The rainbow never sets

"I can't live on that, of course, but I hope to get a monthly allowance from somewhere."

"Yes, well, that's settled then?" "How long will the apprenticeship be?" "Two-and-a-half years, till 31 March 1952." "That seems a long time."

"This will include a three months course at the Bremer Wollkämmerei, where you will learn the sorting and wool qualities. You will also attend the Chamber of Commerce school for commercial apprentices where they teach you book keeping, accountancy and commercial practices. You will need that, as your apprenticeship will have to be registered with our Chamber of Commerce."

"I didn't know that. That sounds all right to me." "Good, see you then on Monday. That should give you enough time to settle in, I hope?"

"Thank you very much." "Another thing, before you go. We have a lot of correspondence in English and French. What is your knowledge in these languages?"

"English is not too bad, but I don't know any French." "Then you had better enrol in evening classes, for both languages, I would strongly advise. You can never learn enough languages."

My head was spinning. I had thought that it would be difficult to get this job, but before I knew it I had it. And plenty of studying! Onkel Wilhelm had been right. Would it be good for their business? I could not answer that question.

While Onkel Wilhelm went to see young Siemering to talk business, Herr Wunder showed me around the firm. The sample room was a large room with lots of shelves along the walls, each one containing hundreds of little rolls in blue paper. He soon explained:

"These are wool samples that are sent from Antwerp or straight from overseas. Our clients look at those samples and if the wool suits them, they buy large quantities of that particular type. So it is most important that the wool sample is always kept in its original wrapping paper. They must never get mixed up, otherwise we would have a catastrophe on our hands. Sometimes we buy wool on sample, and when the delivery arrives, we draw another sample and check that the two samples match. If not, there is trouble."

He pulled out a blue roll, opened it and took a small piece of wool, called a staple, between both thumbs and index fingers: "This is very fine wool. We call it AA/A or in English it's a 70s. If you look at it against the blue paper, can you see the fine crimp? That's how you can tell the quality of wool. You are supposed to spin 70 yards of yarn with one pound of this wool."

I was fascinated. Although it was all rather confusing to me, I felt that I would like to work there.

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