Mailbag, October 7

VAL Faulkner says she had a fleeting romance with Trevor Tuckwell, a member of the famous Oxford haulage firm (Memory Lane, September 9).

She had only a vague recollection of him, but remembers his fair hair.

In 1951, I did my basic training in a Light Infantry depot in Hampshire.

One of our group was Trevor Tuckwell. We were in the same barrack room and I remember him well, but he didn’t have fair hair.

In this photograph, Trevor is second from the left, I am in the centre and Alan Edwards, from Bladon, is second from the right.

After the training, we split up into different regiments so I never saw him again.

After demob, I drove for a short time for Tuckwells, but never came into contact with Trevor.

GORDON WYLES Helwys Place Kidlington

Cowley problems began in the 1950s

IN SOME ways, Derrick Holt (Memory Lane, September 2) is correct when he says that much of the blame for industrial strife at the Cowley car factories rested with the management, but only after 1963.

The period I was referring to in my letter (Memory Lane, July 22) was when the rot set in, in the late 1950s.

Before that, Cowley was a relatively happy factory as was Radiators’ branch in Woodstock Road.

Viscount Nuffield was still very much there, as was Lord Lambury Leonard Lord (LPL) and weak they were not!

Nuffield/Austin still had 40 per cent of the market, there were no redundancies, and working conditions were good.

I remember union shop stewards had a mass meeting in the canteen, distorted the sound system so it was just a noise, they had their Communist followers in the front of the audience, then asked for a show of hands.

The front rank put their hands up and the rest followed like sheep. They were on strike, but they had no idea why. They were paid twice the national average wage.

I give you a further recollection about the unions. An engineer, Doreen Cooper (known as Super Cooper) and I had been carrying out tests on drying time for acrylic paint.

We were required to run a working test in the paint shop, using a stop watch to measure the time for a body to pass through the drying booth.

The foreman cleared this with the shop steward and explained what we were doing. The moment we started, the steward called for the line to be stopped. The test was abandoned.

You could not talk to a Transport and General Workers’ Union official – they just wanted trouble.

The problem with senior management was that, at the Oxford plants, there had never been union trouble. It was not so much weakness but a lack of understanding why it was happening and what to do.

Where I do agree with Mr Holt is that in the 1970s, one can only describe the products as dreadful. The ghastly Allegro and Ital: awful quality, sporadic production, erratic delivery dates etc.

By that time, the good distributors and dealers had moved to Datsun (Nissan), Honda, Mercedes etc.

I remember Jack Bradburn, of Bradburn and Wedge, announcing at a distributor association meeting that after 50 years with Morris, Wolseley and MG, they were signing up with Nissan. It was almost as if someone had dropped a bomb in the room.

It’s just history now, but consider how well Unipart developed, and Land Rover/Jaguar with Tata Motors.

No-one plays around with them. If they did, the plant would move out of England as has happened at Ford.

Thankfully, I have never been directly involved with the unions, and never want to be.

MAURICE COLLIER Banstead Surrey

Homeless helped

TOWARDS the end of 1959, I was ending my second year of general nurses’ training at the Horton Hospital, Banbury.

We always had an influx of people officially known in the hospital lingo as NFAs - people of no fixed abode.

By the time they came to us, they had an ailment, real or otherwise, but with history and symptoms, enough to get admitted.

They were down usually to just one layer of clothes that was definitely the worse for wear. We would bag the clothes up and quickly get them out of the ward to the hospital incinerator. We always supplied them with a ‘new’ set of clothing when they were discharged.

I recall one occasion when one such gentleman was admitted. As usual, his clothes were removed and bagged and given to a student to dispose of.

A few days later, almost all the patients were scratching and complaining of itching and what looked like bites on them. They were covered in fleas.

We investigated the linen closet – there were fleas everywhere. They must have loved the warm linen room environment and multiplied rapidly from the gentleman’s clothes that our dear student nurse had put there!

I do not know if the student stayed in nursing – I graduated and left.

These patients always descended on us just in time for Christmas. They made sure the complaint they had would keep them in long enough for the whole holiday, but nothing that would mean they couldn't enjoy the Christmas fare.

DAWN GRIFFIS Vermont United States

Sisters are spotted

I WAS interested to see the picture of children at the Woodlands adventure playground at Slade Park, Headington, Oxford, in 1970 (Memory Lane, August 19 and September 16).

Two of the little girls at the bottom of the picture are my sisters, known as Suzie and Barbie Baker (Susan and Barbara).

Barbie is the smallest girl at the front with the short dark hair and Suzie is the taller girl next to her in the dress with white buttons and braiding.

We all lived at 9 Nuffield Road, Wood Farm, in the 1970s – four sisters, two brothers and mum and dad.

I am one of the older sisters and Chris is the other. We are not in the picture.

When we all get together, we laugh and reminisce about Wood Farm. We have a lot of memories, especially of the Wood Farm bakery known then as Pippits.

As people in the area then knew, you took a short cut through the Wood Farm woods on to The Slade, where the Woodlands camp was.

In the picture, I also recognise Sharon Grant – she is the girl looking towards the right, by the girl lifting someone off the plank.

JEAN EGLESTON (nee Baker) Cedar Road Botley Oxford

Grandad was in band

MY GRANDFATHER, Lew Randell, was in the picture of Morris Motors’ Band with their trophies in 1929-30 (Memory Lane, September 9).

He came to Oxford from Durham and worked at the car factory for many years. He played the soprano, a small cornet, in the band.

My father, Ron Giles, followed into the field of music, playing in the City of Oxford Silver Band, and I play in the Jubilee Brass.

ALAN GILES Abingdon

Young driver is my daughter

YOUR centre spread of pictures of past St Giles Fairs (Memory Lane, September 9) included a lovely one of my daughter, Donna Marnell, now Donna Hutton, from 1977.

She was four then and was seen ‘driving’ a car on one of the roundabouts.

Donna was quite excited at seeing the picture, and it brought back memories to me.

I remember a man with a camera saying how good she was at driving a car and asking me questions about her.

It wasn’t until later that I learned he was an Oxford Mail photographer.

I had the picture enlarged at the time. It just goes to show how quickly the years go by.

Thank you for the memory.

ESTRELLA MARNELL Barton Village Road Headington Oxford

Snapshots from teens’ Skegness trip

I ENCLOSE three pictures of Garsington teenagers on a visit to Butlins at Skegness in 1958 or 1959.

The two-seat pedal cars were used to get around the camp.

The reason that we have our backs to the camera in one of the pictures is because an elephant had fallen in the swimming pool. Despite strenuous efforts to get it out, it sadly died.

Does anyone else remember that trip?

DAVE CLINKARD Deddington