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Roland Barkers memoirs

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Roland Edward Barker (1945-2023)

From a document saved on Roly’s computer, obviously unfinished as it only goes to Paul’s birth but in his own words…

My Life as told by me. On Dec 28th, 2015 - This is when I started writing.


The earliest I can remember is when I was living at the Brook in an old cottage (very old cottage) with Mum and Dad and my Sister Joy, she was three years younger than me. I would be about 4 or 5, we had lots of visitors in the house, mainly Rats and Mice, but we did have relations come as well, I suppose to Tea, but they didn’t stay long I suppose the Rodents put them off.

We did have a toilet (down the bottom of the garden) and as I remember there was a big gap at the bottom of the door where the Rats could watch you, as we sat on the throne. There was a field opposite where Vermuyden Gardens is now, where Joy now lives.

It must have been very damp in this Cottage because later when I was seven, I had to go in Hospital with Pneumonia Whooping Cough and Tonsillitis, anyway in the meantime I had to go to School.

The School in the Village was an old Church School, as there was in lots of Villages at that time, the Head Master was an ex-Military Man called Mr. Scott ( he had Scott Court named after him) I suppose he had a first name but we didn’t know it at the time, we all called him Scotty.

Scotty was a big chubby Man with a large white Beard and Tash, and he always carried his Cane around with him, I suppose that made him feel important, he liked using the Cane on us, but then that is what they did in those days. The other Teachers were a mixed bunch, Mrs. Vye was the one who taught the infants and that was the one who we met first, she was a very nice lady totally different from the others, she was perhaps breaking us in slowly for when we met the rest of the arrogant lot who were supposed to be teaching there.

Mrs. Smith is worth a few words, she was supposed to be the maths teacher, but she had a problem! She didn’t like Children, so every lesson she would lose her temper and give us the ruler, this was her favourite weapon and she gave everyone a whack with it even if you didn’t deserve it, even Joy had it, her face used to get redder and redder if you pretended it wasn’t a problem but of course if she was really upset she would send you to Scotty who would enjoy giving a nine year old kid the cane.

Apart from leaning to read and write we had music lessons occasionally this is where Mrs. Smith could bash something else, she played the piano, you didn’t learn much because half the class had a Triangle and the other half had a tambourine so unless you were going to specialize in one of these instruments in later life it was pretty useless.

At this time, I was about seven and I contacted Pneumonia whooping cough and Tonsillitis and finished up in Doddington Hospital.

This was a time I can’t remember much about, but I do remember being in a ward with all Men, I sometimes had to lay on my stomach on a special bed that folded up in the middle for hours spitting in a bowl, I suppose this was to get rid of the stuff on my chest, now it is Antibiotics and a drain. I had my Tonsils out and they must have cured the Whooping Cough somehow. One day the Nurses took me to see my Grandad who was in another ward and he was in such a bad way he wasn’t expected to live much longer, this was Grandad Peacock who was married to Nan I don’t remember getting on with him very well probably because he was a bit old fashioned and perhaps he couldn’t relate to young children, I never saw him again after that and he passed away in that Hospital, aged 69.

Towards the end of my stay there they took me to Papworth where I had some sort of operation, and then I left and was told I needed to go to a Convalescent Home in Felixstowe, what a place that was! Mum took me down there on the Train (we didn’t have a car then) and I remember being interviewed by someone who said I will be there for three weeks, this was a bit of a shock as I only thought I would be there a week, anyway Mum left and I started my convalescing there, the first night in the dormitory the rest of the boys started to cause a ruckus on my bed and in came someone in charge and blamed me and took me down to the office where I had to stand in the corner for some time as punishment, a great start!

Anyway, the days went by, and Mum came down to see me some weekends and I settled in for my three weeks, I remember standing in line for breakfast and having to eat a large spoonful of Malt (brown stuff that tasted horrible) I suppose that was good for you.

I must have survived the three weeks all right because I came home to live in a brand-new Council House at Brookside, number seven, and pick up where I had left off.

By then I had a new baby sister, Angela, and we lived there until I got married aged twenty-one. We had the Hawkins one side and the Cropley’s the other, Mr. and Mrs. Cropley were a strange couple, he was a Bus driver and as so he worked shifts, but they also had a permanent lodger, Charlie, I don’t quite know what went on but it was an odd relationship, Mum didn’t quite get on with Peggy although they spoke politely to one another, it was quite understandable really because she would tell the Council every little thing we did, that she didn’t like, Dad put up a new shed at the bottom of the garden and painted it red, Peggy wrote to the Council and Dad had to repaint it green, Dad used to bring Nan round on Sundays and drive on the grass so she didn’t have to walk from the road, Peggy wrote to the Council again, she would not tell us but we knew it was her.

Meanwhile I was back at Sutton School making friends again and keeping out of the way of Scotty and his cane, other kids were still getting the cane and I can remember Roggie Read coming out of the classroom holding his hands where Scotty had hit him with his cane and crying his eyes out, it is important to remember that the children there were only between five and eleven and it seems that this was the normal way install discipline, it just shows what poor Teachers they were.

Paul Brown was a friend there although he was older than me, he was adopted by Topsey and Ernie, she was Mums best friend and a lovely person, I sometimes went to stay with them when they lived at Park Road, other kids were the Bibby’s, Sid and Tony they lived at the Chestnuts at Ely road in Caravans and were permanent Travelers living there.

The other kids didn’t like them much, but I got on well with them and stayed friends to this day, there was also several Polish Children there who were over here during the war they lived in huts at the Toll until they went home some years later. Edward Batchelor (we all called him Dan after his dad) turned up at school for a few months then didn’t come any more, we later found out he had been sent to Wilburton Manor School for backward Kids, he resented us knowing that for the rest of his life.

There were lots more Kids there that I stayed friends with some to this day. In the Winter there seemed to be a lot of snow and frosty weather so in the playground we had slides everywhere some of them were quite long, these days they wouldn’t be allowed in fact they wouldn’t be allowed out in the playground, elf and safety was unheard of then.

When we were eleven we had to take our Eleven Plus Exam to see where we went next, Cromwell or Soham Grammar school, needless to say I went to Cromwell, Joy, when it was her turn went to Ely High School the brainy one in the family.

We had the summer holidays first before we went so it was six weeks of going off with other kids all over the place ,up the Aerodrome playing on the rifle range, this was a tall embankment with a wall about thirty feet high at the back which we used to climb up, then there was Petrol dumps either end of the Airfield, these consisted of two huge tanks, empty of course, which we would climb onto.

At that time there was still a lot of stuff left over from the War, silver paper in packs that Aircraft dropped to confuse the enemy Radar, three o three bullets, old searchlights and the main hanger and Control building just left as they were, just the place for kids to hang around. We also went swimming down the Gault most Summers, this is where we learnt to swim.

Cromwell School at Chatteris was a totally different school to Sutton, first of all in wasn’t mixed the boys were in one half and the girls in the other, it was much larger and had a huge playground and large playing fields for football, cricket, tennis, and it was large enough for a athletic track on Sports day.

There was a Bus load every day from Sutton Mepal and Witcham, and we were put into three `streams` in classes from the brightest to the not so bright, I was in the top Stream so I must have been reasonably bright, but you had to watch what you were up to because at the end of Term you could go down to a lower one and the others could come up.

After about a year they decided to mix the whole School, boys and girls together, so one day a number of girls came into the class and we were all mixed up, as was every class in the school.

This is where I first met Janet and all her friends, a lot of them I still see now and we are still good friends to this day, one of the boys in the class was Terry Rayner, Janet’s cousin, he came from a family of eight who lived in the town and they all went to that school, the usual mix of kids that you find in a school classroom.

The Teachers were a mixed bunch as well, the Head Master was Mr. Llewelyn he always had he gown and mortar board on for Assembly in the morning, I think he may have had a cane but I don’t think many kids got it, Mr. Kidd had been there years and enjoyed teaching, he taught history and commerce and got very involved in what he was telling us, if you were not taking notice or messing about he would come up to you and give you a punch on the top of your arm, and of course the other kids thought that was funny so some of them got the same treatment, Janet told me years later that he scared her and the other girls, but he was a good Teacher. Mr. and Mrs. Goodger taught English ( he never got me to write very well ) Mr. Grainger was the science master, he was a very big bloke with enormous hands so if he thumped you it hurt, he also had a habit of throwing things at the kid who was messing about, blackboard rubbers can hurt.

There was quite a few more Teachers there but one who was worth a mention was Mr. Tom Salmon, he taught maths and gardening, however he had a problem, he chain smoked Woodbines, he would sit at the front of class and cough his way through fag after fag, it was a good way of putting kids off smoking, however he died of Cancer not long after.

Some of the other kids were, Jane Edgley, Jenny Peacock( now Linney) Janis Dewsbury( now Driver) Cynthia Rook, Josephine Barker, Angela Kiel, Janet Barker(my dear wife of course) Terry Rowe, Richard Fletcher, Allan Britain, George Spooner, Derek Clark, Michael Peacock, Terry Rayner ( who I mentioned earlier was Janet’s cousin), they were all in the same class as me, and we went through together until we left at fifteen.

When we weren’t at School, in the evenings and at the weekends and of course School holidays, it was usually out with your mates up the Airfield, playing cricket on the Perimeter Track or just riding around there on our bikes, on November 5th we used to light a bonfire up there that we had built weeks before, and let off the fireworks that we had bought. Summertime we were back down the Gault of course, swimming and fishing, and riding about all over the place.

One job we always did was help Mum to pick Gooseberries in Johnny Bradshaw’s orchards along the Brook, it was the only time Mum seemed to have a job outside the house, however she was always busy there cooking and doing housework and making clothes for all of us, knitting was something she liked doing, and one day we were all surprised when she came home from Ely on the Bus with Joy, with a knitting machine, the box was about six feet long and it must have been quite a struggle on the Bus, anyway she made lots of stuff on this machine to our amazement and kept it for years and using it on the kitchen table.

We had a holiday every year ,nearly always Yarmouth, we stayed in one of Jim Alps Caravans on the South Deans site, there must have been thousands there at that time because nearly everyone stayed at home for their holidays at that time (Spanish holidays had hardly got going then) but we had a good time and it was something to look forward to. The shows down there were outstanding, and you could see a different one every night, all the Stars were there, and I even remember seeing George Formby, we sat at the back and the Theatre was packed.

We went to Yarmouth for years and even Janet came with us when I was fifteen. One year we all got there to start our holiday and found out that the van was double booked, so we all sat there on the grass while Dad found out if we could have another caravan, but we got one in the end.

When I was fourteen Pop music was getting, as the word suggests ,very popular and as the records then were 45rpm you needed a Record Player however it was only Michael Peacock who had one, so it was up to his House to listen to it, however he only had three records which he played over and over again until we got fed up with them.

In 1958 Mr. Henry Scott our old Headmaster at Sutton retired after 32 years, and the school got a new Head, Mr. Williams, I suppose Scotty took his cane with him, and things changed a lot at the school then and started to look more like Schools we know today.

Also in 1958 the USAF commandeers the Airfield where we used to play, to build a Thor Missile Base, it is worth mentioning that at this time the West was in the middle of the Cold War with the USSR and things were getting very serious, of course as children we didn’t take too much notice of these things and carried on as normal, however there were marches and protests everywhere, and they even had one at Mepal Airfield, there is a photo of the March somewhere with me and some other boys on our bikes watching the Protesters with their placards walking from the Ely direction past where the Bibby’s lived.

There is quite a lot now on the Internet about these Missiles, but I will just mention a few things. Each of the Airfields in East Anglia had three of these Missiles that were brought over from USA where they were made, they were still under control of the Americans, but to launch them they needed a RAF and an UASF man together with a key each, getting the Missile ready for launching took fifteen minutes (quite some time I would have thought) it had a Nuclear warhead on top that was to be under the control of the Americans, we used to see them being put up, for practice I suppose , but thank goodness none were launched, if they were there would have been nothing left of me and my bike or anyone else for that matter.

One more point of interest on this subject, I was taking to a friend of mine while I was writing this, Brian Jaggard, and he said he was playing cards about ten o clock one night during the Cuban Missile Crisis October 1962 some years later, in the Brook House Pub when the siren in the Village went off and the lights went out, so they went outside and they saw the Missiles standing up with the lights at the Base on and vapor coming out of the Missiles, this was I assume the liquid oxygen what they fuel them with, anyway nothing happened as John Kennedy and the Soviets sorted it out.

So life carried on in and around Sutton, there was a Boy Scouts group in the Village, however I never went to that, a Youth Club, which I did go to, it seemed we just played Table Tennis but it was OK, they had dances at the Vicarage Hall and later on at the old British Legion Hall (the Nissan hut) I was about fifteen then and most of my friends came to the Dances including Janet.

At Christmas time we always had three days going round our house, Ron and Mary’s and Len and Win’s, taking it in turn each year.

We had a Television at Brookside ( black and white of course) and I remember watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium and Tony Hancock, I remember getting told off by Dad one day for coming home early ( I had been down Hiams Farm to see Janet) but didn’t want to miss Hancock, he was sitting there watching it himself, “ why have you left that girl down there for just to come back and watch Hancock” he said. A little later I used to go down to Hiams Farm with David Ratcliff who was going out with Janet’s neighbour, Elizabeth Hadder , we went everywhere together for quite a few years, to dances and when we both got married on holidays, he was older than me and had a car, an Austin A 35, after that he bought a Triumph Bonaville motor bike, this was totally different to the cars in more ways than one, it would do 140 mph for a start, which was twice as fast as the Austin, later on he sold the Bike and bought a Mini, we used to go out with them in this car and when I was old enough to drive, in Dads Ford Prefect ( he had this car for several years and I must have drove 30000 miles in it, going everywhere , more about this later) we went to Woburn Safari Park one Sunday and a Rhino backed up to the Mini with us inside it and we all thought it was going to sit on the car with us inside it.

However back to Cromwell ( I am fifteen now) I left this School and started at Wisbech College on a Building course, a few more in our class came to Wisbech as well, including Janet, on a Secretary course, she later said she only came because I was going but I didn’t know that at the time. I was on a Building course, however, because there was only three of us on that course we were put in a class with Engineers, so I was learning Carpentry, Plumbing, Bricklaying, mechanical engineering and Lathe turning, but it was OK And I met some more friends there, but I don’t think I learnt that much, because you find it totally different when you start work. The trip to college every day was a bit of a performance, we had a Taxi to Ely then we had to catch the Bus to Wisbech, sometimes the Wash was flooded at Welney so that then needed a long round trip just to get there.

Weekends we went to the pictures at Chatteris, and they were still having dances at the British Legion, and of Course we went on our annual trip to Yarmouth where as I mentioned before we see all the stars of the day, Joe Brown, Billy Fury, Jackie Wilson, Bob Monkhouse, Des O Conner, Charlie Drake, Arthur Askey and lots more.

When I was sixteen it was time to leave Wisbech and start to earn a living, I eventually started work as an Apprentice Boatbuilder at Appleyard and Lincoln in Ely, this was an interesting job and it taught me to work to high standards with hardwoods, at that time they were still building wooden hull boats fitted out with hardwood inside, some of the lads who were working there I am still friends with today, Brian Fletcher, and Joy who worked in the office, who he later married, Len Reynolds was the Foreman, Tim Whitehand and Andy Maclaren. Ted Appleyard who part owned the business was a well-known character in the area, he would helm an old Tanker up and down the river, he always had a Dog end in his mouth with a dew drop on the end of his nose, this how he spent most of his time. Getting to work was a bit of a problem, I couldn’t drive so the only way was on the Bus ( which cost money) or Bike, so that is what I did most of the time, sometimes I would get a tow some of the way home from David Ratcliffe on his Bonaville, ( not the sort of thing one would do today). We used to take a rowing boat each out in the dinner Hour and have a race up to the Bridge two miles upriver, and back, I suppose we hadn’t used up enough energy at work. In the Winter of 1963, the River froze over completely to a depth of twelve inches, and by this time we had moved to the other side and to get to work we had to use the Chain Ferry, because the Bridge that is there now hadn’t been built. We were eventually stood off because the Boats could not be moved out, or in the Boathouse, however we weren’t the only people who were stood off, most of the Building Trade were in the same situation, and Dad who was working for Robinson and Gimbert was home for several weeks, in fact the whole Country was frozen solid until March with a lot of snow in some parts of the Country, this was the coldest winter on record since January 1814, someone even drove a Car on the river at Ely.

Janet and her Mum and Dad had by then moved to Peterborough, where she had started work at an Engineering place, however she didn’t stay there long and in September 1962 got a better job at Hotpoint as a Shorthand Typist where she stayed until we got Married in February 1967. So we used to see each other at weekends, sometimes she would come over on the Bus and stay at her Grandmas in Mepal, I would go back to their Bungalow in River Close with Janet after going to the Pictures at Chatteris, and listen to Arthur Atkins ( who was living with her Gran) telling us stories about the first World War, he was in the Trenches there, and it must have made a big impact on him because it seemed he didn’t talk about much else.

As I have said, Janet’s Mum And Dad lived at Hiams Farm along Chatteris road, it was a Council Farm but it wasn’t very big, about thirty five Acres, and they couldn’t make much of a living out of it, Eddy was a Bricklayer by trade, and was only there to help Edna’s family out and when Edna’s Step Mother died there was nothing to keep them there and he could get back to his old trade, so that is why they moved to Peterborough.

It was during this time that I met a lot of Janet’s Uncles and Cousins, a lot of them lived over Chatteris, there were the Rayners ( Edna’s brother Harold and his wife Nell) they had eight children, the oldest was Gwen and the youngest Sandra, they all went to Cromwell but Sandra and Terry, as I have mentioned before, were there when I and Janet went, they lived in a small two bedroom house in Bridge street, where some years later I will be coming back in the Fire Service. Also I met Edna’s other brother Frank and his wife Molly, they lived at Fowlmere, a village South of Cambridge where he had a large Farm with Pigs and arable land, they had eight daughters and we could never get the names in the right order but I do remember Ann was the eldest. So, we went to quite a few weddings over the following years, and a lot of them were Janet’s relations.

At home, as I couldn’t drive yet I was either biking everywhere or using the Bus, Dad had past his Driving Test only a few years earlier, Robinson and Gimbert, who he was working for then. paid for the test so he could drive a small pickup truck, he then bought an old Austin car, later on, when I had passed my test he changed it for a Ford Prefect, only about two years old, this was a modern type of car, not like the old fashion type we had before, this car we had for years and I drove many thousands of miles in it, going on holiday to Devon, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. Janet’s Dad had an Austin A35 when I first knew him, then after they got to Peterborough he bought a Ford Cortina Mk1, which was his pride and joy, it wasn’t quite so busy on the roads then, however there wasn’t the Motorways, they had just started building the M1 I think, but everywhere else was single roads, two years later we drove down to Cornwall on holiday and it took thirteen hours to get back.

When I was seventeen I started to have driving lessons, in a Morris Minor, I’d had seven and the driving instructor said `I will put you in for your test`, the test day came and it was a bit foggy so they cancelled it, and I had to wait two more weeks, in the meantime I had two more lessons ( at £1 each) went for my test and passed. So that is when I started my driving career.

During this time Joy was at Ely High School, and Angela was still at Sutton where the new Head, Mr. Williams, was in charge, Scotty had retired after 32 years of service (and 32 years of caning kids) and a PTA was formed for the first time. The Thor Missile Base on the Airfield was going to be closed for the next year, so the Village could use the Airfield again. The village had quite a few shops at that time ( unlike now) we had two Butchers, a Baker that delivered by Frank Haddock, Frank was quite a character in the Village and he used to belong to the Women’s Institute ( he was the only man to be a member of this organisation) where he would play the Piano, a Cobbler, a CO OP, another Grocer at the top of Pound lane, a Television shop ( Charlie Darby owned this as well as the Butchers) John Nuns the outfitters, Oliver’s the sweet shop and a Café the other side of the road, a Chemist and a Milkman, Norman Higham. There was still a lot of Pubs in the Village, The Ship, The George and Dragon, The Crown, Brookhouse, Royal Arms and The Chequers as well as two Clubs, British Legion and Conservative Club, so we never went thirsty. Dad was the caretaker of the British Legion at that time (the original Building was a Nissan Hut type which a group of them built after the war) some years later this was modernised and lasted for many years until it was pulled down several years later. We had a Fair visit once a year, they stayed in a field down School Lane, before that in a field opposite Lawn Lane (now called Fairfields) So there was plenty going on in the Village at that time. We also had a Railway Station but by this time wasn’t used much, I do remember going to Hunstanton on the Train, but it took ages to get there, and in 1964 it was closed along with hundreds of other Stations and miles of track in Dr Beeching’s cuts.

So in between me being 19 and 21 I was spending my time at work for R and G, going out with the Fire Engine evenings and weekends when I was available, and of course going over Peterborough twice a week. I was by then using Dads Car for my trips over there, and I had some breakdowns on the journeys, one Saturday Morning I got to Ramsey Mereside and the Engine just stopped, so I got out lifted the bonnet up to see if something had fell off, no it hadn’t , at least at first glance, ( you had to remember in those days cars were much simpler and didn’t have so many things on them, so someone like me could very often work out what was wrong, even though I was a Carpenter not a Mechanic) so I took a Plug lead off and found no spark, took off the Distributor cap off and found the Contact breaker points had fell in half, pushed the car off the road shut the bonnet and thumbed a lift to Stanground, where they now lived, anyway Janet’s Dad took me to the local Garage where we got some new Points, drove to the car and I put them in, another time the fan belt broke halfway down the forty foot bank at 12 O Clock at night, a pair of tights fixed that!. We went on holiday in that car to Scotland, Ireland, Devon and Cornwell with Robin and Lavina nearly always camping.

The Fire Service took up a fair amount of time, for us to be called out we had a Siren in the Village and a bell in the House, this would wake everyone in the house up if it rang at night, so Dad would get up and get my Bike out for me to ready to ride up the Station, at that time during the summer months we had a lot of `land fires’, they were coursed by Farmers burning straw after Combining, they didn’t need the Straw at this time so much, so they burnt it, the trouble was around our area the land is very Peaty and the ground is full of dead plant matter that will burn very easily, for days, so this took up a lot of the Fire Services time for many years until it was Banned Nationally.

Robinson and Gimbert were building all over the local area so I could be working in Cambridge, Newmarket, Cottenham, Ely or any of the villages including Sutton, at that time they were building houses and bungalows costing from £3000.00 upwards, and as they were building in the Village, down Red Lion Lane, we decided to buy a Bungalow there, we had already decided to get Married in February 1967 but didn’t know where to live Stanground or Sutton before then, but then decided it would be, 15 Red Lion Lane Sutton.

So we got married on Saturday 18th Feb, at Stanground Church, with Cousin Andrew my best man, we later had the Reception at the Whittle Way Pub that had a large hall at the back, and later that evening drove to the Train Station to go to London where we stayed at the Strand Palace Hotel for our Honeymoon, 45 years later we went back to the same Hotel for a weekend in London but the place had changed considerably by then but it is still one of the best Hotels in London for price and location.

We had got a Mortgage at that time from the Halifax it was £16.50 a Month, the bungalow cost £3150.00 and we borrowed about £2300.00 which at that time was all we could afford, I was earning about £16.00 a week so that was all we could borrow, in those days the Wife’s earnings were not counted for a mortgage. Anyway although we were broke when we moved in, after a few months we started to save enough to start buying things like a Car and a coloured Television, the first car we had was a Vauxhall Viva HA model, this was a terrible car and was a big mistake us buying it, it had a transverse leaf spring for suspension at the front and didn’t handle very well at all, in fact it spun round in the middle of the road coming home from work one day and frightened me so much I got rid of it after three months, and bought a Ford Cortina Estate, a proper car. The coloured Tele wasn’t much better that spent more time at the repair shop than at our house, it was a Marconi so we thought it would be all right, but it wasn’t, eventually we bought a Grundig, this went well for some years. We had some good neighbours, at number 13 next door was Mr. and Mrs. Roy Squires, he was a Timber Salesman, but his hobby was his Hi Fi which he had in his lounge, at that time it was all Vinyl Records 45s and 78s and he had quite a collection upstairs in his spare room, however he had the latest equipment to play them on, and a pair of the latest Electrostatic speakers, but he had a problem, that is where I came in, he was deaf in one ear, so he would ask me around to sit in the middle of the room then he would play test records and I would have to tell him where the stereo sound was coming from, so it was set up OK, so I had my uses even in those days. On the other side was Reg and Mora Maul, they came from London.

So Janet left her job at Hotpoint and started working at Westholm Construction in Ely, where she was Secretary to the Manager, it was here that she met some lifelong friends, Rosemary Talbot, who died of Cancer two months before she did, and Anne Bell who lost her husband five years ago, she is still friends with me now. I continued working for R and G for a year or so, until I decided to go self employed as a Carpenter, which I did for the rest of my working life. Reg who lived next door wanted to do the same so we teamed up together, this was as I found out was a big mistake, first of all he couldn’t get up in the morning, I had to go round most mornings and knock on the door to wake him up, this was of course very annoying and secondly he wasn’t as good as me at doing the work, so when he decided after a year to leave and go with someone else I wasn’t to bothered. Reg was a good friend though and he used to play with us in the Sutton 2nd Eleven Cricket Team, which I was Captain, Barry Linney also played, and every weekend we were off somewhere, Saturday and Sunday playing teams all over Cambridgeshire, Eventually Janet came with us to help with the scoring, this was much better because we always got home late having visited the local Pub, a bit anti-social.

Holidays were a big thing with us, and at that time we started going abroad for the first time, we went on a Package Holiday to Tossa De Mar in Spain with David and Elizabeth, it cost £32.00 for eleven days I think, full board, a year or so later we went in our car to Interlaken, camping, and one of our longest holidays at that time was when we took the car over to Zeebrugge and drove all the way through Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, over the Alps to Italy and just got to what was then Yugoslavia, then we came back via Pisa, the south of France, Nice, Monte Carlo, and camped at Antibes, carrying on to Paris and home. Janet’s Mum and Dad came with us one year when we went to Austria camping, we had a large frame tent and all the gear you would need for cooking and sleeping. At that time, I wasn’t very keen on flying, which is why we went to all these places by car, but I didn’t mind driving.

It was now about 1969 and Mum and Dad moved to Churchill Close, in a Bungalow, we never found out the reason, they thought it would be more cosy I expect, anyway Angie came with them because she was the only one left at home, Joy being at work at the Palace in Ely, and then Angie started work at Darby’s in September. At this time, I was working all over the local area doing small jobs, and large jobs, and a lot of Building sites, Lakenheath, St Neots, Huntingdon and Cambridge, so I learnt how to do just about every job there was to do.

Of course when I got home there was the Fire Service, I would just sit down to my dinner and the Bell would go ( a year or so later we had a pocket alerter ) and we would be off to someone’s house or Farm or shed or any building that could catch fire, and of course in the Summer around harvest, time there were `land fires` we could be out all night sometimes putting out burning land mainly down the Gault, it was some years later that stubble burning was banned, but in the mean time it was costing a lot of public money to put right Farmers carelessness.

In May 1970 Janet was made redundant from Westholm Construction due to falling sales, and then started at Arthur Rickwood E H F along the Chatteris road opposite where she used to live, she stayed there until June 1976 when she was having Paul, but more of that later.

So after a few years of paying what was by then a small mortgage, and both being at work, and me having the Fire Service job as well, we were reasonably well off, the colour tele was going OK and I bought a new stereo radio complete with a large FM stereo aerial and rotator, so I could listen to John Peel in stereo at 10 pm Friday night. I also made my own Beer and wine, this was quite a fashionable thing to do then and there were shops everywhere selling kits for this hobby, storing the beer could be a problem because the beer was still fermenting in the bottles so it needed somewhere cool, in my case it had to be the garage, however I once went to see how my stored beer was and it wasn’t there anymore, it had exploded and all that was left was the thick bits of the bottom of the bottle. Cricket was still my main sport then, I was wicket keeper as well as captain, one Sunday afternoon we were playing down Station Road and we had a new fast bowler, a very fast new bowler, and I went to take a ball from him down the leg side and got there too late, and it hit me in the mouth, so with blood everywhere they took me up to Doctor Parkinson and he stitched me up ( in those days the Doctor would see you anytime not like now) and Monday morning I went to the Dentist to see if I had broken a tooth, I sat in the waiting room with dry blood all around my mouth with people looking at me thinking I had been in a fight the weekend, my front tooth was cracked but the dentist said, leave it for now see how it goes, I have still got it.

The years now are 1968 to 1970, Joy had moved to a School in Iver Heath and then to a School in Worthing, Angie was leaving School about this time and starting work at Darby’s. One sad memory was the death of Grandad Lenard Barker from Coveney, I think he had lived in the village all his married life, and he looked after the horses at Nix’s farm in the main street, I remember spending my summer holidays with them when I was young, cousin Andrew would stay as well and we would help with the harvest, in those days they had to use Threshing Tackle driven by a long belt from a tractor, and lots of Men helping.

So we carried on living at Red Lion lane until 1976, Janet working at Arthur Rickwood Farm on the Chatteris road and me working as a self-employed Carpenter, something I did for the rest of my working life, I was just getting going then working for various people and small firms, as I mentioned earlier I finished working with Reg, still my neighbour, and I had a while working with Brian Dodman, and although he worked hard he wasn’t able to do the same amount of work that I could do, but he still wanted half the money, Brian had been in the Royal Navy and when he came out he went to train as a Carpenter for six months at a Collage at Letchworth, then he came with me! Eventually, after two years or so I had had enough and we parted, and I started working With Ernie Locke who lived in the village then, and we spent quite a few years together working for Trend Housing on sites around the area, and we kept good friends until he died.

Cricket and holidays took up most of our time outside work, and weekends we went to dances with Gordon and Margaret Day, David and Liz Ratcliff, we went on holiday with them twice and also motor racing at Snetterton where David was a Marshall, unfortunately it all ended in tears after a few years when Liz decided to leave David and go with a colleague from work, who she still lives with now, David phoned me up when it happened and was on the phone for hours pouring his heart on to me, I must be a good listener.

One day I was talking to Barry Linney about building a house, and he said he wanted to buy some land that was for sale at the bottom of West Lodge Lane, there was three plots at £3000.00 each and he said would I go halves with him and buy one and a half plots each at £4500.00 this made better size plots, and we could both afford this, so we went ahead.

About this time, we went on a holiday to America, we went out on the QE2 had a couch tour from New York to Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls and flew back home. I was then busy getting plans drawn up and buying the land, and wondering how we was going to pay for the building, and where were we going to live because we needed to sell the Bungalow to get the money, so it was a Caravan on the site! Barry and Jenny were going to live in one too, but they had two young children, so theirs was a Mobile Home.

Then we had a pleasant surprise Janet came back from the Doctors and said she was having a baby, this was something we had wanted for years, and everything was happening at once now.

It was now springtime, and we wasted a lot of time getting the plans drawn up, the first person took an age and when they were done, they weren’t what we both wanted, so we got someone else to do the drawings. We sold the Bungalow for £9000.00 or so and we had to move out, into the grotty caravan I had bought, we didn’t have the sewer connected to start with, so we used a Porta Potty, didn’t have a shower but we did have water, just! Anyway, it would be all right in the end as we would have a house worth £40000.00 when we sold it seven years later.

1976 turned out to have the hottest summer on record so we spent most of the time outside the van or up the Pub in the afternoon with the Bricklayers who found it too hot to work some days. When we dug the footings out, we found running sand after about a metre and a half, so we didn’t go that deep, also there was a Well in the corner, it just missed the footings, so we filled it up with hardcore and hoped the Building Inspector didn’t see it.

Janet stopped work in June and rested most of the day in the hot sun, she had Jenny next door as a neighbour, an old school friend, in fact we all got on well together, me and Barry helping each other out with the buildings. We were trying to get the house done before the baby was due, but we could see this wasn’t going to happen, I was working during the day and building a house nights and weekends as well as being in the Fire Service and playing Cricket Saturday afternoons, anyway we were getting there.

So we spent that Summer living and working on a building site, having baths at our parents’ house and living in this horrible van, ( when we finished I gave it away to some travelers) eventually in September the heat of the summer went and it started to get cold in the van, and the baby was due any day, that was when Janet’s Aunt Doris who lived at Haddenham said `you are not going to let that baby stay in that van`, so Paul was born on the 17th September and that is where we lived for three weeks until we got in the house.

At this point the typed story ends - but in the back of his writing bureau was a note book containing the following jottings, presumably ready to tell the rest of the story.

When we moved in we still had work to do. I helped Barry with his woodwork.

I then started bowling at City of Ely Bowls club when J Canham asked me to play in a team he was getting up, finished bottom of 4th division but next year we won.

Also brought a boat. Skipper Ribin came with me, went down to Devon with it, Eddie came out with me.

We changed the Sprite Alpine for a newer one and used it a lot in the coming years, joining the Caravan Club.

Working for Trend Housing with Ernie Locke and also did work for Barry Haddock and later Hayden Grey started building in his haulage yard. Brian built several houses for him in the coming years.


1977-1978: The Fire Service went on strike for 9 weeks, over Christmas when I was 33 years old. Sutton station decided not to join in as we were not in the FBU. Lead to lots of bad feelings as out on our own with the Army in Green Godesses. Calls included: Mepal garage, bus fire, Mepal cafe roof, Brampton RAF stores (17 pumps), metal box factory in Wisbech, chimney fires, kitchen fires, fires in sheds, garages, bedrooms and back yards, a skip lorry turned over at Hill Row, animals in the river and Chatteris glue factory.

1978: Jonathon born

1983: Guy born

1984: Sutton bypass opened.

9th April 1985: Planning permission was granted for us to build the new house (in Elizabeth Court)

June 1985: Edna brought 1 Elizabeth Court, opposite the bungalow where Ernie and Pat lived and Barry built the next round the corner.

We started building having brought the plot for £12,500.

The house was a similar size to the one down West Lodge Lane except we made the lounge and dining room separate, moved the toilet into the utility room and 4 bedrooms upstairs.

Barry and Jenny moved to Manea, he built the fireplace in the new house for us.

We moved in with one bedroom done and the rest were finished after we moved in. It cost about £40,000 to build and we had an endowment mortgage for £10,000. Big mistake, they were all the go then, you pay the interest off mainly, but the loan should be paid off by the endowment policy which you pay for every once a year. They told us there would be enough money in the policy and some left over, it didn’t work like that, the policy make enough to cover the loan in our case, so we forked out 20 years later £2,500 to finish it off. However some people who took their policies out had a shortfall of tens of thousands of pounds, it was a scandal waiting to happen and the financial advisors made a lot of money.

So we settled down in Elizabeth Court (named after Ernie’s daughter) with neighbours Philip Barker one side and the Browns the other. Ernie carried on and brought some more land and made the site bigger.

1986: Working on building sites for most of my life I have never really been hurt, but soon after moving into the house at Elizabeth Court I had a near miss. I was working with Ernie taking a garage flat roof off when I stepped back and fell straight through landing on the concrete floor, a leap of about 8ft breaking my arm, my right arm. I suppose I was lucky really it could have been a lot worse, anyway I had six weeks off work while it healed and I had to use my left hand for everything.

We sold the Sprite Alpine and got an ACE Harmony, towed by an Omega. We went to lots of Caravan Club rallies, to Wales, a the 3 centres rally with Pete & Joyce, Melvyn & Cynthia and Robin & Lavina.

We also holidayed in France and I was still playing cricket.

Fire service - land fires and RTA at Mepal where a car went off the bridge into the river. Luckily he swam out.

1987: Paul started Witchford College. He was fishing and sailing with me at Salcome, North west Norfolk, Heacham and Wells. Our first laser (61245) leaked but we had it repaired, sold it and brought new one 105000 approx.

1988: Janet left the Farm for a second time and began to work at the doctors surgery. I started to learn to play the guitar. Mum and dad had their golden wedding anniversary.

1889: The recession began.

As all of the builders I worked for had packed up I like thousands of others in the building trade was out of work for a while, 6 weeks in fact. We were not exactly desperate for money as Janet was at work at the surgery and I had the fire service job which gave me a cheque every month. So I thought I would build a conservatory on the house, this would keep me busy and wouldn’t cost a fortune as I would make the windows myself, so all I would have to buy was the bricks, glass and roofing. This is something I felt the house needed and would add value in the long term.

1991: Had a heart attack whilst building Paul and Katie’s house. We cancelled our holiday to Aussie and I was off work for quite some time, having a stent fitted a year later.

In November 1991 I worked on the tv series London’s Burning and visited Blackwall fire station for the filming.

1996: Long holiday to Australia, stopped at Bangkok to refuel, the Sidney for a week, then a coach trip to Alice, stopping at Cooper, other places and then Aires Rock (climbed to the top) flew to Cairns, visited the Barrier Reef, then home stopping at Hong Kong on the way.

1997: About this time Sutton Parish Council got a grant to build an all weather bowls green at the Brooklands Centre. I watched them build it, then a meeting was arranged, we went to it and got on the committee - Pete Wyatt, Ingles, John and me. There was trouble from the start, water in ditches, fence blew down, out of level, no pavilion toilets. In December 1997 I decided to retire from the fire service after 34 years. Paul had joined by then and my last call out was to an articulated lorry on its side on a bend opposite the old west. It slid 80 yards and the driver was in the cab covered in earth. A crane was needed to lift it up in the end. Went to Cambridge city hall and the British Legion for a presentation.

29th Nov 2001: Dad died

In February 2002 we went on holiday to Bangkok, New Zealand and Fiji. We stopped at Bangkok for the River Quy tour and were able to see Uncle Percy’s grave at K. Hired a car in NZ for 2 weeks then stayed in Fiji.

2003: Visited Hong Kong, Macau, Melbourne, Perth, LA, Egypt and Jordan.

2005: Mum died, 92 years old. Alice born.

2011: Visited Argentina, cruised around the Falklands then onto Chile.





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