Buying the Programme Book One of the Small Wars Trilogy

By Alan Watkins-Groves

Ron Jessop is a thief, a fraudster, a black marketeer and he may be a drug smuggler as well, his wife is an evil scheming Chinese prostitute, his true love is a Yorkshire dressmaker and his best friends are hired killers.
And he’s the kind and sympathetic hero of Buying the Programme.
Ron is fixated on the idea of providing a good life for his beloved mother while his father is away during WWII and after his father’s death on D Day, he works hard to try an establish himself as a businessman and we watch as he tries and tries again to realise his dream and is thwarted time and time again.
We follow him from Yorkshire to Malaya in the 1950s after he is called-up for the Army, then onto Germany, into military prison and out to Yorkshire again, then Aden, Borneo and the mean streets of Ulster in the 1970s.
It is Ron’s indomitable spirit that keeps him getting up after each knock down and keeps him heading towards his dream of wealth and ease for his Mam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781326043445

Book preview

Buying the Programme Book One of the Small Wars Trilogy

Also by Alan Watkins-Groves

The Shouting Horseman –

Book Two of The Small Wars Trilogy

Surviving –

Book Three of The Small Wars Trilogy

Buying The Programme

by

Alan Watkins Groves

Book One Of

The Small Wars Trilogy

ISBN 978-1-326-04199-1

Copyright © Alan Watkins-Groves

This Book is Dedicated To -

Firstly, Liz my wife and Joel my son who have put up with me for many years while I struggled to realize this and have made both suggestions for improvements and pots of coffee.

Chris , Lady Chris, Diane, Maureen and Wendy of The Wednesday Drop In Writers Group, Lincoln Drill Hall for their unflagging support and encouragement.

Alana Kelsall in Melbourne, Victoria for long distance reading and checking and valuable insights.

And the late Connie Barstow for telling me in 1974 I ought to get my stories in order and write them down. I’m sorry I didn’t get my act together sooner Connie.

For all the above, my deepest thanks and love.

Chapter 1

I were a lad – but not for long

I were born October the 27th 1932 and life were hard. I didn’t know that at the time. Like most people I only started remembering things when I were older. The first thing I really remember were when I were about 7 or 8 and me Dad picking me up and hugging me. I remember because he had on a suit made of very coarse scratchy material and there were some sharp shiny things on his collar that kept digging into me face. Mam told me later it were his new Army uniform. He’d been called up to go to France to fight Hitler. Which weren’t fair according to Mam.

He did his bit in Gret War, she’d said, "They’d no right mekkin’ him go agin. He were blown up in last lot, he were lucky to survive, all the other lads wuz killed or injured. Young Tommy his mate were left deafened in one ear and blind in one eye. He’ll not have to go off for this lot! I stood wondering at her. I thought Dad had been blown up, like a balloon, inflated like. And tried to work out how that would make you deaf and blind. I were hard pressed not to giggle at the thought of Dad blown up with a big fat body and little tiny arms and legs sticking out, with Mam holding a string tied to his ankle so’s he didn’t float away. He were too young for the last lot, lied about his age to get in and went off to France for the last year of the war. I didn’t know him then. I’d’a bloody stopped him. Going off when there weren’t any need. Silly bugger. Now he’s got to go. Bloody conscription."

I remember that Mam were sitting at the table in the front parlour of our through terrace in Armley at the time. I say ‘front parlour’ like we had another but all we had then were front parlour, back room which had the kitchen range, off shot laundry room, two bedrooms upstairs, Mam and Dad had front and I had back. There were a toilet up the yard, a flushing one because we were well up the hill, and a coal cellar but it were scary to go down there as we had to use a candle when we went, scary because it were dark and full of spiders and scary because the gas meter were down there and Mam were always expecting the candle to cause a gas explosion and send us sky-high. I had to go down and put big old pennies in the meter to keep the gas going. I used to leave the candle on the floor by the cellar door and walk across in the almost darkness to put the pennies in, I were that scared of gas leaking out of the meter. Just by the gas meter were the coal pile that coalman chucked down through cellar grating. That were another job I had, go to cellar, get a bucket of coal and haul it back upstairs with the bottom rim of the bucket dinging me shins and causing blue black bruises.

There were another room at top of the house, in the attic, tiny with a small window jutting out of the roof like a dog kennel with a glass front door. Sometimes we had a lodger in there when Dad weren’t workin’, which, as I remember, were quite a lot because of the Gret Depression me Mam said. Often the lodger were a mate of Dad’s called Cloggy on account of the clogs he wore. Cloggy swore by them. Said that you couldn’t be getting anything more comfortabler than clogs. But, by, he made a noise as he clattered up and down the uncarpeted stairs on his way to and from his attic room.

I remember he had this old bike he used to keep in the ginnel beside our house and he told the story about one time he’d gone out into the countryside to do a little poaching but he’d had no luck. He were cycling back in the early hours when he sees some sacks of pig manure stacked outside a farm gate. So he grabs one and balances it on the handlebars of his bike and cycles back to Armley. Seems he’s got a mate who grows roses and will give him a couple of bob for some good manure. Howsomever, the local bobby sees him coming with a sack balanced on his handle-bars and waves him down.

What’s in the sack? asks copper.

Pig shit! says Cloggy.

Don’t you be clever with me, me lad, says the copper and shoves his hand into the sack. Cloggy never finished the story because he were laughing that hard at the memory of the copper standing there with his hand and his cuff covered in pig muck.

I can see Mam now in me mind’s eye on the day that me Dad had to go off to the Army. She were wearing a dress of some dark stuff, thick stockings and her flat black shoes. She had a floral pinafore over the top of her dress. Her hair were just starting to show some grey and it were stuck full of hair grips. It were lovely when she let it down, all long and silky like.

Your dad can’t keep tekkin’ chances. No one gets away wi’ it forever,  she’d said with finality. Tears were bright in her eyes. I hugged her. He were that little when he went to Gret War he were put in a Bantams’ Battalion. He reckoned that being small kept him alive because he were such a tiny target. Fifteen he were. Fifteen! He should’a been in school not fighting a bloody war! The tears were flowing freely now and I could only put me arms around her shoulder. Then there’s bloody foundry, she continued, He comes back from war and t’only place he can get a job is in bloody foundry. Pounding on hot metal with a sledge ‘ammer. There’s lads getting lamed every day in bloody foundry. It’s a bloody dangerous place, t’foundry. Hot metal, chunks of it flying around, bloody gret bits of tractor swinging on cranes, just waiting to fall on some poor bugger. I remember she hugged me to her and made me promise never to take chances. Don’t forget, our Ron, don’t take chances if you don’t have to, no-one gets away wi’ it forever.

With Dad away I assumed I were now the man of the family and Mam let me believe it. Every day she went off to her work as a cook in a department store restaurant, some people still had money to eat out, and I went off to school. After school I’d clean the house, one room each day, so that Mam could just rest up after being on her feet all day.

When I were 11 and just starting to go to big school Mam got me a job as a Saturday delivery lad for the store she worked in. I were that made up that I’d a job and could help out with the money. When Dad had gone off he’d told us he’d make an allowance home out of his Army pay, but it never came. It were only later that I realised why we never got the money, it were the same reason we never had money to spare even though Mam and Dad both had jobs and only me to look after, we never had money to spare for trips out to the cinema or to the seaside and we were allus being dinged by the rent man, debt collectors and such. Sometimes we’d be sitting in their bedroom upstairs keeping very quiet, pretending not to be at home, while some big man with leather satchel ower his shoulder banged on the door and shouted curses through the letterbox.  Mam told me we weren’t to blame Dad for never having any money.

"See Ron, after yer Dad had been blown up, he were buried alive in the shell hole.  he remembers trying to dig himself out but dint know which way was up. He were just losing consciousness, dying like, when another shell landed nearby and blew him up out of the shell hole again. His mouth were full of dirt an’ mud and his nose were blocked with it and he could only move a little bit at a time to clear it out as he were in full view of the enemy. He’d to lay there, on the bits and pieces of his mates, until it was dark and it were safe for him to crawl back to his own lines.

Things like that Ron, things that your Dad saw in the War, just don’t go away. He were alright when he first come home and we met, we courted and got wed. But he has these terrible dreams, nightmares, and he thinks the blankets are the dirt covering him again and he wakes up fighting the blankets off himself and shoving me away because he thinks I’m one of his dead mates come back. So if he has to have a drink to get him to sleep …well, so be it.

It were only later that I found out that Dad was borrowing money from loan sharks to help him buy the drink he needed to sleep. Mam said he’d been to the doctor but the doctor’s pills were more expensive than the beer. Now dad was away things were even harder and many was the day that I went to school having ‘forgotten’ my lunch.

Well, I decided, if that’s what comes of boozing I wouldn’t drink beer like Dad and I would work hard and help Mam to have a better life nor the one she was having at the moment. My new job would mean we’d maybe be able to stay on top of debts.

So, every Saturday I would take the tram into the centre of Leeds with her and then I would spend the day taking groceries out to the rich peoples’ houses in the north of the city. The Yids me workmates called them. It were hard uphill riding, Scott Hall Road or Harrogate Road, on that heavy Royal Enfield bike with the huge basket on the front but you could freewheel almost the whole way back. The bike had got a huge stand that folded down in front to support the basket when it were stopped and the manager had had a rear carrier fitted as well in case he couldn’t get everything in the basket!  I think he’d’a strapped a pack to me back if he thought he could get away with it!

Worse thing were the tram tracks, if you got your bike wheel caught in them you could go miles without being able to get out again, especially if you were going fast downhill.

You had to be very careful going through some parts of Leeds mind. I’d heard that the lad who had the job afore me had been stopped and robbed by a gang of lads from the houses round the back of the big cinema near Moortown. They just jumped out, knocked him off his bike and nicked all the groceries. He weren’t sacked as it weren’t his fault, but it scared him so much he wouldn’t go up there again. He quit his job and that’s how I come to get it. I were told this on me first day and told not to worry about letting them have the groceries, the store would understand. I told them that no lads better try and steal from me and the manager rumpled me hair. But I were serious. This were me job and it meant a lot to me to be working and helping me Mam.

It were a Saturday in the school holidays when they jumped me. I’d just turned off Harrogate Road and the road were blocked by a gang of kids standing across the street. There were five of them and most were about me own age but the lad slap bang in middle of the street were about fifteen and he were a big bugger and all. Short cropped hair, holey jumper, long trousers and a snarl on his face like an angry Alsatian.

I stopped the bike short of them and heaved it onto its stand. I went and stood behind it, all meek like and they came forward, thinking that I were going to let them help themselves from the basket in front. As they crowded around the basket I pulled out the cricket bat I had strapped to the rear carrier and I gave that big bugger such a crack across his arse he leapt into the air with a scream that made his mates hare off straight away. I gave him another crack on the back of his leg and he went down into the dirt and dust of the road. A bright red mark on his leg showed where a bruise would be tomorrow! I couldn’t see the one on his arse but I knew he wouldn’t be comfy sitting down for a while.

You try and rob me again, I snarled at him, You even come near me and it won’t be your leg I hit. I’ll break your bloody head for you. He struggled to his feet and I raised the bat over his head and held it up as he hobbled away. They chucked a few stones at me as I pedalled away but they weren’t trying to hit me. I never saw them again and I never had any more trouble with gangs or robbers. What I carried were too small for proper crooks and the kids had learned that I didn’t mess about.

I remember now the very day I first hit upon me money making scheme. I were pushing the bike up the hill towards Alwoodley when it joggled and a spud fell out of a bag and hit the road. I picked it up, spit on it to clean it, but you could see where it had got damaged by the road, the skin were scraped and there were grit in the flesh. I put it in the pocket of the long apron I had to wear. I got to the back door of the big house I were delivering to and rang the bell. The cook opened it as usual. I were almost roaring with fear at what would happen, would she report me to the store? Would I lose me job?

I’m sorry missus, I stammered out, I dropped a spud on way. It kind of joggled out of bag an’ fell on t’road. I pulled it out of me pocket to show her. She only laughed. It weren’t my fault.

Never you mind, our Ron, she chuckled, No-one misses the odd spud or carrot. You tek that home, give it scrub and rost it on t’fire for your supper.

These people were so rich they would never miss the odd spud or carrot! So, from then on, every delivery I made, I would take one potato, one carrot, a leek, a small onion, out of each houses’ order and, by the end of Saturday, I would have a fair old bag of veggies. After all, no-one would miss one spud or one carrot.

On a Sunday, back home in Armley, while Mam had a long lie-in on her only day off in the week, I would take our old felt topped card table and set it up a few streets away from our house and set the veg out on it. At the prices I were able to charge, what with having no wholesale costs or overheads, I soon emptied me table and started to fill me savings pot. With the shilling a week I got as wages and the tips from the cooks and maids who took in the groceries I were doing very well.  Of course I could never tell Mam about it, she would have tanned my hide for me and no mistake. How can I say this? I didn’t see as how it were wrong. The folk I were nicking off didn’t need the little bit that went missing, the ladies I sold to were so hard up I were doing them a favour. Of course, I knew that technically, by the Bible, I were doing wrong but when I showed Mam me savings, her eyes glowed with pride and that made it all worthwhile.

When the manager said I were such a good lad I could take charge of weighing and bagging up the deliveries for an extra thruppence a week me apron pocket got fuller and fuller. Because the customers were important posh people we were told to make sure and weigh up a little bit over the odds so there couldn’t be any complaints, that little bit extra became me stock for me Sunday market stall.

It was about this time that Mam first asked me for ‘a loan’ from my savings jar.

It’ll only be for a while, she said, Only I’ve got behint with the rent and t’landlord’s getting stroppy about it. From then on my little bit of money, my couple of bob a week, were just added into the family pot and my savings jar quickly emptied as Mam tried to pay off the rent arrears and keep a roof over our heads , while Goering were doing his best to take it off. The landlord, like many, were doing a bit of profiteering by sticking up the rent knowing that folk couldn’t very well move anywhere else.

Then, one Saturday in the spring of 1943, the van that used to deliver to the really big houses just outside the city broke down and I had to take their order out by bike, I didn’t take anything from their bags, too bloody risky at a house you didn’t know. Anyway, there weren’t any veg, just fancy pots and jars of pickles and jams and fruit in syrup - stuff that would be missed. They didn’t tip either, after me biking the whole way on a hot day. I went round the back as usual and knocked on the tradesmen’s door. A snotty looking lad in a tight striped waistcoat opened it and looked me up and down like I were something the cat had dragged in. I must admit I were lathered with sweat after riding all that way but there were no need for the look he gave me. He took the basket into the house and I stood there like a lemon waiting on him coming back. When he did come back with the empty basket I asked if I could have a drink of water and he just shut the door in me face. I were furious but what were I going to do? Kick the door in and demand a glass of water? I were so angry and frustrated that I swore I’d get that lad somehow, sometime. But as I pushed me bike down the driveway I realised it would be a waste of energy and emotion really. Revenge is useless, you waste time and energy getting revenge when you should just forget it and get on with earning money.

On me way back to town I were that parched I called in at a little cottage and asked for a drink of water. There were an old gaffer and his wife and they’d got a big vegetable garden, some chickens and a little orchard. I sat in their tiny parlour while the gaffer pumped a cracked china cup of water for me and the wife polished me a hard little apple to tek with me. ‘Tek it for Ron,’ she said. And when I looked at her gone out, wondering how she knew me name, she said, ‘Fer lateR on!’ and cackled away like it were the funniest joke ever.

I asked ‘em how did they eat all that food they grew? They told me anything that were left over from what they needed for themselves went to feed their pig. By the time I left I had me big basket filled with beans, peas, onions, new potatoes and eggs. I promised them I’d pay them when I sold it. I don’t think they’d’ve minded if I did or not. That week I made a pile.  I went back up to the old gaffer’s place and gave him a half-dollar for the veg. He were made up and told me he’d have a drink with me that night. But he never did, his missus took the money off him and put it in a jug on the dresser. They became a regular stop of mine. The store never questioned how long it took me to deliver the groceries so a detour to the old gaffer’s place to see what he’d got seemed more reasonable to me than going back with an empty basket. However, I couldn’t keep doing it without someone starting to wonder why it took me so much longer than the other lads.

The great revelation was that I could now stop nicking from the store and go legit. I knew that there must be other little places like Mr and Mrs Garside that would have a bit to sell me so I decided I needed a bike of me own and went with Cloggy to the local scrappy to see what he’d got. Cloggy hadn’t to go to the War because it turned out he’d flat feet, another thing he praised his clogs for.

I picked up a frame, a couple of wheels - back one were a fixed wheel and I came to regret that later – and some brake levers and rods, all the bits I needed. I built the bike in the scrappy’s yard with Cloggy’s help and his spanners then rode it home. It cost me a hard earned half-a-crown that I promised to pay off at a couple of pence a week and Cloggy stood as me guarantee but I reckoned the bike would pay for itself.

I rigged up one of Mam’s wicker shopping baskets on the handlebars and two Rexine shopping bags strapped onto the carrier behind the saddle like a cowboy’s saddle bags. I painted ‘R. Jessop Fruit and Veg’ on the basket so’s everyone would know what me business were. The lettering were a bit wobbly because of the way the twigs were woven but it looked good to me. Now I worked for the Department Store on Saturdays and for myself on Sundays and after school on weekdays.

Throughout the summer of ’43 I went back and forth to little small-holdings just out of town after school and at weekends. I widened me pitch to take in Wortley as well as Armley and I were soon well known. Rozzers knew me and didn’t stop me because I were working and really only bending the rationing laws – not breaking them like a lot of the others were. Nothing were being stolen and everyone benefitted. I even biked out to the Rhubarb Triangle around Ardsley in Spring of ’44 and got a load of that, it went down a treat with me customers and I cleaned up a tidy profit.

Some of the school lads started calling me ‘Ikey’ Jessop because they reckoned I were real Jew-boy the way I grabbed for every penny I could get. They didn’t do more than call names because with all the work I were doing I were well muscled up for a little lad and because some of their Mams shopped with me and held me up as an example of what a son should be to his mother now their dads were away in the Forces. It hurt a bit but what did I care? I saw that by working hard and not wasting me money on things like sweets, I could get out of Armley one day and make a home for Mam and Dad so’s he wouldn’t have to work in the foundry when he came back from the war and maybe he’d not have them nightmares and not have to drink so much.

There were some in the papers and on the radio that said we should be ‘Digging For Victory’ and that our gardens should be given over to vegetables. But what gardens did we have in our terraces? Our front doors opened straight from front parlour onto the streets and we only had a small paved yard at the back, where were we supposed to dig for victory? Them as had a bit of garden round our way usually had it filled with an Anderson shelter. We hadn’t one because we’d a cellar. And when were the folk around me supposed to be doing this digging? Take me Dad’s mate Tommy, him as were blown up in Great War, he did a 12 hour shift at the foundry helping to make tanks and armoured cars for Montgomery to use against Rommel in the desert. After his shift he were into uniform and out with the Home Guard, patrolling and making sure German paratroopers didn’t sneak in disguised as nuns, though what good he’d be I don’t know, I’m sure. He were that deaf a regiment could have marched past behind him and he wouldn’ta known. Even Mam would be up on the roof of the church of a night, fire watching when Goering sent his bombers over, with a wind-up phone beside her to tell the fire engines where to go.

What I brought in from the countryside helped many a poor family get by – and helped many a small-holder to avoid everything being scooped up by the Ministry of Food at rock bottom prices. There were even a couple of big farmers who put bits of food me way when they had had a bumper crop. If they produced too much the Ministry would set their targets higher and they couldn’t always guarantee to meet those targets. I were like a safety valve where the small-holders and farmers could blow off a little excess steam. I were always careful to disperse me goods around Leeds so that no one rozzer ever saw me doing loads of business and get suspicious.

Because of me business I got to know people in the countryside and that led to me being given jobs on farms and small-holdings during the summer holiday harvesting season and after school when I were needed, back breaking it were too. Crawling along rows picking peas and throwing them into a sack I towed behind me, or stooping and cutting cabbages with a long sharp knife and throwing them in a box. Potatoes were the worst because it were always freezing cold when we went for them, cold, and wet and the potatoes heavy with mud that had to be knocked off before they were thrown into their sacks. The sacks weighed a hundredweight, too much for me at twelve going on thirteen, and the men had to throw them up onto the cart. They still used horses then and it were great going over and warming your frozen blue hands on a big hot horse while it tried to nibble your hair.

But the money mounted up and we’d cleared the rent arrears and were now managing to keep abreast of the bills coming in. I’d even got Mam to open a Savings Account with the Post Office. There were no temptation for me to spend the money on flash clothes or anything because of rationing. Of course there were always tailors down the bottom of Briggate who could ‘see you alright’ for a suit length if you wanted but I weren’t interested.  Smart suits were for spivs and young men out to attract lasses. I weren’t a spiv and lasses didn’t interest me much then. I were only interested in making sure Mam wouldn’t want for anything.

The farm lads were good blokes who helped me a lot, taught me things, things like how to rig a wire to catch a rabbit and how to skin and paunch it and soon I  added meat to me increasing list of commodities by putting wires around rabbit holes I saw on me rides back and forth. They also taught me how to climb onto the roof of the barn to see into the bathroom that the Land Army girls used. I knelt there one summer evening with them, peeping over the ridge of the barn and watched two of the girls bathing. The sun were behind us and it streamed in through the bathroom window. It were like watching a Technicolour film at the Regal. The girls took off their shirts and bras and their breasts swung free, I were amazed at how much tit flesh there were when it weren’t all bundled up in clothes and how far their nipples stuck out, not like me own thin flat discs. When their pants came down I were only a bit surprised to see that they had not got cocks and that they had patches of dark hair in triangles between their legs, even the blonde one! Collar and cuffs don’t always match it seems. I had led, you will have guessed, a blameless and secluded 12 going on 13 years so far. The two girls climbed into the bath together, one in front and the other behind with her legs around her friend and they took turns soaping each others’ backs, which caused me two companions to start groaning. When I looked at them I saw that they’d got their flies open and their