As opposed to an autobiography which is of course an account of one’s entire life, by definition a memoir is a nonfiction narrative in which the author shares their memories from a specific time period or reflects upon a string of themed occurrences throughout their life. This short story hence is a memoir as are the majority of my short stories posted to this blog albeit they are by no means all inherently sentimental!
NB: AUTHOR’S WARNING!
One paragraph below headed ANIMAL CRUELTY. LICENCED TO KILL! contains and describes in considerable detail a true debatably barely legal animal cruelty scenario. I was (reluctantly) present simply doing my job at the time and regrettably albeit minimally, involved not that I wanted to be to say the least. You may or may not want to read that gruesome single paragraph. As for the rest of them in this story, well you decide if reading any or all of them is worth your while. Thanks for taking the time to read thus far. Here is the in this particular case, not so short story. Sorry about that.
In spite of constant financial and myriad other dysfunctional family related issues extant and intruding at the time, in the summer of 1958 I completed my high school education at the age of sixteen having successfully passed the final exams, the UK’s approximate equivalence of a Canada or USA high school level education, not that I knew that to be the case at the time. This in the English county known then as Lancashire (since changed to Cumbria go figure) at the Barrow-in-Furness County Technical School for Boys which I attended from when I was eleven until I was sixteen having first passed my final junior school exam, the ‘eleven plus.’ * Passing the ‘eleven plus’ qualified one’s subsequent entry by personal choice to either the local Grammar or Technical school. We were granted the choice ahead of the examinations. I chose the Technical school as had a favourite ‘Devonald’ uncle of mine years before. As a kid from a fairly poor family, for sure I would have been and certainly would have felt, out of place at the grammar school whose attendees were typically the offspring of generally quite wealthy parents. In addition to the local technical and grammar schools were also a number of ‘secondary modern’ schools aimed at children who had failed the eleven plus junior school exam and were thus not qualified for either the grammar or technical schools.
I was fortunate. Some of the parentally very poor kids in my final high school year class were pulled out of school by their poverty stricken parents at fifteen ** the then minimum school leaving age, in order to have them start work ASAP invariably and unfortunately in general, to be paid a pittance. This of course adding insult to injury by denying them the opportunity to even take the all important final school exams a year later. Abject poverty of parents will do that, done of course out of sheer necessity. My parents were seriously poor, however as poverty goes at least they were a step up from abject.
To facilitate my joining the local work force at the upcoming end of my high school days, fortuitously I was armed with the approximate North American equivalent of grade twelve give or take which I had earned in the form of seven out of eight GCE *** ‘O’ level exams. I failed only woodwork but who cares? A would be amateur pianist of sorts to this day, I quite literally knew too many people with missing fingers to engage in risking any of mine. Often they were Barrow shipyard trade workers. (fitters, turners, carpenters, machinists, etc) Many schoolmates of mine served five year apprenticeships in various of the numerous trades needed building ships in ‘the Yard’ as it was and is known.
My parents were quite poor however compared to those of some of my school mates, arguably they were financially relatively ok at least up to a point. Certainly the lack of family money of any real substance due to my father’s chain smoking, heavy drinking and even worse above all else, incessant gambling and the inevitable concomitant heavy financial losses occasioned thereby, negated any further full time scholastic education for me. That said, the closest university to Barrow then was Manchester about 100 miles away. Not exactly practical least of all with minimal if any funds available to me. There is now a university in Barrow. Incidentally, as an only and I have to say, hence former lonely child, I believe raising only one child should be strongly discouraged. Where would a dog be as an only puppy? A cat an only kitten? Don’t even think rabbits. As for mice, I rest my case. Just saying.
Keen to pursue an analytical chemistry oriented career triggered in part by a chemistry set I had as a Christmas present the previous year, I sought such employment locally and found it with a company called British Cellophane who had just built and only recently opened, a new factory in Barrow adding further overall manufacturing capacity to that of their existing plant in Bridgewater Somerset in the southwest of England. They manufactured cellophane sheet wrapping from wood pulp. The raw wood pulp starting material came in the form of large sheets thereof from Scandinavia. The plant was closed down in 1991 cellophane wrapping having become largely outmoded. One truly does have to make ongoing changes in order to keep up with the times.
My post secondary school career goal had always been to work in an analytical chemistry laboratory and ‘Cellophane’ as we routinely called the company, was at the time advertising for laboratory assistants aka lab technicians. I was interviewed and hired. The plant was not yet in production when I joined which enabled me and a number of other recently hired would be ‘lab techs’ to be trained on various analytical test procedures which we would ultimately perform working eight hour shifts as in mornings, afternoons and night shifts. I really disliked the latter.
Because the plant was not yet up and running we worked regular day shift hours for a time and were trained in various chemical analysis procedures. Within about two months the plant was in full operation and most of us me included, were then required to work morning or afternoon day shifts or night shifts five days a week with of course two days off each week, not necessarily weekends. The plant ran continuously twenty four seven and we were for various reasons quite often called on to work overtime.
Prior to joining ‘Cellophane’ as we called the company typically dropping the ‘British’ part, I had wanted to join Glaxo Laboratories as it was then known, subsequently to be changed to GlaxoSmithKline and relatively recently to GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals or simply GSK. Glaxo had a plant about ten miles away from Barrow in the rural town of Ulverston, silent movie star Stan Laurel’s birthplace! **** They had a well deserved reputation of being a very good and well paying employer but had no lab tech vacancies the year I left school. A year later they did. I left Cellophane, joined Glaxo and got to work regular normal days instead of the day and night shifts I was stuck with at Cellophane. They also paid me considerably more money than had Cellophane. Little was I to know that down the road as in several years later I would, after an unanticipated and certainly unwanted long absence from Glaxo, eventually have a second if short go around with them under quite strange rather obtuse personal circumstances. This latter very early in 1967 immediately prior to pulling up stakes a few months later which event I had made known to Glaxo prior to my re-joining, emigrating to Canada and settling in Vancouver, British Columbia because of it’s close proximity to mountains and the sea, just like Barrow’s but in the case of mountains on a much bigger and higher scale. In the case of the ocean I swapped the North Atlantic for the North Pacific.
To this very latter day, Glaxo has almost been my all time favourite former employer of which there have been quite a few. The only exception falls under self employment as in B.H. Devonald and Associates which in 1967 was then a very long way into the future before fruition was at all feasible. Becoming an independent manufacturer’s representative, I started my one man company in 1990 in Vancouver Canada to which I had emigrated with my wife in 1967, 4,700 miles from Barrow give or take. This after working in Canada first for nine years as a laboratory technician for a quasi university/BC provincial government agency named BC Research and located on the grounds of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Having just emigrated I was very fortunate to find that job very soon after arriving in Vancouver. Post BC Research, which folded in 1976, I had a few boring small time local company jobs before setting up in 1990 as a self employed manufacturers’ representative serving the electronics industry. I sold manufacturing services for both rigid and flexible customer designed printed circuit boards for a very successful Toronto based PCB manufacturing company for many years until they were bought out by a US company just a few years ago. Also from the self employed get go, I represented and still do, a US company called Interpower Corporation. They offer a whole range of North American and Internationally specified 110 and 240 volt power cables and associated accessories. From inception, for most all of the companies I have represented at various times, I have had as my sales territory the four western Canadian provinces British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Back to my initial time at Glaxo. Joining the company in 1960 I was there for two years. For sure I would have been there very much longer had it not been for an unforeseen move from Barrow to my birth place Northallerton Yorkshire, not out of choice, but out of what at the time appeared to be the best of limited options. My heavy drinking, chain smoking, good for nothing, incessant gambling father’s game was up. (Don’t get me going on gambling per se) He stole a considerable amount of money from me from what was at that time my entire life savings stored rather stupidly in the form of cash kept hidden (I thought) in a drawer in my bedroom. It was money earned on a seven days a week very early morning newspaper delivery route I had whilst still at school, along subsequently with money I had saved that was earned at British Cellophane and Glaxo. I initially intended it to be used in part to buy a better performing motor cycle than the one I then had to give me more reliable mobility and a more fun and exciting way to get me to my job at Glaxo over about ten miles of lots of twisting and turning mostly narrow country roads. Also to get me to a college 45 miles away in Lancaster where I had started studying post high school level chemistry and physics one full day a week along with night school the same day. This over three years in order to earn an ONC (Ordinary National Certificate) in Chemistry. It was a very long day indeed followed by the motorcycle ride home after the night school class and hence in the dark, often in heavy rain north west England not exactly being the driest area of the UK. Think the English Lake District, which is just fourteen miles from Barrow. The rather long weekly journey tested my ability, especially deep into the darkness of winter, to stay awake whilst riding the motorcycle. I would get home close to midnight often in pouring rain having left at 7am also often in pouring rain. My ‘rain gear’ was sparse to non existent. Glaxo gave those of us who wished to further our studies and to their credit they strongly encouraged us to do so, the one day off a week needed and with full pay. The company was a class act and hopefully still is. My parents had no car. Basically they had essentially nothing of note other than a half decent semi-detached house complete with a large mortgage and an ambitious if lonely, only child who by way of some strong insistence from me, had in lieu of a brother or sister, a loving dog. Dogs have been an inherent part of my life ad infinitum regardless of the ’ownership’ thereof. At more than a few disparate times, they have been a saving grace and then some as have several ‘knowing’ cats, a Silver Tipped Persian named Hi-Yo (as in Hi-Yo Silver) in particular.
Why did my deadbeat father steal a large amount of my cash savings from me? To place a bet on a horse! Which of course and from my perspective fortunately, did not win the race. Had it done so his plan would have been to keep the proceeds and quickly return my money before I missed it and I would have been none the wiser. At least until the inevitable next time. Don’t get me going on gambling. My mother found a way to pay me back. Goodness knows how, I was reluctant to ask.
I subscribe in general to the school that says if you abuse or take unreasonable advantage of me, you will pay a heavy price for it. My father did on both accounts. We were poor certainly by the standards of most all of our friends and relatives who rightly, considered my father to be the black sheep of the Devonald family which he most certainly was. That said, he used to say, on the very few occasions he even spoke to me and that was nearly always to physically threaten me (I am not making this up) that as an enlisted career soldier (i.e. he was not a conscript) during his world war two service spent mostly fighting in Palestine and I quote, “the worst thing that ever happened to him during the war was that he DIDN’T STOP ONE”. Think about it. Oh and one other thing. He did on a number of occasions say to me and I quote, “I wish I could legally get you into a boxing ring and beat the living daylight out of you”. Gee thanks dad! A flyweight sometime professional boxer, he had boxed extensively both in and outside of the British army and had won many prizes and cups doing so. At least he claimed that he had. I never saw any. Britain never did legalise fathers beating up their teenage sons in boxing rings for no apparent acceptable reasons. Good thing. Although both solo and team sports oriented, I had no interest whatsoever in boxing as it was and still is practiced. Had they withdrawn from the rules legal hits to the head, I would have been right there also like my father, as a flyweight weighing in at a paltry maximum of 125 pounds.
Much lower down the economic ladder than were even we, in mine and many other local schools were destitute kids only 14 and 15 years old and yet forced by their poverty stricken, often times unemployed and slum dwelling parents, to cut short and hence forego much of their school education to earn trifling amounts of money because their parents literally could not even afford to feed them! Don’t get me going but I will state that I am not a fan of Britain’s still intact – look at most of their federal MPs for example class system which, albeit now as a long time Canadian is I am given to understand, still very much alive and well to this day. It is very deeply ingrained and is still apparently engaged inherently with a ‘keep the lower orders’ down’ mentality. (I ‘Googled’ it. Yes indeed the class system is still very much de rigueur.)
With the class system in mind and to parody Monty Python, it is to no surprise a truism that ‘I didn’t have the Latin’ so to speak, this simply and literally as a result of preferring to go to the technical school over the grammar school which latter certainly taught Latin and was favoured by the upper class. I did at least get to study French. Rather more useful than Latin! That said, Je parle un trais peu Francais mais comme une vache Espagnol. I speak a little French but like a Spanish cow! The French do use this rather fun expression and yes, I have been there and done that.
Given my father’s clearly and increasingly outright criminal activities, e.g. after the felony of stealing the money from me, he was very soon to be fired from his warm and cushy indoor mail sorting job with the UK post office along with several other would be post office employee crooks, for an attempted but failed collective misdemeanor, in the form of money theft. (They back dated with a post office device football pool bets and mailed them in after the fact already of course knowing the results.) The tipping point at hand, my mother and I decided our best move forward was to throw in the Barrovian towel so to speak and move the hundred miles or so from Barrow to my maternal grand parents’ large house in Northallerton Yorkshire, literally the house I was born in and in which she had grown up. We would sell our house in Barrow and seek a better life minus once and for all, my deadbeat father. For better or for worse this we did with some rapidity. She notified my by then as stated, recently unemployed father of our plans. He was clearly not in any position to object and I, albeit frustratingly with great reluctance and a heavy heart, gave my notice to Glaxo to this day the best employer I ever had other than B.H. Devonald and Associates which as a proud Canadian having earned citizenship, I was to found in Vancouver BC in 1990.
It did not take long to sell our aging semi detached house in spite of its close up ‘view’ of the local and impressively large slag bank (‘bank‘ is a hill or large pile) in this case of the (initially) molten very hot waste slag by-product from our local steel manufacturing plant. In fairness I will concede that from our upstairs windows, if one squinted, the Irish Sea was just visible at one end of the rather high slag bank when the tide was in, thus we had an ocean ‘view’ sort of. On a clear day one could also see the Isle of Man about forty miles away. I think I saw it twice the entire time the many years I lived in Barrow. Clouds, high winds and rain were and of course still are, common place.
With considerable reluctance and heartfelt distress I gave my notice to Glaxo and said goodbye to my many friends there and indeed to others scattered around Barrow and environs including myriad cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. Little did I know I would briefly return to Glaxo under much lighter and brighter if to say the least, quite weird circumstances, some years later. We packed up everything of any consequence and I drove us (my mother never having learned to drive) in my barely viable ancient Hillman station wagon, the hundred miles or so give or take over the very scenic Pennine hills to Northallerton. It was a ‘Hobson’s choice’ departure situation that ultimately benefitted me some, but not unfortunately my mother who, thanks to my useless father, never recovered from the trauma she had had to bear over many years and was alas to continue with up to her too early death ironically in Northallerton her place of birth.
Albeit I was also born in Northallerton in what was then described as the North Riding of Yorkshire (now called North Yorkshire but the citizens are fighting to change the name back to the North Riding of Yorkshire go figure) neither I nor my mother fitted in with local society, this likely because ‘Father Time’ has a habit of changing essentially everything and everyone. In its simplest form the reason we failed Northallerton’s Yorkshire life 101 was that we had had years of Barrow in Furness Lancashire life 101. The two counties did engage after all in the wars of the roses. The Yorkshire population were very different people from their Lancastrian equivalents and no doubt to this day still display quite different thinking in many ways. In a nutshell, with some exceptions Yorkshire and in particular Northallerton and environs, is largely rural. Lancashire (now Cumbria!) significantly much less so especially in and around Barrow itself which is heavily industrialised. Might you for example be looking to buy a very recently Barrow built and freshly launched nuclear powered and potentially nuclear armed submarine? The first such UK deadly monstrosity was launched in Barrow almost the same day that I left the technical school ‘Barra Tech’ as we called it in our local dialect. That said to this day building nuclear subs has kept the ‘yard’ in business as did earlier myriad vessels ad infinitum going back would you believe a very long way, to 1894 no less. The many other ship types Barrow built when I was a kid along with subs were passenger liners, oil tankers, freighters and ultimately modern day cruise ships, you name it. Oriana was the last ship I saw launched which was in November 1959. To my utter surprise and delight, she routinely plied between Sydney Australia and Vancouver at the time I arrived here (Summer 1967) and for some years afterwards. I even got to board her once and found the ‘Built in Barrow in Furness’ plaque. With the exception of the nuclear subs, not any more. The other ship varieties are all now and have for a long time, been built much less expensively off-shore! Pity.
I did say Northallerton was rural. There was little industry. Job wise the only laboratory job I could come up with locally (and it was a galling five and a half days a week proposition, so much for my Saturday mornings) was with the local Public Health Service managed, I was to find out the hard way, by an incredibly arrogant and self serving supercilious very wealthy, upper class twit medical doctor. I had him figured early on when he advised me in his ‘posh’ accent and I quote verbatim: You will have to learn to “KNOW YOUR PLACE”. This latter with the emphasis very much on “know your place”. (upper class ‘learn’ pronounced ‘LEE-EARN’ and ‘KNOW’ sounds like KNEE-OH). This after I had asked him why we were using, abusing and routinely then killing animals in an appalling manner to test for certain human diseases for which there were by then perfectly good and accurate chemical tests. This just after he had sold his Rolls Royce which I gathered from other employees, my predecessor had been obliged (as in required) to wash once a week! Maybe that’s why he quit. I would have had fun with that one for sure by attempting to get the arrogant self serving twit ousted by his (hopefully) more worldly peers to whom he reported, assuming I could find any worth their salt. Certainly I would have refused to wash the Rolls Royce in Public Health Service time or any other time. OK maybe but unlikely for a few quid i.e. pounds Sterling.
I have zero tolerance period for being trifled with and least of all by very wealthy (daddy’s and or other family sourced money most often times) highly educated people who should know better and who abuse via their assumption of their birthright, whatever system they happen to be a part of. I was very definitely not working full time and studying part time in order to spend any of it washing some upper class prat’s/twit’s take your pick, Rolls Royce. I was some time later and to my complete surprise, to be driven from a railway station to a job interview in a large company’s Rolls Royce, their chauffeur fully decked out as such to a tee and me ‘lording it’ in the back seat as per the custom. The interviewer bless his heart, on apparently and quite enthusiastically perceiving to my utter and complete surprise, vocalizing significant long term potential in me far beyond the job he advised, that I was seeking and literally begged me to go to university and to blazes with the job position he had on offer! “You will come back and thank me he said”. Having hardly any money of my own and my parents both basically broke (except for the house albeit they did have a large mortgage) I simply could not afford university and thanked him profusely for his kindness and for his thoughtfulness. I wish I could have found a path. That said, I have no regrets. Certainly had I found a way to pull it off (bank robbery anyone?) I would have come back and thanked him profusely. He was named Mr Willis. The fact that I remember his name from so long ago tells of his impact on me and then some. He would for sure have been pleased with how things have panned out for me the way they have done sans university. Plus I learned a packet not just from his wise words, but from his humility and his out and out humanity. I like to think that at the very least some of it rubbed off on the youthful unworldly me he was interviewing. I have never forgotten the class act and a half that was the so caring oriented man, and he was certainly legitimate upper class. They are by no means all uncaring of the run of the mill working class. In the end I could not take the job I was interviewed for and offered simply because the salary wasn’t enough to cover the expenses of living and boarding in the town which was considerably distant from my then North Yorkshire home.
NB RE the IMMEDIATELY BELOW PARAGRAPH – ANIMAL CRUELTY LICENSED TO KILL! Read it only at your discretion. It is not a pleasant read. Unfortunately every word is true and the killing methodology apparently legal, at least it was at the time.
ANIMAL CRUELTY. LICENSED TO KILL!
With regard to my five and a half days a week public health laboratory job, the Saturday morning extra half day incidentally not having been mentioned at the interview, every Monday morning (of all days!) I was to assist a man who was, and I am not making this up, licensed to kill. He specialized in guinea pigs, mice and rabbits all of which having been inoculated with various liquid test samples of suspected human diseases tuberculosis being one of many. My job was to retrieve the ‘correct’ animals from their crowded cages, note their tag number to confirm that indeed I had the right one and then to pass to my executioner colleague, those that he had previously injected with various suspect disease samples from sick humans. He would then immediately kill the animal and perform a post mortem. There was nothing tender and understanding about this. I had no choice but to track down by hand in the small and crowded wire cages, specific animals, mostly guinea pigs, that were tagged by date as to who’s time was up so to speak. I would then hand the animal to him and watch as he hung it upside down by the hind legs with one hand and then violently, OK exceedingly violently believe me and that’s the good news, proceeded in one fell blow to crush the back of its skull using a heavy wooden cosh with the other hand as might be better used for a more worthwhile purpose such as self defense by a British police officer. I wish I was making this up. I am not. The post mortems were in search of goodness knows what diseases. I didn’t dare enquire.
Needless to say on discovering the weekly live animals massacre part of my job (also not mentioned at the interview otherwise I would very definitely not have taken the job) and with further disdain for several other chores I might add also not mentioned at the interview, I very soon started looking for yet another laboratory position and found one about twenty miles away in Middlesbrough, also in Yorkshire. It was with ****** Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) who manufactured at that facility nylon 66 polymer. They were then a massive UK company which incidentally no longer exists and has not done so for some considerable time tragically at a cost of literally tens of thousands of jobs! ICI was for a very long time by far the largest manufacturer in Britain period with annual revenues in the billions, yes billions of pounds.
Initially at ICI I was working regular nine to five days under analytical chemistry tests training with other new recruits and drove to work the twenty miles or so in my rapidly falling apart and rusting away Hillman station wagon. Once trained we switched to shifts of an unusual form. We worked three day shifts followed by three night shifts followed by three morning shifts and finally three afternoon shifts followed by three days off – largely sleeping! Whomever dreamed that up must have been a loony and a masochist but we were stuck with it.
I tried continuing to live in Northallerton and driving twenty miles plus each way to work every day. My aged Hillman piece of junk didn’t like it and neither did I. Especially after falling asleep at the wheel en-route home one morning after a night shift. I hit the curb head on hard but fortunately nothing else. That woke me up instantly and I continued home. Shortly after I moved to the resort town of Redcar just outside of the very industrial town of Middlesborough where the plant was and rented a ‘bed sitting room’ that being the cheapest and hence smallest form of accommodation available which is all that I could afford or indeed needed. Redcar is a seaside resort town (a last resort the radio comedians of the day used to say of all UK ’seaside’ resorts of which there are many) and my tiny abode was very close to the beach. In fact the very cold North Sea was just across the road. My location was about a twenty minute drive from my workplace. I had never lived alone before (I was still only twenty) but adjusted to it with no problems except one. It was winter and very cold in part from winds blowing on shore from the North Sea all of about fifty feet from the front door of the very large and drafty house. My rooms were heated by electric radiators. They were triggered by my putting coins into a collection slot. It didn’t take me long to discover that it was much cheaper to stay warm (the winters were very cold) by walking to a nearby pub and drinking beer until closing time! Guess where I spent most of my evenings.
It did not take very long for it to dawn on me that I needed to move on from the very marginal life I was leading. Moving back to Northallerton had proven to be sort of ‘OK’ for my mother but for numerous reasons only barely so. For me it was not the greatest. It was and still is very much a small town (about 4,000 population) that translated into less than a welcome from the locals. Yes I was born there no I did not grow up nor go to school there. That was the killer. It was as simple as that. Returning to Barrow, population 55,000, did not appeal. I decided and I don’t recall specifically quite why exactly, that I would move to London. Population then about eight million now nine million. I was twenty going on twenty one. It was the early 1960’s. Moving to London proved to be the best thing I could have done.
I needed to find a job in London. Easy as pie. I saw an advert in a national paper for lab technicians to work in a gas engineering testing laboratory. The gas at that time in the UK being manufactured then from coal. It was not yet North Sea natural gas. The gas fired appliances tested were designed for industrial use about which I of course knew nothing. I sent my resume anyway and scored an interview. Amazingly, I got the job which it turned out I very much liked and lived very happily in London, initially Fulham close to Chelsea soccer ground and then Nottingham Hill Gate. I was in London for three years. Many of the appliances we tested incidentally were manufactured in Canada.
Pursuing part time as I was and had been since leaving my full time Barrow Technical school, a post high school education on a one full day a week and one, sometimes two evening classes, I was pleased to discover that was fine by the North Thames Gas Board by which name my new employer was known. On the advice of one of my new found colleagues, I enrolled in a chemical engineering course leading to a Higher National Certificate over three years to add to my chemistry ONC as in Ordinary, etc. An HNC which although not equal to a degree, did for all practical purposes pursue many degree level teachings in its subjects and indeed in its examinations.
Three years went by and I passed the final exam with rather to my surprise quite high marks. This set me off on a course of action which ultimately soured on me. I resigned from my gas board job having discovered and started a full time one year course in chemical engineering at a college in Liverpool like Barrow, in the north west of England from which if completed successfully, one would be recognized (at least by the Brits) as a qualified chemical engineer. It also turned out that most all of the class I was now a member of had like me, just passed HNCs but at a Liverpool college of course not the London one where I had been. Except that they hadn’t. Not like me that is. Their HNC syllabus was considerably more advanced compared to mine especially in the math and physical chemistry departments. Go figure. How could this possibly be? Who knows? It was indeed the case. Had I known, I would not have signed up for the course nor would I have given up my job in London! As to why this was the case goodness only knows. I talked the situation over with one of the senior instructors who understood and agreed with my conclusion. I frustratingly and reluctantly bailed. I knew there was no way forward for reasons perhaps better known at the London college where I earned my HNC. I know when to quit when I am losing and this was very much the case. The math as stated was especially much advanced over any I had been introduced to in London or for that matter Barrow. Without that knowledge I concluded I would be toast and hence most unlikely to pass the final exams and qualify as a chemical engineer at the end of the full time course if I even made it that far.
I went back to Barrow, picked up a phone and talked to someone in personnel at Glaxo. They could use me immediately if not ‘sooner’. I was back in business with my favourite employer and with many of my friends from the last time around. I started the next day, about six months before my, also Barrovian girlfriend and very soon to be wife, having successfully applied to emigrate, were scheduled to leave for Canada. We did so on schedule and never looked back. We married in Barrow, drove our brand new left hand drive Austin 1100 export model car to London the next day, boarded a Russian passenger liner on the river Thames the Alexander Pushkin, of course taking the car with us soon to be well lashed down by the crew to the ship’s very soon to be pounding foredeck as we exited the river and reached the open North Atlantic, disembarked in Montreal ten days later, pitched our ‘pup’ tent at a camp ground, visited the then ongoing Exposition 67 for a number of days and then drove the 4,600 kms to Vancouver tent camping most all of the way along with occasional nights in motels. We made it in about a month and never looked back. *****
FYI: Who won the Wars of the Roses?
Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster defeated King Richard III of the House of York in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, which resulted in Richard’s death and the end of the Wars of the Roses. Tudor then ascended to the throne and became King Henry VII.
Who would have thought?
* Eleven-plus: a dreaded by some, British school examination given between primary and secondary school at age 11. It evolved after 1944 as a means of determining in which of the three types of secondary school—grammar, technical, or secondary modern—a given child should continue his or her education.
** The then legal minimum school leaving age. Hence they did not get to sit final exams for the GCE i.e. the General Certificate of Education – thus through no fault of their own, limiting and or restricting their chances of getting both financially and academically very far in life.
*** GCE. General Certificate of Education.
**** Stan Laurel’s birthplace
***** FYI. If Canada has a class system I am oblivious to it.
****** Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926. Its headquarters were at Millbank in London.
Who won the war of the roses?
Answer and explanation: Henry Tudor of the house of Lancaster defeated King Richard 111 of the house of York in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth Field, which resulted in Richard’s death and the end of the Wars of the Roses. Tudor then ascended to the throne and became King Henry V11. Who knew?