A “great idea” that didn’t quite work. But it had hysterical results.

In 1962 I had three friends who lived near me. Alan Fox, Colin Ellis and Dave Lash all lived in Evelyn Court about a mile and a half away. One day Alan and Colin announced they were going to Israel for a year and then they were gone. That left Dave and me. The problem was that Dave didn’t have a phone at home. This meant us having to arrange a time that he would call me at home. It was inconvenient, but it worked as long as there were no last-minute changes. So, I came up with an idea. Walkie-Talkies. But this was well before you could buy Walkie-Talkies in a department store. The only place I could buy Walkie-Talkies was in an Army surplus store.

So down we went to just such a store on Regent St. in the West End of London. There we looked at what was available. Not a lot of choice and the units came in three pieces. The battery pack, the headset and the transmitter with a four-foot-high antenna.

I found this picture on eBay. It looks close to what we bought. You wore the battery on your back and the transmitter on your front.

The idea was for us to have them in our bedrooms, not go walking about London with them on. We thought we would be able to communicate the few miles between our homes. By the way, we were supposed to get a broadcasting license, but I thought it best to test them first.

We took them home and at a prearranged time we tested them. It didn’t work. We didn’t know if it was the walkie-talkie units or the distance. So, we loaded them into my mother’s car, a Triumph Herald, and decided to test them in an open space.

Why I chose Epping Forest to test them is now beyond my memory. Probably because there was easy access from the road and we would be concealed. Remember it was illegal to transmit without a license.

It was now a Wednesday night in mid-February, it was cold, dark and wet, but we “soldiered” on. I drove to a part of Epping Forest that was not too far from Enfield along a straight road with open grassland on either side. I remember pulling off the road and driving across the open grass to a tree where I parked facing the road. It was late evening around 9pm.

We got out and put on our gear. We stood back to back and got the sets working. As we walked, we talked and eventually we determined that the range was only 100 yards or so. We decided to return to the car. I turned around to go back to the car and that’s when I realized that I was lost. It was almost pitch black. I couldn’t see the car, let alone David. Never thought to bring a flashlight. Oh geez. Eventually, after many anxious minutes we walked into each other and then found the car. What a fiasco! We got all the gear back into the trunk, got in and headed for the road.

As I said earlier, it was wet and on our way back to the road I ran into mud and the wheels started spinning. Even though we were inching forward, I’ll never know why, to this day, I stopped the car and got out to survey the situation. But there we were 10 yards from the road and bogged down in the mud. Even with Dave pushing it was no go. We went to plan B. Dave would stay with the car and I would go looking for help.

It was now close to 11pm and I’m walking down a road lit only by stars in the middle of winter and I have no idea where I’m going and what or who I’ll run into. What a crazy situation. Suddenly I could hear the familiar sound of a moped. Familiar because I owned one. The rider pulls up alongside me and says, “are you all right, can I give you a lift.”. It was a London bobby on a noddy bike, as we called them back then. I turned to him and explained my situation being careful not to mention the reason we were there in the first place. Transmitting without a license was an offence. “Over there wiv’ your girl, were you?”, he asked with a grin. “Oh, er, no, with my mate”, I gingerly replied, not quite understanding where this might go. “Oh”, was all he said, and I got on the back of his bike and we went back to the car. Until 1967 homosexual relations were illegal, and men feared being picked up by zealous police wanting easy convictions and punishable by imprisonment, often for doing nothing more than looking a bit gay.

Dave was standing there quietly freezing his buns off. It was getting colder and damper. The bobby got off his bike and together they tried to push the car out of the mud. It didn’t work. Not only that but the bobby seemed to have lost a ten-shilling note when he took his flashlight out. Now instead of pushing he’s looking for his lost money. This is just getting worse and worse. Time for plan C. The bobby took Dave to the train station and there he called for a tow truck. We both had work the next day.

Eventually the tow truck came and pulled the car out. I got home around 3am, showered and jumped into bed. I jumped straight out. I had forgotten that my electric blanket had been on for 5 hours. Lucky the place hadn’t burned down. After a half hour it was safe to get into bed. I didn’t bother setting the alarm I figured I would sleep until I woke up and then go to work.

At 7am the phone rang. I staggered out to the hallway where the only phone we had was located. “Hello”, I asked still half asleep. It was my Aunt Ruby. “Ooh Russell, I wanted to catch you before you went to work.” “Auntie, you almost caught me before I went to bed.”. Still with the humour even half asleep. “Ooh, er” she said in typical Aunt Ruby style. Ruby had been trying to reach me most of the evening. I couldn’t tell her where I had been. By this time, I was awake,

Oh well time to dress and go to work. I got to work about an hour earlier than usual. I remember the manager, Dave, looking at his watch and wondering if it was going slow. I told him my story and said I would work until I was too tired and then go home. He was fine with this and that’s what I did.

The Walkie-Talkie sets never worked as planned and I just left them in my cupboard. What a waste of time and money. Oh well, another good idea didn’t work.

Some Years Later

We were living on the ground floor of Cambridge Court in Amhurst Park. Our apartment was overlooking the main road.

My mother was a very light sleeper. I had changed my bedroom light switch to the rocker type and learned to avoid walking on the squeaky floor boards in the hallway leading to our bedrooms. Even with sleeping pills, a sudden noise could wake her up and she would turn into “Attila the Mum”.

I was now in my 20’s and I could come and go as I pleased as long as I didn’t disturb my mother.

I got home late one night and did my usual soft shoe creep down the hallway to my room. I had found that if I placed my feet close to the walls on either side of the hallway I could avoid all the usual noises. The fact that I was walking like I had crapped myself, was irrelevant. The tension was high and I remained on alert until I had switched on my light. The light came on, Attila remained asleep. Mission accomplished.

I undressed and went over to my window to adjust the Venetian blinds and close the curtains so that the sunlight would not disturb me in the morning.  I pulled on the blind string and without any warning the whole fucking lot fell down. Venetian blinds, curtains and the pelmet board crashed down on the window sill making one hell of a racket. It’s 2am and I’m standing there with the light on, my hands in the air, stark naked and a bus goes by. It’s a night bus, they run once an hour. I can see everyone and they can see me. To make matters worse there’s a couple walking by my window, and they’re smiling at my plight. It’s 2am, the sun will be up in a few hours; now what? If I don’t cover the window it’ll be like sleeping out in the open. The sun will come blazing into my room lighting up the place like a stage. Absolute craziness!

In all this noise my mother has still not woken up. Can you believe it? Now what am I going to do? You can imagine how much noise falling Venetian blinds make; now imagine how much noise there will be as I try to put them back up. But I have to do something and soon, before another bus comes by.

I didn’t have much in the way of tools with me and anyway I couldn’t start drilling and screwing that time of night. Wake the whole block up. Let me think, what have I got, what can I use temporarily to support the blinds and the curtains? Think, Russell, think. Suddenly it came to me. The Walkie-Talkie aerials. That might just work. I got them out of the cupboard and assembled them. Whadda you know? They were just the right height and had just the right springiness to work.

I don’t know how I did it but I managed to get the blinds into position and bend the aerials so that they would open up and hold the blinds in position. My mother was still asleep. In the morning I told her what had happened. She absolutely heard nothing. The blinds stayed up with the aerials supporting them for months afterwards. This time a good idea did work. What would I have done without those Walkie-Talkies?