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.
1969
For the first few months of this year I wasn’t that well. I complained of headaches, which I had never had and, since then, have never got. I had an eye test which proved nothing. During January, I only went to watch the rugby. I returned for my first game of the year on 1 February. Our prop had not arrived and, as I was playing on the wing, an easy position to miss if you needed to, I was asked to go prop until he turned up. If you remember my physique you will know I wasn’t the beefiest of people, so prop wasn’t the best place to be. Nevertheless I did what I was told.
The first scrum went down, everyone pushed and the most incredible pain started shooting through my back and I was finding it hard to breathe. The trouble was I couldn’t do anything, far less say anything, until the scrum broke up. When it did, and they looked back, they found me lying on the ground. The ref ran over, asked if I was okay, and offered me his hand to help me up. What he didn’t know was that when I answered the okay question with “yes”, I wasn’t telling the truth. At that one moment I couldn’t feel my legs. When I moved to take his hand, something clicked in my back, and I stood up. It was probably one of the stupidest things I ever did and it again came down to not wanting to be the centre of attention. If anyone has a back injury they shouldn’t be moved. I don’t know but I could have been paralysed. What I do know is that since that day my back has caused me quite a few problems and, for the last ten years or so, daily pain but more later. Information that is, not pain. Oh, moral, don’t follow an idiot.
On 15 March mother’s diary notes “no rugger this week, thank goodness”. I was always very nervous about playing but each week mother would insist I had a full, late, cooked breakfast in the morning because I wouldn’t eat lunch. Each Saturday I would eat the breakfast and then go upstairs and, because of the nerves, throw up. Following this back injury, and remembering the previous year where I had nearly missed cricket through a rugby injury, I decided to retire from rugby, scoring my only try in my last game. A devastating jinking run from the half way line handing off several tackles; a brilliant interception and a run the length of the field? No, I charged down a kick five yards out, it bounced off me, went back over the line and I ran forward and fell on it. Quick thinking maybe, rugby skills nil. It did, however, cost me jugs all round after the game.
The injuries continued on the cricket field but none were enough to stop me playing each week. I chipped bones and dislocated fingers but avoided anything more serious. When fielding at cricket I used to either be at short leg, I already had two of my own, or, once we were attacking less, move out to mid off or extra cover. I had already perfected the diving stop and after these rugby injuries I needed it even more. I could no longer throw a ball more than thirty yards and the best way to stop having to do that was to stop it going past me.
On 8 March 1969 father and I went up to the west end of London. Father knew I wanted to buy a car and he had found one of the new FordSport dealers near where he worked in Sloane Square. He had checked things out and I had decided to buy a brand new Ford Escort GT, the start of my motor sport career. I thought. Well I got some things right. The dealer we bought it from was Clarke and Simpson and over the next decade they ran innumerable cars in the World Rally Championship. The garage was run by a guy called David Sutton but on this first visit I dealt with Jill Robinson. She was a pretty good club rally driver though I fear her only claim to fame now may be that on the 1973 RAC Rally she shared an Escort with………………..Jimmy Saville. Just a comment here, I never met him but I also never liked him. He was too creepy, too gushy, too much show biz. He was obviously too much a few other things too and that I find abhorrent, and no other word will do.
The car cost £961 and I had to borrow £520 over two years. Father stood guarantor. After getting back from Sloane Square and signing the papers, I was phoned by the rugby club, I hadn’t retired yet, and went off to play rugby at short notice “without any lunch” as mother notes. At least I won’t have been sick.
On 1 April 1969 I picked up my new car. This time David Sutton was there and handed me the keys, breaking off his conversation with Timo Makinen (well look him up or more precisely look up to him , he was tall) to do so. Then we drove home. Well father and I did as David and Timo wanted to continue their conversation. Imagine buying your first brand new car and driving straight out into London rush hour traffic. My dad had supported me when I bought it and sat quietly in the passenger seat as we negotiated the Hammersmith fly-over among other places. I was so lucky with both my parents, although, my ever-protective mother, or should that be my over-protective mother, wouldn’t speak to father for at least three days after we got back. She was convinced that I would be killed in this car and it would be his fault. Another of Sutton’s driver was Ari Vatanen, and in one of those strange quirks of fate, he and I would correspond much later about an educational project that I was running when he was a MEP.
In August this year, the family holiday took us to Cornwall, this time with another family. I drove down, with my cousin and my sister in my car. It was a hot summer and, on the second day, on the beautiful beach at Poldhu Cover, I got very sunburnt while lying, talking. We spent the day on the beach and mother notes that, in the evening when we left to go home, “Richard felt unwell, was sick but he still drove our car home”. God I loved driving.
Two days later, we were again driving to Poldhu down some Cornish lanes, when I turned through a right hand bend and there, in the middle of the road probably only wide enough for one and a half cars, was another car. I swerved to the left very quickly, onto the grass at the side of the road but, unfortunately, this narrow grass strip, with a hedge beside it, concealed a ditch. To make matters worse, the hedge concealed a stone wall. My beautiful new car ended up with its nearside wheels hanging over a ditch, its pristine new left side bodywork grazed and up against a wall and its frame stuck on the edge of the ditch. The other driver did stop and got out to see if we were alright, his wife shouting at him as he left that he wasn’t even looking where he was going. I had my cousin, my sister and her friend with me and we sent the two young girls off to the beach, we were only a mile or so away, and my father and his friend came up and eventually my car was towed out. The damage wasn’t too severe, a local garage beat out the wing and checked it over and I had it back within a few days. Back in London, Clarke and Simpson did a better job and soon my car was as good as new.
The other significant event of this holiday was the tennis match. A week after the ditch incident, this was our first two-week holiday, we all went to the local courts. My father was never a very competitive person, he was probably too gentle to be, our family friend was. I guess at the time he was about 46 and I was 20. We played a set, he won; we played another I won. The third set lasted a very long time and eventually he won. Despite a reputation I have been given of hating to lose, this was never a problem. I hated to feel I hadn’t given my best, just as that old gym master had told me I could and should do. In this game I did and he still won but I loved the fact that he never gave up and of course neither did I.
My life was now work and sport. Having my own car made going to cricket even easier and I would play every Saturday and Sunday there was a game, which, weather permitting, was every weekend. I was hardly ever home and, if I was, I would spent time in my newly converted bedroom developing my skills on my now vastly expanded Scalextric set. This conversion of the bedroom was very simple but, as I thought of it, a rather clever affair. A few years back when the model cars got boring, and crawling round the floor was hurting the knees too much, I had the idea of making my bedroom floor space nearly twice as big. If you remember the room was about 6ft by 8ft. I persuaded mother to buy a piece of hardboard 7ft by 5 ft and then I put some battens around the edges and across the middle to improve the strength. Then I screwed a batten along one wall, about 3 ft off the ground. I put hinges along this and screwed my piece of hardboard to them. I now had a fold down floor which covered most of my room at a height of 3ft. There was space outside this for my wardrobe, the only piece of furniture I had apart from the bed which, of course, fitted underneath. I would then build my new Scalextric set, on this platform and I could, if I wanted, just fold it away. That’s how it started but after a time I would just sleep under the board, leaving the circuit up permanently. Funnily enough this also stopped my music hobby as I had nowhere to practice the guitar any more.
Having mentioned, a little while ago, my purchase of a lilac shirt and corduroy jacket I should point out that my dress style in the city caused a few raised eyebrows among the more sedate members of the community who had been there for some long time. My suits were always double-breasted with a highwayman collar. Shirts tended to be red (bright), orange (distinct) but never white. It quite amazes me that for someone so shy and who so feared being noticed, I would dress like this. But I did.
Shortly after I joined the Royal Exchange, the directors, feeling they now needed a larger company to cater for my financial needs (hahaha), agreed a merger with the Guardian Assurance Company and became the Guardian Royal Exchange or GRE. In September they merged the quotations departments and I was walked, by the Assistant Actuary, to accompany our desks, books and papers which had been delivered to the Guardian Offices in Shoe Lane, just off Fleet Street. My boss had been moved elsewhere and I actually joined on my own as my colleague was, again, on holiday. On our walk, I was gently encouraged to take these actuarial exams and told that the company had been extremely impressed by how I had coped with being thrown in at the deep end.
The following three months were pretty boring for me. The systems were being changed so that all quotes would now be done to the Guardian rates and so any new work went to them, while the two of us just tidied up our old work. There was no point in learning the Guardian way until we had fully merged, no one seemed able to find work for me, and I spent quite a lot of time looking out the window as the first copies of the Evening Standard were sent out. This lack of work would seem to make it easy for me to rush home one afternoon in December when mother rang my office, she couldn’t get hold of father, as my sister had a nose bleed which couldn’t be stopped. When I got back it had stopped and all was fine.
On 8 March 1969 father and I went up to the west end of London. Father knew I wanted to buy a car and he had found one of the new FordSport dealers near where he worked in Sloane Square. He had checked things out and I had decided to buy a brand new Ford Escort GT, the start of my motor sport career. I thought. Well I got some things right. The dealer we bought it from was Clarke and Simpson and over the next decade they ran innumerable cars in the World Rally Championship. The garage was run by a guy called David Sutton but on this first visit I dealt with Jill Robinson. She was a pretty good club rally driver though I fear her only claim to fame now may be that on the 1973 RAC Rally she shared an Escort with………………..Jimmy Saville. Just a comment here, I never met him but I also never liked him. He was too creepy, too gushy, too much show biz. He was obviously too much a few other things too and that I find abhorrent, and no other word will do.
The car cost £961 and I had to borrow £520 over two years. Father stood guarantor. After getting back from Sloane Square and signing the papers, I was phoned by the rugby club, I hadn’t retired yet, and went off to play rugby at short notice “without any lunch” as mother notes. At least I won’t have been sick.
On 1 April 1969 I picked up my new car. This time David Sutton was there and handed me the keys, breaking off his conversation with Timo Makinen (well look him up or more precisely look up to him , he was tall) to do so. Then we drove home. Well father and I did as David and Timo wanted to continue their conversation. Imagine buying your first brand new car and driving straight out into London rush hour traffic. My dad had supported me when I bought it and sat quietly in the passenger seat as we negotiated the Hammersmith fly-over among other places. I was so lucky with both my parents, although, my ever-protective mother, or should that be my over-protective mother, wouldn’t speak to father for at least three days after we got back. She was convinced that I would be killed in this car and it would be his fault. Another of Sutton’s driver was Ari Vatanen, and in one of those strange quirks of fate, he and I would correspond much later about an educational project that I was running when he was a MEP.
In August this year, the family holiday took us to Cornwall, this time with another family. I drove down, with my cousin and my sister in my car. It was a hot summer and, on the second day, on the beautiful beach at Poldhu Cover, I got very sunburnt while lying, talking. We spent the day on the beach and mother notes that, in the evening when we left to go home, “Richard felt unwell, was sick but he still drove our car home”. God I loved driving.
Two days later, we were again driving to Poldhu down some Cornish lanes, when I turned through a right hand bend and there, in the middle of the road probably only wide enough for one and a half cars, was another car. I swerved to the left very quickly, onto the grass at the side of the road but, unfortunately, this narrow grass strip, with a hedge beside it, concealed a ditch. To make matters worse, the hedge concealed a stone wall. My beautiful new car ended up with its nearside wheels hanging over a ditch, its pristine new left side bodywork grazed and up against a wall and its frame stuck on the edge of the ditch. The other driver did stop and got out to see if we were alright, his wife shouting at him as he left that he wasn’t even looking where he was going. I had my cousin, my sister and her friend with me and we sent the two young girls off to the beach, we were only a mile or so away, and my father and his friend came up and eventually my car was towed out. The damage wasn’t too severe, a local garage beat out the wing and checked it over and I had it back within a few days. Back in London, Clarke and Simpson did a better job and soon my car was as good as new.
The other significant event of this holiday was the tennis match. A week after the ditch incident, this was our first two-week holiday, we all went to the local courts. My father was never a very competitive person, he was probably too gentle to be, our family friend was. I guess at the time he was about 46 and I was 20. We played a set, he won; we played another I won. The third set lasted a very long time and eventually he won. Despite a reputation I have been given of hating to lose, this was never a problem. I hated to feel I hadn’t given my best, just as that old gym master had told me I could and should do. In this game I did and he still won but I loved the fact that he never gave up and of course neither did I.
My life was now work and sport. Having my own car made going to cricket even easier and I would play every Saturday and Sunday there was a game, which, weather permitting, was every weekend. I was hardly ever home and, if I was, I would spent time in my newly converted bedroom developing my skills on my now vastly expanded Scalextric set. This conversion of the bedroom was very simple but, as I thought of it, a rather clever affair. A few years back when the model cars got boring, and crawling round the floor was hurting the knees too much, I had the idea of making my bedroom floor space nearly twice as big. If you remember the room was about 6ft by 8ft. I persuaded mother to buy a piece of hardboard 7ft by 5 ft and then I put some battens around the edges and across the middle to improve the strength. Then I screwed a batten along one wall, about 3 ft off the ground. I put hinges along this and screwed my piece of hardboard to them. I now had a fold down floor which covered most of my room at a height of 3ft. There was space outside this for my wardrobe, the only piece of furniture I had apart from the bed which, of course, fitted underneath. I would then build my new Scalextric set, on this platform and I could, if I wanted, just fold it away. That’s how it started but after a time I would just sleep under the board, leaving the circuit up permanently. Funnily enough this also stopped my music hobby as I had nowhere to practice the guitar any more.
Having mentioned, a little while ago, my purchase of a lilac shirt and corduroy jacket I should point out that my dress style in the city caused a few raised eyebrows among the more sedate members of the community who had been there for some long time. My suits were always double-breasted with a highwayman collar. Shirts tended to be red (bright), orange (distinct) but never white. It quite amazes me that for someone so shy and who so feared being noticed, I would dress like this. But I did.
Shortly after I joined the Royal Exchange, the directors, feeling they now needed a larger company to cater for my financial needs (hahaha), agreed a merger with the Guardian Assurance Company and became the Guardian Royal Exchange or GRE. In September they merged the quotations departments and I was walked, by the Assistant Actuary, to accompany our desks, books and papers which had been delivered to the Guardian Offices in Shoe Lane, just off Fleet Street. My boss had been moved elsewhere and I actually joined on my own as my colleague was, again, on holiday. On our walk, I was gently encouraged to take these actuarial exams and told that the company had been extremely impressed by how I had coped with being thrown in at the deep end.
The following three months were pretty boring for me. The systems were being changed so that all quotes would now be done to the Guardian rates and so any new work went to them, while the two of us just tidied up our old work. There was no point in learning the Guardian way until we had fully merged, no one seemed able to find work for me, and I spent quite a lot of time looking out the window as the first copies of the Evening Standard were sent out. This lack of work would seem to make it easy for me to rush home one afternoon in December when mother rang my office, she couldn’t get hold of father, as my sister had a nose bleed which couldn’t be stopped. When I got back it had stopped and all was fine.
Back to the top
