Читать книгу A Life of Pride - Alan G Pride - Страница 27

The talks with Chippy had made me keen to go to sea, and because of my love of steam power it had to be soon, because diesel was quickly replacing steam on the seas. I'd swaggered off to Leadenhall Street with my Broken Hill qualifications, only to find that top companies like the Cunard Line were unimpressed. So to get some steam experience, I signed on as a fireman with the British Railways. I started as a trainee in heavy snow in mid-February, with a month to go before being fully qualified. It was hard shift-work, with three possible shifts: 6 a.m to 2 p.m, 2 p.m to 10 p.m, or 10 p.m to 6 a.m. I chose to start with a morning and night shift, because finishing at 2 p.m on a Saturday would give me 'till 10 p.m Monday night off. On March long weekend, I used the time to ride the A.J.S (with Pat pillion) on a big tour of south-eastern England, from Folkestone down the coast to Eastbourne, inland to Battle and Cranbrook, back to Folkestone and up to Dover, Margate and Canterbury; then back to London before work at 10 that (Monday) night. We’d done 630 k’s for £3/1; really satisfying for me, perhaps not so exciting for Pat.

The weather then turned bitterly cold, with blizzards, gales and metre-deep snow. March ‘came in like a lamb, out like a lion’, said the English, an awful shock for Reg and I.

Still, I liked being on the trains. Hard and dirty work, but it was steam. We used to cook eggs and bacon on the engine on one of our uphill runs, very welcome in the freezing winter.

As the weather warmed up in April, I painted ‘Australia’ and the kangaroos on my bike panniers and rode hundreds of k’s sightseeing. April 20 was especially beautiful, with the country lanes around Aylesbury a sea of wild bluebells, and the spring green really stunning to a red-desert Aussie. Pat loved going out into the country with me and we would wander along, picking bluebells.

At the cliffs of Folkestone

...and of course the white cliffs of Dover.

On the A23 between Hastings and Rye.

At the end of April, my Irish friend, Pat Kelly, asked if I could take him up to Glasgow in Scotland for his aunt’s funeral. I felt sorry for him and knocked off work at 2p.m. We left London at 7p.m with him riding pillion, covered 250 k’s that night and set out again at 6a.m next morning. I was delighted to cross the ‘Sydney Bridge’ at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a tiny version of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, though much older. We rode through Edinburgh at noon and reached Glasgow by 2, having covered 600 k’s.

What welcome did I get from his family?

“Are you Catholic?”

“No.”

And they turned their noses up at me. It was as much as they could do to give me a bed for the night!

Mightily pissed off, I left the next day. (Pat Kelly would go back to London later by coach.) I rode non-stop 250 k’s to Carlisle, where the brakes failed on the A.J.S. Pigheaded as ever, I kept riding, coming into Manchester at 9.30 at night, in torrential rain. Thoroughly drenched, looking around and wondering where I could stay for the night, I was hailed by the boiler attendant of a nearby power station, and ended up sleeping on the boiler-room floor!

Having dried my gear out on the hot boiler, I set off again early next morning, travelling the hills and cities of the Midlands through intermittent rain. My Glasgow adventure ended mid-afternoon in sunny London. I’d covered 1000 k’s almost half without proper brakes, and lost several days' pay and all sympathy for my bereaved friend and his bigoted family.

That wasn’t the end of my friend problems.

I caught the train to Cornwall, for a few days with Chippy and Janey, and on my return, found that Reg had taken the A.J.S from outside our flat without permission. The padlock was broken, the stoplight wire and speed cable broken, the generator burnt out and the back tyre punctured. There was even a different filler-cap! My blood pressure went through the roof! People had seen Reg on the bike, yet he denied everything. We didn’t actually come to blows, but the rift lasted for some time.

I was getting a bit tired of the A.J.S though, and decided to repair and sell it before going to sea. I tried it first at £115; no luck. The best price I could get ended up being £60 and since I still owed £41 on it, this left me with only £19 in pocket. At least I could buy Pat some nice presents for her 18^th birthday, and get a ship and anchor tattooed on my arm to cover up a crude home-done tattoo. Sailors often had tatts, so that their bodies could be identified if they were drowned and half-eaten by fish!

Pat and I also had a great week together at a Folkestone hotel near the beach (pretending to be married, of course).

Everything changed in August. It was time to go to sea. I gave my notice to the railways, wrote to my mother asking for a bit of financial help to buy a ships’ uniform (£17) and now had to get a ship. Off again to Leadenhall Street with my new qualifications, only to find that top companies like the Grand Cunard Line still didn’t want to know me. I needed actual experience on ships to get a good one. By the end of August, I was down to looking at … Tramp Steamers. The Ivanovic Steamship Co, had three new ships, the S.S. Mooncrest, Helencrest and Starcrest, and I landed a job as 5^th Engineer on the Mooncrest.

On August 26^th I got my papers and I.D. card organised and on the 29^th, I turned all of 22. It had been a really happy year, full of adventure and learning.

On the way up to Scotland.

Cornwall 1952.