In 1921, around about my 14th birthday I decided I wasn’t going to be a farm labourer all my life, so what could I do? Jobs were scarce and I then realised that my education left much to be desired, so I went to ‘college’, I had better explain. At Penzance there was a house which rejoiced under the name of ‘Newham’s College’ It was advertised as a ‘continuation College’ and I thought ‘this is just what I want’ how disappointed I was to find that many of the pupils couldn’t even read or write and were quite middle aged. After a few nights I was doing as much teaching as Mr Newham. It was no use to me so I soon ‘retired’ still it’s nice to say I went to college.

One evening in the autumn of 1921 a Mr Angove called at our house. He was the manager of a local dairy at Crowlas which was owned by farmers in the neighbourhood, they had had their AGM and decided to take on an extra hand principally to look after the machinery and he had been instructed by them to ask me if I would like the job, well I was delighted for two reasons. First that I could pack in farm labouring and secondly that I was selected from so many other lads who would have liked the job.
The work was quite interesting, my duties included weighing the milk and cream and entering it in a book, this produce was brought in by farmers living nearby and our own lorry collected from more distant farms. Also I looked after the milk separators, butter churn and butter worker which washed the butter milk out of the butter and mixed the salt into it. It was quite a responsible job and I had many narrow ‘squeaks’ and one or two minor accidents.
You know what taps seem to do? Turn your back on them and they seem to run twice as quick, cream everywhere. Anyway I had a brainwave and fixed up a contraption under the separator spout so that should the receptacle overflow it would, by means of a bent pipe, flow into a second can placed conveniently close and a little lower,. It worked beautifully and Mr Angove was delighted. It saved ‘my bacon’ many times. It wasn’t long before I was in the other part of the factory where Mr Angove and two women weighed, shaped and packed the butter into boxes. It was all done by hand. I was fond of making the lump of butter brick shaped and putting a fancy decoration on the top with the wooden ‘hands’. It was amazing how adept one soon became.