Today, had he still been alive, would have been my fathers 85th birthday, born on Armistice Day in 1923 the youngest of four and the only boy in the family his fate was determined by Percy his father, “the boy will join me in the family business as soon as he is old enough” he declared at young Franks birth.
And at the age of 14 thats exactly what young Frank did, he went to work for his father in the family clock repair shop in Meanwood, the same business that his father had won as second prize in a coin toss with one of his brothers, the other brother winning the golden prize of the family pub “The White Stag” a bit further down Meanwood Road.
But another occupation beckoned the young Frank from just across the road, the dual sports of snooker and billiards as practised in the Meanwood Conservative Club. He was taken under the wing of a rotund old timer called George Hughes who was a handy snooker player but an absolute ace at the much more skillful game of billiards, a game that I never, even to this day, understood, at all.
Although under-age the young Frank spent most of his waking hours in the “Con Club” practising his billiards against the old stagers and not surprisingly he was sacked by his father, returning home despondant his mother Clarice asked why he was home so early and upon hearing the news that her husband had dismissed their son from the family business, clipped his ear and sent him straight back to the shop with a message that he was to be re-employed with immediate effect.
Thus started an on-off relationship with the clock repair business, every time he sneaked off over the road to play billiards his father would sack him and send him home at which point his mother would clip his ear and send him back to the shop, back an forth he travelled the streets, ear red raw, dreaming of being a billiards ace, realising that clock repairing was the more likely way of earning a crust…
Then Mr Hitler invaded Austria.
The 18 year old Frank joined the conflagration in 1941 having served a year or so in the Home Guard, I like to think of him as “Pike” in “Dards Army”, coincidentally of course Pike’s name also being Frank, so it must have been him then.
Frank was dispatched to Africa as a sergeant in a motor pool, so not Pike then, but Bilko (this is all true by the way), and fortunately for him the troop ship did not take them to face the bosch in Northern Africa but instead dropped them off halfway down that vast continent in Nigeria, a place where World War Two had yet to infiltrate. Leaving them on the dockside with a platoon of engineers and a hundred or so ancient trucks they were instructed to drive the convoy across the width of Africa to Ethiopia where they would be boarded on another ship to be taken somewhere else.
Thus followed the course of Franks war, driving back and forth across Africa delivering trucks from Nigeria to Ethiopia, no-one asked where the trucks went after they were delivered and no-one asked why the ship couldn’t simply sail all the way around Africa, no-one rocked the boat, so to speak, as that part of Africa was at least 500 miles away from where the rest of the war was taking place.
His war was a relaxed, casual affair, along the way he and all his fellow sergeants gained a native boy each to pander to their every whim and fancy, I have photographs of Sergeant Frank sat outside his personal tent on a canvas folding “directors” chair with his “boy” sat at his feet and on the floor a strange and hairy black and white rug to rest his feet on – a rug made from the pelt of several Colobus Monkeys, for that was one of the “boys” jobs.
They also gained along the way a group of Italian prisoners-of-war who were drafted into the motor pool and made to do all the dirty jobs like changing the oil and sucking the diesel out of the fuel lines when they became blocked with sand, and thus was born his hatred of foreign food and in particular Italian food or “bloody foreign muck” as he preferred to call it later on in life.
Leaving the Army at the end of the war he returned home to find the clock mending business in ruins, his father having taken to his bed with lung cancer the year before, with his dying breath he made ex-Sergeant Frank promise to continue and flourish in the business, “for people will always need clocks repairing son, urrrgh” (that was him dying).
Half an hour later, standing in the shop which had been closed for a year Frank recieved his first customer, an irate woman who had brought an alarm clock in for repair twelve months earlier and who by now was sick and tired of her husband getting up late for work, “it’l be ready Tuesday love” Frank promised, and when she’d gone he picked up a telephone directory and started looking for someone stupid enough to buy this business from him…
…to be continued tomorrow.
I think you may have posted a picture of your dad and his servant from the war. Either that or you described it so eloquently in a previous post that I feel as though I’ve seen it.
Very interesting story so far Gary. I played a few frames at Meanwood Con club. Is it still in the same location it was 23 yeras ago, right on the curve opposite a pub – I forget the name of the pub.
I went into the Stag a few times over the years. Did you ever go into The Primrose on Meanwood Road at Buzz Lane? What an absolute dive. I think they only washed the glasses once a month.
Where was the clock repair store?
Ed – I think I did post a picture of my dad and his “boy” some time ago, the last remnants of a colonial army in Africa.
Brutus – It is indeed still in the same location, the pub was The Becketts which has recently been demolished and replaced with an apartment block. The Primrose is now under new ownership, is painted yellow (fittingly) and kitted out superbly as a live music venue. The clock repair shop was underneath The Becketts, if you went around the back of the pub it had a couple of basement shops because it stood on a slope – thats where the shop was.