by Paul Daniels
It was quite usual for council tenants, or anybody, to leave their front door unlocked and open for visitors. The records book I took with me would often give instructions to walk straight through the front door and into the front room where the rent would be left ready for collection. People were very trusting in those days, but then again, most people didn’t have much worth stealing!
It’s a strange phenomenon but you can tell if there’s someone in a house or not. It was certainly possible to feel the ‘vibes’ of a body upstairs, or even detect if someone was hiding. When rent was in arrears it was pretty common for the tenant to try and avoid the collector and I saw more than one figure duck down behind the window as I approached. Even if you didn’t see them duck, you would sense they were in there. An empty house feels different. If the occupant was having a tough time financially, we would often turn a blind eye for a while, but if they were simply skiving we would do all we could to collect the money from them. My ‘sixth sense’ of ‘feeling’ whether the house was empty or not came in very useful. That is, until one day, when I got it totally wrong.
In one of the houses, following the instructions in my book, I entered and yelled out my customary ‘Hello’. No answer, so I headed for the front room. It was the darkness of the room that confused me as the curtains had been closed, yet the envelope containing the cash had been left on the sideboard as usual. I picked up the money and started to enter the money into the rent book. As I stood there in the darkness, my eyes began to adjust to the lack of light and various outlines began to appear. Suddenly, to my absolute horror, I spotted what I thought was a man lying on a table. Against my better judgement I moved closer, hoping he was all right. He wasn’t. There in the middle of the tiny front room was a corpse laid out in its box. I fully understood how Connie felt when he dropped his end. I was out of the house much quicker than I went in and I was shaking like a leaf.
Another house but the same instruction, the rent is on the front room table. ‘Hello, hello.’ And no reply. In I went, saw the money and I was bending over the table filling in the book when from under the table came a nasty, low, growl. My testicles went back into my body of their own accord. Never in the history of rent collecting has anyone backed out of a house more slowly. Nice doggy.
All the cash from the rents and the rates was kept in a huge safe fitted into the wall and was secured each night. Just before leaving for home one Friday, I happened to glance around and noticed that the chief cashier had left his bag full of bank notes on the floor by the safe door. He must have forgotten to secure it in the safe and when I opened it there must have been several thousands of pounds in there. It was an extraordinarily large amount of cash in those days, so, thinking quickly, I decided to take the bag home with me. After all, I couldn’t leave it there all night and I had no key to the safe.
Placing the bag of notes on the wire clip on the back of my NSU Quickly, I arrived safely home and put the package under my bed. When Monday morning arrived, I happily sailed into work, only to find police cars and policemen everywhere. The place was lit up with flashing blue lights.
‘What’s going on?’ I innocently enquired of one of the clerks who wore an expression of complete bafflement.
‘All the rent money’s been stolen,’ came the swift reply.
‘Oh, that’s OK, I’ve got …’ but they wouldn’t listen to me.
‘Please, son, we’re very busy. Just get on with your duties,’ was all I got.
Several attempts later, I approached someone else. ‘Excuse me. Are you looking for this?’
The official’s eyes nearly rolled out of his head when he caught sight of me holding the bag open with notes stuffed to the top.
‘Where on earth did you get that?’ he bellowed, as all hell broke loose.
I explained the whole predicament and defended my actions reminding him that I was only a junior clerk and didn’t have anyone’s phone number to contact them in an emergency. I was briskly thanked and told to get on with my work. Somehow I felt it was all my fault and yet I had tried to help.
When the council offices were eventually moved to new premises, a new security vault was built which was burglar, blast and tunnel secure. There was no way anyone could rob this safe we were proudly told, as we were taken on a tour of this new protection system. Walking past the double-skinned, triple-lock metal door, we were then led past a floor-to-ceiling grill with one-inch steel bars. Once in this impressive chamber, the safe itself stood on a raised platform and the council officials were delighted with the solid walls and floor. Looking up, I asked what the ceiling was made of. They hadn’t thought of that and gave me a very dismissive glance to hide their embarrassment. Anyone could have just gone upstairs, lifted the floorboards and dropped down into the hyper-secure safe-room through the ceiling tiles. Whoops!
Councils seem to have the reputation for incompetence, but I don’t think they are any worse than any other major organisation. Local government is there, complete with all its little by-laws, to keep some sort of order in your district. You have to have your rubbish collected, your sewage removed and your pavements made safe, but because the council deals with so many people, a few problems are bound to slip through the net. These are the ones that get the publicity, ignoring all those who were perfectly happy.
I tried to pre-empt a few problems myself with all sorts of moneysaving ideas, which I thought were helpful. Some of my suggestions were even laughed at, but looking back they would have worked.
One thought was to place large tunnel-like tubes under all the roads in the new estates we were building. Each large tube would have a walkway along the bottom, above a tube that carried the sewage. Along the walls of the tube would be smaller tubes that carried all the services, electricity, telephone lines, gas and the like. There would be no need to ever dig up a road again. Each service would be able to access its own tube easily. If this had been taken up, it would have saved the nation millions, but then where would we be without our beloved roadworks!
At that time, and perhaps it is still the same now, we as a Council had to borrow the money to build anything, whether it was a swimming baths or council houses. Then the money we borrowed had to be repaid over a very long period of years, adding millions in interest rates. I could not for the life of me see why we couldn’t levy a rate that would enable us to save up for a few years to build public amenities and that would have been a lot cheaper than the current system. Their argument was that you could not levy a ‘rate for something in the future as a ratepayer might die and not benefit’. As it was, we had ratepayers paying for buildings that had long been pulled down, so what was the difference?
By now I was 17 and living two lives. Since the non-excitement of the first kiss I had practised a bit more and, of course, I was filled with the knowledge of my dad’s sex manual. In the Co-op Chemists on Lorne Terrace there was a blonde goddess (well, she was to me) called Jean Pagel and I used to go in there as often as I could. The cheapest things to buy were Horlicks tablets at nine pence a packet and I bought them by the hundreds. Eventually we dated and spent many a happy hour rolling about on her front room sofa. Nothing serious happened, damn it, only kissing and fumbling but I raged with passion. Meanwhile, from the Methodist Youth Club I had moved into the pulpit. On Sundays I was a lay preacher, the rest of the week I was a young man raging with lust. Things are different nowadays, of course – I am no longer a lay preacher!
To be honest, I wasn’t a lay preacher for very long anyway. I had run the service in most of the chapels on the local circuit. It was a bit like working in the clubs and theatres later; you could do the same ‘act’ in front of the different congregations and then you would have to come up with a new ‘script’ for the next tour. My main problem came in my own chapel and from my sense of observation. There was one lady who never came into church in time for the start of the service. She was always about five minutes late and the other women in the congregation would then all be whispering about he
r new hat. Imagine, a new hat every week. So when it became my turn to run the service in the chapel I didn’t start the service. With the brashness of youth I announced that we would all sit quietly as the lady would be waiting in the foyer of the chapel and when she arrived we would admire the hat and then get on with the real reason we were supposed to be there, worshipping and thanking God. When the woman did come in, she was livid. As she was the wife of a church elder I more or less got the sack. Neither did they like my idea of not doing the service in the order it had been done for years. My idea was that if you didn’t know what was coming next you might pay more attention to the words. It’s funny that it was the old people who objected and the young people who liked the improvisations.
In my mid-teens, Dad and I would sit up at night after he came home from work and just chat. We would discuss life and the universe and, naturally, put the world to rights. Motorways were under discussion; these new wonder roads that would allow everyone to travel easily great distances with no delays. Yeah, right! Dad had an idea that has stayed with me – at the same time as they were building the motorways, they should put large tubes alongside them, possibly underground, maybe two to three feet in diameter. These tubes would join all the major cities of the UK and belong to the Post Office. Inside the tubes there would be, for want of a better word, torpedoes. In London, a torpedo for, say, Leeds would be filled with post and loaded into the tube. The tube at that end sloped downwards slightly and as the torpedo went in it would activate a sensor switch that activated an electro-magnet. The head of the torpedo would be magnetic and it would be pulled, aided initially by gravity, towards the magnet, picking up speed. As it approached the magnet another switch would de-activate electro-magnet number one and switch on number two and so on. After a very short time the magnets could be well spaced out as the torpedo would be travelling at very high speed. As it approached Leeds some 20 to 30 minutes later, the electromagnets would be switched on behind the magnetic head to pull it back and eventually stop it at the Post Office. No train delays, no traffic jams, nothing would stop our postal system. Like so many ideas, we did nothing with it.
A long brown envelope awaited my return home one evening. It wasn’t a surprise as I had been expecting the communication, though I wouldn’t have been disappointed had it not arrived at all. It contained my call-up papers for National Service. Every 18-year-old, if they passed a medical, was expected to train in the services for two years in order to keep Britain’s fighting strength at its maximum potential. World War II may be over, but problems in the Far East, the Middle East and the Cold War with the Soviet Union were still threats to be taken seriously.
Registering at my local army offices, the choice was Army, Navy or Air Force. I didn’t have any knowledge of the military system at all. My father warned me not to volunteer for anything so I didn’t. When asked about going on OTC (Officer Training Courses) or whether I wanted to be an NCO or a WO or any of that stuff I just said ‘no’. I should have asked what it meant but I didn’t. The rumour was that whatever you volunteered for would be ignored. Not only that, but the famous joke based on truth was that you would be sent to the entirely opposite type of service you proposed. It was all part of the early ‘break-down’ procedure that was to turn us young boys into brainwashed recruits, so I waited for the date of my departure to be confirmed and details of where they would send me.
By now I had been working on pay systems so I expected to go into the Pay Corps. They put me in the infantry. I was to join the Yorkshire Regiment, The Green Howards. ‘Collection’ day, Thursday, 7 February 1957, was an unhappy day as I prepared to leave family, friends and home behind to become part of Intake 5703, whatever that was. Worst of all, I had to abandon all my beloved magic equipment and books. My props were gone and I was on my own again. Little did I realise that once in training, I wouldn’t have enough time to go to the toilet, let alone perform.
As I piled on to the train, along with 100 other pasty youths, I looked at Mam trying not to cry. Dad’s voice was ringing in my ears, ‘there are some things in life that you can do something about and some things you can’t. Don’t waste your time worrying about the things you can do nowt about.’ As the train pulled away, I surrendered myself to the next 24 months and it was a good job that I didn’t realise then just how tough it was going to be.
I suppose I should have had some idea of what lay in store after arriving at our destination and being quickly pushed into the back of an old, green army wagon. We rattled, banged and swerved our way up the steep incline of Richmond Hill, bruising each other’s arms as we did so. I am sure that the Army specially designed the open-backed truck, so that, as it travels along, it sucks the exhaust fumes into the back, making all the occupants extremely nauseous. It was winter and extremely cold, so by the time we arrived at the barracks in Richmond, Yorkshire, we all had heads spinning, stomachs churning and teeth chattering.
This was just the condition that the Sergeant Major required. No sooner had the truck stopped, than the pins at the back were removed, the metal flap banged down against the truck and a terrific roar filled our ears:
‘GET OUT OF THAT TRUCK THIS INSTANT, YOU ’ORRIBLE LOAD OF PANSIES!’
There had been no preparation at all for what were to become some of the hardest days of my young life. As the voice continued to shout at us, I wondered where on earth I was.
‘GET YOUR FEET DOWN ’ERE, YOU ’ORRIBLE LITTLE MEN!’ I noticed that no matter how tall you happened to be, you were still an ‘’orrible little man’.
We were pushed and shoved into some sort of line before the next command thundered forth:
‘LEFT TURN!’ came the scream, only to be followed by a complete scramble of panicking youths, uncertain at which was the left or the right way to go. After a few bumps we somehow fell into the rattling rhythm of ‘LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT…’ fired off in such quick succession, that none of us could keep up.
We were led to a freezing cold, concrete barracks with rows of beds stationed along the side of each wall. It’s OK if you have been brought up to share a bedroom with a lot of other men, but I hadn’t. Neither had most of the others, I guess. The shock of all that I was experiencing began to sink in and I didn’t like it. As I sat on my allocated bed, it hardly gave way under my weight. The thin mattress sat on a metal tubular frame and wire base, covered with several sheets and blankets.
Without a moment to think, the voice screamed again and we were ordered into another room to collect our kit. None of this fitted, of course, which was all part of the plan. One pair of boots was issued for parades and the other for work.
Twenty minutes later, Private Daniels 23370053 stood to attention. What a wreck. Did England really think I could defend it? I was now part of the elite Green Howards Regiment. Well, they were elite until I joined them.
Learning the history of this regiment was a first priority. Apparently, the Green Howards got their name when, long ago, regiments were named after their commanding officer. In the British Army at the time, there were two ‘Howards’ families – one wore buff colours and the other green, thus creating the name, the ‘Green Howards’.
‘NOW THAT YOU ARE IN THE BRITISH ARMY,’ the Sergeant Major blasted (they never talked), ‘YOU WILL BE TRAINED TO OBEY A COMMAND WITHOUT QUESTION. WHEN YOU ARE GIVEN AN ORDER, YOU WILL NOT THINK, YOU WILL JUST MOVE.’ Somewhere inside me, the little boy who had questioned the accuracy of his teachers was saying, ‘I will believe this when I see it.’ I soon saw it. The next eight weeks introduced me to the most horrendous military conditions I could ever have imagined as we began our basic training.
From the moment I was shouted out of bed at 5.00am to the last seconds of climbing into bed, I was active. If not on parade, I was cleaning something, shooting something, learning something. I became a natural marksman on all the weapons, perhaps because of my hand-to-eye coordination. I put no real effort into learning this; I just understood the logical mathematics of the techniques. The
re was no time to be lonely, to be homesick or grieve over lost magic. There was simply no time for feelings of any kind and barely the space to write home at the end of an exhausting day when I would collapse into bed and be asleep within seconds.
We buffed and polished and did keep fit and marched and drilled with rifles in a non-stop, high-speed way, day in and day out. For one hour every evening we would sit on the hard floor of the barrack room, backs against the wall and polish our parade boots. Polishing your boots was an art form. You used a lit candle, a spoon, a lot of spit, a duster and boot polish, of course. Army boots come covered in little bumps. Using the heated spoon you had to iron the bumps flat on the front toe cap and on the heel section. This took for ever. Then you burnt the polish into the leather again using the heated spoon. Then you spit and polished. Over and over again. You could get shaved in the reflection of those boots. This time each evening was called Shining Hour. When I wrote home and mentioned this, Mam thought we were having Sunday School lessons again. I wished!
The second weekend we were told that we were allowed visitors, but they also decided to give us our ‘jabs’ at the same time. As I took my place in the long line of men, I could see two army doctors standing on either side of the queue. When each man passed, both doctors would inject needles into the man’s arms at the same time. As I made my way to the front of the line, I kept my eyes firmly ahead so as to avoid the sight of needles simultaneously piercing my skin. Several of the lads had already passed out and I didn’t want to succumb to any possibility of needle phobia.
The pain was acute and some suggested that the Army filed down the ends of the needles deliberately, so I was proud to have emerged from the ordeal without disgracing myself. As I was leaving, I overhead one of the nursing staff state that the pay books, in which all the inoculations were recorded, had not been collected. I offered to collect them, went next door and did so. I turned to come back and fell unconscious to the floor. Remember, I could have been defending you in times of trouble!