Tripod

Live another life Live Another Life Autobiography of a Smiling Depressive Douglas Stuart Laird, the author of Live another life: (Autobiography of a smiling depressive} was born in Liverpool during the depression. The son of a corporation labourer who had spent most of his early life in the ninety-third Argyle and Sutherland regiment in India and treated his children worse than the dhobi wallahs he employed over there. He was a very hard man and his family lived in poverty while he shouted one and all drinks in the local boozer. The author, whose fragile mother was doing her utmost to feed the family eventually succumbed to malnutrition (then a new word for starvation) at the age of forty-three leaving the four children to fend for themselves. The author not only suffered a miserable and unhappy childhood but also had to contend with frequent bouts of black depression, eventually being diagnosed as a smiling depressive, always laughing and joking on the outside but crying on the inside. As he matured the only nurturing he could get from these terrible bouts of depression was to dream of sexual fantasies. How did he survive? Suffering from malnutrition and contemplating suicide at the age of thirteen he reckons the start of the war saved his life as he was evacuated away from Liverpool to North Wales How is your imagination? Imagine a dimly lit street in the centre of the large city of Liverpool in England. The gas lamplighter was just at the end of his round. With his long hooked pole he was reaching up to pull down the ringed chain to light the last gas light on the corner of Molyneux Road. It was a freezing cold night and being the middle of winter, as usual the fog was as thick as pea soup. You could just about hear the ships eerie foghorns intermittently blowing on the River Mersey. The lamplighter tucked his pole under his arm, dug his hands deeply into his overcoat pockets for warmth and headed off home into the swirling fog. The gaslights of only a few of the terraced houses in Molyneux Road could be seen dimly through the fanlights above the front doors as most of the occupants were out celebrating in one of Bent's alehouses over on the corner. Yes, it was New Year's eve. It was well past ten o'clock and at number six Mrs. Laird was struggling to give birth to a baby boy as the revelers across the road were being reluctantly turfed out the boozer singing their bleedin' heads off. Yes, at number six that was yours truly being born in Liverpool on the 31st day of December 1925. Poor Mam! Fancy having to give birth at ten thirty on New Year's eve when everyone else was living it up. I don't remember a great deal about my mother as she died when I was about six, but I seem to remember her as being a slightly built delicate lady and my father always trying to persuade her to go upstairs. Six Molyneux Road was our address and I suppose you could call it a working class neighbourhood. My father was working class all right, being a labourer with the Liverpool Corporation. A hard man, never missed a day’s work in thirty five years, promoted eventually to be a ganger maintaining Liverpool's tram lines all over the city. I didn't know much about his early life. As far as I could gather he'd spent fifteen years in the Ninety-Third Highlanders, most of which was spent in India. When he came back to England he got married and settled in Liverpool but unfortunately he was twenty years older than my mother and very set in his ways. My sister Marion was the first born then came my brother Fred. I was next and then my younger brother Eric. My father wanted to give us real Scottish names like Hamish, and Dougal, but my mother managed to change them at the christening. Although my old man's work was regular he never seemed to have any money and was always screaming poverty. It was always extremely embarrassing for me to go with him to buy anything, especially in the Jewish clothing shops in Kensington. He would haggle for an hour or more over a bleedin' penny for a pair of socks, but I must admit they would never let him go without buying something and it would always be at his price. As I said, he was a hard man. One of my earliest memories at about the age of five or six was following a brass band down Prescott Street into the centre of Liverpool where suddenly they all stopped playing and disappeared. I didn't have a clue where I was, so I wandered around for about an hour or more and was finally picked up by a policeman who took me to the nearest police station where they gave me a cup of tea and a cake. I remember there was the largest pile of toys I'd ever seen on a long table, which I enjoyed playing with for hours until my sister came to pick me up and take me home. I was always attracted to music and would follow a band for miles, or sit outside a pub listening to the buskers, especially if one was playing a piano accordion. We didn't have any music in our house. I don't think the old man was very musical, although I did see a picture of him once in his Argyle and Sutherland regiment uniform playing the bagpipes. I just love to hear bagpipes being played, preferably under six feet of water. He was not only a very hard man, he was also a very mean man, I don't know how much he gave my mother for rent and to feed and clothe us, but I'd bet it wasn't more than a quid a week. I was told years later by my mother's sister, Aunt Bertha, that my mother really struggled to feed and clothe us and believe it or not, she died of malnutrition at the age of forty-three. Mmm, that was a new word in those days, "malnutrition", yeah, just another bleedin' word for starvation. Aunt Bertha also told me my mother was so proud, that when she was visiting them on a Sunday, and was asked to join them for a lovely roast dinner she would refuse saying "Bertha, I've just come away from having a large lunch.'' If the truth be known, she'd probably not had anything to eat that day, or the day before, having given any food she had to us kids. It's queer, my mother would never admit that she had married a first class bastard of a man who treated us all like the servants he'd been used to in the army in India. I used to just love cleaning and polishing his old smelly boots. I remember not long before my mother died I caught scarlet fever and I must have been very ill as I was in bed for sixteen weeks. After about eight weeks my old man had not even been up to see me, so my aunt Bertha got onto him about it. She must have given him a right bollocking as he came up to see me a few days later and said, " How are you feeling?" I said "Not too bad" and he said, "Get Jock to buy you some oranges." He always called my brother Fred, Jock. I said, "What do I use for money?" and he slipped a shilling into my hand. I nearly fell out of bed, it must have broken his heart to give me that shilling - just think, that would have been at least three pints of ale - that was the first time he had ever given me any money. The second time I remember was when Fred and I were playing outside the pub on the corner of Molyneux Rd. Fred suddenly came over to me all excited and said "Hey look what I've found." I said, "What is it?" "I think it's a quid". "Where did you find it?" “Just outside the door of the pub" he said. I shot over to have a look myself and sure enough there was another couple of ten bob notes on the ground. I grabbed them up and went back to Fred and said. "What are we going to do with them?" “ We’d better take them home”. What an idiot! He should have known better, he was two years older than I was. When my old man saw what we'd found his eyeballs nearly fell out. He just grabbed them off us and said they were a couple of football coupons and stuffed them in his trouser pocket, the lying git. A couple of days later he came home from work a little earlier than usual and said " I'm taking Jock and you into town". I thought, "Hello, he's going to buy us something". We all walked into town and he marched us into Woolworth's. That's my old man all right, nothing over friggin' sixpence. He bought us both a sixpenny torch, batteries included, but they didn't last long. After a night shining them up and down all the back entries and across the sky the batteries were soon dead. We'd been told you could charge the batteries up by putting them in the oven but we finished up melting them. To think of what my mother could have done with that money Fred and I found and to think she had asked me for the shilling my old man had given me to buy some oranges and I wouldn't give it to her. I was too young to realize she was dying of malnutrition trying to keep us fed. I well remember the night she died. She had come home feeling poorly the day before. She had been to the pictures and had come out long before the big picture had finished and went straight to bed when she came in. I don't remember if my old man called a doctor when he came home, although I doubt it. That would have cost him about three shillings and sixpence. As the night went by Mum must have got worse and she quietly passed away about three o'clock in the morning. Then my old man sent for a doctor. As I was sleeping in the same bedroom I heard the doctor say, "I'm afraid she's gone, Jim". The old man gave a bit of a moan and said, "What are we going to do now? " I was only about six at the time and didn't take in the consequences of my mother dying. If life had been tough before she died, it was going to get a lot tougher now. Liverpool during the depression was an arsehole of a place to live, especially in our predicament. My younger brother Eric was only three years old at the time so who was going to look after him. My mother's sister Aunt Bertha said she would take him, so that left my sister Marion, brother Fred, and myself to stay and live with my old man. I suppose my sister Marie did a good job under the circumstances of looking after us. She used to get the necessities of life on tick from the grocer's shop on the corner of Molyneux Road opposite the pub. The owner, a chap named Arthur, would let us have say, a quarter pound of corned beef and put it down in the book as a packet of tea and very occasionally, even chocolate biscuits to be put down as a quarter pound of tea. I remember one Thursday night my old man was studying the tick book, and he started his high pitched whine, which was usual when he was studying anything that was going to cost him money. I thought for a minute he was going to give birth. He suddenly said "How the fuckin' hell can we have used a pound and a half of tea in a week?" I said "Maybe we are putting too much tea in the pot." I don't know if he ever twigged what we were doing, but from then on he used to make a strong pot of tea in the morning before going to work and that had to last us all day by adding hot water to it. The miserable git would then hide the packet of tea. He was not only a hard man and a very mean man; he was also a terrible swearing man. I must have learnt it from him as I have always found it difficult not to swear.When anyone complained to my old man about my swearing, he used to take me into the back kitchen, take off his four inch wide double buckled belt and lay into me. I used to make a lot of noise running round in circles, moving so fast he was working pretty hard to lay one on me. It never stopped me swearing, which in the long term was a good job as being very thin and not too strong, a few of the kids in the neighbourhood used to gang up on me, but I had such a foul mouth, it used to frighten them away in case their mothers heard it and they would be in the cart proper. A lot of kids around our way must have had scarlet fever the same time as me, as the hospitals were full up, so they came round and fumigated the house. This was unfortunate for me, for even though we were frightened of going into hospital at least I would have got some good tucker down me. Fred came in moaning that the local kids had been told by their mothers not to play with him because I had scarlet fever. Finally after sixteen weeks in a bug-ridden bed I was allowed to get up, and to my surprise I couldn't walk. I just staggered about and it took me a couple of days to come right. No wonder I was weak; I'd been almost eaten alive by the bed bugs so I got my sister Marie to help me to burn them out from between the wire mattress and the wooden frame of the bed with a couple of lit candles. We could hear the bugs sizzling but we never seemed to get rid of them altogether. In bed I got to the stage that I could smell a bed bug two inches from my nose. I was then about eight years old, my brother or our kid as I called him was ten and my sister Marie about thirteen. I guess I didn't realize our living conditions were gradually deteriorating to the stage that my sister had had enough, so she buggered off and left Fred and me to it. I didn't know it then but I think this was about the first time I started suffering from depression. I would all the time be sobbing inwardly and if anyone shouted at me I would really burst out crying and I couldn't understand why. . The old man used to get away to work early and I would drag myself out of bed and light a newspaper in the fireplace for a bit of warmth. I suffered terribly from the cold. Our kid would fry a round of bread each and add hot water to the pot of tea the old man had made and we would head off to school. The old man used to give our kid and me a miserable penny each to buy our tucker for the day so we were always pretty hungry. On the way to school which was about a couple of miles away in Brae Street I used to pass a pet shop in Kensington and pinch a couple of dog biscuits or cattle nuts from the bags they had on show outside and munch them on the way. At dinner time I used to shoot off to a butchers shop in Prescott Street and study all the lovely meat in the window and then decide to spend my penny on a couple of thin sausages or a spice ball which I think was made of animal offal. My hands and feet would be so cold and painful by the time I got home I would add boiling water to the teapot and wrap my feet around it. Fred would also have bought a couple of sausages or some chips. I would open the gas cooker door and chase away two or three mice that were having a feed of the dripping in the frying pan, and then light up the gas ring. Sometimes we would be lucky to get our sausages cooked before the gas would run out. I guess we got used to eating half-cooked tucker rather than waiting for the old man to come home and get a penny for the gas meter. I'm sure the old git had it worked out that the gas would run out while we were trying to cook a bit of lunch. Sometimes he used to ask me to meet him on his way home from work. I don't really know why because he used to walk very fast for a man of his age and I had to struggle to keep up with him. We would go into the grocers shop in Kensington and buy some eggs, hen or duck eggs you'd think - not on your Nelly - friggen' snake eggs from Indochina twenty four for a bob and half of them were rotten. The old man would boil a couple of them up and after slicing the top off the egg the smell would nearly knock you over. I'd say, "I can't eat this." He'd say, "There's nothing wrong with it, give it to me" and he'd scoff it all down. He must have had cast iron guts. Sometimes he'd send me off to the fish shop to buy a large conger eel head for a penny then he'd boil it up for an hour or two in an old cast iron pot and when it was cooked he'd lift it out onto a large plate and get stuck into it. I remember the conger eel's big eyes looking at me as he pulled the lips off and swallowed them down like spaghetti. I couldn't eat the lips, but the white meat in the head wasn't too bad. What I used to hate most was the old man making me drink a tin mug full of the water he'd boiled the head in. "It's good for you" he'd say and he'd swig a mug full down himself. He called it jipper but he couldn't get our kid to drink it. The old man would sit reading his newspaper and it would get darker and darker. I'd say "When are you going to light the gas dad" and he'd say "Shortly" and then get his magnifying glass out so he could read a bit longer. Eventually, when we couldn't see each other, he would get up and carefully light the gas mantle. I say carefully, because if he accidentally touched and broke it, like he did one dark night, he would go friggin' bonkers and we would have to clear lower deck. Later he would put on his jacket with his quart bottle in his pocket and walk smartly over to the pub. He certainly liked his beer and he often used to say to me that he would die if he didn't get his pint every day. I often wished that I could have thought of a way to make him miss his pint, but I must say I never saw him the worse for it and he always walked straight as a die. I did hear one time my aunt Bertha telling some one that he would be buying drinks for his friends in the pub, while his wife and kids were suffering from malnutrition, but I'd doubt if this was the only case in Liverpool. Fred and I would be playing games in the kitchen but always listening for the rattle of the pub door closing and then looking out the window to see if he was coming back. He would always bring his quart bottle of beer back with him and pour himself a glass before settling down to finish reading his paper. He used to always tear off a piece of paper to cover his glass. I don't know why, maybe after fifteen years in India he had a problem with flies. I would wait for him to go out to the back yard toilet for a leak, then I'd take a good swig out of his glass and top it up from the bottle and carefully replace the piece of paper on the glass. When he came back in he'd look at his beer on the table, give a bit of a whine, light his pipe and go back to reading his paper. I was never really sure if he twigged that I was pinching his beer but if he did then he never let on. He'd just say "Its nine thirty, get up to bed". I used to like the odd times when he would ask me to go to the fish and chip shop to get him three pennyworth of spare ribs and chips for on the way back I would carefully open it up and pinch a rib and a couple of chips, very enjoyable. I knew he wouldn't offer me some anyway. He used to pay my aunt Bertha five shillings a week for looking after Eric and every Friday night he would go down to Doddridge St where they lived and take her up to Harry Best's pub on the corner of Hall Lane for a glass of beer. My aunt told me once he would wait till the very last minute to give her the measly five bob. I must have been about eight or nine when my second lot of teeth were well through and my first lot hadn't dropped out so the school dental nurse gave me a note to get them taken out. I remember going by myself down to the infirmary in Islington and sitting in the waiting room wondering what they were going to do. After what seemed a long wait they took me into a small room and sat me up on the dentist's chair and the nurse said, "We're going to have to give you gas." They shoved this horrible smelling rubber mask over my face and said, "Breathe deeply". I thought I was going to die. It was ghastly. I took a couple of deep breaths and the next thing I remember they were shaking me pretty vigorously. I think they had given me too much gas and couldn't wake me up. I was finally led over to a sink which I thought I was supposed to fill up with blood. They seemed to have a problem stopping the bleeding and eventually stuffed my mouth with cotton wool and sent me off. Unfortunately on the way home I met someone I knew, and was terribly embarrassed trying to explain where I’d been since my mouth was full of cotton wool . I'd only been saying a few days before to our kid that I wondered where our sister Marie had got to when suddenly one Sunday afternoon she appeared on our doorstep and guess what! With presents, a new overcoat each for Fred and me. She had a boy friend with her, and they asked us if we would like to go down to Newsham Park and they would hire a boat for a row on the lake. We put our new overcoats on and off we went. She told us as we walked to the park that she had been involved in a car accident. Some idiot driver had opened his car door and she had ploughed into it fracturing her ankle. She had taken the chap to court and the Judge had awarded her twelve pounds plus expenses. Newsham Park was a lovely park. A brass band was playing in the rotunda and as Marie's boy friend Eddie rowed us around the islands and under the bridges, Fred and I were eating ice cream cornets Marie had bought us and we thought we were real toffs. On the way home Marie asked us if we would like to see the flat she had just rented down by the Casino ice rink so we set off to have a look. It was just a tiny kitchen and one small bedroom and me being such a thoughtless twit said I didn't think much of it. She got very upset as she thought she had done very well and I suppose she had, considering she was only fifteen and had buggered off with only the clothes she stood up in. I guess my idea of a flat wasn't two tiny rooms in a great big old house. Marie was a very hard worker and she soon saved enough money to start her own little business. She would set up a stall at the different markets in and around Liverpool and sell imitation jewellry, She reckoned it was quite a profitable little business. Sometimes Fred and I would pick up our younger brother Eric from my aunt Bertha's and we would all go down town to have a look at the shops. I Remember one time Eric accidentally walked into a lamp post and started screaming his bleedin' head off. We tried to console him as he was causing a lot of attention from people passing by. He wouldn't stop crying so we started to walk away from him when an old lady stopped and asked us what was the matter and when we told her she opened her purse and gave Eric a penny. He immediately stopped yelling and we shot off to the fish shop for a pennyworth of chips and mushy peas. As we were golloping them down my brain started ticking over as it usually did on any ways of making money, so I thought we could make a habit of this as that was an easy penny Eric made, even if he did have a big lump on his head. We tried it a few times, getting Eric to start yelling, even if we had to give him a couple of thumps to get him started, but we soon found out there were not very many kind old ladies I distinctly remember one Saturday afternoon asking the old man for a penny to go to the pictures but he said he couldn't afford it. It was pouring with rain as I was staring out the dirty windows through the old lace curtains into the empty street. I thought he's bound to give in if I sit here long enough looking miserable but no such luck. The old bugger just sat reading his paper, ignoring me. I'd heard you could get into the "Lytton" picture house somewhere in town for a couple of empty jam jars. We didn't have any so I jumped up on the backyard wall and walked along looking into other people's back yards until I finally found a couple. I took them home to wash them out and shot off to find the Lytton. I had a vague idea where Lytton Street was and after asking a couple of people for directions finally I found it. There were hundreds of dirty jam jars on the floor by the cashier's desk so I put mine down, got a ticket and was ushered in. I sat down absolutely saturated after my long walk. The Lytton used to show at the kids Saturday matinee, the two big films they had shown during the week, even if they were unsuitable for children, so it was great value for two jam jars. I think my father only ever went to the pictures once in his life. It was when Fred and I took him to the Kensington picture house one Saturday afternoon. The picture had started and it was pretty dark when we were shown to our seats but unfortunately they were in the centre between the two aisles and some of the people didn't bother to get up. In the darkness the old man must have stepped on some of their corns or bunions on their feet. What a bleedin' commotion there was, I could hear the old man effing and blinding something awful. I felt embarrassed and was quite relieved when they all settled down. I even remember the name of the film, It was "The Thirty Nine Steps." On the way home I said " What did you think of the film dad." He said "Pure rubbish." Not a very feeling person, in fact I'd say, dead from the bollocks up. Never having any money to buy something you wanted was a problem but I soon learnt that swapping was the answer. I suppose it started with swapping comics and in no time I'd worked up to getting something I'd wanted for a long time, a pair of roller skates. I just about lived on them and soon became the second best roller skater in the neighbourhood. I remember well I was about ten, and I was showing off my skating skills to a couple of young girls standing outside a sweet shop in Farnsworth St. They were eating sweets and I think pretending not to notice me. I was doing a high speed fancy about face when suddenly one of the bleedin' wheels came off, boy, did I go for a shit, I think I did a double somersault and landed straight on my poxy head in the gutter. I could hear the two girls laughing as I staggered away still seeing stars and looking for my skate wheel. At least I learnt one thing, lesson number one, don't show off in front of other people. Fred and I used to go down to Newsham Park to fish for jacksharps in the model boating lake, and I used to envy the boys with their model yachts. Luckily after a while I was able to talk one of the boys into swapping his model yacht for my precious pair of roller skates. I couldn't get down to the lake quick enough to have a sail of this beautiful fifteen-inch yacht, and either in my haste, or I didn't know, I pushed the yacht out without loosening the sail. The friggin' thing sailed slowly out to the centre of the lake and stayed there. I waited and waited but it never moved, a man told me to go home and get a long piece of string that would reach across the lake so we could drag it in. I ran all the way home thinking where am I going to get a piece of string that long as the lake would have been at least two hundred yards wide. I explained it to the old man but I got little sympathy or money to buy string from him. It was getting dark as I ran all the way back to the park hoping the keeper hadn't locked the gates, but he had, so I climbed over and my heart sank when I saw my yacht had gone. I walked home slowly crying inwardly to myself. Lesson number two, I suppose there was a lesson for me somewhere in this but I'm not sure what it was, maybe it was, learn a little about what you're doing before you do it. As would be expected with a father like ours, none of our relations ever came to visit us. Even the kids in our street were frightened to knock on our door to ask me to swap a comic. The old man had a sister, Aunt Katie who lived in Utting Avenue East, then a very posh neighbourhood in Liverpool. I remember Marie, before she buggered off, taking me out there one day on a tram car. It was a joy to ride on one of these twenty five ton monsters nicknamed "Green Goddesses." Once we got out into the country it seemed to glide along the shrub-sided grass tracks. No one was home when we got there, so Marie decided that we should wait for a while and after about an hour our Aunt Katie arrived. I don't think she was too over thrilled to see two ragamuffins sitting on her doorstep and quickly invited us in before any of the neighbours saw us. She must be very rich I thought. I'd never seen such a lovely home, and the furniture was beautiful, everything was spotless. I was afraid to sit on the chairs when she asked us to, and Marie knocked my grubby fingers off the beautifully patterned tablecloth. Aunt Katie made us a lovely pot of tea and brought out the largest plate of home made cakes I'd ever seen. I gollopped two of them down in as many minutes and was ready to grab the third when Marie gave me a very nasty look which said, that's enough. I could have scoffed the lot. I think the reason Marie went to see aunt Katie was to see if she could help us one way or another, her being dad's sister, but she gave us the impression that our old man was the black sheep of her family and didn't want anything to do with him. We sat there for a while after having another cup of tea and not saying very much, until aunt Katie got up, found her purse, opened it, and gave us a penny each. Normally when we visited relations, the giving of a coin was an invitation to leave, so we said goodbye and left. On the tram speeding back through Liverpool, Marie said, "I don't think we'll get much help from Auntie Katie" and she was right. We never heard of her again. I was brought up on American films. I used to love going to all the picture houses in Liverpool, as soon as I got my hands on a penny or tuppence, which was mostly by running errands for the old dears in our street. I specially remember one at number fourteen, almost every day asking me to run messages for her. She'd say "Duggie." I hated being called Duggie. Then she would ask me to get this or that down at the shops and promised to give me a halfpenny when I got back. I knew the routine. When I'd get back she'd open her purse and say, "I haven't got any change I'll give it to you tomorrow." The mingy old bitch. She knew what I was learning fast, that tomorrow never comes. She must owe me quids. Unfortunately, except for Saturday matinees, a kid could only get into the pictures if he was accompanied by an adult so I used to stand outside a picture house, sometimes in the freezing cold or rain, saying to anyone who I thought was going in, "Take us in mister, take us in." Usually some kind soul would take me in. In those days the films ran continuously from ten o'clock in the morning till ten or eleven o'clock at night, so the chances were that you got in half way through a film. That didn't bother me overmuch as I would sometimes spent up to six hours in there and I would see the films over twice. At least it was warm and comfortable and gave my clothes time to dry out. One night I remember standing outside the Hippodrome in West Derby Road in the pissing rain asking to be taken in when a rough looking chap I asked said "O K give us your money, I'll take you in." I was taken in alright, the scaly bastard took my tuppence off me walked up to the cashier's desk, asked for one fourpenny ticket, went in and left me standing there, gawping. Actually this happened to me two or three times and there wasn't much I could do about it until one day I was telling an older boy at school. He said, "You're a complete idiot, we never pay to get into the pictures". I said "Yer what" he repeated it. I said, " How the fuck do you do that?" He said "Meet us tonight outside the Cozy picture house in Boaler Street at about eight o'clock and I'll show you". Sure enough he arrived about ten minutes after I got there. I was a bugger for giving people nicknames and I called this kid "Bullet" because that was the shape of his head. He said to me "I don't know why, but most picture houses unlock their side exit doors during the interval, so all you have to do is gently pull the doors towards you and slip in. He said "Once you're inside find an empty seat as quick as you can". He was right, as soon as the interval came we heard the usherette unlock the side exit door and we were in as quick as a couple of rats up a mooring rope. Once you were inside, there was the problem of finding a seat that was vacant but luckily some of the people had just got up to buy ice creams or chocolate. Many times I would be nicely settled down when someone would tap me on the shoulder and say "You're sitting in my seat." If they were bigger than me, and most people were, I wouldn't argue. I'd just go and find another seat but Bullet, his real name was Joey, would argue that it was his seat and tell them to piss off. Most of them did just that, although the odd one would call the manager and he'd want to see our half tickets. If we couldn't produce them, and it was a full house he would turf us out, otherwise they would find us another seat. It was great to get into the pictures for nowt, I must have sneaked in about three or four times a week. I couldn't get enough of the American films, especially the big musicals, and then there were the Andy Hardy films starring Mickey Rooney. I got the idea that all Americans lived like this, and all my dreams were of getting to America as soon as I could. I used to knock about with another kid down our street named Clarence, what a name, Clarence, it seemed terribly sissy to me. I used to envy him very much as he had some lovely clothes and his mother kept him very smartly dressed. Even his stockings stayed up, not like my cheap ones always round my ankles. I think his parents had a few bob.When they were out he used to take me into their house and I would sneak into the pantry to see what food they had. It was stacked with every type of tinned food you could imagine. I used to be very tempted to slip a tin of sardines or something in my pocket but would satisfy my hunger by golloping down a hand full of dry cream crackers. He knew I was also mad on American cowboy films and I'd heard if you wrote to film stars that they would send you their photograph. Clarence said I could use his dad's writing materials and stamps to write to Gene Autry, my cowboy hero, and sure enough he sent me a lovely photograph of himself and his horse "Champion" which I proudly showed the other kids in the neighbourhood who offered me all sorts of things to swap for it. After a while I gave in and swapped it for a small, silver, pearl handled ladies revolver. I think this kid swapped it because it was broken and looked very difficult to fix as the screw holding the revolving chamber had snapped leaving half of the screw in the body of the gun which needed to be drilled out. I showed it to Fred and he said he could get his metal work teacher at school to drill it out. I was mad on guns and always wanted to own one. I didn't want to let it out of my sight and I was a complete fool to let Fred talk me into it and yes you've guessed it, Fred's metalwork teacher kept it.The lousy bastard kept it. You certainly have to learn the hard way. Lesson number three, don't trust anyone. I suppose it was seeing Clarence so smartly dressed that made me feel that I should try and do something about my clothes. Luckily for me we didn't have any mirrors in our house so I could only see myself in shop windows. I looked a mess, especially my boots which the old man had tried to mend with pieces of old rubber car tyres. Being so thin my legs looked like a pair of match sticks and my jacket and short trousers which were miles too big for me must have made me look like some sort of refugee. I decided the only way to get a long trousered suit was to save up as hard as I could any money I got from running messages for the old dears in the street. The cheapest long trousers boy's suit I'd seen was in the Thirty Shilling Tailors in London Road. That suit was twelve shillings and sixpence. I'd be a long time saving that much up. I got a savings card from the Post Office and every time I got a penny I would stick a stamp on. It was a start. I became pretty good friends with Bullet. I found out he lived just around the corner from me in Rolph Street. He was a lot bigger and tougher than me but he didn't have much up top. I used to feel much safer when I was with him as we used to wander all over Liverpool together. Come to think of it, he wasn't very nice to look at with his flat green snotty nose, he always seemed to have trouble breathing and gave the impression that he suffered from a permanent head cold, anyhow for me he made a good body guard. In the nineteen thirties I was told Liverpool had about fourteen miles of docks on this side of the river Mersey alone and I'd say Bullet and I walked every foot of them. We used to love watching the dockers loading and unloading the large ships with their colourful funnels, with me always thinking some of these ships must be coming from or going to America. I'd heard of people stowing away on these big ships and I decided to talk Bullet into stowing away with me, which wasn't very hard as he was quite easily led. It was much easier said than done as we found out when we tried to get aboard the largest ship on the docks we didn't get any further than the top of the gang way when an armed guard grabbed us and booted us back down again. I gave him a mouthful as we raced away along the docks and vowed we'd keep trying. As we were walking home past the Liver buildings, Bullet suggested we go up through Pitt Street and the Chinese area. I was always afraid of that part of town but didn't want to let Bullet know I was scared so I said OK. We wandered through the business part of Chinatown watching the Chinese people shuffling along with their coolie hats on and their hands tucked up their sleeves. It all seemed very sinister to me. A group of them were standing outside a shop on a street corner arguing heatedly in Chinese. Stupidly, Bullet began to imitate them in a loud voice and two of them started to chase us. I just about shit myself, I only weighed about five stone and could move pretty fast but I don't think I ever moved faster in my life. I was imagining knives flashing and getting one in my back but they never caught me, they finally got Bullet who was lucky to get away with a kick up the arse. Why did I always connect the Chinese with knives, maybe I'd seen too many Charlie Chan films. I know most of my nightmares from then on were about Chinese chasing me with long knives. I think Bullet had been crying a bit when he eventually caught up with me in London Road. He wouldn't admit it but I think he'd got much more than a kick up the arse as he said he had. He asked me up to his place in Rolph Street. When we got there the door was wide open so he went straight in and left me sitting on the doorstep. I remember well his mother sitting opposite the front door for all the world to see, breast feeding Bullet's younger kid brother who must have been at least four or five years of age and I was feeling quite embarrassed as I don't think I'd seen a woman breastfeeding a baby before. She said "Joey give your mate a sugar butty". Bullet cut a couple of inch thick rounds of bread, smothered them with margarine and emptied the sugar basin on them. We both sat on the doorstep munching away. Delicious, I thought, I could make a habit of this. I remember about this time being slightly embarrassed again. I'd started knocking about with another kid named Edgar Williams who lived across the road at number nine. His mother, who I thought suspected that we weren't being looked after properly, as I had quite a bit of scurvy on my face which she seemed quite concerned about, had invited us in for a cup of tea and biscuits. Sitting at the tea table she noticed me admiring a lovely clock they had on the mantelpiece. She seemed to quiz me for a while and she found out that I couldn't tell the time, and I didn't know my alphabet, so she started to teach me. After a while she said "You're quite bright" I had picked it all up pretty quickly. As I left I felt quite pleased with myself Bullet had nicknamed me Gossie because I had a bad turn in my right eye. I was extremely self-conscious of this and I used to close my right eye when I was talking to anyone. I hated being called Gossie, but Bullet seemed to get some pleasure out of it so I didn't let on. My sister Marie had told me one time that when I was about two years old I'd crawled out of the back yard door, across the back entry, into Mr. Bonney's coal yard where he kept a couple of shire horses to pull his carts. Somehow I had managed to get under the horses hooves and one of them had kicked me in the head which she said caused the squint in my right eye. I don't know where she dreamed that lot up from, but I suppose it was a good reason as any if I'd asked her about it. I must admit I had a terrible fear of horses when I was young, and I think one of the reasons for that was that they used lovely plumed black horses to pull the hearses at funerals. In the winter the streets would be covered in ice and the poor horses would be struggling to keep on their feet, then they would fall down and the terrified look in their eyes would frighten the life out of me as half a dozen men tried to lift them back onto their feet but down they would go again. Actually if I hadn't been so scared and it hadn't been a funeral, it would have made a fuckin' great slapstick comedy. My saving up was going better than I thought it would, I now had twelve penny stamps on my card and the next time I went to the Post Office they swapped it for a savings book with a shilling in it and gave me another card for stamps. I suppose it was a good job in those days that there was no such thing as inflation otherwise the price of the suit I was hoping to buy from the thirty bob tailors would have gone up faster than my savings. The old man was still only giving Fred and me a penny a day for food and I was as thin as a rake, in fact as we were lining up at school one morning one big smart twat said to me, "Don't stand sideways Lairdy or they will mark you absent." I thought I'll get Bullet to hang one on him later. Luckily for me it was the days of free milk in schools and I used to look forward to morning break. Sometimes there was one or two bottles left over and the teacher would look around the class, pick a couple of kids out and give them the extra bottles of milk,. I don't know why, but the teacher never ever gave me an extra bottle, maybe I made it too obvious that I wanted another one, or maybe there were much hungrier looking kids in the class than me. I found out that some of the kids from the poorer families were getting cheap meals at a scoff house just off Durning Road and I asked the teacher about it and she gave me some tickets to go. The dinners were quite big and I used to feel sick trying to force them down because they wouldn't give you a pudding if you didn't eat all your dinner. I remember most days it was boiled liver and mashed potatoes and I think it was the liver that made me feel sick. After a couple of day's I started taking a piece of newspaper with me so I could wrap up the boiled liver, put it in my pocket and just eat the spuds, then I would get a pudding and I would turf the liver on the way back to school. Unfortunately it only lasted a couple of weeks as the old man refused to pay the tuppence a day for the meals. In the winter, an old motor truck would sometimes come down our street selling scouse [Irish Stew] full of shoulder mutton which they made in an old washing copper on the back of the truck and it was always steaming hot. It was tuppence a basin full. Although I didn't want to spend my savings I couldn't resist adding a penny to the one I got from the old man, finding the largest basin in the house and then joining the queue behind the truck. Scouse was made of shoulder mutton chops, potatoes, carrots, onions, salt, and a big dose of pepper. I used to love it, and would stretch my tongue to lick out the bowl. As a youngster I was never over fond of sweet stuff and preferred food that was full of goodness, but Bullet always craved sweet stuff and most times had a mouthful of lollies. One day I asked him where he got all the sweets from and he said, "Come around to our place tonight and I'll show you." I went round to his house about seven o'clock when it was just getting dark. He was waiting for me and as we walked down our street I said to him, "Where are we going," He said "Every night about eight o'clock an L.M S railways articulated lorry comes along Shiel Road with a container full of large jars of boiled sweets." I said "Yeah," he said "Yeah all we have to do is jump on the back when it slows down at the corner, lift up the steel swivel bar, open the big door and help ourselves." I said, "Right, that sounds easy enough." We waited about half an hour on the corner of Shiel Road and sure enough along came the L.M.S. lorry and as it slowed down for the corner to about ten miles an hour we slipped from our hiding place from behind some bushes and jumped on the back. I don't think the driver had seen us so we slowly swiveled the steel bar up and opened the large door. The hot sweet smell that wafted out was gorgeous but it was too dark to see what kind of sweets they were so we just grabbed a jar apiece and quickly closed and barred the door. Now we had to get off the lorry. Bullet said, "Wait till he slows down at the next corner and jump off when I do. I thought what a friggin' pantomime it would be if we dropped the jars as we jumped off, glass and lollies all over the bleedin road. Holding the jar tightly I jumped off safely and when Bullet slipped off at the next corner, I could tell he'd done this before. We had a job to get to get the tops off the jars as they were still hot but when we did, we filled our gobs with the delicious boiled sweets. I thought, these are much nicer than the cattle nuts and dog biscuits that I usually pinched on the way to school. We put as many as we could in our pockets and buried the jars in the bushes in Shiel Park. Once the lorry driver realized what was going on, he started carrying a long whip in his cab and would lash out at us if he saw us jump on the back. Why they didn't just padlock the container I don't know. Bullet and I often wandered down to the Pier Head. It always baffled me how sometimes you had to walk up the massive covered gangways and sometimes you had to walk down the gangways onto the landing stage to the ferries. I guess I didn't know much about tides and that the whole landing stage was floating. Some idiot had told me that if you stared down at the water long enough as you walked along the side of the gangways you would become mesmerized and leap down into the water so I tried not to look It was almost impossible to sneak aboard the ferries without paying so if we had a penny each we would buy a ticket and jump on the ferry to Birkenhead. It would only take about ten minutes to cross the Mersey, but we would have a bit of fun chasing one another around the ferry and then getting in front of the queue to be first off. Our original intention would be to go to New Brighton but that would have cost more on the ferry so we would normally walk, although it was a fair hike to New Brighton from Birkenhead. On a nice sunny day it was lovely to stroll along the promenade and enjoy the smell of the sea on the breeze. On the way we would have a spell on the piers at Seacombe and Egremont and sometimes if the tide was out we would climb over the railing on the promenade and jump about ten or fifteen feet down onto the sands. I remember so well one time as we walked along the sands, we noticed a chap standing flush up against the sea wall looking up. Above him were two young girls leaning against the rails on the promenade with their dresses blowing about in the wind. Bullet said, "That bloke is looking up those girls' dresses and I'm going to tell them. Before I could stop him he shouted up to the girls to warn them and they quickly shoved off. We took off too as the bloke who'd been enjoying the sights realized what Bullet had said and cursing, shot off after us. Luckily we were on the hard wet sand close to the water so we were moving much faster than him and he soon tired and gave up but we kept running till we got to the roller skating rink on the promenade at New Brighton. We watched the couples waltzing around the rink for about half an hour, me wishing I had a tanner {sixpence} to hire a pair of skates and show off my skating skills. We walked on along the promenade till we came to the fair grounds, one of my favourite places, plenty of music, happy people, noise, and always something going on. We stopped for a while and watched the Punch and Judy show. As usual Punch was beating the shit out of someone and the mob of kids were really enjoying it. Next to that show was a chap sitting on a chair at the top of a seventy to eighty foot tower and below him was about a ten foot square concrete pool about four foot deep. We were standing next to the pool when an attendant said to me "Watch you don't get burnt." I thought, "He's a smart prick, how can I get burnt next to a pool." I soon found out, before I could move away, the attendant flicked a lighted piece of paper onto the pool and up it went with a hiss and a roar. The flames shot up about ten feet and everybody looked up to the top of the tower as the geezer sitting on the chair toppled backwards. We stepped back and down he came at a terrific speed into the flaming pool. A wave came over the side as he floated to the surface but I think he'd pushed his luck once too often as he'd either hit the bottom or the side of the pool. Anyway they carted him away in an ambulance. The next booth we stopped at was the boxing booth and a couple of hard looking fighters were standing on the stage with their arms crossed over their hairy chests. Also on the stage, a fancy dressed geezer was screaming the odds to anyone in the crowd to stay three rounds for a quid with either of the two tough looking punchers. Bullet and I were both wishing that we were a bit older so we could take them on and win that quid, even if it meant getting seven types of shite knocked out of us. It was all a sham anyway, usually a hard knock in the crowd, feigning drunkenness, would stick his hand up and shout "I'll take the two of the buggers on for a Quid" and he'd stagger up onto the stage. Of course, he was part of the act, but it would get the crowd going and they would pay their tanner to see the fight. Bullet, who hardly ever took his eyes off the ground, looking for money, found a threepenny bit. His eyes lit up as he said, " I'm gasping Gossie, lets find a cafe and get a pot of tea" I said "O.K." We left the fairground and walked up a side street off the promenade to were the nearest cafe was. The sandwich board outside said "Afternoon Teas One Shilling." We walked in and Bullet asked the waitress if we could have a small pot of tea for threepence. She looked at us for a while as if trying to make up her mind then said, "It's more than my job is worth, but the boss is away at the moment, so it would be all right". She brought us a lovely pot of tea and Bullet poured out a couple of cups. I started to swig mine down as a large group of people came in. Bullet said, "Don't rush it Gos, this lot will never eat all their sandwiches and cakes and we can help ourselves when they go. Sure enough after about twenty minutes they started to leave and as Bullet had predicted they had left quite a few sandwiches and cakes. Quick as a flash and before the waitress had time to come in and clear up the dishes, he had the lot on our table. I thought to myself, this lad could go places, probably Walton Goal. We were still scoffing the cakes down when the waitress came over to our table. I gave her a guilty look as she dropped our threepenny bit back on the table and said " You two bugger off before the boss gets back." I could have kissed her. Getting that threepence back meant we could take the Ferry back from New Brighton to Liverpool. That was great as we would not have to walk all the way back to Birkenhead. I still had a penny and I gave it to Bullet to add to his threepenny bit. He bought a couple of tickets and we strolled along the pier to the Ferry. This boat was the largest Ferry plying the river Mersey, named the Mayflower, or was it the Daffodil, never mind, I do remember it had three decks and ploughed through the water at a fair speed. We would gallop up and down and around the three decks, then half pie stuffed, I would go and sit down by the engine room hatch and nod off, listening to the the thumping engines. Going to the seaside with all that fresh sea air, a stomach full of tucker and all that running about, would leave us fairly tired when we got to Liverpool and we didn't feel like walking all the way home. Bullet said as we walked up the gangway to the Pier Head tram terminus, "Let's jump on a tram car." I said, "We can't, we haven't got any money." He said, "Never mind, follow me," and he jumped on a tram car as it was just moving off. It was just picking up speed as I clambered aboard and followed him upstairs to the front seats. Sure enough we were almost home by the time the conductor got to us for our penny fare and he arseholed us off at the next stop when we told him we had no dough. Bullet was laughing his bleedin' head off as we ran home along Farnsworth Street, saying,"There are no flies on this kid" and I thought, maybe not, but there's a lot of holes where they've been by the look of his pock marked face. Come to think of it, my face couldn't have looked much better, what with the scurvy and the malnutrition sores which were starting to cover my head and face. One day at school I noticed a teacher eyeing me up and the next day she said "Laird I'm going to get you a note to take to the skin clinic and let them have a look at your face. A few days later she gave me a note and said, "Take the afternoon off and report down at the skin clinic." I said I wasn't sure where the clinic was so she wrote a few directions and a wee map for me on the back of the note. I arrived at the clinic about the middle of the afternoon and everything was at a standstill. The nurses were all having cups of tea but they never offered me one and a couple of them were gauping at me and frowning at each other as I gave them my note. They seemed to be at a loss to know what to do with me but eventually decided to cut most of my hair off and then smothered my head and face with a brown coloured ointment. Then they covered my whole head and face in bandages and just left a couple of slits for my eyes and nose. I was glad when they told me I could go home, but they said that I would need to come back in a week's time. Everybody seemed to be looking at me as I walked home and I realized why when I saw myself in a shop window. I looked like the gangster in a film I'd seen who had his own initials unknowingly cut into his face by the doctor he was about to kill. The gangster thought the doctor was just going to change his face so no one would recognize him, but the doc realized he would be killed after the operation. . I was half way up Phythian street when I passed a couple of old dears sitting on the doorstep of their terraced house. They stopped chinwagging for a moment and one of them said, "What happened to yer lah, did yer get run over? My brain immediately ticked over and I thought what the fuck they might take pity on me and give me a penny so I said, "Yeah, I got knocked down by a lorry." The other one said, "You poor bugger, come in and have a cup of tea and tell us about it." I didn't need a second invitation. I was parched, so I followed them in. They sat me down in the parlour and started to brew up in the kitchen. I thought what a lovely clean and tidy home compared with our house, which hadn't been cleaned since my sister Marie had buggered off. This was a palace. As I was drinking my tea, they were all ears, looking through the slits in my bandages. I spun them a real yarn about being knocked down by a lorry in Erskine Street and being rushed to the infirmary with my head split open. They were lapping it up as one of them poured me another cup of tea. I explained that the doctors at the infirmary thought I'd fractured my skull, so I had to have an x ray, which turned out to be o.k. After wolfing down another piece of home made cake, I told them that the nurses had cleaned and bandaged me up and told me that I might have to stay in over night for observation, but after a couple of hours they came and said I could go home. I suppose I felt a bit guilty having these kindly old dears on like that, but I was too embarrassed to tell them that I only had a scabby head. My savings were not going as fast as I would have as liked, so when Bullet suggested we break into one or two shops he had been casing in Farnsworth Street, I agreed immediately. He'd noticed the fanlight window over the front door of the cake shop had been accidentally left partly open. He said, "You're thin enough to slip through there so I can give you a leg up and you can drop down inside and undo he bolts. I looked up and down the Street. It was pitch dark and deserted. I said "O.K. lets do it." He legged me up and I squirmed through the partly opened fanlight, dropping head first into the shop. . I undid the bolts and opened the door. Bullet slid in and struck a match. He knew were the till was and made straight for it. Normally, I felt anxious and depressed, but suddenly I became aware of a fantastic feeling going through my body. It was a warm glow I had never felt before. At that age I knew nothing about drugs and getting high, but this fantastic feeling must be like a drug-induced high that burglars must get during a robbery. Could it be the feeling of instant riches that a robber could get addicted to? I was thoroughly enjoying the feeling, when all of a sudden I was brought back out of my trance-like state to reality by Bullet belting fuck out of the till, which he couldn't open. He wasn't one to give up easily and eventually he opened it, but as I guessed, except for a few papers, it was empty. We rummaged through all the drawers and cupboards we could find, but no money, only cakes. Bullet said, "Let's take a couple of cream sponges and get out of here." We took one each and slipped out into the dark street. Bullet said as we scoffed down the sponges under the glow of the street corner gas lamp. "We didn't get much for our efforts" I said, "You're right Joey" but I was very pleased, especially with the high it gave me Our kid Fred, some how had got himself a bike. I don't know whether he'd pinched it or what but I do know I was dead envious as I watched him screaming up and down Rolph Street, slapping the back brake on and coming to a circular skid stop. I barely remember Marie teaching me to ride a bike in a field out in the country. She would hold on to the seat and I would pedal away, then without me realizing it she would let go of the seat, and I would be riding by myself, great fun. Fred wouldn't give me a ride on his bike, so I went home crying. The old man said, "What's up with you." I said, "Jock won't give me a ride on his bike." He said, "Never mind." I got the biggest shock of my life when I arrived home the following Saturday afternoon and there, standing by the sideboard was an old bike. Curiously I said " Who's is the bike dad" he said "It's yours" I thought he must be kidding me, and said "Mine" he said "Yes, take it out for a ride"I grabbed it and shot out the front door. I couldn't believe it, the old man must have gone down to the second hand bike shop in West Derby Road as the ticket on the cross-bar showed he paid eleven shillings for it. Fred wouldn't believe me when I joined him racing up and down the street. He reckoned I'd pinched it. I cycled down to my aunt Bertha's place in Low Hill and when I told her she said, "So the skinny old bugger has opened his arse at last, he must have won some money somewhere" A couple of days later the free wheeling cog on the rear wheel broke. I was pedalling like hell but getting nowhere fast. It surprised me when the old man said he would take it to work and get it welded and sure enough he did and made it into a fixed wheel which made it a bit dangerous to ride at high speed. As I've said before, the old man was a very mean man, but I never took the old git to be devious. I was still trying to fathom out why he'd bought me a bike when a couple of weeks later he said "Now that you've got a bike, why don't you try and get a paper round, then you can give me half of what you earn to pay me for the bike" I thought this wasn't a bad idea so long as he would only take half of my wage off me, so I talked to Bullet about it, as he by now already had a paper round and earned two and six a week. He said he would talk to his boss about it and the very next day told me I could start the following Monday. I was right chuffed and Monday couldn't come quick enough. I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. The day came at last and I tore home from school, picked up my bike and shot off down to the paper shop. Bullet was already there, so he took me in and introduced me to the boss. He was a big fat guy and he stared down at me through his thick horn-rimmed glasses. He said, "Joey where the friggin' hell did you pick this kid up from." Bullet said, "He's all right, I know him." The boss looked at me again and said, "O.K. The wages are two and six a week, Joey will show you the round, always be on time, now get cracking." Bullet picked up his bag full of papers and we jumped on our bikes and shot through. I was to take over the round the next day so I only had to follow Bullet and learn the ropes. I arrived a bit early the next day, good job I did, I had a bit of a problem, for when they slung thirteen dozen newspapers in the bag around my neck, my legs started to buckle and I could hardly walk let alone ride a bike. I struggled onto my bike and zigzagged down the street. It was about a couple of hundred yards to my first delivery and when I got there I was completely knackered. I asked the lady if I could leave half my papers at her place and she said "O K." It meant I had to do two trips and cover a lot of extra ground to get all my papers delivered. It was after dark and I was fair fucked by the time I got home that night. I was hoping no one had complained to the boss about their papers being delivered a bit late. No one did, so I kept doing my round in two trips. Friday came and the boss, not saying a word but looking at me in a disgruntled fashion, gave me a new shiny half crown. On the way home I thought most probably the old man wouldn't have any change, so I stopped at the first shop I came to and asked them to change my half crown for two separate shillings and two threepenny bits. I guess I couldn't trust my old man to give me the change. When I got in, he was sitting reading his paper, the first thing he said was "Did you get your pay" I said "Yep" and handed him the one and three pence. He said "Good lad," then he put his quart bottle in his jacket pocket, slipped it on and marched straight over to the pub. He wasn't a very talkative man, well, not to us anyway, although once, I do remember, he sat me on his knee and tried to teach me to speak Hindustani. I don't remember exactly how long I delivered papers for, but I think eventually, some miserable twat complained that I was late on the round and the boss sacked me, luckily, not before I'd saved up the twelve shillings and sixpence to buy the long trousered suit that I so dearly wanted. I drew the money out of the Post Office and went down town to the Thirty Bob Tailors. As I was looking through the rack of boys suits I noticed a salesman eyeing me up with an air of disgust. I think he was about to tell me to piss off, when to his surprise I said, "I'd like to buy the green suit on the rack." He said "You better try it on and led me over to a cubicle. It fitted perfectly. At last my skinny matchstick legs were covered up. It was Sunday and Bullet hardly recognized me in my new suit. He said, "Get a new pair of shoes, a decent hair cut and you'd look like a film star." I said "Yeah what with my penny basin hair cut and scabby face." I looked more like Moe of the three stooges. He laughed and then got a bit serious as he told me he'd sorted out another place to do over. It was the big cafeteria in the park and he'd eyed a skylight that he reckoned he could squeeze me through. I thought about the lovely feeling I'd got doing the cake shop, so I said, "Yeah O.K. lets go and have a look. We wandered through the park, past the bandstand, over to the cafeteria where he showed me the partly opened skylight and the railings that we would have to climb up to get onto the roof. I said "Looks easy, when do you think would be the best time. "He said, " I think Saturday night but I'll get back to you before then and let you know." I hadn't heard from Bullet by Saturday night, so thinking he'd changed his mind as it was pissing down I decided to go down and sneak into the Casino ice rink and watch the ice hockey games. In a way it was lucky that I did for the next morning I got one terrible shock. They told me that my best pal Bullet was dead. I couldn't believe it at first. They said that after he'd robbed the park cafeteria he'd slipped on the steep wet roof, fell down and impaled himself on the wrought iron railings. I thought, poor Joey. Although he was older than me he was still only thirteen and I shivered at the thought of him being hung up on those bloody railings. How long was he there for before someone came to help him. The more I thought about it, the more depressed I got. I tried to put it out of my mind, tried to think of other things, but I couldn't. Bullet was a great pal. I think he liked me a lot too, because we always thought the same and I used to keep him in stitches laughing. I was sure going to miss him, but I would never forget that snotty nosed face. Fortunately, when you're young, tragedies flow past you more easily ========================== CHAPTER 2. As soon as Fred was fourteen he left school. He buggered off to St Helens and got himself a job down the coalmines. That left only the old man and me in the house, which didn't give me much to look forward to. I really missed Fred, especially in the mornings, when we had to go to school, he used to get up first and light a few newspapers to warm the place up a bit. I hated getting up in the morning as I suffered with the cold so much. Maybe the winters were getting colder. To warm up I would dash around to Mr Gills sweet shop to get the old mans newspaper and sometimes, if the lady had to go to the back room to get the paper I would slip my hand over the glass case and pinch a bar of chocolate. Fred and I would munch into it on the way to school. A young girl started serving in Mr. Gill's shop and she always gave me a lovely big smile when I went in for the paper. They told me it was Mr. Gill's young daughter, and I became quite attracted to her. She was about the same age as me, about twelve or thirteen. Her name was Sheila and she was very slim and extremely pretty. Somewhere I'd picked up a sheep skin mask which I would wear to cover my scabby face. I spent a lot of time gazing at her through the shop window when she was serving people and now and then she would turn and give me a wink or a smile. I must have been growing up fast as before I met Shiela I wasn't the least bit interested in girls. She started delivering the newspapers down our road. I'd watch for her coming and open the door before she could put the paper through the letter box. Sometimes she would bring me a bar of chocolate and to my surprise, one evening she slipped a half crown into my hand with the newspaper. I didn't know what to say as I was so taken aback and I stuttered my thanks as she skipped off down the road. This gave me something to think about, or worry about. She must have taken that half crown from the till in the shop. I could sure use the money but I didn't want to get her into any trouble, so the next day I went into the shop I told her not to do it again. She just smiled, leaned over the counter and giving me a kiss said "Don't worry about it." What could I do? I used some of the money to buy extra food and the scurvy on my face started to clear up. I decided to buy Sheila a wristlet watch for her thirteenth birthday. I went into town on a Friday night and looked in the brightly-lit jewellers shops in London Road. I saw the lady's watch I wanted so I went in and pointed it out to the salesman. He said that would be three shillings and eleven pence, put it back in its case and wrapped it up. I had to think of a way to give Sheila her birthday present without her parents knowing. Her father kept a strict eye on her, I don't know why because at our age in those days, we didn't even know anything about sexual relationships. We virtually had no time together, but got a lot of enjoyment out of just seeing each other. I used to look forward all day at school to seeing her when she delivered the paper, so I decided that would be the best time to give her the birthday present that evening I'd wrapped it up in some tissue paper and stood waiting and peering through the dirty windows for her to come skipping down the road. I saw her come round the corner of our road and I jumped up to answer the door before she knocked. I opened the door. She looked lovely in her clean and neat school uniform. She attended a private school. I said "Hi" as she handed me the paper and I gave her the present. She said,"What's this." I said, "It's your birthday present for tomorrow." I felt a bit embarrassed as she unwrapped it. A look of surprise spread over her face when she opened the case. She said, "It's beautiful" and jumped up the step to give me a hug. Now I was really feeling embarrassed. I wasn't used to being hugged by anyone and the old man had just shouted from the back kitchen where he was having a cold wash down, "Shut the fucking front door." He hated anyone coming to the door. I shouted back "It's only the paper girl and gently pushed Sheila out, slamming the door behind me. It was getting dark as we walked down the road. I apologized for the old man's bad language and helped her to deliver the rest of her papers. I said, "What ever you do, don't let your dad see that watch." She said, " I'll try, it won't be easy. I'll only wear it at school and leave it in my locker. We finished delivering the papers and I walked her back to the shop. In the doorway she took hold of my hands and said "Don't forget, I'm your girlfriend now and I love you. She kissed me on the lips and I felt the same kind of high I felt when I was breaking into shops with Bullet. I could have stayed there for a while, but I saw her father come through the curtains into the shop so I scarpered. On the way home I thought what a lovely feeling to know that someone loves you. It was a completely new experience for me as there wasn't much love in our house In fact you could say, it was about as scarce as rocking horse droppings. I couldn't fathom what she could see in a gossie eyed, scurvy faced git like me as that's what Bullet used to call me. Maybe she'd fallen in love with my sheepskin mask. I've said before my old man was a hard man, a mean man, and a terrible swearing man but now, when I come to think about it, he must have also been a right randy old prick of a man too. He used to say to me every Thursday night. "I don't want to see you back in here before ten thirty tonight." I'd say "Right you are"and bugger off out to play. I didn't give it a lot of thought at the time but about half past eight when it was just starting to get dark I used to notice this dolled up blond lady meander along Farnsworth Street and turn into our road. She would stop at our front door, peer up and down the street and knock. The old man would open the door quickly and in she would go. I used to think at the time, she must be another insurance lady, but we already had an insurance lady, the very business type Miss Beaumont from the Pru calling once a week. I knew the old man used to moan when he had to give her a few coppers and she would tick it off in her book and leave as quickly as possible. It finally dawned on me a few years later, that this dolled up blonde lady must have been a prostitute. No wonder he told me not to come near the house till ten thirty. That was all right if the weather was warm, but to think that some nights I'd be sheltering in the pub doorway for a couple of hours in the freezing cold, waiting for someone to open the door to get a blast of warmth while he was enjoying himself, shagging the arse of some old bag from Lime street. I wish now that I had understood then what was going on, I would have had some great fun, banging on our front door every ten minutes and then hiding down the back entry. I Could have got Bullet, who was game for any thing, to shout through the letter box, "We know what you're doing, you dirty, filthy, lucky old bastard. He'd have gone bonkers. II don't know how any woman could spend time in my old man's bedroom. It was a right mess and I don't think anything was ever washed, or if he ever opened a window. All the plaster was hanging off the wall between our bedroom and his. This was because he used to turf his smelly boots at the wall if our Fred and I were making too much noise skylarking. He used to shout at us a couple of times to be quiet, but when the boots hit the wall, we knew that was the final warning and shut up. In school the music teacher was teaching us to make a flute out of bamboo, it was very interesting for me as I loved music, so I worked very hard at it and finished up with a lovely flute which I painted black and gold. The music teacher, Mr. Taylor, taught us quite a few songs and told us that he wanted to form a black and white minstrel group to play at the Christmas party. He said he would choose the ten best players in the class to form the group a couple of weeks before Christmas. I practiced every day for ages and when the time came for him to pick the group I sat nervously with my fingers crossed hoping I would get picked. I wasn't in the first five names he read out. I was his seventh choice and I was fair chuffed. Later he told us our dress for the Black and White minstrel group would be pyjamas. I thought, "Thats a problem." I didn't have any. Sid came to the rescue when I told him, he said. "Don't worry about it, you can borrow a pair of mine." I didn't think at the time but he was twice the size of me. The night of the of the Christmas break up party came and the music teacher painted our faces black. I put on the pajamas Sid had lent me and they were miles too big. I tried to roll the pyjamas legs and sleeves up as Mr. Taylor hurried us along. We had to cross the playing field to get from the classroom to the hall and, luck would have it, it was pissing down and I tripped up over the long pyjama legs. I arrived at the hall saturated and muddy. The hall was brightly lit and had been nicely decorated for Christmas.It was a large hall and it was chocka block with school kids and their parents. When it was time for our act go on, we marched up onto the stage in single file and bugger me, if I didn't trip up again and go arse over kite in those bleedin long pyjamas. I think the crowd thought it was part of the act and roared with laughter, which they did, every time I tried to pull up my pyjamas while I was trying to play the flute. I could feel my face growing redder by the minute as the music teacher, who was sitting in the front row, looking at me disdainfully as if to say, " wait until I get you back at school." I often wonder if an episode like that could have an effect on you in later life, as I could never play music in front of anyone without becoming nervous and making a right balls up of it. I sometimes used to wander round the back of our place to the end of Rolph Street and watch a few unemployed blokes playing ollies. This was like a grown UP's game of marbles, only the ollies were much larger and made of a kind of compressed chalk. I used to watch them, hoping they would ask me to play. One afternoon I was surprised to see a schoolboy playing with them and after a while he invited me to join them. He lent me a couple of ollies and we must have played very well as we won the game against two older men . After the game he told me his name was Sidney Codman and invited me over to his place. He only lived a couple of hundred yards from our house, up above a dairy in Farnswoth Street but I'd never seen him before. He led me through the back door of the dairy and there to my surprise were half a dozen Black and white cows, chained up in a byre waiting to be milked not the sort of thing you'd expect to see in the centre of Liverpool. Sydney made a pot of tea and we sat down and yacked for an hour or more, he told me he was only fourteen but he looked older to me. He was a helluva good-looking bloke with a beautiful set of teeth and nice smooth skin. He poured himself a second mug of tea and offered me another one. I said, " I'd rather have a mug of his fresh creamy milk."He said, " Help yourself, it's one thing we have plenty of." I didn't need telling twice. I drank two big mugs full and I could almost feel it doing me good. The old man wouldn't buy fresh milk. I suppose we were lucky to get the cheaper tinned connie onnie (sweetened condensed milk.) Sid pulled out a five packet of Woodbine cigarettes and offered me one. Although I didn't smoke I took one; we lit up and after a couple of drags I just about choked. He said, "Don't you smoke." I said gasping for breath and making for the outside toilet, "Not really." Unfortunately like a lot of folk in Liverpool I suffered badly from bronchitis so at least those couple of puffs helped me get rid of the phlegm. I used to knock about with Sid quite a lot. He taught me the finer points of playing Ollies and we often beat some of the good players around the neighbourhood. We played for a penny a game which would keep us in fags to which unfortunately, I was fast becoming addicted. After a few games we would always go back to his place in the dairy and I'd get into the creamy milk. I told him about Sheila from the paper shop. He eyed me up for a while, then he said, "You should do something about your appearance, like getting your friggin' hair cut properly." Someone had been having a go at cutting my hair and it was all steps and ladders. I took his advice, went down to a good barber in Kensington and paid fourpence for a nice trim. When I got back to Sid's he sat me down, smothered my hair with Brylcream, parted it down the left side, put a quiff just like his on the right side and said. "Look in the mirror, what do you think of that, Sheila will never know you." I must admit I did look lot better: better still if I closed my right eye, which I usually did if I was looking at anyone. By now I had turfed my glasses away as they were bent around my face. I had worn them since I was five, and they hurt me behind the ears. Anyway they didn't straighten my eye and the old man wasn't interested in buying me a new pair. . Without realizing it I was becoming addicted. In those days you could buy cigarettes called S.O.S. from slot machines for a penny. There were three in a packet and the shrewd buggers only put two matches in the packet which encouraged you to chain smoke two of the cigarettes. Sometimes our Fred would come back home for the week- end and I can remember begging him for a cigarette if I didn't have any money to buy some. The old man said he didn't mind us smoking, so long as we smoked a pipe like him. Could you imagine in those days a thirteen year old smoking a friggen' pipe Sid was a bit of a comedian. They bred a lot of them in Liverpool. He nicknamed Fred and me " I ope yer know" and "But" because he reckoned every sentence Fred spoke ended with the words, "I hope you know" and every sentence I spoke ended with the word "but." we certainly had a lot of laughs together. One evening I was gazing through the shop window at Sheila serving people when suddenly her father came through the curtain, leaped over the counter, opened the door and before I could move he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and booted me up the arse. He said "Now fuck off and don't let me see you around here again" giving me another one up the arse before he let me go. I flew home thinking, boy! was he mad, something must be up. Something was up all right. The next night I was waiting for Sheila to deliver the paper. It was almost dark and she hadn't arrived, so the old man said, "Go and pick up the paper." I ran round to the shop. To my surprise there were no lights on, the door was locked, the place was empty. What could have happened, I felt a bit dazed as I walked slowly back home thinking what the hell's going on. After a while it dawned on me that her father must have found out somehow that Sheila was pinching money from the till, or maybe he'd found out about the watch I'd bought her for her birthday. I thought, what other reason could there be for him to suddenly up shop and go without any one knowing. When I told Sid he said "Maybe they'll come back in a week or two." They didn't and I never ever saw Sheila again. I suppose, being only thirteen I didn't have the brains to know how to find them. It was September 1939 and things were beginning to move fast. In school one morning every one seemed to be very excited as the teachers started dishing out gas masks and we were all instructed to try them on. When I put mine on the horrible smell of rubber reminded me of the rubber mask they put on to give me anesthetic at the hospital when I was getting all my first teeth out. We had to gallop around the playground with them on and I was feeling quite sick. The excitement grew in the afternoon as the teachers explained to us that we had to be prepared to be evacuated, as there was a possibility of us going to war with Germany. They told us to go home and pack some clothes and toiletries to be ready to go any day. I thought that wouldn't be too hard, as I only had the clothes I stood up in and I didn't own a toothbrush. I rushed home to tell the old man when he came home from work. After I told him, he whined for a few minutes and I suppose he was thinking, you bugger, you'll be leaving school in a couple of months when you're fourteen and now you won't be here to start work and bring in a few bob. It worried me that he might be able to stop me being evacuated but on the other hand he might have been glad to see the back of me. The next morning I was running late for school and was relieved to see all the kids with their parents in the schoolyard talking to the teachers. The rumour was that we were to be evacuated that day to North Wales. All the kids had their small suit cases with them and I only had my gas mask but I felt as if I was going on a holiday. Eventually the buses came to take us away. Some of the mothers were hugging and kissing their kids and I thought it just as well the old man wasn't here. We all piled into the bus and I managed to get a seat up front by the driver. He started the motor. My heart skipped a beat and we were off with the parents waving madly, some with handkerchiefs to their faces as we sped off towards Edge Lane. By now it was lunch time and some of the mothers had thoughtfully packed lunches for their kids. I was lucky to be sitting next to a couple of them and they gave me some meat and mustard sandwiches. They were delicious. It was the first time I'd tasted mustard. Things were definitely looking up for me and I was glad to be getting away from Liverpool and the old man. It must have been an uneventful trip as all I remember was stopping in the small town of Wrexham and then on into the countryside. The sun was shining. There were sheep and cattle in the fields and to me everything looked clean and healthy. We finally arrived at our destination, a small Welsh village called Brynteg. The teacher shouted "All out and line up on the foot path." We piled out and the teacher marched us two abreast along the street. There were fields on one side of the street and on the other, a lovely row of two storey stone cottages with tiny stone fenced flower gardens in front. There were ladies who had come out of their cottages to welcome us, standing by their wrought iron gates. As we passed each cottage, two or three kids would be introduced to the lady of the house and then taken into their new home. Our new landlady's name was Mrs. Woodall. She was only about the same height as me but was quite chubby. We sat down in the kitchen and she made us a cup of tea. It was a dinky little cottage, kept lovely and clean. The other boy who was billeted with me was Leslie Woodward and he was about he same age as me. I'd never met him before. We were talking away in the kitchen when Mr. Woodhall, her husband came in. She said his name was Arthur. He said "Hello" and they started jabbering to each other in Welsh. This gave me a bit of a surprise as before I had only ever heard the Chinese speaking in a foreign language but later on I realized they always spoke in Welsh when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about, or they were discussing us. Arthur shot off to bed after he told us he worked down the Gresford coal mine on permanent night shift. He had a terrific Welsh accent I found at first difficult to understand. After a while their young son came home from school. His name was Glyn. He was only seven and seemed pleasantly surprised to see us. He showed us around the house, down the garden where they grew their own vegetables and back up to his bedroom where beds had been made up for Leslie and me to sleep. This looked too good to be true, even sheets on the beds. We went back down to the kitchen and the smell of dinner cooking made my mouth water. Mrs Woodhall told to us sit at the table and she'd put the dinner out. I think they called it Ponchmipe. It was a mixture of potatoes, turnips, carrots, in a thick brown gravy, boy; did it go down well. Mrs Woodhall said "Help yourselves." I did. I had a plate and a half and only just had room for the bottled fruit and cream we had for afters. Talk about feeling like Lord Muck from Turd Hall, as Marie used to say when we got stuck in to a feed she'd made at cookery lessons in school. We were dozing off on a sofa by the fire when Mrs. Woodhall said to Glyn "You better get off to bed, it's eight o'clock." I said, " I think I'll go too." She said, "Wait till I fill your hot water bottles." As I suffered with freezing cold feet I appreciated a hot water bottle. Back home I'd be lucky if the old man would let me have the steel plate out of the oven, wrapped in a Liverpool Echo as a foot warmer in bed. We all ran upstairs and I jumped in between the lovely clean sheets. It was so comfortable, that even though I was dead tired I didn't want to go to sleep. At last I was free from bed bugs and fleas I suppose the war with Germany, although I didn't realize it then, was the best thing that could have happened to me and possibly many other pour big city kids suffering from malnutrition Out in the country we were getting plenty of fresh air going on long walks with the teachers. Food had not yet been rationed and even when it was I'd be eating twice as much as I was getting in Liverpool, but I think my stomach had shriveled up a bit as I couldn't keep up with Leslie. On the other hand, our education had virtually come to a standstill. At our country school, they only had one lady teacher to each class to look after up to sixty locals and evacuee kids aged from five to thirteen. In the classroom they split them up into sections according to their age and did their best. Our teacher, who I think was an infant teacher said to me, "I can't teach you any more so I'll make you a monitor and you can help with the younger children" so I spent my time filling ink wells and sharpening pencils. It didn't bother me to help out as I was only waiting to leave school in a couple of months on my fourteenth birthday. I was talking to Mr. Woodhall one evening when he asked me what I was going to do when I left school. I said I wasn't sure. He asked me if I would like to start work down the pits, again I said I wasn't sure. He used to come home nice and clean as they had just installed showers at the coal mine where he worked, but some of the miners would come home black as the friggen ace of spades. I didn't think it was my cup of tea, but I told him I would like to go down and have a look. Mrs. Woodhall's father also lived with us, he was a a very quiet man who had a badly disfigured face from a birth defect and also suffered terrible stomach cramps. He used to worry me. Every week we would have to go with him to the local slag heap and spend all day in the freezing cold picking bits of coal. We'd take a hand-cart with us and sometimes on a good day we'd pick a full two hundred pound sack of wee nuggets for which we had to pay the man at the gate sixpence. By late afternoon I'd be so bleedin' cold I'd be feeling sick and we still had to push the hand cart a couple of miles home before dark. Leslie didn't last long. He got very home sick and one week end his mother and father came and took him back home to Liverpool. Fortunately that was one problem I never had. In those days I never felt homesick and my main worry was that the war would end and I would be sent back to Liverpool. Mrs. Woodhall didn't seem to mind Leslie going home, although she most probably missed the ten bob a week the government paid her to look after him. I don't think she liked him very much and used to complain to me about him always having his hand up his trousers playing with himself. Maybe he didn't know himself that he was doing it as he often went off into a bit of a trance. I remember one day we were talking about something or other and Mrs. Woodall gave me a great hug. I automatically pulled away from her. I don't know why I did but maybe it was embarrassment. Perhaps hugging is something you have to be brought up with and all I know is that it worried me at the time, and she never hugged me again. Although I hated the winter In Liverpool with its snow and ice, it seemed to be a lot better in the country. Mr. Woodhall made us a beaut toboggan, Glyn and I used to spend hours screaming down the hills of a local valley. We used to go on long walks and I actually began to enjoy the snow. On one walk we came across a large field of turnips. I whipped a couple of the largest ones I could see and humped them the all the way home thinking they'd make a good feed of Ponchmipe. When Mrs.Woodhall saw them she burst out laughing, and shaking her head said, "They're mangols you fool, farmers grow them for cattle food." I should have known as I'd had a bite of one and it was terribly bitter. Never mind, the intention was good. The weeks went by slowly to my fourteenth birthday and I was glad to leave school as I wasn't learning very much. A couple of days after I left, Mr. Wood hall took me to the coal mine to show me around. I was feeling a bit nervous when we got into the cage to go underground. The cage seemed to give way underneath us as we plunged down three-quarters of a mile in what seemed to be about three-quarters of a second. I think I left my stomach up top. The miners who worked an eight-hour shift were just about to have their twenty minute break when we reached the work level. They were a cheerful lot, waffling down thick sandwiches from their bait tins and gulping down quart bottles of cold tea, which looked like beer to me as they drank it without sugar or milk. It was a mucky place, even though it was nice and warm and the freezing weather up top didn't bother them. When we got home I told Mr. Woodhall that I didn't want to work underground, so he said he knew of a reservoir being built near Wrexham and we could try there the next day. We caught the workers' bus to the reservoir early the following morning and talked to the boss at the site office. He said he could give me a job as a can lad making tea and running errands for a gang of pipe layers and labourers. The pay would be five pence an hour and I would also get tips from the gang if I looked after them well. I said " O.K. when can I start?" He said the next day and gave me some free bus tickets. I got up early the next morning and Mrs. Woodhall put some jam sandwiches and tea and sugar in a bait tin for me. There was about six inches of snow on the ground and it was freezing as I walked down the road to catch the bus. It took about three-quarters of an hour to get to the site where I was introduced to the ganger and the men. There were about twenty-five blokes in the gang and the ganger, a chap named Jack Basanko took me aside and explained what I had to do. My first job he said was to collect some wood and light a fire near the tent where the men had their breaks, then go down to the nearest farm house and ask for a couple of buckets of water. This wasn't as easy as it sounds, with up to a foot of snow on the ground, it was hard to find enough wood to keep a fire going. Luckily it was only about a quarter of a mile to the nearest farm from where I would pump up my two buckets of water from the well. Having to do this three times a day kept me flat out as I used to get worried if I didn't have the water boiling on time. About half of the gang I looked after were Irish men recruited from Southern Ireland and they used to give me a bit of a hard time. One day I had a bit of an argument with one of them who got onto me because the water wasn't quite boiling. I called him a silly bastard and in a flash he just picked me up and turfed me straight into a fuckin' gorse hedge. Mind you, it stopped me swearing for a day or two. Even though there was a war on and food was strictly rationed, they'd get me to buy meat for them from the local farmers and then they used to half cook large steaks on their long handled shovels over the fire. I would watch them with envy as I ate my jam sandwiches in the tent and they would sit there laughing and joking with blood from the steaks running down their faces. The other half of the gang were locals and I got on quite well with them, in fact a couple of them who reckoned I looked underfed, used to share some of their delicious meat and mustard sandwiches with me. We got paid on a Thursday and I was looking forward to my first pay packet. We were putting in about sixty hours a week and for that I received just over a quid. After a few weeks Jack Basanko the Ganger found out that not all the gang were giving me a tip for all the running around I did for them, so he decided to collect the tips for me. That brought my wages up to about thirty shillings a week. I gave it all to Mrs. Wood hall and she would give me two shillings pocket money for myself. I got a bit of a shock one morning when I went down to the farm for water. The miserable prick of a farmer had taken the handle off the pump so I couldn't pump up any water. He was out in the fields when I asked him what the trouble was. He just told me to mind my own business and to bugger off. I never did find out what his problem was, but it meant I had to walk another mile and a half to the next farm to look for water. This farmer was a kindly old codger who lent me a yoke that fitted across my shoulders to make it easier to carry the two steel buckets of water. He couldn't believe what his neighbour had done and said, that was the sort of thing they did in France in the first world war to stop the Germans getting any water. He also pointed out a stock water trough on the hill that was a bit closer to our camp. I hurried up the the hill, filled the buckets and struggled back, spilling about a third of it on the way. It had taken me well over an hour on that trip and I was absolutely knackered by the time I got back to the tent. Luckily it was mid winter and the men didn't drink much cold water. There was just enough left to make the tea and wash up. I got home one evening and to my surprise my brother Fred had arrived out of the blue. He said he'd given up his job down the pit at Rainhill and was staying with the old man in Liverpool while he was looking for a job. He told me the old man had asked him if he had any money and when he took out the only five bob he had in his pocket the old man grabbed it off him. Fred said he'd given the old man a thump, got his five bob back and buggered off. He was much gamer than me for even though the old man was seventy I wouldn't have had him on. Fred said he wasn't going back to Liverpool so Mrs. Woodhall asked him if he would like to board with us. He said he would and that he'd go the next day for a job at the pit. He was lucky Leslie Woodward had gone home which left an empty bed in my room. Glyn was sound asleep when we went up so we yacked for a couple of hours about the old man, our Eric, who was still with my Aunt Bertha, our Marie who was still doing the markets with her immitation jewellry, our cousins Alf and Maud and what we'd all been up to over the last few months. He had me in stitches about his battle with the old man over the five bob. I suppose we could have talked all night but Mrs Woodhall came up to bed and told us to be quiet Jack Basanko, my ganger wasn't very happy when he found out I was paying all my earnings to my landlady and only getting two bob pocket money, so he eventually persuaded me to leave Mrs. Woodhall's and go and board where he was staying in Wrexham. I suppose I was a bit thoughtless at the time because, as I heard later from Fred, when I left, Mrs. Woodhall had turfed him out too. So he was totally pissed off with me. When I left Brynteg I took my belongings in a bag to work and Jack said he'd fixed it up with his landlady for me to stay there. He was a nice chap and seemed genuinely interested in my welfare. When we got to Wrexham which was a lot closer to work than Brynteg and only a few minutes to walk from the centre of town to the house where he boarded, we met his landlady, a Mrs Virgo, in the front garden. She was a very slim lady about thirty and she had two young daughters. I remember her well because her full name was Veronica Valerie Virgo, three V"s for victory which every one was praying for against Germany. In a way I was hoping the war wouldn't end too soon as it could give me a better chance of getting to sea, as I still dreamed of going to America. Mrs. Virgo showed me through the house, a two storey terraced house with a third story attic which I was to share with Jack. She said my board would be twenty- three shillings a week and she would buy my clothes. I thought that was fair enough, as it would leave me with around seven bob a week in my pocket. Jack told me she had recently lost her husband at Dunkirk and that was the reason she was taking in lodgers. Besides Jack and me there were two other lodgers. a couple of bus drivers from South Wales. They were a right pair of characters with very strong Welsh accents and they teased me all the time, mostly about girls. They taught me to play Monopoly and I used to piss them off properly when I kept beating them. I went to bed early one night and woke up about midnight to find Jack standing on a chest of drawers peering out of our tiny attic window. He said, "Come and have a look." I scrambled out of bed and climbed up beside him. Looking out the window, I could see in the distance the whole sky was a red glow. Half asleep I said, "What is it"? He said, "Listen" I could only just hear an aeroplane engine. He said, " That's a fully loaded German bomber and they're hammering hell out of Liverpool, it looks like the whole city is on fire." We found out later it was the whole docks that were ablaze. They couldn't put it out and the bombers had an easy target to find every night. Jack said, "You're lucky you were evacuated and I thought, "In more ways than one." I heard from Fred later that all through the heavy bombing with everyone dashing to the air raid shelters, the old man slept through it all. It reminded me of a time when at work the old man fell against an emery wheel he was using. It gouged a large piece out of the back of his hand. When he came home he took to it with a scrubbing brush. I remember my mother fainted and I felt sick, still do if I think about it. He sure was a hard man. The name of the company Jack and I worked for that was building the reservoir was Holland, Hannan, and Cubitts. It was a large company and Jack told me they had just got the contract to build a huge ammunition factory a couple of miles down the road. He said as soon as the reservoir was finished we would start building the new factory which would take about two years. I got pally with a few of the other can lads and they said if I could get cleaned up by four o'clock, I could join them playing cards in the old washhouse of a local farm. When I got there they were playing a game called three-card brag. It was a relatively easy game to learn and I soon picked it up. I quite enjoyed playing and the time passed quickly to the knocking off whistle. It was my introduction to gambling and unfortunately, it soon became a habit. Jack told me that as soon as I reached my fifteenth birthday in a couple of weeks he could employ me as a labourer, and my wages would go up to sevenpence an hour. I didn't think I could keep up with the other Irish labourers as I only weighed about five and a half stone and I was nowhere near as strong as them, but I was determined to give it a go. Before I had a chance to start labouring for Jack, we had a bit of bad luck. Late one afternoon when I was playing cards with a couple of the other can lads, a smartly dressed chap suddenly appeared in the doorway. He said "Who are you lot working for?" We got such a shock nobody answered. He asked again,, "Who do you work for"? One of the more cheeky lads said slowly "Er Holland. er Hannan. and that other bastard." The well dressed chap glared at us and said "Is that so, well I happen to be that other bastard You know you're not allowed to gamble on the job so get down to the site office and pick up your pay and your cards. So that was it. We were sacked. As if that wasn't enough to worry about, when I told Mrs. Virgo I'd been sacked, she said "I've also got some bad news for you. I just received a letter from your aunt Bertha in Liverpool to say that your Father has died. She seemed quite upset and gave me a bit of a hug. Funny enough, that news didn't seem to worry me as much as losing my job. In fact I smiled to myself as I thought of the time the old man had said to me, " If I don't get my pint of beer every day I'll die." I thought, he must have missed his pint that day. Nobody asked me if I wanted to go back to Liverpool for the funeral and it didn't bother me very much. Maybe it was just as well. They buried him in a pauper's grave. I'd been out of work for over a week and didn't realize it then, that I was falling into that black depressive state I'd had to battle with many times during my life. Inwardly I would cry myself to sleep every night and for the life of me I couldn't drag myself out of bed in the mornings. All my thoughts seemed to be negative. It was many years later that I realized these black periods didn't last for ever, but at the time I had to battle with the constant thoughts of doing myself in. I never told Jack how I was feeling, but I think he picked something was wrong. He suggested I try for a job down at the new munitions factory they were building at Five Fords, which was several miles from Wrexham. I was feeling a bit better the next morning as I got up early to catch the bus. Jack had given me a tot of rum in a glass of milk the night before as I had a bit of a cold. It tasted awful but I forced it down and I slept much better. It was hard to believe how big this factory was going to be. They told me it was going to have a perimeter of twenty five miles and the only job they could offer me at the moment was carting drums of diesel by horse and cart to all the bulldozers and diggers on the site. I didn't tell them that I was afraid of horses as I needed the money to pay my board. They told me I could start the next day. The pay was sixpence an hour and with overtime I could put in eighty four hours a week. The next morning I got a lift off a dumper driver down to the farm where I was to pick up the carthorse. The farmer took me over to the stable and showed me how to gear him up. He was a massive shire-horse called Sam. I was struggling to get his gear on when the bugger moved and squashed me up against the stable wall. I yelled out and the farmer rushed in and poked Sam up the arse to get him off me. He said "Sam's a very gentle horse but you have to be very stern with him, otherwise he'll walk all over you". We finally got him geared up and the farmer said, "Right, I'll give you a leg up and you can be off." He legged me up and I started off nervously the two miles back to the camp. I'd never ridden a horse before, not even a donkey on the New Brighton sands that the old dears were coaxed to ride and have their photos taken on. I was surprised at how lovely and warm he was. I tucked my cold hands under his collar as he walked quietly along the dirt road. We weren't far from the camp and were just crossing a railway line when a shunting engine's hooter blew. I think the stupid prick of a driver did it on purpose. Anyway Sam with his ears pricked and his eyeballs half out was off like a hairy dog after a rabbit. I got a terrible shock but I managed to hang on to the reins screaming my head off for him to stop. "Whoa you fuckin idiot" I screamed holding on for dear life as first one of my wellies dropped off followed by the other. I was not only riding bareback but also bare footed. I was using all my strength pulling on the reins but Sam wasn't taking a blind bit of notice and we were almost at the camp office before he finally slowed down and stopped, snorting and farting ninety to the dozen. I was shaking all over as I slipped off his back. Shit! was he big, sweating like a pig and as fat as one. I had a feeling he knew I was terrified of him and he wasn't going to make my new job any easier. I looked back to see if I could spot my wellies after I'd tied Sam up to a gate post. I found them about half a mile down the track and felt a bit embarrassed as I noticed the engine drivers laughing. I slipped my wellies on and hurried back. I didn't feel like getting back up on Sam and I didn't trust him to stand still while I hopped on from a fence post. Even walking him was dicey as he could step on you with his bleedin' big feet. I suppose I was lucky he didn't bite. Getting him into the cart was a comedy act in itself. I tied Sam up to a fence post, then I picked up one of the shafts of the heavy two wheeled cart and struggled to move it over to him. A couple of labourers across the road were leaning on their shovels watching my antics. One of them shouted, "Leave the bloody cart where it is and back the horse into it." Shouting back I said, "Why don't you give us a hand." They looked at each other, dropped their shovels and came across. In a couple of minutes they had Sam safely in the shafts and all geared up. I thanked them, jumped up on the cart, grabbed the reins and was off up the road to the diesel depot. As I was running a bit late I tried to get Sam to speed up a bit by giving him a couple of belts across the arse with the end of the reins. He answered me with the loudest, longest fart I'd ever heard. He just about blew me off the cart, and the smell-- well let's say, two whiffs of that and you were greedy. I could imagine Sam thinking to himself, I've got a right one here, a complete friggen idiot. It was morning tea-time when I arrived at the diesel depot. They gave me a cup of tea and then loaded five forty four-gallon drums on to the cart. The foreman gave me a rough idea of where I'd find the machines so I started off feeling quite pleased with myself. After a couple of miles I was getting a bit concerned when I suddenly heard a machine working before I could even see it. I urged Sam up over a hill and there it was, my first delivery, a big R.B.10 excavator. The driver saw us, gave us a wave and stopped working. He jumped out and we yacked for a few minutes while I fitted the pump in a drum and topped up his tank. He seemed to notice how interested I was in his machine and asked me if I 'd like to learn to drive one. When I said I would, he legged me up into the cab and started to show me how all the levers worked. I was so interested and amazed at the accurate type of work he could do with such a big machine I didn't realize I was taking up his lunch-time. He said he didn't mind and would let me have go at driving on my next delivery in a few days. Sam was starting to get restless. I think he knew it was lunch time so I slipped on his nose bag of oats and sat down to eat my sandwiches. I managed to get three more deliveries that afternoon, two to bulldozers and one to another digger. They were right when they told me the site had a twenty-five mile perimeter and we'd only covered about half of it. I was glad to get back to the site office where I was to leave the cart. I think Sam was too. As soon as I unhitched him he seemed to know he was on his way home and when I jumped on his back from the wheel of the cart,he moved off at a fast pace. I waved as we passed the steam engine drivers hoping they wouldn't blow their friggen hooter and frighten the life out of Sam. They didn't and we arrived back at the farm safely. I was giving Sam a drink of water at the trough when the farmer came out. He shouted, "How did it go?" I said, "Not too bad really, but I wish you'd told me he was frightened of trains. "Yeah I know" he said, "I should have told you, but you looked worried enough as it was. He's always been a bit timid crossing railway lines." I led Sam over to the stable to give him a feed of oats. As I left I slapped him on the arse and said, "See you tomorrow Sam." He stopped eating, turned his head, as if to say, "If I never see you again, it'll be too soon," and he dropped his guts as I walked out the door. I'm sure he got some enjoyment out of answering me with a loud fart. It was late and I was too tired when I got home, even to go to the pictures. I told Jack and Mrs. Virgo over dinner about my new job and they had a good laugh. Jack said his job at the reservoir would be finished in a few weeks and he'd be moving down to where I worked, so if I still wanted a job with him as a labourer at nine pence an hour, he could fix it up. What I really would have liked was a trade apprenticeship as a joiner or carpenter, but apprentices were only paid seven shillings and sixpence a week so that was out of the question as my board was twenty-three shillings. After a couple of months I became quite attached to Sam. He was a dapple grey in colour and the farmer said he was an eight year old gelding. He was a great worker. He'd pull that heavy cart loaded with drums of diesel up hill and down dale seven days a week without as much as a grunt. I used to go hungry some days as he loved my jam sandwiches. The only problem with the job was the diesel. I started to reek of it, as it seemd to penetrate all my clothes and my skin. Even my wellies started to shrivel up and fall apart. After a lot of thought I decided to give it up and try a job at labouring, also the threepence an hour extra meant I could save up a bit. I"d talked to the boss about starting work as a labourer and he said that would be O.K seeing that I'd turned fifteen, but I would have to wait till he could find a replacement for me. That took him about a month and I was pleased when he told me I could start labouring the following Monday. I remember riding Sam back to the farm on my last day, thinking, would he miss me. I know he'd miss my jam sandwiches and I'd miss warming my hands and sometimes my feet on his broad back when it was extremely cold. In the stable I gave him an extra half bucket of oats and said, "I'll see you at the site from time to time Sam" giving him the usual slap on his arse. He answered me with the only way he knew, a loud fart. The first few weeks labouring went pretty good. We were digging foundation trenches for the factory buildings. I became a bit of a dab hand with the pick and shovel learning as much as I could from the Irish navvies. After a couple of months the ganger was talking to me one day and he asked me what pay rate I was on. I told him I was on nine pence an hour, he said " You're a good worker and I'm going to try to get you on the full labourer's rate" which at that time was one shilling and sixpence an hour, twice the rate I was getting. Sure enough, when I opened my pay packet a few weeks later, to my surprise there was nearly six quid in it. I was really chuffed and couldn't wait to get home and tell Jack and my landlady. We were working long hours and seven days a week and I found it more difficult to keep up with the work. I managed O.K on the pick and shovel but then we started unloading train loads of bricks and cement, each wagon holding seven ton of bricks. As soon as we emptied one, they'd shunt another one up. At the end of each day I was absolutely stuffed and my finger tips were bleeding. For some reason my hands wouldn't harden up. One Irish navvy told me to piss on them every day which I tried, but that didn't help. I think the snot-gobbling prick was having me on. Jack made me a pair of slip on hand protectors out of an old truck tube. They were the story and my hands soon started to heal up. I don't know if I was falling into another depressive state or what but it began with me taking days off. As we got double time for Sunday I started by taking Monday off. It didn't seem to make that much difference to my wages. I was managing alright, but then I started taking Thursday off and I still seemed to manage O.k. The Ganger who had got me the full rate told me the bosses were not happy about the time I was taking off, especially working Sunday for double time and taking Monday off. He warned me to look out. It seemed the problem of not being able to sleep at night and not being able to get up in the morning was with me again. On the days I didn't go into work I used to go into Wrexham where one day I was attracted to the loud music being played from a new amusement arcade, where they had an American Wurlister juke box, which I couldn't resist playing. My favourite record then was Joe Loss's Woodchoppers Ball. Listening to music always made me feel better, but in those days our landlady would only let us have the radio on to listen to the news. Nobody knew why, maybe she thought it would wear out. By this time I was down to working only three days a week. Jack wasn't very happy with me and told me I could lose my job if I didn't buck my ideas up. He was a bit of a union man and said they were fighting for a five day week, not a five day week-end. Anyway, the way I felt, I just didn't care. The job was too heavy for me and I hated it. I even regretted giving up my job with Sam and the diesel cart. As well as being attracted to the juke-box in the amusement arcade I also started playing their money machines. One machine which I played nearly every time I was there developed a fault one night and paid out every penny that was in it which that was about fifteen shillings. I called the white-coated attendant over and he opened the machine up and said the paying out mechanism was jammed with a bent penny which let it pay out all the coins. I thought, that was nice of him to tell me. Now I knew how to empty the machine. A few more weeks after Jack had told me I'd be sacked from my labouring job if I didn't pull my finger out, I was. In a way I was pleased, working ten hours a day seven days a week was no joke. I just wasn't big enough or strong enough to keep up with those tough Irish pick and shovel merchants. What was funny though, was after I'd emptied the slot machine in the amusement arcade half a dozen times with pennies I'd bent slightly in a vice, the boss, a gangster-looking wide boy named Ted put a picture above the machine. This was of a wounded soldier lying in bed covered in bandages from head to foot, with a sign saying, "The proceeds of this machine will be donated to our brave wounded soldiers in hospital." I thought, This bugger's trying to get at me." I ignored the sign and kept emptying the machine a couple of times a week when the money change attendants were out of sight. It was surprising the boss didn't ban me from the arcade, although he had no proof it was me inserting a bent coin in the machine and slipping the handle. Instead, to my surprise he came over to me one evening and said, "Would you like to work here as a change attendant." I said, "I sure would." He said, "Go behind the bar and get a white coat on." I couldn't believe my good luck and didn't even ask him what the wages were. I knew the hours of work, if you could call it work, were six to ten thirty during the week and two to eleven on a Saturday. Behind the bar his wife sorted me out a white coat, filled the pockets with a quid's worth of pennies and told me my wages would a shilling an hour. I thought, what a job, being paid to listen to the latest music, while supplying change to the people playing the gambling machines (for amusement only of course.) Although the wages were nowhere near what I earned as a labourer I seemed to manage all right. A few weeks later Ted the boss, asked if I would like to do the job of fire watching during the night. I said I would and he showed me an office on the roof which he said I would share with other fire watchers. Besides a table and chairs, it even had stretcher type beds if you felt like a nap. The other fire watchers didn't seem to worry too much about sleep as they played cards most of the night. Naturally I joined them but more often than not, I lost the four bob wages I received for the night's work. I thought the boss was wasting his money paying us for fire watching as the nearest bombing was thirty miles away in Liverpool. After a couple of months the boss used to let me open up the arcade on a Saturday afternoon and I used to put the juke box on playing Joe Loss's 'In The Mood,' as loud as it would go. It was amazing how that record drew the people in. The place would be chocka in about fifteen minutes, then the police would come in and complain the music was too loud so I'd turn it down. By then the place was full. About that time the boss also promoted me to a key job, that meant I not only walked around with my pockets full of coins but I also had a bloody great bunch of keys round my neck so I could open any machines that were faulty. The boss must have thought I was trustworthy to give me that job as the temptation was there to take some money from the machines. Sometimes American service men would drop in from the pub across the road and quite often they'd put two bob pieces or half crowns into the machines instead of pennies saying they didn't understand our currency. I didn't discourage them and would retrieve these coins when they left. The Yanks favourite machine was the punch ball and they'd spend an hour or more belting hell out of it. Any coin would work it. That came to an abrupt end when one of the Yanks tapped the punchball aside as his mate punched at it. He missed and put his fist straight through the plate glass of the indicator which shattered. They carted him off to hospital and the boss banned them for a couple of weeks. The Yankee service men always seemed to have plenty of money and were extremely generous. One night I asked a group of them for a cigarette and finished up with two packets of Lucky Strike. I was attracted to a lovely looking girl who used to come into the arcade and play the machines. She had curly blonde hair and a gorgeous figure with painted legs. In fact all the lads were attracted to her and would hover around her in case she wanted change. One evening, while I was talking to her and giving her change I noticed her hands were unusually hard and rough with long hacks on her fingers. Somehow it didn't tally, her being so beautiful and when I mentioned it, she told me she worked in a fish factory and all the girls hands were like that. I sometimes wonder now, did we think in those days, that only the rich wore gloves. This amusement arcade job was too good to last, and it didn't. I think the noise complaints, not to mention the gambling, was too much for the police so they closed it down. The boss did offer me another job. He also owned a fair that moved around the country quite a bit and he wanted me to collect the money on some of the high speed roundabouts. I don't know why I didn't take that job as it would have been a good experience, but they were a rough crew. Maybe it was because I'd started to knock about with my landlady's younger sister. Her name was Myra. She was a very attractive girl with long dark hair. My landlady had asked me to take Myra to the pictures one evening and we enjoyed it so much we started going twice a week. At the time she was seventeen. I'd just turned sixteen but some how she seemed to me to be much older. Anyway it was nice to have someone to go to the pictures with as I used to get quite lonely. I hadn't saved much money from my previous job and I was worried about paying my board. A young lad named Jeff who had worked with me at the amusement arcade said he was going to hitch hike to Chester to look for work and asked me if I'd go along. I said, "O.K" and the next day we buggered off. Chester was about eleven miles from where we lived and we didn't get a bleeding lift till we were almost there. The old dear who gave us the lift dropped us off in the centre of town. I thanked her and we moved off. We were feeling a bit tired and hungry. Jeff who didn't have any friggen money, as usual, suggested we nick a couple of bars of chocolate from Woolies before they closed. We just made it and managed to get three bars of nutty chocolate as they were closing. We wolfed it down as we strolled along the main street, looking in the shop windows. We passed a couple of coppers who eyed us suspiciously, possibly making a mental note. Farther on I looked back guiltily to see if they were following us. They weren't and we moved on looking for the railway station where we hoped to kip in the waiting room for the night. We found the station and wandered into the refreshment rooms to see if anyone had left sandwiches or cakes on the tables. Jeff , who wasn't very backward at coming forward asked the lady behind the counter if she would give us a cup of coffee and we would clear the tables and help her with the dishes. She said, "All right," poured us a cup of coffee each and gave us a few sandwiches on a plate. I'm not sure, but I don't think I'd ever drunk black coffee before. It was ghastly, but I was thirsty and forced it down. It was years later before I tried it again. I said to Jeff, "You were a cheeky prick asking the lady for that coffee," He laughed saying. " If you don't ask, you don't get." When the refreshment rooms closed we thanked the lady and wandered into the dimly lit waiting room. It had a table and a couple of long forms for seating. On the table there were some magazines but the light wasn't good enough for reading so we talked for an hour or more, then, as there wasn't a soul about, we stretched out on the wooden forms and nodded off. Sleeping in railway stations is not the sort of thing you'd want to make a habit of. It was uncomfortable to say the least and I was glad when it was light enough to get up to exercise my aching bones. We shagged about most of the day, spending some time in the labour exchange, but they could only offer us the same labouring jobs as we could get back in Wrexham. I still had a few bob in my pocket so we decided to get a feed and head off back again. We were lucky to get a lift about half an hour after we started and we were dropped off about four miles out in the country. I loved the countryside and quite enjoyed hitch hiking. Everything was fresh and green. We skylarked as we walked along the road, waving down any cars that came our way, fucking and blinding them if they didn't stop and killing ourselves laughing at the things we shouted after them. Jeff would shout, "Stop you snotgobbling bastard" and I would shout, "Alright don't stop you flounder faced fuckdog." Good job they couldn't hear us. Jeff was a Londoner and we seemed to compliment one another with our comical antics. We plodded on for a few miles but nobody seemed interested in giving us a lift. It was beginning to get dark so we started to walk a bit faster to keep warm. About a mile further down the road Jeff spotted a lit up farm house , and a couple of hay stacks in a nearby field. He said he doubted if we'd get another lift now it was dark and suggested we doss down for the night in one of the haystacks. We couldn't get through the gorse fence near the stacks so we carried on down the road to a gate and hopped over. We climbed on to the top of the haystack and started to dig ourselves in. The colder it got, the further we dug in. It was reasonably warm and comfortable once we got settled down and I must have nodded off as Jeff was yacking away at me. The first time I woke up I was in a bit of a sweat and itching all over. There must have been mites or something in the haystack that was irritating my skin and scratching only seemed to make it worse. Jeff was snoring his head off, it was still dark and I didn't have a clue what time it was so I must have dropped off again. The next time I woke it was just starting to get light and I called to Jeff to get up. We slipped down off the haystack and brushed all the bits off each other. He asked me if I had a comb and said he felt as if he'd been dragged through a gorse hedge backwards. I agreed that's how he looked. We noticed an orchard not far from the farm house so we decided to have a gander. We squeezed through a trimmed poplar hedge and tasted a couple of windfall apples which were lovely and sweet so we filled our pockets. There were also a couple of pear trees so I grabbed a few of them and stuffed them in my jersey. We didn't think any one had seen us as we made our way back onto the road. Apples don't make a very good breakfast on a freezing cold morning, but I suppose they were better than nothing. The sun came up and lifted our spirits no end. Had I been born in early times I'm sure I would have been a devout sun worshipper. We started waving down the odd car that came along. Eventually one stopped and I dropped a couple of pears as we ran towards it. Who said nobody had seen us in the orchard. It was a bleeding police car and two scuffers got out. They started to question us, "Who were we, where were we going, where did we get the apples." I told them we'd been to Chester looking for work and we were hitch hiking back to Wrexham. Jeff said we'd nicked the fruit from an orchard down the road and that we were hungry. They bundled us into the back of the car and sped off in the direction we were going. It turned out the farmer had seen us in the orchard and rung the police. Jeff muttered something like "big deal" and the cop told us to be quiet. In no time it seemed we arrived at the Wrexham police station. They took us inside and started to question us again, "Where did we come from. Did we have any relations. Where did they live." I told them I had an aunt in Liverpool and Jeff said he had a father in London. After a while they gave us a cup of tea and some sandwiches. We had to hang about there for a couple of hours while they decided what to do with us. In the end they said if I was prepared to go and live with my aunt in Liverpool and Jeff with his father in London, they wouldn't lay any charges against us. We reluctantly agreed and the next day after saying goodbye to my landlady, Jack and Myra, I buggered off back to Liverpool. My aunt Bertha lived in a road off Kensington and as I walked up there from the station I was amazed to see the amount of damage that the German bombers had done. All the houses in one road I'd passed had been completely flattened, gas mains had burst and with the help of hundreds of incendiary bombs many properties were burnt to the ground. My aunt Bertha who had lost her husband in the first world war, was still looking after my younger brother Eric who was still at school. She also had her son Alf and daughter Maud staying with her. One thing I remember most about that time was that my aunt was a fantastic cook and her Sunday roast dinners, even though food was strictly rationed, had my mouth watering long before it was served. She certainly did a great job looking after us. I was keen to get a job so I could pay her for my keep but what jobs I applied for I didn't get. They just referred me to the labour exchange . If I thought the blokes working at the fair grounds were a rough lot, they were angels compared to some of the ones I saw at the Liverpool labour exchange. I thought I had a foul mouth but I never knowingly swore at, or in front of women but in the dole queues the women were as bad, if not worse than the men. I saw one guy jump a few places in the dole queue and didn't those women give him arseholes. They called him all the bastards under the sun. I must say he stood up for himself and gave them as good as he got. The language was atrocious, I'd never met such hard people. It got to the stage where I was frightened to look at anyone in case they took offence and had a go at me, especially the women. Unfortunately, because of the war and being over sixteen, you couldn't pick and choose your jobs. You had to go where you were directed and of course I was directed to one of the worst fucking jobs in the whole of Lancashire, the poxy Garston bottle company. I doubt if anyone would have worked there unless they were directed. The company manufactured bottles and they didn't recognize unions so they could treat you like shit, which they often did. I'd have to take two tramcars to get to work, picking one up about a mile from home at Moss street to Aigburth Vale and then transferring to another one to get to Garston which was a very industrialized area. I still had another mile walk past the stinking Bobbin works and Bryant and May's match factory to get to the bottle works. Of course it was shift work. They worked three eight- hour shifts seven days a week. I was employed as a "Taker in" which meant picking up the white hot bottles as they came out of the moulds and transferring them to a slow moving conveyer machine which cooled them down over a couple of hours. The heat of the place was exhausting, so much so that we only worked half an hour on and half an hour off. The night shift was worse because of the blackout and not being allowed to open any windows. During the half hour on I'd drink about a quart bottle of water as the sweat poured out of me. I remember one night, it was extra hot and one scaley bastard of a practical joker had pissed in one of the bottles of water that we kept in a line on windowsill. The poor bugger who'd just finished his half- hour on was so thirsty he swigged most of it down before he realized what it was. The culprits were laughing their silly heads off while their mate was looking a bit green around the gills. Some people certainly had a queer sense of humour and from then on I always did a colour check first . Thinking back on it now, it amazes me what a firm that didn't recognize unions could get away with. I was twenty minutes late one day, through no fault of my own and they suspended me for three days and also docked a quid out of my wages, saying they'd repay it to me if I wasn't late for the next two months. It didn't take me long to realize why they called the bottle works a scab firm. Changing shifts every week was a bit of a hassle. They called it the quick change over. Say you were on the night shift, eleven o'clock at night till seven o'clock in the morning, you would have to be back at work by three in the afternoon for the evening shift. By the time you spent three hours travelling and getting a meal it didn't give you much time for sleep. After a few months at this job, I became deeply depressed with constant thoughts of doing away with myself. It got to the stage where I would be waiting at the tram stop about ten o'clock at night and the half empty tram would come but I couldn't make the effort to get on it, even though I knew that the chap I was to relieve might have to work a double shift. Off the tram would go and I would wander home with some feeble excuse for not getting to work. Very little, if anything was known about mental depression in those days. I didn't even know myself that I was suffering from bouts of it and it was many years later that I was diagnosed as a smiling depressive, outwardly always laughing and joking, but inwardly always crying. To try and snap out of it I went into town to volunteer for the Royal Navy but being only sixteen and a half they told me to come back in another year. Then someone suggested that I try the Merchant Navy, so the next day I went down to the M.N. pool in the city. I couldn't believe what they told me. They said they'd be quite happy for me to join the M.N. but I would have to produce some evidence of my previous experience at sea. I told them I'd never been to sea, only across the friggen Mersey a few times on the ferry. They said sorry, but we can't get you a job on a merchant ship without previous sea experience. I thought, how the friggen hell does anyone ever get away to sea? It was not long after that, I started to get concerned about my physical health as most long term bottle machine operators in the machine pits said they didn't think they would pass a medical for the armed services, what with the heat and fumes from continuously swabbing the red hot moulds with oil. To me they didn't look too bad considering some of them had spent over ten years in that unhealthy occupation and to think their job would be a promotion from my job as a "Taker In." Like an idiot I was taken in alright, by the joker in the labour exchange who said I would enjoy working in, as he put it, a glass factory. My idea of a factory was a nice clean, spacious, well-lit building with a healthy atmosphere. I'd worked for a while at the Brymbo steel works just after I left school and thought that was a hot unhealthy job, but this one was worse. Anyway I only had to keep fit for a few more months till I was seventeen, then I could join the Navy and hopefully see the world, or better still, jump ship in America. My cousin Alf, who was about three years older than me had been trained as a watchmaker and had a good little business in a shop in Hall lane, close to where we lived. He was a hell of a good dancer and used to enter all the dancing competitions with his girlfriend. Knowing how much I loved modern music he reckoned that I should learn to dance and invited me one evening to go to dancing practice with them. The music was great, but I didn't realize how shy I was, until eventually Alf's girlfriend coaxed me onto the floor. Although I was quite light on my feet and seemed to be doing things right, I felt terribly embarrassed and didn't get up again all evening. What a wonderful opportunity I missed then to learn to dance. There's a saying, "Don't regret what you do, regret what you don't do." I certainly regretted not learning to dance properly when I had such a great opportunity. It didn't look to me as if the war was going to end quickly, which I selfishly thought suited me. We were getting bombed nearly every night, but luckily we had an underground coal cellar which we would all tumble down as soon as the bombing started. Then the government supplied us with an all steel Anderson bomb proof shelter which fitted neatly under our kitchen table. When the bombing started, we'd take the wire front off the shelter and pile in, replacing the wire front and settling down. Although the Anderson shelter, being in the kitchen was much cozier than the cellar, to me the dirty coal cellar felt much safer as there was access up through a grid into the street in the event of being bombed. We would sit quietly listening to the drone of the heavily loaded bombers overhead and the constant pounding of the box barrage put up around Liverpool by the ack-ack guns, some of which were mobile and we'd hope one wouldn't stop outside our house and blast all the windows out. We could hear lumps of shrapnel from the anti aircraft shells falling down on the roof. One big lump hit the back door one night so I went out and picked it up. It was a jagged piece of red hot metal about three inches long so I dropped it smartly. Not the sort of thing to get hit on the head with, so I didn't linger outside too long. Alf was a bit of a practical joker too. One night we were having a bit of a party and there were quite a few people talking in the kitchen. He suddenly let go with a terribly loud fart and looking at me quickly said "DOUGLAS," blaming me of course. Everyone went quiet and looked towards me and naturally I went as red as a beetroot feeling terribly embarrassed and Alf, the git was killing himself laughing. They used to hold quite a few parties at my aunt Bertha's, especially around Christmas time. I used to really enjoy them and Maud or Cliff my older cousins who were both self taught piano players, would bash the music out and we'd all have a good old dance and sing song. It certainly helped to keep peoples' morale up during the war. It was getting nearer to my seventeenth birthday and I was just about counting the days. At work the machine operators were teasing me, saying you'll never pass the medical for the Navy and you'll have to work here till the war ends. What a dreadful thought; the only thing that worried me about passing the medical was the bad caste in my right eye as only my left eye focused. I was as thin as a rake and my ribs stuck out like dogs' bollocks. I was beginning to believe the lads at work when my aunt said I'd be better to wait till I was eighteen and get called up, but I was told I had a better chance of getting in the Navy if I volunteered, otherwise they could put me in the army, which was the last thing I wanted, as a most of my mates had gone in the Navy. Alf, knowing that I liked gambling suggested that I have a punt with the blokes at work that I would pass my medical. Sure I liked to gamble but I didn't like losing and my chances didn't look good. Alf said, "Look Doug, there's a war on, they're extra short of manpower. If you're standing up and breathing, they'll pass you." He certainly boosted my confidence so I bet the blokes at work even money that I would pass my medical A1. Quite a few of them had five bob's worth so I was in to win about three quid if I passed. I'd realized for a while that my nerves weren't very good but when the day came for me to go for that medical, I was close to having an attack of the Joe Blakes. I had a hot bath and caught a tram into the city. At the medical centre there must have been about thirty jokers in front of me and they were pushing them through pretty quickly. The first test was an eye test and I was lucky they tested my eyes individually, but not for focus and then they gave me a colour test, which I passed easily. Not so the urine test. I was so bloody nervous I couldn't piss in the bottle so they sent me off into a room by myself until I could. After a blood pressure test I was standing in line stripped to the waist waiting for a short arm inspection when I noticed the doctor who was doing the inspection eyeing me up along the queue. Suddenly he got up, walked along the line and staring at my chest said, "Jesus I could see your heart beating from where I was sitting. He worried me at the time but I thought afterwards why was he so surprised, had he never seen a skinny git like me before. At least he could see that I was alive. Some of the guys I spoke to there had been called up and I couldn't believe that they were praying not to pass their medical when I was praying that I would. It's a good job you don't know what the future holds for you. As Alf predicted, I passed my medical A.1 and collected a few pounds from my work mates, promising to shout for them before I left. Passing that medical seemed to give me a new lease on life and that gloomy depression I was in faded away. I found that having something to look foward to always helped me when I was suffering from depression. A few weeks later, I received a letter informing me that I was to report for training to H.M.S Royal Arthur, a shore base at Harrowgate in Yorkshire, so on my last day shift at work I shouted the boys to a fair feed of fish and chips followed by a few jugs of shandy and we certainly enjoyed that day. As I clocked off for the last time and walked down the road to the tram, there was no one happier than me to be leaving the Garston bottle works. Leaving Liverpool wasn't any great hardship for me as I didn't make any close friends the short time I was there. It always seemed to be, one was going to work or going to bed. I'd packed what few things I had into a school case my aunt had given me and with a few bob and my travel warrant in my pocket I was off down to the Lime Street railway station. Lime street station to me has a very homely feel about it, although it's a huge, noisy, smoky, and steamy place. It's always alive with people, mostly servicemen and women in all manner of uniform and always on the move. As the guard checked my travel warrant and I jumped on the train to York I thought, I'll be one of these people in uniform when I come home on leave. The train was pretty packed as I walked through the carriages looking for a seat. No luck, so I stood gazing out of a window all the way to York where I met up with a couple lads from Liverpool who were also going to Harrogate for training. We stopped for a bite to eat and a natter in the refreshment rooms in York and then moved on to Harrogate by bus. I was really surprised when we finally arrived at the shore base H.M.S Royal Arthur. It was actually a Butlins holiday camp at Skegness, right on the east coast of England and Harrogate was a famous holiday resort. Evidently the government had commandeered the camp for a Naval training base at Skegness. On arrival we were told that we would be billeted in the holiday camp chalets which were nothing more than two man army huts with no heating, but when we checked out the dining rooms, dance floor, and bars we found them to be most modern and luxurious, all decked out in plush red leather, polished timber and brass. Old Butlin must have been as shrewd as the proverbial shit house rat to make sure holiday makers didn't spend too much time in their chalets. We spent about three days doing our arrival routine, getting rigged out with our uniforms and being shown through different areas of the camp. I noticed the large swimming pool had a dummy whaling boat fixed to the side with its oars hanging into the pool and coming back we saw the trainees rowing like mad and getting nowhere fast. On the third day we had to queue up for our inoculations for every disease known to man. We'd been warned these inoculations would be inflicted on us by uncaring trainee sick bay attendants. I wasn't too concerned until I saw two pretty big tough looking guys pass out in front of me. They sat them down to recover and when it was my turn, the sick bay attendant stuck what seemed to me to be a sail-makers needle into a bowl of white powder and jabbed it in and out my left arm a couple of times as if he was sewing up a sail. I was quite pleased with myself that I didn't flake out like the big guys. The following day we were issued with some first world war 3.0.3 rifles to start six week's square bashing and after falling in on the parade ground we were given the usual crapola speech by the gunnery instructor about discipline blah,blah,blah, and he finished up by saying, "You bastards may have broke your mothers' hearts but you're not going to break mine." He wasn't a bad sort of bloke, looked as if he'd drunk a fair drop of piss in his life. Most G. I's did, but they always appeared on the parade ground next morning as bright as a brass button. One morning I remember well, we were doing rifle drill with fixed bayonets and the G I was bawling us out for doing something wrong. Unfortunately he was pointing his bayonet and looking straight at me when he said, "If you were a German, I'd run you through." As quick as a flash, without thinking I said jokingly, "If I was a German, you'd shit yourself," and the squad started pissing themselves laughing. The look on his face told me I'd said the wrong thing. He screamed at me as only a G.I. can, to take one step forward and to apologize. I know I should have done it then, but for some reason I didn't. He ordered me to raise my rifle high above my head and commence running around the parade ground. After about four rounds I was just about knackered and when another squad would pass between us I would rest the heavy rifle on my head and jog on the spot. As I passed him on the next round he could see I was fair fucked and asked me again if I was going to apologize but I shook my head and he ordered me to carry on. Luckily for me an officer, who had been observing us from a nearby building appeared. He walked over to our G.I and began speaking to him. By this time I was down to a slow-motion jog and as I passed the squad the officer beckoned me over. He too suggested that I apologize, which I did, realizing I couldn't win. I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed those six weeks training and even though it was very cold, it was good to be out in the fresh air every day after being shut up in the bottle works. We'd be square bashing most days and every other night the duty watch would be fire watching on the flat roofs of the buildings. Teaching us to swim was a bit of a skylark. I swam like a brick, straight to the friggen bottom of the pool. The instructor looped a belt of canvas under my arms and with a long rope dragged me the whole length of the pool. After about ten minutes he gave up and passed me. We were paid fortnightly, only five shillings a week while we were under training and we weren't allowed to go ashore for the first two weeks. Tobacco was very cheap, only three and six a pound and we had a lot of fun learning to roll our own. Our first night ashore was at Harrowgate. It seems silly to say going ashore when you're already on a shore base, but you must remember all Naval shore bases were named and regarded as ships. It was our first time ashore in uniform and my mates, who were all over eighteen years of age made for the first pub they saw. At that time, being only seventeen I couldn't legally drink in pubs, but it didn't take much encouragement for me to go with them. One of the lads ordered a round of drinks and I thought, this is the life, sitting back supping a pint of mild beer, without a worry in the world. When I went up to the bar to order another round the barman eyed me up and said, "How old are you son." I said, "Eighteen." He said, "You don't look it and you'd better hop it if the cops show up." Things started to warm up a bit. A couple of old dears began singing and we joined in. Unfortunately our liberty pass expired at ten o'clock, so we ordered another round and decided to head into the wind. The tempting smell of fish and chips drew us round a corner to the fish shop and then we staggered back to base happily singing, with our gobs stuffed with fish and chips. At the end of our six weeks training we were all looking forward to being transferred to our permanent Port Division from where we would always return after being at sea or on another shore base. I was hoping to be based in or near Liverpool, but no luck there and my two Liverpool mates and I were transferred to H.M.S Pembroke, Chatham, near Gillingham, in Kent. Typical of the Royal Navy, whether you volunteer or get called up they ask you what occupation you would like to take on and if you said you'd like to train as a telegraphist, they'd train you as a cook or if you said you'd like to be an ordinary seaman O.D they'd put you down as a stoker, which is what happened to my mates and myself. I guess it was just who they were most short of at the time. Chatham barracks must have been built before Adam was a cowboy. It was built to accommodate approximately five thousand Navel officers and ratings but when we arrived there it was absolutely chocka block with about thirty thousand personnel. It took us almost a week just to do our joining routine. All the slinging billets were taken so we slept on our spread out hammocks on the deck. There were ninety ratings in the mess we were assigned to and believe it or not between us there were eight knives, six forks, and two spoons and it was absolute chaos. Some of the lads got browned off and homesick but it didn't bother me too much. When the tucker came up I'd be into it like a hairy dog, a cup full of thick hot soup, roast beef and roast potatoes, and a large lump of steamed duff, then I'd roll a cigarette and enjoy a few puffs. Some of the lads complained but they always got the same answer, "There's a bloody war on you know." The only thing I didn't like about living in these two storey barracks was the lack of ventilation. Imagine a thousand bodies sleeping in the upper storey in the middle of winter with no windows open, the stench was unbelievable, talk about a friggen Hindu's armpit. I couldn't get out of my hammock quick enough in the morning to go to the heads (toilets) for a breath of fresh air. Then there were the tunnels; when they built Chatham barracks they also built a series of deep tunnels under the base itself. I guess they could have conducted the war from down there but I was told they were built to house secret war documents. If we wanted to we could go down the tunnels to sleep of a night time. I slept down there many times as did hundreds others and you felt very safe there being away from the noise of the bombers but again the ventilation was bad. Two whiffs and you were greedy. I soon learnt the art of shallow breathing. Chatham naval base covered a very large area and it took us a week or more to find our way about. Once we were settled in we started training to be second class stokers, or oil fuel manipulators as one bright spark liked us to be called. Most of what we learnt was just common sense. You didn't have to be too bright,which was good, as some of them weren't. We learnt a bit about fire fighting, boiler cleaning, pump maintenance, etc, all very exciting stuff. After a couple of weeks we were allowed to go ashore so off we went to Gillingham. The place was full of matloes, most of them heading for the nearest boozer. This always baffled me as they say, join the Navy and see the world. I'd say it seemed they only wanted to see the inside of every pub in the world. I managed to steer my two scouse mates Jake and Nick past the nearest pub to one of the many Naval outfitters in the town to check the price of a made to measure tidley uniform, as the one I'd been issued with, made me look more like something the cat had dragged in. The assistant told me a new made to measure suit would cost about three pounds so I told him I'd come back when I'd saved the money up. Jake and Nick were much more interested in the shop next door. It was a tattooist and after studying all the tattoos in the window they suggested we go and have a few pints then come back and get tattooed. I agreed and we swaggered into the nearest pub. It was crowded with sailors and their girl friends who eyed us up as we made for the bar. Some of the sailors were smoking pipes and you could cut through the air with a knife. We ordered three pints and as there were no vacant seats we stood with our drinks in our hands and supped up. Most pubs in those days were not built for comfort, you couldn't even see inside as all the windows were made of stained glass. I noticed a group of chaps at the end of the bar who seemed to be taking more than a passing interest in us. They were all heavily made up with powder and lipstick and one of them even had his wavy hair combed down over one eye like the film star Veronica Lake. I naturally thought they were a group of actors from a pantomime or something. I passed them as I was going to the toilet and one them gave me a wink which I thought was a bit queer, not knowing them, so when I happened to mention it to my mates they just burst out laughing. Jake the older of my two mates said, "Jesus Doug didn't you know, they're a bunch of brown hatters." I must admit until then I didn't know much about that side of life and even after Jake explained it all to me I still thought they were having me on and it was all a bit of a skylark. I think Jake's last words on the subject as we left the pub put me off queers for life. He said, "These friggen brown hatters get all their great sensual pleasures in life from shoving shit up hill."Wouldn't the thought of that make you sick. The tattooist was still open for business so I followed the lads in. He explained the upsides and downsides of having tattoos and said we might like to think it over and come back in a few days. Jake, who'd supped a few more pints than Nick and me said he'd like one done right away so he picked one out of the book which had the word Mother in the centre. Nick said he'd have the same one, so we took off our jackets and white fronts and I watched them pulling faces as the tattooist worked on them. I wasn't too sure myself. My old man had had quite a few tattoos put on him when he was in the army in India and I didn't want to be reminded of him. I'd also been told there was a slight chance of a tattoo turning septic which I thought, knowing my luck, was a good reason for not getting one. When I told them, Nick started making chicken noises and Jake joined in. We had a good laugh especially when I asked the tattooist if he'd had any experience tattooing bones, pointing to my skeletal body. We'd been looking forward to going on our first seven days leave after we'd finished our training. The lads had spent a lot of time trying to make their ill fitting uniforms look more tidley and looking as if they'd been in the Navy for years. The older ratings, for instance, through continual washing, had their uniform collars a lovely pale blue colour and the front of their jackets cut in a U shape instead of the issued V shape. I reckoned the colour of our issued collars was a light black and some idiot told me the best way to lighten the colour was to soak the collar in a strong dose of bleach, which I did for a couple of hours and what a friggen mess it turned out to be. It came out all blotchy and streaked. I washed it a couple of times, ironed it, but it still looked a mess. Luckily we were issued with two collars. We were to be inspected the following morning before proceeding on leave and the lads dared me to wear my blotchy collar. I was tempted but I wasn't game enough and I didn't want to do anything to delay me from going on leave. A smile crossed my face though as I imagined what the the look would be like on the faces of the Inspecting duty officer and the Master at Arms when they walked behind us and saw my collar. The lads reckoned the officer would have shaved off on the spot and were even prepared to pay me a few bob to witness it. The dress inspection went off the next morning without too much hassle and after we'd picked up our pay and travel warrants we were glad to see the back of those huge iron gates of the base. It was great to be free for a spell from naval base discipline and we just about danced down to the railway station to board a train to London where we had a hot meat pie and a cup of tea in the refreshment rooms while we waited for our connection to Liverpool. It was just past ten P.M when we arrived at the bustling Lime street station and Jake, fearing the pubs would be closing rushed us out of the station to the "Big House" pub in Lime street. The place was packed out and they'd just stopped serving as we edged our way through to the bar but the barmaid, seeing the disappointment on Jake's face and possibly the fact that we were in uniform, took pity on him, removed the towel and drew us off a pint apiece. She didn't even charge us. The manager kept shouting "time"and as the customers started to thin out we sat down to enjoy our drinks but after a couple of minutes the police came through to clear everyone out. Jake swigged his pint down and finished mine off too. I hadn't quite got used to the taste of beer. It was pouring with rain when we got outside, so after saying goodbye and promising to meet up with Jake and Nick at the end of our leave I crossed over London road and hopped on a tram to my aunt Bertha's home in Albany Rd off Kensington. The tram was full down below so I skipped upstairs. The conductress came up as we sped up Prescot street but when I offered her my tuppenny fare she just ignored it and carried on, just like the barmaid in the "Big House." This is what I loved about the people of Liverpool during the war, they always looked after the lads in uniform. My Aunt was always pleased to see me and always made me feel at home. I must say I used to thoroughly enjoy my leaves at my Aunts and when ever possible, as food was severely rationed, I would take her a parcel of tinned food which I would buy or scrounge from the cooks or stewards back at the base. She really looked after me as she did my younger brother Eric, who was still with her. I certainly appreciated that and knowing that she loved a drop of Navy rum I used to smuggle her a bottle of neat rum through the gates when ever I could. As I wasn't old enough to draw a a rum ration, I'd have to buy it off some of the lads who were, when they saved their daily ration up and bottled it to sell. On my first mornings leave I used to enjoy being able to lie in and wake up to the smell of our week's ration of bacon and eggs being cooked in the kitchen by my Aunt, She was a fantastic cook despite the limitations of rationing. Her Sunday roast, which she'd spend hours cooking, was a joy to taste, one out of the box, followed by my favourite dessert, a creamy rice pudding sprinkled with nutmeg. It was enjoyable for me just to watch my aunt eat. Although she was a dumpy woman about sixty five years of age and she never seemed to look any older, she had this very delicate ladylike way of eating which never ceased to fascinate me. She really enjoyed her tucker. She also enjoyed a drink of an evening so about eight o'clock I used to go with her and my cousin Maud to a pub in Hall Lane. Maud would have a port wine and my aunt and I would have a beer, then we'd settle down till ten o'clock closing time by the fire in the cosy parlour. By nine o'clock the parlour would be full, so would most of the customers and the whole place would be humming. Someone in the parlour would start singing and we'd all join in. Just when we were really beginning to enjoy ourselves the poxy air raid sirens would go off and the ack ack guns would start up but the people in the pub didn't seem to take much friggen notice. They just carried on drinking, singing and making sure of getting an extra round of drinks in before closing time. This surprised me as you'd think they'd have just supped up and scuttled off home or to the nearest air raid shelter. Maybe it was because I hadn't drunk as much as them for to be honest, at first I didn't like the taste of beer, although I loved that, "she'll be right, give the cat a fucking goldfish" relaxed sort of feeling I got after two or three pints. My heart would sink a little as Harry Best the manager would start calling "Time gentlemen pleeeease" and we would have to drink up. We only lived about ten minutes walk from the pub but because of the very strict blackout conditions , it was impossible to see anything My Aunt used to carry a small torch but when she switched it on, even pointing it at the ground, you'd hear some twit shout, "Put that bleeding light out," so we would move as quickly as we could between the high walls of the back entries to the houses, hoping to avoid any falling shrapnel which we could hear bouncing off the slate roofs. Arriving home safely we'd have a bite of supper, wait for the all clear siren to sound and go to bed. All too soon our most enjoyable seven days leave would be over and I was off to meet up with my two shipmates at the Lime street railway station. They were already there when I arrived, skylarking and eyeing up any girls that happened along. We yarned over a cup of tea while we waited for the train to London, which being wartime, naturally was running late. We only waited an hour or so and we were off. As usual the train was crowded with servicemen and women and we were lucky to get a seat for part of the way. We arrived in London without any incidents and as we had to wait a while for our connection to Chatham, Jake suggested we go and have a beer so we wandered out of the station to the nearest pub. As it turned out, it was not a very bright idea because we got yacking to a group of locals who bought us a few too many drinks and when we finally staggered back to the station our connection was long gone. Why we didn't wait for the next one I'm buggered if I know for even if it meant we would have been a little overdue we might have got away with it. Nick in his befuddled state of mind said, "Let's go and have another pint." Jake agreed and I followed them both back to the pub. We didn't have much money between us but Jake ordered another round of beer. He could certainly hold his grog. I was as full as a tick and feeling pretty good as we yacked away in the smoky warmth of the bar. Nick muttered somthing about not being too keen to go back to the lousy conditions at Chatham barracks and thought we might be there for the duration and never get to sea. Jake agreed and I said, "I didn't give a stuff one way or the other but if I could somehow get a passage to America I would definitely jump ship." Jake said, "That's a fuckin' good idea Doug, why don't we head back to Liverpool and join the Merchant Navy." Nick said, "That'll do me, and the pay is much better." It sounded like adventure to me so I said, "Lets go." Once outside the cold air hit me and I felt quite groggy; in fact I didn't have a friggen clue where we were except that we were somewhere in London. Jake said, "We got to make for the Great North Road, where ever that might be." He made a few inquiries at a bus station. I must have flaked out as the next thing I remember was being helped off a bus by Nick outside a Salvation Army hostel in a place called St Albans. We went inside and Jake asked the lady behind the counter if we could get a bed for the night. She said we could and did we want a meal. Jake said we didn't have any money. I said that I had a book of postage stamps worth half a crown which she said she would accept and she served us a slap up meal of sausages and eggs which I thought was extremely kind of her. Luckily for us she didn't know we were now A,W,O.L (absent without leave) but I must say since then I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Salvation Army. When we'd finished our meal the lady showed us to a large dormitory type room that was divided into many smaller spaces by strong wire netting. You could only virtually describe them as wire cages with each cage had a single bed and a lowboy beside it. The sheets were clean but the mattress seemed to be filled with some sort of grain, maybe wheat, rice, or something similar and I found the only way to get comfortable in it was to lie in the impression made by previous tenants. My two ship- mates were laughing and cracking jokes about the place in adjacent cages when some one told them to pipe down. Even though I was drowsy and I felt quite safe, it was a difficult place to go to sleep in, what with jokers coughing their lungs up, talking in their sleep and the odd drunk staggering about. I lay there thinking that this must be what they call a doss house, this must be the home of the down and out, the alcoholics, poor buggers. I eventually nodded off. We got up early the next morning and after a feed of porridge and a cup of tea we headed off down the Great North road thumbing any vehicle that came along for a lift. After a while we were picked up by one of the many trucks passing by and Jake spun the driver some yarn about why we were hitch hiking. He said he'd be going through Liverpool and wasn't supposed to pick up hitch- hikers but because we were in uniform he might get away with it. We had a very comfortable trip in the large cab of the truck and arrived in Liverpool in no time. We thanked the driver as he dropped us off outside the Mersey tunnel entrance. As we gazed around wondering what to do next it occurred to me that there was a problem we hadn't thought about. We didn't have any civvy clothes with us, so how the hell were we going to present ourselves to join the Merchant Navy still being in Royal Navy uniform. Nick said, "We'll nut something out." We didn't so wandered around for a couple of hours trying to come up with some bright ideas. Nothing. We were starting to get a little down hearted when Nick suddenly pulled out a couple of pound notes from his pocket. I said, "Were the fuck did you get that." He said, "My dad gave it to me at the end of my leave and told me I was only to use it in an emergency." Jake's face lit up and he said, "This is an emergency, what do say we go for a pint and a bar lunch." Nick had a doubtful look on his face and I said, "It's either that or we starve." Nick agreed so we moved off looking for the nearest pub. We saw a couple of army red caps (military police) standing outside a pub we were heading for in London road. We straightened our caps and walked right past them, then round the corner into Lime street and into the "Big house" pub. It was unlikely that army M,P's would stop us to check our leave warrants but we had to be very careful not to bump into any Naval M,P's known to us as shore patrols, as by now , being A.W.O. L. they would have been warned to be on the look out for us and at a guess I'd say we were pretty obvious. We couldn't have been very bright at the time not to realize that there was no future in what we were doing and, to be honest, I don't think my shipmates had any intention of joining the Merchant Navy. So what the hell, not knowing what was going to happen to us, from hour to hour, and being on the run, to me, was pure adventure. The pub was chocka block as usual and as we peered through a smoky haze I noticed that about eighty per cent of the customers were black American soldiers and their girl friends. Nick slipped one of the two quid notes he had into my hand and asked me to order a round of beer and three counter lunches. I managed to squeeze in between two of the Americans' girl friends at the bar, but before I had a chance to give my order to the barmaid, one of the girls gently took hold of my hand and squeezed it. Man! what was I to do? I felt terribly embarrassed, even a little scared. My natural impulse was to pull my hand away quickly, but I didn't. I looked to see if the two girls' black American boy friends had noticed but they hadn't. If they had, I think I'd have been in shit street proper. My brain started to race a little as to what would be my next move and after I gave the bar maid my order I looked at the girl, winked and shook my head slowly, as if to say, "Don't be naughty." To my relief she slowly released my hand and as I stepped back a pace from the bar she leaned over and whispered, "We'll see you in here tomorrow." By the time I got served the lads had found some empty seats in the saloon bar so we got stuck into our counter lunch of corned beef and chips, swilling it down with a pint of Bent's best mild ale. I thought, "This is the life," as I puffed away on a fag I'd just rolled. I told the lads about the girl holding my hand at the bar and wanting to see us tomorrow. Jake said, "Jesus Doug you're in there." I said, "Not me mate, she looked quite a bit older than me." Nick got another round of drinks in just before the pub closed at three o'clock. I suggested to the lads that we move out of the city into the suburbs where there would be less chance of us being picked up by a shore patrol. They didn't go a bundle on my idea, so we brazenly strutted around town walking through the big shops like Lewis's and Marks & Spencers which they kept lovely and warm, sometimes eyeing up the elegant judy's doing their shopping. Back out on the street Nick waved to a couple of girls who were skylarking as they walked along. They ignored us. Jake said, "Let's follow them, just for a bit of fun." We followed them for quite a distance and they suddenly disappeared into a park. We followed them into the park and looked everywhere but they'd completely vanished. Nick said, "Those judys must have realized we were following them and the buggers have given us the slip. It was by now starting to get dark and a bit cold. I said, "Where do you think we are going to sleep tonight Nick." He said, "With a bit of luck I was hoping we might be able to pick up a couple of judys who would take pity on us poor marooned sailors and invite us into their homes. Jake and I burst out laughing as I said, " Dream on Nick, for fucks sake, the best you'll do tonight is a kip in that open fronted shelter over there next to the bandstand that we've just passed." Actually my prediction wasn't far wrong. We about turned and strolled back to the shelter. It was reasonably clean and had wooden bench seats around the walls so using my duffel bag as a pillow I stretched out on the bench and said, "I could just about nod off here right now." Jake said, "It's past five o'clock, the pubs will be open." Nick said he still had thirty bob left in his pocket, so he suggested we go for a bite to eat. Jake said, "And a pint." We dropped in to a nearby local pub opposite the park. There were only a few people in the bar, not full of Yankee pricks wooing all our girls like it was in the 'Big House' in Lime street. Nick ordered three pints and asked the barmaid if they served food and she said, "We sure do and tonight it's home made pie, peas, and spuds. It will be ready in about half an hour. We picked up our pints, sat down and relaxed by the fire. I said to the lads, " I don't know about you snot gobblers but I'm starving." Nick said, "So am I, my stomach feels as if my throat's been cut." Jake said, "Get another round in while we're waiting for the nosh." My mouth began to water as we waited patiently for the meal. The clock on the wall, normally a bit fast in pubs, said seven o'clock when the barmaid put our meals on the counter. They looked pretty good to me as I carried two over to the table, a large steaming hot home made steak and kidney pie, mushy peas--- I looove mushy peas---topped off with a big dollop of mashed potatoes, most enjoyable and to finish it off the barmaid brought us another three pints saying the two old dears sitting nearest the door had treated us. We raised our glasses to them and wished them all the best. The poor buggers most probably had less money than we had. Although I've said many times Liverpool was an arsehole of a place, a young fella in uniform couldn't find a better place to be in even if you were on the run, like we were. After that meal I was ready for anything, even sleeping in the shelter over the road in the park. Ten o'clock came too soon for my liking and they chucked us all out. We made our way across the road and found the park gates were locked but not to be out-done, Jake the tallest of the three of us gave Nick and me a leg up and we all clambered over. We made our way over to the shelter, swearing, laughing, and joking as only three scouse idiots could. A freezing blast of wind coming from the north brought us to our senses as being the middle of winter we began to feel the intense cold. Although we had our overcoats with us, I soon realized they were tailored for style not warmth, like an army overcoat. We settled down on the hard wooden benches using our duffel bags as pillows and, I eventually nodded off to the sound of Jake snoring his friggen head off. I woke up suddenly to the sound of ducks quacking on the park lake and I wasn't quite sure where I was but soon realized I was lying on a hard bench. My overcoat had fallen off and I was frozen to the marrow. I guessed the time to be about four o'clock and struggled up, put my overcoat on and went outside for a leak. I remembered seeing some road works and a cocky watchman's hut as we had followed those two girls the previous evening and I wondered if he might have a brazier lit. Jake and Nick seemed to be still sound asleep so I jogged off to have a look and get a warm and sure enough the cocky watchman was there and he had a red hot coke fire glowing in the dark. I think I startled him a little as I emerged out of the gloomy darkness. "Jesus, he said, you gave me a bit of a fright, I was just nodding off. What are you doing out at this time of night." I spun him a yarn about my mates and me being in the park with some girls and it was very late when they went home, so we decided to flake out in the park shelter. He pulled out his pocket watch from his vest and said, "It's nearly five o'clock by me so if you want to go and get your pals I'll put the billy on and we can have a cuppa. I was loathe to leave the warmth of the fire as I was just beginning to thaw out but I said, " O.K I'll be back in about ten minutes" and toddled off. I was getting fed up climbing over the bleedin gates but the thought of a hot cuppa urged me on. The lads were awake and up by the time I got to the shelter and were jogging on the spot trying to get warm, and wondering where the fuck I'd got to. I quickly told them about the cocky watchman and we hurried back to him as fast as we could. Luckily the cocky, who said his name was Ted, had just finished brewing up. I told him our names as he filled the only cup he had and passed over the billy-can to share between us. I rolled a cigarette for the cocky and we had a typical seaman's early breakfast, a hot cup of tea and a smoke. After about half an hour we were as warm as toast so I moved back a couple of paces as the coke fumes were getting to my chest. We chatted away with the cocky for another hour or more. We talked about the way the war was going and when it was going to end. The cocky told us what we should do with that pox doctor of a corporal, Hitler, if we ever got our hands on him. We were all in stitches laughing when he suggested shagging him with the rough end of a pineapple. This cocky was a bit of a comedian once we got him going. They sure have their share of comics in Liverpool. Ted certainly enjoyed our conversation which went passed his knocking off time. As we were leaving he told us about a small tea house down on the dock road where we could get a cheap breakfast of tea and toast for tuppence. We thanked him for the tea and meandered off. Having nothing better to do we strolled down to the dock road and sure enough we found the tea shop Ted had mentioned. It was more or less a hole in the wall and was run by a couple of motherly type old dears. There were quite a few dockers in there and one or two merchant seaman. Nick ordered tea and toast and the old dear gave us a large plate of buttered toast and three mugs of tea for sixpence. In the light of day as we were drinking our tea I noticed we were looking a little tired and dishevelled after sleeping rough all night in the park and when I mentioned this, Nick suggested we go for a tuppenny wash and brush up in the toilets at the railway station." Jake said, as we got up to go "Good idea, I feel as if I've been dragged through a fucking gorse hedge backwards." I said, "You look as if you have too, the two of you could do with a shave." Jake booted me up the arse and I shot through the door laughing. We could see there was a naval shore patrol standing outside the main entrance to the Lime street station so we sneaked around to the side street entrance. Once in the toilets Jake and Nick had a shave but I was lucky, being only seventeen, I hadn't started shaving yet. I felt as if I could have done with a bath but I bucked up a little after washing my hands and face. Nick paid the attendant as he gave us a brush down. I said to the lads, "I bet you're not game enough to walk past that shore patrol at the main entrance." Jake said, "How much." I said, "A pint." He said, "You're on." Nick said, " Me too." I said, "Yeah you too." We straightened our caps, picked up our duffle bags and casually walked out of the main entrance. I must admit my heart was in my mouth and I held my breath as the shore patrol eyed us up and down. They didn't move or say a word. I couldn't believe it for by now we were at least seventy- two hours adrift and you would have thought they knew and would be keeping an eye out for us. I said, "You lucky buggers, you won. I thought I was on a dead cert and I haven't got enough money to buy you a beer. Nick said, "Don't worry about it lad, I've still got about fifteen bob left out of the money my dad gave me for an emergency. Jake said, "Right, it's just gone eleven and they're open, I'm gasping so let's go and have one in the "Big House." Nick said, Yeah, O.K. we might meet up with those judys who were holding Doug's hand yesterday. I said, "You can have them" as we pushed through the door into the bar. Being early there weren't many in there, just a couple of old codgers who looked as if they'd been sleeping rough like we had and had been waiting outside for a while for the pub to open, also a few black Yanks with their girl friends. I thought, they must be very trusting as they had quite a lot of money spread along the bar, even pound notes. I resisted the temptation to nick one as Jake ordered three pints and we sat down where I could keep an eye on the door to see who was coming and going. We had only been in there about ten minutes when Nick said to me, "Doug, you don't see those two judys about that you met yesterday do you." I said, "Talk about the devil, those very two have just walked through the door. Nick said, "Wave them over." I hesitated. Jake said, "Go on Doug wave the buggers over." I put my hand up and waved. They saw me and came across to our table. I said, " Hi there, remember me, would you like to come and sit at our table." The smaller blond one said, "Sure, why not, you're the guys we saw here yesterday." I said nervously, "That's right, my name's Doug and these are my two shipmates, the fair one is Jake and this dark headed romeo is Nick." They sat down and the wee blonde said, "I'm Brenda and this is my girl friend Norma." I said, "Where are your boyfriends today?" Norma the tall dark headed one said, "You mean the Yanks." I said, "Yeah." She said, "Oh, we'll probably meet up with them tonight." Nick said, "What are you drinking." She said, "We'll have a couple of gins." Nick got them in and we talked about different things for a while. Jake told them the truth that we were on the run, short of money, and looking for a place to stay. Brenda took a quid note out of her purse, gave it to me and said, "Get another round in Doug." On the way to the bar I dropped in to the toilet and Jake followed me in. I said, " What do you reckon about the girls." He said, "I think they're a couple of young pro's but I quite like them. Play our cards right and we could be in here." We picked the drinks up and went back to the table. Nick seemed to be getting on well with the wee blond Brenda and we enjoyed a pleasant hour or so drinking and chatting away. I said to Nick when the girls got up to go to the loo, "What do you think of them Romeo." He said, "I quite like Brenda, its a pity there's only two of them." Jake said, "I fancy Norma, she's got a beautiful pair of legs." I said, "She has too, but don't worry about me, you two fill your boots." When the girls came back and sat down Brenda said, "Would you like to come back to our place and have a cup of tea." Nick said, "Hold me back." and Norma said, "We've decided if the three of you would like to stay with us for a while you can." Jake looked at me, winked and said, "What do you reckon Doug." I said, "That's o.k with me." He said, "Right, let's go." We finished our drinks and moved out into the first sunlight we'd seen for days and It actually felt warm as we skipped a tram going down to the Pier Head. We got off after two or three stops and headed off to near Scotland road where the girls said they lived. I knew Scotland road to be one of the rougher parts of Liverpool and I wasn't expecting too much, but I got a bit of a shock when I saw where they lived. It was an old dilapidated empty shop. Norma took a large key out of her handbag and opened the heavy front door. The large shop front window was all smashed in and the place looked as if it had been hit by vandals. I think Norma noticed my disappointment and said. " I'm afraid It's not very flash but it's better than nothing and it doesn't cost us anything." Jake said, as we walked across the glass splintered shop floor, "Any port in a storm," and Nick said, "It's a bleeding sight better than sleeping in the park." I thought these two girls would at least be living in a comfortable tidy flat. We never asked them how old they were, but at a guess I'd say they were around twenty five to thirty. They were quite good looking and even if they were prostitutes as Jake said, I'm sure they could have found a better place to live than this. There were two dingy rooms behind the shop with the distempered plaster hanging off the walls. There were a couple of chairs and a small table in one room and each room had a grubby looking double mattress on the floor. There was no gas, hot water or electricity, but luckily a fire-place with several half burnt candles on the mantelpiece. Brenda said, " Pull up a few more rotten floorboards out of the shop and get the fire going and we'll have a cuppa." Nick and I ripped up some floorboards and with the help of a candle got a roaring fire going. I filled an old cast iron kettle with cold water from the only tap in the place and had it boiling in no time. Norma passed me a half empty tea packet and I poured some of it into the boiling water. Brenda said, "I'll wash the jars out in the shop." She came back and I poured out five jam jars of scalding hot tea. Although I knew it was common in Liverpool for poor people in the past to use jam jars for cups, I couldn't remember my mother, even though she was as poor as a church mouse, using them. Norma brought out a packet of chocolate biscuits from a small wall cupboard and we sat round the cosy fire munching them. We were chatting away when Jake said, "I could sure do with a drag." Norma reached into the cupboard again and pulled out a carton of toasted Lucky strike saying, "We're short of nothing we've got," handing us a packet each. I wasn't into toasted tobacco but I really enjoyed one with my jam jar of tea. I said to her, " Where did you get these from?" She said, "From one of my Yankee boyfriends." I said, " How many boyfriends do you have?" and she answered, "How many days are there in a week?" We laughed and she went on to tell us how they would meet up nearly every night with American servicemen in one pub or another in the city, get free drinks all evening, have a great time and then tell their boyfriends they lived miles outside of Liverpool and tap them for the bus fare. Usually they gave them ten bob or even a quid which she said was enough for them to live off. Nick said, "Do you bring any of them down here?" Norma said, "Jesus no, if they want a cheap thrill we take them up behind the station and tell them to hurry up or we'll miss the last bus." Brenda said, "Norma, we'd better get ready and get cracking, remember we have to meet those two we were with the night before last. Norma said, " Right, I'll just do my legs and I'll be with you." She cocked one leg up onto a chair and started painting it. Jake's eyeballs just about fell out. She certainly had lovely long legs and watching her paint them was quite exciting and had us slathering. Brenda said, "We'll be back after ten o'clock, will you guys still be here? If you are we'll bring you back some fish and chips." Nick said."We'll be here." Off they went and we pulled up a few more half rotten floorboards from the shop, stoked the fire up and made another brew. By now it was pitch dark so I lit a couple of candles on the mantelpiece and tried to read a copy of the Liverpool Echo. My eyes soon grew tired and the lads were half pie nodding off in their chairs. Nick said, "What do you think our sleeping arrangements will be tonight?" Jake said, "I'd like to sleep with Norma." Nick said, "You would, she's just about your size but Brenda will do me, what about you Doug?" I said "I couldn't give a stuff, I'm just about knackered. We haven't had a decent sleep for a couple of days so I'm going to pull this mattress over to the fire and get my head down very shortly. Nick said, "Yeah, do that and we'll give you a shout when the girls come back." I pulled the mattress nearer to the fire, took off my jacket and trousers, lay down with just my long jersey on and a couple of old grey blankets over me. The next thing I heard was Jake shouting, "Doug the girls are back, come and have some fish and chips." Sure enough the girls had brought back at least ten bob's worth, plus half a dozen large bottles of beer. What a feed we had, downed with a couple of jam jars of beer. The girls, who looked quite pretty in the light of the candles on the mantelpiece, said they'd been given a pound for bus fare by the Yanks who they were drinking with. They'd enjoyed themselves and were quite merry. Eventually Jake said, "The tram's have stopped running, it must be past midnight so we'd better call it a day. Who's sleeping where?" Brenda who had her arm around Nick's shoulder said, "I'm going to sleep with Romeo here in the other room and Norma can sleep with Jake and Doug by the fire." Jake said, winking at me, "Suits us fine doesn't it Doug." I said, "I'm too bloody sleepy for any thing so I'm going to turn in." Nick vanished into the other room with Brenda. Jake and I undressed down to our underwear but kept our Navy jerseys on, as the fire was dying out. Although I was dog-tired and my eyes kept closing I watched in the flickering candlelight as Norma undressed down to her bra and knickers. Jake was right, she did have a fantastic slim figure with lovely long legs. She blew out the candles and hopped in between us and snuggled in. She lay with her back to me, whispering to Jake so I just cuddled up behind her. I must have been really fagged out as I went to sleep almost immediately. I woke up shortly after, out of a dead slumber to hear Norma still whispering to Jake. I heard her say, "Is he asleep?" Jake answered, "I think he is." I thought I'd better pretend to be asleep so I started to snore quietly. After a minute or two she whispered again to Jake, "Are you sure he's asleep?" Jake whispered back, "He certainly is, I can tell by the way he's snoring." I started to snore a little louder as Norma turned slowly onto her back. Even though I was dead sleepy I started to get excited as I realized they were about to make love. I'd never slept with a girl before so this was really an exciting adventure for me. Norma struggled quietly as she tried to shed her bra and knickers without waking me up so I kept up the snoring. The three of us were lying very close together so I could feel every movement they made. Jake was caressing her breasts and all over her body. He slowly moved over on top of her and as she parted her legs, her left leg became firmly pressed against mine. By now, even though I was still snoring and pretending to be asleep I was wide awake and getting sexually excited. Norma was breathing very heavily and moving slowly in rhythm with Jake. I thought, for fun, what if I suddenly stopped snoring. I did, and their rhythm stopped for a moment as they listened. I had to control myself from bursting out laughing and saying, "Caught you in the act" but I quickly started snoring again. Their rhythm started to quicken and as Jake increased the movement Norma's leg moved further over in between my legs, and was rubbing up and down on my queer fella. I let my hand move slowly onto the top of her leg. She was completely naked. Jake was grunting and the rhythm was so intense now there was no stopping them, I think the three of us had a climax together. They lay there panting for a few minutes and the heat generated under those blankets was stifling. Jake slid off her and was snoring in minutes. Norma just lay there relaxing. I wasn't sure whether she was asleep or not but I let my hand rest on her stomach and after a couple of minutes I was just beginning to nod off when she moved my hand up onto her breasts. My mind started to race a bit as I thought maybe she wanted me to make love to her too. I0'd already made a decision when we first met them that I didn't want my first sexual encounter to be with a prostitute, then I thought, I'll never get another opportunity like this. My next thought put the Kibosh on it proper as I thought of the horrible colored slides they showed us during our Naval training of sailors suffering with all types of venereal disease, some with their genitals half eaten away. It was enough to put a young lad off lovemaking for life and while I was trying to make up my mind to take a chance I must have fallen into a deep sleep, What's that you say? "Tell that to the Marines, it's the truth." I woke up with a start to the sound of Nick ripping up more floorboards to light a fire. He looked as rough as guts as though he'd had a hard day's night. I got my soap and towel out of my duffle bag and crossed the glass- strewn floor of the shop to the large porcelain tub, thinking, " I'll find a brush some where today and sweep this bloody lot up." The water was freezing but I stripped off and managed to have a good wash and rub down. Brenda popped her head through the door, saw I was naked and trying to dry myself, gave a whistle and said, "Oh sorry, look I've just made the tea, come and get one while it's still hot." I dressed quickly and joined them sitting around the warm fire drinking tea and smoking toasted Lucky Strike cigarettes. I guessed it to be about nine o'clock and the girls looked a bit haggard in the daylight. Jake didn't look much better as he gave me a knowing wink. Mind you, he'd drunk most of the dozen large bottles of beer the girls had brought us the night before. Of us all, I always thought Norma looked the prettiest, even in the morning. Nick said, "What are we up to today." I said, " I wouldn't mind going to my aunt's and let them know what we're doing and maybe have a nice hot bath. "It never entered my head that my aunt could be worried about me. Why should she and then I thought about the allotment of seven and sixpence a week I'd left for her out of my pay. That most probably had been stopped. Jake said, "You'd be foolish to go home to your aunt's as the Navy could have some one watching the house, especially when it comes to us being A.W.O.L for more than seven days. We'll then be classed as deserters." I hadn't thought about that, in fact I hadn't thought too much about anything as we were living in a see if I care, day to day life. Maybe Jake was right so I scrubbed that idea. Brenda said, "You can always go down to the bath house a few blocks along our road and have a nice hot bath for a tanner." Jake said, "That would be a right waste of good money. We can manage with a cold wash down at the tub and I'd rather spend the money on a nice refreshing pint of ale." Nick said, "Good thinking I've got a few bob left and I could go one of those home made meat pies they have for lunch at the pub." I said, " You buggers had better have a shave while the girls are doing their legs." Nick said, " I think I'll grow a beard." Jake said, " You can't do that, you're in the Royal Navy now and you have to apply for permission to grow a beard. Nick said, "They can get stuffed, in a few days I'll be a deserter and I'll do what I like." I said, " I'm lucky I don't have to shave yet, all I have to do is stand outside in a strong wind." The lads laughed as we followed the girls into the street and down to the pub It absolutely amazed me that we hadn't been picked up by the military police as we sauntered around Liverpool for many days, brazenly walking past naval patrols and red caps along Lime Street. The girls always seemed to have enough money to pay for our food and drinks when we were broke. We would only go out with them in the afternoons for something to eat and a few beers as they preferred to spend the evenings with their Yankee boyfriends and roll them for as much dough as they could, but they always remembered to bring us back some fish and chips and a few bottles. As the girls were ahead of us and out of hearing, I said to Nick, " How did you get on with Brenda last night?" Jake said, "Did you get your end in? " He said, "Did I get my end in. I sure did. It was bloody fantastic, she must have gobbled the old sobbing pilgrim for half the night. They both burst out laughing as the girls turned around to see what the hell we were laughing at. I thought, "Yuk, what a dirty horrible thing to be doing." I suppose at seventeen my mind was pretty pure and naive and it told me that doing things like that with a girl, especially if you were in love with her was not very gentlemanly. Jake said , " Why don't you sleep with Brenda and Nick tonight and give me a bit of elbow room." I knew what he was hinting at so I said, "Not on your Nelly, I'd like to get a good night's sleep for a change even if you don't, so if you start any of your shenanigans tonight I'll grab your pork sword and give it a tweak. We were still killing ourselves laughing as we caught up with the girls going into the pub. After a feed and few pints we were soon in a merry state and the afternoon flew by. So this became our daily routine, getting up at about nine o'clock or soon after, having a cold swill down, ripping up a few more floorboards to light a fire, a jar of tea and a smoke for breakfast then down to the boozer for what ever they had for lunch, usually pie and mushy peas. We'd have a few beers and back to the shop when the pub shut at three o'clock. Sometimes I would then go for a long walk by myself to give Jake and Nick a bit of time by themselves with the girls. I found this sometimes helped us get an undisturbed night's sleep. On these long walks by myself I always seemed to get terribly worried about everything. I was fine when I was with somebody, always laughing and making a joke about everything, but as soon as I was by myself this black depression would slowly creep over me and I would be crying inwardly. I never discussed this problem with anyone but luckily found some relief in people's company, sleeping, or having a few beers. I never really liked the taste of beer but the effect on me was terrific. I just loved that, she'll be right, give the cat another fuckin' goldfish feeling, that I would get at that time after about three or four pints. I think, after a while, I started hoping we would be picked up by a Naval patrol, as I slowly began to realize there was no future in what we were doing. My dream of going to America seemed to be fading fast. Jake and Nick seemed to have lost interest in trying to join the Merchant Navy and sailing off to the States. It was alright for them, they were really enjoying themselves shagging the arses off the girls at every opportunity but as for myself, I felt a bit inadequate in that respect after seeing Jake naked one morning having a cold swill down. Boy' was he donkey rigged. That helped me no end in my resolve not to have my first sexual experience with a prostitute, which, take it from me, wasn't easy, especially when, on some very cold nights, the five of us would sleep together on the two mattresses pulled together in front of the fire, but I must give the girls their due, they never encouraged me to do anything that I didn't want to. It must have been about two weeks after we had met Brenda and Norma and we were waiting one evening for them to return, We waited up till after the trams stopped running and it must have been well after midnight and no sign of them. We were getting a little concerned, as they were usually back by twelve o'clock at the latest. Jake said, "I've got a feeling they're not coming back tonight, they've probably got shacked up with a couple of their Yankee boyfriends." Nick said, 0"You could be right too, just when I was feeling a bit peckish. Never mind we might as well get our heads down. We turned in, but I lay awake for awhile wondering where the girls had got to and hoping they would return. They didn't, and I must have nodded off. We slept in a bit late the next morning and still no sign of the girls. I said, " What are we going to do now?" Jake said." Don't worry yourself, they'll be back sometime today." I said, "Well if they're not I'd like to bugger off to my aunt's in case they're worried about me." Nick said, " If you do go, you'd better wait until it goes dark. There'll be less likelihood of anyone watching the place. We hung around all day but they never turned up. Fortunately Nick had half a crown left out of the money his dad given him for an emergency, so at lunch-time he shot off and got us some fish and chips. That was the last meal I had with Jake and Nick. They were a couple of right characters and I would love to know what ever happened to them. Even though we were all based at Chatham I never met up with them again. As soon as it was dark I said to the lads. "Right I'm off to my aunt's to get a hot bath and a bite to eat. Nick said, " Make sure you check there's nobody about before you go in and try and fetch us some grub back." I said, "I will and I should be back by about ten o'clock." Jake said, " The girls could be back by then, any way, look after yourself. If we never see you again, it'll be too bleeding soon. We all laughed as they saw me through the shop door and out onto the street. I never ever found out if the girls returned or not. It was freezing cold and I buttoned up my overcoat as I headed into the wind, up London road thinking about what I was going to tell my aunt. I didn't have a tosser so I couldn't even skip on a tram. I walked fast and I was pretty flushed by the time I reached my aunt's road off Kensington. I had a good scout around, but it was so dark, being blackout, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face so I thought I'm here now I'd better go in. I was bit nervous so I took a deep breath, opened the back kitchen door and stepped in. My aunt Bertha, Eric my younger brother and my cousins Alf and Maud were sitting there listening to the news on the radio. They all looked very surprised and there was a stony silence until Alf said, " Where the bloody hell have you been?" I explained to them rather sheepishly what I'd been up to over the last couple of weeks or more, but I never mentioned the girls. As I expected, they gave me a bit of a hard time. I asked my aunt if I could have a bath and she said I could, so I shot upstairs to get away from all the questioning. When I came down my aunt said, " I thought you'd be hungry so I boiled you a couple of eggs." I said, "Goodo I'm starving, thanks a lot. While I was tucking in she said, "The police have been here looking for you, you're now a deserter from the Royal Navy. What ever were you thinking of, and what do you think you are going to do now?" I told her that I wanted to change into civvy clothes and join the Merchant Navy. She said, "We'll see about that. When your brother Fred comes back from the pub, he can take you down to the police station and you can give yourself up." I'd heard a few stories about the police giving deserters a good hiding when they got them in the cells, so I wasn't too keen on that idea, but it was no use arguing. I was out numbered. When Fred came in from the pub just after ten o'clock he agreed with my aunt that I should give myself up. I argued, but it was no use so I went with him to the Prescot Street police station. The sergeant at the desk looked us up and down and said, "What can we do for you chaps?" Fred explained that he was my brother, that I was absent without leave and I was giving myself up. The sergeant looked at me and said, "How long have you been absent for?" I said, "About eighteen days." He said, "Ah, that makes you a bloody deserter, we can handle that. I'll take your particulars down and contact your port division. He began to write, then looked up and said to Fred, " What are you waiting for?" Fred said, "Oh, I was just waiting around to see that my brother was treated properly." The sergeant said, "Ah, don't worry about that me lad, we'll look after him, you can bugger off. Fred didn't argue. I said to him, "I'll be O.K" so he said, " Tarrah" to me and buggered off home. The sergeant then asked me to empty out my pockets on the desk. I only had my pay-book, a packet of fags and a box of matches on me and he took the lot. The smokes being Lucky strike I never saw again. I found out much later, if I'd have known my rights, I could have demanded my smokes as I was only awaiting transport back to base. The sergeant grabbed me roughly by the arm, led me down to the cells, opened the door and shoved me in. He said, "You're lucky its not Saturday night as these cells would be half full of drunks. You'll be here for a few days until they send an escort from Chatham for you." I sat down on one of the bunks and I thought, what a complete fucking idiot I am, I should have persuaded my aunt to let me make my own way back to Chatham and give myself up, instead of having to wait in a cell here for them to decide when to come and pick me up. Today was Thursday so I couldn't see them coming before Monday. It was a very long week-end, no smokes, piss poor tucker, nothing to read, and as the sergeant predicted the cells half full of pissheads on the Saturday night. Was I pleased to see that Navel escort arrive on the Monday afternoon. There were two escorts, both over six feet tall and I felt like a midget between the two of them as they bundled me into the back of a shore patrol vehicle and we headed into town. I was gasping for a drag so I asked the escorts for a ciggy. One of them said, "Behave yourself and I'll give you one on the train when we get going." When we arrived at Lime street station they got out and produced two pairs of handcuffs and handcuffed me between them. I said, "Do we have to have them on?" They said, "Only till we get on the train." As usual the station was crowded and our progress was very slow as people tried to go between us and were stopped dead by the handcuffs. The looks we got made it very embarrassing and I was relieved when we finally boarded the train. A compartment had been reserved for us with a dirty big notice on the door saying, (PRISONER & ESCORT), more embarrassment. Everybody kept looking in for a seat but we had the compartment to ourselves which I thought was a bit unfair as many people, including an old lady were standing in the corridor. The escort took one set of handcuffs off me and rolled me a smoke. I took a couple of deep drags, it was good, even though it made my head spin a bit. The escorts asked me what I'd been doing while I was on the run, but I didn't tell them much. After about half an hour I could still see the old lady standing in the corridor so I said, "Why don't you ask the old dear if she'd like a seat." They looked at me for a while and one of them said, "If it's O.K with you I will. " He opened the door and she came in and sat opposite me. Everything was quiet for a while until she saw the handcuffs on me and then she started asking questions. The escorts told her I was a deserter and they were taking me back to Chatham for trial. She kept shaking her head and telling me what a naughty boy I was. Fortunately for me, what with the movement of the train and the smoky atmosphere, she finally nodded off. It was dark when we arrived at the main gates of Chatham barracks. I was still handcuffed to the two escorts as the sentry on guard let us in. We marched over to the R,T,O's office where the escort handed me over to the Master at Arms. After they had a few minutes discussion I was bundled into a large brightly lit holding cell half full of defaulters. I started talking to a couple of them and managed to bum a smoke. There was a pile of palliasses in one corner so I grabbed one, put it on the wooden floor and lay down, enjoying my smoke. It must have been about ten o'clock when the bright lights were turned off and, as I was pretty tired I soon fell into a deep sleep. It must have been sometime in the middle of the night when I awoke to someone shouting my name at the cell door. I dragged myself up, was handcuffed, and escorted outside into the pitch darkness and stillness of the night. I couldn't see a fucking thing and was still half-asleep when suddenly someone screamed out "HALT, WHO GOES THERE?" I just about shit, man, did I get a fright. The escort screamed back, "PRISONER AND ESCORT." The gate sentry shouted, "PASS" and we moved past the main gates to another office across the road. This sort of treatment I'd say was pre-arranged and done on purpose as part of your punishment, before you were even tried. At least I was wide-awake by the time I got to the office for the First Lieutenant's report. I was marched in and stood to attention between the two escorts. A petty officer ordered, "Off Caps." The First Lieutenant read out a list of charges, some of which I think he made up, being totally pissed off at having to work on his midnight to four duty, and finished up with the charge of desertion from his Royal Majesties armed services. He asked me my age and what reason did I have for deserting. I told him I was seventeen and had no reason for deserting. He didn't seem to have a frigging clue of what to do with me and after a thoughtful minute or two he said, "Commander's Report." The petty officer ordered, "On Caps, about turn, quick march." This time I was ready for the gate sentry's challenge but no, not a dickey bird. I said to the escort that maybe he'd nodded off. They laughed as they returned me to the holding cells . The next morning they transferred me to another cell block further up the road. Although the cell was built to hold two prisoners had it to myself for a few days. I had a cigarette butt in my pocket so when the guard came with my dinner I asked him for a match and he wanted to know what I wanted it for. Like an idiot I told him I had a cigarette butt and was dying for a drag. He immediately demanded that I hand it over to him or he would call the duty officer and put me on report. I thought, what a miserable bastard, he was just an ordinary rating like myself and I couldn't believe a young chap could get like that. I told him to go and get fucked and sat down to eat my dinner. He buggered off and returned about five minutes later with another burly rating and again demanded that I give him my cigarette butt, or they would come in and take it off me physically. I didn't like the way he said physically, so I reluctantly handed it over to them, thinking these bastards must be hand picked. If the roles were reversed I couldn't see me refusing someone a light if they were gasping for a smoke. Later in life I often wondered why the bad incidents one experienced during life seemed to get ingrained in your memory more than the good ones. Could it be that a person suffering from depression only remembers the bad times. That may be the problem and one of the causes of depression. Three days later, early in the morning I was escorted to the Commander's office for his report. It wasn't much different from the First Lieutenant's report, just that there was a bit more gold braid about. The Commander asked me the usual questions and I gave him the same answers. He made out as if he was considering what to do with me for a minute then said just what we had expected, "Captains Report." P.O. shouts, " On caps blah, blah, blah," and I'm escorted back to the cells. Later that afternoon they bundled another rating into my cell. He was a lanky hard looking lad who said his name was Len and the first thing I asked him was if he had any tobacco. He did, so we sat on my bunk and rolled a fag apiece. I took a couple of deep drags and it made my head spin. Len didn't say much at first but after a while he opened up a little and told me, when I asked what he was in for, that he'd thumped a Petty Officer. I said, "You thumped a P.O. Jesus, you wouldn't want to make a habit of that, what happened?" He smiled and told me the P.O had been picking on him quite a bit when they were on the parade ground square bashing and he suddenly lost his temper and laid one on him. They carted the P.O. away and immediately put him on a charge of hitting an officer. He told me he'd always had a very bad temper and always seemed to be angry. His mother had told him he was a bit of a nutter and was afraid that one day he might kill someone. I thought, just my fucking luck to get a guy like this as a cellmate and I had better be careful not to say anything to upset him. After our evening meal, Len gave me the makings for another smoke and bugger me if the same guard I had the trouble with the day before didn't look through the peephole bars and see me lighting up. I don't think he'd noticed Len when he ordered me to give up my fag or they would come in and take it off me. Len got up off his bunk, looked straight at the guard and said, "You bastards can come come in whenever you like." They must have heard about him dropping a P.O. as they didn't come back and I told Len that was the same guard who refused to give me a match and took my last smoke off me. He said, "I don't think they'll bother us any more." After talking to him for a couple of hours that first evening, I got the impression he was definitely a bit of a headcase and he worried me so much that I kept my boots within reach when I turned in, just in case he threw a wobbly during the night. The day before I was to appear on Captains Report I was ordered to wear my tropical white uniform from then on to indicate that I was a prisoner--- more embarrassment as they marched me right through the barracks. Everyone else was in blue. It was almost the same as the Commander's Report only a bloody sight more gold braid. The Captain seemed to be a bit more interested in me and was quite friendly and after the charges had been read out he said, "If you have any problems, you can confide in me." I said I didn't and like the others he seemed to be at a loss to know what to do with me. He had a small discussion with the officers either side of him and then turning to look at me said. "Commodore's Report," I heard some one behind me say , "Jesus, a Court Martial." I thought, This is ridiculous, what a complete waste of time on a seventeen year old deserter. I know there's a bleedin war on, but this is the limit. Anyone would think I'd started a mutiny aboard a bleeding battleship or something but maybe it's all a jackup to put the fear of god into me. Back in the cell I told Len what had happened. He said, "Don't worry about it, you're lucky they don't execute prisoners any more for desertion or at least I don't think so." He laughed and offered me a smoke. I said, "Ta, you'll be bloody lucky if they don't string you up for striking an officer." He said, "Yeah, I was out in the exercise yard a few days ago studying Admiralty Fleet Orders (A.F.O's) in the large glass case by the main office. It's 1943 and would you believe the orders state execution by hanging was still a punishment for mutiny so it pays you to keep a cool head." A few days later they took Len away to see a doctor and he didn't come back to the cells. In fact I never saw him again so I guess they would realize he was a nut case and discharge him. The tropical whites I had to wear had never been worn since they were issued to me. They were made of a very thick strong type of linen that was more like cardboard until they had been washed many times and were extremely uncomfortable to wear. The days crawled by until the time came for the "Commodores report" and again I was handcuffed and marched through the barracks in my whites to the court-martial courtroom with everyone gawping at me on the way. Once inside the courtroom, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was absolutely dripping with gold braid. I had never in my life seen so many fucking Naval officers gathered in one place. I must admit I was terribly nervous as I was marched towards a large high brass-railed type of pulpit with two officers sitting each side of a huge leather bound chair. An officer called every one to attention. The Commodore appeared from the rear of the courtroom and smartly seated himself between the four officers and again it was "Off caps" and the charges were read out. The Commodore, a kindly faced older chap leaned over the brass railed pulpit and stared down at me as if to say, "What the hell is this young boy doing here." I looked back up to him, my right eye, which didn't focus straight, closed. He started to ask the same questions as the other officers but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. He thought for a while, then leaned over closer to me and said quietly, " If you have a very personal reason for deserting, like trouble at home, tell me and maybe I could help you." He couldn't seem to grasp the fact that a young lad could desert for no reason at all other than wanting to get to sea and going to America. It dawned on me then that this officer was genuinely trying to help me so I should play along with him. He asked me the question again. I hesitated for a moment or two as if considering it, then I said, " I'd rather not sir," making out that I had a reason but I wouldn't reveal it. He threw his hands up in disbelief and said more sternly, "If you don't tell me lad I can not help you."He repeated the question once more and again I hesitantly said , " I'd rather not sir," He looked around the courtroom as if for inspiration and then chatted to the officers beside him. It seemed ages and the court-room was dead quiet before he announced the sentence. Ninety days detention to be served at Fort Darling detention barracks with remission for time ( A.W.T.) awaiting trial. The court was brought to attention and the Commodore disappeared through the rear door, then again it was, "On caps, about turn, quick march, left right left right left." It was suggested to me later that the reason there were so many officers at the trial was because it was part of their training to watch the proceedings of a court martial. I was transferred to Fort Darling the following day. It was a large army detention barracks in Gillingham, Kent. On arrival I was searched, then told to strip off and to take a cold shower while, believe it or not, they even brushed out my pockets for tobacco dust. The barracks consisted of dozens of long army huts holding about thirty prisoners apiece. There must have been about eight hundred soldiers, maybe a dozen air force types and about ten Naval ratings in residence there at that time. It was just like a prisoner of war ( P.O.W) camp you see on the films today, in fact a squaddy told me the Germans really believed it to be a P.O.W. camp and that's why they never bombed us, which was a good job as we didn't have any bleedin' air raid shelters. I was bundled into a hut with about twenty five soldiers, most of them being tough paratroopers serving long sentences for desertion, as there was a lot of talk then about a second front. My bed was down about the middle of the hut, made up of two six inch high trestles, three wooden planks and three horse hair filled squares called biscuits, possibly because they were so hard, and also a couple of unwashed smelly grey army blankets. They relieved me of my biscuits in the first couple of days as punishment for calling a Staff Sergeant "Sir" instead of "Staff," For the life of me, even though I repeated the word over and over in my mind, when they screamed at me, fucked if I could remember the word Staff. I would call them Sir'and they always thought I was taking the piss out of them. I was issued with first world war gear, like ammunition pouches and belts that you wore across your chest, gaiters, also a 303 rifle. All had to be worn over your Naval uniform and to be cleaned and polished every night. I didn't sleep too well the first night and was startled first thing in the morning when the Staff sergeants rushed in screaming, "Stand by your beds." Every one jumped up and stood to attention beside their beds. They did a head count and disappeared as fast as they came in. Breakfast was tasteless porridge, no sugar or milk. Some of the prisoners had managed to get hold of some salt, but it took some time to get used to. I was starving so I scoffed mine down and looked around to see if everyone had finished theirs. They had and I thought, "If that's breakfast, roll on friggen lunch-time." It was now the middle of winter and there was no heating in the huts except for a couple of hot water pipes running down the side of the hut, but most of the time they were cold. Just inside the door in the left corner was the stinking toilet can with a curtain around it and being the new boy, I fell in for the sickly job of emptying it every morning. This was after another screaming session of "Stand By Your Beds", while the staff sergeants inspected everything. We had to be out on the parade ground by seven thirty, in full First World War kit. This motley gathering of almost a thousand defaulters on the parade ground first thing in the morning had to be seen to be believed. It never ceased to fascinate me. There were staff sergeants, sergeant majors, naval petty officers, air force officers, you name it, every type of senior rank in the armed services, screaming orders and running around like a bunch of comics, reporting here reporting there, inspecting this, inspecting that, grabbing your rifle off you and peering up the barrel. I was nervous the first morning when the inspecting officer stopped in front of me. He looked me up and down for a moment then he said, "Haircut" and moved on, much to my relief. This comic opera went on for almost an hour, then finally when everything was present and correct we were marched off. Even the army marching in detention was comical to me, as they did about one hundred and twenty steps to the minute whereas in the Navy we only did about eighty which meant I had to walk with a bit of a gallop, always behind. As we didn't stop for morning tea, we were marched off to the army assault course. I'd been warned that this was the toughest assault course in Britain, even tougher than Aldershot and I was quite worried that I couldn't do it. As it was, being young, I didn't find it too tough, but some of the older blokes found it very difficult. I remember one day a chap coming over a twenty foot wall behind me fell off the top and started screaming out in terrible pain. I thought, shit, he's broken both his legs. They carted him off and I carried on and was surprised to find out later that he'd only broken a big toe. The food and the way they served it at Fort darling was unbelievable. They must have been very short of crockery as everything was served on the one plate. The meat, which I guessed was horse, as it was a light black in colour which matched the spuds and veges, were then covered with your afters, usually rice pudding made with water, and some stewed prunes. It looked a terrible mess and was quite off-putting for a lad like me with a dicey stomach. Surprisingly enough, after a few days, being so hungry, I used to look forward to it. One day we noticed the meat was not its usual light black colour but a dark green, absolutely mouldy. Like complete idiots we ate it. The lads in the hut discussed it and asked for a volunteer to complain. I said I'd give it a go. Usually about ten minutes after the meal, an officer with a staff sergeant would come through the hut, with the normal , "Stand by your beds." This particular day the staff sergeant stood right beside me and screamed the usual, "Any complaints?" My stomach turned over as I shouted, "Yes staff." There was a dead silence in the hut as the staff sergeant took out his note-book and pencil. Normally there wasn't any answer to the " any complaints" question and I think my answer "yes staff" took them a little by surprise. The staff sergeant glared at me and said, "Yes, what is it." I said, "The meat at dinner time was green mouldy and rotten sir." They didn't seem to know what to say for a minute, then the officer had a brainwave. He said, "Did you eat it all." I said, "Yes sir, I was very hungry." He said, " You stupid man, you can't expect to complain after you've eaten the meal can you." I realized he could be right and said, "No sir." He turned to the staff sergeant and said, " Take a note and carry on." We never heard any more about it, but the meat was rotten alright as the lads had gripy guts for a few days and I was emptying the shit can twice as often. If we hadn't eaten it, I don't think they would have given us another meal anyway. The discipline at Fort Darling I thought was a bit brutal, possibly worse than a German P.O.W camp. Every thing had to be done on the double and if you answered back to a staff sergeant screaming in your lughole, the chances were he would invite you out for a scrap. In my time there I only ever saw one squaddy take up the invitation and I heard he was taken down into the cells and beaten up by three staff sergeants. On another occasion a paratrooper didn't get up quick enough for the staff sergeant and complained of being ill. He was told he could only report sick on the parade ground. He managed to get there but collapsed as he was reporting sick and a couple of staff sergeants wheeled him off to the sick bay on a hand cart. At the sick bay they were seen to let go of the tow bar and the hand cart tipped up smashing the paratroopers head on the concrete. Unfortunately he died and the two staff sergeants were court martialed and given eighteen months apiece for manslaughter. Months later it was good to read that one of the staff sergeants was murdered in prison. I soon realized that here you even had to be careful how you looked at a staff sergeant when they were tearing you up for shit paper for some trivial mistake, or they would have up on a charge of silent insubordination. One day I noticed they'd forgotten to strain the tealeaves from the billy can and I'd heard if you dried them they made a good smoke. I partially dried the tea leaves off the best I could with my towel, wrapped them up and jammed them between the two water pipes behind my bed hoping some hot water would flow through them in the next few days. It did and three days later the tea leaves were bone dry and just looked like real tobacco. Using toilet paper I rolled a big fat cigarette and all I had to do now was to get a light. One of the long-term prisoners showed me a unique and sometimes dangerous way of lighting a cigarette. He stood on a chair and removed an electric light bulb and in place of the bulb he stuffed a strip of silver paper. He got one of the other lads to lift me up with the fag in my mouth to drag away when he switched the light on and quickly off. The silver paper glowed and I took a couple of deep drags and inhaled it. Jesus it was bloody awful, nothing like tobacco. My head started to spin and I felt as sick as a dog but at least the lads had a good laugh and I thought what a pity. I could have been onto a good thing, but gasping for a smoke or not I don't think I'll be making a habit of smoking tealeaves. I never ceased to be amazed at the antics of some of the prisoners in our hut. Once a week one of them, a Cockney paratrooper, was taken to the Gillingham hospital for treatment for syphilis. He came back in the hut one day, immediately stripped off and was bent over seemingly in pain as he pulled at an elastoplast between the cheeks of his arse. I went over to him and asked if he was alright. He said, "Yeah, fack off, and he slowly peeled the elastoplast off. His eyes were watering as he showed me the quarter pound of tobacco wrapped in a water proofed material that he'd smuggled in past the guards. He'd also smuggled in a couple of cigarette lighter flints behind his foreskin and these he pressed into small holes he'd drilled in his boot brushes. From then on I nicknamed this bright Cockney lad "Skinflint" which was the only name I can remember out of the thirty men in our hut. He unrolled the tobacco from its wrapping and the smell of it was tantalizing. He'd even smuggled in a packet of fag papers and we watched him as he slowly rolled a cigarette. The way he lit it was intriguing. He took out his tooth brush and a razor blade, then he shaved fine particles of plastic from his tooth brush handle into a small heap on the floor and then flicked a couple of sparks from the flint in the end of his boot brush on to the wee heap of plastic. It immediately started smouldering as one of the lads blew on it and it started to glow red. Skinflint bent down and lit his fag. He took a couple of deep drags and then passed it around. Not being used to group fag-sharing, I didn't deeply inhale my first drag which almost started a fist fight as one stupid git reckoned I was wasting the tobacco, an indication of what tobacco addiction can do to you. The thing that struck me most at the time was the fact that although the guards peered through the peephole every fifteen minutes or so and saw us smoking, they never did anything about it. Although we hardly ever had a minute to ourselves, the days passed very slowly. Of an evening they even had us picking Oakum (a loose fibre got by picking old ropes to pieces and mostly used to caulk the decks of wooden ships,) a common task of convicts since the days of Nelson but this was nineteen forty two. A heap of old rope or hemp was thrown on your bed every day and each prisoner had to pick the lot. Sometimes one or two of the paras would get back to the hut before me and the miserable bastards would pile half of their ration of rope onto my bed which meant they would be finished picking by eight o'clock and I'd be still picking till lights out at ten. I never found out who the culprits were, not that I could do much about it. I guess they thought it was a big joke. I was now counting the days to my release and trying hard to keep my nose clean. Some of the paras reckoned I was dead lucky to get such a short sentence with remission for the time I was awaiting trial, which cut my sentence by half. Many of them were doing sentences of from two to three years but when I was there, some of them were offered immediate release if they volunteered for service abroad, which they guessed was the second front in Europe. A lot of them refused, and I found it hard to believe. If only they would make that offer to me, I'd be off like a hairy dog. Finally the day came for my release. Some of the lads said, "You'll be back scouse." I said, "Not on your friggen nelly, I'm never coming back in here, not on your life." They said, "We've heard it all before, you'll be back, they all come back." I said, " Not this kid, if I never see you bastards again, it'll be too friggen soon." Slinging my kitbag over my shoulder I made my way to the patrol vehicle that took me back to Chatham Naval base. Indeed I kept my word. I did get into trouble from time to time and received minor punishments but I never went back to Fort Darling detention barracks. I was dropped off at the RT.O's office by the main gates and told to do my joining routine which normally took a couple of days. They handed me a bunch of papers and I staggered off up the road under the weight of my kitbag and hammock. I'd only gone about a hundred yards and was just thinking, "Boy! it's great to be free" when I heard a terrible commotion going on back at the gates. I turned around and saw a petty officer blowing a whistle and waving his arms about at me. I just stood there not knowing what was hell was going on and a rating ran up the road towards me and blurted out, "Don't you know you're not allowed to walk on the foot path." I dropped my kitbag and said, "No, You're kidding." He said, "No way, foot paths are for officers only, ratings must walk on the road." I thought what a load of utter bullshit as I moved my gear onto the road. As it was, the sidewalk only ran a couple of hundred yards from the main gates and then petered out. I'd not had a smoke for a few days so I stopped the first rating that came along, told him I'd just got out of chokey and tapped him for a cigarette. He pulled out a packet of Senior service and gave me five. I thanked him, lit up, took a couple of deep drags and with my head spinning, was off up into the base, ready for anything. I spent the next few days doing my joining ship routine. It was a pleasure to be back on good food again and I couldn't get enough of the soup and steamed duff that the cooks made but unfortunately it didn't last very long. One day after doing a three week Stokers' training course I heard them piping for me over the tannoy system to report at the RT.O.'s office. Here they informed me I was to be transferred to the Destroyer H.M.S.Wolfhound in a couple of days at Rosyth Scotland. I hadn't picked up any pay since I went A.W.O.L and they didn't seem to be to keen to start paying me again. Every time I queued up for my pay, they'd say it hadn't arrived yet, or some other silly excuse. I was totally browned off, but glad to be leaving the shore base at Chatham for a ship in Scotland. Arriving at the dockyard gates at Rosyth late in the afternoon I asked the guard for the whereabouts of the destroyer Wolfhound. He must have picked my accent for he said there were two or three destroyers berthed next to one another in the dockyard and just walk down there and shout "Scouse" and one of your townies will appear and show you the ropes. I staggered off under the weight of my kitbag and hammock and sure enough when I got to the wall where the destroyers were tied up and shouted "Scouse" a curly haired head popped out of the galley of the furthest away boat and shouted, " Hi." "I shouted, "Is that the Wolfhound?" He said, "Yeah, come aboard." My first impression as I clambered over the rails of the first two destroyers was that they were just old steel hulks. They certainly looked dilapidated to me. The curly headed chap in the boiler suit was making himself a cup of tea in the galley as I introduced myself. He was a right Scotland Rd Scouse with that common Liverpool accent that everyone recognizes as soon as you open your gob. He made me a cup of tea and gave me a slice of jam tart. I told him I'd been in detention for desertion and hadn't had any pay for a few months. He said, "Hang on" and he shot off down to the stokers mess-deck. He came back and gave me two packets of Senior Service cigarettes and I think this stuck in my mind because I don't ever remember being given anything for nothing by a stranger. We stood in the galley enjoying a cup of tea and a smoke and he told me his name was Danny, but being from Liverpool most of his messmates called him Scouse. He said, "When we finish our tea I'll show you around the ship." He told me as we walked along the deck, that the Wolfhound was a V and W class destroyer built during the first world war in nineteen seventeen and our job was to escort merchant ships up and down the north sea. The crew was split into two watches, Port and starboard. I thought there weren't many aboard and he explained that the port watch was on shore leave in Edinburgh. I was amazed at the amount of riveted steel about us, the deck, the bulkheads, the watertight doors, everything was built of half inch armour plated steel. He took me for'ard and showed me the twin four point seven inch guns, then amidships, more twin anti aircraft guns and down aft, numerous depth charges, ready to be rolled off or lobbed into the air. In between this lot the designers had managed to cram two boiler rooms, an engine room, for'ord and aft ammunition magazines, fuel oil tanks etc. Then one of the designers must have said, "Hey where are we going to put the crew?" "Ah" Someone answered, "Don't worry, we'll squeeze them in somewhere." So they built a tiny wardroom for the officers, a small mess-deck for the seaman under the fo'castle and a smaller one below that for the stokers. It was a pretty slim sort of vessel about one hundred and sixty feet long. Danny reckoned its speed would be about thirty-one knots flat out. After he'd shown me through the engine and boiler rooms he took me through the seaman's living quarters down through a hatch to the stokers mess-deck, where twenty six ratings were expected to live in an area of about two hundred square feet. I found an empty locker and stowed my gear away. There were steel hooks all over the deck-head for us to sling our hammocks but unfortunately they were all taken as we had two extras in the mess, a sick bay tiffy and a chap from the catering staff. Danny said I'd have to sleep on the lockers which ran down each side of the mess till a sleeping billet became vacant. This was quite satisfactory in harbour but a different story at sea, as I was soon to find out. As all the slinging billets were taken, I had to lay my hammock on any empty part of the lockers running each side of the mess-deck. This wasn't too bad in calm weather but once it blew up a bit I'd have to lash myself to to the lockers with ropes for fear of being turfed off onto the deck as the ship lurched sideways. Sometimes I'd just get reasonably settled down when the skipper would suddenly decide to hare off around the convoy and all hell would break loose in the mess, as tin hats, heavy gas masks, lashed up hammocks, you name it, any thing not stowed away properly would come raining down. I'd have to put my arms up to protect my head and believe me it made sleep at times almost impossible. Eventually I got a slinging billet when the sick bay tiffy found a better possy up in the seaman's mess and what a relief it was in rough weather to lie in my hammock and relax. That was until I found out the reason why he'd changed his slinging billet. Everything was O.K until for some reason or other we'd have to drop the hook. My hammock being slung directly below the anchor capstan and lubricating oil would leak through the deckhead rivets and drip all over me every time they dropped the anchor. It didn't bother me that much and I was quite happy to put up with it as I usually slept in a clean boiler suit being always on standby ready for action stations. It always gave my messmates a bit of a laugh. The Royal Navy certainly made me pay a high tariff for my misconduct of deserting. When I stepped forward every fortnight to receive my pay on outstretched cap, I would hear the dreaded words from the paymaster, "Not entitled." I would 'on caps' and move away muttering under my breath, "What a bloody pack of miserable bastards. By now I'd been without any pay for over a couple of months and with no money I wouldn't even be able to go ashore. I slowly fell into another bout of deep depression which actually got to the stage where I even considered going A..W.O.L again. This happened to me more than once and I think the only thing that stopped me was realizing that things could only get better. At least my messmates were keeping me in tobacco and some of them would give me sippers of rum if they were on the afternoon watch, as the two and one bubbly would make them too sleepy down the boiler room. The next few days I spent learning the duties of a second class stoker aboard the Wolfhound and getting to know the lads in the stokers mess. They were from all parts of the British Isles even one from Southern Ireland who they told me could only go home on leave in civilian clothes because his country was neutral. They were a happy go lucky bunch of blokes ready for anything. I was rostered in the starboard watch and was told we would be the emergency destroyer the following day. This meant we would steam out of Rosyth early in the morning and lie off Burntisland for the next twenty-four hours. I was on the first watch and had to be down the boiler room by four a.m. It was very interesting learning how to flash up a boiler from cold and watch the steam gauges slowly creep up to two hundred and fifty pounds pressure per square inch. There were two boilers in the number one for'ard boiler room with eight sprayers on each injecting the oil fuel through a flame ring into the boiler. My job was to manipulate the sprayer valves controlling the oil fuel to keep the steam pressure up as the engine room demanded it. Two stokers looked after a boiler apiece and we took all our orders from the petty officer in charge of the boiler room. Most of the P.O.'s were old hands, having joined the Navy long before the war as boy entrants. By six a.m. we had a full head of steam. The bells began clanging and the orders started coming down the voice pipe. I felt the ship shudder a little as we slipped quietly away from the jetty. I kept my eye on the guages and the pressure started to drop as we increased speed. The P.O tapped his wheel spanner on a pipe to indicate to me to flash up another sprayer. This pipe tapping was the only way of communicating down below because of the noise of the giant fans working flat out to keep the air pressure up, otherwise the boilers would just about shake hands with you. It didn't take very long to reach our emergency destroyer station and we dropped anchor about half a mile off Burntisland. My duty watch finished at O800 hours so I clambered up through the airtight door and hatch onto the deck. Iit was a fresh sunny morning and the coast of Scotland looked lovely and green, the sea was calm and I thought as I leaned over the rails enjoying the view, well, I'm at sea at last. Not that this boat was going anywhere near America. The morning watch also had the duty of cleaning the mess, washing up the breakfast dishes and helping to prepare dinner. Our starboard watch leading stoker who was in charge of the mess was a stickler for cleanliness, which I guess he had to be, with so many of us living in such cramped quarters. At breakfast time he'd look around the table seeming to know who hadn't had a wash when they got up and he'd order them away to wash. Mind you, if you'd seen our heads (washing facilities,) you might not blame them. Imagine a cold all steel compartment approximately eight feet by three, with four tiny wash basins, one open shower, no hot water, for the use of one hundred and fifty men. It's amazing though, what you can get used to when you have no option. No emergencies came up during our twenty four hour standby and the next morning we steamed off to escort a convoy of about thirty merchant ships up the east coast, We were only one of four destroyers escorting the convoy and we took up a position on the starboard side. We could only move as fast as the slowest ship in the convoy so our speed settled down to a steady eight knots. The sea was relatively calm and I was sitting up in a gun turret amidships talking to a couple of gunners when a Sparkie (Telegraphist) passed us the news we were about to run into a force nine gale. I could feel the temperature beginning to drop rapidly so I went down below to the mess-deck where Danny told me we'd be doing a dummy run exercise at action stations in a few minutes and that my action station would be with him on the for'ard twin four point seven inch gun. The action station alarm bells went off and just about deafened me. We leapt up the ladder, through the hatch, the last one through securing it, as the stokers mess was a water tight compartment. By now the temperature had really dropped and a bitterly cold wind was blowing. I was only wearing my underwear and a thin boiler suit having not long come up from the boiler room and I slowly began to freeze. Our job was to feed the shells into the breaches of the gun and the gunners did the rest. I was holding a heavy shell for about twenty minutes. My hands were slowly turning white and numb with the cold and I had a job to keep my balance as the old Wolfhound started to dig its bow into the waves. That exercise lasted the best part of an hour and was I glad when the order came through to stand down. We heard the duty seaman pipe "up spirits." Danny who was rum bos'on at the time shot away aft with a fanny to pick up the rum ration for the mess, a tot for each rating over twenty, which left me out, and one tot in seven for spillage. Danny, who the lads reckoned was an expert at negotiating the sixty-yard dash, shot off along the upper deck hanging onto life lines and returned with the fanny three parts full of rum back to the mess without spilling a drop. Although he loved his rum and would do almost anything for a tot, he gave me half a cup full to thaw me out. Luckily it wasn't neat rum but what they called two and one, two parts water and one part rum. I sipped it down and it had a lovely warming affect. By now it was dinner time so scouse and I shot off up to the galley to fetch the meal down. Although the old Wolfhound was pitching a fair bit as the storm increased we managed to polish off the meal before the teacups starting turning upside down on the table. The north sea can become in the matter of hours one of the coldest roughest seas in the world. I began to feel a bit queasy as we ploughed head on into the gale force winds. Then the skipper must have decided to steam all the way round the convoy to check for any stragglers and as we increased speed the movement of the ship reached the stage where it was almost impossible to stay down in the stokers mess. Being the most for'ard mess-deck aboard, the shuddering up and down movement must have reached thirty to forty feet. By now I was really beginning to feel ill and when a couple of the lads started to be sick in a bucket I grabbed a duffle coat and made for the upper deck. I held on to a life-line just outside the galley and I couldn't believe how rough the sea was. You could only describe it as a ghastly green colour, which I was told by the lads later was the same colour as my face. The seas were almost vertical with the deck of the ship as we pitched and rolled. I couldn't hold it any longer so I grabbed hold of the gash chute that was hanging over the side and spewed my guts up. Little did I know that this was to be the beginning of over a year of continual sea-sickness for me. We ploughed on to the head of the convoy with our skipper, who at the time I thought was a bit of a fucking idiot, playing loudly over the tannoy loud speaker system his favourite record, "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf." Some of the crews on the merchant ships waved to us as we ploughed head on into the wind past them. Reaching the head of the convoy we struggled to turn around to proceed down the port side. Although this was a little more comfortable with a following wind and sea, it turned out to be a right cock up for there were quite a few stragglers and it took us a bit longer than it should have done to reach the tail end of the convoy. That's where the skipper's troubles began as by now the gale had increased to the predicted force nine and the intensity of the wind and sea was such that it was impossible to turn back again and rejoin the convoy. On his first attempt the waves were so huge and hit us so hard one after the other I was afraid we were going to turn turtle. In all, he made four attempts and each time got about half way round when he'd have to give up in fear of turning the ship completely over. I thought what a prick of a job the skipper's got and wondered how he was feeling as we were now steaming in the opposite direction to the convoy. About fifteen minutes later the skipper warned us over the tannoy system to brace ourselves as he was about to have another go at turning about. This time he must have read the seas and the wind gusts right because we just made it even though my braced position in the narrow alleyway changed from vertical to horizontal about three or four times. By now we were many miles behind the convoy and the poor old Wolfhound vibrated continuously as the skipper used every ounce of power we had to catch up. Fortunately for us the convoy had slowed down to about four knots to allow the stragglers to catch up. In severe storms like this one, the fleet of merchant ships can become dispersed over vast areas and we could spend many hours shepherding them back together again. I was still feeling as sick as a dog and it was with some relief to me when we finally caught up with the convoy and reduced our speed down to about five knots, but even at that speed the wallowing of the ship was sickening. I went down to the stokers mess and it was absolute chaos. There was about three inches of sea water, spew, and you name it, swishing around the deck as the old tub leaked like a sieve in heavy weather. Scouse and a couple of his hardy messmates were doing their best to soak up the mess into buckets but were fighting a loosing battle. I tried to help them for a while but had to give it up as I was retching all the time and my stomach was empty. Scouse suggested that I go up on deck and sit with the gunners amidships where the ship's movement wasn't as bad. He certainly was a great sailor. I never ever saw him seasick and for him the rougher the weather the better. I'd see him rubbing his hands together and saying, "There'll be no action stations tonight lads, it'll be too rough for those poxy German E boats and we'll get some sleep." I felt a bit better as I sat up in the fresh air with the gunners and they told me we were steaming through the Wash, one of the roughest parts of the North sea. We were heading for the Humber estuary and would tie up at Immingham and if we were lucky we might get ashore at Grimsby which they reckoned was a pretty grim place. The way I felt, any place ashore would be heaven. We must have sailed many times through the Wash in the following fourteen months of my life aboard the Wolfhound and almost every time there would be a gale warning. The sea would become mountainous and I'd finish up feeling completely washed out. Although we went ashore many times at Grimsby I don't remember much about the place, possibly because we always finished up getting drunk. One night ashore there I remember we met some girls in a pub who told us most of the young ladies there were employed at a jam factory, or was that at Immingham, never mind, for me it was those odd nights ashore that gave us something to look forward to. The worst part of our escort duties in the north-sea was steaming through an area known as E boat alley, especially on a calm night. The shrewd German skippers of the high speed E boats would tie up at the buoys that indicated the shipping lanes, extinguish the blinking lights and lie in wait for our slow convoy. We would proceed to investigate the lights being out and the E-boats would tear into the convoy firing their torpedoes left right and centre causing havoc amongst the merchant ships. We'd be closed up at action stations and if I wasn't on watch down the boiler room, I'd be either down in the magazine or on the seaman's mess-deck pumping shells up a chute to the gunners who would be blasting away for all their worth at the E boats. One night in particular sticks out in my mind while we were in action. I'd picked up a shell and pulled off the base cap for the officer to set the distance for it to explode. I pushed it up the chute but the gunner somehow missed grabbing it, and it came hurtling back down. It then bounced off the bottom of the chute and crashed three feet down onto the deck. Everyone froze and there was utter silence for a moment as we all thought it would explode. As it started rolling across the deck with the movement of the ship the officer screamed at me to pick it up and as I did I involuntarily spewed all over him and the shell as he checked it. I still have a laugh when I think about it, but take it from me, it wasn't very funny at the time as we couldn't leave our action stations and it was a couple of hours before we were stood down . Later I apologized to the officer and the gunner who unfortunately had to grab hold of the shell. It's possible the vomiting was caused as much by fear as by the pitching of the ship, unlike the captain who also suffered from seasickness, but only for the first few hours. At sea I was continuously seasick whenever the weather was rough. In spite of all the problems, life could sometimes be quite enjoyable on a destroyer at sea. For me, this was when the sun was shining and reflecting off a sea when it was as . smooth as glass. The good sailors cursed the calm weather, knowing they would be closed up at action stations most of the night. I would laugh at them and say I'd rather be scared all night than spewing my ring up. They would usually answer with, "Yeah, fucking good kid in harbour." At a very early age I was a sun worshipper. I just loved the nurturing warmth on my body and whenever possible when I was off watch I would be found sunbathing on the upper deck. Unfortunately on one occasion I overdid it. I must have been pretty tired when I fell asleep in a 'Carley float,' a life- saving raft and I must have slept there for over two hours. I woke up to find my body covered in blisters, some of them about three inches across and they slowly filled up with water and became quite painful. The sick bay tiffy gave me some ointment to put on them and at the same time told me not to report sick as getting sunburned in the navy was a punishable offence being classed as self inflicted injury. I thought this guy has got to be kidding me, but he wasn't, so I didn't report sick. It was punishment enough to have to work down below in the heat of the boiler room for the next painful few days. Once the blisters burst and the skin all peeled, then the itching began as I slowly healed up. The lesson being, don't fall asleep when you're sunbathing. . Hurrah! At last my papers arrived and they started paying me again so I was able to pay back the few bob I'd borrowed from the lads, buy some tobacco and even had enough left for a run ashore. We'd just escorted a convoy up to Rosyth without any strife and were tied up in the Leith dockyard. They piped the liberty watch that was going ashore to fall in for inspection. After which we all toddled off to Edinburgh. I'd palled up with a couple of Scottish lads, one named Howie from Kilmarnoch and the other named Kerrigan from Glasgow. These two were a couple of characters and for the first month or two I could only understand half of what they said because of their accent. What really tickled me was their use of the word "how" instead of the word "why" in any discussion you had with them. Of all places we always enjoyed a run ashore at Edinburgh. We'd normally book beds in the local Y.M.C.A, then wander off up Princes Street eyeing the girls and trying out the beer in the various pubs. If by nine o'clock we hadn't become stoney broke we'd stagger along to the Palais De Dance, a lovely dance hall which had a revolving stage divided in two, with two dance bands. One band would play for half an hour and then revolve off as the other band came on. It was very modern at the time. I had a bit of a problem asking girls to dance and it sure helped to have a few beers first and get that, 'give the cat another fucking goldfish' feeling. Kerrigan and Howie would edge us across the floor and ask a group of girls up to dance. We danced with them for quite a while and they promised to meet us later when the dance finished but when we looked around for them outside they'd completely vanished; just as well as we were supposed to be back at the Y.M by eleven thirty or we'd be locked out. At least this gave us the opportunity to catch up on some lost sleep as I seldom slept well at sea. So for month after month we had the monotonous task of escorting convoys in the North Sea up and down the east coast, only getting the odd run ashore at Sheerness down south and places like Dunfermline, nicknamed the dumps, and Kirkcaldy up north, places handy to where we tied up at Rosyth. Many times the monotony turned to straight out boredom as we could be held up fog-bound for days at a time because the merchant ships didn't have the new fangled Asdics and Radar. I'd come up on deck from the boiler room and peer out into the gloom. You could only describe the scene as eerie with the odd bleating of the merchant ships' fog horns as they lay at anchor and the intermittent clanging of the destroyers' bells indicating the time of day. In a way it really suited me as the sea would be like glass and we could virtually glide around the convoy. I think it was later that night that I got one hell of a fright. We'd just stopped for a moment and I was taking a breath of fresh fog before turning in when a ship suddenly loomed out of the darkness aft, straight at us. I gripped the rail, unable to move expecting it to ram us but it actually missed us by about four feet and passed so quickly I didn't even recognise it as another one of our destroyers. The Semaphore lanterns started to flash vigorously between the two escort vessels. I'd say our skipper was giving someone a right bollocking for scaring us to death. For me, being fog bound was a time to relax while most of my messmates were on tenterhooks fearing a torpedo attack by a lurking submarine. I'd tell myself the submarine captains were more interested in sinking merchant ships than their escorts. As I'd pass the sparkies office I'd hear the Ping Pinging noise of the latest Asdic (anti submarine detection) equipment beeping out its sound waves to rebound off an enemy sub, or even a shoal of fish, which could send us off on a wild goose chase. This Asdic gear was good alright as we found out when we did an exercise with one of our own submarines. We were well out in the North sea with another destroyer doing a criss-cross sweep until the Asdic operators pinpointed the submerged sub. There were quite a few of us off-watch ratings inquisitively staring at a patch of water that all the guns of the two destroyers were pointed at and sure enough, about fifteen minutes later, that was the exact spot where the submarine surfaced. A big cheer went up from all the crew watching. Seasickness is a terrible malady. It can affect you three ways, vomiting, splitting headaches, and chronic constipation. Naturally being a fucking born Jonah, I got the nap hand. When the weather was rough and that would be about seven times out of ten, the only food I could keep down was packets of peanuts that I bought from the canteen. After a few months of this I was looking pretty sickly and only my sunburnt features saved me from looking like death warmed up. A buzz went through the mess that when we got to Rosyth we were in for a boiler clean. This meant being tied up for six days and an opportunity for some leave, this time for the starboard watch. The buzz was correct and we were given leave for five days. My cousin Maud worked in a grocers shop in Liverpool where they had a telephone so I rang her from Edinburgh telling her that I was on my way. In war time that's all you could tell any one. I wasn't even allowed to tell her where I was ringing from. Our mail was also censored, which was a good excuse for not writing too many letters as it was a chore for me. It was a nice warm late afternoon when I arrived in Liverpool so I decided to save a few coppers and walk from Lime street station up to Kensington. I was carrying my duffle bag which was pretty heavy being half full of tinned food which I'd scrounged from the mess for my aunt. I was in a bit of a sweat when I reached Low Hill so I pushed my cap to the back of my head and fuck me stupid, if within a couple of minutes a Shore Patrol vehicle didn't pull up beside me. Two white belted and gaitered jokers hopped out and put me on a charge of being improperly dressed ashore. Did I mention before that I always thought I had a lot of luck; unfortunately it was always fucking bad. This charge could mean another period of punishment and I was only a few yards from my aunt's home. Its amazing what a few days relaxing on leave can do for your health. My aunt was very good to me, giving me extra food and letting me lie in bed in the mornings. Even though food was severely rationed, my cousin Maud would manage to get a little extra from the grocer's shop where she worked so we did pretty well. Of an evening we'd all go to the pub for a few drinks. Later we'd come home, have a bite to eat and I'd sit up late having a chat with Maud. She was a lovely girl, about four or five years older than me, and just a little under five foot tall, which seemed to concern her quite a lot at the time. She had lovely blonde hair and a beautiful petite figure and I think at one time I was actually in love with her. Occasionally we used to write to one another but I doubt if she ever knew that in my thoughts I was using her in place of a girlfriend. Shore leave passes very quickly and in no time we were back aboard again. A few days passed and not a word about the improperly dressed charge against me. I was hoping that the shore patrol hadn't reported it but no such frigging luck. Two days at sea and I was told I was on captain's report. By now I was getting used to this defaulters' routine. The old Wolfhound was ploughing in a bit as I tried to steady myself in front of the captain's table, Again it was "off caps" and the P.O. read out the charge. The skipper gave me a bit of a lecture on proper dress standards ashore and then sentenced me to seven days punishment. I thought, "What, no walking the plank." Mind you, it wasn't that funny at the time. Doing punishment at sea in war-time was much harder than doing punishment ashore, having most of the time to be in a state of readiness for action stations and doing your normal duty watches. The punishment kept me on the go for almost twenty hours a day, starting about five thirty in the morning. I had to hand pump fresh water up to the galley tanks for a couple of hours, then between duty watches down the boiler room, they'd have me galloping around the upper deck with an old heavy first world war rifle above my head for an hour or more. Then we could be at action stations most of the night. So much for life on the ocean wave. We'd just safely escorted a convoy to Sheerness and were lying out in the stream waiting to get along the oil jetty to oil ship. The C.P.O. (Chief Petty Officer) who was one of those chaps who'd served his time pre-war, and was recalled in 1939 when the war started, had lined me up for job of helping to oil ship. We tied up beside another destroyer at the jetty and a couple of seaman dragged the heavy oil hoses aboard. Of all places to have oil fuel tanks, the designers had situated them below the petty officers mess. The Chief P.O., who was pretty old and had very poor eyesight stationed me down in the P.O's mess and told me to shout out to him when the oil reached the top rung of the ladder in the oil tank. I shone my torch into the tank as the oil flowed slowly up the rungs of the ladder. The Chief shouted down, "Hey Scouse, the quicker we get this job done the sooner we'll get ashore." I said, "Right chief, only three rungs to go." I strained my eyes as the oil slowly crept up to the top rung and when it was about four inches below it I shouted up to the chief, "It's up to the top rung." He said, " Right ho," and shouted to the seaman on the jetty, " We're full, turn it off." The silly bastard on the jetty turned the wheel of the stopcock the wrong way. Instead of closing the valve, he opened it up further, not knowing this valve worked opposite to normal. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the flow of oil increase rapidly over the top rung. I screamed out to the chief to turn the bastard off. --- Too late!--- to my horror the filthy oil fuel spewed over the top of the tanks and started to fill the P.O.'s mess. By the time they got it turned off, there was almost a foot of stinking oil fuel in the mess. The poor old chief stoker, who would normally get quite flustered when we were taking on oil or ammunition looked as if he was about to give birth. It was alright for him but I was standing almost up to my calves in poxy fuel oil with all the P.O.'s shoes, slippers, and what have you, floating around me. I could hear the chief screaming up top, "You'll have to get that fuckin' lot cleaned up and there'll be no fuckin' shore leave for you stupid bastards tonight. He was right, I was still handing buckets of oil up the ladder at nine o'clock and it was almost eleven by the time we got fully cleaned up. I guess I was my own biggest enemy. It was bad enough being continually seasick at sea, but now when I went ashore with the lads I began drinking more than was good for me. I remember the first time I drank too much. I was ashore in Dunfermline with Kerrigan and Howie and we did a bit of a pub crawl. When we came out of the last pub into the fresh air I began to feel really ill. We staggered into a toilet behind the pub for a leak. Howie jammed his fingers down my throat and I gave the pub the fuckin' lot back for nothing. Jesus I was crook and so glad to get back aboard into my hammock. I didn't feel much better the next morning, having the feeling of not knowing whether I wanted a shit or a haircut. I kept saying to myself never again, never again, and it took me over three days to recover. Did it teach me a lesson? Did it fuck. I did exactly the same thing again the next time I went ashore. Come to think of it, a stokers messdeck aboard a destroyer in war time was no place for a young lad. I couldn't believe some of the talk that went on between the stokers as they lay in their hammocks having just returned from shore leave. No wonder they called it the lower deck. It seemed as if they tried to outdo one another telling the filthiest stories and jokes of depravity. When I joined the ship I had a very high regard for ladies and put them on a pedestal, like the Yanks. The lads talked about women as if they were all whores and prostitutes and some of them even included their wives in the same way. In a way I was a bit shocked by their attitude towards women; maybe it was the grog talking, or the fact that they liked to brag as to how many different parts of the world they'd been to, or maybe the comedy they made of it all, eased their stress of wartime. You'd never know. By now I was beginning to realize that I'd volunteered for the wrong service. I should have joined the Army or the Air force. Even the foreign legion couldn't have been worse for me than the Navy. I doubt if I'd ever be a good sailor, but I guess it was the uniform and the opportunity of getting to America that persuaded me. Actually my uniform became a bit of a problem for me because at sea we were continually living in damp and wet conditions, as well as being weak from sea sickness. I also got a right dose of rheumatism in my arms and shoulders and the pain would bring tears to my eyes as the lads helped me to get in and out of my tight fitting uniform. The pain got to the stage where it was easier for me to sleep in my uniform, which I often did. There were times when everyone got fed up with only having dehydrated meat and potatoes for meals. It didn't bother me very much as at sea I would stick to my salted peanuts but the lads would really cheer up when the skipper decided to go fishing. Every few months we were allowed to do training exercises dropping depth charges so when he thought it was safe to leave the convoy for an hour we'd tear off. We'd increase speed up to about twenty five knots, the minimum speed at which you could safely drop depth charges and would then lob a couple of depth charges over the side. After a few seconds there would be a terrific underwater explosion followed by another one, the shock of which would be felt through-out the ship. From the bridge the Tannoy loud speaker system would bellow out, "Clear lower deck, all hands to lower whaler and motor boat. As we slewed around back to the vicinity of the explosions, about twenty to thirty off duty ratings would stand in line holding the ropes to slowly lower the two life boats down into the water where there were scores of dead or stunned fish floating about. We would slowly circle the two boats as they picked up as many fish as they could. The motor boat returned quickly with enough fish to open a fish market and the lads slowly heaved it up and swung it back inboard. The whaler was a bit slower as it wasn't motorized. There were four seaman rowing and two picking up the fish. I think the skipper was anxious to be on the move and they were called to come alongside. They did, and then there was a bit of confusion as to what happened next. I think the skipper took off too soon before the for'ard end of the whaler was properly secured to the davit. I saw a large wave hit the for'ard end of the whaler and it suddenly slewed out as we gathered speed leaving the whaler dangling on the after davit and toppling all the six seamen and all their fish into the icy sea. Panic stations! I heard the coxswain screaming to the men in the water to kick off their sea boots, but I don't think they heard him as they were swept under the ship. I thought, Jesus they'll be cut to ribbons by the screws, but luckily, somehow they missed them. We saw them all surface about a couple of hundred yards aft of the ship. By now the officers on the bridge had realized what had happened and with the whaler still dangling from the davit we turned around to be alongside the stricken seamen in minutes. I'd say we dropped the motor boat in record time that day and in no time we had all the seamen back safely aboard recovering rapidly with the help of a couple of tots of neat rum. Of course we blamed the officers for that incident, but the buggers made sure the choicest fish went down to their wardroom. Some of the lads would do anything for a couple of tots of neat rum. One time I remember, we were in a bit of a storm when the chief stoker shouted down the mess for a volunteer to secure a forty-four gallon drum of oil that had come adrift and was rolling about dangerously on the upper deck. When Danny the curly headed Scouse heard there was a couple of tots of rum in it, he volunteered without hesitation. He slung a coil of rope over his shoulder and we watched him make his way along the heaving deck holding on to a lifeline, as the ship pitched and rolled from side to side. So did the heavy drum. Scouse studied the sea and the movement of the ship for a moment and as soon as the drum came to rest on the side rails close to him, he nipped over and slipped the rope around it. We lost sight of him for a few seconds as a giant wave crashed over the side and when we spotted him again he was still hanging on to the rope that he'd looped around the drum which was now doing a bit of a jig across the deck. He managed to slip the end of the rope over a rung of the steel ladder attached to the gun platform and whipped in the slack as the drum rolled towards him. He had it. Slipping another couple of loops around the drum he lashed it to the ladder, securing it with a great number of half hitches. He reported, "Drum secured Chief," and claimed his two tots of neaters. He was just about frozen to the bone and we reckoned he deserved a couple of bottles of rum. Another time the lookouts on the bridge spotted what they thought to be a downed aircraft in the distance on the port bow. We steamed over to it and it turned out to be a fighter plane. We came alongside and looked closely at it but there was no sign of the pilot so the skipper decided to try and lift the plane aboard to salvage it. A volunteer jumped overboard to secure it. After several unsuccessful attempts to get it aboard we finally gave up and the skipper then decided to tow the aircraft behind us. That wasn't very successful either as the weather deteriorated and it started to sink so we abandoned it and steamed off to catch up with the convoy. By now I'd been in the navy for a year. Before I joined I was praying that the war wouldn't end too quickly. Now it couldn't end quickly enough for me. Even though we seemed to be slowly winning the war, the overall moral of the fleet wasn't very high. The Admiralty must have realized this as they decided to issue war service chevrons, one chevron for each year of war service. This seemed to boost the moral of the crew as they were all busy sewing the chevrons on the sleeves of their jackets. Some of the crew who had been in the Navy since the beginning of the war received four chevrons. I got one and what with that, and my H.M. Destroyer hat- band I really thought I was Jack Tar ashore. We were lucky to have in our mess a leading stoker named Hank who was a civilian-trained hairdresser and he gave us some real fancy hair cuts. To shave we all used safety razors, but not Hank. He always used a cutthroat razor. I remember he gave us a hell of a fright one afternoon. He was having a shave and the mirror, which was hanging on a stanchion, was swaying side to side to the movement of the ship. Suddenly, without warning the mirror crashed to the deck. Hank who must have got a bit of a shock, involuntarily whipped the hand holding the cutthroat razor up and accidentally slit his throat. Panic stations! Blood everywhere! Hank grabbed hold of his throat and kept the pressure on until we got him up to the sick bay where the tiffy finally managed to stem the flow of blood long enough for them to get him ashore to a hospital. He survived alright and we were glad to see him back aboard a couple of weeks later. But from then on he always used a safety razor. Talking about razors reminded me of the time when a couple of the lads decided to grow beards and I found it hard to believe when they told me they had to put in a special request to the captain for permission to grow them. Their requests were granted and they grew pretty good beards but after a few months when they got fed up with them, they found out that they would have to put in another request to the captain for permission to shave them off, which they did. I thought they looked pretty good with their beards and if I'd been the skipper, for a skylark I'd would have said "Not granted." That would have shook them, but he didn't. I envied them as I hadn't even started shaving yet, just a bit of bum fluff as the lads would say and their suggestion for me to get rid of it instead of shaving would be to dash aft in a high wind. I use to enjoy lying in my hammock when I was off watch, listening to the radio music that was piped down into the mess-decks. At times it could also be very frustrating because when the ship rolled to one side the music would go off. When the ship righted itself the music would come back on, then off again as we rolled to the other side. That was alright, but it was a different story when we were trying to listen to the news. The news-reader would be reading out some important war news and we'd miss half of it as the ship rolled from side to side. Then we'd have to spend some time trying to fill the parts we didn't hear until the next news bulletin. After a pretty rough trip through E- boat alley, being at action stations most of the night, a gunner told me we'd fired off almost two thousand rounds of ammunition. No wonder my friggin' ears were still ringing. Just before four in the morning I'd come up from the magazine where I'd been pumping shells up to the gunners, to go on watch down the boiler room. Once on deck I saw an E-boat that must have taken a direct hit from our gunners and was ablaze from stem to stern. heading at high speed through the convoy. It seemed to be completely out of control and I feared it would plough into a merchant ship, as these E-boats were armed with torpedoes. It suddenly came to a standstill and we saw the crew leap overboard to escape the fire as it started to sink. I nipped down the boiler room to tell the P.O. and the stoker I was to relieve, what was happening up top. They were chuffed, but I still got a bollocking for being a few minutes late. We 'd just escorted a convoy to Sheerness and were flabbergasted to see hundreds of ships lying in the stream at anchor or tied up anywhere they could get a berth. Normally we could get a berth at Sheerness without any trouble but we'd never seen anything like this. As we looked around, there was every ship imaginable lying quietly at anchor. A buzz went through the ship that there must be something big on and it certainly looked like an invasion fleet. Unable to get a berth we dropped the hook out in the stream and cursed our luck at not being able to get a run ashore. If there was something big going to happen nobody was telling us. There was a quiet excitement amongst the crew and the buzz aboard was that this was the preparation for the second front in Europe. Sure enough, when we went up on deck the next morning, there wasn't a frigging ship in sight. They'd all slipped quietly away during the night. The buzz was right , this was D-day. The assault on Europe had begun and the buggers had left us behind to do our monotonous convoy duty. I knew I should have joined the Army so I could have been in France by now, getting stuck into the poxy Jerries. Never mind we'll have to make do with a run ashore tonight in Sheerness. It wasn't long before I was in strife again. We'd steamed out of Rosyth to lay at anchor off Burntisland for twenty-four hours as emergency destroyer before joining a convoy south. The skipper, I guessed to break the monotony, decided to send a landing party ashore on some exercise or other. We dropped a couple of lifeboats and with a P.O. in charge of half a dozen seamen, myself, and two other stokers all armed to the teeth we slowly rowed ashore. I don't think the P.O.really knew what we were supposed to do once we got ashore but he told us to spread out and have a look around and return in a couple of hours. One of the stokers who thought he knew the area reckoned we were only about two miles from the nearest village so I thought this would be a good opportunity to find a post office and buy a ten bob postal order and send it off to my younger brother Eric for his birthday which was due in a few days, so we set off together. Unfortunately the village was a bit farther away than the two miles I was led to believe. We started to get a bit worried on the way back as it seemed to take longer than we thought it would. I began to realize it had taken much longer than the two hours we were supposed to be away but I thought, maybe they'll wait for us. They didn't! there wasn't a friggin' soul about when we arrived back at the beach. We hung about for an hour or more hoping someone would come and pick us up. No one did, so we decided the only thing we could do was to hitch hike back to Rosyth. It as beginning to get dark when we finally got a lift in an army lorry and the driver took us all the way back to the dockyard gates. We presented ourselves to the guard and told him what had happened to us. He looked a bit unsure of what to do, then he made a couple of phone calls. It turned out there was another destroyer tied up in the dockyard and the guard told us to report to the duty officer on board. It must have been about ten o'clock when we finally caught up with the duty officer who told us they were casting off first thing in the morning and luckily for us would be joining up with the same convoy as the Wolfhound was escorting. My off-sider who I only knew as Jock told me he'd been born in this area. he moaned about feeling pretty hungry so we went down to the stokers mess and made ourselves a cup of cocoa and some toast. Some of the crew were on overnight shore leave so there was no problem finding a place to sleep. This was actually an American destroyer we were on, one of fifty, first world war, four funnel destroyers given to the British by the Americans on a lease lend scheme. The main thing we noticed was that the crew didn't sleep in hammocks. They had proper beds that folded up to the sides of the mess-decks which were quite comfortable but I think I would prefer a hammock in very rough weather. I was awakened early the next morning by the shuddering of the ship as she gathered speed to rendezvous with the convoy. In the meantime I was talking to a seaman up on deck who told me the American name for this destroyer was Clancy but they changed it when it joined our V and W fleet. The American name brought to mind the song "Clancy lowered the boom" and I said to Jock, "That's what our skipper will do when he gets us aboard." About an hour later we sighted the slow moving convoy and the duty P.O told us to stand by ready to leap aboard the Wolfhound as soon as the skipper could manouvre as close as possible to her. The sea was a bit choppy as we came alongside. I could see a couple of seaman preparing to take down the guard rails and an officer scowling at us up in the fo'castle. Both ships by now had slowed down to about four or five knots but were still pitching up and down quite a bit. The P.O. ordered us to the guard-rail and to jump as soon as he shouted when the two ships were about level. I think we were both a little bit nervous. I know I was as I grabbed hold of the rail to steady myself. The P.O. yelled to us to jump as the Wolfhound came up almost level with us and we both took the biggest leap of our lives. Jock who was much taller than me made it safely with a foot to spare. I only managed to get the toe of my boot onto the deck but luckily a seaman grabbed me by the collar and hauled me inboard. I thought afterwards they could have at least tied a rope around each of us in case we slipped and fell between the two ships, but no, that would have made it too easy for us. Maybe this was part of our punishment. It's funny, the only time I ever saw the captain seemed to be at his table on defaulters. Jock, who I don't think had ever been on a charge before wasn't very happy when they threw the bleedin' book at us. It took them over five minutes to read out all the charges they could think of, from being absent without leave to detaining his majesties ship for one hour from rendezvousing with a convoy. I thought, time to get the fuckin' plank out again, which I suppose would have been the order of the day if we were back in the times of Nelson. I think my sense of humour kept me from getting too depressed. I tried to make a joke and see the funny side of everything or even associate it to a piece of music. Unfortunately the skipper didn't see the funny side of it, being wartime and lashed us up to fourteen days punishment apiece and all because I wanted to buy my younger brother a birthday present. "Hands to bathe." How I used to hate that order coming over the Tannoy system. For one thing I couldn't swim, the bleeding water was freezing cold and it was a fair jump over the side. If I couldn't find a place to hide I'd put on my life-belt, leap in and flounder about till I was blue to the amusement of the lads who could swim. Our first Lieutenant was a Maori chap from New Zealand. He had a magnificent body and would strip off, dive in naked and swim like a fish many times around the ship. I certainly envied him. Our soldiers were doing well on the continent and it and it looked like the war in Germany could soon come to an end. We would then have to concentrate on the war in Japan and some of the lads were hoping to be posted out to the far east. The leading stoker in our mess became very concerned about the state of my health. I was still being continually seasick and had started to retch up some blood. Without me knowing he complained to the engineer that he didn't think I'd be capable of doing my job much longer although I'd only missed one duty in over a year when I was so ill I didn't have the strength to get out of my hammock during a very bad storm. I was surprised when the engineer sent for me. We had a wee chat and he decided to send me ashore to see a naval doctor when we arrived at Rosyth the following day. The doctor I saw the next day was a surgeon commander and after a brief examination he gave me twenty-four hours to get off the ship. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I was pleased to be getting off the Wolfhound but I didn't want to leave my shipmates and return to the overcrowded shore base at Chatham especially with a chitty saying I was suffering from continual sea sickness. Oh the shame of it, being a Liverpudlian. I sadly left H.M.S. Wolfhound the following day. The lads gave me a few sippers of rum to cheer me up and see me on my way. They'd been officially told that they were to be transferred to a newly commissioned destroyer and would steam off to the Far East. I thought as I sat on the train to London, the lucky buggers, but I heard a few months later that their new ship was sunk with heavy loss of life. May be I was the lucky bugger Arriving at Chatham, as usual I spent the first few days doing the boring joining ship routine on part of the shore base named H.M.S Pembroke. After a couple of weeks of good regular meals I started to feel much better but broke out in boils around my neck so I headed off to the sick bay. They bandaged me up so much I looked as if I'd broken my bleeding neck. This came in very handy as it seemed to excuse me from any duties, although there was a surplus of bods around and Skiving seemed to be the order of the day. Everyone worked hard at trying to avoid doing any duties, especially during the night. If anyone asked me where I was going, I'd point to my heavily bandaged neck with my head leaning to one side and say I was off to the sick bay and this seemed to satisfy them. I used this skive for quite a while even after the boils cleared up but eventally they caught up with me and I was given the duty everyone tried to avoid, "morgue party." I asked a leading seaman what did this duty entail and he told me it was removing any dead bodies from warships that came in from battle, but he said the chances of that happening was pretty slim. He didn't know my luck. The following night a light cruiser limped into Chatham and I heard the order over the Tannoy system for the morgue party to assemble outside the mess hall at nineteen hundred hours. We fell in and a P.O. marched us down to the dock where the cruiser was tied up. It looked as if it had taken a direct hit with a torpedo as it had a hole in its port side that you could have driven a double decker bus through. We scrambled up the gangway and were issued with a tot of neat rum apiece by the duty officer with the promise of another one when our job was completed. We went down the boiler room to recover the remains of the stokers. It had been blown to pieces and everything was covered with stinking oil fuel. It wasn't a job for the faint hearted and I was faint hearted but after we finished the gruesome job, the officer, after looking at me, gave me two tots. I got very little sleep that night. A week later I was told that I was to be drafted to a shore base at Sheerness for recuperation. I asked around as to the whereabouts of Sheerness and was told there were two, one somewhere in England and one on the Orkney Islands. I would have liked to have been drafted to the one on the coast in England, but no, my luck was still consistent. It was the Sheerness up in the cold Scapa Flow on the Orkney Islands, in the far north of Scotland. When I told the lads, they started having me on, asking me if I could ride a camel as Sheerness was about three days camel ride from anywhere. Still, I thought, anything would be better than "the morgue party.". It took me a couple of days by train to get to Thurso, a village on the most northern tip of Scotland. From there I boarded a small M.F.V (motor fishing vessel) and then spent a couple of uncomfortable hours being tossed about crossing Scapa flow to H.M.S. Proserpine, the Naval shore base at Lyness. Here we were billeted in army type Nissen huts, semi circular and made of corrugated iron. These huts held about thirty ratings and with a coal stove in the centre and a bed instead of a hammock to sleep in I thought they were quite comfortable. I think they must have forgotten to tell them that I was up here for recuperation as I was given the worst job on the base, boiler cleaning, which must be one of the most unhealthy jobs you could imagine. When a ship came in for boiler cleaning, they would shut down the boilers, remove the small doors to let them cool down enough so that we could start work the following morning. I think they picked me because I was thin enough to crawl through the small boiler door openings. Once inside, sometimes with only the light of a couple of candles, we'd chip away at the salt encrusted drums of the boiler for hours, then wire scrub the lot down, including the rusty waterline. The heat was such that we could only stay inside the boiler for about an hour before having to come up on deck for a breather and suffering from bronchitis I'd start hoicking up a lot of phlegm, coloured red from breathing in the rust. Not my idea of recuperation. There was a large contingent of men on H.M.S. Proserpine and we used to fall in on parade every Sunday morning when the M.A.A.( Master at Arms) would call out our evening duties. A few weeks later I realized I was getting twice as many duties as anyone else. I happened to mention this to one of the lads who suggested not to answer immediately when my name was called out. I did this and sure enough, after the M,A.A.called out the name Laird three or four times someone else answered. I found out that this scaly bastard who had the same name as me, being a shrewd git kept quiet and let me do his duties, although, come to think of it one duty I didn't mind doing was Wrenary Patrol. The Wrens were housed in a large building with a very high wire netting fence around the perimeter with barbed wire on top. We were told that some of these girls had been prostitutes and were hand picked for the job of entertaining the boys at Scapa. In warm weather we used to watch them through their open windows lying on their bunks as we patrolled the perimeter fence. The odd cheeky one would flash us a breast or two and then collapse into fits of laughing. Our duty was to stop any of the lads from climbing over the fence and getting into the girls' bedrooms, but there were a few American servicemen who were stationed nearby and they used to bribe us with Lucky Strike cigarettes and chocolate to let them go over the fence to see the girls so we used to give them a leg over. Sunday church parades used to be a bit of a caper. Sometimes when my mate and I didn't feel like getting dressed up to go to church, which in those days was compulsory. We would hide ourselves in a wardrobe before the officers came on their rounds inspecting the huts. I used to come out in a bit of a sweat holding my breath as the officers walked through the hut, imagining the look on their faces if they happened to open the wardrobe door. Fortunately for us they never did. On the Sundays when we did decide to go on church parade, the M,A,A. would call out the different denominations to fall in. Catholics to the left, Protestants to the right and Jews fall out. Although I think I was brought up a Presbyterian as the old man came from Scotland, he never ever took us to church, so sometimes I used to fall in with the Catholics as they usually served up tea and biscuits after the sermon. I think I must have been a bit of an atheist as I found it difficult to believe in God, afterlife and all that drivel. One of the chaps in the mess was very religious and he used to bale me up when ever he could to try and convert me. Although he sounded very convincing and we used to have great fun arguing, he had no answer for some of the questions I'd put to him, like, for instance, "If there is a God, does he ever think, who am I? Where did I come from? Who is my God?" Mind you I always thought believing was a good thing, as it was someone to lean on in bad times and I always envied people who did believe. It is good for keeping children on the right road but maybe it should be taught on the lines of Father Christmas. I picked up a bit of a gambling problem at Scapa. We were paid fortnightly and after being paid we would normally end up in the fleet canteen for a beer or two. There wasn't much entertainment on the base, just the odd free travelling E.N.S.A show. The fleet canteen was a pretty large building and would be bustling with all types or servicemen and women, especially if the fleet was in. If the lads weren't playing Tombola (Housie) there'd be two or three groups around tables playing Crown and Anchor. It's quite a simple game and after watching it being played for a while I decided to have a bet. I slipped a ten bob note on the crown, the dealer shook the three dice in a leather cup, turned it upside down and slowly lifted it. To everyone's astonishment three crowns were showing up. Only two of us had bet on the crown and I was quite excited as the dealer paid me out thirty bob. I put a quid in my money belt and placed another ten bob note on the crown and also one on the heart and sure enough up they came, two hearts and a crown. I'd won another thirty bob. I thought, this is too easy and by nine o'clock I'd won ten pounds. Suddenly the lookout on the main entrance shouted out "officers rounds" to warn the dealers to pick up their crown and anchor boards. There was a hell of a scuffle as everyone grabbed for their money and the dealers slipped their boards under the table. The duty officers came through on their evening inspection, saw that everything was in order and the lookouts shouted all clear as they left. I was told gambling was a punishable offense in the navy but they must have known it was going on. I joined my mates at their table and shouted them all a few beers out of my winnings. I drank a little too much that night, the lads told me the next day that I went to bed muttering something like "a man is not drunk when from the floor, he lifts his head, and asks for more. I was hooked all right. For many months after that night, except for buying my tobacco ration, I lost all of my pay every fortnight on the crown and anchor tables. I'd kid myself that it didn't worry me so long as I had enough tobacco but it did and I used to get quite depressed about it. The guy who slept in the next bed to me in our hut ran a crown and anchor board in the fleet canteen and one day he confided in me that he was sending home three to four hundred pounds every fortnight. He also showed me a long knife he kept under his pillow as he was feared of being robbed. I know, because he was up like a rocket if anyone came too near his bed during the night. I told him I was losing my pay every fortnight to the crown and anchor boards and surprisingly he seemed quite sympathetic. He even said he would pay me ten bob a night as a lookout for a couple of nights a week if I packed up gambling. I did, and it was the best move I'd made in a while. The lookout job was easy and after a few weeks I could go into the canteen for a beer without getting that terrible urge to gamble at the crown and anchor tables. May 8 1945 V.E (Victory in Europe) day. I heard over the radio that at Piccadilly Circus in London a U.S soldier gives a hug to a lovely looking English woman celebrating Germany's unconditional surrender. Excited crowds packed Whitehall and the Mall even before any official announcement had been made confirming the end of the war in Europe, and here we were, sitting up in the Orkney Islands, being ten to fifty miles off the northern tip of Scotland (depending to which island of a group of sixty seven you were on). Of glacial origin the Orkneys are low, almost treeless, windswept, and wet, but the climate is tempered by the gulf-stream. The lads would have loved to be celebrating at home in London, Liverpool, or anywhere except Scapa Flow. Mind you I must say, when we heard the good news I felt as if a great burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I guess everyone felt the same. Work came to a standstill and the order of the day was "Splice the Mainbrace. Up spirits." The rum bo'sun came in with a fanny full of rum. I still wasn't old enough to draw a rum ration but a few of lads gave me sippers of theirs and we were all soon laughing like chief stokers. A few days later I was drafted to the mainland of the Orkney islands, a place called Kirkwall. Although extremely small, just like a village, it was actually a city with a lovely Cathedral. The powers that be must have eventually got the message that I was drafted to the Orkneys for recuperation. I was billeted in an army camp with four other Naval ratings and a group of guys in the fleet air arm. The hut was partitioned off into small rooms suitable for two people and we were under the same discipline as the chaps in the fleet air arm, which was virtually nil compared with the army blokes. Our job, if you could call it a job, was to wander down to the dockyard workshops every day and if any ships had come in needing repairs, then we were supposed to help. No ships came in and I think the Navy heads actually forgot that we were there so we had the time of our lives as nobody seemed to be in charge of us. We even dressed like mercenaries. My rig of the day was calf length sea boots with long white woollen stockings rolled over the top, with my bell bottomed trousers tucked in. This lot was topped with a white polo necked submarine captain's jersey, that I'd bought cheaply off a rating ashore in the pub, with a lambskin lined flying jacket lent to me by one of the fleet air arm pilots to keep me warm of a night time as our Nissen huts had no heating. Without any formalities an officer used to appear every fortnight to give us our pay and after a few weeks we didn't even bother to show our faces down at the dockyard workshops. I couldn't believe my change of luck , we were actually being paid for doing nothing. Our daily routine went something like this-- we'd have breakfast with the fleet air arm chaps, great tucker, these chaps really lived well, then we'd amble a couple of miles down into town and have a look around. At morning tea time we'd go into a local cafe where the lady would make us a lovely hot creamy mug of Horlicks as the weather was pretty bleak. Fortified we'd walk back to the camp and have a game of cards till dinner time and after a scrumptious meal we'd lie on our beds in the hut for an hour or more to digest it. What a life. Normally in the afternoon we would wander to the camp N.A.A.F.I. (Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute) canteen to play billiards or darts. The girls serving in the canteen were in the A.T.S.(Auxiliary territorial service)and boy, did they look after us, supplying us with tea, sugar and goodies for a late night snack. Being the only sailors in an Army camp I think we were a bit of a novelty to the girls. They seemed to be more attracted to our uniforms which didn't go down too well with their Army buddies who by the way outnumbered us about a hundred to one. I started going out with one of the young A.T.S.girls by the name of Kathleen, a beautiful petite eighteen-year old girl with a lovely Scottish accent. I fell in love with her almost immediately and we used to spend many happy hours together going on long walks through the countryside around Kirkwall or in bad weather just gazing at one another in the canteen. At a camp dance one night we were warned by a few tough looking squaddies not to monopolize the girls too much dancing or they would do us over on our way back to the hut after the dance. I believed they would too, so I shot off early with my girl before the dance ended and heard later I'd missed a battle royal on the parade ground between the square bashers and the matelots. Outnumbered, our lads had come out the worse for wear. Some guys would be into battle at the drop of a hat. I hated violence and not being over big or strong I soon learned at a very early age to talk myself out of trouble. Unfortunately I was talked into trouble with my girlfriend by some of the lads in our hut. They kept getting on to me to put the hard word on her and kept telling me if I didn't I would lose her. I thought she was too nice a girl for me to try any thing like that as I couldn't seem to associate having sex with someone that you were in love with, but the lads still kept on at me about it. Kathy sometimes served in the canteen of an evening and one night I'd drank a drop more than I should have. N normally when the bar closed at ten o'clock and the place was empty I used to help her to wash up and then we'd sit on a big old sofa by a roaring fire. This particular night as we were cuddling up I started to get a bit randy so thinking of what the lads had kept telling me I slipped my hand under her skirt and placed it on her knee. She wore thick long stockings and she didn't seem to mind as I kept kissing her. I let my hand wander slowly a little farther up her leg and touched the long thick army issue bloomers she was wearing which the lads told me later were called passion killers. They didn't deter me as by now I was becoming quite excited and lifted the tight elastic around her leg and slipped my fingers further up. That was it. Without warning, as soon as I touched bare skin she all of a sudden went rigid, started struggling and told me to stop it. In my alcoholic haze and thinking this was part of the game I pressed on and hugged her closer to me gently groping her amidships. That's as far as I got; she started screaming blue murder at the top of her voice and started crying. I got such a hell of a shock that I let go of her and sat up. Much to my relief she stopped screaming but kept on crying until I told her I was sorry and gave her a hug. After a while we walked quietly back to her hut without saying a word, then she gave me a kiss goodnight and slipped inside. Back in the hut I was telling the lads what had happened and they were laughing their friggin' heads off. Some of them wouldn't believe me and for proof the dirty bastards kept wanting to smell my fingers. Typical stokers mess-deck. I made it up with Kathy and we spent the next few months enjoying one another's company. Come to think of it I respected her more after that disastrous night on the sofa in the canteen and although we spent many more nights there doing some heavy petting I'd got the message and knew exactly how far I could go. I think it was here when I was out sightseeing with Kathy that I remember seeing a plaque commemorating the sinking of the battleship Royal Oak that was sunk here in Scapa Flow by a German submarine on the fourteenth of October 1939 taking 24 officers and 809 men of her complement with her. We'd survived the war with Germany and the way things were going it didn't look as if the Japs would last much longer. All good things must come to an end. I know our cushy number came to an end abruptly when a A.F.O.came through demanding to know what half a dozen ratings were doing loafing at Kirkwall, and within forty eight hours we were all drafted back to H.M.S Prosepine at Lyness. Parting from Kathy was tough. I kissed her goodbye and left her in tears on the jetty as we boarded a M.F.V promising each other to write as often as we could. We wrote for many months but never got the opportunity to see each other, then her letters stopped and I guessed she must have found someone else. I never ever saw her again. Back at Lyness at least they didn't put me back on boiler cleaning. I was given the job as a Chief Petty Officers messman. This job entailed two of us to look after about thirty C.P.O.'s, helping the cooks to prepare their meals, serving them, washing up and keeping the cook-house spotless. These guys lived like kings, eating the best of tucker and demanding chips with every main meal. I used to look forward at lunch time on freezing cold days to start with a delicious mug of thick creamy soup. You wouldn't believe the food these cooks wasted, I watched them making the soup one day and they poured the juice of a large tin of tomatoes into it and threw the tomatoes away. What a waste, in war time too, never mind. We ate the same food as the chiefs even if it was almost cold by the time we got round to it. If we worked fast enough we could be cleaned up by two o'clock and have the rest of the afternoon off. I would doze on my bed for a couple of hours fantasizing about Kathy and wondering if she ever regretted not letting me have my way that night on the sofa in the canteen but I doubt it very much. At five o'clock it was back to the cookhouse to help prepare the dinner. V-J Day at Scapa Flow. Japans unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, more celebrations, splice the main brace, up spirits, the feeling of another great weight lifted from our shoulders and again wishing we could be at home to celebrate with our families and friends. I'd been on leave a month previously and wasn't due for any more for at least three months so we made the best of it and did our own celebrating in the fleet canteen. Now the war was over, what was going to happen to us? Everyone wanted to know, when are we going to get demobbed? The answer to that question wasn't easy. When I volunteered for the navy, it was for the duration of the war, and on my service certificate it said Period volunteere-- Until the end of the period of the present emergency. That could mean anything. After a couple of months of anxiously waiting to hear when we were going to be de-mobbed we were all given a release number based on age and length of service. The number they gave me was fifty six, a number that had seemed to crop up frequently during my life so I used it as a lucky number, winning me from time to time quite a few raffles. About a couple of months later group one was demobbed, then group two a month later. I thought at this rate I'll be here till doomsday. I wasn't far wrong. In the meantime I was given a job that I really enjoyed. I was to service the water supply to the camp which meant a daily hike of about five miles up in the hills to the reservoir. For the first few days I was taken up by another older seaman who was about to be de-mobbed and he showed me the ropes and then left me to it. I took to this job like a fish to water especially when the sun was shining. It was so healthy walking up the hills in the fresh air every day. All I had to do when I got there was a visual inspection of everything, take a few readings, check the chlorinating plant, make a few notes and that was it. I'd make myself a pot of tea and enjoy a cut lunch lying outside sun bathing or on cold days taking in the expansive view of the rugged Orkneys and Scapa Flow, the relaxing silence only broken by the crying of the seagulls or the odd lamb for its mother. I couldn't do anything else but recuperate in this environment. I guess it was here that I realized just how much I enjoyed walking in the countryside, a pastime I've spent many enjoyable hours at ever since. Twelve months later they were still only up to de-mob group forty five which meant I still had eleven groups to go. Most of my shipmates, being older than me had been de-mobbed so I was counting the days. When they got to group fifty one I was drafted back to my port division H.M.S.Pembroke at Chatham. I was hoping to be demobbed and home in Liverpool for my twenty first birthday but no such luck. My cousin Alf the watchmaker sent me a beautiful hand crafted cigarette lighter in the form of a miniature book that he had made himself for my birthday. It was a treasure and the nicest present I'd ever received, come to think of it, the only present I'd ever received. I owned it for less than twenty four hours. Some scaly bastard pinched it out of my locker and I cursed myself for showing it off to everyone about and for not keeping it on me. I also cursed the culprit who took it and hoped his bollocks would fester in the near future. What could I tell Alf? I doubt if he would believe that someone had stolen it and would more likely think I'd flogged it. I think I got more upset about this than I should have done and I accepted all the sippers of rum the lads offered me to celebrate my twenty first and finished up getting horribly drunk, so much so that it took me almost a week to recover. What a complete idiot, will I ever learn, evidently not. Talk about getting drunk. It wasn't long after this while I was still waiting to be de-mobbed that I was given the duty of serving up the rum to the lads before lunchtime, under the watchful eye of an officer. There were about a hundred guys in the queue as I started serving. After serving two or three the officer said, "Have you had your tot Laird?" I said, "No sir."He said, "Have yours now." I poured myself one, drank it, shivered as I didn't really like it and carried on serving. After a couple of minutes the officer said, "Have you had your tot Laird." I said truthfully, "Yes sir."He gave me a queer look and said, "Carry on." A few minutes later he said in a louder voice, "Have you had your tot Laird?" Suddenly it dawned on me what he was trying to do. I said, "No sir" and he said, "Have yours now." I poured myself another one and swigged it down. Getting the message I said, " Have you had your tot sir?" He answered, "No I haven't." So I poured one into my cup and handed it to him. This caper went on every few minutes for over half an hour and consequently I became absolutely blotto. After serving the last rating I still had about a third of a fanny full left over. I asked the officer what I should do with it. He said, " Go through to the kitchen and pour it down the sink." I thought what a frigging waste of good rum but I needn't have been concerned. When I staggered to the sink I saw a couple of our lads outside the kitchen window. One was holding a jug and the other was pointing down to the gully trap. I realized what they were up to as I poured the rum down the sink. They had the jug under the waste pipe and buggers caught the lot, rum, tea leaves, potato peelings, grease, you name it. Afterwards I saw them sieving it through a cheese cloth and pronouncing it fit to drink. Luckily I didn't have any more duties to perform that day so after being sick I was able to get my head down and sleep it off thinking a man could easily become an alcoholic in this place. February the 25th, 1947, demob day for group fifty six. The day we had been patiently looking forward to for more than twelve months since world war two ended. I remember standing in a long queue to be fitted out with civilian clothes, picking out a grey pin stripe suit and a Raglan type overcoat made out of material the lads jokingly referred to as sandbag tweed. With the large parcel of clothes tucked under our arms we marched out of the Chatham barracks gates for the last time only to be besieged by a mob of Spivs from London offering to buy our de-mob outfits for forty pounds. This suprised me till I realized clothes were still rationed. Still in uniform and with my travel warrant in my pocket I ignored them and set off back home to Liverpool on six weeks de-mob leave. By now, all the end of the war celebrations in Liverpool were long gone. As usual my aunt Bertha and her family made me very welcome and we enjoyed a few drinks down at the local whenever we could. Living with my aunt at the time were my cousins Alf and Maud, my younger brother Eric, and Maud's husband not long de-mobbed from the army. He'd been in a tank regiment and had evidently had a very hard time crossing Europe. After a few weeks I started to get bored and decided it was time to look for a job. My aunt insisted that I go down town to a flash tailor and buy a made to measure suit out of the forty five pounds gratuity and prize money I'd received from the navy. I felt a bit embarrassed as I was getting measured up and having to return a couple of times to be fitted. I finished up with a dark blue chalk striped suit with the latest rolled type lapels. My aunt was delighted and said it was essential to have a nice suit when applying for a job but what a waste of eighteen quid. I applied for the few jobs that were advertised but got nowhere and finally, when my paid leave was up I joined a long queue at the labour exchange. What an arsehole of a place, what a motley crew. Hardcase women were fuckin' and blinding at some roughly dressed jokers who were trying to jump the queue. I felt quite nervous and didn't look at them as they passed remarks about my suit, one of them saying loudly, "That prick looks like the fuckin' manager." I sighed with relief when I finally got up to the counter. The woman behind the pidgeon hole said, "Next." I stepped forward and said I was looking for a job. She said, " There's thirty thousand unemployed in Liverpool, you make thirty thousand and one, you'd better sign on for the dole, twenty six shillings a week." I said "I pay thirty shillings a week board." She looked at me as if to say, "So what," and said, "Come back next Tuesday and sign on." I was glad to get back outside but quite dismayed to see a couple of soldiers in a van with a loud speaker on the top inciting the men in the dole queues and those loafing outside the labour exchange to rejoin the Army or the Navy. I thought, the cheeky bastards, then someone turfed an empty beer bottle at the van and started a bit of a riot so I shot through and vowed never to return to that poxy labour exchange. A week or two later I found out the government were running rehabilitation courses for ex-servicemen so I filled in a application form for a forestry course as the thought of working outside in the forest really appealed to me. After an interview and a medical examination I was accepted and given a rail warrant to proceed to a forestry camp in a small isolated place named Kershopefoot on the border of Scotland about twenty odd miles from Carlisle. On arrival I was interviewed by the camp boss who told me he'd been a petty officer in the Royal Navy. I think I made a big mistake when I told him I was an ex-navy stoker from Liverpool. He immediately said, "I think hut eight will do you." I'll never forget the day I walked into hut eight. I tossed my gear onto an empty bed nearest the door, feeling a little nervous as if I was intruding. I glanced around to size up the occupants. I thought I'd seen some rough characters in the dole queues in Liverpool but at first sight this lot had them beaten. There were about twenty jokers living in this Nisson hut, one of eight all in parallel just like a prisoner of war camp. The inmates were all shapes and sizes, most of them with beards or needing a shave. Half of them were lying on their beds and the other half were sitting around a pot-bellied wood stove. One of them was standing up, bollock naked except he was wearing a gun belt with a revolver in the holster. He was stretching his slack scrotum over his dick and I must confess although it looked grotesque it also looked funny and the lads around the fire were in stitches at his antics. I thought, what the fuck have I struck here? The big guy stopped stretching his scrotum and hailed me over for a cup of tea. They all started asking me questions at once---Where did I come from? What service was I in?---After yacking to them for about half an hour I started to feel quite at home. They told me the ex- naval petty officer camp commander as he liked to be called, thought he was still in the navy and was a stickler for discipline. They were all ex army blokes and had had a gutsful of discipline after six years of war so they didn't take much notice of him. As I got to know them I thought they were a great bunch of lads even if they were as rough as guts. It seemed the camp Commander at the interview made an instant decision as to your character and if he thought you might be a trouble maker he shot you straight into hut eight. For the first couple of months I worked with the gang from hut eight building roads through the forest. It was hard work but I liked it as the weather was hot and it was healthy outside work and I was soon suntanned to a light black. We did a great deal of skylarking and swapping wartime yarns but I soon realized this was more of a cheap labour scheme than a rehabilitation course and the guys in hut eight would never be recommended by the camp commander to become foresters. His favourites were in hut six and most of them were ex navy and air force officers, petty and otherwise. Our pay was only thirty shillings a week and the less said about the food the better. To supplement our monotonous camp tucker, a couple of the lads taught me the art of poaching trout from a nearby river that ran through a large block of privately owned land. They would make a snare by using a short length of flexible wire looped through a metal boot eyelet which they attached to a short pole. It was quite exciting of a night time using a spotlight to creep quietly along the edge of the river bank. As soon as we spotted a trout relaxing by the side of the river one of us would slip the snare into the water. Most times the trout would take fright and shoot off like a hairy dog, but sometimes we were lucky and if the fish was dozing we would slip the snare quietly over its head and with a lightning sharp pull it would be whipped up onto the bank. We'd sneak back to camp, get out the frying pan and slowly cook the trout fillets in butter on top of the pot bellied stove. I'd never tasted trout before and I must say it was delicious, especially followed by a hot cup of coffee and a smoke. Fortunately for us we were never caught poaching although we had some narrow escapes from the gamekeeper and his dog. Occasionally we'd get a few weeks break from the strenuous job of building roads and they'd put us on the more relaxed but terribly monotonous job of weeding the seedling beds of the Sitka pine. The forestry mostly employed young women to do this tedious job but if they were short handed they would bring in the lads from hut eight and I can tell you, there was some great skylarking going on around those seed beds, all of us sitting on upturned buckets weeding away and the lads spinning yarns and jokes keeping the girls howling with laughter. I was still a bit shy in the company of these young women and avoided looking directly at them because of ``the cast in my right eye which I usually kept closed as if dazzled by the sun. One thing I did notice though was that every time I did look around, one very young girl always seemed to be watching me. Later that day when I glanced around she was still studying me so cheekily I winked at her. She gave me a lovely smile and blinked both of her eyes in an effort to wink back. I thought how beautifully innocent she looked and guessed she was only about sixteen. Back at the hut I mentioned her to the lads and one of them told me to go the camp dance the following Saturday night as she could possibly be there. Sure enough she was, but for the life of me I couldn't see why she would be interested in me but maybe it was my navy uniform that I still preferred to wear instead of my de-mob suit. It was a typical Scottish border dance, a three piece band, piano accordion bass and drums, with the girls sitting down one side of the hut and the boys the other. I'd never really learned to dance but it didn't matter as the dances they were doing were reels and flings which I never seen before and everybody seemed to join in. I think she saw me come in but she didn't seem to be dancing with anyone in particular. I'd had a few drinks but it took me some time to pick up the courage to ask her to dance but with a lot of urging from the lads I got up, crossed the floor and asked her to dance. She smiled and we joined the dancers doing some sort of an eightsome reel. I just watched the others and followed their steps and I soon picked it up. We danced together for the rest of the evening, if you could call some of it dancing. It was extremely lively and it seemed to me at times, the idea was to try and turf your partner off the floor. I think I put too much effort into learning these jigs as by the end of the evening I was sweating like a stuffed pig and was glad the last dance was a slow waltz which gave us the chance to be close and talk to each other. I'd found out from the lads that her name was Ruth and she already knew my name and quite a bit about me. She told me she was boarding at a local farm house and I was chuffed when she agreed to let me take her home. The farm house was only a couple of miles from our camp and we nattered happily as we walked slowly down the country lanes. She told me that she was nineteen but in the moonlight she looked just like a school girl in her ankle socks. We lingered at the farm gate enjoying each other's company as my mind debated, being our first night out together whether I should kiss her goodnight. I couldn't resist the temptation so I said goodnight and gave her a gentle kiss. She relaxed in my arms for a moment then she skipped off up the drive to the house saying, "I'll see you tomorrow at work.". I wandered off down the lane in the dead silence of the night in some sort of a dream world when I was suddenly startled by what sounded like an old man coughing his lungs up behind the gorse hedge. Shit! It gave me a fright until I realized it could only have been an old sheep choking on something. I thought, " typical dim towny," laughing at myself as I jogged back to camp. One guy in our hut was a bit of a character. He was a Norwegian lumberjack, a strapping fellow by the name of Chappell. The lads had nicknamed him Chopper and I asked one of the them, a Geordie from Newcastle by the name of Rodger if they had given him this nickname because he was a brilliant axe-man as I used to feel envious as I watched him felling a tree. "No." he said, "Have you not seen the size of him amidships?" I said I hadn't. He said, "Why do you think he's the last one to get out of bed in the morning, he's actually a bit ashamed of the size of his dick, it must be at least ten inches long. "What," I said "slack" He said, "Yeah, keep an eye on him in the morning when he's getting out of bed." I did. Most of these hardy jokers slept naked anyway. I don't think they owned pyjamas and I found out the next morning Rodger was right. Chapell was certainly donkey rigged and the lads in the hut used to take the piss out of him something awful but I think most of them were jealous. I know I was. I used to say to them, "At least after having a leak he could knock the drops off with his kneecap." That had them in tears. This guy Rodger was always up to something. One day he was telling me that he had seen a Kestral Hawk's nest at the top of a very high tree in the forest. He said it had young chicks in it and he reckoned if we could get one of the chicks he could train it and maybe get it to steal meat from the cookhouse which the cooks left out overnight just covered with cheesecloth. I thought, anything for a skylark so we decided to go and have a look the following Sunday. I suggested to Rodger that we take Chopper with us as he could scramble up a tree like a rat up a drainpipe. Off the three of us went on Sunday after lunch. We just about got lost trying to find this bloody tree and it was about a couple of hours later that Rodger spied the Kestral hawk circling high above the tree with the nest in it. Chopper told us to sit down and keep quiet. We sat for about fifteen minutes and then the hawk slowly came down to feed her chicks and was away again in a few minutes. Rodger asked me if I'd like to climb up and pluck one of the chicks out of the nest but before I could answer Chopper said, "I'll go up."Relieved I said, "Good man, one volunteer is as good as ten pressed men." He put on a pair of old leather gloves and some spiked leather gaiters and was up the pruned part of the tree in a flash. Once he got up into the branches he was difficult to see so we moved out into a fire break to get a better view of him. He must have been fifty or sixty feet up when we caught a glimpse of him and by now the hawk had returned and was circling around. We shouted up to him and pointed to the hawk and he waved back so he must have seen it. Chopper was only about six feet from the nest when the hawk started dive bombing him to frighten him away. It would come screaming down straight at him and only turn away when it was about a yard from his head. I think it would have put me off but Chopper ducked and weaved and finally was able to grab one of the noisy chicks and stuff it inside his jacket. He carefully climbed down the tree and when he showed us the chick we were amazed how big and strong it was. Once its talons got a grip on your finger you'd have to prise them off and what with his sharp beak and piercing eyes I'd say he was ready to have a go at anything. Back at the hut the lads took a great interest in him and named him Eyeball as he would stare at you for ages without blinking. Geordie started feeding him with milk from an eye dropper but he soon got fed up with that caper. Then he would have all the lads outside digging worms and Eyeball would scoff them down as if there was no tomorrow. After a few days he seemed quite happy to fly about inside the hut even though Geordie had a long length of twine tied to his right foot with a light lead weight fastened on the other end. He didn't seem to want to escape and the only problem was the mess his droppings were making. Luckily the camp commander kept well away from hut eight as he knew he wasn't welcome. Every evening before it got dark Geordie and I would take Eyeball out up a firebreak in the forest for a bit of training. It didn't take him long to realize that every time he returned to us when I gave out a piercing whistle he was rewarded with a piece of beef sausage. He just loved a beef sausage. Even after a month's training Geordie was still afraid to let him go completely free just in case he wouldn't return to my piercing whistle. I spent a lot of time trying to teach Geordie to whistle. It was funny to watch. I'd get him to place the first two fingers of both hands in his mouth and curl his tongue backwards then blow as hard as he could. He either finished up choking himself or spewing out his false teeth and we'd end up in fits. He reckoned my powerful whistle could deafen a man so he left it to me . A few weeks later we were put back on road building and I missed seeing Ruth everyday at work weeding the seedbeds. We used to meet every Sunday up in the forest where we would walk for miles in the afternoon, both of us enjoying each others company. I remember one Sunday in particular we hiked to the top of the highest hill in the area and exhausted, flopped down in the trees by the side of the firebreak, where there wasn't a soul about for miles. Recovering after a few minutes I rolled over beside her. Looking down, her flushed face looked so beautiful I couldn't resist slipping my arm around her, drawing her closer and gently kissing her on the lips. She relaxed in my arms for a moment and then held me closely in a passionate embrace. I don't know how long we lay there enjoying the sexual stirrings of our bodies; all I do know is that I was wearing shorts and I felt as if the upper parts of my legs were being constantly nipped by something. I said to her, "I think I'm being bitten by something." She said, "I think you're right." We jumped up and sure enough, her bottom had been lying directly on top of an ants' nest and they were all over our legs. We ran down the hill brushing them off and laughing and at the bottom of the hill we jumped into a stream and splashed the rest of the them off us. We must have been bitten hundreds of times and when I persuaded he to lift her dress to show me the extent of her bites I was amazed. The poor girl, the top of her legs had been badly bitten and were all red and swollen. Luckily we hadn't discarded any of our clothes and we must have thought the ants biting us was part of the sexual excitement. So much for heavy petting. We'd been training Eyeball now for a few months and Geordie reckoned he was big and strong enough to start working for his keep as we were losing weight sharing our tucker with him so one dark night about ten o'clock we slipped him over to the cookhouse. Above the door was a small fanlight which was always left half open. We clambered up on to a wooden box that we'd placed on top of a forty four gallon oil drum and Geordie shone his flashlight through the fanlight. We could see on the far side of the kitchen a tray of cooked meat sausages and bacon left over from the day's meals. Geordie lifted Eyeball off his shoulder and slipped him through the fanlight, still tethered on a long twine and I could hear him flying about in the large cookhouse. Geordie kept the beam of his flashlight directly on the tray of meat and Eyeball landed on the end of the high bench and slowly walked towards the tray. My mouth began to water at the thought of a thick meat sandwich for supper. Eyeball hopped on to the tray with his claws gripping a sausage and he took a dirty big bite out of it. Geordie said quickly, "Whistle him back." I gave a shrill whistle which sounded so loud in the kitchen that it must have startled poor Eyeball as he jumped up, dropped the bleeding meat and flew back to the fanlight. Geordie cursed and said, "For fucks sake Scouse don't whistle so frigging loud next time." It must have taken half a dozen attempts before Eyeball got the message and would return to us with a piece of bacon or a sausage. It was past midnight by the time we got back to the hut with enough meat to share with a couple of the lads who'd waited up for us. For the next couple of months suppers became a regular feast in hut eight and I suppose it was my fault that they came to an abrupt end. I'd been nagging at Geordie for quite a while when we were up in the firebreaks to let Eyeball off the twine to see if he would return to my loud whistle and in the end he agreed and said, "Don't blame me if the bastard doesn't come back." I said, "I won't" as I untied the twine from around. . our monotonous camp tucker, a couple of the lads taught me the art of poaching trout from a nearby river that ran through a large block of privately owned land. They would make a snare by using a short length of flexible wire looped through a metal boot eyelet which they attached to a short pole. It was quite exciting of a night time using a spotlight to creep quietly along the edge of the river bank. As soon as we spotted a trout relaxing by the side of the river one of us would slip the snare into the water. Most times the trout would take fright and shoot off like a hairy dog, but sometimes we were lucky and if the fish was dozing we would slip the snare quietly over its head and with a lightning sharp pull it would be whipped up onto the bank. We'd sneak back to camp, get out the frying pan and slowly cook the trout fillets in butter on top of the pot bellied stove. I'd never tasted trout before and I must say it was delicious, especially followed by a hot cup of coffee and a smoke. Fortunately for us we were never caught poaching although we had some narrow escapes from the gamekeeper and his dog. Occasionally we'd get a few weeks break from the strenuous job of building roads and they'd put us on the more relaxed but terribly monotonous job of weeding the seedling beds of the Sitka pine. The forestry mostly employed young women to do this tedious job but if they were short handed they would bring in the lads from hut eight and I can tell you, there was some great skylarking going on around those seed beds, all of us sitting on upturned buckets weeding away and the lads spinning yarns and jokes keeping the girls howling with laughter. I was still a bit shy in the company of these young women and avoided looking directly at them because of ``the cast in my right eye which I usually kept closed as if dazzled by the sun. One thing I did notice though was that every time I did look around, one very young girl always seemed to be watching me. Later that day when I glanced around she was still studying me so cheekily I winked at her. She gave me a lovely smile and blinked both of her eyes in an effort to wink back. I thought how beautifully innocent she looked and guessed she was only about sixteen. Back at the hut I mentioned her to the lads and one of them told me to go the camp dance the following Saturday night as she could possibly be there. Sure enough she was, but for the life of me I couldn't see why she would be interested in me but maybe it was my navy uniform that I still preferred to wear instead of my de-mob suit. It was a typical Scottish border dance, a three piece band, piano accordion bass and drums, with the girls sitting down one side of the hut and the boys the other. I'd never really learned to dance but it didn't matter as the dances they were doing were reels and flings which I never seen before and everybody seemed to join in. I think she saw me come in but she didn't seem to be dancing with anyone in particular. I'd had a few drinks but it took me some time to pick up the courage to ask her to dance but with a lot of urging from the lads I got up, crossed the floor and asked her to dance. She smiled and we joined the dancers doing some sort of an eightsome reel. I just watched the others and followed their steps and I soon picked it up. We danced together for the rest of the evening, if you could call some of it dancing. It was extremely lively and it seemed to me at times, the idea was to try and turf your partner off the floor. I think I put too much effort into learning these jigs as by the end of the evening I was sweating like a stuffed pig and was glad the last dance was a slow waltz which gave us the chance to be close and talk to each other. I'd found out from the lads that her name was Ruth and she already knew my name and quite a bit about me. She told me she was boarding at a local farm house and I was chuffed when she agreed to let me take her home. The farm house was only a couple of miles from our camp and we nattered happily as we walked slowly down the country lanes. She told me that she was nineteen but in the moonlight she looked just like a school girl in her ankle socks. We lingered at the farm gate enjoying each other's company as my mind debated, being our first night out together whether I should kiss her goodnight. I couldn't resist the temptation so I said goodnight and gave her a gentle kiss. She relaxed in my arms for a moment then she skipped off up the drive to the house saying, "I'll see you tomorrow at work.". I wandered off down the lane in the dead silence of the night in some sort of a dream world when I was suddenly startled by what sounded like an old man coughing his lungs up behind the gorse hedge. Shit! It gave me a fright until I realized it could only have been an old sheep choking on something. I thought, " typical dim towny," laughing at myself as I jogged back to camp. One guy in our hut was a bit of a character. He was a Norwegian lumberjack, a strapping fellow by the name of Chappell. The lads had nicknamed him Chopper and I asked one of the them, a Geordie from Newcastle by the name of Rodger if they had given him this nickname because he was a brilliant axe-man as I used to feel envious as I watched him felling a tree. "No." he said, "Have you not seen the size of him amidships?" I said I hadn't. He said, "Why do you think he's the last one to get out of bed in the morning, he's actually a bit ashamed of the size of his dick, it must be at least ten inches long. "What," I said "slack" He said, "Yeah, keep an eye on him in the morning when he's getting out of bed." I did. Most of these hardy jokers slept naked anyway. I don't think they owned pyjamas and I found out the next morning Rodger was right. Chapell was certainly donkey rigged and the lads in the hut used to take the piss out of him something awful but I think most of them were jealous. I know I was. I used to say to them, "At least after having a leak he could knock the drops off with his kneecap." That had them in tears. This guy Rodger was always up to something. One day he was telling me that he had seen a Kestral Hawk's nest at the top of a very high tree in the forest. He said it had young chicks in it and he reckoned if we could get one of the chicks he could train it and maybe get it to steal meat from the cookhouse which the cooks left out overnight just covered with cheesecloth. I thought, anything for a skylark so we decided to go and have a look the following Sunday. I suggested to Rodger that we take Chopper with us as he could scramble up a tree like a rat up a drainpipe. Off the three of us went on Sunday after lunch. We just about got lost trying to find this bloody tree and it was about a couple of hours later that Rodger spied the Kestral hawk circling high above the tree with the nest in it. Chopper told us to sit down and keep quiet. We sat for about fifteen minutes and then the hawk slowly came down to feed her chicks and was away again in a few minutes. Rodger asked me if I'd like to climb up and pluck one of the chicks out of the nest but before I could answer Chopper said, "I'll go up."Relieved I said, "Good man, one volunteer is as good as ten pressed men." He put on a pair of old leather gloves and some spiked leather gaiters and was up the pruned part of the tree in a flash. Once he got up into the branches he was difficult to see so we moved out into a fire break to get a better view of him. He must have been fifty or sixty feet up when we caught a glimpse of him and by now the hawk had returned and was circling around. We shouted up to him and pointed to the hawk and he waved back so he must have seen it. Chopper was only about six feet from the nest when the hawk started dive bombing him to frighten him away. It would come screaming down straight at him and only turn away when it was about a yard from his head. I think it would have put me off but Chopper ducked and weaved and finally was able to grab one of the noisy chicks and stuff it inside his jacket. He carefully climbed down the tree and when he showed us the chick we were amazed how big and strong it was. Once its talons got a grip on your finger you'd have to prise them off and what with his sharp beak and piercing eyes I'd say he was ready to have a go at anything. Back at the hut the lads took a great interest in him and named him Eyeball as he would stare at you for ages without blinking. Geordie started feeding him with milk from an eye dropper but he soon got fed up with that caper. Then he would have all the lads outside digging worms and Eyeball would scoff them down as if there was no tomorrow. After a few days he seemed quite happy to fly about inside the hut even though Geordie had a long length of twine tied to his right foot with a light lead weight fastened on the other end. He didn't seem to want to escape and the only problem was the mess his droppings were making. Luckily the camp commander kept well away from hut eight as he knew he wasn't welcome. Every evening before it got dark Geordie and I would take Eyeball out up a firebreak in the forest for a bit of training. It didn't take him long to realize that every time he returned to us when I gave out a piercing whistle he was rewarded with a piece of beef sausage. He just loved a beef sausage. Even after a month's training Geordie was still afraid to let him go completely free just in case he wouldn't return to my piercing whistle. I spent a lot of time trying to teach Geordie to whistle. It was funny to watch. I'd get him to place the first two fingers of both hands in his mouth and curl his tongue backwards then blow as hard as he could. He either finished up choking himself or spewing out his false teeth and we'd end up in fits. He reckoned my powerful whistle could deafen a man so he left it to me A few weeks later we were put back on road building and I missed seeing Ruth everyday at work weeding the seedbeds. We used to meet every Sunday up in the forest where we would walk for miles in the afternoon, both of us enjoying each others company. I remember one Sunday in particular we hiked to the top of the highest hill in the area and exhausted, flopped down in the trees by the side of the firebreak, where there wasn't a soul about for miles. Recovering after a few minutes I rolled over beside her. Looking down, her flushed face looked so beautiful I couldn't resist slipping my arm around her, drawing her closer and gently kissing her on the lips. She relaxed in my arms for a moment and then held me closely in a passionate embrace. I don't know how long we lay there enjoying the sexual stirrings of our bodies; all I do know is that I was wearing shorts and I felt as if the upper parts of my legs were being constantly nipped by something. I said to her, "I think I'm being bitten by something." She said, "I think you're right." We jumped up and sure enough, her bottom had been lying directly on top of an ants' nest and they were all over our legs. We ran down the hill brushing them off and laughing and at the bottom of the hill we jumped into a stream and splashed the rest of the them off us. We must have been bitten hundreds of times and when I persuaded he to lift her dress to show me the extent of her bites I was amazed. The poor girl, the top of her legs had been badly bitten and were all red and swollen. Luckily we hadn't discarded any of our clothes and we must have thought the ants biting us was part of the sexual excitement. So much for heavy petting. We'd been training Eyeball now for a few months and Geordie reckoned he was big and strong enough to start working for his keep as we were losing weight sharing our tucker with him so one dark night about ten o'clock we slipped him over to the cookhouse. Above the door was a small fanlight which was always left half open. We clambered up on to a wooden box that we'd placed on top of a forty four gallon oil drum and Geordie shone his flashlight through the fanlight. We could see on the far side of the kitchen a tray of cooked meat sausages and bacon left over from the day's meals. Geordie lifted Eyeball off his shoulder and slipped him through the fanlight, still tethered on a long twine and I could hear him flying about in the large cookhouse. Geordie kept the beam of his flashlight directly on the tray of meat and Eyeball landed on the end of the high bench and slowly walked towards the tray. My mouth began to water at the thought of a thick meat sandwich for supper. Eyeball hopped on to the tray with his claws gripping a sausage and he took a dirty big bite out of it. Geordie said quickly, "Whistle him back." I gave a shrill whistle which sounded so loud in the kitchen that it must have startled poor Eyeball as he jumped up, dropped the bleeding meat and flew back to the fanlight. Geordie cursed and said, "For fucks sake Scouse don't whistle so frigging loud next time." It must have taken half a dozen attempts before Eyeball got the message and would return to us with a piece of bacon or a sausage. It was past midnight by the time we got back to the hut with enough meat to share with a couple of the lads who'd waited up for us. For the next couple of months suppers became a regular feast in hut eight and I suppose it was my fault that they came to an abrupt end. I'd been nagging at Geordie for quite a while when we were up in the firebreaks to let Eyeball off the twine to see if he would return to my loud whistle and in the end he agreed and said, "Don't blame me if the bastard doesn't come back." I said, "I won't" as I untied the twine from around. Eyeballs leg, it took him a while to realize he was free until Geordie raised his gloved hand and sent him off, he hadnt gone fifty yards when Geordie said anxiously whistle him back I said give him a few minutes freedom as Eyeball flew up the firebreak and out of sight above the Sitka Pines, Geordie said whistle the bugger back, I could see he was getting upset so I gave the loudest whistle I could muster, nothing, so I whistled again, I heard a squawk high up in the trees and the next second we saw Eyeball high tailing it towards us down the firebreak, he landed on Geordies out stretched arm and I rewarded him with a piece of sausage, he seemed to enjoy his few minutes of freedom and his feathers were all fluffed up. The following day we let him off for over five minutes before I whistled him and he was back in less than a minute but a couple of days later it was a different story, Geordie let him off at morning tea break and the bugger didnt return although I whistled all day till my jaw was painful there wasnt a sign of him. Geordie was totally pissed off and blamed me for talking him into letting Eyeball off the twine, I knew it was my fault but in a way I was glad he was free. Many times when I was working up in the forest Id give a loud whistle hoping to catch a glimpse of him flying above and to know that nothing had happened to him but we never ever spotted Eyeball again. Ruth and I had been going out together now for about three months when one evening she asked me if we could go into Carlisle to see a film she was keen to see so we decided to go on the following Saturday night. We caught a bus and got into town early but once in town Ruth seemed to have a problem crossing roads and I soon realized she was absolutely terrified of motor traffic. The roads weren't that busy but if there was a car coming half a mile away I couldn't get her to step off the pavement and even when I did finally get her to cross she'd have a vice like grip on my arm. I'd never struck anything like this before and I didn't like to say anything to her about it as I thought it seemed quite normal to her. Eventually we arrived at the picture house and thoroughly enjoyed the film "Two Girls and a Sailor."Unfortunately the film broke down half way through which made us late getting out and the last bus had just gone when we got to the station. We decided the only option we had was to stay in a hotel for the night and catch a bus back the next morning. We found a small hotel and I think the receptionist picked we weren't married so she offered us two single rooms with breakfast for nineteen shillings. This was a few shillings more than we had between us so I gave it a bit of thought and said to Ruth, "Stay here and I'll slip out into the street and try and sell my cigarette case." By now it was late and not many people on the street. The first guy I stopped listened to my story but said he didn't have any money on him, the second joker offered me two bob for it, then a couple came along and I told them of us missing the last bus and not having quite enough money to stay the night in a hotel. They gave me six shillings for my cigarette case so I thanked them and booted it back to the hotel. This was all new to us as we'd never stayed in a hotel before. I paid the receptionist and a maid showed us up to our separate bedrooms which luckily were adjacent so when the coast was clear I snuck into her room. We didn't have night attire with us and Ruth seemed a bit shy so we just lay on the bed in our clothes holding one another till we both fell asleep. I'd made one major mistake that night. I should have made it look as if the bed in my bedroom had been slept in. No, come to think of it I made two mistakes--- the second one was going downstairs into the dining room for breakfast.There were about a dozen people seated in the dining room when we were shown to a table by the waitress and we'd just started to tuck in to a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and tomatoes when a stern looking buxom woman appeared at our table. For a few moments she stared at Ruth and then at me and I had a feeling something was up. She said to me in a loud voice so that everyone in the dining room could hear, "You never slept in your room last night." I hadn't seen her before but I guessed she was the manageress. I never answered her but I could feel the blood rushing to my face with embarrassment and Ruth sat there with her mouth open. The women went on angrily, "What do you think this place is? This is a Temperance Hotel, not a house of ill repute. There was a ghastly silence in the dining room as everyone had stopped eating and were looking at us. It was one of those times when you wished the earth would open and swallow you up. She ranted on for another few minutes about the sins of man and finished up by telling us never to darken her door again. I think she accomplished what she set out to do, to make sure we never enjoyed our bleeding breakfast or to put me off hotels for life, which she did. Sitting on the bus going back to Kershopefoot Ruth said, " I think that awful woman must have thought I was a prostitute." I said "I doubt it, you look too young for that caper" and we finished up having a good laugh about it. Although I enjoyed life in the forestry camp, I was now sure that the opinion I'd formed soon after arriving there that this place was nothing more than a cheap labour camp was correct, especially for the lads in hut eight. I thought the chances of them, of which I was one, becoming fully fledged foresters was about four fifths of fuck all so I decided to return to Liverpool just before the end of the rehab course to see if I could better myself there. Ruth was sad to see me leave but agreed that there was little future here for me. As usual my aunt Bertha was glad to have me stay with them when I arrived back in Liverpool. There were still thousands unemployed there although I'd say a lot of them were unemployable. It took me about a week to find a job as a labourer with a large company named Bibby's who manufactured everything from cattle feed to soap powder as they imported raw materials from all parts of the globe. We worked three eight hour shifts seven days a week. My job entailed weighing off hundred weight bags of cattle nuts for half an hour, then hand sewing the sacks up for another half an hour and then the same amount of time stacking them three high. Working this system wasn't too monotonous and I soon became an expert bag sewer. Most of my work mates were ex servicemen. One guy I remember distinctly was a bit of a nutter who the lads nicknamed Psycho and every now and then he'd grab hold of a sweeping brush, leap behind the stacked bags and start firing at imaginary Germans. He worried me even though at most times he seemed quite harmless. The company put up a suggestion box and asked the workers to enter a competition and suggest a name for a new soap powder. For a bit of fun I talked psycho into putting the name "Flash" in for the new product and fuck me if he didn't win the competition and the company gave him a gift of ten pounds. I was reading through the Liverpool Echo one day and a large advert put in by New Zealand House, London, caught my eye offering free passage to ex service men to emigrate to New Zealand. I thought that sounds like my cup of tea so I sent a letter off to London giving the details they'd asked for. It must have been almost a month before I received an answer and I was terribly disappointed when the letter said that they weren't taking labourers at the moment, only tradesmen but they would contact me if the situation changed. In the meantime I'd heard that they were looking for single men immigrants to go to South Africa to work on the railways so I sent off another letter for more information. They replied almost immediately with the information that they were looking for young single men to work as assistant firemen on their steam passenger locomotives based in Johannesburg. They further explained that only having a single railway line, I would be expected to work a nine hour day, be dropped off somewhere along the line, then sleep in a railway hut for the night and be picked up to work on another locomotive the next morning. It sounded a bit adventurous to me and a good way of seeing a foreign country. Before I had a chance to accept that opportunity I received another letter from New Zealand House London saying that they had now decided to take labourers to work on their hydro electric dams and to let them know if I was still interested. Now I had to make a choice, South Africa or New Zealand. One of the conditions of going to South Africa was that you had to pay the fare back which they would stop out of your wages whereas the only condition for going to New Zealand was that you work for two years as directed. This sounded the better bet for me so I wrote back and accepted their offer. Some days after work I would come home have a wash and dress up then wander down to the Fairclough Arms, a pub at the bottom of Fairclough lane to have a few beers and a game of darts. The young barmaid, who I found out happened to be the owner's daughter, seemed to take a liking to me as she always rushed up to serve me with a big welcoming smile. Her name was Martha and she was about twenty years old. One day she was watching me play a top darts player for a pint. This guy who played in 'News Of the World' contests could play with sharpened six inch nails which he often did and still beat you. I know he didn't have to pay for many drinks but I didn't like to refuse his challenge to play for a pint in front of the barmaid. We were playing 301 and he got away with his second dart on a double eighteen and was close to a double to finish when I finally got away on a double twenty. On my next throw I got two arrows in the treble twenty and of course three in a bed wins the game. Martha shouted over the bar, "If you get the third one in Dougie I'll promise to let you take me out." The lads watching gave an envious sigh. I aimed and threw my third dart and sure enough it went straight between the other two darts into the treble twenty. A cheer went up from the lads watching and for a moment I thought the dart was going to drop out but it just held on and my opponent, looking extremely surprised, paid over the shilling for the pint Martha was drawing off. She kept her promise and we started going out together. After a while her parents asked me to come and have tea with them and they seemed quite happy for me to be taking their daughter out. I received another letter from New Zealand house inviting me to an interview and after passing a medical examination I was accepted as a fare paid immigrant to New Zealand. I was laughing like a chief stoker and the days couldn't pass fast enough for me to be off. The thing I most disliked about working for Bibby's was the fact that you weren't allowed to smoke, not even in our tea breaks. Now that I knew for certain that I would soon be off to New Zealand I started taking the chance of being sacked by sneaking downstairs into the street for a few puffs at meal times. Of course I was caught with Psycho and another chap having a drag at morning tea time by one of the bosses. A few days later, just when I thought we'd got away with it we were called into the main office. I was the first to be called in and the manager went on about the fire problems and the punishment for smoking was instant dismissal. I told him I was off to New Zealand in a fortnight and he became quite friendly telling me his son had just emigrated out there. Never the less instead of instant dismissal he gave me a week's notice and wished me well. I was a bit concerned by the fact that I had hardly any money to take with me to New Zealand but I had a stroke of good luck the week before I left. It was Grand National day and about seven oclock that Saturday morning I was sitting on a tram coming home from my last night shift at Bibby's. On the seat next to me was a Daily Worker newspaper. I picked it up and on the front page in large bold type was their pick to win the Grand National steeplechase race, Russian Hero, a rank outsider. I studied its form which wasn't very exciting but I couldn't get the name out of my head so I decided to have a few hours sleep and go to the Aintree racecourse which wasn't far from Liverpool to see the race. Unfortunately I overslept and missed the bus that would have got me to the racecourse in time to bet and see the big race. Knowing that bookies took bets almost to the time of the start of the race I hoofed it down to the Fairclough Arms and Martha pointed out a bookie to me. I put five shillings each way on Russian Hero and the same on the horse I fancied by the name of Roimond. Martha gave me a big smile and a friendly wink as she drew me off a pint of mild and we sat down to enjoy listening to the Grand National on the radio. This is one of the toughest races in the world, four and a half miles of steeple and water jumps. It was a large field and in the noise of the pub I just caught the commentators voice saying half a dozen names of horses that had fallen at the first fence. The two horses I'd backed were hardly mentioned until near the end of the race and over the last fence it was a battle royal between three horses, two of them being Roimond and Russian Hero. I couldn't believe my ears. I jumped up and shouted for Russian Hero knowing he was a rank outsider and he won by a good margin. Roimond was just pipped into third place and I was in the money. The bookies loved an outsider winning and I think I was the only one in the pup who backed the winner. We waited anxiously for the odds to be posted. Believe it or not Russian Hero's odds for a win were two hundred and two to one on the tote and I paid dearly for over sleeping and missing the bus to the course as the bookie's maximum pay-out for a win was only sixty six to one. Still I was not too disappointed as the bookie paid me out about forty pounds. Just the same I would have picked up a small fortune off the tote but at least now I had some money to take with me. I was to be off in a weeks time. I knew very little about New Zealand only what I'd learned at school. I was trying to imagine myself labouring alongside big strapping Maori jokers and whether I'd be able to keep up with them. My younger brother Eric wasn't very happy with his lot at this stage and would have liked to have come with me to New Zealand but I told him that was impossible at the moment, that he was still very young and could always come out later. So with a little documentation and all my worldly goods which filled about half a suitcase I said my goodbyes and wandered off just as if I was going down to the shop for a loaf of bread. I left Liverpool by rail for London and then on to Southhampton keeping an eye out for anyone's luggage that indicated they were also off to New Zealand.O on the railway station in London I palled up with an Irish chap who had such a quiet accent I could hardly understand what he said and when he asked me if I was emigrating to N. Z., at first I thought he was tapping me for some money but I soon began to interpret his accent as we made our way by train to Southhampton . He told me his name was Michael and he came from Dublin in the south of Ireland and he seemed to know quite a bit about the ship, the "Atlantis"which we were about to board. He said it was about fifteen thousand tons, had been a hospital ship during the war and we were draft number fourteen. Once aboard we were shown to a pretty compact four berth cabin, twin bunks either side and a mirror. that was it We stowed our suitcases which we would live out of for the next month and a half and then we went up top to have a look around. The Atlantis had five decks, A to E, two large dining rooms, a swimming pool, and half a dozen bars, what more could a chap want. I said to Mike that I hoped the weather wouldn't be too rough on the trip as I suffered from sea sickness. His advice was, get permanently pissed on the cheap duty free grog and you won't notice any rough seas. Actually I found this to be very good advice as I never felt seasick during the whole voyage even though we passed through some rough seas in the Bay of Biscay. We were to set sail that evening so Mike and I settled ourselves down in one of the large comfortable bars. Most of the six hundred passengers must have had the same idea as the bars were crowded and the waiters were working flat out. We soon found out that the amount of service you got depended on the size of the tip you gave the waiters and you could wait up to half an hour for a drink so it paid to double up on your order. It must have been getting close to departure time as some of the passengers were leaving the bars to line the ship's rails. Shortly we heard a couple of blasts on the fog horns and the Atlantis quietly slipped her moorings as the people waved their good-byes from the dockside and now we were off to a new and hopefully a better life. I had no regrets. Our departure date was the first of May 1949 and I was twenty two years of age but possibly in some respects a little older in the head. I settled in quite well with the other three blokes in our cabin down on A deck, which was about as close to the bilges as you could get. I spent as little time as possible down there and would take a couple of blankets and sleep on the upper deck whenever the weather permitted. Our first couple of days out, the sea was a little rough which made a few passengers a bit queasy so there was plenty of space in the dining rooms. I took Mike's advice and got stuck in to a few glasses of beer as soon as the bars opened and being second sitting for meals I was always more than ready at lunch- time. I must say the food was the best I'd ever tasted in all my life and the all male waiters did a fantastic job in sometimes very trying conditions. I don't know how some of these immigrants had been fed before, but they were so fussy. How the waiters put up with them I don't know but they weren't treated very well at all. I think I would have slipped and dropped the bleeding meal over the heads of some of them. We always had a menu with a choice of food. I'd never eaten a lot of fish before, being put off I suppose by my old man and his fucking conger eel heads so when I tried the fish, especially the steamed Terikiki in a white sauce I found it to be delicious and often asked, and got a second helping. I sometimes shared a bottle of wine with others at our table and all in all I thoroughly enjoyed meal times. I was pleased when we steamed out of the Bay of Biscay and once we got near to the Straits of Gibraltar the seas slowly calmed down. We didn't stop at Gibraltar although I heard the previous draft did stop there to drop off an unfortunate immigrant who had dived backwards into a swimming pool breaking his neck and died in hospital in Gibraltar. Now we pressed on into the Mediterranean sea and the lovely sunshine. What a difference, now the dining rooms were chocka block and the bars on the upper deck were full again. We even had to start tipping to get some service. After lunch I would sun bathe for an hour or more and then join my mates for a drink in one of the bars before they closed at three o'clock. The early closing time didn't bother us very much as we would order a tray of twenty four glasses of beer which would see us through till opening time at six o'clock. Sometimes in the mornings we'd have a boat drill or gather in one of the saloons for a lecture on life in New Zealand. The speakers certainly painted a rosy picture. What stuck in my mind was what one speaker said, which was, "Life is great in New Zealand, especially if you love the outdoors.If you haven't got a car your cobber's got a car. If you haven't got a yacht your cobber's got a yacht.If you haven't got a bach, (holiday cottage) your cobbers got a bach." It sounded better than life aboard the Atlantis but I think most of us took it all with a grain of salt. Of the six hundred immigrants aboard there were only about one hundred and fifty females and by the time I thought of a shipboard romance the good looking ones were all taken up. Being a bit shy of asking a girl to dance didn't help either, but somehow I did become friendly with a Scottish lass but she was about ten years older than me and although we enjoyed each others company, unfortunately she wasn't looking for romance. We idled our time away through the Mediterranean and woke up one morning to find ourselves entering Port Said. It was very hot and you could smell the place a couple of miles away. Within a few minutes of dropping the hook the ship was surrounded by colourful bum boats with the Arabs trying to sell us everything from daggers to boxes of Turkish delight. Some of them even managed to come aboard but were chased off by the crew. One of the Arabs in a bum boat about twenty feet below our deck showed me what seemed to be a beautiful pair of jeweled daggers for which he was asking ten shillings. I offered him five and he said O.K and told me to drop the money down. I dropped two half crowns down into his boat and he tied the daggers to the end of a rope and I hauled them up. On closer inspection I found they were made of a lead type of metal commonly known as shit metal which couldn't be sharpened, in fact, about the only thing you could cut up with these daggers would be a side street. Even the jewels were painted on but never mind , knowing me, I would eventually sell them off at a profit. We weren't allowed ashore at Port Said and the next morning when I was half awake and peering out the porthole, something didn't seem right. It seemed funny to me as we were moving slowly and I couldn't see any water. A family of Arabs not a hundred yards away was leading a string of camels along in the desert. Of course, we were in the Suez Canal on our way to the Red Sea. This was the life. The only decision I had to make was whether to sleep in the cabin or on the upper deck. It was very hot in the cabin and when you slept on the upper deck you were disturbed at four a.m. in the morning by the seamen hosing down the decks around you and I think the buggers enjoyed giving you the odd splash but they didn't deter me as I enjoyed sleeping under the stars in the cool air of the night. Our first port of call where we managed to get ashore for a few hours at the other end of the Red Sea was Aden, a very busy port teaming with people of every nationality. We wandered through all the bazaars looking at what they had to sell, being pestered by smiling little boys telling us they had lovely big sister's and taxi drivers wanting to take us any where we'd like to go. I was admiring one of these taxis, a brand new American two toned blue1949 V 8 Chevrolet. I'd never seen one before as I don't think they imported many American cars into England. The driver saw us admiring his car and asked us if we would like to go for a spin for the cost of a few bob. I couldn't resist the offer and encouraged the four of us to pile in. I sat next to the driver and I asked him how much the Chevrolet cost and he reckoned the equivalent of about 500 pounds. I thought one day I'm going to own a car like this. We drove around a few more back streets and the driver asked us if we would be interested in visiting a brothel. I smiled at him and said, "Not today thanks, were trying to give it up." He laughed and said, "O.K. I'll take you to the gardens." I don't know whether they were the hanging gardens of Babylon or the garden of Eden or was it Aden but they were a sight for sore eyes. Not that we were over interested in gardens but considering the driver said it hadn't rained for six years they were certainly very beautiful. We were advised not to drink in Aden for some reason or other so we asked the taxi driver to drop us back at the ship as the heat was getting to us and the thought of a cool beer in an air conditioned lounge was all we needed. We slipped off that evening along the Gulf of Aden through the Arabian Sea and into the Indian Ocean. I remember this part of the journey very well as for days I suffered chronic earache in both ears. I put up with it as long as I could but it seemed to get worse so I went down to see the ship's doctor. He poured some oil into my ears and told me to come back in three day's and he would syringe them out. I thought, another three days pain and wished I'd come and seen him sooner. After a couple of days I was ready to leap overboard so I went down again to see the doc. He shoved a basin under my left ear and starting pumping hot water into it and he was amazed at what he got out and said it was like concrete. Once he'd cleaned both of my ears out the pain stopped almost immediately. Back down in the cabin I was telling the lads when I stopped and said, "Whats that noise."One of them said, "What noise." I said, "That bleedin' thumping noise." They listened for a moment and said, " That's the engines." I couldn't believe it, I'd been aboard for about three weeks and that was the first time I'd heard the engines. It was the middle of May and at this time of the year it was very hot in the Indian ocean but the sea was beautifully calm so we made the most of it, sunbathing and supping duty free ale. It seemed to me that most of the passengers couldn't get to New Zealand quick enough and were counting the days but I was in no hurry. A popular tune at the time that they played every day over the Tannoy system was "A slow boat to China" and now that my painful ear ache was better I was thoroughly enjoying this trip so the "Atlantis" couldn't go slow enough for me. Our next port of call was Colombo in Ceylon ( now called Sri Lanka) another hot busy port and as usual we all went ashore. I went with a couple of lads from our cabin, one of them, a scottish chap who they used to call Haggis was an ex desert rat who had a nasty shrapnel scar on his forehead. He also used to throw a bit of a wobbly if anyone called us pommie bastards which one unfortunate steward did after a bit of an argument outside our cabin. In a flash Haggis leapt out of his bunk into the passage way and had the steward by the throat up against the bulkhead. He must have terrified the poor bugger as we never saw him again for the rest of the trip. We had a good look around all the Bazaars in the port of Colombo. The Indian owners must have been well educated, they spoke perfect English and were extremely polite. Many of them seemed to specialize in jewellery so I decided to buy a gold ring for Martha back in England. We were sat down and the owner plied us with lovely cups of sweet tea as he displayed tray after tray of gold rings to us. I finally decided on one that had what looked to me like a diamond surrounded by what the owner called semi precious Zircons. Haggis looking closely at the ring and said it wasnt stamped with a crown as gold normally was in England, the owner explained that Indian gold wasnt stamped and produced a small bottle of acid and proceeded to place a few drops of the acid on the ring saying the gold would discolour if it wasnt 24 ct pure. He seemed genuine enough so I paid him the five pounds, thanked him for the tea and we moved out into the bright sunshine. Nobody had warned us not to drink in Colombo so after having a good look around the place we ended up in some sort of dive with a bar and a couple of billiard tables. We had a couple of beers which didn’t taste too good so Haggis decided to try a couple of whiskeys. Id never tasted whiskey before and I thought it was bloody awful but the other two seemed to like it. The place was full of bearded Indians and a couple of them asked us if we would like to play a game of billiards. Having virtually lived in a billiard hall and played for money when I was fifteen in Wrexham I thought I was a pretty good player so Haggis and I agreed to take them on, We won the first game easily and in the second game, even though the Indians played a lot better we still won. They then suggested we have a little bet of ten shillings on the next game and like idiots we agreed. Their playing seemed to improve rapidly but they played so that they only just beat us potting the black to win, when they suggested another game, double or nothing, I began to suspect these buggers as being as shrewed as a pair of proverbial shit-house rats. By now there were quite a few onlookers, some of them being fellow immigrants from our ship who goaded us to have another game and the Indians were taking ten bob side bets from them that they would beat us, and beat us they did. They really cleaned us up. I think we only potted a couple of reds and that was it, we never got another shot. What a couple of con men they were. Later when I thought about it I even suspected the bastards had drugged my drink. I must have keeled over as the next thing I remember after paying them their winnings was being dragged paralytic along the wharf by two uniformed Indian police wearing those comical fez hats. I must have immediately flaked out again for at least another thirty six hours as when I came to I remember Haggis hanging on to my legs trying to stop me from getting through the port hole in the cabin shouting that I was off ashore. Good job he was there as wed been at sea for over a day and were now in the middle of the Indian ocean. While I was out to it lying in my bunk I also faintly remember one of the lads removing the ring I’d bought for Martha and my wallet from my trouser pockets and muttering something about keeping them safe for me. He gave them back to me the following day but sad to say about two thirds of my money was missing which left me with about ten pounds for the rest of the trip. The next day we crossed the equator with a lot of pomp and ceremony and in the heat of the afternoon they had a guy dressed up as King Neptune seated by the swimming pool with another couple of jokers baptizing everyone by chucking them into the pool and giving them a certicate indicating that they had crossed the equator. I kept my distance after seeing a few non swimmers having to be rescued as the ceremony seemed to get a bit out of hand. Some of the lads, knowing I couldn’t swim tried to get me near the pool but they weren’t quick enough. Later I heard this caper was scrubbed on later passages. The days started to pass more slowly as we had to cover three and a half thousand miles between Colombo and our next port of call at Perth in Western Australia. I was still annoyed with myself for my stupidity at Colombo and finishing up losing most of my money so with what little I had left the lads invited me into their card school. I was a pretty shrewd card player having served my time playing penny Brag when I first started work as a can lad and over the next few days I must have won about twenty pounds which certainly helped me to stay financial for the rest of the trip. We were most unfortunate to arrive at the port of Fremantle on a Sunday. The lads and I took a bus into Perth and believe it or not there wasn’t a soul about. The shops were all closed, as were the pubs and Haggis said we might as well have stayed aboard but for me it was good to get ashore and stretch my legs and have a good look around the town. Someone proudly showed us the lovely new hospital building they’d just finished and we ended up having a sandwich and a milk shake in a local milk bar before heading back to the ship. It must be costly for ships to stay in port as by the following morning we were well at sea again and heading for the Great Australian Bight. Haggis, who had been in this part of the world before and knowing I was prone to seasickness was trying to put the shits up me by telling us the Australian Bight was known to be one of the roughest sea in the world. As it turned out when I woke up each morning the sun was up, it was lovely and warm and the sea was as smooth as a bleedin’ mill pond. Having learnt in the Navy to enjoy taking the piss out of people I enjoyed taking it out of Haggis every morning saying, “Where is this rough sea you were burbling about”with the same old reply,” Just wait and see”. By now even I was getting a little bored doing the same thing every day and like the others started to count the days to our arrival in New Zealand. A sort of excitement began to build up amongst the immigrants as we steamed daily closer to Wellington, our final port of call. It was late in the evening when we arrived and we had to lie out in the stream till the following morning to get a berth, We could see the lights in the city and on the surrounding hills and a lot of us gathered on the upper deck for a bit of a singsong until it was time to turn in. Everyone was up early and lively the next morning and were lining the upper deck to catch a glimpse of their new land as the Atlantis was edged slowly to tie up at its berth. You could feel a distinct excitement in the air as the seamen lowered the gang-plank and there was jostling to see who would be first ashore. I noticed a group of girls sitting on the edge of the wharf waving to us. We waved back and I was quite surprised to see them pull out a packet of tobacco and start rolling their own cigarettes. I'd never seen anyone, especially women, roll their own cigarettes, only the odd American cowboy in films but I must admit it looked quite cute and I was told it was the done thing in New Zealand. We were quickly ushered through customs and those of us who were to travel on to Christchurch were told we were free to look around the city but we had to be back at the docks by six o'clock to board the inter island steamer to our final destination at Lyttleton in the South Island. As we all wandered into the city of Wellington, the thing that struck me first was that most of the houses and a lot of the commercial buildings were constructed of timber and were clad with what they called wooden weather-boards. Many were gaily painted in colours of cream and green which I thought compared favourably with the sombre brick and stone buildings back home. As usual we ended up in one of the many pubs in the city and much to our surprise they were serving up a free counter lunch which suited me down to the ground as I only had half a crown (two shillings and sixpence) left between me and the workhouse. I don't think we even had to pay for a drink as we were immediately surrounded by a group of local chaps, who had picked by our dress and accents that we were new arrivals. Although we had only been here for a few hours they seemed hellish keen to know what we thought of the place. We said we thought it was a lovely place, and every body wanted to buy us a drink, in fact they were beginning to line them up on the bar. By now I was feeling quite merry and couldn't believe our luck at the welcome we were receiving. I told the chaps we had to be back down to the wharves by six o'clock to catch the ferry and they said. "Don't worry, the pubs close at six o'clock and we'll have you back there in plenty of time." They must have been true to their word, for the next thing I remembered was getting out of a taxi in a bit of a dazed state, shaking hands with them, then thanking them as they wished us well and staggering up the gang plank onto the ferry. We were half an hour late but we were told the ferry wasn't sailing till eight o'clock. After stowing our gear away in a four-berth cabin, we went to have a good look around the ferry. Its name was the Wahine, a solid sort of tub which was brightly lit and of course the lads made straight for the bar which had opened as soon as we cast off. I'd had my share of grog for the day so I left them to it while I sat on the upper deck to watch the bright lights of Wellington slowly disappear before I turned in for the night. It was a rough but uneventful overnight trip to Lyttelton and the first sight I got of the port hills the next morning reminded me very much of the hills surrounding the port of Lyness at Scapa Flow but nowhere near as cold. We gathered our belongings together and made our way to the upper deck gangway to be amongst the first off. Once on the wharf we were introduced to a couple of chaps who welcomed us to the South Island. We chatted away to them as they escorted us to the railway station where we boarded a train to Christchurch. This was only a short trip through the Lyttelton tunnel below the port hills and I was surprised when we came out of the tunnel into bright warm sunshine which must have been hidden by the hills at Lytttelton. In Christchurch we were taken to the immigration department offices where we were told the plans for us had been changed. The three of us who were supposed to start work at the hydro electric dam at Roxburgh were now to go to work in the State Forest at Eyrewell about twenty five miles north of Christchurch, the department's reason being, they thought it might too cold for us at Roxburgh! What a laugh for me after being up at Scapa flow for a couple of years. We had a meal and then we were taken on a sight-seeing bus trip in and around Christchurch. It was hard not to notice how fresh and clean the city was with the lovely River Avon meandering through the centre. An older chap standing at the front of the bus pointed out the different places of interest and told us he'd come to Christchurch some thirty-seven years ago from Scotland. Some clown from the back of the bus mimicked in a Scottish accent, "Do you think you'll like it?" Everyone burst out laughing and he replied, " I wouldn't go back if you paid me to." We all got out at the top of the Port hills to take in the magnificent view of the fertile Cantabury plains from the Pacific ocean on the east coast almost to the west coast and as far north as the eye could see. Back in Christchurch most of the immigrants were dropped off at different places which left just the three of us to be taken to the State forest camp at Eyrewell. We passed through a couple of small townships with what seemed to us to be exotic names like Kaiapoi and Rangiora which I thought would look more exciting as my address on any letters I sent back home. I was looking through the bus windows as we approached the forest camp when I said, "Looks like we're passing a chicken farm." The driver said, "What chicken farm." I said, "All those rows of wee chicken huts." The driver said, slowing down, "They're not chicken huts, that's your accommodation." I said, "You're kidding us." "No I'm not," he said, " They're the two man huts the forestry workers live in." The bus stopped and we got off. The huts did look a little larger as we got closer to them but they were still only eight feet long by six feet wide, good job we didn't have a cat with us. A foreman forester appeared out of an office hut, introduced himself and showed us to our huts. He must have noticed me looking at the bunks which had no mattresses on them so he said, "If you come with me I'll get you some palliasses which you can fill with straw and in the morning I'll also issue you with some protective clothing." We filled our palliasses with dry straw and returned to our hut. Shortly after, the gangs of forestry workers started to return to the camp on the back of trucks so we joined them in the cook-house for dinner. We were up bright and early the next morning and after breakfast we made up a cut lunch and then clambered up onto the back of a truck to be taken deep into the pine forest. I didn't have a clue where we were when we jumped off the truck in a firebreak. The leading hand issued us with a long handled pruning saw and a pretty sharp axe and pointed down a seemingly endless row of trees for us to start where someone had left off the night before. Our job was to prune the trees as far as we could reach and fell any dead or windblown trees. The leading hand said to put on our protective clothing which turned out to be camouflaged world war two gas capes and that he would give us a whistle at ten o'clock for morning tea. He then disappeared into the bush. I didn't find the work that hard and managed to keep up with the others without too much trouble. The gas capes came in handy as when the frost in the tree canopy began to thaw it dripped continuously like rain even though the sun was shining. You wouldn't believe how easy it is to get lost in the forest. I got lost on the second day there. When the whistle went for morning tea I thought I was making my way back to the clearing where they were boiling the billy and I got completely lost. I kept calling and they kept answering but by the time I found them morning tea was over, just as well. At first I couldn't drink the tea they made, it was black with no friggin' milk or sugar but at least the lads had a good laugh about it. After a few weeks we got to know most of chaps in the camp and I must say they were a motley lot. Most of them were drifters from all parts of the world and the only New Zealanders working in the bush with us were a couple of young Maori lads who were very friendly and were always skylarking. A couple of hard case Aussies used to have me on a bit. I didn't know at the time that they had worked for many years in circuses in Australia as animal trainers and could imitate almost perfectly the roar of a lion or the trumpeting of an elephant. We'd only been there a few days when early one morning the two buggers sneaked up behind me through the ten foot tall Manuka to within a few yards of where I was working away in a bit of a dream and suddenly one of them let out the tremendous roar of a lion. I just about shit myself, then the other bastard let out a snarl just like a tiger. I think it must have been the first time I had ever felt the hair on the back of my head stand straight up before I realized what the hell was going on and the two practical jokers appeared out of the bush doubled up killing themselves laughing. I felt like slitting their throats with my pruning saw but as I was out of tobacco I was happy to cadge a smoke from them and they showed me how to roll my own. They said there was nothing to be feared of in the bush as there were no dangerous wild animals or snakes in New Zealand. Life was pretty cheerless up in the forestry camp. We didn't even have a radio in our hut and I had no money to buy one. One of the chaps in the next hut to ours said he'd been given twenty pounds by his family in England to be used for emergency purposes only. He didn't seem too bright and we soon convinced him this was an emergency and got him to ring the Farmers store in Christchurch. Yes they said, they had a nice mantel radio for fifteen pounds and would deliver it free to our camp which we thought was very good of them. He accepted and they delivered it the next day and what a difference a small radio can make to your wellbeing. Half a dozen of us used to sit around most evenings in the two man hut and listen to music and news till the stations closed down at eleven o'clock. Unfortunately the tucker wasn't anything to write home about but I suppose you could expect that as the catering was put out for tender and I guess the lowest tender was always accepted. It didn't bother me too much as I wasn't a very big eater and if on occasion when there were second helpings I'd give mine to one of the other lads, who usually golloped their meals down like frigging Gannets. The caterers also ran a small canteen but their prices were exorbitant. In fact they ripped us off left right and centre, two shillings for a table tennis ball normally worth sixpence. They certainly had it made as the nearest shops were about fifteen miles away in Rangiora. We had no transport and there was no barber in the camp so when my hair got to the stage that I had to cut a hole in my jersey to get it off, I'd share the cost of a taxi with some of the lads going in to Rangiora for a couple of kegs of beer. Total cost just to get a haircut, eighteen shillings. I soon realized there wasn't a hope in hell of saving any money in this dead-end job. For most of the jokers in the camp the fortnightly routine, once they got their wages was to get a taxi to the nearest boozer, buy some tobacco and spend the rest of their wages on two or three kegs of beer. They would come back to the camp, set their kegs up in one of the huts and drink themselves stupid over the whole week-end keeping us awake most of the night with their noise. My hut mate and I were invited over for a beer at one of these boozy sessions that was just about coming to an end on a Sunday night. It was utter chaos inside the hut. The floor was saturated with beer, some of the jokers were flaked out on the bunks and the others were still guzzling the last dregs of the beer from the basins placed under the kegs. We couldn't get much sense out of them as their speech was pretty blurred although I did hear one of them burbling something about drinking all his wages this week and next week he would drink all ours. Sure enough in a couple of days they were cadging tobacco and wanting us to spend what little wages we had left to buy more booze. Although we were supposed to do two years at this job, I suggested to my hut mate Jim Fraser that we go and see the immigration officer in Christchurch to see if we could get a better job. We packed our gear up and went in to see him the next day. He listened to our tale of woe but he wasn't much help. He made a couple of phone calls and then sent us off to an abattoir in Sockburn where they killed horses for dog tucker. We introduced ourselves to the boss, a very pleasant chap who asked us if we were new arrivals. We said we were and he told us his son had just left for the U.K. and hoped they would offer him a better job than slaughtering and cutting up stock for pet food. After ringing the immigration officer he sent us back to see him telling us he should find a better job for us. He didn't, but I thought anything would be better than killing horses. We were then sent off to an electrical appliance manufacturer and were given the unhealthy job of metal polishing which we thought we could stick for a while till we could find something better. At least our accommodation had improved no end compared with the forestry camp. We were now billeted in long huts divided into two man rooms at the Air Force base at Wigram. Camp life suited me down to the ground and I resisted any efforts by the immigration department who encouraged us to board in private houses. We ate the same meals as the Air Force chaps and I must say it was excellent. Milk was left out in large urns in the dining room and I used to drink two or three cups full at each meal. Jim Fraser, who had shared a hut with me at the forestry camp now shared a room with me here. We had by now become good pals and with another guy, a Londoner we nicknamed Curley spent most of our spare time together. Getting to and from work was a bit of a problem as it was over a mile to the nearest tram stop and once in town we'd have to take another tram to where we worked. We decided to buy a bike each on the never never, five bob down and five bob a week. This did the trick and saved us a lot of time. Come Saturday we'd get dressed up and the three of us would cycle off to the Racecourse hotel and get stuck into a few beers. Jim Fraser or Blondie as we called him had a preference for port wine which was much cheaper here than in England so we'd buy a bottle between us and chase it down with a few bottles of Triple X strong beer. We'd relax and enjoy ourselves till closing time at six o'clock and then bike back to the camp to finish off our bottle of port. Come eight o'clock we would be well primed up and being in that, she'll be right give the cat another friggin' goldfish mood, we'd get dressed up in our best suits and set off on our bikes to the posh Wentworth dance hall in town. Lucky for us there wasn't much motor traffic in those days as we'd all be doing a bit of a wobble going down the Riccarton Rd. I don't remember who I was dancing with one night, it might have been Blondie Fraser, but I do remember feeling a bit embarrassed when the club manager danced up beside me saying, "Take your bike clips off." Wigram Air force base must have been one of the best places I'd ever lived in. They had their own swimming pool, a cinema, a nice dining room with plenty of good tucker, what more could a guy want. The only thing I could think of was to try and get a healthier job. A couple of days later I took a day off to look for another job and the next morning the foreman said. "Where were you yesterday?" Being truthful and a bit of an idiot I told him I'd been out looking for a better job. He said, "Well you'd better piss off and keep looking for another job." So off I went. Back at camp one of the lads said they were looking for workers at the carpet factory to train as carpet weavers. That sounded like a nice job and only a short bike ride from the camp so after lunch I went down to see the manager. He was a bit of a character and how he ever got a job as a factory manager I'll never know. He told me he was an ex Royal Navy Petty Officer. He'd seen an advert in a local paper in England for this manager's job and had applied for it. He got the shock of his life when he was accepted so he came out to New Zealand immediately. I told him I was also ex Navy and we had a great old natter as we seemed to have a lot in common. He told me, as an experienced weaver I could earn with bonus over ten pounds a week which was more than twice what I was already earning, and said I could start training the next day. It was a pretty easy job but again it was shift work, something I'd vowed not to do since I'd had a gutsful of it in Liverpool but after a few weeks training I soon became proficient, earning sometimes over eleven pounds a week, the highest amount of money I'd ever earned so I decided to stick at it and save up for a while. Remembering it was 1949 and not long after the war, what struck me most in Christchurch was the lack of good dance bands, and always seeking a way of making money doing something that I would enjoy, I suggested to Blondie Fraser and Curley that we buy a musical instrument each on the never never, take some lessons and start a dance band. They agreed it was a good idea so Blondie bought a trumpet, Curley a clarinet and I bought a piano accordion, an instrument I'd always dreamed of owning. Finding a teacher for the accordion was easy enough and I carted the heavy instrument into Christchurch once a week to Elaine Moody's music centre for half an hour's lesson. My two mates had a bit of a problem finding a teacher for their instruments but eventually managed to find a suitable one. We used to have a bit of fun practising in our small room making such a din our adjacent room mates would be hammering the walls down and shouting at us to make a friggin' noise quietly. This bright money making idea of mine came to a sudden end when Blondie Fraser lost part of his middle finger in a press machine accident where he worked and Curley became terribly homesick and eventually decided to return to London. I suppose it was just as well as none of us were musically minded enough to become good musicians. I carried on with my lessons for a while but what with the hassle of carting the instrument to town and the fact that the young girl who was supposed to be teaching me was more interested in flirting, I gave up taking lessons and just practised by myself. The food must have been too rich for me at the camp and I broke out in a rash of carbuncles so I joined Blondie Fraser on the sick list. Being off work was bad news as we still had to pay our way and we hadn't been in the country long enough to draw Social Security. We soon got bored to tears being so idle, so not having enough money to pay our board we decided to take off early the next morning and hitch hike around the South Island. That evening I made the mistake of asking Blondie to see his finger when he was changing the dressing. He warned me not to, but I insisted. I took one look and I couldn't believe it, what a mess, I felt as sick as a dog. I never let on, but I never asked him to see it again. We set off the next morning with just our towels, soap, and tooth brushes shoved into a small school case. Talk about travelling light. Luckily it was October and the weather was getting warmer so with a spring in our step we made our way through Christchurch and onto the Main North road. There was not a great deal of traffic about as we thumbed a few cars for a lift, and after a while a truck stopped for us and we hopped in. The driver said he was off to Rangiora and would drop us off at Woodend where we would have a better chance of getting a lift. We thanked him as he dropped us off and we wandered through the very small township of Woodend, made up of a garage, a couple of shops and some nicely painted wooden houses. A quarter of a mile along the way and we were back in the countryside again. The grass was green, the air was fresh and we were lapping it up. I was day dreaming, thinking this is the life for me and maybe I should become a hobo, when Blondie thumbed down a small car which pulled up slowly a few yards ahead of us. It was an Austin ten driven by an elderly chap. His wife wound down the window and asked us if we would like a lift. She said, "There's not much room with all our luggage on the back seat," but blondie and I jammed ourselves in and we were off. We chatted away for a while and they seemed to be a kindly old couple and the lady was very interested in the fact that we had not long arrived from England as her parents had come out from Scotland. After a few miles down the road she suggested we stop and help move the luggage into the boot so there would be more room for us in the back. We said we were ok, but she insisted so we baled out and humped the luggage into the boot. She was right, it was much more comfortable in the back seat without the luggage. In fact I was so relaxed I was just about nodding off when suddenly we came into the hills at the end of the tar seal and onto a heavy shingle road. The noise of the shingle banging up on the underside of the car made conversation difficult and I became quite concerned about the old lady when every time an extra large rock would belt up the underneath of the car she'd just about leap out of her skin. I thought I was a nervous type but she'd leave me standing. You'd have thought she would have got used to it, living out there in the country but I guessed it was all part of growing old. Mind you, in the early days, in the hills on the winding shingle road between Cheviot and Kaikoura, at times with almost a vertical drop of about a thousand feet on the passenger side, you couldn't blame any one for getting a bit nervous. We were still in the hills when we arrived at their farm-house. I got a bit of a shock when they opened the boot of the car. All their luggage was completely covered with a thick layer of dust and I felt a bit guilty as we dusted it down and helped them to carry it indoors. It didn't seem to bother them and the old lady even invited us in for afternoon tea. We didn't need asking twice as we were parched, so we followed them up the steps into a lovely country mansion. She seated us at a long table in the large farmhouse kitchen and I could just about see Blondie's mouth watering as the lady laid out the table with home made meat pies and cakes. She told us to tuck in as she poured the tea and we did. We just about cleaned up everything she'd put on the table, chatting away with our mouths full. The old chap told us we were about ten miles from the township of Kaikoura. As we were leaving we thanked them and the old lady told us we were welcome to come back and stay the night if we had any problems getting a lift or finding a place to stay for the night. She seemed to be a little concerned about us, but I assured her we'd be O.K. We set off at a leisurely pace up and down the beautiful country hills and after a couple of miles we rounded the corner of the last hill. As we walked down we took in the picturesque view of the Pacific ocean with the Kaikoura peninsula in the distance. That view gave me a real contented happy feeling, a feeling hard to describe but similar to the feeling you get when you're going on holiday. I still get it to this day when I see the Pacific ocean as I approach Kaikoura. It was almost dark when we arrived and we didn't have very much money between us, but we decided to spend a couple of bob for a hut in the camping ground near the beach. We got into conversation with a family camping in a tent next to our hut. They were sitting around a fireplace cooking up a couple of huge crayfish in a billy over the open fire. We chatted away and they told us they came to Kiakoura every year on holiday and to set out their crayfish pots. I told them we were fresh out from England and when they asked us if we had ever tasted crayfish, we said we hadn't, so they invited us to have supper with them. What a friggen feed we had. They brought out a keg of beer, handed us some glasses and told us to get stuck into it. I thought, the New Zealanders we'd met so far were certainly very generous. We sat around the fire gorging ourselves on hunks of crayfish while their kids were fighting in the tent. I must say, I'd never tasted anything so sweet and delicious as that crayfish and I still get hungry when I think about it. By the time we got into our bunks it must have been after midnight and I quickly nodded off to the sound of the waves crashing onto the pebble beach. I think we slept in a bit the next morning as we weren't very concerned about time, neither of us possessing a watch. We had a quick wash in the ablution block, thanked our camping neighbours for their hospitality and wandered off up the beach. I thought, as we strolled along by the edge of the Pacific Ocean, that this place had a real tropical look about it. A beautiful row of palm trees had been planted along the curved beach and were swaying to a light easterly breeze. The sun had risen from the ocean and was well up by now reflecting on the calm water.Looking north, the direction we were heading, a range of snow tipped mountains seemed to jut out into the ocean. We came off the beach and had a leisurely walk through the township picking up a road map of the South Island from the local A.A garage. The next town on the map in big letters like Christchurch, was Blenhiem. We bought a couple of meat pies from a bakery and munched into them as we headed north into the breeze. We hadn't walked very far when we were picked up by a chap in an old beat up looking Land Rover. He asked us where we were off to and we told him we were heading for Blenhiem. He said he was a cow cockie, whatever that was, and he was off to buy some crayfish from a roadside stall owned by a cobber of his about fifteen miles down the road. We told him about our first crayfish meal we had enjoyed the night before at the camping ground. He was a pretty fat guy and said he would finish off a couple of large crays for his tea. His open topped land rover rattled down a long straight road, then suddenly making a sharp left turn we were driving once again parallel to the rocky beach, the Pacific ocean on our right and a single railway line running in and out of the tunnels that run through the hills along parts of the east coast of the South Island. I was watching some small fishing boats close in, working away on a beautiful calm sea. I thought I saw something moving on the rocks and mentioned it to the driver. He told us they were seals and there was a seal colony along this stretch of the beach and he pulled up to let us take a closer look. We scrambled down on the rocks and got quite close to the seals who seemed to be half asleep and sunning themselves on the warm rocks. As we sat there watching them Blondie pulled out a packet of tobacco and tried to roll a smoke. I'd managed to get the knack of rolling a fag alright but Blondie's effort finished up like a friggen cigar. We lit up, the driver honked his horn, anxious to be on his way, so we clambered our way back onto the road and hopped in. A few miles down the road he stopped again at a caravan selling crayfish and he said, " This is as far as I can take you." We thanked him, jumped out and set off along a winding road with a high cliff face on our left. We studied our road map that showed us a lofty mountain range named the Seaward Kaikouras that seemed to run parallel with the coastline. Coming to a sharp bend in the road a sign said "Beware of falling rocks." We only lingered long enough to kick some of the larger rocks off the road onto the beach and once round the corner we came upon a most beautiful sheltered bay. Another road sign said "Rest Area" Blondie said, "That will do us Doug, we'll sit here for a bit of a spell." I said, "Right," and sat down at a table cum bench affair made of railway sleepers and we were immediately surrounded by squawking seagulls hoping to get some scraps of tucker. We didn't have any food for ourselves let alone them. We sat there not speaking, enjoying the quiet remoteness of the place. A small river ran under the bridge on the road. There were no toilets here so I decided to go under the bridge for a leak. Passing a rubbish basket I noticed a seagull pecking a t a small package which turned out to be the remains of somebody's picnic lunch. I opened it up and found half a dozen reasonably fresh cheese sandwiches, Blondie wasn't too keen to share them with me, so I shared them with the seagulls. A few minutes later a large truck carting sheep came hurtling round the corner and pulled up in the rest area. The driver jumped out and came over to our table carrying his lunch in one hand and a flask in the other. He said, "Gidday," sat down, and got stuck into his lunch. He must have loaded all the sheep himself as the back of his hands and his arms were covered in sheep shit. He must have noticed us looking at his hands so he apologized mumbling something about dagging bloody sheep. I said, "Why don't you have a swill by the river?" He said, "She'll be right, I'm in a bit of a hurry." He chatted away between mouthful's of tucker and we explained our situation of being on sick leave and wanting to hitch hike around to see a bit of New Zealand. He offered us a cup of hot tea from his flask and said that was a good idea, and if we wanted to, he could drop us off on the outskirts of Blenhiem. We said that would be great, finished our tea and followed him over to his truck. The sheep were all bleating away crushed together and their urine was draining out of the back of the truck on to the road. Being a hot day with no wind the smell of the sheep was pretty strong but not bad enough to revert to shallow breathing. We climbed up into the cab which looked as if he'd carted the odd sheep in there for company and we were off. We were off all right. What a friggen driver, he was away like a bat out of hell, passing everything in sight and sometimes on the very edge of the road when he was overtaking. Mind you he had told us he was in a bit of a hurry and I picked he'd been up and down this track a few times before. I was glad when he had to slow down going up a hill behind another vehicle but then he would still boot it down the other side to overtake the one that held him up, leaving a trail of urine for them to skid on. After a while I got used to his high speed antics and calmed down a bit. Blondie and I had a good laugh trying to pronounce the unpronounceable exotic Maori names of the places we passed like Waioruarangi, Mangamaunu,Puhipuhi, Parakawa, Kekerangu, etc. I said, "It might be better to gargle them." On this stretch of road the only English name I saw was the Clarence River. Clarence was the name of a friend I knew as a boy. The driver had a bit of a laugh with us too, but I didn't want to talk with him too much in case he took his eye off the road. Eventually we were dropped off at a farm gate which we opened for him to drive through. We thanked him for the lift and he said we were only a couple of miles away from Blenheim. We set off down a winding hill and on to a long straight stretch of road till we came to some houses which we took to be the suburbs of Bleheim. We kept thumbing the odd car that came past and were surprised when a big flash American car driven by a young lady stopped and offered to give us a lift. She opened the back door and we hopped in. What a luxurious car and we relaxed on the back seat as she sped off down the road. We chatted away and after a couple of minutes we seemed to be back in to the countryside again. She said she was going to Nelson and asked us where we were heading. We both said Blenheim and she turned round looking surprised and said, " Blenheim! we've just passed through Blenheim." I said, "I thought that was only the suburbs." She said, "Oh no, it's not a very big place, but I can drop you back there if you want." I said, "No, not to bother, we'll walk back, its not that far," or so I thought. It took us almost an hour to walk back to Blenheim and we didn't think it worth it. It was four o'clock on the Post Office clock when we arrived in the town-square. There wasn't a friggen soul about anywhere and all the shops were closed. We couldn't believe it. We looked at each other shaking our heads. We were pretty hungry and in need of a cup of tea, I said to Blondie, "It looks as if they've have had an Atomic bomb scare here or something and everybody has shot through." He smiled and said, "The place is absolutely deserted, it's got me stuffed proper." We started to retrace our steps back to the main road when further down the road a smartly dressed older lady suddenly appeared out of a side street. I said to Blondie, "Quick, ask her if there's a place where we can get a cup of tea and a bite to eat before she vanishes." We hurried to catch her up and when we asked her, she said, "It's Sunday of course, all the shops close on a Sunday." She must have seen the disappointment on our faces and added, "But there is a dairy by the Railway station which sometimes opens on the week end, you could try there." She pointed the way and we thanked her. Sure enough we found the dairy at the Station and fortunately for us it was open. The notice on the counter said chunky dressed meat pies, what ever they were, so I ordered two and the young girl serving said we could have a pot of tea and she'd bring it out to us. Sitting outside, we were counting our lucky stars that we'd found this place and it was open. Boy was I hungry, my stomach was feeling if my throat had been cut when the girl came out with the pies and a couple of rounds of bread and butter. The pies looked good, could have been home made, with a big dollop of mashed potatoes spread over, and topped with slices of beetroot. We got stuck into it. Blondie said he didn't like beetroot and I was hoping he'd leave it as I loved it, but he scoffed the lot, every last bit of it. Out came the tea. We decided we couldn't afford to have a cake with our tea so Blondie rolled another cigar-like cigarette and we sat there puffing away seemingly without a care in the world. After we'd finished our meal, we went for a walk around the town, still not believing how it could be so deserted. The only signs of life were a couple of mongrel dogs chasing one another and I thought of catching one and taking it with us for company but Blondie said, "No, leave the buggers be." We had to decide whether to stay here for the night or press on. By now it was getting on for seven o'clock so we decided to inspect the Railway Station for a place to sleep for the night. At the end of the station were a couple of empty railway carriages. There was still nobody about so we tried the doors. Some of them were locked but on the second carriage we found one open and hopped in. The leather covered bench type seats were quite comfortable so I threw my wee case up on the rack and we stretched out, one on either side of the compartment. Using my towel as a pillow I lay there thinking, what if a steam engine hooks on to us in the middle of the night and we finish up back in Christchurch in the morning. I was just about to mention this to my mate but he was already snoring. I awoke with a start to the sound of a shunting engine crashing and banging about the place. Expecting to be jolted off my seat any minute, I jumped up, gave Blondie a quick shake and said, "Come on mate, we'd better make a move before we get hooked up to an engine." I looked out the door, not a soul about so I hopped out on to the platform followed by my bleary eyed mate. Along the other end of the platform we found a toilet and we were soon freshened up after cleaning our teeth and having a cold water swill. Once back on the road we were ready for anything. I offered Blondie a bite of a beetroot sandwich I'd made and stuck in my pocket at the dairy the night before. He said he wasn't very hungry so I wolfed it down. The signpost indicated Picton one way and Nelson the other. Checking with our map showed Picton being the longer way around to Nelson but it took in the beautiful Marlborough sounds we'd heard so much about so we decided on Picton which seemed to be the busier road. We were soon picked by a truck going to a cheese factory. The driver was a happy go lucky type of chap, very interested in all types of sport, especially horse racing. We yacked away. I told him we didn't know much about New Zealand horse racing and hadn't yet been to a trotting meeting and about how lucky I'd been to back the winner and the third horse in the Grand National back home just before I left. The road to Picton was a pretty straight road in what seemed to be a valley set between two hill ranges. The driver turned off the main road at a place called Koromiko into the cheese factory. He offered to show us around the factory, have a cup of tea, and taste the cheese. Blondie said, "Hold me back." We got out and followed the driver. After an interesting tour of the factory he took us into the workers rest room where we tucked into a feed of biscuits and many different varieties of cheese washed down with a large mug of tea. Unfortunately I wasn't a great cheese lover, not like my old man. He just about lived on cheese and Spanish onions, if you could call that living, but being pretty hungry I still enjoyed it. Back on the road again we walked down between the two hill ranges into Picton. What a beautiful place, a natural deep, sheltered harbour on the Marlborough Sounds. We wandered down to relax on the beach in a lovely curved bay, and sitting there we could see a large ship heading directly towards us up the placid Queen Charlotte Sound. As it approached the bay it swept around doing a complete hundred and eighty-degree turn and slowly backed in between two wharfs. You could say the skipper had done this manouvre a few times before. It was the large inter-island ferry and we watched as they opened the stern doors. Out came dozens of railway wagons, trucks, and motor cars. It was an interesting operation to watch as it ran so smoothly, then again, we had little else to do. There were no shortage of pubs here, so after having a good look around the town and at all the different types of boats tied up in the marina, we decided to lash ourselves up to a glass of beer in a pub which had an upstairs verandah with a lovely view of the harbour. We seem to get quite a contented feeling enjoying a glass of beer and a smoke, watching everyone going about their business, some lazily, some in a hurry, but I never relax for long, so I said to Blondie, "Drink up me hearty and we'll head into the wind." Talking about the wind I thought, after I'd bought myself a bike in Christchurch I soon realized that there were five winds in this part of the world, north, south, east, west and the head wind. Walking out of the township we passed the railway yards and a small industrial area on the way to the start of the Grove track, a shingle road following the contours of the hills and along the coastline of the Marlborough Sounds from Picton to Havelock. By the time we got to the top of the first hill up a winding road we were puffed, so we decided to rest for a few minutes at a look-out point, which gave us a magnificent view of the picturesque Queen Charlotte sound and the bush covered hills on either side. What a pity we didn't own a camera at that time though I suppose it didn't really matter as the beauty of this area would never change and we could always come back. After resting for a while we pressed on up and down the hills with the odd vehicle passing us in a cloud of dust. Every mile or two coming to the top of a hill we'd look down through the bush onto an inviting sandy bay. Eventually we waved down an old flat deck truck. The driver said they were going fishing and his mate said they didn't have enough room for us in the cab but we were welcome to hop up on the flat deck so being a bit tired we were pleased to get a lift and jumped aboard and snuggled in behind the cab. What a rocky dusty ride that was. The pair of buggers in the cab kept looking through the back window and laughing at us. I sat on my case and just about flattened it and after about half an hour we couldn't stand it any longer so I banged on the cab roof and indicated for the driver to pull up. He skidded to a stop and we hopped off. My mate thanked them and they drove off, still laughing their frigging heads off. It had been cold on the back of that truck, even though the sun was shining, so after dusting ourselves down the best we could we set off at a brisk pace to warm ourselves up. We soon came to a sign which said Momorangi Bay camping ground half a mile and the thought of a dip in the bay to get rid of the dust urged us on. The colour of my mate's face was a light black with rings around his eyes and we looked a right pair of hobos. Coming down the next hill we could see the lovely sandy beach of Momorangi Bay and a group of youngsters playing in the water being watched by their family who were relaxing on the sand. We walked out of sight to the far end of the bay near a small jetty, stripped down to our under pants and paddled into the water. It was pretty cold but we had a good swill down and feeling refreshed after getting rid of all the dust we decided to sunbathe for a while on the warm sand. There was quite a bit of heat left in the sun and the warmth must have relaxed me for I nodded off. After a while I woke up suddenly to the feel of something nipping me amidships and Blondie shouting that he was being eaten alive by friggin' sandflies. He was right. I was covered with the bastards. I brushed them off and grabbed my clothes off the jetty, giving them a good shake to get rid of the dust, then got dressed smartly and walked up back to the road followed by my mate cursing loudly. The store at Momorangi Bay sold just about everything, but the only thing we wanted was food, so the storekeeper offered to make us up some ham sandwiches, and a pot of tea. When we mentioned the sand flies he said, " Yeees, they're bad around here at this time of the year, the best thing to keep them off, is to cover yourself with a mixture of baby oil and kerosene" whatever that was. I found out later, it was what we called paraffin oil at home. I tried it amongst other things a few years later when I was gold prospecting on the West Coast but I never ever found anything to stop sandflies, or mosquitoes from biting me except keeping myself well covered up. I soon realized sandflies loved fresh blood, especially Poms. I've worked beside some New Zealanders and they were never bitten. My sister Marie came out to New Zealand a few years later and she was so badly bitten by mossies or sandflies on a cycling tour around the South Island that she had to cut through her shoelaces to get her shoes off. Her feet were so swollen, maybe we had some blue blood in our family. Finishing off our tasty ham sandwiches with a nice hot cup of tea we sat having a smoke while we contemplated our next move. Being late in the afternoon we couldn't make up our minds whether to stay the night at the lovely Momorangi Bay camping ground or carry on to Nelson. I tossed a coin, heads we stay, tails we press on. It came up tails. We said good-bye to the storekeeper and he answered with a cheerful, " Hooray.," I thought, as we wandered off down the road, maybe he was glad to be rid of us. There was a long dusty road ahead and we set off a t at fair pace. We thumbed down a few cars but none of them stopped and after a few miles slogging up and down hills we started to slow down a bit. At the end of a long straight, looking back at what appears to be a bus in the distance, I said to Blondie, "I'll thumb this bugger down for a bit of fun." I pulled up the leg or my trousers to show a bit of white skinny leg and thumbed him down and to our surprise the bus lumbered to a stop about a hundred yards farther down the road. We picked up our step a bit, and as we got closer I noticed something a bit unusual. The bus had a friggin' chimney sticking out of the top and it started belching out smoke. The driver opened the door and said. "Hello there, where are you heading?" He looked like the wild man of Borneo with his long curly hair and bushy beard. I told him we were new arrivals and were hitch-hiking around to see a bit of the country. He switched off the engine and said, "Come on in" and once inside we were surprised to see the bus had been completely converted into a home. He said his name was Harry and introduced us to his wife Meg who was stoking up a a wood burner that they used for heating water and cooking. Introducing ourselves as Doug and Jim we chatted away as Harry proudly showed us through the bus. He said they'd spent three years converting it and I must say they'd made a terrific job of it and now they were enjoying the fruits of their labour. You couldn't be anything else but dead envious of their gypsy type life style and over a cup of tea they told us they would stop any where that took their fancy. They'd just spent some time fishing in Kaikoura and were now heading for Nelson and maybe do some apple picking, after which he said they would most probably head back to Karamea on the West Coast which was their base and do some whitebaiting. Finishing our tea Harry said, "I think the motor has cooled down a bit by now so we'd better push on." He jumped into the driver's seat, slapped it into gear and we were off with a hiss and a roar. Blondie and I relaxed on a sofa in the living room part of the bus and chatted with Harry's wife. She told us they had three grown up sons who would often come and spend their holidays with them in the bus. She said it was a pre-war Bedford that Harry had picked up for a song but they'd spent a lot of money on converting it. I'd noticed the old bus was struggling a bit going up some of the steep hills and Harry told us the engine was just about knackered. He said we'd better stop at the next river and check the water in the radiator so we stopped at a stream by a little place with a name that was hard to get your tongue around, Mahakipawa. Blondie and I had some laughs trying to pronounce some of these Maori names. Harry checked the radiator and sent me off down to the stream for a jug of water which in fact became my regular chore at every river we crossed all the way to Nelson. We stopped a t the Pelorus bridge, the map showing the Rai Falls in this scenic area where we again topped up the radiator before heading through the Rai valley with the old bus moaning and groaning over the Rai Saddle into Whangamoa. By this time it was getting late and Harry said he was tired and didn't think we would make it to Nelson before dark. He asked us if we had a place to stay there and when we told him we hadn't, Meg said, "Good, you can stay with us tonight and if you want to come with us to do some apple picking tomorrow you're welcome." Harry said, "Well that's settled then, I'll pull in at this rest area and we can have a bite to eat." Meg stoked up the wood stove and cooked us up some fresh herrings and cod Harry had caught the day before. They went down a treat followed by a hot mug of tea and a smoke and I thought what a comfortable mobile home this couple had made for themselves. I certainly envied them. We sat and chatted away in the warmth of the stove and I said I didn't think Blondie could do any apple picking after losing the top of his finger on a machine at work and after seeing his unbandaged finger they agreed and Meg bandaged it up again saying, "Never mind, you're very welcome to stay with us for a while and have a look around Nelson." When Harry and Meg retired to the small bed-room at the rear of the bus, Blondie and I settled down in the kitchen on a couple of sofas. They were quite comfortable and we soon nodded off. Meg was up early the next morning pottering about and in no time I got the whiff of smoked bacon and eggs cooking, and that's all the encouragement my mate and I needed to hop up and get ready for breakfast. Harry must have got up early too for he was outside tinkering with the engine. Meg shouted to him to wash his hands and come and have breakfast and he came in muttering something about the engine being just about stuffed and he would be happy if it would keep going long enough to get him back to the West Coast where he could give it an overhaul. He said to us, "Don't wait for me, get stuck into your breakfast." We did, thick rounds of bread, best New Zealand butter, smoked bacon and eggs, what more could a joker wish for. The sun was shining through the bush onto the rest area where we were parked as I helped Meg clear the table and wash the dishes, then we were off on a road that seemed to improve as the miles went by and in no time we were back on the bitumen coming into Nelson. Harry said later they'd decided not to go apple picking as he was keen to get back to the West Coast and do some work on the engine. He suggested we stay one night at theTahunanui camping ground and if we liked we could spend the rest of the day looking around Nelson. Meg said they would be quite happy for us to stay with them till they got to Westport and we enthusiastically agreed. Harry said, "That's the story then, bugger off and have a look around and make sure you're back at six o'clock for tea." We skeddadled off out the camp and down the road and in a few minutes we stumbled over a couple of sand-hills onto the beautiful Tahunanui beach. There were just a few families scattered about sunbathing, with their kids noisily enjoying themselves in a nearby playground, not a bit like the New Brighton on a sunny day at home which would be so crowded , you'd be lucky to find room enough to flake out and relax. We strolled along the beach for about half a mile and then came out onto the main road leading into Nelson, not realizing that Tahunanui was only a suburb and we still had a fair walk to get to the city centre. Looking at our Shell map as we strolled along the coast road, I could see the Tasman Bay on our left and across the road to our right, low hills with large houses set in lovely gardens. We stopped to watch some small fishing boats come in through a gap in a boulder bank and start unloading crates of fresh fish. We thought of buying some for Harry and Meg on our way back but we were bit late and the wee fish shop was closed. The size of Nelson surprised us. It was so much bigger than Blenhiem and fairly buzzing with people and we must have walked in and around the shops for hours. As we passed a bakery we couldn't resist buying a couple of tasty meat pies and we sat on some steps leading up to the law courts in a lovely garden area, munching our pies. We passed the time away by playing a game I always enjoyed. As people went about their business we would try to guess everything about them, their nationality, age, occupation,where they were going, etc, etc. It was a lot of fun, especially with minds like ours, what we came up with sometimes was mostly unprintable. The pleasant afternoon passed by very quickly and remembering that Harry had said not to be late for tea we set off walking back to Tahunanui. It was just after six when we arrived at the camp and Meg was putting the meal out on the table, one of my favourites, sausages and mashed potatoes. Harry said, "Where did you get to Snow?" He called Blondie, Snow. I thought that's not a bad nickname and started sometimes calling him that too. I told him we'd spent a bit of time in the town centre eyeing up the girls. Meg said, "Trust you young buggers to be doing that." Harry and Meg were a great couple and having lost my parents when I was a youngster, I would have been proud to have had them as my mother and father. They were so easy going. Early the next morning we set off to Westport travelling all the way from the east coast to the west coast of the south Island. It was a pretty uneventful trip if I remember right until we got to Korere. Once we were off the tar seal the road in certain places was very rough and winding and we'd just made it over the Hope Saddle when it started pouring with rain The windscreen wipers in the bus only worked in fits and starts, Harry said they weren't too reliable as they were vacuum operated and asked me to work them manually. As I did this I watched the road ahead slowly deteriorate and become a quagmire and eventually we ground to a halt behind a long queue of vehicles up to their axles in mud. Harry opened the door and poked his head out. He said, "I think there must be a slip or a washout up ahead, I'll put my gum-boots on and go and have a look. "He returned a few minutes later dripping wet with the news that there had been a big washout and a grader was at the scene towing the cars through one at a time. He said, "We could be a while here so we might as well have a brew up and a smoke." Meg soon had a pot of tea on the table and we relaxed on the sofas enjoying a smoke as more cars started to pile up behind us and some of the anxious drivers getting out and trudging through the mud to find out what was going on. I mentioned to Harry that I'd never seen such heavy rain. It was coming straight down in torrents. Harry said it was quite normal, in fact on parts of the West Coast he said you could get up to three hundred inches of rain a year. That didn't mean anything to me as I wouldn't have had a clue what the yearly rainfall was in Liverpool. I said, "By the look of it we're going to get that much today." After about an hour it was our turn to be towed by the grader. The driver in his all-weather gear hopped down from the grader and hooked on a wire rope to the front of the bus and started to carefully tow us. By now you couldn't see exactly where the road was, and for the next hundred yards or more it was just a sea of mud. I felt a bit sorry for the grader driver having to work in those conditions and we were thankful when he unhooked us safely back on solid ground. We gave him a wave and set off again. I didn't envy Harry having to drive this old bus in these conditions and Snow and I were not much help as neither of us could drive, not as if he would let us if we could. I suggested to Harry that we stop at the next rest area until the rain goes off but he reckoned it had set in and would rather stop at Murchison where we could connect up to the power in the camping ground. We passed numerous rising rivers and water falls, some pouring down through the palms and ferns onto the road giving the old bus a jolly good wash. Everything was so green and clean. I thought what a pity we can't get out and enjoy this scenic area, if only the sun would break through for a spell but no such luck. If anything ,the rain got heavier as the road started to run parallel to a big river. Harry told us this was the Buller river which flowed all the way to Westport. We were all relieved to arrive at the Murchison camping ground without any further mishaps. It was late in the afternoon and the rain was still bucketing down as Harry connected us up to the power. Meg gave me the job of keeping the wood stove going after Snow telling them I'd been a stoker in the Navy during the war. It didn't take her long to have a hot dish on the table and we sat there enjoying our meal and nattering away in the comfort of the warm stove. I asked Harry what he did for a crust before he retired and he told us he'd spent quite a few years coal mining on the West coast and in his early years he'd also spent some time gold mining there. Now I said,, 'That's more like what I'm interested in, tell me more.' He mentioned many rivers on the coast, the Matakitaki, the Mangles, Blackwater, where he'd spent some time prospecting or mining for gold and finished up by saying there was still more gold left on the Coast than was ever taken out. Unfortunately for me, it would be many years before I got the opportunity to return to the West Coast and do some prospecting for gold. Being pretty tired that night we all turned in early but I kept waking up to hear queer sounds coming from outside and something thumping on the roof of the bus. A strong wind had come up during the night and I thought it must have been the branches of the trees we were camped under making the noise, but Harry told us the next day that there were a couple of Possums playing on the roof and quite a few Pine cones had come down in the high wind. We were pleased when it stopped raining about seven o'clock the next morning, so we had a quick breakfast and were on our way. Harry said it was about sixty miles to Westport and with any luck we would get there by lunch-time. There was no improvement in the road, in fact, in some places it got worse, narrowing down to one way. We turned one corner and a car coming pretty fast from the opposite direction gave us a bit of a start as we both had to slap our anchors on to avoid a head on collision. Then the driver of the other car had to back up a fair way till the road was wide enough for us to pass and he must have been in a bit of a hurry as he didn't look too happy, but I waved to him as we passed. Our next stop was Inangahua, where, while Meg made us a pot of tea, Harry told us we now had the choice of hitch hiking to Reefton and going back over the Lewis Pass to Christchurch or staying on with them till they got to Westport when we could then go back south along the coast road to Greymouth and over the Arthurs Pass into Canterbury. Meg seemed quite pleased when Snow and I agreed to stay with them till we got to Greymouth. At the scenic rest area we sat outside the bus enjoying our cup of tea in the warming sunshine, admiring the beauty of the mountainous countryside, and the bush which looked so tropical with tall Punga ferns almost forming an archway over the road. As we chatted away I suddenly felt the ground start to shake a little underfoot followed by a queer rumbling noise. Harry said, 'That's a bloody earthquake.' It was so sudden and unexpected it gave me quite a shock and I felt the blood draining from my face. Snow, who had spent some time in Japan in the services after the war and I think, had experienced a severe earthquake there, said, "Shit, lets get out of here' and jumped into the bus. Meg followed. Harry and I sat there listening in the eerie silence as if waiting for another shake. Everything was so still and quiet, not even the sound of a bird. As we got back into the bus Harry said, "Not to worry, this part of the country is prone to earthquakes, you get used to them." Snow said, "I don't think I'll get used to them. Lets bugger off." Harry hopped into the driver's seat saying, " I'll have to drive more carefully now as earthquakes can bring down major slips and block the road." He wasn't far wrong, for when we got to a very narrow winding part of the road at a place called Hawks Crag, with a sheer cliff face on our left and a vertical drop into the Buller river on our right, we came upon a grader and a gang of labourers working flat out trying to clear a large slip. Having been brought up since I left school at fourteen on the pick and shovel, I soon had a great admiration for these road works gangs, who to me, seemed to work in very dangerous conditions, under the constant threat of further slips. We only had to wait about half an hour for the grader driver to clear enough room for Harry, on his own, to edge the bus gingerly past the slip. We followed, thanking the road workers for their speedy effort. When a bit further on the road widened, Harry pulled over to the side to let a couple of cars, whose drivers seemed to be in a hurry, pass. Without any further mishaps we followed the partly flooded Buller river all the way to Westport, stopping in the centre of the town. Meg and Harry tried their best to pursuade us to carry on north up the coast with them to their patch at Karamea. It was very tempting, but having virtually run out of money we decided not to go any farther as we would only be sponging off them, so we said we would head down south to Greymouth, then over to Christchurch and back to work. We said goodbye to them and Meg wished us the best of luck and said if we were ever in the area again to drop in and see them. We said we sure would and watched from the pavement, waving to her as Harry drove off up the main street. Westport was not a very large town and it only took us only about half an hour to look around from one end of the main street to the other. We located a bakery and bought a couple of meat pies and called into a dilapidated old pub at the far end of the town near the wharf and ordered a couple of glasses of beer. We sat at the bar and pulled the pies out to eat. I'd just taken a bite and a swig of beer when the barman suddenly threw a right bleeding wobbly. He shouted, "You can't bring food in here to eat." I said, "Why not."He said, "Cos we sell bloody pies here, that's why." Snow said, "Ah well, give us a couple of your bloody pies then." The barman who was a big fat guy with bulging eyes, who I thought for a minute by the look on his face was going to give birth, screamed, "No way" grabbed our two glasses of beer which we'd only just started to drink and swilled them both into the sink. He said, "Now bugger off and don't come back here." I was flabbergasted and got up to go. Snow said, "What about our money?" The barman who by now was getting redder in the face and really upset, opened the till, grabbed the money, smashed it shut and threw the money on the counter. Snow picked it up and I put the half eaten pies back in their bags as we made for the door. Once outside Snow said, "Jesus, I wonder what upset that prick of a joker," I said, "Fucked if I know, talk about hospitality, and how to make friends and influence people." Snow laughed as we walked on towards the wharf. As we sauntered along the wharf we said "Hi" to the fishermen who were unloading crates of fresh fish off their small fishing boats and sitting on the end of the pier we watched them working away as we finished off the rest of our pies. Snow said to me, "How would you like to be a fisherman Doug, in one of those small boats?" "Not on your life." I replied, "It wouldn't suit me, I suffer badly from seasickness." he said, "I wouldn't mind giving it a go." I was just about to say, "Count me out," when I heard one of the fishermen give a wolf whistle. Looking back down the wharf I saw two young girls in short summer dresses dawdling along towards us. I said to Snow, "See if we can get talking to them," Good job the sun was shining, for when they got closer to us, Snow opened up with, "Hi there, isn't it a beautiful day." They agreed and in no time we were away making small talk and introducing ourselves as Doug and Jim. They sat down beside us told us their names were Janet and Sue and they were training to be nurses at the local hospital. We'd been gossiping away for a while, when suddenly Sue said, "Are you two Americans?" Snow looked at me and winked. I thought quickly, how could anyone take us for Americans, me with a Liverpudlian accent and Blondie hailing from Redcar in Yorkshire. Thinking quicker still, it occurred to me that maybe our chances of getting away with these two girls would be better if they thought we were Yanks, so I said, " Yeah we're from the States.," It worked and they became much friendlier. I spun them a terrible yarn that automatically came into my head. I said we were from California and were working for the film industry which I thought might impress them. It did. They became really interested in us and listened intently to every word we said. Blondie must have caught my drift for he carried on seriously, saying we are actually a couple of talent scouts searching for young ladies to act in a film our company is about to make in New Zealand. He sounded so sincere I almost burst out laughing and had great difficulty keeping a straight face. I thought, surely no one in their right mind was going to believe this load of bull, and for how long could we keep it up but these two good looking girls seemed to take everything we said as gospel. To change the topic of the conversation I said, "Boy am I thirsty, where could we get a cup of corffee?" Snow knew I hated coffee but kept up the deceitful yarn we were spinning. He said, "Yeah, Let's locate a milk bar." Janet said, "Better still, why don't you two come back with us to the nurses' home, which is only a short walk from here and we can have afternoon tea." I looked at Snow and said, "That'll do us just dandy," then we toddled off back along the wharf to the envious stares and wolf whistles of the fishermen. The nurses home was adjacent to the hospital and was set in a beautiful large well manicured garden. We followed the girls down a long corridor with small rooms either side to a retiring room at the end. Janet said, "Sit yourselves down at a table while I put the Zip on and make a pot of tea. " A couple of older nurses in uniform sat at the far end of the room and were giving us a bit of a stare. I must say by now I was beginning to feel a bit guilty and was finding it more difficult as time went by to keep up the pretence of being Americans though it didn't seem to to be bothering Snow very much. We all sat there enjoying a lovely cup of tea and a cream sponge cake which Sue had spirited from somewhere. After we finished our tea we strolled around the garden, skylarking most of the time and then relaxed on an ornamental seat and watched the gardener mowing the lawns. All in all, it was turning out to be a very pleasant afternoon. When Sue asked us where we were staying over night, I told her we'd only arrived that morning from Nelson and that we would most probably book into a local hotel for the night and leave early the next morning for Greymouth. Janet seemed concerned and told us the local hotels were a very low standard. Sue said, "We have spare rooms at the nurses' home and if you like, I could ask the matron if you can stay the night. Snow's eyes lit up and he said, "Super idea, what do you think Doug?" "Sounds good to me" I replied, worrying what she would tell the matron. They left us sitting in the garden while they slipped inside and Snow said, "I wonder what they'll tell the matron." I said, "If they tell her the load of rubbish we told them we'll get the boot." He said, "Don't worry, we'll invite them out to that old dingy picturehouse we saw as we walked through town this morning." I said, "Yeah, that's a good idea." We were having a good laugh a few minutes later when they came skipping out, all smiles, saying they had the matron's permission for us to stay, and, if we wanted to, we could also have dinner with them in the dining hall at five thirty. Snow rubbed his hands and said, "Great, that would suit us down to the ground." I said, "We thought of going to the pictures in town tonight, would you like to come with us?" Janet looked at Sue who nodded and said, "Sure, but you might find it a bit of a dump." I said, "Not to worry so long as they only charge us dump prices," They laughed as we wandered back in to the retiring room where they left us to go and tidy up. I said to Snow, "Have we got enough money to pay for the pictures?" He said, "Only just, I've got about five bob." I said, "Me too, I've got six, that will be more than enough." We sat reading womens' magazines in the retiring room until the girls came back all spruced up. They showed us where the men's bathroom was and luckily it had a shower. By now my carbuncles had almost healed up and Snows finger was looking a lot better but we were both feeling a bit grubby as we hadn't had a bath for more than a week. We stripped off and had a quick hot shower but it must have taken us longer than we thought as the girls were already in the hospital-dining hall across the road by the time we found it. They had our meals already on the table. It was a large helping of cottage pie and by now we were both pretty hungry so we sat down opposite them and tucked in. Occasionally glancing up at them I thought to myself, how could these two very pretty young girls be really interested in us. Even though Snow was not a bad looking guy. I was no oil painting. Could be they really thought we were Americans; anyway it was too late now to enlighten them. Sue got up and took our cleaned up dinner plates back to the servery and came back with my favourite sweet, creamy rice pudding, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After dinner we relaxed and chatted in the retiring room for a while. When I remarked on how beautifully tanned they were. Janet told us they'd just come back from a holiday at a place called Kaiteriteri, where they had spent most of their time sunbathing. I asked them if they had any photographs they could let us have and Sue said they did and would show us some when we came back from the pictures. They weren't far wrong when they had told us the picture-house was a bit grubby. It was an old brick building, with an iron roof, which I wouldn't have known if it hadn't started raining. Boy, did it rain! It came down so hard that the noise on the iron roof drowned out the actors' voices and it was like watching a bleedin' silent movie. We cracked a few jokes about it loudly and kept the audience laughing. Actually I quite enjoyed it, as it was not often that I got the opportunity to snuggle up to a good looking young Judy in the back seats of a picture-house. At the interval Snow and I slipped out for a drag. We bought the girls a couple of ice creams and then settled down for the big picture. It was still pouring down but I think someone had asked them to turn the volume up a bit as now we could just about hear what the actors were saying. It was a romantic film and Janet, after a while relaxed her head on my shoulder and had slipped her arm through mine. Feeling quite comfortable with her I let my hand wander across onto her flimsy dress just above her knee. I let it dwell there a moment and she didn't attempt to move it. She just parted her legs fractionally as if to make herself more comfortable on the seat, which by the way, was as hard as the hobs of hell. I was getting a bit that way myself as I felt the softness and warmth of her skin under her dress. I started to gently massage her thigh and she seemed to be enjoying it so I got a bit more adventurous and let my hand creep further up her leg to touch her knickers. As soon as I tried to move them aside to further explore, she gently took hold of my hand, gave it a squeeze and moved it away whispering, " Stop it you naughty boy and watch the film." I thought, "Fair enough, I'd better behave myself," although I still believed what I'd been told that girls expected you to cuddle them up, especially in the back seats of a picture-house. Fortunately the rain had ceased by the time the film was over so when we got out we linked arms and strolled back down the road, avoiding the large puddles on the way to the nurses' home. Sue said, "We'll make a cup of coffee for you when we get back and show you the photographs you asked about that we took on holiday." Janet said, "When will you be leaving?' I said, " As much as we'd like to stay for a few more days, we have to leave for Greymouth first thing in the morning." Sue said, "That's a pity, I hope you'll keep in touch with us." I said, "Shucks, we sure will," still trying to sound like a Yank but thinking by now they must be beginning to disbelieve us. If they did, they didn't show any signs. As we sat in the retiring room enjoying our coffee, Sue said they would go to their room to sort out some photographs. I said, "Can we come with you." Sue looked hopefully at Janet, who shook her head and said, "I'm afraid not, we're not allowed to entertain men friends in our rooms, the Matron is pretty strict." Snow said, "Oh, that's ok, a photo of Sue in a bathing suit will do me." They walked down the hallway to their room laughing. Returning a few minutes later they showed us some photos of them in bathing costumes that had been taken on the beach at Kaiteriteri. I said to Snow, "Wow look at these man, they certainly look like a couple of film stars." He agreed, "You betcha." He said, "What beautiful figures Doug, I think our search could be over." Just at that moment I heard someone coming down the hallway. It was the Matron. I thought, "I don't know about the end of our search but this looked like the end of our evening." It was. The Matron told the girls to switch the lights off and retire to their room and as soon as she left the girls quietly showed us to our room and said they would see us in the morning before we left. I slept like a log that night and woke up early, keen to be off on the road again. It was just beginning to get light. Snow tucked his head further under the blankets as I called, "Wakey wakey, rise and shine." He responded with, "Drop dead you bugger, go back to sleep." "No," I said, Let's get up and make an early start before everyone's on the move." I said I didn't want to have to keep up the charade of being Americans and I wasn't too keen on saying goodbye to the girls. Snow said, "Don't worry about it, we'll tell them the truth and get those photos off them." I said, "O.K." We jumped out of bed, had a swill, and were first in the dining room. Only the porridge was ready so we had a couple of plates of that, then we took our cups of tea outside and sat on the garden wall to have a smoke. Soon after, the girls appeared and asked us if we'd had our breakfast. Snow said we'd only had the porridge so they took us back in and we soon finished off a delicious plate of smoked bacon and eggs. Sue had brought the photographs down with her and said we could pick out a couple of them to take with us. We studied them for a few minutes and both of us decided to take the ones of them in their bathing suits. Janet said, "I thought you would." Sue said, "We have to be on duty in a few minutes so if you have definitely decided to leave today you'd better be off before we talk you into staying." Janet said, "And don't forget to keep in touch." Snow said, "Don't worry, we will" as we walked off down the road waving to them till they were eventually out of sight. We'd had a good night's sleep and a solid breakfast, so we were feeling as fit as a couple of buck rats. Stepping it out smartly we were soon at the edge of the township and into the countryside. The sun was up and shining and the temperature was ideal for hitch hiking. The only problem was, there wasn't a bleedin' vehicle to be seen for miles. We pressed on, enjoying the quietness of the beautiful surrounding bush until we came to a junction in the shingle road. The signpost which indicated Inangahua one way and Greymouth the other way had been bowled over, but we guessed we had to make a right turn and keep to the coast. Before long, after a winding stretch of uphill road we reached the top and looking down along the coast we could see umpteen sandy bays and coves, stretching out for miles, without the sign of any habitation anywhere. I said to Snow, "It doesn't look as if we'll get a lift around here so let's clamber down on to the beach and see how far we can walk." He said, "Good idea, we can give our feet a spell and have a paddle in the sea." Once down on the beach we realized the tide was well out and the sand was packed hard near the water making it much easier to walk on than the shingle road. Whipping off our shoes and socks we sloshed on along the edge of the water, oblivious to the fact that we were heading farther away from the road. The tide must have been on the turn and as it pushed us slowly back up the beach, we came across some large caves so we decided to have a look through them. Once inside the vast caves I could see looking back, that our footprints were the only ones to be seen on all that stretch of beach. Not a friggin' soul to be seen anywhere. I said to Snow, "You know what, to me, this place seems so isolated, I feel a bit like the people must have felt when they first landed here, I feel just like an explorer." Eventually we came out of the caves and pointing up the hill I said, "It wouldn't surprise me to see a couple of feathers suddenly appear behind one of those bushes up there." Snow laughed, saying, "This place is sure deserted, considering its such a beautiful area." The incoming tide pushed us further up the beach and then we came to a fairly fast flowing river. It didn't seem very deep but we decided to follow up the river to see if we could get back up to the road. It was a hard slog through the bush and after about half an hour we were relieved to hear the sound of an engine and see a cloud of dust being kicked up along the road. I was just about stuffed, so we rested under the road-bridge and drank some fresh cold water trickling down though the ferns. Feeling refreshed and being glad to have found the road again we set off singing a bawdy version of "All the nice girls love a sailor" at the top of our voices. A few vehicles came along, all going in the opposite direction of course, then an old Maori chap came our way driving a tractor with a trailer. I gave him a wave and he slowed down to a stop. He shouted, "Where are you off to." Snow said, "We're making our way to Greymouth." He shouted, "You've got a long way to go ay, I'm only going to Charleston, jump up on the tractor if you want a ride, its only a few miles." We hopped on either side of him holding on to the mudguards to stop us from falling off on the bumpy road. I mentioned to him how funny it was that the few cars that were on the road were all going in the opposite direction. He smiled and said that the reason for that was because the bloody races were on at Westport and he'd been wearing their dust for the last ten miles. Lucky for us no more cars came that way before we arrived at Charleston. The old boy told us he was moving his furniture from a rented place into a bach he'd just bought so we said we would give him a hand to unload it as the poor old bugger seemed to be dying with asthma. He told us he thought it was caused by the constant sea mist swirling around the rented house he'd lived in for years further up the coast. At the bach we uncovered the trailer while the old boy said he would brew up a pot of tea. It didn't take us long to unload the trailer and place his possessions where he wanted them. It was quite a neat little bach set in a very tidy garden amongst about half a dozen other dwellings. I'd say it would be hard to find a more picturesque spot than this with such a lovely view across the Tasman sea. Enjoying a cup of tea we sat talking, I asked the old boy his name and he said his cobbers called him Tau and he'd lived on the coast all his life. Snow asked him if he had any more gear to fetch down from the old house and he said about one more trailer load would finish it. Snow looked at me and asked him if he would like us to go back with him and give him a hand. His face lit up. "If you wouldn't mind," he said, I'm just about buggered ay, you two can bring my old car back and I'll bring the tractor, that will save me another trip ay." Snow asked him if he could have a drive of the tractor, when he said, "Too right" Snow jumped on. Tau and I hopped on the trailer and we booted it off up the road. It was a much longer trip back to the old house than I thought it would be. We went back through Westport and on up the coast, eventually arriving about an hour later. What an old and decrepit house it was too. All the paint had flaked off, most of the weatherboards were rotten right through and this Whare, ( Maori hut) as Tau called it, was only being held together by the borer holding hands. How the old boy could have lived there for years was beyond me, it was so musty and damp. Once inside I noticed that nearly all the wallpaper was hanging off the walls. What little furniture he had, I thought, would have made him quite a few bob if he could have sold it to an antique dealer in London. When the tide was in this Whare was perched only about twenty yards from the sea, and it was constantly surrounded by a swirling sea mist. On the other side of the road, solid rock cliffs towered up hundreds of feet or more, which seemed to reflect the mist back onto the house. I thought, poor old Tau, no wonder he was dying of asthma, having to live in a dump like this. Snow said, "It's getting on, we better make a move and load up the trailer." Tau said, "We can stay here the night if you like and load up in the morning ay." Snow replied, "No, better do it now while the weather's fine." I agreed. I didn't want to spend a minute longer than I had to in this place. We hitched the trailer on the back of Tau's old car and loaded it up. After a few minutes work Tau started a fit of coughing, and was having trouble breathing. He worried me, so I told him to go and sit down in the house while Snow and I would finish the loading. We got cracking and had the place empty in no time. I told Tau to set off on the tractor and get a head start on us, then we could catch him up and follow on behind him. Off he went and we sat down for a smoke. After a bit of a rest we covered the trailer and set off after him. Snow wasn't too happy about driving the old truck so he didn't go very fast but Tau must have gone off like a cut cat as he was almost in Westport by the time we saw his cloud of dust in the distance. We finally caught up with him when he pulled up near the wharf. Stopping behind him he shouted to us that he was going to buy some fish for our supper and for us to carry on, so we set off again. Arriving safely at the bach we worked quickly to unload all the gear and had just about finished as Tau came tearing down the road. Slapping the anchors on, he came at us in a four-wheel drift, stopping only a yard or two from the trailer. He was covered in dust and had a big grin on his face, which was normal when he wasn't coughing his lungs up. As well as picking up some fresh fish, he'd also dropped into the pub to have a couple of beers after hours and he'd brought a few bottles back with him. Tau said , "Now get stuck into the grog ay, while I wash the dust off and start cooking the fish." Snow and I didn't need telling twice so we cracked a couple of bottles and sat there supping away. It was ages since we'd had a beer. Tau seemed to be in a very happy mood. I think he enjoyed having our company. I studied him a bit as he was cooking the fish up in the frying pan. He was quite talkative and would say 'ay' at the end of every sentence, then burst into a fit of giggling. He had a very comical face that really amused me when he laughed, especially as he didn't have a tooth in his head and watching him eat was home entertainment. He told us he'd spent a few years in a shearing gang that did a circuit on the West coast which he thoroughly enjoyed and in the off season, he'd do a bit of truck driving or would work on a gold claim. The word "gold" got my attention. He explained to me a complicated method of retrieving gold from the beaches which was very fine gold called flour gold, that had come a long way down the rivers intermingling with the heavy black-sand, and with the help of the tides would end up over the years deposited along the beach. Tau promised to show us the next morning some of the old gold workings a few miles from Charleston and we said after that we would set off on our way to Greymouth. After a few beers we were more than ready for a feed. Tau had cooked the fish to perfection. They were large speckled flatfish he called turbot and the one I had was delicious. I don't think I'd tasted turbot before and it certainly had my mouth watering. I asked Tau about his family and he told us his father had been a seaman from Scotland who had jumped ship here and married his mother, a Maori girl, in Wellington. He said they had passed away a few years ago but he still had two younger brothers floating around somewhere in the North Island. We chinwagged for a while finishing off the bottled beer till Tau noticed Snow starting to nod off in his chair. He said, "There's a couple of mattresses in the small bedroom, so you can hop off to bed when you're ready ay." I smiled, remembering when I was a boy saying "but" after each sentence, and my brother Fred saying, "I hope yer know." I slept well that night and woke up early to the sound of Tau puffing away and coughing his friggin head off. I thought listening to that was enough to put a chap off smoking for life. I woke Snow and by the time we got up and dressed Tau had our breakfast on the table, one of my favourites too, tinned tomatoes on fried bread. Tau said, "Get it down you while its hot ay," and I watched his comical performance of getting his breakfast down him without any teeth and giggling at every thing I said. Maybe it was my Scouse accent, it did seem to amuse some people. After breakfast we helped Tau to clean up, then we all piled into his old V8 car and chugged down the road to the old gold workings he'd promised to show us. We stopped a few miles down the road and followed Tau up a hill through some bush into a clearing of terraces that had many tunnels intermingling throughout the hill Tau said these tunnels had been dug out where the black-sand leads, rich in gold, had been discovered by prospectors in the early days. We must have been more than a couple of hundred feet above sea level, so these deposits must have been formed thousands of years ago and were slowly uncovered as the sea receded. The terraces were as solid as concrete and the diggers must have worked pretty hard to excavate those tunnels and extract payable gold. We explored them for a while, then it started to cloud over and looked likely to rain so I suggested we head back. Snow and I were also being troubled by sand-flies, funny, they didn't seem to bother Tau who started giggling when I said how much sand-flies loved Poms. Making our way back to the car, we thanked Tau for having us and showing us around. I said, "I would definitely be back one day to do some gold prospecting and he said, "Drop in anytime ay, I like having people visit me." He shook our hands, cranked up the old V8 and motored off, leaving us standing in the middle of a very isolated road. We headed off to Greymouth at a leisurely pace, seemingly without a care in the world, a state of mind and a feeling I sometimes slipped into usually when I was stony broke but slightly optimistic of what the future held. It was a nice feeling and a change for me because, as well as being a chronic worrier, I was still battling intermittent fits of depression. It was cloudy and the temperature was just right for hitch hiking with a slight southerly breeze blowing off the Tasman sea. Snow said, "We're not doing too bad, I've still got about six bob left in my pocket, how about you?" I said, "Would you believe four fifths of fuck all." He laughed and said, "Never mind Doug, we could be back in Christchurch in a day or two." We must have walked for three or four hours without a sign of a vehicle going either way, eventually coming to a shallow shingle-bottomed river. We cupped our hands and enjoyed drinking the clear sparkling water, then we relaxed on the river bank chewing the fat for a while and pondering our chances of getting a lift in this isolated area. Feeling rested, we crossed the bridge and noticed a small sign pointing to a track up the river with the word "Caves" on it and decided to investigate, thinking they would be a sheltered place for us, if we had to sleep out that night. We must have walked a couple of miles up the river which had widened out into many smaller streams with no sight of the caves. To our right the bush was dense and we could see cattle grazing on the far side of the river. Becoming a little despondent of not finding the caves we were just about to turn back when the track split into two branches, one of which went straight into the bush. Wandering in about fifty yards I came upon a large sign nailed to a couple of trees. The sign read "Commune ~ Keep Out." Snow said, "I don't think we'd better go any further in there." I was inquisitive and said, "Why not, we've come this far, let's have a gander." We walked on cautiously down the track when a bearded chap with a shotgun slung under his arm, suddenly appeared out of the bush.He said , "Hi there, what are you guys up to?" Feeling a bit guilty that we were trespassing, I explained that we were new arrivals from England and were hitch hiking around the South Island and we had seen the sign pointing to the caves so thought we'd have a look. He eyed us up or a moment then I guess, deciding that we were telling the truth said, "The caves are still quite a few miles up the track from here. I was just off to check on the stock across the river and maybe shoot a rabbit or two for dinner." I was relieved his tone of voice sounded friendly. He carried on saying, "If you're interested, you're welcome to stay here for a while and I'll show you around." Snow looked at me for approval, and I nodded and said, "Sure, that would be fine." He said, "By the way, my name is Isiah, walk back to the river with me where you can wait while I do a stock check. I'll be back in no time." By now the sun had appeared and we sat on a log by the river. I mentioned to Snow what a beautiful place it was to have a commune. We watched Isiah cross the many streams that made up the river till he was out of sight. The stillness was only broken when he fired a couple of shots off and Snow said, "Sounds like he may have bagged a couple of rabbits." I said, "Yeah, a plate of rabbit stew would go down nicely now, I also wouldn't mind that hat he's wearing." It was an old American Stetson type and it made him look like a cowboy. He was taking a little longer than we thought he would and we were about to shove off when he appeared out of the bush on the other side of the river. He waved to us as he made his way over and sure enough we could see he had a couple of rabbits hanging from his belt. He greeted us with a big smile and apologized for taking such a long time, saying it took him a while to find the rabbits he'd shot. Following him down the track for about ten minutes he suddenly turned onto a path into the bush and shortly after I could see a large clearing ahead with a number of tents set in a circle. In the centre of these was a large marquee. Some children and a dog came running out to greet us. The dog barked, but the children just smiled at us shyly and never spoke. We followed Isiah into the Marquee, which was set out with half a dozen trestle type tables and a large wood burning farm type oven. Three or four ladies were busying themselves cleaning and preparing food. They all wore long skirts and bonnets similar to the Sally army and they wore their hair long, which gave them a bit of a bedraggled look. Isiah introduced us and explained to them what we were about and said he'd told us we were welcome to stay for a while and would they set a couple of extra places out for dinner. The ladies looked at us approvingly and the youngest one of them said that would be fine. If you go and skin those rabbits and bring in some vegetables, I'll make you a rabbit pie for your dinner. Immediately I saw Snow's eyes light up at the mention of tucker. He said, "Lets go." Outside we watched as Isiah expertly skinned and gutted the rabbits. Then picked up a spade and we followed him over to a large vegetable garden. I studied him as he dug up some carrots and turnips. I guessed he was about thirty years of age but his bushy beard may have made him look older. I smiled to myself as I thought of his name which reminded me of an old joke about a chap who was named Isiah because of one eye being higher than the other. I asked him how he came to be living in a commune and he said it was a long story, but he thoroughly enjoyed the lifestyle. Snow said he didn't think it would be his cup of tea but I said it would really suit me down to the ground as I liked the idea of everyone working together and helping one another. The only thing I didn't like was the idea of living in a tent. To me tents always has a peculiar smell about them, that seemed to stick in my nose. Isiah said, "That wouldn't be a problem Doug, there's plenty of timber here, we could always build you a cabin." I said, "That gives me something to think about." Snow said, "Count me out," as we walked back to the marquee. The younger one of the ladies had made us a pot of tea, and offered us some freshly made scones, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I think she had taken a liking to us, as we would have been about the same age as herself. Every time we looked across to her she would give us a shy smile. Isiah said he was off to cut some firewood for the stove so we volunteered to help him. As we were sawing up some logs, we asked him about the young lady that had made the tea for us. He told us her name was Leah, she was the daughter of their leader and that she was twenty-two. He said they were very religious and her father never let her out of his sight. He warned us to keep our eyes off her and admitted he fancied her himself. I said I didn't blame him, for she was a beautiful young lady. We carted a few wheelbarrow loads of firewood back to the marquee where some of the members of the commune were already queuing for dinner. Leah, who was helping to serve out the meal saw us come in and beckoned us over to join the queue. We traipsed over behind Isiah. Leah thanked us for the cutting the firewood and dished us out a large plateful of rabbit pie and potatoes, telling us to sit at any of the tables. I felt a bit conspicuous as I followed Isiah to a table near the entrance. Everyone seemed to be watching us and I guess they were wondering who we were. Most of the men had beards and looked very religious so I thought I'd better watch my language. Enjoying our meal, we soon got into conversation with the others at the table who told us the commune was self-supporting. That they leased about a hundred acres of land, bred and slaughtered their own cattle, sheep and goats. They grew all their own food and were experimenting growing tea and bananas. I said, "You chaps have got it made." They agreed, but one of them said, "We don't have any motor cars, only a tractor and no electricity." Snow said, "And Doug, they live in smelly tents too." They all laughed. We finished our meal and helped Leah to clear the tables and wash the dishes. Isiah kept an eye on us and made sure we weren't left alone with her. I think he was a little jealous of the interest she was showing in us. She laughed all the time as we told her about our trip so far around the South Island, which she thought was quite adventurous. Walking over to the entrance, Isiah said, "Come on, let me show you around the place before it gets dark." We followed him out. After passing a few tents we came to an empty one and he said, "You can sleep here tonight." It was an old army square type tent with a wooden floor and a couple of bunk beds. "You should be comfortable here" he said and we agreed. Most of the tents had small flower gardens around them and everything seemed to be kept neat and tidy. Snow said, "Where does Leah live?" Isiah pretended not to hear and said, "Come on, we'll take the tractor to save us getting our feet wet when we cross the river." We walked over to a lean- to shed where he kept a fairly new tractor. He cranked it up and we set off and as we passed the marquee, Leah came out and waved to us, then disappeared into an adjacent tent. Snow winked at me and we teased Isiah saying, "Ah, now we know where she lives."He laughed and said, "You boys wouldn't have a chance with her. I said," You could be right, anyway, we'll have to be on our way tomorrow and you'll probably never see us again." He laughed again and said, "Is that a promise?" We drove round the property for over an hour, crossing the braided river a couple of times for Isiah to feed some hay out and to check on a cow that was about to calve. He was telling us what an ideal property it was for their needs, plenty of water, sometimes too much as they had a very high rainfall and the river had nearly washed them out a couple of times. The second time they had to abandon the camp and move everything further away from the river. Looking at the river now, being so tranquil and calm, it seemed to me as if it could never be any different. It was dark when we arrived back at the commune. Isiah showed us to our tent and although it was moonlight he lit a candle for us that was on a box between the bunks. Sitting out side the tent we yarned for a while, then Isiah said, " I'm off to bed, goodnight." We watched him as he made his way to his tent on the far side of the camp and as we watched, a bright light came on in his tent and we guessed it must have been a gas lamp. We were still talking about the beautiful Leah about half an hour later when the light went out in Isiah's tent. We'd just decided to turn in when he suddenly appeared outside, looked around for a moment or two, then started to make his way across the camp. Snow whispered, "I bet he's off over to Leah's tent." He was right. We watched in the moonlight and he made straight for her tent and slipped inside. I said, " I hope her old man didn't see him." We went inside. lying on our bunks in the flickering candlelight, Snow said, " I guess he could be making love to her by now, it would be funny if her old man caught him at it." I said, "Yeah, I'm trying not to think about it, the dirty filthy lucky bastard." Our laughter rang out across the stillness of the compound and I fell asleep wondering if they had heard us and dreaming of being in his boots. I awoke the next morning to the ringing of a bell calling the members to church and breakfast. Snow was already up and keen to be on his way. Once outside I saw Isiah leaving his own tent and he waved us over to the marquee. He greeted us with his usual big smile and I thought, after last night maybe he had something to smile about. Following him in we lined up for breakfast. Leah, who was not wearing her bonnet looked vivacious for that time in the morning and was serving out the breakfast. She gave Isiah a knowing smile and said a shy good morning to Snow and me. We sat at a table with a group of men. Isiah whispered to me, " That's Leah's father Joseph sitting at the end, I'll introduce you to him."He was a small gentle looking man with a grey beard. When everyone was settled Joseph said, "Let us pray." I felt a little embarrassed, not being used to praying before meals but luckily he didn't pray for long so we could get stuck into our porridge before it went cold. A lot of young children were running about and they kept coming over to us and asking our names. I would answer, impersonating Donald Duck and they would run away laughing. Joseph seemed to enjoy it more than the kids. We talked for a long time after breakfast. Leah came over with her father and they tried hard to pursuade us to stay with them for a while longer. I liked the idea and would have stayed, but Snow was determined to move on. Isiah said he would take us down to the main road on the tractor and Leah offered to cut up some sandwiches for us to take. We thanked them all and half an hour later we were off again, Leah waving to us as we bounced down the track to the main road. When Isiah shook our hands, he wished us well and then sat on the tractor gazing after us till we were out of sight. The road was absolutely deserted and we walked for hours without seeing a sign of anyone. Snow said, " You couldn't call this country a hitch- hiker's paradise, looks like were going to have to walk all the way to Greymouth." I said, "I don't give a stuff so long as the weather stays fine." Isiah had told us, we were very lucky to be having such a run of good weather, as it could rain here for days on end. Luckily for us, every few miles or so we'd come to a river or a stream where we would rest up for a while, share one of Leah's sandwiches, and take our fill of lovely fresh water. I thought, this sure beats working for a living on the pick and shovel, but we'd been lucky up till now. My carbuncles had almost healed up and Snow's finger was looking much better so maybe it was time for us to get back to Christchurch and do some work. My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing. Bugger me, if a bloody fire engine didn't come screaming round the corner in a cloud of dust. The firemen waved to us as they passed. Of course, they were going the opposite way to us and. I thought, well, they have to come back sometime, and they did, about a couple of hours later but going a little slower. We waved them down and although I didn't expect them to stop, they did. The driver said if we wanted a lift to hop on and he was off. Hanging on I talked to one of the firemen whose face was a light black. He told me that they were a local volunteer fire brigade and had just put out a small bush fire that was threatening a farmhouse. The fire engine, an old Dennis was a right vintage job. With solid rubber tyres and the motley looking crew, it reminded me of the Keystone Cops in the films I saw as a boy. I think they saw this volunteer job as a bit of a hobby and a good opportunity to get together with the lads for a beer, but I must say they kept the old fire engine in immaculate condition. We stopped at a place called Punakaiki where one of the firemen lived in an old house. He invited us all in to try his home brew and opening a couple of flagons, the lads, being parched, got stuck into it. Snow and I tried it, but by the look on his face I don't think he liked it, mind you, he always pulled a face at the first sip of alcohol. I drank half a mug full and thought to myself, "I'll be glad when I've had enough of this". Across the road I could see a sign pointing in the direction of the sea which read, "Blowholes." Asking one of the firemen, he told us it was a rock formation created by the pounding sea over millions of years. Using it as an excuse not to have to drink any more home brew, I said I'd like to go and have a look. He said, "Off you go, we'll be here for another hour or so before we head to Greymouth." Snow and I left them to it and crossing the road made our way through the bush down a narrow path towards the noise of the surf. Emerging from the bush we could see vast rock formations being pounded by the sea. They were named the "Pancake Rocks" and were layered just like pancakes thirty to forty feet high. Over a long period of time holes had been worn through the rocks and as the sea pounded them, great columns of salt-water spray would intermittently squirt high in the air. We must have got a bit too close, when suddenly we got drenched as a couple of the holes blew. We retreated smartly, to the enjoyment of a group of boys who were laughing their heads off. I thought, looking down at the sea surging up and down and around the columns of rocks, that this was is a potentially dangerous place and I was glad to leave it. Back at the fireman's house the lads were in a jolly mood and luckily for us all the home brew was finished. Piling on to the engine I asked one of the firemen how far it was to Greymouth and he reckoned about thirty miles. The driver, even though I guessed he'd had a lot to drink, handled the fire engine expertly and we arrived at Greymouth without mishap. Dropping us off at the fire station, we thanked the driver and wandered off into the centre of the town. I had no money left and Snow, who said he was hungry had about four shillings, enough for a meal apiece. It was six o'clock on the Post Office clock and opposite it was a café that was still open. The sandwich board outside advertised, sausages, egg and chips for one shilling and sixpence. Snow said, "That's for me" and in we went. A most cheerful young lady was serving and she treated us like old friends, so much so, that I think she fell in love with Snow on the spot. As we were the only customers, the meal arrived in no time and the cheerful young lady ponced around us as if we were guests in her home. She too must have mistaken our accents for she asked us if we were Americans. I thought, I'm not getting into that caper again like we did in Westport with the nurses, so I said, "No, we're from England." It was a very large meal with a pile of bread and butter and although I enjoyed it, it was too much for me. So thinking this would be the last meal we could afford until we earned some more money I slipped a couple of sausages between two rounds of bread, wrapped them in a serviette and stuffed them in my pocket. Snow and I discussed our next move over a pot of tea. He seemed keen to set off back to Christchurch immediately. I didn't like the idea, as it would shortly be dark, but after a while I thought, " What the hell, let's go." There was still quite a bit of traffic leaving Greymouth, but it wasn't until we were well out of town and beginning to flag a little that we got a lift from a farmer heading home from the races. He was towing a horse in a float and was beaming as he told us his young horse had narrowly won its first race, paying nine pounds for a win and three pounds for a place. We were hoping he would be going all the way back to Christchurch but he said his farm was in the high country about fifty miles out, which may have been a good job as the banging noises behind us sounded as if his horse was kicking the float to pieces. We had to stop every few miles to try and calm him down and at one stage the owner took him off the float and walked him up and down the road. That was a mistake as he wasn't extra keen to get back in. It must have been about ten o'clock that night when the farmer turned into a side road and said, "That's about as far as I can take you." We thanked him and hopped out. Back on the deserted main road, Snow said, "It's pitch dark and we're up in the hills in the middle of nowhere. I said, "Yeah and there's a bloody cold wind blowing so we better keep moving." The trees rose high on both sides of the road and the deadly silence was only being broken now and then by some queer noises emanating out of the bush. Sometimes we'd stop to listen and at times I became a bit nervous wondering if there were any wild animals or snakes here that we didn't know about. I found out later that most of the noise would have been made by wild Pigs and Possums. We'd decided if we didn't get a lift, it would be best to keep walking during the night and have a sleep as soon as it was light. We must have walked for hours without a sign of civilization when suddenly the clouds began to break up and an almost full moon started to peep out. As we were resting on a log beside the road, Snow said, " I think I can hear a car engine" and then I saw the headlights in the distance. We jumped up ready to wave him down. The car only seemed to be crawling along and as soon as the driver saw us he slapped on his brakes and skidded to a stop in the shingle. The driver poked his head out of the window and in a slurred voice asked us what the hell we were doing here in the middle of the night. We explained that we were hitchhiking and had been dropped off by a farmer a few miles back. He said, "Right you are, jump in the front with me." I opened the door and the smell of booze nearly knocked me over. We got in and noticed that there were two girls and a guy in the back seat drinking from large bottles of beer. I soon realized they were all rotten drunk, including the driver, and I thought to myself, that we sure could have made a bad move here, waving this lot down. The driver set off, fortunately at a slow pace as the road had a sheer drop on one side. The three in the back, whose bad language was atrocious, worse than I'd heard from the women in the dole queues in Liverpool were as pissed as farts. I heard one of the girls say, "That silly bastard Harry has picked up a couple of effing pommies." The driver turned round and said. "Shut your effing mouth you drunken shit." Talk about being embarrassed! I felt awful and looking at Snow, he just shook his head. We couldn't very well ask him to stop and let us out after he'd been good enough to pick us up. Things didn't get any better and a few miles farther down the road the headlights suddenly packed up. Effing and blinding, the driver Harry got out and staggered to the front of the car and lifted the bonnet. He got back in after a few minutes, still cursing and to say he couldn't fix the problem, but would carry on driving with his head out of the side window. The only thing that stopped this from becoming a complete nightmare was the full moon appearing from behind the clouds and the road being completely deserted. After driving for a few miles with his head out of the window Harry complained of being tired and I suggested he stop and rest for a while. He did, and immediately fell asleep. The three in the back seat were still swigging away from their bottles of beer and the language was getting more coarse by the minute, even for me. Funny, though being a terrible swearing man myself, it seemed to cut me to the quick to hear women using foul language. After about half an hour Harry woke up saying he felt a little rested, and set off driving quite a bit faster than before. I was feeling a bit nervous so I sat peering out the front window with my hand on the handbrake. The three in the back had gone very quiet, so I looked around to see what was going on. One of the girls had nodded off and the guy, who was lying on top of the other one, was trying to make love to her and she was putting up a bit of a struggle. Suddenly she screamed out to the driver to stop the effing car as she was going to be sick. Harry slapped on the anchors and to help, I pulled on the handbrake. Unfortunately we were not quick enough and she vomited all over the back seat. I think we could have applied for an entry into the Guinness book of records as the fastest car evacuation ever. There we were, in the moonlight, Snow and I standing in the middle of the road and the others staggering about trying to hold one another up. The car, which Harry had told me was an old 1934 V8 was sitting with its doors wide open only a few feet from a near vertical drop of a thousand feet or more into a valley. The thought went through my head of releasing the hand brake, and letting the old car slip over the edge when Harry said, "Look at that mob of sheep being mustered down the valley." Looking down in the moonlight I could just barely see four men on horseback surrounding a large mob of sheep. They must have been at least a mile away from us, but listening carefully as they got closer I could hear the men shouting and the dogs barking. It must have been about four o'clock in the morning as Snow and I sat on the edge of the road interested in watching the musterers working their ever willing dogs to bring the sheep down from along the steep sides of the valley. In the meantime the girls had done their best to clean up the back of the car and were sitting patiently in the front seat waiting for us. Harry shouted for us to get in and we did, holding our breath. It was still pretty high in there so we opened all the windows to let the cool night air blow through I must give credit to Harry. Considering his condition, he did a magnificent job of getting us safely through the Otira gorge and on a most difficult road, over the Arthur's Pass. He most probably wouldn't have attempted it if he had been sober. By now they'd finished all the bottled beer and I heard Harry suggest to the girls that we stop at the Bealey pub. They agreed. I asked if it would still be open in the middle of the night and Harry said he didn't think it ever closed. He was right and after driving with his head out the window for miles, he was extremely relieved to see when we arrived there, that all the lights were on and the pub was open. They invited us in for a drink but we said we'd rather not as we had no money. We sat in the car having a good laugh over the antics of this group of people, Snow was just saying this was the hardest lot we'd come up against since arriving here when Harry came back out of the pub and said, "We could be here for an hour or more so why don't you come in and have a beer on me." Although my stomach was feeling a bit queasy, I was quite thirsty. Snow and I had just finished off the sausage sandwich I had kept in my pocket from the last meal we had in Greymouth so we said, "O.K." Once inside, we soon realized why they had decided to stay for a while. About a dozen people were having a great party and our group, being as sozzled as they were, had joined in. The beer was flowing freely and a three-piece band was doing their best to play lively dance music. Harry brought us over a couple of jugs of beer and Snow and I thanked him and got stuck into it. After a while the girls got us up to dance and I remember the girl I danced with telling me I was extremely light on my feet. At the time the only thing that felt light was my dizzy head, as some bugger had kept topping up my glass. After an hour or two, by which time everybody had either flaked out in the lounge or retired to their bedrooms, Harry suggested we head into the wind while we were still on our feet. I was pleased as we staggered out into the brilliant sunshine, that now we would be driving in daylight, and what a drive it was. Snow and I jumped into the back seat and one of the girls decided to park herself between us. Although the shingle road was very rough, the seats in the old ford V.8 were extremely comfortable and the effects of the grog soon started to take hold. The girl whose name I can't even remember rested her head on my shoulder letting one of her hands slip onto me amidships. Not knowing what relationship she had with the guys in the front seat and feeling a bit embarrassed I moved her hand away. Harry who had been driving quite carefully said, "We're just coming into Springfield and onto the tar-seal so from now on it's all downhill. We'll speed it up a bit and be in Christchurch in less than an hour." I was thinking as the car speeded up what a fun trip we'd had when suddenly the girl, who still had her head relaxing on my shoulder lifted my hand and placed it on her leg just above her knee. Snow, who was either asleep or pretending to be didn't make a move so I thought what the hell, and started tickling the inside of her leg. She relaxed and snuggled in a little closer. I thought, what a predicament, it reminded me of the time being in the Navy during the war. I was in the Big House pub in Lime street Liverpool, when a girl who was with a bunch of American soldiers took hold of my hand. This now was a similar situation, but we'd all had a skinful so I was not so concerned. Nobody seemed to be taking any interest in us so I slipped my arm around her and gave her a kiss. She responded and moved my hand further up her leg. I was just beginning to get a little excited, when all hell broke loose. We must have been doing over seventy miles an hour when suddenly there was an almighty bang and the windscreen shattered into smithereens. The three of us in the back seat were thrown forward as Harry jammed on the brakes. We skidded to a stop in the shingle by the side of the road. And Harry shouted out, "Shit, we've hit a fucking magpie." Boy! Did that give us a fright. It was enough to cause instant sobriety. Covered in bits of glass we all stumbled out to inspect the damage and pick out the loose pieces of glass from the windscreen. Harry, who was looking a bit white around the gills said, "That gave me a terrible fright Doug." I said, "Me too. I bet it gave the poor magpie a bit of a frigging headache too." They all laughed nervously as we piled back into the car. To keep out of trouble I jumped in the front seat with Snow, leaving the girls to get in the back with the other guy. The rest of the journey was uneventful except for the fact that we were driving without a windscreen, which wasn't too bad, at least we got plenty of fresh air that helped to sober us up. They dropped us off at Riccarton, which wasn't far from where we wanted to go, so we thanked them for the lift and made our way to the camp at Wigram. On the way Snow said he was feeling pretty hungry and I said I was too, in fact, my stomach was feeling as if my throat had been cut. Luckily we arrived back just before dinner, giving us time to have a shower and get spruced up. After a slap up meal Snow and I lay down on our bunks in the hut and discussed the time we'd had on our trip around part of the South Island. We eventually agreed it was a lot of fun, but being broke, both of us would be glad to get back into a normal routine. I fell asleep much earlier than usual and slept like a log. It was January 1950 when the next draft of immigrants arrived on the"Atlantis and a group of them were sent to our camp. Amongst them were half a dozen young good looking girls. I remember Blondie Fraser and me eyeing them up as they came into the dining room for dinner. They sat at the tables on the opposite side of the dining room and one girl in particular took my eye as we studied them enjoying their meal. She was a very slim dark haired girl who seemed to me to stand out from the other three more buxom girls who she seemed to be really pally with. It was a couple of days later when an opportunity arose for me to ask her to go out with me. Blondie and I bumped into the four girls as they were going back to their hut after dinner and we exchanged a few remarks as they passed, hoping they would stop and chat to us for a few minutes so we could get to know them. They carried on and when they were about twenty yards past us I plucked up enough courage and shouted to the dark haired one "How would you like to come to the pictures in the camp with us tonight." To my surprise she said, "Yes, that would be o.k" so we promised to meet them outside their hut at seven o'clock. Sure enough we arrived all poshed up about ten minutes early outside their hut. They must have seen us through their window as they came out right away. It was only a few minutes walk to the cinema in the camp, so we shyly introduced ourselves as we skylarked down the road. The dark haired one that I fancied said her name was Annie Dorothea and they called her Dora. Her pal was named Violet, called Vi for short. I clicked on to Dora straight away. She told me she came from Dungannon which was near Belfast in Northern Ireland and I jokingly told her I came from the Capital of Ireland, "Liverpool." Blondie seemed to get on well with Vi. She was one of three sisters who all came from close to where Dora had lived in Ireland. Vi had a real Irish accent as did her two sisters but Dora didn't seem to have an Irish accent atall atall atall, possibly because she'd spent a few years in England caring for the children of a Jewish family. We certainly enjoyed each other's company and after escorting them safely back to their hut we decided to see them again the following evening. Back in our hut Blondie and I discussed the two girls little realizing that in a short time we would end up by being married to them. I started seeing Dora as often as I could. Coming back to the camp from work on the day shift, I'd wait and watch from the retiring room window for her to come into the camp from her new job as a sewing machinist in town. As soon as she came in sight I would feel a glow of excitement course through my body. It was a lovely feeling which would increase as she came through the retiring room door with a shy smile on her face. I guess I must have been falling in love with her. She looked so young, but actually was only a year younger than myself. After dinner we would meet in the retiring room and chat away all evening, then I would see her back to her hut. On the way we would shelter in the dining room porch-way and spend an hour or more kissing and cuddling till the cold of the night drove us back to our huts where I would thaw out my feet over a small one bar electric fire. Blondie and I would yack away about the girls. He seemed to be getting on very well with Vi, going steady with her as they say,the same as I was with Ann. I'd just about get my feet warm when the circuit breaker would blow out, being overloaded by too many of the lads switching on their electric fires as they returned to the hut. To keep warm I would jump into bed and soon be fast asleep. Although most of her friends called my girl friend Dora, her second name was Annie so I always called her Ann. In the next few months we spent as much time together as we could, especially in the weekends. I would enjoy going on long cycle rides with her into the country, sometimes going as far as Lincoln and then having to come back into a strong easterly wind. I used to study her as we battled against the head wind admiring her flowing hair and envying her young rosy good looks. We'd be pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the camp. After we'd been going out with each other for about a month, one evening she didn't return from work and she wasn't in the dining room when I went in for dinner. I was getting a bit concerned so I asked some of the girls if they knew were she was. They said they didn't know and it wasn't till the next morning that I found out that she had been whipped away from work to the hospital with appendicitis. I found out what the visiting hours were and hurried in to see her, and to my surprise she looked the picture of health, considering they had operated on her the night before. Years later I was to find out, it was one thing that used to really annoy Ann, and I found hard to fathom the fact that she could be quite ill but it never showed on her face. She would look so young and healthy. So different to me, being so pale. When I was ill, I was told I looked like death warmed up. I was so pleased she was o.k, but they still kept her in for five days. We used to enjoy catching a tram into town and going to the big cinemas like the Regent theatre, afterwards we would sit and chat over a cup of coffee in one of the Colombo street milk bars I was always worried that this relaxed life style we were enjoying wouldn't last long. The immigration department told us we would have to leave the Air force camp and go into private board. Ann found board in Christchurch with her camp friend Ellen but I couldn't stand the thought of going into private board again as I'd had a gutsful of that in England and I definitely preferred camp life. Now I was only able to see Ann a couple of times a week, as it was a long bike ride to where she lived. Sometimes she would cycle all the way out to the camp to see me for a few hours, then we would ride our bikes back to her place, going through Hagley Park sometimes in thick fog, with just the sound of the ducks quacking. If I remember right it was on one of these nights when we stopped in the park for a kiss and a cuddle and after a bit of serious discussion we decided to get married. I guess that was easier said than done. For one thing, we didn't have any money so I thought I'd better start saving up. The only asset I had was my piano accordion, which I'd almost paid off and was worth about sixty-five pounds. Ann told me years later that when the camp warden's wife heard that we had decided to get married, she warned her not to marry me, and said that I was a drunkard. Ann evidently didn't heed her advice and we were married in the small church at Church corner in Riccarton on St Swithin's day the fifteenth of July. I remember it to be a very serious and sombre affair, especially when the minister said, in a very loud voice. "Those who god hath joined together, let no man put assunder." He grabbed our arms and bound them together with his stole. That seemed to have a profound affect on me and could be the reason why we're still married fifty years later. Unfortunately it poured with rain on the day we were married and I found out later, legend had it, that if it rained on St Swithin's day, it would rain for forty days and forty nights. I don't remember if it did. We couldn't afford a photographer so one of the chaps from the camp who owned a good camera volunteered to take some pictures, but with the weather being so bad, only one turned out. In those days accommodation was very difficult to come by and after looking at many unsuitable places, we managed to rent a nice room in an older type house in St Albans. After the wedding we returned there with Snow, who was my best man, and some friends for a meal and a few drinks. For our honeymoon we'd booked a hotel in Auckland for a week. We flew up there the next day in an old twin engined Dakota. We had never flown before and were a little nervous and I suffered terrible pain in my ears, which seemed to get worse when we were landing in Auckland. We were pleased to arrive there safely and get settled in the Railway hotel that was built on a hillside. The week passed very quickly for us. We relaxed, enjoying long walks around the city and a visit to the Zoo. Back in Christchurch, Ann and I settled down to a very hectic and busy life. It wasn't too bad when I was on the day shift as we would see a little of each other and have dinner together, but when I was on night shift we hardly saw each other. Ann would be away to work early in the morning. I would get up later, potter about for a while and try to warm up a meal she had prepared for me. I say try because our landlady, Mrs Tentori would be hovering over the electric cooker, juggling pots and pans, trying to cook her family's dinner before the power cuts started, so I often finished up with a half-cooked meal. Could be the reason why I have been shy of cooking meals ever since. Then I would be off to work on my bike, but in a different direction to Ann who at that time would be cycling home. I wouldn't see her and it would be three in the morning when I arrived from work and she would be snoring her head off. I remember at that time some funny things happening. Ann used to leave our bedroom window partly open for me to come in, to save me from wakening anyone up as I came through the big house. Cycling home from work at three in the morning I would pass through the park where there were hundreds of daffodils in bloom. I would nick a bunch and after climbing through the window I would wake Ann up and present them to her. We would have a good laugh and finish up having a cuddle and making love. Sometimes coming home from work I would cycle as far as the park with a work mate by the name of Morphus, who had not long been married. He was a bit of a lad and only had two speeds, dead slow and stop. I nicknamed him Rigor, which used to upset him. One night on the way from work I suggested he also take a bunch of daffodils home to his wife. He said, " Are you kidding?" I said, "Why not" He said, "Between you and me, my wife will be lying in bed wide awake when I get home and she's sex mad. She expects me to make love to her every night when I come home from work and tonight I'm just about knackered, and I don't want to encourage her." I cycled away laughing my head off and by the sound of the ducks on the river, they were laughing with me. I thought what a lucky bugger he was. I'd never heard of anyone complain of that problem before. The winter of nineteen fifty was a very cold winter and not only did we have daily power cuts but there was also a chronic shortage of coal. We had run out and you couldn't buy coal for love nor money. I was just finishing a week on day shift, and it was miserable sitting of an evening with an empty fire grate. On my way to and from work I passed a railway siding and had noticed quite often there were half a dozen wagons overflowing with coal close to where I crossed the railway lines. I couldn't resist the temptation so on my next night shift, I slipped an empty coal sack under the lunch tin on my bike carrier. It was pitch dark and freezing cold when I left work just after two in the morning. I jumped on my bike and headed for home. Everything was quiet except for a dog howling when I got to the railway siding and climbing up on top of the wagon I started to fill the sack with selected nuggets of coal, wondering how much I could carry on the crossbar of my bike. I filled the sack just over half full and lowered it to the ground. Lifting it on to the crossbar I cocked my leg over the seat and made off in a zig-zag fashion down the street. I hadn't gone fifty yards down the road when suddenly a set of car headlights came on and I heard an engine roar into life. It gave me a hell of a fright and it started the old brain racing. Although the car was still a fair way behind me I was caught in the headlights. My guilty brain told me to drop the bleeding sack and vanish up a side street. I did. I dropped the sack in the gutter and pedaled like hell down the side street. Looking back I saw the headlights of the car go past so I waited for a few minutes in the darkness and the freezing cold of the night while I debated whether to leave the sack where it was but I couldn't. I went back, heaved it onto my bike and rode in a drunken fashion the last couple of miles home without further mishap. I must have woke Ann up as I struggled to get the sack of coal through the bed room window. I don't think she was too thrilled about what I'd done, but we had a good giggle about it when I told her what had happened and now we could have a cozy fire of an evening to warm the place up. It was about two months later when Blondie married Ann's girl friend Vi and moved out to Sumner, a pleasant suburb by the sea. We visited each other a couple of times but they eventually moved to the North Island and we lost touch with them. Curly, my homesick friend finally sailed back home to London. That was the last I ever heard of him. Ann and I decided to work as hard as we could and save every penny to buy a section of land to build a house on. We were paying half an average worker's wage for just one room and I couldn't see any future in that. Luckily we were both working on a bonus system, myself as a carpet weaver, and Ann as a clothing machinist. I had to weave twenty-five yards of Wilton carpet each shift and would be paid five pence a yard for any yardage over that quota. This was quite good as sometimes I could nearly double my wages. The only problem was if the weaving loom broke down, then I could lose the bonus I'd earned the previous day. After I'd worked there for a while a chap showed me the intricate job of winding a few extra yards on the yardage counter, as this was never checked. It gave us a few extra shillings in our wages. Months later some of the workers asked me to become their union delegate. I don't think it was my cup of tea really, but I didn't like to refuse them. Funny though, at that time in New Zealand they always seemed to pick on Poms to be Union representatives. They must have thought we had the gift of the gab or something. It didn't help me very much either, as I always felt nervous in the company of people in authority, probably caused by my stint in the Royal Navy. I was also beginning to spend too much time in the boss's office negotiating rates of pay and bonus and only a small percentage of our negotiating was successful so I guess overall, it was a thankless job. Ann and I worked hard and in about twelve months had saved enough to buy a building section. We'd put up long enough living in one room, so one Sunday we cycled out to a new sub-division of sections being opened up in the suburb of Hoon Hay. We met the developer and he showed us around the sub-division. The prices ranged from two hundred and sixty pounds to four hundred pounds according to its position on the road. We picked one at two hundred and eighty four pounds, which was all the money we had saved. I remember it was Ann's birthday so I mentioned it to the developer and he knocked the four pounds off the price as a birthday present We would cycle across town every weekend to look at our section and even banged in four stakes to tie a length of string around the boundaries to indicate that was our plot of land. The name of the street was Downing Street and when they allocated the house numbers I was hoping to get number ten but we finished up with number thirty-four. We noticed that some of the neighbours who had bought in our street, had started to build small baches or garages as temporary accommodation till they could afford to build a house. Being broke we thought this was out of the question for us till the husband of a friend of Ann's at work told us he knew of a timber company where we could buy all the materials we needed to build a bach, on time payment. This chap had just come out of the Army and had completed a six-week rehabilitation course as a carpenter. He said he would give me a list of materials to buy and would help me to build the bach. I ordered the materials and the chap at the timber company said they were happy for me to pay it off weekly. Arriving at the section the following weekend we were confronted with a large truckload of green timber and concrete piles. Ann and I stacked the timber while we waited for the chap who was to bring the tools and help us build the bach. Of course he didn't turn up. Neither did he turn up the following week or the week after and eventually we found out they'd moved to the North Island. This was great. I didn't know shit from clay about building a timber framed dwelling. A few days later I bought some second hand tools at an auction, a claw hammer, hand saw, spirit level and a shovel. In those days there weren't any electric power tools. Come to think of it, at that time there wasn't any power to the section. I'd drawn up a bit of a plan, just a pencilled oblong on a sheet of paper to get a building permit. The uninterested chap at the Council just glanced at it and much to my relief put his approved stamp on it. During the following weekend Ann and I got stuck into the hard work. We dug the holes and set the concrete piles in place getting them as level as we could. Luckily a new timber framed house was being built on a section further down the street so I was able to spend at least half an hour before starting work, studying the builders working away and picking their brains for advice. I bought a Standard Vanguard car-case and turned it into a tool shed which saved me carting my tools with me all the time. On the night shift, I would cycle all the way over from St Albans to the section in Hoon Hay, work all day there till about four thirty, then cycle to work at Riccarton to start at five, returning home in the early hours of the morning. If Ann was awake we would discuss any progress I'd made on the bach. Even though I studied the builders working up the street and listened to their advice I still made a awful lot of mistakes and what with the timber being green, almost impossible to cut, and starting to warp as it dried, I became totally frustrated. In fact, the whole job of building the bach became a bit of a nightmare for me. Definitely not conducive to someone who is a chronic worrier and suffers from depression. Ann was a fantastic help to me and with her continuous encouragement, even when sometimes through the winter, she was frozen with the cold on an unsheltered section with a fierce southwesterly wind blowing. We kept at it and finally six months later it was completed enough for us to move in. There was no high-pressure water supply or sewerage, so we had to have a two-inch well sunk. I bought a hand pump and a daily chore was to pump water up to a large tank on the roof from which it was gravity fed to the kitchen. Luckily we had enough timber left over to build an outside toilet and the night cart used to visit us once a week to empty it. We celebrated our moving in with a couple of large bottles of cider which is quite intoxicating after working hard all day, especially on an empty stomach. The bach consisted of only two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom of equal size. Having no bathroom or hot water supply was a bit of a problem, so I fixed an electric jug element into a five gallon drum to heat enough water for us to have a bath. We used an old tin bath in the car-case tool shed and I can remember watching the neighbours through the gaps in the timber working on their sections while I was having a stand up scrub down. The people on the East Side of us started to build a large house, which gave us quite a bit of shelter from the biting easterly wind. I still used to lie awake worrying if I'd built the bach strong enough to withstand the frequent southwesterly gales, even though I'd frequently used four nails where a tradesman builder would have only used two in each part of the fra0mework. We settled in and were quite happy to be living in our own place, even if we did sometimes accidentally forget to empty the bucket under the sink and it would overflow. I would then take it out and water some of the vegetables Ann had planted. Our next job was to dig a boulder pit and connect the sink bench waste pipe to it. This we completed in a couple of weeks and all the work we did in our spare time certainly made life a lot easier. It was almost two years to the day that we were married when our first child was born, a lovely wee girl, who we named Sharyn. I well remember her in our tiny bedroom. I would wake up during the day, being on night shift, and she would be quietly smiling at me from the cot, as if she knew not to cry and keep me awake. Later I remember waking up and opening one eye to see what she was doing and she seemed to be studying me through the bars of the cot, still happily smiling. I guess I was lucky as some of my work mates who had babies reckoned they didn't get much sleep. It wasn't long after Sharyn was born that I received a letter from my sister Marie in England asking us to sponsor her and her husband Jim to come to New Zealand. We set about finding a job for Jim and accommodation for the both of them. Jim was an Iron moulder so it was easy to find a job for him and we managed to rent them a bach in Kaiapoi. They arrived a couple of months later and we certainly had a lot to talk about. We got them settled in o.k, but us all being so busy and not having transport, we didn't see a great deal of one another. Most of our neighbours by now had had their houses built and I thought it imperative that we also build a new house as the bach was only allowed for temporary accommodation, although the council hadn't put a time limit on it. The maximum state loan available to build a house was only two thousand pounds. We contacted a few builders and at that time the cheapest they could build a new house for was about two hundred pounds more than the state loan so it was back into the saving mode again, a mode we never seemed to get out of. Once we saved enough we applied for a state advances corporation loan and contracted a builder to start on the new home. It was only supposed to take approximately four months to build but this chap cut too many corners, made mistakes and didn't build to the specifications. Luckily for us the state advances inspectors checked his work frequently and made him re-do a lot of the construction work again, eventually taking over nine months to finish the job. We'd only just moved into our new house when our second child was born, another baby girl who we named June Allyson after a film star I'd fallen for as a lad in the navy. The daughter of our previous landlady who had a four year old boy, but had desperately wanted a baby girl, couldn't have any more children and had taken a liking to our daughter Sharyn. She had volunteered to look after her while Ann was in the nursing home. This was a godsend for me as it meant that I wouldn't have to take time off work. Moving into a new two-bedroom house after living in the bach was like moving into a palace. Sharyn and June could now have their own bedroom. June was a much noisier baby than Sharyn and would cry uncontrollably if we let a stranger look at her and even my sister would start her off. Ann and I used to laugh about it at the time but sometimes it could be a bit embarrassing. We decided to rent the bach, but we thought it was too close to the house, so someone suggested we move it to the rear of the section. That was a job and a half. We got the power disconnected and using a couple of car jacks we jacked it up. After digging out the concrete piles we lowered it onto four long lengths of timber separated by short lengths of water pipe with the intention of rolling it slowly to its new position. Easier said than done, we got into all sorts of strife. The water pipes locked into the timber or would roll off the end of the planks and we'd get bogged down in the wet ground but we persevered and after about three days flogging our guts out we finally got it set up again on the piles at the back of the section. I guess we must have got some satisfaction out of doing all this backbreaking work. Then the truth being, we had no option. Advertising the bach for rent in the local newspaper we were besieged by young couples looking for accommodation. Some of them were pretty rough looking characters and we had a job to choose a suitable couple. Finally we chose a newly married couple related to a friend of mine. They were a scatty pair and we didn't see much of them. They never did a tap of work outside on the section and spent most of their spare time either in bed or sunbathing in the nude behind the bach with the end result she soon became pregnant and a few weeks before the baby was due they left. We then rented it to a young separated woman with a school age son who were ideal tenants. Of course Ann had stopped working just before Sharyn was born so now it was more difficult to save any money. We made the effort and managed to save the rent from the bach which was two pounds a week and our government child allowance of one pound a week. Our neighbours had asked us when we could build the dividing fences between our sections, so we saved hard and as soon as we could afford to I purchased the materials and with the help of the neighbours we attempted to build the paling fences. Unfortunately the water table was very high in this part of the city so when I dug the holes for the concrete fence posts, in places I struck water at about two feet. I would drop in a fence post and it would almost vanish down the hole in a gurgling sound, and I would have to grab hold of it before it disappeared into the bowels of the friggin' earth. I was beginning to think that I was a bit of a Jonah as it seemed that every job I put my hand to never went right. We filled the holes with some old bricks and eventually finished the job Looking at it a year or so later, some of the posts had sunk and the top of the fence looked about as straight as a dog's hind leg which bugged me after all the work we'd done. Now that we had reasonably good shelter from the wind, Ann and I set about developing a vegetable and flower garden. Ann, having lived in the country in Ireland had some experience in gardening, but I didn't have a clue. We had been advised to plant potatoes the first year to break the soil up. The land had previously been a dairy farm, very heavy soil and of course full of twitch. We dug over as much as we could in our spare time and planted the seed potatoes. After a few weeks we would inspect them everyday waiting for them to show through, and when they did we would mold them up as Ann said they did in Ireland. I found it very interesting and even before the potatoes were ready to pick, I would tickle a few of them out to see what they were like. I got a bit of a shock to see that some of them were scabby, but I was told this was quite normal growing spuds in new ground. In those days most of our neighbours kept a few chickens so I bought a plywood equipment case from work and built a chicken shed. As soon s it was finished Ann and I cycled out to a chicken farm and bought half a dozen, what they called, point of lay white leghorn pullets. I don't know where they got the point of lay from, but it was six weeks before Ann shouted to me from the hen house that the first egg had been laid. Over time we tried many different breeds of chickens but I must say, for egg-laying, the white leghorn beat them all as they would lay till they dropped. It seemed as soon as we saved a few pounds, that something needed to be done on the section. First we built a new picket front fence, then we cut out a driveway, laid the concrete curbs and spread umpteen cubic yards of shingle along the length of it. About this time, the early fifties, there was a lot of trouble on the wharves culminating in a major countrywide wharf strike which almost brought the country to a standstill. The last thing I expected was for this strike to affect my job as a carpet weaver, but it did. Evidently the Wilton carpet we were weaving for export was piling up at the wharves, so the factory manager decided to sack all the weavers. I happened to be off sick with the flu at the time, and it gave me a bit of a shock when I received a letter informing me I was down the frigging road and no redundancy, sick pay or any thing like what workers get today. I immediately set about looking for another job, I thought that the job most closely related to carpet weaving, would be carpet laying. I set off canvassing the major carpet-selling firms in Christchurch but they only wanted experienced layers. One of the firms suggested that I contact a couple of brothers who did all their carpet laying on contract. I did, and they took me on as an adult apprentice. I spent the first month in the carpet re-making room and I was astonished at the filthy old carpets some people have re-made, then I went out with the two brothers and started to learn the carpet laying business. These brothers were hard workers. It was all go,go,go, head down, bum up from seven thirty to five thirty, no morning or afternoon tea and only half an hour for lunch. I made a few mistakes in the first couple of weeks. One was when we were working in a small bedroom, and it was very hot so I partly opened a window. Within minutes one of the brothers almost poked his friggin’ eye out on the window stay so he gave me a right bollocking. The very next day I made another blue. There was no ashtray in the room where we were working so being a tidy sort of joker, intent on the job and not thinking, I flicked the ash from my cigarette into the packet of carpet tacks. Luckily for me, it was the other brother who came in to help me. He automatically took a mouthful of tacks and fuckin near choked himself to death on the cigarette ash. I felt awful as he tore me up for shit paper. Someone must have told the blokes back at the workshop and they thought it was a great joke. It was a fidley job. The carpets were usually ready made up back at the workshop and sometimes if they weren’t careful they would make a mistake, like cutting the fireplace out in the wrong place. The brothers would then have me keep a sharp lookout for the lady of the house while they ripped the carpet up and re-hashed it on the spot which could be a bit nerve wracking at times. We spent a lot of the time laying linoleum. This type of work was extremely hard on the knees and I suffered a great deal of pain. This was most unfortunate as I was just getting the knack of the job. I stuck at it for another month but the pain in my knees became intolerable so I packed the job in. It was a pity really as that was a good trade to learn and I found out later my knee problem was housemaid’s knee. It was round about this time that I started getting bouts of dazzles in my eyes for about half an hour followed by a splitting headache. I was getting about two attacks a week and was concerned that I might be going blind. Ann suggested I see a doctor which I did. He soon explained that I had a very common complaint called migraine and it was nothing to worry about. He said it was usually suffered by highly intelligent people, so I wondered why I was suffering from it. I went home very much relieved that I was not going blind. When I told Ann we both agreed we’d never before heard of migraine. Later on some attacks were so bad, for the first hour that I thought I was dying, for the second hour I wished I had. While I was searching for another job someone suggested I try the post office. They were looking for young people to train as telephone operators and I thought I’d give it a go while I was looking around for something better. After a short interview and a tour of the central telephone exchange I was told I could start immediately. Of course it was shift work again, something I’d swore I’d never do again when I left England. I spent the first couple of weeks on the day shift learning the ropes. Most of the switchboard operators were smart young women and at first, being new, I felt very shy and self-conscious sitting amongst them. It didn’t take me long to get the hang of it, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea. The discipline was almost as bad as being in the Royal Navy. We were constantly watched by a female supervisor walking up and down or standing behind you. I think some supervisors were only used to having female operators and when they started employing males they didn’t like it. Anyway that’s the impression I got when they kept picking on me. It would be, “ Mr Laird, sit straight at the board.” “Mr Laird, that’s not a standard expression.” “Mr Laird, you say, ‘through’ not ‘you’re through now.” Then into my headset someone would say, “You may go for your morning tea now Mr Laird, ten minutes only or the next operator will have to make it up.” We weren’t even allowed to call one another by our Christian names. I stuck at it for another month while I looked around for a better job and then one day I was called into the office by the manager. He asked how I liked the job and I told him that I wasn’t over thrilled with it. He then asked me if I would be interested in the position of night clerk at a suburban manual exchange. I thought, anything to get away from the central toll room so I immediately accepted and then he filled me in with the details of what the job entailed. The job involved three shifts, two night shifts and a day shift. He said at least I would be my own boss for two weeks out of three which sounded good to me. The night shifts started at eight p.m. in the evening to two a.m, then from two a.m to eight a.m in the morning seven days a week. The day shift was straight out eight to five six days a week which I was occasionally able to swap with one of the other two night clerks. I worked the first week on the day shift on a nine position switchboard under the watchful eye of an older lady supervisor. She was pretty strict but the atmosphere was a little better than the central exchange as all the girl operators could chat away to one another when it wasn’t busy. As much as I disliked night shifts I looked forward to the evening eight to two shift. After relieving the supervisor at about ten to eight I was then in sole charge of the exchange with six young female operators, who would all noticably relax as soon as the supervisor quit the building. I would operate the end position of the switchboard but there wasn’t much for me to do as the girls were so fast they would beat me almost every time to pick up incoming calls. They were so efficient. Post Office trained telephone operators were keenly sought by private business firms. As the exchange quieted down, two of the girls finished their shift at nine o’clock. Another two at nine thirty and the last two at ten o’clock. If it was very quiet, they would pester me saying, “Can I go now Mr Laird can I go.” Sometimes I took the chance and let them go early hoping there wouldn’t be an emergency like a house fire in which case the whole switchboard would light up. This happened a couple of times but luckily we were fully staffed at the time. Once the last two girls had gone home, I could relax as I had the exchange to myself. I would make a cup of tea and have a sandwich. Normally by eleven thirty on weeknights the calls were few and far between, just one or two for taxis or the odd bod wanting a four A.M call to go fishing which was one of the many services we provided. Occasionally I’d chat away to one of our subscribers, who might be living alone and feeling the need to talk to someone. Usually by midnight I would drag some cushions from a sofa in the retiring room and spread them along the operator’s chairs where I could lay back and relax. Unfortunately you weren’t supposed to go to sleep, and to make sure you didn’t, a supervisor in the central toll room would activate an alarm bell on my switchboard every fifteen minutes which I had to deactivate by throwing a switch. If the alarm was not answered in five or ten minutes, the central supervisor would dispatch a staff car from the public service garage to see what was wrong. During the three years I was there two night clerks were transferred back to the central exchange for sleeping on the job. I nearly got caught once myself but just managed to wake up in time to switch the alarm off before the staff car arrived. My excuse was that I was in the toilet and luckily I got off with a warning. The next thing we saved up for was a motor car. Most working class New Zealanders drove around in old bangers as for some reason or other you had to have overseas funds to buy a new vehicle. I knew as much about motor cars as I did about building baches and after that episode, I didn’t feel like asking anyone for advice. I studied the cars for sale columns in the newspapers and I enjoyed cycling around Christchurch looking at cars for private sale. After looking at about half a dozen I decided to buy an old 1928 Essex for seventy- five pounds. It was a large solidly built American car and I spent every spare minute I had working on it. I found it so interesting I advertised to buy an Essex workshop manual and was surprised when a chap in Timaru wrote and said he had one. I bought it and set about learning everything about motor cars. By now, we were expecting our third child and I remember one day working underneath the car taking it to pieces when Ann came out and said, “You better put that car back together again, I’m ready to go into the home. I put everything back together as fast as I could and we were off to the nursing home. I managed to get a week off from the post office to look after Sharyn and June when our third child was born, this time a baby boy, who we named Mark. Although we say we don’t care whether it’s a boy or a girl so long as everything goes well. I think we were both pleased it was a boy. Sharyn and June couldn’t have picked a worse time to catch chicken pox and I spent most of my time dabbing their spots with calamine lotion to stop them itching. I also tried my hand at cooking, something I’ve always tried to avoid since I was a lad, when I had to somehow feed myself to survive. One evening I slapped some cut up pieces of liver and a few eggs into the frying pan, which must have been too hot. It all exploded and then shriveled up, but the girls said it was delicious and asked for a second helping. They even gave it a name, Livre De Chuck. No one was more pleased than me when they rang up from the nursing home and said for me to come and fetch Ann. With a few lessons from my neighbour I soon got the hang of driving and it was a treat to take Ann and the children for a drive out into the country at the weekends. I’d decided to take the car to work on the night shift, but sometimes it was difficult to start on a cold frosty night. Ann also didn’t take too kindly to being asked to leave her warm comfortable bed at two in the morning to manipulate the controls while I cranked the old bugger over. Cranking away for about fifteen minutes at that old six- cylinder engine was hard work and I’d feel absolutely knackered when it finally sprang into life and I could drive off. I soon gave that caper away and returned to my Old Faithful cycle to get to work. I suppose you couldn’t really call it work as it was the cushiest job I ‘d ever had in my life. It was just the ungodly hours, seven days a week that you had to be there. I liked the eight p.m to two a.m shift the best and once I got to know all the operators it became a bit of a skylark, especially at the weekends. The girls would invite their boy friends in and I found out that the other two night clerks had made a rule setting the entrance fee of half a dozen bottles of beer so the exchange would become a bit of a social club after the supervisor left. Where at one time when I first started, the girls would say, “Can I go now Mr Laird,” now they were saying, “Can I stay on after ten o’clock Mr Laird.” Of course my hardest job was trying to keep control and getting the subscribers calls answered. Our antics became well known and operators from other satellite exchanges would descend on us when they knocked off. I remember one chap used to come all the way in from a country exchange on his motor bike. There were times on a freezing cold night when he would arrive with his fingers frozen, holding onto a half gallon jar of home brew, so we’d have to thaw out his gloved hand to extricate the jar. This must have been the only job I ever had where, when my relief came in at two a.m, he would join the party and I was reluctant to go home. It was about this time that I got really interested in horse racing. The chap who was renting the bach invited me to go to the local trotting meeting. This was quite a colourful affair and although I didn’t win any money, it was quite an enjoyable day out. Most of the guys I worked with, the night clerks and the linemen who frequently dropped into the exchange for their tea breaks were all mad on horse racing. Monday and Tuesday topic was always the previous Saturdays racing results. On Wednesday the racebooks for the following Saturday were on sale in the shops so the next two days were spent studying the race form of the horses. Being a night clerk in a telephone exchange put you in a favoured position, especially if half a dozen of your subscribers were horse trainers. I was in such a position. By studying the race books and the newspapers I soon became familiar with the names of all the horses and their trainers, noting that many of the owners and trainers were subscribers on my exchange. Although you weren’t supposed to listen in to subscriber’s conversations, it was extremely tempting to do so. Of course we called it monitoring the call. A night clerk’s job can be very boring but also very interesting if you listened in to some of the conversations. The ones I enjoyed most were the conversations between sweethearts, horse owners, trainers, or indeed, any exciting news. Sometimes the gaps in the lover’s conversations lasted up to five minutes and I would conjure up in my mind what these two young lovers looked like and what they would say next. One night an anxious chap kept ringing his girl friend whose line was busy. When I finally connected him through to her I heard him say, “I forgot to dispose of a small one inch square packet that I stuffed down behind the cushions on your sofa, would you get rid of it in case your mother finds it in the morning.” No wonder he sounded anxious. Friday night was the most interesting time to monitor the calls of the horse owners and trainers discussing the following day’s-racing tactics. Some of these guys seemed to know, especially on toll calls that somewhere an operator would be listening in, so they gave their horses nicknames or referred to them as the big fella or the wee one. This certainly made our exercise of trying to sort out a winner for Saturday more difficult. During the big race days, like the Inter- Dominion Championships, I would be monitoring the usual owners and trainers throughout the previous night, but by the end of my shift, I would still be left wondering which horse was going to win a stipulated race. This was because as many as four or five trainers had told the owners that their horse would win I was soon to realize, that, as a betting proposition these major races were best left alone and to concentrate on the smaller country meetings, like they held on the West Coast. One night shift I was lucky to be monitoring a toll call between a trotting trainer and the guy who was to drive a horse at a country meeting the following day. My ears pricked up when I heard the horse’s name. The trainers orders to the driver were for him to try and take the lead in the first leg of the double, which was the fourth race, keep the pace on and make it look as if the horse was tiring in the last furlong and to finish about fifth. I could feel my adrenaline starting to pump as the trainer carried on saying, “You should be able to win the last race easily. He then went on to say, If the stewards question you regarding his performance in the running of the fourth, tell them the horse had inadvertently got into an open sack of chaff in the stable an hour or so before the race.” Arriving home from work on the Saturday morning I discussed my information with John, the chap who rented the bach from us. He suggested we go down to the T.A.B betting shop just before the fourth race, listen to the race on the radio and if the driver runs the horse to the trainers instructions then we would be in plenty time to back it in the last race. With our ears glued to the radio we heard the commentator say they were all off safely. The driver ran the race exactly how the trainer had instructed him to and he finally finished fifth about six lengths from the winner. Unfortunately we could only afford to bet a pound each so we stuck the two quid on his nose and toddled of home to listen to the last race at four o’clock. The race was about to start as we were enjoying a cup of afternoon tea in the lounge of our new house. Recently at an auction, I’d bought a large seven-valve console radio, which would pick up race commentaries from almost anywhere in Australasia. Ann didn’t think it suited the lounge but it had a much better tone than a mantel radio so I persuaded her to let us keep it. We were getting a little impatient as the starter was having trouble lining the horses up but then the commentator said, ‘They’re away.” All but two of the horses, which broke up, got away safely. The driver settled the horse we’d backed down on the inside just behind the leader. This was only a mile and a half race as compared with the first leg of the double which had been a two- mile race. He didn’t give us a moment of concern as he had a charmed run, sitting behind the leader till the last furlong. We were shouting our heads off when he got a break and a lucky run through on the inside and he then sped away to win easily by three lengths with a photo finish for second and third. We waited patiently for the commentator to announce the dividends. It only took a few minutes, then he announced the winner had paid seventeen pounds which was about ten quid more than we expected. We celebrated, cracking open a couple bottles of beer. Actually, I found out later when the newspapers arrived, that the horse had gone out second favourate in the fourth race, so fortunately for us the punters must have forgotten him in the last race. I’d read somewhere that a few night clerk telephone operators in America had become millionaires, just by monitoring the calls of stockbrokers discussing with one another the days trading results of the stock market and what were the best stocks and shares to buy and sell etc. I didn’t know if there were any stockbrokers on our exchange and anyway, at that time I knew about four fifths of f-- all about stocks and shares so I didn’t bother to check. It seemed my main interests were in motor cars and horse racing so I set about trying to make some extra cash from these two interests. I sold the old Essex for about ten pounds more than I’d paid for it and that got me started. I thought as I gained more mechanical experience and for a hobby, I would buy the odd car privately, keep it for a couple of months while I did it up, then hopefully sell it off at a profit. This was easier said than done. For one thing I had to pay slightly more than a dealer would when I was buying a car and sell for slightly less when I was selling it. I guess I was lucky to be working night shifts as it was very time consuming looking at cars to buy privately. I soon realized the best buys were cars that had something wrong with them mechanically, that I knew I could fix easily and at little expense. One such opportunity was the next car I bought. It was a 1938 Austin big seven, that had a loose universal joint, which must have worried the owner, as it was quite noisy. I soon fixed that and after giving it a cut and polish and re-chroming the hubcaps, it looked a picture, so I sold it for a twenty-five quid profit. Not having a garage was a bit of a nuisance, so we saved hard and soon had enough money to employ a builder to build us one while I worked on curbing the shingle drive. At the time we couldn’t afford to have a concrete floor in the garage, but it was a pleasure to work on my car under cover in the winter. There must have been over a hundred sections in the new sub-division where we had built our new house and the thought went through my mind that, in the near future, they would all have to be fenced. There were only a couple of companies manufacturing concrete fence posts at that time and they were pretty expensive so I thought I might have a go at making them myself. I broached the idea with Don, a fellow night clerk who was my relief at two in the morning. Although he was a bit bleary eyed we discussed the matter for an hour or more over a pot of tea. He seemed very interested in the idea and we decided to make some inquiries first thing in the morning. Don, who lived in a garage cum bach a couple of streets from us in the same sub-division, called for me at ten o’clock in the morning and we cycled off to town. After inspecting a couple of concrete manufacturers, who weren’t much help, we called in to see a chap who worked at home making concrete posts. He was quite helpful and didn’t seem to be a bit concerned that we were thinking of going into the same business in our spare time. The big concrete manufacturers had made steel moulds for their posts which we couldn’t afford to make, but this chap had made wooden moulds and he helpfully gave us all the measurements for us to make our own. We had very little spare cash between us but we managed to scrape together enough money to buy the necessary materials. Luckily, the both of us were on night shift so we were able to work about six hours during the day. We did all the work down at Don’s place where there was no shelter. It was the middle of winter and sometimes the weather was atrocious, but we pressed on. Finally we got the moulds finished. Our next job was to order the cement, pre-mix and reinforcing steel and not having enough money to buy a concrete mixer, we mixed the concrete by hand but that was a slow tedious job. As the weather was wet and cold we waited days for the posts to dry enough for us to remove them from the moulds. I remember after a week of patiently waiting we carefully lifted the first post out of the mould and got it about two feet off the ground when the whole post completely disintegrated leaving only the three steel reinforcing rods in our hands. We looked at one another in amazement, then Don burst out laughing. He said, “Either we didn’t let them dry long enough or we haven’t put enough cement in the mix.” I think it was a bit of both. We found hand mixing the concrete wasn’t really good enough, so we were forced to borrow forty-five pounds with interest at twenty five per cent to buy an electric concrete mixer which also made our job a lot easier. Once we’d made a couple of hundred posts we were broke so one weekend we decided to advertise them. They sold like hot cakes and by Sunday night we were sold out and actually turning customers away. This was a problem as the posts were taking too long to dry and we didn’t have the money or the resources to build up a stockpile. I guess we hadn’t put enough thought into this type of business so after discussing with our wives we called it a day. Even though intermittently I was picking up some good information at work on the racehorses, the small amount that I was able to bet, compared with the large sums the owners and trainers punted, soon made me realize I wasn’t going to get rich very quickly backing horses ten bob each way. These guys sometimes bet up t five hundred pounds at a time. I decided to resist the temptation to bet every week on any information that I received monitoring the switchboard and to save as much as I could in two or three months so that I could have a decent sized punt. In doing this I missed out on some very good winning tips but I kept saving up for the big one. This came about when I’d saved just over fifty pounds. It was early Sunday morning and there had been a trotting meeting at Wellington on the previous Saturday. I was monitoring a toll call when I heard this chap mention the name of a trotter I knew. I soon figured it out he was the trainer driver and he was talking to the owner who had unfortunately put three hundred pounds on the horse to win. He was telling the owner how unlucky he was and that his horse was just about climbing over the backs of the other horses in the straight but just couldn’t get through the tightly packed leaders and was beaten out of the money, finishing fourth. He suggested to the owner that they double their bet on the forth-coming Saturday when the horse would be racing at Addington in Christchurch where he thought it would pay a good price. I connected two or three other calls as I was monitoring this call but by the time I got back to them they’d hung up. I was quite excited as I thought this could be the big one I’d been saving up for. I never mentioned it to the night clerk who relieved me at seven in the morning as I was in two minds whether to tell anybody or not. Once the information got around it could drastically affect the odds but I knew it would be hard for me to keep it secret for a whole week. I was on day shift that week and it was standard practice during our lunch breaks for the linemen and operators to discuss any tips or information they’d heard from people in the know. The week seemed to pass very slowly but I managed to hold my tongue until Friday afternoon teatime when I was feeling a bit mean for not divulging the information I’d heard over the blower. I decided to tell them. The lads listened intently and I impressed on them to keep it quiet, as we didn’t want the horse to go out favourite. I also discussed it with John that evening in the bach and he said he’d come with me to the races so we could study the betting odds on the tote. It was a typical day at the Addington races, a big colourful crowd milling about in the bright sunshine hoping to win a bob or two, although looking at some of them with holes in their shoes, I’d say they could become instant bankrupts after the first couple of races. The nag I’d got the information on was to run in the fourth race so I decided not to have a bet till then. My mate John who couldn’t resist having a bet had lost a few quid by the time the fourth race was due and was relying on my tip to change his luck. When the tote opened for the fourth race the horse I’d got the bully on, who I shall call Shagnasty for obvious reasons, was not very well backed and was paying fifteen pounds for a win. I nervously studied the tote till about five minutes before closing time. The price had dropped to twelve pounds as John joined me in the queue. He wasn’t convinced Shagnasty would win but when I picked up courage at the tote window and said, “ Fifty pounds to win on number twelve” he also bet a smaller amount on it. We dashed over to the packed stands to try and get a good position to view the race. The crowd was buzzing as this was also the first leg of the double. It was a big field and the stewards were having a bit of trouble getting them all lined up. Shagnasty had drawn the number one position but was handicapped on the twelve yard mark and he was standing perfectly quiet when the starter let them go. The commentator said they’d got away to a perfect start but my eyes were glued on Shagnasty, who just reared up, turned completely around and galloped off in the opposite direction to the rest of the field. I couldn’t believe my eyes and my heart sank as the driver pulled him up, turned him around and he set off at a blistering pace being over a furlong from the leaders. A great ovation went out from the crowd as he belted past the stands but I knew I’d done my dough and even though he finally caught up with the field, he didn’t have a shit show of winning the race. John, who had been wishing for a change of luck, got it; it went from bad to worse. So much for good information. Funnily enough Shagnasty won the following Saturday and paid ten pounds but I was short of funds and didn’t back him. For all I know they might not have even been trying to win on the day I backed him. I think sometimes trainers and owners put out false information to make the punter’s job more difficult. Loosing that amount of money should have taught me a lesson, but in my job in those days, betting on horses was a way of life. Compiling all the information, discussing the horses merits with my mates throughout the week, then anticipating a big win on the Saturday. A few weeks after my big loss I was back punting again with the lads, wagering ten bob each way on any good tips. Even with the information we had access too, I soon realized the chances of making a fortune were slim, so I thought, the best thing to do was to keep it as an interesting hobby. Years later I woke up to the fact that one of the reasons why I was getting a splitting migraine headache every Saturday morning was the stress of trying to decide which horses to back, out of maybe half dozen that I’d heard tipped over the blower. Eventually I gave it away but in the back of my mind there was always something urging me to better my family, and myself. Maybe it was a teacher I had as a boy who always said, “Never be satisfied, you can always do better.” Maybe it was my cousin, who during a bit of an argument said to me, “You’ll never be anything but a pick and shovel labourer,” or as a boy, just seeing how well off the Americans were in their films. Whatever it was I had no intention of us staying as poor as church mice for the rest of our lives. There was no doubt in my mind that there were many good opportunities in New Zealand and it was just a matter of sorting something out when you had only limited funds. I listened to anyone who came up with any bright ideas or good advice. One of these chaps was our grocer. In those good old days you dropped your grocery order into his shop and he would deliver it on a Thursday. He was a pretty shrewd old Irishman and he often stopped for a few minutes for a chat and his regular advice was for me to go out and buy a block of land. He reckoned they could always build more houses and more motor cars, but they couldn’t produce more land. He said it was the best investment anybody could own and it was much cheaper to buy per square yard than carpet. I visited a few stock and station agents who occasionally advertised small blocks of land for sale but when they found out I had very little cash they didn’t want to know me. The developer of our residential subdivision in Hoon Hay opened up stage two and was selling buildings sections on terms so we decided to invest in one. We paid a small deposit and used our child allowance and the rent from the bach to pay it off. In the meantime we worked hard cultivating it and growing potatoes which helped us to pay the section off. Our grocer who I may have said before, was as shrewd as a proverbial shithouse rat decided to build a small block of shops to rent, adjacent to his own shop. Now that Sharyn and June were going to school and Mark was at kindergarten, Anne and I decided to rent one of the shops and to start a paint and hardware business. We spent weeks building shelves and ordering the paint and hardware. It wasn’t very long after we started the business that we realized the majority of the locals didn’t patronize their local shops, because they were so used to shopping in town. We would only see some of them when they’d run out of money, and wanted to buy something from us on tick. After a couple of months trading we were only making enough money to pay the rent of the shop, which was four pounds a week. This was so disappointing after all the time and effort we’d put into it. I don’t know why we decided to go into the hardware business. It must be the toughest business a person could get into as it covers such a vast field. A very high percentage of people coming into the shop would ask for something that you didn’t have in stock, and many of them wouldn’t be prepared to wait a day for us to order and deliver it to them. Fortunately Ann had been interested in gardening ever since her childhood so we decided to include in our stock, garden plants, shrubs and associated garden products. I built a couple of three tier trolleys, filled them full of nursery plants and displayed them outside the shop. This was a good idea as the locals were keen gardeners and it brought many more customers in to browse. The weather seemed to play a big part in the business. We used to take as much on a Friday, when we were open till nine P.M, as we would take all week, which wasn’t very much. During one Spring I remember it rained almost every Friday and people coming home from work just didn’t stop to shop. This was most disheartening and I began thinking I was a born Jonah. Ann and I stuck it out for almost three years, hoping it would improve. It didn’t. Then the final straw came when a scaly bastard of a painter, who said he had government contracts to paint schools, ordered without our knowledge almost three hundred pounds worth of paint from our Dulux supplier. He then declared himself bankrupt and the Dulux Company threatened to withdraw our paint agency if we didn’t pay his debt, so we scraped enough money together and paid it. That was it for me. I decided to sell the shop and the extra residential section we had by now paid off and look for a block of land in the rural area. Our transport at this time was a 1927 two cylinder Jowett that I used mostly for deliveries from the shop. I would clean it out at the weekend and the family would pile in and we’d be off to search for a small piece of land for sale in the country. I guess this was a bit boring for the kids because I remember Sharyn often saying in a disgusted voice, “We’re not going to look at another block of land are we?” I’d say, “I’m afraid we are.” If we passed any of her school friends when we drove off she would duck down in the car. The little bugger didn’t want to be seen in such an old banger. Actually, considering its age it was a very good little car, reliable and very economic. The chap who sold it to me had owned it since new and virtually treated it as one of the family. I was still working for the Post Office that owned several welfare cottages throughout the country. We used to have a holiday in one of them at Timaru which was relatively near to Christchurch. It was only about a hundred miles away, but it would still take us over five hours to get there in the old Jowett. Returning from one of these holidays I noticed a “property for sale” sign on the Main South road not far from Christchurch, so I stopped to inquire. The Owner said his was a large property but told me of an old chap who owned a small block with an old shed on it further down the road. He had expressed a desire to sell but as far as he knew had done nothing about it. I made a mental note of the old chap’s name that he gave me, thanked him and carried on our way home. It was still in my mind what the our old shrewd grocer had told me about land being the best investment, so the following week-end we took a drive out to locate the property which wasn’t too difficult as the old shed was a good landmark. Luckily we found the owner working in the shed. I introduced myself and told him I’d heard he was thinking of selling his small block of land and that I was interested. He agreed he had been thinking about it and offered to show us around. It was a lovely square block of five acres with a stand of high bluegum trees on the northern boundary with the main south railway line running adjacent to them. It also had a good main road frontage. I was really taken with this block of land so I asked him how much he was asking for it. He hesitated for a moment and then said he would sell it to me for fifteen hundred pounds. I told him we only had about a hundred pounds and was pleasantly surprised when he said he would take that as a deposit and we could put the balance on first mortgage at six per cent. It was as simple as that. We shook hands and the deal was done. My time was running out as a night clerk. The Post Office was slowly converting the satellite manual telephone exchanges over to automatic and in those days we never knew the meaning of the word redundancy. Once you were employed by the Post office, at that time run by the government, you could be there for life, not that that was my intention. My idea was to work for them in the short term giving me time to seek out a better job but by now I’d been with them for over three years. When our exchange converted over to automatic I was given the choice of transferring over to the Lines branch or to the Technicians branch. I don’t know what made me choose the technician’s branch, as I’d always preferred to work outdoors. I spent the first six weeks at school learning telecommunication circuitry and maintenance of automatic telephone exchange switch- gear. I found it wasn’t easy for me, as I don’t think I was very technically minded. It was hard to keep up with some of the other lads who had just left school or university and I found the easiest way for me was to learn it off parrot fashion, even though at times, especially during examinations, I didn’t know what I was talking about and sometimes felt as if I was a square peg in a round hole. I suppose overall it wasn’t a bad job but I couldn’t see any real future in it for me, especially the shift work which I’d always thought to be so anti-social. My first couple of years as a mechanician were spent cleaning and adjusting row after row of switch-gear in the central rotary exchange, a job that just about bored me to tears and a job that years later was found to be doing more harm than good to the equipment. The only good point about the job was that it gave me plenty of time to think about bettering myself. Many ideas went through my mind, one of which was the American style motels that I’d seen on their films. As far as I knew none had been built in Christchurch and the more I thought of the idea the better I liked it. Thinking about it brought to mind the old joke of the lad saying to his father, “I’m thinking of going to America dad, how much will it cost?” “Nothing,” the old man said, “It costs you nothing to think.” Good question, where was I going to get the money from to build motels. The banks weren’t interested unless you had at least sixty per cent of the total cost so I had to think of some other way to get my hands on some finance. Many of my workmates had worked for the Post office for over ten years and had a fair bit of dough tucked away in the government superanuation fund which was deducted from our wages fortnightly. I had a bright idea. I put it to them that if we all drew out our superanuation and applied for a bank loan we could build a large block of motels in Christchurch and with the profit we made, build more. I reckoned we would be able to retire on a packet at the age of fifty, instead of working till we were sixty-five under the government super scheme. The lads, without giving it too much thought, said it was a brilliant idea and were all enthusiastic. The banks were a bit keen on the idea too. I think I must have given them too much time to consider the idea because a couple of weeks later, when push came to shove and I asked them to apply to withdraw their super, half of them had changed their minds saying it was too dicey. I reckon they missed a great opportunity and as things turned out, I’d say all of them would have retired rich men. As well as deciding to sell the shop and our extra section we also decided to go the whole hog and sell the house too. That was easier said than done and to make a long story longer we had them all for sale for months and not a buyer in sight. It’s funny how things turn out. We were just about giving up the thought of selling anything when within the space of a week we’d flogged the lot. The section we sold on the Monday, the house was sold to a local chap on the Wednesday and a Dutchman bought the shop for the price of the stock on the Friday. It’s great when good fortune comes your way for a change. A week or two later I spotted in the local newspaper a house for sale for removal, so at the weekend the family all hopped in the car to go and inspect it. We found the dwelling in a very narrow street in town. It was a fifty-year-old weatherboard house in pretty good nick and they were only asking a hundred pounds for it. It wasn’t a very large house, consisting of a lounge, kitchen, two bedrooms and a sunroom, so we decided to buy it. As it happened that was the easiest part of the deal for now we had to get someone to move it out to our five-acre block of land at Weedons. At that time there was only one chap in Christchurch who had the gear capable of moving houses so we accepted his quote of a hundred and fifty pounds. Then the fun started, that’s if you had a good sense of humour. Luckily the size of the house was just within the maximum limits to get a council permit to shift a house without having to cut it in half. They jacked it up ok, resting it on pallets while they maneuvered the long trailer under it. The problems started when they got it out on the road. The house was just a couple of feet too wide to get past the power poles, so there was quite a long delay while we got the electricity department to lean the power poles over just enough to get the house past. Once we were out on the main road, things were just starting to go smoothly when the bloody old trailer which had cast iron wheels and solid rubber tyres suddenly collapsed through a thin patch of tar seal on the road and came to an abrupt halt. Utter confusion as the house sat there in the middle of the main road with the frantic police trying to keep the piled up traffic moving around it. The contractor, who was a real rip, shit, and bust artist didn’t seem overly concerned as he ordered his men to jack the house and trailer up and try to get it moving again. The real funny thing about it was the Paparua Council had demanded the house be borercured before it entered the County and the chap I’d paid to do the job had only just arrived. He was dashing around the house trying to get it all sprayed for borer before they got it mobile again and the poor buggers who were trying to jack it up were getting the lot and were really giving him arseholes. The house finally arrived at our five-acre lot about four hours later. I’d warned the contractor about a shallow water race along the front of the block that was normally dry and suggested he put a few railway sleepers across it just in case. Unfortunately it had rained the night before and there was a drop of water in the race and the paddock was also pretty damp. I suppose the contractor running late decided to chance it, consequently when I arrived, the house on the trailer was doing a balancing act at a frightening angle halfway across the water race. The trailer was completely bogged down and the workmen were all glaring at it scratching their heads. Their powerful truck was unable to move it and as it would soon be dark I didn’t like the idea of half the house jutting out on the main road. The contractor had no option but to ring town and call out a bulldozer and with the truck and the bulldozer churning up the paddock they finally got the house safely on the property. By now it was pitch dark so they left the house sitting on the trailer overnight and returned the next day to lower it down onto it’s concrete pile foundation. My advice to anyone thinking of shifting a house, forget it, especially if you’re the anxious worrying type or suffer from migraine. In those days, there were too many problems associated with moving a house, Of course it could be easier today as they have more sophisticated equipment. If you must shift a house, make sure you can open and close all the doors in the house before the contractor leaves and have a house warming party so the dancers can settle the house down on its foundations before you start re-decorating. Before we could move in we had to have a well sunk for our water supply and a septic tank set into the ground for sewerage. Once these jobs were done we moved in and it didn’t take us long to get the place shipshape as I was still working night shift in town. The children soon settled into their new school at Weedons and I think we all enjoyed the change of living in the country. I guess there was so much work to do we didn’t have time to think of any thing else. As soon as Ann got the children off to school we’d be into it, upgrading the house, planting trees, fence maintainence, you name it, we did it. Now I come to think of it, Ann and I really only had one thing in common, we were both hard workers. Ann worked hard because I think she actually enjoyed it, I worked hard because I wanted to get on and if I didn’t keep at it I suffered from awful bouts of depression. Not long before we moved to our house in the country I’d decided to build a caravan. The Post and Telegraph branch that I worked for imported all their equipment in large wooden cases, these cases were all very well constructed of resin bonded seven-ply plywood and we were able to buy them pretty cheaply. I set to work on the novel idea I had in my head, instead of building the normal complicated framework which I realized later was to restrict the weight of the van, my idea was to laminate the seven by three-foot sheets together to form two large sheets on which I could draw the pattern of the caravan including the door and the windows. Raising the large cumbersome sheets off the ground and using an electric saw it wasn’t too difficult to cut out the shape of the van, in fact, I wondered why this idea hadn’t been thought of before. I bought a set of Ford V8 hubs, stubs, and wheels from a car wreckers yard and had them welded onto a steel axle, I then set about building a box section chassis, again, without giving too much thought to the overall weight of the finished caravan. I clamped the whole chassis together and towed it of to a local welder who made a great job of welding it all together. Left over from building the bach I had a fourteen foot long plank of twelve by two inch Canadian Oregan.The idiot who was supposed to help me to build the bach told me to order to use as a straight edge, I could hardly lift it, it was that heavy. I found out later, he was going to build a boat and use that length of timber for the keel, which the bugger had got me to pay for, they say there’s one born every minute. Anyway it came in handy as I took it to a saw mill and had it cut into six lengths of two by two which I bolted to the chassis, thus making solid bed plates for me to attach the body of the van too. I hand screwed over one hundred and fifty one and a half inch brass screws to join the heavy sides to the chassis and then finished off by screwing the front, back, and top to the sides. For all this effort I got a right dose of tennis elbow in both arms, it was quite painful to lift a cup of tea. The doc injected my elbows with cortisone but that was more painful than the complaint so I didn’t make a habit of going back to see him, it took months to get better. Fortunately the rest of the job of finishing the caravan was relatively easy as most of the work was inside. As soon as it was finished I took a weeks leave from the Post office and we set off for a well deserved holiday. Luckily at the time I had the 1936 V8 car, which, out of all the cars I’d owned, would have been the only one capable of towing that van, it was so bloody heavy. Even the V8 engine struggled to pull it so I decided to keep away from any hills. We’d heard a place called Geraldine had a nice camping ground so we set off to explore it. What we hadn’t heard until we arrived back home was that the township had been hit by a stomach bug and half the townsfolk were pretty crook. The weather was fine and we had a pleasant trip down to Geraldine and once we found the camping ground we parked the van and soon settled in. The first few days were great, being good walkers we enjoyed tramping all over the place, finding many places of interest and exploring the vast forests. It must have been the third or fourth evening we’d been there, that our children started to be ill. Poor Ann was up most of the night rushing them over to the toilets to be sick, then she caught the bug herself and she was really ill, which was quite unusual for her, not like me, normally, if someone sneezed too close to me, I’d get pneumonia. This time I was lucky, as I could have been the only one in the camping ground that didn’t catch the bug. It certainly spoilt our holiday and we were pleased to get home. In my time I’ve bought and sold a few caravans and we’ve had some enjoyable holidays in them but I don’t think Ann was really over keen on them, she preferred a Post Office holiday cottage or a Motel. Thinking about motels, it was still in the back of my mind to do some thing in that line of business. We had the five acres of land but when I discussed it’s suitability for motels with anyone they all said we were too far out of the city, we were twelve miles from the centre of town. Scanning the newspaper one evening I couldn’t believe my eyes, there was a large advert in the properties for sale which said the government were selling by tender their experimental housing units, built as temporary accommodation for people on the waiting list for state houses. The next day I couldn’t get out there quick enough to see them, I found them in Jolie street on the other side of town. They had about twenty single and double units for sale but it was the double units that caught my eye, they were reasonably well built and only about four years old. Each unit had two bedrooms, a kitchen living room with an electric cooker, bathroom with toilet. They were a bit scruffy but basically sound and I thought to myself, these units would be ideal for motels. I discussed it with Anne and we decided to put in a tender, how much to put in, that was the problem, we didn’t have a clue how much they were worth so we put in a low tender for two double units of four hundred pounds apiece. To our surprise, the government accepted our tender but for only one double unit of which we became the proud owners. I guess it would have cost at least four times as much to have one built so we were quite pleased. I contacted the chap who moved our house and he said he would only charge us the same price to move the double unit onto our land and he that could do the job immediately. This he did in one piece without any mishaps even though the double unit was sixty feet long by eighteen feet wide. A couple of weeks later I saw another double unit advertised in the paper by a chap I knew, he’d bought one and intended to move it to Hanmer, but found it was too big and he would have to cut it into three pieces to get it across the bridge at the Waiau river so he decided to sell it. Unfortunately he’d tendered five hundred and fifty pounds for it and said if I wanted to buy it, that was the price. It was too good an opportunity to miss so I bought it. This meant now we would finish up with four two bedroomed motels with a house on five acres but there was an incredible amount of work to do before we could open up for business. The units had sustained some external damage during removal but being on evening shift gave me the opportunity to get stuck in during the day to repair them. Anne set to work cleaning the inside of the buildings from top to bottom, I don’t think the electric cookers had ever been cleaned since the units had been built, it meant we had to virtually take them to pieces to clean them properly. Having four units meant each job had to be done four times and as much as I would have liked to employ some one to help us we didn’t have enough money and the bank would only allow us a miserable eight hundred pounds overdraft. No one seemed to realize at the time that the quicker we had the work finished the sooner we could open the motels and start taking in some money. I must say, Anne was doing a magnificent job, toiling away with me every day, never complaining and cheering me up, especially when I got downhearted when some of the jobs didn’t go right. We’d soon used our overdraft up and we still had to furnish the units, the caravan I built was parked on the drive and was the only asset we had that I could sell. I towed it out on the road, put a FOR SALE sign on it and sold it the same day for three hundred pounds. Now we were able to get cracking again. We couldn’t afford carpets for the units so I shot into town and bid on a couple of rolls of linoleum at Smiths shitty markets as we called them. I spent at least half a day a week in their auctions rooms as they auctioned quite a lot of new stuff from fire sales. I ordered some dressed timber and a carpenter friend of ours named Fred came over to show me the easiest way to build in the single and double beds, I find it much easier for someone to show me how to do something, than trying to pick it up from a book. In all I had to build in eight single and four double beds and once I knew the best way to build them I worked away quite happily with the minimum of mistakes. Progress was very slow, what with building inspectors, health inspectors, battling the County Council as they had received a petition from the locals to try and stop us from opening our motels. A couple of years later I read an article in the newspaper by a councillor that our motels were an asset to the county. I would have loved to have bought a modern neon lit sign that were all the rage at the time, but we couldn’t afford it so I built one myself. We decided to name the property, the Bluegum Motels after the large stand of bluegum trees on the rear boundary We certainly worked hard, hoping to open the motels on the show week-end of that year but with so much to do, with so little money we only managed to have two ready by show-day, the other two were ready except for blankets. We ‘d turned our wee sunroom into an office and of course we were a little nervous and excited when our first guests arrived, they had booked by phone. Later in the afternoon our second couple drove in off the road and we got them settled in. As soon it got dark I switched on the road sign that I’d made and within an hour we had two cars in the drive with another two couples looking for accommodation. With no blankets we were in a quandary, as we didn’t want to turn people away. With no hesitation Ann whipped the blankets off our beds and made the beds up in the remaining two motels while I kept the guests chatting in the office. Good job it wasn’t a very cold night as we all had to sleep with overcoats on our beds. The children didn’t complain and Ann and I were really pleased that we could put up the No Vacancy sign on the first night we opened. These days people might tell you owning motels is a cushy job but in our time it wasn’t, there was no laundry service and every day Ann did all the washing and ironing of numerous sheets and towels. One day she was so busy she told me a neighbour caught her with the breakfast dishes still in the sink at two o’clock in the afternoon. As she said, since we moved on to the property, our feet hadn’t touched the ground for the first couple of years. I would help to clean the motels when I was on night shift and I liked the one nighters. Sometimes they would arrive late in the evening and be away first thing in the morning, you wouldn’t even know they’d been there and some romantic couples from town would even be away by midnight. Ann preferred the long stay guests, as that would reduce the amount of washing to be done. Complaints were few and far between, I only remember one toffee nosed git, a week or two after we opened, complaining there was no air freshener in the bathroom, he must have never heard of opening a window. Although we kept our prices to the minimum, there were still the odd shrewd buggers, usually two families posing as one, with half a dozen youngsters between them, they would top and tail the kids in the beds and only pay as one family. I guess we were lucky in a way, during the whole time we were there, only two groups tried to leave without paying. One group, two chaps with two young girls arrived late one night, the next morning the chaps had vanished, and about ten o’clock the girls started walking towards the city. I jumped in the car and caught them up, thinking quickly they said they were going to buy some smokes at the Templeton garage which was a couple of miles down the main road. I offered to drive them there and after they bought the cigarettes I said I’d take them back to the motels, they paid up smartly and hopped on a bus to town. We guessed the guys were on a dirty night out, had given the girls the money to pay, but they’d decided to pocket it. The other party, a lone woman stayed only a few days and scarpered without paying, I suppose we should have expected it to happen, as she did tell us she was visiting her husband at Burnham, ( in prison) and because she had no transport Ann had actually been kind enough to drive her out there to visit him, how cheeky can you get. The main army camp for the South Island was also based at Burnham and once a year when they did their exercises, they would book in advance our four motels for a long weekend. It was quite entertaining to see the sergeants and squadies running around like blue arsed flies looking after the top brass, some of the highest ranked officers in New Zealand including a General and the chief of police stayed with us. I was a bit surprised they picked our motels as we weren’t exactly five star, but I guess they didn’t have much choice as we were only a few miles from Burnham. A couple of sergeants would arrive during the day, fill up the refrigerators with grog, whisky, brandy, soda etc. They would then pin up notices on the inside of the officers bedroom doors explaining explicitly exactly what they had to do, in half and one hour intervals from the time they got up at six- thirty till they arrived back at the motels. I used to think to myself, what a life these guys are having, they don’t even have to think for themselves. Every thing was laid on for them. In a way that was good for us, they had all their meals at the camp so they didn’t do any cooking in the motels which meant a lot less cleaning up for us. On the day of their departure, as soon as they left, the sergeants would drop in to retrieve any left over liquor, sometimes I beat them to it Sharyn, our oldest daughter who was now around twelve or thirteen had always had a love of horses, so we decided to buy her a pony. Knowing little about horses except for the experiences I had as a boy with the carthorse named Sam, we bought her a creamy colored pony called Pepper. They’d certainly named him right, the bugger used to take off for no reason at all. One day the children coaxed me to have a ride on him, thinking I could come to no harm on our five acre paddock I agreed and rode him quietly down to the bluegums on our rear boundary. No sooner had we reached the trees, someone came out of the house and he took it into his head to bolt back home thinking there was a feed on. Without warning he spun around and set off flat stick at a gallop, I clung on the best I could thinking he must stop at the barbed wire fence near the house. He did, he stopped dead, but I didn’t, I shot straight over his bleeding head and landed heavily on my back. I was in pain for days so that was the end of my horse riding for a while. On the town side of our property was along block of land of about forty acres, the company that bought it planted the whole block in Lucerne. They built a drying plant at the far end of the property and I became quite concerned when the factory chimney started emitting a steamy residue into the air. Although it was about a quarter of a mile away, in an easterly wind, intermittently, the steamy residue would waft across our property and it worried me that it might upset some of our guests. I could always smell it in an easterly but no one ever mentioned it so I needn’t have worried. One time when the Lucerne had just been cut and before the fences had been erected, Sharyn was riding Pepper when he suddenly bolted into the Lucerne paddock, she either jumped or was turfed off and then Pepper shot out onto the main South road. Luckily the traffic wasn’t very heavy at the time and fortunately for Pepper he’d turned up the first side road he came to, thereby being in less danger of shaking hands with a vehicle. I wasn’t at home at the time but Ann told me that after searching for awhile she found Pepper standing quietly by a gate in Larcombs road. The next week Pepper was on the market and was bought by a farmer who said he worked very well for him. He reckoned our problem was that we were over feeding him so he was jumping out of his skin, just the same, I was glad to see the back of him and Ann still has the odd nightmare about that episode. After Pepper was sold we bought numerous ponies for Sharyn and June, with names like Prince, Brandy, and Spotnic, a bay horse with a large white spot on its side. It wasn’t long after getting their ponies that they joined the Springston Pony Club and I remember walking with Sharyn, riding her new pony, Prince, to the pony club for the first time while Ann drove the car. Mark, our young son, like me didn’t take too much interest in horses at that time. He used to help me doing odd jobs like fencing and feeding the chickens from a wee trailer we towed behind the rotary hoe, he seemed to be more interested messing about on push bikes with the high handlebars. We used to keep a few sheep in the paddock, mostly ones that had originally been given to us by local farmers as newborn lambs whose mothers had died. I remember one time Mark had pitched a small tent down the back by the Bluegums, an old pet ewe must have taken shelter in it for the night, as we went down to feed the chickens Mark must have decided to look in the tent. I watched him as he lifted the fly, at the same time the old ewe decided to evacuate and she came out like a rocket. I heard the two heads clunk together and Mark somersaulted arse over kite backwards, poor Mark staggered around dazed for a few minutes and I thought he’d been really hurt, but luckily he was o.k. He told me there’s nothing much harder than an old ewe’s skull. I can’t say the motels were a great success financially, possibly because we were a bit too far from the city but we had our regular guests. Some of them were farmers or horse owners and we could always accommodate their dogs or horses when they came down for show days, a few of them didn’t even like driving in the city. Situated just over the railway line and a road at the rear of our property was the Weedon’s Air Force Camp. The officers invited some of the locals to become civilian members and I was invited. I thoroughly enjoyed being a member as it was so handy, being only a couple of minutes walk from the motels. They had a cozy little bar in the camp which was a focal point for us local members and we also enjoyed the use of their swimming pool. It became a terrific little community, some of the Air force chaps had been based in Fiji and had married lovely Fijian girls, they would put on Fijian evenings which everyone enjoyed. The locals weren’t very happy when the government eventually closed the camp down for economic reasons. My accountant informed me that it would be better if I gave up my job with the Post Office as I was paying most of my wages in income tax. It was a hard decision, even though we lived pretty frugally I still wasn’t sure whether we could live off the motel earnings. As a trial I took three months leave without pay and we hardly noticed the difference so I resigned from the Post Office for good. A couple of the locals I met at the camp were horse trainers and now that I had a bit of spare time on my hands I used to go down and give one of them a hand. It was good experience for me and I learned as much as I could about trotters and pacers. Once I’d learned how to groom and gear them up the day came when the trainer said I was ready to take one out on the track. At first I was a bit nervous as I jumped on the sulky but I soon gained confidence as I jogged around the track. I could see the trainer watching me and every time we passed him he would encourage me to go faster, before long I was tearing around the track like a veteran. Part 13 After six years in the motels Ann and I decided we needed a change. Most people would think running motels was a cushy job but they were a terrible tie for conscientious people and someone always had to be on deck. In the back of my mind I had the idea of owning a larger block of land and maybe breeding and training a few trotting horses myself. Knowing the motels wouldn’t be easy to sell and would take some time we still advertised them privately without much luck. We then gave them to a real estate agent and left her to it. In the meantime I saw a thirty-acre block of land advertised for sale nearby. I couldn’t afford it by myself so I asked a couple of mates who I’d worked with in the Post Office to come in with me. After convincing them that there was a bob or two to be made out of land, they said O.K. We formed a company named Laird, Logan and Bacon after our surnames and bought it. I don’t remember how much we paid for the land but it must have been pretty cheap as it was covered with gorse and broom. There we were, three townies who didn’t know shit from clay about land development owning thirty acres of gorse that didn’t need stroking to make it grow. The only equipment we could afford was a heavy brass knapsack sprayer with which we attempted to eradicate the gorse during the weekends. I just about sweated blood on those paddocks but with little success as it seemed the more we tried to kill the gorse the faster it grew. I don’t know what gave me the idea of sub-dividing the land, but the thought kept running through my mind that because of the low price we paid for the thirty acres, we could sub-divide it into smaller blocks. We could then sell them fort the same price as quarter acre residential building sections were selling in Christchurch and still make a handsome profit. The first thing I had to do was to check with the County Council, to find out all about the by-laws regarding the sub-division of rural land. To my great surprise there weren’t any as in those days there were no such thing as District schemes. A man could just about do as he pleased with his land and in rural areas the only by-law was that the minimum size you were allowed to sub-divide down to was five acres. I could hardly believe that no one had thought of doing this before, only maybe the odd farmer who had cut five acres off his farm to retire on and leave the balance for his sons to farm. Checking the title of our thirty acres I soon found out it was actually in two titles, a ten acre block and a twenty acre block. This meant we could sell off the ten acres and use part of the money to develop and pay a surveyor to sub-divide the twenty acres. I discussed it with my partners Logan and Bacon and they agreed with the idea and more or less left me to it. I was surprised at the number of enquiry’s I received from people when I advertised the ten- acre block. Some were still interested even after inspecting it and seeing it was covered in gorse. After selling the ten acres we bought an old Case tractor, a semi swamp plough, and an old set of grubbers, intending to plough up the gorse and broom and making our twenty acre block more presentable for sub-dividing and selling. Well, what a bloody pantomime that was. Not one of us had a clue what we were doing as we had no experience at farming. When we started ploughing and took our eyes off the manually operated plough for a moment, it would clog up with gorse roots and if we didn’t stop the tractor in time the plough would carve out what looked like a dry water race. After many months of working in our spare time, sweating and cursing, we finally got rid of the gorse one way or another, mostly by burning. Then all we had to do was to keep grubbing it to kill all the weeds as they came up. After a while we sowed it down in grass seed using the old hand scattering method which wasn’t too bright as we didn’t get a very good strike. Never mind, the block looked a hundred per cent better than when we bought it. Ann and I were not too happy with the amount of effort the real estate agent was putting in to sell the motels. She didn’t even come out with her clients and they just wandered out from time to time and we didn’t even know when they were coming. We decided to drop her and advertise them ourselves. It was lucky that we did for a chap who was flying to Australia to look at motels saw our advert in the Press and contacted us when he landed. He sounded quite genuine and arrived back in Christchurch a week later. He told us he was from England and had made quite a bit of money in the business of installing television aerials and was now interested in purchasing motels. We didn’t really know what our property was worth but after studying the books he negotiated a deal to buy the motels, lock stock and barrel for twenty seven thousand dollars cash, which we thought was a reasonable price at the time. He wanted immediate possession so we didn’t have any time to look for another property. Fortunately a neighbour’s lovely old property across the road came up for rent so we moved in. Although I suffered from a depression that I managed to keep under control most of my life, the period after selling the motels was one of the worst times. I fell into a deep suicidal depression that I could not snap out of. Thinking back on it now, it could have been caused by the sudden change, from working flat out for six years in the motels to having nothing to do in the rented house. It was a large property with a big garden which I helped Ann to look after. Ann also worked on the owner’s other property at Landsdowne for which she was paid. I got the stupid idea that Ann and I could take up gardening for a living, not the brightest one of many ideas I’d ever had by any means. We advertised in the Press and sure enough we soon had enough work to keep us going. The only problem was that most of the jobs we got were from people who had totally neglected their gardens and it was hard work. It must have been a couple of months later we were working hard on one of these neglected gardens when the lady owner came out and said she’d been observing us from her kitchen window and didn’t think we were working hard enough. We were flabbergasted, so much so, we just dropped our tools, told her what she could do with her garden, packed up and drove home. That was the last day for me working on anyone’s garden for a measly one dollar per hour. I guess it didn’t do much for my depression which seemed to get worse. Ann ordered me to see the doctor and I explained to him that I was constantly feeling like doing away with myself. He must have prescribed a pretty powerful drug for me because I walked around for the next couple of weeks feeling like a bloody zombie. Depression is an awful complaint. They didn’t seem to know much about it in the fifties; just thought you were having a bad hair day. Come to think of it, I don’t think they know very much more about it today as we’re approaching the year two thousand. The worst thing about depression is, at the time you never feel that you’re going to get better. I guess the fact is, you never really get completely better, just that sometimes are better than others. The cup is always full but intermittently it overflows. Personally, I think it’s a disease of the brain which seems to addict your mind only to negative thoughts, so you have to force your brain to think positive. The only solution I found that helped me was to keep as active as possible and to try and always have something to look forward too. I think the people who suffer from depression are the ones that feel very deeply and possibly think too much. I know I do. I get a moment of acute pain right through my body when I see someone get hurt, even on films and I can’t figure that one out. I enjoyed looking at rural properties that were advertised for sale. Ann and I looked at many and we eventually decided to buy one at Rolleston, named Roseneath. It was a very old villa type homestead situated on ten acres of light to medium land. The garden, although neglected had been professionally landscaped about a hundred years ago and covered approximately thee acres. It was such a lovely garden, beautifully sheltered and had some magnificent trees, two huge sixty-foot American redwoods, a Scarlet oak and lovely flowering cherries. These surrounded the large lawns that at times the local schoolteacher would bring the children over to play on and young couples getting married would come over to have their photos taken. Although there was plenty of work to do on our new property my depression didn’t seem to get any better so the doctor recommended that I enter the hospital at Hanmer that catered for people having a nervous breakdown. I had never been in hospital before and didn’t have a clue what to expect. Being a psychiatric hospital the first thing that struck me was, that except for the odd guy bawling his eyes out in bed, everything was as normal as outside. I happened to mention this fact to one of the patients and he said, “What the hell did you expect, a bunch of raving lunatics.” I felt a bit embarrassed and said “I don’t really know”. After being examined by the doctor there, although I told him I had a thing about drugs after the zombie episode, he insisted I go on a course of treatment taking Valium. This I thought after a few days was a pretty good drug as it had little or no side effects and I was soon skylarking with some of the other patients and making them laugh. This institutional environment with the minimum of responsibility seemed to suit me down to the ground. One morning I was told to attend an A/A meeting and found myself in a chair amongst a group of chaps sitting around the periphery of a large room. After a few minutes a guy in a white coat came in and sat in the middle of the room. He then said he would like to hear from each individual the story of their drinking problem. I must have been pretty naive or thick because when they told me to attend the A/A meeting I thought it would have something to do with the Automobile Association. I soon realized that was not the case when the first chap to speak, said he was a farmer and had got to the stage where he was drinking a bottle of whisky before morning tea or he couldn’t get through the day. It really hit me when the second guy got up and said he was working for the government as a political cartoonist and the stress of having to meet a deadline every day was too much and he was consuming about a bottle and a half of gin a day. It was only then that I woke up to the fact that all these guys were alcoholics and this was an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable as each joker sat up and told his tale of woe. There was only two to go before it would be my turn and my mind was racing, thinking about what I should say. When the next guy but one had just finished his story, the chap in the white coat decided, to my relief, to break and have a cup of tea. During the break I spoke to him and he apologized and said under no circumstances should I be there and sent me off. You may not believe me, but at the time I actually envied these chaps who were alcoholics for they seemed to recover so quickly. After treating them for a week or so on various large capsules, called bombs, which evidently contained oodles of pick me up drugs and vitamins, they were back on their feet in no time. Whereas, the guys suffering from depression or nervous breakdowns seemed to take much longer to come right, if they ever did. I met one chap there who told me he was the manager of a pub not far from where I lived and he came to Hanmer hospital every year to dry out, as did a few other pub owners. I wondered then if that was at the taxpayer’s expense. I remember one lah de dah new arrival coming in and asking me what I thought of the place. I told him it was like living in a five-star hotel and offered to show him around which I did. I don’t know what put him off but he left for home within an hour so maybe he thought I was pulling his leg but I wasn’t. Overall it wasn’t too bad a place. The food was good and there was also a large occupational therapy room where you could indulge to your hearts content in artistic pursuits. In my state of mind I didn’t feel like getting into anything that needed brain power, so I took the option of working outside with a gang of patients on the adjacent golf course. This suited me, as I liked working outdoors, although at times it wasn’t easy working with half a dozen jokers suffering nervous breakdowns. Almost every day one of them would flare up and there would be an argument but luckily no one patted me on the back with a shovel. Later when there was snow on the ground and we couldn’t work on the golf course I decided to try working in the occupational therapy room and finished up making a nice leather handbag for Ann. After a few weeks, because I wasn’t sleeping too well I was allowed to move from the dormitory holding twenty patients to a nice sunny room at the end of the dorm which only held four patients including myself, none of which were cot cases. We had a radio in the room and I found I was soon able to relax much more and started to sleep better. The other three patients in our sunroom were recovering alcoholics and were quite good company, always getting up to some skylark or other. Directly across from our room was the ladies quarter and the lads would wave to them as they sat by their windows. One day when I was chatting to the other three chaps in our room one of them, a Scottish chap nicknamed Haggis said to me, “Keep it under your hat, but we’ve jacked up a date with some of the girls from the women’s quarters tonight just after eight. We’re to meet them at the hospital’s hot sulphur swimming pool for a game of netball. would you like to come?” I gave it a bit of thought and said, “I don’t have any togs and I can’t swim.”He said, “No problem, you’re not allowed to wear trunks and its only about five foot deep. We’ve done it before and its great fun.” I said, “O.K. then, anything for a bit of a laugh.” About eight o’clock we rolled up our towels and strolled out one at a time through the dorm. Outside it was a freezing cold foggy night and Haggis was waiting. He said, “Follow me.” I followed him quietly and we caught up with the other two standing outside the high corrugated iron fence that surrounded the hot pool. Haggis quickly scaled the fence and opened the door. Once inside it looked quite eerie. The light from two low wattage lamps, one at each end, were glowing dimly in a mixture of swirling fog and the steam that was rising from the hot pool. Laughing and joking we stepped into a small changing room and stripped off. Haggis said to be quieter as we slipped into the pool saying, “Two whiffs of this pool and your’e bloody greedy.” He was right. The smell of the hot sulpher pool wasn’t very nice but you soon got used to it. The pool was really hot, about thirty eight degrees but luckily it wasn’t very deep so I could wallow in it. About ten minutes later we heard the girls tittering away as they as they came through the gate to the pool. They shouted, “HI” and one of them threw a net-ball over to us. There were actually five of them and they were giggling away as they came shyly out of the dressing shed just wearing a towel tightly wrapped around them. I was just thinking as they slipped out of their towels and glided into the pool, that I’d read somewhere about a group of young people in Australia having sex orgies late at night in a swimming pool and I thought this evening certainly had the makings of one. Although I guessed four of the girls would have been on the wrong side of thirty and most probably married, they had pretty good figures and were excellent swimmers. Lucky for us but they weren’t quite as fast as the lads and after about a quarter of an hour we had poked three goals into the net. It was great fun as there was a lot of touching and sometimes grabbing trying to get possession of the ball. I was afraid one of the wardens or someone would hear our shrieks of laughter and come to investigate but it must have been too miserable a night for anybody to be abroad. Minutes later we were battling away close to our goalmouth trying to stop the girls scoring when someone grabbed me amidships, possibly accidentally on purpose. I gave out a yell not knowing whether it was one of the lads or not, although the hand certainly felt smooth. I shouted, “ I don’t know who the hell that was, but if it was one of you girls I’ll give you twenty four hours to stop it.” I think the girls knew, doing it for a dare, as they all burst out laughing. At that moment a loud voice pierced the fog from outside the high fence shouting, “What are you buggers up too.” We all went quiet expecting a to see a warden come through the gate. There was dead silence for a couple of minutes and then Haggis shouted, “Who’s out there?” There was no answer and again it was all quiet. Haggis said, “Someone knows we’re here and could tell the wardens, maybe we’d better scarper”. The girls were already out of the pool and making for the dressing shed through the thick fog so we quickly followed and there were nine steaming bodies in a small shed trying to dry off and get dressed in the dark. One of the girls asked us to see if it was all clear outside. We did but there wasn’t a soul in sight. Whoever had been out there had vanished. Maybe he’d looked over the fence and thought better of taking on three alcoholics and a smiling depressive. We escorted the girls as close as we dared to the women’s quarters without seeing anyone then jogged back to our room as Haggis said to me, “We could make a habit of this Doug.” I said, “That’s for sure.” It was not to be. A couple of days later a notice appeared on the notice board stating that the hot pool was only to be used, strictly at the stipulated times during the day and would be locked up at five P.M. That put the kibosh on any of our future capers, not that I cared very much as at the time I was feeling pretty low and what with the drugs they were feeding me, I doubt if they could call me Mr Libido. Hoping that a beer would cheer me up, one Saturday afternoon I wandered over to the only pub in Hanmer. The bar was a dirty rough looking place full of forestry workers playing pool and smoking their frigging heads off. I’d given up smoking for the second or third time only a couple of months back and was still gasping for one. Sitting on a stool at the bar I ordered a glass of beer. I remember not feeling very comfortable as I was the only one there not in old working clothes. Sipping my beer I watched a group of young Maoris enjoying themselves playing pool. I envied them and even wished I was one of them. The beer tasted bloody awful and I thought as I drained my glass, I’ll be glad when I’ve had enough of this. As it turned out that decision had already been made for me. I’d noticed the barman talking to another chap and both of them looking over to me but didn’t think much of it at the time as to them I was a total stranger. I decided to have a glass of bottled beer and beckoned the barman over but before I had a chance to order he said, “Are you from across he road,” indicating the hospital. Without thinking I said, “Yes.” He said, “I’m sorry I can’t serve you.” Puzzled I said, “Why not, I’ve only had one beer.” “Look” he said, “We’ve been instructed by the hospital not to serve any alcohol to the patients.” I said, “O.K, that’s fair enough but I’m not an alcoholic. ”By now a few of the customers were looking inquisitively in my direction and I was feeling slightly embarrassed and getting a bit upset. “Yeah” he said, “We’ve heard that a few times before, you’d better be off.” I stalked out, absolutely flabbergasted, then I thought as I walked back to the hospital, I suppose he was right, he wouldn’t know whether I was an alcoholic or not. I was the friggin’ idiot and should have thought quicker and told him that I was a tourist on holiday. Back in our room I was telling Haggis and the lads about my experience in the pub. They had a bit of a laugh about it and Haggis told me the pub now treated everyone from the hospital the same. He also told me the reason for this was because recently, a young recovering alcoholic who was just about cured and ready to leave, for some reason or other had got upset and had sneaked out to the pub for a beer. The barman, not knowing where he was from, served him a couple of beers and later he also sold this twenty-four year old, two bottles of gin. When he didn’t return to the hospital they sent a volunteer search party out to look for him. Haggis said he was in the search party that found him at the top of Conical hill, a tourist observation lookout. He’d consumed the two bottles of gin and was absolutely blotto. They carted him back to the hospital and he was still there when I left about a month later. One of the things I came to realize when I was there was that you didn’t have to drink alcohol to enjoy yourself. The staff held a dance there one Friday night and I was amazed to see the patients enjoying themselves so much, just dancing and drinking coffee or tea. About nine o’clock the superintendent wandered in, I guess to see how things were going. As soon as he cane through the door a young nurse sprinted over and asked me to dance Which quite surprised me as I’d never been asked by a female to dance before. As I got up I thought, maybe she fancies me but the thought didn’t last long for as soon as the superintendent left the room she dropped me like a hot potato and returned to her seat. That occasion didn’t do a great deal for my self-esteem. Ann used to visit me whenever she could and I also had a visit from my sister Marie who seemed to get upset by the fact that she had a brother in a psychiatric hospital, who had told the doctors about our early life. I don’t know what she told them but from then on they seemed to do everything in their power to encourage me to leave. I guess in those days, as maybe even today, there was sort of a stigma attached to psychiatric hospitals. I know for a fact that when I left Hanmer my biggest worry was what would my friends think when I met them again. As it happened, most of them had not even noticed that I’d been away for a while. I guess they were too busy trying to get on with their own lives, it may be that’s why normal people say “Why worry” but a smiling depressive thinks, “You die if you worry, you die if you don’t, so you might as well worry.” One of the main things I realized on coming out of Hanmer was that I was not as ill as some of the ones I’d left behind, a positive thought for a change. One young woman there was a sad case, a drug addict and an alcoholic, who’d attempted suicide a few times. I tried to help her by talking to her and teaching her to play table tennis. At first, all she talked about was mixing as many drugs as she could get her hands on and taking them with a bottle of port wine which she reckoned was the best way to commit suicide. After a week or so she really started to enjoy playing table tennis and it wasn’t long before I left she was joining in to play against some of the better players. I was far from being cured when I left Hanmer and it was not easy to get back into the swing of things. Although I didn’t have a job, Ann and I kept as busy as ever working on our new ten-acre property, especially the garden which had been totally neglected. It was springtime and Ann had been given some more lambs from local farmers to mother up. What with the ones she’d been given the year before, we now had quite a little flock to look after. We also had a couple of pet sheep. One was an old wether that had wandered onto our property. and I think he’d fallen off a sheep truck. He was completely blind and was a dear old thing. We called him Blindy and most of the time he walked around in small circles. Sometimes I would watch him standing by the apple tree with his head cocked as if listening and he must have had excellent hearing as well as a good sense of smell for as soon as he heard an apple fall to the ground he would sniff around until he found it. The other pet sheep was Emily, an old ewe whose wool grew faster than that and she and Blindy were great mates and could always be found together. Ann used to have a go at shearing them with hand blade shears. What a performance! It would take us over an hour to shear one of them with me holding while Ann did the shearing. It was a pure comedy to watch. Ann asked a local farmer how much a shearer got for shearing one sheep and he told her ten cents. I thought, at that rate it that would be instant bankruptcy. Who’d want to be a shearer. The balance of the land we’d bought at Weedons by now was looking pretty good so we fenced it into five- acre blocks and employed a surveyor to subdivide it. Once that was completed I advertised the four blocks for sale. A real estate agent from Christchurch must have seen my advert and being in the area that day dropped in for a chat. His name was Rex and I explained to him over a cup of tea the ideas I had about buying and sub-dividing uneconomical blocks of farmland into five-acre lots. He listened intently as I told him what I’d already done and that I was selling five-acre lots for the same price as a building section in Christchurch. Rex seemed very interested and after a lengthy discussion he told me he was the principal of a real estate agency on town and would I be interested in working for him. That gave me something to think about. I told him I wouldn’t be very interested in selling houses in the city, especially under the new Multi-Listing scheme that they had just started to use but if I could work from home I would be keen to sell properties in the rural area, as I enjoyed nothing better than being out in the countryside. Rex said that would be fine so I accepted the job and he offered me Sixty-five per cent of all the commission I earned, and if I wanted to I could use our house as an office. That arrangement couldn’t have suited me better, it meant I could work all the hours I wanted to, which would be a help for me to overcome the chronic depression I was suffering from. For the next few months it was pretty tough, working flat out trying to get that first property sold and prove to myself that I could be a good salesman. I’d been told a few times by my fellow workers in the Post Office that I would make a good salesman but I felt that I didn’t have enough confidence. At that time there was only one other real estate agent, other than the large stock and station firms, who was working in Christchurch specializing in the rural area, and as it happened we both had a contract in from different purchasers to buy the same property. It was a lovely six acre property I had listed the previous week. Unfortunately, after signing a keen purchaser up for the property I found out the vendor had gone away on holiday, so I made a few phone calls and discovered what day he would be due back and the estimated time of arrival of the aircraft. With the unconditional sales contract in my pocket I met the vendor as he alighted from the plane. He got a bit of a surprise when I presented him with the contract and he reckoned I was certainly on the ball. I didn’t mention that another agent also had a contract and after a short discussion I managed to get him to sign. I was quite thrilled as I made my way home even though thinking it had taken me all of three months to sell my first property. I heard later that the other agent had walked around for a week with the contract in his pocket thinking he had it sown up and was at the races the day the vendor arrived back. I soon learnt you couldn’t relax for long in the real estate business. Although I was about ready to give the game away when I successfully concluded my first sale, I soon realized the amount of interest in this type of property was very high The four five-acre blocks we’d sub-divided were soon snapped up and although I didn’t realize it at the time, which was around nineteen seventy, it was probably my ideas that initiated what is known today as living on lifestyle blocks. I spent a great deal of my time talking to farmers who were scratching a living on small uneconomic farms in the Paparua County. They were very wary and I had my work cut out to convince them there was good money to be made from subdivision. Farmers had some funny ideas. They all thought that employing surveyors was terribly expensive and they were concerned I wouldn’t be able to sell all the blocks and they’d be left holding some. I talked to one struggling farmer who had a hundred-acre farm, and was also running a few pigs about the possibility of subdividing it and selling it off in ten-acre lots. He refused but said I could list it for sale if I wanted to. Normally, as a farm, the Stock and Station agents would have been lucky to sell it for about two hundred dollars an acre. This farm was adjacent to a new golf club being developed and I just knew I could subdivide it and sell it for at least six hundred dollars an acre which would be a handsome profit. I guess I should have borrowed the money to buy it myself but I wasn’t game enough at that time. I put a proposition to a couple of chaps I used to have a beer with at the Air Force camp. They were licensed motor vehicle dealers and I knew they had a few bob. They seemed pretty keen on my idea but being shrewed businessmen they wanted me to go in with them. Although that wasn’t illegal providing you informed the vendor, salesmen buying and selling properties that they’d listed was frowned upon by the real estate institute. At that time, not wanting to upset anyone I decided not to go in shares with them. It didn’t matter, my enthusiasm convinced them, and they couldn’t resist the opportunity of making some easy money. They told me to go ahead anyway and buy the property for the asking price of forty five thousand dollars. The farmer was pleased I’d sold his farm so quickly and I was happy to pick up my second commission. In those days commission was pretty straight forward, two and a half per cent on the first hundred thousand dollars of the selling price and One per cent thereafter. Not that there were many sales over a hundred thousand but if you were lucky enough to get one, it meant a wee celebration at the office in town. I immediately set about getting the farm sub-divided into ten- acre lots and it wasn’t long before I was under pressure by my investors to get the blocks sold. The first two overlooking the golf course sold quickly for cash and the investors were pleased but although I was working hard, sales came to a bit of a standstill. Most building sections in town were being sold on easy terms so I suggested to the investors that we follow suit as I found it easier to persuade buyers to buy the blocks on easy terms, especially for investment purposes. I suggested we make the terms ten percent deposit, ten per cent in six months, ten per cent in twelve months and the balance in two years. That was quite successful and I had the balance of the blocks flogged off in three months. The investors more than doubled their money and were keen for me to seek out another farm suitable for sub-division for them to buy. They also promised me a bonus. Over he next couple of years I bought, sub-divided and sold a few farms for these chaps and even for the odd solicitor who became interested in what I was doing. After a couple of years the County council woke up to the fact that we were slowly cutting up the county into five acre lots and thought they’d better do something about it. The first thing they did was to increase the minimum size a lot could be sub-divided into, from five to ten acres, not a very bright idea. What the council didn’t realize was that a lot of people living in close proximity to the neighbours in the city just wanted to get out into the country on an acre or two. It was just as easy to talk buyers into ten acres as the price was about the same as the smaller five-acre lots. What did the Council do then? The silly buggers upped the minimum size to twenty acres thinking that would stop sub-division. It didn’t. I still encouraged farmers to sub-divide their land as the writing was on the wall and this couldn’t go on indefinitely. Unknown to me another shrewed developer from the city picked my brains over the phone and the next minute he was competing with me to buy the farms I’d sorted out for sub-division into twenty acre lots. The farmers did well out of this new competition. They played us off against each other and increased their prices. In a way this pleased me as between the farmer, the investors and myself, we could push the opposition into paying an uneconomic price for the farm. I’d sold quite a few twenty- acre blocks when I heard a buzz that the county council were going to withdraw the right to build houses on these lots and only allow building permits on lots of a hundred acres or more. Not losing any time I informed all my purchasers to apply for building permits and at least get their house foundations down before the council could change the law. Many of them did and more houses sprang up everywhere. I didn’t realize it then but in the space of a few years a large part o the Paparua County would be sub-divided into five, ten and twenty acre blocks. Now that the minimum to build a house as of right was changed to one hundred acres, this naturally put the kibosh on things for a while. A lot of pressure was put on the council to allow owners of small blocks to build houses and the law was changed again. This time you had to prove that you could turn your small lot into an economic unit to get a building permit. This proved to be relatively easy for any solicitor with half a brain as we could prove that a person could make a living growing about half an acre of yams, so all of those who wanted building permits eventually got them. It seemed about this time, that every man and his dog who owned a few acres were going into racehorse breeding, especially trotters, as it had become a bit of a status symbol to own a racehorse. Since leaving my job in the Post Office as a telephone operator my racing information had almost dried up. Getting no pleasure out of losing money, I also decided to breed a few racehorses instead of backing them. This game was easier to get into than you’d think as many people owned brood mares but couldn’t afford to breed from them every year so initially it cost you nothing to lease a registered trotting brood mare for one breeding season. The first nag that I leased went by the name of Enschede, a ten year old mare by Smokey Hanover. She’d already had three foals by top stallions like Yankee Express and Local Light but to my knowledge had never thrown anything to write home about. Still, you live in hope. It’s said, horse breeders live longer, living for and dreaming that the next year’s foal they breed will be a world champion. I certainly had a lot to learn about breeding racehorses. The first thing was that it was very expensive, even in those days you had to pay three hundred pounds for the service fee of a good stallion. It was much later when I learnt that of every hundred racehorses bred, only ten get to the races, and of those, only one became a winner. Still it can be quite exciting, after all the work of getting your brood mare to the stud, fetching her home when she had returned a positive pregnancy test and caring for her for many months till she was due to foal. Most brood mares have no trouble foaling and often foaled overnight. I would look out across the paddock every morning when the time was near and one morning, there was the foal standing by its mother at the far end of the paddock. I rushed inside to tell Ann and the children and we all walked cautiously down the fence line to get as close as possible to admire the lovely foal. Brood mares can be very protective of their foals but although I got close enough to touch the foal she just ignored me and carried on grazing. I’d been advised the best way to train a horse is to handle it as a foal as much as possible from the day it’s born. This I did everyday in the spare time I had between selling properties and it wasn’t long before both of them would trot over to me as soon as I entered the paddock. Once we’d weaned the foal from its mother I spent a lot of time in the paddock teaching him to lead, although, I must admit, in the first few days he was doing most of the leading, but he soon got the message. Unfortunately he never came to anything after escaping from a trainers paddock and injuring his hind legs. The next two foals we bred from leased mares never fared much better than the first one, but I guess we got a certain amount of enjoyment out of learning and working with them. The last one we bred was the pick of the bunch. We’d leased a mare by the name of Gleniti Gold from a local neighbour. She was a fine looking chestnut mare by Meadow Chief out of Sandy Gold. From her we bred a magnificent looking colt by Bachelor Hanover. The colt was a golden coloured chestnut with a beautiful gold silky mane. To my limited knowledge he certainly had the looks of a future champion as he trotted around the paddock. In the past as a night clerk, I’d listened in to many horse trainers discussing with owners their methods of training and the most important part seemed to be in the correct feeding. One successful trainer use to mix as many swan eggs as he could get hold of into his horses tucker and in those days they were scarce and expensive. I never got to that stage but I always mixed him up some delightful meals. I used to handle him everyday and give him a hug and I was surprised, for as a colt he was so placid and relaxed. Not many horses would stay lying down when I approached them in a small paddock but he would. I would wander over to him and lie down beside him laying my head on his neck and he would then just lift his head slightly, give a big sigh and flake out. Gleniti Gold was a pretty crafty mare. She would purposefully entangle a foreleg in the fence nearest the house and start neighing to attract attention knowing I would take her over something to eat. One day she did this and I was feeding her some horse pellets from the lid of bin where I kept them; a minute later Ann came over to tell me I was wanted on the phone and I passed the lid to her to carry on feeding the mare and hurried over to the house. Seconds later Ann came rushing back to the house saying she had been savagely bitten on the breast by the mare. Ann was in terrible pain as I rushed her down to the doctors who gave her some pain- killers. He actually thought it was a bit of a joke. I’m afraid it put Ann off horses for a while and when I told the owner, he also confided he was a little afraid of the mare as he had been badly bitten on the arse trying to encourage her to go into a float. I often wondered why he always left it to me when she had to be floated anywhere and I heard later that Gleniti Gold, was a daughter of a renowned biter Meadow Chief, a stallion known to have grabbed hold of a trainer and lifted him bodily clean over an eight strand wire fence. We’d had some difficult horses to float but she was the worst. As usual I would have to try and lead her into the float with Ann and the Owner behind her with a rope across he backside; she would stand there, legs apart, determined not to enter the float. The owner, losing patience would give her a great whack across the arse and she would bolt into the float in one leap as I rocketed out the escape door at the front. The owner enjoyed the spectacle of me exiting the float at high speed and would have a fit of laughter, as did any onlookers. Deciding to name a young racehorse was difficult. I came up with the bright idea of naming our foals after the names of major companies that had gone bankrupt losing their investors millions of dollars, the idea being that the big money boys would be put off backing horses that reminded them of their major losses. Two such companies were Merbank and J.B.L, both these companies having gone down the gurgler losing their investors heaps. You had to submit three names to the trotting conference, out of which they would choose one. One of the three names we picked for a filly we had was Marebank which I doubt the Conference associated the name with the collapsed company Merbank. For our lovely Gleniti Gold colt we submitted two names, J.B.L and Jellybean, and,you guessed it, we didn’t get J.B.L, and this beautiful colt was stuck with the name Jellybean. I guess some of the guys at the Trotting Conference could have lost a pile of dough on the J.B.L company collapse Not having any luck sending my young horses to be broken and trained by professional trainers, most of whom I’d lost faith in anyway as I suspected some of them were just farming racehorses instead of sheep. I decided to train Jellybean myself and found it to be quite interesting and exciting. With the fees I would normally pay to trainers I was able to buy all the necessary gear including a second hand jogging cart to start his training. For the first few weeks a local chap named Horace who trained a couple of horses himself as a hobby would drop in for a couple of days a week and help me to gear Jellybean up. He would then lead him around a small paddock next to the house with me sitting on the jogger. I think Jellybean must have had a fair bit of intelligence, as he was such an easy youngster to train. As we gained confidence in each other, I decided to take him out on the road, so one morning Ann opened the gate for us and off we went. The road where we lived was a long straight shingle road with wide grass berms, ideal for jogging horses, and used by many trainers. Every thing went well as we jogged down the road until we came to the railway line where he stopped dead and suddenly became fidgety and nervous. I tried to coax him to cross and after five or ten minutes I even tried growling at him but he just pricked his ears up and pranced about. I gave up, jumped out the cart and led him nervously across the line. The thought ran through my head of the time as a boy, about the trouble I had with the carthorse Sam; he also had a problem with railway lines, but smiling to myself, I doubted if the two horses were related. It must have been a week before Jellybean got used to crossing that railway line without getting wild eyed, but once over he’d rocket away at a fast pace for a mile to the next crossroad where we would turn around and head for home. Another trainer, who I suspect had seen his antics at the railway line said to me as he passed, “One day, that colt will be coming home by himself” but he never did, even though that remark had me a bit concerned. One of the local trainers had taken a fancy to my heavy jogging cart and asked me if I would be interested in swapping it for one of his proper racing sulkies. I said I would, at the same time trying to imagine what Jellybean would look like at a race meeting with all his new gear on and in a flash racing sulky. One day, Horace, who lived just down the road, rang me up and invited me to come down and train my young horse on his trotting track. Jellybean as usual stood perfectly relaxed as I geared him up into his new sulky. He really looked the part and when Horace saw him he was very impressed with his new gear and how big and strong he’d grown since he last saw him. Horace was a very cheerful chap and always insisted that we greet one another with a cheerful good morning, which wasn’t always easy when you’re suffering from a bout of depression and feeling like death warmed up. He was also a bit of a character and I was captivated watching him gear up his horse. He didn’t have two pieces of gear that weren’t joined together by either a piece of used binder twine or an old dog collar. I guess I was the last person who needed a lesson in frugality. We would jog and pace around his track for half an hour or more and then come in and hose the horses down giving them a good brushing. Horace would then produce a flask of tea and we would sit down and have a natter, mostly about horse breeding and racing of which he seemed to be well informed. Actually he told me he was a retired accountant but had always dreamed of training a trotter or two. I couldn’t understand why I was suffering more severe bouts of depression. I kept losing the will to live and yet everything was going so well. I was doing exceptionally well in my country Real Estate job and Ann, who was helping in the local boy scout group to raise finance was happy and the children were doing fine, so why were all my thoughts so black and negative. No one knew, not even the doctor who eventually suggested I spend some time down at Ashburn Hall, a private psychiatric hospital in Dunedin if he could arrange to get me in. Keeping myself flat out busy seemed to be the only thing that helped me, but there’s a limit to how much physical work a person can do. Fortunately the demand for small blocks of land in the country as a lifestyle, and the potential for investment, was rapidly increasing. At the time I was advertising twenty-acre lots for about six hundred dollars an acre and it was amazing the number of people who rang me up asking to buy a one acre lot but of course we couldn’t sell them just one acre as the minimum you could sell by law was back to twenty. This demand for small one-acre lots put an idea into my mind. I thought why not buy a large block in or near a rural township and approach the County Council to have it subdivided into lifestyle one-acre lots. To me this made sense as it would slow down the fragmentation of the County into twenty-acre lots. Looking through my diary at the few large blocks that were still for sale, one seemed to stick out to me. It was a fifty-acre block of light land at West Melton which I thought had the makings of a lovely village. Although there was no zoned residential land there, it sported a community hall, a popular hotel, two churches, a garage cum shop, fire station and a model school which was adjacent to this fifty acre block. There was no industry there to speak of, no pollution, and was only fourteen miles from the centre of Christchurch on the Main West highway. West Melton was only three or four miles from were we lived at Rolleston and I knew the area like the back of my hand having sold hundreds of acres there over the past few years. The more I dreamed about it the more I was convinced the idea was a good one. There wasn’t much interest from buyers for this block perhaps because it was too large or because the owner was a pet food merchant and was using the land for slaughtering horses. He only wanted twenty thousand dollars for the block and I thought the price was reasonable. Logan by now had dropped out of our partnership which just left Bruce and myself so I discussed the West Melton idea with Bruce and he was quite keen. We had previously thought about buying or leasing some land and running a few pigs as a sideline. Bruce had showed a lot of interest in them so we could have then called him Bacon the pig farmer. It was only a few weeks after we purchased the land that the pig markets, which were vulnerable to imports, collapsed, so we scrubbed that idea in the meantime and leased the land for grazing. Our doctor informed us that he had arranged for me to go into Ashburn Hall in Dunedin. I was quite worried at the time about the stigma of going into a psychiatric hospital, but I thought anything would be better than walking around feeling like a zombie on the pills that the doctor had given me. I’d recently sold my Holden station wagon and bought a Chevrolet Impala, a lovely comfortable car to drive so Ann and I set off for Dunedin. We found Ashburn Hall just a couple of miles outside the city in a quiet rural setting. It was made up of an old homestead surrounded by a number of older type weatherboard buildings. On our arrival we were shown into the administrative offices and a few minutes later Ann was asked in to speak with the resident doctor. I saw him about fifteen minutes later and don’t remember much about what we discussed only that I was feeling pretty crook. Ann told me later she was a bit angry with the doctor because he had asked her for permission to treat me with Electro convulsive shock treatment and this before he had even seen me. Luckily for me she had refused. A while later I met up with a couple of patients who were having this treatment and in my opinion it wasn’t doing them any good at all, in fact I’d say after the treatment, they were ten times worse. It took me a while to settle down in this place. No one was allowed outside for the first week and they were treating me for high blood pressure which at the time was two hundred and twenty over one hundred and twenty. The matron told me later that for the first week I was walking around like a caged tiger. Once I got to know a few of the patients and got used to the daily routines I began to feel a bit better but I must say, what a motley lot they were. Many of them were from very rich or well-known families in New Zealand. I had never realized the numerous types of psychiatric afflictions and phobias that people could suffer from. What surprised me too was that the patients, many of who paid big money to stay there, were expected to do all the work around the place, while the staff just supervised. My job was in the laundry with half a dozen others. With four washing machines we did all the bed linen, towels etc for almost a hundred patients. Of course they reckoned it was good for us to be kept busy, which I suppose was true and we were usually finished by lunch-time. After a couple of weeks the patient who was in charge of the laundry went home, so her job was given to me and what a job it was too. You couldn’t get some of the patients to do a tap of work no matter how you cajoled them. In fact one young lady who I’d been warned about, was only interested in inviting any male into the drying room for a kiss and cuddle session. This being the reason she was in there, another nymphomaniac. One ginger headed chap I distinctly remember wouldn’t use his hands to do anything and even opened doors with his boots which was unfortunate for anyone on the other side. We were all working in the garden one afternoon and I actually coaxed him to help me do some digging. He suddenly showed a bit of interest, picked up a fork and started to dig. I thought, success at last! Not so. A few minutes later without a word he dropped the fork and buggered off back to his room to drink coffee, with, believe it or not, five or six heaped teaspoons to a cup. No wonder he was crook. Sometimes I would worry if we could get all the work done, but luckily I was able to get a couple of good workers in the laundry and we’d try to get the job done by lunchtime. Having meals with a group of psychiatric patients for me was an experience and a half. Amongst a group of jokers I’d swear as much, if not more than the next guy, but in mixed company I would try not to swear at all. Here they all swore like bloody troopers. For the first week or two I don’t think I sat down for a meal without feeling embarrassed by what was being said, like one day, out of the blue, a young woman from across the table, said, “You’re a good looking bastard Doug.” When you’re not expecting anything like that it comes as a surprise. Everyone turned to look at me and I felt my face going red. What could I say? I mumbled, “You’re not bad looking yourself.” I soon learnt that most of these patients sitting at my table were suffering from schizophrenia and they seemed to enjoy shocking people to see their reaction. At lunch time the next day, the same young woman during conversation suddenly came out with, “Doug sucked me off last night”. I nearly fell off my friggin chair hardly believing my ears. The lying bitch seemed to be enjoying my embarrassment but if looks could kill she’d have been stone dead. Whether the others heard her or not, I don’t know. They just ignored it and carried on eating and talking. After a week or so I’d had enough of them and asked to be allocated another table, which they did right away saying that I shouldn’t have been at that table anyway. Some of the things that were said to me here certainly gave me food for thought. One day a young woman sidled up to me and said, “Doug, the patients have decided to accept you here.” That’s all she said and I wondered what would have happened if they hadn’t accepted me. There were times when I was feeling so bad I actually envied these patients suffering from schizophrenia, for most of the time they seemed to be a hundred per cent, but then they could suddenly change dramatically. For instance a group of us were chatting away one evening in the retiring room when all of a sudden one young woman jumped up, stripped off, and started to dance completely naked around the room.She seemed oblivious to everything around her. I felt a bit embarrassed and didn’t know where to look but a few minutes later a couple of white coated attendants came in and carted her off. I found out later she was a trained Ballet dancer with a mild form of the disease. This was a problem for me as I never felt very comfortable in their company. You never knew what they were going to say or do from one minute to the next. Some of the patients hardly ever left the hospital so I asked permission to take half a dozen of them out to dinner at a hotel in Dunedin. The matron warned me against it but agreed, providing I kept a close eye on them. I said I would and after seating them all in my car we set off. Arriving at the hotel without any problems I settled them down at a table, gave them a menu and ordered some drinks. They seemed to take ages deciding what meal to have, then suddenly all decided to have fish and chips. I was feeling a bit peckish by now and decided to treat myself to a roast duck dinner. It didn’t take long for the waitress to serve the fish and chips and the group got stuck into them. I was still waiting for my meal and the others were only about half way through theirs when suddenly one of them stood up and said, “What time is it” I said, “it’s eight o’clock. Why?” He said, “We must go, I go to bed at eight o’clock.” I said, “There’s no hurry, we’ve got plenty of time.”He said, “No, we haven’t, we must go to bed at eight o’clock” and he made for the door. One of the others said, “He’s right” and they all got up a followed him through the bloody door. I was flabbergasted but you couldn’t argue with them. They just ignored my pleas to stay a while longer so I gobbled down some of the tasty fish and chips they had left behind, hurriedly paid the bill and walked out to see them piling into my car. As we drove back to the hospital I thought what a pack of ungrateful gits but I guess it was a waste of time to complain to them as they were carrying on as if everything was normal. When we arrived back at the hospital I saw a patient in the main office who I had become friendly with talking to the matron. I went in and told them what had happened, the matron started tumbling with laughter. She said, “I did warn you didn’t I but any way, now that you’re here I’d like you two to go over and have a chat with a chap that came in today. He’s deeply depressed and you two comedians could help him.” We wandered over to his room and found him lying on his bed. At first I thought he was asleep until he started mumbling away about there being ten foot of snow outside and we were all going to perish. It’s not easy to converse with a person in this depth of depression but we kept talking to him, repeatedly telling him there was no snow out side and no one was going to perish. After a wee while he start to cheer up a little. He told us his name was Doug, the same as mine so we decided to call him Douglas. We finally drew it out of him that he had been farming way down south. They’d had a couple of bad years and he must have slowly become depressed and while in this condition he had sold his farm for a very low price without realizing it. I think this is one of the symptoms of depression. For me it is anyway, everything we owned seemed to become a chronic worry and I’d have an urge to sell the house, the car, the boat, whatever. I would also worry myself to death about little maintenance jobs that needed doing around the house but I would keep putting them off and that didn’t help, in fact you’d get worse, so I knew where Douglas was coming from. What sort of treatment they gave him I don’t know, but he made an amazing recovery. Within a couple of weeks he was selling raffle tickets and playing practical jokes on everybody. The last time I saw him in the hospital before I left, he was putting names down on a list of those patients who were interested in having sex with one of the young newcomers who he reckoned was a nymphomaniac. She was a good-looking dark skinned woman he’d nicknamed Black Velvet. I don’t know whether he was having us on or not but I told him at that time my libido was just about dormant, it being one of the many downsides of depression. We spent many afternoons attending group therapy. This could be quite serious but it also could be a bit of a giggle as some of the patients were pretty good comics. I thought the ones suffering from schizophrenia seemed to have some extra sense that enabled them to seek out other patient’s problems by questioning them thoroughly. The group would pick on a patient and hammer him or her with questions of every description for about half an hour and eventually they would come up with a fair idea of what the person’s main problems were. The group baled me up one afternoon. They weren’t backward in coming forward with their questions either. It didn’t take them long and after only about fifteen minutes they all agreed that my biggest problem was that I worried too much about money. I guess they were right and they only confirmed what I already knew, but they couldn’t answer the main question that I was concerned about, which was, why does a person become so physically ill with anxiety and worry about everything. These days, they’ve worked it out that it could have something to do with the chemicals in your brain. Once I became familiar with the running of the place and the sun was shining, I would disappear in the afternoon from the regular working party, after finding a lovely out of the way possy for sunbathing which was on the roof of the main building. I always liked doing a bit of sunbathing and it took the staff about ten days to discover where I kept vanishing to. Another interest some of the patients enjoyed was learning Yoga. A young very fit looking couple would come one afternoon a week to teach us. There’d be a scramble amongst the male patients to get into the gym early to lay their mats down as directly as possible behind the beautiful ballet dancer. This was the young lady who occasionally, would suddenly decide to strip off. For Yoga she wore a skin- tight leotard and she had a figure that would have made Venus De Milo jealous. As we went through all the exercises the male patient’s eyeballs would be just about glued on to the ballet dancer’s exotic movements. The male teacher also paid her a lot of attention but even though I watched her for a while she failed to arouse me. I guess that was indicative of the state of my health. After all the strenuous movements we would then lie down and do some relaxing exercises. About half way through when every thing was dead quiet except for the purring of the teachers incantation, I’d just about nod off, only to be brought back to earth by some uncouth bugger farting and the ballet dancer bursting into a fit of giggling. Yoga always gave me a bit of an uplift and was also very well recommended for people suffering from depression. Some of the young women patients at the hospital were suffering from an eating disorder and wouldn’t eat anything. This disorder which they called anorexia baffled me as the only eating problem that I could think of, especially as a boy, was trying to get enough tucker to survive. A few of the staff seemed to think that I had the gift of the gab and could talk a person into anything. They gave me the chore of taking meals up to the rooms of these patients and to try and coax them into eating as much as possible. It wasn’t an easy job at first, as I was a bit shy. I didn’t know how these young women would react, but once I got to know them I found it wasn’t too difficult to make them laugh, and before long it gave me a lot of satisfaction actually persuading them to eat all their meals I used to look forward to the times when Ann would come down to visit me. She would drive the big Chev Impala all the way to Dunedin. The first time she came down we had an enjoyable day together and the next time, she left the car for me to use and flew back to Christchurch by plane. Although there was nowhere to garage the car it was sure handy to get into town occasionally. The time came when I must have been feeling a bit better so I decided to head for home in the next day or two before I succumbed to the Nympho in the drying room. I informed the matron who tried to pursuade me not to leave but my mind was made up. I’d figured out they tried to keep patients there as long as possible, probably for economic reasons. I told a few of the friends that I’d made there, that I was leaving for home and one of the patients who lived in Christchurch asked me to give her a lift. She was a young woman about twenty-five and I remember, after only being there for about a week, she was the one that kept asking me to go for a walk with her, so one-day I did. We walked together for the first few hundred yards but as soon as we were out of sight of the hospital she was off. She hopped over a gate and headed up into the hills. I tried to keep up with her but I couldn’t so I sat down at the top of the first hill to enjoy the views while I waited for her to come back. She didn’t, so I made my way back just in time for some afternoon tea. After dinner the matron was inquiring about her, so I told her we’d set off for a walk after lunch and I was unable to keep up with her. The matron told me that was the problem. She was addicted to physical exercise and would use any excuse to go tramping up into the hills. She said, “ I know she’ll arrive back here before dark completely exhausted so please don’t give her an excuse to go hiking in future”. For the life of me I couldn’t under stand how that problem could be a reason for anyone to be in a psychiatric hospital. At first I was a bit dubious about giving her a lift, as I didn’t want the responsibility but the matron said it would be o.k. We set off the following morning. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining as the Impala purred down the highway. I felt a bit anxious at first but once we got chatting my passenger and I soon relaxed. Looking through the windscreen to my left, we could see across the lovely green fields to the snow capped Kaikoura Mountains, a sight that always made me feel good. A straight line of cloud in the distance known by the locals as a nor-west arch indicated strong nor- west winds and warm weather. By the time we got to Timaru I felt as if I was on a bit of a high, as if I’d just been released from jail, not that you could call Ashburn Hall a jail. Unfortunately the high feeling didn’t last very long and I was soon back to being a bundle of anxiety worrying unnecessarily about silly things like what people would think about me having spent some time in a psychiatric hospital but as I’ve said before, most of your drinking friends don’t even notice you’ve been away, they have their own lives to lead. Although this depression made me feel like a sack of shit tied amidships, I still felt it was good to be home so that I could talk myself into as much work as possible, which seemed to be the only real help for depression. Ann had done a great job of looking after the place, including the animals. The cat, named Big, Emma the dog and the young colt Jellybean nicknamed Jaybee, they all looked as fit as buck rats It didn’t take too long to get into the daily routine of work and the harder I worked the better I felt. I would have to say, working in real estate would be one of the best jobs a person suffering from depression could have, because to be successful at it, you virtually have to live it. Unfortunately I realized later, that was at the expense of the family, as I could have spent a lot more time with the children’s interests. I guess I was lucky that my wife Ann, who did a tremendous amount of work around the home, also spent a lot of time with the children, leaving me more or less free to follow my pursuits of providing for the family. People were still ringing up wanting to buy one-acre sections in the country, so after discussing the idea with Bruce of subdividing our fifty-acre block at West Melton, we had our surveyor prepare a concept plan for the area. Unfortunately this was the beginning of a decade of hassle with the County Council to get the land re-zoned to Rural Residential, but we never gave up and eventually we were successful. The Council not only re-zoned ten aces of our land to Rural residential but also ten acres of our neighbour’s land. Our original consept plan only covered the front ten acres of our fifty-acre block which was quite a narrow rectangular block of land. The idea struck me that if we could buy an adjoining ten acres of our neighbour’s large property, we could amalgamate it with ours and double the number of sections we would have for sale, plus the fact it would make a more balanced subdivision. Thinking we wouldn’t have enough money to buy the neighbours land, we decided to make an offer, through their solicitor, to swap the balance of our land, being forty acres, for the ten acres of their land that we were interested in. I got the shock of my life when I received a reply from the solicitor to the affect that the owners were not interested in swapping land but would be quite happy to sell us the ten acres in question for Fifty thousand dollars. I couldn’t believe our good luck as at that price it was a pure gift, even if it meant us having to borrow part of the money. Bruce agreed with me, but not wanting to seem too keen we waited a couple of days before replying to say we would accept their offer and that would have been the quickest property transaction that we ever made in our lives. It turned out later the vendors and their solicitor very much regretted not taking up our offer to swap, instead of selling the ten acres to us. We guessed it was because we eventually subdivided their block into twenty- two lots, the last one of them selling for almost what we paid for their whole ten acres. We only realized years later, how much they regretted selling their land to us, when we tried to purchase another block of land from them and they asked one million dollars, I guess they must have thought, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” One day we received an Official looking letter from the new labour government, which had recently been elected. The letter informed us that the government had decided to turn the township of Rolleston into a satellite city of Christchurch. They had decided to buy all the township’s properties and if we weren’t interested in selling by negotiation, they would give us twelve months notice and then take our property under the land acquisition act. It came as a bit of a shock to us that the government could compulsorily purchase your home from you and it turned the township upside down. I’d suspected something was in the wind a few weeks earlier, when the son of a labour minister approached me seeking to buy a block of land in Rolleston, which to me, at that time, would be the last place a person with a few bob would want to buy a property. It was absolute turmoil for the residents of the township. Some, dreaming they would get a high price for their property were keen to sell immediately in case the government changed its mind. Others formed groups to fight the government. We had meetings in our dilapidated hall with everyone having their own argumentative opinions and government officials trying to answer all our questions and espousing what they wished to achieve. The town was already in dire need of an upgrade and it didn’t help when the government started to buy up properties which naturally became neglected, and the question in everyone’s mind was, to sell or not to sell. Some asked for my advice, but I was finding it difficult to decide what to do myself. I’d recently bought a ten-acre block in Rolleston, just down the road from where we lived. It was pretty run down but had potential as it was in one-acre titles. The government reckoned they were paying good prices for properties so I decided to try them out and offered them our ten-acre block. After some consultation, and their valuer inspecting the land, they sent us a cash offer of twenty two thousand dollars. Ann and I didn’t think that was too bad considering we’d only recently bought it for five thousand dollars so we sold it to them. We then decided to sell them our home property so we had it valued. I guess we might have procrastinated a bit too long in deciding to sell, as the high prices the government had been offering had reduced considerably. They came up with an offer of only about two thirds of the valuation which of course we didn’t accept. We then went into months of negotiation without success and finally in a new election the government changed to a National party. The Labour Government’s decision to build a Satellite City at Rolleston by now had become a political football. The National Government had warned, that if they won the election they would scrub all the work that the Labour party had done at Rolleston. They won and did it immediately, bringing all negotiations to a standstill. By now, what with all the haggling with the local government officials, the seed to sell our lovely hundred year old homestead had been germinated in our heads so we decided sell it on the open market Our home property, which was in a beautiful rural setting when we bought it, had in fact been zoned heavy industrial many years ago and some noxious industries were beginning to creep up around us. The previous owner had submitted a plan for sub-division to the County Council but for some reason or other had not persevered with it. The plan was for seven lots, the homestead situated on three acres and the balance in seven one-acre blocks. Ann and I decided to complete the sub-division at a small cost of one payment to the Council to upgrade the road and one to the surveyor to re-peg all the lots. Although the homestead was an aesthetically beautiful property, the fact that it was zoned heavy industrial made it more difficult to sell. After many months of advertising we finally found a buyer. Funnily enough his occupation was house moving, being something I’d been interested in since moving the State temporary accommodation units and converting them into Motels which eventually brought us to this area. Our property was ideal for his business, as he needed plenty of space to store the houses he bought for removal. He offered to buy half of our property for the same price as the government had offered for the lot, so we accepted it leaving us with five one-acre lots to sell. After having lived in an old house for about Twelve years, Ann and I decided to buy a new house in the suburbs Christchurch. We looked at numerous houses before deciding to buy one in Avondale situated on the River Avon. It was a cream coloured stuccoed Spanish style bungalow that was just becoming in vogue again at the time. It didn’t take us long to realize that we had made a big mistake thinking we could adjust easily from living on a ten- acre rural property to living in a smaller house on a tiny section. Although it didn’t seem to bother Ann too much as she soon set about establishing a lovely garden, for me it was the beginning of another period of deep depression. With little to occupy my mind I used to get up early and walk for miles along the Avon River in a bit of a suicidal state. Arriving back home I’d have a little laugh to myself to see our fat cat ‘William’ who I’d nicknamed ‘Big Bill’ sitting on the doorstep looking very depressed too. The poor bugger looked lost and didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Where we lived before, he had the whole countryside to roam about in, chasing birds and what have you, but now, everywhere he went he would immediately be chased back home. No wonder he was totally pissed off. Before we left Rolleston I had to make a decision what to do about our colt ‘Jellybean.’ Not having many options I decided to lease him to a young keen horse trainer who lived nearby. The lease was for a couple of years with the right to buy for two thousand dollars. Although I never had any problems with him, the trainer reckoned he was playing up so I had to agree to have him gelded. That really was a pity, as he was a magnificent animal and he proved this by winning two races as a two-year old. The trainer then decided to invoke his right of purchase and then immediately sold ‘Jellybean’ to America for twelve thousand dollars. In that country New Zealand horses had suddenly become very popular. I never did hear if he was a success over there, just as well. I really regretted not keeping him as he was one of my main interests and after that I seemed to lose most of my contacts in the racing game. It was about this time that I also decided to give up my Real Estate job and live off the earnings I could make buying and selling properties on my own behalf. By now we’d just about completed stage-one of our sub-division at West Melton, giving us eight lots to sell. That wasn’t too difficult as they were the only residential sections in that area. With the money from the sale of these lots, we were able to pay for the roads and all the other amenities that were needed to complete stage-two which consisted of another twelve sections. Of course this enterprise didn’t happen overnight. It took years of negotiations and haggling with Councils, solicitors, surveyors, so in a way this was good for me as it kept my brain continuously ticking over. Ann and I couldn’t settle in the new house we’d bought on a tiny section by the Avon River so we spent much of our spare time looking for a nice property within the city boundary but preferably on an acre or two of land. This type of property rarely comes on the market but as I was searching through the properties for sale columns in the local newspaper, I spied one coming up for auction in a few weeks. Contacting the agent we made an appointment to view the property the next day. I quite enjoyed looking at properties but I’m afraid Ann didn’t: maybe she’d seen one too many. Meeting the agent the following afternoon he showed us through the house, timber framed and weatherboard it had two bedrooms, a sunroom and was approximately fifty years old. The house was set on just over two acres in a perfect situation right at the end of Avoca Valley. From the kitchen, a small window gave us a tremendous view up the valley and the house was perfectly sheltered on three sides by high Pine trees. Being in a pretty steep sided valley I realized that we would lose the sun at mid afternoon in the winter and the house would need a couple of workaholics to restore, but Ann and I were captivated by its beautiful and quiet situation. We decided to attend the auction and bid for it, knowing we could easily afford the property if we sold our house. As it happened we had a buyer interested in our house but he was only prepared to pay the same price as we’d paid for it. We weren’t too keen, as by now we’d owned the property for almost a year and had upgraded it quite a bit but the pressure was on now if we wanted to buy the Avoca Valley property so we decided to accept his offer. Although we had been to a few auctions and had a good idea of the procedure I had never made a bid to buy a property at an auction. There were only about twenty people at the auction rooms when we arrived and a few more dribbled in as the auctioneer started his rigmarole on the terms and conditions of the sale. I began to feel a bit nervous as the bidding began and was surprised at the low amount of the first bid being only twenty-five thousand dollars. They then rose in one thousand-dollar bids to thirty thousand without me raising a finger. The auctioneer, who was working pretty hard failed to get another thousand-dollar bid so dropped the bidding to five hundred dollars which seemed to spark quite a bit more interest and the price shot up to thirty three thousand five hundred. After a long pause the auctioneer then said, “Going once, Going twice,” and was just about to say, “Sold” when I shot my hand up and bid. The auctioneer said, “ Fresh blood” but for all his effort he couldn’t wring another dollar from the buyers so he knocked the property down to us for thirty four thousand. It was only when I when I went up to pay the ten per cent deposit that I realized I’d forgotten my cheque book which was quite embarrassing but having concluded a sale they were quite happy to wait for us while we shot off home to get it. I’d have to say that Ann and I worked harder on this property than any other property we’d owned. We cleaned, we altered, we painted but I think the best thing we did in the house was to replace the small wooden window in the kitchen with a very large aluminium bay window. Taking up almost the full width of the kitchen it gave us a fantastic million-dollar view way up the valley. The previous owner’s brother dropped in one day to inspect our renovations. He lived next door, was about eighty-five and was a bit of a character. He took one surprised look at the new kitchen window and after a minute or two said, “ How much did that cost you? When I told him he said, “Bugger me, my brother only paid that much to build the whole bloody house.” I had to laugh but then his brother had built the house more than fifty years ago. A week or two later the old bugger who had a couple of large glasshouses on his property had climbed up on top of one of them to replace some broken glass. He suffered badly from arthritis and it must have locked him up while he was up there. The poor bugger couldn’t get down by himself so we were called out to help him. He sure was a goer. By now I’d sold all our sections at West Melton except one, which we kept for future access into our neighbour’s land on the off chance that we might purchase some more of his property in the future. We also still had almost forty acres left, behind our sub-division which we hoped to sub-divide some time in the future. This was accessed along a small cul-de-sac named Laird place. Wow! We must be coming up in the world, having a street named after us. We had submitted a few street names to the council including Westview Crescent and Laird Place, which were the two they eventually accepted. Although there was tons of work to keep me busy on our Valley property I felt I needed something more challenging, something more interesting to do. We’d had a go at most things, shopkeeping, motels, horse breeding and I even had a go at the share market for a few years with a portfolio of shares that were going pretty well until the market collapsed in 1987. Luckily for me, I’d sold a large bundle of shares the day before the crash otherwise it would have cost me a packet. As it was, the share market crash had cost me quite a bit and I lost confidence in it completely. I thought, better stick with what I know, buying and selling property. That’s the caper. Reading the ‘For Sale’ columns in the newspaper one day, an advert for a gold dredge for sale caught my eye. Gold prospecting was something I’d dreamed about doing since I met a young adventurous chap on the boat coming out to New Zealand who reckoned he was coming out here to go prospecting on the west coast of the South Island. I went to see the dredge the following day. It was owned by a Dutch guy who gave me the impression that he seemed to know a fair bit about gold mining and was quite happy to impart his knowledge to me. He said his name was Yohan but liked to be called John and he could see I was very keen and interested in buying his gold dredge. It was a relatively simple affair consisting of a steel suction nozzle that connected to a six- inch flexible pipe about two metres long and a metal sluice box was attached to the end of the pipe. John spent a fair bit of time explaining all the ins and outs of gold prospecting and said he was off down south at the weekend to explore some of the old gold towns around Cromwell and asked if I would like to go with him. I jumped at the opportunity and we set off a couple of days later. John picked me up and once out on the main road he shot off like a bat out of hell, never stopping till we arrived in Cromwell which is about four hundred and fifty kilometres from Christchurch. He was one of those chaps who once he set off anywhere, just didn’t want to stop for anything until he arrived at his destination. He later told me of one time he took one of his aunts on a long trip and she just about burst her bladder not wanting to ask him for a toilet stop. After riding with him a few times I knew just exactly how she felt. We arrived there safely and booked a cabin in the camping ground at little place called Bannockburn. It was getting on by the time we arrived there but once we’d had a good look around and got settled in John pulled out a pile of maps so we sat down and studied the area for a while. The maps showed dozens of creeks and old gold workings in the surrounding area and one of the creeks ran right through the camping ground. This camping ground had originally been located adjacent to the Bannockburn Creek but when the government decided to build a huge electric hydro dam on the largest river in New Zealand, the mighty Clutha River at Clyde the beautiful camping ground had to be re-located on to much higher ground as this whole area was to be flooded and years later came to be known as Lake Dunstan. The cabins were relatively new and the beds were extremely comfortable but that didn’t stop me from waking up early as I was extra keen to get cracking. Making a breakfast of bacon and eggs I roused John who said he was gasping for a cup of tea and a smoke. After breakfast we got all our gear ready and drove down to the Creek at the original lower camping ground. We were surprised to see that we weren’t the first ones down there. Already there were about half a dozen families along about half a kilometre of the Creek. They were working away with all sorts of equipment, gold pans, wood and metal sluice boxes and the greatest assortment of home made apparatus I’d ever clapped my eyes on. I stopped to watch a group of four women sitting at an old log table slowly panning the washdirt their men had put through the sluice boxes. I was just thinking, they’re working so slow I would never have the patience to do that job when John hurried me along to find a good possie to start working. Finding a likely spot further along where the creek was about fifteen feet wide and two or three foot deep we assembled the dredge on the shingle bank and then slipped it into water. John told me to hold the nozzle of the dredge under the water and to be ready when he started the motor. He had already explained the principle of how a gold suction dredge worked and it seemed relatively simple. He sat a five-horse petrol motor on the bank. This was directly coupled to a two-inch water pump which this in turn pumped the water through a one an a half inch fire hose to the three quarter inch venturi inside the suction nozzle of the dredge. The Venturi increases the pressure of the water dramatically and creates a vacuum at the nozzle. Resting the steel nozzle on the bed of the creek I could feel the powerful suction tearing away the gravel from the bottom and shooting it through the six inch two metre long flexible pipe connected to the dredge that was floating a few metres behind me on a couple of blown up truck tyres. Compared with the motley lot of simple equipment all the other prospectors were using, John’s dredge looked pretty sophisticated and before long a group of them had congregated on the bank showing a lot of interest in our dredge and how it worked. John explained to them the principle of how his suction dredge would recover gold. He said that as the gravel flowed through the dredge, the gold, being seven times heavier than the gravel would settle between the riffle bars that were set on a length of coconut matting on the bottom of the sluice box. Some of the onlookers seemed very doubtful, saying the material was going through the dredge too fast and the gold, being very fine in this area would just go straight through and back into the creek. By now the tailings were piling up at the back of the dredge so John started clearing them away with his long handled shovel. After we’d worked pretty hard for over an hour I was very keen to have a look in the sluice box so I asked John and he stopped the motor. We emptied the contents of the box into a couple of gold pans, called dishes by some of the old timers and John showed me how to pan the washdirt on the edge of the creek. Although gold panning is a skilled and tedious job, it can also be quite exciting. I watched John as he submerged his pan at the edge of the creek. Crouching down he swirled the pan in a circular motion just keeping enough water in the pan which was slightly tipped forward to take the lighter sand and shingle over the front edge leaving the heavier minerals, and if you’re lucky some ‘gold’ to sink to the bottom. The back and forward swirling movement must be very gentle and even though John seemed to be a quite experienced at panning, it still took him over fifteen minutes before I could see what was left in the bottom of the pan. John kept running his fingers through what was left of the wash on the bottom. All I could see was a handful of black sand and not a spec of gold. There were also about a dozen tiny reddish coloured stones that he said were semi-precious stones called garnets but these were of little value being only suitable for industrial use so he turfed them back into the creek. He then suggested that I have a go at the other panful and told me to pan it into his empty pan just in case I missed any gold. This was a good idea as it meant I could work faster without the fear of losing what we were prospecting for. I actually panned the wash from pan to pan three or four times for practice but still not a skerick of gold, just one reasonable sized garnet that I kept. Maybe some of the old timers were right when they said that we could be sucking the gravel through the dredge too fast and any fine gold was just going back into the creek. One of them suggested we could be better to prospect over on the West Coast where the gold was more nuggety. We enjoyed a couple of days prospecting up and down this creek without any luck but on the third day we found the creek bed completely dry. It was a lovely hot day and one of the annoyed prospectors told us a couple of farmers were irrigating upstream so we stowed the dredge into John’s station wagon and drove down into Cromwell. This was an area of pretty dangerous rivers where many gold miner’s lost their lives in the early days when gold was just about everywhere to be found. John soon found an easy accessible spot where a small creek ran into the Kawarau River. Ideal, I thought as we carted the dredge down and coupled it up by the edge of the water. Two hours later I was peering into the dish John had just about finished panning and sure enough, there mixed with the black sand were a couple of dozen tiny specs of gold. He pulled out a small glass pill bottle, filled it to the brim with water, licked his dry finger and transferred the flecks of gold to the rim of the bottle where they sank faster than the eye could see to the bottom. We spent another couple of days in this area prospecting a few more creeks but what little gold we recovered was extremely fine, so fine in fact, some of it would almost float on water. John said it was called flour gold and his dredge may have been a bit too powerful to recover it all. We set off home the next day as John had to start work having an eight to five job. I’d made up my mind to buy his dredge as I had ideas of modifying it and the price he was asking was very reasonable. I’d always thought that I had a bit of an inventive mind and knew there was good money being made by inventors. It also follows that money could be made from improving any thing that had already been invented. These were some of the thoughts that ran that ran through my active mind as I dozed off heading back to Christchurch. After a few months Ann and I soon had our Avoca valley home renovated to our liking except for the garage which was under the house and only had a dirt floor so we set about concreting it. That done, at last we now had time to explore and enjoy the fantastic setting the house was situated in. About half an acre of the two-acre property was taken up by a lovely orchard with every type of fruit imaginable, apples, pears, plums, apricots, you name them, we had them, or did we. I think the birds ate more of them than we did. Climbing up the hillside of the property to explore the boundary we soon realized the shelter-belt trees were about ninety feet high and sadly in need of topping. We were still haunted a bit by the experience we had at Rolleston during the huge Northwest storm in seventy-four, when many of our high shelter belt trees came crashing down almost destroying the garage and workshop. The last thing we wanted was a repeat of that. The trees here protected us from the strong south-west winds that occasionally swept down the picturesque valley where the verdant slopes rise to steeper rocky outcrops like so many valleys on the Peninsula. We decided to have them topped and employed a company aptly named Beaver Tree Services Ltd. They did an excellent job. I used to watch in awe as the guy would clamber nearly a hundred feet to the top of a tree with a chain-saw dangling from his belt. Starting his chainsaw he would then lob off six foot lengths which would come crashing down noisily to the ground. They must have topped about seventy trees and when they’d finished I could see about six months work ahead of us to clean up the mess. Luckily I had a couple of mates who wanted firewood for the winter so they came up every weekend for two or three months working their hearts out helping me to cut up the heavy logs and then cart them away home on a large overloaded trailer. I don’t know what I would have done without them and we finished up with about three year’s firewood supply. At every opportunity, I’d stow the gold dredge in the back of the car and be off to the West Coast to prospect the many dozens of rivers and creeks between Greymouth and Westport. I used to base myself in the camping ground at the small town of Reefton. In those days it was pretty rough and ready but a good place to meet the odd interesting old prospector from whom I could glean a bit of local knowledge. The camping ground consisted of a dozen tiny two-man army huts, an ablution block and a large cookhouse. Getting up early I’d be one of the first in the cook-house frying up some bacon and eggs, the smell of which would soon entice others in. After a hearty breakfast, which would have to last me till I got back in the evening I would head off south toward Greymouth, prospecting a different river each day. The first one I tried was Slab Hut Creek only a few miles out of Reefton and it was pretty easy going once I got the motor started. Fortunately the creek bed didn’t have too many large stones that could block the suction nozzle. Sometimes an odd elongated stone would shoot up the nozzle and jam and not wan0ting to stop the motor I’d slip my hand up the nozzle to dislodge it. The first time I tried it the suction was so great it tore my protective rubber glove clean off, sucking it through the dredge and away down the river. From then on I used to unblock it with my bare hand and it always felt as if the suction was trying to tear my skin off. It didn’t take me long to realize it was easier to hold my gloved hand over the mouth of the nozzle to divert any large stones from slipping through. The biggest problem here was the wasp population. There must have been thousands of the bastards and at any one time there must have been at least fifty of the buggers flying around my head. After working for about five hours, emptying the dredge a few times and practising panning for an hour or more I felt a little disappointed when I didn’t see anything in the dish to get excited about. The wasp nuisance seemed to be getting worse. They started to neglect me but began to attack the noisy motor which must have been disturbing them in this very peaceful valley. They kept diving at it, some hitting the exhaust pipe, getting burnt and dropping into the river. I’d never seen anything like it before and I thought, maybe it’s time for me to shove off before they start attacking me. Back at the camping ground, the chap in the next hut to me had the back-end out of his almost new four-wheel drive vehicle. I asked him if he wanted a hand as he dragged himself out from under the flat deck wagon. He said it was the second time he’d broken a rear axle getting to and from his gold claim. That perked my ears up so I told him what I was about and he showed quite a bit of interest in my dredge. As a rule gold miners are pretty tight lipped about what they’re up to, and this joker was no exception. It must have been about my fifth visit to the camp before he opened up a little about himself. He told me he was a helicopter pilot who used to fly guys to different areas looking for gold claims. This started his interest in the gold business as he thought there was good money to be made, if you were lucky. He never let on exactly where his gold claim was, or even the name of it and I must have known him at least twelve months before he thought he knew me well enough to confide in me. One evening he invited me over to his hut for a beer. What a shambles it was, gear strewn all over the place, rucksacks, a couple of 303 rifles, car parts, you name it, mind you, these two man army huts were only eight foot by six and he lived in it permanently. He cleared a space on one of the bunks for me to sit and opened a couple of bottles of beer. He’d already had a few and was quite talkative. He told me he’d leased a claim from an old German farmer up the Waipuna River and aptly named it “Keep It Dark” which he evidently had done and he was to pay the farmer ten per cent of the value of any gold he found. He must have had a few bob because he then went off and bought a new digger and had a six-foot floating gold screen built. Over another couple of beers he told me had a business partner who lived locally and they worked the digger twenty-four hours a day doing two shifts a day each. That was pretty hard work but as he said it was worth it as they’d taken out two thousand ounces of gold in the first twelve months. Work that out at over six hundred N.Z dollars an ounce, that makes it about one point two million, not bad for a new boy. Months later he invited me over to his claim but the access was too rough, no roads, so I had to drive up a stony riverbed for quite a few miles. The farther I went the worse it got so not wanting to stuff my vehicle I chickened out and came back. I could see how he kept breaking his back axles. Years later I heard that he’d lost most of his hard-earned cash in the eighty-seven stock market crash. Over the next year I must have prospected every creek and river between Reefton and Greymouth on the east side of the mighty Grey river including Nelson Creek, the Ahaura, the Snowy river at Ikamatua and the Blackwater Creek at Waiuta. One thing about Reefton, if you were sitting by yourself in one of the bars and you happened to mention the word gold, you would immediately strike up a conversation with someone. This happened to me quite frequently and one day an old codger confided in me about a spot he knew about a mile up from the end of the road at Nelson creek, where years ago he’d panned some nuggety gold. I bought him a pint and told him I’d give it a go the next day. I set off early next morning, as I knew it would be almost an hour’s drive to the end of the road at Nelson Creek. Overall my dredge weighed about a hundred pounds. I lashed the pump and motor on my back and half pie carried and dragged the rest of the gear to a bend in the creek that the old boy had reckoned was a good spot. This took me about another hour struggling slowly through gorse and broom and in some places, if it was easier or shorter wading up the creek bed itself. It was an extremely hot day and when I got there I was sweating like a pig, completely saturated and absolutely knackered. I dropped my gear off and flaked out on a grassy bank just about nodding off in the warm sunshine. I was thinking to myself as I slowly recovered, what the hell am I doing here flogging my guts out in this isolated place. Maybe I’d caught the gold fever that I’d read about in books that the old timers prospecting for gold used to suffer from, or was it just the fact that it was a complete break from my normal routine of buying and selling properties, dealing with solicitors, living by the telephone, maybe not realizing it at the time, but always a feeling of being under tension. Possibly not the best occupation for anyone suffering from severe bouts of depression and high blood pressure. Here in this peaceful valley, even though the work was hard any tension soon flowed from my body as I assembled the dredge and started work in the centre of the creek. It was pretty easy going as the water was only a couple of feet deep and wearing a new pair of chest waders I could now dredge down to about four and a half feet without getting too wet. I tried two or three places along the creek within a couple of hundred yards of my starting point but no luck, not even a colour. About four o’clock, feeling a bit disappointed I humped all my gear back down the creek to my vehicle, vowing in future not to take too much notice of yarns that old codgers spun in the pub. Driving back down towards the end of the rugged valley I noticed a couple of older women panning under the main road- bridge of the Nelson Creek. Being curious I stopped and went down to ask them how they were doing. To my surprise they produced a small pill bottle over half full of fine flakes of gold and told me they were on holiday and had panned it from under the bridge in the last four days. I admired it as I held the wee bottle in my hand. It felt quite heavy and they reckoned it weighed about four or five pennyweights, not bad considering there were only twenty pennyweights to the ounce and at that time in the nineteen eighties gold was fetching around eight hundred dollars an ounce. I wished them luck and set off back to Reefton. On the way I kept thinking, seeing the two old girls with the gold hadn’t really made the day for me. I’d been half pie killing myself ten miles up the creek using pretty expensive gear and getting four fifths, while these two old dears had just parked their car beside the bridge, walked a few yards and were panning good gold. I guess the old saying, “Gold is where you find it” wasn’t far wrong. I promised myself that in the future if I couldn’t park my vehicle within a hundred yards of where I was going to work I would forget it. After all at this stage for me it was only a hobby Back in Christchurch I was talking to one of my real-estate mates about this gold caper and he seemed quite interested so the next time I went over to the coast he decided to come with me. This time I decided to explore all the creeks and rivers north of Reefton up to Cronadun. It was in this fairly isolated area I first noticed that within minutes of starting to work up one of the valleys a vehicle would suddenly appear out of nowhere and some joker would hop out and want to know what you were doing. I’d explain that we were testing out a new gold dredge but most of them seemed to be a bit aggressive towards us and we got the impression we were not wanted there, although I do remember the odd one that treated us O.K. He even recommended a creek on his property that we could try so I promised to give him half of any gold we found, normally that was fifty per cent of nothing so I used that promise a few times after that, which seemed to calm down the odd irate owner or farmer. This is not intended to be an anti-West Coast diatribe but we had heard so much about the fantastic hospitality received by strangers from West coasters that we were amazed by their attitude and we never saw any of it. Maybe the ones we came in contact with weren’t genuine coasters, or maybe they didn’t like poms. Years later I realized they just didn’t like gold prospectors or anyone interested in their Coast’s natural resources, especially anyone from over the hill, meaning Canterbury. I wouldn’t mind but many of them were either too lazy, too busy, or had no interest in the area’s gold resources. I guess it was only the few tourists who received all the hospitality, being here today and gone tomorrow. My mate, who by the way was named Eric seemed to lose a lot of his interest in gold prospecting when he realized how hard the work was. I had to laugh one day when he actually fell asleep on the riverbank as I was trying to teach him the art of panning. Never mind, it was good to have his company in these isolated parts, especially after I saw an effigy of a gold miner hanging from a garrote on the main highway a couple of miles from where we were working. It was being so unwelcome and occasionally abused by some of the locals in these parts that made me consider giving it away, when I saw an advert in the newspaper for the sale of a gold claim way up the Moonlight creek which was the name given to it by the famed American gold prospector George Fairweather Moonlight. He was a Californian prospector who first found gold in many parts of the South Island where he eventually settled. I discussed the claim that was for sale with Eric who was keen to have a look at it so we answered the advert. After two or three attempts we finally tracked the owner down in Greymouth. He was an older bloke called Herb. I guessed him to be about Sixty five to seventy and someone mentioned that he was a bit of an alcoholic and we soon found out there are many pubs in the Greymouth area. We eventually located him in one of them and he arranged to take us up to his claim the following day. He wasn’t a very early riser but we managed to get away in his old truck by about ten the next morning slowly crossing the Grey River bridge and heading for Blackball. This place was once a thriving coal mining town but was now slowly becoming a semi-derelict area after the mines closed down a few years earlier and you could now buy a house here for a couple of hundred dollars. From Blackball we proceeded up a rough shingle forestry road partly washed out in places and occasionally Herb would have to pull over and stop to let heavily loaded logging trucks, speeding downhill, pass taking up most of the narrow road. I thought it was a bit nerve racking but it didn’t seem to bother the old boy. We finally arrived at a large clearing in the bush that they called Andersons flat where Herb parked the truck. He slung an old haversack on his back with a gold pan sticking out of it and he was off like a hairy dog up a narrow path alongside the creek. I must say, for a man of his age, and supposedly an alcoholic he must have been as fit as a buck rat because we couldn’t keep up with the bugger. In fact he was sitting down having a spell at the first of three swing bridges we would have to cross to get to his gold claim. Herb shot off again and we caught up with him at an old dilapidated hut he wanted to show us that was in thick bush just a few metres off the track. It was as rough as guts inside with an old mattress on the floor but Herb said it was worth knowing about just in case some time we might be stranded up here in the Paparoa Ranges. Back on the track Herb had slowed down a bit so we managed to keep up with him and I was able to appreciate the beautiful surroundings as it was midday and the sun was reflecting off the fast flowing creek. We pressed on for another ten minutes or more to where the creek divided into two, “This is it,” said Herb dropping his haversack and pointing to the left and right branch of the Moonlight Creek. We sat down and rested for a while. It was the most peaceful place you could imagine, only the sound of the fast flowing water against the many large boulders strewn along the creek bed disturbed the silence. Herb told us a bit about its history and in the old days when up to a hundred Chinese immigrants had worked the river, at times manually diverting it to recover the gold and he reckoned they didn’t miss very much. He also said that over time the gold is replenished from its source high up in the ranges so there was always some to be discovered. Down at the forks of the creek we cleared a small area of boulders so Herb could pan a few dishfuls. He recovered plenty of black sand but only the odd speck of gold, not very exciting, but I was sure we could do much better if only we could get my suction dredge up here. Old Herb was asking five thousand dollars for the licence to the claim and I didn’t have a clue what a licence was worth but I was giving it some serious thought. The beauty of having your own gold claim was that no one could abuse you as this was crown land and you didn’t have to cross any private land to access it, which was a problem in many places. After unsuccessfully panning half a dozen likely looking spots up and down the creek we returned to Blackball where we stopped for a well-deserved beer at the local pub, now well known as the Blackball Hilton. We got talking to a chap in there who had a small claim up the Moonlight Creek and had also made himself a suction dredge. I told him I’d be interested to see it so he invited us over to his house. He not only showed us his roughly made dredge but also some of the gold he’d recovered with it from his claim and proudly showed us one nugget that weighed just under an ounce. I took a fancy to it and asked if he wanted to sell it, gold at the time was selling at about six hundred dollars an ounce but specimen nuggets were worth much more. He said he’d been offered twelve hundred for it but thought it was worth more so I offered him thirteen, he thought about it for a minute or two but decided not to sell, good job he didn’t for a couple of months later he told me he’d sold it to a Queenstown jeweller for Two thousand dollars. Back in Greymouth we told Herb we’d give a bit more thought to buying his claim and said we’d keep in touch before we headed off back to Christchurch. On the way I said to Eric I couldn’t imagine us humping a dredge and supplies two or three miles up the moonlight creek, crossing one man swing bridges and then having to start work when we got there. Frowning he agreed and we had a bit of a laugh about it. On the move again, I’m not really sure what causes it but as soon as Ann and I had brought our property up to scratch with nothing more we could do to improve it and having explored all the surrounding area, I’d want to be on the move again, much to Ann’s displeasure. I could only put it down to the intermittent severe bouts of depression I was suffering. Even though I enjoyed looking at other properties you wouldn’t think the trauma of shifting house would help my depression, but it did. I suppose because we were kept so busy. Unfortunately it was only temporary but at least it gave me a slightly better quality of life for a few months. The next house we moved into was a four storey modern home overlooking the estuary at Ferrymead and was known locally as the wedding cake house because of its four tiers. It had magnificent views from the top storey north along the coast as far as Kaikoura and was kept lovely and warm by never missing a minute’s sunshine. Being only a couple of years old there was very little work for us to do to the house, Ann set about re-designing the garden and I set about doing a bit of re-designing on the dredge. After a few more trips to the West Coast I wasn’t too happy with its performance so I decided to sell it and build a new one from scratch. I advertised it and was amazed at the number of people from all over the country interested in buying a lightweight gold prospecting dredge. Before I sold mine I took it to a couple of engineering workshops to get a price to manufacture them with a thought to selling them as a bit of a hobby. At one workshop a couple of engineers were very interested in what I was proposing to do, especially the buying of the gold claim and after a couple more meetings with them and a lot of discussion they asked to join up with me as partners and buy the gold claim. This was a great idea for me as I needed all the help I could get to cart all the gear up the moonlight so I agreed and a few days later I shot them over to the coast to have a gander at the claim which seemed to heighten their interest. Driving back to Greymouth we had to do a bit of a pub-crawl to locate Herb and I think it was in the third, or was it the fifth pub that we actually found him. I introduced him to my two partners George and Ray and we made him an offer that wasn’t as high as he was asking but over another couple of beers he accepted. Buying a gold claim from an individual is a very slow process but Herb was happy for us to have a go at it before the paper work came through which was many months later. The quickest way to buy a claim is from a company. All you have to do is to change the directors and it can be done just about overnight but we only found this out during our later dealings. I think my partners soon realized it would be too difficult a job to manually hump our gear and supplies up to the claim and at times this could be a little dangerous. These so-called creeks, especially the Moonlight which was very fast flowing, could become raging torrents within a couple of hours Ray suggested we hire a helicopter and after a bit of discussion we decided that was a good idea even though they charged four hundred dollars an hour. We arranged with a helicopter pilot to have all our gear including a tent and a pre-fabricated garden shed flown in. He would pick it up at Anderson’s Flat, the nearest point to our claim, at a certain time. He arrived a little late, helped us to load our gear, but reckoned it was a little too heavy for one trip so we had to make two. Ray volunteered to go with him and show him exactly where to land and they completed the job in less than an hour. In the meantime George and I tramped up to the claim to help Ray clear a spot to set up the tent and stow all the gear away. It was late in the afternoon by the time we got everything shipshape so we didn’t have any time to do a bit of prospecting and it was getting dark by the time we got back to the car. On the way home George and Ray were telling me that they were thinking of selling their engineering business so that would give them plenty of time to work on the claim. I suggested that I could take up my real-estate cobber Eric and we could live in the tent while we constructed the pre-fabricated shed. They agreed and the following week Eric and I shot back over to the coast. Parking at Anderson’s Flat we set off up the Moonlight creek on the narrow track to our claim. I was surprised that Eric could move quite fast when he wanted to even though he’d suffered a hip injury in a truck accident in the army and was always taking painkillers. Normally you couldn’t get him to move fast crossing a busy intersection in fast traffic. About half way there I was peering up through the bush when I got a nasty shock. I thought I saw a body hanging from a tree but on closer inspection we found it was only a wet suit that some prospector had hung up to dry. I found crossing the one-man swing bridges carrying supplies was a bit hair raising. They crossed deep ravines and some idiot would sometimes set them swinging when you were only half way across with only one hand free to hold on and giving you a bit of a scare. A bit further on we met the local forest ranger coming down the track. We stopped to pass the time of day and told him what we were planning to do. He seemed quite interested but warned us to keep an eye on the creek if it rained. I envied his job and his fitness but was shocked a few months later to hear he’d had a heart attack on that very same track and had died, so you never know. Arriving at our camp we found nothing had been touched except a possum had made our tent his residence and had scoffed all the tucker that we hadn’t put in tins, mostly crackers and biscuits. I set about tidying the place up while Eric made a brew of tea and after a bite to eat we sorted out a piece of level ground and built a foundation out of logs and stones to build our hut on. It took us about three days to complete, it was like a bloody jigsaw puzzle, about a hundred pieces and a fairly hard to understand pamphlet on how to assemble. We managed to complete the foundation and get the base down on the first day and as soon as it started to get a bit dark we had a makeshift meal in the tent and laid our sleeping bags out on the stony ground. We talked for a while but when the temperature started to drop rapidly we jumped into our sleeping bags fully clothed. I guess I didn’t sleep too well on that first night, as the ground was so rocky it was difficult to get comfortable. I got up once to move my sleeping bag into a better position and hearing a lot of grunting and queer noises going on in the surrounding bush, inquisitively I peered out of the tent flap shining my torch around the trees to see about half a dozen pairs of red beady eyes staring in my direction. Bloody possums I thought, waiting for an opportunity to come into the tent and search for tucker. They weren’t the least bit afraid of us. About an hour later I was dozing, Eric was snoring his head off and I could hear the little buggers rattling the pots and pans only a couple of feet away at the back of the tent. By the time I finally fell asleep it was almost time to get up so I dragged myself out of my sleeping bag and prepared a quick breakfast so we could get an early start. After breakfast Eric sat on a large rock studying the assembly pamphlet while I unpacked all the bits and pieces and spread them out on the ground. Eric said, “Right, I think I understand this now, lets get started, bolt piece A1 to B2, A2 to B4,” and so on. It sounded simple enough but we still made a few mistakes and had to undo some parts and redo them again. Being a couple of sun worshipers we’d have enjoyed this job much better if the sun had been shining but being camped in a deep valley we saw very little sunshine. If it wasn’t cloudy, as it could be for days, the sun would peep up over the mountains to the east for a couple of hours and then vanish down over the mountains to the west. I guess we were lucky it wasn’t raining as it could rain in this area for days on end but we managed to escape it for the five days we were there. On the second day we got a fair bit of work done, although getting the coreboard floor level on the uneven ground was difficult but we managed to get it sorted out by morning tea and by knocking off time the hut was starting to take shape but was by no means finished as I had hoped. We were not looking forward to sleeping another night in the tent. We must have worked too hard that day and within minutes of getting into my sleeping bag I was dead to the world. Some time during the night I slowly started to wake up from a very deep sleep and suddenly became conscious of a weight on my head. It was a friggin possum sleeping on my face for warmth. Startled I sat up and the bugger leapt across and landed on Eric’s head. He got such a fright he vanished down to the bottom of his sleeping bag thinking we were being attacked by some wild animal. The possum must have got a bigger shock than we did as it shot out of the tent like a rocket. Even though we’d left an oil lamp burning on low it hadn’t stopped them coming in. We had a good laugh about it but from then on I slept with the hood of my jacket up. On the third day just after lunch we had the hut about finished except for the sliding door which we must have assembled wrong and it wouldn’t fit properly. We decide to give it a spell, explore the area a bit and fix it later. There was a good walking track between the middle and right hand branch of the Moonlight Creek so we wandered off taking our time. Eventually we came to a small flat area littered with old heavy gold mining machinery and I said to Eric, “I wonder how the hell did they cart this heavy equipment all the way up here.” He answered me with his favourite reply to any question like that and said, “It wasn’t easy.” That answer of his always amused me. I thought, too bloody right it wasn’t easy as it must have weighed at least ten to twenty tons and there were no helicopters in those days. Sometime later I read that they’d used carthorses to drag the heavy machinery up there and some of the horses had died of exhaustion. I thought of my old carthorse Sam that I’d worked with as a boy. I reckoned he would have given it a go. Eric said , “We’d better get back and fix that sliding door and move our gear into the hut.” I agreed and had the happy thought of sleeping on a nice level floor with no visiting possums. We soon had the door fixed and settled ourselves comfortably in our new hut. After a bite to eat and a hot cup of tea we relaxed on our laid out sleeping bags and in the dim light of the oil lamp we discussed our plans for the next day. After a while I suggested to Eric that we get up early, cart our dredge down into the right branch of the creek which we’d been advised by the previous owner was the best of the three branches to recover some gold. He agreed and the next minute he was contentedly snoring away. I soon nodded off myself and we had the best sleep since coming up here but it put the kibosh on our early start as I didn’t wake up till nine o’clock. After a quick breakfast of porridge and a pot of tea we carted the dredge down to the creek which was up a bit as it must have rained during the night, but was still workable. Unfortunately the creek was strewn with many large boulders and we had to work pretty hard to clear a possy big enough to get a start, After about half an hour we struck the riffled rocky bed of the creek only about two and a half feet down. This pleased me as gold, being seventeen times heavier than water only ever goes in one direction in water and that’s down. The water was freezing cold and I wished that I had a dry suit so that I could go under and inspect the bottom. As it was we only had chest waders and you had to be careful not to bend over too far or they would fill up. I wore a pair of underwater goggles that I rested on the surface of the water. I could just barely see the sand and shingle being sucked rapidly into the six-inch nozzle collapsing the wall of shingle ahead as I weaved the nozzle from side to side. Eric was sitting on the bank relaxing so I shouted to him to grab a shovel and start clearing the tailings that were piling up behind the sluice-box. After working solid for just over an hour we were keen to pan out the wash in the sluice box. Opening up the box we let our eyes wander over the contents looking for any wee nuggets. Nothing, not even a fleck of gold. Emptying the wash into a couple of pans I spent about fifteen minutes carefully panning it on the edge of the creek while Eric gazed intently at the pan from where he was perched on a rock beside me. I said, “Plenty of black sand and a couple of lead pellets but no sign of any gold. He said, “Lets move a bit farther up the creek,” I suppose its quite normal to think of moving to another possy if you’re not successful immediately, but it takes up a lot of time and a fair bit of work to move everything and start again. I told him I’d prefer to stay where we were as I was down to bedrock and working a good face and besides the sun had peeped up over the eastern ridge and was shining right where I was working. The water was icy cold and even if there’s no wind the fast moving river creates a fair movement of air in the first six inches above the water that just about freezes your face but having caught a right dose of gold fever I hardly noticed it. We slogged our guts out for the next couple of days without success but it was a great break for us from dealing in property and I always felt better when I was working hard. We’d decided to leave the next morning and it had started to rain so we stowed all our gear in the hut, locked up and walked out to where we’d left the car at Andersons Flat. Although it was raining heavily I always liked walking in the bush. Coming out it was mostly down hill but we were sweating cobs when we arrived and I quickly made and enjoyed a sweet cup of tea. A couple of days later back in Christchurch I went to town to visit my two new partners George and Ray to let them know that we’d completed the hut up at the claim but hadn’t recovered any gold. They were pretty keen to go up there but were being kept very busy in their engineering workshop. I noticed they’d drawn a plan of my dredge in chalk on the floor and they said they were working on plans to improve the design. One good idea was to float the pump and motor on a truck innertube instead of having it on the bank, this would keep the unit much closer to were we were working and use less two inch fire hose which meant more pressure at the venturi. We also decided to use Stainless steel which would last much longer for the suction nozzle instead of mild steel. For the next few months we spent every opportunity we had to work on the claim, but to no avail. The gold up there was about as scarce as hen’s back teeth and we reckoned it had been cleaned out many times before us so in the end we decided to sell it. We sold it to Eric and a mate of his for the same price as we paid for it and they later re-sold it for treble the price. This gave me a bit of an idea so I suggested to my partners that we apply for some claims on the much more accessible rivers closer to Reefton where I had located traces of gold. In the back of my mind I had the idea that even if we didn’t find any gold, maybe we could make some cash dealing in gold claims. Of all the creeks and rivers I’d prospected on the coast I always seemed to be drawn back to the Blackwater Creek at Waiuta. You could always guarantee to come home from there with a few grains of gold in your pill bottle, but I think it was the easy access to most parts of the creek that really attracted me. Within five minutes of getting your gear out of the car you could be away working. After showing my partners, who had by had now increased to three after Ray and George had asked to let a friend of theirs join us, the different likely areas to put in claims for prospecting licences we finished up making applications for five on different rivers and creeks handy to Reefton. The first one we applied for covered about nine kilometres of the Blackwater river from the main road up to the wee ghost town of Waiuta. Our new partner was named Neville. He was a doctor and as keen as they come to join us on this gold prospecting venture. Ray and George had heard about a damaged caravan coming up for tender so they decided to put a bid in for it. They got it pretty cheap as a tree had fallen across the roof and caused quite a bit of damage but with Ray and George being engineers and with a little help from the Doc and I we had it shipshape in no time. It was a fairly heavy van and our idea was to tow it over to our claim at Waiuta. Luckily the Doc had a V8 Rangerover that was capable of towing it over the hills. We found a perfect flat spot to park the caravan beside the Blackwater Creek. The area was about half an acre in size, completely surrounded by hills and bush and out of sight from the forestry road that went uphill to Waiuta. It didn’t take us long to get settled in. Although it was a large caravan it only had two berths so Ray and the doc decided to sleep in the awning leaving George and me to sleep in the caravan. Next morning we were all up early keen as mustard to get a start in the creek, so after a slap up breakfast of smoked bacon and eggs we only had to cart the gear about fifty yards down to the edge of the river. Having four of us to work made the job so much easier clearing all the large stones out of the way which meant we could have the dredge going flat out within fifteen minutes. For the next hour we all had turns apiece at working the suction nozzle and the water was so clear when George had a turn he reckoned he could see flecks of gold being sucked into the nozzle. We thought he was having us on but he sounded serious enough to make us all keen to stop the motor to inspect the wash. I turned off the noisy motor and George slowly lifted the top off the sluice box and for sure he was right, there was a dozen or more tiny flecks of gold sitting along the top of the wash. George said, “This looks promising” as he ran his fingers through the wash looking for small nuggets, I said, “ I’ll get the pans” George liked panning and he was good at it so we left him to it on a small shingle Island of tailings while we moved up and started dredging again. This was quite exciting, or was it the gold fever taking a firmer grip About twenty minutes later above the noise of the motor I heard George shouting to us holding his hand up in the air. I thought, he’s found something so I hurriedly sloshed down the side of the creek towards him. He showed me a wee nugget surrounded by numerous flecks of gold and black sand in the bottom of the pan. George said, “It looks pretty good” and suggested I take it up to show the others. As it happened that wasn’t a very bright idea as I was almost up to them pushing against a fairly fast current when I suddenly slipped and went arse over kite head first into the bleedin’ creek loosing the lot as I tried to save myself. The air must have just about turned blue with the mouthful of obscenity I let out as my chest waders started to fill up making it more difficult to get myself up. Ray and George who had seen my bit of a comedy act were killing themselves laughing and were lucky I didn’t throw the empty pan at them. Later we dredged over the area where I had dropped the wee nugget hoping to find it again but we didn’t, although in the future we were to find many similar sized wee nuggets. We worked the claim as often as we could even though we hadn’t yet been granted a prospecting licence. The mines department were terribly slow granting licences and when we finally received ours it was quite helpful for me as by now I was selling the odd dredge. Previously the buyers complained of not having a licenced area to prospect so all I had to do was to give them written permission to work on our claim. That kept them happy and they really enjoyed themselves. About a hundred yards up from our camp the creek narrowed down to a mini gorge about six feet wide. The faces of the gorge were smooth solid greywacke stone and I reckoned by the angle of the sides that they would meet at the bottom about four or five feet down. We figured if we could dredge to the bottom where the gorge suddenly widened out there could be a pot of gold waiting to be sucked up. The reasoning behind this was that any gold that came down the creek would flow fast through the gorge but would drop to the bottom as the flow of water decreased suddenly. We started early one morning as there were some mighty big boulders to be shifted that were embedded in the creek. We would dredge around them until they were loose enough for us to move farther downstream with the help of the fast flowing water. We slogged it out all day and the deeper we went we noticed as George emptied each sluice box of wash and panned it out that the size of the flakes of gold increased. This was very encouraging and by the end of the day we had narrowed the solid stone sides of the gorge down to about three feet but still no sign of the bottom. I think we were all pleased that day to knock off when it became too dark to work as we were completely knackered. Luckily Ray who liked to do a bit of cooking had made a great pot of soup the previous day so I pulled it out from under the caravan and soon had it boiling on the gas stove. He’d also brought over a few bottles of wine that he made at home and boy! was it potent. After a large glass of that and a couple of plates of hot meaty soup I soon felt as fit as a fiddle. Yarning away after the meal about the day’s work and what we could expect to find the next day if we could only dredge down another couple of feet didn’t keep us from getting drowsy, making for our beds and slowly nodding off. It was just getting light when I awoke the next morning not too happy about having to work in the freezing cold creek but the thought of that imaginary pot of gold waiting to be dredged up encouraged me. I noticed dozens of sand flies on the caravan window opposite where I lay and every minute or so a wasp would come and pick one off. Someone told me that wasps only feed their young on protein and as far as I was concerned they were doing a great job. One could put up with wasps but sand flies gave me a hard time especially when I was panning. The back of my hands would be covered in them and some of the bites had turned septic. The next time the Doc came over he brought some surgical gloves for me and they were a great help. Leaving George to do the panning we plowed into the work early the next morning shifting some mighty big boulders jammed in the bottom with the aid of a couple of big crowbars. The occasional wee nuggets we found in the wash of the sluice box were definitely getting bigger which indicated we were closing in on the bottom. The only problem was that we were now working in over four feet of fast flowing freezing cold water and were beginning to get very cold and wet. In fact our chest waders were starting to fill up and to top it off, about half an hour later the heavens opened up and it started to pour down. I thought I’d seen some heavy rain when I was on a destroyer in the North Sea during the war but it was nothing like this. At sea the rain came at you horizontally in buckets, this came straight down in forty four gallon drums. Ray said, “I don’t like the look of this, I agreed and said, “We’ll have to keep an eye on this creek as it can come up fairly quickly.” Within half an hour of this downpour it had risen almost two feet. We just managed to scramble to the bank with our gear before it rose any further. Looking up, something drew my attention. I saw an old rusty handsaw jammed half through a long overhanging branch of a beech tree. I pointed it out to the others and we pondered what could have happened to the owner. One of them suggested it could have belonged to an old prospector who may have been washed away as the river rose so rapidly. By evening the creek had risen into a roaring torrent and we kept a close eye on it in case we had to move the caravan onto higher ground. It had eased off by the time we turned in so we decided to chance it as we were still about thirty feet from the creek. Sometime during the night the noise of heavy rain on the roof of the van woke me up suddenly. I got up and peeked out but the creek had only moved a couple of feet closer to us. Jumping back into bed I lay there listening and I could hear the large goolies (big rocks and stones) tumbling at speed down the creek. I couldn’t bear to think of what the area that we’d worked hard on for the last couple of days would look like in the morning. I woke to the sound of Ray shouting, “Get up you buggers, the rivers just outside the door.” We all scrambled out and were amazed to see our normally placid Blackwater Creek now a raging river just a few feet from our van and I couldn’t recognize the area where we’d been working. The gully had filled up with tons of goolies and forest debris. Our dreams of instant wealth had vanished overnight and we cursed the weather as we pulled down the awning, stowed our gear in the back of the Range-rover and moved the caravan onto higher ground to cook up some early breakfast. By now the rain had really set in and believe it or not it came down for thirty days solid. No wonder many people called it the Wet Coast instead of the West Coast. In these times some of the rivers actually changed course and uncovered fresh areas for us to prospect for gold. Luckily for us we didn’t hang about, as we knew it would be quite a few days for the creek to be at a workable level again. Actually it was a couple of months before we managed to get over there again and we weren’t game enough to have another go in the gully. It would have taken us many days to get down to where we were before and we just didn’t have the time as it was late May and the winter was closing in on us. I still say there could be a pot of gold for anyone game enough to get stuck into that gully with a suction dredge. You would have to pick the time of year with about ten days of fine weather, not that easy on the West Coast. Back in Christchurch during the winter I kept myself busy building a few more dredges and found it much easier to sell them now that we had a gold claim nine kilometres long that buyers could prospect to their hearts content. It certainly was an interesting hobby if you weren’t frightened of hard work, which reminds me of my friend Eric. He wasn’t frightened of hard work, he’d go to sleep right beside it, like he did once when I was showing him how to pan gold. My partners and I decided to form a gold exploration and mining company and set about making applications for gold prospecting licences on about half a dozen rivers along the West Coast that we had worked on. I guess my idea at the time was for sometime in the future to turn our hobby into a commercial business either working the claims or selling them. One of the claims we applied for was on Boatmans Creek at Cronadon a few miles south of Reefton. Licences can sometimes take years to come through but we received this one in only a couple of months indicating there had been no objections, so we thought. With the gold prospecting licence in my little hot hand I shot over to the coast by myself to test a few different spots in the creek. I stopped a couple of miles down the valley near a bridge that would give me easy access down to the creek. Before I had a chance to assemble the dredge a guy appeared on the bridge staring down at me, I said, “Hi” he looked at me for a moment and then said in not a very friendly manner, “What the hell are you doing here?” I said, “I’m just going to test my new gold dredge.” He said, “Not here you’re not, I own all this land and you haven’t got my permission” “Well” I said, “We’ve got a gold prospecting licence for this creek and that’s all we need” I pulled out the licence and showed it to him. After he read it he said, “This is the first I’ve heard of this, I’m going to ring my solicitor and check it out.” I followed him back to his house which was only about a hundred yards from the bridge. He didn’t even invite me in and just left me standing by the front gate. About two hours later he hadn’t appeared but his wife came out to see if I was still there and told me he was having a bit of trouble getting on to his solicitor in Christchurch. It was pretty cold standing about and I was hoping she would ask me in for a cup of tea but no such luck. I hung about for another couple of hours and was just deciding to leave when the farmer came out with his wife. He told me he’d got on to his solicitor earlier and he’d taken long time to check my licence out but said it was genuine and that it actually covered about a hundred acres of his farm. I told them we were only interested in prospecting the Boatmans Creek that ran through the middle of their property but they both gave me a hard time for over an hour saying that they weren’t interested in gold mining and all they wanted to do was to farm the property. Well I didn’t get any work done that day and in the next few months they got into me at every opportunity whinging about how they were anti-mining and only wanted to quietly farm their land. They seemed to be pretty genuine and after a while they got to me and I even started to feel a bit sorry for them so I suggested to my partners, who were not too keen to deal with angry farmers, that we let this chap have the licence because he was so unco-operative and would hinder us when ever possible. They agreed; as we were due to get some more licences that we’d applied for. I reckon that was the worst suggestion I’d ever made in my life. Within a couple of months the farmer had had all his land professionally tested, surrendered our prospecting licence to the mines department for a mining licence and with a relative started mining immediately, after continuously moaning to us that they had no interest in mining. That’s how gold effects people. I heard a few years later from the guy who did the testing for him. He told me this particular farmer had taken four million dollars worth of gold from this claim, then sold his farm and bought a big spread in Australia. He also added that he didn’t even get paid for doing all the testing. Yes, gold can turn normal people into criminals. Although we were granted four gold claims on the West Coast, like silly buggers we gave the best one away. I guess we didn’t realize what we were letting ourselves in for taking up gold prospecting, even as a hobby. The next one we applied for was on a large stretch of the Big River a few miles north of Reefton It covered some seven hundred acres including a small farm. I spoke to the owner of the farm and he informed me that he’d already taken out a licence on the whole area. I had an idea he wasn’t telling the truth so we checked with the mines department who told us that was not the case so we applied for it. As usual nobody seemed to object and we were granted a prospecting licence for six years. This really upset the farmer and unfortunately I had to pass his house up a dirt road to get down to the river to work. His was a rough property and he was a pretty rough farmer. His sheep always looked as if they had been dragged through a gorse hedge backwards and there were a few dead ones lying about that he hadn’t even bothered to bury. He also had a couple of fierce looking dogs that he told me he was training to attack me on command and every time I went near his house to talk to him they would come tearing out barking their heads off. I would bend down to their level and talk to them in a Donald Duck voice, they would stop dead a few feet in front of me and start wagging their tails, eventually coming closer to be patted. So much for his attack training. A very lazy disagreeable man if I ever saw one, he couldn’t get on with anyone, especially with the local forestry workers. I saw him one day in the local pub and his face looked as if it had been used for a punch bag. I heard later that he’d got onto a couple of forestry workers again and they turned on him giving him a good hiding. I had a bit of a laugh one time when we were having an argument and he called me a silver tongued Liverpool scouse git. I guess he’d been watching the T.V show, “Till death do us part.” Eventually once he got to know us he became more friendly. One of the reasons for applying for a claim in this area was because I read in the old days that a big sluicing claim had been worked there quite successfully. It must have been too successful as they didn’t leave any gold for us. We spent a few more years over on the West Coast whenever possible in our spare time but we never found that large elusive gold nugget that I’d often dreamed about. The closest we ever got to a large gold nugget was when one of my partners found a large chunk of white faceted quartz and without us knowing he had carefully painted large realistic looking streaks of gold around the periphery. It certainly looked the part and it sure had us fooled on the day he rushed down the river excitedly to where I was panning to show us what he’d dredged up. It took us quite a while to realize it wasn’t genuine, especially when we saw the smirk which he couldn’t contain on his face and he finally admitted to painting the gold on. Every year a well off French couple used to come on holiday to New Zealand and they always finished up on the West coast of the South Island. Every year a well off French couple used to come on holiday to New Zealand and they always finished up on the West coast of the South Island. This likable couple drove up to our Blackwater claim one day and had quite a chat with us. They told us they came from Paris where they owned a number of shops in the record business. They also explained to us that they had a private museum at their home and had a collection of old coins dating back centuries that they had found all over Europe using a couple of metal detectors. I told them that I also owned a metal detector but didn’t think New Zealand was a very good place to use them, telling them the best I could do was half a bucket of lead-head nails and the odd penny. They asked us if they could work on our claim so we lent them a sluice-box and a couple of pans and they worked like a couple of Trojans for days to recover a few flecks of gold. One day I borrowed the imitation gold nugget from the partner who’d painted it and in the afternoon from where I was working in the river I started jumping up and down, waving my arms about and shouting Eureka. The French couple who were getting stuck into the bank on the far side further up must have heard me and came dashing across to see what was up. Excitedly I showed them the nugget as if I’d just dredged it up, their eyes almost popped out as they inspected it closely and I found it hard to keep a straight face. This practical joke started to back fire on me a bit when the husband suddenly said, “I’ll give you two thousand dollars for it right now” What could I say, they actually thought it was genuine and I was beginning to feel a little embarrassed. Not wanting to end the joke too soon. I left them saying that I would hop along to show it to my partners who were working further up the river and as soon as I told them they said jokingly “Take it before he changes his mind” I didn’t want to keep the French couple in suspense too long so I told them when they dropped into the van for some late afternoon tea and we all finished up having a good laugh about it especially when I told them I’d been completely fooled by it myself. A couple of days later they invited us to dinner at the Ikamatua hotel and boy! What a meal it was. After a few drinks we started off with a gorgeous dish of crayfish followed by the most delicious meal of roast beef I’d ever tasted considering at that time this hotel was virtually out in the wop wops. The wine also flowed as if we were royalty and although I was close to bursting, not being a very big eater I couldn’t resist the lychees and cream they served up for sweet. I thought this lot is going to cost a pretty penny but when we offered to pay our share the French couple wouldn’t hear of it, even though we insisted. We certainly spent a very pleasant evening mainly chatting about our gold prospecting experiences and the French couple telling us about their discovering many ancient coins from all over Europe using their metal detectors. I doubt if the same hosts would be at the Ikamatua Hotel today but if they are and you’re in the district, drop in and enjoy a meal of a lifetime. Thanks for reading my story. Have fun. Doug.

Coming Soon . . .

ARE YOU THE OWNER OF THIS SITE?

When you build your Tripod site, your pages will be displayed at this address.
To start building your site, click one of the links below:

• Building Basics - Getting started is as easy as 1-2-3!
• Site Builder - Build a site in minutes! No HTML skill required!

ARE YOU VISITING THIS SITE?

Tripod has everything you need to build a GREAT website! Easy to use tools. Expert
advice. Free domain names. No pesky ads. Join today!

Learn More | Sign Up!

» Lycos Worldwide

About Terra Lycos | Help | Jobs | Advertise | Business Development

Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of the Lycos Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions