My parents wanted me to be a printer. My father was a stereotype operator at the Daily Express in Manchester and earned exceptional money because the print unions were so strong. He got me an interview at the Manchester Evening News for an apprenticeship. About two dozen lads turned up for morning interviews and aptitude tests and half a dozen of us were invited back in the afternoon.
The job went to the son of another member of the union but I was told the next apprenticeship was mine. That's the way it operated.
I was fortunate to get myself a job in journalism at The Knutsford Guardian before the next apprenticeship became available. This was 1958 and I was taken on a six month trial as a junior reporter on £2 17s 6d a week. A print apprenticeship, I seem to recall, paid around £7 a week. My parents were less than overwhelmed.
The manager/editor at the Guardian was Maurice Carver. The vacancy had arisen because the senior reporter had moved to the Manchester Evening News. Dave Skentelberry (Skent) had become senior in his stead, and I was the new junior.
Knutsford was, and still is, a lovely and wealthy Cheshire town. Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell had been a resident in the 19th century and used it as the setting for her novel Cranford. In the late 1950s it still seemed surprised that someone had built a council estate on the other side of the Moor. Mr Carver (never Maurice) looked like Eric Morecambe and, although he was only in his thirties, behaved with a gravitas beyond his years. Or maybe he thought that was how editors should behave. He had served in British Intelligence and been in Berlin as the war ended. He told entertaining stories of Russian barbarity and stupidity.
The weekly newspaper followed a gentl routine that started slowly on Thursday, publication day, and got gradually busier as we closed in on the Wednesday noon deadline. I covered everything from funerals to police calls, golden weddings to Quarter Sessions, garden fetes to the Royal May Day festivities that unfortunately coincided with the Cup Final (first Saturday in May, back then) and, when Skent eventually moved to the Lancashire Evening Post and I became senior, I followed the Mid Cheshire League fortunes of Knutsford FC and had two junior beneath me: Malcolm and Robin.
The typewriters were massive sit-up and beg machines built like battleships that could amputate the fingers of the unwary. The County Express also had an office in town manned by local lad Dave 'Caz' Carsberg. Caz and I always went to the Cranford Cafe every morning for coffee at 10 30 after police calls. I spent a delightful four and a half years in an idyllic setting, completed a three year apprenticeship and learnt the rudiments of the job.
It was a damn fine better way to earn a living in what was the golden age of journalism than as a printer in Manchester.
The job went to the son of another member of the union but I was told the next apprenticeship was mine. That's the way it operated.
I was fortunate to get myself a job in journalism at The Knutsford Guardian before the next apprenticeship became available. This was 1958 and I was taken on a six month trial as a junior reporter on £2 17s 6d a week. A print apprenticeship, I seem to recall, paid around £7 a week. My parents were less than overwhelmed.
The manager/editor at the Guardian was Maurice Carver. The vacancy had arisen because the senior reporter had moved to the Manchester Evening News. Dave Skentelberry (Skent) had become senior in his stead, and I was the new junior.
Knutsford was, and still is, a lovely and wealthy Cheshire town. Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell had been a resident in the 19th century and used it as the setting for her novel Cranford. In the late 1950s it still seemed surprised that someone had built a council estate on the other side of the Moor. Mr Carver (never Maurice) looked like Eric Morecambe and, although he was only in his thirties, behaved with a gravitas beyond his years. Or maybe he thought that was how editors should behave. He had served in British Intelligence and been in Berlin as the war ended. He told entertaining stories of Russian barbarity and stupidity.
The weekly newspaper followed a gentl routine that started slowly on Thursday, publication day, and got gradually busier as we closed in on the Wednesday noon deadline. I covered everything from funerals to police calls, golden weddings to Quarter Sessions, garden fetes to the Royal May Day festivities that unfortunately coincided with the Cup Final (first Saturday in May, back then) and, when Skent eventually moved to the Lancashire Evening Post and I became senior, I followed the Mid Cheshire League fortunes of Knutsford FC and had two junior beneath me: Malcolm and Robin.
The typewriters were massive sit-up and beg machines built like battleships that could amputate the fingers of the unwary. The County Express also had an office in town manned by local lad Dave 'Caz' Carsberg. Caz and I always went to the Cranford Cafe every morning for coffee at 10 30 after police calls. I spent a delightful four and a half years in an idyllic setting, completed a three year apprenticeship and learnt the rudiments of the job.
It was a damn fine better way to earn a living in what was the golden age of journalism than as a printer in Manchester.
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