My Father, Part 3: Post-War Working…
After the War…
After the Second World War, my father clubbed together with his brother Bill and bought a window-cleaning round but after I was born, a friend from the army, Jack Burton encouraged dad to become an insurance agent, which was a risk because it involved low pay until the agent had built up a clientele. Dad stopped smoking but saved his half-crowns so that eventually, some fourteen years later, those savings helped him to buy his first car, a blue Austin Mini, DOX 251 C.
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| OLD AERIAL VIEW OF SHARD END... |
Below is an extract from a letter to dad from his other brother Les, written in 1947, suggesting that dad had asked for a loan of money but Les explained in the text that he wasn’t able to accommodate my father’s request. Hence Bill helping dad out and I presume my father paid back whatever monies had been lent to him over a period of time.
Britannic Assurance…
However, dad was a reliable, resilient employee and had found a niche for his undoubted ability to communicate with people of his own working class and those more unfortunate than himself. His clients loved him as a family member almost, they adored his cheeky humour but he certainly placed his clientele before his own family. Indeed, he was known to have laid out at least one dead family member on his ‘round’…
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| BIRMINGHAM'S BRITANNIC HEAD OFFICE... |
Mum said nothing. She was frightened to. Dad applied for a council property when I was around six or seven years old and was offered 121 Nearmoor Road in Shard End but the decision to take the rented property caused awkwardness and emotional upset for my nan, with whom we had lived since my birth. Mum was devastated, for she was torn between remaining in a lodging with her own mother and having a family home of her own.
Dad told the office manager at Britannic Assurance that Nearmoor Road was out in the country somewhere and that the local farmer was often herding cattle along the road. Ludicrous. However, when he returned home that very evening, a herd of cattle had indeed been ushered along Nearmoor Road, trampling some front gardens…
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| SHARD END & THE BACK YARD. THE FIRST PHOTO I WAS ALLOWED TO TAKE... |
He cycled his insurance round on a 1935 bicycle, which was still leaning inside his garden shed until I moved it to Birmingham Museum’s History Teaching room, where it became an artefact for teaching children about recent history. It remains there, as far as I am aware.
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| THAT BIKE IN MY MUSEUM TEACHING ROOM... |
Dad’s work took him mainly to the Bordesley Green area around Heartlands (East Birmingham) Hospital, plus the Glebe Farm and Stechford areas.
Days of the week…
Dad, as I recall, went off to work at around 9am on Mondays, returning after 5pm for a meal, which would be laid upon the table for him by my uncomplaining mother but then, after frowning over his accounts, he would go out again, ‘collecting’, apparently, arriving home quite late. Mum would hear the back-gate rattle in the late evening, rise, say nothing, make dad a sandwich and a cup of tea then leave him to it and quietly slink off to bed. Only if mum had sponged a piece of important gossip from a neighbour did she reveal any words at all and dad would partially listen between bites and slurps.
Tuesdays had earlier starts, dad’s final half-day of collecting in his working week, a week which actually began on a Friday. He returned home on Tuesday lunchtimes for food and remained there, serious, sullen and scary, sitting at the dining table totting up his accounts. He was irritable, spending much of the afternoon ‘doing the accounts’. Sometimes the balance was out, making him more cantankerous… Mum and I stayed out of his way… The collected coins filled his jacket pockets, whilst the bank notes were wrapped in a headless monkey hand-puppet, which he kept hidden behind the boiler in the airing cupboard on the upstairs landing. Weird. I was ‘encouraged’, shall I say, to check dad’s adding up on occasions, which sped up my own mental arithmetic but dad became really nasty if he couldn’t ‘find that shilling…’ Ridiculous.
He was never mugged, or robbed, despite collecting and carrying a considerable amount of insurance money through such areas as Bordesley Green, Glebe Farm, Stechford and Lea Hall, then having to walk home from his lock-up garage, often in the dark. He was known but liked, I guess. He carried sweets for obnoxious children and loathsome dogs but youngsters in Shard End knew him as the good chap who helped with football at Hillstone School, so that his property, car and person remained untouched. The sweets always seemed to be dug from deep pockets at Aston Villa games too, chocolate éclairs, usually.
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| WHO DAD LIKED TO BE WITH BEST OF ALL: CAL, BILL, THEIR DAUGHTER NORMA & SON-IN-LAW TONY SHORTMAN... |
On some Tuesdays, late in the afternoon during some school holidays we played football at the local recreation ground, once a council landfill site: the Norman Chamberlain Playing Fields. In school term-time, he often jogged around the perimeter of that large green space then helped at Hillstone School afterwards, taking a full part in the football practices. These were usually held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which suited dad’s timetable well. He wore such scruffy togs for playing in, too. I can even recall him wearing his army shorts…
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| READY FOR A TUESDAY KICKABOUT WITH MY MATE BRIAN KENSIT, A GOALIE... |
On most Tuesdays, dad would go back out ‘collecting’ during the evenings, although from what I now know, there is some doubt about that. Secret meetings with other agents at a pub, possibly the Bradford Arms in Castle Bromwich, plus snooker with his good mate and fellow Britannic agent Eddie Coleman, even games of squash appear to have taken place instead. Mum never knew about these activities…
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| EDDIE COLEMAN, LEFT, WITH MUM & DAD... |
After cycling in the early years, he bought his first car and he drove to ‘The Office’, near the Fox and Goose pub on Wednesday mornings, to have his accounts checked, before ‘paying in’ at the Midland Bank next door. Despite being so damned miserable when adding up his own account sheets on Tuesday afternoons at home, dad was used by the assistant managers to check other agents’ accounts in the office on Wednesdays.
Dad made sure he checked Eddie’s first, for there were always discrepancies, despite Eddie being a fine mathematician. He was just laid-back and often careless, partly because he used some of his collected money for personal items during the week, then replaced it before ‘paying in’ on Wednesday mornings but the accuracy just wasn’t there, although in truth he was truly capable of being ‘on the money’…
It seems that dad would then accompany colleagues like Eddie to a ‘milk bar’ after the accounts had been checked. Dad would then spend the afternoon cleaning windows in Southbourne Avenue, often dubbed ‘the road with shiny windows’. Only Eddie knew about this ‘pocket money’ work, for dad didn’t declare it, which was strange because he did everything else by the book.
He was particularly close to the Annett family in Southbourne Avenue and he spoke lots about Mrs Annett and her son. The lady had endured marriage problems, then she re-married and moved to Shipston-on-Stour but Christmas cards were regularly exchanged for many years. I have no idea how close dad became to Mrs Annett but at the very least she looked after his ladders for him…
If Villa were not playing at home on Wednesday evenings, I remember dad going out then too. His reasoning was that some policyholders were out or working during the day and ‘popping in’ during evenings was the simple remedy, preventing arrears accruing, even policies lapsing. Whether he was collecting money, simply enjoying the company and hospitality of his customers, or even spending more time at the pub will no doubt remain a mystery.
Thursdays involved a 9am start for dad but although he would leave the house wearing his suit, to fool the neighbours, he was actually going to clean windows and would presumably change clothing and role at Mrs Annett’s house. How long dad worked during those Thursdays is again open to question but I believe that as Thursday was a day off for the agents, it is quite likely that dad met Eddie at a club in Castle Bromwich, before returning to play football or summer cricket with the lads at Hillstone School.
Fridays though were dad’s toughest days, for many people back then had been paid their weekly wages on that day and so insurance premiums needed collecting. He left the house earlier than usual, returned home for dinner in mid-afternoon but then went out again, finishing his collecting well into the evening. He was rarely in a pleasant mood when he returned home, where mum waited to feed him a sandwich, pour him a cup of tea and vanish silently off to bed. Before purchasing a season-ticket for Villa games in the early 1970s, dad worked on Saturday mornings too. Well, apparently… It has been well documented that on Saturdays he ate lunch with his brother Bill and his wife Cal in Church Lane, opposite The Glebe pub in Stechford. They also had bets on horses but dad rarely arrived home until tea-time, again leaving mum and in my younger days, me, alone together.
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| 1940s & DAD WITH HIS MUM, LEFT, THEN BILL & CAL, WITH ASSORTED KIDS... |
Saturdays…
Strangely, when Villa’s home games were being played and dad had a season-ticket, the morning collections magically disappeared, allowing him to spend time with Cal and Bill as usual and then go to Villa Park, after picking up neighbours Frank and son David, a lad who suffered from Down’s Syndrome. Dad used to drive along Aston Church Road at around 45mph, so that David would chuckle as the car shot over a hump-backed bridge, churning the stomachs of all in the vehicle. The road has changed now, with the introduction of a ‘spine road’.
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| FRANK GRIFFITHS, 2ND FROM RIGHT & HIS OTHER SON STEVE, YELLOW SCARF, AT WEMBLEY, 1971... |
On days when Villa played away from home on alternate Saturdays, dad would often take Bill, a staunch ‘Bluenose’ (Birmingham City supporter) to watch Villa’s reserve team at Villa Park, often chatting to Gordon Cowans or Gary Shaw, two of Villa’s famous players. Mum? Alone, deserted but probably quietly pleased to go about her hobbies of knitting and dozing in the verandah ‘thing’.
Dad had one ‘call’ to make in Solihull, quarterly, which he drove to on some Sunday mornings. More time out of the house for him then, unless mum accompanied him en route to meeting Ivy and Jack for an afternoon at their week-end caravan. Mum would sit outside the client's house in the car, whilst dad conducted his business inside, which seemed a little bit mean…
Promotion?
Dad’s job was his life, refusing promotion several times to enjoy the freedom of collecting from houses and thus avoiding the pressure and the curse of being an ‘Assistant Manager’. Maybe he felt ‘superior’ to many of his policyholders, for they looked up to him, respected him and really did appear to value and like him. Thus exchanging that for a managerial role would have taken away his freedom to arrange his daily life as he wished, as well as shoving him into a role which brought much worry and pressure to a chap.
Dad won awards for increases in business, which generally fell into his lap anyway because he was so intimate with his policyholders that they often asked him to set up new policies for themselves, relatives, or friends. He held some new business back too, in case of a lean spell and so he would appear to be increasing the size of his ‘book’ consistently. He built up his ‘round’ well, he cleaned his windows, chased women around kitchens (allegedly) and he visited Mrs Annett regularly, restricting mum to a break on Sunday afternoons with Ghreta, Ivy and Jack.
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| A TYPICAL SUNDAY AFTERNOON OUT WITH THE FAMILY... |
He took his summer holiday from a Sunday until a week the following Wednesday, so that he could complete his Friday and Saturday collections, plus as many of his Monday and Tuesday calls as possible before travelling, for he knew that some clients would struggle to pay two weeks’ premium in one go. Nobody substituted for him at Britannic but when I was older, I collected a selection of premiums for him on a few Fridays when he was in Devon. Once I did the calls with my nephew-in-law Paul, whose eyes were opened to the plights of some members of the ‘working class’ and their living conditions. People like the Dunks…
In 1965, when dad became a motorist, buying his blue Austin Mini from Longbridge, with his brother Bill’s employee’s discount in place, dad and I travelled to Longbridge on buses and he simply drove the car home, for he had continued to renew his driver’s licence gained in the army during the Second World War, when he drove five ton trucks, as an administrative Corporal then a Sergeant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. I was terrified.
He progressed to an Austin 1100, a Triumph Toledo and a Ford Escort, A 821 UOJ, his final purchase, which was eventually towed away, rusted beneath, many years later. He treasured his vehicles, cleaned them with gusto and regularity but allowed nobody to delve inside the trunk, possibly because his squash gear was hidden inside there…
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| DAD'S TREASURED MINI, EN ROUTE TO PLYMOUTH, ABOUT 1966... |
The other agents…
I recall that dad had encouraged two agents to take up jogging and eventually both of them ran many Marathons, even appearing at my side in the 1982 Birmingham Marathon, one of them dressed in a ballet tutu… Dad's colleague Gordon Medd appeared for Birmingham City in his younger days, brothers John and Barry Lovesey took promotions into management and played for Britannic’s cricket and football teams, although Barry’s toupee was unceremoniously knocked off as he headed a clearance away in one soccer match.
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| DAD'S TWO COLLEAGUES WERE HASSLING ME DURING THE 1982 BIRMINGHAM MARATHON WHEN THIS IMAGE WAS TAKEN... |
Dad played as a wicketkeeper for the Britannic’s ‘Birmingham 4’ team but I was never invited along. I wonder why… The one time I was allowed to accompany my father to a sporting event he was playing in, was because the C.U.A.C.O. (Commercial Union Assurance Company) football team needed two players one Sunday morning.
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| HE WAS OFF TO PLAY CRICKET & I WAS FORCED TO GET CHANGED FOR A FAMILY PIC... HORRENDOUS. |
I was 17, dad was 47 but I had played no organised soccer for six years, having been attending a rugby playing Grammar School and in those days there were no Sunday teams for kids. I played on the right-wing, dad played at inside-right and within five minutes, I had scored with a low right-footer. Dad assisted another player for goal two soon afterwards but we lost 5-2 in the end…
Another Britannic agent from the Ward End office reckoned he was paid ‘in kind’ by an Aston Villa player’s sister when the cash wasn’t available to pay the weekly premium and Tony Brooks, my mom’s favourite agent, was a rascal who handled stolen goods and ended up in prison himself. Dad helped Tony, after he had retired to get new business in the tough Nechells district, where dad reckoned some of the men considered a custodial sentence just a break from crime, a mere inconvenience. Dad’s music-centre had been stolen goods, provided as a gift by Tony, which surprisingly, my parents were grateful for, although mum was oblivious to the transaction…
Len Lucas, suave, with film-star looks and marvellous moustache charmed women on his round but eventually lost his job and finished up in a Shard End maisonette with one of his women. Eddie Coleman was laid-back in the extreme, with a great ability to achieve anything he could turn his hand to. He lived in Water Orton, ran a toy-shop near the Yenton public house and reminded me of actor Sean Connery. He retired to mess around in boats, near St Germans in Cornwall.
When my dad decided to decorate the lounge on one occasion, he wanted coving fixed to the tops of the walls and Eddie turned up to do the job. Dad was a careful decorator but he nearly passed out when Eddie made no measurements but simply and speedily hammered coving-supporting nails all round the room. Then he slapped up the adhesive-smothered coving and went home. It was a fine, accurate job when completed but the doing of it horrified my father…
The office girls loved my mum, used to visit her too and turned up at her funeral. One of them, Beverley, even travelled with my mum and my aunt, Bill’s wife Cal, to watch me perform as Sir Thomas Holte at Aston Hall in the mid-1980s.
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| ASTON HALL: CAL, ME AS SIR THOMAS HOLTE (HENCE THE HOLTE END AT VILLA PARK), BEVERLEY & MY MUM... |
Collecting for my father…
He would leave me a number of calls to make, some because he knew that the customers wouldn’t be able to make two weekly payments on his return to work, some because the customers wanted to meet me and a few because my dad simply wanted me to witness them…
On one occasion, as mentioned above my nephew Paul accompanied me, who was in his teens at the time. We decided, cruelly I guess, to give marks out of ten for any particularly desperate characters we met in what we termed the ‘Desperate League’… The winner would be the person who, by the end of the evening, had achieved the highest score awarded.
The Dunks…
Our first call on that Friday evening was to collect money from a Mr and Mrs Dunk and I knocked on their door. A woman appeared and despite her friendly, welcoming behaviour, she was in truth, somewhat obese, course, rough featured and totally disheveled. Paul and I looked at each other and I mouthed, “Nine…” He somehow kept his face straight but agreed with a slight nod. Mrs Dunk paid the money owed, I signed her blue payment book but she then bellowed into the house, demanding her husband’s presence at the door.
“Mr Ray’s son Peter’s at the door!”
Mr Dunk duly appeared. He was a gem. He looked harsh, no teeth were visible and he was smoking a fag. He wore scruffy trousers and a coloured, badly discoloured vest, stained and straining across his belly which was rather enlarged by beer and fried food, the stench of which emanated from within the council property. The vest sported three words, printed in comic lettering: ‘I… AM… SEXY…’ … He really wasn’t…
I looked at Paul and at the same time we both mouthed, “Ten…”
The whole enterprise had been ruined at the very first port of call. Nobody else came close to 10, except maybe one character…
The House of Strain…
It was on a small roundabout near Church Lane, Yardley. It was close to a railway bridge. It was at the right end of a line of four council properties. The extended family existing inside this dwelling had badgered my father to allow me to call for their insurance monies and anyway, dad wanted me to be a witness to the truth about one of his party-pieces, in which he would describe this particular household.
The first time I visited the house I had been alone and on the driveway which led to a wooden garage perched to the right of the house was a dysfunctional vehicle which was being ‘worked on’, its various parts lying about with the occasional retired kitchen appliance rusting nearby.
The ‘front’ door was actually on the side of the house and so I took a deep breath, recalling dad’s words: “You will be amazed. Look at the window ledges, check out the TV and count the animals. Make sure you speak with Grandma. Do not accept a cup of tea though and not only because of the sterilised milk…”
I was welcomed by the main female character in the house, a smoker, a Brummie and she appeared to know more about my life than I did myself. I was invited inside, I politely refused a cup of tea and flicked my gaze towards the door which led into the kitchen. And I saw chickens running across the work surface and draining board next to the sink. I was pleased I had refused a hot drink…
The window ledges were totally covered by piles of clothing which had apparently been acquired from jumble sales in huge quantities, so that at least some of the items would fit at least some of the folks abiding in the house. And there were lots of them…
It appeared that there were two sisters living there, both with a number of offspring each, as well as the grandmother but it was not possible to count them all. I didn’t see any men.
The TV was on. It was a colour TV but in the early days of such sets, the colour often needed to be adjusted. Thus as I stood in the doorway to the lounge, a crowd of viewers were watching what appeared to be a vision of hellfire. The screen was a moving mass of redness and all eyes were fixated upon it. By the sound alone, I believe the programme was ‘Crossroads’, the infamous and awful soap opera based in a Midlands motel.
There were too many dogs and cats in the room to count and some of them showed a vague interest in me, the intruder, whilst others strolled into the kitchen and disturbed the chickens into a-squawking and a-flapping of wings…
But the feature in the room for me was the grandmother… She knew all about me too. She sat permanently upon a commode chair. We conversed I think. And then she made the remark my father had known she would make:
“Do ya wanna see me stump?”
“Er, yes, sure…” I replied doubtfully. Then, in a well practised manner her grimy clothing was raised above her one remaining knee to reveal, well, a stump, for much of her other leg had been amputated…
I wasn’t shocked because I had been warned about this situation but still I was searching in vain for a response. I reckoned that: “That’s really nice…” wasn’t appropriate, for it was actually rather grotesque but “That’s hideous, Gran…” wasn’t an option either, so I finally settled for,
“How neat it is…”
She seemed pleased with that and asked whether I was sure I didn’t want a cup of tea. I told her that I was fine and that I had just had one at another house. I lied. I hadn’t actually visited Mr and Mrs Jones yet…
I was given the insurance money, I signed the relevant books and left the rather smelly house with a sense of relief, yet also a feeling of fascination, with the realisation that my lot was fortunate, even though I too lived in a working class council property.
I took Paul the next year my dad was on holiday because he simply hadn’t believed my description of what the house was like. He was dumbfounded. I asked the grandmother to show him her stump. She did too…
96 Norton Crescent…
My father had told me that Mr and Mrs Jones would be expecting me. They were elderly and lovely people living in a well maintained council property and indeed had been there for many years. They just wanted to sit and chat with me, dad had said, so it was a cup of tea and a slice of superb home-made fruit cake at number 96…
China cups, saucers, a teapot, loose tea leaves and a tea strainer all appeared with the cake on a tray. I could have stayed with them all evening…
Paul liked it there too…
The Jamaican family in Cole Hall Lane…
One of the first guys to travel to the UK from Jamaica, I reckon, this policyholder was probably one of my dad’s favourites and I was asked to call on him too. He was lovely and although one wasn’t allowed into his house, the business being transacted on the doorstep, the tall guy chatted for ages to me on the two or three occasions I called at his house…
The mantel shelf…
I recall dad mentioning a delivery driver on his insurance round, whose pay packets would lie unopened on the mantel shelf above the fireplace in his house. Dad once asked him why that was and the guy spoke openly about it.
He delivered bread to large shops, like supermarkets and because the staff in those stores were often too busy to check the delivered orders, they would simply sign for whatever he unloaded. He would hold back some loaves on his truck however and therefore he was able to take the spares to other, smaller shops out of town and sell them at cheaper prices, which benefitted himself of course but also the recipient shopkeepers who made a bigger profit on the provided goods…
More simple to do things like that in those days, I guess…
Final words…
Dad didn’t want to retire. He loved his job. He knew he would regret finishing at 65, for he was fit and healthy. And he would be forced to be at home, where mum was…
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| WITH COUSINS DEREK & DAVE, PLUS UNCLE JACK & DAD, ROUND ABOUT THE TIME DAD BECAME AN INSURANCE AGENT... LIKE MY HAT? |
He helped Tony Brooks out now and again to rustle up new business, as well as spending time (although I have no idea how much time) with his brother Bill and family, also meeting up with Eddie Coleman, before Eddie moved to Cornwall.
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| DAD IN WORK CLOTHES, AROUND 1952-3, AS AN INSURANCE AGENT, STILL LIVING IN WARD END THEN... |
