Grandad’S Story: The Life of a Typical Yorkshireman

By David Bannister

In 2013 he decided to tell his life story, hoping that someone may someday want to read it. It is an insightful look back to the world of yesterday, and deals with subjects ranging from school discipline, family feuds and office politics, to the joys of children and grandchildren, the loss of loved ones, and the perils of caravanning in Europe.
The story is told in the frank and forthright manner you would expect from a true Yorkshireman, full of honesty, self deprecation and dark humour. It also shows that an ordinary man can have an extraordinary tale to tell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Dec 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499092271

David Bannister

David Bannister was born in Bradford in 1940. After leaving school at the age of fifteen he forged a successful career in the motor trade, going from the garage workshops into senior management, and everything in between. He moved to the south of England in the 1970’s, where he made a significant contribution to the local area, including the formation of a boys football club. Since retiring in 2001 he has divided his time between his home in Oxfordshire, his extended family in Hertfordshire and holidays in Spain.

Book preview

PART ONE

Chapter One

Redundancy

I t was early one day in December 2001 when my office telephone rang. Upon answering, the voice at the other end of the line said, ‘Is that David Bannister?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘David, have you heard the latest rumours?’

I replied in the negative. However I soon found out what my colleague was on about. Upon opening my company e-mail later in the day I noticed a message with the subject heading, ‘important message.’ On opening the message it read ‘100 redundancies in the MES department to be announced in 2002.’ It continued to state that ‘middle management would be most affected and that the people involved would be notified in the first week of January 2002.’

Being employed as a Special Project Manager at that time, this came as something of a bombshell, not only to me but to a greater extent many of my colleagues who had young families to support. Even though I was aged 61, and with maximum pension rights, I was not sure whether I was prepared to seek other employment or retire if it turned out that I was one of the people to be axed. With Christmas only a few days away, I decided not to dwell on the subject or worry my family, feeling that destiny would take its course regardless. In any case, I asked myself what would be gained by worrying.

It was not the first time that the business had made such an announcement during my tenure, however it was the first time that my department was directly affected. Christmas however came and went and my wife Elizabeth, son Richard and I had an enjoyable festive season.

At this time I was based at the company’s Head Office in Ipswich, Suffolk, and for the last few years I had only been returning home at the weekends, living through the week in various hotels. So at 5.30 am on the first working day of 2002, I left home trying to anticipate what the immediate future would bring.

Noon soon arrived followed by one o’ clock and still no announcement was made. With me being one of the longest serving and oldest employees in my department, it was assumed by many of my management colleagues that I would be top of the list to hear the announcement.

Early in the afternoon, several of them began telephoning me to say they had been given the boot and to ask what the position was with me. I had to be honest and tell them that until now I had heard nothing and would probably be one of the last to be informed.

Sometime later my office telephone rang. It was my immediate boss at the other end. ‘David,’ he said, ‘I have left you until last to contact.’ He then advised me that he had informed the directors that because of my long service and excellent work, he was not prepared to make me redundant, however he said would talk to me and see what other options there were.

We arranged a meeting for the following week, away from the offices. My boss told me it was difficult for him to convince the company that my present position was tenable, and we talked through the limited options available.

After a long discussion we agreed that I would take early retirement and that there would be a small ‘golden handshake.’ We also discussed whether I would prefer to take gardening leave (stop work on full pay until the retirement date) or continue to work at a more relaxed pace. I opted for the latter and it was agreed that I would work from home for the remaining period of my employment. This allowed me to spend more time at home and less in hotels, which I had done for the last few years.

Arrangements were thus made to convert our smallest bedroom into an office. The company supplied me with a desk and a chair which folded out to become a single bed. They also supplied me with a business telephone line and a monster of a machine which incorporated a telephone, fax, printer and copier. My wife Elizabeth nicknamed this machine as ‘That Bloody Thing’ because it kept ringing day and night and continually spewed out paper, mostly junk mail faxes from all over the country. We eventually resolved this problem by unplugging the machine every day at 5.00 pm and at weekends.

Time passed very quickly and my workload gradually became less and less. It was thus during this period of time that I developed a habit which I have since adopted permanently, this is that around half past three every afternoon, I partake in one or two glasses of wine or whisky and then have a siesta for an hour or two.

The 30th June 2002, my last working day soon arrived, and I had prearranged a meeting with one of our suppliers at the company’s Bolton office. The meeting only lasted around two hours, and afterwards I looked around the office and found that I could not see anybody there that I knew. I was aware that my immediate boss was out of the country on holiday, and we had already arranged to meet a couple of days after my retirement for a final handover of various confidential documents I had created for the company. Not surprisingly, several other managers had approached me unofficially for these documents without success.

Returning to my last day. I thought, perhaps naively that after 32 years of service to a company, there would be some kind of farewell for me from management. A couple of hours passed and still nothing, so somewhat dejected I left the office for the last time without any acknowledgement.

Being a diehard Yorkshireman, I soon got over this disappointment and got on with my life. There is one piece of advice I would give to anyone, and that is;

‘Always do your work to the best of your ability and do not expect false praise. Work to live and never live to work and always remember that when the King is dead, long live the King. And finally, in modern commerce you are never more than a number.’

Chapter Two

Goodbye to the Priest

M y story began 87 years earlier in 1915, some 25 years before I was born. In the city of Bradford, Yorkshire, on the 10 th July 1915, Fredrick and Cecilia (nee Gynnt) Bannister had a second son whom they named George. George, some 25 years later was to become my father. George was the second of four brothers. The others were William (Willy) the eldest, Fred was third, and the youngest was named Arthur.

There are two stories I recall my father telling me about Arthur. I never knew my grandfather, who had died when my father was a young teenager, coincidently on the same day as the then King, George V. Arthur was obviously very upset and a reporter from the local newspaper Telegraph and Argus saw Arthur in tears on his house doorsteps. The reporter asked why he was so upset and Arthur told him why. The next day’s headline in the newspaper read;

‘While the Country mourns the death of the King, this little boy mourns the death of his father.’

The second story was when Arthur was very young. His elder brother Fred fired a stone from a catapult, hitting Arthur in the left eye. This resulted in Arthur losing said eye, and I only ever knew my uncle Arthur with one odd eye. Although Arthur was a great uncle and a kind person, I believe that he never forgave Fred for his accident, and my recollection is that they never mixed with each other. In fact I believe that there was more than one bust up between them over the years, although I never witnessed anything first hand.

Whereas I had a good and safe childhood, the same cannot be said for my parents. As I mentioned earlier my grandfather died when my father was a young teenager. My mother Margaret suffered an even worse experience, with her mother dying shortly after she was born.

My mother was the youngest of three sisters at the time of her mother’s death. The eldest was named Jane, Mary was the second born and finally my mother Margaret. Her father married again not long afterwards and his second wife did not show much motherly love or affection towards the three sisters.

In due course my mother’s father and his second wife had a son of their own, who was called Albert. By all accounts Albert became the apple of his mother’s eye and could do no wrong. When my mother was still only in her mid teens, she was forced to leave the family home and go to live with Mary, her older and by now married sister.

I never met my mother’s stepmother and I believe she died before I was born. With regards to my mother’s father, I only recall seeing him on the odd occasion.

In the 1920s and 1930s, there were no such things as government grants or benefits, so if you had no money you either went hungry or depended on charities. My father attended the Bradford Cathedral School, and told me that many of the children went to school without shoes, and in many cases relied on hand outs of second hand clothes given out by the school authorities. They also in many cases only had one decent meal a day which was supplied by the church authorities. My father’s mother Cecilia worked many long hours as a cleaner in order to give her boys the minimum requirements of food and clothes.

This would explain why, on returning home one day when he was in his late teens, my father found his mother very distressed. Also in the house was the local Catholic Priest. It turned out that when asked for a contribution towards the church and replying that she had no money, the Priest threatened to excommunicate my grandmother unless she donated. On hearing this, my father physically removed the Priest from his mother’s house. Whereas up until this time my grandmother had been a practising Catholic (she was born to Irish parents), she never attended church again afterwards.

It was in the mid 1930s that my father George and my mother Margaret became friends and then on February 1937 became husband and wife. There must have been some mischief before they married, because on the 15th July 1937 my mother gave birth to my eldest brother Brian.

Some three years and three months later I was born on the 8th October 1940 at 5 Lofthouse Street, off Otley Road in Bradford, West Yorkshire. I mention this address because due to necessary development over the years, it no longer exists.

The first house I recall living in was at the top of a very steep hill, and it was typical of the type of house that working class people lived in, in the 1940s. Of course it was a rented property, because in those days it was unheard of for ordinary people like us to own their own house.

The property was known as a back to back, with a snicket (passage) dividing the adjacent front and rear houses, each one consisting of a living/dining room and small utility room on the ground floor, and two small bedrooms on the first floor. There was a small cellar underneath the house and the main reason for this was to provide a store of coal for the one and only open fireplace, which also doubled as a stove, and therefore was the only means of cooking meals on. There was no mains electricity and the only room that had any kind of lighting was the living room. The lighting in this room came from two gas lamps. When retiring to bed, candles were used to illuminate the bedrooms.

There was only cold running water available, and when hot water was required, this had to be heated in a pan on the fire range. There was no bathroom or inside toilet, so bath time was always a family affair. My parents would heat water on the fire range, and pan by pan would fill a steel galvanised bath shaped container. Then in order of age we would each take a bath. Being the youngest at the time, I was always last.

The outside toilet was at the rear of the property down the snicket and was housed in a small stone building. This was divided into two, one part for the front house and the other for the rear house, and these buildings were known locally as the midden. If or when you needed to go to the toilet during the night, unless you were prepared to go downstairs in the dark and then walk to the rear of the property, you had to use a small bowl shaped container which was either made of metal, or ceramic if you were posh. This container or potty (or as it was colloquially known, a gusunder) had to be emptied and cleaned every morning. The old ceramic versions are now considered as antique collectable items, and can be quite valuable, with people using them as planters for flowers among other things.

There were no luxuries such as carpets in those days. The ground floor lounge had linoleum, with the upstairs rooms being simply bare floorboards. The kitchen floor was laid with large stone flags. For extra comfort, my parents would make ‘tab rugs’ for the lounge. These tab rugs were made using a piece of canvas, then cutting old clothes into four inch by one inch strips, or ‘tabs’ as they were known. Then by using a special stick you pushed each end of the tabs through the holes in the canvas, and you continued this until the canvas was full of tabs.

In those days there was of course no such thing as television, and the only forms of entertainment in the house were either a piano or a radio. These radios were completely different to those of today. Instead of being solid state they consisted of many valves (similar to small light bulbs) and lots of wires. With having no electricity in the houses these radios were powered by rather large batteries. Unlike the AAA and AA batteries of today, these batteries were about one third the size of a car battery and were constructed on the same principle. Again with having no electricity supply in the house it was necessary to regularly take the battery to Boots the Chemist for recharging.

It was on one of these occasions, when I was about six years of age that my mother asked me to take the battery to Boots the Chemist about half a mile away to have it recharged. At the time I had a children’s scooter, so without ado I set of down the steep street where we lived, completely failing to slow down when I reached the main road at the bottom. Unfortunately for me, one of the few cars on the road in those days was approaching my street and I went straight into the front of the car, resulting in me flying into the air. It must have been nerves that kept me going because I immediately jumped up and continued to Boots the Chemist with the battery.

When I returned home I was in for a severe telling off by my mother who had been frantic, wondering if I was alright, and was also concerned for the driver of the vehicle, who was greatly shocked by the accident. My mother calmed down when she saw I was unscathed by the impact, but my scooter was confiscated and I was grounded for a while.

It was also about this time that I had my first run in with the police. One day a friend and I thought it would be great fun to throw stones at the trams as they passed the bottom of our street. That was until we were seen by the local policeman. In those days the local policeman knew everybody in his area, so on being seen by the policeman, my friend and I decided to make a run for it.

Some time passed and eventually we thought it would be safe to go home. When I entered the front door I noticed immediately that the policeman was already there and was speaking to my father. In those days it was going to be either my father or the policeman who gave me clip around the ear, and I recall on this occasion that it was my father.

On laundry days my mother would fill a metal dustbin shaped tub with hot water, and using what was known as a posser she would agitate the clothes with an up and down motion. When the clothes were clean, she would repeat the process several times using clean cold water. Then to remove as much water as possible, she would pass the wet clothes through a machine called a mangle, which consisted of two rollers that were revolved with a handle.

With the houses we lived in having no garden or outside space to speak of, the wet clothes were hung to dry on a creel (a wooden frame with several rods) which was suspended from the living room ceiling directly above the open fire. When pressing the clothes my mother used an iron that was heated on a rack attached to the fireplace.

These houses and their workings may appear to the modern reader to be very primitive, however, around the time of the Second World War this was all the working class people of the town I lived in knew. Even to this very day, there are still lots of these houses in existence, although by now they have of course been brought up to date with inside facilities and the usual modern day implements.

In 1939, at the start of the Second World War, my father George was conscripted into the armed forces and was attached to the transport section of the Royal Air Force (RAF). One of his duties was to transport and load bombs onto Lancaster bombers. These bombs were to be dropped on Germany and other Nazi occupied countries in Europe. My father recalled to his sons many years later that during one of these loading operations, a fellow airman inadvertently walked into one of the bombers propellers and was instantly decapitated.

My father did not speak much about his time in the armed forces. Maybe this was because the furthest distance he was based was Blackpool, some 70 miles away. He was also demobbed on medical grounds because of high blood pressure, something he suffered with all his life.

After being demobbed, my father worked for a company called Craven Dairies as a milkman. He initially delivered milk with a horse and cart, distributing the milk from large milk churns into his customers’ jugs with a ladle. He later progressed to using a motor vehicle, and was then able to deliver larger quantities in bottles, mainly to schools.

Because my father was employed in transport before driving licences were a legal requirement, he never had to take a motor vehicle driving test. The only licence that my father possessed was for a Hackney Carriage (for horse drawn vehicles), and for which to this day I still possess the original document.

I cannot recall any of my uncles having a distinguished war career, with the exception of my mother’s half-brother Albert. Albert was also in the RAF, he was a Mid Upper Gunner (MUG) on a bomber. I believe that his plane was shot down on more than one occasion, and I think he ended up being a prisoner of war in Italy.

I am a great believer that a person’s personality and principals are to a great extent formed in their earliest years. In my case my parents taught me to be honest at all times, particularly to myself, and to be prepared to stand up for myself and treat other people with the respect that they deserve.

An example of the first principle was when I was at primary school one day and the class was being taught about money. This lesson included using fake money which was made of card and paper. After the lesson I decided to keep some of this fake money, and I took it home. Later that evening my mother found the money and asked where I had obtained it. Not being aware that I had done anything wrong, I happily explained. I was somewhat shocked to be advised that this was tantamount to stealing and therefore wrong. The very next day I was instructed by my parents to go directly to the headmaster, return the false money and apologise.

Being only about six years old, the headmaster appeared to me to be a giant of a man, although with hindsight he would have been no more than about six feet tall. I did what I was told and have never forgotten the lesson I was taught.

The second example was when my brother Brian told my father that he was being bullied by an older boy at school. My father asked who it was and it turned out that it was the boy who delivered the newspapers in the local area. So the very next day, when the paperboy (who was somewhat taller and older than Brian) approached our street, my father told Brian to confront him.

Brian obeyed my father and shortly after a scuffle started. It appeared to me that Brian was coming off worse, so I asked my father why he did not stop the fight. My father’s reply was, ‘Brian may be coming of worse, but the other boy will now know he will not get away without some pain if he bullies Brian again.’ True to my father’s reply, Brian was never again bullied by this boy.

Brian and I had two friends who were also brothers, their names were Charlie and Dennis Finch. We boys often played together in the waste ground that was adjacent to our homes. Alternatively, another favourite place that we used to play was the large cemetery at the top of our street. To gain access to the cemetery we had to scale a wall which, although it was only about twelve feet tall, to us small boys was some feat.

One day we decided to camp out in the cemetery, so off we went and each got a large bed sheet from our mothers’ linen cupboard. Everything was going fine until our parents noticed that we were not in the house after it had gone dark. Needless to say when our parents found us our adventure came to an immediate end.

Another favourite game of ours was to jump on the rear fender of the trams which travelled from the city centre to a place higher up the main road from where we lived. We stayed on the tram until the driver or conductor noticed us, then we alighted and ran like hell so as not to be caught.

Charlie Finch, although a good friend to me and my brother, was something of a local character. He had previously been in a borstal (detention centre for young offenders), and was well known for getting into trouble. My last recollection of Charlie was when the police called at his house, and we saw him climb onto the roof of his house through a sky light and run off across the roof ridge tiles of the adjacent houses.

When I was five years of age I recall a street party. When I say a street party, that is exactly what I mean. All the neighbours brought out their chairs and tables and placed them in the middle of the street. There was homemade bunting and each neighbour supplied whatever food they could manage. Although at this tender age I did not appreciate the reason for this party, I was later told by my parents that it was to celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day, which was the day the Nazi’s surrendered to the Allied forces.

In late 1947, my mother and father asked Brian and me whether we would prefer a motor car or a new brother or sister. We obviously replied that we would like a motor car. How naive young boys are, and on the 28th February 1948, we were presented with a new baby brother, who was named Gordon.

It was later in 1948 that our parents told us that we were going to move to a new house in the suburbs of the city. When the day finally arrived for us to move, my father, mother and younger brother travelled in the removal van, while Brian and I caught a recently introduced trolley bus. The trolley buses were gradually replacing the old trams and while they still ran off electricity supplied by overhead cables, they were not restricted to the tracks in the road like the trams were. The trolley buses were also much larger and all of the passenger seats were inside like the modern buses of today.

What a difference we found in the surroundings. Instead of being closed in by other houses and cobbled roads, this new house was surrounded by fields and woodlands. Not only was the environment different, the house was like a palace to us boys. There was a lounge, separate dining room, kitchen, entrance hall, three large bedrooms and something that we had never seen before inside a house, a bathroom and separate toilet with hot and cold running water.

Another feature that we had never experienced before was electric lighting, not just downstairs but throughout the whole house. There were also gardens to the front and rear of the house. This was the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

Chapter Three

Retirement

M y faith in human nature was restored when my closest colleagues at work arranged a farewell dinner for me in Oxford. We all stayed in a hotel overnight and had a great time reminiscing about the good old days. Unfortunately this was the last time that I saw these good friends. Perhaps the main reason for this is that they all came from different parts of the country, and one of my other traits is never to return to a place once I have no remaining connection to it.

Several weeks before my retirement day, I had contacted the pension provider’s office in order to ascertain what my pension and other benefits were. I was initially given a figure of which I was satisfied, however several days later I received a telephone call from the pension provider informing me that the figures given earlier were incorrect. This was because I had paid too much money over the years into my ‘Additional Voluntary Contributions’ (AVCs), and I was informed that I would have to pay 40% tax on the surplus, which would amount to several thousand pounds.

I responded rather angrily and told them that they had a duty of care to protect me from such events, and that only recently I had received a letter from them suggesting that I further increase my contributions. They advised me that those were the facts and nothing could be done about it. I immediately wrote a rather aggressive letter to them saying that I was not prepared to accept their statement and that I was prepared to take this matter all the way, even to the courts if necessary.

A few days later I received a telephone call from my old boss, saying that my case had been discussed at a recent directors board meeting, and he was wondering if there was anything he could do to help me. I thanked him, but said that this could become quite nasty and I would not want to prejudice his position in the company.

He said that he had told the directors that I would not give in until the very end. To cut the story short, I contacted the insurance Ombudsman, requesting that his office look into my case. Shortly afterwards I received a letter from the pension providers stating that the company had agreed to increase my ‘golden handshake’ by the amount of the tax due.

There were only three conditions attached, and that was that I would have to sign a document in the presence of a solicitor stating that I would not continue my career, either independently or with another employer (carrying out the same kind of business), that I would hand over or destroy any data which I had created for the company during my employment, and finally I must not discuss my terms of retirement with any other person. This procedure took all of thirty minutes and cost my former employers £500.

Earlier in the year Elizabeth and I had bought a new Hyundai Coupe motor car in preparation for my retirement and the loss of the company car. Richard at the same time also bought the same model, more for pleasure and of course posing. This was the car that at the time was billed up as ‘the £15,000 Ferrari!’

Many people upon retiring either go on a cruise or some exotic holiday, but Elizabeth and I decided that we would buy a one way