I left school around Christmas time when I was fifteen and went to work at a leatherwork factory. My Dad knew the manager and foreman and he helped to secure me a position there. It was a bit foreboding the first time I walked in there and saw all the men at work but they were a good bunch and they looked after me. The works manager was a Regimental Sergeant Major, I found him to be a very fair man. I spent my first year of employment working in the factory then gradually started to go out on site with some of the older, more experienced lads. I learned my craft, repairing upholstery and treating leather by hand, by working alongside an older, experienced man. Most of the leather came from Scandinavia. It was of superior quality and made the best hides due to the way the animals were kept- no barbed wire fencing, good treatment from the farmers – and also because, due to the cold climate, there were no wobble flies there so these skins made the best unblemished hides. The firm I worked for had depots in Euston, Wimbledon and Canterbury, all well known and affluent areas. We worked in several aspects of leatherwork; car upholstery renovation, ships – I went to America to do a refit on the QE II, we had the Royal Warrant and worked in the Houses of Parliament.   I spent one year working in the factory, then three or four years out on site with more senior staff before being sent out on my own. The company put me through my driving test and HGV test. It was a good job, I’d hate to have been stuck somewhere that made me dread going to work. I spent thirty four years there until the company went bust, mainly down to the rise in cheap imports.

Outside of work I had an active social life. The main thing we did in those days was go to the cinema, often twice a week. There was also a social side to my ‘stay away’ work travels. I travelled to places such as America, Germany, Holland, France and Italy. I enjoyed the travelling but didn’t learn any foreign languages. I think we English are lazy in this respect and everywhere I went most people spoke English so I never needed to bother.

I suppose I didn’t realize at the time that I was actually becoming a craftsperson. I had always been more practical than artistic. I did have a good eye for mixing colour, I found it easy to look into a colour and see what was needed to achieve the right result. We had recipes for the older colours but the newer colours, the pastel shades and suchlike needed to be mixed.

I left home aged twenty three when the company, Connolly’s, closed their Euston factory and I was relocated to Wimbledon. Connolly’s lent me the money to buy a flat in Sutton, Surrey. I lived there for five years before selling the flat and making enough money to pay the company back and buy a small house in Sutton. I met Collette, a young lady who worked at the hospital next to one of the garages we used. She was a Medical Science Laboratory Officer,researching blood. She eventually moved up to work in research at the Blood Transfusion Service. Collette worked a lot of hours, often evenings and weekends and I was busy with my job so we never married. I am happy to live on my own and comfortable with my own company. We visited places together, went out for nice meals. Our lifestyles suited us.