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Chapter Six 1948
Back to Real Life!
My civilian life resumed with six
weeks demobilization leave. I needed a temporary job to supplement my
meagre army pay and my Dad found me one. I worked for a month of nights
at Britvic soft drinks factory, stacking empty bottles onto the bottling
machines and taking full ones off at the end. I had two surprises there.
First of all I was amazed to find that of ten men on the all male shift,
eight were moonlighting policemen, including my father. The other shock
was the state of the toilets. The day shift was exclusively female but
judging by the terrible mess they left the lavatories in none of them
were ladies!
At the end of my leave I had an interview with Mr.Snell who had been Deputy
and was now Chief Engineer. He asked me if I had done any surveying in
the Army. I replied that I had but omitted to add that it was one Thursday
afternoon. I had been asked by the C.O. to check the level pegs for the
new Officers tennis court. They had been put in by a Captain using three
different sized pickaxes and no spirit level. Naturally they were wrong.
Anyway that 'experience' got me promoted to Assistant Surveyor and I started
back in Shrublands Close. Now I was the surveyor peering through the level
at the pole held by the chainman. My place as survey assistant was not
filled so we had to use workmen taken from a gang on the nearest seawall
job, or someone from the drawing office in the Head Office. The E.R.C.B.
was now the Essex River Board and new recruits to Head Office staff included
Mike Hyde, who had been at the Grammar School with me, John Francis, who
had been at Junior School, Johnny Little, who lived in Baddow Hall Crescent.
Mick Alderman and Jimmy Peecock who were friends of Mike Hyde also joined
us. I had heard a lot about them when at school. All had just finished
National Service and surveys often resembled a hunting trip by Robin Hood's
merry men. Airguns, catapults and, later, long bows were added to the
necessary survey equipment. We were usually working far from any habitation
and rabbits, partridge and pheasant were welcome supplements to the diet.
Mick Alderman was not only a fine marksman but also a very good craftsman
with wood or metal. His reactions were instantaneous. On one occasion
three of us were walking across a field, Mick with an air rifle under
his arm, when a rabbit shot up from under our feet. While Jimmy and I
were too startled to move, Mick reacted so quickly that the rabbit was
dead before it had gone three yards. He read a lot about the traditional
longbow and made one from ash and turned arrows from old pine floorboards.
'Salvaged' rifle bullets with a blade fashioned from spring steel formed
the tip, and goose and turkey feathers were used for fletching. The bowstrings
presented a problem. The proper linen strings were not being produced
commercially so we visited Godfrey's rope works in Moulsham Street and
persuaded them to make half a dozen.
I bought a bow and we got quite expert but the bow really started me on
the road to vegetarianism. Mick and I were doing a survey at South Woodham
and on Woodham Marsh we spotted a large covey of partridge about a hundred
and fifty yards away. It was extreme range and Mick's arrow was blown
a few yards off target. I aimed off a bit and my arrow pinned a bird to
the ground by its wing. We ran up, sending the other birds into the air,
and I had to wring the poor bird's neck. I was not happy. The partridge
had not done me any harm. It was the Alderman household that had partridge
for supper.
Several Engineers and Surveyors had returned from War Service and two
of them were in the Shrublands Close office. Mr.Fillingham had been in
the R.A.F. I think he had been a Flight Lieutenant and a pilot. He was
the more flamboyant of the two and Mr.Metson, who had been in the Royal
Navy, was much quieter. This led me into an n embarrassing situation.
I read a book about the convoys to Russia which had lost many ships to
German submarines and aircraft in appallingly icy conditions. It was called
PQ17, the code name of one of the most mutilated convoys. Knowing that
Mr. Metson had been in the navy I thought he might be interested and asked
if he would like to read it. " I have," he said, and quietly
added, "I was on that convoy". Soon afterwards I saw a letter
on his desk addressed to Lt.Commander Metson, D.S.C.
Mike Hyde and Johnny Little were both keen cyclists and persuaded me to
join the Chelmer Cycling Club. Club outings did not appeal to me much
but I did make three long trips, one with my army friend Ken and the other
two with Derek Wright who lived in Great Baddow and I knew from school.
The first trip in autumn 1948 was on the old style heavy-framed bikes.
We went to Dover and along the coast to Hastings and then home. We took
a small tent but no mallet so had to knock the pegs in with the base of
a bottle. ( Do not try this at home kids.)
The first trip with Derek was to Dorset. We visited Swanage first, staying
at a Youth Hostel, and met two Swiss girls who had come to England to
see a tide. Unfortunately Swanage has the smallest tide in Britain. Then
we went via Corfe Castle to Weymouth. Unfortunately the Youth Hostel there
was full so I went to the local Police Station and asked where we could
stay. I let slip that my dad was a policeman and we were offered, and
took, a night in a cell. We got breakfast but had to leave early before
the day shift Inspector arrived! Then on to Lyme Regis, (very smelly)
and Seaton before heading home. On the way back we were passing Blackbush
Airport when Derek got stung on the cheek by a bee and was in some pain.
Fortunately a lorry driver stopped to look at the planes and I noticed
that it was a furniture van from Colchester. We got a lift back to Chelmsford
in comparative comfort with our cycles in the back of the van.
Our second adventure was to the West Country. We started out from Great
Baddow and by sunset we arrived in Stow in the Wold, about 120 miles.
I wore out a pair of shorts that day. The next day we went on via Broadway
and Evesham to Great Malvern. The weather was very hot and we didn't try
to repeat our first day performance on the journey back.
These journeys were eclipsed by Johnny and Mike. John set off to cycle
alone to Spain but was so entranced by the Dordogne valley that he stayed
there until it was time to come home. Mike, a devout Roman Catholic at
that time, cycled to Rome for the Holy Year celebrations and then continued
via Sicily, Tunis and Tangier to Gibraltar. He came back via Spain and
France, stopping a while in Paris where he supplemented his shrinking
funds by collecting waste paper from affluent apartments and selling the
almost new magazines back to the newsagents. Mike also eclipsed our 120
miles by setting out from Chelmsford at midnight and reaching almost to
the Lake District by midnight the next night. About 300 miles!
In 1948 I joined the local Young Conservatives. Not from any political
conviction but because they were the only available social club and they
had a table tennis table. There were also girls. Two of these "went
out" with me for reasons of their own, as I discovered later. Joyce
thought that by going with me she could get closer to her real target,
my sister's boyfriend Don. Shirley had broken with her fiancé and
wanted to make him jealous. Nora was very different. I met her at a Y.C.
dance and we got on very well until her mother found out that I was not
a Roman Catholic and ended that. Religious persecution! Saturday night
dances at the Odeon were a focus of our social life and I remember one
occasion when Jimmy Peecock took one girl to the dance and after about
an hour made an excuse, left the girl with friends while he went to visit
another girl, returning in good time to take the first girl home after
the last waltz. And he got away with it.
Jimmy Peecock introduced me to a group of lads, some of whom I knew from
school, who met regularly to listen to classical records or play solo
whist. John Plumtree, Jimmy, Derek Evans and Barry (?) were the regulars
with occasional visitors. We each took turns in providing the records,
usually in the concert form of overture, concerto and symphony or Tone
Poem. An assistant surveyor in the office, Arthur Marshall, was keen and
knowledgeable on Beethoven and he helped widen my musical knowledge.
The Great Baddow Young Conservatives were run mainly by the Willis family.
Alan was the Secretary and Neville who is a gifted musician organized
concerts. They were sort of reviews made up of sketches and acts using
any talents the members had.
Neville and I mostly wrote the sketches and the shows had names like "Clean
Round the Bend" and "Bats in the Belfry"
Perhaps the most significant date in my life was Good Friday, 1949. That
was my first date with another girl I met at Young Conservatives, Brenda
Mison. I had borrowed my father's car, a pre war Singer saloon, and we
went to Southend to a concert by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra. Brenda was wearing a red skirt and a pale blue jacket. Her
father warned us not to be late and set the pattern for several years
to come. Unfortunately Sir Thomas was ill but Charles Groves stepped in
at the last moment and the concertwas a great success. It started with
Delius, "On Hearing the First Cuckoo". That was followed by
Elgar's Cello Concerto, then " Apres Midi D'un Faun" and Tchaikovsky's
sixth Symphony. The car handbrake failed because of a broken cable but
we got home safely.
Later that year Brenda applied to go to Teacher Training College and in
September she started a two year course at St,Osyth College in Clacton.
This meant that our romance was conducted at long range with daily letters
and frequent phone calls. These would have cost me a fortune if I hadn't
known the local telephonist who connected me free of charge. Every couple
of weeks I made the trek by bus to Clacton and stayed in a B&B near
the College. The College buildings were two former hotels on the sea front.
The regime was monastic. Students were booked in and out and if they had
male visitors they had to keep the room door open.
I think it was the summer of 1950 that Brenda had an operation for the
removal of a cyst from the thyroid. This was to affect her for many years
if not for life. She left college in 1951 and started teaching at Danbury
C of E Primary School with a class of eight year olds.
In 1953 the conjunction of a very high Spring tide with high winds caused
an extremely high tide. At hundreds of places on the East coast the sea
defences were breached and fields and houses were flooded. I had to take
some torches and lamps to Canvey Island at Midnight and my first sight
of the island was of the whole island looking like a huge saucer full
of water. The only illumination was from army searchlights. Later I was
directed to the River Board store in Great Stambridge to control the flow
of sandbags, wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, timber and coffee, tea and
rum to the teams of men working round the clock to try to fill the gaps
in the sea walls. It was a constant race against time to beat the next
high tide. . The rum was issued to the work gangs on a ratio of one bottle
to so many men. However among the 'volunteers' was a large number of Borstal
boys who were not allowed the rum. This left me with a surplus of half
a dozen bottles. Quite a problem!
I shared the job with other men from Head Office, mostly Mike Hyde. I
would drive a Land Rover to Stambrdge in the evening and Mike would drive
it back to Chelmsford , returning in the morning to take over while I
drove the van home, and so on. One evening Mikes fiance, Valerie, who
worked at Head Office, asked me to take her to Stambridge so that she
could come back with Mike. It seems that on the way back she said to him
that I drove better than him. He turned to refute this slander and drove
into a lamp post. Fortunately not very fast.
The store was in the yard of a pub at Great Stambridge. I slept in the
bar and the publican's daughter cooked me meals and showed me how to throw
darts. This promising situation ended when I got 'flu and was sent home.
My replacement had to sleep in the store and was troubled by mice. He
borrowed Mike's air rifle and, waking up to see a mouse on the end of
his camp bed, shot himself in the big toe. However he did get a trip in
an RAF helicopter which I missed . When I recovered I spent most of my
time checking sea walls for damage. On a visit to Rushley Island, a small
islet of about an acre near Great Wakering, I found the walls secure but
the island was full to the brim with sea water and floating in it were
the bloated bodies of dozens of cows.
Soon after the flood we got a new Austin pickup truck and I drove it to
Stansgate Abbey seawall where repairs were being made. I set out level
pegs for the foreman and set off back to the office. The truck was new
to me and I failed to notice that the heating was full on and became a
bit drowsy. Between Cold Norton and Cock Clarks I met a sand lorry. It
forced me to swerve so that my nearside wheels hit the grass verge and
in my sleepy state I lost control. The truck turned sideways, rolled over
and ended in a ditch. I got a bruise on my forehead from the metal level
case and bruised thighs from the steering wheel. The doctor, when I told
him I had felt a bit faint before the accident, sent me to a specialist.
It was several weeks before they agreed that I was not epileptic!
TO BE CONTINUED!!