Open Writing

Two streets away from Birrell Road, on Cedar Road, lived Uncle Harry and his daughter Emily. By the time I was old enough to visit them on my own he was well into his 80s and Emily was 60ish. They came from my father's side of the family, but I am not sure of their exact place in the order of things. No matter, what I do remember is a very warm and inviting welcome whenever I knocked on their door.

Uncle Harry was a bubbly person with great charm that always enchanted me and drew me to him time and time again. He would regularly watch bowls being played on The Forest. Walking stick in hand he would stroll the half-mile down Sherwood Rise to the green whenever conditions allowed. He would also tread a similar route to his local, The Grosvenor at the bottom of Hucknall Road.

Knowing of his whereabouts during the summer months, I would endeavour to locate him. I can recall his response as if it was yesterday. Stopping in his tracks when he heard me shout 'Uncle Harry' he would lean on his walking stick and send out a clear signal of warmth and affection.

King George VI died on 6 February, 1952. I remember the date well. It was me who opened the front door to see Aunty Gerty standing there. "He's gone" she said. This was a reference to her husband, Great Uncle John Biddulph, who had been bedridden for a number of years. I came to realise some years later that he was the brother of my father's grandmother. Aunty Gerty was to outlive her husband by twenty years and was in her 90s when she died. I always had a good relationship with her.

There were two features of her house I vividly recall. Her budgie, with whom she had regular conversations, and her grandfather clock which boomed out the chimes on the hour and the half-hour. It had a man in the moon face which swayed as it chimed. She lived in a finely built rented terrace house on Hucknall Road not so far from our first house in Sherwood. Like most houses of the time it had a coal fireplace with a side oven and a stand to place pans over the open fire, a scullery and an outside toilet.

I celebrated my 15th birthday three days after these double deaths. This was the watershed day for most working class children. Henceforth they could leave compulsory education, enter the workforce and earn some money of their own.
Continuing their quest for educational maximisation for me, my parents had borrowed about £100 from Aunt Sarah, a large sum of money at the time, to pay the fees at the privately run Miller's Business College on Wheeler Gate in the centre of Nottingam.

I don't think they fully appreciated that they were placing me in an alien world, far removed from my experience of life. Firstly, I was the only boy in a class of around twenty. Indeed, my recollection is of only three boys including me out of about one hundred. Secondly, most of the students came from private schools and the remainder had attended grammar schools. Thirdly, I was only fifteen years old. Everyone else was sixteen. Only a year difference but it was a chasm for me. Fourthly, the raison d'tre of the College was to turn out secretaries, assistants to the bosses in the mind of a working class boy.

Fifthly, I had little experience of so many girls, with no sisters and little social contact with them since primary school. Sixthly, I viewed most of the girls as posh. Both accent and demeanour placed them in a different social group.

Ironically, the only other person on the course who did not appear to fit in was a somewhat older woman named Winnie. Her fees were being paid by the government. By one of those strange coincidences that seem to afflict us all at least once in our lives, she was lodging for the duration of the course with Mrs Roberts at 48 Birrell Road.

When I started on the course I was delivering newspapers. Inevitably and much to my chagrin it became common knowledge amongst my classmates, such persons being perceived as occupants of a different world. The course was largely inappropriate for me. I never did get to take shorthand at anything even like a slow speed. It was almost quicker to write in longhand.

My early foray into bookkeeping fared little better. My typing skills did advance somewhat better, thanks to my father hiring a typewriter for me to practise on at home.

I had no way of knowing it at the time but my proficiency with the keyboard provided a lasting and profound legacy of my year spent at the college. Subsequently I was able to earn more money during National Service with the Royal Air Force, type all my material during twenty-four years of teaching without having to rely on pool typists, type up my thesis for my masters degree after being let down by an incompetent typist, type countless letters during my political and campaigning activities and, last but not least, type up this book a hell of a lot faster than most other people who spend hours at a computer keyboard. I am sure I have saved thousands of hours over the years, all owed to the one year I spent in a somewhat inhospitable environment.
Despite my parents' ignorance, they acted in what they perceived to be my best interests and at considerable expense to them at a time when they were not very well off. For that I am eternally grateful.