TASHY DID - A LIFE
Hey kids, grand-kids, and any other nosey people who are reading these pages, this is for you to read now or sometime in the future. It may tell you a little
about how life was 60 or so years ago and rather more about me. Why am I doing it?
In the years after my father's death, way back in 1981, I kept thinking of things I wished I'd talked to him about. After my mother's death, just over
thirteen years later, there was less of a knowledge-vacuum because mother talked more about her past.
Just recently, my daughter and I unearthed my mother's diaries which went back to 1929, when she was just 13 years old. This reminded me of the 1998
incident with my 6 year old and I decided to put down here the story of my life so my children and grandchildren could, if they wished, read about what I had done. I would use my
memory and those diaries to build a picture from 1949 to the present day and add some personal observations.
So, here we go. Each week we will have a new year with preceding weeks being archived. In the first few years, as I will have less to say, probably, I will
add some info about your grandparents and their parents.
1966
This was the year I had been waiting for since 1957 but, sadly, it started in the wrong kind of way. On 8 February, my father’s mother died but at the grand old age of 91. I didn’t go to the funeral.
In May of this year, father reached his 60th birthday and, as rules allowed, took some of his pension in the form of a cash sum. With this we built that porch and garage on the house but, far more importantly, he decided to buy a car again. There was much debate within the family. Mother wanted a Morris Oxford automatic. I fancied a Sunbeam Rapier, they used these in rallies, until we came across the Mark 1 Ford Cortina GT. Mother was dismissed, she couldn’t really drive anyway, and the car was duly purchased. Father refused to let me drive until I had taken at least one lesson with professionals and my birthday present that year was a set of 12 such lessons with BSM. The first was on the Tuesday after my birthday.
I met the instructor and he drove me out to George V Avenue in Hatch End. He explained a few things and then suggested I could have a short drive. I started the engine, put on some revs, brought up the clutch and, pretty smoothly I have to say, we set off. I accelerated through the gears and soon we were heading, quite swiftly, down this dual carriageway. At which point, the instructor did mention that we were now doing about 60mph and he hadn’t told me how to stop this thing. For those of a nervous disposition, it did have dual controls, but they weren’t needed. I had waited so long to drive, watched father and others when they had driven me and read so many books, that it all came so easily.
Having a lesson a week, and being allowed to drive father’s car most nights, I duly passed my test first time on October 25 1966. Father never really liked driving that much so, from then on, I became the family driver in his car. It was a lovely car to drive although practising on it did bring about the only comment from my examiner during my test. He mentioned he was glad he wasn’t buying my petrol, as I hesitated to use fourth gear. The test car was a standard Cortina but fourth gear in father’s usually meant you were doing more than 30mph. I even passed after getting some questions wrong after the driving bit.
In those days, after you had driven, the examiner would ask you some random questions from the highway code. One he asked me was when should I not accelerate. I tried all the usual; approaching a junction, approaching a pedestrian crossing, approaching a bend, approaching a hump back bridge but he kept saying “and”. It turned out he wanted me to say “when being overtaken” but as I did not envisage that possibility it completely slipped my mind.
My learned historian friend, when I went back to school the next day, had written me a rather touching ode about the test, especially nice as we had parted company, form wise, after the “O” levels in July.
Returning to less important matters, I took my “O” levels again in June of this year, this time all 9 of them, and passed Maths (again), English (again), English Literature, History and Additional Maths. Latin, Science and Art were complete failures, French only just. In November I resat that French “O” level and duly passed with a 6. There is a story about that exam which appears elsewhere but I will repeat it here.
The re-sit was not in my school but in nearby Camden Town Hall. I drove there. There were, I recall, about 100 or so of us virgin failures sat in about six lines of desks, stretching down the hall. I was still a fairly shy young man and was pretty horrified to discover I was at the front of one of the middle rows.
The first part of the exam was in two parts. First you had a dictation to write out and then you were read a story and you had to re-write this in your own words to show you could understand the language. This was called, I think, the aural. As the exam started the invigilator chose to stand right in front of me. My little hands shook, I probably blushed, my heart started racing and he announced he would begin. I looked up at him and suddenly noticed that on the other side of the paper he was reading from was the next part of the exam; the aural.
I then attempted to perform something akin to a biathlon, only skiing and shooting simultaneously. As I desperately tried to write out the dictation, I was also copying the words from the story. I left a line between each line of dictation and copied the story into the spaces. He never looked down to see why I was writing twice as much as he was saying and so when the dictation ended, we were given time to re-write it, I was ready to listen to the story but had my own version already.
Now he could have easily gone and stood somewhere else to read the story but it would appear my aftershave had some hypnotic appeal and he simply turned the paper over and began reading the story. I don’t remember if we could make notes but I do remember I listened to none of it as I was trying to memorise the dictation which now faced me. Needless to say I passed and now possess a French “O” level. I do not consider I cheated; I think I was extremely enterprising and also pretty smart and it’s bloody hard work listening to one thing, reading another, writing down one of them and copying the other, all at the same time.
School-wise I had now moved into the sixth form and was studying Statistics, History, Economics and British Constitution. In the first of the two sixth form years we also took a paper, an AO level I believe, in Use of English plus a General Paper, about which I remember nothing except I passed both.
We also had our regular Norfolk break and I was allowed to drive some of the time. Mother also decided to have a drive as she now wanted to be able to ferry herself around. She had never taken her test, getting her licence just before tests were introduced in 1934, I think. Sadly, down a narrow Norfolk lane, she came up behind a cyclist. She was too scared to overtake him and we followed him for well over ten minutes as he pedalled faster and faster.
We also had our regular Norfolk break and I was allowed to drive some of the time. Mother also decided to have a drive as she now wanted to be able to ferry herself around. She had never taken her test, getting her licence just before tests were introduced in 1934, I think. Sadly, down a narrow Norfolk lane, she came up behind a cyclist. She was too scared to overtake him and we followed him for well over ten minutes as he pedalled faster and faster.
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