The changing world (5) Working 1963-4

I had A levels at 17. In those days working class children did not take a year out and travel to exotic locations. I spent the next year doing my pharmacy practical year in Boots the Chemist, This was the last year where the practical part of the pharmacy qualification could be done pre-graduate. From that year on one had to do agree first then practical. What I did enabled me to qualify as a pharmacist at the minimum age of 21 - voting age then.
  This was my one and only year working for pharmacy big business. I quickly learnt I was entering a commercially driven profession. Idealism was dispatched. I earned four pounds ten shillings a week. If I had been 19 and taken an extra year not one year less than normal for A levels, I would have earned more. What idiotic remuneration which did not reward talent.
   The Boots shop was in temporary premises off the market share. We moved to the new premises on the square in my year.The market was notorious for two things. Market day was Monday. You never had a bank holiday on the Monday. Secondly the square was cobbled. people were for ever falling and coming in for first aid. I had chosen pharmacy because I did not want to deal with blood!
   My manager was Mt Beveridge, Rev, a Scot about to retire. Like many expatriate Scots he was always on about his native land but when the company offered him the post of manager in his old home town of Kilmarnock he turned it down saying he knew no-one there now. So he retired to Thirsk and a younger, more ambitious and less kingly manger was appointed. We had two dispensers, ken Kilvington and John who did the veterinary stuff.
   My year in Boots gave me contact with two men later to become famous, the Thirsk veterinarians, Sinclair and Wight, better known as Siegfied Farnon and James Herriott. The irony is that these were not the top local vets. The top man was Dr Burkhardt, vet to the Newmarket sales, who treated only one kind of animal, race horses. We sent his prescriptions as far afield as France and Ireland. I went to school with Wight's children. It was not until the 70s that their father became a world famous author. Mrs Wight was a local school governor, not a snob line the other partner's wife. Burkhardt's daughter was Virginia. John the dispenser said she belied her name. I did not understand that at the time.  Later when I read the books I could identify some local characters including the doctor who has a wife beating patient with a fear of needles. The doc chose his biggest and bluntest needle to inject him saying, ' The tell me you are a tough man with no feelings', and injecting said, ' But you felt that didn't you'.
   I cycled four miles each was to and from work. One day as I was emerging from the village of Carlton Miniott a fox ran out of a field, along and across the wet road. Soon a lead hound followed then packing huntsmen.. 'Did you see the fox?, I was asked. They had lost the scent of wily Reynard. 'Yes', I replied. 'Which way did he go?'
'Nay I replied, 'Youv'e got the hounds. You find him'. Ever the bolshy one living in a hunting community I was not then in favour. Now living in the city and with Blair banning hunting I am all in favour.Both sides talk rot. The hunters say it is a good way to control foxes, the vermin which destroy birds and animals. The truth is they want the fun of the chase enjoyed for centuries. The anti-hating lot think they are dealing with cuddly defenceless animals not ruthless predators, the only animals except man who kill wantonly seemingly for the fun of it. Urban foxes to are pests fouling gardens and disturbing one's sleep with their sex lives. Vermin say I. Hunt them! Tally Ho!
   As I wrote before I had become an agnostic but kept the peace at home by chapel attendance. But I eagerly anticipated university, freedom and no more chapel. Local Methodism was blessed with Rev. Eglon Sercombe. He later baptised me. He was totally blind. Went blind overnight from diabetes. his wife drove him everywhere. in the pulpit you would not know he was blind. he read braille like a sighted person read the Bible except he did not look down at the book.
   That year most of my contemporaries from my year went to work, university or college. Margaret my girlfriend was still around in her final A level year. But Marjorie Atkinson, a farmer's daughter in my year died tragically soon. Her then boyfriend was to eventually marry my lovely Margaret but that is to come. I recall only one lad, Dodsworth, who did marry his schoolgirl sweetheart.
   November 63 saw the shooting of Kennedy and the death of C S Lewis.