When I left school at the age of about 17 we had various possibilities of jobs. Not like today. We had five possibilities: I could have gone as a trainee to Laurence Scott, to Boulton & Paul's, to the Central Electricity Board, to the Eastern Electricity Board and many others. We had the choice. In the event I left school and joined Laurence, Scott & Electromotors, a well-known Norfolk company established in 1883. The training there was in the factory and then we went three nights a week to College, and one day a week. So that took 5 years, and at the end of that I was qualified as an electrical and a mechanical engineer, and stayed there for 25 years. A wonderful training in all respects, and when I think back to the days spent in that factory I have great affection for those days, and it was not only education in engineering, but education in life.
Initially I travelled through all the departments in the company, finishing up on what was called the testbed. That was where all the equipment was tested. I should here say for those who don't know: Laurence Scott made electrical equipment, motors, generators and control gear, especially, in the early days, motors and generators for the marine industry.
Then came the possibility of National Service and what to do, whether to go into National Service at 35 shillings a day ... sorry! .. 35 shillings a week! Or, a better alternative, for Laurence Scott people, into the Merchant Navy at probably £6 or £7 a week. Fortunately the decision was not mine, and conscription ended before I had to make that decision.
Over the years I became more interested in the commercial side of life than the engineering, and eventually I went into an office which was then called Estimating. That was a place where you did quotations for the equipment that people were asking for. This would involve anything from coal handling plants in power stations to generators in power stations, all manner of things . .. pumping stations, and, of course, marine equipment.
During these early days at Laurence Scott about five of us got together. We were always keen on music in those days, but it wasn't rock and roll. It was more likely to be jazz. Anyway, having played clarinet at school, I then decided to join this group of five, clarinet and alto-saxophone, and before long we regarded ourselves as sufficiently adept to launch upon the public. And for about five years, maybe more, we had this small dance band. It was a dance band: We had dinner suits, bow ties and we travelled around village halls, ladies' circles, Lakenheath Camp, Swanton Morley Camp, Marham Camp, doing orthodox dance music. And I don't mean old time, which young people now .. . I'm talking about waltzes, quicksteps, and also old time dancing, which was real old time dancing, such as the valeta, the St Bernard and so on. So I had a very enjoyable time doing that, and it was only when I moved to Yorkshire that I was unable to continue with that, and then I took up the export business, so I was never at home regularly enough to be in any other band.
The move to Yorkshire came about because after a time in the Norwich office I decided I would like to go out into the big, wide world and be a salesman, and the first job I was given, for Laurence Scott, was in the Sales Office in Leeds. Going to Yorkshire from Norfolk was a great upheaval for me. We couldn't believe how the other half lived, we couldn't believe what Yorkshire was like. Leeds at that time was just becoming a clean air area, and the smoke had diminished, but everywhere we looked around was blackened, soot-encrusted buildings. So not a good start for a Norfolk boy who was used to clean air and the countryside. Nevertheless, clutching a new Corsair, Ford Corsair, which some of you will remember, I was given a mailing list to go round to the wool mills, the coal mines, all sorts of industries. I might add that this mailing list was so out of date that half the places on it had been knocked down! Also then I was able to travel to Hull and Grimsby to see the trawler owners. We sold a lot of equipment - trawl winch generators, trawl winch motors - to the marine industry.
It was then that I had my big break. At that time the trawler owners in Hull and Grimsby were no longer able to afford the costs involved with British shipyards, so they started having their trawlers built in Poland. This coincided with me being given the job as Eastern European Manager for Laurence Scott, which involved me travelling to Poland. There in Poland we had our equipment on the trawlers being built for Britain, and at that time the Russians were also having trawlers built in Poland, and they saw our equipment and said "What's that?" and they were told "Oh, that comes from Britain: Laurence Scott". They liked it, they tested it, and before long they placed an order with the Polish shipyard for 35 trawlers. I was on my way!
I really had made it! Just to clarify things: The shipyards were Gdynia and Gdansk, and you will remember that it was there in Gdansk that the Solidarity Union Movement was started, which eventually overthrew the Iron Curtain in Poland.
Just going back a bit . . going back quite a long way, apart from the steam trains and apart from bicycles and father's Austin Seven, I very rarely travelled a great deal, and I was 19 before I even left the County, and that was only just over the border in King's Lynn, so when I took my first flight, nobody had told me about this. I turned up at Leeds Bradford Airport, it was windy, it was raining and I didn't know what to expect. In those days they were flying aeroplanes with four propellers, and again I knew nothing that would happen. I climbed aboard and I must admit I did take an early Scotch, and off went this machine! Tremendous noise . . . and after a time there was a tremendous noise and I thought "Whatever is this?" That was the wheels coming up! And then at the top of the climb they switched the power down, because they'd done climbing and they don't need any more great power, and I thought the engine had stopped! Anyway, it was a terrible journey! We flew at about 10,000 feet, right in the middle of the weather. All around me people were being sick, which was not a pleasant sight or sound. Nevertheless I got to Heathrow, I met my boss and said "I know I've only taken this job a few weeks ago. I want to resign." He said "Take a Scotch", so I took another one! We hopped into a jet plane, a Trident, which went way above the weather in the nice blue sky above the clouds, and we flew to Warsaw. I decided not to resign!
Having, for the first time, been overseas, let alone behind the Iron Curtain, it was a great experience and he told me afterwards that one of the tests for a salesman in Eastern Europe was "How much can you drink and what is the result?" When I came home my wife looked at me - my eyes were red-rimmed, and she said "What's happened to your eyes?" and I told a lie! I said that the pressurisation in the plane had failed!
So we continued in Eastern Europe, East Germany through Checkpoint Charlie, Bulgaria, Albania, all those places behind the Iron Curtain where life was so difficult for the people, even more so I suppose for the traveller. Well, we continued, and I worked, not only with the shipyards, but with man made fibre factories and all manner of industries where Laurence Scott was active.
Then, after spending about 5 years in Eastern Europe, Laurence Scott management sacked the Export Manager, and they looked around and thought "Ooh, what have we done? What can we do?" And they saw this poor fellow, pale from Eastern European travel: "We'll give it to him. He'll be cheaper"! So they gave me the job, but they wouldn't call me Export Manager, they called me Export Executive. That was simply a ruse to pay me less. And all of a sudden my territory was no longer Eastern Europe, but the world. It's difficult to believe now, in the modern oil industry age, that the Sales Director, who shall be nameless, looked at the Middle East and said "I don't think we should go there. I don't think the Arabs have got any money to spend." How wrong he was! Eventually I was forced into the Middle East by a situation which really put Laurence Scott in trouble. We had some big 1,350 horsepower motors there, driving pumps in Abu Dhabi in the Emirates, and one of these had broken down, and nobody took any trouble to do anything, and eventually we were told "If you don't do something then you will be taken off the vendors' list for all future contracts". So I was sent in the middle of the summer - that's the summer here, summer there as well! - in Ramadan, to Abu Dhabi. I found the electrical engineer concerned, walked into his office, sat down, and he said "I've never seen anybody from your company before. The answer is No." I thought "I've come all this way"! Anyway, we talked a bit, we drank a bit, and eventually I gave him the equivalent of about £15,000 worth of equipment and we were back on the vendors' list. That was easy compared with what I faced when I came back! I came back home to the Board of Directors, and I told the Sales Director "I have given them £15,000 worth of spares". He was amazed! He tailed off to the rest of the Directors and said "I think he has gone mad! The sun has got to him. He's given away £15,000". Anyway, eventually they saw sense, we were back on the vendors' list, and eventually we got an order for another twenty of these 1,350 horsepower machines. And so we continued: Not only the Middle East, but other territories, South Africa. Didn't do a lot in any other African country apart from South Africa. That was a very pleasant place to operate until I got mugged in Johannesburg, which was not so pleasant. And I travelled around the world selling this equipment.
Eventually, after many years of persuading, a German fellow who knew me very well, said "Please come and work in Hamburg. Come and work for me". I said "I don't want to live in Germany", so eventually he gave way, financed me and I set up my own company in Norwich. I had a small office in Magdalene Street in Norwich. It was called Techno-Product Ltd, which had a very Eastern European twang about it. Then I had all sorts of different products. Believe it or not, I was selling anything from one ton gas cylinders for chlorine to very tiny magnets for loudspeakers, which we bought from Russia. We were buying railway wheels from East Germany. Little did they know that we bought these. . .. British Rail didn't realise that I was bringing in railway wheels from East Germany, which was then unheard of for British Rail to buy from Eastern Europe. Bringing them in, putting them through West Berlin, drilling holes in them, painting them green and giving them a certificate of Western European source. So there we were. We were selling railway wheels to British Rail. My chlorine drum business took me to all sorts of strange places, not least of which, Egypt. They were using a lot of chlorine in those days for purifying water, and one occasion they alleged that one of our cylinders was leaking. Now, in the West, if you had a leak of chlorine you would immediately bring in all the experts and see what can be done. In Egypt, no! They sacked the manager of the pumping station, the water treatment station, so nobody knew what they were doing, so I had to go there and see what was the situation. We overcame that.
Later in Saudi Arabia we had a situation where they believed that these great cylinders, which contained this chlorine for water purification, they believed that they contained alcohol and that really did cause distress! So really overall we had a great experience of what the rest of the world is like. Some people have said "Ooh, does travel broaden the mind?" I suppose it does really. In some ways it's made me more xenophobic and more anxious to try and conform. But I find it very difficult. I suppose this is really the result of being a Norfolk man! Because in Norfolk "we do different" (laughs).
I wonder can you just tell us what it was like working in the Communist countries, because I think you said China as well, initially, didn't you? What was it like? Did you have a minder? What were the hotels like?
Well, the Eastern bloc was a bit different to the Chinese Communists, but the Eastern bloc things were very, very inefficient. People were very, very hard up, very poor. They were very friendly, and took you to their homes, but they lived in these great, big Eastern European blocks of flats with hardly more space than a battery chicken really. They had a room where you lived, you dined and you slept, because that was turned into a bed at night.
We first went to China to a British Energy exhibition, just as the Chinese were letting Westerners come in. We were one of the very first flights on British Airways to go in there, into Peking. Again our accommodation was . .. it was called the Friendship Hotel. It was like a great block house, and we were put into this place. There was no air conditioning, but again the people were so friendly. There was never any crime. You had no need to lock your suitcase or your door. I spoke no Chinese and they spoke no English, the ones I came across, and yet we laughed so much together. The food was genuine then, not like the stuff you get served up in England now. The food was genuine and I very soon learned either to starve or to use chopsticks. We were there about 40 years ago, bearing in mind today is 2009, and we went to places like Tiananmen Square, which these days is absolutely crowded. It was deserted then. We went to the Great Wall of China. Again, absolutely deserted! And it was only 35 to 40 years later when I went back to China on a holiday that I realised just how things had changed. Motorways had been built, buildings everywhere, cars blocking the streets, as opposed to the early days when there was nothing but bicycles lining the streets. That to me was one of the greatest changes I had ever seen during my travelling period.
And what about the sort of things you are doing now? Where did the interest in shepherding come from?
I retired when I was 61. We'll put some financial information here: Annuities for pension funds were going down and down and down. At that time a lump sum of £100,000 would result in a pension of £10,000 a year. What do we get now? Probably £5,000 if we're lucky. So I decided that I would retire. Having retired, unlike most people who say "Oh what shall I do?", I was offered a job, believe it or not, selling greenhouses! I was asked "In view of your experience in exhibition work (which I'd done in Peking, in Hanover, in Germany, Cologne, everywhere) would you go to the Royal Norfolk Show and sell greenhouses?" Seemed rather a strange thing to do, but I did that, and I became quite successful in selling greenhouses. It was easier selling greenhouses to Norfolk people than it was electrical equipment to Arabs. So I continued that for some time, and then I stopped that. But all sorts of other interests occurred. I've always been a country man, and so I was quite interested in the activities of the Norfolk Society, who are now the Norfolk Branch of Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. So I joined that, and did my best to help in that.
Later on Gressenhall Workhouse and Museum were advertising for volunteers, so I went along to that for an interview and decided I'd probably like to do that. So they said "Right, we have a training period of about six weeks. Come along and do that". Well, I almost gave up half way through, because for the first time in my then 68 years I was CRB checked - that's checked by the police, which was a bit of a shock. I had to do a hygiene certificate in case I did any cooking in the farmhouse. There was all sorts of Health & Safety aspects, there was all sorts of how to treat children, how to treat adults, how to treat old age pensioners, and really this Nanny State almost caused me to pack up. But I continued anyway, and we had to give a presentation at the end of this course, during which I presented a programme about farming before tractors. I successfully passed this training and was given a job as a volunteer. We're called "mardlers". The word "mardler" is the Norfolk word meaning people that speak a lot. I'm a mardler! Anyway I decided that the place for me would be on the farm, and so there I am down on the farm, driving a tractor with a trailer on the back with seats for visitors. I'm among rare breed animals: We have Large Black pigs, Norfolk Horn sheep, Red Poll cattle, which bring me to another interest of mine. I'm interested in rare breed farm animals. They're animals which are rare simply because they are the old traditional breeds, they grow slowly, they don't mature very quickly, they're probably a bit too fat for the supermarkets, so really they don't fall in line with modern requirements, either for a farmer to make a living or for supermarkets to sell their meat. So that's another thing.
Then I had a telephone call "Would you be so kind as to come along and be a member of the Patients' Participation Group?" Once I ascertained what that was, that was a small group in the village where they have people that liaise between doctors and clinical staff and the patients in the street. Eventually I became Chairman of that, and still am.
Another interest: We have a magazine in the village, called Link Up magazine, covers Swanton Morley, East Bilney, Gressenhall, Hoe, and I found myself involved with that, initially distributing, but now becoming more and more involved in the production and all other aspects of the magazine.
Do you still see any work colleagues at all?
Yes. As of about three / four years ago we have a reunion of Laurence Scott people and there'll be about 250 people turn up. Bearing in mind, in its heyday there was 4,000 people employed in Norwich, and about 200 odd turn up for this reunion. And we had a fellow there last year who was 91. The sort of loyalty and affection that we had and still have for the old company is unknown today. I mean if you got a job at Laurence Scott then you were there for life, just as Norwich Union and other situations. Also in terms of reunions, we have a College reunion. We went to that about two weeks ago. That was the 48th year we were celebrating, this reunion.
Norwich City College?
Norwich City College, yes. And also Swaffham Grammar School, we have an annual lunch for that as well and about 120 people turn up. So there's a lot of nostalgia in my life. I've often heard it said that "nostalgia is not what it used to be" (laughter)
Did you have any social events that Laurence Scott arranged while you were working there? Christmas Parties or Works' Outings or anything like that?
Yes, we occasionally had a trip to the great city of London, in the days when ladies of the night were in doorways in Soho, and we thought that was quite interesting! They still have a very strong Pensioners' Association. I'm not a member. I don't admit to being a pensioner, but they do have such an organisation. I think Laurence Scott at the moment is under Austrian ownership, which, as an export man, ex-export man for them, is a bit of a horror story for me, but they're doing very well. I think they only employ about 500 people now.
But they are doing very well, which I'm glad to hear. You probably don't know, but Laurence Scott is on Kerrison Road, which is behind the football club at Carrow Road. In fact a lot of the Laurence Scott car park has been taken over by Norwich City Football Club. But, looking back, even before my time, if workers there were ill they were taken away to a rest home at East Carleton, which was owned by Laurence Scott, and they were there at the Company's expense until they got better. So there was a tremendous amount of two-way loyalty, the people that worked there and the people for whom we worked, something which I don't see today. But then, be careful because the grumpy old man will come out again! There doesn't seem to be the sort of loyalty in both directions that there was then.
And what do you think you enjoyed most about your work?
It's interesting that people say that with all those areas of travel, what is your favourite place, and I said "Woodgate, Swanton Morley". I think that if I was transposed into another time now, and I was about 30 and qualified as I was then I would be off now to New Zealand, and the strange part about it, in spite of all those travels, I've never been there. I like Switzerland a great deal, spend a lot of time in Switzerland, and they are still looking after a little bit of my money (laughs). But I realised early on that to be successful in Switzerland you have to be Swiss. They had a referendum, oh . . . 30 years ago: "Shall we send all foreigners back?", and do you know they only lost that by 51 to 49 (laughs). But the things that, well... people say to me "Were your schooldays the best days of your life?". And I say "Not yet!" (laughs)
I think really I've enjoyed all my life, but I thank God that I did it at the right time. I travelled in the Middle East when it was perfectly safe. I travelled in Eastern Europe when it was perfectly safe. There wasn't the threat of danger from flying in aircraft that there probably is now. Terrorism was not something which was high on the agenda, so I had a happy life. No, I mustn't say "I had". I haven't finished yet! I've had a happy life, but I'm glad I did it when I did, which sounds like a statement of "I'm glad I'm old". I'm not glad I'm old, but I wouldn't want to do the things I did then now, so I'm much happier being a gardening peasant, sitting with my memories back here in the centre of the earth, Woodgate, Swanton Morley! (laughs).
