This rather fanciful picture of me was taken when I was about 19.
of this 1948 BSA B31. A 350cc machine with a top speed of 80 mph.
It was a long stroking single cylinder machine with a wonderful sound
The front forks had a telescopic suspension but there was non on the rear
This led to a skippy ride sometimes!
I paid Alan Young £30 for it
Early Years School Days Dockyard DaysEarly Years
I was born in 1942, a so called baby boomer. Edna, my mother, was a Portsmouth girl, where she was born and lived all her life. When she was pregnant with me, she already had a young son, my brother John who was about 1 year old. Portsmouth was a very inhospitable place, the Luftwaffe were dropping bombs all over the city in an attempt to get the naval Dockyard. Stamshaw, where we came from was a stones throw away from Whale Island a Royal Naval base. It seemed the prudent thing to do to move away from there!. Mum moved to the country, a place in Wiltshire near Warminster called Tascroft Farm
That's how I came to be born a Moonraker. Mum gave birth to me in a beautiful old country house in Bradford-on-Avon called Berryfield House. It was being used as a maternity hospital during wwII. It has been many things since, the last time I saw it, it was a hotel.
Tascroft was a wonderful place to be a small child. It seemed to me there were no shortages, being a farm, there was plenty of eggs, milk and butter, even petrol. We were staying with George and Gertrude Young, who ran the farm with Georges' older brother Harry. George and Gert had four children of their own Barbara, Doug, Alan and Viv. Barbara was of an age to be interested in boys and nearby was the USA Army base full of GI's over to help us win the war. Barbara would take me out in the pram as a way of getting to know the soldiers. I was quite spoilt, George thought the sun shone from my rear end and so did Gert. I'm quite sure that Viv the youngest couldn't stand me. Certainly years later she would tease me mercilessly until I cried.
My memories of Tascroft are shadowy and vague, after all I was only a baby. However I do recall being unconditionally loved and the smell of the hay, the straw and the animals. In the winter evenings there was no light except for candles and the oil lamps with their glass chimneys. I remember distinctly the brightness that arrived with George as he came in from the milking shed carrying the Tilley Lamp. He would always place his freezing cold hands on my cheek which elicited a shriek from me and howls of laughter from him. When I was about 2 years old, the war had just ended. George was using the tractor to pull up the wire fencing poles that were placed around the field perimeter. I was sitting alongside him on the tractor which had a double seat. He and I were inseparable, I was always on the tractor whenever he was driving it. This particular day, he had already managed to pull out a good many of the angle iron poles when he came upon a particularly well entrenched one. It resisted the tractors pull. The tractor was fastened to the fence pole using a wire hawser. The angle made between the fence pole and the tractor when the hawser was under tension caused the tractors rear wheels to leave the ground. Immediately the tractor flipped over. George, heroically, launched me off the seat and through the air to safety, this selfless act gave him no time to save himself and he was crushed beneath the tractor's steering wheel. I staggered across the ploughed field to the farm house to get help and I remember looking from the window as the ambulance came to take him away to hospital in Salisbury where he took many weeks to recover.
With the ending of the war the mundane realities of post war Britain with rationing and shortages of cash became the norm. Harry my Dad was demobbed and we all went back to Portsmouth to live with Arthur and Jesse in a claustophobic existence in the small terraced hose where Dad had been born, 54 Ranelagh Road. This must have been a hard time for my Mum, losing the freedom and space of the farm. It was a hard time for us all I think, inlaws included. It was here that we had most of our childhood diseases, measels, chickenpox, scarlet feaver etc. I was not the favourite anymore, John, the first born was Nan's best little boy. Nan considered me spoilt and did not give me the time of day. In 1947 when I was aged 5 we moved to a brand new council house on an estate still being built at Paulsgrove. It was here at Paulsgrove where I grew up to be the person I am today. I believe that most of my attitudes still derive from that time.
Paulsgrove was very different from Stamshaw, The front door of 54 Ranelagh Road opened directly onto the street. There were no trees to be seen. The houses were in one long continuous terrace with no gaps or spaces between. To get anywhere else required the same route to be taken with very little opportunity for variation. Twyford Avenue the road at the top of Ranelagh Road was one of two very busy arterial routes into the city.
Paulsgrove, on the other hand, was spacious and open, the houses were made in terraces of two or four with lots of open space between. There was a long path from the front door to the road, we had front and rear gardens and the houses were painted in bright colours. Virtually no one owned a car so the streets were safe to play in. Some of the houses were still being built so there were lots of piles of sand to play in, emtpy houses to explore and scaffolding to climb. There were no fences between the houses so it was easy to get to know neighbours, everyone was in the same boat, young, newly arrived on a new estate with children. In many ways it seemed like utopia.
School Days
My first school was Hilsea Infants, my three memories of this school are: One year I was a soldier in the May festival, I was required to wear a cardboard constructed, cylindrical hat with a peak. The hat was huge and my head was unusually small. Mum had to stuff the hat with newspaper to stop it falling in my eyes even still it dwarfed my head and sat lopsided. I was acutely embarrassed and was glad to take it off. My second memory of this school was being hopelessly in love with a small girl whose name I never knew but who was fascinating and vivacious. The occasion I remember happened on our way home from school, quite a number of us had left the playground, crossed Alloway Avenue and were going up Bredbury Road. We were all laughing and mucking about, something I said to her made her kick me on the bottom. What she didn't know, and I had forgotten, was that the previous evening I had had a bath in front of the fire and was getting dry before putting on pyjamas for bed. I was probably fooling around as usual and my Dad in play touched my bottom with the steel fire poker. He didn't realise that it was still hot from poking the fire. I got a small circular burn. Of course I cried and wouldn't be consoled when he apologised. I remember looking in to my teacup at the tea leaves left behind (this story pre-dates the widespread use of tea bags) and saying to him, 'I wish you were dead' Not a very nice thing to say. Of course I had forgiven him and forgotten it by morning.
Anyway, when the girl kicked my bottom, it all came back to me as the coarse flannel of my cheap trousers roughed up the blister and scrubbed at the raw flesh beneath. I went off her immediately and she never knew why.
It's funny writing this account, every time I come to it several days or even weeks have passed by. I forget what I had in my mind to say. I suppose I should make some notes to ensure continuity of thought and structure. Anyway that said, my third memory of school is of Stingo. Stingo would not be allowed now, the perpetrator would be put away for sadism and possible child abuse and maybe even accused of being a paedophile. It all seemed innocent enough in 1948/49. Stingo was a punishment meted out to misbehaving children. It involved going out to the front of the class and bending over the teachers's knee. Whereupon he would lift up your trouser leg or skirt if you were a girl and give you an open handed slap on the bare thigh. It really stung, hence the name Stingo. Being threatened with it was oft enough to calm down and control even the most exiteable of kids. Unfortunately due to my talkative nature I was a frequent recipient.
Initially the school was housed in black painted wooden huts. I assume these were ex military. In winter they were extremely cold with only one coal burning stove at the front to heat them. There was no double glazing and the teacher, of course, stood in front of the stove with a nice warm bum while we all froze. It was here that we learned to write with proper pen and ink. The ink, which was black, had to be made up with pigment and water and dispensed into small ceramic inkwells housed in each desk. The pens were poor affairs, scratchy and sharp, always catching on the crude rough paper that was all that was available. When the pen caught on the paper it scatttered a myriad of small blots all over the page. Being water based, the ink took ages to dry and so smudged readily. The pens were always running out of ink and had to be replenished by dipping into the inkwell. The result of this was to produce a page of writing with a constantly varying density, covered in spots and smudges. In short, a mess. It was everyones' ambition to get a fountain pen as soon as possible. Biro's, a new invention, containing non smudging ink administered to the page smoothly via a small roller ball were banned. Apparently they would cause us to have bad habits and we would never learn to write properly. We were encouraged to use the ink pen to create thin upstrokes and thicker downstrokes in a calligraphic manner. This all made writing very tedious and to this day I don't like doing it. Christmas brought the much desired fountain pen. A Platignum. Although a bottom of the range pen, it had a nice smooth nib and a refillable reservoir. This together with my other Christmas present of a jar of Royal Blue Quink ink resulted in a marked improvement in the appearence of my written work.
Later on, new school buildings were built on an adjacent site and we moved into these for "juniors". The school had a lot of playing fields and sports days featured high on the calendar of activities. In my final year at junior school I was put up for a trial for Portsmouth boys at cricket. This was on the basis of one inspired flog I made. Needless to say I failed to impress the selectors, being bowled for three consecutive ducks by a boy who I later played alongside at the Technical School. He really could play cricket and his bowling was outstandingly fast and accurate. He won most of our matches for us by bowling out the opposition. Our batting side was never up to much but his bowling gave us achievable targets.
John had taken his 11+ two years before and passed to the Portsmouth Northern Grammar School. He had been rewarded with a bike for Christmas. So with the promise of the same for me, I took my 11+ in high hopes of following in his footsteps and gaining a much prized bike of my own. I never understood the selection criteria or what pass mark I would need to achieve, but deemed myself to have failed to make the grade by "passing" to the Portsmouth Technical School. My parents accepted it as a pass, at least I hadn't failed to the Building School or even the Secondary Modern. So that Christmas a shiny new Elswick bicycle was gleaming in the bedroom on Christmas night. John's school was far enough away from Paulsgrove to qualify for a free bus pass. On the other hand the Technical School being at just three miles away did not qualify. My Elswick bicycle repaid my Mum and Dad's outlay in the first year!
In my first year I was placed in form 1b. I did well in this form and this was the happiest time I ever had before or since at school. I was awarded a prize for form proficiency and was always well up with my peer group. The following year I was promoted to form 2a and things went downhill from there. Always struggling to keep up, I preferred the role of clown to work and as a consequence I most likely underachieved. I was caned in the second year by the head of lower school, Mr Blood, six strokes, three on each hand. My crime? I had clattered my ruler down the side of his wanylap boarded classroom. I'd barely got halfway along when his head popped out from a window and intercepted me. His cane was a long affair and got up to quite a speed before being interupted in its progress by my outstretched palm. It was very painful at the time and hurt a lot. Quite awhile afterwards though, the feeling changed to something pleasant and warm. Not pleasant enough to want to be caned again for but a surprisingly nice silver lining.
In this first year I teamed up with two boys one who became my best friend. Ted Moss was his name. The other was called Vic Collins. There was a lot of bullying going on. The third years found the first years fair game and pushed their weight about. Ted, Vic and myself made a pact to act as a trio against anyone who tried to bully any one of us. This was all right in theory but the first time it was put into practice I found myself alone, being beaten up, while they watched. To add insult to injury, I also got the cane again for fighting.
My next caning was in front of the whole school. Every year we would be bused out to the top of Portsdown hill to run the annual cross country race. I was good at this and in the previous two years had come in the top ten of the year. However, I decided to take on a cause. There were some overweight boys who found running the distances involved very distressing. I believed that taking part in the run should be voluntary not compulsory. I don't think I would have articulated my beliefs very well at the time and although born from sympathy for the fat lads, I asked to be excused the run for myself, explaining that nothing should be compulsory. The request was denied so I said "OK, I'll walk the course". The day dawned, it was a good dry day but there had been plenty of rain the day before, enough to make the ploughed fields muddy so the mud adhered to the plimsoles in great clods. When 120 boys had assembled at the start line and the starting pistol went off. All but one boy set off running. That boy being me, resplendent in my blue cap. A died cap that had belonged to my grandad Jim Hunter. It was the same type of cap and died the same colour as Gene Vincents'. It took a lot of determination and stubborness on my part not to break into a run as the last of he slow running stragglers disappeared in front of me. Teachers shouted angrilly at me to run but I steadfastly refused making my case against compulsory extreme activities. Eventually I arrived at the finishing line. The four buses had departed with the other boys back to school. One lone teacher waited for me with his car. The journey back to school was taken in silence. I knew I'd be for it. The next day at assembly after the songs and the prayers, the head called out my name and asked me to come onto the stage. He read me the riot act and I got another six of the best and nothing was spared. My steet cred. was at an all time high but I'd achieved nothing except disgrace. I'd even lost my blue cap, snatched off my head while walking the course by an irate teacher with an invective of "bloody fool"
What I learned from this exerience is that I possessed a strong sense of right and wrong, I identified with underdogs and would challenge authority if I believed it wrong. I also found I had a certain amount of courage even though I am basically a coward at heart, preferring to avoid confrontation rather than meet it head on. I failed to learn that one should pick one's battles wisely
I completed the annual cross country event for a further two years each time bettering my placement. I represented the school against other schools. I proved I just wasn't being lazy
My other memories of school are indistinct and muddled. I recall some of the teachers, there was Beery Bellis, so called because he was reputed to always be drunk. The boys said he was a genius, I just thought he was a bad teacher who knew his subject (Olevel physics) inside out. After all it can't take much to outshine a class of 15 year olds. Then there was Mr Humby who taught Geography. He had the most awful bad breath. Sitting at your desk you would pray that he wouldn't stop by, to look at and comment on your work. Mr (Gus) Gates the deputy head, my favourite teacher, taught maths. Despite his skills as a teacher and his great attributes as a human being, in an otherwise souless school, my maths skills never developed to much. My favourite subject was history. The teacher whose name I sadly forget had a novel way of marking which meant that you could get greater than 100% in exams if you knew enough facts. My least favourite teacher was Mr (Silas) Sinnet. Despite his diminuitive stature, his cutting sarcasm and ability to make you feel small and humiliated, resulted in an initial enthuiasm for French being extinguished so that I came to dread the lesson and hate him with a passion I've rarely felt for anyone else. The Head Master was Mr Ivor Dunn (Called I've Been, for obvious reasons) He had a thing about sideburns. We were not allowed to grow them long. Lots of us did as we tried to emulate our rock heroes, in particular Elvis. Ivor stationed some toadies in the entrance hall to assembly with instructions to single out boys with "unaccepatable" sideburns. About a dozen of us were taken to one side. Here I had another brush with authority. I refused point blank to shave mine off, in my opinion, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the school. Fortunately my Dad sided with me and this time the "rule" was quietly dropped.
My last day at school came at last and I was surprised to be called to Mr Gates office. He was very friendly and for the first time at school I felt I was being treated as an adult. He gave me a cardboard tube, "I think this belongs to you" he said with a smile. Inside the tube was my blue cap. Separated from it for two years since it had been confiscated on the cross country run, I had completely forgotten about it. I sang Be Bop a Lula all the way home
I have never been back to the school, I missed the silver jubilee reunion arranged by "Spud" Pitassi a boy in my class and have heard nothin since
Dockyard Days
I think it is clear from my description of school days that I was never going to amount to much. I left school with four GCE's, Metalwork, Woodwork, Art and Technical Drawing. Four subjects which in relative terms, I excelled at. Long before my results were known, it would have been obvious from the results of my mock exams that I was not going to do very well. John was already away at university and the parental purse strings were stretched. It must have been a bit of a blessing that I wouldn't be going off to Uni. but would be getting work and contributing to the household budget. But what work? In my section on Edna I make it clear that what I did was down to her. She put me in for the Portsmouth Dockyard exams for engineering apprenticeships. I passed the exam tenth out of over 800 entrants and then the day came when we were to present at the Dockyard Training School to be allocated our trades. As I recall it there were about 80 entrants that year. These were divided up 8 Electricians, 1 Electrical Artificer, about 20 Fitters and Turners and the remainder Shipwrights. The trades were listed on a blackboard and we were each asked, in the order that we had passed the entrance exam, to chose our trade from the list. It soon became apparent that being an electrician was what everyone aspired to. One after the other "electrician" was called out from the floor. My counting skills were sufficient to realise that unless someone chose something other than electrician then I was going to be the first person to call out "fitter and turner" and so it came to be. Even the Electrical Artificers' job was taken up and nobody even knew what that was.! So I started training as a Dockyard Fitter and Turner
My Dockyard years were good, although I never shook off the fealing of under achieving that I gained at school. I tried very hard to be good at my job, I was a lot cleverer than most of the people around me, so I felt comfortable. I was able to demonstrate in many little ways that I was competant, reliable and trustworthy. I made a lot of friends, helped a lot of people and gained much respect.
In retrospect, the work was incredibly varied and interesting. The challenge for me here is to try to represent this complexity to you the reader in a way that is not just a boring list. Well starting with the first year.We were in a place called Blockhouse Quay. (I am sure that this is where the ferry Portsmouth to Bilboa sails from today) Now it is a huge car park, then it was a series of buildings housing a Dockyard College and various prefabs where we learned how to cut and shape different metals using hand tools and where we also learned how to turn metal on a metalworkers lathe. We attended the college for one day each week and one evening, where we were taught the S1 level of the Ordinary National Certificate (ONC) I did OK in this, here maths made sense, we were applying it to everyday situations and this context gave it value. I passed this exam with credits at the end of the year.
The second year saw us moving on to the main Dockyard Factory. This was an enormous building with some of the biggest machine tools I have ever seen. Imagine a lathe big enough to turn an aircraft carriers propellor. Horizontal borers 30ft high with rotating tables 20ft across suitable for boring out the propellors themselves. Huge shaping machines and Pillar drills and overhead cranes that could carry 40 ton weights. The factory was arranged into a number of parallel bays each with manned multiple overhead cranes. There were different zones for different kin ds of work. My first work was in the valve section building valves from componants. I worked for a fitter named Gloster Yeo who was a ginger haired young man. He regailed us with tales of when he had trained on turbine blades at AEI in Trafford Park at Manchester, where the smog was so thick that to find his way home he had to run his toe along the edge of the pavement and climb the bus stop posts that he came to in order to read the bus route to check that he was going the right way.
On our start we were given a wooden toolbox. This box was to stay with us for the five years and become our property at the end of our time. Our starting time was 7:00 am, always a challenge for me to meet. We were on a clocking in and out system and even a minute late resulted in a quarter of an hours docking of pay. The early start usually meant no breakfast so I'd take baked beans in a tin. All over the factory there were ovens for various purposes. Heating a tin of beans was no problem. I'd punture a couple of holes in the tin place it in an oven and later take it out and eat the beans from the tin. One day I sat on my box leaning over my tin as usual and inserted my tin opener into one of the holes. I hadn't realised that the beans had boiled over and blocked the holes with the result of pressurising the can. I received a faceful of scalding hot bean juice. Blinded and in pain I was helped to the ambulance centre where I was cleaned up and my face was sprayed with a film of plastic, this dried hard and made facial expression difficult . Clear at first this turned a nasty yellow over the next few days and I was mighty relieved when the day came a week later to remove it. I seemed to be none the worse for my experience and retained my handsome looks :)
It as around this time that I met Elaine whom I was eventually to marry some years later. I made her a large brass CND sign which she wanted for some reason, we still have this today. I also made a foldng pocket knife which I regret to say I left in a Leeds wash and brush up along with a nice knitted jumper my Gran had made for me. This was on a visit to said girlfriend at her home in Morley.
After a year I moved on to "The Fridge Shop" where the chargehand was Gordon Libby. By now we were considered competant enough to work on our own with only a watching brief from a fitter. I had the good fortune of my fitter being off on long term sick, this enabled me to tackle proper work rather than have to do with the fitters leavings. During this time I completely refurbished an auxilliary steam turbine on a frigate along with a steam operated bilge water pump. At first Gordon was horrified because he had told me not to touch anything for fear I'd ruin it. After a while he saw that I was responsible and doing things well so he let me carry on
By now it was the winter of 1962/63 The coldest since 1947. Around me in the Dockyard the sea was frozen. Sea water pumped up to wash decks by the sailors would freeze as it fell. Initially I was in good shape. My job involved working on the gun turret of a manned frigate. With sailors aboard and steam in the boiler, this was a nice snug hidy hole. In the morning at 7:00 am the matelos would still be in their bunks. The walls would be streaming with condensation and the floor would be an inch deep in water. The place smelled awful. By 10:00 am everything would be ship shape and dry and they would share their rum ration with me. They were not supposed to accumulate it but some of them did for birthday parties and such like.
All good things must end and I was moved on to the Aircraft Carrier Victorious, in for a major refit, she was in dry dock with no services at all. With many deck parts removed and wooden ladders replacing proper steps and festoons of low voltage lighting cables everywhere she was a dangerous place to be at the best of times. In the extreme cold cicumstances where a spanner would burn your hand if you held it for too long and there was absolutely no where to get away from the mind and body numbing cold we spent as much time in the dockside NAFFI as we could. I was supposed to be working on the hydraulic lift that took planes from the hanger up to the flight deck. I can't remember much about this but we must hve made some progress as we moved on to working on to the steam catapult used to assist in the launching the planes. This would later prove to be a fun thing to be involved in
It was while on the Victorious that an opportunity to work nights came up. A ship out on sea trials had developed a problem in the boiler room with a steam joint in some major pipework. (shoddy work by one of my dockyard maties I expect) Anyway the job was to remove the lagging on the night shift to allow the day fitters to make the repair. This was hot and dusty work, we were not protected from the dust at all, no masks or breathing equipment Insert Mech E stuff as appendix
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