The Langley Boy to Be Better Than the Best!: Part 3 of the Langley Boy Trilogy

By Charles Tyrie

This book, The Langley Boy To Be Better Than The Best! Part 3 of the Langley Boy Trilogy, is the story of the authors ultimate success in fulfilling his long-held ambition to become a chief officer in local government, responsible for engineering, architecture, land management, and direct labour organisations.

It details the David and Goliath struggle between local authorities and central government to prevent the privatisation of essential services such as refuse collection and cleansing and the maintenance of highways, sewers, vehicles, parks, and open spaces. It outlines the authors leadership and management skills, his philosophy that failure is inconceivable, and his successful reorganisation of the councils workforces at Swansea and Rushcliffe to protect employees jobs, pensions, and conditions of service.
The book contains family anecdotes of moving homes, creating new gardens, a wedding, the joys of grandchildren, the sadness of parents deaths, taking children to theme parks and pantomimes, and the fun of dressing up as hippies, punk rockers, and clowns at family parties.

There is a fund of stories involving the author and his wife Hilary, hiring a narrow boat with friends to cruise the Cheshire Ring, buying a caravan to tour parts of the UK, travelling to Germany to sample its wines, and suffering from chateaux fatigue in the Loire Valley. It covers a trip to Spain to solve the first recorded incident of bearnapping, events in Langley, and creating T-shirts and specialty cakes for family special occasions.

As a former member and president of the Rotary Club of West Bridgford, the author organised a series of charitable fashion shows, duck races, Christmas collections, and other events to help the less fortunate in the UK and overseas. In retirement, he became chairman of governors at West Bridgford Infant School, during which time the school was designated as outstanding by Ofsted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504995818

Charles Tyrie

Charles Tyrie lives in Nottinghamshire with his wife Hilary. He is a chartered civil engineer and has spent most of his career in local government, where he worked in Manchester, Swansea and Rushcliffe. He is now retired and has written, The Manchester Vendetta a work of fiction, inspired by his work in Manchester and the summer holidays spent on the island of Anglesey. His first publication is The Langley Boy, part one of a trilogy, which covers his childhood years in Langley, Buckinghamshire, and captures the life of a small community in wartime Britain and growing up during the post war years of austerity.

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2015 Charles Tyrie. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/26/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9582-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9581-8 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

DEDICATION

PART 1 WELCOME TO SWANSEA

LEISURE, FAMILY, AND FRIENDS AT SWANSEA

PART 2 WELCOME TO RUSHCLIFFE

RUSHCLIFFE BOROUGH COUNCIL (I)

FAMILY CELEBRATIONS

RUSHCLIFFE BOROUGH COUNCIL (II)

PART 3 RETIREMENT

SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY AS SCHOOL GOVERNOR

THE ARTS AND SPORT

ROTARY INTERNATIONAL SERVICE ABOVE SELF

FAMILY FESTIVITIES

THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

To my wife Hilary, my family, my good friends, loyal staff at Swansea City Council and Rushcliffe Borough Council, the dedicated teachers and governors of West Bridgford Infant School, and my friends in the Rotary Club of West Bridgford.

PART 1

WELCOME TO SWANSEA

In July 1981, I joined Swansea City Council as the Assistant City Engineer (Management) in charge of the outside works division. Swansea paid generous relocation expenses and I was provided with a grant of £400 towards my removal expenses, solicitor’s fees, and estate agent’s fees.

The council had provided me with temporary accommodation on the 10th floor of a council-owned block of flats at 57 Clyne Court Sketty, but after I had moved in, I noticed that one of the walls in the lounge was affected by mildew, which gave rise to its nickname ‘The Grotty Flat’. It was not the warm welcome to Swansea that I had expected, and so I complained to the Director of Housing, who promptly arranged for its treatment and eradication.

We were not able to move to Swansea as a family, because we still had sell our house in Timperley, Hilary had to give a term’s notice to Park Road School of her intention to resign, and Jonathan had to complete his final term at Manchester Grammar School. Consequently, Hilary and I hired a small truck from Altrincham Van Hire and furnished the flat with our kitchen table and chairs, two bed chairs, the spare double bed, a single wardrobe, a couple of sets of curtains, a coffee table, the portable television, pots, pans, crockery, and a miscellany of other essential household goods.

It was a lonely existence living away from my family and friends and so I spent the long summer evenings driving around the city looking at properties for sale. I returned to Timperley on Friday evening to be with Hilary and Jonathan, and to avoid Sundays being ruined by the prospect of facing the long and tedious, four-hour, journey back to Swansea, I delayed my departure until 5.00 o’clock on Monday morning when there was little traffic on the road. I was never late for work, and my early-morning departure meant that I only had to spend four nights away from my family.

The authority had agreed to honour my holiday arrangements, and Hilary and I returned to our beloved Lake District, where once again we stayed at the Scafell Hotel in Borrowdale. We repeated many of our traditional walks to Castle Crag, Watendlath, and Grange, and climbed Glaramara, subsequently renamed Hernia Hill, because it confirmed that I definitely had a hernia, the injury having occurred during the barn dance mentioned in Part 2 of the Trilogy The Langley Boy Raising the Red Flag.

Initially, the side effects had not seriously affected my lifestyle. I had lived with the occasional minor discomfort, but it was wishful thinking, and during the long and arduous ascent of Glaramara, I recognised that my condition was more serious than I had cared to admit. When we reached the summit, I was forced to consider the possibility that Hilary might have to make the descent alone and alert the mountain rescue team to airlift me off the peak, but a compulsory rest did the trick, and by judiciously taking a number of short breaks during our descent, we slowly and cautiously reached the foot of the mountain.

When I mentioned my suspected hernia to a colleague at work, he said that a friend of his was also suffering from the complaint and that his doctor had informed him that the waiting list for hernia repair operations at Singleton Hospital was at least six months. Fortunately, I was still a patient at my doctor’s practice in Timperley, and when I returned home at the weekend, I saw Dr Tulk, who carried out a brief examination and confirmed my prognosis. He explained that this was due to a portion of the small intestine forcing its way through the weakened muscles of my stomach wall, and that if it were left unattended, there was the possibility that it would rupture with fatal results. His more encouraging news was that the waiting list for hernia repairs at Altrincham General Hospital was only five to six weeks, and bearing in mind my circumstances, he kindly offered to arrange for me to be admitted as soon as possible.

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September was a memorable month for my in-laws, Jim and Kathy, who celebrated their Ruby Wedding Anniversary in the Masonic Hall at Burnham on Sea. Our contribution to the proceedings was the celebratory cake that Hilary had made for them and which I tastefully iced during one of my weekend visits home. Some thirty two members of their family and friends made it to the party, including my brother-in-law John, Jane, and their sons Matthew, Robert, and Simon from Melton Mowbray, my sister-in-law Sheila and her daughters Caroline and Helen from St Albans, Hilary’s aunts and uncles, Olive and Leslie Lyon from Rainhill, Peggy and Bill Wood and their children Pete and Sue from Congressbury, Jim’s brother Harold and Ethel from St Helens, and Hilary, Jonathan, and me. The meal was a buffet provided by Kathy, Hilary, Sheila, and Jane and comprised the usual party fare of quiches, sausage rolls, mixed salads, cheesecakes, and blancmanges. After the meal, Hil’s mum and dad cut the cake and made formal speeches, followed by the inevitable group photographs. We then danced the Conga, the Hokey Cokey, the Lambeth Walk, the Gay Gordons, and other dances popular with the older generation, after which we played modern dance music to entertain the younger age group, having pre-recorded the tracks on our tape recorder for the occasion.

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My parents’ idea to move to Canon Frome from Timperley had been wonderful in theory but poor in practice. My father had found it increasingly difficult to drive his car due to problems with his breathing and his eyesight, and so he and my mother had to use the bus to travel into the nearby town of Ledbury to do their shopping. There was only one bus a day and the timing was such that there was very little time to buy groceries and have a cup of tea before they had to catch the next bus home. The local authority subsequently issued a questionnaire seeking local residents’ views about public transport needs in the area, which I completed on my parents behalf, with the recommendation that the time of the bus should be amended to leave Canon Frome at eight o’clock in the morning and return after mid-day, so that local people had more time to do their shopping. Sadly, the consultation was a sham. The local authority deleted the service in its entirety and it was impossible for villagers to visit Ledbury using public transport.

The summer of 1981, was probably the happiest period that my parents spent at Canon Frome and they were certainly more relaxed and content when we visited them. We sat in the garden under a sun umbrella, took a gentle stroll along the lane to see the premises occupied by the local commune, and admired the panoramic views across the fields. I was pleased that my father had found contentment in his new surroundings; the location was far superior to the suburban housing estate of Timperley and he was much happier pottering around in his shed or losing himself in a novel.

He was visibly pleased with the promotion I had achieved, especially as it had always been his ambition that his sons should be more successful than he had been. He enjoyed our chats, and was delighted that Jonathan was doing so well at school and likely to go to King’s College, Cambridge, and that Allan was enjoying his teaching career. He was also fit enough to use his joinery skills, and he made the cottage into a comfortable home with the addition of a stone fireplace, an oak mantelpiece, and a plate rack around the walls.

Even my mother entered into the spirit of the countryside, and she swapped her dresses for trousers and blouses. Despite living in the wilds, my parents established a reasonable social life for themselves. They joined an old folks’ social club, which provided their weekly entertainment and they visited our relatives Alison and Ralph in Hereford. The only real disadvantage for my mother was that she was isolated from her sons, her sisters, and her friends in Langley, who she missed dreadfully.

Victoria Cottage adjoined a wood yard engaged in the manufacture of creosoted, shiplap, garden fencing. My father used to criticise the way the business was managed but apart from that small detail, its activities did not affect his peaceful surroundings. Then calamity struck. The owner introduced a drying shed equipped with electrical fans, which emitted such a high pitch whine that they penetrated the walls of their cottage. I suggested to my father that he should complain about the noise to his MP and Hereford and Worcester council but much to my annoyance, the local authority was incredibly unhelpful, claiming that it was hamstrung by staff shortages in the environmental health department. Eventually, I was forced to intercede on my parents’ behalf, and I spoke to a number of senior officers at Hereford and Worcester. Their response was appalling, and I too failed to get the organisation to investigate and resolve my parents’ complaint. With the benefit of hindsight, they should have approached a solicitor to deal with the matter but hindsight is a wonderful science.

During the October half-term school holiday, Hilary joined me to go house hunting, and while I was at work, she painted the bathroom and loo to make them more presentable. We eventually found a delightful, modern, four-bedroom house in King George Court, Derwen Fawr, owned by three sisters called the Miss Greys, who had lived there with their elderly mother. The house was beautifully decorated; it was carpeted throughout, and it was available for immediate occupation. We took the details but we were unable to proceed with its purchase, because there was little or no interest in the sale of our own house in Greenhill Road.

On the 9th November, I was admitted to Altrincham hospital for my hernia operation. I have to admit that I was rather apprehensive about being anaesthetised and cut open until I had a sneaky look at my notes when the consultant had been called away. The comments were short and sweet, and merely said, Repair stomach wall, and that was it. In his eyes, I was a simple repair job, and the notes were rather like the instructions I used to issue to my highways staff to repair a pothole in the carriageway.

I went through the usual pre-op procedures of being deprived of food and water, and given a pill to make me relax, after which my stomach area was shaved and marked with an indelible pen, so that there would be no mix up when I lay unconscious on the operating table. It was a strange sensation being put to sleep, and I had the nagging fear, experienced by many patients about never waking up again, not that I would have known anything about it, if I had not.. The anaesthetist gave me an injection in my arm and told me to count to ten, although by the time, I had reached six, the cluster of theatre lights and the figures dressed in green gowns began to spin around until they disappeared into the black hole of unconsciousness. I was awakened by a nurse’s voice saying, Mr. Tyrie, Mr. Tyrie, and I opened my eyes to return to the land of the living. Hilary came to see me that evening, and although I was still drowsy, the good news was that we had received an offer to buy our house.

Our prospective purchaser was a local woman, who after agreeing the price, stipulated that for the sale to go through, she wanted us out in a fortnight, because she wished to move in for Christmas. Having waited an interminable six months for a serious purchaser to come forward, we were in no position to argue and we reluctantly agreed to her conditions. We very much hoped that our respective solicitors would not be able to complete the sale within the tight timescale she had imposed, but as it so happened, both practices worked in the village, and there were no complications preventing them from meeting the completion date.

We then had to move out of 3 Greenhill Road and find somewhere to live. We knew that we could use our temporary flat in Sketty but I was still convalescing from my operation, I was unable to drive, Jonathan was still at school, and Hilary was committed to work at Park Road School until the end of term. Fortunately, my brother and his wife came to our rescue, and Allan and Jean kindly put us up for a couple of weeks.

There was a great deal of work to be done before the move. Arrangements had to be made to put our furniture into store, we had to inform the local council and gas, water, telephone, and electricity companies of our move, and we had to advise our friends, relatives, banks, building societies, and a host of other organisations of our temporary accommodation, all of which had to be repeated when we moved into our permanent address.

The hernia had occurred in my lower abdomen, and in order to carry out the repair, it had been necessary for the surgeon to cut through the internal muscles, which severely restricted my mobility. Furthermore, there was a great danger that the stitches could tear and undo his good work, and so I was strictly forbidden to drive. Much to my irritation and embarrassment, my convalescence lasted eight weeks, the longest period of absence from work that I have ever experienced during my working career and one of the very few occasions when I have had to take sick leave. The compulsory break did have its compensations however, and I was able to make an offer for the house in Derwen Fawr and concentrate on getting things moving on the domestic front. Having agreed a price, we instructed our solicitor Dave Hallam to complete the purchase as soon as possible, because the new house was empty and we were not in a chain.

The need to vacate Greenhill Road before Christmas posed the problem of Hilary’s VW Beetle, which we decided to leave with Hilary’s parents at Burnham-on-Sea until we moved into our permanent accommodation. This meant taking two cars so that we could return home in the Fiat Mirafiori but we still had to overcome the problem that I could not drive, because I was still recuperating. The solution was simple; I could accompany Jonathan, who had been learning to drive in the VW, although it did mean that we would have to follow a non-motorway route. To Jonathan’s great credit, he drove extremely well, and despite being cut up by a lunatic near Gloucester, we arrived safely at Burnham-on-Sea where Hilary joined us in the Fiat.

On January 3 1981, I received an unexpected telephone call that my father was in Hereford hospital with acute bronchitis and that his condition was poor, the medical profession’s coded message for saying, He is very ill. It was worrying news and so we went to see him the following day. When we entered the ward, he was fast asleep and wearing an oxygen mask, and so we pulled up two chairs and joined my mother at his bedside. He looked so weak that the worrying thought crossed my mind that he might die, but the doctor gave us the encouraging news that he was responding well to treatment and he should pull through. We stayed there for about two hours but when there was no indication that my father was going to wake up, we decided to go home. At that moment, he opened his eyes, took in his surroundings, and smiled at us. We sat down again and told him that we just called to make sure that he was feeling better, at which he made his now memorable remark, I am not going to die, as if to reassure us that we shouldn’t worry about him and that he was going to recover. I have to admit feeling very relieved that he had come round, and we briefly chatted about the progress of the house purchase until he closed his eyes and fell asleep, which was our cue to leave and return to Swansea.

Over the following week, I kept in touch with my mother and the good news was that my father seemed to be recovering. On the 11th January 1981, while we were staying at Burnham-on-Sea to escape the depressing confines of the flat, I received an ominous and distraught telephone call from my mother, informing me that my father was seriously ill and that he was dying. It was to be the beginning of one of the saddest periods of my life, and during the high-speed journey back to Hereford Hospital, I silently prayed that he would not die before we arrived. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish that he had, and knowing my father, I know that he too would not have wished to put his family through the emotional trauma of sitting around his bedside and waiting for him to die.

When we arrived at the hospital, Hilary and I met my mother and Alison under a covered walkway outside my father’s ward, and with tears in their eyes, they told us with an air of resignation that his condition had deteriorated and that he was dying. I remember thinking that life was so unfair and that my father did not deserve to die fighting for breath in a hospital ward. He had been a hard-working man all his life; he had always done the best for his family, and as an old soldier, he would have preferred a clean death that caused the minimum fuss and suffering to those, he would be leaving behind. Sadly, he had no choice in the matter.

It was heartbreaking watching my father lying unconscious with the clear, plastic, oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and his weakened body trying to fight the infection in his lungs. I found it difficult to accept that he had deteriorated so much since our previous visit to see him, and I clung to the hope that he would recover. It was not to be, and the following day his condition deteriorated so much that Allan and Jean joined us. My poor mother was suffering from a head cold at the time, and because she was not quite sure if she should be sitting so close to him in case of infection, I asked a sister on her behalf, if it was a problem. Her response took me aback and she replied that it did not matter, if my mother got close to him, because he was dying and there was nothing more they could do for him except to keep him comfortable.

A kind chap, who was occupying a private ward, recognised the strain we were all under and he kindly released his room to us. I cannot remember the precise details of why he was so generous but we all stayed in that depressingly small room overnight. I tried to provide my father with a little comfort; I gave him ice cream and sips of water from a teaspoon, I mopped his fevered brow with a damp cloth, and I can still recall someone sitting behind me, saying how gently I dealt with him but it was the least I could do.

On the fateful morning of the 13th January 1981, Allan and Jean returned to my parent’s house at Canon Frome to feed their dogs. In the meantime, the nurses asked us to leave the ward while they washed and shaved my father. When we were invited to return to his bedside, his breathing was so rapid that he sounded like a steam engine. I sensed that something untoward had happened during our absence and I asked one of the nurses, if he was all right. I was assured that he was, but his breathing was unnaturally fast and loud compared to his earlier condition, and he sounded as though he was burning up. I asked another young nurse, who had just arrived, if this was normal, and she took his pulse and said that he was satisfactory, then as she left, he stopped breathing. I shall never understand how a man whose lungs were allegedly shot to pieces, was breathing as if he had just run a four-minute mile. It was unnatural, and had I not been so upset at the time, I would have questioned the reasons for his death, before his earthly remains were cremated. I kissed his forehead before we left, and as dutiful son, I promised to make sure that my mother’s interests would be safeguarded.

Later, my brother arrived back at the hospital to the discovery that his father had died. His death was not unexpected of course, but at least Allan had been spared the trauma of watching his father’s last moments on earth. Seeing my father die was a strange experience, because although he was unconscious, he was still my father and part of my life. The moment he died, everything changed and harsh reality set in. He no longer existed, and all that remained was his corpse. He could no longer share our lives, he could no longer be there for us to visit, and he could no longer give us the benefit of his wisdom, knowledge, and experience when we needed advice about tackling jobs about the house.

We were now on our own, and although when I was a boy, I had hated working with him and being compelled to do painting, decorating, mixing concrete, building sheds and fences, and maintaining the garden, he had taught me to stand on my own two feet. Equally, I had absorbed the skills and high standards that he had taught me, which had contributed to my successful career. His greatest gift had been to ensure that my brother and I had received a good education, and in return, we had lived up to his expectations and made him a proud and happy man when we obtained our degrees.

We returned to Canon Frome to arrange the funeral and telephone our relatives in the UK, Canada, and Australia, and the following morning, Allan and I completed the funeral arrangements with the undertaker, after which we ordered the flowers and returned to our respective homes. Jonathan had been spending Christmas in Italy with his mother at the time and so it was not until he returned to Swansea that he learnt the sad news that his grandfather had died. As it happened, I was pleased that he had been away, because it meant that he would only have happy memories of his Granddad.

Our domestic life was in turmoil. I was still recovering from my hernia operation, my father had just died, and as soon as we arrived back in Swansea, we had to go to the solicitors to sign the conveyancing documents and collect the keys to our new house. The following day on the 15th January 1981, we moved into our new home. I could only play a passive role and stand on the sidelines when the furniture van arrived, and it was very frustrating watching Hilary and Jonathan unpack the numerous heavy boxes and cartons being disgorged from the removal van and not be able to help them.

The almost new, red, Axminster carpet that we had brought with us from Timperley was not quite large enough to carpet the whole of the through lounge and dining room and so we went into Swansea to see if it was still in stock. We were in luck and we bought an additional length, which the carpet layers professionally pieced together to complete the carpeting downstairs. Our new kitchen was already fully equipped with beige wooden cupboards, wall units, and stone-coloured working surfaces, while the walls and floors were fully tiled with brown tiles, which although they looked very classy, made the room rather gloomy. The bathroom and downstairs loo were similarly luxuriously equipped with brown sanitary ware, gold taps, and beige wall tiles, which had one of our friends fascinated, because their contoured surfaces resembled irregular shaped globules of oil resting on a wet surface. Our old kitchen furniture was past its best and we replaced it with a new table and bench seats. We stored the old table and chairs in the loft above the garage, a philosophy earning me Hilary’s nickname of Squirrel Nutkin, due to my propensity to hoard things on the basis that you never quite know when they might come in useful and naturally, they do.

I had recovered sufficiently to return to work, although being unable to drive, I had to rely on Hilary to ferry me backwards and forwards to the office. While I was work, she and Jonathan sorted out the packing cases, arranged our paperbacks on the bookshelves, placed our crockery in the sideboard and kitchen units, and stored our films, records, glasses, and drinks in the lounge unit.

We subsequently discovered that there were number of outstanding builder’s defects to be rectified. These included water hammer, dampness caused by the lack of filler around the door and window frames, and a faulty central heating thermostat. The builder failed to respond to my requests to carry out the repairs and so I had to involve the NHBC to persuade the company to complete the remedial work.

Our new back garden comprised a large patio and a raised lawn supported by a dwarf retaining wall. The patio had been surfaced with red and yellow paving slabs laid in a chessboard pattern with similar coloured bricks in the low retaining wall. Not only did it look horrible, the surface of the slabs was so rough and uneven that it was impossible for our nephews to use it as a racetrack for their Corgi toys.

The following year, I was tempted to rip it up and replace the garish surface with a more attractive form of hard paving but when I looked into the cost, I could not justify spending so much money on a whim. It then struck me that I could construct an aesthetically pleasing pond opposite the French window in the dining room and use the redundant paving slabs to build three raised, flower containers to break up the remaining surface of the patio. After removing twelve slabs, we excavated the pond to a depth of two feet, the recommended depth for fish to survive a harsh winter, and left a narrow shelf around the edge on which to place some marginal water plants. To save us having to transport the excess soil to the local tip, we used the excavated material to fill our newly created plant containers and top up the flowerbeds.

Having determined that the best product for a pond liner was heavy- duty, black, polypropylene sheeting, Hilary’s Dad obtained a roll of it for us from a builders’ merchant. To fit the pond, the liner had to be double the width of the material supplied on the roll, and so we cut it into equal lengths and coated a six-inch wide strip along the edge of one sheet with white spirit, which we left until it was tacky. We then stuck the two halves together to provide what we hoped would be a waterproof joint. To protect the membrane from sharp stones, we laid an old carpet against the sides and base of the excavation, placed the liner in the hole, and with our fingers crossed, we slowly filled the pond with water. To check that it was watertight, I placed a tower of bricks on the bottom of the pond and capped it with a column of coins so that the uppermost one just touched the meniscus. When I checked it the following morning, I was relieved to find that it was still level with the surface of the water and there was no leak. The joint was perfect. We then confidently squared up the corner joints, trimmed off the excess material and rebedded the adjoining slabs so that they overlapped the sides of the pond to hide the liner.

Finally, we stocked the pond with marginal water plants, lilies, and goldfish, and filled the raised flowerbeds with a mixture of bedding plants and evergreen shrubs to provide colour and interest throughout the year.

I was not completely satisfied with the transformation of the patio but we were now able to enjoy the constantly changing reflection of the sky in the pond, gaze at the calming movements of the water, and watch the impertinent goldfish swim to the side of the pond and beg for food. To deter our nephews Matthew, Robert, and Simon from getting too close to the pond when they came to stay with us, I told them that it was 6ft deep and that if they fell into it they would drown. They treated it with caution until the inevitable happened. Simon fell into the pond and after the initial shock of hitting the water, he stood up and said, Oh, it’s not really very deep!

Our next-door neighbour was Mr. Thomas. He was a quiet and reserved man, although he placed his oscillating lawn sprinkler so close to our garden fence that it not only sprayed his lawn, it watered our patio as well. Similarly, his DIY hammering against the utility room party wall was once so great that I thought that he would break through the party wall in a cloud of dust and rubble.

My father’s cremation service took place on the 19th January 1981. He had been a popular uncle, and when my cousins had asked him for help and advice in buying a house, he would accompany them to check that there were no major structural defects. He also showed them how to do small decorating and DIY jobs and he generously gave Johnny Nicholson, my cousin Kathy’s husband, a full set of carpentry tools. In a similar vein, my cousin Mary asked him to give her away when she got married, because her father had died several years ago.

Funerals are sad occasions, although I have to say how much I appreciated everyone’s presence there, because it was comforting to be supported by so many people, who had known, loved, and respected him. We considered that it would be a waste of money for mourners to buy wreaths and sprays, only for them to remain sadly neglected outside the crematorium, and so we requested that any donations should go to Hereford Hospital’s Chest Clinic Unit to bring relief to other sufferers. The only wreath, which we bought to accompany the coffin was a joint family one comprising a cross of red roses.

My mother, Alison, Allan, and I travelled to the crematorium in an ancient hearse, followed by a convoy of cars containing the other mourners. We nearly lost Hilary and Jean, who had become detached from the funeral procession but thanks to Hilary’s innate navigational skills, they arrived just in time for the service. It was a strange experience being seated in the hearse with my father’s coffin resting on the catafalque behind me, and few words were exchanged between the passengers as we gazed numbly out of the windows during the long journey to Hereford. It was all very mechanical. Outwardly, my visible grieving had passed, and the only occasion when my brother and I had lumps in our throats, was when we had visited the florist’s shop to select a wreath and we had to write our words of farewell on the commemorative card attached to it.

I was determined that my father should have a good send off and that the service should run smoothly, and so I provided the vicar with a sheaf of briefing notes and made sure that he would pronounce TYRIE correctly, because strangers often wrongly pronounce the ‘y-sound’ in our surname as the ‘i-sound’ in ink, instead of the ‘y-sound’ in tyre. It was an important detail, because during a funeral service for one of my employees at the Southern Cemetery in Manchester, the vicar had mispronounced the man’s name and had reduced his family to tears. I was not prepared to allow that to happen at my father’s memorial service.

Everyone returned to Canon Frome for the wake and to give us their support and sympathy, after which we returned to Swansea, while Allan and Jean took our mother back to Urmston to look after her. She stayed with them for about two weeks and then returned to Canon Frome, from where we picked her up to spend a little more time with us after helping to sort out Dad’s belongings.

We were very sympathetic to the fact that my mother had lost her husband, whom she had loved and relied upon for many years, and we tried to support her the best way we could until we hit a snag. She said that she could not possibly go back to the cottage, because Dad had told her that if anything were to happen to him, under no circumstances should she stay in Canon Frome. I do not think he quite put it like that, because it was inevitable that she would have to live there until she could make alternative arrangements, but as it happened, Dad’s relatives, Alison and Ralph, kindly invited her to stay with them at weekends, although we did have to gently insist that she returned to the cottage in the short term.

It was at this time that my mother dropped the bombshell that she had been told that Alison was my father’s daughter. The only information I knew about Alison from a very early age, was that a girl called Jean Souter had left her baby at my grandfather’s house in Perth and he had taken her in and brought her up with his own children. The news was a bolt from the blue, especially as my father was no longer alive, but there were a number of relatives available from my father’s generation, who confirmed the information, including father’s youngest sister, Aunt Peg, in Australia, and my father’s cousin Peggy Cairns in Scotland. Sadly, too many years had elapsed for Allan and me to enjoy a close brother and sister relationship with Alison but we do keep in touch and meet up periodically.

It is impossible for children to appreciate the depth of a parent’s despair and loss on the death of their spouse. My mother and father had lived together for forty years and his sudden death had destroyed the close bonds of love, affection, and companionship that had existed between them. Nevertheless, despite the fact that we were all working, we did try to visit her as often as we could and we invited her to come and stay with us for holidays.

We had arranged a small family party for Jonathan’s 18th birthday, and bearing in mind that my mother was still in mourning, we were not sure, if we should invite her to the celebration. We knew that she was feeling depressed, because during our telephone calls she would complain about being isolated and not being able sell the cottage, which had been on the market for almost two months. After a great deal of heart-searching, we decided that since it was her grandson’s eighteenth birthday and a special family occasion, she really ought to be there. I did not want her to put a dampener on the proceedings, and so I tactfully suggested that if she did not feel that she would be able to enjoy the party atmosphere, she should not come, as were sure that she would not wish to spoil his special day.

Hilary’s parents, her brother John, his wife Jane and their sons Matthew, Robert and Simon, Hilary’s sister Sheila and daughters Caroline and Helen, and Allan and Jean came to the celebrations, and even my mother made a big effort to attend. Hilary cooked the cake, I iced and decorated it and provided the traditional eighteen candles, and we had the usual party food and a Champagne toast. Sadly, my doubts about the wisdom of inviting my mother were confirmed. She was morose and did not seem to be enjoying the occasion, nor did she put in much of an effort to socialise, which I attributed to the fact that she was missing Dad.

It was not unexpected that my mother would feel lonely and isolated after my father’s death, and being determined to leave Canon Frome, she sent away for estate agents’ details of properties in Slough and Langley. Not wishing for her to be unhappy, and recognising that come what may, she intended to return to her roots, Hilary and I took her house hunting in Slough and stayed overnight with my cousin Pat and Chris Johnson in Burnham.

After we had helped her to find a maisonette at 29 Cornwall Avenue in Slough, and had packed a selection of tools and gardening equipment in preparation for the removal company, Allan and I provided a full set of our father’s carpentry tools for Jonathan, in accordance with his grandfather’s wishes, after which we shared the remaining items between us. We each took a favourite tool in turn to remind us of our father, my first being his leather-handled hatchet, which he used to keep in his tool kit. Allan on the other hand took the matching leather-handled claw hammer. I already possessed a reasonable set of tools and so I tended to choose the more unusual ones when it was my turn, including his ripsaw and some of his more specialist jackplanes, which have been of immense value over the years. We had to dispose of my father’s Maxi and Allan and Jean took it home with them to sell in Manchester.

My mother made the final arrangements to return to Slough with the help and assistance of her brother George, and thankfully, the move was a success. Back in her home territory, she enjoyed the benefits of living much closer to her remaining brothers and sisters, her old friends, and her nephews and nieces, although they could not replace my father, whose death had left such an empty void in her life.

It came as no surprise to me that my mother had not settled down in her new accommodation. She was a country girl, not a townie, and the elderly woman living in the maisonette below her accommodation played her radio and television at full volume, being partially deaf. I also gathered from her letters and telephone calls that she seldom stayed at home and spent a great deal of her time travelling by bus to visit her sisters Gladys and Min, and her old friends Renie Woodley and Win Brown.

She finally achieved her ambition to return to Langley when she spotted an advertisement in the local newspaper concerning an almshouse that had become vacant in St Mary’s Road. By a strange twist of fate, it was almost opposite our old home at No.17, and so she applied for it, and was awarded the tenancy. No. 20 Seymour Cottages was in the perfect location for my mother. It was within easy walking distance of many of her old friends and relatives and only a mile to Langley village where she could go shopping.

In November 1982, she moved into her new home. My cousin Brian Balding and his friend David Godard kindly helped to move her furniture and other household goods into the dwelling, but understandably, they did not wish to damage her wardrobe, and so it was left to Hilary and me to move it upstairs. I then learnt why Brian had been so cautious about shifting it. The narrow, sharp bend in the steep staircase meant partially dismantling the wardrobe, otherwise it would have been impossible to move it without damaging the outer casing. Being the son of my father, I carefully worked out how it had been assembled, and with Hilary’s help I judiciously separated as much of the wardrobe as possible to facilitate its journey upstairs. It was still an incredibly tight squeeze around the steep bend, but Hilary and I were a good team and we inched it around the obstruction and reassembled it. I then repaired some of her chairs where the joints had become loose, after which, we hung her pictures on the walls and generally helped her to settle in.

The almshouse comprised a lounge-cum-diner, a small kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Originally, the dwellings had contained no internal bathrooms, which meant that the elderly residents had to wash and cook in the downstairs kitchen, and for personal hygiene, use chamber pots, and the brick lavatories that had backed onto St Mary’s Road. These had been demolished after the bathrooms had been installed, and the only evidence of their former existence was the concrete floor slab where the residents stored their dustbins. The only other features of any significance in the dwelling were the draughty, leaded, glass windows, and the floor in my mother’s bedroom, which was so uneven that the ancient floorboards creaked ominously whenever we walked across them. When I mentioned this to my mother, she remarked reassuringly that the noise did not concern her, because no one would attempt to break into her bedroom without being heard.

She had always enjoyed working in the garden, and we were pleased to see that she had taken advantage of the small plot at the front of her house to grow lettuces, radishes, beetroots, carrots, beans, and peas. She even repainted the white, wooden, garden seat that my father had made for them at Canon Frome, which stood sentinel outside the lounge window and made regularly appearances in our family photographs.

During one of our visits, I heard strange creaking noises, which my mother explained were due to the branches of a massive yew tree rubbing against each other as they swayed in the wind. It was a logical explanation, but I can well imagine how those strange sounds would have been construed in the 1940’s, if superstitious residents had woken up in the middle of the night and allowed their imaginations to run riot, especially as they were living opposite a graveyard. They may even have been the source of the claim in the nineteen forties that the almshouses were haunted, the full story being covered in Book 1 of the Trilogy.

My mother was much happier living in Langley. Not only had she returned to the village where she had spent most of life, her almshouse was only a short walk from her sister Min and brother-in-law Bill Balding, who lived in ground floor flat in Minster Way. From a historical perspective, their dwelling had been built on the site of the old walnut tree where police sergeant Harkwright had knocked Dougie Paine over with his cloak in the 1950s, also covered in Book 1.

She could also visit her friend Win Brown, who lived a short distance away in Alderbury Avenue, or walk into Langley village to see her niece Dorothy Reidy. My cousins, their partners, and their married children often popped in to see her, the regular visitors being my cousin Mickey Balding’s wife Mary, who developed a close bond with my mother, his brother Brian, and my cousin Kathy.

Following the sale of my mother’s maisonette, I had taken advice from my bank in Sketty on how best to invest her money to supplement her pension and provide her with a little growth. Although the sums involved were modest, the rate of inflation at that time was very high and she was receiving an excellent 7% rate of interest on her money. However, the rate dropped significantly over the next five years and she was forced her to draw on her capital to maintain her standard of living, pay her rent, rates, energy bills, and other general living costs.

Despite my help in sorting out her financial situation, she kept her financial affairs very close to her chest until she wanted to draw on her capital. I can only assume that it was her way of demonstrating her independence, and of course, how she spent her money was entirely up to her. Consequently, it was only many years later that I discovered how much money she had donated to the church, after moving into the almshouse. I also found among her belongings an extensive list of all the friends, nephews, nieces, great nephews, and great nieces to whom she sent birthday cards and presents, which when added up, represented a considerable monthly outgoing from her pension and investment income. She obviously felt that if I knew how much she was spending on such gifts, I would advise caution, because she was eating into her capital, but it was a deft means of encouraging people to visit her and it obviously worked.

My mother was relatively young to have been widowed at 62 and my father’s death was a traumatic experience for her. Apart from my regular visits to Langley, we would have long telephone calls, during which she would tell me how lonely she had been, and then she would list all the people she had seen during the day, as well as those she had visited. As our call continued, it became increasingly evident that she was having a much fuller social life than Hilary and I were enjoying, although this was no substitute for having Dad around or the inevitable loneliness she would experience at the end of the day. When I was a boy, my mother never attended church, except for the formal Hatch ’em, Match ’em, and Dispatch ’em occasions, but living in church property, she received regular visits from the vicar and she became a regular churchgoer. She was even confirmed and took communion, a simple act that extended her circle of friends and encouraged her to participate in numerous social events in the church hall.

Swansea City Council

Managing the Outside Works Organisation

The City Engineer Ifon Jones had a neat moustache, short, wavy, mousy brown hair and a wiry figure. He lived in the adjoining town of Llanelli and he drove to work in an unpretentious, nippy, cream, Renault runabout in preference to his luxurious, high-powered, Rover saloon. He was knowledgeable and self-assured, and it was a great privilege to have worked for him. He had his fingers firmly on the pulse of his department, and if he wanted me to look into something for him, he would preface his request with the words, I’ve heard a whisper that … He had an large and imposing office dominated by a majestic, green, metal desk, which was about 10ft square with an inlaid leather top. The only drawback to the room was that it faced a stark, yellow, brick wall on the opposite side of the inner courtyard, and it received little or no natural daylight.

My room was about twenty feet long and twelve feet wide, and it was furnished with a metal desk, half the size of Ifon’s, an executive swivel chair, a bookcase, a cupboard, a wooden table and two upright chairs. The view from my office was also the forbidding, yellow, brick wall, and I could only see the sky, if I stood immediately next to the window. There were of course many advantages of being based in the Guildhall close to the centre of power, but its drawback was that I was isolated from my managers and the operations for which I was responsible.

The city engineer’s department comprised the outside works sections, the accountancy unit, the administration section, and the engineering design section managed by my colleague Ken Jones, the other Assistant City Engineer. Ken had a bushy beard and a twinkle in his eye, and his deep, rich, baritone voice made him the perfect choice for the Dunvant Male Voice Choir. Surprisingly, and despite the fact that we occupied adjoining offices, our paths seldom crossed.

Apart from my meetings with the City Engineer, the person with whom I had the most contact in the Guildhall was our departmental accountant Frank Osborne. Frank was a dapper, friendly man with a rich, dry voice, who clearly saw my arrival as a breath of fresh air, especially when I asked him for detailed costing information concerning each of my outside works sections, and my proposals to implement stricter financial controls.

My first week was spent getting to know my staff and establishing the size of my empire, a situation that was brutally interrupted by the need to deal with an industrial relations dispute, which was to be the first of many while I was at Swansea. The main depot was situated at Pipehouse Wharf in the Strand. It was conveniently close to the city centre and it accommodated the outside works, cleansing, and garage sections. My managers were J. R. Davies, who was responsible for organising the highways, sewers, and capital works operations, David Tucker, who supervised the cleansing service, and Terry Avery, who was responsible for vehicle maintenance.

The public lighting and sewers sections occupied an elderly depot at Morfa Road, which were managed by Robin Pyott and Fred Bull respectively. In addition, there was a cleansing sub-depot at the tip of the Gower peninsular to serve the lightly populated rural area.

J R Davies, known more familiarly as JR, was a tall, imposing man with a military bearing, and a deep sonorous voice. He was one of life’s great characters. He was a good raconteur and his most amusing story was that of a telephone call he once received from a woman, who complained to him that men were adjusting their flies as they left the public conveniences close to her home. JR knew precisely where she lived, and he scratched his head in puzzlement, because he could not work out how she could possibly see the entrance to the men’s lavatories from her house. He offered to visit her and assess the situation, and when he arrived, she invited him inside and offered him a cup of tea. After listening to her complaint, she took him to the window to show him the problem. Much to his consternation, he still could not see the building from where he was standing, and being somewhat mystified, he said that he could not see what the problem was. At this, the woman stood on a chair and said, Well Mr. Davies, if you stand up here, you can see them very clearly!

I had only been in post for a few months when I was hit by what is commonly known as a double whammy. JR fell ill and had to take early retirement, and I was faced with the need to reorganise the outside works sections to meet the threat of privatisation imposed by the rightwing Thatcher Government. This was further compounded by the legacy left by my predecessor, who had given his staff extensive powers to manage their sections, which although laudable, was incompatible with the threat of compulsory competitive tendering. As my managers were to discover, this meant that their decisions would be put under a financial microscope, they would have to adopt more efficient methods of working, and they would have to develop new skills and achieve significant cost reductions in every aspect of their operations.

It was vitally important to appraise myself as quickly as possible of the size of the highway network and the other facilities for which I was responsible, and so I arranged for the Highways Superintendent Dennis Kenchington to give me a comprehensive tour of Swansea and the Gower Peninsula. Dennis was a kind-hearted and well-respected man, who was an excellent organiser and the ideal person to have at one’s side during an emergency. He was in charge of 116 highways labourers, street masons, drivers, plant operatives, and the four district foremen, comprising Messrs. Hannigan, Hopkins, Ellis, and Sutton. He also had the services of his technical assistant Roger Mulcahy to support him in his duties.

Dennis was a mine of information about the history and culture of the Gower peninsula and he showed me the beautiful sandy beaches of Port Eynon, Three Cliffs Bay, Oxwich Bay, Rhossili Down, and the spectacular rocky isthmus called Worms Head, access to which was restricted to a short period around low tide. During my introductory tour, Dennis told me about the public conveniences at Port Eynon where a pervert had managed to cut a peephole through a 6-inch thick, reinforced-concrete, roof slab over the women’s cubicles. What we could not work out is how he could have done it without making a considerable amount of noise, and yet none of the villagers had reported the activities.

The north Gower beaches were unsuitable for swimming due to the treacherous currents in the Loughor estuary, but they were the perfect location for the renowned and internationally famous cockle beds, which the locals harvested in the traditional manner. Having explored the delights of the Gower peninsula, Dennis then took me on a whirlwind tour of Swansea’s urban areas with evocative sounding names such as Llansamlet, Bon-y-Maen, Fforestfach, Cwmbwrla and Sketty, as well as the more anglicised terms such as Morriston, St Thomas and Sandfields.

At the 1974 reorganisation of Local Government, Swansea had claimed the right to maintain the 300 miles of unclassified roads within its area under Section 187 of the Local Government 1972. My budget for this work was £1 million, which covered footway and highway repairs, gulley emptying, the cyclical maintenance of highway reservations and grass verges, and the provision and maintenance of public lighting. I was also responsible for maintaining the city’s 70 public conveniences, fifteen of which were manned by 38 employees. The overall cost of this activity was an enormous £450,000 a year and as I was to discover, public conveniences attracted vandals, graffiti artists, and many sad people.

I also managed a small civil engineering capital works section, which comprised 24 building trade employees, who were responsible for carrying out highway and sewerage schemes in the Lower Swansea Valley Enterprise Zone, repairing coastal defences, building new car parks, and making up private streets to adoptable standards.

The Sewerage and Drainage Superintendent was Fred Bull, a friendly man, whose neatly trimmed beard reminded me of that of a sea captain. Fred was ably assisted by his two foremen, Des Martin and Colin Morris, who supervised 56 employees responsible for sewer maintenance, the septic tank and cesspit tankering service, and the emptying of pail closets in the remote parts of the rural Gower peninsula. The latter activity provided him with a fund of amusing anecdotes about the need to carry the contents of the privies through residents’ houses, because there was no other means of access to the rear of their terrace properties. There were six hundred kilometres of sewers in the city and fifty-six pumping stations, all of which were maintained for £640,000 under a Sewerage Agency agreement with the Welsh Water Authority.

The fleet manager was Terry Avery, an enthusiastic young man, who had moved to Swansea from Southend. The garage and workshops played an important role in every facet of the council’s work, and Terry was ably assisted by his foreman Lou and thirty mechanics and fitters. He maintained the authority’s 270 vehicles and items of plant, all of which had to be carried as overheads on the council’s operations. Consequently, it was imperative that its costs were kept to a minimum.

The public lighting superintendent Robin Pyott was fully conversant with modern electrical equipment and good working practices, much of which had been gained from his former employment as a time-served electrician at Coventry and his work overseas. He was innovative, keen, and knowledgeable, and he wished to transfer his wealth of experience to his new organisation at Swansea. This progressive approach was not well received by the workforce, the reasons for which became clearer during the forthcoming weeks.

The Public Lighting Section

The public lighting superintendent was absent during my first week in post with the result that I came face to face with an inflexible workforce, whose morale was at rock bottom and which refused to abandon its outdated working practices. My baptism of fire arose when I received a telephone call from the area foreman John Mainwaring, who advised me that a problem had arisen with the newly introduced bonus scheme and could I come and sort it out. John and his colleague Howell Davies acquainted me with the situation, and advised me that the men were refusing to co-operate with them. I suggested that we met the workforce in the canteen, and not wishing to create an us and them situation, I proposed that John and Howell should sit with their crews during the meeting. I then had to wait for about half an hour for the tower wagon crews and jointers to return to the depot, park their vehicles, and saunter nonchalantly across the yard to the canteen. Their cavalier attitude did not impress me. It spelled trouble with a capital T, and trouble it proved to be.

The men’s spokesmen were Joe Burke and Roy George. They were nice men and hard bargainers, and I respected their points of view, although I did not agree with them. I listened to the employees’ fears and worries, and I explained to them that having just arrived in Swansea, there was little I could do until Mr. Pyott returned from holiday. I did however ask them for their co-operation and goodwill, in return for which I gave them a cast-iron guarantee that if they helped me out and continued to operate the new bonus scheme, I would personally review the bonus targets and meet them again to consider their objections. I might just as well have spoken to the wall. The workforce was not prepared to listen, they would not budge an inch, and so I returned to the Guildhall to brief the City Engineer on the outcome of my meeting and my failure to broker a satisfactory compromise. The following morning, Ifon dealt with the problem directly. He called into the depot on his way into work and temporarily kicked the new scheme into touch until their