[lit-ideas] Re: Hereabouts
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2018 14:44:55 -0700
On Oct 14, 2018, at 11:52 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
David,
Many of us benefitted from a war in some way. I’m 84 and therefore 9 years
younger than your father was when he died. I was born in 1934 so he must
have been born about 1925. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, he
would have been about 14. It sounds as though your father didn’t complete
his education until after the war was over.
Probably more than you want to read, but it’s on my computer so, “Why not?"
Born in a house called “Strawberry Farm,” in Isleworth, West London, my father
grew up first in Cambuslang and then an area between Burnside and
Rutherglen—parts of Glasgow— and then to Primrose Bank road, two streets in
from the Firth of the Forth in Edinburgh. From Trinity Academy in the summer
of 1942 he was offered a wartime bursary at the University of Edinburgh, on
condition that he study Engineering and accept, “such service in the Armed
Forces or elsewhere as might be required by the Ministry of Labour and National
Service.” The alternatives to this course of study were few and
dangerous—service in the armed forces or in the Coal Industry—but as the war
and his studies and his nights spent defending the Physics building against the
might of the Luftwaffe drew to a close, a new possibility emerged—a graduate
apprenticeship at the English Electric Company. In June of 1945 he was
directed to work in Steam Turbine design and assigned a seat in an office
immediately behind my mother’s brother. He and my father played field hockey
for the same team. It was at this point in his life that my father won his
first golf trophy and decided to look around for new opportunities, which were
found in Trinidad, where he learned to inspect machinery for wear and
corrosion, work hard and play hard, drive a Chevrolet Jitney, escape a beach
undertow, write speeches for the Refinery Manager, put out fires both
metaphorical and real, address a haggis, fish, and drink a rum frappe.
It was on his first home leave that he met and soon proposed to my mother.
They were married in a small church in Pointe a Pierre. Though he had less
time for golf his handicap sank from ten to four. Home on leave, he
interviewed with Shell but chose to take a job in Grangemouth, near Polmont,
where favorite aunts still lived. And the golf? He won the “Thomson medal”
twice (no idea what that was) beating an opponent with a lower handicap. One
final was held at Gleneagles.
He was offered a two year secondment to London, so they moved in with his
in-laws. Half way through that period, in 1959 he joined the Royal Blackheath
Golf Club. They stayed in London, buying his in-laws'house.
Skip many years...And then…a posting to Iran and, as Robert called it, “a front
seat at a revolution.” And then came one final project and, at sixty,
retirement.
They joined the Byron society. There was more golf. He won the Summer Medal
during his year as Captain, with a scratch score of 75. That had last happened
at Blackheath in…1912. In 1991 he became a Freeman of the City of London. and
subsequently joined the Engineers Livery Company. He enjoyed the Bromley
Camera Club. But the most enduring pleasure came from an informal walking
group, a “Last of the Summer Wine” group. Four men—as with the television
program, the cast changed over time— getting together to talk and wander and
drink coffee.
They would walk round the Tate Modern. He’d tell me he couldn't undestandwhat
he was seeing, explain that it wasn’t “his style,” and then go back…and reject
it again! Like most of us he was happiest when in familiar territory,
pontificating as I do, but willing to stretch. When he liked a joke he would
hang onto it, tell it over and over, seemingly enjoying it afresh each time.
In our childhood I think he only had one joke, which I believe is from the
Music Hall era; it certainly has an Edwardian shape—what is the difference
between a man who has seen Niagara Falls, a man who hasn’t seen Niagara Falls
and a bee? A man who has seen Niagara Falls has seen the mist. A man who
hasn’t seen Niagara Falls has missed the scene.
And what about the bee?
That’s where you get stung.
He will be remembered by his Livery for loyalty, by the Kent Captains and all
he played golf with for being serious about trying to win but never at the
expense of good sportsmanship or a breach of decorum. After a win he’d say on
the phone, “Ask me how I did!”
“How was the golf, Dad?”
“The others weren’t as fortunate as I was."
When we were young we spent several holidays on a dairy farm. One time the
farmer asked for help building a barn. Not managerial or engineering help, but
"would you be an extra pair of hands" kind of help. Of course. He no doubt
ensured that it was all done properly, for he abhored shoddy workmanship. He
loved a well-turned bowl or any other indication of craft. He was fascinated
by ingenuity, bringing back “toys” from the Science Museum that demonstrated
this or that principle with the aid of magnets and bits of bent wire. He
criticised the Wankel engine’s inefficient design, thought that the Prius would
have battery problems…then bought one…loved the brickwork of his own house.
"You can’t see where one day’s work finished and another began." Hard work,
craft, elegance of design, these were his passions. Get him on the subject of
turbines or sleeve valve engines and you had to expect a moneysworth. Though
he grew up in a near tea-total household, he enjoyed wines or tasty food in
moderation. The grandchildren remember a particular lip smacking sound he used
to indicate enjoyment of either. He was very strict with himself about things
that were “bad for you,” chocolate and so on and enjoyed lots that is good for
you: fruit, salads, exercise, conversation. His life advice when we were
teenage boys, “Stay away from drugs and motor bikes.” After the war he had a
half share of ownership in a motor bike, so he knew what he was talking about.
Like his mother, he was tactile when he came to wooden surfaces; he liked not
just to look at a table or sculpture but—if permitted-- to run his hand across
the surface. He liked his garden to be tidy and his tools to be sharp and
well-oiled. He never put his golf clubs away without washing them. Last
winter, one time when I phoned he had just finished oiling the teak garden
bench…so it lasts. He was forward-looking like that, wondering at the end of
his life about what Brexit would bring and whether electric cars will succeed.
For the record, he was against both.
He was proud of being the first in his family to earn a degree and to make a
little money. Part of the reason he read so much about warfare, I think, is
because he could so easily have been sucked into the Second World War. At one
point he had an argument with his father, wanting to sign up for the Fleet Air
Arm and learn to fly the Swordfish biplane he’d recently been up in. Instead
he kept going with his studies, spent his “holidays” sawing logs in the
Highlands, graduated and did what the Government asked. No doubt there were
moments when people looked at a fit young man and wondered why he wasn’t in
uniform, but he had no anecdotes about this beyond spending nights trying to
sleep on a hard bench between shifts on the roof of the Physics building,
tasked with watching for fires and bombs while armed with an unloaded rifle and
wearing a tin helmet. Maybe this and the Edinburgh weather contributed to him
taking his final exams while suffering from a fever? And passing. To say that
he was strong willed would be to understate the case.
He divided memories of his grandparents into the good ones and those who
thought children should be seen and not heard. He tried hard to be a good one,
and succeeded. Praise was not his thing and he reserved little for himself
when he assesses his parental role in the memoir he wrote; he thought that he
was gone from home too often. Whether he was or not, the fact that when he
needed help his children and grandchildren were there for him is testament to
the love that he generated. In his final days he expressed his happiness with
this time and again. It was his peaceful lodestone, a guide at the end.
David
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