Ladder on underground among ‘twin’ recollections
I’M home from hospital for the first time in five weeks. That’s great news for me, if nobody else. As I remarked last week, I’ve been looked after exceedingly well. I am now in that period of readjustment to non-hospital living. I share the same view as many people in as much as we think of hospitals as great places to get better in, but not the place we want to spend the rest of our lives in!
During my stay I had ample time to reflect upon my life and the things that really matter to me. There is nothing very deep about all of this but it did prompt me to remember the kind of things I did with my brother and others in those years from the Second World War through to our university education.
Being a twin from a straightforward working-class family and with parents who encouraged my brother and me to maximise our talents, we had ample challenges provided by virtue of being fairly intelligent and without any pretensions about our skills or the opportunities provided by our school.
It was a first-class school, giving boys like me huge opportunities to develop our talents and any latent skills we possessed.
So let’s take for granted that I was given every opportunity in my school years. It didn’t give me the freedom to be stupid but I still was. I have recollections of doing daft things and I used those opportunities, sometimes for fun and sometimes more serious stuff.
One of my more silly uses of my school education was directed towards taking a fully extended ladder on to the London Underground. My brother and I chose to do this at rush hour just to maximise the inconvenience to fellow travellers.
Another use of the ladder was to make it possible for my brother and me to watch our girlfriends doing their classwork while we posed as window cleaners.
On another occasion I was working
‘‘ ANOTHER USE OF THE LADDER WAS TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR MY BROTHER AND ME TO WATCH OUR GIRLFRIENDS DOING THEIR CLASSWORK WHILE WE POSED AS WINDOW CLEANERS.
at a brewery. I jumped at the chance to have as many free bottles of soft drink as could be crammed into a working day.
What I did not realise was that something which initially tastes delicious becomes less so after the first five in one morning. I realised why there was more to washing bottles than first met the eye.
Believe it or not I used to be a pole vaulter as a uni student! Pole vaulters in those days were supposed to land in a patch of sand! Unfortunately, whilst I vaulted fairly well, I noted on one occasion that I landed very badly.
I hit the timber edge to the landing frame and completely fractured both bones in my left leg. My brother ignored my shouts because it was April Fool’s Day!
In working mode, I worked for over eight months in the local general hospital when I was a uni student.
It was a brilliant experience and one in which I learned a lot about human nature. This work taught me to cope with helping people in grave physical distress and I quickly learned how to prepare breakfast for people who were vomiting and more fortunate hungry souls.
It was almost relaxation to take my turn in my dad’s garden despite the fact that he was a hard taskmaster and did not appear to believe that one should enjoy oneself while working.
The great thing about holiday work in England when I was a lad was that it was extremely well paid and you were encouraged to work as many hours as you wanted to.
The terms of employment always seemed ridiculously generous to me compared with professional fulltime staff.
I never envied those who had to go to work every day while people like me could slip in and out to suit our schedules.