A round up of the fascinating stories told by those who worked in Enfield’s Industries in the last century.
/
RSS Feed
Episode 4: a round up of fascinating stories…
Episode Three Apprenticeships and working on production lines in industrial Enfield.
Apprenticeships and working on production lines in industrial Enfield.
/
RSS Feed
Episode 2 Anthony Fisher Remembers Brimsdown plating
Anthony has worked in Brimsdown since 1964. Here he reminisces about the processes and people in a jobbing metal finishing company Brimsdown Plating ltd AKA Roval Ltd.
The first four episodes concern people who have worked in Industry in Enfield in the latter half of the last century. The main body of these have been compiled and edited by Soveks Lo of Maroon Community Media, in the main, from interviews I conducted in my oral history project “Industry in Enfield”
/
RSS Feed
From an Enfield poet Episode 1
From an Enfield Poet is a series of podcasts concerning, history, culture, industry, poetry, people most of which will be associated with Enfield. All of interest to me and, l hope, also be of interest to you.
The first four episodes concern people who have worked in Industry in Enfield in the latter half of the last century. The main body of these have been compiled and edited by Soveks Lo of Maroon Community Media from interviews I conducted in my oral history project “Industry in Enfield”
/
RSS Feed
Festival of industry – enfield
Since 1964 I have worked in Brimsdown the industrial area of Enfield to the East of the borough. The North South Route had not long been built. This is a road running from East London to exit near the M25. Before this the only accesses were at the level crossings at Brimsdown and Ordnance Road Rail Stations which meant the area was somewhat isolated. A rail siding carried goods to and from Delta Metals and there was access via the River Lea. In fact we had one chemical delivered from Germany to Columbia Wharf where it was offloaded from the barge by the Scotch Derrick crane onto a lorry for the final mile.
Brimsdown and Eastern Enfield have always been neglected by the council whether Labour or Conservative and I have always felt that manufacturing industry tends to be looked down upon in Britain and small companies such as mine are always overlooked even though, collectively they contribute around 65% of both employment and GDP.
Imagine my surpise and delight when a Festival of Industry was announced in Enfield. It is a joint venture between Enfield Local History Museum and the Create Enfield cultural team. The museum displays industry Past Present and Future and I am delighted Fisher Research Ltd. is featured along with Chela Ltd.
Create Enfield brought together arists of all persuasions to create individual perceptions of industry in Enfield. In my case I put a call out to poets in Enfield Poets for poems industrial. These can be read and heard at Poetic Voices. Those by Christive Vial and me are from personal experience and the others are reflexions on industry. All very interesting and I hope that you like them.
Accidental Success
Over the last 60 years I have sometimes unexpectectedly created something that is aesthtically pleasing or successful without knowing why. The first was an oil painting of a girl, Susan, I’d met whilst on holiday in Cornwall. When I first saw Susan she was wielding a heavy sledge hammer breaking rocks in the track leading to her family farm. Walking across a field with her led to me being given a bunch of four leafed clover; they seemd to leap out at her. She kept goats and tried, and failed, to teach me how to milk them. I had taken a photo of Susan with a couple of her goats and, when home, decided to paint a portrait of her in oils. I’d had art lessons at school from the wonderful Ray Butcher, but do not know why I thought I could do this. So I fished out an old sheet of hardboard and probably put a coat of white emulsion on the rough side and started. I love the smell of oil paints. It seems to challenge a painter to create a masterpiece. I didn’t and the painting was binned at some time but recently, as I was putting a cardboard box into the recycling bin, an old slide fell out and it proved to be of my painting of Susan. I quite like it and wish that I had kept the original.
Soon after this, probably when I was 20, I decided to carve an articulated chain of teak. My father had aquited a piece of the old teak door of the Capital Cinema which once stood in Winchmore Hill. There is now a block of flats there. I had recently bought a pen knife that I was quite proud of so perhaps this was why I wanted to whittle but I cannot remember why I chose a chain. So I cut a square section about 9 inches long, pencilled in the profile and started. I would sit in the lounge after lunch with my father and his girlfriend and various others, mainly on a Sunday and carved away as we chatted. I liked the result and still have it by my chair in the sitting room. The chain is light, warm and chimes when I toss it in my hand.
When I lived in Chase Side next to St Michaels Green it was a new build and the front garden was a dreary slab of concrete. I wanted it to be my museum and art gallery so put all manner of things in it, anything whose shape or history pleased me. I sculpted with hub caps I’d picked up from the road and would sell them for a pound to motorists who spotted one for their naked wheels. Some one kindly dropped a pair of very old boots over the wall and I put them in pride of place on a wooden cable drum I had acquired. A local tramp knocked and asked to buy them and refused them as a gift insisting on giving me £5.00. Worth quite a lot in 1987. I then decided to fill the garden with colour and planted geranium, petunia, violets, marigold anything that was bright. I used pots and containers of all sorts. When there was a hose ban I would rush from kitchen to garden with buckets of water. It was lovely and in 1987, unbeknown to me, a lady in the flats opposite entered me into the Enfield in Bloom competition and a certificate dropped through the letterbox. I was astounded and my neighbour furious. She would berate me shouting “You never do any gardening, I spend all my time in the garden so why is it you that gets the certificate?” I shrunk before the onslaught and, of course, had no answer. After I’d moved I discovered that my garden was known as “The madman’s garden” and people used to travel from all over to look at it and it was a popular clue on treasure hunts. I wish I had known at the time. There may be some photos somewhre and I will blog on my garden some more.
A couple of phtographs.
The first is of shrimp fishing in Angoulin just south of La Rochelle on the west coats of France.
I used the panoramic setting on my iPhone and was so pleased with the result that I printed it out on 1 metre wide photo paper. The detail of the image was just amazing.
The second, again in France, is of a dancer. July each year, the town of St Maixent de l’Ecole, in what was the Deux Sevre, used to host an international festival of national music performed by young people. One group was from, I think, Slovakia and I took a shot of a dancer with swirling skirts. There is no motion blur which was amazing and I do not know how or why. I was using my compact camera which may have been a Panasonic. It insipred a poem and here they are.
Finally a poem. It floated into my mind, essentially as it is below, as I was waking up when Valerie brought me a morning mug of tea. The three gandchildren were dancing around her and it seemed as if her skirt was alive, a shaman’s skirt bridging the three worlds.
Grandma’s Skirt
Grandma moves around the house
wearing a skirt of children.
Faces float at her waist
as six little feet dance in orbit.
No need of iron! The skirt has noise enough.
No need to dance! The skirt can leap enough
to pull me back to where,
Grandma moves around the house
wearing her skirt of children.
© Anthony Fisher February 2000
The Power of ideas
I have a butterfly mind and new ideas excite me which, I suspect, helps me as a development chemist and poet. Francis Sealey of En-Caf discussed this with me in an interview yesterday. It was the first time I had a dialogue with anyone about ideas in this way and I found it both a useful and enjoyable process. Useful as it caused me to think about what I do and enjoyable as, well I tend to find things enjoyable! Just learning how to imbed the YouTube video in to WordPress was fun.
Well, I hope that you watch and enjoy this.
Genesis of a Memoir
Our youngest grandson, Jake, asked us ‘What was it like when you were my age?’ and how could he know as I rarely spoke of my upbringing to him or the other grandchildren? This prompted me to write a memoir whose title was suggested by Jake’s mother Megan, “Me, My Beard and I”. I had bought Anna Meryt’s book on writing a memoir and my original plan was to print it using my laser onto A4 pages but as I began writing I thought that something better could be produced and decided to self publish a “proper book”. We already had ISBN numbers and had used a great printer, One Digital, for the Enfield Poets Anthology so I was all set.
I then decided to include some photos and this is one of me at about 18 months. I still wear baggy trousers and braces.
Bearded in 1963
Mutton chops in the mid 70s 
After I had written a couple of chapters I thought to join the Life Writing class run by the Bishopsgate institute tutored by Nick Barley. In fact I enrolled with two of his courses and learnt much which meant re-writing! Nick also encouraged us to plan the book and so I laid out the chapters with a sketch of how I wanted the story to unfold and the order in which the chapters were to be. I then joined a short story writing class with Barbara Marsh which was very interesting and helpful and lead to more re-writing! Eventually I was able to manage 40,000 words, not many for a book but loads for me. It covered from 1943 to about 1964.
The research, choosing the photos to use, all caused me to reflect on my life and enabled me to better understand why things happend the way and when they did. I gained a different perspective of what had happend which was both useful and enjoyable.
Next came the design and layout a process I found very interesting. First came the size and I decided upon B5, next type face and I thought Palatino Linotype looked good, is very readable and had a certain gravitas. The paper was 90 GSM and suggested by the printer. All this was fairly straightforward. Other aspects were to resize the page, choose margin size, make sure every word was in the correct font which I found painstaking but MS Word enabled me to do all of this. I am not good at detail. The printer asked for text and images as PDF files and sent back a digital proof and the pages numbered. This enabled me to finish the contents page. Jools Barrett designed a wonderful front cover using a photo taken by granddaughter Holly and I decided to use my poem “Railing” for the back cover. and all was set, I just need to review the hard copy proof which I am reading in the Feature Image at the top of the page.
One Digital have impressive machinery and are extremely helpful and sent me some images and video of my book beaing printed and on the way to be trimmed.
And here are the pre-trimmed books.
And they arrived, on time!!! Only 60 copies but already I am planning volume 2. Next I intend to publish my first collection of poetry ‘Goddess and Other Poems’
My Mother’s Great Love; Wiktor Szubania
I’m writing my memoirs, Me, My Beard and I. It was Grandson Jake’s idea and Daughter Megan suggested the title. I have completed the first draft and, to my surprise, written about 145,000 words and I expect it to be about 150,000 when finished. The idea is to write of my early life, my parents and close relatives for the children and grandchildren and my Mother’s story is part of this. I was always told that my mother’s first , and I think, only love was a Polish Naval captain whom I only knew as Wiktor. They were not allowed to marry as he was “foreign” and that he was Catholic I suspect. I only remember meeting him once. Dad financed a fish and chip shop for him after the War and I went there once with my parents in about 1950. It must have been difficult for him after the excitement of the war being helped by the man married to his Love.
My mother drove an ambulance in and around Rochester during the war and was bombed twice in the depot so she too had an exciting time. She and her sister Margaret would visit the officers’ mess on one of the Polish Navy vessels where the officers would ply them with vodka and one of them was Wiktor.
The three sisters. My mother on the right, Margaret the centre and Georgie on the left. At this time Georgie was away in the Wrens.
I had seen photos of Wiktor in my mother’s wartime album but I could not read her hand writing so could not decipher his last name. Whilst choosing photos for the memoir I mentioned this to a Polish friend and she offered to see if she could read his name and so I now know him as Wiktor Szabunia and his photo is to the right. It would have been taken in my Grandparent’s garden. Though they were not allowed to marry my Grandfather did much to entertain both British and Polish Naval personnel.
Justyna Googled Wiktor and, to her surprise found a Facebook page dedicated to the Polish Navy and that Wiktor was one of 12 officers rescued after the ORP Grom was sunk by a Henkel bomber in May 1940. The Grom was the most feared ship in the Norwegian waters because of its relentless pursuit of German naval vessels. Wiktor must have been posted to a vessel in Chatham where he met my mother.
The featured image is of the 12 officers but I would like to repeat it here.
Wiktor is, I think, on the far right.
I suspect from the coquettish look on my Mother’s face, Wiktor took this photo.
In July 1953, there is an entry in my mother’s autograph book that Wiktor Szabunia and Helen, perhaps his wife, came to dinner at the same time as Ebba and Torben from Denmark. It is interesting as Ebba was my Father’s lover when he was in Denmark at the end of the War. I can remember Torben for some reason but not the others though shadows are beginning to appear in my mind as I write. It was only eight years after the end of the War so it could have been some sort of reunion.
More Things I like in our Home
The featured image is the collection of dried flowers that Valerie arranges in an old shopping basket on the top of the cupboards in our kitchen. Every now-and-then she changes some to they always look wonderful. She also has a collection of interesting objects to the left of the flowers including a range of invalid feeding bottles. I enjoy looking at the diffent things, imagine how they were used, by whom and it looks very attractive when the fairy lights are switched on.
Valerie is very pleased with the half pint milk bottle that she found whilst mudlarking on the Thames with Cheryl who was over from the USA.
You can see it here above the bunch of old keys. On its left is a stoneware inhaler designed to allow the breathing in of medicated steam. In the stone marmalade jar, bottom centre, is the bullhead tin opener that Elwyn gave us. An efficient opener but it does produce a very jagged edge.
I am not a Hindu but I have an affinity with Lord Ganesha who has helped me over the years and on my bedside cabinet I have a little carved, portable shrine of Him and Saraswati Goddess of music and writing, culture. There are many statuettes of the Elephant headed God around the bungalow. By my left shoulder, as I write, is a statuette of a very slim Ganesha. Normally he has a magnificent belly that contains the universe. Some 40 or more years ago during the relaxation period at the end of a yoga session a bright and intense scene appeared in my mind of an elephant-headed man dressed in Indian clothes, where there was supposed to be a rose that we’d been instructed to visualise. He was leaning against a tree preaching to a small group and it was very hot and sunny. I opened my eyes and it appeared on the ceiling about two metres across. It was as bright as a film, I closed my eyes and it stayed. This went on for about 15 minutes until the instructor called us back into the present. At the time I was ignorant of what I had seen. I told the yoga instructor about it who, during the next session, informed me it was something that happens and to forget about it. Years later, I met her in Kings Lyn, when she said that the council were very worried and told her to mislead me in this way. Much later I came to realise what I had seen and to realise that it was a very special moment that I was privileged to have had. I can still see the scene, as vivid as a video, when I close my eyes.
The image on the left is of the window by my chair. We bought the lovely Art Deco statuette at the Southgate auction house, she is beautiful and so joyful. I’d hoped it was a Chiparus but it is unsigned and on a cheap base so, though lovely, it probably isn’t. In front of the glass plate on the right you can see another statuette of Lord Ganesha on the left are a figure and chain I carved out of teak from the door of the old Capital cinema in Winchmore Hill. I am very proud of the chain, the links are separated and tinkle when shaken. As always some art glass. The green one is particular favourite and it changes so much in shape and colour in different lights. The blue piece is modern from the Czech Republic. I bought it at a glass fair where we first met our son-in-law’s late father Johnny King who was a very well known glass blower with Whitefriars Glass , He very generously made me a handkerchief vase, which he signed, and here it is:
I am very interested in origins and find the history of writing very fascinating. The earliest is cuneiform developed in Sumer about 3000 BCE. This led me to Enheduanna the earliest known poet writing in Ur in about 2350 BCE. Cuneiform was invented by accountants for stock control and Egyptian hieroglyphics by priest for us in tombs and some say this is why Egyptian poetry the more human and passionate, I like both. The image below is of a precious object, the 11th tablet of the Story of Gilgamesh the first known novel. It is written in cuneiform but the language is Akkadian and it is an early version of the great flood in which Noah is the central character in the Bible. It is a replica but when I handle it I can hear the voices of the story tellers that told the story long before it was written down in 800 BCE. It is on the window will in our sitting room and I was sitting in our tiny patio when I took the shot.
Finally an image I just like. It is the reflection of the chandelier in my toilet, in the angular glass clock which is amongst various bits and pieces on he shelf over the cistern. You can just see the shape of the clock. I bought it in a car boot in Witney as I liked its chunkiness. It did not work but, to my amazement, I was able to buy a cheap replacement over the internet.
