Sunday, January 10, 2016

Not a stunt rider


No this  is not a stunt rider.  This manoeuvre was part of the normal motorcycle training for National Service Military Policemen in the 1950s.

The first week of training was spent in a field at Aldershot learning to control the bike before we were allowed out on the road.  First day just going round and round the field trying not to fall off for those who had never ridden a bike before. But of course the first thing was to learn how to kickstart the damn thing without the kickback breaking your leg.
 During the week we progressed in our control  of the bike by standing on the seat and the rear pannier, sitting side-saddle and sitting on the petrol tank with our legs over the handlebars. This was before we were even allowed to move out of first gear! Needless to say, the bikes had to be cleaned at the end of every day before the evening meal.

By the end  of the week we were regarded as being competent enough to be allowed out on the road.
This was not always the case, because in reality we had not learned any roadcraft nor properly when it was appropriate to change gear. Of course it all came together with practice, riding every day for quite long periods in different traffic conditions.

One of the highlights of about the third week was a day spent doing cross country riding  at a scrambling track.  This was quite competitive and it was the first time that we were encouraged to go as fast as we could. 

Once having completed the motorcycle section of our course we then went on to the much less exciting business of learning to drive a 15cwt truck.  How boring by comparison. 

 




Thursday, January 7, 2016

Stop the world I want to get off.

Lots of older people are just grumpy old men or grumpy old women.  Some though are just bemused by the changes which have taken place in just a short space of fifty years.  Are we still living in the same world as we were then, it is so different that some of us suspect we have been hijacked by aliens.
 Is science fiction fact?  Are the teenagers of today people in the same way as we were when we were young or are they from a different planet? Or even a different solar system?  They don't have pointed ears but there is multi coloured spiky hair, strange patterns on their skins, all kinds of of hardware dangling from their ears or noses,short haired girls and long haired boys with skinny legs with toes that point towards each other instead of straight forward.

There is rampant puberty from the age of ten but young people are "kids" until they are 21 or more.  
But then suddenly parliament is full of 30 something's running the country, most of whom have never had a proper job. 

Technological change is normal over such a time span and because this has happened gradually most people accept the changes and adapt.  But there are still changes forced onto the population which many older people do not want.  Who decided that "music" was compulsory in shopping centres, even in the toilets?  And why does 90 per cent of the photos on FB contain a tongue? Who changed fast bowlers on the cricket pitch to quick? Why is text speak everywhere and not just in texts? Who is able to keep up with all those abbeviations? 

There are all these improvements but still no cure for the common cold.  No cures for cancers either that work for ever sufferer.  More money spent on subsidies for grouse shooting than on flood defences. A National Health Service which is National only in name.  Charities which spend more  of the money collected in paying CEOs and administration than on the job they were created for..

Anthony Newley surely could not have realised how much his song would resonate in the future.


Friday, January 1, 2016

What National Service taught us.

There used to be a phrase about National Service and what it taught young men. "I learned to drive and I learned to scive>"

Neither of these subjects were covered by the Army Education Corps.

I did my National service in the army and the AEC sergeants  came along to give talks on various subjects, most of which I can't remember. A lot of these sergeants were not much older than us, much like some secondary school teachers today.

On one occasion there was a session where we each had to give a talk lasting three minutes on any subject we liked except sex, religion or politics.

Well there was the usual set pieces from some of the lads, my job, my home town, my football club and so on. There were one or two quite well educated chaps who were able talk quite easily about films, art,  music and so on, but most were a bit mumbly and bashful.

 Well I was quite prepared for this so when it was my turn I walked up to the front and said  " We have been told that we can't talk about sex, politics or religion, I don't know about anything else, and I don't even know much about sex come to that "  and went and sat down.

The education sergeant who was normally quite easy going, went ballistic.

"Back up here. Three minutes so start talking and keep talking till I tell you to stop."

I will admit that I had thought about  this and said that my topic was "Forbidden subjects. "  The Sergeant said "Your three minutes hasnt started yet but watch your step.

I kept going, and don't remember the whole spiel but I managed to include the words, religion, sex and politics about a couple of dozen times each. But only in the context of when and where it was not allowed to be talked about, like you couldn't talk about sex in church and there wouldn't be much point in talking about religion whilst having sex and so on.

I managed my three minutes without trouble as once I was in my stride of mixing and matching I started getting shouted suggestions from the other lads.  It was hilarious and not what the sergeant had in mind.

 I am not sure if they had any more of those talk sessions after that. 

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Curry without chips

It may be difficult to believe in these days of multicultural cooking, but I had never tasted curry until I was nineteen years old.  Despite having been born near the London docks with a spice warehouses nearby, foreign foods were not eaten in our house, if you dont count bagels and soused herring.

Back then, ending an evening in the pub with a curry or a vindaloo or whatever was not that common. I had not been to a Chinese or Indian restaurant or any other kind of restaurant for that matter apart from the fish restaurant attached to a fish and chip shop.  I am not even sure if Manzes Eel and Pie  shop qualified as a restaurant either.

So I came to like curry quite by chance. During my national service I was stationed in a small unit near Suez and the military police camp was shared with a similarly small unit of Mauritians.  Our unit's cook was replaced by a young catering Corps chap who had not actually learned to cook.  This has come about because he was a professional footballer, an apprentice with Glasgow Celtic  so had spent all his training time playing football instead of learning catering.

His early efforts at cooking for fifteen men were a disaster and more often than not were a wate of good food so that we were often still hungry even when we had eaten.

I was friendly with a couple of the Mauritian military police and would wander over to their side of the compound and scrounge a meal.  It seemed to be a curry every day.  I was welcomed into the kitchen and a watched the meals being prepared and gradually learned how it was done.  Curry is a simple meal really, especially Mauritian style.  Just some meat, mostly chicken or lamb, some dried fruit, plenty of tomatoes an apple and mango chutney with generous spoonfuls of curry powder.
What could be simpler.

Eventually we sent our Scottish cook over to learn how it was done and that became his speciality.


Sunday, September 6, 2015

A visit to Malta

In January 1945 HMS Whimbrel visited Malta  as part of a Royal Navy flotilla which was in training to go to the Pacific, The war in Europe was nearly over but the war for the Royal Navy and its crews was far from over, it was to be another year before they returned home.

Whilst moored in the Grand Harbour or adjacent to the bomb damaged Royal Naval Dockyard Dad  would have seen the church of Cospicua sitting just above, opposite Valletta. He did not know that this was the church in which his Maltese grandparents had been married in 1858 and  in which his mother had been baptised in 1862
Cospicua Church amid ruined houses 1942

The church had almost miraculously escaped unscathed from the enemy bombings of 1942 although many of the houses in the vicinity had been reduced to rubble.
Matti Grima Street, Bormla

If he had gone ashore to visit the church and if he had known, he could have walked up the stepped street alongside the church and a few streets away would have seen the house that his mother and grandmother had lived in an and where his great grandmother died.  But he knew nothing of this, as although he knew that his mother had been born in Malta, he had no idea which part of this small island she belonged to.  It was ironic that he was so close to her birthplace and was not aware of it.

Whilst at Malta there was shore leave for the crews and no doubt he would have visited some of the churches to attend mass, and perhaps chance may have taken him to the church of St. Paul Shipwrecked in the centre of the city where his grandfather had been baptised in 1835.

Monday, August 31, 2015

A Tale of Two Migrants





My Great great grandfathert Balthasar Dietz was an economic migrant by today’s standards, In about 1842 he left his native village in rural Hessen in Germany and travelled to England.



He had no trade so went to work in one of the many Sugar refineries in the East End of London. Being a sugar baker in Whitechapel was hard work in great heat for not a great deal of money. He stuck at it for about four years, and in the meantime married and had children but still managed to save up enough money to set himself up in business as a beer seller.
He must have been reasonably successful at this as he could afford to make trips back to his home village, owned a gold watch and on his last visit to Germany had fifty pounds of his own money in his pocket.

How this entrepreneur of the 1850s would have progressed we do not know because he died at the age of 42 in unknown circumstances in Cologne on his way to visit his aged parents in Germany. As he had succeeded to go from a labourer in a sugar refinery to being self employed with money to spare in just four years, imagine what he may have accomplished given more time,

On the other hand my great grandfather Alphons Eder was a different kind of migrant. He left his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia and signed on one of the last Royal Navy sailing ships as a bandsman. After sailing to British Columbia via Valparaiso and Rio and back, he stayed in London haveing presumably seen as much of the world a he wanted. 
He married the only surviving daughter of Balthasar, fathered ten children and for the rest of his life he never had a “proper job” supporting his wife and family playing in a German Band as a street musician or busker if you will.  I always think of him as some kind of early jazzman for whom the music was more important than the money. He lived a good life as far as we can tell and lived to the age of 77, never having returned to his native land.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

A day at the Races

Peter McKie was a chair-maker and although much of
his trade was in the repair of chairs he also manufactured a folding stool, much like those sold to anglers today. Working from a shed in the back yard of the house where they lived in Pennington Street, Stepney there was no room to carry large stocks apart from the lack of capital for that.  The chairs were usually sold wholesale to market traders but at least once a year Peter would build up a stock, load up the small pony and cart that he owned and would go off to the races to sell them there.
Normally he would take one of his older sons with him but one year, 1905,  he allowed one of the younger ones, Ernie, to go along, together with 14 year old Joe.  What an adventure that was as young Ernie had never been far from the house before.  Pennington Street, to Tattenham Corner, Epsom was in the region of 17 to 18 miles by road.  The pony was not that young and although Ernie was allowed to ride on the cart from time to time, the pace was still a walking one and the journey took almost half a day to accomplish.
Over Tower Bridge and almost into “Indian territory” as it were for Ernie, he had never been on this side of the river before and to many east enders Bermondsey was almost a foreign country.  Along New Kent Road to Camberwell, probably places he had never previously heard of and then more new experiences as they got out through Streatham which was still effectively in the countryside in those days.
Coping with the early morning traffic with a pony and cart  was not the problem that it would be today.  Although there were quite a few manufacturers of cars in Britain by 1905, there were still not that many motorised vehicles on the road, and the many of them could not go a great deal faster than the much larger number horse-drawn carts, drays, traps and the like which clogged the main roads in and out of London.
Hills were avoided as much as they could, to save the old pony's strength for the long walk that he was no more used to than the boys were.  On to Mitcham a small village then where they stopped to breakfast on the sandwiches they had brought with them, having been on the road already for nearly three hours.  Fortunately for the two young boys, the pubs along the way were not open at that time of day, otherwise, perchance they would not have reached their destination.  On through Sutton and Banstead still no more than country villages at this time so more new experiences for young Ernie.  Finally to Tattenham Corner on the Epsom Downs where the fairground had been set up for the race meeting.  Ernie had not seen such a large open space before in his life.  There were parks near were they lived, but nothing the size of Epsom downs, rolling away into the distance.
Tattenham Corner also had its own railway station used by many of the Londoners who came down for a day at the races, so a good spot to catch likely customers for the chairs.  The Epsom race meetings usually lasted about a week, but Peter rarely had enough stock to take with him to justify staying for more than one day,
Having set off early in the morning they were there in good time for the first of the day trippers to arrive on the special trains which operated on race days  They did a good trade and sold most of the chairs by the time that racing had started and Ernie fully expected that they would then soon be starting for home.  It was not to be.  Peter “liked a drink”, as they say, so he was off to the bar tents with the takings leaving the two boys to look after the pony and cart.  They could hear all the excitement of the fairground, the steam organ on the roundabouts, the cries of the hucksters and screams of the girls on the ghost train.  Worse still they could catch the aromas from the food stalls,   They would have been able to see the helter skelter and some of the high rides and would have wanted to sample them, supposing they had some money, but they dare not disobey their father and remained where they were told.  They passed the time watching the racegoers toing and froing near the rails and having some inkling of the thrill of the betting and the racing, although they heard but could not see the horses thundering round the bend at Tattenham corner.
Peter did not return until racing was over for the day or all the takings had gone, whichever came first, Ernie didn’t know.  Fortunately in those days, being drunk in charge of a horse was not an offence, however Peter still had no intention of leaving.  Waiting until the crowds had thinned, he sent the two boys to scour the grounds for any of the chairs which may have been abandoned.  They came back with a reasonable number, only to find Peter fast asleep in the back of the cart and would not be roused.  Joe did not think that he was able to find their way back to Pennington Street so they had no alternative but to unhitch the pony and feed him and then make themselves a bed under the cart to wait until morning.
At first light they were on their way again, with all three riding in the cart this time.  Having spent the night on the ground in the open, which he had not experienced before, for Ernie, the shine on the adventure had worn off, so the return journey was not as exciting for him as the outward one had been.
There was also the foreboding of the reaction of their mother when Peter returned home without the profits that she would have been anticipating to provide for the family in the coming weeks.  Being the sort of person that she was she would lay some of the blame at the door of the 15 year old Joe, boys of that age being regarded as adult in those days. and regularly worked with his father.  Jessie McKie was a martinet, by any measure of the word, but try as she did to control her wayward husband's drinking habits, she was unsuccessful.  This was to be the last visit to Epsom downs.  At the time of the Derby the following year, Peter having been ill in the St. George in the East Infirmary died there three weeks before the race.