THE PINBALL THEORY
HOWARD MCKAY
~~~
Published by Steven Wright Publishing at Smashwords
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Preface
My reason for writing this book is three-fold. Firstly it is a self-indulgent record of my life and career as an engineer that - it is hoped - will provide an interesting and sometimes amusing read to both engineers and laymen alike. Secondly it is to give young people still in secondary education some idea of what might lie in store for them should they embark upon the path to such a profession. I venture to suggest that, having dealt with many other professionals during the course of my life, some of my observations will also be useful to young people considering other pursuits. One thing for them to bear in mind, however, is that very few people seem to end up following the path they had in mind when they started out. This happened to me and, as will be seen through the course of the book, it happened to quite a number of my peers.
The third reason is to give my children, grandchildren and other descendants some idea of my life and the person they are descended from. For my own part, I know very little about my grandparents and I have only a scant knowledge of my father’s life – a very unfortunate one that ended with his suicide when I was aged around nineteen.
Frankly, whilst still at school I found little really useful career information to guide me and, ultimately, some aspects of my engineering adventure were simple twists of fate. This was particularly true of my entry into university where, for reasons that will be seen, I found myself on a course, which I found neither particularly relevant to my aims nor interesting.
My interest in engineering started the first time I saw our next-door neighbour, Mr. Piper, take his bicycle wheel apart to replace the grease in the bearings. Later – partly through necessity – I too was to become adept at the high-tech ramifications of bicycle engineering, a path that was ultimately to lead me to a degree course in Mechanical Engineering at Newcastle University. My four years at Newcastle were, incidentally, to see me converted from being a Manchester United fan to a follower of the “Toon Army” or Newcastle United as they are formally known.
Apart from being interesting and amusing I hope my story and anecdotes may save others from the ultimate price of ignorance that marked my early years leading to university and, to a great extent, my time spent whilst studying there. By the time I realised I had signed up for a course which was inappropriate for my aims, it was too late. Only in hindsight did I reflect as to how I could have actually gained much more benefit from my four years slaving over a hot slide rule (no calculators in those days) had I approached things differently.
As an example of the poor advice that was given to us sixth-formers to prepare us for university life, we were recommended to read a book entitled “Lucky Jim” by Kingsley Amis. I struggled through a few chapters of this hopelessly irrelevant tome before finally discarding it. Even in the mid 60’s its relevance to university life was akin to trying to read of “Tom Brown’s schooldays” to prepare oneself for life at a modern comprehensive school.
I have long viewed the factors that govern one’s life and career as the “pinball” theory. In playing pinball we all gleefully pull the plunger to propel the nice shiny ball on its way, waiting hopefully with flippers poised to send the ball back up from its first and subsequent descents. Anyone who has either played or watched pinball will have observed the good players can often fail miserably whilst duffers can accidentally catch the ball with what appears to be more skill than luck. Likewise in life, there will be many like me who have seen the genii amongst their peers fall on surprisingly “stony ground” whilst some of the absolute dross have confounded justice with their “success”.
It is worth retelling the joke about the ex-student –the worst mathematician the school had ever seen - who turned up to a class reunion in a Rolls Royce car. When asked by his former teacher how he was apparently doing so well the ex-student said, “Well Sir, I do bit of buying and selling – buy something for ten pounds and sell it for twenty. Its only ten percent but it’s a living”. Many of us will know that fellow.
In my own case I am pleased to say that I have done very well out of not only engineering but also out of other ventures. To the envy of many I was able to turn my leisure pursuits of music and beer drinking into a very successful business empire - More of that later.
Did I lead the perfect life? I did not. As with any autobiographer, I have the luxury of omitting some things that others might have included. I am sure we all have dark secrets that we wish to remain so. I am sure there are many who would say, “I can tell you a thing or two about him...” Well let them write their book.
This book covers not only my life as an engineer but it follows my fortunes from early childhood and relates both the good and the bad times, the japes and the dramas. I hope you will enjoy it.
Howard McKay
Philippines 2010
~~~
Chapter1 – the formative years
As a schoolboy at Altrincham Grammar School in the 1960’s, the only formal paper that I failed was English Literature “O” level, an examination that was one of the British measures of competence for 15 to 16 year olds at the time. I believed and still believe that this failure was partly because I was always at odds with my teacher (and hence the examiners) on either, the interpretation of the works or what was considered acceptable prose. Interestingly, another boy who failed the same paper was Alan Hart who went on to be a professional journalist and recently won “Travel Writer of the Year” award in the UK.
Although my main career path was that of an engineer, I nevertheless had to be more adept with the written word than with calculations for most of it, such that I was often tapped to be the ghost writer for professional papers to be presented by the hierarchy, with their names emblazoned on the top and mine relegated to a minor acknowledgement at the end.
I do recall the many ‘rules’ of English that included such things as “never begin a sentence with ‘but’ or ‘and’”. But, of course, I noted that many successful writers ignored this rule, so why should I be penalised? And so on.
This lead-in is, I confess, to avoid starting this book with the rather hackneyed… “I was born...”. Now, having overcome that trap, the rest follows.
I was born in Chaddesdon, close to Derby in the middle of England. The date of my birth, 1946, followed the demise of Adolf Hitler by about one year and was about eleven months after the cessation of WW2 hostilities in the Pacific. By the time I reached the age of five we moved to Manchester, having completed my first year at primary school. During that first school year we had lived in three different houses in Chaddesdon, and there was also a short spell when we stayed with my two Aunts in nearby Chilwell, close to Nottingham. It was quite a few years before I was to find out the reasons for this early nomadic existence.
My parents were both from Yorkshire. My father, Alan McKay came from Hull and was the only child of a policeman, Archibald McKay who had served in the Military Police in the First World War. No doubt some interesting tales could be told of Archibald’s service but I have no information other than a single photograph of him in uniform together with some French soldiers. Apparently he had won a medal “saving people from a bomb”. Given his role in the military police I have often wondered if he had personally arrested any of the shell-shocked deserters of that awful conflict who were then sent to their deaths in front of firing squads.
Archibald McKay, France 1917
My mother was born Edith Lilian Hoyle in 1921 and was raised near to Halifax, the youngest of three sisters and from a family which was reasonably well-to-do in the early years. The Hoyle family fell upon hard times, however, when my maternal grandfather went blind then died whilst my mother was still in her teens. The three girls were apparently brought up in a very religious environment and, I was told, it was normal for them to attend church three times on a Sunday.
Marriage of parents Alan McKay to Edith Lilian Hoyle, 1941. Maternal Grandmother Nora Hoyle to the left. Fraternal Grandparents Archibold and Kate McKay behind couple. Also shows my mother’s sisters - Caroline adjacent to grandmother and Winifred adjacent to the bride
Although my antecedent family history is quite interesting I will not expand upon it here other than for the purposes of explanation and comment upon the situation I found myself in. It seemed as if my early life was governed by a combination of dogmatism and proverbs, a situation that was to affect my early life and character make-up long thereafter.
Whilst I am sure I am not alone in the ability to remember things from my toddler years, I can remember certain aspects of my life at the age of five quite vividly. Shocking things are certainly etched on young minds and I can remember clearly, for example, the appalling and horrifying nest of earwigs I disturbed in an ice-cream carton that I pulled out from the garden hedge one day. Similarly, I remember very well the pain of ripping off a fingernail as I rode my three-wheel bike one-day, catching the nail on a sharp edge of the dustbin lid as I went by.
Our third and final house in Derby at No. 431 Nottingham Road was almost directly opposite Chaddesden Park and I recall being put to bed each evening whilst it was still light, thinking how unfair this was. I was not in the least bit tired and I would look wistfully out the window at other children, apparently of my own age, who were still out playing. Perhaps this was the early grounding for my ability to enjoy solitude at times, and to daydream almost to the point of trance – a factor that was not a great asset in the classroom.
My father was an industrial chemist and was, I am told, part of the team that developed PVC. Despite a number of family dramas (with worse to come later) we were nevertheless relatively well off at that time, evidenced by the fact that we were one of the first families to have a television set. Ours was a “Baird” with a huge walnut veneer box containing a tiny black and white screen in it. Memories of that TV include my mother always kicking out the urchins (my friends) I brought back after school to watch “The Cisco Kid” and other exciting fare. Two other images from that TV that have always stuck in my mind are from the news footage of the Korean War. Firstly there was the repeated image of a gun barrel poking from a net, firing a blast and recoiling slightly before bouncing back out again. This image was played night after night on the TV news and I always wondered what it was about. The second image was again repeated endlessly and it was of sad faced children waiting in line with their empty bowls. I used to wonder to myself, “Why don’t they go home to their Mum?”
With my sister Rosalind, circa 1951
Another effect the TV had – and it is perhaps proof of the oft-denied influence that television has on the behaviour of young people – is that it made me into an involuntary gang leader. I was almost alone in being able to watch the TV cowboys regularly punch and wrestle each other and, as a result, I was able to put these lessons to effective use in any schoolyard rough and tumble. Two factions developed within the boys of our class and, as a skilled fighter I became leader of one of the gangs.
I remember a few visits made to the Derby Infirmary to visit my Dad and I recall wondering why they didn’t call the place a “hospital”. I had no idea why my father was in there or what was wrong with him. Finally a big furniture removal van arrived at No. 431 Nottingham Road one day and, a few hours later, we found ourselves in Sale, Cheshire. This town is just outside of Manchester and was where my father would begin a new job.
In later years I was to find out that the reason my father was ill was that he had – in cahoots with some of his fellow laboratory workers – brewed some “hooch” in the factory laboratory and they had all been laid low by it. Not surprisingly he had lost his job which is why we ended up in Manchester when he took up a new position as industrial chemist with the Mersey River Board. The domestic drama caused by the “hooch” incident, plus a general partiality to alcohol was part of the reason for the moving around that had taken place up to this time.
Nevertheless, we settled into our new house in Manchester and, despite a constant atmosphere of strain between my mother and father, things were otherwise relatively stable for the next five or six years until another bombshell hit the household that I shall recount later. Grandpa Archibald also lived with us in Sale as he had equity in the property, my paternal Grandmother having died in Derby shortly before we moved.
Mother with Rosalind and I at Llandudno, Wales, circa 1950
Possibly because of the early influence of television and undoubtedly because of the efforts of my mother, I arrived at my new primary school somewhat academically ahead of my new peers. The first result of this was when the teacher, disbelieving that I had finished the very basic book she had given me, made me stand in the corner for an hour as punishment. Relating this to my mother when I got home, she arrived at the school next day to tell the teacher a “thing or two” after which my chances of becoming the teacher’s pet were quite remote.
I stayed at Park Road primary school for two years and then –partly prompted by my sister failing the 11-plus examination – my parents sent me to the fee-paying Atrincham Preparatory School, undoubtedly the best primary school in the area. Here, given smaller classes and enthusiastic teachers I appeared to finally fulfil the promise that my parents had seen in me. From being a non-entity at Park Road, I rose to the top five in both term positions and exams. My improved results even saw me being presented with a class prize at the school Speech Day.
Obviously some great future was seen for me for; in addition to the compulsory sitting of the 11-plus examination – which was the then country-wide system for streaming children for secondary school – my parents also enrolled me for the entrance exams to the prestigious Manchester Grammar School and William Hume GS. Both of these schools were and still are among the top achievers in the UK. Both held a two-stage exam but I failed the first stage for MGS and then the second stage for William Hume. Perhaps I was not so brilliant after all?
At this point it might questioned as to how the desire to be an engineer was kindled – well it was certainly not yet. I did have a “Meccano” set – a collection of small metal sections and fasteners from which you could make a replica of the Forth Bridge if you were so minded - however my father seemed to play with it more than I did. Life was one of school, homework, and games in the street or in the nearby park. Sometimes we would go to the Saturday kids’ matinee at the cinema where we would be sure that the situation “Flash Gordon” extricated himself from at the commencement of this week’s episode was nowhere near as dire as it had been at the end of last weeks. Did they really think that young kids were that stupid? Sunday afternoons meant attendance at Sunday school, which I have since recognised as simply a great way to get rid of the kids for a few hours. This was followed by a further attendance at church in the evening.
Although my mother’s background was “Church of England” we somehow became regulars at the Methodist Church and I became a soloist in the choir. My father too was very musical and was a superb piano player. Two particular pieces I remember him playing at home were some “Boogie Woogie” music, as he called it and “Memories are made of this”, a hit of the time. At Sunday school I was entered for various religious exams and won some nice illuminated scrolls for my outstanding efforts. Whereas I view religion with much scepticism these days, even then I always wondered why everyone played down all the smiting and begetting that went on in the Old Testament whilst concentrating more on the “turn the other cheek” aspects of the New Testament. Apparently, according to the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, it is still permissible to sell one’s daughter into slavery – there is no guidance to the price one might expect, however.
Despite my religious grounding and my impeccable knowledge of the Ten Commandments there was one commandment that always puzzled me and this is where our neighbour Mr. Piper came in, in addition to his later part in seeding my engineering ambitions. The commandment that always puzzled me was “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife”. Now, I knew that the “neighbours” were the people who lived either side of you in the street. To covet their kid’s bicycle or the family’s new TV set, or even the car that the Charlesworths had, I could understand easily. Why anyone would covet the robust Mrs. Piper or the rotund Mrs. Charlesworth was something that was beyond my comprehension and I often looked at them over the fence with puzzlement. Today, I have a clearer understanding of those things and have, in certain circumstances, coveted both the neighbour’s wife and his car.
I was told that Mr. Piper was an engineer who worked at one of the numerous large factories that then existed in the Broadheath area near to Altrincham. In fact he was a technician or maintenance fitter rather than being an engineer but few people even today would know the difference, with even a fifteen year old kid with an oil can in his hand being given the title. One day I spotted Mr. Piper over the fence with his bicycle upside down with the wheel removed. My attention now grabbed, I went round to his side of the fence and watched with interest as he took the spindle from the wheel to reveal some small metal balls he told me were bearings. I watched as he cleaned the dirty grease from the balls and the cups they ran in, before smearing them liberally with clean grease and re-assembling the whole. I thought this was terrific and longed for the day when I would have my own bike so I could do the same. I think that was the first time I had any great desire to enter into the World of things “engineering”.
Returning to academics I sailed through the 11-plus with ease and found myself placed in the A stream at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys. The headmaster was James Crowther or “Jim the Bim” or simply “The Bim” for short who by coincidence had been at school with my Auntie Winnie. He told my mother that I had gained one of the highest 11-plus marks in Cheshire that year.
In the summer and prior to commencement at “Alty”, my parents took me on a family holiday which, at those days seemed always to be in Bridlington - partly because relatives on my father’s side lived near there. I was besotted with my new uniform of green blazer with red piping and I still have the photographs of me sporting this attire. I wore it – complete with long socks – for the entire holiday, even on the beach. I always enjoyed our holidays at “Brid” and I remember with nostalgia the sea trips on the Yorkshire Belle as we rocked and rolled in the heavy swell around to Flamborough Head and back again. I can still see and hear in my mind the swirling seagulls and the jaunty accordion player who strolled the deck, resplendent in his French beret and horizontal striped T-shirt.
On the SS Yorkshire Belle at Bridlington 1959. From left, Uncle George and Aunt Madge, sister Rosalind, cousin Susan, me, mother and father who, it would seem, had just come from a meeting with Al Capone.
Two side benefits of passing the 11-plus were that I was given both a guitar and a bike as a reward for passing. My sister, now about to start her second or third year at “Secondary Modern” also received a guitar so I guess she just rode on the back of my fortune. Both these two items were to be major influencing factors in my own personal pinball game some years down the track.
During the relatively stable years there was nevertheless constant on-going strain in our household as I have mentioned above. I think the fact is that my mother never forgave my father for the apparent shame he had brought upon the family. Coupled with that there was drink involved and, as I was later to find out, sex had its part to play also. Things were not helped by the fact that Grandpa also liked a pint, particularly on Sundays, and his rubber-legged returns to No. 3 Rydal Avenue did not meet with my mother’s idea of amusing. My sister and I thought it was hilarious, however, especially the day we helped to haul him out of the hedge in the middle of the afternoon. (What will the neighbours say?)
My father took to intense study and would spend night after night in the bedroom at his bureau in the upstairs bedroom swatting for exams for Fellowship of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. At other times there was constant bickering between my mother and father and rows such that to this day I will do almost anything to avoid arguments. I also react very badly to nagging females both as a result of these rows and as a result of the constant dogma that marked my formative years.
Rare photo with our father Alan. Cousin Jennifer on the back.
I fared reasonably well in my first year at Alty. Given that Altrincham was a reasonably affluent middle to upper class area and most kids were from good backgrounds, the school consequently had quite a fine academic record. At the end of each academic year there was the usual class adjustment with two or three from each stream going down or up. I was about lower-mid point in my class so, at the end of the first year I was advised that I would go into the “Remove” class at the start of the second year which actually meant that I would be taking “O” levels after 4 years instead of the normal 5. With a July birthday I was already youngest in my peer group, so this would have meant me sitting for “O” levels at the age of 14. For reasons to be revealed this did not materialise, however I did eventually become a B.Sc. at the age of 20. Had I remained in the upper stream it could have been 19 otherwise.
The guitar, as it would, took my interest to begin with. Not knowing any better, however, we had been saddled with horrible cheap instruments with steel strings perched about half an inch (or so it seemed) from the fretboard. This required a holding down effort that just about cut off the tips of my finger. I just could not understand how, on television, the likes of Lonnie Donegan and Bert Weedon – two of the stars of the day – made it look so easy. Mostly due to the excruciating pain, the novelty soon wore off and the guitars gathered dust for a while although my father continued to persevere.
My first guitar. This would lead to a lifetime of fun and pleasure, not to mention a successful business venture.
My new bike was put to good use and at the end of my first school year in the summer of 1958 I rode with the next-door neighbours’ boy, Vernon Charlesworth, to the Lake District to camp for two weeks before cycling back again. He was fifteen and I was just twelve at the time. We completed the distance of just under 100 miles each way in a single day each time. It should be noted that in those days there was only a tiny stretch of motorway in existence (the M62 Preston by-pass – now part of the M6) and all the traffic travelled North via the A6 which is the road we also rode on. Our journey took about ten hours, culminating in the negotiation of the steep Kirkstone pass which – with my single speed bike - I could only negotiate by dismounting and pushing the bike to the top before blissfully coasting down to the final destination at a small lake called Brothers Water. Perhaps times have changed but even now it surprises me that I was allowed as a 12 year old to take such a journey. Nonetheless I was now a “real cyclist” and it was the constant need to understand and to try to improve my bicycle that was to drive me towards an engineering career.
A dog-eared post card that I sent in 1958 and which, somehow, I have managed to keep, reads as follows:
Dear Mummy,
I have got my sheaf knife, it’s smashing. We are having some smashing meals. Spuds, vegetable, salads, fruit, eggs and apple pie. Doesn’t it make your mouth water?
Love Howard
It is interesting to reflect that a sheaf knife was considered standard fare in those days for boy scouts and other young pioneers, however such knives in the modern era are a concern related to increasing ‘knife crime’ amongst youths.
In the late 1950’s there were bright spots in our family life such as when my father gained his Fellowship to the Royal Institute of Chemistry which meant that he could now put “FRIC” behind his name. Soon afterwards my father was offered the appointment as head of the Glamorgan River Board which seemed to please my mother although I was personally not happy of the prospect of moving away from the area where I now had all my friends. One thing I do recall most vividly was that the salary was £3000 per annum at a time when people used to talk about a “thousand pound a year man” with bated breath. I remember wondering how anyone could actually spend sixty pounds in one week and I was excited that we would now be rich beyond my dreams.
My father moved away to South Wales to live in digs, as they called it, whilst we put the house up for sale with a view to joining him later. I do recall being quite miserable about the prospect of leaving my friends and having to start a new school, even though that magical figure of “sixty pounds a week” kept revolving around my head.
On a dark evening a few weeks later our fortunes changed for the worse when there was a knock at the door and two gentlemen in twill coats and trilby hats asked to speak to my mother and my Grandfather. Words were exchanged in the hallway and I remember an air of anguish and my Grandfather repeatedly throwing his hands in the air and saying “The fool, the fool”. It turned out the men were the local police who had come to break the news that my father had been arrested in South Wales.
At the age of 12 and with delicate matters involving things such as “sex”, things are never candidly explained and I have never had “chapter and verse” on what took place and I have no inclination to seek out all the details so long after it happened. Seemingly my father had engaged in the molestation of a female minor and was awarded three years in Wakefield jail as a result. Needless to say, putting aside the embarrassment and shame aspects, the sudden removal of the sole breadwinner (apart from my Grandfather’s pension from which he probably made some contribution) this posed enormous practical problems.
My mother had to immediately apply for social security in an era when there was great stigma attached to that. The amount, as I recall, was four pounds a week. We stopped the newspaper and the phone was cut off together with all manner of other cost cutting measures being implemented.
At school the situation was not a great aid to concentration or achievement. As I have noted, Altrincham Grammar School is situated in an area of reasonable affluence and some of my classmates – particularly the Jewish boys, came from quite rich backgrounds. If I had lived in a Gorbal slum where many were in the same boat of hardship and poverty I might have been to say, with an air of nonchalance, “Och, the auld man’s away tae jail and we’re on the social”. As it was I had profound difficulty with even the most simple things like explaining why my friends couldn’t get me on the phone any more (it was disconnected). In fact I continued the concealment of the fact that my father had gone to jail, for the next six years of secondary school.
As had been the case when we had been at Chaddesdon, my mother – obviously looking for somewhere to flee in a time of trouble - took my sister and I back to Nottingham with her sisters, Carrie and Winnie. We were put into local schools where, once again, I had to go through a whole new learning curve. This began with the “tough” of the year having to show who was “top dog” although I actually I let him win to get it over with quicker and to avoid having to tell my mother that my new blazer or shirt was torn to shreds. Also new was the fact that this was a co-ed school so, after three years of boys only classes I had the ignominy of having to compete academically with girls. I also had to learn a new language including, for example, the fact that “lils” were tits (lilly-whites) and so on. The spectre of our situation came back to haunt me when I had to explain to my classmates why I did not have to go to the front of the class one Monday morning to pay my five shillings dinner money because I was getting my school dinners free as part of “the welfare”.
Actually I fitted in quite well at the school and began to enjoy life in my new environment. At the end of the first term, however, my mother took my sister and I back to Manchester where I resumed my studies at Altrincham GS where, sensibly, they put me down to the B form. In Nottingham I had – amongst other things – lost a term of Latin although I wished I could have lost it altogether. Entrance to the Alty G.S. B stream also meant that I would now have the normal time frame leading up to “O” levels which, given the circumstances, was sensible.
Things remained very austere on the financial front. My mother – who had worked in a bank prior to her marriage and who had a very good academic record including being Head Girl at a prestigious Yorkshire school – went out to work, firstly at a Sub-post office before finally joining the Youth Employment Service where she eventually rose to senior levels before retiring some 20 years later.
I became a latchkey kid and I used to arrive home to a cold house and I had to light the coal fire as first duty for most of the year except for summer, which usually lasted about a week. Although now down to the B form, I didn’t excel at anything except perhaps Physics which I guess was partly due to the embryonic engineer in me. In terms of placing I was generally at the lower end of the 30-odd class group, much to the disgust of my mother who harangued me terribly when the reports came out. Sport I was reasonably good at and was always in the house teams for almost everything but I never made a school team at anything. Perhaps the highlights of my sporting achievements were being made house swimming captain when I reached the Sixth form. I gained fourth place in the school free-style swimming final almost every year, and in athletics I was always fourth in the 60metres hurdles dash. I guess it was a bit like being a David Duval in the days of Tiger Woods. The only school event I ever won was the middle school pole-vault with the staggering height of 7 feet (I should explain that there were no “bendy” poles in those days).
Although we gained the benefit of a younger, more enlightened gym teacher later on in school life who gave a bit of coaching, school sport in those days was mostly “get your kit on and get on with it.” As with my university time, I now find it a bit irksome looking back, to think that I could actually have been much better at various sports had there been better direction in those days. As I was to find out the hard way, similar comment could be made directed at the “career guidance” that existed then. I certainly hope it’s better today and, if it’s not, that’s why some benefit may be gained from reading this book.
My mother always and repeatedly used to say “Ooh, schooldays are the best days of your life”. I could never agree and still remember my school days more as a chore than anything else. Certainly we had some good times in those days and I am still in regular contact with about ten of my old Alty classmates. The academic work I found mostly a drag, and it wasn’t helped at home by the sound of others laughing at television shows in the next room whilst I was poring over mathematic problems or learning the poems of Mathew Arnold in preparation for the next day. Some kids seemed to sail through schoolwork – the same at university – but for me it was almost always a slog.
My love affair with the bicycle continued and at Easter 1959 at the age of thirteen I cycled 127 miles in a day from Manchester to Anglesey in Wales together with three class mates, Johnny Wright, Alan Hart and Barry “Waddy” Wadsworth. Alan left school after his O levels in 1961 and went on to become a sports and entertainment reporter with the “News of the World”. I was to not see or hear from him for a period of nearly forty years until he contacted me and came out for a holiday to the Far East where we also met up with Johnny, now living in the Philippines. In Anglesey we camped for two weeks before cycling back totally exhausted and penniless. We were obliged to do a midnight runner from the campsite, as we couldn’t pay the fees we owed. Our food for the final day consisted of a packet of digestive biscuits between the four of us. Those were the days.
Camping trip to Angelsey in 1959. We cycled 127 miles in the day.
Same scene, same guys, recreated in the Philippines in 2004. Johnny Wright on left, me in the middle, then Alan Hart
At Easter in 1961, at the age of 15, I cycled with Johnny Wright from Manchester to Bridlington in a single day. This was a distance of 110 miles but punctuated by, firstly the Pennine hills and then another grueling climb beyond York. In my case, the trip was again made without the benefit of gears which were a luxury that would only come when I bought them with my own money later that year. We cycled onto Whitby and thence to York, staying at Youth Hostels on the way. In York we met up with a chap with the memorable name of Mike Silver who persuaded us that we would pass for 18 at the pub and that we should go and have a beer with him. This we did, with Johnny and I lurking in the back room and him bringing the beer over to us. The next day we set out on the final leg back to Manchester in the company of a lad from Pickford, Cheshire whom we nicknamed “Sixpence” as that was all the money he had left until he got home.
We had enjoyed the clandestine pint in York so much that we planned with Sixpence to stop at a pub on the way home to have another. As I recall, the pub was called the Brown Cow located somewhere on the Woodhead Pass and, as we had in York, we sat in the back room whilst the older boy (he was 16) got the beer. As we sat enjoying the beer the TV was on and, from the black and white pictures we recognised the Russian leader Khrushchev waving from a dais in Red Square. In the background the unmistakable dulcet tones of Richard Dimblebee gave the commentary. After listening for a while it became clear that we were actually watching a live broadcast – the first ever from Russia to the UK - and that a chap called Yuri Gagarin had been into space and back again. I can thereby always answer the question related to the “date and name of the first man in space” when it comes up on TV quiz shows.
Around the age of twelve, the first paid work I ever did was as a casual potato picker for the princely sum of nine shillings (45 pence) per day. As a mixed bunch of schoolboys and housewives we would wait in the field until the row of spuds had been turned over by the harrow attached to the tractor. We would then bend over to hand pick the produce, loading a basket that we would then take to a collection hopper when it was full. I’m sure it rained every day, it was cold, my back ached and the job was just a total misery that I have never forgotten. As a food I just love potatoes in almost any form, but please let someone else pick them.
In the summer of 1961, at the age of fifteen, I got my first real “nine till five” job, courtesy of my mother through her job contacts as a Youth Employment Officer. The job, which paid a relatively modest three pounds a week, was as a mail boy working for a company called Calico Printers Association which at one time had been one of the big Northern textile firms. I vividly remember going to work on the first day when, in the company of my mother and her friend Mr. Perkins (more on him below), we took the No. 48 bus from Grosvenor Road into Manchester in the company of the mass of working humanity that is so vividly portrayed in the video of Pink Floyd’s Brick in the Wall. Upstairs on buses in those days was the “Smoking” section and the atmosphere was always thick with the products of Woodbines, Turf, Capstan Full Strength and the like. The links between smoking and cancer had yet to become common knowledge and somehow everyone considered this awful fug to be normal.
We sat near the front of the bus; me dressed in a suit with tie and feeling terribly self-conscious and nervous. I was due to get off a couple of stops before my mother and Mr. Perkins and, as my stop approached I bid them goodbye and made my way anonymously to the back of the bus to the stairs.
“Good Luck.” Mr. Perkin’s voice boomed out so the whole bus could hear and forty odd faces turned to look at me with wide and “knowing” grins. I could have killed him.
I found myself working in a long mailroom with a combination of old lags plus a few boys around my own age for whom this was now their career. The mail came in; we sorted it into pigeonholes and then delivered it around the large dickensian office complex. Towards the end of the day we would do the rounds to collect mail, put it through a franking machine and then deliver it to the post office.
In the middle of the day we were not very busy and I found it boring having nothing to do but, on the other hand, it was not possible to go out and do one’s own thing. There was a small unused room close to the mail room and one of the lads brought in a dart board which helped to pass the time. As in any good Dickensian novel, we were found out however, and punished. The whistle blower was one of the senior bosses’ secretaries who had heard the sound of revelry and the thump of the darts one day as she passed by. The punishment was to find us additional but menial and meaningless duties to fill our spare time.
On occasion, I would accompany one of the older men to deliver mail by foot across town. It was always, “Let’s take it steady – let’s stop here for a ‘blow’ and a cig.” This was the first of many dire summer and Saturday jobs which were to be a great incentive for keeping my nose stuck into the school books with the hope of something better in life at the end of it.
Again, as has been my experience throughout life, the men in these mundane occupations used to bemoan their “lack of the chance” and a lack of education. Nonetheless, although they had inordinate amounts of spare time on their hands even within their working day, hardly any of them ever took one minute to study anything other than racing form, the football results or the “page three” pin-up (which did not actually exists in 1961). The three weeks seemed to last an eternity but the end finally came with me nine pounds richer, money that would be used to pay for my next three week cycling holiday around Scotland.
I will make a mention of Mr. Perkins who was in many ways typical of the Manchester commuter who travelled into town every morning on the bus. On the buses in particular, the travelling public became a community in itself with all the regulars knowing each other at least by the nod of a head. In those days, schoolboys wore caps and most men wore a cap or trilby hat, all of which were lifted dutifully as any lady approached to join the queue with a formal “Good Morning” being spoken on both sides. My mother came to know Mr. Perkins through this route and he became a family friend for many years until his death some twenty years after. Despite the fact that he took tea with us and we became to know his wife and daughter, I think it was only in much later years that he and my mother dropped the “Mr. Perkins” and “Mrs. McKay” monikers, such was the formality which still existed even in the sixties.
Mr. Perkins was actually quite an interesting man who was actually a failed Oxbridge undergraduate. I never actually found out why he had never completed his course.
After finishing at CPA – and now equipped with gears on my bike and the nine pounds I had earned in the summer job – Johnny Wright and I took a three week trip around Scotland staying at Youth Hostels on the way. In the three weeks we cycled 1,200 miles and our total budget was nine pounds each, or ten shillings a day on average. In those days a pint of beer was one shilling and three pence or, about six new pence. (The price of beer is actually a great way to judge inflation and the present worth of money). It is with some pride that I can recount that we did not push the bikes up a single hill in Scotland and it was only the 1 in 3 Buttermere Pass back in the Lakes District that finally defeated us.
Although a keen and proficient cyclist, Johnny was more concerned with current fashion when it came to riding attire and he completed the whole trip riding in ‘drain pipe trousers’ and ‘winkle picker’ shoes whereas I opted for a more practical anorak and shorts. When we arrived in the Scottish Highland town of Fort William, Johnny even retained his fashion gear as we set out to scale Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom at 4000 feet. Although we started out in brilliant sunshine, the wind began to howl and we had to force our way up through near horizontal rain. As we neared the top we encountered a zigzag path which meant that the wind and rain was alternately in one’s face then into one’s back. Johnny was soaked to the skin and cold by this time. He had on a light blue bomber style windcheater and I laughed like a drain as he yelped each time he had to change direction so that the cold wet cloth would slap into the side of his body that was no longer in the lee.
At the top of Ben Nevis the path led us to the ‘trig’ point that marked the top and, through the swirling mist we came upon a guy with a trombone. He was quite happy to see us because he had been attempting to stand on top of the trig point to play his instrument but had been unable to do so because of the strong wind. We held onto his legs as he climbed up once more to give a rendition of The Saints and thereby achieve his ambition to be the highest trombone player in the UK, if not the World at that moment. After he came down we both took into in turns to blast out a few none-descript notes to achieve similar status. On the way down, the sun came out and by the time we returned to the Youth Hostel we were completely dry again.
I should mention that it was by this time that I had developed a real interest in motorcycles. This, seemingly, was all part of the developing engineer in me. My interest had been triggered by my sister’s boyfriend, Tony Megson, who was a real cool dude with a ‘Triumph Twenty One’; a 350cc twin that I thought was the ‘bees knees’ at the time. My enthusiasm doubled when he let me take the controls around a field one day. After that I was – and still am – a total motorcycle nut, currently owning eight machines.
My sister was now a real ‘looker’ by this time and was often compared with Bridget Bardot and Catherine Devenueve – both French sex bombs of the time. Having left school with no great honours she was now working at the Gas Board as a clerk and she gained her ‘ten minutes of fame’ by getting her face on the front cover of the Gas Board monthly staff magazine. Although Rosalind was not wild in the way some kids of today might be described, I guess my mother probably thought she was and I recall interminable arguments about the boys she associated with (including Tony), the clothes and shoes she wore, what time she came in and so on. Tony was an apprentice plumber which again was undoubtedly not my mother’s idea of an ideal suitor, however his perseverance and that of my sister in going out meant that my mother had to accept it in the end and, finally, they got married. I recall that, in order to maintain the level of fashion demanded by the peer group of her day, my sister had to secrete her makeup and more fashionable items of clothing before she went out in the evening. She would then change her attire and put on the makeup in the telephone box down the road before continuing on her way.
As mentioned, Tony was cool – and had only recently reverted from being a ‘Teddy Boy’, he told me. Not only was his bike great but he had one of the first space type helmets when the standard lid was the old pudding basin. He had some cool black cowboy style riding boots with white stars on the front, which could be seen just below the turn up of his blue jeans when sitting in the bent leg position on the motorbike.
The influence of motorbikes was such that, with the pedal-cycling limitations of self propulsion, the opportunity to experience speed as the result of hill-assistance was always met with glee. Coupled with that, I had already been to Oulton Park to watch motorbike racing, thus the ability to take corners on the limit of adhesion had also become a must. With this in mind, at the end of our Scottish trip and now back in the English Lakes District, Johnny and I found a terrific hill near to the Youth Hostel with a challenging bend at the bottom of it. The hill was so steep it was necessary to push the bikes up it before hurtling down again to see who had most ‘bottle’ on the bend. I think it was on the third attempt that I overcame the limits of friction and bounced myself and bike off a very hard stone wall and I lay in the road thinking I was dead. Fortunately I only suffered bumps and scrapes but the forks and frame on the bike were bent so badly that I could hardly ride it. We had just enough money such that I was able to take the train next day back to Manchester complete with bent bike, whilst Johnny rode the final leg on his own.
Tony used to buy ‘The Blue ‘Un’, which was ‘The Motorcycle’ magazine so named because of the colour of its cover. (The other magazine of the time was ‘Motorcycling’ or ‘The Green ‘Un’). I read these from cover to cover and became almost intimate with the regular columnists and writers of the time. Articles by the technical editor, Vic Willoughby MIMechE, constantly intrigued me and I dreamed of the prospect of having letters after my name like that one day.
About this time the Japanese Honda factory had just entered the scene with entry of some 125cc motorcycles in the Isle of Man TT race, being finally placed somewhere mid-field. The next year Honda returned with much improved bikes and, over the next few years, they and their rival Yamaha and Suzuki factories enthralled me with their close competition and ever changing technology. This battle culminated in a bike that perhaps was a pinnacle of Japanese ‘wrist watch engineering’ a 50cc four stroke twin that revved to 22,000 rpm. These marvels of engineering were the things that grabbed my imagination and drove me with a desire to become a designer of motorcycle engines that would take on the World. My school books became covered in doodles of engines, valves, racing fairings and the like. Obviously I couldn’t wait to get my own motorbike.
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Chapter 2 – Grammar school days
My unremarkable academic career at Alty Grammar continued. It should be remembered, however, that this ‘relative mediocrity’ was within a stream that was already in the upper academic percentile, or so the theory went. On the social side, I had a group of good pals and, despite the ever-present ignominy of having my father in jail, times were not too bad.
My mother stuck by my father but I felt this was more from a viewpoint of teeth-gritting duty rather than as a result of much real affection. My sister and I never went to visit him in Wakefield jail but we would see his letters, written in his small spidery script on jail notepaper. Two of the highlights of his life were that he was made prison librarian and he became the regular church organist. Towards the end of his time he came out on parole and I was taken over to Wakefield where, with my mother, we met him for a meal. The situation was awkward and orchestrated with forced conversation all round and long silences, punctuated by the clink of cups and cutlery. From time to time he would give me a wistful grin and I would give one back.
My father was released from prison soon after that and managed to get a job in the Wakefield area as an industrial chemist. I have no idea of the exact details but I would guess it would be on much less money than he had been getting before. He came to stay back in Sale with us for a couple of days before going back to Wakefield to work. The letters continued but my mother showed these to us to demonstrate how his writing was deteriorating which was supposed to be some kind of evidence that he was back to alcohol. Whether this was laboratory brewed or not was not discussed.
Around the same time, my mother received a small inheritance from an uncle in Yorkshire. The money was sufficient to allow her to pay off my Grandfather’s equity in the house and he was then promptly kicked out from his front room abode. He moved into ‘digs’, which I visited only once and I never saw him again after that despite living relatively close by. As many people find out when marriages split, ‘their side of the family’ don’t come in for much on-going tribute. As I was later to find out myself when I became divorced, indeed pro-active spite becomes part of the normal proceedings.
Finally my mother announced that she was going to divorce my father and we saw him again in the waiting room for the divorce court in Sale where, again we exchanged a few weak smiles across the room. That was actually the last time my sister and I ever saw him. I guess I would have been around fifteen years of age.
My sister and I, with friend doing our Cliff Richard and Bridget Bardot impersonation
My mother gained promotion in her job and although the general dogma and haranguing continued, life was not too bad overall. Amongst my pals there were a few from more well to do families like Richard Hawkins, whose Dad was a test pilot for Avro, flying Vulcan bombers and the prototype Avro 748 airliner. In an era when few middle class families had any kind of car, the Hawkins owned a Jaguar and went for holidays in Spain. This was at a time when only the really wealthy could afford holidays outside of the UK. There were other boys, however, who also came from fairly modest backgrounds, like Ivor Davies who lived in a council house and whose father was a clerk. Within my peer group it didn’t really make much of a difference except, perhaps at the time when some of the richer kids were given cars for their 17th birthdays.
As mentioned we all tried to secure jobs in the school holidays and I had a Saturday car cleaning round at one time. I can say with some authority that, in the grip of a UK winter, car cleaning is not much fun with the water freezing on the car as soon as you touch it. This was even with your cloth soaked in what, a few seconds earlier, had been warm water. I would normally clean eight cars on a Saturday to earn one pound sterling – a sum that – for reference - would buy about 15 pints of beer at that time.
Apart from bicycles, beer, and a desire for motorised transport, girls became a point of interest as we grew older and then we had to learn how to actually get close to them. As they say, I wish I had known then what I know now. A group of four of us took to ballroom dancing lessons on a Friday night that culminated in a final 30 minutes of rock and roll jiving where we all frothed at the mouth at the sight of suspenders and stocking tops as the girls twirled around. From this venue and at the age of fourteen I managed to get a date with Pat Wheldon, one year older than me and already working. I took her to the cinema to see a film about the life of the composer Franz Lizst and I sat all night with my arm around her shoulder, unable to pluck up the courage to lean across and kiss her. Needless to say, she wasn’t too much interested in such a duffer as me after that.