My Dad, he worked for a time with Eckett & Ellis, the builders on Ham Common.  They had a yard opposite Vine Cottage, that looks onto the pond and that was the local builders and my Dad worked for them for a time.  They were great friends as well… and then my Dad, he was called up – the Second World War – he went in quite late, because he was Reserved Occupation, being a builder.  But I spent quite a lot of my childhood at Vine Cottage, because they didn’t have any children, my godmother, she desperately wanted a family, but it didn’t happen and I was the third child with my Mum.  They were great friends, so she looked after me quite a lot.  I think it was more jobbing building, really.  I know they used to do a lot of work for Ham House, but he was… just everybody knew them.  And also Mr Fricker, his two brothers, they worked for Eckett & Ellis and the Frickers lived in Lock Road; they were a family of four or five children and I’m still friends with John, the eldest boy, even now we meet up.