Foggy days, hot metal and good friends

Eric Watson lived a few doors down Brenchley Road from Dorothy Froud (nee Selves). Like my older sister, Shelia Gardner (nee Cackett) I also went to South Borough School (obviously the boys’ school).

My best friend from junior school right through senior school was Dorothy’s younger brother John Selves.

I remember now how we used to walk to school in the early 1950s in the thick smogs that would last all day. It was really eerie as you genuinely could not see your hand in front of your face. In those days from the age of five you made your own way to and from school, no dad’s taxi service or escort with your mum.

I left school at 15 and started work at the Kent Messenger on August 14, 1961, as an apprentice hand compositor.

The apprenticeship lasted six years and you learnt on the job everything about printing.

It was at least a year after I started work I realised my older brothers had been good friends with Eric Watson, who had started his apprenticeship two or three years before me.

I was paid £1 12s a week, which in 1961 was just about the right money to buy an LP record. Music was, and is still is my big passion.

I have many fond memories and recall in December 1962, a few weeks before the big freeze, a young Edwin Boorman (the then Guv’nor’s son), home from university, slaving away with ink on his arms and face, on a big old flat-bed platen printing machine, printing the carol sheets to be inserted into copies of the KM.

In those days we printed around 105,000 copies each week and the carol sheets had to be over-printed four times to be in full colour. The press had to be stripped down as it was not printing accurately, so it got behind schedule. Edwin