I saw the cook getting dressed up and I said “What do you think you’re doing? Where are you going?” so he said “I’m going ashore” so I said “Well we’ve no money” so he said “Oh,” he said “the young chap here, a little Arab boy” he says “he knows where we can get some money” so I said “Well that seems funny to me” but anyhow we told a couple of our pals and the four of us went ashore in the rowing boat.  Well this little boy, he took us into Algiers and then we went down a very dark alley and up about four flights of stairs and he knocked at a door.  Well, there was a family, they were just having their evening meal and they asked what do we want.  So we told them we wanted some money.  So they said “Well, what ship are you on?” so we said “The Apsleyhall” so he said “Alright. Come in” he said “I’ll let you have some money” he said “How much do you want?” so we didn’t know how much to ask for so somebody suggested a Thousand Franks each.  Well, I don’t know how much a Frank was but it couldn’t have been a very great deal because without any hesitation he gave us this Thousand Franks each.  Of course we signed for it and he said he’d get it from the Captain when he went aboard next day.

Anyhow we went off with this Thousand Franks and of course went to a pub and we soon got through our Thousand Franks so they said to me “Do you think we could find this place again?” so I said “Well, I think so. I think I know where we went” so off we went back to this house again, up the stairs, knocked at the door and he said “What do you want now?” so we said “We want some more money” so he said “What? Another Thousand Franks?” so I said “Yes, that would be fine” so he gave us this money.

Well we went back to the pub and there was a bit of a disturbance in this pub.  Somebody must have done something or said something wrong and they started, all these natives starting setting about us.  There were only four of us so we thought we’d better run for it.  Anyhow as we were running through Algiers we kept picking up more English sailors.  In the finish there were French Foreign Legionnaires and natives and God knows who was chasing us down to the docks.  Anyhow when we got to the docks the gates were locked but the police at the gates, they opened the gates and let us go through and so we got back to the boat alright.

The next day the Captain sent for us and said “What’s this I hear about you going ashore last night?  There’s a man here says you owe him two thousand Franks each” so we said “Yes, that’s right.  We got it from him last night” Well of course he played steam about this but there was nothing for him to do but to pay it.  Of course it came from our wages so we hadn’t done anything wrong really.  This chap turned out to be the Ship’s Chandler, the chap who supplied all the food for the ship so all was well.

One time when we were out in Algiers two of the chaps came to me and said “What about jumping the ship and joining The Foreign Legion?” so I said “What?!  Join the Foreign Legion?” they said “Yes.  Why not? It would be a bit of excitement” so I said “Sure it’d be a bit of excitement but” I said “I’m not ready to die yet” I said “when I’m ready to die” I said “that’ll be the time I can join the Foreign Legion because I can always commit suicide after I’ve joined the Foreign Legion” so I said “No Foreign Legion for me just yet”

As I said before, a lot of the Crew had to draw their rations weekly.  This included all the Sailors and the Firemen, the Donkeyman, the Apprentices and the Boatswain and the Carpenter.  They used to come each week and draw their stores from the Steward.  I remember one tin of Nestles milk had to last them, each man, three weeks.  Well as it was very hot, especially for the Firemen, they used to be always drinking tea and so this milk didn’t go very far.  It lasted nothing like three weeks.  Well all the time I was on board this ship, I never used to pinch anything to sell but I did used to give the crew an odd thing now and again.

I remember the Steward one night, he came into the Galley and he saw me making a cup of tea for myself so he said “What do you think you’re doing?” so I said “I’m having a cup of tea” I said “what does it look like?” so he said “Well, we’re short of tea. You’ve no business to do that” so I said “Alright, I’ll remember in future” So later on I got one of the Firemen.  I said “Look” I said “how would you like some dry tea?”  So he said “Oh, yes, we would” and I said the same to the Sailors.  So I said “Right, well if you put an empty butter tin in my cabin” they were seven pound butter tins, quite big ones and I said “I’ll see what I can do for you” so early in the morning I filled up these tins with dry tea.  We had two kinds of tea on board.  One was for the cabins, the Captain and Engineers and us and the other was for the Crew.  Well the Crew tea was horrible stuff.  So I gave these Firemen and Sailors cabin tea which they were very thankful for.  So he said “What have you done this for?”  so I said “Well the Steward caught me getting this tea last night and he said we’re short of tea so I thought we’d make us a bit shorter and help you out” and when we used to load the stores on board I remember the Nestles milk used to come in crates. I don’t know how many there were in a crate, but they weren’t very strong cases; they were just bound round with a bit of wire.  So when we were loading these I used to smash one down on the deck and of course these tins used to roll all over the place and I said to the Firemen and Sailors “Give us a hand with these will you?” so of course they did, they started picking them up and of course practically half a case disappeared and that was what I meant them to do! So I was on pretty good terms with all of them.

I remember one tea time we got five eggs each so I said to the Cook, I said “There’s something fishy here, getting five eggs each, there must be something wrong with this lot” Anyhow, we cooked these eggs and out of my pile, I didn’t get one good one.  I don’t know if anybody else got a good one but the Steward must have known they were pretty bad or else he wouldn’t be giving us five each.

I remember we had to buy our own soap and it was pretty expensive and we used to have Sunlight soap, I remember and there were three bars to a packet.  Well the port holes in the store room were very very small.  You couldn’t get through them so they were left open to let as much air in as possible.  So one day when I was in the store room, I moved all the soap not very far from these port holes and told the Apprentices, I said “Look, if you want any soap” I said “I’ve shifted it.  I’ve put it near the port hole on the starboard side so if you want any you’ll have to fish it out with something when you’re on watch tonight” so they said “Okay”.  Well, they got a long cane and made a point on it, sharpened it to a point and I of course just meant them just to get one or two packets of this soap but instead of that, they took the lot.  Well of course they gave me my share but they flogged quite a lot of it among the Crew.  The Steward, he never did find out where that soap had gone.

We never used to get any supper on board the ship.  We used to get our last meal about Five o’clock so very often during the day I used to cut myself a nice piece of meat, steak, off the meat and I’d go into the Galley at night and have steak and chips.  Well one night I was there busy cooking these chips and who should walk by but the Captain.  He said “What do you think you’re doing Baysil?” so I said “Well” I said “I’m cooking myself some chips and steak” so he says “Well you shouldn’t be doing that you know” he said “Anyhow, it smells very good” he said “I think I’ll take that lot from you and have it myself” so he collared the lot so I had to set to and make some more for myself.  He wasn’t very annoyed about it.  I think he quite enjoyed them.

After giving this tea away to the Sailors and Firemen, I used to have to make the tea for the Second Mate and Mate and Captain and Stewards and myself so one day I decided to give them Crew tea. So I dipped my hand into the Crew tea tub and gave them this.  Well when they got this tea the Steward took it in to them and they said “What the hell do you call this?” so he said “I don’t know.  I don’t know what’s gone wrong” so he came and asked me.  He said “Where’d you get that tea from?” so I said “Out of one of the bins” so he said “Well you’ve given us the wrong kind.  You’ve given us Crew tea” so I said “I’m awfully sorry.  I must have put my hand in the wrong bin in mistake” Of course I knew what I had done really but it served them jolly well right.

One night when we were homeward bound it was very very foggy and the Captain ordered us to go dead slow and he was blowing his fog horn all the time.  Well we were very annoyed, we wanted to get on with it and so one of the two of us were off duty and we went and sat on the oaksill head that was right on the front of the ship and as I say it was very very foggy indeed and we were cursing the Captain for going so slow but all of a sudden we saw a great big liner.  I think it must have been a B and I boat, British India boat, a passenger boat. He was ablaze with his light and he couldn’t have been more than a hundred Yards in front of us and we never heard a sound from him.  They’d never blown their fog horn at all. So after that we weren’t quite so annoyed with the Captain.  We thought he did a good job in going slow else we might have had a pretty bad crash.  I can’t understand why this passenger boat hadn’t blown his fog horn because he must have heard us blowing. He was very near.  This boat cut straight across our bows and if it hadn’t it would have cut us in two and there would have been no hope for us.

Well I think one time after we’d left Aden, the following day we found we’d two Arab stowaways on board.  Well the Captain was furious because we were going out East and we’d have had to take these men with us all the time and each port we called at we’d have to put them in jail and pick them up again and bring them back ‘til we keep them aboard until we got to Aden.  Well he didn’t want to keep them all this time so he got the Wireless Operator to get in touch with another ship who was homeward bound and asked them if they’d take these two stowaways off and drop them at Aden.  Well he got in touch with this ship and he agreed to do this but we knew whereabouts we were going to meet him but have must have changed course and missed us on purpose and we didn’t see him at all.  We still had these two stowaways on board and when we were passing the most North Easterly part of Africa, Cape Guardafui, the Captain stopped the ship and lowered a boat and they put these two stowaways into the boat.  They had to punch them to make them go into this boat. In fact they said they’d rather be shot than put ashore at this place as there was nothing but dessert there.  They certainly gave them a tin of biscuits and a tin of fresh water but how on earth they survived, I don’t know because even if they could get across the desert, they’d still have to cross the sea to get over to Aden.  Well if this had been heard by anybody in the Company the Captain would have got into a terrific row over that. I think it was a dirty trick to do.

One time while we were in Calcutta a ship that was lying close to us challenged us to a game of football.  Well we’d no football togs onboard our ship of course so I suggested we should get some blue singlets to act as jerseys for us so we’d know who was who.  Well we went off to the market and we were rummaging about for these blue singlets and last of all we found some and there was quite a crowd of us round and I picked one up and paid for it and somebody said “Oh we’re not buying one of them from here.  It’s no good buying here” so I said “Well, that’s what we came for” and I said “I’ve got mine” but anyhow they said they wouldn’t buy any.  Anyhow, we left the store and each one of them pulled out one of these jerseys.  They’d all pinched one.  I was the only one who’d paid for it!  Anyhow we had this game of football.  I forget who won but it was very very hot I remember but we enjoyed it.

I was going through the market again another day and this native who was in charge of this store pulled me up and said we’d stolen a lot of jerseys from him.  So I said “Well, I paid for mine” I said “I don’t know about the others” I said “it’s nothing to do with me so I said “You can remember me paying for it can’t you?” so he said “Yes, you paid alright but the others didn’t” and that was the last we heard of that.

So after this game of football I used to wear this blue singlet and one day the cook was making some bread and his hands were covered in flour and he put his hand on my back and made a big white hand on the back of my blue singlet.  Well he didn’t know I knew he’d done this so I immediately went to the galley and got my hand covered with soot and walked up to him and he was looking over the rail and there was a ship passing so I just put my hand on his shoulder and I said “What’s that ship over there Cooky?” so he said “I don’t know” Anyhow, my hand left a beautiful black print on his white singlet. 

Well it wasn’t long before he said “How long have you been in the White Hand Gang Bays?” so I said “The White Hand Gang?” I said “What on earth are you talking about?  I’ve never heard of it” so he said “Oh, yes there is a White Hand Gang” so I said “Well, I‘ve never heard of it.  I’ve heard of the Black Hand Gang” I said “I’ve seen one of those but never The White Hand Gang” Anyhow all the Crew were roaring with laughter and the Cook thought they were laughing at me of course.  I was still quite innocent about this white hand.  All day long we were talking about this White Hand Gang. And I remember at night when he took his singlet off, he found this huge black hand on his singlet. So of course he was furious. In fact it nearly started a fight.  But I said “Well, you started it” so I said “If you play tricks on people, you must expect them to retaliate and play tricks on you” By the way, this was a new Cook.  A younger chap altogether.  A very decent chap he was.  The other one had got the sack after the first trip.

I remember once we were going to have lifeboat drill.  All the sailors came along and the life boats were hanging on davits and they’d been painted so many times that we couldn’t budge them.  They were stuck absolutely fast with paint on to the davits and they couldn’t move them.  We had to get the Carpenter and it took him nearly a day to ease them off.  Last of all we got them hoisted so far up, we didn’t actually lower them into the water but just made sure that they’d work alright.  While they were doing this the Steward said “It’s about time we replenished the lifeboat with food and stuff.  It was supposed to have Nestles milk in and goodness knows what but there was nothing in it but some flares and some biscuits and a barrel of water.  Well we tasted the water and it was black!  It tasted vile. The biscuits were just crumbs.  There was one mass of weevils had eaten every bit of them.  So if it had gone down we’d have been in a bad state.  No water, no food, no nothing.  So I said to him, I said to the Steward “Shouldn’t the life boat have Nestlé’s milk and such like in the boat?” so he said “How do you know?” so I said “Oh well, I do read the regulations sometimes” so he said to me “Well if the ship does go down, it’s your job to fill it with food”  I said “Well, if you’re relying on me to fill it with food you’ll be damned unlucky because” I said “if the ship’s going down, I’m not going down below to get food for you lot!” I said “So you’d better put some fresh in now while you’re about it!”  I think we were each allocated to a lifeboat but I didn’t know which my lifeboat was so I thought it was best not to ask and I thought if anything does go wrong, I’ll get in the nearest one and make sure that I was safe.

I remember every time the Cook was cooking bread, he used to get his flour into a huge bowl, tin bowl, and you could actually see it moving, there were so many weevils in it and we used to sift it all.  Well, every time we filled the sifter and sifted this flour there was about two inches of maggots on the bottom of this sifter and even then, some used to get through the sieve and get into the bread but we had to put up with that.

One day the Steward, he brought his usual meat for us to cook for dinner and I said to the Cook “Well, this meat’s rotten” so he said “It can’t be” so I said “You just come and have a smell at it” Well he did and he found out that it was bad so he said “We’ve to cook it anyhow, he’s brought it to us” so I said “We won’t, you know” I said “If you hand that meat out to the Crew” I said “You’d be murdered” I said “None of them’ll eat it and” I said  “I’m sure I won’t”  Last of all he plucked up courage and he told him he wasn’t going to cook this meat because it was bad but the Steward said it wasn’t.  Anyhow in the finish the Cook won the argument and we had to dump about Two Hundred Pounds of meat over the side.  This made the Steward furious of course because it was loss of money to him.

As I said before, we used to nearly always tie up at the buoys and we used to discharge our cargo into lighters.  Well the lighters used to come alongside and tie up to us and the lavatory we had, it used to have a hole just above the water line of the ship and it used to flush down into the sea.  Well of course when these lighters came ashore, if anybody used the toilet it used to flush onto their decks and they used to get very annoyed about this so one day the chap on this lighter, he climbed up and put a peg, a big wooden peg in the hole where the toilet was.  Well our cabin was next to the toilet and after about a week’s use it got pretty full, I tell you, and it wasn’t very nice in a climate like that. It used to smell terribly.  So I thought “Oh, we’ll have to do something about this” so I told the lighter man, I said “I’m going to knock this peg out. Would they move a bit further along the side of the ship” So he agreed to do this and all I had on was a pair of shorts.  I didn’t have any shoes or stockings or vest on or anything else.  I took a hammer down and lowered myself down to the end of the rope.  Well, I was banging away at this peg for a long time and it wouldn’t come out.  Last of all it came out and out shot all this filth all over me. All over my tummy.  Well, I got such a shock that I nearly dropped into the sea and I shouted to some of the chaps to give me a hand to get me back up on board again but seeing the state I was in they wouldn’t come anywhere near me!  So I just dumped the hammer over the side and had to get up the best way I could.  Well luckily there was a bath in this toilet also but it only had sea water in.  But I dashed into the bathroom and took my shorts off and pitched down over the side and got into the bath and tried to get myself clean.  I had to have two or three lots of fresh water in before I could get myself respectable again.  Anyhow, when I’d finished I went to my cabin and got some more shorts and got dressed and then I started really cleaning up the toilet so after that it wasn’t so bad but I never want to be in a state like that again!

The Crew thought it was a huge joke and they kept pulling my leg for days afterwards.  It was then that I realised what the Signalman at Ripley station must have thought when my brother handed him this bag of cow dirt!  I must have felt like he did.

One day the Cook, this new Cook we had, he missed a Fifty Rupee note that he had in his little box so I said “Well, I certainly haven’t got it” so he said “No, I don’t think you have” he says “I think it would be Ginger the Apprentice” but of course we’d no proof of this but I thought I’d see who was going into our drawers so I got some wire and these drawers had little brass handles on them and so I wired the handles, each handle, down one side with an electric wire from the light so that if anybody got hold of the two handles they’d get a shock.

Well I don’t know what went wrong but somehow all of the lights on the ship went out. I’d fused the bally lot.  Well this caused chaos on the boat and I guessed I’d done it so I ripped out these wires very quickly and dumped them over the side.  It took them some time to mend this fuse, find out the fault, what had gone wrong and they’d to put oil lamps on the mast head and on the Port and Starboard lights.  Of course, the first person they came to, the Engineers, was me and said “What had I been doing?” so I said “Me?  What have I been doing?” so they said “Yes, you fused all the lights!” so I said “Well how on Earth could I do that?” I said “I’ve been doing nothing to fuse the lights” I said “How do you make out it’s me? So they said “Oh, if there’s anything goes wrong you’ve always some hand in it” so I said “Well, it wasn’t me this time” and as I say, they couldn’t prove anything and they mended the lights and all was well.

After I’d been home after the first trip, going back again I took a telescope with me. It belonged to my father; it was about three feet long and about three inch diameter.  It was a very good one indeed and it came in very useful looking at various things we passed.

One day the Captain saw me with this telescope and he shouted down from the Bridge, he said “What have you got there Baysil” so I said “It’s a telescope” so he said “Bring it up here.  Let’s have a look at it” So I took it up there to him and he had a look through it and he said “Well, this is ten times better than the one I’ve got” he said “You’ll have to lend me it sometimes” So whenever we passed any signal station or anything like that he used to have a look through it and he could read the signals.

It came in very useful one day when I saw five tugs towing a huge dry dock.  I don’t know where they were taking it but, it was a good distance from us, but through this telescope I could see it quite distinctly and the Captain shouted at me and asked me to let him have a look so of course I went up on the Bridge and he had a look through it.

Whenever the Captain or the Mate were on the watch on the Bridge, if they saw a ship coming they used to steer away from it, a mile away from it, and the shore, you used to keep well away from the shore.  But when the Second Mate was on duty, he used to go quite close to them and they used to have a few words to each other by semaphore.  I remember once when we were passing somewhere, it was night and we were so close to the shore that the lighthouse there, it lit up the whole cabin every time it turned round and flashed so we must have been pretty close in.

Although it was a very hard life at sea, I enjoyed every minute of it and after I left I was really sorry that I had left.  I wished I’d gone on and stayed a bit longer with them.  I kept in touch with them quite a long time but I haven’t heard from them since of course and I don’t know where they are now, any of them.

I remember one night the Cook, this new Cook, he’d been ashore on his own and he’d been to a very low dive in Madras and he’d bought a pair of slippers while he was there and he came back at night and found he’d left these slippers at this place he’d been to so he said would I go with him the following night and get them back for him.  Well we went into this, the lowest part of Madras and it was a place where all these girls were and all these girls came tramping out to us so he said “I don’t want any of you girls” he said “I want my slippers!”  Last of all, the chap in charge came and the Cook says “Where are my slippers?!” so he says “You didn’t leave any slippers here” so he says “Oh yes I did!” he said “Come on, out with the slippers!” So the man said “No, I’ve not got any of your slippers” so he took his coat off and handed it to me and he said if they start anything he says “You’d better get stuck in and help me”  Well I wasn’t too pleased about this because as I say, we were in the lowest quarter of Madras and there weren’t many Europeans about and we’d have come off pretty badly if they had started anything but he brought these slippers back alright and we left without any trouble.

The Wireless Operator, he used to buy quite a lot of curios in Madras and Calcutta and I used to ask him how much he’d paid for them. So he used to tell me. So I said “Well, they’ve charge you twice as much as they should have done” I said “Don’t you argue with them and barter with them a bit?” So he said “No” he said “I just pay them what they ask for” So I said “Well, that’s ridiculous” I said “Next time you go, take me with you and” I said “you’ll see what the difference is” So off I used to go with him and he used to get about twenty five percent knocked off each time so he was very pleased.

Eventually we got home.  We docked at South Shields.  The ship was only staying there three days so I asked the Steward “Could I go home?” so he said “No” he said “If you go home, you go home for good” so I said “Alright, if that’s your attitude I’ll go home for good” but I stopped on board until the ship sailed.

As soon as we got into port, we always used to go into the shipping office and get paid off, get our pay, what we had due to us.  The Wireless Operator said to me “I don’t know what I’m going to do because I get paid by the Marconi Company and he said I’m leaving the ship this trip” and he said “I’ve no money for a bed tonight” so I said “Well, can’t you stay on board?” he said “Oh no” he says “ I’m not going to stay on board” he said “I want to get off this ship as quick as I can”

So I was only paid off with three pound ten after a ten month voyage because I used to spend my money in sight seeing at all the different places we went to and as I said before, I like to see as much of the country that I visited.  So I said to him, I said “Would a couple of pounds be any good to you?” so he says “What? A couple of Pounds?  You mean to say you’d lend me a couple of Pounds?” so I said “Yes of course I will” So he said “Well, we may never see each other again” he said “how do you know you’ll get your money back?” so I said “Well, a couple of Pounds won’t make or break me” I said “that won’t make any difference to me at all” I said “I don’t mind” I said “I know you will pay me back” so I left him my address and as I stayed on the boat for three days, I went home back to Harrogate and as soon as I got home my mother said “What have you been doing borrowing money from people?”  So I said “I haven’t borrowed any money from anybody” so she said “You have” she said “There’s a telegram here to say you owe somebody Four Pounds” so I said “I certainly don’t owe anybody anything” I said “Where’s the telegram? Let me have a look at it” So she produced this telegram and it was a telegraph money order for Four Pounds.  It was from this Wireless Operator.  So for the Two Pounds, I got a hundred percent profit so I’d judged him alright.  I never did hear from him again.

I think when we got home it must have been towards the end of Nineteen Twenty Nine.

My cousin Douglas, he was in the Army of course, as I said before and he went through the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Loos and in Nineteen Seventeen he was drafted to India and by that time he had become Captain.  I don’t know how long he stopped in the Indian Army but when he came home he went to a farm school in Wales and took a course in farming.  Well I believe he did very well at that and he got a farm near Pateley Bridge called Roundhill Farm.

At that time there were very few tractors about and I remember he had a very old horse called Fanny.  These hills were so steep that when he was reaping, the reaping machine used to slide sideways down the hill.  I remember seeing him one day on his tummy and this horse pulling away at the reaper and he was swearing at the top of his voice trying to stop this horse, swearing in Hindustani and every language under the sun I think but it took no notice and didn’t stop.

When they were getting the hay in they had to use sledges, not carts because it was too hilly for carts and we used to load this sledge up with hay and if we got too much hay on this Fanny used to just stop and look round and wouldn’t budge.  Nothing would make it budge.  So of course we had to take some hay off.  Well Douglas thought “This will never do” so he decided to buy a new horse and this horse was called Boxer.  It was a very big horse indeed.  It was about seventeen hands.  I remember you used to go up a flight of steps and stand on these steps to get its collar on, it was such a huge horse and you could hardly lift its collar never mind anything else.  Anyhow, he had to collect this horse from Pateley Bridge station.  He decide to ride it up from Pateley and it galloped full belt through Pateley and up to the farm and he said he’d never made the journey so quickly before!  He had a job handling it.

When he was ploughing he used to put both horses on the plough and  this old horse, Fanny, used to see how well Boxer was pulling and she wouldn’t give up then, she used to keep up with him and did far more work.

I don’t think he grew many crops.  It was mostly a dairy farm and he had a name for each of his cows and at milking time they all used to go into their own stall and he used to milk them.  One cow, he could never keep in the field.  Whatever field he put it in, this one cow used to get out.  How, we don’t know.  It either broke the fence down or jumped over the top.  We never found out but it was always out.  One day we couldn’t find it anywhere.  I remember it was hay time and we’d got this sledge full of hay and took it to the barn.  Douglas said “You get on top and I’ll pitch the hay up to you and you can throw it further back, to the back of the stack in the barn” I clambered up a ladder, it must have been eight or nine feet high, this stack and I said to Douglas I said “Say, what do you think I’ve found up here?” So he said “I don’t know.  What have you found?” So I said “Just get up that ladder and have a look!” To his surprise he found this cow lying down on top of this haystack.  Why it had gone up there, goodness only knows!  But the job was getting it down.  We thought if we weren’t very careful it would fall down and perhaps break a leg or damage itself in some way.  So we pulled a bit of hay down and made a kind of a slope for it to get down.  Anyhow we got it down safely alright so that was fine.

One time after the hay had been in the barn quite a bit we suddenly went in one day and we saw it steaming very much so of course we’d to get up and dig down into this hay with some hay forks and you couldn’t bare your hand on the hay.  I should think in another day it would have burst into flames and burnt the farm down.  So that meant forking it all out and spreading it out to let it dry but it was very very black and I think it was no good for fodder.

When he first went to the farm his father used to live with him.  His mother was ill and she came to my mother’s house in Harlow Moor Drive in Harrogate and she died there in Nineteen Twenty Five.

One day Douglas had got some blasting power and he got four inch drain pipe and buried it in the ground and he used to get treacle tins and fill them full of blasting powder and ram it hard down with clay and put a fuse in.  Well he put the first one in and then he made another one, a smaller one and dropped it in with a fuse on and he used to light the fuse of the main bomb.  Well when it went off it went off like a cannon of course.  This thing used to fly a terrific height into the air and explode in the air.  I don’t know what the people round about thought about this but they never said anything but I remember his father was furious.  He said we’d all blow ourselves up.  Of course it didn’t do any damage it only exploded in the air and fell in the field on his own farm.

I think Douglas must have been married about Nineteen Twenty Five, not very long after his mother died because his first daughter, Diana, was born about Nineteen Twenty Seven.  The farm, Roundhill Farm, was about seven miles from [??????] where my Uncle Edgar lived where we had to take rations up every week.  On this farm there were two empty cottages so we persuaded my uncle to come and live there. Well, we got a furniture removing firm from Harrogate to do the job and of course he didn’t know the way so I arranged to meet them in Harrogate and go in the cab with them and lead them up to the house.  We got there alright and they started loading up the furniture and stuff but my uncle, as I said before, was very eccentric and he wouldn’t see these men at all.  He was upstairs.  They loaded up all this machinery, as I said, there were two or three tons I should think and all the furniture downstairs and while they were doing this, things kept sliding down the stairs; my uncle was emptying the rooms upstairs and the furniture men kept saying “How much more is there?”  Well as I’d never been upstairs at this house, I didn’t know and so I said “Well, I don’t know whether there’s any more or not”

Anyhow every time we thought the last thing had gone, something else would slide down the stairs!  So these furniture men were getting very annoyed.  They said “Well, if you don’t know what there is to go, who the hell does?”  so I said “Well, my uncle, he’s upstairs” so they said “Well, why doesn’t he come down?” so I said “You’d better go and ask him” Anyhow they didn’t go up there and last of all they got everything aboard and I remember there were great big stacks of periodicals call The Engineer and they dated back from Eighteen Hundred and Eighteen I should think.  So the furniture men said “Well, have these to go?” so I said “Yes, everything he brings down has to go” so it went into this van.  Well, the van was standing on very soft ground just outside the wall near the garden.  Suddenly, it sank in this soft ground right up to the axles.  Well, the furniture men were furious!  They’d to take half the stuff off again and we’d to take some wall down and put it under the wheel of the van and dig it out with spades and it took a heck of a job to get it on to the harder road.  Well, eventually we got it out of this hole and loaded up again with all the furniture and stuff.

I remember my cousin Gertie was there and when we left the house, there were two chairs, two old chairs and just little oddments and my uncle and Gertie they’d to sit in these chairs all night because it was getting pretty late for them to walk back to the farm.  Anyway, on the way to part of the farm there was a very steep hill leading into Pateley, Greenhour Hill.  So I told the furniture men about this, I said “It’s a very steep hill, you’ll have to go steady” I said “I hope your brakes are alright”  So they said “Well, I don’t know so much about that” he said “there’s a hell of a load on and I don’t know whether we’ll be able to hold it”  Well, I was a bit dicey about it and didn’t know whether they were going to make it or not but we eventually got down into Pateley safely and as I said before, the road up to the farm, you’ve to go through five gates, through five different farms.  There was a track; you couldn’t call it a road, and you’d to keep stopping and opening these gates and shutting them after you see.  So as this van had sunk once, I thought if it stops anywhere on this soft road it’ll sink again so I said “There’s a gate ahead, about twenty/thirty yards ahead” I said “you go slow and I’ll go and open the gate and shut it after you and go through it at a fair speed and so you wont sink and I’ll run and catch you up and open the next gate.  Well, we got through about three gates safely and last of all we came to the forth gate.  Well, I jumped out and opened it and this van came tearing through and it hit the branch of a tree and it ripped the whole side of the van off.  So these furniture men, they were swearing at the top of there voices and said “Well, that’s done it. We’ve had enough. We’ve had enough.  We’re not going to do any more today”  so I said “Well, the farm’s not very way” I said “you’d better leave it there and come up to the farm” So luckily my cousin had some beer in and he gave them a jolly good hot dinner and plenty of beer so it calmed them down a bit but they’d to stay the night and we’d to get a horse and cart and take a lot of the furniture in this horse and cart to the cottage.  These furniture men said “Well, that’s the worst job we’ve ever had in our lives, they said “we never want another one like it”.

Next morning my cousin Gertie and Uncle Edgar, they set off to come to the farm and he had a bike so he rode on and poor Gertie, she’d to push this pram with the little oddments on it.  Well, my uncle, he didn’t know the way and he got lost and he didn’t arrive until late at night. We were very worried about him.

Gertie, she cut across the fields with this pram.  It was a pretty old pram and the spokes, with the load on, the spokes of the wheels, they came through the rim and the wheels were quite oval.  So of course she couldn’t push it any further.  She’d to leave it and she walked on to the farm and told me where she’d left it so I had go and retrieve it.  She’d just about had about enough as well!  It was a great relief when my uncle turned up.

One night it was very snowy.  There was a dance on in Pateley.  We hadn’t decided to go to this dance previously but we suddenly decided what about going to this dance.  There was quite a crowd of us there so we all set off to walk.  My cousin Douglas, he had a lamp, a paraffin lamp, and he was leading the way.  Well, we got to a style and he jumped over this style and disappeared in the drift about six foot deep and we lost him.  We’d to dig him out of that.

Anyhow, by the time we got to the dance it was nearly over so we had a drink there and decided to walk back to the farm.  When we got back to the farm, my uncle, Douglas’s father, he was just getting up.  He thought we were crazy and we’d all to draw lots as to who should have beds.  All the ladies that were with us, they had beds of course but the chaps had to draw lots to see who’d get the extra bed and the other had to sleep on the floor.

Douglas married my half-sister’s daughter, Thelma Ryder.  She was a Sister at The Royal Infirmary at Leeds.

The farm didn’t pay very well.  It was so hilly and it was why the hay got on fire was because up in North Yorkshire the hay time was very late; sometimes October before we got the hay in.  So of course we’d to put it away green.