was born in Enfield in 1945 on the day we reached Berlin which is why she has a name starting with V for Victory. Valerie went to Chase Side Primary School and then Enfield County School. Her first job was in a wages office in Klinger’s in Edmonton and then in the sales office of Belling & Lee on the Cambridge Road. Later in life when her child was older she took a course in shorthand typing and temped for a number of years in local firms ending up at Barclays Bank Ltd in Enfield Town. Valerie was then employed by Enfield Council for 17 years, six at St Ignatius College and 11 years for Social Services. When the establishment was closed down she was given early retirement.
Valerie Fisher’s interview
Interview of Valerie Fisher recorded by Anthony Fisher on 5th March, 2023 Transcribed by Valerie Fisher
Valerie
My name is Valerie Fisher, I’m also known as Valerie Darville which is my maiden name. I was born 2nd May, 1945, on the day we reached Berlin which is why I have a name starting with V.
Anthony
Do you have any siblings?
Valerie
I am one of six children, three sisters and two brothers. My elder brother and elder sister have passed on now. I am number five.
Anthony
And whereabouts did you live when you were first born?
Valerie
I was born in Chase Side, Enfield, in which was then 122b but they have altered the numbers slightly, it is now 122d, I think. It is shop premises but they have changed it and made the upstairs into a separate flat and I was born there; it was all one property.
Anthony
And you went to a local school, did you?
Valerie
Yes, I went to Chase Side Junior School in Trinity Street, which is just a few hundred yards up the road.
Anthony
And secondary education?
Valerie
Secondary I went to Enfield County School which at that time was a grammar school.
Anthony
So you must have done the Eleven Plus.
Valerie
Yes, I did. My three elder sisters had all gone to the County School and there was terrific pressure – I had to pass the Eleven Plus, I had to go the County School and when the results came I had passed but I been given a place at somewhere called Glendale Grammar, I’ve no idea here Glendale Grammar was even. I think it must have been a short lived name change but it was in another part of the borough – there was a policy at that time to send kids quite a long way away from where they lived. I was absolutely devastated, I felt I had let the family down, failed, I cried and cried, my parents were very upset. Looking back now I’ve no idea why it was so important to them but my father knew somebody in the Council and contacted them and told them my sisters had all gone there and they transferred me. I might have been better off going to the other place.
Anthony
So you think you might have been better off going to the other school?
Valerie
Probably. The County was a very good school if your face fitted; you know, middle class girls who were in the choir and had supportive home backgrounds, that sort of thing but basically the form I was in we were just written off at 12.
Anthony
Which is surprising because you went on to get two degrees.
Valerie
Yes, but that was long after I left school and in the eyes of the County that wouldn’t have counted because I didn’t do it from school.
Anthony
So when you left the County School you started work?
Valerie
Yes, I was more or less chucked out at 16 with one O Level in English Literature. I had disastrous O Levels, I had revised all the wrong things, totally flunked it. I think had I been able to stay on and re-take them I would have done a lot better but that wasn’t even considered and I got a job in the wages office of Klinger Manufacturing in Upper Edmonton. It had been the Workhouse apparently before then; it was a big old brick building, it’s been pulled down now. I earned £5 a week. I used to get on the train at Enfield Town, off at Silver Street and walk up the road past North Middlesex Hospital.
Anthony
So was it far to walk?
Valerie
Ten to fifteen minutes, I suppose.
Anthony
So the journey wasn’t too bad for you.
Valerie
No, it wasn’t too bad. I was at a bit of a disadvantage because normally they took on a junior and she learnt the factory, where everything was, she would run messages here, there and everywhere and got to know the layout of the factory but I went straight into the office so I never knew where anything was so if I was asked to take something somewhere I usually got lost.
Anthony
So how soon was it after you left school that you started?
Valerie
I was determined to have the summer holidays first so I waited about a month, much to my parents’ annoyance, and then I went to an agency in the Town, it isn’t there any longer. I think it was called something like Senior Office Services and they sent me for an interview at Klingers.
Anthony
And, as you say, you went straight into the office you didn’t know your way round the factory.
Valerie
No, I didn’t and I didn’t know anyone in the factory. The girl who was the junior at the time, she knew everybody.
Anthony
What did you do in the office?
Valerie
I calculated the Sock Turners wages. They were mainly elderly ladies. When the socks – Klingers made stockings and socks – when the socks came off the machine they were inside out and the ladies had what they called an “arm” and they pushed the sock on to the arm and pulled it off the right way round. They got paid in dozens and when they had done a dozen pairs they got a little slip of card and at the end of the week I would get an envelope full of these bits of card for each person and I would calculate their wages from that. I knew my twelve times table up to twenty five times twelve.
Anthony
So how many dozens would they earn each week?
Valerie
Oh, I really can’t remember, I mean you’re going back sixty years.
Anthony
Did you stay there long?
Valerie
About two years, I think. On Fridays we used make up the wages; loads of cash used to arrive from the bank and we used to have to check it. Bundles of 100 £1 notes, the old pound notes, and check there was a hundred in each and great excitement when there wasn’t. I remember counting one once and there was only £96 in it but the bank didn’t seem to quibble, you just told them. We also had to count the bags of silver and coppers as well – this was the old money, florins, shillings, half crowns and so on, and then we would make up the wage packets. They were all paid in cash in those days.
Anthony
How long did it take to do that?
Valerie
Well, it took all of Friday morning.
Anthony
And then the envelopes had to be given out to the employees.
Valerie
Yes.
Anthony
Did you do that?
Valerie
No, I didn’t do that.
Anthony
Then where did you go?
Valerie
When I left I went to Belling & Lee opposite the playing fields on the Cambridge Road, one of the many factories closed by Mrs Thatcher. That was the Belling of Belling cookers. Belling’s was just down the road in Southbury Road and Mr Lee was his partner. They were both alive in those days, Mr Belling in Belling’s and Mr Lee was in Belling & Lee. He had an office on the top floor. I don’t know that I ever saw him actually. There was Sangamo Weston next door and there was a car auction place, further down there was Goray’s on the corner of Carterhatch Lane. They made skirts mainly, I think, good quality ones. There were factories all along there, I think MK was there as well, I’m not sure.
Anthony
The Goray’s building is still there, it’s now a Business Centre called Goray House. So what did Belling & Lee actually do?
Valerie
They made components, printed circuit boards, things like that. I was in the Sales office which I quite liked and I had more social life. There were a lot of boys there who were apprentices and I got to know people. Then this awful bloke joined the sales office team, really obnoxious and he decided he was in charge of me, although he wasn’t, and was constantly harrying me and I got fed up with that and left.
Anthony
So how long were you at Belling & Lee?
Valerie
I’m not really sure, eighteen months or so,
Anthony
What did you do in the Sales office?
Valerie
People used to ‘phone up asking for catalogues or enquiring about components or ordering stuff.
Anthony
It was business to business was it?
Valerie
Yes, business to business. Plessey were a big customer who were often on the ‘phone.
Anthony
Did you get any training for that?
Valerie
Not really, not that I remember, no. But there was always someone you could ask, if you didn’t know the answer.
Anthony
After Belling & Lee where did you go?
Valerie
After Belling & Lee I was out of work for a few weeks and about that time I got involved with a very undesirable type and I became pregnant and I didn’t want to get a job in an office because I would have to confess to being pregnant so I went – the most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life – I went a got a job in Barton’s Bakery in Enfield town, working in a shop, standing on my feet all day.
Anthony
Where was Barton’s Bakery?
Valerie
It was – if you’re walking up the Town towards the library on that side it was quite a long way up on the left, I suppose there was about ten shops or so between Barton’s and the road that goes by the library. Then I got married and then I got the sack because I was pregnant, they didn’t insure pregnant women, so I got the sack.
Anthony
It must have been quite difficult being on your feet all day.
Valerie
It ended badly, I ended up in the antenatal ward at South Lodge with oedema. They said I had been overworked; I was water logged and like the side of a house.
Anthony
So nowadays you wouldn’t have been sacked but it was probably better for you that you were.
Valerie
Yes, probably. I married the guy which was another big mistake and then I had a baby to look after – the marriage didn’t last very long, Thank the Lord, and after that I was determined not to go to work until my son could talk so he could tell me what was happening. There was a case of a woman my sister knew, she was leaving her two year old son with this woman and she wasn’t feeding him. She was feeding her own kids but not him, and I was determined that wasn’t going to happen to Paul so I wasn’t going to go to work until he could talk clearly which was when he was three. I got a part time job as a barmaid in Enfield Town, in the George, which at that time was owned by the Stanbrook family, and I liked it there. It was a big change, I actually got a sore throat from after speaking to nobody all day, except Paul of course, I was talking the whole time.
Anthony
I wouldn’t have thought of that. From being a single parent living alone with a child it would have been very difficult to socialise, wouldn’t it.
Valerie
Yes, it was. What I used to do, I used to go shopping every day because if I did, like, one shop, I just didn’t go out so to make sure I went out every day I just shopped from day to day. I didn’t go out in the evenings because I had Paul to look after so I did my housework then. So anyway, I got a part time job in the mornings and my friend, Becky, used to have him Friday night because I used to work Friday night and Saturday morning – I used to pay her because they were hard up as well, and I saved up out of my wages until I had enough money to take a part time course in shorthand tying.
Anthony
What year was that do you think?
Valerie
It must have been, what, 69? I went to an annex of Southgate College which was in Edmonton Green. It’s all pulled down and different now. And then when Paul started school I started working for an agency as a temp.
Anthony
So it was a while between finishing the course and using what you had learnt.
Valerie
Not that long. He started school at 4½, which was in retrospect much too early. He wasn’t ready for it but I was young and inexperienced and I let it happen Had I been older and wiser I would have said, “Look, this is too much for him.” They can’t make you send them to school until they are 5. I would have taken him out. But he was quite a frail child but when he was 5 he had his tonsils and adenoids done and his ear drums punctured because he had fluid behind them, he had grommets, and it made a different child of him, much stronger. But until then he was always very catarrhal and bad colds and so on.
Anthony
It must have been a difficult time for you.
Valerie
Well, you just have to get on with it, don’t you.
Anthony
What sort of companies did you work for when you were temping?
Valerie
I wouldn’t go very far because I had to get back to get Paul from school – there were loads of companies then, there were loads of factories before Mrs Thatcher. For several years in the winter, there was more secretarial work in the summer because people were on holiday, so for several years I ended up in the post room at Belling’s, which was fine, I actually liked it. The woman in charge was o.k. I was always very respectful to her because – I hate saying this but – in those days anyway factory people and office people were two separate species and they were suspicious of people who worked in the office and they might think that they thought they were better than them in some way so I was always careful to be respectful to her – I know that sounds patronising but it wasn’t – I needed the work, I needed the money. You have to do what you have to do, its no good going in to any job thinking you’re too good for it.
Anthony
What did the work entail?
Valerie
It was checking a lot of stuff, I can’t remember what now and then you had to put your initial in the corner to show that you’d checked it and there was a lot of sorting of post and memos and stuff like that into pigeon holes.
Anthony
So it wasn’t post coming from outside the company, it was post within the company.
Valerie
It was probably both. It was fine, I got on perfectly alright. You can’t go in there thinking you’re better than anybody else because you’re not.
Anthony
How many years did you go there?
Valerie
It must have been at least three; they used to ask for me.
Anthony
I think you told me once that people often asked for you.
Valerie
Well, I worked for Mrs Murray in Central Staff Agency in Palace Gardens, the building is still there but, of course, they have decimated Palace Gardens, and if the company had a bad temp the week before and they were cheesed off I used to get sent. I know that sounds conceited but it’s true because they used to tell me after I’d been there a couple of days and they found out I was actually o.k. they used to say, “We had a terrible temp last week and we told Mrs Murray we didn’t want her back,” and I used to think, “There’s a familiar sound to this,” I’m not saying I was brilliant or anything but I was o.k.
Anthony
I suppose a lot of people would have offered you permanent jobs.
Valerie
Yes, I don’t make a good impression at interviews; I very rarely got jobs through interviews, I always managed to put my foot in it some way or other but I got offered lots of jobs after I’d been temping there a week or two then they would offer me the job but I couldn’t take any. I had to have a certain freedom not to work if Paul wasn’t well or something like that. You can’t do that with a permanent job; you can’t ‘phone up and say, “My child isn’t well, I’m not coming in,” you know.
Anthony
In those days there was actually quite a lot of work.
Valerie
Yes, there was. I temped at Barclays Bank for a couple of years, Paul was older by then and I’d remarried so I took a permanent job there. Barclays wasn’t really a very good firm to work for and the part time people were called auxiliaries, they didn’t get pensions or anything like that but eventually they had to change so the part time workers could join the scheme but I had left by then.
Anthony
It’s interesting that while you were there they had the first A.T.M. machine in the world.
Valerie
Yes, it was. Customers had vouchers and almost every day you would get letters of complaint – people talked about it as if it was alive. They used to say things like, “It gobbled my voucher and didn’t give me any money,”
Anthony
Were these vouchers issued to anyone?
Valerie
No, you had to have an account with the bank and they were issued with these vouchers which they fed into the machine.
Anthony
So they were vouchers for £5, £10, £50?
Valerie
I suppose so, I don’t know. I never had any, I never went into that scheme and later they brought out Barclaycard which was the first debit/credit whatever card and the voucher thing stopped. I think I left there about ‘74. I often wonder if my finger prints are still on record because whilst I was there, one weekend, they had an attempted break-in. there was an alarm system which periodically sent back messages to the security people and they managed to get in and they managed to somehow do something to the alarm system so it was still sending messages whilst they were cutting through the door of the vault but there was something that made the security people suspicious and they came to investigate. They didn’t catch them, they escaped and they hadn’t quite got through the door of the vault but the police took all our fingerprints for purposes of elimination. It was done with ink in those days, they put ink on your fingers and pressed them on to paper and they said, “We’ll discard them after six months,” but I often wonder if they did or if my finger prints are still on file. Not that it matters, but I wouldn’t have thought so after, what, fifty years but, who knows?
Anthony
Going back to the voucher machine, there’s a story, which might be apocryphal, that there was a person behind the wall pushing money out if the machine didn’t work. Is that true?
Valerie
Well, it might have been in some places but it wasn’t in Barclays in the Town, no.
Anthony
So they put in vouchers and money would come out through the slots.
Valerie
Yes. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, I never used the machine myself, we just had to reply to these letters of complaint. They used to say, “It ate my voucher,” or “It gobbled my voucher,” as if it were alive.
Anthony
And the bank could check whether that was true or not?
Valerie
They must have been able to, they must have been able to count the number of vouchers and count the money in the machine.
Anthony
So when Barclaycard came in they stopped using vouchers but the card could be used?
Valerie
I guess so but you’re asking me questions I can’t really answer; at some point the machine would have been changed to take the card but I don’t know when that was.
Anthony
After Barclays where did you go?
Valerie
I went back to temping for a couple of years and then when Paul was fourteen I finally managed to get a job in a school which I’d been trying to do for years, at St Ignatius College along the Cambridge Road. It is a Roman Catholic boys’ school run by the Jesuits. I was in the office but I wasn’t in the general office because there wasn’t room for me, I was upstairs in the A.V. room with a woman who ran the A.V. side who became a good friend.
Anthony
How long were you there?
Valerie
Six years and then I moved to working for Social Services.
Anthony
Before we leave St Ignatius I remember a story you told me about collecting dandelions.
Valerie
Oh yes, nothing to do with work but I was going through a wine making phase at the time and the playing field was smothered in dandelions and I asked if I could pick them. They were only too pleased and after work I went out and collected half a bucket full of dandelions. I don’t know if you know how many dandelions it takes to fill up half a bucket but I never wanted to see another dandelion but I made some wine from them and it was actually delicious, light and floral. I did that for a few years but it’s a lot of hard work and the wine’s not normally that brilliant.
Anthony
So you left about 1980?
Valerie
No, about 1985. I went there in, I think, 1979, because I could work four days a week and I was doing my first degree at – it’s now Hertfordshire University but it was then Hatfield Polytechnic. It was one of the best polytechnics in the country apparently although I didn’t know that when I went there. I used to go there all day on Wednesdays. By sheer coincidence, one of the teachers, who also became a close personal friend, was also doing it so we went through the system together and she used to give me a lift which I was very grateful for because I doubt if I would have lasted the course if I had had to go on buses.
Anthony
It’s a long journey by public transport, isn’t it.
Valerie
Yes, well now there is a direct bus from Enfield Town to Hatfield but there wasn’t then. I arrived soaked one day and Lin said, “This is silly, if you come to my house I will give you a lift,” which she did from then on. It was very decent of her.
Anthony
And you were successful in getting your degree?
Valerie
I got a 2.1
.
Anthony
And after St Ignatius?
Valerie
After St Ignatius I got a job at a place called the Rownhams Centre in Bush Hill Park which was a Family Therapy centre and next door was a residential unit for adolescents; we had the emergency beds for the borough – all two of them.
Anthony
How many beds were in the unit?
Valerie
We could take about five kids I think.
Anthony
For the whole of the borough?
Valerie
Yes. They were emergency beds for sudden family breakdowns or whatever.
Anthony
How long were you there?
Valerie
I was there for eleven years.
Anthony
Until 1996?
Valerie
That’s right and incident filled years they were! Eventually they moved the residential unit to another premises and sold off the house so it was just a Family Therapy centre but whereas it had had very experienced family therapists at the beginning and we had been very busy, things sort of dwindled and everybody left except me. I wasn’t going to leave, I stuck it out and eventually they said they were going to close it and because I was 50 and I was redundant they had to give me early retirement. My husband had started a business and I did some work – I didn’t get another ordinary job – I just did some work for our business from home.
Anthony
Which you are still doing.
Valerie
Very little, apart from attending Board Meetings and doing the Minutes and doing things like applying for trade marks, these days the firm has grown and other people do everything. I’m very peripheral.
Anthony
The Family Therapy centre sounds quite an interesting and useful place. I mean, what is family therapy?
Valerie
It was for adolescents, teenagers, who we all know can be very difficult and parents at the end of their tether, or sometimes the parents were to blame – not all parents are blameless – and a social worker could refer them to us but I was the admin person and acted as receptionist and so on. We had two rooms upstairs; one was the therapy room and it had one of these mirrors you could see through one way and not the other and on the other side of the mirror there was another room where other family therapy social workers could sit in darkness and watch the proceedings through this mirror and the family would talk about their problems and the therapist would try and find solutions for them. The sessions were recorded, with the family’s consent of course, and forms signed to say it was totally private and wouldn’t be divulged to anybody else. It’s a bit like when you watch a murder mystery or something on the television, if you watch it again the second time you pick up all sorts of clues you missed the first time and if you re-watched a session you could pick up lot of little clues and indications that the first time you had been too busy concentrating on what was happening to pick up and it was useful.
Anthony
How many people worked there?
Valerie
It wasn’t a big place. Well, when we had the unit there were lots of social workers, they worked shifts but in our building there were about, I don’t know, five or six of us originally. Next door in the unit there were two social workers on duty the whole time, day and night – sleep-ins – they weren’t supposed to leave the kids with only one social worker in there. And there’s lots of things you don’t think about, I mean for instance from the office you could see the front door so you could see who was coming in whereas where they moved them to in Edmonton, you couldn’t, so you couldn’t know who was coming in. There are all sorts of things like don’t have a coffee table or something on wheels because it can be shoved across the room and used as a weapon, don’t have milk in glass bottles which can be smashed and used as a weapon. People in the Civic Centre don’t understand that sort of thing. I’m not saying all the kids were like that but there is always the odd one.
Anthony
I remember you mentioning in a previous conversation about the pack size of butter.
Valerie
Oh yes, they used to say you’ve got to buy like nine million packs of butter because you can get it at ten pence a packet cheaper but what happened was it got out of date before it was used and got thrown away but they couldn’t understand that it was cheaper in the long run to buy small quantities as you went along and they were always getting people’s time sheets wrong. I remember one weekend cook, he used to come in on Sundays I think, they changed his wages number without telling him so he worked his shift and sent in his time sheet with, as far as he knew, the right number on, which they then rejected saying it had got the wrong number on it. He ‘phoned up and said, “Why have you rejected my time sheet?” and they said, “It’s got the wrong number,” so he said, “No it hasn’t,” so they said, “We changed it,” so he was really annoyed – justifiably – and I had this stupid woman on the ‘phone saying he had been very rude and she wasn’t going to do his time sheet unless he apologised! So I said, “Hold on a moment, are you telling me that you won’t pay him what he is owed unless he apologises?” And then she back tracked and said no, she didn’t say that. I said to her he was justifiably annoyed, I should think. He got paid eventually but I think he packed the job up after that.
Anthony
I remember you telling me you used to take the time sheets into the office personally because the internal post didn’t work.
Valerie
Yes, they used to say not to put things in the post box by the front door because it might take days to remerge. I used to take it up to the wages department and deliver it.
Anthony
I also remember you saying the fact that you had the keys to the petty cash box gave you immense power.
Valerie
It didn’t give me immense power! Far from it! I didn’t have any power but the kids were always a little bit wary because if they needed something the social worker would say, “Oh, I’ll have to ask Val for the money,” – I mean, I had to give it to them, I didn’t any choice, but the kids didn’t know that; they thought that perhaps I had the power to not give them the money so they were always quite polite to me. They weren’t bad kids most of them, a lot of them were more sinned against than sinning.
Anthony
And you were made redundant in 1996?
Valerie
1996, without even a thank you from the council after having worked for them for seventeen years.
Anthony
Going back to earlier times, you worked for Dyson’s – not the vacuum cleaner people, there was a supermarket in the Town called Dyson’s.
Valerie
There were two supermarkets, there was Dysons and The Home & Colonial but I don’t think many people seemed to go in the Home & Colonial. There was also a small supermarket on the opposite side of the road near Barton’s which started out as Bernard Best, then became Victor Value and then Tesco. They had a very large cashier, I think her name was Ivy. Dyson’s was nearly opposite the library green on the opposite side of the road. I got a job there when I was 15 as a Saturday girl.
Anthony
So you were still at school?
Valerie
Yes, I was 15, you weren’t allowed to leave grammar school until you were 16 – or you weren’t supposed to anyway, your parents had to sign a form when you went there. In fact there were two in our class who did because you could go out to work at 15 in those days. At Dyson’s I talked too much and the manager got cheesed off about it so he took me off what they called the Floor where you did things like stacking shelves or we used to go with the cashier, stand next to the cashier and pack the customer’s bag for them, so I got sent upstairs to the egg packing department. I used to put six eggs in like a bottom half of an egg box, it didn’t have a cardboard top, it was just the bottom half, wrap this film round it and slide it over a hot plate which sealed it. You had to be careful you didn’t burn your fingers. I think I earned something like £1and fourpence for the day. Old pennies.
Anthony
Dyson’s would take delivery of eggs in big boxes?
Valerie
Well, in large amounts, I don’t remember how they came really. When we closed there was a conveyor belt which went upwards and they’d pack all the fruit and veg into boxes and send them up on this conveyor belt and we’d unload them and put them in the fridge because they didn’t open on Sundays then, until Monday morning. There were lots of things different then, they had a chicken roasting rotary spit thing that was in the window that they cooked chickens on and the fat would drip down into a pan and every Saturday night this elderly gentleman would appear at the back door and they’d give him the chicken dripping. That wouldn’t happen today. It was probably quite delicious, chicken dripping is nice on toast or something.
Anthony
How did they get deliveries because there’s no back entrance is there – or was there?
Valerie
There was some sort of back entrance where the 329 terminus is now. I’m sure there was a way in from the back but I don’t really remember, you’re going back an awfully long time and I wasn’t involved with deliveries.
Anthony
Did you stay there until you left school?
Valerie
No I got fed up with packing eggs, I was there about a year I think and I left. It was quite good fun, a couple of my friends also worked there and after work we would very often go to the pictures.
Anthony
In those days Enfield had three cinemas.
Valerie
There was the Rialto, the Savoy or the ABC as it was also known and there was the Florida in London Road known as the fleapit. We normally went to the Rialto. My father was very strict about what time I had to be in so I didn’t get much chance to do anything else really.
Anthony
Well, we’ve been talking for 46 minutes –
Valerie
That’s probably long enough.