A Lucky Life

What others are saying about A Lucky Life

‘The story grabbed me and I had to finish it. The dialogue is colourful, with many funny lines.’

‘John Tassell has an informal style which is very appealing.’ - Tweed Heads librarian.

‘I’ve been enjoying ... John Tassell’s books. You are a natural, John. Keep it up.’ - former Sydney Morning Herald Reporter and Columnist.

A Lucky Life

John Tassell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 John Tassell

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Chapter One: The Early Years

Chapter Two: Growing Up

Chapter Three: Barbara

Chapter Four: Alwyn

Chapter Five: Vera

Chapter Six: Navy Life

Chapter Seven: Big News

Chapter Eight: Albatross

Chapter Nine: Off to War

Chapter Ten: Typhoon

Chapter Eleven: Not Too Many Dragons

Chapter Twelve: The Atom Bomb

Chapter Thirteen: Round the World on The Grey Funnel Line

Chapter Fourteen: The Dream Car

Chapter Fifteen: Dizzy Des

Chapter Sixteen: Out at Last

Chapter Seventeen: Claire

Chapter Eighteen: Colour TV

Chapter Nineteen: Getting Serious About Antennas

Chapter Twenty: Travelling North

About John Tassell

Connect with John Tassell

Chapter One

The Early Years

I was born in England in 1929. A son after three daughters, I was expecting a big celebration with champagne, music and dancing in the streets but it was all very quiet. ‘Perhaps I’ve arrived at a bad time’ I thought. This was very perceptive for a new born babe because it was a bad time. 1929 was the year of the Wall Street crash. Investors were jumping off tall buildings in pairs, a time of ultimate despair.

We did it very tough ourselves. At our lowest ebb, we had no food in the house, no money, no coal for the fire and a foot of snow outside! Things were crook but unlike Mr. Mc Cawber, who was always saying, Something will turn up, (but it never did) for us, something did turn up.

Next door had a load of coal delivered and Dad , thinking, they'll never find it when it's buried under a foot of snow, went out and with the big heavy wheelbarrow, brought it into their coal shed. However, being half starved, he collapsed. Mum and the lady from next door had to get him inside. They sat him by the fire with a cup of hot tea and Mum bathed his black frozen hands. Poor Dad moaned with the pain from his hands but their neighbour, showed his appreciation. He worked at a colliery and as part of his employment package, he was given a monthly, free delivery of coal and he made sure we had coal all winter

Dad left school in 1912. He was fourteen and he got a job at The Siemens Electrical Company. He was paid a penny an hour. Four and four pence for a fifty two hour week!

In 1914 Dad had his sixteenth birthday and started an apprenticeship with Siemens. The First World War had started and all the men were being called up. To young fellows like Dad and his mate Sid Pike, going off to war seemed like an irresistible adventure.

Intending to lie about their ages and volunteer, he and Sid presented themselves at the Stafford recruiting office but the medical officer was their family doctor and he told them to get off home.

Undeterred by this little set-back, they waited until the weekend and cycled to Wolverhampton, the nearest big city. They found the Army Recruiting Depot and joined up. They weren't even asked about their ages, The Army were taking all the cannon fodder they could get. So, they were rapidly, In the Army.

For training, they were sent to the island of Guernsey and joined, The 4th North Stafford Regiment. In January 1915, after four months of rugged training, Dad was posted to HQ and Sid was posted to the 2nd Battalion in France.

At HQ, due to his copperplate writing and accent-free speaking voice, Dad was employed in the office for general duties and to answer the phone. He was needed for this, because all the other men were from the potteries and their speech was unintelligible.

During this time, he had a letter from Sid, saying he had been sent to Mesopotamia. Later on Dad heard Sid had been killed in action there.

Next, Dad was posted to the 62nd Machine Gun Division and trained to be a machine gunner. After training, he was sent to the 21st Division and over the next two years, he saw a lot of action and was wounded several times: First at the Somme and later that year, the Somme again. Then at Passchendale Ridge, which was the worst. So, he had done more than his share but then he got a break.

It was decided to train machine gunners and make Machine Gun Companies. And … Dad was chosen to be one of the instructors! That was very good news, for that he had to be sent home to England! Wonderful! Home at last.

Dad had come from a very religious, Wesleyan Chapel, family and I had always assumed that he was very religious too. We were brought up to go to church regularly (C of E not Chapel) and Sunday school but in fact, Dad had lost his faith in the trenches. He decided that no God who loved his flock would allow such terrible things to happen. Appallingly awful nightmarish things, that haunted him all his life, and yet he was such a wonderful loving father. How he helped us and kept on helping us, long after we were grown up.

My three sisters and I were blessed. No one could have had more loving parents. Dads wonderful book Reminiscences, includes some details of his terrible time in the war, it is such a good read.

Besides being very religious, Dad’s parents were quite well-to-do. His father George was the area manager for The Singer Sewing Machine Company and he operated from the Stafford Singer Shop in Gaol Square. They had a nice house, a terrace but in the better part of town and big enough to raise five children in.

Dad was the eldest and we always thought it unfair that he had to leave school at fourteen and go to work, while his younger brothers and sisters went on to university.

Mum’s maiden name was Grace Ellen Tiviotdale. An intriguing surname name and she used to intimate darkly that her family had suffered and fallen from better things. Her father had graduated from the big Birmingham University and he was a surveyor-draftsman with the big city council. However, he had taken to drink in a very destructive way.

So ... fate had brought two victims of misfortune together. With a little better luck they both could have enjoyed a more comfortable start in life but who’s to say that they would have had a happier and more rewarding life than they eventually did?

Mum and Dad had been brought up in comfort but after their marriage, they lived in Genteel Poverty (or they would have been if they could have afforded to) but at that time it was a struggle just to survive.

Dad credits Mum for our ability to speak properly. She had a wonderful speaking voice and a lovely singing voice and she trained us to speak. I’ve always appreciated speaking properly but at times it’s been a mixed blessing. We were often thought of as stuck up, even though our extremely desperate circumstances made us quite the opposite. On reflection, being spoilt and well spoken sometimes gave me undeserved confidence. I seemed to believe I would always be forgiven my countless stupidities.

Our dear mother was tireless and full of fun, which is really remarkable, considering the very thin times we went through. These thin times, caused us to have to move about a lot but moving was no trouble for Mum. In fact, to her, it was adventure.

Dad would only have to come home from work and say, ‘We might have to move dear.’

She’d say, ‘Right’ and start packing!

Going back to Dad’s time in the Army, he survived the First World War. Well, he more than survived. When he got out, he was a highly decorated Crown Sergeant and only twenty one!

One story that became a family legend, was about one of his luckiest escapes. As a sergeant, he was marching his troop back behind the lines for a bit of R & R. When they came under shell fire, Dad ordered his men to dive into the ditch beside the road. When they were all in, he dived on top of them.

The instant he landed, someone landed on top of him, saying, ‘Shove up a bit mate.’

They were his last words, a shell burst overhead and virtually vaporized him. Whoever he was, he saved Dad’s life. Dad woke up in a field hospital and when, after weeks, he finally saw himself in a mirror, part of his hair had turned white and in his own words:

‘I had this flash of pure white hair on the front-left side of my head and all my life, it made me look rather distinguished!’ God bless him.

Then there was the cigarette case incident. He had this heavy metal cigarette case in the top left pocket of his tunic and it stopped a bullet! I know it doesn’t sound original but it was probably pretty original ninety years ago!

When Dad got out of the army, his reward for serving his country was unemployment. Luckily, his Dad was able to get him a job with The Singer Sewing Machine Company. He had to commute daily to the Singer repair and assembly plant at Wolverhampton. There, he was taught to operate and repair Singer Sewing Machines.

When he got home from work one day, his Mother said, ‘Do you remember that girl I wrote to you about during the war. The one your brothers nicknamed, ‘Tricky Tivvy.’

Dad said, ‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well, she’s going to her brother in Canada and she’s come to say goodbye. I persuaded her to stay the night, so she could meet you and Tivvy is waiting in the drawing room.’

Dad quickly cleaned up, changed and hurried down to meet her. He opened the door … and boom, there she was. It became a family-legend that some spark passed between them at that moment. She stayed until the end of the week and Dad took the rest of the week off.

After that, they met at weekends. They both caught a train and met in the middle. It was at a lovely village called Four Ashes. They did this for a few weeks, but then the company transferred Dad to Shrewsbury, so their courting had to continue by correspondence.

While Dad was working at Shrewsbury, some weekends he cycled the 22 miles to the Welshpool markets. After three visits, it seemed to him, there might be an opening for a Singer Sewing Machine Shop there. He spoke to the management but they were not impressed.

However, they did agree to supply him with stock and pay him a pound a week. He thought that was enough to start and found a shop and residence. Then he wrote to Grace, telling her he had somewhere to live and he would get a special license for them to marry. She came right over but by the time he had paid the rent and for the license, he was broke! Nevertheless, they were very happy and stayed married until after their 60th Wedding Anniversary. Dad lived on to eighty six and Mum lived to ninety.

Welshpool was a lovely town. It had a handsome castle and a beautiful park with wild deer roaming freely but it didn’t have buyers of sewing machines. To earn some money to keep going, he delivered mail to the farms around town for thirty shillings a week. Yes, on his bicycle, very early in the morning, through the rain and snow. Then things got worse!

God knows how they survived but undaunted by their poverty, the family continued to grow in number! Finally due to lack of business, they had to close the shop and return to Stafford. They stayed with Dad’s parents, who were very kind to us all.

After a few weeks, they moved into the flat above the Stafford Singer Sewing Machine shop in Gaol Square.

Over the next few years, they moved to many Singer shops in other towns and villages: Cannock, where I was born. Rugely, Burslem, Stone and Walton-On the Hill.

Considering the fact that they had had three daughters in quick succession and then had managed to be unproductive for five years, I’m pretty sure I was an accident.

However, Mum and Dad and my three sisters regarded my birth a red letter day and Dad got orders for three sewing machines on that day. So that would have helped!

Things got even worse at Walton, Vera heard Mum crying in the night and the next day she found out Dad had lost his Job.

Meanwhile, I was spoilt and pandered to by my parents and my three sisters. Of my sisters, Vera is the eldest and is known as the brains of the family. Alwyn is my middle sister and she is very smart too. Barbara is the youngest and she is the artist.

When she grew up, she started studying fashion art and dress designing at Stafford Art School. In time, she came to paint in oil and water-colour, sculpt in clay and she excels in all of them!

My middle sister Alwyn is famous for the time she was walking me in my pram and when we were at the top of a hill, she was buzzed by a bee and in the process of swiping at it, she let go of the pram. An idle onlooker would have found it difficult to suppress at least a giggle. There I was hurtling down the hill, accelerating at 32 feet-per-second per-second (gravity) with Olly in hot pursuit waving her arms and shouting. There was a fork in the road and a slimy green duck pond at the bottom of the hill. My pram and I became airborne and landed with a squelchy splash in the slime. In spite of Olly giving me this impromptu swimming lesson, my three doting sisters were my best friends and when they all went off to school. I missed them.

When we lived in Walton, a village in Staffordshire, the house was on a bend in the road and when my sisters went to school, I used to climb up the gate to watch them. The higher I climbed, the longer I could see them. Then one day I climbed so high I ran out of rungs and toppled over! I went head first into the cast iron water cock cover, putting a gash in my forehead. This bang on the head could account for my seeming to be from another planet for most of my early life and for my oddly idiosyncratic behaviour!

The head-bonk caused much running around and screaming but they eventually caught me. Whereupon, I was head bathed, elastoplasted and laid out in a darkened room. I healed up but had a rather intriguing vertical red scar right in the middle of my forehead. It was not long This gave me a horizontal red scar creating a forbidding sign of the cross, which I used to deter God-fearing bullies from bothering me, lest they found themselves struck down by a thunderbolt from on high.

This Holiness scam worked for a while but then the horizontal scar began to fade and I had to revert to my ability to do the 100 in 10.2. Besides banging myself on the head a lot, I had enjoyed poor health of various kinds. Plus, I used to walk in my sleep and wake up with screaming nightmares.

Seventy odd years later, I can until glimpse what made me scream. A flat sheet of something smooth would appear but then it would start to wrinkle and for some weird reason that would scare me to death.

I also had a very bronchial chest (the climate wouldn’t have helped that) and I was kept at home from school for a year. I’m sure I would have played on that. I was not fond of school. So, what with my screaming and coughing I must have given my poor parents such a lot of trouble and they were already struggling desperately.

In the end, the poor beleaguered doctor said, Keep him home from school for a year and let him run wild, it might build up his strength, and apparently I did run wild. Roaming all over the countryside, and poor Vera or Alwyn were sent to find me which they certainly resented. They would have had far better things to do with their time.

As well as that aggravating behaviour, I had an imaginary friend called Barney whom I talked to all the time. It used to drive Barbara nuts and it would have been another thing to worry Mum and Dad. But when Vera was little, she’d had an imaginary friend too, named Ali Bolkran. So, having already experienced the imaginary friend phenomenon, they figured it was fairly normal behaviour.

Things had been crook before but our stay in Walton was no picnic. Dad lost his job and God knows how we survived. We did find a basket of groceries on the door step and its contents kept us alive for a day or two. People can be very disappointing but what marvellous kindnesses some members of the human race are capable of.

We all think we’ve got problems but compared to the worry of four young mouths to feed, rent to pay and only dole payments to survive on, you would wonder why Mum and Dad didn’t go barking mad. Mum was indomitable, can’t even begin to guess how she kept us all fed.

Finally, some good luck. Although Dad had lost his job with Singers, he sometimes got customers by word of mouth, and he received an order for a sewing machine from a Mrs. Orchard. While Dad was demonstrating the sewing machine to Mrs. Orchard, her husband Joe asked him if he was looking for a job.

‘I certainly am,’ Dad replied.

It turned out Joe was the sales manager for what was known as, The Universal Grinding Wheel Company. It was widely known as, ‘The UNI.’

In1938 and Joe told Dad that the company had been given a government contract to supply Russia and they were putting on workers. He got Dad a job and things started to look up.

Working at the UNI, Dad learned to use a 20 ton press to press the grinding wheels into shape. They were made from a mixture of clay and an abrasive, such as emery or carborundum and after they were pressed, they were fired in a kiln like pottery. The clay melted and binding with the abrasive, the pressings became grinding wheels.

Now Dad had a bit more upstairs than the average factory hand and he wanted to make the most of his opportunity. Jobs were as rare as rubies, so if he ran out of work for his machine, he didn’t just stand around. No, he got stuck into cleaning it down and generally keeping busy.

This got him noticed and when the foreman was sacked for reading a newspaper in his office, for the third time! Dad was made foreman and eventually he was made manager of three divisions of the factory!

Of course this didn’t happen overnight but the job was the start of a reversal of fortune. The factory was near Stafford, which is right in the middle of England, and Dad had to cycle four and a half miles, to get to work from Walton and to get home he had to climb a huge hill! So ... we moved again, this time to the village of Doxey. Doxey was only about a mile out of town and just only the other side of the works cricket pitch from the factory.

We rented one of a row of six terrace houses, which had very primitive plumbing. The toilet was at the bottom of the garden and once a week the tin bath was put in front of the fire. The water heated in the kettle on the stove and the bath laboriously filled and … we were all processed through it! So you see it’s all true about the Poms weekly bathing habits.

As Dad was promoted, we began to prosper. Even to the extent, that when the big house,’ The Big House,’ across the street became vacant, we moved in! Now this was ‘Big Time.’ It had a large front garden lined with tall fir trees and a driveway which swept around to the backyard. We had three double bedrooms and a bathroom and toilet upstairs. A bathroom and toilet upstairs! Incredible and downstairs, there were two large front rooms: the Drawing room and the Blue Room, also a large kitchen/family room with a fuel cooking range and a scullery with a gas stove!

Even though the house was a very classy property, it had no electricity! That was not uncommon in those days. We had a gas stove and gas lighting and the gas pipes went to every room. Instead of light globes, we had gas mantles. They were shaped a bit like a light globe but made out of white material which glowed when lit. The gas would be turned on and a match struck and when it heated up, the mantle would give off a rather nice warm light. until, electric light would have been better. The back door opened into a glassed-in back veranda, which was like a hot-house and Dad was able to grow tomatoes and other good things out of season.

From the veranda, we stepped onto a paved back yard with an outside toilet and laundry. There was also a lawn with two huge cherry trees. They gave us pounds of beautiful cherries every year. They were so delicious Bar couldn’t resist them and ate so many they gave her a tummy ache.

Then there was a low wall across the back of the yard and beyond the wall, there was a long, double-width garden. It had several varieties of fruit trees, apples, pears, plums, damsons and so on. The Big House also had a cellar! There was a door of the scullery, and we stored our harvest down there. It was quite a large room, and every year and