Copy of Draft for Chapter 5

Chapter 5

1949 - 1954.

St.Brendan’s, Bristol, Rugby, Violent Education,

But above all the Sad Death of my Mum.

The picture above is the School Badge for St.Brendan’s College, Clifton, that was worn on black school blazers and caps by boys attending that grammar school in Bristol. It was a school founded and operated by the Irish Christian Brothers.

The Brothers in Bristol were a branch of a lay teaching order set up by Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice in Waterford in 1806. The work by him was counter to the Penal Laws that existed until the 1820’s that denied an education and franchise to Irish Catholics. Many people were inspired by his dedication, piety, and his success in providing education where only “hedge schools” had previously existed. The lay order of Brothers gained approval and support from the hierarchy and expanded then with the passage of time the order extended to England, the Dominions, and the USA. For the next hundred years the Christian Brothers' Schools of Cork continued to educate children. In 1812 a community was established in Dublin and by 1907 there were 10 communities educating around 6000 children.By the end of the 19th century the influence of the Christian Brothers had spread around the world. By 2002, their 200th anniversary, there were about 1800 Christian Brothers, 600 of them in Ireland. But, by the millenium, the history of the Christian Brothers was irrevocably sullied when widespread and systematic child abuse was uncovered in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland. It then transpired that more allegations were made against the Christian Brothers than the other male orders combined. (Allegations were not confined to Ireland, with reports of abuse occurring in orders in Australia, the US and Canada.) The Christian Brothers accepted the findings were correct and in November 2009 the organisation announced they would be paying £145m million in reparations.

I preface this chapter with these statements about the Brothers because it is so significant. The Brothers provided an excellent education but sometimes the cost was awful in boys lives ruined by sexual abuse, violent punishments, and religious bullying. My son-in-law in Canada lost a school friend to suicide because of this abuse in Newfoundland. Now I realise that some of my school companions must have had an awful time too.

And so it was on a September morning 1949 I went to Oldfield Park railway station in Bath and caught the 0803 hrs steam train to Temple Meads, Bristol, to start my secondary education at St.Brendan’s College, Clifton. There were about a dozen boys going to the same school, two or three were older, and there were a couple of other lads off to Bristol Grammar from the next two stations Saltford and Keynsham. Bristol Grammar is another famous old grammar school founded in 1532, and then there is Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital founded by Royal Charter in 1590 also known as QEH and this is the last boys only school left in Bristol. The QEH boys used to wear long blue coats with bright yellow long knee stockings exactly as they did in Elizabeth 1’s reign but unfortunately they stopped this about the year 2000. Then there was Clark’s College, a co-educational establishment that was originally set up to train youngsters for the Civil Service. These children wore an extremely bright striped blazer and seemed more ‘modern’ than all other schools. Traditions and competitions were vibrant in Bristol’s education system.

I was again “streamed” as I had passed both scholarships and so I ended up in the top set known as ‘alpha’ and that automatically put me in groups focusing on Latin, Ancient Greek, and the Arts in general. There was at least two hours homework every night and there was school on Saturday mornings until noon. The school had a terrific reputation in rugby and this extended to cricket and running. There was an expectation of participation and trying to make the school teams. there was also an equal expectation of support by attendance if one did not make the team.

Each day at school ended by walking from Clifton to the Center, taking a bus to Temple Meads Station and then catching the 1632 steam train from Platform 4 and getting home about a quarter past five each evening.

I do not remember being unhappy in this first year at St,Brendan’s College but I did find it very, very different from all previous schooling. I greatly missed my friends Brian Cottle and Robert Elphick, Brian went to Bath Technical College, and Rob to Bath Grammar School. But I also missed the girls that were my friends. Molly Davis went to La Sainte Union, I had a crush on her and she embarrassed me by congratulating me in Manvers Street when I was with my Mum. Then there was Jane Bailey, Janet Beer [ a very pretty girl from Freshford] and Anne Dottingham who was a really good friend, someone you could really trust, a really nice girl. But I am never unhappy for long and I am never ever bored.

I guess the first thing to deal with at that time was the Brothers’ factor. I had been used to priests and others in Holy Orders and they were dressed appropriately in black suit and Roman collar or long black cassock. The Brothers at that time wore similar garb except they donned a long black cassock and large deep black sash around the waist when teaching. Then came sports day and there before me was this behemoth in rugby kit with legs like tree trunks and with what appeared to barbed wire sprouting from those gigantic thighs who shouted in a thick Irish brogue -”Right lad, tackle me!” [Behemoth comes from the Hebrew word b'hemah meaning beast.]  I was totally confused and a bit scared but this was a game and I soon got the idea. What was a different matter was the violence in the classroom.

My first form master was Mr.Murphy, a short young teacher with buck teeth, who, on retrospective analysis, was a twerp full of his own importance who taught Latin besides being the Form Master for Two Alpha. I call him a twerp because he would use the strap at the drop of a hat and one should be able to exercise discipline without resorting to violence and pain. Still I guess he belonged to that group of incompetents who fail to understand that the word discipline is linked to disciple which comes from the Latin “discipulus” - follower. Some Latin student, eh? But the real exponents of brutal thrashing were the Brothers, they all carried a strap made of two pieces of leather stitched around a length of flexible whale-bone just over a foot long and designed to inflict pain without damage to a boy’s hand or bottom. We called it a ‘whack’ and I quickly became familiar with this device.

Let me give you an example of the gratuitous violence dished out by one Brother Monk, who took us for French in this my first term there. He was a small irascible man. Definitely ‘light blue touch paper and retire’ attitude to life. On this occasion the spark that generated the explosion of anger and physical pain was the letter “e” in French. Of course I knew the difference between these following letters:

è or in English, an e with an accent called grave,  

é or in English, an e with an accent called acute,

But what I did not know was the correct pronunciation of these letters and, despite giving me the correct enunciation I got it wrong. Out came the weapon of choice, whale-bone sheathed in black leather and he attempted to bang it into me six times, each time harder that the last blow on the hand. By the time he came to the last blow he was jumping to give optimum force and shouting the correct sound for each letter. It did not mean a thing to me all I was conscious of was the pain from successive blows to my raised palm. He was a horrible little bully in his latter years and he did nothing for my French and I do not like Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a little bully too.

Another Brother developed an even greater pain infliction - enter Brother “Spike” Sheehan and a wooden half-metre rule in his physics lessons. His method was to get the victim to place hands on a desk and bend forward so the trousers stretched tight across the bottom and then he would bring the rule very quickly down so the tip only just struck the tensed buttock. This was an immensely stinging blow, a horrible way to so called chastise anyone.

One day Spike decided that I needed punishment, I cannot for the life of me remember why, I never did anything really bad. It all went wrong and Spike misjudged his blow and the end of the rule hit me on the base of the spine - the coccyx. The pain was excruciating and I retched. I whirled around, tears in my eyes, fists clenched and I was close to hitting him, oh so very close. But I think memories of my fracas at St. John’s stayed my hand, thank God, and the taste of anger was rank copper in my mouth.  I think he realised that this had exceeded every limit this time. Some people look back on Spike Sheehan as a character, not so for me. another bully that got away with it. Violence generates nothing but negative results and, in this case, could well have seen me expelled for my reaction. What then for a career? I did see him many years later by a rugby pitch, he did not recognise me, and I could smell the drink on him. Brother Sheehan died in April 2012.

It was unfortunate that I had encountered these violent Brothers in my first term at St,Brendan’s but not all of them were so extremely brutal. The Headmaster, Brother T.A Lennon was another problem that emerged later.

The ordinary masters, with the exception of Murphy were great, and they had seen active service in the war. English teacher (and Bristol 1st XV full-back) Frank Duggan was amongst the lay teachers called-up: he saw service in the Italian campaign and had been wounded. The chemistry master was Squadron Leader “Bung” Rose from the RAF, a larger than life personality,then there was Major Tagney [English teacher} had served in the Royal Artillery [as did Tina’s Father], and then there was Captain Davis [Art Master] who had been a camouflage expert. None of these men were given to gratuitous violence. They had discipline and respect from all by who they were. Add to that they were really top class in their subjects, really top class.

In this first term of the Autumn of 1949 I was introduced to the total glory and awe inspiring experience of singing Gregorian Plainchant with 200 boys in the Pro Cathedral Clifton and ultimately singing a Requiem Mass. This was a service for a boy younger than me who had died of cancer. I can still sing the whole Mass - it never leaves your memory once you have participated in such heart touch ceremony, the haunting solemnity never fails to resonate. I am writing this after Easter 2014 and I think too of singing ‘Regina Coeli’ oftentimes - I find the joy of that wonderful.

There are other events in 1949 that should be noted in context of this story. Firstly conscription was regularised and the National Service. From 1 January 1949, healthy males 17 to 21 years old were expected to serve in the Armed Forces for 2 years, and remain on the reserve list for four years. They could be recalled to their units for up to 20 days for no more than three occasions during these four years. Men were exempt from National Service if they worked in one of the three "essential services": coal mining, farming, and the merchant navy for a period of eight years. If they quit early, they were subject to being called up. Now although it did not affect me in 1949 I was aware of it on the horizon like every boy at that time. I knew that I would be exempt but for many others this was going to be something that would complicate their lives.

In 1950 the Christian Brothers acquired 50 acres of land plus two houses, including The Beeches, in Brislington, Bristol. [This was on the road out of Bristol to Keynsham .]  Much of the land had been acquired from Brislington House, a former private lunatic asylum for the wealthy founded by Dr. Edward Long Fox (1762-1835) – who had created a number of ornamental walkways through the grounds as part of a pioneering technique in the early nineteenth century believing that healthy outdoor walking would heal damaged minds. You can imagine the jokes that circulated with this news.  St. Brendan’s School sports field in Westbury was vacated and sold. Brislington provided superb new sports grounds and I was destined to enjoy this for the rest of my school days.

Going to school in Bristol really enhanced and stimulated all my ideas of going to sea and a life of seeing far away places with adventures and challenges. Bristol had been a major seaport since 1247 when they diverted the River Frome and linked it up with the River Avon. The Frome would be roughly where the Bristol Centre is today. The City Docks were vibrant with activity in 1950’s as I went to school each day. It was a Port full of sights and smells, yes, smells, many very noticeable and pleasant. I remember clearly the wonderful smell of Seville oranges as one of MacAndrews’ cargo ships opened its hatches to discharge a full cargo of oranges destined for marmalade. Then there was always a Scandinavian ship in with a cargo of timber usually pine or wood pulp from one of the Baltic states or Siberia in the Soviet Union. Pine has a wonderful clean smell. There were unusual cargoes too such as esparto grass from North Africa in great big bales below decks and on deck - this was a commodity used in the manufacture of very high grade paper such as bank notes. There were links with Iceland, Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland - for 145 years stout came to Bristol from Dublin. Sherry came into the port in lots of 900 oaken barrels. Sand and gravel came in frequent trips by sand dredgers from the many banks in the Bristol Channel.. Ashmead’s barges brought more wood pulp up the Avon from Avonmouth with busy tugs. The back streets had bonded warehouses that I passed as I went to catch my bus to Temple Meads. Each day brought another scene another story.

We were tested at the end of each term and given a rating, in December 1949 I was in a class of 41 boys with an average age around 12 and I achieved 13th place that dropped to 15th by the time of breakup for summer holidays. Best marks? Maths, Art, and - wait for it - Music!  The reasons for this were that I was into Euclidean Geometry as it is used in chartwork at sea and the music? well it was the Gregorian Chant.

In the Autumn of 1950 I really got into rugby in a big way. Thankfully I was free of the odious Mr Murphy as I moved up to Form 3 Alpha and came under the jurisdiction of Brother Ring. He was a precise, neat, tall man with a sense of no messing but he did not use the wack right left and centre. I liked him from the outset, he told me to stand up turn around, sit down, and then he said calmly that I would playing lock forward [second row of scrum] and to report to him kitted-out accordingly next sports day. I never looked back because he was the one who emphasised focus on basics and getting basics right.

The school has an unusually powerful reputation even to being called a “cradle of English Rugby” once in the Daily Telegraph. The following is a copy of the statement on the website of St.Brendan’s Old Boys that will put it into perspective:  

St Brendan’s Old Boys RFC first started in 1929, with players from St. Brendan’s college meeting once a week and starting what was to become a strong rugby community within Bristol. With a colourful and decorated history, St Brendan’s RFC was a force to be reckoned with, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, winning the coveted Bristol Combination Cup several times and boasting a rich history in producing several club and international players.

In October 1971, St Brendan’s College played a match against an International XV, made up mainly of the British Lions, who had just returned from beating the All Blacks, and included that famous pairing of Gareth Edwards and Barry John.  They beat the school 62 points to 35, but when you consider there were nine Lions and seven internationals in their side it wasn’t a bad result!   In the 1980s, St Brendan’s RFC was represented by no less than 6 international players: Mike Rafter (Club President), Peter Polledri, Nigel Pomphrey, David Scheifler, David Peglar and Paul Jeffery

The school also had a considerable reputation of high standing in drama. Each year the school put on a very high quality play and in late 1950 we put on a superb production of Hamlet by William Shakespeare. I volunteered and became a stagehand and make-up artist. It was all very professional, Bristol Old Vic staff coached me and others in make-up for a week prior to production; they brought in a huge plate glass to use to reflect the ghost and been seen through. This was enormously effective and ultimately caused the audience to gasp - including my Parents. We used thunder flashes in big tanks and big cannon balls rolling overhead to simulate thunder and lightning - all causing wonderment. The actors, all boys, were amazing. It was a great experience.

The one problem that remained for me at the end of 1950 was the Headmaster Brother T.A.Lennon, and, on retrospect, I guess that he was a problem for a select few other boys at that time. Brother Lennon was a formidable Irishman with a tough no-smiling grim visage. He had a crew cut, beetle brows, horn rim spectacles, to be honest he would have made a great police sergeant in downtown New York. He tore around the school at great speed looking for misdemeanours and whacking those caught. But his greatest problem was if he selected you for what we as St Brendan boys called “a pep talk.” I was subject to two of these incidents in my time at the school and I found both experiences very disturbing, they made me angry, it was so inappropriate. These so called pep talks were a prurient inquisition of a boy’s sexuality. The first question that he asked was if I had any girlfriends and I answered in complete innocence in the affirmative. Of course I had girl friends, think of Anne Dottingham, Jane Bailey, and all the others back in Bath - they were my friends. He immediately pounced and asked had I touched them? it was a mortal sin! And there was more like that and I was mortified by this all and wanted out. I told him explicitly that I went to confessions and that was that. I never told my Parents about this, why would you? more to the point would they believe you? Some boys suffered much distress by this kind of encounter because it seemed to be telling them they would be damned to hell for absolutely anything to do with girls. The second time that he nailed me for a pep talk I was older and I guess a bit wiser. Brother Lennon got wind that one of the junior boys from Bath had exposed himself on the train and he was looking for someone to give information. Goodness you would have thought that Bath was Sodom & Gomorrah to have heard him but I did not bite and he sent me away with dire warnings of mortal sins etc. He was a real piece of work. It is a good job that he never found out how much that I loved Madam Lucy Margaret [and still remember her with love] because he would have sullied that too. It is a poor sad individual that cannot identify love from lust or other negative feelings.The Brothers should have remembered the words of Our Lord who said: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.” Brother Lennon taught me to hate.

There is much nicer memory for 1950 and that was a joy for every boy in England because that was the year the comic “Eagle” was launched. [Tina remembers the sister publication called “Girl” that was an equal success delivered every Wednesday with the newspaper.] Like every boy I too became a fan of Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future - in his war against the evil Mekon but the thing that really sold it to me were the wonderful cutaway diagrams of sophisticated machinery and in particular ships. I remember clearly the Shell Oil tanker “Velutina” that at 45,000 tons was the biggest tanker in the world and the diagram for this ship was superb. You can imagine my excitement when my Father arranged a visit to Barry to see this tanker. But it was even more exciting.

In 1950 the last two working tallships, four-masted barques, the “Pamir” and “Passat” docked in Barry, South Wales, at Ranks Mills, with full cargoes of wheat from Australia. The Shell Tanker “Velutina” entered a refit in drydock in Barry at the same time and my Father’s ship the N.A.V. “Bedenham” was in Barry for maintenance. My Father took me away from school for a day and we went to Barry from Bath and I saw all four ships. Can you begin to imagine the unutterable pleasure? Can you think of a better way to be introduced to the world of ships that had disappeared, the world of new ships with all the massive advances in technology? It was a most memorable visit and my desire to go to sea became a firm commitment, a true dedication to sea-fever. One thing became clear from my visit - I was under no illusions about the profession that I was choosing - it would be tough. Many disciplines to learn, much to learn on working with a crew, and very physically demanding.

The last point to note about 1950 was the outbreak of the Korean War that was to go on until I left school. An armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, by which point over 1,000 British servicemen had lost their lives and some 1,060 taken prisoner by the North Korean forces. Most famously, nearly all those in 1st Battalion The Gloucestershire Regiment (now part of The Rifles) were killed or taken prisoner during the Battle of the Imjin River in April 1951.Many of these were National Servicemen so that brought it home to schoolboys. One’s eighteenth birthday does not seem far off once you are in secondary education.

In December 1950 I was a teenager just past 13th birthday and my study marks had slipped particularly dragged down by the introduction of Greek. I liked Latin but could not get on with Greek. Christmas was good and was to prove the last of old-fashioned celebrations as will emerge later in this tale. We were all together and Jack made it with his usual great generosity and glorious food from Culmstock.

And so it was January 11th 1951 that I started another year at St.Brendan’s College. I was going from strength to strength in rugby becoming a significant second row forward particularly in the line out and open play. I so enjoyed going by coach to Cheltenham, St, Illtyds, Cardiff, Bath and so on and we were winning. We were quite formidable both in speed and size. I would get home late Saturday evenings and more often my Mum had a wonderful stew with dumplings ready.

April 1951 was an enormous shock for my Father. The ship that he had commissioned at the beginning of the war blew up in Gibraltar. The Naval Armament Vessel “Bedenham” arrived in Gibraltar on the 24th April and tied up at the Gun Wharf to await discharge of depth charges into lighters. Work started 3 days later on 27th April and then one of these high-explosive devices ignited in one of the lighters. Bear in mind that the depth charges were not armed with fuses, they were huge steel barrels packed with explosive material. A fire-party quickly tried to control the blaze from the quay to no avail and the intense fire spread to the NAV “Bedenham” following an explosion. Shortly after this events really went out of control and the ship was subjected to a massive explosion and the ship’s bow was blown out of the water and onto Gun Wharf, while the rest of the ship sank. Sadly 13 people were killed in the explosion.The crew of the Bedenham had already abandoned the ship by the time of the explosion, with the exception of the Captain and the Naval Armament Supply Officer, both of whom were blown into the water but subsequently rescued. Massive damage was caused to the town and, in particular, the Cathedral and Government Buildings.

My Father first heard of this at home on the radio from a BBC News Broadcast! we did not, repeat WE DID NOT have a telephone. My Father would not have one, it was as simple as that. Anyway very shortly after the news there was a Humber Super Snipe driven by a Womens Royal Naval rating [WRN or Wren] outside our front door to take my Father to the Admiralty to deal with this emergency. It later transpired that faulty or ‘dirty’ explosives had been utilised in the manufacture of this huge bombs and the whole batch were dumped at sea in the Hurd Deep off the Channel Islands. [Greenpeace was not around in those days!] My Father arranged this process. The Admiralty took full responsibility for this disaster and paid out over a £¼ million in reparations and that was a lot of money in those days.

Not many people had cars in those days so neighbours were most impressed to see this impressive Government car, the Humber Super Snipe driven by a WRN, drawing up outside our home in Bath. It was not the first time this had happened. Bath, of course, is an inland city in Somerset and it had been a wartime decision to move most of the Admiralty to Bath from London to escape bombing. The UK had joined NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] in 1949 and that had resulted in a lot of work for my Father particularly in the Naval ports of Portsmouth and Plymouth so the car was the best way to get there in those times. So quite a few times, my Father and some other Admiralty official or Naval Officer would be driven from Bath to either of these two south coast harbours.

Late 1950 or early 1951 St.Brendan’s formed a contingent of the Combined Cadet Force or CCF that was a natural since the college had the officers. So in the summer the lads went off to camp to be subjected to marching, maneuvers, and other military activity.There was one lad called Brooks, actually a great keen guy of little stature, who tripped in war games and shot his big toe with a blank - this was extremely painful to his foot and ego!

It was that summer that my Father arranged for me to sail as supernumerary to crew on board the Naval Armament Vessels “Kinterbury” and “Throsk”. I joined at the munitions dock in Gosport and subsequently visited the Naval Munitions Quays at Woolwich on the Thames, the depot almost under the Tamar Bridge, Plymouth,  Milford Haven the mine depot, Belfast, and the military quay at Stranraer. It was at this latter ferry port that I watched the then new type of ship. the roll on/ roll off ferry “Princess Victoria”, sailing several times to Larne in Northern Ireland. Later in 1953 this ferry tragically sank with the loss of 133 lives. My Father arranged all this not so much for pleasure but as test of my keenness to pursue a life of seafaring. It confirmed my desire to do just that. Everything was great, it all appealed to all of my ideas.

Before I had sailed away on that great summer venture I had been increasingly aware that all was not well with my Mum. She had tried hard to keep life as normal as possible but then with my Father’s job one could not expect a life as others with more mundane routines. This had placed an added pressure on my Mother and it became increasingly clear that she was ill, seriously ill. Cancer is an evil sneaking illness and that is how it started to attack my Mother sometime in 1951 My Mum had unaccountable bouts of temperature change and swellings in the neck and armpits, as I said, something was very wrong.

Mum was waiting across the road from the bus stop when I came home from the sea that first time. It was a lovely summer’s day and she was dressed in a lovely short sleeve dress that my eldest brother Jack had bought in Bermuda. I crossed the road and she held me tight and told me that she loved me. She had told this me many times before but somehow this was special and I remember it so clearly. Sadly this would prove to be the first and last time she welcomed her son home from the sea.

I went from strength to strength in rugby and by late 1951 I was rated very highly and became captain of the Colts Team in 1952/1953. This was due in very large part to Brother Ring and another Brother Browne. They were clinically remote and focused on getting basics absolutely right and emphasising the point that rugby was a 15 man team game. We played hard but fair and it worked. A measure of our success may be gauged that we played King Edward’s School, [KES] Bath, and beat them. The school traced its history back to 1552 with funds set up by King Henry VIII and later a petition to King Edward VI in 1580. The year that we defeated them at rugby they were field hockey champions of England so no slouches at sport. We defeated them by 100 points to nil that became a record and we did that on the Rec where Bath play their rugby today. We did it by playing 100% fifteen men rugby, we played total rugby. The team was outstanding as a team but there were some players that you would say were born to play in certain positions and recognised as such by coaching. Two of these were boys of Polish origin, one was Frederick Sziemasko who you pick every time as the ideal front row player. He was kind of squat, very strong particularly in neck and shoulders, and the other was Norbert Chylewski who I had befriended at Bath. He was your quintessential winger, lightning fast and completely focused.

These three Brothers probably typified why the education provided by St, Brendan’s College was such a success to many. They were very good at their subjects and, whilst they would use the strap, this was not frequent and if you got the strap then you felt that you had deserved it. The other side of the coin was that these Brothers gave praise rarely and, if you received commendation, then you really were deserving of that praise. They had no favourites nor did they bully anyone.

 

I have good reason for remembering Brothers Ring and Browne plus another Brother Lovelady and that is my religious education that was part of each and every day. One would have expected that a dogmatic Irish Catholicism would have prevailed but that was not the case. Yes, each classroom had a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the left corner of the room and a statue of Our Lord with the Sacred Heart in the right corner. They were mini altars of devotion with candles and sprays of flowers at times. We observed the Angelus and similar devotions. But these three Brothers encouraged debate and it was a complete debate too. I did not expect this in a million years. They really allowed questions that I did not expect on subjects such as suicide, baby death, religious war, martyrdom, and so on. These were really adult debates no holds barred. I can thank them for introducing me to Thomas Aquinas. I really enjoyed this debate and particularly that they allowed arguments against Catholic doctrine to be aired. Needless to say that I achieved high marks in examinations on religion.

At home all was not well. My Mother was becoming increasingly unwell. She was diagnosed as having Hodgkin's Disease, a relatively uncommon form of cancer where lymphoma cells develop in the lymph nodes. My Mum had it develop first in the neck where she had surgery, she had radiation treatment as the year progressed but then it spread through the lymphatic system. She became increasingly weak as the early months of that year, 1952, came and passed.

The house where we lived in Bath was not the ideal place for living never mind being unwell. We had one source of warmth - a fire in a grate in the living room that burnt coal [when available] or wood or coke. We had an outside toilet or one used a chamber pot or, in the case of my Mum, sometimes a bedpan. We had no bathroom, we had a copper boiler that used gas [coal gas in those days] that held approximately 10 gallons of water and that was then run into a tin bath. The same system was used for washing clothes. We had no washing machine, dryer, vacuum cleaner, telephone, television or motor car.

So I had to frequently help but my Mother also took this as the opportunity to teach me basics of cooking, the basics of washing and ironing, and the basics of ‘make and mend’ such as darning socks or mending a tear in clothing. She did this not just so that I could help but she knew that I wanted to go to sea and all those basic skills would make life much easier for me. Life was rather full on, I was sad for my Mum, but cannot say that I was unhappy, perhaps I did not have time to be unhappy. I did not realise that Mum was dying until the last week or so when she was taken into the Sisters of Mercy Nursing Home at Oldfield Park. Even then Mum was chatting with two of the Nuns brightly most days. She had helped one of those Sisters deal with breast cancer two years earlier and they were fond of her at the Convent. They did admire her skills at crochet and knitting but that activity had stopped by late 1951. Then one July evening my Father stayed on at the nursing home and came home early the following morning and quietly closed the curtains to cut out the morning light.

          My Mother died on the 12th July 1952, she was 45 years of age, just over three months before my fourteenth birthday.

Dad asked us if we wanted to see Mum and I told him that we did want the last memory of her to be in death but as she had been alive. I honestly cannot remember too much then for that time except on the day of the funeral. The cortege was going through Widcombe on the way to the Catholic Cemetery at Perrymead. I saw the Mother of my friend, Rob Elphick, shopping in Widcombe Village and indeed she crossed the road ahead of the hearse. She never looked at us, apparently she was oblivious to us, and never glanced our way. I know that she would have been mortified had she had known that this had happened and I never ever told her of the incident. But somehow the image has never ever left my memory although the rest of events then are very blurred. Perrymead was solemn and I looked across at the two altar boys standing where I had stood either side of Father Kelly wondering about grief. Now I felt sorrow and felt numb and speechless.

Recently Tina and I visited Perrymead. It is nestled in a valley by Combe Down and Widcombe. It could only be England. It is timeless, it  is tranquil, and one gets a sense of a place slowly going back to nature. It is not seedy just very old and plants all seem to be just wandering. It is very quiet and traffic noise is not evident so birdsong and insects are the only sounds that can be heard. In the far distance there was the sound of little children at play in some small school yard. These are joyful sounds.

Family friends, Mr. & Mrs. Bennet did look after Keith and I from time to time. They were a lovely elderly couple who never had children and they would have been such loving parents. Mr. Bennet was a cabinet maker, and in fact made bespoke furniture for the RMS “Queen Mary”  before the war. We were entranced with their diet - they had mint sauce with everything even eggs and bacon and we loved it.

Going back to school was strange. Nobody offered condolences, nobody said prayers for my Mother, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Strangely my grades did not suffer and actually it was the opposite, I was nearly top of the class. By the end of 1952 I was appointed Captain of the Colts XV and I was becoming a force in rugby. I played Second Row where I was at the heart of the scrum and the main player in lineouts.

The year 1952 was memorable for the United Kingdom for several reasons and outstanding of these were - the death of H.M. King George VI from cancer with Queen Elizabeth II ascending the throne in February and the nation entering the nuclear club. I remember the universal sadness on the death of the King, the nation mourned the passing of the man more than the monarch and my Father wore a black diamond on his top coat sleeve to show his respect. He had suffered a war with us and not escaped to somewhere safe like the Duke of Windsor.

In October 1952 the United Kingdom joined the other two nations, USA and USSR, in the nuclear club by detonating an atomic bomb in Australia. So my Father visited Harwell and Aldermaston, the homes of the bomb, and was inducted into the inner circles of secrecy. After all the bomb would need transport and shipping might figure in this so my Father might be involved in the marine transportation of this deadly weapon and his extensive experience would be an asset. Of course, we had the inevitable visit from MI5 to ensure all was well.