However, Joan did get her scholarship to a very good school, and in his turn Peter won his to Latymer Upper School. Meanwhile, Arthur managed to get a slightly better job and they crawled out of absolute poverty, moved to a slightly better flat, and even had the use of a little garden. Peter and Florence shopped in the market for some bedding plants which Peter lovingly planted out. Each day he went out to measure them to see how they had grown...but the soil was so poor that they shrank over the weeks and eventually died.

Now Arthur received a regular wage they could afford proper food again. That Christmas, Arthur came home with an expensive paint box...for his boss’s daughter. There was still not enough money for proper presents for his own children. Joan, who longed for just such a box, found his attitude difficult to understand.

For a while, Arthur worked reasonably well and life for the family was “ordinary”. There was enough regular money coming in to allow a feeling of security. But he was not satisfied as he hated working for a wage. How could he make his dear wife a fortune that way? He began to
spend much of the time when he should have been working playing whist with his friends. But to the family at home it seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here is an extract from a diary Peter kept for a few days during a summer holiday in 1928 when he was fourteen:

August 28th: Up at about 7.50. Billy goes back to school today. Arthur [not Peter’s father, but a school friend] arrived just before 9.30 am. We spent the morning partly in the garden making Japanese gardens on our rockery in the sunken garden. We made little paths, steps, etc. and grew tiny plants along the sides. We also made a pond of a dish-cover upside down with rocks all round the edge. Started making a long path of red brick. We spent the rest of the morning writing up the metal nickel in “The Book of Everything” (2 pages) after having made rough notes for the Universal Encyclopaedia, Donington Pears Encyclopaedia and “Chemical Arithmetic” by Sydney Lupton MA. After dinner Arthur rearrived and we continued the Japanese garden. It’s looking jolly decent. Arthur did not stay to tea today. In the evening I drew a sketch of my father, from a photograph five years old. Mrs Pinnerch came over, but mum had gone to the pictures to see “The Unknown Rider”. I started studying the Greek language and can already say the alphabet off by heart. Another fortnight before school. Got to bed pretty early 9.50.