Elizabeth Finn Care can support people living in care homes by helping to top up their fees. Here’s the story of a gent we know - with a mind as sharp as the crease in his trousers - happily settled in his new home.
You can tell George B has always been what they call a ‘snappy’ dresser. Now in his ninety-sixth year, George looks like he’s off to work, and as he unfolds his near-century long story you can see, in your mind’s eye, at some point in the early 1950s, the well-dressed and sprightly George jumping on the 7:50 a.m. train into town, rolled umbrella and morning newspaper in hand, quickly alighting at the end of his journey, briskly walking to his work place from the main line terminus.
A lovely glint in his eyes says it all. George is very engaging and gregarious and you just know that he’s one of life’s natural friendship and fellowship makers. Six months at Rashwood and George clearly believes he has found a home from home. He smiles broadly and leans forward to take you into his confidence. Thus begins George’s story, an index finger beating out a little tattoo on the table-top as he emphasises a point or two.
It all starts back in 1910. George is born in November that year, in Biggleswade, Bedforshire, the son of a railway engineer, and in a town of some 6,000 residents set in a near idyllic rural environment that had George witnessing, during the first world war, a cavalry trooper neighbour bringing his horse home for the weekend, tethering it in the back garden.
Between the wars George goes from primary to secondary school to evening classes, excelling in soccer and cricket en route, securing a job in 192x with the General Post Office as, first, a post office clerk, leading to counter clerk and what was to prove George’s true milieu, post office telegraphist. Today we’d say George was ‘driven’ but then he would be seen as ‘keen as mustard’ - and so he was.
In tandem with his day job, George took on various postal courses as part of his drive to improve his job prospects. It worked. Among many examinations and tests, he passed the very challenging Civil Service Examination for Treasury Grades and landed a prime job at the Waterloo Headquarters of London Telephone Service.
It’s at the Hitchen, Hertfordshire telephone exchange where George meets the lady with whom he is to eventually set up home with. She is Supervisor Winifred, two years George’s junior, and they marry in the Parish Church on June 23rd 1938. Mr and Mrs B start their very successful marriage in Potters Bar, in a spacious three bedroomed semi-detached house that George is able to purchase via a mortgage, quite an achievement in the financially un-liberated days of the late1930s.
Courtesy of the London North Eastern Railway, George commutes to King’s Cross every day to attend to his new post in London Telephone Service HQ and with the outbreak of war the close proximity of the HQ to Waterloo Station means that he’s soon dodging German bombs. But relief is at hand. He’s called up. Quickly put into uniform in January 1941, as Mr Churchill inspires the country to face down the foe, George is shipped to Yorkshire for training in the Royal Signal Corps. Eighteen months later, having mastered Morse Code, George is promoted to lance corporal and put in charge of one of four wireless vehicles. More training follows and he’s eventually climbs aboard troopship HMS California at Greencok, Scotland, and sails for India in January 1943, via Cape Town and Bombay, joining the 11th Armoured Group in Delhi, which forms part of the recently arrived Lord Mountbatten’s Supreme Allied Command South-east Asia. George recalls it like happened yesterday, not over sixty years ago, “I remember GHO Delhi sent me and a signalman to Calcutta to escort three tons of stores to Columbo by train which was quite an experience, changing trains and making sure we got on the right ferry, no detailed orders in those days, we had to use our initiative and common sense.
The daily fare though was sending and receiving highly coded messages from General Slim up on the front in Burma. I must have been doing something right, they promoted me to corporal in Aril 1945, then up to sergeant in July 1945!
The war in the East abruptly ends in August 1945 with the dropping of the A-bombs, and George was on a boat back to the UK in late December 1945, arriving in Liverpool after three weeks at sea, finally back on ‘Civvie Street’ and the arms of Winifred. They move home to a new house in St Albans while George picks up his career where it had been so rudely interrupted some five years previously. He re-locates from Waterloo to Regent’s Street where one of his first tasks is to help reduce the mountain of outstanding requests from customers for business and residential telephone lines.
More promotion follows and George looks to become an Executive Officer. He is recommend by the telephone manager to the Treasury for interview the success of which takes George out of the telephone service forever and into the Board of Trade in Chancery Lane, off Fleet Street. Their daughter, Pauline, is born in September 1947.
Still clearly very proud, George relates those early days of parenthood, “Pauline went to Potters Bar High School for girls and passed her eleven-plus, and went onto St Albans High School for girls where she really developed a talent for music, playing piano and singing, taking and passing exams that took her to the Royal Academy of Music in London.
“She passed there all the exams she ever took, getting her Diploma of Education, going onto teach music and religious instruction at Maidenhead High School for Girls.”
Pauline married airline pilot Joseph Oxspring in1971 and two grandchildren followed, Caroline in 1973 and Alexander in 1976 with great grandchildren, Christian and Jessica, being born in 2003 and 2006 respectively.
George retires from the Board of Trade in October 1975 and he and Winifred sell up their Hertfordshire home for the gentle and pleasing micro-climate on the south coast at Ashley Heath, near Ringwood, Hampshire, where they reside in a bungalow. Both of them quickly assimilate into the community with gardening, bowls, whist drives, trips along the coast, and, for George, membership of the ‘Greyfriars Community Centre, Ringwood, Men Only’ club. No, it’s not one of those clubs. This is a thought-provoking debating society that boasts over thirty members and which meets every week on a Thursday morning to seriously address the issues of the day, followed by a very pleasant lunch. Oh yes, there is a Ladies Night.
Sadly Winifred passed away in 1999. Bereft but undaunted, George decides to remain living in the bungalow and holds out for another six years before admitting that he is finding it increasingly difficult to look after himself totally on his own.
So to Rashwood, near Droitwich, Worcestershire. George arrived in October 2005. He is clearly impressed, “I’ve only been here for nine months but very quickly settled in and taken advantage all the events here. Being mobile I am able to walk around the large garden here every morning, and admire the flowers and the rolling countryside, especially in the brilliant weather we’re having right now.
“I’m a regular for the trips we take in the minibus to the outlying areas to see the scenery and visit the sights around the county, which are all very new to me, just coming from the south of England.”
It’s been a long and varied life for George. A successful marriage, a loving wife, a talented daughter, a lovely large family of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a long and fulfilling career. With daughter Pauline and son-in-law Joseph living close to Rashwood, and the extended family paying him regular visits, it doesn’t look like George will ever be allowed to get bored, so that alert mind of his will continue to be as sharp as the crease in his trousers. But then, why at 94 change of the habits of lifetime?
