Social History

by Terence Kearey

London Garden Town 1935 – 1965.

Life, Love & Longing.

Introduction

I maintain I’m lucky – being born to parents who loved and cared for me, they mainly made me what I am; I also believe the age I grew up in was a better time for children. You may believe the reverse, that today’s improved education, parental, medical and social care provides for a far happier life. In this piece I look back hoping to prove both points.

At home! Father, a proud highly decorated Regimental Sergeant Major whose yardstick was obedience and dedication. He held firm beliefs about most things. Christened Albert Edward (Bert) was born in 1898, at the time of the Battle of Omdurman was a Bayswater Victorian through and through – by birth, education and upbringing; a man who enjoyed the company of men of similar age and experience.

Before marriage: Bert was a man about town who went shooting every weekend with the Regimental Team. He studiously followed convention as he saw it. Conservatism and the established order of things his yardstick – he believed they worked! His axiom: to keep his word, not let anyone down and never be late. He polished the toecaps and insteps of his shoes to the same degree.

On Sundays! My brother and I wore our best clothes, polished our shoes and slicked down our hair with water – ready to present ourselves to our bedridden grandmother and aunt, in Eastcote. We were told not to play cards or to play in the street only to play or read quietly indoors. At home, bad language never tolerated, voices never raised nor profanity uttered. We were expected to exhibit the then accepted codes of moral behaviour.

The family had their meals in the dining room, except in the winter, where strict table manners ruled; entertainment limited to various bands playing in Headstone park. Cinemas and shops were closed. Public transport ran a restricted service. Socializing – having neighbours, friends or relations in for a meal extremely rare, father distanced himself so as not to spoil what he treasured most – a peaceful home life.

This controlled disciplined life – valued by pre-war society, was not just something peculiar in our family… it lasted a further ten years – to 1960, when flower power reigned, school standards dropped and multi media organizations expanded their output. Trade Unions flexed their muscles and weak managements succumbed to the pressures of maintaining increased profits and company share values.

Throughout my life! The kitchen clock and the paperwork behind it constituted the family office; household bills to be found on the mantelpiece alongside mother’s cigarettes and father’s pipe cleaners and spills. Food was standard fare: roast joint of meat Sunday, cold cut Monday, minced with bread, onion and carrot, sausage, stewed steak and fish Friday. Saturday fried breakfast, meat pie for lunch and high tea at five. Brought in fish and chips, winkles, ice cream, cream cake and crisps, a twice yearly treat.

Weekday evenings! The family gathered in the small kitchen to feel the benefit of the back boiler with its lid open. The permantely lit fire drew us in close, the dried wood crackled, snapped, burst into flames… to die, flicker and catch again; the smoke danced up the chimney as the soldiers, the red hot sooty embers on the fireback, advanced and retired. Time to apply a few more pieces of coke – a notoriously difficult fuel to keep alight – the anthracite’s running low.

Our faces lit up with a warm glow as we listened to the radio, which was only switched off late at night. The family played cards or made a jigsaw – for one was always on the go. This picture of home life neither dulled nor faded throughout my life but remained inviolate. There have been many times in my life when I would have loved to be back warming my knees watching mother knit or sew as father filled his pipe… open the newspaper and draw in another mouthful of tobacco; it was a cocoon spun by a man who needed this – his idea of family life. During WW2, his rife was to be found propped against the gas meter door ready for use. Home was a haven of security and rest.

The fire, its bread oven above drying out the next day’s kindling, took up the centre of one wall. The family of four took up station, we boys sat on the padded boxes either end of the fender, father sat facing the fire, on the left, mother to the right. It was evening, the radio tuned to the light programme. The final bars of a Viennese Waltz, played out by the Sydney Thompson Orchestra. Time for bed, away from the womb of the family. The darkness outside wrapped the house in its cloak as we boys drew in closer to the fire one last time, taking off the fireguard the warming pyjamas, dressed… climbed the creaking stairs. The family’s cat meowed outside, the distant owl hooted goodnight and the express train to Aylesbury flew by.

Neither father nor mother discussed their parents, brothers or sisters; their own past home lives continued to be for us a mystery. Their childhood fantasies, secret hopes and fears, had been put away years before with their school life, hobbies and interests, these never saw the light of day. We boys remained ignorant. That my father had been RSM of The Kensington Regiment was kept private, unknown to us for years, similarly being second in command of a Home Guard Division, both, a complete revelation. However, the greatest discovery of all, his grandfather had been an Irishman with an ancient Gaelic ancestry stretching way back in time. This, something else to be proud of.

He was one of the first to fight in the First World War as an avowed Christian to end it an agnostic as he watched his friends die around him in the fields and trenches. He believed that many in high command deserved to be pilloried. Mother also never described her life in a lace mill nor discussed upstairs life in a stately home. Their past stayed in a vacuum flask with the cap firmly on – ignorance blissfully intact. The family garnered current events via the newspaper or radio; life in the 30’s predictable, like the passing seasons and ticking clock.

In the main this is a happy story, a childhood cared for by loving parents: a father of forty-eight, absorbed by the military, freemasonry, and Old Contemptible Association. A pinstriped, bowler-hatted, straight-backed man, who worked on the railways, and a mother of twenty-nine whose marriage provided children, a suburban garden and a family of cats. His greatest hobby was playing the piano or organ at Freemason meetings; mother knitted, embroiders and crochets. Her own home life and childhood had produced a kind, gentle and unassuming country girl whose early life, before marriage was in the lace mill working ten years before the loom… ending her working life in-service up-stairs – as a Lady’s Maid.

Chapter 1.

All young children, in the main, are ignorant of those outside forces that can affect the family’s wellbeing i.e. international events, labour laws, national institutions and local politics. The children see their world in prime-uncontaminated colours, without having to concern themselves with detail. The parent’s main concern was providing sufficient money to maintain their chosen life style, sporting interests and hobbies. The family’s political beliefs shaped by the father and his experiences. The children generally feed off the parents views altering their views only when they meet the outside world.

Those outside forces in 1920, started with demobilized men coming home from WW1- as Britain became a debtor nation. The women employed during the war were forced out of work not through inefficiency but by Trade Unions finding places for men. A period beginning with record unemployment leading to industrial strife and the introduction, during the next ten years, of many technical advances from America. New ways of looking at the world discussed, the broadcast news and newspaper topics shaped public opinion and political thinking.

The First World War assisted women’s electoral freedom. The call to arms on the land and factories produced a path for equal rights. Later, full employment, a housing boom and rearmament ended the balmy period just before the Second World War. The events, recorded by newspaper, magazine, and radio and shown by Pathe news at the cinema, of happenings in Europe – gradual brought about the realisation that war could be imminent.

My parents were married in Tatworth’s St. John’s Church at five-ways corner in 1933, three miles from Chard Town, Somerset. (I was later to be christened there) Elsie’s father a lace mill engineer fathered fifteen children in a small cottage opposite the village school. Albert’s father, a self-employed painter and stainer, proudly fathered eleven children in Bayswater, close to Kensington Gardens. The mother ran a laundry whilst acting as unpaid midwife for local women.

Albert and Elsie spent their honeymoon setting up home in Sudbury Town close to Wembley and Harrow. It was not long before their first son was born making their new home complete. A second pregnancy close upon the first prompted them to move to a larger home with a garden in North Harrow, also near the station – within commuter distance of Marylebone Station – the father’s place of work.

31, Cumberland Road, was a Cutler home designed in the late twenties built in the thirties. The General Strike of 1926 prompted the government to find solutions to reduce unemployment, the result being a massive house-building programme, which included developing new garden towns – North Harrow being one such town.

As you drive about Britain, you come across public buildings and houses that all have similar architecture. The nineteen-thirties building style was recognisable by the use of brick and tile, gabled roofs, roughcast walls, tile hung bays, suspended floors, symmetrical windows with stained glass inserts and panelled doors.

A privet hedge bordered the small front gardens. The semidetached houses divided by a narrow side entrance leading to the back garden. There are similar houses all round England built to a particular standard of design and quality. The development fine once the trees and gardens planted, you could appreciate the formality as something rather charming.

This idyllic period only lasted until the motoring age and the weekend ‘do-it-yourselfers’ who ruined the style by tearing out the dado and picture rails… boxing in the stairs. Later, the double glazing salesmen took away what individuality was left by introducing picture windows.

The once pretty flower bordered well-trimmed lawn, contained behind the perfectly clipped privet hedge, has given way to scuffed concrete – the home to an assortment of bins, along with the family car. The one time deserted road now lined with cars of all shapes and sizes vying for the few spaces available.

The cheaper houses built in North Harrow were Cutler homes. Albert Benjamin Cutler came from Tottenham. He began building in 1909; most of his work was in North Harrow and Pinner. His son Horace took over the business, eventually becoming Mayor of Harrow, then Leader of the Greater London Council; later rewarded for services in 1979.

Albert Cutler lived firstly in Beresford Road, Marsh Road, then finally in Eastcote Road. He was closely associated with the Imperial Properties Investment Company (IPIC) then Amalgamated London Properties (ALP).

During the period, 1925-1939, T. F. Nash Ltd., another property developer had three large estates for development. One was at Eastcote, where Nash lived, another at Kenton, and a third at Rayners Lane, the most economical. Others, more elaborately built, situated on the way to Pinner, ranged from £595 to £750 – four up and two down, plus a garage.

Similar outer London Towns surrounded North Harrow. The Pinner Road separated the fashionable part from the council homes close to Wealdstone and the Kodak Works. Imperial Drive crossed the town linking Rayners Lane with the town centre.

No softening effects of grass verge nor shading tree in the cheaper end of town having to make do with narrow roads and pavements. The houses along Imperial Drive running towards Pinner blossomed with flowering trees set in well cut grass verge and cemented driveways. Telegraph poles were just about to be raised in 1933, lines strung, and the few telephones ordered installed. This was no depressed environment in the thirties but a well-designed, new and ordered, living space, as befits a garden town. Churches and schools, cinemas and recreation grounds given priority as the broad pavements fronted the line of purpose built shops.

This dormitory town, for that is what it was – had no factories or large offices, relied on the railways and buses to ferry the working population to the nearest main town and beyond… London being only twenty minutes away. The town designed to provide a feeling of light and space, whilst the classically styled, imitation marble-walled Embassy cinema, one of the Associated British Cinema (ABC) chain, reserved for itself the role of premier landmark.

In Britain, the years between 1933 and 1939, considered ‘the calm before the storm’. Travellers, holidaymakers and businessmen, who went to Europe, came back with tales – describing Germany as being prepared for expansion both militarily and industrially, with a population indoctrinated to consider others, not Germanic, as inferior.

The British government did not debate nor predict their worries, of ‘troubles to come,’ nor was it forcefully spoken or written about – by the media… at least, not sufficiently to raise the alarm or disturb the peace. Realization of danger penetrated the national psyche almost too late. The powerful aristocracy and conservative right had much to answer for for they should have known better.

North Harrow’s lower middle class ordered life was one of calm ruled by convention and habit based upon old Victorian ideals of Empire, a strong navy, trust in the Establishment, and faith in the private educational system. Each year the new intake for grammar schools chosen by the top eleven plus exam results filling what places accounted for by classroom sizes kept to minimum, thereby maintaining a high standard equal if not higher than private school achievements. This was an unfair system, which the Liberal Democrats later tried to correct with their ideas of comprehensive education.

Halls Farm field’s ran along George Fifth Avenue towards Headstone and Hatch End, provided local dairy produce. Neither the leading citizens nor local government agencies gave any indication what was happening in Germany, peace reigned in a vacuum. The summers leading up to nineteen thirty-nine were glorious, predicting another series of grand harvests. Cricket played at Lords by Middlesex harbouring great expectations. No aircraft were heard flying overhead and London’s airport never mentioned. Northolt had biplanes taking off and landing and Brooklands circuit held motor racing.

Fathers’ walked with furled umbrella or cane wearing a jacket and tie. Mothers’ pushed coach built prams with sunshades. Children wore school uniform including caps, policeman patrolled on foot, and errand boys delivered goods – on bikes. Milk, coal and beer delivered by horse and cart. Children skipped in the road and collected cigarette cards. Football became the national sport – relegating cricket to second place.

Lord Reith, the Managing Director of British Radio, demanded absolute decorum and the King’s English; parks, recreation grounds, bowling greens, and council gardens competed with each other to see who could cultivate the neatest lawns and plant the most colourful flowerbeds. Head Gardeners held their positions, by their good names and the quality of their gardens.

In all of this, Harrow was no different from many other Boroughs throughout Britain. Gradually pride of achievement in the workplace lessened by Trades Unions trying to ensure increased wages, longer holidays and shorter hours. Full employment – protecting workers from management pressure to always increase output with a smaller staff, lead to strikes in the sixties.

Every trade skill was taught using an apprenticeship system, reduced post-war from seven to five years. An apprentices pay in 1950, linked to the journeymen’s’ rate, starting at two guineas per week. Those just out of their time £20.00. Justifiably proud when finishing their training stoutly defending any erosion of their place in their trade or wider society.

Girls pre-war! Neither taken on as apprentices, taught industrial skills, worked on building sites, or drove cars. Mothers didn’t work full or part-time, but stayed at home at least until the youngest child went to infant school, then they worked in shops, went back into offices as typists, continued nursing or teaching. Those untrained took up a domestic cleaning job. Very often, the youngest daughters, (spinsters) not married, looked after their elderly parents.

The town’s citizens, although living in up-to-date houses, observed turn of the century attitudes. Boy Scouts, Boys Brigade, Church Lads, Girl Guides and their junior sections cubs and brownies were the centrepiece of many children’s lives. The meeting places if not in church halls huts built on church land. Some older boys joined one of the armed services cadet corps. These organizations had a close link to the military, The Empire and the needs of the public during war.

Membership of these and other organizations ensured a higher attendance at church than would have been expected. Pre-war congregations about fifty per-cent of the population attending at least one service during Sunday. Most young children went to Sunday school. North Harrow and surrounding towns catered for most non-denominations in a variety of chapels.

Shops shut on Sundays and Wednesday afternoons. They opened at eight and closed at five – during the weekdays. Thursdays and Saturdays, they stayed open an hour later. There was no poverty; all the children were well dressed, keeping aside special clothes for Sundays. I do not remember any rowdiness or drunken brawls.

Teashops were popular and cakes and sandwiches formed the basis of afternoon teas. There was no Hire Purchase and personal saving the only way to pay the bills. Jumble Sales a regular feature and Tea Dances a popular afternoon event.

Much was made of The British Empire. The newsreel camera showed the Royal Family maintaining a ridged schedule of familiar appointments. The National Anthem ceremoniously played at every performance at the cinema, theatre and concert, and at most public meetings – everyone stood to attention, and those in uniform saluted.

The Nations psyche revolved around The Union Jack hoisted on every big occasion. Each of the Armed Services seen as saviours and protectors of every country within the Empire. Explorers, Generals, Colonists and Missionaries were written about and applauded. Newspapers, books, and magazines promoted The Empire’s people, produce, and position. Churches collected for The Empire’s poor, and prayed for the continuance of the Monarchy, the Colonial system, and the government of the day.

The country’s laws, institutions, businesses, and educational system organized to continue the country’s growth and wealth. The Empire was a very important part of the country’s way of life. The population made aware of its importance by all forms of indoctrination. This was not by official propaganda but part of a proud culture.

The Metropolitan railway line, laid down the previous century, reached Pinner from Baker Street, in 1885. New house building started where the old Edwardian style left off – at Edgware Road and Willesden. All along the line, in the late 1920s – on either side of the railway-line, new housing sprung up – Wembley Park, Preston Road, and Northwick Park… onto North Harrow, Pinner… and beyond…

Previously it had been farmland now transformed into The Greater London sprawl. It linked up all the little villages and hamlets along the line… it just needed more schools and other institutions, to convert each area into new town status. By the time the plan completed, between 1928 and 1933, the European situation directed the government to reallocate the country’s resources… Serious house building had to wait twenty-five years until it started again in Chesham. By 1960, there was another enormous shortage of first time buyer’s homes.

Germanic military expansion in the thirties was threatening peaceful existence, sufficient to galvanise the government into building-up the depleted armed forces, and place orders for military equipment. Even after this awakening, Britain was still poorly defended – it’s Military woefully inadequate and badly trained; tactics and procedure based on lessons learned during the First World War. The Indian Army and Overseas Detachments were in being to show force – military strength – to help the civilian authorities hold the peace. The military establishment was rigidly structured based on the class system, previously part of the Manorial system, not on merit.

Unemployment was not an issue. I recall the concern my parents exhibited towards the advancement of war, brought on by ‘The German Attitude.’ A build-up of incidences led to Chamberlain’s 11.15 a.m. radio announcement – on Sunday the 3^rd September 1939 – that took the country into war.

We heard the announcement whilst in the kitchen. Why we were all there I cannot recall but we took in the solemn statement with I believe bated breath. I can still hear Chamberlain voice, a rather high, brittle, reedy voice, with clipped intonation…, a rather theatrical performance – receiving a cheer and a clap on the back!

France announced they were to be at war with Germany that afternoon, as did Australia and New Zealand. South Africa announced their intentions three days later and Canada followed within the week. As all this was going on, the inhabitants, of North Harrow continued their lives as if nothing was happening. A laisse fare attitude, which carried on throughout the war.

On the continent, British troops advanced through France to Lille – near the Belgium frontier. They dug defences, then advanced – leaving their prepared positions… then fell back…, never to fully recover. The army was unfit for war, inadequately equipped, carrying outdated weapons, and adopting inept tactics in a doomed campaign. By the end of the following May the British Army in full retreat… to the coast, and Dunkirk – to re-embark and be shipped back home. It was almost a perfect farce carrying on from WW1.

It was thought by the populace, an act of providence – like the river Jordan parting. In fact, it demonstrated an almost total ineptitude brought on by thoughtlessness and ignorance, exhibited by most of the political and military elite. It took almost four years to recover when the outcome inevitable, however – by that time, Britain was in debt to America, never to regain its premier position.

North Harrow! In 1939, that autumn, was a town with pride – a place that grew out of the thirties and prospered, linking the old towns of Harrow, Pinner, and Wealdstone. Its design showed off town planning at its very best with accommodation for all pockets and services to match. Many of the roads had pavements fringed by a grass verge. A crab apple or almond tree planted outside each house, gave the grass verge a pink canopy in spring.

The whole ambiance described poetically by John Betjeman as Metroland, a term applauding suburban planning. Householders competed with each other to see who could produce the best verge and neatest front garden eagerly taken up as an unspoken challenge.

By the time, I was four – able to take note of things around me the front gardens in the road fully stocked with shrubs and trees – softening the outlook, which left me with a lasting memory of flowing greenery. It is important to emphasise that there were no unkempt front gardens until cars began to be parked both there in the sixties and in the road – the seventies.

The town’s appearance to the interested onlooker was one of orderliness, neatness, and tranquillity… essential requirements for lower middle-class life. The buildings and infrastructure new – of the period, considered modern, the pavements, roads and kerbs clean and undamaged no cracked paving slabs, discarded litter, or graffiti. The town was as designed with no extensions, garages, conservatories, replaced windows, or doors. Its citizens assumed the conventions of studied politeness – hats were raised to friends and neighbours and audiences stood for the National Anthem. The town was everything the planners had worked towards and achieved.

It is difficult now, over eighty years later, to describe the atmosphere and general ambiance of the place, because it was so different. There was no frenzied traffic passing, no pollution, or noise. It was gentle, neat and orderly. Many bikes were ridden, the horse and cart the means of delivery prams abounded, and children held hands. Compared to today’s picture those times were quite charming – not seen since.

Closing my eyes, thinking back to when I was a boy during the war, standing at the crossroads, clutching an Evening News and two ounces of Rosemary tobacco – bought for my father that Saturday evening. On three of the corners stood an imposing bank guarding the town’s entrance. There is very little traffic about, occasionally a single decker bus – the 230 route, passes on its way – to Rayners Lane or Wealdstone. It was quiet, with few people – one or two hurrying home. It was the lack of road traffic and the emptiness of the pavements. The town closing down, about to go to sleep.

North Harrow’s railway bridge, of riveted steel, spans Station Road, casting a shadow on Headstone Hotel – the local hostelry. The railway station had two entrances each with a bank of telephone kiosks. The ticket office displayed the tickets in racked, serried ranks, drawn upon the counter ready to be punched. Access to the platforms made through the barrier, up the stairs, out onto the raised platform – next to the waiting rooms.

Bright advertising posters, hand drawn and printed by the lithographic process, heralded Brighton and Seaton as being everyone’s dream location for a holiday. The London underground map flanked by the ‘up and down line’ timetables framed on the platform and waiting room walls.

The town’s banks – railings and porticoes, faced in Portland stone, stationed impressively on the crossroads. Their solid respectability made a good impression on visitors and townspeople alike. Many of the shops had countrywide names: Express Dairy, United Dairies, Dewhurst’s, Home & Colonial, Maynard’s, Cullen’s, Mac Fisheries, Boots, W. H. Smith, Woolworths, Cooper’s, and the Watford Co-op.

The local dance studio operated from the large room over the Co-operative Department Store. The dance teacher taught ballroom, Latin American, and old time dancing. Previously this large room had been a snooker hall and in common with many became obsolete – giving way to more profitable pastimes. Both have long since disappeared along with the cinema, car showroom and bicycle repair shop next to the cafe.

The car showroom with its tall plate glass windows, rested under the distinctive clock tower. The sliding doors, separated off the public from the lucky few who could buy the latest models. Cars, what few there were, serviced at the rear – next to the petrol pumps, their fuel pipes attached to swinging arms that carried the contents to the roadside.

In 1939, there were nearly two million cars on the road, one for every twenty-five members of the population. The cheapest car could be bought for just over a hundred pounds. Motor bikes and sidecars were popular as were three-wheeler cars.

Opposite – on the other side of Pinner Road, lived Stan and Rose Kealey and daughter Joyce. Stan knew my father in WWI – they became linked by the closeness of their names. Ever more, they kept in touch. As a family, we often visited them for tea. He was a groundsman for the council, very proud of his bowling greens. As a family, they joined to make jigsaw puzzles and they always had one half-finished inviting us to join in.

The nearest local National School was built in 1841, situated at the bottom of Pinner High Street. This was a development of The Church of England’s interest in promoting education for religious purposes. This took the form of The National Society for Promoting the Education of the poor in the Principles of the Established Church in 1811, to grant sufficient money to open up the Pinner Sunday School five years later.

In 1833, the government enquiry into education for the poor lead to a series of grants to regularize religious involvement. This was the first nationally organized involvement, which lead to The National School being granted land by the lord of the manor, maintained by the school fee of a penny and voluntary contribution. Ten years later, at the time of The Great Exhibition, the school catered for 190, pupils.

A much larger school was built in 1867, with five rooms in School Lane, Marsh Road, becoming Pinner’s National School. In 1950, this school building became the overspill for Headstone Secondary School – where I spent my final year. The Education Act of 1880, made school attendance compulsory. In October 1891, lessons at the infant school free, though the upper schoolchildren were charged 1d per pupil.

The National School continued servicing the local children’s education for a further forty years when the influx of children from the new estates demanded more accommodation. The Middlesex County Council soon provided new schools. Headstone Lane Secondary School was the first in 1929, Pinner Park in 1931, Cannon Lane in 34, and Longfield a year later. It was to this school that my brother and I attended, in 1939, and 1940, respectively.

Longfield Primary and Junior School was situated midway between North Harrow and Rayners Lane, built at the same time as the surrounding houses in typical thirties style, of brick, with a flat roof, concrete cills, and metal framed windows. It educated about a hundred and fifty primary children and about the same for juniors; staffed by ten teachers, a headmistress, secretary, and caretaker.

The playground asphalted and marked out for netball, relieved by a shrubbery on two sides. The headmistress banned the sports field for breaks – except for the annual sports day, because children became far too dirty – even in summer, a chain-link fence circled the school’s boundary separating the school from its surroundings. During the war shelter were dug to take the whole school population.

Children seldom played truant, although there was always the odd boy who did – and got away with it. The School Board’s Inspector peddled round the roads on his bike to catch out those unwary children – trying to evade being caught.

Headstone Secondary Modern School was built at the other side of town, for the bulk of teenagers who failed their ‘eleven-plus’ exam. Pinner Grammar, built just down the road, catered for the selected few. To cater for aspiring parent St. Andrew’s private preparatory school for mixed infants and juniors, and girls up to eighteen lay behind the fence next to the bus stop on Station Road. Atholl House School built at the other end of town, nearer Rayners Lane. How strange it was to have private school, with red-coated pupils marching to school quite separate from the rest of the community.

Who were the parents who sent their children to these private schools? The children were hardly ever seen or heard… where did they go to when they did leave? It was a mystery. The nearest private school for juniors and seniors was John Lyons School where our neighbour’s two boys went. The parents of such children planned and paid their children to be educated and shaped for managerial white-collar occupations.

Private education distanced their children from the rest of society – the parents in effect chose social exclusion. School fees: bought better academic and sports facilities, discipline, compulsory homework engendered higher social expectations. The parents believed that it was worth the financial sacrifice to buy privilege, reinforcing the school’s curriculum by ensuring that their child mixed with children of similar minded folk.

During the day, the shops and pavements were the preserve of women – mothers – pushing prams, shopping and meeting neighbours. It came to life when children came out of school, and again, later, when the trains delivered men from work. There were no nearby factories, and the frequent question, ‘where are all the men’ received the time honoured reply, “Gone up to town – it was mainly a white collar community commuting to London.

My brother and I had our clothes bought from Sopers or from a London second-hand shop. I do not remember any from local stores. This applied to all household linen too – Harrow was the main shopping area. In the linen department all, the items were arranged in countless drawers behind glass-topped counters with recessed brass measures screwed to the working surface.

The cashier sat in an enclosed glazed box taking the money then sending the bill and money to the back of the shop using a brass tally chain or pneumatic tube. Change and a receipt came back the same way. Shoes were the only item bought locally – being needed at frequent intervals. When new, the soles were covered in steel studs or blakies, which made a crunching noise – like a soldier marching – that sent, sparks flying, when sliding on the pavement…

My father was a cartage manager at Marylebone main-line railway station. He rented the family house spending very little time and no money maintaining it… being very prudent never overspent or borrowed money… His was a secure job that included a free season ticket – for personal use, and an annual pass for a family holiday. His membership of the Freemasons and Old Contemptible took all of his free time, and we suspect his cash too.

Shops in Harrow stayed open late on Saturdays and Thursdays, with half days opening on Wednesday. I do not remember any of my friends owning a wrist or pocket watch. The only person to give the correct time was the policeman. Life in Britain had changed little since before The First World War.

The most noticeable social change was the employment of women in offices and shops. Previously, most office and shop work had been the preserves of men. Later, women took over during the First World War leaving older men to continue as overseers, managers, and senior clerks. The use of women in factories, offices, and shops escalated as the years went by. By the time, the Second World War was underway women were finally accepted as ‘essential for the country’s economic survival’. Thereafter, the employment of women continued apace.

It took another fifty years for girls to be considered suitable for technical work and given suitable training – at Further Education Colleges. In the printing industry, there were no women employed in any of the craft sections until the 1980s. In graphic reproduction studios, the training of girls began for film planners, but even so, there were no indentured apprentices. Industry stepped back from long periods of training for girls – believing that in many cases it would be a wasted effort.

Girls leaving school in the 1950s were expected to work upto the time they were to have children. This was the first time girls in mass had these expectations – it was an understanding of female ‘self-worth’. This lead to sexual liberation and the concept of ‘The modern marriage.’

Within fifty years, the ridged social structure was transformed. ‘Flower power’, nuclear disarmament, hippies, rockers, trial marriages, television watching, Further and Higher Education, popular culture, lost innocence, drug taking, contraception, part-time working, job sharing, single parenthood, throwing keys into the ring, drug taking, increased alcohol addiction and divorce played their part in the social changes that took place.

Harrow Public Today it covers an area of 55 acres including a boundary of roads containing terraced workers cottages built in late Victorian style.

In 1925, Hendon Rural District Council bought Headstone Manor House with its twenty-five acres of land. The object was to build a recreation ground. The council widened Headstone Lane and made a new road called Parkside Way. Headstone Manor Estates bought the land from the council to develop the land, the builder being A J King whose design and quality was an improvement upon Cutler. The Headstone Races took place just north of Southfield Park. These farmer’s horse races were keenly followed but exuberance saw its demise following the riots of 1899.

Pinner was looked on as a middle class area circling its much photographed fifteenth century church, coaching inn and High Street. Its borders nearly reached the Methodist chapel, North Harrow, which is set back from the cross roads that links George V Avenue to Hatch End, and the nearest farm. Originally, called Pinner Park Farm now Hall’s Farm, its fields, ranged either side of the road, provided milk for the dairy – bottled for the town and surrounding area. [During the war, these fields held a local searchlight battery]. The milking parlour, built next to the bottling factory stood opposite the stables and sheds – housing the milk carts painted in red and white livery.

The horses, harnessed to all delivery carts, remembered their round as well as the milkman… never needed to be told to ‘walk on’. These horses provided my mother with the necessary manure for her tomatoes and roses. The farm’s original estate had been a deer park of over two hundred acres – the first recorded building on that site was in 1560. The present farmhouse, which boasts Halls Farm painted in large letters on the side, was built in the 1750s.

Across the field, following the public footpath… towards Pinner stands East End Farm Cottage, which we called Snow White’s Cottage. This is an early fifteenth century building in Moss Lane and can claim to be one of the oldest surviving houses in Pinner. It was built by Roger of Eastend and reputed to be an open hall house. In the 1850s, the farm was called Hedges Farm and generations of the Hedges family owned it until 1935, when it was sold and the land split up.

Gypsy caravans travelled along the main road sometimes in convoy. Many of them were richly painted – with floral designs, with beautifully carved furniture and antique porcelain. They told fortunes at fairs and sold pegs and rattraps door to door. The women brought round baskets of ‘lucky heather’.

Four main churches served the town’s citizens. The Roman Catholic Church, St John Fisher, which was, positioned half way down Imperial Drive, The Church of England created the parish of St Alban in 1930 – graced the cross roads near Village Way. The Baptists eventually found their home in Rowland’s Avenue… The Methodist’s Chapel behind railings and privet hedge stationed at the corner of Pinner Road and George V Avenue, and The Christian Science Hall along Imperial Drive not far away from Elmfield Chapel. These places of worship were stationed at the boundaries of the town and gave shelter to their own school and choir, plus sundry other associations and groups… the largest congregation attending the Roman Catholic Church.

Every national club and association celebrated Saint George’s Day, The Sovereign’s Birthday, Empire Day and other special events associated with the club. The National Flag of St. George was raised on those special national days. The majority of boys in every town were members of national youth associations like the Boy Scouts, Church Lads, or Boys Brigade. Older youths joined Army, Navy, and Air Force Cadet Corps. Girls too had their organisations, which they usually finished when they reached school-leaving age – at fifteen or sixteen. Monthly church parades saw the various organizations march behind each other following the Boys Brigade band. Flags held at the slope before the church door as the signatories filed in… lead by The Mayor.

General heating in all homes was by coal fire and the cooking by gas. Lead pipes continued to be laid and no loft or window insulation installed. Cavity walls were not thought of, concrete or breezeblocks unknown and all internal pipework exposed. Damp courses laid in slate and all wood joints nailed, not bolted or screwed. In the winter ice formed on the insides of the windows and there was always the danger of pipes freezing up. Plugs were kept in the sink to stop the dripping tap freezing the outflow pipe.

Terms of endearment never used, love, not mentioned, affection never exhibited. Hand holding, kissing and arms round shoulders not countenanced. Boys followed a Kiplinesque character raised to serve the nation and girls nursed those that were injured. Sexual thoughts words and deeds never spoken of. This was not only a source of guilty daydreaming but total embarrassment. Procreation, it seems, was a mystery to the nation.

All this may suggest we were all frustrated, lonely, and unloved, but that would be wrong. If society proceeded along these lines and no questions asked, who was going to change it? Society must have been either downtrodden or reasonably happy. I believe it was the latter. There were many jobs available. The occupation of the father still controlled many sons choice of a job.

In 1837, the railway line was laid that linked Euston in London with Birmingham, passing through Wembley and Harrow. In 1873, Parliament accepted a plan for the London, Harrow, and Pinner Railway, which would terminate between The Grove and Cannon Lane Farmhouse [now the Whittington Hotel]. Five years later the terminus was moved to Pinner Green.

In 1880, Harrow Metropolitan Station was opened and just four years later Marsh Farm was demolished making room for the new station. On the 25^th May 1885, two days before Pinner Fair, the line was up and running. Steam trains ran every half hour to Baker Street.

The chairman of the Great Central Railway, which had joint running rights over the Metropolitan line, decided on North Harrow as the correct place to build a new station. The fields between London and Pinner had been extensively developed with three-hundred roads created.

The existing railways stations could no longer cope with the influx of passengers. The station opened on the 22^nd March 1915 just where a farm access road passed under the existing line. The Metropolitan Railway Line affected the character of north-west Middlesex and with it North Harrow. The peak year for new-builds was 1934. The houses were built for white-collar workers and highly paid manual workers. Average weekly wage was then £2.15s.0d.

North Harrow Station, opened in 1915, nestled in a hollow under the railway bridge spanning Station Road, was recognisable by the telephone boxes – at the entrance to the booking hall. The architectural style looked to the age of art deco rather than art nouveau – observed in the letterform, tile, and paintwork’s colour scheme.

It declared the age of the Metropolitan Railway Line… a line that ran between Bakers Street and Amersham, Aldersgate and Aylesbury. The train company’s brown livery decorated the carriages. All the Aylesbury line locomotives were steam driven, as were a number on the Metropolitan – the majority however were powered by electric motors. It was not until some years after the war that the line was completely electrified.

The carriages held ten people sitting – five on either side. In the rush hour, a further six stood… swaying, while adjusting their stance – attempting to keep their feet. Clasping hold of the luggage rack, each tried to read. Smokers, who were the majority, relied on the nearest person to open the window, to suffer the draughts, occasional drops of rain, and smoke… The interior sprung seats bounced the occupants to the tune of the joints in the rail, as the train swayed and lurched along the track… The seated, appreciating their luck, began to nod off…

It was only the first and last compartments that banned smoking, all the others smelt strongly of tobacco. On cold and wet days, the carriage windows soon streamed with condensation – areas cleared of mist, made by the person sitting next to the window, gave a clue to the whereabouts of the train on the line. The dripping raincoats, flapping umbrellas, and sneezing passengers heaved a concerted sigh as the train moves off… conversation again stilled as newspapers reopened…

At eye level, underneath the netted luggage racks, brass-framed prints advertised seaside resorts… A London underground map took up the centre frame, frequently hidden when the carriage was crowded, causing panic for passengers unfamiliar with the line – not knowing where they were.

Platforms and waiting rooms were made mainly of wood emblazoned with hearts and arrows carved by the younger passengers, who, on the walls, proclaiming their hearts desire… more pungent cartoonists, criticised the punctuality of trains – which they often, ‘died waiting for…!’

At night, looking out from our front bedroom windows, we could see the orange glow of opened fireboxes, as the firemen shovelled in another load of coal. The shunting tank engines, coupling-up their wagons in the sidings, gave cheery toots, as their flashy cousins – the express trains, thundered on their way warnings more urgent – a shriek, that gradually fell away, as they disappeared up the line. The nightly routine of coal delivery into the pens continued supervised by the controller as the nightlong process resumed.

As with all large towns several bus routes serviced the citizens, some ran to Harrow and Northwood others to Rayners Lane and Wealdstone. They were mostly single deckers and all had their conductors – who issued punched tickets. They ran at ten-minute intervals servicing a growing queue as the time-approached rush hour.

A bus ride was a community affair: getting on and off, lurching from hand bar to strap… up the bus; the favoured seat, ringing the bell, standing in packed togetherness, listening to each other’s conversations; wiping the condensation off the windows… It was not often that someone was turned away even if the bus was overloaded…

The conductor stood at the door taking the fares of all the unpaid passengers – those he was unable to reach when he forced his way up the aisle… piling up the spent ticket underfoot. He was an expert at dishing out loose change, having a pile of pennies in his hand ready, as he punched the green cards.

Horses and liveried carts made local deliveries. My mother took in a delivery of milk – in quart, pint, and half-pint bottles; quite often the milkman he would leave a crate for collection – the next time he called. The rag-and-bone man came round in his cart calling out ‘any-old-iron’ or ‘rag-a-bones’ in a sing-song voice and the knife-sharpener echoed with ‘scissors-to-grind’. The newspaper seller, on the corner of Pinner Road and Station Road, stood by his upturned orange box outside United Dairies, his newspapers folded under his arm, calling out, through rolled cigarette, ‘star, news or standard’.

Coal and coke was delivered in hundred weight sacks by the coalman wearing his leather hood and shoulder apron. At least four times a year a gypsy woman called to sell pegs and a posy of heather. Children played in the streets and called at each other’s houses. Roller-skaters held onto the backs of passing carts… The chalked stumps, still visible on the garage doors from the match the day before… stayed – all through the war.

Mother’s left their babies in coach built prams outside their front doors – to take in the morning sun, as Cumberland Road continued its daily life, uninterrupted and contemptuous of all distant international events. English society wasn’t altering its habits one jot to suit jumped up foreigners – declared the papers.

The jolliest annual attraction – attended by the majority of children, was Pinner Fair… the license granted by King Edward III in 1336. Their parents, needing little encouragement, attended in the evening. The fair took up the whole of High Street and Pinner Road being within arm’s length of the houses on either side of the road. Stalls and merry-go-rounds, helter-skelter, ghost house and candyfloss, roll-a-penny and toss a ring, all vied for attention… the stall owners shouting out in encouragement. The streamers, strung lights and colourful bunting all contributed to the colourful occasion whilst the steam organs piped-out the old pre-war tunes.

Pinner Fair was held on one day only – the first Wednesday-after-Whit… [Its Charter awarded by Edward I], was always well attended, even during the war years. There were never any disturbances needing the authority of a policeman although they were very evident. The nearest workhouse onetime stood behind the George public house in Pinner. Union Workhouses and Guardians of the Poor were abolished in 1929, their places taken by the Public Assistance Committee under the MCC – the workhouse became an institution and the infirmary a hospital. Pinner became a parish, which separated it from Harrow, in 1766.

CHAPTER 2

Greater Harrow was formed in 1934, uniting Wealdstone, Hendon, and Harrow under the title of Harrow Urban District Council. Harrow Borough received its Charter of Incorporation in 1954. In population and rateable value, Harrow became the largest urban district in England and Wales, secured its civic status, and granted a Charter. North Harrow, Pinner, Wealdstone, and Rayners Lane were all part of this mighty Borough along with other onetime hamlets. They all were within comfortable walking distance and each boasted a cinema.

The next five years prosperity blossomed – it was a period of expansion and full employment; it was a happy state that could be seen in the demeanour of its citizens. It was an ordered, well-kept environment with full employment. All was about to change…

The ‘pictures’ or ‘flicks’ – was the main form of public entertainment. The sound, delivered from a single, central source behind the square screen – had to wait until after the war to be improved – not a patch on Technicolor and stereophonic sound, of later times. The majority of cinema audiences participated at least once a week… watching films from Hollywood – a life very different – made the entertainment romantic and exciting. Every night queues formed outside the cinema behind price boards – the queues stretched right round the cinema. Patrons slowly shuffled in during, but mainly after, each three-hour performance; if there were no seats left then there was standing room only which you might have to suffer for the whole length of the film.

A thick, grey, smoky haze greeted the ticket holder as the usherette’s torch sent a beam of projected light into the black interior… penetrating the fog… lighting-up the rows of seats. The rustle of sweet papers and the rasp of matches punctuated the film’s performance. Courting couples filled the back row, with those standing, unable to have seats, leaning over the rail. The main event – ‘A’ film, was the public draw – enticed the audience in. A newsreel followed the advertisements and trailers… before the second featured, ‘B’ film. Larger cinemas, particularly on a Saturday evening, would put on a talent contest, band, or organ recital… with the audience singing along – following the words shown on the screen.

The nearest large cinema was the Granada, Harrow Town, which also accommodated the Herga cinema and the rather grand Coliseum theatre. It was an enormous treat to sit in its plush, red seats – particularly in the circle, and see the occasional West End Shows. The Langham in Bridge Street, Pinner was part of a small chain called the Modern Cinema Company opening in 1936. The Grosvenor at Rayners Lane became part of the Odeon chain opened the same year. Eventually, forty years later, Benjamin helped in this cinema, in the projection room, and became an authority on art films collecting his own of which he was very proud.

The area Police Station was at Pinner – two miles down the Pinner Road. You would always see a police officer on duty walking along the main street of all towns – at least twice a day, and again during the night… checking all the shop’s doors and windows, the alleyways and side roads. The patrolling sergeant, who would phone into the police station – using the blue call boxes found at most main-road junctions. If, as a child, or even adult, told to ‘abide by the law’ you did as instructed. Police officers were very much-respected citizens, perhaps, even feared… They saw to it that there was no cycling on the pavements and bikes had efficient brakes and a bell.

All parks, recreation grounds and sports areas monitored by their Keepers – who acted very much like police officers in their duties. The Yeading Walk Gardens or Streamside Walk, and Pinner Park, as all the other parks in the Borough, had carefully designed flowerbeds arranged in floral decoration – to give a fantastic riot of colour all summer season. Their beauty replicated those gardens at the seaside and London parks. The grass beautifully manicured and the edges trimmed. No cycling or roller-skating – no walking on the grass or running about. The garden’s facilities were built for recreational walking and it good maintenance, considered important to the town’s standing.

Bands played every weekend at the larger parks… fountains worked, paving regularly levelled and autumn leaves gathered… Cricket pitches, bowling greens and tennis courts all carefully manicured and maintained. Competitions organised by the local authorities, between each other – award certificates to the best Head Gardner… who – vied to outdo each other… The workers used their winning certificates to obtain better jobs. Councils produced their own seedlings, trees, and plants at the town’s nursery. Our local park was Streamside Walk – its paths wandered over stones bridges… alongside the river. Within easy walking distance of home, were Pinner Park, West Harrow Park, and Headstone Recreational Ground all giving us lads ample play areas?

Streets had their own sweepers, who swept into the gutters the dust and waste – made up into piles, to be loaded onto their carts and taken back to the Council depot. Dustmen called once a week in the corporation dustcart, which had curved sliding-lids to half a dozen compartments. Each house had their own dustbin… there being no limit to the amount collected or type… just size – which could be picked up later if it could not be thrown up onto the roof of the wagon. A great deal of waste was thrown onto the kitchen fire or onto the bonfire – along with the garden clippings. There was little or no packaging… most meat or dairy produce wrapped in greaseproof paper. Gas lampposts had small boxes attached to take cigarette boxes or sweet paper, there being no large receptacles. Sand boxes at main street corners, tops, and bottoms of hills and level crossing to give grip for horses and cars – in icy conditions.

My father looked forward, to providing a new house in a better environment for his wife and new son… They were living in rental accommodation in Sudbury Town. He read about a house being for rent in North Harrow, which might provide the answer to his quest… the Metropolitan Line connecting him to his work at Marylebone station’s goods yard, was an added bonus.

All the roads in North Harrow were named after counties and county towns, and had not long been finished by the builders. Number thirty-one was vacant – unoccupied since first built, and provided just the sort of living area and garden my parents were looking for. It was perfect. My father, paying the deposit, arranged to move in that autumn.

Later in life, I asked my father why he rented. His reply was, “I believe it allows flexibility of movement, and that over a period of time maintenance and depreciation makes ownership uneconomic.” I wonder now whether this was not just an excuse, to compensate for my parent’s age difference and that he could not face up to the realities of social progress and changing circumstances. He never gave voice to what was to happen when he retired – that ownership might provide security in old age. Perhaps my father did not want the responsibility after experiencing the useless slaughter in the First World War – his perspective shaped by the transience of war, or was it to give larger donations to the Masonic Lodge… We will never know, but in the event, it was a bad decision – revealed later in my tale.

Number thirty-one was built in 1933 with two reception rooms, three bedrooms – two of reasonable size the third a box-room, a kitchen, and an upstairs bathroom. The exterior walls pebble dashed and the bay roof and gable end hipped. The side entrance – behind a close-boarded wooden gate… led to the back garden. At the front of the house, facing the road, and acting as a boundary with the neighbours, the obligatory privet hedge – standing four feet high… The hedge almost smothered a low cinder-brick wall, built around wooden posts supporting a barbed, broad-linked chain…, which also served as a boundary marker to the house next door. The house built on a slight right-hand bend halfway down the road – the even numbers ranged opposite. Following the building line, and almost directly facing our house, four lock-up garages with glazed wooden doors one of which housed my father’s car – loaned to him for official duty for the duration of the war… the other three remained empty throughout.

My father’s car was an Austin 14 – a large square shaped saloon with leather seats, bulbous mudguards, and the battery and spare wheel bolted onto the running board. On most days, it had to have the engine turned over with the starting handle… with the choke fully out… This control of the butterfly valve always started to work its way back to the open position. To ensure the engine fired the driver had to pull out the choke, leap from seat to grill, turn the engine until it fired, bound back into the car, to catch the engine firing – before the choke retracted back to the open position. This daily exercise guaranteed the driver was fully awake before chancing his life on the road.

Our family Doctor had his surgery just past the small line of shops up on the left – past the crossroads. Doctor Mayer was a large framed, loose-limbed Irishman, who hardly ever moved from his swivel chair. His waiting room, to the left of the front door, was entered off the small hall… A small sign directed the patient to enter.

As soon as the door opened, a number of piercing eyes greeted you… some appeared over newspapers, others myopically through glasses… the women present, looked up from their knitting. They were not all hostile, but most certainly wary… you may be bringing in some dreadful disease… there was no means of knowing who was the last to enter before you? To know your place in the queue you had to recognise all either who were there when you entered, and then use elimination, or, if you were bold, you just asked… It was very rare for this to happen. It certainly created uncertainty, which contributed to its own degree of nervous anxiety, which overlaid your already weakened state of health…; it also partly explains the anxious piercing glances when you first arrived.

There was always a rather fat boy with glasses who sniffed repeatedly, judging each sniff to a nicety – to prevent total embarrassment! It was the only source of real entertainment, and either caused the onlooker to feel even more sick, or drove them out of the room… The ill-hung lace curtains, behind full-length blackout curtains, covered the bay windows – the glass, criss-crossed with brown paper tape to prevent splinters – if a bomb fell. Pealing posters and scuffed linoleum did nothing to entice the visitor to linger. The kitchen chairs, ranged round the sides of the bleak room, allowed the group of coughing and sneezing patients, to examine each other carefully over their magazines… each scrutinized carefully for signs of infectious disease or distressing habit. In the centre of the room, a green-blaze tablecloth covered the circular table, which held a pile of ancient magazines. These gave only limited distraction to the desperate company of men, wanting a chit to enable them to take time off work, women, who needed someone to take an interest in their nervous condition, and children, to obtain a school pass…

Posters declared the horrors of measles, mumps, and TB, and the government’s latest warning, showing an owl silhouetted against a yellow moon – declaring that, ‘talk costs lives’. The low wattage bulb, its illuminate quality, severely restricted by a fringed coolie-hat shade, attempted to offer some much-needed light – to the wartime patients, as they waited… to act on the summons of the piercing bell. This jerked everyone into a response: some to almost fall off their seats, others to stand, only to sit down again as someone else beat them to the door, a third who seemed to shake in desperation at the clammer.

The rattling striker of the distressed bell emitted a throttled b…ring. The assembled company came to life… their hearts pounding… The next patient, checking his position in the order of entry, lurched to his feet. Placing his magazine carefully on the table, attempted to leave the room unseen and unheard… his trailing scarf dragged on the floor. There was very little science on offer, precious little comfort, and no privacy. Every flat surface of his consulting room filled to overflowing with strewn papers, sample dishes, stethoscope, microscope, torch, ruler, and bottles of pills and pink coloured jollop. Doctor Meyer started to write out a prescription before you even taken your seat… “What can I do for you my son?”

On the other side of the road were the dentists. Mr Hudson was the very antithesis of Dr Mayer He was short, erect and slim, quick of action and slow to rile. He operated a belt driven drill with the dexterity of a diamond cutter. It’s rotating belt spun round as the coarse drill ground in. I had good reason to admire his expertise and technical qualities.

Our neighbours on the right were the Williams’, sons Frank and Victor, attended John Lyons School. On the left, Mr and Mrs Tripp’s’ kept a very low profile, being hardly ever seen. He a professional backer of greyhounds and she a dedicated homemaker. Both stood high on our list as good neighbours… the formers garden contained two delicious apple trees and the latter, a cherry, both raided during the summer holidays. They ignored our many boyish escapades.

I do not remember my father ever talking to either neighbour or passing the time of day with anyone in the street… He only recognised them, by raising his hat. We never had a friend of my father’s visit the house, except two maiden aunts and our grandmother, at Christmas time. His social life was at the Masonic Hall and with The Old Contemptible Association. My mother had three friends who called during the day. I never knew my parents have a party or socialise.

A bow-topped, slatted, wooden gate – painted drab green, greeted visitors to the house… It was the only means of entry to the house and garden… This reluctant guardian to the estate snapped either shut with the force of a rattrap – achieved by an over tightened coiled spring, or, more often than not, was propped open by a brick.

The opened gate allowed you to enter up the quarry-tiled front path flanked by black serrated edgings tiles. Flowerbeds on either side of the path were planted-up with rather poor roses on the right and Michaelmas daisies on the left, both needing some of mums acquired horse manure. The clay soil was light dun coloured forever-needing lots of humus to grow anything really well. London pride and grape hyacinths gave a cheerful display as an edging and under the sitting-room bay windows, a clump of white lilies lent over to get the sun… as the panelled front door, with noticeable bubbled paint, stood before you, under a canopy of sheet lead…

The glazed panel of the front door, the hall window, landing and small fanlights, to the sitting room, were of stained glass; set in lead… these dictated the architectural style of the period… Only the hall, stairs and landing had a dado rail plus a picture rail. All the woodwork including the doors, architraves, doorframes, skirting and stair surrounds were stained brown to resemble dark oak – as was the embossed lyncrusta wallpaper below the dado line. The decoration copied more expensive properties – using cheaper mediums to achieve the effect.

Standard house design after the war, did not include stained glass, leaded lights or roughcast walls. Lath and plaster gave way to plaster board; hung wooden floors became a concrete raft and chimneys defunct by sidewall vents for gas boilers. Plate racks, picture and dado rails, coved ceilings, stair spindles all outdated, plain mouldings replaced ogee for windows and door architraves. Where possible, concrete used instead of brick, tile or wood… it was the period of ‘utility’, and adoption of the kite mark! It took many years before substantial housing was built with anything like the same attention to detail and solidness of construction.

By convention, houses of the period were painted either green and cream or brown and cream. Ours the only exception relying on what my father could acquire from work…, which was usually battleship grey. Father had no intention of spending any money or time decorating someone elses property – it was one of the reasons why his principle of renting only came into play.

At the end of the hall, facing the front door hung a picture of the royal coat of arms flanked by two of my father’s dress swords. Decorating the wall next to the front door, on the right, were crossed imitation Roman swords, hung either side of a silvered mirror. On the wall opposite stood the hallstand completely covered in numerous coats, hats, scarves, umbrellas and walking sticks. Built into the centre of the hallstand a glove box, under a mirror. Coat hooks screwed into the dado rail next to the hallstand lined the wall upto the stairs… the hooks strained with the weight of umpteen coats, scarves and hats, shoes peeped out from beneath the coats. Under the stairs a larder and an overfilled hall-cupboard.

The larder had a marble slab and numerous shelves. A bread bin, cage for cold meats, cheese and butter dishes plus jug of milk all resided on the slab and on the floor a vegetable basket with separate containers. Either side on wall brackets were shelves filled with condiments and bottled sauces. The larder ventilated by small holed wire grill covering a small window – this too was patched over with cardboard in the winter. The under-stair cupboard contained the Eubank carpet sweeper, dustpan and brush, Goblin cylinder vacuum cleaner [that never worked] and a singer sewing machine [my mother’s pride and joy], many shopping baskets and sundry bags… I cannot remember ever seeing the back of the cupboard!

Health officials go on today about the necessity for cleanliness in the home and work place and caution against leaving food out of the refrigerator. We had no such warning strictures. The meat was eaten even though there was not a refrigerator or meat safe and if the milk went off then you drank it or went without. In hot weather, the milk was boiled and the larder’s marble slab was cold in all weathers. I never remember the larder being taken apart and cleaned thoroughly and I certainly do not remember anyone having an upset stomach. The cats kept the rats and mice away and no one complained about the lack of hygiene.

Father, not owning the house, felt it not incumbent upon him to maintain it. Therefore, a very infrequent redecoration was all that the rooms ever received – by that I mean the ceilings were white washed using a lime powder with the addition of a blue bag to give a whiter effect, and the walls distempered using the same powder with the addition of a coloured dye. The walls downstairs were papered but in those days the paper was not trimmed – one side would have to be cut with scissors – to overlap the previous sheet. We boys, halfway through the job, would start humming the tune, ‘When father pasted the parlour’…, this did not go down very well!

The result of almost zero maintenance over ten years – the property underwent a slow deterioration… The final nail in the coffin was the doodlebug, V1 bomb, which finished off the job… After that number, thirty-one had an extensive refit.

The furniture and furnishing remained the same; items of furniture positioned to cover up bad decoration, damp patches, and worn carpets. My mother made all the curtains, cushions and chair covers using her Singer sewing machine – kept in the cupboard under the stairs – opposite the now ‘best room’.

The ‘best room’ – lounge, or front room, was used as the formal dining room, for the few visitors that dropped in and for very special occasions. It was undoubtedly, the coldest, dampest, most uninviting room in the house. It held a large table, that by operating a winder – to turn the ratchet, the two outer leafs were pulled apart, a third leaf dropped in-between. Four dining chairs, two kitchen chairs, and two carvers could be accommodated around its sides. This complicated operation only occurred at Christmas time – needing every resource available to keep my father calm… as every other gadget in the house, it was temperamental.

A sideboard took up the entire wall immediately in front of the open door, two bookcases, with glazed side cupboards, stood either side of the chimneybreast – one cupboard holding half-filled decanters and the other my father’s service revolver… Placed on top, a framed box – containing my father’s medals, taken out and worn once every year at the cenotaph – Remembrance Day. Opposite the fire, the table… and taking up the only other wall the bay window, looking out into the street.

A green tiled fire surround and hearth, with mirrored over mantle held the central position. On its wooden mantelshelf chimed a French clock my father brought back from France. No fireplace was complete without a fender and coal boxes. A fireplace companion set of poker, brush and shovel in a polished brass holder decorated the hearth. Perched on a high round table was a rather unhealthy looking aspidistra in a round, green glazed pot. This offending plant scattered innumerable small black seeds everywhere and led a charmed life, to my knowledge never was watered. Two upholstered armchairs, with tassels on the arms, either side of the fireplace tried to lift the room – give it a feeling of comfort and warmth. They failed miserably.

Two heavy curtains on runners framed the bay windows, permanently covered by lace suspended on stretched wire. This lace curtain shut out much of the light and gave the room formality it also prevented scrutiny of what was going on in the room. Nobody ventured to disturb the net curtains – father considered any movement linked to nosiness – impolite. It was the general rule for all houses of that period to have lace covering the windows. A framed silver plated oval mirror on chains separated two Scottish river scenes, hung from the picture rail centred over the sideboard. Here, on top, was displayed the wooden nut bowl, biscuit barrel and cut glass fruit bowl. The tasselled patterned carpet square fitted into the surrounding border of linoleum, nailed down. A painted wood standard lamp stood next to the round table holding the fern which when lit cast a shadow of its tracery over the floor. The windows were hardly ever disturbed throughout the house for if they were could never be closed.

When we had our aunts to tea, a special effort was made to do everything perfectly. The cucumber, beetroot, mustard, and cress sandwiches were made of white bread with the crusts cut off. There would always be at least two cakes available displayed on stands with paper doilies peeping out from beneath. The tea: cups, pot, basin arranged with precision on the best tray… all graced the table on top of a pristine tablecloth with razor sharp creases.

The back room – originally built as the dining room, had French doors leading out onto the back yard and garden. It was always used as the sitting room, it offered privacy – which was lacking from the front, and what was convenient, on the warmest side of the house. A brass fender boxed in its maroon tiled, fire surround and hearth. This room only sat in at weekends when my father lit the fire. The over mantle held a large mirror and various knickknacks perched on the suspended shelves gave ornamentation. Pipe racks, spill containers, Swan Vesta matches and two porcelain figures of nubile dancers graced either end of the mantle shelf.

All the floors were close boarded and frequently patched. The poor underfloor ventilation created damp causing floorboards to rot, plywood lay over these areas preventing the family falling through to the void beneath. Newspapers placed under the carpet to serve as an added underlay tended to smell which all added to the slight musty odour. Although coal and coke was available, much of the time wood was burnt, which cause much crackling and spitting and the occasional shower of sparks, which fell onto the fireside rug.

To get a blazing fire a metal plate was placed before the fire, we called it the ‘roarer,’ its purpose was to draw in the air from below the fire basket. This metal plate sometimes became red hot and a rush made to take it outside into the garden to cool off. The chimney to the sitting room had to be swept every year. It was mums job to distribute the soot around the garden.

Heavy curtains on poles drawn tightly together to keep out any draughts covered the French-doors. Two upholstered armchairs and a settee, a pair of small cupboards either side of the fireplace and the upright piano, with a stack of music on top, and its accompanying stool, completed the furnishing. Light provided by a low wattage, centre electric light bulb with a coolie-hat fringed shade. A reproduction oil painting in a gilt frame of the battle of Waterloo provided the wall decoration. The over mantle held two porcelain dancers, a centrepiece French clock and a set of spills to lite father’s pipe.

On cold stormy nights, with the wind whistling round the house and blowing through the upturned branches of the poplar trees… in next-door’s garden… it was particularly comforting to be inside, in the warm. The rain beating on the windows invited the chairs to be ‘drawn-up close’ to form a semicircle round the fire. Once the rolled up piece of carpet was thrust tight up against the bottom of the door to stop the draughts, the radio set tuned for the light programme: Henry Hall’s Guest Night, Band Wagon with Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch, the BBC Doctor Charles Hill, Friday Night Is Music Night, Down Your Way with Franklin Engelmann, In Town Tonight, Old Time Dancing with Sydney Thompson; Valentine Dyall, as ‘The Man In Black’ and Edgar Lustgarten in murder intended. Lift -up-your-hearts, Life with the Lyons with Ben and Bebe Daniels. Forces Favourites from The British Force’s Broadcasting Network in Germany with announcers Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalf linking those at home to the forces aboard – then the entertainment would begin.

My Mother would take up her knitting, usually from wool unplucked from an old jumper, and the cat would jockey for position before the fire. It took a brave person to disturb the well-lit pipe, the warm slippered feet and the sense of peaceful tranquillity. My father’s pipe would emit a stream of sweet smelling Rosemary, he was deep in his book.

On most weekend evenings, my father played the piano – I, turned the music and sometimes sang – from The Daily Express Community Song Book, which he loved me to do. As I sorted out the music, I chose music, which looked hardest for my father to play – like the Hungarian Dances – where the pages of music were black with notes. My father never turned down any piece however difficult and the old piano would almost bounce across the floor.

The sound of the piano intensified by removing the front panel, so that the ‘action’ was exposed; this part of the piano held the hammers, which together with all the other wood and felt parts became damp in the winter. It must be explained that our piano was not ‘over strung’ but made of all wood with the strings strung on a metal frame. The candleholders on either side of the music stand – long since removed, what was unusual, the piano was made of a pale yellowy coloured wood.

The action was lifted out… straddling the brass fender – dried in front of the fire. Eventually the squeaks from the stiffened action were reduced – the action eased; the weekly recital started when the washing of the tea things had been dried and put away, the coal and logs had been fetched in and my father had smoked his first pipe-full of tobacco.

The kitchen was at the end of the hall – next to the larder and dining room – now our sitting room. It was about ten foot square and became the hub of family life… most meals eaten there – the ancient radio, with its fretted front, continually tuned to the light programme… When first turned on the radio emitted a series of high-pitched screeches and whines, which lasted for about two minutes until the set warmed up. Woe betides anyone who changed the station waveband because it was almost impossible to re-tune. The radio rested on a wide shelf held up by substantial metal brackets one of which held all my father’s rods and canes for checking us children. The rest of the shelf occupied by a row of graded saucepans and a large over-filled cupboard.

There was a constant need to ward off the problems of damp. The woodwork and kitchen walls painted in gloss – a drab mustard colour that did nothing to raise the spirits… their surface ran with condensation during the winter. Heating the house by coal fires and using gas to cook by contributed to the damp conditions. Doing the family’s washing by boiling in a bucket, hanging wet washing on the airer and boiling, most vegetables contributed to the damp atmosphere. The main reason why the family washed in the kitchen was simply that it was the only warm room available in the whole house.

Although there was a slate, damp-proof course in the brickwork there was no cavity wall. Under the downstairs floors, there was a void of about four feet, which collected rising damp to the extent that it was permanently wet – in some places covered by a few inches of water. In the hottest summers, this never completely dried out. The ventilation airbricks below floor level and in the upper walls were religiously blocked-up by my father – to prevent draughts. Though blocked, the wind blew through the gaps separating the skirting from the floor… all doors and windows provided with draught excluders – torn strips of paper. Even so, it was a constant battle to save heat and prevent draughts. In winter, the upstairs windows had ice on them all day… this could last for days.

Hot water from the tap was a luxury, certainly not appreciated by us children, made possible by over -stoking the kitchen fire until the boilerplate glowing red-hot with sparks flying up the chimney. Everyone would draw back from the kitchen range not because it was too hot but because the boiler might explode or the chimney catch fire – often the wood drying in the oven did. It was more normal to sit as close as possible, to the extent that red blotches appeared on those parts of the body closest to the fire. In winter, chestnuts would be cooked on the fire using an iron shovel. My father would split the chestnuts, and when cooked, passed them to whomsoever to cool – tossing from one hand to the other, and peal. Whilst all this was going on my mother darned, sewed or knitted.

My brother and I sat round the table that held a jigsaw puzzle meanwhile the fire prepared to later toast bread or crumpets. An alternative was baked potatoes cooked in the ashcan with a dob of butter. The plates would be passed round and the potatoes dug out with a fork – trying to save some of the butter from soaking in. The kettle put on for a cup of Horlicks, Ovaltine, or cocoa. It is difficult now to describe the enormously satisfying comfort and security obtained sitting round a smoking, crackling, and ember spitting fire on a cold winter’s night with the wind rattling the doors, the shadows of the flickering fire dancing on the walls; the badly tuned radio draws the listener ever closer to the tale being told. Dealing the cards for a game of whist, or standing up the dominoes whilst the potatoes in the ashcan cooked ready to be passed around, with a daub of margarine – which was gradually melting, on the plate.

The boiled water from the kettle provided the hot water in the washing up bowl. The overhead airer hoisted to the ceiling never empty of drying clothes and towels. This gave the kitchen a similar appearance experienced by prehistoric cave dwellers. If the walls had contained a recess for a bed, we would have slept in there too. The kitchen faced north, onto the garden, its door re-hung to open outwards to give more space. Any attempt to open the door was resisted by all; even the cat had to cross its legs!

Our meals at home were repetitive and the maximum use of every scrap: saving beef dripping, stewing the meat bones for stock and soups, mixing butter and margarine together. The butter bought from Home & Colonial Stores – displayed on the marble shelf behind the counter. The desired lump, cut off, salted, blended with a wooden cutter, and patted into shape with butter pats leaving a fancy set of marks, before placed into a greaseproof wrap. Coffee never drunk, being a middle-class beverage. We had ‘camp’ coffee essence from a jar, which tasted nothing like coffee. All main shops had an errand boy who delivered the order by bicycle with a basket on the front.

Very few families had a refrigerator, normally dairy produce and meats would only last a few days, depending on the weather, all larders had a cold slab made of marble. Puddings, desert, or ‘afters’ – some sort of apple dish with custard – used as a pudding at every meal even with the rice pudding or tapioca. However, my mother persevered in all things, which would save money, so puddings were inevitably apple pie and custard. Next door’s garden held a cooking cherry tree, the other neighbour – apple, both vigorously scrumped, as were overhanging branches from trees along the road.

Our weekday clothes were bought second hand, patched repeatedly and darned – to the extent that the foot of a sock was more darn than not. However, Sunday clothes had to be special – to give a good impression.

To all the country, the wireless was the chief form of entertainment in the home. To us children it was a liberating view of the wider world – something our parents never had, as well as an exciting form of whiling away moments between play. Derek McCulloch, better known as ‘Uncle Mac’, produced the BBC Children’s Hour; this programme ended in 1964. There were many much loved programmes especially Out With Romany, written by Bramwell Evans in about 1938, who pretended to go out for countryside rambles with his dog Raq and two children. These nature-loving walks talked about finding birds’ nests, walking beside a stream; climbing over stiles and discussed how the weather affected the flora. All the interviewers and introduces were referred to as Uncles and Aunts.

A great favourite was Toytown, read by Uncle Mac [Derek McCulloch] and C. E. Hughes, The Boy Detectives, Norman and Henry Bones, Castles and Their History and Young Artists, Wind in the Willows read by David Davis and Norman Shelley and many other wonderful stories. Later on, during the weekdays the family spent most of the time in the kitchen, as a special treat, most weekends, we gathered around the fire in the sitting room.

As routine, certain programmes looked forward to and formed special moments of togetherness and companionship. Programmes such as Monday Night At Eight with Gillie Potter, Grand Hotel, Henry Hall’s Guest Night, Dick Barton Special Agent with Duncan Carse, Itma and Tommy Handley, Happydrome, Worker’s Playtime, and Boxing Matches commentated by Eamon Andrews; news reader such as Bruce Belfrage, Alan Howard, Stuart Hibbard. Alvar Lidell, I remember, told us about a new tank battle in the Western Desert, which involved New Zealand troops. An enemy raid on Sidi Omar. “In Russia, the Germans still made progress towards Moscow and a small force of bombers attacked Brest and Cherbourg,” or the Brains Trust with Professor Joab who always began an answer with “it all depends on what you mean by”?

During the war, to achieve maximum working hours, the clocks put forward two hours – called ‘double summer time’. Later, in the autumn, the clocks were only put back one hour to give ‘summertime’ hours – sunrise being about 9am in December. This arrangement continued for many years, even after the war, to allow maximum daylight working hours.

After the war, Saturday teatime about five o-clock, the full-time football results would be broadcast after the news. The sing-song voice of the announcer, annunciating the score in such a way that the listener could guess the final result, would relay the information for the populace as a whole to take down the results – that they could find out if they had won the football pools prize and mark up their coupon. My mother would generally do the marking up by giving one point for a home win two for an away result and three for a draw – counting the completed coupon for each line’s result. How excited we all were as the scores mounted.

Quite often, my father would go to MacFisheries fish shop to buy a pint of winkles – a small edible sea snail for our tea. My mother would butter some bread and he would bend some pins – to winkle out the snail. They were lovely and we considered them a treat.

At weekends, my father’s main job was to put-by sufficient chopped wood for the fire. Large planks and balks of wood sawn into logs, using the family saw. This my father sharpened by knocking out every alternate tooth of the saw and turning the saw over repeated the process the other side. If extra care taken, he would file the teeth as well. Oil rubbed onto the saw to ease its passage through the wood and for the last inch; the log smashed to the ground to break it off. He would then chop the wood into pieces for both lighting the fire and into logs. If the axe or chopper proved difficult to cleave the log then a hammer helped it.

The backdoor, with fan light above, lead out to the back yard and garden. It was built into the centre of the rear kitchen-wall, next to a small window – dutifully clothed in its regulation net curtain, under which resided an ancient gas stove with polished brass taps. On the other side, the butlers sink – with traditional wooden drainer, above, which, a range of shelves containing toothbrushes and powder [just imagine the whole family using the same tin of tooth powder]. A whole range of, never to be disturbed, cleaning fluids and mugs… their own layer of clinging dust and debris added to over the years. Underneath, hung on cup hooks, the flannel and dishcloth, scourer and bottlebrush… ever in the way, swaying and dripping, occasionally dropping into your bowl…

Opposite the back, door – in the corner – the door to the hall, the rest – a Welsh dresser and narrow fitted broom-cupboard. The top section of the dresser – enclosed behind glazed doors – covered by a patterned film, the tea and dinner service. Under the shelves – screwed cup hooks, holding an assortment of cups, jugs and pots. Two shelves contained all the family’s pills and potions – Beecham’s pills, Carter’s Little Liver pills, aspirin, Friars Balsam, calamine lotion, corn plasters, Band Aids, smelling salts, camphorated oil, cough mixtures, Vaseline, boracic powder, iodine, bandages, and slings: syrup of figs for tummy upsets castor oil, Senna pods and camphorated oil, Epsom salts, various syringes and assorted safety pins. The bottom of the dresser housed all our toys. On the side of the dresser, next to the door, a pipe rack – holding at least six pipes… a letter rack, filled to the gills, took up the rest of the space beneath…

On the farther side, opposite the door, the broom cupboard – giving space to the mop, broom, dustpan and brush, dusters, candles, oil lamps, kindling for the fire, shoe-cleaning gear, cod liver oil & malt – and all the family’s – every-days, shoes. During the war, my father’s rifle

[key men were issued with a rife to shoot paratroopers and guard prisoners]

stood in the corner – next to his chair, whilst he polished his uniform. The gas pipes, competing with the rifle – ran up the wall to the meter – perched on top – next to the torch and radio’s earthing wire.

The radio relayed the fateful message that September. I can remember distinctly the concentrated silence – the whole house was stilled, as we all listened to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, tell the Nation – that Sunday, September 3^rd. 1939, they were at war with Germany.

I was four so it must have been an event etched into my very being. The following May Churchill assumed office; the end of the month… saw the retreat from Dunkirk. My life remained unaltered… I saw and felt no change whatever; it was not until that September that the air raids, the searchlights, the anti-aircraft guns, began to focus attention on what was happening. It was really the London blitz – after Hitler switched his forces from levelling Britain’s airfields and Radar chain that the war made its first impact on our life… then we could see and feel the difference. It took the victory at El Alamein and Stalingrad to mark a turning point… lead to ultimate victory. Still, that event was in the future, during which time I attended Infant School and marked the map printed in the newspapers as our troops advanced… dropped back… before advancing again…

Every householder had to fill in a census form on 29^th September 1939, detailing who lived in his or her house. This information enabled the government to issue identity cards, a National Registration Number, and a ration book to each person. The whole nation was informed by news announcment, newspapers and notices displayed in local shops, how the system operated – how to register at local shops [the shopkeeper cut out and kept the counterfoils], how to fill in the Ration Book – name, address on each page and counterfoil [the counterfoil needed the date, the shop’s name and address – elected as ‘shop of choice’ for a period of six months]. My mother had to queue as soon as the shop opened – often a scrabble to make for the counter bearing what was currently in short supply.

At home, what would have reminded the visitor that there was a war on, the rifle, propped up in the corner? My father was now in uniform, and his frequent trips away were a trial to my mother. The installation of the telephone all marked a change in routine. However, I was not unduly affected… home life continued governed by my mother’s preferences and capabilities – based upon her past rural habits and upbringing.

CHAPTER 3

School dominated my life indelibly linked to my great friend David Henry Villers (Nicknamed China). Life continued. The kitchen remained the focus, dominated by the dresser, the toy cupboard, and always… the fire…! Nowhere on earth was there a more heart-warming place that would provide inner comfort, to recoup one’s strength and equilibrium.

Between the broom cupboard and the sink’s drainer was the black kitchen range – built into the wall… All the cast iron and lead pipe-work ran along the kitchen wall from the kitchen range to the sink, to the bathroom, hot water tank in the airing cupboard and to the cold-water tank, housed in the loft… This, patented, multipurpose, iron monstrosity – contained the back boiler and bread oven. The bread oven, never used for that purpose but to dry kindling – to light the fire in the morning. We lived in perpetual fear that the whole lot would catch fire, which it frequently did.

Above the kitchen range was a mantle shelf – always crammed with: a biscuit tin, fire lighting spills, clock, candleholder, small box with drawers, letters, bills, post cards, and always the day’s pipe, pouch – and my mother’s cigarettes. Strung under this mantle-shelf a washing line – hung the current tea towel. Above the shelf, a mirror – hanging from a string – with post cards decorating the sides.

In front of the range – surrounding the hearth – enclosing the wooden, copper sheathed, fender and upholstered coal boxes – the brass railed fire-guard… also served as a clothes horse. When young we boys bathed in front of the fire in a tin bath – that hung outside the back door. The towels stretched out warming on the guard ready to dry us when we stepped out onto the hearthrug.

Mondays were always washing day; the clothes placed in a large, galvanised iron, washing tub over the gas burner; a convex bottom plate kept the washing off the bottom – from burning. The washing boiled with frequent turning and pummelling with a large wooden spoon. Soapsuds came from, soda crystals and shavings taken from a Fairy soap block. The washed clothes then taken out of the boiler and ferried dripping to the sink to be rinsed. A Rickitt’s Blue Bag used in the rinsing water for all the whites, whilst collars and cuffs, treated with Robin’s starch. Once rinsed, the clothes taken out to the back yard to be mangled, then hung to dry.

The mangle, like all the mechanical apparatus in the house, was never new to the family and had seen better days. To extract the maximum water from the clothes the tensioned roller springs were over-tightened by screwing down the tap-like screws at the top of the mangle – to then turn the rollers, using the crank-handle, needed the strength of ten men. The machine would creak and groan, to spew out its charge flat as a board, sometimes with all the buttons split. The wrung out clothes shaken out and hung on crossed washing lines that divided the backyard. If it rained, the wet clothes hung on the airer in the kitchen or placed on the clotheshorse in front of the fire.

Ironing day a Tuesday, using flat irons heated on the gas stove. I can remember my mother spitting on the iron to see if it was hot enough. The ironing done on a blanket laid on the kitchen table. My father’s shirts with their detachable collars and cuffs pressed and polished using an iron. His trousers were pressed using an old tea towel to stop polishing the nap of the cloth – using soap from a thin bar run down the inside creases – then the whole ironed on the outside to give them extra sharpness. He always wore pinstriped trousers, black jacket and waistcoat, watch chain, black greatcoat and highly polished shoes topped off with a bowler hat; always carried a pair of leather gloves, brief case, and furled umbrella during the day, at night a silver-topped walking stick.

Mother cleaned and tidied the house but not to the extent that she could be accused of being house-proud. Life proceeded in an orderly manner with the rules laid down by my father. Meals expected at a set times… the weekly routine never altered… made for continuity – a reliable settled existence maintained. There was little formality except when an aunt came to tea and the front room used. The few visitors who did visit came to see my mother, which was during the day and only then for a cup of tea in the kitchen.

I do not remember my parents doing much dusting or carpet cleaning. The Goblin vacuum cleaner did not work and there were no feather dusters. Damp tealeaves scattered over the carpet then sweptusing a dustpan and brush or the Eubank cleaner fetched from the cupboard under the stairs. The damp leaves attracted the dirt and the collection achieved without causing more dust.

This old Victorian habit took the place of sawdust. If there was any hard and dirty work like cleaning the gas stove, heavy gardening, hedge clipping, beating the rugs, blacking the stove, fetching the coal, cutting the wood, cleaning the shoes, decorating and cleaning all the brass work, my father did it. My mother’s main tasks were making the beds, seeing to the washing, ironing, and most importantly, planning the meals, doing the shopping, cooking and serving. Windows attended to by the window cleaner the only outside labour my parents engaged.

There were never any arguments or discussions about what work that had to be done. My mother was not into DIY nor anything mechanical or electrical. A spring clean was an annual event and taken as an opportunity was taken to apply white wash and distemper to the walls and ceilings.

Nothing was ever wasted; worn clothes altered, patched or darned. Faded clothes were dyed, frayed collars turned, worn sheet top and tailed, towels became flannels, and flannels became dishcloths and dishcloths consigned to the shed. Orange boxes became bedside cupboards, bricks used to take up room in the fire to save coal. Buttons saved lace hoarded, wood stored.

Our basic kitchen furniture consisted of an old, dark, polished wood, dressing table which had a hinged flap screwed onto one side – always covered in an off white oil cloth, which had two drawers to the front holding all the cutlery and kitchen utensils. Under the table was a box on roller bearings – pulled out for extra seating at meal times, a wooden carver, and a folding, wooden-slatted chair. This made up the seating arrangements, augmented by a deck chair – naturally claimed by my father. The floor covered in painted linoleum with a carpet square on top reinforced by yet another rug just before the fender linking the upholstered box ends holding the kindling – for lighting the morning’s fire.

For some strange reason our taps would drip incessantly. Part of father’s regular duties was to change the washers. The tap’s washer, held in the spigot, tightened into its base by the tap. The tap assembly held into the body by a nut, the size of which our toolbox could not provide a spanner. An adjustable spanner was the universal tool used in almost all cases where a spanner was required. Unfortunately, the adjustable screwing mechanism was deficient of its stub screw. This unfortunately was missing so you had to hold the adjusting screw in with your first finger and thumb whilst turning the wrench.

I well remember the ‘U’ bend in the kitchen sink blocking and my father doing his usual ‘fixing’ which involved minimum preparation by him and maximum nervous energy by the rest of the family to keep out of his way pretending that all was normal. I was fascinated by the more than excessive grunting and banging so enquired how he was getting on. He explained the intricacies he was experiencing – trying to make a repair using the much used tool kit on a more than stubborn nut.

I do not know what came over me but I remarked how I thought he was being a bit of a twat. He exploded, leaping to his feet whilst bashing his head on the bottom of the sink. I retreated at speed he meanwhile shouting out that I ought to know what I was saying – that I should look up the word in a dictionary. Later I did just that finding out that I had called him a female genital. I felt such a fool and have never used that term again.

All this was typical and part of ‘life at home’ for anyone using our tools had to be adaptable, versatile and quick thinking whilst maintaining a cool exterior and a positive outlook. Just look at any of the nuts in our house and you will see they all have rounded sides – made by slipping spanners and wrenches. I have known my father resort to tapping a screw round with a screwdriver and a hammer, which made the already rounded nut lethal for unsuspecting users.

The tiles, which surrounded the kitchen sink, did not help because they were only a millimetre away from the tap – there was not a great deal of space to do any repairs. Having the flannel and dishcloth hanging up under the overhead cupboard was also very handy for they provided extra grip. Such things were not considered important enough to move – were after all handy to stem any blood flow caused by the slipping pipe wrench.

Job preparation by my father was always a little sketchy because he always approached any task with a positive approach. To repair a leaking tap he sought out just one spanner. This meant that he was always going backwards and forwards to the shed gradually to work-through our set of prehistoric tools. Gradually the kitchen drainer would represent an artisan’s workbench. Holes would appear in the surface and bits sawn off the sides – made it look as if termites had been at work. These incidences made up much of my home life, later on used to bring laughter to family gatherings, and remembered with relish.

From the hall, the stairs led upto a landing with four doors leading off to three bedrooms and bathroom. The entry to the loft was by trapdoor in the landing ceiling. The lagging to the mains water pipe leading to the cold storage tank sketchy at the best of times. Every year the annual freeze-up necessitated the pipes and inlet valve, to the storage tank, thawed out. A small paraffin heater put into the loft at night to stop the pipes from freezing-up did not always provide sufficient heat

My brother and I thought this exciting; to my father it was a calamity. He had to fetch the ladder in from outside to reach the trap door on the landing then to fumble his way around the loft so that he could see where this day’s blockage had occurred. It was usually the inlet valve and short section of pipe, which lead from it. Hot water bottles passed up through the hatch, candles and paraffin lamps lit to thaw out the pipes. With any luck, there would be a hissing noise and the water would start to flow back into the cold-water tank.

The bathroom, at the head of the stairs, was to the left. This contained the airing cupboard, the bottom half reserved for the galvanised hot water tank. The top-half’s shelf held the bed linen lower-down yesterday’s ironing. The hot water, heated by a very small back-boiler, at the back of the kitchen range being highly inneficient – most of its heat needed in the kitchen, not for heating the water. The hot water system at onetime did operated fairly efficiently if coal was used. During the war, a governmental limit of ‘four inches of water’ for bathing was ordered necessitating strip washes for most days.

My father shaved and washed in the kitchen very early in the morning before we children, surfaced. My mother did her ablutions later, during the day – in peace and quiet. Normally, hot water provided by a kettle carried upstairs – for those who were shy.

Each of the bedrooms, except for the box room, had small cast iron fire grates and surrounds. These were lit on very special occasions – an illness or the birth of my youngest brother. Before the hearth, a fender… gave boundary – to a small hearthrug. Both rooms had carpet squares with an outer border of linoleum.

All the rooms in the house had the walls papered. This claim to middle class convention continued for many years. The wallpaper, purchased from the hardware shop, needed the lap removed to match-up the pattern… achieved with a pair of scissors. Eventually the manufacturer cut this off. Over the years, my father tired of papering and decorated the walls by distempering over the paper… the simple solution. The windows curtained… with the addition of nets, by convention, always drawn.

My brother and I, were shepherded off to bed promptly at nine, armed with a sock-wrapped hot water bottle, and tucked up in bed with two goodnight prayers:

‘There are four corners to my bed,

There are four angels at its head,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

Bless the bed that I lay on’.

Alternatively,

‘God bless mummy,

God bless daddy,

Make me a good boy, Amen’.

Whichever, the calming influence of the familiar words soon had us off-to-sleep. Outside: the owls hooted and cats screamed, as the ghostly trains hurried by on the way to Aylesbury trailing smoke and steam their whistles fading away in the night sky…

Beyond the back door lay the concreted backyard – which ran: to the width of the house, side passage, and to about fourteen feet – out into the garden. Today backyard might be elevated to the more modern term of ‘patio…!’ To the right hand side, facing the rear of the house, were two coal sheds, one for coke and the other coal, which also held the logs for the fire and kindling. My father, at regular intervals, had delivered from his rail yard a lot of used wood. Over time, this was cut-up and chopped for firewood.

The garden shed, with laid brick floor, nestled next to the coal sheds – in the corner of the yard. Inside a workbench and a number of shelves lined the walls. To us boys the shed was a source of continual mystery and experiment – gave us lots of enjoyment and excitement. It was packed with a variety of useless tools and half-used materials, piled on top of each other – each vying with each other for space. The roof beams held a myriad collection of nails, hooks, and screws, each supporting another collection of articles of fascination and awe.

We children looked upon the garden shed as an Aladdin’s Cave. It’s very deepest corners held untold secrets. Access denied to us initially by a padlock – in time, picked so often that eventually left unlocked. An old German helmet, a first world war trench periscope, numerous boxes of assorted nuts and bolts – all rusting into a solid lump, tools which might have graced a workman’s bag of the mid eighteen hundreds, many sizes of sawn wood, sheets of tin, deck chairs with broken bottom struts and torn covers which challenged the boldest user. Folding slatted chairs and a table of indefinite vintage. It was all inviting and we children used all its resources to construct gang huts, tree houses, soapbox carts, stilts, and cricket bats. The assorted tools had the look of Iron Age implements. Saws lacked teeth, hammers had rounded heads, which turned over every nail hit, spanners that were adjustable but were never designed with that in the manufacturer’s original specification, wrenches, jemmies, gauges, and rulers – long since losing their working life. The vice would have done justice to a blacksmith’s forge. It could have held the most stubborn of rusted nuts except that the turning screw on the shank had such enormous play it was impossible to make any sort of final adjustment.

From the pole, nailed to the near corner of the shed, ran the radio aerial… strung between two porcelain separators. The wire passed through the kitchen window frame… along the shelf… into the ancient wireless set, there, held in its aerial socket by a matchstick. We were all very concerned when there was an electrical storm – that this arrangement would attract a lightning bolt, when we expected the house to go up in flames or at least the radio to give its final shriek…!

I do remember my father resurfacing the back yard. Like anything else father did, the task was to be completed with minimum effort at maximum speed. To achieve that, the procedure had to follow a set plan. Unfortunately, the plan did not include the right dress, proper preparation, correct tools, or the best materials in the correct proportions. My father would approach the job in his normal rig-of-the-day, giving the job its proper recognition of difficulty and respect by rolling up his sleeves.

As with all the family’s tools this screwdriver had the extra task of doubling up – to become multi-purpose. Large screwdrivers, filed down to take small screws, the coal shovel act as a trowel, wood rasps to smooth metal, metal files to smooth wood. Speed was essential for all tasks, minimum effort – an equally important work goal; technical difficulties overcome by muscle power and any onlookers bamboozled by an enormous flurry of arms and legs. Fine-tuning and attention to detail given due respect by a fine selection of hammers: that had rounded heads, heads that flew off – handles that was not at right angles or split. All these would have proved to be a mountain to be climb but the job was still possible, if….

A load of sand delivered and a quantity of cement obtained. The cement, long past its sale-by-date with bag split, was comprised of large lumps. These rocks had to be broken up, crushed, and sieved – to produce some semblance of the original powder. In crushing, the pile reduced in size, it now looked as if it might be in short? The sand too, had its own variety of foreign particles – came from a number of sources – indeed, multi grained. A tin bath, employed to hold the cement mixture, had a quantity of sand and cement added. The duel-purpose coal-shovel stirred – mixed a slightly aqueous gritty substance ready for spreading.

The yard contained the mangle, a large box – very much like a cold frame, which held firewood, the rabbit hutch, and sundry other, bits, and pieces. This extraneous matter treated as part of the permanent structure – by its longevity.

It is said in the army that, ‘if something moves you salute it and that if it does not you paint it’, this general rule applied at home. There are other secondary rules: ‘what is moved might have to be put back’, ‘out of sight is out of mind’, and if you have a surplus you might have to get rid of it. It has always stood countless soldiers in good stead to apply these basic rules. There are however, another two, which did not apply in this instance, although we children used them on countless occasions. Do not be caught, not carrying something, and, if moving abroad in daylight hours, do so urgently. My father was an old soldier…!

The mixture was now ready for spreading. It soon became apparent that using the right proportions of 6:1 the cement would soon run out – savings would have to be put in place. Father decided that 8: 1 would have to do – after all, there would not be a lot of wear on the surface. Even this lean mixture found to eat away at the now ‘valuable’ cement pile… Subsequent mixings saw a very sandy mixture getting worse… The planned concreting was now adapted – modified…

It was soon discovered the shovel was not up to the job in hand. The wooden handle dropped off – meant holding the metal sleeve. Some of the cement stuck to the surface of the shovel, which steadily grew – increasing its weight, [This never came off and dried solid]. That did not slow down the job only made my father speed up. Soon, a simpler spreading technique had to be adopted, for time was ‘getting on…’

Now my father’s patience was wearing thin – impatient to see the job over! The yard broom, like all brooms in our house, required tapping down – to ensure the head was securely attached to the handle – which it never was. Just as all tools that have a handle there is a ‘right’ size for the hole… For some unknown reason our handles were always smaller.

It was not odd to see a screw hammered in to secure the handle instead of a nail. This was viewed, like many others, as a temporary fixing, awaiting a more permanent job, later… This was never successful. It could have many nails, of mixed parentage, sticking into the head like a porcupine… some oval others round, with or without heads… Numbers did not always guarantee a firm result.

By watering down the mixture a coat of light grey, sandy cement, could brushed on. At last…! Here was a technique that would solve all the problems – time left to do the job, degree of muscle power available, after much effort, tamping to achieve level and smoothness, and sort out the now obvious lack of materials.

Soon the job completed… tools put away – with their own coating of cement, especially the shovel. The broom, now the multipurpose leveller and spreader, was the last tool to be used – walking backwards brushing as one went… could not be dunked in the water barrel to clean it off so retained, ever afterwards, a healthy amount of grit.

It did not take long for the rain to cause its own effects upon the drying mixture. Small rivulets of grey cement channelled its way down the garden steps on to the lawn making the end result something like the Ganges delta. Ever afterwards, the yard grated under ones feet and a thick dust-cloud blew round the side entrance. It was never the same again – I do not ever remember the yard ever being free of grit swirling around – in any sort of wind!

The garden which led off the back yard was to be found below a series of brick steps cut into the bank leading to the lawn. Privet hedges separated the steps from the flowerbeds, on either side, which were planted with Marigolds, Michaelmas daisies, Roses and Sweet William and at the bottom just before the lawn, mum’s favourite, London pride.

A random curved stone path ran to the ditch at the bottom of the sixty-foot garden. This ditch was a drain – a tributary of the river Pinn, enclosed in a four feet diameter concrete pipe. Flowerbeds ran down each side of the garden from top to bottom. At the bottom of the garden was an oval bed and the side farthest away from the house was four small trees. This oval flowerbed was, during the first part of the Second World War, our air raid shelter. Unfortunately, it was always filled with rainwater and never used…the’oppin’ trench was a risky playground not a saviour of skins!

Many games involved landscaping earth, mud, and stones to form: The American West – provide our lead cowboys and Indians with an ‘out west’ backdrop, or, Indian Plains – an enactment of the part played by soldiers in khaki – of the Empire… There! That is it then… the answer to the question my first memory games with lead soldiers taken out of their boxes, kept in the kitchen dresser, and ‘set up’ – for a battle – whether inside the house or outside in the garden.

Our never-never land was at the bottom of the garden, well away from the house. When something required tools… it was to the shed and dad’s workbox, we went… First though, to get past the lock…! We became very adept lock pickers. Fortunately, they were very simple locks.

The garden steps, flanked by two rather moth-eaten, variegated leafed, privet-hedges lead down to the lower garden and lawn. These six steps were our second choice play area – ‘gladiatorial’ arena. Their brick construction – their goings one brick high and treads two stretcher bricks deep, were about a yard wide… These provided a number of wheeled contraptions with a suitable descent …

The steps represented for us what the ‘Cresta’ run does for downhill skiers, although the sides were considerable rougher than tape or netting, being a rather spiky privet hedge. To ease the decent, boards propped up to take away the bumps to make a smoother ride…

Initially, when it had all its wheels, our first carriage was a horse on wheels. This was later substituted by a rather soberly tricycle – unfortunately it’s large single front wheel difficult to keep in a straight line, caused many mishaps… a pedal car came third, but suffered from having a rather low chassis which tended ‘to ground’. Finally, a home built soapbox-on-pram-wheeled, go-cart; boasting many modifications – add-ons and adaptations, all designed to surpass all others… it was to be the fastest thing on wheels.

Extra propulsion – provided by a gentle guiding hand, gave an initial start… this soon became a more vigorous push which considerably increased momentum. After, a go each – excitement being then at its peak, the push turned into an enormous heave taken at a spirited run. This, upping of the danger levels – from running shove to gigantic heave always ended in catastrophe… me crying. My brother with hands on hips adopting a superior stance demanding what I was crying for… my mother rushed out of the kitchen door demanding, ‘what was wrong?’ These are some of my first impressions of play – when I was four.

Friday the 1st of September, 1939, was a momentous day. Germany invaded Poland, completely subjugating the nation in four weeks; in a similar number of days, the defeat of Holland followed. Chamberlain’s declaration was the following Sunday. Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg invaded and overrun… shortly afterwards, and the great retreat began… ending with evacuation from Dunkirk on June 4^th. My brother started school the next day, which was a far more monumental event… for me.

Prior to the war being declared the Government considered whether air-raid shelters should be built – not for individuals but for high-ranking government employees or particular scientists, living in range of enemy bombers. It was decreed that particular individuals could apply for special dispensation. Local Councils would deliver free shelters to individuals in need, mostly families, but only in specific danger zones.

There were two types of air-raid shelter for families: the Anderson shelter, named after the then Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, which was a corrugated iron structure with a domed roof for outside – could be either partially sunk in the garden or completely buried – catered for a maximum of six. They were extremely damp – suffered from condensation and needed to be properly installed – with sump and pump, or proper drainage channel, routed to a soak away. A special bomb blast wall was needed to protect the entrance.

The second was a three-foot high steel-topped table with steel-mesh sides – for use inside the house; this was a Morrison shelter, devised by Herbert Morrison. It was not long before both types were unused – being too inconvenient. People preferring to hide under the stairs, in basements or under the kitchen table, particularly the latter – it was warmer and less damp.

Street shelters – to provide for the population of a small road, a windowless oblong brick built structure, with a flat, nine-inch reinforced concrete roof was built at convenient places throughout North Harrow. Our nearest was stationed near the crossroads – at the end of the road. Its main fault, when there was a near miss, the bomb-blast would collapse the walls and the very heavy roof crushed those inside. They were extremely cold, airless, damp, and smelly; had neither light nor heat and did not boast a door or window. I do not remember anyone using one with a positive outcome… in retrospect; they were a waste of money and effort.

Those shelters, which did save thousands of lives, were those that had been purpose built – deep – mainly underground railways. During the Battle of Britain – the most critical period, people bought platform tickets and waited underground until the all clear sounded. Later, the government realised the benefit and allowed people to enter the platforms after dusk, free of charge – planned a proper organised arrangement for Londoners using the underground railway system.

At the outbreak of the war father dug a trench at the bottom of the garden. A shallow trench with sandbagged walls. He scoffed at the more conventional design as being ‘death traps’ declaring that a slit trench was far more serviceable. From a military standpoint, this was undoubtedly true – allowing easy access and escape.

However, for a purely practical family shelter suitable for all weathers a more conventional structure with a roof would have been better. Still, as our shelter was never put to the test, and I do not remember any of my friends needing to use theirs either, perhaps my dad was right. Even during the most frightful of raids our family never so much as retired to the cupboard under the stairs.

What garden furniture did grace the lawn was skimpy – consisted of a seat on a canopied swing and a handmade garden bench painted green. At the right hand corner of the garden, a tall copper beech tree – our tree house – accessed by a rope ladder. A swing – single or double rope, tied on a lower branch The tree was also ‘in extremis’ an escape route – to a part of the tree as far away as possible from my father’s reach… who waited with diminishing patience – at the bottom, with a cane.

Next door, the Tripps had an enormous Lombardy poplar tree, which dominated the area – taking all the goodness out of the surrounding gardens. During, and just after the war, we kept chickens, as a number of other families did, and occasionally, a rabbit too! Our family was never without a tabby cat. It often monopolized mums lap… playing with the knitting wool… whose kittens – arrived in frequent litters…

Separating all the neighbouring gardens was an open wood fence tightly enclosed behind obligatory privet hedges. At the bottom of the garden, a close-boarded fence indicated the boundary – divided us from the houses in Canterbury Road. At its foot, ran a ditch and stream – a tributary of the river Pinn. This stream had been contained in a four-foot diameter concrete pipe and serve as a storm drain. Fortunately, the boundary hedge totally screened us from our neighbours at the bottom by tall hedges and trees… probably the original hedges dividing the farmer’s field.

Dig for Victory, Wartime Allotments, The Kitchen Front, The Kitchen Waste collection and Pig Club were all government initiatives – instigated to provide incentives to spur people on – to help themselves and others. The object was to become independent and self-sustaining. It was declared unpatriotic by a government official, to feed birds or throw anything away which could be recycled.

The lawn, laid on either side of the garden path – from the bottom of the steps to the oval flower bed at the other end of the garden, was undulating because at the start of the war garden owners were encouraged to dig up their lawns and turn them into allotments – which my parents did. As far as that went all was well. When it came to planting the seeds, pricking out, spacing, nurturing, and ‘bringing-on’… the whole plan faltered… finally collapse. Like most other plans, it came to naught… grass replanted itself in the levelled off patch. The indentations were never totally made good – the lawn assumed the feature of an ancient burial site.

The already much used lawn mower – an apology for a gardening aid, never had its blades sharpened or set and would have graced any respectable antique shop. The adjusting nuts, their corners rounded by frequent attention, did the job without their necessary locking nuts. The uninitiated who attempted fine-tuning ended up having bruised and bloodied knuckles. The selection of spanners, of doubtful manufacture acquired over the previous industrial age, was impressive – in size and assortment… but rarely delivered up the correct size. The keen do-it-yourselfers’ had to resort to many devices to get round the problem… Many times my father would dance round cursing and shaking his fist hurling many and varied abuses at the mower.

The mower’s driving roller operated the cutters by an adjustable chain, which had so much play in it that it often fell off. This fault, however, was secondary to the lack of sharp blades properly set. The handlebars covered by rubber grips – over time worn and torn. Rubbed raw blisters on your hands. Quite often I would stand on the roller’s scraper-plate, to give the roller extra gripping power – stop it slipping – increase the mowers weight, so that the many bumps in the lawn were further flattened. This slipping, of the smooth back rollers, also added to the grass becoming squashed, scuffed, and made many flattened mud patches. None of this was helped by the handles of the mower being adjusted too low – the pusher always started with a slight stoop which would progress to become like a potato picker – doubled up.

The reader has to picture all this going on with my father who never removed his jacket, always insisted on wearing a waistcoat and continued to wear long johns even during the hottest of summers. He wanted to show the neighbours that everything was going according to plan – that the mowing was effortless – accomplished with panache and skill, even when the chain had jammed and the stationary rollers skidded on the muddy surface. My father used oil and grease on the mower as tools rather than lubricants… a trail of black slime followed the mower wherever it went. Today, the mower would be an heirloom and much sought after – fetch a tidy sum at the Antique Road Show. The slack driving chain contributed to the already worn down driving sprocket. The front wooden rollers had always been there, partially rotted away by being left with mud and grass cuttings over the winter months.

Overall, it was an excuse of a lawn. The weeds grew abundantly, provided extra pocket money for us boys to prise them out with a weed trowel, and the depressions created pools of water unable to escape from the present glutinous clay soil. One flowerbed held two apple trees, a cooker, and a very sweet red desert apple. Both trees produced apples so small and worm eaten they were hardy worth peeling. That never put my mother off extracting the maximum from what the gardens offered. Paring the apples – with film like peelings, or accepting next door’s bitter cherries – ‘to help them out’. Apple pie was mums forte, first and last. If the Kearey family has fortitude, stamina, and endurance then it is the result of mum’s apple pies.

There is no doubt that by the end of 1940 the nation had developed a core of fortitude. It was not obvious to the casual onlooker but underneath – showed itself increasingly by grim determination – a flame that was not going to be extinguished. When Russia was invaded the following year, the working population began to warm to their struggles. Eventually many became communist with a small ‘C’ admiring the mighty efforts of a beleaguered nation. There was enormous sympathy and admiration, which the people of Britain felt and recognized.

CHAPTER 4

My mother took me to Longfield School in September 1940 – one year after the declaration of war. I was five years and two months old. I can still remember walking past North Harrow station holding her hand. I felt nervous, but very grown up! The Introductory Class – the first classroom on the right from the main entrance and stairs, caused me the normal shy, worried fears all the other children had to cope with.

This was the only time I ever remember my mother attending one of my schools – I am sure she must have at some time but I do not recall it. After my first day at school, I continued my attendance walking with my brother until I was conversant with the route. This initial period did not take long and I was soon making my own way. Over forty children were in the first class, all sitting on tiny chairs in front of tiny desks. The whole room in keeping with the furniture – all on a Lilliputian scale.

As well as recognising letters and numbers every day of the week, we were taught how to sew – with very blunt needles and to paint and sing. On the windowsills, boxes of wet flannel grew mustard and cress, jam jars, lined with blotting paper, demonstrated the growth of peas and beans. I took to it all immediately… all my fears evaporated… so did my cap! Throughout my schooldays, the uniform was the same – jacket and trousers. I never had a greatcoat, raincoat… come rain, or shine the jacket had to suffice… It was the same for all my friends.

Joined up writing was the next stage in the art of writing. Individualism was not acceptable – up and down strokes were to be on top of each other, loops banned; each generation seemed to have their own preferences in letter writing form – with or without loops – continuing without space from capital to lower-case… more paper covered, more notebooks used, than any other task. Row upon row of individual letters, repeating page after page all designed to perfect the writing. Another daily task was repeating multiplication tables by rote in a singsong fashion every morning… on and on… it passed a great deal of time only to be interrupted by the air-raid warning… which we might make before the ‘all clear’ sounded… Then back to mental arithmetic – so many apples bought – so much change returned?

We learned music from visual aids – Tonic Sol-Fa draped over the blackboard. Music pieces played on a record player and the tune picked out on the piano – a demonstration of variations within the piece… the time rapped on the desk. Music increasingly became an important part of the curriculum. This was due to the government’s recognition that it was important; the publics habit of listening to the radio and an increase in concert going in town halls and parks. Posters decorated the walls with multiplication tables, nursery rhymes and a nature scroll. There were painting lessons, highly coloured daubs with an almost hairless brush… reading Janet and John type books – fingers running across the page – each child having to read in turn.

The school’s air-raid shelters were installed in 1940. Large concrete pipes, originally made for enclosing streams or sewers, about six foot in diameter sunk into trenches in the ground. A bombproof entrance and exit steps built at either end then the whole lot covered in eighteen inches of soil turfed over. Duckboards covered the floors and slatted forms provided seating at the sides. They were dimly lit, smelly, cold, and damp. When the sirens sounded, we left our classes and streamed to the shelters, each class having their own place. I do not remember any lessons being taught or even attempted to be taught whilst we were down there.

We sang many songs in the round, took part in general knowledge quizzes. Using a cotton reel with four small nails over which wool was looped French knitting was produced. Eventually a long knitted tail was made which was sewn together to make a round mat in turn could be further stitched together to make a rug. Wrapping wool round a cardboard ring with a hole cut into the centre was another craze. You continued threading wool round – from the outside into the centre until the centre totally filled with wool. The outside edge was cut, the cardboard removed, producing a ball of wool. My Infant school-days consisted of many such Air Raids which meant ‘going down to the shelters’ where teachers tried to occupy the children by keeping us entertained.

We all had our own gas masks in a square cardboard box equipped with string shoulder straps. Very soon, after the masks issued and the Battle of Britain fought the fear of enemy troops landing diminished. We were told gas masks need not be carried but must be kept near to hand, so they were consigned to the cupboard under the stairs never to be got out again. There was government propaganda put out over not only the air but also printed in newspapers extolling the need to be aware of the seriousness of the national position and that everyone should be prepared to do their best for the country and those fighting aboard.

Although adult conversation was about the war, children did not participate – their talk was about the latest film from Hollywood, the latest action in the Beano or Dandy… perhaps, about some sporting event or train spotting. For life went on, it appeared, as if, nothing was happening… much as always … As children, we never noticed or commented on the lack of men – that the shops and town streets were only populated only by women …!

Radio news programmes were highly censored giving a report on the wars progress in line with government’s plans. Newspapers took their line from a similar agency keeping in mind the necessity of keeping up moral. Everything was said and done to help the country’s war effort. Programmes such as Wilfred Pickles ‘Have a Go, Joe’, Tommy Handley’s ‘Itma’, Workers Playtime or ‘Bombed Out’ written to raise the spirits.

The period of the blitz was over relatively quickly. The Germans, before putting Operation Sealion into action – the invasion of Britain, planned to put Britain’s airfields and radar stations out of action, a sensible decision. Our air force – guided by radio waves, could and would have caused considerable confusion and damage to an invasion force. Shortly after the German initiation of this policy – when many airfields and radar stations damaged or put out of action, Churchill demanded a retaliatory bombing mission on Berlin. This had the effect of prompting Hitler to return the attack to London, diverting his forces. Churchill never appreciated the result from his fortuitous order…

The German bombers were to be attacked – to ensure sufficient damage and loss that fighter escorts needed, if the policy were to be continued. For Britain, the raids continued further draining Germany’s resources… but most of all relieving the pressure on Britain’s fighter airfields and radar installations. Eventually Hitler put off the thought of invasion instead marched into Russia. This heralded the end of the blitz particularly raids towards inland sites – meant fewer air raids. The school’s shelters gradually became redundant.

As boys, watching from my parent’s bedroom window, Stan and I observed the air raids at night over London. The air raid sirens would start their interrupted pulsating wail that told you to take cover – approaching bombers were within range. The searchlight batteries would illuminate the night sky flicking their beams of light about in an attempt to locate the planes.

The interrupted drone of the unsynchronised engines of the German bombers punctuated the night. Occasionally the searchlight beams caught a bomber making it look like a silver, midget fly. The bombs would be exploding making a dull crump then flames would shoot up eventually making the completely eastern sky glow orange and red like a semi-circular, northern-lights spectacular.

We could see at first the searchlights seeking out and occasionally lighting up an enemy plane – the beams of light flickering across the sky forever probing for the aircraft. Then the backpack guns firing – trying to shoot the bombers down. At night, you could hear the pieces of metal shrapnel falling onto the roof. Finally, the sirens would give the all clear by a continuous tone and the searchlight would begin to flicker out. In the morning, it would be a rush to see who could find a piece of shrapnel. These pieces swapped a larger piece for two smaller.

It is interesting to remember that Winston Churchill declared ‘total’ war early on. Germany’s total war effort was not declared until 1944. Total war is about every person, involving every field of human endeavour. Pre-war Britain had more merchant ships than America and Japan combined. By the end of the war, 5,150 of those ships were lost [a total tonnage of more than its pre-war fleet]. The country lost its prestige, its world position and became deeply indebted to America, which would take many years to pay back.

As much as fifty percent of the county’s food was imported before the Second World War. Food rationing started on the 8^th January 1940, organized by the Ministry of Food, after the populace warned the previous November – it was scheduled to happen for the purchase of butter and bacon [sugar and all meat followed the next January; cheese cooking fat and tea soon afterwards] and to register – to a shop of their choice.

The government believed that it was possible Britain could be forced to surrender by the sinking of food supply convoys and wished to share out the food available; they were also aware that hording – by the ‘well off’, was likely to occur.

By 1941, people began to get more accustomed to the limited supply – to experiment with unusual ingredients – imported tinned sausages and spam, powdered milk, eggs and potatoes. We hardly ever had to resort to any of these new foods in the home although school meals included them.

One of the changes to our diet, my brother and I made, was to take part in the governments Vitamin The British Restaurant chain was a government institution organized in 1942 to cater for people who could not for one reason or another cook their own meals. There was one at Bennett’s Park, Station Road, North Harrow, and behind the cinema Rayners Lane. For a shilling, you could buy a three-course meal when they first opened. They were cheaply built, as prefabrications on a concrete slab and seen in most large towns. Others situated in suitable halls or galleries. In effect they were soup kitchens but on a far larger scale and served a variety of meals. After the war they still existed but soon operated on a different footing having to make a profit – hired out for jumble sales and evening classes – in effect became community centres. By 1943, they served 700,000 meals per day charging an increased fee of 1 shilling and tuppence [about 6p] for a two-course meal.

Sharing the same site, at the back of The British Restaurant, was the Home Guard Hut, the Manager, David Villers father, Basil. It served also as Number 21 ARP Wardens’ post. Just up Station Road almost on the corner of the crossroads was the cinema. The Associated British Cinema group owned North Harrow’s classically styled Embassy Cinema, which opened in October 1929. The frontage, decorated with linked railings, bordered oblong gardens decorating the ‘notice boards’ giving the current and future film previews. The large, wooden, double doors at the side of the cinema, lead to the deserted car park – marked out at the back. Beyond… the towns wood yard – opposite the British Restaurant.

The government’s Welfare Scheme promoted a daily spoonful of cod-liver oil and malt [which was free for children under two]. Years later, the cod liver oil scheme was changed – to one of concentrated orange juice – to supplement the Vitamin C intake. At school, we had a third of a pint of milk thought beneficial for health – particularly Vitamin D, to prevent rickets.

How to save scraps of food to make further dishes and how to conserve fuel and water was practiced. The radio doctor Charles Hill, later to be Minister of Health, told the listeners how to make simple diagnostic tests and how to treat basic health problems – what to eat to keep healthy. He became an established radio celebrity whose advice was avidly listened to and followed. He became a radio celebrity and an institution so fondly was he considered.

The population was coping becoming progressively more frugal. There were hints on how to make clothes last longer. Clothes rationing [a separate clothing book] introduced after food in June 1941. Early the following year each person allocated sixty coupons, which had to last for fifteen months. People were encouraged to Make-do and Mend. The government introduced the ‘utility’ scheme designed to save material. Much later, this scheme involved all household goods and brought about the utility kite mark.

Being Ink-monitor was a chore for the reservoir pot was large and heavy. Trying to fill the small inkwells was difficult and messy enough without having to retrieve them from each desk and return them full up. All pupils allocated a School House, which identified the member, by a coloured diagonal band, especially recognisable for sports and team games.

School Assembly held first thing in the main hall of the school. Mrs Gotobed, a person who would easily find an equal place alongside Chalky of Giles cartoon fame, would officiate. When the final announcement made we marched from the hall, to the tune of a popular march, back to our respective classrooms. At some time in the school year we had to parade in front of the Nurse to have, our ears looked into, and our hair searched for lice.

My co-educational primary education completed, without any streaming, selection or the altering of class position. I do not remember any child having behavioural problems – towards each other or against those in authority, nor, unable to keep up with the rest in lessens. There were no tests, which would have blighted my day.

On Empire day, we were allowed to go to school in cub uniform. The Union Jack flown on the flagpole and The National Anthem sung. Even at home, if the anthem played on the radio one was almost made to feel disloyal if you did not stand to attention. The playing of the National Anthem outside the home in theatre, cinema, concert hall, or park demanded total respect. No one would dream of being anti-royal or casting aspersion towards the hierarchy. King and Country maintained and claimed as the highest ideal.

School dinners served in the hall, sometimes divided to accommodate overspill classes. Some children went home for their meals – those who lived nearby. Milk drunk from third pint bottles with a straw at the morning break-time continued for several years. In the winter, the milk was cold – sometimes frozen solid and in the summer warm, often tasted sour.

Friday afternoons at school was the time when our teacher read us a story. Coral Island or Wind in the Willows – a great favourite. During the reading of these stories by the teacher, I can still remember how much they excited me. I could quite ‘get into them’ and could imagine all the descriptions – of places and people.

The other abiding memory at this time was playing submarines with my ‘best friend’ David Henry Villers, later to be nicknamed China [china plate] after the cockney slang for mate. Every school lunch time we would be playing, by the box hedge near the school gate, submarines. What prompted us to play that game I know not except that it was about this time that the action of German submarines was playing a significant role in the war and was therefore much in the news. As the land war was being won by a continuous string of enemy successes so too was the war at sea. It was a very frustrating period, which never seemed to end.

I continued with the same class of children throughout my period in the primary school. There were tests and reports in the juniors; whatever the result, in my case not too good, my parents took no action to motivate me to do better. They did not demand any homework or to my knowledge require any explanation as to what they should do to improve my education. Eventually I went upstairs to the Junior School and the educational process continued.

In 1941, my brother enrolled in the local piano teacher’s class. He practised religiously and throughout his many years of lessons took the Royal College of Music’s exams. Two years later my father asked me if I would like to learn too. To this, I replied “No” keeping to myself that I did not want to spend all my time practising whilst my friends were outside having fun. I do not think my father was very pushing. He knew that if I did not want to learn he would not have to spend the fees.

One of my elder brother’s great schemes – it may have come from stories during the war or through the scouts, whatever, his idea was that we should build an aerial ropeway from bedroom window to ground.

The clothes line running from garden shed to a pole, close to the fence, was borrowed and sneaked up to the bedroom – making sure that my mother didn’t realise what was going on by being stuffed up my jumper. The bedroom window flung wide open, one end of the washing line tied to one of the iron bedstead legs, paid out over the window cill, and the spare… dropped to the ground. We casually went down stairs out into the back yard. Using the mangle as an anchor tied the spare end to it and drew the rope tight. Back we went upstairs to begin our descent. My brother being the organiser and senior elected to descend first.

There were, other than the poor quality of the rope, two main essentials to the success of this escapade. One, the need for a firm anchor at the top, two, that the bottom firmly held – to prevent ‘swing’.

The architect who designed the house believed that a semblance of balance was necessary in his design – the doors and windows were in alignment vertically and horizontally… beneath our bedroom window was the French doors.

After clambering out onto the cill my brother gradually descended. It was here that the first safety feature was missing. The bed took up the strain… our bedroom never had a carpet but relied upon linoleum to offer it a taste of luxury. The floor surface did not allow sufficient grip… the bed gradually slid towards the window. Perhaps, if the second principle of safety reliably put into place success achieved. There again, if I had been strong enough – by holding onto the other end drawn tight the slack… that may have sufficed, unfortunately, I was not!

Thinking about it afterwards the outcome might appear obvious but to us it did not. The mangle, though of ancient lineage, still had the castors attached; these found to be necessary for us two to move the mangle to the other end of the yard.

This is where, had there been complete reliance upon total ‘grip’ [to use an expression much used by General Montgomery] help might have been to hand. It was not, the mangle started to move towards the French windows and the rope slackened. My brother wishing to stop the rope spinning and to give some semblance of order to his descent pushed out his foot, which found purchase on the main French window, which gave way under pressure.

Without going into too many details, he landed in a heap on the ground via the mangle. My mother now took a greater interest in the proceedings and flew out of the kitchen. She did not have to say that she would tell our father what we had been up to for the results of our labour were obvious.

It was normal to meet my father at the railway station every evening. It was on our walks back home that I was able to get my side of every issue straight before any nasty rumours broadcast later on. In this case, it was to no avail even though my brother and I often took to the top of the beech tree, into our tree house, as we did in this case, my father meant to have his say with the cane. I never enjoyed being up the tree looking down on my father who was stalking about at the bottom with a strap or cane. Time was not always a good healer…

From the time my father joined the Home Guard to the time he was demobilised we saw little of him. There were brief spells of home life but he was not around sufficiently long enough to change the way my mother ran things; she continued her placid way of life – nothing hurried, no upsets, nothing altered to show that there was a war going on or that rationing dictated the type of meals we were eating. There was nothing obvious, to the casual observer, to suggest we were nearing the middle of the twentieth century for we were locked into how she was raised back in rural Tatworth.

Mother was pregnant. At 54, my father had another son, Derek, who was born in October 1943. My mother had a home confinement. This did not alter the daily routine. I can only believe that Nan, an adopted Aunt, was there to hold the fort.

I enjoyed school and my classmates, but most of all, I appreciated my particular friend David. My life revolved around his family and home. Our conversations mainly taken up by the history of the Plantagenet kings, their castles – and the breaching of their walls. The lessons were not onerous although I was not keen on mental arithmetic: problems, especially those awful ‘if you bought six apples at 2d each and four pears at 1d how much would you have out of a 10 shillings note,’ were horrific – I always forgot the beginning of the question. There was no fuss about exams although we took classroom tests. However, we were becoming more aware of a horrid event looming before us. A scholarship examination, as the eleven-plus was, put into place.

All children were taught to read and write in a manner laid down by the education authorities. Conversational English based on the language of radio announcers – the Kings English. Sums were a compulsory part of the curriculum as was scripture, music, nature lessons and model making. Every year had its sports and Empire day, dancing round the May pole, cricket and football – when the field was dry, which seemed to be rare. It was a good school although unfortunately my period there coincided with the war, which interrupted most lessons. Sex reared its head in a very innocent way with, ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,’ which never to my memory produced anything other than mild amazement.

Saturday morning cinema club either at: the Granada Cinema, Harrow, the Odeon, Rayners Lane or The Embassy, North Harrow. They all had their theme songs, which we children all sang loudly in time with the spot, which indicated on the screen the next word. Their special clubs, which passed out badges of membership, were much prized. I can still remember the songs and feel the tense excitement. Westerns, with Roy Rogers taking the lead, detective mysteries, with Mr Ching, the Bowery Boys who were led by Slip Mahoney. Laurel and Hardy comedies, Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick humour, and the Keystone Cop’s mad antics were the most frequent comedies.

There was the usual competition for small boys to try to get to the front by crawling under the seats to get nearer the screen. On special occasions, live actors and singers gave a concert during the middle of the show. The organ at the Granada would rise out of the floor and the white coated figure would strike up the tune to a roar from the whole audience. A two penny, round, Lyons ice cream cornet was a particular delight.

Although I never took part there were always ‘crazes’ going around the school. Either it was: special cigarette card collections, a particular coloured or sized marble to swop, flicking cigarette cards against the wall to see who got the nearest the wall or covered the other cards. There were gangs of boys who leaped upon each other’s backs to see if they could get higher than another team, girls screaming at catch or skipping, or hopscotch. Boys playing football with a tennis ball or just riding on each other’s backs to see who could knock another pair over. However, the greatest collectors were those who could produce the largest piece of shrapnel.

My brother had joined the cub scouts the year before me and when it came to my time, I was eager to attend. My father took me to the Scouts shop in Hindes Road, Harrow, where I was fitted with neckerchief, woggle, cap, and jumper in the Headstone Wolf Pack colours. Tags and badges brought home – sewn-on by my mother. My life as a cub scout began. We learned our scouts promise, sat for badges for fire lighting, telling the time, and tying our laces up. Learning special recitations like “doing our best, well dib, dib, dob,” and going to summer camp.

One of my greatest regrets is that I was never able to swim. A whole group of us would go to the outside swimming baths in Harrow. There the group played team games in the water. Because I could not swim, I used to pretend by hopping about on one leg. It was awful not being able to join in properly.

Although having explained that the war for us children was exciting and a great talking point nothing frightened us. The blitz over London was visible, the searchlights lit up our bedroom, and the backpack guns pumped their shells into the sky. Shrapnel rained down and could be heard bouncing on the roof… still it all seemed a long way away. Bombs did fall on Pinner in the summer of 1940, and some close to St Albans church, a number in the centre of Pinner later that year. All these were over quickly and soon forgotten. It was in the final year of the war that we were actively involved this was not forgotten…!

The V for vengeance bomb, or doodlebug, was a jet engine powered, stubby winged plane, operating from a ramp, which gave flight direction, the distance controlled by the amount of fuel it carried. This was the first of Hitler’s vengeance weapons. The second was the VII rocket and the third an enormously long barrelled gun. All three were random weapons – used for scare tactics rather than pinpoint accuracy.

The V1 had an engine noise which was distinct – had a sort of spluttering sound. Everything was all right whilst you could hear the engine but when it stopped you knew that the plane was in a steep dive to the ground. Three fell in the summer of 1944. One fell in Parkside Way, another in Rowland’s Avenue, and a third fell seven doors away, between numbers 49-53 in Cumberland Road, also damaging the British Restaurant and Home Guard hut. The doors and windows were blown in, and part of the roof collapsed. At least five houses were blown-up and many more damaged. A number of neighbours died and others seriously injured. This occurred when Derek was just under a year old when the war was in its final year.

My brother and I were getting ready for school after finishing breakfast. My father was there also having just dressed into his uniform. We were all milling about in the kitchen mum was putting on my tie and my brother Stan still sat on the box seat. It was a normal start to the school day and we were about to head for the front door. There was a whooshing sound and then the explosion – not as you would expect an enormous bang but more a rumble, there was an enormous billowing of plaster dust – actually all quite unimpressive for the devastation it caused. There had been no air-raid siren sounded – we had been taken by surprise…

Naturally, my mother’s initial cry was ‘Derek’, which stimulated the whole family to rush for the hall and stairs. Up, the family went and into my parents’ bedroom. There was the offending article, smiling, sitting in a sea of glass and dust. It was amazing that no harm had come to him for on closer look around us all the windows had blown in and most of the doors too.

A number of neighbours killed and one lost his sight. My father immediately headed down the road to see if he could offer any assistance and to organise the relief services. We meanwhile started to clear up the mess. Auntie Nan who was working at my Uncle Will’s house in Pinner was informed. She kindly cooked our evening dinner and brought it over, walking all the way with the dinner on a plate with a cloth over the top later that day.

It was not long before workers came round to repair the damage – to make the house fit to live in. It was during this time that the floors were lifted and the void beneath was filled in with rubble. This to some extent cured the problem of damp. Many of the rotten joists were replaced and so too the damaged floorboards. During the weekends, it was my job to take Derek out in the pram when we went for miles mostly up to Hall’s farm. Often I would take him to ‘Snow White’s Cottage’, which was just up a cart track off George the Fifth Avenue and could be got to from Noah Hill in Pinner.

My father’s, spell in the Home Guard ended in 1944, when it was clear to the government that Hitler was not going to invade. On leaving, his rank was made substantive – he was now a Major, although not on the serving list. His move back to the railway, which had two important effects on the family. One was that his car had to be given back to its rightful owner, and two, life got back to the routine left behind – four years previously.

When I was about ten, I joined the choir at Saint Albans Church, North Harrow. My brother was already in the choir and the whole idea was my mother’s, whose friend, Mrs Green’s son Peter, was senior choirboy. This was not a success as eventually it interfered with playing with my friends and it was all too confining for my tastes.

Another call on my spare time was a paper round which gave my six and sixpence a week. It was the smallest round in the shop but it suited me and was to last for five years. This was the means whereby I could go to the pictures; buy a packet of five woodbine or turf cigarettes and round it all off with a bag of toffees. However, I did enjoy music and accompanied my father and mother to the Saturday or Sunday concert at the Moat Farm concert at Headstone Recreation Ground almost every Sunday after the war until I started work.

Our gang, which used to roam the streets of an evening, got up to many larks. The railway line tempted us – to put pennies on the line so that the weight of the train squashed them; or perhaps build another gang hut on the embankment. Quite often, we had to take to our heels because the railway police were after us. On one occasion I quickly jumped down from the embankment only to find at the bottom that I had cut myself badly on a piece of metal sticking out from the concrete side.

Playing ‘knock-down-ginger’ was another prank we got up to – tying a piece of cotton to a door knocker pulling it and watching the annoyed face of the house owner wondering who kept on knocking his door. Tying a dustbin to a car bumper and watching it disappear down the road scattering the contents. Pushing a potato down someone’s exhaust pipe crated mayhem or scrumping apples from the back gardens. Throwing fireworks – bangers, when we were annoying another gang – know where their hideouts were and creeping up on them.

There were frequent gang fights between the Canterbury Road and the Cumberland Road gangs using the bombsite at the top of the road. Broken roof tiles provided the ammunition and the many brick lined holes made excellent trenches. Scaffolding poles, which stretched, from roof to ground, gave us a thrilling slide to the ground. It was all a perfect adventure playground.

My father treated Christmas as time to massively celebrate – he loved it all – the hanging of paper chains, bells and balls… made the front and back rooms look like Father Christmas’s’ grotto. Copper three-penny pieces wrapped in greaseproof paper added to the pudding mix – if silver ones not available. The pudding-cloth lay over the pudding the string tied round the basin and the ends of the cloth knotted over-all… the pre-Christmas preparations would be done well in advance. The lead-up time exciting… the rest, viewed with trepidation and concern…

Christmas was a time to look forward to with its fog and possible snow, which gave it a special atmosphere of comfort and togetherness. Presents gathered and spread around the bottom of the Christmas tree. Pillowcases hung on the stairs to receive masses of simple presents. Stocking hung up on the bottom rail of the beds. The sideboard groaned under dishes of fruit, boxes of dates and chocolates.

The front room table lay with an immaculately ironed cloth and set using the best china and cutlery. Grandmother was the chief guest; unfortunately, she died in the last year of the war. Aunts, Amy, Lil and Nan were usually in attendance and the house used to vibrate with their chatter and bonhomie. The Christmas tree had strewn to excess, with tinsel and glass balls, the fairy at the top waving her wand. Tiny candles in their holders clipped to the branches and lit. Eventually the candles burnt away and no more obtained during wartime.

I had to queue up at the express dairy to get what cakes and sponges were available. The highlight of it all was my father playing all the old tunes on the piano with everyone else singing along. Song sheets distributed – cut out of the newspaper especially for the occasion. The blue covered Daily Express Songbook had its annual exposure to daylight. Mum and Nan would fuss around the kitchen stove and sink since early morning; for nothing spared to give everyone the best. Crackers arranged by every placing – everyone had to wear one of their paper hats, jokes read out and miniature fireworks set off. English sherry consumed whilst the nuts passed round. The fire banked up to the extent that sparks would fly up the chimney and everyone would draw back from the heat. The Kings message was eagerly looked forward to whilst the port and mince pies circulated.

Most Christmases, before Martha, grandma Kearey, died in 1944, Dad would fetched her and Auntie Lil from Eastcote in his car to spend the day with us. I well remember on those trips to fetch them how foggy it was, to the extent that Stan or I had to walk in front with the torch to show the way. On other occasions, the snow was so thick driving was difficult and we had to take a shovel to dig the car out of the ruts.

The money I needed to afford recreation – going out with my friends, visits to the cinema and buying sweets came from money earned from my paper round [my father had stopped paying pocket money immediately I started]. Although this method of earning money was illegal for I had lied about my age to the newsagent – was under the age of eleven years. Taking jam jars and pop bottles back to the shop to receive a halfpenny each and doing errands for my mother also brought in an additional sum.

To afford Christmas presents my friend David and I went carol singing. I painted stripes onto a jam-jar and lit a candle that was stuck in the bottom – to make it look like a lantern, and strung it on a pole. With that, we lighted our way and presented a Yuletide image. At first, we had a song sheet but eventually this became discarded when we had learned the words. Every evening we earned pounds and saved it away to give ourselves treats and pay for our present giving. When people were coping with the war and afterwards when rationing was still in place people were very generous and concerned about those less well off – particularly children.

Victory in Europe [VE Day] was in May 1945. I was almost ten years old in my penultimate year at junior school. I do not remember any particular fuss about the ending of the war – we had no street party or buntings flown, although the local church bells rung. War was still being waged in the Far East and there were still many shortages. Ration Books were still in use right into the fifties.

After the war, many men needed to repair and reconstruct the damaged homes and factories. Most major southern cities of England were war torn and ravaged with many levelled bombsites, very bare of buildings or holding just the skeleton. The houses in our road, blown-up by the flying bomb, rebuilt to the previous design; the damaged houses repaired – this included our house – which also had the void under the floor filled in and the rotten floorboards replaced. The men doing the work were only using hand tools adopting standards that were pre-war mixing up plaster with horsehair and cement by hand.

Every Sunday Stan and I would go to Sunday school in the morning where we would contribute to the farthing collection and in the afternoon go to my grandmother’s house in Eastcote where my Aunt Lil would make us honeycomb and treacle toffee. It was there that we explored our Uncle’s garage and looked at the lines and lines of military vehicles parked in the field at the back of the house.

Looking back at that time it was a difficult time for my father to adjust and the family fortunes were at low ebb. This was no so much in monetary terms, although that was hard, but in my parent’s social well-being. The age difference between my parents began to become more obvious; their appreciation of the latest industrial advances and current changes in social behaviour became more distant. There had been little change in social behaviour and working environments since the twenties. Now, under a thrusting new workforce looking for change and greater distribution of wealth, everything associated with the past challenged. It was much later when the same thing happened to me and I began to appreciate the feelings he must of felt.

My father began to face impending retirement, the advent of ‘the nationalisation of the railways’, younger men coming out of the services and modernisation as a threat. His career had reached its peak just before the war in the late thirties and felt distanced by the integration of the railways and road services. My mother was increasingly left behind by city and town life – she progressively relied upon my father – trusting that he would be able to provide for the future – a future that was totally different from those experiences previously inculcated.

The eleven-plus examination was brought into being by the 1944 Education Act. This was a system of secondary education made to fill the number of grammar school places then available. In some counties, the child who failed this 11- plus exam could re-sit the following year.

For those who failed there was the chance to sit for a Technical or Art School – both for boys or girls wishing to be trades people and could be sat at the age of twelve. Girls tended to go on to secretarial schools or catering colleges and boys into engineering and commerce.

Those children who failed both these exams and were not in ‘O’ level streams within the Secondary Modern Schools system became an underclass of poor achievers. They could re-enter the higher educational system by applying for Polytechnic places. This was not its intention – to make young people feel of lesser importance, but a fact. I was one of those who felt belittled by failing those tests. In this, I am not necessarily blaming the system for there must be a hierarchy of learning with a place on the scale for technical and manual ability… but it did play a part in my mental attitude to education.

At last, the day came for me to sit the exam. I was sure that if I prayed hard enough my request would be answered. The night before I had knelt down and said my prayers, hands tightly placed together, eyes firmly shut, Lord’s Prayer intoned, and the special prayer my father had taught us to say… God bless mummy, God bless daddy, make me a good boy, Amen. However, most of all I made a promise to God that I would worship him forever, come what may, if I passed.

I polished my shoes and smartened myself up. Pencils sharpened, pen nibs cleaned, special fountain pen bought specially for the occasion, rubber and ruler to the ready. We all had to file into the main hall and sit at desks spread apart in long lines – all neatly arranged with the teacher sitting at the desk on the stage and other teachers walking about between the desks.…

I was quite right to be nervous. I knew there was no way I could pass that or any other exam. It was all a massive shock to the system. There had been by me no preparation whatsoever and it was easy to compare myself to those special others, a very few, who I knew would undoubtedly pass. I just had not a chance. One look at the paper convinced me that what I had thought would happen was a total certainty.

There were so few places in so few schools. The numbers, which passed, obviously corresponded to the number of places available. Those that passed were the exception – perhaps there were just half a dozen in my class of thirty-five. I mention that but do not know how many for sure. What I did know was not one of my friends who did. Some children were to go to fee paid schools others like myself sent to the nearest secondary modern, which was Headstone School. All the boys that I associated with failed. As an individual, I somehow knew – even at that young age, the divisions wrought between those that did go to a grammar school and those that did not would never be joined – the stigma would attached itself. We who did not pass were failures, our parents knew we were and the community did too.

The grammar schools particularly the most well known like Harrow took the elite and they were known to be quite as good as the best private fee paying schools. There was a feeling at the time that this was a fair system for progressing bright pupils. Those that failed could have a second chance at taking the ‘twelve plus’ and after a year one could sit the entrance exam to a technical school. The thought that if you were not clever using your head you might be clever with your hands and go to an engineering, building or art school. It believed that children had aptitudes – if not up to standard at one subject then better in another.

It was never discussed or explained openly that some parents who understood what was going on, cared sufficiently to do something about their children’s education at a time when it would count – in a positive manner, and would make all the difference. That a caring attitude towards what was happening to their children would count It was not much good thinking about what would help little Jack just before the exam or even a year before. It had, by preference, to be thought about even before the Childs birth, certainly soon thereafter, as a mindful planned exercise when the child is adaptable, obedient and capable of being directed towards discovering through games and challenges. This should be a plan just to get the child through the Scholarship but as a way of bringing-up your child. There is no doubt that there were some parents who did think about such things because they were either deprived themselves and meant to make sure their children did not end up as they did. They could have been social climbers or even to show off to their neighbours, friends and relatives.

However, by far the best way was by the parents having the intellect to know what was best and sensible. Perhaps they may even have had a good education themselves and therefore appreciated the value of a good education – were going to make sure their children had an equal chance. No matter the reason behind their motivation, the fact was they recognised that an effort made and they needed to direct their children. There were some parents like that but they were rare. The majority of children slotted into the prescribed pattern and to some extent that suited the limited provision obtainable.

There was no feeling of relief after sitting the exam. I knew deep down that I had failed. When, some weeks later, the letter from the Education Department arrived the truth was out and what I had thought would be the result came true. All my friends failed too which was a relief and we all found ourselves bound for Headstone Secondary Modern. A new uniform bought and a new life began. Each new part added more pressure and challenges – the golden years of having no responsibilities – of permanent blue skies, gone for good.

I now realise that to make a difference, for any improvement in learning skills, the child has to make a sustained effort. To do this, if it has not come about naturally, the parents have to make an equal effort too to see that that effort made is not wasted. It is a matter of the correct state of mind, which must come from the parent first… To ensure that the child’s efforts become a natural habit… then it will last a lifetime.

Passing the eleven plus did not necessarily guarantee a secure permanent job or an ability to earn more money than those who did not. That the Grammar Schools gave a better education is not in doubt. Secondary Modern Schools or Comprehensive Schools later on, failed to reach the educational heights of the old established Grammar Schools. Breaking up that system by Shirley Williams and the Labour Government was understandable but at fault. They should have considered building more Grammar Schools, opened up the intake, and selected by Committee rather than exam – referring to the Childs yearly reports.

Chapter 5

The Headmaster, Mr H. E. Manson, was a short, stout, red-faced man with swept back, slicked down hair, in a pin striped, pin neat suit with a projecting white handkerchief from his top pocket. He stood at the school gates in the morning rocking on his toes, alert to every living thing fluffing out his feathers.

The light, reflected off his spectacles – like the yellow orbital ring of a peregrine’s eye, scrutinising its territory. He patrolled the corridors during the day catching his prey on the wing, alive to every trick played by his charges; stopping here, then there – to look in through the windows of the closed classroom doors to see if there was any ‘larking about’. Not only did we the pupils fear him but the teachers too…

Morning assembly saw he whole school gathered, including the teachers…, a respectful mass of upturned faces ready to take part in the daily service before the start of lessons. Achieving this army of serried ranks was a thing of organisational beauty. At the command of a whistle, the playing children would stand still. Another ear shattering blast would direct all to form up by class – in twos. A third whistle started the leading class to file into school, along the corridor to the hall.

On my first day, Mr Manson explained to the assembled gathering that it was important to refer to the school as Headstone Secondary Modern School and not Headstone, as that was a private school down the road. He went on to say that, we should be proud of our school and should not feel ashamed of not passing the eleven and… we attended a good school with an excellent record. I fear all his strictures were ignored. We were very aware we had failed and besmirched by the fact. Needlesstosay, thereafter, we referred to our school as Headstone.

We were allotted our classes; thankfully, all my friends were with me – in the same class – Upper 4B. I refer to the boys only, for most, if not all the girls, were from other schools in the neighbourhood. That day in September 1946, we began our four years of secondary education.

There were about thirty-five pupils to each class and four classes to each year – in order of merit. Annual exams were set and tested in school and my results were consistent throughout all my school life – being within the first half dozen in the second class. For some reason, which I cannot now imagine, I was quite satisfied with being in that group. Eventually the top class streamed – to take ‘O’ levels, which gives you an idea what the other three classes were like – in ability.

Education was affected just as much as industry by the war, the lack of male teachers and a lessoning in standards – caused by lack of discipline. Today we see children carrying enormous quantities of books and school equipment. I do not remember anyone carrying books to school. What was necessary was provided – was read on the day of the lesson not taken home. We sat in-school set exams marked by the teachers who took the subject. There was no external assessment and I do not believe we ever had the School’s Inspector pay a visit. Simple grammar taught with no reference to Latin. Mathematics including decimals and simple algebra the peak of achievement. French taught for a couple of terms. Music consisted of singing national tunes and listening to records. History taught more as a reading test without committing much to memory. Geography as countries of the world than rock strata and population growth than birth of a town. Boys had metalwork and girls home economics. Gardening consisted of a lot of digging with no planting. Woodwork for boys making boot scrapers and Sewing for girls making shoe bags.

Although some homework was required throughout the four years, I rarely did any at home. Mostly what was needed completed before I left school – that same day – during school hours. If homework was given at the end of the day, I did it next morning – in the playground. My friends and I considered homework unnecessary – an interruption to play. My parents did not question what was going on – they never attended a parents meeting or visited the school – at sport’s days or special events. As my end-of-term results were sufficiently high, they never enquired too deeply, how I was getting on. Very few pupils went on to full-time further education no one stayed on at school beyond fifteen.

The shortages, previously described, plus lack of equipment and limited accommodation did not offer the chance of greater advances. Grammar schools concentrated on producing literate students not technocrats. Secondary education, apprenticeships, day-release courses and night classes not only produced tradesmen but skilled manpower which the country desperately needed to keep up with the rush of new innovations brought to the market just after the war.; for very many this was to provide a better means to make social advances…

One of the many crazes during my time at Headstone was miniature cricket. This played using stumps three or four inches high, a bat carved out of a small piece of wood and a marble. The whole assembly of players knelt down and gathered round the batsman, bowler and wicket keeper. This game, played on the field, soon turned trouser knees green.

Mr Mason declared at assembly that anyone caught playing this game would be caned. He thought the game ruined good clothing – that the parents would support him. Our team ordered onto the stage – made an example. We trooped out and lined-up, with hand extended, to receive our just deserts.

After school, we walked home past the shops towards the Embassy cinema. There were the usual skylarks of chasing each other and playing ball. One of the boys jumped on my back and I fell forward smashing my face onto the pavement. I leapt to my feet pretending that there was no harm done. Suddenly, felt a cool draught in my mouth. Putting my hand up to my face, I found that two of my front teeth knocked out. For months and years afterwards I was to be plagued by having to go to the dentist to have caps put on – temporary ones initially that had to stay there for two years. They were silver and obvious and I hated them.

It was during my first year at Headstone that my friends and I agreed to join The Boys Brigade. I was never happy at the scouts particularly digging grease pits, making chairs, tables, cooking stoves, and latrines and sitting round the campfire – it was all so cold and very uncomfortable and quite prehistoric coupled with the fact that the uniform slouch, wide brimmed, hat, and pole looked ridiculous.

Joining The Boys Brigade [first Pinner Company based at Pinner Methodist Church, Love Lane], at the age of eleven in 1946, was probably the highlight of my young life and lasted up until the age of seventeen. I went to gym classes, drill lessons, band, and drill nights, and Church parades every Sunday, attended every camp and sat numerous badges. It was more important to me than school and anything else. It gave me security, interest, hobbies, and social skills. We took part in drill and band competitions and for our summer, camp went to the Isle of White. For some years, we camped in the same field as the sixth London Company the same company my father had belonged to so many years before.

Captain Leslie White who started the company just after the war led our Company. The company attached to the Methodist Church in Love Lane, Pinner. Four years later, the church insisted on having a Scout Group – partly prompted by an inherent class preference Our Company had to find other premises, which it did in Northwood. George Munday and Leslie Tanner were the other officers and together they formed a strong base for the company taking it to over thirty boys strong. Looking back it would be difficult now to find a more loyal of dedicated group of people who were only interested in doing their best for their charges.

I owe them a great deal for their long-suffering patience and fortitude. Hardly a day goes by without some reference to those times and how they have ‘stood me in good stead’. Church every week and church parades once a month, every national holiday celebrated, the flag raised – if not in fact metaphorically, and the old Empire given prominence. They were days, never to return, days of strong community bonds and ridged rules of etiquette and behaviour. These extended to local use – when the family went out or on holiday, and to Brigade events and camps.

During one of these camps, my father had written to me one of his comical letters and addressed the envelope, ‘To Master Terence Kearey. Forever after my nickname was ‘Master’. As usual, my great friend David was with me throughout all my school days – from the age of five until eighteen – our lives were together. We went to Lords cricket ground. Every Sunday afternoon in summer went into the park at Headstone Recreation Ground to watch the cricket and take the scores. Camped out on Chorley Wood Common in forever-leaky tents and walked back from Church from Northwood to North Harrow every week. Forever discussed the war, the history of England, castles and their upkeep, defences and sieges.

Every year we spent a week’s camp at St Helens in the Isle of White. When we were there the island ran a railway service all-round the island. The train, built smaller than normal size, started off from Ryde pier where the paddle steamers tied up, after their run from Portsmouth harbour. We arrived there from Waterloo Station having had to wear our uniforms throughout the whole journey, which made us very self-conscience. Still, we made a brave sight marching up from St Helens station with the bugle band in front in turn lead by Captain White to arrive at the field. This venue was the same every year I attended. The cookhouse was staffed by professional cooks whilst we boys had to peel the potatoes and do the washing up – not so very pleasant after having porridge or stew.

Every day there was kit inspection and the bell tent flap and brailing railed-up – made ready for rounds! The Union Jack rose to the bugle call, blankets folded in true ‘pusser’ fashion and kit neatly laid out on ground sheets. Paillasses stuffed with straw and tents carefully swept out, for woe betide any dropped points for that meant not winning the trophy for best squad. It is difficult now to describe what all this meant to us boys and how seriously we took it. An inordinate time spent cleaning the equipment, the tent, and the site. The tent lines had to be exact and so too the kit for inspection. The bugle call perfectly played and the Union flag rose with ceremony and pride. Prayers said every day and church parades an essential part of the week’s proceedings. Every squad had to perform a special task and to provide part of the week’s concert party.

On one of my early camps, Mr White the captain ordered that no one should take a boat out on to St Helens bay. The St Helens bay constructed to act as a holding lake for a water mill and had a low causeway built to retain the seawater. Every time the tide came in it filled the lake so that at all times there would be sufficient water to drive the paddles of the mill. The public could hire out rowing boats, the area considered safe for boating. Just why Mike Langley, David Villers, and I voted to take a boat out I do not know. However, it was not a surprising thing for us to do for we did form a dastardly trio. It was only natural, and just our luck, that one of the officers would be passing the lake as we were playing Nelson. Therefore, up before Mr White we were marched. To be told “pack-up your bags” – for us to return home. Whether this was, just a trick to worry us I am not sure, but if it were it worked. The riot act read and bags packed; dressed in our uniforms we attended the assembled Company to hear of our misdoing. It was a most worrying moment. He finally let us off with dire warnings…!

A trip to Sandown was always high on our list of places to go. We piled out of the train to see what fun we could have. There was clock golf, crazy golf, who could make the best sand castle and who could skim the water with a stone to see who has bounced the most. None of these came up to starting the day off with a hot jam doughnut. These doughnuts were then and to my mind even now the very best that were ever cooked. Perhaps it was the dough, the amount of jam or the mass of sugar that the enticing doughnuts were rolled in, I do not know all I do know is many were eaten. Mike Langley ate twenty-seven at one sitting. Now that is what I call a record.

The round the island coach trip was another exciting event. Alum Bay, Blackgang Chine, Shanklin, and Ventnor all are wonderful memories. Granny Smith apples have never been the same since. At this time my annual Boys Brigade camp was the only holiday I had and most of my spare paper round money spent on it. I can even remember buying a glass of brown ale in St. Helens for sixpence.

The lessons we received had the same core component as most other schools – then, as today. A great emphasis was laid on English – language and grammar, and arithmetic… metalwork and carpentry for boy’s domestic science and housecraft for the girls, these thought mandatory. A teacher dressed-up like someone from The Woman’s Land Army gave gardening, thought fitting for secondary school children, especially during and just after the war.

We did have French lessons as well as Latin, soon replaced – thought unnecessary for future ‘blue collared workers’. I finished school just before my fifteenth birthday definitely deficient in Basic English – not being able to explain the construction of a sentence, why one method of expression was preferable to another. I can still recite G.K.Chesterton’s ‘The Donkey’ and John Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’. I managed to take the school’s prize for technical drawing – with the painting of the school, both being the summit of my educational achievement… skills I found interesting… thankfully, stood me in good stead for my intended career.

My last year at school was a joy, I was asked, in company with another keen artist Michael Gilbert whose father was an architect, to paint a picture of the school’s annex in Pinner. It must have been big because there were two of us painting it at the same time. That summer given spice and much nervous tension by games of ‘truth, dare, promise, or opinion’ held on the school field hoping to be asked if I dared ‘kiss a girl’.

Unfortunately, I was never asked, but that did not stop me from being enormously excited by the thought. Those long hours I would spend round at Joan’s home in Hatch End just cycling or walking up and down looking for a face at the window… It made me dizzy so goodness knows what it did for anyone watching. Joan was so popular that I did not have a chance – I was also totally unsophisticated, unsure, and inexperienced. Then there was Joy who used to ice skate at Wembley. She would walk down the high street with her white sided skate boots tied over her shoulder, long flowing hair, and short skirt – even for those times. During class, I would have love notes passed to me which completely left me in a state of mild panic. I never knew what to do with them.

It needed something far more direct and forceful for me to do anything about it. I was quite hopeless – totally shy and self-conscience but longing to be asked. As I think about it now if one of the girls, say Ann or Judith, had asked me out, and I had gone, it would have changed my whole life… so I would like to think… Being so lacking in self-esteem I would have grown in confidence overnight. In the final week of school life, the class told they could have an ‘end of school party’. There would be music provided by the school gramophone, records we could provide, and each pupil asked to bring something for the table- to eat and drink. In the event, because I could not dance I sat out and consumed a box of dates kindly provided by someone else.

The teachers had been reasonable considering that many were onetime injured servicemen, or demobbed – just returning from the war, others filling in – whilst seeking employment. There were too many children to each class. Doubling up went on in classrooms using any extra space available – including the hall and corridors. Class sizes were always over thirty-five. Discipline was difficult to maintain due to not only the class sizes being large but also children disinterested after the excitement and expectations – of the war ending. It was always obvious which child came from the lower forms by their speech, dress and behaviour… made it a challenge for the sternest teacher.

The teachers attempted to amuse the lower classes to keep them quiet for they, in the main, were not interested in taking any exam! The top class [A], taught to sit ‘O’ levels – the other extreme, also recognisable and in every way as capable as grammar children. They were to go on a take ‘A’ levels for a university place. The rest of the final year’s children faced an internal, school-based exam – not invigilated by an outside body… They were to go on to Colleges of Education, Polytechnics – to take City and Guilds exams, apprenticeships, nursing or secretarial courses.

The result of secondary education for most children in 1950 was a modest improvement compared to the 1930s. It was if anything a limited implementation of the 1944 Act. Even five years later only twice as many stayed on at school to seventeen than in 1940. What was lacking was a long look to the future by both the Labour and Conservative Parties. Overseas countries were adapting faster to new technologies. Still, in my last year all this was miles away. I drifted into the finishing school eddy… the wind driven current of work without me realising it was forcing me back into choppy waters!

My adopted aunt, who was working as a cook for Frank Oppenheimer, Managing Director, Chromoworks Limited, overheard a conversation whilst she was serving dinner. It was about the problem the firm was having finding suitable apprentices – in this case, it was for an apprentice in the Artist’s Studio. This was during my last year at school when I was fourteen. She approached Frank Oppenheimer the next morning – which she knew of a relative who was interested in drawing and painting, could they apply for the position. He said they could and asked her to get this young lad to submit some drawings.

There was feverish haste to comply with the request to produce sufficient work for a portfolio. My father was keen for me to leave school, impressing on me the need to pay my way by contributing towards the housekeeping. A letter sent to the firm and a date arranged to attend an interview, with a portfolio of work. My father and I went by train to Neasden and then walked to the firm. The Board of Directors interviewed me and looked at my work. I was told what to expect if accepted, that, ‘I would hear from them in due course’.

A fortnight later, I received a letter telling me that I had been accepted – was to report to Doughty Street, London, Headquarters of The Institute of Printing, to sit an entry examination and take a medical, both of which I passed. My goal, to be an indentured apprentice to the Lithographic Artists Studio at Chromoworks Limited. First, I had to complete satisfactorily a three-month probationary period and subsequently be accepted by the Union. Thankfully, with all my hurdles jumped, I started work immediately I left school just before my fifteenth birthday in 1950.

The end of school party convinced me that dancing was going to have to be faced so I enrolled at The Guy Haywood School of Dancing met above Burton’s store in Harrow. There the intricacies of the waltz, quickstep, fox trot, and Latin American dances – girls to line up one side of the room and boys on the other, ‘take your partners please’. So began my introduction to girls and it did not take me long to realise that once again I had been missing out. No wonder those dark haired gigolos with their flashy suits had ruled the roost for they could show off their girls and, quite naturally too, they were more easily accepted socially – had learned the art of small talk which improved their confidence.

To illustrate how bizarre life was at home I never had a front door key. From the age of fourteen, my brother and I were out most nights. My father locked up the house at about half past ten when both my mother and he went to bed. When my brother and I came home, which would be between eleven and twelve, we had to get in through the landing fanlight window first by climbing the fence then balancing on the concrete cill and finally by squirming through the ten-inch window. Once inside we had to reach down placing one hand on the inside, window cill and then grab hold of the banister rail with the other. All this had to be down without waking my parents. In the morning nothing ever mentioned about how we got in, where we had been or what we had been doing. Even when I started work, I was never presented with a key.

At that time, I attended the old time dancing evening classes held in the British Restaurant on Headstone Lane, at the bottom of Cumberland Road, next to the Home Guard Hut, where David Villers father was the manager. You may well imagine what it was like for me to go there and have to dance with middle-aged partners doing the Valletta, dashing white sergeant, waltzes and the one-step. I was in much demand and really, it was great fun.

Gradually as those men and women, who were demobilised raised their own families they had aspirations honed from countless discussions with each other throughout their years of war service. These were, in the main, socialistic ideas about social betterment for the individual in an equal society.

The history of the Trades Union movement was always towards an increase in wages, and a shortening of the working week, whatever the shade of government. The unions also preached ‘fair deals for all and that everyone deserved a job with a minimum wage based upon the cost of living’.

My childhood was happy and innocent. As a callow youth I was very unaffected by the opposite sex surrounding myself with a group of like-minded fellows who felt and viewed things much as I did. Most children joined a youth group of some complexion even if they did not keep up their attendance. Stress was not a word ever mentioned throughout the war years and thereafter. You just got on with life and never questioned what was going on around you.

In my early years, I suffered, like many others, by shyness, generated by a lack of confidence, something I found impossible to control. My lack of confidence would be overcome, when I had thoroughly learnt a skill, and by this, achieved independence. In the last days at school, Barbara Sutherland invited me to a party. It was not only my first invitation to such an event but the first by a girl. It was a joyous, frustrating, and a clumsy occasion – probably for us both.

Drawing, both freehand and technical, my favourite subject all my school life, and thereafter to old age. I enjoyed the precision of constructing a worthwhile design and a pleasing effect. Thankfully I had the patience to produce complicated and detailed work. I realised early on in my life that it was up to me to make a go of it – to make up for my lack of formal educational and paper qualifications.

Getting a job on leaving school was expected, any thought of taking time off, either school or work, just not considered sensible or economically desirable. Fortunately, it was a time of full employment with any amount of vacancies to choose from but only up to a certain educational level – a standard governed by the selection board or interviewing manager associated with whatever trade or commerce chosen. Grammar school’s prided themselves that their children were educated for office work – perhaps management, whereas the child trained in a secondary school considered more fitting for the shop floor and manual labour.

The Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, decided to hold a general election for 1950, which he won with an overall majority of ten. The ‘Welfare State’ and the policy of ‘Nationalisation’ for the chief industries, including the railways, were established. Both these pieces of social legislation were not just the result of one party but achieved by a social awareness of nationhood. The Conservative Education Act of 1944 and Labour’s National Health Act 1948, marked another change in the national conscience – made an effort to provide a comprehensive scheme of insurance to provide health care for the general population and long-term care for the old. For children and teenagers there were primary, secondary, and further education – each abiding to a national curriculum? This was supposed to bring about greater equality between the classes and provide full employment – but it never achieved these goals. Class was still a great divider.

My father was a Conservative, imperialist and anti-trades unionist in a world conditioned to middle-of the-road – left of centre politics. He was coming up to his retirement and was frankly scornful about allowing any work force to having any say in how businesses should be run… he believed that ‘the management’ knows best how to produce profits and govern their work force. How he believed this having the experiences he had had managing men in a cartage company closely associated with the railways I do not know. Britain has benefited from the slow growth of trade unionism. Most agree that without the trades unions acting as bargaining agents the country would have to be content with state intervention.

It was not universally considered, and certainly not at home, that a person’s job might not last a lifetime. That workers might have to retrain a number of times to adjust to industrial demands was never thought of. Flexibility and an open mind to changing circumstances were not universal traits. This was not just the closed minds of my parents but national habits… people did not readily accepted new methods of doing things in the home or workplace…, which made flexibility of thought and the acceptance of unexpected events impossible to come to terms with.

It seemed that my mother was quite happy that my father should have his own way all the time. She never questioned him, argued or discussed matters… it was how things were and had been.

My mother’s main love was her home and garden, her children and pets. She hailed after all from the country and never lost her love of flowers, animals, the seasons, and village life. She was neither sophisticated nor a seeker after the latest fashion. Her naturalness made her very comfortable to be with – a trait appreciated by her few friends. Above all she never lost her love for country living.

It has been, and is a continuing to be, a theme in these writings, that the British population after the war had to cope with a changing world… a world that could not, would not, and will not, ever be the same again, even though hankered for.

I do not remember my parents ever saying to me, my brothers or to each other, I love you. I never saw them kiss, hold hands, touch, and cuddle or show any sign of affection; they never gave way to sentiment or feelings of inadequacy nor admit they had been affected by sadness or sorrow. On the other hand, I do not remember any great displays of attachment – feelings of warmth, towards my friends by their parents… these were things thought to be sentimental, weak, emotional and ‘not British’. It wasn’t a way of teaching children to toughen up – to be unfeeling, just that individuals had to get on with life and ‘see it through’ – have a stiff upper lip

Chapter 6

My father had generously paid for a weekly train ticket – an action meant to demonstrate to me the confidence he had in my ability to hold down my first job. He was very much of ‘the old school’. Whilst I was looking forward to a bohemian life-style, he, understanding the ways of the world, looked towards my dedication and perseverance… to ‘set me up’, for a lifetime of work!

Ever since leaving home, my thoughts consumed by doubt and fear. Every part of me charged with foreboding. My walk, dodging in and out of the streams of workers down Station Road, Neasden, took me away from the railway station… past the bombed out sidings and goods-yard that stretched as far as Wembley. The soot blackened factory walls – hiding behind spearheaded railings… the endless rows of terraced Victorian villas – bravely advanced upon the pavement; their geranium filled window boxes trying to lend colourful distraction from the all too obvious bomb damage. A poster-hung hoarding exclaimed, by stark design, the virtues of Persil’s whitening power and Tetley’s superior leaf – promoted by a colourful plantation scene, which gave colour and softened the aspect… I reached the factory gate…

Peering out from behind the grill of a small enquiry hatch a portly gatekeeper acknowledged my knock. He was attired in a brown, patched, warehouse coat, gripping a rolled-up cigarette between a few stained teeth, croaked a gruff, ‘What-ja-want?’ My fear returned; I thrust out my letter – Mr Oppenheimer’s elaborate hand graced the paper… I made my first utterance since leaving home, ‘Here sir’! The door opened… I reluctantly squeezed in. My working life began…

The Gate Keeper showed me the clocking-in procedure, having found my card, then marched me down the long corridor which followed the whole length of the factory to the Artist’s Department. There, a grey painted sliding door opened onto a room furnished with eight six feet by four feet wooden tables, several racks of metal plates, and a small anti-room which contained the Forman’s toilet and a storeroom.

He introduced me to the foreman, Mr Brian Porter, whom I had met before at my interview. He, in turn, introduced me to Charlie Cockburn, the eldest in the room. Although past retirement age had elected to stay on – at onetime had been the foreman. Reg Passey held the position of unpaid deputy, Bruce Ormarod, the second eldest and the most irascible. Frank Clements the lettering artist and finally to Eric Campbell the ex-apprentice – had just serve an extra year’s apprenticeship to improve his skills.

I was then shown to an empty bench – to be mine, and to the storeroom cupboard, to be my responsibility. It had been explained to me at the interview that I was to serve a trial period and that if then I was accepted my indentures – a signed and sealed binding document made by the Master and Apprentice stating the terms and conditions, witnessed.

For my duties, I had Eric to show me round – as he was a most sensitive and industrious fellow, his explanation of my tasks most detailed and seemed to last for ages! The first thing in my day was to mix up the ink using an enamel plate as the mixing container I had to rub onto it a greasy wax black stick and then by rubbing the tip of my middle finger over the applied wax using water as the base. By this method, a black drawing ink produced – the consistency of thin cream.

My second task was to take the orders for dinners and snacks. Chromoworks had an efficient and popular canteen, which remained open for the next five years and that, was where my love for cheese rolls began. Their rolls freshly baked to a nicety and the butter and cheese unsparingly applied. The Works Drama Group laid on frequent dances and the annual Christmas Pantomime. The firm was a family run affair and The Directors looked upon their factory with parental responsibility; the workers viewed the firm as a means of employment and social companionship.

Chromoworks was self-contained not only having a canteen but a carpenters shop, its own engineers and electricians, a resident nurse and social worker and the works painter and decorator. It was efficiently run, clean, freshly painted, windows regularly replaced and cleaned, and the industrial site up-to-date regarding methods of production and delivery of goods.

Eric took me on a tour of the factory- to every department and shop, introducing me to all the workers. The works employed sixty percent men. The forty percent women mostly occupied positions in the warehouse and print finishing. Any man walking through these areas, for the women would call out and barrack them, took great care. However, it was all in good fun and never got out of hand. If any of the machine minders became too fresh they were soon slapped – the women sheet feeders who fed the paper into the grippers of the large machines worked on platforms above ground and the men passing would make to grab for a leg only to have their hand stood on. Mostly the machine minders were very protective of their women helpers so there were hardly any problems.

Chromoworks was a Lithographic Printers – a printing house that was able to reproduce in colour all forms of commercial printing work. Their work covered production of the smallest labels right through to the largest posters. The reproduction of drawings, paintings, photographic prints, and transparencies reproduced both photographically and by hand.

A Lithographic Artist in 1950 was still using the same tools, materials, and processes adopted in 1796. He was drawing on the printing surface with a wax crayon and ink… either copying a previously painted artwork or making his own drawing. The standing, and future development of the industry, were not explained to me – that the industry was about to be revolutionised by new technology; even if they had I would not have understood the significance.

I was born at the time Kodachrome transparency film was invented – a process giving excellent quality. In 1942, Kodacolor negative film was introduced which bought about the eventual tricolour separation for colour reproductions. It was during my apprenticeship that this discovery, and the inventions that followed, was introduced from America. By 1950, all small colour artworks were reproduced using photographic halftone principles, adopting primary colour filters to separate the tri-colour printing images. Lithographic colour retouchers corrected those separations for their spectral deficiencies.

I do not know how much the men understood about the changes that would come about when the film companies introduced their new discoveries and inventions. Even by looking at the American industry, you could not foretell the future. It has always been surprising to me how backward the Americans are in implementing new advances. Their printing processes were lagging behind European print houses. What was sure because I was there and experiencing it was that in 1956 the hand drawn poster industry was finished?

Photographic film was now produced in large format size with a stable backing… previously; photographic plate glass size was 30×20 inches. From that moment, a very quick change took place. It was a retrograde step but customers insisted upon having their work produced using the latest technology. It is obvious that multiple printing improves commercial posters, which were now printed in four colours instead of eight. Over printing increases depth of colour, allowing self-colours to match the original and customers house style. Those lovely seaside posters on railway platforms would never be seen again.

By the 1960s, electronic scanning began to be introduced for black and white newspaper block making using a Hell Klishograph. This spelt doom to photographic screened halftone images. Still, that was to come later, although workers began to appreciate what was in the air… These changes were to make the onetime power of the camera operator, colour retoucher, lithographic artist, and film planner, redundant…

After my trial period had been successfully completed – three months after starting work, I was invited to the following month’s union meeting to hear whether I was going to be allowed to become an apprentice. I stood outside, whilst my worth discussed; later allowed back in to hear the verdict by Frank Clements, the Father of the Chapel – elected sometime before I arrived at the firm. He continued in this position until the Printer Strike in 1956.

Frank was my mentor taken me under his wing ever since my first day in the works. He was an avowed Socialist, proclaimed the worth of social care and the brotherhood of man and was not afraid to say so – he frequently stood up at Head Office Union Meetings and declared his position – he was a most caring individual but unfortunately he expected others to be equally strong both in opinion, resolve and care for others.

This was all very well but his thinking did not seem to include a consideration for the management and owner’s need to make a profit; the effects of overseas and homegrown competition nor union strength used undemocratically. Without the use of a sealed ballot – to evade undue pressure applied to an opposing union or works committee.

The vote taken without dissention, I was pleased to stay and start my apprenticeship. However, I had to join the Union and attend Head Office and works meetings.

I started my five year Apprenticeship as a Lithographic Artist continuing very much the methods and techniques used all those years ago in Prague. One of my first tasks, after mixing up the ink required for all the artists, was to draw a letter ‘c’ by hand [without the use of a compass] large enough to fill a 60” x 40” poster plate. The Foreman, Mr Porter, got down on his hands and knees, gazed along the curves by turning the plate round and if there was the slightest bump or undulation, I had to do it again. I had to do that letter ‘c’ over a dozen times which took over a week and even then he only allowed me to stop and do something else when there was grumbling from the other men that I was being unfairly treated. This sort of attention to detail followed me in all that I did.

No work accepted unless it was of a very high standard. Eventually such tasks were commonplace; I had to draw the whole side of a Heinz bean label – that is all the written ingredients, letters that were half an inch high. However, for this I used a ruling pen and compass. These were the first tools bought at Cornelissens & Sons, and I have them here before me now, a half set of compasses and a ruling pen, so frequently sharpened down that it’s blades are half their original length.

My days at work quickly passed. There was so much that was new to me – so much which was a challenge. I had found by luck, something that interested me – and eventually after a lot of hard work became proficient. I was never a lettering artist although I could produce a reasonable effort. It was lucky that we had Frank Clements who did all the lettering… and he was good at it too. Sometimes to do small letters he would cut down a brush handle to make a wedge shaped tip and use that instead of a brush. It was at colour evaluation, that I found I had a natural bent. It never seemed to me to be difficult to assess how much of each colour needed. What I did not have was the strong fingers of Reg Passey who could lay on a three quarter tint of chalk work over a large poster plate first time, without having to build it up by continuous application of the crayon. His tint-work would be so smooth – without any patches.

It was in 1950, that Chromoworks won the contract to produce the official poster for the Festival of Britain. This was excellent for the firm and a whole range of posters needed, from small Underground Station posters to the largest forty-eight sheet posters measuring 200 x 120 inches. Much of the other work printed was a succession of well-known advertisers from Tetley’s Beer, Persil, Heinz, and British Rail. Annually Lyons Corner Shop commissioned pictures for their restaurants. What was interesting was that a number of these were the self-drawn works of well-known artists – known as auto lithographs.

Throughout my time as an artist, the basic drawing techniques never changed. To speed up the production of vignettes and increasing the weight of chalk work an airbrush was sometimes used… for smaller areas the use of Ben Day Mediums – a mechanical tinting devise with a raised dot structure stretched over a wooden frame charged with black ink, was appropriate. A pen and ink artwork or architectural drawing could be reproduced photographically that saved drawing by hand. All these methods were adopted to augment the use of chalk and ink.

Towards the end of the process – of hand drawn work, great efforts were made to stem the tide of the camera taking over. However, in the end customers wanted the latest techniques to help sell their produce – thinking that to be modern and up-to-date would give them an advantage – nothing would entice the client to stay with hand-produced posters. Those changes to the industry were to come about, when I came out of my time as an apprentice and had served my National service, six years later…

In October 1950, I started my indentured period of apprenticeship for one day a week, including the evening; I had to go to The London School of Printing at Bolt Court – just off Fleet Street, to study the City and Guilds Course for Lithographic Artists. Many of my fellow apprentices had been to the school for their full-time education, having passed an entrance examination. Their knowledge of the industry was far greater they had had the advantage of training in a department that had a long-term future – the majority were photographic colour retouchers.

The course was for five years and taught by lecturers who were still there in 1980. They were keen on me continuing with hand drawing and showed great interest in the work that I was doing. I produced a reproduction of a horse and cart in nine colours, using hand stipple, by pen and ink. This method of colour reproduction practiced in the 1920’s. It was, even to me, outdated, but I did as I was told… much later I regretted the waste of time and effort!

There was an air of obsolescence about the whole process. It was not just all the other industrial trades affected by modernization and union disruption. Printing, particularly for London’s national newspapers, beset by labour problems. National newspapers are unique. Their production is geared to ‘the latest story’ and ‘the fastest deadline’. They make their profit on the advertisers who use their vast circulation for maximum coverage of their product. Any disruption in production is critical. Newspaper owners are caught by the threat of a strike. They always gave in. This gave the letterpress union’s massive power and an enormous pay packet to boot.

I had to belong to a Trade Union. Chromoworks was a union house – a fact accepted by the management. The Legal status for such gatherings of workers did not come about until the mid-1860s, to include all trades. The monthly union meetings were held at Doughty Street in London, and all members took it in turn to attend and report to their colleagues what took place – raise any questions the chapel required an answer to, and to vote in a manner agreed upon.

The union was organised within printing houses and plate makers in trade groups called Chapels with officials elected annually. The representative for each chapel was called the Father-of-the-Chapel, who was voted into office, with the rest of the committee, annually. It was hoped, by keen trade unionists that each member would fill these positions in turn, in reality, all the officials continued until they gave up the position. Most of the business covered was routine and to a man, the chief participants were left wing Socialists… In 1950, the majority of workers were ex-service men in favour of a weak communist theory – to look after your brother.

The Head Office staff also retained their position until retirement – deputies into the shoes of departing leaders. The main union policy or philosophy was one-man one job – using a ‘white card system’. Every journeyman was equal to another the rulebook the law. There was only one problem and that is not everyone is equal – quality, efficiency and speed suffers.

The union was there to look after your interests from apprenticeship to retirement. The minimum wage was set annually for a trained member based on ‘the cost of living index.’ All other wages balanced to this sum, including apprentices, paid an incremental proportion.

The rulebook covered every known instance of dispute. On any ‘in house’ dispute, between a member and the employees, it was insisted that the Chapel would sort it out – by self-regulation. Any self-regulating system is flawed by self-interest, human foibles, and a lack of farsightedness.

In my experience, there was little regulation. Workers and management flouted agreements when it suited their interests. Managements were tied to making a profit, meeting deadlines, and competing against other firms, markets, and new techniques. Workers kept new production techniques and true production times secret whilst protecting the number of jobs and working habits.

Employers either extracted unfair profits in good times or did not have the will to take a moral stand in bad. They were at the mercy of the unions, especially the newspapers, who had a deadline to keep. Minor union officials were often dissatisfied men threatened by their own lack of skill – their need to control others gave them a feeling of power – to make up for their own shortcomings.

From 1950 onwards, momentous changes occurred in the printing industry. There was a transfer of work from one printing process to another as advancing technology dictated. Letterpress, up to 1960, was the process for general printing work, Lithography the process most suitable for large posters, and Photogravure ideal for long runs suitable for all the most popular magazine work including the Radio Times. This order of work lasted from the late thirties until the seventies, when lithographic web-offset printing took over the printed word – print runs for magazines and newspaper production.

Both letterpress and gravure declined leaving lithography in advance until jet and laser printing made inroads into that, in the nineties. While all this was going on, the labour force shuttled from one process to another, retraining as it went, trying to keep up with each innovation as it fitted into the production line.

Technical colleges could not keep pace and Training Boards floundered. Finally, the unions lost power and the adage of one-man one job went out of the window – colour scanners and word processors linked to laser printers won out. However, all this was to come. No one could predict in 1950, what was to happen in fifty years – a revolution for information technology, the reproduction of pictures and the printed word.

So ended my first fifteen – wartime interrupted, years. No great scholastic achievements – few personal attributes unearthed. These moments were for me, and for my circle of friends, times of childhood innocence of freedom, security and simple pleasures. In retrospect, they were halcyon days, taken for granted, and as described, doomed not to last. Are things better? In essence, judging by my own experiences and happiness, no!

I now realise my generation was very lucky – discipline, responsible behaviour and public order dissolved as the old social order changed. In America, the lowest common denominator was ‘anything for a fast buck’, here, ‘I deserve a living’, to became later ‘Because I’m worth it!’ Society now is far more selfish and demanding.

The anniversary of Prince Albert’s Exhibition of 1891, was celebrated a hundred years later in 1951, becoming The Festival of Great Britain to show the world Britain had survived – emerged from the conflict of war with all the skills and trades ready to resume where it had left off – to claim its previously held premier position.

The site chosen for the festival was the South Bank, of the Thames, which had been badly bombed. Several aerial attacks had left a derelict site close to the centre of London – an ideal place to show what the future would bring and to demonstrate what Britain could do. A joyous expression for a war weary nation. This exhibition brought about much needed work especially to those businesses around London. In the event, it had about the same effect as the millennium dome. To continue my story log-on to http://www.openwindowslearning.co.uk/ select ‘Bookcase’ chose a book or listen to a narration, meanwhile, I do hope I have proved my point.

CHAPTER 7

My story begins just after NATO was formed: when the Attlee Government took the country to war in Korea, Churchill regaining the premiership a year later, and three-quarters of all house building was by local authorities. It starts in the middle of a ten-year period – a period begun at the end of the war till the Macmillan government came to power, a golden age of local government power – parks, road verges and municipal gardens restored to pre-war standards; social mores returned – presented a solid foundation from which the war torn populace settled into civilian life. When Macmillan declared ‘you have never had it so good’, did he really know how right he was?

The present consumer driven economy started in 1955 – it was the start to the television boom, gradually overtaking all other forms of popular entertainment. The writing spans a period when the Conservatives held approximately twice the length in government – over Labour. This was the start to the free-world industrial power exerted by the integrated circuit, proposed by G W A Dunner…an invention to have profound effects on all careers.

I started work as an apprentice artist – in a printing house, learning about a method of reproduction discovered at the turn of the nineteenth century… no sooner was I trained than the craft was superseded by photography – later, film-masking which in turn gave way to electronic scanning, finally, the whole page was capable of being designed including pictures and type matter It was a forty-five year revolution in pre-printing technology.

Here are some of the cultural changes, which affected me, particularly those of the Trade Union. The period has seen enormous progress towards women’s liberation – to the position where few work places not served. These social changes affected physical and metaphysical sex, children, marriage, flexible working and consumer choice… how could I not be affected…?

The period covers a land where few ventured abroad, some, not out of their town or village. Within these years few have not flown, owned a car, had their kitchen designed or shopped at a supermarket… Britain was buying more than it was selling, ‘proclaimed The Times’, and Communism causing great anxiety – to the western world – particularly America. The general election in February registered a decline in Labour’s popularity. Later that year, the outbreak of war in Korea brought another economic crisis. It was a serious situation… prompted the following year by dissolution and subsequent election of Churchill, and the Conservatives. The death of George VI and coronation of Elizabeth II re-established Britain’s place in the world. These great events dwarfed my ‘going out to work, for the first time’. Industrially and economically, the country, through the media, admitted its consumer culture… well before Mrs Thatcher! The fifties were the start of many strikes – unofficial… in particular: the printing industry, coalmines and dockworkers. I was there, at the start, experiencing the effects it was having. Even for me – at such a young age – lacked working experience, it was unsettling! The negotiations between management and worker’s representatives became an annual event based upon ‘the cost of living’ as much as, ‘improving terms and conditions’. It took until the end of my National Service and final year of apprenticeship, to appreciate the seriousness of my position – I was now a skilled worker, in a redundant craft… In a technically changing industry that was in turmoil… I was coping with my sexuality and the effects of my upbringing. If that wasn’t enough… there was now industrial and social confusion. As with most, I married in my twenties and started out in a furnished flat… saving hard for a deposit whilst storing things away in our ‘bottom drawer’. It was the beginning of modern industrial life – information technology… and the disease of retraining each step taking me further away from handcraft to computer…! I hated its interruption… to ‘planning ahead’. I wanted to concentrate on my life not be continually plagued by a changing world about me. What an impossible thing to desire…! As with most marriages children arrived that added to the complications. My own upbringing directed how I should behave – plan for their futures… Now I could put into practice how I thought children, should be raised… in company with my wife’s thinking and Doctor Spock’s theories. Our long-term plans for the children were based upon the educational system then in place, plus a 1950s youth culture struggling with pre-war standards of social behaviour… This was also a new age ‘of women’s rights’. Their employment soaked-up vacancies in certain sectors of commerce and industry. By the beginning of the 60s, popular daily newspapers were printed and bought at the rate of two per household… indoctrinated by left wing theories.

I began working life in 1950, just before my fifteenth birthday… on a wage of thirty-seven shillings and sixpence. That I should stay on at school not considered worthwhile… my father, believing his children should bring money into the home as soon as possible, did not give the idea a moments thought. My brother and I, in ignorance, acquiesced – not fully understanding that an improved education could lead to greater choice – of jobs. The excitement of feeling ‘grown up’ – being a worker along with everyone else – having money in our pocket, obscured the fast approaching technical innovations. Even if my brother and I had decided to follow the path of education, my father would not have wanted us to do so. Many of the attitudes and life-styles of friends and neighbours were somewhat similar. It was a working class environment – the emphasis was on ‘working’, and the money earned. It was a preordained way of life based upon a pre-war culture … For my father it was a culture of discipline, hard work and principles and I suspect a fair dollop of ‘knowing ones place’.

Naturally, the complications of life – personal and social – sometimes recognisable, become compounded – the older one gets. I was an innocent of fifteen years, unbothered by choices – of my own or my parents, poorly educated, and socialised by five years attendances at Boys Brigade activities. My parents did not associate or link current issues of the day – affecting industrial and social changes, with their own experiences. Technical advances – commercial and industrial, gathered apace… to my parents, unrecognised – beyond their understanding. My father read a newspaper everyday… he scorned worker’s disputes, seen by him as ignorant follies.

There is no reason to suppose that the way they chose to bring up a family was any better than the way their parents tried. Each generation thinks they have the answer until faced with the realities of life – which are not forgiving. Children turn on their parents in every generation few escape criticism. With the divorce rate nearing fifty percent – including remarriages, there are going to be very many discontented children casting aspersions on their parents efforts – backs will have to be very strong! The only ones to escape will be those who have small families or no children at all.

Post war union struggles to improve worker conditions were threatened, by foreign competition and escalating cost of raw materials. These reasons not always recognised by office workers and housewives, but obvious to factory and manufacturing managers and workers.

Prime Minister Attlee’s Second Ministry coincided with the Korean War – the Communist northern state invaded South Korea on the 25^th.June 1950, the Berlin blockade – which lasted almost a year, only just been defeated in May 1949 by the Anglo-American airlift, and the forming of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Each, in turn, added further to our national debt.

The period 1950 – 1965 was in the main governed by the Conservative party under Churchill and Macmillan. In 1951, meat, butter, tea and sugar were still rationed. Rents were controlled and holidays abroad for the masses were out of the question. However, for those few who were lucky enough to have sufficient funds and could go abroad there was a fifty-pound limit – on what you could take out of the country. The wage restraint still working in 1950 was lowly relaxed…

At the start of the nineteen fifties, the average rate of inflation was nearly four per cent… fifteen years later over five. The growing power of the unions, particularly the various printing unions within newspaper houses – characterized the period. All the country’s powerful unions, involving: the generation of power, imports, exports, and industrial manufacturing, played an enormous part in shaping Britain’s economic future. The government, looking ahead, was greatly occupied with the nation’s economic structures – planning national performance figures and influencing social services – education, health, and benefits. However, out of town – in rural areas, the war had forced greater productivity – new machinery, and land use. This had not appreciably changed the character of the people. The pace was still slower than the town. The extra labour used during the war had left… water meadows, steep hillsides and difficult field boundaries reverted-back – to pre-war usages. The demobbed, did not all want to go back ‘to the land’ – they had learned new skills and wanted a part to play in ‘the industrial age’.

The war had been for Britain an economic disaster and would eventually cause the country to fall under the economic dominance of those countries they had previously fought… for they had the goad and goal – achieving something from nothing. The Marshal plan, which was an effort by the USA to stop Communism and to make aided countries beholden, enabled those past enemies to reconstruct new factories, which could incorporate new technological innovations. Their worker’s organisations, initially, concentrated on work and profit before conditions. Britain not only had to provide for the Korean War but also had to maintain the Welfare State, which took money away from investing in industrial expansion, renewal of outdated machinery and new technologies. There was student unrest, which stemmed from the Vietnam War… continued right through this period. It was an argument about consumerism [still with us today], the profit motive in big business and over production. Mass entertainment outside the home was from the motion picture industry exported from America. These films depicted the American way of life – behaviour, language, living conditions and expectations – new forms of dress and transport. It was only natural that we, in Britain, should aspire – to those new freedoms of expression and consumer objects. Educating Archie the most popular pre-television radio programme… this was the end of radio’s golden age. TV began to take a hold even forcing the weekly visit to the cinema to decline in popularity… theatres lost audiences becoming uneconomic… pulled down… never to be rebuilt. At weekends, the towns and cities pulsated with the desires of an expanded population – eager to improve their living standard. The arbiter being ‘The Media’, and in particular, the latest fad promoted by the glossies.

CHAPTER I

It did not take long to get into the swing of working life… Up, out of bed, a quick wash and a snatched breakfast… then, a quick dash down the road, to reach the station in time to catch the seven o/clock train for Wembley Park…

In 1950 there were still steam trains running on the brown liveried Metropolitan Line. The slam-door carriages held a dozen passengers all intent upon trying to read their newspapers whilst packed together like sardines. My journey lasted thirteen minutes, stopping at three stations…, at the fourth, the doors opened to disgorge half the passengers… myself amongst them. Not stopping for breath, I, and the other mackintoshed paper carrying passengers, forced a way over to the other side of the platform. We pushed our way into the underground train – already waiting at the platform… not needing to be reminded ‘to mind-the-gap’…, as the doors slid shut…

Gasping for breath, I attempted to glance at the Daily Mail – to check the printing vacancies, clinging, as I did so, to the overhead strap. The passengers, hundreds of other expressionless workers, swayed to the hypnotic clackerty-clack, as the train travelled along the track towards Neasden. This was the start, to a lifetime of travelling up to London. A habit-forming ritual, as I, and every other passenger, fought for space and isolation engrossed in their books or reading for the umpteenth time the advertising streamers.

My destination – Neasden, was a rather dingy outreach of Willesden Green a place where trolley buses ran – receiving their power from overhead lines. Neasden’s most important employer was British Rail who operated its railway sidings. Reputed to be one of Britain’s largest goods yards, work went on round the clock… railway enthusiasts could always see great activity and register numerous working engine numbers. Obviously, the sidings importance were internationally known, for numerous Nazi hit and run raids damaged the tracks and further defaced the Victorian terraced houses that lined the perimeter fence.

It had never been a place of any pretence or elegance, even when first built… languishing as it did so between Blackbird Cross and Willesden High Road. The rows of terraced housing – three up two down were purpose built for railway workers and their families.

Along with hundreds of others, I joined the stream of hurrying workers marching up the stairs, like the march of the troglodytes, past the booking hall out onto the street, there, to turn right onto the pavement leading down the hill past the railings… Trying to walk on the pavement was a feat in itself… ducking in and out, now one foot in the gutter the other on the kerb, jostling with the rest of the early birds…down the hill – as the human tide surged about me. Sheltering behind the hoardings – from the wind, I strode on, past British Thompson Houston and Dalmyers optical works to Chromoworks, perched on the Willesden Road, behind some unimposing iron railings, which corralled the car park. Opposite, the showroom windows of coach-builders Park Ward, reflected and distorted the polished Rolls-Royce cars that lent an aura of respectability to the whole neighbourhood… Just along the road, a forlorn café perched next to a paper shop – a rather seedy establishment that sold sweets and cigarettes. It was here that I bought my cigarettes in packets of five with a book of matches. When times were extra hard, which was almost weekly, the cheapest brands, Weights, Woodbines or Turf, could be purchased one at a time… to become my saviour – from depression, boredom, and at times, shattered confidence – when jobs went wrong.

Reaching the gate, I braced myself before entering, remembering that ‘I must order the men’s cheese rolls and dinner choice… early’. With that thought in mind, I passed by the canteen.

I was usually the first to clock in. Inserting the card, I jerked down the handle… 7.50 in purple ink. I started off, down the long corridor… past the warehouse, printing shop and stairs, leading up to the grainers… past the lavatory, turn left and there on the right the sliding door surrounded by large printing plates propped handily against each wall. Hardly an imposing entrance or welcoming sight, nevertheless it was the firms Artist’s Studio.

The smell of turps and printing ink greeted me as I made my way into the large airy room… I headed for the store cupboard to fetch out the enamel plate and stick of ink. Rubbing the ink stick on the plate, I splashed a small amount of water in and started to rub my finger round and round to mix-up the ink – into a creamy, opaque mixture… I wondered how many times apprentices had gone through a similar induction to their working day…?

Just outside the room…. along the corridor, the machine shop burst into life. The machine assistants fetched tins of ink from the store. The machine minders opened the tins and troweled some onto their mixing slabs. There, they worked the ink, oil and driers together to form the correct consistency… as the inking slabs resounded to the slap of palette knives – that pummelled and squeezed out the ink…

The printing plates, wrapped round the plate-cylinder, were damped over – with a water-soaked sponge that also removed the gum layer. The brakes squealed, as they stopped the cylinder turning. The machine minder scraped the mixed-ink into the inking duct, and laid on a palette knife – full of ink, to the rollers… Then the warning bell rang, as power was switch on. The cylinders revolved and the sheeting lever released, as the vacuum pumps ‘puffed and sucked’ – opening and closing the sheet feeders. The hiss of the ink-coated rollers – as they came in contact with each other, and the ‘click’ of the gripper’s release gear – letting go the paper…, the stack began to grow…

The warehouse girls, feeding in the paper, burst into song, ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’… as they positioned the next sheet against the lay-bars. The minder rushed round to the front of the machine to extract a sheet to check the register and colour… This was the scene at all printing firms throughout the country.

I loved the activity, the rhythmic sounds and evocative smells… being in the company of others, skilled workers all contributing to creating, what I thought to be, a work of art… part of an age-old printing industry, with skills and routines that had hardly changed from its conception – a hundred years before.

Lithographic printing is ‘a chemical process’ – using a surface image rather than raised – for letterpress, or sunken, for engraving. The lithographic process was discovered in 1798, by fortuitous accident. Alois Senefelder, a book and music publisher, of Munich, grasped the significance of a dampened non-image area, which repelled greasy black ink.

Hand drawn colour lithographs – printed from stones or metal plates, is the only commercial reproduction method to simulate drawing with a brush, crayon or pencil. Both the production of letterpress blocks and engraved plates are stilted mechanical processes – which lacked artistic freedom. The hand-drawn lithographic reproduction has a random chalk image that does not rely upon a mechanical screened image – to show graduations of tone.

The first lithographic printing surface was that of a smoothed, locally hewn, limestone, which retained its quality – remained damp when water applied. Later… grained aluminium and zinc plates took the place of stone – a surface medium able to wrap round a printing cylinder.

Kelheim limestones are cut in the quarry three to four inches thick – for various machine sizes… then, given rounded edges and corners. The stones then either polished or grained depending on the size of the ‘run’ and the ‘quality’ required.

Initially, Senefelder used a smooth ungrained surface to write his music. When illustrating his work he produced tonework with a pen and ink – to produce stipple work [dots], or scraped away a solid patch – to give a line, crosshatched or woodblock effect. Later, for commercial jobs, the stone’s surface grained – to allow crayon-work to be used – to give a pencil tint. Graining also increases the surface area – allows the dampening effect of water to last longer – allowing a greater number of prints to be made.

The stone’s grained surface is produced by rotating a levigator, [trade name for a hand spun metal wheel… mimicked a corn mill], or, spinning two stones in contact – grained two stones simultaneously. Both these methods used graded qualities of silica sand – as aggregate, plus copious amounts of water [old work removed by the same process]. Steel straight edges provided an accurate level. When graining metal printing plates the same principle applied – a graining machine oscillates – as a rotating bed, using various sizes of metal or glass marbles – depending on the finished grain size required. Whether stone of metal plate, the final grained surface is washed and prepared using a very weak acetic acid – cleans the surface by removing any grease particles – giving the surface an even greater grease receptiveness.

The lithographic hand press uses both the principles of a letterpress screw press – for pressure, the engravers reciprocating press – to produce a larger print size and the operation of a scraper bar on the tympan – greater, directed, pressure. The first hand press, using the same principle as a clothes mangle, plus a scraper blade, instead of a wooden roller, was built at the turn of the eighteenth century – just after the discovery of the process. Fifty years later, in the 1850s, lithography became the premier printing process for monotone and colour. My work as an apprentice and during training used exactly the same type and age of hand press.

The artist’s studio – my responsibility to keep tidy, had a high ceiling strung with suspended fluorescent lights. The tall, metal framed, windows – glazed with wired, hammered, safety glass, let in a filtered, glittering light, still clothed – to the higher panes, with a criss-cross of sticky brown paper – there to guard against shattering – caused by London’s blitz. The walls, painted a light mustard colour, gave a mellow look to the otherwise harsh interior. Painted below the dado-line – braking up the expanse of tobacco stained wall colour – mid-grey… those areas that could be seen, unbroken by racks of zinc printing plates propped against the walls.

The stained and uneven floorboards – raised, where the nails and hard polished knots protected the surface, defied continual wear… smelt of turps and benzene. The planked surface blackened with chalk shavings, cigarette burns, and scratched by the edges of hundreds of metal plates dragged over them, testified to many years of service. The large wooden benches – massive legs capable of supporting heavy stones, arranged to give access to all sides… their owner, protected by dark grey warehouse coat… stretched across their surface – attending to a chalked tint or penned letter. The atmosphere smells and rustles, the same as years gone by – when the process discovered…

In 1822, it was demonstrated that ‘by overprinting several colours’ the lithographic process could make a reasonable reproduction of a coloured original, even though the number of copies limited.

Commercially, the chromolithographic process began in 1850. Previously, all printing work had been in a black and white line image [monochrome]. The public anticipated colour so did the advertisers. To some extent, hand-colouring prints did produce the desired effect, but only ‘for limited editions’ – not for ‘the mass market’. Letterpress and lithography both vied with each other to produce many copies of a commercially acceptable coloured reproduction – which matched the artwork. Chromolithography won… but not for long!

The changes that did come about to the lithographic and letterpress processes in the first hundred years, concerned mechanics, not principle – the use of metal rather than wood- in the construction of the press and the type. Later, the use of rotary action rather than reciprocation further advanced each process until, finally… conversion – of the coloured continuous tone picture, by the photographic halftone principle. The photographic reproduction of coloured originals had a relatively short life span. Eventually, in the 1980s, the electronic revolution began by introducing colour scanners… ink and laser jet printing.

1. When a new job estimated, for a hand drawn lithographic reproduction, a decision of how many colours required is the first consideration. Obviously if the job is for a cinema poster the number of colours would be less than for a facsimile of a fine art reproduction. The average number for a commercial reproduction is eight: buff, yellow, flesh, blue, red, black, pink, and grey.

2. A swatch or tab of each colour to be printed is stuck onto a piece of card to remind the artist exactly what colour he is working to, and give the printer a guide – when mixing his colours.

3. Multi-colour printings must register on the sheet of paper. The artist needs an accurate tracing to use as a guide to reproduce the original. To achieve this, the artist traces an outline guide. This guide, called ‘the key’, gives an exact position of each colour, shape, shade, brush stroke, shadow, and highlight. To position this correctly on the paper, register marks added for the printer.

4. The guideline, on each stone or plate, has to be non-greasy. Either the original tracing has to be retraced onto as many plates and stones that are to be used, using a non-greasy setoff powder, or the Keyline traced in conte crayon and rubbed down. Commercially, a key stone or plate is drawn, a black ink pull taken, the wet ink line dusted with purple setoff powder and the key pressed onto as many stones or plates as necessary.

5. Each printing stone or machine plate, with its faint purple line-image, can now be ‘drawn-up’ in black ink or crayon – to represent the weight of colour to be printed. The artist will use: pen line and stippling, Ben Day tinting mediums, splatter-work, airbrushing, flat crayoning and finger tinting, jumper work, sharpened crayon, sponge and stump work.

6. Incorrect work on the plate can be removed using blotting paper soaked in benzene for both ink or crayon work, and an etcho-stick [chalkstone] on a wet stone or plate when proving. Care taken, not to remove the grain, especially on a zinc plate, for that might create a scum of half-removed work when printing. No method is perfect or wholly reliable on metal plates, for utmost cleanliness is essential at all times. The limestone, being relatively soft, allows its surface to be engraved, scraped, carved, or etched.

7. Before starting to draw each colour, all non-image areas should be painted with gum Arabic – to desensitize the stone’s surface. This prevents dirt, dust, finger marks, or stray grease affecting the clean paper areas.

When the printing stone or plate had been drawn – ready for printing, the image should be ‘proved’ – to secure the work and to make sure that what is on the printing surface is what is wanted. There are three reasons why ‘proving’ the image has to take place:

i. The artists drawing ink and crayon, does not contain a ‘sufficiently greasy content’, to ensure a permanent image – a more grease receptive image has replace the drawn one.

ii. Before printing, the printing surface has to be scrupulously clean – showing only that which is to be printed.

iii. The printing image must be capable of producing multiple impressions.

• The completed ink and chalkwork drawing is dusted with French chalk – using a shaker and cotton wool puff. This prevents the work smudging when gummed-up.

• The stone or plate is ‘gummed up’ – using a sponge soaked-in a gum arabic solution – to cover the whole plate surface. To prevent smearing or interfering with the image in any way, dab over the dusted work, do not rub.

• Gum Arabic crystals melt in water – to make a thin creamy consistency [test for ‘tack’ between finger and thumb]… applying gum arabic desensitizes the non-image areas – makes the non-image areas ‘water receptive’. If the gum-Arabic solution is too watery, there is the danger that you will remove some of the fine chalkwork. Similarly too thick the solution will scrub the image. You do not add any acid to the first application of gum solution for the same reason. The solution will be useable for a few weeks steadily becoming acidic which will have an etching effect.

• When the Gum Arabic solution applied to the printing surface, the excess is blotted-away – using newspaper. This reduced the gum to a thin layer. The surface is then fanned dry. The Gum Arabic will only adhere to the non-image area.

• The artist’s ink and chalkwork is now removed with turpentine using a pad of bound felt. When that has been achieved, remove the excess turpentine with a cloth, which leaves a ghost image, and fan dry.

• The ghost image-area is now fortified with ‘washout’ ashphaltum – a thin greasy tar solution that has a greater ability to attract grease [transfer or black printing ink reduced slightly with linseed oil can take the place of washout]. Excess removed and the surface fanned dry.

• The printing surface dampened with water – using a sponge. The drawn image now replaced by ink – using an ink-charged nap-roller – applied in a number of directions to ensure even coverage. Unwanted work can now be removed with an etcho-stick…, the plate or stone fanned dry and dusted with French chalk.

• If the plate or stone is not to be used, it is gummed over with gum-etch [gum Arabic and much-diluted nitric acid. Remember to only add acid to water], this keeps the surface clean. The printing plate can now be stored to await proving or printing.

• When ‘machine proving’, prepare a suitable amount of transfer or black printing ink on your rolling up slab. Charge a composition-rubber hand-roller. Dampen the printing surface – with a water soaked sponge. Roll-up the image uniformly in a number of directions using the ink charged roller… whilst continuing to keep the non-image areas damp…

• Finally, prove the work – by taking an impression on paper. The rolled-up printing stone or plate, transferred to the press, dampened, and re-rolled using a composition roller charged with black printing ink. All ink rollers whether composition or nap should be stored on a rack, not left lying on the ink slab.

• Place a sheet of paper on the stone. Lay-on additional sheets as ‘backing-sheets’ – this finely adjusts the pressure on the plate or stone by the scraper bar. Lower the tympan – a thin sheet of tin held in a frame hinged to the middle of the machine, which the scraper-bar runs over. The stone – resting on the ‘bed’ of the press, now raised-up to meet the scraper-bar using a jacking lever. Using the cranking handle, the bed wound by ratchet on a track, beneath the scraper bar, previously adjusted for pressure by the screw. The bar or lever dropped back into place – to take the pressure off, and the bed run-back. The tympan raised and packing sheets and ‘proof’ removed. The resulting proof is a ‘direct’ impression – straight from stone or plate. This reverses the image on the plate.

To make the image ‘right reading’ the image either has, to be drawn in reverse, or, transferred – using two ‘damp-proof transfer-papers’ and another printing surface. It was not until 1905 that a rubber blanket used to transfer an image from stone to blanket, then from blanket to paper – to produce an indirect, ‘offset’ reproduction.

The 1880s saw photographs reproduced. The photographic prints, with their continuous tone image, converted using a ‘halftone screen’. Ten years later, this halftone process applied to coloured photographs.

A coloured artwork is photographed three times using three separate films. Each separate exposure made through a primary light filter to make three separation negatives – one through the red filter, one through the blue and the final one through the green filter. These three negatives are now converted to a positive image and screened by contact or camera. The result from this action is to reverse the image from negative to positive and reverses the colour separation from primary filter colour to positive secondary colour. Each of these now positive images are made into three separate printing plates. Each plate now represents a positive image for its secondary light colour. There is a plate for the cyan printer, a plate for the yellow printer and one for the magenta printer. We can now print each one of these on top of each other [to overprint] to reconstruct the original artwork.

By 1900, lithographic printing was well established. The industry now saw the introduction of the cylinder press. Rotary printing, and the wrap-round rubber blanket – transferring the image to the paper ‘right reading’, took a further five years.

It was discovered, at about the same time, that if a stone were to be grained [given a slightly rough surface] a wax crayon could be used to draw with to represent tonework – much like pencilling. The result, when printed was a crayoned effect similar to a pencil image… the wax crayon producing an image that could be ‘rolled up’ and proved, in exactly the same manner as the solid ink line-work. This transformed the chromolithographic industry. Oil paintings and watercolours were now capable of being reproduced – using fewer printings – to achieve the same result… All the Commercial Artist’s work was now capable of being reproduced, including the lettering.

Artists appreciated that they too – could produce their own work – to make fine art prints. They were not able to show the same expertise in application. Their work, depicting a free unrestrained quality, became autolithographs.

To reproduce an oil painting needed twelve or more printings, plus an engraved stone for canvas texture, brush strokes and impasto work, faithfully copied – using an embossing technique. For every day reproductions – advertising theatre productions, greeting cards and packaging labels, fewer colours were needed.

Colour printing technology and type composition improved over the years… that allowed faster production, increased the length of the machine run and improved quality.

I was fortunate, not by foresight but by chance, to be working for a lithographic printing house… at a time when drawn lithographs – the process used by advertisers, agencies and poster designers, used for poster production – for hoardings, tea houses and railway platforms. It was also the time when lithography was about to overtake the letterpress industry as the ‘printing process for the jobbing printer’.

A reasonable colour reproduction on paper was only possible a few years before the First World War… a number of inventions and discoveries came about together to make this possible. Hand drawn reproduction techniques only lasted fifty years, before giving way to photographic processes. My apprenticeship came right at the end of this fifty-year period.

By 1955, colour corrected, separated film sets, now patched together with typematter, onto clear plastic foils – in page and sheet position. This transformed the platemaking industry. It was a far simpler method to create a printing plate for multi image production. These innovations made lithography preferable to letterpress. A few years later, the same thing happened to the photogravure industry casting many workers aside – when faster and cheaper lithographic plates and platemaking made the process acceptable – for fast, long runs with he ability to make quick changes to plate content.

My three-month trial period disappeared in a flash. To be indentured as an apprentice, the union members had to vote whether I was suitable… the management also had a say in the matter…

At the following month’s union meeting, I was asked to ‘stand outside’, while they discussed my future… Thankfully, I was accepted. The indenture was then legally drawn-up, for me to sign, as did the Directors, and the seal applied – guaranteed the training, conditions and scale of payment.

For one hundred years, the Lithographic Artist considered the premier skill of the printing trades… from 1950 onwards, steeply in decline. The baton then taken up by the photographic retoucher, camera operator and film planner… handing it on ten years later – to the scanner operator.

My pay was, linked to that of a journeyman’s rate, two guineas a week, for forty-eight and a half hours, plus two weeks holiday. I had to attend The London School of Printing, on a one day a week Lithographic Artists course. A set of drawing equipment bought at Cornellisons was my first job and the men gave me various tools to start.

The Festival of Britain, held in 1951, was supposed to herald Britain’s recovery. However, we still had enormous repayments to make to America… a fact the media did not explain clearly to the population. Britain was now a second-class power still operating as if nothing had changed. British industry in general still spent heavily on research and development. This was a spill over from the war effort particularly into aircraft manufacture and allied industries – radio communication, radar and electronic engineering. Two thirds of all exports were science-based much of the development work coming from America. The pre-printing industry used much development work from American film companies particularly Kodak who were manufacturing their new polyester backing for films. Colour correction for the printing tri-colours used the Kodak double-overlay masking soon to be replaced by the Tri-mask system.

During my apprenticeship taught the craft… working on my own reproductions… continually repeat any technique not mastered. Lettering was another challenge. One of my tasks was to draw the letter ‘C’ with a circumference of two feet – to draw the curves by hand. The foreman would get on his hands and knees following the curve round, the slightest bump or cavity I had to do it all again. When I had done this five or six times, I became very careful not to make the mistake again. All the members of staff checked all my jobs in turn so that I would have a total understanding of every technique. My fingers became hardened by gripping the snapped off chalk, especially when having to crayon large areas of tint… the ends of my fingers, at first, worn down, gradually they grew hard skin.

Doing all these elementary tasks over a protracted period made me respect what they meant by doing a job perfectly. I was expected to do a job better than a journeyman – I had more time… They were working commercially – quickly, doing the job, ‘right first time’. When an artist told to copy something, it had to be exactly like the original… no excuses accepted. Some of the work for Lyons had been drawn by the artist onto printing plates… these are called autolithographs. The trained artist often viewed the work produced by such artists as crude – lacking in drawing technique and unfinished. The trained man took a delight in producing work of fine quality copying the artwork in every detail he was skilled. The autolithographer used many drawing techniques to obtain the expression desired. Quite often, these techniques were inappropriate for reproduction and caused many problems for the prover and machine minder.

One of my tasks was to draw a ‘key’, tracing with pen and Indian ink on Kodatrace, of a Lyons Tea Shop artwork. This was one of a series first introduced three years before… this being the first of a second issue. They were, introduced by Lyons to cheer up their teashops giving them framed lithographic prints, in bright colours, to hang on their walls.

I had to take particular care to see that every shape recorded. The resulting keyline drawing exposed, in contact with a light sensitive coating, to a zinc plate. The light hardened the coating of the non-image areas to allow the softer parts to be replaced with a greasy ink. When rolled up the plate became the ‘key plate’ to make transfers for each colour, to be drawn mostly in eight colours.

These quality prints were much sought after, and proved a favourite with the public. We all enjoyed spending time on these as a change from working on large posters. Not only were the subjects well drawn and painted but the impasto brush strokes had to be reproduced as well.

I had to address the men respectfully… they were my teachers… half the department not long been demobbed. Even so, they still demanded respect, for they had gone through a similar tough apprenticeship. An exception, not made for me, for they had every intension to make sure I ‘was up to the mark’ – not let the department down.

Chromoworks took its name from ‘a small reproduction of a coloured original’ – of an oil painting or other artists medium. The history of printing shows a challenge exists, between all the processes – which can produce the cheapest work with the longest run. As all businesses, price of product always the ultimate determinate.

Letterpress continued to be the main producer of books and newspapers well into the nineteen eighties when the cheap production of the lithographic plate and photographic page planning changed the whole industry. Photogravure still printed the radio and TV times and women’s magazines… the massive ‘runs’ of several million copies. Within a few years, they too gave way to the lithographic process.

CHAPTER 8

In 1948, the government decreed all men over the age of eighteen were to take part in two years National Service, in one of the three services. These years, could be, deferred – ensuring apprenticeships and training schemes completed before entering. I elected to do my National Service during my apprenticeship and serve an extra year to make up for the two years lost. That meant I would be ‘out of my time’ by the time I was twenty-one. The three years spent as an apprentice soon past by.

A group of us lads – in The Boys Brigade, decided to join the Royal Marine Forces Volunteer Reserve [RMFVR] based at Moorgate in London. I think it was only the thrill of the challenge and the uniform, which drove us on. By signing on allowed our National Service time to be spent in a unit that normally would not take two-year entrants. Meanwhile, my best friend David Villers left North London Polytechnic to start a job with a northern-based newspaper as a trainee sports correspondent.

The Royal Marines formed in the middle of the seventeenth century to be part of the compliment onboard capital ships… they were mainly to act as guardians to the captain and officers… accommodated on mess decks that separated officers from men. Their secondary job was to guard the officer’s quarters, gangways, embarkation entries, quarterdecks, cells and gunnery decks. During battle, they not only guarded those spaces but platforms in the ships rigging – to kill opposing sharpshooters and to maim the directing officers of opposing ships. In many instances, they provided shore going raiding parties – acting as Special Forces. The Corps of Royal Marines divided into three Wings: Sea Service, previously described, Commando and Amphibious.

The term commando originated from the Boar War. They were mounted light infantry commanded to hit and run as armed raiding parties. Their task was not to be bogged down by conventional warfare situations by holding positions awaiting backup troops and provisions but to be flexible in approach. Churchill ordered the forming of Commandos Units during The Second World War with a similar job in mind.

It was not long before splinter groups – Special Forces, began to be formed which attended to specific demands. All these groups: Landing Craft for Infantry and Tanks, Small Boat Raiding Craft, Special Boat Section, Beach Control Parties, Boom Defence, underwater swimmers, divers and shoreline specialists were amalgamated into the Amphibious Section Royal Marines at Poole.

As soon as we were kitted we had to attend lectures on the history of the corps and to fall-in for basic drill. It was all very informal and friendly, great emphases made that the detachment was a large family. It expected that we would attend as many lecture nights and informal occasions as possible. It did not take many weeks before we were considered fit to march in public and wear the uniform on every occasion.

Now most of my weekends were booked for rifle shooting. We all arrived at the Moorgate drill hall where a Royal Navy truck took us to one of the two ranges, Bickley or Pirbright. Our Saturday nights were spent in the huts close to the rifle range. Now, even my reading time taken over, evenings and weekends filled.

The commando training took place on the Welsh hills where camping out was normally held during the winter. Route and speed marches organized for groups and pairs. Map reading and survival training were all part of the experience. I do not remember anyone dropping out or questioning what we were instructed to do. We were given, basic infantry training with a modicum of unarmed combat, cliff climbing, rope work plus the usual assault courses. After attending regularly for over nine months and passing a set series of commando exercises in the Welsh hills, route marches and target practice, we finally climbed Snowdon, which earned our green beret.

Every year, in November, the Royal Marines Volunteer Reserve invited to contribute a contingent towards the Lord Mayor’s inaugural show. A squad, including myself, practised drill and marching on the Honourable Artillery Company’s drill square, which was just next door, for weeks before the event. There was also a regular monthly dance, attended in walking out uniform; the canteen bar was always open which provided a decorative backdrop to the occasion. It was without doubt an excellent convivial company without any stress or bad feelings generated from any quarter. Everyone was a volunteer and wanted to be there and to take part in all the activities.

The year was up… It was now 1953, I was eighteen, Mrs Dale’s Diary the most successful radio soap, gave the life of a doctors wife, that was distinctly upper-middle class in content. Fifty percent of all children went to Sunday school and about the same percentage of boys enrolled in a youth organization. Although I did not recognise the fact the consumer society was about to gather momentum.

My call-up papers arrived and off I went off to Lympstone, Devon, to do my infantry training, which was to take seventeen weeks. I became one of the 843 squad. During our training we had instruction on personal hygiene – how to wash and iron, how to clean our teeth, what to wear, how to wear it and how to clean it. Corps history was emphasised reinforced by a simple written test, contraception matters and a medical with its attendant jabs and inoculations. We had the pleasure to make up a concert party for the annual Christmas party.

Most people would think that the training would follow how things done in the conventional army – after all, it was infantry training? There was a concerted effort by RM Instructors to be different from the Army. I never heard a swear word used by our company sergeant major during drill nor by our small arms instructor. In fact, swearing never adopted by any of the staff. The raised voice too was something frowned upon. All commands made only loud enough for those men under instruction to hear. There was no exaggerated stamping of feet. These changes from Army habit to Royal Marine difference was recognised and emphases made – it was instilled in us to be different not just for differences sake but because it was considered to be a better way. Every man who passed the entrance inspections was accepted whatever his height. There was a further emphasis on initiative, freedom of movement – to achieve the objective and sometimes choice of weapons carried. The esprit de corps – engendered a dedication… not to let down the squad or section – to those around him, who were to be considered a close-knit family.

My ten-week infantry training started October 1953. I arrived at Waterloo Station and travelled down to Lympstone in Devon in company with some other lads who were joining up. I had to leave my uniform behind, to be re-issued when I got there. We were to make up the compliment of 843 squad for basic training, led by Colour Sergeant Snowden… There was about fifty of us split into two huts, with a Corporal in charge of each.

We started our training… a more complete version of what we volunteers had been doing for the past year. Towards the end of our ten-weeks – Christmas 1953, the squad enrolled in a Christmas concert party to sing two songs… Marbella Margarita and Little David trained and conducted by the Surgeon Lieutenant. Two days later, we went home on leave to start our next assignment when we arrived back – to continue training in our chosen Wing.

After our initial training, we had to make a choice between the three Wings: 45 Commando, who were in Malaya, Amphibious Section at Poole Harbour and Sea Service. Having been in the Commandos I elected to go into Sea Service fancying a trip round the world with sunshine, grass skirted native girls, the sound of Hawaiian chants and the sun glittering of the wave tops around Gibraltar, Singapore and Barbados. What a shock I was going to have!

I was detached and sent to Whale Island Gunnery School, Portsmouth, with a small group to attend a gunnery course, scheduled to last four weeks. Here all recruits had to double to all lectures, demonstrations and practices. It was freezing cold being in mid winter and it snowed most of the time I was there. The practices completed firing the four point seven guns – the standard gunnery piece. All the equipment was old and much used evident by the amount of paint that had been built up on the carriage. The four training weeks went by quickly – found the squad hanging round the Company notice board to see what ship allotted.

At last, my name appeared telling me to present myself to Portsmouth Harbour where HMS Illustrious, a large [by British standards] aircraft carrier, was taking in stores and additional crew. Built by Vickers Armstrong and launched on April 5^th 1939, commissioned a year later at Barrow, to carry fifty-two aircraft … the ship was now nearly twenty years old. I was one of a half dozen Royal Marines who had to present ourselves to the Officer of the Watch, get ourselves new kit, be introduced to the hammock – be shown our mess deck… where I slung mine and ate there, for just over a year.

It would be nice to be able to say that for all that time I spent onboard I learnt valuable lessons, was introduced to new exciting experiences, prepared myself for taking an active life in modern Britain and be shown how efficient and up-to-date our military might was. However, I cannot say that. We were a training ship for aircrews and sailed out into mainly coastal waters to fly-off and land-on planes. At action stations, my post was on the island operating one of the seventeen-bofor guns.

The ship was leaking to the extent that the pumps could hardly control the inflow of water. Most of the equipment was out of date and extensively used. There were many crashes and frequent ditching of written off planes. Whereas the ship’s naval crew were fully occupied running the ship and the Fleet Air Arm fully engaged with their aircraft we The Royal Marines were monstrously scrubbing decks, standing guard and operating some of the guns. There was absolutely no point in us being there – firing the guns to give the aircrews a taste of attacking through simulated ack-ack fire – this practice firing could have been performed equally well by naval ratings. As for scrubbing decks these, we had to make-do with hand scrubbers only and take up water with cloths – long handled brooms and squeegees banned. At one stage, we took onboard some new replacement Royal Marines who had flown back to the UK after having just come out of the jungles of Malaya fighting terrorists. Now it was their turn to scrub decks and paint ship. What a waste of experienced fighting men by the military planners.

Whilst onboard I struck up a friendship with another Marine who had his coxswain’s ticket for dinghy sailing he asked me if I would crew for him. Thereafter, wherever HMS Illustrious entered port – if suitable harbour facilities – we would launch a General Purpose [GP] 14 dingy and have a sail. This we did on many occasions becoming quite expert at launching and coming into position to be hoisted inboard.

To launch we had to arrange for a forklift driver to carry the boat out of the hanger onto the lift and deposit it under the crane. Then the crane driver would drop the boat over the side and we would pick it up after guiding it under the gangway ladder.

Anything under a force five wind which was not about to increase we could sail. If a gale was imminent, a cone hoisted. This warning had to be obeyed – return onboard immediately. On one occasion in Belfast, we went out on a lovely day in a force three wind and sailed for over an hour testing ourselves on going about and close hauling into the wind. By this time, we were quite some way from the ship and did not notice that the wind was rising. When we thought we ought to return we looked to the ship and saw that they had hoisted a cone. We set about returning onboard only to discover the wind and tide against us, coming onshore – into Belfast Bay, and the sea starting to get up, making a return trip more lengthy. We started tacking furiously trying to make headway. By this time, even we could see that the waves were beginning to be considerably fiercer and I do not think we needed to look at each other to realise that we had ourselves into quite a pickle.

At last we began to get sufficiently near to the ship to see that she was streaming before the wind and tide, which did not allow us any lee to shelter – we could then sail to either side for hoisting inboard. The officer of the watch was there as well as the guards and duty crane driver. The side of an aircraft carrier is I suppose as high as a five-floor block of flats, the sides curve upwards and outwards – overhanging anything beneath… all accentuating height, weight and mass… is intimidating!

This was all becoming decidedly embarrassing and we knew that the flight deck personnel would be attending the steam catapult gear for repairs for they had been there when we left. There were times in my life when I wished I were many miles away from where I was at that moment and this was one of them. What was needed now was a very slick pickup of the hook and speedy exit from our embarrassment.

As we came up to the extended boom which was projecting out from the ships side, [these booms, perhaps two or more on either side of the ship, had trailing ropes for small boats to tie-up to and rope ladders for boat exit and entry], we got into a position for the crane driver to lower the pulley and hook. We could see that the choppiness of the water which by this time had a four to five foot rise and fall.

Now, if you can imagine the scene: a large pulley block and hook about the size of a small car wheel and weighing about a hundredweight, with four pieces of spliced wire each with their spliced eyelet – for attaching to the dinghy, and all swaying about above your head – whilst you are rising and sinking with the waves.

Now all that is bad enough if there is just you, your mate, and the crane driver in attendance. In this case, all our antics observed with great interest by a gathering group of well-wishers and an even greater group of loafers who had had up to then a boring day – wanting to be entertained – watch somebody else in trouble.

It was very difficult to stay up with the trailing rope ladder – to grab hold of it without being plucked-out of the dinghy. For the umpteenth time we tacked into position only to be forced back. At onetime we ended up with our mast under the boom and as the wave jerked us up the mast caught under the boom and released it from its cradle. [These booms were about twenty feet long and over two feet in circumference]. It swung round and smashed against the ships side that bought a muted cheer from the onlookers. I say muted because that crash heralded the irate face of the Commander peering over the side and a stream of shouts emanating from his now reddening face.

We had to make our way to the next forward boom with a trailing group of watchers, both official and some, frankly, stirrers of the spilling pot. Here the trailing rope and rope ladder were adjacent. I managed to mount the ladder whilst this time holding onto the bowline. With this, I could let it out or pull it in so that the pulley was directly over the dinghy. My friend shackled on and the crane took up the weight. Now he and the boat hoisted up onto the deck with a loud cheer from all the faces filling the portholes all along the ships side. We were ever so careful after that.

During my time aboard ship, The Captain of Marines asked me what my job was before joining up. When he heard I was a trained artist, he lost no time in asking for a picture of his wife to be sketched. This soon brought in many other requests which although bought me in much wanted cash it prevented me from going ashore. However, what it did do is to have me transferred to the painting stores section where I placed under the chief petty officer whose part time job was painting ships crests. These ships crest is made of moulded, painted and gilded Plaster of Paris, ordered by the ships captain to present to visiting dignitaries or similar officials, when the ship put into dock home or ports abroad. Our presentation plaques were extremely well made and finely decorated – no expense was spared to ensure that they were perfectly produced. Any gilt was in gold leaf and the final operation was a coating of varnish. The rest of my time spent aboard served in the paint store except when detailed off for watch keeping – corporal-of-the-gangway; first making sure that a store of plaques had been put by – ready for issue. My other call to fame was when the ship called at Trondheim, Norway, and a ships band was called for. As I had been a drummer in the Boys Brigade, I found myself roped into this scratch band to augment the ships Royal Marine buglers who were also drummers. Thankfully, this was a one off and my skills were not called for again.

During one of my leaves from the National service, my father’s lodge held its annual dance. He invited me along. Therefore, making up a party of three, including my mother, we made our way to the Kensington Lodge where we met up with my father’s friends, Nobby Clarke his wife and daughter at whose table we sat at. Naturally, I danced with the daughter who told me that she worked as a legal secretary in London. How I came to pluck up sufficient courage to ask her out I do not know, but I did and so a relationship blossomed even after her telling me that she was unofficially engaged to a chap who was in Australia.

That year Stan got married to Jean after courting her for over a year. He was twenty and Jean 18 – the marriage conducted at the Methodist Church, North Harrow. Stan was not sure that getting married at such an early age was both sensible and wise but continued with the inevitable course. I was the best man and to match the groom remember buying my first charcoal grey suit. They both settled down to married life in rented accommodation, in walking distance from his old home. I was still doing my National Service and Derek was twelve. My relationship with Barbara continued for a few more months. I mentioned to her about getting engaged – trying to put a more committed basis into our friendship. I am sure my brother’s wedding and my mentioning ‘engagement’, prompted Barbara to make a choice. Within a short period, she broke off the friendship saying that she was going to marry the chap she was engaged to…

I was so annoyed and could not believe that someone could be so deceitful – being led to believe that the other fellow was but a memory. We were so near to announcing our engagement. I think the Clarke’s were upset and annoyed with their daughter. I remember being so miffed that I told my mother and that her reply was that I should not to let it upset me… a fat lot of good that was for I was hopping mad!

My second flirt with the opposite sex occurred later when I went out with a girl that I had met at the dance studio in Wembley. Janet lived in Sudbury Hill and was a local beauty queen. We went out together for some months and over Christmas, invited to our family’s festivities. She wanted to dance and through a total lack of understanding on my part, I thought it silly to dance in our front room. I was still utterly unsophisticated – lacking social graces – subtleties of courtship – showing romantic feelings and desire.

Once again, my dealings with the opposite sex were short lived, plagued by misunderstandings and lacking sexual awareness – regarding what to do and when to do it! I had to do a lot better than this or I was going to be destined for the shelf…?

In 1954, after a visit to Aberdeen in June Illustrious was taken out of service – destined for the breakers yard! Again, I had to choose where I would like to go within the Corp. A chance offered to go to the Amphibious Wing in Poole, Dorset, which was now the main school for Infantry Landing Craft, Breach Control, Small Boat Section and Raiding Parties. My request was accepted and so off I went to Poole to do a Landing Craft Stokers Course, the aim of which was to produce engine room mechanics. I learnt all about Ford Marine Engines trained to occupy the engine compartment, maintain the engines and drive the craft. The stoker of an infantry landing craft sits between these two in line engines with the two propeller shafts spinning either side of you, two levers engage the drive for forward and reverse and the throttles connected to the carburettors determine the revolutions. The telegraphs are placed on the bulkhead either side of the armoured door in front of you which is clamped shut during a landing so too the round hatch above your head. Its top speed was about eleven knots. However, the craft was extremely active in rough water and because of its slab-side easily affected by a strong wind blowing on the crafts quarters during a landing. I suppose that as an analogy you might imagine going to sea in a tin bath. It was not something you would wish to be in when landing on an enemy shore covered by well dug in heavy machine guns when occupied kedging off whilst worrying about the thirty or so troops waiting to land. It was equally difficult to disembark or embark troops from a heaving troopship, which towers above your head with a choppy sea running.

With just four months – before demobbed, I was asked to present myself to the Beach Control Section – to join their small team. Now all my days taken up signalling, sorting out beach signs and learning how to set up a beach landing position on an enemy shore. These were probably my most interesting days spent during my national service. Days were spent discussing various beach conditions which might have to be dealt with – to allow ‘entry over’, trying to visualise for every possible attack. Eventually my time was up and I had to report to Eastney Barracks for discharge.

Joining the Royal Marines had been a serious mistake… I was not considering the corps as a full-time career. I should have completed my apprenticeship, and City and Guilds course. My knowledge of the industry – other processes and trades, unknown to me; I was ignorant of the advances taking place in technology…

I should have instead, applied to join the Royal Engineers, who had within their service, a mapping section – the Survey Section catered for all the army’s printing and pre-printing processes. It was an allied trade – would help me in civilian life – keep me in touch with other printing trades and techniques.

After leaving my National Service, I had to do a further six years in the volunteer reserves. After the first camp – a two-week camp in Malta, on landing craft, I did not show my face again until I handed in my kit five years later.

About 160,000 men were called up each year beginning in 1948. By the time I served the Malaya conflict was the main drain on these resources. The NS was much to do with social control as to provide a defence force. It broke up family links, disrupted apprenticeships, imposed harsh anti social training and became a political tool. NS preserved the status quo for a martial, class ridden, society.

CHAPTER 9

It was quite a shock to go back to my old job in 1956, after two years National Service. There had been many changes to the printing industry since my departure mainly to do with technical innovations within the film industry. Three main factors transformed the printing of colour and type for all printing requirements. First: the manufacture of large size studio camera, Second: the ability of film manufacturers to produce larger areas of film with a stable backing, Third: colour correction, by overlay masking, to compensate for the spectral deficiencies in the tri-process inks. From this time photography ousted hand drawn reproductions. This was the end to fine art posters and autolithographs for coffee houses.

Customer preferences, in a now film obsessed advertising world – where hand drawn methods were ‘old hat’, wanted the latest high tech. methods. Advertising Agencies, sold space to clients on the use of ‘the latest technology’ that sold hording space using, ‘keep-up, with all that’s new’. It was di rigour – as a sales gimmick, but not always ‘best practice or advice’. The object was… as always, to reduce the number of printings needed. Hand drawn methods could not compete with the range of tone produced by the photographic halftone screen. Immediate post war publishers relied upon letterpress to produce the bulk of general print work. This includes newspaper and book production. Print runs for popular magazines became the prerogative of gravure printing simply because the gravure cylinder retained the image longer without changing. Lithography produced greetings cards, wrapping papers, labels and posters. Whilst Screen Process [Silk Screen] concentrated on signs and shop counter goods and packaging.

It did not take long for all this to change, as new technologies came into being and working practices adapted to suite. The first process to feel the pinch was letterpress whose hand set type, superseded by hot metal production, gave way to photographic typesetting practices. Patched up and planned film, incorporating halftone pictures and lettering, exposed onto light sensitive coated, flexible metal plates, enabled the lithographic processes to take over much of the work previously printed letterpress.

I had to finish my apprenticeship by completing one more year. I was not to return to College or evening classes. Within a short time I found all the old skills retuning… able to copy everything a fully trained journeyman asked to do. I was now paid nineteen pounds for a forty-five hour week with two weeks holiday.

Before my NS, there had been very few union disputes. Men were returning home from the war and life returning to how they had been pre-war. Houses had to be repaired, furniture brought up-to-date and children catered for. Now, five years later, in 1955, the unions were conscience that wages had to keep pace with the cost of living and workers had greater expectations – an improving life style.

The dockers were complaining about age old methods of unloading ships; the Transport and general’s ‘closed shop’ arrangement was being challenged by the Dock Labour Board. The Electrical Trades Union refused to maintain the newspaper printing presses; the Locomotive Engineers demanded a wage increase from the Transport Commission. It was constant friction throughout the 50s… spelt the eventual demise of Britain’s industrial sector over this twenty year period… from which it never returned…!

The spirit of England had changed since the Suez Crisis in 1956. I was about to be called up to serve in landing craft. In one week the tone of the country altered when it was called ‘the aggressor’ by the Americans. The whole campaign was viewed as gunboat politics. I thanked god… that it all died down and the troops returned home…

Back to reality and normal life: after work, my journey home was from Neasden Station… a seven-minute walk from Chromoworks. On many occasions, Ken, who had attended the same school, gave me a lift in his new Ford Popular – a car bought for him by his father, for the price of just under £500. Ken worked in the drawing office at British Tompson Houston – an electrical engineering firm dealing in switchgear. We gave up many of our Friday evening’s to the Wembley Town Hall dances which were always well attended and engaged first class bands – Ted Heath, Ken Macintosh, Eric Delany, Johnny Dankworth and Lou Stone. Most Saturdays we went to the pictures… for he was good company, we chattered away covering most subjects, enjoying similar things. Film goers reached a peak in 1946 when one third of the population was going at least once a week. The Korean War, Malaya and National Service reduced audiences steadily until the effects of television – consistently lowered the graph…

Trevor, another artist working in the same studio, had a motor bike Not only did he understood its mechanics but followed motor cycle racing. His girl friend Gladys was engaged to him for five years, spending most of their time together planning their new home. He refused to marry her until he could buy a house, which he eventually did, furnishing it… finally building his own garage, with his father.

Through his interest, and lots of prompting, I bought myself a black, ridged framed, single cylinder, 350cc AJS, from Pinks of Harrow. This faithful steed took me to work in all weathers. I kept this for a couple of years, stripping it down and polishing it… believing I was increasing its speed with every change of oil. Unfortunately, this never happened for it only ever went at sixty miles per hour with my head down, throttle fully opened and a following wind…

I began to take on more and more difficult tasks at work. Eventually after that first year after coming out of national service, I was able to take my place with the rest of the studio. For some reason, that I am grateful for, I was never ‘banged out’. This is an age-old method of celebrating the completion of an apprenticeship. The departing apprentice carried around the firm on the backs of his onetime fellows whilst ink, soot and feathers, thrown at him…

All the artists were worried about their future employment. During my two years absence the industry had undergone enormous change. Advertisers believed that adopting the latest means of picture reproduction would help sell their wares. Colour reproduction was now going to be a photographic operation… hand drawn work phased out.

Printing was not the only industry to suffer from being out-of-date – lagging behind emerging Far East companies. Car and motorbike production boomed, as did the manufacture of components and accessories… but not for long… Hire purchase business doubled and house building soared. Television competed with radio and the cinema… and won. Independent television began in 1954 extended ten years later – increased its membership. There was large-scale immigration from the West Indies quickly absorbed by the railways. Overtime, by the nation’s workforce, was an accepted way of raising ones living standard…

Wembley Town Hall was the unlikely venue… where I met Sally… my future wife. Ken and I went to a dance there just before Christmas 1955 having arranged the meeting the previous week. He picked me up at home as usual, in his car. As we mounted the wide steps to the Town Hall, we decided to have a drink first, take in the competition, survey the land – plan our evening.

The dance floor was certainly the largest in the vicinity – as a venue it lacked an intimate atmosphere. The floor was so large that before the next dance there was this enormous void in the centre of the floor, which, to find a partner, had to be negotiated. When one did pluck up enough courage to strike across the floor… towards a likely girl, always concerned that one’s fly buttons undone or some other personal defect visible… what does one do with one’s arms. Swing them or should I put my hands in my pocket and saunter over feigning confidence. Did I always walk with a limp, I wondered, or is it these damn shoes slipping on the floor? It was equally daunting when being refused a dance by the girl using one of the stock phrases: “Sorry, I’m waiting for my partner, I’m sitting this one out”, or, “I promised this one to someone else.” The poor rejected soul had to either creep away, ask somebody else nearby, which never produced a good result, or carry on walking to the bar as if that had been his original idea in the first place. There was a distinct advantage to leaping to one’s feet as soon as the next dance, introduced by the Master of Ceremonies – so that the choice of partner secured – at its highest point. The girls who were the prettiest and could dance well were always the most sought after. Without prior intelligence work, you might be fooled – make the wrong choice, then you had to stagger around the room with someone who had two left legs, had little or no conversation, or worse still just did not want to dance with you. The whole object of the exercise… to find a girl… who would be a good companion!

At the end of all dances, the ‘last waltz’ announced. To be left without a girl to take home was the worst thing possible. I looked around and spotted someone in the crowd who I thought might be suitable. However, my request granted… missing the fact that she was with a friend… we took the floor… It seemed to go quite well she danced easily… we chatted about the band, the choice of music and her preferences for dances. It was the best dance of the evening and I asked if I could see her home. At this she replied that her friend with her and that they had come together and it would not be right to leave her alone. I immediately asked if she would go with me to a Christmas Eve dance above the Regal Cinema in Sudbury. At this, she said she would – the date fixed, for meeting her there…

The evening was a success. It was my greatest worry that we might not get on – conversation stilted and time drag… However, it was not any of those things, it was enjoyable and for the first time I felt at ease and more sure of myself. I walked her home, which was over a mile away; time quickly passed. The parting kisses were a delight and I said goodnight arranging to meet her in a few days time – after Christmas she had her days planned long before. I walked back home over Harrow Hill along the Ridgeway, whistling a happy tune… at peace with the world…

It did not take me long to appreciate that this friendship was different. Our interests and feelings of togetherness were appreciably less stressful than my previous relationships. I do not think that it was because I was becoming more adept, although getting older in itself would naturally do that, it was obviously… the more experienced girl… She was interesting and interested and made the relationship natural and exciting.

From that time, we saw each other at least twice a week and gradually I grew to know her parents and her brother Roger. It was comfortable – so easy for me to be included into the family circle – to take part in their home life. They lived next to the Wilson’s – Colonel Wilson had been my father’s Corps Commander – in the Home Guard.

Sally was born on the 14^th March 1932 to Harry and Rita Morgan at a nursing home in Chicester. Sally’s father, born in 1899, served, during the First World War, in Mesopotamia in the signal corp. Harry appears in my memory as being slightly taller than I. Therefore, he was all of six foot – weighing twelve and a half stone. He was a Welshman, born and bred in Neath, South Wales. A head of thick, grey, wiry hair combed in a neat, central parting. A grey moustache set off a cheerful, lined, weather-beaten face… more often than not, wreathed in a smile. He was an inveterate smoker of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes, which he inhaled with relish letting the smoke, pass out through his teeth. This habit perfectly conjures up how he viewed life, particularly away from his work – for him, a chore – he tried to be enthusiastic about all that he did – had distinct views, of most aspects of life, which he propounded… looking over the rim of his glasses and The Times newspaper. It was this paper’s crossword which gave his main form of relaxation.

Harry was a rugby fanatic, especially Welsh rugby… at Cardiff Arms Park. Having been born in Neath, South Wales, he never ceased to extol the virtues of either the country or its citizens. To him Dylan Thomas was its chief bard – he often recited Under Milk Wood many times the Welsh Anthem and Men of Harlech his first choice of tunes. The harp was the only instrument worth listening to and the Welsh flag the only flag worth flying. He was a Welshman through and through.

When I first knew him, he was the manager of Lloyds Bank, Greenford and considered his staff to be his main concern over all others. Throughout all his years, working his way up from cashier to manager, he had been a dedicated member of staff. Harry was disenchanted with modern banking methods – head office required goals to be set for taking on new clients – continually increased the targets of how much money the bank processed… he wanted to retire. This took away contact with main clients… he considered his friends. He was a member of the local Rotary Club and participated in their charity work but could not wait to retire from the bank so that he could watch cricket at Lords, westerns on the television and go cycling…

He was not a practical man; but proud, when he had wired up an electric plug or mended a puncture. He was literate and enjoyed going to the theatre. Financially prudent, he appreciated and planned for, a simple life the delights of the English countryside and good company… He mostly wore light grey suits and striped shirts and to my memory never wore a hat, nor ever wanted to. He was not somebody who would knowingly harm you, swear at you, raise his voice… but be gentle in all things…

His wife Rita, nee Hutchence, hailed from Woking where the family ran a Coal Merchants. They had met whilst Harry Chief Cashier at the Chichester Branch of Lloyds Bank. Rita worked at the County Library as Librarian; they both had an interest in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas and the theatre in general. Her father, moving out of the family home when she was young, forced the mother to raise the girls! This event had a great influence on her sister Grace [Paicie] who thought little of her father for deserting her mother and children, for another woman. Brenda [Bren] still lived in Woking. It was not until much later that her son Raymond, who worked for the local authority, married Valerie and continued to reside near the family home.

Rita had been a star pupil at school winning numerous prizes, which also upset her sister who tried much harder in her work but did not receive due reward or recognition. She was only about five feet four inches tall and slight of frame but very strong willed, determined and resolute – totally believed in woman’s liberation. She was perceptive, relished testing other people’s opinions and reactions, and once set on a task she persevered until finished. Rita was a homebuilder and delighted in keeping up with the latest fashions. Not popular mass market fashions but accepted appearances of good taste. The home at Sudbury Hill was always immaculate. The furniture was mostly of polished wood and the chairs had loose plain covers. Her favourite colour was green which showed in the colour of the carpets and drapery. Most of the curtains she made- up herself, taking great pains to ensure that the hanging lengths were perfect.

Tea laid in the dining room, arranged to a uniform setting. Small iced cakes, tarts and flapjacks home made and a bought almond cake was the usual fare. Rita at one end of the table with Harry served cups of tea facing her at the other. He relished fruit loaf, which is a particular favourite of mine too, so that was always on offer. In the evenings, I would stand by Rita as she played the piano, turning and sorting out the next piece of music. Being raised on Sullivan’s music, and other turn of the century pieces, we got on famously. I knew that my father played the piano well but Rita more accomplished – gave greater feeling in her translation. Sally played the piano too – passing five exams, but disliked playing in front of anybody, not receiving the same pleasure from playing – as her mother …

Rita played the piano to a high standard, accompanying the local light opera company and attending their concerts. She often remarked that she had been set to follow a music career… had she not met Harry. I got the impression that she would have preferred the life of a musician rather than being a librarian, which she later became. Although there was a certain amount of romantic longing, rather than practical reality about her feelings, she imagined in her daydreams a bohemian lifestyle – not one of a staid bank manager’s wife. She often spoke about past loves and losses with regret. In later life, she took up the cello, achieving a sufficiently high enough standard to be a member of the Wembley Orchestra. Her involvement with a local string quartet and recorder group gave her a busy out of home life, which complimented her later schoolwork.

The atmosphere of gentile orderliness and the attention paid to form, quality and style captivated me. These were all things foreign. Everything was decided by the relationship of one object or colour balancing with another – which picture should balance with a piece of furniture – sympathetic to the overall general decor and mood; this consideration was a revelation… made total sense! Rita thought all things through, giving an educated appraisal of the impression required. She was undoubtedly artistic, literate and thoughtful. I think she believed she had wasted her talents and for most part, she probably had – although for a woman it would have been difficult to have penetrated a-mans-world at that time.

Priory Gardens is a road of semi-detached houses, which runs up from Harrow Road… close to Harrow on the Hill. They were houses built about the same time as those in Cumberland Road but to a higher standard, being on a larger plot of land. The windows were latticed set in bay windows to the front. The garden neat but unremarkable, with a small number of fruit trees at the bottom of the garden… The french doors looked out onto the back lawn… The grass, mowed by Harry – a task he never looked forward to, became one of mine…!

Sally’s brother Roger, went to boarding school – St. Paul’s, for the first year… when I came to know the family. He had been a chorister at Kings College, Cambridge – winning a scholarship. Rita had decided to have him educated away from home. Roger remained in a boarding environment throughout his whole education. Rita believed this would make him more independent from the family. He was, and remained a convivial [hail-fellow well met] individual. His smile was inviting and genuine. He always had time to talk and had a generous personality. Roger could always be relied on… his keenness to please sometimes got in the way of positive action. He proved to be a good friend.

Sally had attended Haberdashers Aske Girls School and because of her inclination – to make each subject a challenge, kept in top class positions for most subjects. Her best subjects were Literature, English, Latin and Modern Languages. Sports of all type were perfect for her longing to succeed and she belonged to all the School’s First Team. Sally had strong views, which she declared forcefully, and was out to win especially at games. She was also very upset when her mother compared her with a near neighbour Jennifer pointing out how helpful and considerate she was to her mother… believing her mother never gave her full credit for anything…!

Many Saturdays saw me taking Sally to a lacrosse match in Gunnersbury Park – she sitting on the back of my trusty AJS, the evenings spent occupying the back seats of the local picture house. During the week, we usually just went for walks. Come the summer we arranged to spend a week at a Warners holiday camp on the Isle of White. Before we set off Sally’s father made me promise that I would look after her, which I said I would. I found this loving gesture most kind and thoughtful and just typical of the man.

It was planned to sleep in separate chalets – next to each other. In the event we slept together in one bed without engaging in intercourse, being quite content to save the experience for marriage which by then we expected to take place. It was during this holiday we became unofficially engaged, buying a marquisette ring at a jeweller’s in Shanklin, which Sally immediately put on. I felt full of the joys of spring and most sophisticated in my light tweed hacking jacket and dark grey trousers.

At last, I felt confident – I could concentrate on my job, the future look after itself… The holiday proved a great success, having any stress removed by compatible companionship; we were going to share the future together – no hurry to prove our love for each other – time would do that…

It was a glorious summer holiday with not a spot of rain in sight. Our walks together along the beach and exploring the countryside about the camp – taking the bus further into the heart of the Island, were unforgettable. I became badly sunburned, which took quite a while to heal.

It was on our return home that I asked Sally’s father, when we were together alone in the sitting room, if he would agree to us getting marriage. He said that we had his blessing…! We announced a date for the following year… not sure of the timing.

I was twenty-two and Sally twenty-five. We were both excited, by the thought of being together, started to plan for the coming year. First I had to attend a Royal Marine camp in Malta – to last a fortnight, as a Z class reservist.

I flew out with the rest of the party in a Short Sunderland flying boat from Southampton to Gibraltar. For a fortnight we trained hard beaching and drawing off, circling the island many times…

Sally sent me an airmail letter every day, many written with ‘I love you’ covering the pages, which was eagerly looked forward to. The rest of the squad looked at me with envious eyes as they started to be delivered. Sally had started to knit a brown background fair-isle jumper with an extremely complicated pattern. This took all of Sally’s patience and spare time – night after night knitting away trying to keep an even tension on the different coloured wool so that the pattern did not have one strand that pulled.

The Morgan’s did not have a television set – by choice, nor did they own a car. Rita practised the piano and cello most evenings in the dining room or bedroom to prepare her-self for the forthcoming concert. Harry continued reading… filling in his crosswords whilst attending monthly Round Table and Rotary evenings. They both decided that they would not buy a television, until Harry retired…

They took Sally and I to the theatre on a number of occasions to see Sandy Wilson’s musicals, Salad Days, The Boy Friend and The Buccaneer performed at the Lyric, Hammersmith.

At this time, Sally was working part time at a local greengrocer’s, earning sufficient money to pay for her way through a Secretarial Course for typing and shorthand at the Pitman College. Previously she had worked at The Bank of England a position her father had obtained for her which was not at all suitable for her – enclosed in a large institution was not something Sally would ever have liked. Having to use the underground railway was also something she disliked doing – was a fear, which has never gone away. She dislikes banks, banking and officialdom. All these fears and dislikes ended any hopes her father might have had in that direction. This decision did not go down well with either of her parents.

We met when Sally was undergoing a Pitman’s Secretarial Course. She finished her training and passed the examination to give her all the skills she needed. A vacancy for a medical secretary becoming vacant at Wembley Hospital… Sally applied and passed the interview. It did not take her very long to understand and apply medical terminology to the letters transposed from audio recordings; typing-up letters from shorthand notes – which she was not so keen on doing. As the hospital was, only two miles from her home in Sudbury Hill Sally cycled there every day.

National Service had upset the normal course of an age old custom, linked to my apprenticeship… This I considered fortunate, I missed the ‘banging out’ ceremony – heralds the completion of an apprenticeship – reaching journeyman status. However, I did not get away without having to stand the firm a drink – over at the local pub – for both my engagement to Sally, and my new position…!

In 1956, industrial production in Japan achieved pre-war levels and West Germany, helped by three million refugees from the East, surpassed Britain’s car production figures. The printing industry, controlled by the newspaper industry – whose workers always the most militant… annually demanded better working conditions. The men composing type – the compositors, held the newspaper proprietors to ransom… usually getting their way! This had a knock-on effect… onto the other printing processes, forcing up their wages… improving their conditions.

Most other industrial workers looked to the militant to hitch their coattails. The printing industry was not the only powerful group. The dockers –controlled the import of food, and the miners – controlled the power. The whole country rode on this era of increased affluence. Employment figures were up and there were not enough skilled workers trained to develop many new production techniques originally designed pre-war but now being introduced.

From this time onwards home produced cars and motor bikes lost out to the more reliable Japanese models. Eventually Britain’s car, truck and motorbike industry failed to foreign competitors whose products were less rust prone, had higher component specifications and mounted later engine designs.

On the 31^st October that year, Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt. The loss of the war, by retiring from Egypt before a satisfactory completion – caused by American pressure, lost the country valuable industrial production and exports but it also interrupted vital oil supplies. All these taken together created a run on sterling and caused a loss of credibility and prestige. Macmillan had the job of putting a break on rising prices and maintaining the value of the pound. That year there was a destructive printing strike, which went on for weeks and caused much bitterness and strife. Its net result made a number of firms move out from London and caused others to close down altogether.

Prefabricated houses were built during the war, to house bombed out survivors. They were ready-made, easily erected, single floor bungalows, very much like a large caravan. Tower blocks were, now replacing these iconic, utilitarian homes. City and town ‘bombed out areas’ were completely changed from their original Victorian buildings by new slab sided easily constructed offices. Concrete framed picture windows, stairs and landings steel tubing that replaced brick; individual windows panes, stained glass, wrought iron railings and moulded brickwork anathema. It was the turn of minimalism, easy fix and pre-construction. It was thought, by the then consultant architects, that what people wanted was high rise blocks to house the maximum number of families so that more space around would compensate for the lack of gardens. Every part of the country had there own soulless creations the repeated a sameness of not only the social outcome of disaffected youths with nothing to do but a soulless conformity – lacking in individualism.

The massive increase in industrial competition from the beaten axis countries, helped by the Marshal Plan to ward off communism, started to prove too much for Britain’s outdated, worn-out factories and machinery. It was very much easier to start- up a modern system of production when starting from scratch rather than cobbling on the latest innovation onto the old previous model.

Foreign Governments subsidised the building of modern factories, which could undercut British prices; our trade unions demanded one man for one job, which was inflexible and anachronistic. Work gradually went abroad especially when, it seemed to be more often than not, there was industrial action here to increase wages and reduce the working week. In the printing industry, particularly in the pre-printing side of the industry, typesetting and picture reproduction was now computer generated… the writing was on the wall… labour was going to be replaced by machines. Fixed-size presses superseded rotary book presses – standardization became an important factor in pricing. The rapid development of photographic typesetting to assemble a complete page continued apace. It was clear that letterpress typesetting and block making was in decline. It was a question of how fast would the print house owners change their equipment and come to terms with what was clearly going to happen. Fortunately, for the workers, this did not come about as fast as predicted…

Society expected you to get a job immediately on leaving school, a percentage paid over to your mother – to help with the housekeeping. It was expected that you would get married after a reasonable period of engagement, of say two years, then, when in your early to middle twenties, you got married in a church; you rented a flat either furnished or unfurnished to allow you to save hard – for a deposit to take out a mortgage – to buy your first home. Children were to be the result of that marriage after a reasonable period taken to gather basic furniture together.

It was late in 1956 when there was a lengthy printing strike, which created great bitterness between the management and workers. The Works Director of Chromoworks could not deal with Frank Clements, SLADE&PW union representative. He was a confirmed Socialist very interested in social reform. He would not accept that the management could not increase the workers wages. There was talk of a walk out leading to strike action. Eventually, asked to step down as Father of the Chapel.

As usual, the workers demand was for a reduction in working hours, longer holidays and more money. Eventually the bosses concluded a deal and we all went back to work. However, the eventual outcome was the closing down of the artist studio over a period of a year. One man retired, two men went as trainee retouchers to Sun Gravure Works, two men retrained at Chromoworks as retouchers and two of us went to Wood Rozalar and Wilks, Willesden. Shortly afterwards Chromoworks closed down their Neasden factory and went to Nottingham becoming part of The British Printing Corporation [BPC]. This firm was also a general printer similar in size to Chromoworks, what was more welcoming, intended to retain their artist studio in the hope that they would pick up work from firms closing their studio.

My fiancé and I had not discussed having children before we were married. It was not a subject shunned because it was embarrassing just denied importance. We had not even discussed where we would eventually buy a house or how we would furnish it and certainly, not what style nor period of decoration we preferred. It was almost as if life would just follow on what had taken place before only now we would do it together.

Our marriage, planned for the third week in March 1957, timed to take full advantage of the end of tax year rebate. This rather clinical regard for a tax rebate was worth planning for and used by most couples thinking of getting married. We took ourselves off to see the vicar of St. Andrews, Sudbury, to inquire about what the marriage procedure was – about when the banns read. We had very little money and had to save like mad not only for the wedding and honeymoon but also for the flat on Harrow Road and essentials.

The wedding breakfast held at Priory Gardens. Harry and Rita Morgan had explained to Sally and me that we had a choice, a wedding with all the trimmings or a simple event plus a cheque for five hundred pounds. As I have explained – we were very hard up, took the kind offer with gratitude.

For the occasion, I had had a new suit and Sally had a fitted costume with an ‘A’ line light blue topcoat and hat, which she soon discarded – never liking such accessories. Round her throat hung a single string of pearls and pinned to her coat a posy. Sally hated dressing up and never ever got used to doing so. Such formalities and rites were anathema to her. She was all for sporting gear and casual wear.

I rolled up to the church by bus – from Harrow – dropping me off at the bottom of the road. I walked, in plenty of time, to the church… up the aisle, before the altar. There I mused, ‘was I doing the right thing?’ My doubts vanquished by finality and completeness… no more disruptions; I must ‘get on with life’.

It was a fine spring day, warm and sunny, heralding a new life about to begin. Eventually the main guests arrived including Vera my godmother, up from Somerset, and Roger, Sally’s brother, my ‘best man’.

Sally drove to the church in a hire car and walked up the aisle with her father. It was a simple affair – no choir or bells rung, although there was an organist. The hymns we had both chosen, enthusiastically endorsed by Sally’s parents, sung with enthusiasm. It was a lovely happy occasion with the minimum of ceremony and fuss.

After the ceremony Sally and I waited in the wedding car for all the guests to make their own way back to Priory Gardens, which was only five minutes walk away, and then we drove up in the car. Harry and Rita had laid on a fine selection of ready-made sandwiches, cakes and biscuits. A fine toast by Sally’s father preceded champagne and cutting the wedding cake. From now on I was to call them Dad and Mum. They never asked me to do so, and I was never embarrassed using the familiar terms – it just seemed natural to do so. I became part of their extended family, from that day on… never needing better.

When we eventually arrived at Waterloo station, via the dreaded underground railway, Sally hated going underground, we boarded the main line train to Portsmouth, which would take us to the pier where we were to catch the ferry to the island. A taxi took us to the hotel where all of the guests, we discovered, were on their honeymoon too.

The honeymoon was booked at Cliff Top Hotel, Shanklin, and Isle of White. Our marriage state obvious, for who else would go on holiday in March… cold, wet and windy… The hotel was full of such couples – all on their honeymoon.

Our week was soon over. I have read that these events are not always easy affairs and ours was certainly not the most relaxed – we were in fact embarrassed which was silly because we had spent the previous summer together on holiday sharing the same bed. Perhaps we should have talked the matter through, but we did not, both being unsure and inexperienced. We were not the world’s greatest lovers and the run up to the wedding and aftermath caused its own stress. There is something to be said for trial marriages – understanding all that is involved about making love with all the expectations that should follow. By itself, the hotel was fine and the Isle of Wight provided the necessary backdrop to the start of married life.

However, we survived to find ourselves outside the Harrow Road furnished flat – we rented… my motor bike, propped up in the road. Arriving back home, with forty pounds in the bank and a lot of hard saving look forward to…!

The owners were a funny lot because what ever they did they made a lot of noise about it. There was an amazing amount of banging and crashing with shouts and screams, which reverberated from one side of the house to the other. This was our nightly entertainment, which did not make our love making any more accomplished, in fact put Sally right off. At one time, I am sure the man threw a chair that bounced from one wall in their kitchen to the other.

Our rooms were sparsely furnished and the kitchen positively barren. The bed creaked and the floors echoed. Sally was homesick to the extent that she spent all her time back at Priory Gardens. It was all quite hopeless and no way to carry on. This lasted about a month before Father-in-Law decided that we had to have a better situation that might prove to be more encouraging.

An unfurnished flat – number eight Meadow Road became available in Pinner. A Lloyds Bank employee had occupied it. We had a chance to fill it, which we did with much rejoicing after paying a deposit. Now we could use all the things we had both collected to stock our bottom drawer… moving in May 1957, after its total redecoration.

We furnished the flat with a kitchen table with two chairs, double divan bed, light green carpet square, two Cintique arm chairs, a ‘G’ Plan wardrobe and chest of drawers and all the other bits and pieces needed to make up an on going home. With those and an orange box covered over with a tablecloth that supported the black and white TV… we were all set to start our married life together in our own unfurnished flat.

My in-laws kindly bought us a magnificent Mason’s tea service made in the Strathmore design, which became our pride and joy. It was always a pleasure to use but as with all most precious things, with a large family, accidents took their toll…!

My motor cycle, I kept down the side passage, to wheel out every day, to take me to work come rain or shine. It was not long before I wanted a larger machine. I discussed this with Trevor – a work colleague. He advised buying a bike such as his – being familiar with its construction and servicing his own machine knew that it was reliable… recommend his BSA, 500cc twin. With that advice, I looked around the various local showrooms and eventually found one at Slocums in Neasden. What a difference it made compared to my AJS… the BSA was a pleasure to ride…

Sally continued to work at Wembley Hospital and cycled there every day cum wet or shine. Her pushbike with the wicker basket on the front often with the day’s shopping inside had to negotiate Harrow Hill that Sally used as a challenge to get up without stopping to push.

The house we shared with the Turners, who lived on the ground floor. Mrs Turner and her daughter ‘did’ housework for local people and her son worked for the council. Living with a family below was a strain particularly when Sally repeatedly cleared her throat at night. The result would be a tremendous banging on the ceiling below with a broom handle and frosty glances during the day. Mrs Turners was always a few centimetres away from the drawn net curtains that twitched every time we went out.

It was not long after being married that Chromoworks shut down their artist’s studio. The management gave three months warning saying that they could retrain half the staff to be lithographic colour retouchers – those who had been with the firm the longest.

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The three of us – who had to leave, asked by the management what we intended to do? George Clements said he would retire. Fred and I to fill positions within a local printing house called Wood Rozlaar & Wilks, Willesden. Everyone was satisfied… that the best had been done to see their future catered for…

The firm kept my wages at the same level, which, considering my new married state was very welcomed. It did not take me long to fit in with what the other men were doing. My previous skills stood me in good stead and Cambell Gilbert, detailed off as my instructor, was an adept tutor interested in the job and open-minded about new technical methods. There was an enormous amount of handwork still to do on both the continuous tone negatives and screened positives. Because so much time was devoted to masking out the negatives, I had a chance to take in what was going on around me and to adapt quickly to the new working environment and skills I had to acquire.

When first married, ten years after the war, the nation’s conventions – behaviour and habits, based on pre-war patterns, that had evolved over generations. My marriage was the culmination of my longing to settle down and plan for a better life – to share goals, interests and outcomes. We had not discussed whether we were going to have children or how we would bring them up if we had. Getting together – courting… our engagement, marriage, and early life together, all followed conventional behavioural patterns… This conformity spilled over into shared tasks within the home and, from overheard conversations, sexual behaviour too… Having children was included in our forward thinking, although not spoken about…. Although individual childhoods are not all the same – within a social class, life-styles patterns are. The changing culture of Britain promoted ‘the welfare interests of children’. This was to play an important part in the future consideration of married partners. Sally and I continued to live in Pinner, throughout my year of re-training, and subsequently… when I moved on… to a job with Sun Litho at Ruislip. I applied for the position as a fully trained retoucher, although the work considerably more advanced. At least five of us at Wood Rozalar, from different departments, went to Sun Litho – a relatively new plate makers and provers who were taking advantage of the boom in litho – taking over from letterpress.

The latest Kodak Tri-colour masking methods were used which ensured less handwork and retouchers had to do their own page planning. The Roland flat bed proving machines, three in all, were the latest design – all new. Planners took the separate pages to plan into sheet position ready for plate making…

Sun Litho was a plate-making firm for the lithographic printing industry and as such had to make a profit from only that source. This competition, from independent colour separation studios, plate makers, film planners and provers, became an inherent part of the printing industry, and over time created faster and cheaper techniques… Competition became fierce.

For all book production, whatever the printing process, films, showing typematter and [screened] halftone pictures, cut, patched and planned to form pages. These pages in sheet position are now ready for printing. The position of a page on the plate is relative: to the size of printing machine, number of pages in the book and method of cutting, folding and gathering.

Planning separate films – both screened pictures and typematter in page position, onto a clear plastic foil – both stable to heat and cold conditions, was a considerable improvement on letterpress having to set type and picture blocks into a forme.

The surface of the aluminium printing plate was coated with a light sensitive emulsion which hardened, when exposed to light. The opaque black ‘image areas’ held back the light leaving those areas capable of being removed – replaced – made ink receptive.

Within a very short period, many letterpress workers were made redundant. To absorb these workers – keep them in the printing industry and in the same union, apprenticeships were curtailed and a retraining programme instigated. It was not many years before the photogravure industry followed the letterpress industry’s downturn. All this was the start to a massive restructuring of the printing industry, which is still going on today, driven by electronic image generation.

Throughout this period the trades union held legal strength. As previously explained it was not just in the printing industry that it resulted in poor growth. The obvious restrictive practices stifled the growth of productivity – put off firms seeking greater profits – investing in new machines. Unions were always trying to improve the conditions of their members because this was their main task. Therefore, the pressure on the economy increased. Management’s did not stand a chance to resist having all that political power against them. In the coming, years when Labour in office there was a marked increase in the growth of public sector employment. This spiral of wage claims, strikes, inflation relying on restraint to curb an ever-increasing enactment of the position was destined to fail.

To maintain, perhaps increase, my living standard employers had to be progressive – be efficient – use the latest technology. This meant that I had to move firms every two to three years – move to progressive firms, keeping abreast of new techniques. It was no good staying at the same place out of sentimentality because wages would not keep pace with the cost of living. Most platemaking firms paid precisely the same rate to all employees believing that there would be no industrial friction between skills if all paid the same rate… not so…!

This was neither economical nor in the best interest of production however much it pandered to social engineering and the rights of workers. That meant that you could not seek a raise for greater productivity because that would mean that others would feel threatened – it would show that greater productivity could be made by admitting that this one man was better at his job than another. Who was going to be the judge, if a wage-rise given then that man should have all the most difficult work to do?

In some instances workers agreed amongst them – to accept the same rate – and ensure total transparency. Working in such an environment one quickly became aware that some men were better than others. Some slowed the work-rate down – so that others could keep up others sat back… The common denominator: for the slowest speed to be the norm – working at the same rate – for the same pay. This is patent nonsense… even if the standard of final work was the same, which never happened… quality and quantity gradually declined… However, new methods and machines came into production faster than human’s change behaviour – adapt.

There was general belief by Labour Government’s – of Clement Attlee’s 1945 – 51 and Harold Wilson’s, 1964 – 70, that the Trades Unions and various social welfare groups, should plan events in favour of so called underprivileged groups – workers who were less skilled. It is as well that in the early 60’s there was a great post war boom – driven by cheap energy. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan attributed saying, “you have never had it so good”. From 1951 to 1963, sandwiched between two Labour governments, there had been a Conservative administration, practically covering the whole period of which I write.

In 1961, life expectancy for males was 70 and females 74. The rate for employment growth in Britain was 3.2 the lowest for the seven largest Western economies in the world. The place of women was particularly difficult. The war years had seen a tremendous influx of women into not only the armed services but into industry – there would be no turning back, women sought parity with men in all fields. Women jobs in printing factories were for warehouse duties. Apprenticeships and trainee positions for girls only started in the early eighties. Girls just out of school no longer thought about getting married and having children. It was now about getting a job, fulfilling ambitions and becoming independent.

The economy was thrusting ahead which continued for over a year. Working conditions negotiated on an annual basis, in retrospect, always the same: longer holidays, shorter working and an annual increase to keep abreast of inflation. Overtime worked by the majority – at least two nights for four and a half hours per week and Saturday mornings from 6-12. New firms were opening up every week offering better wages and conditions and there was a steady turn round of staff.

In the sixties, the industrial unrest centred on the shipbuilding industry, dockside workers, mines and motor works. This had the effect of turning young people off those jobs – for fear of being involved and losing wages. The long-term result was a lack of suitably trained workers within all industries. The emergence of web-offset printing – from continuous reels of paper, for the production of local newspapers and periodicals – cut costs, introduced better quality pictures and started the use of colour. This was the beginning of steps taken to restructure the printing workforce.

The three main printing processes, letterpress, gravure, and lithography, competed with each other for the middle print-run jobs – a print run of half a million copies. Letterpress held on to newspaper production… mainly because the production set-up long established and would be expensive to change, and the strength of the letterpress chapels had always held the management to ransom. Letterpress also controlled book production for a similar reason although from a union point of view their power diminished – their profits were not from advertisers and deadlines. Photogravure existed for long runs – magazine production in the millions. Lithography printed labels, holiday brochures, lesser magazine runs, greeting cards, prints and jobbing work. By the 1960s, it was very clear that the two former surpassed the latter… All the most modern innovations: Flatbed scanners, studio cameras, film & foils, printing machines and rotary machine plates pointed the way – the printing industry was heading towards a radical change… In fact, it was a revolution.

Countries abroad influenced change too. Their workforce flexible – easily controlled – dominated by strong management. New techniques, working arrangements and modern machines were quickly introduced – without renegotiating new agreements. This undercut Britain’s industrial effectiveness.

In Britain, the newspaper industry continued to run on pre-war working methods. Abroad – mainly in Holland and Singapore, faster and cheaper lithographic processes undercut prices…. Their use of film for the production of typematter, multiple images and scanners, for four colour reproductions, gave them an edge – on price and time. Foreign governments financially assisted their country’s printing industry. Britain could no longer compete.

1963 – 4 saw the twelve-month premiership of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the surprise choice of the conservative party. He predictably came across as a reliable, trustworthy prime minister who unfortunately had no persona for television and the media. He was a bad choice not because his policies were bad but because he did not reflect this age of youth and scientific progress – there was to be great changes in industrial development, which did not bode well for Sally and me planning our way ahead…

It was considered by government ‘think-tanks’ that motorways was the answer to traffic hold-ups. 1963 heralded… the introduction to: town planners and developers proclaiming a new architectural design – to progress a brighter future… the promotion of concrete – roads, embankments, slab-sided buildings, bridges – institutional buildings and council offices. Cities and towns forty years later decried this misplaced zeal began to haul down these edifices of blighted opinion…

When we had been living at Pinner for just over a year Sally decided that it was time for us to think about having a family. We were still saving hard for our own house and the thought of having to do without one salary in our saving strategy was worrying. The question of having to start planning for a baby was a shock… and what about the long-term effects?

We had never discussed having children or if children came along what size family we would like. In fact, Sally had never shown any desire for children – enjoyed their company – shown any regard for babies or been envious of mothers to be. It was almost an out of character act, for someone so sporting.

However, Sally was not to be put off by financial considerations. Here was a challenge that required dedication – if others could have children then so could we, any thought about waiting until we had our own house was out of the question. So the decision made, that a pregnancy tried for – after two years of marriage life.

For me, to be making love most nights was an enjoyable experience and there being no need for contraceptives a liberating and satisfying time – but for Sally it was a mission – not something to be fulfilled by or enjoyed.

After a couple of months of trying for a baby with no results Sally began to question what was wrong. She consulted friends and colleagues at work. As she was still working at Wembley, hospital she was in the right place to gain some of the answers. Eventually the family doctor consulted. The usual advice given to achieve pregnancy was, give it time, be patient, achieve the right temperature and posture, and be relaxed… All of those I had in plenty. For Sally it was frustrating.

At last, the day came when Sally had the pregnancy test… which proved she was. It was a time of satisfaction and expectation. Sally still cycled to work and the months ticked by up to the time she gave up work just a few weeks before the birth.

That year we spent our holiday at a farm in Timberscombe, Devon, close to Dunster and its castle. I can still see the large bowl of cream placed on our table for every meal and the porridge too made with cream and full cream milk provided for breakfast. In the afternoons, a cream-tea served and once again, there was the cream placed before us in a large bowl.

On one of our motorcycle trips out around the lanes near Rickmansworth, we sped round a corner to meet a car coming in the opposite direction. The leaves on the wet road presented no grip and we drove straight into it. I gripped onto the handlebars like glue Sally meanwhile flew over both my head and the oncoming car – I sustained a broken wrist and she nothing at all. I made my way to Mount Vernon Hospital where my wrist put in plaster. The damaged motorbike transported to a garage in Wealdstone where it was repaired. Never to be quite the same bike again – being out of balance – the frame slightly twisted. That made us very aware that from now on our family’s safety was paramount.

That Summer I started to take driving lessons in a Standard Pennant car setting off with a hill climb up the hill to the cinema along Pinner high street or trying to pull out from the parked cars going down towards Love Lane. Riding a motor cycle had made me road conscience so it did not take me long to get the hang of driving. I managed to pass in eleven lessons, which was a relief because we badly needed the money.

I sold the Triumph 650 cc, which I bought in place of the BSA nine months before, and bought from a friend – Colin Reuter who ran a garage along the Pinner Road, a pale yellow Ford Anglia 15cwt. van for £150.00. It had only three forward gears and a side valve engine… but much needed for a growing family and gave noble service.

Stan, by this time, had gone into the motor industry from being an agricultural engineer, was in the servicing department at Dagenham Motors, Alperton. They took over servicing my car.

Often I wondered, after sampling dry, warm motoring, why I had continued with the motor bike. Those freezing cold fingers, wet chilled knees, waterlogged shoes and bulky weatherproof clothes. Not to mention those awful raised white lines on a wet day coming round a corner – that if you got one wheel one side of the line and the other wheel the other it meant a possible fall. This was the same feeling experienced when going over a polished manhole cover or a pile of rotting leaves. Alternatively, the heart stopping moment when a motorist suddenly opens his door, adjust wipers blades, cleans the windscreen, or to turns sharply in front of you… now we had a family to care for…

Our first child, a boy, was born on 5 February 1960, at Wembley Hospital Maternity Unit. We named him Simon Roger [after Sally’s brother]. I was twenty-five and Sally twenty-eight delighted that the birth had been a success – without any complications.

After ten days Sally, released from hospital carrying Simon, we drove back to her parent’s home – thinking that there she could rely upon her mother to make the passage to parenthood easier… could develop a routine to transfer back to Pinner. It was a relief that her parents were so near and that Rita was happy to put up with the invasion… It was an ideal situation, which lasted for a couple of weeks, but like all good things had to end…

We got all the new infants bits and pieces together and with Sally’s case, journeyed back to Pinner. When we got there, we unloaded the pram and wheeled it up the front path. There, we suddenly realised the awful truth – the pram was too big – would not, with any twisting, turning, tipping and tugging, be enticed around the front door and up the stairs to the flat. It was at this stage, Sally, getting more and more upset, refused to proceed – declared that we were to return to Priory Gardens immediately…!

Our fateful return convinced the In-laws that here was a crisis that they had to be corrected, being too well aware, they would have to put up with an invasion… yet again, unless desperate measures taken. A powwow produced a solution… we had to have our own home and fast… Harry scanned the local papers for Houses for Sale…

Both he and I went in the van to see some of the houses on offer whilst Sally stayed behind with Simon. We had talked through the financial situation knowing that I had this Provident Life Policy – could be used to provide a loan for house purchase.

When I was seventeen my Aunt had taken me to one side to explain that I should devote some of my wages to take out a Provident Life Policy – to save, and later, convert to house purchase. This seemed like an excellent idea and I completed the paperwork at once. This cost me in the region of £17.00 a month – which was a lot of money to me being almost, one week’s wage. How pleased I was when it became clear that this policy would be our salvation for it allowed us to put down as a deposit £2,300.00. However, we needed another £500. My Father-in-Law stumped up the amount needed, put the transaction through the banks Lawyer and checked the paperwork. How lucky we were that he was a bank manager fully conversant with such matters.

Sally turned down a number of houses we looked at – being unsuitable – either too small or in a position which to her was unacceptable. At last we came upon 68 Norwood Drive which at first glance would provide all that Sally desired. She gave it the thumbs up and we speedily made our way to the Estate Agent.

The purchase arrangements was speedily completed and we became the proud owners… knowing that there was much work that needed to be done – to put it into a state suitable to receive our new family. All my spare time was spent scrubbing floors, stripping old wallpaper, painting and planning the new kitchen. Sally and I agreed to name the house Harbury – adopting ‘Har’, my home town [Harrow], and ‘bury’, from Sudbury – her home. The sign graced the front porch – hanging from the door canopy. It was very exciting to own our own home… I could not stop myself from walking round and round the house thinking how lucky we were…!

It was about this time that Harry took early retirement from the bank at the age of sixty. He had looked forward to this moment with relish – he was going to do all the things he had been dreaming of: being a grandfather, watching cricket, cycling, reading and perhaps most of all buying their first television and watching Westerns. His face would wrinkle up in a tremendous smile, he would draw an even greater mouthful of smoke in and exhale through his teeth as the wonderful thoughts, expectations, and delights regaled him. Now he could devote all his energies and time… to fulfil his dreams!

CHAPTER 9

Number sixty-eight newly built in 1932 when much of the town of North Harrow developed… The construction of suburban homes provided work for a great number of unemployed building workers after the disastrous General Strike of 1926… The new towns followed the Metropolitan Railway Line… running from Aylesbury to London…

We arrived, with our new baby. The few cars, that were owned, parked on driveways leading to tile-hung, lean-to garages, with pitched, tiled roof… the roads bare of parked cars… quiet – residential…

The road was flanked, as the majority, by a grass verge, behind kerbstones… Obligatory crab apple, hawthorn or almond trees planted squarely in the middle – one before each house… It was infra dig not to keep the front of one’s house tidy… all kept their front gardens immaculate – grass verges and lawns, short… Privet hedges, trimmed – scalloped or castellated… masked the chain-linked fence beneath…

House window frames and doors, painted either green and cream or brown and cream, and most, if not all, had lace curtains. This may all sound rather twee – regimental. Perhaps it was, but it led to a good standard of decoration – uniform behaviour, being normal rather than extreme… A green and pleasant land prevailed…!

These were three bedroomed houses with two reception rooms plus a bathroom upstairs and a kitchen below. The larder was in the hall next to the kitchen with an under stair cupboard. Picture rails and plate racks, dado rails in hall and landing, open spindled stairs-cases, unpainted polished handrails, galleried landings, and wood surround fireplaces on a tiled hearth… These were Horace Cutler homes, built by the same builder who constructed my parent’s rented home in Cumberland Road, solidly built with tile-hung, curved bays to the front and french doors at the back. No drive or garage but a rear entrance with wooden fence and gate. The panelled front door was glazed with stained glass and so too the landing window. The kitchen provided with a range that heated the water, a wooden dresser, butler sink and surface plumbing. Previous owners had not altered the house – it contained all its original fittings and fitments…

Opening the back door revealed the garden… and the concrete path that circled the house. Not having a shed – for either coal or tools, gave further proof, to the property’s unaltered state. The sixty-foot lawn sloped down to a mature hawthorn hedge… the one-time field boundary…, stretched as far as the eye could see, all along the back gardens, giving shelter, shade and animal byway… thereby ensuring a rural landscape – through all the seasons.

On either side of the lawn, a three-foot wide flower border, held a couple of clumps of bedraggled Michaelmas Daises and a woebegone Phlox. The lawn, such as it was, held indentations where onetime wartime vegetable plots laid out. There was much scope for improvement… it was all ours… we proud owners…!

Our immediate neighbours, Lilly and Bart Walker, had a daughter Janice – the same age as Simon. Eventually they attended the same class at the Primary School just two hundred yards down the road towards Rayners Lane. On the other side of us was the electricity board sub station and the ends of the gardens from the houses in the next street.

We moved in prior to Easter 1960 and settled down to domesticity. Simon occupied the same bedroom we did – at the front of the house, and continued so doing for three months before taking up residence in the second bedroom – to the rear. It was not long before we invested in a fitted grey hair cord carpet to cover the whole house except the kitchen, bathroom… wood parquet, graced the hall…

By this time I was working at Sun Litho, Ruislip, with most of the work force being of similar age – most, newly married… starting a family. There was much talk of home repairs, improvement and renovation… the latest cars, washing machines and fridges… Arguments would ensue about the relative strengths of certain mixtures of cement to sand, the boxing in of staircases, panelled doors and difficulties hanging wallpaper or fixing wall tiles.

Regular mystery car trips were organised which ended up at a local hostelry. It was all very friendly – learnt over time – to accept and be relaxed in each other’s company. It was also a ‘go-ahead’ firm using the latest industrial methods. A period of boom swept over the print world and thankfully we became part of it…!

My first task after decorating the inside was to build a garage. I drew up the plans and submitted them to the council. There was nothing in the plans to cause any dissent from the planning department and so that summer taking a week off from work I started work. The side fence and gate was cleared away so too the front hedge and brick wall. I began digging out the footings, which needed to be dugout to a depth of four and a half feet to allow for the clay subsoil. Fortunately, my garage only needed one side and back wall – a lean-to garage, 20 feet x 11, with a corrugated asbestos roof.

When it came to filling in the footings – it was even more of a struggle than digging out… Not investing in a mixer – mixed by hand… what seemed like tons of concrete…? To make it a little easier I started heaving in some of the two thousand bricks ordered for the walls – to supplement the mix…

Building the walls slowly accomplished, taking care of the stability of the single brick, one pier, construction… When it came to building the reinforced concrete joist over the double doors – I nearly met my match… Lifting a bucket of concrete up above shoulder height – to pour into the shuttering, was far harder than imagined, particularly because, my ladder was short… Eventually the job was finished with the roof on, parapet built and doors hung, including the fixed framed window to the rear. Now I had to construct the drive and lay the garage floor…

It took me so long to level out the hard-core, breaking the bricks into manageable pieces, then to mix up the necessary concrete. Sally’s father came over to lend me a hand and at onetime I thought he was going to have a heart attack…

To make the job go faster I shovelled up a massive pile of ballast and cement in the road. As I hosed in the water, Sally’s father and I started to break down the sides of the pile – to mix up the concrete. Unfortunately, the side’s of the well broke and a wet mixture – of half-mixed concrete started to flood out into the road. What a gallop we had to rush round to stem the tide. We furiously mixed as we circled the pile trying to stem the tide whilst stiffening up the mixture. Poor father-in-law had to go in for a cup of tea and a long sit down…

Later on, that summer of 1960, we went on holiday to Bournemouth, for a weeks stay at a hotel, with Cedric, Jo and new daughter Jane… Cedric, doing his internship, and Jo, a physiotherapist, both worked at Wembley Hospital… Jo being pregnant with Jane, at the same time as Sally – who worked in the secretaries department whilst pregnant with Simon… They became one of a small circle of friends throughout the childrens growing up period…

Harry, we were told, had had a mild heart attack, the week before we were due to go on holiday. Because it was considered not life threatening we were advised to carry on with the holiday arrangements. It was during that holiday we heard of his death… Rita, Sally’s mother, advised us to finish the holiday before coming home – nothing we could do to help. What a shock this news was and how distressing; he was only sixty one and had so looked forward to retirement – to cycle over and watch Simon grow up and to watch a lot of cricket… things he had been planning to do for so long… I was certainly going to miss him and his steadying influence…

Rita continued to live at Priory Gardens after the funeral – being only fifty two at the time, putting on a brave face… to the terrible tragedy, especially when we heard that it needn’t of happened if the proper course of action had been taken by the Hospital. She was to take an active part in our growing family making sure each child had all the necessary clothes and school uniform whilst always remaining interested in their out of school activities. Birthdays always celebrated, school reports scanned and problems talked through… No week went by without some contact and monthly visits to her house – for Saturday or Sunday tea.

Making wine was another common fad which many work mates succumbed to. The kit was bought with all the ingredients plus the carboys to hold the wine, siphon, and distil. The chaps at work were continually going on about what a magnificent brew they had obtained – so a craze started. It all ended up with the whole lot dispensed with – down the drain, and the carboys given away.

I had a vision to create a smart frontage to the property by erecting an oak-railed fence in place of the privet hedge. To complement it an oak door made especially at the local joiners in Harrow – to replace the original stained glass 1930s style door, which was beginning to come apart.

In the late 60s, it was all the rage to remove all the plate rails, picture rails and dado mouldings from the walls. Box in all the stair rails and panelled doors. Knock down the fireplaces and hearths, remove the over mantles and the fire surrounds and replace with electric or gas fires mounted on the wall. This sacrilege went on throughout the country; doing away with the old, and replacing with easy to decorate and simple to clean, gloss painted hard board.

Many years later: conservation and restoration experts declare, ‘original fixtures and fittings, to be left – in situ’ – replace the original mouldings and fireplaces if possible, put it all back as it was. Thank goodness, common sense has returned and properties now reflect the age and style they were built. Owners now began to appreciate the skill of past craftsmen and the quality of their materials. The many television programmes concerned with renovating old buildings and interior decorating has opened their eyes. House buyers are better educated to appreciate past standards. The philistine age of knocking everything down has passed with the advent of educational television programmes that explain the skills used in the past.

This was the age of the mini skirt and Carnaby Street fashions. Informality was in and strict dress codes were out. Denim trousers for both sexes went with long hair and Beatle haircuts. The BBC launched Radio 1. No longer, did families gather round the radio of an evening to share a programme – young people had their own channel and in all probability listened to a pirate radio station. I ran a Kay’s catalogue and bought all the family’s clothes from that source which made dressing the family so much easier.

I was in competition with the next-door neighbour – unbeknown to him… Their garden, with prized lawn, precisely arranged flower beds and regimented kitchen-garden, represented perfection – neatness and colour content.

Two could play at that game: I invested in lorry loads of peat, the latest scientific advances in chemical fertilisers… laying a well hidden, punctured hose, along the edge of the flowerbeds… No vegetable matter was going to be retarded by lack of water, what was good enough for the Nile delta was good enough for me! There, that should do the trick, I thought…!

My beans galloped over the canes and nearby fence – mighty curling vines – thick as a python, with tendrils wrapping themselves around everything. The tomatoes suffered from root rot and wilted; the lawn became yellow and patchy… and my lawn boasted the richest harvest of vetches, clover and moss.

I retreated in ignominy and relied upon the overhanging branches from next door’s apple tree to supplement my dwindling horticultural produce.

It was Sally’s plan to have children fairly close together – a two-year gap between the first and second. Because Simon had taken longer than planned Sally thought we ought to start earlier – to produce the second. As luck would have it, for Sally, she became pregnant at first try… David Harry [named after Sally’s father] greeted life a little early, on 3 September 1961. In those days a home confinement and birth was possible for the second and subsequent children. Therefore, we met as a family, Nurse Foulds, who became Sally’s midwife, confidant and friend. She saw Sally through the nine months – we were delighted at the end result… there I was, running up and down the stairs – with hot water. Even though I had attended the birth and read books I was still remarkable ignorant about procreation and the likes and dislikes of women. David was heavier at birth than Simon was and more even tempered and carefree; made very much more of his teething which must have been more painful for him.

Rita baby-sat for us at every night out we had. It did not take her long to appreciate that it would be very convenient to own her own car. So she started to take driving lessons which were to take her over two years to achieve.

My elder brother Stan had his first child Steven that year too which helped to make their new home in Chesham complete. We watched together that house being built – on farmland which, went to make up a new development on the outskirts of old Chesham. How Stan drove to work in that old Ford I shall never know? Its remarkable, looking back, what one does – taking everything in at a stride, not considering sufficiently the eventual outcome?

Derek, my younger brother was now eighteen. Before he left school at fifteen my father had secured for him a position with the London Underground working in the signalling section. I do not think Derek thought much of that so went to work for Halls timber and hardware store just off Rayners Lane. During that time, he helped me decorate the sitting room renovating the fireplace – helping to scrape the rich brown varnish off the woodwork. He was the proud owner of a large Ford car that required an enormous amount of work to keep it on the road.

It was about this time that my parents received the awful news that the owners of their house had died and that the new owners were putting the property on the market. Initially my father, as a sitting tenant, gave the opportunity to buy it for the sum of two thousand pounds. This of course he flatly refused one because he said that he didn’t have the money and two because it went beyond his principles of never to own his own property. It was a tremendous blow to my mother.

Over a period of many months, every avenue explored to come up with an answer – where they were going to live. Even the Freemasons were involved but they refused to help. The council were informed. Initially they could not help. As time went by their position became more urgent – something arranged to find a home where they would be happy.

Pinner Green had an estate of council flats erected right at that moment. Once again, even though my parents lived within walking distance they never visited or phoned. I found this most unusual could never could make out why? When we did visited them we were made to feel so welcomed and at ease. This was not what I had planned and worked towards for so long – I wanted to play an active part in my children’s family life – go on joint holidays, watch my grandchildren grow up, read those stories, play with them, see them take part in sports and go to their school.

As previously explained, my parents did not own their home… they were tenants. The owner died. As sitting tenants they were offered the chance to buy it at a reduced rate… it was then offered to them for two hundred pounds. There was no way she could afford that, having no savings, whatsoever… my Father then declared, ‘he did not possess that amount and would not consider borrowing the money…’ The opportunity was lost, for neither my brother nor I had that sort of money to invest. This had a tremendous affect upon my mother… never being a town person she harped back to her childhood and all the country things she loved… she would have loved to keep the house in the family. They were given six months to find another home… after trying every avenue – to stay or rent, the Council came up with a solution – to live in a ground floor flat, one, in a block of flats, in Pinner Green.

Derek, who was living with them, the last child at home, had to dismantle all the fixtures and fitting. Help burn all the furniture not wanted and prepare for the move. What a disastrous thing to happen. My father had all the time in the world to prepare for this moment. It was just his stubbornness, fear and ridiculous principles, which got in the way. It was also surprising, looking back, that we boys could not have got together to find the money… knowing that when they died the sum would come back to us. It did not strike us at the moment that this would have been the solution… which shows, how familiar we now with financial services: mortgages, loans, trusts and wills… the advantageous manipulation of money and resources.

The summer of 1962, Sally decided that we should start to think about increasing the family believing that it would be lovely to try for a girl… there being no girls in the immediate family… it was something to look forward to. We were both pleased to find out that Sally was pregnant again – that August… for a birth sometime in May 1963. It was also that year that Stan and Jean had their second child – Stuart, whilst they were still living in Chesham.

My old Ford van was not suitable for a growing family – further seating needed. Living next door to Rita, in Priory Gardens, was the owner of the local garage in Sudbury. We told him that we were looking for another car and he came up with a red Vauxhall Victor 1500 cc. car, which was only one year old. This seemed like a sensible buy. That car took me to work in Islington for many years… giving excellent service.

During Sally’s pregnancy with Rachel, leaning over the settee twisted the umbilical cord. This caused fluctuations to the blood supply to the womb – at onetime we though the pregnancy would have to be terminated. By taking things steady – not exerting her, the nine months might pass by without trauma… only this time the baby delivered at Edgware Maternity Hospital. At last, Rachel was born on 18 May 1963 – named after Sally’s mother – Rachel Rita. The problem over the part strangulated cord did mean that Rachel had not had all the necessary life giving aids and was lighter than normal. However, she soon perked up and became the feted first girl for generations, in the Kearey family.

Our family holiday’s were arranged for single weeks never a fortnight at a time. We would spend the first holiday of each year at the YMCA, Eastbourne. This opportunity eagerly looked forward to – it provided lodging and full board. It also had a lot of space for the children to explore, organised evening entertainment and gave us the opportunity to have a laid afternoon tea in the dining room.

The YMCA run as a hotel being directly on the sea front in the middle of town made it perfect. We have to know all the local facilities especially the best walks and sights. This holiday at Eastbourne was eagerly looked forward to becoming a central part of the family’s life and continued for many years – it never let us down.

I was fortunate that at this time I had three week’s holiday a year. For the other two I planned walking holidays based upon either a farm or lodgings mainly in the West Country. For each holiday, I bought an Ordinance Survey map and carefully planned each days walk to take in as many archaeological points of interest that I could find starting mid morning and finishing mid afternoon. They had to be circular so that we never walked twice along a certain footpath nor saw the same piece of landscape. All the walks planned to follow reasonably flat ground – to allow for the pushchair. Towards the end of each day’s walk, the pushchair had to carry two children, I to carry the remaining tired soul. It was a challenge to come up with such a walk every day for a week and we got into some difficult times when the map was either unclear: the footpath not used sufficiently – the nettles and brambles unflattened or the path went through a herd of cows, or the little stream had become a raging torrent. Perhaps, the village, shown on the map, was either of a few solitary houses or devoid of any habitation at all. All this had to done under any weather conditions usually in the pouring rain, particularly when we visited Wales of the Welsh Marches.

I usually lead being the map-reader and Sally brought up the rear. In between was strung out the children who were enticed by the many and varied games I thought of along the way, with a prize of a few pennies for the winner. Nursery Rhymes sung as a roundelay as well as the alphabet, who can find the roundest stone, who can gather the prettiest posy – usually placed on the oldest gravestone in the graveyard… our walks always included a visit to the church. The challenge was, who can select the most varied group of coloured leaves, who can think of a girls or boys name beginning with each letter of the alphabet? In fact, I made up frequent quizzes and stories to make the journey interesting – keep the children occupied. Many times, I said, “It’s just around the next corner”. I made the rejoiner so many times that it become a family saying.

By looking at the map I could tell what the geography of the place was in relation to human habitation – so I explained why the houses were built where they were, why the farm was laid out so. The significance of where in the past houses were built relative to the lie of the land and so many other interesting pieces of information recording how past generations lived: how a dry stone wall was constructed, how a hedge was laid, why a ditch drained off the land. The object was to read the map in such a manner that one could picture the area – the contents and contours. Much of the time, my words were just a voice on the breeze. However, I did hope some of it was sinking in for I found it all fascinating especially when the walk took us to a castle, some other historical building or place with the significance of the crossed swords indicated on the map – and the consequences thereby. Every church admired or criticized for its architecture – every detail; the gravestones checked to see which was the oldest. Our picked bunches of wild flowers were laid on that grave. We savoured the old-fashioned names and epitaphs.

All our holiday followed this familiar pattern with a packed lunch gathered up along the way to be eaten perched upon a rocky wall, gate or mound. The pushchair was the carriage: holder of all the unwanted clothes, after stocking up at the local shop, the source of comfort which would eventually lead to home; at times it transported three children. Even though it was a pain when one had to lift it over a hedge or style, it went with us everywhere.

David had been sleeping in his cot in the small third bedroom. Now that we had another child, that bedroom was to become Rachel’s and David went into the larger second bedroom with Simon. This did not cause any upset nor cause any problem – it was a case of necessity.

On one of our visits to Jo and Cedric Selway, we had to bypass Epping Forest. We stopped to have a break and to give the children chance to play. When we left, I found that the car bogged down in mud. Stupidly I made to lift the car out of the mud and to ease it forward. In doing so, I strained my back. With much effort, I struggled into the car and we continued our journey. Now I had the job of getting out. I staggered into their lounge and had to lie on the floor, which I continued to do for the whole of the visit. What an effort it was to get back into the car and to drive home. . I can sympathise with anyone who has similar problems. Mind you, it was daft to try to lift the car in the first place. It does not take long for anyone who has a permanent illness or disability to become his or her own expert clinician. In my case I soon got round to standing on my feet by getting to my knees first or likewise sliding out of bed onto my knees.

Late in 1964, Sally decided once more on having another child. I was most concerned that, as it was, the family’s budget was being stretched and having another child would stretch it! However, Sally insisted that we had ample baby clothes and all the other necessary things – after all, it was the four children that she had always wanted – that we had agreed upon. I did not remember any such agreement but if that were what was necessary to make her happy, perhaps it would be nice.

Now I really had to plan for an enlarged family. All the bedrooms occupied – we needed more space. The first thing was to put in a downstairs toilet. This would not be too difficult because we had an existing under-stair cupboard that had been a walk-in larder. It had too sufficient headroom for what I had in mind. Luckily just outside the small ventilation window was the soil pipe from the upstairs lavatory so all we had to do was link into that. We called the plumber who was a friend of Stan’s so his prices were very reasonable, so we pushed ahead with the plan. The window was louvered which gave sufficient ventilation and light. Now all I had to do was redecorate and put on a new door, which I built out at an angle to give a little more space. Overall, it worked out very well especially as we had fitted at the same time a new gas boiler and several radiators.

In 1964 there was few loft extensions built. Still the original layout of the roads, with their grass verges, was intact. The kerbstones were still complete without runways breaking up the sweep of the roadsides. The majority of houses retained their side entrances and complete front gardens. Few cars parked, hedges abounded and front gates hung. The roads were therefore neat, uncluttered and in the main unspoilt by alterations to the estates original conception. This was so all over Britain. What altered the panorama was the advent of higher wages – increased prosperity, which heightened the individual’s will to better themselves. This declared itself by individuals altering the specification of their house and garden.

The country’s prosperity and easier planning laws allowed individuals to alter their property to cater for a car. Pavements could be torn up to create a ramp – to cross pavements, garages, built with a flat roof although the brickwork had to be in keeping with the original specification. Lofts converted, front doors changed and window designs altered. These changes were made to houses all over Britain affecting the original design concepts devised by the architects and town planners

The baby boom of the sixties, and the ease of planning regulations and control, gave parents a simple option… It was much cheaper to alter your home than it was to sell and buy anew – a larger version of the same. Children could carry on attending the same school… the routine of living – continue unaltered… This made extending a far more attractive proposition. The appearance of British town’s changes forever… gone, calm green vistas and conformity… DIY ruled and cheapness the governing factor to design…!

This happened all over Britain a situation where a vast proportion of properties were beyond the financial reach of a certain sector of the population. First time buyers seeking affordable homes found less and less on the market. Mrs Thatcher sold off council homes and buying to rent made difficult.

I believed that I could provide a better environment for my family if I relocated to the West Country. A larger house, purchased in Somerset or Devon, with the money received from the sale of Norwood Drive, would be a better proposition than staying close to London… Part of the building could be let out for holidaymakers or as bed and breakfast accommodation. The possibility of a larger garden would provide a much better environment for the growing family.

Excited by the thought, of what the future might hold, I made plans about how I should go about it. Sally appeared to be interested in the idea and could see the benefits. I contacted the West Country union offices and enquired about vacancies. One existed and so applied for a ‘white card’ to receive back a request for an interview. I wrote to some of the local Estate Agents – near Exeter to receive back a sheaf of particulars that looked promising…

It was at the point that Sally said that she did not want to move. This forced me to reconsider all my plans – led me to take out another insurance policy with Provident Life to allow us to have the capital to go ahead with an extension. We also extended the kitchen sideways and redesigned the interior layout – constructing a hatchway into the dining room. On my next holiday, I built a new patio, garden wall and replaced the wooden fence with a brick wall – separating us from our next-door neighbour.

To allow more space in both the second bedroom and the dining room I thought I would remove the fireplaces and the chimneybreasts. Tackling the bedroom first, I started to remove the brickwork, which came away quite easily. Where the breast came up to the ceiling, I staggered the brickwork back to support the breastwork above in the loft. All the rubbish I threw out of the window and then wheeled it to the skip. When I came to do, the downstairs dining room things were not quite so easy because the massive concrete hearth to the room above not supported. The concrete hearth was six inches thick by four feet long and eighteen inches wide. The question of how to get it down was a puzzle. At last, I had a brain wave. I would lean my ladder against the wall and then hammer it down from the room above. At the first twenty smashes, nothing happened. I could feel the house move but not the slab. Not even a chip flew off. Wishing to get on I assaulted the stubborn block by giving it a tremendous whack. That did it. It plummeted through the floor straight through my ladder, which it was suppose to slide down, and buried itself into the splintered floorboards. I peered through the hole in the floor aghast at the damage done. My new extending ladder bought for me by my mother-in-law was ruined. To remove the slab: rolled – head over heels… through the French doors up a sloping plank into the skip… now I had to plaster two rooms. It looks so easy when you watch a skilled plasterer lying on the coats of plaster dampening down – flicking a brush of water onto the drying surface just to allow easy passage of the float to give the plaster a polished surface. What a performance trying to get it just right. In the end, I relied upon sand papering succeeding coats of plaster to give the wall some semblance of ‘a level professional finish’.

In 1964, Harold Wilson and the Labour party elected. This was a time of industrial failure, out-of-date technology; short term fixes which propelled the country into yet another sterling crisis and inflation. Therefore, off we went again into the annual wage demand to keep up. Wilson stepped back from trade union reform. It was just a few years later that the Labour moved towards comprehensive secondary education.

Talking amongst ourselves at work, I could tell there were higher expectations sought from life. Individuals spoke about flying to the Far East or America. There was much talk about going out to restaurants and nightclubs. New towns were springing up all over the country. Men at work told stories about weekend parties… and the swopping of front door keys. All sorts of choices in lifestyle were possible and there were shops and stores catered for any deviant behaviour.

Distemper superseded by emulsion paint and the public shied away from having green, brown and cream exterior woodwork – choosing instead, new softer tones. Centre lights taken up to the ceiling. Net curtains frowned on. Privet hedges replaced by brick walls, roads erupted with new driveways and lean-to garages sprouted. The old quiet charm of the thirties went modern! Kitchens were now fitted with everything beneath the worktop surface; the box freezer was the ‘in thing’. Fireplaces ripped out, chimney places bricked up and wall-to-wall carpeting finished off the effect of uncluttered space. Gas and electric fires were taking the place of conventional fires for both heating the water and for heating the living space. New ‘Do-it-yourself’ programmes backed up all these alterations on television.

Overtime for me was now a necessary buttress if I was going to supplement state education by out of school activities like swimming and drama [elocution] lessons… our holidays, had to be booked. Sally’s decision not to move to the West Country put an end to all my hopes to try to supplement my sources of income. We had to continue as we were…

In 1965 our eldest child was about to start Primary School; the second had just started swimming lessons at the Swimming Baths, our third was starting to walk and Ruth was about to be born.

Both Sally and I were keen to see that the children kept up to the required standard at school. Because Simon had had such a good start, being in a class at Primary school mainly populated by girls, the standard of behaviour and learning had been high. The parents too had been interested in their own child’s progress. It was natural for us to expect all our children to assume the same progress. We also compared our children with friends and relations children and discussed with them their views. We watched and kept note how each one progressed from birth… Sally filling in the ‘baby books’ assiduously keen to make sure nothing was missed out…

As a young family, we did without television until our eldest was twelve when the pressure from outside the home became too great to continue without one. This doing without a television was a conscience decision by both of us parents, to prevent addiction to triviality, violence and puerile programmes.

We paid a weekly visit to the library where all the children drew out books – read by the following week. This Saturday trip to the library became a routine event come rain or shine… followed by two ounces of sweets each to eat on the way home. All this started when the eldest became old enough to benefit and continued well after the time television was to become popular entertainment.

I was working at least two four-and-a-half hour periods of overtime on top of my normal hours during the week… on Saturdays, I started at six until two in the afternoon. The midweek rate for over-time was time-and-a-half and for Saturdays double-time. I started off from home during the week at about seven and drove to London by either car or motor bike to be there for eight and arrived back home around six for normal days and getting on for eleven on those nights of overtime.

The owner of Cumberland Road died and the son inherited the house. He wished to sell the property for £400 which my parents could not afford. Eventually, after a lot of heart searching – looking into every possible way to stay, or at least find a place to live, the council offered them a home at 99 Mill Farm Close, Pinner Hill Road. It was a very difficult time for all the family particularly for my mother who hated to leave her garden and neighbours.

As a social group, trades union’s officials, whether at the union office or shop floor, enjoy power – to satisfy: their inadequacies, enjoy the excitement of confrontation, look upon industrial disputes as opportunities to sit back, stop work and talk about ‘management unfairness…’ There are those, who make such situations, one to ‘help their fellow workers, right injustices and a few, born leaders of men – who like cream – rise to the top… as well, many others. A few, believe in ‘socialistic philosophy’ – an ideological belief concerned with equal distribution of profit – relative to need… This, world-wide, proved to be: inefficient, unworkable, unfair and socially detrimental and holds back evolution… From my experience, a generalization, none were the most skilled workers…

The workers representative would be called into the works office to discuss unusual jobs, difficult production schedules, annual pay reviews, changes in all workers ‘rights’, overtime payments, clarifying arrangements, discussions about new materials, machines and safety-first and welfare issues etc. All the above are extremely vital factors needing sometimes delicate handling. In many instances the union representative was not up to that delicate task – not technically able…!

When workers are receiving top salary rates and as much overtime as they want there are no complaints. Workers will work in terrible conditions with fearful safety problems – due to poor lighting, dangerous floors, amateurish electrical fittings, draughts and floods.

Between the wars trade unions officials shied away from wielding their strength – as to affect the nations economy – giving way as soon as the national safety declared an issue. Always it was ‘how the economy would not stand a change’. When there is full employment, and not enough skilled workers, then, union power at it’s strongest. This is obvious – reflects scarcity value.

This book covers the period when unions were probably at their strongest –any shortfall, from earlier times, made up by an influx of white collar unionists, older trainee groups and women workers. The number of strike – days lost an escalating one, and the largest proportion of these, unofficial. As a onetime junior union official – all SLADE & PW members had to take their turn in attending meetings and filling local union jobs, is was apparent that head Office union leaders were not strong enough to control their more activist members. Very often men were forced to ‘toe-the-line’, if not – sent to Coventry. It was not a period of ‘common sense’. The local union officials acted irresponsibly. They never explaining that, ‘by the way, this strike might lead to mass unemployment, work going aboard – lead to industries closing down…’ Point out: the advance of electronics will come about which will alter working arrangements.

The workers continued their overtime habits – now relied upon… a necessity not just to get the job out on time but to pay their own bills… leading to the eventual loss of profits for the firm… delayed introduction of new working arrangements and installation of the latest technology. It was a viscous circle, which no one benefited from, least of all the workers. I have heard men say at a union meeting, “I would rather have this firm shut down rather than give way – on our demands”. There was a hard core of individuals who did not care about the industry – who enjoyed confrontation, who spoiled for a fight. They did not concern themselves with the changes facing the industry – the new ‘reprographic’ printing systems. Although traditional ‘in-plant’ printers were slow to exploit what was ‘new’ – instant print business, they made changes, which swung general trade work towards litho replacing their slower more inflexible letterpress machines. There was a very subtle difference between what the traditional printers estimated and what the competitive small jobbing printers charged. The former boasted faster delivery, quality and reliability and the latter cheapness. However, the differences were becoming ever closer. New materials, faster make ready times – on the printing machine, and electronic picture scanning, finally made the difference. A century of hand produced coloured posters ended…

British governments continued to employ a policy that held back investment and destroyed confidence – no party had a leader strong enough to stand up to the unions: allow a wages policy, plus degree of unemployment, to force out the inefficient, time wasters and industrial agitators.

It was in this climate that we were bringing up our new family. I had to be very circumspect about what I said at work and how I did my work. Each man looked over his shoulder at the chap at the next bench. Was he achieving a faster, better job, doing more overtime or paid a higher salary? I could never relax because it was essential to continue to earn as much money as I could.

Everything at home, carefully thought through – contributed towards making a good environment for a family – educational trips to the Commonwealth Institute, Museums, Galleries, Concerts, places of interest and the library. Removing the television was paramount… to form a quiet, self-learning environment we hoped would be habit forming.

It was just such a pity that each child could not have their own room to enjoy privacy – have their own things around them. Perhaps more space achieved by building a loft extension, or in extremis, moving to a larger house.

I compared my living standard and expectations with my parents. My world was utterly different. It was not just different because of material differences, for they were many, but of expectations and possibilities. Our life was certainly closer to my in-laws – their horizons, tastes and practices, and this set the standard for the children – how we would bring them up – their speech, manners and horizons. We had hopes that by adopting these ideas we had done our best to raise socially adaptable children – capable of achieving a happy fulfilling life. So far, the plan was working… However, not far away the pressures of the peer group and sexual awareness both might spoil all the good work and effort.

The differences between social attitudes within all classes related to the size of the family. Instead of being surrounded by a number of clambering children the modern family could be enjoyed and this reinforced by better living conditions. Little did I realise then what was to come about…!

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