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Life In The
British Rail Offices - A unique account from John Smith's
Autobiography Violets
The Railway Office and Bell-Ringing
Years
The purpose of uncle Edmund’s rare visit to the farm was to let us
know that there was a vacancy for a junior clerk in the Motive Power
Department office of British Railways LMR based at Middle Furlong
Road in Nottingham. He could get me an interview because he knew the
chief clerk Mr Jarrow very well. If I got the job it would open up a
career in offices instead of what otherwise would most probably
happen which was following his footsteps as a Cleaner at Westhouses.
He was sure that I was much more cut out for an office-based job. My
dad agreed and so the die was cast. The date was duly set and the
programme was to have a medical in the morning at a centre adjacent
to the main line Midland Station in Nottingham, go to aunt Gladys’s
house for lunch and then to the Motive Power Department for the
interview in the afternoon. What surprised me about the medical was
the inclusion and indeed heavy concentration on an eyesight test.
This was no simple “can you read the letters on the third row from
the bottom” type check that had been conducted periodically at
school. It was all to do with recognising numbers and shapes arrayed
in dots of varying colours. Even my acute shyness could not prevent
a little query as to why. Apparently I was taking the standard
colour blindness test that was compulsory for engine drivers
periodically and indeed the passing of which was mandatory to remain
in this elite job due to the absolute dependency on colour
signalling. I didn’t think there would be a lot of call for signals
in the Motive Power office but it seems that “if you want a job on
the railways then you take and pass the standard test”. So that was
that.
What actually happened in the interview proper is totally lost on me
due entirely to the drama of being sick half way through. That in
turn was due to aunt Gladys insisting on me eating rice pudding for
lunch (or dinner as it was called then) “to build you up for the
afternoon”. I never could digest milk in its raw state and had been
excused it at school since infant days. Whether this resulted from a
physiological defect or the sight in my earliest memories of dad
milking cows by hand twice a day, I never really knew. The outcome
on this crucial occasion was perhaps psychosomatic, perhaps not. At
any rate either through dint of sympathy, achievement or the pulling
of strings by Chief Inspector Edmund Smith, I got the job. The start
date was fixed at April 9th when I was fifteen years and one day
old.
The journey to work involved cycle, train and foot. The archetypal
commuter. I had to be out of the door by ten minutes to seven to
bike up the lane, down the village bottom end, under the two railway
bridges leading to Tibshelf up the gravelly Station Road, along the
“Chicken Run” to Tibshelf Station a total distance of about three
miles. It was great on fine mornings in the summer but horrible in
rain and during most of the winter because apart from the bit in the
village itself, the route was not made up and the lane in particular
was full of potholes and its due share of mud. Cycle clobber
including galoshes was essential much of the time. The train left at
7.20 and arrived at 8.00. I never once missed it but only through
murderous dashes into the Station compound at times.
The official designation as “slow” did not relate so much to the
actual speed of the train as the fact that it was scheduled to stop
at all the stations on the fifteen-mile route. Being steam powered,
acceleration from a standing start was sedate and given that stops
were made at Kirkby Bentinck, Annesley Central, Hucknall, Bulwell
and New Basford before actually passing through a station called
Carrington, the journey after the initial novelty was somewhat
tortuous. Eventually of course this wonderful little commuter line
providing an excellent and economically productive service to the
local Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire villages would be scrapped
under the Einsteinly-brilliant Beeching Plan. After this act of
lawful vandalism the travellers who all worked in Nottingham City
would buy cars and make their separate way and after which under an
equally brilliant plan a new commuter line would be opened many
years later in a (failed) attempt to reduce city congestion from
cars and to further the economic prosperity of the East Midlands
towns.
This new service takes a slightly different route that cuts out the
Derbyshire villages since the original line that was part of the
Great Central Line into London Marylebone had been dug up. Of course
this destruction had its compensations in that the great gaping hole
left by the closure of Nottingham Victoria Station (blasted out of
solid rock by the Victorians) was to be filled by the monolithic
Victoria Shopping Centre specifically intended to bring hordes of
unproductive shoppers into the City as opposed to economic creators.
There might have been some sense in leaving the shops in the
villages and then taking the brain-workers into town by developing
the well conceived Victorian-created service routes. To compound
this fantastical testament to integrated transport and town
planning, Nottingham City Centre has now been dug up at heaven knows
what cost and consequential damage to productivity in order to lay
tracks for trams. Less than fifty years ago, there was a good
working system of power throughout the city to support virtually
silent and electrically driven trolley buses. It is, however, all
progress don’t you know. Well, if not exactly progress, it all makes
work.
It probably took about a year before my intense shyness and lack of
contact with real-world adults loosened sufficiently to allow for
any sort of conversation with the, by then, regular group of men
travelling from Tibshelf to Nottingham every morning. A group of
card-players started to shepherd me into their regular compartment.
I, the solitary young-man traveller with his wooden carry-case for
his lunch and nothing else. A case made especially for the purpose
by Uncle Ernie in his joinery workshop in Sherwood Street. Years
before he made a scooter each for myself and my sister, the best
Christmas present I could ever remember. What was a man with those
skills doing working on a road-sweeping gang? He was the husband of
my Mum’s eldest sister and one of my egg delivery customers. A
survivor of the Far East Campaign in Burma, he often told me of his
admiration through his war experiences of the Aussies and of his
hatred for the Greeks. I never knew why on either count but it
seemed particularly cruel that a man who had been through so much
ended up with so little leisure, the joinery workshop, the horse
betting, the walk down the road to the “club” for a pint on Saturday
night. Once Aunt Annie had died he lost heart and ended up falling
onto his own oven top. Poor old Aunt Annie and Uncle Ernie, the only
couple to go out with us in the pony and trap when he would catch
the horse droppings in a little bucket for his vegetable patch. A
lost world.
The train carriages had no corridors. Each was a private little
world and the peace of which was disturbed only by the arrival at a
station and the prospect, much detested, of someone having the
effrontery to open the door and enter. These doors were the “slam”
type that still exist today in certain financially frozen backwaters
of the Southern Region of British “Rail” (where did the “Ways” go,
perhaps the new name was always intended to focus attention on the
stationary hardware and away from the actual moving parts?). The
overhead luggage holders were of the string-net type and pictures
were real scenes or sea-side town destination advertisements “Visit
Torquay for the English Riviera” in proper frames.
The card game was “nap” and the four played for money. I was
incredibly impressed with the system of scoring. The stakes were 1d
for 3 tricks, 2d for 4 tricks and 3d for 5 tricks or “nap”. The
keeping tabs was always done by Brian and consisted of pluses and
minuses against each named player and on a pad brought for the
purpose. It followed that reading across any line of numbers
produced zero pence, that is to say it “balanced”. This was to be a
foretaste of dreads to come. It worked such that if for example a
winning call was “4 without” thus beating “4 with” when no “5” was
called, a win would net the caller 6d and each of the three losers
would be reduced by 2d from their cumulative score to date. Whilst
it is often said that in life over many issues and over time things
even themselves out, this was certainly not so with this little
group of gamblers. At a settlement at the end of the Friday evening
journey back from Nottingham, it always seemed that Brian was a
recipient, that Joe might be if he had had a lucky week but the
other two were payers. I often marvelled at this and wondered if
there was some deep lesson to be learned since the cards were
meticulously shuffled after each hand and, in the course of a week,
many such hands were played. It would be great to believe that some
blinding insight so detected the cause of these consistent wins by
Brian as to ensure for myself a financially successful future “by
chance”. However, this was not to be the case.
I developed a sneaking admiration for Brian due to his laid-back and
nonchalant if belligerent air. When not scoring, playing and winning
at nap, he completed the Daily Telegraph crossword with apparently
no more effort than it took to read the clues. The only thing I ever
knew about him was that he lived on the High Street in Tibshelf, was
a Civil Servant and worked at the Department of Labour situated on
the junction of Castle Boulevard and Wilford Road. I knew this
because it was on my walking route to Middle Furlong Road and we
often walked together. Joe was older than the others and was a
manager at a motor dealership also on Castle Boulevard. He was
extremely kind to me and after about two years would pick me up on
Saturday mornings in his Morris Minor and bring me back in the early
afternoon. This saved a lot of time because there was no suitably
timed train on Saturday and my only option had been to use the
Erewash line to Westhouses and this meant not getting home until
after three o’clock.
Working Saturday mornings was a standard part of the week and I so
envied Brian and Tom who didn’t have to in their jobs. Tom was
always very smartly dressed and it was through him that I started to
wear a top-pocket handkerchief, a habit to last a lifetime. He
worked for “Old’s Discount” on High Pavement in a position I vaguely
thought to be a financial city one although I never understood what
he did. He cycled from Morton each morning which was much further to
the Station than anyone else. During my third year of commuting, he
took a holiday in Norway. On his return he talked longingly of the
beauty of the Fiords and of the freedom from the rat race. A little
later he packed everything in to travel the world and I never saw
him again. The fourth member of the card school was a chirpy
gum-chewing chap whose name escapes me and I never knew what his job
was.
The office that I was about to start work in was attached to the
Engine Sheds of the London Midland Region. They were about one mile
down line to London from the main Midland Station and across the
centre of Nottingham City from Victoria Station. As such it was a
long walk and passing en-route the third Nottingham station known as
London Road that served the East to West traffic. Leaving the office
at five-thirty to catch the six ten to arrive back at Tibshelf at
seven and home by seven-thirty, made for long days and coupled with
the Saturday mornings, made for a long week. Hearing my dad rolling
the milk churns up the yard outside my bedroom window early on a
Sunday morning gave a first taste of all days merging into one.
The office itself would not be recognised as one today. It consisted
of what might be thought of as a church hall with fixed desks
attached to all four walls. These desks had steeply sloping lids
with a ridge along the top for pens and an inkwell still in use.
They were high off the ground so the seating consisted of high
padded stools. The only floor mounted conventional desk was located
at one end of the room, was huge and accommodated three people, the
chief clerk, the assistant chief clerk and a female secretary. The
only private office was located off this main room close to where
the chief clerk sat. This housed the Superintendent. He was the boss
of the whole Motive Power Department and was very important. Though
rarely seen, he wore a railway issue suit and overcoat and like my
uncle Edmund had a bowler hat. The chief clerk, Mr Jarrow, who had
interviewed me spent much of each day dashing back and forth into
this private office of the Superintendent. I never knew why and
indeed never knew what either of them actually did.
From the earliest days the role of the assistant chief clerk was
obvious. He supervised all of us with a close intensity. He had a
specific job of paying “the staff” each fortnight in cash in a brown
paper envelope. My initial fortnightly pay before tax and National
Insurance was £7-2s-8d. His peculiar sense of humour came into its
own on the payday immediately following my successful passing of six
months probation. This event, it seems, triggered my compulsory
entry into the Railway Superannuation Scheme and as such, six months
back contributions. Instead of giving out my pay packet as normal,
he felt in his back pocket and handed me three coins. Later he
substituted these for a packet containing three shillings. He was a
particularly bright man and very good with figures. He had a habit
of jerking his head back when walking across the office under time
pressure and when thinking hard. His name was Claude and it was
rumoured that he had a sister named Betty who was on the stage. This
lady is still acting and is known to the nation as Betty Turpin in
Coronation Street.
The goings on, at, or around the top desk was my introduction to
office gossip. The secretary to the Chief Clerk was a fine energetic
woman in her prime. She wore loose frocks, had flowing hair and wore
the highest of high heels to noisily show everything off to its full
potential whilst tripping between the desk, the Chief Clerk himself
and the Superintendent’s office. She rarely ventured into the
vastness of the open office itself. It was said amongst the staff
that she enjoyed special privileges from her exalted position and
that there must be many secret goings on because of the intense
whispering that went on in this distant corner. Furthermore, it
seems she was having a relationship with “a certain member of the
general staff, that one that sits down there close to them”. As a
result, he also enjoyed special privileges by being part of the
elite group. Apparently they slipped away at lunchtime together.
This “outsider” was never part of any group staff discussion and his
actions had to be viewed with great suspicion. Actually he seemed a
pleasant chap and always treated me with great kindness, which just
shows that one never can tell.
A new experience for me was the female sounds in a lavatory. Back
home, going to the “lav” was a solitary affair and even at this time
consisted of an earth closet in a separate brick building across the
stackyard. Here however and although still housed in a separate
building across a yard, it was at least a modern-type water flush
closet. There was just one lavatory for all the male staff and this
was kept permanently locked in order to keep the non-office
employees out. The key hung next to the outside door on a string
attached to a large wooden block. It followed that if the block was
present, the lavatory was free. Otherwise there was no option but to
wait and if the occupier happened to be a particular person, this
could be a long wait because on certain mornings that person was
known to be engaged in the serious business of “picking winners”
ahead of slipping out later to the bookies. When I first arrived I
could have been forgiven for thinking that having plucked up the
courage to grasp the elusive key, the lavatory would be as solitary
and therefore as private as had been the case at home. It was
therefore a massive shock when on about day three, the unmistakable
sound of “the” high heels came clip-clopping ever closer to my
little room. With a sound like bedlam a key turned in a lock and a
door opened and slammed shut. It was so close it might well have
been exactly where I sat. But then the sound as if “Daisy” had peed
directly onto a concrete floor came as fast as it was noisy. In an
instant it was over and the door re-slammed and was locked and the
clip-clopping gave away the hasty departure. I was mortified. Only
later was I to learn that this event was a standing joke amongst my
colleagues. She had a reputation for the most and the fastest in the
West. It could be avoided only by the convergence of finding not
merely that the male key was available but also that the female had
gone into the Superintendent’s room or else was in deep whispering
confabulation with the Chief Clerk. A tricky business.
The reason for a vacancy having arisen was the promotion of the
previous junior clerk to the “Grade 4” designated post of mileage
clerk. Patel, a very polite and well spoken young man whose parents
were Indian, had two weeks to teach me the ropes. The main aspect of
the junior position was “checking” in and out the manual work force.
This consisted of being handed literally a metal check or disc
through my office window flap as men came on and went off duty. Each
check had a number and it was important to put a face and therefore
name to that number so that the time attendance records were
accurate and there were no fiddles going on. The times, counted back
to the last minute from the huge clock on the office wall, were
entered onto a large weekly sheet against the name of the correct
person. This included the mid-day break but not the tea breaks. At
first the recognition part was difficult not only because there were
hundreds of men involved but also some came to the window almost
pitch black from their work. A few were pitch black because they
were black, the first I had even seen and I formed a view that their
race was a far happier one than ours. To a man they always laughed
and joked and one in particular always had a banter with me. This
was in stark contrast to certain of the others who obviously lived
in permanent purgatory. There was also the smart Alec flashing past
the window and throwing in a disk with a speed to match any
magician. Eventually though and by compartmentalising the groups by
their job titles, it became second nature to recognise the men and
to know who had deposited more than one disc in a further attempted
slight of hand. Some of the job titles were fascinating. There were,
amongst others, Fire Raisers (who built the fires to get the engines
into steam), Fire Droppers ( who put the fires out and got the
boilers ready to be worked upon), Plate Layers, Boilermakers and
Shunters.
Each day the sheets of the previous working day were extended to
produce for each worker the total “clock” hours taking into account
the rules for lateness and leaving early. These figures were
transferred to a time card and the sheets and cards passed to a more
senior person for checking. By the Tuesday of each week every person
in the office had a responsibility for totalling and pricing a batch
of time cards. It worked by seniority so that as the sole Junior
Clerk, I would have relatively few cards and only for those workers
who tended to have a set week on fairly low rates of pay. The easy
pick. On the other hand, the four most senior “Grade 3” men each had
a large batch that included the most complicated employment terms.
These complications arose because for the senior footplate men, that
is the drivers and firemen whose time details came not from my
checking in but from the “foremen” working next door, the rate for a
standard week was pretty much academic. It took a while for me to
realise that this work was the real rationale for the existence of
the whole office. Footplate men worked around the clock and seven
days a week. There was time and a quarter, time and a half, double
time and in the most extreme case of working on a “rostered rest
day” that happened to fall on a Bank Holiday three-fold time.
In addition to the calculations to produce total clock hours for pay
purposes, drivers were paid mileage bonuses. In the case of daily
excursion to a seaside town there was a condition known as “short
rest” under which if the driver spent no more than a given number of
hours at the destination, his time was counted as right through from
clocking on to clocking off at the depot. Because there were time
allowances for the act of clocking itself and for getting from the
depot to the mainline station to start work, all this made for a
very long “clock” day. It could for example be from six am to ten pm
and since most of these special excursions were on a Sunday, then
this was all double time. These factors made the basic rate of
£11-2s-6d a week for a top driver meaningless in terms of actual
earnings and as a result put much pressure on the seniors in the
office. (This basic rate made me realise how high were the
aspirations of my aunt Madge when presenting the Children’s Guide to
Knowledge when I was aged 10 “one day you will be on £10 per week,
mark my words”).
So complex were the calculations for the top drivers and firemen and
so large the resultant pay that the procedure demanded that every
time card once extended into monetary value had to be checked and
initialled by a colleague of equal or senior rank. That is why on
days building up to payday the assistant chief clerk could often be
seen dashing around like a headless chicken grabbing cards fully
extended for checking and urging greater speed of extension. When
all the cards were complete and priced to gross pay per employee,
they were rushed to the pay-office in Derby to be put into “Gross to
Net Pay” terms by machine. The master net pay sheet with individual
packets and deduction details per employee were returned on the
Friday morning for actual cash payment and with the actual money
pre-calculated into the correct denominations of £5, £1,10s notes
and coinage. Then the fun really started.
Each Friday morning, pay day, three teams of two men each had to be
installed in the pay-office that was located in a separate brick
building within the main engine sheds. At nine o’clock the security
van arrived with the cash together with the assistant chief clerk
who signed for each of the three bags of cash pre-prepared from the
three-way split payroll sheets. Each batch of money with the
accompanying sheet was handed to the senior in each team for
counter-signing. This done, the assistant chief clerk and the
security men left, locking we six in the room. Then the race was on.
The structure was that two of the teams consisting of senior staff
from the office and who were very experienced in the job, took two
large payrolls whilst the third team took a smaller payroll. This
was deliberate as a form of training for the junior in team three.
After two weeks of observation and some practice, I was the junior
in team three. It was fortunate that the boss of this team was the
recognised fastest and most accurate of everyone and in my case he
needed to be. The ability to count out notes and coins was vital but
a skill soon learned. The determining quality however was dexterity
and here I was found wanting “all fingers and thumbs” was an
expression that springs to mind.
The procedure was that member one of each team found the name of the
employee on the pay sheet and noted the total net pay. Then to the
nearest £5 grabbed such a note from his team’s pile of money, next
the nearest £1’s and so on until the pay was counted out. He then
passed the pay packet, that was already embossed with this net pay
and name and payroll number of the recipient, to the senior of the
team. His job was to duplicate the procedure and if satisfied stuff
the pay packet making sure the flap was not sealed down. Since there
were many hundred employees and a decided air of competition in the
room, this Friday morning job had a good deal of stress attached to
it and was heightened by two factors. First, there was a twelve noon
deadline when the pay-office officially opened for the collection of
wages and secondly if the money did not work out there was no second
chance saloon. Money failed to work out if either some was left over
at the end or there was not enough to make up the last pay figure.
Either was equally serious. The two senior teams were very slick and
always appeared to balance first time and the job would be over by
about eleven o’clock. Because the idea was to get finished just as
the pay-office opened for business, these four would disappear once
completed. I sometimes suspected a bit of trickery, it all seemed
too good to be true. This may have been borne out by the occasional
excitement directed anytime after noon at Herbert Dale. Herbert was
a bit older and more senior than the other staff aside from the top
desk. He did higher grade work the purpose of which always eluded me
except it was something to do with traffic and freight statistics.
Not however on a Friday afternoon because he was the official
cashier and therefore payer-out of earnings.
Either instantly on ripping open a packet or very soon afterwards
there would sometimes be a rumpus in the works. The person involved
and the details very soon penetrated the office, “old Sid is down a
quid” or similar expression would ring out. Herbert had to sort this
out but without recourse to those involved in the morning’s work
since by definition they had not been allowed to leave the pay
office until the balance had been struck and therefore everything
had been left as perfect. How Herbert did the sorting out was a
constant puzzle to me. He was such a quiet cultured man and the
outrage of certain workers had to be seen to be believed. I think he
must have had some high-level latitude to settle and it was not
unknown for “that bloody machine in Derby” to be blamed.
I was never slick. My fingers could not quite build up the speed
needed to finish an hour early. The best Roy and I could hope for
was to finish about thirty minutes early and, halleluiah, to balance
first time. Often though there would be a 10s note left over or
short and we would have to re-check every packet (which was why they
were all left unsealed until the end). I can honestly say that we
always found the error eventually and never once did he dig into his
personal money or pocket anything. On several occasions we got
perilously close to the noon deadline and could still be sealing
packets with the British Railways wet sponge as Herbert approached
with his slow steady walk across the yard. Once when we had had a
stupendously successful morning and actually finished just after
eleven o’clock, Roy said “as a reward I’ll let you into a little
secret”. Instead of going back to the office he led me through one
of the main engine sheds and up the side of the line onto Wilford
Road. Having crossed the road we entered a building opposite went up
the stairs and into a huge smoke-filled room. At one of the snooker
tables were our four pay-packet-filling colleagues. From that day
on, I was accepted as “one of us lads”.
Just as the “terms and conditions” attached to the footplate men
were structured such that the top few could earn substantially more
than the union negotiated basic pay, so the threesome of Ted, Dennis
and Phil had managed to work the system to the same end. It took me
a long time to discover this and even then only due to the kinship
that was to develop between myself and Herbert. It transpired that
these three received a higher rate for their work than the official
Grade 3 due to recognition, albeit on a temporary basis, of
increased responsibility. In addition, they were collectively doing
the work of four members of the office establishment and to achieve
this meant coming in one hour earlier than the official start time
each morning and staying one hour later. Also, they worked through
their lunch hour break. This constituted higher-grade overtime.
Also, when one of the three was on holiday, rather than draft
someone else in, they had agreed to cover this work too and claim
the extra hours. This was an exclusive arrangement to themselves and
did not extend to Roy, or the “friend” of the secretary or indeed
anyone else. How it had started and was allowed to continue, I never
knew.
Aside from the common work of time sheet compilation and pay packet
filling, each member of the office had a very specific job. Ted, for
instance, did “Sunday Rostering”. This was an extremely important
subject for the more senior footplate men since it was the source of
high earnings. To boost the earnings from “long days” and from high
mileage bonuses it was of the essence to work a Sunday because at a
minimum it meant double time and should this particular Sunday fall
on a “rest day” then triple time came into play. Permutations of
choice of driver and fireman for Sunday Rostering were endless as
Ted explained to me one day. There were two main determinants. One
was whether the driver was “passed” to take a particular route and
the second was the system of “links”. One might think as an ignorant
outsider that once the skill of actually driving a steam train had
been mastered and especially having undergone the learning curve
from being a fireman and then a “passed” fireman, such trains could
be taken anywhere on the rail system. This was not so. A driver had
to “learn a route” and this involved doubling up with an already
passed driver and on several occasions building up to being tested
on the particular route “for real” by the likes of my Uncle Edmund,
the Inspection Officer. Only on being “passed” could that driver
take charge of a train on a route. Thus this was the first
qualifying factor for selection for a lucrative Sunday job. Learning
a route involved knowing where all the signals were located, where
the gradients and bends were and their magnitude, understanding the
station and platform features and most importantly the prevailing
speed restrictions. Every driver once passed had, before every
journey, to “sign on” with a depot foreman and receive that day’s
printed “instructions for the route”. These gave all the latest
speed restrictions as dictated by engineering works or by any number
of special factors. One such factor that always caused mayhem in the
foremen’s office (that room linked to ours that buzzed with highly
charged male activity and choice words) was the passing through the
rail network of a “Royal Train” since clear passage for the
privileged meant disruption to the masses. Information on
engineering and other works such as the seismological train or the
snow plough train emanated from the central Traffic Department
located in Derby. The dissemination of such routine information and
its interpretation into operational instructions was a key job of
the more senior staff in our office.
The second qualifier for Sunday working, as with all work
allocations, was the “Link” into which a driver was placed. Links
were the ultimate arbiter of driver selection because they reflected
seniority. Only the most senior men were in Link 1. Such drivers
would have been in post the longest time, would be passed for the
most routes and certainly the main line to London and most vitally
would not have failed the crucial and mandatory periodical medical
including as it did the colour vision test. Link 1 drivers were the
elite and made the most money. At the other end of the scale were
Link 4 drivers who were reduced to shunting engines around in the
marshalling yards or taking freight trains on slow local journeys.
It followed from these two criteria that Ted was often the fulcrum
of angry scenes from a driver stamping through the office to his
stool demanding restitution for not being allocated a forthcoming
juicy Sunday job. Certain drivers got extremely excited and because
Ted’s desk was towards the centre of the long wall of the office, it
was impossible to work whilst explanations were offered. Perhaps it
was due to Ted’s tall, rather stern and ex-RAF moustached appearance
but I never once witnessed a decision being changed or intervention
from the top desk. Either he was exceptionally good at his job or
else the ultimate authority of his office was always going to
prevail. I never knew.
Rest Days were another high-earning minefield. A colleague of Ted
and sitting next to him was Dennis and one of his jobs was to work
out and publish weekly the “rest-day roster”. He too had his
confrontational moments with certain members of the footplate staff.
This was because a driver or fireman who asked to work his rest day
was in for double money and if that day happened to fall at the
weekend or on a bank holiday, then triple time was due. Whilst rest
days were quite normal and as such scheduled into the routine
matching of men to work, the limitations were severe due to
sickness, holidays, absence without leave and the required
qualification of being passed for the route and being in the right
link. Consequently, and as with Sunday working, a fair deal of
judgement went into the choice of crews asked to work on their rest
day. It occurred to me that Dennis was not quite in Ted’s league in
handling a large and powerfully irate engine driver who had “just
been done out of working my rest day”. Several times there were
red-faced emotional explosions centred on Dennis’s area and a small
group might gather round to calm things down. Such events presented
a baptism of fire for someone as young and innocent as myself who
had never even heard my parents swear or argue or get particularly
emotional about anything to do with “work”. And here we had two
fully-grown men threatening to beat the living daylights out of each
other. Of course, much later in my working life there would be
confrontations infinitely more deadly if more subtle.
There was a third area of malcontent between the outside workers and
a member of our office. We lads were blessed with a second lady
member. Lillian was small, a bit on the plump side and, I started to
think, not best suited to her specialisation. Lillian was queen of
free passes and privilege tickets (P T’s). Every employee was
entitled to concessionary travel on the railways. The allowance was
five free tickets per year and of these three could be, but did not
have to be, “foreign”. Foreign meant outside the Region of
employment. Working for the London Midland Region therefore entitled
the employee, for example, to go up to London five times a year
should they choose, absolutely free. Or, say, three times and
perhaps to the South Coast twice (being partly on the network of a
region other than the “home” region).
Once the free passes had run out, any number of P T’s could be
obtained and these facilitated much reduced train fares. One would
have thought that this valuable fringe benefit would have been a
constant source of joy and happiness to all especially since for
married employees, it covered the whole family. However, this did
not prove to be universally the case. A seemingly endless procession
of workers of all types from the most elite driver to the humblest
yard labourer sought out Lillian’s desk to challenge her records.
Herbert with his pay-packets and Ted and Dennis with their Sundays
and Rest Days had their bad confrontational times but at least they
were fully fledged men of some senior stature. Poor little Lillian
had no such natural armour. Time and again she must have entered the
wrong date or the wrong destination because there should always have
been one free pass left. But Lillian’s box-card system never lied
and there before their very eyes was the evidence in bright blue ink
of the passes issued previously. But then, what about the
cancellation, what about the late decision to change the
destination, what about her errors? Poor Lillian. And when she cried
her nearest colleague Arnold would climb down from his high stool
and walk over and put his arms round her plump shoulders and tell
the offending employee with all the gruffness he could muster to
“bugger off”. Beryl the important secretary would take her out to
the ladies to get over it. I began to wonder if, from the employer
perspective, these benefits were really achieving anything. If there
was any gratitude from the employee, then I never saw it and if
everyone gets the same, can there only be disgruntlement by sort of
definition? After all, where is the exceptional advantage? Can there
only be the chance of losing out? The chance of being diddled? I
resolved to tuck this thought away. It might come in useful later.
During all my three-and-a-half-years in that office, I never
discovered what Arnold actually did. What I do remember with great
affection was his nickname, which was disparagingly derived from a
combination of his squatty frame and his surname of Sidebotham. I
also remember his sideline. In this age of smoke and smoking, Arnold
was a champion of the briar pipe but the little package that it
became my custom to pick up from the specialist smokers’ shop on
Wheeler Gate did not consist solely of pipe tobacco. Almost everyone
in the office smoked cigarettes and it was common to run out,
especially in the afternoon and especially on urgent need of the
“key”. The closest desk to the key belonged to Arnold. The little
brown paper package contained an assortment of the most popular
brands of fags. Arnold didn’t lend out fags or provide a charitable
service. He sold them individually and at a considerable mark-up.
Everyone knew he was on to a nice little earner but when one needs a
fag, one needs a fag and if nothing else his supply never faulted.
Arnold was hated but happy. My first encounter with a true
entrepreneur.
After about six months I was promoted. It owed nothing to my being
the world’s or London Midland Region’s finest Junior Clerk. It
appeared that Patel was leaving to pursue his career in the retail
sector or more specifically as he explained to me to work in a shop
in the middle of the city that sold wall-paper. As I was to deduce
later, this decidedly downward move was caused partly by the mass of
statistical data that had to be memorised to make a reasonable fist
of the “mileage clerk” job but mainly by the trauma of playing
second fiddle to the head of the two-man section. My first real
clerical position placed me at the bottom of the “Grade 4” salary
scale and represented quite an increase in pay. I was over the moon
with the letter from the Chief Clerk announcing my new status and
terms but it did not seem to impress my dad greatly. Still, mum
increased my pocket money.
The mileage section turned out to be all to do with the
determination of bonuses earned by the footplate staff. Mileage
bonus was staged according to the total mileage covered in each
week. Not that my new position involved the actual calculation of
money but just the mileages. As with the hours aspect of pay,
details per man were fed to the offices in Derby for conversion into
money and the subsequent payroll. The routine was quaint. In the
adjoining “Forman’s Office” was a sliding window through which was
pushed the daily journey sheet of each driver and fireman after it
had been approved with the initials of the foreman on duty at the
end of each shift. On our side of the wall was a large wooden box
into which these sheets dropped. As a result, this box was about
half full each morning and positively packed on a Monday morning.
The task was to convert the journeys into mileages and tot up each
stage to give the shift total. There was no difference between the
work of the junior and senior positions aside from the quantity of
sheets that could be processed. This in turn depended upon knowledge
and memory and the ability to graft. In essence it was no different
from a factory production line with the speed of the belt
self-determined by these factors. The fact was that a new hand had
no knowledge. Mileages from one point to another had to be looked up
on a series of cards that had been written out over the years by
previous incumbents of the position. The longer this research took,
the slower the processing and the larger the pile of un-cleared
sheets. The same deadline as applied to time for payroll input
applied to mileages. Missed input to Derby would inevitably lead to
held-over bonuses and when this had occurred in the past, angry
drivers had stormed in seeking the blood of the mileage section.
Whilst it would take time for me to learn the journey mileages,
there was a limit to how long I could be carried on the section. As
far as Patel was concerned, the limit had been passed and Colonel
John had been forced to recommend a change. The “Colonel” was a
fairly fearsome and self-contained character. Short, bald and with
heavy rimmed spectacles, he did not mix with the others and chose to
keep himself to himself. He had no truck with the office gossip and
did his job diligently and efficiently. His good army pension added
to his independence. Also, he was the only one in the entire office
who came to work by car.
Being terrified of failing and not having met anyone remotely like
my new boss before, there was no way The Colonel would be displeased
with my work effort. My head was down over those sheets and the
mileage cards from the minute I got there until I left. The effect
of this was probably exaggerated by the fact that The Colonel was
doing no overtime or covering other positions or higher-grade work
and so did the bare minimum hours. In fact rather less. He walked in
just a little late and usually left just a little early. My
endeavour coupled to a good memory for numbers paid off. Less and
less was there a need to refer to him for route details from a start
to a finish journey and more and more I learned the routes common to
each link. Soon, only the complicated “Sunday Specials” presented
any problem and I soon discovered that they did for The Colonel too.
So it was that we started to get on well together and to the point
that sometimes by mid-afternoon we engaged in a little game. Once we
were “straight up” (no sheets waiting to be done) we would open our
side of the box and take turns to surprise the next unsuspecting
pusher-through of his sheet by whipping it out of his hand from the
tip first exposed to us. We would then revel or groan depending on
the simplicity or complexity of the sheet thus obtained. I must have
pleased The Colonel really because he started to take me in his car
across Nottingham to my station after work and on his way home. It
was on these journeys in his Ford Popular that I learned just how
awful every other single driver was and how proficient he was. It
must have come from his army training but the anger and invective
from inside that little car had to be seen and heard to be believed.
Actually, the mileages and routes were interesting in themselves. I
began to like my job. The crack train in the week from Nottingham to
London St Pancras left on time every morning at precisely 8.04 am
and took two hours and four minutes. This was the prestige route and
allocated to only a Link 1 crew. It ran via Leicester round the
Trent Loop (where the Derby trains joined the track) and had a total
mileage of 127. This consisted of 28 to Leicester, and in 28
minutes, and 99 forward to London. Unlike today however, this was
not the sole route to London. Trains were scheduled via Melton
Mowbray also on track long since abandoned apart from local journey
specials on cute steam trains. This route was shorter at 123 miles.
At the other end of the spectrum were the many freight trains
especially carrying coal. The places themselves were unknown to me
except as specific mileages between each and in total. There is a
touch of irony in many of these places becoming known to me
intimately years later whilst the mining industry being served would
be wholly eradicated. Go North East to Calverton, Farnsfield and
Bilsthorpe or North West to Hucknall, Linby and Papplewick. These
coal pits fuelled the power stations on the Trent and Soar that in
turn fed the East Midlands with electricity and served the National
Grid though it would take a job move to appreciate this.
I started to appreciate the steam engines that hauled these great
loads and sometimes when the Colonel and I were “straight up” I
wandered through the massive Motive Power Sheds to get close to
these fantastic examples of British engineering. I loved the little
4-2-0 and 4-2-2’s and started to identify for myself the engine that
pulled the trains along the track just one field away from our “top
field” on the farm. This was the little branch line taking coal from
the pits at Teversal and Pleasley down to the main Erewash line at
its junction at Westhouses and onto who knows where. “Down” was the
operative word because rail track is supposed to be as near flat as
possible and hence the steep embankments and tunnels and viaducts.
The constructors of this branch line either forgot this or more
likely decided its worth was so little as not to justify the effort.
Consequently, when the full load reached a point opposite our field,
the crew had to stop the train, alight and walk from wagon to wagon
applying a brake to each by hand. There was still a driver, a
fireman and a guardsman but their leisurely stroll along the length
of the train and the overall journey time schedule was a million
miles removed from the 8.04. It taught me a powerful lesson for the
future. Never reckon that people with the same job title or
professional label, even having an identical start to their career,
are the same. The top of Link 1 and the bottom of Link 4 exist
everywhere.
If the little engines were lovable, the giant “8” and “9” freights
were positively awesome. Their magnificence was not dented by the
quietness and stillness of being at rest in the great engine sheds.
Nor was their dignity impugned by the ant-like men in boiler suits
with strange sounding trade names who crawled over and inside them.
Years later when the last working beasts in the UK had long since
taken a dead-end journey to the breakers yard, I was literally
reduced to tears when my taxi entering Cochin in Southern India came
to a shuddering stop to allow an “8 Freight” to pass over the level
crossing hauling its gargantuan load of coal. What the British
introduced, the ex-colonials had had the sense to retain.
Of all the staff in the office, two stick in my memory most. Ted
because of the lunch-time horse-play when he was to demonstrate to
the others and on me some of his RAF close-combat fighting skills.
He had some technique, was much taller than me and had secured a
strange sort of grip but he was a chain-smoker and perhaps unaware
that I had mucked-out the cows for years and was used to heaving
sacks of corn and potatoes. Anyway, I only hit him once in the lower
lumbar region. He sank slowly to the floor and rested. Ted did not
do his overtime that day and in fact left slightly early. He was off
for six weeks.
The other was Herbert because he reminded me of uncle Harold with
his quiet authoritative manner and because in the afternoons, not
Fridays, he had the ability to go soundly to sleep whilst sitting
bolt upright at his desk over the statistical returns that I never
understood. But more importantly because one afternoon overlaying
his vital returns I spotted a diary. Not the main body holding the
days but the rear section containing complex grids with zigzag lines
in blue ink. To most they would remain a mystery and in the office
were no doubt thought of as useful references for his scientific
work. To me however they were recognised instantly as diagrammatical
representations of Bell-Ringing methods.
Some months before and having cycled to Matlock on a Sunday
afternoon with my best friend John Smithson (who was 10 days younger
than me and for who’s mother I had often been told Nurse Ball had
had to leave my mother to attend in a snowy April of 1942), there
was panic stations to get back fast. It seems he had to be at Old
Blackwell Church by a quarter to six to “ring the bells”. This was
news to me but apparently for the past few weeks he had been
receiving lessons from his dad and was “in the team ringing the
treble”. We walked not into the main entrance of St Werburgh’s
Church but in the side to the Vestry, turned sharp left and having
opened a small wooden door climbed the circular stone steps until
opposite was a door with a handle at its foot. The technique was to
step onto the opposite stone ledge and pull up the door and whilst
holding it aloft, step inside. The room inside was a revelation to
me and I entered a new world. There were five men with coats off and
sleeves rolled up and six ropes with thick brightly coloured middles
sections draped round pegs in a circle but climbing up through their
own little hole cut neatly in the ceiling. This was the holy grail,
the bell-ringing chamber, and we were late. John took off his coat,
rolled up his sleeves and walked sheepishly to the bell rope on the
far side of the chamber. The rope was untied from its peg and its
end held in the left hand along with a few loops of loose rope. The
right hand held the woollen middle section. Slowly the chatter
stopped and five men did the same with their appointed bell rope. I
cowered in the background and watched. John tugged the centre
section of his rope downwards and the others followed in rotation in
a clockwise direction. Immediately the bells started to clang,
1,2,3,4,5,6 from the highest to the lowest note and repeat and
repeat. After each round the middle section moved higher and higher
until almost touching the ceiling with all the spare rope taken up.
After a few rounds of this extreme length, John’s dad shouted “stand
next sally” and from 1 to 6 the middle section or sally was slowly
eased to rest were it had started. Awestruck was not in it.
Mesmerised would be a better description of how I felt. That Sunday
evening’s session was not the best advertisement for the art of
change-bell-ringing. John had not yet got full control of the bell
nor the striking art of the treble and there were numerous “clashes”
of bells and consequential yells from Arthur, John’s dad and
bell-ringing captain, attempting to get others back into the correct
sequence. Rather than putting me off, this cauldron of human effort
somehow drew me in. It looked physically and mentally hard and when
Arthur asked if I would like to see the actual bells before the next
mid-week practice, the die was cast.
Blackwell church has six bells with the largest, the tenor, weighing
7cwts,2qrs and having a diameter of thirty-four and a half inches
and tuned to note A. It is believed that originally the tower had
just three bells and the second bears the mark of the Nottingham
founder Henry Oldfield with the legend “Jesus be our Spede, 1587”.
These facts are set out in an excellent little book written and
compiled by Glyn Holdgate and published in 1999 “Ting Tangs, Trebles
and Tenors”. It records that in 1901 two further bells were added as
cast by John Taylor at the Loughborough foundry and that of the
reconstituted five bells, the “Oldfield” bell became the fifth.
Although completely ignorant of this history at the time, this
“fifth” was to become my bell for a five-year period until 1964. The
first full peal on the five bells was achieved in 1928. In that same
year, two young men who would become very special to Blackwell
Church rang their first peal on these bells. One was the Arthur now
inviting me to “take a look at the bells” and the other was Wilf
Riley who quite co-incidentally was my dad’s nearest neighbour. Wilf
and his family lived in a bungalow in an adjoining field across from
our “Back Field” and from where, apart from his full-time job in the
mine, he ran a small but flourishing market garden business. He was
the proud owner of a Javelin motor car the likes of which I had
never seen before or since. These same two men also rang a peal to
celebrate a lifetime as bell-ringers. It was achieved on the
fiftieth anniversary of their first peal. A truly fantastic feat.
One of the very last peals to be rung at St Werburgh’s, Old
Blackwell on the five bells before the augmentation to a full six,
took place on 15th August 1945 and was one of only a handful of
peals of the full 5,040 changes in the country to take place
actually on V.J.Day to celebrate victory in the Far East and the end
of hostilities. Of the team that day, three were ringing in that
chamber as I watched fourteen years later. Each man proved to be
quite remarkable and collectively they taught me one very important
lesson that would stand me in good stead throughout my later career.
Never underestimate the mental capacity of a seemingly humble
person. Absence of opportunity and even ambition is no guide to
ability. Arthur had been elected Tower Captain at the age of 21. He
had lost half of his right arm in an accident towards the end of the
war. He was a “shunter” of freight wagons in the railway sidings at
Westhouses both before and after this accident. He re-mastered the
art of bell-ringing using his good arm and hand and the stump of his
amputated arm. He also looked after the tower including tending to
the bells and repairing the stays and wound up the clock for a total
period of 55 years. If ever there was a true Knight of the Realm, it
was Arthur Smithson.
The second longevity medal should have gone to Albert Wheeler who
rang the tenor and heaviest bell. Back in 1945 he was undertaking
his first peal in that valedictory ring and was the backbone strong
man. He was a train driver and in my first year of work a solid
respect for this skill had been growing. He was an excellent ringer
and his “striking” skill on the tenor was such that he was an
obvious challenger to Arthur who because of his handicap could only
operate on the No2 or No3 bell. However, despite some needle between
the two men, he was never a serious contender for Tower Captain
because Arthur’s “rope sight” was far superior. Albert was a widower
and drove to church in a Baby Austin car often accompanied by a lady
friend who was later to become his second wife. He was a dedicated
pipe smoker and in an era when whether it was safe to “fake” (draw
into the lungs) cigarette smoke was already being debated, Albert
took deep lung draughts of pipe smoke that made his eyes almost pop
from his head. Not that that did any apparent harm. He was over 90
when he died.
The third man was Billy Steele. It had not been Billy’s first peal
in 1945 and he remained a faithful member of what was to become a
very sophisticated and technically proficient team. He came from
solid farming stock was small in stature and always immaculately
dressed in collar and tie. A true gentleman in the old fashioned
sense and marvellous to get to know and to talk to.
Flashing down Cragg Lane on my bike the following Wednesday evening
having barely had time to gulp down my meal after cycling from the
train station, I passed Arthur peddling his old sit-up-and-beg model
and slowed down to ride together to the lich gate. He led the way up
the stone steps of the tower but passed the door to the ringing
chamber until after a further revolution we stepped onto a ledge and
through a door into a small room the principal feature of which was
a large glass case. Arthur opened the case with his key and from a
ledge pulled out a large handle and inserted it into its housing.
Without a word he started his twice-weekly job of winding up the
church clock. For a one-handed man this was no mean accomplishment
since the mechanism was heavy and the drop deep. I was innocently
amazed. It had never occurred to me that church clocks had to be
hand-wound. That this was happening as an act of casual routine by
such a disabled man, and had been for many years without help,
created a sense of immediate admiration. It proved however to be
small fry compared to what would follow. Having re-locked the
mechanism we left the clock chamber and walked higher up the stone
steps that led to the bells themselves. Their size seen at this
close proximity was huge as they hung dormant each in its wooden
cage lined up in two rows of three and here began my first lesson.
Arthur took me round the bells on a wooden catwalk pointing out the
smallest treble and graduating to the largest, the tenor. He
explained that attached to the wheel-like frame of each bell, and
now in an upward facing position, was the “stay” and that when the
bell was fully inverted and so upside-down, this stay could travel a
few degrees off the perpendicular before hitting against a cross
beam designed to stop the bell traversing completely. It was a
safety device for someone such as he hoped I would become, namely a
“learner”. A skilled bell-ringer could hold a bell in the
upside-down position just off centre and with minimum physical
strength awaiting the precise split-second to “pull-off” and
“strike” at exactly the right time in relation to that bell’s
correct position in a sequence of “changes”. Such a sequence of
changes was known as a “method”. There were simple symmetrical
methods and “surprise” non-symmetrical methods. The true skill was
the timing of the strike and a big bell would take longer from
pull-off to strike than a smaller one. Thus it may be that the tenor
would pull off before the treble and yet strike later. The skill of
holding the bell “balance” whilst upside-down largely negated the
need for physical strength once the bells had been “rung-up”. This
was important because it meant that females could become expert
bell-ringers and indeed some of the best ringers that Arthur had
tutored had been girls. My head was swimming with facts but this one
I was more careful than the others to tuck away for future
reference.
This first teach-in was concluded by the classical prospective
bell-ringers’ dire warning. Before the necessary skill of rope
handling was attained, the bell in its dangerous upside-down
position might fail to be held just past perpendicular and if so,
the sheer weight of the bell could so smash the stay against its
cross beam (the slide) as to break it. If this happened, the bell
would do a complete revolution and the bell-rope that traversed it
would rush to the ceiling of the ringing tower. If the unfortunate
learner was still hanging onto the rope, it followed that a swift
upward journey was enforced and it was not unknown, as was the case
at Blackwell, for the ceiling to intervene. The same accident would
occur if during normal ringing the “sally” failed to be caught in
order to hold the balance. This possibility haunted me throughout
the bell-ringing years and led to several sweaty nightmares.
And so it was that my bell-ringing career started. First the
handling of the bell. In one-to-one little sessions before mid-week
practice nights Arthur patiently taught me how to ease the bell from
its resting position into gradual first movements to-and-fro by
slight downward pulls on the sally and gradually increase the
momentum until this brightly coloured blob of wool was almost
touching the ceiling on its upward flight. The crucial bit was to
catch the sally as it returned lest once in full flow the bell
should rush over the top and the rope take me with it to the
ceiling. It is a truly wonderful feeling when the fear goes and the
bell can be held just past its balance in the inverted position.
This keen learner “could handle a bell”. Next came ringing up with
the team on a light “inside” bell. The skill is to follow precisely
the bell in front by facing that bell-ringer and pulling the rope
just after his and if going too fast then to slow down and
vice-versa. It takes time to master this task and even more to “ring
down” at the end of a session since once the bell is in free-flow
and off the balance, there is little or no control and yet the
follow-my-leader must be maintained for the sound of the bells to be
rhythmical and musical. Once these rudimentary operations become
easy, the true skill is accurate striking. This means timing the hit
of the clanger on the face of the bell such that the resultant sound
is evenly spaced with the other bells. When a team of ringers are
striking together well, then the sound is lyrical and melodious.
Conversely, if the spacing of sound in uneven or worst of all
“clashing”, then the noise is dreadful. A bit like getting life
right or wrong.
Perfect striking calls for highly skilled rope handling and a good
ear. It soon became apparent that some quite adequate ringers never
made good strikers. There was more required than conscious
observation. Sub-conscious timing was of the essence. Big takes
longer, small takes shorter. Two valuable lessons that were to be
tucked away and applied elsewhere later. After the technique comes
the application. The art of change-ringing is about “methods” and
methods are about extracting a given number of bell combinations
without duplication and without returning to the 1 to 6 (or less or
more) strict sequence. In its extreme, 5,040 (6x5x4x3x2x1x7) changes
are mathematically possible on six bells provided the rotations are
consciously changed to set patterns. Such a feat is called a “peal”
and would take typically two and three-quarter hours to complete.
For the whole of this time concentration is intense and even with
six experienced competent ringers familiar with the chosen method,
mistakes are almost certain to be made. This is where the most
skilful factor of all comes into play “rope sight”. A few highly
gifted individuals, and Arthur Smithson was the most gifted that I
ever knew, could from one ringing position and whilst ringing a
method themselves, correct errors made by others and sometimes by
several others simultaneously. Because a method involves exact rules
of where to interchange sequence positions with another bell
(dodging) and where to stay in a position (holding), it follows that
to keep “right” on one’s own bell for long periods is very
difficult. To do so and correct others at the same time is nothing
short of miraculous. It was something that I could not master. But
then, a one-armed man dedicated to a church bell-ringing team and
bringing on new learners for fifty-five years, winding up a heavy
clock mechanism, keeping the grounds tidy, riding a bike, doing a
full-time job, setting a vegetable garden and bricklaying for a
local farm, is a miracle.
I was a keen student and learned so much from this marvellous man.
Three things always stayed with me. Never be content to stick with
what has been learned so far, there is so much more. Proof; I
graduated from simple Bob Minor as a method to what was generally
accepted as the most difficult of all London Surprise and developed
from just ringing to conducting and achieved a number of peals with
this excellent team. Next, and whether it is corny or not, there is
no more powerful organism in this world for achievement than a small
closely knit team of like-minded people all pulling together and
lastly and most important of all, it is possible to look straight
ahead and yet see what is going on to one’s left and right.
The journal “The Ringing World” has been published weekly since
1911. In it was advertised their official diary. In this diary I had
been studying the various bell-ringing methods on the increasingly
tedious morning train journeys to Nottingham. The path of a bell
throughout a method was drawn as a diagram across pages until the
whole sequence was covered. In addition, the rules at the
conductor’s call of “bob” or “single” to change the routine, were
shown separately. There are simple methods like Bob Minor, Double
Bob and Grandsire and more complex “surprise” methods such as
Oxford, Cambridge, Kent and the dreaded London. To see Herbert doing
the same concentrated work in the Motive Power office was like
finding a long-lost friend. After I had tentatively expressed my
interest, it was as if we two were drawn into some secret society. I
had unwittingly penetrated a part of Herbert’s secret afternoon
armoury. Soon we were deep in discussion about some of the more
tricky sections of the surprise methods and before long I was being
invited to the practice evenings at the two big city-centre
churches. I was way out of my depth at both.
St Peters was dominated by undergraduates from Nottingham University
and although occasionally getting a ring my time was spent mostly
marvelling at eight bells rung to complex pieces and a hotbed of
animated discussion. These Thursday evenings were alternated with
Mondays at the absolutely huge St Marys in the Hockley district.
This was a quantum leap from Blackwell having all ten bells
regularly in use and seeing two men standing on a box handling the
two-ton tenor. How I envied the student bonhomie and the city’s
nightime energy. How I enjoyed the half-pint after work with Herbert
and picking up his habit of a mini pork-pie from under its glass
cover with mustard and a knife. The cost of this extra-work activity
was increasing tiredness. No sooner had I got to bed after catching
the last train back, than I seemed to be getting up again.
The feeling of great tiredness and the difficulty in getting up on
Sunday morning to ring for morning service, my one day off, was not
being helped by a recent decision to attend Clarendon College on two
nights a week for a course on Shorthand, Typing and English. The
mileage clerk’s job was now boring and there was no prospect of
moving to one of the other sections since the little deals to cover
higher grade work and absences with overtime stifled any openings,
or so it was beginning to appear to me. Another thing was that
mysterious punch cards from the Hollerith section in Derby were
starting to replace some of the manual work in the office. There
were vague rumblings about computer analysis and the future being in
Derby not Nottingham. There were vacancies being advertised
internally for jobs at the Derby offices but to get there I would
need a motorbike and had no money. Being turned down for an “Outward
Bound” course sponsored by the Traffic Department in Derby did not
bode well either.
As by now an avid reader of the evening paper on the train home, the
answer was to become a journalist and for that shorthand was needed
and hence the course. The English part was interesting and ought to
be kept up. The touch-typing came easily and I passed a
30-words-a-minute exam at the end of the first term but the key
shorthand part was not working. What was the point of learning the
Pitman swish curve only for it to be replaced the following week? My
ambition to become a journalist was receding. There was a man often
on the later trains with thick- rimmed spectacles and bulging eyes
who kept wanting to touch me and had some good suits at home that
would fit me and I should visit him at the weekend and try them. It
was time to move on.
And there it was in the small job ads “Junior Clerk wanted East
Midlands Electricity Board, Lime Tree Place, Mansfield”. The salary
was quoted as £330 a year and although £20 a year less than my
present pay and although surely I was two-and-a-half years on from
being a junior clerk, I began to weigh things up on the journey
home. No hours and hours spent on the trek to Nottingham six days a
week. I could cycle to Mansfield and I reckoned that although hilly,
the service bus could probably be beaten and so that meant a journey
time of about 30 minutes or less. It would be cheap, I would save
the whole of the rail fare and furthermore, I liked the sound of
“Lime Tree Place”. What a fantastic sounding work location. A world
away from “Middle Furlong Road” and its rows and rows of
back-to-back cheap tired houses and the outside lavatory with its
noises. And another thing, although I loved the railways and had
great respect for the men who spent a whole lifetime working on
them, it would be a relief to be rid of the ever-present stigma
attached and the passionate un-escapable need I always felt to
defend the system. “Look”, I would say, “You cannot compare the
price of rail travel with road. The railways maintain their own
track and signals and have a self-contained independent network. How
can that be compared in cost terms with just getting onto a
ready-made road and driving away? What about maintenance, what about
signs?” But I always ended up as a minority of one, overwrought and
frustrated and of-course the Beeching Plan would come along and
prove the “uneconomic case” for much of the local network of
railways. My own commuter line would be ripped out along with
hundreds of other local service lines. The claimed financial benefit
to future generations would be enormous. So it was good to turn
away; the alternative was probably to explode as I still feel like
doing when I think about it today.
Once you get started, try putting Violets down. |
