I started school when I was 4 years old in Wollaston Primary School and we carried on there until we was, well it was 11 years old. Going to the junior and infant school. Well, as it happened where I live I didn’t have very far to go, in fact I can see the school. I’m been in the garden this morning and I can hear the children in the school this morning. They were still there you see, it’s still a school the junior, well, primary and junior thing. So I just used to have to walk round the corner more or less and at school they used to do the bare, you know all the usual lessons. The sports day were down the big playing field, as you go towards Strixton. So everybody used to march down there when it was sports day in the big field. I weren’t a very big sports man I weren’t, used to spend most of my time getting out of doing it if I could. We went up to the new secondary modern school and that was in 1958 it opened. We went into the higher class in the junior school first, then they opened the secondary modern so we went to that and that was in ’58, as I’m just said. We went there just for two years because by then I was 13 and we left at 15 and I actually left when I was 14 and started work on my 15^th birthday at Brown’s the carpenters in Wollaston. I was there for, oh, 11 years.

I done an apprenticeship at Browns in Wollaston which you know which was the standard time you done on that. And then and then I went, you sort of just went on doing the job really, you know. We went Wellingborough tech for night, you know night, and then you used to be a day release there as well in the day. One day used to be, one day a week I think it were and probably two evenings.

My pay were £3 something I think when we started, when I started and that would be 1960. That were, that were about all it were and it wasn’t much over £20 when, when, I finished and that were full money then you know. But of course you got a lot more for £20 then than what you can now.

We used to work round the different building sites because Browns did all the carpentry for Underwoods of Wollaston. So we went round on new houses, they had a site in Rushden, a site in Earl’s Barton and they had a site in Wellingborough. They built odd houses in other places and then they had a site in Bozeat and a site in, er, Earl’s Barton which we went round working, and a big site in Irchester. All Woodlands Road area at Irchester were built by Underwoods. I worked over there quite a long while on the houses when they were being done.

I left there in about 1971 and went to Scott Baders on the building maintenance and I was there until I retired in 2003, in September. A couple of years early than what I would normally have done but everything was in place to do that and with their permission I retired in 2003. So I was only about 58 then, I’m 65 this year, we would have left on normally at 60. We were contracted to 60 in them days so that was how we went along. But on the buildings I was on that for about 11 years before I went to the maintenance and then we done a lot of work in Scott Baders, they built up quite a good building department. But then the things began to get tight with the money so some of them were made redundant but I fortunately carried on until I packed up. And so I were there about 34 years, something like that, all together there and that’s how I went through that stage of things.

Since then I’m been retired and so I’ve been doing my own thing. I like a bit of gardening and I do a lot of collecting of toys. That’s how I come to meet Jim Osborne and we’ve been quite friendly ever since. I’ll go in and see him and have a chat with him, as you know he keeps chatting doesn’t he, Jim does. We have some interesting little talks so that’s how I come to meet him really, through this toy collecting and that and friends of friends.

I have got a friend as used to live in Rushden, he’s 93 now and he lived in Fitzwilliam Hill when he was young, well a boy and that with his mum and dad. But now he’s 93 and he lives in Leicestershire and his name is Mr. Burgess. He used to be friendly with my father and of course when they, when he died, I’ve kept kept it up with him you know and he’s still plodding on. So that were my, you know, more or less that were how I come to be friendly with him like.

I mean in Rushden I can remember the Birch’s buses. We used to go to London on the Birch’s buses but you had to get a bus from Wollaston to Irchester turn and Irchester turn to Rushden to get on the Birch’s bus to go to London which we did used to do. You could go to Bedford, I used to go just to Bedford or you could go all the way to London but mainly we used to go all the way to London and get upstairs in the front seat, if we could, on the double deckers, that’s how we used to do it.

We used to go to London, I were very interested in the toys well, not the toy soldiers the real soldiers. But getting back to the collecting again with Jim and the toy soldiers which I do a fair bit of collecting on. We used to go round the sights of London, well all over really when you got there, but that’s how you used to go. It used to be quite a like decent little ride to London. They used to stop near St. Pancras where the station is, they used to stop along side of there, Birch’s did, and then they used to run back.

I went there with my parents, with my mum and dad and probably somebody else as I were friendly with, another boy or whatever, you know. Sometimes there’d be two of us go, you know, with the parents. It used to just depend, it were a Saturday trip out that were, used to be Saturday morning thing. But getting to Rushden in them days were a bit of a problem, you know, well on public transport it were and there weren’t that many people got private cars, not then you know. So that’s how we used to do it but now of course we go to London when we like as quick as we can, I usually drive down in the car.

Yes, I always drive down and then leave it at tube station. I’m actually hoping to go Saturday morning this week because there’s one of these shows on in London which I shall go and have a look round. Then spend the rest of the day in London and come back, well come back to the car by the tube and then home again in the car in the evening, hopefully anyway.