Blog

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.

Floss was a handyman at Ramsgate’s huge funfair called Wonderland. He worked on the Big Dipper. Early every morning he sent two cars round the track loaded with sand bags, watching the reaction of the wooden structure as the car went round, to gauge any weaknesses. Next it was my turn for a free, if solitary ride, as a third check. Can you imagine what Health & Safety would make of that today?
Evening was the best time to be there, it was vibrant, with a cacophony of sound and a kaleidoscope of coloured lights winking on and off, and I absorbed the hectic atmosphere of the constantly eddying mass of humanity, along with the excitement of it all. When I went on these protracted holidays it was my practice, even duty, to return home with a small present for each of the family. This time I had had so many incursions into the wallet I was almost totally broke. What with the cinema trips, smoking, the funfair at Ramsgate and the even more expansive funfair at Margate, called Dreamland, I had only pence left and was at my wits end – well almost, I still had the slot machines to fall back on. Families descended like locusts on the one-armed-bandits. They were impatient to win and when the pickings were poor they too, like the locusts, moved on. It was then that I moved in, with just the odd penny here and there. I would give a heavily patronised machine, the opportunity to play one or two more games. Most times it worked. On the last evening I could not waste money on bus fares and cycled to the fairground. There I set about the stalls. Buying presents was out of the question, just a matter of playing the odds and knowing when to stop. Having increased my shilling into something like five, I went in search of other games of chance where I had reasonable odds, I won a glass bottomed tea tray, plaster of Paris elephants of all sizes, coated in black mica, a milk jug, toffee, and chocolates for Val. The things were equally disparate and cheap, but I was no connoisseur, merely a boy trying to get himself out of a jam. That night I cycled back to Pegwell Bay with the tyres birring happily along on the tarmac, a smile on my face which could not be rubbed off by the passage of the wind, no matter about the lonely days and the long hours spent touring for its own sake, the elation of that evening put it all behind and made that holiday one I never forgot,
It was at this time that I bought a packet of Will’s Goldflake cigarettes and sat in the cinema, in the afternoon, in the dark, enjoying a taste I was only once again able to enjoy. There is something about the taste of those first cigarettes one smokes which is indescribably satisfying – like the taste of real Naval rum, never to be experienced again. In fact it was many years later, when I restarted smoking after a longer than usual period of abstinence, that I savoured for a brief period that wonderful sensation and taste.

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!

Some aspects of the economy, recently been brought to my attention, are in themselves are not unlawful, but they have a considerable effect on the viability of production in this country. A friend of mine recently had their house overhauled by a builder, and then asked him to carry out additional work. He said that he was going out of business because he could no longer compete with the prices offered by immigrant Polish companies, who were undercutting him. I’m not criticising the Polish people, if the system is there for their advantage, then they are perfectly at liberty to make use of it. We are finding that when a large company in a given area up-roots its production and takes it to the Far East, or India, the area in which it functioned can become seriously economically disadvantaged as a result of the unemployment, and the effects on the local industries and outlets. If, immigrant companies are set up, the workforce is immigrant, paying low wages, and such wages that are paid are being sent home to a foreign country rather than used to support the economy in the area in which the work is being done. This is a parallel of manufacture and construction being carried out abroad, with the same effects on our economy. I am conjecturing that those immigrants have a lower standard of living than the indigenous nation, in order to send more money home. Recently there was a case of eight men living in a very small bungalow. These facts are understandable, and are not criminal, but their apparent growing effect is clearly not to our advantage. The areas in which immigrant workers are now filling posts, is getting wider with time. Theoretically there must be a balance between the cost of indigenous labour, and the viability of the output, but it would seem that there is a flaw in this theory somewhere. It worked in the past, so why does it not work now?

One reason that I have put forward before, is that those who are using foreign manufacture, or foreign labour in this country, must be pocketing the profits, and possibly not spending them in this country, because the money does not seem to be following the usual path. When companies are selling articles on the basis of buy one, get one free, then either they were overcharging in the past, they’re on a path to destruction, or treading water in the hope of things getting better in the future. Recently the government was coagulating itself on a 6% rise in employment levels in manufacturing, but they didn’t say what the base level this came from. I’m afraid that we are faced always these days with statistics that mean nothing to us because the background is in shadow. `

Oxbridge and ex-Public School staff ran our school on Public School lines – as closely as one could for a day school. We had PT every day, vaulting over boxes, doing running somersaults, walking the high beam and everything one can imagine doing in a fully equipped gymnasium, including a shower afterwards. We played seasonal games twice a week, assembly with hymns every morning. Prefects were allowed to thrash, yet no one complained. A strong sense of pride, fostered by a good academic success rate both at school and after, ensured the popularity with parents. The pride was greatly publicised by names on mahogany-faced boards in gold leaf in the Great Hall, that could be read when the message from the platform was too banal. This pride was dented a bit when some Hitler Youth came over on exchange, taught us hand-ball and thrashed us, then proceeded to beat us at tennis. If cricket had not been beyond the German vocabularies of our upper sixth, we could well have be beaten at that too.
There was snobbery between us and other schools in the area, which we thought beneath us, which I place squarely at the feet of the staff. We had a woodwork department, in which the woodwork master was replaced by a teacher who spoke with a working class accent, worked very much with his hands and had probably come from an artisan background. I suspected he had started life apprenticed to a trade in the North and then had worked hard to reach an academic level. One never saw him in the staff room and rarely, if ever, in the company of members of staff. He taught maths as a subsidiary subject but woodwork and metal work were his preoccupations. We had to choose between learning Classics, or Woodwork and metalwork for Matriculation, I chose the latter, and have never regretted the grounding which has helped me throughout my life, and which made training in the Navy considerably easier. Looking back though, I think tuition in both subjects would have been more beneficial,
It was in my second year the new crafts teacher arrived. Below average height, built like an international rugby hooker, he had hands like vices. He appeared dour. Looking back, and taking into account later experiences with him when we were evacuated, I believe he was probably just reserved. In two terms he single-handedly ripped the workshop to pieces, built steel covered metal work-benches, installed a forge, a lathe, a vertical drilling machine and a plethora of new implements we had never seen before’, while teaching. Then he proceeded to teach us to make EPNS pierced napkin rings, twisted pokers for home fires, the dangerous art of spinning copper – improperly set up, one could lose fingers, ears, chunks of cheeks, as men in the engine Sheds at Crew did, spinning the copper domes for the valves on top of the steam engines. To me it was a period of my schooling I looked forward to every week.
In his store he kept all the expensive and or dangerous bits and pieces which today would walk the plank. Stealing then was not a problem, there was the odd thief who was generally caught and expelled, but nothing was locked up anywhere in the school, except the school shop and the tuck shop. With permission, we were allowed to fix things, as a privilege, and if we had taken on a project which was behind or took more time than allocated, we could work at it in free periods. It was then I discovered him sitting in his office with a cup of tea or sandwiches for his lunch, something the other Staff would not have dreamed of doing, they were entitled to school meals, even when they were not on ‘dinner duty’. I felt sorry for him, a childish presumption based on my own gregarious outlook. In fact, later, I was to find he was a very sophisticated man with cultured tastes and he probably preferred his own company to the racket of the Staff Room.
When we were evacuated in Sussex, he had to try to maintain our progress in metalwork without proper facilities as we would be examined not only on written work but a half-day practical. That first winter in ’39 was fierce and the snow was heavy. One day he came upon some of us trying to make a toboggan out of scrap timber, fruit boxes and the like. He called us into his house, produced some decent wood and guided us in the making of one which would seat three grown boys at a time and was properly constructed with metal runners. Once the ice was broken, we went there on several occasions for tea with his family and it was then that I really appreciated the worth of the man. I have often wondered if he was ever really accepted by his peers at the school, or even whether he wanted to be. All I know is that I owe him more than just matriculation in metalwork.