Get A Job

The card table, because it was a card table and not a dining table, though that is what it had been used for as long as Alan had been alive, sat two or three feet away from a 15” Bush television perched on top of a highly polished and stained wooden trolley with castors. On the lower shelf was an ancient gramophone player and a small collection of records, vintage ranging from 1930 to 1950. The trolley and the sideboard next to it had been made by his dad. The sideboard had originally been walnut sides from army ammunition boxes, but now was, like the trolley, highly polished by hand using French Polish. His dad had made them both and all the other furnituyre in the house. The bed he slept in, the double wardrobe in his parents bedroom, the table in the kitchen, the two arm chairs in the living room together with two small stools. All made by him. It was probably the high quality of the furniture which had turned Alan away from ever wanting to follow in his fathers footsteps as a joiner, or cabinet maker as he styled himself. However, now that he had left school and was the owner on one certificate in GCE English Language, and nothing else, he needed to find a job.

On the table spread out in front of him was the Bolton Evening News open at the Job Vacancy pages, and he was avidly casting his eyes on them as he had done for the past weeks, ever since returning from the Boy Scout Jamboree with a sun tan and little else other than fond memories. He smoothed out the paper with his right hand and remembered the day before the exam results had come in. Deciding he had to find a job he had spent the morning walking around the town centre trying to imagine what it would be like to work in some of the premises he passed. Then suddenly he found himself on Mealhouse Lane in the centre of town and in front of a tall red brick imposing building which housed the offices and presses of the Bolton Evening News (published every night, and the Bolton Guardian published on Friday). He pushed open the heavy wood and glass door and walked into the reception area. Heavy wooden floorboards showed a path where every visitor to the offices had made over the years. He stopped at the chest high Mahogany counter and waited until the woman fiddling with something on a shelf below the counter bent up and looked at him.

 

“I’d like to see the editor please” he said. She looked him up and down and wondered what on earth a teenager in a dog tooth check sports coat and grey flannels could want with the editor. “What is it about love?” she asked nt unkindly. “I want a job” Alan replied. Her eyebrows went up a little. “Wait her e for a minute and I’ll see if he can see you.” She disappeared through a door in the wood and wrinkly glass panels which formed the wall behind her. The door slammed too as she went through. Alan looked around him at the photos on the walls around the large reception area. Two minutes later she came back. “He’ll see you now,” she said, “Follow me.” She ducked under a part of the counter which was hinged and nodded to him to follow her through a door to the right of the area. She followed him up two flights of narrow wooden stairs until they reached a series of offices running along the floor they were now on. Stopping in front of one of them she tapped twice on the glass window in the door and opened it, allowing Alan to walk carefully past her into a crowded office. The editor sat behind a large impressive desk covered in paper and files. Behind him was a wall full of files on shelves and in front of the desk was a wooden chair with armrests. The editor rose from his seat and held out his hand. Alan shook it and sat down when the editor told him to. Alan sat, his stomach no longer churning and doing somersaults as it had been doing since he walked in through the front door of the premises. 

 

Alan explained he would like a job on the newspaper and that he was very good at writing and expected to get five O levels including English Language in a few weeks time. After five or ten minutes conversation Alan was shown out of the office with a request that he return when his results were through and the editor would see what there was for him. Alan got only the one pass, in English Language, so he didn’t bother to go back. The single result had shattered his confidence. Perhaps not simply the single result but the conversation he had had with his English teacher for the final year at school. He recalled it well.

“I got a pass in English sir” he had said to the diminutive teacher as he had tried to waft past Alan wearing his long black gown. “Yes I know” had been the short reply. “It’s the reason I am leaving this place. When people like you can get a pass and others who are more clever and deserving don’t get one. I am leaving this sordid little system and this sordid little town.” And he had continued his waft down the corridor. Alan had stood there in the doorway to the a hall, unsure of what to say but feeling angry and diminished by the comment. Well, he thought at least I will never had to see that miserable so and so again. And he walked out of the school doors for the last time in his life.

After the Bolton Evening News he paid a visit to the Army Recruiting office. There he discovered he was too old to join as a Boy Soldier and too young to join as Junior Soldier. Story of his life. Too old or too young.

An advert in the paper caught his eye. Bolton Borough Police were seeking to recruit a Cadet. No idea what that was, but he knew his uncle Fred had been a sergeant in the force prior to his retirement a couple of years ago. Maybe there was something in it. He wrote off to the Central Police Office giving his reasons why he wanted to be a Police Cadet, omitting the main reason, he simply wanted a job.

The selection process was quite involved and long. There were 83 young men sat in the large room which looked a bit like a gymnasium for the first of the examinations. He thought it was a gym as there was a badminton court painted on the floor and still several feet around it on each side. A large room. The exam, so Alan felt, was almost an insult. English, Maths, Geography and General Knowledge. Obviously too much for some of the applicants as sixty three of them had failed it and the remaining twenty went on to do a physical exam. In the end, and a week later Alan received a letter from the station asking him to attend for an interview at the Chief Constables office.

He sat on a solid hard backed wooden chair in a dark corridor seemingly made of dark wood. The three interviewees looked silently and nervously from one to the other. Alan was in the middle of the three of them. Eighty three whittled down to just three. How had he managed it? Still he found it hard to understand or believe. The first went in and after fifteen minutes or so the door to the Chief Constables office was opened and the first applicant came out. There was nothing to understand from the blank look on his face. The lady who had shown him out now held out her hand to indicate it was Alan’s turn. He stood and walked towards her as she held open the door. As he got to the threshold of the room she smiled kindly and nodded him through. He stepped into a large bright office with two windows forming the wall opposite the door he had entered through. Sat at a large wooden table were three men. The man to the right of the desk was a senior officer in uniform, the other two in civilian suits. The man in the middle smiled and said, “Come in, Sit down. Alan Robinson isn’t it?” Alan walked the four paces to the seat in front of the desk and sat down. “Yes sir” he said. The words sticking in his throat. The man in the middle, a stout balding man with a kindly face looked him in the eyes and said, “Alan Robinson. Is your father Stanley?” The question threw him and for a second he had to think. “That’s right sir” he said. The man in the middle smiled. “You won’t remember me but I’m Alderman Booth, chairman of the Watch Committee. I’m your uncle Freds brother.” He smiled again. “How is your father going on these day, it’s a long time since I last saw him.” Alan’s mind raced. Fred was indeed his uncle and had only recently retired from the force as a Sergeant. He was married to my brothers sister, my aunt Phyllis and had two sons, his cousins David and Peter. Alan nodded nervously and replied, “He’s fine sir, thank you.”

The Chairman of the Watch Committee, a man of considerable standing in local politics was a relative! Alan was stunned, he had no idea. It was him who probably had the last say in the appointment of officers in the force. Was his luck changing? Alan spoke clearly through the short interview and at the end was shown out into the corridor, and then home. He told his father was the people at the interview. His father looked quietly at him and said, “Mm. I’d forgotten Alf was there.” and that was it. Nothing moer was said.

During the next week, mid October, in the evening there was a knock at the front door as Alan and his father sat watching the television. Alan answered it. Stood there were two men in civilian clothes. One of them was his cousin Keith, the other a stranger. He had known Keith for some time, from the boy scouts. He was some years older than Alan but was familiar with him. “Alright Alan,” he said. “Can we come in? It’s about your application to be a Police Cadet.” Alan was confused, but knowing the identity of Keith he ushered them into the living room where his father rose from his chair and shook hands with Keith and was introduced to the other man. It turned out Keith and the other men were now detectives and responsible for doing background checks on people who had been successful in applying to join the force.

Alan was left out of most of the conversation between Keith and his father, answering only the briefest of questions. And then they left. Alana looked at his father after they had gone. “Well”, his father said, “Looks like you got the job then. Well done. Proud of you.” He smiled. A rare one.

 

On Monday 4^th November 1963 Alan started work as a Police Cadet in the Bolton Borough Police Force. He left the job in March 1978 having risen to the dizzy heights of Police Constable.

 

1960s End of School

The British Grammar school, or State School, had been closely modelled on the Private school, or Public school system since it’s inception. Aren’t names sometimes confusing? Stick with it, it gets worse. The system of terms in the schools were based on the habits of the parents of those who first started the system of Public Schools. In summer, ie. August, one went to ones country house in Scotland, or if one could not afford a granite pile in the Highlands, one went to a wooden house somewhere in Cornwall, where one could wear a Cornish fisherman’s Guernsey, a heavy knitted high collar jumper which kept out wind, seawater and fish of various kinds, an d pretend you lived by the sea. So the school terms could only start after the Grouse shooting season, which started on the 12^th August and lasted until the 10^th December, had ended. By which time there were considerably fewer Grouse left, and the upper classes had become fed up with shooting the birds.

So school year would start about the second week in September, unless you lived in Scotland, when the kids were forced back to school in early August, thus relieving country living Scots of the necessity of looking after their kilted kids, and could go off with the wealthy English to shoot their native birds. Not that the Scots did the shooting. No, they were the ones who carried the guns, hefted large supplies of food and drink around, and flushed the birds from the hillside, and generally acted like dogsbodies for the shooters from south of the border. Frequently complimenting them on the quality of their shooting in the hope of prising much needed cash from the shooters pockets.

So, the school year ended about the end of July, normally, unless you lived in the north of England – south of the border with the kilted ones. Then you fell into the category of ‘Northern Working Class’, a breed to be avoided like the outbreak of 1665. This ‘class’ worked the cotton and woollen mills of the north. After much strife and tribulation the mill owners condescended to give the workers a week or two holiday, each year. During this time the whole town would close down apart from a very small number who did not work in the mills. The mill workers would flock off to the seaside for their two weeks Wakes Holiday. To ensure that the whole cotton industry did not collapse annually each town would close down for their Wakes Week (two weeks actually) at a different time. For example. The town of Bolton in Lancashire closed for the holidays for the last week in June and the first week in July.

The town of Blackburn, famous for nothing very much apart from Kathleen Ferrier a famous singer who died in 1953, but is still revered in the town as someone who has just slipped out for a pack of tripe from the market, and separated from Bolton by some fifteen miles of moorland, closed it’s mills during the first and second weeks in July. In that way the mill owners ensured that there was always a supply of fabric to be supplied to the worldwide market. This was fine and worked well from the 18 something or other, until 1992 when the good folk of the education system realised that the cotton mills had long gone ( starting just after the Second World War) and the holidays were scrapped and people could take their holiday when they wanted to.

So, Alan and his classmates had two weeks off at the end of June and beginning of July then had to come back for three weeks until the end of the school year on 31^st July. For the whole of his school life Alan had had to tolerate this dead three weeks. A time when it was impossible to do any proper lessons as the syllabus had finished for that year and the new one could not be started until September. A cock eyed system at best. A complete waste of time at worst.

On Thursday 30^th July 1963 Alan sat at his desk by the open window of his classroom. The sun had been shining like a ball of fire in the sky since he had walked in that morning. All the classroom cantilever windows and the hum and buzz of bored and restless teenagers rose and fell like the quiet summer tide breaking on the beach at Blackpool. Alan looked around with the feeling someone had called his name. Nobody had but Browney, sat at the front of the class, was looking round at him. Silently he mouthed, “Are you packed up yet?” Alan shook his head and silently relied, “Not yet. Tonight.” The noise level started to rise. Mr Banks, seated at his table at the front of the class, noisily scraped back his chair and rose to his feet. The class fell silent. He cleared his throat and waved a pencil silently over the heads of the thirty 15 and 16 year olds in front of him. “Let’s keep the noise down to a reasonable level shall we?” he said quietly, then casting his eye over them all once more, resumed his seat and the novel he had been reading.

Alan resumed his watch on the sky outside. IT was blue. It was blue over the other school buildings, it was blue over the woodlands, it was blue over the topmost mill chimney just visible in the distance. The sky was blue. No cloud to be seen anywhere. A clear blue boring sky. Alan sighed in boredom. Mr Banks looked up from his book at him. Maybe the sigh had been a bit too loud. “Just another hour Robinson, “ he said. Alan grinned and thought. “Yes. For me the last day, for everyone else tomorrow is the last day. This time tomorrow I will be on a BOAC jet from Ringway Airport at Manchester and on my way to Greece“. He glanced at his watch and the thought went through his mind that perhaps by this time tomorrow the plane will have landed in Athens. The thought made him smile to himself.

Once he left this place, he thought, I won’t ever sit back in this place, this seat, this classroom, this school. I won’t set back until the results of the O Levels arrive. Then I will have to come back and hear my fate. Passed or failed, it was too late now to worry about them, they had been finished over two weeks ago. Now it was a matter of waiting. That and enjoying the three weeks in Greece at the Scout Jamboree to be held in Marathon, on the coast some 25 miles from Athens. He knew the itinerary by heart.

Arrive at Athens airport from Manchester. Coach to the campsite. Two weeks by the sea at the camp. Boat from Piraeus to Rhodes, stay for three nights, boat back to Athens. Three nights in Athens then flight home to Manchester.

It would take a mighty effort to get the smile removed from his face.

1960s School 3

The school assembly hall was about fifty feet long and about thirty five feet wide. It’s floor was multi-coloured parquet and noisy as hell when three or four hundred pupils were forced in there, as happened every schoolday morning. Now it was silent, and empty, apart from Alan. He stood leaning against one of the three large radiators against the blank left hand wall. They were pumping out hot air, very hot air, into the large void. His shoulders leaned against the top ridge of the radiator and burned through his school jacket. He moved to ease the heat. Opposite him at the far end of the hall was a stage under a proscenium and at the back of the stage stood the foldable dividing sections which formed the blank wall of the music room beyond. Alan glanced at the clock on the wall over the proscenium. Still twenty five minutes before classes started again after the lunch break.

Outside the February wind and rain beat against the floor to ceiling windows of the outer wall, blowing first one way and then the other according to the whim of the wind. It was cold, wet and miserable. In three months or so he would be starting his final examinations of his five years at the school, the General Certificate of Education ‘O’ levels. Along with the other one hundred and eighty pupils of his year he would sit in this hall and struggle to remember the facts and figures teachers had attempted to cram into his brain over the previous five years. How many passes would he gain from the seven subjects to be taken? English Language, Maths, History, Geography, Biology, Physics with Chemistry and Music. Would it be a forlorn battle or would he gain sufficient passes to get a decent job? Staying on to the Sixth Form to study some subjects at Advanced Level was out of the question. He and his father had already had this conversation. “I can’t afford to let you stay on at school son,” he had said quietly without any sense of remorse when the question had been asked. “You’re going to have to get a job.” And that had been the end of that discussion. Later today his father had promised to come to the school to attend with him the meeting with the Youth Employment Advisor. It would be the first visit to the school he would make, and the only one. Five years his son had attended the school every day, and not once had he been interested enough in his education to attend the various invitations to open days, sports days, parent teacher evenings. Not once. Alan was not anticipating anything constructive to come from the meeting this afternoon.

As he stood watching the trees sway in the wind he was aware of the sound of the doors to the hall opening, a sudden increase in the noise level from the classrooms and corridors of the school beyond the hall. He heard the sound of footsteps approaching, but never reacted, pretending that he had heard nothing. The footsteps descending the wooden steps into the floor of the hall were familiar, but still he ignored them. Today was not a good day. He hadn’t spoken to anyone all day, not in the classrooms nor the hall at assembly this morning. He just didn’t feel like talking to anyone today, nor the past four days. During the past three or four years the silences had grown more frequent and longer. No idea why. He just felt unhappy. Never felt the need to talk with anyone, and so he didn’t. In the classes he could get away with silence, nobody ever spoke to him, and teachers would only pester him if they pointedly wanted him to answer a question. The footsteps stopped behind him and after a seconds pause a body appeared in front of him standing two feet away at the end of the radiator.

“You alright Alan?” she asked. It was Christine, a girl one year older and therefore in the year ahead of him. He nodded his head and glanced at her, then back to the window. She was as tall as him and had curly blonde hair, and together they had started to talk and walk around the school at break times and lunchtimes. Sometimes she waited for him on Wednesday whilst he had a Clarinet lesson and then walked partway up the main road from the school afterwards before she peeled off to walk to her home. Today he wanted to say nothing to her and silently wished she would go away. They stayed together for the remainder of the lunch break and then when the school bell rung parted and went to their respective classes.

At 2.30 pm he made his way to the front door of the school to meet his father, who had parked his Triumph motorcycle and sidecar in the staff car park and was walking towards the double doors of the school. Together with minimal speech he led him through the school to the empty classroom designated for the Employment Services interviews. Alan knocked on the door and a man’s voice called out “Enter”. They went in. The owner of the voice was seated at the teachers table at the front of the room with two chairs on the other side of the table. Aged about forty he wore a check sports coat with leather patches on the elbows, giving away immediately his status as a former teacher. He wore a white shirt, probably from a day before and a tightly knotted stripped tie. He stood up and extended his hand. “Mr Robinson?” he said, “Please take a seat. So far he had not made eye contact with Alan. Now he turned his head slightly and looked at Alan. “So, what do you think your chances are with the O Levels?” he asked. Alan had been expecting the question. “I think I might get five” he said. The man looked down at a sheet of paper on the desk in front of him. He paused. “Mmm. Any idea what they will be?” he finally asked. “English, Biology, Geography, History and possibly Maths” Alan said. “Mmm.” The man replied and turned to Alan’s father. “What do you do for a living Mr Robinson?” he inquired. Alan’s father cleared his throat and replied, “I’m a Cabinet Maker.” The man glanced up sharply then down at the desk. “Mmm. A joiner then.” he said. Alan felt his father bristle and sat up a little straighter. Before he could reply the man turned back to Alan. “So, what ideas have you had for a job then?” Alan paused and said, “I don’t know. I was hoping you could suggest something. That’s why we came her.” The man shot him an angry look and he harrumphed. He shuffled the sheet of paper together with others on the table. “Well, have you considered the construction trades. Like being a bricklayer or a joiner like your dad?” Alan sat silent for a second. “No. Not really.” He stood up and glanced down at his father. I think we should be going dad” he said. His father shot an angry look at the man and rose from the chair. “Yes. Let’s be off then.” Without a further word the two of them left the room and walked off through the school. At the door to the outside Alan said, “See you later dad.” He father turned to him. “That was a waste of time wasn’t it? Useless man.” He turned and walked back to his motorcycle parked between the staff cars on the car park. Alan turned back and made his way through the silent corridors to his form room.

Mr Banks, his form teacher and French teacher, glanced his way as Alan entered the classroom. “Alright Robinson?” he queried. “Waste of time sir.” he replied, and squeezed his way through the desks and chairs to take his seat at the desk by the window. The rain continued to fall, bouncing off the part opened window by his desk. He leaned over to close it with more of a bang than was really necessary. Mr Banks stopped what he was saying and looked over to Alan. “That useless eh Robinson?” he asked quietly. “Complete waste of my time and my fathers.” he said and settled back in his chair.

1960s School 3

September 1962. A steaming hot day in the Music Room of the Grammar School. Seven pupils, three boys and four girls sat waiting almost patiently for their teacher Miss Thompson, to arrive in the class. Alan looked out of the large picture window to the right side of the room. The Beech and Sycamore trees he could see at the edge of the wood were still in full bloom, as Autumn was late starting this year, so the trees were as full of leaves as they had been all summer. So green and full that they blocked out the strong sun, but not from the Music Room windows. The room was hotter than ever it would be in winter when the heating blasted from the wall radiators.

Alan was seated furthest away from the windows and closest to the side wall of the room which formed a moveable barrier to the school hall where each morning the whole school assembled to say prayers and sing a hymn, where the headmaster or his deputy would read out the notices to the school, who fidgeted in boredom each morning before being dismissed to their classrooms. Next to him was Browney and then Rogers, the other two boys in the class. Behind them sat the four girls. Carole with the plunging neckline caused by the nicely developing breasts, then Alice the stick insect. Next to her was Brenda the lump, and finally Susan, who every few weeks Alan fell madly in love with. Shoulder length brown hair tied back in a pony tail, slim, and a beautiful oval face with the bluest eyes Alan had ever seen. But she was untouchable, from a very wealthy family and lived in a large detached house on the outskirts of town. She was brought to school by a chauffeur driven car each morning and taken home again each afternoon. She often told the driver to stop some way from the school entrance. She could not alter her parents wealth but always felt embarrassed by the wealth compared to that of her schoolmates. But nobody else was bothered about her fathers wealth and treated her just like the other pupils. Neither better nor worse.

Alan turned to the window to his right as a group of boys started to walk along the path which ran around the outside of the Music Room. Two of them stopped and raised a two fingered salute to the pupils inside, gesticulating rapidly with an up and down motion. Alan, Rogers and Browney turned in their seats to repay the comment, raising their right hands with the V sign made. Just as they did so Alan heard the door at the back of the classroom open, it’s familiar creak giving warning of an impending visitor. The three boys rapidly lowered their hands and turned back to face the front of the classroom. The two boys outside could not see very much of the inside of the room due to the sunlight and were caught in the act by Anne Thompson, the music teacher, as she walked down the length of the room to her position at the front of the class. The moment they realised they had been spotted the two boys quickly bent down below the level of the window and tried to creep away without being seen. The other pupils walking along the path pointedly walked around them, looking down at the two crouching figures and pointed them out to the teacher. Alan and the others in the class grinned and chuckled out loud.

“That’s enough now, settle down” said Miss Thompson, and as one they quietened down and sat facing her at the front of the room. “Alright,” she began. “The Messiah” she announced. “Open your score where we left off.” The seven pupils groaned inwardly and dutifully opened the large manuscript folios on their desks.

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The first time Alan had met Miss Thompson had been the first music lesson of the three year course which had started the previous year. Seven rather timid fourteen year old pupils sat in two rows at the front of the class, facing the teachers desk, and an upright piano which stood in the right hand corner; a singularly bad place to position the instrument in view of the fact that when she was seated to play some music to demonstrate what they were studying, her back was always turned to the pupils. However, it took only one or two attempts at chattering or misbehaviour to realise that Miss Thompson was the very proud possessor of a pair of eyes in the back of her head. A sharp word was enough to bring them to order.

She had started that first lesson by introducing herself. “I am Miss Thompson and I will be taking you for O Level Music for the next three years,” she had said. Her eyes ran over the two rows of pupils. She was a slim woman in her late thirties and not unpleasant to be sat in front of for the twice weekly forty minute lesson. Her voice was kind and could be soft spoken or loud, depending on the subject she was addressing. After the first lesson she never had to admonish any of her students. She broached no nonsense, and made that point quiet clear. The lessons were busy and often lively, which made attendance pleasurable.

“So,” she began. “Let’s find out a bit about you shall we?” She pointed to Browney sat in the middle of the three boys in the front row. “What instrument do you play?” David Brownlow grinned at her and replied, “Violin Miss.” She turned to Danny Rogers and nodded. “Piano Miss,” he said. Turning to Alan she nodded her head at him. “I don’t play an instrument Miss.” he said. She was quiet for a second or two. “Alright, we’ll come back to you later.” Going through the girls and interrogating them she discovered that they played a piano, a violin, a viola and another violin. Her gaze dropped to the student register which lay on her desk in front of her. “Right Robinson,” she began. “You don’t play an instrument?”

“That’s right miss.” Alan replied quietly.

“So what are you doing in my class then?”

“It was either music or woodwork Miss. My dad’s a joiner and I hate woodwork. The headmaster wouldn’t let me do art, even though I’ve been top of the class for the past two years. He said my options were to be either woodwork or music. And I hate woodwork.” Miss Thompson leaned back away from her table and rested her back against the upright chair set in the centre of the desk. For a few seconds she regarded Alan, not with an anger or dismay, just resignation at the rotten trick the headmaster had played on her and the pupil. Why force a pupil to choose between two subjects he did not like? What was wrong with giving the pupil some leeway from the rules he had made up. The headmaster was disliked by many of the teachers as well as most of the pupils. No, correction, all of the pupils. Universally hated by all. What a thing to have inscribed on your headstone at the end of life.

“OK.” she said quietly. “You have to play an instrument if you are doing O level music. What instrument do you want to play?” she asked. Alan thought for a few seconds and then replied, “Saxophone Miss.” he said. A look of exasperation crossed her face for a second then vanished. “It has to be an orchestral instrument Robinson,” she said. Alan thought for a second or two. “I don’t know Miss. The only instrument we have at home is a gramophone player.” A snigger ran around the room. Miss Thompson glanced around the other six pupils. “Quiet,” she said. The room fell silent. She looked down at Alan and smiled gently. “So what sort of music do you play on your gramophone then?” she asked. “Well, my dad likes brass bands and he’s got a bit of military music and some musical shows, like Carousel and The Student Prince. So if we don’t have the radio on it’s sometimes his music, though he’s not all that keen on music.” Miss Thompson nodded her head and asked, “And what sort of music do you like?” He glanced out of the window then turned back to her and said, “I like jazz Miss, and Glen Miller, but mainly modern and trad jazz Miss. I listen to Humphrey Littleton’s jazz club on Wednesday on the Home Service. He plays all sorts of jazz there. Mainly modern but his own sort as well.”

Miss Thompson’s face lit up. “Good. So you don’t dislike music altogether then? How about learning to play the clarinet, it’s got the same fingering as most saxophones and you can play jazz on it as well as classical music.” Alan smiled at her. “Thanks miss, but I haven’t got one.” “Don’t worry. You can borrow one of the schools and I will fix you up with a tutor who will come to the school once a week. He already comes on Wednesday afternoons after school for another pupil, so you can start with him next week.”

And that was how Alan became a keen jazz aficionado, as well as gaining a love of classic music.

1960s School Part 2

In Alan’s opinion, for what it was worth, the grammar school he attended could not have been situated in a more idyllic location. The walk to school each morning took him first through the main road of council estate built next to the one where he lived. The new houses still had fresh paint and newly laid out and well maintained gardens. The occupants happy to have been given the option of living there, as just beyond the estate was farm land and woods. A wonderful location in which to raise children, something which seemed to be the main preoccupation of the majority of the tenants of the homes.

Each morning Alan would walk quickly through the estate, a strip of ten minutes or so, then through a wooden five barred gate into the first of the fields belonging to Jim Breakspear and his wife, Marge. They kept a small herd of milking cows a few pigs in a sty by the path leading through the farm, and several chickens for eggs. Summer and winter alike Marge would twice a day bring in the cows from the fields to milk them. Some of the milk she kept for their own use and to make a little butter, but most of it was sold to a newly created government body, The Milk Marketing Board. During the worst part of winter the cows were brought into the farm from the fields for the last time and kept in the cow shed. Their lowing could be heard as Alan walked along the cobbled path through the farm. He was always a bit wary of these cows. Once during a winters afternoon on his way home from school the cows were being herded in from the fields for their afternoon milking. The stout figure of Marge bring them along close to the head of the small herd. Dressed in her normal floral dress and clutching a short leather coat to her body she clucked and chivvied the beasts along the path towards the farm buildings when one of them suddenly lunged forward and made a beeline for Alan. Swinging his school bag over his shoulder he made a dash to a side path leading from the main path through the farm closely followed by the cow and Marge shouting at the top of her voice. “Get out of her way, she’s a bugger this one”. Alan was already yards ahead of her instructions and safely made it into one of the open doorways of the farm house. The cow kept on running, being chased by the heavy weight behind her wielding a long stick to encourage the beast.

Normally though there was little excitement on his walk through the farm. As he made his way gingerly through the sea of mud which in winter was what the path became, he stood on small islands of dry mud to move to his right to take a look at the pigs. Reaching out from the final hillock of dry mud he reached out to rest his hand on the top of the stone wall of the pig sty. The stone was a sheet six feeet square and was attached to its neighbour by a metal tie. He leaned against the wall and looked over into the floor of the sty. Four pigs, one enormous like a grounded barrage balloon, and three slightly smaller ones, were snuffling noisily in the mud for the kitchen scraps Marge fed them on. The biggest pig, a sow, stopped and raised her head for a moment to look quizzically at Alan. With a bored grunt she stuck her snout back into the food, determined to get what she could before the others took it.

Next along the path was the cow shippon where the cows spent their nights in winter. Then a large rough local stone built barn with a small round window set almost in the eaves of the roof. Jim kept his store of winter hay there, and all the local kids would take it in turns to jump from the top of the pile of bales to the lower one, once his harvesting had been done for the summer. Jim was a cleaver man and knew that he could never be around all the day to shoo off the kids, so he tolerated them. The kids, for their part, played only as long as their energy lasted, which was never very long as the barn was always the last calling point on their afternoon adventure in the fields and woods. After the barn it was tea time.

Leaving the farm along the cobbled roadway the route to the school took Alan through a woodland area planted perhaps a couple of hundred years ago. Deciduous trees clung to the sides of a steep sided stream which started life on the moorlands above the town and wound it’s way down through the hills until it hit the woods. In the middle of the woods was a Mediaeval Hall and chapel set right in the middle of farmland and bordered by the woods. Part of the complex of buildings was an almost derelict stable block with a double door wide enough for carriage and horses and inside was stabling for several horses. It’s black and white timbers were almost hidden during the summer months by the overhanging branches of Oak and Beech trees, whilst in the gardens by the side were Rhododendrons which displayed countless multi coloured blossoms for many months of the year.

Alan strode on through the stables and out again into the last of Jim’s farmland, and finally onto the road which lead to the school. Twice a day he made this trip. Twice a day in summer and autumn he sweated, and in winter twice a day he moved just fast enough so that he could keep warm. To the north side of the school were the edges of the woods. To the east lay the woods as well, through which football team in winter and cricket teams in summer had to walk to play their games on the playing fields which lay to the southern edge of Jim’s farm and to the east of the estate where Alan lived.

1960s School

 

He stepped smartly down the narrow thirteen steps of the staircase which ran from the bedroom landing to the cramped hallway by the front door. His shoes clumped noisily on each step for the short time it took to negotiate the steps. His grey flannel long trousers, his first pair, hung an inch and a half above the stout black shoes on his feet. They were too small, but had little chance yet of being replaced. He had chosen these shoes at the outset of his new school year, two years ago. In a display of petulance he had insisted on the thick soled heavy unsightly black leather shoes, simply because his father had insisted he could not have the thin fashionable Italian pair he had set his eyes on. Now, almost two years later, he was paying for the petulance. The shoes were too small for his growing feet and would have to last almost another year before a new pair was bought.

His father never had money left over to buy new clothes, especially school uniform clothes. These were his first long trousers bought for him since he had started Grammar School, and though he was rapidly outgrowing them it would be something of a miracle as to when they would be replaced. The knees were running thin do to the cheapness of the flannel material. All that his father could afford at the time they were bought. Occasionally, he thought, mum would have bought me new ones by now. No, that was wrong. The thought passed through his mind almost every day, that and the thought of new shoes. The ones he wore had been outgrown at the same time as the trousers, and the shirts he used for school. Despite everything, he was growing, and fast.

He was fourteen now and had had been bought the majority of the school uniform just before he started his first year at Grammar School when he was just a few months before his twelfth birthday and a few weeks following the death of his mother.

His mother. Every day he thought of her. Almost every day he had wondered if she really was dead, after all nobody had every told him that she was dead. He had simply been told that she had collapsed. On his return home from school that hot friday afternoon his sister and her future husband were in the back garden as he opened the gate into the garden. She was being held by her fiance. In the house his sister and her future husband stood before the fireplace. She held out her arm to him, “Oh Alan, “ she gasped, tears filling her eyes,” Mum’s collapsed.” He burst into tears and bawled, unsure what the word collapsed meant. He dropped his school bag to the floor and flung his arms around his older sister. Had she just fainted? Had she just dropped to the floor? Nobody told him she was dead, not until he spoke to the sister when he was 55 and told her of the incident. “Well she is dead,” the sister had said.

For months after that Friday afternoon in June he had wished her to be alive, to be in some hospital somewhere recovering. That he would come in from school and find her sitting in her armchair waiting for him with that smile. As the months drew on he knew she was dead, but still, nobody had said she was dead, nobody mentioned her. Like she had never existed. God how he missed her.

A few days later following her death he was sent to stay with friends of the family. A man and woman he had never met who had a young daughter and two Pekingese dogs which snapped at him each time they say saw him. He had never been so unhappy. The weather was fine and sunny, so he played in the garden most of the day so that he would not have to talk to anyone else. Many times he cried quietly to himself hiding behind the metal sided shed at the bottom of the garden. He had nobody. During the days he stayed with the family his mother was laid to rest. He was never told when or how or told he could go to the funeral or couldn’t. Death was to be kept away from the young at all costs. The implications were long term and went on to form a major part of Alan’s life.

Some weeks after her death the memories of her refused to leave his mind. Two or three times during the night, whilst still in the last throws of summer, Alan lay in his bed talking to his brother in the other single bed in their room. Summer sun still shone through the curtains behind him and against the opposite wall where his younger brother lay. “What was it like?” he asked, “You know. When you were on the bus with mum. What happened?” His brother turned onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. Alan could easily make out his shape in the fading light. “I can’t remember.” he said. “You must be able to remember something” Alan urged him gently, desperate to be able to picture anything about her last moments. “She sort of fell against the side of the seat” was all he could bring to mind. Then he turned over and went back to sleep.

Alan pictured her in his mind, seated on the long three seater seats immediately to the left of the open entrance to the double decker bus. It was early afternoon on a hot Friday in June. She had been shopping in town with her youngest son and had had to rush to catch the bus. Soon after sitting herself and her son on the bus she had had a massive heart attack and almost immediately died. So the post mortem said. Now all Alan had left were the memories and thoughts, and as the months bore on, the memories did not diminish or go away. For years he thought of her and tried to force his memory to remember incidents from his life which involved her. Like being picked up and sat on her left arm as she stood by the front garden gate talking with a neighbour. Again during a hot summer, he must have been no more than three at the time or he would have been too old to have been picked up by her. He remembered after a few minutes wriggling around on her arm as the back of his legs resting on her arm had become numb, so she put him down.

And now, two years on, during the previous summer, his younger brother had died too, and his father was even more bereft, more sullen and depressed, even fewer words passed between them. His had died in hospital from Leukaemia, aged six. A nurse in the hospital who came to know my brother and father once told him that they had never seen so many childhood leukaemia cases as they had now. This was just a couple of years after the fire at the nuclear power plant at Windscale in Cumbria. Hushed up, swept under the carpet, but the number of cancer cases, particularly in children, grew and grew for several years in the counties forming the west coast of England. No government enquiry, no government acceptance that there was a problem. Swept under the carpet. Hidden from sight.

When his father had work to do in his job as a self employed joiner he would be gone from home by the time he rose for school and often did not arrive home until after he had arrive back from school. Today was different. It was winter and work was thin on the ground. In fact it had been some weeks since he had had a job, and so the little money he had, had dried up. What food there had been had grown more and more meagre. Now, this morning in February there was nothing in the house to eat before he left for school, and the fire had burned out during the night. There was no more coal. The house was cold and often during the cold days and nights he would wake to find frost on the inside of his bedroom window. This morning was no exception. As he had pulled by the think curtains they tugged in his hand against the adhesion of frost on the glass. He looked at the worn thin curtain to see where it had been held fast by the ice on the inside of the glass, and gently eased it away from the glass. Dim winter light had cast a thin light over the bedroom as he dressed himself in the half light and made his way downstairs.

His father was sat in the old wooden green cottage style armchair in front of the empty fireplace. The grate was cold and contained nothing but the ashes from the last pieces of coal scraped from the corners of the coal hole which formed part of the kitchen. “Morning Dad”, he said. His father looked up and returned the greeting, then without a further word continued to stare blankly into the fireplace. A mug of instant coffee lay on the carpet by the side of the chair. Without looking away from the bare fireplace he reached down and lifted the mug to his lips and sipped quietly at the half warm liquid. There was nothing to eat for his breakfast, or for his son.

“Do you want a brew Alan?” his father asked, and made to rise from the chair. Alan held out his hand to stop his father from rising. “Okay dad I’ll make it.” he said and went through into the kitchen to put the last of the cheap instant coffee and sugar into a mug, then poured water from the kettle into the mug. With the mug in his hand he walked back into the living room and sat in the other wooden armchair, the one his father had made for his wife but now normally used only by Alan. The room was cold and dark. The electricity had been disconnected by the electricity company because the bill had not been paid, so the water for the coffee had been boiled in a small pan on the fire using the last of the coal in the fireplace. Now that was gone. He sat for a few minutes sipping at the lukewarm brew, trying to finish it as quickly as he could in order to escape to school. Rising from his seat he took the mug into the kitchen and rinsed it under the cold water tap. The warm water from the last of the heat in the boiler had finished. As he placed the mug on the draining board he glanced though the kitchen window and out over the bedraggled garden. The Cherry tree was nude of leaves. The Californian poppies at the bottom of the right hand flower bed were almost dishevelled down to the soil level. Maybe next summer they would flower again. The grass on the lawn had not been cut before the end of summer and was long and now yellowing in the winter cold. Even the shed at the bottom of the garden his father used as a workshop looked to be on its last legs. Maybe it would last a few years more. Maybe not.

Going back into the living room he went through into the small hallway where coats were hung and took his school blazer and fawn mackintosh from their hook by the stairs. Struggling into the now too small jacket he then pulled on the waterproof mackintosh and buttoned it. Picking his school bad from its place by the foot of the stairs he took hold of the door knob of the door into the living room and leaned forward to poke his head around the door. “See you tonight dad,” he said. His father grunted a reply and sipped from his mug of coffee, by now cold. Alan pulled the door closed and opened the front door. The cold from outside hit him full on in the face. Despite the cold in his bedroom and the house in general, it was still far colder outside. Cold and damp and a sky filled with grey clouds threatening snow. He pulled the mackintosh closer around him and giving a shiver, started out to school, feeling as miserable and unhappy today as most other days for the past two and a half years.