Mollycoddle or rust?

I may have remarked before how now-a-days parents seem almost over-protective of their children as if there is pervert around every corner or as if, when climbing a tree, they will fall and break their neck, or would never trust their child with a sharp knife. In my experience children are generally very sensible and robust and quite capable of looking after themselves.

Among the several buildings comprising my parent's business Smith & Crockford was an ancient shed in some disrepair which was used to store disused building materials and ladders. It was a wooden structure with earth floor and part corrugated-sheet-iron roof. The other part was where sheets were missing, and many of the existing sheets were paper thin for rust. It had a sort of upper floor by reason of the lumber stored there. In all it was a wonderful playground. Of course, strictly, we were not allowed to climb on the roof because it was considered so dangerous. But we did. We being my older sister (until she grew out of such things) and Ian, the boy from next door.  My sister is three years and Ian was a year older than me. We knew how to navigate that roof. We did not chance the rustiest sheets. We gambled on those that were mediocre. And we disdained the few shiny new sheets.  We crawled through tunnels formed from stacked lumber. We ground glass bottles to dust in an old plumber's vice.  We made milk by mixing crushed chalk with water, and added it to tea made from builder's sand mixed with water. We made an obstacle course around the "top" garden which was adjacent to this shed: the course involved various dare devil feats and you were chicken if you could not complete it or touched the ground.  I remember edging my way along the top rail of a tall fence surmounted with metal spikes which would have impaled me had I fallen. And then walk unwavering along the rounded top of a 6ft masonry wall.

Next door was Ian's parents' grocery store which had a separate bakery at the end of the yard behind the shop. Ian and I would pester the baker for cakes and occasionally won, more often got shouted away. Or we would filch eggs and watch them explode when thrown against the brick wall we traversed to get from my to Ian's property. We only took eggs with no shells, thinking these were unsaleable. Or, if the store room was unlocked, Ian would take bottles of fizzy drinks one by one and drink the top half inch or so on the basis that nobody would ever notice. As far as I know nobody ever did. In those days bottles were not sealed like they are now.

The bakery had a slate roof which was definitely out of bounds. Slates break very easily and are difficult to repair, as I repeatedly tell people here. But we clambered over the roof none-the-less, with great care I should add - it was never our intention to damage property.

In my parent's "top garden", which was about 50 yards along the builder's yard behind our house, was a raised rain-water tank that communicated via a valve and underground pipe to a second, underground tank which had an overflow onto the vegetable garden. On opening the valve water would thus come out of this overflow and water and soil make mud and mud is great to play in. Here it was that I made dams and reservoirs and invented the venturi pump.  How could I have known it had already been invented?

His Master's Voice

My workshop was in the top garden. My father had plenty of other work areas associated with the business so was happy for me to take over part of this shed. Here I collected resistors and suchlike from old radio sets and, when I got a bit older, actually made things that worked like an oscilloscope, a servo-controlled XY pen-plotter, an audio signal generator. Here I first savoured Rossini's overture to Guillaume Tell on a '78 using a phonograph with a steel needle, through my beloved balanced pentode audio amplifier, the beginning of hi-fi.

We now live together with several other families and I am so thankful that we have about 15 acres of land, not all cultivated, thus providing plenty of opportunities for children here (that includes my three granddaughters) to explore, whilst still being in the relative safety of our property.

Morning

Morning Alaska

Long time ago my father ran a DIY shop in Alresford and I was granted the task of re-modelling the shop window. Having recently learnt in school how to do a flat wash and possibly inspired by scenes from the film Oliver I decided to cut out a silhouetted city sky-line from ply-wood, paint it matt black, and place it in front of a colour-wash sky. Suitably lit by coloured flood-lights of course. And probably littered with a few choice DIY products in the foreground. It was a success, by which I mean I enjoyed doing it and liked the final product.

The sky this morning at Big Delta, Alaska brought back these memories.

My father

Why post about "my father"? Because I want to honour him. Because I want to try to explain what made him tick and to comment on the events in his later life which evoked so much criticism. Because he was my dad and I am his progeny.

I have lived many years in Ireland insulated by distance from these events and yet such things leave a deep impression that does not wholly dissipate with time. I hope that by setting down what little I know in writing I do no injustice to either my parents or anyone still living. Many accusations were made, but my intention is to write only from that I know.

Mum and Dad in the "top garden"

This is the best picture I can find of my Dad and Mum in later life. But let's go back a bit. I wrote my post "Ginty" to help set the scene for who Dad was but another important ingredient would have been the war. He spoke very little about his war experiences to us children so about all I know was that he was posted in North Africa somewhere and drove an ambulance. But one does not spend several war-time years in the army without it having a profound affect.

Dad is on the left

Dad is on the right

'Clandon', 10 Weir Gardens, Rayleigh

I am unsure of how Dad and Mum met but it was doubtless during leave in those years. Here they are, just married, with granddad on Dad's right and Mary on Mum's far right.

Probably granddad was involved in the acquisition of our home, 16 Broad Street. Dad had to do a lot of work on it to make it habitable as you can see from this photo.

The dining room 16 Broad Street, before renovation

The house had at one time been part of the George Inn - so parts of it were very old. There is a Tudor brick floor under the floorboards in the front room and there is a cellar which my father said still smelled of beer.

Some history about our house - to read the text click to enlarge.

After Dad died the house was sold and, together with the adjoining property, it became Alresford County Library.  The following picture is what it now looks like - they have divided the windows into badly proportioned "Georgian" panes but otherwise it looks much as it did in the past. When I see this picture there is a choking feeling and I recall " 'Yes' he said dully... 'That is my world.' It was the bleakest moment in all his travels" (Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis).

My mother's father 'granddad' was the Crockford in "Smith & Crockford". When he died my parents took over the business and gradually changed it from a fully fledged building contractors and funeral directors to a building and DIY supplier, although my Dad continued to employ a few men for small building jobs.

Smith & Crockford premises before I was born

As I remember it - taken from my bedroom window

The workshop housed separate thicknesser and overhand planer machines, each belt driven by a common underfloor shaft which in turn was driven originally by a gas engine but later superseded by an electric motor. The belts were poorly protected from human contact and I loved to watch them in motion - it amazed me how they managed to stay on their pulleys whilst thrashing about.

Wikipedia

Whilst Mum and Dad ran the business together they kept their finances separate. This had significant implications later on for us children.

I have already explained how we first went to the Congregational Church in Pound Hill but later changed allegiance to New Farm Chapel. Here Dad was a deacon which basically meant that his service to the church in practical matters was recognised. He was also the church organist. The organ was his own but given or lent to the church. Even in its day it was (to my eyes) hideous, and it didn't sound much better compared with the real thing. It sounded... well like an electronic organ.

Bird electronic organ

Internally it comprised 12 separate master oscillators for the 12 semitones in the scale, each driving neon divider circuits to give the octaves. These would produce saw-tooth waves which, being rich in both odd and even harmonics, could be filtered in various ways to give the different 'stops' or voices. Oh, and how I hate those "contemporary" legs!

He would also preach, but never (in my memory) at New Farm. "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house." There were several non-denominational churches in the locality whose congregations were so small that I suppose they relied completely on visiting preachers. Generally we all (Mum and Margaret) accompanied Dad on these jaunts. I remember on one occasion putting a half-crown in the collection - that was a LOT of money for me. A proportion of the collection would be given to the preacher to defray his travelling costs and I am reminded of a friend who more recently told a similar story - in the story the boy told his father afterwards - "if we had put more in we would have got more out!".

The only sermon I have any recollection of Dad preaching was on Psalms 107 where he identified the four classes of people there, who each come to their wits end, as people with various modern-day ailments.

In my post The Railway Room I observed that my father rarely lectured me. His input into my life was by his actions and occasional one-liners. He had some interesting sayings, doubtless none of them original, like:

• when I told him my teacher had said "there's no such word as can't" he answered "you try telling them to light a bar of soap with a match";
• he often noted that "there are always two ways of killing a pig";
• he suggested that I should not mind appearing to be less intelligent than I thought I was, before my peers, because that way I would end up learning more;
• " 'I see' - as the blind man said";
• "the muscles of his brawny are were strong as onions" which might have been me mishearing this for Longfellow, or more likely was my Dad being foolish, or it might have been a quote;
• "You thought?...  you know what Thought did? - he thought he had hung himself and he had!"

He was a great fan of Tintin and also of Colonel Pewter with his amazing hold-all, both which ran as newspaper strips at that time, and I wonder if the "onions" came from one of these?

Talking of quotes, my father was also a great fan of C. S. Lewis and thus introduced me to the Narnia stories and his Sci-Fi trilogy which became an integral part of my education and the mutual understanding that existed between my father and us children. In his set of Narnia books he annotated in the margin the various scriptural references implied - is is quite amazing how many there are.

Music was another important part of my childhood. None of us were maestros but we enjoyed listening to and making music. At school I played flute (poorly) in the orchestra, sang in the choir and on one occasion even sang Handel's "Where e're you walk" solo in a school concert. At home I messed on the piano or played flute whilst my father played the piano. I also sang in the church choir. I saved up and purchased a Fidelity reel-to-reel tape recorder and recorded music that I liked and so discovered Bruckner, entirely by accident, as related in my page on Music.

My mother did not share the same degree of interest in Lewis or in music, and was not at all interested in railways. I think my mother was the more pragmatic, and my father the more romantic of the two. This made my mother's faith much more "matter of fact" and simple - she was happy to accept the gospel story at face value and did not question. Things that did not fit into her religious views were simply marked thus and so her world was gloriously and simply polarized. Whereas my father would try to embrace all into his Christian understanding and thus was drawn by authors such as Erich von Daniken and films such as 2001.

I cannot recall that either of my parents gave me any sex education. I think my mother might have tried: I remember her asking me if I had observed animals mounting each other - I had not - animals in the abstract (as in zoos or nature films) have never interested me - and I think she gave up at that point.  I think they thought the school would do the deed, but our biology master got out of it by observing that doubtless all of us already knew all there was to know. Which actually was far from the truth for myself. There was, of course, no internet back then and I did not socialise with the sort of boys that talked of nothing else. True I picked up a bit from books. I found the best teacher in this regard is mother nature - although I do remember struggling with the question, apparently not discussed in the books, of which way up should the woman be? I hasten to add that good old mother nature told me all I needed to know when I needed to know it, and I have four children as testimony to this solemn fact.

My parents spent quality time with us children - they regarded us as valid people. Such regard was lacking at Rayleigh and that is why, I suppose, my sister and I hated it so much there. From this I have learnt to always treat even the youngest child with as much respect as any adult - indeed they deserve more. We often went "out" on Saturdays or Sunday afternoon, and then of course there was the annual holiday often to the West Country. Favourite spots included Abbotstone Down and The Heath, Petersfield as these rather mouldy pictures show:

Abbotstone Down 1963

The Heath, Petersfield

In the first picture my two sisters are on the left. I am in PSS uniform and the shorts mean it was during my first year. I have no idea who the girl on the right is. In both pictures I am the focal point which must say something. To walk the entire perimeter of the Heath was such an adventure, such a long way! Whilst travelling to these places Mum might spin us tales of the sisters Princess Isabelle and Princess Dizzibelle and of Lord Longnose. These are happy memories.

We all looked forward to the annual holiday. Some children grow out of enjoying their parent's holidays but I never did - even into college days. A particular favourite location was Daymer Bay. Here was good sandcastle sand, good swimming, a rocky headland to explore to the north and sand-dunes and a decent hillock (Brea Hill) to climb to the south. In between their is an unexpected tiny Anglican church with an interesting history which could count as one of my Enchanted places. And within easy driving distance the village of Rock where a local bakery made real and large Cornish Pasties such as can only be found in Cornwall.  And don't start me on clotted cream...

St Enodoc's Church, Daymer Bay

My parents were quite protective, especially when we were very young. There were things we were not allowed to do, games we were not allowed to play on Sundays. "Pop" music was not allowed at any any time, and there no TV in my early days. The latter made things difficult at school - "did you watch so-and-so last night?"... It was not until I was in mid teens that my parents finally invested in a TV. Colour was in its infancy then, very expensive and in constant need of maintenance, so ours was B&W.  My Dad and I regularly watched the original Star Trek, Tomorrow's World and - does anyone remember The Goodies?

My father allowed me the use of a large shed in the top garden as my workshop. Here I amassed and dissected old valve radios, the occasional TV, gramophones and such like. I made some stuff too: an oscilloscope, a pen plotter, an audio generator, and of course the signalling system for The Railway Room. And there was that balanced pentode amplifier I mentioned before.  Here I was left undisturbed to invent to my heart's content. All this stood me in good stead in my interviews for Oxford and, later, for the BBC Research Dept.

In this blog I have made very little reference as yet to my younger sister Heather. This is mainly because she was seven years my younger and so simply does not come into most of the stories, or was too young at the time to count. Before she was born my parents broke the news to us children by telling us that we were going to have something very exciting - my mind went - TV, new car, washing machine... and I was rather disappointed when I found out is was a baby.

-----ooOoo-----

My father loved and cared for us children, and must have loved me as only a father can his only son, much more than I ever realised at the time. He had principles but generally he could be reasoned with - except regarding his views on religion. He enjoyed life and wanted us children to enjoy life too. We always assumed that we were one happy family and I never suspected that there were cracks beneath the surface.

Years passed, I grew up, left home, settled in Sutton, Surrey and got myself a wife. For a while we persisted the Bailey tradition of visiting at Christmas. And then Alison and I dropped out of society: we sold our house and joined a community, we home schooled our children and I gave in my notice to the BBC and started odd-jobbing building work: in short we trampled over all that my parents had invested in me. Perhaps all this was contributory to my father's behaviour in later life?  I have a copy of a typewritten letter from both mum and dad at that time warning me of the possible dangers I was laying myself open to, and yet conceding that "a man has to do what a man has to do...".

From about this time I sensed that not all was well between my parents. I have always been somewhat naive, intentionally so: if people can't be bothered to tell me stuff why should I dig? Looking back I now see that my father had a weakness which is, I regret, common among men. He did not consider too carefully the consequences of his emotions. Men will often hardly admit to being emotional let alone correctly manage it. He became infatuated with another woman who I will call X. I doubt (but others did not) that it was ever overtly sexual. But for a man any relationship will become sexual given half a chance. I think that Dad kidded himself that the relationship was "platonic". After all X was married. But my mother sensed the problem immediately and instantly became jealous. Women are like that. However life, business, church and respectability carried on as it must, but not without some tension in the air.

I like to think that I am happily married, but it is also true that my relationship with Alison is different now to how it was when we were first married. It has matured - but this, perhaps, is a euphemism. Certainly we have changed: our bodies are older, our interests - never very compatible - have become more individual. I thank God that we still love each other and have a common faith in God to bind us together, but what we now mean by 'love' is rather more like Golde's caricature

Do I love him?

For twenty-five years I've lived with him

Fought him, starved with him

Twenty-five years my bed is his

If that's not love, what is?

than like the strong, sensual feeling we first felt for each other. It think it was because of this gradual and natural aging process that dad and mum managed the tension as "part of the package". Or maybe they didn't manage it too well - I do not really know because we only saw them on visits and anyone can behave for a short time.

My mother passed away, for her sake I hope it was in her sleep, while my father had gone to the "top garden" for a smoke - it must have been a horrible shock to him on his return to the house. Looking back, I want to be with him to share his hurt but I was far away in London playing at being radical Christians.  I consider it was the mercy of God that this happened before our move to Northern Ireland for she was hurt enough by our community venture in London.

In the years that followed my father had health issues connected with his diabetes and after a stay in hospital, to help him convalesce, he was invited to stay with X and her husband Y. This was like heaven to him. Others built fantasies on this move - I have no wish to fantasize but the arrangement was a concern to us children. Moreover it seemed to us that X was influencing not only Dad's emotions but also his pocket. He interpreted our concern as enmity. By this time Alison and I were entrenched in the restrictive community in Northern Ireland (about which I suppose I will blog sometime) and so could rarely travel. On one occasion I did manage to visit Dad at X and Y's place. It seemed to me that walking up their drive, knocking on their door and introducing myself was like entering enemy territory. I had a good by short time with Dad though and, on leaving, he gave me some money as a gift but I sensed X's disapproval at this. Which all could have been my imagination.

I have a letter from my father dated July 1984 signed

in which he tells me that he had sold Smith & Crockford and also talks about the sale of "the allotments" along Station Road, formerly my mother's, to Abbey Homes who named one of the homes in our honour, and apparently another in honour of my mother's family.

My father died of... well, diabetes related complications? - horror, as I search my memory I find that I do not know the details of how and why - was I so far removed from my father at this stage? I am horrified to realise how little I must have cared. To say I could not have done otherwise (which has some truth given my circumstances) is no excuse. Others would have found a way.

I have said that my parents kept their finances separate: in particular granddad had passed on a number of tenanted properties to my mother and, when she died, she willed that her estate should be held in trust for us children until my father died and that any income in the meantime should go to him. And so it was that we received that much when my father died, but the majority of his estate (including the family home 16 Broad Street and the proceeds of the business Smith & Crockford) went elsewhere.

He did will his "chattels" to us children, but by the time we got to them there were not many left. I say all of this as a statement of fact and I am not bitter. On a much later visit I was informed that the vase standing in the window of a house in Alresford, pictured below, was once my mother's although (male that I am) I do not particularly remember it.  The picture is indistinct because the vase is behind a net curtain and, of course, the the photograph was taken from the street.

It is notable, and an enduring sign to me of his love for me, that he left "the contents of his workshop" to me. Oh, how I would love to be able to go back in time and have kept more of his stuff, but at the time it was not feasible to transport much to Ireland so I sold or gave away most of it. There was a battery powered electric drill (not a good one, and long since given up the ghost) that I decided to keep. Y was present, indeed had to be because he had the keys, and it seemed to me that he would have taken this had I not been almost objectionable about it. Such was the tension. Perhaps this also was my imagination. But my father's will was not. Some said we children should have contested it but I wanted none of that. If that is what my father wanted, that was that. And in a way I understood, and do understand, what he did. I know I am weak enough to have done the same in similar circumstances. I hope not. He idolised X.

The parish register records that my father was buried in the same grave as his wife according to his wish.

BAILEY EDWARD BENJAMIN died 1987-11-06 age 66, plot EX/S, grave 96

The George Yard and Groundhogs

My childhood home was, I am told, once part of the George Inn which, hundreds of years ago, straddled the archway that leads into what is now called the George Yard.  My parents now both being deceased, the house was sold and converted into the County Library.  When I last visited the Library I found that my old bedroom and the bathroom next door still exist much as I remember it.  Even the bathroom suite, and the towel rail with its secret fixing which I made myself, is still there.  This is surprising because much of the rest of the house was gutted in the conversion.  My bedroom was where the yellow square is in the Google Earth image below.

The view from my bedroom window looked down on Smith & Cockford, Builder's Providers owned and run by my parents (now Alresford Builders Supplies).

You can see from the earlier picture below (which predates me) that my parents did some improvements, but some of the sheds to the rear were still in bad shape and, with their rusty tin roofs, served as my childhood playground.  My friend from next door and I clambered over many of the roofs in the vicinity, often against the express order of the owners. The goal was to get from A to B without touching the ground and without being seen by any adult.  Or we would (from an allowed vantage point) hurl abuse at my father's workmen on their way to or from the very suspect convenience (which stank) provided for them.  In one shed there were two layers of stacked timber which you could crawl between to hide or to, once again, get from A to B without being seen when playing tag.  There was a large rectangular rainwater tank for playing submarines - you get a suitably shaped piece of wood and leave it for several days to become waterlogged, then drive in nails until it is on the verge of sinking.  The game is to see who can make a submarine that stays down longest (without aide) although which eventually surfaces.  As a result the bottom of the tank became filled, after a time, with failed missions and other debris which my father had to clean out to his chagrin.  This tank is the same one that supplied my venturi pump described in an earlier post.

Looking back from where this photograph was taken, the next two pictures are recent and show our house on the left, and our neighbour's on the right.

It you walk up the George Yard passing what was Smith & Crockford on the left, there is now the plot of a new house occupying what was our "Top Garden".  My workshop, marked by the red square is in the aerial view above, was in the corner of this garden and is where I would retreat to make my inventions.  My father built the swimming pool which you can see in the aerial view.  I plumbed in the filtering system and made a solar heating system (by diverting some of the pumped water to trickle down the plastic roof of the changing room  / shed).  The picture below is recent and was taken by slightly trespassing into what is now the garden of that new house.  Had anyone been there to ask I would have done so and I am sure they would have been happy to show me around.

An advantage of owning your own swimming pool is that you can swim naked.  It is better in every way - you are more streamlined, there is none of that clinging of wet material to the skin, the water does not feel as cold, no wet swimming costume to peel off and deal with afterwards, etc.   There are locations on the river close to where I live now where one can (with some care) get away with swimming naked, but I am not going to tell you where they are.

The pallisade fence is new but the low brick dividing wall, the fruit tree and the high flint wall at the rear with its inset arched seat are all as I remember them.  The wall was built by Bill Smith (no relation of the Smith in Smith & Crockford who died long before my time).  Bill was an old-timer.  He and his family lived in what seemed to me, as a child, little more than a shed with a tin roof.  They kept chickens and my mother would buy free range eggs from them.  It used to be said that anything Bill Smith built would last a lifetime.  The fact that this wall still exists and is in perfect condition is testimony to this, although Bill himself is long gone.  He used to let me "help" him and there is, in that wall, several pieces of green glass that I inserted all by myself.  If the present owner reads this, they can find the glass not far from the inset arched seat, to the left if I remember correctly.

A little further up the George Yard there were trash heaps to left and right.  These were doubtless meant to be for builder's rubble but sometimes there was more - so they were wonderful places for me - very, very occasionally I would find a prize - an old radio, or a discarded vacuum cleaner.  These I would haul back to my workshop, like an ant hauling food for its menagerie, where they would be stripped down and any useful components kept.

In my earlier years most of my "work" was in disassembling (parents should not necessarily discourage this activity, negative though it may seem - it is how I learn.  Adults call it "reverse engineering").  But later I did make stuff - here are some examples.

My earliest memory, having previously decimated various valve radios and stuff, was to construct my very first radio receiver.  Or so I hoped.  I figured that these parts once made up a radio, so my connecting them together I must surely stand a chance of making a radio.  This exercise was not completely without knowledge - I had a battery and earphones.  But it didn't work.

My other examples were later on in my career...

An oscilloscope - this was heavily based on a magazine article.  It used a 2.5" CRT, a special mains transformer, and valves.  Valves (vacuum tubes) are ideal for an oscilloscope because of their naturally high input impedance.  I did all the metal work myself, the source of aluminium sheet being an unused Green Shield Stamps placard  (bare aluminium on the reverse) which was surplus to my father's requirements.   .

An audio signal generator - again heavily based on a magazine article, but I could not afford the thermistor stabilising device so instead had a potentiometer which had to be carefully tweaked for lowest distortion.

An X-Y plotter.  This used a platen roller from a type-writer for the Y-dimension, and a pen drawn along a brass rod for the X-dimension.  The rod was milled (a friend of my father's who built model steam engines allowed me to use his milling machine) with a slot and turning the rod lifted the pen so gave the Z-dimension.  Z was actuated by a solenoid.  X and Y were actuated by d.c. motors driven by AD161 / AD162 power germanium transistors in a servo loop.  The position coder was a standard linear potentiometer in each case. The design was largely my own this time.  The chassis, this time, was made from Perspex (acrylic).  I had discovered that chloroform is a solvent for Perspex so, accompanied my my father, we had to sign the dangerous substances register at the local chemist to purchase a small bottle of the stuff, which promptly evaporated if you didn't screw the lid back on tight after use.

My crowning achievement was to use this device to plot a groundhog.  Dunlop had been running adverts for their tyres featuring this creature, and I had a younger friend Nigel at school whose claim to fame was the ability to draw them.  So my hand-drawn groundhog became a sort of icon for any graphics project.

Later - or was it concurrent? - I discovered the digital plotter at college and my first software program to make use of it had to have it drawing groundhogs subject to various geometrical transformations, but that is another story.

And then there was the railway room.