Page 30 - It's a Rum Life Book One "In the Beginning 1947 to 1960"

worked for a charity as a fund raiser and had an office in
Bradford. My recollections of the city in the late 1940’s were
one of smoke and grime but that office on Great Horton Road
gave me my very first introduction to Boy Scouts. I had found a
cast off book with no covers, discarded in a dusty corner of the
office. I read it avidly and cherished it for years.
This was a very early full bound copy of “Scouting for Boys”.

ONE HALF PENNY A DAY
One half penny every day was my target. One I never
managed to achieve as frequently my first West Yorkshire bus
from Skipton Road arrived as the Ledgards was just leaving. I
always tried though and ran desperately the whole uphill length
of the Bus Station in the hope that Ledgards Bus was late
leaving.
These early disappointments with my budgeting as a six year
old helped me get over even bigger problems in the future.
Sundays in 1950 were sacrosanct. Only reading and painting
or such like was permitted. Noisy games were taboo and of
course those noisy garden machines that plague us now on a
Sunday were a long way off being invented.
Grandmother and I loved our “steam” radio, originally
powered by a large rechargeable battery and now converted to
mains power. Children’s hour with its daily serial ‘story time’ was
listened to avidly by probably every child in the land. Sunday
always provided popular family programmes too.
The episode of the ship ‘Flying Enterprise’ being wrecked of
England’s South coast and the heroic efforts of tug boat
‘Turmoil’ and Captain Curt Carlson were on the radio every day
for a week or more until the ship, eventually sank. This was real
life ‘Boy’s Own stuff’.
Apart from this we had a large collection of books and I had

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