Old Gaffer

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  • Old Ned

    My in-laws were generous and kind, and any member of their extended family in trouble was welcome. So it was when Ned came to stay, permanently. Ned was both a character and a knowing old devil. In his late eighties when I first met him, tall, stooped, severely rheumatic, lame and rheumy of eye, he was very amenable. His gratitude to his daughter and son-in-law, were expressed almost daily. The most frequent story of his life I heard referred to the days just before he set out on his travels round the world on a sailing ship. He was a joiner and ship’s carpenter in the shipyard in his home-town shipyard at Carrickfergus where he had also learned to drive a ‘Donkey Engine’. This type of Donkey Engine would be called a steam driven winch or capstan today. A ship, with square rigged sails, had been launched and the skipper was looking for a carpenter cum donkey man, and Ned rushed home to tell his mother that he was applying. Back at the yard his boss recommended Ned and, in short, off he went to sea to sail in a sailing ship round the Horn, with all that implied in hardship in those days.

    He was an old rascal,. He would sit in his corner and think up statements designed to shock and there were none he liked to shock more than maiden lady visitors. On one occasion it was the spinster daughter of a Presbyterian minister who was visiting, and you can’t get much more unworldly than that, and as a gesture of kindness she went out to the breakfast room to have a word with the ‘old gentleman’ – what a mistake! The family always had someone on duty in these circumstances – they knew him of old. In this instance he was heard to say, ‘I’m not as young as I used to be daughter,’ which he pronounced more as do’gh’ter, ‘Come, steady me on the Po.’ after which he chuckled at the expression on the lady’s face with a sort of Billy Bunter glee-noise, an aspirated’ he-he’ which seemed to come from deep within his chest, and would go on for what seemed ages. There was another instance when a lady of similar background went to talk to him about his travels round the world and he admitted having visited quite a few places in the Southern Hemisphere, ‘Like that sharp place,’ he said. ‘You know, wallop you’re arse with a razor.’ He was referring to Valporaiso, and we were sure he knew the name as well as his own, he was just out to stir the pot, it was all the fun he had left.

    Old Ned and Laura. Laura is my elder daughter and at that time she was not yet two years old. He and Laura often had running battles, and sometimes he behaved like a child himself. Laura would sit on the floor and play with her wooden bricks, building them higher and higher, as carefully and meticulously as she does all things, with the result they reached considerable heights when one considers her age and dexterity. Ned was lame and walked with a stick. He dozed a lot, but when he was awake he would reverse his stick and hook the handle round Laura’s tower and topple it, at which time he would cackle with laughter and she would get cross. She, however, was resourceful, and on one occasion waited until he was asleep with his head supported on a hand, itself supported on an elbow, on the arm of the chair; then she attacked. She drew back the door behind which he sat and then hit his hand with it as hard as she could. The shock to the poor old boy must have been devastating, he complained to everyone as they entered the house and as the bruising on his hand developed as it does with old people, he complained even more. I have a feeling the toppling stopped after that encounter.

    NED AND THE HAIRCUT Because he was so lame the time came when he could walk very little; so we employed a hairdresser to cut his hair at the house. It seems the visits were too far apart to suit Ned and one Sunday, when the rest of the family were out for a walk, Ned insisted that I cut his hair in spite of my protestations that I was unqualified and the result would be a disaster. Nothing would deter him and still complaining, I put a towel round his neck and proceeded to operate in the best way I could with the cutting-out scissors. When I had finished, or rather, when I dared to cut no further, we went through the ritual with the two mirrors, as in a reputable hairdressers. Ned was delighted, I was relieved. He kept eulogising my many talents, as a barber supremo – his eyesight was not of the best. Then the rest of the family returned and he immediately showed off his tonsorial transformation, explaining who had done it. I tried to intervene and explain that I had been press-ganged against my will, but the hoots and roars of laughter at the remnants of the poor old man’s white locks drowned me out. I have never seen such a transformation, it was lightning, it was quick-silver, it was instantaneous and it was virulent. Now I was cast in the roll of the villain who had taken advantage of a poor old pensioner and made a mess of his hair. Fortunately his memory span was as poor as his eyesight and next day all was sweetness and light once more.

  • Sex & Child Abuse

    I often wonder if young people, with shiny new degrees lecturing us on TV, in dictatorial terms, with such conviction, have really had any experience of the problems they are allegedly solving. I have met a number of those problems head on, at a time when they were not thought to be so. From the age of eight, I, and many of my mates regularly carried blood blisters on our buttocks or hands from caning. We were high spirited, and when we thought we were right. rebellious, but not vandals, nor did we feel oppressed.

    In a music lesson in secondary school, the teacher was playing a record of the Overture to the Mid-Summer Night’s Dream and explaining how a few bars of the music imitated the braying of an ass. Gilly Potter, my mate, and I sat together; we were undoubtedly asses. The teacher replayed the record, Gilly and I, instinctively brayed on queue. I had to fetch the punishment book and cane, Gilly and I received 6 blood blisters on our buttocks to take home.

    In elementary school, a poem set for homework was twice tested the following day. After further learning in a classroom, where the rest were being taught something more interesting, those still below par, had to learn again, then bend over and had strokes of the cane punctuating each omission to help the appreciation of poetry. In my own home, a cane hung from a hook on the kitchen door and could be applied for all sorts of reasons. There were other abuses, bullying, clips round the head for incompetence, etc,

    At secondary school we were caned by the prefects for minor infringements, like not doing the lines they had given us for running in a corridor. Most of us took it as part of life, it hurt momentarily; it was an obvious risk one took for disobeying the rules, but psychologically, life was so full, we hadn’t time for it to become a real concern.

    As to sex, in single sex schooling, and unless we had sisters, we had no truck with girls until we were about 15, and even then we were totally naive; and while there were dirty stories going the rounds, I distinctly remember when I was about eleven, having no idea what the guy telling the story was talking about. Swearing, sex and salacious talk was rare in front of children, to the extent that when an aunt was being divorced, it was only discussed when I was absent, I was ten at the time. Sexual child abuse and other deviances, to my certain knowledge were never aired in general company, mainly because they were ‘not nice’ the final arbiter in so much pre WW2.

    Would I be wrong in thinking that religion-supplied recreation and stimulation in the old days served the community well, particularly in those dull, dark winter nights, through clubs, Scouts and Guides and other activities for the young, even if they abandoned it later in life; but that the root causes of delinquency today are through the lack of parental control, exercise, stimulation and also debilitating boredom, not abuse and some of the other factors usually offered? Am I right in thinking, in effect, the parents should be held actively responsible, and there should be more recreational areas and facilities?

  • College Capers

    STUDY AND THE BENZEDRINE PILL For years I have known I can’t be taught, I prefer to read books and find out for myself. Whether, as I suspect, the droning of another voice hypnotises me, or whether I just nod off, all I know is I tend to get on better on my own. My wife, a teacher of Modern Languages was a little miffed as French was one of the subjects I was to sit for the entrance exam, Demobbed, hoping to get into Queens University to read Engineering on an ex-service grant, I started the cram course. The guy I went to for a cram, had a classroom over the Fifty Bob Tailors at the Junction in Belfast. He was also none too pleased when another student and I started to teach him mathematics instead of the reverse. Learning French was pure memory, so a tutor merely had to mark exercises. In the case of the Crammer, he was so far behind current day thinking in mathematics, he was practically using the abacus to calculate what we owed him in fees.

    This other student was a real character, he was doing the same exam as I because he had been in the Naval Commandos and been demobbed at roughly the same time. We would meet at the Crammers’ and then go for a drink afterwards. We discussed our relative careers and when that palled we worked at examples we were sure the Crammer was making a mess of. Slowly the time drew near, we were both working hard and comparing notes when we met, and on one occasion he showed me some Benzedrine tablets he had which were left over from beach-landings he had taken part in. He was using them from time to time so he could study through the night without sleep. I warned against it without success, in my case I was merely resorting to coffee and tobacco.

    The day of the Exam dawned and I entered the world of the university for the first time. We sat in the Great Hall, with darkened oak or mahogany woodwork, stained-glass windows and a gnarled, stained, wooden floor. The little desks in rows in isolation. The atmosphere was austere and not a little intimidating. I was esmerised just by being there, in a place I knew all my family in England would revere. My wife had trod those boards two years earlier. We had been given examination numbers and when I looked across to where I expected to see my friend his desk was empty and stayed so. I found later he had succumbed to the Benzedrine and when he should have been at Queens he was in hospital. I have said he was a character, that is true, he was larger than life and when his name hit the headlines in Northern Ireland it only went to prove the point. Failing to get into Queen’s he had left and gone to the rigorous climes of Northern Canada to work in the oil fields, and it was there he walked for days in the harshest conditions of blizzards and ice, without food, to fetch help, when he and some of his work mates had been involved in an accident. The feat was so extraordinary it was even carried in the press here.

    THE BOXING MATCH In second year, I offered an opinion, it always heralds trouble. The men were wondering what sort of show to put on, on Rag Day. Instead of just a procession, I suggested a static show, slap stick, to gather the crowds and collect more money, – provide ourselves with a captive audience. I was inveigled to join another ex-serviceman in An Olde Time Boxing Match. We were to wear combinations, I was to black my face and wear a Fez. I was six foot two of Great Mustapha. He was the British challenger – five foot nothing of cheeky chappy. We set off in the procession with our seconds and marched from the University to the centre of High Street. There was an open space left by the demolition of bombed buildings In the meantime some of the gang went ahead and set up a ring. The performance predictably followed the usual circus ring craft, although we were probably not as crafty. A lot of water was thrown about, punches were thrown and of course, Mustapha must-ave-a beating – which he duly received. To finish it all off, absolutely cold sober, but with adrenaline running high, I obtained a crate and, standing on it in the middle of the main thoroughfare, brought Belfast to a halt with community singing. I arrived home, soberly dressed, sat down for the evening meal when my Mother-in-law, told of how this idiot, standing on a box in his underwear and black face, holding up the traffic was conducting the crowd in a singsong. It was some time before I enlightened her who the idiot was. In the cold light of day and without the stimulus of adrenaline, I agreed with her, he was an idiot.

  • The Guards, Homeguard and Buck House

    Presumably, as a morale booster, a genius at Whitehall thought it would be a ‘terrific idea’ for the HG to mount guard at Buck H, unaware what the poor devils would suffer at the delicate hands of the Guards’ Drill Sergeants. An edict was read out at parades. I assumed it was an honour for the HG while paying homage to His Majesty, KG6. They wanted the platoon to provide men six foot in height -‘volunteers’. Skipper made us fall in, put us through arms drill, finally picking those he thought would disgrace us least – I was one.

    We reported to Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk each evening for two hours, training in the art of guarding, that involved stamping the feet at every opportunity until the Achilles tendons ached, carrying a rifle at the ‘slope’ and marching back and forth – doing everything old Skip had taught us but with ‘snap’. ‘Put a snap in it, lad’, was the cry. There was a S’nt Mayhah, not a sergeant major, dress cap placed parallel to the ground, black peak flat on his face so he had to hold his head back to see where he was going, and a device under his left arm, called a ‘pace stick’. To assess the level of detail these guys entered into, the S’nt Mayhah invariably held this pace stick parallel to the ground, with the point held between the first finger and thumb of the left hand, with the remainder of his fingers extended, his right hand loosely closed with thumb extended on top and the arm raised to shoulder level on alternate strides. Someone in our platoon
    wondered who had time to wind them all up before we arrived.

    The S’nt Mayhah had a voice like thunder and I assume, abused his own sergeants to impress upon us civilians the yawning gap there was between a soldier and a Home Guard. That we were held in complete contempt was patent on arrival, and as the S’nt Mayhah probably had additional duties in consequence didn’t help our cause. One other odd, peculiar particular was the Officer-In-Charge. Dressed like the S’nt Mayhah but with a Sam Brown across his chest, his hat with the flattened brim, he marched back and forth, parallel to the Birdcage Walk railings, swagger stick like the pace stick, under his arm, precisely held, but he looked neither to left or right, he ignored what was going on beside him, of which he was in charge, and just stamped his feet as he turned round at each precise end of a the exact course of pacing. Periodically a sergeant or the S’nt Mayhah would stand in his path, sufficiently far along the track so he could put on the breaks and stamp to a halt. They would salute one another for the umpteenth time, both shout something unintelligible as if a field apart, salute yet again, stamp a few times, part company and the officer would start his pacing again like an automaton.

    It was June and the weather was wildly hot, I had only a singlet under my battledress tunic, a great mistake. For hours on end, night after night, we sloped arms and ordered arms and we tried to ‘put a snap in it’, but achieving that was almost impossible towards the end of the evening because our collar bones were sore with the repeated battering they received from the rifles as we obeyed instructions, shouted in our ear, strength five, ‘don’t put it down, slap it down’. We had done a full day’s work already, we were being abused as if we were raw recruits and this our chosen profession. Resentment reigned large. My friend Farrer was becoming as miserable and bolshie as I was . The crunch came on a Saturday Now, not only my collarbone, broken years before, but the skin was so sore I could barely take the rubbing of the uniform on it. At ‘Shoulder arms’, I tried to find a spot on which to lay the rifle, it took time. A sergeant, taller than I, and a great deal stronger, standing immediately behind me, watching me as I started to lay the rifle down tentatively, hit the rifle on the barrel when it was about six inches from my shoulder, so that it literally crashed down on all the pain – “I told you to smack it down not lay it down”, he bellowed in my ear. For a moment I was staggered both by the pain and the brutality. One minute they were implying we were no-hopers, the next we were treated as if fully trained but malingering. I took the rifle off my shoulder and turned to the sergeant and explained rather tersely that I was a civilian trying my best but as my best was not good enough I was resigning from his care. After all these years I have no idea what I really said. I walked sedately off the parade ground. Whether the automaton saw me is unlikely, whether he cared is a definite negative. none of our platoon were at the Gates of Buckingham Palace in June when the Press pictures were taken.. Probably we were all dismissed and Guardsmen were dressed in our awful uniforms and out there, pretending – serve ’em right!

  • General Foremen, Fiscal Iniquity, The New Industry

    The New Industry 2 On the 31st of October I posted this subject (still included) and I have already said I wouldn’t Rant – I say sorry to those looking for something different – look tomorrow, I’ll put an extra piece in. The panic is that they are at it again, using Global Warming as a lever to make more money by the back door. Of course we have parking problems; we haven’t got a sensible and convenient public transport programme. Surely, instead of giving unscrupulous Clamping Companies a licence to extort, – also making a total hems of the Olympics – which is another Blair ego trip – which few outside the Southern Counties want – which will further drain our resources – still without a firm budget probably 50% wrong; – we should be using all those billions to improve the Transport system and really help the Environment. I mentioned this to someone, who said we are a World Leader and must lead – where has he been for the last 10 years?

    General Foremen (GF) are the backbone of any engineering/building project. In my day they started on a long apprenticeship, followed by a journeyman period, became Foremen and finally reached the top. All this time they had been moving from job to job for advancement, gaining experience in many fields, manufacture, building, engineering and heavy engineering, and management. These men were university material but circumstances or finance had forced them to take the hard road. Decades ago the system was changed, the apprenticeship was shortened, and the quality of skill fell in many instances – output and cost were the key, not perfection. At the same time, affluence meant that those with the attributes were going to university, not into apprenticeship, a different route with a different outcome – hence the long experience gained to enable a man to become a proper GF was lost. recently there has been a training programme for people with the ability to be trained in the Trades, but as it is a government scheme, I doubt if the products will ever match up to the men I worked with. I now hear that Polish workers are arriving here with those very skills and presumably there will be more to follow from elsewhere.

    Fiscal Iniquity I am worried that we have all been marched into an organisational morass, by the constant and pointless tweaking of every system, without reference to the actual professionals carrying out the work.

    The Fiscal Iniquity which ties the hands of all those dispensing Government funds has operated since God knows when. It is a boon to small contractors but a bane to those trying to manage budgets. On the 4th of April, each year, allocated funds not spent revert to the Treasury; and money for the following 12 months has already been allocated, but not necessarily in the same proportions. Teachers, libraries, book sellers, small road contractors, and the rest, all are aware of the system. From October on. there is a rush to buy materials, books, to draw up and let contracts to have footpaths relaid, roads tarred and a host of ad hoc ideas, to use the surplus derived from under spend in other spheres. The under spend results from circumstances outside the control of the local authority, it could be strikes, weather, a glitch in supply, but the money doesn’t roll over, if it is not spent it is lost. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realise the resultant waste of money – in being put under pressure to spend, forethought is at a minimum. Multiply this throughout Government contracts and general expenditure and the waste must be mind boggling. I fail to understand how, overall, politicians haven’t woken up to this waste, unless there is some valid reason why Government spending is so different from Industry, where a rolling programme is essential.

    When I complain, I am thinking of the generations born since ’75 and in the future and worrying where they as a community will finish, when all the skill has been down graded through expediency. – Sorry to be so miserable!

  • ‘Hells-a-poppin’

    We were entering harbour with our new Skipper in charge and most of the crew were getting into what was referred to as their Number Ones, their shore-going gear, their Sunday suits, when suddenly we were thrown to the deck. We’d hit the harbour wall. It was at the time when our place at the head of the convoy as Flotilla Leader had been usurped and we were demoted because of the rank of our new Skipper. No one was pleased with the situation and, if by chance he had won the Irish lottery, the crew would have griped that he had managed to do it when the kitty was low, that was how they felt about the state of things. He, the Skipper, had inadvertently called for ‘full ahead’ when he had meant ‘full astern’, or that was the gossip, the scuttle-butt. That was not what annoyed the men, they would have applauded the act if it had come off properly, but the idiot had managed to hit a rubbing strake, a fixed fender made of hardwood which was attached to the harbour wall just for that event, instead of hitting the wall itself. The blow had been fended off to some extent and all that was damaged was the Skipper’s pride and a few of the bow plates; instead of shifting the engines on their mountings and putting us into dry dock for a month with oodles of home leave. He was not popular. What was worse still was that as we were shortly due for a boiler clean they proposed putting a collision mat on the bow and sending us off on convoy next day, with the pumps trying to keep the water down.. A collision mat is a heavy tarpaulin which is tied over the hole and mainly held in place by the pressure of the water as the ship ploughs through the waves. It is a bit more scientific than that, but that’s the main idea. The whole business had been totally mishandled as far as the lower deck was concerned.

    During the previous trip I had developed severe tooth ache and as the Sickbay Tiffy was not licensed to do dentistry I had to be content with pain killers until we reached Sheerness. There I went ashore to the Naval hospital and was attended to by a Surgeon Captain Dentist – a four-ringer, no less. “Does this hurt?” he asked tapping a tooth and trying to anaesthetise me at the same time with a waft of stale gin. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Nor this?’, tapping again. ‘Ouch’ I said. I’m no stoic. ‘Right!’ he said, but I could not answer as I had a mouthful of his right fist. There was a push and a pull, a quick tweak, and there was one of my sacred molars at the end of his pliers. He admired it from every angle. ‘Nothing wrong with that one,’ he said, ‘Must have pulled the wrong one’, he added. ‘Had to come out sometime. Open wide!’

    I was sore and annoyed and fed up into the bargain. It was raining cats and dogs. I had missed the rest of the crew who were off somewhere and so I mooched the streets until I espied a cinema with a film called ‘Hells-a-poppin”. It is that daft film where a man comes on at the beginning of the film with a pine tree sapling in a pot, and all through the film he reappears with it having grown more and more each time until in the last reel the tree is on its side, on a low loader, with a bear up in the top branches. The film cheered me so much I nearly forgot the incident, the idiot dentist, his halo of gin, but not ‘Hells-a-poppin”. Think what I could have claimed from the Government today for incompetence.

  • The Farce At The Barrier

    On the site of a large sewage works under construction in the 70’s I was telephoned from Head Office to be told that bombs were ‘on all the bridges’, this meant rail, road and river. I closed the site to give the men time to et home and tried to pick a route for myself which would be trouble free. It was at the height of the bombing campaign by the IRA, At every turn I was frustrated and slowly found myself herded by circumstance into what was then thought of as ‘no-go’ areas At one point soldiers appeared from behind a hedge and held me at gun point until they were satisfied I was bona fide. I then had to decide whether to either drive through a certain UDA (Protestant militant) barrier or possibly one set by the IRA. I chose the former. I found railway rails driven into the roadway at junctions by the UDA to stop speeding bombers, a not unusual occurrence.

    I was brought up short at a barrier with no escape route except to retreat the way I had come. I locked all the doors of the car and put the car into reverse with the clutch out and the engine running, while deciding what to do. A young thug dressed in camouflaged army surplus, with a bush-hat over his eyes, swaggered over to the car and knocked on the window. “Show me your licence,” he said, parroting the police and military in similar circumstances. “I will not” I said, firmly. I resented these vigilante groups almost as much as the IRA itself, although I could understand their predicament. “You’ve no right to ask.” I added. This conversation went on its boring, and repetitive way until finally I became fed up and said, ” you might as well let me through, because I’m not giving you my licence.” The irony and indeed stupidity of the whole performance was that when I was stopped by the barrier, I was leaving the area they were supervising, not entering it.

    At this point a large man in his forties appeared, not in camouflage, but clearly a man to be reckoned with. His gait was steady if slow and his face expressionless. By this time, while outwardly calm, I was in a state of high tension. Alone, with no witnesses, completely vulnerable to say the least, I had made a stand and now was not the time to capitulate. There ensued a question and answer session between the two men and then the older man asked me if I had any other means of identification Luckily, I had a work pass which I showed through the closed window. This seemed acceptable, and I was about to put the car into forward gear, preparatory to departure when the man said, “Get out and open the boot.” I hadn’t expected that, caught off balance, incensed, I made a totally stupid remark at anytime, but especially in those circumstances. “If you intend stealing the car,” (a common occurrence at that time), “you’ll have to steal me with it, I’m not giving it up.” “No!” the man said, “I just want to see into your boot”. “I suppose I have to trust you,” I said, he nodded, I opened the boot. Inside was a valuable set of golf clubs belonging to a professional, circuit golfer, each club chosen and modified to suit I was scared it would be ‘liberated’. “A golfer,” he said, smiling broadly, “what’s your handicap?”

    The sudden volte face, the drop in tension, the banality of the words in this charged situation, was nearly my undoing. I silently got back into the car, the barrier was removed and I drove round the corner for a hundred yards; I could go no further. The tension, the build up of adrenaline in the system, and then the sudden release had produced a pain in my back of paralysing proportions. For a while all I could do was sit there and wait for it to disperse, my brain in limbo. Over the years I have had a number of stressful instances, and this final one made me evaluate the degrees of fear, from apprehension to terror, an xercise I found illuminating and totally contrary to what I had expected. The problem was I could not generalise, we are all different and must respect that.

  • The Terraced Wedge

    We finally moved from the awful flat to a house we all called ’76’. My brother could now come home to be educated. 76 was close enough to 88, my grand- mother’s house, for her to help out when Willie, my mother, had to work late. Unless one has never lived in a terrace house on the bend of a road, and a tight inside bend at that, one cannot possibly imagine the consequences. As far as the house is concerned, the bend starts at the kerb on the farside of the road, then there is the road, the footpath, the front garden- however meagre, only then does one arrive at the front face of the house, which, for road symmetry, must be the same width as the rest of the houses on the straight. The house is like a slice of sponge cake, wide at the front and narrow at the back and the degree of squeeze is determined by the depth of the house and the tightness of the curve. 76 had a front room, a second room on the ground floor before arriving at a side entrance to the garden, the kitchen and then the scullery, and throughout this parade of rooms and spaces, the width narrowed inexorably. It was as if the house had been squashed in a ‘V’ shaped vice. Don’t get me wrong, it was a palace to what we had been occupying previously, the freedom, the independence, the joy of a place all of one’s own was immeasurable. It was just a funny shaped house with an even funnier shaped garden. It was just our own personal slice of speculative mismanagement.

    The hall leading from the front door to the living room had a kink where the staircase started. On the wall at the kink was fixed above head height the shilling-in-the-slot gas meter which had all sorts of interesting pipes, name plates, covers and seals, each with its own resonance when hit by a lead air-gun slug. So the Wyatt Erp Era of gun law was inaugurated, and also open season on gas meters. I had swapped something or other for an air-gun pistol and it was my pleasure, especially at holiday times when I had the house to myself, to sit at breakfast and practice the ‘quick draw’. The target was the gas meter, not as a whole, but the various units, and success was signalled by the sound each gave off when hit. As you can imagine, this palled after a while and I advanced to using a mirror and shooting backwards over my shoulder.

    All the years I knew her, Willie was subjected to fearsome migraines and never more so than at 76. It had never been a severe problem for me before, when she was ill I fed myself, but when my brother joined us circumstances changed. We started having greater choices; this included roasts, Yorkshire puddings, boiled salt beef and carrots and so on. The problem was we had no refrigerator, only the wooden ‘safe’ in a cool place in the garden, with its wet cloth in the heat of summer, wet earthen crocks with dripping towels and other devices to prolong the life of meat, and milk in particular. Willie would buy a roast for the weekend but often the migraine would strike and I would have to provide the dinner. In this way I learned to cook anything, stews, roasts, even pastry when my interest had been awakened enough for a meat pie. I spent the morning running up and down stairs receiving orders for each stage as it arrived, given in a weak, pained, wavering voice, but in time it became routine.

    By comparison, in about 1935, my Aunt Min, our school-teacher aunt, had a marvellous one-room flat in Russell Square which I envied. For its time it was well in advance of the norm. To start with it was approached by a lift and was so high one could see right across London to the East. Off a tiny hall was the bathroom, a wardrobe, a general storage cupboard and, what interested me most, was a small cupboard which contained the refuse bin which was emptied by the building staff from the corridor through a small door into the corridor. The room itself was not exceptional except for the cupboard in the lounge which opened to reveal itself as a tiny kitchen with stove, sink unit and storage. To me it was the life to aim for. At 76, aged about 14, for the first time ever, I was given a room in which I could do what I liked, and it was then I started designing multi-function furniture for the bed-sit, some of which I saw later in magazines. There were two pieces in particular, one impracticable, one later commonplace. The first was a rotating wardrobe with doors back and front so in one position it was a wardrobe, in the other it was a larder – totally daft, although years later, in a one-(tiny)room flat I was to use a wardrobe for both functions. The other was a bed with a bed-head for sitting up against when in bed, which folded down to form an occasional side-table when the bed was transformed into a divan as part of the seating arrangements. I believe it was ahead of its time.

  • Talk of Parties

    “ANY FOOL CAN COOK ” – a certain party stopper. We were entertaining old friends to dinner, we had all eaten and drunk well, the conversation was slowing and some guests started to eulogise the meal and others felt left out if they didn’t – we all knew my wife Sophie’s excellent cooking capabilities. I said, ‘Any fool can cook’ just for something to liven the evening.

    Alcohol had something to do with it. The fact I believed it to be true and was prepared to prove it, made no difference, heads turned with such speed, some were in danger of dislocation. All the women round the table were up in arms, their skills, had been denigrated, it was like the terraces on a Saturday when the ref has made a boo boo. The men were laughing, enjoying the lashing I was getting. I tried to explain my thesis which asserts that most people think cooking is so easy they don’t read the small print – the really important details – they read the ingredients and the first few lines, then, as they have seen that bit before, they think the rest is also all the same and skip it. I tried further to add that one was allowed one mistake and then success should be assured, but the hub-bub was such that no ‘lady’ was listening, they were all shouting abuse.

    A few weeks later an Aunt, a reasonably intelligent woman, was in Ireland staying with us and I brought the subject up again, with the same reaction, she was very incensed, to the extent she reminded me of the Worthy Master of the Loyal Orange Lodge who had said he would ‘like to stick a deacon pole into me so far he would have to put his boot on me to pull it out’ – there was that level of vindictiveness. She insisted I take on a challenge and make a ‘knocked-up’ pie as proof of my theory. The trouble was none of us knew what a knocked-up pie was and she was too cross to tell us. In the end it transpired that the K-U pie was the sort of pork pie people eat in pubs. To me the answer was simple, use a jam jar as a former for shaping the bottom, make and cook the bottom bit, make and cook a fancy lid, fill the pie with pre-cooked meat, put on the lid and then pour in the hot jelly through a hole in the lid. The Aunt said I was a mile off, but not why. Sophie, ever helpful, even though I had insulted her with my theory, was forgiving enough to discover in her library of cook-books that I was right. I think QED would be a suitable way to close the matter for all time.

    PUNCH – manipulated. I used to make wine out of Spanish grapes – 54 gallons per year, and this enabled me to make a lot of punch. In wintertime, the norm was four bowlfuls as a pipe opener for our parties. The recipe, consisted of wine, with a mixture of chopped up oranges boiled in brown sugar and sieved, brandy, Orange Curacao, and Cointreau; the last three being added after the heating process was over to ensure none of the alcohol leached away into the atmosphere. This potion was relatively innocuous in that there was no in-built hangover but it did set the standard for the night. One evening, a close friend, stood beside me and remarked I was playing tunes on my guest’s alcohol blood level. I claimed ignorance, he insisted, and I capitulated, he was right and very astute to notice. To avoid the parties getting out of hand, I replaced the three liqueurs with only essences and orange lacing the wine, and when the decibels came down to a nearly reasonable level, normal service was resumed, and only one had discovered the ploy.

  • A Childish Adventure

    The house we occupied was at the corner of a roadway leading North into the bush. Across the road on the opposite side was the residence of my inseparable friend, Mike. For the two of us, 7 or 8 years old, every activity took on the drama of an ‘adventure’. Who was the instigator didn’t matter, the ‘adventure’ was important; and this was the ‘Run of the tank’. The tank had come from my house. It was a galvanised iron water tank, serving a number of houses and had been replaced. It had lain at the edge of the garden for some time and had served us as a hideaway, as a fort and any number of other guises, but on this day it became a tank, not a water tank but an army vehicle of destruction.

    In the First World War my father had not been a conscientious objector exactly, because he had voluntarily joined the army with his friends from the Surrey Walking Club, rather he wished to be categorised as a on-combatant because he objected to killing; with the result he had been enrolled as a stretcher bearer. Ironically, if it was at all possible, it was an even more hazardous category than the infantry to which he was attached. He had been wounded at least twice and severely gassed and in consequence he abhorred war and never allowed me to play with soldiers nor as a soldier; indeed one Christmas my Grandmothe sent me a box of soldiers and these were confiscated as soon as I opened them, and I never played with them at all until I returned to England. Because the bungalows were generally used only for relatively short tours of duty, when one moved in one might find a small accumulation of other peoples goods, things they had no room for when travelling or were just left. We found a trunk left by someone who had served from subaltern to major at least, in a number of regiments. There were buttons, shoulder badges, regimental names in brass, cap badges and other insignia in mint condition and by the handful. My mother and I never told my father, it was our secret and while I never played with them then, I fondled them and dreamed. When I returned to England I had enough to outfit several of my pals and made my own army, using drainpipes as howitzers and stones for ammunition. We, all officers, were dressed to kill, in every sense of the phrase.

    While I was in Africa there was no hint of rebellion in my readiness to play at soldiers, it would have taken a more mature mind to have done so. It was just that playing soldiers offered more excitement and breadth for imagination, hence the ‘tank’. The tank was circular and shallow, but with a fair diameter. The bottom was sealed, in the top was a manhole which had lost its lid; this had given ingress when it had served its many other functions. Firstly Mike and I raised the tank on edge, then, one at a time, we climbed through the hatch and were able to stand, side by side in the dim interior. The tank had been constructed of long sheets of corrugated steel so our feet were precariously supported along the corrugations. We started to walk up the inside of the tank, steadying ourselves against the sides and one another. The tank began to roll and with confidence it rolled ever faster. We were totally unaware of where we were going until a stone got in the way of one edge and the whole thing collapsed on its side. Unhurt we climbed out and started over again, the idea was marvellous – just a few snags to be ironed out. After several abortive attempts, it dawned on us to roll it to the road outside where the system took on an entirely new aspect and from then on it was a breeze.

    We could not steer and we could not see, but we were totally confident it would travel in a straight line, seeing no problems we concentrated on rolling as fast as our legs could climb the side like two blind gerbils in a rotating cage. At some point we must have been aware we had left the track and were ploughing through the tall grasses of the veldt, because I still vaguely remember the sense of elation when we felt the grasses being rolled flat like a real tank.. Finally it fell on its side, fortunately the right side up, but when we climbed out of the steel oven, heated by the afternoon sun, we found we were out of sight of civilisation, surrounded by the bush, apparently miles from anywhere. I was convinced we had travelled miles, but two small boys working in that heat could not have gone far. My mother was made aware of the escapade only years later.