Works Outing in Arcadia

The return of the Works Outing continued in Arcadia yesterday with the periodic clearing out of the lock-up garage from the back of the van at Wimbledon Car Boot Sale.  No sooner had I unloaded than I fell into conversation with a gentleman who apprenticed at de Havilland's on the airstrip at Christchurch in the County of Dorset.  Upon the closure of de Havilland's he went to work as a toolmaker for Grice & Young, a seminal Post-War British Fishing Reel Maker.  A factory where, when the orders were quiet, the small workforce were taken out in the owner's boat to fish for bass in the Estuary.