Greater London House

This is intended as an exercise in “stream of consciousness” and description. The location is real, but I am not going to “let the facts get in the way of a good story”. Don’t take it seriously!

When I worked for Foster Wheeler Power Products, they were based in Greater London House, opposite Mornington Crescent tube station.

The building is distinctive and famous. It used to be the Carreras Cigarette factory before it was converted to offices. When I was there it was painted a cream colour and had lost some of its decoration. It has subsequently been restored to something like its original glory. It really is a spectacular building. An art-deco Egyptian temple in the middle of London!

The building takes up a full block. It’s a slightly irregular shape to fit the site. The main building stands on pillars and it has a car park underneath. Viewed from above it is a “ladder” or extended figure of eight to allow for light wells through the building. Foster Wheeler’s offices were on the second floor. Power Products has since been absorbed into Foster Wheeler Energy (or sold to Rolls Royce) and moved to Reading.

When I was there I remember the office had a suspended hardwood floor which was taken up to install some specialist equipment. The windows were original Crittall steel. One unusual aspect was that the goods lift in the North-West corner of the building had a set of doors which served the outside world, and another set of door opposite which led into the building and the man who acted as the security guard and goods inwards controller had a desk in the lift which he rode up and down all day! Maybe it wasn’t that unusual, because the tube station at Mornington Crescent has a similar arrangement where the ticket offices are in the lifts. If you wanted to buy a ticket (everyone I knew, including me, had a season ticket) you bought it in the lift. I tended to use the stairs from the platform level, even though they were really only intended as an escape route. They wound their way around a circular shaft.

 (31st December 2016 – 328 words)

Jessie Bannatyne's Singer sewing machine

A few years ago (5 or so, I don’t remember), I inherited a sewing machine from Jessie, one of my cousins. “Inherited” in both the formal and informal sense. I went to her funeral, and stayed a couple of nights. When you are travelling several hundred miles and finishing up on a Hebridean island, it is almost unavoidable. The day following the funeral, some of the women were packing things up and asked me “do you want anything?” There was the sewing machine in a store-room so I said: “I’ll have that.” Naturally, it didn’t turn, but I didn’t care that much. Actually, I really do like the idea of having a sewing machine, and this is one of those hand-cranked ones, so it was ideal and of course it was free.

Jessie Bannatyne's Singer Sewing Machine (circa 1921)

A couple of weeks ago, in the evening something prompted me have a look at it. The first thing I found was that the reason it wasn’t turning was simply a tangle of threads around the lower bobbin. A few snips and a couple of tugs with some rat-nosed pliers and everything was moving. A squirt of WD40 down the appropriate holes and it was running freely. Since then I’ve fitted in a trip down to Cork and bought it a bottle of proper Singer oil (almost certainly an unnecessary extravagance, I’m sure 3-in-1 would have been adequate, but what the heck), and a replacement rubber friction wheel for the bobbin winder. That is the only replacement part it has required. I haven’t totted up the total expenditure, but at 1 rubber wheel, 1 bottle of oil, 1 paper of 5 needles and 3 reels of thread for parts and less than a couple of hours labour, it isn’t much!

Some research on the internet shows that the serial number of the machine was allocated in December 1921. That may well mean that it was made the following year. Asking round the family we have concluded that it was probably bought new by my Grandmother (also called Jessie btw). She used it for a while and then gave it to her daughter when she married and took over the farm. She in turn gave it to my cousin Jessie (my family do it to confuse!) who was a spinster and eventually it came to me.

So there you have it. Early 20^th Century over-engineering at its best! Made in Clydebank and finishes up in the South of Ireland via the Hebrides. 94 or 95 years old, three generations of women using it for dress-making, making curtains and all those other things and it’s still going strong and the only part it needed was a replacement rubber wheel! They don’t make them like that anymore!

I can see from the picture that this is before I fitted the replacement wheel. And in case you are wondering, the tatty towel in the background was issued to me when I was working shifts at British Steel’s Lackenby Steel Plant in 1979/80. I used it to test the machine, by joining it Ends-to-middle. I still use the towel to wipe my hands when I go to the gym! 

Illiterate labourers and medical examinations

This is a little story from the start of my career. The message is about recognising opportunities not being judgemental.

I started out working for the British Steel Corporation. I worked for them during my summer vacations from University. Every year I had to have a medical examination. It was the most thorough examination I’ve ever had. It included blood tests and lung function. The works had its own medical centre and they took it all very seriously. The work was potentially dangerous both in the immediate term and the long term effect it could have on you (hence the regular checks on lung function).

I was waiting in line to see the nurse. There were several of us, and we had all been given forms to fill in. I expect you can imagine the kind of thing: lots of tick boxes and questions like: “Have you ever had…?”. We were also all given jars to pee in. The man ahead of me in the queue was obviously a foreigner. He took a long time with this form. Eventually, when nobody else was looking he got my attention and asked me to help him fill in the form. He obviously felt awkward and embarrassed about this. Quickly I took his clipboard and by asking the questions filled in the form for him. No problem, but I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Eventually the time came for my neighbour to take his turn filling his sample jar. While he was in the lavatory I approached one of the male nurses and said to him “I think the fellow sitting next to me is illiterate”. I don’t remember the exact words. I was a little surprised by his matter-of-fact response: “Oh! Thanks for telling me” and he shrugged.

When it was my turn in the examination room, I had the same nurse I had told about the fellow beside me. As I came in he was changing the eyesight chart on the wall. The one he was taking down had “shapes” (triangles, squares and circles) and he was putting up the more usual alphabetic type. As we did our business he explained that British Steel didn’t care whether the fellow I had helped with his form could read or write. He was there for a labouring job. They did care about how good his eyesight was, and they did need to make sure that he could recognise certain words and signs like “Danger!”, “Gas” and “No Entry”. They definitely cared about his health and safety.

I don’t know whether the foreigner who couldn’t read got his job. At that time there were thousands on that group of sites, so it’s no surprise I didn’t see him again. How well he could read only mattered to BSC in as far as it had a bearing on whether he would be safe on the site and whether he might endanger others.

There are plenty of people in all walks of life who are “functionally illiterate” in some aspect of their lives. There is something which they just do not know how to do. They may be able to do other things even better than we can. For those of us who are experts in particular areas, things other people cannot do become opportunities for us (like filling in forms!).  

Hope that gave you an opportunity to smile.

Blue Suede Shoes

Here is an amusing little tale.

Siobhan came into the kitchen with a bottle of my whisky. It’s the one I’m slowly working my way through and was quarter full (or three-quarters empty, if you prefer). “Why have you got that?” I asked. It turns out she wanted it for a still life for the art exam.

“You’re not taking that to school!”  I said. I explained that taking an open whisky bottle to school was bound to be in breach of some school rule or another and that a quarter bottle of whisky was bound to be a temptation to someone.

The question was though, what to do about it. She wanted the bottle. The solution was to decant the whisky into an empty jar. Not a jam jar actually, but a jar which had contained chocolate spread. I washed it out carefully first. Then I replaced the whisky with an equal amount of tea. It’s the standard thing done in the theatre (unless certain actors are playing, when they use the real thing) and looked pretty convincing.   

So there you have it. I’m drinking my own liquor from an old fruit jar!

Another problem with lights

Now you've reminded me of a funny one from even longer ago (creaky voice "we're getting old..."). When I put my NSU (*****, so we were **** and that was **** years ago) in for its initial MOT Bassey failed it on the headlight (Bass failing something!). He then suggested that it would be totally irresponsible to "scrub the metal reflector and cover it with self-adhesive silver tape" and proceeded to sell me a roll of self-adhesive silver tape. Naturally it sailed through the MOT second time around.

Happy, innocent times. Bass wasn't unique either. Mind you, as you know the lights on a Quickly were at best a bit like an anaemic glow-worm, and you had to have the engine running at full revs to get that! I wouldn't suggest attempting anything similar on the Fazer. You know there would be an opportunity for someone if there was a way of refurbishing transparent plastic components like that for a reasonable cost. I don't know of one. Where do you go from here? "Daytime only" and be careful, I suppose. I expect the dodgy reflectors will still get through the MOT. It makes you think. This is not a problem you have with an old glass headlamp assembly, although the silvering at the back does fail sometimes. The really old may outlive the newer and better because of the failure of a small but vital plastic component.

Did I ever tell you the one from over here about "three wheels on my wagon"?

RE: The mad old bat, her one eyed son, Mable the pig and Gertie the goat

M, There isn't that much of a tale, but I'll tell you what there is. The cottage was called "Fox Meadow". At least that's what it was called in the brochure. Sometimes they use made up "cute" names in brochures so it might really be called anything. It's somewhere near Torrington, in Devon. It was one of the earlier summer holidays after N and the girls moved over to Ireland. I've just spent a fruitless couple of minutes with Google maps, hoping I would recognise some place names, but no joy.

I remember that we all met up at J's in mid-Wales and then I drove to Devon. Went over the old Severn Bridge, and turned right along the M5 through Avonmouth. Not a route I'd taken before, because it's just not the way I would travel to the west country, especially if I was starting from London. I remember that we paused somewhere for ice-cream. That delayed us.

Finding the cottage was a little bit of a struggle. It wasn't near anywhere much and was tucked about half-a-mile up/down a lane which turned into a bridleway. Effectively it was the end of a very long cul-de-sac. The building was, or had been, a row of cottages, with what might have been a cottage or might have been a barn at one end. We had the "barn" bit and "the bat" and her son had the rest. It looked like two or three cottages, but had actually been converted into one dwelling.

Anyway, "the bat's" name was Mrs Cameron and the son's name was Fergus. Must be some Scottish connection there somewhere. We turned up and they showed us the cottage (more of that later) and invited us to drinks. Drinks were in a sort-of communal garden which stretched along the whole of the front of the building. The whole set-up was very pleasant.

Our cottage was on two floors. Mrs C would have been in her eighties. Fergus wasn't around when we first turned up and I noticed that Mrs C didn't show us upstairs. She just indicated the stairs. I don't blame her at all. The stairs were the kind that only just qualify as stairs, rather than ladder and I had to duck near the top because of the slope of the roof. The cottage was stone and cob with a thatched roof. The first floor was really part in the roof and the windows were all very small. On the ground floor there was a sitting room and a kitchen with a stone-flagged floor. Simple but adequate. I remember that the bathroom was a bit primitive, but then what do you expect in a place like that. Everything worked. Upstairs the floor was uneven and the ceiling was low. There must have been an attic above the ceiling.

The garden was at the front of the building and the back of the building was almost blind. The only window was from the bathroom. Close by on that side there was a large pond which went along the full length of the building. We gave Siobhan and Margaret strict instructions that they were to go nowhere near the pond unless they were with Mummy, Daddy or Fergus. They didn't. They were much more interested in the other side.

So much for the building, now for the inhabitants. I got the idea that Mrs C some money. Probably from a deceased Mr C. She had some idea of being an artist. I saw some of her paintings and also went to an exhibition in Bideford where they were showing one or two that she had produced (among a hundred others!). The paintings were alright but unremarkable. The kind of landscapes that little old ladies paint. She really was daft as a brush. Fergus was, or had been, a professional  photographer and I got the impression that he didn't really want to be there. I think something had gone wrong somewhere else and that he had escaped to live with Mother. He did all the maintenance around the place. Fergus would have been in his late 50's or 60's, and as I said had only one eye.

Mrs C and Fergus seemed to be running a very small small-holding as well. Or maybe they just liked keeping pet animals. They had Mable the sow, a goat and a whole load of free range chickens. Siobhan and Margaret loved the animals. Mable's name really was Mable. Siobhan and Margaret decided that the goat must be called Gertie, so Gertie it remains. Mable was enormous and black and very friendly. She would snuffle at the fence if you stood there. Gertie as a great favourite. Siobhan and Margaret used to pull leaves (mostly docks) and Gertie was happy to take them, which of course delighted Siobhan an Margaret. Have you ever looked in a goat's (or sheep's) eyes? Most peculiar. They have sort-of dumb-bell shaped pupils! The hens used to just wander around the place and if we left the door open would sometimes come into the kitchen and have to be shooed out again.

It was really a very nice place to holiday with small children. Quite reasonable to let them wander around at the front on their own.

The nearest pub was a fair walk for me. I remember I located it with an Ordinance Survey map and it was a mile-ish footpath all the way, mostly through woods. Safe enough, but a bit of a challenge on the way home.

One little detail that I've just remembered was that Fergus told me that there was an attic that ran the whole length of the building and that he had to go up there on crawling boards for some reason.

Anyway, that's it. Not axe-wielding or screaming madness. Just a couple of eccentric people living in rather a nice place.

I enjoyed writing it anyway.

Cheers,

T     

Interview at Royal Exchange Buildings and 1.5 pints of beer

(7th October 2012 Signing on at 14:21)

My first proper contact with British Steel was before I went to University or sat my A Levels. I can’t remember when exactly it was, although I may be able to work it out. For some reason which isn’t really clear to me, I had decided that I wanted a sponsorship deal for going through University. This may have been because I fancied the money, but I think there was something else going on. Anyway, I wasn’t particularly fussy, so I applied to all the companies I could find who were sponsoring students taking degrees in the subjects I was interested in (that means Chemistry and Chemical Engineering). I know I got a fair number of interviews.

My interview for British Steel was in Middlesborough. Looking back, It was quite an adventure getting the train up there. Tube from Hatton Cross (I expect), train from Kings Cross up to Darlington and change there for the local train to Middlesborough.

I can remember looking out of the window at the industrial landscape from Darlington to Middlesborough. At the time, the buildings seemed huge. Enormous, corrugated iron sheds, with fierce glowing lights visible through gaps.

At that time the British Steel Offices where in Royal Exchange buildings which were very close to Middlesborough station. It was only a short walk.

I don’t remember much about the interview, but a couple of things stand out:

The interview as in two parts: an interview and then an aptitude test. The interview I can’t remember at all! The aptitude test was after lunch, and lunch had not been provided. I went out into town and visited a pub to get lunch. I was only just eighteen. The first pub had no food, neither had the second, and at the third they had pizza. So, that was lunch; three halve of beer (surely not three pints?) and a slice of pizza.

After lunch I had an aptitude test which included what I think was an IQ test, plus things involving doing tasks with both my right and left hands. Whatever the effects of the beer were, they weren’t too detrimental  because I got the job! 

Fifteen Minutes Writing

(Sunday 7^th October 2012 12:17)

I’ve got to put the potatoes on for lunch at 12:30. Okay, that isn’t exactly 15 minutes, but then cooking potatoes isn’t an exact science and neither is writing

.

This is the first time in a little while I’ve tried the “free association” writing exercises. I wonder if a quarter of an hour is long enough for anything interesting to surface.  Last night someone’s name came into my head. Someone I hadn’t had anything to do with for thirty-five years, and I decided to put the name into Google. It is an unusual name and it looks like they wrote a book in 1974! The name is unusual and the location matches. It’s surprising what can surface unexpectedly. It is doubly surprising what you can find when you combine what surfaces from the unconscious with the search power of Google (or the search engine of your choice of course).

That’s better! I can feel the muscles or pathways inside my mind starting to loosen up. It is getting easier to write. I know I have only allowed myself 15 minutes now, of which only five remain, but I will continue this in the afternoon. After a little while of stuck-ness, things are starting to move again. I shouldn’t expect things to be easy. Even small amounts of movement help. That is why I do these exercises. Write and write. There does not have to be a subject or a reason. Simply write to get it out of my system (whatever “it” is). I’m not sure if I even have a reader in mind. The reader does not have to be me, it does not have to be anybody. Keep going, keep writing. Something may emerge from the depths. Already I find the most surprising things. Some are good, some are less so. Just now, without warning or planning I managed to correct a little problem with had been irritating me for days. Now it is fixed. The mental energy it was using can be directed to something more useful.

(signing off 12:30)  

(signing on 13:28)

Okay, it’s no longer going to be fifteen minutes but it is going to be writing. Let’s see what happens. I just distracted myself by looking up Herman Miller chairs. They may be ergonomic and comfortable, but they are also very expensive. I don’t think I will be buying one of those for a while. Back to the writing, but thinking about ergonomics; I think I will take a bit more action about getting a footrest. I find that my posture is better when I have a footrest. That means that I write more easily even using the fairly basic (but fundamentally comfortable) chair that I’m using at the moment. On my next maintenance trip to Feltham I may collect the office chair that was left there. It was comfortable too. Even when new, I doubt it cost as much as a Herman Miller, and I bought it very second (or third) hand, many years ago.

The little bit of tidying I did in the kitchen was a real surprise. It came out of the blue. To one side of the hob there used to be an accumulation of spice bottles. It’s nice to have them handy, but even the most complicated recipe only ever used one or three. For no particular reason I looked in the cupboard beneath that section of the worktop. It was empty. A quick rummage upstairs and I found a plastic basket which fitted nicely into the cupboard. Now the spice bottles are in the basket in the cupboard and the work-surface is clear. It was only ever a minor irritation, but now it is gone and I feel good about it. Similarly, I’ve moved a laminator with has been sitting abandoned on the landing for months to a shelf in my study. A tiny change, but again it makes me feel good. I’m not a particularly tidy person but I like tidiness. It makes me feel comfortable. I don’t like clutter or noise. I’ve liked noise less since I became hard-of-hearing and I think that perhaps the dislike of auditory noise has spilled across into my dislike of visual clutter.

(pausing, to do the washing up: 13:46)

(Washing up done, restarting: 14:05)

While doing the washing up I started thinking about how one thing, or thought, leads to another. Better be careful about names. I’m not going to write down the name I looked up. It is too recognisable, if you recognise it! I don’t know why it came into my head. It certainly wasn’t really connected to anything I was doing or thinking about. That in turn has made me start to think about what I did when I was working for British Steel, in particular at Lakenby and Redcar. That is a period in my life when I was quite optimistic and excited by the prospects for the future. I liked the work I was doing and I liked the people I was working with. I was ambitious. I also liked where I was living. Yarm was, and is, an attractive little village. It’s not too far from the Teesside towns either. The only cloud on my horizon at that time was the economic situation (rather like now). It was clear that, right or wrong, British Steel was no longer going to receive the support it had been receiving and that meant that it was going to contract.  I have set aside titles elsewhere to write about things to do with British Steel. Perhaps I should go there now. Yes, that is what I will do. Continuing elsewhere.

(Ending 14:15 950 words, 1.5 pages)

Relax, think of nothing and then write.

(Saturday 8^th September 2012 Signed on 10:13)

Ok. I’m going to try this “Free Association, Stream-of-consciousness” trick again. No objective, no real purpose except the process. Keep moving forwards. Write the stuff that comes to the surface. As the surface becomes exhausted, we get that little bit deeper. With each scraping we go deeper still, peeling the layers off the onion. The metaphor is slightly wrong. “Peeling the layers off the onion”, sort of implies that we are getting closer to the centre. That is not correct. True, we are delving deeper into the unconscious, but there is no centre. There is no single place that represents the “real” centre. Instead there are lots of different centres, at different levels. Some gain control for a short time while others are usually in control and some others are dormant at present.

Every centre had an origin. Every centre can be activated and modified.

This week I was sent a photograph of a motorcycle that someone had built. It wasn’t an especially artistic creation. It was more what a manufacturer might make as an engineering feasibility study.  Take parts which you have in stock for existing models and assemble them differently to produce something new. I used to find that kind of thing exciting. This picture reminded me of the way I used to think about possibilities. How I used to think about combining things in new ways. Perhaps there is something here that is more important than the memory. The picture reminded me of a “feeling”.

As I write, I’m trying to understand and intensify that feeling. I am trying to access it. I am trying to feel it more completely. What does that feeling remind me of? When did I feel it? Where was I when I felt it? Who was I with when I felt it?

Those questions seem like good stepping-off points to examine and feel the feeling. I want to feel it because it feels like possibilities. It encourages me to experiment. It makes me want to try new things. It is an optimistic feeling. I can try new things and recombine old things in new ways.  It doesn’t matter that the results will not be perfect. The results will be a stepping stone to something else. Changing, changing, changing!

What does the feeling remind me of; It reminds me of living in Cleveland, the first year after I left university. I was living in the cottage off the yard. I got there through a narrow, arched passageway through the building. There was a wrought iron gate across the passageway.  The yard was paved with cobbles.

There was a row of cottages. Mrs and Mrs Smithard lived in the cottage which was accessed by a door actually in the passageway. Next there was a retired lady who lived alone and whose name I have forgotten. Next was the cottage which I occupied with Les. Then there were Mr and Mrs Mallaby. Mr Mallaby had had a stroke. His right side was slightly paralysed.  He held his right hand as a fist, with the lower arm tensed.

I bought myself a small portable drawing board. When I wasn’t working I drew things; speculations about ways to build motorcycles. I had fun. I played.

That is the feeling I want to access now. I need to work but I need to play as well. I need to do repeated, sometimes even boring things. Things I would rather not need to do, but I need to make time to play as well.

What did I do when I lived in that cottage? I remember going for a long walk across the moors. I route I chose was about 6 miles. I remember that the route involved crossing a stream by a ford. When I got to the ford it was deeper and the stream was wider than I had expected. I took my boots and socks off and waded through the water bare-foot. The water was so cold! After the stream I walked into a small village. I remember drinking beer in a pub in the village, but I don’t remember how much I drank or whether I ate anything.

(Pausing 10:51 – 11:00)

I’m back! I went looking at the route on Google Maps. I didn’t find the village at one end of the route, but I found a farm nearby. I remember it was a very small place and the pub was marked on the Ordinance Survey map. Perhaps it wasn’t really a “village” after all. I don’t have a very clear memory of it.

I felt possibility and optimism. The day of the walk was sunny. It was the weekend. It was probably a Sunday.

I’ve already “cleared out one thing today”. That is a good feeling. Try and create more free-space. Reduce the amount of visual, physical and mental clutter. Reduce the amount of noise.

I still have to get on with my admin task. There is only a little more to do and it will be finished. Maybe not today, but this weekend, I will take the next step. Always the first steps. Every journey is a succession of first steps. Keep taking the next step, which is the next step on the journey. Each step only a single step. It only requires the effort required for a single step. So long as it is a step in the right direction, then each step takes me closer to reaching my goal, however far away that goal may be. The admin task is nearly done. There is only a short distance left to go. Imagine the feeling of satisfaction I will feel when I achieve the goal.

Having got the goal achieved then I can rest in the achievement for a short while. And then, having created more free-space and rested, I can embark on the next journey. Set off towards the next goal, which will be something even more satisfying.

I think I’ve done enough of this exercise for now. There is something else which I could be doing, something which uses different skills and a different part of my mind. I’m breaking off now to do that!   

(Signed off 11:13)

Suggestions from others

<Mike>
Paddy and Mick - were the names changed to protect the . . . innocent?
That was one severely stuffed VW. I was already wondering if the telegraph pole provided a take-off ramp before I read your thoughts along the same lines - why are you unconvinced that is a plausible explanation?
The Garda sound somewhat better than the alleged upholders of the law provided by both Thames Valley and the Manx Constabulary.

As I've only just got back from the Isle of Man (Having missed the last two years. Aarrrgggghhhhh!) I'll start with the Manx Constabulary.

Not this year - 2008? - we were going down Bray Hill when the sound of two-tones made me look in the mirror to see blue lights a fraction of a second before a police bike went by at high speed. 200 yards later, as we ascended Ago's Leap, the process was repeated. Another 200 yards further on, as we descended towards Quarter Bridge, a police car took over the role. While we queued to turn right at Quarter Bridge two more police cars came screaming through from the direction of their HQ a few hundred yards to our left.
By then I was convinced there had been a major incident of some sort, particularly when two more came howling by on the straight between Quarter and Braddan Bridges. Had a plane crashed coming into Ronaldsway, I wondered as I was passed by another one between Braddan Bridge and Union Mills and two more between Union Mills and Glen Vine. Surely nothing else could explain a police response of that magnitude?

Then I crested the hump that follows Glen Vine and found the dip through Crosby village filled from wall to wall with this vast sea of flashing blue lights.
All traffic was diverted around Crosby and when we finally made it back onto the Douglas to Peel road on the other side of Crosby there were yet more Police vehicles almost tailgating each other as they "headed towards" at high speed from the Peel direction.

It turned out a car driver hadn't bothered to either indicate or look in his mirror before turning right, taking out a motorcyclist who'd been overtaking him. The biker was killed, but even so . . .

That happen during practice week. About ten days later, towards the end of race week, we were sat in a Douglas pub, unobtrusively eavesdropping the conversation at the next table as a bemused thirty-something told his parents about what was clearly an extremely minor bump that he'd had on his drive to work that morning. "The entire Manx police force turned up" he told them with an incredulous shake of his head.
As Irene remarked later as we walked back to our hotel "If you want to rob a bank in Douglas, stage a road accident in Ramsey".

And as for Thames Valley Police!
To give you just one of many possible examples, a couple of years ago a mouthy chav in a flashy sports car ran up the back of a young couple right outside my house. It was very quickly established that the mouthy chav was not insured, whereupon the local Rozzers were called.
Ten minutes after their arrival the chav was sent on his way, laughing his head off, while the Plod proceeded to give the young couple an extremely hard time that went on for quite a while.
I later learned that the mouthy chav is one of the areas more prominent drug dealers. It's hard to prevent the word "corruption" coming to mind . . .
</Mike>

<Jeff>
I have two events which build into your senerio ...one Sunday lunchtime we were crossing over to the valley to the west. The road here is fast and was unrestircted. It had one junction on it and at ~ 1pm on a Sunday the junction had a car on it's roof with all 4 doors open and no one inside or in sight....we guess someone had a pint or two before lunch and was late for his dinner...put the car on it's roof ....did a runner and was going to report his car stolen later in the day. Two..... a mate of mind was returning for Xmas from his first part of officier training with the RAF. On ice he managed to slide the car sideways through a telegraph pole ..the VW Golf was writen but he was amused that the insurance company paid the bt bill for the repair. The bill included the itemised "credit "of money from selling remains of telegraph pole.... 65p!!. My mate's father had been a recon Spitfire pilot during WWII and had finished the RAF as an instructor at RAF thorney island..unfortunately my mate hurt his ribs while doing his pole smashing activity and the RAF wanted to re-course him when he failed the next part of the course. Chris didn't agree with them and he and the RAF parted. About 4-5 years ago I heard of a robot solar plane made by DERA at Farnborough .....and who was the lead engineer on the project...my pole smashing mate CK
</Jeff>

Stories my Father told me…

(29th August 2012 Signing on at 18:33)

…about Flying Training at Hanworth Airpark.

Arriving from Glasgow

I do not know what year this was, but presumably it was the Christmas either immediately after, or immediately before, the Britain’s declaring a state of war with Germany. My father had been fired from a job assembling Sunderland flying boats in Glasgow (or maybe Dumbarton) but that is another story.

He arrived at Feltham station on the Greenline bus from Victoria Bus Station, having taken the bus down from Glasgow. He says that he had the clothes he stood up in, a small suitcase and his toolbox. He had been told that he had a job with General Aircraft on Hanworth Airpark. He had nowhere to stay. As this was the late 30’s, the journey down from Glasgow must have taken some time. He said that he arrived in Feltham late in the evening. He checked his toolbox into the left-luggage office at Feltham Station and enquired about somewhere to stay for the night. I don’t know how effective such an enquiry would be now, but then it got him the suggestion of an address down Hanworth Road. This was a time before even land-line phones were common, so he would have had no choice but to walk to the address and ask. Fortunately they had room for him. In fact it at was even better than that.

The house where he had been directed and where he eventually stayed for a while made him very welcome. The “man of the house” had lost his job, and so they were very short of money. The money from his rent made all the difference. It was just before Christmas and my dad said that the wife said to her daughter “now we can have Christmas”. The pair of them went on a shopping expedition to Bentall’s in Kingston a day or so later.

The day after he arrived my Dad went to General Aircraft. He was told that he had a job, but that news of his dismissal had come down from Glasgow. He had a bad reputation and he what going to be watched.

What I don’t understand is how my Father moved from General Aircraft to Flying Training Ltd, but he did!   

Defending the Airpark, with few guns and no ammunition

The war was either under way or just about to start. This could be the period which I believe was called “The Phoney War”.

Hanworth Airpark was a military base. All the instructors in Flying Training had been drafted into the Airforce and the ground maintenance personnel, like my Father were under military orders but continued to be employed by Flying Training. As the Airpark was a real military objective, some means had to be put in place to defend it from attack for the air or the ground. To put this on a formal basis, my Father and all the other members of the staff became members of the Home Guard (or whatever its predecessor organisation was). From some source unspecified they were issued with guns (probably ancient rifles). They were even issued with a small number of machine guns, one of which was mounted onto the back of a truck. In my mind I have a picture of an earlier version of “the technicals” in warring African states, where a machine gun is mounted on a frame behind the cab of a Toyota pick-up truck.

There was just one problem, but it was a significant one. Whoever had organised the artillery had forgotten about munitions! There was no ammunition for either the rifles or especially the machine guns. However impressive it all looked, it was completely useless! As my Father said, thank goodness there was never any question of using the weapons, because it would have been hopeless.

There were some garbles stories about defence exercises at night. It all sounded good fun and chaotic, but I wonder if it really felt like that at the time?

Leaving for Stoke on Trent (Mere?)

At some point it was decided that Hanworth Airpark was not a suitable base for a training squadron, and the decision was made to move the whole organisation to Stoke-on-Trent. I think the destination was “Mere” but I’m not sure. The aircraft were flown up and everything else went up as a number of convoys.

Alan Lavender’s first wife’s parents lived in Victoria Road. Alan had a three-wheeled Morgan sports car. Because the moving was government business, he had fuel to drive it up in one of the convoys. Looking back, I can’t remember my Father ever mentioning how he travelled up to Stoke-on-Trent.

Piss-pot up the flagpole

The pilot students at Hanworth were like many students. They got up to all sorts of wild things. Many of their escapades were fuelled by drink. The officers’ mess for the flying school was located in Hanworth Park House. Behind the house, naturally, there was a flag-pole.

One night, probably after an evening in the pub, an unidentified student climbed up the flag-pole and placed a chamber-pot on the top.

When the time came to hoist the flag the following day, the Commanding Officer was furious when he saw the chamber pot. He immediately ordered someone (presumably Airforce personnel) to climb the flagpole and retrieve the pot. Inspection showed that the flagpole was rotten, and although it had apparently withstood the weight of a student the previous night, nobody was prepared to climb it sober and in the cold light of day!

Not to be defeated, the Commanding Officer then ordered the guard to shoot the pot down. Apparently they had found at least some ammunition by this stage. When the chosen marksman shot the pot they discovered the flaw in this plan: it was an enamelled steel chamber pot! Shooting it made a noise and ruined the pot, but it wasn’t likely to bring it down.

I would like to say that the story had some funny or surprising ending. Unfortunately, it has no ending at all. I don’t remember my Father saying how the chamber pot came down, if it ever did. Of course it must have come down in the end, because there is no flag pole at Hanworth Park House!

Stealing a fire engine

Several of the trainee pilots were a little eccentric. One of them habitually wore a red huntsman’s jacket. I believe it is called “Hunting Pink”. This fellow (I suppose he must have been in his early twenties) took a fancy to one of the barmaids in the Airman public house. The feeling was not reciprocated. This barmaid either lived on the premises or very nearby.

One evening, when drunk the “huntsman” proposed to the barmaid and asked her to run away with him to Gretna Green. He was obviously a romantic. She told him that she would, on sole condition that he drove her there in a fire engine. She thought that would be an end of the matter.

The following day, she was wakened early by the sound of a bell outside her bedroom window. When she looked outside she saw that the huntsman had stolen a fire engine from the local fire station (I presume the one which used to be under the railway bridge at Bridge House). She told him that he was an idiot and that he should go away.

I don’t know what happened to the huntsman or what happened to the fire engine. I have to suppose that the fire engine was returned undamaged and that this kind of madness was exactly what the airforce was looking for in its fighter pilots.

Joe Tollow’s dog

I know almost nothing about “Joe Tollow” except that he was one of my Father’s mates, and that he had a dog.

At that time, The Airman public house had three bars: Public, Saloon and Private Bar or snug. My Father and his colleagues had sort-of taken over the Private Bar. They had no right to do this and the publican didn’t approve, but they regarded it as their territory.

The Private Bar was furnished with small tables (I don’t know what shape, but I imagine little round tables. The important thing is that between the legs of these tables was a small shelf at about “dog height”. I think it was intended for putting glasses on when the top of the table was being used for playing cards or dominos.

Anyway, Joe Tollow’s dog (I know less about the dog than I do about his master) enjoyed having his back scratched. He just couldn’t get enough of it. If someone else had invaded the Private Bar, and my Father and his mates were there, they would sit around one of the tables and scratch the dog’s back. The would also sit with their legs under the table so that the dog could not get under their table. When they stopped scratching the dog, it would look for somewhere else to scratch its back. If it could get under the shelf of one of the adjoining tables then it would scratch it’s back and probably upset the drinks (and the other customers)!

Floyd Buttle

Floyd (Bud) Buttle was one of my Father’s friends. His wife Madeline’s parents lived in Victoria Road. I have seen a photograph of Bud. He had a moustache. I know that after (and possibly during) the war, he worked for Airworks in the Arabian Gulf. He died of lung cancer.

Madeline re-married and moved to the Isle of Wight. I met her there many years later.

Crash

Flying Training mostly used Hawker Hart and Hind Aircraft. I am not sure if it was them, but one type of aircraft was supposed to be very difficult to spin, even if it stalled. This made it an ideal early trainer. However, some of the aircraft were re-engined which changed their handling characteristics. One of them spun out of control and crashed (An electricity sub-station near Cromwell Road) killing the trainee and the instructor.

 (Pages 4+, words 1,690, signing off at 19:37 )