I thought I’d share this. A memory that came to me that sort of explains my reaction to an issue Donny Red brought up the other day. In the late 70s I was lucky enough to go to Reading University. I was lucky to get a full student grant but when your main interests are beer and women that soon runs out. One student told me about a summer job he’d had in an old print works the other side of town. He gave me the gaffer’s name so I went to see him and he set me on that summer for six weeks. 12-hour shifts, six days a week. More money than I’d dreamed of. I worked with a dozen blokes in the far end of the factory, ripping ‘flash’ off printed sheets of Oxo cartons. The sheets were about 6ft square and piled 5ft high on pallets. Old Bill showed me how to do it. You got through as many as you could on a shift, there were no targets. Just as well because Old Bill took a lot of rests and his hands trembled. With shock of white hair he reminded me of an albino badger. Being a student, my other job was making the tea. All mugs lined up on a shelf, you soon got to know what they all wanted. Being a student, I didn’t have a mug only a plastic cup. And as the only northerner, my nickname was soon sorted. When I heard “YORKY!” I got the kettle on. The gaffer offered me the job for the following year. I knew I'd got a promotion as the gaffer sometimes let me help out on the waste baler outside. It was quieter, you could have a cig. That's when another bloke told me about Old Bill. The next year would be my last. I turned up, gave the boys a nod and just as I put the kettle on, the gaffer’s voice above the noise. “NO YOU DON’T YORKY!” I turned round. “We got a student for that.” In the instant I knew I wasn’t needed anymore, Old Bill shuffled toward me. They all stopped to watch. Bill held out both hands and gave me a bundle of tissue paper I carefully unwrapped. They’d got me my own mug. I was now one of them. I would train the next student. I was overcome, tears in my eyes, not so much because of that, but because of the mug Bill got for me. I was twenty at the time. At the same age Bill was in the Navy. He served on the Artic Convoys that set out to supply the Soviet Union. Many merchant ships were sunk by bombers and U boats, thousands of men lost. In arctic waters, sub-zero temperatures meant you were dead in around two minutes. Bill’s ship took a while to go down and another got alongside. They managed to pull him out. ‘Turned him white and he was never the same again,’ the bloke on the baler had told me. In the 1950s the printworks had taken Bill on. He’d been there ever since and would be there until decided to pack in. The mug Old Bill gave me that day was very similar to his own and a cause that was in his heart. On it was a white flag with a red cross. And the letters R N L I. Sad to say I no longer have that mug. And we no longer live in that world.
Always has been one of the charities I support, I was fascinated by the story of Grace Darling at primary school. How volunteers can be so brave and give up so much of their spare time to volunteer, they should be getting all the accolades.
I used to think it very apt that the Seahouses lifeboat was named Grace Darling. However last Oct it was replaced by a Shannon class and its new name is John and Elizabeth Allen. The person who donated it gets to name it. I went up for the changeover, the new boat’s number is 13 - 36 and the procedure was both boats were outside the harbour and the new boat entered the harbour at exactly 13:36 followed by the retiring Grace Darling.
Great story mate. Those convoys were a major reason the war was won. Attacked daily. Providing provisions etc to the people/resistance of Leningrad. (Who were being starved out by the Germans.) And arms to the Russians. They had 2 routes. one summer and the other in winter . Both perilous.
