Old Gaffer

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  • Happy Christmas

    Happy Christmas and a prosperous 2007 to all my readers, especially the large number I assume are on the four to twelve am shift, or like me, need less sleep now. I have been a watch-keeper. I found the trick, after you have settled in, was to find something to do to keep one alert, especially if you are on your own. I hope I am not being presumptuous in thinking this stuff helps.. To mildly amuse those working on Xmas Day I tell another ridiculous story and a Xmas one.

    The Day I Nearly Shot Granny I was on leave from the Navy in 1942 when there was very nearly a disastrous accident. Gran asked me to look through my grandfather’s toolbox to see if there was anything I fancied as she was ‘clearing out’. I found a gun, an old, out of date revolver. Gran explained that one of my grandfather’s jobs involved carrying money, and for protection he bought the revolver I was looking at. I took it out to the garden the better to see it and found it was a type I had never seen before. Revolvers today have a hammer which strikes the centre of the cartridge, in these older ones, the hammer fired the cartridge by striking a rim pin set in the edge of the cartridge at the side, at right angles to the axis of the cartridge. Being unfamiliar with the system I spent fruitless time trying to find how the chamber opened. To be safe I fired what I thought were six shots in the air but the chambers were empty. I remember that above us, glistening in the sun, was a barrage balloon, simply calling to act as a target, but I resisted.

    I then called Gran over to show her the gun. We stood examining it at the back door and I told her how I had fired it, and to show it was empty I pointed it casually at the ground and fired once more. You’ve guessed it! The wretched thing had one more cartridge. It hit the ground between our feet and ricocheted with a whine off down the garden. For a moment we stood looking at one another dumbfounded and while I could see no funny side to it, realising that the ricochet could have severely injured her, Gran gave a shaky laugh. The gun had either seven or eight chambers instead of the current norm of six.

    A Christmas Story -The Shooting Sheet Of Flame
    Christmas Lunch was over, the majority of the family wanted to stretch their legs and the children to push, ride or wear what Santa had brought. My young nephew, Ian, elected to stay with me as I was on duty – my mother was ill in bed. We then sat at the fire and chatted. The room was resplendent with Christmas decorations and Christmas cards on every level surface. The fire was nearly out; if the family came back, feeling righteous but cold, this would be frowned upon. I went in search of paraffin to sharpen it up. The can was empty. Not for the first time I decided to take the risk of using turpentine. I added fresh coal sprinkled turps and then found the Christmas cards had usurped the matches on the mantelpiece. By the time I found them seconds had elapsed. Through all this time Ian had been standing beside the fireplace watching the proceedings silently, taking all in but reserving judgement, while turps fumes were expanding, I struck the match
    and offered it to the fire.

    For a second nothing happened and then, between Ian and myself, a sheet of orange flame came from the fireplace, out some four feet into the room and then just as quickly returned up the chimney. Ian’s expression intrigued me, once I was over the shock of our personal flame-thrower – not so much the expression as the lack of it. His head had followed the the flame out of the grate and back in with total equanimity, The next phase was less dangerous but much more troublesome. For an instant there was silence and then there was a rumbling like one hears standing in a house built over the Tube Railway in London when a train is passing below. Buckets of soot descended into the grate, into the fireplace and spilled out further. Not only that, a cloud of the stuff settled on every available surface throughout the room. Above, my mother’s wavering voice was questioning what was going on, her bedroom shared the same chimney stack so she had been party to the rumble. I said there was nothing to worry about, and proceeded to clean and Hoover up, which really meant a full Spring Clean of the place, cards and all. Ian and I sat back with a newspaper over the fireplace to encourage the fire into life, when there was another rumble and yet more soot. The moral would seem to be that if in doubt, don’t, and also that some nephews should regard uncles and their decisions with a keen suspicion.
    Have a good Christmas – best wishes, John – A Very Old Gaffer

  • Longevity, Obesity, Pensions, – Just a Question

    Rulers are often conjurers; they distract the eye, while performing sleight of hand. For example, the Games of ancient Rome; it has been said that Bush’s precipitate launch into Iraq was to distract from a parlous financial situation – yet how much more it has cost in lives and cash. Some gave the same reason for Maggie Thatcher’s war in the Falklands.

    The current Government is focussing, at considerable advertising outlay on Obesity as being a life-shortening evil, which it is. However, at the same time it is altering its approach to pensions on the basis of the population in 20 years being predominantly in its eighties. A dichotomy! Rubbish??

    I, in my mid eighties, have outlived most of my friends and expect to snuff it at any time. Thinking about why I am still alive, I have come up with a theory I later found had been promulgated in the Lancet. Born post WW1, a time of austerity, when personal transport was for the wealthy, I ate home cooked meals, nourishing and of fresh produce. We mostly walked everywhere. Exercise was therefore inevitable in work and play and we played on open Commons or in clubs. In about 1936 we were turning the corner, there were luxuries, but we exercised as much, or even more, because there were now more facilities, swimming baths, schools had pitches and courts. There was little stress by today’s standards, but at that point WW2 set us right back to basics and we didn’t recover until the ’50s. Excess was not embraced until the ‘Free ’60s’.

    Hence the post WW2 baby boom, now in their 50’s and 60s could well live nearly as long as their parents, but I firmly believe, with holidays in the sun, greater alcohol consumption, fast food and much, much more stress, lack of job security, lack of exercise, one man one car, pollution, the longevity trend will abate rapidly. The people in the Government are clevee than I, so is all this concern really about longevity and obesity, or a ploy to justify the pension proposals?

    I have previously written about watching a clever, hardworking, strict boss, at sixty, steadily degenerate physically between sixty and sixty five, retire and die at sixty eight. It determined me to retire at sixty. In my view, there is a point where doing the same or similar things repeatedly can become so boring it affects the psyche and the health. I have also written that lack of stimulation is the greatest reason for the mental deterioration of the elderly. Take these two propositions together, and my own case, where after a year’s retirement I obtained another job, and the solution is to retire early on a reasonable pension, and get another, different, job for a few years.

    Be in no doubt, being retired on a basic pension is not fun, stress-less, nor something to look forward to. Generally a worker looks forward to the weekend, to relax, do something different. On an extended scale, retirement is the same and should be looked forward to. The whole pension problem, as we all know, is the theft of pension funds by unscrupulous companies and Government overspend. To make the Public responsible for managing their individual pension plans is pie in the sky, a lot can’t manage their day to day expenditure. By the same token, they would be open to the greatest shark infested financial waters in all time, Watchdog on TV tells us that every week. The Stock exchange can’t be relied upon, some pension providers likewise. What is needed is a government backed, compulsory, saving scheme with profits, from day one to retirement, subsidised by the national purse, I lost 8 pension years through working in non contributory government jobs, this included my war service. Movement between jobs increases experience and interest, so is to be welcomed, it also keeps the employers on their toes. Hence a pension system must be for life and independent of the employer. What do you think?

  • Fetching The Camera

    The most salutary lesson I learned, living in Belfast was to come on the ‘Glorious Twelfth’ of July 1949. By this time I had just about learned that it was referred to as the Glorious Twelfth. An aunt living in Bangor, who had borrowed a camera from our next-door neighbour, had unfortunately been rushed to hospital. The neighbours were going on holiday that evening with the result, the camera had to be collected and returned that day. We had a council of war and it was decided that I should cycle to Bangor to fetch it. The reason for the bicycle was that public transport would be packed and it might be quicker by cycle.

    As I passed the ‘Field’ at Ballyrobert, which bordered the main Belfast-to-Bangor road, I saw the Orangemen lying about on the grass enjoying the glorious sunshine, it was indeed a Glorious Twelfth. They had marched there from all arts and parts and would soon be returning from whence they came, With much to-ing and fro-ing I collected the camera and headed back to Belfast and all went well until I was on the outskirts of Holywood, a seaside town about five miles from Belfast. These days the road is a wide dual carriageway with at least six lanes and a hard shoulder. Then it wound picturesquely between overhanging trees and was about wide enough for two cars to just pass comfortably in opposite directions,. Whether it even had footpaths I forget. I came across the Orangemen on their return journey some half a mile from Holywood and they were marching between cheering crowds to the extent that there was no room to pass on either side. I could hear the strains of the band and way up ahead was a man striding out in his bowler hat, his dark suit and his white gloves, sword to the ready.

    At this time I was totally unaware of how sacrosanct these parades were and, as I have said elsewhere, equated them on a par with the Sally Ann or the Scouts The problem was to get the camera to our friends PDQ, and as there was no way round, the solution seemed to be to go through. After all I assumed as I was riding on the Queen’s highway I had the right of way. No sooner had the idea presented itself than I acted, but I had hardly advanced more than a couple of ranks before I was being stabbed from behind with a sort of pike, it was a long stained pole topped by a brass emblem like a fleur de lys, which I then recognised as a Deacon Pole, taken from a church pew. This prodding only hurried me on through the ranks and I suspect that as I was the first since the days of King William to have had such gall, I took them all by surprise and got away with it. As I cycled on my way I looked back to discover that the man with the white gloves and the sword had forgotten to put his collar and tie back on since lying in the grass in the hot, hot sun, at the ‘Field’

    At the time, I was a student and had a summer job on a building site as part of my training. I was under the supervision of a Clerk of Works (COW) on a sewer contract. The COW was also a Worthy Master of a very influential Orange Lodge and many a time I was asked to leave the office while someone was seeking an audience with the COW, and many of the someones were often to be seen in photographs on the front page of our local newspapers, standing importantly in front of some official building. I believe the COW was a person to be deferred to and whose political career was even more extensive than his job

    When I had successfully returned the camera on the Twelfth and was having my evening meal I related the happenings of the day with great amusement and it was greeted by the family in the same vein, not so the COW. Oh dear no! On the next working day, when I related it to him, smiling as I spoke, slowly his face turned to thunder and he wasn’t kidding either. When I finished he said one sentence with such venom, any thought of him being humorous was out of the question and then he stumped out of the hut and off down the site.

    He shouted,” Prod you with a Deacon pole? Prod you? I’d have stuck the f….. thing into you so far I’d ‘ve had to put my boot on you to pull it out”, and he meant it!

  • Crazy Mathematics

    I haven’t, a clue where we are headed, I just hope the Government does, but I doubt it. Take this incredible debt that we are servicing, – credit cards, loans, et al. How much of it will inevitably be written off, and who will be the losers in the long run? To answer that, one needs to examine the commercial chain. What are we spending the money on, which is producing the debt? Answer – property, here and abroad; services, like call centres etc overseas: imported goods – practically everything, from cars to light bulbs; manufactured food in lieu of home cooked; entertainment which includes drink, expensive TV and packaged entertainment – much from overseas, and labour. I understand, the Citizen’s Advice Bureau is recommending, for a debt which is beyond help, that, in preference to using one of the highly advertised financial advisers to manage, one should declare bankruptcy, for the obvious reason that the former policy only gets you further into debt.

    We are told the people with the greatest spending power are among the retired, they have secure incomes from the old system rapidly being dismantled. When we have all snuffed it and the annuities are recalled, another source of stability will be gone. We then have to ask where we are going to get the money to repay these debts? To provide a lot of these services we are importing labour from outside and we are trying to house all these immigrants – some illegal – creating more debt. It doesn’t seem the money is coming from manufacturing, the utilities are partially owned by other countries, so it would seem we are really paying each other high salaries and fees for services, and the money we handle is going round and round. – but surely on its way round a high proportion is siphoned off to repay for the imports of goods and services. Where is the rest coming from, or are we building an even greater debt abroad? Some say the Stock
    Exchange – we have seen what a broken reed that can be in the past.

    Who do we owe all this money to? If we are welshing on our debts, then the suppliers of goods will not be paid, and if sufficient people and companies default, the foreign manufactures will not be paid. For services we will owe the banks, the utilities, the building societies, and maybe some small traders. The banks and building societies will claw back through repossession, but then they have to sell the repossessed items – maybe solving the housing problem, or making it worse.

    I just wish a high powered accountnt would explain the system slowly and simply so we all can understand, instead of me, at least, standing and wringing my hands for the worry about a future I shall never see.

  • Comparison – The 30’s and Now

    A little history gives a slant on what people say. We thought we were Middle Class, we had the social graces, the accent, the interests, but not the cash. We, my mother, brother and I, had just returned from Africa under the British Raj, where we had lived and, I suppose, acted like landed gentry, with a fleet of servants. We were part of an extended family, and from time to time, through difficult circumstances, farmed out round the family for periods ranging from months to years. So, we had no airs and graces, no strong drives, living took up most of our attention, but we did not feel deprived, we, the children, accepted and mostly enjoyed life. Those circumstances alone are rare today, with two bread-winners per household and few extended families.

    At Christmas we all had fixed routines and protocols which seem to have gone, mostly through affluence and expediency. Then, indeed in our case up to 20 years ago, the children and often everyone hung up a stocking, either over the fireplace, on the end of the bed, or were given one on Christmas morning, even grannies. We knew we would get nuts, an orange of some sort, a piece of coal, carefully wrapped, sweets and three or four items. Today, the children have entirely different tastes and expectations. We have watched great grandchildren growing up and never cease to wonder, not only at the presents they receive from friends and relatives, from the moment they hatch, but the number, size and quality. They would never fit into a stocking now.

    Granted we were married in wartime, but we thought our wedding was super and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Now there are hen parties in foreign countries and the men, not to be out done get drunk in another country as well. The wedding is in a remote romantic spot, and, what with the travelling and the presents, over recent years the exponential rise in these standards, because that is what they are – standards, has left me amazed – and that is only for the relatives and close friends. The honeymoons are also unbelievably lavish at a time when the young people are only starting out. I’m not being a Scrooge, nor a party poppa, although I sometimes can be, what people do with their lives is their business. I have just watched, and wondered where it will finish. Those Joneses, everyone seems to feel they have to keep up with, have a lot to answer for! With the rising cost of housing, weddings and life generally, one cannot be surprised the younger folk are cohabiting, if they can even afford that, and unlike our generation – not many of us left – marriage itself can be tenuous.

  • Faces Of The Same Coin

    In the way that folk accepted the steady bombing of the cities during WW2, as something that if hated, had to be inured, the majority of the Northern Ireland population felt the same way during the 30 odd years until very recently.

    THE STORY OF THE LUDICROUS GIFT
    I have referred before to the ‘liberation’ of articles by the terrorists. There are hundreds of apocryphal tales but one which happened on a contract I was engaged upon, took place a day or two before we stopped for Christmas. The contractor had a gang laying pipes down one of the main roads in the East of the City. On the morning, some men arrived in a car and one approached the men on the site with a gun, casually held in his hand, not pointed at them, just there, an implicit threat. “I want to borrow your lorry,” he said with no preamble. The ganger nodded, what else could he do, anyway the lorry belonged to the firm not him – there was no contest. The man smiled, thanked them as if he had been granted a favour and he and another drove off.

    The theft was reported and we heard later in the day the lorry had been seen between Belfast and Ballymena going hell-for-leather down a motorway, filled with booze. Still later we heard a vintner’s wholesale store had been raided. The men were never caught. Next morning the lorry was found parked beside the pipe-track. When the driver opened the door of the cab he found a dozen tins of beer on the seat with a note thanking him and wishing him and his mates a merry Christmas. Is a question asked in Ireland an Irish question? In this case the question had been asked of the workmen and the questioner had answered himself – What a question!!

    The Young Molotovs In ’98 one grandson was getting married in Scotland and another had been diagnosed with meningitis in Ireland. While we were all worried for the patient, we had been assured that he was recovering, so we went to the wedding, staying overnight. The following day, on our return, we were in a hurry to see the invalid, and as I was still well above the limit, the Scots are very generous and persuasive; Sophie drove to Bangor straight from the airport, about thirty miles. Late in the afternoon she started to drive us home when we found that UDA Militants were blocking the dual carriageway and we were forced to drive through a housing estate. We rounded a bend and were flanked by and held up by young boys, anything from 10 years old and upwards. One of them was brandishing a lemonade bottle with a rag hanging out of it in one hand, and flicking a cigarette lighter in the other. The rest were telling us to get out of the car, one hammering on the side door. They proposed to steel it. I looked as Sophie, she looked at me – we had been held up a couple of time before by Republicans and each time I had driven through them, hoping to hit none, but if I had, my policy was I would immediately report to the Army or Police. In this case, without hesitation Sophie stamped on the accelerator and, thank god, they were so surprised they didn’t throw the bottle, but one did try to climb into the back seat – without success – none was hit – Sophie was revving with no regard to the engine. She was 78 years old, and old habits die hard – ‘No Surrender’ is written on many walls in Northern Ireland – the paramilitaries should read their own slogans.

  • A Boy’s Introduction To Killing

    Home from school at midday in Livingstone, most likely with no homework, I had a long afternoon to put in. On several occasions a few friends and I would go outside the limits placed by our parents, out through the tall grasses of the Veldt, along the wide deep drainage ditches waiting in their dusty state for the next onslaught of the monsoon rains. It was exciting creeping down these excavations, knowing full well there were snakes there, because our parents had told us that was the reason we were not to trespass outside the town boundary. Across this arid pasture we went until we neared the abattoir, another no-go area. It was here we spied on the Africans slaughtering the pigs. The act certainly didn’t conform to Government regulations; it was more a tribal game. They would release a pig. give it a stab to urge it on its way, then some of the men would run with it until they managed to kill it with a knife. We seem to have been unaffected by this brutal barbarism. I was horrified for the sake of the pigs, while I was left with a mental snapshot, it did not affect me otherwise, no nightmares and no aversion to blood, This was not the only killing I was to observe. In retrospect I realise that the Africans’ values were unsurprisingly different from those of the whites. On one occasion, shortly after I arrived, one of the servants asked me if I would like to see the chicken being killed, the one destined for the table that day. The family reared chickens for eggs and meat in the compound at the back of the house. I assume I acquiesced because I became party to a demonstration of decapitation and the sight of a headless chicken running round the compound until it fell, already dead. This I still see in graphic 3D.

    Until I started thinking more deeply concerning those days, I had not realised how much death was taken for granted in that environment. On one occasion I saw from a distance the witch doctor who was brought in for the ritual killing of several people and would ultimately be hanged, himself. I saw a snake killed on the step of the bungalow merely because it was poisonous. I went to the Zambezi to see my father bring in the bodies of several crocodiles, which had been killed because they were thought to be lying in wait for Africans watering their cattle. Both oxen and herders had become the reptile’s prey, swept off their feet by a swipe of a tail and then drowned. These huge creatures lived on an island in the river and took their kills there to bury them for eating later. The white men were rowed out on the river in small boats to shoot the crocs in the water and then, when they were sure the reptiles were dead they would be tied on to the boat and towed ashore. My father and his friends would then stand around while their servants skinned the beasts. I remembered that the smell of raw crocodile was one of the foulest smells I had ever encountered.

    All this took place at what was referred to as ‘the bathing place’. An area of cleared River Zambezi riverbank with two rectangular huts in the style of native dwellings, used as changing rooms for the whites – by the men and ladies. In Africa, at that time, white women were all ladies, irrespective of their antecedents or proclivities. As far as I could see, the whole aspect of life as a member of the Raj was like being a member of a select, upper class British club. There were rules, which one only broke on penalty of being black-balled, so one conformed – how one conformed. The actual bathing was done in the Zambezi itself. I assume that an inlet in the bank reduced the velocity of the river to nearly nothing at that point. I have no recollection of currents being a problem. The main river was only about two miles from the Victoria Falls at that point so the velocity in the main stream must have been quite high. To protect the bathers from the ever present threat of crocodiles, wire netting on poles formed the perimeter of the pool, held to the bottom by stones, a crude system which later proved fatal for a friend of mine. At Madeira, on our way home we read of the death by drowning of a school friend who had been lost in the swimming pool. Apparently he had not been seen for a while and when the men went to look for him fearing him drowned, his body was not within the enclosure, but they did find the wire netting had been breached very badly. The assumption was that a crocodile had entered, drowned the boy and left with him. From an age when I could reason cause and effect, I had been astounded that the whites would have permitted the Africans to water their oxen and cattle beside the bathing place, it was tantamount to training the crocodiles, and the death of the school boy had not been a unique case. We later heard that that was the end of bathing in the Zambezi. Incidentally, no one ever called crocodiles anything but crocs

  • Leydene On The First Occasion

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

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

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

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

  • Smoke Tests

    Smoke Test No 1. Today inspection and testing has become remote, highly technical, and mostly computer driven. In my Dark Ages every thing was hands on, mucky and tediously prolonged. Pipes are now checked with robots and cameras. I have always found it strange that smoke really does issue from a sewer up through the earth and travels quite long distances through cracks in pipes and the ground. In those days this feature of smoke was used to assess whether a sewer pipe had been breached or was leaking. Theoretically every pipe leading to a sewer is trapped with a water trap, so there should be no risk of smoke entering a house. To carry out the test the operator closes one end of the pipe, or puts a temporary block at some point. At the other end he attaches a box, which is really only a source of smoke, and the bellows will force it through the pipe. He puts a rag, heavily impregnated with oil, inside the box, lights it, and then, using the bellows, pumps the smoke into the pipe until it is seen issuing out through a small hole in the block at the far end. If it issues from nowhere else it is assumed that the pipe is tight and has no leaks.

    This test took place on a Saturday morning when I was working for the contractor. The sewer we were laying was in running sand, a very unstable and dangerous material and we did not want the trench lying open over the weekend as the results of a possible slip could have been hazardous to the Public and expensive, added to which if a smoke test failed then we might have had to carry out a water test which can take hours. We were dealing with a very fussy Clerk of Works who liked his authority and enjoyed wielding it. He knew as well as we did that there was nothing wrong with the pipe, he had seen every joint made, he had nothing else to do, but the book said smoke test before passing the work, so smoke test we did. We set it up, put in the disk at the end of the pipe with the one-inch hole to show the smoke had gone the whole way through the pipe, and then tea was up. Well it was up for the Clerk of Works, it was up for the men, but not for the foreman and not for me. We had connected the crude smoke box with its bellows to the upstream end of the pipe, inserted an oily rag, lit it and were pumping the smoke for all we were worth and it was not reaching the other end. The Foreman said to me, “You go and join the Clerk of Works and I’ll have it fixed in the mean time, no sense both of us being here.” I followed his advice.

    About ten minutes later he stuck his head into the hut and said all was ready for testing and when the Clerk of Works and I went to the other end, there, sure enough, was the smoke puffing out in spurts in time with the pumping of the man at the other end. Honour had been satisfied and come twelve o’clock we would all be going home. When I was out of earshot of the Clerk of Works I said to the foreman that I was surprised at the amount of smoke issuing. Considering the length of the pipe, usually there is dilution by the air within the pipe for some time, and it seemed to me the smoke was denser than I would have expected. He smiled. “I helped it on a bit,” he said. “I thought it could do with another smoking rag so I put it in the other end, I knew he’d never guess, he’s all talk and no experience.” This accounted for what I had seen. The foreman, unknown to me and the Clerk of Works had inserted a piece of burning rag at the other end of the pipe from the bellows and the air within the pipe was being pushed by the bellows to make the smoke from the second rag issue from the small hole. Instead of the pipe being full of smoke as it seemed, it was probably partly full of air. For all of ten seconds I wondered what to do, and then for another ten seconds I suppressed my conscience with the thought that I saw the Clerk of Works from time to time, I saw the foreman daily.

    SMOKE TEST No 2 There had been a complaint of rats in the lower part of the Ormeau Road area in Belfast and it was laid squarely at the door of the Sewerage Section. Sam was sent to investigate and decided that he needed a smoke test. He had it set up with the smoke box in one manhole and the round timber block with the smoke hole in it at the next manhole In Sam’s case the usual results were amplified. In the first instance someone shouted that smoke was issuing from the lamp standards, and as these were gas lamps, panic ensued until he managed to explain what was happening. Next he heard screams coming from the back-yard of one of the houses. The sewer in question ran between the backs of two rows of houses and at that time, those houses only had outside toilets in the yard. Apparently a householder had been in one when she found smoke, firstly coming up round her feet, and then all round her; her plight was understandable. Finally he had to pacify the fire brigade who had been called with a 999 call from someone further afield who had found smoke coming up through the floor boards. The theory that the sewer was at fault, seemed to have been thoroughly confirmed.

  • A Minor Diversion and the TOPO

    During the 50’s we owned a series of cars but the most idiosyncratic was, without doubt, the Morris Minor 1000. Sitting with the driving seat fully back I found my knees were somewhere near my chin, so the matter of using the clutch caused my knee to make the little signal arm come out and indicate I was turning right, an embarrassment at any time. Sometimes that same little arm stuck and when I got out of the car I would break it off.If nothing else it gave me confidence in doing small repairs. Then there was the shape of the boot. Clearly, at the speeds that thing achieved, streamlining and hence the drag factor were obviously an issue the designer had spent hours on. I never did discover why it was so small and of a shape that no more than one suitcase could be accommodated in the boot at a time.

    We proposed taking a month and going to Igls in Austria, via Brussels and Cologne. We had learned that to save money one took as much tinned food as one could and due to the shape of the Minor’s boot the tins had to be packed round the spare wheel and within its dished rim. Just one suitcase, a Revelation, expanded to its maximum, everything else was in plastic bags – apart, that is, from a doll in a carry-cot. My younger daughter refused to go unless the wretched doll went too and in its carry cot. Every inch was catered for, under the seats, the sun brolley was between the seats, the back shelf was loaded until the rear view was almost obscured, every spare space was taken up – except one – behind my heels – that triangle of valuable space immediately in front of the driver’s seat. That was where the unmentionable dolly in its equally descriptive cot rested when we were on the move.

    It had to happen – of course. It would have been unthinkable for it not to have. When we travelled in other vehicles, where things were secreted in suitcases, it never happened, but because we were travelling like gypsies, it happened – we had a puncture on a motorway, the German Autobahn outside Cologne. There I had to take out the case, the plastic bags, and the individual tins of food, before I could change the wheel. That was not the end of our embarrassment. We were staying in hotels where the staff in green aprons came out to take the elegant, matched suitcases from people driving limousines. In our case this was not quite a fair description. They came out all right, but I made them hold out their arms and piled them up with the transparent plastic balloons containing our necessities, all on display. I suppose seeing the repeated looks of surprise, followed by disgust was compensation for what I really felt. No matched luggage meant no big tip; what plastic bags portended, they had no previous experience, but they guessed correctly.

    Igls was not a success after our previous holidays at Hendaye in the Basque country. For a start, the latter was on the Atlantic, the beach was wonderful, the huge waves came straight in and when it wasn’t raining the weather was perfect. Then there were the myriad of things to do. On Bastille Day there was the great celebration with the confetti battles, where one never opened one’s mouth to say a word in case a complete stranger threw a handful ofconfetti in. Towards evening, when the street dancing started, the ground was littered to a depth of more than an inch with all colours of confetti one bought in huge paper bags. Sophie lost her watch in all this mele, It is impossible to believe, but after a lot of searching, under the confetti, in the middle of the cavorting feet, I found the watch still going. Those celebrations kicked of with the Toro Del Fuego, a papier-m?ch? calf, festooned with Catherine Wheels, bangers and Roman Candles, carried on the head and shoulders of a man, weaving in and out of the crowd, sputtering its fireworks to the screeches of the dancers. There was that beautiful city of San Sebastian, with its posh shops, fine restaurants, statues on high towering pillars of rock round the harbour and a small funfair at the top of one of them.

    We visited San Sebastion from Hendaye on the Topo, a ackety train in which all the locals crossed themselves before it started, and with reason. It journeyed through a tunnel in the Pyrenees, which was not well lighted. The way it rocked about was certainly unlikely to imbue anyone with the confidence they would survive. In San Sebastian we bought the cheap liqueurs, which we shared with the other guests, all French, back at Madame Ader’s and this made the evening meals most congenial. The only problem was no one spoke English. After about three weeks of continuous fractured French I came down to breakfast swearing I would speak no French that day, it was such a strain. I had to renege, there was no chance of getting through a day, with only English.