The Property Man --- i.e., the man who looks after the chairs and tables and things moveable by hand, and who manufactures the sheep,fish,carrots, and huge chamber-candlesticks used in the pantomime --- is a mysterious mechanic, whose habits are unclean, predatory, and mendacious. His complection is a singular compound of the perspiration of the Midsummer before last with the dust of the preceding Christmas. Dust rests upon his eyelashes as moss rests upon the boughs of an old tree. If ever he wash himself --- which is doubtful, save on his wedding day --- his ablutions are made in the glue-pot. He is so sticky that, were he to lean against a wall, portions of his garments would adhere to it when he summoned up sufficient energy to walk away.

Why does this gifted getter-up of gnomes, salamanders, dragons' heads,and fairies'wings abjure cold water and ignore all crystal streams, save the pantomime fountains framed of wire, blue gauze, white Dutch metal, and spangles? Would his fingers lose their cunning if occasionally polluted by the use of soap? his tongue its power of ready excuse, or his brain its inventive faculty, if fluid touched his external man? The cause of this dramatico-mechanico-hydrophobia is inexplicable, and ever must remain a mystery, to be solved only by a treacherous member of the craft, who, converted to cleanliness by a Turkish bath, shall renounce the property-room and divulge its secrets.

The Property Man has the same peculiarity as the oldest inhabitant --- he never remembers anything; nor will he, no matter how familiar the object, confess that he has ever seen a specimen, or that it is procurable, save by the expense of large quantities of money, time, difficulty, and danger.

"Grimes!" calls the Stage Manager. Grimes is very often absent, not in mind, but in body; but an active call-boy, knowing Grimes haunts, fetches him from the tap, where he had been rendering himself more adhesive with half a pint of treacly beer.

"Grimes," says the Stage Manager; very authoritatively if he be ignorant of his calling, but rather kindly if he have some perception of it.

"Yes,Sir!" answers Grimes, with respect or deference; for it is part of the Property Man's instincts to be too deferential and respectful.

"We shall use the red furniture for this farce."
Yes,Sir!"
"Tables, chairs, sofas and all that, you know. And then there's breakfast things, and -- and that's all. No --- by-the-way, there's a cat wanted."
"A what, Sir?"
"A cat."
"A cat, Sir!" echoes Grimes, as if the word were as strange to him as unicorn, phoenix, or ichthyosaurus.
"Yes. Should be a tortoiseshell."
"Taught us who, Sir?"
"Yes, tortoiseshell cat, I say."
The eyes of Grimes wander over the footlights into the empty pit, inhabited by the dust, orange-peels, mice, and fleas. After a pause he looks into the face of the Stage Manager and says,
"Where am I to get one, Sir?"
"Get what?"
"A -- a cat, Sir?"
"A cat! Anywhere."
Anywhere, Sir?"
Repetition is one of the principal weapons in the Grimes armoury.
"Yes, anywhere," says the Stage Manager. "Cats are plenty, are they not?"
"They may ha' been, Sir, some years ago; but I hardly never seen one lately," is the reply.
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My Background

A few years later, I must have been eight, my mother left me for perhaps 15 minutes, while she went to the corner store for something. I took down the mantel clock, a wedding gift, and began to explore how it worked. Eventually, of course, I undid the screw that released the mainspring. It was at this point that my mother discovered me; surrounded by all those wonderful pieces, shiny gears, leather tipped hammers, curiously shaped pawls and the gyroscopic balance wheel!
My mother was the greatest. She had three boys, no girls, yet (and we're talking 40's and 50's here) she began to teach us all, as we reached the age of eight, to cook, knit and sew and take care of our own clothes. She had an old Singer treadle machine (I finally motorised it in my last year of school) that, in the days of the war and then rationing, she did wonders of reusing and recycling. She also scraped together enough money to give me piano lessons for seven years!

I learned an awful lot of stuff being in the Boy Scouts, where I spent a total of twenty-two years, from being a Wolf Cub through Scouts, Senior Scouts and then becoming a Leader. The Troop I was with in England took great pride both in maintaining the principles of Scouting and in being the most efficient camping and rope-bridge building Troop in the county. We did a lot of hiking and held a week long camp each summer. As the number of Seniors increased we did lots of weekend camps or overnights. One of my most memorable trips was a week long hiking tour of North Wales, climbing Snowdon, having our campsite washed out by a flash flood coming down off the mountain, being lost on the moors south of Aber, sleeping one night in a barn on bales of hay that wanted to entrap us, taking a shower in a waterfall.

I learned knots that I could trust my life to, first aid and home nursing that I could depend on, camp cooking that was palatable. I learned to be resourceful, inventive, dependable and responsible. We built our own HQ of concrete and brick (my father, a contracting foreman, acted as consultant but we did the work ourselves)

On getting to Canada the Troop I connected with as a leader was very much into canoeing so I learned fast in the attempt to stay at least one step ahead of the boys I was teaching!

Parallel to Scouting I was in the Air Cadets at school learning military discipline, firearms, signalling and, eventually, I won a scholarship that paid for flying lessons to obtain my private licence. I continued into the Royal Air Force (2 years conscription) where I learned electronics for air and ground radar. I also learned that the military life was not for me even though they kept on at me to sign on (I was good at what I did).

From this point I basically continued my education by changing jobs. After the Air Force I worked briefly for I.C.I Plastics Division operating an Infra-red Spectrograph. Then I went as a laboratory assistant in research for the British-American Tobacco Company (two years)doing work on the filtration of tobacco aerosols (which is what smoke is). It was at this point that I emigrated to Canada. My first job here was in Kingston, Ontario with Alcan Research Labs in the Physics department (seven years). I was responsible for quality control checks on the conductivity of the transmission wire Alcan was producing. We did some work on the cause and cure of corona in high voltage transmission (standing on the safe side of a grounded cage only 18 inches from a wire carrying 250,000 volts!) I became a certified Industrial Radiographer. I assisted in the development of several non-destructive testing tecniques for the manufacturing plant.

Following that I moved to Wawa to work with the Algoma Ore Division of Algoma Steel for five years. Wawa mined and smelted the ore sent to the furnaces in Sault Ste Marie. My work was in the control instrumentation are that kept things running smoothly. This included conveyor belt speed control, conveyor weigh bridges, furnace temperature controls, ore depth controls in hoppers and so on.

I then came to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was unemployed during the first winter but my wife got a part in a play at Pier One Theatre and as I was driving her to rehearsals and waiting around the director suggested I run the lights for the show. This led to me being the TD for the next two years!! When the funding ran out I went back to electronics, scraping through the test at the Dockyard! After six weeks I was so bored! So, when the TD of the Dal Theatre Department called me at home one night to offer me the job as Props Master it took only moments for me to look at my wife, (who said "Go for it!") and accept. That was in October 1974 and 100-plus shows, and hundreds of students later, I'm still here. It was here that I taught myself fine furniture making and wood turning. I make the models of Peter Perina's set designs that are displayed at the Prague Quadrenniele. I've taken classes in pewter hollow ware and pottery. I will retire in 2001 which will finally give me time to get to all the ideas in my sketch book!

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