“Dad told me to spruce myself up an’ get my hair cut,” said Albie, “so I did – but I en’t too keen on all that Brilliantine, are you?”

www.albiestales.co.uk part three

HEN ALBIE STARTED WORK in the Design department of Jarrold Printing in July 1960, the Head Designer and Deputy Manager, Mike Fuggle, was given the task of training the young ex-Art student for a career in print. “Forget everything you learnt at Art School,” Mike told the lad, “from this day on, you’ll do things the ‘Jarrold way’ – the right way!” But what on earth did he mean, Albie wondered, surely three years at the Norwich School of Art had taught him most there was to know about printing? But how wrong he was to be! So, putting all past thoughts behind him, and forsaking his Bohemian lifestyle forever, Albie resigned himself to discovering and honing the skills of a designer in a professional printing environment...

BY MID-AUTUMN OF THAT YEAR Albie was well into the swing of things, having spent the past few months generally ‘helping out’ the other designers, though supervised by Mike, of course, his mentor and a very good friend.

It was still a strange place to work, at least Albie thought so, and took some getting used to with its more-or-less open-plan office environment with everyone going about their allotted tasks and telephones ringing every few minutes.

“Halloo? Halloo?” said Mr Moore, manager of Buying, the department responsible for purchasing vast quantities of all manner of consumables – paper and ink for the printing machines, office equipment and materials for the typists, in fact everything down to the very last paper clip to ensure the continual smooth running of the company.

“Halloo? Are you still there?” he asked, in his distinctive high-pitched voice, “we still haven’t had the delivery of board from you – 180gsm Art coated, that is. How much longer....?”

“Um, oh, thank you, I’ll take it – um – in my office...”

“No, you look here,” said Mr Fenton, progress-chaser for the Production department, getting quite hot under the collar with someone on the other end of the ’phone, “you know that job should’ve been printed and bound by now – what’s your excuse this time...?”

All around him was a cacophony of noise likened only to the Tower of Babel, Albie thought. If only he could be allowed to concentrate in peace...

“Albie... Albie!” called Mike Fuggle, from his desk at the other end of the Design department. “Is there anyone at home? I thought you’d gone to sleep for a moment... can you spare a minute when you’ve quite finished day-dreaming?’

ALBIE GETS HIS FIRST REAL JOB!

Joining Mike at his desk, Albie explained it was ‘all the telephones putting him off’ and he wasn’t in the habit of ‘going to sleep’ in the middle of the day!

“Be that as it may,” laughed Mike, placing a package of work on his table, “you’ll have to get used to it if you want to stay at Jarrolds!”

“Anyway,” he continued, opening the packet of work, “you’ve been helping everyone out for some time now, so I think it’s about time you had a little job of your own to design!”

“Great – tha’s just great, Mike,” Albie replied, enthusiastically. “My first real job, thanks ever so much!”

For the past few weeks, he’d been helping the other designers with their ‘paste ups’, or doing some ‘lick and stick’ as some of them called it. A highly essential part of bookwork, this entailed producing, on paper, a true representation of all the pages of the book, two pages at a time, complete with words and pictures for the customer’s initial approval. He had learnt how important it was to be highly accurate in his approach to ensure that everything was placed in the correct order and the right way up! However, if the end result didn’t meet up with the customer’s approval it was sometimes the case of start again!

“It’s the next Jarrold Magazine,” continued Mike, the head designer, “our in-house journal and right up your street I shouldn’t wonder – but it’s very important to do it the way I’ve taught you!”

Albie began looking through all the material; odd scraps of paper, some typed, some handwritten, complete with proofs of the typematter from the Composing Room, together with all the photographs and artwork.

“You’ll need to do a rough layout first,” Mike told him, “and ‘size-up’ the pictures before taking them round to Norwich Engraving in Muspole Street – but don’t forget to do prints first!”

It was normal practice to make prints of any photographs, with these being produced on a Xerox camera, usually operated by Nita Coxall, another member of Design.

“After I’ve sized up the pictures, can I get Nita to make prints for me, please, Mike?” Albie asked.

“No, Albie,” Mike replied, “that’d be good experience for you to make some prints, don’t you think?”

“But, I haven’t... how do I... ? I mean, I don’t know how...”

Mike laughed: “All part of becoming a designer, you must be able to do anything and everything – but, don’t worry, Nita will show you how to operate the Xerox camera! But – here comes the tea trolley, so let’s have a cuppa first, shall we?”

A WELCOME TEA BREAK

Jarrold & Sons Ltd was a family-run firm, with John Jarrold as Company Chairman and Peter, his son, Director of all operations at the printing works. Another son, Richard, was the Director of the Jarrold Department Store with the youngest son, Anthony, about to become involved on the Publishing side of the business.

Jarrold & Sons Ltd had a good reputation as an employer and, as such, many of its employees came from several generations of the same family.

Nita Coxall and her parents, Arthur and Muriel, were a good examples of this, with Nita being the Xerox camera operator, her father a Gatehouse keeper and her mother, Muriel, working in the Jarrold canteen.

On this occasion, Muriel was wheeling the tea trolley – heavily laden with a large urn filled with hot water, a tea pot, cups and saucers, and a selection of filled, crusty bread rolls and slices of beef patty – along the first floor of the Mill, calling at each department in turn.

“Hello, Albie, an’ how are you today?” Muriel asked the lad as she poured a cup of tea from her extremely large, aluminium teapot. “Fancy a cheese roll, do ya?”

“Yes, please, Mrs Coxall,” he replied, handing over his money and taking a crusty roll filled with thickly-sliced cheese. “An’, can I have two sugars, please?”

Suddenly, the office – usually bursting with the hubbub of ringing telephones, chatttering typewriters, lively laughter and casual conversation – was silent, with people having more pressing matters to attend to, drinking tea and coffee and getting their ‘laughing gear’ around cheese rolls from the tea trolley, or, in Felix’s case, currant buns he’d brought from home. Never one to trust bought food, he always insisted on home-grown and home-made!

“You won’t catch me drinking that rubbish!” Felix told Albie, as he poured a cup of hot cocoa out of his flask. “That’ll turn your insides all brown, that will!”

After a quarter of an hour, all returned to normal – the telephones commenced ringing, typewriters began clacking away at seventy words to the minute, the conversation recovered from its muteness – and Albie decided it was time to see Nita in the Xerox area.

ALBIE BECOMES A NUISANCE ...

“There’s not much to it really,” Nita declared, having given Albie a demonstration of the procedure for making prints on her Xerox camera. “Mike wants me to help him for a while, so, if that’s all right, I’ll leave you to it!”

If she could do it, he should be able to do it, Albie thought as he prepared to make his first print.

The Xerox camera, being too large for the Design department was in another area on the first floor of the Yarn Mill, adjacent to the Production Control department. Also in that area was Alec Miller, whose job it was to ‘vet’ all manuscripts coming into Jarrolds, checking them for grammatical and spelling errors and preparing them before they were sent to the Composing department for typesetting. A most responsible and demanding job, requiring, it has to be said, 100% concentration and utter silence – but that was all about to end as Albie began on his first print!

“Right,” Albie said to himself, but just loud enough for Alec to hear, “first, I place my photograph in the copyholder...” With that, he swung the large metal-framed copyholder down with a bang, followed by an audible ‘sigh’ from Alec Miller!

“Now I hatta focus that up an’ check the size is right,” Albie continued, placing a black cloth over his head and squinting at an image on the frosted-glass screen. “Tha’s queer, ’corse tha’s upside down, I ’spuz I’d betta turn ut the right way up!”

Another loud band as he adjusted the photograph in the copyholder, followed by an even louder sigh from the man trying to read the manuscripts. But, worse was to follow.

“Now I gotta sensitize the metal plate,” Albie continued, with his running commentary, and managed to drop the plateholder on the floor with a loud clatter. “Whoops, butterfingers,” he laughed.

Eventually, after charging the light-sensitive plate, putting it in the back of the camera and exposing it to obtain an image, it was ready for processing.

“Nita said, ‘don’t forget to give it a good bang in the cascader’,” he reminded himself – and did just that! Bang, bang, and another, bang, just for luck!

“Do you really have to make all that noise?” fumed an irate Alec Miller, finding it impossible to continue with his copy preparation for a moment longer. “It’s like working in some damn garage with you about – besides, I’m getting one of my heads!”

In abject silence, Albie continued with his print making on the Xerox camera.

... AND UPSETS THE CANTEEN MANAGERESS

At 12.25pm precisely, the factory hooter sounded announcing the start of the lunchtime break for the factory workers, and quickly, from the far corners of the printing works, vast numbers of workers headed for the works canteen on the second floor of the Mill.

“Phew – thank goodness,” declared Albie, upon hearing the klaxon and glancing at his wristwatch, “another twenty minutes an’ tha’s time for lunch!” In those days it was customary at Jarrolds for the office workers to attend the second sitting in the Canteen at 1.45pm!

“How are you getting on?” Mike asked Albie in the ‘Gents’, as the lad stood at the sink washing off all the black Xerox powder from his hands and arms. “Finished all the prints, have you?”

“Well, yes, just about,” replied Albie, drying his hands on the roller towel, “but I think I may have upset that man in the next department.”

“Oh, Alec, you mean? Don’t mind him, his bark’s worse than his bite!” laughed Mike, as they made their way up the stairs to the canteen on the floor above. “Let’s join Ivan and the others for lunch and forget about work for a while...”

At the far end of the canteen, several other designers had already ‘bagged’ a table and had left seats for Mike and Albie. Having decided what they were having for lunch, the little group – Ivan, Tony Mullins, Tony Shearing, Mike and Albie – began discussing who should get the ‘dinners’, who should get the beakers of water, and who should collect the cutlery.

“You get the knives and forks, Albie?” Ivan told him, “and I’ll join the queue for the dinners.”

Going to the cutlery box, next to the serving hatch, Albie noticed it was empty. Putting his head around the corner of the hatch, he politely asked: “Please may I have some cutlery, as there en’t none in the box!”

“You’ll hatta wait,” came an abrupt reply, “we dishin’ up.”

By now, Ivan had collected dinners for the five of them, stacking the plates one on top of another, using metal rings to keep them apart.

“C’mon, Albie,” he said, “get the cutlery, do our dinners’ll go cold!”

Once again, Albie politely requested some knives and forks, which were clearly visible to him on a table just inside the canteen kitchen.

“Our dinners are gittin’ cold,” he told a lady in the kitchen, “can we have some cutlery, please?”

“That’ll hatta get cold,” retorted the woman, “I told ya, I’m servin’ up an’ I’ve only got one pair of hands!

“They say they’re too busy to fill the cutlery box!” he called out to the other designers, sitting impatiently with their dinners getting cold in front of them. “But there’s a gret ole heap o’ knives an’ things in the kitchen...”

“Do you go in an’ get it then!” shouted Ivan – and Albie did!

Opening the kitchen door as quietly as he could, in the hope of entering unnoticed, Albie made for the pile of freshly-washed-and-dried knives, forks and spoons on the table.

“Just what do you think you are doin’ on? ” shouted Mrs Symonds, the canteen manageress, coming out of her office. “Get out! Get out o’ my kitchen, this instant, do you hear!”

“B-but, I on’y wanted some knives an’ forks,” protested Albie, backing away, furtively grabbing a handful of cutlery as he went. “’Corse our dinner wuz gittin’ all cold...”

“I don’t care,” the manageress replied, waving a tea towel in his direction, “don’t you ever come in here again, do you understand?”

Red faced and quaking in his socks, Albie quickly dished out the cutlery to his fellow designers – but he was one set short! Sitting with a plate of cold bacon, runny eggs and mushy beans in front of him he suddenly realised he’d completely lost his appetite – even for the baked beans!

“Wha’s wrong with that, then, Albie?” asked Muriel, the canteen assistant, as she scraped his left-overs into a bin on her trolley. “ You hen’t et much, hev you?”

“And you can’t have any pudding either,” laughed Tony Mullins, “if you don’t eat your first course all up!” With that, Charlie Baker, the works’ messenger at the next table, lit up a foul-smelling cigarette – and Albie knew it was time to leave!

ALBIE MEETS A FRIEND

Albie decided to go out for a stroll, heading past the Gas Works and in the direction of the Adam & Eve, the oldest inn in Norwich. Not having the ‘taste’ for a beer, or even a shandy, he walked straight past and down Bishopsgate, lined on both sides by rows and rows of well-built Victorian villas.

“Knowin’ what the City council is like,” he muttered to himself, as he walked along the narrow road, “they’ll probably knock all these down an’ widen the road – but, that’ll hoolly be a shame, that will, an’orl!”

He wasn’t to be far wrong either!

At the end of the road was a medieval bridge and, beside it, another pub – the Red Lion. By now, having missed his lunch, all for the want of some knives and forks, Albie was almost having second thoughts about going inside for a cheese sandwich and a Vimto. However, never being the one to frequent public houses, especially on his own, he decided to give it a miss and continued walking.

Descending a flight of steps beside the river he began walking along a leafy lane towards an old ruined tower on the opposite bank.

Down by Cow Tower, on the south bank of the River Wensum, Felix was sketching the blissful scene as the rippling waters meandered gently past. A whiteness of graceful swans sailed by, pausing for a moment to enquire – in their own inimitable manner – whether any morsels were to be cast in their direction. Sadly, for them, Felix had enjoyed the rest of his lunchtime feast of currant buns and only a mere handful of crumbs remained, which the fastest of the group quickly consumed with one swift swoop of its neck.

“Hi, Felix,” said Albie, announcing his arrival after taking the little path from the direction of Bishop Bridge. “Tha’s what I miss most about leaving Art School – sketchin’.”

“You could always come with me,” replied his friend and travelling companion, “after all, I spend most lunchtimes sketching somewhere or other.”

That’s not a bad idea, thought Albie.

“Tha’s bin a funny ole mornin’,” he replied, watching the glorious, ever-changing reflections in the river, “what with one thing an’ another...”

“I gather you rather upset Alec?” Felix asked, scribbling in his sketchbook, adding shadows to his pencil drawing of the medieval tower beside the bend in the river. “You certainly know how to make a good impression!” he joked.

“Yes,” replied Albie, quietly reflecting on his morning, “an’ I managed to git into Mrs Symond’s bad books, an’orl.”

Felix laughed. “That doesn’t take much doing,” he said, closing his sketchbook and tucking his pencils into his top pocket. “Come on, young Albie, it’s almost ten-past-two, we’d best get back.”

A SURPRISE IN STORE FOR ALBIE

That afternoon, Albie began designing the Jarrold Magazine, using ‘Cow Gum’ to paste in all the typematter and the prints he’d made of the pictures earlier that morning. It may have been only sixteen pages, but it took him most of the afternoon to do it the ‘Jarrold way’ as his mentor had instructed him, as he knew he had to get it just right.

Around half-past-four, Albie finished the paste up, and he was rather pleased with the result, so he took it to the head designer for his approval.

“I think tha’s all done now, Mike,” he said, proudly laying down his paste up in front of him. “P’raps you’d like to have a look at it for me, please?”

Mike looked through all the pages, pausing every now and again to make some marks on the proofs.

“Not bad,” he said, “not bad at all – just needs a bit of fine tuning here and there, but it’s good for your first real effort!”

“Let’s go through it together, shall we?” he continued, fetching a chair for Albie. “Then, tomorrow, you can take the photographs to the blockmakers in Muspole Street.”

Looking through Albie’s paste up of the Jarrold Magazine, Mike made one or two changes to the size and positioning of the illustrations, with some spelling mistakes to be corrected.

“You’ll need to know how to mark up the proofs properly,” he told the lad, “using special marks that the Composing Room people can recognize – but I’ll show you that tomorrow, as it’ll soon be time for you to go home!”

Albie felt quite pleased with himself as he began to tidy up his desk, putting away his pens, pencils and scalpel – not forgetting to put the lid firmly on his tin of Cow Gum. Soon it would be time to join Felix and make the dash to Thorpe Station to catch the 5.23pm home to Sheringham.

Putting on his jacket, he was about to leave when Mr Oliver, the Design manager, called him over to his desk.

“Albie; before you go, can you spare me a minute?” he said. “Sit yourself down, it won’t take a moment.”

Fearing the worst, Albie did as he was told and sat down beside the manager.

Perhaps, the noisy episode with the Xerox machine hadn’t gone unnoticed by ‘Management’ – after all, it was right next to the Chairman’s office – or maybe the canteen manageress had lodged an official complaint over the invasion of her kitchen, or perhaps Muriel had taken offence at him not eating up all his dinner.

However, it was none of these things – and Albie was in for a great surprise!

“Mike has shown me your efforts with the Jarrold Magazine,” the Design manager told him, “and, I have to say, I’m quite impressed by your work!”

“Thank you very much, Mr Oliver,” Albie replied, relieved at having done something right for a change.

“And, with the festive season only a couple of months away,” Mr Oliver continued, “we’d like you to give some thought to designing a front cover for the Christmas Jarrold Magazine!”

But, what would Albie have in mind?

NEXT: Albie designs a cover for the Christmas Jarrold Magazine – AND receives a Christmas present from the Directors!

SOME OF ALBIE’S FAVOURITE WEBSITES A Norfolk Entertainer A Moment in Time Enjoy North Norfolk Enjoy Norwich Flint Holiday Cottages Norfolk Churches Norfolk Dialect Norfolk Village Signs Norwich City Hall and the Lions Picture Norfolk Remember Norfolk Sculthorpe Spyplanes

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