I never knew either of my grandfathers, my mother’s father died suddenly in bed of heart failure when she was only seven years old, he was in his early fifties. My father’s father died of cancer in his mid-sixties.

My grandmothers differed very much from each other, my mother’s mother, Emma Johnson, was very religious and my earliest memories of her seem to be mixed up with going to church and going to see her in the rectory at Papworth St. Agnes where she was housekeeper for the Rev. Stewart, a tall awe inspiring bespectacled figure who condescended to speak a few words to me when I was small and he towered above me. My father’s mother, Hannah Clarke, gave me my first glass of homemade wine from a barrel kept in her pantry, she also provided my first cigarette - Dr. Blossoms, I remember it was herbal and a very pleasant smoke. She kept a second-hand/nearly-new clothes shop in her front room; she also used to take in lodgers. When horse racing was on at Brampton racecourse, the horses were mainly stabled in the George Hotel stables nearby and she usually put a jockey up for a couple of nights and I used to be interested in the tales they told. We children used to like watching the race horses being led or ridden from the stables to the racecourse; the races were something apart and we never thought of going to see them except to look through the hedge.

I was born in Huntingdon on 24th December 1916, in St. John’s Street, which was then a quiet peaceful area and I just remember going to the Church School in Walden Road. The buildings and playground are still there, and look about the same from outside. I don’t think I liked it very much and one thing I remember well was being pushed over by a bigger boy and my glasses, which I wore from the age of six, smashed into my forehead and a teacher bathed the glass out - that was probably the beginning of my enduring hatred and probably a little fear of bullies. I also remember they were clearing a site for building next to the school yard and unearthed stone coffins and some human bones. That area is now Walden Grove.

I also remember living in Ermine street in a quite nice house with a garden and apple trees and I think there were some chickens, I was very young because I remember Mrs. Hibbins, our next door neighbour, hanging wrapped bars of chocolate or bags of sweets over the fence for me on many occasions. A window on the stairway landing looked out onto the back garden and I thought that was where Jack’s beanstalk was and a giant was somewhere there, and I kept thinking the beanstalk was there for me to climb.

I was told that when I was two years old I got a taste for adventure and disappeared. A search of the area eventually found me on the Spring Common for which I must have crossed Ermine Street. I think I must have been seven or eight when Mr. Scambler, a great friend of Grandma Johnson and a farmer originally from Yorkshire, came and took us in a pony and trap to his farm at Conington (Cambs.) about seven miles. I still remember that drive, the quiet clippety clop and curious light airiness and sort of lift and fall - a bit like a boat - as the pony trotted along on the almost deserted road. The farmhouse was quite large and at one far end was a lavatory with three holes in the long wooden seat - there were I think thirteen in the family all much older than I was. Mrs. Scambler was a dumpy round hearty little woman. We all sat down to tea at a long table - I can’t remember the food but it must have been good. There was a big weeping willow on the front lawn so large it was like a big tent. There were other visits on which I remember picking plums in the orchard and being warned about the wasps. At the time of writing Walter Scambler is still alive and lives at Dry Drayton and I think he has a sister in Yorkshire. (He has since died - in 1994 think).

I must have been six or seven when we moved from Ermine Street to 64, Great Northern Street, one of a pair of cottages with the name engraved in large stone plate “Cromwell Cottages”, which my maternal grandmother had bought and she lived in the other cottage, No. 65. I recall a large white sweet smelling jasmine bush near her back door; the cottages were identical with a ‘living’ room and  ‘front’ room and a long walk-in pantry and a lobby inside the front door. The washhouse had a cold tap over a stone sink and a large copper with a fireplace under to heat the water; a wooden copper stick was used to stir the clothes as they boiled. The coal place and flush lavatory were opposite each other in the far corner of the yard. A candle was used for illumination at night and if it was too windy so the candle blew out we just had to manage.

When my maternal grandmother went to housekeep for the Rev. Stewart at Papworth St. Agnes after a break at home she let her house to a young couple that worked at the nearby Edison Bell Record Company. They knew all about wireless sets - tuned with a crystal and I think our first one had a drum with a bar and earphones, which, if you were lucky, enabled you to hear something. I recall better the set that worked by an accumulator which had to be taken to be charged about once a week so that we could hear Henry Hall’s band etc. Our light was a mantle Paraffin lamp which was pumped and made its own gas like a Tilley lamp. We had to be careful not to knock it or jar it; the light was quite good though.

About a fortnight before my tenth birthday the family had gone to tea with Grandma Clarke in St. John’s Street and as I was putting on my coat to go home my arm caught the handle of a boiling saucepan (the Christmas pudding I think) and pulled it over my right leg and I was badly scolded (I still have the scar). Of course it was agonising and they took me to the doctor’s where he dressed it. I had a pretty bad time and I recall seeing pink elephants and other funny things on the bedroom wall, I developed scarlet fever and was taken by ambulance to the Isolation Hospital. Mr. Cobb carried me to the ambulance. The Isolation Hospital is now Health Authority offices, it is, and was, next to the town cemetery in Primrose Lane and the ward windows looked onto the graves and we could see funerals taking place and used to wonder if it was anyone we knew. Harold Peacock was in the next bed which was nicer than someone I didn’t know but I had a bad time because my leg had to be dressed every four hours - that was always painful but it didn’t stop me from throwing my soap wrapped in my flannel at the mice at night when they came out to play. I also read everything I could get; Billy Bunter was one I remember well.

When I got back to school of course I was a bit behind and had to catch up which didn’t seem to be a lot of trouble.

My grandma Emma (Johnson) bought me a second hand bicycle when I was twelve so I could visit her at Papworth St. Agnes and I used to enjoy riding there and helped pump the water from the well to the tank in the roof and a few other little jobs. She was friendly with several people in the village, including Mrs. Walker, wife of Squire Spurling’s farm manager.

About this time I used to go and stay with my mother’s cousin Hilda on her Poultry farm at Horley, Surrey. The farm was situated on the Balcombe Road, the old Brighton Road; she did quite a good trade in table birds, chicken and ducks! Fresh and oven ready. There were two good fields split into runs with wooden houses, food was all mixed from the straight product - maize meal, fish meal etc. mixed in a big tub with water and the corn feed also mixed to a formula. Feeding was quite a big job for which a little truck or wheelbarrow was used, and the eggs were collected twice a day morning and evening. All birds had to be shut up at night or foxes would get them which they did sometimes and I have seen the devastation a fox can cause if shutting up is not properly done. Guinea fowl used to perch in the trees high up. On the way to and from the farm one of Hilda’s sisters, either Gertie or Mildred, used to meet me in London and treated me very well - Lyons Corner House near Charing Cross Station for tea and to the Zoo, Madame Tussauds, The Tower etc. and once to see Amy Johnson feted at her Hotel after flying from Australia; this must have been in 1929 or 1930. Other, for me, exciting experiences was tea in the rooftop restaurant at Selfridges etc. I was also taken to Brighton and Littlehampton while at Horley and we cycled to the Cattle and Poultry Market at East Grinstead.

About this time a local Grocer, Edmond Dear, came and asked me if I would work for him between school hours, about ½ hour at midday and about an hour evenings and Saturdays. The pay five shillings a week (25p. in today’s money) which in those days wasn’t bad and I very much wanted to be independent - I think my father was out of work just then and we always seemed to be very hard up. So I agreed. Mr. Dear was, on the surface, very nice, he carried the Cross-as head chorister at St. Mary’s Church and belonged to the Literary Club, Bowls Club etc. and was a respected citizen. However, like most people, he had qualities which were not so obvious and less public. I hadn’t been there many days before he tested me by leaving a half-crown under the waste paper box which I had to empty - of course I didn’t recognise it as a test I just instinctively gave it to him thinking it had rolled there or been accidentally dropped. He never had a trade bike and I used my own to take really heavy baskets full of groceries out and one day my handle bars couldn’t take it any more and the half I used to put the heaviest loads on broke off - I told him I couldn’t use my bike one day as I had to have new handlebars fitted - he never even offered me anything towards the cost. On Saturday mornings I had to sit in a little wood-shed and chop boxes up for a week’s kindling (firewood).

When I left school in 1931 I was fourteen and he said he’d like me to work full time and ‘learn the trade’ but he could only pay me 7/6 (seven shillings and sixpence). This was a time of very high unemployment and I really didn’t have a lot of choice. I went for a job at our local newspapers but didn’t stand a chance really, a boy I was friendly with who went to the Grammar School got it. I applied at Chivers when they opened their new factory, they said they would let me know but they never did; I had an excellent reference from my old headmaster (Tom Pack) but it didn’t seem to make much difference. (In due course my father and both my brothers worked for Chivers but I never did and I am probably better for it). Mr. Dear had a new bungalow built on Hartford Road which was then nearly all open fields and the smart place to build. I had to pick stones off his new lawn while he looked after the shop. I opened the shop at 7,45 a.m., and did cigarette and tobacco trade. The tramps all came by from the workhouse about 8.30 or 9 a.m. and one or two usually asked for an onion or something.

Mr. Dear sold the business to Mr. Harry Connington in about 1934 or 1935 and they asked me to carry on working. Mr. Connington did a lot more business and I got on OK with him and he did give me a rise, I think it must have been £1 then, and I used to go to his house in Godmanchester and play tennis with Mrs. Connington and his sons David and Donald and Hugh’s girlfriend - we had some good games. When I was eighteen or nineteen I asked Mr Connington for a rise - he was cross and said he would give me 2/6 more but not to ask him for another one so I decided to apply for a job away from these mean people who I thought were taking advantage of me. There must be better jobs and I knew there were plenty of nice places. I felt adventurous and ready to try anything. So I took the ‘Grocer’s Gazette’ trade weekly and eventually got an interview in London; I met Captain Palmer at King’s Cross and he took me to a restaurant for a nice lunch and then we walked together in the city - talking all the time - of course he was weighing me up and before we parted he asked me when I could start and we agreed on £2.2s.6d. per week to increase to £2.5s. After a month or six weeks.

2: To Work Away From Home.....