Sunday Gardener

The Berkeley Arms c1965
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In 1961 I got my first job after leaving school at S & R Smiths Garage on the Great South West Road. The owners were brothers Sydney and Raymond Smith. We called them Mr Ray and Mr Sid. I started in the stores department. It was a Ford dealers and sometimes I would be sent out on my bicycle to fetch parts from main Ford dealers. This could mean going as far as Staines or Twickenham. The stores manager was Pat, an Irishman with seven children. He would always insist on having St Patrick's Day off. There was also a nice old chap that worked in the stores part time, I only knew him as Pop, he was about eighty, had white hair and would shuffle along.

A panal beater started at the garage who was Asian, but came from Johannesburg, South Africa. He was the first coloured man I had met. The lads in the workshop wouldn't help him if he needed a hand to do something, so he would ask me. He told me he had never seen snow in the streets, only on the top of mountains. I later transferred to the panel beating shop. Being the young lad the first thing I had to do in the morning was to bring the coke in for the coal fires that were dotted about the workshop. I would also go out on the breakdown trucks to drag in the car wrecks. We had two red trucks named Humpty and Dumpty. There was a lot of fog in those days and we got a lot of business. My job was to direct traffic around the accident. There were no air bags or seat belts in those days.

Mr Ray was into rally driving and had a red souped-up Ford Anglia 105E. Mr Sid drove a Riley Pathfinder and lived in a corner house on the Bath Road, east of the Berkley Arms. He asked if I wanted some extra money clearing up his garden on a Sunday, as I was saving for something to drive once I was sixteen I jumped at it. I'm no gardener, but cutting grass and raking leaves I could do. He had an attractive daughter a bit older than me and when she was picked up by her boyfriend in a little sports car I knew she was way out of my class

I left S & R Smiths when I was about sixteen. Years later I noticed the house was knocked down and flats built on the site. The garage and workshop are pulled down too and now there is a modern petrol station there. What happened to all those people, are their ghosts still there? Does Pat still jump over the counter to save walking round? Is Pop shuffling his feet and spilling the tea? Did Mr Ray ever win the race of his dreams?