Les Clackson

Post date: 12-May-2020 17:16:15

Les Clackson.

Renaissance Rebel.

Jack of all trades and master of all.

By Dave Young

I first met Les in the first year at the Harben Secondary Modern school in Kilburn or lower West Hampstead, if you prefer. His first words to me were the question: “Are you interested in chemistry?”. A surprising question in the Harben where the most common one was: “What team do you support mate? Most kids there were from local families in Kilburn where chemistry would not have been a common subject of interest. I was pleasantly surprised having come up from a local junior school where I had learned to behave with street credibility and keep my conversations likewise. On being asked my team there I had searched my memory for a football team name as I had no knowledge or interest in the game. Chelsea, I had blurted out and hoped there would be no further details requested. Here was someone who had differing interests and, I subsequently found, had as little interested in football as myself. “Yes”, I replied “I have a chemistry set”. This brought a scornful sneer. “You don’t need a chemistry set, they are for little kids”. “I’ve had it a long time”, I said, hoping to correct what I realised was a mistake.

I came to understand he understood subjects like chemistry in a way that I and most of the other kids in the school did not. We quickly struck up a friendship and manoeuvred ourselves to sit in adjacent class desks. As I grew to know him longer, I was amazed to find his knowledge was far above the norm for the school. “I wonder how a jet engine works” I said one day shortly after not expecting a knowledgeable reply. Jets were still relatively new then and it was a complete mystery to me how an aeroplane could work without a propeller. “Hang on a minute I will draw you a diagram” he replied and promptly did so passing me a detailed diagram on a piece of scrap paper. I stared at it in wonder and incomprehension. Seeing my ignorance, he gave me a detailed explanation of the engine’s workings. What was a guy who at the age of 11 could understand and explain a jet engines workings doing in a secondary modern school? I wondered. I knew how I had ended up there and how I had failed my 11 Plus exam but how did he? As I got to know him longer, I began to realise that he intentionally failed his exams including, I assumed, the 11 Plus and was scornful of exams in general and usually did not bother with them.

He was easily the best at art and could draw well but sat doodling in the art class as he had nil respect for the teacher and her way of teaching art. I had far less ability than him but found myself getting higher marks. Science subjects were a bit of an exception and he was so keen on them he could not resist showing his ability and always got top marks.

I learned later that his rebelliousness came at an early age when in junior school he wrote an essay and was accused of plagiarism both by the teacher and his father, being told he was not clever enough to write it and must have copied it. He then decided that as, when he did his best he was not believed, then he would no longer bother with schoolwork. Our form teacher, a Lancastrian Guardian reader Mr Wallwork, gave us a talking-to one day saying that: ‘just because we were top in school, we should not be so proud of it as we did not have much competition in a Secondary Modern school. “You two are rebels” he said, “and you Clackson are even a rebel to yourself”. This he was.

He had as little interest in sport as I had, and we were both regularly sent off the field in cricket and football and caned next morning. This suited the rest of the guys in the class who were keen on sports and preferred us off the field and not mucking the game up and we were happier back in the changing rooms. We were regularly caned and accepted it grudgingly as par for the course, mainly, I seem to remember, for laughing. Les had the ability to make me laugh in all those situations where it was not allowed and made all the funnier for that reason. He would put witty annotations in the book we were supposed to be studying or do an amusing doodle in it and pass it to me.

In the second year many of the pupils left to join the new school Kynaston. Les asked me what I was going to do. “I am staying here" I said, “In Kynaston there will be homework, hard exams also more sport and most of the kid’s I don’t get on with here will go there." "I will tell my Mum I want to stay here too” he said. By then his father had given up on him. So we stayed where life was easy.

By the fourth year we were made prefects. You two do not merit it, we were told but as we were the senior boys, they had no choice. Somehow, we both managed to misplace our prefects’ badges and were asked to pay for new ones. Les refused to do so and I had to also so as not to lose face. Each morning we were summoned to the Headmaster’s office to give the money or be threatened with the cane. I was keen to get out of it and pay the money but Les point blank refused each morning. He got very limited pocket money and valued it as his cigarette money. The Head wanted to spare us but the Headmistress, a harridan Miss Billings, told him not to. “Give them give them six of the best Mr Lyle” she would say, “It’s all they understand”, “I will do it for you if you don’t want to.” A terrifying woman and a vicious caner and I was pleased Mr Lyle did not give in to her.

After leaving school at age 15, which was the norm then, we remained friends and would hang out together spending our Saturdays in Charring Cross Road bookshops and evenings in Soho coffee bars or clubs like Ken Colyer’s Jazz club. Les’s dad tried to get us into something healthier than hanging out in coffee bars, and bought us membership of the Budokwai judo club in Kensington. I did not last long at it being thin and bony and a master of the too-late break-fall resulting in many small injuries. Les persevered with it having just the right type of build and much aggression. He lasted about a year getting up to brown belt one short of 1^st Dan black belt, but eventually gave up as it was incompatible with his drinking and other sixties indulgences.

Les started work in a small supermarket in George Street writing shop signs. After some months at this he gravitated to a drawing office and became a sign draftsman and was responsible for drawing some of the first M1 motorway signs. I remember asking him how they managed to draw the letter O and zeros so perfectly. “I will show you” he said and placing the largest piece of paper he could find on the floor drew a perfect O free hand. “Like that” he said.

Les never kept a job long and after the drawing office did various jobs in printing firms including silkscreen printing. We had started to hang out at the Witches Cauldron, and oing to the endless parties of the Hampstead scene at weekends. Les often stayed at home improving his drawing and painting as he had become fascinated by Japanese art and soon became quite adept. He had wanted to go to art school, but his father would not support him and told him to get a job. They had a bit of a strained relationship. Les said at a certain point in his boyhood talking to him about electricity he realised he understood things his dad did not and corrected him.

He also took up guitar around this time. Acoustic at first but he later gravitated to electric and bought himself his beloved Fender. After he died I came across some of his guitar playing on tape including, I was pleased to find, some blues.

His favourite place was the pub, any pub. He was already drinking when I met him at school, a habit he developed during holidays with his family in the West Country. He brewed his own wine using used tea leaves and raisins. It looked as bad as it tasted but it did get you drunk.

In between jobs and after being on the dole for some time he was told he must do some kind of training course. He chose clockmaking because he said, “It looked like the easiest”. The teacher, realising he had someone above average abilities, encouraged him and got him into the Watchmakers Guild. This became his main profession and he worked his way up through the watchmaker’s companies around the City Road. He began to get a reputation in the trade as one of the best workers in London although usually drunk at work somehow, he got to be working on chronographs such as Omega, Rolex and Patek Philip etc.

Often in trouble because of union activities, being very left wing, and more often for drunken dances in the workshop he nevertheless usually did not lose his job as he was so good at it. He and two friends, Steve and Albert, literally did spend their working days up and down the City Road and in and out of the Eagle (pub). His later years in the trade were working for Watches of Switzerland where he had an awesome reputation. He could do the impossible with the watches including things that were normally sent back to Switzerland to be done. They valued him for what was called valeting, any watch over used, scratched or blemished in a shop window he could make look like it had just come out of the factory. He could change synthetic sapphire watch faces by hand, which could normally only be done by machine in the Swiss factories. They cost 500 quid each and were just millimetres thick. No one else could do it. Anyone who tried broke them and eventually only Les was allowed to try. Wealthy customers would offer to buy a watch if they could have a different face on it and they wanted it now. These watches cost a fortune and the salespeople got a bonus on sales.

When he was in the Knightsbridge shop, he was arrested as drunk and disorderly at the firm’s Christmas dinner for dancing on the restaurant table while drunk. In the morning he was bailed out by the manager and brought back to the shop. A customer wanted a different face, or he would not buy the watch. Les did the work and he heard them upstairs shout excitedly “He did it!” He went up from the workshop to the salesroom and saw the manager collecting money saying: “I told you he would” He realised they had been running a book on him being able to do it and the manager was collecting his winnings. He could do the impossible although on a hangover and after a night in nick!

He did some very nice engravings on brass plate around this time, but they were sadly all lost as were most of his pictures. The loose life of the sixties accounting for the loss of most of the pictures.

In between watchmaker jobs one time he worked with Mince, Lindsay Thomson, who ran an antique furniture repairs workshop. They struck up a friendship both being skilled with their hands and having the ability to be so while stoned or drunk, usually both. Les came ready trained to this work as one of his grandfathers was an antiques furniture restorer and sometimes ‘maker’.

At a certain point in his watchmaking career to he amazement of many including me he took up blacksmithing. He had been good at metalwork at school where the teacher somehow held this against him and regularly beat him. A Mr Barrett: “Come here Ginger I’ve got a nice piece of steel rod just right for your behind”. Strangely, it was probably the only way he could bear to acknowledge Les’s ability. Les took these beatings with feigned casual indifference which added to Mr Barrett's annoyance. His work can be seen on the carriages in Kenwood House where he replaced the worn iron work on both. And a gate to the market in Hampstead.

Pottery was another achievement after he gave up blacksmithing. The pottery teacher refused to believe he had not done it before and when taken sick after a couple of weeks asked Les to take over the class. He had been taught how to use his hands as a young boy by his other grandfather who was a woodcarver and showed Les how to use and sharpen tools. He had the head to match the hands so was good at brain/hand coordination. He understood the science of what he was doing with his hands.

At school his knife was sharpened like a razor and a kid who tried to hit Les with his leather belt buckle found himself holding a half a belt with the buckle end on the playground floor. A teacher borrowing it to sharpen a pencil cut the complete end of the pencil off. “My God that’s a sharp knife!”

Among his other interests were astronomy and maths which he and Rob Andrews would discuss at length and he liked a game of chess.

I did not see him for more than ten years while I was expat in India. I had wanted him to come with me but realised he was happy enough here in London and could amuse himself with the things around him in his room. He was also in a relationship. He did not need India like I did. He had two beautiful daughters, Emma and Elizabeth, that he doted on and cooked wonderful dinners for his speciality being Cod Thermidor.

He was liable to take a deep interest in anything he came across. One day after my return we went up the Union Canal through the Camden lock from Kings Cross to Little Venice on a friend’s canal boat. I thought no more of it until sometime later he said: “I have used up all the books on canals in the Westminster libraries but there are still things I want to know so I will try the British Library”. An expert on canals in the making. And indeed, he became so.

Dave Young later added:

I keep remembering more on Les's interests etc. I particularly forgot his main interests were Roman Britain on which he had many books with marginal notes plus the usual pot-shards and secondly of London and it's history (again even more books and notes) on which he became quite an authority.

Maybe you could include these in his interest section if it is not too much trouble. When I meet him later in the pub in the sky I won't have to explain my omission.

Sadly, his drinking killed him at the too early an age of 57. His other organs were still in good condition, but his liver was fucked. Sadly he was only offered a transplant when it was too late. He had stopped drinking for ten years but could not resist a drink at another work's Christmas party and started again. As I sat with him in the hospice the evening before he died, I realised I was about to lose the closest and cleverest friend I ever had.

Dave Young

Les Clackson: A life in Pictures

Les Clackson was an amazingly talented guy who was a watchmaker extraordinaire, a sometime draftsman, printer, blacksmith, engraver, potter, guitarist, painter. He was really good mates with Dave Young, and as well as the Wiches was regularly found hanging around at Dave's place at 54 Alexandra Road along with John Maddicks. Later Les married Kate Van Doornink and they lived at 42 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, where I regularly visited him in the 1970s. Jill Lumkin (later Ernest) also lived there in a top-floor room until 1970 and was a schoolfriend of Kate's. Whe Jill and I got together we would visit Les and Kate in their Warrington Crescent flat.

I gave up pipe smoking around 1970 and I remember swapping my pipes for Les's collection of snuff. He had about 20 different kind of classy snuff from Smiths in the West End, and I still have some of those pots. That snuff is like freshly ground black pepper compared to the dried out white pepper powder you used to buy in snuff tins from pubs.

Kate died much too young in the late 70s or 80s leaving Les to cope on his own. The last time Les visited us was at a party in West Hampstead, it could have been 1998, Jill's 50th. Les was full of warmth, but mostly sat in a corner drinking vodka.

Sadly neither Les nor Kate are with us any more but they leave behind two daughters, Emma and Elizabeth (Buffy).

Paul Ernest