Old Gaffer

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  • Memories Of France

    PARIS, on the way south we had stayed for a couple of days in Paris. Sophie’s friend had told us of an hotel in the Rue Du Caire, the red-light district, which was closer to our budget than most. Being on a B&B basis we had to take our meals elsewhere. We tended to buy the food near the hotel, to leave the rest of the day free. Sophie would go into the shop and I would stand outside with the girls. One day Linda and I had been watching the Ladies plying their trade, they were standing row on row in tight satin dresses, disappearing with men from time to time into a small hotel opposite the shop. I was quietly timing them and being amazed at the through-put, when Linda, aged 12, hit me with a question I should have anticipated. ‘Daddy, why are all those ladies standing there?’ she asked innocently, staring with interest at the ladies in question. ‘Ah’, I said floundering, then I decided to give half the truth, she would learn the rest soon enough. I explained they were waiting for their men friends to take them into the hotel. Mercifully Sophie rejoined us and we went off sightseeing.

    I suffered one culture shock at the Notre Dame. I might have been lethargic about religion to the point of rejection, but old teachings die hard and I had been taught to respect the worship of others. We visited the Cathedral on a Sunday, and found a stream of people going in and out. It was only when we were inside, in the middle of the noisy scrum consisting of excursions, sightseers, people leaving, assumedly having worshipped, people going in to worship, that we found a service in full swing. It left me with a recurrence of the vision of the inside of the Temple in Jerusalem as I had imagined it when as a child I had been told the story of Jesus and the usurers. I had expected the calm and hushed atmosphere of St Paul’s, augmented even, because it was Sunday.

    Brush With The French Police In the 50’s we were on our way home. I had looked at the map and knew I was on the main road.. I drove along it, and passed another, angling from the right, giving a cursory glance because of ‘priorite a droite’ , when a Gendarme stepped into the road and made us go into a lay-by. It was cleary a regular occurrence – he had that practised air about his arm-waving. ‘Now remember,’ I said to the family, looking meaningfully at Soph, ‘we don’t understand French, and I’ll do the talking’.. The policeman told us we had breached the highway code and he was going to fine us some astonomical sum. I explained in pigeon French – what else? – that we were on a main road and showed him the map to make the case. No sale. The argument went on for ages as I had no intention of paying a fine and he was steadily getting more heated and Sophie was getting more worried, especially when he threatened to take us to the next town and impound the car. The fact that there was no ‘Halt’ or other sign obviously meant nothing to him, he was probably on a percentage. ‘Say nothing,’ I said to Soph, ‘Let him bloody well take us in, I’ll make an international incident out of it.’ That went down like a lead brick, but just when a real decision was about to be made, along came another miscreant in a Deux Chevaux, who had to be stopped.

    The copper was having a field day – that was until the car door opened and a shapely, long, silken clad leg issued, attached to a beautiful, blond dolly-bird – then it was he who had a decision to make. She had a mate who was even prettier if that were possible. Oh! La la! Poor Frog!! He remonstrated to them next, explained; they smiled and she moved the leg, he looked back at us, we looked innocent, and, believe it or not, straight faced, he capitulated, we went on our way. The last we saw was him leaning on the roof of the car breathing garlic fumes into the little Deux Chevaux.

  • Civil Engineering as a Profession

    I realise several things. Having been employed in six different fields, and each time I applied having only a vague idea what the work involved, I believe young people are still in the same predicament. Did the soldiers joining, and more, their wives, ever think of them fighting in Afghanistan in extreme conditions? Do young shop assistants think of the stress and hours Christmas can produce, or the boredom of an empty shop? Do young dental students realise, like watchmakers, they will sit or stand in one position, operating in a small area, with meticulous skill for most of their working life? I have known a few dentists outside work, and they talk!

    Civil Engineering, for those with the temperament, is a most varied, interesting and intellectually rewarding profession. Some will have read that towards the end of the war I was an instructor. I taught highly technical complicated subjects to recruits, WRNS, officers and old lags. When once I had got the hang of it, the repetition nearly drove me mad. My wife, who taught all her working life, on the other hand, enjoyed every minute, and was never bored. In civil engineering you will work in adverse conditions, sewage, compressed air, up pipes and tunnels, in extremes of heat, cold and rain, get filthy, often with hazardous implications if care is not taken, go anywhere, from the bottom of the sea to the top of a factory chimney. You are going to design, price, go to contract on, supervise and account for projects ranging from a few thousand to millions, be prepared to work abroad for a period, and you will have to deal with the Public, your contractors, your employer, consultants and the workforce. To start with you will be learning at a cracking pace, required to do as you are told, but within a short time responsibility will be yours and then the buck stops with you. You may or may not earn as much as some who started university on the same day you did, but you will have had a very varied working life. While much of the work may be similar, the problems will mostly be different. As you rise in status, so the work and the problems will change. It will only be when you are just short of retirement, that deja vu will take over, but even then old habits die hard.

    For example, in the 50’s I had to learn Wave Modelling at a hectic pace. I was taking over one harbour in progress and later tested another. At the same time my innovative faculties were being taxed for the first time. I was designing wave height gauges, applying stroboscopic, photographic analysis, and putting in place much which I was reading up. Wave models fall into two categories, those only dealing with current and wind generated flows, and waves. Those which take into account the movement of the materials of the sea bed as well are siltation models. The models are built in a tank, with a wave-making paddle at one end which can be controlled to produce waves of any height or wavelength. Records of temperature, wind force and direction, sea bed formation, and any physical peculiarities such as sand banks, submerged impediments such as rocks and wrecks, are collected all over a number of years and seasons When the parameters of the physical conditions have also been copied within the model for a given occasion, then, by turning the model, or the paddle, the waves can be made to arrive at the model from any direction needed, exactly to scale, to what has previously been experienced,. The models are then required to replicate, in every way instances from the past to prove their accuracy. Only then is the model deemed accurate enough to prophesy the future reactions to physical modifications to the harbour. The models are made and remade in the future proposals and tested to see the outcome, remodelled to overcome problems, until all are satisfied that the scheme is worth pouring millions into. >From then the outcome is designed and built.

    There are so many facets to civil engineering. There is marine work which involves working either below the sea, or dealing with tidal effects. Tunnelling has its own problems depending on the nature of the soil, from rock to silt. Shops and flats have problems of weight and expansion, depending on the architectural design. For a very long row of shops, the design factors for the expansion and contraction of the building, longitudinally, can be quite excessive. Sewage works and reservoirs, often relegated to poor ground, may have to be piled or supported against slippage of the retaining walls, and the piping to and from the works can also be difficult. One can be dealing in areas of half a city, at other times just one building. In today’s environment, roads and airfields have greater loads and traffic to deal with, which means that they too are becoming more complicated. One could say that there is little time for an engineer to become bored if his interest is in the work.

  • Discipline As A Concept

    I have had to exercise discipline on others, I have been the recipient of it being implemented in almost every form, from lines to a leather belt, and more than anything I have had to exercise it on myself, often unsuccessfully. I therefore believe punishment in any form is transient, and in excess is self defeating. Take a simple example of shock treatment – having, in the past, worked daily where swearing was filthy and as constant, I am no prude. I was in charge of a large team of men, rarely if ever swearing, and bad language was rarely used in my presence, not because of rules, but I assume, out of courtesy. Something was either done or said which was so criminally stupid that I swore,. The atmosphere was electric and still, and the expressions on the faces of the staff were enough to show the point had been thoroughly made. I was caned regularly in all my schools, by teachers and prefects, not for villainy, more from making fun, mild rebellion, or not suffering fools gladly. We all had to bear caning without malice or stress and accept it as the norm. Life was too absorbing to do otherwise. There were, though, sadists, especially in the teaching profession with egos out of all proportion. One primary teacher, was very keen on ‘may’ being used instead of ‘can’. When a child of nine put up his hand and asked could he go to the toilet, he went through endless torture until he used the word ‘may’ and some in extremis embarrassed themselves. The smile on the teacher’s face said all. One can only assume that no parental protests were made because taking the child from that school was worse for a parent than the child’s ordeal.

    Now, on reflection, I believe self -discipline is the nub of the problem; there is no possibility of ‘imposing’ discipline, it can only be administered by oneself, a concept which rarely seems to be taken seriously and certainly never aired in the general context of the matter. I am firmly convinced from my own experience that a beating serves only to put a temporary full stop to a situation; it introduces a feature, so violent, that what went before it is dwarfed. Beating has a minor roll, and is only valid if it is then followed by persuasion to impose self-discipline – though not in those terms. The follow-up is rarely implemented and if there is no other outlet for the energy which has engendered the anti-social behaviour in the first place, and no self-discipline to quench the fires, the punishment as such ceases to have any validity.

    The Secondary School Part 2 The educational system, so hacked over today, was relatively new to secondary schools when I started, (See LCC and the Secondary School ) and the philosophy of parents doing everything to ensure their little darlings got the best education was, if anything, more prevalent then than it was in the post-war years until now, the 2000’s. When I was very small my grandmother pushed me to and from school, four times a day, a mile or more away, to ensure I went to what was considered to be the best elementary school, and later when I was able, I walked it on my own. Next, I cycled four miles or more in heavy traffic, suffering two accidents during that time on the way to school, in order to go to the best secondary school in the area. Incidentally I do not believe any legislation, outside a totalitarian state, will ever remove the desire for personal choice completely.

    Discipline By The Prefects At my Secondary School, with a prefect hierarchy and the school captain at its head, they had authority to thrash, in certain circumstances – I use the word ‘thrash’ advisedly. The system was severely flawed. The original crime was insignificant, the miscreant was awarded lines to be handed to the prefect by a certain time. I was both a customer of ,and part of a syndicate, who wrote lines for a fee, using a number of pencils taped together. The teachers and prefects never checked closely. Failure to hand the lines in on time doubled the dose. Failure again meant that one was called before the Prefects’ Meeting. This was a dragged-out pantomime, scripted to enhance the status of the prefects and belittle the criminal. One stood outside the library, laughter issued through the door, then there would be the serious mutter of voices and finally the door would open and the lamb would be led to the slaughter. The indicting prefect read out the charge, the School Captain asked the transgressor if he had anything to say – pointless, the decision was already made, any comment would be taken as insolence, and being harangued further and even receiving extra punishment. The malefactor was then asked if he wished to be caned by the prefects, which meant the biggest and strongest one there, with a lust for blood, or have the matter referred to the Head Master, a personage on conversational terms with God, both because of his Doctorate of Divinity, but also because of his exalted position – it was really a rhetorical question. Even though one had taken the opportunity of putting on two extra pairs of gym shorts, it hurt.

  • Sunday Special No 1


    Garden Design

    I am not trying to compete with those brilliant people who run gardening programmes both in the press and on television, but as I have remodelled and rebuilt gardens on at least six different occasions I would like to pass on some of the problems I had to deal with and the solutions that I found. One of the biggest misconceptions by people new to gardening and possibly starting from scratch, is they forget that trees can grow and grow. How often have you seen a garden totally enshrouded in shadow, because the trees were never pruned or kept within bounds, and had arrived at a point where it would cost a fortune to bring them under control. I only have to look out of the bedroom window to see trees between houses where the actual space is only 12 feet wide, and the trees, growing in clay, will ultimately cause settlement; and in gardens where they have grown so large that any idea of planning has long since been lost.

    The first garden I had was little bigger than an allotment, and so, instead of filling it with perennials, I used old glazed cupboard doors, built cold frames and brought on annuals – cheap, interesting, allowing experimentation, regular weeding, and not a great deal of work.

    We moved into a house standing on a quarter acre of land, with copious flowerbeds containing specimen plants. As time went on, as our lives grew more complicated it became necessary to reduce the work. In consequence I replaced some of the beds with lawns, decorative paved areas, and beds of mixed shrubs, that would form a stepped background, not grow too large and whose foliage would be complementary and seasonal. I cannot stress that a good deal of research was necessary both in the selection of the shrubs, and the plantsmen selling them, as the latter are often as ignorant as the purchaser, and it is a disaster if you plant a complicated bed with shrubs not to the habit you had expected.

    In what amounts to the last garden we have designed, we started with a virtually clean slate. The predecessors were only interested in sunbathing and so the rear garden was purely an oil tank sitting on a patch of grass. Both of us suffer from arthritis, I cannot pick things up off the ground – even money on the floor of a supermarket. So we designed our garden with very few beds along the periphery, which we trellised with shaped trellis to support climbers of every sort. This meant that we were able to plant a selection of seasonable shrubs and perennials, as well, at intervals in the rose beds, such that weeding using long handled tools was easy. Needless to say the trellis suitably masked the oil tank.

    I found later it was a struggle, with all that was contained in a small garden shed, to keep it tidy enough that one could easily take and replace the long handled tools. With the result I built a lockable annex to the side of the shed, out of 6 foot by 8 inch fencing planks, one plank deep, and in there stored the long handled equipment successfully. In addition we found during the winter months that Sophie could not see the plants in the garden, due to the high level of the kitchen window. I therefore made suitable brackets attached to the trellis supports, which now hold, safely against the gales, bowls of winter pansies, snugly held within the framework of the brackets, at a height that she can see from the kitchen. We have colour all the year round, through annuals, perennials and shrubs in pots which are easy for us to maintain.

  • The Library and PT

    The Library I have already described the way we lived in general, with me doing most of the catering for our mess and the E Boat problems. How we were provided with German speakers whose sole purpose was to listen through the hours of darkness for the officers on the ‘E’ Boats, communicating in German with one another in plain language. The specialists would then try to obtain a bearing on the ‘E’ Boats and we would be off in pursuit, irrespective of mines. These specialists had to be housed somewhere, so the Skipper decided to start another Mess. To it were added the ERA, the Engine room Artificer, the Gunnery Artificer and a couple of other stray bodies. A small compartment became home to us, it was cramped and uncomfortable, especially at night when most of the hammocks were slung, but we melded and that was the main thing.

    The two specialists were German speakers, both straight from University with little or no training, even their dress, and their lack of interest in improving it, proclaimed them to be fish out of water. One was a lecturer, the other an Estonian who was a perennial student and had attended a number of colleges in Britain and abroad. We were not resented by the crew, just treated as one would expect Martians to be treated if they were found to be benign. We would get visits reminiscent of those of children at the zoo seeing Orang-utan for the first time, with similarly inane comments. Slowly the novelty wore off we became the focus of attention for a different reason. Avid readers all, our combined tastes were as catholic as a public library. Slowly, on the tops of the lockers grew a collection of books, and as it grew so men from all parts of the ship came to borrow. We had become a voluntary lending library. Even the Officers came and it was interesting to find that among the crew, the more uneducated the men were, the greater the number of the classical or informative books they borrowed.

    Pt Shipboard Style The Navy was never renowned for its physical training, except for the famous gun crews at the Royal Tattoo every year, taking a gun to pieces, carting it from one end of an arena to the other, and firing blanks when it is assembled once more. Also young Boy Sailors run up a rigging and perform feats of daring miles in the air on a replica of a square-rigged sailing ship’s mainmast. But in my experience those were for show, generally there was little in the way of physical jerks in the accepted sense.

    It was summer, the sun at its height, we were off to fetch a convoy and so action stations were unlikely to be called. The crew were hot and tired, or perhaps bored would be a better term, so someone, probably Jimmy The One, thought up the idea of something physical for the good of our health. Try to imagine a ship some 250 feet long and some 26 feet wide, with superstructures astern and foreword, guns, a funnel, depth charges, life boats and Carley floats to contend with. What was left was a sort of gangway past all these obstacles where two men could barely pass one another. There was no point then, in having any sort of exercise unless it could be of real interest, not just a matter of expending energy and oozing perspiration – another incentive. You’ve got it! Money, cash had to be brought into the equation and that was what the Bosun and the Gunner’s Mate organised.

    Firstly there was a shooting gallery at the bow. Everyone paid so much a shot with a rifle at objects thrown into the sea, the person to hit the most took all or nearly all, some of the money went into the ship’s funds. Clearly the more one spent on shots the greater chance there was on winning, it was a bit like ‘Scratch cards, it had that same compulsive element. The other competition was much more physical and weighted against the more sedentary of us, the deck hands and the gun crews were odds on favourites. We were ‘handicapped’, and, like the shooting there was an entrance fee – it was possible to have more than one go. Someone ran a book so we could bet on the favourites and perhaps recoup that way. One started beside the funnel on the port side, and then ran round the ship twice, which entailed rushing up or sliding down ladders, finally climbing, only using the arms, up a mast-stay to collect a piece of paper from a bundle tied about 12 – 14 feet from the deck, returning to the deck and running over a chalk line drawn there. The ship was still steaming and rolling while the sports were on, so the race round and the climb up the stay were a severe test on the muscles of the chest and arms and on the skin on the hands, especially in the descent. It was unbelievable what that simple competition did for moral, if nothing else it gave us a topic of conversation for days after, as we tended our wounds and ridiculed the more incompetent.

  • Life As We Lived It In Livingstone, N Rhodesia.

    Indecent Exposure And The Rest I was in receipt of or witnessed discipline in the severest sense. The business of the witch doctor being arraigned for ritual killing could have been a case in point, but the first instance and the most frightful was to do with ‘indecent exposure’ and, if I had known of the trauma to follow, I would never have opened my mouth. It was mid afternoon and I was standing among the fruit trees on our patch, talking to one of the African servants, when suddenly he opened his trousers exposed himself for me to admire. Whether he had other proposals I don’t know, I was too taken aback to think and even if I had I was too inexperienced to know what they might have been. I had never seen anything quite like it before and its size and colour were a culture shock of the first order. I told my mother who told my father who was a strap man, that is, someone who takes off his belt to administer discipline. I remember hearing the young black man screaming and later crying, or more like howling, long into the night. I had not realised the enormity of what had happened and so the punishment seemed, to me unbelievably barbarous. Some time later, I was to receive the same treatment for what I would have considered a breach of etiquette – I had been rude as a seven year old will, from time to time, but little more. For this, with the help of the goading of Johnny Walker, I was stripped, held down on a bed with a hand across the back of my throat and whaled with the self-same belt. I’m sure I howled too. What harm did it do to me? Not much I think. I was never to receive worse, but I was destined to receive much more but rarely for even less.

    When children living in Livingstone reached a certain age they were generally sent to Bulawayo or Capetown to boarding school, and then later they were sent to the UK to finish their education, so most were in boarding school from an early age. We, who were too young, were left behind and only saw the older boys at irregular and long intervals so we were a prey rather than playmates, objects to be teased and worse, harried, and bullying was our permanent lot. The family-life which existed then, now seems pointless. At eight years or thereabouts, the children would be sent off and, to all intents and purposes, never be seen again except for very short periods. It reminds me of a tea-room in Newcastle, County Down, circa 1950+. Ted, my brother-in-law and I had been spending a few days walking in the Mourne Mountains and had descended into Newcastle, tired but happy. We found a tearoom to pass the time until we would board the train home. Seated opposite me was a familiar cameo in which the father, a stranger to the boy in the uniform of the local boarding school, was vainly trying to break the ice. Both would leave with a mixture of frustration, disappointment and the knowledge that they knew nothing of one another.

    Smoking and Whisky I took up smoking on an experimental basis somewhere between the ages of six and seven. Smoking was the norm and the non-smoker was not so much a rarity as someone with a deficiency. My smoking started with reeds. All the Africans’ huts were roofed and often walled with bundles of reeds taken from the river. They stood about six or seven feet high, were about half an inch in diameter and were hollow. If, while hiding behind the huts in the kraal at the bottom of the garden, one lighted the end of a short length, the reed would glow and give off an acrid smoke which we would draw into our mouths if not our lungs,. It was only a small step then to steal the odd few cigarettes which were kept in silver boxes for visitors. There was not much check kept on them as they were very inexpensive, unlike the whiskey which had a habit of disappearing. We would take turns in supplying the cigarettes until the whole thing became a bore and then it was dropped. Tangerine scrumping was much more fun and mildly more dangerous, because the best tangerines were not ours, they were grown by an irascible old codger who liked tangerines a lot more than he liked little boys.

    I mentioned the whisky which dissappeared from the locked Tantalus and bottles at an alarming rate. I found my mother holding a bottle of drink upside down and marking the label. It must have seemed odd to me because she explained that whiskey had been disappearing and she blamed our African servants. She added that if the bottle was marked upside down, the level of the liquid when the bottle was righted, would bear no relationship to the mark on the label – crafty! At the time I believed her, but with the experience of time I suspect the thief was a good deal closer to home.

  • Design and Invention

    Both are faces of the same coin, derived through necessity. We all design and invent, it is natures way of progress, but what I wish to lay before you are the difficulties, snags and problems in designing and inventing for profit. My own experience. So you can evaluate the advice, in short I quote my own experience. I have been a designer in Heavy Engineering in most branches from tunnels, airfields, water, sewerage works, docks and harbours, shops and flats. After retirement I was a design consultant to people wishing to promote their own designs and inventions, including patenting and protection, culminating in a joint British Design Award.

    The friends and relatives of the client are the bane of the design consultant. Generally, neither they or the client have any promotional experience and often a limited technical knowledge, but after seeing the invention, they are all so mutually proud, so sure it will make a fortune, they have imbued the client with such a positive attitude he is not prepared to listen to advice and, believe it or not, he is convinced the consultant will steal his design. This was so prevalent I made a statement I was prepared to put in writing – it stated that his material would be treated with the utmost confidence, not only would I not copy it, if as a result of our discussions I could see improvements, additional uses, or should the design be unworkable but another version saleable, all would be his in total and I would have no claim on it. Even this on occasion was hard to convince.

    Protection Patents, Copyright, Protected Designs, and Trademarks, all come under the auspices of the UK Patents Office and are referred to as Intellectual Properties. Things have moved on since my day, 14 years ago, so I will only generalise. If you have an interest in protection, start searching on the internet. I was involved with a design which seemed to have tremendous potential, worldwide, but was received in some quarters with scepticism. Patenting would have to be worldwide, especially with so many countries now well versed in manufacture, and patenting alone was going to cost tens of thousands of pounds. One aspect of protection is that the details of the design and/or the manufacturing process must remain secret until a preliminary patent is obtained, any breach could invalidate the ultimate patent. Hence the design must be protected before seeking a manufacturer.

    Manufacture – Costing. Designs from the humble milking stool to the Rolls Royce require to start with a prototype stage to iron out design, drafting and manufacturing problems. Often these can be done in other materials more cheaply and more conveniently, but they are essential as it is rare to consider all aspects without modification.. Once this is done a manufacturing consultant – ranging from a friend to whatever – is needed to decide on the best economical process and hence the anticipated cost. Only at that point should the product be promoted.

    Promotion and Prospects To make the point I will quote the above instance. We had a prototype, photographs, a reasonable stab at the manufacturing process, and the cost of the moulds necessary to produce the product in plastic. To this was added printing and packaging – all assessments to be hardened up when a manufacturer was found. The first manufacturer was very enthusiastic, but he was part of a conglomerate and the product would need next stage approval. This stage was a duplicate of the previous one. The decisions came back in a few days. Then the product was sent to the top of the heap in the US and we heard nothing for at least a month. Our Marketing Consultant believed from experience that the people in the US were assessing it in the hope of breaking the patent, hence the delay. Ultimately the client found a manufacturer, the product was put on the market but never achieved the sales to even clear all the overheads. There are books in libraries on marketing and details of the various methods used to gauge the potential, like simple mass questioning, with a pen and clipboard, and product evaluation seminars, where selected cross sections of the intended market are brought together in groups to examine and discuss the product before analysts – and there are still other methods. One other hurdle is the state of the general economy which is mercurial.

    The percentage of designs from the general public, which reached the stage of being considered for manufacture was about 5% The successful ones were less than 2%. It’s a tough, costly road and there is only room for hard-headed common sense. Check before spending time and money, someone else, with your skills and reasoning may have had the same idea, it happened to me. Check patents, on the Internet or, possibly, through a government Quango.

  • Chauvinism Exposed

    I can’t remember, but I don’t suppose that the word chauvinism featured very much in the vocabulary of the man in the street, in the 30s and 40s. There used to be a silly story, which had more truth than humour, about an Italian who was asked his views on life, and he answered ‘ I digga da pit, to earnna da mon, to buya da bread, to getta da strength, to digga da pit!’ As I was brought up by women, it was only after the war that I lived in a house where the head of the house was a man. None of us at that time took exception to the fact, that he and I contributed very little to work in the house, other than maintenance and gardening. One came home, read the paper, ate the evening meal, and spent most evenings with the family. Occasionally, at times of pressure one might help with the washing up but it was rare. Similarly, we wouldn’t have dreamed of attending a birth, let alone participating.

    Recently, Sophie, my wife, has been so ill she was incapable of doing more than sitting still, with the result that I found myself as a carer, with all that entails. I’m not suggesting that I found it irksome, merely time-consuming, in many cases time wasting, and very tiring. I of course, in my 80s, would be more tired than most. But what it did do was make me realise, in the past, just how much we had denigrated the work of the housewife as being ‘ woman’s work’, something simple and easy, and I suppose, beneath us. Over the years things have obviously changed not only in my own household, but even more with the younger people where it seems, the roles have no clear definition, they are certainly interchangeable. In those ancient times the head of the house, was exactly that, what he said went, and the fact that this was only superficial in many cases, and those laws were modified by those carrying them out was never discussed. Today, chauvinism seems to be to be found more in the workplace than in the home. You never know, it might just disappear from there too.

  • You’re No Use To Me

    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 na?ve 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

  • An Unpleasant Phenomenon

    Am I wrong in Thinking we are having our pockets picked day and daily, in every sphere? Take Computing, what with broadband, the vast Internet and the improvement in artwork currently available on the home computers, it is a new and wonderful world, but expanding at an unnecessary rate. I wrote novels, on the BBC. B computer, that only had 32 kb. of ROM. I was able to conduct all my affairs, draw graphs, and do my accounts. Now it seems that on a regular basis everything is upgraded, particularly Microsoft, as are the programmes that go with it. When they introduced XP, after Windows 98, there were constant problems and we are still getting updates, Perhaps we need another company which will manufacture a computer for our basic needs, will talk one with another, communicate across the board, and not need upgrading on a regular basis with downloads arriving daily. My old computers, including the BBC are still working, but they no longer relate to other computers, like Appl;e, and some programmes from the past, and so I will soon have to upgrade again. I believe that very few of us need the vast memories and the high complexity we are now forced to purchase, although some companies will go out of business if we don’t continuously upgrade. So it is not being done for our benefit, but their bank balance. Is there no way that the man in the street can assert himself, stop this exponential upgrade? Thank God we can’t upgrade the kettle any more!

    Television has now joined the bandwagon, through the programme supply industry and some of the hardware suppliers. The former, I suspect because its programmes are not being accepted in the quantity they had hoped. I refer to the in-house rented films, each at a price for which one could rent three, for three days, from a DVD rental. Someone taking the full package will be paying more than £600 per annum, without paying for additional material. There is now a new alternative which also costs more. Some of the better films can now only be obtained on ‘High Definition’ requiring a telephone call. I believe this may also involve upgrading the receiver. Then there is Plus, containing a ‘hard-drive’, which allows one to pause during viewing and return later and pick up where one left off. The manufacturers are now offering equipment which not only gives the hard-drive service, it enables people to download and play later, on disk, material of their choice – breaking copyright? Unfortunately the repair and installation companies on the ground are lagging behind this technology and are insufficient to maintain the industry.

    Parking is another case. We all realise the new policies are merely moneymaking schemes, without regard to the individual’s acceptance of these policies. The changes are causing the cost of parking to be ever dearer, and wider in application, to the point where the individual will have no freedom to use his car without risking penalty. As to pay as you drive, this seems iniquitous! The unfairness of all this, which started with Beecham, with no real reference to public opinion, or a true assessment of the growth of need, has placed us in a situation where public transport, an essential alternative to mass parking, is needed both in cities and even more in rural areas, but is almost non-existent. This too, it would seem, is costing ever more, instead of being subsidised as a National need, precisely to reduce congestion. There seems to be no move to upgrade public transport on a national level.

    Taxation is no longer straightforward, we know our taxes are increasing year on year, we are not always sure precisely what proportion of what we spend is tax and what the money is intended for. In Northern Ireland, for years our annual council tax included water rates . It is believed, that money was never used for the purpose intended. Now Imperial Government demands our water rates will double year on year, to include all the updating, renewing and maintenance not previously done, as well as an enlarged supply system, hence we will be paying twice for the same service. Road tax is not, I believe, used to improve roads. The basic principle of the return of surplus money, destined originally for specific work, and accruing through not being spent, but needed later, which is now returned to the treasury at the end of each financial year, only goes to confuse the bookkeeping at the end of the day. We should all demand from our MPs that tax is separated from all other spending, (except import duty,) up front, so we know what we are paying and what it is applied to. It is a matter for our representatives to take up, urgently. I realise that this is more complicated than it will appear, as manufacturers and suppliers will include their taxation in the cost of what we purchase. We can all bleat away, but when Government has an overall majority, and apparently no one is individually responsible, let alone culpable, change is unlikely.