After the Lord Mayor's show comes the..........
To those of you who have never heard of this ancient adage, it refers to the time when all transport, and in particular, the annual splendid "Lord Mayor's Show" was horse drawn. " Muck cart" was the end of the proverb. You will see what I mean as you go along.
On the 17th. July 1949 I made the last of 113 sorties from Hamburg and RAF Wunstorf to Berlin and back with a load of Motor Fuel and then eventually flew a Dakota back to an England that was suddenly flooded with Pilots all looking for jobs. My Log book( No2) showed that I had 2,793 Flying hours.
Flying was regarded as a dangerous and a very expensive luxury that could only be undertaken by comparatively well off people. As a result there were few, if any vacancies for pilots to be had in aviation and I had to take a succession of various poorly paid and very dull jobs. I sold toilet rolls around the small Hotels and Boarding Houses of Padddington and Victoria. The only good thing that came of that is I practically obtained "The Kowledge" sought by London taxi Drivers by driving a small van around the various Hotel and "Pension" districts. I had a brief spell as a counter assistant in Bewlay's pipe and tobacco shop at the side of the Savoy Hotel in the Strand and then salvation came in the shape of an advertisement in "The Aeroplane" magazine requiring people to be trained as Air Traffic Controllers. ( I hope that you are taking note of all this Kookabat , Jabberwok and Co.!).
I went for an interview at Ad Astral House in Kingsway, I think, and was lucky enough to be recognised from my Captains' Check Pilot days at Aldermaston by several of the Board of Examiners. I was accepted for training at the School for Air Traffic Controllers at Hurn, near Bournemouth, but it would be three months before my course would start and I had to do something to make ends meet until then.
I think that the worst job was that of a "Tallyman" in the Croydon area. A Tallyman was employed to collect the pennies and sixpences from the poor customers of firms who sold household goods, clothes etc. from door to door on the "never, never" as Hire Purchase was called then. This was the very bottom of the barrel and I shall never forget the poverty that I saw and the stories that I was told as to why they couldn't pay the odd pennies and threeoences that they owed each miserable week. Thank God, it didn't last long because flying began to pick up a little and I had kept valid the B Licence that I had obtained by swotting in a school in Manchester ( and watching Compton and Edrich score lots of runs at Old Trafford for England).
I now started to freelance at Croydon where various pre-war firms were starting up again using De Havilland Rapides, Oxfords, and even single-engined planes like the Proctor etc. which I rapidly swotted up and added to my licence. The two main firms were Olleys and Mortons both of them solid and well known as pre-war pioneers. The Chief Pilot of Mortons was Captain Bebb, one of the true pre war charter pilots. The firms only employed one or two pilots on a regular basis and relied on freelance ones in the summer and at weekends. The regular pay was thirty shillings per hour and was very welcome especially as the odd trip to Le Touqet, Le Zoute etc. enabled you to bring back the odd steak or two as well as some wine. Yes, meat was still strictly rationed in 1950 !
It was during this period that I got talking to a chap in a pub in the West End of London who told me that the B.B.C. were looking for someone to replace an Announcer for the Sports News on the BBC World Service. He gave me the address of a Mr. Lotbiniere to contact. One of the tallest men that I had ever seen greeted me courteously and arranged for an immediate voice test . "Lobby", as everyone called him, told me that the job was mine on a temporary basis at the really princely sum of fifteen guineas a week. I was to read the Sports news for the World Service at 0645 in the morning for fifteen minutes and then, again at 1900 hrs. As there was no public transport at 5 in the morning when I had to leave our flat in Clapham, the BBC sent a taxi to get me to Portland Place. I had to take the mundane tram for the later one in the evening.