02 THOMAS BURGESS

 
THOMAS BURGESS C950/02/01-04/VHS 01-01

MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE

THOMAS BURGESS
C905/02/01-04/VHS 01-01
Original on DVC-Pro
Copy on VHS

Interviewed by Pete Fleischmann
Camera by Faye

Transcribed by Julie Sharman
April 1999

[start of DVCPro tape 1 – start of VHS tape 1]
[Both talking together]

`Yeah, yeah, just be natural… just relax and…’

`Yeah, I’ll try, yeah, right…’

`Somebody come with a clapper, say… action..’

`No, we’ll just.. we’ll, we’ll just sort of start in a few minutes really…’

[Both talking together]
‘Give us the nod… and I’ll rattle off..’
 
‘Yeah’

‘I’ll rattle off… and watching you.. to, to, to… if you put your finger across your throat… I’ll know you want me to stop’

`OK, OK, but I mean, if I want you to stop I’ll say take a break’
[interviewee coughs]
 
‘Right…’

`Or move on, or I might ask you another question, or…’

`OK’

`I mean, some things I might go back to as well, so…’

`You start me off…’

`OK’
[Both talking together]
`We’re ready to start, so…’

`All right…’

`If you’d like to just to start, just to tell me a little about your father and your mother’

`My father and my mother… well, err… my father was out of work from 1932 to 1938, and I’m afraid my father got used to being out of work… Of course, when the war.. or when the.. when Chamberlain went to Bergesgarden [ph], then brought back a piece of paper saying I’ve got peace in our time… err, he, there was plenty of jobs going.’

`Right, what kind of work did your father normally do?’

`My father sold rugs and carpets, but in… you remember.. or you’ll have to remember that that was during the depression…

`Right’

`…when there was real hunger in Britain, alright?`

`And where were you born?’ `What…Where were you born?’

` I was born in… 4 Stewards [ph] Place, Clerkenwell [ph] Green.. I was actually born in Bart’s Hospital.’

`OK’

`And that was in… err, September 4th, 1920… and the… when I was 15, I was apprentice to a process engraving, that’s printing blocks. When I was 18, that was when the crisis in Britain happened, when Chamberlain come back… when the war was in the air… and I went round to join the Navy when I was 18…’

`Could I just stop you there and just’

`Sure…’

`…go back to your, just to talk a little bit more about your childhood?’

`Now, my childhood…’

`Yeah, I mean what, what was your home life like?’

`Oh, very happy I should think… err, my mum and dad loved one another. The old man, if I could err describe him like that, was a little bit tough on us, as far as cleaning your teeth and getting to bed, and if you wasn’t up to scratch mum would say [laughs] I’ll tell daddy when he comes home [laughs] and that was it, you know what I mean?… I was, I was a little afraid of my father but I loved him, and I loved my mother come to that…’

`What was your mother like?’

`My mother… she was oh… what was she like, she was like a mother, who cooked and done her best for her family, but… now there wasn’t a lot of money about and I don’t know why… I really don’t know how we had a meal everyday, and we lived well. Well, reasonably well, we didn’t starve…’

`Did you have brothers and sisters?’

`Mmm.. we had brothers and, we had six sisters and one brother and err… oh, I, I count those times I’d speak to my sisters now when I’m on my own in the room, you know… err… [laughs] because I think Gabriel was calling me `come in Tom, your time’s up’ [laughs] and I’d past my sell by date and err…’

`Were you one of the youngest?’

`Mmm?’

`Where you one of the youngest children?’

`No, my brother was the youngest, he was three years younger than me [coughs]… and we had a happy life actually, but… well, happy… under trying circumstances, put it that way, but the old man was err… so patriotic you wouldn’t believe it. I mean, if they played God Save The Queen, or , or, or The King, on the radio he’d stand up to attention [laughs]… I’ll tell you a little story. I come home, come home, come home on leave err, from the Army right.. and he used to listen to the German propaganda, Lord Haw Haw [ph] don’t know, you wouldn’t know him… and, he described the King as, and Queen as, laughingly as, stuttering George… and I laughed [laughs]… my father run round the bloody table after me [laughs]… you… that’s how, that’s how patriotic he was, laughingly that, at stuttering George, I remember that very well. But, apart from that, I would say… see, years ago we lived different than we are today, I mean, we had our key through the letterbox on a piece of string… people trusted one another, helped one another… and, and., and had a row with one another for… you know what I mean, but… I would think… it was a happier time… a poorer time, but a happier time then than it is now… that’s my childhood…’

`What, what’s…?’

`I went to St Ethel Regis [ph] School in Ealey [ph] Place, that’s Holborn. What more do you want from childhood?’

`Well…’

`I used to box… my father thought he’d get out of the ghetto if he [laughs] had a world champion [laughs] in the family… Well, I used to box and I got to the Albert Hall with the London Boys’ Federation Boys Clubs [coughs]… we had three fights in one day at the Albert Hall… now when you got to the finals, it wasn’t the finals, there was three… only three rounds mind you. In the morning you, you turned up in the morning and there was… the last fight was the final in the evening, in the… the Prince of Wales… who, the one who err… resigned… the one who capitulated, you know, he was the one who handed out the, the egg cups you know, like the little… [laughs] you, you’d not be [???] yourself on one of those [laughs]… and the finals [laughs] you was all… [laughs] and you got this little egg, this little cup and, how delighted, but I didn’t reach that stage… I got done in the morning early, but I…’

`How old were you then?’

`How old was I then? About fifteen… but they used to run round Regents Park for training, round the inner circle and the outer circle from Mary Ward’s {ph] in Tavistock Place… that, that Mary Ward’s [ph] is a big err… charity… it was set up, I think Mary Ward’s was set up to occupy the poor and to show them what tennis was, what running was, what… and I used to row with Mary Ward’s [ph] and go to Hammersmith and… well that was my life. I was, I was, I didn’t… football or anything like that, used to run and box. I wasn’t very good at boxing. My, my, my father was very disappointed [luaghs] that I wasn’t Khanir [ph] or, or somebody like that… terribly disappointed, but… I used to box in the Army and all… I used to like boxing… only amateur boxing. Professional boxing, my goodness me, they stand for everything and hit you on the ground and, put the boot in practically, but amateur boxing I mean, as soon as you’re getting the belt in they turned it in, you’re, you’re the loser, you know what I mean?

`Yeah’

`What else did I do…’

`What about your brothers and…’

`Mmm?’

`Your brothers and sisters [both talking together], a lot more about them?’

`My brothers and sisters… I had two sisters worked at Conway Stewards [ph], they made pens, you know…’

`That was a factory was it, or a workshop, or something?’

`And… where… my eldest sister was named… Kate… oh, no, no, no, it wasn’t… that was my mother’s name, Kate… Liz, her name was. Now, when we, we were up against the wall for money, she was Liz… she married a guy that, and they opened up a business in Aldershot [laughs] and she changed her name to Caplin [ph] [laughs] and she turned middle class or something like that [laughs], used to make me laugh… I used to call her, just to needle her, I used to say, ‘Liz… my name is…’ [laughs] you know, and wind her, wind her up. That was the oldest one. The, the next one was Polly… now Polly used to… to like a pinch of snuff… and she, she used to go into the toilet, you know, to… because the family… now our family thought it was terrible taking bloody snuff, but… and then there was Lizzy, Polly, Katie. Katie married a guy that was out of work, and she worked… like a trojan, sometimes three jobs, because he was out of work she used to have cleaning jobs and… but father liked clean clobber, she, he… she used to push a pram, a kid with a pram from Edgware Road to where we were in Clerkenwell [ph] Green for half a crown from the old man. She used to iron his, clean his shirts and iron them. That’s how bad things were. That was Katie… where’s the next one… Nelly… Nelly got killed during the war, I’ll tell you about that after… after I’ll run through the family. She got killed in the Lady Owen [ph] School, it’s called Dame Alice Owen’s, it’s in, near the Angel… then there was Eileen, very frail and thin and… she liked to dress up like Princess Marina [laughs]… and really went up to, to infinite pains to copy… this and that… and oh, she was…’

`Queen Marina?’

`Mmm?’

`Princess Marina?’

`Princess Marina was… was… oooh…. She was, she died or got killed I don’t know… she, she was a princess… very beautiful woman. Then after… Eileen, came Winnie, and Winnie wasn’t much older than me… We used to fight like… I can remember going… {laughs]… going on a school outing and her and her mate, because she as about 16, they were in one of these dressing rooms they used to have at, I think it was Southend somewhere… they used to have old fashioned on wheels and things, that they… you know the old swimming costumes they… and these two was in one of these bloody boxes and I wanted to speak to them and I wanted to gee them up, and I pushed it over and [laughs] they were naked [laughs] ‘Oh!’…. [laughs] and… and… I’ll never forget that [laughs], but by and large… I reckon it was… well what can you say about a family? You’ve all… had stresses and strains… you like some better than others, and some… err… I don’t know… it was a family.’

`And you all lived together in a house in…?’

`Yeah, in a house in… we lived… on Clerkenwell Green [ph] there’s a big building called The Sessions, Sessions House. It used to be like… in the old days it used to be like the Old Bailey, you know they had a court… and where we lived was called Steward’s Place… so the stewards of the court used to live in these old cottages that we lived in, all right? Because Sessions House was kaput as a… as The Old Bailey or, or, or Magistrates or… that’s finished, that… it’s an office block they turned it into. And its just called the Sessions House, it’s in, everybody knows it… but… it was… me and my brother was at… used to sleep in dad’s and mum’s bed down the bottom at one time, but… by and large we were a happy family… and when I, when I say happy, I mean [laughs] we had our ups and downs but by… looking back on ‘em, I haven’t got any… I can’t say to you… ‘oh, they owe me a living or they didn’t do this for me, they done what they could and my old man scratched up £25 quid, I don’t know where he got it from, to indenture me to engraving, so… and £25 pounds in 1938 was a, a… it was quite a lot of money…’

`That’s to… as an apprentice… you were an apprentice?’

`I was an apprentice, yeah…’

`Right’

`Five years apprenticeship and two years improvemanship [ph}[???]…’

`And that was for in… in printing or engraving?’

`Engraving… process engraving, you make blocks for magazines, newspapers, in zinc and copper… if you wanted a fine art job for say, Vogue, you done it in copper… if it, if it was for the newspaper, you done it in… there’s a screen over… you ever noticed the dots on a newspaper, well they call that the screen, and different… 120 screen… there’s a bigger dot, something like that, but for, for Vogue it, it was very fine screen and fine artwork. That, that was what I was apprentice to, but [coughs]… can I go onto when I was 18?’

`Sure… can you tell me just before we leave your childhood, just about your… were you a healthy child?’

`Was I what?’

`Were you healthy as a child?’

`Sure… you couldn’t go in the bloody ring and… run round Regent’s Park, 5, 6 miles every night… [both talking together]’

`I mean you were never ill, or…?’

`Of course I was ill… I had concussion when I was 7, I tell you… at Clerkenwell [ph] Green is a steep hill and they used to make scooters with ball bearing wheels and a couple of planks, and I was going down there and I went over a grating [laughs] I went arse over tit [laughs] and landed on my nut… [laughs]… I was seeing double vision, and they took me to Bart’s and they kept me in, you know… but apart from that [laughs] I think I got over that [laughs] I’m sure… [both laugh]’

`What were your impressions of the hospital then?’

`Mmm?’

`What did you think of the hospital… how, how old were you when that happened?’

`In hospital, when I was 7… I thought or maybe 8 or 9, I’m not… that’s a bit vague… I’m thinking about 70 years ago now son… [inaudible] What else do you want to know?’

`Were you… did you and your brother get up to any other sort of tricks or…?’

`Tricks… I tell you what, because we were a little bit skint… I used to go to Covent Garden… we used to tie string around our jersey and wait outside… there’s a bit insurance place in Bloomsbury… and we used to wait for the lorries, they weren’t as fast as they are today… to stop… the fruit lorries going down towards Clerkenwell Road where I lived… used to jump on the back, pinch pears and apples and, and… right… and when we, when we got near home… hopefully it would stop, but if it didn’t stop [laughs] you jumped off one, one at a time so when I…[laughs] I was [inaudible]… there was apples and pears all over the place and I was running like… [laughs] [inaudible]… and then we… in Farringdon Road they used to have barrows… stalls and we used to get tuppence for pushing them… pushing them round to their… their sort of mews [ph] where they used to put them away for the night… well if it… I liked apples and oranges, and he’d put a tarpaulin over it for… you know… and a bit of string… I used to eat more than I pushed [laughs]… on my way home… but for tuppence… I mean we weren’t by any stretch of the imagination, law abiding citizens I mean… I can tell you… I don’t know as I should tell you this… but I used to milk telephone boxes… they had old fashioned telephone boxes and [coughs] it had… put tuppence [ph] in, press button A, and, oh I know, press button A and, and you’ve got, your, your party. If you press button B you got your money back, all right… and the tuppence [ph] come down in a little cup. Well, me and, and a couple of others, we had a sort of milking round… we used to stuff… paper… not paper… old rags up this, this little cup, so when, when people put… pressed button B for their money back, the tuppence [ph] didn’t fall down… and we’d go round every… about seven o’clock at night, pulled the thing down to see how much we got… a copper caught me… on Clerkenwell Green, they used to have an horses trough there, right at the top because there were horses about in those days, more horses than bloody cars… but this copper caught me… and coppers those days, they was the regular coppers around the district you, you see… and they knew your father, your mother, your sisters and brothers… right what you tapped me on the shoulder for?…’

`…it’s your microphone…’

`This?’

`Yeah…’

[Brief pause as microphone corrected]

`There we go’

`I was wondering…’

`Was it wrong?’

`It just fell down like… couldn’t hear you so well..’

`Right…’

[Both talking together]

`I didn’t know why… [both talking together].. [inaudible]

`Sorry, you were just telling us about the… coppers’ [both talking together]

`The police… the police had… you got regular coppers about three of them going round 24 hours…’

`On foot or..?’

`Round the same district…’

`Right… and they were walking or on bicycles or…?’

`Yeah, they had, they had little maps where they got to walk, you know [both laugh]… and sometimes they used to go reverse or, or… to… just to fool you… he caught me milking the telephone box… he… he said to me, as I remember it now, ‘you want me to tell your dad? Or you want a clump?’ [ph] I said I don’t want you to tell my dad, he said ‘right, bang’ and he gave me such a bashing with his… they used to have capes… and used to have these capes rolled up and dangling from their belt… he whacked me with the bloody cape… he said ‘the next time, if you get in any trouble I’m telling your dad.’

`He hit you with what, with a truncheon?’ [both talking together]

`With his cape’

`His cape?’

`His cape. These, these old coppers had a cape when it rained… they used… [both talking together]

`Oh I see’

`…it was a short cape…’

`and it was…?’

`And it was rolled up’

`Right’

`And he gave me a whack with his cape’

`And did that hurt?’

`Err no… I’ll never forget that, but the point is, this… we weren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, errr… I suppose today, if I got caught doing… milking telephone boxes today, they’d… [inaudible] [laughs] get sent to… [laughs] to Dartmoor, something like that, but the copper… in those days, fathers give you… gave you a kick up the arse and, and coppers treated you rough, but they, they, they knew that, that the family would have approved of that rather than taking you in [inaudible]… I mean, when we had parties we used to… sometimes… on one occasion we had a party for, for some wedding or other, I think it was Winnie got married, and the local copper came in, took his bloomin’ [ph] coat off, and his hat, and was one of the family… they was passing round beetroot in, in… and jugs of beer… and that was the relationship you know… he, he was the governor mind you… in a way, if, if I can describe him like that, but… there was law and order, there was petty the… crime that they don’t bother about now. They treat… they used to treat on the spot if they could, and, and clear it… and then they would not hold it against you unless you done it again, but… that was that… you asked me if I’d been naughty, well… I’ve been very bloody naught, but err, not, not in… you wouldn’t call it naughty today I don’t suppose. That’s… normal, normal kids… that’s it… that’s my childhood, and when I become an apprentice, I had to, had to… knuckle down and be disciplined you know what I mean, because they sent a report home to my old man, and after all, he paid [laughs] £25 quid [laughs] he had a… I think he had a vested interest as well to become a printer [laughs], it would get the family out of trouble [coughs]… no, my father wasn’t like that, he wanted… he wanted to the best for his kids [coughs]. I told you about… I told you about… Polly taking snuff did I?’

`You did’

`Yeah, well this is the awful part about it [laughs], I take bloody snuff now
[laughs], so… I hope you don’t mind’

`Not at all’

[Takes snuff]

`I’ve got a… a bucket over there where I soak the handkerchief before I take them round to the washing place [laughs] because they get filthy… it’s a dirty habit. I spoke a pipe an’ all, but none the less, I’m ashamed of that… I keep it quiet, but you and I are friends now because you’ve made it clear [sniffs]. Right.’

`Did you have any contact with people who had psychiatric problems or anything like that?’ [both talk together]

`Eh?’

`Did you have any contact with people with psychiatric problems when you were a child or…? What were your first memories of you know… was there anybody in the neighbourhood who, who was, had been in hospital or anything like that?’

`[takes a gasp of breath, ‘aaaah’] There was an old soldier… who lived on Clerkenwell Green… that when the [inaudible], or, or when he’d had a drink, I don’t know…’

`Hang on… do you need to break again?’

[All talking together]

`I think it’s your microphone’

`Am I speaking wrong?’

`No, no… not at all’ [all talking together]

`It’s just ‘cause you’re moving around quite a lot…it’s…’

`It’s alright…’

`Sorry, I’ll try not to move around’ [all talking together]

`No, no, no, no, no, it should be ok now…’

`I just want to make sure we can hear you that’s all…’

`You’re diving very deep into…’

`Yeah… [laughs]’

`We haven’t started yet…’

[All talking together, laughs]
`Look, wonderful… yeah, you just pricked my, my memory… we had an old soldier, we used to call him Mad Ernie… at certain times we used to say, when the moon was… when the full moon was out, or… or he’d got a drink… he used to hide behind trees and be a sniper, ‘boom, boom, boom…’ and run to another tree… he was, he was obviously thinking back, living when he was in the 1914 war, but err… that’s the only crank [clap]…, pardon me Ernie, God rest your soul… that, that’s the only… brain damaged person that I can recall…’

`Right’

`There must have been others, that I didn’t know of, but Mad Ernie was Clerkenwell Green character…’

`And what did you think of him at that time?’

`I used to love him… everybody loved Mad Ernie… he was a… a quiet, gentleman until these things happened, [imitates gun shot sounds], see… things… and, and… and… oh, everybody…. Oh, old Ernie… oooh… it was a spectacle to see him behind the bloody tree, you know… and… bending down like… a, a sniper… poor old bastard [laughs]. Sorry… ‘

`No, that’s fine… so you were just… before you were talking about your apprenticeship…’

`My?’

`Your apprenticeship, for printing…’

`My apprenticeship… well… I told you I made blocks, but at 18, because there was… the journeyman didn’t like you to find out too much about engraving in case the governor sacked them and put you to work you see, as the cheap labour, so at 18 they used to keep you away, pacing you along, slowly, very slowly… at 18 I used to go to, to the shop with a… a broom handle with nails on it and pike hands [ph] on it, with the names of the different people… and get tea… and, running sandwiches… when I was 18 I used to do that. See, they’re keeping you down, keeping you in your place, because everybody knew the [laughs], the pecking order in those days [coughs], but… when I was 18… and, and the crisis happened, everybody was worried I think like that… I thought, I’ll join the Army… no, the Navy I wanted to join, so I went down to the embankment… you know that big Navy ship that, that they’ve got at the embankment, do you know it?’

[Both talking together]

`The President its called… they was… that was a recruiting, and God, it was miles, miles… you wouldn’t believe it… miles of… queue… a queue right the way round… right, when I got there he said `I’m afraid… 1, you’re too tall… about 6 foot 3, and 2, [laughs] we’ve got enough Navy applicants the right size [laughs], so, we’re shutting the gate’ he said, ‘you have to got to Whitehall…’. Well, then, I didn’t go to Whitehall then, I went and told my boss, Mr Pearcy… I said, I went to join the Navy, Sir… you had to call them… you had to be respectful… and, he, he was a nice fella [ph]… I said, I went to join the Navy last night… he said ‘without our permission?’… I said, well, I thought… he said ‘you’re indentured here, as an apprentice…’ he said, ‘if you want to break your apprenticeship or do anything different, then surely you should ask us first…’. He said ‘you speak to your father…’, so I’d, I’d gone down to join the Navy… without telling my dad. I thought to myself, well they’ll grab me in, I’ll be away and it’ll be a fait accomplis… [ph]. When I told my dad, he said, ‘you’re not joining the bloody boyscouts’ he says, ‘you’re 18’ he says, ‘you haven’t seen nothing of life… he said you bring khaki home here’, he said, `I’ll throw you out the bloody window with it’… anyway, I said to him, look, I’m going to join… so I went to Penton Street, you know Penton Street? I went to Penton Street, had a big drill all there [???], and… I joined the Territorial Army… that, on their advice… they said, if the conflict doesn’t come off… you’re free to pursue your apprenticeship, and I told Mr Pearcy, that’s the Governor, exactly what I’d done. He said ‘that’s the best thing you could have done’, he said, ‘we agree with that’. About 3 months later they called the Territorial’s up [laughs] and I went to Margaret’s Bay near Dover… I don’t know what we did… I think we were… we were wasting time and, you know, because there was no war on… and they got us…’

`What sort of… what date was this? When was this?’

`Mmm?’

`What date, what year was it?’

`Oh, that would be 1939… the back end of 1939. I, I think… I’m terribly sorry about…’

`That’s ok…’

`I’m not sure about the dates…’

`Why were you so keen to join…?’

`Mmm?’

`Why were you so keen to join?’

`Why was I so keen to join and… the country was in trouble… and err… although we had any other pot to piss in… it was my country… and, there it was… and all my mates joined. I mean, all the street… it, it was a sort of… a fever… you know what I mean?… and besides that, the, the… the reports of, Hitler I didn’t like… from what I knew of it, and I wasn’t terribly political then… as I am today, I mean err… that was the thing to do, I mean… whatever the country is like, you say… I don’t know where I got if from, my country right or wrong… and, and then… we didn’t think too much about… the mechanics of things, that was the thing to do, they wanted us to join the Army and away we went… and that was it. Right… now, I’m lost for words, what do you want me to… where do you want me
to go?’

`Just… if you continue your… [both talking together]

`Army career…’

`Yeah… [both talking together]’

`[coughs]… well… at… Dover… a little way back at Margaret’s Bay they had a mysterious pylon thing, what reached up to the sky… and another one, down the line, and another one… in… I think it was in… it was in Kent, strangely enough, at a place called Dunkirk in Kent… near Faversham… Canterbury… and we went back to Dunkirk, wasting time actually… digging holes, making gun implacements and things like that, for, for lewis guns [ph]… protecting these pylons…’

`Lewis guns?’

`What… lewis guns… twin lewis guns…’

`What kind of guns are they?’

`A lewis gun is… err… how can I describe it… it’s got… a round, loading… you load the bullets… I forget what they call it…’

`Magazine?’

`Magazine… you got a magazine that clips on the top… you pull the thing and you’re in business, right? So, the twin lewis guns… to fit either shoulder right?’

`They’re big guns..?’

`No… no, no, no, no… about that big… not big… not big at all. When I become au fait with a lewis gun, when I… understood a lewis gun, I thought to myself, its like giving an elephant a peanut for his breakfast, you know what I mean? [laughs]… it was useless… because when you start… when you fire a lewis gun, you can… they put tracers, and incendiaries [ph]… and ordinary bullets, one on one, you know… it’s got all kinds of bullets, and you can see the tracers going up… it went up as high as the… the… St Paul’s, and then you see it bend… the… bend curved… [laughs] well… what bloody use [laughs]… and, and these columns we was… these mysterious columns we were guarding, were useless. I often ask questions about this, but they were secret. You know what they were? Radio direction finders… when they cast the beam… across the channel, and when the beam was broken… the err… there was a voluntary body called air spotters [ph]… you know I forget the name of them… on all buildings and.. and all the way round the coast… they were the cream of everything… gentlemen, you know, and they got the word that there was planes coming and that was how the air raid… in those days it was so haphazard… and digging trenches here, there and everywhere and… people digging for Britain, and… all sorts of things… we were running round in circles… unprepared… the country wasn’t prepared for war. I think, on reflection, that Chamberlain, who we thought was a silly old nannygoat [coughs] holding a piece of paper saying, ‘me and the Chancellor have had words and its peace in our time…’ we thought it was… I’m not going to say it… but, on reflection, thinking back, he was a double white man… he, he wanted the breathing space to get ready, because he must have known that… we would sooner or later… we would be at war, so… thinking back after… he wasn’t a nanny goat… but he might have been… for what it’s worth… but, that was that… that was then… then we got bothus [ph] guns, you know what a bothus [ph] gun is?’

`[inaudible]’

`It’s a much different kettle of fish than lewis guns… its on 4 wheels and you know how… I’ve often thought when I’ve been looking at Formula One drivers coming in for petrol, you, you… you know how they put… ‘brummm’ [ph] and its up in the air, that’s exactly the machinery that a bothus got, had… it had sort of girders that held the gun in place when it was mob… mobile, and when you wanted it in action, you, you uncoupled a, a thing… just… and these, these girders become the, the… lifts to lift the… and the wheels came up, and you was in business. There was a platform there and one sat one side and one the other and the bloke was standing on the top loading crates of shells and they… it was terrible… it was bloody noisy, but… ‘boom, boom, boom, boom…’ right…’

`What was that gun designed to shoot at?’

`Anti-aircraft… but in France they were used on open sites against tanks… useless mind you, there was no protection for, for… for, for the operators, you know what I mean? Very frightening… I… in… to go back to early days in France… when we went to France… ah… we were part of… we formed the 51st island division, and that was a Scottish unit. We were the reserve… I was in the reserve anti-aircraft unit at… 44th… anti-aircraft unit, for the 51st island division… that was… placed in, around the, the, the… around the dutch border, somewhere like that. That was, the front line ones. We, we… when things got messy we was going to go across’

`Right’

`An ordinary soldier don’t know all this… I mean they don’t tell you sod all, you know they keep there in the dark, and give you a fag, you know what I mean? You’re, you’re just… [coughs] you do as you’re told and… right… but we went over from LeHavre [coughs]… to LeHavre, from Southampton… and we were stationed at Rouen. When the action began, I, I think it was… yeah, when it began we went up to… from Rouen to Sulize [ph]… I think that’s the place, and a big beautiful bridge that had been… newly made of concrete and there was French soldiers, pilouse [ph] or something they called them, filling the, the hollowness of the bridge with yellow powder, it would seem to be yellowish… reddish, yellow, to blow it up, right?’

`Uh, huh’

`We didn’t know that Hitler, in the phoney [ph] war of 9 months… I don’t suppose you know about…?’

`No’

`Well, there wasn’t a shot fired to my knowledge, from 9 months from the declaration of war to when we… had… in the army. Hitler was doing his sums, wasn’t he? He... the French police, he made them Generals [laughs] I’m sure about this… that, the… they infiltrated everywhere… I reckon the blitz creed, they knew exactly what street they had to go up, they knew when they hit us… when, when… when the bombshell hit us, the Germans knew exactly what they were doing, and with the help of the French. Now, I don’t believe, I know that all France wasn’t collaborators, but I’m talking about my experience. Wherever we stopped they was there. Haystacks set alight… or lights showing… and some times… veary [ph] pistols and things like that, but always an indication of… right… and… I’ll get to this stage… we went from Sulide [ph] because the Army was really up against it, at a place called St Valerie Et Coeur [ph]… I think that’s… just memory, St Valerie, which means on Sea I think it means, Et Coeur… don’t know. The Army… the 51st island division was holding that, right… and we, we were going up there… we reached a stage about 6 mile away from… but, the… you know how Kosovo is now with refugees…?’

`Yeah’

`That was exactly how the French refugees… poor bastards was… they… some had their homes on bicycles, some on wagons and some… cars… and oh.. and we couldn’t get through this. Now we were taught and it was drummed into us, that if you’re in convoy you had to be I think, it was about 6 lorries away from the next one, in case you got bombed. Because of all this palarva [ph] with the French police, the, the, the… refugees, if I can call them that… we were all bunched up… nose to tail, right against orders, and it was a summer’s day… when during the blitz, the… blitzkrieg in France was beautiful summer in June, or July, very hot, and I was on the back of a lorry and… we were smoking, because, waiting for the Sergeant to move us on… and somebody saw 3 planes… said, look at those saucy bastards, or something like that… I don’t remember, to be quite honest about it, I don’t remember… I may be making up the words, alright? So, and it was choice language anyway, and I looked that way… and to my…. memory, the plane… the fighter bombers or I… had two bombs strapped underneath, one each… the wing, and they didn’t seem to be going straight, they seemed to be going from side to side, you know what I mean? I don’t know whether they were lying astern, right… now… our bothus gun was on its wheels, that means to say, the girder that held everything up was about 2 feet…’

`Uh, huh’

`And when the machine guns… they opened up with the machine guns… these, these planes… started going… I dived under the bloody girder, be… I couldn’t do anything else because the… they caught us with our trousers down… I was under the girder, the driver was… he, he, he was… he came round and got with me, I got my bloody tin hat down, well down on flappers [ph], right… away from these… but a bomb went off about… oh, I don’t know… it was very close, I don’t know, to say 15 feet or 20 feet… but it blew the… the, it blew the… bothus [ph] over on its side [laughs]… it was quite heavy… the driver said, that’s the bloke next to me, he said ‘where’s my fucking arm?’ and I looked… and all I saw was nothing… and I… I ran… I ran through hedgerows, I ran as far… far away as I could up a hill… I don’t know how far I went… and when the planes went away, I went back. Now I’d righted the… the bothus [ph]… and… it was punctured… there was shrapnell through, through the shells… they were dangerous, right… it was… and the, the block… that’s the thing that goes up and down, that’s the block, right, was damaged. In any case, the driver, I think… I’m sure it was the driver… they took him away and I understood that he died, right. Now, that was the shrinks who were… errr… turning me inside out… term as the first rung of the ladder, of, of me… winding up in Banstead [ph].’

`Right.’

`Right… but I didn’t know that, I wasn’t… I wasn’t terribly afraid of, of, of… man or beast… the only… then… where ignorance is bliss, you know what I mean… and you’re training and things like that… right… that was that. We had to take this gun to the Royal Engineers… to be repaired, so we didn’t go on to St Valerie. There were 6 men on the back, they was the gun team, alright… a Sergeant, and a driver, right. They was made up from the driver… the driver was replaced and we went back because the engineers… have you ever seen an Army engineer in outfit?’

`No’

`In those days it was something that was… a wonder… absolute… I was… one of the… bloody great lorries, used to have sides [ph] come down and go on, on, on, to, to, to, and to stand up for you to walk about… they had lathes [ph] and everything… everything… was, was… an engineering shop, on wheels, and there was about 3 lorries all joined together… and that was the engineering place. When we got there they was packed up, they said we… [laughs] we were told to move back… because St Valerie then, had closed, the Germans had closed the gap and, the unit I was supposed to be with was either dead, captured… most of them was captured… but…’

`So a lot of people that you knew, had been killed?’

`Oh yeah, yeah… [both talking together]’

`They was from the same street that I lived, you know… I could rattle off you… some of the names, now, of people… sorry, people who, who lived the same street as me. Yeah… when I look back on it, I was one of the lucky ones really, that’s what I thought, at the time… but some of them come back unscathed, they’d been in… they’d been gardening [laughs]… in a prison camp, you know… for, for four years, and… [laughs] I think they was the lucky ones… [laughs & coughs]. We… from then on… that was 4 miles up the side of St Valerie, this is as I remember… we, we retreated. We were being spasmodically fired at from time to time, from various people, maybe the French Police [laughs] I don’t doubt that they had a go as well. That’s maybe doing an injustice, because I’m not sure… I’m presuming, if that’s the word, that they had a go… but, they, they directed us wrong, instead of going to Nantes, where we were making for, that’s going down, right down South, all the channel ports were… I mean those that got off at Dunkirk, I consider them to be lucky [laughs]… lucky… poor bastards had got… swimming for their lives, but none the less… we carried on, and when we was making for Nantes, but we got mis-directed by French Police, and landed at a seaside place called Le Sabler du Long… [ph] I think that’s how you pronounce it…’

`And all this time you were being bombed and, fired at, and…’

`No, no, no, no, no… not being fired… no, don’t, don’t make it so dramatic. They were mopping up the main blitzkrieg were mopping up the channel ports and securing them. We were… I think, a couple of times we had stray planes come over. I hated the RAF, where are they? Where’s the protection? Bleedin’ bryl cream boys we used to call them… they go to bed, they… in… with… beds with sheets on it, when… I, I… thought to myself… the next… the next bryl cream boy I see I’m going to ring his f****ing neck. None the less, we eventually got to Nantes… this is… I’m not bitter… far from being bitter. When we got to Nantes we’d all been rounded up, by the French Police. ‘This is an open city’ they were… they, they said, right… ‘we don’t want to be bombed to, to buggery…’ or in their own words, it’s my words, but this is what they… we had somebody who could rabbit in French and I’d learn a few words in French, like, voulez vous promenade to the birds, but none the less… guess who… [inaudible] had an attitude of the French, and there was Army people amongst them and all. ‘Get out, we don’t want to be bombed, this is an open city’, that was Nantes. Can I have a wee wee?’
`Sure, let’s… shall we take a break then.. yeah…’

[end of DVCPro tape 1]
[start of DVCPro tape 2 – VHS tape 1 continues]

`Just…’

`Where were we?’

`Well, just to go back to something that you said… you said that the experience of being bombed, when you were first bombed…’

`When I was first bombed’

`Yeah, that was… the psychiatrist that you’ve seen said that that was the beginning of your problems...'

`Ahh, yeah… he said that… well, you see… I, I explained to you that I’d been turned inside out mentally… errr, over a long, long time… and… the, the stages of things… of, of what could have been, or, because, the mind is… is, is very… ohh, what do they say? Fickle… they, they don’t really know, but they, they, they think… and that’s what they say, they think, there was different stages of what hit me, all right… how I come… to where I did come to, all right. And, that was one of them.’

`So did you feel… did you have symptoms at that time or were you frightened, or shaking, or…?’

`I was shaking, yeah… err… but it was unmanly. Are we on the air?’

`Yeah’
`It was unmanly… err… you see, when there’s a crowd of people, I mean, if, if somebody is, is, is afraid of being yellow or… you know what I mean, or, or… you’re afraid of others, what they think about you, so you kept your feelings under control. Yeah, I was… I was trembling… ahhh…’

`This is when you got back to England or at the time?’

`Hang about… I’m being thrown out of Nantes…’

`Right’

`In mid-way France, not… it’s not, you can’t call it Southern France. I’m being thrown out of France, and we’re making for Saint Azaire [ph] right… we’re on foot by the way… our lorry had been taken away from us by somebody or other… it wasn’t a lorry it was a 1500 weight truck, Bedford. The, the… bothus [ph] was left with the Engineers, so we were part of a, what I would describe as a disorderly retreat, and we’re making, to get away, to Saint Nazaire… walking. The Police was, throwing… threw us out at gunpoint… from Nantes… see, so we’re not fighting the bloody Germans, we’ve got the French Police. They, they, they were crapping themselves in case they got bombed and in case some house got hurt or anything like that, wanted to protect this, and they ought to have seen what was happening up north. But none the less, they… I reckon they was a load of bloody Nazis because they was prepared, see… there was a bloke… anyway, I’m digressing. We got, we got to Nantes, and I thought that’s good… we’ll be away from… errr, no, we got to Saint Azaire… I thought, great, big harbour, everything like that. There was two big ships in the harbour. One was called the Georgic [ph] and I’m not sure about the other, Lucitania [ph] maybe, but I was… the Georgic I know of. The other one I don’t know, but two whacking great big passenger ships. I thought to myself, oh, we’ll get on those, wonderful, we’re home. But we had to spend two days getting lorries, motorbikes, driving them in to dry docks, and when, when they were there they put petrol over them and burned them and, and, we had to burn our… all the gear’

`And how did you feel about that?’

`Two… the two bloody days that I, I… I want to get home, I want… I’m, I’m no good here, I’m not fighting or anything like that, I want to get home, I want to get away from these bastard French… I wasn’t thinking about the Germans, I was thinking about the French. None the less… and I told you six times, that I may be doing them an injustice, which I feel… I’m saying to you… [laughs]… I’m… French nation I’m sorry about it if I got you arse upwards, but I didn’t… but, but… only certain people there… they were Nazis… they were recruiting… yeah, they were… the Germans knew what they were doing when they went through France, went through us like, a hot knife through butter… they knew… they knew everything. Anyway, they were professional people, we were amateurs, alright. Anyway, got to Saint Azaire… after two days hard work, dumping all this bloody gear, burning this and blowing up that… and got a destroyer or a… corvette [ph] I would call it, out to a ship called the Georgic. Beautiful ship… and there was another ship, I’m not… I told you I don’t remember the name of it… the Lucitania [ph] it may have been. We were going home in tandem, right, two whacking great bloody ships. We got attacked, by dive bombers… the Georgic was lucky, that I was on, the other ship, one, one of the things went down the funnel, blew the guts out of it. There was oh… chaos… but the Georgic had to survive, we was out the way, these poor bastards in the other one… oh, were swimming or blown up or… I don’t know what happened to them. They… don’t even remember the name of the ship, but none the less, we got home to Liverpool and the people of Liverpool, God Bless them… now, here [laughs] I’m likely to shed a tear… they… we were in the roads in Liverpool, so we could see the catholic cathedral that was being built. We, but we couldn’t get to… because there’s so much space for a ship to get in and a ship of our size had to, you understand me, had to wait… the people of Liverpool, or so we were told since, absolutely thousands of little boxes, with chocolate… [pause] [crying], bananas, sandwiches… because the Georgic had so many people on it…’

`Mmm’

`That they couldn’t feed them… a fucking great big [laughs] ship like this, had run out of food… Anyway, the people of Liverpool… wonderful. Eventually we got… we went to Salford and I think it was Salford [ph]… I’m sure its at Salford, then we got on the train and went to Salford, under canvas. Then I was… I was determined, then, that I wanted nothing to do with the Army. Right. When I got to Salford. I thought, somehow or other I am going to turn it in… right. I saw a… a… running through the camp, I don’t know whether the camp was in a park or something that was… oh, thousands of tents, oh, put them anywhere… the war, people coming from Liverpool and... oh… I saw coming towards me, a lorry, and it had Carter Pattersons on the top [blows his nose]… so I pulled him up. I stood in front of the road, if he ran over me I didn’t give a shit. Pulled him up… he said ‘what do you want’. I said, where are you going? He said ‘I’m going to London’, I said, you are? He said… I said where? He said ‘Goswell Road’ I said, any chance of me jumping? ‘Yeah, jump up’. So I’m in the Army, I’m… that’s it, I’m on… the… a Carter Patterson van. When I got home, I remember getting home, Clerkenwell Close I lived in, where people had been bombed out or something, they moved… my mother collapsed, my father was crying [crying/laughing]. They’d had a letter saying I was killed in action’

`Ohh…’

`[pause] So they were so pleased to see me. But anyway…’

`What sort of condition were you in? Mentally?’

`I was knackered. I tell you what, I was knackered. I, I… if my uniform had told me, smelt… of stale booze and vomit. I, I went to bed… they tell me I went to bed for three days and slept… right… When I got ok… and went to… we never had a bath then, we never had a bathroom… but when I went up to Merlin Street baths and had a bath and a swim, I got ok. I didn’t tell you that there was an announcement over the radio saying BES men, that’s British Expeditiary Forces men, will be told when… see they was coming back in thousands from all sorts of directions. Some of them swimming the bleedin’ channel I think. But none the less, we’d be informed of when they would have to lager [ph] or go to various points. When, when I got ok… and, I put my old suit on, hung around, I said to my dad, I’m not going back in the Army. He said ‘what are you going to do, there’s a war on’, I said fuck the war. I remember these words, I remember the time Peter, so clearly… my father said ‘how are you going to live?’. I said, if I was in prison, if I was in jail, what can they do to me, can they shoot me? I’m not going back. After a lot of argument, ok then, I’ll help you if I can. So I took all my clobber, Army, err… uniform, everything, took it… I don’t [laughs] know why I took it up to, you know opposite Sadler’s, Sadler’s Wells, there’s a garden. I threw everything over the railings, everything. I am having nothing to do with the Army or the war, I’m finished. That’s what I said to myself. Well now this… I lasted three months [blows his nose] dodging the police… err… I got somebody else’s identity card.’

`Where did you live at that time.. where did you live?’

`Anywhere, there was plenty of people that would take me in [coughs]. I was prepared to sleep in a sewer, I wasn’t going to have that… it was so disorganised… if I’d have been a German militarist or anything like that with… that knew was… that we were a load of amateurs. We didn’t know our arse from our elbow. If I’d have been with somebody that was a cracked regiment or anything like that, bruuum, bruuum, bruuum [ph], I thought to myself I ain’t going to put my life in the hands of mugs, I’d sooner be in jail. Right. When I got lumbered, after three months… I had a… I went to Newcastle. I went to Newcastle anyway. Now, I think there was a court marshall place at Newcastle, I’m not sure why I went to Newcastle… and I’m not sure of the name of the barracks where I… I was in prison there. Henham Barracks. That’s the name I believe, Henham Barracks, Newcastle, but they a court marshall. I got 212 days… they didn’t prove, because I was a volunteer, right, they couldn’t… they either went easy on me… or they just couldn’t prove desertion. So I got 212 days for absence without leave, and 56 days for loss of kit, to run one after the other. Right. I’d done my time, oh I forget where it was, anyway… after I went in there three months in jail I’m talking about…’

`So you were at an army prison?’

`An army prison, yeah… a sort of a made up glass house, but it… there was so many glass houses [laughs] that they used to make them up… this was an old mill, in, in, not far from Newcastle, err… Sowerby Bridge. Sowerby Bridge. It was a mill by a canal… oh, with all the paraphenalia of a prison all the way round, you was locked in baby… with a big parade ground, everything like that, and I thought well I’m here for the best part of a year, [laughs], wonderful, I was an athlete… I could [laughs]… this… just my… they were putting me through an assault course, you know, for punishment, and I was lapping it up. I was losing weight [laughs], I was getting… everything I did in civvie street, crazy, but I was loving it… right turn, left turn, up, on the double, march, and all that crap… right. Trying to break your spirit, alright… after three months, I went in front of a court of review. The three colonels I think they were. They said, ‘we’ve been looking through your court marshall, I forget what they… anticedents or some name like that… your paperwork they meant… and we find that you haven’t got a grudge against the country’ and I said I haven’t, no. I love the country, still love it. They said, ‘what don’t you like about the army?’. I said the bullshit. Painting white, coal, bits of coal, to, to, to show the way to this… polishing buttons, saluting, running around like a blue arsed fly doing nothing. So right, they had a… an interval, come back, they said ‘if we put you in a unit where there was no bullshit, as you say, would you soldier on?’. I said, lead me to it. They said ‘fisherman in Grimsby have been complaining about being attacked by the, the scarfed aircraft and motor torpedo boats, and they weren’t that cheery about going out fishing without protection’, he said, ‘so we’ve formed a unit for gunners’, he said, ‘you’ve been trained with a lewis gun, there’s two lewis guns mounted on the fore peak of a fishing boat, would you man them?’. Lead me to it. They released me I think in two days. Two days, they said your sentence is still there, if you sc… using my words, if you scarper again you’re right in it… with the rest of, right… so, I got released, travel warrant, got to Immingham [ph]… Immingham was not very far from Grimsby, and I met the Captain of the Captain, there was… another fishing boat, there was only about four [coughs] and they had mounted on the fore peak, right on the front of the boat, twin lewis guns, see, and they were, had the… had cover over them, and I, I was… a member of the crew, he said, join the club until there was danger. I.. I’d just… see, there was… there’s certain times you get attacked, its either first light or in the dark, they like, or in the twilight, that’s evening time, so I just stood two in the morning and in the evening, the rest of the time… I thought I was going to be sitting about sunbathing… [laughs] I remember when we got to the fishing grounds, I’m getting shouts.. ‘turn too, all hands on deck’, I’m in my bunk. He said ‘you and all’, [laughs], I said.. why is it danger? ‘No’, he said, ‘it’s on the fucking net, we’ve got to haul it in…’.

`Can I move you on a bit to…?’

`Uuhh?’

`Can I move you on to start talking…?’

`Sure, sure, sure…’

`Yeah, cause… tell me, can you say when the next time you felt that you had mental problems and what happened next, was that after the war had finished or..?’

`Ahh, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah… yeah. Well, I’d been on, on the ship about [pause] Oh, I don’t remember how long I’d been on the ship, but I got notification to go back to London, from the Army. Now this was another step in, in… the one I told you about, the one… the psychologist. When, when I got err… to where I lived… there’s all people crying and everything like that…. They says… Lady Owen’s has been bombed’. Well all my family was in Lady Owen’s, it was Dame Alice Owen, that was in the Angel, you might know it. On the top of the Angel there’s a bit school, down Goswell Road [ph] on the top of… you must have passed it…’

`So it was a school, where they…?’

`It was a school, yeah… there were the catacombs under the school you see, made into shelters.’

`Right. Was that where they were living at that time then?’

`Of a night.’

`Right. That’s where they were sleeping?’

`Every, every night, people either went down the tubes, err, or wherever. My family went down to Lady Owen’s and it was straggled with what they called chain bombs they used to release three or four bombs all chained together, so that when they flew out, I don’t know, if the things were made to, to, to part, it bombed in a pattern, and, and, it straggled Lady Owen’s, it was flattened. And I... I was the only one of my family that was on their feet because I’d come down from the army. Now, I went round hospitals, but I couldn’t find Nellie… she was… I knew Eileen was in Hill End Hospital with Katie… my mum didn’t get hurt, or my dad, I think they were in a boozer somewhere getting plastered. But they weren’t down Lady Owen’s, thank God. But all my sisters was damaged in some way or another. But Nellie, they couldn’t find. She was… and Eileen was under the debris for 36 hours before they dug her up, and she was a cripple when, when, err, forever, err {coughs]… an electric wire was shorting across her back while she was down under the… under the rubble. Nellie they couldn’t find. They found Eileen, she was in Hill End Hospital, that was… an evacuation place from Bart’s. Bart’s… all the hospitals had places where they took… and that was in St Alban’s, Hill End. She was in Hill End, they said they… couldn’t find Nellie. I went round the mortuaries, see I told you this was the, the other step… in the wrong direction for me. I went round the mortuaries, couldn’t find her. Now, in those… in, in the bombing days the mortuaries were so full up, so clustered that builders yards, they used to have a builders yard with their ladders and their paraphernalia, yeah, they commondeered builders yards for temporary mortuaries. And I was going round to these things seeing bits and pieces of bodies, and I couldn’t find Nellie. Eventually I thought I saw a handbag that belonged to my sister, and I thought there was a hand [crying]… that I recognised… and her ring… that I thought I recognised, but I wasn’t sure [pause/crying] and I said, yeah, I think that’s my sister and that’s what we buried. Now, to this day I’ve got my doubts, that that’s Nellie… [crying]. That’s the second shock that I, I had.’

`At this point you’d never seen a psychiatrist or anything like that?’

`Noooo.’

`So when, when was the first…?’{both talking together]

`No, the bleedin’ army… the only thing the army knew was M&D, have you ever heard of M&D?’

`No’

`Medicine and Duty. If you could walk you was fit. There was a war on, they was bombing this place, bombing all over… see.’

`So you were sent back into action?’

`I went back to the fishing boat.’

`Right’

`Right. Now, because I was six foot three… they said you’re being promoted, to deep sea ships, so that was when I… I went across the Atlantic, eight times, there… and eight times back. I went on a passenger liner, passenger cargo ship… [pause/moves]’

`Do you want to take a break?’

`Don’t worry, don’t worry. …called the Highland Monarch. That took 1500 troops to Durban, South Africa. At Durban, the living space where the troops was living had to be ripped down, and the engineers that was on the… I had to help them by the way because… out of the danger zone of an aircraft… see there was, so, so… sort of a… a circle of where aircraft could go. Are you with me? When we got away from this, this… the danger of aircraft, if they… if the captain said you did this or you did this for the safety of the ship, that was the words he used, you had to do it.’

`So when was the first time you did see a psychiatrist?’

`When?’

`Yeah. Was that after the war?’

`Oh no, I didn’t… I saw one during the war.’

`Right. Would you like to tell me the events that led up to that?’

`[Takes a deep breath]. Yeah, I was in a special unit that was made up of all sorts of people. I have to tell you this, that when we… when we landed… when we attacked Sicily, and took Sicily, now I’m talking about… the allies, or the… the army, or the navy, air force…’

`Mmm… this is in 19…?’

`When they took Sicily, we… I was in a special unit that was made up of Polish, Italians, ‘cause… we’d taken Sicily and there was a Martial Badolio [ph]… he took… Mussolini had scarpered somewhere or other, and Marial Badolio become, the Titilla Head [ph] of… and he capitulated to the allies, so… below Naples… I’m only drawing a rough line, it could have been up or down, right, say below Naples… the Italians was on our side… all the Italians wanted to come on our side… but they were under the kosh because the Germans were occupying… right. Now [coughs] we had to fight… I was in a… on a ship… bar…near a place called Setsurrahughes [ph] near Mount Etna, waiting for it to be safe enough to go into Italia. And when it was safe enough we went into… oh, where’s the bloody place… anyway… oh, I forget the name of… oh, I remember it’s a big port. We went, we went there, and I used to… I went… ah, there’s a… now, the third thing that I’m going to tell you, the trauma… call it a trauma shall we? The third trauma… the convoy that I was in got split up in two, one went round to Bari, B A R I, and one which I was on went into Taranto, alright. And I had mates… on, on ships that went into Bari… and I asked, I asked for leave, I said… yeah, you can’t do nothing… now [coughs]… I had about three days, so I packed a side pack, with a loaf of bread, couple of tins of bully beef and some ground… some coffee beans from the ship, you know I was on… it was like peace time on the, the ships… it was one… there was rationing but it was quite liberal. I had the side pack and I was going across Italy and I got a lift with an American… earth moving, they got big scoops, that scooped the land flat, for aircraft, you know, that’s what they were, this big convoy, I got a lift on them, they were going to Bari… you know, can I tell you about when we stopped for dinner on, on these Americans. This amazed me. We stopped for dinner, they all had bloody great big pork and I got… big pork chops, potatoes and beans, everything on plates, and there was coca cola and sod knows what… and one guy that was sitting next to me says ‘what, no ice cream?’ [laughs], and I’d been living on shit [laughs]… But none the less [laughs]’

`Go, go on with the…’

`We get to Bari… when I got to Bari, about the other half of the convoy had been bombed in the harbour… this was… this was… I’m likely to go funny describing it, this… so you’ll have to cut… when we got to Bari, Bari was under… err… well it was all ammo, already under military re… control, but this was tight… ‘bruump’ [ph], you’re out… had people, round Bari. A bomb had hit… a German bomb had hit an ammunition ship that blew up most of the ships in the harbour… got… right, and one of the ships, now… the British say we’re whiter than white… we’ll, we’ll fight with clean hands, then why was one of the ships carrying a poison gas, phosgene [ph]… I tell you how I know this… because, I got through this ring going to Bari, but, and I was commandered… bruump [ph]… lumbered. I’m on leave, no… bruump… there’s work for you to do… and it was… help with, with, the, the people jumping from one ship into the water… this poisonous gas, I think it was phosgene, was floating on the water like oil, and the poor bastards was getting killed by jumping in the water.’

`This gas, how do you spell that?’

`Mmmm?’

`Do you know how to… do you know how to spell the name of the gas?’

`Phosgene, no I don’t… but, I don’t… I think it was phosgene, I’m not sure, but none the less… you know when they rope a mad dog in with a loop round, and with a big pole… we were in lifeboats going round in Bari, floating bodies because they had this gas on them, looping the head of somebody or someone, or their feet, or whatever, and tie them along like… like dinghies… [pause] You wouldn’t believe… you wouldn’t believe… they’d get these bodies up because they couldn’t touch them, like if they was on…’

`And this was as the result of an accident?’

`A ship was carrying poison gas..’

`Which was…?’

`That went up… that went, went, went… when, when the ammunition ship blew the bleedin’ lot out… now, all these poor sods was being pulled up by the feet, all on these hoops, and by the hair or whatever, being hosed down, like pieces of meat… [pause] We have coffins, you know like that were flat, 3 ply or something like that, that when you bent them they, they reach the shape… they’d clip together… with gas capes on, wellies and, and bleedin’ great gloves, putting them in… that was… trauma number two according to the doctors… with me unfortunately’

`How did you feel about it?’

`How do I feel about this… now?’

`Well, then…?’

`How do I feel about it…?’

`Well how did you feel about it then, I mean you say the doctors said it was traumatic, did you think it was traumatic?’

`Oh I’m sure, err, I think… I think because… so many different ones agreed… I think they must have been right. You see, before I went round the bend, I’m being crude now aren’t I? Before I went round the bend he said there were sort of milestones, sort of… of what led up to it. And my family was one, number one, Bari was the other one. Right. Now… I… I… even forget, where I went from there… [pause] Aaaah… I... wait a minute… ohh… in between this time you know, I’m talking about now, I’m talking about… I’m digressing for a bit, right, because I… I’ve got out of chronological order [laughs]. I got… I was on deep sea boats, went to Canada, America, South America on the Highland Monarch and landed in Italy… I went, went on a Malta convoy, did you know Malta was starving during the war? Well let me briefly tell you… Malta was starving during the war… it was quite close to Italy, with Italian dive bombers and this and that, day and night, flattened the latter… they call it Malta George Cross now, you… did you know that?’

`No’

`Malta was awarded the George Cross for what it put up with… they was eating rats and mice and… I don’t know what they wasn’t eating… and…
‘cause Malta convoy was assembled in Gibraltar… going through the mediterranean to get to Malta… one, you had the Spanish, and the Germans in Algisaris [ph] I think it was, that’s the other side of Gibraltar… Gibraltar’s one side and the other… I think its Algisaris… and all the German bloody spies look, look, look, looking at us, yet we could practically see them and all, you know what I mean… they even come round while the convoy’s assembling… I, I shot the machine gun at them. I tell you what, they come round… ‘cigarette Tony [ph]… cigarette’… well we was told that they wasn’t going to get too near the ship because they put limpit mines, you know what limpit mines are? Limpit mines… ‘bruump’ [ph], they come near the ship and ‘bruump’ you’ve got one. Let them get too… so I said, ‘via’ [ph], speaking Italian, ‘via’ go away, ‘vamousse’… they say ‘hey, hey, hey…’ two of them in the boat, and I started firing. My mate says ‘here turn it in, you’ll kill them’, I went fuck them, they might have bombs… for, to kill us. Right… the captain said to me afterwards, ‘you did right’… didn’t hurt anybody… that’s how good a, a marksman I was [laughs]. They went away… ran away like anyway… and when we went… when the convoy went through to Malta, we had condors, you know what a condor is? It’s got four engines, can stay in the air for a day or so, going round and round and round, following us, giving directions for submarines or whatever. People going ashore one way, North Africa and then, looking out for us… we were attacked all the way to Malta, day and night, right… our ship got hit enough for us to be pulled into deserter, for a patch up, but we went on to Malta. I don’t think you were too… anyway… we got to Valetta, we got in the harbour… and we were greeted as… well… as saviours [laughs] you know what I mean? The… the people were really hungry… wonderful people Maltese. None the less, lets get back to Italy. I was in Italy, and I got stationed in… err… oh, my God, not… begins with B… [pause] I was on a flat bottomed boat, I’ll think of the name in a bit…’

`Ok. I mean what I want to get to now is, you said that…’

`What do you want to know?’

`Well it was during the war that you first…?’

`This was during the war…’

`Yeah, no, I know that… but that you first saw a psychiatrist… you first saw a psychiatrist during the war, that’s what… [both talking together]’

`Ahhhh, that was a long while back… a long while back… I… well, not so long ago… listen… err… Brindisi [ph] is the place I was thinking of…’

`Right’

`Brindisi… I was stationed in Brindisi taking supplies up to the partesans who was behind the lines. We were in shallow draft ships.’

`Right’

`Do you know what a shallow draft ship is? It’s one that can float in about four foot of water’

`Right’

`So it can go up beaches or whatever and pull itself off, crash… Now, I got transferred to… it was an unlucky ship for me, a ship called Hindsholm [ph], I should have called it the Hinds Arse, or something like that, or Arsehole… Hindsholm… it, it had two funnels, I used to call them woodbine funnels, they were very narrow. It was only a little ship, but it was a shallow draft ship, going from Brindisi to Ancona, alright, not behind the lines. Ancona was quite close to where they was fighting. But… [coughs] when we was in Ancona, I was on anti-sabotage watch, had a rifle thrown over my shoulder, walking up and down the quay, watching nobody touched the ship or went near the ship… sometimes I’d be on the gangway… who was coming on and who was coming off. But it was twilight… I told you that they had a ‘stand to’ time for the Army, it was twilight, getting dark. Now, I found this out afterwards, I didn’t know, I didn’t remember, a plane came down and dropped a torpedo, aerial torpedo… you know what they are? Seeing the ship with the two funnels I suppose, right… but the ship was the other side of the jetty… I was on the jetty, walking up and down… and the torpedo hit the bloody jetty, ship was alright, but I went from arsehole to breakfast time then… I was gone.’

`Right’

`I went down back to Brindisi and they put me in a hospital and said I had pneumonia. This is… bits and pieces… see, when you’re… when you’re… when you’ve gone, I don’t know how to describe this… or, or, or… whether the words are acceptable to you… some things you understand, some things you, you, you, you see…’
`Describe it in your own words’ [both talking together]

`…but you can’t speak about them. You’re, you’re lock-jawed… err, because, what you say might be [talks inaudibly] you know what I mean… you might be stuttering. I was in this hospital and then I got transferred to a ship, which I found out afterwards, again, that was going home to England. It was called the Ocean Vigour. Now, I went back as a soldier. Now really the unit I was in I was neither soldier, sailor or civilian. I had civilian clobber, right, because we used to go into neutral ports… I mean I sailed into Huelva [ph], Huelva in Spain, many times to pick up iron awe, and along South America, I was in Buenes Aires, Montevedeo, Rio Grande de Sol… Jamaica, and… see, so I was a civilian, sailor, soldier. All sorts of things. None the less, that thing… I was on the Ocean Vigour… and as she… to remember it… then I didn’t remember it, then… I remember parts of it’

`Were you in shock then?’

`I must have been, yeah. The Army didn’t give a shit, anything about people like me… if, if they didn’t understand it, if it wouldn’t respond to medicine and duty they didn’t know what to do with you… didn’t want to know you, right. So I got bunged on this ship, Ocean Vigour, and got home, I don’t know… I don’t remember to this day where we landed… the next… I don’t… I remember snatches of the Ocean Vigour because I’m… I try to think back and back and back, back, back… and I remembered Ocean Vigour and, and, and sorting it out… asked people, looked at Lloyds list… you know Lloyds list?

`Yeah’

`It’s a paper that tells you who’s sailing and where they are and everything like that. So I had to dig this out, dear me. I found out I was on the Ocean Vigour, and… I got home to England. Now, from there, I couldn’t tell you truthfully… truthfully… I remember snatches of being in… there’s… a big place near the House of Commons, big block of flats going towards Chelsea, I don’t know if you know them… I’ll think of the name of them… but they made a temporary hospital there. I can remember going from there in the back of a… an army ambulance that was all locked up…’

`Mmm’

`I don’t remember getting to Banstead’

`Right, so you weren’t physically injured at this point?’

`Yeah, I picked up a, a splinter… of wood or something that went through just there with my tibea and fibea open all at… fractured.’

`Right… so they took you to Banstead… they took you to Banstead?’

`They took me to Banstead. Now, well… I don’t remember going to Banstead.’

`Right’

`I remember waking up in a padded cell. Err… smelling of all sorts of things that people have to do, naturally, and then… they… [coughs] the bloke who came in, called me all the names under the sun… says ‘don’t you know to use that’ a rubber po… there was nothing, nothing… err, gentle about the way they treated, the army in… or me, talk about me, because that’s what I know about, in Banstead?’

`Had you… I mean can you remember being admitted… were you…?’

`No… no… I can’t remember being admitted. I remember being in the… I can’t remember… I didn’t know the outside of it, nothing, nothing… all I can remember is the walls, and the… they’re all like, if it was a suite of furniture, but it was in err, leather or…whatever…’

`Right, and that was the door, and every… everything?’
`All the way round… all the way round’ [both talking together]

`Right, and there was no windows, nothing?’

`What you trod on was… right… and err, they stripped me and my clobber, and I, I… they left me naked at one time… because… err, I did my business… it came from me, you understand me? Do you understand that?’

`It came… no… can you explain?’

`I didn’t… alright… I’ll put it to you in crude terms. I pissed and shit myself and didn’t know it…’

`Right’

`Ok… and err…’

`And what was going through your mind at this time, can you remember how you felt?’

`I didn’t know. I, I… I recognised… I wondered where I was… but eventually… and, food, err… see they… they was annoyed with… they was annoyed… they was annoyed that, that… I was annoyed with myself. I mean… when I’m complus mentus, I mean, there’s the toilet there, baby… if you want to crap, you go in there. I… I wasn’t err… err…I wasn’t with it. And, and because somebody had to clean this up… very likely them… they’d give me a push and a shove… stupid bastard or something like that, push it… in the corner… I don’t really know. I know that they was rough on me’

`How long do you think you spent in the padded cell?’

`I don’t know. I don’t know.’

`Do you think it was days or weeks, or…?’

`I don’t know how long I was in the padded cell, but… I knew… I knew when, I started using the potty… right. Because I couldn’t [laughs]… without the fucking orderly… not, not, not err, liking the smell, I could… when I started to come err, round a bit, I didn’t like the bloody smell, so I used to use the potty… and, and knock on the door. When I started… it’s like a baby isn’t it? It’s like a baby. When I got house trained like a bloody dog, knows where to crap, they promoted me to outside. Well now, Banstead, I don’t know if you know it, or what it… I’ll describe it as
I know it.’

`Please do’

`It was an old fashioned, black fortress with iron bars… but the army had… you know what an army hut is don’t you? Where they put their soldiers, about 30 soldiers and a sergeant lives… you must have seen them in a Bilko on the… or you’ve seen the army huts… they, they must have joined three together, because the middle one had beds in, err, with sheets and pillowcases and was a hospital, then they had heavy wire that petitioned that middle piece off… that other part was called a recreation, they let you in and out with the keys, and back to bed… I don’t know what the other part was for, but none the less, I remember there was three parts. The beds, and the recreation place. Oh.. the ablution sheds and things, and, and the showers and things like that’

`And you were locked… you were locked in there? Were you locked in
there?’

`Oh locked in, yeah… locked in’

`And there were other people with you?’

`Yeah, yeah, yeah… there was about err… now, I am supposing… supposition… there may have been about twenty other blokes in beds’

`Were they all soldiers as well?’

`All?’

`Soldiers? Or former soldiers?’

`Soldiers, yeah, soldiers, yeah… they kept you. The army kept you separated… I’m talking about separate from sailors, or, or… [inaudible]… but I was in with the army. And they were all in more or less the same as I was, but… they treated you, or me… they treated everybody as though they were an incumberance… we were an f***ing nuisance to them and to the country. And besides that baby, who knows you’re not kidding? What plan… the three card trick, do you understand? This is what they had in mind that you were all swinging the lead, that that was basic thinking for… you were all crooked.’

`So was it… the nurses… were there nurses and doctors running it?’
`No… the nurses were army people… they had bloody great chains and keys. Right. Now I got into trouble there, twice. Let me tell you…’

`Ok, lets take a break here.’
[End of DVCPro tape 2]
[Start of DVCPro tape 3 – VHS tape 1 continues]
[start of DVCPro tape three – VHS tape 1 continues]

`…up that road’

`Yeah, yeah… ok, are we rolling?’

`And it helps me.’

`Right. Good. Now, you were just beginning to talk about Banstead?’

`Yeah… I, I, I’d been… I told you, I err… started to use the, the rubber potty.’

`And they put you in this… these three huts?’ [both talking together]

`And they put in, in, in, in the ward… with beds, and my father came…’

`Right’

`…down to visit me. And… I, I could see him… but I couldn’t speak to him. I… I had all these things I wanted to say to him, but I couldn’t say them, I just stared at him, because… he started to cry. And [laughs] he said… I found all this out after… putting two and two together… he started to cry… he said ‘I’d rather see him dead than like this’. My dear old dad said that. Now… I got up out of bed, err, in time… started cleaning myself, because… the, the regime you’re trained to do in the Army, I mean, get up, clean yourself, err… is good in the respect, that, that it sort of clicks with you that that’s what you’ve got to do… straighten the bed… started making the bed myself, you know what I mean, and… then I graduated to the… recreation room. Then, you see, they… are still thinking that you’re pulling a fast one, right… this is what I, I… I’m, I’m not sure, I might, might have it all arse upwards, I’m not sure, I’m just saying this is what’s going through my mind.’

`That’s your impression’

`Because he said, on a Friday, ‘pay parade’ [ph] ‘all line up’… now this is patients, see… this is, he’s talking to people that have had the guts knocked out of them, if I can describe it that way’

`What were the other patients like?’

`All sorts of things. Let me, me get this over, because it’s terrible. You won’t believe it. So, I said I’m not bloody lining up… I said what do you want me to line up for? ‘pay parade, pay parade’, and… an officer there with a, a, a fold up table, you know, just like in the army, right, calling names, there’s the sergeant there calling ‘Burgess’… I must have said what you want. The officer said ‘ten shill…’ and I remember him giving me a ten shilling note. I said, I don’t want this, and I tore it up, in confetti… I said fuck it, I don’t want anything from you. Oh my God, they practically jumped on me. Two of these so called nurses, two big burly bastards’

`Men?’

`Men, yeah… oh, they were… all, all the nurses were men… got hold of me, lifted me up, and I was 6ft 3. I was taken into the ablution shed… and, one… I was struggling mind you, fighting… one got… had his keys in his fist, and battered me on the back of the neck… the other one was going ‘give him another one’ or something like that, I really don’t know because its sixty years ago. But I know about these bleedin’ keys, I felt them at the back of my neck, right. And they bunged me back in the padded cell, right. But there again see, I’m… I’m, apart from err, having the shit knocked out of me, I’m ok, I cleaned myself, done my business in the… and eat what grub that come. Oh, one of them even spat in the bloody… plate, he brought me. That’s… that’s the feeling [pause] My God… they had two, three knock ups there. One night they said… you’ve got to have a blood test. Come and… see, out of… I was taken out after about three or four days, out the padded cell, and I was back in a bed. Blood test, ‘Jones…. all line up’ you know, army style, ‘get going’… well I thought a blood test, prick your finger, put it on a slide, something like… something… I thought it was simple anyway. I didn’t know what a bloody slide was then, but I know… I’m only telling you I thought it was a simple business. Now, when I get in there, I see a f... can I?’

`Sure’

`A fucking great syringe… they’re going to take half my blood away from me. I said not bloody likely, I’m… I started to fight and back in the bloody padded cell I went. Now… I… [coughs]… after I don’t know how long, maybe a day or two, they start to explain things to me then, alright… and I am in a position to listen to them, in the padded cell. A woman doctor came in with these two louts, who you would call nurses. They weren’t louts really, they’re doing their job… they don’t know shit from clay, they’re bullet heads, you know what I mean… and she said to me, ‘look, Gunner [ph] Burgess’, I said don’t call me Gunner Burgess… Mr Burgess please, or nothing. Right. She said ‘why’s that?’. I said, you can fucking well shoot me, I am not having anything to do with the Army, nothing. That’s the reason why I confetti’d that ten bob note, and threw it back. If I’d taken your bleedin’ money, I’m in your prey, I’m back on the old, sausage machine, I said, you… nothing… ‘Oh’ she said, ‘I understand that, but let me understand… let me tell you…’ she was quiet speaking, a very good one at that, she said, ‘let me tell you why… we’re trying to examine you on how you come into this hospital and we have to take a blood sample because venereal diseases can cause what is happening to you.’ So I said, I ‘ve never heard of that before. She said, ‘well its with syphilis’, so I said, well, I’m staying well clear of the Royal Albert Docks, you know, I said I’ll stay well clear of that… I’ll do what you ask me to, I said, but why didn’t they explain that to me before. I said I was confronted with, with something that looked like a bicycle pump with a needle on it. She said… so we went in and took my blood sample, and of course that’s pure. That was number one. Number two, I had to go to the dentist when I was in the… recreational room right. I was marched to the dentist as if I’m prisoner escort. I sat in his chair, he said ‘open your mouth’, I said err… I’m not opening my mouth for you. He said, I’m the dentist…’ I said… I’m a patient, I’m not going to be tortured or practised on by the likes of you. I said you want to practise somebody’s teeth get a nannygoat and pull his teeth out. I said you ain’t touching my fucking teeth. Right. I was back in the bloody cell again [laughs]. And, God Bless him, the dentist come to talk to me. He said [laughs], look... I am a skilled dentist, I practice in Harley Street no, no, no less, and he showed me his papers with his address. He turned out to be a smashing guy [coughs]… he said, ‘come along and let me see your mouth’, he says, ‘and I’ll tell you what wants doing’. And, he done some bloody… I’m pleased that he did my mouth, because… I’ve been… my mouth has been looked after by a Harley Street dentist, but… that, that landed me in… but none the less, lets get away from the padded cell.’

`Were you receiving any other sorts of treatment, any…? Were you given any drugs or anything like that?’

`Ohh, yeah… they give you, pills. Have you seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?’

`Yes’

`There was… looking at them, I thought to myself, somebody like me has been talking to these film makers, because that’s exactly as it was. They wanted you damped down, and under sedation. They used to give you Benzadrine. Now, they used to… they used to give me two tablets in the morning, and one tablet at night. That’s three. Now when I got out of… when I got out of… I was going to say when I got out of Banstead… I was still given loads of these Ben… Benzadrine, to take, one and a half. They’ve got a cut mark in half the tablet, so you break them in half.’

`Do you know how many grams they were or…?’

`Mmm?’

`How strong they were? Milligrams or anything?’

`No. But wait a minute, I took those for… I… oh… I don’t know how long. It runs into years, two years, eighteen months, but I got… from the recreation room, Banstead had a whacking great big cricket pitch… lovely green… its in Surrey, and if you was to forget the place over there, there was the country, bloody seats, and, lovely… anyway, I went from there to the Olympia, that had, demobbed gear…’

`This was….?’

`Oh, one important thing. One very important thing had happened. They took me into, they took three of us into the civilian part of Banstead, you see… did I explain it to you that there was a military side, that was built there, plastered on it, and the permanent workhouse looking place with bars on the windows. They took three of us round there. Osten… is this English? Ostensively?’

`Obstensively, yeah’

`…to help them, with some boxes, but it wasn’t for that. When they told me that they were sending me out for three months’ leave, they said, and this kept me on the straight and narrow… ‘cause this place when I went in there, was dark and dank and I saw the inmates there… oh, My God, when I think of it… it keeps me awake at night, it’s like Charles Dickens’ place… they were none too clean, but the women there had lipstick plastered all the way round their face, and, and, powdered, oh, and I thought to myself, oh poor dears, God, my… ahh, that upset me no end. Before I went out with… I wen to the Olympia and got my civilian clobber.’

`Sorry what was the Olympia?’

`The Olympia was a demobilisation, centre’

`In, in…?’

`They had tailors, hatters, oh, the lot there, shoe people’

`This was in London?’

`In London… in .’

`In Banstead, were you certified or diagnosed, or anything, did they…?’

`No… I’m not certified…’

`They didn’t tell you anything about what they thought was wrong with your…?’
`No, no, no, no… I wasn’t certified. The Army wouldn’t certify a bloke if he ran around with, with a tommy gun, they’d want him out the bloody way, it’s not… none of their business. You understand me? What they know fuck all about they don’t want to know about. Are you with it? If you didn’t respond to Medicine & Duty, which was a favourite way… you go into an Army place now and say M&D they know exactly what you mean. This, this is… a generalisation of me… thinking back.’
`So, they sent you to Olympia, did that mean that you were discharged?’
`They took me… took us, took a lot of us in a coach to Olympia.’

`Right.’

`We got fitted out, got a cardboard box with all the civvie clobber in. You went from one… there was a tremendous, it was like one big… oh, you went from one to the other, got shirt, this… everything you would need in civilian life. [coughs] excuse me… and back to the nut house. Right. They… said to me… the woman psychiatrist I rem… this just shows you what a bastard I must… with all the things I forget or can’t remember, I remember her name, and what she said to me. Right. It wasn’t a Mr or a doctor it was a shrink, a head shrink at… Mrs Samuels, alright. She said ‘we’re giving you three months’ leave. You’re still in the army for three months, but you’re a civilian practically, but you’re still in the army’. The two are opposite in terms aren’t they, still in the army but you’re a civilian… my God.. or something like that. She was all creamy and all syrupy you know, and… she said, ‘but you know if you get in trouble with the civilian authorities, ‘you’ll be back there as a civilian’, and she pointed to this… well that frightened the shit out of me. Kept me awake, oh… for… months if not years.’

`Can you say a bit more about what you found so frightening or… can you say a bit more about what you found so frightening about the civilian…?’

`About her?’

`No, about the hospital, Banstead?’

`Banstead. Well, what can I say? It says it all if you know now that they’ve turned it quite simply into a young persons prison. It’s made to measure as a prison. But the army did what they had to do to build it up and to close it up, to secure… and… it was rudimentary, because, I’ll repeat myself’

`That’s ok’

`They believed primarily that they had somebody pulling a fast one on them, alright, so… they had to see you in a wheelchair with no legs, to say oh, he’s… he’s sick [laughs]… then they’d know… and they didn’t want to know, and the ones you saw, I’m sure, they were old, they were throw outs wanting a job, because anybody that can’t get a job as a shrink in silly street is made to measure in bloody, eh, so you had all, all the specked apples, but… what can I tell you about it, I don’t want to… I want to go on, I don’t… I want to leave that…’

`Alright, just to finish that bit…’

`But I’m with you’

`Yeah, just to finish that bit off… just to finish that bit off, how… how would you like to have been treated at that time. What do you think would
have helped you?’

`I would like to have been treated with respect. That’s number one. I would have liked to have been treated by… people I had faith in, a doctor or somebody like that, who I believed in. But nobody did I believe in, in Banstead. Nobody. They were what the army told them to be. If they can walk, they’re fit. Out. And they didn’t understand any… or didn’t seem to understand…’

`Right’

`Shall we just leave it there for…’

`Sure…‘

`Ok’

`I’ve got over the bloke with the keys. You… did that come over to you?’

`Yeah, yes, yeah… we can go back. What I thought we’d… we can go back over a couple of things about Banstead because I’d like to hear a bit more’

`As many times as you like’

`But…’

`Are you going out for a…?’

`Yeah, we’ll go out for a bite and come back at…’

`I’ll have something to eat and come back’

`Ok, so we’ll come back at about one… two thirty I should think.’

[break]

`Ok’

`This is something… they let us in… they told us to keep together when we went on the, on the, in the cricket place, you know, big vast field… they says… and they watched you, you know, and this is one thing that I objected to. There was one fella, didn’t know… he was gone. Now, two others who I don’t… were au fait… you know, they, they, they was, they had their nut about them. They’d go and play with him, you know, play jokes on him, and this is what they did. They went up to him and said, ‘General DeGaulle is going to turn up to give you a presentation, the Cridegale [ph] and they’d made out of a cherry blossom blacking tin, just round [ph] with a piece of rag and a safety pin… and about a dozen of them lined up, and him in the middle, proud as punch, and… they, they’d [sings anthem], says ‘… so and so, for bravery on the field of battle…’ and he stood there, poor sod, and then said… ‘presents you with the Cridegale [ph]’, and somebody said ‘step forward’ and they’d [laughs] pin this bleedin’ blacking tin on him, and, I thought they were terrible, and I complained to that woman, Mrs Samuels, she said ‘don’t worry about it’, she said, ‘you’re going to go out to the real world sooner or later, where you will meet this kind of thing’, alright. She said you might as well meet it here under these conditions. She said, ‘so don’t worry about it, providing you don’t hurt anybody’, and she, she laughed about it’

`Did you ever think of complaining about…’

`Mmm?’

`Did you ever think of complaining about when you were, when those nurses beat you up, did you, did you complain about that?’

`Nobody wants to know. Nobody wanted to know. I, I, I… I was thinking back, I, I… would think that the… it might have been a regular thing, I don’t know, I wouldn’t like to say. Perhaps somebody temporarily went out of his mind, and because you had to be out of your mind to, to beat another human in cold blood, but, there were two of them. But whether it was, a regular thing or not, I couldn’t say. I know that they didn’t take kindly to me because I wouldn’t have the army you see. I mean the shrink asked me on one occasion, said… testing me you see, and said ‘we’re going to release you tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’ll do?’, I said the first person I see in uniform, I will kill. She said, ‘you will? How?’. I said any way possible, the first one in uniform, be it be a boyscout, a copper, anybody. So… that done me a favour, I think I went back in the oven for my eyes to be done [laughs] you know. But, they ask you questions like that, what are you going to do… where are you going on..?, but generally speaking, all they wanted to do, in that hospital, and I don’t want to disparage them, I’ve got… I’m a… I’m quite perfectly happy, with the cards I’ve been dealt, you understand me? I think I’ve been happy, I am happy and lucky. I mean there’s other poor sods, I can walk around can’t I, I can chat, I, I can weigh things up and go to the country, I can go to the seaside, what a pleasure to be out in the garden. So, what have I got to grumble about now? So, and I’ve got no axe to grind.’

`What kind of… how did you spend your days then?’ [both talking together]

`I’ve got nothing to gain by bullshitting you…’

`Yeah, but how did you spend… was there a routine?’

`How did I…?’

`How did you spend your days in Banstead, what was like a typical day?’

`In Banstead. Oh, I can tell you this. This is another funny thing [laughs]. There was an old guy walking along with a white marking machine, right. I think he was one of the, the civilian inmates that was left about, see, who did a bit of gardening or whatever. So, a couple of the fellas [ph]… this is another terrible thing, he, he put markers where he was going to mark, I think it was a rugby pitch, or a football pitch, had a big… you know, the penalty and things like that, they played football I think… and they moved the markers [laughs]… it isn’t funny, but them winding him… oh my God… [laughs] Anyway, things were, actually… you see, I… we, we struck up a relationship of a kind with one another, some… some of them were, was… past reasoning, you know what I mean, past caring if you like, but… by and large… the fear of, staying in that place, hung around [ph] like the sword of Damacles, you know… if you don’t… even kid to them that you’re alright… and yet, I used to hide it up… I used to tremble… and you wouldn’t believe, I don’t believe it myself, when I think about it, I could ring my vest out. Banstead… I kept as quiet about that as possible, because I could go to the ablutions and have a wash down, alright. But I kept the… I wanted to get out of there, which I did eventually. I don’t know how long I was there, not very long I don’t think.’

`Were you months or weeks?’

`A couple of months or something like that. I don’t think I was there long. But the fear of that… woman saying if I broke the law in any way, I would be back there for a very long time. Now, that’s… let me work it out. I’m seventy eight now… that was… and I was about twenty six then. I’m still afraid of going back to bloody Banstead, although I’m free as the breeze. They would have to have a bloody good reason now, to bung me back in the oven, but what other questions do you want to ask me?’
`Did you know who was in charge of Banstead at the time? Did you know who was in charge of Banstead? Did you know who was in charge of the hospital?’

`Do I know who was in charge?’

` No I don’t…’

`You didn’t...’

`I’ll come closer, does she know, the girl?

`Yes, that’s fine’

`I’ve come closer because I can’t hear you very well.’

`Right’

`No, I don’t know who was in charge at all. I think Mickey Mouse was in charge. Really, I mean…’

`Were there ward rounds?’

`Mmm?’

`Was there a ward round, with…? A ward round?’

`A war dress?’

`No, ward round. Did you have ward rounds?’

`A ward?’

`Ward, round?’

`Ward round? What, go round the wards?’

`Did some doctors and nurses come round and visit each person regularly at all or…?’

`No… if I understand you right, is that… if they come round the ward and see… ask you if you was alright, and how you’re doing and good morning, or…?’

`Yes, that’s right.’

`No, they didn’t do that. They come round with a little pill for you and watched you take it.’

`Right.’

`I… the only time I saw… I saw a, a shrink in there about four times and that was always the woman, Mrs Samuels’

`Right. Right’

`… the shit… I’m not talking about her… for, for putting the fear of God in me about going… whatever.’

`Right.’

`No, there wasn’t a ward round.’

`Right, ok.’

`They was embarrassed by you, they wanted you out of the way, they didn’t understand you.’

`Right. So then you were…’

`That’s only… Nelson [both talking together]… get it good. I know nothing about psychiatry, I’m not qualified, I’m giving you a patient’s opinion, and that could be biased or whatever, it’s my opinion, that, that… we were an embarrassment to the army… they didn’t understand us, they didn’t want to understand us, they wanted us either to get back into uniform, or out.’

`Right. So once you left Banstead you went back to London…?’

`I went back to London, yeah… I went back to, to my mum and dad at err… [takes a deep breath] … they couldn’t… they couldn’t or, now what can I say… I was a… a burden for them because I paced around like a caged tiger, see, and I didn’t used to talk to them… my powers of talking or conversing, I mean, I say to them I found them today, but in the early days of release there I was a worry for my family. I lived with my mother, my sister, Winnie, who lived in… off the Kingsland Road then. I… I rented an attic from her. She didn’t want any money, but she… right. Another sister in Hounslow, that was the one that called herself Cath, because she didn’t like Lizzie, didn’t like to be called [laughs]… it was terribly working class to be called Lizzie [laughs] so ‘my name is Cathleen’, what a load of old crap [laughs], but none the less [you make me laugh]. I don’t know how I survived for a very, very long time but… because, I went out and I had attacks while I was out. I tell you what they discovered… a doctor discovered how to… attack these attacks, and I tell you what, tell you what happened. I used to sweat and tremble… and I really couldn’t lift a… you know, I couldn’t do a thing… just used to stand there… I was gone. Oh… you just wouldn’t believe how much I sweated. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anybody like that in that condition, trembling and sweating, now, I tell you what the nice thing that happened to me when I was… I was in real schtuck [ph]… and it was in real trouble. You know… you ever heard of the word ‘schtuck’?’

`Schtuck, oh yes.’

`It’s a Jewish word. I was in right trouble in Rosebery Avenue, that’s just a little way away from us. I was sweating and, and trembling. I thought I’ve got to ring for an ambulance, I’m going to fall down. I’ll ring for an… and I got in the phone box, one of those old fashioned ones I told you I used to screw, and I’m trying to get the number, and I can’t get the number, I put tuppence in, I’ve lost it, I’ve pressed the wrong bloody button and I haven’t got any money. In the end I smashed the, the, the… the mouthpiece, smashed the bloody windows… and, I would have been there a fortnight, kicking it, but a copper came, and run me into… Kings Cross Road… Police Station, and I think I came up there, you know, the next morning, for destroying the… and… they asked me why, you know, what was I doing… what, you know, what was it all about, why did you do this, terrible thing? I told them I was ill. I couldn’t get the hospital, I didn’t know the number, see, I didn’t know the number getting on the blower… I thought, dial 911 or whatever the number, thing is, 999 and they would send a conveyance… and he said I would have to see a probation officer, alright, and I think the probation officer was in the court, or one of them, a Mr Frost. Now, I know him because he [laughs] he was a nice fella and it was frosty this morning [ph]… and I knew Frost, and he asked me what happened and I told him. I said look, I’m in dead trouble, not for the paying… I said, I’ll pay back for the damage I’ve done, right, I said, but I don’t want… I said, I told him what I told you, what… I’d been released… and I showed him, I think I had a… pass on me, from the army’

`Right’

`I said I’m still in the Army technically but I’m from a hospital…’

`And the war was still on?’

`What?’

`The war was still going on? What year…?’

`No, the war had ended by then’

`The war had ended.’

`The war in Europe had ended.’

`Right.’

`There was still a war in Japan’

`So this was 194…?’

`1945, something like that’

`Right’

`See the war in Europe had finished’

`Right’

`The war in Japan was still on, until they dropped the bloody bomb.’

`Right’

`Right… and he must have… he took sympathy on me I think… he was a kind man. He must have got at the magistrate behind my back, and says ‘we’re dismissing this because…’ now what were the words? ‘… he was temporarily nutted in…’ oh, no, not responsible for his actions, that’s what it meant, and the court accepts this, and he has accepted the court’s idea of going for treatment, and I was duly released, lucky eh? But not… I tell you how lucky I was… smashing that phone box up, I’ll tell you how lucky I was. About a week’s time, I got a letter from the Evening Standard, you know the paper?’

`Yeah’

`Asking them if I’d come along and speak to them and they would pay me expenses, see. I thought what have I got to lose? I don’t know what they’re talking about but, right… I was… saw the personnel manager there… he said, ‘your case last week, in… Kings Cross Police…’, I think it was, I came up in… is there a magistrate’s court in police… in… I think it was there.’

`I think so’

`It doesn’t really matter… it doesn’t really matter. He said, ‘your case was reported and put on the spike [laughs]… in a newspaper they talk that way, you… he said, ‘we didn’t use it but it went through the mill and we have to employ a quota of, discharged personnel, you know, discharged service people’… he said, ‘if you’re up to it, we might, wouldn’t mind giving you a job’. So I said… I said [laughs] he don’t believe it do you? [laughs] talk about smashing up a bloody phone box… somebody puts the story through as it was his job to report… court reporter, and talk about luck, you know… I’m religious… I am religious really, I know you wouldn’t believe an uncouth bastard as I am can, can thank God, but somebody is watching me and has helped me. And I said… he said ‘look, if we give you a certain test, and paid’ he said, ‘in newspapers we have casuals and casual casuals’… I thought what’s a casual? I can understand a casual worker going there one day and getting paid… but what’s a casual casual? He said [laughs], ‘well a casual says he’ll come in Thursday or Friday, that’s a casual… a casual casual is when we get onto the union and say we need two men, finish with him’. He said ‘we have regular casuals’, I said I don’t understand it but I’ll come in a s a casual, and they put… they gave me tests, now… I’d forgotten, not how to talk by this time, I talked too bloody much… but how to read and… oh, I could read… I learned to read, but I can’t spell, even to this day, I don’t know how I fooled everybody all this time, but I did [coughs]. When I start to write a letter, I think to myself, I don’t… they’ll think this Charlie, you know… I spell colour the American way, and, and all sorts of things, and they’ll, they’ll laugh at my bloody childish letter so I won’t write to them, I’ll ‘phone you… I’ll get on the answerphone, so I was crafty enough, I got to be crafty enough, I don’t know about when the… you don’t confuse being crafty with being intelligent. I don’t consider myself being intelligent, I’m bloody crafty though. They gave me tests and they said what did you work at… and I said I was an apprentice. ‘Oh, were you?’, because they use blocks… in, in newspapers, adverts and things like that. I said no, I don’t fancy doing that, I said, I’m not going to go backwards, I want to go forward. So she said… ‘here’s a pencil’, she said ‘doodle on that paper, draw a cat or something like that’, she said ‘you’re an artist’ [laughs], laughable… laughable isn’t it… but it’s true… it’s true… she said ‘would…’ then I went back to the personnel bloke, he said ‘well, we’ve got a report that you might fit in in the artists studio [laughs]… he said ‘would you come in there as a casual for three months?’. I said… so I get paid every day. He said, ‘yes, and every day you get the sack’ [both laugh] he said. ‘We pay you’, oh right… so, I went there for three months as a casual and I turned, fortunately, I turned up most of the time. He said, ‘ring up, let us know you’re not coming in, you still get your wages’… right, I think I rung them up two or three times and told them that I don’t feel well. ‘Boom’ [ph] I got my wages the next day, a day’s wages with holiday money, pension, all the… in newspapers they do that, every… every day in the week they pay daily, some people I mean. Right [coughs]. So three months, they said ‘well we can offer you a permanent position in… as an artist’. You know what they used to do there… now only the person… the personnel manager said ‘this is confidential’, he says, ‘you’ve got a disabled badge on there’, he said ‘take it off, put it in your pocket’. He said, ‘this is the authorities era, the, the people who should know, do know what your circumstances are. He said ‘anybody else, tell them refer them to me’, alright. So I went into the artists department and you know in newspapers a cartoon has got Jack, the cartoonist, right… well he didn’t sign it that way every day, he signs it once and they make a thousand on a sheet like stamps. Somebody has to cut them up and put them down, and somebody sticks them on his work, and that was me [laughs]… cow gum… [laughs]… isn’t it laughable… cow gum, let me see if I’ve got a stamp… I’m just… might have… to show you what… [looks for stamp]… there just might be a for instance here… that I can show you. No, I can’t…’

`Don’t worry, I think I know…’

`No… I would like to show you, Peter’

`Ok’

`No, there’s nothing in here, but… right. On all work that was submitted, I stuck a label or a logo we used to call them, the, the the… the logo of the person who had, you know, theirs… crossword puzzles, and all sorts of people sent different things in, and I had to recognise and put the thing on… that was for a long while.’

`Were you still receiving… were you still on any treatment at this time?’

`Leave it… leave it a minute… just be patient. I wasn’t there long, when I disappeared. I was, I was there four months, and I didn’t turn up, and my parents and my sisters all rung the Standard and asked them where I was. They didn’t know… people didn’t know. For four months I was adrift… four bloody months, drifting around. Eventually the salvation army picked me up. I was lousy, had crabs and I don’t know what I didn’t have. They took me down to the toilet, put me under a shower, went to Woolworths and bought a razor, ‘cause I had four months’ bum fluff round my face… found old clobber and burned mine I think, or cleaned it, I think it needed burning… I was a tramp for four months. Right.’
`Can you remember much of what…?’

`That was in… near Birmingham. Oh, I’ll think of the name of the place. Its important that I tell you the name of the place, because you might check up or want to check up… Dudley… Dudley’s [inaudible] the place…’

`Right’

`And… Castle Street, Dudley, I remember where I got picked up. Castle Street, Dudley.’

`So you’d wondered from… you’d wondered up from London to Birmingham?’

`How I got there I don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t want to know [laughs]. I’ve been told, forget it… [laughs]. But it wasn’t four months it was sixteen weeks. I tell you for… tell you why. The subway to the Sally Ac we call that. You know why they call it the Sally Ac?’

`No’

`You know when they say roger, err… and they give you the name of a plane and they say… what can I say… sally means, S, Ac is A in morse code, Sally Ac… Salvation Army. All soldiers know that, to go into the Salvation Army for a cup of tea or something like that, I’m going to the Sally Ac. Right, but none the less, these good people, cleaned me up, fed me, saw that I was ok, put me on a train, told the train people to look after me… I was met, I forget what station I was met at, by a Salvation Army person, right… took me home, right, to my mum and dad. Now, I must have been with my mum and dad at that time, my dad said ‘there’s a lot of registered letters come to you from The Standard’. Now, from what I told you about milking bloody, machines, you, you’ll think this is a fairy story, so I opened one… and it’s a week’s wages with tax form in it and everything, and I looked at, they’re all the same, and I said that’s my wages, sixteen weeks’ wages they sent. I rung them up to say that I’d come back you see… I said, they said ‘will you start… can you start say Monday?’ or something like that, I don’t remember. I went back there and I said to the manager, the floor manager that is, look, they’ve sent me my wages for when I was away. I says to him, I’ll put them on this bench, I says, I haven’t earned them and I don’t want them… [laughs] crazy isn’t it… I must have been… must have been right gone [laughs]… he said ‘look’, he said, ‘I never made your wages up, that was over and above my head, that decision was made’ [coughs] and I said, well, if it was made over your head, you go back to where it was made and take them with you, I want to get on and do my job… [laughs] and I walked… walked, walked out and started doing my sticking on. Right. Right. In… that morning I got a letter from the…I got a call… the general manager, that was a Mr Dawson wants to see you. I went up to him, he said ‘look here, you’ve been in the army, services’, I said that’s right, he said ‘we don’t like trouble makers here, [laughs]’, I said, what trouble have I caused sir, I says, he said ‘bringing these wages back’. I said I don’t understand you. He said, ‘well understand this, the tax has been paid, this has been paid, somebody’s made them up so we’ve got to go backwards to put the money in the till’, he said ‘you’re making more trouble for that’, he said, ‘take it, and go’. That was the general manager, and he said ‘and if you don’t pick it up Burgess, put it in your pocket safely’, he says ‘walk out of the door, we don’t want to see you’. Now, I [laughs] didn’t want that to happen, I put the dough in my pocket. When I get back to the floor manager he said ‘everything alright?’, I said I think so. He said [laughs] ‘we’ve been working… [laughs]… this is like, this is like Bilko or somebody like that… ‘we’ve been working out your entitlement and you were due for three weeks’ holiday’ [laughs]… made me cry when I think… [laughs]. I said I’ve only been here five minutes, he said ‘you’re not going to… we’re not going to have the same performance as we had with your bloody wages, you want to go up and see Mr Dawson?’ I said no [laughs]. He said, ‘well work until Friday he says, and your money will be made up.’ I went on three weeks’ holiday. Now, they treated me so well. They said to me, that was the floor manager, ‘we’ve been talking over Tom, about you, and we would like you to see a doctor at Bart’s.’ He said, ‘it’s just a request, but we think you should go’. Right. After disappearing for that time, you know what I mean?’

`Yeah’

`And that holiday… so Bart’s had a psychiatric wing that they’d just opened up… you can check on this when they opened it up in Little Britain, because soon after they’d opened it up, I was a customer, right, which they accepted me. But it was always the same thing there. They asked me more or less what you asked me. Where are you going when you leave here? Oh, I’m not… oh, I’m going back to work. What are you going to do tomorrow? What do you do at the weekends? Where are you going for your holidays? Where are you going Christmas? That sort of thing… they wanted to get some order you know, because… when I questioned this a long while afterwards, they are trying to push a normal person’s thinking into me because everybody’s thinking where they’re going, here, when they’re going on holiday, what they’re going to do the weekend and everything like that, and I reached a stage at Bart’s where they asked me if I would consider having brain shocks. I don’t know the technical word of it… in case you don’t know, I’m sure you do know mind you, but I’ll tell you in case. You’re on a sort of a table, seven foot long… you lay on it flat, no shoes on. They put a, a dog;s bone in your mouth, somebody to hold your, hold you down, your legs and your arms, put things on your temple and ‘bomp’ [ph]… on an outpatient’s… as an outpatient. Now, I had to be taken home because that knocks you sideways.’

`What did they… when…did they tell you much, did they explain to you what it… why, they decided to do that?

`Yeah, they decided that might be a good thing for me, because I wasn’t responding to, to normal treatment that they knew of, alright… and, they worked on the assumption as that, from what they knew of me, if one thing had knocked me one side, then they might knock, knock it back [laughs] or something like that. It, it was…’

`Were you still taking medicine… any medicine?’

`Still taking Bennie’s, yeah…’

`Right’

`Alright. Still taking… [coughs], what’s the name of them… not bennie’s, Ben, ben… Benzadrine’

`Benzadrine, yes.’

`Yeah, still taking three a day. I took three Benzadrine a day for four years. Right. Until they decided, they found out they were addictive.’

`Were they called bennie’s by people, for short?’

`Well, I met plenty of nuts, and they never called them Benzadrine they called them Bennie’s, alright… you know, I mean, if you’re in a waiting room anywhere like that and you’re all the same and then you get talking and he says, what they given you? Some had injections, you know… tranquillisers, that lasted a week. But I was on Bennie’s… for all that time…’

`Sorry… do we need to change the tape?’

`Yeah’

`Sorry, we’ll just change the tape.’

[End of DVC Pro tape 3]
[Start of DVCPro tape 4 – VHS tape 1 continues]
`Yeah’

`Well, those, those… [both talking together] those shocks…’

`Yeah, we’re ready to go’

`…took me about a week to get over, you know, I mean… until I was fit enough to go back to work.’

`Right… and how many did you have?’

`Three. Three. Just the three.’

`And did you have them once a week?’

`Nooo, no, no, no… once a week was planned yeah, but sometimes I rang them up and said I don’t feel like coming and they said, well, we’re not working tomorrow in this department, we’re working Wednesday, about three days, come Wednesday. So they were… well, as time went on, with seeing the shrinks in the… in Little Britain, that’s Bart’s, and this treatment, I began to see the light, you know. I would… began to worry about Christmas, what I’m buying… you know, the normal things.’

`Did you think that the shocks helped?’

`Certain of it. Certain… quite… as certain as I can be, do you understand me? I mean, who knows when you’re brain’s been bashed about, what’s… but from that, from that time those shocks, they did, I found a… I disappeared after that, for a couple of days, found myself in Winchester once… but, the doctor said to me oh you’ve possibly got a… instead of getting… I used to go to Waterloo, he says instead of getting [laughs] on the train to Feltham, you got on the train to Winchester and I didn’t know it [laughs]. I am certain I have got through that stage, certain… I certainly hope so, my God, I certainly hope so, but I’m getting old, I’ve got a bike out there, you’ll see it, anchored up… I still go along the canal there to Vicky Park, you know Vicky Park, Victoria Park… go up to Victoria Park with a book and a sandwich, and a thermos flask, and stay all day, and I’ve got a regime, you understand that… err, of course you do… of gardening. Tell you how I come to garden out there. When I, when I first moved here, I lived at the top of the flats over in the other side, and, I was a gardener then because I, I knew all about, I’d learned the, the quacks had told me to you know, anything I liked to do, anything that interests me, pursue it, you know, and gardening was something that really appealed to me. It was nice and quite, left alone, I got more bloody sense out of a packet of seeds than I did of the human beings, but [coughs]… now where was I going? I… see I lose track of myself. Ahh, I went down to that garden to read a book ‘cause they’ve got benches round, I’ll show them to you if you want… and I, I went and looked at their roses. They had greenfly, blackfly and every other bloody fly on them, and I said to the, caretaker, these roses are… want spraying. He said, ‘who says so?’ I said I say so, have a bloody look at this greenfly… they’re covered. [Door shuts] I don’t know what went there, but anyway… he said ‘write to the Guild Hall’, he says, ‘there’s only one man got to look after all these bloody things… I’ve got to look after the plants [ph], sweep the place, keep it clean, do this, and look after roses’, he says, ‘write to the Guild Hall’, and I… wrote to the Guild Hall and says, your roses want some attention. Do you mind if I do it? They sent me back a letter, I had it for a long while, with welcome… if you want to do a bit of gardening you’re welcome… so I’m a free hand out there now. So, with, with gardening, I’m talking about the, the discipline, the regime that I’ve got with the gardens and I’m worrying about the Spring, and Spring is… was so important to me, twenty, thirty years ago… Spring, I love Spring. You see everything come to life after a bloody Winter. That… I used… I’ve read books that Spring comes a month earlier in Portugal than it does in England, and I thought, oh, I could get in two Springs then [laughs] if I go to Portugal a month earlier than, than Easter say…. I’m sitting there waking up half the plants, and… which I did, for, oh… time and time again… I got so many passports out there you wouldn’t believe. I… because money wasn’t… I wasn’t short of money being a newspaper man it was coming out my bloody ears [laughs]… I didn’t know what to do with it. I was rich. And, there’s me as a newspaper man [shows picture]. Right. Have you got that?

`Yeah’

`And, I… I took, I took… they took to me like duck… I mean the artists, the real artists that did the work, for somebody to do the things that was beneath them, you know, there’s a grind to them, they welcomed me. I mean… after I’d get their tea, I’d do anything. I was getting the same wages as they got, [laughs] and I wasn’t doing the responsible work they did, so why did I worry… I got right mercenary. If you can understand that, right, and if they… would… they have a system of working overtime there, right, that included me. If one had to stay behind to finish a job, it was shared between seven of us. You see, all sorts of little things… the overtime went on to… [inaudible] for example, if you earned a fiver in overtime today, right, your wages was a fiver more, right. When you got your holiday reckoning, you got that included the… are you with that? So I had more money coming out of my bloody ears than that, but… this was a turning point. They asked me if I’d go to school… the Evening Standard was… said ‘go to school’. So, they worked out where the London School of Printing, that was at Bulk Court [ph], that’s in Fleet Street, don’t know if you know it, but… right now its at the Elephant and Castle. They asked me if I’d go to school, I went to school. Two days a week and two nights, to learn airbrush. You know what an airbrush is?’

`No, not exactly’

`Well, you get a ballpoint pen, but I haven’t got one. A thickish ball point pen, but its got a tube attached to it, to a pressure pump, and its got a little nozzle, err, switch on the top, like if you’ve got, look, like that see… [demo]’

`Yeah’

‘and they went… you know a big spray, with a spray gun, this is very miniaturised, so in a little well you put the colour you want with a brush, an artist’s brush, and ‘pssst, pssst, pssst etc’ [ph] so you can take… if there’s two people separated, and you’ve only got a column or two columns to put them in, you cut round one, alright, shamfer [ph] off the edges at the back, which you can do with a photograph, and over, overlay, say you’re there, if you overlay there, see they’re just in front of you, and then you, you airbrush here and there and fanny it all up and you think, oh, look they seem friendly there but they’re right miles apart [laughs/both laugh], you can do things like that, or when people, years ago, if you photographed it… anything in the, the precincts of the law courts, and the law courts were shown in any way, you was likely to be summonsed and nicked, right, so when there’s a divorce on, some of our photographers had hidden cameras so they would whack, whack them out, brump [ph] and bang them back in there… and then put, the poor divorce is covered along from different directions, you understand me? And, you… I had to, or somebody had to airbrush the, the, the railings out… and very likely stick them in Kew Gardens, are you with me?’

`Yeah’

`You’ll want to cut that probably’ [both talking together].

`Well, we… we just want to take a quick break cause I’m not sure about the microphone.. maybe just check it, ‘cause it’s just…’

`It’s ok actually’

`Is it?’

`Is it broken?’

`No, no, no… it just slipped behind so I… [both talking together]’

`I did that purposely so you’d come over… [all laugh] I’m getting attached to you… what are you doing tonight?’

`I think you’re getting attached to my microphone as well there...’
`You are attached to the microphone… ok..’

`Do you want to have a little...?’
`Do you want to carry on?’

`Still recording’

`You want to switch it round?’

`Shall we just have a little rest, do you mind?’

`Banstead, you said… you said about…’

`Are we… at where… ok?’

`You said you were interested in me being in a straight jacket.’

`That’s right’

`Well what happened… I told you. They tried to line us up, army style, and pay me, and I threw the money, confetti’d over them. The two so called male nurses, lumbered me into the ablutions shed, knocked the life out of me and put me in a straight jacket, back in a padded cell.’

`Right’

`And that was as simple as that’

`And what was the straight… how was the straight jacket, what was it made of, what..?’

`Ah, the straight jacket, now, would I remember it… it was made of white canvas… you know what they make… you know what they make army webbing of…?’

`Yeah, yeah’

`I think I’ve got some, I’ll show you… ‘

`No, I know the sort, quite thick stuff [both talking together]’

`You know, pretty thick and substantial with straps here, and there’s no sleeves, well there’s sleeves, but they’re blank, alright, and on here there’s either straps or strings or whatever, and, and, and, and…’

`Right.’

`That’s how you are…’

`Right, you’re like that…?’

`Yeah, because, I, I was… I was pretty annoyed with him, I wanted to fight him. I mean I thought, I… I didn’t know where.. you know, I think I lost track of where I was or anything like that and somebody was, giving me a kicking’

`Mmm. And does it buckle at the back?’

`Buckles, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Buckles at the back with straps… yeah, that’s it. Nothing in the front… yeah, that’s it, and, you couldn’t get your hands through, there was...’

`And what about your legs?’

`Oh my legs was free, yeah…’

`And what about things like going to toilet and that sort of thing when you’re…’

`You’re… you’re in cuckoo land son… I was in the Army… they didn’t give a shit. That’s the least of their worries’.

`Right. And how long did they keep you in the straight jacket?’

`I think it was only overnight or something like that, it wasn’t long… they come in and say ‘you alright now? Well now, after a night banged up like that trying to sleep or whatever, you say, yeah, I’m ok now, and that’s it. It’s quite friendly if you like [laughs]… there’s me wanting to kill them really, but the point is… I told you, you get crafty, like Mad Ernie or something like that… have you got that, have you got that story?’

`Yeah, yeah, yeah…’

`Poor old Ernie… ‘boom’ [ph] the sniper… What else?’

`The straight jacket, did that happen just once or several times?’

`Only the once that I remember, yeah’

`And do you know whether it happened to other people at the Asylum?’

`Oh yeah, it happened, happened to others, yeah’

`And was it quite common… treatment?’

`I don’t know about it being common… you see, I wasn’t with it. Look, right now, I’ve been taught, by, I don’t know who, some very clever people, to observe other people and to read situations, and to smell whether you were wanted or not in a room, or whether you are going good or not, to smell it out without anything said… you… I mean… people have taught me how to walk, they haven’t taught me how to spell though [laughs], they couldn’t make it but, but… I, I, I can fit into gentile society and get by. I go to church regular, I believe in God, but… you asked me… what did you ask me?’

`What were the other people with the… how regularly they used it… the straight jacket?’

`No… then, then… you see I was… I’d improved from a padded cell, to being sort of free, to lay in bed… but what went on around me, for a long while I wasn’t interested in. I mean, it just… I just… everything was blank you know… I didn’t care, didn’t worry… but I must have had my nut about me because there was things I jibbed about, you know, I wouldn’t let them torture me with a syringe, or having my teeth, a dentist without my permission, we they got, so I must have been alive somewhere at points, but generally speaking the other poor sods it was their problem. That, that seemed hard, or a quick… I mean I had enough on my plate, to get out of that bloody place, anyway.’

`So, ok… so coming sort of a bit more to the sort of the present.. coming round to the present a bit more, more…’

`Do that’

`More recently have you…?’

`Recently, well… quickly, I retired from the… voluntarily from the Evening Standard. When I was 64, you see, I’m leaving my personal life out of it.’

`That’s ok’

`But I lived in this flat, with a woman, we called ourselves man and wife. She was diabetic invalid in a wheelchair, a journalist. Alright. She had her nut about her, she wrote stories and everything, she was a very intelligent woman. And we got on very well. But, when I retired, the doctors… oh, about, they said… through her diabetes, she’d have to have her toe off, then she’d have to have her foot off. I forget where it went from there... and she got afraid of having her leg off, and she wanted. She... sure, she'd given up and she wanted to die. Alright. So I retired a bit sharpish. Now having got all this money, they used to stop a percentage of my pay for my pension. Now June, we had a little car, I used to drive [laughs], so I wasn’t all that cranky… and I used to drive her about. I retired and I… I lost 1800 by retiring early, see… but that didn’t matter, the decision was made, I was retired, old June was near… we both knew, she didn’t tell me, but I knew from the doctors, right… that she’d given up actually. Really I could say that… so I thought… I gave up, I said can I have my pension out in a lump sum, and they said ‘you can have all but £50 a month… oh no, no… £200 pound a month, you can have, you still have to have some basic pension, alright. So I said well what’s left, they said £24000 quid, so I said to June, that’s… you could call her my wife actually… although we weren’t married she changed her name to mine. We were in love actually. I’m a crank and she’s in a wheelchair… [laughs] what a match, but we got on alright. She was a bloody good cook, oh… marvellous cook… wonderful, and we got on ok. Right, so we both retired right… so I said let’s go on a cruise, so we went on a cruise, I wanted… oh, she wanted… she said ‘I’m not going down the bottom of the… right in the bowels of the earth on a cruise ship’, she said ‘how am I going to… if something… if there’s man overboard or something like that, something happens, I’m for dead aren’t I, I can’t move’, so I went round to shipping officers, explaining June, I said she wants a window… a window on a ship [laughs], June wanted a window on a ship [laughs]… we got to the Russian line, do you know I forget what they call them, the Russian boats, and we booked a cruise that was beautiful on the Leonardo Bresnev, that was the name of the ship. We couldn’t afford… they had six suites on this right… we couldn’t afford, well I could have afforded it, but it was… ridiculous money, but we were up, right up and had a little window up… like the old trains you pull a strap and pull it up and crook it down, everything was safe, it was up too far to worry about portholes, but we started to unpack in this… and they said, ‘Mr and Mr Burgess, the Rosamunda Suite is giong to be empty for this trip, and we wonder if you would like it’, I said we can’t afford… he said ‘no’ he said, ‘we upgrade everybody when we’ve got empty spaces, and we’re..’ and I said right, I said lets pack up… and he said ‘no, I want you to see it’, I don’t believe it… a big bathroom with a ten foot long bath, showers, everything. It had a room as big as this with a cramped in table in the middle, fridges with two bottles of champagne and two bottles of, spring water in… buttons for the maid, if you… you had dirty things you took off you left them on the floor. When they come in to clean it up, when you come back it was washed, dried and ironed. What a… the Rosamunda Suite, you can check on this, it’s a… there… oh… and on one occasion they had lobster thermidor… well I’d read of lobster thermidor in books where, you know, American films, oh I’ll have lobster thermidor… and the.. I saw it on the menu and I thought I’ll have lobster thermidor, and ‘what wine would you like to drink with it sir?’ [laughs] Oh, my God, we were living the life of Riley. Poor old June, we both knew it was… well, anyway, we won’t go onto them… now, we went from Tilbury to Holland, from Holland to Vigo, Vigo to Lisbon, Lisbon, where to… oh, Lisbon to Casablanca, Casablanca to Venezuela, Venezuela to Jamaica, Jamaica to, not the Scilly Isles, not.. no, oh, Fennygall is the… Fennygall is the capital, of some little island. Anyway, in, in, in… now where is it… it’s off the coast of Portugal, the Azores, round that way, and home. It was a dream for the pair of us. I mean she had… she was treated like nothing on earth… four sailors carry her bodily in the… down the gangway, special place in the bus, oh, everything.. everything, everything was beautiful. It cost a couple of thousand a piece, but what’s a couple of thousand to me, I’ve got twenty four grand haven’t I? I’m rich [laughs]. We, we… didn’t stint ourselves… I took two thousand, I took a cheque for two thousand, and put it in the ship’s bank, so, so that anything we wanted on the ship used to go in the Casino, or she did… she liked to bet, so I used to get a bowl full of small chips, for about a dollar a piece, a bowl full, and she’d sit there in her armchair and [laughs]… rien a la plus… [ph], place your bets, no more bets sir ‘fait assure’ [laughs], you know French roulette, and old June was wonderful, putting dollar bets here and dollar bets there and she’d won… and while she was doing that I was in the bar next door that had a, a dance floor, a dance floor, a band and a bar, vodka was free. They had about thirty different kinds of vodka… some you had salt with, some you had sugar with, some you had this with and some you… oh my God, and I would be, vodka and orange or something like that, vodka and orange, they hated putting mixers with it, but you had to bump it one back in one piece, but none the less, we enjoyed the last… old June, I took her… she had… what we thought was pneumonia, and she’d cry and say I can’t lift this and can’t lift that, two o clock in the morning, I run over to Bart’s in the Fiesta we had, and they said we’ve got to keep her in, I said I’ll stay with her, she said no, no, no, you go home and [inaudible]. [pause] The last word she said, now, is a crank, who’s been through all this shit, and come through all this, and there’s an intelligent woman, the last word she said, Tom, I love you, right. In the morning about four hours, I left her at three o’clock at night because that happened at two o’clock. I went first thing in the morning, about five, no, it wasn’t five, it was about seven o’clock, eight o’clock, something like that, and she was dead [pause]… It’s a bad thing for me to say, but it was a lovely, lady’s death, you know what I mean… she never suffered… she suffered all her bloody life mind you with diabetes and this and that, but she, she wasn’t in some… I am lung [???] for years and years and years, you know, she went quick, and thank God that was the, the… and when June went, my life had finished… I’m even getting upset now [crying], but none the less… old June wouldn’t like me to get upset over that, she.. she was right pleased about everything. I’ve made myself upset. You never asked me these questions. Wait a minute’

`Do you want to stop?’

`I hope I don’t… I hope I don’t… right. What was you saying?’

`Well I was going to ask if you wanted a break, or… do you want to break or do you want to.. shall we keep going?’

`Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…’

`You were saying to me earlier, you were saying to me earlier when you and your friends, you call cranks, get together, can you talk about that?’

`Oh, well let me tell you this… I had… I was, I was.. I had a few bob, you understand and I’ve still got a little, a very little, I mean I can get a bottle of brandy, and think nothing of it… by peoples’ standards outside, right, I’m rich. But I’m not rich. Do you understand me without me, going…?’

`I think so yeah… you comf… you’ve got enough to get what you need’

`I, I don’t have to worry too much about money, but I was getting down, my money was going, I wasn’t capable of frying an egg, and when you go into a restaurant, it can come to a few bob, specially if you have a bottle or wine or something like that… and some friends said to me, who knew me, right, Army friends, why don’t you apply for a pension, alright… and I said, fuck them… I’ve existed all this long without them… money… I’m sixty four now, why should I ask them for a penny? I said, they treated me like shit when I went off the rails, I haven’t got nothing to thank them about at all, Evening Standard, one, and other people, kind people, I said, but not them. I want nothing to do with them. I said, I told her a story I said, I’m still scared about being bunged back in the oven and they said oh, don’t be ridiculous, you know, but eventually… I wrote, or they wrote to Euston, to… let’s see if I can get up without disturbing this… here… and you can… you’re quite free… that’s Tim Whittaker… [pause] you keep that…’

`Oh, ok’

‘You’re quite free, if you’ve got any doubts about the crap that I’ve been talking to you about…’

`Oh no, not at all, I mean no.’

`No.. if, if, if… or if you want another slant on me, there’s Tim Whittaker, you’ve got my permission to ring him.’

`Oh ok, thank you’

`Right. I got in touch… you see what it is, the pensions… war pension welfare service pensions agency. That’s in Euston. I got in touch and Tim Whittaker came along. He, he’s now become a friend, alright. So he said, what did you do in the war, you know, what…? Have you got any physical things I can see? I said my ears started bleeding when I was too near a bloody explosion, if that’s anything. Yes, he said, it is. He said, that’s a sign of you losing your ears or your ears have been damaged. He said, and we pay for deafness, he said, tell me a synopsis, that’s the word is it… synopsis..’

`It’s like a summary’

`A summary, summary… tell me what, so… all the rubbish that I’ve been talking to you about, alright, I rattled on to him about a couple of hours… and he jotted down, jotted notes, and he submitted it to Norcross [ph]. Norcross is an agency for war pensioners, it’s up in Blackpool. And they said I would have to be examined by their people, three I went in front of right. Now, where was that… anyway. And then one came out and the one who came here, the shrink that came here, we got talking about the sea, [laughs] I don’t know whether he was a clever… I think… on reflection when I think back, I think that man was the cleverest bloke that I ever come across in my life, because he kept saying maritime, maritime Ac Ac, no, not exactly, but some thing like that… what ships were you on. He said what did you do when you went to America and things like that, and I said well for my sisters I bought bobby pins and that… they gave me a Lena Rubenstein orders… I says, I used to get from my sisters, I used to get shopping lists, that if I ever went to a neutral country to buy things that were short here, or impossible to buy and you know these hair pins, what, the clips, they went out… they went out… you couldn’t buy them for love nor money, not for any amount of money [laughs] that’s a joke by the way, if a girl was asking that she wouldn’t… so that she wouldn’t understand them {???}, not for love nor money, well anyway, … and my sisters used to give me these bloody shopping lists, and I knew a Lena rubenstein, Joy perfume, oh, all sorts of bloody things that she, and of course, silk stockings, nylon stockings… all things that were out here, that had gone through, the… that were no longer. I used to get… this doctor was asking me and talking to me, do you ever go… when you was in New Brunswicke in Canada did you go fishing there? He says its only a… he knew New Brunswicke, and I said, yeah, there’s… they’ve got a Reisen [ph] of sixteen foot with the tide, the tide comes up for the river, sixteen foot, so it goes over, its got the… called the rise and fall tide, or the rise and fall river I think, but when the tide’s coming in it goes over the sea, and when its going out, it comes back with the water, so it’s a waterfall that way and a waterfall that way, but… Salmon make this jump and oh, I got on well with that shrink. As a matter of fact, he must have thought I was a real crank. I said, come back again, I enjoyed talking to you [laughs] what do you think of that [laughs]. And, he, he was, never the less I got a good pension but it took me nearly two years, but they pay you from the moment you submitted your claim, so I had two years, with about £6000 in one lump and £80 quid a week in another… now that.. you know, so I don’t want, err.. of course I want money because I want to, I want to go to New York, I want to go here I want to go there… I’m, I’m, I’m going to live before I die, but…’

`Is that how you got involved with the servcicemen’s mental welfare society?’

`Oh no… oh no, sure, sure, sure, sure… as soon as I applied for my pension, I had a wing commander, wing commander gent come round from Combat Stress, and he, he said, combat stress has two homes. He said, if you like, I can run you there and show you one, its at Leatherhead, so I said no, I’ll take your word for it, so he said well go down there and see. I said no, I don’t… I ‘ll take your word for it, it’s a lovely place, big garden, and all the freedom in the world, so he arranged for me to spend two weeks down there. I went to Leatherhead. You have to live there to appreciate a bloody lovely room. It’s got like a cupboard, with, with… all the… water and the bowl, and plug for your razor and everything like that. Somebody to make your bed, I, I can show you, if you see this shirt, it was ironed… you… just like you being on the bloody Leonardo Bresnev. You put your clobber in and it comes back ironed, oh,…. I take my dirty washing there. Now you ever think of going up on a holiday and taking all your dirty washing with you, well I do… [laughs] I just put it in the wash, oh… they’ve got all the modern machinery, it’s not… I said to the woman, I’ve got trousers, I’ve got this, I’ve got that, is it too much if I bring it in… she said… and its all beautifully done, with love. Down there, they’ve got people… I tell you… they work for a living but they give something over and above that, you understand that? I mean, they sometimes if you want to go up the British Legion there and they’re finished at six, one or the other they’ve got a bus down there… in that… it’s sixteen, sixteen seater bus and a thing for cripples at the back if you’re in a wheelchair. Every time, we never got a refusal… we want to go to the British Legion, can you fix it? I’ll take you at seven, pick you up at ten, providing you don’t get drunk, and smoke in the bus, and as far as I know, they did that off the, off the ration, you know what I mean?’

`Why unofficially?’

`Unofficially, they.. I’d think… all the lot of them, John, lads who Carrie Harvey must have seen’

`Right’

`And Mary, I don’t know her other name. There was just second in command now, they must know what goes on, because they know everything, you know, I mean… when you’re going out they look at you to see if you’ve washed your neck, you know, visually, you know visually, and I’ve seen in a book, because I’m a nosey character, Tom Burgess, very smart… yeah, no kidding and they put things like that, so… they must know that their wagon does an extra eight miles a night [laughs] and twice on Sunday.’

`How often do you go there?’

`Well, you’re allowed to go six weeks a year, but last year, I’d… I did alright, I… I had enough to do… see, they wanted me to go when it was inconvenient for me gardening. Supposing somebody in the spring wants to come and say look you can go to Bermuda… and I’ve got bloody seeds to put, and the spring is so terribly imporant to the garden. And I, I want to build up a herb garden. I like basil in… you like basil in a…?’

`I do’

`Yeah… and sage and… mint, thyme all the lot of them, and… I wouldn’t go to Bermuda in the spring, as if they had a place for me to go. I’m sorry I can’t go, so I went two weeks last year and I’ve been three weeks this year.’

`Have you made a lot of friends through that?’

`Friends galore… friends galore… look, when we started to talk we made contact right away didn’t we? Right, in about three weeks time or three years time, we’ve got something in common, something we both won’t get touchy about, you know… it’s like that, you know, it’s so easy. There’s, there’s people, depressed people you know that need to sit on a garden bench or somebody will come up to them and say, hello Bill, look come round here I want to show you something, get them off there and say, do you smoke, you got a light? You, you know what they’re doing… you see we’re good for one another, you see instead of moping on and.. say, got a light mate? No, I, I don’t smoke… look I want to show you something… and, well, well, look, come on… but take him in… somebody’s doing some oil painting, cause you can do a bit of oil painting, water colour painting, turning a lathe, if you’re capable… you could even make baskets, you know, those baskets, you, you can buy them for tuppenc ha’penny, but [laughs] its laboriously flat these things, you can do what you like there. I like to walk. I walk for miles and miles and miles and then, I’ll very likely ring them up and say look, I don’t know how to get back, [laughs] I’ve walked… well, it’s, they said to me once, isn’t there a minicab handy… I’d walked from Leatherhead to Epsom, its about 5, 6miles I’m not sure, but I saw a public path and a hand… you seen these lovely walks, and I lose myself, I see this and then that, and I’m walking and suddenly I feel tired and I think to myself oh I’d better get back. Where am I? [laughs]. On one occasion I rung Mary, she’s a very sweet woman, she said there’s a minicab, she said… ask a copper or somebody where the minicab office is. Get in one and tell them Tyrett House, Leatherhead, they all know it, and that’s what I did, and she said, ask him for a bill, a written bill, and I would show you, I’ve got loads of them to submit, in my briefcase… ask him for a written bill and it’ll be paid and she paid the guy about six quid… nothing… bruump, bruump, bruump, bruump… all out of… that’s, that’s, the easy way, you know, the easy life, you’ll go for a walk, I mean, you can go golfing there. There’s a golf course, sixteen hole gold course down the road, they would arrange it. On one occasion they asked me if I wanted to go, I said no, I don’t want to go, don’t want to go there, I said there’s not a race course there, I says I like to see the colours on the jockeys… she said at Epsom.. I said Epsom only has one meeting, two meetings a year.. they arranged for me to go up to the Queen Mother’s Farm for Disabled men and women, in Ayreshire, its called Hollybush House, beautiful place, right the way down a hill, on their estate, there’s salmon and trout, and they’ve got rods you can… I would like to go back to her… and I want to Troon, Royal Troon, fancy a mug like me knocking a ball round on Royal Troon… you can’t become a member until you’ve got a lordship or something like that, but… seize an open door… very understanding people.’

`Did you see, could you see a doctor there if you wanted to?’

`Can I?’

`Could you see a doctor?’

`If I wanted to?’

`Yes’

`What kind of a doctor?’

`A psychiatrist, at… yeah…?’
`If I wanted to I could go to Bart’s outpatients department anytime’

`And in Leatherhead?’

`In Leatherhead you see a… you see a shrink, as a must…’

`Right’

`You see him… he comes every Tuesday. If you don’t see him one week you see him the next, yeah… and a doctor. It’s… it’s… I want you to give them the good housekeeping seal of approval. They’ve got my love let alone my good wishes, yeah… for deaf people.. you know, have you ever heard of the… oh, I forget the circuit… If you put, if you use… I haven’t got the machine here, I’ve taken it away… on the television, but a wire goes all the way around the room, and then this thing has got a telephone, shall I… look… I’ll show you… and he says, can you see T?’

`Yeah, yeah…’

`Telephone. When you’re, when you’re… sorry, dear… [microphone whistle]… when you’re switched on… [microphone whistle]… I’ve upset my… when you’re switched on to this thing on the television, that’s dead, nobody hears it. You could have it blaring, coming through… all the way round the room, but the point is this, I could go into the toilet and be doing my business, and… [laughs] and hear the nineo o’clock news… [laughs] its so powerful… it’s wonderful… I had… I took it down… it goes right the way round the room… just a wire, but, in the other room I could hear it outside, I’d smoke my pipe out on the verranda and I could still hear it… now what do you want to…?’

`If… if you just tell me…’

`I’m drifting aren’t I?’

`Yeah, well no, no… its fine, it’s… if you just tell me a little bit more about the companionship you found with other people who have had similar, problems?’

`Well, well… what we, what, what, what we do… I had friends that I’ve met at Tyret House, right… I, I’ve got a spare room in there, and its got a single bed in it… that, if you don’t tell the council, my mate’s come for a week a time, or, or over a weekend, something like that, and I go and see them. I… I have my book, I’ve got, a friend in Portsmouth… you name the place, and… and they’re… we’re all… we’ve all been sick, but we’re all…we’re say… eighty per cent, ninety per cent. I mean the people here, that live in here, this is one of the reasons why I didn’t wan to do this. I’ve managed to… to… hid myself in here for a number of years, they might think I’m strange, I’m sure they do [laughs] but being strange or being different, is better than, than I know… [laugh].. I’ve been in a bloody straight jacket, in, in Banstead, you understand me? They… it’s funny you know, if you… if I told people what I’ve told you, they would act differently towards me. I found that out, that’s the reason why… I … I think I told your firm, or your company, that… what did I tell them? That I was afraid of, of the neighbours knowing right..’

`Mmm, mmm..’

`Because of this reason. I mean what people don’t know, they don’t worry about. I mean they, they might well think I’m, I’m… I’m a little bit eccentric or something like that, but, they don’t lock their doors with a double lock because of me [laughs]. That’s the only reason why, why I told them I might have reservations.’

`Mmmm’

`But when I got to think about it, I thought to myself, I’m not going to live forever, I don’t want to live forever, I think I’ve… I’ve… I…. I would, love old Gabriel to say ‘come on Tom, up you come’ because I’ve had a bloody good life, really… I mean apart from the nonsense, which was dreadful in anybody’s language.’

`Mmm’

`Apart from that I man… managed with the Grace of God, and I’ve got to thank Him up there, you might not like me saying… you might not like, but… I… there is not a morning or night, or day or, you know, that I feel that He’s looking after me. Right now.’

`Just… I mean we’re… we’re kind of slowly winding…’

`Would you make sure that that’s on there because…’

`It’s all… it’s all on there…’

`Right’

`It’s all on there… just slow it… I’m… slowly we’re getting towards the end, the end now.’

`The end?’

`We’re slowly getting towards the end, so…’

`Tell, tell me… tell me what you want to know?’

`Well is there anything else that you’d like to say?’

`Look… to, to, to, to… to weigh it up… I don’t particularly like French Police, from fifty years ago… I certainly don’t like the bloody Army, or, or they done me a favour by giving me a way of life, oh, they done me a favour…in fact I think they should introduce conscription here, between eighteen and twenty… that, but not for me or my kids [laughs]. I told you that good people, Evening Standard, Tim Whittaker, marvellous.. Tryet House, wondereful… I’d, I… I don’t know whether I’ll have… meeting you… I don’t know whether I’ll thank you or curse you [both laugh]… that comes with experience doesn’t it? But… I’ve enjoyed… I well enjoyed the way you’ve tackled it… the girl, she must have cramp, sitting at that bloomin’ camera…’ [both laugh].

`Is there anything you want to top up from me? See, I could give you addresses from… of , of mates in…’

`We can talk about that afterwards, and we’ll do… what we’ll do, we’ll do some shots of the room and of anything else that you want to show… but shall we… have you got anything else to say?’

`Ok, well we’ll just…’

`Lets have a five minute break’

`Ok, fine...’
 
‘Ok fine’

`Ok, running’

`Ok… Tom… Tom would you just like to tell me a bit about this coat, what you…?’

`Well for a start off, this hat is a Royal Marine’s hat, I’m strictly non entitled to it. The badge I made up, but I used to have this badge, on my… see, but that’s a Royal Navy badge and AA Anti-aircraft, and whenever I put this on, on Remembrance Day, people ask me, they say ‘what’s that?’. Well I was associated and working with the Special Boat Squadron, which it is… Royal Marines, in, in Italy. So I believe, that that’s the nearest badge that I… and whether they don’t like it or not, its too bad. Now the coat, because I’m anti-war, and I think the Americans love a war, they’ve started enough… about sixteen in… since, since… in the last twenty years, I’ve got this on the back of my coat.’

`Do you just want to, move your… shift your shoulders around just so that we can…’

`Tell me when’

`Well, now, just, just slowly, so we can read…’

`Finished?’

`And the other other way as well, ok?’

`Ok?’

`Ok, do you…?’

`Yeah’

`Yeah… and it… what does it say on the coat? Just, just in case… on the coat, it says ‘May God forgive you, Clinton, murderer…’ and I’ve got a black… on the bed… that is gauzed [?] I’ve been, Whitehall… outside of Whitehall, outside the American Embassy, and… nobody takes any notice, but going into the library, forever…’

`That’s right’

`The best thing I ever did was to meet you. All right? [crying] [pause]’

`Ok… do you… would you like to tell us what this is?’

`That is, is… my wife, Lou, and me, in, in Paysero [ph] that’s near Bologna, Italy, Italia. ‘Il parlade lingua Italia molto bene…

`[Laughs]’

`[Pause]… and they’re two of my grandkids… two of my grandchildren… Danny… and Vicky… [pause]. That’s… the other one… [pause]… that’s one of my daughters… [pause]. I used to… I… I used to… like… that’s gardening… I used to have a lot of… thing on the veranda. The… out… outside the… of my flat, and somebody, un…`unbeknowns’ to me, submitted my name to Islington… that’s… and I won first… class tickets, third prize… and that’s what this certificate is. Oh, that’s all… wedding… of… of… my wife’s sister, I think… you know, that’s… that’s at… [inaudible]… and, that’s Christine, who, with her first born, and… they live in Devon now. And over there, that’s my mum. [Inaudible]… and you could tell the age of… of me, [laughs] of… of mum…’

`When was that picture done, do you think?’

`What? That one…?’

`Yeah, of your mother?’

`Oh that was done about fifty years ago… or more than that, maybe, because… men used to come round the shop… they’d come round the houses, and ask… have you got a picture that we can… fiddle around with and… reclaim [???]… and… and they used to do all that… and you had to pay them weekly…’

`[Laughs]’

`About sixpence it was… a week… [laughs]… for twenty six years.’

`[Laughs]’.

[End of DVC Pro tape 4 – End of VHS tape 1]