Do you remember the days of full employment? Between 1946 and 1955,1 was able to hop from job to job. There were thirteen in all, each taken by choice.
Turned down as a postman because of poor eyesight at 14,1 became – among other things – a factory labourer, a travelling library salesman with books carried precariously on a bicycle in a heavy suitcase and chosen on the doorstep of customers at four old pence per book a week, a lumbeijack, shoe salesman, hospital storekeeper, reporter for a Jersey newspaper and a press photographer.
I’ve never found it easy to get out of bed in the morning, and was often late for the office. As a news photographer in Birmingham in 1948,1 always carried my camera. Each morning, late as ever, I would run down the path from the house, leap the gate with the heavy camera case and jump on to the open rear entrance of the bus as it accelerated rapidly from the bus-stop.
I rarely had an excuse for being late. But, one morning, things were different.
The bus made an unexpected stop on Saltley Bridge. I smelled a story and pushed my way off the crowded bus.
Two trams had stopped in front of us. The number 8, travelling to Alum Rock, had somehow broken the overhead power lines. Great loops of electric cable were hanging from their supporting pylons and were flashing blue sparks across the centre of the
road. Loose ends of live wire dangled to the metal tram tracks twitching and flickering flame in all directions.
I took my pictures. They captured the front page in the evening newspaper. At last I’d found a proper reason for being late to the office.
The great industrial boiler must have been forty feet long and twelve in diameter. With its belly close to the ground, it looked like a gigantic metal tunnel. It crept along the main road in Hay Mills. Children whooped and ran by its massive sides. There weren’t many cars about in those days, but any that came near the monster approached with a certain delicacy.
The boiler was at the beginning of its hundred mile journey from Birmingham to London and I’d been sent by my editor to get a photograph.
Shops lined the main Coventry road at this point. Above the shops were flats. I ran
across the road some distance in front of the rolling giant. I had about three minutes to get to the window I’d marked out above a furniture shop. No-one was in the shop.
It was ten o’clock in the morning and the assistant had probably gone out for a cup of tea. But there was a door behind some hanging carpets.
Beyond the door I found myself in a gloomy space at the foot of a flight of stairs. I went up the steps two at a time, opening the large camera case swinging at my side as I ran. There were three doors on the landing. Only one of them faced the front of the building.
I knocked but didn’t wait for a reply. This was Press business. I opened the door and went in. The day was overcast and I hardly noticed it was a bedroom.
I strode swiftly across to the sash window facing on to the main road. The rumble of the boiler’s inexorable advance was much louder. I undid the catch on the window and pushed up the bottom section. It stuck, then broke free with a screech and I thrust my nine by twelve centimetre plate camera outside, wound up the roller shutter, whipped out the metal sheet covering the photographic plate and pressed the release button just as the boiler began to crawl past.
“I hope you got a nice picture, young man. Now close the window, you’re letting in a draught.” In the heat of the moment I’d quite forgotten where I was. I turned round in embarrassment.
The tenant of the flat above the shop was still in bed. I hadn’t seen her in the gloom of a dull morning and now she was sitting up in bed and watching me with amusement,
John A Sealey
