Marjorie had very good hearing and so we had the old Jack Spratt problem with the sound knobs on radio and T.V. She could hear spiders walking on the carpet! She didn't like spiders, especially the big autumn variety. She would come into the room with a strained look on her face and I would say "All right, love, where is it?" "In the bath" or "On the staircase" and I would go and kill it. They go in pairs at that time of the year so I would keep a good look-out for it's mate over the next few days.
The other things she didn't like were June bugs, or 'billywitches' as they are called in Suffolk. They are big things which zoom about at dusk like bats and get in your hair. Their grub is a large repulsive looking thing with a large fat white body as big as a slug and a black end, usually living in flower beds.
The Lee Valley and particularly the Cheshunt and Waltham Abbey part was full of greenhouses before the War, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, roses and carnations. The produce used to go up to Covent Garden in London by special train from a siding at Cheshunt Junction every day in 'the Tomato Train', if the price was right. If the price at Covent Garden wasn't right the trucks - usually six to ten - were unloaded, and the tomatoes put on the pavement at Cheshunt and Waltham Cross High Streets - help yourself.
The Greenhouse Industry in the Lee Valley came to an end after World War 2 when the Government did a deal with the Canary Islands and Holland for cheap tomatoes. There used to be more than ten thousand men, women and girls working in the 'Lee Valley Sea of Glass.' Nowadays most of the glasshouses have disappeared and been replaced by housing estates, mainly for North London slum clearance. The few small ones that are left are now mainly owned by former Italian P.O.W's who were put to work in them, stayed after the War and sent for their families - Momma, Poppa, Grandma and Bambini, so there is now quite a large Italian colony in Cheshunt. In the early 1900's many of the glasshouses had been developed by Swiss, Norwegian, Danish and Dutch families so there is a polyglot society there now, including West Indians and Asians. A similar thing happened in Bedford where there is a large Italian colony stemming from P.O.W's who were set to work in the brickfields during the War, and stayed on.
According to obituary notices I often read in the newspaper many famous people seem to have had nicknames. For instance General Montgomery was always known to us as 'Monty', but when he was a young cadet he was called 'Monkey'. I never really knew what I was called at school or work until in later life, when I seemed to have at least two. One was 'Rufus', not because I have red hair, - it has always been fairly dark, but now paleing off. No, but because I always initialled documents 'R.F.S'.
The other nickname stems from a sales training memorandum which I wrote under the fictitious address of Mr A B Shark, 1 High Street, Dunwich, North Sea. Dunwich is a village which was overrun by the North Sea many years ago and is now about two miles off the East Anglia coast completely under water. People living on land perpetuate the old story that at low tide the church bells can still be heard. Naturally I became known as Mr Shark and often as a joke would answer the office telephone as such. Eric Broughton, an ex-sergeant in the R.A.F., was introduced to me in this way a few days after he joined one of my departments and still remembers that he really thought it was my name.
Mum and Dad used to like to play tennis but there wasn't a club they could afford to join. So when we lived at Waltham Cross we would cross the railway line at the back of the house and take a picnic to Waltham Marsh, about a half mile away. This was common grazing land and Dad marked out a reasonably flat area as a tennis court using whitewash and flour. The cow pats had to be cleared off before starting! The net was a white cord stretched between two flower canes so there were frequent discussions about 'over or under'. A family called Dawe lived nearby on the other side of the Marsh and used to join us. Mr Dawe used to travel up to London in the train with Dad when he had worked there.
We boys used to wander off to the River Lee and do a little fishing. I could never get enthusiastic about tennis. The River Lee rises at Luton, goes through Hertford, Ware and Tottenham, and discharges into the Thames near the Isle of Dogs. That's why the Royal Gunpowder Factory was at Waltham, and the Royal Small Arms Factory was at Enfield Lock. (The rifles we used during the War were called the S.M.L.E. - standing for Short Magazine Lee Enfield.) The Lee was fully navigable through locks back up to Hertford, and timber was carried by barge to the furniture factories at Tottenham, Edmonton and Hackney before the War which is why they are there. Most of these factories are either closed or get most of their wood by road, although some still arrives by barge.
When we moved back to Cheshunt there was a tennis court for cheap hire behind the Cafe/Petrol Station at the end of our row of bungalows, so tennis parties on Sundays continued. However fishing for we boys was out. Although the New River was at the bottom of our garden, there was a bye-law forbidding such enjoyments and in any case it was about eight feet above. The New River is an artificial canal built by King James about 1612 to take fresh drinking water to London from the natural springs at Ware, which it still does. So I used to walk down to Cheshunt Cricket Club to watch my hero, Nichol Greene, hit sixes over the football grandstand, which is still there but in a sad state of disrepair.
Charlie Clapham of the prewar comedy act of Clapham and Dwyer lived in Cromwell Avenue, Cheshunt - he was the 'silly ass' with the thin black moustache, monocle, top hat and white tie. Dad knew him and said that he was just as daft at home as on the stage. The original Lord Charles.
I said previously that Dad was a Socialist. He was a founder member of the Labour Party in Waltham Cross and Cheshunt. Being near London he knew many of the more important members of the London branches and went to meetings in their halls. Some of them often came to Cheshunt, including George Lansbury M.P. the National leader, who came to our bungalow more than once. He was the father of Angela Lansbury - Jessica F1etcher of the TV series 'Murder she wrote'. I often wonder if she ever came with him to our home, or if I ever met her. She would be a little younger than me, and I was only a young lad at that time. Dad never managed to convince me to become a follower of the Party.
When Chamberlain came back from seeing Hitler at Munich in 1938 the Government started up the Militia, which was compulsory part-time military service, but I was too young for that. My best pal, Mervyn Moore, who was in the Cricket Team with me, had to go in and he was captured at Dunkirk and spent the whole of the War in a P.O.W. camp in Poland working on farms and in coalmines.
I did not see him again until the summer of 1946 when we met up again on the Post-War Course in Birmingham. He had come back when released in 1945 and had married Edna Kemp, the daughter of the Enfield Showroom Manager. When I first worked at Tottenham in 1936 Edna was a trainee in the Showroom and sometimes at lunchtime I used to play table tennis with her and others in Alec Butson's Studio.
Alec was Company Artist and Display Designer and the water colour of Staithes in Yorkshire which is in the sitting room was done by him. Later on he did another one specialty for me which I gave to John and Brenda Nortecliffe as a wedding present, because I found out one day that they had actually lived in one of the houses in my painting. They had been sitting opposite it talking to me and suddenly said "We seem to know that place!" Alec died in summer 1989.
Brrr. Brrr. Two o'clock in the morning. "Night Emergency Officer here, Sir. There's been an explosion in a Factory and the Police want somebody in authority. Our Fitters are there." Off I go. A large process oven in a chemical factory had blown up. Its steel door had hit a wall about ten feet away near a table and chair. Ten minutes before the bang the night shift operator had been sitting there eating his sandwiches but he had gone to the toilet, lucky for him. He'd have been killed.
"What caused it, is it sabotage?" say the Police. "Check all the gas controls, boys and see if they work properly. Don't repair anything that seems wrong, the Home Office Factory Inspector will be here very soon, and he won't want anything touched." "We want to get back in production," says the Factory Manager, rubbing his eyes and looking very worried, no doubt thinking about compensation, lack of production and the report he is going to have to make to his Board of Directors. "That's not possible until I've agreed with the Inspector that it's safe."
When these fire, explosions, gassings etc., happen the Press are on to it like a shot. Headlines "gas explosions kill three etc". In fact there are more deaths from these causes by electricity in homes than by gas but the Press always make a meal of it and never wait for the true facts. This one wasn't a gas explosion at all. What was in the oven were Aspirin tablets mixed with industrial alcohol before being pelletised and in there for drying off. 'Black Smith', Home Office Inspector, who I often met on these occasions, said there was the equivalent of several gallons of methylated spirit in the oven, nearly as bad as petrol. The Factory - a household name - had to change its methods. The local Press had already gone to town blaming gas, but we never got a retraction or apology. Didn't expect one.
Brrr. Brrr. Two o'clock in the morning again. (It's always two o'clock!) "Night Foreman Baker here, XZ Bakery. The bread oven won't work. All the dough has been yeasted and it's rising. We're in a right pickle." Have you called our Night Emergency?" "Yes, your fitters are here but they can't do anything. They gave me your home number." "Did they, indeed, it's ex-directory, I'll kill them when I get there." I knew what was going to happen on future occasions - they'd ring me direct - I only lived about a mile away. Sure enough that's what happened during the next few years.
Well, I put it right. Like all bakeries there was flour all over the place, getting into the burners and inside all the complicated controls. I tore the Bakery Foreman off a strip for bad maintenance - it must have been like it for days. It could have been serviced in the daytime and never have broken down.
Never mind. I came home in a snow shower at dawn, loaded with cream cakes and hot crusty bread. Back at the office at nine o'clock.
In plant bakeries ovens can be up to fifty yards long, in back street family bakeries they are the size of a household garage. I had learned all about them from our specialist at Tottenham, Arthur Panting. He was about five feet high, looked like Arthur Askey and was of course known as 'Short Pants.' He dealt with more than three hundred bakeries in a large radius around North London, and was acknowledged within the Gas Industry all over the country as an expert to be consulted. He had taken bakery courses and could bake as well as any family baker.
He was also an expert on Fish and Chip Shops, and dealt with about two hundred of them as a specialist, mostly in the evenings as you would expect. When a Chippie rang up and said that the fryers weren't working properly he would go along, with or without a Gas Fitter, put them right and do the frying for the rest of the night, even serving the customers. It is a cash trade, and the Chippies were our worst account payers. Arthur had some regular offenders and would go along with a Gas Fitter at their busiest time - nine o'clock on a Friday night. "Pay up or the meter comes out!"
We always knew the morning following one of these affairs. He would arrive late in the office in his white(!) coat and count out £1 and 10/- notes (no cheques) on his desk. The whole room would very soon stink of fish and we would all find good reasons to be somewhere else. It was rather rough on the clerical staff, who were captive, but they would manage to find some reason to go down to the Stores and sort out some mythical documentary problem. Fred Savage, the Storekeeper, would say "Arthur collecting bills again?"
Our chief typist at Tottenham was Molly Smith, even smaller than Arthur. She and husband George were expert dedicated cyclists. She couldn't have children, so they had bicycles instead, five or six racing bikes each, a tandem, a tricycle and ordinary bikes for coming to work from about eight miles away. For many years George held the National record for the long distance tricycle race - more than one hundred miles, I think. At that time there was a lady cyclist, Beryl Burton, who regularly rode from John O'Groats to Lands End - about seven hundred miles - to keep or break her own record. All the Cycling Clubs en route would turn out to guide her through their towns, and to jump on the traffic light pads to keep them on green. Beryl was usually coming through where Molly lived in the small hours of the morning, and she would go back to bed, but turn up for work on time, bleary eyed.
When we lived in Ipswich we always went to St James Church where Gay was married. Paul served as Altar Boy for some time. Father Sweeney was highly regarded by his congregation on account of his short services and sermons, and was reputed to fall foul of the Bishop because of them. One Sunday while reading the Parable of the Unjust Steward, his version ran " .......... and he seized him by the throat and began to throttle him. "Pay what thou owest, THOU SKUNK ........." The last two words were spoken softly, but everybody in church heard them quite clearly. I've not been able to find them in Matthew, Chapter 18!
At one period in Ipswich we had a spare bedroom, with its own washbasin, and we let our priest know about it. Several people came for a few days. There was a priest from Ireland visiting his relations, the mother of a Nun at Gay's Convent, and an Art Student at Ipswich College called Rhys who gave us a piece of his sculpture and one of his paintings, both of which I still have. The ones I remember best were a man and wife from the Christmas Pantomime at the nearby Cinema who did a speciality act. There was no performance on Christmas Day so they had dinner with us and entertained our kids afterwards with their tricks.
Someone forgot to endow me with any artistic talents when I was born. I can't paint, sculpt, compose songs or poems, play a musical instrument or act. However Marjorie could do some of these things, especially act and produce plays. When we lived in Cheshunt she did these things in the Cheshunt Dramatic Society. I've got her press cuttings in the Scrap Book. It must be from her that Gay gets her talents. Hilary was in the Luton Girl's Choir, and I think she must have got this talent from my Mother's side of the family, who were all good singers.