Some quirky memories

A few final funny memories from our residents at Glenmoor- a naughty dog, a stolen bike and some strict old ladies...

I was friendly with the neighbour’s daughter, Alice, and she had a bicycle. I was ten years old. She rode it and I sat on the back seat, and we went to Vernon Park, a mile and a half away. It was late summer. Up and down the hills, freewheeling all the way. It had new tyres on it. We played in the park until we were tired out and it was starting to get dark. But the bike was gone.

We went to the police station. The policeman, Bobby Walsh, asked how many bikes there were. I said only one.

“You’re a lad, and you’re sitting on the back?” he said. He took us home, and Grandma saw me first, and got me tucked up in bed before I could get a belting.

I had an Aunty Martha in Oldham. One day I was drawing something and she shouted at my mother. “Ethel! What’s he doing with a coloured crayon? It’s Sunday. Give him a pencil.”

She had a mahogany table with fancy legs, but on Sundays she covered the legs up with red blankets. Maybe she thought I’d start imagining ladies walking down the road! There’s good and bad in every religion. Aunty Martha did her best to be a good Christian.

-James

My grandmother, my dad’s mother, she rustled when she walked down the hall. She would only go in the sitting room on Sundays, when the vicar called.

We had a dog called Gyp, a Spaniel . He was a pup and one day we were going out, so my mother thought we’ll put him in the tall cupboard in the kitchen. He’ll be safe in there. When we came back he was looking very sheepish.

Then later it was time for Dad to get ready for the Home Guard and he was looking for his gaiters. We looked high and low but we never found them. The dog must have chewed and chewed them. They’re known for chewing, Spaniels.

You’d have thought Mum would have been wiser!

-Janet

Thanks once again to all the residents for sharing their stories and making this such a fascinating experience, and to Rachel and all the other staff at Glenmoor House for helping me so much with this project. Many thanks also to Made in Corby and the Arts Council for their support and advice.

More of James' Adventures...

Here's the final part of James' story. He talks about becoming a fireman and life in the prison service...

When I left the Marines I had to learn how to adapt back into civilian life. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I was twenty three years old. For a while I did some labouring on a building site, then I met a friend and he told me they needed people for the Fire Brigade, so I went there and signed up for that.

We had three months training at the fire station in Oldham, learning how to operate the big ladders, driving, tying knots. I already knew about knots. We moved to Burton on Trent, Millie and I, and lived in two rooms with a Miss Winchester, a very staid and orthodox Scottish lady. We started saving for a cottage on Stanford Road. There was an end cottage that we liked, on sale for £800. So we went to a solicitor, Mr Hicks, he was recommended by Mr Lowe the postmaster. Millie’s parents gave us £120 cash as a down payment, and then we paid the rest in instalments.

I remember one particularly terrible fire, it was the Ind Coope Brewery. The hops were set alight and we went in with our breathing apparatus, but then we had to come out because the bobbing barrels came tumbling down on us. My friend was with me, Arthur Adams, and his breathing apparatus came off. The whole building was lost.

Some time after that I left the Fire Service and started working in a hospital, helping the elderly, getting bathed and dressed. I had a wonderful interest in people. Then one day, there was a man with a fracture and I was taking the plaster off for him. One of the nurses saw me and said to go down to orthopaedics, so I could learn all about plaster. I did that for a while then, until somebody else suggested I try out working in prisons.

I decided to work in prison hospitals, and I was sent to St Thomas’ Hospital in London for training, a few hundred yards away from Wormwood Scrubs, where I was smartly dressed in a white uniform. After training I went to work in Lincoln Hospital for a while, about seven years, I think.

I nursed a lot of patients who were seriously ill with psychological problems. Some of them were quite dangerous, they could be paranoid and suspect you, they could turn violent. Others were placid and easy to manage.

There was a doctor there, and he saw my work, and he said, “You’re wasting your time here.” He thought I should go into the probation service. I met a probation officer, Mr Simpson, and I went for the interview. I got into the service, but first I had to go for training to university, and by the end of it I was highly trained.

The work I did was important because it helped them, otherwise you could go to prison and not be seen by anyone. I would talk to employers too, try and get some work lined up for the men when they left. I remember one chap who was serving time, but when you looked at his past, his father had mistreated him. And that was how he treated women, gave them a bit of thump.  So I found work for him with Mr Field, as an apprentice tuner and fitter on a trawler engine, and he did that when he came out of prison. Then one day I saw him, and he’d brought a girl. “We’ve been going dancing,” he said. They ended up getting married, and I was his best man, and they were very happy together.

There were some who couldn’t cope with life on the outside. There was one fellow, when he got out he stole some rope, just so he could get sent back to prison.

Then there were the escapees. The Thompson family, that was one, prisoner by the name of Fred. He got away and nobody knew where he was. We went to his house and the officers were searching everywhere and they couldn’t find him. I said to his wife, “Come on Hilda, where’s Tommo?”

“I’m not telling you,” she said, looking at me contemptuously.

Eventually they found him, down the road, in a pub in Victoria Street, having a drink. He’d gone up into the loft of his house, then moved along into the next loft and the next, gone down into the house of another criminal family. I think he’d stolen a Vienna clock from a shop.

I’m always telling young people about how I was helped in my life and how they should always aspire to something more, try and progress, and to look for people who can help them, help them get to the next stage.

A little more about James' time in the Marines, and a lovely memory of meeting his wife Millie, to whom he's been married for over sixty years...

There was one man by the name of Warrant Officer Chivers. He inspected the lines. He asked me, “Can’t you stand up straight?”

“I am, sir,” I said.

“Put that in the book!” he shouted.  I had to stand still in front of the mirror for two hours then, as a punishment.

I think he wasn’t born like a normal person, Officer Chivers, he was poured out of a big jug, with neither mother nor father, so he was just standing there, a fully formed Marine, nothing else. You couldn’t imagine him being anything other than a Marine.

As I progressed I was put in charge of a landing craft, I was promoted to coxswain. There were forty four troops, most of them crouched under the gunnels, twenty men on one side and twenty on the other.

It had two big V8 engines. It was a flat bottomed boat, so it could be pulled onto the beach and land the troops on sand and mud and pebble beaches. Pebble beaches were the best for landing. It was buoyant because it was filled with thousands of polystyrene balls, filled ping pong falls that looked like expanded treacle toffee. It wasn’t bullet proof but very few people were killed on landing crafts.

After three and a half years I was posted to a training squadron, where I taught other officers about navigation.

It was on one of my visits home that I first saw my wife, Millie. It was the second week in July. Millie was working as a confectioner, doing an apprenticeship in a village across the river from where I lived, a big shop in Rawley. There was this lovely girl standing outside on the step, wearing a short dress and she had flour on her hands and knees.

They’d been baking only twelve rolls a day, but when Millie started she churned out God knows how many muffins and cakes and buns. She ordered more flour and more yeast, and told them to get a new oven. The manager was astounded.

So I met this girl, and all I could think of was, what a nice person. I had no experience of romance. We saw each other, and wrote letters, and there was an affinity. We had lunch in a restaurant of a beautiful shop, and then later I met her parents. Mr Pearson supplied the meat, a lovely piece of roast meat.

I spent time with Millie’s grandfather too. He had a 1927 Alvis motorbike, and we worked together on it, got some new tyres for it. I think that was why he accepted me, in the end.

                                   WW2 Landing Craft

Here's the next part of James' story, and his life takes a very different turn to working in a grocery store...

I wanted to join the army but I was still a few weeks away from my birthday. Then I met a friend in the village. He was dressed in a blue uniform, and he told me he’d joined the Royal Marines, and they were recruiting people in the old school in the village.

There were two Grenadier guards without their bearskins on and they pointed us down the corridor to the room. Then there was a sergeant and a chief petty officer, and they asked me if I wanted to join the Navy or the Marines. He said the Marines were the finest corps in the world, "Per mare, per terram", by sea, by land, and he gave me a picture of the Royal Marines. I thought that sounds alright, and I signed up, just like that.

My mother told me I’d received a letter and a warrant from Plymouth, and she packed my things in a case. I was sent on a train to Winscombe in Devon on a certain date. I fell asleep so they lifted me up and put me on the luggage rack. I nearly fell off. My mother was a clever girl and she gave me sandwiches to eat on the way, and a flask of tea of all things, and then the other boys gave me a beer, a half pint glass. It was the first alcoholic drink I’d ever had. It wasn’t meant to make me drunk, just to be with them.

When we got to the big station there was a lot of noise- it was being bombed, and there was crashing and banging. Eventually it stopped and we got out. We were put into files of threes and we ran up the grassy bank to the depot.

We sat down in the mess to have our meals. The first meal I had in the Royal Marines was a tiddy oggy, a huge Cornish pasty that went over the edge of the plate, with meat at one end and jam at the other, and a cup of tea or cocoa, and I ate every last bit. They cleaned the tables with a little brush, made sure there were no crumbs left.

The next morning we were woken up at 6.30am by the sergeant who was very rude. Our civvies were packed up and sent back to our homes, and we went to the store wearing dressing gowns, socks and pants. I put a label on the parcel and it got sent back to my mother in Oldham. The store was full of rows and rows of clothes. We’d all been measured previously and we needed two vests (woollen), boots (two pairs), slippers, tunic top, trousers, all to be stamped.  It was all piling up in front of us. “Get dressed!” Then we got changed and one by one we stood in front of the mirror, and the corps sergeant made sure we properly dressed in Royal Marine battle dress.

Then we went and signed the papers, “Sign there! Sigh there! Sign there!”  We went down to the quartermaster’s store and we were issued with a rifle and a few rounds of ammunition, and a beret. We also had a leather string with a number tag on it. Sergeant Blackburn asked, “Who are you?”

I told him my name and he said, “Forget about being James Smith. Now you’re a Royal Marine.” And that was what happened, you weren’t a person with a name any more, just a number- PLY/H8218.

After that we weren’t allowed out of the barracks. We could go to the naffy, where you could sit down and have a rock cake or a cup of tea and a bun.

We’d walk and run for ten miles and they’d drag you through the drainpipes. We went over the moor, Dalditch Moor. When I see these things on television now, I think, “Did I really do all that?” It’s hard to believe but I did.