1931 to 1939
I had had no formal training [as a motor mechanic], my parents not being well off enough to pay a premium to get me an apprenticeship. Instead, after one year working on a chicken farm for 6 shillings (30p) a week (minimum 50 hours, plus unpaid overtime) my old schoolteacher, knowing of my interest in mechanical things, found me a job with a small garage owned by her nephew. The snag was that although I was now 15, the pay he offered was less than I had been getting, because as he said, I had a chance to learn a trade without paying a premium. It was agreed that I would be paid five shillings a week (25p) for the first year, 7/6d for the second and ten shillings (50p) during the third, at the end of which I would be 18 years old. The garage was at Whaddon on the A36 Salisbury – Southampton road, eight miles from Downton. I had to have a bicycle to get there, and my parents, God bless them, arranged for me to buy a new one on hire purchase, which took all of my first year’s wages. With the crassness of youth, I took all this for granted.
My training was mostly a matter of helping the only mechanic and watching how he did things, as well as the menial tasks of cleaning, sweeping, washing cars etc. I can’t say I liked it very much, but after a time it became the recognised thing that any work on motorcycles would fall to me. This suited me very well and there were enough motorbikes around in those days to keep me busy. The boss found he could safely leave the place to me on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. This helped out my pay, and on my last year there, I worked seven days a week during the summer, opening the garage, serving petrol, repairing punctures, doing minor repairs etc. and was as happy as a sand boy, as they say. By this time I had learned to drive cars and ride motorcycles, getting a chance to drive all vehicles on my 17th birthday just before the driving test was introduced.
When I became 18 I asked for a rise, and the boss said he would give me fifteen shillings (75p) a week. I knew that the mechanic was getting two pounds, and as I felt I could already do better work than he was doing, and certainly worked harder, I thought I was being poorly treated and would look for another job.
This was the year 1935, when the great depression was at its worst and jobs were very hard to find. I saw an ad for a motorcycle mechanic in the Daily Chronicle, under a Box No, wrote, and found the job was in London, pay one pound two shillings. I got the job, moved to Brixton, met Beccy, who was to be my wife, and all went well until the motorcycle firm went bust. Then followed a succession of jobs during which I learnt a little welding, and handled lathes and milling machines, drove a van delivering theatrical make-up round the West End, worked for a very fine Jewish market trader who looked after me like a son and taught me a lot about life, but not much about motor mechanics, and then landed a permanent job as a mechanic for the London General Cab Company, where I started at 1/- per hour and worked up to the top wage of one shilling and four pence which, with a little overtime when available, made a weekly wage of about £3.10.00, very good pay in London, only bus drivers had more, their wages being reputed to be over four pounds.
On the strength of this, Beccy and I were married and found a rented room in Shakespeare Road, Brixton that was a penny ride on the tram from where I worked. We were very happy there, but after eighteen months my work at the Cab Company was boringly repetitious; they had seven hundred identical Austin taxis, and when the offer of a job as a mechanic to look after a fleet of haulage lorries in my old village of Downton came up, I grabbed it and we moved, first to a room in my parents’ house, where our first child Jean was born, and later to a tumble down thatched cottage rented for 25p weekly. This was a bit of a culture shock for Beccy, who was a city girl, but she took it well and we were just beginning to feel cosy when Hitler attacked Poland and the Territorials were mobilised.