Chapter 8 - Home Again, Again
From ChapmanCentral
- This is from the "magnum opus", Dad's memoir of his life up to middle age.
My first task on returning to Civvy Street was to find a job and I went to the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) for help. They suggested Trollope & Colls and when I said that I was recently demobilised, the reaction of the Company was that they felt obliged to employ me. How different from the attitude of employers when I was awaiting call up. The work was mainly on maintenance but included some on the installations in the new Bank of England Chambers in King William Street. There was also opportunity to use my ratting expertise because the rats, as rats will, chewed their way through bunches of cables to gain access to the Electrical Intake in the basement.
During one lunch break I looked into a shop near the Monument and saw a camera on display. The shop owner told me a few facts about the Kershaw Penguin and I noticed that it had a lens made by Taylor Hobson, at that time probably manufacturers of the best lenses in the world. In fact, they later stopped making lenses for cameras because the lens mounts were not good enough. Obviously I became the owner of a Kershaw Penguin.
One of the jobs that we did was at a Diamond Sorters where 'Jimmy's' girl friend, Barbara worked. Small world! The routine maintenance of kitchens of some clubs meant that I was relatively well fed but after about a year I felt that my experience should be wider and I also wanted to be nearer home and hence evening classes and so I left Trollope & Colls to work for J Lyons & Co Ltd. The name intrigued me and I was interested to learn that L, Y, O, N and S were the initial letters of the first names of the five Gluckstein brothers who founded the company and of whom two, Leonard and Samuel, still worked there. I was employed on the building of their new frozen food (Frood) factory in Rannoch Road, Fulham.
When the factory was finished, I had completed my five years (including 2 years National Service) as a Mate and 'got the tools'. Rather than leave, I stayed on to work on maintenance, the experience with both food production machinery and in the workshops being valuable. Before telling the next part of my story I should like to relate some of the personal details about Lyons.
I found it fascinating to work for a company who were as self sufficient as they reasonably could be. They needed lorries with their own specialised bodies and so set up Park Royal Coachworks to manufacture them. They needed a laundry service and so started Hayes Laundry. The Corner House side of the business has been well documented elsewhere but not many people are aware of the Hotel side with Regent Palace Hotel and Strand Palace Hotel. The Company had their own tea and coffee plantations, a well organised wharf and barge set up to import foodstuffs via the Thames from Greenwich and had built one of, if not the, first computers (LEO) to be used by them for their own accounts and they could sell time to others for similar purposes.
My only complaint about Lyons is that they were so mean that I have never heard of another company like it. Every other food and confectionery manufacturers that I've been lucky enough to visit have all had the policy of: 'Eat as much as you like'. The workforce very soon get sick of the sight of chocolate, or whatever, and there is very little or no theft. Lyons employed a large security staff whose total salary bill must have exceeded probable Company losses by a huge margin. In fact, theft was widespread and, at one time, it was difficult to obtain coffee after blending had been completed and the easiest way was to buy it from a particular Security Guard. The most distressing case was that of a Cable Jointer, employed by a sub-contractor, who worked through the week-end in order to finish connecting one 'floor' of the factory and, while he was working on the 'Live' ends, there was a short circuit that blew a hole in the palm of his hand. After he had been to West London Hospital for treatment, he went back to work and carried on working. He completed the job on Sunday morning and the 'floor 'was in production on Monday morning, some weeks early. On his way home on Sunday he took a Christmas pudding. He had good taste! The Guard on the gate searched his tool bag and called the Security Chief who then called the Police. The case was heard on Monday and the Cable Jointer's boss was so incensed that he came down from Manchester and paid the fine (10 shillings) and added some rude words about blood money. Their remaining contracts for cable jointing were completed on time but never early. There is no excuse for theft but the methods used by Lyons were draconian. I am sure that there is a connection between the attitude of the Company and one employee whose house had every conceivable item from Lyons, including all his carpets and cutlery.
I had my first introduction to brand names with strawberry jam, made and bottled at Lyons, being sent out labelled as Hartley's. One of the jobs that we were involved in was the installation of new supply cables in both the hotels. This involved arriving at the hotel by 9.O pm, to have a meal and then start work as soon as the lift could be shut down. We finished at about 3.3O am and, provided that we arrived back at Rannoch Road by 8.O am, we were paid overtime from the end of work the previous day. Overtime rates were 'time and a half' until midnight and 'double time' after that. For each week that one night was spent replacing cables my wages were approximately double the norm.
One evening, 'Bert' came to the flat and asked me to help him to move a man. I thought that he was moving house and when we got there I found that the man had died. There was a nurse living in the flats and she was already there. We carried the man into his bedroom, undressed him and the nurse tied up his jaw. This was the first time that I had seen a dead person and was certainly the most traumatic incident in which 'Bert' involved me. 'Bert' was a strong influence in my life. He wasn't a 'Father Figure' but always seemed to gently persuade me of the right thing to do if there was a difficult choice. I shall always remember his funny ways. One of his sayings was: "Not that surely!" But there was an emphasis which could be either persuasive, amusing or critical, depending upon where he put the emphasis and the word 'that' often came out as 'thart', making the saying his own. Another quirk was that he called Ladbroke Grove, 'Ladbroke Grove Street'. Now this was on a route fairly frequently used by our family for some years and our family caught the habit so that we all refer to 'Ladbroke Grove Street'. 'Bert' also introduced me to the real benefit of Trades Unions. One of the ways in which he did this was to take me to see 'Six Men Of Dorset' at the Unity Theatre.
One day the foreman at Lyons said that he was required to make one of his men redundant. I felt that it was time to move on and volunteered to go. It has always been more difficult for an older man to find another job and the wish to gain experience combined with the confidence of youth were a strong influence. I had bought, and sold, a Humber cycle which Marjorie and Frank will remember because of the description of it given by their first son, Russell, as:
- "Uncle bikey new."
I had then bought a motor cycle and decided to take a long holiday touring round the coastline of England and Wales. At the end of six weeks I was getting short of money and the staff at the Labour Exchange were making offers that I did not want to accept so I asked 'Bert', who was the General Foreman of the Fulham Borough Council's direct labour scheme if he could give me a job. What was wanted was a job that was not too demanding so that I could complete the day's work in less time, leaving some time for College homework. I spent a year with them and found that the scheme worked extremely well. There have been a number of privatised schemes set up nationwide but I have never seen one that gave such good returns in terms of workmanship or low cost on a unit/job basis. There are many schemes which cost less but, in terms of value for money, leave much to be desired.
The work wasn't all simple domestic maintenance and repair and, in fact, one job gave me one of my favourite anecdotes. I was sent to rewire some services at the Fulham Mortuary. The Attendant, George, seemed to be an interesting man and I asked him how he got the job. Work was hard to come by in the 30's and when he saw the job advertised, he applied. He was given the job and told that he would soon become accustomed to handling corpses. He was told that when a post mortem was required he would place the body in the PM room ready for the doctor. On the first occasion, he did this and when the doctor arrived he looked surprised that the body was 'not ready'. He then explained to George that all the organs, including the brain, should be laid out so that it was not necessary for a doctor to even put his gown on. He could simply look at all the organs displayed, determine the cause of death and save a lot of time. He explained the 'perks' that would accrue and George was, after the initial shock, quite pleased with the arrangement, the extra cash being quite useful in bringing up his family. Asked about his surgery technique he said that he used oversewing. He then explained that it was not possible to return the brain, it being unmanageable and, to restore shape to the head for appearances sake, he stuffed it with newspaper. At this point he indicated a pile of newspapers on his desk and I burst out laughing. It took a few seconds for me to regain control. George wanted to know what I found so amusing and I asked him whether it had never occurred to him that the majority of the citizens of Fulham supported the Labour Party but he sent them to their graves with their heads stuffed full with the Daily Express.
Another job was far less agreeable. One block of private flats had been requisitioned by the Government during the war and used to house refugees from a country in the Mediterranean. These were large 'Key' flats with rent in the region of £1O per week before the war and had many rooms. On taking over the flats for Council use we were to divide them each into two units. One of the refugee families had used one room as a tip. All their kitchen waste etc had been thrown into this unwanted room and it had turned into a giant compost heap which had rotted for years. The work involved in restoring that flat and many other abused properties can easily be imagined and I sometimes found it difficult to reconcile 'Bert's' socialist attitude towards tenants who mistreated the property. For example, there was one couple who had a small child and kept a puppy. The floor was bare, apart from a scattering of newspapers which did nothing to control the spread of dog faeces over the flat. The man was a reporter on a National Daily.
I had sold the Kershaw Penguin in favour of a camera with more sophisticated controls, a 'Semi Prince' of unknown make which was a 16 on 12O and went on to produce snaps of good quality for me (and for 'Jimmy') for some years. For processing, I went to the Ideal Studios at Hammersmith and one day the owner, Mrs Jacques, asked me if I would take some wedding pictures for her as she had a double booking. This was the start of many Saturday afternoons spent in taking photographs, very often at two weddings and once, at three. I only once took pictures at Caxton Hall and there was a well known personality getting married at about the same time. I seem to remember that it was Julie Andrews but I had no spare plates and hence, whoever it was, I count this as 'one that got away'. I also borrowed one of the plate cameras from time to time to photograph such events as the gathering on the occasion of the Christening of 'Jimmy' and Barbara's first born, Gillian. This was attended by Barbara's two sisters 'Betty' (with husband, Jim and their two children), Daphne (with John Hopkins the conductor) Barbara's parents, Mr and Mrs Webb and others. Daphne was playing the cello with the Halle Orchestra at the time. Note the careful name dropping!
One wedding had a funny incident. It was at Hamnmersmith Town hall and I went to some trouble to set up a group on the steps. Having got everyone nicely posed, I was giving them the usual 'chat' to get a simultaneous smile and I noticed that the Bride's Father looked a bit miserable so I said: "Come on Dad, give us smile". To which he replied: "I carnt, I aint got me teef in".
"You young people don't know when you're well off". There are many of us who would like to have been given money every time that we heard that statement but there was no such luxury as Day Release and the only way to get Further Education was through Evening Classes. In my case, three evenings a week were spent at Wandsworth and I used an old technique to reinforce the lectures, that of copying all the notes out in full, with clear diagrams. I always made a point of having all this, and Homework, clear by Sunday night. It was normal to work five and a half days and this did not leave very much free time. In fact, I usually took Saturday afternoons off (mainly for weddings), working the rest of the week.
Church friends of Barbara were June Patience (whose sister had married 'Geoff' Mc Garry) and 'Tony' Furneaux who married June. An architect named Alan joined the throng, as did 'Ken' Curwen and it was quite usual to gather at 'Geoff' and Elsie's flat at 52A Britannia Road after evening classes on Fridays. Hence, 'Friday night is Mc Garbage Night'. The other silly expression was that if anybody mentioned the number 52, for any reason, the rest would chorus: "A!"
Another late night was Monday, when we hired one of the Fulham Baths after they were closed to the public and swam from 10 until 11 pm, arriving home for an evening meal at about 11.30. In view of the fact that all this travelling was done by cycle (until the purchase of the motor cycle) and it was approximately 3 miles between home and Wandsworth, with 2 miles to work by 8.00 am, it is little wonder that I am sometimes lose patience with young people today. Another cause of late nights was Badminton.
When I arrived for the first night of the ONC year there was a kindred spirit in the form of 'Ron' Pottinger already seated and I joined him. We became firm friends and, since he was already married I then began to visit him to do our Homework and to revise for exams. Later, I took Mum to their house to watch the Coronation while 'Ron' and I revised for the Higher National Certificate exams.
One Spring, 'Ron' and Joy asked me if I had done any walking because they did some ridge walking and would like to take me to Snowdon. The following Sunday we did a short walk, over White Top, Juniper Top and Box Hill as a training exercise for the following week-end, Easter, in Snowdonia. That was the first of many such visits. The travel arrangements varied according to the party and 'Ron's' vehicle. The first visit began with an overnight stop at a farmhouse in Shrewsbury on the Thursday night and we picked up Barry and Hazel, an Australian couple, at Llangollen on Friday. Barry worked at Port Sunlight and was very knowledgeable regarding the Snowdon area. He was our guide for the week-end which was truly memorable with beautiful weather, albeit causing 12 people to be rescued from the snow. I picked up Barry on my pillion and 'Ron' with Joy in the side-car, picked up hazel on his. We stayed at Evans farmhouse in Nant Gwynnant. On succeeding years we used 'Ron's' pre-war Lancia, a Commer van borrowed from a friend of mine and motor cycles. One year we stayed overnight with Aunty Ada and Uncle George in Birmingham and, on another memorable week-end we decided to drive on to Snowdon non-stop, arriving at 4.00 am in time to 'run' up to the top and see the sunrise. We reached the top in about one and a half hours and then the clouds settled. It then took us about 4 hours to compass read our way down. This didn't damp my enthusiasm for ridge walking and there was plenty more to follow.
Fulham Council Works Outings were always taken at Brighton and I managed three, one at each end of my year with them and another as a guest. When I had passed my ONC I felt that it was time for another move. As luck would have it, the Council had a small recession and, once again, the old redundancy trick came in handy. I got a job with a small firm called Temperature Limited, who manufactured air conditioning equipment. Some of their units were packaged under other labels such as GEC but the house brands were TEMCON and TEMTUR. The two most significant events there were meeting two people who have remained good friends ever since. One of these was Tommy (Tom) Martin and the other was 'Ernie' Collis. 'Ernie' and his wife, Edna soon became good friends. In a very short time the electrical foreman, 'Fred' Beckwith, returned to a mental hospital. My appointment as Foreman followed.
The Works Manager, Mr Voss, was an ignorant beast of a man who had played on 'Fred's' weakness and thought that he was going to repeat the performance with me. I made it quite clear that I knew my business and did not wish to waste time in useless conversation. One evening we had a job to install an air conditioning unit at Lyons Corner House in Lower Regents Street. The arrangement was that we 'clocked on' at 9.00 pm, went out for a drink and went back to work at 10.00 pm when the customers had all left. The Maintenance Foreman had too much to drink and was useless. I had taken 'Tommy' to the Captain's Cabin for a drink and Mr Voss, as usual slightly the worse for wear, watched as 'Tommy' and I did the necessary and moved the unit, weighing in excess of a ton, down into the basement. Voss was full of praise and I persuaded him at about 2 am to have a lift home. I can honestly say that I frightened the daylights out of him and, combined with our heroic efforts in getting the job done, this turned Voss into a placid individual from then on. There were some interesting installation locations including one job at Revo Limited at Tipton near Dudley. I took (then very young) Roy Dearling to help me and noticed on the Hotel register 'ACCOUNT TO REVO'. Roy and I enjoyed their hospitality and, as a result, I have never drunk rum since. The Revo job was to install the first of the units in some fighting vehicles. Another job was to install units in some Outside Broadcast vehicles at the Palace of Arts at Wembley. The particular vehicle was being prepared for the BBC trip down the Thames. While I was in the vehicle, the daylight was suddenly somewhat obscured by a huge man. It was Richard Dimbleby and he was, with reputed typical efficiency, 'leaving no stone unturned'. It was a privilege to see the great man at work.
I had an unexpected experience on the way back from Wembley. As we were travelling along Western Avenue there was a sharp 'crack' and the van, an Austin A7O lost all drive. It was too close to finishing time to expect any response but we did telephone the works. I looked under the van and could see the two ends of the clutch operating rod hanging down. The driver declared it to be hopeless but I suggested that we should drive back without using the clutch. He said that he thought this to be impossible so I volunteered. Suffice to say that driving in the rush hour through Shepherd's Bush and Hammersmith Broadway (pre one way system) left us ready for a strong drink.
Temperature Limited had a sub-contractor in Surbiton working on fighting vehicles. His main line of business was in rebuilding crashed motor cars. In order to secure one 'lot' from the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police it was necessary for him to accept an ex-Police Triumph Speed Twin which I then bought from him.
Our welder, 'Charlie' Pavitt was an interesting character who, it was said, could catch anything alight. A small test facility had been built in one corner of the works. It was constructed of steel sheets and was considered to be indestructable. 'Charlie' set it alight. His most regular problem was that he seemed to be unable to turn his welding torch 'OFF' without getting a 'blow back'. It was thus that the cry 'BOTTLES' went up approximately weekly and 'Charlie's' gas bottles would be thrown out into the yard. Some hero, not 'Charlie', would then turn the fire hose on them to cool them down. Needless to say, 'Charlie' enjoyed the nickname of 'Arson' Pavitt.
We normally ate lunch at the Rendezvous Restaurant in Fulham High Street. 'Tommy', Brian our blind telephonist and I were a regular trio and 'Tommy' and I played silly games on Brian by moving his meal round after he had set it. The firm was housed in an old horse bus garage, where the buses were kept on the ground floor and the horses stabled upstairs. To facilitate this the stair treads were wide and the risers shallow with solid brick walls at the sides. Brian would challenge us to a game of football and, relying on the echoes from the enclosure, he was unbeatable.
I was sent to Christchurch to set up arrangements for some units to be installed at Airspeed. It was decided that it would be better to leave the work to their own electricians but, while I was down there I visited 'Ernie' who was staying with a photographer for one of the motor cycle magazines. He took an action shot of me. Perhaps it was this that influenced me when I left late the following morning and drove back to Fulham at the highest speed that I could coax out of the machine.
Westken Electrics was still going strong and I supplied a Police Sergeant with a TV set. He warned me that the speed at which certain motor cyclists rode along Fulham Road was giving cause for some concern. The problem arose because 'Reg', 'Tommy' and I were all punctual in that we usually arrived just before expiry of the permitted three minutes of lateness, thus avoiding penalty. I passed on the warning to the others but 'Reg' chose to ignore me and was charged with speeding. I later had the unpleasant task of dismissing 'Reg', who could not be relied upon to do any job correctly. I suggested that he should look elsewhere for work and that I would say that he had been made redundant in order to avoid the word 'DISMISSED' from appearing on his Labour Exchange record. He said that he would report to the Union that I was breaking the 'LAST IN, FIRST OUT' rule. I replied that I would dismiss him for incompetence. He then chose redundancy and in fact left quite amicably.
As my Higher National Certificate examinations approached I wrote to a dozen firms offering them the advantage of employing me. Six ignored me, three said 'NO' and three called me for interviews. I wrote and turned one down but went for an unsuccessful interview with Vickers at Kingston and then went for an interview at the Handley Page Limited Test Department at Park Street near St Albans.
I haven't mentioned that 'Rene' and 'Chris' had married and moved, first to a flat in Marylebone and later built their own bungalow at Seer Green. Marjorie and Frank were still with Mum and me at the flat. I mentioned the fact that 'HP' had offered me £500 pa and Marjorie expressed surprise at this huge sum. In point of fact, I had been earning £10.15s pw (£559 pa) at Temperature Limited but felt that the improvement in other ways warranted the move.
Perhaps I may mention just one more of 'Bert's' sayings. If asked when a job might be finished or when he was going somewhere and there was even the slightest hint of a nag, he would calmly reply; "Tuesday November the seventh".
