I started work on a very auspicious date, 1st April and I never caught on, otherwise I wouldn't bothered and that was in 1940. I went into a small city office, what used to be euphemistically known as the tea boy. It quickly became an increasingly administrative and responsible job because with the war on, it was a very small office, one fellow went swanning off to be an officer in the army and suddenly I was thought as second in command. Not a lot was said about it really, I mean in those days it was mainly all book keeping. The most significant about it was the fact that it was within the inner city area that was declared by the government, on account of the London blitz. It meant that the place had to be opened and fire -watched 24 hours a day. I did an awful lot of that because there were only a few more men in the place and most of those lived in the area, in the East End, so I did quite a bit of subbing there. That was my first job.
Second job, that's a long way back, better not go quite that far. There was the war for what it was worth. Started with fire watching, went on to be a member of the LDV, which for you is "Dad's Army" and then I went in to the Royal Naval air service. Which took me amongst other places into the Indian Ocean on the first commission and all the way round to the Pacific on the second one. When the war finished I was in Hong Kong. Then I came back home and I went back where I worked in the first place. That lasted until 1951, I think, at which time I was unfortunate enough to be made victim of a political call up; I think it was the Korea or Vietnam. Anyway they sent me up to Lossiemouth because my trade was radio electrics and when I got up there I knew what to expect anyway. The airfield was shut down for years while they extended the runways. So I spent the whole eighteen months sitting around in a little mobile workshop, in a little airfield about ten mile away doing nothing. I wasn't very favourably impressed. I came home again and went back to the firm which was obligated to keep our jobs open. The only trouble is an office in a small firm, jobs don't just sit and do nothing, they do develop and by the time I came back I'd took an alternative post with them. I worked in their steel warehouse for about 4/5 years.
Money in that time is difficult to say. I can recall that I first started on, I think it was 17 / 6d a week plus the 5 shillings or equivalent, to pay for a monthly season ticket on the underground. By the time I was demobbed after the war and came out, about 18 months after that I married this little lady over here. I think we got married on something like £4 10s. After the Korea crises and I went back to the firm again, it was a long way away, it didn't pay enough for transport. The only public transport was to go from Essex, Romford Essex into Liverpool Street and then back out to Ponders End, which would of course have been quite onerous. So what happened was, I tried, I certainly couldn't afford a car, I tried one of these little motors in cycle wheels and that just wasn't up for the job. So I wound up cycling. Now had to do five and a half days a week in those days and 25 mile a day is a 150 miles a week. You get to the point where you realise that this can't go on you see. So my next job was found locally, eventually. It was a peculiar arrangement, I applied for a lot of jobs. I tried very hard to get into the Ford Nova company where the best money in the area was but that was a closed shop almost like the print unions. I made several applications and got absolutely nowhere. Joan and I sat down one night and worked out what the minimum amount of money was that I could earn for us to get by on. I finally got a job by quoting that figure, that was I think just over £6. That was store- keeping in an electrical firm and lasted for 8/9 years. After which that began to go a bit sour and I'd arranged to stand in for a pub manager for a fortnight; so we parted company with the firm and did this little Relief, which was quite entertaining.
Then I had a job to go to with the Ilford film people that was in Brentwood. I was part of a manual payroll team and that went on until, they decided after about 3 years that they were going to mechanise their payroll. Well I was the last one to go into the office so I was the first one of two to come out again.
Next job was Thermos Engineering, that was in the same capacity. They were in Brentwood at the time. Thermos moved to Thetford round about 1960, some where round about there. I've got one of these essential worker positions. I came up as office Manager. It got me to Thetford, that I am very pleased with about, that's about the only benefit it had.
Fortunately about 3 years after we got here, I got employed with Danepak. I worked with them for 23 years. That was a number of responsibilities, all of them in what in those days was called Middle Management. I stayed there until I was just turned 63, when for the third time they approached me to be paid off and they made an offer which couldn't be refused. It was a year's tax free salary and I'd only got about 21 months to go, so we jumped at that.
In the meantime, we had arguably the biggest stroke of luck in our lives. I'm not fond of the administration in this country, the system, but dear old Maggie Thatcher came up trumps for me. When I finally bought the house in Fir Road, at the top of Barnham Common, it was sold to me for just over £7000, plus the £2000 mortgage and I paid the lot off in 5 years and suddenly I was wealthy.
When they retired me, we sold up and looked for a place, I wanted a place on the coast further south where the winters were not quite so cold. Well the nearest we could go, we had to buy for what we could sell, and short of going right down to the worst country, the only option was to go to the Isle of Wight, so that's where we wound up. We were there just over 13 years and then with one or two little warnings from the doctor and the hospital, I felt it was time to bring Joan home. The issue was that when we retired and went away, I had 4 children in the town and they were all in the process or likely to be in the process of moving away. Well ultimately one did and at the second attempt she has settled in New Zealand. But the other 3 are still here and of course the island is a round trip of 300 miles from Thetford. So it was a decision of expediency really and we've been back here 8 years.
My eldest son, Roger, was 15/16 when we came to Thetford and obviously he went straight into employment. His first job didn't turn out very well and he went to the Co-op in Thetford and worked in the men's department. Ultimately for the Co-op manager, he managed a little clothing shop in Magdalen Street, I think it was. That was a non-starter, so he was really at a bit of a loose end here. I got him to fill in an application for Danepak and dropped it in to Lesley Broadhurst' s office and Roger wound up getting a job as an assistant buyer there. He was there for, oh a long time, I wouldn't like to say how long now, it must have been 15 years, something like that. He was the only one of the family who worked with me for any time.
What made you work at all the different places?
Well the first one obviously was first job from school. Why I went there I don't know, you went and found a job. The second one, was purely on the grounds of the distance between me and the first one being impractical. The third one; the second job I held for about 8/9 years and it lost its charm, I can't put it fairer than that. Therefore the third one, was again a case of finding a job, I mean I was married with a big family by then, so the basic reason was, I needed to get another job. The fourth one was due to redundancy from the third, and the fifth one was again, as I said, I came up to Thetford as an Essential Person, appointed office manager for the Thermos business up here and it went sour.
No particular reason, the fact they had a fire about 12 months after coming up, which did a lot of damage, didn't help. But then again, still married still with 3 of the 4 children on hand; the fourth job and the one that really mattered was a case of finding a job. Although it is fair to say that Danepak in those days had the reputation in Thetford, along with Baxters and another company which has gone now, that was called Berkey Technical. They were the places to work if you could find a job there. As I say I settled for Danepak when they offered me a job, was there for the rest of my working life.
What skills did you learn?
To be fair, virtually nothing. The first job I went into I was shown the art of double entry book keeping and general office work. I was instructed very precisely on how to use the telephone because the telephone was quite expensive in those days. There was a very much formal procedure to answer the telephone and a requirement not to get carried away with chat but to do the business. My school success was always mathematics and I suppose, well in fact most of my working life has been built around the basic ethos of 1 and 1 always makes 2. Figures very largely in what I have done, store keeping and what goes with it which is: stock control, production and analysis work at Danepak amongst other things. A little bit of, about 7 year period of direct line management. All of these things came out of previous experience, ongoing development of my talents, you might say to make a bob or two. Specific skills; I did become quite proficient as a two finger typist.
I can just say that work, when I was working for the most part was a very different story to what it is today. I started work in the days when if you got a job, you fondly imagined that was what you were going to be doing for the rest of your life. There was a personal aspect to it, there was a personal touch involved in it which disappeared I suppose by the time I was 50. By that time business had become very impersonal and I can say fairly authoritively, the last ten years of my working life I didn't enjoy it. Prior to that I had enjoyed it.
The hours at the first job I had were the office hours prevailing at the time, now I believe they were 9-5.30 and 9-12 o'clock Saturday. Second job, yes that was basically factory hours, that would have been 8-5 and again at that time still Saturdays, Although that was probably overtime. When I went on to the payroll jobs, we were back with office hours which were 9-5 roughly. When I went to Thermos, the hours were office hours because I was still working in originally payroll operator, before coming up to Thetford to be the office manager. When I went to Danepak, we started on what could be called unprincipled hours. I was one of the first people to be taken on there and to give you some idea, when I started at Danepak, Danepak produced about 4/5 boxes of bacon all day. It was very much development and we working at times from 7 in the morning ‘til 7 at night. When it settled down, some of my time was in the office, on office hours, most of it was on factory hours. The office hours would have been the standard 9 ‘til 5, there abouts. Factory hours were 8 until about 5 o'clock again and on Friday probably finish 2.30.
At a very early age I learnt to drink and smoke. The smoking went on until I was about 40 and the drinking hasn't finished yet. Most of the other activities in my spare time were basically of a sporting nature. In the course of my lifetime I have played hours and hours of all 3 racket games. I've cycled hundreds and hundreds of miles and I've walked another hundreds and hundreds of miles. I've been a keen gardener all my life. At one time when I was going to work on the underground, I used to read a book a day, going to and from. I did a bit of photography at one stage while it was still black and white, including a bit of my own developing and printing. My Father came from Southwold and his Father was a fisherman. A fisherman of Southwold in the winter made model yachts as part of their living when the sea was too rough to go out, They were long shore fishermen. Southwold in those days used to run during the holiday season, at least one that I fancy, more likely three, model yacht regattas. Where the tourists who would be down there, would go along to the pond and they'd pay a few bob to enter any of the model yachts that were lining the bank in to a race. Now my Father also brought that skill home, he was a carpenter. In the mid 30's he started a model yacht club in old Southgate, I was obviously one of the members. At one stage during the war, both he and I, when I was on leave, organised the place for holidays at home for school children. That went on for about 5/6 years. That was very interesting, as a matter of fact, I'd made one or two boats myself since for grandchildren. I've tried to refit the last one only about 6 months ago but I can't. Nowadays model making is very difficult, there's not much outlet of the materials you want and for me you know it's almost impossible. Always very interested in music, my main music love is classical. I was a choir boy ,mainly because I loved church music and it was a way of singing. I actually sang in a mass choir at St. Paul's Cathedral on one occasion. Billiards and snooker, did an awful lot of that. When I came out of the Service I was granted 8 weeks demobilisation leave. It happened around about May/June of 1946. Well I took every day of it. The average day was to get up late. Have a bit of breakfast, go down to the pub and play bar billiards whilst drinking. Then go around to a little cafe behind Southgate's station for a bite to eat. Come out of there and trot across the road to the billiards hall above the Burton Tailors. Where we played, got bar scratch game of snooker all the afternoon. Then it would be about 6 o'clock or just after, it would be time to go back to the pub and play darts all evening and drink. Finally when they throw us out of the pub, we went back across the road to the snooker hall and stayed there until 11.30, playing more snooker. That went on for 8 weeks, actually I became quite proficient at snooker, I only ever played Andy Pandy stuff but I made an awful lot more money than I lost. After that, I went back to work, met Joan, started courting, got a family and snooker went by the board, I played very little, very very little ever since. Played around a couple a times when there's been a table handy.
When I was retired on the Isle of Wight I took up wind surfing. It happened because my eldest granddaughter came down to visit for a holiday and I spoke to the people who ran a club in Sanddown Bay And said would she fit in with it. They said yes and before I knew what had happened, I'd booked two courses, one for her and one for me. They were 5 lesson courses over a fortnight and by the end of the fortnight I was hooked. My granddaughter, Debbie, had to come back to Thetford and carry on where she'd left off with school. But I was hooked on it, I kept it up for about 8 years and got pretty proficient, for somebody who didn't start until he was 65. I packed up when, as I packed up all of my sports really, when I found I was beginning to go back on it. I'm not one to keep doing something for the sake of it, which I've done far better at some stage. So that's when it finished but doing that spell I was approached by the management of the White Water Club on behalf of somebody called Robin Cook, the "Cook Report". At that time I was one of 3 people interviewed on the island on the question of whether pensioners with a little of money in the bank, should in the light of the threats of government taking over and misappropriated it, whether they should spend it while they've got it and then live on the state when it was all gone. That's arguably my biggest claim to fame. I did actually get on the telly with it.
Just before I finished work, the brilliant computer came into my office. I was at that time in charge of a large component and packaging store and the stock and control thereof. It came in with a software package, which was going to do all I ever wanted by the touch of a button. In point of fact it was a total waste of time. I may be biased but I really didn't want to know it in the first place. I had a perfectly sound and very brief manual system which worked to a tee and the staff that worked for me were trained in it. Anyway struggling along with this thing, trying to make it do what it was supposed to do but we got a few results out of it. By the end I said "No, take it out. I'll pass the information through when I've finished with it manually and the information can go to the buying office regarding receipts and one thing and another. They got a computer there, they can press the buttons. It's doing nothing for me." That was about 3 years before I finished work and I was never more delighted about anything than getting out of having to earn a living before this press button technology came in. My wife currently has a computer, bought by one of the children for us, I've already copped out of that. To be fair I can't handle it, the print is too small and it's too much of a strain. Joan's had a crack at it but circumstantially she's gone backwards a bit because of the move we've made. But she's determined she's going to have another go and then it will be basically communication between Thetford and New Zealand, where my daughter lives.
