Granger 26
- This article is a Biography
- Chapter 26 - Back tracks
Here I will break off and back track a long way, to cover one or two little facets of Ethels life and my own, some apparently irrelevant may be, but many are relevant to the events that followed, so they should be brought into the picture, for without them, one cannot set the true perspective. They may indeed be little things, but in that way our lives are moulded. "Great oaks from little acorns grow." and our lives are fabricated on very small events or facts, which tend to turn us in the direction we shall ultimately follow, or which by accumulative action builds our future for us. I was a quiet studious introspective youth, getting a scholarship to the Grammar School, where mainly I was interested in scientific subjects and practical work. When I left at 17, I had passed the Cambridge Senior Local Examinations with Honours and if I had been wise I would have gone to college, after another two years at school. But I was anxious to get to work to earn some money, also I doubted if my parents could have afforded it. So I left, in the hope of becoming an engineer, to work for the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. But my job was in the stores and checking the time clocks round the works. This did give me the chance to see lots of work being done round the factory; for twice a day I had to make a tour of the shops to see late arrivals; all for 16 shillings a week. After 9 months I left to become a pupil teacher, so before I was 17, I found myself, alone in front of a class of mixed, unruly 11-year-old children, trying to instill learning into their unwilling minds, with no experience as to how to go about it. Two months at Shelford and I was moved to Trumpingdon, where at least I was placed under supervision and guidance at £40 per annum, until end of the term in which I became 18 and could be recognised as an uncertificated teacher.
This meant an application, which got me a job in Soham Boys School at £100 per annum. It was 20 miles from home, so I went into lodgings for the week, for which out of my princely salary of £2 per week I paid 25/ -, leaving me with less 15/ - myself.
When I had begun at the Secondary school I started riding a bicycle, a Raleigh 3 speed road racer, with a carrier on the back and often with a basket on the handle bars.
Therefore on Monday mornings I started from home about 7:30am to get over the 20 miles ride to work by about 8:30, to get to work at 9 am. In the darkest winter months I usually stopped over until Saturday before returning home, laden with my clothes strapped on the carrier, but by February, I would leave work at 4 pm and go straight home, wet or fine. Usually I didn't mind the cold, but wind and snow were the element I dreaded most, for the winds across the Fenland roads could be very fierce, sometimes the staff had a party and I would then ride home about midnight.
One February Friday, riding home, in a high wind, and hoping to eat the daylight, I got behind a lorry to break the wind, so I was doing a good 25 MPH. All of a sudden, about 3 miles out or Ely, I hit a stretch of loose granite stones where they had filled in the road. I knew I could not hold the machine an I got speed wobble, and felt I was about to come off. Next thing I remember, it was nearly dark. I was standing beside the pump, just through Stretham, feeling wretched and being violently sick, though I can never remember riding that last 3 miles to get there. Luckily someone saw me, took me into the pub nearby, for I was covered in mud and blood, and kindly put me on the 109 bus for home, where the conductor put me off. I had abrasions and a pair of black eyes and was off work for 6 weeks, before I could pick up my bike and bring it home. How I got on my bike, picking up my hat and rode the last 3 miles is a secret I shall never know, but a good ┬╛ hour had been lost. Perhaps some good Samaritan picked me up and helped me, but I will never know.
It was at the end of the year that I got my first motor cycle, borrowing the money from my aunts, a ┬╛ hp Raleigh 2 speed belt drive. Also about that time that I began with Mary. She was not the first woman to whom I had been attracted and kissed, but the first with whom I had any real connections. It was then too, I purchased my first camera a second hand V.P. Kodak, a good little camera and I kept it for some years, soon learning to develop, print and later to enlarge, by home made apparatus. My father had bought a house with a shop, which sold shoes, so that my mother was in charge of the shop while my father worked in the back room as his workshop. It was on the corner of Milton Road. Behind it was an old disused stable, which I turned into a workshop, dark room and laboratory, where I had an old treadle lathe, very simple, so I could make most things I wanted, including a balance. I fitted it out with electric light from the house with overhead wires, here I would spend week ends, sometimes with Mary later with Ethel. Eventually, I gave the V.P.K. to Mary who had it for many years.
I next launched out with a Contessa V.P. camera, with compur shutter, f4.5 lens, to which I later adapted a focussing scale. This I used for many years until in the end I gave it to my daughter, after adapting it to square colour shots. Later I added an Ensign Portrait camera 116 size, with a focussing scale which took nearly postcard sized pictures, which in the end I sold. Later I got a Ross Ensign camera 3½ x 2½, which I still have, although I have added a 35mm Paxette and Exacta Reflex since then, as well as come Double 8 cine cameras too.
Meanwhile, at Soham, I had moved to a new lodge, when the other one took in another lodger. The new lodge was in the middle of Soham, with a Club opposite, where I spent most of my evenings playing billiards Russian Pool &:A bridge instead of studying. I became pretty good at billiards, with my own cue, and was awarded a handicap, but I was supposed to be studying, which I did after midnight. When I sat for the Acting Teachers' Certificate Examination held in Cambridge, so I was home for a week, and I was lucky to pass with honours in Chemistry, for that was one subject I had really gone to town, and I guess I surprised the examiner. I suppose that was just aquirk of my contrary nature, for with the Cambridge I had done badly in Chemistry which put me on to doing plenty of private study, and in my laboratory I had gone on to making dyes and explosives. This was the last acting teachers exam held, so as I had passed, I then became a fully certificated teacher, able to command the enormous salary of £3 per week.
This meant leaving Soham, after an application to obtain a post, with success. I was sorry in a way to leave this large country village where for over 4 years I had tried to inculcate some rudiments of education into a class of 45 unruly, 11 to 12 year olds, who did not want it. I suppose I was a pretty stern disciplinarian, wielding the cane when required. It meant leaving my nice lodgings and the club, when I moved to Peterborough's biggest boys' school, where I found classes of 60 was usual, with no free time either for marking. I was in lodgings a few yards away for the week and motor cycled home the 35 miles on Friday or Saturday as before, returning early on Monday mornings. I decided that the marking of 60 books every evening was not for me, and I had already been to some classes to study for the City & Guilds Handicraft Examination, so when there was an opening at the Nelson Street Handicraft Centre, I applied, and got the job. It was a double centre in charge of a nice chap, Mr Pugh, who helped me to take and pass the City and Guilds Exam, which gave me an increase of £1 per month. I was there when I got married, on a salary of £13 per month , which did not give much spare cash to spend on luxuries; but one could live comfortably, as we did, on £6 a month for groceries and food.
I had left my old lodgings and moved nearer to my place of work, where there were 3 men lodgers, and one of them lent me my first copy of London Life to read. I worked with Mr Pugh for 15 years, until he retired. It was my own fault, not applying for his place in time that I lost out, but I got on pretty well with the new man. It was then that I applied for and got a fire arms certificate, got a rifle a Repeating Remington .22 and also a .22 Target pistol, although I did have some trouble getting the permit at first until I got a solicitor on the job. Later I bought a 2 inch telescope. Later we shifted the handicraft centre to Queen Street, from where I was moved during the war, due to my now advanced political opinions. I moved to a mixed school, taking other subjects now including gardening.
At the end of the war, when the craft teacher returned, I was moved to a Grammar school for a short time and then to Orchard Street, a mixed school, where I finished up my time as Astronomy and Handicraft master. It was a very happy school. I enjoyed it.
As for my politics, these had developed along a natural channel. My father was a virulent Liberal, or anti Tory, but at Soham, I came under the influence of one of the masters, who was a confirmed Socialist, so I became converted so that we did join the Labour party in Peterborough for a time. However the mess at the beginning of the war, and various books I read, turned me further to the left, so that I came out in lots of ways, speaking on public platforms, a thing I once dreaded, but got over my stage fright. Also I became the Editor of a small monthly paper, and learned to write in a journalistic style. It was all good training and every facet was a help in later years. In fact, in the post-war election, we both did a lot of work to help get the new Socialist M.P. elected here. He was so pleased, that afterwards, he invited us both up to Leeds, where he lived for a week; and took us round the House of Commons one day.
My first motor cycle was worn down, so I bought another, a 2┬╛ H.P. Raleigh Sports, with chain drive and 3 speeds, which was an fast as most things on the roads. Petrol when I started was 2/4d a gallon, but was now down to as little as 10d gallon for R.O.P so I could go home every week to meet Ethel. There was a 30 MPH limit everywhere then. When I married her, and before we both rode on it, going home each week end until a week before the birth came. Afterwards, when the licence ran out I put it in the shed, hoping to get it out one day, but I never did. In the end in 1958 I old it as a vintage machine for £10. We would now go home on the bus, which was 5/ - return fare to Cambridge. After walking to school for some time I brought over my fathers old 3 speed bicycle and I used that to get to work, and during the war time until it tell apart. I bought another 3 speed second hand machine, which continued in service until we became motorized properly. Ethel later brought over her mother's bicycle, a sit up and beg machine, so we could both get around easily.
Marriage changed many things. When I married her she was 2 months pregnant. This is what we agreed, that if she became pregnant, as I hoped she would, then she would let me know, get a special licence, to get married right away. As I was a confirmed atheist, it was against my principles to get married in a church, so it was to a registry office we went for the ceremony, with no nonsense or fuss. I had spent most of my money on the new motor cycle some time before, we had about £30 between us at the end of the wedding. Not a lot, but things were cheap in those days. As I have said, she was a very dainty little wife, in a very short dress for the wedding.
Ethel had come from farming stock, and was not innocent when I met her. She had been working at Woolworth's, when I first met her, but got the sack because she cheeked the manager. She also lost her man friend too and was pretty miserable. Afterwards, she got a job on a newspaper, selling for orders around East Anglia. Here she met someone who had a furnished flat to rent, and fixed it up with her. This we went into, for our honeymoon, after the week end. It was a nice little place, heaven to us then, but that was soon broken, when at the end of the week the landlady said she had sold the house. She was wife of a sea captain, and when the captain was away, all sorts of things went on with her and her daughter. On the Saturday morning., when our notice expired, we were told the bed had been sold and the van was outside to take it away. Heaven ended quick.
We had already got a place with a dear old maiden lady and stopped there for 6 months, but when Ethels time was nearly up, she got so worried about it that she said we must go. So down the street in a handcart we trundled our few bits and pieces to an unfurnished flat, where my daughter was born. Ethel wore her first real corsets there. It was there we brought our first two kittens from Ethel's home, Smutty, a black female with white feet and bib, and Fluff, a grey male with white feet and bib. Smutty lived 10 years to have lots of kittens, many greys which we sold, and Fluff lived to be about 13 years old. Since then we have had many cats, never without one or more.
The house we were in was sold, so fed up with moving I borrowed from my aunt and with a mortgage bought the house in which we now live for £600, to pay it all off in 10 years @ 4% interest. What lovely days they were.
When we went home we always took the cats with us, on the bus in a travelling box. They were quite used to it and settled down very well. We went home every holiday. Even the house we bought was occupied for a fortnight, while the owner's wife had her baby. So we went home for that period until we could move in.
I am always ready for any adventure, so it may be appropriate to mention that after the war, when my daughter was about 16 and had her own bicycle we decided that we would cycle home. With our luggage on the back carriers, including the box with the cats, and baskets loaded we set out. However we had done about 12 miles when they wanted to stop. A great mistake, I found, for when I got on again I soon got terrible cramp, although Ethel laced as she was, did not suffer. I was in agony all the rest of the way, but we got there in the end. Coming home it was all right. We afterwards did it again and this time without trouble. That briefly covers our history, and I hope you have not been too bored with it. But you see we were always living on a shoe string, or I should have done many things I otherwise would have wished but could not afford.
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