A Life of Power and Persuasion

By Keith A. Elliott

Described as ‘an interesting and thought provoking book’ this autobiography by Keith A. Elliott MBE shares his career in the Metropolitan Police over 38 years from the late 1950’s to the late 1990’s uniquely in London’s West End dealing with many of the daily incidents and criminal acts as a front line police officer and where he was introduced to many elevated and influential members of society.

On leaving the police he also uniquely set up and ran a consultancy to the film industry making a contribution to over 75 films including the ‘Harry Potter’ series, ‘V’ for Vendetta’ using his knowledge and persuasive ability to obtain agreements on behalf of the film companies and at the same time ensuring that film directors and assistant directors and crew abided by the agreements negotiated with the authorities in London and the Counties. This process enabled the author to witness from the public perspective point of view the changing the changing role and performance of the police leading to the present day.

Coming from a humble background and childhood beset with poverty , deprivation and bullying he entered into a career in the police where he worked to make a difference for over 38 years and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Nov 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781800468528

Keith A. Elliott

Keith A. Elliott’s childhood was beset with poverty, deprivation and bullying. He entered into a career in the police, where he worked to make a difference for over 38 years. He lives in Hampshire.

Book preview

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Copyright © 2020 Keith A. Elliott, MBE

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1800468 528

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother,

who through much pain and anguish brought into the

world eight children, often going without herself,

ensuring that we were all benefactors of her love.

I also dedicate the book to my brother Mark,

a prince among men who was taken from us long before

he should have been; he was not only a brother but a dear friend.

Contents

Chapter One

The Early Art of Survival

Born during the Second World War at my maternal grandparents’ house in the then quiet village of Hedge End, I was placed in a drawer from a chest of drawers as no cradle or crib was available or affordable. We eventually moved to Swaythling, a suburb of Southampton, to be with my elder brother in a first floor flat and later to a rented house in Sholing, another suburb of Southampton where I was to spend the next fifteen years. From my frequent early childhood visits I have very fond memories of life at my birthplace, a double-fronted, rented, detached house next door to a Salvation Army hall, with the moving sound of the singing and band music on Sundays. At the side of the house was an often heavily-fruit-laden plum tree towering between the house and the hall. The hall and tree are now gone and a house has been built on the spot where they stood. There was a well at the rear of the house next to which I often lay on the ground looking down at the water boatmen skating across the water surface. Also at the rear of the house was a toilet, which was a bucket with a wooden seat over it and squares of newspaper hanging on a hook – no such luxury as tissue. The bucket was always emptied into a cesspit up the garden, a garden which produced amazing fruit and vegetables.

Grandfather, who was a smallholder and market gardener, always kept two working horses, some of which he trained himself to pull between cart shafts, in a stable at the end of the garden; he also kept a couple of pigs. The horses were used for a number of tasks including running a taxicab service when not being used for his market garden. To one side of the stables there were ferrets in a cage which my Uncle Jim looked after. I used to stand looking at these little brutes that had razor-like teeth as I learnt by prodding them through the wire mesh screens. Beyond the end of the garden there was a field which always seemed to be laid out to cabbage plants; this field is now a housing estate.

I recall, while enjoying listening to the singing in the hall, admiring the beautiful fuscias in the front garden and amusing myself by popping the unopened buds, much to the anger of Uncle Jim. My grandfather often used to cut the grass on the village recreation ground opposite the house with cutters drawn by his horses. He was a member of the Hampshire Fruit Growers Association and used to take my mother on the horse and cart to Botley Railway Station in the strawberry season with many large punnets of strawberries.

Strawberries were a massive industry in Hampshire. We had two aunts called Martha and Floss (Florence) who lived in Titchfield with an exceptionally large rear garden, more like a field, laid out to rows and rows of strawberry plants. My aunts cultivated and tended these throughout the year and thought nothing of getting up at 0500 to work on the field, and every summer our whole family would walk from Sholing to Titchfield and back, a round trip of eleven miles, to pick strawberries and return with a couple of large punnets.

I remember that strawberries then were delicious and included varieties such as Madame Phoebe and Royal Sovereign. When ripe you would be able to hold the strig and pull out the core still attached; they tasted delicious and smelt of summer.

Strawberries today I find are tasteless by comparison – hard and unidentifiable from the beautiful strawberries I knew. So much for genetic engineering. I believe the best results are obtained through natural selection. Sadly future generations will not know what they have missed.

Grandfather was a pipe smoker and I remember him sitting in the front room by the fire cutting tobacco from a solid block of what was called Battle Axe tobacco, rubbing it until it was supple, putting it in his pipe, lighting it with a spill from the fire and smoking it; the aroma was intoxicating. Through this process I was to sit still and be quiet. In truth a word never seemed to pass between us until I was told what to do or where to go next. He lived to his eighties. My grandmother on my mother’s side sadly passed away when I was three years of age. She was a very loving person and deeply religious; her father was one of the founders of the Methodist Chapel in Hedge End and he was often abused, sometimes violently, for his religious beliefs. Some things never change. The chapel contains a plaque in his memory.

A very interesting event happened one day on grandfather’s smallholding. He noticed that at fairly frequent intervals his vegetable crops were slowly disappearing, so one day he laid up in wait and bingo! He caught the light-fingered individual. It was the local police officer. Well, this was something. After an interesting conversation the officer left with a quantity of vegetables and grandfather would thereafter put a sack of veg over the officer’s gate once a week. Hard times for everyone, I guess.

Starting life during the war there was very little to go round and people had a very uncertain future. My mother used to describe a number of experiences during the war. She remarked that while working at the Fairey Aviation building at Hamble, the location was strafed by a lone German aircraft, during which she spent a frightening number of minutes in a ditch. She wrote to her mother once while sheltering from a German bombing raid on Southampton docks:

Dear Mum and Dad,

I do hope you have not been worrying too much although I know you must have been. We have been lucky to escape this time but I think it was because we prayed to God. We had to spend the night in the boiler house under the Docks station because the train drivers would not run the trains. It started as we left the floating bridge (Woolston) and we ran all the way to the station and then they let us go down to the boiler room with the guards and drivers and we stopped there with bombs dropping all around and then came one bomb in the goods yard and we all thought the end had come. It rocked the place and the pipes were buckled and it blew coal dust all over us. After that they took us down under the South Western Hotel until the all clear but even then the trains did not run until 4.30 this morning and we got home at 6.30 today and went straight to bed. I tried to telephone Harry Smith but the exchange had gone because of the raid. I was not frightened but I thought of you. The Gerrys did not give us a chance to get home. I hope this letter is not too long in reaching you. I suspect you see all the fires in the town, they hit a munitions dump and it kept on exploding. We had two incendiary bombs on the station but they were soon put out. Well I must say goodnight now, Mother, but I certainly thought I was never going to see you again. I can understand why the Woolston people walk to Hedge End. Lots of Love.

My father talked very little of the war but did say he got caught in an air raid while in Portsmouth Dockyard and witnessed the aftermath of a German bombing raid on Eastleigh airport. The bombs, having missed the airfield, hit the factory buildings nearby leaving many dead. All this I was told before we bombed German cities.

I was the second to be born of six boys and two girls. The eldest became a professor of mathematics, now in the USA. The next joined the Berkshire Constabulary before it became Thames Valley and later left to work for a water company (policing was not for him, his upbringing was not like mine), followed by Mark who started like his father on the tools as a carpenter and joiner as did five family generations before. He successfully rose from the floor to the position of regional director for a major construction company. With much sadness he was lost to us at the age of forty-nine; he was not only a brother but a dear friend. The next was a contracts manager also with a major construction company, and finally there was Andrew, an artist, who has disowned his family. My eldest sister became an air stewardess until she fell in love and started a family; she is now retired. The next sister became a school teacher and emigrated to Australia to teach, as her experience of teaching in the London Borough of Brent was near impossible, with class numbers as high as fifty pupils.

My mother was as near to a saint as a human could be. Having had a loving upbringing as a Methodist she signed the pledge and went through life without one alcoholic drink, nor did she smoke. She gave birth to all eight children at home, one of which she delivered herself, and suffered a couple of miscarriages. She worked tirelessly all her life dedicating her love to, and making many sacrifices for, her offspring; she often went without food so that we could eat. I was brought up on a diet of bread and milk boiled in a saucepan sprinkled with sugar. At one point in my childhood she took me to see Doctor Vaughn Havard as I would not eat potatoes. He said to her, ‘What do you not like eating?’ Upon her reply he said, ‘You have your dislikes and so does he. Good day.’ During rationing after the war my mother had many fairweather friends as they wanted the clothing rationing coupons; after rationing melted away so did her so-called friends. She would often take one or two old fraying woollen pullovers or jumpers and unravel the thread and create a number of balls of wool from which she would knit a fresh pullover or cardigan, or socks if there was insufficient reclaimed wool. There were a number of occasions when feeling the strain on her physically and mentally, she would be found sitting on her parents’ grave several miles away back in Hedge End.

My father was a very capable carpenter and joiner who worked only as and when he had to; he turned down as many jobs as he took, although it is fair to say that his health was not always good. His attitude was that one should not forget your origins and not get ideas above your place in life. I do not know if this philosophy (to which I cannot subscribe as we are all mortals) was an excuse not to progress or improve his lot, or because he had no desire to do more than necessary. His mother, who was a very hard woman, told him that he had married above himself. Perhaps that is why I tend to consider snobbery an English disease.

I was present at his mother’s house in Eastleigh as a child when my father and her were having an almighty row and I remember her shouting, ‘You’re nothing but a Tory bastard!’ As a child I could not help thinking, What is a ‘Tory bastard’? Well, nothing could be further from the truth it transpired, although it is not difficult to see from her background some logic in the statement today. However, this may be the reason why he did not buy his rented house when he had the offer and saw home ownership as a capitalist move, something his offspring would differ from him on. I would break the mould and my brother Mark and the remainder of the family would follow.

My father’s mother was not a person to tangle with. She kept chickens in the back garden and thought nothing of wringing a bird’s neck in front of everyone and cooking it for dinner. She used to wear a full-length apron and would slice a loaf of bread while holding it under her armpit and throw the slice down on the plate after applying the spread, possibly butter. She also bred and kept Alsatian dogs. When visiting her home you quickly learnt to hear all, see all and say nothing and keep your head down.

My grandfather on my father’s side had passed away three years before I was born. He, like my father, was a carpenter and joiner. At a young age he joined the Royal Engineers and was immediately posted to Cape Town in South Africa where his commanding officer described him on his service papers as a ‘very superior carpenter’.

Shortly after returning to England he was recruited into the Royal Flying Corps and posted to Eastleigh as a flight sergeant working on the ‘flying machines’. From time to time he would make items of furniture and other curios from discarded pieces of aircraft propeller, which still exist within the wider family today. He later became a member of the Royal Air Force for a short number of years as the RFC was transformed into the RAF.

In those days most employers would keep a week’s pay in hand from their employees, a practice for what good reason escapes me, and my father would often take a job and at the end of the week sack himself to get the week’s pay that was owed him. To their credit neither of my parents ever went on the social and there were no such benefits as tax credits, income support or housing allowance. My father was never short of work offers but would only take a job when he thought it was right, or he needed money, or it was a challenge. He was very good at his job; on more than one occasion without help he would build the complete roof of a house on the ground from the basic timbers. The roof would be lifted into position by a crane and laid on the house and every time it was a perfect fit.

There were many Saturdays I had to spend helping him repair sash windows. The lead weights would break away from their rope cords and fall down within the cavity of the building, and on many occasions I would, because of my thin hands and arms, have to reach down the cavity to rescue the weight, often grazing my knuckles after disturbing spiders and other crawling creatures. The whole process was messy, dusty and dirty, and stripping the window frames down and reassembling them would take most of the day, so no time to be out playing with my chums.

At one of the houses where we repaired the sash windows, the owners, Mr and Mrs Harding, had a large pigeon loft holding a considerable flock of Tumbler pigeons, often seen in the neighbourhood flying in group formation and suddenly doing a back flip in flight. Well, as I stood helping my father, Mr Harding came into the room and offered to sell me a couple of pigeons for half a crown (12.5p), a lot for me. His wife said in a very firm voice, ‘Do not buy them, lad, they will fly straight back to him.’ An early lesson learnt by listening.

Father was a very strong person physically and mentally, hard as nails, and you would never try trading blows with him. I suffered many beatings from him and much later in life he remarked to me, ‘You had a hard upbringing, son.’ I had to agree, as Peter, my elder brother, coined the expression when talking about the rest of our brothers and sisters: ‘They did not experience the Stalin years.’ At a very early age I had to learn how to calculate his moods and avoid him lest I should get another beating. One thing could be said for him: he never walked away from his responsibility to his family but clearly he could have done more.

During my childhood I had to endure many hardships and defy many today who say they are hard up or poor and abused. Peter and I, once a week in our pre-teenage years, had to wheel an empty pram to the local grocery shop which was run by a miserable old hen called Mrs (Fanny) Hill. On handing her the shopping list and suffering a contemptuous look we would be kept waiting hours to be served. This store had on the floor sacks of rice, flour and other foodstuff, which she would scoop up in a metal scoop, pour into a blue paper bag, weigh and price. These sacks I believe were left out all night in the store and were probably raided by rats and mice. We ate the food and survived. On many occasions in the evening I would be given a shilling (5p) and told to go to Snook’s, the bakers, near my infant school at St Monica’s Road, and ask for some stale buns. These were unsold buns at the end of the day’s trading.

Sometimes whoever was at the bakery would give them to me in a paper bag and refuse to take the money, some would tell me to put the shilling on the tray and others would take the money. Some would refuse to provide any – an early lesson that there are some good people out there and others with a different attitude. At mealtimes we would all have to sit at the table and were made to eat all that was put in front of us; we did anyhow as we were often not sure what or when we would eat next. This practice is so embedded in us that we still do not leave food on a plate at the end of a meal today.

At one mealtime when my father was at work we were all sat around the table when my young sister Kay started to choke badly. Within a flash Mother picked her up by her ankles and while she was upside down shook her vigorously. Well, it worked; whatever it was that was causing the choking fell unceremoniously onto the floor. Our faces were priceless – is this how you deal with a choking fit? Well, if it works, fine, but I believe methods, thankfully, have moved on. Crisis over we all carried on as if nothing had happened.

When there was a shortage of chairs in the house the seating at the table was often an ironing board stretched from one chair to another and on the opposite side of the table a plank of wood between chairs.

At one point in our childhood our father managed to obtain a pair of hair clippers and decided that he would cut our hair. Well, we suffered this until one day a couple of the teeth in the clippers broke and instead of cutting our hair they were tearing it from our young heads. After much complaining the practice stopped and fortunately the ridicule from our schoolmates also stopped.

Somehow my father found enough loose change to have a bet on the horses. Now, this was long before the advent of licensed betting shops and to have a bet you had to know whose back door to go to.

Well, he knew and frequently he would give me a piece of paper wrapped around a couple of coins and say to me, ‘Take this down to Mr xxx at Woolston,’ and give me the address which I already knew as he had already taken me there on one or two occasions previously, I suspect grooming me for the role of runner, at the time a criminal offence. Eventually I was no longer given this, then, illegal practice to do. Why, I am not sure; maybe it was pointed out to him what he was doing was wrong and possibly he could be subject to prosecution. Mr xxx was a newsagent who, surprise, surprise, lived in a big house, and at the rear of the building there was a ticker tape on which he received all the results and starting prices. I am not aware of what became of his betting activities when licensed betting shops came along.

As a child I enjoyed gardening and managed to cultivate a reasonable collection of irises and carnations in the garden, and when in bloom I used to cut and create attractive bunches which I took door to door around the neighbourhood selling them for a few shillings.

This helped at home – money my mother badly needed. In looking after the garden the path to the front door was rather puddle-laden and the landlord would do nothing about it so I took it upon myself to take a sack and my rusty cycle down to a field which had a deep cutaway exposing a fine vein of yellow gravel, and with a trowel extracted a sackload of the stuff and put the sack on my bike.

I then set about walking it home. About a hundred yards from the front door I was stopped by a police officer; as you looked at him your eyes went up and up and you wondered if you would ever see his head. ‘What have you got there lad?’ ‘Gravel,’ I replied. ‘Oh yes and where did you get it?’ ‘I dug it out of the ground, it’s sub soil.’ (Where did that answer come from?) ‘You sure you didn’t get it from a builder’s yard?’ ‘Don’t know any builder’s yard,’ was my reply. He paused for thought then said, ‘Alright, lad, on your way.’

Often we played football in the road and one of us was appointed lookout for traffic and the police; usually it was a very tall copper riding a bicycle with a cape strapped over his handle bar. On one occasion when he was spotted we all ran to each side of the road and leapt into any front garden and hid behind the fence or wall, and on reaching us he stood in the middle of the road and shouted to us all, saying he knew we were there and hiding. None of us broke cover but when he carried on and was out of sight we were back at the game.

The problem we had was that there was no recreation area. The only open space we were able to play in was a field owned by a local smallholder and the only way we could get into the field was through one of the neighbour’s gardens, so we used to work out who had gone out and slip through to the field and when no one had gone out we used to crawl on our hands and knees down the neighbour’s path, past their windows and pray they were not looking out. Once in the field we had great childhood fun playing football, cricket and cowboys and Indians. I did not grow up wanting to shoot guns or harm anyone or rob banks. Then at the end of the day we had to work out which garden we would get back through to return home.

Next to the field was a large orchard, also now a housing estate, where two horses were always roaming loose, and when the apple season was at its best irrespective of the horses we would often suspend play and go and help ourselves to some fallers; if no fallers we would send someone up the tree to throw some down. Often these apples had maggot holes in them but we just ate the good flesh around the hole and threw the rest away; many times in eating the apple we came face to face with the maggot and it did not bother us and the apples were always sweet and enjoyable. Why are we told that the apples we get today are what we want? All the same size, shape, colour, often tasteless and rot from the inside.

As was the case with most lads at the time we became quite efficient at horse trading in cigarette cards, stamp collecting, marbles and comic exchanges, all of which were a constant learning source, particularly stamps, with the assortment of foreign countries. As for the comics it was a learning curve as to what we did during the war to defeat the Germans and what was done to the American Indians.

Once during my pre-teenage years I was out playing with some of the local boys and fell backwards over a dog, grazing my elbow; I thought little of it. Several days later I was at home grizzling like kids do and my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I replied, ‘My arm hurts.’ I then told him how I had grazed it and he said, ‘You have nothing to worry about unless you have a red line going up the inside of your arm.’ I looked and said, ‘I have.’ He took one look and said, ‘Straight over to the hospital for you.’

It was made clear by the doctor at the hospital that I had tetanus and if left any longer it would prove fatal. A nurse told me to sit down in a cubicle where the wound was cleaned then a doctor confronted me with what was a very large – probably the largest I have ever seen – hypodermic syringe and plunged it into my right thigh. When he had finished he told me to sit where I was and went away. I thought that was it. Wrong. He returned with another and proceeded to do the same in my left thigh. Try standing up after that, the pain was indescribable, but it was penicillin and it saved my life; thank God for Fleming. It was also good fortune that my father knew what to look for. Not many months after my experience a lad by the name of Ricky Hammerton, who lived a short distance away, suffered the same misfortune and died of lockjaw after playing in a field where horses roamed freely. All of these things taught you to have fun but to be mindful of the consequences of your behaviour.

During our childhood when one or the other caught chicken pox or any other infectious disease we were made to stand next to the suffering individual so we could catch the dreaded illness; we all survived and suffered no lasting ill effects.

One winter evening when it was snowing and the ground had a good covering of snow I had to walk to Woolston and back on an errand. On the route was a hill which was quite steep and the location where I mined my gravel. To one side of the road was a deep slope on which a man and some children were tobogganing. I stood and watched for a few minutes thinking, Lucky them. My face must have said it all because the man came over to me and said, ‘Can you toboggan?’ Not ever having done so in my life, I replied, ‘Yeah, Yeah,’ and with no more ado I was on the sledge and hurtling down the slope at speed, snow pelting my face, when suddenly I veered to the left and was suspended in thin air and dropped about thirty feet into some brambles which cushioned the landing. All I could hear was a collection of distant voices which got louder and louder. I was then extracted from the base of what was a gravel pit and the man and his son extracted me from the brambles then said to me, ‘I thought you could toboggan,’ and as I limply sauntered away I said, ‘So did I, so did I.’

My legs and hands now adorned with scratches I went home where my mother said, ‘What happened to you?’ When I explained she said, ‘You stupid boy, go and clean yourself up.’ Well, another lesson learnt. I wonder if I had told the man that I could not toboggan whether he would have still let me do it with some instruction; who knows. It was good of him to offer me the opportunity. I paid the price for my bullshit.

I learnt another lesson strangely enough at a small lake at the bottom of the slope at the same location, again in the middle of winter. On the way home from school I decided to go to the lake alone, which was frozen over, and like all lads full of bravado I decided to skate across from one side to the other. After visually checking the opposite bank from where I was standing I set off and on reaching the centre I thought, No problem, when suddenly cracks started to appear. Ping, ping, ping they were going. With my ass twitching I thought, Oh shit, another dumb thing I have done, nobody here to help me if I go under, I must get to the bank fast. Instead of going back I kept going which, as it turns out, proved to be the right course of action, as the closer I got to the opposite bank the thicker the ice got, whereas if I had gone back it would have been on ice already weakened by my weight. Well, I survived and had quickly learnt the meaning of ‘Don’t skate on thin ice.’ Did instinct become logic?

Life was and still is full of lessons which you learn from. I used to play with a lad a few doors away who had a very large garden, and close to the house was an enormous pear tree always laden with very tasty pears and at the base of the tree was an Anderson shelter covered by a bank of turf. One day while playing under the tree I noticed a wasps’ nest in the wall of the bank and being a total prat I took a long stick and proceeded to insert it as far as it would go down the entrance tunnel of the nest, only to be smothered within seconds by a very large number of angry wasps.

I ran like hell, with these nasty creatures in pursuit of me stinging me as I went. On reaching home my mother set about dispatching the wasps that would not let go and let me suffer for my stupidity. I have no idea what these creatures are on this earth for. I believed they are like ants, here to annoy people so I had decided to annoy them, at personal cost I hasten to add.

Life at the time produced many characters. One such person was a man called Jim (Jimmer) Marsh. He owned a horse and cart which he drove up to the house one day and my father told me to get up on the cart with him and go to an address in Woolston to collect a piano. On arriving at the address Jimmer lifted the upright piano on to the cart without any help. We had no conversation on the outward journey and the only words he uttered on the return journey were to rebuke his horse who constantly lifted his tail and broke wind. On reaching home he lifted the piano off the cart and gently placed it on the footpath. Not a man to mess with, me thinks. It was from then on that I learnt that my mother was an accomplished piano player and my brother Peter was going to have piano lessons. No such privilege for me or the others.

Several winters – and some of them were hard – my father would wrap a hand saw in a couple of sacks, tie them to his bicycle and say to me, ‘Come with me, son, and bring your bike.’ We would walk to the top of our road in the bitter cold, more often than not with snow on the ground, go into the woods set in several acres where he would select a silver birch tree with a modest girth and saw it through at the base. He would then saw it through about nine inches above the first cut providing us with the first log. He would then lower the tree the nine inches and repeat the performance until there was no sizeable amount of tree left, the tree being reduced to the appearance of a bush.

After about three or four more trees we had as many logs as we could carry. We then had to carry them home and hope we were not asked by some overenthusiastic copper where they came from. On reaching home my fingers and hands were so frozen I had to put them in warm water to thaw out; chilblains often followed. Once thawed out I was given the task of axing the logs into sizeable amounts to fit the fireplace. Clearing the fireplace of the ash from the previous night’s fire and lighting another fire was another chore I had to perform frequently at the start of the day. The irony in respect of the exercise of going to the woods to fell timber was that not long after this practice, which lasted over a couple of years, the woods were flattened with bulldozers and all the trees and shrubs burned and another hideous housing estate built. This was an extra sad loss as we spent a lot of our time as children up in these woods birdspotting and enjoying the open space.

At home these fires resulted in the occasional chimney fire, which I always found myself with my father dealing with. When the chimney was ablaze we soaked some hessian sacks in water and stuffed them up the chimney. This never failed; within minutes the fire was out. My father would then send me to borrow a neighbour’s flue rods and I would help him sweep the chimney and clear up the mess that followed, and there was plenty of that. This learning curve would be of great advantage some years later when I set fire to the chimney in police married quarters.

Christmas was a telling time of year. I remember waking up like most children with anticipation of a sock at the end of the bed and the smell of oranges and nuts. Our father made a lot of our toys. He made me a porter’s trolley which I used to invert and use as a ladder. He was also very good at making animal shapes and painting them in bright colours. No electric jig saws in those days and probably lead in the paint.

At some stage in my childhood I showed an interest, for some reason, in fishing and asked my parents for a fishing line one Christmas. This I received; it was a small hand frame with a quantity of green chord wrapped around it with a weight and hooks attached. For this I learnt that I would need some rag worms for bait, and making a note of the tide times I went about digging in the mud off Weston Shore until I felt I had enough for the job. Well, armed with this and enthusiasm I made off to Southampton Pier to fish. I often visited Weston Shore and from time to time I watched in awe from the shore line the Sunderland Flying Boats hurtling down Southampton Water, seemingly never going to get airborne but they did.

Setting off to my fishing venue I would bait up the hooks with the rag worms, unwind the line and cast the baited line out to sea, and much to my great disappointment the whole line and frame followed it. First lesson: secure the frame and the end of the line before casting. My day out fishing ended as quickly as it started. In time I was able to secure another one of these fishing items and decided that if I wanted to catch good fish I needed to get into the Southampton docks.

Now, the docks gates were controlled by police officers who stopped all going in and out, and since I would not be able to get a permit without an adult I would have to use my wits. I would wait until a lorry was going through the dock gates and the police officer would come out of his lodge and engage the driver in conversation. I would then nip around the other side of the lorry and away to the dockside. In lowering my line to the water the drop was so far down that most of the line was in space before the bait sank. Often I would go fishing this way and sometimes alongside the original giant ocean liners The Queen Elizabeth and The Queen Mary. No shortage of bananas and oranges scattered on the ground either.

The thought of this practice today chills me as I could not swim an inch and if I fell into the sea from the dock wall it would have been curtains. What I do not understand is my parents often knew what I was doing and said nothing. My father never ever went out with me and never proffered any guidance. I suppose the bigger irony is that I never caught anything other than miller’s thumbs and crabs. Amongst my experiences in the docks was the number of men with black or brown faces who would approach me trying to sell me cigarette cases or cigarette lighters with pictures of naked women on them. Did they not realise I had more pressing matters – fish? On the odd occasion I used to fish from the old Supermarine Slipway in Woolston near the floating bridge where I managed to achieve a better catch of the odd dab and plaice which my mother cooked to perfection.

Over a little time I managed to move up a gear and secure a freshwater rod and line (six-foot bamboo cane with reel and line) and went fishing on the River Itchen which at the time was crystal clear, less so now. This was a totally different game and infinitely more challenging. Worms and bread were easy to come by, but one had to be careful here; one slip and into a fast-flowing river – curtains. As in the docks, instinctively you knew this so you always picked your ground carefully. Here I caught grayling, dace, roach, gudgeon and, not so often, a trout.

On the occasional Saturday morning when I was not expected to run errands or help my father I would get myself over to Southampton where there was an Odeon cinema. Now, I had no money for a trip to the pictures so I would stand in the lobby as if I was waiting for someone and when an adult came in with about six or seven children I would tag on to them once they had their tickets, then as part of the group I would ease my way into the cinema. I don’t know what I would have done if I was challenged. On the odd occasion when I was there with a mate either he or I, once in, would open the fire doors and let the other in. This practice was fairly commonplace; couldn’t get away with it now.

For a period of time on some Saturdays I would run errands for two elderly women, a Mrs Etheridge and a Nurse Davis (retired). Both of these women had a connection with the bookmaker and newsagent. Mrs Etheridge cleaned house and shop for him, and when on Saturday I did her errands she sat me down with a cup of tea, a crusty roll coated with real butter which I enjoyed and she would then give me sixpence (2.5p today), and some cigarette cards which she knew I collected – a very pleasant and agreeable woman

I would then go to Nurse Davis’s house and do her errands. On one occasion she asked me to creosote her fence, which I did and received one shilling (5p), and some creosote in my eye, which she treated by flooding the eye with something other than water. Whatever it was it did the trick – no refreshment or cigarette cards from her though.

In between the hardships and numerous tasks beset me during the school holidays I found time to visit my cousin Tony in Eastleigh where his father, Uncle George, worked on the railway. We used to go into the shunting yards and climb unsupervised in and out of the dirty old steam trains, and being mindful that trucks were being shunted to and fro all the time we deftly dodged them by climbing onto the train driver’s footplate. We would spend most of the day doing this and return to his house filthy. Good fun. Oh what Health and Safety has done! We did not need to be told more than once to take care; we were well aware of danger and responded to the circumstances we put ourselves in when rail trucks were being shunted.

At the age of thirteen I had saved enough money running errands for various individuals to buy a well-worn secondhand bicycle for 10/- (50p). This gave me a little freedom but my father saw it as a means to fetch and carry; he would give me some money and say, ‘Here, go round to Wyeth’s and get a half hundredweight of coal.’ Well, I used to bring it back wedged in between the bike frame and not long after a couple of these trips unsurprisingly the bike gave