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Jack Hill who lived at Leicester recalls the latter years of his education after a spell as a Bevin Boy during the war.
Now that I was at University with a FETS grant and tuition fees paid direct, I was able to live comfortably, but even so it was essential to get work during the vacations to make sure there was spare cash to travel and get extra items like books.
So for the first summer, I obtained a job with the forestry commission at Ratby Burrows. I was one of a small team who were detailed to clean out old ditches and cut down brushwood. A ranger came from somewhere every morning to give us our job for the day, issue tools and then leave.
I seemed to be the only one who felt inclined to work {me being me}, and I remember one chap who had a fund of jokes which would have kept a cabaret going for weeks. He would tell a joke say about parsons and that would generate more jokes till we pleaded for time off. By electing
to tell jokes, he of course managed to do very little actual work as he was expending his energies thinking and delivering.
It was there I saw my first grass snake.
I knew it was important to wear some form of sunblock on my bare back so I purchased a jar of Brylcreem and by the end of the summer was a lovely shade of brown. The cycle ride took me along the Glenfield track to get to Ratby.
The second summer, I went to the dole office in Leicester and they put me in touch with the Greyhound Stadium in Belgrave Road. The job involved preparing the old grotty stands to be renewed with prefabricated slabs and steps in concrete.
So the team this time had one or two regular members, but to be honest they were hardly examples of good British workmen. A slightly ridiculous element of the design became quickly apparent if the thin slabs were carried the easy way. By easy I mean like a stretcher and not vertically like a sheet of glass.
They broke in half. The reason was in fact outrageous as the reinforcement was simply the remains of sheets of steel plate from which strips had been cut at right angles to the length, so the only strength was in the two narrow widths of metal at top and bottom.
The steps had a toe to form the rise so had more stiffness to resist breakage The people owning the stadium seemed not to be bothered by being rooked so I gave up bothering as well.
They had a Fordson tipper lorry, which was driven by one of the regulars, but one day when he failed to appear and I needed the lorry to clear some debris, I decided to try and move it myself. It had a starter button, so in I climbed, pressed button A, got it going, slipped into a gear and was off out of the front gate around the side to reach the next gate.
All of course on a public highway, albeit deserted in the cul de sac. However, having negotiated the gate I tried to drive along a narrow track and tried to change up, but couldn't find the gear, so stalled. Fortunately by that time the chap had arrived and sorted me out. That was my first driving experience and my next had to wait until Kuwait in 1954.
Often when we were working we would be able to watch the greyhounds being given a workout and could get extra money by attending the track for meets, but I declined this opportunity.
Within the grass track was the dirt track where motorbike meetings were held twice a week. These I did attend as a general helper but usually as a free entry spectator.
To get to the site I used the old faithful Raleigh drop handle sports bike, now with panniers and dynamo-powered lighting. The car parking and bike storage was two or three hundred yards from the Stadium, but I was not unhappy as I had lock and chain to attach it to a fence.
However, I had not thought of the ingenuity of thieves who simply unfastened the dynamo, the lamp and rearlight, leaving the bike untouched. That meant when I found the bike at 10.30p.m. there was no alternative to walking with it and sometimes sneaking a quick ride to get home around midnight.
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