大象传媒

Dad was from a family of four with a younger brother William and two sisters Edith and Ann. They lived in Hollington, a small village where farming and quarrying of sandstone were the main industries. At 14, when his father died, he became the family bread winner, destroying any opportunity of furthering his education. Some of his time was spent in butchery and it was during that time that he was run over by a horse drawn cart weakening his back for the rest of his life.

Mum came from a nearby hamlet, Greatgate, later an idyllic setting for me as a child with its hills and woods and a stream that ran across the road twice as it passed through and where trout could be caught by 鈥渢ickling鈥� them from out of their hiding places. Her father managed some of the local sandstone quarries and she was expected to help her mother with household chores for her father and the three brothers, George, Fred and Richard. Of course this meant that she became an excellent cook!

Whilst both have died there are some artefacts from their time of World War Two, such as a Spitfire brooch made from a melted coin and a copper plate and brass gong brought back from Egypt as presents from dad to mum, together with many photographs and postcards.

Looking through some of the souvenirs it is interesting to find exercise books written up during training.

Dad joined the RAF and trained at Lytham St Annes, Lancs, we also know he spent some time in Pershore Worcs. He was LAC 1225662 and spent much of his wartime after training in Egypt. He travelled there going by ship, a grey Queen Elizabeth, to Cape Town in South Africa and then overland.

His skills were utilised in aircraft repair. Looking through the training notebooks there are books on repairs to both metal and fabric skinned aircraft, a Dunlop tyre course, tools, metal drilling and tapping, fabric repair, hydraulic principles, and many, many more topics. Looking through the books we feel that he should have received a degree after so much study!

When I was young I recall listening in awe as he recounted stories of the war with friends that lived locally, such as the man that used to call every Thursday, selling shoes or the man with the greengrocery shop in the back of a large van that had their own tales to tell, unfortunately most of those stories have been lost to the memory now.

One tale I do recall is how dad was almost electrocuted by a faulty drill in a hanger as local Egyptian workers laughed at him and his strange dance not realising that he was unable to let go of the drill as his muscles in his hand had locked because of the shock that he was receiving. He survived to tell the tale!

I remember also that he adopted a pet chameleon which went around on his shoulder as an efficient way of keeping flies and other bugs off him.

We have Christmas lunch menus from celebrations in Egypt and in free leave time he did manage to visit Luxor, he saw the Sphinx and the Pyramids and other historic sites.

Unfortunately on his return to civilian life, born in 1911 (dad was quite old when called upon for military service), he was considered too old for employment in areas where he had developed skills during his military service and was forced to take employment below his skills level. This was not unusual and some of those who worked with him, in a shift pattern, overseeing the operation of a deep bore well pumping water to Stoke-on-Trent also had great skills. One of whom could build magnificent wooden cabinets as well as intricate clocks.

In his spare time dad developed a great interest in gardening growing flowers, especially chrysanthemums and dahlias as well as a wide variety of vegetables.

However, self-taught, he was also the radio repair man for everyone in our local villages until the emergence of the transistor. He also taught himself to make repairs to the circuitry of early television sets.

Mum and Dad married in 1941, I was born in 1947 when mum was almost 37. Mum spent some of her wartime years working in a local munitions factory in north Staffordshire, Thomas Bolton.

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