Philip worked for 50 years across farms in Norfolk as a self-employed agricultural engineer. He describes his life from when he first came to Norfolk at six weeks old.
I was born in London in the early 1930s. My mum was a young lady in her 20’s when I came into the world and after six weeks she brought me to her mum and dad here in Runhall and I stayed here for the rest of my life. My mum worked in London as a servant with her three sisters doing the self-same thing. My grandad was quite strict, but he did the best he could for me under the circumstances. They were only old age pensioners on ten shillings a week, so they did their best.
I didn’t have the best start in life because first of all they couldn’t dress me like most children were dressed. I wore hob nailed boots and second-hand or patched clothing and none of the children in the village really wanted anything to do with me
School days
When I was five I started school. Not Runhall School where most of the pupils were farmworkers’ or farmers’ children. I didn’t fit into that category at all especially with my clothing and the way I was being brought up. I went to Brandon Parva school, which was two miles beyond the village and my grandad walked me there. I was rather upset about being amongst a lot of children I didn’t know and I was locked in the school. When they did eventually let me out to play, three days later, the children set about me and called me all sorts of names. But one boy came and helped me all the way through school until I became old enough to stand up for myself. One day I caught one of the bullies alone and the teachers had to pull me off him!
First jobs
As years went by things got a little better and when I was 14, I left school. My grandad would use the leather belt if he thought I was lying to him and if he was told that I had been cheeky to somebody it was the same treatment. When I came home from school he told me to get myself a job and give my granny some money to look after me.
First of all, I went and worked with a gardener who was a self-employed man who ran a business looking after gardens at big houses. I went and worked with him for a month at Wymondham Hall. But I always wanted to be an engineer, and I was into tractors and combines. Everything in the tractor world was coming into farming then. There was a Mr Harrison who had a 500-acre farm at Brandon Parva who was into tractors. He had a lot of American equipment imported and he was one of the first in Norfolk to run big tractors. He was also the very first to run combine harvesters. He had one engineer who looked after his farm machinery as he did contracting work as well. He said, ‘Mr Curl does my work, but he could do with somebody to help him. The workshop is very untidy, he doesn’t look after that, so yes, I’ll give you a job.’
Off I went the following Monday and Mr Curl said to me ‘you can sweep all the workshop and tidy that all up.’ After I had done that for the first week, he got me into tractor puncture mending which was a big job for me being young and not very big. But on the other hand, I was quite strong because over the years I had worked with my grandad on his allotment. I helped him to dig the quarter of an acre of land he had, and which he was totally cropping. I also helped him when we used to walk the dog and if he saw a farmer that had got a dead tree in a field he would go and ask him if he could have it for firewood. They were always glad to give him old dead trees. So, I helped him, and in those days, there weren’t any power saws or chain saws, it was all hand work, so I was quite fit and active through that.
I got on quite well working with Mr Curl at Mr Harrison’s. Through the six months I was there I was doing punctures and sweeping up and odd jobs, but he never did give me the opportunity to work on a tractor. I said to him one day (when I knew there was a tractor being brought off the farm into the shed with a knock in the engine), ‘Why can’t I have a go at working on a tractor engine? You could show me roughly what to do and let me have a go.’ I said ‘I won’t never learn if you don’t let me try’ and after a few minutes he came back in and he said ‘You’re right in what you say boy, I’ll let you have a go. I’ll tell you how to start.’ I knew that the tractor had a knock because funnily enough I had an engineering mind. Mr Curl came along and said, ‘drain the oil.’ On the side of the engine there were four plates which you could take off and get to the internals. In those days engines were made so that most of the internal bearings were adjusted by shims. He showed me what to do. ‘There you are’ he said, ‘there are the tools.’ He gave me some of his tools and I started on it, and he kept coming back and seeing how I was getting on and he said, ‘well you’re doing everything right Philip’ and anyway I got two of the bearings apart. There were shims and I tightened them, as that was where the knocking was. I did the two and he came and had a look and felt them and he said, ‘I didn’t expect them to be as good as this.’ So, I got the two all locked off again and then I did the two back ones and got them all locked up. He came and turned the engine over. There were no self-starters in those days, everything was done by hand. He said, ‘put the plates on Philip and fill it up with oil. I’ll come and start it, and we’ll know what sort of job you’ve done.’ So that is what we did, and I passed the test.
Up until then the only mechanical side of my life related to my uncle who was a motorcyclist and so I knew a bit about motorbike engines because I worked with him in his shed. So that was where I picked up the engineering side. I knew absolutely nothing about a tractor engine but somehow along the line I had a gift to know when things were right or when they were wrong. I wasn’t perfect by any means. What I did to the tractor engine was more luck than judgement I suppose, but my judgement was good for the job.
Driving a combine harvester
Anyway, I worked for Mr Harrison for a year. He’d got two combine harvesters, a big International that was pulled by a tractor and a Massey Harris combine which was self-propelled. He was one of the first in Norfolk to have combine harvesters. This was the start of the whole operation when farming with horses and men gradually began to fade through the years. Most farms moved into the tractor world, and I was there aged 15. Harvest time was coming along, and he said to me one day, ‘do you think you could drive a combine Philip’ and I said, ‘yes I should think so.’ He had another new harvester which he had bought in from America and went by the name of Cockshutt. ‘Tomorrow’ he said, ‘if it’s a nice day we’ll go and start on some oats’ on a 26-acre field which was named the Sheds field. He was a nice enough man, but he was an odd character. He wanted to be out of the field before he was in it, and he would go as quick as ever he could. He didn’t want to do much about the job he was doing, he worried about getting the crop.
Anyway, the following day about 11 o’clock he came and said ‘come along Philip we’ll go and have a go’ so off we went. There were sackers in those days and at 15 years old they were big, tall sacks with a bit of weight in them. Like I say, I was quite fit, and I just had to move them off the delivery of the combine, down a slide and let them into the field, two bags at a time. Off we went and we hadn’t gone far before boom, the Cockshutt stopped dead. So, there we were, 20 minutes to half an hour cleaning the drum out because he was putting too much corn in for what the drum could cope with. Anyway, we cleared that all out and off we go again, and we hadn’t gone much further, (he kept in the same gear), and it stopped again. We had started at 11 o’clock and by the time we got round the 26-acre field, an hour and a half had gone by. Two and a half hours, because it was half past one. We got round to the end of the field where we started and he said ‘cor blimey I’ll have to go and get my lunch, it will be cold or burnt, I’m an hour late. I’ll send another man by the name of Jack Sewell to you.’ I knew the man and when Jack came on the scene I had my lunch, and I said to Jack ‘come on here we go.’ Off we went and I went down in a lower gear which was a lot slower. You could hardly see us moving. I did a round and never had a stop. Half past three in the afternoon Mr Harrison came along in his little truck. I can see him now. He drove up the side, jumped out of his truck and up the steps. ‘That’s no good creeping round here like this’ he said, ‘you’ll be here until the next harvest.’ I said ‘well Mr Harrison we haven’t had a stop. I’ve been going all the time.’ He never said a word, just jumped in and drove off. So, this was on a Monday and on the Tuesday Jack and I we kept going all day. By Wednesday afternoon, about quarter to two in the afternoon, we finished and I walked down into the yard, because I had no transport. He was at the pump filling his truck up. ‘What’s the matter Philip’ he said, ‘you got a break?’ ‘No Mr Harrison’ I said, ‘we’re finished.’ ‘Well done’ he said, ‘well done.’
He said, ‘I’m going to send to you to a Captain Dawson’s at Costessey to do some contracting for me.’ I said, ‘oh alright.’ There were two men, Fred who was driving the Massey Harris out on a contract and Jack, the other man, he was out with the big old International contracting. He said, ‘they’ve finished so I’ll get them to come and pick the Cockshutt up, take it over to Costessey for you this afternoon and they’ll drop you off in the morning at Costessey.’ So, all that happened and I went to Mr Dawson’s. I used to grease the combine, check all the chains and belts and so forth and fill it up with fuel. Anyway, we’d been there about half an hour and this Mr Dawson rolled up. He was an ex-army man, a captain in the army, very smart. He used to ride about in the car of the day, the Jaguar. ‘Hello young man’ he said, ‘are you getting it ready for Mr Harrison?’ and I said, ‘no Mr Dawson I’m the driver’ and he exploded. ‘Well’ I said, ‘Mr Dawson you’ll have to have a word with Mr Harrison because I am the driver, and I’ll do a good job for you.’ He just jumped in his car and off he went and about half an hour he came back with his tail between his legs a bit and he said ‘well young man I’ve had a word with Mr Harrison and he tells me you will do a good job’ and I said ‘I’ll do my best.’
In those days when combines first came in, if you left a kernel of corn in the straw behind the combine that was one too many. Today they don’t care, they leave as much on the field as they get in the stores but that’s how things are. So anyway, the worst part about it was, this wasn’t a field that was as flat as this table. It was a field with three woods round it and on the slope and that’s one of the worst things you can have for a combine harvester. If you go up one way it all goes down to the back of the sieves and over the back and if you go down the other way it stays all at the front and you get a bad sample with cold and all that because it won’t get blown off. So, Jack, the fella with me, he said, ‘however are you going to do this?’ and I said ‘I’m going to go like that because if all the corn goes to one side this way, at least that will travel the whole length of the sieves. I can adjust them how I think.’ Anyway, off we went. Mr Dawson was there, and I went a little way and jumped off and there were a few kernels. I had got the sieves, the drum, and the wind to blow the cold off, roughly in about the right place, so I adjusted up a bit more and went a bit further. We had another little stop, and I could only find an odd kernel here and there. I adjusted again and another stop and I couldn’t find any kernels. ‘Well Mr Dawson’ I said, ‘this is the best I can do for you.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘young man I’m amazed at what you’ve done. I’ll leave you to get on.’ Which I did, and that’s how engineering in the farm work started off for me and I worked for Mr Harrison for 20 odd years.
Army life
I went into the army when I was 18 to do my national service. I was told by people who had been in the war that if you do what you’re told you’ll get on, but they said it’s all yes and not a no, so I went off prepared to Aldershot. I arrived there one day, and they got us all on the parade square, 35 of us and the sergeant who was in charge of the group, the squad, he presented himself in not a very pleasant way.
He walked through the lines and one or two of the boys weren’t very smart and one in particular wasn’t very clean. The sergeant questioned him, and he didn’t answer him very well. He pulled him out of the squad and stood him there to attention. He come across another boy with a big mop of hair and he said, ‘that will all have to come off’ and the boy answered him back and told him he wasn’t having it taken off. After only a couple of hours he found out how things changed. There was another boy who swore at the sergeant. That went down a bang. Anyway, he got all three out and he just walked along the line; I want six volunteers he said, ‘you, you, you, you, and you’ and I just happened to be one of them. He put all these three together, then ‘Right’ he said, ‘you need a good scrub.’ The boy swore at him. We marched him down to the washhouse and took off all his clothes. There was one on each arm holding him and one on each leg. They did actually scrub him with a scrubbing brush. Two of them and he was red raw. That soon changed his mind. The other boy with the hair, the sergeant marched him to the barber’s shop. ‘Now’ he said, ‘young man, how would you like me to just give you a little trim?’ He took the shears off the barber and cut a furrow right through the middle. He said to the barber ‘take it all off’ and the boy didn’t know what was happening – that stopped his breathing for a minute. He wasn’t quite so harsh with the other boy. He took him into the barracks and put all his big heavy packs of kit on him and he marched him round the square for two hours, totally on his own. That quietened them down very quickly.
I was lucky really because I passed all the exams. I had all my injections, and we went to the canal zone in Egypt. They fixed us all up the next day with lighter clothing because of the sunshine. We had shorts, loose shirts, little loose jackets, and being a motor biker, I was thinking about being a despatch rider. Everything went my way, all personnel had to read part one orders which would be on the office door, or office wall, after three o’clock every afternoon. It was a transport company with all the drivers and about 120 vehicles which you had to drive to such and such. All your names would be there, two or three hundred people. There were big, long lists and on one little list, it said motorcyclist required and I thought ‘cor’ so I went to see the sergeant major and said ‘scuse me sir, I would like to know something about the motorcyclist job.’ ‘You got the job’ he said and that was what I did all the time I was there, and I really enjoyed my life there.
When I got used to everywhere, I used to drive about 250 miles a day. I’d start at 5.30 in the mornings. I went back one afternoon and read the part one order and it said Private Greengrass will report to the orderly room in the morning at 8.30. I thought whatever’s that for. What have I done wrong. I had gone out of the camp at 5.30 and been all over the canals with messages. I went in and saw the sergeant major, ‘Captain Gilles’ he said, ‘has put you on part one orders in the morning, because you’ve taken your motorbike into the tent lines.’ So, I said ‘well yes sir, I did.’ ‘Don’t worry about that’ he said. ‘You be there at 8.30.’
Next door to our company was the regimental headquarters for the canal zone, where all the ranked people, all the colonels and that type of people were and I had met most of them. Anyway, in we go into the orderly room, and I could see this lieutenant colonel from the headquarters, he was the man who was going to handle the day and there was a fella who was Captain Gilles, a Scotchman. He stood beside him at his desk and the sergeant major said ‘Private Greengrass reporting’ and so the lieutenant colonel said, ‘Well young man what have you been up to?’ I said, ‘I don’t really know sir.’ He said, ‘you are a despatch rider aren’t you’ and I said ‘yes,’ and he looked up at the captain and he said, ‘what have you charged this man for?’ The captain said, ‘I saw him on his motorcycle in the tent lines where he shouldn’t have been.’ So, this lieutenant colonel said,’ tell me why he shouldn’t have been there.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he shouldn’t have any vehicles in the tent lines.’ ‘Why?’ he said, ‘is there a notice to say that he couldn’t?’ and he said, ‘no sir’ and he said, ‘well Private, tell me why you were in the tent lines.’ I said, ‘I always take some spanners with me in case I have a breakdown I can try and repair my bike.’ He said ‘good thinking young man. Gilles if you haven’t got anything better to do than treat people like you treated this man for nothing it’s about time you found yourself another job’ and he just disappeared in the following two weeks. I knew all the people at the top and I got on really well.
Lotus sports cars
When I first went to Mr Harrison’s, he wasn’t an agricultural engineering firm, he was just a farm contractor. When I started there at 14 the war was gradually coming to an end and at the end of the war two of the farmers, Mr Harrison and Mr Dann, got together and bought a lot of old American army trucks because they had big auctions on all the air bases and the vehicles on there were virtually new. They decided that a lot of farmers would like to cart their own sugar beet into the factories so they bought 15 lorries. They all had solid metal boxes on them, with no hinged doors and they weren’t tippers. Anyway, Mr Harrison had to look for a welder to do all these conversions on the trucks and that was how he got into agricultural engineering because one thing led to another. Then, of course, he had firms come in who were making stuff for farm implements and that type of thing and he became a dealer for that and for Nuffield tractors. He could have had an International tractor contract but he wouldn’t take it on. They needed more money laid down for their equipment, but he took on Nuffield’s as a sub agent. His farm was the main dealer for the county, and we were selling more tractors than what they were at the end. We sold a lot of Nuffield tractors, and this was how we went on until I decided I’d had enough and went to Lotus as being more attractive.
I worked as workshop foreman for the last five years I was with Mr Harrison and then I saw an advert in the paper for Lotus sports cars coming to Norfolk. I was into cars and motorbikes, and I wrote a letter to them. They gave me a job straight away. So, I went to Ware for two months and they paid for my B&B. Why, I don’t know. The job I went there to do was as simple as ABC to me, as it was putting in engines and gear boxes. As a working foreman for Mr Harrison, I was earning £15 10s a week. I went to Lotus and my first week’s wages were £23 10s a week. The manager had a word one day and said to me ‘Philip when we get to Hethel (this was only about a week or so before we were due to go), we are going to start off a part in the assembly area making engines more powerful than the standard. Would you like to take that on? You’ve been in engineering for a long time’ and I said, ‘I’ll have a go at anything.’ He said ‘your wages will go up to £32 10s a week’ so I doubled my wages in two months which was a lot of luck. I liked being at Lotus, but the sad part was that in the area where I was doing the engines, I’d had a sore throat quite a lot. I sat there one day working on the engines. It was a day like this, a sunny day and the roof of the new building had quarter light panels. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I could see all these little silvery flakes coming down. So, I went and spoke to the foreman of the assembly area, and I said to him, ‘Cor, Maurice, whatever is that coming down those beams?’ He said, ‘I hadn’t noticed that.’ The problem was they were fibre glass byes. They had a special fettling area where they trimmed them all ready for fitting the panels and fitting the windscreens and what have you. He said, ‘well the problem is, the boys on the line are having to do fettling to get the windscreens in’ and I said, ‘no wonder I’ve had a sore throat.’ So, I was there for a year, and I thought I just can’t work inside in this. I had a lovely job simple as ABC and the money was extremely good, but I decided I would have a go and work for myself in agricultural engineering.
Self-employed as an agricultural engineer
I had a great advantage because I knew most of the farmers from working at Harrison’s. A Mr Banham (Claud) and his son John, who I’d known all my life, used to come and see me most weekends. Claud was a very generous type of man. I just mentioned it to John, and he said, ‘you can have all our work.’ I never advertised, work just came along because of the people I knew. John would just mention me to them, and they would ring me up. I had another great advantage in that I knew the good payers and the bad payers, so I took eight good customers on. They really looked after me all the way through my career and I did that for about 50 years.
Mr Harrison was an odd character in many ways, nice enough fella but he didn’t treat me with too great a respect and when I started on my own, he treated me better than what he did when I worked for him.
Mr Banham across the road said to me one day that they were looking for a new armourer at the gun club and asked if I’d take it on. I’d done a bit of shooting, so I knew roughly what it was all about. He took me down to the gun club two or three times as a guest and pointed out a few things to me. The fella who had been looking after it was an odd character and members of the club knew that he was robbing them because he was buying the clay pigeons and the cartridges and selling to them at a higher price. And this is how I got into it. They had a meeting for the club just to know what was going on and I went along unannounced. The armourer asked me ‘what you doing there?’ I said ‘I don’t really know’ but before the meeting I’d been asked to find out what I could buy them for. So I went to the supplier who I actually knew, and told him what the position was. I said, ‘as far as I’m concerned, the club will have them at the same price I pay you for them.’ I said ‘We’ll better that. We will see if the club will pay you direct.’ The old armourer was told, ‘you’re getting on in age and we feel we need a new armourer, we need a younger man.’ Of course, that upset the whole apple cart, he exploded, but he stayed in the club, and he treated me with respect as well because I stood up for myself and that was how it went on for me. What was an advantage for me was not only being the armourer, I also got the work of overhauling the clay traps at the end of each season.
When I worked for Harrison’s, I used to go off to Richard Jewson’s sometimes and he had a little tractor, and he had a meadow cutting machine as well. We used to look after that because when I started on my own, he got to know, and he rang me and asked would I do his lawnmowing and machinery for him and I did that for 50 years.
I never advertised for anybody, but I knew a tremendous amount of people and I knew the payers. You see when you get in amongst that type of people it’s amazing the type of lives they run. The small farmer was a better payer than the big farmer. If you had a man with 500 acres and you had a man with 400 acres and they were side by side, the man with 400 acres would try and keep up with the 500-acre man who was a wealthier man. Of course, all along the line you get the good payers and the bad payers. The ones who were short used to hang on to the bills for about three or four months, whereas the ones who had the money used to pay me every month.
Repairing the Mercedes
One particular farmer I did a lot of work for during the 50 years I was working for myself, was an Alston farmer at Colton. I had a ‘phone call one Sunday evening. ‘Jim Alston here’ he said, ‘they tell me Philip that you are working for yourself. I’ve got a job for you.’ ‘So’ I said, ‘what would that be Mr Alston?’ and he said, ‘it’s my Mercedes car, do you know anything about Mercedes cars?’ I said ‘no, I don’t know anything about Mercedes cars to be honest but tell me what your problems are, and I’ll tell you if I can help you.’ ‘Well,’ he said ‘I broke down in Newmarket on Friday. Robinsons came and collected us, brought us home. They rang me up Saturday morning to say that my car was done. I went and picked it up from the workshop and drove it round to the office to pay the bill. When I went to start it, it wouldn’t start again like it did in Newmarket. How do you feel about that?’ I said, ‘I’ll come and have a look at it. I know roughly what you’re talking about.’ I knew it was either electronics or fuel.
Anyway, when I got there, he said ‘I went round to the workshop, picked it up, got to the office, came out and it went rrrrr and wouldn’t go. I went to get the foreman out of the workshop, and he said if you look at that little thing under there, just give it a kick he said, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ Well, that was the fuel pump because it wasn’t working you see. What a thing to say to somebody. He said, ‘what do you think?’ I said, ‘I’ll have a go.’ I got it off, took it all apart and I could see what was wrong with it. It was a Bosch part, and I think in those days that was £160. I said, ‘well Mr Alston I’ve found the trouble, but I don’t know whether I can get the parts, the little brushes are worn out, they’re worn out right down to the wire.’ ‘Oh well’ he said, ‘I’ll leave it to you.’ So, I brought it home and I went to Banks in Norwich and no they couldn’t supply with me with any brushes, but they could supply me with a pump, and I thought I’ve got some brushes at home that go in a dynamo. I’ll make some. So, I came home, and I made these four little brushes to fit the holes in the electric motor. I did that as the first job I ever did for him.
That was how life went for me. I treated people with respect, and they treated me with respect, and I got on very well when I started working for myself.
Family contact
My mum bought me to grandmum and grandad’s in Runhall when I was six weeks old and through my life ‘till I was about 26, 27or 28, I only ever did meet my mum twice and she never introduced herself as my mum. When she came the first time, about two years after she left me here, after she had gone my granny actually told me that was my mum. I was never introduced to her as her son. I never knew my father or anybody, only my grandmum’s family. Two boys they had had, and three girls and she never did buy me anything, teddies, or anything like that, but my aunties did. Two of my aunties bought me things when they used to live in London. They married London men. The last time I saw my mum I’d be early 30’s I suppose. She was pregnant then with triplets with another man, but she was never introduced to me as my mum, and I never did know my father. Granny and my grandad were my mum and dad, and I stayed with them until the end of their lives when I lived on my own for about five or six years and so I know roughly what life’s all about.
Meeting Tricia
We met on a total blind date. I just happened to go past The Horseshoes in Barnham Broome. There were two pubs, The Bell and The Horseshoes. They had a porch on the front of the pub into the main building. I knew all the girls in Barnham Broome. I went past one day in my car; this was after I’d been out of the army for five years and saw this girl sitting in the porch with another boy who I knew, and I happened to see Tricia. I used to go in the pub on a Wednesday and there was a fella in there by the name of Henry King. He knew everybody in the village. He’d lived there for the biggest part of his life, and I said ‘Henry, I saw a girl sitting in the porch with Sam. Who would that be? A girl with gingery blonde hair, lovely looking girl.’ He said, ‘that’s Pattie, I don’t know what her second name is, but her mum and dad broke up and she works in the telephone exchange in Norwich. She comes home to Barnham because her mum is living here with her brother and sister.’ I knew her brother, Tricia’s uncle, and anyway I went along on the Wednesday night and Henry said, ‘I’m glad you’ve come, I’ve got you a date with Pattie on Saturday.’ I said ‘whatever are you talking about Henry. I don’t even know the girl. Never met her.’ ‘Never mind’ he said, ‘you will on Saturday night if you meet her outside the telephone exchange about ten, quarter past six, after she leaves off.’ The strange thing was I was a bit of a loner after I came out of the army. I had to do what I wanted to do myself because I hadn’t had a lot of freedom in life.
Anyway on the Saturday evening out came the girl I was meeting, Tricia, and she had a longish grey coat on, black patent high heel shoes, earrings, short blonde gingery hair, a little make up, not a great deal, and she had this loose white silk scarf on. I thought to myself, she’ll say hello to me, I’ll tell her my name and she’ll say I’ve got a bus to catch but anyway I introduced myself, and she introduced herself as Tricia Ba .I said ‘would you like to go and have a cup of tea?’. We had a cup of tea in Lyons who used to be open until seven o’clock. Another thing I’ll never forget. There was an elderly man in there, he was pouring his tea into a saucer and drinking it out of the saucer. Whilst we were having a cup of tea I said, ‘would you like to go and have a fish and chip supper at Valori’s, Timber Hill?’ and Tricia said straight away ‘my mum and dad had a fish and chip shop in Hastings, and I used to work in there.’ I would normally have my fish and chips, go and have a drink, then after I’d had a drink I used to like to go to the Hippodrome to the variety show. So, while we had our fish and chips I said, ‘would you like to go to a variety show starting at half past eight?’ I told her when it started and when it finished. She said ‘that would be lovely. I’ve been to one or two.’ Tricia was born into a Salvation Army family, so her life was restricted in some ways. The variety show we went to just happened to be a one-off type thing. As the curtain went up, there were four girls topless, one at each corner, never seen it before. There they were anyway and after the show, which Tricia enjoyed, the first thing she said to me was, I wondered where you were taking me, and we’ve been together ever since.
I was a motor car racing man as well. I like bikes and cars and Snetterton circuit had just started up at that particular time. We went there on the Sunday, and she asked me if I would take her back to her digs in Norwich so I knew where she was so I could go and see her on the Wednesday, and we’ve been together ever since for 63 years.
No scaffolding!
We saved up together and there were two old derelict cottages owned by a local farmer Mr W whose machinery I worked on. Someone had been living there but everything was overgrown. All you could see were the two chimneys over all the bushes. One day I said, ‘about the cottages you have Mr Wright.’ He said ‘you should have spoken to me last week; I sold them last week. If you had approached me, you could have had them.’ This was the cottage near the church. So, I missed that. I said, ‘what about the old cottages at Mordice?’ ‘Yes’ he said, ‘I’ll sell you them, but I won’t sell you the field.’ So, we came and dug right down there, me and another young chap. There were two old cottages there and a blacksmith’s shop where the garage is, with a thatched roof. The blacksmith’s shop was underneath with the living room on the top. It was a clay lump with a thatched roof. Anyway, Tricia came, and we had a look at it, and he wanted £600 for it. We got our act together, we looked after ourselves and we decided we’d buy it. Me and another boy pulled the houses down, no scaffolding. I reflect back now how ever did we do it. I often see the chap who helped me, and we laugh about it. So, we had the bungalow built and then some friends of mine put the extension on and we’ve been here more than 40 odd years.
Retirement
I retired at 83 and I still keep dodging about, I like going to the airfields. I like going out and about, and we go out for meals. We go to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital as volunteers. We go there as stooges, and we caught Covid there last year. We went on this particular day, both of us and you see the same doctors training, but they are doing different exams. I went in and I said to the doctor ‘I’m not wearing a mask’ and he said, ‘you don’t need to wear a mask’ and of course every student who came in didn’t wear a mask. Tricia went down with it on the Tuesday or Wednesday and I went down with it on the Saturday, so we know roughly what that was all about. But I have worn a mask since I’ve been in. I missed a session a couple of weeks ago because I had a cold, but we’ve done that for 20 years.
How I got into that was I had a heart fibrillation and saw a consultant who put me on tablets, Sotalol and Warfarin. I had the option really because I knew a man who had been on Warfarin for the same problem and I also knew a man who’d been put on aspirin and in the year he had to go into hospital with terrible stomach ulcers. So, I went with Warfarin and they haven’t killed this old rat yet!
Farm machinery now
I think farm machinery now has got completely out of hand. All the men who have to do the repairs on them. They’re a nightmare. They’re so complicated and they’re so expensive to do, these big American tractors. I mean even the farm tractors now have automatic gearboxes. I have spoken to some of the men who work for Ben Burgess, and they say it takes two men two days to take a cab off a tractor and the cost of the parts is astronomical – that’s how it’s all changed now.
Mr Alston, who I mentioned before, sadly he passed away when he was only 53 and is son Ian took it over. He decided he would try growing potatoes. He went in for lorries and trailers and everything and had three lorries and 13 trailers at one time. He had four bulk carriers for carrying sugar beet and that type of thing and he also had 10 trailers specially made for potatoes, whereby they were built with big belts in the middle for loading. But as the years went by, I looked after the lorries and the trailers, and I was virtually in a full-time job there. He looked after me really well. I knew there was a little problem because he was selling bits of land here and there but every time I took him a bill he’d go straight into the office and write the cheque out. He was very good, excellent to me, a genuine type of fella.
I got on really well with all the farmers. I used to go shooting with them and especially Mr D at B. When I worked for Harrison’s, I went there one day and he flew out of his office, ‘where the …’ and he swore at me. ‘Where have you been, you should have been here at 8.30.’ I went where I was told to go and I’d got the tractor partly to pieces, got the carburettor off it. I said, ‘Mr D if that’s the way you speak to me. I treated you with a bit of respect and you’re not treating me the same’ and that knocked him back a bit. I said, ‘what you want to do is go and have a word with the people who told you I was going to be with you at 8.30 and ask them why they ordered me to go to two other places before I got here.’ I threw my tools in the back of the van. He had gone round to the front of the van. He must have heard my back door go and the next thing I knew he was running round the front of the motor. ‘I’m sorry Philip’ he said. ‘I’ve been a bit annoyed because I really want to use that tractor and get on.’ ‘Well,’ I said ‘Mr D I’ll do my best. We’ll have it going in a little while hopefully. I know what the trouble is.’ And from that day he was a different man.
So that was how I got on, but I’ll give the credit to my grandad, he taught me how to live, regarding treating people with respect. The army changed me completely because I know how to defend myself. I haven’t really ever fallen out with anybody, swearing or anything like that. I’ve always taken things how they’ve come. The thing was in those days, the farming community were dominant. They were everything and everybody to themselves. There was the odd one or two who would go into a pub, and how ever many were in there, he would treat them to a drink, but there were people who were totally the opposite…
I remember one big farmer whilst I was still at Harrison’s, and he had a son and he was the big ‘I am.’ When the bird-scarers first came in we went in for them, and the son came and bought two. Everything was explained to him because they used to put carbide and a little water in them, and a drip feed, so the scarers kept making the gas and the bangs. Later I was told the son was on the ‘phone saying that the bangers weren’t any good. I said, ‘I should think he’s flooded them.’ So, off I go. The scarers were on a big field down the back of the woods, and I could see where a track had been made across to these bangers. So, I set off across the field in my little van. I wasn’t going to walk half a mile across a big field of peas.
The son had turned the water off and burnt all the carbide out and I was in the process of recharging them when this Land Rover flew across the field, dust flying off the side. He was only a young boy about 18 at the most. Well, the language he used was unbelievable, ‘get the van off, you want to come across, you ought to walk.’ I’d been in the army by then and I feared nobody. I looked at him. ‘What are you looking at me for?’ he said. I said ‘I’m telling you a thing or two. If you want these bangers working, I’m staying here. And if you don’t get off here quick, I’ll put you off.’ He didn’t know what to say. I expected when I got back, he would have been down there and reported me, but he didn’t. He’d realised I was right, and he was wrong but that was the attitude. They knew everything except how to treat people with respect. The upper-class type knew nothing, only in their own field, but that was how life was in those days. You had to stick up for yourself and that’s how I did it.
Keeping it in the family
My granddaughter is 30 this year and she’s driving an artic lorry. She went in for a course last year, went for a test and passed first time so we’re keeping it in the family. She’s worked for a lorry business in Bradenham and got to know the family a little bit. The boss had his own lorry and wouldn’t let anybody else drive it, but he let Laura drive it one day and then he asked if she would lead the procession at the funeral with his lorry so that’s what she did.
We find it harder to get about to do what we want to do now. I’ve had two hips and a knee done and I’ve been waiting eight years to get the left one done. I’ve still got a motorbike which I’ve tried to sell but I can’t find anyone with the money. It’s one I’ve built from bits and pieces. I’d like to buy one you can just press to start. I’m afraid with the kick start I might do something to this right leg, then I’d be wheelchair bound, and I do like to keep as active as possible.
Philip Greengrass talking to WISEArchive in Runhall on 27th January 2025. © 2025 WISEArchive. All Rights Reserved.
