Ike helps the war effort by raising pigs.
INT: So you were telling me earlier about life during the war, about how May gave you a job?
IG: Oh yeah with the pigs, the three pigs that we had in the sty across in the allotments. And that’s where she met Ted Gibson who used to come across from the allotment and see her and he was the one who knew me. And…
INT: From the pub?
IG: No from the… May, from the second… the people that came in at Christmas to…
INT: Right.
IG: The little widow lady who came in at Christmas, he was her lodger.
INT: Right.
IG: And he got to know May because I introduced them and a year or two later they married.
INT: What a story!
IG: Well I think it’s quite a story but…quite amazing.
INT: Isn’t that lovely.
IG: And both of them had never married before.
INT: Uh huh.
IG: And he was a farm labourer and for the daughter of a strict Baptist pastor to marry a farm labourer was a bit down market.
But they moved out to Hyam’s Farm in St. Ives which is an Animal Health Trust farm and after a few years…I operated from there in my final years at school and the…sorry Hyam’s Farm… He eventually got moved by the Animal Health Trust because he’d had experience with horses when he’d been in the military horse brigade in India, and he got moved out to Newmarket where they had Balaton Lodge which was a great big lodge house, half of which was laboratories, the other half was stables. And he was the man put in charge of the stables.
And I lived there with them for a while and of course I didn’t tell you last bit of the pig story… Well imagine a good Jewish boy looking after the pigs.
INT: Apparently if you’re Jewish you can keep pigs as long as you don’t eat it.
IG: Is that right? I didn’t know that.
INT: Apparently, I don’t know if it’s true.
IG: Anyway I got the sale price of one of them and I bought a beautiful drop handle barred bike called a ‘Phillips Vox Populi’ and I had that for many, many years and treasured it.
