Old Gaffer

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  • The 6,000 Volt Shock

    To put this occurrence in context I have to write some technical information. I have discovered that any mention of physics and peoples eyes start to glaze, so I will be brief and as simple as possible. Voltage is what gives electricity impetus to move along wires, across the ether, or, as in my case through the body from the hands to the nearest contact with earth. Current is the measure of the electricity passing, and mostly it is current which kills not voltage, A few years ago Sophie, my wife, who never studied physics, accidentally filled the works of her mixer with tomato soup. She cleaned up the mess, absentmindedly held an aluminium saucepan on the steel drainer and started the mixer again. The mains ran up one arm, down the other, through the pan and the drainer and to earth via the cold water pipe. She was lucky she only had a severe shock. She was receiving somewhere around 230 volts and all the current the mains could supply

    It was on my second convoy when I received a rude awakening, a real shock to the system. I was brought from a deep sleep to a set that was as dead as a doornail, not a flicker, not a peep. It was housed right at the bottom of the ship in a small office about ten feet long and six wide. At action stations we were battened down, down there, as part of the system which cut the ship up into watertight compartments to avoid general flooding in the event of being hit. In time you got so used to it, it seemed normal. The set operated mainly at sea level, while we had another in an officer’s cabin mostly used to seek out aircraft. The ship was so crowded even the officers were not immune from their space being shared with some gadgetry and maybe operators on rota.

    When I started to test, there were a number of simply translated signs and I soon discovered that a number of resistors had exploded, a feature new tome. These components, part of a circuit which transformed the ship’s voltage to one of six thousand volts, to operate the cathode ray tube and other sensitive bits of the Radar I switched off the power and set about removing the exploded remnants, but I did not get too far. Standing on a steel deck, in ordinary shoes, I touched the wrong end of one of the damaged resistances, and came to at the other end of the office, sitting dazed on the floor, being spoken to as if I was a hospital case in need of assurance. In the instant before I momentarily passed out I remember that every joint, from neck to ankle, felt as if each had been brutally pulled apart at the same time and twanged together again, as if made of elastic like a child’s doll. I was so dazed, I went back to the set and committed the same act all over again with the same result, except, this time, I had the shakes added to the blinding headache and pains in my joints from the second encounter. I sat there and took stock. It was then I realised that some of the components, the huge smoothing-condensers, sort of electrical storage tanks, still held their charge which the resistances were supposd to dissipate. I am sure I had received 6000 volts at least on the first occasion and nearly that the second time, but the current was small enough merely to teach me circumspection, not the rudiments of the harp – I should be so lucky!!.

  • My Views, Do You Agree?

    Political Absurdities, especially about us leading the world, are becoming the norm. A man on television was proposing we – in Britain – should give an open apology for Slavery, and implied a responsibility for restitution. Where does this sort of lunacy stop, we, as a nation were not unique. We all know it was cruel and wrong, but therefore, should the French and the Danes have to apologise and make restitution, also? If we should be apologising at all, it should be for allowing Israel to settle in Palestine in the first place, that was mainly the British; later, not to have allowed building in the occupied areas, and to have led the world then.

    Margaret Beckett, in a cleared field in the Middle East was proclaiming that we should ‘LEAD THE WORLD’ in ridding it of Cluster Bombs. They are a stupid, random and hideous weapon aimed at the non combatants, like napalm, but I wasn’t aware we ever intended using Cluster Bombs. If we don’t, we can’t really say we are going to get rid of them now – presumably, we already have in essence if not in fact. Just a sound-bite, maybe? Our PM wants to spend Billions on atomic subs and bombs. Why? – when we haven’t enough to money to equip our forces currently in battle. Like Iraq, and Afghanistan, he wants to LEAD THE WORLD, while our infrastructure is crumbling. If a nuclear deterrent is required, and many authorities think it is outmoded, Europe should be footing the bill. In this day and age, international aggression is taking a more personal form, and there are easier and cheaper ways of creating havoc than loosing off rockets which will be retaliated. They are fiscal, and strategically hand-placed bombs, and with our economy on a knife edge, and our security stretched, it doesn’t take the mind of an Einstein to think of how these atrocities could be achieved.

    A Long Route to Order out of Chaos- I write as a professional who covered most facets of his work and have also been a civil servant and a Local Government employee. The word ‘professional’ in this context includes all who have served their time and know their job inside out. Local and civil services used to employ professionals at all levels of their professions, allowing in-house training and promotion. Now work of any significance is farmed out to consultancy companies, and contractors, Promotion is less in-house because the experience to make valid professional judgements is no longer on the strength. Civil servants move from department to department, as do politicians, and while they may have managerial experience, most are not experienced in the professions and regimes they are managing. Hence, policy is an abstract, based upon second-hand information, prescribed by government, controlled by targets, spin and aims, the latter not always intrinsic. The professionals juggle to meet the criteria posted, by managers without the background or training in the field they are managing. Greed, self-interest at many levels, together with vested-interest pressures are the causes of mis-management, as is sweeping implementation of untried policies without adequate localised test – the poll Tax, and many, many others.

    Putting the clock back is appealing, but impracticable. Putting the management back in the hands of the professionals, should be our aim? Brainstorming, favoured by No 10, has a pecking order favouring the bully. Instead, if a small network was built of real, select professionals, working individually, and communicating using the internet, posing questions and supplying solutions if available; this information could be channelled to central logistical correlators, who would evaluate, circulate it for selective comment. Then one might arrive at a workable and professional solution which could be implemented. The merit of this idea puts the decision making process in the hands of people who have nothing to lose or gain. Small, general problems can quickly be identified and possibly solved as quickly – many errors now, must be through mismanagement rather than resources. A pilot scheme, highlighting universal faults in a small area of activity might just prove the theory. Invention starts with an idea, then a prototype to iron out logistical problems, and sometimes at this stage another idea is envisaged which dwarfs the original.

    The level of expertise in government is being steadily diluted; those with real ability profit more from seeking other paths. Fewer faces become known on TV and seem to change almost weekly in all parties, so how can they become expert? It seems sensible for outsiders to come up with watertight, irrefutable solutions to problems. Currently those in charge tinker regularly in every sphere, causing confusion to those expected to implement the changes, wasting money promulgating the changes and rescinding them, and spreading Public frustration and discontent.

  • Stealing

    Shoplifting I have great sympathy for those who have absentmindedly taken something and walked out of the shop, only to be nailed. I have walked into the street many times with a book, a birthday card, you name it, unpaid for. The interest in other products I didn’t buy in the end, distracted me and it was only when I was outside I found I still had the book or whatever, in my other hand. I had a friend who suffered from Alzheimer’s and would lift things in shops and casually walk out with them. His wife had circulated his photo, plus a reference from his doctor to the neighbouring shops with her telephone number and an explanation – it saved everyone stress and inconvenience.

    Burglary We lived for 42 years in a corner, detached house, were burgled six times and had my car stolen four. The burglaries started almost as soon as we moved in and were still a chance when we left. The first one had an amusing side, if being burgled can ever be called amusing. It was Saturday, 6 am, when Spicer, our Golden Retriever barked. It woke me and I told him to ‘Shut up!’. At eight o’clock I went to make the tea and found little piles of goodies, silver, cut glass etc in all the downstairs rooms, drawers ransacked and electrical goods missing. My wife joined me and you can guess the pantomime which followed, but the most interesting part, of which, was her attitude when she had almost recovered. She went from room to room, looking at the piles and exclaiming that a lot of her prized articles had not been selected by the burglar, obviously not to his taste. She was affronted.

    Car Stealing I have driven off in someone else’s car on three occasions. Same make, same colour, the key worked, and it was only when I found different contents that I discovered my mistake. In one case I thought my mates had played a practical joke by gluing a Madonna and Child to the dash My car was stolen, four times, during the period of the ‘Troubles’, a common occurrence. After a couple of instances I had a secret ignition switch fitted so that if it was hot-wired it still wouldn’t start. The lads who were stealing invariably broke into the car, pushed it down the path, out the gate into the road before starting it. On the third occasion it was found by the police half across the road. I was dragged from my bed, shown the car and asked to drive it back into the drive. My job at that time was sensitive and I would check my car for bombs, when I remembered or not in a hurry.. There were three policemen there with their Landrover. I asked if they had checked it for a bomb, they all nodded, so I got into the car and searched for the secret switch. While I was searching I noticed they all retreated to a safe distance – the liars. I guessed it was joy-riders not the IRA, they would have left the car in the drive. I smiled, thanked the police, drove in and went back to bed.

    The Theft Of A Grandfather Clock The most awful event of stealing, was perpetrated when I was at sea, well, not exactly at sea, rather on it, at anchor. The whole ship’s company was embarrassed. We had taken a convoy out into the Atlantic and there was a delay in picking up the one coming back. Our Skipper, a Scott, was basically a kind man and took the ship to a bay in the north of Scotland where, in peacetime he had fished. When we arrived and dropped anchor all hell broke loose ashore, because the residents thought we were the advance guard of a defence force and Scotland was about to be invaded. The Home Guard was called out, phoning and all else took place, with the result that when they discovered we were just visiting, the relief had a profound effect. It was Sunday and the pubs didn’t open on Sunday in Scotland but this one did – and how. They had cases of fishing flies and some of the men were given these as souvenirs, drink was on tap, we ate and by the time we went back to the ship we had had an extraordinary day. It was late at night when we were woken and the ship was searched from end to end. Someone – I assume, obviously drunk – had stolen the grandfather clock from the hotel hall, wrapped it in a rug and smuggled it on board. Every mess was searched – nothing. Hammocks were examined, those slung, those still in the hammock rack – nothing. Then the ship rolled as it did, invariably, and a loud ‘Dong’ was heard. The clock was well concealed but it could still chime. The Skipper and the crew were fit to be tied. The miscreant was sent back to the hotel, with the clock and the rug, in the whaler, under guard, to apologise, before being courts marshalled.

  • The First day Afloat

    Travelling since early morning, provided with food vouchers, eating on the run was difficult. The trains were full, and one spent the journey uncomfortably seated on a suitcase, while guarding a small case and kit bag, with a hammock in the guard’s van, At big junctions there were barrows selling sandwiches and tea and there were always the canteens run by the Salvation Army ( God Bless ’em ), but the problem was that, if you were alone, you risked having everything stolen, or had to take it with you to make a purchase, and risk missing the train. One tended to buy food at termini and not on the way. When I arrived at the ship, it was late afternoon, she was about to leave harbour to pick up a convoy in the North Atlantic. My first impression was of how small it was, two hundred and fifty feet odd in length and only twenty odd in the beam was not what I had expected, but as I was hurried aboard and sent straight down below, I saw little in that first glance.

    After saluting the quarter deck, giving my name to the Boatswain’s Mate, I dropped my hammock and kit bag through a hatch and followed gingerly down a steep steel ladder into a world of new noises and smells. The nickname for those ships was the ‘sardine tin’ and it was apt. Passing on the corridors, or ‘flats’ as they were called, was an intimate affair and all living a prescription for claustrophobia, even before they battened down the hatches on us at times of action. There were strict levels of social strata, unwritten rules concerning movement from one stratum to another and relationships across strata boundaries, but these rules, provided stability if not confidence. I had arrived just as the evening meal was concluding and someone asked me if I was hungry. I was starving, and was presented with a huge plate of roast meat, potatoes, and vegetables all swimming in greasy gravy. I tucked in. I have written elsewhere of my initial problems with being a Hostilities Only rating and in living in the Petty and Chief Petty Officers’ Mess.

    We left the Firth of Forth even before I had finished eating and for a while I tried to get myself sorted. We sailed north and then followed a route the men referred to as ’round the North Cape’, which I took to mean through the Pentland Firth, and out into the Atlantic. That was where we really found the weather. The ship rolled and pitched for all she was worth and it was then I regretted the roast dinner; I was ill.

    At some point later, one of the Radar operators came and told me that one of the sets had broken down and that I would have to fix it. Seasickness was no excuse and duty came first, so I went. I discovered that soldering was called for and that was my personal Waterloo, in more ways than one. The radar set I was working on was large enough for me to be able to fix a bucket within its confines and use it as needed while breathing in the cloying and stinking fumes of the soldering flux, which only added to my nausea as I hung on for dear life, while the ship tossed itself about. At the same time, I was trying desperately to give a good account of myself on my first trial. From that moment until we brought the convoy to harbour more than a week later I was permanently ill, I could not bear the heat of the air at hammock level and slept on the floor of my office, which was not much better as the steel floor vibrated in tune to the engines. I prayed for death and gave not a single thought to those who would accompany me. I was prostrate, in pain and almost demented. When I ultimately went ashore, the jetty appeared to be rolling and pitching as the ship had, until my brain got itself in gear. This affect is not uncommon after very bad weather. The strange thing is that after that voyage, in similar circumstances later, irrespective of the weather and not withstanding that some of the experienced men around me were sick, I was never ill again.

  • Victoria Falls

    In the then Northern Rhodesia. On film today it is certainly majestic, but to see the immensity, the rush of water, hear the noise and feel the constant rain of the spray in those simple, uncluttered days, is an unforgettable lifetime’s experience. We had an enormous American car, called an Overlander, with a soft, collapsible hood resting behind the back seat.. The wheels were so huge the mudguards were big enough to form a seat for our African servants. Mostly we went on picnics to The Falls or the Zambezi, We needed guards with us to guard the car and more importantly the food, from baboons, which gathered in vast numbers around the picnic sites – they could be vicious. The servants brought chairs, and set out the food. We would take two servants on the rear mudguard, hanging on to the canopy as we went over dry roads, rutted after rain by the wheels of ox carts. In the wet season, we would take two more perched on the front mudguards in case we got bogged down. Neighbours of ours in Livingstone, had, for years, been dreaming of retiring to Eastbourne. When they achieved it, they only stuck it for two years and then returned to Africa. I suspect their muscles had forgotten what housework really meant.

    The descriptions of The Victoria Falls run to 11 pages on the Internet; so I will be brief and describe what it was like 76 years ago. There were few visitors then, merely the locals. Both sides of the Zambezi were Northern Rhodesia, now, when crossing the bridge, built in 1908, one leaves Zambia for Zimbabwe, and the Falls Hotel is in Zimbabwe. Only as a special treat did we eat there, mostly we picnicked in an area where the ‘rain’ – spray thrown up by the force of the fall – was absent. Also in Zimbabwe is the Rain Forest, a treed area growing on the edge of the Falls and mostly, soaking wet from the spray The Boiling Pot was where the water from the river fell via the Cateract into the Gorge and with the turbulence and the spray was all the world like a bubbling pot. From the pages of the Internet the area now seems to be highly populated.

    THE CAR AS A BATTERING RAM Our house was on a corner of a junction. of two dirt roads. On trips my father would set the car at the edge of the road, facing downhill.. The servants would load it, my parents would get in, the servants would climb onto the mudguards and then we’d be off. On THE day. to get me from under their feet, I was sent to sit in the car, which I did, in the driving seat. Where else? I naturally pretended to drive, who wouldn’t, aged seven. I maintain I did nothing, but then I would, wouldn’t I? It was hot. I know I was. I sat there for an age, and soon became bored with saying brmmm, brmmmmm, but what else was there to do? Start all over again? All I know is that the car suddenly started moving of its own volition and set off down the hill with an excited me on board, It started to track narrowly from one side of the road to the other, gathering speed until it reached the other verge, on a slight bend which it then mounted, knocking down some flimsy fencing, then a telegraph or electricity pole, which sheared at ground level, thanks to the attention of red ants, and which finally fell diametrically across the centre of a hut made of reeds and clay, used to house the servants working for another family. The pole demolished the hut. The car stopped short of the hut. For a short while nothing happened. Where the servants were who used the hut, I had no idea. There were no shouts or groans and death never occurred to me, I was too worried about the impending doom I could see gathering on the horizon, or more accurately at our garden gate.

    I was whacked. On principle, if in doubt, whack. I explained or rather pleaded that I had touched nothing, total amnesia though is never an excuse. I found that out years later in the Navy. In fairness, my mother had lifted me from the car amidst the disaster, but she spoiled the effect by scolding. I was never believed by anyone but myself, and that’s no consolation. A totally different and more interesting story was told that evening at Sundowners – alcohol has that effect. My absence in body, if not totally in fact, had been an edict, so I only heard what was said through a crack in a half-closed door, but the story had become a saga, the nub of which was not what had happened to the hut nor to the people who might have been in the hut, not even the traumatic effects on the psyche of a quivering child, (who had never quivered in his life), it was a long and tediously detailed explanation, with many repetitions, of how the car had been extracted from the hut and that it had not sustained so much as a scratch. Everyone has his order of priorities, mine were severely changed that night.

  • The 30s, I write, You Compare

    Life and Standards

    I have always believed that until 1939. when Hitler mucked up the world and in Britain it has never been the same, the period from ’35 to ’39, when our economy was steadily improving and we had emerged from the austerity of WW1, was the most equable and relaxed time in our history. It wasn’t Utopia, but nowhere ever will be. We had the iniquitous class structure, but as we knew nothing else – so what? From my experience of education and industry over the years, people in the 30′ were less ambitious, their goals were modest and achievable, a job was mostly for life, your pension like the job was inviolate, and promotion was dead man’s shoes. WW2 changed all that, 1946 brought back a work force which had been replaced in its jobs and there was a period of re assessment – shuffle and re-deal which lasted right into the 70’s and 80’s.

    Since the 50’s standards gradually accelerated in every sphere, industry, leisure, communication, and then, in the 60’s, when we had reached a pinnacle of some sort, the wheels came off and it has been down hill ever since. Chaos seems the order of the day, standards in most spheres have dropped – education, business probity, morals, mores, thrift, and above all, trust, have all suffered. Am I right? Can we rise yet again? Do we want to?

    Communication
    We sat round the Christmas luncheon table on Christmas day, with the cat’s whisker adjusted, the 2 volt, lead/acid battery powering a crystal wireless set, and a pair of headphones talking to us with the King’s voice, and those memorable words – ‘London Calling !’ all from the bottom of a baking bowl in the centre of the table. We never thought that one day we would communicate instantly with pictures, words and music, in every sphere. Now, unlike then, censorship, voluntary and enforced, is more relaxed, we  are presented almost daily with scenes of alleged sexual orgasm, speech incrusted with our letter words, guns that fire unlimited bullets so inaccurately, the recipient of the onslaught walks away unscathed. We are told we can switch off if we don’t like what we see or hear, but is that not infringing our right to be entertained that we have contracted for, should the squeamish not be totally catered for as well as the unshockable? The latter, after all, have a section of the ether referred to as ‘Adult’ – a misnomer?

  • Grenadier Guards At Whitehall

    In time we, in the Westminster Homeguard were chosen to man blockhouses in Whitehall. Crude, concrete structures, set across a road leading to Whitehall and with a gate making free access impossible. Our job was sentry duty outside the blockhouse on ‘X’ nights a week and at weekends. In the blockhouse it was like a squat, comfortless, and outside, bitterly cold. There were three troopers, a sergeant and me. They all had ammunition I had none, presumably for their safety rather than my own. It was here that I first came across the unthinking use of expletives, the more disgusting the better. The ‘F’ word was used indiscriminately, certainly rarely in context and often between syllables. In retrospect I find it strange how soon I became acclimatised to the whole atmosphere. Our blockhouse was beside the Liberal Club, one of the clubs in London and the Members, on duty nights, welcomed us and allowed us to use the club between bouts of duty and to have a half of Bitter in those august rooms, if we liked when we were doing duty at weekends. It was another world. The quiet smooth running of the club was like a well oiled engine which had been in service since the dawn of time; the unruffled, discreet way the staff appeared to serve, almost without being there, the over-stuffed, oxblood-coloured leather, the rich carpets and curtains and above all the almost cloistered atmosphere of the billiard room, with its raised leather benches, its green baize and cowled lights over the tables, a world away from any previous experience, and awe-inspiring. It seems it took a war to break down the barriers.

    Tedium epitomises the lot of the lower ranks in all the services and I include the police in this. The aspect I have found strangest is that at the time we are not aware we are wasting our lives. The system really works, all that marching up and down, forming fours or whatever, standing to attention with ne’er a muscle moving, does seem to concentrate the mind in the physical sense rather than the metaphysical, to a point where it is incapable of critical thought. The greatest of all boring duties is ‘Guard Duty’ in whatever service one is in. In the police, especially in Ireland during an ‘Emergency’, it can be lethal, in the Navy it is a joke, unless one is caught, and in the Army it is taken very seriously, even when all that is being guarded is so insignificant that no one would want to steal it or copy it anyway. The main function of the guard is to keep on the alert in case he is caught, having a crafty pull on a cigarette, is improperly dressed, or is slouching, all deemed to be heinous crimes with unspeakable punishment if caught. In wartime there are innumerable sergeants and officers creeping about trying to catch these guards committing these diabolical offences.

    At the time we also had the Blitz to contend with. I was on guard duty outside the blockhouse in Whitehall on a very black night, when a shadowy figure approached. I said the obligatory ‘Halt! who goes there? Approach and be recognised.’, feeling like a total idiot, knowing full well it was one of the Regiment, nobody else would be fool enough to be out in the small hours on a wet and cold night. It was the Guards Officer doing his rounds, and I suspect my lack of sincerity must have come through. “Who the f…. are you?” he said with all the venom of an embittered mother-in-law. There was absolutely no way he could have thought I was other than what I represented. . I was sure the officer, even if he were dim, could not have been unaware of what and who I was. Anyway, it would have been on the order-paper or some typically bureaucratic sheet. “Home Guard, on duty. Sir.” I replied reasonably, with my bayonet still pointed at his supper.” ‘X-ing Home Guard!” he said and pushed past me with hardly a glance at anything but the bayonet which I was now waving about as I grounded the rifle. The poor Guards sergeant, who was a decent fellow, if also scathing about the Home Guard, got an earful, which carried out to me even through the layers of sacking, which acted as blackout curtaining. If one had the opinion one was aiding the war effort by being in the Home Guard, a few weeks with the Guards soon made it clear one was as useful and as desirable as another head.

  • Naval Life in 1940

    The Changes WW2 Wrought On The Royal Navy 2 Once it had dawned on the Government that the war would not be over in a month, and Dunkirk reinforced this thinking, people were inventing new, and improving existing weapons and systems. fast, resulting in a constant state of change within the services. New categories of ranks were created, space had to be found for the new equipment and what was generally more difficult, for the men to operate and maintain it. I was one of those men and, to complicate it, I held a seaman’s rank, was educated to the level of a Petty Officer and dressed like one, without the gold-braid. I was a Leading, Wireless Mechanic later to be called Radio Mechanic, responsible for the maintenance of the Radio and Radar transmitters and receivers on the ship. The Chief Bosun, the Lower Deck mover and shaker, was at a loss where to put me, especially as the ship was crowded already. Unfortunately I finished in the Chief and Petty Officer’s mess, resented for my age, inexperience, being a Hostilities Only rating, and not having had to earn such an august place. Day and daily I paid dearly for that decision because I was resented by most of the members of the Mess.

    We collected convoys at the mouth of the Thames and took them out into the North Atlantic to join other ships, and shepherded other ships home from the Atlantic to the Thames. From somewhere off Lowestoft, right up and beyond the Tyne minesweepers cleared a path for us and our charges, and buoys marked the cleared path. Over this stretch we were generally at action stations, especially at night. Then Jerry thought up a new strategy. He had fast torpedo boats we called E Boats. They were made of plywood and effective. They would tie up to the buoys in the dark and when the radar had an echo, initially it was ignored, thinking it to be the buoy. Then after a few ships had passed, Jerry would flash into the middle of the rest and sink a few, causing chaos. That stretch of water was called E Boat Alley. The Admiralty then inducted German speakers, who sat up at night listening for the plain language between the skippers of the E boats. What goes around comes around. Having to find accommodation for them, a new Engine-room artificer, a Gunnery-artificer, the two German speakers and someone else, they took a small compartment 3.5m square and made a Mess for specialists, a place where we ate, slept, and lived when off watch, I was included and swapped my durance vile for overcrowded camaraderie.

  • The Toboggan Run

    For the sake of those who have only recently joined, here is a golden Oldie, to the rest, I ask your indulgence.

    I have said in the intro I was a latchkey child of a one parent family, I was also the baby sitter for a brother whose main aim was to gum red bars of Lifeboy Carbolic Soap with relish. I had just been introduced to ball-bearing roller skates and, when not at school, lived on wheels from breakfast until bedtime. It was a way of life which had been denied me in Africa because there were few paved areas on which to skate, but now I had discovered them, I was learning fast, if at the cost of sheets of my skin.

    One Saturday Mother instructed me to take charge of Baby, who was sitting in one of those old fashioned, deep bodied, prams nannies would wheel in Hyde Park. I was rarely intentionally mischievous, rather I was inventive and given to ill-considered impulses. This time, becoming bored with pushing Baby round the roads at a snail’s pace, with no opportunity for adventure or self expression, I thought of the idea of skating with the pram, so two birds could be dealt with at one go, duty and speed. This too became boring until I realised that I had been doing the circuit the wrong way. If I tackled it anticlockwise I would have to descend a steep hill, instead of climbing it. This opened up a much better prospect and I proceeded to perfect the Toboggan Run system of perambulation, whereby the perambulator became the toboggan with Baby acting as ballast.

    At nine years old I found this system so simple and so splendid I wondered no one had thought of it before. One skated to the top of the hill by any route. When on the flat, one turned the pram round, ducked under the handle and grasped the sides of the pram with the hands, put the chest on the back rim of the pram, and then skated as never before. When the whole unit was reaching Mach 2, one lifted one’s feet, skates and all, and then tobogganed down the hill accelerating the while, much to the enjoyment of Baby.

    The game went on for the rest of the session until the moment when Mother rounded a corner to be met with the sight of her last-born hurtling towards her and no sign of anyone controlling the pram. I was hidden by the hood and the body of the pram and was almost alongside Baby as a passenger. In spite of the fact that Baby clearly thought the whole idea marvellous and also in spite of my assurances that it was absolutely safe, Mother put an end to a sport which might have had international recognition.The success of the venture outweighed the punishment to such an extent I can’t remember the form retribution took, but then I always did take punishment as a rod to be borne in the search for excellence.

  • Trials of Parenthood

    Being unemployed at any time is not funny and in ’46 I had been unemployed for three months, and any resources I might have had had gone. I worked to reach a standard for the university entrance exam, and then I became a student on an ex-service grant of ?200 a year. I think if it hadn’t been for the generosity of my in-laws, we would have starved, our finances were so tight. It is said the purpose of university life is that it broadens the mind as well as the backside, the latter from hours of sitting in the Stack, mugging. In the first year Laura, my daughter, was too young to know she even had a father so I was able to take part in a lot of what went on in the college, before the needs of family were greater and something had to give. Rowing was the first to go.

    Loving boats I naturally joined the Rowing Club, a lowly Fresher Oarsman. We had racing shells and practice shells, those with the sliding seats and out-rigged rollocks; and rowing boats variously termed the tubs or the punts in which we, the raw recruits, were trained. Unfortunately, the people who were to teach us were also part of the first and second eights, so we waited until it suited them to teach us – anything up to four hours later – during which one did nothing but chat in a desultory fashion. I enjoyed those days on the river, I was tall which was good, I could handle an oar, which was essential and I was keen. When the tide was in we would row right down to Belfast Harbour, or up as far as the weir, but the real pleasure was all in the rhythm. When everything was going well there was a poetry about the way the boat responded and we responded to it, which has to be experienced to be appreciated. Alas, while the youngsters could relax in the boathouse, I had plumbing and paving and presents for the parties on my mind and worse, on my conscience. With the deepest regret I gave up after a year.

    When my daughter was old enough to be invited to children’s parties we were presented with yet another financial problem, how to keep up with the Joneses. The children Laura played with came from homes across the social spectrum, but as the trend was set by the more affluent, all toed the line, with the result Laura would come home laden with bits and pieces. Not only that, but she had to take presents which were on a par. Often still skint, when it came to funding Laura’s, and later Lizzie’s, presents, both to take and to give, I had to find a solution.
    At that time James came home from work at the Belfast Shipyard with pieces of rough sawn timber, which had originally been part of long lengths used as templates to pattern the plates for the ships. He cut these, when their useful life was over, into manageable lengths and brought them home for firewood. In the first instance, using this wood, I made Laura a small Irish cottage with a hinged back, opening front door with a little porch round it, all on a small board and decorated with roses growing up the sides and round the porch. The next venture was to make small simple jigsaw puzzles out of the ply obtained from tea chests, with the pictures from colouring books. Very soon Laura could do them, picture-side down. These prototypes in the end solved our problem. Then it was not possible to buy wooden jigsaw puzzles with big or small pieces, and dolls houses were scarce too.

    The next requirement was an assembly line and armed with a treadle sewing machine base, a grinder head-stock, some steel channel, I made a circular saw cum-lathe. The people who run the dodgems at funfairs use hinges on all sides of the floorboards connecting them to each other. The pins in the hinges can be withdrawn, making it easy and especially quick to assemble and take down on each move. I used this system to mount and take down the saw table when swapping from sawing to lathe work. I produced the houses and other items by batch methods. True I have a nick in the bone of one finger where I inadvertently put my finger into the saw, but Sophie was never party to that bit of carelessness. Later the machine became electrified instead of the laborious treadling, and later still I made dolls from broom handles – long lengths of dolls on the lathe, head to foot, with their arms from doweling and wool for hair. Not only had we solved the problem of the presents we now had a minuscule income. . What had started as an idea, in the end turned into a mass production industry with the houses and puzzles also being sold in our shop