Old Gaffer

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  • Are We Past The Pinnacle?

    The gales and the damage that have occurred this week caused me to reflect on the past. It made me also realise that we have come a long way since I had to trim oil lamps and put shillings in the gas meter. The changes have not only been extreme but clearly detrimental in many cases. I think one could say that probably we were generally unaware right up until the 90s, that things would definitely have to change. In Britain, and the other more prosperous countries, we had arrived at a point where convenience was the essence of our progress. Work, entertainment, pleasure had all been honed to a fine finish, where, providing one had the cash, there were no limits to a life of luxury, pleasure, and relatively little work in the home. The days of the washboard, the coal-fired clothes boiler, the outsider loo, and forced public transport are so far in the past that they have almost been totally forgotten.

    It would seem, with all the new legislation, taxes, and constant warnings, that we are past the pinnacle of the 90s and the future does not appear as rosy as many of us had hoped and expected. A long time ago I wrote the piece that follows and now included here, to stress the incredible change that some of those on the bottom rungs of the ladder have achieved.

    The Very Poor And The Not So Poor – Beef Dripping.     Not far from my Grandmother’s house was a Victorian slum building known locally as ‘The Buildings’. It was not unlike a poor version of the tower-blocks of the 60’s, though without balconies, bathrooms and air. A central, spiral,wrought-iron and concrete stair led from the street to four or fivelandings, and the roof seemed to be flat when viewed from street level. It was like a dirty cube of concrete, dumped amid single storey shops and lock-ups.

    Inside this hell-hole lived our flotsam and jetsam, shadowy figures we never saw and some who were on display day and daily with their pitch and begging bowl. We hear stories of beggars who have fortunes in their mattresses and whether true or apocryphal, it was said that one of the tenants of the buildings died, leaving a mattress full of money. He was a poor creature inevery sense. Whether he was unhygienic or not, he looked it, his pores seemed ingrained with dirt. He had lost his left arm and his left leg in some war or other, probably The Great War-to-end-all-wars. I was too young to distinguish war medals which he carried in full view on his chest. Hecarried something never seen today, a hurdy-gurdy, a rectangular organ suspended on a strap from the shoulder, which could also be set on foldinglegs. It was a development of the music box and one played a number of tunes by grinding a handle at one side. This man would stump, literally, on a peg leg, with his single arm grinding away and an enamel collecting cup attached to the front of the box. What was left of his left arm was held in a fold of his sleeve by his side.

    To digress for a moment, there was the case of the man and wife team whobegged outside Woolworth’s. My mate at school was the son of a Water Board Inspector who was required to carry out enquiries at a house in a street near Woolworth’s. It turned out that the whole terrace of some five or six houses belonged to someone who was an absentee landlord and he, the inspector, would have to make an appointment to see the owner or owners, which he did. They were absent all right, they were at their work. You’ve guessed it! Imagine his surprise when he found that the little lady, respectably dressed, selling iron-holders, little squares of thick woollen material, bound together by an edging tape for holding the old fashioned cast-iron flat-iron, (I should know I made many of them as a child for presents for relatives) and her equally respectably dressed husband who sang in a quavering voice outside Woolworth’s for money. They owned the whole block.

    To return to the matter of the roast beef dripping, On the second or third floor of the buildings lived a woman and her several children in conditions of squalor, and from time to time it was my duty to take to these people a huge bowl of roast beef dripping and a few other items. I hated those expeditions. My grandmother insisted, in spite of all protestations, and she was not unaware of the depths of my emotions. I hated the smell, the dirty, dark, dank hall, the awful stairs, and the embarrassment of handing over the bowl, not for myself, but for the woman. It all seemed so demeaning, which I’m sure it was, but nonetheless she was grateful. I believe it was an exercise designed to force me to see the other side of life, to rub shoulders with real poverty. Once I made Gran let me taste bread and dripping and, with a lot of salt, one could acquire a taste for it.

  • How Schools Can Mould Character

    I was on board a corvette in Belfast Harbour; while repairing a set and talking to the wireless operator, an officer stuck his head into the office and said “Williams…” and then he stopped. “I thought you were Williams, ” he said, “You sound just like him.” I smiled, he left and I got on with the job. Then Williams turned up. I discovered I knew him, he had been in my class at school. It was strange meeting him under those circumstances, and later, thinking about what had happened it led me to believe that schools have a stronger moulding influence on their pupils than they are credited with.

    In our school, situated as it was in the heartland of the cockney accent, every Friday during a pupil’s first term, all the new entrants were gathered together and taught phonetics and what amounted to elocution. We mimicked the vowels, the consonants, silly phrases about cows, peas and pace which stressed the difference between what was said inside and outside the school. We mimicked the master, Oxbridge to the teeth, so we too were now receiving an Oxbridge slant.

    To extend the theme of mass moulding even further, both geographically and educationally, when I started at Queens University Belfast, as a mature, ex-service engineering student, there were only a few English students, most were Northern Irish with just a smattering of foreigners and members of the Commonwealth. Out of forty of us I believe there were something like fifteen of us who were ex-service, many married, some with children, all on grants, all with only one chance, no second bites of the cherry, all ambitious with ground to make up, all studying like mad. For the rest, they were straight from school and within a few weeks they found we were a force to be reckoned with.

    From my perspective as an outsider, both from origin and age, I discovered unconsciously that the men and women who had come straight from school seemed to fall into categories conditioned by their schooling. Their attributes and outlooks seemed the same within each group and yet so disparate group by group. Without being specific, there were schools which produced people who were relatively innocent to a point of being almost naive. One group could have been classed as puppyish; another had the insouciance of the English Public School. There were some who had suffered such a strict and rigid regime that now they were out from under the repressive supervision, they did not seem to know quite what to do with their freedom. There was a tough crowd, polite but hardy, nothing would get past them and there were others who seemed so reserved as to be non-existent. To generalise is unfair to the individual, and probably many would not agree with my assessment. However, the fact that I have convinced myself that I discovered this apparent segregation in attitude and approach subconsciously, and that I believed it to be true at the time, must say something for the mass moulding of character and the responsibility the teacher has for the end product of his school.

  • Christian Science As I Found It

    My Aunt became a Christian Scientist, influenced by an artist friend who lived in Manchester. She passed her ideas on to my mother and after a while my mother became a wishy-washy version herself, never quite at the heart of the movement, but reading a lot, which was a necessity, because Mrs Mary Baker-Eddy based the whole concept on a philosophical dissertation. In short, the theory, as I understood it then, stated that as we, according to the bible, were made in the image and likeness of God, there could be no such thing as matter, and if that was accepted, then there could be no sickness as that was brought about by the degeneration of matter, which, of course, did not exist. The big fallacy to that theory, but I was too young at the time to see it, was the question of who had thought up matter in the first place? They would probably say the Devil, but then who and more importantly why had he been thought up? Deep stuff! Ultimately too much for yours truly. The one part of the whole scenario I found disturbing was my mother’s illness culminating in death. She had contracted cancer and because of her beliefs made no call upon the Health Service.

    With my Aunt a mover and shaker in the local CS church and my mother a willing, if part-time, acolyte, it was pretty well ordained that I would have to attend, and as I had tried everything else I had no valid excuse for back-sliding. I was enrolled in the Sunday School. The parishioners, if one could call them that when they hailed from a number of electoral parishes, were drawn from the ‘haves’, rather than the ‘have-nots’. It was and still is very much a middle-class religion and certainly a degree in philosophy would help in understanding the finer points of its doctrine. In my case I was a have-not, tagging along as a ‘have’ on the coat tails of my Aunt, so I had to mind my P’s and Q’s – although my Aunt would never have seen it that way.

    I think the only real experience I have brought with me from those years is the memory of the hours I spent contemplating the balcony in the church hall where we held the Sunday School before joining the adults in the main body of the church to hear the readings from the Bible ‘with key to the scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy’. ‘Why the balcony?’ you might ask, and it would be a fair question.

    Our teacher was extolling the merits of mind over matter and the fact that everything was a figment of our imagination because we were one with God and so we were a figment of his imagination and therefore our thoughts were his thoughts, so everything was OK. (Are you with me so far?) I completely understood what she was getting at although my interpretation was a little different. To me she and the rest of the class did not exist, I had just conjured them up in a sort of dream. It therefore followed, according to her theory, which, of course had to be really mine, by definition, that if I chose to go up to the balcony and jump off I would land like a feather and be no worse. So I put it to her and she said that was true, providing – there is always a ‘providing’ – providing I had enough faith. From then on I kept trying to assess exactly how much faith it would take to achieve the impossible, but I never had quite enough to put it to the test. From then on I steadily edged toward agnosticism and then atheism and Sundays became a day of rest.

  • It All Started With A Fish Box

    This was originally posted on 15th September last, I thought it might amuse some who had not read it.

    One day, in calm weather, the Petty Officers Messman appeared on deck and sat down to scrape a fish box. No one took any notice, but as the day progressed so did the fish box. He shaped the sides, added supports to the bottom, made a hinged towing bar with a cross handle and started to paint it. We dropped anchor at Sheerness, waiting to pick up another convoy and when we went ashore the Messman went also and came back on board with four wheels he had bought. Within a few days we were treated to the rumble of a little truck being trundled round the deck, complete with small seat, swivelling front wheels and painted like a gypsy’s caravan. It was a present for his daughter. Needless to say that was not the end of the matter – far from it.

    On our ship there were two brothers in authority and competition. Both were Chief Petty Officers, one was the Bosun, responsible for the smooth running of the ship and the other was the Chief Gunner’s Mate, responsible for discipline and gunnery. Both were of a jealous disposition. The little trundling fish box had given the Gunner’s Mate an idea. The next time in harbour he disappeared over the side with a bottle of rum in his hip pocket, only to return from the dockyard with lengths of steel strip and some sheets of plywood. We were all intrigued, none more so than my friend the Gunnery Artificer, an associate, if not a friend of Guns, as the Gunner’s Mate were generally called.

    Our curiosity was soon satisfied, we were dragged in to help. I have often found that people in authority get a bright idea but expect everyone else to carry it out. In this case it was the construction of a doll’s pram. The Artificers were expected to forge the springs and make the axles, the seamen made the body and my bloke, an artist in civilian life who was doing a roaring trade in rum painting water colour portraits of wives and girlfriends from photos, was hauled in to paint those gold lines all good Tansad prams carried.

    We arrived in port at the end of yet another convoy and who should come down the jetty and be brought aboard but Mrs Gunner’s Mate complete with Miss Gunner’s Mate – Happy Families indeed. They disappeared into the caboosh of the Gunner’s Mate only to reappear with the pram, a doll lying there and the last we saw of them was the proud child and the self-satisfied grin of the Gunner’s Mate. The Customs men never did discover the butter, sugar, rum and cartons of cigarettes the little girl wheeled through the dockyard gate so grandly and so innocently.

    You might think the matter stopped there. Indeed you might wish it did, but history demands that I record the next act. Act III. The Rivals. The Bosun, Guns brother, could not be outdone, his reputation and self esteem demanded bigger and better, and bigger and better was what we saw. The two-ring Lieutenant, Jimmy the One, The First lieutenant, the Captain’s right hand man, was nobody’s fool when it came to conning a ship, dealing out retribution for misdemeanours, but he was putty in the Bosun’s hands. The Bosun aproached him and explained that there were parts of the ship which needed repair and that the next time we were in harbour he would arrange to put it in hand, all he needed was a signature on a chitty. Jimmy signed.

    The next time we were in harbour a forest of timber and steel appeared at the gangway, carried by dockyard ‘Mateys’. It was brought aboard and men were detailed to stow it. Off we went again. The next time we docked, the timber disappeared along with the Bosun and a bottle of rum. The Bosun returned empty handed. On the next trip we dropped anchor at Sheerness at the mouth of the Thames; where the Bosun went to a second hand shop, bought a cheap inlaid box, with a receipt written in pencil. Back at Rosythe a beautiful bed complete with steel frame, springs, polished like new, was brought on board from the dockyard.. My bloke painted Mickey Mouse and Minny on the ends, the receipt for box now read ‘One large child’s bed.’ and all was ready for transport through the dockyard gate. ‘Great oak trees from little acorns grow’

  • The Vagaries of Engineering

    Sleight of hand. In one place I worked the boss had the theory that everyone made at least one mistake in anything he did. Give the boss a sheaf of drawings to check and approve, he would look at every one of them until he found a mistake, which was not blatant. It could take hours. It was sometime before I was let into the secret of how to combat this, even if it might prove that one was less than perfect – it was the intentional mistake. Subtly, one put one in, not too blatantly and not too difficult to find. Then everyone was satisfied.

    The Dolman And The Fairy Tree. Nearly all the sites we developed in those days, were green field sites and almost all were farms which had been in families for generations. Ireland is a country with more than its fair share of myth and legend. Articles, which might have mystical connotations, or could be connected in any way with necromancy, are given a wide berth when it comes to disruption. On one site there was a dolman in the middle of the field. For days the contractor responsible for the site could get no work done on that part of the job because a road was proposed where the dolman stood. The contractor told the Housing Engineer that there was not a man on his payroll who would shift it, could the road not be diverted? The answer to that was an unequivocal ‘No!’ – even if for no other reason than the ridicule he would receive back in the office in Belfast. Stalemate! Then up spoke an Englishman labouring on the site. He would shift it, and he did, on his own. Whether true or inevitably made up to prove a point we never knew, but the story goes, that when the man returned to England he took ill and never worked again.

    We always had the same trouble with Fairy Trees, those stumpy hawthorns one finds leading a lonely life somewhere in a field, which have survived because no one has had the temerity to dig them out and make ploughing or hay-cutting so much easier.

    Scotch & Turkeys It was Christmas, I worked for the Admiralty and I was deputy on a construction site, we were buying stone by the thousand tons rather than the lorry load. Conforming to convention, two days before we were to pack up, at the end of the day, out of the darkness came a car loaded with good cheer – the contractor who supplied the stone – and he was there that night, to show his appreciation in a material sense. No matter what was stated on our contract of employment, we applauded. There was a turkey and a bottle of Irish whiskey for each man in the office. I told the boss. “Hand it back..’ he said, ‘Say a polite thanks, but no thanks,” was the order and that was how it finished. The whole lot went back where it came from, Next day was that silly day when everyone turns up to work, nothing is done, and near lunch time tongues are hanging out for the ‘heavy’ which is standing, row on row, on the boss’s table, waiting for the twelve o’clock kick off. When all our glasses had been charged, the obligatory ‘thank you for all the good work’ had been said, the boss raised the matter of the turkeys. He had been liberal with the Scotch. “About the turkeys and Irish,” he said while lifting a wash-leather pouch from an inner pocket. “I received this, from the same source, it is etched with my name.” He held in his hand a beautiful gold cigarette case. “This is something I have always coveted, but it too has to go back, engraved name or not.” I like a man who is even handed, even if he would like to cut off his own hand – perhaps especially so.

  • The Golden Rivet

    If the wide screen is to be believed, in the days of the great railroad expansion in the USA, there was a tradition that on the completion of a section of track, a golden spike was ceremoniously driven into the last tie. In the Navy there was a legend that every wooden warship had a golden spike driven into the keel for luck during construction. This yarn was then perpetuated in steel ships as a ruse to inveigle the young, the unsophisticated and the unwary into the darker corners of the hull for nefarious purposes. The cry on the Mess-decks when a new recruit came aboard was often, ‘Take him to see the golden rivet!’

    At the end of one convoy we arrived at Rosyth to find cardboard boxes of knitted articles, most of which were in an unsuitable khaki. There were long scarves which seemed to go on for ever, pullovers, roll-necked sweaters and even long-johns, and many were the epitome of clich?s which often accompanies amateur knitting. The articles had been made by the WRACS manning, (if that’s the right word), an Ack Ack battery on the outskirts of Edinburgh. They had asked the Commodore for permission to adopt a ship and we were it. What followed would have made an Oscar Hammerstein musical, it
    was that predictable.

    An invitation to visit was sent by the Captain to the Commanding Officer and it was arranged that at the end of our next trip the WRACs would come aboard. From that point until we next docked there was only one topic of conversation and one outcome. Every section of the ship spent its off-duty hours preparing The place had never been cleaner and tidier. In my section we had a few advantages and we made good use of them. The screen of the radar display tube was a brilliant blue, while the warning lights throughout the small office were a bright red and green. Overhead was a white light. With our resident artist on hand we made a drawing of a voluptuous woman fully clothed in red, green and blue garments. The effect was that, without the overhead light, when we doused the screen or changed the lights, she lost some of the garments in each transformation. After some trial and error it was a great success, well we thought so and the girls were polite enough to applaud.

    The crew had organised a meal in the canteen in the dockyard accompanied by a hogshead of beer (54 gallons). In due course a lorry arrived and the ship was inundated with khaki. It was interesting to see how polite the sailors were in allowing the girls to precede them up ladders. Couples and groups were everywhere, in the engine-room, the boiler-room, our wireless offices. They turned the gun turrets, stood on the bridge and conned the ship from the Coxswain’s wheel. And all the time as one sailor passed another, each guiding his bevy of beauties, the question was always asked, “Have they seen the Golden Rivet yet?” followed by a dirty laugh.

    The girls were finally dispatched back to camp and the ship got back to normal until it was time, on the following day, for ‘Liberty Men’ being piped and the ‘Off Watch’ to line up for inspection to go ashore. Then the fun started, lies were bandied about with all the sincerity of a politician on the stump. No one was going anywhere near the gun battery, some were going for a walk, some to the cinema in Dunfermline, but there must have been a considerable change of heart because, when it was time for the WRACS to come off duty, there was half our crew lined up at the gate, looking sheepish.

    When I left the ship some of the men were still making pilgrimages to Edinburgh and the gun battery. It is amazing what can result from the kind act of presenting sailors with badly knitted woollens in the wrong colour.

  • Teachers As Surrogate Parents

    Recently there have been a number of changes in national policy which seem to have neither rhyme nor reason, but the most arrogant of them all, apart from the wars, is the proposal to extend the school leaving age across the board. In the 30s, some of my friends matriculated, and others left at 14 to take up apprenticeships in various trades. One joined the Daily Express as a trainee press photographer, the job he was very successful in, until he retired. Another went into a butcher’s shop and finally owned one. In those days there was no stigma at leaving at 14, as the majority did so. In engineering of every type, as in printing, shop-keeping, and many other trades, starting at 14 enabled one, with the right guidance, to become professional in one’s chosen trade, during a period in life when personal responsibilities are generally at a minimum. As one who has had to study for 4 years, while maintaining a growing family, the latter would clearly have had some advantageous aspects.

    There is no shadow of doubt that this proposal has more to do with teenage criminal behaviour than concern for their educational capabilities. In consequence the schoolteachers are to become surrogate parents, as the chiid’s parents have to work to maintain the standard of living which is considered the norm. I am convinced a youth, either not wishing, or not able to take advantage of higher education, should have the opportunity to start at around 15 years of age as an apprentice. He or she should be apprenticed to a recognised journeyman-tradesman, who has the breadth of experience, and all related standards set by, and approved by an appropriate authority, for the required period – not kept on at school at great national cost, in order to keep him or her off the streets, possibly with little to show for the added years. The men I worked with, started as apprentices and became gangers, foreman, and general foreman, with good wages and prospects. It was my experience in the later years of my working life that the quality of the tradesman who were available for short-term working, not part of an organised company, were not of the standard I was used to, their training had been shortened for convenience.

    I changed my job on six occasions and each time it took time to find my feet and understand the routine of the new company. This period was tiring for me and I was not providing the productivity that I was capable of. From this, one can draw the conclusion that change is inevitably unproductive for a period of time until the new system has bedded down. Untried change, for a whim, and the wrong reasons, is letting down those involved in the implementation, probably going to have to be countermanded, and those promoting it will not bear the brunt.

  • Clement Atlee On Epsom Downs

    Those of the Television Era would not appreciate the shock of misconception suffered when brought face to face with a politician whose appearance and mien have been conjured from only newspaper articles, radio interviews and radio comment, when there was no TV. Recently, all we see is the top few of our leaders and their cohorts . Prior to then they were constantly in the public eye, on TV, in newspapers and magazine. We could assess their physique, their mien, whether they were arrogant, self-seeking or evasive. In 1940 it was a matter of forming an impression on little or no true evidence. Such was the shock I received when, in the Home Guard I was paraded for the benefit of politics, patriotism and publicity.

    One day Skipper informed us that on the following weekend we would be going for an exercise on Epsom Downs. End of story. In those days everything was secret, so what we would be doing on Epsom Downs would be a mystery until we did it. The only part of the weekend which stands out is the time we spent parading in front of the stands awaiting the arrival of Atlee, the Deputy Prime Minister. The day was as hot as I have experienced, one of those scorchers typical of the South East, which are not helped by being slightly humid. Standing there in our battledress serge, with a tin hat on, awful leather puttees and heavy, studded black boots, one could feel the perspiration running down the spine.

    There used to be a macho tradition in the Guards Regiments that if a soldier fainted flat on his face while on dress parade, he was left there until the order was given to cart him off. I’m assuming the logistics of the alternative, of people rushing about being compassionate, was less important than keeping the ranks nice and tidy just as the King (as he was then) was about to take the salute. Actually, if one thinks of the size of the spectacle and the complication of the manoeuvres at the Trooping of the Colour, if a couple of them did collapse and his mates did rush about, there really could be chaos. It also had something to do with malingering, making sure the soldiers really did faint. I understand that if they fainted they were on a charge; – such is the way of the army, or was then. There we were, then, hundreds of us lined, up in the heat, being made tostand at ease, stand easy, and all the other ways soldiers have to  stand including presenting arms, all in the interests of making us smart and keeping us alert, in the sweltering heat. Every now and then there would be an almighty crash. Some poor sod had hit the dirt. Then nothing; we were on parade after all, even if the criminal who had the temerity to faint was only a clerk out of ‘Rents’ doing his bit for K & C. Minutes would elapse and then someone would gather him up and his day of glory would be over, our torture would continue.

    Atlee was heard to arrive several hours late and the remnants of us could not have cared less by that time. We were drilled for his delectation and then he sauntered down the ranks peering at us and stopping to say words of encouragement to men with campaign medals from the First World War. It was at this point I became disillusioned with politicians for all time. I have since read and been told that Atlee was a very clever and astute man. I saw someone entirely different. I saw a small, hunched, unprepossessing man with a glazed stare, tired and feigning interest unconvincingly. What a waste of time for both of us,

  • Bits and Pieces 1

    Throw art y’moldies! This was the period when people went everywhere in charabancs, those overblown, single-deck buses with their thin tyres and great over-hang at the back. Derby Day, early in June, was a great outing in our part of South London, especially as it was on the route directly to Epsom Downs. There was a lot of talk about the race and every year there was a tremendous fair at the course, it attracted crowds of all ages and classes. I don’t know if the custom still exists, but when I was a child, we would go to Balham High Road to see the charabancs coming back from the races. The passengers were in high spirits, streaming coloured paper out of the windows and as the traffic was slow due to its volume, there was time for interchange between the people on the bus and the people lining the road. We were there in crowds; the atmosphere was almost like that at the Coronation. People were shouting and laughing and children used to call out ‘Frow art y’ mouldy coppers!’, one assumed that the winners were so well heeled a few coppers meant nothing to them. A window on the bus would open and a fistful of coppers would descend in a hail on to the pavement and then there would be a scrum between those whom my Gran called the ‘gutter-snipes’ for what they could grab. I was not allowed to join in, I had merely to observe and enjoy the ambience, although I suspect she found it hard when a fistful would land at our feet. Sometimes dolls and stuffed toy animals would come sailing out, won at the funfair, and often sweets too. The excitement felt by the gutter-snipes and the returning gamblers was contagious and had to be experienced to be appreciated, what with the heads and smiling faces leaning out of the bus windows and the cross talk between the pavement watchers and the passengers, it was almost as if we had all been there to see the races. As I got older I used to go to see the return of the revellers on my own. There was no chance of missing the event, the roars of the crowd as another fleet of busses passed at the top of the road was alarm enough.

    DEAL – The Big Catch. My mother’s family, her uncles and aunts, all lived in or near Deal, where I went for short holidays with an aunt. The whole atmosphere was a revelation, they were all so ebullient, so full of fun, nothing was too much trouble, and meal-time was like a feast with everyone talking at once and the place filled with men. It was a new world. The family business was still going and they had this huge house with an immense garden at the bottom of which they kept chickens. I had already been blooded in Africa, so when my great uncle instructed me in how to pull a chicken’s neck, while I know I hated the idea, I did not flinch. I suffer from what the French call the English Disease. I think I could dispatch a human quicker than an animal, sometimes I think, with more reason. My cousin was about ten years my senior but he took me under his wing during that visit. He showed me his BSA 0.22 rifle, a powerful gun, and demonstrated how, with three shots he could shoot the stem off a pear hanging at the top of a huge tree and drop the fruit. It never occurred to me then to wonder where the bullets finished up. The rifle had belonged to the boy next door who had foolishly been using bottles for target practice when one piece of glass had ricocheted back into his eye and permanently blinded it. I was allowed to shoot at the stems of pears too, but with no success, except it gave me a love of target shooting I have never lost. It was on an earlier holiday, before going to Africa, that I discovered how considerate and resourceful families can be when they set out to entertain, and how much fun can be had when they are all together. My Great Uncle suggested we should go fishing off Deal pier. They bought me a line, sinkers and hooks, and a rectangular wooden frame on which the fishing line is wound. The whole lot probably cost sixpence. Off we set. We went to the very end of Deal Pier for deep water and they showed me how to bait a line with a worm and throw it over the rail. I was barely the height of the top rail, if that, and had difficulty seeing where the line finished. They explained that when I felt a tug on the line, which was the fish biting, I was to tug back and then wait to allow the hook to catch the fish, then if it tugged again I was to haul in the fish, which I did, several times, going home as proud as Punch with the string of fish I had caught. It was only years later that my aunt told me that the others had been standing on the lower tier of the pier, tugging the line and putting on fish they had bought at a fish shop. Many a time I have fished since and been exhilarated with my catch, but never since did fishing give me the thrill those few fish, which in truth I had not caught, did that day.

  • More Rubbish About Rubbish

    On the ninth of October last, I wrote an article about rubbish. Unfortunately I feel I have to make some further points more strongly, because the Local Authorities in conjunction with the Government are still intending to further charge us for collecting our rubbish. They are using the current, excessive amounts being put out for collection as a case in point, without due regard that during the Christmas period people were given large quantities of packaging, which inevitably had to be disposed of, and that there was also a change in the collection routine.

    When a fair proportion of the population is spending in excess of its income, it is not surprising that it is overbuying. During the same period I was given several items of hardware for my computer. I discovered the large size of the boxes in which these articles came and the miniscule amount of information in book form. The boxes were half the size of a cornflake packet, containing in one case, a very small Life-cam, with next to no information, a CD, and a small package of wiring. This was not an isolated case, it seemed to be commercial policy.

    With the spending boom, of which we are told we are unique in Europe, coupled with, one assumes, a general marketing assumption that the bigger the packet, the bigger the sales, the amount of rubbish will continue to rise. We have arrived at the absurd point concerning the wrapping and packaging, where the box is more important than the contents. How often does one by a pie in a huge box, only to find that the pie itself, in yet another box, is much smaller than anticipated – a disappointment all round.

    It therefore seems only logical, that a tax should be placed upon the suppliers of the goods to cover the increase in waste disposal rather than on the individual who has no say in the matter. The proposed system of the extra costing of waste disposal is a very cumbersome and unwieldy one, open to all manner of abuse. I urge anyone who feels as strongly as I do, to address this matter to a wider audience such as MPs and newspapers, because not only will we all suffer from this injustice, but once the system is underway they’ll discover that it doesn’t work like so many current attempts at policy, and then have to change it after spending millions on bins with chips in them.