Memories

On the 25th February 1963 I got up early for an exciting event, exciting to me anyway, it meant nothing to Edna. Overnight there had been a big boxing match in Miami, America. Cassius Clay as he was then known was challenging Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. The BBC was going to screen it at 7am on TV. I didn’t turn the radio on and watched the sensation that unfolded with Clay winning in the 6th round. After the fight Clay announced he had changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

In spring we set off for a holiday to Newquay in Wales. I remember having seat belts fitted to the car before we set out. They had only recently been made available and were not yet compulsory. They were like a parachute harness in which you slid both your arms. We chugged along, my maximum speed was no more than 40 mph so the journey took ages and finally we arrived there late afternoon. That would have been our first trip through Shrewsbury, I can remember now going round the island near Meole Brace and driving up past the Brooklands Hotel to go up the Roman Road. We liked Newquay and had a good time; we stayed in a small-whitewashed cottage on a hill just outside the town. By this time Edna was harbouring a thought that she hadn’t yet discussed with me. The first night we got there we started to get ready for bed. She suddenly brought out of her suitcase a brand new white nightdress. I think it was appropriately called a baby doll dress. She said, “ I thought I might tempt you, it’s time we started another.” What a waste of money, I didn’t need any tempting!

One big event occurred for me in 1963, I went to Wembley for the first time. A coach was filled from County Hall one Wednesday afternoon in October. England against a team called the “Rest of the World” to celebrate the centenary of the Football Association. A crowd of 100,000 turned up to watch an England side pit their skills against the best in the world, including Puskas, Di Stefano and many others. It was a football feast and I for one thought it was brilliant, hardly a surprise.

A terrible event occurred on the 23rd November when a gunman in Dallas, Texas assassinated the American President John Kennedy. Such great hopes worldwide were pinned on that one man at a time of the “Cold War.” I have read that time stood still when people heard the news and the exact moment was never forgotten. That was certainly the case with me. I would probably have never remembered that on that evening I would be attending an evening course on car maintenance run by a Mr. Judson at a local school and we had been discussing the clutch and it’s problems. Why all that has stuck in my memory I don’t know. When I got back home Edna had heard the news and told me immediately and I sank into a chair in disbelief. The world suddenly seemed a more dangerous place. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was later sworn in as the new president.

After Emma we never seemed to have a problem once the decision was taken to try for another baby. I suppose we were lucky in that respect, it didn’t seem to take very long either before a bull’s eye was scored. Sure enough Edna was able to confirm that number two was on its way a few weeks later. We were both very pleased, Emma would have a friend, that’s what we hoped and thankfully after a shaky start that’s what happened. A very young Deborah Ann came into the world on the 14th February 1964. This time the birth was very easy, she was so eager to get out. I remember sitting in the dining room eating cornflakes reading the paper while Edna did the business, again around 10pm. At this time I still didn’t have the nerve to be present, reading the paper appealed rather more. Once Edna had started in labour we arranged for our friends John and Margaret Hague to pick Emma up and take her to their house. In the end, she ended up staying the night with them, which must have come as a shock to her. They brought her home the next morning. It was a very cross little madam who walked into the bedroom to find mummy holding a little baby, that didn’t help things one bit! In hindsight she should have stayed at home and it took a few days for her to accept the new situation. It was soon obvious that Debbie was a calm smiler, that was really good news, less trouble all round.

In the following February a problem began that was to last a very long time and have an impact on my life. I had had a pretty strenuous weekend, playing football on the Saturday and some heavy digging in the garden the following day. On the Monday morning I woke up to find my back had seized up and literally I couldn’t move. That was the beginning of many years of disc problems and was also the end of playing football regularly. Edna told me later she got worried visualising having to look after me as well as two kids. It wore off after a few days and I simply had to learn to live with it.

We met a new member of the family around this time. Eric, Edna’s younger brother rang to say he would be calling in to enable us to meet his girlfriend. They had been on a camping holiday in Scotland and would stop on the way back home. They arrived late one afternoon and we were introduced to Celia Lane who two years later became Celia Barrett. Celia had been at Leamington College for Girls at the same time as Edna but two years below. Celia told me recently that Edna was a very studious girl at school, apparently she was known as “The Professor.” When we first met Celia said she felt a wreck with her hair an absolute mess after the camping. I can’t say I have never noticed Celia looking like a wreck at all and thought she looked fine. Eric had done well!

During the first week of June in 1964 several of us got into a spot of trouble in the office. I mentioned earlier that you could see the wicket on the Trent Bridge Cricket ground from the drawing office. It was a sunny day and England was playing Australia in a Test match. It was a bit distracting, I had the choice of concentrating on Ted Dexter batting or that particularly difficult drainage layout I was struggling with. There wasn’t any competition really. We had a long balcony outside our windows with access to it from some French windows. It was very hot in the office and somebody suggested having ten minutes on the balcony to watch a bit of the cricket, a few of us trooped out, cup of tea in hand. A few moments later unknown to us the TV cameras at the cricket ground panned around picking up County Hall. Richie Benaud was commentating and he muttered something about “the workers up there must be having a late lunch.” The next day there was a mention of this in the Nottingham Evening Post. Oh dear! An inquest was held in the office, and the suspects were hauled up in front of Dan for a telling off. At least he didn’t have a cane like Mr. Gibson.

In the early summer of 1964 I was considering moving on from Nottingham. I now had some experience behind me and the theory at the time was to try different offices. A second consortium of local authorities had recently been formed and was producing buildings using the SCOLA system. Guess where the initials came from? I decided to apply to Shropshire County Architects department who had been instrumental in setting it up. I wrote a letter outlining my experience and asking had they any vacancies. I was invited for an interview towards the end of June. The office was based in Shrewsbury and on arrival I liked the look of the town immediately. Built around a loop in the river Severn it had a pleasant scale compared with the cities of Nottingham and Sheffield. The County Architects Department was close to Lord Hill’s Column, a major landmark in the town on the London Road. A new Shire Hall building was under construction on the other side of the road. The office turned out to be a small Victorian building called “Column House” with rows of temporary huts behind. Ralph Crowe the County architect and Geoff Hamlyn his deputy interviewed me. It seemed to go well and they offered me a post subject to clearing it with a committee. It seemed the approved establishment was full and they had to get approval to increase it by one, presumably they wanted me because of my CLASP experience. The agreed salary would be £1,565 per annum, which was double what I started on at Notts four years earlier. I was quite happy when I drove back home. I intended to give it another three or four years in Shropshire and then move on. I didn’t realise on that journey back, we would put roots down and my stay there would be for the next thirty-three years.

In August 1961 we travelled over to stay with Mother and Dad in the shop for a couple of days. The news came through over the weekend that Berlin was now a divided City; troops from East Germany had sealed the border between East and West Berlin shutting off the escape route for thousands of refugees from the east. During the night six-foot fences topped by barbed wire was erected preventing access. Within days the fence was replaced by a concrete block wall, which became a permanent structure and a symbol of the political divide between the western nations and the Communist states. You couldn’t help wondering at the time where all this would eventually end, all out nuclear war?

Edna gave up teaching in early1962. She had been having a few problems and once fainted in the corner shop near to our house. Nevertheless this was a wonderful time for us both and she was very much looking forward to the birth scheduled for March. At Christmas we used to alternate between visiting the farm and going up to Lancashire, this time we stayed at home. I didn’t want to risk her perched on the back of a swaying scooter. Emma Jane Clarke entered the world in the evening on March 22nd. It wasn’t an easy birth. The midwife at one point asked me to go over the road and get the Doctor, the only useful thing I did all night. Emma was being awkward and couldn’t find the launch pad. Dr. Stevenson our Scottish doctor had to pull her out with forceps and thankfully everything was fine. We were delighted; I think I could safely say Edna was deliriously happy. I don’t think we got much sleep that night, Emma was pretty disturbed and no wonder. I have a copy of a telegram I sent over to my parents at 8-36am, the next morning. It read, “ Emma Jane born Thursday 10-15pm Grandads birthday (stop) weight 7lbs both well.” Yes, she had been born on my Dad’s birthday, which must have pleased him. Neither of us had a phone, so in those days a telegram was the only means of instant communication. The next day I was mowing the lawn when a neighbour walked by, “ Congratulations” he said, and then came out with that old saying, “You’re life will never be the same again.” How true it is!

Although we did not know it then Emma had been born at a very dangerous time and the facts were not made public for a few years. A drug called “ Thalidomide” had been available in the UK since 1958; it was used as a sedative and to alleviate morning sickness and it was estimated that worldwide some 8,000 women had taken the medication. It was taken off the market at the end of 1961 when the medical profession were becoming aware of the tragedy that was developing. The drug disrupted foetal development; babies were being born with terrible abnormalities and limbs missing.

Edna’s life had certainly changed; She was always making lists and schedules. How about this for a planned day, written in a notebook dated April 1962.

DAILY TIME TABLE.
7. 00 am. Feed and change Emma.
7. 45 am. Cook Bill’s breakfast.
8. 15 am. Wash and dress.
8. 45 am Wash and boil nappies.
10. 00 am Wash, iron, clean house.
11. 00 am. Wash, feed, change Emma.
11. 45 am Prepare dinner.
12. 15 pm. Iron nappies and air.
12. 45 pm. Arrange dinner.
1. 00 pm. Dinner and rest.
2. 00 pm. Walk to shop with Emma and Aggie
2. 30 pm. Relax and exercises.
3. 00 pm. Feed and change Emma.
3. 45 pm. Sleep.
4. 45 pm. Prepare tea.
6. 00 pm Bath, feed and change Emma.
6. 45 pm. Free.
11.00 pm. To bed.

What a merry time she was having. I bet she was glad when 11.00pm came and it appears Bill wasn’t even capable of getting his own breakfast. Edna did everything for Emma and that included all the changing of nappies during the night. Over the six kids we eventually had, I can’t remember once having to get up in the night, in fact I don’t think I ever changed a single nappy. Edna simply loved all aspects of her task; boy was I lucky!

During our Nottingham days we saw a lot of one of my old University friends, Stewart Doncaster and his wife Anne. Stewart got a job working for a firm of private architects, Bartlett and Gray. Their office was just round the corner from County Hall. They used to come round to Tollerton every Saturday evening to watch the new satire programme on our tiny little TV called, “That was the week that was,” with a newcomer called David Frost. We also tried to learn Bridge together, a game I never really got on with.

In the summer of 1962 we went on holiday with Keith and Janet Grantham to Hunstanton on the North Norfolk coast. We travelled over by coach to Kings Lynn and then caught a bus to Hunstanton. We stayed in a small timber chalet on the beach, the weather wasn’t too good and it was very cold at night. Emma was only five months old, I bet Edna was piling the blankets on her. We didn’t go very far, I recall endless games of cricket on the beach with Keith. Sadly after the holiday we saw very little of Janet and Keith again. I think they came over once to Shrewsbury a few years later with their two small sons and that was about it. I have had no contact with them for nearly forty years; it’s odd the way things work out. Two of my closest friends Frank and Keith I completely lost contact with for so many years. Only recently I have found out through Abdul that Janet and Keith later got divorced. At the moment I have no idea what happened to Keith. The last news I had he was working in Hong Kong in the early 1980’s.

Life was good at this time. Edna was happily settling down to life as a mother and I was getting to grips with learning the practicalities of being an architect. I had started to handle major contracts on my own. Ironically my first two jobs were fire stations, at Beeston and another at West Bridgeford. I really should have done that Fire Station for my thesis, there weren’t too many Reform Club clubs being designed by County Councils. Visits to both our families were regular events. Since having Emma we had to use public transport, Edna didn’t fancy holding onto Emma, sitting on the back of the scooter and clinging to me with her knees. We needed a car so I began to take lessons again; I remember the man giving the lessons wasn’t much older than me. He persisted in calling me “Chief.” I’ve been called many things but never that; he must have been a John Wayne fan! Whatever, he got me through at the first attempt. Edna asked her sister June if her boyfriend Les could get us a car. A few weeks later Les rang to say he had got one for us. It was a Ford Anglia. I can’t remember how old it was, but it cost £60. It proved to be a brilliant bargain, three years later I sold it for £35. Not bad, depreciation cost per year just over £8. One sad thing is I can’t remember at all what I did with the scooter. For four years it gave us both the ability to travel at minimum cost and we had some great times on it despite the constant mechanical problems. Unfortunately there was a big black cloud looming and our happy days were soon to be under threat from a most unexpected source, far away on an island off the American coast.

There was a major crisis in world affairs in October 1962. It is hard looking back now to those few weeks to remember how frightening it was at the time. The Cuban Missile Crisis was without doubt the most serious episode in the cold war and was probably its turning point. For two weeks from the 16th to 28th of October, the world was closer to nuclear war than it had ever been. The Americans had discovered that Russia had placed long-range nuclear rockets on Cuba aimed at cities in America. Kennedy the American President had given an ultimatum to Khrushchev to remove them; In the meantime a fleet of Russian ships were already at sea heading for Cuba with more material. The world held its breathe to see what would happen when the Russian ships met the American forces. We were listening anxiously to every news bulletin. If this all went wrong the consequences were unimaginable. I can close my eyes now and see the scene in our small dining room late one evening. Edna was doing some ironing; we had the radio on and in the next few hours the Russian ships were due to be intercepted. Emma was in a carrycot on the floor, I remember looking at them both wondering whether we would all be alive to see Emma’s first Christmas, the situation was that dangerous. The next morning when we heard the overnight news that the Russians had backed down their ships had turned round and were heading back home, the relief was enormous. By facing down the Russians without resorting to force first, there is no doubt John Kennedy had saved the world from a catastrophe. This life story would never have been written for a start. It was not known at the time that a secret deal had been worked out with Russia that in return for their withdrawal America withdrew all its Jupiter missiles from Turkey. This was only revealed years later.

Thankfully we did see that Christmas. I have only one photograph and it shows a chubby Emma sitting up on the floor by a laden tree with a big paper hat on. In her hand she is holding a Gollywog (a very politically incorrect name these days!) that Edna had knitted. Emma still has it, although the neck is very floppy after forty-three years. On Christmas Eve we had a few flakes of snow, little did we know what was in store. We were on the brink of what became known as, “The Big Freeze.” I have never experienced anything like it here and don’t suppose I ever will again. I have read that a winter that severe has a 250-year return rate and many records were broken. From the 28th December to 4th March temperatures never rose above freezing with repeated heavy snowfalls, the only time that happened in the 20th century. Records showed that the winter was the worst since 1740. You may gather from these statistics life was very difficult. Temperatures of -15 to –20 degrees were commonplace and roads and pavements were permanently covered in ice. At Eastbourne the sea was reported frozen to an extent of 100 yards offshore for a length of two miles. Getting to work was not easy and for Edna pushing Emma in our big pram walking along to the shop along Melton Road was a regular hazard. All professional sport was virtually abandoned during January and February. Eventually during the first week of March a slow thaw set in. We were glad of the warmth; our heating system had been totally inadequate to cope with those conditions.

We moved into 1 Bentinck Avenue, Tollerton, in February 1961. After the months in Hampden Street it was wonderful to have our own place. It was tiny really, and an awful lot of space went into a long corridor that went virtually down the middle. We had two bedrooms a dining room, lounge and kitchen and a freezing cold bathroom at the end of the corridor. The heating was a bit of a mess; a mix of fixed electric fires, a coke burner and an open coal fire. We coped and Edna I am sure was looking at it in a different light to me. She was looking at a nest! She had been teaching at the Luttrell School for nearly eighteen months but with the purchase of the bungalow other things were now on her mind, and in the autumn she told me with a delighted look that she was pregnant. Apparently we were not so quick at producing Emma as subsequent babies, she told Louise later that several times when she was hopeful, the period came and she cried.

Our neighbours were an elderly couple Mr and Mrs Fellowes in an adjoining bungalow and Mr and Mrs Potter in a semi on the other side. Mrs. Potter, who we called “ Pansy,” was well intentioned but liked to give advice very regularly which Edna hated. Another problem there was yet another yapping poodle, Mitzi reincarnated. I got on well with old man Fellowes, a genial character with a twinkle in his eye and a sharp sense of humour. When Edna stopped working later that year she made several good friends in the road. One of them still sends a Christmas card every year The Doctors surgery was virtually directly opposite our house on the corner with the main road. When the time for the birth came, he wouldn’t have far to walk, perhaps as well considering what happened. That summer we bought a dog, a Scottish terrier puppy called “Aggie”. Edna thought the world of her, although it was a bit mad. The postman was very wary having had the odd nip. There are several photos of Edna hugging the dog, good practice for all the hugging she was to give to babies over the next twenty years.

Edna was still in touch with her old friend from school Lorna. She was by now a Mrs Edwards having married Bob who was a policeman. We used to have occasional nights out together in Nottingham. I have this memory of going to a packed “Stork Club.” Clubbing was not normally our scene but it was a great night out.

During the summer I had to go back to Sheffield for my professional practice exam. This was always held one year after passing finals and until passing the practice exam. I could not be regarded as fully qualified. I can remember going into the main hall of the University at Western Bank to see a long table with about half a dozen elderly gentlemen, presumably the great and good of the Architectural world. I was asked questions on the experience I had gained over the year. It seemed to go well and I duly passed. I was now eligible to join the Royal Institute of British Architects and put the letters after my name. W.A.Clarke BA (Hons.Arch) ARIBA. I liked the sound of that. It seemed a long time since I had been sat on the roof with Dad at the age of fifteen when that man got out of his car carrying a roll of drawings.

I had always been interested in science fiction and tales of space travel. Flash Gordon had ignited that. In 1950 there was a series in the Sunday Express about a journey to the moon by rocket. I carefully cut the articles out and kept them in Dad’s books. In the early 1960’s when President Kennedy promised to have a man on the moon before 1970, I closely followed all the various stages of the developments. This included the Russian successes with Sputnik the first man-made satellite in 1957 and the Yuri Gagarin flight who was the first man in space. The American’s responded with the initial Redstone rocket flights followed by the manned Mercury and Gemini programmes. News of Gagarin’s flight came through on the 12th April 1961. I had just left work around 5-30pm and was walking across Trent Bridge towards the town centre when I heard a newsboy shouting, “Man in space.” I rushed over to by a newspaper and read all about it. That incident is worth a comment in itself, you don’t see lads selling newspapers on the streets nowadays. In the early 1960’s newspapers and radio were the main means of news communication. Television news was brief and the schedules rigid. There was none of the endless non-stop twenty-four hours news channels that fill the TV screens today. There were what was called “News theatres” this was a cinema totally dedicated to newsreel programmes like Pathe News. Every major city would have them they do not exist today. Three weeks later Al Shepard became the first American in space when he made a fifteen-minute flight perched on top of a Redstone rocket. We had a radio in the drawing office and stopped work to listen.

I made one bad decision that summer. We had booked a holiday in Cornwall; it was at Newquay and looked an idyllic spot. It was in a small pub down by the harbour, overlooking the sea. I rang them and sent off a letter enclosing a deposit, to secure the booking. At that time we also wanted to buy a Television, we hadn’t had one up to that point. After a few weeks agonising we pulled out of the holiday and spent the money on a small green, plastic faced 14inch TV. That was the last opportunity we would have for a holiday on our own for the next twenty-five years!

For most of her life Edna had pen friends. It started when she was nine and joined a club that provided names to write to. She started to write to a girl of the same age called Brenda from Skegness. This correspondence carried on until 2003 when Brenda sadly died. Over all those fifty-six years of correspondence they never met once. I remember one day we on the scooter near Skegness and I suggested we call in to see Brenda but Edna didn’t want to, it was almost as though an illusion would be shattered. They spoke on the telephone for the first time in 2000 after Edna had come out from a long stay in hospital. She also had several pen friends from abroad. In 1961 she invited a French girl to come and stay with us for a couple of weeks. I went down to London to meet her and bring her back to Nottingham on the train. It turned out that Mademoiselle was a very swish dish indeed. Heads were turning as we walked to the station in London. When I got back to the office I mentioned the fact she was staying with us. I suddenly became very popular and several of the lads were queuing up to be invited home. Dick Patterson made the most progress and took her out several times. I wasn’t sure what Edna made of all this, and she must have been glad when the time came for her to return home.

Around spring of 1960 Edna gave her notice in at school and began to apply for teaching jobs in the Nottingham area. A reference written by her Head teacher Mr. Wade was again using the adjectives “conscientious” and “very responsible.” I had already been offered the post at County Hall, so we were almost certainly going to live there. She was offered a job at the Luttrall School in Nottingham, another mixed comprehensive. Edna finally left the Bentinck School in July after two years as a teacher there. In later life she always looked back on those years with great fondness and pleasure. Inevitably there had been difficult times but she had learned so much and always remembered the staff and the children she had known.

In the summer of 1960, Keith and Janet were finally married and I was his best man. June and Les were also married that year at Priors Marston. Edna was a bridesmaid together with Josephine and Anne Carvell who was a good friend to both Edna and June. Anne remained in contact with Edna for the rest of her life. In 1961 we travelled over to Blackpool for the wedding of my old school pal Frank Coucill to Ruth. They had met in 1955 when Frank had a summer job working as a conductor on the trams on Blackpool sea front with my old school friends Alan Cockshaw, John Darlington and Jimmy Davies. Frank had been to Liverpool University to study Chemistry but had not completed the course and at that time he was trying to find a new career. Amazingly after the wedding I never saw Frank and Ruth again until we were reunited in 2003, I scratch my head now and wonder how that could have happened, bearing in mind they had continued to live in Bolton over all those years. Stewart and Anne Doncaster were also married and we attended. It seemed to be wedding bells all round for a couple of years.

6. 1960 to 1964 - Nottingham

Once I had qualified at Sheffield I wrote to Dan Lacey at County Hall, Nottingham and was formally offered a post starting in early August. The next problem was to find accommodation. I wrote to several estate agents and received lists of flats to rent. We couldn’t afford much, Edna was between jobs and I hadn’t started. We finally found a flat in Hampden Street, close to the City centre and next door to the School of Art. It was the usual large three-story Victorian house split up into flats. It was not brilliant; we had two rooms, a very large lounge with a sink and basic cooking facilities and a small bedroom off. Toilet and bathroom facilities were shared with other flats on the same level. In the first few days I saw some of the other tenants and my eyes opened slightly wider. I had my suspicions straight away. I know it was summer and the weather was hot but there were several middle aged ladies living there, who seemed to be competing for the shortest skirt and the thickest make up. I think there were four of them, plying their trade in the City. To think we were sharing toilet facilities with that lot, I was worried we might catch something. To be fair they never bothered us and were always very quiet when they came in. We considered moving on, but after a few weeks the two who were on our floor left, which solved the toilet concern. The two “girls” remaining upstairs we had little contact with. I bet Edna was glad about that, it must have been a situation that worried her.

I started at County Hall in the first week of August. I caught a bus in the centre to Trent Bridge. The Architects Department was on the top floor. It was quite a large office; there were five architects groups with about ten in each group. Other sections included, Quantity Surveyors, Services Engineers, Landscape Architects, Clerk of Works, Maintenance and a very large Administration pool. There must have been at least one hundred and fifty worked there. I was introduced to other members of my group. The leader was Eric Turner, tall and balding, always smiling he hid away in a glass cubicle. The two senior men were Dick Patterson and Alan Meikle, very different characters. Dick was smart and smooth, Alan, rough and tough. Both men became County Architects elsewhere in later years. The group’s main project was responsibility for the extensions to County Hall and I was to work on this for the next year. That first morning I got off to a crackling start. At that time I smoked a pipe, and after a couple of hours decided to light up. I filled it, lit it and then couldn’t see an ashtray, so I blew the match out and stuffed it back in the box. My blowing wasn’t that good, in no time the box had ignited with a bang and I was hopping around I could see the others looking at each other thinking what sort of idiot have we got here!

Very soon they gave me a small contract to do myself. It was some alterations in the basement of County Hall; I didn’t have far to go for a site meeting! At first those meetings were an ordeal, the Architect would chair the meeting and there were sometimes as many as twenty there, Contractors, Sub Contractors, engineers, Quantity surveyors etc. It was a bit nerve wracking but being pitched in at the deep end it soon became second nature. Over my working life I always said I was happiest being on a building site rather than in the office. Nottinghamshire County Council operated in a building system called “CLASP.” This was the abbreviation for, “Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme.” Many other local authorities used the same system. I was not to know it in the early days but I eventually was to spend over twenty years designing system buildings. This was a mixed blessing, I became very proficient at managing and running several major contracts at once but decidedly weak on a knowledge of building construction. You didn’t have to think, all the details and assembly drawings were done for you in a large bound manual.

In November 1960 John F. Kennedy became the new President of the United States beating Vice-President Richard Nixon by a slim margin. Kennedy was only forty–three a Harvard graduate and war hero. He became the youngest elected president in US history and the first Roman Catholic. What has all that got to do with me you may ask? At the time I probably felt exactly the same and probably took little notice of this event. Two years later I was very glad of this man’s judgement during the Cuban missile crisis.

I frequently went on the site of the County Hall extension. I got to know the Clerk of Works well, a grey haired, wiry character called Frank Mee. In his site hut he had a large collection of girlie pictures, the really dubious ones were kept in the bottom drawer. The site foreman, Joe was the image of Arthur Askey, he and Frank together were like a comedy act. Dick Patterson was one of the main supervising Architects for the contract but Joe and Frank were always complaining they could never get hold of him to ask questions. One morning I went in very early to find Frank and several workmen bustling around in the Drawing office. They were moving Dick’s Drawing board, table, drawers, files, everything and reassembling it all on the first floor slab of the incomplete extension before he came in. “ Now we’ll be able to get hold of the bugger,” said Joe. When Dick finally arrived in the office, his jaw dropped when he saw all his stuff had disappeared. To his credit, he grinned and played along with it, spending the rest of the day working at his board on the open first floor slab with labourers working around him, they had even rigged up a phone for him. There were no windows in at that stage either.

The office had a thriving cricket team with regular fixtures; I was soon involved in that. The dashing Rex Goodwin, burly Alan Willis, dour Alan Goodman and jovial John Hague are a few of the players I can recall. All the games were played in the evening over twenty overs, and then the serious drinking began. The sports facilities were excellent, we had a large sports ground down Wilford Lane with cricket, football and tennis catered for. In the winter I turned out for the NALGO football team, playing in the local Nottingham league, surprisingly not all the players registered were County Council employees, nobody seemed to mind. Bearded Clive Trigg from the office was a tough tackling full back. We became good friends with Clive and his wife Chris and also with John and Margaret Hague. John lived at Keyworth not far from Tollerton, both Edna and I forged our baby-sitting skills at their house. John was a lively character who had a good line in impersonations of Tony Hancock. He claimed to be a demon bowler and rushed in with a slingy action, his few wisps of hair straggling across his perspiring brow, always looking suitably offended if he didn’t get a wicket every ball!

It was noisy living in Hampden Street; there was always some dispute, screaming and shouting going on outside throughout the night. Towards the end of 1960 we started looking around to see if we could afford a house and move. Lizzie came up with the generous offer that she would pay the deposit on a property for us, so we began to look seriously. We saw a small two bed-roomed bungalow at Tollerton, about six miles from County hall on the Melton Mowbray road. Bentinck Avenue was on a small estate, but the properties were not uniform and it was quite pleasant. The asking price was £2,200, which was a little more than our budget but we wanted it. Our offer was accepted and I put an application in for a mortgage. In the meantime I asked Bernard Sherwin from our Maintenance section to check it over for me. Bernard was quite an elderly man and had a very lugubrious manner. He rarely smiled and the world for him was a dark, dangerous place infested by death-watch beetle, dry rot, wet rot, broken drains, leaking roofs and subsidence. As we walked down the path he looked worried as usual. I could hear deep sighs as he stared at the shaky garden wall, the bad pointing on the garage and the rust appearing on the metal windows. The thing that made him happiest was when he could produce his pointed knife. This had to be done discreetly with the owner of the house around. He would sink it into floorboards and skirting boards, the easier it sank in the more pleasure it seemed to give him as he sucked in through his teeth. We walked away, and he said, “ I wouldn’t buy that.” We did of course, when the mortgage survey report came I knew what to expect. Luckily I had made a friend Gerry, who I played football with. He was a plumber but could turn his hand to many other trades and was very competent at everything he tackled. He did all the work required at a very reasonable price with the exception of the rebuilding of the front garden wall, that I decided to tackle myself.

Frank Mee taught bricklaying at an evening class at a local technical college. His trade before becoming a Clerk of Works was a bricklayer. When I told him I was going to try and rebuild the garden wall myself he suggested I came along to his class. I did this for several months, all the other lads on the course were apprentice bricklayers and they thought it was a huge joke that an Architect was joining in. There was a lot of ribbing, but it was all in good humour I think they respected the fact I was there with them and trying to learn. They were all doing fancy arches and corbelling and there was I struggling with my plain straight wall. I got there in the end and the wall was rebuilt and approved by the mortgage surveyor