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.
1974
A year which started with some great news, stumbled through another period where my fears took over and ended with something incredibly beautiful that I had been so frightened I might miss.
After my wife left the GRE, she briefly did temping work in London before finding more permanent work in Colchester a couple of miles from where we lived. I continued to travel each day from Wivenhoe to Liverpool Street and thence on to those offices in Cheapside where I had worked, with some brief gaps, for almost 6 years. Earlier in this year I thought about leaving as did quite a few others. My boss, who had been in that role since I joined the pensions department, called me into his office one day for a chat. The talk got round to new horizons and he asked if I had applied for the new company who were building up their pension position. I told him yes, some people just elicit honesty, and he asked what was the result. I had actually been offered a position and the offer letter was in my pocket. “I’ve got one too”, he said, producing his letter. He then gave me a few of his thoughts and eventually neither of us took the positions. I think, if I had known that he going to leave the following year for an internal placement abroad, I might have made a different decision.
He taught me one very important lesson. As I was now a section leader, still unqualified of course, I had to give a yearly report on my staff. I didn’t like being unkind so I tended to make these a little more glowing than perhaps they should have been. After one particular report, he looked at me and said, “so, if I promote so-and-so because you say he is good, he can cope, can he? Because if he can’t, then the company will suffer, you will suffer because it will make me question your judgement but most seriously of all, he will suffer because he will be put into a position in which he will be unable to cope”. His advice, which I have always tried to follow, was that if someone couldn’t do a job, or wouldn’t be able to do the next job up the line, it was my job as their section leader/employer to say so. In mother’s words, “you have to be cruel to be kind” and while I would substitute honest for cruel, there are a hell of a lot of parents I know who would do well to follow that, as well as many in business.
While on the subject of working practices, I once had another Assistant Actuary come out of his office one afternoon and walk up to my desk and sit down next to me. We began a pretty casual conversation about nothing in particular, certainly not work, and I was feeling a bit awkward because I was waiting for him to ask why I was chatting and not working, even if I was chatting with him. At the end of our chat, he explained he had been grappling with a particularly difficult problem and needed a break. Never be afraid to do that, he said, no one can work 6 hours a day without quite a few breaks to chat.
By now I was into the accepted house-owner, married-man, commuter mode and in March we learnt that we would also be in the parental mode too. Having my own little family, in that cosy little house, had always been a dream, even if as I said earlier, it was no longer the perfect dream, so this was great news, except my anxieties took over. I still had the occasional panic attack, when I would suddenly think I was dying just as had happened on that Boxing Day in 1968. Once again, it was probably when I was over-tired. Usually they occurred as I was falling asleep and, my way of dealing with the initial panic, was to leap from the bed and run around to various rooms announcing I was dying. Of course the panic created a faster heartbeat, the running helped and by then I was actually in fight or flight mode, and I chose flight. My wife used to tell the story to others that it was an amusing sight to see a naked man, I have never worn pyjamas or anything in bed since I was 16, running aimlessly through the house. To be honest, telling others how stupid I looked, didn’t do much for me but people have to deal with their problems their way.
However, the thought that I would be a father pushed my fear of dying anxieties to a new height. I wanted this so badly, suppose I died and missed it. As I said, although this was how people, and indeed I, perceived it, I have never really been scared of dying. I was scared of not living. I had so much I wanted to see, to do, to experience. I still do. Things got so bad that in mid-May I stepped back to 1962 and found I was unable to go to work. If I was on the train, I would start sweating, heart thumping and feeling dizzy. Once at work, with people I knew, I was fine. It was the time alone or with strangers that caused the problem. None of this was helped by British Rail and the IRA. Trains would often break down in between stations, and in winter, at night, I had no idea what stations. I would work out how I could get off the train and find a road where an ambulance could pick me up. There would also be delays caused by bomb scares where I would be stuck at Liverpool Street for hours.
During the two months this problem lasted, I stayed at home while my wife went to work but there were some days when I persuaded her to feign morning sickness, it wasn’t too difficult as she did suffer, and stay with me. I saw the doctor, who told me to get a grip on myself and prescribed some tablets. I didn’t take them but nor could I get this grip. I could cope in the company of others whom I knew but alone it was difficult.
We had planned a holiday with our friends in Wales and we still took this, although this was a minor disaster as on the way from ours to London to pick them up, we were just taking my car, a bee flew into the car and my wife, who hated these things, panicked. I, as a dutiful husband, immediately reacted to swat the bee away from her but in doing so mounted the near side kerb at about 50mph. I was just congratulating myself on my superb car control when, a mile or so later, I felt a flat tyre. I parked at the side, we were making an early start and it was about six in the morning, and was proved right. The back tyre was flat. Sadly, so was the front one. Manufacturers, who do not cater for early morning bees, only provide one spare. No garages were open and with no mobile phones, one of us would have to hitch a lift to the nearest town and get help. I am not about to leave a young woman at the roadside but I knew my nerves could not have coped with being there. In the true, needs must, tradition, I had an idea which worked. I changed one tyre, the one which looked more damaged and then, using the foot pump we had, pumped the other as high as I could. We drove on for a few miles, I got out and checked it, pumped it up a bit more and carried on. We did this a few more times, by which time it was nearly eight and we found a garage who gave us two new tyres which they fitted and off we went.
My work had been very good about my absence. Initially, I had been given a certificate citing depression but, just before we went on this holiday, I had spoken to someone and decided to explain the position. I now had that vital person in place who knew and understood, just like my old Head at school. I had decided that on return from holiday I would return to work and I did it. The train journey was hell, both there and back, but I kept thinking about how brave this old Head had said he thought I had been and was determined to at least show myself I still was. During the next few weeks my wife went back to temping up in London so the train journey became easier again. I couldn’t fault the way she helped me out in all of this but the problem for me was that, though she did all these things, I don’t think she ever understood how I felt. If she had, she would not have told everyone about my behaviour because, quite simply, my own behaviour made me feel stupid and what I needed at this time was to be more confident in who I was, not feel even more abnormal.
By September of that year I was back running my section and I had a new staff member. Over the next 3 years, she became my rock, the person who I could turn to if I panicked but, of course, as I had that rock to turn to, I never panicked. Even when we no longer worked in the same section we would still lunch together at one of the many hostelries in the city. If anyone who worked there at that time remembers any, or even if they are still there, I will quote you the Dandy Roll, the Hole-in-the-Wall, Williamson’s Tavern and, our favourite, a paddle steamer moored on the Thames near London Bridge. They did an awesome ploughman's lunch.
In December, the event I had been waiting for, and been anxious about not being around to see, happened. My wife, after nearly 30 hours of labour, gave birth to a little girl. I was there, which wasn’t that common in those days. Indeed the nurse kept asking me if I was okay and I had already be warned that if I fainted at any time I would be left on the floor. In fact, I was fine and when, in the latter stages, the midwives and trainee doctor were in conversation looking out the window, I quietly alerted them to the fact that my wife, who was thrashing around a bit, had disconnected the drip feed from her hand and instead of pumping something in, blood was now flowing out.
Seven days later we took the little baby home, obviously in my red Escort, and lying in her carry-cot on the back seat, unstrapped as there were no laws about it then. That Christmas was a great family affair spent at my parents’ house. Both mother and father doted on their first grandchild. Father especially so, as he had shown a skill I didn’t know he had and knitted our daughter a beautiful layette, if that’s the right word. Mother bought the pram and it had to be one of the best, whatever we wanted. And that little baby has been, and still is, a source of immeasurably pleasure, fun and laughter and someone of whom I am extremely proud.
It was also the year that my little sister, that small bundle held up for me to see all those years ago, reached 21. We had a party at my parents house, where she still lived and indeed lived at home for another 14 years, and two weeks later her best friend had her 21st down in London. We all went down in my car, my wife, sister and two parents, had a great time, met some TV celebrities, well they were then, and drove back early the following morning. My sister enjoyed herself immensely and it was less than a month by the time we had got the smell of vomit out of my car. Later that year, at Christmas I think, she threw up over her own collection of teddy bears and again I did the cleaning up. I should point out that as far as my own children were concerned I also dealt with unplanned evacuations from the top end. The other end was their mother’s responsibility, whether it was planned or unplanned.
It was also the year that my little sister, that small bundle held up for me to see all those years ago, reached 21. We had a party at my parents house, where she still lived and indeed lived at home for another 14 years, and two weeks later her best friend had her 21st down in London. We all went down in my car, my wife, sister and two parents, had a great time, met some TV celebrities, well they were then, and drove back early the following morning. My sister enjoyed herself immensely and it was less than a month by the time we had got the smell of vomit out of my car. Later that year, at Christmas I think, she threw up over her own collection of teddy bears and again I did the cleaning up. I should point out that as far as my own children were concerned I also dealt with unplanned evacuations from the top end. The other end was their mother’s responsibility, whether it was planned or unplanned.
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