commons, there were tennis courts, running tracks, and everywhere in the summer, small groups of children were playing a crude form of cricket. The older children skated in the winter at commercial rinks, and most schools played football or rugby. Later teenagers formed small groups on a regular basis to play games like tennis, football and cricket and then these developed, as they grew older, into local teams, especially football and cricket, on local open spaces.
WW2 put an end to all this, what with the Dig For Victory campaign, subsequent house building, and other reasons, many of these Commons have since disappeared with the result the young people are now thrown back on their own meagre resources, tribal rights and wars, or a more monastic life mainly spent in front of a blue screen in their bedroom. It is therefore not surprising that some of the tougher, more bolshie elements make trouble. facilities for the young are essential. At one point in my chequered career I joined a youth club. My outstanding memories were that it was an aesthetically cold place, poorly run by amateurs, that I enjoyed little, and left in a hurry. I believe that young people have a fair idea of what they want, most do not want the moon, but they do not want second-best, this is an insult and gives exactly the wrong impression. Perhaps they should be consulted. I’m not equipped to advise on what should be offered, and how it is run or how it is funded. A nationwide survey, of successful clubs might be rewarding and give a benchmark for future design. Aspects I think are important are, that the club should be better in every way than the homes the young people come from and therefore valued by them, abuse and therefore banishment would really deter bad behaviour, and that respect is a two way street. I am merely making these points from the basis of my own experience, and trust that that experience is not unique; otherwise this piece would be pointless

My mother’s nickname was Willie, and you can imagine the confusion in small minds when my children referred to ‘Granny Willie’ – but that’s our family way.
Willie was one of those who constantly find themselves in alien situations, mostly because of a determination to right wrongs – a sort of latter day, female Don Quixote. Before WW1, she left Deal and went to London to work as a bookkeeper. She worked for Simpson’s or a similar chain of restaurants in London; establishments where middle-class people would dine on special occasions, and while not in the top echelon, they were in their day considered more than acceptable to all but the very wealthy. Once, between the wars, Willie took me there but I found it very dull, the dark, deep-piled, patterned carpet, the heavy dark mahogany and the hushed atmosphere were all too sombre for me at that time – it was a wasted expense, I preferred the Brasserie of the Lyons Corner House where it was bright with a lively orchestra competing with the clatter of plates and the chatter of conversation.; just what a young person looked forward to on his next birthday.
Willie was housed at the top of one of the restaurants in a sort of dormitory under the roof, where the company maintained lodgings which the female staff were obliged to occupy unless they lived at home. Situated on the borders of Soho, she sometimes heard screams from outside which made her hide under the bedclothes. I asked the obvious question, ‘what caused the screams?’ but she said it was better not to know..
At some point she was promoted to stock taker as well as bookkeeper and went round the restaurants checking stocks. This included the stocks in the kitchens and as the implements would be part of the stock, the chef had to be on hand. On one such occasion she watched with horror while the chef nonchalantly dug a boiled rat out of a cauldron of congealed fat that had been set on the floor overnight to cool. He then proceeded to place the fat on the stove to reheat for use through the day. This incident, related to me when I was about ten years old, had a profound effect on my enjoyment from then on. Blessed with a highly developed visual imagination I could see the whole scene and never forgot it, but it was not the idea of the dead rat nor the casual attitude of the chef to common hygiene which affected me so markedly, it was the way these considerations had affected my mother all her adult life; she would never again be able to sit in a restaurant without being confronted in her mind by that incident in her past.
She was not the only one affected in a material sense, as a result of her almost, irrational, and certainly singular views on restaurants and the catering industry. She introduced the ‘dreaded suitcase’, an article I loathed every time an expedition was muted. The suitcase was an albatross I had to bear, not around my neck, but it turned an outing into a drudge. I was envious of my friends, and added to this, toward the end of a long day round Hampton Court Palace, when the shins were complaining at the battering from the suitcase and the arms were tired from my turns at carrying it, there was a deep, heartfelt resentment. My specification for a day out, consisted primarily of being taken to a restaurant for a celebration lunch, the odd ice cream, sweets and maybe another meal later. My school friends would regularly relate visits to places like the Zoo, describing how they had lunched in the open air at the restaurant, what they had eaten and drunk. I could see it all, and envied them. For me, however, the disgusting chef had scotched this level of debauchery.
On the rare occasions Willie and I set out by train or bus to visit such places as the Tower of London, full of anticipation in some respects, I was burdened by a suitcase containing a ham salad for two, complete with plates, ironmongery, salt, pepper, salad cream, indeed all a person could possibly need for a picnic out of a suitcase, including tea, milk, cups and sugar. The whole procedure was ludicrous, especially as other members of the family would take me to cafes and restaurants. Willie’s sister, Josie, would think nothing of eating winkles from a stall on any promenade you care to mention.

There has been one plus to this unusual saga, however – my own children ate all manner of food in all manner of places and, as far as I know, were none the worse for it.

Parents used to make strange decisions, with the best intentions and even self- sacrifice, but with little realisation what they were condemning their children to. Single parenting is not, and never was, easy, conscience has to be weighed against pragmatism, welfare, economic resources and what is possible. My mother decided I should not be kicking my heels throughout the summer holidays in London, so twice she sent me off, for a month on my own for a Holiday. Summer jobs were rare so vocational work was the exception. In the countryside, there was fruit picking or harvesting for nothing or a pittance, On the first occasion she took me to a boarding house in Worthing, introduced me, stayed a day or so, bought me a season ticket for a seat at the bandstand and left, giving the woman my pocket money to be doled out, a shilling daily, I was bored out of my mind, lonely, made no friends, and I sat and listened to the brass bands night after night.
The experiment was dropped for a year or two; then I was sent to stay with Floss and Val at Pegwell Bay, in Kent. Val was a roly-poly, rosy faced lady, with a sense of fun and generous nature, who had a handful of guests, mostly friends of the family. Floss was small, tough and rugged, an ex-regular soldier with service all round the world in various regiments He had laid paths round the house in concrete, with regimental badges picked out in coloured cement. He and Val amicably shared the house and one another when visitors were not in residence, but cohabitation was something only whispered. The house at Pegwell Bay was furnished with brass ornaments from India and the Middle East, colourful china, and rugs which Floss had brought home from his travels, and there were flowers everywhere, both inside and out. The hangings were of rich colours – Val herself was colourful, like a Gypsy, with red cheeks, dark hair and huge earrings always dangling to her shoulders.
The house below, on the road leading to the beach, was occupied by an AA man I found interesting, who covered the district on his yellow motor bike and sidecar. He had small children I played with, although I think I preferred to play with Val’s goat which I milked, and was tethered beside the house in a small pasture. The goat, knew me so well it would baa even when I was a quarter of a mile away. It always wanted to play butting games and its forehead of solid bone often caught me unawares in the thigh. The goat’s milk I accepted with tentative caution as I did the vegetable salads which contained fruit, more colourful than Mother’s – Val liked colour. I liked the salad no more than I did the milk but the outdoor life gave me an almost insatiable appetite.
Feeding birds, cats, the goat and a tortoise which hibernated in the cupboard over the cooker through the winter, together with Floss’s influence taught me much about the wider aspects of life – full justification for the working holiday experience, but much of it solitary. There was wonderful hay making, the hay transported in horse-drawn wains and stooked. The fun of building ricks with horseplay among the youngsters, the lunches brought to the field and the smell of the hay itself. I liked guiding the horses by the bridle when on roads, but was always fearful of their huge hooves. I also got jobs as a way of filling in the day, plum picking up tall rickety ladders, with a sort of apron bag in which to put the plums and filling wicker baskets, we were allowed to eat all we liked while we worked, and were paid on the number of baskets we filled. I didn’t get rich, but I did lose time with diarrhoea on the second day. I cycled to some of the Cinq Ports, Sandwich and Canterbury,. and wandered through the remnants of the invasion defences left from the First World War and to Manston and watched the RAF planes taking off and landing.
Down the road beside the bungalow I found another road running parallel with the beach and when I was cycling along there I was assailed with the marvellous scent of fresh lavender. I went into the lavender fields, which, like those in Grasse, in France, stretched in rows to fill the huge field. On the middle of one edge of the field was a gloomy wooden barn-like building which was store and shop and in there one could buy sachets to sweeten sheets in drawers, bottles of essence, hair grease in boot-polish-like tins, solid perfume blocks and sprays of all kinds and above everything was the concentrated smell of lavender. I was allowed to pick lavender and received sachets and hair grease for my trouble.

If you are a conscience ridden single parent, worried if your child should have a holiday, please make certain he or she is accompanied, or else forget it!