Disclaimer:If anyone would say any of this is true; please tell us; my family believe non of it.

Revised in 2016, parts one and two; the first 21 years.

Copyright MDG 2014-0706, all rights reserved
UNBELIEVABLY LUCKY
To fear God is the beginning of wisdom.
So trust in God and know that with his help, all problems might be overcome.
Part One
Family; early problems; faith; revived in the mortuary.
Part Two
Work; extreme sports; bad girl; London.
Part Three
Money; creatures; marriage; dream.
Part Four
Sin; retirement ; the stones and the death stone.
PART ONE
My grandfather, Jabus Thomas was a newspaper man who became General Manager of the
South Wales Echo, the Western Mail and later, the Argus; and the paper mill; all staffed by members of
the Thomas family. After the South African War, he volunteered to serve as a private in the First World
War. After Egypt and Palestine he was in the Dardanells, where he was shot through the head when
leading a charge; but he was the only survivor of his regiment. When the Navy rescued him, they gave
him a full bottle of Navy Rum, the remains of which, we still have. I mention this as an illustration of
the strange way our family members seem to survive. He was said to be the most popular man in
Cardiff and eventually had the biggest funeral but was buried in an unmarked grave and soon forgotten.
My fathers seven uncles also survived the Great War. When one had a medal pinned on him in
hospital by the Queen, he told her that he did not feel entitled because his family had only come over
from America for the fight. She said you are one of us now and we are very proud of you! So we
have considered ourselves British ever since. This seemed to inspire my father to be a hero. He joined
the Air Force and we have an old photo of him beside the wreckage of his crashed biplane in the Iraqi
desert in the 1920's. He was holding his pet scorpion and was unscathed. After his last crash in the
Second World War, he was not allowed to fly again but after a brief spell in aircraft design, (which
meant that we had to move from Cardiff to Cheltenham), he managed to join the Commandos. He kept
up his military activities until he was eighty years old.
When I was about twelve in 1956, my brother made the newspaper headlines as the man who
fell 200 feet onto rocks and lived. He said the papers exaggerated. When he woke up in hospital next
day in plaster and the nurses would not give him his clothes back, to go home; he borrowed some
crutches and kept jumping over the other beds until they did let him go. We had great fun with the
crutches. We could go really fast with them and jump obstacles and the one with the crutches always
won our little races.
Others in the family have been unaccountably uninjured or revived after traffic accidents that
would have appeared to have caused death. More about that later. So is it genetic, attitude or lifestyle?
When I was born on June seventh, 1943 at 8, Glossop Terrace in Cardiff; my father said, born
ginger, born lucky! My spine was twisted in three places and the midwife went to smother me (as this
was the common thing to do with badly deformed babies in those days) but mother stopped her. The
midwife then straightened me out as best she could. My father noticed that there was something wrong
with my eyes but mother would not accept that criticism of her baby! Mum had had a bad fall down

2
steps while she was heavily pregnant with me and weak from over-working. With her own hairdressing
business she had been booked solid from 6am till midnight, with only short breaks for meals. From
then on, she spent her hard-earned savings on private medical treatment that totally failed to diagnose
or deal with her real problem; which was three of her vertebrae crushed into a flat plate that fused
together and had initially left her partial paralysis. Knowing this, has left me deeply suspicious of
private medicine, where I suspect motivation may be about money.
Mum ( Evelyn Jessie, nee Thomas, nicknamed Tommy) was, as I remember from later on, in
my schooldays, rather thin, with freckles and dark red hair. My father, Maurice Derwent Gladstone, I
hardly remember at all but old photographs suggest that he was tall, dark and handsome. Mum said that
he was the only man she ever could have married because he was the only man who ever stood up to
her mother. After I was born, he was immediately back to the war so he could not do anything about my
problems. Granny (Sarah Jessie, nee Fraser) was small and thin, with a lined face, grey eyes and white
hair fastened in a bun at the back and always dressed in donkey brown.
Because of my fathers accident in the Canadian Fleet Air Arm, we moved from 11, Fidlas Road,
just up the road from Roath Park, Cardiff to Cheltenham, where he worked at Dowty as a draftsman
until he was fit enough to join the commandos and take part in the invasion of Italy.
So my big brother, Mike often looked after me and was a really excellent substitute father
figure, hero and role model. So I learnt very early in life, from my immediate family that if you do
anything wrong, you cannot conceal it from yourself and you will lose self respect. As my brother later
remarked, if everyone had a mother like ours, there would not be the trouble in the world.
In our back garden at 344, Old Bath Road, Cheltenham; we had a strawberry patch. One very
sunny day, I crawled out naked and had my fill of fruit and fell asleep. When mum eventually found
me, I was covered in insects; ants, bees, flies, spiders, wasps, earwigs and butterflies. I had very
delicate skin that swelled up when touched. Without the protection of the insects, I would have been
very ill with sunstroke and sunburn. Mum thought they might have been attracted by my sweat. How
lucky is that?
My Uncle Stan, who was a Captain in the Merchant Navy, sent me two soft toys from Canada; a
lamb called Rochester and a bunny called Thumper, early 1944. As a baby, I loved cuddling these. As I
was sat in front of the coal fire in the living room on a rather cold day while mum and gran were
talking in the scullery: I was puzzling about their telling me about Father Christmas having come
down the chimney. So I put Rochester and Thumper up the chimney to have a look but they caught fire
and I Yelled! Mum and gran came rushing in; but it was too late as Rochester and Thumper had been
sucked up the chimney well alight in a blaze of burning straw, stuffing and material: I was very sad at
losing them but very interested in what they were made of and rather skeptical about Father Christmas.
Mum managed to get a job helping Mrs. Shingler in her cafe on the corner of Cambray and the
Strand in the center of Cheltenham. Because of rationing, the beans on the toast were counted! Mrs.
Shingler was a very kind lady and she let mum bring me. She could also not bear to turn away any stray
cats. There were a lot. There were always ones that were ill and there was a stink from their diarrhea! I
was quite happy to curl up under the kitchen table with the cats. I was allowed to take one of the kittens
home with us. We called her Panda because those were her markings. She was very greedy and grew
rapidly. Bigger and bigger she got until she was very fat and round but she kept tipping over the
neighbors dustbins in her search for food. They accused mum of not feeding her!
Brother Mike would take me out in the pram and make a game of it, pretending it was a tank
:As soon as I could toddle, I was exploring my surroundings and would venture up nearby
Leckhampton Hill with anyone who would take me. Another boy, Allen Attwater, took me up to
Daisybank one day. Because I could not see more than shadowy images (the connections between the
eyes and brain were damaged, we later learnt), I could not see very well where I was stepping. I
stepped into a wild wasps nest, right up to my chest. Allen ran back to the house but was too frightened

3
to be able to speak but Mike guessed something very serious had happened and raced up to Daisybank
and rescued me. The wasps had stung me all over but not my eyes (how lucky was that!) They
completely covered me, both inside my clothes and out and even in my mouth and nose. While waiting
for the ambulance, mum dabbed me all over with blue bags ( they were used in the washing and for
sundry other things in those days) so that I was a completely blue baby! I was also lucky that they did
not get past my throat into my lungs and that I was used to pain from my spine, so I could deal with
that, without panic. I made a full and speedy recovery and was soon roaming the hill again. For some
reason that I never understood, Allan did not come with me again. A bigger boy from 348, Old Bath
Road would take me. His name was Johnny Orgee and he became my best friend and we enjoyed many
adventures later.
One night, I woke to hear a faint noise from downstairs. I was thrilled at the thought that it
might be burglars. Stealthily, I crept downstairs and opened the living room door. It was Panda
entertaining next doors cat on our dresser. They were even more surprised than I was and jumped
through the window, breaking the glass and all our crockery went flying onto the floor, crashing and
smashing! I stared aghast at the mess. Suddenly mum was behind me, grabbing me by the shoulder,
whacking my bum and sobbing Oh! You naughty boy! Oh! You naughty boy! The beating did me no
harm and ensured my care afterward to avoid another drubbing. When I was able to explain what had
actually happened, mum only said, you needed that anyway! Actually, what really hurt was mums
disapproval and not the physical punishment.
EARLY HEALTH PROBLEMS
Mum took me to see Doctor Hutton at Cambray. He was a slightly stout older man in a dark
suit and his trousers smelt. Much later in life, I learnt that that smell indicated prostate cancer. So he
was diligently caring for his patients while suffering himself. Alternate days, I attended Cheltenham
General Hospital for physiotherapy to straighten my spine. Initially, there was a lot of manipulation and
measuring to see how much things were out of true and to see how I could adjust myself without too
much pain but it got to be just pulling myself along on my back along benches with my arms above my
head. This went on for quite a number of years. A lady doctor said that I had a squint and told my
mother off for not getting it seen to. We were getting some support from the NSPCC Inspector, Mr.
Hammer. He said that he was well aware that I had a sight problem but my mother already had more
trouble than she could cope with. Eventually, I was referred to Mr. Stephenson, the eye specialist at
Cheltenham Eye Hospital. He diagnosed that the connections between the eye and the brain were torn.
This might have been around 1947.
Dr. Hutton authorized me to go round the corner to the Spa Bath in Bath Road, where the
Playhouse now is. I believe that the baths remain intact under the theater. I suppose this might have
been about 1951 or 1952. Mr. Moss was to teach me swimming there. I wore a canvas belt and he
pulled me through the water on a line of window cord, while giving breast stroke instructions.
Gradually, I learnt to get along on my own. However, I scratched my leg on a rough part of the concrete
steps going out of the water.
Dr. Hutton when he examined me later, said that I had caught polio but had got over it with
natural resistance. Nevertheless, he prescribed special shoes and I had to wear a caliper on one leg. He
said that I would gradually grow straight. And he was right. But in old age, a DHSS Doctor examined
me and said humph, you have had polio, it always leaves its mark! At the time I endured a lot of
ridicule not just from other kids but from adults, too! Other people also caught polio and I believe that
is why the pool was closed even though it was fed with the remedial spa waters and was supposed to be
used for its curative powers.
To try and make both ends meat, as the sausage maker used to say, mum took a lodger. Her
name was Lucy. She was very old and almost as blind as I was: Mum and I made a miniature landscape
on an old plate, using a bit of broken mirror to imitate a lake and moss and plasticine. Lucy was

4
delighted with it. It takes a lot more than that to get people excited today!
Our toilet was outside the back door, through a lean-to. Mum was on her way there when she
stopped and froze. She stepped back. Round and round the toilet basin was coiled an enormous snake. I
heard mum say it was a boa, about 12 or 15 feet long. She pushed me back. She did not know what to
do. She quietly called Lucy. Lucy called puss! Panda came quickly; as soon as she saw the snake,
despite her bulk, she leaped straight for its throat and held on until it was dead. Then she dragged it all
the way to the far end of the back garden. Eventually, she managed to eat it all! We never discovered
where the snake came from. Sometimes people would buy exotic pets and when they became too
difficult to look after, they would just turn them loose.
Panda became more and more difficult to feed, more aggressive and we were in the ridiculous
position of going hungry ourselves in order to feed the cat. Eventually the RSPCA Inspector put Panda
to sleep.
When mum went shopping with me, I had to hang on to her coat to avoid getting lost. One day
in the crowded Co-op butcher in Leckhampton, I came out clutching the wrong ladies coat to the
surprise of us all. As far as I was concerned, I had been clutching the same coat all the time but I
suppose that I might have shifted my grip without realizing it and identical material had been all
squashed together. Things like this always puzzle me and I try to find a plausible explanation.
Also about 1947, gran took me to start at the Whaddon Road Day Nursery. We walked the
whole way. People did not expect to be driven everywhere in those days and never thought of
complaining as they do today. When mum came to collect me at the end of my first day, she asked how
I had got on. The teacher replied that I was the thickest one they had ever had. She had kept calling me
Maurice without getting a flicker of response. She could not understand that I had always been called
David even though it was the second name on the birth certificate that gran had produced in order to
avoid confusion with other family members also called Maurice. Although I told this same teacher
that I could not see things, she had a girl take me to the toilet, as if raising her voice to me was not
humiliating enough. People should not be treated as imbeciles just because they have a health problem.
So right from the start, I was not keen on schools. Neither was my brother. He had encountered
bullying at school and taken in a baseball bat but had not had any further problem. On changing
schools, he had found that registration was at morning assembly, so he let teachers each think he was in
a different class and then bunk off and spend time reading whatever book he wanted up the hill. He
would also take me and one day he gave me a piggy-back while he climbed the devils chimney!! Mum
used to get upset when he came home with his clothes messed up with cave dust and candle wax from
exploring caves.
Mike borrowed a book on hypnotism from the Cheltenham Public Library. Rather sceptically,
he tried it out on me. He thought that no one could be hypnotized into doing anything against their
nature and told me to smash the window. I had a hammer in my hand and that is what I did. Actually I
was in a trance but my adoration of Mike was such that I would do anything he said automatically.
Anyway, I had a smack and Mike did not mess with hypnotism again.
Mum gradually seemed to get stronger, house cleaning for Mr. Mervyn Moor, a partner in
Watterson Moore, a leading firm of solicitors, (at 3 and 4, Regent Street, Cheltenham and later in the
Promenade), at his home in Ryeworth Road, Charlton Kings. Their gardener was Sergeant Merry, who
had retired from the police and lived opposite us in Old Bath Road with his daughter Rosemary.
MURDER
I would listen with interest when they chatted. As was common in those days, Sgt. Merry had
difficulty reading and writing and when Mrs. Moore would leave him written instructions, mum would
read them to him. Anyway, the sarge had been the initial officer in charge of a murder investigation,
later famous as The Severn Torso Mystery and Gloucestershire's first unsolved murder: However,
the sarge was quite sure of the facts but lacked the evidence of the missing head, to prove the identity

5
of the victim and thus his case.
Sgt. Merry was certain that Mrs. Sullivan,an unqualified nurse, mass abortionist and
incidentally an unmarried mother and associate of serious criminals was the murderer because she was
the only person who had the expertise to have cut up the body in the way it had been. He believed that
Sullivan had smuggled the head from Tower Lodge on Leckhampton Hill in the back of a settee to
storage at 22 , Evesham Road and buried it there. Despite having the gardens dug to a depth of three
feet, it was not found. In later life, I remembered all this and bought the house at 22, Evesham Road
(previously 11, Pittville Parade) and discovered the remains of a head, much damaged by sulfuric acid,
wrapped in an oilcloth tablecloth at a depth of four feet. So Sgt. Merry was right all the time. But by
that time, everyone involved in the case was dead and the story did not attract verification, just a little
bit in the press and TV.
I think it important people know that eventually truth is likely to come out and that in any case
wickedness brings its own punishments, independent of the legal process. Sullivan had a son, Brian,
whom she adored and it seems likely that she killed him to stop him going to the police. About 1965, I
met Mr. Roberts Barrett who kept a Gents Outfitters in Great Norwood Street, Cheltenham. He told me
that Brian Sullivan had come into his shop and said that he was going to the police to make a statement
but that he was going home first to collect his things. Mr. Barrett advised him to go direct to the police,
rather than go home first but Brian never arrived at the police station and was next found dead.
Someone else alleged that Sullivan claimed that a gang was involved. Maybe, she would probably have
been involved with such people for her abortion business.
Giving evidence for the inquest, Sullivan claimed that the murder victim, Captain Butt was a
homosexual, causing further distress to his family as in those days people regarded homosexuality as
more disgusting than murder and it is not uncommon for criminals to defame their victims in order to
shift moral blame from themselves. Actually, Capt. Butt was a hero and victim of the First World War.
I later overheard Mr. Husbands saying how distressed he was at helping to recover the remains
of some 140 fetuses from wells at Tower Lodge and at the corner of Folly Lane; both places that
Sullivan had used. Sullivan apparently faked her death in the blitz in London. She spent many years
moving about in fear of the police and kept her things in store and kept coming back and crying over
them. She would have been much better to have confessed and been hanged but I suppose people like
that must be really afraid of death and the final judgment.
Mr. Moor came home just as we were leaving his house in Ryeworth Road one day. He stopped
and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up? I thought of my rich, heroic Uncle Stan and said a
millionaire! He paused and asked how much I had so far? I replied that I had not started yet. He
laughed and gave me a silver half a crown to start you off! That was rather a lot of money. I took it to
a jumble sale at Leckhampton Village Hall and bought thirty ties at a penny each and sold them to the
other kids for two pence each: By 1956, I had enough to buy a small terrace house at fifty pounds! But
that all comes later.
After Lucy, we had various lodgers, some extremely nice like Mr. & Mrs. Eustace and Mr. &
Mrs. Boudan and some nasty, like a lesbian woman from GCHQ who stole mums money. It was normal
then, for people to start their married life in a rented room. One nasty couple were persuaded to move
by the offer of other accommodation from Uncle Phil and were told to b----- off when they got there!
ABUSE
About 1948, at age 5, I joined the infants at Leckhampton C of E School. Mum had a bicycle
with a little seat on the back for me. Mike also had a bike to get to school. I had rather strong hands for
my age and Mike was dismayed when he went for his bike to go to school and found that I had taken it
to pieces. One day my seat came off the back of mums bike and when she did not hear me reply to a
question, she looked round to see me sitting in the cycle seat quite a long way back up Leckhampton
Road. I did not mess with the bikes after that.

6
There was bullying from the first day when several bigger boys set on one of the smallest ones
and I stepped in to save the little one. Then they all set on me, including the one I had helped. I had a
bit of telepathic ability ( that seemed to run in the family that helped with my lack of proper vision. I
did not realize how unusual that was but I soon learnt that other kids got very angry if they realized that
I knew what they were thinking. I suspect that some telepathy is common until we develop the other
senses. Mine might have persisted because of my defective sight but it was a horrible burden to
sometimes be aware of other peoples nasty thoughts and I am jolly glad it no longer bothers me. The
two Infant teachers watched or walked, while boys held me down on the infant playground tarmac and
took turns to jump on my stomach. This was a regular occurrence. Eventually my gran put a stop to it.
She walked me to school and I learned the way, feeling the walls as we passed. Then at playtime, she
turned up and talked to these two teachers and showed them a photo of my handsome, unmarried Uncle
Stan in his Merchant Navy Captains uniform. The bullying stopped and they kept asking me when my
Uncle was coming home?
A very nice thing was when a girl my age, Jacqueline De la Cassia, combed my hair. Also, when
I was playing in the park, a kind lady in a fur coat, picked me up from the snow and sat me on her lap
and held my hands and said his tiny hands are frozen! Her friend said something like; put the little
ragamuffin down Ermintrude, you might catch something! But she continued to cuddle me into her fur
until I was warm. Apparently little things like that, can mean a lot and later when I had a daughter of
my own, I wanted to call her Ermintrude but my wife did not like that choice. A boy called Jeffery
Tilling with a very good character also took my side in fights and was a very good influence.
Also in 1948, as I walked home from school, I became aware of a woman walking beside me.
She started talking to me and introduced herself to mum when we got home. I was dirty from my
classmates jumping on me, so mum put the tin bath on the table in the living room to bath me. The gas
ran out and mum needed change for the meter. Mrs. Evans offered to keep an eye on me while mum
went over the road to the shop for change. While she was gone, Evans grabbed my privates so hard that
I screamed. That is the only time in my life that I screamed: When mum returned, I tried to tell mum
but Evans said I was lying and mum grimly let her out of the house. Mum spoke to the NSPCC and
they became a lifeline for us. I understand that Evans was a widow infant teacher, without children .
She was not one of the infant teachers at my school. I think that people with decent mothers cannot
appreciate the dangers of some women to the very young or disabled. We had a tremendous lot of
support from the NSPCC Inspector, Mr. Charles T. F. Hammer and his wife Molly and children.
There were differences in local speech so that you could tell by accent which parish kids came
from. We spoke using an H where there was none and omitting real ones. My classmate, Eric Hunt was
not a best friend before I discovered that his first name was not actually Hairy. Rather later, I had a
friend whose initials were D K and I was told off for calling him Decay as it was presumed that I was
referring to a growth on his face.
We had a girl called Joan in our class who was several years older than us and seemed rather too
intelligent and manipulative and bullied me. So I stuck my leg out and tripped her up in class. She was
furious and realized it was deliberate but no one else did. More about her later.
A gypsy boy joined our class. When he raised his hand to be allowed to use the toilet, teacher
told him off and made him sit until she said he could go. As time went on, he became more and more
obviously distressed. She shouted at him to keep his seat until he eventually fouled his trousers. Them,
she triumphantly told him to go home. I still feel ashamed that none of us dared speak up for him.
When teacher said that someone has done something wrong, we learnt that we all had to shout;
Tommy did it! Teacher would then send Tommy to the Headmaster, Mr. Boulton, to be caned. This
seemed to happen almost every day. I think Mr. Boulton did not actually hurt Tommy and he always
came back in good, unbroken spirit to the admiration of the rest of the class, however, one day Tommy
came in early and took the headmasters canes and hid them in the blackberry bushes, only to discover

7
that the plimsoll could be more painful than the cane and he promptly returned the canes. Tommy
Mitchum eventually went into the Royal Navy and became much respected.
When I wriggled under the headmasters garden fence, hungering for his gooseberries, he
affected not to notice. He was a kind man and I guess he understood my hunger. All the male teachers
that I encountered were very good men. Quite a number of women teachers were also very good but
some were stupid and sometimes vicious.
The canteen where we ate our school dinners was at the top of the playground at the other end
end of the school to our class. Just outside, were wooden, roofless toilets. One day when I went in, the
other boys were seeing how high they could pee; so I got out my todger and managed to pee right over
the partition separating the girls toilets. They were screaming that the boys were throwing water over
the wall as I slid out and bumped into our teacher asking her what is happening, Miss? as she wiped
the stray splashes from her face. Then I heard her smacking the other boys and saying, No it was not
David, He was outside! Thus I started to gain respect from my fellow pupils.
On another day, having eaten all of my salad but the ham, teacher ordered me to eat the ham. I
explained that I was allergic to it but she suspected me of being a Jew and insisted that I ate it all. I
swallowed one mouthful and immediately vomited violently over her, the rest of the table and
adjoining tables. The clean up operation lasted most of the afternoon and we missed country dancing.
They never asked to eat anything I did not fancy again.
JUNIOR SCHOOL
When we were taken for country dancing by Miss Workman (a devoted and diligent teacher)
and we mostly, had learnt the steps, I would turn the wrong way and mess it up again. As the boys
thought dancing was sissy, this made me more popular and teacher would focus all her attention on me,
to keep grabbing me by the shoulder to turn me the right way. Sometimes she would get exasperated
and use words like buffoon or idiot and I would go home and tell mum my new words. On parent
day, she and mum did not see eye to eye. I had been made to stand at the front of the class with Lesley
(a girl who also annoyed her), both wearing conical dunces caps. Unlike other teachers, Miss Hancock
was clever enough to realize that there was something wrong with my eyesight and had moved me to
the front of the class without realizing that I was almost completely blind. I just saw shadowy, multiple
images and did not realize how much better normal sight was. So wherever she put me, I could not
understand what was on the board but as soon as someone else read it I would shout out the answers.
My mum and Uncle Stan seemed to communicate telepathically at times of stress but it was not on the
same level as me.
Many years later, as a postman, I was enthusiastically greeted by Miss Hancock, who said: I
always knew you would make good, David! and said that I was one of the two pupils in her career that
turned out well. Then I was so ashamed at the way that I had played her up in class.
Somehow, I managed to miss nearly all serious lessons at school because of continuing
attendance at the hospital for physiotherapy, where they kept pushing my back straight until it hurt too
much and doing the exercises and a series of six eye operations to give me sight. Each one was a
separate stay in hospital with one eye or the other with a patch: There was also my friend Johnny Orgee
who found a way into the local sewer where he would bring buns to feed the rats. They became quite
friendly but were rather greasy to stroke. That is probably why we picked up nearly all the diseases in
the medical books and were not allowed to go to school much. Neither of us liked school.
My brother, Mike was always the victim of my curiosity. I wanted to know what was in the
many books that he read. Through him, I learnt about history, ancient peoples, far away lands, about the
Romans, about the Greeks and their philosophies and battles, about early kings killing their relatives to
stop being supplanted, about an early Arab mathematician who only needed sand to write on and
discovered things that I could not even understand. He gave me an interest in Geology and the
development of the different forms of life. All just answering my questions, ever patient.

8
It must have been very annoying to be interrupted, yet Mike would still read a book, while
washing up and playing simultaneous chess with himself and never complained.
We had swimming lessons at school at the Alstone Baths and because of my previous lessons
with Mr. Moss at the Montpellier Spa Baths, I had a bit of an advantage. Someone stole my vest and
cap but the teacher just said it was up to us to look after our own things. How can you, if you cannot
see properly? Possibly I was lucky not to lose the rest of my clothes!
Later, I realized that a boy called Nightingale was wearing my school cap and I found out where
he lived. Mum and I paid a visit to their rented cottage, way up on Leckhampton Hill. Mrs Nightingale
answered the door and flatly denied that her son had taken my cap and said she had bought it herself!
Mum said that if she did not produce the cap that instant, it would be a police matter: The cap was
produced and I was able to identify it, despite the name tag having been torn out, by the torn peak
which mum remembered stitching. Mrs. Nightingale handed over the cap in a very surly manner. They
left the area shortly after. Mum said they were fly by nights.
The school selected me to represent them in the schools swimming gala. Some of the others
gave up before the end but I carried on to the end and although I came last, I was cheered like mad.
Whenever I could, I went swimming at Alstone and at the Lido in the summer. I made friends
with a lad called James Wixey. He shouted a lot because he had caught an ear infection from the water
and was a little deaf. He taught me crawl, backstroke, sidestroke, butterfly, back butterfly, corkscrew
strokes and to dive.
TRIPS OUT
Gran had a best friend that I called Aunty Hilda. She was married to a police inspector at
Dunster, in Somerset. I was taken to stay with them for a little holiday. We visited a farm owned by
Auntie Hilda's employer, who was a director of a shipping company. A girl took me to watch her milk a
cow but I did not like to say that I could not see: I was put to sleep in a room where a previous girl
visitor had seen the ghost of a nun walk across the room and into a wall. I was excited to see a ghost
but instead slept soundly and saw nothing. The Inspector had examined old council records that showed
the building to have been a convent and there to have been a door where the ghost walked through!
During the 1930,s depression, Dunster enjoyed full employment, supported by the confidence of
the local manager of Barclays Bank but they do not come like that very often today.
One trip that mum took me on was to Lynmouth in Devon, leaving me with dim but happy
memories of a little park, ice cream and a ride on the cliff railway. In Cardiff, I enjoyed rides on trams,
trains and trolly buses. The trolly buses gradually replaced the trams because of accidents when cyclists
got their wheels caught in the tram tracks. The rattle of the trams was comforting, linked in my mind to
holidays and safety.
A particularly good day out was by paddle steamer from Cardiff to Weston-Super-Mare, where I
had a ride on a donkey, ate candy-floss and had my photo taken riding a giant tortoise along the sea
front. There was also time for a try at building a sandcastle with the peculiar muddy local sand. As the
ship left Weston, a crowd of Welsh miners, who had been having a day out and were very merry, sang
hymns. As I explored the ship and came to the engines, a kindly engineer explained the workings.
On one trip to Cardiff, there was a dead whale on the back of a big truck. For just a penny, I
could walk through from the back to come out of the mouth! The expensive bit was to pay for a photo
coming out. We could not afford that!
Somewhat later, I enjoyed a trip by steam train from the station in Leckhampton Road to
Weston with the Sunday School. I only remember the train on that trip. Mum decided that I did not
need to go to Sunday School any more as it was the same kids as at school and being bullied in the
week was enough
A holiday trip by train to Porthcawl where we actually stayed in a guest-house was particularly
memorable. I must have been about six by that time and benefited from the on-going eye surgery to be

9
able to find small creatures in the rock pools. I spent all day collecting baby crabs with which I filled
my tin bucket of sea-water. However, during the night, all the baby crabs had managed to escape and
cause consternation by distributing themselves everywhere, in all the beds and everyones clothes. We
left in a hurry and never returned!
When I was about eight, on another seaside trip with granny, we enjoyed a ride on a little motorboat, with me driving, sandwiched between mum and gran. Then I explored the rock pools and made
friends with a really big crab who I shared my egg sandwich with. Crabs really like egg, especially the
yolk: There was a paddling pool on the beach that was filled with sea water. My crab seemed to like it
and went exploring on his own. Suddenly girls started screaming and everyone got out very quickly. I
said that I wanted my crab but mum said that we had to leave straight away.
Another trip to the seaside and I went exploring with a bigger boy. We found a way round the
rocks at the end of the bay and discovered some teenagers sunbathing in their underwear. My new
friend grabbed an armful of clothes and naturally, I followed suit with some more. There was some
shouting and we had the excitement of being chased along a fairly crowded beach. An older chap
almost caught us and I breathlessly took cover behind a large lady but the chap had spotted me. The
lady said are these your kids? and suddenly he found himself in trouble until the others following and
picking up the clothes we had scattered, caught up. A bunch of them got to the station as the train
pulled out, just in time. I do not remember mum taking me to the sea-side after that. It was a bit of a
close thing. Thank goodness for large ladies. They are usually around when needed and in later years
were a protection at border controls.
Back at school, across the road, was an ancient cottage (long since demolished) where a kindly,
very old and very small couple let our class look around. There was a very small winding staircase. The
ceilings were very low, even for us kids. Obviously, in earlier times, people must have been much
smaller.
Back walking on Leckhampton Hill with my brother, I was having such a good time, despite
him trying to stop me getting men to chase us by shouting insults, that I could not bear the walk to end.
So, as we were passing a large shallow pond, I took mean advantage of him wearing shoes and me
wearing wellington boots and stood in the middle, to try to make him agree to extend the walk: He got
rather upset and took a long time throwing clods of earth. Eventually, I promised never to do that again.
And I never did
SIGHT
It was only when mum saw me feeling the garden walls on my way home from school that she
realized that something was seriously wrong with my sight as my father had said. She took me to the
Cheltenham Eye Hospital, next to the General Hospital. A lady doctor in a white coat looked at me and
said, he has got a squint; his eyes don't focus in a very frosty manner. She was very critical of my not
having been brought in before and commenting on my fathers opinion, said that at least one person in
the family had some sense. With all mums problems, her attitude was not helpful. How would she have
managed to survive in my mothers situation, I wonder?
However, we were quickly referred to Mr. Stephenson, a tall thin man in a white coat. He had a
quick look into my eyes and said that the problem was not the eyes but that the connections between
the eyes and the brain were torn. He would see what he could do: Over the next couple of years, he had
me in for a succession of six operations. He advised that it was a completely new procedure and he was
hopeful that it would result in my having some sight, with glasses, until about twenty-one.
Apart from the operations, which meant that I felt safe and nourished in hospital, I was going to
the eye clinic each week for eye exercises and progress checks. So I had eye patches most of my time
at junior school. The nurses were always kind. This was all going on between 1950 and 1954.
As my sight continued to improve and Mr. Stephenson asked me to read the letters from the
chart, hanging from the back of his consulting room door, from the big letters at the top to as small as I

10
could go. I went straight through them, including the very small printers name and address at the
bottom. He said humph; he has memorized them! I did not dare tell him that I only knew them
because he did. I was too aware how people hated for me to know what they were thinking. It did not
seem to occur to him to question how I had come to know the very small letters in the first place. I shall
always be grateful to him for the wonderful gift of sight. Even today, I still have his picture by my
bedside. However, I was always too much in awe of him to be able to thank him, even after many
years. Still, I do the eye exercises that he advised and an optician expressed amazement that I now
have perfect sight in both eyes, in my seventies! People who have not experienced blindness, do not
normally appreciate what a blessing sight is; and neglect their sight. It is catastrophic to keep your eyes
at the same focal length for reading or computers for too long.
Another way that I came to miss school resulted from my bigger friend, Johnny Orgy, finding a
way into a very old stone section of the public sewer. We made our den there and Johnny brought
penny buns with which we fed the rats, who soon became our friends, although they were always rather
greasy. There was a small stone chamber with stone benches either side and we imagined that they
were Roman ruins.
I suppose that it is not surprising that we kept getting ill. Chicken box, diphtheria,scarlet fever,
whooping cough, measles, germane measles, etc. etc. all combined to let us escape from school! The
way it went was for me to say that I felt unwell and mum would call the doctor, who would diagnose
what it was and say how long I must be kept from school to avoid spreading it. He would want to know
where and with who I had been playing and Johnny would have time off as well. In answer to his
queries, I would truthfully say that we had been up the hill. He could find nothing wrong with our
drains or anything else but always seemed very worried about epidemics. Two hours later I would call
out that I was better now and tear off up the hill again. Johnny seemed to have to spend an awful lot of
time in bed. I seemed to have a natural aptitude for laziness and a curiosity to find things out for myself
at my own pace. I acquired a book called Oscar Danby, VC and by pestering my brother for help
eventually succeeded in reading it to the end. As I started out of curiosity, I had to keep on, to find out
what happened to the hero. With attendance at the hospitals for my physiotherapy to my back and for
my eyes, I managed with all the illnesses to avoid all but three serious lessons in maths or English
before the exams for eleven plus and was happy not to have to go to grammer school.
We had repeated visits from the attendance officer about my absences from school. He seemed
to believe that my special boots and leg brace and glasses and eye patches and spinal curvature were all
a hoax!! We must have had some particularly dim and suspicious teachers and school inspectors in
those days who seemed to think that if they harried my mother enough, it would make me fit enough to
go to school!! As I look back, I feel it quite shameful that my poor mother had to put up with it.
Without the support of the NSPCC Inspector, I do not know what would have happened.
One winter, about 1953; the school playground was covered in ice and snow and the other
children were throwing snowballs at each other after dinner. My eyes were still plastered over from the
latest operations as I carefully made my way down to the school buildings when my classmate, Michael
Hart gave me a big push from behind. I fell onto the back of my head and was left there unconscious
for about four hours, when I was dragged into the cloakrooms as all the other kids were going home.
Eventually, Mr. Cook, the new Headmaster, ordered Mr. Berry to take me home in his car. He had taken
me for English and though I was left-handed we were only allowed to use our right hand and he told
mum that he found it was painful to watch me trying! He was upset about my blood on his leather car
upholstery. Mum was worried about me being late home but Mr. Berry told her that I had just had a
little bump and just needed to be kept warm and quiet for a while! Mum noticed that apart from all the
blood over me, I just kept repeating the same thing over and over while slumped in front of the electric
fire and that the lump on the back of my head was the size of a goose egg. She rang doctor Bracy; he
was out on a call but his wife answered and said she thought it was concussion and called an

11
ambulance.
I do not know how many days it was before I woke up in Battledown Children's Hospital at
Harp Hill, Cheltenham with a continuous flickering of consciousness. I had been in Mr. Berry's class
but seemed to have missed Mr. Chapman's class altogether. He was conscientious to stop any bullying
or other misbehavior in the primary playground..A nurse was asking how I felt. I did not want to be
operated on and have anyone messing with my brain but had difficulty communicating. After a while a
nurse put a thermometer in my mouth and I automatically chewed it up. They cleaned my mouth and
tried again. Same result. Third try with three glass and mercury thermometers gone and sister said to
put one under my armpit: I gradually improved as day succeeded day. With nothing much to occupy me
as I lay in bed, I experimented with concentrating my mind on a piece of paper on the floor and it
seemed to move! A nurse came by and tried to pick it up but as I made a special effort, the paper
moved! The other children laughed. The nurse kept trying and the paper kept moving away from her!
At last she got it. Then she fetched Matron who suggested that I had used a thread and the nurse had
not noticed. I had not used anything like thread. Was this due to some incidental draught or could it be
tied in with so called poltergeist activity, as sometimes associated with young people who have been
badly traumatized? They thought I was getting better if I was up for tricks and it was not something
that I was inclined to question: Eventually, at age 49, the brain injury was diagnosed and I was treated
by doctor Noonan with Epilim medication and it was eventually cured.
My release from hospital coincided with the Christmas Party. The cake was put in front of me.
Big mistake!! I stuffed as much as I could into my mouth before they could rescue what was left. I
heard a nurse gasp that cake was for the whole hospital! One of my lifes great moments! The great
thing about looking a bit dim, is what you can get away with.
Later, when I was back at school, my glasses got broken in a fight. So I wore them without the
lenses. A few days later, mum realized and had me straight back up to the Cheltenham Eye Hospital.
Mr. Stephenson said it is a miracle; his eyes have corrected themselves! He does not need glasses any
more!
GIANT DIAMOND
Mum took me to visit an aunty whose husband was a funeral director. They lived in a flat above
their premises while I was still very visually impaired, aged about eight. I will not give the names or
location in case it causes any trouble, even after all this time. Aunty was worried about local burglaries
because she had a massive diamond that had come down through the family. It was almost as big as a
house brick and clean, white, uncut and similar in shape to the Cullinan rough. She kept it in the fruit
bowl. She had me sit down and passed it to me because she said that if I dropped it, I might break my
foot.
The history of the stone was that an ancestor, as captain of a merchant ship, while trading along
the African shore, had managed to land on the skeleton coast in freak weather conditions and he had
managed to get off again!!. He had walked along picking up these stones. They had later proved to be
diamonds and kept the ladies in the family in diamond engagement rings for hundreds of years. So the
African diamonds were a family secret for about four hundred years butt non of them ever encountered
conditions where they could land again. All the diamonds had been cut|polished except the biggest. On
his return voyage, he had used his trade goods to buy Africans who had been defeated in battle and
would otherwise have been killed. These, he had taken to the West Indies and the settlers had rewarded
him handsomely for his good deed. Could this have been the start of the transatlantic slave trade? A
letter in which he gave description of these events, I was allowed to keep and I treasured it until it was
eventually taken in a burglary and the burglars dumped all my papers in a skip when they found no
money in amongst them. Nothing was recovered. Aunty hid her diamond in the rockery and her home
has since been redeveloped. It seems possible that her son may have taken the diamond with him to
America. If it should ever emerge into the limelight of publicity, then you will know some of the back

12
ground. The last diamond ring from that background, my mum hid in a teapot but after she died, iit got
sent to a jumble sale with a lot of other stuff by accident. So as with any possessions, nothing is
forever. Not even diamonds. But don't the ladies like wearing them?
Anyway, I was allowed out to buy an ice-cream on my own while mum and aunty talked about
grown-up matters. I left the flat above the garages and funeral parlor and turned left, as instructed, until
I came to the milk bar on the corner. When I left, licking my cornet, I did so by a different door, onto a
different street but not realizing this because of impaired sight. W hen I got back to where aunty's
building should have been, I was left wondering how such a substantial building could have completely
disappeared. After hanging around for a while and finishing my ice cream, waited for a solution to the
problem to appear.
Right on queue a large lady appeared, after ascertaining that I was lost and did not know a local
address, she took me to the police station. The sergeant questioned me and I gave the best description
that I could of aunties flat, the business premises and the private road running underneath with a long
line of cars disappearing into the distance: He became extremely interested. Other people had gathered
round. How many cars? They wanted to know. As I only had a vague idea about numbers, I guessed at
about a thousand! A voice gasped that would account for all our stolen cars! There was sudden
laughter from mum and aunty who had silently arrived on the scene. They explained to the
disappointed police that they had twenty hearses and that they were all in at that time and where the
funeral parlor was and my tendency to think of any large numbers as thousands.
FAITH
Mum had always been church of England and had been confirmed in Llandaff Cathedral. So it
was natural for her to go to her new local parish church of St. Peter, Leckhampton. The vicar preached
against unmarried mothers and directed the packed congregation's attention to mum!!!(being in a new
area because of the war and my father being away fighting, the vicar and local gossips had jumped to
the wrong conclusion) My mother was outraged and called the vicar a coward and a hypocrite and
never entered a C of E church again. It is hardly surprising that when the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked
on our door and offered us a bible study, mum accepted when I was about ten.
At morning assembly at school, our new head teacher, Mr. Cook told us that we should pray
every day but we should not expect God to answer us, as there were far too many people in the world. I
thought this man does not believe though I had never doubted. As soon as I arrived home from
school that night, I went straight up to my bedroom, knelt by my bed and prayed for a bicycle to prove
the point. As I was about halfway down, there was a loud knock on the front door. Mum and gran got
there just ahead of me. It was a man holding my brothers buckled bike with one hand and supporting
my brother with the other. Mike was holding his smashed mouth with his raincoat and nearly all his
teeth were damaged. Incredibly, at the time that I was praying, while cycling up the steep hill, his bike
had jumped the kerb and smashed into the pillar box at the junction of Leckhampton Road and the top
of Old Bath Road!! Mum said to put the bike ( a slightly small black BSA) by the dustbin as it was no
further use but gran said no; Mr. Husbands can repair that for David!!! I was dumb with shock! There
was no way that I wanted anything like that to happen! I began to suspect that yes God hears every
prayer but we cannot judge the consequences of having the things that we want. God knows what is
best and we should just be thankful to him for our blessings.
As the summer holidays approached, I began to question if this is all just co-incidence? My
friend, David Turner, offered to take me fishing at Shurdington sandpits. We cycled out there together
and he showed me what to do. We fastened string to the end of our sticks and stuck a bit of squashed
dough stuff on the end and cast our lines into the water. He dropped his and said that I had a bite! We
pulled it in together and he said it was the biggest rainbow trout he had ever seen. It managed to fit into
my saddle bag and we cycled back to his house in Pilford Road and put it in the stream in his back
garden.

13
When, with great excitement, I told my mum, she said to get it quick and we can have it for our
dinner. When I got there, his mum said that a duck had eaten it. Mum said it was nonsense, they are
eating it themselves! I overcame my fear of asking God for things and prayed for a fishing rod and
almost immediately gran said that she would buy me a fishing rod for my birthday as I had done so
well with just a stick and a piece of string! She bought me the complete kit!
So, I spent the whole of the summer fishing. I tried every lake and river around and never even
caught a minnow or a stickleback. It was particularly galling to have people either side of me keep
pulling fish out of the water and telling me how easy it is and just to copy them. To this day I dare not
ask God for things because he can obviously make better choices than me. The only good thing about it
was that I was paid more for my fishing kit than it cost!
We were taught the ten commandments in school: One balmy summer Sunday evening, I heard
the bells ringing in our St. Peters parish church and fancied that they were calling to me. So I went
there. Was delighted that I could get the front pew, even though the rest of the church was pretty full.
The service greatly interested me as it was the first that I had been to. However, when the vicar said
we are all sinners; I stood up, outraged, saying how dare you call all these people sinners!s I
pointed round the congregation, every head bowed in shame, including the vicar. I sat down in stunned
silence. After a little while, the vicar continued the service but with a red face.
On the way home, I passed a horse chestnut tree and started picking up conkers. At a gap in the
fence I picked up the biggest and most shiny one I ever saw. Continuing on my way home, I was struck
by the thought that that super conker really belonged to the boy who lived in the house with the broken
fence! It meant that I was a thief, that I had broken one of the commandments and was a sinner. I put
the wonderful conker back as if it was hot. I realized that one may not be able to resist Satan's
temptations without God's protection. I went home and prayed for that protection and forgiveness.
I started to take a keen interest in the Witnesses teachings and meetings at 120, Bath Road,
Cheltenham. I eagerly went with them on the work, knocking on doors and selling their literature
(now free). For a small boy, it was much more fun to knock on doors and instead of running away, to
say to an angry householder I forgive you!
Our opinion of Brother Green went down when we realized he was sneaking round our side
passage and mum tried to empty a chamber-pot over him. He was a retired builder and put up a garden
shed for mum, paid for by Uncle Stan, who was shocked at him using rotten wood and overcharging.
Mr. Green just said you always charge double to a woman on her own! Nevertheless, we continued
with the group as we realized that all are fallible and it is not for us to judge. That is until we found that
the Watchtower bible and tract society had accepted him as one of the remnant who would judge the
rest of us! By the time I was in secondary school and we backed out of being baptized into the
organization, the overseer and another visited us and accused me of having an Oedipus complex and
threatened to tell everyone! I did not understand what they were on about but mum came back into the
room just in time to hear. She threw them out of the bungalow and went over the road to see Mrs.
Lodge, the wife of the village policeman and discuss it with her. With her recommendation, we started
attending the local Congregational Church where we were very happy.
Eventually, I started as a Sunday School teacher with a very small class. The children were very
enthusiastic listeners to the most bloodthirsty tales from the old testament and told their friends from
school and my class grew rather rapidly. Ron James, one of the deacons listened in but that day there
were even more new recruits who were clamoring for me to tell them about Robin Hood! So my time
as a teacher stopped!
Today, I regularly worship at my local Congregational Church, which suits me. I do not claim to
understand everything about my religion and am suspicious of those that do. My opinion is that a lot of
the schisms in religious belief may be because of personal ambition or conceit of religious leaders.
Nevertheless, the training of the Witnesses has stood me in good stead and saved me from disaster

14
many times.
BAD
As a child, I endured nasty behavior from adults as well as children. It was not uncommon to be
mocked in the street because of my twisted back and gait. When I tried to post a letter for mum; what I
could see appeared to be a row of red pillar boxes and trying each one caused much hilarity to those in
the bus queue by the adjacent bus stop. My friend, Johnny Orgee thought they should be punished. So
on a very dark evening, we raided several homes; not stealing but just swapping things from one house
to another; including chickens from a back garden. We then started things off by knocking on two
adjacent front doors and hiding under a hedge. In those days, people kept their front room to invite
other people into and did not normally lock doors. We thought it grand when we heard one man
exclaim in surprise at seeing an identical ornament to his own, in his neighbors front room and the
equally surprised reply that he had not noticed it before and called his wife who was equally surprised.
When the chickens were discovered, the whole street became alive with people looking round and
saying it is those damn kids! There were a lot of people stumbling around in the dark with torches
and candles without ever managing to catch us.
We tried another stunt but it was in the day and went wrong right at the start. We had climbed
through a front window that was open. Then we heard the lady phone the police and say that there were
two burglars in her front room. She had heard them. Then she came into her front room armed with a
poker to find us two small boys trying to hide behind her settee. She quickly ushered us out of the
house before the police car arrived.
Johnny and I would roam all over Leckhampton Hill. We found a place where chickens were
getting out of a garden to lay their eggs on the hill. Johnny brought some matches and we lit a little fire
of twigs and dry grass to cook eggs. I thought they tasted better raw. We often sucked wild birds eggs
but would spit them out when they were addled.
We found a stream that we successfully damned; to the great annoyance of a householder when
he found the stream diverting through his garden and house.
On the way home from school, I passed the Cheltenham Caravan Company factory and tip.
They let me play there and help myself to any of their wast materials that I fancied. It must have been a
nightmare for mum when I kept arriving home with bits of timber, nails, tins with dregs of paint at the
bottom, old tyre's and assorted bits of metal. Out of all this junk, I worked very hard to build a tree
house in the ornamental prunus (plum tree) in the front garden. My construction was anything but
ornamental. It caused consternation to the two old Misses Raven next door. I have no idea how my poor
mum managed to get rid of all the old motor tyre's.
The two elderly Raven sisters devoted their lives to caring for their brother who had been left
severely disabled by the first world war with a metal plate in his head. They would put him in his
wheelchair by their stream in their back garden when the weather was suitable and he seemed to like
that. He would try to talk to us but we could never understand anything he said. People who find war
exciting should have to cope with some of the suffering that it causes.
My brother, Mike and his friend Keith dug out a hole in our back garden to make an
underground den. When they went off for a break, Johnny and I investigated and found bits of coal at
the side wall next to the boundary with the Ravens. We pulled out more and more and when they came
back they told us off and started carrying the coal in buckets back to our coal shed but the Ravens
came round to complain to mum that Mike was taking their coal. They had seen it disappearing down a
hole in the floor of their coal shed and Mike and Keith carrying it away!! Mum could not believe it of
Mike but they said yes, it was definitely the big boy. So Mike had to carry coal back to the Ravens
shed and apologize and explain. They were very good about it then. Mike had to fill in the hole and the
Ravens were happy again.
A curious feature of my life has been the number of people called either John or Margaret. Apart

15
from John Orgee, my other best playmate was John Husband, whose family were so kind to me. I had
been nicknamed Ginger but that gradually stopped as my hair became dark. John Husbands hair
stayed bright ginger. Mr. Husband had been a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Indian Army and he
retired on the same day as his commanding officer, Colonel Sir John Brierly and became his gardener
and Mrs. Husbands became housekeeper to Lady Brierly at Hill House and the husbands lived in Hill
Cottage. The Colonel never said anything about me gorging myself on his unripe russet apples and
other fruit, even when he accidentally stepped in our diarrhea in the grass. He let us play as we liked
and never complained about damage, only telling John's dad that we should keep out of the pump
house that we had been investigating because of it's exciting and mysterious machinery, because it was
dangerous.
Ginger told me about some fantastic things in his attic, not really believing him, I invented
wonderful things in our attic. When his mum asked my mum, the truth came out but ginger was not
satisfied until he had seen our attic for himself: I had a wonderful time exploring his attic with him.
There were so many relics of the Indian Empire that should have been in museums. Things like a 22ct.
Gold pen, used to sign the document granting India independence, old uniforms dripping with gold
braid too heavy for us to put on and even a square shilling from the English Civil War and a grain of
rice inscribed with the Lords Prayer in fine copperplate done in the Black Hole of Calcutta, being the
smallest handwriting in the world!!!
In the warm weather, we would follow courting couples up the hill shouting what we thought
were rude and insulting things to get the chaps to chase us. We were never caught but once we were so
successful that we completely lost the chap and re-found the girl who shared their picnic hamper with
us!
Soon after, a builder called Norman was doing work on Ginger's home. I poured tar on his
concrete to get him to chase us. It was very successful and I led him a fine chase across a steeply
sloping bank and he, being heavier, came crashing and rolling down to the bottom. He caught Ginger
and gave him a good hiding but was crying himself. Ginger's sister Nora, comforted him and they
eventually married. I was not invited to the wedding.
We also played on the burnee where the rubbish was burnt. Somehow, Ginger always
managed to get liberally coated with dirt and ashes like a dirt magnet and got criticized by his mum
for not staying clean like me. This seemed to make Ginger a bit resentful to me.
One of mums specialties was caraway seed cake. Ginger looked at it in a doubtful sort of way.
He then spent a long time picking at it in the belief that the seeds were little insects. His own favorite
food was his mums pigeon pie. He always had some in his pocket. We also snacked on raw horseradish
root.
When men had been drinking in the town, they would sometimes steal a bicycle and ride it until
the hill got too steep, then throw it in the hedge where they would rust quietly away. We salvaged some
of these and made up ones to ride. We lacked inner tubes, brakes and axles, so we stuffed the outer
covers with newspaper, used sticks for axles and wire and sticks for brakes (but these were not very
effective) and the axle sticks were liable to wear down or get broken. So we learnt to jump off a bit
sharpish. We also had to push our bikes well up the hill to get a good ride down.
Coming down the hill rather fast one day, I crashed into an oncoming car. The driver picked me
up and took me home. Wow! A ride in a car! He apologized to mum and said that I had been doing
about 30 MPH and my bike was a complete wreck. He took out his wallet but mum reassured him (that
was before I had Mikes bike) and thought he looked shaken and offered a cup of tea to him and his
wife, but he just wanted to leave. So, was she really his wife?
Another day, when both Ginger and I were freewheeling down, we collided. Ginger was
howling and I was really worried for him but it turned out that he was only grazed but a brake lever had
gone right through my right knee-cap but it did not bother me much and the blood soon stopped. Pain is

16
not a reliable indication of the seriousness of an injury.
Yet another day, racing downhill, this time to escape a thunder storm, there was a great crash of
thunder and flash of lightening that blew us apart. We each thought the other must be dead but the only
damage was the shoulder of my new raincoat had turned orange and turned to dust when I brushed it
and we had only been about eighteen inches apart!
Behind and parallel to Leckhampton Road, ran a disused tramway. It had a rotten wooden
structure overhanging it that we fondly imagined might have been used to hang people. This was
festooned with Old Mans Beard ( wild clematis) that we knew as smoking wood) so we collected
some suitable dry material and tried smoking it in our scullery when mum was having an afternoon
nap. She woke up and smelled smoke and came quietly downstairs to see smoke emerging from the
scullery keyhole! She opened the door to see Ginger and I wreathed in smoke, coughing, spluttering,
eyes red and streaming tears. She did not punish us but said she hoped we had learned our lesson!.We
became non-smokers.
When Johnny Orgee bought real cigarettes and they were passed round our group up the hill, I
refused because I did not like it. They said that if I kept trying, I would get to like it. I could not see the
point. There seemed to be no benefit and it was just burning money.
Opposite Hill Cottage where Ginger lived was a cottage lived in by a reputed miser and recluse.
He threw all his old cans and bottles around his substantial gardenwhich also became a bit of a
jungle, all to discourage burglars. When he died, Mr. Husbands had the job of clearing the grounds and
we had a new area to explore. A large rectangular well with a crocodile that had died because no one
knew it was there to feed it. On cleaning out the well, Mr. Husbands found a bronze Roman pot that
they used as a jardiniere. The cottage was restored and rented to Major Dowty from the USA air base at
Brize Norton. They were an incredibly nice family with a daughter about our age and we spent a lot of
time playing there. We learnt the delight of iced cola on hot days and the Major taught me the
rudiments of boxing and self defense. This stood me in good stead, many times in later years and is a
debt that I can never repay. The Major took us to Oxford, where we swam in a clean, clear river. He
became rather worried when I disappeared underwater for too long but I could swim four lengths of the
pool underwater and he did not know that. Playing hide and seek in their garden, I learnt that you can
remain unseen at quite close quarters, if perfectly still!!
Ginger and I drifted apart when he associated with a boy who was selling stolen bicycle parts
and joined another group poking fun at me.
For half a crown, I bought a very large white rabbit that I called William. I improvised a hutch
from some wood and the old tin bath. William managed to escape and ate the heart out of all Mr.
Bennett' prize lettuces. It was a particular shame because Mr. Bennett was such a nice man. Mum said
William had to go. Actually, I was already fed up with cleaning out his cage, so when I came home
from school to find that mum had sold William to the girl living opposite for seven shillings and
sixpence, I just said wow! I made five bob on William! Mum vetoed any more pets and the thought
of reimbursing Mr. Bennett never occurred to me.
My classmate, Robert Constance was a good kid but when his dad died, his mum tried to
compensate by giving him a lot of pocket money. All it did was allow him to take up smoking and to
spend too much. Eventually, his name was in the paper for being caught trying to steal cigarettes from
the Co-op. Johnny Orgee also had pocket money and took up smoking and lighting fires. So I was
always a bit mean with letting kids have money and my kids seemed to make me very proud at the way
they avoided trouble and the nice things people said about them.
HUNGER
When we were short of food, I borrowed the carving knife and stalked the woods and fields in
the hope that I could find a bear for food but of course there were none. So I borrowed my uncles
Webley pistol and Daisy rifle and laid snares but caught nothing. Eventually, the NSPCC Inspector

17
discovered the weapons and disposed of them. That might have been when I was about six or seven.
Difficult to hunt if you cannot see properly!
Although mum went without porridge, so that Mike and I could eat, I was always hungry. I used
to eat the seeds of the laburnum tree in the front garden and they did not seem to do me any harm
although they are supposed to be very poisonous.. We ate hawthorn leaves and called them the bread
and cheese tree. At the top of the hill were fields of root vegetables, mainly cattle feed, that we ate. We
took ones from the headland, scraped mud off and ate them raw. It filled our bellies and the farmer
never stopped us.
On a windy day, I noticed how the wind flattened the corn in one of the lower fields and found
that with a stick and string, I could make quite tidy circles and interesting patterns; never thinking
about crop damage. This would have been late 1940's. If I inadvertently started an interest in crop
circles, I apologize to farmers.
Outside the sweet shop opposite Pilley Lane, I found a half a crown and accepted it as a gift
from God and converted it into thirty penny Mars Bars. They had all gone before I got home.
A new keeper on the hill was unfriendly and accused us of stealing the eggs from his chickens
before we even thought about it. Johnny lit a little fire of grass behind his hut, near the lime kilns. It got
out of control and not only burnt his hut but also the nearby woods. I wanted to help put out the fire but
Johnny was more prudent and we left it to the firemen while we ate wild strawberries in the quarry.
Then we explored the little caves and collected devils toenail fossils and tried to catch small animals
such as mice, snakes, toads and lizards.
One hot day, we watched a village cricket match, lying on our bellies in the grass, when the
snobby players spotted us and chased us away. We had been doing no harm and there had been no need
to threaten us with a bat. We sneaked back and Johnny lit a little fire of grass where they could not see
us behind the pavilion. Somehow the fire got out of control and burnt the pavilion with their clothes
and stuff inside so they had to go home in their silly cricket whites. They should not have bullied us
and it would not have happened.
On my sixth birthday, mum made fairy cakes and I took some up the road to where Mr. Blunt,
the kind and friendly rag and bone man, kept his horse, Dobbin and shared them with Dobbin: On a
particularly dark night soon after, mum and I were coming down the hill after visiting Aunty Boudan
and Uncle Phil when I suddenly disappeared and found myself standing next to Dobbin in his field.
Somehow, he had grabbed me and pulled me through or over the barbed wire fence without hurting me
at all to mums great astonishment!
In school playtime, Joan led the girls to corner boys, to see their privates: A couple of years
later, now in grammer school uniform, she stopped me on the way home from school and wanted me to
go into Dobbins field with her. My friends, Roderick and Marilyn Perry helped stop her. Then a car
drew up to fetch my friends because their mum had died. That night I woke with a fever and the feeling
that I had escaped something dreadful by not going into the field.
VIOLENCE
Pilley Bridge over the railway, separating Leckhampton from Charlton Kings, where mum
worked, had been bombed in the war and only replaced with a fairly narrow footbridge. As she returned
from work one evening, a man had tried to pull her off her bike there. She was very upset and wanted
to talk things over with Mike. She gave me some money to buy a bottle of Tizer from the little sweet
shop at the top of our road. I bought the bottle of pop while a big man was sitting on an upturned crate,
talking to the old lady's son who was looking after the shop for her. The man was boasting. He was a
builders laborer who lived opposite us on hos own and was rather feared and often drunk. He said I
almost got her today. I shall get her off that bike and rape her tomorrow! I did not know what rape was
but realized that this was the man who had so upset my mum. Without thinking, I lashed out with the
bottle in my right hand and he fell to the floor. The shopkeeper told me to get off home and he would

18
help the man back to his cottage. I was only about six and a half years old and just did as I was told.
Next day, there was a group of neighbors talking in the street outside his house. He had been
found dead at the bottom of his stairs. I was very shaken. I thought I might be arrested and hanged,
bringing disgrace on all my family. Kept it to myself until writing this biography when I showed it to
someone, he said he thought two unidentified men had been seen going to the cottage later in the
evening. The coroner had returned an open verdict as it looked as if the man had fallen down his stairs
but there was nothing in his house that matched the fatal injury. I guess there may be plenty of people
who will deliver a fatal blow when someone is already down. So, who is the killer? The person who
delivers the first blow or the one who hits last? At least I had no lethal intent, just an involuntary
reaction. And mum no longer was in fear. If I had spoken out in the first place, I could have saved
myself an awful lot of distress.
Just down the road lived a man of whom I knew nothing bad at all. We will call him Mr. Bean.
Mr. Bean, Mrs. Bean, John, age 17, Richard, age 10, Mary, age 7 and their lodger were on the opposite
side of the road. Mary was rather a spiteful girl and I was telling mum about her one day, when mum
said to ask her why she had a round face and the rest of the family had long faces? So next day, in all
innocence, I asked her. She seemed puzzled but must have repeated the question when she got home
because there was an almighty row that ended with Mr. Bean throwing the round-faced lodger out of
the house.
At the weekend, Richard came over and invited me to their house to play and Mike let me.
Mum asked him who had come to the door and he said. She immediately sent Mike over to get me
back. Although Mrs. Bean had only just ushered me through her house to the back, she denied that I
was there. Mike pushed past her. Her children already had me down on the floor of their shed with a
rope round my neck, starting to strangle me. They stopped as Mike burst into the shed and he quickly
took me home. Mum said that I was never to play with them again. They were not friends. Always be
very careful when people who are not friends, pretend to be.
John Bean was boastful about his black belt for something. A little later, he and half a dozen of
their friends stopped me on my way home from school. John was powerfully built for his age but when
Mike appeared John faced up to him. Mike strode up without hesitation and hit John flying!! The group
parted in awe and I swaggered after my skinny brother: It got talked about and John Bean no longer
had a gang. At school, the other kids re-enacted it over and over in the playground. It was one of four
times my brother saved my life. That was the end of bother at school.
One of the exciting elements of Leckhampton Hill was the chance of a battle between Johnny
Orgee and I on the one side and the Pilley Crescent gang on the other. Although there could be
between one and two dozen of them and just the two of us, a lot of them were very small and easily
frightened. Johnny was bigger and tougher than any of them and I was an instinctive strategist who
would always manage to get us on higher ground with blackberry bushes to protect our rear, the Pilley
Crowd were hampered by holding dustbin lids as shields and trying to use sticks with knives tied to the
ends, as spears. On our rare engagements, we won.
However, one time that I was up the hill on my own, I was working my way through mud
between blackberries when I found myself trapped back and front by the Pilley gang led by Dawsey
Blunt. Surrounded by a mass of home made spears, I was edged to a quiet corner where a bomb-fire
had been prepared. I was tied up in the middle and they were trying to get it burning when my brother
strode round the corner looking for me because it was dinner-time. The gang fled. Some time later, two
of the gang were convicted of murdering two girl hitch-hikers.
My sight continued to improve and I would cycle to the Alstone Baths where I could swim as
long as I wanted for my penny. It was a very under used facility. Sometimes, in the evening, in winter, I
would be the only one in the pool. As I became proficient and learnt to dive with somersaults and back
somersaults with Dave Turner and his group, I was allowed to train with the elite Cheltenham Water

19
Polo team but there seemed to be resentment from other lads to the encouragement I received from
Jack Jones (a top player) and I decided that I disliked the company of one lad in particular and did not
continue.
In the summer, I loved to use the diving boards at the Lido open air pool in Sandford Park.
There, I would swim two lengths under water. Some people found this incredible.
At Alstone, I had passed my life saving test and got my bronze badge. When I was the only one
in the pool one evening and the lifeguard had gone for his break, a very fat man entered the pool. I saw
him crumple with cramp and start to go down, I got to him iin time, pulled him to the side of the pool
and with great difficulty, pulled him out. He quickly recovered and waddled off without even bothering
to say thank you. I on the other hand was left with a hernia to be stitched up!
SECONDARY SCHOOL
Our home had been requisitioned by the Cheltenham Rural District Council in the war from a
private owner. It had to be handed back but we were allocated a new council bungalow at 41, New
Barn Close at Prestbury. Shortly after moving in, two men from the County Council came to interview
mum. A confidential decision had been made to build a new state of the art school at Bishop's Cleeve
nearby and they suspected that there had been a leak!!
Before I could start, there was a real problem: Mum was diagnosed with cancer. She was treated
in Bath and had her womans bits removed but it had already spread. She was offered radiotherapy to
extend her life by about three years. She already knew about that and believed it would mainly make
her last days worthless. Mr. Davis, the National Assistance Officer, told her, you must not give up;
you must hang on for the sake of the two boys.He was a great moral support to her. She spent some
time in a Nursing Home in Bath while I was looked after by the family of the NSPCC Inspector, who
treated me as one of the family at 11, Monson Avenue. What I owe them cannot be quantified.
Uncle Egbert and Aunty Mary took me in, he was headmaster of Gladstone School in Llanishen,
Cardiff and I attended his school. He and aunty had no children of their own. They kept a very
Victorian household but were immensely kind behind their stiff and proper attitude. At Uncles school, I
was amazed how kind and considerate everyone was to each other, specially to anyone disabled or
disadvantaged in any way. In our class there was a girl with water on the brain and whoever was
nearest would help her without any fuss. Good behavior was the school priority. Without moral
standards, the rest is a waste of time. Yet the school achieved vastly better standards than I saw in
English schools. The children appeared proficient to a higher standard in English as well as Welsh! The
lessons would start each morning with times tables up to sixteen for a few minutes with random snap
questions. This got everyone in an active frame of mind and was to stand me in good stead in later life.
My later aptitude with figures was often said to show Jewish blood but really was down to that early
Welsh school experience.
At Bishops Cleeve Secondary School, we started in the old buildings, opposite the church. Mr.
Porter, the headmaster, explained to me the fine relief decoration around one of the older classrooms.
They were the original castings of the Elgin Marbles presented to the school by an ex-pupil who
worked for Lord Elgin and were taken before the originals were removed or interfered with and
therefore more complete than what is in the Museum in London. I do not know what happened to them
but they were certainly missing when I visited the buildings many years later. The people who have
control over public buildings are often the worst vandals!
Our form teacher was Miss Old, who was young, blond and pretty. My form mate, Ian Russell
had a crush on her ( he went on to be a printer) His spotty friend, Chris Abbley, went on to become a
police sergeant. Mr. Young, the maths teacher was not young but still had black hair and big mustache.
The algebra and geometry, I found a bit difficult at first. Miss Biddle,the teacher next class up had red
hair and tried to be strict beyond her years. The primary school photo bore the legend school days are
happy days,but at Cleeve it was really true. They were days of sunshine and happiness!

20
Because of my new proficiency with sums and interest in things, I received the nickname
professor. Everyone at this school were well behaved and pleasant so that my life in my new
surroundings was a daily delight. I also had a new best friend who lived nearby, also called David. He
had a very nice family who always made me welcome: He had a grandfather who had survived the
horrors of the Great War and who had one great pleasure in simply enjoying walking in the quiet
English countryside. A common feature among these survivors was their liking for pictures of cows
quietly grazing by still waters.
My brother Mike and I eagerly explored our new surroundings and trod every available
footpath. We admired York Row, said to be the oldest continuously inhabited home in Europe,
having been a tree house in neolithic times, since redeveloped!
We found a field at the top of the village (since developed), with a notice saying Beware of the
Bull. There was no bull in sight, so we started walking across the field. Then we started across the
next rather large field. As we got near the center of the field Mike said he could see a herd of cows.
They raced toward us. I pointed out that they were not cows, but young bulls, because of what hung
beneath. There was no hope of outrunning the bulls, so I started to make loud mooing noises in the
hope of confusing them. They came to a skidding stop, just in front of me and took turns to kneel and
lick the mud and dubbin off my boots. We could not explain this and just accepted it as another miracle.
It was a long walk, to and from school but I was able to buy a little bar of Fry's Chocolate
Cream for a halfpenny and make it last all the way home. Now you do not get much change from a
pound! Rather later, when Harold Wilson introduced decimal currency, saying; the pound in your
pocket will still be worth a pound! Ha, I thought, but a pound of what? Once it was a pound of silver.
Now our money is just paper promise to exchange for base metal tokens! As the confidence falls, so
does the value. For six hundred years from the time of Edward the third, we had a gold standard and
before that, a silver one. No wonder a generation has grown up without the confidence to save or invest
much.
Soon, I was cycling to school, although the traffic was rather heavy and inconsiderate, rushing
by without leaving any room for error, especially on race days. When I arrived at school one morning
with a little bird perched on my handlebars, Miss Legg, (who inspired my lifelong interest in art) said it
must have been hit by traffic and disorientated but it soon flew off when she approached.
Possibly, it was one of the injured birds mum took in and nursed. She would wrap them in a bit
of cloth and give them a little dilute brandy from a dropper and a little wet oatmeal, until they were
ready to fly off. Mostly creatures will make friends with you, if treated right.
At morning assembly, Mr. Porter told us to sing up but when other boys said that my singing
put them off; he listened to me and banned me from morning assembly, to the envy of the other boys.
Miss Legg directed the older children in a play, performed on the back lawn, while the rest of us just sat
on the grass and watched: I realized that the essence of good teaching was to make lessons interesting
and fun. Buildings and equipment are much less important.
While I was quietly eating my dinner one day, Audrey, who was sitting next to me, still and
staring, suddenly jerked and said that I had kissed her. Since I had a fork full of food in my mouth at
the time, it was impossible. I did not sit next to her again. It was a puzzle because she was a quiet,
truthful, well behaved girl.. f someone can imagine something and believe it to be true, it could make
establishing the truth extremely difficult.
In the new school, our form teacher was Dr. Luker. He was very thin with blue lips, that I later
learnt were a possible sign of heart trouble. He took his duties very seriously; so seriously that when he
saw the caricatures of pupils and staff in my rough book, it was confiscated and I was banned from art.
I felt a bit sorry for him as he put everything into trying to give us the best training he possibly could
and some of us did not adequately appreciate this and were sometimes inclined to play about.
Some of the girls got a bit excited or curious after a health lesson and tried to drag me into a

21
classroom but I held on to the doorpost until they gave up. Then they dragged another boy into the
science lab which was our classroom. After dinner, class continued until Dr. Luker heard noises from
the storeroom just off the class. He investigated and dragged the unfortunate boy to Mr. Whitehouse,the
headmaster but when it transpired that it was a girl instigator, nothing happened. Not deterred, she
called on me in the evening, to invite me to go up the hill with her! Mum sent her packing and got P.C.
Lodge to come over and warn me about danger from girls. Some girls go through a wild stage but settle
down respectably later. Mr. Lodge was a big built old fashioned village bobby and was much loved and
respected. It was said that he knew pretty much everything that happened in the village and that what
little he did not notice, his wife found out!!! He was a sort of father figure to everyone.
Some sixty years later, Diana, a very pretty girl from our class, recognized me while shopping. I
was taken by surprise and did not know what to say but would love to know how my fellow pupils got
on in later life.
We had a new English teacher, Mr. Foster. He lined us all up against the wall with our hands out
and used a ruler on all of us to let us know that he would not stand any messing about in his class. It did
no harm but I understand that there was some parent trouble. Personally, I greatly benefited from his
teaching. We had to write an essay for homework. Mine was about cycling to school on a very cold
morning and one of the things that I described was the road menders warming their hands with a
brazier but my spelling was wrong like the ladies top undergarment. When another boy read it out, it
caused some laughter. This did not stop me being nominated as editor of the Crozier, the school
magazine. However, when the time came,I had to go to hospital for a bursting appendix and Pat Tonks
had to do it instead. You know, good teachers give you benefits for the rest of your life.
The two boys from next door had tea with us one afternoon. It was nasty food, supposed to be
good for me. Bobby and Kenny ate theirs and I tipped mine out the window as soon as mum turned her
back. Mum came back and was very pleased to see my plate clean and dumped another helping on it . It
went the same way. The boys initial shock turned to hysteria. Their mum did not let them come again;
possibly I was a bad influence but at least she did not tell mum: She asked mum why she never shouted
at me? Mum said I could hear and that if children hear you raise your voice, they realize you lack
control.. So Bobby and Kenny did not get shouted at again.
Sad things happen even in the midst of good times. The aunt and uncle of my friend, David
Vizard came on their motor cycle and side-car to collect his little brother, Danny from school. They
were run over and squashed. Danny saw the remains before he knew what had happened. He became
diabetic, I expect that it was from the shock. I heard that David eventually went to America, became a
well known motor author and millionaire.
Another good friend was Robert Clive Redmond, whose dad was foreman at the racecourse. He
tried to teach me to ride a racehorse but when he gave me a leg up, I went straight over the top but we
had to leave, in case we were caught.
We tried camping out one night, using two of my mums old hairdressing capes sewn together as
a tent and with Mikes' Primus stove to cook our supper. We had no fat for our frying pan but I thought
that the paraffin was a sort of oil and it would do for our egg and chips: I never tasted anything so
disgusting! But it was all we had to eat.: When we became cold, I brought the Primus into the tent.
About 2 am, the tent somehow caught fire. After putting out the flames, ii came home with rather less
than I took. We did not try camping again.
Robert and I cycled through the glorious Forest of Dean to St Briavel's Castle Youth Hostel. The
road was almost deserted, so was the castle. We slept in the chapel upstairs. It was a bit chilly and
someone had been using the font as an ashtray. In the night, I woke up to go for a pee but had not
thought to find where the toilets were, before and there were no lights after 10pm. Silently, I felt my
way to the top of the stairs and slowly down. At bottom, I turned left and felt my way along the wall
until, to my surprise, the stone floor ended in a drop. I gingerly extended my foot, and found, nothing! I

22
continued to explore and found a passage that ended in a big doorway with faint moonlight coming
through a fanlight at the top. Feeling around, I found the handle and catch, opened the door to find
myself on the edge of the empty moat. I made myself comfortable and just managed to catch the door.
If I had not caught it before it slammed, I would have been in a right pickle stuck there in my
underpants till morning!!
After finding my way back to the chapel and into my bunk bed; I heard a frightened whisper,
asking if I was awake. Robert was convinced that he had heard ghosts and I could not convince him
otherwise. He never went on another trip with me. In the morning light, I discovered that the seemingly
bottomless void was nothing more than an unusually large step down, with the toilets directly opposite!
Things sometimes are scary just because we do not understand.
We had a fine breakfast and did our hostel duties, did a daylight exploration, then went on a tour
of the castle with the warden: There was a complete working pit roast that would have been powered
by a small dog. By my next visit, it had been largely destroyed for health and safety reasons.
There was the the worlds earliest surviving example of window glass. It had medieval scratched
graffiti . As glass is reputed to be the most viscous liquid known to man, it had drifted from tissue thin
at the top to thick at the bottom ;but the conservators replaced it with nice new glass!
There were the ancient oak beams projecting from the gate towers and etchings of them used for
hanging men. All gone!
There was the graffiti in the debtors prison, such as I am fair weary of this place. Some of
which may still be seen.
There were wonderful copper hoods for each fireplace, each with the repose emblems of the
constable of the castle, who had had them made and the original accounts for their manufacture, design,
date and costs. All since removed on the instructions of experts who considered them Art Nouveau
and inappropriate! I recognized them some years later in a car boot sale!
There was an oubliette, rather like a well, where prisoners were thrown, at the whim of the
constable of the castle, to die forgotten. It was very deep with massive slimy stone walls, with a small
aperture, long and winding but big enough for rats to get through to dispose of remains. That is
probably still there.
There were the remains of the Norman keep, blown up by the parliamentarians in the civil war.
There were many fine carved stone features; including the chimney pot in the shape of a crown,
denoting that the castle was King John's hunting lodge.
There were also, the original court records of proceedings held at the castle.
Back at school, Mr. Crouch , our sports master ,did not take my lack of sport knowledge
seriously; until I headed the cricket ball. This left a big bump on my forehead. He thought me too
stupid to play games. But if you have been unable to see the balls, how can you ever learn about the
games? So I was relegated to running round the games field and then cross-country running. This
actually suited me better. I would make my way to a suitable spot, lay down and appreciate the
countryside and the clouds and make my way back to school by an appropriate time. When my bump
went down, it left a boney ridge between my eyebrows which then joined..
In handicraft classes, taken by Mr. Cole, who was rather rotund, I made a submarine. It went
quite well on the surface but not under water. I was more successful in making a crystal set. I upgraded
it to a one valve radio and then a two valve set and listen to the police radio. I was able to sell it at a
profit. Mr. Cole was a good teacher who was not appreciated by pupils,who wanted things simple.
We were given a school bus and I no longer had to cycle. I learnt not to sit at the back of the bus
when the girls started to misbehave. The driver complained to the headmaster about rowdiness and I
was given the job of school bus monitor. The others thought they could still do what they wanted. So I
composed a letter to the head, naming the boy who was the ringleader of resistance and quoting
exactly, things that he said. I showed it to his friend and said that I was going to mull it over for a day

23
or two before handing it in. Behavior improved, so I did not have to.
PERVERT
On my fourteenth birthday, I was allowed to go on a Youth Hostel trip on my own with my new
Lenton Sports bike that gran had bought me for my birthday from the Cheltenham Cycle Company in
Cheltenham Strand. The trip was enjoyable and unremarkable until I was on my way home. A man
standing beside the road flagged me down. I stopped to see what he wanted. He attempted to carry out
a homosexual rape but I managed to get his leg in a lock and bend it the wrong way. I jumped on my
bike and peddled like mad until I came to Lechlade police station. There a fat red faced sergeant sent
the young constable out to get sugar to make me a cup of tea, while he acted in a peculiar manner, then
the sergeant rang the CID, who arrived quickly. They asked peculiar questions and kept my outer
clothes as evidence and I cycled home in my underwear. Be very careful of strangers in lonely
places. Even in broad daylight, they may be up to no good. It was a situation that I did not understand
and it left me shocked and with chest pains. Dr. Everson, our GP asked if I had been penetrated and I
had not and he told me that then there is nothing to worry about, you cannot have anything wrong at
your age and with a healthy lifestyle but he was wrong. It was my heart.
Not long after, I woke up all sticky. Not understanding these things, I thought I had somehow
caught a terrible disease from my attacker. How I had got it would not be believed and it would bring
disgrace on my family. I considered suicide but that would only attract unwelcome attention to the
family. So I faced up to it and told mum. She told me it was only a perfectly normal part of becoming
an adult male: If there is something that distresses you, you need to discuss it with someone that you
can trust. In the old days, there were many suicides through ignorance and lack of help.
Some thirty years later, I was able to tentatively identify my attacker and although he was not
prosecuted, he did not escape. Today there are ways to positively identify and punish such people
within the law. As it was, my inquiry led to his loss of employment.
A female neighbor wanted me to help her in her home but it seemed that she was a pervert and I
escaped. You have to be on your guard against women, as well as men. The Jehovahs Witness training
saved me as it did so many other times.
HOSPITAL
All seemed to be going so well, school and hobbies were as perfect as can be, when I started
stomach pains. My brother thought it was lack of exercise. So he took me for a run round the sports
field at the back of the bungalow. This did not solve the problem. So he took me for another run. He
always felt better for exercise and took me for another run. Then I was in a really bad way and mum
called Dr. Everson, his immediate diagnosis was appendix and an ambulance to rush me into St Paul's
Hospital. This was an old red brick collection of buildings that had been the workhouse. But when it
had got to run with care, consideration and the problems had been sorted out; they had closed it !!
Unfortunately, there was no surgeon available to deal with my burst appendix but a chap who
left his drinking at a party in order to try and save my life. When I came round after the operation it
was to hear the staff discussing if they should open me up again to recover a swab and an instrument
that had been left inside me. Then they said it was too late as I was waking up and they would have to
do it later! The hospital had been having trouble with infections and the vicar of Holy Trinity, who we
knew and liked died from one. Then memories become a bit vague and I was there a long time with a
staph infection.
There is often a good side to things that seem bad, or in this case, very bad. There was a Gideon
bible by my bed and I managed to read it completely through, from cover to cover. That was something
else that was a blessing in later life.
As it was, I deteriorated until they said I was just a stinking skeleton with horrible green slime
oozing out of my operation wound. They said that as I was going to die anyway, there was no point to
keep giving me water and bed pans: Mum got mad about this and passed a message by phone via his

24
wife to the Chairman of the Hospital Management Committee to the effect that she was going to let me
die in the comfort of my own home and have the water that I needed. She was warned that she would
then be held responsible for my death!
Meanwhile, my death certificate had been signed and I was transferred to the hospital mortuary.
I had what I eventually found out what is known as an out of the body experience. It seemed as if a
great weight had been taken from me. I effortlessly left my body and rose to a great height and looked
down. I felt that I was in a divine presence and was shown a great city built entirely of golden light.
The presence was too bright to look at but felt kindly. He told me that I could enter now but if I did not,
then I might not be able to get in later. I went effortlessly above the Prestbury Road to the little red and
blue brick Congregational Church and saw the Rev. Chambers, the Minister come out of his little room
and tell the ladies arranging the flowers that I had died and he had to tell my mother, who had no
phone. The ladies burst out crying. I thought, if they are that upset, then I cannot do this to my mum.
I went straight back into my body and desperately tried to move. Then the sheet covering me
was pulled back and I heard the male nurse say we thought we had lost you! There had been no sign
of life and my death certificate had been signed. I was quickly transferred from the mortuary to an
ambulance and rushed to Cheltenham General Hospital. As the ambulance had been leaving the
hospital gate, my mum passed it coming in with a taxi to collect me and take me home, having missed
the Rev. Chambers.
The sister on ward six was a friend of mum and took charge of me. She said that the infection
was in my blood and that I must have a complete blood change. My blood could not be matched and I
was put on a continuous saline and dextrose drip. I was too weak to do anything for myself but within a
few days, I was out of bed and doing press ups. Gran brought me a banana flavor ice lolly that I found
incredibly refreshing. I was soon eating small bits of steamed fish and bread and butter.
A young Mr. Newberry was brought in to a bed opposite me, having been taken ill at his
wedding. There were panic stations round his bed but despite everything that they tried, his temperature
kept rising and he died in the night from no known cause. The staff were devastated and it was worse
when his new bride came to visit him in the morning, only to find herself in shock at being a widow. So
why was he taken and I left? Only God knows. But he knows best.
PART TWO
WORK
As soon as I left hospital, I went straight to the Youth Employment Office and asked for a job.
People had been talking about the bulge in youths looking for work. I was sent to the Home and
Colonial Tea Stores in Lower High Street and had an immediate interview with Mr. Bugler, the
Manager. He was a very thin, very kind old Welshman. Ha accepted me but told me to enjoy the
summer holiday first as I was still only fourteen and should not go straight from hospital to work. So I
did.
At the shop, I learnt to break down and pack from bulk; sugar, tea, currents, canned meats and
to skin a cheese and all the other things that grocers did in those days. I grew strong and moved sacks
of sugar and spuds with ease.
We had an accidental double delivery of sugar one day and no place inside to put it. It was soon
after wartime rationing. Mr. Bugler was worried in case of rain damage. I said, not to worry and next
customer I served, I whispered you can have two bags of sugar; do you want your two bags of sugar?
She nodded eagerly and all the other housewives in the shop said they wanted their two bags of sugar.
We were very busy all afternoon selling sugar and had a lot of new customers.
Not so long after, we had a duplicate order of baked beans. Again Mr. Bugler was worried and

25
explained that if it rained, the labels would come off and the stock sold at discount. So I pulled the
same stunt as with the sugar. And it went even better. Mr. Bugler tried to re-assure customers that they
could have as many as they wanted. Some came back with prams and we sold out. Our sister shop in
the Upper High Street also sold out of baked beans. That night, listening to the news on the radio, I was
astonished to hear a special announcement that the bean harvest had not failed in the United States and
the makers of Heinz had plenty in stock: Sometimes people will not believe what they are told. Many
years later, I was to buy an old house and find the shed at the back stacked with out of date cans.
I was blissfully happy in the shop. An area manager paid us a visit and said all the shelves
should be faced to the front to look smart. My thoughtful suggestion was that if there was just three
cans left on the shelf of items we wanted to move, it would attract attention and remind the ladies that
they could buy some before we ran out. He said that I was a smart lad.
Gran did not approve of me working in the shop. She had old-fashioned ideas about peoples
status serving others. She said that I should apply to the Post Office; at least it is a uniform, she said.
One day she came in the shop and asked to be served by me. So I did. Then she said that I had short
changed her. I started to explain how her change was worked out. She stopped me, saying she did not
want to get me into trouble. Everyone in the shop was looking at me in horror as this dear old lady
walked out! Mr. Bugler took me out the back; he said that my gran was trying to stop me working in
the shop. He would have to keep me away from the tills until it was forgotten else the opportunists
would be clamoring for more change. He was very upset. He wanted me to stick it out but there was no
way of knowing how long that would be and I thought that as long as I stopped there, my character
would be under threat. So I went to the youth employment for another job.
They sent me to Priestly Studios, behind the Public Library. The first thing Pete, the foreman
told me to do was to go downstairs for a long weight. So I thought he was having a joke. He came
down rather annoyed to find me having a long wait, while he had wanted a long window sash weight.
After that, I learnt to anticipate what he wanted and produce it as soon as he asked. So he gave me the
nickname Flash.
They taught me silk screen printing and paid me five shillings a week but with overtime, I was
paid for a 100 hour week. So I gave my mum my basic and saved much of my overtime. The work was
easy, relaxed and fun, with plenty of playing about, unlike working conditions today, so the hours were
no problem. A new lad was unable to take a joke when he was initiated by having his member painted
with Day-glow paint and shoved in a milk bottle, where it swelled and did not come out. Brenda, the
tea lady was angry with us but after she got it out the lad left and did not return. Another boy that I
happened to meet again many years later got extremely angry when I greeted him by his old nickname
of Tex.
Two of the other lads took exception to me hogging the overtime when they thought more
should have gone to the one who was married. They waited for me at the bike shed at night. I had been
hardened by experiences at school and they never tried it again. If you show bullies that you will hurt
them, whatever they may try, they will not normally try again.
Gradually, the effects of working with poisonous paints showed in my increasing pallor and the
brightly colored deposits on my handkerchief. Mum notified the Factory Inspectorate that she thought
proper safety standards were in use and they notified the factory of their intended inspection There was
a sudden erection of partition walls and a milk issue as per regulation. The inspection was passed and
the partitions were taken down and milk stopped. Mum insisted that I leave and I did because if you
lose your health, no other employer will want to take you on.
To Grans fury, I applied to join the police cadets. She said that I would be mixing with the scum
of the earth and it would spoil my character! I never thought to ask her if she meant the police or their
clients. Awaiting the result of my application, I tried working for a tailor in Regent Street called Horace
Barton but I had sweaty hands that marked the cloth and they were not dexterous enough, although they

26
were very nice people and pleasant to work with.
There was a Spanish Taylor in Well Walk who I got a job with but at the end of my first week,
he had taken care to teach me nothing . He also paid me almost nothing, although I had been busy
collecting money he said people owed him! I declined to stay. It was a lesson that you need to fix the
terms of your employment first and not trust to your employer being fair.
Next, I worked for F.H.Edwards, a Gents Outfitters next to Marks and Spencer. He mainly sold
y-front underpants to ladies. When ladies were stuck to find something else as a Christmas present for
their men, he would show them woolen gloves and say pure bull, madam and they would be excited
to have found something new to buy. He was a slightly stout, smart, older man with a sense of humor
and a very strong drive to help others.
THE HOME
Gran said that she could not run her own home any more and arranged to move to a Home for
Gentlewomen of the Upper Class by Pittville Circus near us; using a friend in the nobility as a
reference and donating a four figure sum ( I could have bought twenty houses with that money) and
furniture to the Home!
Pop, my grandfather, had been close to his cousin, Jesse Oliver, who lived in her castle at St.
Maws, in Cornwall with her servants. She had seven husbands (not all at the same time), who she
outlived and though thought to be a leading Victorian Lady Artist, never signed her pictures or sold
them but donated to the Tate and the National Gallery. I only managed to save two oils before gran
burnt the rest. Pop had saved the first six sheets of each issue of stamps in the belief that one day they
would be collected and valuable. Gran said Oh, the fool, these are out of date; we cannot use these ant
more! and threw them on the fire. On the instructions of my Uncle Stan, I spent a long time burning
his paper records that would have been both intensely interesting and valuable today. They included the
papers to do with at least twenty shipwrecks that he had survived. So I learnt the utter futility of storing
up riches on earth!!
The move to the Fairhavens old peoples home was not quite what gran imagined. Her lady
companions were not the upper class titled ladies that she had imagined and her bedroom was a quite
unremarkable upper room. She felt that she had been tricked. Also, her fellow residents were worried
about being haunted by a lady in white that gran thought might actually be the Matron of the home.
POLICE
In 1958, I had my interview to enter the police cadets before Colonel Billy Henn, the Chief
Constable and Mr. A. C. Carter, the Assistant Chief Constable at the County Headquarters at Holland
House in Lansdown Road. Col Henn was a Victorian war hero and Mr. Carter had served as an officer
with the Gurkha. In fact the force was richly endowed with heroes from the two world wars and had an
ethic that bobbies keeping their patch clear of crime were more important than top brass and that it was
important not to waste public money. So, I felt honored to be accepted into the cadets.
My first work was in the inquiry office and using the Gestetner duplicator under Inspector
Thomas. When he told us to light a fire and there was no wood to start it, Cadet Roger Sandford
chopped up the old wooden chair in the office and we had a nice fire going by the time the Inspector
came back. He looked all round headquarters for his chair in the belief that someone had borrowed it.
Cadet Paul Pring pretended that he had accidentally dropped his wages in the waste and had several
looking for it but as he did not seem to look hard himself, I did not bother and it turned out to be his
idea of a joke. Roger was allowed to take his leave before it was due so he could go with his father who
was a sergeant. As he drove off in the nice new sports car that his family had bought him, he waved
goodby to Inspector Thomas who was getting on his pushbike. The Inspector had a strange expression
on his face as he looked at his hands and then his trousers. Roger had smeared black duplicator ink on
the saddle and handlebars. Roger never returned. I resolved never to spoil my kids if I should have any.
I had a period in traffic office under Super Greenall. He ran a very efficient team but I messed

27
up when I copied the duty lists with the bright idea of using carbon paper and did not realize that the
duplicated blank forms were not evenly duplicated and the car numbers did not copy on to the right
lines. This we found out when police all over the county were in the wrong areas when they were
supposed to give evidence in various courts. This ended with closing the courts to sort out the mess and
years later I was told that they never got up to date again. He never punished me.
One day gran came to our bungalow, rather shaken. She had heard a noise in the night and gone
out to see the lady in white and had a tussle with her at the top of the stairs, but the ghost made off.
Gran thought the ghost was Miss Pittman, the Matron but had no proof: A few days later Miss Pittman
came to our bungalow and announced to mum: Your mother has died of a heart attack and she is at the
undertakers! We have an arrangement with them and they will take care of everything. You must come
immediately to her room and clear her things! She said that I was to come too.
In the room, Pittman sent mum downstairs with some things, then immediately produced
grannies steel box and told me to break it open with some tools she had ready. I was in shock and did as
she said, to see the box was stuffed with five pound notes. Gran kept her money in cash as she did not
trust banks. Pittman sent me down to tell mum. When I got back with mum the box was only a quarter
full. Grannies jewelery and family silver also disappeared, even her wedding ring. I have a suspicion
that Pittman murdered gran to avoid gran exposing her but I have no proof. Mum suspected that
Pittman was part of a gang and not acting alone but again it was only a suspicion. Our family solicitor ,
Mr. Moor, was also the solicitor for the home. He said that although gran had paid for her funeral with
the Co-op, it was a condition for residents of the home to have their funerals with Selim Smith
Undertakers and her Estate would have to pay again. Gran was quickly cremated. Although we were
allowed to attend, I found it very upsetting. The curtains did not close properly and I saw the coffin
burn and gran sit up with her hair on fire. I was told that this was an effect of the heat and that they do
things differently now.
I told Super Greenall about it and he recovered the family silver from Pittman's flat and she was
sacked. She was not prosecuted because there was no proof that she had not been just looking after the
silver and forgotten about it.
Mr. Moor held on to grannies War Loan, Consuls, Saving Certificates, etc. for about two years
because he said people need that time to get over a bereavement, to resist people trying to fleece them.
He also made deductions from the estate to pay bills that we knew gran did not owe. He tried to get
mum to sue her brother but she refused and changed solicitor. When she eventually received her
inheritance, I persuaded mum to buy her own home. It was at 6, Prospect Terrace, Fairview Street.
I had a spell in the Information Room with Sergeant Brett. It was a very small room, staffed
with the sergeant, a constable and a cadet. The telex, phone PBX switchboard and radio were all close
and it functioned brilliantly. A message came in from another force about a dangerous escaped prisoner
and the sarge said that if he comes to us it will be over the Mythe bridge and he radioed the nearest car
that pulled up alongside the villain as he stopped at traffic lights, the other officer opened his door and
that of the fugitive and pulled him into the police car before he realized what was happening! Very
exciting! A call came through about a missing girl and said that she had a baby and where she could be
found but the sergeant wanted to know how I knew. I could not admit to having a telepathic flash
without a lot of trouble so I just said that I knew the girl, which in a sense, was true.
Everything changed when we had a new man we will call JSHG, with a mission to modernize
the service. The first things he did were to have a big new office and a personal secretary. Miss
Lightbody was the most voluptuous redhead. The information room was moved down to spread over
most of the ground floor and staffed with a lot of young ladies in overalls with a huge map in the form
of a table that we had difficulty getting round. Markers, representing the police vehicles were pushed
around by the ladies with long sticks. Super Greenall would not serve under him and left. Detective
Superintendent Hancock, who was a scruffy giant of a man and reckoned the most effective

28
Detective ever, also left, after being insulted by JSHG and required to take an entrance exam!.My
opinion is that JSHG was an unscrupulous, manipulative bully with no understanding of policing
beyond what he might have seen on TV programs like Z-cars.
In the new Information Room, I was told to help Deidre, the telephonist on the switchboard but
she went straight off to have a tea-break without showing me what to do, so I followed the printed
instruction sheet as best I could. There were only three outside lines and they were all in use. When
both JSHG and D. S. Trapp both rang through for an outside line I told them they were all engaged,
according to the instructions but they gradually became impatient and a bit rude. So I connected them
up together so they would Know they were not waiting alone. DS Trapp left the building about 20
minutes later carrying his stuff in a cardboard box and with a red face. It was a shame because he was a
good detective and he also taught me some new swearwords. Minutes later a GPO (General Post
Office) engineer arrived to give us the new lines we needed. Deidre (ex GPO, herself) said I should
have just disconnected people who were on the phone too long and blame the GPO!!
Cadet West at 19 became a policeman stationed at Cheltenham Division where a problem had
developed with drunks and itinerants accosting people, while the older PC' s were waiting direction
from JSHG. West cleared up the problem overnight with a few arrests. One of the trouble makers
complained to JSHG who immediately sacked West!! The opportunists soon caught on that they could
make money by complaining to JSHG!!!
In admin. Sergeant Abbott was reduced to tears by JSGH for collecting some firewood and
ordered to pay the farmer who complained a crippling compensation although He was allowed by law.
All of us Cadets were sent for day release training at nearby Dean Close School. At rifle
practice, after one ranging shot to see how out of true my gun was, I put every bullet through the same
hole in the center of the bull. At first the RSM assumed I had one lucky shot and missed with the rest.
When he had confirmed by examining my target, he seemed very impressed. He made me left marker
on parade. There was a special parade for JSHG to show us off to his guests. However, I had been
reading a book called Good soldier Schwike. When the RSM yelled right wheel! I wheeled smartly
to the left and the right marker correctly wheeled right. A third of the cadets followed him ; a third
followed me and a third dithered in the middle. A very impressive shambles, I thought but it produced
unintended consequences when our training was transferred to a residential course at Liverpool. I much
regret the outcome for the entirely innocent RSM of my making the new Chief Constable discomforted
in front of his guests.
Before we left for Liverpool, JSHG had paid a dealer (with public money )for the historic
trophies at headquarters, to be disposed of! !! I wondered if he had been Governor of the Bank of
England if he would have got away with paying a dealer to take away the gold ingots cluttering up the
vaults there???
The training facility at Mersey Avenue, Liverpool did not strike me as much of a success either.
The buildings and swimming pool were excellent; it was just the staff.. Two of my friends were told off
for riding a motorbike at over 100 mph, in uniform, standing on the saddle, through the city. I had
previously been asked not to repeat riding a borrowed powerful motor-bike through red traffic lights,
while under age, uninsured and without instruction. Gossip said that a cadet from another force was in
trouble for some sort of self abuse in a ladies toilet, caught by a sergeant peering through a hole in the
wall. I wondered what the sergeant was doing in the ladies? Other gossip was about one of our cadets
abusing a retired police dog in his room and the dog dying of a heart attack. This was Maidstone from
Dursley, whom I had taken a particular dislike to because of his posturing and claim to be related to the
Royal family. I wondered if it was a gypsy family of that name. Our rooms did not lock and I caught
Maidstone coming out of my room; when challenged, he said that he was just calling on me to say that
it was almost time for dinner. I checked my room and found that my return rail ticket was missing from
my wallet, I immediately reported it to the Sergeant who warned me it would cause trouble and ordered

29
me to search my room and sent a cleaner to do it also. They tried to intimidate me to withdraw my
complaint but I would not do so: We had tests, I had the lowest score for observation ever recorded but
was the first to get 100% in Maths. Before we left, the Gloucestershire Cadets were all ordered into the
hall to be addressed by the Chief Inspector. He said that if I did not withdraw my complaint or someone
own up, he would make his report to our Chief Constable that he should sack all of us!!!
On our return, JSHG interviewed us individually. David Price, the other Leading Cadet said that
we should tell the whole story but by then I was sufficiently discouraged not to want to. However,
JSHG seemed to take a fancy to me and suggested that I had a speech impediment and that I should
stay behind at the hut at the bottom of the garden, when the others had gone home and he would give
me elocution lessons!!! I said that I was expected home for tea and would stay the following night.
When I got home, I told my mum. I wondered if he was giving me a chance to tell my full story of
what happened in Liverpool. The NSPCC Inspector was called and said we should set a trap for the
new man and he would set it up with Inspector Baker, the training Inspector. Baker, rather red, came to
the hut and said that JSHG would not come down and I was to speak into a tape recorder. I had the
impression that Baker had blown the trap for his own advantage.
In the morning, I was asked by the sergeant in accounts to sign the Official Secrets Act and after
signing, told me that if I ever mentioned the name of John Stewart Hinton Gaskain, I would be
immediately arrested and thrown into prison under the Act. Later I was sent to see Chief
Superintendent Oakley in his office. He said that he did not know what it was about but the Chief
Constable had told him to advise me to look for another job and that when my time came to join the
force proper, he would remember me and make sure that I did not get in. Mr. Oakley had taken a pay
rise and promotion to stay on under JSHG but I had the impression that he was very interested to know
what was going on and as a hero from the First World War he would have done what was right. But my
admiration for such guys was such that I did not want to drag him into anything messy.
There was a 19 year old PC Berry, who was very much in and out of the new JSHG 's office,
including through the window at the back. One night as I was walking up the Promenade to night
school, he stopped his police car and threw me over the bonnet and scattered the contents of my little
case over the pavement to the interest of all the passers by; saying something about little girls navy
knickers that they would catch me one day and he had caught another pervert after little girls!! There
was no one around that I knew to assist and he drove off as I gathered my school books and papers
from the pavement. I should have gone to the media but when the police become rotten, where do you
know to go at 15 years old? It is a crying shame that brilliant and courageous police officers should be
let down by corruption. But the stress lines on my face soon faded when I got another job. JSHG was
promoted to HM Inspector of Constabulary, directing the affairs of other police forces. I wondered if he
had been put in that position to protect powerful people? It must have made things very difficult for
those senior officers who wanted to do the job properly.
PROPERTY
Still only 15, on my way to see Mike at his basement flat in Bristol, I saw particulars of a block
of 8 flats for sale at 800 pounds, viewed, put down 5 pound deposit and exchanged contracts. When I
told Mike, he said please tell me you are joking. I had inserted a Latin phrase in the contract giving
me the option to cancel. Mike called a friend in the court who warned that the vendor had a reputation
as a swindler who sailed just within the law. Another friend said Alma Vale was on a potentially
unstable site and under pressure from my family, I saw Mr. G. A.Willans, the lawyer who asked What
sort of businessman is this, that exchanges contracts with a kid? He wanted to know where I had got
the Latin phrase from and how had I managed to insert it? I could not tell him but admitted to lying that
it was a family motto that was needed to validate my signature. Mike thought it appropriate that a man
who tricked people into signing dud contracts had himself been tricked.
Mr. Willans revoked the contract on my behalf and recovered my five pounds and had

30
detectives investigate this international banker and property developer. They found he was an
undischarged bankrupt and trading illegally in his sons name. His businesses were liquidated and he
went to prison.
I found two small inner terrace freehold houses for $75 each. At that time, a laborer could earn
$15 a week. Cheltenham was affected by planning blight at the time, where the council had not
revealed their plans for the town redevelopment. Also, mortgages were only easy on modern three bed
semis with a garage and were not normally available for houses without a front garden. Mum said I
must not buy them as owning slum property would blight your life! You are known by your address
and it would stop me getting a good job. I got the option to buy a large Georgian house with a lot of
land along the Tewkesbury Road for $3,750 but being only 15, my family vetoed it. The area was later
developed and became incredibly valuable.
The subsequent easy availability of mortgage money, said to help people own their own homes
has drained investment from industry, made people pay a lot more over a long time and think they are
better off than they really are. People focus on cars and homes now but when property eventually
crashes, as it did in France before the revolution and in America in 1929, there could be social disaster.
Mum and I went round the Estate Agents until they believed she would never actually buy. She
viewed and exchanged contracts on a cottage off Hewlett Road. But found that the vendors had lied and
had concealed that the place was rotten with merulias lacrimans (dry rot). Mr. Willans said Caveat
Emptor (buyer beware). The lady vendor was a pillar of the church; mum went to see the Bishop and
the sale was voided but it taught us not to trust what people say, specially if they are selling you
something.
Eventually, mum settled on the little terrace house off Fairview Street and left me to negotiate
with Mr. Jack, the agent in Rodney Road. The asking price was $1,320 and my opening offer was $750
and rose by $75nat a time. I made my last offer at $985 in order to give the impression that he had
taken me to the limit. He was so excited to be the one who finally sold a house to Mrs. Gladstone that
he rounded the price down as they did not deal in odd amounts and pressed the vendor to accept;
although I think mum would have gone to the asking price, she was so taken with the place. The most
important thing about a house is the neighbors. We lived there very happily for several years.
LEASURE
At Northlands, Pittville Circus, we had an active social life with dances, talks and outings,
evenings and weekends. It fitted rather well with my evening classes at Whaddon Evening Institute and
the North Gloucestershire. Tech. I even gave a talk myself but do not remember what it was about.
For a weekend trip on our bikes, we were to start at 7.30am but I arrived a few minutes late and
the others had already set off; believing that I would soon catch up. They had told me our planed
destination and I looked it up. I did not do so and assumed they had taken a more scenic route. When I
eventually reached Linton Youth Hostel, it was to discover that I had cycled over two hundred miles in
the wrong direction when I should have gone only about sixty miles to Lynton in Devon.
Training with the St. Johns Ambulance Brigade, meant not only treating minor injuries but free
entry to events. Luckily, at the Regal Cinema, I had an alert, experienced chap with me when a girl
tried to lure us into the ladies to treat her friend! Many young chaps get entangled and tied to a wife
and family before they realize what is happening. Acting as a patient at a First Aid Competition at the
Technical High School, I was quite distracted by a lady competitor feeling for swellings that I forgot to
make the right noises and she won. A group of girls then asked me to come with them to find
something but I managed to escape when I realized they were also looking for swellings. I was glad to
know and use the phrase I have to go! I dd not volunteer as a patient again.
At a Sotheby's charity evening at Cheltenham College, I was allowed to enter the competition
run by John Harvey, even though I got in free with the St. John,s Ambulance. I won it!! He became my
guru for knowledge of valuables. An absolutely absorbing hobby.

31
My social life was very active; what with climbing; mountain running,;the young Liberals, the
Young Conservatives; night-school for Maths, English, History, Geography and French; wild
swimming; sailing;dancing; socializing and becoming Treasurer of a local Caving Group. I soon gave
up that last when I realized how much criticism, responsibility and how little thanks you get from these
sort of committee positions. However, I did get to see Agen Allwed, one of the deepest pothole systems
very soon after it was discovered. After squeezing through what looked like a fox hole, it opened up a
bit. About half way down there was a rather tight bit where I got stuck upside down for about twenty
minutes. This caused some concern as I was in the middle and those ahead could not turn back and
those behind could not turn round. Although thin, I may have been the fattest one there. If your head
goes through, the rest of you should. Eventually it did. Some while later, we climbed down a red mud
cliff to enter a huge chamber. It looked as if you could have got a Cathedral in it three times over. It
was one of the most awe inspiring sights I ever saw. The red mud floor was covered with brilliant
gypsum crystals all glittering like tiny Christmas trees about a foot high in the light from our carbide
lamps. Some of the party wanted to take specimens but most wanted to keep it all intact: Next time I
went, the entire chamber had been stripped bare.
Brother Mike commented that we could get much the same sensations as potholing from filling
the bath part full of muddy freezing water and rocks and wallowing in it with the lights out for a few
hours. So we graduated from caving/potholing to climbing. He took me on his BSA 350 motorbike to
climb on the millstone grit between Manchester and Sheffield. One cold morning when all the others
kept to their tents, we had a great days climbing and returned exhilarated.
Mike had shown me knots and rope work with Manila hemp rope but we soon graduated to the
new nylon rope that was so much lighter and easier to use and carry. It also had give in it so you did not
hurt the same if you fell. He initially used ex-army carabineers and equipment but went on to new stuff
as it became available and climbing became more popular. The old army boots with nails had a
dangerous tendency to slip so Mike had Jones shoe shop in Cheltenham Promenade make the first
specialist climbing boots to his order.
On my first trip to North Wales; we arrived late and tried to sleep under a huge slab of rock but
it was already crowded. What with my nose jammed against a wet rock and a boot wedged into my
back; I emerged sleepless and miserable in the morning. I just wanted to go home. Mike was incredibly
patient and took me to a pub for coffee and breakfast. I brightened up. We walked up Snowden along
the pig track and quickly noticed a ladies shoe beside the path. Then another. Then various other
ladies garments, until walking rapidly, we passed the final items of underwear. We never found the
lady. Someones idea of a joke, no doubt. But we enjoyed the magnificent scenery. It would have been
dangerous for Mike to have had another bad night before riding the bike back home, so then we went
home.
I never got to join Mike and his friends in serious climbing in the Alps or Pyrenees or to
develop his skill or fearlessness. He was always the ideal that I tried to follow. When his wife said
many years later that she had never believed that the perfect man existed until she met Mike; I thought
that had never heard another wife say such a nice thing about her husband.
My rambling continued. On a winter trip over the Welsh hills, a big group of us came to a
hilltop tarn that was iced over. As I swam in the sea at Christmas, I was challenged to swim it.
Stripping to my underpants, I dived in but my pants caught on the ice. While I swam to the other side
and back, girls had fished them out and ran off with my clothes. I had to chase them to get them back!
Many years later, at Chepstow Youth Hostel, some girls were giggling over photos that one had found
in her mums things. They were of me chasing for my clothes near the tarn! I had no idea photos were
taken. How the past can catch up with you!
One Bank Holiday weekend, I decided to hitch-hike round Wales. Just past Tewkesbury, I
squeezed through a crowded lay-by to buy refreshments from a burger van, only to find that my jeans

32
pocket had been slit and all my money was gone. I just carried on.
Without getting my first lift by the time the light was starting to fade, I was starting to get
discouraged when a sports car drew up and I had my first lift. It was like a dream, the way he sped
round single track winding country lanes at about 120 mph. Actually, I felt safer than when my wife
drives now. But do not tell her that! I asked what happens if we meet another car coming the other
way? He said not to worry, he was an experienced racing driver and would just go through the hedge.
What was his name? He said Stirling Moss, who I had heard of.. When years later people asked me
who taught me to drive when I went a bit fast, I would say Stirling Moss! Of course, I do not know if
he really was, or if he was just winding me up. However, when he asked me about work and I
mentioned about having been a police cadet, he would not go over about 25 mph.
He dropped me off by a church in North Wales. The vicar, after hearing my story let me sleep
rough there and tried to get me to accept church money. I refused as it seemed like cheating. I went to
open a can of beans to eat but had forgotten to bring a tin opener! I managed to bash it open with a rock
but made a bit of a mess.
Another lift was from a Brummie, a native of Birmingham who called me our kid and set
me down by a park where I slept under a bush. I woke turning in my sleeping bag to find it chock full
of snails that crushed as I got out. I completed the trip successfully but never managed to clean the
sleeping bag properly and eventually shoved it in the rubbish bin.
MARATHON
Still aged 15, Mike and I entered the South Wales Seven Peaks Marathon. We each carried a
compass, first aid kit, OS maps, spare clothes, drinks, rations for a fortnight and sleeping bags. We had
an early start at 6 am and we were soon trotting merrily across beautiful countryside in perfect weather.
At the first checkpoint, we were not only ahead of the pack but there before the checkers. So we left
notes at the checkpoints while telling each other, this is not a race!
Just as we were approaching the Story Arms where we planned lunch for mid-day; I stepped
into a hole and twisted my ankle. I let Mike carry on to support the family honor, while I had a leisurely
rest. After about twenty minutes, I woke up refreshed. As I looked at my maps, it seemed that with a
change of route, I could incorporate another two peaks to make my day knocking off the nine highest
peaks in Wales outside North Wales! So I gave it a go.
As daylight faded; I noticed a 56 lb. Weight by my route. So I picked it up and put it in my
rucksack. As I successfully finished, I pulled the weight out of my rucksack. No one would believe it
was real until they tried lifting it. I did not confess that I had only carried it a couple of miles or so!
After supper, I rounded off the day by my demonstration of Cossack dancing. Then I indulged in an
early night.
Next morning, I was so stiff that I could not get out of bed without help from Mike! So much
for my showing off the previous night. Mike had to cook our breakfast and do everything for me. Also,
he was severely criticized for going so fast that other people would try and do the same and die. As I
was hobbling to the bus stop, a car pulled up. The driver said he was a doctor, that I was having a heart
attack and he was going to take me to hospital. Mike said no thank you, we prefer to walk! After the
long bus journey home, I was much better but mum was not fooled and said you will suffer for that
later on! Of course, she was right, osteoarthritis of the knees and heart!
Another year, I just did the basic walk with a friend from school called Mike Crofts. No heroics
that time! We just enjoyed the countryside.
SAILING
At Bredon, Worcestershire, I bought a fully equipped five foot three sailing dingy for fifty
pounds. It was a Peregrine made of marine ply. With my brother, I sailed it up to Evesham even though
the river had not been navigable since wartime neglect and all the locks above Bredon were unusable.
So we had to carry it round the weirs and raise the center board and slide down the weirs. He few

33
people who saw us seemed very surprised. When Mike got out to stretch his legs, a farmer with a shot
gun was stalking him but Mike went one way round a big blackberry bush and Mike the other. He got
back in the boat without realizing how close he came to a confrontation!
Weekend sailing back at Bredon, I let a girl have a go with the tiller but she turned it the wrong
way and rammed our sharp prow into the side of a large cabin cruiser that was moored to the bank. The
hole was quite big but no damage to my boat. As the cabin cruiser began to settle, a little man started
following us down the river bank doing a little dance, waving an oar and shouting I am going to dip
you! I called out with my hand to my ear; can you speak up! I cannot hear you! and decided to
carry on down river to Tewkesbury. There, I left the river Avon for the river Severn. I never went back
to Bredon. I never took the girl sailing again; she said it was a silly boat. It goes the wrong way!
I sailed down the Severn in stages. At one stage, a friendly farmer looked after it for me and did
not charge me. His cows were very interested and got in but did no damage although he worried about
it Mum came with me part of the way and found that the river mud soothed the arthritis in her feet.
Continuing on my own, the scenery became enchanting and so peaceful. We passed beautiful
red sandstone cliffs. The river became very wide.
Near Lydney, a line appeared in the water some way off. Near there a family had driven onto
what appeared to be a beautiful sandbank while the water rose. A local saw them and phoned for help
but the sand bank turned to quicksand and car and passengers disappeared without trace, never to be
found.
Realizing my danger, as the boat grounded, I raised the center board keel and made for the edge
of the emerging sandbank. We soon grounded again. This time I jumped into the water and pulled the
boat. Quickly sinking, I used the boat to extract myself and kept repeating the maneuver until the boat
once again floated. Then I continued my journey. The sandbanks change position with each tide. They
alternate between hard sand and quicksand in an unpredictable manner. That is why, when the Severn
was used for shipping (before the Sharpness canal was available), the pilot going off duty had to brief
the pilot coming on duty. Some of the bigger sandbanks, such as The Noose, Frampton, Saniger,
Lydney Shapherdine and Oldbury are permanent but change their footprint and consistency.
Approaching the old railway bridge across the Severn that had been partly demolished by a
tanker collision; there was a lot of wreckage in the water and the current was very strong. It was a close
call to avoid piling into the wreckage but somehow we scrapped through.
Continuing down the river, the wind increased but remained steady. The waves built up to about
three feet high. Both the canvas sails were up and fully stretched in the wind.
The wind continued to strengthen and the boat was cutting through the waves instead of going
up and down. It was exhilarating!
Because the waters in the Severn in the vicinity of the Chepstow river Wye and the Bristol river
Avon are said to be the most dangerous in the world at the turn of the tide; I had intended to beach the
boat and do that bit at a safer time of day, another day. However with the boat going so well, I decided
to give it a go.
Approaching the construction of the first Severn Motorway Bridge; I saw a line in the water
where two currents met. As the boat hit the line, it quivered. I gave a great leap from the boat into the
relatively calm water beyond. The boat disappeared beneath me and I saw the top of the mast disappear
into the deep water. My rucksack hit the water, also into the calmer water but with such force that it
split and all my gear was scattered over the surface. I swam round gathering up my stuff and shoving it
into the rucksack, not realizing that it had split the other side and everything went straight through to be
totally lost. I was dimly aware of a siren going and thought that the workmen on the bridge were having
a tea break.
The boat came up on its side with the bottom stove in, the tiller broke, the boom bust and the
sails split. Apart from that, the damage was not too bad. I jammed the rucksack into the forecastle and

34
to right the boat. The sails were already too waterlogged and heavy and the rigging had also swollen
with the wet and would not release.
Then I heard a voice call hang on, we're coming! I looked round to see a lifeboat approaching
from the bridge. So that was what the siren was for. Wow! What a great day and a ride in a lifeboat too!
The lifeboatmen said I would never have got ashore alive without them. I was their first successful
rescue. About three weeks previously, a small steamer had been ripped in two by the currents and some
of the crew and debris had been washed up on the Welsh coast and some on the German coast. They
towed my boat all the way to the Salmon Fisheries at Chepstow, where they were very kind and let me
keep and repair my boat there without charge. I used glue and cord and anything to hand. Workable but
not very pretty.
I stayed the night at the local Youth Hostel. The warden and his family were Norwegian. The
daughter was a few years older than me and rather pretty. She offered to let me take her on my boat..
When we got to the river, she looked all round but when I pointed it out, she would not get in. She went
back and told her parents that I was raving mad and my boat was a broken toy (and other things).
Next day, I crossed on the Aust ferry in order to catch the bus home from Bristol. Some girls on
the ferry, who included one who said she was Churchill's niece, told me about a yacht having been
wrecked. I kept a straight face but thought it rather wonderful how my dingy had grown so much
overnight!
I returned to Chepstow and sailed as far up the Wye as I could get. On my return, I met this
young lady that looked rather like Marilyn Monroe in her twenties. She wanted me to change in her
sports car so that I could go water skiing with her. I was 16 and alert for crazies and made my usual
excuse that I have to go! My friend Mike Crofts did not believe this and let me take him with me
when I went again for a few days. We sailed on the Wye, Severn and the Bristol Avon. A couple at
Portishead Yacht Club put us up for the night. And we sailed back and forth across the Bristol Channel.
There was an interesting ship flying the explosives flag, so I sailed for it. An agitated officer appeared
on the bridge with a megaphone, ordering us to keep away. I did my impression of a deaf person but
sailed off after having a good look.
In mid channel, Mike wanted to go to the toilet so I said to just go over the side. We were both
suffering from too much sun. As he was sat with his bum over the side, I forgot and tacked; the boom
came round and knocked him over. I managed to get him back on board and he asked for toilet paper. I
told him that I did not use anything so effeminate and to use newspaper. I always considered that the
News of the World was good enough for me and the Times for the upper classes but neither of us had
bought a paper. So I told him to use the sails.
We beached the boat at Brean and made it to my brothers basement flat in Bristol for the night.
He was not expecting us but never locked his door. We were sleeping peacefully on his floor when he
came in, in the dark. First he fell over my friend and then me, saying bloody hell! I had not heard my
brother swear before.
Next day, we sailed along the Welsh coast. In the evening we ran the boat ashore at Whitesands
Bay at Barry Island. We were immediately swamped with kids climbing all over. We pulled the boat
well up out of the water and went for a walk. Not very far into the sand dunes and Mike looked round
to see about a dozen girls, aged about thirteen, were following us. He said run! We took to our heels
and they could not catch us. When we stopped for breath, he explained that he knew about teenage
Welsh girls from pony trekking. I was thankful that despite the sun, he was more alert than me.
We slept that night beside the boat on the sandy beach. We slept well: When we woke up, all our
food and clothes were missing. Mike remembered waking in the night to see girls dancing around
sniffing our underpants but thought he was dreaming and had gone back to sleep. We felt rather
conspicuous walking into the police station wrapped in the boat sails to report our loss. The sergeant
laughed and said that a group of girls had escaped from an approved school and we had no hope of

35
getting anything back. Lucky I still had my money that I had been sleeping on, to get us home. We had
the top deck of the bus to ourselves. Mike Crofts said after that I did not exaggerate my stories.
Mum arranged for Uncle Reggie Thomas to look after the boat as he lived near by. It remained
at Barry Docks with only a couple more outings before it disintegrated with boys throwing rocks at it. I
think that I had my full share of fun from it.
POLITCS
In the summer of 1958, I had discovered the existence of the Young Liberals in a basement in
London Road. At the first Monday meeting I attended, there were only ten of us present. Ken Mathews,
the Chairman, appointed me Press Officer and Membership Secretary and handed me the membership
records. Thereafter, I wrote an account of each meeting and pushed it through the letter box of the
Gloucestershire Echo on my way home. They published everything I wrote, complete with spelling,
grammer and punctuation errors: both social and political. I also visited all the addresses in the
membership records to encourage people to come again. Our meetings became well attended and more
frequent.
David Jones, a trainee solicitor was keen on the theater. The Council had decided to close the
Everyman Theater. We held a debate on it and voted to keep the theater. It was on the front page of the
Echo. The Council changed their minds and the Everyman is still there. Janet Braddock, that I had been
at school with, worked at McIlquham across the street and when I delivered our post to her, she had a
letter for David Jones office that I delivered for her. At the next meeting David was very excited to tell
me that I had an exact double, who even wore similar clothes! At first, I managed to keep a straight
face but then told the truth.
The Fenton brothers each kept newsagents shops and persuaded me to help early mornings but I
did not keep that up for long. I was not as keen on money as laying in my bed! After late night dances,
it was just too much. Ron Hobby and Roy Hextall were a better influence on me. We had a dance at the
Rotunda in Montpelier (now Lloyd s Bank) with two bands and a third showed up for free. It was a
great success with some two hundred attending!
I was warned that my involvement in politics had attracted attention and I should choose
between them. So I resigned from the Liberals and joined the Young Conservatives for their social
events. They proved a very sensible friendly crowd that were not worked up about politics.
The Young Socialists would not let me join because of my association with the Liberals. This
was rather a pity as some of their girl members looked pretty jolly.
ABROAD
Because I was under twenty-one and could not get my father's signature for a passport, I had to
be tricky traveling abroad. On the way to Dover, my route finding was not very good but I enjoyed the
exhilarating experience of cycling the wrong way through the Blackwall tunnel and seeing the startled
faces of the lorry drivers coming toward me! I was not asked for a passport when buying my ferry
ticket at Dover and wheeled my bike on.. Then I joined the crew in their canteen for a meal and again
nobody challenged me. At Ostend, to avoid French Passport Control, I waited while the passengers
were disembarking and followed the crew ashore, wheeling my bike.
When crossing land borders, I used minor roads or public transport. When challenged, I would
feign stupidity and offer things like paper bags and old tickets that were always lying around, while
dribbling as my brother had taught me. There would always be some large lady to tell officials off for
bullying me. Thank goodness for large ladies!
This way, I was able to explore France, Belgium, Holland and Germany (where I bought a very
large silver ladle in a flea market.) It would not be so easy today, despite being promised easy travel to
join the EEC !
However, on arrival at Ostend Youth Hostel, where there was no warden, I was a bit shocked at
the filth and debris; particularly in the kitchen and toilets. Next morning when I picked up my bike, it

36
just fell apart. So I accepted the offer by a young French lady teacher and a girl from East Pakistan to
hitch-hike with them. The girls were attractive and we had no trouble getting lifts to Amsterdam. That
night we shared a sleeping bag ( with me in the middle) to sleep in the dark in the Vondlepark with lots
of other travelers. Before first light, I was desperate for a wee and eased myself out of the sleeping bag
without waking the others. At the base of a big tree where there were no other sleeping bags too near, I
let fly. I had not realized that the ground round the base of the tree was covered in sleeping ducks. All
hell broke out as the duck shot off in all directions shaking the wet off their wings and the rudely
awakened sleepers all asking what is happening? Is it raining?
WINDERMERE
Some friends, who did not know much about it, tried to get me to have a go at swimming the
English Channel. Mike offered to pay (as a 17th birthday present, for me to swim Lake Windermere at
Easter as it was only half the distance, there would be no shipping or big waves to worry about. Only if
that went well should I make plans for the Channel in the summer.
Easter is a moveable feast and for reasons that I do not understand; it came early that year. We
camped at the south-west end of the lake where a rented rowing boat had been delivered. It was the
arrangement that the boatyard would collect it from where we finished by Ambleside at the north end
of the lake. There was plenty of snow at the camp site but we hoped it would be warmer in the
morning. We had heard that the Channel swimmers greased themselves but the only thing the local
shop had was butter, so we bought that. Mike had brought five large Thermos flasks, a large number of
tins of Heinz Scotch Broth, his Primus stove and other food.
Mike woke me at 6am with breakfast ready. By 6.20am we had eaten, I was freshly buttered in
my swimming trunks and everything packed. I had no goggles or other aids. The ice was thick round
the edge of the lake amid the first rays of morning light and as I broke my way through it, Mike said;
This is madness, let us just pack it in!
After all the preparation, was determined to make some sort of show and started swimming
crawl vigorously through the ice. After about twenty minutes, I got cramp. Because of the butter, Mike
could not get a grip on me to pull me into the boat. So I continued in the hope that the sun would come
out and warm me. It did not. It remained bitterly cold, cloudy and windy all day.
Mike tried to feed me hot soup but because of the cramp, I could not move enough to drink it:
So Mike poured it over me to thaw me. I kept on. Sometimes it is the only thing to do. The soup
congealed. Ice formed round it. It seemed to give me some insulation from the bitter wind but there was
no protection for Mike.
I kept swimming and sighted a wooded shore that I hoped was our destination but Mike said it
was only an island about half way. Things looked different from water level. So just kept swimming. I
stopped alternating between over-arm and breast stroke and stuck to breast stroke from then on.
Things started getting hard and I just kept on, losing track of time. It gradually got dark. It must
have been pretty hellish for Mike but he never complained. Today, I suppose one would just use a
mobile phone to get help but then we could see the lights of Ambleside and they looked deceptively
near. When we got there and I grounded on the beach. Mike rolled me to a tree and propped me against
it while he used the old newspapers blowing about to scrape the ice,soup and butter off me. Then he lit
a fire under me and dressed me. It was 8.30pm when we landed, so I was probably the slowest person
ever to swim the lake! I guess it would have been Easter, 1959.
Mike, carrying all our possessions on his back, walked me, like a zombie to a cafe and poured
hot coffee into me until the cafe closed at ten-thirty. Then memory gets a bit blurred as I was walked
back to wherever but I remember the sole coming off my left boot.
Not only did I abandon any idea of being a channel swimmer; it put me off swimming
completely for about four years: It put me off scotch broth for life.
A curious effect of the swim was that, apart from my head, my sweat glands stopped working

37
and only started recovering after some years, whereas I had been a rather sweaty person before. Also
my body temperature kept very low for a long time. This meant that I had difficulty in avoiding
overheating. About ten years later, the science lecturer at Hartbury Horticultural College did not believe
my temperature that he accepted as about ten degrees Fahrenheit below normal after confirmation with
seven lab thermometers.
ROMANCE
Mum noticed an advert in the Gloucestershire Echo for a pen friend and persuaded me to
answer it as the writer seemed well educated and shy. I did and the advertiser came round to see us with
her parents. Her dad was a respectable businessman and her mum an infant teacher. Her mum said she
was also fifteen and comparing birthdays, just five months younger than me. Her name was Margret
and she had fair brown hair, sparkling blue eyes, a peaches and cream complexion and a slim but
perfect figure. I fell in love, hopelessly, completely in love. I would cycle the seven miles to see her
every chance I got: When we would kiss goodnight, it seemed like heaven. My work as a cadet and
everything else was blotted from my mind. It seemed that I had met the perfect girl from the perfect
family. Just when things seem perfect is when we need to be most on our guard. We must have dated
for two or three months and it was only when she led me into some bushes one day and asked why I did
not make love to her that I was shocked. Gathering my thoughts, I explained my Jehovahs Witness
belief that love was only for people who were married and that we were too young. The NSPCC
Inspector came to see me and said that Margrets Headmistress had spoken to him. She was worried
that other girls had said that Margret was very bad. I could not believe it ! It had to be malicious gossip.
Not long after, when we were alone, Margaret started crying and said that her mother wanted a
word with me. I wanted to know what it was about? Margret was pregnant!!! I could not take it in.
Next thing I remember was being confronted by Margret's mother telling me we had to get
married. I said we were too young. She said that no one would check; if we did not, the baby would
have to be aborted and I would be responsible for it's death. She was arranging my vasectomy because
we were too young to risk more pregnancies too soon as I was the only one Margret wanted to marry. I
shall never forget her smile as she put her sanitary towel on the fire and her pink satin underwear. She
said that she would make sure I did not regret it and her short red hair. Nor can I forget Margret's older
sister's blue suspenders and matching knickers. Nor can I forget Margret kissing me goodnight while
pressing herself gently against me, keeping me at fever pitch without release, until 10.20 pm. Or her
mothers revelation that I should get into the real world. The pictures on the wall were stolen while
looking round properties for sale. I needed to have sex. I have never been able to kiss passionately
since, without feeling overwhelming revulsion at these memories.
I had no idea that this would be with me for the rest of life and damage every future
relationship. Only after more than fifty-five years can I even bring myself to reveal it. A shocking
revelation can be far more damaging than physical abuse and there is no evidence.
Months later, I was told that Margret was only 12 and had been having relationships for a llong
time, including some chaps that I had thought to be my friends. Margret's mother had embezzled all her
fathers money and it had gone to her partner. He was without legal remedy and worked hard into his
eighties to pay off debt. Margret had seduced a young builders laborer and left her bedroom window
open for him. Her mother had investigated and the chap had gone to prison for rape. She had boasted to
school friends about this. Could this possibly have been my old friend Johnny? Ever after, I considered
myself damaged goods, by association and lacked confidence in relationships. I will not reveal the
family name, because of the danger to the male family members, who were decent hard workers.
COUNCIL
An application to GCHQ for work met with a rebuff that they did not want police rejects! I was
tipped off that my personal record had been altered and that I was recorded as sacked! So this did rather
confirm to me the corruption of JSHG. I had not thought that a willingness to be buggered might be a

38
condition of entry to the security services!!
However, an application for a position as a junior clerk at Cheltenham Rural District Council
was successful. I had given the Deputy Chief Constable as a reference. His son in law had said it would
be OK. Mr. Carter had always called me John and I had never liked to correct him. My new boss said
that he had replied that he never knew a David Gladstone, only a John Gladstone! So my boss was
suitably impressed that I had never been in any sort of bother.
So I worked in the inquiries office, filing, using a small PBX switchboard, duplicating,
answering the phone and callers and running errands. Still only 15, a woman brushed against me,
leaving me embarrassed and confused, showed me her knickers and said that her husband had had a
vasectomy and she wanted another baby and invited me to her home. She should not have approached a
boy of my age in that way and I started to tell an older lady but was severely told off for making up
stories. This left me even more embarrassed.
There was a problem with a big Polish council tenant at Northway who was threatening and
frightening people. He had to be evicted but Mr. Haddock, the solicitor and Mr. Collett, the Housing
Officer had been threatened also and he had found their private addresses. No one seemed to want to be
the one to deal with it. I remarked to my boss that I was not afraid of him. She went and told Mr.
Acocks, The Clerk of the Council and to my great joy he let me represent the Council in Court. I
understood the process and as a junior clerk, I was technically an officer of the council and could
represent them in court.
So in due course, I appeared before High Court Judge, Mr. Anthony Bulger and stated the case
for the council while the tenant scowled and the Judge smiled. He was obviously amused at such a raw
youth ( I did not even look 15 ) representing the council. He asked me if I was the Clerk of the
Council? I replied that I was only a junior clerk. He asked if I was scared of the tenant? I said no,
grinned at the tenant and said I was just nervous because it was my first time in court.
Judge Bulger ordered the tenant to leave the area and warned him if he did not do so straight
away, he would be sent immediately to prison. This would have been for contempt and he would have
had to stay there at the discretion of the sentencing judge. We never heard of the fellow again.
Later, I got promoted to Storeman. This included a lot of responsibility for supplies in the South
West of England and locally. I was eventually on the top pay scale for Local Government Officers and
was earmarked to be CEO of the new Water Authority.
In those days, there were still a lot of adults who could not read or write. We had drivers who
had started driving in the army in the war or had acquired their license by paying five shillings at the
council offices without any test like my mum. They could get rather upset trying to fill in forms after
accidents. I enjoyed helping them and giving little prompts, such as was there anything like a wasp
distracting you? The insurers sent a team to investigate and all our vehicles had to have insect
repellant devices fitted.
My first Christmas, I was told that it was a tradition for us all to have a drink. I bought three
gallons of wine, recommended by the local off-license. However, they all sixty of them came into my
office individually, obviously with the intent of getting me drunk! I went along with it because they
were all older than me but had given me their loyal support and I did not begrudge them a little fun.
However, once the wine was drunk, they said it was their turn to treat me! They took me to the local
pub. Since I was normally tee-total and did not know anything about intoxicants, I offered to try
everything to see what I liked. We returned to the Prestbury Depot, where I did my booking and then
they took me home. I walked through the front door and Mike said our Dave is as white as a sheet,
whatever is wrong with him? I said that I did not feel well and went to the loo and vomited it all up.
Then I went to bed. Come morning I was OK again and went and checked my booking at work but I
had not made any mistakes. I never repeated heavy drinking. It seemed a stupid waste of money, I did
not like any of it and after the first drink, my judgment had been impaired so that I carried on drinking.

39
Had I not been surrounded by friends, anything could have happened. The Bible and the Koran warn
against drink and it is an abuse of ones health, although there may be medical uses. When people try to
drown their sorrows, is when they might most need their wits.
We had our own fuel supply. Although the diesel tallied correctly, the petrol did not. It was as if
someone was secretly filling our petrol back up overnight. I did not think that too likely. We eventually
found that a leak in the tank was letting groundwater seep in so we ended up with a tank of water with a
little petrol on top.
MORE ROMANCE
Deciding to embark on another adventure, I took a ride on a bus going north. On the top deck,
enjoying the view, I got into conversation with a rather pretty girl. When the bus stopped, we both got
off and went for a meal. We spent an idyllic afternoon together by the river and I visited her the
following weekend. I missed my last bus home and two friendly policemen let me spend the night at
the police station.
Back at the Depot, a robin made her nest on a high shelf in my office. Then there were eggs;
then there were baby birds. There was no Mr. Robin in evidence and I tried to help by finding grubs. I
looked under a stone and found a baby adder, about the size of a pencil. So I found that I had an
orphaned adder to look after as well. When the chaps realized what I had and that while iit seemed to
regard me as its parent, it wanted to bite everyone else; They all went out to go on strike. Mum would
not let me keep it at home but the Library and Museum took it in. They said it was important as the
coloring of healthy adders was in dispute.
My new romance seemed to be going well and I got on well with her family. We talked about
marriage. I wanted to make sure that it was me that she wanted and not just my career. I was also
feeling the strain of responsibility at work. Also, I was missing political activity. Mum had been a top
hairdresser in her day and I decided to resign my job and try my hand at making a fortune at
hairdressing in London. When she heard what I was doing, my girlfriend said that she did not want to
be married to a poof hairdresser!!
LONDON
Rather than take an apprenticeship, I took an intensive three month course in London's west
end. I arrived at Victoria Coach Station and made my way by underground to Paddington. Based on her
experience of London in the1920's mum had advised me to look in that area for respectable
accommodation advertized on newsagents notice boards. There was something strange about the
adverts. They were mainly by ladies with large chests, wishing to accommodate gentlemen. Some
were even stranger. I tried other areas and got to the Bayswater Road. The adverts there were similar. I
started to ask myself if I had a bad mind. I was getting tired and dispirited.
Along came an old lady with a dog and her stockings round her ankles, so I guessed she must be
local. So I explained my predicament to her. She looked me up and down and apparently assessed me
as a harmless fool, said in a very upper class voice to go round the corner to her house in Clanricard
Gardens and tell the housekeeper that I was the new tenant.
As instructed, I arrived at an imposing house and the door was opened by a lady aged about
thirty and dressed as a traditional French Maid. Wordlessly, she led me upstairs and into a very large
bedroom. She said It is four pounds. I handed over my money. The whole situation seemed a bit
surreal. I slung my case and bag on the floor. I was surprised that there were no formalities in renting
accommodation but supposed that was how things were done in London. I was feeling footsore,
wearing and hungry.
I asked where I could eat. She looked at me as if I was really stupid and said there were places
to eat all along the main road. Perhaps it is my broad country accent I thought as I slipped past her and
down the stairs. Soon, I was ensconced in a little cafe round the corner in the Bayswater Road eating
omelet and chips with a milk shake. I took my time. Then I began to wonder if I could find the house

40
again! As I trudged back, all the houses looked the same. I tried a doorbell and it turned out to be the
right one. The same lady answered. She said she was beginning to wonder if I was coming back. She
handed me a key and a rent book and disappeared.
As I went up the stairs, I met a young lady coming down. She smiled and said you must be the
new tenant with that lovely big room on the first floor. There are twelve of us and we all muck in and
share. Come on down to the basement and meet the rest of us!
When I entered the basement, it was to discover that all the other tenants were girls aged from
18 to 26. They were all in the film or TV industries and very pretty. The eldest was Margret, who was
absolutely stunning and wearing nothing but a shirt! She was sitting in an armchair and invited me to
join her. I lost my resolve to wait until marriage in that instant. Somehow, I clean forgot that it was my
twenty-first birthday.
When Margret's fiance walked in on us, she blamed me but the other girls shouted that she had
set it up!! He went off but I believe they made it up after. I started having full normal relationships with
girls. I phoned my brother to let the family know that I had found somewhere and was OK.
Next day my brothers girlfriend called to see that I was alright. I was exhausted and spent the
day in bed. The girls went and hid because they assumed she was my wife, they later told me!
Our first teacher at the hairdressing school was a voluptuous Greek lady with red hair called
Violet. Naturally, I tried to date her but she warned me that her boyfriend was a dangerous character
known as Jimmy the knife but actually, he used a cut throat razor. I had heard about pairs of Greek
boys, slashing their victims as they grabbed a bag or case but was not deterred.
As I was about to leave one day, Jimmy appeared. He was a weedy, spiv, unclean type of youth.
He knocked off my hat with one hand as he razor slashed me across the tummy with the other: I was
wearing a loose fitting t-shirt which was cut right across; but the cut to my flesh underneath was both
shallow and clean, without significant hurt and I took no notice of it.
I stood there and told him to pick my hat up. He kicked my hat away. I felt angry. Jimmy just
starred at my tummy. I told him again to pick up my hat. Suddenly he turned and ran away. I chased
him. He ran very fast down the stairs into Oxford street and round to the back of the building as if the
devil himself was after him! He scrambled without hesitation up a fire escape to the Regina Lecture
Hall; pausing at the top to throw chairs down at me as I was quickly ascending. The chairs were flimsy
plywood things that I brushed aside: The chase continued. It was exciting. I had no idea what I was
going to do when I caught him.
Eventually, Jimmy took refuge up some stairs in a scruffy side street, into a little Greek cafe and
into their toilet. I thought that I had him trapped and that he would have to come out eventually. So I sat
down and ordered two cups of coffee, realizing that I had put myself in a potentially dangerous position
on Jimmy's turf and that I should confine myself to giving him a severe telling off, when he eventually
came out of the toilet. Letting myself appear angry, I told the Greeks how scum were destroying the
Greek national reputation that had been the cradle of civilization, going on in this vein some time while
keeping the Greeks standing to attention while I sipped my coffee from time to time. At last I asked one
of the Greeks to fetch Jimmy from the toilet. He came back to say Jimmy gone! I followed him in to
the toilet to see for myself the open window from which Jimmy had dropped twenty feet to the
alleyway!!
Returning to my coffee, I finished it and said it was pretty good, paid and left..I never saw or
heard of Jimmy again. I never got my hat back. I never heard about any more razor attacks and I found
that I no longer fancied Violet, knowing she had been with a creep like Jimmy.
Violet taught us how to shampoo, rinse the hair properly, section it, the proper use of scissors,
comb, rollers, pin curls, working to the mirror, front wash, back wash and how to do the Italian top
which was the only style that our grey- haired models used.
A group of us would socialize together. Sometimes at the swimming pool. I suppose these were

41
our salad days.
Before I had left for London, mum had shown me the techniques that had made her top
hairdresser in her day. She had played some part in the early years of the Institute of Trichology and the
London Scalp Hospital but did not allow the use of her name. So I enrolled as a student and also with
the London College of Fashion. I found my lack of A level chemistry quite a handicap.
Our next teacher was a thin, dark chap who said little and appeared rather bored with us but
taught cutting, styling, coloring and razor cutting and constantly monitored and refined our techniques.
I noticed teachers watching me and trying to learn techniques mum had taught me. I thought that was
not on. Evan though I was barely halfway through the course that I had paid for, I was able to get my
certificate, leave and get a job as an improver. But first I went round the manufacturers schools
where we could have a weeks free tuition in each where the manufacturers could promote their own
products.
The first was the British one , Inecto at their Mayfair premises, very much 1920's decor. I had
a shock there when trying to date a girl there, because she knew all about me. Her mother knew my
landlady through archery at Buckingham Palace!!! I realized that I was outside my comfort zone
among the upper echelons of society and did not pursue that opportunity.
The next school was L'Oreal, the French one. Their products were more gentle and very popular
for home use and their premises modern and stylish.
Next was Schwarzkopf, the German firm, very efficient.
But the last and best was Clairol, the American firm, whose products I most preferred and
whose school in Baker Street brilliantly run. Their teachers/demonstrators had bright red hair and it was
secret, whose was natural; something that I was immediately curious to find out. I was given a popular
girl singer to color her hair. She did not admit to using drugs but it became apparent when her hair
turned khaki. It got sorted and she sang as it was done! They persuaded me to have a go at a National
Hairdressing Competition and arranged a superb model. We came third but only the top two got prizes.
Even so, an amazing result for someone who had only been in the trade a few weeks!
Then I started my job as an improver in a small, select salon near Parliament. My new boss
was owner, manager and receptionist and it was just something to keep her occupied as she sipped her
brandy as her husband was very wealthy. There was another chap and a blond girl stylist, who was very
impressed with herself. This chap confessed to an urge to kiss a client when leaning over, shampooing.
One day, he actually did it and got instant dismissal. However, the very rich client made it clear she did
not want him punished but ended up leaving the salon with him, with her hair wet and unfinished. She
left her husband and took her hairdresser on a world cruise!! We got postcards from them from all over
the world. I guess that the most wonderful thing in the world for the lady with everything is the
ultimate dramatic romantic adventure.
My next step was to work for a world champion. His clients would have about seven hairpieces
each (these would cost as much as nine hundred pounds each) and meant that we were always busy
with these and live clients. Even so, I gathered that he did not make a fortune. His overheads were
heavy and his charges less than my mother forty years before! She just used her home and had a brass
plate outside reading, Madam Thomas, Ladies Hairdresser and when she had competition, she had a
new one put up, saying, Madam Thomas, Experienced Ladies Hairdresser! So I started to think that
hairdressing was no longer the money spinner it once was. As it was, my four hundred pounds savings
that I had brought with me to London was almost gone. A few outings with the girls had not helped to
conserve cash.
So I moved to a small but clean and tidy bedsit at 112, Walm Lane, NW2 for only two pounds
ten shillings a week. My new landlord was a German Jew who had been very rich before the war and
he showed me a wardrobe full of old banknotes, now worthless. It was a shared kitchen where I learned
to eat cheaply and we tasted each others food. I liked the Pakistanis thick soup they called Dahl. A

42
British Guianan had a paper bag of green things that he ate like sweets. He offered them to me and I
started to chew. Suddenly my mouth started to explode as if on fire, I rushed to the sink and ran the
cold tap into my mouth. Everyone found it intensely funny, except me.
Two Irish girls rented the biggest room. Then they stopped work, stayed in bed all day and
stopped paying rent. Our landlord was very distressed but his little wife soon evicted them.! So my
friend Rafik Islam rented it for one pound fifteen shillings a week to save money. What we had not
considered was my snoring. So that did not work.
SPEAKING
As a child, mum had taken me on a day trip to London. First to the Tower (no need to queue
then) and then to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park where we were thrilled to hear a sermon by Old Bob
John who soon had everybody singing Honey on the Rock I went again but there was no longer Bob
John but a group of far left political activists plotting the disabling of parking meters! They were the
SWP (Syndicalist Workers Party) although none of them actually worked. I listened to all they had to
say, fascinating, parking meters were an infringement of their liberties; though non of them had cars!
The SWP had their own emblem and flag and soap-box and took turns to speak under the
watchful eye of Axle, their leader. He invited me to have a turn on the soap box. Wow, this was fun; me
a public speaker on Hyde Park Corner!!
I mounted the stand and in a loud clear voice said that I believed that public interest and
property was paramount and anyone damaging public property should be denounced. The group
panicked and fled. A policeman approached to see what I was shouting about and had a laugh. They
seemed a bit paranoid and abandoned their flag and soap-box and even the flat of Alex, their Russian
leader. Nevertheless, it re-awakened my interest in politics and I used the reading room of the British
Museum to read the works of Marx, Engels and even Hitler.
I developed an admiration for Nikita Khrushchev who had fooled Stalin about being a reformer
and fighter for individual freedom and the west about the threat from Russian nuclear weapons when he
had no intent and would certainly not have put them in the hands of another state such as Cuba!!!I
understand he saved huge numbers of people from Stalin's purges. He even let American president
Kennedy take the credit for arms limitation. He came to grief in trying to reform Soviet agriculture too
quickly and incompetents and those resistant to change messed it up. His real failure was in continuing
the undermining of western values about family life, work and faith and duty. Rottenness has a habit of
spreading and could damage the East as well as the West!!!
Of course, Churchill was nearly everyone's favorite hero, except my gran, who blamed him for
the Dardanells fiasco, which was really down to lack of co-ordination in the upper ranks of the army
and navy.
My favorite world hero was and is Admiral Lord Cochran, who played a critical part in the
Napoleonic Wars, the fight for the Independence of Latin America, the development of iron warships
and freedom in the Mediterranean. He was slandered and largely written out of British history for
criticizing his superiors. I lack confidence in media and official history. I always ask what is true and
what is covered up. My other great hero is Commander Anson, who in his famous voyage round the
World and re-organization of the Admiralty, put the British Navy in condition to fight Napoleon.
EAST END
I decided that I needed more general experience and got a job in Bethnal Green in the East End
and even cheaper accommodation. My new landlord was so miserable that I soon wanted to move
again. My new employer, whom I will call Mr. Ham seemed to have some ill defined authority in the
area. There had been a man called Ginger Marks who had been shot dead close by. An old lady came to
ask Mr. Ham if she should go to the police as a witness but he said no. Later, I heard him boast about
killing an old lady for the money in her hand bag. Nevertheless, he gave me some advice that I only
came to appreciate much later, when he said not to do anything for nothing as it only brings you

43
trouble. To avoid bother, give help anonymously. When I checked and found he had not paid my
National Insurance stamp, I contested it. I was told he wanted to see me in his office back of the shop.
He told me to shut the door. He pointed his little gun at me and said that I had laid an information
against him and that he had only given me money to keep me off the street and now he was going to
kill me!! I laughed and threw the door open, thinking that the little thing on the end of his gun meant
that it was only an air pistol. I strode through the shop full of people, all staring at Mr Ham, still
holding his little gun.
When I sketched the gun for Mike later; he said it was not an air pistol but a deadly Luger, with
a silencer on the end.
I looked round for another job to tide me over and got taken on as a garden laborer with the
London County Council at almost twenty pounds a week. This was much more fun and it was
interesting to find out about the plants.
I also found somewhere new to live. It was with the Dypolt family, refugees from Germany
from the second World War. Apart from the parents, there were Ursula, Barbara and Peter. They were a
very warm hard-working family. The dad worked at the Embassy in the week and lived in their other
house in the West End. with other tenants and was a photographer with a little monkey at weekends.
The mum worked as an outworker for a clothing factory, using her large pram to collect the ready cut
material and take back the finished clothes. They only charged me two pounds ten shillings a week for
their big front room.
Nearby was an excellent little cafe that served a most excellent stew,amongst other things. The
couple who ran it warned me that it was a very rough area and if I went out at night, I should take their
Alsatian dog. I took it to the park in the afternoon to train it, although I had no knowledge of training
dogs. I thought that we were doing well and took it out late evening. We passed across an apparently
deserted bomb site and found dark shapes silently converging on us from the shadows. As they got
close, I let the dog off the lead and gave the order Attack! Instantly the dog leaped on me, knocking
me to the ground and started licking my face! The lads who had surrounded us burst out laughing and
helped me to my feet. They were only teenagers looking for some action.
Mum decided to visit me, to make sure I was OK and I said I would meet her at Victoria Coach
Station. Unfortunately, this coincided with a new arrivals section over the road that had not been
publicized. So I spent a long time waiting at the old arrivals stop and mum spent a long time at the new
one: She managed to find her way to 78, Marlborough Avenue, by the Regents Canal where I lived and
not finding me there, she went looking for me in Victoria Park. But I had already been round the park.
We tried looking for each other at Paddington Railway Station in case there had been a
misunderstanding and I had thought she was coming by train. There was a record making machine on
the platform and we each made records saying about missing each other. We kept missing each other
and leaving messages. Eventually, we both gave up and took a coach back to Cheltenham from Victoria
where we also missed each other.
At one thirty am, I was knocking on mums front door, just after she had got to bed, in a state of
utter exhaustion. We both said at the same time What the devil have you been playing at?
Mrs. Dypolt thought that I had deliberately led mum on a wild goose chase to stop her
interfering in my life; but it really all followed from the neglect of the coach station not letting people
know about the arrivals change, even the staff could not tell us and if you ever try to find someone in a
big city without a contact point, do not bother.
All around the park was a shrubbery that had been neglected since the Second World War and
was now full of very big trees: I suggested that it would be easiest to take the trees down first and then
cut them up on the ground and Mr. Sayers, the park Superintendent gave me what I asked for and left
me to get on with it: We attached a rope as high as I could reach, then we would dig a semi-circle and
tread a chain down into it, the chain was strung between two tractors that would then undercut the roots

44
while we pulled the rope to make the tree fall where we wanted it: Another team would cut the wood up
and it would be carted away on lorries. The work proceeded quickly and everyone seemed happy,
except when the men were digging and I was laughing at them and scratching myself. I explained that I
did this because of a medical problem and they apologized because they did not know that!
Mick Taylor, who I was working with, had a Saturday job on the door of a strip club in St. Ann's
Court in Soho. He asked me to stand in for him one day when he had some other business to attend to.
It was interesting. The chap at the first club would call out, three lovely girls, come on in and see
everything! The next chap would call out, four lovely girls and so on, until it got to, eight gorgeous
girls, nothing covered up! Actually it was the same three girls going from club to club and in the dark
there was nothing much to see anyway. It was mainly seats in the dark where tired old men could rest.
The girls were unmarried mothers, just making ends meet; rather sad, really.
Mum decided to try another trip to London; this time with her friend, Olga Kracowski and
nothing went wrong. These two old ladies were a bit surprised at the chaps calling from the doors of the
clubs and the girls leaning out of their windows, calling Hey boy, you looking for a girl? and I would
reply I got two already, love! Mum said that if she had known London had become like that, she
would never have allowed me to move there. I showed them where I did incredibly cheap shopping
(probably stolen from the ships by the dockers). We had a really nice steak dinner at the little Italian
restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was ancient with very low ceilings and low prices. Sadly, it is no
longer there.
Mrs. Dypolt and mum got on well and swapped homes for a holiday, taking baby, Cornelia
Dypolt. Mum helped dress the monkey for Mr. Dypolt but it was very difficult for each time she got
two legs in the trousers, the tail would come out and if the tail was in, a leg would come out; so how
did Mrs. Dypolt seem to manage so easily?
I showed my brother and friends round London and was treated to a posh, expensive meal at
Romanovs in Greek Street and showed them The Establishment Club that I had joined the day
before it closed (famous for Peter Cook, Dudley More and other satire comics). When it was my turn to
pay, we ate cheaply but superbly in Old Compton Street; Where I learnt not to pay the taxi after getting
out as he scooted off with my change.
Summer came and I became a lifeguard on the Victoria Park Lido. It was an idyllic, cushy
number with bikini clad scenery all around. Paradise for a young man. Strange that there was a
shortage of lifeguards and a non-swimming girl gardener was given a job and a whistle to blow if she
saw anyone in trouble! We would sometimes go for a run round the park, before or after duty in order
to keep fit and I found myself running faster than the others, who tended to be a bit muscle-bound.
There was also a set of weights to amuse us and I was told that I was lifting between 3 and 5 pounds of
the British National records and that without working up to it slowly, I would damage the discs in my
spine, maybe that is part of the cause of back pain fifty years later?
Oola, (Ursula Dypolt) came with me to chose some smart clothes in Carnaby Street, now I had
a bit of money again. These remained favorite clothes for Many years, even when kipper ties and flares
were no longer fashionable!
One of my companions at the Lido, only spent the summer there and in the winter was a
mercenary in Africa. He tried to persuade me to join him. He said You can kill people! I was rather
surprised that he would leave his attractive wife for such long periods. Personally, I would not want to
kill for money.
Although, Ginger Mick had the physique of a heavyweight boxer, he was a nervous chap and
never answered the door without his three foot Stillsons in his hand. His main job, I was told, was
smash and grab.
We also had a bearded Welsh student, who was rather morose and it was said that he had lost his
money for college by unlucky gambling He tried to pick a fight with me but the others said just to leave

45
it or we would both get the sack and cause trouble for everyone.
Mick Taylor was the gambling specialist, particularly on the dog track. I would not get drawn
in, against my bible teaching and my lack of desire to get money that I had not earned and reluctance to
part with money that I had earned. I suspected that if I won, he would take his commission and if I lost,
it would be 100% my loss.
When our rest room was used for a meeting, everyone was discussing different prisons they had
been in. I had nothing to say. When pressed, I said that I had never been to prison. This was received in
shocked silence. Someone said grimly, everyone has been to prison! Mick Taylor suddenly laughed
and said; He is a con-man! Then everyone relaxed and I felt accepted. Everyone was very concerned
about the abolition of the death penalty and it was explained to me that they all were concerned for
their families as the abolition would lead to people carrying guns and a lot more violence. Of course the
politicians either did not understand this, or did not care.
I was told never to mention that we got given twenty pounds when we had a go in the boxing
ring because it was amateur and it was only for about 20 to 30 minutes. I only went twice to the York
Hall. It was just supposed to be entertainment but I got a bit excited and did not fall down in the fourth
round as I was supposed to and accidentally hit the ref when he got in the way. What with a lot of girls
shouting Dirty Dave! because I did not know the rules; it all got a bit exciting. I was told off after ,for
hitting too hard and a hard looking chap said I was using the death punch and if I killed someone there
would be a lot of trouble. So there was no more easy money for me there. Somebody said that someone
had lost a lot of money because of me, so possibly there was some illegal gambling that might have
been rigged.
Not long after a group of girls invaded our rest room, shouting We want to see Dirty Dave's C
k! so I stuck my thumb through the leg of my shorts and they went off shouting, We've seen it!
Another day, a girl at the pool who did not speak English, introduced herself by dropping her
bikini top and she hung round till the pool closed and not knowing what else to do with her, I took her
back to my room for coffee. I made and put the coffee down and she suddenly flung me from one side
of the room to my bed on the other side and jumped on me. When I staggered in to work the next day,
everyone grinned and asked how I got on? It seems that I was the only one who did not know that she
was a famous lady wrestler. Some time later, I had a date with a lady ballet dancer and I avoided very
fit women ever since.
Late one evening Mick Taylor turned up at my place in an inebriated and very distressed state.
He had been to see his fiance ( the daughter of a well known boxing promoter) and been told that the
Midget who he explained was the foreman of the Kray gang, had taken her over and he was not to
see her again! I did not want to let down a workmate and took him for a walk to clear his head and to
decide what to do. LI had heard about them and that the Midget was wanted in America for murder;
that the gang were involved in boxing and inveigling young men into homosexual acts or other illegal
activities, blackmailing or intimidating them into becoming part of gang activities. They were also said
to be helpful to those who asked their help, whereas the gang on the other side of town had a bad
reputation for torture friendly policeman had said that the Kray twins sometimes spoke to the police!
Mick suddenly dived into a phone box. He came out white-faced and almost sober. He had
phoned the Midget, who had said he was going to kill Mick. After that Mick wanted me to go
everywhere with him to protect him. I said that I knew nothing about street fighting. He said they
don't know that! A few days later, we were attacked by two lads with knives, in the street. As I took
one step back, Mick smashed their heads together ad the knives went clattering in the gutter. We
laughed as they ran off but Mick said it would not be so easy next time.
I do not know how, but word went round that we were in conflict with Ronnie and Reggie Kray
and my neighbor from Glasgow insisted that I accept his brass knuckle duster and a newsagent pressed
his little Italian handgun on me, with sixty rounds of ammunition. He said it was only small caliber but

46
to just keep pulling the trigger. Myself, I am a firm believer in the stopping power of a 45 but would
never carry a weapon by choice. It will put you under suspicion of malicious intent and can provoke
violence. Much later, I was to learn, but not use discrete ways of killing.
Mick lived directly opposite a park entrance and it looked safe enough for him to cross the road
to work. However, that is where they got him; crossing the road to work. He disappeared for quite a
while.
When Mick eventually returned, he said that he had spent a long time in hospital in Liverpool,
recovering from head injuries. He was lucky to be alive. He had made his peace with the gang and
urged me to pledge my respect for them!!! I thought not but said nothing.
Many years later, I thought I saw Mick Taylor being interviewed on television about the Kray
gang and thought, well, he never did escape that environment!!
In the Bank Holiday sunshine, the pool was crowded. I was at the shallow end when I saw a girl
sink in the deep end. I ran round the pool as the quickest way to get to her and only at the deep end was
the pool not packed solid. I dived in and pulled her out. The girl had fainted in the water without
anyone else noticing! Reg, the pool supervisor was happy to have something positive to report. The
other three lifeguards had not noticed the girl until they saw me run through the poolside sunbathers
and dive in.
When the weather turned colder one day, we just had one boy in the pool. I saw him sink and
struggle and sink. Although I was fully clothed because of the cold, I dived in and pulled him out. He
quickly recovered and said he was only playing! Reg said that he was afraid of being in trouble for
bunking off school but I used to do that and let him go. Reg said we should have taken particulars and
got him checked out by the hospital.
We had another Saturday of bright sunshine with the pool crowded again. I was poolside when
someone gave me a push that almost had me fall in the pool. The chap who had pushed me clambered
over the wall that separated the pool from the park. I followed and paused at the top to see a group of
fellows with knives, crouched the other side. Obviously a trap! I waved my hand to a man with some
Alsatian dogs shouting Come on! We've got them now! and big Mick looked round the corner with
his Stillsons iron wrench in his hand. The waiting group looked round at Mick and the dogs and ran off
in the opposite direction. I jumped down and gave chase, punching them without stopping as I caught
them and chucked the last two or three in some wet cement foundations (ready to build some new
flats). I do not know what happened to any of them. Big Ginger Mick said later that when he saw the
lads with their knives, he had dived back into the rest room and locked the door. He thought I was
insane to chase them. All the time, I had had the knuckle duster and the gun in my pockets but in the
excitement had clean forgot them.
My hands hurt an awful lot after and I saw the doctor, who sent me up the hospital for X-rays.
When I saw him for the result, he looked grim, said that I had fractured every bone in both hands and
how had I done it? Not wanting trouble over any injuries the lads might have got, I asked if it could be
from hitting the end of the swimming pool? He told me to be more careful in future.
When the pool closed for the season, I chose to return to the fresh air and the beautiful
Cotswold Hills that I missed so much. I managed to get a job as an assistant gardener back in
Cheltenham.
Returning to London for a day visit to see friends and acquaintances; I was told that people had
been told that I had been killed. I assured them that was not the case. I had a pleasant day.
It seemed a good idea to go back again and clear up any misunderstanding with the Kray twins.
However, this visit bore a remarkable similarity to my mothers first visit. I was told that they had
already tried to meet me in Manchester, under the impression that I had a Manchester accent and was
from there. So I left a message for them to meet me in the park. When they got to the park, I had
already been round all my friends there and left a message for them. We missed each other at the

47
railway station and the coach station as well and I decided not to waste any more time running round
after them. Apparently they got tired of trying to meet me as well. My brother thought this was a very
good thing. Despite my occasional visits to London to this day, we never met and I understand they are
no longer there, so I suppose we never shall meet.