I went into the building trade like most people did.  My mate was working there and said come and work for us, so I went to work for a bloke called Hammond in Kew down Sandycombe Road, right up the other end of it and worked there.  He packed the business up in the end, he had taken it over from his dad.  He was a strange bloke he was frightened of going up a ladder and you’re up the ladders all the time, and he was frightened of going up them was Hammond.   

Did you have any formal training or was itjust learning on the job?  No just working with the blokes that were there. Funnily enough, there was one bloke that was called a carpenter, Bob the Carpenter, then the other one was Bill the Brickie! But we done everything, we done painting, we done papering, we done everything, we couldn’t have had a better grounding really for doing everything. Because it was neither one trade nor another one day doing the brickwork and the next thing he’s lining the ceiling, and I used to paper a lot because they’re big ceilings down Kew.  Big houses down there.  You had to get up the big ladders, we even tied a ladder on another 60 rung ladder to get up there.