This was the sort of work I did until I retired, with greater responsibility each time I moved, eventually arriving at the top in Eastern Gas, and serving on two National Committees.

At Tottenham I was dealing with household names such as British Oxygen, Ever-Ready, Barratts Sweets, Thorn Electric, Gestetner, Ferguson Television, hundreds of shoe, clothing, and furniture factories, as well as many very large commercial users, such as Harringay Stadium, British Rail and Alexandra Palace.

Every day brought a new challenge and interest. One day I had a call from a large slaughterhouse who said "We've got a gas pipe here, all we want to know is how to use it." Well, we had no record of a gas main anywhere near the place, so I went down to tell them the bad news. "Oh yes, there is" and I was led to the middle of a field where sure enough there was a large pipe sticking up.

It turned out to be a Wartime Filling Point for a Barrage Balloon put there in a rush under Emergency Powers, with no records kept because of National Security. These balloons were mainly filled with hydrogen or helium, and topped up with coal gas for cheapness.

So we connected up. The abbattoir dealt with horses, cattle, dead dogs and cats brought in every day by the street cleaners, and turned them into bone meal fertiliser or pet food. They also exported horse meat to Belgium for human consumption, but otherwise the meat was injected with a bright green fluid which had the same result on Malcolm when he broke his leg in an accident.

While I was there one day Winston Churchill's racehorse was brought in. It had broken its leg on a racecourse and had to be put down. There is always an auction at the racecourses for these carcasses, and this Company had been successful.

They had a huge pile of bones, skulls etc., out in the field, and had a plant to turn it into bone meal, which was then stored in a warehouse, in a heap over twenty feet high, which didn't smell very nice. Our fitters had to work in the roof space and had to clamber through this stuff. Naturally they went on a short strike for 'dirty money'. Bill Hedges' wife wouldn't let him through the front door when he came home each night, and he had to go round the back and leave his boots outside the back door. So he would walk across his front lawn, and after a few days there was a track of grass about four inches higher than the rest and very much greener!

Poor Bill was always in some kind of trouble. One day he fell off some scaffolding and cracked his head open. He was only off for a few weeks - his mates reckoned his head was thicker than the concrete he had fallen on.

All the men were very experienced, knew all about the ins-and-outs of factories and their regulations, and would work all the hours that God sends, unlike their counterparts in other departments. They were the best, and knew it. They were very proud men.

The Department Manager, Arthur Bird, was a little man, but during the War he had been awarded the M.B.E. He had been an Officer on a merchant ship, been torpedoed, captured and put in a German Prison Camp. He escaped, crossed over to Norway, and eventually got back to England. While he was in Norway he married a girl there and brought her back to England with some other people. One of the tasks the workmen set themselves was to drink him under the table at Christmas and other 'beano' outings. These outings usually involved hiring a coach, filling it with crates of beer and going to Dover, where they would cross over to France and have a whale of a time. Sid King, the original manager, always went along, for old times sake, and so did the manager who succeeded him, Joe Law, even though they were very much higher up in the hierarchy. There is a well-known photograph somewhere of the pair of them fast asleep on Dover Pier, left behind before the rest of the gang went to France.

There was only one department car, in addition to the Manager's, and because the first district I dealt with on joining could be reached by bus, tube, and on foot, I rarely had the chance to use it. However, Sid King and Joe Law were now at Headquarters and had large chauffeur-driven cars, so when they were office-bound they would send their car down to me, complete with chauffeur in peaked cap and uniform. Very impressive I was, turning up at the entrance of some back-street Jewish Rag-Trade factory, whose owner was likely to be planning his next insurance/bankruptcy fire!

As a child I had often been taken to Alexandra Palace (Ally Pally) with Bryan, finishing up at Aunt Sarah's house a few hundred yards away for the rest of the evening. There was an enormous organ there, a cinema where I first saw 'Felix the Cat' cartoons, and its own Railway Station. A regular feature was the circus, the most impressive act being the finale outside, when a man hung by his teeth from a cable between what is now the B.B.C. Aerial Tower and the Horse Race Track, a drop of at least 200 feet, and a distance of about 300 yards.

Ally Pally, now rebuilt after the fire which destroyed most of it in the 1970's, had a rabbit warren of underground rooms and passages with walls over six feet thick in places. B.B.C. television was first broadcast from there before the War, and every large pub and club within a radius of a few miles had a set, with about a six or nine inch screen, and you had to pay a few coppers to sit round it and watch.

All the B.B.C. 'props' were made there in the cellars and stored down below, in the 'dungeons'. There was usually a small gang of my fitters working there, for Ally Pally was a very big gas-user, and one day one of the apprentices came rushing up from below, white as a sheet and scared out of his wits. One of the fitters had found a papier-mache arm and stuck it to one of the walls, in a fairly dark place.

The Lee Valley, running from South Tottenham to Cheshunt, is very low lying, and with most houses and factories burning coal, was subject to dense yellow fogs in those days. The 'London Particulars', as they were called, were worst in that area, and it was quite customary for everyone to be sent home early in the afternoon when one occurred, even as early as 3 o'clock, because the buses and trains would stop running and people had to walk home.

There was a very bad 'Smog' period of several days on end in the 1950's - old people and others with bad chests died in great numbers. The buses between Tottenham and Waltham Cross would try to get back to Waltham Cross which was a terminus, ready for the next morning, although it was quite usual for the drivers to abandon the buses completely and have to find them again the next morning.

Passengers would take turns to walk in front of the trolley buses guiding them along, and one afternoon when it was my turn I was going along quite happily when I heard the bus arm come off the overhead cables, and the bus came to a halt. Well, that wasn't too unusual, but just at the same moment I walked straight into a low wall. I had guided the bus round a crescent entry of a large house, right round the garden path, and quickly realising how unpopular I was going to be, I continued walking round to the other entrance gate without a 'cheerio' or any other form of speech, leaving the bus to its fate.

During that 'Smog' period, I was probably walking the whole eight miles back home for more than a week, sometimes getting back well after 9 o'clock, with Marjorie on tenterhooks, not knowing what was happening.

The Lee Valley in those days was a bad area for chest complaints, particularly bronchitis, usually a matter of a few days in bed with hot water bottles. I had several bouts of it after the War and didn't regard it as anything serious - more of an inconvenience than anything, until one lunchtime when I collapsed in the Canteen. This time it was pneumonia, following bronchitis, and I was in bed several weeks, quite poorly. I grew a thick beard and moustache, for Marjorie didn't fancy working on it with a razor, so one day when I felt better I shaved all the beard off, but left the 'mozzy' to grow. When I finally got back to work I had this lovely Jimmy Edwards 'Handlebar', which became quite famous, until one day over Christmas at Ipswich just after Hilary was born I shaved it off; when I came downstairs James burst out crying!

Being a specialist I was able to get on the short list for most jobs in my field, and I had several interviews but without success because every time the matter of housing reared its nasty head. The problem was that with three children we needed somewhere larger than most people, but could only rent, not having enough capital to buy what we really wanted. Not many houses were being built for sale in those days anyway and were mostly being built by local councils to replace bomb damage and rehouse returning servicemen. Nothing had been built during the six years of War, and outsiders could not get into the 'Points' system in towns they had not previously lived in.

I thought we had a real chance once for a job in Brisbane, Australia. We actually went to Australia House in London for an interview, but someone else, who I knew, got the job and was out there for more than thirty years.

So I was stuck for a few years and was getting rather depressed. My Mother's forebodings about large families often came to mind.

Gwendoline House in Waltham Cross, where we first lived, and where Gay was born, was allocated to us on the Cheshunt 'Points' system, and Dad was a little embarrassed when we were allocated a new 'soldier's house' at Bury Green after a while, because he was then a Town Councillor, and actually on the Housing Committee. My brother, Bryan, was also allocated a house four doors away because he also was a returned soldier and had a family.

Jim and Blanche Lacey lived next door to us. Jim had been in the Navy, had been torpedoed twice in shark-infested waters, and had met and married Blanche in Cape Town where she was born.

Jack and Vi Squires lived on the other side, and had two children, Peter and Margaret (now married to Cedric Barbour). It was Jack's prize chrysanthemums that Gay ruined, as Marjorie has written.

There was an open field opposite where the children could play and childrens' parties were often held on it. There was a tall tree on the other side of our road and right from a very tender age Malcolm would sit in its top, frightening all the mums.

There were many other people living on the Estate who I had known all my life, some being returned servicemen, and others who had been bombed out and waited years for a replacement house.

We had all-night Canasta Parties, taking turns as hosts and providing food and drink (I never got a taste for Blanche's South African Sherry).

We were within walking distance of all my own family, but my home ties were very loose. I had been at school eight miles away, at work the same distance in a different direction, six years away in the Army; so perhaps everything had been made ready for me to up roots and go away, anywhere, and Marjorie was the same. All we wanted was an opportunity.

Any chance to better oneself and family should be taken without too much thought of what and who are left behind. You have to make your own luck, that's one of the secrets of being 'lucky'. The other is to make sure of being in the right place at the right time.

In fact my Father had no compunction about moving as far away as Hunmanby in Yorkshire when he re-married Lilian Ingram not long after my Mother died. He had lived almost 55 years in Cheshunt. The only Saggers living now in Cheshunt is Vic's daughter, Jeanette, married to Jim Wright.

Eventually an opportunity came up in Ipswich, a part of Eastern Gas Board since Nationalisation in 1948. Small units had been shut down, or merged into Divisions, and it had been decided that each Division would have a specialist Industrial engineer in charge on the same basis as my own Boss at Tottenham.

When I got to the interview who should be there advising the local Divisional General Manager but Sid King, now head of the entire Marketing Operation of the Board. I have often suspected that was why I got the job. He knew all about me.

They offered me a car (DPV 369) and understood all my problems about a large family (James had come along) and buying a house, and said they would purchase any reasonably priced house I selected and rent it to me.

So I hired a car and Marjorie and I went over to Ipswich about two weeks later and did a grand tour, looking at houses. There were only three which suited our book, Tolworth House was in fact the first one we saw. What a marvellous choice it turned out to be - it had everything we needed, and we were happy there for the next fifteen years.

When we left Tottenham, Alec Butson's Assistant Artist, George Wilding, presented me with the large Cartoon depicting our Trek to the unknown Suffolk Jungles. He had previously given me a Cartoon after I had hired a car and taken the whole family on a holiday to Barbara's in North Wales and Dad's in Hunmanby. Both Cartoons are in the hall.

We had made many friends in Bury Green, but they all moved away in the next few years and the only times we went back were to look at the house from the outside on our way to visit Grandfather's grave at Cheshunt Cemetery which is just round the corner.

While I was there I had to go to Tottenham by bus, which took about 45 minutes, or better still, and more often, catch a lift with Eric Randall who came from Hoddesdon. Eric had been one of the earlier 'A' Apprentices, and always had a car of his own. He used to race at Brooklands Race Track near Weybridge and was quite a character. He is buried in Amwell Cemetery near Ware and I have a photograph of his grave.