MEMORIES IN A TRUNK

Memories, ay?  What would we do without them? 
I was up in the loft the other day.  I came across a huge trunk that contained all sorts of personal detritus.  It had lain more or less untouched since I moved to Scotland in 1986. I opened the lid of the box.  Lying on top was ‘The Schoolboy’s Pocket Book’, a Sunday School prize awarded to me in 1962 for being the only boy to sing 'Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven' in more or less the right key. I don’t know why I kept it, but I leafed through it and instantly became interested.  I didn’t know, for instance, that the Distinguished Service Medal was awarded to naval personnel under the rank of officer for acts of bravery under fire, or that Ethelbald and Ethelbert were sons of King Ethelwulf (ascended to the throne in 839).  Between pages 110 and 111 (little stick men demonstrating various semaphore codes), there nestled a photograph. It was of a factory, a modest art deco factory set in its own grounds.  The factory was familiar to me, because I worked there for two tumultuous years in the mid 1980s.  I went back there twenty years later, only to find it had been swept away and an ugly Ford car showroom had taken its place.
As I stood looking at the photograph, I suddenly remembered my first, and almost disastrous, interview there (the first of two).  The factory was in Blackpool, that boisterous seaside town on the Fylde coast, and I lived in Wallsend-on-Tyne, 150 miles away.  I set off at five ‘o’ clock on a fine May morning.  My interview was at nine.  I drove my asthmatic and arthritic 1961 Volkswagen Beetle through the Tyne Tunnel, down the A1 and across the A66.  I turned off at Kirkby Stephen and stopped the car across the road from the old steam locomotive shed, then a builder’s yard.  I sat in the weak sunshine eating a cheese sandwich and drinking from a flask of coffee.  It was just after half-past six.  I continued along the A66, across wild and lonely moorland to Tebay, where I picked up the M6 and headed south.  The disaster happened just outside of Garstang.  One moment my foot was on the throttle and the car was wheezing away merrily, the next, nothing.  I pulled onto the hard shoulder and lifted the hood.  The engine was at the back.  I could see in a moment what had happened.  The throttle cable had snapped just before it joined the carburettor.  I looked in desperation at the bits and pieces lying on the parcel shelf.  I found an electrical connector and, rather more quixotically, a compass from a mathematics set.  I discovered a pair of pincers and an electrical screwdriver in my toolbox in the front compartment.  I cut with the pincers the leg of the compass from the pencil-holder bit and then the point of the compass from the leg.  I screwed that to one side of the electrical connector and the end of the broken cable to the other.  The cable was still too short, but I found that by pulling back the carburetter butterfly spindle, I was able to secure the cable to the spindle The car then idled at 2,000 revolutions per minute, but that didn’t matter; I was mobile again.  I left the M6 at Preston and drove along the M55 to my destination.  I was unfamiliar with the place, and it took me a while to find the factory, which was located near Marton Moss.  I had decided to wear jeans and a sweater to drive down, as my best (only) suit, being crimplene, was uncomfortable.  My suit was hanging on a peg in the back of the car.  There was a public park across the road from the factory.  I drove into the car park, parked the car, lifted out the suit, stood on the park grass, dropped my jeans, and pulled on my suit trousers, much to the consternation of an elderly woman walking her Jack Russell dog.  I flung off my sweater, donned my suit jacket, and sped across the road to the factory reception.  The time was one minute to nine.  Hot and sweating, I gabbled out to the receptionist that I had an interview at nine with the General Manager, Mr Greeling.  The receptionist looked at my dishevelled state with some disdain and said, in a snobbish tone, “Mr Greeling has been called away in an emergency.  He’s not expected back here until late this afternoon.” 
Memories, ay?