PART 2 - On the road. The local story of millionaire, Geoff Bells chartered accountant investing £1,250,000 into the Village Development Project in Almancil, and Geoff never seing a penny in return.
When I was 16 (on 28 February 1955) I got my licence for a motorcycle. All the lads in the village over 16 had motorcycles. Jack, Tommy and Joe Miller had Triumph SpeedTwins – beautiful balanced twin engine. Eric Miller had aBSA 350, Billy Granger had a A7 BSA. My brother Reg hada Triumph Thunderbird.
All the lads in the village were customers of a motorcycle dealer in Carlisle, a Mr Graham of Strand Road; they took me to see what he had and in my price range was a BSA 350 for £45. This was okay but, with only probably less than a pound to my name, I would have to ask Mr Rudd if he would buy it for me.
In those days you worked on the farms on six-month hires so normally you only got pocket money each week,then got paid out at the end of the six-month period. So when I decided to get the motorcycle I had to ask Mr Rudd if he would buy it for me and he could take the money from me at the six-month end; this he agreed to.
I went with the lads to Carlisle to get the bike, paid Mr Graham the £45 and then off we motored. Well, what a new world I came into that I did not know existed. Assisting me was my brother Reg and Eric Miller, both experienced riders.
We would go into the Lake District. It was so exciting for me but I had difficulty keeping up with them on my first day.I had to try and keep up because I did not know where I was. It was some experience. I was so excited but scared to death around those corners trying to keep up. They pulled up at one of the village cafes and we had a coke.
I told them they were going too fast for me, but we wereI told them they were going too fast for me, but we wereall having a real good laugh and enjoying the day.
In 1956 when I became 17 years old I moved to another farm at The Lathes near Kirkbride. The farmer was Gordon Dixon and his wife was Mary. I was then on £6 per week, living in, all food included. I was moving to a very different environment and would be using all I had learned from my previous boss.
Gordon Dixon’s was a dairy farm, It had a new type of byre for 40 milk cows with enough space in the centre toget the muck spreader in, not like the many small byres that Mr Rudd had with the centre isle just wide enough to get a borrow in and cobblestone surface, Gordon’s byre was all cemented out and had a cooling house at the end with all the washing-up facilities.
I was hired to look after the milking, see to all the calves and in general be in charge of everything. Being very well groomed by Mr Rudd and his family, I had no fears whatsoever about what I was letting myself into.
I moved into the Lathes Gordon’s farm on a Saturday after lunch, met Mary Gordon’s wife and she showed memy room – a nice big room with a double bed and with a bathroom next door. How exciting; I would now have access to a proper bath. Then Mary took me into the farmyard to meet Adam McCracken.
I expected to see Gordon the boss for instructions, but it was Adam who showed me around the farmyard and told me about all the stock and the feeding material methods.
At about 4pm Adam would start about getting ready for milking time. We got started milking the 40 cows and also a small byre with about 12 cows. We got finished and washed all the milking units and fed all the stock by about 5.30pm.
We did finish a lot fed all the stock by about 5.30pm. We did finish a lot earlier than when I was at Rudd’s because we had to startat 5.30am as the milk collection was at 7.30am.
We then went in for the supper Mary had made. Gordon was back but had never come into the farm buildings to see what was going on. Gordon Mary Adam and myself all sat around the table; it was very good food and very enjoyable with all the chat going on; we were all laughing. Gordonwas a right character, full of fun.
When Mary was coming around filling up our teacups , Gordon put his hand up Mary’s legs and pulled her knickers down. I didn’t know which way to look because I’d never seen anything like this before. They were both laughing their heads off, even Mary. All she said was “stop it Gordon”, so I had to let my laughter out.
Adam lived at Gamelsby with his family in the sweetshop I called at on my paper round two years previously. I had packed the paper round up when I left school. Adam actually worked on the council looking after the gutters and roads around the Lathes area five days a week but he did part-time for Gordon on the farm at weekends. He would bike all the way back and forward to his home.
After dinner I had a nice bath, got changed and I was up and onto my motorbike to see my pals, just up the road where Baird’s farm was. Gib could use the farm Ford 10 van with bails of straw in the back to sit on, so there would be four or five of us up to the Joiners Arms pub at Aikton. You had to be 18 to get a drink and most of us were 17 so we were let into the back room to have a few nut brown ales; then onto the Little Bampton dance; after that I went back to my new home on Gordon’s farm.
On my first Sunday I was up sharp at 5.30am. Adam was already there but no sign of Gordon. Adam had the engine started for the electric generator – no mains there in those days. It was a Lister diesel engine with a hand start which was very hard to crank over and you needed start which was very hard to crank over and you needed all your strength.
We got all the milked byres cleaned out, all the calves fed but there was no sign of Gordon or Mary, so I said to Adam: What about breakfast? We will have to go in and make our own. So we went into the kitchen.
Adam knew the ropesand went into the larder; he came back with bacon, eggs, sausages and bread. The cooker was fired up for six eggs, bacon, sausage and fried bread; we were hungry after two and half hours hard work.
With all the cooking done, we sat down and enjoyed our breakfast with a lovely pot of tea. After breakfast we went back to finish off around the farmyard.
Being Sunday, we were off until about 3.30pm and then back in for milking. Adam was back to help meat night but on the Monday morning I would be alone. I knew pretty well now how things worked and was more or less settled in and not in the least worried about anything.
After we finished work on Sunday night, Adam and I went in the house for dinner. Mary had a good meal for us. Mary, Gordon, Adam and myself were all at the table and it was all fun again. Gordon was full of unbelievable banter. I was in another world completely different from Little Bampton. After dinner I got changed and went up to Baird’s farm to see Gib and Ed. Quite a few of us gathered there on a Sunday night – Chris Hall, Joe Kenny, Fred Abbott, Stan Pat. In the summer they would play cricket. I did not joinin – I was not into cricket – but Gib was crazy on it.
Later at night we would have a fry-up, making egg and chips. They had a big Aga cooker and a large kitchen and very large dining room for the workers. Baird’s farmhouse was large they had eight children, Mr and Mrs Baird were very nice people. I never heard them shout in all the time I spent there. There was always someone visiting but I never heard anyone getting told off.
On the Monday morning I was up with the larks at 5.30am on my own. Adam had gone on his own job. I managed all the milking, washed up, mucked out fed the calves and all the other stock. Gordon would come out with me after breakfast and tell me what was to do on the land.
He had a good tractor which I liked, a Ford Power Major with front loader. He had an eye for good machinery and I think he was more interested in machinery than farming.
Gordon had a Bedford 10 ton truck and one day he said to me "Do you want to go with the driver to Prudhoe, Newcastle fora load of lime?" I said “yes”, and off we went, got loaded up. All the way back I was thinking this is what I want to do, to be, a truck driver.
When we got back to the farm I went straight to Gordon, who asked "How did it go?" It has just made my mind up that I want to be a truckdriver.
Gordon was then doing haulage for M&H Towel, Agricultural Merchants, Carlisle, but he also wanted to get into lime and fertiliser spreading that Towels would sell tothe farmers.
The local machinery rep for County Garage Carlisle, the main Ford dealer, was a Wilf Clifford. He would callat Gordon’s farm and would come in for lunch with us all. He was a character, so we had two of them together; what a laugh we would have.
During one visit Gordon asked about a new Atkinson Lime spreader and a new Ford Power Major to marry up to the lime spreader. Mary went mad: Where are you going to get the money from? We cannot afford those things.
Anyhow Gordon always ordered what he wanted and after a week or so a new tractor and a new lime spreader arrived. So after milking at nights I would go and spread the lime and fertiliser, which I loved to do.
Gordon was getting more orders in from Towel’s and needed another truck so he ordered a new Ford Thames Trader from County Garage. The new truck was for me to drive so it had to be under three tons unladen weight for a driver under 21 years old. It was fitted with a 20-foot flat wooden body and the sides were what we call ‘drop on sides’ which were removable for weigh-in at the police weighbridge to get the proper road tax bracket.
Gordon arranged for me to take it to the weigh-in and said if you don’t get it under three tons you can’t drive it , so it’s up to you to get it under three tons. Well, I took everything off that was possibly legal with only about half a gallon of diesel in. So into the police weighbridge, handed in the papers trying to keep calm and couldn’t stop thinking if it is over three tons I will not be able to drive this truck.
Waiting for the weigh ticket to be given over to me, a voice came from the weighbridge window “here you are son:. I was nervous to read the contents but I could see that my worries were over - just under three tons. I was on the road and was one very happy young lad.
I started driving full time for Gordon and went back to live with my mother at Little Bampton. She was very happy to have me back. I would be away early in the mornings. If I was going to ICI Billingham, I would want to be there first in the queue to load up, so I would be up at 5am to be there before 8am, get loaded with 10 tons of bagged fertiliser, and then back to Carlisle or the Wigton area to deliver to farms.
We did a lot of bulk slag in the autumn and through the winter so I needed the sides onfor this. Basic slag was waste from the steel works, just like black dust. When we had loaded this slag we would bring it back and it was to spread on the fields of the farmers who had ordered it. It was all to shovel from the truck into the spreader which would hold about two tons.
The farmers wanted it spread mostly half a ton to the acre. When our truck was empty I would be as black as a crow, in my hair all over my face, impossible to comb my hair. It was very hard to get your hands clean. It got into the truck cabs and all over. I wore a boiler suit that I took off when I had unloaded. We collected this slag from steel works all over – Lackenby Steelworks, South BankSteelworks, Middlesbrough, Skinningrove, Corby Weldon Steelworks, near London.
I was making very good money – £13 per week clear with all taxes paid – but working very hard for this. On a normal working day I would be up at 5am, over to Middlesbrough, load up back into Cumbria, shovel the 10 tons into the spreader (five spreader loads) and spreading it onto the fields. Then back into a farm to pick up a load of baled hay, load it onto the truck eight rounds high. Loading these bales up to eight rounds high could only be done by drivers like me that had the farming experience.
Once loaded, I would then deliver it to the farmer that had purchased the load, mainly in the Cumbria area.
Gordon had another driver, Freddy Miller, driving aBedford truck but I was doing more work than him so I said to Gordon, "Why is Freddy getting the same money as me and not doing as much work?"
Gordon was not interested and would not talk about it.
In those days there were a quite a few contractors doing this same contracting. John Rumney from Thursby had a contract with Graham’s Agricultural Supplies Penrith and he approached me to work for him; he knew I could drive the truck and also handle the tractor and spreader; most men could only drive the trucks and knew nothing about spreading. On the other hand tractor spreader men did not drive trucks.
John Rumney offered me £16 per week clear, so I thought “well, same job, why not?" I spoke to John Rumney and said I would start the following week and he agreed. So Ispoke to Gordon and said I was leaving and would work one week’s notice. He exploded. I started my last week for Gordon and within two days he approached me and said "You are not going to work for f--king Rumney I will F--kingkill him" .So the next night John Rumney called me and said he could not start me because Gordon had been onto him.
So here I was, 19 years old, looking for a job. I got started on a farm with Mr and Mrs Curruthers, Pow Hill Farm, Kirkbride, which was very near to my friend’s farm, Baird’s of Wampool. The job was more or less tractor and general farm work; they did the milking and looked after the stock. It was very boring actually and not what I wanted. But the farmer and his wife who lived opposite gave me a lot of fun. Pais Brown was his name and what a character.
I used to go over at lunch hour and have plenty of banter with him and his wife. Also at nights I was over to Baird’s farm with my mates Gib, Ed and the others. I only stayed at the Curruthers farm for a few months. My next job was for John Dixon, Gordon’s elder brother.
Read Part 1 HERE.
