LOOSE ENDS FOR JUNE
One of the penalties of getting old is that you have to bury your friends. This week I had the sad duty of going to the funeral of my old friend Rita Barritt of Kayfield at Salterforth. I first met Rita almost 55 years ago when I was working out of West Marton Dairies where Rita was one of the ladies in the laboratory who tested the milk. I took to her right away and as I got to know her better found that she was one of the nicest people I have ever met. I never heard her raise her voice and we never had a wrong word. I also have to say that I was slightly in awe of her because something about her spoke of far better breeding than I can claim and it shows in her children! Over the years my daughters got to know her and the family and when I told them of her death they were all so sad. The only good thing about funerals is that they waken up the memories that nobody can take away from us. Come to think, there is one more happy result, we get to meet old friends that we haven't seen for years.
Not surprisingly, this got me to thinking about those happy days fifty years ago when we were all working at West Marton doing long hours and lifting weights that would be illegal today. It wasn't a good wage but everyone seemed to be having a good time. I noticed this when I was talking to my weavers at Bancroft, despite being a hard noisy and dirty job they were all happy and one even told me that Bancroft was like a holiday camp! I mentioned this yesterday to Pat who worked with Rita in the lab and she said that she enjoyed it so much that at times she thought she ought to be paying the management. I know what she means, there were times in brilliant summer weather when I was being paid to drive round our lovely country lanes picking milk up from farms in 168lb (77Kg) kits that I had the same thought. Mind you, this was balanced by the days in winter when freezing rain was coming in horizontally over the fields!
I started mulling this over and came to the conclusion that there were probably two reasons for our contentment: We expected no better and we had security of employment. As long as the cows were being milked someone had to deal with it. We may have been hard-pressed at home to make the wage last till the end of the week but we had no stress about losing our jobs. As long as we kept our noses clean and kept working we were OK. I've checked this with some of my friends and it looks as though I might be on the right track because all of them said that today they have no security. I asked my daughter Susan and she told me about a friend of hers who has just got a job as deputy headmistress at a good school but is on a two year contract with no guarantee she will stay in post when it ends.
I know that there is a lot to be said for having a varied working life, as my father once told me, “Five years in one job is long enough, after that you start to become part of the furniture and it's 'good old so and so, he'll do it'” but this short term tenure is, in many cases, crazy. Even in the worst times, when inflation was over 20% I can't ever remember having to worry about having a job. It strikes me that this is probably one of the biggest changes in work I have seen in my lifetime and I have every sympathy with young people having to raise a family with this extra stress placed on them. We were better off then on a wage of seventeen and a half pence an hour than kids are today, no wonder they can't understand it. Mind you, I don't understand it myself. In 1959 we bought a pram for Margaret, our first daughter, and it cost £35, 200 hours work before tax!
On an entirely different subject, I came across something recently that intrigued me. I know this will bore some of you but there are people who are interested in these things! When the British Expeditionary Force went to France in September 1939 (You young ones will I am sure know that this was the outbreak of World War Two!) they took one surprising bit of equipment with them, a big McLaren Compound steam traction engine for levelling ground for temporary airstrips. It had to be left behind when we retreated via Dunkirk and nothing is known about its eventual fate. This wasn't the last use of steam traction engines in the war. Some of you may remember PLUTO, Pipe Line Under The Ocean. It was decided to lay undersea pipelines, three all told, across the channel so petrol could be pumped direct from Britain to the front line troops after 'D'-day. This pipe was very heavy stuff, it could weigh as much as 63 tons per mile and it was soon realised that there was a bit of a problem. The ships and other means of laying the pipes couldn't approach nearer the shore than the five fathom line which could be three quarters of a mile away so there was a requirement for very powerful winches to haul it ashore. None of the standard army equipment was man enough.
The naval officer in charge of the job remembered seeing Fowler ploughing engines at work in peace time and so he hired two BB1 Ploughing engines from a firm called Penfold's at Arundel and after modification for the specialised hauling job they were taken into service and did the job with no problems at all. Only one was sent out in a landing craft to Cherbourg, witnesses said it was named Steve. The other one and some subsequent hirings were used at water crossings of the pipeline in the UK. It would be nice to report that the engines had a happy retirement after performing this unique task but unfortunately after the war they were commandeered by the Overseas Food Corporation and sent out to Africa for use in the abortive Groundnut Scheme which was supposed to supplement our diet in the hard post war years. When the scheme failed, like a lot of other equipment they were left to rust and eventually were scrapped.
I have seen these engines working and was always impressed by the quiet way they delivered immense pulling power and it pleases me that a 19th century technology could save the day in the darkest days of the war. What a pity they couldn't have an honourable retirement.
Rita on the left and Vera at Kayfield in 1977. They were happy days.
