It was late May 1946 when I was on the train again through Domodossola to Calais, and was demobilised at Aldershot. We were able to keep battledress, shirts and boots because clothing was still short and on coupons. They issued me with a suit, civvy shirts, and a Raglan overcoat, and a book of clothing coupons, which the spivs outside offered good prices for. But they rarely had much success, and more often than not got thumped.

Then it was off home to Cheshunt where Marjorie was waiting, a few days only, and then off to Birmingham to join the course a week late. There were four other 'A' Apprentices there who I had trained with before the War - Mervyn Moore, Cyril Moore, Les Dancey and Reg Wheeler. There is a photograph of us all in one of the albums with some others from other Gas Companies. We all look very fit except for Mervyn who had been in prison camps. He now lives in Norfolk with Edna, both retired of course.

Marjorie's account tells much of what our life was like in those first six months in Birmingham. The course was not too difficult for me because of all the technical work I had been doing in Radar, and the short course I had had in Perugia University had brought me well in front of the others. It was very hard for Mervyn. Marjorie's mother and father came down to see us at Mrs Mac's. They were rather taken aback with Mrs Mac's place but we had been used to roughing it in the Forces, and besides, we were together again at last. We didn't use the infamous bathroom at all. I could always get lunch at the College, and in the evenings we could go to the British Restaurant. These British Restaurants were official eating places and served plain meals without having to use a Ration Book.

A terrible thing happened in Birmingham - a beer shortage, and on ration at that. There were queues in the pubs, right out into the streets. We had been short enough of beer in Italy - there is an article about it in the Scrap Book, but this was serious!

At Perry Bar there was a speedway track, and we often went there with Jimmy James who lived not far away. The star was 'Split Waterman' who had been a Despatch Rider in the Eighth Army in Italy. When the War finished the Army built a speedway track at Pozzuoli near Naples and we had often seen Split ride there. He became an International Champion.

The Australians brought speedway to England before the War and the very first track was on grass in a field behind the Waltham Cross Gas offices, but they soon moved to a proper dirt track in Epping Forest behind the Kings Oak pub at High Beech not far from Waltham Abbey. Dad and Bryan and I used to cycle over there on Sundays. Some of the structure was still there up to a few years ago. It is not far from Dick Turpin's Cave where he used to hide Black Bess, his horse.

We only saw Jimmy James once after we left Birmingham when he came down on his motor bike to Cheshunt, but somehow we lost touch. I wrote to the Post Office and other establishments to track him down and finally found an old scrap of paper with his address in a bookmark so I started to search again, but it was too late. His sister wrote to me saying that he had died of a brain tumour the previous year.

Our 'digs' were in a suburb called Harbourne and there was a good class Cricket Club nearby which I joined and played for every weekend. Some of the Committee members were also on Warwickshire County Club Committee and an offer was made for me to turn professional, but my engineering career was more important than six or seven years playing cricket.

The course finished in December and we went back to Cheshunt to live with Mum and Dad. I went back to work and a few weeks later the Final's results came through - a First Class Pass and immediate professional qualification as Associate Member of the Institution of Gas Engineers.

So at the start of 1947 I was professionally qualified, had completed my training, had survived six years of War, had a lovely wife and our first baby on the way. What next?

The Manager who had arranged all my training with the Gas Company and the Final course at Birmingham had retired and his successor came down to see me. He was S.A. (Sid) King, a man of high reputation in the Gas Industry and the very first of the 'A' Apprentices to be recruited in 1926 when the scheme started. As his reward for successful qualification he had been selected to found the Industrial Department of Tottenham Gas at the tender age of 22 and be responsible for all the Company's business affairs with industry and large commercial users.

He had risen progressively to the top, and was later to be recruited by private industry, joining Thorn Electrical Industries as Marketing Manager of their kitchen equipment makers, Main Morley Limited. He was interviewed by Jules Thorn himself, which was entirely unexpected because in the early days when Jules Thorn had emigrated from a Middle European country into Britain and started up a small electric lamp factory in Edmonton, Sid had been down there almost every month with a gas fitter to cut off the factory gas supply, because the gas bills had not been paid. Sid said he was shaking in his shoes when he saw Jules Thorn behind his desk, but Jules said that it was Sid's toughness that had got him the job. I went to Sid's funeral in Broxbourne in 1976.

"What are you going to do now? You can't stop at this, you must go on and get a Diploma." This was then the highest academic award of the Institution. "I can't get the training or experience here, I need to go into the Industrial Department which you started." Sid agreed but first sent me off to the largest, most sophisticated depot at Enfield (where I had done my gas fitting training before the War) for about two years. It was good experience. In the evenings I was studying and going back to night school in London for three nights a week. In 1949 I was in the Industrial Department amongst the elite of the Company, now nationalised and part of Eastern Gas. Whilst I was there I continued with night school and now had to learn about gas manufacture, about which I knew nothing whatsoever.

I passed the Manufacture Examination First Class, having been through the gates of a gas works only twice in my life, and then only to get coke for our boiler at home when the delivery men were on strike. I was now qualified to manage a gas works!

Over the next three years I continued studying at home and at night school for the Diploma itself. This time as well as the long working hours and travelling to Westminster and Fulham I now had a wife and young family (Gay had come on the scene with Paul soon to follow) who didn't see much of me except at weekends. It was harder on Marjorie than on me, but it was necessary and it paid off in the end, because I passed, the only one ever in the Supply Departments of Tottenham Gas, and the only one in that year in the whole country. I was now a Member of the Institution and at an important stage in my career.

This is an appropriate stage to bring Marjorie's account into this narrative. She started writing it when we were in Ipswich and edited it when we came to Dunstable about which she wrote nothing. It describes her life up to 1968.