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Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943 and joined the Royal Armoured Corps. He joined the British Liberation Army and took part in the liberation of Germany. He met and married his German wife, Ruth, while stationed in Münster then returned to England to be demobbed.
The firm I was working for had a bad habit of laying people off when sale became slack and after about eight weeks I was told that I would have to go. This practice would not be allowed at the present time.
I needed a job so I took advantage of the law, which said that the firm which a person had worked for before joining the services had to re-employ them. I took advantage of this and re-joined Sainsburys.
I was sent to work at the branch in Terminus Road, Eastbourne. I also did some relief work in the other Eastbourne branch in Cornfield Road. After being an NCO in the army, finding myself under the command of a woman counter head was a rather galling experience and when Champion Electric opened up again I gave up the Sainsbury's job and went back to the radio factory.
This time I was given a job in the service department. Repairing the mains radios was a very pleasant job but the firm had started producing a small battery radio fitted with the miniature American valves, which had been fitted in the walkie-talkie in Germany.
These were powered with tiny 67-volt layer built battery. The ferrite rod aerial had not been invented and the aerial was a flat loop aerial fitted inside the lid of the radio.
This was very inefficient and the reason that most of these little radios had been returned was that they failed to pick up all except the local stations. It was my job to correct this, whereas really the set needed re-designing. However, trade became slack again and once more I was out of work.
My wife Ruth was now pregnant and I could not remain out of work for long. When the local general store, owned by Len Wilde, offered me a job I took it. Because I was trained at Sainsbury's I think I was quite useful to him.
The shop was a real old-fashioned store, which sold nearly everything. The bakery that had been behind the shop had been abandoned and the bread was now baked in Townsend's bakery in Polegate.
One of the assistants, a Mr Harvey, lived in Polegate, so every morning he collected the bread on his way to work. Fred Taylor did most deliveries. He was a short man who had a humped back but he could still carry the loaded baskets on the rounds.
Annie Dumbrell worked as an assistant on the grocery counter. Mrs. Wilde ran the Post Office and accounting side of the business with the help of Miss Taylor, who operated the telephone exchange and Jean Evenden who served at the Post Office counter.
I started going on the rounds with Fred to get some practice driving. There were a number of rounds, which required a lot of preparation. There were Frog Firle, Litlington with Lullington, Berwick and Arlington, Selmeston and Alciston rounds.
Each one had a list of customers with their orders, which were first assembled on the counter then packed, into a large wooden box. The sheaf of orders was then placed in the box and the box loaded into the lower shelf of the van. Bread was placed on the upper shelf and newspapers put on the passenger's seat.
When the first house was reached, the deliveryman would take a large wicker basket, then, with order sheet, take the items from the box and assemble them in the basket together with the bread required and the newspaper. This would then be carried into the house and the basket discharged onto the kitchen table. This procedure was carried out at every customer's house.
Once I had had enough practice I was sent into Eastbourne with the van to take my driving test. I passed on the third attempt. The problem was lack of practice in town driving. All my practice had been either across country in the army or on country roads around the villages.
When Mr. Harvey was on holiday or sick I had the job of collecting the bread from Polegate. This was fine on a summer morning but on a frosty winter's day the warm bread caused the windows of the van to steam up. In those days there was no de-misting fitted to vans and I had to keep stopping to clear the windows.
A lot of the provisions were delivered in bulk. Brown sugar, flour, dried fruit, and sides of bacon, all had to be cut up, weighed out or measured out and packed into smaller containers. Flour and sugar were kept in sacks on the upper floor of the shop.
Dried fruit such as currants and sultanas were kept in drawers in the shop and were weighed out as and when required. The brown sugar sometimes formed into hard little nuggets and when placed in the mouth, slowly dissolved, delicious!! The bacon machine was hand operated and could be set for different slice thickness.
Len was quite a DIY man, although the term was unknown then. He had a new composition floor laid over one weekend and we found a problem with it on the Monday morning.
Paraffin was kept in a large tank opposite the back door of the shop, in the alleyway. The assistant would take the customer's can up to the tank, fill it and return to the shop. The first time this happened after the new floor was laid, when the can was lifted we found it had melted the new plastic floor. Paraffin was banned from the shop from then on.
Len Wilde was also very good with a paintbrush. He excelled in carrying out a process called 'graining'. This consisted of applying a cream undercoat on the wooden front of the counter, waiting for it to dry, then putting a coat of brown paint over it. While this was still tacky, he would 'comb' it with a serrated piece of wood to create a graining effect.
This is now available as a commercial kit. I suppose they think they have invented something new!
Ron Levett, 2001
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