A small time shop keeper brings his crooked ways to a provincial town, introducing his customers to boozing gambling and sex.
The grocer’s shop where my grandfather committed most of his later crimes was pulled down shortly after he died but as shop-keeping was not his first choice of career he would not have been sorry to see the wrecking ball do its work.
His life sentence of greengrocery without parole had been foisted upon him by the Jockey Club following his warning off in the spring of 1955 and try as he might he was never truly at home in the uptight world of provincial, suburban commerce.
After what had gone before selling Bramley apples and Brussels sprouts was always going to be too tame for him. His working life began with a bang of primitive poison gas when he left the poverty of rural Ireland to join the British Army who promptly shipped him to Iraq where he witnessed the Kurds getting their first taste of British chemical weaponry. This was quickly followed by a disagreement with his sergeant-major that lead to a lengthy spell in the glasshouse which was memorable only for the brutality, the bad food and a foul mouthed encounter with T.E. Lawrence which culminated in a one sided exchange of homophobic insults.
His inevitable dishonourable discharge saw him back in England and on the dole. With steady employment thin on the ground he tried his luck on the racetrack as a bookmaker and he was moderately successful until restrictions on gambling imposed following the outbreak of WWII threatened to rob him of his livelihood. A lesser villain may have found DORA’s draconian measures too much, not my grandfather he simply carried on regardless...
The grocer’s shop where my grandfather committed most of his later crimes was pulled down shortly after he died but as shop-keeping was not his first choice of career he would not have been sorry to see the wrecking ball do its work.
His life sentence of greengrocery without parole had been foisted upon him by the Jockey Club following his warning off in the spring of 1955 and try as he might he was never truly at home in the uptight world of provincial, suburban commerce.
After what had gone before selling Bramley apples and Brussels sprouts was always going to be too tame for him. His working life began with a bang of primitive poison gas when he left the poverty of rural Ireland to join the British Army who promptly shipped him to Iraq where he witnessed the Kurds getting their first taste of British chemical weaponry. This was quickly followed by a disagreement with his sergeant-major that lead to a lengthy spell in the glasshouse which was memorable only for the brutality, the bad food and a foul mouthed encounter with T.E. Lawrence which culminated in a one sided exchange of homophobic insults.
His inevitable dishonourable discharge saw him back in England and on the dole. With steady employment thin on the ground he tried his luck on the racetrack as a bookmaker and he was moderately successful until restrictions on gambling imposed following the outbreak of WWII threatened to rob him of his livelihood. A lesser villain may have found DORA’s draconian measures too much, not my grandfather he simply carried on regardless...