How Green was my Valley ... or are my Fingers?

In a moment of utmost astonishment the other morning, I was taken back in my mind to a time probably forty-five years ago, when I worked at a factory in my Norfolk birthplace.  The factory had been there by that time for about twenty years, give or take, and was one of the town's biggest employers.  The business had been founded in London in the 'fifties by a couple of ex-RAF chaps and, after a few years of steady growth, they moved out to the country.

Typical of many small town factories of the age, this quickly grew into a 'family business'.  An employee, - being an electronics firm, the employees were mainly female - seeing that there was a vacancy, or a general appeal for more to join an expanding workforce, would tell mother or daughter or an out-of-work sibling, and so the whole family would go along there.  That may not have proved such a good idea when contraction of business led to redundancies, but no one thought of that then.

Every year there was a sports day, for the employees and their families to join in, and every year, too, there was an outing to the seaside, with the three nearest resorts - Clacton-on-Sea, Felixstowe and Great Yarmouth - being visited in rotation.  There was also a thriving social club, whose principal activities were the daily operation of a tobacco and confectionery shop housed in a cupboard on the shop floor, and a savings scheme in which those who wished could put away their savings for Christmas.

Talking of Christmas, on the afternoon of the last working day before the holiday there was a grand raffle.  This, too, was run by the social club and the tickets were sold by committee members for several weeks beforehand.  In return for the management's permission to hold it in the factory, the founder and managing director was invited to conduct the draw and hand out the prizes.  He was very much the 'pater familias', and enjoyed that role.

Yes, it was very much like a big family and, just as in a real family with lots of children, from time to time someone would leave, maybe to get married or to have a baby.  This was a day of great celebration.  The leaver's friends would make the effort to get to work early on her last day, and her workbench would be decorated with streamers and ribbons, and piled high with gifts and cards.  No one seemed to mind that, overall, several hours' work was lost as a result.

I came there about eighteen months before the founder retired and the firm was taken over by an international organisation, so I caught the tail-end of this family atmosphere.  It didn't come to an end overnight but, one by one, the 'family frills' of life there were eliminated.  Profit became king and the place was never the same again.

Whenever I've left a job, I seem always to have been working right up to the last hour to leave things as tidy as possible for whoever should come after me, and nothing different had entered my mind about leaving this voluntary job that I've been working at a couple of days a week since the autumn of 2018.  So yes, I was quite surprised to walk in on Tuesday morning for my last day to find

                                waiting for me.  I was so taken aback that it didn't occur to me to take the picture until I'd brought it home.  It's not the same as the scenes I remembered from long ago, but then I'm not in the same happy circumstances!  I have an idea where it will live, and I'll do my best to look after it, but I fear my horticultural expertise will be sadly lacking.