THE ADVENTURES OF KEN SAUNDERS
HOMEWARD BOUND TO OZ THE ADVENTURES OF KEN SAUNDERS
Who came to Australia to seek his fortune. He hasn’t found it yet but has had a lot of fun looking.
This story is firstly for Georgie, my wife and mate who has supported me and encouraged me to write this story. Also for my family, Linda, Wendy, Martin, Ryan, James, Liam and all my Aussie mates.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed living it.
Copyright © Ken Saunders 1993
This book is copyright. Other than for the purposes and subject to the conditions prescribed under the Copyright Act, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission.
ISBN 0 646 141279
Printed in Australia by Fast Books, a division of Wild & Woolley Pty Ltd Glebe, NSW 3
Special EBook number 101
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EARLY DAYS
Like a lot of kids I didn't like my first day at school, Mum walked me to Mrs White’s private school before she went to work, and I let everyone know I didn't want to go. We had only just moved from Deptford London to our new home in West Drayton which is about 30 miles from London. I can't remember too much about Mrs White except that she seemed very tall she wore a long black dress and she carried a cane which she always kept where we could see it. From there I progressed to the proper school with all the other five year olds, where learning began in earnest, football ( soccer) was one of the major priorities, I liked that. When I was seven the Second World War broke out and that was fun for a seven year old, spending most of our school days in the air-raid shelter got us out of lot of school work, a fact I regretted in later life. My Dad was working as a metal polisher in a factory that made aircraft parts so he didn't go into the army ,his work was considered to be essential to the war effort. He was a lovely person my Dad, a real cockney. I loved my Dad even though he seemed to mix with some rather shady characters. I remember one night the piano had to be moved, the floorboards raised and some goods were placed under the floor. I never found out what it was, but Dad never seemed to be short of a drop of scotch. None of our family could play the piano but occasionally Dad would invite someone home who could play and we would have a good old sing along. One of the few regrets I have is that I never learnt to play the Piano, 3
Despite the fact that Mum sent me for lessons. Which I invariably missed to go and play football with my mates down the park. My sister Jean made her appearance in the world at this time. I remember she was born at home which caused a lot of excitement for the grown ups. Everyone reckoned my nose would be out of joint, I kept checking my nose but it didn't seem to grow any different, so I thought they didn't know what they were talking about.
Mum had a little dry cleaning agency shop, and Dad helped out by delivering the bag wash to the customers. Bag wash was a means of the working Mum getting her washing done very cheaply -about three shillings for the whole wash.
On occasions Dad was given a pig which had been illegally killed by one of his farmer mates. Dad would place the pig on the kitchen table and proceed to butcher it. The result being that some of the favoured bag wash customers would get a bonus with their washing, at a small extra charge. Of course.
My Grandad on Mums side was an excellent carpenter; he and my Grandmother lived in a little cottage on the edge of a canal that ran between West Drayton and Yiewsley. He converted one of the bedrooms into his workshop and in that workshop he made the counters for Mums shop, he wheeled them in his wheelbarrow up to the shop and installed them. He also made toys which he used to wheel around the shops in Yiewsley trying to sell them to the shop owners, and he was well into his seventies, a wonderful old man. Unfortunately none of his craftsmanship rubbed off on me. I liked to visit Grandad’s cottage often because as he lived right next to the canal I could take my fishing rod down there and do some fishing. We used bread as bait and surprisingly I was able to catch the odd fish, nearly always too small to eat but I would still take them home to show Mum. It was always interesting to see the barges go by being pulled by a big horse. Those horses seemed so big to me, I would always get well off the track
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when they came by. The barges were painted with very bright colours. Grandma told me never to talk to the people on the barges, so I was always a little frightened of them. This was a shame. I am sure they were very interesting and nice people. One day I caught this huge fish -well to me it was huge. I was so excited I raced into Grandad; he said it was very nice now go and throw it back to its mummy. I was going to put it in my bag and sneak it home to show Mum but Grandad must have read my mind. He came outside and watched me throw it back. Anytime I caught a fish after that I never told him. If anyone came into the shop and wanted shirts laundered Mum would send the shirts with the bag wash then when they came back she would iron them in the little room she had upstairs, no one ever knew the difference. Mums shop seemed to be going very well but it kept her very busy and when she got home late at night she was so tired, even at that tender age I used to worry about my Mum.
Dad got me a job helping the milk lady on the milk cart; it was the only job I ever got the sack from. On about the second or third day she asked me to move the horse and cart a little further up the road. I got the horse by the bridal and pulled him forward, not leaving enough room to get past a parked car. Of course we scraped the car and she went off her brain and told me to go home in no uncertain tones. My next job was delivering newspapers before school. It was a good job although I wasn't very keen on getting up so early, especially in winter, but the money was good for a little kid.
I liked Sunday mornings because I was given a whole lot of papers to take down to the Air Force camp to sell. There were a lot of American Airman stationed there and they always had plenty of chewing gum. Any extra gum I had left on Monday I could swap for cigarette cards with the other boys at school. The war was hotting up and Hitler’s boys were throwing everything at London. It must have been terrible for our parents. Mum made up a bed for my sister and me under
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the stairs that was considered to be the safest place in the house. We kids thought it was great after an air-raid to go out and pick up pieces of shrapnel from the bombs. We collected them and compared them at school the next day.
One of the houses around the comer got hit by a bomb, no one was hurt, and luckily everyone was down the shelter. The Germans must have been looking for the Air-Force camp and were a little off course. It was good for us kids -there was plenty of shrapnel to collect. Things were going OK at school, in between air raids we managed to get a few games of soccer in and the teacher made me captain of the house team which carried a certain amount of prestige ( I later found out that he was a drinking mate of Dads) . After school we used to go down the common and play football. We used coats and jumpers as goal posts and we had some great games. I was getting a bit of a reputation as a goalkeeper this news must have reached Dad because he decided to give up some of his darts/drinking time to come and watch me play one day. He got our little van out put my sister in the front seat beside him and drove down to the common.
Unfortunately the passenger door wasn't closed properly and when he turned a comer Jean fell out. Fortunately she wasn't badly hurt but Dad never ever came to see me play again. My mate Billy Christmas who lived next door was very keen on photography and he also heard that I would soon be playing for England in Goal (I think I told him), so he brought his camera down to the common to take my photo. We arranged that the first goal kick I took he would take the picture. The big moment arrived, Billy lined up the camera I lined up the ball, completely missed it and fell on my backside. Everyone thought it was funny, except me. Another game we liked to play was conkers, a very hard game to explain. Firstly you had to find a tree with nuts on it which we knew as conkers.
You drilled a hole in the nut with one of Mums meat skewers, put a piece of string through the hole and tied a knot. You were then ready to challenge another boy
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to a game of conkers. The opposition would hold their conker out for you to try and belt it with your conker you each took a turn until one was broken. The boy with the conker still in tact was the winner and could then challenge someone else. We got a bit cunning with this we found that by baking the conker nut in Mums oven it would become as hard as cement and very hard to break. One of my baked conkers had seventy five victories before it finally succumbed. Scrumping was another favourite pastime, there was an apple orchard just down the road from our place and when the trees were full we used to raid them. There was a team of six of us boys. We would split up into two lots of three and climb trees on either side of the small orchard. When the farmer came out to chase us away he could only chase one lot of us, the other three would pick as many apples as they could, then run for it. We would then meet the other three, split up our haul and take them home to our Mums. Well organised and Mum never asked where we got them. Food was always a problem, we probably did a little better than some families because of Dads connections, but it was still tough. Mum used to make bread pudding. She would make huge trays of it I loved it .It certainly was a good filler. One day on the way to school I remembered that Mum had made a big bread pudding the day before. The temptation was too great for me. I turned around and ran back home, but the place was all locked up. I was so desperate that I broke the pantry window to get at it. I ate half of it and took some to school with me. On the way home from school I realised I was in big trouble so I did the right thing I confessed. I got a good wallop behind the ear and told that I would have to pay for the window out of my pocket money. On another occasion one of my mates had come upon five shillings, I think he nicked it. He spent it all on cough lollies and a packet of five woodbines. Being a good mate I helped him out we were both looking a bit green when we had finished them. The reason he bought cough lollies of course was that is all he could buy.
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The shops didn't have ordinary lollies or ice cream or other lovely things that us kids yearned for.
Mum had to go to work before I left for school so I would have to go to Aunty Betty's place for breakfast. Auntie Betty lived just up the road next to the Cherry Tree Pub. All we got for breakfast every day was a bowl of porridge I hated it. I often complained that it was too hot, only to be told to eat the edges, to which I replied "I've already eaten the edges". I was now going to Cherry Tree Lane School, a brand new school, with brand new air raid shelters. The air raid shelters almost became our class rooms the teachers had a most difficult job to keep us under control. I was always in awe of the teachers; they seemed to have eyes in the back of their head. One teacher in particular, Miss Wilson would be writing on the blackboard and without turning around she knew it was me that was playing up. She would say "Kenny stop doing that" and I would think how did she see me. One day she sent me up to the Headmaster and without asking me what I had done wrong he got the stick out and gave me six of the best. I was a hero for a couple of days, but boy was my hand sore. I behaved myself for quite a while after that. We had mental arithmetic each morning to get us going.
It was about the only subject I was any good at, mainly because of Dad. He used to encourage me to be good at it; his reason was that if you can add up the boss can't cheat you on pay day. There were two occasions I came home soaking wet and got into trouble. There was a gravel pit not far from home that was full of water. Extremely deep and extremely dangerous, it was like a magnet to us boys.
We managed to get hold of some empty oil drums and we strapped them together and made a sort of raft out of them. We found an old door and used it as a deck.
We then made a couple of oars out of pieces of wood and had a great time paddling around this big gravel pit. Another group of boys had done the same thing and we had races. Of course eventually there was a collision and a couple of us fell in, we were wet and cold. I ran home and 8
tried to sneak upstairs without Mum seeing me, to no avail I got a hiding and sent to bed without tea. I managed to pinch a jam sandwich later when no one was around. There was another occasion that really made Mum mad, but surprisingly not with me. Between our house and next door there was a narrow passageway and there was a Welsh family living next door who we didn't get on with. I was coming home from soccer one night and the kids were waiting in the upstairs room overlooking the alley, when I was directly under the window they emptied the family chamber pot over me, it was a good shot -not one drop of the stinking contents missed me. When Mum saw me she saw red, she raced in next door and really gave them a piece of her mind. Out came the old tin bath and I was given a thorough scrubbing. Mum gave me an extra big tea that night. I think it was one of the very few times that she gave me a cuddle. She really did love me but emotions were not shown in those days.
We had an air raid shelter delivered to us and we dug a big hole in the back yard and put this air raid shelter up. The first time it rained it filled up with water. We would have been safe from the bombs but we would have drowned. We never used that shelter in fact Dad pulled it down and filled the hole up again. The Doodle bugs or VI and VII were the worst. We could hear them coming then after the motor cut out we would wait for it to explode. Dad always said if you can hear them explode you are OK. I firmly believe that every Mum and Dad that brought kids up at that time should have all got a medal of some sort.
We had a bathroom at home but us kids very seldom used it. We had a tin bath which Mum would place in front of the kitchen fire and fill it up with hot water from the kettle.
Not very private but nice and warm. It was a huge kitchen and most of our living was done in that room. The front room was only for Sundays or when we had visitors, it too was a large room with a three quarter size billiard table a piano and radiogram. Grandad Saunders was staying with us on and off.
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I remember watching him playing Dad billiards one day and every time Dad turned to put his score up Grandad would knock the balls into the pocket with his hand and then claim the points. I'm sure Dad knew but let him get away with it.
My Grandad fascinated me he would stand with his back to the fire and rock back and forwards with his eyes closed, I'm sure he went to sleep sometimes. On occasions he would turn and spit into the fire and watch it sizzle on the hot coals.
Mum would really go mad at him if she caught him doing that. I liked Sundays!
Mum would open up the front room and I was allowed to play records on the radiogram. Glen Miller was my favourite and we also had Ted heath and Fats Waller. Every now and then Mum would poke her head around the corner and yell at me to turn the volume down a bit (nothing changes). Also on a Sunday evening Dad would bring some Perry Winkles home from the pub and Mum would give us a sewing needle each to get the winkles out of their shells to eat them, yum!
We had an allotment down on the council land, which was a small plot of ground where we could grow vegetables. I would go down with Dad and help him pull out the weeds and tend to the vegies. We were very proud of our allotment and we would have competitions with our neighbours to see who could grow the biggest onions or carrots. Dad nearly always won, he said he had green fingers which I didn't believe. They looked brown to me from all the cigarettes he smoked. The allotment was very close to the Cherry Tree pub and Dad would often sneak away for a quick pint. He wouldn't be away long and he would bring me back a packet of Smiths chips so that I wouldn't tell Mum. One day he must have had more than one pint because he had to have a wee. He did it near the onions and said we would win for sure this time, I watched them grow over the next few weeks, I thought he might be right, so every time I went down there I gave them a little fertilising of my own.
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My big brother Jim joined the army and went to the Middle East. I was very proud of him and I thought he was the main reason that we won the war. The other kids asked me how many Germans he had killed if my answers were accurate he should have received several Victoria Crosses. Dad promised me that he would buy me a bike for Christmas if I behaved myself; I was almost the perfect child for a long while. As Christmas got closer I would search all the places they could have hidden it and couldn't find a thing, When the big day arrived there was a beautiful bike at the foot of my bed well I thought it was beautiful. It was fairly old and in need of a bit of cleaning up, but it was all mine.
That bike was my pride and joy for quite a few years. I polished it and oiled it and gave it a lot of love and care. We built a sort of speedway track on a piece of vacant land and raced our bikes around it often having pile-ups and going home with skin off elbows and knees all good fun. Some of the boys had old jumpers on which they would paint names like "Bronco" or "Flash", so not to be outdone I got an old jumper of Dads and wrote on the back "Tiger Saunders", I used one of Mums lipsticks to do it. I put the jumper back in the cupboard where Mum kept all that sort of thing; Dad had not worn this jumper for years. Of course he decided he would wear it one day without looking at it. He couldn't understand why everyone was saying "Hello Tiger" or "How you going Tiger". And giving him a bit of a smile. I got grounded for quite a while over that.
During the summer holidays of that year I was allowed to ride my bike down to visit Auntie Flo who lived on a farm in Farnham about thirty miles from where we lived. I had some great holidays down there, my cousin David was a good mate and we had some great adventures. Uncle Bob, David and I went out rabbit shooting on many occasions. We used a ferret to get them out of their burrows I don't think Uncle Bob ever came home empty handed. There was a country railway line near the farm and David and I would go down there and watch the big steam trains go by. We each had a book which
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had all the train numbers in it and as they went by we would mark our books to show that we had seen that particular train. We would sit there for hours just to get a big 38 as she went by it didn't take much to keep us amused in those days. The hills around Auntie Flo's house were covered in blue bells when they were in season and us kids were made to go out and pick them. David and I would sneak away and explore the caves in that area. There were some fantastic caves and when I think back on it, it is a wonder we never got lost. On one occasion the girls had gone home with their bunches of bluebells and we were still in the caves. When we got home Auntie Flo said she was going to tell Uncle Bob when he got home from the local and he would get the strap to us. She never did -she was a bit of a softie. We knew that and used to play up to it a bit.
My bike was getting a bit past it what with the long trips to Farnham and the speedway track, so I started to drop hints to Dad. My dad mentioned it to Jim who was home on leave and he gave me thirty pound to go out and buy myself a brand new bike. With my brand new bike I was the envy of the neighbourhood I spent all of my spare time in the shed looking after it. It leads me to my next adventure. I decided to take a holiday ride around southern England including the Isle of Wight. I stayed at Youth Hostels on the way around and everyone was amazed that one so young should undertake such a trip. I remember standing in a queue one evening for supper and all of a sudden I passed out -from then on some very concerned young member’s of a cycle club took me under their wing and looked after me. They made sure I ate properly and drank water whilst I was riding and generally looked after me like a young brother. That trip was a good education for me, it taught me that sometimes you do need the help of others, that you can't always do things on your own and most people enjoy helping someone else. I am indeed grateful to that group of riders and I am sure I did not thank them enough at the time.
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One summer holiday Dad got out the old motorbike and sidecar and took us down to the seaside for a quick holiday. The place we went to was called Littlestone one of the few sandy beaches to be found. We had to go down through Romney marshes to get there and I remember thinking what a scary place, it was misty and really spooky. We erected a sort of lean-to tent next to the motorbike and camped on the beach, it was great.
Making sandcastles and getting wet up to our ankles, very exciting stuff. I didn't even notice the barbed wire and the concrete fortifications· it was still the seaside and Hitler could go to blazes -we were going to have fun for a few hours. It was soon time to go back home and back to reality. When I think back I realise that Mum and Dad just wanted a few hours to enjoy their kids and forget about the war for a while. The war ended when I was thirteen, there was so much excitement and celebrations went on for days. It was such a relief for all the grown ups that they had successfully got through it must have been hard for them to realise that it was all over. As for us kids we really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. We knew we were going to win -especially with my brother in the army. There were street parties and bonfires and much hugging and kissing. I liked the bonfires but didn't think much of all this hugging and kissing. It was about this time that my soccer started to improve so I decided to try out for the local team. I was going to try and get a start with their junior side. They were holding trial games on Saturday so I put my boots in a bag and rather nervously took myself down to the ground. The junior team coach got me to show my stuff and in reflection I don't think he was very impressed in fact he told me to come back next year when I put a bit of weight on. So it was back to my mates and our improvised goalposts. We decided that we should try and get our own team in some sort of competition and after getting a couple of older people interested we managed to do just that. I remember our first game was a disaster. We got thrashed something like 8-0 and we started to wonder if we had made a
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Wise move. Our next game we were up against a team almost as bad as us and we managed a 1-1 draw, which was promising. In fact at the end of the season we had managed a couple of wins and finished about halfway up the competition ladder, not bad for a team of young school kids. Saturday morning pictures at Yiewsley were great it cost sixpence to get in upstairs or three pence downstairs. The noise was unbelievable but we thought it was terrific. It was about that time that I started to notice that girls were a bit different than they used to be, I always thought they were a bit yucky. I fell head over heels in love with a girl who lived in the council houses estate around the comer. Our one and only date was to the pictures to see Jane Russell in The Outlaw .She reckoned I was a bit mean for not paying for her ticket and not buying her a soft drink at interval. The next girl friend I had was much more interesting. She was a contortionist from a vaudeville family her name was Avis Daignton. I would feel quite important when I went to watch her perform. She would make sure I got a good seat in the front stalls. What made it even better was that I didn't have to pay for the tickets. None of these romances lasted long because my real love was football and girls didn't play soccer in those days. It was a pity I wasn't very good but what I lacked in talent I made up for in enthusiasm. That applied to football as well as romance. The football at school was much easier as we were up against kids of our own age and also the teachers saw to it that not too much rough stuff took place. One school game we were up against a team from a neighbouring school and it turned into a bit of a grudge match. The match sticks in my memory because one of our defenders fouled one of their players in the penalty area and they were awarded a penalty.
It was one ofthe very few penalties I ever saved. It was, I must admit a complete fluke. I dived long before he kicked the ball and fortunately I picked the right way to dive and much to my surprise the ball hit my hands and went round the goal posts for a comer. A hero! The young bloke who took
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the comer sent over a fantastic ball, which to cut a long story short curled into the top of the net I never laid a hand on it. A villain! After the game (which we lost) our teacher tried to cheer me up by saying things like, "it's not your fault, there are ten other players in the team," it didn't help much I blamed myself for the defeat. I started to support Fulham Football team and I used to go and watch all their home games played at Craven Cottage the name of the ground at Fulham. They had a centre forward who was my hero his name was Ronnie Rooke, I managed to get his autograph one day after the game I was so excited I kept that program for years. I was very much a loner around this time going to the games on my own; it was a fair sort of trip for a young boy. I had to catch the steam train from West Drayton to Paddington station then the underground to Fulham, but I considered it well worth the trip. Another of my favourite pastimes was to go and watch the speedway at Wembley stadium. My favourite rider was a guy by the name of Bronco Johnson; he could really bum the track up. I went to the speedway one night when Wembley were up against West Ham. I was all armed with my red and white scarf and my ex gas rattle, a wooden contraption which made a hell of a noise when spun around vigorously. These rattle’s where originally designed to warn people that there was gas in the air during the war so we had to find some use for them in peace time. My heroes were all there Bronco Johnson and Bill Kitchen just to name two and this was billed as the grudge match to end all grudge matches. The smell of high grade fuel and the dust from the cinder track made for an exciting match and my team never let me down. It was to be one of Bill Kitchens last matches and he proved a great captain by scoring top points for the night, he certainly went out in style. The only disappointment was that Bronco crashed in an early race and was removed from the track on a stretcher but we still won and that was the main thing. After the last race I made sure I was near the pits and I was lucky enough to get a
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couple of autographs on my program. I was well satisfied eating my hot dog on the long train trip home.
I left school at the age of fourteen and launched myself on the unsuspecting working force. My first job was in a department store called Caleys in Windsor.
Caleys was situated opposite
Windsor Castle and on occasions the Queen herself would come across to visit the shop but all us youngsters were made to go in the store room out of sight. My education continued at Caleys. They had a young lady who gave elocution lessons and she picked me out for special consideration. I thought she was sweet on me. The fact that I used to say firty, free and fousand instead of thirty, three and thousand had nothing to do with it. She used to keep me in after the class had finished to practice saying "Thirty three thousand thrushes on a thistle" I still have some difficulty with that! I worked in the linen department and the man in charge of our section was a small man with glasses that he wore on the end of his nose. I had the feeling that he didn't like me very much he seemed to be able to find me the most boring jobs to do. One day the other boys came in and we had a bit of a pillow fight -the mess we made was unbelievable. I was
sure that I was going to get the sack, surprisingly I survived. I was only earning one pound seven and sixpence a week (about $3) and my train fare took most of that, so there was not much left for the luxuries of life. My brother told me that he had heard there was a job available at the factory where Mum had her shops cleaning and bag wash done and the pay
was about three times what I was getting at Caleys so I decided it was a change of career path for me. It was an interesting job I had to check in and weigh the bag wash as
the agents drivers brought it in. My figures were used by the accounts department to debit the agents -so Mum was not very happy when I left that job!
One of the men working in
the wash house was a top amateur boxer and used his work to enhance his training. He would throw the heavy wet bags of washing from a distance into the machine used to spin dry the 16
My first suit.
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clothes. It certainly developed his