What age were you then, when you left school?
Mrs T: I was 15, Eric would be 14.
And had you done any exams or leaving certificates?
Yes, we sat the 11-plus, anyway, I didn’t pass it, but there used to be a technical college, I could have gone there but there wasn’t any money, you see, for a uniform or anything. So that was it, you left school at 15, I left on Friday and started work on the Monday, as Eric probably did.
Mr T: I did.
What was the job that you first went into?
Mrs T: Me dad got it. He just went across the road to this woman, and I started at burling and mending, I hated it, I wasn’t very good at it.
Mr T: I can remember leaving school. Well I wanted to be a motor mechanic when I left school and I couldn’t get a job nowhere as a motor mechanic, so I finished up going to iron foundry, and me first wage was nineteen and a tanner a week. And then when I was 18 I went into the army and it was 18 month then National Service, but I was the unlucky one - I got roped in for another six month, so I did two years. And then I went back into the iron foundry, anyway, dishing all the sheet metal out and that, it was a good job.
Mrs T: But he met me. Then he got a job here, on the railways, his mate got him a job on the railways, and that was it, you see. I was 17, and I was 20 when we got married.
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