Starting Secondary School

I would cycle to school most days at first coming home to the blacksmiths building and getting punctures as I rode over our rough red ash fourcourt and yard. Later the builders always seemed to be at work on the workshop, then showroom. By the time I started at Victoria Road Secondary School I was already doing chores when I came home from school. My jobs, at least those I remember were to fill and clean the oil bottles (at this time oil for cars came in re-usable glass bottles) and fill cans with paraffin which was popular for heating etc.

One highlight of my first few months in the first few months was meeting Adie she was lovely and had the most amazing hair (no I wont be drawn on what else I found attractive!). Once a channel of communication had been established - via passed notes - I arranged to take Adie to the Christmas Party. Adie remembers this was a special event and as such Iris bought Adie a new dress for the occasion, I bottled out and never went and thinking about the disapointment of the anticlimax upsets me even now!

Memories of my time at school are just snapshots out of context and chronology. But here goes. Singing sea shanties in the music lessons. Walking down the hall to assembly and smelling milk on the turn as there would be crates of the little 'Gill' milk bottles stacked against the walls. Cycling down Nepshaw Lane to school and seeing Gypsies breaking down several Rolls Royce hearses'. Not many years after this these vehicles were worth fortunes as they were being converted to RR Silver Ghosts by restorers.

This same journey to shool would take me past Robert Hudsons Railtrux works. Although well past its heyday it was still a massive foundry and works with rail lines ouside and coal trucks lined up on short sidings. All long gone now!

Grandma - the first cloud.

I spent a fair amount of time with Grandma and Grandad Hanson. We had travelled to Australia and upon returning they had bought a fish and chip shop just outside Doncaster on Sprotbrough Road. Some of my most memorable Christmases were spent here. My bedroom here was above the shop and next to the extractor from the chip pans, I remember well going of to sleep to the sussuration of the customers and the drone and sizzle of the frying range.

Eventually as the garage got more established they sold their business and came in as partners to the garage and they had moved to the flat above the showroom so they were a very big part of my life growing up. My favorite tale of this time is how I would ask first mom for some money for chips from the chip shop over the road, then pop upstairs to grandma to repeat the plea, then finally call at the kiosk on the garage forecourt, where dad would be doing the evening shift serving petrol and repeat! Then its off to the fish shop for fish chips and a bottle of pop. Then sit on the wall of the air raid shelter - still there at this time though a bit damp inside.

Anyway; back to the story, I am 14 and coming home from school on my bike and I am met on the forecourt by my mom and dad and they told me grandma had died. This was a big shock as I had not realised she was ill. It was sudden and was due to a burst ulcer I believe. In later years when mom talked about it she indicated that she knew about the ulcer but that the doctor had not indicated in any way that it was serious. This is the 28th September 1960. She was just 56.

Adie

After a bit of note passing I finally plucked up the courage to ask Adie out and she was to be my date for the Christmas party. I hated parties and bottled out in the end. The worst bit was that Iris had bought Adie a new dress for the party, I still feel gutted when I think of it.

Several false starts later we managed to start going out steady. At this time I wouldbe transitioning from just fillin oil bottles after school to doing a stint serving petrol (taking over some of grandad's evening shifts) and sweeping out the workshop. Dad would be putting in 14 hour days running the garage and showroom, opening the petrol pumps at 7am and locking up at 9pm. Mom was running the office and also driving our private hire cars, needless to say I didn't see a lot of them. So when I did finish whatever jobs I had I would race off to Alwyn and Irises to spend time with Adie.

Grandad's Struggle

I always think of grandad as Pop Larkin in 'Darling Buds of May' he knew loads of people and was into all kinds of things. Knew all about horses; he bought me a pony to learn to ride, so well behaved was this pony that it chased him out of the field and he had to hurdle over a 1.5 meter fence to escape! Convinced that there was a cheap Ferrari to be had in a Bradford scrapyard we spent days driving round looking - never found it, probably never existed. Weekends we would often go to visit his brothers in Selby, Bill had a fish and chip shop and Fred had a newsagent and sweetshop. Great memories.

One time he decided we needed a boat s Adie an I accompanied him as we drove to all the marinas he could think of, nearly purchasing a canal barge, sunk and sitting on the mud at the bottom. In the garage he would wander around picking up screws and washers that the mechanics had dropped, lecturing everone on waste and frugality. I look back on these few years as we went about with grandad with real fondness.

So now the cloud; grandad was diagnosed with throat cancer. I was too young to really grasp what was really going on, also cancer was kind of a taboo word which no one said out loud. Grandad went in for treatment and they cut away much of his throat and voice box. All I remember of this time is grandad being tortured in a way, mom and dad trying thier best to cope visiting and running the garage also looking after him at home on the odd time he was consisered well enough to send home. He was in pain, couldn't speak, in and out of hospital and eventually in a nursing home for his last months. He died 10 March (69) 1965.

A cloud appears on the Horizon

I started work in the garage in 1961 I would be just 15 years old. I thought I would love it, after all I had been messing about with cars and around the garage for years so sure was I that I decided, against my parents wishe, to leave school with no qualifications so the die was cast. However I never enjoyed working it as a mechanic even though I ended up doing it for near on thirty years.

As an apprentice my main tasks were sweeping up and scraping grease of the floor! So to lift the tedium the staff (and I) would try and get dad to tell us tales of the war. We would all stand by the 'pot bellied stove' and listen to tales of how he had escaped from Dunkirk. The photo of dad in France is with the family in France that had become lifelong friends, after they had at great personal risk, shielded dad and a couple of his buddies as they made their way back to the beaches at Dunkirk. This was one of the tales we never tired of hearing. After Dunkirk dad was posted to Burma and there were many tales of his time in the jungles of Burma, the one that sticks in mind is when he and his troop were out in the jungle - monsoon conditions - they were all sheltering under the trucks, rifles all oiled up and wrapped up in bags, then through the jungle they here soldiers aproaching. The panic starts as they rush to unpack the guns, the soldiers break through the undergrowth, fortunately for dad they were on our side! There we other tails of the Chindits. and the Gurkhas', just wish I could remember more.

As an insight into what sort of a person my dad was. During one of these sagas, told stood by the glowing stove, one of the mechanics in oil soaked overalls burst into flames and I mean was engulfed in flames. Without hesitation dad through the guy to the floor rolled him to put the flames out and got the ambulance called whilst the rest of us stood montionless and stunned.

I clearly remember dad being a real enthusiast of Aston Martin, he really facied one and we had a customer who had one and would bring it in for service etc. It was not to be. However a Jaguar was only just out of reach and he would often say he was getting one. I recall one time when he said one was ordered and coming, when it arrived it was a Jaguar MK1 but was for a customer Henry Webster our local farmer and the person from whom we had bought the land for the garage expansion. So when he said he had bought an E Type, I for one did not believe him, until he went down to London to pick it up. It really was his pride and joy. Unbelievably he let me drive it and I remember buying a cigar (never lit it), driving round in the E Type and feeling all that. Clearly looking a right plonker!

And now the storm finally breaks. Dad gets diagnosed with lung cancer and after living through the time with grandad suffering and dying with throat cancer he refused all medical treatment. He decided along with mom to try some non medical treatments - loads of carrot juice, vegetable smoothies etc.

Concurent with this life changing event another occured, when we were notified that the garage was to be compulsory purchased for the M62 motorway. Clearly this created a big problem, at this stage no way was I old enough to take responsibility and mom was distrought. Any attempt to sell the garage as a business was thwarted by the purchase order hanging over the business. Then to compound the dire circumstances the Department for Transport indicated that work would not commence for at least two years. Dad did not have two years, and knew it. Much discussion followed with our local MP and eventually it went all the way up to the Minister for transport - Barbara Castle. This all takes place in a cold wet and snowy autum and winter, garage open but no business, heating off to conserve finances. Both mom and I harked back all our lives remembering what a terrible depressing time this was.

After much deliberation a new plan was formulated...