When I Worked at the White House

It's funny how the smallest detail sometimes leads to an almighty turning back of the memory clock.

One of the embarrassing aspects of working with a PDA is the need to ask people their names.  In the 'old days', I could just hand them the clipboard and say 'sign and print, please' and, so long as there was a clear indication in each box, I'd be on my way.  Now, if there's a delivery sheet to sign as well, it seems something of an insult to ask, implying - however correctly - that their printed name is illegible; and if there isn't a piece of paper, then to ask a name seems nothing less than a blatant intrusion into 'their space'.  To cover my embarrassment, I notice that I've developed the occasional habit of making some comment about the name I'm told.  (I have to be careful what I say is not racist, of course!)  This backfired on me the other day.

I'd made a delivery to a car showroom in Ashford, Kent.  On arrival, I was approached by she who appeared the junior of the two ladies on duty behind the reception desk, and after putting the parcel on the floor, I asked her name.  "Birch," she said.  "Oh," I replied, "I used to go to school with a girl named Birch."  Quick as a flash came the amused rejoinder.  "I've aged very well!"  She must have been in her early twenties, at most.  I hastily covered my embarrassment with a comment about her being much too young, and retreated.  As I drove away I thought 'Birch'.

There were, in fact, three sisters of that name.  At school I knew Angela and Susan, who were respectively two years and one year older than me, and I had little to do with either of them ... shy boys of eleven didn't in those days. It wasn't until ten years or so later, when I was newly married, and a junior accountant with a manufacturing firm, that I discovered that they had a younger sister.  Their works was at Harleston, about ten miles from my home town, and rather than provide my own transport, I would often travel there on the bus that was provided for the factory workers, many of whom lived in Diss.  One Monday there was an attractive addition to the passengers, and as the only two office staff amongst the otherwise overalled gathering, it was perhaps natural that we should sit together.

In the following months, we shared many a Monday morning and Friday evening journey, and I learned that Julie was the sister of Angela, who by then had found a job working not with me, but in the same office, and Susan.  She was married to an airman, I believe and, having found work at the factory, in the office next to ours, she lodged during the week with Angela, who lived nearby.  On Fridays, she would travel to Diss, on the first leg of a complex journey to spend the weekend with her husband, making the reverse journey on Monday.

Unsurprisingly, this arrangement was not conducive to happy family life, and it only lasted a few months, by which time Julie had obtained a more suitable job nearer the base, enabling her to commute from married quarters.  I was flattered that, on the first of only three occasions in my whole career, she asked me for a reference to support her application.  I have no idea what it was that I wrote, given that my work and hers rarely coincided, if at all.

This whole recollection brought back many happy memories of the four years I worked at that factory, and the many faces that were familiar, although with the passing of forty or so intervening years, many of the names are now casualties of time.  I remember sometimes wearing a red hand-knitted pullover, and being nicknamed 'the robin' as I walked round the shopfloor collecting data.  Then there was the time when I made some notes in the presence of one of the young women who graced the shopfloor as secretaries to the departmental managers.  "Coo," she exclaimed, "haven't you got nice writing ..."  My head began to swell with pride until she added, "... for a feller!"

Mendham Lane, Harleston - former
factory canteen and car park

The White House - my office was
on the top floor of the nearest corner

A few weeks ago, I made a delivery in the Suffolk town of Beccles, and my homeward journey would naturally have taken me past Harleston, so I took advantage of the opportunity to divert through the town and look at the site of this particular chapter of my early career.  The factory building is no longer, having been demolished a few years ago to make way for housing, but the canteen is still there, now a community hall, with the car park still in use around it.  More significantly, from my point of view, so too is the white house on the opposite side of the car park from the factory, which in those days housed the administrative departments.  I could almost hear the slam of that solid front door as I stood by the roadside with my camera.