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Count Your Blessings, Geoff

Riches! My Friend Harry had just come on to the senior rate as a reporter on a local weekly paper - £4 7s 6d (£4.37) - which sum had been grudgingly handed over in a brown envelope on Friday morning. Plus, as he was lucky, such expenses as had been sanctioned by the formidable, angular spinster who sat on a high stool in the office labelled ‘Cashier’. In the general run, those expenses might, if his arguments had been unusually persuasive, amount to as much as half-a-crown (12p) for the week. More usually, after vehement strikings-out with a red pencil, they emerged as Is (5p) with the spinster making it coldly evident, as she threw the coins on the counter, that his employers were doing him a favour at that.


So, with about £4 10s (£4.50) burning a hole in his pocket and a week’s holiday about to start, he repaired to the Carpenter’s Arms to consult his financial adviser. He, William Ryman, a junior clerk in the Midland Bank, had it all taped. “Jersey," he said. “Train to Pompey. Boat to St. Helier. Week at the Aberfeldy. Boat back. Train to London. We’ll leave tonight.”

All on £4 10s? Certainly. All this happened shortly after the invention of the wheel...


So off they went, each with a small cardboard suitcase containing pyjamas, brush and comb, toiletries and plimsolls. Change of clothes? Do us a favour. They owned what they stood up in.


Their financial position improved dramatically on the next morning when they found a pub in St. Helier where there was a pinball machine that paid out cash. Either they were surprisingly gifted or the pinball mechanic had had a bad day, but the cash flow in their favour was instant, eye-opening and continuous.


For about 15 minutes, that is. Then the patron put a cloth over the machine and invited them in French words of one syllable to push off. Loot-laden, they gleefully contemplated a holiday rolling in it.


Regrettably, they and the rowdy companions they accumulated in the next day or two, drank too much, made too much noise, kept late hours and were, without question, pains in the necks of all and sundry. Not that that upset My Friend Harry too much at that time, for he was far more concerned with his dislocated toe. On the previous afternoon, having spent the morning at various watering holes, he and his financial adviser decided on a paddle. Harry fancied the beach on the other side of the groyne, so he set off at a run, leapt over the groyne, and ...


Well, he almost leapt over. He caught his left foot on the top of the groyne and that dislocated his middle toe. He didn’t know it was dislocated, of course. It hurt, certainly, but alcohol deadened the pain somewhat and he hobbled about more or less regardless.


Next morning, when they both got the heave-ho from the hotel, the toe was black and it took some time and much sweat to get the shoe on. Then it was off to the ferry and back to Pompey and so to London. They arrived on the Friday evening and saw in The Star that the 500 mile race was on at Brooklands the next day. That seemed a splendid way to end the holiday, so they looked around for a cheap night’s lodging.


They found it in the Victory hotel behind Victoria Station. Ten bob for bed and breakfast-for the two of them. With fleas gratis. My Friend Harry disposed of four during the tortured night, his financial adviser, five. And they took one each with them to Brooklands on the train.


It looked like being a great day’s racing. The sun shone when they arrived and they looked forward to seeing the giants of the day, including John Cobb, George Eyston, Dick Seaman, Oliver Bertram, Earl Howe and Freddie Dixon. Soon after the start, though, it began to rain - and it never let up. Naturally, they had no mackintoshes and certainly nothing so upper class as an umbrella. So they got soaked and stuck it out to see Freddie Dixon bring home the Riley and collect the first prize of £250.


Away they squelched to the station and their train to London. One more train to Gillingham, in Kent, and My Friend Harry was almost home. Not, by then, having even the bus fare, he hobbled painfully to his home.


The family were in bed, so he made himself a cup of cocoa and began opening the mail that had accumulated during his absence. He was surprised to see one envelope that was franked with the name of the company he worked for. Puzzled, he inserted his thumb and ripped it.


It told him that, as he had reached ‘senior’ status, his services were no longer required. One week’s notice had begun on the day he had started his holiday. He was jobless and flat broke.




□ ALL the foregoing had come to mind when the eye caught a piece in the journalists’ magazine, Press Gazette. It was written by a chap named Geoff Rumney who sobbingly said that he’d been made redundant from the Evening Telegraph, Blackburn, with ‘only’ £14,250 to soften the blow. And we don’t suppose he had a dislocated toe, too - or a rampaging flea from the Victory Hotel, either.

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