36. Balancing Family Life & Work

Whilst working at Farington and Leyland in the early 1950s, my colleague and I were seconded to a section which entailed having a weekly schedule of parts from all the stores at HQ which the spares department at Chorley required. This was a good system whilst it lasted. My overtime ceased, but it was a blessing in disguise as I was arriving home around 5.25pm. I was able to help Alice with the young children as mum was very stressed with three children so young. Eventually I was transferred back onto my original task of providing spares for Chorley. During 1954 my old boss, Mr. Fred Waddecar died in his early 60s. I attended his funeral at Leyland St. Andrew’s parish church. As the year progressed Paul commenced day school at Whittle St. John’s C.E. school and my overtime was back, which was a good help financially.

In 1953, the year of our Queen’s coronation, we hired a caravan at Little Bispham, near Blackpool. We were taken there by a local man, Mr. J. Salisbury, whose parents lived locally at No. 31. It was Bolton Holiday Week, as in those days Bolton had the first of the wakes weeks. That Saturday coincided with the schools open air fair on the then vicarage lawn and, as Paul was partaking in the event with his class, we were late in getting away. We eventually arrived at the caravan. When we came to light the gas cylinder we found the gas had expired and it was getting very late in the evening. I found the manager of the caravan site and persuaded him to let me have a new cylinder, which he did for the price of one pound. I found it extremely heavy and had to lug it back to the caravan where I changed the cylinder over and we were able to heat milk for Elaine’s bottle, as the gas was connected to a cooking stove. The weather was excellent the whole of the week and we enjoyed the holiday very much. Grandma Pearson came over for one day, bringing Auntie Jenny, who had come over from Canada. Jenny was Grandma’s younger sister. This was our first holiday with the three children. We made our way back to Whittle via the bus. The next few years saw the start of our other two children starting school at St. John’s and eventually mum was employed on the school meals dinner service, which helped us financially as the rent of the house had steadily increased and also the ever increasing cost of everyday living and school clothes.

1956 saw me transferred back to the Chorley store as by then we had got a new stores manager in place of the late Mr. Waddecar. I was employed on what was then the stock card system where every part in the stores had a stock card with a different part number. There were on average nine ladies assigned to work on the cards and the system was very efficient in the days before the advent of the computer system, which was adopted in the late 1960s. Each year we tried to have a works holiday. 1954 was the first year we took a flat at Fleetwood, going by train as there was then a railway station there (except one year we had to travel by bus owing to a rail strike). In all I think we had five or six holidays at Fleetwood and it always seemed to do us good as the air is so bracing. The following years we had holidays at the Isle of Man (Peel), Morecambe and Blackpool. We always catered for ourselves and mum made some very good meals. One year whilst we were at Fleetwood, Norman and Nelly, who had been to the Isle of Man, brought us back as they had left their car for the week at Fleetwood.

George and Alice Tustin

Children L - R: John, Paul, Elaine

[end of George's annals]

Advance to Chorley Guardian 25th May 1945