大象传媒

I was born in November 1925 at Austerfield near Bawtry, so I can claim to be a Yorkshireman by a few hundred yards. 鈥淣obbut just鈥� as they say in Yorkshire. I spent my schooldays in Lincoln and then Scarborough when my parents moved there in 1938. I left school in the Christmas term of 1939 aged 14 years.
I started work in advertising with the Imperial Tobacco Co. group in January 1940 and stayed there until 1941 when the advertising department closed down due to the wartime restrictions of materials. I then took a position as a civilian storeman at the Clifton Hotel in Scarborough. From here I was drafted into the Royal Navy in August of 1941, aged 16 years.
Following the end of the war I arrived back in Chatham in the UK in 1946 and although demobbed remained in the Navy for a further three months, comprising two months overseas leave and one month demob leave, and was on reserve for three years.
Probably because I had joined the Navy at such a young age I found I desperately missed the comradeship of service life, the travel and the sea itself, and felt very unsettled for some time. At the end of my three months service leave I resumed my pre-war employment with the Imperial Tobacco Co. working in Lincoln and then in 1948 returned to Scarborough and left my job to nurse my mother through illness. My brother Frank and sister Nora both having young families by this time. I then found employment with a wholesale newsagents and the Yorkshire Post. Also at this time I met Marjorie from Horsforth, Leeds on a blind date and became engaged.
In 1950 I took up a new post working for a wholesale grocer and importer in the West Riding, Leigh Lineham & Co and remained with them for the next twenty years. My job involved visiting shops, hotels, catering and retail outlets throughout the North Riding of Yorkshire. In September 1950 I married Marjorie and moved, firstly to temporary housing on Wombleton aerodrome and then to Kirkbymoorside. Our son Andrew was born in 1953, and in 1955 we moved to new housing in Nawton near Helmsley where our second son Stephen was born.
I was always very keen on walking, cycling and camping and became involved in the boy scouts movement and was one of the first walkers to complete the Lyke Wake Walk, a forty mile path across the North Yorks Moors.
In 1964 we moved again, to Hovingham, a small village north of York and bought and renovated an old house where we remain to this day. I became involved with the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme being leader and chairman for over twenty years and also during this time was a voluntary Ranger for the North Yorkshire Moors National Park and a member of the Scarborough and District Search and Rescue Team. I also enjoyed bell ringing and flat green bowling and formed a club, The Dalesmen, similar in principle to the Lions, to provide help for adults and children with disabilities.
In 1970 I left Leigh Lineham and started my own grocery and delicatessen business in Easingwold eventually retiring in 1983 due to ill health. In 1984 after recovering my health my wife and I took up positions as the managers of Akebar Park Caravan Centre near Leyburn in the Yorkshire Dales, and remained there until retiring in 1992.
Following my retirement in 1992 I started work at Castle Howard on a part time basis and remain there working at the Arboretum, a woodland trust, and make walking sticks and turn wood in my spare time. In September 2000 Marjorie and I celebrated our golden wedding.
In November 2005 I celebrated my 80th birthday with family and friends at our home in Hovingham.