Читать книгу If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will - Eric Sykes - Страница 6

Having left school, I still had no idea of what I wanted to do or how I should go about attaining an interview. It was the normal practice in those days for a father in a good steady job to recommend his son to the foreman, or even the manager, so as to ensure that the son followed in his father’s footsteps. They could then make their way together to and from their place of employment and have their tea at the same time when they got home. However, no self-respecting father would push his son into a cotton mill and Dad was no exception. He had better plans for me, in short to put in an application for employment in the Post Office.

I greeted this suggestion in a lukewarm fashion. I’d often chided Vernon because he worked somewhere in an office. Polished shoes, collar and tie—that wasn’t my idea of a workman. I wanted to work in overalls, sweep the streets, the chimneys, clean windows, anything as long as I could come home weary and dirty with a good day’s work behind me. But the Post Office—I would go to work clean and tidy and come home in the same state, and I didn’t consider selling stamps a proper job. However, my attitude changed when my father came home with a bit of newspaper he’d picked up on the tram and he smoothed it out to show me an advertisement urging school leavers to apply to the Post Office for positions of telegraph boys. My face lit up. The main argument in favour of the Post Office to Dad was a job for life, but for me, I was already sold on a uniform with a stiff peaked cap, a black belt and a pouch—all this and a bicycle too. Excitedly, I sent in two applications, both of which were ignored. Bitterly, I thought, ‘It’s typical of the Post Office—neither of them have been delivered.’

Meanwhile, not far from the top of Featherstall Road was Emmanuel Whittaker’s Timber Merchant’s, and I have no idea how it happened or who did what but all I know is that on Monday next I was to start work as a timber merchant. I had no inkling of what I was expected to do, but no doubt they’d tell me when I arrived.

So it was with outward calm and inward trepidation that I made my way up Featherstall Road, thrilled by my overalls washed many, many times to a faded blue, bought possibly from a sale at a second-hand or even a pawn shop. Had my overalls been new I would have looked like a raw beginner, if only I was old enough to shave. I crossed Featherstall Road at the exact spot where seven years ago I had attempted a career as a car number collector. There were other people making their way to work, some of them overalled like me; women were bound for offices or shops, and there was a man at the tram stop, in bowler hat, collar and tie, eyeing me as if he was superior. I tried to spit in order to make a point, but it wasn’t too successful: it didn’t go anywhere but just dribbled down my chin. I brushed it away, too late, and he was sniggering when he boarded the tram. Rounding the corner of Featherstall Road, I stopped suddenly as if I’d just walked into a brick wall. There on the other side of Oldham Road was the formidable office building of Emmanuel Whittaker’s, and to the right the heavy iron entrance gates to a yard which housed countless orderly stacks of wood, some covered by huge tarpaulins. A daunting prospect loomed before me and it took all my willpower to approach this man’s world.

Undecided, I was standing outside the gates, all courage gone, when two or three young bucks and one older, laughing at some joke or other, walked through the gates. The older one stopped and looked at me, and said, ‘Hurry up, lad, or you’ll be late.’ All fears dispelled, I joined him and we walked in together.

My benefactor turned out to be my number one. He was on the cross-cutting bench. The wood on rollers moved towards him, he pulled the large circular saw through them, and then he pushed them along his bench to me. I hoisted these three-foot-long battens on to a large leather pad on my shoulder and carried them through to another shed, where two elderly men were nailing battens together to make crates, which would then be lorried down to the cotton mills to hold the cops—a cop being a cone of cotton thread wound on to a spindle. These two men rarely spoke—they couldn’t, as I never saw either of them without a mouth full of nails—but by golly they could knock up a crate in the time it took me to bring another batch of battens. So for the next few loads I was striding out as if I was dropping back in a marathon and as the pile of battens began to get larger I was falling behind. Sweat was rolling down everywhere when my mate switched off his cross-cutting saw, helped to load me up and said, ‘Now take it easy, otherwise by dinnertime we’ll be having a whip-round for your parents.’ It was kindly meant, but I was determined to earn my wages. However, when I got home that night I fell asleep in the middle of my baked beans on toast.

A few days later I learned a little dodge, which was the beginning of my indoctrination into the shady world of the working man. Rather than being sent to an early grave with a pile of battens on my leather pad, I was assigned to another job. This entailed going round the carpenters’ shop to take their orders for dinner, which was usually a hot meat pie with a dollop of mash on top. My mouth watered at the thought of it but as it was sixpence it was out of my price range, and in any case I lived close enough to go home for midday meals.

As I wrote down their orders I also collected the money, and this is where my trade union education began. When I returned from the shop at dinnertime with an armful of sustenance I was met at the gates by my new mate on the cross-cutter.

He said, ‘Did you get any change from the shop?’

I said, ‘Yes, eight pence.’

Quickly looking over his shoulder to see if we were being observed, he folded my hand over the coins and hissed, ‘Stick it in your pocket, lad.’

Perplexed, I looked at him. ‘It doesn’t belong to me,’ I said guilelessly.

He shook his head sadly. ‘Listen, lad,’ he said. ‘You’re not the first to collect dinner money and you’re not the first to get change from the shop but you will definitely be the first to hand over the money to that lot.’ He jerked his thumb to the joiner’s shop. I was about to object when he carried on, ‘Some of the lads who collected dinner money before you are still working here.’ I still couldn’t get my head round the gist of his words. This must have been obvious from the blank look I gave him, for he sighed, ‘If you start giving change back to them you’ll be putting a noose round the heads of all the dinner lads before you.’

‘But it would be dishonest.’

‘Go ahead, then: sell your mates down the river. I give up.’ And shaking his head, he strode away.

It didn’t take me long to decide which path to go down and that night I went home eight pence richer, which was almost ten bob a week, but some of the blinkers had been taken from my eyes. I realised now that the working class I’d been so proud to join was not as far along the road to Jerusalem as I’d first imagined and secretly, and a little shamefaced, I accepted my corruption as my entrance fee to the world.

A few months later I found myself in a different location, opposite the cross-cutter. My new assignment was on a machine called the fore-cutter. The cross-cutter was a much older, capable and efficient man in a boiler suit and a very old trilby, sides pulled down to protect his head and neck from flying wood shavings and splinters. His job was to feed a dirty long plank of wood into the fore-cutter, where it would slowly move through the blades and emerge at the other end planed and shiny. It was up to me to take it off the rollers and stack it with the others in time for the next twelve-footer. It sounds simple enough but the storm of wood shavings and chippings flying from the machine was much greater in volume than it was at the front end so an old hat was found for me. Nowadays one would certainly wear gloves to protect the hands from splinters and goggles to protect the eyes, but in the early thirties at Emmanuel Whittaker’s these had never even been considered. Every fifteen minutes or so the machinist would switch off to allow me to sweep the shavings through a square, two-foot opening in the floor, and at the break I would go down the ladder to spread the sawdust and chippings more evenly. When I got to the bottom of the ladder I was up to my waist in sweet-smelling wood, so it was a slow job to spread the load.

As I write this, it suddenly occurs to me what a fire hazard the sawdust and chippings must have been, but then I doubt that safety regulations were prevalent in those days. Come to think of it, I can remember at least three comrades with missing fingers.

Again I was moved to a different job. Whether I was up- or downgraded I’ve no idea, because my wage was the same. I was now a painter, but not exactly in the Van Gogh school. In fact I wasn’t really a painter at all: my task was to prime the wooden window frames with a pink primer. At least my assignments seemed to be getting less onerous. Was the management experimenting, trying to find a job that would suit me, or, more likely, trying to find me a job I could do?

I threw myself into my new work. Proudly I returned home every night with my overalls stiff with almost as much paint as I applied to the window frames. After a couple of weeks I knew I had found my niche. No chance of losing fingers, no chance of a hernia from carrying more than my strength—it was going to be a pushover. But little did I know that splashing about with paint was a boobytrap. First I went down with painter’s colic. This was not life threatening, but unfortunately the colic mushroomed into something more serious: exactly half of my face broke out in eczema, from the middle of my forehead, down the bridge of my nose and under my chin, while the other half of my face was completely unblemished.

Mother took me by tram to the skin hospital in Manchester. A middle-aged lady doctor treated the suppurating side of my face and my whole head was bandaged, with two holes cut into the bandage for my eyes and a slit for my mouth. Every Tuesday for months we made the journey, as in Son of the Invisible Man, to see the doctor, who would unwind the sticky bandage, view the affected area and shake her head in defeat. The eczema hadn’t spread—it was down exactly half my face—but neither had it improved. She applied more lotions, bandaged me up again and told my mother that I would have to be admitted to the hospital. She should take me home now as there was no bed available and as soon as there was a vacancy the hospital would let us know. It shouldn’t be too long a wait but if we had not heard we should report as usual to the outpatients’ clinic on the following Tuesday.

When my mother told me what the situation was, I was horrified and waves of panic swept over me. For me it was a terrible week: I dreaded the days that followed and prayed that I would not be admitted. Every Tuesday for the past few months as we’d sat on the long benches in the outpatients’, sometimes waiting for ages for our call, I had looked round me to see some terrible skin afflictions. One or two of these poor wretches were in dressing gowns, inpatients obviously, and some of those sights were horrendous. After a time I refused to look and just stared at the floor until my call came. At least I went home every night, but now the thought of lying alongside these nightmares in a hospital ward gave me the shivers.

Next Tuesday came and I was sitting opposite the lady doctor, listening as she told my mother that there still wasn’t a bed vacant, and my spirits rose a little. Then she began to unwind the bandages and my self-pity evaporated somewhat; after all, this wonderful lady had to deal with skin diseases all the time and most likely much worse than mine. When the unveiling was complete, a cool breeze caressed my face and there was silence for a moment or two. Then the doctor beckoned Mother across and together they stared at me in amazement. The doctor nodded and said calmly, ‘This is what I have been hoping for. It’s the shock—it must have been.’ She repeated herself: ‘The shock of having to be admitted to the hospital is the trick,’ and as I looked into the mirror I understood. There was not a blemish on my face; a pink tinge where the eczema had been but that was all. I was cured. No more eczema, no more bandages and certainly no more Emmanuel Whittaker’s.

Once again Auntie Emmy came up trumps when she asked me if I would like to spend a week’s holiday in New Brighton. She said it was Uncle Joe’s idea, but I had a shrewd suspicion that she was being diplomatic. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t wait to pack my swimming costume and a towel, a Just William book to read in bed and, naturally, a pullover.

So I went with Uncle Joe and Auntie Emmy to New Brighton, a place not renowned for its amusements, its main attractions being an open-air swimming pool with diving boards and a shopping arcade. In fact we spent every day at this manufactured oasis, except when it rained, which it did for a large chunk of our holiday, which we spent in bus shelters and shop doorways. Umbrellas were an unnecessary expense, affordable only by bank managers, local officials and the well-off. On sunny days Uncle Joe and Auntie Emmy lounged on deck chairs by the pool, and I sat on the grass beside them, ostensibly reading my book but all the time watching furtively the goings-on around me. We made an ideal holiday trio. Auntie Emmy sucked Mint Imperials from the bag on her lap, listening to the beat of a popular tune blaring from hidden loudspeakers, while Uncle Joe, knotted white hankie on his head, scanned any discarded newspaper he’d managed to scavenge on his way from the digs. As he was fair-complexioned, his only concession to sunbathing was to undo the top button of his shirt. But nobody went to New Brighton for a tan: although the sun was out it wasn’t strong enough to cast a shadow.

People were splashing about in the pool but as yet no one had used the diving boards. I was a useful swimmer but my greater joy was high diving. As a young hopeful I had learned to dive from the lock gates on the Manchester Ship Canal and I had since improved from the top board at Robin Hill Baths, a few hundred yards from my home in Leslie Street. Now in New Brighton I eyed the top board by the pool. It was higher than anything I’d ever come across before, but I could manage a swallow dive, which was the nearest thing to flying, upwards and outwards, arms stretched out like wings and brought together for the final plunge: it was exhilarating, spectacular and fairly simple.

I stood up and announced that I was going for a swim, and Auntie Emmy said, ‘All right then.’

Walking down to the pool, I was conscious of my thin, white, emaciated body. I was fifteen years old, midway between the roundness of childhood and the chunky hardness of an adult, and I was fed up with the old gibe of many, who should know better, whenever I dived in the water at Robin Hall Baths: ‘Who’s thrown a pair of braces in?’

However, on this day, instead of diving off the side of the pool I made my way up the ladders to the highest board. On looking down, I had qualms as I saw the little figures below staring up at me, Auntie Emmy, shading her eyes from the sun, on her feet now. For a wild moment I thought of abandoning my madcap desire to show off, but then the thought of making my way down the ladders again was too shameful. I walked to the edge of the board, controlling my breathing, I stared outward and the next moment I was floating down almost in slow motion, and when I brought my arms forward for the entry I looked along my body, I could see my legs and feet together and I plunged into the water. It was the most exciting dive I’d ever attempted, and when I heaved myself out of the pool I noticed that all the noise and shrieks from the bathers had ceased and they only had eyes for me: it was my moment of glory.

When I got back to Auntie Emmy she was wiping her eyes, as she’d been crying. ‘Who learnt you to do that?’ she said.

I was shivering so much that my shrug went unnoticed and as I towelled myself Uncle Joe remarked wryly, ‘I can think of better ways to commit suicide.’

But the main memory of New Brighton eddies around my mind for one other landmark. On the day following my historic dive, a new entertainment visited the pool: eight beautiful girls, all blonde, same height—they might well have been octuplets. They were sponsored by a newspaper and announced as the Daily Mirror Eight. They danced to recorded music, perfectly synchronised. They were fantastic and I was mesmerised. Fifteen years old, and innocent, I was vaguely aware of the difference between men and women—this was made obvious when I watched them in their bathing costumes—but women had aroused no strange feelings in me until I saw the Daily Mirror Eight. Auntie Emmy said they were going back to the digs and I said I wouldn’t be long. In fact five minutes later I followed them, and as I walked through the streets in a haze of wonder a coach drew up alongside and, would you believe it, out stepped the first of the Daily Mirror Eight, the other seven close behind, making their way into a hotel. Not one of them noticed me, mouth agape, eyes shining with adulation. I hadn’t expected them to look my way, and if they had I would only have blushed. I was in love with all eight of them and that was enough for me. What a wonderful place to live in!

Oldham was the major cotton town in Lancashire in my opinion. Others will undoubtedly disagree. Cotton towns all had one thing in common: they were tired, and weary, and it would take another few years to fill the gaps left by the bloodbath of the Great War. Oldham Town Hall was a quiet, austere Victorian building, with heavy, stone pillars at the front, and except for the dirty, smoked brickwork it could have been reminiscent of the Parthenon in Ancient Greece; in fact most town halls in northern towns seemed to have been constructed from the same blueprint. Across the wide roadway from the town hall in Oldham was the Cenotaph, an evergreen memorial to the young Oldham lads who would never again walk up West Street or Barker Street for a Saturday night out in the Tommyfield market; and overlooking the Cenotaph, St Mary’s Parish Church.

It is poignant to bring to mind Armistice Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Each year when the church clock struck the eleventh hour all traffic stopped, trams ground to a halt, horses pulling carts were reined to a standstill, and cyclists dismounted and stood to attention by their bikes. Every pedestrian remained where he or she was; men removed their hats and women bowed their heads. The silence was almost tangible. Then after two minutes a soldier on the roof over the church doors, head and shoulders visible above the black stone battlement, put a bugle to his lips and the melancholy, evocative strains of the ‘Last Post’ pierced the veil of silence. Not until the last note had faded away did the town re-activate itself.

Alongside the church was the commercial heart of Oldham: dress shops, chemists, solicitors, Burton’s fifty-shilling tailors, Woolworth’s, Whitehead’s Café and, squeezed in the middle of all this affluence, a brave little greengrocer’s shop. It really was tiny, just one room crowded with a counter, a tap without a basin and no space for a lavatory, the nearest being the public toilets at the top of West Street—quite a distance for a weak bladder.

The over-worked proprietor was Sam Hellingoe, a round, darkvisaged man, not tall but compact. Alone he collected fruit and vegetables from the market in Manchester, laid out his daily purchases on a bench in front of the shop, and then hurried inside round the counter to serve his customers. If there weren’t any he swept the floor, polished the apples or wiped the counter as if it made any difference. He was always busy, but sadly his age was beginning to slow him down and reluctantly he decided to take on the expense of an assistant. This was a momentous decision because money was tight, so his assistant would have to be willing, able and above all thick enough to toil every day except Sunday for a pittance—and that is how I came to work there.

Mr Hellingoe, was forever in a flat cap and brown dustcoat—as a matter of fact in all my time in his establishment I never saw him take his cap off, not even to scratch his head—and like a dutiful assistant I followed suit in a flat cap, brown dustcoat and, hallelujah, my first pair of long trousers. Beneath my overalls at Emmanuel Whittaker’s I had still been in the short pants from my schooldays, but now I wore a pair of Vernon’s cast-offs, a bit long in the leg with a shiny backside, but I didn’t care: they were the bridge into manhood.

Each morning I met Mr Hellingoe on the Croft, where his small van was parked. We never exchanged ‘Good mornings’, we just nodded, and he squeezed himself into the driving seat, putting the gear shift into neutral before letting off the brake. Then I moved round the back of the van and when he gave me the thumbs up I began to push. It was hard work, but I’d only about a hundred yards to go to the top of West Street, where I gave him an extra running shove to set him off and the van slowly trundled down the hill. I watched it disappear like a very old tortoise on ice. It was all downhill to Manchester and that was his destination. Eight miles is a heck of a long way to freewheel, but I did say money was tight; after all, he had to pay me fifteen shillings a week—I had Tuesday afternoons off but worked until nine in the evenings on Saturdays—and petrol wasn’t cheap.

As time went on, I grew accustomed to the work. Mr Hellingoe was away for longer periods and I became self-assured, looking after the shop on my own, weighing out potatoes, carrots and Brussels sprouts with fallible dexterity on the old scales, popping the goods in a paper bag, and then ‘ting ting’ on the till, ‘There you are, missus, three pence change,’ or whatever. One day, however, I overstepped myself. An old lady clutching a shiny purse was feeling the fruit, squeezing the bananas, smelling the cabbages. I watched her covertly as she turned her attention to a box of apples and suspiciously I wandered casually from behind the counter. If anybody was going to walk off with a Cox’s pippin without paying it would be me, and why not? My wages weren’t princely and to make up the deficit I ate more of the stock than my Friday night’s wages were worth. Underneath the counter was a huge rubbish box. Overripe or beginning-to-smell fruit and vegetables found a quick exit into it, but amongst all this detritus there was quite a hefty amount of healthy apple cores, pears, some with only one bite out of them and banana skins, because while in charge of the shop I ate fruit by the sackful, but if a customer came in, wallop, the half-eaten fruit would find its way under the counter. But that’s between you and me.

Getting back to the old lady, who was now outside the shop, eyeing the rabbits hanging there: having selected one, she brought it in and dumped it on the counter.

‘How much?’ she said, and I told her, and here’s where I overstepped the mark.

Having watched Mr Hellingoe deftly skinning them, I blurted out, ‘Would you like it skinned?’

She looked at me doubtfully and said, ‘Can you manage?’

I winked at her and began the process. It was just like undressing a baby and she watched, probably marvelling at my dexterity—that is, until I came to the last bit. The rabbit was now stark naked and all I had to do was pull the last of the fur over its head.

‘There you are, madam,’ I said triumphantly, but when I jerked the fur over the rabbit’s head I was horrified to see that the fur must have torn because there was still some left on his head like a crew cut.

‘I’m not having that,’ she said and stormed out in high dudgeon.

What was I to do with the naked rabbit? I couldn’t chuck the whole thing in the rubbish box: Mr Hellingoe would know how many rabbits had been hanging outside. Then a smart wheeze crossed my mind. I still had the fur and all I had to do was to dress the rabbit again. The back legs were easy and I’d just got one of the forepaws clothed when Mr Hellingoe returned and I was caught literally red-handed. But instead of hitting the roof, he just smiled and said, ‘Take that home to your mother. You can have it for your Sunday dinner.’

I was overjoyed and at the same time ashamed of the amount of fruit I’d got through illegally, and I made up my mind that anything I took from the stock I’d replace with money in the till. At that moment I would willingly have pushed Mr Hellingoe all the way to Manchester and, if it would have saved him petrol money, all the way uphill back to Oldham.

When I went home that night I was awash with good thoughts—and wide open for the sucker punch. It wasn’t long in coming. I arrived home and casually tossed my wage packet on the table; then while Mother checked the contents, I pulled the rabbit from behind my back like Houdini at his best and said, ‘Voilà’.

She didn’t smile. ‘Why did you buy a rabbit?’ she said, still holding my wages, and my heart plummeted. Mr Hellingoe had stopped it out of my wages—the crafty old devil. Mother didn’t help matters when she said, ‘And he’s overcharged you as well.’

During the time I was helping to keep Mr Hellingoe’s body and soul together something momentous was happening in an old building just in front of Tommyfield: a new Oldham Scout troop was being formed. As I passed it on the way home I decided to drop in. There were about twenty or so urchins in a circle round the edges of a fairly large room. Half of the boys were still at school but quite a few of us were working for a living. A tall figure in a black cassock down to his ankles stood in the middle and made a short speech, welcoming us all to the formation of the 113th Oldham Scout troop and I relaxed. I noticed three of the older ones holding kettle drums, and as there was one not being used on the floor by them I casually picked it up and stood with the other three. They handed me a drumstick and in no time at all we were marching round the room in single file to the beat of our four drumsticks. By the end of the evening we were all members of the 113th Oldham Scout troop and speaking for myself it was the best evening’s work I’d ever done.

Scouting was to make me fitter and healthier, and give me selfassurance and the comradeship that had been so lacking in my past; but the most important part of this initiation was that I met Bobby Hall, a butcher’s boy. He was also one of the drummers and there was an instant rapport between us. Neither of us could drum. We both showed promise, though; and in a matter of months a banner led the troop on church parade, with four drummers with white ropes hanging beneath our drums and a big drum, and to cap it all looking pretty smart in our new Scout uniforms. The troop was divided into four patrols and I had already been appointed patrol leader of the Peewits. Bobby was troop leader, next in line to the Scout master, who turned out to be the curate at St Mary’s Parish Church. We never saw him in any uniform other than his cassock, but he was accepted nevertheless. The months went by and in that time I gained two armfuls of proficiency badges, all round cords; and my greatest achievement and the most coveted was that I became a King’s Scout. I must have been an awesome figure to the spotty herberts of my Peewit patrol as I explained how to tie knots, put a tent up and recognise the mating call of an owl. I took great pleasure in helping my little band gain proficiency badges of their own, and in return they paid me the compliment of listening to me as if I was Baden-Powell’s grandson.

I don’t know what has happened to the Scout movement these days. I haven’t seen a parade of Scouts for years but the writing was on the wall when I last saw a Scout jamboree on television. Gone were the broad-brimmed Scout hats, which were replaced by berets; and, worse, they all wore long trousers. Perhaps I should move with the times. Well, all I can say is tell that to the beefeaters.

It wasn’t long after the rabbit fiasco that my employment in the grocery trade came to an end, my place being taken by Mr Hellingoe’s daughter, a comely lass, I should think in her mid-twenties. I thought she was smashing but I wasn’t old enough to fancy her. I felt a bit hurt at being given the elbow, but then again she was his daughter and perhaps she worked for nothing as it was all in the family.

I’ve no idea how I came to start work in Shaw, a far-distant cry from the fleshpots of Oldham. Whereas I used to walk to work at Hellingoe’s, from Featherstall Road to Shaw was a fair tram ride. Even more extraordinarily, my new employment was at the Rutland Mill, a cotton mill, but thankfully not in the dark satanic part of it. I was to be the new office boy and I looked forward to it, completely forgetting how I sneered when my brother Vernon started to work in an office, but knowing him as I did I expect he aspired to an invitation to the boardroom table.

At least I had Saturdays off, and I put these rest days to good use, especially in the long summer days. Bobby Hall and I, now ex-Scouts, were still attracted by the lure of camping under the stars, miles from anywhere. For instance, on a typical Saturday afternoon we’d meet at the bus stop in the High Street of Oldham, both of us overloaded with heavy backpacks containing potatoes, eggs, bacon, bread and butter, cushioned by sleeping bags while our rolled blankets were tied securely on the top, frying pan and saucepans, enamel mugs hanging from the straps—we were always well prepared, living up to the Scouts’ motto. From Oldham we went out into the country, perhaps Delph or Saddleworth. Having offloaded our kit and ourselves from the bus, we began our journey to our camping grounds. Our favourite destination was a place called Chew Valley, a massive terrain of huge boulders interspersed with trees and streams. We trekked anything from five to eight miles into this deserted landscape to a rare patch of grass about six feet from a fast-moving stream. We kept our eyes open for dead trees. Within sight of our tiny Shangri-La, and would hurl a rope over a long sapless branch and give it a quick tug to bring it crashing to the ground. Being so dry, it broke into manageable pieces, which we hauled the short distance to our camp.

The first thing was to put up the tent. Everything was then piled inside, in case of inclement weather. The fire was next and thanks to the deadness of the wood a saucepan full of water was soon heating while one of us peeled the potatoes. Then the light began to fade and the stars appeared until the whole of the blackness was crowded with a glittering, sparkling ceiling…Sausage and mash had never tasted so good. A few minutes to digest it, tin plates rinsed in the stream, and then, relaxing on our backpacks, sipping our mugs of freshly brewed coffee, we sighed with happiness as we lit our first cigarettes of the day. Even now I feel blissful contentment overcoming my senses as I recall that first drag on a Woodbine. The silence of our surroundings was disturbed only by the spitting hot logs in the fire and the eternal symphony of the rushing stream’s hypnotic melody. Sleep came easily as by and large it had been a hectic day. Being old hands, we knew that blankets piled on top don’t keep you warm: it’s the blankets underneath that do that, as cold comes up from the earth. Automatically now we pounded out a hollow in the ground for our hips—in fact no bed in the most expensive hotel in the world could have been as comfortable—and when the birds and the daylight opened our eyes on the Sunday morning, we were well rested, hungry and ready to enjoy the day. Light fire, wash in the stream, fry bacon and eggs, the whole breakfast including slices of bread toasted on the tip of green saplings and once again the enamel mugs of coffee, followed by…yes, you’ve guessed it, the first Woodbine—not a bad way to spend a summer weekend.

When I was working at the Rutland Mill in Shaw, Saturdays were once again bright and pristine; I no longer had to work till nine o’clock as I had done in the fruit trade. I was older, possibly wiser, although I wouldn’t put money on it, and certainly a few shillings more affluent, and I had two stalwart mates. As well as Bobby Hall, Jack Cleaver was one of my pals. A strange lad, usually the target of our heartless humour, he wore glasses, steel-rimmed and held together by a strip of sticking plaster, and he had light straight hair which he pressed with open fingers to create waves. If the world was not exactly our oyster it was most definitely our winkle. Our main Saturday night attraction was the Gaumont cinema at the end of Union Street. As for the film, the question we first asked ourselves was, ‘Is it a talkie?’ and the second, ‘Is it in colour?’ This didn’t bother us a bit: it was Saturday night, hey, lads, hey and the devil take the hindmost.

The Gaumont cinema was a large, luxurious emporium showing the latest films and up-to-date news, not forgetting Arthur Pules at the mighty Wurlitzer. For many Oldhamers the perfect panacea for the end of a stressful working week was a Saturday night at the pictures. Just relaxing into the armchair-like seats was an experience to savour. Uniformed usherettes busily showed patrons to their seats; one usherette stood against the orchestra pit, facing the audience with a smile as she sold crisps, peanuts, chocolates and soft drinks from a tray strapped round her shoulders; another usherette patrolled the aisles, selling various brands of cigarettes and matches from a similar tray. There was a general feeling of content in the audience, excitement slowly rising under a subdued babble of conversation. The audience were the same people who had gone off to work during the week in overalls, dustcoats, ragged clothing and slightly better garb for office workers, but at the Gaumont cinema they had all, without exception, dressed up for the occasion. All the men wore collars and ties and the ladies decent frocks and in many cases hats as well. What a turn around from my dear old flea-pit Imperial days; no running up and down the aisles chasing each other and certainly no whistling, booing or throwing orange peel at the screen during the sloppy kissing bits. In all fairness, though, I must add that that was only at the Saturday morning shows and we were children enjoying a few moments not under supervision or parental guidance. In fact when I was old enough to go to the Imperial for the evening films the audience even then dressed up and enjoyed the films in an adult fashion.

Back to the sublime at the Gaumont cinema; as the lights went down, so did the level of conversation. A spotlight hit the centre of the orchestra pit and slowly, like Aphrodite rising from the waves, the balding head of Arthur Pules would appear as he played his signature tune on the mighty Wurlitzer. He was a portly figure in immaculate white tie and tails, hands fluttering over the keys and shiny black pumps dancing over the pedals as he rose into full view, head swivelling from side to side, smiling and nodding to acknowledge the applause; but for all his splendid sartorial elegance, having his back to the audience was unfortunate as the relentless spotlight picked out the shape of his corsets. Regular patrons awaited this moment with glee, judging by the sniggers and pointing fingers. We were no exception: having all this pomp and circumstance brought down by the shape of a pair of common corsets on a man was always a good start to the evening’s entertainment.

At this point the words of a popular melody would flash on to the screen—for instance, the ‘in’ song of the day, ‘It Happened on the Beach at Bali Bali’—and, after a frilly arpeggio to give some of the audience time to put their glasses on, a little ball of light settled on the first word of the song. In this case the first word was ‘It’; then it bounced on to ‘Happened’; then it made three quick hops over ‘on the Beach at’; and then it slowed down for ‘Bali Bali’. The women sang with gusto and the men just smiled and nodded.

Happily this musical interlude didn’t last too long. Arthur Pules, the organist, was lured back into his pit of darkness and the curtains opened on the big wide screen. The films at the Gaumont were a great improvement on the grainy pictures at the Imperial, and so they should have been: after all, the film industry had made great strides in the eight years since John and I had sat in the pennies, dry mouthed as the shadow moved across the wall to clobber one of the unsuspecting actors.

After two hours of heavy sighs and wet eyes ‘The End’ appeared on the screen and the lights in the auditorium came up, bringing us all to our feet as the drum roll eased into the National Anthem…no talking, no fidgeting, simply a mark of respect for our King and Queen.

From the cinema we made our way eagerly to the next port of call, the chippie at the top of Coldhurst Street, for our customary fish and chips sprinkled liberally with salt and vinegar, and salivated to the top of Belmont Street, where Bobby Hall lived. Conversation was on hold as we stood in a circle, the steam of the hot fish and chips mingling with our clouds of breath on the cold night air. Finally with sighs of satisfaction we saw Bobby to his door, and then Jack and I made tracks through the darkness to 36 Leslie Street.

Sunday evening was just as interesting. Our little gang met as usual and made our way down to Union Street, where hordes of people strolled down one side of the street to the end, crossed over the road and walked up the opposite side. It was habitual, the Sunday night paseo. Chatting and larking about, we joined the parade, just a few young blokes without a cogent thought between them, but this was not so—we were all of the same mind: GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS! We were growing up; it was the April of our lives. Should we come upon a linkage of girls we immediately locked on behind them, a decent space between us lads and our quarry. The girls threw covert glances over their shoulders and for our part we pretended to be oblivious to them, Bob and I laughing at nothing, and Jack staring ahead with what he perceived to be a steely glint, which didn’t quite work because his eyes were slightly crossed to start with. And another weekend hit the dust.

The offices of the Rutland Mill were palatial, with high ceilings in the boardroom and the general office; these were separated by a washroom, which had two gleaming taps above the basin and at the far end a toilet. All the office doors were either mahogany or rosewood, with shiny cut-glass door knobs; the windows were long and curtained, the bottom half of frosted glass so that the workers would be unable to look in on their betters, and more importantly, we wouldn’t have to look at them. In the first few weeks I felt embarrassed by the cheapness of my suit—Vernon had always been taller than me; but I did polish my shoes so that at least I could walk about the office with more confidence. Filling most of the space were two long desks. On one desk was a girl at one end and me at the other, and at the opposite side an older man facing me and a woman facing the girl, both more important than us; on the second desk a clerk even more important and facing him the big panjandrum, the boss man of us all, the secretary Edmund Taylor. From where he sat we were all within the orbit of his baleful gaze. As he looked at us over his glasses, we doubled our work rate. He never smiled and I surmised that he was either unhappy at home or nursing a grievance that he was grossly underpaid.

My duties were not too taxing. Most of my time was spent entering crate numbers of cops into an enormous ledger. The sheer size of this book gave me a sense of importance. Another duty of mine every week was to take the wages in a huge tray up to the mule room, where the big and little piecers queued for their hard-earned pittance. That was the only occasion I had to go into the mill, and for the first time my heart went out to my father, who was a big piecer at the Standard Mill in Rochdale. The treadwheel in old prisons would have been preferable to a few days in the mule room, where workers, barefoot on the oily, uneven floor, continuously walked up and down between the in-and-out movement of the mules piecing up cotton strands that broke with monotonous regularity; the heat was stultifying and the noise horrendous. Another regular duty of mine was to top up all the inkwells and distribute new blotting paper to the other members of staff.

When we acquired electricity at home is a mystery. It seems that one day we were holding the taper to the gas mantle to bring soft light to the room and the next we clicked a switch on the wall and a brighter light shone from a sixty-watt bulb. I can’t recall any major upheavals in our lives at 36 Leslie Street—no electrician tearing up the skirting boards for wires and connections. Now we had a wireless plugged into the mains no less, and you can’t do that with gas, but our listening was rationed because of the expense, unless it was something special; and on Sunday 3 September 1939, a fine, warmish day, sitting on the steps to the backyard, face turned upwards to the sun to take advantage of the passing summer, I heard Mr Neville Chamberlain, our Prime Minister, informing us all that from today we were at war with Germany. I was only sixteen years old, so I accepted the news with equanimity; I didn’t honestly believe it concerned me. The next day the air-raid sirens wailed over the land and I still wasn’t convinced it was real; in any case it was common knowledge that it would all be over by Christmas. Here a very strange thing occurred. Aunt Marie received a letter from her brother, Uncle Ernest, who was in the navy, assuring her that there would be no war. It was dated 21 August 1939, but ironically the letter was delivered the day after war was declared. In his letter Uncle Ernest told Aunt Marie that he was now serving on HMS Adventure, which in the past had been in reserve but now was commissioned on active service.

Contrary to popular expectation, the war was not all over by Christmas, and war in the air and on the high seas was taking a heavy toll of British lives; and at home Uncle Ernest was constantly in our thoughts.

During this moment of history, when I was still filling inkwells at the Rutland Mill, only once was I in trouble. Next to me, the girl on my desk was new, a little older than me but very self-assured. I didn’t really get on with her, as she treated me like a minion—‘Bring this’, or ‘Pass me that’ or, once when I sneezed, ‘For heaven’s sake, use a hankie’; and while I appreciated the fact that she was slightly superior in office seniority, she had been with us only for a few days whereas I was an old hand. Anyway, one dinnertime I happened to mention that the cotton mill was a frightening place at night, especially now that the war was in full swing and all the windows were blacked out. Ken Smith, the senior clerk, was about to leave the office and as he was passing he said that the mill was a frightening place during the day. Clever Clogs snorted. He looked at her and continued. ‘Some time ago, he said, when he was doing my job, as he was about to enter the passage a man walked towards him carrying an arm on a piece of paper, followed by two other workers who were supporting the man who had lost it. He’d had an accident with a fan belt and there was blood all over that passage, and that was in the middle of the morning, he said, and some say that his ghost still comes along the passage at night. The story scared the pants off me. A cotton mill at night is never silent: it creaks and groans, and somewhere in the factory something falls to the floor. But when he’d gone she said she wasn’t afraid of the dark.

‘You’re pathetic,’ she said.

That did it. ‘All right,’ I replied. ‘Go up into the mill tonight, then.’

She said she couldn’t tonight as she was going to the pictures and that was that.

But the following night when everyone else had gone and the factory was deserted apart from us, as she was stamping the mail she gave the last stamp a violent thump, turned to me and said, ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes.’ As she stormed out of the office, I thought, What’s the matter with her? Then it all came back to me—my challenging her to go into the empty black mill. I dashed after her to the beginning of the long stone passage that led to the steps up to the card room and stared into the blackness, but it was too late: there was no sign of her. I hadn’t a torch or anything—it had never really occurred to me that she would take up the dare. I gulped. Then again, she was so cocksure and I hadn’t forced her. Tentatively I called her name. The silence was deafening, so I called again, louder, but to no avail. So I shrugged and wondered if she’d gone home, leaving me standing there like a bridegroom wondering if it isn’t too late to call it off. But when I went back to the safety of the bright office, I saw her coat over the back of the chair, so I knew she had gone into the card room. Suddenly I’d had enough. If she wanted to play silly games, that was up to her. I had a tram to catch, and when she returned to the office full of triumph I wasn’t going to be sitting there to applaud, and she could put that in her pipe and smoke it.

However, when morning inevitably came there was a strained atmosphere in the office when I arrived. The girl was not there, but more remarkably the secretary was, and he looked as if he’d had a serious illness and hadn’t yet shaken it off. ‘Come into the boardroom,’ he rasped, and I followed him into the hallowed magnificence reserved for the chosen few. He sat at the enormous table. ‘What happened last night?’ was his opening gambit. For a moment I didn’t understand; then the events of the night before came back to me and I told him as much as I knew. In a quiet voice he filled in the rest. At about three o’clock in the morning he had been called out of bed by the police. The front door of the office was wide open and on entering they’d spotted the pile of mail unposted and the girl’s coat slung over the back of the chair. The secretary dutifully posted the letters and put out the lights. Nobody gave going into the factory itself a thought and it was only when the women arrived in the morning to start work in the card room that the girl had been discovered in a half-full skip of bobbins, fast asleep. Again the secretary was called back to the mill and, observing that the girl was on the verge of a breakdown, instructed the other girl in the office to take her home and call a doctor. Then I arrived, the only one in Shaw apparently unaware of the calamity at the Rutland Mill.

The secretary gave me a severe rollicking, ending with the fatal words, ‘Get your cards,’ which in everyday parlance means, ‘You’re sacked.’ I was appalled by what had happened to the girl and ashamed at my cowardice in not going to find her. Anyway, head down, I shuffled from the boardroom and sat at my desk, still in heavy shock. Then the secretary came back and sat in his place, and, probably from force of habit, on seeing him in his familiar seat I opened the enormous ledger and started, in a daze, to enter the numbers in the correct columns. The fact that I had just been given the sack never entered my mind and the secretary didn’t press the matter; we both carried on as if it had never happened. The girl didn’t return to work, so in all probability the secretary had concluded that he couldn’t afford to lose two members of his staff in one day.

When I travel back in time to when I was just gone sixteen years of age, one particular incident in that historic year of 1939 springs immediately to mind. It was not the declaration of war but something more significant in my life than the inevitable conflict to come.

It all began to snowball one Sunday afternoon, when I found myself in a friend’s house. How or why I was there I’ve completely forgotten, but one thing sticks in my mind: in the front room there was an upright piano and anything musical had always attracted me. I should add that I played the mouth organ, which hardly entitled me to call myself a musician. Any fool can press a piano key and get a result, and we all do it, but when my friend sat down to play, I listened with awe as he knocked out a popular dance tune. What impressed me more than anything was that he never once looked down at his hands, and without a break in the music he looked towards the door and said, ‘Come in, Arthur.’ Another youth entered, carrying a violin case, which he opened, and after a few tentative tuning notes they segued into ‘The Blue Danube’. Then with more panache they went into a swing version of the same thing. I was transfixed, absolutely spellbound. If only I could play the guitar, we could form a British Hot Club de France. Surely the guitar wasn’t too difficult to learn? I desperately wanted to be a part of the action and before I could stop myself I blurted out that I played the drums, which wasn’t strictly accurate: all I possessed was a pair of drumsticks from my Scout days. The next Sunday afternoon I brought them along. I was the last to arrive and I was introduced to another member of the group, who played the bass, which belonged to his father, who fortunately was in hospital for a month or two. In a short time we were into the first few bars of ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. I was perched on the arm of the settee, drumming on the seat of a chair, and I’ll tell you something: it wasn’t at all bad—we were definitely in the groove. My friend on the piano had a healthy pile of sheet music and the rest of us busked it.

After a few more Sundays we were really swinging, to the extent that I was encouraged to do sixteen-bar breaks. I’d no idea where these came or how long were sixteen bars. I just beat time until they all stopped playing and the pianist said, ‘Take it away, man,’ and I went into a drum routine, starting on the chair seat, ‘rack-a-tacket’ on the back of the chair, on the linoleum part of the floor to the arm of the settee, all to the accompaniment of ‘Yea, man, go for it.’ It was heady stuff.

A couple of Sundays later we were at the stage of getting together a programme for dancing and suggesting names for the band. There was ‘The Oldham Serenaders’ and ‘The Swinging Four’, but the favourite was ‘The Blue Rhythm Band’. I have no excuse for what happened next. Whatever possessed me to even consider we were ready for public scrutiny? But on the spur of the moment, unbeknownst to the rest of the band, I placed an advert in the Oldham Evening Chronicle: ‘THE BLUE RHYTHM BAND WILL PLAY AT ANY FUNCTION, DANCES, WEDDINGS, ETC. MODERATE TERMS’ and to my astonishment it was in the local paper that same evening. I couldn’t wait to take the cutting with me to show the lads next Sunday. My troubles, however, were just beginning. On Wednesday, only two days after the advert had appeared, I received a reply. I was absolutely flummoxed: it had never entered my head that somebody would write back—my thought process had ended with the advert.

Fortunately the letter contained a telephone number. Good, I only had to tell them that we had another engagement on that particular Saturday. Yes, that was it—simple. Standing in a telephone booth, I dialled the number and a very attractive woman’s voice answered. No, she hadn’t sent the letter; she was only the secretary to Mr Flintock, the secretary of the club. Her voice was so pleasant and seductive that I found myself discussing terms for an evening of dancing at a municipal hall in Hollinwood. Having agreed a fee, I was now a worldly business tycoon and ended the conversation by saying I was looking forward to seeing her at the dance.

It wasn’t till I’d walked halfway down the street that the enormity of my brashness came home to me. If only I had the address of the recruiting officer of the French Foreign Legion, I could be halfway to Sidi-Bel-Abbes by Sunday. Alas, this was not to be, and when I faced the lads on Sunday I confessed abjectly and fully. They looked at each other, and then the pianist said, ‘We’d better get down to it.’ We had only one Sunday left before we took to the road. Oh, how I loved my comrades at that moment, and how much I was looking forward to a week on Saturday! I was in the lofty realms of euphoria again, leaving myself wide open for the sucker punch. It was later that evening when the bombshell burst: I didn’t have a drum kit. I certainly couldn’t turn up at our debut with a pair of drumsticks and an old kitchen chair. Once more I fell on my feet. The pianist’s brother ran a musical instrument shop and I hired the accoutrements for the Sunday only and on the condition that I returned them in good order. I agreed and walked away with as much as I could afford, which unfortunately didn’t include a bass drum, but already I had an idea about that.

The days dominoed down to the fateful Saturday, and to seven o’clock in the evening, by which time the dancers were already changing their shoes in the cloakroom. The communal hall itself was a barn of a place, with chairs all round the dancing area and a stage where we would soon be performing. We were late, through no fault of our own: three trams had refused to take us on board. Normally tram conductors were in the main accommodating, but we were an odd collection. I was laden down with the big drum that I had borrowed from the Scout troop and a hired gold-glitter snare drum under my arm. The rest of the kit was packed in a suitcase crammed with the foot pedal for the big drum and a stand for the snare drum, not forgetting a carrier bag of sheet music. One witty conductor asked which one of us was Oscar Rabin.

Eventually thirty minutes later we were on the stage, busily sorting out our instruments. The bass player helped me with my stuff and picked up what he surmised was the stand for my snare drum. He looked at it curiously and then nudged me with it and whispered, ‘What’s this for?’ Now he’d opened it out I understood. In my hurry to get out of the musical instrument shop I’d hired myself an ordinary music stand instead of the stand to hold my crowning glory, the gold-glitter snare drum, but the music stand would have to do for tonight.

I carried on tightening the ropes on the big drum, flicking my finger against the skin to satisfy myself that it was taut enough for a quick step. All this time there was a puzzled silence from the waiting dancers. They were mostly middle-aged women—it must have been some kind of Mothers’ Union anniversary, or something like it. I fixed the foot pedal on to the big drum and balanced the gold-glitter snare drum on to the music stand, giving it two experimental taps to make sure that it didn’t bounce off. The pianist had opened the lid of the upright piano before placing his pile of music on top within easy reach. Then with an arpeggio the tuning began, by which time the dance should have been in full swing, having started forty-five minutes ago.

Apart from us musicians the place was tight with the silence of amazement, even when the pianist nodded his head and opened with a Paul Jones. Usually this was just a preliminary so that everyone could get acquainted. The ladies went round in a circle, the men walked round the ladies in the opposite direction and when the music stopped couples facing each other were either delighted or lumbered as they then slid into a foxtrot or a waltz.

None of this mattered at this particular dance, though, as nobody left their seats to take the floor. They just sat stupefied all through our massacre of ‘Here We Come Gathering Nuts in May’.

I was the first to crack. I had enough difficulty keeping the snare drum on the music stand, but a greater problem arose with the big drum. Every time I stamped on the foot pedal the big drum slid forward a few inches, and when the pianist had done about sixteen bars another calamity occurred: the pile of music on top of the piano dropped down into its innards, silencing the melody. We were left with only the thin whining of the fiddle for the tune, and only the Irish could dance to that. The situation was teetering dangerously close to farce. Stretched out almost flat on my back, looking as if I was on a recliner in my desperate attempt to get my toe on the foot pedal of the big drum before it ended up on the dance floor, I glanced fearfully at the immobile punters…Hostility, disbelief and outrage were the dominant expressions, directed at us maliciously. It was then that I noticed the secretary, who had met us on our belated arrival. He was standing in front of the stage, beckoning to me. I abandoned the big drum, went forward and bent down to hear what he had to say.

It was short and to the point. ‘What are your expenses?’ he hissed through gritted teeth.

I was so embarrassed that all I wanted at that moment was for a pile driver to trundle up and hammer me into the ground. I looked again at the lynch mob on the dance floor and whispered to him, ‘Is there a back door to this place?’

‘Behind you,’ he replied curtly. Then he turned to the audience with a grovelling smile and asked, ‘Is there anyone here who plays the piano?’

An old lady put up her hand and while we were feverishly struggling to collect our paraphernalia she was already thumping away at ‘Carolina Moonbeams’. For a moment there was no response: the dancers were still shell shocked. Then, realising that they weren’t going to get their money back, reluctantly they began to search out partners to express their grievances to as they shuffled round the floor.

After our escape we didn’t wait for the tram and once we were at a safe distance from the communal hall we decided to walk home,—no mean feat, as it was all of three miles. Strange as it may seem, we were not downhearted. On the contrary, as we began to see the funny side of it I started to chuckle, which fathered a snigger and then a laugh, and soon we were all shrieking with maniacal laughter. Every so often we had to stop, offload and dry our eyes and our noses as we were shaken by another paroxysm of howling. It was carnival night at the asylum.

How could we have conceivably been a success with our amateurish blundering into a situation we were in no way competent to deal with? We had got away with it this time, but there’d be another and another until we were old enough to realise that all youth is not necessarily fireproof.

Meanwhile changes were taking place at the Rutland Mill. The storekeeper received his call-up papers and within a week he was serving in His Majesty’s army. The next time he came to bid us farewell was on his embarkation leave, a hero. All we young bucks envied him and still very few shots had been fired in anger. His leaving the storekeeper’s job left an important vacancy, and I wasn’t going to let a chance like this pass by unnoticed. So from dogsbody in the office I became the new storekeeper, back in my beloved overalls, once more a worker, and I could sit on the upper deck of the tram and light up a Woodbine without embarrassment. My duties varied. I was responsible for all the goods that made a cotton mill operative. My storeroom was in the yard annexed to the main factory, a large airy room. On each wall but one there were wooden shelves about two feet in depth, divided into compartments three feet long and deep towering up to the eighteen-foot ceiling. These shelves were stocked with everything to keep the factory supplied with the necessities of life: different-coloured crayons to identify cops from the card room, electric light bulbs, nails, nuts and bolts, toilet rolls for the office staff and heads of departments—it was rather like a shop with everything costing only a signature.

I don’t suppose for a moment that without a good storekeeper the factory would have ground to a halt, but it might have limped a bit. I didn’t spend all my time in the storeroom. Whenever a lorry piled high with bales of cotton pulled up outside the warehouse, it was my job to offload it. Manipulating the hoist, I sent the clamps high into the air, where the lorry driver caught them in order to fix them round the bale. Then with a downward movement of the handle I lifted the load clear, lowering it gently on to a waiting trolley, where it was wheeled away into the maw of the cavernous warehouse. The next bale was clamped and the same procedure ensued, and so on.

It could be dangerous: in the unlikely event of the bale tearing itself free of the clamps and hurtling to the ground, if I happened to be underneath it, looking the other way, it would be goodnight Vienna, and I would be carted off to the mortuary with a very flat head, half my size and twice as wide. With the tall doors of the warehouse open it was a pleasant enough occupation. In the summertime the warehouse was always the coolest department in the mill, but in winter a polar bear would have been in serious danger of hypothermia. I offloaded the bales wrapped up like one of the crew of Scott’s Antarctic expedition. Blizzards in a Lancashire winter were frequent, but the bales still had to be unloaded until thankfully I closed the enormous twenty-foot doors and hurried off to a room adjoining the general offices, where a hot mug of tea helped to bring my circulation back to normal.

Nobody knew where I would be at any given moment, but hanging about in my storeroom wasn’t an ideal way to pass time away, until I had a brainwave. I bought a lilo, hauled it up the shelves to the top one just under the ceiling, and laid it out so that I could lie comfortably, reading books or just resting. It was high enough to be unseen by anyone on the floor fifteen feet below, but a good vantage point for me to observe them. So that I would not fall off my perch if sleep overtook me, I nailed the long handle of a brush across the edge. It was the perfect bunk on an ocean-going liner. On one occasion, a labourer from the mule room poked his head round the door and called me. Had I been on the floor I would have asked him what he wanted and as long as he signed for it he could have taken away his articles; but when this particular man came in, he decided that I wasn’t there, had a quick shufti round and then snatched two light bulbs and stuffed them in his pocket. He was about to leave when I shouted, ‘Oi!’ He stopped in his tracks, looking round. ‘Put them bulbs back,’ I yelled. He didn’t hesitate: he put the bulbs back and ran out terrified. He was the gofer for the mule overlooker but he never entered the storeroom again without first knocking on the door, giving me time to climb down before shouting, ‘Come in.’

In the course of my work I was able to visit any part of the mill to check on supplies. Sometimes I’d just be bored by long stretches in my secret bunk and in truth I had no object in mind but I walked purposefully with energy and foresight, ostensibly carrying out my duties. The operatives in the mill seemed to enjoy my passing through, exchanging cheery badinage. One morning I was chatting away to a couple of big piecers who were eulogising about Bing Crosby. My face lit up: Bing was my idol too. Spotting a bucket resting aimlessly in the corner, I picked it up, stuck my head in it and sang ‘When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day’. I finished off the song with a ‘boo boo deo voihm’ and when I lowered the bucket the couple of lads were now a dozen, obviously impressed by my rendering. With smiles all round, and like a seasoned artiste, I left them wanting more. Some of them started to call me ‘Bing’ and from then on there was always a bucket handy when I went up into the mule room. I vocalised other Bing offerings but the favourite was ‘When the Blue of the Night’.

The bubble had to burst. Some of the big piecers were leaving their machines to gather round when I put my head in the bucket. I was in particularly good voice one morning and I finished up with the usual ‘deo voihm’, but when I took the bucket from my face the audience was not what I expected: it was the manager himself, all thin, six feet two of him. I attempted a sickly smile but he was unmoved. Either he didn’t like Bing Crosby or in the last few weeks production at the mill had dropped disastrously. The manager, who must have been in his seventies, spoke in a quavering voice, but as always he was economical with his words. ‘Get your cards,’ he said, and he left, the mule room. I looked round but all my newfound fans were frantically busy at their machines.

This was the second time I’d been sacked from the Rutland Mill, but I’d learned the lesson from my first dismissal. I ignored it and continued to be the storekeeper. A few weeks later when the mule overlooker passed me in the yard he said, ‘You must have a great guardian angel looking after you.’ Naturally I didn’t give it a second thought until the next time.

I must have been about sixteen when I had dancing lessons, not tap or ballet but ballroom dancing. I attended evening classes twice a week at Eddie Pollard’s Dancing Academy, in Hollinwood. I never saw Eddie dance himself. He collected the fee at the door and put on the records, old seventy-eights, on an even older gramophone. Without wishing to boast, I was a pretty good dancer. I didn’t get many partners, because I was a very young sixteen-year-old and like a fool I concentrated on learning to dance rather than assignations. I could do the fishtail and the running six and could even get round the floor without watching my feet. I wasn’t too fussed about the waltz, and the foxtrot was OK. However, the quickstep was my metier. I don’t quite know why I have mentioned all this, except now I’m a senior citizen I can still do a fishtail but in all my life I’ve never met a woman who can manage it.

One Sunday morning we had a very pleasant surprise. Uncle Ernest came to visit us on one of his leaves. What a fine figure of a man he cut in his navy uniform as he stood with his back to the fire, Vernon on his left and me on the other side! He spoke modestly of actions at sea in which he had taken part. Vernon and I drank in every word, watching him with admiring eyes. Obviously he couldn’t tell us what ship he was serving on or where any operations took place. In fact he was reluctant to answer all our many questions and it was only when he had left that I realised that we should have talked about something else. As it was Sunday we had Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy, but today we all had a smaller portion in order to heap his plate, as the dinner was now in his honour.

Needless to say, we were all in the war as well. Firewatchers were introduced and once a week, according to a roster, a few of us spent the night on the roof of the factory with sand and stirrup pumps, in order to deal with any incendiary bombs released by the Luftwaffe. The Rutland Mill was situated on the edge of the moors, bordered by grassland, so at night on the factory roof we were surrounded by impenetrable blackness; the millions of stars above were the only visible proof that we were not upside down. The nearest target for the German bombers was the city of Manchester, ten miles to the south; and Liverpool was another danger area, much further away to the north-west. In all the time of our firewatches no one was called upon to put out an incendiary, no one even saw an incendiary and to be brutally honest none of us ever heard an aircraft, friend or foe—in fact Churchill and his war cabinet would have been much safer holding counsel in the boardroom of the Rutland Mill.

It was now clear that I would soon be called up to lend my shoulder to the wheel (what a useless choice of words). My mate Bobby Hall and I discussed which service we could volunteer for. We were both physically fit from our camping excursions and a brief dallying in Health and Strength, in which we had practised co-ordination of muscles, centralisation of the abdominal wall, pectorals, latissimus dorsi—we knew it all, almost as if we’d been preparing ourselves for the service of King and country. Bobby made up his mind to volunteer for the navy, but I had other plans: my ambition was to train as a fighter pilot. I desperately wanted to be one of the few who were owed so much by so many, according to Churchill, and that is why I would opt for the Royal Air Force—that is, if the war was still on.

How I came to regret that last thought about the duration of the war! On 25 November 1941 the flagship HMS Barham was torpedoed off the coast of Egypt, and five minutes later she capsized, exploded and sank. The War Office despatched over eight hundred telegrams expressing condolences to parents, wives or any next of kin. Granddad Sykes opened the buff-coloured envelope with dread in his heart. ‘We regret to inform you that your son…’ Now as for so many other grieving families the war had laid its clammy hands on 36 Leslie Street, and never again would we see Uncle Ernest, but to this day I can still visualise him standing with his back to the fire in the warm aroma of roast lamb.

As I sat in my storeroom one day, gazing at the blank whitewashed wall, an idea began to form. I took a handful of coloured chalks and began to sketch a flight sergeant pilot looking up into the sky. It was life sized from the waist up, with wings above his left breast pocket and three stripes on his upper arm topped by a crown. It wasn’t bad—in fact people began to come into the storeroom on some pretext or other in order to see the sketch. The huge expanse of whitewashed wall was inviting and in a short time I’d sketched the head of the mule overlooker. His round, white, podgy face dominated by spectacles wasn’t too difficult. More people came in and chuckled as they recognised the expressionless face.

Elated by my success, I added other bosses and even the secretary of the mill, my first boss, as I had an inexhaustible supply of crayons of many colours. The whole of the hierarchy was now on my wall, head-on or in profile, smiling or glowering, everyone recognisable. Word soon spread and each came into view the portraits and sheepishly give their own visage a cursory glance, and they came back again to examine their faces more closely when they thought I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t a storeroom any more; it was the portrait gallery of the Rutland Mill.

However, one face was missing: that autocratic phissog of the manager. There was an ideal space in the middle of his workforce, a perfect placing; and more than that, whereas the others were life size the manager, as befitting his rank, would be twice life size. I hadn’t seen him since the bucket episode but he was an easy target. Some days later I was standing halfway up my ladder, shading in the wispy, white hair of his head, when there was a commotion outside the door. I was too wrapped up in my art to take notice, but then the door burst open and one of the workers in the ware-house crashed in, in a muck sweat, saw me up the ladders and said, ‘There’s three lorryloads stacked up waiting to be offloaded.’ Turning, he was about to dash back when he stopped suddenly. He turned round and for the first time he saw that the man holding the ladder steady was the manager.

‘Oh, I didn’t see you, sir,’ he said.

The manager, with his face sideways, so that I could sketch his profile, and without moving his lips, ordered the man to find somebody else to work the hoist.

The portraits remained long after I had left to serve my country and although the inside of the mill was painted twice a year, one wall remained inviolate. It was never painted over and when the mill finally closed in 1963 the flight sergeant, my first sketch, was still staring into the sky.