Chapter 8

1955 - 1958

Life with Transport

Back at Melksham

It was not a good time to bring a small child from Singapore to an oncoming English winter.  After being fully dressed in a vest and nappy to half a dozen assorted layers, Christopher took it in his stride and even enjoyed the first snow of winter.

Following an overseas tour one has three choices of posting and I was lucky enough to be given my first which was RAF Melksham, the Technical Training camp that I had left six years before.  Melksham was the closest camp to Kath’s family at Trowbridge where we would be staying until I found other accommodation or we had married quarters.  Having gained more points with my increasing seniority and a new member of family I could expect a movement up the waiting list but quarters still had to become available.   Tony Lannon and Ron Grigg, my two mates from Changi had also decided to take a break from aircraft servicing and they, were posted here within weeks.

 Kath’s father had been poorly for some time and unable to work so I had borrowed his ancient bicycle to cycle from Trowbridge to Melksham and back each day.  Seven miles with no gears and a weird ‘back pedal’ braking system; a car was a priority.  Sadly we could not afford the £230 for a pretty little Morris Minor convertible with a tatty canvas top but bought a 1936 Ford 8 for £120.  A dozen driving lessons for £10 and hope for the best. The lane from the tarmac road in town was muddy, rutted, pot-holed and virtually private; well, the police never tested their springs on it and I would drive up to Mr Corp’s farm (he owned the farm cottage) for milk and eggs.  What with the lane and the very uneven fields around the cottage I was quite proficient at ‘off-road’ driving before being licensed to drive on a road.  The test was taken in Bath, a town of steep hills.  Having just got through the three-point turn and then having to make a right turn onto a steep uphill I was baulked by a car roaring by and stalled the car.  Not only on a turn and a steep hill but with one wheel in a deep pot-hole.  My off-road experience came to the fore and it was a perfect hill start in spite of the handicaps.  I always claimed that that incident gained me a pass in February, ’55. 

 The car gave us our freedom, apart from the back and forth to camp trips.  From the seven or eight mph on the bike, I could now do nearly 40 mph flat out with a tail wind.  We were also able to have family days out.  Kath’s parents, like mine, had never owned a car and it was a pleasure to take them out occasionally at weekends.  It even took Kath and I, Tony and Joy, plus our two little ones plus the luggage for a week’s holiday at Tintagel in Cornwall.  The leaf springs were flat and resting on the rubber stops.

 Shortly after using the car I decided to give it a bit of an overhaul so had the head off the engine, decoked it and reground in the valves. Does anyone still do that these days?  When I look under the bonnet now I cannot even identify the engine with any certainty.  The car could now do 45 mph even without a tail wind and we were due a trip to my folks, so London, here we come.

 We had just climbed the hill to Beckhampton corner and joined the A4, then   the main London road.  The car purred along at a steady 40 and we hardly noticed the rattles when, suddenly, smoke poured from under the dashboard and I had to lean forward to see through the windscreen.  Pulling over and investigating we found that wires under the dash had shorted.  In the good old days we used real rubber to insulate our cables which might last a good ten years before it dried, perished and left bare wires unlike modern plastics that might last a mere hundred.  Luckily I had both dry newspaper and string (I told you I had faith in string!) both good insulators at 12 volts.  In less that half an hour we continued our journey to London with some inch thick cables.  Motoring had an edge to it in those days.  The next weekend I rewired the vehicle, all nicely colour coded with recycled RAF plastic coated wire and half a dozen rolls of black fabric insulating tape to make a cable harness.  Nowadays my servicing consists of topping up diesel, oil, air and water.

 By the spring of ’55 we were given one of the old married quarters on camp, a bit cramped and with a weird cooking system.  Kath was used to the old ‘Black Bess’ stove at Drynham Cottage and this one was similar.  The cooking side was in the kitchen but the heat came from the fireplace in the living room and occasionally it worked quite well but not Christmas day.  I had lit the fire really early and it roared away but in spite of trying every combination of flue dampers, the chicken (turkeys were still living wild in America then!) was still cold by mid-day.  We had bought a Baby Belling oven for every day use so forced the chicken into that.  It cooked quite well but had the appearance of a Rubik’s Cube when it came out.  Apart from that it was memorable for snowing during Christmas dinner; enough for a snowball fight later.

 Then came the good news; whilst in Singapore a new technician rank had been introduced, with ‘upside down’ tapes (chevrons).  When it was first announced there was a 5 year wait as well as test boards between promotions from completion of full training.  On our return from overseas , not only were the periods reduced to 3/4/5 years but commencement times were altered.  In early 1955, not only did I take the board and turned my two corporal tapes upside down but I was able to take the Senior Tech. board and change the two tapes to three immediately after. 

 This was a major change.  I became a senior NCO, moved up to the Sergeant’s Mess, given more responsibility, a whole squad to play with on the parade ground and MORE MONEY.  By May ’56 we felt that we had earned a new car so the ’36 Ford was replaced with a slightly newer ’39 Series M Morris.  Both Ron and Tony were promoted about the same time and we each had new teaching areas.  I had been teaching basic workshop practice; filing, brazing, metal turning, surface plate work, etc. but was now given electronics.  Although I can still explain the purpose of the five elements in a pentode valve there is very little call for glass bottles with little glowing lights in them these days.

About this time my dad decided he would have a joint down on the seafront at Brighton.  The interior was made into a winding passageway with various optical illusions along the way.  I had already made the 'camera obscura' for him, a device where the viewer is inside the 'camera' viewing the outside.  The lens arrangement was rotatable for viewing both ways along the promenade.  Most of the other illusions were variations on mirror tricks; from the magician's "Pepper's Ghost", deep wells and grottos and peep shows to image reversals of different sorts.  The large mirrors used were mainly from junk shops, collected during the winter.  The interior was divided with six and a half foot (2 mts) panels in a building with a 8/9 ft. ceiling, so Kath and I scoured the shops for armfuls of packets of crepe paper to make a simple false ceiling.

 One of the problems that arose in the training workshops which we (I was now working with Arthur Hewitt) had to solve was the new 25 pin sockets.  Previously we were using 12 pin.  The closer range of colours in the 25 core cable meant that we all had to be checked for colour blindness and some people had to change trades due to this.  A new plastic insulation (PTFE – polytuoflouroethylene – I think!) had a low melting point and that plus the close proximity of the pins meant soldering had to be done very quickly otherwise the heated wires melted the insulation.  How to teach quick soldering?  My sadistic side came up with an answer.  Each student was given a supply of one inch (2.5 cms) lengths of straight tinned copper wire to make whatever they wanted; tools allowed: one soldering iron which may be held in a vice.  Heat conducts rapidly along one inch of wire held in the fingers, which became criss-crossed with scorch marks before really good quick joints were made.  The finished test piece was a perfectly soldered 25 pin connector with neat unmelted insulation.  The system required straight wire bits, not curved as from the reel.  Half a dozen complicated straightening devices were rejected before I found the ‘elegant’ solution.  One end of the wire was held in the vice, the reel unwound across the classroom and the loose end twisted around a screwdriver as a handle.  Take the strain and pull until the wire ‘gives’; technically, that is when it stretches beyond its elastic limit and reaches plastic deformation.  Result perfectly straight wire.  Arthur made the special cutter to provide a dozen identical one inch bits at a time. 

In spite of the success with the open staging for the puppets on the concert party tour, I still wanted a full proscenium set-up. We felt that if we were going to produce little plays and sketches then we had to hide behind the ‘tabs’ (Tableaux curtains or the big red ones!) to do scene changes.  In recent years we have seen some wonderful work being done, especially by a couple of German puppet groups where operators and scene shifting is open to view but habits die hard.  As it turned out, the new ‘Palladium’ though finally finished was only used on a very few occasions.  Most shows that we did were just cabaret turns on an open stage until the big theatre was finished.

However, more responsibilities, with the Air Force considering that as they paid me, their needs were greater than mine, a growing lad and Kath becoming broody again, more days out in the car, me studying for the Chief Tech. (three upside down and a crown) board as well as for an external City and Guilds Instrument Maintenance Certificate and a some GCEs, the basics that are always useful: Maths, Physics, English and General, left me with little time for the puppets.

Some of my mates had joined the ‘Buffs’ (The Antediluvian Order of Buffalos) the poor man’s Freemasonry.  A good evening’s fun with honourable and charitable aims that meant a weekly trip to the Carpenters Arms at Lacock.  Although three of us reached Second Degree (Primo), I did not continue after leaving Melksham but it did involve a couple of charity shows.

Two things happened towards the end of 1956 that further curtailed the puppetry.  Amanda Gaye was born on the 13^th October and I fell whilst standing up on a stool to reach a high shelf.  Not only did I receive a badly bruised coccyx which hit the concrete corner of the raised teaching dais but it resulted in a week in bed and a continued back problem.  I hasten to add that only one of the above was an accident.

The fashion in those days was for huge wooden ‘radiograms’, cabinets containing radio and record player with cupboards under for ones collection of ‘78s’.  We could not afford one so by the time Kath went into labour with ‘Manda I had made the framework.  Having taken two weeks leave to look after Chris I had plenty of time to finish the monster.  The radio from the Lyneham period was stripped down and fitted inside and with a bartered turntable fitted under the heavy lid. It was ready when Kath brought ‘Manda home.

 Early 1957 there was a heavy snowfall.  Tony was on a week’s course at Farnborough and as he had no car he had taken the train.  His wife, Joy, was expecting and getting close, was taken into hospital with complications at about 6pm.  Ron and I tried to contact him by phone and failed.  So, using the Morris we headed off, through Devizes and across northern the Salisbury Plain.  Snow was getting deeper and the road very bad.  At RAF Upavon the road ahead was closed.  Calling into the guardroom we were told that a RAF Landrover had just got through, so we took a chance. 

 The drifts were closing in, the deep ruts had partially thawed then frozen solid.  It was like driving across a glacier.  After a number of stops, skids, reverses and sideswiping ice-walls, Ron got out.  He was a Rugby player and built like the proverbial brick toilet facility.  With me driving and him pushing we managed to force the Morris over the worst spots.  Return routes were limited across the plain but with both Ron and Tony now pushing over the bad bits we finally made it back about four in the morning.   Tony was reunited with Joy who made a good recovery and produced their second, a boy.

Before Christmas ’56 we moved from the temporary quarters into a decent house in the Berryfields estate outside the camp.

 The Morris suffered a further indignity sometime later.  The paintwork was decidedly ropy so a paint job was required.  Having driven the car into a small barn near the married quarters, stuck masking tape in all the vulnerable places and opened up the tin of black Valspar paint, started painting in nice even strokes.  All this was quite normal for cars of that vintage.  Half way through Kath sent a neighbour’s six year old to call me for lunch.  After lunch the youngster’s older sister came and asked me if I had any turps. or other mild paint cleaner.  Next time I saw the car the six year old had finished painting it; the lights, windows, wheels, dropped the brush into the sandy dirt, giving the car a sandpaper finish.  He was also covered in paint, hence the turps.

Late in 1957 rumours began to spread about RAF teams going out to America to work on spaceships!  Arthur and I were even considering being the first RAF contingent on ‘Moonbase Alpha’ so when the official call came for volunteers for ‘Operation Thor’ both Arthur and I signed up.  It was not long before we went before the selection board, chosen and found ourselves on the usual pre-courses with various other trades. There were visits to firms such as IBM and we stood agape as their latest computer played a simple monotone of “God Save the Queen”.  For some years now I – a non-musician – have written bits of music with any of 400 instruments in combination plus sound effects using my ‘Sound Club” computer program.  We also learned something of the new solid state technology and transistors.  The 'spaceships' turned out to be the Thor missile, a sixty foot (18 mts.) 1500 miles (5200 Kms.) range, Intercontinental, nuclear bomb carrying, load of devastation.  A popular weapon of choice during the cold war.