Chapter 17

1973 - 1974

 RAF Wittering, RAFASupU

In June 1973 I was told that I had been posted to the RAFASupU at RAF Wittering and I actually moved on 21^st July.  The role of this unit was all to do with the support of Nuclear Weapons in the RAF.  I had done a considerable amount of training here over a period of time in order that I could work at the SSF at Waddington.  My job was to be the number two in charge of a new facility cutely named the Radiation Monitor and Instrument Maintenance Centre (RMIMC).  Prior to this time the servicing of radiation monitoring equipment was done on individual RAF Units.  This had produced varying standards and a lot of unserviceable equipment with no proper facility to repair them.  The Chief Technician in charge was Alistair MIDDLETON who was posted in from RAF Scampton.  He and I, both Aircraft Electricians, were the only two tradesmen with experience of maintaining this type of equipment.  The rest of the section comprised Corporals and Junior Technicians with a Ground Radio background.  For me this turned out to be a great job and I believe that we set up a section which improved the standard of maintenance and recovered a lot of equipment that had been previously categorised as of no further use.  The lads used to collect and deliver the equipment to RAF Units, which meant a long time on the road for some of them.  A couple of the lads made up a Test Bench for improving the diagnosis on one of the monitors that gave us a lot of trouble.  They received a cash award of £25!!!!  I have included a photo of them at work on the test facility; they are John WELLS, standing, and Rob McMILLEN.  

I am still in touch with Rob and it was him that found the photo.  It may be noticed that the wearing of radiation monitoring badges was standard procedure for this job.  We had two support units, one in Wales and the other in Scotland, which covered the Units in their areas and at the start of this new system, RAF Kinloss, in Scotland, had a problem with the test bench.  I went through the set up procedures with them over the phone for ages but still they could not get the Test Bench to work so I was sent up to Kinloss by train to try and fix the problem.  When I got to the section, I put one switch into a different position and fixed the problem.  I suppose that this illustrated the fact that the written procedures were not good enough and neither had been my advice over the phone.  I was only in this job for about 17 months but it must have been one of the best  jobs that I had.

1973
8, Manor Road, Stilton

When told that I was posted to Wittering, there was a good deal of  anxiety in the family about moving house after nearly five years.  In the end Maria and I decided to buy our own house and after looking around the area we found a new estate in the village of Stilton, near Peterborough and bought 8, Manor Road, a newly built semi-detached three bedroomed house.  At that time Stilton was in the county of Huntingdonshire.  There was a good deal of hassle before we finally moved in, mostly because we didn’t really have enough money to pay for  everything that we needed, like deposit, legal fees, furniture, carpets curtains, curtain rails, battens to mount the curtain rails on.  Yes, apart from the tiny bathroom, this was a house with absolutely nothing in it except kitchen units and a large electric storage Unit that supplied warm air heating.  The legal fees were solved by the RAF  At that time, if there were no Married Quarters available the RAF would pay the legal fees with the proviso that, if the house was subsequently sold within a defined period (I cannot remember what that was, but about three years I think), the fees had to be paid back.  The mortgage required a 15% deposit, which we didn’t have but some legal loophole was used by the Building Society so that we only actually had to find 5%.  This we could just manage.  The price of the house was £8,100, which is tiny by today’s standards but just consider that, when the estate was started 18 months earlier, the cost of the same house on the other side of the road was £3,500!  Whilst all of the negotiations were taking place to buy the house, the RAF Housing Office at Waddington was trying hard to evict us so there was a lot of pressure to move and quite a bit of friction between Maria and me.  In the meantime, the mortgage rate went from 4% to 8%, putting even more pressure on our limited resources.  I even tried, unsuccessfully, to get the builder to reduce the price.

Although we lived in Married Quarters we did have some things that would be useful in the new house.  We had a three-piece suite, a washing machine, a Fridge, and Bunk Beds for two of the children and that was about it.  Pop and Doreen bought us Double and Single beds to get us started and I hired a van, which we used to go up to Bradford so that we could beg anything from the family and friends that would be useful in any way.  Maria’s Mum had an old sideboard, table and chairs, which gave us a start.  Just at this time, Geoff and Mo BRYSON were changing some of the carpets at Rosedene, next door to Pop and Doreen.  We took all the old carpet and underlay off their hands and it carpeted the boy’s bedroom in our little house.  At work we had a crew-room in which the carpet was being replaced so I took that to be used in our bedroom.  It took a lot of scrubbing but finally became clean enough to use.  Chris and Brian FOSTER had some carpets from their previous house and we relieved them of one big enough to carpet the lounge and Dining area.  Close to the house was a barn, in which someone kept all sorts of odds and ends and in here we found various items, including a little kidney shaped dressing table that just fitted in Annette’s little box room.  That room, which was restricted in size because of the staircase, was also the reason buying a single bed that was only 5’ 9” in length.  We found a second hand three ringed Belling electric cooker advertised locally and bought that.  Maria cleaned it up and it worked for the whole of the time that we owned the house.  She also made all the curtains for the house.  We also found a place that sold ex-military furniture from which we bought various bedroomed items including a sideboard and bedside units.  We also bought a green stair carpet in the local carpet shop on Stilton High Street for £10.  Tony HUDSON, who was a hockey playing friend as well as a work colleague at RAFASupU was a bit of a carpenter and he designed and made a sliding wardrobe for our bedroom.  This was brilliant as the children had to use cardboard packing cases with a piece of dowelling inserted.  Our time in this our own first house was most enjoyable and we settled down for a long stay.  Oh how wrong can one be!

As far as the children were concerned, the move meant that Andrew and Annette both went to the local village school and Nick duly started. 

Andrew, Annette & Nick TURNER

The house had been built on an old orchard and we had three apple trees in the small back garden.  We found that the apples, if stored in newspaper in the dark for a while were quite pleasant to eat.  Because the house was one of the last ones to be built on the estate, and probably the last one to be sold, a considerable amount of garden waste and rubble had found its way  on to our tiny front garden.  Having cleared all this, we planned to have a little lawn with flower beds for borders.  The back garden was full of weeds, but the soil was good so we dug out the weeds and sieved 30 barrow loads of soil and transferred it to the front, seeded the lawn area and waited for the grass to grow.  

1974
8, Manor Road, Stilton

1974
Annette & Nick TURNER

What I had not taken into account was the fact that the weeds in the back garden had seeded and we had inadvertently transferred a large proportion of them to the front.  Maria and I spent hours pulling out tiny weeds as they came through in the spring.  Meanwhile, I built a small retaining wall in the back garden and a shed from odds and ends of wood found around and about Stilton.  The main part of the garden was turned into a lawn.    

On the sporting front, I played hockey for RAF Wittering and Strike Command, but no civilian hockey.

Socially we were fairly restricted; living about 13 miles from Wittering and always having the children to consider, I don’t remember using the Sergeant’s Mess apart from the odd formal event, which did not include wives.  We had our car so we could have days out although the area was not quite as good as Lincolnshire and we were very busy with the house.  Chris and Brian FOSTER lived about 25 miles away from us in Rushden, Northamptonshire and we did visit them on occasion.  Brian now worked for a civilian company that had a Flat in London and he offered it to me for the weekend around our 15^th Wedding Anniversary in 1973.  He also said that he and Chris would look after the children, which was an amazing offer especially considering that they had two daughters of their own in about the same age group as our three.  I arranged all this without telling Maria and set off for Rushden on the Friday night, where, very much to Maria’s surprise, instead of unpacking for an overnight stay, we abandoned our children and went to London.  We found the flat OK and on Saturday drove into town and parked in a car park somewhere.  That cost us about £5 as I remember it.  Apart from seeing some of the traditional London sights, Maria found a huge C&A on Oxford Street, where we seemed to spend hours!  On the Saturday evening we enjoyed a bath together, but as we were getting out, the door to the flat opened and in walked one of Brian’s colleagues!!  That was an embarrassing meeting; it transpired that Brian had not told him that we would be there, although it wasn’t a problem because there were two bedrooms.  The whole weekend was a great success, and probably the first time that Maria had willingly been away from the children overnight.  I say willingly because l seem to recall that she was ill one time when we were at 4, Finch Close and neighbours looked after them.  Incidentally we still have the Crystal Vases that we bought for that Anniversary.

Our holiday in 1974 was in Filey, and paid for mostly by Pop and Doreen.  They hired a house with enough room for everyone and also bought us our main meal every day in the local cafe.

Our adjoining neighbours at Stilton were an American family, Jean and Floyd GORE with children Jeanette and Roseanne.  They were very friendly and had access to very cheap alcohol!  We used to join them for the odd Vodka and Orange during the evenings.  Jean also made the most magnificent sandwiches; I say magnificent but only to me because they involved Peanut Butter, Pickled Gherkins and Cheese, none of which Maria liked.  Jean was actually English, but had adopted the American lifestyle and her accent sounded more American than Floyd’s.  They also had a poodle, named Misty, who hated me and loved Nick.  Any time I was in the garden, she would stand at the fence and bark until I went in or she was taken in.

Later in 1974, I was pre-warned by a Squadron Leader at Wittering that my name had cropped up on the overseas roster for which I had volunteered some years before and, once again, forgotten about.  He said that I could be taken off if I wished so we had a big decision to make.  If we sold the house, we would have to pay back the legal fees to the RAF, money we didn’t have.  The other problem was that the house was now worth about £500 less than when we bought it, more money that we didn’t have.  We spoke to Jean and Floyd next door and asked whether or not the USAF at Alconbury, where Floyd was stationed, would take on our house as a hiring.  Floyd sent us to see the Base Housing Officer who agreed that they would take the house on for a monthly rent of £65.  This gave us another problem because one of the restrictions on the mortgage was that I could not rent out the property unless the rent earned covered the mortgage payments.  In our case it didn’t.  I wrote to Abbey National and told them what we wanted to do and I received a letter back, which I wish that I had kept.  It said in effect that they could not give me official permission to rent the house, however, as long as the mortgage was paid on time, they could not foresee a problem.  As a result we therefore decided that we would pack up and go to Germany, which, hopefully would put our finances on a more secure footing and we could enjoy seeing some of  Europe.  We put the house on Alconbury’s books and prepared for the move.

A strange thing happened at the time we were due to move.  Jean and Floyd received a knock on their door from a person demanding that they pay their rent.  It transpired that, although they paid their rent direct from Floyd’s pay, it wasn’t reaching the owner.  They decided that this situation could escalate and asked if they could move into our house.  We were delighted and so they moved in when we moved out and stayed for a year or so, before moving onto Base accommodation.  They also said that they would look after our interests once they moved out, which took a load of our minds.  Our limited quantity of furniture was placed into storage for future use.

That was the end of this particular chapter although we shall come back to this house later on.  I was posted to No. 3(F) Sqn., a front line Harrier squadron at RAF Wildenrath and Maria went to stay with Doreen and Pop until a Married Quarter became available.