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experience I would have preferred to missed The company produced large quantities of Cement and I during my day filling sacks, though given a masks to keep the dust out of my lungs soon found the mask blocked up and with the moisture in my breath formed a solid cover to this breathing mask which we would have to discard to get a breath. I think during this one day working in the cement works I put on a stone in weight from all the cement my lungs collected!

The period in Belgium was extremely valuable to me for it gave me a experience in all types of engineering specially in heavy engineering I became involved in the assembly and testing of very large double acting diesel engines with outputs over 10,000 BHP. These engines were used in large ships, which were built by the company at their Antwerp division.

While with John Cockerill I also spent time in the Steam engine assembly shops where I obtained experience in the manufacture and testing of large steam engines and steam turbines.

My indentures were completed on my birthday June 1949 it was my 21st birthday. There was still a chance I might be called to the armed forces, which I personally would have liked very much but my father would not hear of it and so in September 1949 I commenced further education at Regent Street Polytechnic. Here I took a full time, four year Higher Diploma course in Mechanical and Electrical engineering.

During the last two years of my apprenticeship I had met Marion and soon fell head over heels in love with her. Marion was the loveliest girl I had ever seen we met at the Stanmore Institute, she was highly intelligent and I was hooked from the time I first met her. At the time I knew she was really out of my league for she was already the leading Steno Typist in the Holborn, London Office able to type over two hundred and thirty words a minute. Reports of her achievements were already starting to appear in the national press.

Marion commanded the huge salary, even before she was 21 years of age her she was earning more than my father who was at this time Borough Valuer at St. Marylebone was. Somehow Marion became, ‘my girl’, but only for a short time I used every trick of the trade to win her!

One weekend she said she would not be seeing me as she was going to stay with her parents in Newport Wales, I talked Dad into letting me stay Friday night sleeping on the floor in his office at the St Marylebone Town Hall. My plan was to get to Paddington very early and pick up the milk train which left at 5.00 am, When the train arrived at Newport later that morning I telephoned Marion at he3r parents to say my firm Davey Paxman had sent me to Wales the week before and wondered if I could call in to see her and her folks as I was passing through. Her mother suggested I stay the weekend with them, which was exactly what I wanted her to say! Marion’s father drove out to collect me! And I got to meet her folks. What a wonderful weekend they gave me and we did have a great time, .even though it was really Marion I wanted to see.

As time past Marion was taken on as a special reporter travelling all over the world she became a member of the United Nations staff in Geneva with a team of typists working for her reporting on the United nations meetings this was followed by numerous other overseas postings

In the summer of 1947 I talked my brother Jo into joining me on a visit to Geneva.

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