Ian Copinger

Welcome to my website!

1

At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurses arms.,

      I was born in a nursing home, "The Gables", on Elswick Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, on 15th July 1936. St. Swithins day which accounts for the fact that I have rarely had a dry birthday. I was the first and, in the event, the only child of Charles Alexander Copinger and his wife Flora McDonald Copinger, nee Furness.

      My mother was the adopted daughter of William Furness, a blacksmith, and his wife Lillian, nee Bielby, who originated in the small village of Hawnby in the depths of North Yorkshire. Flora had been "adopted " as a child from Kenneth and Mary Jane McDonald who lived, according to her birth certificate, at 54 Henry Nelson Street, South Shields. This is a two bedroomed flat a somewhat energetic stones throw from the sea. Adoption of course was not formalised until 1927 but my grandparents Furness went on to adopt another daughter, Joan, through an advert in a local morning paper.

My stage was Rowlands Gill, Co. Durham, or at least that is where it was until boundary changes moved it into the political area of Gateshead. Here we lived first in a semi-detached bungalow in Norman's Road. We moved once within the village into "Ingleholme", Station Road, a two bedroomed bungalow which we occupied until after my father's death in 1958.

      The house was situated high above the main road through the village and had a pleasant view across the valley. I was favoured by having a bedroom at the front of the house with that view.

      Rowlands Gill was a cross between a pit village and a dormitory for Newcastle business men and workers. The village housing was rather peculiarly graded from East to West. To the East, down beside the River Derwent were streets of houses each of which no doubt had a name but were collectively known as "the bottoms". They were almost entirely occupied by miners in conditions which varied from modest but clean to positively squalid. It was to those houses that the unmistakable Fever Ambulance made regular visits.

      Further to the East lay two more rows of colliery houses, the village school and opposite it the colliery. The close proximity of the school to the colliery seemed to be convenient since a proportion of boys left the school on a Friday to begin a lifetimes work there on the following Monday.

     In the middle of the village were more pleasant streets of houses while to the West stood the larger detached houses of the middle classes.

The upper classes and the landed gentry were not represented in the village although their land was. On the South side of the river lay Gibside Estate owned by the Bowes-Lyon family. Within the estate stood a chapel designed by Adams which, in my childhood, was used annually for a harvest festival service. There was a roofless banqueting hall which stared back across the valley through empty windows and a tall monument on top of which was a figure whose outstretched hand was supposed to hold some gold coins. The whole estate was in the immediate care of a gamekeeper, Dick McQueen, who could smell the presence of small boys the moment they entered his domain.

I will attend to the rest of the stage as time goes on.

My infant memories are few. I vaguely recall a seaside holiday at Silloth, perhaps falling into the water burnt it into my memory. I remember being looked after by a "girl" called Dorothy, my nursemaid.

A photograph reminds me of a childhood visit to Darlington Park and a fascination for some birds in a cage straight opposite the entrance.

The first time Marshall Green appears in my memory was the occasion when I was being dressed in full Highland dress and paraded into the living room to the apparent delight of all present. I could probably make an accurate guess at the relatives who had gathered there but my memory is of a sea of faces in a room lit by a blazing fire and an oil lamp.

Marshall Green plays such a major part in my life and memories that it demands at least its own later chapter.

2

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.

I attended the local infants school though rather sooner than my mother had expected. Since my birthday was in July some strange ruling of the Education Act demanded that I start school with the Easter term while I was still 4, a fact which seems to have escaped my mother and the School Attendance Man was obliged to remind her. I was quickly bundled off to start my education.

My memories of infant school are little better than my pre-school memories and solely involve individual teachers.

Miss Daley taught the alphabet from a blackboard covered with artistic representations in coloured chalk of the key articles for which each letter stood. "Aa" was an apple that could have been plucked from the board and eaten. After lunch a short nap was enforced. Everyone's head was down on the desk in the hopes, largely I suspect of Miss Daley, that sleep might come. Multiplication tables were chanted. Milk in half pint bottles was handed out at morning play-time, frozen in winter and just slightly "off" in summer. The headmaster had a habit of walking through a class calling out the question, "What is 100 times nothing?" to which we dutifully and in unison replied "Nothing Sir". I have to admit to sometimes questioning whether the value of that mathematical snippet wasn't out of proportion with the effort which went into teaching it.

The transfer from infant school to junior school took place by a ceremonial march through an otherwise unused gateway in a wall separating the two playgrounds. New and terrifying masters met us.

Mr. Thomas with his grey, chalk covered, suit whose Arts and Crafts lesson on "how to make and sew up a small booklet" I have never forgotten and is the base on which this book really owes it's existence. Nor have I forgotten him being led gently away having suffered a heart attack in the middle of a lesson. His attempts to make me learn by heart the poem "I must go down to the sea again......." failed miserably.

Inevitably we all moved onwards and upwards to Mr. Swan's class. A small man but noted for his ability with a strap. Reminding myself that this book is intended for a readership about 100 years on from the abolition of corporal punishment in schools I ought to explain that comment. A strap or tawse was a strip of stout leather about 18 inches long and nearly 2 inches wide. One end was cut into several strips for a length of about 6 inches. It was swung down onto the outstretched hand of a badly behaved boy as many times and with such force as the master thought would prevent the boy from repeating his wrong doings.

The school had no playing field so to my great delight we were spared the effort of many outdoor games in particular football. Those words coming from someone in an area where the game was more a religion then a sport is almost heresy. We had gardening as a lesson. Or at least we were periodically called on as a class to do work in the school garden which just happened to be adjacent to the head master's house. I was particularly good at garden bonfires and could build one so that all the rubbish was consumed over a period of a few days. I was particularly bad at digging and accidentally stuck a garden fork through another boys foot. Actually it went through his shoe and exactly between two toes and I was fooling about anyway. I can't remember who he was but many years later when, as a child, my eldest daughter did exactly the same to her own foot I remembered him and did wonder if this was some sort of justified revenge.

The walk to and from school, about a mile, was pleasant enough. There was the option of staying on the road in poor weather or in fine weather taking a "short-cut" through a deep valley at the side of the road filled with bushy vegetation through which ran a rough path. Here the scenes watched on last night's cowboy and indian film could be re-enacted.

The winter of 1940-41 brought special problems and enjoyment. It brought record snow falls, deep drifts and wide spread chaos as the North of England ground to a halt.. At my age it was new, enjoyable, and normal.

Meanwhile, in the real world, a war was raging, which is why the extent of the problems brought on by the heavy snow falls was not widely reported. Having started when I was three quite a lot of it totally missed me. Things happened but for quite a long time I really didn't understand the significance of them.

To save travelling and to escape the bombing my father had to close his office in Newcastle and move it lock stock and secretary into my bedroom. Turning a large bookcase so it's back was towards me and my wardrobe so its' back faced the office split the room in half. A heavy green curtain was hung in the gap to complete the transformation. However I retained the window end and the view.

Most people had "Anderson Shelters" constructed out of six sheets of curved corrugated steel with flat sheets at the ends one of which had an opening cut into it. These were bolted together to form a shelter, usually sunk into the garden to some extent and covered with as much soil as possible for further protection from blast .They invariably flooded. We had what seemed to be a massive dug out shelter totally constructed from reinforced concrete with a sufficient number of steps down to it to hurt when I drove my pedal car down them. The shelter was equipped with electric light, a drop down table and bunks. It didn't flood but always smelt of wet cement. I really can't remember how many nights we spent in it having been woken up by the sound of an air raid warning. I do remember that after a night time air raid we all had the morning off school.

At home we all had black out curtains or some form of light proof shuttering so that no tell tale chink of light should escape to guide in the German bombers. Air Raid Wardens patrolled streets to ensure the effectiveness of the black out. Cars had special hoods over their lights directing light downwards so efficiently that drivers could hardly see forwards.

Rowlands Gill could hardly be described the first choice to be bombed by an enemy. However it lay between although some distance from two other targets, a coke works at Winlaton Mill and a steel works at Consett. When the time came for them to either pull the finished coke from the oven or pour the white hot steel from the kiln they had to do it. So while homes were securely blacked out there were times when it must have been possible to see Winlaton Mill and Consett from the sky for unimaginable distances. The field around the Winlaton Mill coke works was pock marked with bomb craters and remained so for many years but I am not aware of the works themselves ever being hit. After one such raid I remember my father bringing in an incendiary bomb, one of many which had been dropped in and around the village but none of which had exploded. His near mistake was to hand it to my mother who almost dropped it on the kitchen floor. I fancy the fall of three feet might have done what the drop from the aircraft failed to do.

One of the more obvious symptoms of war on a village is usually that men are not so much in evidence. The main male occupation in the village was in the local colliery, an essential war time occupation which could relieve many of them from being called up into the forces. My father, an engineer, was commissioned into the Royal Engineers but in the event was not called up. He was colour blind and in any case his employers Harland Engineers were engaged on war work and he was their chief engineer and manager in the North East of England.

There were however a lot of my school friends whose fathers were not at home. The father of one of them was known to be in India and we all begged him to write to his father asking him to send us each a Gurkha knife. About a month later I found what I later learned was a cobblers curved leather knife behind the back door under the letter box. I took some persuading that it wasn't the Gurkhas knife sent by my friends father. The father of another boy was known to have been taken prisoner by the Japanese, a piece of information spoken of in a tone which demonstrated the seriousness of the situation. I know he didn't come back.

     Food was rationed and families had to "register" with grocers and butchers to receive their allotted weekly ration. An essential war time measure to ensure a healthy diet and fair shares for all it finally vanished 1954. The village had three main food stores. Walter Wilson, Laws and the inevitable Co-operative. The Co-operative store was made up of members for whom it catered and gave them back a dividend on the money they had spent over the year. To some that was a bonus, to others it became an essential part of their income. To me one of the joys of the Co-op was the aerial tramway contraption by which those serving the customers transferred money in a sealed tube by clipping it to a holder on a wire along which it was catapulted to a central office within the shop. Moments later the tube was returned to the same position containing the customers change. We of course were registered with Walter Wilson's where no such niceties existed.

We were lucky in that our rations were supplemented by eggs from the farms at Marshall Green and stored in a large earthenware mixing bowl in a solution of "waterglass" a mixture which sealed the egg shell and preserved it for much longer than would normally be possible. I have no memory of ever going hungry because there was no food in the house.

My mother was an accomplished pianist and I would go to sleep on many nights to the music of Debussy. She taught many of the children in the village to play the piano or the organ. An early attempt was made to introduce me to some musical learning. A half size violin was bought from Windows, the music suppliers in Newcastle and I was sent to a man in the village who had the ability to teach the instrument. I regret that he failed as did my mother in her many attempts to teach me to play the piano. I was always surrounded by classical music whether it was on the wireless, my mother's playing or on record. Records were brittle shellac discs which hurtled round a turntable powered by clockwork or an electric motor at 78rpm. A steel needle or, for a gentler tone, a sharpened wooden needle which looked like a thorn ran in the groove and a wonderful sound was emitted. Well it was wonderful then. The playing time of these old records was so short that a lot of time was spent turning or changing them.

Music was a major part of my mother's life and the eventual creation on the wireless of "The Third Programme" devoted entirely to classical music and discussions on it was an absolute joy to her. Having said that, being forever "shushed" at when walking through the house in the middle of a major work did become something of a bore.

I was nine when the war ended. My mother woke me up one summer evening with the news and told me I could get up which I happily did and ran around our front lawn waving a Union flag. I can't remember that the news came as the relief which it perhaps should have done but certainly I was aware that I was present at a joyous occasion. Unlike so many of my age the war did not seem to have touched me so harshly. My father had had the luxury of running a car throughout the war so that a car and a telephone, neither of which was universally owned, had always been the norm for me. I say he ran a car but actually he owned several. His car was a large Humber. (You'll have to look that one up in the car history books) During the war spare parts were impossible to get so he bought similar cars from a couple of people who could not get petrol coupons and left the cars lying around the countryside so that he could cannibalise them for parts as and when required.

The end of the war eased some restrictions, travelling became easier, and, over a period, heralded the return of some things we as children had never seen. What's a banana? At one point the rumour spread through the village that a small fruiterer was about to get a delivery of bananas. The inevitable queue quickly formed and kept on growing. The consignment turned out to be one box of bananas which, even with self restraint and strict allocation only served a quarter of the queue. Sweets which had been on ration throughout the war stayed on ration but at least a variety became available.

Cigarettes had been available secretly and under the counter throughout the war but strictly rationed by the shopkeeper. My father had 20 Players and some pipe tobacco every day of the war and our apparently well-to-do neighbour had 20 Passing Clouds. Strange cigarettes like "Pasha" a strong Egyptian cigarette, and "Bar One" of unknown origin, started to appear in the shops just in time for my age group to start smoking behind the school toilets and in garden sheds. Well they had smoking cinnamon sticks beaten.

At school we all met a major landmark in our lives. The 11-plus examination. I don't know why 11-plus, I was 10 when I sat this one off chance to form the rest of your life. Passing it sent you to the Grammar School. Failing it sent you to the "Tech"., although I have a memory of one of our number, Ben Ackerly, whose father had a George Medal for bravery in saving lives in a colliery accident, didn't even sit the exam on the grounds that he had great difficulty in getting past writing his name. I also seem to remember that he was leaving school to go and work in the colliery.

The "Tech" at High Spen, taught a more practical curriculum and excluded the Latin and French of the Grammar School. In the event I and most of those who were expected to pass the exam did so.

　

Hookergate.

September saw a new batch of whining school boys with satchels and very obviously new uniforms heading into Hookergate Grammar School. The uniform was a green blazer and cap each with a badge in gold, well it was more egg yolk than gold, a tie in green and gold stripes and grey trousers. I think most of us had moved from shorts into long trousers by then, a transition not too far removed from growing into manhood.

Here we were to spend the next five years under the tutelage of masters and mistresses with flowing gowns as befitted their station in life, and with just the suggestion that they had only recently given up wearing mortar boards as well. Here were new characters to inspire or terrify.

Mr Flynn who taught sport, woodwork and some maths, recently returned from the war where he flew Sunderland Flying Boats. You'll have to look that one up, try Jane's aircraft of the second world war. He would spin the unlikely yarn about dropping green paint onto the sea so as to coat the periscopes of surfacing submarines. They then didn't realise that they had surfaced and would keep on rising until they reached an altitude of 5,000 feet at which point the Sunderland shot them down. No one believed it but it was better than his maths lesson.

The brothers Biffer and Basher Bates who respectively taught Art and chemistry. Mr Elias, Latin and Greek Dr. White, French. Mr Errington, a small man who taught maths and who could unerringly hit any child in the room with either a piece of chalk or a blackboard rubber. I probably owe any expertise I have at English to Miss Joan Andrews who joined the school in my second year and who I met again after I had left school. There were of course more, some of whom I didn't meet very often and anyway this is not a list of old school teachers.

Discipline in the school was maintained by terror of or respect for the teacher or, when all else failed, "lines". Writing out the sentence "I must not (whatever the offence was)" one hundred times became a bore even if it didn't remind you not to re-offend. On one occasion when our whole class must have been feeling rebellious we were all given 50 lines during the first lesson. Our rebellious mood obviously continued because successive teachers during the day added to it so that by the close of school we had all been given 1000 lines. The task was lessened slightly by carefully tying together three or four pencils in such a manner that the action of writing one line could in fact write four. A second line of control over the pupils, mainly in force in the playground, were the prefects, the elite of the 6th form, who had the power to hand down lines or for more serious offences refer the erring child to the duty master.

Beyond "lines" was the punishment of "detention" which involved being kept in school for 30 minutes after school on Friday. The time was spent doing homework. One result of detention was of course that you missed the school 'bus and had to make your own way home. In good weather this gave me the choice of walking home via the main road or taking a "short cut" through the woods which would take me from the edge of the school playing fields to within a stones throw from home. On a sunny Friday afternoon when I knew that by the time I reached home my Mother would have started her music lessons and my tea would be left on the table it wasn't even a choice, out of school, sharp left and into the woods.

Briefly the school was built as a long rectangle containing within it three quadrangles separated from each other by two rows of cloakrooms and a path beside them. One for the boys, one for the girls and one sex was forbidden to walk down the path beside the cloakroom of the other. On one of the long sides of the rectangle were three classrooms, and the Physics, Chemistry, Biology labs and the Art room. A Geography Room and a Woodwork room were situated up stairs at corners of the building. On the other side were sets of classrooms, three per quadrangle. At one end of the building was a dining room and at the other end a Hall used for gatherings of the school and indoor sports. It was I suppose a fairly modern building or at least did not give the impression of being out dated. Behind it were the foundations for an extension which the war stopped and which were never re-started in my time there.

The school day started with either a lesson on religious studies or, usually a Friday, by the school congregating in the hall for a service and brief comments by the Head Master, Mr. Troup, making one of his rare appearances.

These were charitable days and collections were regularly made for one charity or another. An announcement with due applause would be made at the next congregation of the amount gathered. We quickly noticed that on these occasions Mr. Troup always wore a crisp new white shirt.

During my first year of religious studies I learnt the valuable lesson that I was no good at cheating. I was called on to read the results of my previous night's homework which should have been some comment on one of the gospels and which I had not written. I tried to bluff it out by boldly standing up with my homework book and confidently read my supposed thoughts. I think I lasted a faltering half minute before it became obvious that I was gazing at a blank sheet and speaking out of an equally blank mind.

The school playground was divided into two by a lawn. It was not a rule but it just happened that the lower playground was used mainly by girls while the upper area, (the whole site sloped gently to the East) was used mainly by the boys. No doubt the position of the respective toilets had a lot to do with it but the word "mainly" in this paragraph should be noted. Beyond the playgrounds to the East lay the playing fields large enough for two football pitches and a hockey pitch which in due season turned into a cricket ground. Here were the scenes of my worst disasters. I didn't like sport. Football was played on cold wet days and cricket was just a mystery. On those occasions when I had been unable to find an excuse not to appear I stood around the football pitch looking lost and feeling cold and in the cricket season when called to bat I was invariably caught off the first ball I could hit with my bat.

Bullying in the school didn't seem to be a problem. I have to say that I was very tall for my age and I played most of the time with Ron Charlton who was probably the second tallest in the school and John Lewis who undoubtedly the tallest in the school. The world being as small as the average pea it so happened that many years later John Lewis's nephew married my eldest daughter.

The school day followed the pattern laid down in the timetable as dictated by the curriculum. The boys did woodwork while the girls did cookery. The day was punctuated by a brief play-time morning and afternoon and a longer lunch break. For reasons it seemed purely of "ladies first", the girls went into first lunch while the boys waited for a second sitting. Because their where more boys than girls it was possible for some boys to get in with the girls. The desirability was purely dietary, they got fresher meals. Meal times with the boys second sitting was the one time when a form of bullying was apparent. We sat around long tables, probably a dozen to a table. Food was collected in large bowls from the kitchen and was served onto plates at the tables by the older boys who grabbed the top seats. Needless to say the plates sent to the bottom of the table carried smaller portions than those at the top of the table. Most of the time that system worked in their favour. There were however those masters of whom Mr. Errington was a notable and noble example who would walk round the tables and, if he saw that this was happening he had everyone pass the plates round so that the smaller portions re-appeared at the top of the table. Having done so he then saw to it that we all began eating so as to stop any later exchange of plates.

Away from academia home life continued pleasantly. Building materials such as cement and bricks were becoming available to the public. My father, being an engineer, was a resourceful and practical sort. Behind the house stood a wooden garage which had a lean-to greenhouse along it's length. The greenhouse had suffered from particularly heavy hail storm one afternoon when we returned home to find most of the glass in the roof broken. The wooden garage, now probably 40 years old, was showing signs of rotting around the bottom. Leading from the main road up to the front garden was a flight steps made of railway sleepers with soil packed behind them. These were also rotting to the extent that several no longer existed. It was time for building operations to begin at Ingleholme. The air-raid shelter had been demolished by scraping away the soil from the surface, the roof was then smashed in with a heavy hammer and a lot of effort, (so a small bomb would have had no problems) and the area returned to a garden. Surprisingly the garage roof was still sound under it's roofing felt cover so father propped it up at the corners one at a time while he removed the supporting wooden sides and rebuilt them in brick. The greenhouse was remodelled into a workshop by using sufficient window frames to go round the side and putting on a sloping corrugated steel roof. The once wide gravel path at the back of the house was cemented and given walls and two high brick gateposts. At the front the flight of steps was rebuilt by making shuttering into which concrete was poured to mould slabs for the stairs, blocks for the risers and bricks with a shaped face for the sides. These bricks were also used to rebuild the wall at either side of the gate at the bottom of the steps. It is not so long since I revisited Rowlands Gill and looked at the house. 50+ years on his work has stood the test of time and I am delighted to have been there and been a tiny part of it.

4

Playtime

Enough of school, for the time being at least, the world of children was definitely alive and well.

Looking back now the opportunity to play was vast, The variety of things to do, places to go seemed endless. I now look at the children of today and cannot believe that their electronic games and television can make up for the adventures and freedom to roam which we so enjoyed. When older people spoke of school days being the happiest days of your life I now realise that the saying had little or no bearing on school but the freedom which we all so enjoyed out of school. Oh where to begin.

Games went in seasons and of course the games you played depended on your age. Marbles with their infinite variety of rules followed tops and whips which in turn followed hoops. One soon grew out of hoops although tops and whips hung on for a year or so and marbles were still played  at grammar school. A lot of the boys had bikes, mostly old and built out of bits, some even had brakes. Most were quite willling to allow friends to have turns on their bikes and so it was that I learned to ride a bike although I never owned one

Group games around the almost traffic free streets were a favourite and ranged from the popular hide and seek with some of it's variations through the inevitable postman's knock to a game I recall was named "montakitty", at least that is how it was pronounced. It required one team to bend down  and hold on to the next person like a rugby scrum but in a straight line with the head of the line against a wall. The other would, individually, run up and jump as far as they could, leap frogging towards the head of the line until they were all balanced on the scrum or it had collapsed under their weight. For some reason never a bone was broken in the many collapses of the line.

The River Derwent ran slowly along a shallow bed very close to the South of the village. It was deep enough in some places to swim and a fire was always built to dry off in front of. Minnows could be caught in the shallows and roasted over the fire. Army surplus stores had sprung up selling among their wide range of goods inflatable dinghies. One of our group had one just large enough to carry three boys with reasonable safety. In this we paddled up and down a stretch of the river, able to land on small convenient beaches of mud on the banks. It was hardly the Swallows and Amazons but it was enjoyable and miraculously we kept fairly dry.

The village had a cattle mart which in turn had a field attached to it. These were only a hundred yards or so from my house. The area was the site of our mock battles against Germans or Red Indians.The empty pens were admirable as climbing frames and the field was of course a football pitch, cricket field, place to fly model aeroplanes and a path to other adventures.

The miners lit their work with lamps fuelled by carbide. When wet this gave off an inflammable gas. At the end of the shift they tipped out the contents of their lamps but always beyond the bounds of the pit. The dumped carbide was of course never quite spent so we would collect some of it. Not a lot was needed, and it was put into a a treacle tin with a small hole jabbed into the bottom and with a tight fitting press on lid. The object now was to spit onto the carbide which would start to release it's gases, jam the lid on and secure the tin against a post or at least try to support it securely, hence this practice was usually carried out in the mart where the tin could be secured against the post of a pen. When it was judged that enough gas had been built up inside the tin match was put to the hole in the bottom of the tin and the resulting explosion blew the lid off the tin. Oh what joy!!! Can one still buy carbide??

We were always aware that we really shouldn't be in the mart or even on the field. Certainly any mart officials who saw us chased us away. Consequently when we we playing football and the local policeman was seen approaching or, as sometimes happened had come into the mart without us noticing and was leaning on the perimeter fence, we ran like fury. It was only years later that I learned from him that he only wanted to watch the game.

At the bottom end of the field was a row of 7 oak trees known as the seven sisters. These somewhat tortured trees were good to practice climbing skills on for use when out looking for birds nests. The, now illegal, collecting of birds eggs was frowned on by most of us on grounds of cruelty rather than endangering any particular species. Consequently in Spring we sought out nests for the experience of finding and observing rather than damage. One of my friends, Robson Toase, had access to the boxes containing his Grandfather's collection of eggs. Each nestling in a deep bed of cotton wool and carefully labelled they were certainly a joy to see but I am still pleased that I didn't join in the hobby.

The mart field was bounded on two sides by railway lines. One, the Consett to Newcastle line and the other a narrow series of sidings ending in a dead end. Crossing over these lines brought you into "the woods". This an quite an extensive if narrow strip of old woodland with boy made paths running through it. Here games could be played, broken branches gathered for bonfire night, a stream, which I suspect had a high content of sewage, could be dammed with small branches and then released suddenly so that a wave of grey smelly water would flood down the course.

My pocket money could take me to Newcastle by 'bus 3d. At which point I suppose I have to explain 3d. In the days before authority insisted on decimalisation the pound was split into 240 pennies, 1d. 12 pennies made 1 shilling, 1/-d. 2 shillings were also called a florin or 2 bob and 2 shillings and 6 pence, 2/6d, was half a crown or half a dollar from the days when there were 4 dollars to the pound. There was a ten shilling note and a pound note. If you really had money you might have a five pound note which was large white and printed with beautiful copper plate wording. Back to spending the stuff. Having got to Newcastle I could wander round the back lanes, quite a lot are still there as I write, or look round the shops. Going to the News Theatre cost 6d. There were two in Newcastle which showed continuous programmes of Pathe News Films, always a month out of date, travel films showing the wonders of the scenery in foreign lands and cartoons of Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry which is why I went in the first place.

I was a junior member of the Literary and Philosophical Library, a privately endowed library just along the road from the railway station. Here I could spend ages looking around the shelves of books, walking the seemingly endless corridors always making sure that I ended up having to climb both up and down the metal spiral stair case at one corner of the main room. Huge marble statues stood around and massive paintings adorned the walls. There was a lecture room with rows of seats sloping up from the floor in which I listened intently to lectures on subjects now long forgotten.

After the war my father had returned his office to St. Nicholas Buildings, directly opposite Newcastle Cathedral of St Nicholas. His office was on the third floor and the building had a wonderful creaking old lift which I delighted in using. Sometimes I was able to meet him at lunchtime and go to a cafe on the ground floor of the building which did Business Men's Lunches for something like 1/6d.

Opposite St. Nicholas Buildings is The Side, a cobbled street leading steeply down to the quayside. On The Side was a barbers, G. Scott, who made all his own hair preparations in the cellar of his shop and bottled them himself. My father had a printing press on which he, later with my help, printed all the labels for the barbers bottles. The consequence of this was a superb bit of bartering in which the barber did not pay for labels and we did not pay for haircuts.

One of my great joys in Newcastle was to visit the Hancock natural History Museum. I still take pleasure in going to it and taking my grand-children. it is much changed in the way the displays are laid out but now just as much as then I really have no idea if I have actually seen the whole of the building. It always seem that there should be another room somewhere and sometimes I know I have missed one of them but I can't find it. If the museum still exists please visit it.

In addition to the News Theatre there were several picture houses and the Music Hall was alive and reasonably well at The Empire. The Theatre Royal was what is known as the legitimate theatre and The Playhouse at Jesmond was the amateur theatre. In the event of my autograph book surviving the years ahead there are programmes, many unfortunately not dated and indeed many not included, for most of these places.

In Rowlands Gill there was a cinema, "The Picture House", in fact almost every small village had one. While in the larger towns the film would be shown for a whole week in villages the programme would change once if not twice during the week. Here we queued to see Roy Rogers with his so clever horse Trigger who would save his master by untying his bound hands just in time to race off to save in turn the beautiful heroine. Cowboy and Indian films when the 7th Cavalry would gallop round the hill, again just in time, to save the beleaguered fort from massacre by a marauding tribe of red Indians. We never went to see the sloppy love films. I was conned into going to see "Rebecca" because the trailer concentrated on the mysterious Mrs. Danvers more than the romance of Mr. de Winter. "The cat and the canary" was the absolute haunted house mystery complete with secret passages and bodied falling out of panelled walls which opened at the touch of a hidden lever. Add Bob Hope's comedy to that and you have a picture which I still enjoy watching on video. Once on the occasion of my birthday I wanted to go to the pictures but for some reason was in bed early. My mother was giving piano lessons and father was out at a meeting. Leaving a note in my bedroom, just in case my absence was discovered, I climbed out of the bedroom window, thank goodness for bungalows, went to the pictures and returned by the same route. I am sure my parents had no idea I had been out.

In winter the sledges came out. Nowadays snow seems to sometimes fall in winter, in childhood it always came or is that my imagination. On the South banks of the river the land rose steeply towards Burnhopfield up Busty Bank, so called because the Busty coal seam surfaced on it and there was a drift mine there which mined it. Along a path there was a long slope through some scrubby woodland which made the most wonderful sledge track. When house building began in the village the council built an estate on a slope which gave us a whole winter of sledging on a traffic free road.

My birthday, July 15th, is St. Swithin's day and as the old tale has it if it rains on St. Swithin's day it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights. It often rained at some part of my birthday but the rest was never true. One of my birthday things was that my father would take me and four friends in the car to the seaside. The greatest treat here was that my friends got the then rare opportunity for a ride in a car. We invariably went to Whitley Bay where we had the freedom of a beach and the rock pools.

Travelling to the coast was otherwise done by electric train from Newcastle Central when travelling on this train rather than the old hat of a steam train was itself a treat. The train which stopped frequently on the way ended up at Whitley Bay, Cullercoats and Tynemouth, before returning to Newcastle. All these coastal railway stations were an inconvenient distance from the sea and the beach. This made the last bit of the journey on foot so frustrating but it went past shops with brightly coloured buckets and spades and fishing nets which might be bought by fond aunt to quieten begging children. I remember such trips to the sea ending abruptly in unexpected thunder storms and a mad dash to the station to queue with hundreds of other now very wet people for the sad journey home. Definitely travelling by car was best.

Family holidays were of course restricted initially by the war so the holidays I remember were squashed into the years between about 1947 and 1954. The first one I remember was Whitley Bay when we stayed at a hotel which is now so changed as to be unrecognisable. Walking along the lower promenade as the tide was rushing in and trying to avoid being splashed by the waves crashing into the prom was a daily game. I think we had two holidays in Berwick in the days when Salmon was caught just inside the piers by netting them. The net was carefully folded onto the back of a boat which was then rowed in a sweeping curve from the pier out into the river dropping the net off as it went. A man on the pier would carefully watch the net peering into the water judging the time when the net should be hauled in. Usually three or four salmon would be caught at a time and the net then folded to be spread once more. A market was held on the street just outside the hotel so mother and I could watch out of the lounge window to see when, in the late afternoon, the price of peaches came down at which point I would be sent to buy three.

We visited Morcambe Bay in what was probably the twilight of it's years as a big sea-side resort. there were still illuminations and a big display of mechanical illuminations in a park to the north of the town. Morcambe of course suffered from the fact that when the tide went out the whole bay emptied leaving dangerous stretches of quick sand.

Only once did we set of to tour in the car as a holiday. I remember we got to Lichfield where I was most impressed by the front of the Cathedral. I was not too keen on car travel by then because father would use the journey as an opportunity to give maths lessons making me work out average speeds. I was very bad at it much to his annoyance.

 

5

In the meantime.

In the meantime back at school we all ploughed ahead towards the immediate final goal of our endeavours. The General Certificate of Education. An essential ingredient in the portfolio of those heading for greater things especially university. In fact it didn't do anyone any harm to have several passes in a mixed variety of subjects to help ease the way into one's chosen employment.

Education was sometimes halted for lighter things. Once a year some travelling organisation would visit the school to educate and entertain us. The one I best remember was a group with puppets who performed a play the plot of which has long been forgotten but I can still remember the apparent magic of a puppet smoking a cigarette.

Speech day was the annual event when prizes were handed out for excellence in a certain aspects of school work. This invariable called for the attendance of one or another of the school governors or a local dignitary. One year we had Lord Gort, who lived on his estate at Hamsterly just a few miles West of Rowlands Gill and was remembered for the part he played in the First World war. Another year Mr. G. Woof. local Member of Parliament and Labour Whip. Lord Gort spoke as one might expect a peer to speak and Geordie Woof spoke as one might expect a local miner made good to speak, struggling to try to cover up his pitmatic accent.

Sports day brought out the athletic types who ran and jumped in a variety of events for the greater good of their House. Cups and shields were awarded to winners and so it was that the name of Copinger lived on for some years after I had left the school. Senior boys ran the 100yds in competition for the Copinger Cup which had been donated by my father. The cup and the rest of the awards became outdated when the grammar school became a comprehensive school and then they lost their sports day entirely. Sometime between then and the time of writing this the cup has vanished. Pity really.

The dreaded G.C.E.s arrived, were sat and were forgotten about for the time being. The school broke up for the summer holidays of 1952 and many of us walked out knowing that we were unlikely to return. I was not sorry to leave, I had not enjoyed the school and I had not performed well in it.

We all left with the usual promises of keeping in touch but never did. Since leaving school I think I have met only one person who was in my class and of course Joan Andrews who for some years became a friend of my wife and I.

Also in the meantime, in fact about 1947, it had been decided that art and music should again be encouraged in post-war Britain. The Arts Council was set up and sponsored concerts and the like across the country. My parents were, along with some other village stalwarts instrumental in starting "The Gibside Music Club". With the backing of the Arts Council this organisation put on concerts in the local miner's welfare hall. At these I came to meet, albeit briefly, and get the autographs of many musicians of the day whose names even now mean little. It's all in the autograph book if it survives. One which does seem to be missing is that of Owen Brannigan, a fine Northern singer, who I particularly remember meeting.

6

Marshall Green.

Marshall Green on the North Eastern outskirts of Witton le Wear comprised two farmsteads. Little Marshall Green stood at the beginning of a lane leading to Marshall Green. Little Marshall Green was the home of my maternal, although adoptive, grand parents, William and Lily Furness.

The house had two reception rooms. A kitchen and a pantry having been added on at sometime in a lean-to at the back of the house. I remember some repairs being done to this roof when a brass candle holder was found in the roof space.

The main room of the house was of course the living room, the hub of the whole house. A table stood in front of the window with grandfather's high backed chair to one side of it next to the wireless. He was rather deaf and would listen to broadcasts using his hearing aid, a length of narrow flexible pipe with a funnel at one end which he placed against the loudspeaker and a piece of rubber tube at the other end which he stuck in his ear. The wireless was powered by a battery called an accumulator which had to be taken to Howden on occasions to be recharged. It use was strictly limited to the news and religious programmes. I do not remember hearing ITMA or such flippancies at Witton. The large kitchen range was so carefully polished. On the other side of the fire place stood an American organ on which grandfather would play his beloved hymns. There was also a beautiful press, the cupboards filled with food and the drawers filled with linen. A large comfortable sofa filled the room. The stone floor was covered with linoleum and "clippy mats" all home made over many years.

The other room, the "front room" was rarely used. It always smelled of dampness. If the number of visiting relatives grew to overfill the kitchen then the fire in that room would be lit by carrying a shovel full of burning coals from the kitchen fire and placing them in the hearth of the front room. This process naturally filled the house with smoke which to some extent overcame the smell of dampness but barely removed the cold and the actually damp. The room contained a huge stuffed three piece suite and a sideboard littered with the sort of china which now only appears in antique shops.

There were two bedrooms. Mine was over the front room. the bed had a feather mattress that grandma had puffed up and turned so that I sank into it. Thus protected from the ghosts which I was sure inhabited the cupboards I could sleep soundly. I once watched on air raid over Bishop Auckland in the far distance from the safety of this feather bed.

The front garden was surrounded by a low stone wall topped with pieces of clinker. Gooseberry and red currant bushes provided fruit for jams and jellies.

The farm had a cow byre and an adjoining building with loose boxes for calves, a hay shed, grandfathers blacksmith shop with an adjoining loose box and the inevitable pig sty. There were three fields attached to the farm.

Willie Furness had become a blacksmith at a time when horses were giving way to cars, lorries and tractors. He worked at Wolsingham Steel Works as a blacksmith and tool maker travelling to and fro by train with something over a mile walk at either end of the journey. He was of course the local blacksmith for the remaining horses in the area and would make farm implements such as harrows and could put new iron rims on cart wheels.

My grandmother, a kind and gentle Yorkshire woman, cooked and cleaned, washed, fed livestock and cared for her husband in conditions now only found in folk museums.

Along the lane stood Marshall Green, an altogether larger concern. It had a ford yard around most of the three side of which stood outbuildings including a byre for probably a dozen cows. A large hay barn stood beside this with access to it through the byre and a further shed was built in the stack yard. In addition to two horses the farm boasted a Fordson tractor which I used to drive at an age now frowned on by modern health and safety officers and indeed the law.

Beyond the yard the lane turned up towards the farmhouse, past the tractor shed, a garage which housed a tiny pre-war Austin (in which four adults and two children once set of to visit Hawnby in North Yorkshire and ended up sleeping uncomfortably in the car over night), and a stable with a largely unused storehouse above it. There was a cottage sandwiched between the stable and the farmhouse. During the war it was occupied by a family called Reed about whom I can remember nothing. A gateway in a high wall led into the walled garden at the front of the house which faced South across the stack yard.

The doorway in the centre of the house led, to the right, into a passage through the house into the scullery. A door off the passage led into the living room.

To the left of the front door was a front room used no more often than it's equivalent at Little Marshall Green. It contained wonderful things. A large sideboard on which rested fine crockery and usually an orange cake with a fine beard of mould growing from it. Beautiful vases filled with dried Honesty which grew in the garden. The inevitable American Organ, there was another in the living room. A record player which had to be wound up and a small collection of records including "The Laughing Policeman". A large polished mahogany table and a settee.

Ahead of the door a staircase led up to four bedrooms one of which was actually over the adjoining cottage and could be used by either house be means of connecting doors.

Behind the house the garden included plum, greengage, apple and pear trees, soft fruit bushes and a small area for vegetables. The toilet, another earth closet stood alone at the side of the house.

As always the living room was the hub of the house. Even the washing up was done in it by bringing in a large dish of hot water and setting it on a metal tray on the table. It was generally too dark, cold and draughty to work in the scullery. The large table which seemed to occupy the greater part of the room was never quite cleared. Jars of pickle, pots of jam, dishes of butter were always pushed to the back of the table and never put away, perhaps on the grounds that they would just have to be brought out again shortly for the next meal. The only time the table was cleared was on threshing days when so many men had to sit round the table there wasn't room for the usual clutter.

Marshall Green was presided over by my great aunt Florrie, Florence Mabel Johnson, who of course was my grand mother's sister. Aunt Florrie in a general state of "Oh never mind honey, it'll be alright", managed the household with the help of a live in housemaid cum general farm help, Barbara Glansfield. Barbara was occasionally in a bad mood described by one and all as "bottom gear", her only other mood being "top gear".

The men folk on the farm were aunt Florrie's husband, Fred Johnson and his brother Johnny. Uncle Fred hiccoughed himself to death in 1946 and to be honest I have few memories of him. A man in boots and leather gaiters with whom I was not entirely comfortable more or less sums him up. Johnny was a very different man. A gentle, friendly, heavy featured man with strikingly large ears, he had apparently not been expected to live at birth but defied all by not only living but farming in one fashion or another until a reasonably old age. Sometime after Fred's death an old friend/relative George Bradley moved in to help work the farm.

During the latter part of the war and for some little time after it the workforce was increased by prisoners of war. Klaus Ennen lived on the farm for some years.

Often at weekend and certainly during school holidays my time would be spent at Little Marshall Green especially after my grandfather bought me a horse. A welsh pony called Jessie who I rode all over the farms. During the school term she went for long periods with being ridden and consequently tended to return to the wild. She had to be caught by trailing a long rope across the field usually with Johnny on one end because he was fitter than grandfather and Klaus who was a wonderful horse man on the other. Jessie was thus forced into a corner and whoever was nearest to her made a lunge for her neck and hung on. Once caught she very quickly calmed down and was a very quiet ride. Whilst she would go anywhere on the farm she did not like the road beyond a certain gate about half a mile along the road towards Howden. I once got her to the gate at which point she turned and bolted back along the road completely out of control and turned across the road into the yard at Little Marshall Green. Luckily there was no traffic on the road at the time. That was a journey I never repeated.

Grandfather having left very early in the morning to walk to the railway station most of the morning farm jobs seemed to be left to my grandmother. There were usually calves and a pig to be fed.

The week followed a fairly standard pattern. Washing day was always a Monday. The washing was done with equipment now found in any folk museum. Strong white cotton items were boiled in a huge pan on the living room fire. Clothes were energetically possed with a heavy wooden poss stick in a zinc tub. The clothes then had most of the water squeezed from them between heavy wooden rollers of a mangle that stood outside the back door. They were then hung out to dry or in wet weather hung on a frame that was raised on pulleys to the ceiling in front of the fire. Ironing was done with a succession of flat irons heated up at the fire. Even the most humble garment would be clean and crisply ironed.

Baking was done later in the week for the weekend although I remember my Grandmother, a wonderful cook, baking more regularly. Bread and teacakes were mixed in a large glazed mixing bowl and set on the hearth to rise. Those teacakes were delicious as were her ginger biscuits, fruit cakes baked in a tin set on top of another tin covered in salt to spread the heat and stop the bottom from burning, apple pies, oh how long the list is. Ground oats grown and milled on the farm were used.

A pig was always kept, to be killed in the Autumn. Grandma always cried when stock was sold or the pig killing day came round. She had made friends of them all.

The result of pig killing day was a carcase sectioned off on a salting table in the big larder at Marshall Green. So much sausage and black pudding was made for immediate consumption in the days before fridges and freezers that it would be shared with other farmers who would return the favour later when they killed their pig in what seemed like an agreed rota. Grandfather was responsible for curing the carcase by rubbing rock salt and saltpetre into the flesh over a period of time to preserve it. The sides and hams where then hung around the beams and pieces cut off them in situ. One year the salting of one of the hams at Aunt Florries had gone wrong and the bone pulled out of the leg to reveal a cluster of maggots. They were scraped away and the ham continued to be used. It was delicious. The meat turned up in ham and egg pies but I always enjoyed the bacon fried or roasted slowly in the fireside oven.

Eggs were freshly collected from under the hens and the milk came back to the house warm in the pails. The milk was poured through a "separator" which apparently by cetrifugal force separated the cream from the milk each pouring out of a different nozzle on the machine. The cream could be kept in the cold larder until there was enough to make butter. A large amount would be put into a churn, a wooden barrel fixed to a stand on which it could be gently turned. The progress would be watched through a little glass window in the barrel until the butter could be seen lumping together and felt bumping about inside the barrel. It was removed and formed into blocks with wooden butter pats. The remaining butter milk was drunk. If only a small amount of cream was available butter could be made by steadily rocking it in a large tea can usually used when taking meals out to the fields.

House cleaning without the aid of an electric vacuum cleaner meant lifting clippy mats out onto the washing line and beating them with wicker work beaters sending clouds of dust into the air/ Brass was always gleaming, the black metal of the fireplace polished with black lead and the walls of the ash pit below the fire were white washed

The central lighting of the room was from a beautiful glass bowled paraffin lamp which stood in the centre of the table. The lamp glass had to be carefully washed each day, the wick trimmed when required and the lamp filled with paraffin. Any additional lighting about the house was provided by candles and a paraffin storm lamp which could be taken outside around the buildings and to the toilet, an earth closet down the yard.

My Grandparents and Aunt Florrie were religious. I never did decide whether they were Methodist or Weslyan because of the arrangements for worship in the village. Witton le Wear had two chapels A Methodist on one side of the village green and a Wesleyan on the other side. Obviously built in days of much larger congregations which had now dwindled to the extent that the chapels were used on alternative Sundays by the same members of the congregation. Grandfather played the organ at both of them and when I was there I pumped the bellows having gained experience in his blacksmiths shop.

Sundays at Little Marshall Green were busy mornings for grandfather catching up on farm jobs he could not do during the week. Yorkshire puddings at dinner time were served as a first course before some more were served with the main course. and then rice pudding. The Sunday meal at Little Marshall Green was always served a little before the meal at Marshall Green so that sometimes I might manage to run along the lane in time to get some more Yorkshire puddings.

Grandfather always went to bed on Sunday afternoon while grandmother would snooze on the settee with one or another of her favourite cats on her knee. Both would be up in time to milk the cow, feed the stock, have tea and dress, always in black boots highly polished by grandma, before setting off down the hill to chapel. Grandma, smelling of lavender with a vague mixture of moth balls from her black coat always wore black leather gloves. She would not have considered going out without them. She carried a prayer book and a handbag which contained a purse with a coin for the collection plate, a lace edged handkerchief, a bottle of smelling salts and a miniature bottle of brandy for medicinal purposes. Grandfather had a bad heart.

After chapel and a few minutes chat with friends often only seen once a week came the trudge back up the steep hill for supper. Sunday supper was invariably cold ham which I remember as often being very fatty with Yorkshire salad, a delicious mixture of chopped lettuce and onions in vinegar and sugar, with home baked crusty bread and home made butter.

Little Marshall Green is a mixture of wonderful memories so hard to put into any order. Towels made from sacks and tea towels made from finer flour sacks. The dark "under the stairs" sounds like the setting for a James Herbert horror story but here was a large general household store including a tall desk with drawers and a sloping top which dated from the days when grandmother ran a shop. Still in it were her account or order books which were a fascination showing, among the many transactions, flour at so many pennies a stone. For me the best book was the one in which she had written out a story about a man being terrified by a bogart. It was written in Yorkshire dialect which I could not master but I could usually persuade grandma to read it to me in her pleasant North Yorkshire tones.

At sometime during most mornings Aunt Florrie would come to visit and the two sisters would natter over a cup of tea for a while before the inevitable, "Well I'll have to get on , the men will be coming in for their dinners", sent Aunt Florrie back along the lane. Their talk would be of village gossip, household matters and religion. I remember Aunt Florrie set great store by reading the scripture set out by the chapel to be read for that day. Grandma, while by no means less religious, did not seem to have the same fervour. Both, but mainly Aunt Florrie, would travel to adjoining villages to hear visiting preachers, missionaries and particularly to a rendition of the Messiah. I can remember being taken to Crook on several occasions to such events in a chapel near the Market Place although for the most part I am afraid I neither understood nor enjoyed them. The question as to who would be the next preacher at Witton required the production of "the plan", a large sheet of paper that set out which preacher would be where in the circuit during the year.

The two sisters would often spend an evening together at Little Marshall Green. I don't remember the the reverse happening. Naturally these were Autumn and Winter meetings, the summer was too busy, but the time was not wasted in idle chatter. These were the times for churning butter, mat making and crocheting, all done by the light of the oil lamp and the fire which somehow didn't seem as dim then as it surely must have been.

At some point an extra field for hay production was taken into use by Little Marshall Green. It was about half a mile along the road towards Howdon le Wear. I remember one summer helping turn the mown hay by hand using a hay rake with wooden pegs. It was very hot and we drank cold clear water from a spring which emptied into a gutter at the side of the road. The same spring was the only water supply for a nearby house, now demolished. I suspect that open cast work in the surrounding fields will have put an end to that spring. That was the only time I saw a small whirlwind as it swept across the hay field lifting a great swathe of hay we had turned up into the air before dumping it in the next field.

It was about this time that grandfather bought a new cart horse, a huge Clydesdale, so big that none of the saddlery on either farm would fit it. Grandfather went to Dryden Ward at Wolsingham for whom he had been a blacksmith in the days when Dryden ran a timber business entirely by horse power. When he changed over to motor lorries he had shut the stables and left them like a time capsule. Here grandfather found enough tackle to fit the horse. He also built a cart to fit the horse which it would pull at the trot no matter how large and heavy the load. I have a broken little toe where it stood on my foot without realising it and I can still remember the bored expression on the horse's face as I pushed and punched it's side in an attempt to get it to move.

My memories of Marshall Green and aunt Florrie in the early days are scant because I stayed with my grandparents and spent less time at probably spent less time with aunt Florrie while my cousins stayed with her. Barbara was always up first to light the fire and get the kettle boiled. I often wonder if I am wrong or did Barbara not only do the lions share of the work around the house but even with some of the work with the animals. Aunt Florrie certainly made the meals but I always saw Barbara bent over with the weight of buckets of pig swill going towards the farm buildings or buckets of milk coming away from them. Washing, ironing, scrubbing the flag stone floors fell to her as a matter of daily routine. Her few joys seemed to be buying cream cakes from a travelling baker or the odd item of clothing from a visiting tally man.

With the men working out in the fields it was often more convenient at busier times to have those standard half meals, "ten o'clock" and "three o'clock" made up and taken to them in baskets with a large can of tea. This task fell to Aunt Florrie who would sometimes cycle along to the further fields. In the warmth of the summer it was pleasant to stretch out in a hay field and enjoy the sandwiches, teacake and tea but it the cold winter of winter you needed to shelter behind the big wheel of a tractor or lean against the warm haunches of a cart horse.

In the war years German and Italian prisoners of war were put to work on local farms. I can remember Uncle Fred failing to break the language barrier when trying to explain to an Italian the intricacies of pruning fruit bushes. The two nationalities were not always friendly to each other and I recall a violent fight between two of them one thrashing day. They had an Italian prisoner who stayed with them and could make wonderful baskets using long young willow branches. He was not allowed to go off the farm on his own and I would go with him to some woodland near Howdon where he would cut arms full of willow. His large baskets used for carrying potatoes or chopped turnip about the farm were strong and certainly in use almost 40 years on. A German, Klaus Ennen, had been brought up on a farm working with horses and stayed with them until well after the war finished.

Thrashing day came once a year in late autumn. The corn having been harvested and tied into sheaves by machine the sheaves were stood up in stooks, a double line of 8 sheaves leaning against each other to dry out. These were brought into the stack yard on flat carts and expertly stacked and the stack then thatched by Uncle Willie. He lived alone in a house set back from the top of Hargill Hill at Howdon and would walk along with his very old dog trailing behind him and was probably one of the few about who could do these jobs properly. Eventually Black Jack Bradwell, a huge man with a drooping moustache, would arrive with his thrashing machine which was driven by a steam engine. Men from the village were employed on a casual basis for the duration of the thrashing which might last two days. The sheaves were thrown from the stack onto the top of the thrasher were a man would cut the string and push the corn into the machine where beaters would separate the corn which emerged from spouts which fed it into sacks from the straw which was re-tied into sheaves and re-stacked. The chaff was fed out of another spout and shovelled away into a great pile. The full sacks were carried away up stairs to a granary. As the stack of sheaves reduced nests of mice would be found and I as the only small boy there would be thrown up onto the stack armed with a stick to kill them. As the stack neared the bottom rats would emerge and the men would chase after them jumping on them or spearing them with pitchforks. The men were fed baskets full of ham sandwiches and tea cake at ten o'clock and three o'clock and at lunch time they all sat down to plates of roast beef, potatoes and steeped peas. Thrashing day was certainly one of the highlights of the farming year. It's success determined to some extent the farms income for the year.

Life all round was slightly improved when my father installed a limited supply of electricity to both houses. It was powered from a small petrol driven motor in an outhouse at Marshall Green. the generator managed to produce enough electricity to provide lighting and run the radios. I think that was about it's limit. Some power could be stored in a bank of batteries so the generator did not have to be run all the time, but that little store was soon drained. Power was taken to Little Marshall Green on wires running along to tops of tall larch poles at the side of the lane. It is a wonder it ever got there. When the houses were being wired up it was discovered that mice had filled every available gap with the chaff from the corn which they had stored each autumn for their winter food. Marshall Green in particular would have been a death trap if a fire had broken out.

Speaking of fires reminds me that one year Johnny had been burning some rubbish perhaps too near the stack yard. Having finished and believing the fire to be out he went off up the fields to work. Unfortunately in the breeze the fire burst into flames again and sparks from it spread to the nearby stacks. I can't now remember if they were stacks of straw or corn waiting to be thrashed but they were all burnt to the ground. It was a disaster. Hens which had been sitting on eggs in hollows at the bottom of the stacks were roasted on the nests. Uncollected eggs were baked, rather too well baked for eating.

When my grandparents gave up their small farm they moved into the cottage next to Marshall Green. The day of the auction sale of animals was another sad day for grandmother. The blacksmiths shop was moved into an empty building behind the stable and grandfather continued his trade as long as his health would allow.

Grandfather died on 6th May 1957 and grandmother on 23rd October 1958.

Following John's death in 1963 George Bradley went to live with his son and aunt Florrie and Barbara moved into Little Marshall Green. The farm was sold to Joe Johnson, not a relative, for what now seems the ludicrously small sum of £10,000. Shortly after the sale the land was given over to open cast coal mining for a number of years.

Life at Little Marshall Green had been improved by having mains electricity and a bathroom installed. Aunt Florrie and Barbara lived on here in a state of total clutter for a number of years. The furniture from the much larger house had been brought along and pushed into rooms and when they were filled it was stored in outhouses. The living room was overflowing with furniture. I re-papered it once have to move individual pieces of furniture off the wall, paper behind it and replace it before moving the next piece. That was the only time I have ever seen silver fish which were living in abundance behind the paper in one damp corner of the room. The previous paper had been put on with flour and water paste on which they had flourished.

I went on visiting Marshall Green eventually taking with me my wife Pat, and our children. They didn't have the time to enjoy the place as much as I had. They lacked the access to many of the fields, and Aunt Florrie and Barbara were in no position or state of health to have young children abandoned with them any more. It was now our turn to lay the table and fetch out the food for tea. Our children did help with this and they soon learnt to quietly check the plates of pies and caked brought out from the larder and to whisper even more quietly "Don't have any apple pie, it's mouldy" whenever appropriate.

Eventually Barbara moved out into an old peoples home in Crook. A move was made to further modernise the house but inevitably and in failing health aunt Florrie went to live with her niece, Margery.

Aunt Florrie died on 2nd May 1984. She was brought back to Witton for a funeral service in the Methodist chapel and is buried near her husband and her two sisters, Lily Furness and Margery Hannah Brookbank at the far end of the village cemetery.

At the beginning of the funeral service an announcement was made that, after the burial, refreshments would be available in the public house next to the chapel. As aunt Florrie, a connoisseur of funerals would have said, "It's not much of a do if you can't get a cup of tea".

Barbara lived on for a number of years in the comfort of old peoples homes in Crook.

These pages give no more than a glimpse into my wonderful memories of the time I spent there. I only hope that you imagine them and see the places in your minds eye.

I occasionally re-visit the cemetery, a journey which leads me past Marshall Green but it has changed. The new Johnsons are, of necessity, modern farmers and have built a large modern cow shed on the site of some of the old buildings. It is built right up to a corner of the old farm house which is now becoming derelict. They live in a new bungalow built on the stack yard with a view across the valley. The old fruit trees were still standing and, as nature will, still bear their variety of fruit. The lane down to the meadow is badly torn up and I doubt if the little pond at the bottom of the garth still contains the wide range of pond life it once did. The open casting did away with the crab apple tree in the meadow hedge which provided annual jars of delicious jelly. Little Marshall Green has been properly modernised and the pig sty has had to give way to a garage.

7

Work!

I was at Marshall Green when I got the results of my G.C.E. exams. To everyone's apparent horror and, I must admit, to my dismay I had failed every thing. I went home to find a job with no paper qualifications to help me.

My father had two printing presses at home and a considerable range of type. With this he printed all the stationery for a local building firm and a lot of printing jobs for the village. I remember he did a range of personalised Christmas cards at what even now seems an extortionate price, they ranged from 7/6d per doz. up to one guinea a dozen. It meant that our Christmas cards were printed and posted on Christmas Eve. Although I could use the equipment reasonably efficiently it was soon decided that trying to make a living out of it was far too precarious.

Father had by this time left Harland Engineering Co. and was working for the Durham County Water Board in charge of the Northern half of the County. Again it was soon decided that his getting a job for me in the company would not go down well.

I was about 6ft tall by now and growing so I applied for a job as a Police Cadet with Durham County Constabulary, years later the "County" would be dropped. Without G.C.Es. I had to sit an entrance exam at Winlaton Police Office. The exam consisted of written papers of some simple mathematics, equally simple English and some general knowledge. While I sat the exam my father waited outside in the car and one or another of the Policemen on duty, both of whom of course know him, ran out to tell him how I was doing. I soon found out that I had passed the exam and I was told that I would be appointed as soon as a suitable post became vacant. This I was told could take some time so I still needed a job.

With those early alternatives out of the way I set off for the Employment Exchange at Blaydon. The first job I was sent for was as a trainee projectionist at one of the big cinemas in Newcastle. I failed to get that job which with hindsight is just as well. the new fangled television soon had cinemas all over the country closing or turning into Bingo Halls at an alarming rate.

The next job was as an Office Boy for Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons, Civil Engineers, at Dunston Power Station. McAlpines had built two power stations on the banks of the Tyne at Dunston and still had a small office with a team of workers finishing off bits and pieces and doing maintenance work. I got the job although I really can't remember what the wage was, something like £2 a week.

The office consisted of a long wooden hut split into, a long drawing office which was no longer in use but stored all the drawings for the power stations, an office for the Office Manager who only used it one day a week when he visited us from the Newcastle office, and the Time Keepers Office which is where I worked. The only other office employee was in fact the Time Keeper, an old Scotsman whose name I can't remember. McAlpines were very good to their old and loyal employees. The Time Keeper and the works Foreman, an equally old Cornishman, had been with the company all over the country and from what I could make out since the company began. They had jobs until they decided to leave.

Our duty was to record the hours worked by each worker and calculate their pay. By the time pay day came round few of them had a full weeks pay to collect having subbed (borrowed) up to half of it during the course of the week.

Getting to Dunston for 8am by 'bus was a pain especially in the depth of winter to then huddle over a 2 bar electric fire in competition with on old Scot.

We had our lunch in the power station canteen which meant walking through the main generator house filled with humming machinery and a web of pipes which at 6ft I soon learnt to duck under. The meals were large and cheap being heavy susbsidised by employers.

I was with McAlpines 6 months before my appointment as a Cadet came through. I was to work in the C.I.D. office at Divisional Headquarters, Felling on Tyne. I went to the Force Headquarters at Newton Aycliffe and was fitted out in my uniform. A peaked cap and the equivalent of civilian employees uniform of a jacket buttoned right up to the neck. The jacket had the words "POLICE CADET" across a shoulder flash. I soon discovered that it seemed the public, and in particular 'bus conductors, had no knowledge of the difference between a Police Constable and the Police Cadet who was in fact a uniformed office boy. The pay may not have been wonderful but at least I didn't have to pay 'bus fares to get to and from work. The 'bus may be full and a queue waiting, I hopped on the step and travelled free.

I spent nearly 18 months at Felling and I enjoyed it all. Here I was introduced to photography by Ken Blain who was the Scientific Aids Officer. He showed me how to develop negatives and print them. I even took that home as a hobby and found I could develop all my own photographs in the blacked out bathroom. He also taught me how to make a box to pack samples and exhibits by cutting and bending another box to transform it to the size required, an craft I still find useful.

Felling C.I.D. was lead by Detective Inspector Matt Wilkinson following whose death a bravery award was named. The small but dedicated team of detectives were; Tommy Dickson who had been in the army, taken prisoner of war in North Africa, escaped while being transported through Italy and lived on grapes, not always ripe, and stolen bits and pieces until he eventually arrived back at the advancing allies lines. His health still suffered from the privations of those times.; Bob Naisbitt, a quiet man who originated in Crook, and who really could get away with people not thinking he was a policeman because nothing about him said Police. Probably because of this he was appointed to a "ghost squad" with a detective Bill Johnson although everything about him shouted Police. Oh what opportunities that opened up for them, No longer where they restricted to the Felling area. Suddenly all the pubs in Tyneside were theirs to visit and drink in.

Out beyond Gateshead was a sub division of Blaydon where Louis Armstrong and Hylton Tulloch other ran their own C.I.D office visiting Felling only if their presence was demanded.

My job was to answer the phone, take and record messages in a book, see that they were brought to the attention of whoever needed to information. The really tedious part of the job was keeping certain circulations up to date. The Police Gazette, West Riding Police Reports, Scottish Police Gazette, Durham Police Reports and our own divisional reports. Each of these carried lists of amendments, cross references and cancellations all of which had to be meticulously done. It was without doubt a complete waste of time because no one ever acted on any of the information contained in them without first checking with the originating office.

While I was a Cadet I was introduced to the joys of Harperley Hall. This was a large and somewhat stately residence between Fir Tree and Tow Law which had been bought by the Police Authority at the behest of the Chief Constable, Alec Muir. A far sighted man, he saw it as a place where officers could go to be retrained and refreshed in peaceful surroundings. I and a large group of other cadets in the force went for two weeks to collate the new force standing orders which had just been newly drawn up.

At Rowlands Gill all sorts of things seemed to be happening all at once.

My father, a resourceful man, was running what had to be one of the earliest of Discotheques. although the word had not yet been coined. He had a couple of turntables, a public address amplifier, a large loudspeaker mounted on a sounding board (a big lump of plywood) and a large collection of dance records. The records were mostly Victor Sylvester or similar strict tempo dance bands with some Scottish Country Dance music which was popular at the time. This equipment was taken to the local Miners Welfare Hall on a regular basis when he would run dances or social evenings with beetle drives or whist drives for a variety of local organisations. These were the pre-telly days and most of the games which appeared on early television game shows had been run at Rowlands Gill and probably a thousand other village halls. My job was to lay out the numbered records on trestle tables at the back of the stage and hand them to father to change and then file the previous record away.

These were the days of "Night Classes". As soon as September came and the nights began to draw in it seemed that everyone joined night school. I was persuaded to join a secretarial class at Blaydon which consisted of English, shorthand and typing. I didn't last very long in the class. I had been typing with three or four fingers for so long that there was little hope of my changing to the preferred touch typing method and as for shorthand I just couldn't get the hang of those squiggles which looked so much like my own normal handwriting. I took to going to Maurice Banham's and playing cards until the time came for me to return home as though from the class.

I was invited to join a the local youth club, The Phoenix Club, so called because it had risen from the ashes of a defunct club which had it's origins in the Methodist Chapel. It rose up around a group largely but not entirely dedicated to Scottish Country Dancing. We went to the theatre queuing up for the gods in the Theatre Royal at Newcastle at 2/6d or going to the rep at the Playhouse at Jesmond, now pulled down. We went to The George Inn at Chollerford for a Christmas meal before the place became ultra-posh and, after the meal, took most of the outer covering off the bar piano so that one of our members, an accomplished pianist, could play jazz. One of the many times when I wished I had learnt to play. One New Year we went to Allendale to witness the New Year's Eve celebrations. A parade of village men each carrying a half barrel of burning tar on his head walk through the town to a bonfire which is lit by them throwing the barrels on to it. The ceremony said to go back to the days of the Norsemen is a sight well worth seeing.

The young men smoked pipes, one of them had a beautiful Meerschaum which was shading to a lovely golden brown. I bought a basic cherrywood and at work Bob Naisbit filled it with bits of typewriter rubber and unwittingly I smoked it until the rest of the office could stand the smell of burning rubber no longer.

1953 was a time when the club were parting company with Scottish Country Dancing. I have a programme for part of that year when mention is specially of the fact. It is also the year when Television was starting to take over. It had arrived in the village in time to watch the coronation of Elizabeth ii. One meeting is devoted to going to Anne Williams home, Riverside, a rather large house when we would watch T.V.

I don't now remember the order of things but this was also a time when members were going off either to university or the forces.

Max Hill went to Gonville and Caius and Watson Weeks went to Jesus in Cambridge. They were both older than me but my invitation to join Her Majesty's Armed Forces would soon arrive.

 I have just realised that I have never mentioned the church in respect of the village stage. Our local Anglican Church was dedicated to St. Barnabus. I have no idea why, when it was built the builders used sheet of corrugated iron for the whole building instead of stone or even bricks. The short steeple contained a cracked bell. As a young boy I attended Sunday School and later went to both Communion and Evensong with my parents. When I was old enough I followed the accepted path of joining the choir, being confirmed and became a regular server helping the vicar at the altar during communion. I have a vague and earlier memory of attending the Methodist chapel in the village and taking part in a celebration which so far as I can make out is peculiar to the chapel. Young children in turn stood up at the pulpit and recited poems, usually of a religious nature which they had spent ages learning. I remember speaking but about what and with what success escapes me.

The Catholic Apostolic Church with which the family had long had connections was represented in Newcastle by a church near Rye Hill, Scotswood. I remember being taken to a communion service there by my father where we met Uncle Henry Gandy. The service was particularly long because the church had the habit of going straight from the communion service into matins without a break during which the congregation might reasonably escape. I was pleased that the exercise was not repeated.

Eventually and for no particular reason my church going days faded away. I can only think that having started work I hankered more after a lie in than spiritual uplifting on Sunday morning.

　

8

Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth.

In 1954 the war had been over for nine years but that is not to say that the world was at peace. National Service was still in being and would stay so for another couple of years. On or about one's 18th birthday the brown envelope of the "Call Up Papers" arrived. Previous enquiries had been made and I found that if, instead of going in for just two years and being sent were they wanted to send me, I signed on for three years, then I could choose the branch of the service I joined and, within reason, the job I wanted.

I didn't fancy the Coldstream Guards which is probably where I would have ended up so I happily signed on for the required three years and went into the Royal Air Force Police.

Preliminary medicals and interviews over I got my travel warrant and joined a merry band on a train South to Bedford. By the time we got there about the only people who got off the train were newly recruited servicemen. We were all bundled onto trucks and take out to R.A.F. Cardington.

Cardington was clearly chosen because it had been a base for the development of airships and had a couple of huge hangars in which a thousand new recruits could be lined up and kitted out regardless of the weather. Here we were given all those essential items of equipment which we were to lovingly care for over the next few years. A housewife, (a bundle of sewing equipment in a linen holder), two pairs of boots, one Air Force style and one Army style. The army boots were the stronger, heavier but more comfortable pair. Loads of webbing in a bundle together with a large pack that went on your back and a small pack which hung at your side which we would have to make sense of and put together in such a fashion that we could wear it. Knife, fork spoon, affectionately referred to as your iron and pair of mess tins. Items of uniform to a standard number all of which would, if you pushed hard, fit into the two packs and a kit bag.

First job, a compulsory letter home telling parents and loved ones of your safe arrival and how wonderful the sergeant was because the Commanding Officer was sick of getting calls from those people asking if their little Tommy had arrived.

Second job, write a will. There's a cheery thought.

Third job, pack all civilian clothes with brown paper provided, address to home and hand in at the hangar. Wave goodbye to civvy clothes for a minimum of three months depending on length of training programme.

After that our sole thoughts went into sorting out our kit and starting to clean up boots and webbing. The webbing was actually khaki but was required to be scrubbed and turned into R.A.F. blue. All the buckles on the webbing were tarnished and pitted. These were required to be smoothed and polished. The army boots and little bobbles all over the leather. These all had to go and be replaced by a highly polished smooth surface. In short, the smooth surface was acquired by ironing the leather with the hot bowl of a spoon, the polished surface was reached by slowly applying boot polish in small circles from a duster stretched over the forefinger, then spat on and polished until a shine appears. The process should then be repeated at least daily for the rest of your service except during training camps when you did it more often.

After a few days at Cardington our new owners felt we could be sent on for further treatment. One day we were told to have all our kit packed in the manner in which we had been shown and be ready to go to training camp.

A special train took us from a nearby siding to our specified training camp. After a journey of some hours we left the train, were invited to place all out kit bags into a truck by a corporal who screamed "Get your kit bags into that truck. Faster than that you horrible little erks". At the camp we were lined up, given bedding and counted off into a line of long wooden huts. No sooner were we in the huts than we were ordered out to go for a meal. By special arrangement, on the occasion of a new intake, the rest of the camp went into the mess first, got their meals and were seated before the new boys marched in. This gave them the cruel opportunity to sing some heart rending, home sick making song. At this point it was easy to see who had never before left their mother's apron strings.

We had just become 16 Flight, D Squadron, of the Recruit Training Wing at R.A.F. Padgate. I know that because I've just re-discovered the photograph taken towards the end of the training. If the photograph still exists I'm the gawky looking creature directly below the hut chimney. The drill corporals at either end of the group are not twins but one corporal who had the knack of running round at the right time to appear on both ends ,and which is why one of the group in the middle back row is looking round away from the camera. Looking at their faces now I can remember little if anything about any of them which I rather regret.

The next three months were pure bull in the form of polishing and scrubbing interspersed with learning to drill with a rifle, learning to fire it and a sten gun, and learning about the R.A.F. a process which seemed to be done on a need to know basis since I really don't think we were told very much.

Marching and rifle drill was taught by a method of continuous repetition and helped by such choice phrases as " If you don't swing your arm laddie I will tear it off and hit you over the 'ead with the soggy end", always a favourite.

We were all routinely innoculated and vaccinated against the diseases available in foreign stations. For this ceremony we were marched to a large building, made to strip to the waist and queue up to pass by a small but dedicated medical team who jabbed you with many needles as you shuffled past them. For some the anticipation was too much and they fainted before they even got there. Others waited until the sting of the first needle arrived before fainting.

We were then marched back to the huts swinging our recently stabbed arms vigorously on the stated grounds that it would help circulate the medicines but I suspect it was because the corporal knew how much it actually hurt.

A weekly kit inspection was made in which our highly polished equipment had to be laid out on the bed in a special way to be examined, ridiculed and re-done the next day by way of punishment because it wasn't sufficiently polished.

We were introduced to the NAAFI where for very little money our mess hall diet could be supplemented by egg, beans, chips and beer.

After the allotted length of time we were all passed out and given our postings. Almost everyone was going of to further training at other stations. I went to Netheravon in Wiltshire for three months training in the R.A.F. Police School.

Netheravon had been a glider station during the war and was built on probably the highest point of the Wiltshire Downs. It was December and winter was upon us.

Here we were issued with some nice new webbing in the form of a belt, cross strap, holster, gaiters, and a cap cover. Most of it as usual was khaki but this time it had to be turn into a pure white. The brass parts had to be smoothed and gleamed to an unbelievable sparkle. Luckily there was something of a secret service available. The rough brasses could be ground smooth by a friendly engineer who demanded little more than the price of a pint and was worth every penny of it.

Inspection parades were a daily event. The snow could be a foot deep but the parades continued. There was a little Station Warrant Officer with a really mean streak in him. The object in cleaning the brass and blancoing the webbing was to avoid at all costs getting Brasso on the webbing or Blanco, the proprietary name for the white cleaner we spread carefully on the webbing, onto the brass. Should this basic rule not be followed his eyes would sparkle, the webbing was removed, twirled around his head and thrown with unerring accuracy onto the path along which the whole parade would march when leaving the parade square. And I didn't want to go into the Guards.

We learnt law, criminal and martial. We learnt how to write letters and reports in the style required which always ended with the ancient appendage, "I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant".

One of the things I was never taught was how to fire the pistol that was supposed to go into the holster.

Just after Christmas I had 'flu very badly and after a couple of days in sick bay I was sent home for a week to recuperate. All the Geordies on the camp who heard I was going home rushed to give me pennies to throw over the High Level Bridge for luck. It was 1955 and here I was continuing a custom which had been around the North East since the Romans were here nearly two thousand years ago. The train slowed down as it crossed the bridge and I stood at the open window throwing money away.

The weather was terrible for most of the time at Netheravon. Wednesday afternoons were supposed to be sports afternoons when we should all have taken part in some activity, the idea being that it should also be a healthy outdoor activity. No hope. Most of us were to be found hiding in the large warm airing room at the end of the billet reading up for the inevitable exams at the end of the course. We weren't found because most of the instructors were sheltering from the weather as well.

Eventually Spring came and so did the final exams. I don't remember anyone failing and suddenly I was a Corporal in the Royal Air Force Police. The rank was acting, unpaid, and largely nominal for the sake of giving some form of authority. I went on a weeks leave and then had to report to R.A.F. Waterbeach near Cambridge to perform station security and discipline duties for the next two and half years.

There were three fighter squadrons based at Waterbeach, 253 squadron, 56 squadron and 63 squadron. 56 Sqdn. had night fighters so occasionally sleep was disturbed. Not that it mattered very much we were on shift duty anyway, which relieved us from the weekly billet inspection as someone was always in bed in the room.

The principle was that we should cover the guardroom 24 hrs. a day, 7 days a week. At night a corporal from somewhere on the camp and eight airmen would parade as camp guard and, working from a Nissen hut well away from the guardroom would patrol the station and man the gate as a security measure.

The guardroom was our kingdom. Airmen reported to the guardroom going on and returning from leave and weekend passes. We held keys for all offices and buildings on the station which we had to check out in the morning and back in at night. Vehicles entering and leaving the station were to report to the guardroom. When possible we did our own patrols around the station to ensure security and discipline on the station. Defaulters reported to the guardroom four times a day. These were airmen who had committed some petty offence and whose punishment was being confined to barracks usually for 7 days. They had to parade in full kit. It was like being back at square bashing camp again, polished brasses, gleaming boots, smart uniform, packs containing the right equipment. They lined up and were examined by either the corporal on duty in the guardroom or the Station Orderly Officer. It was actually quite difficult to get away with just 7 days punishment because at some point during that time the defaulter was almost bound to commit some further minor offence which would get him a further three days. For someone working all day smothered in oil in an aircraft hangar it was almost impossible to polish a pair of boots. Most of them lacked the common sense to pack their kit correctly and the one that always got them was "What's in your water bottle?". If there was anything in it at all it probably wasn't drinkable. A steady supply of defaulters was needed to keep some things running. The airmen's mess regularly required extra cleaning duties and even the guardroom needed the high polish on it's floor maintained without the exertion of any effort by the guardroom staff.

Speaking of which there were times when there weren't a lot of us to cover the shifts.

The staff I first remember were;

A Sergeant from Cornwall who was terribly superstitious and went wild when some wag drew a pentacle and put it on his desk with a small clay model in the middle of it.

Tom Cleghorn from Belford in Northumberland, Bill Smailes from Hexham, Bill Parkinson from Liverpool. Not very long after my arrival Tom Cleghorn was demobbed and replaced by Eric Shephard (Shep) from Chingford. Much later the system changed and R.A.F. Police were not automatically made up to corporal but got Leading Aircraftsman rank. In those days we got a Hopkirk from Yorkshire, a blonde curly haired youth from somewhere outside London and Alan Bailey a Londoner of swarthy semi-jewish appearance who I would meet again much later.

Shep had a B.S.A. Golden Flash and we went all over on it. The machine ran very well on petrol siphoned from the fire engines parked next to the guardroom. After demob he went to Australia. Tom Cleghorn was last heard of driving a wagon in Northumberland and involved in a fatal accident. Bill Smailes went back to the bank but had a road accident as a result of which he went blind. Parkie went into insurance in Liverpool. The rest were still there when I left.

Everybody got on with everyone else and we were all determined to enjoy our service. Too many people who had to do National Service went in with the attitude that they didn't want to do it and weren't going to like it. The consequence was that they had a miserable time while those who were prepared to accept it and enjoy it had fun.

In order to get any free time we tended to work very long hours which allowed us to have some time off while others worked hard in our place.

Memories of these years breaks down to a list of incidents of varying humour, of long hot summers and winters with a freezing cold wind blowing across East Anglia.

Every year there was a week long exercise when we got little sleep because of security duties. The station was frequently "bombed" during the first day and had to stand down, taking no further part in the game for twenty four hours. Saboteurs in the form of members of the R.A.F. Regiment would sneak onto the station at night and write little messages on buildings which then had to have imaginary repairs done to them or they would put crosses on the wheels of aircraft which then had to be changed before it could fly again.

One dark November evening during an exercise a sharp eyed aircraft controller up in the control tower saw a shadowy figure run across the air field against the dimmed lights of the runway. The fire crews were on duty and had three tenders parked next to the tower. The controller alerted them and as they drove off towards the runway he turned all the air field lights up full. Now, against the full lights, the figure could be seen and was soon surrounded by three fire engines with an immediate choice of surrendering or apparently being accidentally run over. The figure turned out to be the a Flying Officer in the RAF Regiment in charge of a sabotage party. He was brought down to the guard room where we searched him and put him in a cell.

This was clearly an incident that our boss, the Station Adjutant, Flight Lieutenant Grant should be told about. As we understood it he was of British/American/German extraction. Certainly he spoke very good English but with something of a European accent which made the following sound even more like a old wartime movie. He quickly arrived at the guardroom and stormed into the cell. "Where is your Landrover?" he demanded without introduction or preamble. " Oh I'm not going to tell you that", replied the F.O. in a somewhat public school accent. At which Fl. Lt. Grant grabbed the man and hauled him bodily out into the central courtyard which was between the Guardroom building and the Fire Section buildings. We used it to exercise prisoners because it had huge iron spikes round the roof to prevent escape and could be flood lit. The question was repeated and the reply remained the same but with a little more public school arrogance. "If you don't tell me I'll have you stripped and sprayed with the hose pipe".

"Oh I say Sir you can't do that you know. It's just an exercise". Fl. Lt. Grant grabbed him and shouting "Bring the hose pipe Corporal" he tore the man's jacket off. I pulled the hose pipe off it's rack on the wall and turned it on at which the poor man spluttered his protestations about his treatment, but told us where the Landrover was. Someone went to get it while he was thrown back into a cell. I never doubted that the Fl. Lt. would have carried out his threat.

The vehicle was brought back to the guardroom and secured. The F.O. was kept in the cell for another four hours before he was released still protesting to the Adjutant about his treatment. "Complain if you want, I've got the Landrover and you can walk back to your camp", was all he got from Fl. Lt. Grant.

.................

The adjutant was keen on fencing, the sword type, so he had the current R.A.F. fencing champion, a P.T.I. Sergeant Welsh posted in and told to run a weeks fencing course. I joined in, well it was better than night shift, and learnt how to fence tolerably well. I kept the sport up intermittently for some years after I left the forces.

................

One of the duties performed by the squadrons was to fly a protective patrol over an area to the East of the East Anglian coast. One of the occasional duties of the guardroom staff was to give officers early morning calls on request. One morning when I was on duty I forgot to give them their calls on time. As a result the officers who should have been in the air at 7am actually took off at 8am. Russia, with whom we were in the middle of a cold war at the time missed the opportunity. I had been responsible for the East Coast having no air defence for a whole hour.

.................

Formal parades were held regularly at which one of the R.A.F. Policemen would do flag duty. This entailed rolling up the R.A.F. Ensign and looping one of the ropes under itself to hold the flag tight, hoist it to the top of the flag pole and, on the command, "General salute, present arms" pull the rope thus releasing the flag and standing there until the parade continued, at which time the flag rope could be tied off. Special parades were held at least once year when the Air Officer Commanding would inspect the camp or when, as happened once, medals were being presented. On that occasion I had been detailed to do the flag and bring the medals on to the parade ground on a silver tray borrowed from the officers mess. In fact what I did was to go directly to the parade ground having instructed one of the newer members of our staff, to bring the tray to the parade ground in time for the parade. Needless to say he didn't get there in time so I found myself marching smartly onto the parade ground carrying a pile of medal boxes to be presented to about ten other ranks in recognition of their years of good service or particular valour. The adjutant was not delighted. As he said a little later in his office, it was like handing sweets out from a bag. It was of course my fault either for not doing the job myself or for choosing the wrong man to assist me.

...............

We also patrolled the camp in a landrover. One night I was driving around the hangars when I saw a van with its rear wheels in a ditch. Driving up to it I was met by the familiar figure of a corporal from the motor transport section. "Give us a tow will you I've got stuck". I was just wondering where we could get a rope from when I remembered that he had been demobbed the month before. Opening up the back of his van revealed a lot of batteries which he had stolen after breaking into the nearby battery store. I arrested him and took him to the guardroom where he was handed over to the civil police.

................

There didn't seem to be too much crime on the camp or at least if there was it wasn't being reported to us and we weren't detecting it. One thing that did become rather obvious was one of the Airmen's Mess Sergeants who cycled into camp each morning from the married quarters with an obviously empty cycle bag on the carrier at the back of the bike and cycled out again with an equally obviously full bag about twice a week. To be honest we weren't too bothered, considering the amount of food we scrounged out of the mess for the guardroom but we had a bright new sergeant. One Friday afternoon after a couple of weeks of casual observation he called the mess sergeant over to the guardroom as he was cycling home and asked him to open the bag. As we expected it was full of butter, sugar and the Sunday joint.

...................

One sunny evening I was patrolling the camp on foot when I found a corporal mending his car. Mechanics always fascinated me largely because I knew nothing about them so I stopped to chat and admire his work until I saw that the grease he was using was from a tube with a War Department stamp all over it and his boot was full of tools which obviously hadn't been bought from Halfords. Instead of living in a multi bed barrack room he occupied a single room at the end of the block. The room was not quite an Aladdin's cave but it took three trips in a Landrover to empty the R.A.F. equipment out of it. Amongst the equipment he had was an aircraft camera from a Hunter. Once out of the plane it was neither use nor ornament. His greatest punishment for these offences was that he had been due to be demobbed the next week but was kept on for a further three months while the case was dealt with.

...................

Opposite the guardroom was the Y.M.C.A. which provided tea, sticky buns and meals for the camp in competition with the N.A.A.F.I. It was managed by Marjorie Spicer, a lady of uncertain age, married to an R.A.F. Policeman, Alan, who was in the Provost Branch and stationed in Germany. She was assisted by an older lady, Hannah, who was from Sunderland. Both of them lived and worked in the building. It was handy for us and the fire section to use absentees in the area.

One of them, Myson, was 6'10" tall. He had much better uniforms than the rest of us since it was all specially made to order, including his socks of which he ordered a dozen pairs at a time. His bed had been specially extended by a workshop at his initial training camp with a mattress which had also been specially constructed. When he was stationed for a time in Germany these items were flown out for him and back when he returned to the U.K.

He was partnered for outside patrols with another Provost Cpl. who was 6' 5". This arrangement worked well until the smaller of the two was demobbed and it was found that the next tallest was 5'10". I was 6'3" so I ended up patrolling Cambridge with him occasionally. There was a large American presence around Cambridge with some very big U.S.A.F. bases quite near. They would come into the city to a particular dance hall where fights would break out either amongst themselves or with local lads. Never let it be said that the American forces had no racial bias. A lot of the fights were between the black and white factions in the dance hall. Whenever there was a fight the U.S.A.F. Police patrol was called in first. We thought we were smart and all bulled up with shiny shoes and white webbing, but their police were bigger and better. They had polished steel helmets and tall boots polished all the way up. They arrived in a truck and piled into the dance hall swinging truncheons at anyone within reach in American uniform. Offenders were then bundled into the truck and whisked aways we all worked directly opposite to it.

Eventually a Provost Branch group was stationed at Waterbeach. They included Alan who was able to live with his wife while the other five joined us in our barrack room. Their duties were much wider reaching than ours and they covered a large area of East Anglia. They patrolled outside the camp as required and to made enquiries about deserters and .

...................

My only other contact with Americans was in a pub I had found in a Cambridge back street. It was run by an elderly Geordie and the beer was cheap and well kept. A Yank Top Sergeant used to get in there mostly towards the end of the month when, since he was paid monthly, he was hard up. I was paid weekly so I could afford to buy him some beer. His method of repayment was embarrassingly over the top. Once paid he would land at Waterbeach in a huge Cadillac and take me to Cambridge and buy me beer all night and then return me to camp. This went on for a little while until he was posted back home.

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I have already mentioned that two people I knew from school were in Cambridge University so occasionally I was able to go to Jesus College for tea with Watson Weeks or Gonville and Caius for dinner with Max Hill. We would sometimes meet up for a pub crawl round Cambridge at night. It was nice and better than drinking alone. With the shifts that we worked it was rare that a few of us from the guardroom or the provost section could get out together.

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I had learned to drive a Landrover sufficiently well to be allowed to drive it round the camp, but I did not have a civilian driving licence so I took a few driving lessons and took a test in Cambridge. The main mode of transport in Cambridge is the pedal cycle. Thousands of students own them and use them to travel around the City between lectures. There are certain times during the day when the streets suddenly fill with cycles. My test was unfortunately timed to coincide with just such a mass movement of students. Mind you following a tour bus into the grounds of one of the larger colleges didn't help. I failed.

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One night shift I had one of the camp guards drive me round the airfield. There was an old bomb dump at the other end which still had buildings in use which we used to check on. I began to suspect his driving ability when I realised that he was not slowing down for the right angled turn at the top of the perimeter track to cross the end of the main runway. He swung the vehicle to the left, we slid over onto the grass, the rear end swung violently round and hit a large concrete block placed there to stop vehicles running into the landing lights. The impact rolled the vehicle over onto its side throwing me out of the door. We both picked our selves up, looked at the vehicle, realised it was going nowhere and walked back to the sick bay from where I rang the guardroom before we were both admitted to hospital. The driver, or non-driver in this case got 14 days confined to barracks and I got some very strange looks from the investigating officer.

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One of the perks of the forces was cheap rail travel if you paid for it yourself or travel warrants for periods of annual leave.

The cheap rail fares allowed me to visit London and go to the Festival Hall to listen to the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing, among other things, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, on 23rd may 1957. The programme is still in my autograph album. One of the unintended highlights was that just before the second half of the concert an evening suited gentleman came on and announced that certain sound quality tests which involved firing some shots were being carried out within the hall and asked us to bear with them for a moment or two before the concert resumed. He left and a second man entered the stage carrying two revolvers. He fired each six times and walked off to tumultuous applause.

At the bottom of application for leave forms was the line, "Travel warrant required to................."

My father was organising a holiday to Ballymena in Northern Ireland so I applied for a travel warrant to Carlisle and met my parents there. We travelled on together and enjoyed a lovely week. It was our very last family holiday.

The next year I decided to to go even further and wrote down, "Cork, Eire". To my surprise the leave application came back stamped granted and a travel warrant to Cork was attached. Parkinson, who lived in Liverpool had just been demobbed so I arranged to spend a few days with him before travelling on the overnight Ferry from Liverpool to Dublin then on by train to Cork.

My only knowledge of where to stay came from a list of hotels and guest houses which I had obtained from the Irish Tourist Board. With not a lot of money to spend on hotels, I was hoping to spend it on something else like food and beer. I took a taxi to one of the cheaper hotels in the book and was taken to a wide street of 5 storey buildings and went into the "hotel". Inside the front door I walked along a dark passage to a steamy kitchen which resembled the drawings of the kitchen in Alice in Wonderland.

I was shown to a room two floors up and stood inside it wondering just what to do next. The room contained a small wardrobe, a chair, a single bed of doubtful appearence and a wash-stand complete with china washbowl, water jug and soap dish. It struck me that this might not be ornamental. I went back down and enquired about the bathroom. "You'll need to be taking some water to your room" I was told and handed a jug of hot water. It was nearly twelve o'clock and I had been travelling since the previous evening. I washed and shaved and then remembered that I had been told that a meal would be ready at 12.30.

I found my way down to the dining room on the next floor by following the smell of cabbage. In a large room was a central table seating about 12 with smaller tables around it each seating four people. There were priests, members of the Garda and business men at the tables. I hid among the crowd at the large table. Bowls were brought in full of steaming cabbage and larger bowls of potatoes boiled in their skins. Plates covered with slices of cold mutton were put in front of everyone. I watched the other diners as they expertly speared a potato on a fork and, twirling it round, peeled it with their knife. I managed as best I could with the potatoes since I had no hope of copying them. Bowls of rice pudding followed with great pots of tea.

The food was wonderful but I still had the problem of the room and the washstand. I took the bull by the horns went to the kitchen lied about going back to England, paid for the lunch and left.

It was back to the book. I found that the Country Club in Montanette, just outside the City was within my financial reach so I took another taxi and booked in there for the week. It was pre-war heaven, they even had steak on the breakfast menu.

I was spending a quiet evening in the bar listening to the conversations around me when three men came in and greeted me as a well known friend. I said hello but pointed out that I didn't know them. "Of course you do, you're the under manager at the Imperial", said one of them and bought me a drink. They were on Paddy's Whiskey and Double Diamond. it was lovely and by the time I convinced them that I wasn't who they thought I was it didn't matter any more.

I was rather sorry when that week ended and I had to take on the 24 hr journey back to Waterbeach.

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News of the "Suez Crisis" had broken while I was on holiday and I did wonder what would happen to the squadrons at Waterbeach. A elderly Irish lady in a shop asked me if I was on holiday and I told her that I was in the R.A.F. She immediately picked on the dangers of Suez and, saying that she neither knew nor cared if I was Catholic, gave me a little oval medallion. "You must keep this with you for luck". For many years I carried it around tucked in the back of my wallet and I still have it.

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Over Christmas and New Year the camp ran on half staff. Londoners and in fact Southerners in general went home for Christmas while we Northerners manned the camp. On Christmas day the meal in the mess was served to the other ranks by the officers before they went to their mess or home for Christmas lunch.

On 29th or 30th December the Northern contingent went home for the New Year. Londoners could never quite understand it. The train which started in London and ended up in Glasgow called for some reason at Cambridge, Waterbeach, Ely and several other holes in hedges on the way. It got to Waterbeach about 9pm. I did the journey twice. It had previously been suggested that I should take some whisky with me and I was welcomed into a carriage packed with Scots Guards on their way home for Hogmanay with two crates of bottles on the floor. I rolled off the train in Newcastle about 6.30am the next morning.

Vehicles driving round the perimeter track had to wait for a green light from the control tower before crossing the end of the runway. One day two of us were sitting waiting for our green light and watching the Hunter, which was holding us up, in the distance on a circuit prior to coming in to land. It was a position we had been in before and we knew that in a few minutes the plane would scream past us onto the runway and we would get our green light. We saw the plane sinking down behind some trees and remarked that we had never seen one quite so low on a circuit when we got our green light. Realising that something had gone wrong we went back to the guardroom in time to be told to gather up some more staff and head out to where the Hunter had gone down having run out of fuel on the circuit.

He had landed in the soft black alluvial soil of a carrot field and was doing quite well until the plane dipped into a deep drainage ditch and tore the nose off. We found ourselves on guard duty for the rest of the day until something could be organised from the squadron to continue the guard and arrangements were made to strip the wings off and lift the plane on to a low loader.

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We only had two fatal flying accidents in my time on the station. One when a plane took off and failed to climb to a height where the ejector seat might be used effectively before it crashed to the ground. The second was when the ejector seat was used but the nose of the plane went down so quickly that the tail hit the seat killing the pilot.

The airfield was used frequently for night flying. The perimeter track was used by vehicles, planes and vehicles towing planes without any form of control. Until that is one November evening when a landrover carrying four people hit a Venom that was being towed in the opposite direction. The wing on a Venom is level with a point on a landrover bonnet just in front of the windscreen. Because of the combined speed of all vehicles and the weight of the plane the landrover continued to travel under the wing killing all its occupants.

The Wing Commander Technical Wing had lost four of his men and went looking for the pilot who had been taxiing the plane and who he was about to maim. He only calmed down a bit when he was assured that the plane was being towed by another of his men.

The accident occurred at about the time that we might well have been expected to be patrolling the area and a rumour went round the camp that in fact police personnel were the occupants of the landrover. The rumour even went so far as to name Shep and myself and a spontaneous celebration of our deaths was being mentioned in the airmen's mess. Shep and I were actually lying about in the billet when we heard the story and we very quickly dressed in full uniform and whites and marched into the mess. The groans of disappointment were certainly audible.

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Enough. Two and half years at Waterbeach were coming to an end. Demob was looming and Shep, who was due to leave about the same time, and I rushed around Cambridge taking those photographs which we had never taken and grabbed a few punting poles for the last time. Better explain that one. Punting on the Cam is a popular sport. There is a bridge behind Queens College which is low enough to grab the poles of punters who, having passed under the bridge, make the mistake of lifting the pole up for the next stroke too near the bridge. More experienced punters look up before going under the bridge to see if anyone is standing there waiting for them and in any case they float a couple of yards beyond the bridge before their next stroke. All good fun and designed to upset students. Families were never attacked in this fashion.

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There was a process of arriving or leaving a camp which involved taking a form round all the departments and getting it signed to say that they had either noted your arrival or had closed any documents on your departure. It meant you couldn't run away with anything you had signed for on loan from the stores. I did this and got my Certificate of Service" which noted my enlistment on 11th Sept. 1954 and my transfer to the reserve on 10th Sept. 1957. My conduct, it said, had been exemplary while I got 6's for ability and 7's for leadership. The reference at the back was the standard reliable, hard working, confidently recommended etc.

I got my travel warrant to some where outside London where I was given my demob suit and then back onto the train North and home.

The issue of the "demob suit" was a tradition left over from the war when, after several years service the forces kitted you out to return to civilian life. From the design of the suits they had hung on the rails since then. In a large building hung rows of suits and coats, piles of shirts, rows of shoes and stacks of hats as men still wore trilbys. I got a rather old fashioned looking three piece suit, a very rubbery macintosh which tended to melt and stick together on hot days and a supply of the other bits and pieces. I was even issued with a suitcase to put them in.

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Although released from actual service I had been transferred into a reserve group. This would normally have meant being called back for one or more training camps during that reserve service of usually two years. In the event I wasn't called back because of my subsequent occupation but I still received the reserve pay of a few pounds every quarter for the period.

On the subject of reserves I am reminded that one Easter when the camp was stood down for four days and only a skeleton staff left on the place, men started arriving at the guardroom saying that they had come for a reserve camp. No one had told the guardroom to expect them or what to do with them so several were sent home to return on Monday when the camp resumed work. Eventually an officer from Station Headquarters called in and casually announced that some reservists would be landing and told us to send them to Block G. He was not delighted when he was told that half of them had been sent home til Monday. On the other hand the Adjutant wasn't delighted with him for not issuing information to us until after the event. We got off with that one.

 

9

A short break.

I arrived home in August 1957 on one months demob leave. I had a little money although service in the forces was not exactly the best time during which to save money.

My father was dying of cancer in the throat with an unknown life expectancy. My mother, unusually, was coping with a strength that women acquire at times like these.

I did the garden which hadn't been touched for about the last year of my father's illness and tried not to get in the way.

Marjory Spicer had a sister, Rosemary, and brother in law, Eric West, who I had met at Waterbeach. They lived in Audley in Cheshire and ran an egg farm. Rather out of the blue I got a telephone call from Eric asking if I wasn't working did I fancy going to help him build a garage. I certainly did. Father even paid my train fare and gave me five pounds. Was this the measure of my usefulness at home or was he as usual being kind. I like to think the latter.

The "farm" consisted of a rather nice house with two long sheds containing 2000 battery hens, a big yard in which stood the walled-in manure heap and a large paddock. The deal was that in return for my keep and beer I would help around the place and in particular help with building a garage. Well I knew how to mix cement.

My first in fact only mistake was when we were trying to round up a few hens that had somehow escaped from a battery house. I got round behind them and started moving them forward towards the shed. The path was going to take me across the pit of hen muck. That wasn't a problem I had run across many a midden heap at Marshall Green. What I didn't realise was that since the pile didn't contain a large proportion of straw it was liquid with a sun dried crust about an inch thick. This supported the weight of some hens but would not support my weight. I sank up to my thighs in liquid, very smelly hen muck. One lives and learns I suppose.

The garage, which for the purposes of planning permission was to be known as an agricultural building, was being erected over the gateway to the paddock. With a garage door at each end it could be used as a garage or, with the field side open, as a shed for the few young beast in the field. A cunning plan. Most of the walls were up and we had to tackle building the concrete lintels over the doorways. These would have to be build in situ otherwise they would have been so heavy we would never have managed to lift them up. We erected some stout shuttering, put plenty of props under it, fenced off the other end against the animals with some boards, and started mixing concrete. The concrete was poured into the shuttering, with plenty of lengths of waste metal to reinforce it over its 9 foot length, and elegantly smoothed off at the top. We decided that it would be best left for a week to dry out before attempting to move the props. That meant a week before we could start on the second lintel because we needed to reuse the shuttering.

Three evening later we were quietly watching television when there was an almighty crashing noise from the direction of the garage site. Eric and I rushed out to find that the young bullocks in the paddock had burst through our weak defence of planking, and were busy demolishing the props holding up our shuttering. We just beat them back in time to save the lintel. In the dark we stapled barbed wire all over the field end of the garage.

Not long after that Eric took to his bed stricken with flu and pleurisy. Thankfully I had just about learned enough to take over the day to day running of the hen houses without consulting him too often.

Eggs were collected twice a day with Rosemary's help. The only sorting to do was to keep out dirty eggs which were to wash and eggs which had been laid without a shell which we ate. Eggs were packed on trays in boxes to await collection. The wagon from the packing station came on Tuesday mornings. Yes, your wonderful farm fresh eggs were anything up to a week old before they even left the farm. The driver brought with him a cheque and statement for the previous weeks collection showing a deduction for dirty or washed eggs. I still don't know how they could tell an egg had been washed. On Wednesday the feed wagon arrived and that took care of a considerable lump of the cheque.

Mucking the hens out was a heavy job. A rubber mat lay in a loop below the batteries. It had to be wound round to allow the muck to drop into a wheelbarrow. A local farmer led it away from the midden after a time which allowed it to cool down and hopefully lose some of it's acidity.

Money in the way of cash arrived in small quantities from the local pub who would order dressed chickens. What they got were those hens which had gone off lay. I had learned enough at Marshall Green to take care of that side of the business.

Eric and Rosemary had a friend, Innes Ireland, who was an up and coming racing driver. While I was there he was racing fairly near and came to visit. He had a very old Rolls Royce estate car which he said did 8 miles to the gallon providing you were going down hill with a tail wind. I think it really belonged to his father who was a vet in the Borders and who could probably afford it. We all went off for the day to watch the racing but the view was so limited that it has to go down as another sport better watched on T.V.

Eventually Eric recovered enough to resume work and I decided I should go home.

My father was very ill and relying very much on pain killers

It was now the end of November and apart from the small quarterly cheque from the R.A.F. reserve I had no money. I signed on the dole and was promised a few pounds income from that but really I needed a job. None of the jobs on the walls of the Labour exchange appealed to me. It was time to return to the only trade I had any knowledge of - the Police Force.

　　

10

And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.

In the first week in December 1957 I rang the personnel office at Durham Constabulary H.Q., told them who I was and that I was an ex-cadet who now wanted to return to the Force after service in the R.A.F. I was told that an application form would be put straight into the post and that it should be filled in immediately and, rather than sending it in I was to bring it in on the following Tuesday at 10am when I would be interviewed and have to sit an entrance exam, ( You see I should have stuck in at school at got some G.C.E.s.) The result of the interview was that I was accepted and, because I was an ex-cadet and could, they assumed, remember how to do simple tasks like answer the phone and take messages I was appointed as from 16th December 1957. I started at Blaydon Police Office where one member of the public who came to the office recognised me from the R.A.F. and was disappointed that because of my job he still couldn't hit me. Others had to wait until after Christmas to start work and, more importantly, get paid.

The starting pay was a £600 a year but there were certain allowances added to it which, I am sure, were peculiar only to the police force. Housing allowance was paid to all who were not living in a Police House. Cycle allowance was paid to those whose duties required them to use their own pedal cycle to get around their beat. Typewriter allowance if you owned and used your own typewriter. Plain clothes allowance and a "C.I.D." allowance for C.I.D. officers. The CID allowance was a payment in small recognition of the hours of overtime they worked.

On 6th January 1958 I reported with 19 others to the Police Training School at Newby Wiske, in North Yorkshire, some miles from Northallerton. This training establishment took in recruits from all over the North east of England so there were officers from different forces from Northumberland, to the East Riding of Yorkshire.

In three months I was to be taught sufficient law and it's practice not to make an utter fool of myself when I went out on a beat. We also had to do drill which was a bit of a waste. We had all just come out of the forces, and anyway, apart from some very specific occasions policemen didn't march anywhere.

On 9th January 1958 I got a telephone call from my mother telling me that "they have taken your father away". Thinking that he had been taken seriously ill and had gone into hospital I reported to the Duty officer and went home to find that he had died.

The funeral was arranged for the following Wednesday and because of his long connection with the Special Constabulary the local Superintendent arranged underbearers. I rang Newby Wiske and told them that my father had died and they kindly allowed me three days compassionate leave which meant that I should report back there on the morning of the day of the funeral. I spoke to the local Superintendent who in turn spoke to the Commandant at the training school and suddenly I didn't have to report back until the following Monday.

The funeral was the usual sad affair attended by his many friends from work and the village. Mother was not delighted that members of the Masonic Lodge, of which father had been a member, turned up in their regalia after she had specifically requested them not to.

I returned to the training school and not only had to resume my lessons but catch up on a weeks learning.

Sport was played on Wednesday afternoons. Why is it that the world seems to play sport on Wednesday afternoons. Nobody there fenced and I still held my strong dislike of outdoor activities, but since I was now forced into something I pushed myself forward as an experienced linesman for rugby games. I had never played or until then even watched a rugby game but being a linesman was less energetic and warmer than playing.

One of the requirements for joining the police was that the applicant had to be a proficient swimmer, if not at the time of joining then the art had to be learned within the two year probationary period. Each week we went to the public baths at Richmond where the proficient swimmers would practice life saving and the non swimmers would learn to swim. I couldn't swim so I spent each and every week trying to satisfy the requirement of being able to swim one width of the baths. I still can't swim and would certainly never make it across the width of a swimming bath, but I would push myself off one side, always the shallow end, and flap and struggle across with my feet on the ground most of the time and hopefully when the instructor wasn't looking. For some reason, at the end of the course, I was marked as having satisfied the swimming requirement and as a result I was forever relieved of going anywhere near a swimming pool.

Towards the end of the course we all received details of our postings. I was to go to Jarrow and live in the hostel, Henry Studdy House, named after an early Chief Constable.

The probationary period for a police officer, during which he could be dismissed without reason, was taken up with continuous training of one sort or another. A course in local procedure at Harperly Hall, and attachments to different branches of the force to learn or at least be less ignorant of their particular duties. A two month attachment to a section made up of detached beats qualified me to buy a bike and apply for a cycle allowance which I managed to keep for many years. I also bought, and obtained an allowance for, a typewriter. I think I managed to keep that allowance for the rest of my service. There was a refresher course at Newby Wiske after one year and a second course towards the end of the second year. A months attachment to traffic meant riding around in the back of a police car and, frankly, not learning very much. Various short courses at Headquarters, such as a regular one on Civil Defence during which we learned how to read the various measuring devices for the level of radio activity arising from what was then thought of as an inevitable atomic or hydrogen bomb attack, and the role the police force would play in that very modern war.

The police force maintained a driving school as part if it's traffic department and although I didn't get a driving course at that time I did get a driving test. Among the driving instructors some had Ministry of Transport Certificates to test drivers. Following my fathers death my mother had given me his car, a two year old Ford Anglia. I had been driving it around under the instruction of Graham Suddick who lived in the hostel and who was on traffic. The practice must have done me good because I passed the test.

Jarrow was a depressed area. It had never quite recovered from the depression of the thirties when the unemployed marched to London to press for work. It had certainly never forgiven it's Police Force for the way the locally demonstrating unemployed were treated by them. The local Superintendent considered that the best way to control a crowd was to have a baton charge. I think he must have been an ex-cavalry type who really wanted to draw sabres and bear down on them from a galloping horse.

In any event it left a considerable rift between the public and the police. Two of us on night duty found two drunks singing and shouting their way down the middle of the deserted main street at 1am. We arrested them and within a minute we were surrounded by a large and violent crowd all intent on releasing the prisoners. The other officer, Freddy Fisher, lost his helmet, always the first thing to fall off in a fight. This of course was before the days of personal radios and constant contact with the office so we were left to struggle on for about fifteen minutes before someone rang the office and told them two of their officers were having a bit of trouble. Vans arrived and in the face of greater opposition the crowd quickly dispersed. The prisoners were thrown into the back of the van and eventually the cells.

Most successful police work is a matter of luck and being in the right place at the right time. I was in just such a position, having a smoke in the back yard of some empty property, when I heard noises in the next yard. Next door was the office of a small building company. I looked over over the wall and saw two children about twelve years old breaking into the back door of the office. By the time I got round there they were inside the office. I arrested them and eventually they appeared in the Juvenile Court charged with Officebreaking. Apart from demonstrating a bit of luck the episode doesn't seem very much but I learnt two valuable lessons from it.

At the time the charge had to specify which particular building had been broken into, such as house, store, or in this case office. The children appeared at court represented by a solicitor and it was my first appearance in court. A very puzzling not guilty plea was entered and the solicitor eventually explained that the building company who had used the premises as an office had, in fact, been made bankrupt the week before the offence, and the building was in the hands of the receiver. As a result of these circumstances the "office" was, at the time of the offence, a "storehouse". The charge was wrongly worded and the case was dismissed. Outside the court the solicitor said he had been lucky to trip across that bit of information and offered me a lift back to the hostel.

The lessons; I should have checked out the use myself and, the one that stayed with me for the rest of my service, solicitors and, for that matter, barristers,are doing a job for money. The will defend their client in the morning at which point the police office in the case is just short of corrupt. In the afternoon they may be prosecuting another case with the same officer who is now the most upright and stalwart policeman in the force. It's a game.

At the beginning of my second year of service I did my attachment of three months C.I.D. training. Here my previous experience as a cadet at Felling and the training that Ken Blain, the Scientific Aids Officer there, had given me was really useful. I spent most of the time with the Scientific Aids Officers. I was encouraged by the Detective Inspector, Chris Watson, who had been a S.A.O. in his early days. I already knew how to develop and print photographs so I soon learned how to manage the cumbersome Thornton Pickard half plate camera. My first pictures, taken under the guidance of Chris Watson, were at an industrial accident in one of the few remaining dry docks in Jarrow. A huge wooden beam was being lifted into place by a crane when the jib rope snapped. The jib and the beam dropped killing three workmen below it. Attending their post mortems was my introduction to another part of my duties. Looking back it really was something from a cartoon. Hiding under the black cloth at the back of the camera checking for content and focus before taking a picture at an exposure which was largely worked out by experience and chance. I did some work with the detectives but mostly I enjoyed the S.A.O. work. It included going to scenes of crime and examining them for fingerprints, footprints and any evidence which might later connect a suspect to the scene. These were pre DNA times but bits of material or hair caught on the sharp edge of broken glass were relevant.

Scientific Aids Officers handled the paper work end of firearms applications, dealt with aliens, photographed and fingerprinted prisoners and prepared information for Criminal Record Offices. They liaised with scientists at the Forensic Science Laboratories which were based in Gosforth. They attended and photographed scenes of accidents, road or sometimes fatal industrial accidents and suicides including attending the post mortem. And as the saying goes, "did a thousand things". It was better than night shift but only just because they were liable to be called out at any time during the night to attend scenes of crime.

The evening work was interesting. We went round the pubs. The object was to glean information from those founts of local knowledge the licensees and their barmaids. This of course required us to drink beer which was supplied, usually at no cost by the licensee. The pubs in Jarrow could be quite rough with fights breaking out for little or no apparent reason. One sure way of stopping a fight from happening was to keep two detectives leaning on one end of a bar by buying them regular halves of bitter.

By the time my three months attachment was up I had learned most of their work including how to drink beer. Oh alright, I knew that already.

Back to the town beat and shifts. I did work out once that during my probation I was outside patrolling the streets for a total of about three months. Because I could type and already had a lot of office experience, (back to the cadetship again) I was regularly chosen to do duty in the Town Office. It was a job which should really be shared round but some of the shift either didn't like it or frankly were no good at it. The Town Office was in the middle of the ground floor opposite the main entrance to the building, with a public enquiry lobby at one end and a desk for Police Officers at the other end ,behind which was the entrance to the corridor to the cells. The Superintendent, Roy Atkinson, in charge of the Division lived in a house at one end of the building while the Chief Inspector in charge of the Sub Division, George Duke, lived at the other end. They both worked all day and were liable to walk into the office at any time.

One night there had been a fight down in the town and the big van was ferrying unconscious men back up to the office and laying them out on the office floor. There were six of them laid out when Supt. Atkinson walked in at one end of the office. Stepping carefully over the bodies he asked if everything was alright, I said "Yes sir it all quiet now", to which he replied "Jolly good I'm going to bed", and continued stepping over bodies until he got out of the office. To all intents and purposes he hadn't seen a thing.

Life at the hostel was quite fun. The building was looked after by a Mrs. Ellison who had been housekeeper at Harperley Hall and was now retired to the smaller responsibilities of Jarrow Hostel. The food was good and plentiful.

There were about ten of us in the hostel and our main entertainment was playing cards. We played brag whenever three or more people joined together.There was a strict rule of "No Credit" so you really could only lose what was in your pocket. Occasionally I won sums of money which, had I not spent them on something specific, I would just have lost again within a few days. I once bought a dinner jacket which 43 years on is still on the go in fact my grandson Dominick wore it in 2002 to attend a senior school function. On another occasion I bought a monocular which I still have.

A couple of months after I had finished my C.I.D. training I was once again in the right place at the right time. I was on duty in the Town Office when a message came in asking for the S.A.O. to go to Boldon to photograph a road accident. Harry (can't remember his name) was coming down the stairs carrying the camera box when he slipped and sprained his ankle. He hobbled into the Town Office and told the duty Sergeant what had happened. The Sergeant, having first rung for transport to get him taken to hospital, asked who we could now get to photograph the accident and Harry pointed to me saying that I would be able to do it as well as anyone. I was driven to the scene, took the photographs, and went back to develop them. They were alright which is more than could be said about Harry's ankle. It was broken very badly and was going to take ages to mend. I suddenly found myself transferred to C.I.D. for the duration despite still being in my probation. Once Harry's ankle was better and he returned to work the other S.A.O. went on leave, so I stayed on. In fact I continued to do the job on and off for the rest of my probation.

Once my probation was over Chris Watson told me to apply immediately for a Scientific Aids Course adding "by the way the course starts next Monday and you're on it".

So the next Monday I reported to H.Q. and started a six weeks course to learn to do the job I had been doing for about nine months. After a couple of weeks I was told to report to the Executive Suite for an interview for the course.

The interviewing board consisted of an Assistant Chief Constable and the Detective Superintendent who I knew through Chris Watson. The Assistant Chief Constable thought I was too inexperienced for the job, surely I had never been to give evidence at higher courts like the quarter Sessions and the Assizes. When I told him that I had been at every Quarter Sessions and two Assizes during the past year, and the Det. Supt. told him that, not only had I been doing the job for about nine months, but that I was actually on the course now, he said that he had better approve the application and why were we going through this farce.

I completed the course and returned to Jarrow to Town duty for about three weeks until a memo arrived moving me from Jarrow (Town Duty) to Chester le Street (C.I.D.) (Scientific Aids). It was 1960 and the path of my career was set for some years to come.

Chester le Street did not have a Police Hostel so lodgings were found for me with Sally Armstrong who lived in South Pelaw on the outskirts of the town. Sally was a widow, the very embodiment of homliness, then living with a school boy son Frank. Her husband and two elder sons, had all worked in the local colliery. She was used to having men come home hungry after a shift of heavy work and she had not got out of the habit of providing vast amounts of food.

Monday was a busy washing day with little time to prepare food so the main meal was made up of the warmed up left overs from Sundays' vast meal. Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday's meals might be a leek or onion suet pudding rolled in a cloth and boiled for several hours. It lay there curled round a plate of mashed potatoes and smothered in mince and gravy. Friday was always fish and chips. Saturday, a mixed grill swimming in it's own fat and so it was back to the huge meat and Yorkshire pudding meal that was a Sunday dinner. Why my weight didn't increase by several stones is a mystery.

My work in scientific aids was shared with Bill Tate. Between us we covered quite a large area including Sacriston, Chester le Street, Birtley and Washington. I was visiting Washington on a regular basis while it was being transformed into the present Washington New Town.. It was a period when the road on which you had travelled to Washington might not exist two hours later.

Chester le Street police station, which then stood on Front Street on the corner South of The Lambton Arms Hotel, had once also been the home of the Superintendent in charge of the Division. The first floor rooms which had been his home were now occupied by administration, C.I.D. and accident prevention. While the other C.I.D. officers occupied the dining room, Bill and I occupied what had been the adjoining kitchen and pantry. Here we did what was supposed to be highly scientific work, an aid to the detection of crime, in very cramped conditions.

Because we worked an unspecified number of hours overtime each week we were paid a "C.I.D.Allowance" which actually amounted to three hours pay per week. The hours I actually worked were, from 9am, unless I was called out earlier which was usually the case, until I went home for lunch at say 1pm. I returned at 2pm and worked until 5pm. Back to the office at 7pm when a number of interviews might have been arranged or people who had been reported for offences came in to be fingerprinted. These duties were hopefully finished by about 8.30 at which time the C.I.D. officers would get together and decide which pubs each of us would visit. After closing time, and reporting back to the station, we would all get home about 11pm. That is unless we decided to have a party. Our best parties were held in The Board Inn on the corner of Low Chare where Peter Miller was landlord. It is now a jewellers shop most of the frontage having gone to Beamish Museum but there is still some surviving woodwork carved with bunches of grapes. Here after drinking several pints of Newcastle Exhibition ale we would club together and buy gin by the bottle.

Local protocol demanded that if we had been out drinking late we would still be in the office at 9am the next morning. If we had been out actually working half the night then we were permitted a late start.

One evening I was returning to the office with Sid Burt, one of the C.I.D. officers, He introduced me to Pat Clark, a lovely red-head who worked in Chester le Street library and who lived on his old beat at Pelton Fell. The phrase "our friendship flourished" covers the situation nicely. After work I would often cycle up to Gardiner Crescent in Pelton Fell for a fried egg sandwich before cycling home through pit yards and along old railway tracks to South Pelaw.

In due course, charmed by the her fried egg sandwiches, the excellence of her Yorkshire puddings, an art which Pat had perfected and not least because I was genuinely in love with her, I proposed to her and was accepted.

During the run up to the the wedding Pat entered a competition in the Evening Chronicle designed for couples about to be married. The prize was to be a week's honeymoon in Newcastle, Co. Down, where the mountains of Mourne famously sweep down to the sea. It asked for the recipe for a happy marriage. Pat's entry, written in the form of a recipe, won and suddenly what was to have been a quiet wedding was public property. We were front page news in the Chronicle and did a publicity thing at Parrish's store in Byker, (they've long gone) during which we allegedly chose clothing and furniture for our new home. Every one who read it of course wrongly assumed that we had been given all the items pictured. Actually we were given a pair of very useful suitcase for which we were grateful.

We were married on 5th May 1962 in the Parish Church at Chester le Street. Surrounded by our few close relatives with as many people as could manage to get there from our respective work places gathered to witness the event.

The flight to our prize honeymoon wasn't until the next day so after a reception in Newcastle we drove off to the Victoria Hotel, Bamburgh for the night. The bill for dinner, bed and breakfast came to £3.7.6d.

We flew off to Belfast from a Newcastle Airport that was still nissen huts in a plane so small that I was photographed with my arm bent and my hand resting on the nose. Another couple who were celebrating their 13th wedding anniversary and who had won a similar competition in the paper travelled with us. 41 years on, we still exchange Christmas cards. We were met at a very windy Belfast airport by more press and a photographer, so any secrecy about our honeymoon was out of the question.

The Slieve Donard hotel was an impressively up-market hotel which at the time was paying strict attention to the licencing laws if only because the judges from the Downpatrick Assizes were staying there with their police bodyguards.

The hotel really was a stone's throw from a beach which sloped so gently into the warm Irish sea that 50yds out the water was still only up to your knees. The view from the hotel was of the Mountains of Mourne which actually do sweep down to the sea.

Newcastle was a nice small town but with limited activity so one day we hired a car and went off towards Eire. We crossed the border at Warren Point and drove south to Dundalk. We were suprised to see the difference that a few miles over the border made to the people and their circumstances. There were hamlets built around crossroads with groups of old men standing about. There were little whitewashed cottages, old woman wearing shawls and children running about without shoes. Its only 41years ago but the countryside at the time gave the impresion of still being poor. No doubt the advent of the EEC has changed that in recent years.

We also went to Belfast. I had been on a C.I.D. course at Preston and one of the other officers on it came from Belfast so we thought we might look him up. Finding the main police station was easy enough. Finding a way into it was difficult. These were times when "the troubles", as they were euphemistically known, were supposed to be dying down and the sandbags were being removed from police stations. Not in central Belfast. I was eventually admitted but no one was keen to give me any information about my friend. Finally the duty inspector believed me and directed me to his house. Not only did we meet up again but the next night he and his sergeant found a reason to make some enquiries in Newcastle and had dinner with us.

The honeymoon over we returned home which for me meant leaving Sally Armstrong and moving into Gardener Crescent with my wife and mother in law. This situation remained for some months until a house became vacant in Queen's Park, a small estate of police houses at the bottom of Ropery Lane overlooking the by-pass and, depending which side you lived on, Lumley Castle.

9 Queen's Park was a three bedroomed semi of a standard design known as a "C" type. Before it there had been an A and a B and after it came a D, E and F before, many years on, the police authority decided that it no longer wanted to be a landlord and allowed policemen to buy their own houses. All the houses in Queen's Park had been built on the cheap by a jobbing builder. Because the cavity walls were filled with rubble and the floor joists went through to touch the outer wall they were damp. Wallpaper lifted off the walls in winter and dried back onto the wall in the spring. The oven was so old that the recipe book which went with it had recipes that included dried eggs, which hadn't been seen for fifteen years. Still it was home and by chance we had Sid Burt and his wife Audrey, our best man and matron of honour, as neighbours.

11

Home and family.

We set up home with bits given by my mother and a beautiful dining suite and bedroom suite given by Pat's grandmother.

Pat was working at the branch library at Birtley and juggling home, and shopping with work. That is until our family began. With the exception of Anne all our children were born at home under the care of a team of home visiting mid wives, elderly ladies none of whom from my memory had any personal experience of childbirth. Nevertheless they were professional, kind and caring. I was present for all the births, supporting a foot, holding a hand and saying "push dear" in, hopefully, an encouraging tone. Again Anne was the exception, the hospital would not allow me to stay.

Gail was born on 5th July 1963, Ruth on 23rd September 1964, David, 6th January 1967 and Anne on 3rd November 1968. On 7th October 1965, Pat had a lovely baby boy who was sadly born dead. I am often, and quite rightly, accused of forgetting the date of this sad event. It is true I cannot, at a moment's notice, remember the date. I am also accused of not remembering the occasion or the baby. But I do remember it all vividly. I will always remember it but just sometimes I wish the image would go away.

With my hours of work the task of bringing up children fell very heavily on Pat. I did what I could on my days off but I am aware of the heavy burden which she bore.

Sometime after Gail's birth it was obvious that we needed a car. I have no intentions of filling a lot of space describing the absolute debacle of my life and times with the motor car, but I will tell you about our first one. It was an old black Ford Prefect which I bought for £45 from a local man who ran a 'sausage skin' factory in one of the redundant buildings on the site of Lumley 6th Pit. I suspect that the time will come when some vegetarian descendant will not understand the full implications of that remark. Sausage skins were the washed membrane which was a pig's small intestine. This man collected the intestines directly from the abattoir, took them back to his factory where he emptied them of their contents, separated the parts he needed which he washed and packed for delivery to butchers. The remainder was discarded. The description of the process might give you some clue as to the smell in the factory. The car had been stored for six months within the factory and had absorbed the full "flavour" of the smell. Thankfully air freshening aerosols had been invented so emptying two into the car went a long way towards masking the smell.

From then on we were never without a car, not always the finest examples of motor engineering but never smelling like that one. Pat learnt to drive which was an immense help for everyone and gave her some freedom and an ability to use a starting handle.

It was during the early '60's when I looked at the prospect of bringing upto date the family history which W. A. Copinger had published. I still had one of my father's printing presses and a lot of type all piled up in our wash-house and I fondly believed that I could use it to print an addition to the volume. I started writing letters to those relatives I knew about asking for the necessary information. I was also involved in correspondence by tape, in particular with Patrick Copinger, who was living in Kilmarnock and who provided me with other addresses. I wrote to them all, elderly great, great aunts and cousins I had never heard of. They were all kind enough to supply me with information and mini-autobiographies which went towards the final book. I also got in touch with the offspring of Charles |Louis George Emanuel, my great great grandfather and for some time was writing to Lucy, his youngest daughter, my half great great aunt.

One of the "new" cousins I contacted was Hubert, who was by then an ordained priest in the Society of Saint Francis. Hubert visited us four times over the next few years. His first visit was timed to coincide with David's christening, and it was nice that Hubert was not only David's godfather, but that he was allowed to baptize him. One could almost hear the murmurs going around Queen's Park, "Those Copingers have even got their own priest".

In March 1969 I came down with pneumonia and pleurisy. Our local doctors were so attentive. I later learned that on the first night our good friend Dr. Peter Robertson, having been called out gave me an injection to enable me to get some sleep, didn't go to bed himself but sat up all night waiting for Pat to ring to tell him that I was worse. When he came the next morning he walked in empty handed, not sure whether to bring medicine or a death certificate. The anti-biotics worked and together with the caring nursing I had from Pat I steadily improved. Not the last time she would be called on to drag me back from the jaws of death.

Anne was now nearly 5 months old and so that Pat could get on with housework and the other children Anne and I were given a excellent opportunity to "bond". She spent a considerable time sitting in a bouncy chair on my bed gurgling to my stories.

In May when she was christened it was time for Hubert to return to perform his dual role as Godfather and vicar. The only slight hiccough came when he tried to grab a child from some unsuspecting mother in the belief that it was Anne. He had forgotten his glasses

The old police station was replaced with a new and purpose built office and court building on Newcastle Road to the north of the town. Here the darkened pantry gave way to a custom designed darkroom with a allocated fingerprint room within the secure area of the cell block. The scientific aids office had been designed like a laboratory, a mistake at the time but eventually no doubt use would be made of the facility.

The system of C.I.D. officers working all hours had changed to a shift system, which split the day up to a day shift and an evening shift. Scientific Aids Officerswere still on call during the night.

Eventually I left C.I.D. to work in uniform in the town office. It struck some as a strange career move but in the end it did me no harm. I suddenly found myself having to deal with things of which I had little experience, such as the whole of the Road Traffic Act.

Another new experience was "night shift". At 1 or 2am half the shift plus various night shift traffic and dog men gathered in a small canteen to have their bait. This invariably comprised cheese and pickle or tinned meat sandwiches. On my first night shift Pat decided that something of a show should be put on. I took into the canteen a large bag from which I laid out a place setting for a three course meal of soup, a main course of Pilaff because it fitted into a wide necked flask, and apple pie and custard together with a half bottle of wine. Spam sandwiches were being thrown into the bin in disgust, and the shift inspector asked if I always ate like that, to which the only possible reply was, "Doesn't everybody". The next night the canteen was packed. Word of my banquet had spread, and dog men and traffic cars were coming from as far as Darlington to see what my meal was going to be. While I had a meal similar to the previous night, I did let it be known that I would henceforth be joining the pie and pastie brigade. Nevertheless my night shift meals continued to be a matter of some admiration since the numerous pasties were always home cooked and looked as delicious as they were. There was of course the night when I opend my box and exclaimed "Oh dear she's gone back to one pastie", Eyes peered into the bait box to see the solitary pasty. It was a right angled triangle two side of which measured fully 9inches. You can do the maths to calculate the hypotenuse.

There is a position in the police force entitled Coroner's Officer. The officer attends and deals with all cases of sudden death, reporting his finding to the Coroner. "Sudden deaths" or deaths reportable to the Coroner were broadly defined as those deaths where the doctor was unable to issue a death certificate, perhaps because he did not know the cause of death, or if he had not seen the deceased during the previous 14 days. Sudden deaths usually involved a post mortem which the Coroners Officer had to attend. For whatever reason the appointed officer at Chester le Street didn't have a recognized deputy to stand in for him while he was on leave etc. It was decided to have one and I, having been to countless deaths and post mortems as a Scientific Aids Officer, fitted the position nicely.

The job was not without its perks. If there were no deaths and all previous paperwork was up to date, I stayed at home. It was not always necessary to wear uniform, indeed I argued that it was less traumatic for the bereaved to deal with someone not in uniform. The job carried a mileage allowance because the officer used his own car to travel around the division. A lot of paperwork could be done at home so I certainly did a lot of typing sitting in the dining room from where I could shout to Pat, "How do you spell 'pneumokoniosis?". There, did it again and she still gets it right.

Another, less well advertised, perk involved flowers. Undertakers would regularly, at the request of the bereaved family, bring vast quantities of flowers back to the hospital wards. Some would be brought to the mortuary to decorate the small Chapel of Rest attached to all mortuaries. This would soon be overfilled and the ocassional bunch could be quickly popped into the Coroners Officers car boot. Being suddenly plied with huge bunches of flowers Pat did wonder at my generosity and my motives. The arrangement was ideal until one day when she was putting one of my offerings into a vase a small black edged card declaring regret at the passing of Uncle Willy, which I had forgotten to remove, fell out onto the bench.

12.

Time for changes.

Time perhaps to widen my horizons and extend my experience. I applied, Lord knows why now, to transfer to Cumbria Constabulary. Perhaps I was in search of a rural life. I was accepted at an interview by the Deputy Chief Constable who began the conversation by asking after my parents. He had known them both years ago before they were married. This could be an omen for getting a good job. One of my requests, in fact really my only request, had been for a four bedroomed house. These were few and far between, but we were offered a house in Kendal. It turned out to be situated on a busy main road at the edge of a terrible council estate and certainly not the arrangement I was looking for.

I finally withdrew my request and asked for a transfer within Durham County to a rural station. I was offered and accepted a posting to Sedgefield Section which, although it was within Darlington Division might as well have been on the moon for all the contact we had with them.

In September 1971 we moved into a detached Police house in the village of Stillington. The Section may well have been rural taking in a vast acreage of agricultural land and including Wynyard estate, but the village was decidedly industrial. The people were still of the opinion that I was the 'village policeman' and had not grasped the change to rural policemen working shifts and covering a larger area. The effect was that if I was in the house when they came to report something I was off duty and if I was on duty I was out of the house driving a mini van around. As a result Pat advised all and sundry on a variety of subjects and readily gave permission for the movement of pigs, which, because of swine vesicular disease, should have been a strictly conrolled.

At Christmas we were plied with gifts of fowl and game from several quarters. We had to cope within a few days with a turkey, a large cockerel, duck, pheasant and partridge. We were pleased when the travelling butchers van returned so we could buy some nice mince. A farm just outside the village had two sheds of battery hens. The farmer liked to go to Darlington mart on a Monday and not have to rush back for the afternoon egg collection. Pat, the children and I would often help him out by doing it for him. In return we got all the cracked and soft shelled eggs. Tea on those Mondays would always be at least 2 dozen eggs scrambled.

A system of annual personal assessment was introduced into the force at this time and the section sergeant had to tick boxes from one to five, ranging from good to poor, to describe his constables. Our sergeants answer to this tedious task was to hand the forms out and tell us to fill them in ourselves. The last question on the form related to using the officer in difficult or dangerous situations, and asked if the sergeant would a) want him there, b) put up with him, or c) not want him anywhere near. The Chief Superintendent in charge of the division was Ken England and the subsequent interview with him comprised of "Come in, sit down, have a fag". The only question on the form he took any notice of was the last one for which he expected to see box 'a' ticked in respect of any officer of any worth. Mine of course was.

Naturally the village had a Workmen's Club which put on entertainment. One Saturday I found that the singer was someone I remembered from Air Force days and introduced myself. He was appearing at the Fiesta, a big night club in Stockton the following week, so one night he came and picked me up for a night out at the club and the next night he took Pat. Introducing her at the club as a friend of his, she was seated at what was considered a good seat and shadowed by a big bouncer wherever she went.

Free eggs and a good boss apart the 'Stillington experience' was not going down well. We were there perhaps 18 months and Pat hadn't enjoyed any of it. It was quite a blessing when the Boundaries Commission report was published. They were moving the County boundary to actually split the village, not quite in half, but enough to put the police house and its occupant in Cleveland Constabulary formerly Teeside. The county also lost substantial lumps in the North, such as Washington and Birtley to Tyne and Wear. The deal as far as police officers were concerned was that, having joined Durham Constabulary we could choose to stay in it by transfering to an unaffected area or stay and be transferred to the new force.

I applied to transfer to within the Durham County area and shortly a removal order came through transferring me to Sherburn Section in Durham City. Within hours of telling Pat about it the house was packed up and ready for the move even though the van wasn't coming for another ten days. During those ten days George Hall who was the section sergeant at Nevilles Cross heard about my move and told the superintendent at Durham that I would be wasted at Sherburn and that he wanted me at Nevilles Cross. The orders were changed and we moved into a police house 32, Redhills Lane, in February 1973. I had worked with George Hall in Chester le Street C.I.D. when he was a detective. There we had argued, battled and finally become friends and during my time in the section up to his retirement there is no doubt of his kindness towards Pat and me.

Nevilles Cross section was policed by 24 hour cover in a mobile and 6 officers working two shifts, 9am to 5pm or 5pm to 1am, to cover their own beats. Our small police station consisting of one room, to which a toilet was eventually added, was just across the main road at the bottom of Redhills Lane. I started working on the section mobile but quite soon was given the village and area of Framwellgate Moor as a beat.

The village itself was one street of shops and four pubs surrounded by a large council estate and some privately owned housing. The beat extended to include the Technical College, Dryburn Hospital (more sudden deaths), County Hall, and Police Headquarters. The beat boundary was actually two miles away from my house, and to reach it I walked along the main road on which most of my bosses, and my Superintendent in particular, drove to work in the morning. Whenever I was on 9 to 5 I made a point of being seen by him walking that road in time to be on my beat at 9am. County Hall building included the Motor Taxation offices. Every month a number of people who went there to renew their road fund licences presented forged or stolen M.O.T. certificates. The staff could spot them at 50 paces, and we all had four or five busy days charging this lot with a variety of offences. The technical college had a large kitchen of which I was granted the freedom, cups of tea for ever more.

There were a lot of good gardeners in Framwellgate Moor, so in the summer I found a new use for my otherwise redundant truncheon pocket. I could fit a freshly picked cucumber into it while carrying a pound of tomatoes under my helmet. There were also some friendly licensees, so once the pubs had emptied and the streets cleared George and I could sneak into one or another of the pubs for a couple of pints before going home. How we were never found out I will never know.

In December 1974 the police house 26 Redhills Lane became empty. It was a larger house with four bedrooms although, to be fair, the 4th room was a box room which had to have a bed built into it. It was a design known as a Senior Officers house, and had in it's time been occupied by an assistant Chief Constable and a variety of Chief Superintendents. It didn't look as though anyone was going to occupy it so I asked if we could move into it. With some help from George Hall, who knew people in headquarters, we got the house. There seemed no point in getting a removal van to move the short distance along the road, so I borrowed a sack barrow from a farmer. The whole of the section turned out to help and we just carried everything along the street.

Malcolm Fordy, who was the constable on Nevilles Cross beat, was promoted and moved, so I was given that beat which saved me a long walk. I also discovered a new allowance. I was paid a small monthly sum for cleaning the section office. The beat was most enjoyable. I swapped the technical college for Nevilles Cross College, with the same arrangments with the kitchen, and gained several of the Durham University Colleges all with their respective kitchens. I swapped one set of pubs for another with the same sort of friendly licensees. I lost the gardeners but gained a laundry, free uniform cleaning and a staff discount on everything else. For some reason which I never understood, I retained the Hospital.

I also gained the busy cross roads at Nevilles Cross which was governed by a set of traffic lights or, when they broke down, me. Many a happy hour was spent playing with the cars, although on one occasion I was literally chased off my position in the middle of the junction. A mini full of nuns, whose driver was trying to turn right, couldn't decide which way to go round me. To the amusment of all the stationary drivers on the other roads, I ran off before she drove over me.

The laundry staff, who delivered cleaned goods to the many shops the company served, once decided that clothing themselves at the customers expense should be a perk of the job, so they took to stealing whatever garments would fit them. The laundry had always had some items go astray, usually found to have been delivered to the wrong shop, so it took some time for them to check round the shops and then realise that a large number of items had vanished. George Hall and I started to interview the van drivers and their assistants. We soon had a system going whereby when we interviewed a member of the staff, and they admitted stealing certain items, we took them home to recover the goods. On our return they were sacked by the manager and reported for theft by us. By the end of the afternoon the manager was pleading with us not to interview anyone else for a couple of days, until he could keep the place running by replacing all the staff that he had just had to sack

One of my two Chief Constable's Commendations came while I was at Nevilles Cross. Information was circulating in the City about a youth carrying a automatic pistol. No one had named him but there was a good description of him and a suggestion that he lived on Newton Hall estate. One evening information came that he had just left the ice rink, where he had been seen to have the gun. One of the other section officers and I were in the section Panda when we heard this so we followed the next 'bus from Durham to Newton Hall and, sure enough, at Newton Hall the young man who perfectly answered the description got off the 'bus. We stopped and by a quickly arranged plan asked him the way to a street on Newton Hall, explaining the incongruity of policemen asking for directions by telling him we were from Chester le Street. As soon as he raised a hand to point the way we each grabbed an arm and suddenly he was lying on top of the vehicle with me grabbing the gun from the shoulder holster exactly as described by informants. The gun turned out to be a replica and he turned out to be a serving soldier on leave from duty in Northern Ireland. The political situation at the time between the I.R.A. and England was such that certainly in Northern Ireland, and even in this country, there were places where, given the information we had, he would have found himself surrounded by armed men quite ready to shoot him at the first false move and he knew it perfectly well. He went back to camp to face whatever awaited him and we both got a commendation for "tackling a suspect who we had good reason to believe was armed"

I was also spending periods as an Acting Sergeant both in the City and on the Section. This eventually lead to my going on a Promotion Board where I was interviewed by Deputy and Assistant Chief Constables who would consider whether or not to promote me. My last annual assessment must have been good for when my Superintendent, a man I had known for a long time, wrote about me "Copinger has the ability to carry at least the rank of Sergeant". It was actually very kind of him since he had recently given me a rocket for drinking on duty. It was really as far as he dare go since years before I had drunk enough beer on duty with him.

The board must have liked my answers and record because in time I got a message to be at Headquarters at 2pm the next day. It was one of those strange messages people got without any explanation as to why you should appear there. You just hoped it was for the long awated promotion. It was and I was being posted back to Chester le Street as a Sergeant on the Town Section.

I had my own shift of men to organize and supervise which I managed without any great mishap, but, there again, without any great glory. Things frankly just plodded on through the series of shifts with two quick changes from Night shift onto 2pm till 10pm and two days later onto 6am to 2pm. Night shift was still slightly brightened by the contents of my bait box. It didn't now run to three course meal, but there were still some interesting home made pies and pasties.

After a couple of years or so of walking the streets in the rain to make sure that my staff weren't spending the whole shift hiding from the rain, I had had enough. Anyway it was getting harder to win fights with much younger and fitter drunks. I asked if I could come in out of the cold and work in the communications office. There was a Chief Inspector Bob Young in charge of Chester le Street Town and we had known each other for years. My transfer was through within a week.

I entered the warm world of wirelesses, teleprinters and the introduction of computers. I had members of the public queuing at the front desk each with his own individual problem. I was in control of the charge room where I processed drunk drivers, some of whom I knew, and had drunk with in Chester le Street when I was in C.I.D. Here I received into custody prisoners from the whole Division some of whom were people I remembered photgraphing and fingerprinting years ago, and some were their children.

The whole office situation could go from boringly quiet to outrageously busy in the space of a minute. I was blessed by having David Mallaburn as my office man. He had recently come off traffic where he been for most of his service and was so helpful, I knew little about the whole subject of traffic law and would probably have had problems without him. We are still friends and see each other couple of times or so a year.

13

But what about the rest of the world.

Meanhile, our children continued to grow up, change and eventually leave school to gain employment or further training.

Pat worked for a time as a barmaid at Redhills Hotel for the unforgettable Harry Lightfoot and then at the Tax office in Durham.

At some point, I think 1974, I started to keep bees. I have no recollection whatsoever of the thinking behind the decision, but as it happened, it didn't turn out to be too bad a hobby. I was at Nevilles Cross at the time with George Hall, a superb scrounger. I told him I was thinking about starting bee keeping. He picked up the phone, and, after a short conversation, told me that an empty hive was waiting for me at a farm at Bowburn. Now to get some bees. Les Granlund was Detective Chief Superintendent at Headquarters. I knew him slightly and knew that he was a bee keeper, so I rang and asked his advice. Within a few days he delivered a swarm to me that he had collected at Gilesgate. I got some wax from a bee keeper I had met in Western Hill and the hive was soon set up. Pat and I had no proper safety equipment so we made do with track suits and fencing masks to which longer cloth bibs had been sewn. We may have looked peculiar but it worked.

It was then that I discovered there was no organisation to turn to for help. I had met three university doctors one mathematician, one engineer and one geneticist who also kept bees. We introduced our local chemist, Malcolm Proud to the craft and we were visited by the Foul Brood Officer from the Ministry of Agriculture. Time to stick my neck out, I invited this small group to a meeting at our house and we formed The Durham Beekeeper's Asociation. I, for my cheek, was created Secretary, Malcolm, because he had a shop and could therefore be assumed to be able to handle money and accounts, was made Treasurer and an already very old Jack Geddes was made President since, some years previously, he had been treasurer of a local beekeeping association which had disbanded.

I arranged with Harry Lightfoot, now in a pub at Shincliffe, to use his upstairs room for meetings. I arranged speakers or topics for discussion for a series of meetings over the winter, wrote a lot of letters and hoped people would turn up. To my surprise and relief they did, about twenty of them, certainly enough to make the effort worth while. This number rose steadily to over forty and we had a flourishing association. I arranged our affiliation to The British Bee Keeper's Association, a move which I have often regretted since. I also arranged to have a stall at the Durham Agricultural Show held each July at Chester le Street. This was a tremendous success and I was fortunate in being able to organise to the stall for the next 22 years. Actually the stall was very good to me. The Show always coincided with the Miner's Gala, when all days off were cancelled due to the manpower needed in Durham City for the event. One way or another I had always avoided the spectacle and once I had the stall arranged I could apply for a day's annual leave on the grounds that I was the secretary of a "County Association", and was needed at the show. My leave was always granted.

My mother had moved to the little village of Knayton four miles north of Thirsk after my fathers death and was living in a stone cottage. It had a lounge with coal fire and a small room, known as the snug, up two steps from the side of the lounge. She had a piano in here and gave lessons to children in the area. A passage which led from the back of the lounge had a pantry off to the right, and, to the left, two doors. One led down to a cellar and the other opened onto a staircase which was still standing because the woodworm were holding hands. A further door opened into a large dining room with a kitchen and a bathroom, both small but adequate for her needs, at the back of the property. A door at the side of the kitchen opened onto the back garden, a typical Yorkshire garden, the width of the house and fifty yards long. The garden included apple trees and a plum tree which would have been delicious had the ducks from two doors away not eaten them. Upstairs were two bedrooms with very low set windows and beds with feather mattresses.

Mother died on 2nd May 1981 and I inherited the cottage. My mother's cousin little Madge, so called for the very good reason that she was not very tall, and her husband Fred lived in Chapel House in the village. They were lovely people, indeed as I write this Madge still is, so we decided for the moment to hang on to the cottage, change the name from Western Hill to Shalom (if only because we found a ready carved wooden name plate on a second hand stall) and use it as a weekend retreat. We actually did spend quite a lot of time there, perhaps Pat more than me. We would go for my days off, I would come home to work leaving Pat there for a couple more days and then pick her up when I was on 2 til 10.

We even let the cottage through an agency for a few weeks in the summer, thus getting enough money in to pays the bills it created.

My retirement was likely to take place in, at least, the foreseeable future. A broader view of our continued use of the cottage as a main residence had to be taken. David and Anne might still be at school, and it would be unfair to have them change schools at that stage. In any case the chances of any of them getting decent employment in the area seemed slim. So, much as we had enjoyed the country experience, we decided to sell Shalom.

14

Stands the church clock at ten to three

And is there honey still for tea?

Rupert Brooke

The decision having been taken we put the cottage up for sale and, as soon as it was sold, looked for a house in Durham.

Pat found a mid-terrace house, 10 Alexandria Crescent, which was obviously in need of updating. It had been two flats knocked into one house, and had six bedrooms on the first and second floors while the bathroom was on the ground floor. There was a cellar, complete with fireplace, that would house my collection of printing and bee equipment, (otherwise known as junk). It was being advertised for £19,500 and two other people were putting offers in for it. Every time the estate agent rang the price of the house had gone up by £500. Eventually the agents said that everyone should enter a sealed bid to be opened at 1pm on Thursday. At the time the next obvious bid was £23,000, so, after some discussion we entered a sealed bid of £23,011. We got the house, the other parties had entered a straight £23,000.

Thankfully we could continue to live in the police house while work was done on Alexandria Crescent. Gas central heating had to be installed, the whole house rewired, the bathroom moved upstairs so losing a bedroom, and an ensuite shower room fitted into a small room which had been the head of the staircase leading down from the upstairs flat. Then it had to be decorated. Some of the walls had five layers of wallpaper each of which had been painted several times - a nightmare. Eventually all the work was done and we moved in. On the day of the move, just as the removal van was pulling up at Redhills Lane, I drove off to Chester le Street to go to court leaving poor Pat to cope with the move. By the time I got back to Durham, and to our new house, she

had worked wonders and we soon settled in.

I had completed 26 years service in the police force and didn't much fancy having to complete 30 years to get my full pension.I had already been on a pre-retirement course, which not only prepared officers for the massive change in life style, but left most of us yearning for it. I spent quiet moments on night shift working out the complicated mathematics of pension rates and government allowances. Some few years earlier my doctor had told me that I had arthritis in my knees. The problem was about to flare up again. I asked for an appointment to be made with the force medical examiner because of the increasing difficulty I was experiencing with my knees and went off sick. About a month later I was called to the personnel department at headquarters where I was told that I would finish on 4th May and that I should now go to the next room to see the doctor. Clearly the decision to retire me on medical grounds was more administrative than medical. The doctor agreed to the need for my retirement on medical grounds and so it was that I left the police force on 4th May 1984 with 26years and 9 months service, and a full 30years service pension to be increased each April but, if the government had it's way, not by very much.

Suddenly I was free. I could make arrangements weeks ahead safe in the knowledge that work would not get in the way.

My own doctor, to whom I had previously presented my aching knees, kept issuing medical certificates until, as luck had it, I found another job.

I heard that the current Bees Officer, Colin Earp, employed by the Ministry of Agriculture wanted to retire so I rang him and asked how I could apply for his job. I had now been keeping bees for about 10 years. He told me that if I wanted it I could have it but I would have to be interviewed by his boss, Norman Twentyman. An interview was arranged at the Durham Min.of Ag. offices in Hallgarth Street and, having assured himself that I didn't have two heads, Mr Twentyman appointed me to start work in the middle of July.

The job entailed visiting beekeepers across three counties, Tyne & Wear, Durham and Cleveland. At that time there were a total of 500, each of whom should be visited every three years. The job started on the first Monday in April, when it was often snowing, and finished on the last Friday in September. I had an office in the Ministry building, a car allowance, a box of record cards listing all the known beekeepers, a set of ordnance survey maps and a very free hand in how I organised my working day. I also had a very efficient secretary and map reader, Pat.

On warm summer days we drove out to whichever part of the territory suited us, and Pat would guide me to a beekeeper from the lists. I would examine his bees for disease and Pat would complete the required paperwork such as keeping my diary and record cards up to date, especially recording mileage. On wet, windy or cold days we stayed at home or went shopping. You can't examine bees in those conditions. We saw a lot of countryside and I met a lot beekeepers.

Each September the job finished with a final report and a flurry of paperwork, and I returned to my doctor to collect sick notes until the start of the next season.

In September 1985 Gail presented us with our first grandchild, Dominick. Pat had spent months knitting so he arrived to a large array of beautifully knitted clothes.

I now had the time and, technology having caught up a bit with my need, the ability to complete the up date to the family history. I gathered up all the previously acquired information, and, after sitting for hours writing up the pedigree on opaque paper with Letraset, I was ready to have it photocopied and bound in a card cover. After so many years of having it lying around I was pleased to see the copies posted off in 1985 to the Copyright Libraries and various family members. Technology was advancing far faster than I could keep up with it. Computers were growing in availability and efficiency but I wasn't. It was therefore nice when my cousin Paul asked if he could continue the job of bringing the rest of the Pedigrees up to date. 18 years on he and his wife Elizabeth are still updating. I admire their tenacity and am a little jealous of their technical knowledge.

Just after I left the police force I had a telephone call from Jack Marshall, a printer I had first met at Chester le Street, asking if I would bind some magazines for him. He had a contract with Shotley Bridge Hospital to bind the years issue of various medical journals, such as The Lancet, into book form for the medical library. My last experience of binding books had been with Mr Thomas at Rowlands Gill school. This was a very different kettle of fish however. With advice and a demonstration from Jack's son, I quickly learned how to do it. In the first year I had to clear a 3 year back log so there were 33 volumes to do. The cellars at Alexandria Crescent were ideal for the work. I had benches with nipping presses on them, and a quarter size billiard table in the middle of the room to stand work on in its various stages. I could title the volumes using one of my printing presses and gold dusting the printed title.

After the second year of doing this work I thought I had better find out some more about the craft of bookbinding, so I enrolled in a class in the bindery underneath the Newcastle University Library. I found that the class was run by Derek Bradford, the bindery manager, who I had met years ago at Jack Marshalls printing works in Chester le Street. The class in all respects of available tuition and facilities was excellent. I started going three evenings a week and believe I learned most of the generally required aspects of the craft. For many of people there it became more of a workshop with expert advice readily available than a classroom, and I continued to use it as such for many years. My book shelves hold several books which have been much improved or owe their whole existence to this class, such as the copy of Richmal Crompton's "William" which Pat found in a basket in a junk shop in Halesowen. It was a pile of loose paper when we bought it for a nominal 10p. I got a lot of experience repairing it and rebinding it into a readable state.

When we moved into Alexandria Cres. I joined the Royal Air Forces Association who had a club nearby. I even went onto the committee for a few years. Here I met a small group of men, of whom I was by far the youngest, who met on a Friday night to play cards and dominoes. I joined them most Friday evenings often with Pat.

Of these men, George had been in the army and fought his way across Europe in World War 2. Another, Wally Harding, had flown Wellingtons all over the place and he had written a book of his experiences for the information and interest of his family. The story had a wonderful twist at the end, and I was delighted to be able to help bring it to a wider audience. His son was able to get 25 copies printed at work on a photo copier. I bound them up in as near Air Force blue as I could find. After depositing copies in the Copyright collecting libraries, Wally had 19 numbered copies of a limited edition for his family and friends. I am pleased to have one which he autographed thanking me for my help.

John Richardson, (nicknamed Bulgaria, a name taken from his likeness to one of the Wombles of Wimbledon), a retired lab technician was boringly serious but kind, generous and a very good artist. He would eventually illustrate a book describing his own collection of hip flasks, an account of Pity Me where he lived and Joe Dickenson's "Durham Cathedral as it was in the beginning"

The fourth regular member of the group was Joe Dickenson a retired teacher and very knowledgeable local historian. Joe took George, Pat and I on a tour of Housesteads on the Roman Wall. As we toured the excavated ruins intent on Joe's detailed explanation of the buildings, we became aware that our group was growing as we were joined by school children whose teachers clearly lacked Joe's knowledge and ability to put interest into history. Joe was particularly good at doing that around Durham City and Cathedral. Pat and I cajoled, pleaded and pressed him into writing these stories down. Eventually he was persuaded and he wrote Tales of Durham which Pat corrected and I published. It was selling so fast that I couldn't keep up with the demand and the publication of that and its sequel Further tales of Durham was handed on to the S.P.C.K. Joe's "Apocrophal tales of Durham Cathedral" is a wonderful tour of the building especially if read in conjuction with "Durham Cathedral as it was in the beginning". Joe had the ability to research a story and he next took on "The Battle of Nevilles Cross" which is written about in a number of local history books, most of which tell different aspects of the battle. Joe came up with what has to be the definitive history of the battle which was discussed and changed over gallons of coffee in our kitchen. Eventually I published it as a limited edition of only 50 copies, but the demand continued and I brought out a paperback which sold steadily for a couple of years.

With such a successful author I had my own imprint which I registered as "Copinger of Durham" and my own identifying International Standard Book Number. In addition to Joe's books I published some reprints of bee books including Brother Adam's "Heather Honey". However, when Joe died I had lost my main source of material, and my little publishing house died as well.

The bee job continued merrily. I had a year off in 1988 when, in May, I had appendicitis. Pat had called the doctor out just before midnight because of my abdominal pains. He prodded and poked and went away. After he was called out again he sent me to hospital, probably to stop us from calling him out. The next day I had my appendix taken out. The general opinion was that 52 was a silly age to have that operation. I was just recovering from the operation when I chopped the tip of my left index finger in my newly acquire guillotine.

The bees job had changed over the years. Having gone down from 6 months to 3 months it became difficult to keep putting sick notes in because after 7 months the Department of Social Security started to demand I be examined by their own doctors who invariably decided that I was fit enough for some work and made me sign on as unemployed. Once when this had happened I was interviewed by the DSS for my continued eligibilty for unemployment benefit. Their offices were on the ground floor of the building which also housed the Ministry of Agriculture. At the end of the interview I told them that I actually had a job starting in two weeks time and that my office was directly above where we were sitting.

To get round this situation I asked to have my working time changed to six months part time and my bosses were quite happy with this arrangement. My handy Durham office was changed to one in Darlington which was not so convenient. Then my employers were changed from the Min of Ag. to the Bee Unit of the Central Science Laboratories, and they assumed that I was working from home. That was even better.

Early in the spring of 1992, to the horror of all beekeepers the parasitic mite Varroa was found in Devon. It was decided to search certain areas of the country to see if it had spread. In the North a number of bees officers were called to a meeting in Northallerton and we started an intensive search. I spent the early part of my years employment searching in and around North Yorkshire. In the summer the Bee Unit announced that we would have to do a specific search of 10per cent of apiaries in our areas during October. The Bee Unit was based in Stratford on Avon. I reminded them that 200 miles North the temperature was a bit different, and that no one would allow us any where near their hives so late in the year. I suggested that searches in North Yorkshire and points North should be carried out in September. So it was that I spent September driving around not only my own three counties, but also Northumberland. Although no mites were found we all made a fortune in mileage and subsistance allowances.

Then all sorts of things changed. In the early hours of 17th March 1993 I had a heart attack. The previous evening Pat had made me a leek pudding which looked so wonderful that there is actually a photograph of it somewhere. I then went rushing off to a meeting in the Town Hall, something about boundary changes, then ran off up and down the hills in the City to the A.G.M. at the R.A.F.A. club. By the time I was starting to feel a pain in my chest which I largely put down to running around and having smoked 20 cigarettes a day for umpteen years. I went home, still with a slight pain and so to bed. About 4am I realised that the increasing pain was a heart attack and, as I sat up clearly having difficulty in breathing, Pat woke up. Instinctively she went to ring for our doctor, they still did night calls at that time, and then rang for an ambulance. By coincidence they both arrived together so after a quick injection I was taken off to Intensive Care in Dryburn Hospital where to my good fortune the heart consultant was already in the unit. Pat had dragged me back from the jaws of death again.

I spent a week on a ward largely populated by men with heart conditions under the care of a young female doctor who wore mini skirts and low cut tops. How did we survive? I was lectured on a new life style of exercise and healthy living to reduce the risk of further damage to my heart. The dietician turned a strange shade of puce when I described my usual breakfast as including "a slice of bread which I spread with lard and then grilled because grilled food is healthier"

When I went home I found that Pat had changed the house into a "no smoking" zone. Obviously I hadn't had a cigarette for a week and suprisingly I wasn't torn with a craving for them. This was undoubtedly helped by Pat's work. The ash trays were gone, the house no longer smelled of cigarettes and the garage had been designated a smoking room. Initially it still contained Gail's re-built old mini but eventually that would go and the garage comfortably fitted out with carpet a settee and a coffee table. There is no doubt that Pat's consideration helped me to maintain my not smoking, even if, to this day I still fancy a fag just now and again.

The healthy low cholesterol diet as suggested was adopted, but as it included all sorts of oily fish like mackerel we both started piling on weight. More changes were needed. My exercise routine soon got me fit enough to walk to the R.A.F.A. club and eventually up a very steep hill to Nevilles Cross Social Club where I was also a member.

My condition stopped me from driving for about six months. On Tuesday evenings David drove me into Newcastle to my bookbinding workshop and then took me back to Durham, where he took me to Nevilles Cross club. Sometimes he stayed for a game of pool before taking me home and sometime just dropped me there leaving strict instructions with the new barmaid, Tracy, that I was to have no more than two pints and that I should not chat up any strange women including her.

Tuesday was also the night when the "Panthers", the Durham and District Motor Cycle Club, met at Nevilles Cross Club for their weekly meeting. Some of them usually arrived before their meeting at 8pm to play pool, and David and I were readily invited to join in with them. Hearing David call me dad and, of course, not knowing my name they all took to calling me "Daddy". In time when I started driving again and Pat came to the club with me on Tuesday evenings she was just as readily accepted into the group as "Mammy". We had suddenly acquired an large extended family of big hairy leather clad bikers.

Anne was now married to Peter and they lived at Brandon with their two daughters, Katie and Gabby. She took me shopping at Safeways, where I had been going for so long that most of the staff knew me, at least by sight. She let it be generally known that I had had a heart attack and should not be sold any cigarettes. Some months afterwards Pat wanted me to buy her some cigarettes while I was in Durham. I went to Safeway's out of habit and asked for them at the kiosk, only to be sternly told "No we haven't got to sell you any cigarettes because of your heart attack".

In the spring of 1994 I deluded myself that I was fit enough to go back to work even though the D.S.S. had made no effort to remove my invalidity benefit and insist that was fit for some sort of work. I soon realised that I couldn't cope because the bending and lifting left me breathless and I soon tired. I had arranged to work for 6 months on a part time basis, two days one week and three days the next. I managed for a couple of months by visiting sites where I knew that I could get the beekeeper to do all the lifting for me, but when I ran out of them it became difficult. The end really came when, having driven to Guisborough I made the mistake of working my way even further East. In the late afternoon I went to a farmer, whose bees had always been behind a shed in the farm yard, to find that he had moved them to the top of a steep hill on the farm. I had no intentions of even trying that one so I made some excuse about just checking on the number of colonies and got back into my car to face a long drive home.

The next day I rang Mike Brown at the Bee Unit, explained the position to him, and we agreed that I should spend the next four weeks of my employment sitting at home getting the record cards up to date and doing an end of year report. At the end of July I retired once more.

15

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav'd a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his manly voice,

Turning again towards childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

Perhaps not quite like that but at 58 I was definitely not in the market for further employment. I still had the bee suits and smokers which the ministry kindly omitted to collect from me. I could still do my own bees but to be honest John Stevenson, on whose farm I had them, did most of my bee keeping.

In September 1994 the Bee Unit decided that a further Varroa search should be done in the North East and arranged for two bees officers, one from Peterborough and one from Gloucester to come to do the searches. 10 Alexandria Crescent suddenly turned into "The Victorian House" a private guest house catering for the bed, breakfast and evening meal requirements of two visiting bees officers. I largely arranged their visits making sure that the journey to the apiary sites also took them to places of historic interest or natural beauty. Pat fed them with a wide variety of substantial meals. After two days one of them declined the cooked breakfast on the grounds that it was too big so early in the morning.

I was still doing some bookbinding although the hospital contract had now gone.

Early Tuesday evening would be spent at the bindery in Newcastle getting home in time to pick Pat up for our pool games with the bikers at the club. I've called them a big hairy leather clad lot (well Denise wasn't, she was a skin head) but they really were the most friendly crowd. In addition to Den' the pool playing crowd included; her boyfriend, Keith, a seriously dyslexic dustbin man from Gateshead; Martin, who really looked like the cartoon Tazmanian Devil pictured on his jumper; Tony and his BIG girlfriend Dawn who were into things Red Indian and whose home was apparently decorated like a Teepee; Robert who, without his two hearing aids, was stone deaf and who commuted a 260 miles daily return trip to Hull to work as a heavy plant driver, but since he went every where in excess of 100 mph it didn't take too long; Colin the treasurer a driving instructor, thespian and magistrate; Andy a motor mechanic and his totally uninhibited busty barmaid wife Barbara who made me a decoupage picture of an old fashioned printing shop which hangs on the wall beside me as I type; Phil a house husband and joiner, a friend who would later be of invaluable help to us; and little Michelle, the youngest looking and most petite of the crowd who rode one of the biggest bikes in the club.

We were drawn more and more into the group. We give them and their children Easter eggs and wrapped cans of beer up for them as Christmas presents. The girls confided dread secrets with Pat and the lads confounded me with stories of motor bikes, not one word of which I understood never having owned a motor bike.

We catered for their A.G.Ms with sausage rolls, meat squares, chocolate cake and Pat's ever popular caramel shortcake and at Christmas we took mince pies.

By now we were so involved that at one A.G.M. the chairman, big scary Steve, suggested that we should be made honorary members. It was rather nice of them and we were pleased to accept the invitation. From then on we were pressed to attend all their functions and, appropriately, Pat was given a bouquet of flowers on Mother's Day. One of their regular functions was a Heavy Rock Disco at Nevilles Cross Club on alternate Friday nights. We even went to that and did our bit by collecting entrance money at the door. This got us known by a lot more bikers. The club held a rally at Witton Castle each February attended by about 400 bikers from all over the country who camped there for the weekend, often in the snow. We were of course invited but firmly declined any suggestion that we should camp. We did however turn up on the Friday night for a drink and always received one of the much coveted rally badges. I wore my usual garb of trousers and a tweed jacket. Barbara called me a boring old fart for turning up in a leather zone wearing such clothing. Next year I went in jeans a dinner jacket and black bow tie. That really got me noticed.

Members have come and gone, but Pat and I are still there. In fact I am the secretary with an inscribed pewter tankard to prove it.

I was still in the Durham Bee Keepers Association but had passed on the heavy yoke of secretary. On my resignation from that task they appointed three people to replace me, a secretary, a programme organiser and a magazine editor. I had improved our original newsletter which was a single sheet run off on Malcolm Proud's Gestetner into a folded magazine. It had a picture on the front which together with the logo for our stationary was designed at Aston University where my cousin Neil's wife Ros was a tutor in the art department. I was given the title of Vice President. It sounds grander than it is. One of the things I had always tried to do when I was a Bees Officer was to get a group started in Weardale. There were enough bee keepers in the dale to warrant it and it was not convenient for them to trail down to meetings at Durham. Eventually Frank Collingwood, who was the dale's best known beekeeper and, once you got him started, a wonderful organiser, did get a group together. I was delighted to attend their first meeting, in fact I joined the newly formed Weardale Bee Keepers Association. The formation of the group was reported in the local paper and my name was included in the article as having had a part in it's formation which quite delighted me. It didn't go down so well with Durham B.K.A. who thought I should have pressed them all to join Durham and not form some small break-away group. I was even called to attend a committee meeting to explain my actions. I was pleased to do so, and my comments berating them all for their short sightedness are on their minutes file typed on two large sheets of paper.

I continued to attend the Durham County Show with the association stand which I rather considered to be my own until 2001 when Foot and Mouth closed all agricultural shows for the year. I was delighted and proud when in 1992 we won the cup for "Best Trade Stand".

Our president had died at a considerable age, he was 70+ when he was appointed, and the committee of the day set about the task of choosing a replacement. I could have helped them but I wanted the job myself, and thought it tactful to keep away from the committee meetings so as not to bias their deliberations. After two years of debate they had clearly made no decision. A notice was sent out calling an extraordinary meeting for the purpose of electing a president and nominations were called for. I arranged for two friends of mine to nominate me and, in fact, a third entered a nomination unknown to me. At the start of the meeting it was announced that the comittee had changed their minds and were not going to have a president chosen in this manner. Someone from the floor shouted up that the meeting was then a waste of time, should not have been called, asked if there were any nominations and said that if there were the meeting should go ahead. Although no proper seconded proposal and vote to that effect was made, there were certainly loud mutters of approval from the meeting. Two nominations had been entered, the first one read out was a past treasurer who said he did not want the position. The other nominations were all for me. Without further debate the chairman announced my successful appointment as President and I rose to thank the meeting for the great honour they did me. With some members this was about as popular as my connection with Weardale Bee Keepers had been, but I really didn't care. I have a letter from Brother Adam congratulating me on my appointment.

Brother Adam was an internationally known bee keeper at Buckfast Abbey. He had been visiting the North East at irregular intervals for years, but took to coming each August to coincide with his birthday. He was a great friend of a well known Northumberland bee keeper Colin Weightman. I first met Colin when he worked as a seasonal Bees Officer and I also helped him in the publication of one of his memoirs, a collection of articles he had previously published in The British Bee Journal. Every time Brother Adam came north Colin would bring him over to see Pat and me. I had the great pleasure of giving him the tour of Durham Cathedral, the one according to Joe Dickenson, which he enjoyed immensely. He told me that the last time he had been at the Cathedral was in 1936, when his host had brought him to the cathedral but gave no description whatsoever.

I have this probably romantic idea that, whenever possible the very young should meet the very famous, just so that in later life they can tell others about the meeting and the person. My grandson Dominick, Gail's son, was seven when he met Bro. Adam. Adam said that Dominick was an easy name for him to remember as it was quite common in monasteries. They wrote to each other for years until Bro. Adam's fraility stopped him from writing.

It was on one of his visits north that Bro. Adam became ill and was admitted to Dryburn Hospital in Durham. Over the course of the next couple of weeks he was sent to Newcastle General Hospital and finally to Chester le Street General Hospital until he was able to be transferred back to Buckfast. This meant daily visits by a few of his friends to keep him cheerful. Colin came at first but as time dragged on his visits stopped. Bridget Scott who had been his host at Satley came regularly. Thank goodness she had money, she could keep up with Adam's liking for brandy. I managed to see him every day but without the brandy.

He celebrated his 95th birthday in Chester le Street General Hospital with a cake Pat baked and decorated with a bee, visited by a lot of friends from the area and drinking brandy suitably watered down with Liebfraumilch.

Eventually the decision was made to transfer him back to Buckfast by ambulance. He continued to write to Dominick and me while his friend, Elizabeth, kept me in touch with what was happening until his death at the age of 98.

Holidays, as in going away, were really never uppermost in my mind. I was usually happy enough with not working and trips to the seaside. Once I no longer worked I still didn't hanker for long holidays especially not abroad. I don't remember how it began but sometime between retirement from the police force and having a heart attack Pat and I took to going to visit my Aunt Joan and Uncle Jack in Birmingham, Rowley Regis actually. Next door was the home of her daughter Jane, her husband Steve and their children, Luke and Brooke. Joan's youngest son, Neil who I had played with at Marshall Green, lived some miles away at Buildwas. Their eldest son, Lawrence was in America trying to bring the enlightenment of soccer to the colonies. Our trips there were quite fun. We went shopping in different places such as Soho Road in Handsworth and saw the burnt out shopping area in nearby Lozells following some riots there. Here were Indian jewellery shops with locked doors and, in the windows, un-priced glitter which was used in wedding ceremonies and was worth a fortune. Here were fruit and veg shops with 6ft lengths of sugar cane leaning against the door, exotic fruits, of which our own supermarkets might display a dozen, in boxes piled high on the pavement. Here were shops where brightly coloured cloths were bought by women of a dozen nations each to make their own national dress, sari or suit. I'm still wearing shirts I bought there ten years ago without a break in them.

I was a stranger in a foreign land so I didn't mind sticking my neck out and going to the Indian jewellers and asking them about their wares. I once went there with my daughter Ruth, by then a dressmaker, and she was helped and advised as to which materials she should buy and pleaded with by shop keepers to wear a sari. I could never persuade my cousin Neil to go there with me at night-time for a drink. Perhaps he was right.

We went to Joan's for some years and always had a wonderful welcome. We were there when Jack had a sudden heart attack and, although he recovered for a while, we were sadly there for his funeral. We continued to visit Joan until her death after which the house was sold.

It was probably March 1995 when Pat persuaded me to try somewhere else. Suitcases packed, the car loaded we set off with no more notion of where we were going other than "South". At some point on the A1 we stopped at a Little Chef for coffee. There I picked up a brochure and we discovered "Travelodges". I rang and booked a room at Ely which was the furthest point I felt I could drive to. On our way we bought bread buns, butter and little jars of preserves which would serve our breakfast. We arrived to find Ely Cathedral with a dusting of snow looking like a wedding cake. I also had the opportunity of revisiting Waterbeach to find most of the R.A.F. station built on and the rest taken over by the army still it was a nice trip down memory lane.

From there I booked ahead to Ilford and was able to spend several hours on Sunday driving Pat around a surprisingly empty London. Next stop was three nights at Littlehampton which was the nearest I could find to Brighton. This gave us the chance to drive out to Rye, the "Tilling" of E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series which we both so enjoyed when it was on television. Thanks to the time of year the small town was not full of tourists so we were able to drive around it seeing all the houses and streets which had appeared on the screen. We had already been to Broadway in the Cotswolds which was the "Risehome" of the series. In Brighton we found a cafe run by a gay couple who supplied the most delicious food to which their witty banter added flavour.

The long journey home took us via Oxford and a tour round streets which were the home of Morse another enjoyable T.V. series. We stayed overnight at Barnsley, which again was at least as far as I could drive. The Travelodge there was opposite a pub/restaurant where we got the most enormous portion of braising steak for dinner. We went back there the next year for the sole purpose of eating at that restaurant to find that a fire the previous evening had closed it. By way of consolation and probably because he was drunk the licensee showed as the Lonsdale belt and Olympic Gold Medal won by a boxer who had been visiting him.

I think it was only the fact that Pat had undertaken to decorate a cake for someones birthday that took us home otherwise I would probably have rung up for another room in another Travelodge. We had definitely "discovered" Travelodges. The system suits us perfectly. We continue to take our own breakfast and they supply all the coffee we can drink. The lodges, while they may seem to be situated in some daft places are always jumping off spots for days out. Over the ensuing years we often took advantage of their cheap offers during the Autumn and Spring. Part of the fun had always been finding good pub grub and trying to avoid the plastic stuff the chain cafes churn out. Overall we have found a lot more good places than bad ones. I think I managed to convince one pub in South Cave that we were from a "Good Food Guide" when I started by asking for "just a taste please" of four different beers before ordering one. Actually I really did want to taste them because I had never heard of them before. Then, after the meal, in answer to the inevitable question " was everything alright" I replied, "Yes but you lost a lot of points when you gave us mustard in little plastic bags instead of a pot" and then asked if I might have Stilton cheese and biscuits which, although it was not on the bar menu, I was sure would be available as it would be included on the main restaurant menu. I got the biggest plate of cheese and biscuits I had seen for a long time. It worked the next time we went as well with the same waitress but on the third occasion all fell apart when we took Liz and Madge and found that Liz knew the waitress having taught her at school and introduced us. I still got some nice cheese and biscuits. apparently I was the only customer they had who would, once a year, specifically request Stilton cheese and biscuits despite the fact that is still wasn't on the menu.

We go to Lincoln or South Cave near Hull. from both of which we can visit David serving in Lincolnshire Police Force and living at Holton-le-Clay with his wife Victoria and two children, Lydia and Reuben. On those trips we always visit little Madge who, after the death of her husband Fred, went to live with their daughter Liz in Elloughton near the north end of the Humber bridge.

From Dumbarton we drive out to Oban, Fort William, the Cairngorms and Stirling. We had a terrible meal in a swish looking pub restaurant in nearby Bowling and the next night were well fed in a graffiti covered pub in Duntocher where kids on mountain bike were doing wheelies all over the car park. It was so good that we kept going back to Dumbarton and the pub until the staff and particularly the chef, the fattest man we have ever seen, changed. It didn't seem the same after that although we still go to Dumbarton.

Skipton gets us to Holmfirth, "Last of the summer wine" country and Skipton R.A.F.A. club where we are welcomed as though we were long standing members. We usually drive home from there via Settle, and Clapham, where we eat at a cafe run by Alan Bennett's girl friend and where he is sometimes seen. Then through Hawes, "through" being the operative word, one of these days we might find it not so full of motor bikes that we can't park.

At home, Alexandria Crescent was becoming surrounded by students to an intolerable degree. Of the ten houses in the street five were now occupied by a total of 30 students. I had previously done a survey of the streets in what was known as "the viaduct area" which was popular with students and found that in some streets over 70% of the population were students. Having a lot of time on my hands I prepared a map of the small area showing all the student houses in red. It looked like a map of the Victorian world with British Empire glowing red across it. I also did a chart showing the proportion of students and local residents in the streets. I gave copies of it to some local councillors who, while they were well aware that a large number of students lived in the area, were shocked to find out just how many there were.

A series of letters about student behaviour in the local press did spark some action from the university who appointed a City Liaison Officer. His duties were to mediate in differences between students and their landlords or neighbours and to oversee the discipline of students in general. The latter part fell immediately by the wayside when two other principals insisted that no one was going to tell them how to deal with their students. The principal appointed was Dr. Vernon Armitage of Hild and Bede, a "gentle man" who saw little ill in anyone but actually did go some way to helping the situation. I spent a long time on the telephone to him or in his office. One of the matters we discussed was the role of the University Police whose duties over the years had diminished to parking cars at Palace Green. Perhaps as a result of that conversation their role was eventually extended, their numbers increased and a dedicated telephone number published were they could be contacted. They had the power over students to demand considerate behaviour and to report them to their principal who in most cases would fine them. There was a Town & Gown Committee comprising student representatives, councillors, police officers and university staff. At one point Dr. Armitage invited me to join them but as soon as some of the other members heard about it I was very quickly uninvited. Later he did get me on to the committee having invited me to join them at a public meeting at which I reminded him that we had already been through this exercise but he announced that this time his will would be done. I attended several meetings where I found a lot of self congratulatory members who seemed to have no concept of the problems which residents were suffering. There were councillors who did not live in areas populated by students and senior police officers who had clearly forgotten their days on the streets and who said that students were, on the whole, well behaved.

One letter I received from Dr. Armitage came at a time when the Post Office had a series of stamps depicting quotations from Robert Burns. The stamp on the letter bore the quotation "Wee cowrin' timorous beastie,". I rang and told him that this was not the image which his office should be portraying and was there not a stamp bearing the quotation "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled". Being so used to me ringing to complain I think this call cheered his day.

Our house had been on and off the market for years but at last we found a use for students. They had rich mammies and daddies who paid a fortune for city houses in which to deposit their offspring who were at Durham University. It had taken a long time but we eventually sold it for £120,000. I admit to feeling guilty about selling it to be occupied by students but we were pleased for the opportunity to get away from them. In the 50's when I was in the RAF and wandering around Cambridge a university city was a wonderful, vibrant place to be in. During my own late 50's I really wanted to be nowhere near one.

For £77,000 we bought a four bedroomed detached house 9 Green Court, Esh, (not to be confused with Esh Winning), on top of a hill five miles west of Durham. Here our ears were only to be defiled by the slightly cracked church bell at 9.20 on some Sunday mornings and bird song most hours of every day.

Leaving the larger house in Alexandria Cres. it was an undoubted squeeze to fit everything in. The contents of the cellar either fitted into the garage or were disposed of. I kept one small printing press and stored some type in Anne's' garage. All the book cases over filled with videos and books went into a bedroom in the extension over the garage. We had a bedroom with a large en-suite shower room which had once been part of the original third bedroom. the remainder of that bedroom had become a store cupboard. This left a double and single bedroom free for visiting grandchildren.

On the day we moved it poured down. Perhaps the Gods were sorry to see us leave Durham. The rain was so heavy that the removal men had to go back to the depot en-route to the new house to get changed into dry clothes. We then had the problem of trying to ensure that furniture etc., was brought into the house without making to much a a mess. Throughout the move and the following days of absolute chaos we had the help of Anne, Ruth and her friend Jane. I sometimes think that without them we might still be sitting looking at boxes in the middle of the floor. Gail had managed to escape it all by having had the foresight to book a foreign holiday to coincide with the move. Over the months to come Anne came at least once a week to help me completely redecorate the house. The staircase was left until some alterations were made and then it was decided that the job should be left to professionals.

Like many of Ruth's friends Jane adopted us as her second parents so, as with the bikers, our family continued to grow. Inviting Ruth for Sunday lunch usually meant setting extra places not for one but perhaps for three as Jane, or Norma, another adopted daughter, to name but two might arrive as well.

One Thursday evening Ruth and I decided to try the local pub. I was in search of alcohol while she expressed the hopes of meeting a millionaire farmer. The first person I saw on entering was Henry Tomlinson who Pat and I had first met at least 25 years earlier in the Redhills. He introduced us to Dennis who he was with and during the conversation I asked him what he did. Henry explained that about 5 months previously Dennis had won £4.3million on the lottery. Ruth immediately proposed and was just as quickly turned down. Nevertheless she had managed to meet a farmer and a millionaire, neither of whom were likely to marry her.

Two days after we had moved in Keith and Denise arrived to view the house and offer help. The garden was full of shrubs most of which were overgrown. Keith asked what we were going to do with them and I told him that they would have to come out. Next day they returned with gardening equipment including an electric mulcher. Within a very short time all the shrubs were dug out and mulched down into five black bags. Keith also decided that the drains had better be checked so he brought his rods and started to clean them out. Deciding that the rods he had were not long enough he went off to a car boot sale and bought some more. Eventually he bought an industrial power washer and washed them out. I must have the cleanest drains in the village. Thank goodness for our friends in the bike club. We recruited another biker, Phil Dent, a joiner, to help with the house. Over a period of a couple years he refitted the kitchen and laid a new floor in it. Rebuilt the shower room. Built a wall where a double door had led from the lounge into the dining. Moved radiators, re-hung doors, shelved the cupboard and fitted a new bannister with spindle uprights. Outside he renewed all the guttering with white plastic and put new felt on the shed roof. He boxed in the pipes round the bathroom having first corrected the mess that the so called plumber had made of fitting the new bathroom suite.

The original lean-to "sun room" a tiny thing was being used as a cramped smoking room. On our first Boxing Day in the house high winds tore two of the plastic sheets off the roof. Next day Phil was up there in a bitter cold weather renewing them. After Phil had finished the house was much improved.

We also replaced the lean-to with a proper conservatory and renewed the double glazing using other contractors. I sometime think Phil would have done just as good a job.

In the fourth bedroom I got my saw and screwdriver out and increased the number of bookcases so that now only the 350 or so videos are double stacked. We had been increasing our collection audio book tapes so a dedicated bookcase had to be made for them.

Also into this bedroom, now affectionately known as "the office" went a computer as I was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. My knowledge of the technology was limited. I had begun in the days of the "Sinclair ZX81" and progressed as far as a "BBC". But now I had a proper PC with all its refinements, like a printer which I had never owned. With the benefits of a good word processor I tried writing. Obviously with a bit of success when I had an article, "The bees at Beaurepaire" published in the American Bee Journal. The National Honey Show includes a class for an essay and I was lucky in their choice of titles when I came third in 2001 with "My biggest bee keeping disaster", it was a gift really. I just managed a "very highly commended" with "I'll do it tomorrow" in 2002. I haven't yet entered the 2003 competition. After four attempts at "The bee keeper, the honey bees worst enemy?" I gave up. I am now waiting to see if next years title is any better.

The many birds which have visited our garden and delighted us included a pair of white pigeons which happily come into the conservatory when tempted to by some seed. The ring neck doves will not be tempted in. A splendid but rather old peacock would stand on the front door step until he was fed. Other less regular visitors include a great spotted woodpecker, a kestrel which would make infrequent attacks on the sparrows in our lilac hedge, a white cockatiel and even a red legged partridge which had clearly become separated from the flock which lives above Wolsingham.

In 2002 Pat and I celebrated our Ruby Wedding. It was obviously not going to be convenient to have a formal dinner party so we publicised the fact that we would be "at home" during the day and hoped that as many friends and relatives as could would visit us during the course of the day for a drink. We laid on mounds of nibbles and drinks and waited hopefully.

The week before the event I had unexpectedly been able to get in touch with Sid and Audrey Burt who had been our Best Man and Matron of Honour. They had recently moved back north after more than thirty years working in the south so we would have the pleasure of that reunion on a very appropriate day.

Among the first to arrive was one of the bikers, Frank closely followed by little Michelle on her bike with a bunch of flowers upside down in her back pack. Anne and Gail together with their family came of course since they only lived four miles away. David arrived from 160 miles away but it was a bit too far for Ruth who was by now living in Corfu. It was a great pleasure to have Liz who had driven her mother Madge 100 miles to visit us. At the time Madge was a remarkably fit 94.

During the day a long stream of friends arrived. Pat our friendly barmaid from Nevilles Cross Club with her husband and parents. John Stephenson my beekeeping partener and his wife Valerie. Jane and Norma to see their other parents and Keith and Den to visit mammy and daddy.

In all it was a lovely day spent with family and friends. At the end there was little food left over but it's place on the table had been taken by a large supply of Port, Champagne, cards and flowers. Outside stood a standard rose called "Ruby Wedding" a gift from Anne, Peter and family and a bird bath fom David and Judith Mallaburn.

　

16

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Well sans my memory for names certainly and the rest will no doubt follow. This is however a good enough heading to close on.

Keen observers may have noticed that I have excluded from the very useful lines of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" speech the lines, "And then the lover / Sighing like furnace, with woeful ballad / Made to his mistress' eyebrow". I have done this quite purposely on the grounds that, a gentleman never tells.

I have also excluded from the account most references to my various motor cars. It would just make you cry. I will mention one, a 1936 Morris 8 tourer in which I gave Aunt Florrie a lift from Witton le Wear to Darlington. The canvas roof was ill fitting and torn so, since it was raining, she had to put up her umbrella inside the car or be soaked. Turning a sharp corner in Darlington the rear nearside wheel fell off giving us both quite a jolt. See what I mean and this was one of the better ones.

I have excluded detailed reference to our children beyond noting their arrival and perhaps the odd comment here and there. This gives them free rein to write their own autobiographies unfettered by the constraints of any accounts in this one.

Nor have I commented on the day to day ups and downs of marriage. I am bound to say that, in all cases where a decision has had to be made and Pat has made that decision it was the correct one while in the same circumstance decisions made by me were invariable incorrect. Despite this failing she has continued at my side, no doubt waiting for a further opportunity to drag me back from the jaws of death. I do hope she'll remember how. Pat continues to feed me with a wide variety of delicious food ensuring that I am unlikely to be "sans taste". She also caters once a year for the bikers AGM and the 60 people who annually attend a gathering of bee keepers for the Christmas social evening and quiz.

A story just published about the author George Orwell states that just after he proposed to his eventual wife he said "You must learn how to make dumplings". Pat reminds me that in similar circumstances my demand was that she should make Yorkshire puddings an art which she certainly learned but I'm not sure how often she regretted it.

This is clearly not a diary but a continuous if somewhat disjointed narrative. I have no doubt it will be read, and I hope enjoyed, by my children who should remember that it is really intended for a generation as yet unborn.

Perhaps I might have set a precedent within the family and that the future Pedigree need not be restricted to bald statements of Births, Marriages and Deaths.