by Harry Beaves
My eldest son John had left school after GCSEs and studied City and Guilds Furniture and Cabinet-Making at Poole College. We had been enormously impressed with the way he had developed over that period. Much, I felt, was because of the way he was being taught, in particular in the example set by his tutor, Stephen Penny, the sort of dedicated teacher who is an inspiration to his students. I was also impressed by the fact that the course taught the principles of cabinetmaking as they had been taught through history, with no short cuts. My father had worked as a carpenter in his retirement and I had always enjoyed working with wood (at DIY level) and had inherited his tools, so I decided that I would like to do something similar as my retirement job (I wasn’t looking for a second career). After all, I reasoned, unlike people, if a piece of wood lets you down you can throw it away and begin again with another piece. Perhaps that way I could keep my stress levels under check, so I enrolled as a cabinet-making student at Poole College. John, meanwhile, had completed his course and moved on to study Furniture Craft at Buckinghamshire University.
A Williams family reunion at our house in 2009 when my cousin Janice (centre) came over from Australia. Picture Steve Curr.
I used accumulated leave and, for the first time in all my service, took the time off in lieu of working weekends, so that I could complete the first six months of the City and Guilds course, which was two and a half days a week, while I was still serving. As my discharge date approached I was nervously looking for employment. As luck would have it, a furniture company, based in the little industrial estate in our village, was looking for a woodworker. With six months’ experience as a Furniture and Cabinet-Making student I thought I fitted the bill, so I applied and was given a job for the two and a half days that I was not at college, and for this I was paid slightly more than the national minimum wage!
* * *
Around this time I also passed another momentous milestone. Even after cardiac surgery I was still enjoying my regular activities with Wimborne Veterans XV, but games were becoming more difficult – ironically not because of my heart, but because of arthritis. Philip was in his last year at school and captaining his First XV at scrum half. The last game of the season was against the Old Boys, for whom John was playing, so Barbara and I went along to watch, but unknown to her I had spoken to the games master. At half time there was a substitution and I came on to make a guest appearance at prop for the Old Boys. Fortunately for me it was very muddy so the pace of the game was very slow, but I spent a happy forty minutes kicking Philip’s fingers when he came close to the scrum. I never intended hanging my boots up, but I haven’t played again and, at the age of fifty-three, it was a fitting way to end. After, I reckon, thirty-five seasons, numerous military teams and more than ten civilian clubs, I could remind Barbara of the day shortly after our wedding when she watched me play for Askeans alongside George Martin who was playing against his son. (See Chapter 28.)
From the first time that you laced a boot
And tightened every stud
That virus known as rugby
Has been living in your blood
When you dreamt it when you played it
All the rest took second fiddle
Now you’re standing on the sideline
But your hearts still in the middle
(David Harley Brown)
* * *
I never thought I would have trouble returning to civilian life and I had been looking forward to casting off the military shackles, though attending Poole College as a student alongside ‘the youth of today’ was always going to be a challenge. They were scruffy, surly, lazy, rude and uncouth, but that was only what two teenage sons and their friends had prepared me for. In fact, I got on very well with almost all of the course members and enjoyed their company. Several of them became excellent woodworkers and remain good friends, most of the course were very good, but at the bottom of the pile were a number of no-hopers who were late, missed days and didn’t do the work. I was sorry for them as they were throwing away a golden opportunity to learn valuable skills that could set them up for life.
If I enjoyed my time at college the same could not be said of the company I was working for which imported ‘colonial style’ furniture. The owner was in partnership with a man in Indonesia who ran the factory that was making it, mostly from local teak and mahogany. In Britain, as well as the owner, the company consisted of a manager and me. My job was to make sure that the recently-imported furniture was ready for delivery and to repair furniture that had been sold and become faulty.
The whole family skiing at Belle Plagne in Feb 2007.
The owner, a very likeable man, was hopeless and the organisation was chaotic, always balancing on a financial knife edge. He seemed to run the company on half a dozen credit cards so that when one was maxed-out he used the least full and only paid off what he had to. He was happy to muddle his personal and company expenses and one day the manager, who was very unhappy, showed me a statement which included the owner’s son’s school fees alongside company bills. The owner also had an alarming knack of seriously upsetting the people he dealt with. On another occasion the manager actually paid a bill with his personal credit card in order to hire a Luton van for a delivery. He had to use his personal credit card as all of the owner’s credit cards were full and he had to book the vehicle in his name as our boss had upset the hirers! I had always wondered about the shortcomings of military management, but compared with this?
The furniture was pleasing to look at, and was sold by the company at Ideal Home-type shows around the country. Once a month a container packed tightly with stock would arrive from Indonesia. Having taken several weeks travelling through the intense heat of the Middle East most of the contents was covered in a powdery green mould. My job was to prepare it for sale. Usually this meant a wipe over and a strenuous application of wax polish, but frequently it involved French Polishing large damaged areas.
The biggest problem with the furniture was the poor quality of manufacture. An elegant table would have ill-fitting drawers with huge ungainly dovetail joints packed with filler. A table top might be made from two boards of similar grain and pattern and a third board that was totally different, but the biggest fault was the lack of seasoning. Boards in a table top will always expand and contract as the humidity of the surroundings changes and there are various construction techniques that the cabinet-maker will use to compensate for this. The timber used in Indonesia was very green when it was put together and the compensating techniques were not used. Tables in our store would continue to season in the warmth, so the boards would want to shrink as they became drier, but because the top was securely screwed to the frame they could not move. Consequently it was not unusual to hear a sharp crack and to go into the store and discover a table top that had split as the boards dried and was now beyond repair.
After about eighteen months the company was lurching from crisis to crisis and I had had enough. I saw an advertisement for a cabinet-maker to work in the boatbuilding trade and was given the job, again for two and a half days a week while I was at college. I resigned from the furniture importer and about six months later he went bankrupt.
Chapter 35
The Submarine Starts to Rise
My new employers were a husband and wife who ran a small joinery company, with ten people making wooden fittings and furniture for the boatbuilding industry. Not surprisingly, in this area more than ninety per cent of the orders came from Sunseeker. Unlike the furniture importer, the work was interesting and enjoyable and was far better paid, but it was frustrating as, because I was only working part-time, I generally produced the components rather than the more satisfying job of making the actual pieces.
But, although the company produced top-quality items, again the management was dreadful. The wife had some sort of psychiatric disorder and would fly off the handle for the least reason. On one occasion she pursued her husband through the workshop screaming and throwing his sandwiches at him after some
disagreement over working practices. On another she had to be physically restrained from attacking her seventy-five-year-old father-in-law who came in his spare time and cut the grass round the building. At the Staff Christmas Party at a Bournemouth hotel she decided her husband had spent too much time chatting to one of the employee’s girlfriends so she got in the family car and drove round the hotel car park deliberately hitting other vehicles. It was a woodworking version of Fawlty Towers!
I completed my college course with distinction and was awarded a City and Guilds Gold Medal, a rare honour as less than ten are awarded for wood trades in the whole country each year. I enjoyed working with wood and could have worked full-time for the boatbuilding company, but the chaotic organisation deterred me. I worked out that we could pay all of our domestic bills from my Army pension without worrying about the money I was earning from cabinet-making, so I decided to continue to work part-time. That way, if, as seemed inevitable, I had enough of my chaotic employer I could quit with no financial hardship.
I find the winters difficult and I am always gloomy in December and January, but I was feeling particularly tired and under the weather. When I had cardiac problems in 1995 I had frequently taken Rennies tablets, mistaking my angina pains for indigestion. I began to realise that I was doing the same again and started to wonder if my cardiac problems had returned, but the symptoms were occasional and not serious so I was not prompted to go to the GP.
In the spring of 2007 the family went skiing to France and my breathlessness and tight chest became more apparent. I put it down to old age, lack of fitness and, mainly, the fact that we were in a high Alpine resort where the air was thin. When we boarded the train to return home I clearly recognised the angina pains. I thought it was the stress of preparing for departure and expected the symptoms to subside as the train moved out, but they didn’t. The pains were not bad, but they were significant and stayed with me throughout the journey. We reached Paris and I walked slowly and in considerable discomfort from the arrival station to the next. As we sat in the restaurant and waited for our connection I began to feel a little better and gradually recovered on the rest of the journey.
The whole experience was very worrying so, now convinced I had some sort of cardiac problem, I saw the GP as soon as possible. An exercise ECG was unclear as my heart bypass gives a non-standard ECG pattern, but it revealed enough for the cardiologist to refer me for an angiogram (cardiac catheterisation).
The procedure was carried out by Dr MacLeod at Bournemouth Hospital. Since I had the same procedure in 1995 things had changed dramatically and had become much more routine and low-key. In 1995 the brightly lit little operating theatre was crammed with people as it was considered necessary to have a cardiac crash team at immediate call. In 2008 the theatre had subdued lighting, calming music and, most significantly, only Dr MacLeod and a nursing sister in attendance.
The familiar procedures were an altogether less stressful experience, but were made more difficult as the catheter had to be manipulated into the bypass grafts. All seemed to go well and two of my three main arteries were declared clear. However, Dr MacLeod could not find a way through the third artery, but when he injected the contrast agent it clearly found its way to the extremities of my fingers and toes.
His belief was that over the years, as the artery had become progressively more blocked, the blood vessels around the blockage had expanded and had created one or more alternative routes for the blood to flow. In other words, I had ‘grown’ my own bypass in a process known as ‘coronary collateralisation’. The angina pains I had been experiencing were probably because the artery was almost completely blocked and the period of particular discomfort on the journey home from France was, most likely, the time when the artery became completely obstructed and the collateral vessels began to take the full load.
If he was correct, I should gradually return to normal as my body adapted to the change, but only time would prove him right. I was told to go home and expect to get better slowly, but to return immediately if things did not improve. Dr MacLeod was right. This seems to have happened and I have made a satisfactory recovery, though I never fully regained my earlier levels of strength and fitness.
I think it is likely that only two of the three original 1995 bypass grafts were fully effective. The third probably failed and may well have created the fluid that caused the pericardial effusion. My heart had continued to function with two bypassed arteries while the third artery (that had been diagnosed as sixty per cent blocked at that time) remained untreated. Statins and other medicines had slowed down the build-up of cholesterol until it had eventually become completely blocked. Murphy had struck again.
Around this time I began to have more problems with my health, not life-threatening conditions, but the outcome of the pounding that I had given my body through the years of military service. I suffered from arthritis in many of my joints, but in February 2007 it was sufficiently serious for me to have the main joint replaced in my right big toe. Then the following summer I had an operation to fuse the bottom joint of my left thumb because of arthritis. I had taken these things in my stride.
Like most people I had phobias about different things and there were probably times when my behaviour might have been close to obsessive-compulsive, but I never felt this seriously impacted on my life, least of all did I associate it with the ‘submarine’. My most significant problem was probably claustrophobia. As I became increasingly aware of the many aches and pains in my body, I became frustrated and concerned and, without realising it, I was becoming more and more anxious. I had always been cautious and felt that I had to have a plan for every occasion in case something went wrong, but these plans were becoming increasingly far-fetched, creating even greater anxiety. These were warning pings on the submarine.
I also began to think about the fallibility of the medical system. Before my heart-bypass operation (my first experience of surgery) the staff had explained what the operation entailed and the possible complications that could arise, but I had implicit faith. I knew it would be painful, but it was straightforward and simply had to be done. Yet things didn’t go to plan and I had to have a second, life-saving operation. The joint replacement in my toe had been only partially successful as the joint would not bend upwards sufficiently. I should have been back to near normal, able to walk and jog, but, far from that, the toe still causes me pain. A hernia operation (caused by using bad lifting techniques because of the clutter of the boatbuilders’ workshop) should have been quick and easy, but was more painful and took longer to recover from than the planned period. This all fed my fear that I was always the odd one out, the person for whom ‘Murphy’s Law’ had been invented.
My thumb operation in August 2007 had gone according to plan, but my hand was in plaster, albeit a light one, for two weeks and I hated it because the hand was encased and I was not free to do what I wanted with it. I was not in control and it gave me a feeling akin to the claustrophobia that I so hated. On the day I was due to have the plaster removed I was kept waiting and I was so strung up that I was ready to start breaking the cast off myself, in the waiting room.
My second thumb operation was scheduled in January 2008 and I was becoming more and more anxious about it. I couldn’t bear the thought of the loss of mobility while my hand recovered. It was as if I was going to be permanently tied up, almost like incarceration. I had lost faith in the medical profession’s ability to get things right and the submarine was coming crashing to the surface. I was stressed, very anxious and wasn’t sleeping so in desperation I went to my GP.
Throughout my life I had always been ‘responsible’, right from my earliest memories. When I was about five my father spent a fortnight in the Midlands on a course qualifying him as a police driving instructor. He patted me on the shoulder and I well remember him saying, with mock seriousness, ‘Dad’s going to be away for a while. Now you’re the man of the house so look after your mother and sister.’ Even at that age it struck a chor
d and he often said similar things later in life which I always took seriously. I was a leader at school, perhaps because of my sporting ability, so life in the Army, which is all about responsibility, was a natural progression. When we were married my father-in-law was feeling the loss of his daughter and asked me to take care of her. I promised faithfully to do so and, since then, I have seen the responsibility for my family as my absolute priority.
But, responsibility brings with it stress, a major factor in the causes of my heart condition. I wonder if, here, I can draw comparison with Moran’s reservoir of courage (Chapter 13) because responsibility demands moral courage. As I sat in front of my GP I told him that I had spent my life squarely facing up to adversity and being ‘responsible’. Now I could no longer do so I needed someone or something to help me. Comradeship and the familiar routine of service life had supported and protected me for more than thirty years. Far from finding a replacement in life outside, so many aspects of civilian life had repeatedly fallen short. My reservoir of ‘moral courage’ had not been replenished, the submarine was surfacing and I was facing break down.
The GP prescribed Temazepan and suggested I had counselling.
The Temazepan provided some relief, but I was told that the local mental health department would call me in the next two weeks to make an appointment, the waiting time for which was usually four weeks. I was not reassured as I felt I needed help immediately as I desperately wanted my anxiety problems resolved in time for the operation on my other hand. I looked to alternative therapies and decided to go to a local hypnotherapist who could give me an appointment the same week.