MATURITY, PERHAPS
Volume 3 of a memoir
By Alfred Baker
 
                                                CHAPTER ONE
It was 1948.  After three years in the army, and having served in Iraq and Greece, I was a civilian again and had the future before me.  But what future? I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do.
            Before my army service I had spent three years as a factory worker, but I had no wish to become one again.   The only qualification I possessed was the certificate of the Forces Preliminary Examination that I had obtained as a soldier. That was supposed to be the equivalent of the school certificate, but I doubted if it would enable me to obtain a decent job.
            For my twenty-first birthday, Mum and Dad had given me a gold signet ring, which I am still wearing today, sixty-four years later, though by now the initials, “AJB” inscribed on it have almost worn away.
            I spent some time enjoying my demob leave: though a week or so after it had started I received a letter from the War Office, suggesting that now that I had been a civilian for a short while I might be dissatisfied with that state and choose to return to the army. As I was quite happy to be a civilian, I threw away the letter. But as I still did not know what to do with my life, I contacted a Resettlement Officer who advised me that I should embrace public service, and gave me a letter of introduction to the Inspector of Taxes in Enfield.
            Next day I presented myself at the tax office which was near the centre of Enfield Town.  I don’t think I actually saw the Inspector of Taxes, but rather one of his minions, who had the rank of Tax Officer Higher Grade, who took me on as a Temporary Clerk Grade II.
            I was given a desk alongside other temporary clerks and some tax officers, and set to work.  It was also suggested that I join the union, The Inland Revenue Staff Federation, which I did.
            The work was quite interesting.  I think initially it was little more than filing documents, but in time, after some rather perfunctory on the spot training,  I was given an allocation of my own with which to tend the tax affairs of the employees of various companies, one of which was quite large, the Belling electrical manufacturing company, in which my friend Denny Lock was one of the employees.
            Denny had served in the Navy, wearing a rather smart uniform with a peaked cap as he was ranked A Writer, which was just  a fancy navy title for a clerk, and was basically the same level as an army private, or, as in my case, a fusilier. He had been demobbed for several months when I was released from service, which was a fact that I rather resented for he had joined the Navy several months after my call up in 1945, but it seemed the Navy discharged its conscripts rather more swiftly than did the army.
            As the months went on I became more proficient in my work though there was a great deal to learnt and I realised that tax officers, who were equivalent to the general civil service rank of clerical officer, had  much more demanding tasks to perform. Perhaps in time I would become one.
            I would look in the Staff Federation diary at the lists of ranks in the Inland Revenue.  There were many above tax officers, and at the top was the chief inspector of taxes, who, in 1948 was earning the dizzily high salary of £2,000 a year.
            Many of my friends, including Denny, were now demobbed.  With them I joined a social club, The Butlin’s Club, which was an off shoot of the Butlin’s Holiday Camps which were started by a Canadian entrepreneur named Billy Butlin.
            I think the Club met on one evening each week in St. Edmund’s Church Hall. The members were young people of both sexes, all, about my age.  We would meet, drink soft drinks, eat snacks, and the boys would chat up the girls.  There was also dancing, but I can’t remember how the music was provided, whether it was from records, or whether we had a small dance band to play.
            I was no longer quite so shy as I used to be, and I would ask girls to dance.  There were also ladies’ excuse me dances during which the girls would ask the boys to dance, or cut in during a dance and take someone else‘s partner.  There was one girl there who seemed to take a fancy to me, for she cut in several times when I was dancing.
            I was flattered, but not particularly attracted to the young lady so I did not date her.
            But I was one of a little group of boys and girls who became particularly friendly, and, as a group we would go out together of a week end, and ramble in the nearby countryside, beyond Enfield, or, perhaps to Epping Forest which we would reach by bus; none of us having cars in those days.
            Apart from myself and Dennis, the group included Sam Hawkings and Stan Cordell from my ATC squadron, my cousin, Gerard O’Sullivan, and his sisters, Pauline and Christine. We were all friendly with each other, but at that time none of us paired off into couples.
            I remember in particular one ramble that took us beyond Enfield into near countryside when we passed a country lane with a sign next to it reading ‘Trent Park Training College.’  From the road we could not see the college, but I remember thinking, if I were to ever try to become a teacher, that might be a nice place to train.
            Apart from Butlin’s Club activities, my chief form of entertainment was to visit the cinema, either the Empire or the Regal in Edmonton, or one of the three cinemas in Enfield Town.
            The Regal, which stood at the junction of Fore Street and Silver Street, was the largest and newest of the Edmonton cinemas.  It contained various facilities including a restaurant and a dance hall, and it was from a dance which I attended there with the Butlin’s group that I walked a girl home one night. 
            It was a long walk towards Tottenham, and when we reached her home. which was in a Conservative Club where her mother was the caretaker, I kissed her good night and left her to walk the long way back to St. Edmund’s Road.
            I realised that I did not find her particularly attractive and did not really know why I had been with her.  Poor girl! Now, over half a century later I cannot even remember her name, nor what she looked like.
            That year our group had a day out in London, not doing anything in particular, just wandering round in the West End, and having a meal in the huge Lyon’s in Coventry Street, which had not one, but several restaurants.
            This was a time of austerity. Rationing was still enforced, not just for food, but also for clothes and petrol, though as none of us were car owners the latter did not bother us much. I thought the Lyon’s restaurant was marvellous.  My tastes had not developed much at that time.  Today, I would probably think that it was rather tatty.
            The Government had introduced a limit on what an individual could spend in a restaurant, which was not a high figure, but we would have been too poor to have spent more even if that had been permitted.
            London had changed since I had visited it as a soldier.  There were fewer troops on the streets, and, particularly towards the City, lots of evidence of the wartime bombing; but the people in the streets seemed happy enough, and we certainly enjoyed that day.
            My sister Ruby and her husband, Archie were no longer living with us.  He had been demobbed early because he was an agricultural worker, and had obtained a job working in a plant nursery in Chelmsford.  The owner of the nursery, a Dutchman named Walmerdam, had given them tenancy of a small flat on the edge of Waltham Cross.
            Mum was pleased that they had moved out, for she did not get on well with her son-in-law, feeling that Ruby had lowered her standards by marrying a farm labourer.  That was totally wrong.  Archie was a wonderful man, and the perfect husband for Ruby.
            Archie, was not all that happy with his job, but when he started to look for other posts he was disturbed to find that to change jobs would mean to lose the flat, for it was, in effect, a tied residence which by law could only be lived in by an employee of Mr Walmerdam.
            Both he and Ruby were horrified by this, and it was not resolved until  Lady Chancellor, The wife of Sir Christopher Chancellor, the head of Reuters News Agency, who lived in Dane End, where Archie had lived before his army service, offered him a job in charge of the nursery in the village, with a cottage supplied with the job.
            They accepted the offer, and he was soon running the nursery, and they were living happily in a thatched roofed cottage in the village.
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            I think that it was in that year that I had a week’s holiday with my parents when we stayed at a bed and breakfast place in Eastbourne.  I thought Eastbourne a pleasant enough town, though I have no clear memories about that holiday, apart from the fact that in a second hand bookshop I purchased the complete works of William Shakespeare for the dizzyingly high price of six pence.
            By then I had decided that I would probably like to remain a civil servant, so I entered for the limited examination for established service which was chiefly designed for ex-servicemen.  I did not find it too difficult and was delighted to find that I had passed and was to be an established civil servant with the rank of clerical officer.
            There were no clerical officers in the Enfield tax office, so I knew that I would have to leave my post there and move to a ministry, perhaps in London.
            In fact I was posted to the Central Office of Information at its then headquarters in Baker Street.  That would mean paying the fare to and from London each day, but as Clerical Officers were paid more than Temporary Clerks Grade II, I thought that I could cope with the extra expense.
            Before I took up my new post I went with my parents on holiday to Cork, where my widowed grandmother was now living in the Irish equivalent of a council house in a Cork suburb.  It was more comfortable than the tenement where she had been living on our previous visit in 1939, and I think that this time, I even had a bed to sleep in.
            When we returned I spent my last few days in the Tax office, where one of my final tasks was to write a letter to Denny Lock, admonishing him for not replying to a previous communication from the Inspector of Taxes.  I did not wait for a reply to that letter, but, instead said my goodbyes to my colleagues in the office and left for the COI.
 
                                    CHAPTER TWO
When I first reported to the COI  I was placed in the registry, which I found was the usual destination for new clerical officers or clerical assistants.  The work consisted mainly of filing documents, and I think that I would have been bored silly if I had remained in that situation, but it was only to be a temporary post.
            Halfway through that first morning, two young colleagues got up and went to leave the room.  The section head turned to me and told me that I should go with them.
            We went to another office where my young companions were given notes entitling them to cheap meals in the canteen as they were under eighteen.
            Back in the registry I told the section head that I wasn’t entitled to a cheap meal.
            “Oh,” he said. “Then you will be leaving soon.”
            “Why?” I asked.
            “Well, you’ll probably be getting your call up papers soon, as you are old enough.”
            I explained that that was not going to happen as I had just served three years in the army.
            I suppose that I should have been flattered that he had thought that I was still in my teens, but instead I felt almost insulted.
            As a clerical officer, I was paid monthly.  As a temporary clerk I had been paid weekly.  My first pay arrived at the end of the month in the form of a cheque. To pay it in, I needed to open a bank account, so, in the lunch hour I crossed the road to the Midland Bank branch opposite, presented my cheque, started a bank account, and arranged that my salary would be paid into that branch in future, and received my first cheque book.   As I was then markedly short of cash, I made out my first cheque and withdrew most of the money that I had just paid in.
            I don’t know why, but I was terribly nervous entering that branch, feeling almost as if I was trespassing on hallowed ground.  That was quite ridiculous, but I think that I may have been the first member of my family to have a bank account.
            I did not stay long in the registry.  After a few weeks I was transferred to the coding section of the Social Survey Division.
            The Social Survey was a unique division in the Central Office of Information.  Most of the other divisions were engaged in handing out information: the Social Survey was engaged in collecting information from the public through opinion surveys.
            It was a closed knit group run by specialists.  The Social Survey had existed since the early days of the war, though at first it had not been part of the then Ministry of Information.
            The coding section consisted of twenty one executive officers, clerical officers, and clerical assistants.  It was presided over by a Miss Harris, and its task was to quantify the survey schedules as they were received. 
            Miss Harris was a very efficient boss, highly respected by us all.  She was a middle aged spinster whose boyfriend was Mr Grey, one of the senior survey research officers of the division.  She had an almost motherly attitude towards her staff, and at Christmas spent a considerable amount of her own money in buying each of us a Christmas present.  Her present to me on that first Christmas was a book of chess puzzles as she knew that I enjoyed chess.  What she did not know was that I could not abide chess puzzles, though I never told her that.
            My task for most of the time that I was in the coding section, was to work on the Health Index: a monthly survey that looked at the health of the nation and provided statistics, not just for the government, but also for the World Health Organisation.
            I was one of three clerical officers working on the Health Index.  The others were Bob, a cheerful, plump lad who hoped one day that he might become a professional singer; and Janet, a rather lovely girl from Devon, whose chief fault was that she knew that she was lovely and expected all the men to fall for her. Though, if they were foolish enough to do so, they wouldn‘t get very far, for she had a fiancé, a rugby playing executive officer who worked across the road in another COI division. Immediately in charge of us was a woman executive officer of about our own age, who was never bossy, and let us get on with our tasks without criticism. 
            It was quite a pleasant job, though not as intellectually demanding as the work I had had to undertake as a temporary clerk in the tax office.
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            However, work didn’t take up all of my time. I was a half hearted supporter of the Labour Government, I didn’t take an active part in local politics’ though I had joined the Labour Party.  However, I was very interested in international affairs.
            When I had been a soldier I had read a book, The Case for Federal Union, whose author had advocated the establishment of a federal union in Europe, with the existing national governments subservient to the federal authority.  That had seemed to me an excellent suggestion, which could do away with the prospect of a third European war.
            Now that I was no longer a soldier I had became interested in a contemporary movement, The Crusade for World Government, which had been set up, largely by a maverick Labour MP, whose name I have now forgotten. Whilst I had been working in the Tax Office, I had contacted The Crusade, and visited their office in London, and become so taken with the movement that I became their volunteer organiser for Edmonton. I even managed to get some of my friends interested in The Crusade, and together we had leaflets printed and delivered them in St. Edmund’s Road, and adjacent streets. Now looking back at that time, I think we were incredibly naive, particularly as the full name of the organisation was, I think,’ The Crusade for World Government by 1955’.
            Yet, at that time it did not seem such a mad idea.  I remember that I attended a packed meeting it had organised in London that was addressed by various nationally known enthusiasts including the philosopher, Betrund Russell, whose History of Western Philosophy I had borrowed from the Public Library, and had, with some difficulty read through to its end. He made an impassioned speech in which he said that without World Government, nuclear war would lead to a situation in which the only humans left alive would be in Patagonia. Happily, it seems today that he was wrong. Personally, the only lasting effect of my interest in World Government was my discovery of The Guardian, or, as it still was then, The Manchester Guardian.
            My discovery of The Times whilst I had been studying for the Forces Preliminary Examination had opened my eyes to the deficiency in the paper that Pop took, The Daily Express.  As a civilian I looked for a newspaper more demanding, and, for a while took The Daily Telegraph, which was intellectually more demanding than The Express, but politically was so right wing that I found reading its comments almost painful.
            An American volunteer in the Crusade office introduced me to The Guardian and also to The Observer on Sunday, and I began subscribing to both those newspapers and continued to read them for the next sixty years.
 
                                    CHAPTER THREE
I was still very conscious of my lack of education, and I learnt of the existence of Morley College, an adult education establishment in Lambeth, so I went there to find what they had to offer me.
            Morley College was a fairly modern building in the Lambeth Road, on the opposite side of the road to St George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. I thought I would like to enrol in the Theatre School, but as they were not enrolling students until the next term, instead I enrolled for a short philosophy course.
            Before I attended that course I went on holiday with my Butlin’s club friends to the Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness.
            The camp had much in common with an army camp.  Accommodation was provided in huts,  and the dining hall was another very large hut.  Other features were almost military, there was a wake up call broadcast all over the camp from loudspeakers, and other calls announcing meal times.
            Despite those features I enjoyed the week.  One great thing about the camp was that once you had paid for it, pretty well everything was free.  Entertainment was provided by professional companies, some of them quite famous.  There were stage performances every evening, and dances and sporting activities provided daily.  Camp staff, known as redcoats, chivied us to take part in everything.
            Two activities which were not free were horse riding and flights from a flying field at the camp; but as the costs were not high, I sampled both.
            The flight was in a single engined monoplane, which carried about four passengers, was from the camp, over the town, a little way out to sea, and then back to the field.  It took, perhaps, twenty minutes.
            My horse riding was not very successful.  We were introduced to our steeds, and helped to get on to the saddles, and then we were lead from the stables into a field.  An instructor told us how to control the horse, and then we were supposed to ride around the field.  My horse, which had taken me to the field, then refused to move any further.  I shouted at it, dug my heels into his flanks, but as I was not wearing spurs he didn’t seem to notice, and still stood still.
            The instructor came to me, asked me to get down, climbed into the saddle, and proceeded to gallop the horse around the field.   Then he let me mount the horse again and told me that it would now obey me.   It did not.  I sat in solitary humiliation on the beast until the other riders made to go back to the stables at the end of the hour.  At once my horse followed them to its home.
            Most of the ‘campers’ were young people, and our group became friendly with a young man who was the son of a yeoman warder and lived with his family in the Tower of London, and told us stories of the ghosts in the Tower in which he firmly believed.
            We also became friendly with some girls, one of whom, a girl from March in Cambridgeshire, paired up with one of our group for a while, and then, without any positive action on my part, turned her attention to me, and was with me for the rest of the week.  My friend whom she had abandoned, didn’t seem to mind overmuch.
            I found her very attractive, and enjoyed kissing her, which I did rather a lot, and at the end of the week we had exchanged addresses and agreed to keep in touch.
            When the week ended I did subsequently visit her at her home in March, and again we kissed a lot, though I had the impression that she would have welcomed more intimate sexual contact, but I was still a shy Catholic virgin and did not satisfy her in that way; so after that we lost touch.
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            I enjoyed the short philosophy taster at Morley College, but though the tutor hoped I would enrol for a longer course, I did not.  Instead I enrolled in the theatre school.
            The director of the theatre school was Rupert Doone, a former ballet dancer who had been the director of the pre-war Group Theatre in London.
            He taught the movement class which took place on a Friday evening, and also the improvisation session on Saturday afternoon.
            There were two other tutors; one of them was Archie Harradine, who took the play reading class.  He was a splendid mime with a great understanding of drama, but as he had a crippling stammer he could not perform in a conventional play; though he could sing, despite his stammer, and was one of the regular performers in the Victorian music hall sessions in the Players Theatre.
            The play reading class was held on another evening during the week.
            The other tutor took the singing class which was held on Friday evenings before the movement class began.
            I believe that the theatre school did much to repair the gaps in my education.  For a start, in the play reading sessions we read several of Shakespeare’s plays and I discovered that I understood the texts and enjoyed reading them.  We also read other plays, in particular a play from the early part of the century by James Elroy Flecker, Hassan, which made a considerable impression on me, particularly the ending when Hassan, the tailor, is about to start a pilgrimage to Samarkand, and we hear the pilgrims singing,
             “We take the Golden road to Samarkand, to Samarkand”. 
Those lines have remained with me, and given me a desire to go to Uzbekistan, and see Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent.  Though, as I am now 85, I doubt if I will do so.
            The pupils of the School were all keen aspiring actors and actresses, many of the men ex-servicemen like myself.   Most of them were office workers or teachers and tended to have middle class backgrounds.
            My cousin Gerard who had enrolled along with me and I were two of the only students from the working class; but I did not feel out of place there, even though my accent then was very cockney.  That was something of which I was not aware until Rupert Doone pointed it out to me.
            He contrasted my accent with that of Patrick Dromgoole, another student who had been to Dulwich College, and suggested that my speech would improve if I spoke a little like him, and that his would improve if he spoke a little like me.
            I don’t think either of us deliberately tried to follow his advice, though in time my cockney accent did seem to change, but Patrick and I became close friends, despite my remark to him when I discovered his occupation.
            “You’re a bank clerk, then?” I said.
            “I’m not a fucking bank clerk,” he replied.
            “I’m a gentleman of the Bank of England.”
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            The school put on a play at Christmas, it was ‘Christmas in the Market Place by Henri Gheon.  It was directed by Archie Harradine, and My cousin Gerard and I were cast in the play, though not in speaking parts.  I played the front end of the donkey that carried the Virgin Mary, and Gerard the rear end.  Actually I was heard in the performance, for at one point I had to bray like a donkey. The costume consisted of a head and body and separate donkey legs.  I would stand upright, and Gerard would crouch down and grasp me round my waist as the body costume was draped against us.
            It was not particularly dignified, but I enjoyed the performances, though I did not enjoy it when, before we had to go on and already wearing the donkey costume, Gerard lit a cigarette which he smoked before our entrance.
            After the performance we went to a party in the house that Rupert Doone shared with his partner, Robert Medley, the painter.  I remember Gerard and I standing drinking with Robert Medley, and when Gerard said “Cheers,”  
            Medley replied, “That’s the first time that I have been toasted by the ass end of a donkey.”
            The Friday classes were not held in the college building, but in a school not far from The Elephant and Castle where we were watched to make sure that we did not misbehave by the caretaker, who became quite friendly with us.
            He was a war hero, having won the Victoria Cross when he was a sergeant major.  He told us that he was worried about his son, who was a communist and standing for election.  He was praying that his son did not win a seat.
            After the classes a group of us including Gerard and Pat Dromgool would go to a nearby café where we would drink coffee or tea, perhaps eat buns and talk and talk, usually about the theatre, but sometimes about books.
            One topic of conversation was T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, whose memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, had been read by several of the group.
            One girl spoke gushingly about the descriptions of the desert, “It’s so vivid.  You can almost feel that you are there.”
            I replied, “Well I couldn’t.  And I have actually been there.”
            I don’t think that shut her up.
            Perhaps the most useful session at the Theatre School was the Saturday afternoon improvisation class conducted by Rupert Doone, for it allowed the students to develop their acting skills.
            On one Sunday afternoon following a rehearsal several of us were sitting in a café where for no particular reason we began a conversation in mock Chekovian dialogue.  One of our number, who didn’t contribute much of the dialogue took to writing it down and then read it to us.
            From that came a Chekovian skit, The Raspberry Plantation which we performed before Rupert in an improvisation class.
            I played a soldier, and had contributed at least two of the pieces of dialogue in the café which appeared in the final version.
            Following a plea that we effete Russian nobles must go to work, I had said: “I cannot work, I am a soldier.”
            My second contribution produced the following exchange:
            “My regiment is being moved to Dneipervertraniskost.”
            “Then you are leaving too?”
            “No. It is only the next village.”
            A second skit in mock Shakespearean verse was written by Pat Dromgoole with me as the main character.  He called it, The tragical history of Alfstus the ASM.
            I can still remember some of the lines.
             The skit began with the great director sitting enthroned with the prostrate body of a stage manager lying on the floor and providing him with a footstool.
            Alfstus approaches and the following lines ensue:
            “What needs thou?”
            “To act, to Stanislav,
            To have rich Thespis with unerring power
            Enthuse this errant form with power and grace
                    And drive this cursed repression from my limbs:
            That when enthusing in Shakespearean verse,
            Smiling with Coward,
            Or my mind enflamed with
                        Raging passions born of Ibsen’s pen,
            Or when Hiburnian Casey has revoked with
                        Guns and politics my body’s peace;
            Then all these thoughts and moods within my brain
                        Shall be transmitted to an outward show,
            And gazing on me, men shall cry aloud, ‘We have seen Alfstus,
                                    Art can boast no more.’”
 
            I think Pat had written a clever parody; but we never had the nerve to present it before the real great director, Rupert Doone, in an improvisation session.
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            Morley College Theatre School provided me with my first real girl friend, a fellow student, Jean Sutherland, who lived in Dulwich and was the daughter of a Scotsman who was a constable in the Metropolitan Police.
            We were together for nearly two years.   I would usually meet her in Central London, which was about halfway from her home in Dulwich, and Edmonton where I lived. We usually arranged to meet in the booking hall of Leicester Square underground station, and from there, perhaps go to see a film, or to the theatre, usually the gallery of the Old Vic.
            She was a lovely girl, though not very punctual.  I would arrive at the station on time, but she never did.  Sometimes I had to wait an hour before she turned up, and once, two hours.   I always waited because she had told me that she would always turn up if she had agreed to meet me that day, though when she was two hours late, I nearly didn’t wait.
            Perhaps she was trying to tell me that we should stop seeing each other.
            On one occasion, with other Morley College friends, we met on the banks of the Thames where we had arranged to take punts on the river.   I had never been on a punt, but happily these punts did not have long poles, but simple paddles so they were not difficult to navigate.
            Jean and I took our punt a little way up stream, and, when we were out of sight of the others, moored to the bank, disembarked, and finding a suitable place, sat on the grass and kissed and cuddled.  I had now learnt to go rather further than just kiss, and would get my hand under her blouse and bra and fondle her breasts. The first time that I did that, I felt that I had become a mortal sinner, but Jean did not seem to mind.
            However, on this occasion both the kissing and groping came to a sudden stop, for we both discovered that we were sitting on a colony of ants, which were running all over us. We got up immediately and spent some time brushing the tiny invaders from our bodies.
            Jean ceased to be my girl friend  when towards the end of the Theatre School course she became a student at a teachers’ college some way away.  We did keep in touch, but the spark had gone, and, before long she had succumbed to extreme Protestant Christianity which she caught from a college roommate. I think after that we met just once during her vacation from college when I could see that she was no longer interested in me.
            Evan before that break we had had our differences.  At the Friday movement class I had impressed another student with my movement and agility, and she had suggested that we pair up and try to become cabaret dancers together, and that as a first step we should enrol together in a ballroom dancing class.
            I liked the idea very much and I agreed, I imagined the two of us dancing to a version of Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance which I had choreographed; but Jean, when she heard about it, was very upset because she thought that the girl was using this as a device to get me to be her boy friend. To tell the truth, I rather thought that too; but Jean and I were wrong.  My new partner was not interested in me sexually, but only in my potential as a cabaret dancing partner.
            Together we attended a number of ballroom dancing classes, and also had a session skating in an ice rink, but then my partner became totally interested in ballroom dancing and didn’t seem keen to go on to developing a cabaret style, so we fell out, and the association ended: much, I think, to the delight of Jean.
            By now I had become very keen on the stage and decided that I wanted to be a professional actor; but, apart from appearing as the front half of a donkey, Morley College had so far not enabled me to appear on a stage, so I joined an amateur theatre company in, I think, Wood Green, the North London Theatre Club.  With them I appeared in two plays.  The first was Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, in which I played Roland Maul, an inept young playwright.   It was my first appearance in a real role on a real stage, albeit an amateur one, and I conducted myself with sufficient aplomb to get a rather favourable review in a local paper in which the reviewer wrote, “Alfred Baker, as Roland Maul acted with great verve and abandon.”  At least I thought it was a favourable review, but I could have been wrong about that
            One of my colleagues from the COI came to see the production and later told me that our director had been with him in the army, but had used a spectacular devise to obtain his discharge.  He had studied sleep walking, and had sleep walked constantly in the barracks, even when he was on guard, leaving his post and walking around the barracks as if he were asleep.  This had worked so well, that after he had been put on a charge for dereliction of duty, he was examined by military psychologists, who decided that he really was sleep walking and he was discharged.
            The second play in which I acted with the company was called, I think, Summer in December, in which I played a newly married young man, for which I did not get any favourable reviews.
            Shortly after that I left that company and concentrated on the Theatre School which was about to produce more weighty plays.  Rupert Doon had arranged that the School should put on a production every year on and around Shakespeare’s birthday in the courtyard of the George Inn in Southwark, which had existed in Shakespeare’s day.
            The production that first  year was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I did not have a speaking part, instead I was cast as a soldier, appearing, holding a spear in some of the court scenes.  However, I was given a sort of consolation prize.  After seeing a performance I gave in the Saturday improvisation class, Rupert asked me to understudy Puck, so I learnt all the lines and watched the real Puck very carefully.  Perhaps, fortunately, I never had to perform the part, for the real Puck used to perform a cartwheel during his performance, and try as I might, I never managed to perform a cartwheel, so had I had to perform as Puck, the audience would have had to be satisfied with a clumsy somersalt.
            I was spending so many evenings in London, that getting home after a late theatre performance was sometimes rather difficult, as having seen Jean back to her home in Dulwich, it was often so late that it was well after midnight when I boarded the Piccadilly line train to take me back to Finsbury Park or Manor House Station, and by the time that I left the underground, buses back to Edmonton were few and far between.
            I remember taking her to a farce, One Wild Oat, on the night when my sister Ruby was in hospital giving birth to her first son,  and when on my journey home after the performance I nearly had to walk from Manor House I hardly thought about my sister. Later I was delighted to learn that she and my new nephew, Billy, were well.
            However, when I learnt of the existence of a club for ex-servicemen. The Victory Club in the Edgware Road, that provided overnight accommodation, I joined it, and made use of the club’s facilities several times during the next few years.
 
 
 
                                    CHAPTER FOUR
            My parents thought it was time for a change of house, and discovering that the county council was building houses outside Edmonton; applied for one, and soon we were leaving St. Edmund’s Road and moving to a brand new house in Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire. The house had only two bedrooms, so it would not have been suitable if Ruby had still lived with us, but for the three of us it was fine.
            Of course, it meant longer journeys to work for both Pop and myself, but that was not a really great hardship.  The main road and the bus stop were less than five minutes walk from our new address; and the longer journey gave me even more time to read.  I had recently borrowed from the St. Marylebone Library, John Drinkwater’s Outline of Literature, and, from it had compiled a long list of books that I thought I should read.
            I then spent many Saturday afternoons after work in Foyle’s Bookshop in Charring Cross Road, purchasing second hand books from my list.  I had begun with classical works in translation, the extent plays of the Greek playwrights, and, chiefly on the bus, I had read all the plays of Sophocles, Aeschales, Euripodes, and Aristophanes. I had been particularly impressed by The Agamemnon, and can still remember the opening lines.
 
            I pray the gods a respite from these toils,
            This Long night’s watch
            That dog like I have spent
            High on the Atridian battlements,
            Beholding the Nightly counsel of the stars
            The circling of the celestial signs
            And those bright regents
            High swung in ether,
            That bring mortal men
            Summer and winter.
            And thus I serve her hopes,
            The Masculine minded,
            Who is sovereign here....
 
It was, I think, in a Victorian translation, but I liked it much more than a version that I read in a more modern translation many years later.
            I also read Homer‘s Iliad, and Plato’s dialogues of Socrates, and then got on to the Bible, though, as a Catholic I did not read the King James Bible, but instead read the Catholic, Douai translation which though dogmatically sound was, as literature, far below the King James.
            I felt a trifle embarrassed to be seen reading the Bible on the bus, and wondered whether people would think that I was some kind of religious nut.
            The Bible took so long to read, that when I had finished it I abandoned literature on my journeys, but instead took to reading my daily Guardian.
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            I don’t know whether it was because of my bible study, but I suddenly found myself bothered by severe doubts about my faith.  They bothered me so much that I went to the parish priest to discuss them with him.
            I can’t remember what he said to allay those doubt, but what he did do that caused a change in my immediate life, was to persuade me to join the church choir.
            From then on, every Sunday I would arrive early, climb the steps to the choir loft and join the other singers.  I was one of three tenors; though only one of us was a really capable singer.  The other one was at the same level as me; able to follow the accomplished tenor, but, like me, almost lost on the few occasions when he had not turned up.
            When I reached the choir loft, I would look to see if our mentor was there, and if he was not, be tempted to leave at once; though I never actually did that.
            What made my problem greater was the fact that the choir was under the control of the assistant priest, who worked to raise its standards.  He disliked the music of the rather wishy washy masses composed by 19th century British composers.   He wanted, and got, more demanding fare: in particular Mass Quinta Toni by the Flemish composer, Orlande de Lassus, in which the tenor part contained long sections in which we had to sing high A.
            I suppose the effort was good for me as to keep up was such a struggle that I more or less forgot the doubts that had lead me to the choir in the first place.
            We became part of a vast choir which sang in Wembley Stadium at a Catholic rally there.  On that day Wembley was packed with Catholics, though, although there was press coverage, it did not seem to have the impact of the Protestant Billy Graham’s recent evangelical tour.
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            I went to see an amateur production of Of Mice and Men, and was very impressed by it, and joined the company, The Enfield People’s Theatre Group, which, despite its name was not, as many local people thought, Communist.  Indeed I discovered that many of its members were young Conservatives.
            The Enfield Labour Party had built a hall in Ponders End, and, being impressed by the People’s Theatre Group, allowed it to use the hall on condition that it put on a play there every month.
            The group accepted that condition, which proved to be a great mistake.  They just did not have the membership nor the resources to keep to a play a month, though they certainly tried, and managed it for several months, but before the year was up realised that they just could not keep up the schedule.
            However, before we moved into that white elephant theatre I took a part in Shaw’s Arms and the Man.  I played the male lead, Captain Blunshli, in a performance in a park.
            That production was repeated and became the second play performed in the new Labour Party Hall.  I was also in the first production, which was a new play set just after the war with the main characters three soldiers, returning from action and determined to set the world, or at least England, to rights.  I played one of the soldiers, but the play made so little impression on me that I have now forgotten its title, or who wrote it.
            I was in several more of those monthly productions, though, in view of the relatively small size of the company, that was not surprising as most other acting members also got lots of parts.
            I played the centurion and the editor in Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion, Dr Rank in Ibson’s A Doll’s House, the hero, Sai Ping Kwey in the allegedly Chinese play, Lady Precious Stream, and a returning soldier in The Holly and the Ivy.  Apart from Dr Rank, all the parts had military connections, a fact that was commented on unfavourably by the reviewer in the local paper.
            I was still an active student at the theatre school, and worked back stage in the next Christmas production which was a pantomime, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by the Victorian writer, James Planché,  Pat Dromgoole was the stage manager, and I was his assistant.  
            In one of the early scenes, the whole court stood toasting the baby princess.  As soon as the scene ended, Pat and I would rush on stage. There were lots of half empty glasses of cider, which was used as a substitute for champagne, and Pat and I would grab the glasses and drink what was left before preparing the set for the next scene.
            The drinks were the only perks of the job, but we stopped doing that one night when they tasted quite disgusting.  Some glasses had been knocked over before the scene began, and the prompter who sat on the other side of the stage, had topped them up by putting tea, which he had been drinking, on top of the remaining cider.
            That summer the Morley College production at the George Inn was Loves Labours Lost.  But once again I did not have a speaking part, but played one of two blackamore servants.  The other blackamore did not need to blacken his face as he was a brown skinned Indian.
            I now found another amateur theatre group to join, The Montview Theatre Club in Hornsey.  To join I had to have an audition, but was accepted.  After that there were no future auditions, but one just sat at home waiting for a casting letter.   Mine came fairly quickly. I was offered the part of Rosen, a Jewish art dealer, in The Late Christopher Bean, which was a strange piece of casting, because I am not Jewish, but the director was, as were several other members of the club. Nevertheless, I received one of the only two favourable comments in the review of the play.
            The Mountview Club was amateur, yet its organisation was almost professional. I am told that at a play a fortnight it did more performances than any other amateur company in the world.
            The next play in which I appeared was Terrance Rattigan’s, The Winslow Boy, in which I played Desmond Curry, the family solicitor and former England cricketer, who is hopelessly in love with the daughter of the family.         
            Then I was asked to attend another audition to find if I could cope with an American accent.  When they found that I could, I was cast in two American plays; The Man, and All my Sons, by Arthur Miller.
            Considerably later I played the Lion in Andre Obey’s Noah, and had a non-singing part in a musical, That’s a Good Girl.
            Peter Coxhead, the founder of the club, later founded the professional Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, using the same building and theatre.   It became a highly successful theatre school, but in 1970 Coxhead, long after I had ceased acting with it, decided that there was no room for the Theatre Club, so it was turfed out. 
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            During all these dramatic activities, I was still working in the Social Survey, though no longer on the Health Index.   A survey had begun on the attitude of coal miners, which was partly funded by an American organisation, and one of their researchers, a Mr Deitz had been in Nottingham investigating work in the coal mines in that area. Miss Harris sent Bob and me to Nottingham to help with the sampling for the survey.  We stayed in the house of one of the Social Survey Interviewers, and each day would be driven to a coal mine where we would draw up the sample of miners to be interviewed.
            We began to notice that as we approached a mine, the winding machinery would be in operation, and a cage would be descending into the mine.   When we got there we would always be told that we could not see the manager as he had just gone down in to the mine.
            This happened so often, that we realised that it was deliberate.  Mr Deitz had been there before us, and had made such a bad impression on the managers that seeing our car approaching they had descended into the mine to avoid him.
            We spent several days in the Nottingham area, and when we returned Miss Harris was so pleased with our work, that she said that we could have an extra days pay as a reward.
            That worried me enormously, as I did not think that we were entitled to extra pay, though there was no way that we could refuse it.  However, I eased my conscience by purchasing savings certificates to the exact value of one day’s pay and then destroying them.  In that way the money that I believed that I had illegally received would be returned to the treasury.
            I was a sanctimonious idiot in those days.
            I had one further trip north on behalf of the Social Survey.  Miss Harris sent me and one of the executive officers to Glasgow to help in the regional office where they were short handed because of a flue epidemic.
            A survey was being carried out, of the opinions of council house tenants of their housing.  I worked in the office for a few days, and during that time I was introduced to one of the male interviewers who called in for instructions.
            After he had left I mentioned his name to Peggy, the executive officer who had accompanied me from London.  She screamed in surprise and asked me why I had not called her in to meet him as she was a keen football fan.  It seems that the interviewer was a famous football player, the captain of Glasgow Celtic football team.
            In those days, footballers were not  millionaires.  They were working men, and were paid a working man’s wage by their clubs, and many of them looked for additional employment to top up their wages.  The Celtic captain was not the only member of his team working as a social survey interviewer.  I never learnt whether any of their rivals in the Glasgow Rangers were also interviewers.
            The flue epidemic meant that we were also short of interviewers, so one day, despite the fact that I was a working class lad with a cockney accent, I was sent out as a temporary interviewer.
            I coped with interviewing quite well, though I think with my appearance and dress I must have stood out in the Glasgow council estates.  On one occasion when I stopped to ask for directions, the man that I approached turned and rushed away.  I think he may have been a bookmaker’s runner, who thought that I was a plain clothed policeman, for collecting bets on the street was illegal.
            After a few days, I was sent to Edinburgh, my first visit to that wonderful city, though I did not think it wonderful, because it was cold and I was lonely and staying in a YMCA Hostel.
            I think I arrived on a Friday afternoon, and began interviewing on Saturday.   I was told that I must not interview on Sunday, as that would be against Scottish sabbatical morays, but after I had been to mass, there seemed little else to do.  All the cinemas and theatres were closed on the Sabbath, so the only way I could fill the long hours of that day was to attend a talk on NATO, which was not thought to be breaking the Sabbath.
            I continued working in Edinburgh for a few more days until the interviewing was finished and then returned home.
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            At around this time my sister, Ruby was pregnant again, and when it was near the time that the baby would be born, my parents decided that it would be better if she did not have to care for her son Billy during the final stages of the pregnancy.
            She and Archie agreed, and little Billy, who was then around five, came to live with us for a while.
            He was not real trouble, and we let him sleep in a second bed in my room.
            At the weekend I took him to London and we boarded a river boat at Westminster Pier and went down stream to Greenwich, where we disembarked and looked at the Cutty Sark that was moored there.
            He was probably a little young to enjoy seeing the ship, but he didn’t complain and I bought him ice cream, and on the return trip a soft drink.
            I was pleased to be an uncle, but that night I heard him crying when he was in bed.
            “What’ wrong, Billy,” I asked.
            He stopped sobbing for a moment then, whispered, “Oh uncle.  I do miss Mummy.”
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            My association with Jean Sutherland had long ceased and for a while I took out one of the girls of the coding section, Mildred, but after a fairly short time we drifted apart.
            Through me, Pat Dromgoole, who had left his Bank of England post in order to study for Oxford University entrance, became a part time social survey interviewer, as did two or three other theatre school students.
            Very soon I left the coding section, as I had been transferred to the Social Survey Library as assistant to the librarian, a formidable lady, who insisted that I learn to touch-type, which I could already do to some extent, so, to that end, my mornings in the Library would always begin with me working through a touch-typing manual, until I had reached a reasonable speed and proficiency.
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            Now it was 1951 and the Festival of Britain was upon us.  Despite the sneers of the right-wing press, it was a joyous time for many people.   The Festival Site on the South Bank with its modern construction including the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon was very popular.  I visited it within the first week or so of it opening, and felt that I was in a city of the future.
            Further along the Thames at Battersea were the Festival Gardens, which included a fun fair, an open air theatre and various other attractions.
            I took part in the Festival by becoming an acting member of The Taverners, a company funded by the brewery industry which acted in pubs. For the Festival the Taverners were organised into nine companies which took Twelfth Night to various parts of Britain.  I played Antonio in a tour which took us to a hotel in Alderley Edge in Cheshire and performances in public houses in South Manchester and Liverpool.
            It was a very enjoyable week and my only mishap was to fall over on stage one evening.  I quickly picked myself up, and as one of my next lines was, “I do not without danger, walk this street.” I expected to get a roar of laughter with that line, but that did not happen.
            This was the eighth or ninth tour of the play, and as each tour had the same director, stage manager and prompter, the latter by then knew every line of the play by heart and prompted without looking at the script.
            In each pub the stage was not a real stage, but simply a clear area in the centre or the front of the public or the saloon bar. There were never any changing rooms, and we would put on our costumes at our hotel before leaving by coach for the performance.  When we were not actually performing on stage, we would stand to one side, and, invariably would be handed drinks by appreciative customers, and this happened so often that it was a minor miracle that the prompter did not have to prompt very much.
            During the rehearsals the actor cast as the sea captain and the priest had to withdraw because he had changed his job, and his new employer refused to give him time off to go on the tour.   It was, by then, only about two weeks before the tour and the director asked us all to try and find someone to play those two very small parts.
            I managed to get a fellow member of the Enfield People’s Theatre Group to step in.  He liked the idea of a free acting holiday, though he did not enjoy the thought of being in Shakespeare, which he believed to be wordy rubbish.
            How wrong that proved to be.   By the end of the tour he had become so enthusiastic about Shakespeare that he went to every production he could find in London and in at least one case went to the same play several times.
            When the tour ended I was asked if I would like to be a member of the Taverner’s regular company. I was very tempted, but I had to decline.  Before the tour began we had performed as a regular Taverner company in London: meeting first at their headquarters in Westminster, then, in costume being taken by coach to a pub in a southern suburb; performing, and then being taken back to Westminster.   After that it was well after midnight when I got back to Waltham Cross.   Taverner London performances could be as many as twenty six, and to do that sort of thing for twenty-six or more nights would have been killing.
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            By now my course at the Theatre School had ended, but I managed to persuade Rupert Doone to let me enrol for a further course.  He had already begun rehearsing a professional production for the London Group Theatre which he had run before the war and had now resurrected.
            He was directing a production of Jean Paul Satre’s play, The Flies, with professional actors in the leading parts and Morley College students as extras.  He asked me if I would be prepared to help back stage.  Of course, I agreed.
            I arrived at Morley College one Sunday afternoon for a rehearsal a week or so before the performance was to be staged. 
            When I walked into the Holst Room where the rehearsal was to take place I was very impressed: two well known actors, David King-Wood and Abraham Sofaer were there, and a well known actress, Yvonne Mitchell, who I had seen in the Old Vic production of A Month in the Country, at the New Theatre soon after I left the army, and who I had half fallen in love with. There were also several Theatre School students on the stage, but I hardly noticed them.
            On the centre of the stage was an effigy of the dead Agamemnon, which Abraham Sofaer, who was playing the god Zeus, was addressing when I walked in.
            When Abraham Sofaer had finished speaking, Rupert turned to me, pointed to the effigy, and said: “Get in there, Alfred.”
            Which I promptly did.
            The effigy was hollow inside, with a hole into which I had to insert my right arm, and when I had done so I was handed a sceptre and told that when I heard the words, “I’ll silence that foolish girl’s tongue,” from Zeus, I was to raise the arm and sceptre.   With my other, concealed hand I was to pull a lever which would cause the effigy’s eyes to open.
            I learned from Rupert Doone that that was to be my main task when the single performance of the play was staged in the New Theatre  though when I was not encased in the effigy I was also to be the call boy.
            The performance was on a Sunday.  It was quite thrilling to enter the New Theatre by the stage door.
            For the scene with the effigy I wore a jacket with a sleeve that might have been worn by a king.  I climbed into the effigy before it began and stood there waiting for the cue.  When it came I raised my arm with the sceptre and opened the eyes and, as instructed lowered the arm and closed the eyes after a few minutes.
            Then the stage emptied apart from Abraham Sofaer as Zeus and Yvonne Mitchell as Antigone.   There followed long passages of brilliantly acted dialogue until at last the curtain closed as the scene ended.
            By then I was sweating profusely.  I staggered out of the effigy, but then Yvonne Mitchell turned to me and said, “How do you feel, Darling?  I was worried about you stuck in that effigy all through the scene.”
            I didn’t reply, but I was overjoyed.
            I don’t think she spoke to me again that day; but some years later I was walking along the Charing Cross Road with a girl friend, when Miss Mitchell walked past, and glanced at me and looked rather puzzled as if she was trying to remember where she had seen me before.
            I did not enlighten her.
            For the next George Inn production, Rupert Doone abandoned Shakespeare, directing instead Christopher Marlow’s Dr Faustus, in which I had a small non-speaking part as a priest in the Vatican.
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            I think it was that year that I had the first of many boating holidays.   With Peter Feak, another theatre school student, and his brother, I hired a motor cruiser and had a week on the Thames, cruising up to Oxford and back
            It was on our way back that we came upon another motor cruiser stuck on a bank.  They seemed in need of help, so we swam across to them, took a rope from them tied it to our boat and pulled them off. 
            We stayed with the rescued boat for the remainder of the week.  They were a family party, father, mother, and daughter of about my age.  The father was a violinist in one of the London orchestras.  The daughter who was rather attractive was also musical, working in a secretarial capacity at the BBC.  
            When the holiday was over I went with her to a piano recital that she was attending to give an assessment of the performer for her boss.  I was rather out of my depth at that time, as I had no experience of classical music.  I think the young lady realised that, and we didn’t see each other again.
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            That Christmas the Theatre School production was The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly, directed by Archie Harradine with the leading part of ‘De Lawd’ being played by a particularly talented student, Leonard Fenton, who went on to the professional stage and later became nationally famous when he played the doctor in the opening performances of the soap, East Enders. 
            Apart from Leonard, most of the cast played several parts, as I did. My chief part was Abraham, in heaven with Isaac and Jacob after they had died. We all had black faces and hands, but for that part I had to cover my black hair with white powder to simulate great age.   As a few minutes after that scene I had to appear as a young man in a night club, I had to hide the white powder with copious black powder to return my hair to its normal colour. Unfortunately, after the first night performance, though I removed the black make up from my face and hands, I forgot the black powder on my head, and next morning after I rose,  Mum was furious to find huge black stains on my pillow.
            The April George Inn production was The Comedy of Errors, which was set in Edwardian times with appropriate costumes with the Duke as a Turkish pasha wearing a smart suit and a fez.
            The play began with a market scene with various street characters including a dirty postcard salesman and a street photographer: a part which I played.  I also had a small speaking part as a servant who rushes on to tell his mistress about the mad behaviour of his master and his master’s servant, Dromio.
            I may still have had my cockney accent, but that would have been an advantage in that part.
            I now made several visits to the theatre, usually to the Old Vic where I would queue to get in the gallery, but also to the Player’s Theatre which was situated underneath Charing Cross Station, where Victorian style music halls were the normal fare. I usually went there with Peter Feak who had become a member, and also with Pat Dromgoole. 
            We had learnt about the place from the Theatre School teacher, Archie Harradine, who regularly performed there.
            It was a lively place with a chairman, and banter between the chairman and the audience.  We usually sat drinking pints of beer and cheering Archie if he was performing, but also cheering the other regulars including Clive Dunn, Hattie Jaques, Joan Sterndale Bennet, and Daphne Anderson.
            It was about this time that I discovered foreign language films.  There were several London cinemas which specialised in them including The Academy, Studio One, the Continental and The Curzon. In them I saw some great Italian films Vitorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D; and Domini é troppo tardi, in which was a young actress, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, with whom I immediately fell in love, which was something that I tended to do with pretty film actresses in those days.  Later Hollywood discovered her, and to the wider screen audience she dropped the first part of her name and became Pier Angeli.  I also saw Fellini’s masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, and his La Strada, which I enjoyed even more.
            I think the first French film that I saw was Le Dernier Millionnaire, which contained a scene in which some one tries to commit suicide in a casino, but the gun is taken from him and thrown on to a roulette table, on to a number which comes up, and immediately five or six other guns are given as the winnings. Not all the French films that I saw were that amusing, though I enjoyed the films of Fernandel, particularly The Little World of Don Camillo, and also Jaques Tati’s jour de fete, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, and Mon Oncle. I also saw more serious French films, particularly les enfants du paradis and the poetic la belle et la bette: but I did not enjoy the highly praised Last Year in Mariabad, which was so soporific that I only stayed awake by counting the windows in the vast hotel.
            I also enjoyed Igmar Bergman’s Swedish film, The Seventh                                                Seal, and the Japanese, Rashomon.
            I regularly attended two theatre clubs which I had joined, chiefly because they were the only professional theatres in which performances could be seen on Sundays.  The first was the Arts Theatre, where I saw some splendid productions; in particular Stringberg’s play, The Father, in which the leading part was played by Wilfred Lawson who was returning to the stage after being absent for some time because of alcoholism.  He gave a powerful performance.  The other great production which I saw at the Arts Theatre, was Shaw’s, Saint Joan, with the magnificent Irish actress, Siobhán Mckenna, playing Joan, before it transferred to a West End Theatre.  That was a superb performance.
            The other theatre club was the Bolton’s in Kensington which had been started by the film star, Douglas Fairbanks Junior. It was not as prestigious as the Arts, but I saw some good productions there; in particular a play, the title of which I cannot recall, by the blacklisted Left Wing American writer, Dalton Trumbo. Another very good production that I saw there was an adaptation of a story by Henry James.
            I had bought two tickets for a Sunday production of this play, but for some reason my then girl friend could not attend. So that afternoon, at a rehearsal at Morley College I asked various friends if they could use the other ticket none could: so, in desperation I turned to someone who was not a friend, Bill Scott, who was almost infamous in the Theatre School for the scathing, biting criticisms he would sometimes make of other students’ performances. He agreed to take the ticket and went with me to the performance.
            In the course of that afternoon and evening, I totally revised my opinion of Bill and he became one of my best friends.  He too was a Catholic, and had for a while intended to be a priest and as a teenager had been a student at the Catholic seminary near Ware.  However, by the time he was eighteen he had decided that he did not have a vocation and had left.
            He was from a military family; his father was a sergeant in the Scot’s Guards, and he would have liked to have gone into the forces, but he was turned down because of ear trouble, and instead went to work in an insurance office.
            He had also been in one of the Taverner Twelfth Night productions, playing Antonio, and wearing the costume that I was to subsequently wear in my own performance of that part.
 As Bill was over six feet tall, and I am just five feet seven inches it was surprising that the same costume fitted both of us.
            We got on so well together that he agreed to join me on a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads, along with an Australian Bob Vollack, and a colleague from the COI.
            We all met for a get together before the holiday, and got to talking about our army experiences, though of course Bill could not join that conversation.   I and my COI colleague were talking about our overseas service, and then I turned to Bob who had been very quiet.
            “Were you anywhere interesting, when you were in the Australian army?” I asked.
            He paused for a moment, and then said, “Only Borneo.”
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            At home, Mum and Dad had decided that we could afford a television, so they purchased one. It was a black and white set, as this was in the days before colour television, and had a very small screen; but we were pleased with it.
            We could only see one programme, as BBC2 and ITV were long in the future; and those black and white programmes were not presented all day, but chiefly in the evenings and ending at ten o’clock. The programmes were not continuous, and there would be occasional intervals when viewers were subjected to the sight of the hands of a potter working at a wheel. There were no advertisement, and we chiefly watched news, discussion programmes and dramas.  One that made a particular impression was an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel, 1984.
            Then came the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and, despite my republican beliefs, which were not, so far as I knew, shared by my parents, I was quite keen to see the televising of the ceremony.  So was my friend, Bill Scott, and as his family did not have a television, we invited him to our house to watch with us.  After the ceremony had been televised, Bill and I went into London, but we did not join the crowds outside Buckingham Palace.
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            Travelling to and from my office or from the theatre school was not always smooth, particularly when smog fell on to London, and a journey that normally took just over an hour might last far longer.
            I think people today have no conception of the horror of fog, when everything became black, and even in the house or the office with the windows closed, one could still smell it.
            On one occasion I got off the tube at Finsbury Park Station and arrived at the bus stop to see a bus departing in the gloom.  I waited several minutes, but, when no other bus arrived I started walking to Manor House Station hoping that there would be other busses there.  After I had walked for a few minutes I reached the bus that I had missed boarding at Finsbury Park, it was going so slowly, that I was tempted to walk past it; but I got on board to enjoy the comfort of a seat. It crawled along very slowly, but some way past Manor House, the fog lifted and it was able to proceed the rest of the way at a normal speed.
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            As by now I was very keen to become a professional actor and I even attempted to obtain a scholarship to a full time theatre school, but my choice at my audition of the final speech of Faustus before he is carried off to hell, was not a good choice.
            As if Morley College, the Enfield People’s Theatre Group and the Mountview Theatre Club were not enough for me, I joined another acting group which had the rather pretentious name of The London Artists Theatre Group.   Actually that name was not as pretentious as it seemed, for most of the members were artists, the group having been formed when they were all students at the Royal College of Arts. Because of this artistic connection, the costumes and scenery were always of a very high standard.
            The chief member of the company, at whose Kensington mews house we met for rehearsals, taught theatre design at the Wimbledon College of Art, and his students provided the manual labour for the stage sets, and for sewing the costumes.
            The performances were in the theatre of Toynbee Hall in the East End, and the first play that I appeared in was Anthony and Cleopatre in which I played the part of Menas, the piratical follower of Pompey.
            I also had a non-speaking part of a Roman soldier in Anthony’s army, but also, in the same costume as a member of Octavian’s army.  That double part entailed my leaving the stage right, climbing a flight of stairs back stage, crossing to another flight of stairs and descending them to emerge in the other army stage left.
            On my feet I had no sandals but strips of cloth bound round them.  Every night as I ascended the right hand stairs I stepped on a tin tack which had fallen point upward on a step. It was extremely painful, and I resolved to get it removed the following night; but I always forgot about it during the rest of the performance, and, each night trod on it again.
            The next production of the company was Titus Andronicus which was produced in Japanese medieval costume and settings.  An eccentric seeming idea, that in practice worked very well.
            I had two speaking parts.  The first as the youngest son of Titus who is killed by his father for defying him.  The only line I remember from that part is “Help, Lucius Help,” which I called as Titus stabbed me.
            He had been given a knife with a blade that retracted into the hilt to perform the deed, but worried that he might hurt me, he had used very little force in the first performance.
            Afterwards I told him that he should not bother about me, but should use full force for the blow.  That he did.  It was extremely painful, and as I lay on the stage until the end of the scene I wondered if blood was dripping from my body.  It was not.
            All that was near the start of the first scene, but my second part as a nephew of Titus had rather more lines to speak and came towards the end of the play.
            I was also cast in the next production: The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Thomas Middleton but before the rehearsals began I had to back out because of a personal tragedy.   My dear mother had died.
            Mum had never been really well following her illness that took her to hospital when we had lived in Dagenham which had weakened her heart; but the long spell of thick fog at the end of the year lead to her death from bronchial-pneumonia. She was one of about 4,000 people killed by that deadly smog that year, but as I didn’t know the others I could only grieve for her.
            For the funeral Mum’s sister arrived from Bradford and stayed with us until after the funeral.  I found the presence of my aunt, who I had never seen before, extremely disconcerting.  She looked so much like Mum, though, with her Yorkshire accent, she didn’t sound a bit like Mum. It was kind of her to come; but I was quite glad when she left.
            Pop and I were left alone in the council house, though for a few weeks we stayed in Dane End with Ruby and Archy; but as the journey from Dane End by bus, then by train from Ware, added extra time and cost to our journey to and from work, we realised that it was not practical to remain there and we returned to Waltham Cross.
            Perhaps what happened to me precipitated our return.  One evening returning from the office, I fell asleep on the bus from Ware, and did not wake up until we had travelled a fair way beyond Dane End.  I left the bus and began walking back, which took me well over an hour, and, by the time that I got to Dane End, Ruby, Pop and Archie had become quite frantic with worry. 
            Back in our council house we had the problem of cooking our meals which we did not have to solve because our next door neighbour kindly agreed to cook meals for us, so when we got back from work a hot dish was always awaiting us.  However, as her husband did heavy labouring work, the meals tended to be rather larger than we had enjoyed when Mum cooked for us, and I think we both began to put on weight.
            Mum’s death also brought about a further change in my plans.   I had intended, after my birthday, to begin writing to provincial repertory companies applying for a post as assistant stage manager, and if accepted, resigning from the Civil Service.  But I abandoned that plan, for with Mum dead I felt that I could not leave Pop alone in the house.
            I also tried to be something of a companion to Pop and took him to the theatre on occasion; once to a performance of The Tea House of the August Moon, and also took him for a week on the Thames on a boating holiday, which ended disastrously when we managed to ram a moored boat and cause it some damage.  I can’t remember whether Pop or I was steering at that time, but the accident meant that we lost our deposit.
            Then Ruby was pregnant again, and though she could cope with her second son, John, Pop and I took little Billy on holiday to a boat on the Norfolk Broads so that he would be away for the birth.
            It was a pleasant holiday, and we even  got through Oulton Broad and down to Lowestoft. However, at the end of the week, the new baby had yet to arrive, and now that Mum was no longer with us, we, as two working men, couldn’t look after Billy, so we took him back to Dane End, where Archie managed to cope until, Patrick, their third child was born.
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                                                  CHAPTER FIVE
            At about that time I was transferred from the Social Survey to another part of the COI.  I joined the distribution section which was housed on the first floor of a building in Goodge Street opposite the hospital.
            It was quite an old building with an ancient lift that I learnt to stop half way between floors by putting my hand outside the lift cage and tampering with the mechanism.  I did not do that very often because I realised that there would be a problem if I could not start it again.
            My immediate superior was an executive officer of about my age named Eric Bridger, who had just returned from his honeymoon in Austria and waxed lyrically about the beauties of that country to such an extent that I decided that I must visit Austria one day.
            I became very friendly with Eric and usually had lunch with him in one of the cafés close to the office.
            We became regular patrons of that café as did a lovely girl with whom we became friendly.  She was a beauty queen and had won the title of Miss Willesden I think.
            Eric admired her, but as a newly married man did not encourage her.  I admired her, but neither did I as I was still very shy.
            The section that Eric supervised was made up chiefly of middle aged men, and I think he might have had trouble if they had realised that he was so young, but as he suffered from premature balding, and looked rather older than his actual age, such trouble did not arrive.
            The office was within easy walking distance of the British Museum, which I visited occasionally during my lunch hour, though to get back to the office after lunch took a considerable time, and such visits tended to take rather more than an hour.
            In the office our main task was to put magazines and documents into slots for British information offices abroad, and for some British embassies.  It was not a difficult job, and we even had time to read some of the magazines; in particular the two pictorial news magazines, Picture Post and Illustrated.
            One problem arose for us with the distribution of Industria Britannica which was a British produced magazine designed to sell British technology abroad.  There were two versions of the magazine, one in Spanish and the other in Portuguese.  As the two versions usually arrived on different days, that was no problem for us because the number of copies told us whether it was the Spanish or the Portuguese version; but, on one occasion both versions arrived at the same time, and as, none of our staff could speak either Spanish or Portuguese, we couldn’t tell which was which.
            However, I did manage to solve that problem by looking at the advertisements and seeing if any had addresses in Brazil.  There were some in one edition, and that told me that they must be the ones in Portuguese. I was quite proud of myself for finding that solution.
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            One Saturday morning I did not go home at the end of my morning’s work, but travelled to Kensington where I joined two of my Morley College friends in the long queue outside the Albert Hall.
            We were gueuing for the last night of the Proms. I had only once before been to a symphony concert, to a special performance of the London Symphony Orchestra in a cinema in which the chief item was a performance of Bach’s Air on the G String, from the composer’s 3rd Orchestral Suite in D Major.  I  had been persuaded to attend by Morley College friends, and was amazed and delighted to find that I enjoyed the performance very much.
            Len Brackley, a college friend had persuaded me to come to this performance.  We had not bought seats, because we intended to stand in the promenade for the performance, but we were fairly near the beginning of the queue, so we had every chance of getting in.
            It was a fine day, and waiting in the open was quite pleasant.  The queue was a very friendly place with people happily chatting to friends and strangers.
            It was going to be a long wait as the performance did not begin until the evening, but people were able to leave the queue at times and return later to resume their place.  I did just that, and left after about half an hour, found a café, had lunch and returned about an hour later. 
            Soon after my return a BBC team with a microphone began interviewing members of the queue, for a radio broadcast.  I was rather apprehensive as the team neared our little group, for one of the questions the team were asking was what was a favourite item of music, a recording of which was then broadcast.  As I had almost no knowledge of classical music, if I was interviewed I knew that I would make a fool of myself.  Fortunately, before the team reached us, the queue began to move into the hall, so my musical ignorance was never broadcast to the nation.
            The concert, which was conducted by the inimitable Sir Malcolm Sargent, was wonderful, but I have no clear memory of what actual items were performed, though I did think that it included an arrangement of sea songs, which included Rule Britannia.
            When it ended, we were amongst the crowd waiting outside to cheer Sir Malcolm as he left the building.
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            Back at Morley College we said good bye to Pat.  He had disappointed his family by dropping out of school before he reached the sixth form, and working as an itinerant salesman on the street until he managed to obtain his post at the Bank of England.  Now he was determined to make up for his lack of A Levels, and had been studying privately and also using tutors to the extent that he had passed examinations for Oxford entrance and had obtained a place in an Oxford College,  I think it was New College, and that was the last that Morley College saw of him.  Though we did hear of him from the popular press when he featured in a news story.  He had disguised himself as a Turkish professor and in that guise addressed an Oxford student society on the blessings of Opium.
            In 1953, with Bill Scott and two other Morley College friends, I spent a week at the Edinburgh Festival.  We had booked accommodation and tickets for performances through the London Festival Office.
            Our accommodation, which was in lodgings usually occupied by university students, was very comfortable, with excellent food.  The only other guests staying at the lodging were an American couple with their infant son, who had come from the husband’s job in Germany, hoping to buy tickets when they got there.  In this they were chiefly unsuccessful as they had not thought to pre-book the tickets as we had.
            It was a wonderful week, and through it I became keen on serious music. The opening concert was by an Italian symphony orchestra, and, two of the concerts we had booked were of chamber music by the London Mozart Players. I went to them reluctantly, expecting to be bored out of my skull, but came away absolutely thrilled by the beauty of the music.
            We also saw, at the Assembly Hall, the Old Vic performing Hamlet, with Richard Burton in the lead and Claire Bloom playing Ophelia.
            We watched T.S.Elliot’s play, The Confidential Clerk, and sitting grandly in a box, Stravinsky’s opera, The Rake’s Progress.
            I decided that boxes may be all right for people who wanted to be seen, but not by people who wanted to see the performance, for from our position we could only see about two-thirds of the stage and missed parts of several performances. However, a slight compensation for that came at the end of the opera, for the epilogue was sung by the leading players to individual parts of the auditorium, and Nick Shallow, the Devil, sang it looking directly up at us in our box.
            We never saw fewer than two performances at the festival on any one day, and one day and night managed to take in four. 
            We also sampled the Edinburgh fringe, including seeing a couple of reviews, one of which was by the Oxford University Players, and had as its main performer a beautiful young professional actress called Maggie Smith.  The Oxford University Players were also performing Stringberg’s Miss Julie, with my friend, Patrick Dromgoole, playing the valet.   After the performance we congratulated him, and he invited us to come round to chat one afternoon, which I did, in the hope that I could meet the delectable Maggie Smith, but alas she was not there when I visited the venue.
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            Back in the COI I had another transfer.  I was sent to work at the film store in Edgware, which meant a longer journey to work each morning, but I was only there a few weeks before being transferred back to the main office in Baker Street to work in the COI studio.  
            Like all COI staff I enjoyed the activities of the COI Sport and Social Club, particularly a showing of the film Gaslight, and the address given to the club by the film’s director, Thorold Dickinson, who told us that we had been watching an illegal showing of the film; for after MGM bought it they ordered that all copies be destroyed so that it could not be compared with its remake by MGM in 1944.  I had seen the remake when I was a soldier in Baghdad, and despite the fact that it stared Charles Boyar, Ingred Bergman and Joseph Cotton, it wasn’t a patch on Dickinson’s 1940 version. Dickinson went on to say that this illustrated the anti-art power of the Hollywood moguls, who did not want directors to have artistic ambitions, but only to be willing to direct moneymaking films.
            By then I had decided that I should not try to become a professional actor, but instead, I should train to be a teacher. However, if I did not succeed in that, and stayed a civil servant, I should take the promotion examination. .
            I applied for entrance to Trent Park Training College, the place I had thought about when on a ramble with the Butlin’s Club. And at about the same time in the COI  I applied to take the examination for promotion to executive officer.        
            I was called for an interview at the college, and though I thought I might not have much chance of being accepted; in fact I was given a place to begin in the following September.   
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            Working in the studio was quite interesting.  Most of the time I typed instructions for the artists which I received from the assistant studio manager; an unpleasant individual who would complain about how difficult his job was, but would spend lots of time in conversation with friends over the telephone.
            He had one particularly tiresome habit.  Having done little for an hour and so, he would suddenly hand several sets of instructions for me to type and distribute just before I was about to go to lunch.   He would then go to his lunch, leaving me with nearly an hour’s work before I could get to eat.
            His rank was Information Officer, which was equivalent to Higher Executive Officer, and there was also an executive officer in the section who did some of his work.  In addition there was also a clerical assistant who ranked below me; but, as she did not type, I could not pass any of my work on to her.
            I was to learn at first hand how ‘difficult’, his job was, for he was suddenly taken ill as was the executive officer, and they were both absent on sick leave for a considerable time.
            The studio manager said that I would have to cope as best as I could whilst they were both away, and proceeded to pass instructions to me that had formerly been passed to the assistant manager.  I managed to cope with them, and continue to do my part of the job typing instructions and passing them to the artists.
            The work of the studio did not stop, indeed, I suspect that without him, it operated rather more efficiently.  I think some of the artists were quite pleased that he was away for he had an abrasive manner, which was usually directed against me, but sometimes reached them.
            However when he and the executive officer returned to work I had another break for a few days to sit the examination for promotion to executive officer.   This was a limited examination for existing clerical officers under the age of 28, and consisted of several written examinations, and, for candidates that scored a sufficiently high mark, some time later an interview.
            I sat the written papers in Chelsea Town Hall.  In the written examination I came about 1,300, after the interview only the first 800 would be accepted for promotion, but my score was enough to get me an interview, though I realised that I would have to do really well to jump over 500 places to be selected.
            The interview was before a panel of three or four people.  I was rather nervous, and found myself lying when they asked me what should happen in Cyprus, which at that time was still governed by Britain.   I felt that it should be made independent, but I did not say that, I waffled on about how strategically important it was that we retained control of the island, as I thought that was the answer that the panel would prefer.
            It probably was not.  One of my colleagues was asked the same question and answered truthfully that it should become independent.  He passed his interview successfully and became an executive officer: but for that matter, despite my miserable lie, so did I.
            I had made the jump of rather more than 500 places to pass.  I think my final position was in the mid four hundreds.
            Of course I did not become an executive officer on the following day; there was a wait of some time before my formal appointment, but, before the interview I had been transferred from the studio to the Press Cuttings section in the Reference Division.
            I was now faced with a dilemma.  Should I accept the promotion, or should I leave the civil service and become a student at Trent Park College in September?
            I liked the idea of becoming a teacher, but I also liked the idea of being an executive officer.  One consideration was pay, for non-graduate teachers, though paid more than civil service clerical officers were paid rather less than executive officers.  I decided to take the executive post, which would start about six months before September; see how I liked my new position, and, if I did not like it much, resign in August and take the college place in September.
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            Press Cuttings was a a friendly little section, presided over by an executive officer who often talked about meetings with her friend.  The friend turned out to be the opera singer, Constance Shacklock, who had become friendly with the executive officer who had written her a fan letter. I always wondered whether she was exaggerating about that friendship, but several years later I had proof that she was not.  With my then girl friend I had attended a performance of Verde‘s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall, and after the performance we were standing outside the Hall when suddenly we saw the conductor, Sir John Barbirolli, emerge, with the singer Constance Shacklock, who had been a soloist in the performance,  on one arm, and my former boss, the executive officer on the other.
            The work in the section was quite interesting.  Each morning the executive officer would mark the items to be cut from a selected group of newspapers including the Times and the Financial Times, then one of us would take the papers into the library and cut out the selected passages.
            They would be returned to the rest of the section where we would file them under various headings.  I became responsible for the cuttings under the UK Economic heading, which was extremely large, including all the cuttings on industry, trade, commerce and finance. I think within a very short space of time I became quite knowledgeable on such matters.
           
                                    CHAPTER SIX
            So far as my pending promotion was concerned, I was expected to indicate in which department I would like to work.  Ideally one of the London ministries would have done; but me being me, I made an extremely ridiculous choice.  I asked if I could be an executive officer in Trinity House, the organisation that dealt with lighthouses and other nautical matters.
            My reason for this ludicrous choice was that because the department was so small, all its executive officers were listed in Whitaker’s Almanack, and I was rather taken with the idea of seeing my name in print.  That would not have happened if I had been sent to a larger department in which the numerous executive officers were not listed in the Almanac, only officers of higher executive rank.
            Of course my request was not granted.  Instead I was told that I would be an executive officer with the Prison Commission, and would join the staff of H.M. Prison, Lincoln.
            I was worried about the move to Lincoln for that would leave Pop alone in Waltham Cross which I did not want.  However, that problem was solved when my cousin Ron married.  Aunty Kath, his mother, decided that she would give Ron and his bride her house in Potters Bar, and Pop agreed that once I had gone to Lincoln, she could move to Waltham Cross and have my bedroom.
            Before I moved to Lincoln, the steward of the prison, a Higher Executive Officer, wrote to tell me that he had obtained lodgings for me near the prison.  Sadly, I said goodbye to Pop and set off by train to Lincoln.
            When I got there I was mildly shocked to see a sign at the station reading ‘Lincoln, the Home of the Diesel Engine.’  So much for the city containing one of the most beautiful of England’s medieval cathedrals.
            I found my way to my new lodgings, which were in Greetwell Road, almost opposite the prison.  The room was comfortable enough, but I was not impressed by my landlady, a middle-aged spinster, who was not particularly friendly.  I decided immediately that fairly soon I would look for other accommodation.
            Next morning, with some misgivings I walked across the road to the fortress-like prison and rang the bell.  A small door set in the very large door was opened by a prison officer.  I introduced myself.
            He stood aside to let me in, called me ‘sir’ which had not really happened to me before, then led me up the stairs into the centre of the prison
            In front of me was a long corridor with doors on either side, and at the end of the corridor, bars from head to foot with another door set in them.
            ‘I’ll take you to the Steward, sir,’ the prison officer said, and took me into one of the offices on the right of the corridor where several clerical officers were seated at desks performing tasks, and one executive officer of about my age who rose to greet me.
            He was the assistant steward, who before my arrival had been governor’s clerk, the post I was now to fill.  He took me into the adjacent office to introduce me to his boss, the steward, who was a higher executive officer, then after that introduction took me across to my office, the second on the left of the corridor.  The first door was of the governor‘s office.
            In my new office were two clerical officers who knew far more about my job than I did, and a girl typist.
            After I had been introduced to them I was taken to meet the governor, Mr Harding.  He was totally unlike my conception of a prison governor.  I expected him to be an ex-army officer, as had been, I was to discover, his predecessor.  He was much better at his job than any ex-officer, for he had risen up through the ranks of the prison service, and had been a chief officer, the prison equivalent of a regimental sergeant major, when he had been promoted to Governor third class and put in charge of a smaller prison than Lincoln.  Now he was a Governor second class and running Lincoln Prison with great efficiency. 
            He had an Oxford accent; not the upper class university accent, but one with a rural burr as he was from an Oxfordshire village.
            Back in my officer the assistant steward explained my duties, and pointed out that if I was confused, one of my two clerical officers could explain things further to me. With that he left me to it.
            Fairly quickly I settled in.  The work was not too difficult and chiefly consisted of keeping records of prisoners and also supervising the work of my clerical officers, which was almost unnecessary as I was more likely to make mistakes that they were.
            I was surprised to discover that there were civil prisoners who were in for debt.  I had thought that imprisonment for debt had been abolished.  Technically it had.  Our prisoners were not there because they were debtors, but because they had refused to pay a dept when they were thought to be capable of doing so. The courts then sentenced them to so many months in the prison.  However, if at any time during their sentence they decided to pay the debt, they could do so, though it would be reduced to take into account the time that they had spent as prisoners.
            Canny debtors knew that if they paid the debt on Saturday, it would count as if they had paid it on the following Monday and would accordingly be released with a lesser payment.  For that reason, I and my clerical officers would be on tenterhooks as the time approached when we would normally leave work at the end of Saturday morning, for if a message came that a prisoner wanted to pay his way out, we would have to stay until the calculation of his payment had been made.  Alas, that happened time and again on Saturdays, and it was rare that we could get away at the correct time.
            One of my regular tasks was to read the local paper each day to check whether it contained any references to the prison and its inmates. Soon after I began the job, the local paper had rather a lot about the prison to report, for we had a convicted murderer amongst our guests.
            He had been found guilty of killing a prostitute, and had been sentenced to death.  His presence involved a lot of work for me, and the first thing I had to do was to contact three other prisons and ask for two officers from each to be sent here to guard the prisoner.  When they arrived, they were the only people in regular contact with him, guarding him, two at a time in shifts.
            He was never seen by the other prisoners for his closely guarded exercise periods in the prison yard were never at the same time as the other prisoners.
            This close contact with his six guards had an adverse effect on them.  They got to know him far better than they ever got to know other prisoners, and despite themselves even got to rather like him.
            I didn’t discover what eventually happened to them, for as soon as their duty was over they were sent back to their original prisons, but I did learn that some officers had nervous breakdowns and never really recovered after that experience.
            I saw him just once.  I was asked to witness a document in the condemned cell, and there he was.   He was about the same age as me, and about the same build.  I knew what he had done, but I did feel rather sorry for him.
            He was in Lincoln Prison from the time when he was sentenced to death.  The execution was not carried out immediately because the prisoner had appealed and remained until the result of the appeal came through.  When it did he had lost the appeal, and the governor told him, and that he would be executed on the following Tuesday.
            On that day my secretary and the doctor’s secretary, the only two ladies on the staff, were given the day off.
            I got in about fifteen minutes before my usual 9 a.m., for no one would be admitted to the prison after that time on that day.
            The executioner had arrived in the prison on the previous day, and whilst the prisoner was away from his cell being exercised, was in the execution chamber practising drops with weighted sacks.
            Executions were usually carried out by the famous executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, but on this occasion Lincoln had to make to with a less famous executioner, as Pierrepoint was engaged on that day in executing the last woman to be executed in Britain, Ruth Ellis.     
            I felt as if I could cut the atmosphere in my office with a knife.   No one said very much.  Then at nine we heard the governor, the chaplain, the chief officer, and I think the sheriff of the county, leaving the governor’s office and walking along the corridor.  We heard the gate at the end of the corridor being opened, and then silence for a while.
            Perhaps ten minutes later the chief officer put his head through my door and said, “It’s over.  Perhaps I’m getting soft in my old age, but I didn’t like to see this one.”
            I don’t think we did much work that day.
            The execution had been handled with its usual efficiency.  As soon as the governor and his party entered the condemned cell and told the prisoner that it was time; he was pulled to his feet and taken into the execution chamber which was adjacent to his cell, though until that moment the door to it had been hidden by a cupboard which had been pushed aside.
            In the execution chamber he was made to stand on a certain spot, with his hands secured behind his back, and his legs bound together.  A blindfold was put over his face, the rope was placed round his neck and the executioner pulled a lever, the floor under the prisoner fell away, he dropped and his neck was broken.
            The whole thing probably took less than three minutes.
            After the execution the body was left hanging there for some time, so that when it was cut down it had stretched somewhat, which was one reason why relatives were not allowed to see the body, which was to be buried in the prison yard.
            In the prison muniments room a coroner’s jury had been assembled, and their task was to declare the cause of death, which they did.   I thought that their presence was one of the sickest elements of the whole sickening business.
            Before the execution I had already found other accommodation, for living in the house of the middle aged spinster, where despite the fact that it was conveniently opposite the prison, was not very pleasant, so I had moved to a boarding house near the centre of the city.
            It was a theatrical boarding house, for my fellow guests were all members of the Lincoln Theatre Repertory Company.  They were very pleasant individuals and I became quite friendly with them; though I quickly realised that the boarding house was not an ideal residence.
            For one thing, it was too near the cathedral, or rather too near the clock of the cathedral, which chimed every quarter of an hour throughout the night, and the first night kept me awake until the early hours of the morning.  Later I got to sleep rather more quickly, but it was always a restless sleep, leaving me quite tired on the following day.  I quickly realised that I would have to seek accommodation elsewhere.
            Wherever I lived in Lincoln, I would have to deal with my laundry.  I discovered the Lincoln Steam Laundry, where I took my clothes to be washed regularly, and I continued to use them all the time that I was in Lincoln.  They were quite efficient, and not too expensive
            However, I was soon looking for better accommodation, and someone on the prison staff told me that a family nearby was looking for a tenant.  I was given the address, and one afternoon, after lunch I walked to the house which was also in Greetwell Road, and introduced myself.
            The family were an elderly couple.  He was retired after managing a local Co-operative store.  They were delighted to take me in, so I moved there from the theatrical boarding house.  My room was comfortable, the lady’s cooking was excellent, and they both treated me like a son.   Sometimes of an evening we would be singing together round the piano, but on several evenings I would be out, for I had joined a local amateur theatre group and been given a part in a production of The Happiest Days of Your Life, in which I played the father of one of the students. 
            I became very friendly with the woman who played my wife; perhaps too friendly, for she was married, though her husband was working abroad.  After the play was over, I took her out some weekends on visits to towns near Lincoln, which we would reach by bus.  On these occasions she often took her little son with us, who was, on the whole well behaved, though I was mildly shocked that when he was taken short she encouraged him to pee against a wall in the street.
            On my part my liaison with the lady and her little son was relatively innocent.  I never instigated these outings, she always suggested them to me.  I did not even kiss her, though I suspect that she would have been very pleased if I had.  However, before I left Lincoln she reported that her husband would be returning from abroad, and after that we did not meet again.
            I think it may have been the execution that made me decide that I would accept my place at Trent Park and leave the civil service, so I told the governor that I would be leaving in early September, and handed in my resignation to take effect on that date.
            I was apprehensive about the college, and felt that with my elementary education I would be far behind the other ex-grammar school students.  Happily, I was to discover that that was not the case.
            In the prison I continued with my work, not wishing to leave any problems for my successor.  By now I was quite friendly with the other workers in the offices, in particular with the other executive officer, the assistant steward, who was a marathon runner, and would run to the prison every day from his home several miles away, and at the prison change into the clothes that he kept in his office.
            I was no longer rehearsing a play, and seeing very little of my married lady friend.  For amusement I would go to the theatre regularly, and also to the cinema.  In Lincoln I saw the splendid A Star is Born, starring James Mason and Judy Garland.
            One evening I set off for the cinema, but did not arrive there, for I was stopped by a policeman who asked me if I would be prepared to take part in a line up.
            I agreed, and wondered what it was all about.   I was taken into the police station and asked to stand in line with a number of other men, all about my size and build.  Then a prisoner was brought in, shown the line up and told to stand wherever he wished in it. He chose to stand next to me.
            A lady was brought in and asked to pick out the man who had assaulted her.  She walked up and down the line, and paused for a moment in front of me, but did not pick me; nor did she pick my neighbour.
            After she left my neighbour was taken away by the police, and the rest of us thanked and given, I think it was a shilling, for our trouble.
            I was too late to get to the cinema after that.
            Lincoln was a local prison which meant that all the men sentenced to imprisonment in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, began their sentences in Lincoln prison and in many cases remained there for the whole of their sentences, which were rarely as long as the time that they had been sentences to serve, as they were allowed one third off for good behaviour;  for which they did not have to behave particularly well, but just to refrain from bad behaviour, which most of them managed; though there were some individuals determined to serve their full sentences; like the man who achieved that by throwing a book at the governor when the latter was making his inspection.
            I’m told that Mr Harding, simply picked up the book, handed it to the accompanying prison officer and told him to get it weighed.  The weight appeared on the charge cheat when the man appeared before the governor to be sentenced for that incident.
            One day Mr Harding told us about an incident from his early days in the prison service.  In the early 1920s he had been an assistant warder in a prison on the Isle of Wight. There had been a number of Irish prisoners in the prison who had been arrested following the uprising at Easter 1916 and who were kept in single cells..  In those days all prisoners had their heads shaven, but the Irishmen refused to accept that as they claimed that they were not criminals but political prisoners.
            The governor of the prison told a senior warder to take two men and shave the heads of the Irishmen.   My governor was one of the two men.  
            They entered the first cell, and the senior warder told the prisoner that they were going to shave his head.
            “No you’re not,” said the prisoner.
            “Grab him lads,” ordered the senior warder, and my governor and his colleague grabbed the prisoner by his arms.
            Of course, he fought back, but they managed to hold him down, as the senior warder, with great difficulty managed to shave his head, and also a lot of skin from the head.
            After they left the cell, they paused for breath, and the senior warder said,.  “We can’t put up with that twenty-seven more times. I’ve got an idea how we can do it. Let’s see if we can.”
            They entered the next cell.
            “Right, Paddy.  We’re going to shave your head.”
            “No, you’re not,” said the prisoner.
            “Look lad,” said the senior warder. “You know we’ll be able to do it whether you like it or not.  You’re just concerned that your mates will know that you put up a fight.   Do what the fellow in the last cell did.  Sit quietly whilst I shave your head, and while I’m doing it my two officers will make so much noise that every one in the other cells will believe that you are putting up a fight.”
            “All right,” said the Irishman, and whilst my governor and his colleague made as much noise as they could, sat quietly whilst his head was being shaved.
            After that they managed to shave the heads of all the other 26 Irish prisoners without any trouble, though Mr Harding said that he was quite tired after all the violent action he had to perform during the whole operation.
            As I would be entering college in September, I was nearing the end of my time as a civil servant, but before then I took two weeks leave to perform observations in local schools as I had been requested to do by the college.
            It was about ten  years since I had been a pupil in an elementary school, but I did not find the boys’ secondary modern school which I observed, all that different.  I sat in classes and watched teachers at work, and, on a couple of occasions I took over a class for about half a lesson.  It was my first attempt at teaching, and I seemed to manage.
            Then when the two  weeks were up I returned to the prison for another month before my final resignation; when I  said goodbye to the governor and my colleagues, and took the train back home.
            But it was to be a different home from the one that I had left, as Pop was now living with his sister, Aunty Kath, at her house in Potters Bar and that was were I was bound.
            Aunty Kath had only stayed in Waltham Cross for a very short time: had decided that she couldn’t bear the indignity of living in a council house after having been a house owner in Potters Bar, and told Pop that she was moving back, and inviting him to go with her.  I think that he hated the idea, but he hated more the thought of living on his own, so he agreed.
            Apart from being hard on Pop, it was also hard on Ron, the newly married son of Aunty Kath, who was on his honeymoon and thought that he would be taking his new wife back to an empty house.
            Pop had been living in Potters Bar for several months when I arrived, though I don’t think Aunty Kath was very keen on my living there, but there was nowhere else for me to go. There was no bedroom for me, and I would have to sleep on a make shift bed in the living room.
            I was very unhappy at the arrangement, not just because of my unsatisfactory sleeping arrangement but because the move had meant that Pop and I had lost our real home.  Some of the furniture came with us to Potters Bar, some went to Ruby and Archie in Dane End, but most of it had to be sold.
 
                                    CHAPTER SEVEN
            However, the house in Potters Bar would only be my residence during the college vacations, for in term time I would be living in lodgings in Southgate organised by the college.
            In fact I went straight from Lincoln to the lodging that the college had obtained for me.  It was in a semi-detached house in Southgate, within walking distance of the college. I was not the only student in the house, for a second year student was also lodging there.
            The house was owned by a business man, the proprietor of a small piano manufacturing company, who lived there with his wife and two daughters. It was comfortable enough, but I only spent my evenings there, and not even evenings, if there was anything at the college that I could attend.
            I bought a second hand bicycle which I used to get to the college each day, for although its entrance was fairly close to my lodgings, once through the entrance there was a lengthy trek along the drive to the college proper, and to walk all the way from my lodging would probably have taken me almost an hour.
            The principal of the college was Mr Simmonds, the former head of the Tottenham Grammar School, who had been principal since the college began as an emergency training college immediately after the war.
            He was very much in charge, with a strong personality.  I think all the students admired him, and many of the girl students were almost in love with him.  Of course we had all met him when we were interviewed, but at college we saw a great deal of him, particularly at the lectures that he held on the principles of teaching, and also the Tuesday afternoon lecture that he gave to the whole college on various topics, though sometimes he simply presided during the lecture when the speaker was someone else. One Tuesday lecture was held on Valentines Day, but the proceedings were interrupted by the entire female student body presenting Valentine cards and gifts to him.
            Afterwards he thanked the girls and said that his only regret was that this had happened to him at a time when he was far to old to really respond to it.
            Apart from his college duties he was second in command of the London Boy Scouts, and I once saw him, late at night, leaving the underground at Cockfoster’s Station, dressed in a boy scout uniform including the hat. Whilst I was still a student he received some award for his scouting activities; I think it may have been the OBE.  We students were pleased for him, though we did rather resent the fact that he received the award for scouting, and not simply for being the head of the college.
            He really loved his college, and when he retired, some years after my time there; I learnt that he had almost to be asked to leave, because he hung around for weeks after his successor had taken over; and soon after he did reluctantly leave he died within a couple of years.  Perhaps with a broken heart.
            The main college building was the mansion of Trent Park which had been built for Sir Phillip Sassoon, a millionaire member of the Baghdad Jewish family whose most famous member was the First World War poet, Seigfred Sassoon.
            The building looked like a regency mansion, yet it was not really that old.  Sir Phillip had arranged its construction after 1926, using bricks obtained from the demolition of Devonshire House in Piccadilly.
            Sir Phillip had been a society host, and, before the war, many famous people, including Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia had been guests at Trent Park.
            The house, though large, was not large enough to be used for all the activities of the college, and many of the lectures were held in huts in the grounds or in rooms by the stable block and other buildings, including the large hall where college assemblies were held, and, on the stage of which plays were performed.
            Students ate their midday meal in a large dining hut in the grounds, and second year female students lived in Trent Park, first year girls in Ludgrove Hall,  a residence outside the college grounds, whilst all the male students were accommodated in lodgings nearby.
            At the college on that first day we were given our timetables, introduced to the tutors and then attended our first lectures.  I think my first was on Health Education, which I found quite interesting.
            I had chosen to study secondary teaching, as did most of the men, though some men did choose Junior teaching, but the third category, Infant teaching, was made up entirely of girl students.
            All students had to specialise in one of the arts: music, drama, painting or needle craft. I, of course, chose drama, which was held in the drama room, a purpose built hall near the stable block.
            After lunch that first day I sat with fellow students in the student common room in the main building, loving the experience.  Everyone was very friendly and I was so glad to be there.  The atmosphere reminded me of Salad Days, a joyous musical about bright young people that I had seen in London a few months before.
            Only about a third of the students were males, and as most of them had completed national service before starting the course, they tended to be older than the girl students who were still in their late teens.
            At twenty eight I was by no means the oldest student: there were several considerably older, in particular a man in his forties, Earnie Brightmore, an ex professional actor, with whom I became particularly friendly. Another ex-actor, who had been a member of the Bristol Old Vic Company and was about my age, was Peter Nichols, who later became a successful playwright.
            There was so much going on that I didn’t have time to be bored.  Of course, as I was specialising in Drama, the course would provide several opportunities to perform, but even outside the course, students organised lots of dramatic performances.  I found that the second year students were preparing a production of the American play, You can’t Take it With You, by Kaufman and Hart, and were holding auditions that week.  
            I attended the auditions, and was, at first cast as Grandpa, but after the first rehearsal the director decided that I was not quite right for the part, and instead I was cast as Boris Kolenkhov, a ballet teacher.  I was mildly disappointed at losing the part of Grandpa, but I enjoyed playing Kolenkhov, a wonderfully extrovert character with a strong Russian accent. I don’t know that my accent was particularly authentic, but no one complained, and when we performed, the audience of students and lecturers seemed to like it.
            The head of the Drama Department was Mr Burton, who was, I believed, a former Anglican priest.  I don’t think that he had been a professional actor, but he was an effective teacher.  His main assistant, who took improvisation classes, was Mrs Mayes, a youngish lady.  The third member of the Drama staff, Mr Glenister,  taught something called stagecraft, which was about set construction, and was rather like the woodwork lessons that I had reluctantly attended at school.  However, unlike woodwork, I really enjoyed the stagecraft sessions and even sang sometimes as I worked with my hands and used tools relatively efficiently without doing any damage to the materials, or to myself.
            I think my first stagecraft task was to design and construct a small model of a stage set.  I chose to make a set based on a radio play about a prison camp.  I don’t remember what mark I got for it, but it was relatively successful.
            Bill Scott was also a drama student, but his timetable was different from mine, so that in all the time that we were at Trent together, we only had one class together, History in the first year.
            Apart from the drama course and health education, I studied psychology, educational philosophy, history, physical education and games, and English and Mathematical method.  We did not have to actually study English or Mathematics, I assume that we were all thought to have reached a sufficiently high standard to be able to teach those subjects: an assumption that I suspect was rather optimistic for some of the students. 
            PE And games took place in a large gymnasium which had begun its life as the hanger for Sir Philip’s light aeroplane.  Despite my inability to bowl cricket balls, I very much enjoyed the games sessions, particularly basketball, a game that I had never played previously.  I did not become a particularly good basketball player, though, as I cannoned into other players rather a lot, perhaps I was rather a dangerous one.
            There were also tennis courts in the grounds, but I was never a good tennis player, and a swimming pool, which we used in the summer.  The other athletic activity which I enjoyed were the cross country runs in the extensive Trent Park Estate.  I remember one occasion, when I was running second until I and the first runner suddenly found ourselves running into a herd of cows, which immediately started running too, and frightened us so much that we hid behind trees to prevent ourselves being trampled by the stampeding cows.
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            As part of our education, students had to produce individual projects which were really like mini theseses.   In the first year I had three of these to complete.  The first was on drama, an aspect of it had to be studied in some depth.   I chose to write about the amateur theatre, with lengthy accounts of dramatic productions with which I had been involved.  I also wrote about well known amateur companies with which I had no connection such as the Tavistock Preparatory Company, and the Questers of Ealing.  Much that I wrote about those groups was stolen from articles in a monthly, Plays and Players.
            Another project was on child development.  My project was entitled Growing Up in a Rural Community, and it was about the childhood of my four nephews in Dane End.  I thought that the material was rather thin, though I did include a number of photographs, but thin or not, it was thought good enough to be displayed in the library on the college open day.
            My third project was on health, and I wrote about refuse disposal, which entailed a visit to a municipal refuse disposal site, which I found interesting though a trifle smelly.
            On the college open day study groups had to present displays.   My group chose wine, and I wrote a screed on Wines of the Balkans, about which previously I knew very little, though I managed to produce enough information using several pages from reference and other books in the college library.
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            The drama course provided me with my first experience of play production.  We students were asked to produce play extracts to be performed before Mr Burton.  I was asked by a group of fellow students to direct part of a scene from a Noel Coward play, which I did. I don’t think that my attempt put me in the Stanislavsky class, particularly as  one of my cast; the girl playing the maid, proved not to be the brightest of individuals. I had told her to trip over a piece of stage furniture as she crossed the stage.  At her performance, she began walking across the stage, realised that she had forgotten that task: then deliberately crossed over to the stage prop and dutifully tripped over it.
            There were numerous student societies, and I joined the Catholic society, and very quickly became its president.  I was also one of the founders of the Labour Party Society and became president of that, and was a founder of the Debating Society.
            The societies were tasked with the organisation of the weekly dances which were held in the main building.  This was in the days before disc jockeys and dancing to records.  The dances always had live bands providing the music; not huge orchestras, but combinations of three to four players, usually our fellow students.
            Some how I overcome my shyness, and fairly quickly had a girl friend.  Her name was Ann Moon, and she was studying Junior teaching.  She was not a drama student, her main course was music, but we saw a lot of each other.  We would sit together in the common room, sometimes kissing. Such blatant exhibitions of sexual affection were quite common in that room, there would often be several kissing couples there to the embarrassment of the various solitary individuals in the room.  Ultimately it lead to the students’ union complaining about that particular activity, which didn’t seem to deter the kissers overmuch.
            One task given to all drama students, and, perhaps to students in the other arts, was to keep a course diary in which we had to write about every artistic experience we had whilst we were students.  Much of mine consisted of accounts of plays that I had seen, though on my meagre student grant I could not attend as many as I had when I had been a relatively prosperous civil servant.
            I also recorded items that did not cost quite so much to experience, including a chamber concert at St. Martins in the Field church by Trafalgar Square, and the first radio performance of the Dylan Thomas play, “Under Milk Wood.” For further material for my course diary, I revisited the Central Office of Information studio, and wrote up the work of the various artists there.
            Other free experiences that I included in my course diary, were the various performances, musical and dramatic that took place in the college throughout the course.
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            Another aspect of college life that was, perhaps, not quite so enjoyable, was the teaching practices.  In the two years of the course we were subjected to four of these, and they were really the most important part of our studies; and at the end of each one, the number of students would be reduced somewhat because some students showed by their teaching practice performances that they were not suited to be teachers.  Fortunately I was not one of those unfortunates.
            My first teaching practice was for two weeks half way through the first college term. It was to a school in Edmonton that I knew well, for it was Eldon Road where I used to attend once a week for woodwork, until I persuaded the authorities to let me cease attending as I lied that my parents did not like me going to the wooden hut that was the woodwork centre for fear that it was not safe during air raids.
            In those wartime days it had been Eldon Road Elementary School, but now, following the 1944 Education Act, the building had become three schools, with the ground floor the Eldon Road Infant School, the first floor Eldon Road Junior School, and the top floor Eldon Road Secondary School.   It was the latter establishment that I was to attend for my first teaching practice.
            The school had been built near the beginning of the twentieth century and was a fairly typical of the schools constructed at that time, an ugly grey brick building with the classrooms on each floor surrounding a central space which was used for activities such as PE, and singing. Of course when such activities were in progress, the noise generated meant that the surrounding classrooms were considerably disturbed by it.
            I was a little anxious when I walked into the school that first morning.  I had dreaded going there for my weekly woodwork sessions and I wondered how I would feel if I met that fierce woodwork teacher again.  Actually I did not meet him again, for when I looked in at the woodwork building during the lunch hour, I learnt that he was no longer on the staff, and his successor greeted me quite pleasantly, and was surprised when I told him that I had come there for lessons during the war.
            I looked round the workroom, but, as it was the lunch hour there were no pupils there with whom I could sympathise.  I was surprised at how small the benches seemed to be.  In my memory they had been quite large, but, of course, I was rather smaller myself when I had been that age.
            I survived the two weeks teaching practice without any mishaps.  I was attached to a second year class, and students of that age were not too unruly.  The class teacher remained in the room for all of my lessons, which rather annoyed me, though he had been instructed to do so by the head teacher, but the pupils never became so disorderly that he had to take over from me.
            He congratulated me on the first drama lesson that I taught, telling me that it was first rate, which pleased me.  The only other time that he congratulated me was during an English lesson. 
            I had been writing on the blackboard, and when I turned to face the class I saw that several of the boys had hands raised.
            I looked back at the board but couldn’t see anything wrong with it, so I pointed to one of the boys and said. “What have I done wrong?”
            “That is the wrong spelling of ‘their’, you should have spelt it ‘there’.”
            I altered the spelling on the board, then said, “Good boy, It’s what is called a homonym, I’m glad that you spotted it. I wrote it like that deliberately to test you.”
            When the boys left at the end of the lesson, the class teacher said to me. “That was a splendid cover up.  You made a spelling mistake on the board, and completely got away with it”.
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            Teaching practice ended, and back at the college we began preparing for the college festival.  This was an annual event which took place shortly before the end of term, and seemed chiefly designed to interest first year students.  Some second year students took part, but as they by then were busy preparing for their final exams, most of them did not.
            It consisted of a number of dramatic and musical productions, which were entirely directed and performed by the students.  So far as I remember, there was no impute by members of the academic staff, though they made up part of the audiences.
            I took part in two  play productions: Bernard Shaw’s one act play; Passion Poison and Petrifaction;  and Tchekov’s The Wedding.  In the former I played Adolphus Bastable, a young man who ends the play as a statue.  In the latter I played a love sick suitor.
            I was also in a student extravaganza, in which we performed parodies of films in various styles to illustrate the Book of Genesis: one was a parody of a Western, another of a Victorian melodrama, and a third a parody of a Japanese film in which the apple in the Garden of Eden was a drink of saki. There was no single author of this piece of nonsense, we wrote it between ourselves and I provided the ending of the melodrama, though I did not appear in that item.  
            Peter Nichols provided the outstanding item in the festival.  He wrote and performed a brilliant parody of the lecture styles of several of the teaching staff, using a nursery rhyme to illustrate their various idiosyncrasies.  It was brilliant, and in at least one case, rather cruel.  He began one section by saying, “There is also the technique of giving a lecture without actually providing any material”. 
            We all recognised the lecturer to whom he was referring.   His victim was sitting in the front row of the audience and looked extremely uncomfortable.
            I had invited my cousin Ronny and his new wife to the performance that night, and afterwards they could not stop talking about Peter Nichols’ performance, despite the fact that they did not know any of the lecturers that he impersonated.
            I don’t think any of his fellow students were surprised when a few years later Peter became nationally famous as a successful playwright and the author of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.
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            At college Bill Scott and I had one set of lectures together, on history, where the tutor a Miss Matthews, was pleasant enough to us, though, as an evangelical Protestant, it was quite clear that she was extremely anti Catholic.
            At Ludgrove Hall, the first year girl student hostel where she resided, one evening, she subjected the students to an anti-Catholic discourse that had the effect of making the girls want to hear the other side, so, one of them, the president of the Christian Union, asked me, as the president of the Catholic Society, if I could bring a priest to Ludgrove Hall to make the case for Catholicism.
            I asked Dom. Edmund, the parish priest of the parish church and sub-prior of the Benedicton sub-priory there,  if he would talk to the girls and he agreed.  So one evening I took him there and he addressed pretty well all the 1st year girl students with Miss Matthews also present.
            He was an excellent speaker and seemed to impress the girls with his eloquence, and even though Miss Matthews attempted to refute his arguments, she had little success, and was even shouted down by some of the students.  The fact that Dom. Edmund was a convert and had been a Church of England clergyman before his conversion seemed to add force to his discourse.
            When we left at the end of the evening, I suspected that there would be mass conversions of many of the girls, but that did not seem to happen.           
            The Catholic church, which was a modern building quite near one of the entrances to the Trent Park estate, was served by three Benedicton monks.  One of the monks, a Belgium, Dom. Paul, acted as chaplain to the small group of Catholics in the college, and visited us frequently. It was a very progressive parish, and its masses had several of the features which several years later became general following Vatican II.  When the gospel was being read quietly in Latin by the celebrant, a lay person would read it in English to the congregation.
            For this, and for other reasons, I found myself really enjoying attending mass each Sunday, and when, subsequently I attended mass on a feast day in the little church in Potters Bar, I was mildly shocked to find that the congregation were lead in the recitation of the rosary at the same time as mass was being celebrated on the altar. That was the sort of practice that would not have been allowed by my modern Benedicton monks.
            During my first year, one of the second year students was converted to Catholicism.  I wondered whether she would retain her faith when she had left Trent Park and began attending mass in a less progressive parish elsewhere.
 
                                    Chapter Eight
            At the end of the term I went home for the Christmas holiday; though home was not really home for me as it was no longer the council house in Waltham Cross, but Aunty Kath’s house in Potters Bar where I had to sleep on a put-u-up in the living room.
            I had very little money, as the student grant did not go far, and I could not live on Pop’s generosity, so before the term ended I had used the services of the National Union of Students to obtain a temporary job as a porter in Gamages, the large London department store.
             I was not the only Trent Park Student at the store, for Edgar, another first year student, also obtained a porter position. As he had been an RAF flight lieutenant, and I had been a Civil Service executive officer, posts as temporary porters might have seemed rather a come down, but as impecunious students we both needed the money.
            The work was not particularly difficult.
            Each morning we had to report to the stock room in the basement where we would take trolleys and load them up with items to be taken up to the selling points, then take the trolleys and goods up in the lift to the main store and then unload them where required before taking the empty trolley back to the stock room and loading it up again with new items.
            Edgar and I worked steadily through the day until it was time to go home.  Keeping busy prevented boredom, and, made the day seemed to go fairly swiftly.   That was not the case with the other temporary porters, who would spend so much time smoking in the staff toilets that the smoke filled atmosphere made it almost became hard to breath in those places. Our ‘virtue’ did not go unnoticed by the management.  All the other porters were sacked after a fairly short time, and Edgar and I were kept on until Christmas.
            One Tuesday as I was unloading items from my trolley, a customer called my name. It was my fellow student, Ernest Brightmore.   He and his wife Rita, were doing some of their Christmas shopping. 
            We chatted, and they invited me to their flat that evening.
            They lived in a flat in Goodge Street, and when I had finished work I went along there and had a delightful evening.
            They lived, with their daughter, Susan, who was then in her early teens, in a council flat on the first floor of an elderly building in Westminster near London University Senate House.
            Ernest and Rita had open house on Tuesday evenings, when their flat would be filled with their friends, who tended to be intellectuals.  I became a regular visitor over the next few years and became as friendly with Rita as I had been with Ernest.
            Rita was a teacher in a London junior school, I believe that she had been a Trent Park student during its emergency training days, when the training course lasted just over a year. She was Jewish, and her cousins and her father were often guests at the Tuesday night sessions. 
            Barney, her father could be a stereotype of the stock Jewish tailor.  He originated from somewhere in Eastern Europe, and had begun his working life tailoring jackets.  When he first tried tailoring trousers he had some difficulty because in his design he did not allow space for the crotch which meant that the first pair were unsalable. He was a delightful and very wise old man.  I was present on one occasion, not a Tuesday, when I was the only guest apart from Rita’s family.  They were discussing the American presidential election, and one of the cousins said that it was a pity that Goldwater, the Republican candidate, was Jewish.
            “What are you talking about?” Cried Barney. “Jews have got just as much right to be lousy bastards as any other people.”
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            Joan, my cousin Ron’s wife, had a nurse friend who was short of a partner to accompany her to the annual ball of her London hospital at the Grosvenor House Hotel.  Joan persuaded me to accompany her on what would be a blind date, for I had never seen the girl.
            Joan was very persuasive, but I must have been mad to accept, for the outing would entail some expense on my part as I would have to hire a dress suit for the occasion, which would take a large chunk of my earnings as a Gamages porter.  However, when I met the girl I found that she was quite attractive, and I was puzzled as to why she had not found a partner amongst the many young doctors of the hospital.
            I felt rather out of my depth at the ball, but I don’t think I disgraced myself.  Later, back at college I did go on another date with the girl, but after that we went our separate ways.
 
                                 CHAPTER NINE
            When the Christmas vacation ended, I was quite pleased to return to college, where the next important event was to be the start of our second teaching practice, which this time was to be for three weeks. Shortly before it began, there had been a series of articles in, I think, the News Chronicle, by an academic from New Zealand about his experiences in teaching in London Schools.  The articles were called The Blackboard Jungle, and some of his accounts of lack of discipline in the schools were quite horrific.
            I was rather apprehensive when I found that the school that I was to attend in North London, was one of those where he had taught. In fact I was to find that the experience was nothing like as bad as that endured by the unfortunate New Zealander: either I was a better disciplinarian than that man, or his account in the newspaper had been grossly exaggerated.
            The school, in the Finsbury Park area, was similar in construction to the Eldon Road School: grey bricks, three story, with the secondary modern school in the top story. When we arrived I discovered that a small group of Catholic pupils did not go into the morning assembly, but sat, unsupervised in a classroom.  I suggested to the head teacher that I could supervise them during that time and he agreed.
            As a result when my supervising tutor arrived from the college he found me outside that classroom when the rest of the school were in assembly.  He told me that I should have been in assembly, but as he was speaking the Catholic pupils arrived.  I explained the situation to my tutor, then went in with the Catholic children and conducted my own little assembly, reading to them from my copy of The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas A Kempis.
            I didn’t know it at the time, but later another student told me that my action had won me a sort of ‘brownie point’ at college, for the tutor used it as an example of the correct way that students should behave in their practise schools, acting  as if they were members of the teaching staff.
            The same tutor also observed one of my lessons and afterwards told me that I should have been rather stricter with recalcitrant pupils.  I did try to explain to him that this was a rather noisy class, but he did not seem to accept that explanation.
            However, later that day he observed the other Trent Park student taking the same class, and they had been so noisy that he had taken over the lesson from her, and, she told me, had considerable difficulty himself controlling those pupils.
            My little group of Catholic pupils seemed quite pleased that I was with them during the assembly time.  Some of them produced work for me, in particular one girl gave me poems she had written which I thought very good.  One had been inspired by a visit to the National Gallery with her boy friend, who was considerably older than her, and, from what she told me, something of an intellectual. Before I left at the end of the teaching practice, I gave that girl my copy of The Imitation of Christ.
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            When I returned to college I found that I was facing an emotional crisis.  My girl friend, Ann Moon, had found someone else. Whilst on her teaching practice at a junior school she had become attracted to a male member of staff at that school who had been attracted to her.  Now that the teaching practice had ended, they were still seeing each other.
            She told me this when we were together, and I was devastated.  I could not get to sleep that night and was an emotional wreck next morning. I convinced myself that I was in love with her, and when we met again I begged her to give up that man and stay with me.
            Alas, she refused and for the rest of that year kept away from me. 
            Clearly I was not really in love with Ann, and, in time I got over those feelings, but they left a blank place in my life for a considerable time.
            As the term proceeded I auditioned for a student production, an Arabian Nights play written by a fellow drama student.  It was called Malish, and I was cast as The Caliph of Baghdad, which was not quite as important as it might appear, as the cast included other monarchs, including the Sultan of Zanzibar.  It was an amusing bit of froth.
            During the Spring vacation, a neighbour in Potters Bar got me another temporary job in the office of a local toy factory, that kept me from starvation during that time.
            It was quite a successful company, and I was given some filing task that I performed fairly adequately. I was not impressed with the efficiency of the office management.  If this was an example of private enterprise efficiency, I did not think that it was anything like as efficient as that of the civil service.
            Back at college, the main activity of drama students was the end of year production of The Prodigious Snob, the version by the actor Miles Maleson of Moliére’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.  The director, Mrs Mayes, initially cast me as the philosopher, a part that only appeared in the first act.
            I would have preferred a longer part, and at the open auditions that Mrs Mayes held I read the part of Covielle, a servant, which was one of the best parts in the play, and she decided to cast me in that part, with the student that she had originally cast as Covielle being relegated to the inferior part of the philosopher.
            I very much enjoyed performing in that play, and from it I retained a tiny little bit of the Turkish language.  At one point in the second act when we were pretending to be Turkish noblemen we had to say Rahat la cune.  At the time I had thought it to be gibberish, invented by Moliére, or perhaps by Miles Maleson; but some time later I saw those words on a packet of Turkish Delight, so perhaps they really were Turkish.
            Soon after that we came to the end of our first year as students at Trent Park.
            I did not go back to the toy factory for holiday employment, but managed to get temporary work at the Central Office of Information on my old job in the coding section of the Social Survey Division.  The Central Office was no longer in Baker Street, but in a spanking new building near Waterloo Station.
            Many of my former colleagues were still working there, and I quite enjoyed getting up to date on office gossip and politics.
                       
                                    CHAPTER TEN
Back at college as a second year student, I was more active in student societies.  I was president of both the Catholic Society and the Labour Group and I was one of the founders of the Chess Club, the Debating Society, and a men’s society which we called Pourquoi Pas, which I understood was French for Why Not. The latter group did not do very much, apart from organising a visit to Collin’s Music Hall in the east end of London where we saw a rather tatty performance by nude artistes.
            I only remember one debate by the Debating Society which was on the motion, which I had suggested, That This House is fed up to Its Back Teeth.  The debate was not particularly witty, but then neither was the motion.
            With the new 1st year students, the Catholic Society grew with new members, including two nuns, who were a surprising addition as this was not a Catholic college.  In one case, the nun had come to us because her mother superior had fallen out with the principal of the Catholic teaching college to which her teacher student nuns were normally sent.
            Amongst the other new Catholic students was Veronica Mansfied; a charming girl who had trained to be a ballet dancer.  For a while she became my girl friend, until she left me to become Bill Scott’s girl friend.  Subsequently, long after we had left college, she married a fellow student, Mike Robbins.  She is now a widow, but Bill and I are still in touch with her.
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            The previous term the Catholic Society had suggested to the Principal that Catholic schools could be used for teaching practice, and this had been agreed, and a Catholic secondary modern school in Tottenham had been added to the list, and that was where I was sent for my third teaching practice.
            It was quite an interesting experience, though I was criticised by my tutor who observed a lesson in which I had difficulty operating a tape recorder.  It was my first experience of using one of these ‘new’ devises, and I was unlucky to have a tutor present when I made the attempt.
            The school was fairly new, with a young enthusiastic staff.  I remember one staff room conversation in which the practice of giving priority to members of the Knights of St. Columbia in the appointment of senior teaching posts was very highly criticised.   I don’t know if this was the practice at that school, or just assumed to be the practice, but I would not have approved of it, despite the fact that in my teens I had been a squire of the Knights of St, Columbia, and, as I had never officialty resigned, perhaps I still was.
            Back at college it was time for the annual festival, which was mainly the concern of the new first year students.  However, one day in the common room some second year students were bewailing the fact that few of them were to be in the revue, and a small group lead by Bernard Ashley, who subsequently became headmaster or a junior school and a successful children’s author, decided to do something about that.
            That something involved about thirty male second year students including Bill Scott and myself. At a prearranged moment in what appeared to be a performance of This is Your Life, began, the compare said to the performer, ‘Do you Recognise this voice?’ And from offstage a voice, in a phoney East European accent called, ‘Boris and his Bulgarian Acrobats.‘
            At that, dressed in shorts and PE kit, we trooped on the stage and began performing ridiculous, but very easy stunts.  Bill Scott carried on stage a chair, then, stood on it, I did a somersault, and another, bearded student, rode across the stage on his bicycle.
            For each of these performances the other Bulgarian acrobats stood in a semicircle around the performer, pointing at him, and then when the incident was concluded, shouting ‘Prosnoi’.   At the end of the performance, we all stood singing, in phoney East European accents, Land of Hope and Glory, after which we trooped off the stage.
            The applause was tremendous, and afterwards one of the first year students commented on the precision of the performance, and how we must have spent a lot of time rehearsing it.
            In fact we had not had any rehearsals.  The whole thing was dreamed up very quickly and we were simply told what to do before we came on stage.
            Apart from the festival I also appeared in another student production; a modern dress version of Cinderella, written by the student who had written Malish the previous year.  In that I played the short sighted bespectacled secretary to Prince Charming, who was played by a student who was not a particular friend of mine, and who I certainly did not regard as charming.
            Somehow I also found time to appear in a production outside college, at Morley College Theatre School where I took part in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town.  In that extraordinary play there is a stage manager who appears on stage and that was the part that I played.  I was not the actual stage manager of the production; that was the task of another individual who had to do all the work and did not appear on stage.
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            Another big event in the college was a visit by the Queen Elizabeth, the  Queen Mother.
            She was a friend of Mrs Gubby, who was, I think, one of Sir Phillip Sassoon’s heirs, and who farmed part of Trent Park Estate, and lived in a farm house on the grounds.  The Queen Mother had visited her several times, and the principal had been introduced to her, and had suggested that students and staff would be honoured if she visited the college.
            As a lifelong republican I did not feel particularly honoured, but I was interested in the chance of seeing the Queen Mother.
            Drama students had prepared Comedia del Arte, playlets that they had devised, one of which was to be presented to the royal visitor.   I thought that the one that I had devised was the best, which, of course, I would, but that belief was not shared by Mr Burton, who chose one of the other playlets for the presentation. 
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            After the Christmas break I found myself in new lodgings which I shared with other students, one of whom shared a bedroom with me.  It was a very comfortable lodging and I got on well with two of my fellow students, but not, alas, with the one who was to share my bedroom.
            He had had a mental breakdown and had been admitted to a hospital, but had walked out of it and returned to the college and had been temporarily lodged with us. He was still clearly very disturbed, and I did not feel comfortable sharing a room with him.
            One evening, I had been visiting Bill Scott, who was in hospital recovering from an operation on a varicose vein, and had then gone on to a pub where I joined the other two students from my lodgings. 
            We were sitting drinking when suddenly Miss Ruegg, the tutor responsible for student lodgings, came in and spoke to us.  She was very disturbed and told us that our fellow student had been sectioned and was to be returned to the mental hospital, and that if he came to the bar we should try and keep him there until she and the police could be informed.
            She left us, but very soon after that the mentally disturbed student appeared with a girl student as a companion.  We tried to persuade him to stay, and the girl to leave, but totally without success, and after a while they left the pub.
            He had not returned to our lodgings when I got back there, and he did not go to bed there that night.
            Next day we learned that he had been apprehended and was back in the mental hospital.  He never returned to college, though the girl he had been with, who did not seem to have been harmed by him, did continue her studies.
            I was not particularly comfortable with the next occupant of the second bed in my bedroom.  He was a young first year student, who seemed to be emotionally much younger than his years.
            One morning at breakfast in a discussion about sex, one of the other students asked him how far he had gone.  The young student, not understanding that the question was related to his sexual prowess, said, that he had been as far as Cardiff on one holiday.
            At the next teaching practice, it became clear from his remarks that he had been doing very badly, and as a result, the college decided that he was not fit to become a teacher and he had to leave.
            He seemed heart broken, but we were not in the least bit surprised.  Later we learnt that he had obtained a job in a travel agency, and one of my fellow lodgers thought that there will now be travellers who thought that they were booked for a trip to Australia but would find themselves in Austria instead.
            I had a fairly comfortable time in that final teaching practice, which I performed in a school in Bush Hill Park which had a well deserved good reputation.  I don’t believe that I did anything at that school to diminish its reputation.
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            Soon I was coming to the end of my teacher education with two final hurdles: obtaining my first teaching post; and taking the examination for my teacher’s certificate.
            Many Trent Park students, no matter which part of Britain they came from, seemed to want to work in London.  Of course the fact that an additional London allowance was added to the normal teacher pay was an attraction, but there was also the lure of being in the capital where everything was happening.
            I had mixed feelings about teaching in London.  I certainly did not want to be employed by the London County Council which ran the schools in the centre of London, but I did apply to the Middlesex County Council which ran the schools in Northern  Outer London, including the schools in Edmonton and Tottenham. I was interviewed at The Guildhall, which was the administering centre of the County Council, though it was not actually in Middlesex, and was told that I had been successful and would shortly be offered a post in a Middlesex School. 
            However, I had also applied to the Hertfordshire County Council and went for an interview to their headquarters in Hertford, and was offered a post in London Colney, a village just outside St. Albans. I decided that though it did not carry a London allowance, I would accept the London Colney post.
            Today I cannot remember whether these interviews took place before or after the final examinations.  I think that they were before, though if I were to subsequently fail the examinations I would not have become a qualified teacher and could not have taken up the London Colney job.
            The final examinations took several days and included, for the drama students, participation in a play which would be watched by the examiners.
            The play chosen was the Scottish 16th century morality play which had been written by a courtier, Sir David Lindsay: The Satire of the Three Estates, which a few years previously had been presented at the Edinburgh Festival.
            In it I played a bawdy morality figure, Solace, who commented on the action from the side of the stage in the first scene.
            The other test for drama students was an individual interview with one of the examiners during which one had to recite a poem.  I chose to recite one of my favourite Robert Browning poems, My Last Duchess, and after my recitation the examiner questioned me about the poem’s meaning.  When I subsequently told Mr Burton that he was rather angry, as the examiners were not meant to discuss the chosen poem with the candidate.
            Fairly quickly the results of the examination were announced.  Only one student failed to obtain a teacher’s certificate, and my result included a mark of merit for drama, which pleased me enormously.
            I don’t think I was the only person to be marked merit, but one conspicuous absence from that distinction was Peter Nichols, who, in my opinion, was the best drama student of our year, yet his excellent had not been noticed by the examiners.
            I was very sad to leave the college; those two years had been amongst the happiest of my adult life so far.  Now I would have to face the real world of professional teaching.
 
                                    CHAPTER ELEVEN
In early September, 1957, on my new moped, I rode from Potters Bar to London Colney to take up my first teaching post as an assistant at The Modern School, London Colney.
            The Modern School was the second smallest secondary school in Hertfordshire, having only about 250 pupils. Despite its name, it was not particularly modern, being a rectangular pre-war building of one storey, except for the corners which were two storey, so that despite its relatively small size it had four staircases.  One on the first floor corner contained the headmaster’s room and office; another, the staff room; a third a practice flat used by girl students studying home economics; and the fourth the library. All the classrooms looked out on an inner quadrangle which was not used for any purpose apart from supplying light through the windows that looked out on it.
            There were only about twelve teachers on the staff, and I was to teach English, Games, History and Geography, despite the fact that my college had provided me with no instruction on the teaching of the latter two subjects.
            So far as I remember, all staff apart from the headmaster were on the same level.  I did not have to serve under any heads of department, though I accepted advice from colleagues, particularly with geography, history and games. Graded posts for teachers with additional responsibility had only been introduced a few years previously, and I had been told by my new colleagues, that the introduction of such posts had caused a lot of bad feeling, and that some teachers who had performed extra tasks willingly, had stopped doing them if they were not paid extra for them.
            In that first week, I returned to my classroom at the end of the afternoon games period to find a small group of children sitting there facing a man at the teacher’s desk. He introduced himself to me as the London Colney Catholic priest who had arranged to take these Catholic pupils for instruction once a week.
            When he learnt that I was a Catholic, he was delighted, and immediately said that I could take his place each week as the religious instructor to these children. I reluctantly agreed, and the priest smiled, shook my hand and left, never to return again.
            I don’t remember what I taught these children, but I got on well enough with them, and later even arranged a visit for them to Westminster Cathedral, where we were shown round by Father, now Monsignor, Wheeler who had become the administrator of the Cathedral.
            Perhaps my efforts may have corrected the mistaken belief of one of them who, before my arrival had been discovered by a teacher sitting alone in a classroom when the whole school was supposed to be in the hall attending choir practice.
            When asked why he wasn’t there he replied: “I don’t have to go sir. I’m not a Christian.”
            “What are you then?” The teacher asked.
            “I’m a Roman Catholic.”
            That reply had highly amused my colleague who was a Welsh Baptist.
            My main task at the school was to teach English to about half the pupils.  The other half were taught by Jennifer Mycock, a colleague who was the daughter of Bertrum Mycock, the BBC’s industrial correspondent.
            I found English teaching quite agreeable and not particularly demanding.  The pupils did not sit any national examinations such as the G.C.E., but the older pupils were entered for a local examination, the St Albans Area Certificate, which was at about the level expected for the C.S.E. (The Certificate of Secondary Education).,           which came into existence a few years later.
            I also taught drama, and directed my first student production, which, I think was moderately successful.  I chose a fifteenth century French Play in translation, The Farce of Master Pierre Pathelin. It was not difficult to direct.  It only had five characters and there was no need for an elaborate set. Basically it told of Pathelin getting the better of a merchant to whom he owed money, and then being bettered by a shepherd who he defended from a charge.
            It was easy for the audience to understand, and they laughed in the right places.
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            The colleague with whom I taught games was considerably older than me and had been a naval officer during the war.  When he had taken up the post after demobilisation, he had nowhere to live, and the headmaster had let him reside in the school flat, which was quite illegal, until he found other accommodation. 
            I had not expected to teach games and was very conscious of my lack of skill and knowledge. I even bought a booklet explaining the rules of soccer, and another giving advice on its playing. Yet despite my lack of experience I even found myself refereeing games that were played against other schools without making a complete fool of myself.
            Soccer was the main activity for the boys during the afternoon games lessons.  Usually the other teacher took charge of the game, whilst I did other things with non-players.  Under me, the boys sometimes went on cross country runs for about five miles or so, outside the school grounds.
            A rather less strenuous, but intellectually demanding game, that I initiated at London Colney was chess.  I started a chess club, taught pupils to play, and had several enthusiastic members who played in my classroom after lunch.
            On a visit to Trent Park after I had been teaching for a few months, I told the games lecturer that I was now teaching games. He looked surprised, and then asked me if I would mind if he told that to the students who knew me.
            “I always say that the most unlikely people will find themselves teaching games,” he said. “Now, perhaps they will believe me.”
            I enjoyed teaching history and geography, despite finding it difficult to follow the geography syllabus, which had been devised by one of the other teachers, and consisted of a number of statements each beginning with the word “Consider.” Most of the statements I found easy to follow, but there were one or two about which none of the text books provided any information. 
            Using a technique of squaring that I had learnt when I had been in the intelligence section in my army battalion, I was able to draw quite acceptable maps of countries on my blackboard, including one of Ghana when the syllabus asked us to consider that country, and later a map of Argentina.
            My teaching about that country had such an effect on one pupil that he told me that he had persuaded his mother to buy yerbe mate at a health food shop in St. Albans, though he did not tell me whether he enjoyed tasting that drink.
            I was still an active member of the Mountview Theatre Club, and performed in two plays there in my first teaching year: The Late Christopher Bean, and Noah, in which I played the Lion.  However I only performed once in the latter, because I had became ill with shingles and had to withdraw.  My substitute was very unhappy having to wear my discarded lion costume, for shingles is contagious and the costume could contain the germ, but as far as I know it was not passed on to him.
            The shingles, which was extremely unpleasant caused me to be absent from School for several days.
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            Living in Potters Bar had to end now that I had a teaching job near St Albans. After some months I moved to St. Albans where I rented a flat in London Road. It consisted of a living room, bedroom, and, between them, a corridor which contained the kitchen. It had no running water, and that I had to obtain from the communal bathroom, which I shared with the other residents of the house.  The cooking facilities in my corridor kitchen consisted a a food cupboard and two gas rings. My landlady was an elderly deaf widow who occupied the rest of the house.
            I found the rent a bit high, so, as there was a second bed in the bedroom.  In the following year I had a room mate; a young Welsh teacher, who, became the other games teacher in the Modern School and whom despite his newness, as he had qualified as a games teacher, took charge of the sessions, which did not bother me in the least.   He also taught some English and in that respect was junior to me. He was only with us for one year, as he obtained a post in charge of games at another school. 
            I was mildly surprised at his obtaining that post, for he had one black mark against him as a games teacher.  It was when we had a visit from one of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools.  The inspector had come to see him as he was a first year teacher.  I had had a similar visit in my first year at the school.
            We had come to the end of a games session, and I was the first one back in the building, and as I arrived I saw the inspector entering the boys’ cloakroom, so I rushed back to the field in order to warn my colleague. Unfortunately I missed him, though I don’t know how that happened. He returned with the boys, accompanied them into the cloakroom, went to the shower controls and turned them on, to be greeted a few seconds later by a waterlogged inspector, who had gone into the showers to inspect them and had been soaked when my colleague switched them on.
            When he left the school to take up his new post, he also left the flat, but I, fairly quickly found a new room mate: Dennis Smith, who taught rural studies at another school in Sr. Albans.  He was from the North of England, and we got on very well for the three years or so that he remained in the flat.
            After my bout of shingles I left the Mountview Theatre Club and joined a St. Albans club, The Company of Ten, which had its own little theatre near the cathedral. With that company I appeared in two plays: Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, in which I played Johnny, who is shot by the I.R.A, and The Apollo de Belac by Giraudoux in which I played the commissionaire. 
            That one act play was entered in a drama festival and I was praised for my performance which the invigilator compared favourably with the less satisfactory professional performance he had seen when that part was played by the playwright, John Osborne.
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            Ruby, Archie and my nephews were no longer living in the thatched cottage.  Lady Chancellor, Archie’s boss, had moved them to a flat in her mansion, Dane End House, and I was visiting them for the week end when there was a violent snowstorm that covered the countryside in deep snow. 
            It had been so deep that on Sunday the bus to Ware did not run, so we could not go there for mass; and it was still thick on Monday when I was due back at school. Despite Ruby pleading with me not to attempt it, I set out early and began walking through the field to get to another road some way from the village where I hoped buses would still be running. On the way I managed to use a telephone in a farm house to phone the school to tell them that I might be late.
            After more than an hour trudging through the snow I reached the road to find that buses were running, and after a wait at a cold bus stop, I boarded one that took me to Hertford.  From there, another bus took me to Hatfield, another one to St. Albans, and finally a bus got me to the school in London Colney.  I arrived just as school lunch was being served.
            Next morning at assembly the Head talked about my ‘heroic’ effort to get to the school and compared it with the conduct of the many pupils who had not bothered to leave their homes in the village to get to school, believing that the snow gave them a valid excuse for non-attendance.
            At about this time we had a death in the family.  My cousin Peter, who was married with children, had been in his office when it had caught fire and he had not been able to get out before the fire reached his room, and had been asphyxiated and burnt to death.
            I was very sad at that news, for I had liked Peter who had lived with us for a while during the war.
 
                                       CHAPTER TWELVE
            In July I had come to the end of my first year as a teacher, and had begun to realise how lucky I was to have obtained a job in such a small school with relatively well behaved pupils; though I knew that within a few years I should look for another post, possibly one that carried extra responsibility and pay.
            During the summer holiday I went to Dublin for a couple of weeks with Ken Rudrum, who had been a student with me at Trent Park. Ken was a few years older than me and a talented musician who had the letters LRAM, after his name.
            We took the boat train to Holyhead and from there the ferry to Dun Laoghaire: a town that my mother used to call Kingstown, which was its name when the British ran Ireland.. 
            Once we docked we asked a taxi driver to take us to our hotel.
            “Sure, you don’t need a taxi to take you,” he said.
            “It’s just there.”
            He pointed to the hotel which was opposite the ferry terminal on the other side of the road.
            I was very impressed with his honesty.  I had a strong suspicion that a taxi driver in England might have taken us round a block a couple of times and charged us an inordinate fare before dumping us down at the address.
            The hotel was unpretentious and very comfortable.  Many of the guests seem to be Irish office workers who lived more or less permanently in the hotel.
            Our room was on the first floor at the front of the hotel.  It was very comfortable and I wondered why it was so cheap.  I discovered the reason that first night when we were in bed. There was a lighthouse in the harbour with a powerful beam that rotated, and every few seconds the beam shone through our window, making sleep difficult until we got used to it.
            Each morning, after breakfast, Ken and I would take a bus into Dublin.
            I was delighted by the city, which Mum used to refer to as ‘Dirty Dublin’, but I could see no way that it deserved that appellation.
            We would leave the bus at O’Connell Street, which I understood to be the widest street in Europe, near the rebuilt General Post Office, the site of the 1916 uprising, and the Nelson Pillar which was still standing, but which was to be blown up some years in to the future. From there we would walk in the lively city. 
            Of course we visited Trinity College, the University of Dublin, and saw the magnificent illuminated Book of Kells.  We usually ate lunch in a particular restaurant that we found, where one of the other diners was a beautiful model, who we would have liked to get to know.  By about the third day of our visit, we both decided that we would try to talk to her if she was there, but before lunch we visited Christ Church Cathedral where we were unfortunate enough to talk to a verger with alcoholic breath who insisted on showing us round the interior.
            It was quite interesting, but we were getting rather hungry, and we could not shake him off, so that by the time we left and rushed to the restaurant, the beautiful lady was no longer there, and neither was she there on any other occasion when we visited that restaurant.
            During that holiday I think that we saw most of the important sites, including the huge Phoenix Park, where, in the zoo, a giraffe bent down its long neck and licked my hand.
            One another day we went on the free tour of the vast Guinness brewery and were given glasses of the stout at the end of the visit; which I drank rather reluctantly as I had never really enjoyed that drink.
            One the same day we visited the Protestant church where the very first performance of Handel’s Messiah had been performed.
            One evening we went on a tour of entertainment spots, including a hall where we saw Irish dancing, and later that evening in another place we saw a performance of Irish music including a harp solo. During that evening we met two Australian girls with whom we became very friendly.  Later, after the holiday had ended, I took one of the girls, who lived in London, to the theatre.
            She was the daughter of a sheep farmer and was spending a year in England and Europe with her friend, who we had met in Dublin.  Ken had rather fancied the friend, and had thought that with his 'witty' remarks he was making a great impression on her, but her friend told me that he had not, and that they had thought him one of the rudest men that they had met.  I never told him that.
            I think that during that Dublin holiday we visited the theatre three times: twice to see the Abbey Theatre Company, which was not then in the old Abbey Theatre, and once to another theatre, I think it could have been The Gate, to see The Hearts a Wonder, a musical version of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.  That was absolutely splendid, and I was surprised that when it subsequently transferred to London it only ran for a comparatively short time.
            At the Abbey we saw modern Irish plays which were not memorable, but also, before the main performance in English, a one act play in Gaelic, which was, of course, incomprehensible to us, but interesting to watch.
            We did not only visit Dublin during that holiday, but also spent a day in Howth, a charming sea side resort on a peninsula a few miles to the North of the city.
            At our hotel we discovered that the pleasant middle aged lady whom we thought had been the proprietor was in fact the manager, for just before we were due to leave she told us that the proprietor would like to see us.
            She took us into a private sitting room where sat an elderly lady who seemed to be an invalid.  She introduced us and we chatted for a while, telling her how much we had enjoyed staying at her hotel.
            I think it was the next day that we boarded the ferry and returned to England.
 
                                    CHAPTER THIRTEEN       
            Back at home, and starting my second year as a teacher, I decided that if I was going to rise in my chosen profession I would need to get a degree; however, before I could start studying for one I would need to get a couple of A Level passes, so I enrolled at the Polytechnic in Regent Street on two courses on Tuesday evenings to study for A Levels in Economics and British Constitution. I hoped that I could successfully pass these two subjects after one year, and then enrol, at the Polytechnic for another part time course for a degree.
            By this time I had sold my moped and bought a scooter which I used to get me to the Polytechnic each Tuesday evening.  I had also bought a large motor cycling coat to keep warm and a motor cycling helmet, yet these did not prove enough to keep me warm when it got into late November, and sometimes I felt so cold on my return journey from the Polytechnic, that I had great difficulty pulling the machine off the road and into the parking space at the side of my building.
            I was supposed to spend two hours at the lectures, the first hour studying economics and the second hour British constitution. I found the economics lectures difficult and I had to concentrate in order to grasp the material.  British constitution, on the other hand seemed to mainly consist of material that I already knew, and after a few months I started skipping the second lecture, and either going home early, or going over to Goodge Street and spending the rest of the evening at the Brightmore’s as Tuesday was their at home night.
            At the end of the following year I sat for the two A Level examinations and got a bare pass in economics, and, despite my non-attendance at so many lectures, a pass with distinction in British constitution.
            During my second summer holiday as a teacher I again went on holiday with Ken Rudrum, but this time to Paris.
            We stayed in an inexpensive hotel in Montmartre, and I learnt there to telephone down for breakfast in French, ‘Avoir vous le petite dejenour per numero douz sil vou plaise?
            Montmartre seemed to be an ideal place for a first visit to Paris.  We were quite close to the Moulon Rouge, and, of course we went up the hill and visited the Sacré Coeur and looked at the art objects on sale.
            We ate at inexpensive bistros, and went up the Eiffel Tower and also to the top of the Arc de Triumph, which I thought gave a much more interesting view of Paris than the top of the Eiffel Tower.  
            Ken had a 35 millimetre camera, which he asked me to use when he was sick and could not leave the hotel room.  I thought it a great improvement on the cheap camera that I had and determined to buy one when back in England.
            One evening we went on a tour of night clubs which included a visit to the Moulon Rouge, and, at one of the other night clubs a spirited performance of the Can Can by a dumpy yet attractive little dancer.
            When we returned from the holiday and left the train at Victoria Station I thought that London looked dull and shabby compared with Paris.
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            By now I was beginning to feel that St. Albans was my home, and, instead of visiting Pop in Potters Bar, when the other bed in the flat was free he would occasionally spend the week end with me and I would take him for lunch to a little restaurant near the flat.
            I also joined the St. Albans Labour Party, and became quite active in my ward, helping to canvass during a local election and sitting in the Town Hall observing the count during election night, but that did not take all my time.  I was still keen to get a degree so I gave up acting and rejoined The Polytechnic as a part time student.
 
                                    CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As I was mainly an English teacher, it would have been logical for me to read for a London external English degree, but unfortunately without GCE passes in Latin or a foreign language, I was not qualified to work towards such a degree, so, looking for a discipline that I could study, I chose Sociology and enrolled for that. When I attended my first class I found that I was one of about seventy who had enrolled for the course. 
            Unlike some other degree courses, sociology was not divided into two sections, Part I and Part II, instead one studied all the elements until one took the final examination, though before that one should have taken the subsidiary paper in Economics.
            I think full time students had to study for three, or perhaps four years before they sat for the degree, but for we part-timers there was no set time.  We could take as many years as we wished before taking the final.  I think that there was one student in the class who had been at it for over ten years and had sat and failed his final papers several times, but after each failure had picked himself up and returned to his studies in order to try again.
            I did not know whether he should be praised for his persistence or denigrated for his stupidity.  I had no intention of following his example.  I decided that if I failed the first time, I might try once again, but there would be no third or fourth time for me.
            The head of the course was a Dr. Cotgrove, who subsequently became Professor of Sociology at the new University of Bath.  He travelled in from his home in Southend every day to teach at the Polytechnic.  I later discovered that his family had a restaurant in that town that was mentioned in The Good Food Guide, but I doubt if the good doctor had time to help in that family establishment.
            He told us at our first session that most of us would drop out and not take the final examination.  He said that if we decided to drop out, to tell him why we had decided to do so.  He told us that at these first sessions he always made that request, but no one ever did tell him why they had abandoned the course.
            He was right about the drop out rate.  In the five years that I studied before I sat my finals our numbers dropped considerably, I suspect that by the end, fewer than twenty of the original students remained.
            I think that in that first year of study I had to attend the Polytechnic three to four times a week. Which meant that I could no longer be an active member of the St. Albans, Company of Ten drama club.
             I studied social psychology, criminology, statistics as well as the more direct sociology topics.  The criminology lecturer was someone that I knew as he had been, and still was so far as I could tell, a senior research officer in the Social Survey.  He recognised me at once, for during my Social Survey days we had both taken part in a debate organised by the sport and social club; though today I have no recollection of his name, nor of the motion that we debated, though I suspect that his side rather than mine won that debate.
            It was up to students to decide when to sit for the subsidiary economics paper.  I took mine after about three years.  In addition to the lectures and the required text book reading, I paid great attention to the financial and economic articles appearing weekly in the Observer, and I think they had a lot to do with my being successful in the examination; though I was not overconfident on that day, and when, during the lunch break, I ate with some of my fellow Polytechnic students and we discussed the paper we had just sat, I was overawed by the mathematical skill they displayed in that conversation, and their remarks about the graphs that they had drawn.  I had drawn no graphs in my answer papers.
            I need not have been overawed.  When the results were announced and I learnt that I had passed, they were no longer students on the course, they had failed.
            Generally I enjoyed studying, though not particularly statistics in which I realised that my lack of algebratic and geometric skills made it difficult for me to understand all the material.
            I was surprised to realise that in sociological terms I was not, as I had always believed, a member of the working class; but that despite the fact that in most of my childhood and all my adolescence I had lived in council houses,  my job as a teacher, and my father’s job in a grocery shop put me into the lower middle class.
            I found the psychology sessions particularly interesting, though until it was explained to me by a sociologist that I met later in holiday, I did not understand the difference between social psychology and sociology. Our psychology lecturer appeared to be a firm believer in the theories of Sigmund Freud, though he admitted that there was no real scientific evidence for their truth. To me that seemed to be an almost religious blind faith and I never shared his faith.
 
                                    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
During the simmer following my Dublin holiday, Ken Rudrum joined me on another holiday in which we hired a motor cruiser on the Fens.  My other companions were a friend from the St Albans Labour Party, and Peter Peterson,  a teacher who I had met at one of t he Brightmores‘ Tuesday evening soirees.
            He was a South African with a mixed ancestry: one of his grandparents had been Indian, another Norwegian, another Bantu, and the fourth from another European race.  He had a small beard, was very good looking and very talented.  He was a woodwork teacher, and a magnificent cook.  We ate very well during that holiday.
            When we arrived we found our boat was moored on the Great Ouse at Ely, a city with a magnificent cathedral, that, but for being the seat of a bishop, is so small that its population is less than would be found in some large villages.
            At some time during that holiday, possibly on the day that we picked up the boat, I visited the cathedral, and was almost overwhelmed by its beauty when I entered into the West Tower.  The daylight coming from the octagon above was almost breathtaking and I just stood there gazing at the magnificence that surrounded me.
            Boating holidays are a good way of getting to know people, and in the course of this one I discovered that my Labour Party friend was a pain in the neck.  He seemed extremely reluctant to do his share in the various tasks that such a holiday entails, whilst other people were working, he seemed content to sit doing nothing.  He seemed to be on a different wavelength to the three of us.
            This culminated in what might have been an expensive incident when we reached St. Ives. This town was not the home of the legendary man with seven wives; that was St Ives Cornwall.  This was St Ives on the Great Ouse which is famous for its medieval bridge, a stone construction, with a small chapel built in its centre.
            We had been warned to take especial care when passing under the bridge as the gap under the chapel was very narrow, and boats could hit the side walls if passing too close to them.
            Our Labour Party friend was at the wheel as we reached the bridge.  We had known that we could not pass through it with the roof of the wheel house up, so that had been retracted and was resting at its lower position.   However, he did not slow the boat down, but carelessly shot under the bridge at reckless speed and in doing so, the side of the retracted roof, hit the side wall of the bridge and the whole roof tour away from its housing and fell into the river.
            Someone else took the wheel, we turned back, and using a boat hook managed to retrieve the damaged roof and tie up on the bank.
            At that point Peter Peterson took over.  Having borrowed tools from a local boat yard, he managed to repair the damaged roof housing, and we were able to put the roof back in place able to rise over the wheel house and retract if required as well as it did previously with almost no sign of the previous damage.
            When we returned to Ely at the end of the week and told the boat yard what had happened, they were momentarily furious, but when they saw how well Peter had repaired the roof housing, they calmed down, and did not even refuse to return the deposit we had paid them at the start of the week.
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            Despite my degree studies I still found some time for other activities, and I began helping with the school’s youth club which met on one evening each week.  My help chiefly consisted of being there with another teacher just to ensure that there were no fights, but generally nothing untoward took place as our pupils were fairly well behaved; though I did find the loud recorded music that accompanied these sessions rather hard on my ear drums.
            However, on one occasion there was some trouble, though it was not caused by any of our pupils.  One of the girls complained to me that there were some strange boys in the school grounds who were calling out to our pupils. 
            I went out and met those boys, who were all from other schools.  I asked what they were doing there, and they told me that they would like to join the youth club.  I explained that it was only for Modern School pupils and asked them to go.
            They were rather large young men and I wondered what I could do if they refused to go, but happily they did not, and after they were gone I went inside to endure the music and general noise for the rest of the evening.
            Dennis Smith, who had proved a very good flat mate, and whose only fault was his belief that people who claimed to like Shakespeare were intellectual snobs who didn’t really enjoy the works of the great bard, finally found himself a fiancée and a new teaching post near his family home in the North of England and moved out.
            I could not find another flat mate, and as the rent was too high for me, I found myself new lodgings in Radlett, a large village some way to the west of London Colney.
            In my new home I was not able to cook but I was a lodger, with the landlady providing meals.  It was not an ideal situation, but I accepted it, though I did not think that I would live there very long.
            Whilst I was living there I went on another holiday abroad; this time to Germany, to the Harz Mountains near the border between East and West Germany. I stayed with other teachers of various nationalities on a discussion course organised by the Sonnenberg Association, an international body that had been formed after the war, following a meeting between German and Danish teachers who had discovered that despite the tension caused by the war, that  got on very well with each other to such an extent that one of the German teachers suggested that they meet regularly for discussions. 
            The meetings were held at Sonnenberg House near the small town of Sankt Andreasberg.  It was a post war building and we slept in small dormitories each having five or six beds.  I think it was deliberate policy to mix the races in the dormitories.  I had a Frenchman in the next bed to me, who moved out after the first night having complained that my snoring kept him awake. He slept elsewhere for one night and then returned to the bed next to me.  When I asked him why he told me that the people in the other dormitory had rejected him because he had kept them awake with his snoring.
            The discussions that week were in English and German with simultaneous translation during the speeches.   They were almost all on educational topics, and, as well as a large group of English participants and an even larger group of Germans, there were lots of other nationalities present including small groups from Luxembourg, Lebanon, and Italy.
            The leader of the English group, who was chairman of the English Sonnenberg Association, and who taught languages in a grammar school in Barnet, gave a talk in German, so those of us not fluent in German listened to the simultaneous translation which was given in English by the German translator.
            I was persuaded by the chairman to become a member of the English Sonnenberg Association, and was subsequently elected to its national committee.
            We visited the surrounding area, including looking at the barbed wire fence that bordered the East German state, which was close at hand.  We were also taken to see a silver mine, and visited the beautiful mediaeval town of Goslar, where I had my first taste of cheesecake.
            On Sunday I went to mass in the Catholic Church in Sankt Andreasberg, and was distressed to hear the priest telling the congregation not to vote Social Democrat in the next election.  My German was very scanty, but not scanty enough for me not to catch his meaning.
            There was dancing most evenings in the House, and I managed to become friendly with an attractive young German teacher.  We exchanged addresses, and back in England I wrote to her, but I don’t remember whether she replied to my letter.
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            At the end of that week in Sonnenberg, all the British party moved on to Berlin where we were the guests of Berlin teachers. 
            This was a momentous time for the people of Berlin, for recently the East German Authorities had closed the border dividing the city and had begun constructing the infamous Berlin Wall: action that had threatened to turn the cold war into another world war.
            My hostess was a young teacher who lived with her parents in Dahlem, a rather affluent district in West Berlin. Her parents were particularly worried about the border closing, for when it had happened their eldest son, a Lutheran clergyman, had been staying with them, but had insisted on returning to his parish in East Germany, and they were afraid  that they would never see him again.
            I was lucky to have such an attractive young hostess, and I even took her to the cinema one evening where I think we saw a German film of Goethe’s Faust, which was spectacular, though my lack of German meant that the beauty of the text rather passed me by.
            West Berlin, despite the Wall was a very lively, interesting city. There were the cinemas, theatres and night life, particularly in the area of the glittering Kurfúrstendamm I almost felt at home there. 
            It was much larger than I had imagined, with, within its borders some countryside, the rural area by the Wannsee, the lake which provided the equivalent of the sea side to the hemmed in Berliners.  I did not know at the time, but the Wannsee had a notorious history, for it was there, during the war, that the Nazis had a conference in which they decided that the best way to deal with the ‘Jewish problem’ was to exterminate all Jews. .
            Of course we had to cross the wall and look at East Berlin, which was a very depressing place.  We could cross the wall and then return to West Berlin.  East Berliners could not.  The Wall turned their part of the city into a prison.  They could leave it to go east into the rest of the East German state, but they could not go west into glittering West Berlin. That was to remain the situation for nearly half a century until the unification of Germany.
            I did not enjoy the few hours that I spent in East Berlin.  It seemed to be a very grey place.
            Back in West Berlin I visited the Dahlem Museum which held the famous bust of the head of the Egyptian Queen, Nefertiti.  I had seen pictures of the bust before I visited the museum and had been impressed by its beauty.  However the pictures I had seen had been of one side only.  When I was in the museum and able to view the bust from both sides and from the front, I was disturbed to find that the other eye, which did not appear in the pictures I had viewed, was blank.
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                                    CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I had now been teaching for four years and I felt that it was time that I looked for another post, possibly a graded one that would entitle me to extra pay.
            I was relatively contented at London Colney Modern School, despite the fact that it had such a small staff that all male teachers had to take part in a staff-pupil cricket match. I hated that, but if I did not play the match would have had to be cancelled; though the public demonstration of my inability to catch balls was humiliating so I knew that I should get another post.
            I  subscribed to the Times Educational Supplement and would spend some time each week studying the hundreds of teaching posts on offer, looking for a suitable one.
            The suitable one that I found was in the Clarendon School, a large post war school in the council housing estate of South Oxhey near Watford which had a vacancy for a teacher in charge of drama. Despite my headmaster telling me that he did not think I had enough experience to apply for a graded post, I applied; was interviewed; did not get the graded post, but was offered another non-graded post to teach English.
            I was so annoyed at my headmasters lack of faith in me, that I accepted it, though it meant that I had to move as Radlett was too far from South Oxhey for it to be practical for me to make a daily journey from there.
            I found new lodgings in Bushey which was fairly close to the school, said goodbye to my London Colney colleagues, and moved across to Bushey shortly before the new term started at Clarendon School.
            I had rented a typewriter, which I intended to use for literary composition.  One of my first efforts was an article about my failure to learn foreign languages which I called, “Gift of Tongues” and sent to the Times Educational Supplement. I was delighted to receive a letter from the editor telling me that it had been accepted for publication, and shortly after that it was in print, though, in keeping with Times policy at that time, my name did not appear as the author, which was given as “By a Correspondent.”
            I sat back and waited for some payment for my literary effort, but none came, but after a few months the editor wrote telling me that the Department for Education of the state of Victoria, Australia, would like to reprint my article, and asking if I had any objection.  I replied that I had none, but I would like some payment for the article. Shortly after that I received a fee of £7.13 shillings.
            However, during that school holiday I took part in another non teaching activity.
            I did not have a television set, but spending a week end with Pop, who with Aunty Kath was now sharing the house in Tottenham where Aunty Queenie and Arthur lived, I saw a quiz programme on his television and thought that I might become one of the contestants.
            The programme was Criss Cross Quiz and in it contestants had to answer questions set out like a Noughts and Crosses game, and in which the contestant who first answered three questions correctly in a straight line won. 
            I contacted the production company, Granada Television, and was invited to their London office for an audition.
            For the audition I did not have to appear before a television camera; instead I was handed a lengthy quiz paper containing dozens of questions and asked to write the answers down.   I did so, completed the paper and handed it back.
            It was taken away, and then, after a few minutes I was given another paper and asked to attempt that.
            I completed the second paper and handed it in.
            I waited again; and then, after perhaps half an hour, a rather excited person came to tell me that I had done better than anyone taking the test before, and that they would have me on the programme at once. At once turned out to be a week before I was due to start my new post at Clarendon School.
            The programme was recorded in a London theatre.  I think that it was the Chelsea Palace.  There I was introduced to my fellow contestants who included a young beauty queen, the current Miss England.  Make up was put on our faces, though I doubt if Miss England needed much, and one by one we went before the cameras to compete.
            I must have been the last one that day, for after I had successfully answered my first question, the programme came to an end, and I was told that the rest of the broadcast would be the following week at the Granada studio in Manchester.
            That would be after the new school term had started.  Of course I had to be there, and I had the embarrassing task of telling my new headmaster that I would have to be absent for one day in my first week, which surprised him when he learnt why, but he gave me permission.
            That was a couple of days after my arrival in the school and I had already met my new classes and not found them as difficult as I had suspected that I would.
            Clarendon School was very different from London Colney Modern School which had been the second smallest secondary modern school in Hertfordshire.  Clarendon School was the second largest with over fifty teachers and more than a thousand pupils. It was the largest of the two secondary schools in South Oxhey which was a small town consisting almost entirely of council houses, but not Hertfordshire County Council houses, but ones built by the London and the Middlesex County Councils. 
            Like Dagenham, where I had lived as a child, the town was developed to house the overspill families from Greater London where there was not enough room to build enough houses.  Thus it was almost a one class town, for apart from shopkeepers and a few professionals such as teachers and social and medical workers, only working class people lived there.
            The school had been built after the War and consisted of several buildings grouped round the central administration and assembly building. The assembly hall was very large with a good stage at one end, and a wide set of stairs at the other end, containing half way up a platform from which the headmaster would conduct the morning assembly with the whole school assembled below him, apart from the senior pupils who looked down from the first floor.
            When I was present for my first assembly I thought that it was inordinately long and elaborate, with a senior member of staff standing up on the platform and glowering down at the children as they entered to assemble.
            When they were all assembled there would be a short pause, and then the headmaster, wearing his academic gown, would emerge from his study on the first floor and appear at the top of the stairs, at which point the presiding senior teacher would vacate the platform and descend to the floor of the hall while the headmaster, wearing his academic gown, would descend to the platform and take his place on the vacant platform and assembly would begin.
            There would be various announcements of activities, and some selected children would accend to the platform and speak of a class or group activity.  There would be prayers, and the brass band on the stage would provide the music for a hymn.
            At the end of the assembly the headmaster would return to his study and the senior teacher would return to the platform and direct the business of the classes leaving the assembly room.
            At the morning break I was interviewed by the headmaster who asked me what I thought of the assembly.  I nearly said that I thought that it was overlong, but realising that that was not an answer that he would like, I said that I found it very interesting.
            He gave a satisfied smile at that reply.
            My classroom was on the second floor in a teaching block some way from the administration block.  On the ground floor of the block was the school library which I thought impressively well stocked. I said so to the librarian, a formidable lady teacher who was also in charge of that block.  I asked her what arrangements there were for pupils to borrow the books.
            “Oh no, Mr Baker,” she exclaimed. “We can’t let the pupils borrow books.  We would soon lose them if we did.   No, this library is for reference classes and for teaching purposes.  I have a timetable to teach individual classes here for library lessons.”
            I was mildly shocked by that reply.  In London Colney pupils regularly borrowed books from the much smaller school library with no loss of stock. I thought that was the purpose of a school library.  I never did discover the educational value of the library lessons at Clarendon, though those that I observed through the library windows showed me pupils sitting quietly at desks with open books in front of them and writing about them in notebooks.
            Another thing that rather shocked me was the fact that staff meetings were held every week after lessons had finished.  In London Colney staff meetings were usually monthly, though on occasions a month would go by without a staff meeting. 
            The Clarendon staff meetings were tightly controlled by the headmaster, and I began to realise what a strong personality he had.
            My timetable was partly teaching English and partly teaching drama. The woman who had obtained the graded post for which I had unsuccessfully applied, taught most of the other drama classes; but she seemed to be an oversensitive soul and found controlling these former Cockney children too great a strain, and, after one term resigned.
            The headmaster offered the graded post to me, which I accepted.  The extra pay would be useful, though I was rather worried that perhaps I would not be able to cope with the classes that I was to take over from the lady who had left.
            I need not have worried.  I had few difficulties with the classes, though now I was spending about three quarters of my time as a drama teacher, with only about one quarter teaching English.
            As the main drama teacher I was also expected to take an active part in any school drama productions, however I did not help with the school review that was being produced when I arrived.
            My first drama production was of Goldsmith’s comedy, She Stoops to Conquer.  The headmaster would not let me cast any members of the sixth year because he feared that to do so would distract them from working for exams, but I managed to get a cast using students from the third and fourth years.
            Although the audiences were rather small, for there was a feeling in South Oxhey that this was too highbrow a play for local tastes, those who came enjoyed the comedy, and the cast and back stage staff were extremely enthusiastic. I got the feeling that they would love to be in future productions.
            At the end of the term before Christmas the school staged a carol concert with bible readings, and I was asked to provide dramatic interludes to illustrate the Christmas story.  These were to be in mime, and I used some of the cast of the play for some of them.  They were very effective and added to the dignity of the proceedings.
            With such a large staff it was inevitable that some of them should stand out.  One of the girl PE, teachers had thrown the javelin in the last Olympic Games.  I became particularly friendly with one of the history teachers, John Methvan, who subsequently went on holiday with me.
            The school had a full time ballroom dancing teacher, which was strange, for this was at a time when formal ballroom dancing seemed to by dying out.  He was an interesting man, with very Jewish features.  This teacher, Sid Winter, had been a fighter pilot in the Western Desert during the war, and told a story about when they had captured an Italian air base and found huge supplies of Chianti.  They drank so much of the stuff, that if they had been attacked from the air, he did not think that they could have taken off to fight back, as he and the other pilots were so blotto.
            Because of his teaching, several of the pupils were extremely good ballroom dancers, and one girl was the junior national champion.
            The school brass band, was so good that it had been taken on tour to Germany. The timpani player had become a member of the National Youth Orchestra.  Roger Elliott, the head of music had been a woodwind player in a national orchestra.  He was the only person I have ever met who literally foamed in the mouth when he lost his temper, which he did, on occasion if he felt that his work was not being appreciated.
            He had played in concerts under Sir Malcolm Sargeant who had asked him to play the cow horn in the Benjamin Britain rural symphony.  He had taken this unusual instrument home with him to practice, and, though, at first he could only get about one note out of it, he found that with experimental fingering he was able to extend its range.  
            Before the practice for the first performance, Sir Malcolm asked him how well he could play it.
            “Well enough,” he replied. “In fact I’ve taught myself to play ‘Abide with me’ on it.
            “This, I must hear,” said Sir Malcolm.
            So Roger produced the cow horn and gave a solo performance for the great conductor, who laughed so much that Roger thought that he would be ill.
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            Whilst teaching a Clarendon I became interested in sailing, and went to an Easter camp at the Hertfordshire Schools Sailing Camp which was a tented site on the edge at Barton Turf on the Norfolk Broads.  It is, perhaps a fair example of British eccentricity that an inland county like Hertfordshire should have such a thriving schools sailing association.
            At the camp we received instruction in dinghy sailing from an instructor, who was bothered by the apparent inability of two fairly elderly female members, to understand the techniques of sailing, and, in particular the fact that if one was in danger of capsizing, it was best to let go of the tiller, which would enable to boat to rectify itself. In such circumstances these ladies would hold desperately on to the tiller, and by doing so bring their craft to the brink of capsizing.  Fortunately, in that week it never happened to them.  The instructor bravely took them out in a dinghy a couple of times to show them how to do it, but without much success, though neither they nor he had to swim on those occasions.
            On another occasion, three of us were in a sailing dinghy practising what to do if someone fell into the water.   The technique then was to jib round to him and pull him into out of the water.  
            We had a man sized sail bundle which we would throw overboard as a person substitute and then jib round to pick it up.  We never bothered to actually take it out of the water, but would go close to it, then another one of us would take the tiller and then practice the manoeuvre again.
            We had been at that for some time when we suddenly found that we had been joined by a boat containing a young boy, who had rowed a fair way across the broad to join us.
            “I’ll pick it up for you,” he called.
            We blushed with embarrassment.  “No, it’s all right, sonny,” one of us replied. “We’re only playing.”
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            Back at school, the head of the English department had found another post elsewhere and had resigned at the end of the summer term.
            The school advertised his post, but had not been able to find a successor, which was probably due to the fact that although it was a very large department with over ten teachers, the post only offered the pay of a Grade A department head, the very lowest level.  The previous department head had held a Grade C position, which was more in keeping with the size of the department, but the headmaster could not offer that to a new person because he had already used the available promotion points.
            That was because Roger Elliott, who as head of music was on a Grade A allowance, had threatened to resign if his pay was not improved.   The head, terrified of losing the magnificent brass band if Roger was to leave, raised Roger’s position to Grade B, which meant that there were not enough points to keep the pay of the new head of English up to its former level.
            Thus we began the autumn term with no head of English, and the head asked if I, the librarian, and one other member of the department, could temporarily run the department between us, though without any head of department pay.
            The other department member was Pat Fineran, a flamboyant spinster who had joined the staff when I took over the drama post.  Pat was not a good disciplinarian, but when she joined had boasted that she was a trained actress, having been a student at a London theatre school.  When I asked which one she told me that it was Morley College, and she seemed a little distressed when I told her that I was an ex Morley College student, for that meant that I knew that it was a part time school, not full time as she had implied.  All the same, she had asked if she could produce a school play and the head had agreed.
            For much of the term I pretty well ran the department alone, as there was no real impute from the librarian or from Pat Fineran.  However I had a stroke of luck.  One morning I was attempting to organise a debate with one fourth year class.  After a few minutes I decided that this was a mistake as they were making a hash of it.   I stopped the debate and spent the next ten minutes or so explaining what they should have been doing, and then started the debate again.  This time it seemed to go well, and about five minutes into it, the headmaster entered with a couple of governors and they sat and observed for a while.  He told me that he was very impressed, and then left with his visitors.
            A couple of days later I was summoned to see him and he told that he was recommending to the governors that I become Head of English.  I was delighted, and took over the department at once.  It meant extra pay for me, though not all that much, for the posts was still graded Grade A Head of Department, not Grade C as it should have been, but I did not complain.
            We were entering pupils for English language GCE.,  and a few for English Literature.   Although I was now head of department I had never taught English Literature GCE and as we were well into the teaching year, it was not practical for me to take over from the existing literature teacher, particularly as I had not studied the chosen texts,  so I continued with my existing English and drama classes.  I quickly realised that the head regarded me as the head of both the English and the Drama departments, though, at that time the latter only consisted of myself and Miss Fineran.
            My next school drama production was Twelfth Night. I think our audience numbers were slightly better than for my production of She Stoops to Conquer.  My Malvolio was a fourth year boy who performed very well,  much to the surprise of his Father who could not understand how his son had conquered his stutter to appear in the part.
            I told him that the boy never stuttered for me, but meeting the man I could see why he might have stuttered to his father, for he was a very aggressive ex-army sergeant major, who had probably dominated his wife and his children to the extent that they were afraid of him.
            Another school production that I worked on was a musical version of the Arabian Nights, with the school band under Roger Elliott providing the accompaniment. This was the second time that the school had presented this entertainment; the first time had been before I joined the staff, and Roger and the headmaster were keen that we should repeat the success of the former production.  I think that we did.
            I was assisted as director by Peter Denny, a science teacher.  He had lots of useful ideas and we worked well together.  One problem that we both faced was that Roger Elliott was upset when we veered in any way from the direction taken in the original production.
            At one point in the performance we had a procession of children parading down the centre of the auditorium, climbing onto the stage and presenting gifts to Aladdin and the princess.  Peter Denny thought, and I agreed, that during the procession the house lights should not be on, for if they were the audience would see that the gift bearers were pupils, and not mystical Arabian maidens.
            However, when Roger saw this he was appalled, for in the original production the lights had been on and the audience could see clearly the children carrying gifts.  We explained the reason for the change, but he did not listen, and neither did the head when Roger complained to him, so Peter and I were overruled and the procession proceeded with all the lights glaring.
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            I was now an unmarried teacher in my thirties.  Emotionally and sexually I felt very frustrated.  In desperation I sent my details to the Catholic Introductions Bureau who put me in touch with a bank clerk living in Portsmouth.  We corresponded for a while, and she invited me to join her at her family home at Christmas.
            I was not over keen to do that, for I had intended to spent Christmas with Pop, and Ruby and Archie with their children in Dane End, but I agreed to go instead to Portsmouth. It was a mistake.  I found the girl attractive enough, but she was not all that attracted by me; and after I had spent an awkward week with her and her family she decided that she did not want to see me again.  I returned to Bushey feeling extremely let down.
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            Much of my time out of school was spent studying.  Several nights a week I would be at the Polytechnic working towards my sociology degree.  I would sometimes meet other members of the course at the home of a fellow student where we would discuss the material. Some of them intended to go to the Polytechnic full time to complete their studies.  I did not even consider it for myself, partly because I did not know how I would live without a job, but also because I was fairly sure that I would fail my finals, and to do that after working as a full time student would be humiliating, so I ploughed on part time. 
            Then, after five years study I sat the examination, or rather examinations for there were several of them taking about a week to complete.
            After the first paper, which I did not find too terrifying, I sat drinking with fellow candidates in a pub discussing the paper.  One candidate said that he would not be taking the rest of the papers.  He had found today’s so difficult that there was no point in his going on.
            I thought that was foolish, but he kept to his resolve and we did not see him again.
            At the end of the week I had mixed feelings about my chances.  I thought that I had succeeded in most of the papers, though I had my doubts about the statistical and survey techniques paper; but all that I could do now, was to wait for the results.
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            After my finals, with Kerry Fugh, the head of the maths department and his wife, who was also on the staff, I accompanied a party of boys to the sailing camp on the Norfolk Broads.
            This time, as well as the sailing dinghies, we had three yachts, and took turns taking them with crews of boys out onto the broads, and spending one night sleeping on board.
            Towards the end of the week, we staff left the camp under the charge of the sixth formers, and took the yachts out to race them.  It was a rather irresponsible thing to do, but enjoyable.
            Unfortunately it ended badly.  We were returning to the original mooring, when we saw the motorised dinghy with sixth formers on board, coming towards the yachts.  As it approached a sixth former called out to tell us that there had been an accident and  that Mrs Fugh was needed.
            She transferred to the dinghy which set off back to the camp, whilst we moored the yachts.  When we got back to the camp we found that our ‘reliable’ sixth formers had been far from reliable, and had been playing a game with a knife taking turns to throw it at one another so that it narrowly missed each time.  On one occasion the knife had not missed and had become embedded in a leg.  By the time we had arrived Mrs Fugh had managed to staunch the flow of blood and bandaged the wound.  The boy was then driven to hospital, but not kept there as the wound was not life threatening.
            We were due to leave the camp on the following day, and we adults decided not to report the truth about what had happened when we returned to school.  Kerry managed to persuade the injured boy and the other sixth formers that the escapade should not be officially reported.
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            I went straight from the sailing camp to Abingdon where I was to spend a week at a conference arranged by the English branch of the Sonnenberg Association.  With me was my college friend, Ken Rudrum, who I had persuaded to join the association, and also Fred Brown, a science teacher colleague from Clarendon School..
            The conference was held in a college on the outskirts of the town.  We arrived on the Saturday afternoon, and the next morning I was in the local Catholic church attending mass. The congregation included some other people from the Sonnenberg conference, including an attractive Austrian girl who I had noticed when I had booked in.
            After mass I talked to her and her Austrian friend on our way back to the college.
            Her name was Hildegard Starmayr.  She was from Linz in Upper Austria and was a newly qualified English teacher, who had completed her doctorate, which was based on the essays of Francis Bacon, at Vienna University. Her friend was an art teacher named Susan Conaro, who I later learned was a baroness.
            Hildegard had made a rather odd comment when I told her my name.
            “You’re not really Alfred Baker, are you?”
            I told her that I was and was puzzled that she should doubt it.  It transpired that the people that her family had known best from England were named Baker, and that the head of that family was named Alfred Baker.
            I became very friendly with both Hildegard and Susan during that week.  Ken had come with his car, in which he took us, with Fred Brown, sightseeing in the Oxfordshire countryside. Sometimes as we drove we would sing together, and I sometimes sang to Hildegard, the Gilbert and Sullivan song:
            “Prithee Pretty Maiden, Prithee tell me true,
            Hey but I’m hopeful, willow, willow wailie,
            Have you aer a lover a-dangling after you?
            Hey, willow wailie Oh.”
            It seemed that Hildegard did not have a lover a dangling after her, and I started to wonder whether I could fill that post.
            Together we went to a performance of Shakespeare‘s Cymboline at the Stratford Memorial Theatre, and we exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch after the course ended, which we did.
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            A new course was organised to enable teachers with some experience of sailing to improve their skills.  This was held during the Whitson break when members of the course would sail in yachts in the North Sea.  Of course, I applied for the course, was accepted, and on Whit Saturday I was in Burnham on Crouch ready to board the yacht Carman, to join the skipper, a primary school headmaster, and two other crew members, Clive, a bluff ex airman, and a girl teacher from Clive’s school.  She should not have been accepted on the course, as she had no previous experience of sailing, but she was an attractive young lady, so no one objected.
            When I arrived at the boat, it was lying partly on its side as it had touched bottom when the tide went out; however, next morning when the tide had risen, it was floating upright, and as the other three yachts of our little fleet had already set off down river to the open sea, we hurried to join them.
            Our skipper took it on himself to teach the girl the finer points of steering, and sat with her at the tiller as we left the anchorage. Perhaps her beauty was too great a distraction for him, for within half an hour we were aground on a concealed sand bank in the middle of the river.  We tried to use the engine in reverse to extract ourselves but too no avail, and after about half an hour of trying, we had to give up. The other three yachts were now out of sight and had probably reached the sea.  We were stuck until the tide rose to enable us to float off, so we climbed into our dinghy, rowed ashore, and had a not unpleasant day walking in the Essex countryside, finding a pub, and having a pub lunch, before returning to our dinghy, rowing back to the yacht, and managing to get it off the sand bank without the help of the propeller, which we found that we could not use, as the early efforts that day had so damaged it that it was unusable.
            We anchored in deeper water.  It was too late of an evening to attempt to follow the other yachts, which without a working engine might have been a trifle hazardous, so we settled down for the night.
            The next morning the other yachts returned, they had been out to sea when they realised that we were not with them.
            A conference was held on board the yacht of Dr Smith, the course commander.  It was decided that though we could not use our engine, we should accompany them for the rest of the week.  As Dr Smith pointed out, if we got into trouble they would be close at hand to give any necessary assistance, so with the other yachts Carman began the voyage down river to the open sea.
            We appeared to be doing well, though the girl was not allowed to take the tiller, and neither was I for that matter.  By the time that we reached the open sea the other three had gone ahead and were out of sight, but we did not get into further difficulty, and were able to tack south to Felixstowe.  We tried to enter the harbour, but managed to go aground just before the harbour wall. 
            Dr Smith, in his nautical wisdom, sent out one of the other yachts to tow us off.  Unfortunately that was the only yacht without reverse facility on its engine, and it too went aground to the delight of the many fishermen who were watching us from the harbour wall.
            I have no memory of how both yachts managed to extricate themselves from this difficulty, but extricate we did, and were soon tied up inside the harbour.
            At once, dear Dr Smith leapt aboard.  “No time to waste,” he said.  “We have to get to Pin Mill today.”
            I groaned, but my companions took it in their stride.
            Pin Mill was a yachting centre some way up river.
            By now we were all rather tired, but reluctantly we obeyed orders and sailed up river to Pin Mill where we anchored and then tried to get some sleep.  Next morning we found that our anchor chain had fouled the chains of several other yachts, and helped by what appeared to be half the nautical population of Pin Mill we had to spend a considerable amount of time getting the chains untangled.
            Soon it was time to return to Burnham on Crouch, so early in the morning, in order to catch a tide that would not be against us, we sailed from Pin Mill with the other three yachts.  Once again we quickly lost sight of them so that when we went aground, once again, near the mouth of the river, they did not come back to help us.
            After some time we managed to extricate Carman from the river bottom, and sailed on to the open sea, but the time that we had taken meant that the tide had turned and now, with the tide and wind against us, we could make almost no progress.
            I was in the cockpit with Clive at the tiller, when the skipper emerged from the cabin to take my place handling the sheets.  At that point we were near the Walton on the Naze pier.
            I went below and lay on my bunk.  The girl was lying on her bunk looking rather distressed.
            I tried to get some sleep, hoping that by the time that I went up again we would be at the entrance to the River Crouch. I think that I must have lain there for at least an hour and a half, but when I returned to the cockpit, I saw that we were near a pier. 
            “What is that,” I asked.
            I was told that it was still Walton on the Naze Pier.  In all the time that I had been lying on my bunk we had made absolutely no progress against the tide.
            After a while I went back to my bunk from where I heard the skipper and Clive talking.  They decided that the relatively short tacks we had been making were getting us nowhere, and that it might be sensible to take a long way out to sea, and by the time we turned to tack back the tide might have turned enough for us to make direct for the Crouch.
            Five miles out were the Gunfleet Sands, and they decided to aim for them, steering towards the Wallet Number Two Buoy, which was at one end of the Sands.
            We sailed those five miles without mishap, but suddenly there was a crunch and we were aground again.  It seemed that we were not aiming as we had thought for the Wallet Number Two Buoy, but to another marker buoy on the other side of the Sands.
            All four of us crowded into the cockpit.  Our dinghy was now swamped with water, and, although we could empty it fairly easily, there seemed no possibility of rowing it all the way back to the shore.
            We had no flares, but we set fire to a sail bag which we had placed at the end of a boat hook and waved about in the air in the hope that it would attract attention.
            Apparently it had, for about half an hour later we saw a boat approaching us from the shore.  It was the Walton on the Naze Life boat.  It stopped some way away from us, and the coxswain used a loud hailer to call across to us; “Do any of you understand English?”
            I don’t know if a negative reply would have caused the lifeboat to turn back to Walton.
            He then asked us to empty our dinghy of water and use  it to get to the lifeboat.  That entailed getting into the sea to tip the water out, so it was only after the lifeboat arrived that we got really wet.
            Clive and the skipper took the girl to the lifeboat, whilst I remained standing up to my waist in the sea. Then a lifeboat man brought the dinghy back and helped me aboard then took me to the lifeboat.
            Whilst the lifeboat men set about attaching a line to Carmen, we were given rum to drink and hot soup, which was the first thing that I had tasted since breakfast.
            Then, towing Carman the lifeboat set back for Walton on the Naze.   There we were given rooms in a hotel, which were paid for by the Shipwrecked Mariners Society, though we each added something from our pockets.
            It was well after midnight, but we were given a decent meal before we went to bed, and while we were eating, we were told that the Daily Mail was on the phone wishing to talk to us.
            We declined that honour.
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            Back at school, with Peter Denny, I wrote material for a revue which we presented at the end of the summer term, and which was very successfully received.
            I had intended another boating holiday, perhaps in Ireland on The Shannon, and had discussed that with Peter Peterson when we were on the boating holiday from Ely.   He had seemed quite enthusiastic about the idea, but when I telephoned him about it, he said that he had had a better idea.  He asked whether I would be prepared to join him and friends on a trip to the Soviet Union that he was organising with his flat mate.
 
                                    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
            It certainly sounded more interesting than boating on the Shannon, and I agreed, as did Bill Scott who said he would also come with us.   To make the numbers up and reduce costs, I asked at school if any of my colleagues were interested.  Two were, but one of them, as he had recently finished his national service in the Intelligence Corps, did not think that the Foreign Office would permit him to go.  Peter Denny was the other colleague willing to go, and it was agreed that he would join us on the trip.
            Thus it was that one early morning I stood outside Peter Peterson’s flat waiting for my fellow traveller’s to arrive.   I did not ring the doorbell, as I was sure that the two occupants would be down in good time.
            One by one the others arrived, including Peter Peterson’s flat mate who told us that they were no longer tenants of the flat, as they had fallen out with their landlord.  He had slept in a friend’s room, and Peter Peterson would not join us until we reached Stockholm as he had gone on ahead to stay with Swedish friends.
            Peter Peterson’s friend seemed to be a communist, and was very enthusiastic about being able to sample the communist heaven of the Soviet Union, as were two communist friends who were also in our party.
            Other members of our group included a married couple, the wife in which was clearly pregnant, and an ethnic Chinese girl from British Guiana, who was an interior decorator, and whom I found rather attractive.
            I found this news rather disturbing, and was even more disturbed when our minibus arrived, driven by one of our number who told us that an absent member of the party would meet us in Dover.
            The ten of us stacked our luggage in the roof rack and crowded on board. It seemed rather cramped, and would be even more cramped when we had our full complement of twelve after Stockholm. Four of our number, including Bill Scott, were to take turns driving.
            We set off driving towards Kent, but soon stopped at a service station on the London outskirts.  We had broken down. Mechanics at the service station repaired the fault, but that took well over an hour, so that when we finally reached Dover, our chosen car ferry had left.
            At the ferry terminal we waited for the person who was to join us in Dover, but when we were about to board the next ferry several hours later he had not arrived.
            We set sail for Ostend, worrying about the missing passenger, but when we were outside the harbour we received a message that he had boarded the earlier ferry thinking that we were on board, only learning that we were not after the ferry had set sail.  He was now waiting to join us in Ostend.
            We would not arrive in Ostend until the early evening.  We had intended to spend the night in a youth hostel, either in Belgium or Holland, but that was now out of the question, for we had to arrive in Stockholm in time to board the ferry to Helsinki that had already been booked, so, as soon as we picked up our friend at the ferry terminal we had to drive on through the night to make up time.
            By now I was starting to half regret not being on a motor cruiser on the Shannon, rather than cramped into a minibus roaring through the night. We stopped for a rushed breakfast in Holland, and then roared on and it was already daylight by the time that we reached Germany. We drove on through the day, and by late afternoon had crossed into Denmark.
            In Denmark we stopped by a private entrance, to the annoyance of the elderly occupants who could not speak English, but clearly wanted us to move on.  The stop was to enable our four drivers to look at the engine, which had been playing up for some time; but no remedial action was taken and after a while we drove on.
            We crossed by ferry to the large island which contains Copenhagen, and arrived in that city in the late afternoon, and obtained accommodation in a youth hostel, that was a former cinema, with many of the beds in what had been the auditorium. There we spent the night, during which some of us, including me, visited the famous Tivaly pleasure gardens, which had been established on the lines of the London Vauxhall gardens which no longer existed.
            There I saw my first, and so far, my only, flea circus, in which the man in charge spoke in Danish, German and English explaining the skills of his tiny performers, which, he said only lived for a very short time, after which he had to obtain new artistes.  He said that they lived off him, and showed us bites on his arm to demonstrate that unpleasant fact.
            We could not leave early next morning as originally planned, for our minibus had been taken to a repair garage, where the fuel tank was emptied and cleared of the sludge that had been coating it and causing many of the problems with the engine.
            I should have been upset by the delay because it meant that the likelihood of our being in time to catch the ferry between Stockholm and Helsinki was reduced, but, in fact I was delighted for it would enable us to see rather more of Copenhagen, which we did during the day, including viewing the statue of the little mermaid on the water front where we saw some loutish Italian tourists climbing over it to have their photographs taken.
            We left Copenhagen after dark, but in order to reach Stockholm in time for the ferry to Helsinki, we again had to drive non-stop through the night.  It was impossible to get to sleep in the cramped seats of the minibus, and I was beginning to hate the journey, and pretty well all the people with me.
            When we reached Stockholm it was already light.  Our first task was to pick up Peter Peterson, who was frantic with worry that he would be stranded there, for we had been supposed to meet him the previous day.
            No time was wasted with explanations when we did meet him by the main railway station, for now we had to find the ferry terminal.  That proved difficult, for, although we could often see the harbour, the one way system of Stockholm roads seemed to make it difficult to get to it.  Finally, our current driver lost patience and took us the wrong way along a one way street in order to get there, an illegal action that seemed to do the trick.  Without falling foul of Swedish traffic police, we reached the ferry and were able to board it before it was due to sail.
            It was an overnight trip, but as we didn’t have cabins we spent the night either in the crowded saloon, on deck, or, with some of us but not me, sitting inside our minibus on deck.
            We reached Helsinki next morning and received beds in a youth hostel.
            I strolled out to look at the city, and found my way to an open air folk museum which had many buildings which demonstrated Finish rural life.  One was a wooden manor house, which I  thought was possibly like the sort of places in which Tchekov set several of his plays.
            Whilst I was exploring the museum I bumped into Nesta, the Chinese girl from our party.  I had hardly spoken to her before that, but we spent the rest of the day together, which pleased me enormously. She was a very attractive girl, who was born in British Guiana, and worked as an interior designer. One of her tasks had been to design living accommodation at the sports centre in Crystal Palace. 
            Despite being ethnically Chinese, she did not speak Chinese, and told me that she was startled to discover so many English people who did.  She said that she would be sitting in a train compartment when suddenly one of the other travellers would smile at her and say something to her in Chinese. She would be embarrassed to tell the other person that she did not speak Chinese, as would be the other person. She told me that she was not comfortable in Helsinki, as so many Finish men looked at her sexually.   I could understand that, as I rather lusted for her.
            When we parted that evening, I told myself that I should spend more time with her on the rest of our trip, and when I went to supper I hoped to sit with her, but I could not because she was already there, sitting with one of the men of our party and two of the girls.  She briefly smiled at me, but as there was no more room at that table I had to sit elsewhere.  By the time I had finished my meal she was gone, and I did not see her again that evening.
            I felt very frustrated.
            Next day we were to leave for Russia but in a slightly less crowded minibus, for we had lost two of our number; a husband and wife.
            The young wife was pregnant and had been uncomfortable on our journey across Europe and actually sick a couple of times.  She and her husband went to the British embassy in Helsinki and saw a doctor there.  The doctor, learning about the conditions on the bus told them that for the sake of her health and that of her unborn baby, they must not continue on the journey, so they said goodbye to us and left us to go back to England.
            We set off and were soon out of the city and driving west towards the Soviet frontier. As we neared the frontier I think the condition of the highway deteriorated and there were several bends.  I wondered if, in view of the invasion they had suffered in 1940, when tiny Finland had to stand alone against the Soviet horde, they had decided that the road towards their capital should be made difficult for any future invader.
            It was getting dark when we reached the frontier and when we had crossed into the Soviet Union we had to stop at the frontier post.  One of our communist companions was the first off the bus, and as soon as he was off, he joyously cried out, “Now I am standing on soviet soil.”
            At once the frontier guard who had walked towards the bus, jabbed at him with his rifle, and heatedly shouted something in Russian so that our enthusiastic communist quickly leapt back on board.
            The frontier guard then directed us to drive closer to the guard building, where we all dismounted and the frontier guards examined us and the bus, even searching under it to see if we were carrying anything subversive beneath it.  After some time, they appeared satisfied that we were not, and after they had laboriously checked all our passports and other documents, we were permitted to drive on and enter the Soviet heaven.
            The road towards Leningrad was, if anything, as bad as the last stretches of the road on the Finnish side of the border, but that was perhaps not particularly surprising, as much of it had been Finnish before the Soviet Union grabbed it after the war against Finland.
            Much of the scenery seemed to be forest, and I don’t remember passing through any towns and villages.   We didn’t see many people either, though I do remember once seeing a horse near the road, moving slowly, and, perhaps painfully, because its rear legs were hobbled.
            Our destination was a tourist camp situated a few miles before Leningrad, where we were to spend the next few nights.
            The camp consisted mainly of tents, though there were a few buildings for eating, cooking, and toilet facilities.  The latter consisted of washing facilities, urinals, and lavatories. Those consisted of holes in the floor, with foot spaces next to them on which one was supposed to stand.  Clearly many people did not perform that operation accurately, for surrounding the holes were dribbles of drying excrement.  The smell was vile.  I could hardly bear to use them and suffered from constipation whilst we were at the camp.
            Most of the other users of the camp were Russians, though there were a few Finns, some of whom seemed to be constantly inebriated. We were to discover that the strict anti drinking laws of Finland, caused its citizens who wanted a boozy time to cross the border into the Soviet Union, which had no such laws. Getting drunk did not seem difficult for them.  They did not even have to enter a bar to achieve that, for we saw beer tankers in the street distributing booze to purchasers, many of whom may have been Finns.
            We drove into Leningrad next morning, and parked in one of the main squares.  Apparently the engine had been behaving badly again, but our drivers thought that when we got to Moscow, after spending a week in Leningrad, we would have to see about repairing it.
            Leningrad rather reminded me of wartime London, the people looked rather shabby, and there were queues everywhere. Some of the buildings were magnificent, including a cathedral that had been converted into an anti-god museum.  I did not to bother to visit that.
            One place that we did visit was the Hermitage, the former Tsarist palace in front of the square where much of the October Revolution had taken place and where, after rebellious sailors on the cruiser, Aroara had fired its guns, other sailors had stormed the palace. 
            The Hermitage was magnificent as were the art treasures that it contained in its museum, but we did not have time to see everything, so Bill and I determined to return there on the following day.  Unfortunately, when we did so, we found the museum closed on that day.
            Our evening meals tended to be eaten together in the camp with something that Peter Peterson, who was an excellent cook, had put together; however, those of us who wanted midday meals had to use the resources of the city, which was problematical for none Russian speakers like myself, as menus in the cafés and restaurants were printed in the Cyrillic script which we could not read, though even if we could read them, they would not have meant much to us as they were in Russian.
            I remember sitting in a restaurant looking helplessly at a menu, until Russian patrons assisted me by pointing to certain items that they thought I might like.  I had no idea what those items were, but I ordered them, and managed to eat them without poisoning myself.
            One aspect of life as a tourist in Leningrad was that Russians would often stop you and offer to buy your clothes.  This was quite illegal, but most of our party, including our communists, happily sold items for roubles.  Pac-a-macs were particularly popular with the Russians, but I did not have one to sell.  In fact the only thing that I did sell was a scarf.
            I was almost happy when we set off to drive East to Moscow.  Though parts of Leningrad were beautiful I had found the city and its shabby inhabitants rather depressing.
            Our engine seemed to have decided to behave itself, and we made good time, stopping for lunch at a restaurant in a small town where I had my first experience of eating yoghurt, which I rather enjoyed.
            We were about halfway along the highway to Moscow when we stopped to spend the night at another tented tourist camp, where the girl staff seemed very happy to great an English party and asked us if we would dance with them.  They played dance music loudly on a gramophone and wanted us to show them how to do the twist.  I had no idea how to perform that particular dance, but some of our number did, and were demonstrating it when the camp manager suddenly appeared and with a loud voice shouted at his female staff and made them turn off the music.  That may have been because dancing the twist was illegal in the Soviet Union, but it was probably because the music was so loud that it was keeping awake the rest of the camp’s residents.
            Next day we arrived at our next tented tourist camp on the outskirts f Moscow. We settled in, and then the following morning used a tram to take us into the centre of the city. There was no conductor on the tram, and no ticket machine, but a box into which passengers were expected to place the correct fare.  I was rather impressed by the fact that without coercion most passengers seemed to do that.
            We got off near Red Square which contained Lenin’s tomb. There was a queue waiting to view the tomb, which also contained the body of Stalin.  That queue seemed to be permanent for it was there all the time that we were in Moscow.  We wanted to see the embalmed bodies and made for the back of the queue but our Intourist guide would not let us go to the back, but placed us near the front.  The docile Muscovites did not appear to object to such blatant queue jumping on our part.
            The queue moved forward, and quickly we were inside the tomb.  There was not much to see inside apart from the two bodies.  We shuffled past, everyone was very quiet, and then we were outside again, and looking at the plaques on the Kremlin wall which were monuments to people killed in Red Square during the Revolution.
            Red Square was dominated by the Kremlin, which occupied the whole of one side of the square. Of course we entered it, and found that it was not the sinister fortress that we expected, but instead a rather attractive group of buildings which included  a museum containing the tsarist  treasury which  was particularly fascinating., cathedrals,  and, in a courtyard, a giant bell, which had cracked when dropped during attempts to raise it to its intended position.
            One wall of the Kremlin lay alongside the Moscow River, and across the river was an impressive walled building from which a union jack was flying.  That was the British Embassy which was housed in what had been the palace of a pre-Revolutionary millionaire.
            On Sunday I managed to find what may have been the only Roman Catholic church in Moscow, but the notice I had obtained about the time of mass was wrong, and it was just ending when I arrived. I did not stay as there did not appear to be any further masses but went on to visit an impressive museum with a collection of nineteenth century Impressionist French paintings that was magnificent.
            Another visit we paid in Moscow was to Gorky Park, where we rode on the high Ferris wheel.
            The day before we were due to leave Moscow some of our party tried to drive the minibus, but found that the clutch was slipping making driving almost impossible. We discussed what we could do, our discussion made more difficult because one of our number, the Communist flat mate of Peter Peterson, had gone into the city to visit a friend he had made, and had not returned.  Without him, we could not leave, even if the minibus was in good condition.
            I insisted that we should go to the British Embassy, explain our predicament and ask to be loaned money to get us home.  After considerable more argument, the others agreed, so, using public transport we went to the Embassy to beg for funds.
            The officials to whom we spoke were surprisingly sympathetic.  It seemed that we were not the first British subjects to appeal for help when stranded in Moscow. Then one of them asked what was the make of the minibus.
            We said that it was a Ford Thames.
            “Ah, we have a Ford Thames in our garage.  We could tow your vehicle to the Embassy, and exchange your faulty clutch with the good clutch from our machine.  Then you could go on your way without difficulty.
            Of course, we would have to charge you for the labour of our Russian workers, but that would not be as great as the cost of sending you all back to England by rail.”
            We agreed to that, though the pay for the Russian workers would have to come from me, as no one else had much money.
            The clutch was replaced in the Embassy garage and we had to send a cable to the vehicles owners telling them to send a new clutch to the embassy to replace the one that the embassy had given us.
            We were now due to leave Moscow, but could not do so until the missing person had returned, which he did the following day, with no real explanation as to why he had made us miss our intended departure day. So a day late we set off to drive to Smolensk in Ukraine.
            We had another delay whilst still in Moscow; a tire blew and we had to change it and replace it with the spare.  If another went, we would be in even greater trouble, because it could not be replaced as tubeless tires were unknown in the Soviet Union.
            We were to spend the night at the tourist camp in Smolensk, and we seemed to make good time with the engine apparently working well.  With us, on board, Soviet regulations insisted that we had to take an Intourist guide, the second one we had had in the Soviet Union. The first, who had been with us in Leningrad, had been a dogmatic communist who I had found rather unpleasant and not very helpful. Her successor, the lady who had joined us in Moscow, was much more pleasant. Her name was Leda, and though she seemed to accept the communist nonsense she did not try to ram it down our throats quite so much.
            Her father was, I think, a geologist, and because of his work, she had visited rather more of the Soviet Union than most Soviet citizens, which made her suitable to be an Intourist guide.  Her previous client had been an American millionaire and when with him she had travelled in relative luxury, yet she did not seem to mind the discomfort of our crowded minibus.  “You are all young,” she said. “It is nice being with you.”
            We slept well in the tourist camp, and were up early, were taken on a short view of the city, including looking into the cathedral, and were soon back on our minibus and  speeding towards Minsk, the capital of Belarus. That speed did not last long, for less than thirty miles out of Smolensk we had our final break down.  I don’t know what was its cause, but the engine stopped and could not be restarted.
            We flagged down a truck, and a wonderful Soviet lorry driver attached a line to our bus and towed us all the way to Minsk, which must have made him incredibly late for whatever task he had been performing before he had  the misfortune to meet us.
            It was late evening when we reached the tourist camp, and Leda insisted that there was no way that we could continue in our minibus.  In the morning she would contact the local Intourist office and arrange taxis to take us to the Polish frontier.  She would also arrange for something to be done to the broken down bus.
            We half heatedly protested that we did not own the bus; but despite our protests we realised that we simply could not continue our journey in it, so we unpacked our luggage and left it.
            Without the use of the minibus to carry us into the centre of Minsk, we did not visit that city, but next morning we said goodbye to Leda and  boarded the cars that she had ordered to drive us to the Polish frontier at Brest-Litovsk.
            The cars were top of the range Russian vehicles, the kind that may have carried Stalin or other Soviet leaders, and were very comfortable.  They carried us speedily out of Belarus towards Poland.
            We reached the border whilst it was still light, and crossed the frontier without difficulty and then boarded a train to take us to Warsaw.
            On the train we chatted to an English speaking Polish academic. He lectured in building sciences and had spent some time studying in England.   He was very friendly and told us what we should see try to see in Warsaw.
            In Warsaw we did not sleep in a tourist camp, but, instead, in a large hotel.  Dinner was being served when we arrived, so we went into the dining room to eat.  Despite this being a communist country, most of the other guests seemed to be very well dressed, and we ten, in our rather grubby clothes, did not look much of a credit to capitalist England.
            After we had eaten we went up to our rooms to sleep. 
            I slept well, but was awoken next morning to the sound of the radio playing a Chopin prelude.  That had also been the early morning wake up call played in the Warsaw scenes in the film ‘Dangerous Moonlight’. I wondered if the film producer had experienced that in Warsaw before he made the film, or whether the Polish authorities had begun the practice after they had seen the film.
            After breakfast in the hotel we walked into the city where, quite by chance, Bill, Peter Denny and I met the Polish academic from the train. He was so pleased to see us that he abandoned his tasks for that morning, introduced us to one of his friends, and began showing us the sights, the first of which was the main square which consisted of what looked like 18th century buildings, which were, in fact, recent reconstructions, for he took us to the end of the square which contained a photograph of the square as a heap of rubble, which it was how it appeared in 1945 after it, and the whole city had been deliberately destroyed by the Germans as punishment for the uprising of 1944.
            He and his friend took us into a cellar where there was accommodation for students, which I recognised as I had seen it in a recent film; then from the square we walked to a park which contained a monument to Chopin.
            Both men were very anti the current Polish communist regime and the friend made  several anti communist jokes including a story of a man in a church during mass who did not follow the congregation when they stood or knelt.  When asked why he did not he replied that he was an atheist and did not believe in God. 
            ‘Then what are you doing here at mass?” He was asked.
            ”I’m here to spite the government,” he replied.
            Another joke was about the Palace of Culture, a Soviet style skyscraper that was given to the city by the Soviet Union after the reconstruction of the city.
            “From where do you get the best view of Warsaw?”
            “From the roof of the Palace of Culture.”
            “Why is that?”
            “Because from there you can’t see the Palace of Culture”
            Next morning, our last day behind the Iron Curtain, we boarded the express for the West.  Only eight of us were due to go all the way to Ostend on the train.  Two of our party were so short of funds that they could not afford tickets to go all the way, so purchased tickets that would only take them as far as the East West German border, from where they would have to hitchhike to Ostend.
            I sat in a compartment with Bill Scott and Peter Denny, the other five were in seats further down the train. The express set off an made good time.  It crossed out of Poland and into East Journey without any holds up and later into West Germany.  In the afternoon we were in Cologne where the train halted for a while before continuing towards Ostend.
            Peter, Bill and I did not know that at Cologne the train split in two with the rear half destined not for Ostend but for the Hook of Holland, which meant that when we three boarded the ship at Ostend, the other five were not with us.
            Bill and I lost sight of Peter when we went to the dinning saloon for a meal, and when we docked at Dover we did not see him.  We boarded the train for London, and became the only two of the original party of twelve to reach there on time.  We later learnt that Peter had fallen asleep in the saloon on board, and at awakened several hours later after the train had left and had to catch a train the following morning. All the remaining nine of our party got back to England in one way or other over the next few days.
 
                                    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On my return to Bushey I learnt that there had been another death in my family, my Uncle Reg had died and his funeral had been a few days before my return.  I was very sorry to get that news, for although I had not seen very much of him in the past few years, I had liked him. When I visited Pop that weekend he was rather sad about the death.  Uncle Reg had been his brother-in-law but he had always been very close to him.   
            Before going back to Bushey on Sunday evening, I went into London to the University Senate House, hoping that the sociology degree results would be on display on the notice board outside the building.  They were, though only the numbers, not the names of the successful candidates were given.
            I saw, what I thought to be my candidate number listed amongst those candidates who had obtained lower second class honours degree passes.  I was not sure that it was my number, but when, about an hour later I had reached home and checked my examination documents, I was delighted to find that it was, so I could now write B.Sc. (Sociology) after my name.
            It did not make much difference to my position at Clarendon School, though it did make a pleasant difference to my salary, as my possession of what was considered a good honours degree increased it by a couple of hundred pounds a year.
            Some of my colleagues in the school science department were rather amused by the fact that I now had a Bachelor of Science degree, because they were aware that I knew almost nothing about physical science.
            For a time I still visited the Polytechnic each week for I enrolled in a class run by Dr. Cotgrove for potential candidates for master’s degrees, but I did not keep that up for very long, because I could not decide what I should chose to be my thesis subject.
            My next holiday was my second trip to Paris.  I had felt for some time that I should do something for Pop in appreciation of what a splendid father he had been to me; so I paid for him to join me on that holiday.  John Methven came with us, and we had a very good week there.  I had been in regular correspondence with Hildegard Starmayr since we had been together in Abingdon, and she had told me that she would be on holiday in Paris at that time, so we met her when we arrived and went to a meal with her before she left to return to Linz.
            John Methven proved to be a slight problem during that holiday.  He was almost pathologically generous and wanted to pay for everything.  Pop and I had to almost hold him down when there was a bill to be paid, but we did manage to pay for some things.
            Pop loved the food in Paris.  We usually ate the Menu Tourist in bistros, but we also saw that at a greater cost some restaurants had something called Menu Gastronomic, and we decided to try that.  It was very huge, and I don’t think we managed to finish it, though we did our best.
            When we got back home after the holiday, Pop waxed lyrical about the joys of French cuisine, to the considerable annoyance of Aunty Kath who said, “What’s wrong with my cooking?” I could have told her, but I didn’t make any reply to her question, and neither did Pop.
            I felt that I should make greater efforts to learn German, particularly as I was in regular correspondence with Hildegard, so that summer, with Bill Scott I went to Vienna to attend a short German language course at the university.
            Hildegard met the train when it stopped at Linz, and we had a short conversation and she invited me to visit her at some time during the course.  In Vienna Bill and I were lodged in a student hotel not far from the university to which we went each day.  Our fellow students were of various nationalities, most of them relatively young.  The instruction was in German, but delivered in such a way that even non-linguists like myself, were not completely lost. At midday we ate in a university cafeteria on the second floor of another building, which we reached by lift, which was a rather frightening contraption.  I think it was nicknamed  a Pater Nostro, after the Lord‘s Prayer because it never stopped.  The compartments continuously rose past one’s floor so that to use the lift, one had to get on to it as it was passing, and leave it in the same way when it reached your intended floor.  If you were unable to dismount at your floor, which sometimes happened when the compartment was full, you would be taken up to the top floor in the lift, which would then move across to the descending position and take you down to your floor again.
            I quite enjoyed the course, though I suspected that it would not greatly improve my knowledge of German; but the social side was particularly enjoyable.  With Bill, I went to the theatre to see the Offenbach opera, Die Shona Helena, which I enjoyed very much. Various trips out of Vienna to beauty spots were organised for members of the course, and on one of them I got to know one of the Swedish students, Birgitta, a blond from Stockholm. After that we spent much of our time together, apart from the weekend when I went to Linz to stay with Hildegard and her parents.
            Birgitta and I kissed and cuddled constantly, and I desperately wanted to go further, and even bought myself some contraceptives. Whist in Vienna we did not actually make love, though one evening, after we had visited the cathedral the Stephansdom, where my thoughts were far from holy, in a dark alley she held my penis, which was the first time that any girl had done that.
            I went again to see Die Shona Helena but this time with Birgitta. Then she went on a trip that the university organised to Budapest, where she stayed overnight.  I had not booked that trip, though we both wished that I had, and we wondered that if I had been there with her we could have shared a room.
            Before the course ended, I had asked her to marry me, and she had agreed. I went back to England without her, but feeling dreadfully frustrated.
            Whilst in Vienna I had grown a beard, and on my first morning back at school, I was sitting at my desk before the class came in, when a sixth form girl walking past the classroom, stopped when she saw me, did a double take, and then came over to me and said: “Oh, Sir. I like it.”
            Birgitta and I wrote to each other constantly, and during the school holidays that winter I visited her in Stockholm.
            I stayed in a student hostel in Stockholm in the room of an absent law student who had on his shelves several academic texts in English.  Birgitta made me buy a pair of goulashes to wear over my shoes for when I visited her family home where I met her parents.
            She did not live with them, but shared a flat with a girl friend who also had a foreign boy friend; a Jamaican medical student who was reading for his doctorate in Germany at Heidleburg. I met him and liked him.
            In my room in the student hostel, at the ripe old age of 36, I lost my virginity.  I made love to Birgitta several times. Though being inexperienced, my first attempt was rather clumsy. Birgitta admitted that she was not a virgin, having had sex with a Swedish boy some time previously.
            Apart from coupling, we explored Stockholm, which I found a very attractive city.  One evening we went to the Royal Dramatic Theatre where we saw a lively production, in Swedish, of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. Later, in the street, Birgitta pointed out that a man whom we had just passed was the director of the opera, the famous film director, Igmar Bergman.
            Before we parted at the end of my visit Birgitta said that she intended to come to Bushey to be with me.  She would resign her position as a lab assistant, and try to obtain work in England.
            I was sad when I took the train to Gothenburg, and from there the ship to Tilbury; and I was still sad when I got to Pop’s home in Tottenham.  My sadness was not just emotional, but also physical, because, despite the fact that there had been snow in Stockholm and none in Tottenham, I was much colder back in England for there was no central heating in the house, and in Stockholm I had spent much of my time in centrally heated buildings.
            I was rather depressed when term started and I sat in Bushey wondering whether Birgitta would be with me soon.  She was, she had resigned her Stockholm job and had managed to obtain a similar post in an English laboratory.  That should have made me feel better but somehow it did not.  A couple of my married colleagues had given her a room nearby, but she spent some time in bed with me at my flat
            When she arrived she dropped a bombshell and told me that she was pregnant.  I said that we should get married straight away, but she did not seem to think there was any urgency.  As the weeks went by, I could see that she was no longer in love with me, and certainly not with her life in England, a country that she clearly felt was inferior to her native Sweden, and she was determined to go back to Sweden before our baby was born.  I desperately  tried to persuade her to stay with me so that we could marry; but I did not succeed.
            A month or so later she said goodbye to me and boarded the ferry at Tilbury.  I think I knew that I would never see her again.  Later she wrote to tell me that she had a miscarriage and that we would no longer be parents.  I suspected that her return to Stockholm was in order that she could have the abortion that I would have opposed if she were still in England.
            In time I realised that I was no longer in love with her, and wondered if I ever had been.  We had so little in common and the only thing that had held us together had been sex; and as I was not a very skilled lover I realised that she had got very little satisfaction from our intimacy.
                                    CHAPTER NINETEEN
            Desperate for female affection I wrote again to Hildegard Starmayr in Linz, and she replied that although she had been hurt by my rejection of her in Vienna, she would like to see me again. She invited me to her home, and I went again to Linz.
            Her parents were away on holiday, and there was just Hildegard and her sister, Greta, in the house. Somehow, despite my behaviour the previous year in Vienna, she was still fond of me, and I realised as soon as I saw her again, that I should never have left her for Birgitta. In the short time that I spent in Linz, our feeling for each other grew, and by the time that I left, she had accepted my proposal of marriage; though I had little idea about how we could be married and how I could afford to be a married man.  My salary as a head of department, might have been enough, but I had virtually no savings. 
            I returned to Bushey with mixed emotions of hope, yet apprehension about our possible future together; and began studying the Times Educational Supplement for better paid teaching posts, possibly abroad. 
            At school Pat Fineran had persuaded me and the head to let her direct Cinderella for the pre-Christmas show. I left her entirely to it, but agreed that I would help with the make up during the performances. 
            I came to the dress rehearsal and  was appalled.  Few of the cast knew their lines, or seemed to know their moves.  The back stage staff seemed to be totally confused and the lighting changes were generally late.
            After that travesty of a dress rehearsal, I sat with two other teachers who had witnessed the chaos, in a colleague’s car, and they begged me to tell the head that the show needed more rehearsals. They were right.
            Next morning before assembly I saw the head and told him that we needed the whole day to get the production into shape if it was not to be a disgrace to the school.
            He was not pleased but he agreed, and I broke the news to Pat Fineran that I would take over this extra rehearsal.  She was furious, but as I had the head’s backing there was nothing that she could do about it.
            All day I worked on the cast and backstage staff,  and they responded magnificently. At lunch I was walking down the stairs in the assembly hall, when the same sixth form girl who had admired my beard and who had been working backstage, stopped me and said: “Oh, sir.  Thank God.” That girl clearly had a talent for pithy remarks
            By the end of the day the show was in shape and the first performance went ahead with no mishaps, as did the remaining performances.
            Pat Fineran seemed to recover from her humiliation by mentally telling herself that nothing had ever been wrong and that she had produced a splendid show.
            I made no further comment.
            Now that I was Head of English, the head sometimes called me in when he was interviewing prospective new members of staff. They were sometimes new graduates without teaching qualifications such as the post graduate teaching certificate, who had never intended to be teachers, but having graduated and failed to find a job more fitting to their wishes, had decided that becoming a teacher might be a reasonable second choice.  That situation was later ended when the law insisting that all graduates had a teaching qualification before they could teach in local authority schools was passed, but before that any graduate was deemed qualified to be a teacher.
            Sometimes they were, but in other cases they were disastrous, as was the case with one man who joined us for the autumn term and had been given a temporary appointment. He proved totally unfit to be a teacher; and the head soon realised the mistake that had been made in appointing him and did not give him a class to run, but used him as a cover for teachers who were absent, for in a school of our size with a large staff, there were absences almost every day.
            The man’s final disaster took place on a day when I was away, attending a meeting elsewhere.  In the afternoon, the librarian, who was also head of the teaching block that contained the library, had heard a tremendous noise coming from a teaching room in the floor above the library. She told me that it sounded almost as if chairs were being thrown around and children seemed to be screaming
            She could not ignore the noise, though she was very apprehensive as she approached the room, where the noise appeared louder than ever.  She opened the door to find the graduate teacher standing in front of the class attempting to talk as if nothing was happening, but with the children in front of him making the most unholy racket.
            The librarian told me that she had bellowed, “This must stop,” and rather to her surprise it did.  The children became quiet at once, and the ‘teacher’ stopped speaking.
            She turned to him and said that she would like to see him as soon as the lesson was over.
            When he saw her at the end of the lesson, she learnt what had happened.  He had been covering for an absent science teacher, but no work had been set for the class and he had not been told what he was supposed to teach, so when he walked into the class he saw that only boys were present and he asked them what they had been learning and one of them said, “About sex.”  Any experienced teacher would have realised that was not true, but he took it as the truth, and started talking about the female reproduction system, and even wrote something about it on the black board, but at that point the girls arrived.  They had been late returning from a games lesson, and seeing what was on the board started screaming, and in sympathy, so did the boys in the class and the mayhem continued until the arrival of the librarian.
            Clearly the man had to go, and he was given till the end of the term to find another job. Whilst he was still with us, he was kept away from classes as far as possible, and occupied his time on office work for the head.
            I spoke to him towards the end of the term, and learnt to my horror that he had obtained a post in another school.
            We had another, rather unexpected change of staff.  One morning Pat Fineran was late arriving, so the librarian told a sixth form student to take her register. The sixth former was doing that when Pat arrived, and Pat felt so insulted that she immediately wrote a letter of resignation and handed it in at the office.
            Shortly after that the Head told me, with great glee, that she had resigned.  I said that surely it was beyond the time in the term when she could legally do that, and should really submit her resignation in the next term.
            He told me that he wasn’t bothered by such legalities but was so glad that we could get rid of her.
            Later that morning Pat came to me and told me about her action, but now regretted because she felt that she had been rather hasty, she asked for my advice.  I suggested that she write another letter to the head withdrawing her resignation.  This she did, but he refused to accept it, and at the end of the term she left us.
            -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            My search for new posts in the Times Educational Supplement had resulted in an offer from the Ministry of Overseas Development to apply for a post teaching English in a technical institute in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, and an offer from Catholic Overseas Appointments of an interview for a post teaching English in Cameroon.
            I decided not to apply for the Dar Es Salaam post, but went for the interview at the Catholic Oversees Appointment office in London for the Cameroon post.
            There I seemed to make a favourable impression on the interviewing board, for I was told that they felt that they could offer me a rather better post, with better pay and conditions, in Malawi.  
            I knew very little about Malawi, apart from the fact that as Nyasaland it had until recently been a British protectorate and that now it was a totally self governing Commonwealth country: but as, unlike Cameroon, it was not in the area of West Africa that had been labelled “The White Men’s Grave” being in East Africa it was probably a rather healthier place to be. I decided that I would like to work there.
            I was offered a post as a key post teacher at Mtrendere Secondary School in the Central Region of Malawi, and that, as I had said that I was engaged to be married to a teacher, there would be a post for my fiancee also. I decided to accept the post and prepared to submit my resignation at Clarendon School, but before I was about to do so I received a sudden phone message from the secretary of Catholic Overseas Appointments telling me that she was worried about out safety if we went to Malawi.
            Apparently a near neighbour of hers had just returned from a post in Malawi, and had told her that the country was in danger of suffering a violent revolution with the possible overthrow on its government, and that it was certainly not a place to which a couple should go to start their married life.
            I was shocked to receive that news, but the secretary went on to say that there was a far better choice I could make.  There was a vacancy for a head of English in a prestigious secondary school in the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean that I could take, where there was no danger of violent revolution.
            The idea of teaching in the West Indies certainly appeared attractive, so I told her that I would discuss this with my fiancee, and, if she agreed, we would accept the St. Lucia post.
            When I subsequently telephoned Hildegard, she was as surprised as I had been by this change of plan, but she did agree, so I got back to Catholic Overseas Appointment and told them that we would accept the post.  I then submitted my resignation to the head and continued teaching my final Clarendon term until Christmas.
            I spent Christmas at Dane End as usual, with Pop, Ruby, Archie and the boys, but as I had yet to receive details of my journey to St Lucia, before the new year I went to the Catholic Overseas office in London to enquire.  There I received a shock.  The secretary was no longer there as she had resigned, and until a new secretary had been appointed, her assistant was running things.  From her I learnt that they were still waiting to receive permission for my appointment to the post from the St Lucia Ministry of Education, and only when that arrived could my flight be booked.  Apparently the agency had previously offered the post to another applicant who had accepted the appointment, but when the previous secretary had offered me the post that previous applicant had been put aside in my favour.  This had confused the Ministry of Education and was the reason for the delay.
            Now schools in England had begun the new term, and whilst I waited for news, I was out of work and not earning a salary.  I was no longer living in the flat in Bushey, but staying in Tottenham with Pop, so I contacted the local education department to enquire about temporary supply teaching, and shortly afterwards I was telephoned by the headmaster of a grammar school in Haringey offering me a temporary post, which I accepted.
            I thought it was rather ironic that I should go to work in a grammar school despite my having failed the scholarship at eleven, and having completed my school education at the age of fourteen in an elementary school.
            I did not find teaching these bright children too difficult, though I was only at the place a few weeks until the teacher I was temporarily replacing returned from sickness, and I was then transferred to a junior school, which I found very interesting,  It was another new experience for me to have little children come over to hold my hand when I stood at break on playground duty.
            The head of the junior school was so impressed by my work that he said that he would put me in charge of a ‘tough’ class.  After my experience of working with large secondary pupils at Clarendon School, I did not find these little children in the least bit tough.
            However, time was running on and I was still waiting to get the call to go to St Lucia. When browsing in the Tottenham public library one Saturday, I was shocked to find an advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement for the job that I had been offered in Malawi.
            On Monday I contacted Catholic Overseas Appointments again and told them if they did not hear from St Lucia quickly, I was willing to take the Malawi post.
 
                                    CHAPTER TWENTY
            The acting secretary was tremendously relieved and said that I would be in Malawi very quickly; so before Easter I said goodbye to my family, and Pop accompanied me to London, and to the train at Victoria which would take me to Gatwick Airport.  There I said goodbye to Pop.  I did not know then, but it was the last time that I should see him.
            I then boarded a British United Airlines VC10 flight to Ndola in Zambia. The flight took several hours, and when we landed I had some time before my connecting flight, so I went into the town, which was much more modern than I expected, but that was because it was in the Copperbelt, the most prosperous area of Zambia.
            I returned to the airport where I boarded a Vickers Viscount of Central African Airways for the flight to Lusaka which was relatively short.  In Lusaka I was met by a Jesuit, who took me to their residence where I was to spend the night before flying on to Malawi.
            The Jesuits were very friendly, and surprised me by trying to persuade me to stay in Zambia and teach at one of their schools, but I could not do that as I had agreed to teach in Malawi.
            Next morning I had another surprise, for I was given sausage and bacon for breakfast, despite the fact that it was a Friday, but they told me that the Zambian bishops had abolished the rule that Catholics should abstain from meat on Fridays.
            A Jesuit drove me to the airport where I boarded the Air Malawi DC3 that was to fly me to Lilongwe. Thus in flying from England I had experienced several decades of aircraft design; for the VC10 which to took me to Ndola was an up to the minute large jet propelled passenger air liner; the Vickers Viscount which took me to Lusaka was a turbo jet that was about twenty years old; and the DC3, was pre-war.  As the Dakota, it had been the major transport used by allied forces in the war.
            Flying in the DC3 was a totally different experience for me.  It was much closer to the ground than the other two airliners, and I could see clearly the African countryside above which we were flying.
            We landed at Lilongwe in Malawi, where I was met by a Marist Brother who drove me to St John’s Training College on the outskirts of the town where I had lunch. I learnt that teacher training colleges in Malawi did not get the most able students.  Those went to the secondary schools, where they obtained places on the basis of their performance at primary school.  After they had been creamed off, the training colleges were recruited from the next layer, which meant that the trained teachers in primary schools were not of the highest calibre.
            St John’s which was a Marist Brother establishment also had a key post teacher who had chosen the post in preference to a secondary school post in the mistaken belief that this would be a higher status position as would have been a lectureship in a training college in Britain.
            After lunch I was taken by another brother on the drive to Mtendere, which was about fifty miles away.  We left the college and proceeded south on the main road, which was tarmaced for a short distance and then became a dirt road, as were almost all the roads in Malawi.
            There was almost no other motor traffic on the road, but lots of people walking, mostly towards Lilongwe, and also lots of bicycles travelling in the same direction.  The bicycles seldom had just one rider, most of them carried a passenger, and, some had two passengers with a woman behind the cyclist, with a baby on her back.  In one instance I saw a bicycle with four people in board, for in addition to the rider, his wife and baby, another, larger child was perched on the crossbar between the rider and the handlebars.
            After a couple of hours drive, we turned off the road to the right and travelled along a dirt track for a mile or so through the bush until we reached a road bridge that simply consisted of logs with two planks on which drivers were expected to place the wheels of their vehicles.  This my driver managed to do successfully, though I was afraid that we would go over the edge of the bridge and tumble into the stream below.
            After negotiating that bridge, we were soon at Mtendere Secondary School which was to be my home for more than two years.
            The school had been started at the end of the Second World War, hence the name Mtendere, which means peace in the native language,
            It consisted of a bungalow building containing the assembly hall, offices and classes set round a quadrangle, students’ dormitories, then staff bungalows for lay staff, the main building in which the brothers lived, and some distance away houses for servants. There was also a playing field for football, and then the track continued for about a mile to another Marist Brother establishment, the Juniorate, where novice Malawian Marist brothers were trained. Just before we reached the school we passed on the left side of the track, Mtendere church, and to the right a home for nuns who acted as district nurses in the area, and, on the left side, the priests’ house, and the primary school, which was a rather basic building with no windows, but open door openings, and along one side a wall at only shoulder height, so that there would be enough light during the day when the school would be in use.  There were no desks for the pupils, just rows of benches facing the teacher’s desk.
            My belongings were placed in a room in the brothers’ residence and then I was taken across to the staff room where I was introduced to my new colleagues: the French Canadian brothers, Brother Dostie, the head teacher, Brother Leo, the superior of the brothers, and Brothers Michael and Reynald.  I was also introduced to the school chaplain, Father Chibwinja, and some of the other teachers, including Paul Adorno, Jerry Dowsky and Bill Burr.  They were members of the American Peace Corps, there were seven of them, and two native Malawian teachers.  As it was still Saturday no classes were held that day, but I would begin teaching on the following Monday.
            There were two forms in each year, one had the designation F, in which the second language taught after English was French, and the other designated N, in which the second language was Nyanja. The students themselves decided which language to choose, and though there was no formal streaming structure, in practise the less able students tended to choose Nyanja, which, as it was the native language for most of them, was the easier option.
            To be admitted to the school, students had to have successfully completed primary education.  There was no standard age at which they were admitted, and most of them were well into their teens when they arrived at Mtendere, and some of them much older; several were in their twenties, and a few in their thirties.
            Education was not free in Malawi, and students at Mtendere had to pay nearly £20 a term to be there, which was a huge amount for most of them, and partly explained why so many of them were grown men before they arrived, as they had spent years earning enough to pay the school fees.
            On Sunday morning I attended mass in the church. It was filled with a native congregation, and we staff sat in the only seats, which were placed at the back  near the entrance.  All the Malawian worshipers had to stand in the main body of the church.
            I can’t remember who was the celebrant; it could have been Father Chibwinja or the parish priest. The parish priest was Monsignor Mangani, a name that sounded Italian to me, and, but for his brown face, he could well have been a plump Italian monsignor.
            I had asked Father Chibwinja if he would marry us when Hildegard flew out later in the year, and he had been delighted at the idea of conducting a wedding of Europeans in the church.
            On Monday morning I began teaching to a mixture of classes. As key post teacher, I was head of the English Department, which, apart from myself consisted mainly of one Peace Corps teacher, Paul Adorno, who taught the lower years.  My classes were with the upper years.
            The young men that I taught were much better behaved than students in England.  They believed that to be at secondary school was a privilege, and they had no intention of doing anything to lose that privilege. I really enjoyed teaching these young men who were so keen to learn.  At the end of the course they would sit for the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate, and if they did well in that examination they could obtain good jobs in the towns, or places at the new Malawi University, or even places at universities in Britain or America.
            There were no discipline problems, though I was startled to see some of the students standing outside the classes during break smoking.  As I saw Brother Dostie, also smoking, standing talking to them, that was clearly not a disciplinary breach.
            Of course our students were not children but young, and in some cases not so young men.  I learnt that during term time the female population of nearby villages would increase as prostitutes would arrive to cater for the sexual needs of some of our students.
            I did not have to spend long living in a room in the brothers’ residence for the house that had been completed for me was soon ready for me to move in. It was a detached bungalow with three bedrooms, a toilet and shower room, a kitchen, and living room.  It had basic furniture, but before I moved in Brother Dostie drove me to Lilongwe to buy other items. Fresh water ran through the pipes each day from Early morning when Brother Leo turned on the generator, to the evening when he turned it off,  though after he had done so, there was still enough water in the pipes to fill a kettle for tea, and to wash before going to bed.
            Electric light was only available from six at night until the time when Brother Leo turned off the generator before he went to bed.
            Cooking was by a fairly efficient wood stove in the kitchen and I had managed to buy a refrigerator which was oil burning and did not use electric power to keep food cool.
            Before I moved in a Malawian, Suwedi Manolia, approached me seeking employment as a house boy.  I had no intention of calling a grown man a boy, but I did take him on as servant and cook, and he proved very successful at those tasks, despite a tendency to drink too much when not working, so that later Brother Dostie complained that he was a bad influence on some of the students who had become his drinking partners.
            I also employed a garden boy.  I did not object to calling him a boy, because he was in his early teens.  He tended a garden patch outside my bungalow, which provided me with  fresh vegetables.
            I was quite comfortable in my new home.  It was the first time in my life that I had a house to myself.
            Isolated in the bush in Mtendere I needed personal transport, so from the Mission Buying Service I ordered a car, a Renault 4.  I had to go to Blantyre to collect it, which entailed getting a lift from the brothers to Dedza from where I caught the bus to Blantyre.
            With me came one of the Peace Corps to assist me when I picked up the car, for as I still had not passed the driving test I would need L plates, and a qualified driver to accompany me when I drove the car.
            The bus ride to Blantyre was interesting, particularly as we were the only white passengers.
            At Nchea, the bus was stopped and Malawi Congress Party officials came aboard to check that all the Malawian passengers had party cards.  They all had, but I suspected that any who had not would have been hauled off the bus and punished for their lack in some violent way.
            In Blantyre I was introduced to John Smith, the manager of the Mission Buying Service depot.  He was a German Swiss, and I expect that his name was really Smit rather than Smith.  He was an ebullient character, and despite the fact that he was employed by a Roman Catholic organisation, he was a Protestant.  We stayed in his house whilst in Blantyre as did any of the mission brothers or priests when they were visiting.
            He had a delightful French Swiss wife and both of them were hoping to become British citizens before they left Malawi.
            John took me to the Renault dealer to pick up my car, which I was buying using a loan that I obtained from the Marist Brothers, which would take a rather large chunk out of my monthly salary; but when I mentioned that to Hildegard in one of my letters, she told her father, who agreed to repay the loan as a sort of wedding present to us.
            We returned to Mtendere in my new car, with my Peace Corps companion driving part of the way.  When I drove, it was a totally new experience for me, for most of the way it was on dirt roads, and though there was very little mechanical traffic, there were hundreds of bicycles to avoid.
            Back at Mtendere, my Renault 4, registration BB873, met with its twin a Renault 4, registration BB872, which had been purchased by the brothers. The seven Peace Corps, teachers did not own cars, but they did have bicycles.  Their organisation forbad them from owning cars as the intention was that they should have a life style as close as possible to that of native teachers doing similar work.  For the same reason their pay was kept much lower than what they could have earned in America, at around the equivalent of $1,000 dollars a year. Although joining the Peace Corps may have enabled them to avoid the draft to serve as soldiers in Vietnam, they were, in the main, idealistic young men, keen to help in Africa.
            The ironic thing about this deprivation, was that most of their Malawian students were totally unaware of it.  They saw these young Americans living comfortably in a modern bungalow, and assumed that they had come to Malawi to earn lots of money.
            I think that most people would have considered the Renault 4 an ugly little car with its box like body, but I liked it. I thought it far more useful than its German rival, the Volkswagen Beetle.  It had a surprisingly good capacity for carrying luggage.  With the rear seat folded up there was so much room that I think one could have stored a bicycle in it, and lots of other objects. Its engine seemed very efficient and gave me no trouble, and I liked it so much, that when, at the end of my contract I was back in England I bought another one.
            I lent the car to some of my Peace Corps colleagues for a trip South to Blantyre.  That was a mistake, for on the way back they collided with a dog, and dented the body work slightly, and with the lack of repair garages near Mtendere, I had to live with that dent for some time.
            During the Easter break I used the car to go with them on a picnic some way away from the school to a spot where there were some ancient wall paintings. It was an enjoyable break, though I didn’t take any photographs of the paintings.
            Apart from the picnic, teaching, and getting used to my house, my main preoccupation was with plans for my wedding.   Hildegard was going to fly out after Easter. I would meet her in Blantyre and then drive her back to Mtendere where we would be married by Father Chibwinja.
            Before that I had to be in Zomba, staying at the Marist Brother school there for a national conference of English teachers, which was entirely European with no Malawian teachers present.
            Discussions at the conference was dominated by two other key post teachers, one from the Marist Brother teachers’ college in Lilongwe, and the other by a key post teacher from St. Patrick’s, a secondary school situated outside Blantyre which was run by a Dutch teaching order. I felt rather overawed by them.  Both had been in Malawi for some time, and talked authoritatively about possible solutions to problems.
            I was to learn later that I did not need to be so overawed.  When the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate results were published later in the year, Mtendere had performed well, whilst St Patrick’s had the worst results in the country.
            One of the participants in the conference was an Irishman teaching at the Zomba school.  He persuaded me to drive him, one evening, to a bar in Zomba for a convivial evening of drinking.
            It was a great mistake, he and his drinking companions kept pressing more drinks on me which foolishly I accepted, though common sense should have told me not to do so, as I had to drive my car back to college at the end of the evening, and my drive took me directly past the headquarters of the Malawi Police.
            The drinking also had an unexpected effect on my libido.  Amongst the drinking companions was a married couple.  The wife was young and attractive, and as the evening progressed it became evident that despite the presence of her husband, she found me attractive.  After a while we were cuddling and kissing, though by that time her husband seemed too blotto to notice.
            A voice in my fuddled brain told me to behave myself.  I was engaged to be married, and my fiancée would be with me in a few day’s time, but I did not want to pay attention to that voice. All the same fear made me wonder what her husband would do if he realised that I was groping and kissing his wife, which caused my ardour to cool somewhat.
            When we parted I was still capable of driving, but I was almost terrified as we drove past the police headquarters, but I was not arrested, and was able to get back to the school safely.
                                    CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
            At the end of the conference I drove with one of the Peace Corps to Chileka Airport to meet Hilde’s flight.
I took her first to John Smit’s house where we were to spend the night, and the next day drove her to Mtendere.
            At Mtendere she slept in a room in the brothers’ residence.
            The church was packed for the wedding, for, apart from my fellow teachers, Malawians from the area filled all the available space for the sight of two Europeans being married by a Malawian priest, was something that they did not think they should miss.
            Paul Adorno, one of my Peace Corps colleagues was my best man; and Mr Jalali, one of the Malawian teachers stood in place of Hildegard’s father to give away the bride.
            I was deeply moved by the marriage service, and prayed silently that I would be a good husband to this wonderful girl.
            After the ceremony we went into the priests’ house to sign various documents, and found that the Bishop of Dedza, Bishop Chisulu, was there, visiting Monsignor Mangani. On learning that we were newly married he blessed us.
            Then a reception was held in the brothers’ residence, and after that I drove off with Hilde in our new Renault 4, on which someone had attached a sign, ‘Just Married’, to our honeymoon on the shore of Lake Malawi.
            The first part of the honeymoon was to be on a lake shore hotel someway to the south of the better known Grand Beach Hotel.  I don’t know why I chose it instead of the Grand Beach, but it was well run and comfortable, with good food and drink.
            I soon discovered that if I asked for a wine list, the waiter would arrive carrying several bottles of wine in his arms.  I would then have to point to a particular bottle as my choice, and then the waiter would take away the other bottles before pouring the first glass from the chosen bottle. There was no printed wine list, but this system, which relied on the manual dexterity of the waiters, seemed to work very well.
            The proprietor was a Yorkshire man who seemed pleased to see us, though he was not pleased with all his guests, saying “Thank God,” when telling us about a particular group of guests who had left the day after we arrived.
            The guest rooms were individual huts dotted along the beach near the main building which contained the reception office and the dining room.
            We loved the place, and did little apart from swimming, sun bathing, and making love.
            I think we were both rather sad, many years later when we learnt that the hotel had been sold to the Malawi Government, was closed to the public, and had become a rest home for Malawi Army officers.
            We did not spend the whole of our honeymoon on the shore of the lake; after about five days we left for our second holiday home, at the Ku Shawi Inn on the Zomba Plateau above the then capitol of Malawi.
            The drive up to the plateau, was on roads even worse than the ones that had taken us to the Lake.  Some were little more than tracks and in some case there was vegetation growing along the centre of the tracks, even budding trees occasionally.  We had been warned about them, they were from the droppings left by elephants which sometimes contained seeds from plants that they had eaten, and which germinated after they left the elephant’s bowels.
            We managed to get past those hazards without too much difficulty and arrived at the foot of the Plateau.
            I had been driven up to the Inn when I had been attending the English teacher course in Zomba, and that experience had made me wonder whether I should cancel the booking that I had already made to use the Inn as one of our honeymoon destinations.  It was not that the Inn looked uncomfortable, it was rather the hazard of driving up to it worried me.
            The road up was what was known as a ‘clock road’. It was too narrow for vehicles to pass and accordingly for part of the time it was only one way.  For the first quarter on an hour it was only one way up the mountain, and for the third quarter it was only one way down the mountain. With that, and the many bends as the track sloped up to the Inn, I wondered if I, with my lack of driving  experience, could stay on the track and not topple off the side at some point.
            I need not have worried. On my honeymoon drive, having reached the base of the track at the correct time for the ascent, I was able to complete the drive without accident and reached the top several minutes before cars due to make the descent were ready to go.
            The Inn had a very attractive setting on the top of the Plateau; from the terrace one had a wonderful view of Zomba and the countryside below.
            We were greeted by the proprietor, who told us that our chalet was in the grounds a short way from the main building.  It was very comfortable, and had been intended for the Norwegian ambassador, but as he had cancelled his visit, we could take it instead.
            It was quite attractive and consisted of a bathroom and bedroom, but with an outside toilet.
            The fact that the toilet was outside did mean that it would be difficult to use if it was raining, though that was unlikely as this was not the rainy season, but I was apprehensive about using it when I was told that there were leopards on the plateau.  It would be unfortunate if one were to meet one of those nocturnal creatures when taken short in the night.  Fortunately that did not happen during our stay at the Inn.
            At breakfast next morning the proprietor asked if we would consider buying the Inn from him.  I understood that he made the same request to all of his new guests.  I believe that he wanted to sell out and return to Britain.  That was understandable if he was homesick, but not for business reasons, for surely the Inn in its glorious setting should be a very profitable concern if managed properly.
            We did not offer to buy the Inn, but spent our time when we weren’t either eating or making love, in driving round the Plateau including to the area known as the Queen Mother’s View, which had been visited during a royal visit to Malawi when it was still called Nyasaland during the years before independence.
            After several days on the Plateau we moved to our final honeymoon address, at a hotel in Limbe, the town which is the second half of the Blantyre-Limbe complex.
            There was a highway between the two towns which contained the cinema, the Malawi Museum, and other buildings, including another hotel.
            We used that highway very often, for most of our time was spent in Blantyre rather than Limbe where most of the shops and government buildings were sited. We went to the cinema at least once, I think to see The Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,. As publicity for that film, the management had placed a biplane in front of the cinema, I think it was a Tiger Moth trainer.
            We also visited the Malawi Museum, though I was rather disappointed by the paucity of its exhibits, and at a goldsmith’s in Blantyre, Hilde insisted that I buy a new wedding ring.  The one that I had used for the wedding ceremony had been purchased by my best man at a local market when we discovered that the bridegroom required a ring. I was still wearing it, but it was of some cheap material that was already fading, and also leaving a stain on my finger. We replaced it with the new ring, which I am still wearing today.
            One problem in Malawi was that as a former British Empire possession, the country still followed some British laws, including the law against buying and drinking outside licensing hours.   That still seemed to be in operation in Blantyre, and one afternoon, when the sun was high, and we were both rather thirsty, we drove out of Blantyre along the road to Zomba because I remembered noticing a bar when we passed that way on our way to the hotel in Limbe.
            I was right.  A few miles outside the town we came to the bar.  I stopped the car, we went in, the owners of this bar did not seem to be bothered by licensing laws, and we were soon drinking cooling glasses of beer.
            I had noticed as we approached the bar, that along side it was a row of small metal roofed huts, and sitting beside some of them were young Malawian women. I suddenly realised what the place was, as did Hilde.  We drank up quickly, got back in the car and drove back to Blantyre.
            As we drove Hilde said to me: “In my next letter home when I tell them that we are enjoying our honeymoon, shall I mention that ‘Today, Alfred took me to a brothel?’”
 
                                    CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
            The honeymoon ended a few days later, and I drove Hilde back to Mtendere, stopping for a meal at Marcel’s Bar which was on the Mozambique side of the road just outside Dedza, we also picked up a demijohn of wine there to take back to our new house..
            At Mtendere School we were welcomed with open arms; the brothers and the Peace Corps were delighted to meet her. She was to teach English to some of the lower forms and took them over from Paul Adorno.
            We began our life together in the new house, which was, of course, very different from the life that she had known in Linz. I discovered that she was a very good cook, for after Suwedi had shown her how to use the wood stove, she cooked our meals on the week ends, when Suwedi was not on duty.
            Suwede too was a good cook, and we managed to eat meat on most days.  He would go to the nearby market where a cow was slaughtered each Tuesday and return with meat for the week which we bought at one shilling a pound.  Unfortunately Suwede had no way to determine what cuts he would buy.  It was simply a matter of taking what was next on offer, and if that was all gristle or bone, so be it.
            We also sometimes bought chickens from villagers living close to the school, and occasionally, at rather more than one shilling a pound, choice cuts of pork from the butcher who slaughtered a pig in Dedza. Apart from the vegetables which our garden boy cultivated near our house, the other variation in our diet was fish from Lake Malawi.  On most Sunday afternoons a lorry owned by Indians would arrive at the school carrying fish preserved in ice. The fish were a local species called Chambo, and they were quite delicious.
            Despite the fact that we were thousands of miles from Austria and England, I think we both enjoyed settling down to married life in our new home. It was a comfortable little house, and the only discomforts were the insects that pestered us constantly.  These included mosquitoes, that sometimes managed to get into the mosquito net over our bed, and also strange flies that arrived on most evening.  I don’t know what their Latin name was, but we called them sausage flies because their fat little bodies reminded us of sausages.
            They seemed particularly stupid insects.  We found that if they were flying in the room at night and we turned off the light, they would drop to the floor, within reach of  feet that could crush them.  Sometimes they would drop to the floor even though the electricity had not been turned off.  One evening we were sitting drinking brandy, when one sausage fly dropped into Hildegard’s brandy glass so that it, and the brandy, had to be taken out the front door and thrown away.
            Of far more trouble than sausage flies were cockroaches. We secured paper at the bottom of doors to prevent them crawling into the living room and bedrooms, which worked fairly well, though I was once woken up by feeling a cockroach crawling over my face. We could not keep them out of the kitchen, though as they could not get into the fridge, our fresh food was probably not harmed by them.
            Once when we were away for a weekend in Blantyre, we had Suwedi place burning anti insect devices in the kitchen.  I think they were called Gamitox bombs, and gave off fumes that were lethal to cockroach.
            When we returned from our Blantyre week end, we asked Suwede whether the Gamitox bombs had been effective.  He told us that he had collected three large bowls of dead cockroaches after that exercise.
            With the end of the dry season we experienced our first invasion of flying ants. These were newly born ants with wings, that were conditioned by nature to leave their nests at birth and swarm in the sky to search for new nests.
            We had been warned to expect them, yet the warning did not prepare us for the reality.  They appeared like a vast cloud, and we had to close all the doors to keep them out. We closed the door to the kitchen, but did not close the outer door in time to prevent them swarming into the kitchen, where we, who had fled into the living room could hear the noise of them landing and shedding their wings to crawl out into the open again.
            In time they finished swarming, and we were able to get back in the kitchen and try to clear the mass of discarded ant wings from all the kitchen services.  It was a week end, so Suwedi was not on duty, but we did not attempt to cook a meal; instead Hilde made sandwiches for our supper.
            Despite the various insect intruders, on the whole we were enjoying life in Mtendere.        For entertainment we had our radio, there was no television in Malawi, our records, and conversation. If there was a good film showing in the cinema in Lilongwe, we would drive the fifty miles there to see it: getting back to Mtendere at around midnight. When we fancied a change from Suwedi’s cooking, we would drive to Marcel’s bar and restaurant.  The cuisine there was quite reasonable, and though the restaurant was technically in Mozambique, we could pay with Malawian money.
            We seemed to have plenty of friends; my school colleagues including the brothers, and the brothers at the Juniorate, teachers at the Dedza Secondary School, which was a government establishment and not a mission school, and teachers at the Marist Brother’s School in Likuni, a few miles from Lilongwe.
            Amongst our particular friends were the Hoares, a teacher and his wife at the Dedza Secondary School.  I shared a hotel room with him in Blantyre during a conference about the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate whilst Hildegard stayed with his wife, Rita, at their house in Dedza.
            Ron Hoare was a rather flamboyant individual who was very much the master in his domestic household.  Hilde and I both felt a little sorry for Rita, and whilst she was staying with her in Dedza, we thought that she might persuade Rita to be a little less intimidated by her husband, but that didn’t seem to happen.
            Ron owned a rather expensive car.  I think it was a BMW, of which he was very proud, but, apart from using it to visit us in Mtendere, he never took Rita anywhere in it.  She was rather envious of Hildegard, who had visited Lilongwe and the Lake and other places in Malawi more than once since our wedding.
            One such visit was to Nkotahkota, which was a place on the shore of Lake Malawi a considerable distance to the north of Salima.  We had been told that it was an interesting spot as it had been described as the largest native village in the country.  It was rather more than a village, having a population of several thousands.
            We stayed in a government rest house to which we were the only visitors.  In the visitors’ book there was a lot of information about a rare breed of bat which nested in the roof of the rest house, but we did not see any of those creatures.
            We visited the house of the one Catholic priest in Nkotahkota, he seemed to be a rather lonely individual who was serving the spiritual needs of a small band of Catholics, for most of the population there were Muslims, whose spiritual needs were tended in the mosque which we also visited, which was totally unlike my idea of a traditional mosque as it looked rather like a very large African hut.  I don’t think it had a minaret, and I don’t remember hearing an imam calling the faithful to prayer. In the town there was a small monument to Dr Livingstone who had visited Nkotahkota in the 19th Century.
            We also visited the general store to purchase things.  The unusual thing about that establishment was that it had a system of wires which carried money from various parts of the store to the payment area.
            We were tenpted to bath in the Lake but did not do so, for we had been warned that in that area there were snails that carried the parasite which caused bilharzia, an unpleasant illness which we had no desire to catch.
            After we left the rest house, we spent a night at an observation point in the Nkotahkota Game Reserve in the hope of seeing nocturnal wild life, but I don’t think we saw anything apart from insects. Next day we drove home to Mtendere.
            Soon it would be our first Christmas in Malawi.  It was now the middle of the rainy season, though it did not rain every day. We bought our first Christmas tree which we placed on a small table in the corner of our living room.  That and the many Christmas cards which we obtained from England and Austria were our only festival decorations, but the little house looked cheerful enough for Christmas.  Teaching had ended for the holiday and the boys had all gone back to their homes, so the church was not crowded for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. 
            After mass we drove to the Hoares’ house in Dedza as they had invited us for lunch.  They had been fattening a goose which was to be the main element for the feast, but when we got there, it was still running around its enclosure.  They had not had the heart to kill it, so we ate chicken instead.
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            Back in Mtendere, the new term began a day or two late, which surprised us, but not the brothers who were used to many of the boys not returning from their villages on time.  On the morning that the term should have begun, Brother Dostie came to the house just as we were eating breakfast and told us that we would not be starting that day, as only about a quarter of the students had arrived.  We did not start the next day either, as only half had turned up, but although some were still missing on the third day, we did start teaching with slightly reduced classes.
            Pretty well all the students had returned by the start of the following week.
            At about this time we discovered that Hildegard was pregnant so we began visiting the doctor at the Marist Brother School in Likuni, which entailed a drive there and back of over fifty five miles.  There were doctors in Lilongwe, but none in Dedza where the hospital had to make do with the services of a Malawian medical assistant.  These medical assistants were very well trained and could deal with most of the diseases that they had to treat, but they were not doctors, which was hardly surprising as at that time there were only about four Malawian doctors, one of whom had no time to practice medicine as he was Dr Banda, the prime minister, soon to be the president when Malawi was declared a republic.
            The Dedza medical assistant would probably have been quite capable of treating Hildegard during her pregnancy, but while we could, we preferred to use the American doctor in Likuni.           
            A few months into the pregnancy Hildegard’s sister, Greta joined us for a holiday in Northern Malawi and Zambia, but before that took place I had to pass the driving test, as I could not drive in Zambia on my provisional licence.
            For the test I had to go to Blantyre to take it twice, for at the first attempt I was failed, but happily, the second time I passed.
            We went to Chileka Airport outside Blantyre-Limbe to pick Greta up. We took her to John Smith’s house where we spent the night, then drove her to Mtendere and from there drove north for our holiday.
            The first night we slept in a government rest house, at, I think Kasungu, a fair way north of Lilongwe.  We then continued to Mzimba, the administrative centre of the Northern Region of Malawi, where I think we stayed at the Catholic mission.   Mzimba, was a small town, and the only distinguishing feature that I remember about it, was that in its centre, it had a small strip of tarmaced road, which was laid down some years previously because of a visit by royalty.
            From Mzimba we drove to the lake shore, to Nkhata Bay, a rather attractive little lake shore town. That was to show Greta the lake, but I don’t think we swam on that occasion.
            After so many decades, my memory is not completely accurate about that holiday, but I think we also drove up to the Nyika Plateau and stayed at the rest house in the game reserve, which was technically inside Zambia.  There we had rather better luck than at Nkhotakota, for we saw quite a lot of game, including many Zebras.
            We drove North after that and entered Zambia at a point where Malawi, Tanganyika and Zambia met, and drove to our first destination in Zambia, a town near Lake Tanganyika. I forget the name, but it may have been Mbala.  There we stayed for a few days in a fairly comfortable hotel.  We drove to Lake Tanganyika, along one of the worst dirt roads that we had experienced on this trip.  We saw near the lake, a beautiful single drop waterfall which we photographed before driving back to our hotel.
            The main object of our visit to Zambia was to see the Victoria Falls, but that was a long way from Mbala.  The most direct route to the Falls would have been to drive through part of the Congo, but we were not keen to do that, as that country was not very safe for visitors, so we had to make a detour to remain within Zambia, so we travelled South East to our next destination, which was a town in Central Zambia, the name of which I have forgotten, but which had a splendid new Catholic cathedral which had been designed for the White Fathers, and which, in reference to their Sahara connections was in the shape of a Bedouin tent.
            We visited the White Fathers, who showed us round the cathedral and then entertained us in their refractory.  I think that we drank coffee, and one of them told us that during the war he had been fascinated by the advertisements for coca cola that he saw in Life and other American magazines that reached Northern Rhodesia, which was the name of Zambia before independence.  When near the end of the war coca cola arrived for the first time, he had hastily bought some for he had looking forward to tasting this ‘ambrosia’.  He told us that he took one mouthful and almost spat it out, he thought the taste disgusting.
            One of the White Fathers showed us his collection of Africana.  It was very extensive and included several drums.  One of them was an example of a talking drum which was used to send messages.
            He had been very keen to add a talking drum to his collection, and when he learnt that one was to be found in a nearby village, he went there and attempted to buy it, but despite his offering almost more money than he could reasonably afford, the owner refused to sell it. He was very frustrated, and was about to abandon the attempt, when a village elder took him aside and said.
            “You are going the wrong way about this father.  Of course he wont sell it.  We regard these drums as living creatures.  To sell it would be like selling his own daughter.  If you want the drum, you must offer to marry it.”
            Despite the fact that as a priest he had vowed to remain celibate, he had married the drum, parting with a dowry that was much less than he had originally offered to pay for it.
            We next drove to Ndola on the Copper Belt which had been my entry point to Africa a few months previously, and after a night in hotel then drove south to Kariba on the Zambezi.  There we drove over to the dam, which entailed leaving Zambia and entering the no man’s land over the river between Zambia and Rhodesia. 
            We stopped to take photos, and then returned to the Zambian border post where an officious border guard asked us where we had come from, and did not seem to believe that we had been in Zambia and wanted us to return to Rhodesia.  We had considerable difficulty persuading him that we were telling the truth, but finally we were allowed to proceed. We then drove west along the bank of the Zambezi to Livingstone, where we stayed at a very comfortable hotel for a few days and looked at the mighty Victoria Falls, though we did not attempt to cross them into Rhodesia.  We also visited the Livingstone Game Park where we hoped we might see a rare white rhinoceros. 
            In the park we were driving round until, seeing a game guard, we stopped and asked him where we might see a rhinoceros. He told us to leave the car and follow him on foot.  He lead us a short distance and suddenly we were standing so close to a rhinoceros that we could touch it, which is what the game guard did.
            I was very perturbed because I knew that these were extremely dangerous animals, but the game guard did not seem to be frightened of it, and neither were Hildegard and Greta.  We took photographs, and then turned to walk back to the car, and as we turned I saw that there was a second rhinoceros standing looking at us.  I was very relieved when we returned to the relative safety of our car, and were able to drive out of the game park safely.
            Soon after that we left Livingstone and began our journey home.
            We drove west and spent a night staying with the Jesuits in Lusaka. They made us very welcome, and seemed particularly impressed with Greta, who had a doctorate in law.  I think they may have tried to persuade her to take a job in Zambia, but she had no intention of doing so.
            Next day we left to drive towards Malawi and home.  We were rather apprehensive about possible difficulties if we ran out of petrol, for fuel was in short supply in Zambia because the British blockade of oil to the white regime in Rhodesia had had a knock on effect on Black governed Zambia, which had been getting most of its oil by way of Rhodesia: but we had a full oil tank when we left Lusaka, which I thought would be enough to get us to the Malawi border.
            We drove carefully to conserve fuel, meeting almost no traffic on the road, and had reached the township where we hoped to spend the night.  I have forgotten its name, but it may have been Katate.  There was no hotel there, but we knew there was a government rest house where we could stay. 
            We thought we saw a white woman entering a building, so we stopped the car and followed her in.  We had been mistaken, there was no white person there.  The building was the office of the official agricultural officer, who was a charming Zambian who told us that the rest house in the township, was full of officials who were there because the president of Zambia was arriving for an inspection on the following day, but that we could spend the night in his office where he would put beds for us. He promised us breakfasts at his home the following morning; and being very tired, and not knowing where we could sleep otherwise, we accepted his offer, and in that makeshift bedroom, slept quite well.
            Next morning he arrived after we had awakened and took us to his house for breakfast and refused to accept any payment for his trouble.  It was extraordinarily generous on his part, particularly as he was due to meet the president after we had left and that was probably the most important day of his career.
            We continued on our way, and soon reached the Malawian border and then continued towards Lilongwe, from where we turned onto the road south towards Mtendere.
            We had turned off the road on the final stage towards home, when we found that the track had been churned up with mud from rain, and I managed to get stuck. 
            Very quickly there were several Malawians offering to help us out of our dilemma.  They agreed to push us out of the mud, and gathered at the back of the car and began pushing.  I thought it would help of I turned on the engine and got the wheels spinning.  We did begin to move, but the spinning wheels sent masses of mud into the air and back onto the bodies and clothes of the unfortunate Malawian helpers, who quickly ceased to be brown skinned, but became mud bespattered black skinned. 
            They did not attempt to lynch us. I apologised, and we continued on our way and less than an hour later were back in Mtendere.
            After we rested for the night we drove Grete back to Chileka airport, where we said goodbye, and she boarded the flight that was to take her to Nairobi, when she would catch the connecting flight for Vienna.
 
                                    CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
            Back at the school I found that there had been a change in the rules for the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate English examination.  In the past, as in the UK, GCE examinations, it had consisted of two papers: one a comprehension and grammar paper, and the other an essay paper.  The Examining board had decided to retain the two papers for more able students, but to introduce a single paper examination for the others, which would still enable participants to obtain a certificate, but, being thought to be rather easier than the two paper examination, would not enable them to receive the very top marks.
            I tested all my candidates by setting them a test using two old examinations papers, which I then marked, and using the results organised them into two groups, the ones who obtained the higher marks being in the two paper group, and the ones with the lower marks in the easier one paper group.
            All but one of my candidates accepted my ruling.  I had placed the one who objected in the lower group; but he had insisted on being permitted to take the more difficult two papers so I let him have his way. When it came to sitting the real examination, he was the only one of the Mtendere candidates who failed.  We had the best results in the whole country, as it seemed that I was the only head of department who had used testing to decide the candidates for the papers.  All the others seemed to have left it to their students to choose for themselves, and as almost all students in the country chose the more difficult papers because they thought that was the only way to obtain the highest marks, many of them failed.
            Brother Dostie, the headmaster, was delighted.  He put a copy of the Ministry of Education bulletin on the students’ notice board, and underlined the passage that wrote that one school had the best results in the country with all but one student passing, and wrote next to it. “That was us.”
            Hilde’s pregnancy continued with no great complications, and by August we drove to Likuni for the birth.  At the mission station there, we stayed with another key post teacher and his Belgian wife until the delivery time when Hilde went into the mission hospital for the actual birth.
            I was present in the delivery room while the birth was taking place, which took a considerable time during which we were regaled by the doctor, an American lay missionary, who told us tales of his time as a medical officer in the US Army.  Today, I do not remember what he actually said, but some of it must have been so graphic to make me feel almost sick.
            Finally the birth came, and our first son, Stephen, was born. He appeared to be a lovely baby, and next morning I drove to the post office in Lilongwe and sent telegrams announcing the birth to Tottenham and to Austria.
            Almost as soon as I returned to Likuni, the doctor came to us and metaphorically dropped a bombshell.  He told us that we should get the baby baptised at once as it was possible that he would not live. The child had not made water, and the doctor feared that his kidneys were not functioning.  He wanted to introduce a dye which would show if there were kidneys, but this was a dangerous procedure and could kill the child. 
            We were distraught .A priest was called at once, and Stephen was baptised, and then the doctor introduced the dye and found that there were kidneys, He then made a puncture in the baby’s stomach and inserted a catheter so that the urine could drain out.
            The doctor said that there was a blockage in his penis, but as he did not have a catheter small enough to remove it, and did not think that there was one in Malawi, we would have to take Stephen to Salisbury to have the blockage removed.
            Hilde and I were unhappy with the idea of going to Southern Rhodesia, as we disliked the white regime that governed that country, but for Stephen’s health we were prepared to go anywhere.
            I drove back into Lilongwe and went to the Air Malawi office to obtain a flight to Salisbury, but was told that the agent was at the hotel attending a ceremony with fellow free masons.
            I went to the hotel, and managed to speak to the agent who had been drinking; but he sobered up when he heard my story, and told me that if we went to Blantyre we could obtain tickets for the flight.
            I went back to Likuni, but as I was emotionally in no condition to drive all the way to Blantyre, someone at the mission drove us there in a mission car, so I had to leave my car in Likuni until our return.
            At the hospital in Blantyre, Hildegard and little Stephen were taken in for the night, but I was told that I should find a hotel bed for myself as they did not have room for me.  However, after the senior nurse who had given us that information, left the room, her assistant took me aside and said that she would get me a bed near Hildegard in the maternity ward, but that we would have to leave in the early morning before her superior returned for duty.
            Next morning, at the Air Malawi office we got the tickets to Salisbury, and were soon on the plane, with the stewardess making a great fuss of little Stephen who had a bottle for the waste urine strapped to his side.
            In Salisbury we were driven to the whites only hospital, and Stephen was accepted for treatment. Hilde and I could not stay with the Marist brothers, as the fact that they had many African brothers meant that they had been forced to site their establishment in a none white part of the city, but we found a hotel and spent the night there and returned to the hospital the next morning.
            The blockage in Stephen’s penis had been removed, and he was now urinating in the normal way. I suspected that had we had black faces he would not have received that treatment.
            We stayed in Salisbury a few days more, spending much of our time at the hospital with Stephen, and when he was discharged we flew back to Malawi.
            As a family, we arrived back at Mtendere though not to live in the house we had left from, as the brothers had decided that we needed a bigger house, so the poor Peace Corps had to lose half of their accommodation.  They had been occupying a building that was originally built to be two houses.  Now, they had been moved from half the building, the wall between the two halves being reinstalled, and there were now two houses with the Peace Corps in one, and Hilde, Stephen and myself in the other.
            Hilde and I were very pleased with our new accommodation, though the Peace Corps naturally resented having to move, but there was no lasting bad feeling and we were soon friendly again with them all.
            One of the first things that I needed to do when we were back was to go back to Likuni to pick up our car which we had left there when we flew to Salisbury.
            We returned to our teaching duties, though now that Hildegard was a nursing mother Brother Dostie gave her a reduced teaching timetable so that Stephen was only without his mother or father for a very short period of less than an hour each week, when Suwedi would keep an eye on him for us.
            Of course we missed our families in England and Austria; yet living and teaching in a small community in the heart of the African bush, though challenging, was very interesting. About twenty miles away was the district centre of Dedza, with the Bishop’s residence, Mandala’s general store, and a few other stores, and a hospital with no doctor to service it, but a native medical assistant in charge.  Near Dedza was the government secondary school, where the Hoares and other teachers we had become friendly with lived and taught.  Just outside Dedza, on the Mozambique side of the road was Marcel’s bar, restaurant and store where we would buy our demijohns of wine, and sometimes eat.
            Fifty miles away was Lilongwe, which years later was to become Malawi’s capital city.  We would often visit Lilongwe, perhaps to shop at Kandodo’s store or to buy meat from the butcher’s shop; to have a meal in the hotel, to go to the cinema of an evening, or to visit friends on the staff of the Marist Brother teaching college on the outskirts of the town. 
            Further away than Lilongwe was Salima and Lake Malawi where we had enjoyed our honeymoon, and which we visited on occasion, though we never stayed in our honeymoon hotel again, but rather at the more popular Grand Beach Hotel, which had been established before the war as a place where passengers and crew of the Imperial Airways flying boats could stay, when those aircraft rested on the Lake before flying on to South Africa.
            Closer to hand, just a mile or so from Mtendere was the site where a seminary was being built under the supervision of the White Fathers.  The bricks for its construction were made from soil removed from termite nests, so one sad fact was that the housing for the future students of the seminary was being provided by destroying the homes of millions of termites.
            During construction of the seminary a single member of the order, a brother, not a priest, lived on the site. I think we met him just once after he had an accident and had to visit the hospital at Likuni.
            We took him there, waited at the hospital whilst he was being treated and then drove him back.  By the time that we were about half way back night had fallen and even with the headlights switched on I had some trouble seeing the road, and wondered whether my sight was failing.  I worried for a while, driving as carefully as I could, until I suddenly realised that I was still wearing dark glasses.  As soon as I had taken them off my ability to see returned to normal.
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            One Saturday we had driven in to Dedza for some reason, and on our return we found that the bridge across the stream had been destroyed.  A large lorry lay in the stream.  The driver had attempted to use the bridge and the weight of the lorry had broken it. We feared that we could not get home, but discovered that there was a point a little way downstream where the water was shallow enough to drive through it, and using that we got back to our house.
            From then on we had to use that crossing if we wanted to get to Dedza until the bridge was repaired, which did not happen for several weeks.  It was fortunate that this was in the dry season.  If it had been the rainy season, I expect that the water level would have been too high to enable us to ford the stream.
 
                        CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
            In order to keep up to date with the news I used the short wave services on my radio, and every day after lunch I would listen to the BBC World Service and occasionally the Australian Overseas Service.  I also listened to the news on Malawi Radio every day, but as Malawi was very much a one party state, its reports were extremely biased with constant eulogies to the wisdom of the President. I also took the American magazine News week, and subscribed to the New Statesman. Once a week I would gather students together in a classroom during the lunch break and give them details about world news, which they seemed to find very interesting.
            I think the reception on our radio must have been better than that of all the other radios at Mtendere, and when England was facing Germany in the World Cup, all four of the brothers came to our house to listen to the broadcast of the match on BBC World Service, and, despite being French Canadians seemed delighted by England winning.  As I had never been a football fan, I doubt if I would have bothered to listen to that broadcast if they had not asked to hear it.
            The school took part in a competition organised by Radio Malawi in which secondary schools were asked to record a broadcast a recording of a reading by students from a work of literature written by an African.   I chose for our reading an extract from Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. I wondered whether our entry would be rejected because the author was a white South African; but it was accepted, though we did not win a prize.
            We came to our second Christmas in Malawi.  On Christmas Eve the brothers at the Juniorate invited us to their residence after midnight mass, so when little Stephen was well asleep in his cot we walked across to the church for the service and then to the residence where we stayed for a while eating and drinking. Perhaps we should not have left the baby alone for that time, but we always felt very safe in Mtendere and were sure that he would be all right.  He was still happily sleeping when we returned to the house.
            Soon after Christmas Hilde and I took little Stephen on a holiday that I had been hoping to enjoy from the first day that I had arrived in Malawi.  It was a cruise on Lake Malawi on the lake steamer, Ilala.
            We drove to the Lake and spent the night at the Monkey Bay Motel before boarding the ship.  That was a mistake, the hotel seemed very badly run with a teen aged boy, the son of the proprietors, acting as manager in the temporary absence of his parents.  In our bedroom the mosquito nets were full of holes, and we shared the night with several mosquitoes who made comfortable sleep rather difficult.  We were quite glad to leave the hotel the following day and board the Ilala, where we had booked accommodation.
            There was cabin accommodation for twelve passengers.  Our cabin was on the top deck and during the voyage we were the only first class passengers. We took our meals with the ship’s officers. The rest of the passengers, Malawians, had no bunks or cabins and slept wherever they could.  There were hundreds of them on most voyages as the ship sailed to the most northerly point of the lake before sailing back to its harbour at Monkey Bay.
            The ship weighed less than 700 tons.  It had been built in Scotland, then taken to bits, and carried as cargo in another ship to Beira in Mozambique, and from there taken by train to Lake Malawi, where it was put together again and floated. It was a replacement for the Vipya, which had sank on the Lake in 1946 with considerable loss of life. Its owners were Malawi Railways.
            There were three ship’s officers: The Captain, the First Officer, and the Chief Engineer. Before we joined the ship I had imagined that ships’ officers on the lake would be ineffectual individuals who had not been able to obtain posts on sea going ships.  Now I learned that this was far from the case. Officer posts were advertised in international shipping journals and were highly sort after, and were certainly not sinecures.  As the sinking of the Vipya had demonstrated, there were many hazards for lake sailors. The lake, at 365 miles long and 52 miles, wide was the third largest lake in Africa.  Indeed, whilst I was checking details on The Internet I discovered that the Ilala had recently capsized in a storm, and as lifeboats could not be launched, passengers had been forced to swim to the shore with some loss of life.
            The officers only had to serve on board on one voyage out of two, as there was an alternative group of officers who took over for the second voyage, at which time our officers would remain in Monkey Bay working for the company in the harbour.
            Once we, and the hundreds of deck passengers were on board we set sail. I think our first stop was near Salima, where we anchored whilst disembarking passengers were taken ashore by boat, and new passengers brought aboard in the same fashion.
            From  there we continued sailing northwards, stopping at Nkhotakota, and at various other places along the shore.  I don’t think the ship entered any harbour, but simply, as at Salima, anchored off shore so that departing passengers were taken ashore in life boats..
            . When we had reached the most northerly point of the Lake, the ship turned back and started the journey back to Monkey Bay, but with one extra call on the way back to Nkoma Island on the Eastern, Mozambique, side of the Lake.  That Island had been the base for the first, 19th Century, Church of England Missionaries who had built a cathedral there.  It was a spectacular building, about as large as Chichester Cathedral in England.  I don’t know what had compelled them to build anything so large, on an island with a relatively small population.  I imagine that during services it must have been half empty.
            It was a very pleasant restful holiday for Hildegard and myself, and I think we were both rather sorry when we said goodbye to the officers and disembarked at Monkey Bay.
            Our drive home was uneventful until we stopped in Dedza, when a Malawian told us that our house had been burgled. When we got to Mtendere we found that had been true. Someone had broken in and stolen several things, including Stephen’s teddy bear, and various other items, and Hilde’s Austrian dirndl dress. As if this was not enough trouble, as soon as we were back Hildegard developed a high temperature and had to get to bed.  It was malaria, which had probably been caught from mosquitoes at that dreadful hotel in Monkey Bay.  A few days later I succumbed to the same disease, as did baby Stephen. I don’t know if it was life threatening, though it could have been, but within a few days we all recovered.
            On reading in our letters home about our malaria and burglary, Pop sent a new toy for Stephen, a teddy bear sized Giant Panda, which was a more than adequate replacement. Latter we recovered some of the other items stolen, though not the dirndl, when the police caught the Malawian Fence.  That man was tried before the magistrate in Dedza and I had to attend the court as a witness, though as I had been on the Ilala when the theft occurred, I had not witnessed anything. The trial was quite interesting, and, although magistrate, court officials and defendant were all native Malawians, it was conducted in English, with the proceedings translated into Chinyanza for the benefit of the defendant.
            A little time later, on a Saturday evening; the Peace Corps held a party to which we were invited.  It was in front of their house and for illumination they had hung bottles up with candles lit inside them.  That was not a very clever arrangement for the festivities were punctuated with the sound of bottles exploding because of the heat from the burning candles, so that by the end of the evening there was no illumination, but lots of broken glass.  Apart from that Hilde and I thought that it was rather a dull party and we fairly soon excused ourselves and went back to bed.
            None of the brothers had been at the party, but on the Monday Brother Dostie asked me if any cannabis had been smoked at the party as the police had contacted him because they had heard that it had. I told him that as far as I knew it hadn’t, but afterwards I reflected that perhaps it had, for that might explain why everyone else had been so lethargic that evening.
            We next went on our first sea side holiday with our baby. Leaving our car in Blantyre, we flew to Beira in Mozambique where we stayed at a hotel by the sea, a little way along the coast from the city.
            So far as I remember, all the guests at the hotel were white, mainly white Rhodesians I think.  The hotel was comfortable enough, but I thought it was rather like staying at the sea side in Britain, but with Rhodesians. I was mildly annoyed to find that the staff in a beach side restaurant assumed that we were Rhodesians.
            Most days we would sit on the beach, look at the sea and the scenery, and take in the sun. The shipping that we could sea was chiefly oil tankers making for the main port, Lourenque Marques, in defiance of the British blockade of oil to Rhodesia.  On shore, near where we would usually sit, was the skeleton of a vessel that had been wrecked.  It was not very large but we didn’t ever bother to examine it.
            I never swam in the sea, but I did paddle in it once, but it had so much oil that my feet became almost black, and I had to spend a considerable time in the bathroom in our hotel suite trying to scrub off the oil stains.. 
            I think that just once we went into the actual city, which I did not find a very interesting place.  It was surprisingly empty of crowds, and there did not seem to be much of interest to see, apart from a statue of a Portuguese grandee that stood in one of the streets.
            At the end of the holiday I think that we were quite glad to get back to Mtendere.
            At around this time we noticed that the car seemed to be unsteady as we drove, and we were driving in Limbe when suddenly it lurched sideways, and when we got out to investigate one front wheel appeared to be partly detached from the chassis. We were next to the Catholic cathedral workshop, so we asked there for assistance.  The workshop staff took the car in, and took over the repair of the wheel housing, which took several days, and during that time we stayed in a hotel.  When the car was ready, we collected it, paid the cathedral a bill for the repair, which may well have been less than if we had used a commercial garage, and drove back to Mtendere.
            Our car was due for its annual service, which we feared would entail another visit all the way to Blantyre, but we learned that there was a facility to have it serviced at a garage outside Dedza, on the Mozambique side of the road, so we made an appointment, and I drove the car there.  The service would take all day, and as I could not return to Mtendere without transport I spent the day in the restaurant of Marcel’s bar, having lunch, and whiling away the time until the car was ready for collection, by marking student’s essays. It was a tedious day, but not particularly unpleasant.
            Another day that I had to spend away from home, was at Dedza Secondary School, where I had been sent by the Ministry of Education to supervise the conduct of the school and students sitting for the Cambridge Overseas Certificate.
            When I arrived at the school I found an unexpected degree of chaos, for a room chosen to house the examination had not been arranged correctly, and I found the candidates standing there looking puzzled as places for the examination had not been put in place.
            There seemed to be no member of the Dedza School staff on hand to correct this situation, so I had to organise the candidates to move desks and seats into position before the examination could start.  Only when  this had been completed did the Dedza School invigilator enter the room to conduct the examination which then proceeded without any further delay.
            I was extremely annoyed about this, and later complained to the Dedza head teacher, who was very apologetic and told me that one of his staff had been asked to lay out the room correctly before the examination but had not done so. 
            Happily, there was no such hitch to the Cambridge exams at Mtendere.
            It was now getting near Pop’s sixty-seventh birthday, and I was looking for a birthday gift that I could send to him, but before I found one, we received news that he was very ill and had been admitted to hospital.  When we got that news, we decided that we should end our time in Africa and get to England to see him before it was too late, and to that end, we told the headmaster that we would leave at the end of the term, which I was entitled to do within the terms of my contract. Naturally Brother Dostie was not pleased, but accepted that we had good reason to do this, so I set about obtaining air line tickets for my little family.
            One morning, shortly after we had got the tickets, Brother Dostie interrupted a class I was teaching and asked me to come at once to his office.  When I did so he told me that he had received a telephone call telling him that Pop had died.
            I was heartbroken, though not completely surprised.  Brother Dostie told me that I should not attempt to teach any more that day, but should fly to England for the funeral, using one of the air line tickets that we had already obtained. Hilde and little Stephen could stay at Mtendere until I returned.
            I returned to my house and broke the news to Hildegard who was as distressed as I was. Then Brother Dostie came to tell us that he had arranged for one of the brothers to drive me to Blantyre, and after Hilde had packed a case for me, still in a state of shock I was in their car and being driven south.
            Several hours later I was at Chileka Airport in time to board a connecting flight to Nairobi, and from there an East African Airways flight to London, Heathrow. For the whole of that journey from Mtendere I felt numb.  I was going back to Tottenham but my dear Pop would not be there, and I would never see him again.
            At Heathrow I didn’t think that I could cope with the task of boarding a tube, and then a bus to Tottenham.  Instead I took a taxi which took me all the way.
            It was quite early in the morning when I finally got to Lansdowne Road.  I think Aunt Queenie and Aunt Kath were surprised to see me, they had not thought that I could get there so quickly.  Aunty Queenie phoned Ruby to tell her that I had arrived and very soon I was on my way to Dane End; but I did not go directly there, but visited a travel office in London to secure my return ticket to Malawi for after the funeral.
            Ruby was pleased to see me.  We cried together for our loss, and I learnt that she had not been able to see Pop just before he died. Aunties Queenie and Kath had been visiting him at the hospital, when a doctor asked if they were next of kin.  They said that they were, which strictly speaking was not the case, as Ruby and I were the next of kin. The doctor told them that Pop was dying.
            On getting that news they should have at once told Ruby and me, but they did not, and when Pop died shortly after their visit, It came as a shock to Ruby who had not thought that he was that ill.
            The funeral in Tottenham was several days later, and after the burial I was on my way to Heathrow again for my return to Malawi.  This time my flight was by South African Airways and was longer than my flight from Malawi had been because the airway had to fly along the West Coast of Africa in order to avoid the various independent African countries that wanted no truck with the white South African regime.
            We landed in Luanda in Angola, which was still a Portuguese colony, and from there I flew by the Rhodesian Central African Airways to Blantyre. I can’t remember how I completed the road journey back to Mtendere.  Perhaps I had a lift as I had no memory of taking a bus.
            Hildegard was overjoyed to see me, just as I was overjoyed to be back with her and the baby.  They had coped with my absence, though she had been mildly disturbed when one of the students had asked if he could kiss her.  Of course, she had refused, but the young man did not attempt any other amorous approach.
            We had one more holiday in Malawi.  During one school break I drove with Hildegard and Stephen into Zambia and to the Luangwa Valley Game Reserve which some of our Peace Corps had visited.
            It covered a huge area in Eastern Zambia, and was unusual in that guests were not taken round the reserve in groups, but were expected to take a game guard with them and view the animals from the relative safety of their cars.
            Our drive entailed, before entering the reserve, crossing a river using a rather ramshackle car ferry. We arrived at a camp, which I think was called Lion Camp and was on the banks of the river, from where, even without taking a trip in our car, we could see several animals bathing in the river.
            Accommodation was in huts, each of which consisted of a bedroom and bathroom; and that first night Hilde fed Stephen before we went to bed, and poured the excess baby food into the toilet. I woke up in the night and went to use the toilet, and found a little mouse swimming in the toilet bowl.  The unfortunate creature must have been trying to eat some of the baby food that Hilde had scattered, and in the process fallen in. I felt sorry for the creature, though not sorry enough not to urinate on it, and then flush the toilet.
            In the morning we picked up a game guard, who carried a rifle, and set about exploring the game reserve in our car.
            I was particularly impressed by the huge herds of African buffalo that roamed the area.  I had been told that these creatures, rather than lions, were the most dangerous animals in Africa.  We did see one lion, some distance away, moving quickly, presumably after its prey.  From conversations later in the day we gathered that we were the only people to see a lion.  However, a more worrying experience occurred later in that drive.
            I had been forced to stop the car at one point because elephants were on the track ahead of us, two or three adults and a baby elephant. We waited until they had left the track and moved some distance away to the right of our car.
            I had just started moving the car slowly forward when the game guard shouted, “Move faster,”  I did so at once, gathering considerable speed for I saw that one of the adult elephants was charging towards us.  Happily, it did not reach us, and was soon out of sight, but I was no longer quite so happy to be in the Luangwa Valley game reserve.
            Later, when we were on our way back to Mtendere I had to change a tire.  I dreaded to think what might have been our fate if we had suffered from a flat tire whilst still in the reserve.
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            Now that we were coming close to the end of our time in Malawi we were concerned that there might be problems about bringing little Stephen to England, as Hildegard was not a British citizen.  She did not wish to give up her Austrian nationality, but we wondered if there was any way that she could obtain dual British and Austrian citizenship.  To that end we consulted the honorary Austrian Consul General in Blantye, a Dr Gunde, whom we visited at his office.
            Dr Gunde, was an affable Businessman, who owned a coffee plantation, and was the agent in Malawi for several European companies.  He was very sympathetic about our problem, and set the wheels in motion, a task that was easier than it might have been because of the status of Hildegard’s father, who, because of his services to the Austrian nation had been made a Hofrat, or court councillor, a rank which was a relic from the old days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and was, perhaps, equivalent to a British knighthood.
            Dr Gunde‘s efforts on our behalf proved successful, and after Hildegard had sworn allegiance to Britain before a Malawian magistrate in Lilongwe, the necessary documents were obtained, and Hildegard, though retaining her valid Austrian passport, was issued with a British one as a British national.
            When Dr Gunde had given us the good news he told us that he wished that he could have dual nationality.
            “Oh,” I said. “Do you want to become British, too.?”
            “No,” he replied. “I am already a British citizen. I want to have Austrian nationality.”
            Despite German being his native language, Dr Gunde had never been an Austrian citizen, but had been a Hungarian when he had first arrived in Malawi.
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            The latest manifestation of Dr Banda’s dictatorship was the edict that every secondary school must have a member of the Malawi Young Pioneers on its staff.  The Young Pioneers were a Congress Party body that seemed to have much in common with the Nazi Hitler Youth organisation. Its chief function seemed to be to terrorise those unfortunate Malawians who were reluctant to show their love for Dr Banda by being enthusiastic party members.
            Brother Dostie was quite pleased at first at the idea of having a Young Pioneer on our staff.  He thought that the young man could be used to smarten up the students, and give them a necessary quality of discipline. The Headmaster lost all that enthusiasm as soon as the Young Pioneer joined our staff.
            He was in his mid twenties and appeared to be the intellectual inferior of most of our students.  He had not been a secondary school student himself, but had studied at a teacher training college, which in Malawi was always an lesser institution than a secondary school.
            He was conscious that he had no need to follow any instruction of Brother Dostie because as a Young Pioneer he was only answerable to the President.  One of his first actions on joining the staff, was to march the students out to a grove of newly planted trees and have them cut them down, so that the wood could be made into mock rifles that the students could carry when drilled in military formation by the Young Pioneer.
            Brother Dostie complained bitterly to the Ministry of Education about this and other actions by the Young Pioneer, but to no avail.  The Ministry considered that as a Young Pioneer what he was doing could only be for the good of the Party, and he would have to stay. The young man was still on the staff when we finally left for England at the end of our contract, though later we learnt that he was removed by the Ministry of Education after he had raped a girl in a nearby village.
 
                                    CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
            We were coming towards the end of my tour of duty in Malawi, and though Brother Dostie would have liked me to sign up for a second three year tour, I did not do so.  Pop’s death had shaken me so much, and as Hildegard’s father was about the same age as Pop, neither of us would have wanted to be so far from Europe if he were to be taken ill.
            We had the task of obtaining employment and a new home on our return to England. I could have gone back to Hertfordshire because I was on secondment from the Hertfordshire County Council, but I didn’t particularly wish to so. I began subscribing to the Times Educational Supplement which carried thousands of advertisements for teaching posts.  That paper was published on a Friday, but my copy never arrived at Mtendere until the following Wednesday, which meant that I would be later than other candidates in applying for any job advertised.
            The fact that I was several thousand miles away if I was called for an interview was also a problem, as the cost of an air fare to England and back was far too high for me on my teacher’s pay.  However, there was an arrangement that the Ministry of Overseas Development had made under which candidates for a teaching post in England were paid all but £20 of the return air fare from public funds; and in the event of a head teacher asking me to come for interview, I could make use of this service. However I could only use the service once, though whilst in England I was permitted to attend more than one interview, but I would also have to accept if the post was offered to me, for if I did not, I would have to pay the air fare in full.
            I gave these details in all the letters that I  sent to schools in England, but I was not hopeful that I would be offered an interview; but to my surprise the headmaster of a secondary modern school in Market Rasen in Lincolnshire asked me to come for an interview.
            The arrangement was made for my flight to England, so I kissed Hildegard and Stephen, and drove to Chileka airport for my flight, leaving the car parked under a tree at the airport until my return.  From Heathrow I did not go to Tottenham, but to Dane End to stay with Ruby, Archy and their children until the interviews were completed, for I had managed to arrange a second interview to attend after I had visited Market Rasen; at the Catholic teachers’ college in Strawberry Hill in Twickenham where there was a vacancy for a lecturer in Sociology.
            Whilst I was in Dane End I visited Bill Scott, who had decided that now that his parents were both dead, to come to Africa and teach, and had applied to Catholic Overseas Appointments who had offered him a post in Malawi at a school near Limbe.
            At the appropriate time I travelled up to Market Rasen, which seemed to be an attractive little town. I had an interview at the secondary modern school, but, unfortunately, was not offered the post. Neither was I offered the post at Strawberry Hill, which did not all that much surprise me, as despite my possession of a degree in Sociology, I had never actually taught that subject.  Indeed the surprise was that I had even be called for interview.
            I was sorry that I was not going to be a lecturer at the college; but happy soon after that to board a plane for my return flight to Malawi where I found my car still parked under a tree at Chileka Airport, though before I could begin the long drive back to Mrendere, I had to spend a considerable time trying to clean the body work of the car, as it had become covered in droppings from the birds that had been nesting in the tree under which it was parked.
            Back at Mtendere I continued applying for posts advertised in the Times Educational Supplement, but if a head teacher wanted to interview me the interview could not be until I finally returned to England, as I no longer had the option of a flight paid for by the Ministry of Overseas Development.  That had been a once only option which I had already squandered by my flight to Market Rasen and Strawberry Hill.
            By now Bill Scott had obtained a post in Malawi and had joined the staff of a secondary school run by Dutch teaching brothers near Limbe.  Naturally, we invited him to visit us in Mtendere.
            He had yet to buy a car, so he obtained a lift from one of his colleagues at the school who took him about half way before the car turned off to go to the Lake, and left Bill to hitch hike the rest of the way. As traffic was scarce as always, he started to walk until a car came along, which in the heat of mid day, was not all that sensible, particularly as he was still more than one hundred miles from Mtendere.  He must have walked a mile or so when a young Malawian boy started walking along side him and said, “You are footing it?”
            He told the boy that he was, and the boy grinned, amazed at the foolishness of this white man.  Shortly after that a car did stop and gave him a lift.  It was driven by a Nigerian lawyer, who was so worried that Bill would not reach his destination, that although his own destination was Lilongwe, he turned off the highway after Dedza and drove him all the way to Mtendere.
            By then we had thought that Bill would not be coming to us as it was so late in the day, but we welcomed him, fed him and sat talking with him until the generator had been turned off by Brother Leo, and then we went to bed, with Bill sleeping in my study.
            Next day we drove Bill to the Lake and stayed for a few days in the Grand Beech Hotel. It was Bill’s first time there and he seemed to like it: swimming and then sunning himself on the beach.
            We warned him of the dangers of sunburn, but he poo-pooed our warnings, telling us that he had recently been on holiday to Greece, where he claimed that the midday sun was much stronger.
            Very quickly he realised his mistake, for his back and arms were soon covered with painful sun burns, so that when we drove him back to his new home near his school, his body was so painful that we had to abandon plans to show him Blantyre-Limbe, and he took to his bed. I left Hildegard to act as nurse to him whilst I drove into the town to complete various tasks which we could not do back in the bush at Mtendere.
            When I returned to Bill’s house at the end of the day, he had, more or less recovered, and we stayed with him as his guests for a few days as he totally recovered from his burns.  I think that while we were there, Bill cooked the meals that we ate. He had already found a cook, though not a very efficient one, who could only cook one dish, a sort of stew. 
            Now we only had a few months to go before our final departure for England, and I was still without a teaching post at home, so we did not know where we would be living when we got back.  I was still scanning the advertisements in the Times Educational Supplements and sending letters to schools in the Home Counties around London offering my services for when I returned.
            Brother Dostie would still have liked us to stay for another tour of duty, but we were both keen to leave.  He came to me one day and told me that the headmistress of the Girls’ Secondary School in Lilongwe would like me to join her staff.   He had told her that he didn’t think that I would accept, and he was right. It would have been more attractive teaching at a school in Lilongwe than out in the bush at Mtendere, but not as attractive as going back to a post in England.
            Finally the time came for us to leave. I had one interview organised for our return;  to a post as head of English at a secondary modern school in Tunbridge Wells in Kent.  During the first weeks after our return we would be living with Ruby and Archie in Dane End. The house in Tottenham where Pop had lived with his sisters was still available if we had wished to go there, but now that Pop was dead, it would be painful for me to live there. 
            We sold our car to an other expatriate teacher from another school, and organised the purchase of a new Renault 4 in Hertfordshire, which we could collect after our arrival home.
            If I obtained the post in Kent we would also have to look for a house to buy which was a matter of some urgency as now Hilde was pregnant again.
            We said our goodbyes to colleagues, clergy and pupils and just before we left, the brothers entertained us to a meal. During that meal Brother Dostie told us that he had not been able to prevent one of our students from going back to his village after receiving the news that his parents had been murdered.
            The boy and his parents had been Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all the villagers had been members of the same religious sect. The sect was disliked by the Malawi Government because its members would neither pay their taxes or join the Malawi Congress Party, and Dr Banda had recently made a speech on the radio saying that as far as he was concerned Jehovah’s Witnesses did not have the protection of the law, and that he would be perfectly happy if law abiding Malawians treated them as evil outlaws.
            The President’s words had inflamed people living near the Jehovah’s Witness village, and a bloodthirsty mob had descended on it, and slaughtered every one there.
            We were still thinking of that awful titbit of Malawi news when next day we left Mtendere and began our return journey to England.  It would be November 5th, Guy Fawke’s Day when we finally got to Dane End, which was, perhaps, not an auspicious day for a Roman Catholic family to set foot in England again.