DARTFORD

The house cost £575, a three bedroom semi with a fixed interest rate of  2.5% from Dartford Council. The council had valued the house at £585 too which for some reason meant Dad had £10 more capital. And          that at a time when every half penny counted was wonderful news.

John started at West Hill School Infants and I went to Gravesend Tech/Art School.

Financially it was a very difficult time, Post Office money was poor and even with the Navy pension at the end of each week it was touch and go if there was anything left in Mother’s purse.  In other ways life was more settled.  But that was not the last.  In 1938 Father was recalled to the Navy and sent to India.  Mother was shocked and felt life was unfair.  She was right - he was abroad for over four years.

John’s school recognised that because of his poor eyesight a certain amount of visual help was needed and generally, apart from John’s fighting, he got on well.  John did not talk until he was four.  When he did start his vocabulary was extensive, he quickly learned to read and write, could spell and was good with figures.  If anyone deserved to go to Dartford Grammar School John did. He had an academic brain well able to wade through pages of small print and make sense of it.  However he failed his scholarship exam.  He did get a scholarship to Dartford Tech and did Building Construction but never really enjoyed the subject.

Dartford Tech did not teach for the School Leaving Certificate or London Matriculation which John wanted.  I think he got special tuition and took a correspondence course so he could take Matric when he was 16.  He passed.

His hobbies were the Scouts and stamp collecting.  Both were taken very seriously.  When he was interested in a subject no detail was unimportant. If it was worth doing it deserved all the expertise he could bring. Inevitably he was co-opted onto all sorts of committees. I have no idea how many he served on counting work and hobbies but it was a lot.

John’s first job was a paper round he took on when he was 10 or 11.  The first real job, after leaving school, was at Crayford Council. That didn’t last very long and he switched to insurance and joined the Fire Officers Association, a Trade Union for Insurance Companies used for fixing rates on fire and civil commotion.  The civil commotion was at that time solely concerned with overseas.  Nothing of that sort happened here!

I can’t remember how long that lasted but I think he suspected the opportunities were too limited.  He needed general insurance experience and professional qualifications. A move was necessary and the Dominion Assurance Co were fortunate in employing J.E.K.

Studying for A.C.I.I. (Associate of the Corporate Institute of Insurers) the professional examination, was hard work with no short cuts.  Father was a great help.  He would have the text book, ask a question and John would do his best to answer. This required concentration and a phenomenal memory especially to get through the legal exam.  John passed.

Father came out of the Navy for good in 1945.  Almost the first thing he did was to restart the building of a greenhouse so rudely interrupted in 1938 when he left for India. He had started a garden wall leaving me to finish it - a 15 year old with no experience of brick laying.  However the next door neighbour very kindly gave me a hand and the wall was completed to 6.ft..  The greenhouse was designed and built from scratch by Dad and butted on to the wall.  I think that he had finished by the time I had got home in 1946.

This post war period had severe food shortages, even bread was rationed.  A garden, an allotment, supported by a greenhouse made a very positive contribution to the family diet.

Working for the Post Office had an advantage insofar that you worked very early in the morning and had time off during the afternoon. This was valuable gardening time.

My parents recreation was to go to the cinema or the local rep theatre, I can’t recall exactly when one of the cinemas became a theatre but my parents were keen supporters of the new venture.

During the war Mother had worked as a volunteer at the Livingstone Cottage Hospital and at a services canteen.  Through this work she had acquired a number of quite close friends whom she continued to visit.

As my grandmother Nanny had died our house in Dartford became the centre for aunts and uncles who joined us for Christmas and the odd weekend. These were happy times.  As a family they were a jolly crowd. Everyone helped with the chores, played silly card games with a great deal of noise and laughter.  (Mother had by this time lost her very strict Sunday Observance views I had suffered from as a small child).

During the 50’s the working hours were gradually reduced from 44 to 40 for industrial workers with office staff 38 reducing to 35.

Annual leave for almost everyone, except civil servants and school teachers, was two weeks rising to three depending on your position within the company.

For the multitude travel was by train or bus.  Air travel was expensive and owning a car out of the question for another decade or so. Holidays, working  hours and travel have been revolutionised since the second world war.  It is curious that hours, for those in work, are getting longer and the professionals seem to be hit worst of all - some working 60 hours a week in 1996.

When we moved to Dartford I went to school in Gravesend. The course was similar to the one I had experienced at Rochester:-

 first year 2/3 academic 1/3 art and crafts

 second year ½ academic ½ art and crafts

 third year 1/3 academic 2/3 art and crafts

Looking back, the academic side was much better at Rochester but the very small art school at Gravesend was friendly and encouraging. I am not going to claim my academic progress was startling but it did improve and on the art side I was usually top of my class.

War had started by the time I was 16 and work virtually impossible to find except for trained engineers, fitters and draughtsmen.  Fortunately for me I had an invitation to join the art school full-time which I was keen to take up. Mother granted my wish, I think a little reluctantly, but she was true to her vow that any child of hers would be given any advantage to further their education.

From Gravesend I won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, then evacuated to Ambleside in the Lake District. It was the first time I had been so far north or away from home. I did a year and a term at the R.C.A. before joining the Navy.  My time at the art school in Gravesend and the R.C.A. were very happy times - the Royal Navy less so.

In truth, I loathed Service life.

Nevertheless I was very lucky - I survived uninjured and was never a prisoner of war. At times it was excessively hard work, more often than not it was boring and occasionally frightening but I didn’t get too much of that apart from the Normandy landings.  After the French landings I went on to join the East Indies Fleet and spent most of my time up and down the coast of Ceylon and India or in Trincomalee Harbour.

I was demobbed October ’46 and re-joined the R.C.A. now overflowing with ex-service men. Some of the men had been conscripted in 1938/9 and had spent six or seven years in the services.  It was a big slice out of a young persons life and making mental adjustments to restart a disrupted career was not easy.  It was very fortunate that finding work in a peace time occupation was beginning to get going again. Not necessarily good jobs, or well paid, but something.

I left college at the end of the summer term in 1948, had a weeks holiday and started work in advertising. It was never easy to get into the Ad world, particularly in what was called the creative department, but once in and the transition made between being an art student and a professional, a job was reasonably safe. I joined a subsidiary of the London Press Exchange - now Leo Burnett - stayed for 6 months and then joined ICI’s  Central Publicity Dept. After 3 or 4 years I went back to LPE. People moved about to get experience and lift their salary with little thought for job security; there was always another opportunity round the corner.  In a large Ad agency life was interesting and civilised, pay reasonable but not excessive, job security on a par with commerce in general.

This happy state started to fall apart in the early 60’s and the period of frenetic hiring and firing made it’s first appearance with the American agencies.  It spread quickly and now, in 1996, no job is secure.

I went free-lance during the mid 60’s and made a living as a designer, art director and artist working directly with manufacturers and distributors.  It was difficult to get started but we survived - just. Now, 30 years later, I still see clients who go back to the beginnings. Sometimes it’s a small job, other times a lunch, there is always good gossip and laughter.

Being free-lance requires good health and more than ones fair share of good luck; financially it is unpredictable; you are responsible for every decision and every menial task but to be independent gives one a wonderful sense of freedom.

During the 50’s and early 60’s John and I used to meet for lunch at regular intervals, usually fortnightly, when we would swap news, put the world to rights and discuss any problems where we thought the other might be helpful.  Over the years we had learned to use each others skills and professional knowhow to our own advantage.  After his death I missed him a great deal - often wanting a quiet talk when some problem occurred.  Writing this  potted  family history would have been a  John job!

Mother and Father enjoyed their retirement at Langley Heath until my father died suddenly at 76.  Mother lived on until she was a week short of her 90^th birthday but her dying had lingered for 4 months.

Both had an active social life after Father had retired. He was asked to serve on the parish council and when he agreed was immediately voted Chairman, this took him by surprise. He had no knowledge of local government but learnt quickly and found it interesting.

Mother joined the Church choir, she had quite a good voice with an accurate sense of pitch. She continued to sing in the choir until infirmity stopped her from climbing the steps into the Choirstalls.  As an inveterate letter writer she kept in touch with the family and her friends. As the oldest child, and a good communicator, her position as head of the family was accepted by everyone. They all kept in touch with her if no one else.

In writing brief family biographies of the uncles and aunts I knew personally and doing my best to place them in relation to my parents I have been struck, for the first time, by a family pattern. First of all no one seems ever to have been in trouble with the law. None were traders, no one ever seems to have been interested in sport, games were useful in ridding the young of excess energy but it was not to be taken seriously; religion was private, so were politics, John joined the Young Conservatives but that was where you met girls and the club had four or five snooker tables - more a social advantage than a political statement.  Although Mother, Father and John were conservative with a Capital ‘C’ when it came to elections.

Family occupations divided broadly into two categories: there were the crafts - shipwrights, brick layers and so on.  The rest joined institutions - the civil or armed services, the dockyard or hospitals.  Ambition does not seem to played much part in their lives. Cousin Peter, Jack and Vi’s son, stayed on in the army after doing National Service and rose to Lt Colonel, and I have every reason to suppose that if John had lived he would have done well in his company. They were the exceptions.

When young I was aware of numerous second cousins on Father’s side but although I met them the age gap was too great for intimacy.  But the pattern was the same; there was another Lt Colonel and a host of skilled craftsmen.

Should you wish to research further back into family history the Keelers belong to Dover and Lydden.  Mother’s family is more difficult, Harris is a mystery.  But the Drays, your maternal great, great grandparents family,  came from Sevington, Ashford. 

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