Chronicle of a Croydon Boy

I could spend yonks detailing my Customs and Excise years. Instead I'll compress it into this one posting. OK, OK, don't overdo the...

Soon after the start of my new job the police rang me. Just looking forward to my first cup of tea (well, I am a civil servant now!)when my...

When I left school at the tender age of 14 the "careers" chap asked me what I wanted to do. No idea said I. He pressed me for an...

This "bio-blog" of mine has been rather rushed through. I guess it's all been work, work, work - and that makes Phil a dull bo...

Thoroughly disenchanted with the bookmaking game. Fed up and needing something new. A half-page advert in The Sporting Life caught my imagi...

The letter D was looming large in the UK. For some months everyone was being brainwashed by decimalisation literature, television programmes...

Just before I switched to working in betting shops I worked for Albert Cook & Son. The office was in 801 Wandsworth Road in London. The...

There's an old saying: "Where there's muck there's money". You can also be sure that where there is money there's...

Now licensed betting shops were in full swing and there were jobs aplenty for shop settlers/managers/counterhands. I started work as settle...

I moved on from Arthur Horton's bookie office and moved to Albert Cook & Son, 808Wandsworth Road, then a bit later into betting shop...

My time spent learning the settling game was hard going. Like all things, it gets easier in time; practice makes perfect. Well, almost perf...

This new job of mine, after leaving the RAF, is proving harder than I expected. Mental arithmetic was not my speciality. This job was 80% m...

Everybody knows the bookie always wins. Right? Wrong! Well anyway, they didn't always win in the 1950s. There were plenty of punters ou...

It's early January, 1956. A strange new world, for me, learning the tricks and trade of "settling". Betting on horses was so...

Three years ago, well - nearly three years, I'd joined the RAF. Like most lads in those days I was marking the days off the calendar as...

The pipes and drums of RAF Bruggen entertaining the citizens of Echt in Holland, August 1955. I took a couple of photos using an elderly ca...

It was with mixed feelings that I said cheerio to all my friends and colleagues at RAF Hospital Wegberg, although the leaving party was thor...

Things were going perfectly at RAF Hospital Wegberg. Plenty of cash, owing to the cigarette scheme I had with Herr Puhl; plenty of sports, k...

This is an aerial view of the hospital, with a bit of spillage on the bottom left corner. Such a wonderful place to work in. One of the bes...

To say this was a wonderful place would be an under-statement. I could not believe how lucky I was to arrive here. It was, of course, virtu...