Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad

by Phinn, Gervase

  'I couldn't go in the shelter without my bloomers on,' she told her rescuer. 'What would people think?'

  'I should think those in the shelter have enough to think about, Doris,' said the neighbour, 'without being interested or bothered whether you're wearing your knickers or not.' Another neighbour arrived at the air-raid shelter to discover that she had forgotten something. Hurrying back to her house, she was stopped by the ARP warden.

  'And where are you going, Maggie?' he asked. 'Don't you know there's an air raid on?'

  'I've left my teeth on the kitchen table,' she told him.

  'Get back in the shelter,' he said. 'Germans are dropping bombs, not bloody sandwiches.'

  During the war, she told me, bananas were in very short supply. Only pregnant women were able to get them. Mrs Smith's sailor boyfriend at the time knew she had a real liking for this particular fruit and managed to get her one. On a date to the local cinema, as they sat cuddled up together in the darkness on the back row, he told her he had a little surprise for her and thrust a banana into her hand. 'My father's warned me about sailors,' she told him, and slapped the poor man's face before promptly leaving the building. The following day he called at the house to explain, bringing the said banana as proof.

  On the very last day I delivered a card to Mrs Smith. It was from the post boy.

  Just after the sixth form and during the weeks before departing for college, I secured a part-time job in a large bread factory on Greasborough Street, on the outskirts of Rotherham. On the first morning, the other three students and I met the foreman, a loud, bald-headed, rotund little man called Chuck.

  'What's thy name?' he fired at the first student.

  'Edward,' came the faint reply.

  'Reight, Ted, get thee sen down theer, thar on t'Farmhouse Crusties.' He turned to the next. 'And what's thy name?' he snapped again.

  'Robert,' the nervous student replied.

  'Reight, Bob, get thee sen down theer,' he said, pointing in the opposite direction, 'tha'r on t'slicers. And watch weer tha' put thee hands. We don't want fingers in t'bread.' He held up a hand, showing two missing fingers. Poor Bob gulped. Then he turned his attention to the third student, a tall, blond-haired nervous-looking youth with a face erupting with acne. 'And what's thy name?'

  'Julian,' came the reply.

  Chuck looked as if he had been smacked in the face. 'Julian?' he exclaimed. 'Thy name's Julian?'

  'Yes,' the student whispered.

  Chuck's voice roared the full length of the factory. 'Hey lads, we have a Julian in!' This was followed by wild guffaws from the twenty or so men, and by Chuck mincing along with his hand on his hip. Then he turned to me. 'And thee at t'back, what's thy name, pal?' he asked, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes.

  'Dick!' I shouted.

  I learnt a great deal about life, work and human nature in that bread factory.

  Chuck, aided and abetted by some old hands, took delight in playing tricks on the students. I guess it was because a life baking bread, after the initial fascination, became incredibly boring and predictable and these clever ruses lightened the monotony. But there may have been more to it than that. It may have been born out of resentment - the fact that these bright young things would earn a bit of pocket money over the holidays and then swan off to university and end up with fat salaries and company cars. If they ever did return to the bread factory it would be as pen-pushing managers and company accountants, engineers or directors. They needed bringing down a peg or two, showing everyone they were not that clever.

  Some of the tricks played were funny, harmless pranks, others were cruel and humiliating. One student discovered a dead mouse underneath his sandwiches in his snap box and spent most of the shift retching in the lavatory. Another had his bike loaded on to a van with the bread and had to walk all the way home. One poor lad, Ray, with his pale eyes and wispy attempt at a beard, was told by Chuck to report to the stores.

  'Tha can't go into factory wi' that bloody excuse for a beard sproutin' on tha chin,' he told the student. 'There's such a thing as 'ealth and 'ygiene, tha knaas. All 'air has to be covered. That's why we all wear net caps and overalls and special shoes. Thy 'as to either shave off that beard o' yourn or get it covered up. In t'meantime, go down to the stores and ask for a beard cap.'

  'A what?' asked the student.

  'A beard cap,' repeated Chuck. 'To cover up that bum-fluff.' The student duly reported to the stores, where the man in charge enquired of him, without a trace of a smile, what size beard he had.

  'I'm not sure,' stuttered the student.

  'Is it a four and seven-eighths or a five and one-eighth?'

  'I've no idea,' the student replied.

  The storeman sighed wearily. 'I reckon it's a four and seven-eighths.' He ducked underneath the counter, emerging a moment later shaking his head. 'We're clean out of four and seven-eighths.'

  'Should I try a five and one-eighth?' asked the student.

  'None of them in either,' replied the man. 'There's been a rush on them.' Then, producing a large white cloth, the store-man told the perplexed and credulous student, 'You shall have to wear this round your face for the time being.'

  The poor lad, now probably an eminent doctor or a university professor, spent the whole of the morning with a white cloth wrapped around his head. He only discarded the 'beard cap' when the manager, on his daily walk around the factory, asked him if he had a sore tooth.

  I was not immune from the tricks. My first job was to wheel the bread from the factory to the vans for loading. The loaves would be stacked on sliding metal shelves on a tall trolley with heavy rubber wheels. At the very bottom was a locking device, triggered by a push of the foot. Of course, Chuck never mentioned the lock and on my first trip down the long ramp, observed by the foreman with arms folded over his chest, the trolley gathered speed, then careered out of control, collided with a van and spilt its load. I was devastated and began frantically picking up the bread.

  'Bloody marvellous, that!' shouted Chuck, drawing everyone's attention to my distress and embarrassment. 'Bloody students don't know their arses from their elbows. All that bloody learnin' and he can't push a bloody trolley wi'out dropping all t'bread. Comes out of tha wages that, tha knaas.'

  On the next occasion I was let loose with the trolley, Chuck sidled over, surreptitiously activated the locking device with a secretive flick of his foot and then sauntered off with the words, 'And watch what tha're doin' this time.' I spent the next five minutes pushing and pulling to get the trolley moving.

  It was Francis who helped me out. He was a quietly spoken and thoughtful Polish man who spent most of his breaks reading in the staff canteen. He never swore, never complained and helped me and other students out on many an occasion. He showed me the lock and how best to manoeuvre the unwieldy trolley. He then warned me never, under any circumstances, to go down to where the confectionery was prepared by the women under the supervision of the forewoman, Dora. I would, in due course, be told by Chuck to go and fetch some imaginary tool but I should always make some excuse. He kept this trick back for a couple of weeks later, when the students had dropped their guard. Many an unsuspecting student, Francis told me, had entered the confectionery department, been grabbed and had fruit flans, doughnuts, Eccles cakes and mince pies pushed down his pants. It was rumoured that one poor victim had been stripped by the women and had fresh cream daubed all over his privates.

  One morning Chuck sidled up. 'Go down the confectionery and ask Dora for a triple screwtop flange extractor,' he instructed me.

  I set off but spent the next five minutes hiding in a cubicle in the lavatory. I then returned. 'Dora told me to tell you that she needs a note from you,' I informed Chuck seriously. 'She said that the last triple screwtop flange extractor she sent up here has gone missing.'

  'Clever bugger,' mouthed Chuck, ambling off down the factory. After that he left me alone.

  Postscript

  In October 1966 Uncle Ted, i
n his white van, took me, my case and books, electric kettle, toaster and my portable Olivetti typewriter to Leeds, where I spent the next four years studying for my degree and certificate in education. Apart from the school trips to the Isle of Man, the annual fortnight in Blackpool and the brief encounter with camping in Derbyshire, I had never been away from home. My enthusiasm and eagerness the evening before setting off to train as a teacher was palpable. The great wide world awaited me, a world of new friends and greater challenges, and I embraced it with open arms. It was the start of an exciting adventure.

  I remember my first few weeks at college in Leeds thinking just how fortunate I had been with my teachers. Many of the students, the great majority of whom had been to grammar or independent schools and with whom I shared accounts of my own schooldays, described with little pleasure their own experiences in education. They spoke of their schools with little affection, as 'exam-factories', rigid authoritarian structures where they spent their time ingesting and regurgitating facts. They described sarcastic and sometimes violent teachers, tedious lessons and the obsession with examination results and Oxbridge entries. South Grove was different. The teachers were not scholarly or highly qualified, they didn't walk the corridors in academic gowns, but they were first-rate educationalists. They created an atmosphere where the pupils' curiosity could flourish, where we were allowed to think and question, where classrooms were cooperative, good-humoured places, where learning was not derived by the acquisition of a few arid facts but from an understanding and appreciation of the material. It was a child-centred environment well before the term was widely used by the progressive commentators of the late 1960s.

  Over the subsequent years more doors were opened for me by people who played an influential part in any future success I might have had. There was my tutor at Leeds, Dr Raymond Cowell, who developed further my love of books and reading; the first headteacher I worked for, the visionary, ever-supportive Dennis Morgan, who picked me to join the staff at Brinsworth High School soon after I had qualified as a teacher; and Brian Lee, the kindly and erudite Chief Education Adviser for Rotherham, who appointed me as the General Adviser for Language Development some years later. Then in 1998 Esther Rantzen came into my life. Following a talk I gave in support of Childline (the organization she founded) and which she attended, I was asked to appear on her prime-time television show and was brought to the public's attention. This led to the legendary Jenny Dereham of Michael Joseph publishers, editor of James Herriot and Miss Read, inviting me to write an account about my life as a school inspector in the Yorkshire Dales, a book which became (more to my surprise than anyone else's) a best-seller. By chance, the theatre promoter Nigel McIntyre heard me speak on stage at Derby and opened another door, signing me up for a nationwide tour with my one-man show.

  Finally there is my long-suffering wife, Christine. She has given me four wonderful children and has for thirty-six years put up with this mercurial, moody, demanding, garrulous character with the funny name. Recently she came to hear me on stage at the magnificent Royal Hall in Harrogate.

  'Did you ever imagine, Christine,' I asked her as she sat in the middle of the front row, 'in your wildest dreams, when you married me, that I would be doing this for a living?'

  She smiled. 'Darling,' she said, with all the blunt honesty of someone born in Yorkshire, 'you are never in my wildest dreams!'

  Good Parents

  (Parody in answer to Philip Larkin)

  They tuck you in, good parents do,

  They kiss your cheek and hold you tight,

  They fill your world with gentle dreams

  And pray you'll have a peaceful night.

  For they were tucked in, in their turn

  By mums and dads who loved them so,

  And by such loving quickly learnt

  To love their children as they grow.

  Good parents hand such happiness on,

  It's endless like the sky above,

  So learn this lesson parents do,

  And teach your children how to love.