What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (20 page)

St John's Street became a hive of activity. One particular customer required plinths and covers ready-fitted with record decks. The customer free-issued us with Garrard SP25 decks and we assembled them on to plinths, wired them up and fitted covers. This was an additional service we were able to charge for. My dad became a dab hand with the soldering iron, and I took on my next-door neighbour's son part-time to help out with the work.

Gulu, thinking he was missing out on something, bought a couple of hundred of these record decks from me. I still can't understand why because his clientele were market boys and fancy goods shops. I guess he's just one of those guys that need to be seen to be
in there,
as a player.

*

It was around Christmas of 1968, after a visit to the doctor, that Ann announced she was pregnant. We were both happy at the news that we were going to have a baby. Ann was only twenty then and I was twenty-one, so we were very young to start a family, but that's how it was in those days.

When the news was announced to Ann's family, it was greeted with delight - immediately followed by questions about our preparations. 'What are you going to do? Where's the baby's room going to be? How are you going to manage?'

I told my mum and dad the news and got the usual responses. My mum's was, 'Oh, very nice - you
are
young
.
' And from Dad: 'Oh good,' a sort of congratulatory grunt. I got a bit more enthusiasm from Daphne, Derek and Shirley.

Ann carried on working right up to when she was seven months pregnant. Not because I asked her to; it was what she wanted. In those later months, Ann spent most of her time round at Rita's with a couple of relatives, Edna and Fanny. Fanny was one of Ann's aunts and Edna was her daughter-in-law. They lived next door to Rita and Johnnie.

The cackle that went on between Rita, Edna and Fanny - fussing about all the things Ann had to do to prepare for the baby - was a typical Jewish outing. How this must have confused (or bored) Ann!

Rita would often ask me, 'Aren't you excited, Alan? You don't seem to show your excitement. How do your mum and dad feel?'

'Well, my family are, of course, very happy. And as for me, it's not a case of
not
being excited; I'm just a bit apprehensive about the birth, you know, too many cooks spoiling the broth. It'd be nice if we were just able to sit down and think about this ourselves.'

Believe me, Ann was under heavy pressure, albeit well meaning, with everyone telling her what she should and shouldn't do. It was winding me up. My reply didn't go down too well and I got the 'We're only trying to do our best' type of response. And, of course, they
were
only trying to do their best, but it was hard going.

On 7 June, a Saturday morning, when I was about to leave for work, Ann told me she was feeling a bit peculiar. She thought it might be the start of some contractions. Obviously, this being our first child, she had no idea what to expect. She phoned Daphne who advised her to call an ambulance.

When the ambulance arrived, the friendly neighbours gathered outside to wave her goodbye and wish us good luck, and off she went in the ambulance. By now, Daphne had turned up and she came with me as we followed the ambulance in my car.

Rita and Johnnie were unaware of the goings-on. They were at a synagogue in north London, attending a blessing of a friend. Had they known what was happening, they'd have been down there like a shot.

At Wanstead Hospital, Ann checked in and settled into her bed, by which time the contractions had died down. She looked at me as if to say, 'I don't know what I'm doing here - nothing's happening.' But when I popped back later that night, she was definitely in labour. There was a possibility that the baby was in the breech position and they may have to perform a Caesarean section. I was asked to sign a consent form, as Ann was only twenty years old - in those days you weren't considered an adult until you were twenty-one.

Now here's the bizarre thing - something you wouldn't see these days - instead of staying with Ann until the baby was born, helping her through the trauma and pain, I went home again. Hospitals wouldn't let fathers hang around or be present for the birth of their children, so I didn't have any choice (not that I'd have relished the thought). Anyway, instead of sitting by the phone, the following morning I went to play tennis with my mates! Some of them were jibing, 'You're going to be a father soon.' Meanwhile, unbeknown to me, the real action had started. And while I was playing tennis - on Sunday, 8 June 1969 - baby Simon was born. As they'd suspected, Simon had
been in the breech position, but thankfully the doctors were able to manoeuvre him and Ann had a natural birth after all.

I went straight round to the hospital. The nurse brought in a trolley with a plastic cot in it, and there I saw young Simon for the very first time. I wheeled him into the ward and Ann and I were together with our son. I have to say, he didn't look like either of us at the time. Apart from the delight that we had a son, the reality really hit home that we were now responsible for another human being.

Hospitals were very strict in those days and would only allow visiting at certain times, so when Rita and Johnnie turned up that afternoon - in evening wear because they were on their way to a wedding - they wouldn't let them in initially, but after a bit of argy-bargy, they managed to see their first grandson.

Simon was named after my father's father, Simon Sugar. Unfortunately, he was never given a middle name - something he took slight exception to when he was growing up. This was down to the Johnnie influence again - he insisted that Jewish people
do not
have middle names. Frankly, when I look back now, I cannot believe I accepted such bloody nonsense. I have a middle name, my brother has a middle name and my sisters have middle names. But this very domineering man imposed his wishes on me and, because of that, Simon never had a middle name.

Just before Simon was born, my mum and dad went on holiday to Jesolo in Italy. It was the first time they'd ever been abroad. They could afford it now my father was working for me, but, if I remember rightly, I treated them to their trip. However, the timing of their holiday would give rise to another row between Johnnie and me.

In the days after we brought Simon home from the hospital, Rita was by Ann's side quite a lot, as one would expect when a newborn baby comes home with a very young mother. I went to work as usual and called in from time to time to find out how things were. Ann spent a lot of time at her mother's, with everyone flapping around the baby. I joined them all one day after work and sat on the couch next to Ann. The family was banging on: 'You should do this, you should do that, you should make sure the baby's warm. Has he been fed? Has he been winded?' And so on and so on.

At that moment, Ann burst out crying from all this pressure being put on her, not to mention the customary post-natal depression. I put my arms around her and said, 'Right, we're out of here right now. Get up, we're going.'

'No, no, no,' they protested. 'Don't go yet. The baby hasn't had his milk, he hasn't had this, he hasn't had that . . .'

I said, 'We're going. We're going home. Please, leave us alone for a little while. I know you mean well, but look what you're doing. We have to go.'

For the first time, Johnnie saw the anger in my eyes. Even he slid back in his chair, knowing that this would turn into a flaming row. 'Let them go, let them go then,' he said.

When we got home there was a look of relief on Ann's face. She was more than capable of dealing with the baby - it was just a case of letting her get on with it. Looking back, one can't be angry with the care and attention shown by Ann's family - they just didn't understand how heavy it was. In fact, there were numerous occasions when I had to rescue the situation, when the overpowering Simons family tried to control Ann's or the baby's life.

One such occasion was when the trio on Eastern Avenue - Rita, Edna and Fanny - thought they'd detected that Simon had something wrong with his neck, that his head always tended to lean to one side. This latest fuss eventually led to us taking him to the doctor.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with his neck at all. They were driving Ann bloody mad. Again, all well meaning, but as before, I explained to Ann that we had to keep away and get on with our lives - an idea to which, I think, she was warming. The difficulty was that she'd spent nineteen years living in that household and just over a year with me. She was very conscious of not hurting her family's feelings.

A couple of weeks after we brought Simon home, I realised something was burning up inside Johnnie - he was plutzing again. This time it was about my parents. Eventually, he couldn't keep it in any more. Johnnie and Rita invited themselves to our house for tea, or rather, to come and have a word with me.

Johnnie sat down in front of Ann and me and then, presiding like a judge, he said to me, 'Do you think the treatment your mother and father gave Ann by going on holiday was the right thing to do, when they knew she was just about to have a baby?'

I couldn't see what was wrong with it, but I carried on listening to Johnnie, who was explaining how wrong and heartless it was, how they should have been there in case something went wrong. He ended up saying, 'How could they do that? What kind of people are they?'

I was being pressurised by Johnnie to agree with him. He wouldn't let it go. He kept banging on and on, saying, 'You
must
agree with me. Your mother and father are heartless. They've done wrong.'

Eventually, I said to him, 'If my mother and father have done anything wrong, you'd be the
last
person I'd admit that to, okay? So you are wasting your time.'

Again, he must have seen the look in my eyes - up until then I had always spoken respectfully to him, but now he could see I was about to explode, so he backed down, saying, 'Well, I suppose you're showing loyalty to your mum and dad, and I guess that can't be bad.'

When my parents arrived back from Italy I spoke to them about this incident and I think they felt a bit awkward about it and recognised that they
had
done the wrong thing.

*

When it comes to being a young father, I have to say that compared to those of today, I was rotten. When I saw how my two sons and son-in-law carried on when
their
babies arrived, it was quite an eye-opener. There they were changing nappies, taking their turn to bath the baby, being at the birth, taking time off to assist.

Me? I can honestly tell you that I never changed a nappy. Well, maybe I changed one or two, but I certainly never bathed a baby, although I might have watched a couple of times and taken some pictures. In fact, as Ann often reminds me, I never saw the kids when they were growing up, apart from at the weekends. I was out to work first thing in the morning and by the time I got back, they were already in bed. And even at the weekends, I have to admit that I was never one of those smarty-arty, happy-clappy fathers. Of course, we went on family holidays many times and played tennis and all that stuff, but I wasn't one of those fathers who's at the centre of their child's activities. I'm not sure how they feel about it now. My absence during their early years is most often brought up when my children see me messing around with my grandchildren. They make wry remarks such as, 'You were never like that with us.'

*

Back to business. With lessons learned from the plinth and cover exercise, when my suppliers ended up supplying everyone and his brother, I knew that this injection-moulded plinth and cover stuff wasn't going to last for ever. It wasn't going to take long for people to work out that by investing PS3,000-4,000 in their own tools, they'd be able to do the same.

It seems I'd put K & K Electronics out of business. They moved on to open a small factory in Hackney Road, where they assembled amplifier modules. These amplifiers would be placed inside a plinth to make a kind of hi-fi record-player that would be sold with a pair of speakers. It seemed to be a good idea at the time and was a transition from the cheap Dansette
record-player with its auto-changer to the more sophisticated hi-fi market. I suggested to Phil Kaplan that if he'd supply me with some of these amplifiers, I would free-issue them with my plinths for them to drill out and fit the amplifiers in. Then, all my dad and the kid next door would have to do was fit the record deck on top and we'd have a finished audio unit. We must have bought a few hundred of these lash-ups.

I sold them to a fellow in Plashet Grove, East Ham by the name of Bernard Allaghan who had quite a few hi-fi and photographic shops. There was hardly any money in this venture; the main profit was still on the dust cover, so after all the hassle of making plinths, making covers and fitting and wiring up amplifiers and record decks, the margin was pretty thin.

I was still selling transistor radios and other bits and pieces, but in truth, the plinth and cover business was making the radio side of things look stupid, so I decided to become more selective - I would just sell stuff that was being demanded by the customers.

One day, George Chenchen was at St John's Street dropping off a batch of radios he had fixed for me and he spotted all this amplifier stuff going on. George was a cocky kind of fellow and used to talk in a way which implied that everyone else, from a technical point of view, was an idiot compared to him. He looked at the amplifier I was fitting and told me it was rubbish and that he could design a much better one. He asked how much I was paying for it. When I told him, he laughed and said it was a rip-off. To be perfectly honest, I had no idea of component costs and, as it turned out, neither did he. He just said it for the sake of saying it.