Old Gaffer

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  • Cluttons 3 of 3

    Following on from items Cluttons 1 and 2, I write this because it highlights the differences between business in the late Victorian era, my time there, and today

    Aspirations outstripped resources, and I had ideas beyond my station, like going to the theatre. In London, at lunch time I would rent a folding seat, at the entrance to the theatre ‘Gods’, to reserve a place in the queue for the evening. In The evening I claimed and sat on it, being amused by the buskers until the seats were collected. This all cost – economies were made. I discovered the Express Dairy in Victoria Street. Lunches then consisted of a small current loaf, cut through the middle and buttered. This I ate in the Embankment gardens or St James’s Park, swapping a roast with two veg and a sweet, for an evening in the Gods at one of the City’s theatres.

    My next posting in Cluttons was to the Rent Department and a certain Miss Veezey, a charming if slightly tentative young woman, not happy with being brought face to face with the seamier side of life. The Management had decided I was a more robust specimen. I was called into the Secretary’s sanctum, proof enough that I was either to be honoured or dressed down. Headmasters Studies had taught me I was unlikely to be honoured. I went with my tail between my legs. “Ah! Riggs!” No suggestion of sitting down. – a bad sign! “Do you possess a hat, Riggs?” “No. Sir.” I said mystified. “You will understand that this Firm has a long tradition. It is not long since all the staff were required to wear frock-coats and top hats,” he said with equanimity, and not a smile. I just nodded, aghast at what might be coming next, my mind distracted with the vision of tens of my colleagues going in and out of the office in stove-pipe hats and frock coats. He continued. “To represent us you will need a hat. If you can’t wear it you must carry it, and never go anywhere on business without it.” Class dismissed. As I went back to my new department and desk I thought it a bit rich, making me buy a hat, when I was paid only a pound a week, less deductions. I consoled myself that I was lucky; my predecessors had had to pay in hundreds for their tutelage, They, probably had to buy a frock-coat and a topper to go with it. I duly purchased what was then the height of fashion for the young office worker – a Porkpie Hat,.

    Rent collecting was really a juggling act, especially in the rain. There was the rent book with hard cover and all the names and payments carefully recorded, held by a thick red rubber band. Then there was the cash pouch under the jacket, the inevitable hat, the pencil, the householder’s rent book and last, the rent itself, with only one pair of hands. The routine was to stick the hat between the knees, take the money, hand back the change, mark up the book, mark up the householder’s book, say a nice thank you, put the rent book under the arm and retrieve the hat. Easy? Try it with an umbrella as well. Miss Veezey was no fool. Of course that was only the basics with the silent minority, there were always the garrulous ones who were difficult to leave politely, withholding the book and cash until they had told all. Short of wrestling I was a captive audience. I needed training by a milk rounds-man. There were the flats – climbing uncarpeted stairs which children had dampened when the need arose and the atmosphere was thick, or some elderly, undernourished, bodiless hand with a greasy, brown paper covered rent book with equally mucky money would appear through the four inch slit between door and jamb. That particular house was the last straw with respect to Miss Veezey.

    Once I had shown myself capable of collecting rent I was transferred upstairs to the Holy of Holies, the Surveyor’s Department. There they spoke a different language, had more freedom of movement. Instead of writing draft letters for correction, like school, we dictated our own letters, rather than having to write them out in long hand and have them corrected, like essay-time at school. The dictating machines recorded mechanically onto a rotating tube of a black shellac-type material, and the playback needle was of bamboo. When the typist had typed the letters she would engage a shaving device which scraped a thin shaving ready for the next offering. I’m amazed how far we have come in so short a time, to voice recognition transference, dictated straight onto paper, a system I now use.

    My main job then was to take a taxi each morning and visit the areas of our property damaged since my last visit and make superficial estimates of percentage damage, both structural and cosmetic, to enable the registration of War Damage claims. Sometimes, when the raids increased and occurred in daylight as well as at night, I could actually be out recording when further damage arose. The day came when I received my papers and was about to head off to the Navy. On that day I departed, I left a huge ‘Property Vacant, This Space For Sale’ standard notice with a little poem I have long since forgotten.

  • Shorts N0 1

    Not An Electric Eel In the Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolf, it was necessary for me to go into the bowels of the ships to check wiring. It was there that I discovered the cruel, if crafty, disciplinary action of the management. Generally it was a long way from any part of the ship to the conveniences ashore, and, in wartime, most of the men were on piecework which meant that every moment counted – to stop work was like drawing blood. The men therefore, tended to relieve themselves in some dark corner of the bowels of the ship which was under construction. The management had its own bizarre solution to this problem, in the same dark corner they had a string of short lengths of live, low voltage electric cable, stripped of its insulation – that tended to cure the practice.

    Incendiaries I was asleep in bed when my mother woke me, telling me the house opposite had been hit by an incendiary – silver coloured tubes, probably of aluminium, about nine inches to a foot long which were dropped in bunches and scattered on their way down, bursting on impact and setting fire to anything combustible within a small radius. In this case it had gone through the scullery roof of the house opposite, and was setting fire to the laundry. The ARP issued us with a stirrup pump, really a garden spray, two buckets, one for water, one for sand, and a long handled shovel – a broom handle with a small, square mouthed coal shovel fitted – something for lifting dog excrement rather than digging . One was supposed to lift the incendiary, set it in a bucket of sand to burn itself out. The water was to put out the fires. It was a totally useless system for any conflagration greater than a smouldering cigarette – just another cosmetic exercise to hoodwink the populace.

    I put on my tin hat, trousers and gum boots, I climbed on to the roof of the scullery and opened up a hole to put the stirrup hose through. The whole exercise was a total waste of time and in the end we just chucked buckets of water in .There was no point in trying to open the door into the yard, the place below was an inferno.

    Fire Watching On another night, two of us were fire watching at an office when there was a shower of incendiaries and one lodged behind a stone balustrade. Too far to reach with the long shovel, I decided to slide down the roof and wedge my feet against the balustrade to tip the incendiary out through one of the holes between the columns. The idea seemed safe enough and that was what we did. It was only when we went up in daylight to see what damage had occurred that we discovered that the balustrade had one or two larger holes at intervals, holes a body could have slid through and shot down to the road some five floors below. They do say ignorance is bliss.

    Knowing I was short of cash an aunt got me a job fire watching in a tea warehouse in Docklands. It was tedious, boring, but well-paid. Opposite, some distance away, was a railway viaduct and one of the arches had been equipped with heavy doors at either end to form an air raid shelter. On a night, when I was not there, the Docklands had the terrible bombing, and a bomb blew the doors up the shelter killing and injuring many, while my tea warehouse, unsurprisingly, was consumed. This was another case where ignorance at the time is bliss.

    High Tea. A friend had two daughters with a four-year age difference. Sara and Denise The older daughter Sara had a boyfriend and had persuaded her parents to let her invite him to high tea. They in turn had insisted that Denise was to have tea, as a chaperone. Never in their wildest dreams did they suspect the outcome of this rash decision. They were given book and verse, and a blow by blow account of what had happened, from a deeply offended Sara, on their return.

    Sara had really pushed the boat out with a fresh salmon salad and all the trimmings. That was not the problem, the problem was Denise. Apparently, Sarah had everything prepared, with the table beautifully laid and only had to bring a few things to the table after the boy and Denise were seated, but that was when strife began. How Denise thought up the ploy has always been a mystery, she was only about thirteen years old. She was fully conversant with all their condiments, utensils and cutlery, but on this occasion she chose to ignore all that and show surprise at everything on the table. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, picking up the pickle fork. ‘I didn’t know we had one of those.’ Next it was the fish forks, the pepper mill, the sweet server and so on. When we heard the story, we and their parents commiserated with Sara in absentia, but we all had to laugh at such devious thinking.

  • Hypnotism

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Schooling In Britain 1930

    Returning to a British school in 1930 seemed totally alien from what I had experienced in Africa. The hours were different, I had to walk over a mile each way to school, morning and afternoon and the classes were bigger. When I arrived we worked with rooms lighted by gaslight in winter afternoons and, worst of all, I was out of my depth through losing two whole years of schooling. I sat next to a boy who constantly wet himself and there was a permanent aroma. We were not allowed to change seats because it saved the teacher calling the roll twice a day, as we sat in alphabetical order – unfortunately. I remember one teacher who had come from New Zealand and who seemed only to teach Maori customs. She had us making endless native huts and constantly drawing maps of the place.

    There was a strong amateur dramatic interest in the school with end of term plays and it was about this time that I learned sword dancing. The swords were made in the school woodwork shop, where the woodwork master was not averse to throwing bad work at the head of the poor incompetent who had made it, and he rarely missed. The dance called for eight participants and as we danced round we put the swords to our shoulders, and with a good deal of pushing and wrestling, twisting and turning, we managed to get the swords locked together to form an octagon, rather like a large Jewish Star. The whole shape was held in the air by one sword, by the team leader; when it was lowered the swords were withdrawn with a flourish, clashed together high in the centre, like the thin spire of a church and then the dance continued. We gave exhibitions, why I never quite understood, because it was a very dull dance, every bit as dull as Morris Dancing, especially as we were too young to get well oiled before we started. I suppose that was the main difference. I also became re-acquainted with discipline. (See Sex & Child Abuse) Nowadays young people seem to think for themselves more than we did, they are more cynical and less malleable, or do I imagine that?

    Believe it or not, it was an honour to be ink monitor. Can one think of any greater example of brain washing than to make a child actually want to go to school earlier on Monday morning and stay later on Friday afternoon than his compatriots, get his hands filthy dirty with an almost permanent stain and perhaps ruin a perfectly good shirt into the bargain, while he washes out a whole boxful of grungy, chipped, china inkwells of their coagulated mess, then mixes the astringent smelling powder and finally refills them. Not content with that he has to carry the trayful up several flights of stairs and place two in each desk with the inevitable spillage and further chore of cleaning up, all the time worried in case this great honour is taken from him.

    There were the art classes where the inept were cheek-by-jowl with the insouciant, and plagued by the competent who always came just when things were going wrong, with words like ‘Isn’t that nice,’ said with all the insincerity of a street pedlar, hurriedly followed by an entreating ‘Come and see mine’, a plea for praise and perhaps a statement of insecurity. It was strange that in a school where none were undernourished, why the licence to have biscuits and hot Bovril after a swim in the swimming bath of a neighbouring school, was such a great inducement that few, if any, brought notes of excuse. That was the era of cigarette cards. No one failed to collect them, but some collected them for a strange game like a coconut shy. The boys had areas along the playground wall marked out rather like the Oche for darts. Against the wall were propped cigarette cards at intervals and the players would stand at different lines, depending on the distance from the wall, and by flicking a card of their own, from between their fingers, they had to try to fell a cigarette card leaning against the wall. If successful, one received a number of cards equivalent to the offer for each line, say two, three or even ten if it was a back line. There were tricks of course. The stall holders would bend the cards slightly so they arched away from the wall and were thus stiffer to hit. The throwers, – or I suppose, the suckers – would use stiff cards because they flew better and harder and they also adopted a scything technique so they could fell more than one target card at a time, to the annoyance of the stall holder.There were no lollipop ladies; policemen were stationed at crossing points and held the hands of the smaller children as they crossed the traffic in flocks. The children vied for the favours of the policeman and most policemen reciprocated by giving the appearance of being interested in their stories.

  • Baccy

    For possibly the last time ever, I want to revive all those stupid rituals real pipe smokers took so much to heart and spoke of with such reverence. Now we rarely see, or even smell a pipe being smoked, I feel I must record the strange, ancient habits of the sailors of my day with respect to ‘baccy’, some perhaps, long since lost. Tobacco was rarely bartered except with people outside the Service. At sea we received our allowance and could buy named brands at sixpence a packet of twenty. Ashore we took enough to do us, and when attached to an establishment one could buy 400 tailor-made cigarettes for three shillings and four pence. The other Services denigrated sailors when they met, in the way sailors taunted the RAF by calling them the Brylcream Boys. We believed we were the Senior Service and some would boast it in the company of the other Services, often followed by an affray,. The other Services inferred our interests were ‘Rum, bum and ‘baccy’ which was not entirely without foundation. The regular duty free issue of, either pipe tobacco, cigarette tobacco or leaf on a regular basis, for a pittance, was another ducat in the lower deck barter game. It was a treasured perk. The tobacco was of the best quality, and, although it was illegal, a bare handful of non-smokers in any ship’s company, would take their ration and sell it either on board or ashore, or trade it for goods or services ashore, which was more common. Leaf tobacco was rarely taken as it was a bother to process, but I learned the art, which, while being complicated, dirty and smelly, was nonetheless rewarding, if one liked heavy plug pipe tobacco. I will post for the aficionados of pipe smoking, details of the process on board ship rather than in a factory, in a day or two.

    One took a plug of rich, very dark tobacco, pared it with a sharp knife, rubbed, the cuttings pleasurably and with anticipation between the heel of the thumb of one hand and the palm of the other, then, after carefully and expertly filling the bowl of a pipe, it could then be smoked with relish and satisfaction. To a sailor the advantages of a pipe over cigarettes were that it stayed alight longer, it did not burn down in a wind, nor fly ash into the face, particularly if the pipe was fitted with a wind-guard. It left both hands free, and had a macho element too. I distinctly remember actresses in films saying words, which today sound so utterly banal and ridiculous, such as “I like to see a man smoking a pipe.” Why? They were probably paid a fortune to say it, but there were those who mimicked it and believed what was said.

    What is true, though, is that there was so much more to pipe smoking than cigarettes. The different sizes and shapes of pipes, made of so many different woods, at such a range of prices, they became more than a tool, they became an obsession. They could be collected for their own sake and it was a rare pipe smoker who had less than four. They were memorabilia, keys to events or people. Men sat and discussed the merits of this make against that, this shape or that, this tobacco or that. There were rituals which were almost unconscious but which had an inbuilt element of satisfaction. Even the mucky job of grinding out the build up of coke in the bowl had its compensation, it showed the pipe was mature. There was the ‘burning in’ of a pipe, the sacrifice of valuable tobacco, taste and pleasure over the first few weeks measured against the pleasures of a mature smoke for years to come. There was the tactile pleasure, followed by the visual one when the smoker ran the warm bowl down the crevice between nose and cheek to feel the smooth warmth of the pipe, like handling a smooth pebble, and to then admire the burr-walnut or fine wood which now shone in all its glory. There was again the tactile pleasure of the leather pouch and the teasing out of the tobacco. There were tobaccos with wonderful smells which assailed one as soon as the pouch was opened, some smelled like Christmas pudding, others were tangy, all turned grown men into Bisto Kids. Pipe smokers would hand their pouches round so others could experience the smell and texture of their chosen brand and then a long discussion on the merits of brands would ensue yet again, a script worn threadbare, but which never seemed to pall, and the dangers of smoking were rarely, if ever talked about

    Surprisingly there was great satisfaction to be had in attaining the acquired and precise art and skill of filling and tamping a pipe, which had elements cigarette smoking rarely achieved. The fact of having to carry out these tasks induced a natural break in work which could be justified at all levels and which allowed the mind a short respite for filling, lighting the tobacco evenly, which was an art in itself, and then dragging that glorious drug deep into the lungs if one inhaled. I write this long description because soon pipe smoking, which is now frowned upon, will be a thing of the past and people will have forgotten the rituals and the simple pleasures the pipe gave to the smoker, if not to the rest.

  • Pompey Barracks’ Lost Navy

    When I arrived in Portsmouth barracks I found yet another illustration of the practical use of psychology, and while it was on a more lowly plane it was no less effective, it was the axiom of the ‘Messenger’. Those who wished to remain in barracks without let or hindrance, as the lawyers might say, fully vitalled, fully paid and with their rum ration intact, possessed themselves of several ports-of-call and a piece of paper. The specification of a port-of-call was firstly a place one could legitimately be heading for, with said piece of paper. Secondly it also had to be near a ‘caboosh’. A caboosh was somewhere one could disappear into, sleep in, was personal to one or shared with someone one trusted, and had been forgotten. It could take many forms. It might be a tiny room amounting to little more than a very large cupboard, rarely used and large enough to sling a hammock. It could be a small room or even a separate building, in which generators or some other self-operating piece of machinery could operate without much, if any, maintenance. It had to be forgotten by the establishment, or surplus to requirements, and it had to be lockable so a new lock could be fitted, for obvious reasons. Cabooshes were often shared.

    It was then merely a matter of passing from one caboosh to another throughout the day, making sufficient appearances to be known by sight by authority and therefore become accepted as an essential part of the system. The Messenger had to travel so fast it was unlikely he would be stopped and questioned, and the paper, probably one of many, if it was examined at all, should fit any situation and would add that final patina of legitimacy. Authority, with its hundreds appearing and disappearing every week, could never have policed the assemblage.

    At nineteen I was obtaining an education which in future years made me the most suspicious person Soph had ever encountered. I was not in barracks for long, but it was an unforgettable experience. For a start, up until then I had either bought cigarettes at six pence a packet on the ship or rolled my own from my tobacco ration which consisted of a pound of tobacco, cigarette or pipe, once a month, in airtight half-pound tins, for about one shilling and sixpence. However, somewhere in the bowels of the barracks was a small community, who manufactured cigarettes out of the standard tobacco issue and sold them in boxes of 400, at three shillings and four pence.

    The quarters had varied little since Nelson, steel framed buildings like warehouses, with tall factory-like windows and rooms so high one had to put one’s head back to see the ceiling. In the centre were lockers and running down the centre and two sides were the rails on which the hammocks were tied. This in itself was interesting as on rare occasions, drunks would come ‘off shore’ – navalese for coming back from a night out – quietly tie a sleeping man in his own hammock as he slept, using his hammock lashing, then they would climb up onto the beams and raise the poor devil until he was about ten to twelve feet from the floor and tie him there. It would only be when he wakened that he would be aware of his predicament and by then the drunks would be too fast asleep to enjoy the joke. He, meanwhile, would be scared to move in case the hammock was not secure.

  • Pompey and Psychiatry

    Pompey Barracks – Portsmouth. After leaving the ship, in due course I reached barracks in Portsmouth to await another draft. It was the first time I had been there to stay for more than a couple of days and I soon discovered it was a world of its own.

    Immediately on arrival in barracks everyone went through the ritual of keeping appointments at the various departments in which records of his career were held. These records followed the service men and women round the world and no matter how short the stay, or even if it was a return visit after only a brief departure, the tradition of the appointment was an essential part of the first few days. It was a game – that was for sure – as the appointments were more a ritual than having any serious intent, it was a game which was an amalgam of ‘The Stations of the Cross’ and Monopoly, and those who were good at the game, the nefarious rogues, who never went to sea, never did any work, they were the lost legion, who had, in their eyes, won the game. If they were very good they kept it up for the whole duration of the war, never having to pass ‘Go’, never going to ‘Jail’, just picking up their cash and cigarettes, drinking their tot and being bored out of their minds. The size of the constantly changing occupancy of the barracks was a factor in their favour

    The key to failure was being bored. To be a single minded rogue requires ingenuity and intelligence, being part of a gang requires only obedience to the head rogue. The ones I came across were single, running their own rackets and trying to remain anonymous while being ostensibly part of the system. The real rogues were the ones on the strength who were never transferred and never drafted. Sometimes this was a bookkeeping error, sometimes as the result of greasing the right palm, but these men were legitimate members of the barracks and as such received their full pay, their rum ration, their cigarettes and even their leave.

    A Brush With Psychiatry My first encounter with psychiatry was in my last year at school to find what I was best suited for. In Pompey Barracks I had my second, there the Psychiatrist was universally called the ‘trick-cyclist’. I was on my way round the Monopoly board. I had arrived at the building housing the medical staff where I was due for yet another cursory examination. There I sat in a queue waiting my turn while others were there for many reasons.

    As I have previously said, I was a Wireless Mechanic, also only in for Hostilities Only, an HO, a new type of rating , dressed in what was picturesquely called ‘fore-and-aft rig’, a suit with shirt and tie and was generally ignored by the ‘real sailors’, who tended to talk to one another across an HO as if he was not there, and this happened at the medical wing. I recall that at least one of the men in the waiting room was handcuffed to a sailor in gaiters, which would indicate he was a prisoner in custody, he had offended in some way, committed a violent act, jumped ship, stolen, anything which could result in a sentence of imprisonment to be served either in a naval establishment or a civil jail. Men in this category were automatically sent to the ‘trick-cyclist’ for examination prior to arraignment.

    The conversation between the man in handcuffs, and others there for the same reason but not under guard, was enlightening to someone who had barely heard of the word psychologist at that time, a not uncommon state as the profession was in its infancy – but not as far as these sailors were concerned. They not only knew why they were there, having in most cases been there before, they knew the questions which would be asked, could reel off the right answer for standard Rorschach tests, knew the various other tests they were to undergo and advised one another on the answers the psychiatrist would need to be given if they were to be declared unfit for duty at sea. It was a fascinating approach to delinquency, one I never forgot, but more, it was a salutary illustration of the triumph of experience over theory.

  • The Irish Condition A Near National Disaster

    In the 40’s, you would have thought Ireland was nearer Australia than Britain for all the majority of the residents of Britain knew about the place and, I’m afraid, when I was dispatched there by the Navy in ’42, I fell squarely into that category too. In fact I knew more about France, which is about the same distance off-shore, than I did of Ireland. When I was sent, I had some vague idea I was going to the green and pleasant land I had seen depicted in the cinema. One person who had helped to confirm the British concept of Ireland was Barry Fitzgerald with his portrayal of the Irish as either dotty eccentrics, or slightly oily, very obsequious, forelock tugging, guileful little folk, who, in a minute, would bite the hand that fed them while smiling into the other’s eyes. The myths, too, perpetuated in song and on canvas, of thatched cottages and donkeys with their panniers in the peat cuttings, of this nirvana across the pond with its four million population, have been fostered in the minds of its 50 million ex-pats in the USA. In actual fact one has to search the wilder extremes of the country to find this idyll, which ironically is shrinking with every pound or punt poured in by the same ex-pats.

    The media reports during the seventies, eighties and nineties, of the internecine war, so euphemistically referred to as ‘The Troubles’, have changed all that, but only marginally. The real Ireland is none of these, it is so much better and it is worse, it is beautiful beyond belief and in places it is an anachronism, held solid in the aspic of its own myths and prejudices; but above all it is a contradiction. To make the point, take the phrase itself, ‘The Troubles’, a euphemism if there ever was one, and so at odds with what the ‘Troubles’ really represent. It is certainly an interesting reflection on an absurd sense of propriety when one considers that working class women used to refer to their gynaecological ills in the same terms, perhaps they still do – the comedian, the late Les Dawson, used to make great play of womens’ ‘troubles’ in his Northern sketches.

    When one lives in Northern Ireland, in spite of every attempt to be liberal and non-biased, one soaks up the political atmosphere unknowingly because it enters the pores, like the sun on a Costa beach, until the whole of one’s perceptions become coloured. It may not affect one’s outlook, nor one’s attitudes to individuals, but it is there, like a third eye peering over the shoulder, looking for the bias in others and mentally countering every statement with the question, ‘is that really so?’ This conditioning starts the day one arrives and continues from then on. It was there in the ’70’s daily, and to give a taste of the stress it could produce I write about the theft of the drawings.

    The Theft Of The Drawings At the time I was tendering for a large contract, worth enough to bring contractors over from the Mainland to consider pricing. The drawings for the job ran into two rolls of between thirty and forty drawings a roll, and these I permanently kept in the boot of the car so I could meet the contractors straight from the plane and take them to the sites.

    My younger daughter borrowed the car to go to the Queen’s Film Society and while she was at the screening the car was stolen. We suspected it was the paramilitaries and this had me very worried because these drawings indicated where so much sensitive material was to be found, vital to the life blood of the area – the high pressure gas mains, feeding every thing including the chicken incubators of County Down, the high octane aeroplane fuel lines, telephone links and so on were all marked and described so the contractors would be able to price for the necessary precautions. The thought of their theft had never been envisaged. What to do? I thought long and hard for most of the night when I heard the news, and came to the conclusion that there was really nothing anyone could do but worry. It would have taken almost the whole of the British Army to have guarded everything depicted there and even then terror might have struck. I decided to stay stum, let the bosses enjoy their sleep, and await developments.

    Within ten days the car was returned. There was no spare wheel, my golf clubs and other personal effects were gone, the engine had been tuned like a racer and the old valve was in the pocket to prove it. It had done a thousand miles in those ten days which said much for what it had carried and the drawings were lying flat in the boot, untouched, which in turn said something about the people who had stolen the car and the drawings! The relief was unimaginable – unless one has experienced it!

  • The Highs and Horrors of a Motor-Home

    To anyone thinking of buying a motor-home, I would suggest it is a better investment if one is retired, or if one’s employment allows protracted holidays. The two snags in shopping are that one has to tie everything down before setting out, and that, today, with height restrictions at parking sites, the motor-home has to be parked clear of town. Conversely it is nice not to have to back a caravan, merely drop anchor. When I retired, a man offered to build for me what I needed in the way of a motor-home. I had to buy and deliver the vehicle and roughly design the layout. For about a week Sophie and I spent periods standing or sitting on bits of newspaper, and came up with a full scale paper plan. In the end we owned a van which pleased us and was designed to accommodate our arthritic needs – storage within easy reach – and comfort. We had holidays all over Europe, meeting the most extraordinary people. There were the scroungers, those who visited just when the bottles would be on the table, ostensibly to welcome us to the site, but the intent was blatant. Others who insisted on telling us their life story, blow by blow – that’s a laugh, when you consider this Blog – and even strong hints, just short of outright rudeness, could not shift them. There was the lady in Vienna, incredibly endowed, who stood beside the swimming pool slowly and deliberately rubbing some form of unguent into her pendulous bosom while her head was rotating like a lighthouse to see the effect it was having on the assemblage. Above all though was the man we met on our way to Graz having just left Vienna. He was a lu-lu!

    We had turned off the motorway, heading for the mountains, but unfortunately, two lorries preceded us driving nose to tail, so it was a case of pass one, pass all, or stay put. After several kilometres there was a long straight stretch and I started to pass. In the distance a white sports car appeared but he had ages to slow down so I kept going, passed the lorries with room to spare, and then we could relax with an open road and scenery to drool over. Nonetheless the on-coming car had to flash us, I assume he owned the road. About half an hour later I saw a white car right up against the back of the van with no intention of passing, and then, without warning, it swung out, shot in front of us and braked so suddenly that if my reactions or my concentration had been in the slightest impaired we would have been into it. In truth, the sudden halt was so fierce, the fridge door flew open and the contents came up the van to find us. I remonstrated but he took off. We cleaned up, took off ourselves only to find him round the next bend going slowly. We came up behind him and he did the same again, but I was ready this time. There were more instances but to shorten the story, twice he got out of the car and shouted abuse at us in English, because we had caused him to slow down on his way earlier, his was the sports car I had seen. On the second occasion he then stepped up to the window I had open beside me and before I could gather his intent, he had the keys out of the lock and said he was going to the police to report me. We were stunned. Not only were they the keys for the engine, the back door and the water tank; the house and alarm keys were also on the ring. It took a minute for me to gain my composure, because by now he had disappeared. We were in the middle of nowhere, ostensibly without keys. When the pulse rate had died down and the adrenaline had subsided, Soph got out our spare set of keys and it then took us an hour to find the police station, the area was so remote. We told our tale and it took another two hours to get out of there and on our way once more. We did not go to Graz, we were too worried he would be waiting to break into the van if we parked it, instead we went to Salzburg, but we had to go right across to the Rhine before we could find someone to replace our keys.

    I told this tale to Ted, Sophie’s brother, and he said there was an elderly woman living near him, in Cheshire, who had been driving too slowly to please another driver and he had stopped in front of her too, and taken her keys, but he had thrown them into a nearby garden. I think any comment on both occurrences would be hyperbole of the highest order.

  • The Building Site – Lessons Learned

    Engineering Students were required to have a holiday job on a building site as training. I was taken on at a building site constructing houses, and involved in the supervision of the road and sewer contract, under the guidance of the Clerk of Works, whom I had run in with over the Orangemen. It was on this contract I learned to work in the most appalling weather conditions and the most important lesson of all, that disrespect would be shown to those in authority who displayed weakness in any form. I also saw how experience is worth a ton of theory.

    The site was squarely on the tail end of what had once been a glacier in the Ice Age and now consisted of fine sand ground by the ice from the rocks over which it passed. The sewer was not merely being constructed in sand, it was in a feared ground condition known as running sand, – sand which has no stability and without warning can collapse burying men working in it, unless suitably supported. Digging sewers in running sand is both hazardous and costly on account of the precautions which have to be taken. Some contractors tend to take a chance, cut corners, in the hope all will be well and they will get away with it. Such was the case on this site, suddenly the wall of the trench, improperly supported, with a man in the bottom laying a pipe, collapsed without warning and started to build up round the man like sand in an hour glass. Without a second’s thought the foreman, standing on the side of the trench, lifted a shovel and projected it like a javelin at the man’s head, or so it seemed. Certainly, if the man had nodded he would have been cleaved. The shovel stabbed into the sand in front of the pipe-layer’s face and as the sand built round him it formed an airspace in front of his face and, for the time it took to rescue him, he was able to breathe. Experience, not theory had saved that man’s life.

    The next lesson had its funny side, but where I was concerned it taught me that the men on the site, watch everything, particularly where it concerns authority, and it can be every bit as cruel as some of the men I had encountered in the Navy. The engineer in charge of the contractors, whom I shall call Jones, was a strange fellow. I have never found his equal since. I’m convinced he was divorced from reality and if the site staff, the junior engineers and the foremen had not been so efficient, he would have foundered long before I came across him. Building sites are as class-ridden as any segment of British society and the privileges are jealously guarded. At the bottom of the heap are the tea boys, errand boys who are learning to be labourers and then hoping to graduate to tradesmen. It is their duty to go for cigarettes, go to the bookies on behalf of the men, buy food, make tea and work on the site, in that order of priority. They are cheeky, full of
    fun and more than tolerated by the men on the site. The engineer, Jones, would come on to the site, no matter what the conditions were like underfoot, dressed in light trousers, fine shoes, a smart suit and colourful tie and then proceed to pick his way from dry patch to dry patch as he continued down the site, like someone doing the balancing act on precarious stepping stones in a fast flowing river. It was both predictable and inevitable that the tea boys would not only see him as he progressed, they would come out from the various corners in which they had been concealed and would then follow him down the site in a line, imitating his every move and gesture and then, like Grandmother’s footsteps, they would stop and appear nonchalant should he turn. This performance was more than a bit of fun, it was an expression of what all the men felt about Jones. I believe the tea boys would not have had the temerity to ridicule the man unless they
    had heard comments by the men during meal breaks, it was then they knew they were on a winner.

    There was one slightly vulgar story concerning Jones which was going the rounds. Apparently he was doing his site inspection when he came across a man in the bottom of the trench digging. Each time the man shovelled up a load of earth and threw it on the side of the trench he grunted. Jones stood watching him for quite some time and when he could resist it no longer he accosted the man. “I say,” he said in superior tones. “Is it necessary to grunt every time you use your shovel?” The foreman and the ganger were aghast, what the man did while digging was of no consequence, how much he dug and how well, was all that mattered. The man stood up slowly, stabbed his shovel into the loose earth, slowly turned and looked up at the engineer. He was well aware who he was, no one on the site was otherwise. “Wha’ ja say?” Jones had to repeat himself. The man looked at him for a moment as if he was examining something new to his experience and then said, “If you was digging this, every time you lifted the shovel you’d shit yourself, when I lifts it I grunts.” With that he turned and went on digging. “I want this man sacked.” Jones told the foreman, but the man was not sacked. Ask a silly question, you are likely to get a silly answer.