Dangerous territory
Before my arrival in 1935, some special day at the Ashfield School for Boys in Bushey, Herts. The entire school gathered in the two main classrooms, with the wooden dividing wall folded back. Mr Brothers, Headmaster, is addressing the boys. The upright piano, at which the Head's wife accompanied our Morning Assembly and singing lessons, can just be seen under the nearest window. Note the gas lighting.
According to my father, I was a namby-pamby. By this he meant I could not swim, could not remember my multiplication tables, hated school and football and actually liked classical music. In effect, I was useless.
I agreed. Not outwardly, naturally. But I could see he was right. I must have been a great disappointment to him. Stupidity has been my life companion. It provides plenty of material for stories and is thus ideal for blogs. The earliest event I can remember happened in the back garden, a narrow strip of lawn and vegetable area where runner beans and green peas and potatoes flourished. My father was cutting the grass. He asked me to fetch him the scissors. I was puzzled. But he was stooping by the longer grass that grew tight against the wooden fence, and I could see that in fact scissors would be perfect for getting behind the blades. I went indoors to the kitchen and brought him the scissors. I held them out to him and he stood, gazing at them and at me.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘The scissors! You know - the shears!’ Of course. He meant the garden shears. He was right. I should have known.
Whether or not stupidity played a part in my eventual suck-it-and-see progress through four different jobs during adolescence I can’t be sure, but I quite enjoyed the education provided. By the time His Majesty caught up with me at 18 and put me in the RAF I still had no idea of what I wanted to do, or to be.
But a beam of healing light was about to shine.
How the thought came to me I have no idea. I began to wonder if I could earn money by writing and drawing. I had always liked writing and drawing and scored high marks at school. But earning a living simply by putting words and sketches on paper had never occurred to me.
Eventually there came the information that the company for whom I already worked had a department wherein people sat at desks and wrote. It was called the Technical Publications Department and it employed people they called Authors. And they were looking for another Author. This, I decided, was straight out of a novel. Stupid boy discovers gold. But I hesitated. Was this thing sensible? Or was it stupid?
I plunged, and applied for the job. I was granted an appointment with the Editor but on the condition that I first provide an essay. The subject and length were for me to decide.
This was going to be tricky. Technical, to show I was that way inclined? In blank verse to show I could do it? And would short be clever? Or long? I began to warm to doing something unexpected. A few weeks earlier I had sat with my girlfriend at an orchestral concert in the then plush surroundings of Watford Town Hall. With the accompanying delight of having the girl’s shoulder actually touching my own we had listened to Brahms and Beethoven and watched Sergiu Celibidache, then new to the English scene, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
The perfect subject.
I wrote it and put it in the company Internal Mail box. Eventually came the request for my presence in the Editor’s office.
I went for the interview. The Editor took me into the big, well-lit room with eight desks and a swivel chair at each one. He pointed to the one I would occupy. I was introduced to the other authors. The next day I had a call from the Personnel Department. I had got the job. I told my girlfriend and was rewarded with the sort of smile that had attracted me from the start.
On the first day I swivelled in my leather-seated, sprung-back swivel armchair and enjoyed the camaraderie of the other people around me. The weeks passed. Laughs became a part of labour; muttered expletives at mistakes found in proofs, phones thrown back on to their cradles in exasperation, the door banging open to admit a late arrival - any of these would raise a crack from someone and a round of pleasantries. Happy people, clever people. I wondered if I had landed in dangerous territory; it was unlike anything I had experienced. But I began enjoying myself and finding that what I wrote did actually turn into print, sketches I did for designers and photographers did actually end up as professional illustrations.
And my father gave me a beautiful leather briefcase with my initials embossed below the brass lock.