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It is not easy to maintain ones composure whilst sitting in the middle of a glistening and evil looking spider's web.  My baby face began to crumple and spill tears down my little spider body.  The crying was not brought about by the horror of the situation but through my first bout of stage fright.  The sight of so many surprised, amused and bored faces was too much for a five year old spider boy.

As a youngster I had my full share of these activities. I have fingered the baffling illusions in Davenport's Magic Shop followed by a wander around the British Museum opposite to obtain ideas for subtleties, the refinements that give individuality and character to an illusion. I have smelled the dusty aroma of powder colour in Brodie and Middleton's off Leicester Square and brushed in those same pigments in large masses in various theatres and workshops.

Looking back, I realise that these experiences were quite useful to a puppeteer but to a young lad it was just growing up. They were no different to the other non-show business events such as seeing the glow in the sky as the Crystal Palace burnt down.. Or watching the Graf Zeppelin fly across the Thames from the south then chasing it for a while before losing it when it flew up Querin Street! (for years, a family joke for lost items was "perhaps it's gone up Querin Street")   Or watching porpoises swimming under Wandsworth Bridge. Or queuing up with others at playtime at Elbe Street Infants school for a spoonful of cod liver oil and malt following a spell of rickets, a common ailment in those days. Or walks up Broomhouse Lane to look through the knot holes in the fence at the Toffs playing polo on Hurlingham Field. Or going fossicking in the Thames-side mud at low tide ; on a good day you might even find a dead dog to poke with a stick.. These normal childhood memories have little to do with puppetry but are a part of what made me; there were other things that made the puppeteer.

There was the time I was nearly killed by the safety curtain winch at the Lyric theatre, Hammersmith. Dad was fly-man there just before the war. The repertory company performed the usual pieces; "Storm in a Teacup", "White Cargo", "Dracula", etc. I was sitting up on the safety curtain winch platform above the fly floor watching a performance when the unlocked safety curtain began to fall on its own. The spinning winch handle hurled me bruised but otherwise unhurt to the fly floor below.

There were the times I slept on the floor of the joint at the Pleasure Gardens, Porthcawl, to save money on digs; this being after I joined the RAF. Here I would help attract customers to dad's magic show by spieling outside the booth with such novelties as a large jar of clear water containing "Pisci gazumpus", the invisible fish from the Amazon. There were the visits to the BBC property store store where one might find a precious gold inlaid sword of Toledo steel alongside a huge rubber club complete with rubber nail. There were times when I would spend a night at the theatrical digs. with the acrobats, singers, comedians and chorus girls,

It sounds fun but unless one is at the top of the tree life is hard with little financial reward, especially when on tour and having to keep the home going. A lot of time is spent ‘resting’!  Luckily my father learnt sign writing when he first left the army in the twenties and this kept the pot boiling. During these periods I often trailed around London with him helping to carry the gear and would even be allowed to fill in the letters. We would get to know the ‘hand’ of other writers and give them nick-names.

‘Scrawly’, who’s only hand was a terrible sort of Copperplate, was an anti-favourite and I still get a thrill of pleasurable horror at the sight of the truly awful shop facia sign of the "My brother-in Law did it" type. A classic Roman ‘A’ with a broad left side still grates on the nerves as does ‘Ye’ when pronounced Yee as in "Ye Olde Cafe" when the ‘Y’ is actually a ‘Thom’ pronounced ‘Th’ but now I’m being picky.

We kept in touch with the theatre by visiting the Granville, Walham Green, where we would crack our peanuts in the ‘Gods’.. Here we saw all the top-line acts of the thirties and hoped to win a prize on gala nights by being picked out with the light reflected in a hand held mirror. This theatre could not be a better introduction to the beauty and luxury of the Music Hall, designed, as it was, by the leading theatre designer of the day. Frank Matcham and was commissioned, not by the usual impresarios such as Oswald Stoll or Edward Moss but by a consortium of four top entertainers led by Dan Leno. Alas, after a spell as a television studio, in 1971, under somewhat dubious circumstances and after eleventh hour attempts to save this unique example of theatrical architecture, the developers moved in and reduced the Granville to rubble. A similar fate nearly befell my local theatre, that jewel of the Midlands, the Grand at

Wolverhampton but luckily our rescue party were more successful and since 1982 it has gone from strength to strength. Did we care more for our heritage in the Midlands?

It was quite a pleasant period, especially for a town-raised kid like me.  Not that the sea was any great attraction; I suppose it was too available. We lived at Manor Terrace, a row of Edwardian villas at the far south end of the town, facing the sea and with only the road and shingle between us and the water. Once you have thrown a few stones at it there is not a lot more you can do with it. However, on the shingle beach we could find strips of rubbery cordite (who knows from where?) which when dried, made some lovely bombs and the wooden breakwaters were just the right distance apart for stone fights which resulted in a few bruises but no permanent damage.

But best of all was the Pleasure Ground.  Dad had plenty of well paid work painting the roundings and flash lettering of the rides, stalls, and sideshows and I spent a lot of time helping him. This gave me the freedom of the rides and sideshows. That was the fun side but a lot of the showmanship must have rubbed off. I would listen to the spielers raising a pitch outside their shows. One of my favourite sideshows  was "The African Village"; a group of real black Africans in full Zulu costume. Basuto Galalie would enthrall me with lurid tales of life on the African veldt. How was a young lad to know they were really West Indians from Brixton.

Nan's upbringing, plus many visits to the old Granville music hall, gave my style of puppetry a down to earth and occasionally bawdy flavour which I believe is the true nature of the puppet. Check the history and geography of all the puppet types and there is very little of the literati in our art. Even the religious plays like the live medieval Passion plays had a knockabout quality to them. When Kath and I taught puppetry we always steered well away from words like dramaturgy and semiotics that have infiltrated their way into our folk art.

As the winter of 1938 approached we left the coast and returned to the London area and after a few 'lets' at East Acton, Barons Court and Palmers Green we moved out of town to South Harrow. Here it was back to sign-writing for a while and for many years dad's lettering could be recognised all along Northolt Road.  It was during this period that the Lyric incident, above, occurred.

As a Territorial dad was called up just before the actual outbreak of war at age 35 and placed with the Royal Engineers.  After a short spell near London he was sent to South Wales where the Engineers fortified the Usk Valley at Caerleon and then the coast at Porthcawl.  Nan and Joyce looked after the house at South Harrow and mum took me and baby brother Terry to live in lodgings to be with dad.  I went to school in Caerleon until he was posted to North Africa the following year. Our playing field at the back of the school was found, after the war, to be the site if the Roman barracks near the amphitheatre. The brickwork was only a couple of inches below the surface; we probably grazed our knees on bits of it.  We were in Wales over Christmas, 1940 and dad spent more time organising the Army/town pantomime than on the fortifications. This gave me my second confrontation with an audience as the cabin boy in "Sinbad the Sapper" (RE's were known as Sappers - Trench makers) and again, a liking for the rhyming couplet.

A facet of entertainment that I missed out on was music. Dad played the drums and for a few months was the rhythm section in a drum and piano duo for the silent movies in their closing years of the of the late twenties. On our return to South Harrow I joined the ATC (Air Training Corps - A military youth organisation)) in 1942 and I became a wireless mechanic/bandsman and although I could play fair rolls and paradiddles, they wanted trumpeters, not drummers. The trumpets were of the simple, valve-less type so I learnt little of music.  Later I had a few piano lessons but the tutor was called up and left me with an unfulfilled desire to play any instrument. My brother, ten years my junior, was in a better position and is now a competent clarinet and keyboard player. From RAF bandsman, through Boosey and Hawkes craftsman to music teacher with gigs and session work on the side; traditional jazz a speciality. He often helped out with music backing for the puppets and advice on sound systems.

Perhaps it was just as well that my father was in North Africa and Italy, when I left school in 1943. Having been lucky enough to have had two years at the Technical school in Acton I started work at the Victoria Instrument company in Willesdon otherwise I might have followed father's footsteps in and around the footlights (not that anyone seems to use them these days!)..

 Oddly, I never saw a puppet show before becoming involved with this form of entertainment. When I made my first puppet I did not realise it was the start of my contribution to the family theatrical experience. That first puppet was made from plans in an old American "Popular Mechanics" magazine and was of Dopey, one of Disney's seven dwarfs and made for my young brother, Terry. It was not a very complicated first effort and although he now rests in some wooden Valhalla, I remember his details, vaguely, as in the drawing. He was rather unusual in that his main support was a stiff wire through his head in the manner of Sicilian or the miniature Polish puppets. This gave him the ability to shake his head firmly in the negative unlike puppets supported by threads alone. Joints were by wire staples and string and despite the simplicity of construction he had a speed and mobility usually associated with the glove puppet. He was only about eight inches (20cms.) tall so was little more than a toy.

Shortly after I started work, part of the factory was evacuated to Iford, between Bournemouth and Christchurch, so once again I left the London area and this time took up lodgings in the South.  Again, the sea was no great attraction but some of us did swim in the river Stour that flowed by our workshop near the bridge. Sometimes we would be assembling our various electrical meters with a river in full flood partly under our raised wooden shed. Alas, it is no more. It went, along with the house and restaurant that was our social centre. The last time I was there it was a pleasant riverside garden opposite the Iford Bridge Inn.

The river occupied much of our spare time, apart from the lads among us competing with the Americans for girlfriends.  My main accomplishment during that eighteen months was building the boat.  Eight feet (250cms) long and and built from a barn door found on the river bank. It was flat bottomed with wood and tin sides and coffin shaped and, with seven aboard, there was a full inch (25mm) of freeboard. One night it was swept away in a flood and carried to Christchurch and on, no doubt, to the sea.  There was also the gun.  Our foreman, Stan, owner of the house/cafe next to the workshop possessed a 0.22 rifle and box of ammo. Salmon were plentiful in the river then and although the soft lead of a 0.22 bullet can blast quite a hole in a fish it still leaves plenty of good eating.

Sometimes we would walk along the upper promenade at Bournemouth where the main attraction was the gun battle between rival American groups. One lot had Pom-poms guns and the others had Bofors and they each tried to shoot off the long red tail being towed behind, a long way behind, a Harvard trainer, flying out at sea parallel with the coast. The most frightening battles, however, occurred between the black and white Americans. In those days they were in segregated units and some of the Southern 'Good old boys' just could not understand why we (especially our girls) treated the coloured guys as equals.  Just before D-day, the south coast almost sank under the weight of troops and transports mustering for the invasion. When it came, the air throbbed for hours with aircraft, black and yellow striped for easy recognition; fighters, bombers, transports heavy with troops and sluggish with one or two equally heavily laden gliders.

VE-day came and it was bonfires and parties.  I soon left Iford and returned to South Harrow.  Actually, I cycled the hundred miles or so, ran into the back of a lorry and lost my two front teeth which is why my upper plate includes two incisors! Arriving home more or less together, dad started sign-writing and I became an electrician’s mate and we joined and did a few gigs on the fringes of show business.  Our double act started with the street shows that were held everywhere as the men and women returned home. I was stooge in the comedy routine that dad had developed during the latter part of the war. Having been withdrawn from the front line after the Salerno landings he joined the 46th divisions, "Stars in Battledress" and later the "Central Pool of Artists", as comedian and manager. These were groups of men who followed the front line troops, along with the baths and field kitchens and often had their shows cut short by gunfire.

It was at this time that I learned three basic time-steps from the 'old man'. These are tap dancing steps that are the basis of all chorus line and soft shoe routines which were a must for the all 'round entertainer’. I suppose this was one of the links in the chain that led to the creation of Giff, the marionette Morris dancer and the later 'Dance Around the World' puppets.

Dad joined and toured with the "Desert Rats Revue" and fate was probably kind when she provided me with my call-up papers in 1946. Without these I might have slept in grimy theatrical digs and spent hours in agent's waiting rooms.  My father had been a regular and a Territorial with the Royal Artillery and served throughout the war with the Royal Engineers. Uncle Frank was a Grenadier Guardsman, no less, so I had some misgivings about joining the Royal Air Force! It was not until I reached the reception centre at Padgate, Lancashire, that I decided to cut free from the life that might have been and signed on for "ten and two", (ten years service and two on the reserve) as a regular.

The early days of the Service were not without their adventures but so much has been written about the indignities of the medical inspections and the irksome drills and duties of the rookie that these days are best forgotten.  Most of my spare time at the basic training camp at Yatesbury, Wiltshire was spent organising a show for our 'Passing Out' party. This was full of the usual ' awkward squad' humour but did include one or two sketches from the street shows and "The Merchant of Venison" , a cod Shakespearian playlet about meat rationing (meat was rationed until well after the war.

Such then was my background. Not exactly born in a trunk on a stage but with a fair knowledge and a little experience of the art of entertainment, some slight ability to paint, draw and dance; now, unfortunately, rapidly diminishing with arthritis in knees and hands.

Having spent two years at Technical School and worked making electrical instruments it seemed logical to choose the next year studying the complexities of aircraft instrumentation at the Technical Training camp at Melksham, also in Wiltshire.  It was here that the puppet and I crossed paths once more.

Addenda  Just before part of the factory at Willesdon was moved to the Bournemouth area there was an air raid and from the factory we watched a small aircraft flying fairly low which had square wing tips.  Me with my vast knowledge of aircraft (being in the ATC) assured everyone that it was a Messerschmitt 109. "Can't be", said my more observant mate, "its got a bloody chimley on top".  It was the first Buzz Bomb we had seen.  It landed and blew up some half a mile away on waste ground and did little damage.  Living at South Harrow, well away from London we saw very little of the bombing.  There was one unexploded bomb which landed in a front garden about a quarter of a mile away which the army drilled out and steamed out the explosive and a stick of incendiary bombs that crossed our road but only one went into a house and was quickly removed.  One went into the front garden of Cromeke's house and Mrs.C. rushed out and put a cushion on it.  We knew how to cope during the war. 

Northolt Airfield was only a couple of miles away, where the mainly Polish pilots were flying Spitfires.  It was a point of honour amongst them to always bring their planes back and some returned with half a wing or tailplane missing.  There was usually a Spitfire nose down in the dirt just off the runway.  One morning, I was delivering newspapers along the Malvern Avenue (the airfield was just at the end of the road) one Sunday morning when there was a crash behind me.  A Spitfire had clipped a roof then flew over me at roof-top height, touched its wing tip into a bay window and ended up with its nose in a bedroom window and its tail in the front garden.  By the time I reached it, the pilot was sitting on the wall smoking and the house occupants brought him a cup of tea.  As an ATC cadet we often went to Northolt camp, usually on a Sunday where the dinner was always fat pork and saurkraut.  We would help feed the pigs from the cookhouse swill.  I also had my first ride and was sick in a single engined aircraft at Northolt but did enjoy the short flight in the Dragon Rapide or Dominie, a  small, neat looking twin engined biplane.