February the 14th was a bright crisp bitterly cold but sunny morning when I came into Horsham for the first time to take control of our destiny. From now on I realised that it would be my brains, wit, and experience which would either make or break us. Old Mr Sargeant was there to greet me, and we shook hands and he introduced me for the first time to the staff who had no inkling at all that there was to be a change of management. There were seven in all, mostly elderly and leading them was the book-keeper Mr Reg Collard who had a dry caustic appearance with a very cynical and dry turn of phrase, and was continually pulling on a dirty pipe. He was the ex-chief clerk from the Midland Bank, a keen golfer and had got his retirement job through friendship with Sargeant playing over the greens at Mannings Heath. Then there was Peter Stewart in his sixties who had been working in the same premises since the age of 14. The rest were of more recent vintage. Immediately on my arrival after the customary handshakes and greetings within the first hour , I set all about smashing the old cabinets and opening the place up.During the first week, I arranged for a firm to come in and lay a bright new vinyl floor over the old depressing concrete. I was introduced to a young aspiring carpenter and an electrician both of whom wanted to earn extra money by working in the evenings, and so quickly a routine was established whereby I would come to work at 8.30am and keep going until 5.30 when I would come home and have a good supper with Jill and the children. She had been working as a teacher until 3 pm and we would all relax over a hearty meal, after which I lay on my bed and went fast asleep for half and hour ,and then I was back in my car to Horsham to work until midnight, building with the chippy, new shelving, wallpaper racks and installing modern bright lighting to give a dazzling vividness to the place. The competition then was limited, and within three months we were trading at a profit at double the rate that Sargeant had been achieving. The work was hard but I felt exhilarated that at last after 4 years from the time we had left Ceylon we were now on the right course with a family business under my direct control. The money as it started to come in raised my spirits, and I recalled being in a similar mood when I had come out of the prison camp in Japan. Then I had lost 5 years of education that I had to catch up with my contemporaries by sheer determination and slog, so that two years later I had finally got my matriculation and then went on to university. Now I had started under a similar handicap, having to launch myself in a new country in a new line of business but this time also with the added responsibility of having to keep a wife and three children all of whom depended on me for leadership, sweat and determination. Jill though was marvellous. Like me she just worked and worked keeping the home together and looking after us all with only meagre financial resources available.Without her unwavering support at this critical time I could never have accomplished what I did later. There had been very little opportunity for much of a social life those first four years and we just all stuck as a tight family unit doing everything together. But the counter part to all this struggle was my ever deepening love and admiration for the loyalty and dedication of having such a wonderful solid wife by my side. So much so that after five months with the business now running in the black, I decided what we all really needed was a complete break and a holiday abroad, and where better to go than to Turkey where Father had his Motor Cruiser “LANKA” and his retirement home. The only way to do this at a reasonable cost was to drive right across Europe through the Alps down through Italy to the port of Brindisi a distance of about 1,300 miles, and there catch the Turkish Ferry “Truva” for the two nights voyage to Izmir. I announced to the amazed staff that we were off for a month, asked them to look after the business and we all piled into our Austin 1800 and we drove with one stop only in Pisa. Whilst I drove, Jill slept across me and vice versa, but we made it. We left the car in Brindisi, had only uncomfortable reclining seats on the ferry, but it was wonderful after all our travails for the past four years to be cruising amongst the Greek Islands in the blue Agean. Eventually we all arrived in Turkey to the great delight of Father, Aunt Lilian, Cousin Roget, and we went on to Lidja near Cesme. Here we stayed in a small “pensione” on the small harbour front and revelled in the burning warmth of the hot August sun, swam in the sunny seas, amongst the hot springs bubbling up through the sea floor, and relished the bright blue skies, and seeing the children for ever eating honey filled figs, and gigantic peaches picked off trees growing wild in secluded sandy coves. The lovely new crisp Turkish bread with fried eggs cooked by Father’s boatman Jellal, all were light years away from the drudge and gloom of England. We were able to just relax and enjoy the simple courtesies and politeness of the local Turkish peasants sipping strong black coffee and ice cold water in rough little coffee houses surrounded by pitch pine trees and pepperinas with their soft resinous odour. And then there were the days at Father’s house at Karsiyaka on the opposite side of the bay from Izmir. We all ate outside on the marble patio, wonderfully complicated Greek dishes cooked by Grammatiki. Lilian would come out from her house with Fred when he was at home from tobacco buying, and Roget too when allowed by his mad wife Flavia, and we would all dine talk and put the world to rights Whilst we ate and talked Grammatiki would stand with arms folded supervising our eating. If there was something not quite right she wanted to know why, and if Father criticised anything, he would get a torrent of abuse. Her tiny grey haired figure dominated the proceedings and she was like a queen on her patch of territory staring at us with her imperious disdainful eye. But she loved and adored Jill’s quiet dignified manner, and would each day lovingly pick a pine shoot full of long needles, and place on the end of each a white scented jasmine flower as a token of her love and admiration of her. It was all so touching , so simple and yet so very noble to see the goodness that radiated out of that household. In those days Turkey was a distant land which only a few intrepid German tourists would visit. Air travel was expensive, and the communist countries of eastern Europe had endless visas and other barriers to easy travel. These holidays of which we were to do many more, were also an unbelievable education for the children who also met up and played with all their distant cousins who would arrive at the same place each year from all the countries of Europe, usually the same way we had travelled. As much as it was a holiday it was also a broadening of their horizons in their early years from the narrrow confines of their English village life. It was also pleasant to be in a huge under populated undeveloped country with all the traditional oriental courtesies around , where the pace of life was slower, and in a brief manner, time seemed to have stood still.
But then it was the long trip home back by boat to Brindisi, a tedious drive over the mountains to spend a night in Orvietto just north of Rome, and then 900 miles in one hop back to England. We were tired but wonderfully refreshed with countless stories to relate to Mother who came down to stay for a week to hear all our tales, and revel in hearing about all the fun and the experiences that we had undergone. For Jill especially the month long relaxation in the sun, cruising around the bays aboard Lanka, swimming in the crystal clear waters unpolluted by any tourists, and the easy going experience of the family had come as a most welcome break after all the hard slog that she had undergone since we had left our idyllic life in Ceylon, which now seemed so very far away and only a distant memory.
