The "B" Licence

“I knew her when she was young”, Ron said, pointing to a Thatcher biography in the bookshop window, or rather he didn’t know her as such, as she was older than him, but knew the family and did see Margaret in the shop. His brother, a socialist all his life (most British people are socialist by birth, Ron told me), delighted in being able to tell people that he had been at ICI when she had been turned down for a job; far too bossy he reckoned.

Ron’s brother was in Mosquitos during the war and served with Kate Middleton’s Grandfather as his observer. Ron served in the RAF too, during National Service, having been deferred until he could finish secondary school. He was at Grammar school “Don’t even get me started on the demise of the grammar school system.”

He went on to train to be an Engineer….pumps mainly…hydraulics….land drainage etc. We talked briefly about John’s train whistles and our success using a pneumatic compressor to get them going and Ron listed all the steam trains he had known and he told me that he had seen the Mallard, which had done its high speed trial just near where he lived, though that had been a bit before his time. As an engineer he had earned three times what a politician made, - “Don’t even get me started on politicians”, he said.

Then Ron told me that, uniquely, Heseltine got out of his National Service because he was one (which is near as damn it true).  We talked briefly about career politicians and the Gummers, father and son, when Ron qualified something by saying that all politicians should be locals. Footballers too, I suggested. Exactly, he said. Points of agreement like that are useful when you know a conversation is about to become uncomfortable, but gratifying though this had been – shame that I had dug myself into a sport hole! Luckily Ron seemed no more interested in football than I am. “Of course I liked rugby, not football. Three and six was all I got in my boot, but then I was an amateur.”

He has family in Aldeburgh but doesn’t see the attraction. Then you should see it from the air, I suggested, and at this point of shared interest he told me he had his B licence, earned when he was called up and did his National Service, first on Tiger Moths, then Chipmunks, Oxfords (I think he said), then Meteors, which is where I started to really feel blessed that I had started this conversation, though sadly we quickly got off topic, “Don’t get me started on all this flowers and counselling stuff”. You don’t feel that by not addressing trauma in your day you bottled things up and have carried the pain of it? No, he said, and told me about the drowning of a school-friend, aged 12, who had got tangled in wartime barbed wire when swimming, and whose death was announced to the whole school. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. And that was that.

The trouble with this country now, he said, is we don’t make anything. We used to when we were an Empire. Well to be fair, I said, we have Thatcher to thank for that, which was when I started to suspect that Ron did not share his brother’s politics. “And don’t get me started on immigrants.”

I like you, Ron, I thought, don’t ruin this. And soon we got on to the subject of long division. “And don’t even get me started on teachers.”