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jobs,how long did you last

D

dollyferret

Guest
when i left handsworth grammer school(dont laff,i was a very good cheat in the 11 plus),i wasnt prepared for the shock that was to become employed ,no more bunking off and fishing at the rezzer,sitting back and having everything done for me,hiding in the attic when mom and dad had gone to work,our attic covered 3 houses and was huge and full of dust as there were big holes in the roof and it was only accessable via a trap door which my folks couldnt manage ,so i stayed up with my kit of pigeons that no one knew about(use to buy them from *the cage* at bottom of wheeler street,little did i knew that when i let them out they would fly straight back again ,so i ended up buying them again later).
Anyway the first job my dad got me was as a blacksmiths striker(i left grammer with my hat and coat and nowt else but a will to survive without doing too much effort ,horrible aint i?),whats a blacksmiths striker you ask,so did i,for if i knew i wouldnt have gone.its a job for the mentally challenged ,so i was perfect for it.in the corner of this filthy hot ,smelly inferno was a huge coal burning fire into which was plunged dozens of glowing red hot irons that are used for pneumatic chisels,next to it was this huge apparition of the devil himself ,soot stained smelly scotsman(no offence to our northern friends ,but he was scotch).his job was to pull out these irons and hold them on the anvil,while me,5foot 3 and 6 stone of skin and bones,had to pick up and weild a huge sledge hammer,which was bigger than me,and proceed to hammer it ,while JOCK turned it over and over,and honestly folks it would have made a good comedy sketch for as i swung it over my head i nearly fell bckwards 4 out of 5 times onto to the floor.by this time rob roy was ready to throw teddy out of his pram as he was on piecework rate and he werent earning any money,but did i care,no not one iouta,while he was stoking up his hearth ,i legged it out the door and spent the rest of the day in aston park trying to think up an ingenious plan as to why i got the sack.this was to be i am afraid(no i am not) the benchmark of future gainful employment tactics.one really amusing episode(although you people with a gold watch might frown upon)was i had a bet with my friend i could have 3 jobs in a day,this was the mid sixties where manual type jobs were plentiful ,pick up the paper and they were all listed in alphabetical order.First job was welding steel palletts in a factory in bracebridge street on a 6 till 2 shift,by 8am i had earned10 boband was done in ,so i said to the foreman i had forgotten to bring in my cards(you old uns know what they were) and i had to get them off my panniers on my motor bike outside,as the lady in the office wanted them straight away,off you go he said ,dont be long,that was the last he saw of me,(wouldnt go down bracebridge st for months after that in case he saw me.Job 2 was at forgings and preessworks in birch road witton 2 till 10 shift working on a huge drop hammer 5 minute training ,no ear protection away you go,frightening,4 pm came,same trick to the foreman ,got to get my cards for the lady in the office ,off you go sonny,under the security hut and away much to the amusement of my mate who was waiting outside.Job 3,this was a mind numbing experience,lucas s shaftmoor lane,night shift 9 till 6 30(i think as i never made the end),my job was to stand by a machine that stamped a number and a directional arrow on a starter motor case,i was in an elevated positionand allyou could see was thousands of these cases coming towards hanging on hooks clanking towards you like a scene out of war of the worlds,11pm came,i had to be out by 12 or the bet was off,coulnt use the card trick as there was no office open on nights,tried the dont feel well bit but he wasnt having any of that as he was short of people on his shift,went the loo and only just managed to squeeze out the window it was tight believe me,skulked across the shadows of the car park to where my bike was only to find the pole barrier was down and mr jobsworth entrenched in his hut,looking very much like captain mainwaring ,the only gap was between his hut and the barrier,but desperation is a fine mind sharpener,i went to the farthest point of the car park and jumped up and down on at least a dozen cars before the car alarm went off on a couple.mainwaring was out of his hut like a good un,over the top he went blowing his whistle and waving his torch,while ,i leapt on my bike ,stuck into gear and raced towards the gap(i remember thinking i could hearRIDE OF THE VALKERIES playing in the background ,through the gap and into the road only to met by loads of bikers from alexs in the town to see if i could make it on time which i did with 5 minutes to spare.it all sounds a bit silly now but at the time i thought it was really clever.he never paid up on the bet but i couldnt do it now (or want to as couldnt kick start the bike now
 
You made me laugh Dolly you certainly have a knack for writing in colour!
 
could have been 66 or 65 memory switches off now and again,you know how it is,like you go upstairs and think what have i come up here for,i have gone to the next level now,i stand at the bottom of the stairs and wonder whether i have been up or just come down,
the next few jobs were not much better (still couldnt do the long term bit ,even though the rest of my family were real company people,my dad worked at george ellisons in aston lane from demob till retirement,left my
Nmom a company pension of £11 PER MONTH,was it worth it,dont think so,mom did years and yearsat lucas,s gt king st,uncle fred started at ansells at 14 did the king and country bit went back till he retired,(uncle fred was a mate of vicky betts the fellow who was hanged for the rifle crescent murder ,mom remembers him sitting in the house in powell street),my brother has only had 3 jobs he is now 64,but me ,no,few bob bit of fishing tackel and i was off,to me life is an adventure till the next adventure comes along,yes ,i know the responsibilty bit ,but i havent a stressed bone in my body because its allways going to be better,and if we were all the same ,i wouldnt be typing this ,albeit with one finger.but i am meandering of subject,
Next job (i think) was at birwelco in chester street off rocky lane,i passed the interview,(those days you didnt need a degree in councelling or humanitarian studies)i was a welder and i was in.i got the job as they were expecting a big order and very talented people like me were hard to find,(modest little soul aint i ?) so as not to lose me i was taken on and to fill the time in i was allowed to spend my time in the welding school doing nothing except learn how to play cards,well as luck would have it (cynical) they didnt get the order so they had to lay us all off,on the day of our leaving we all had to line up outside the managers office to have the usual thank you bit,we were told to line up in a pre planned order and go in when the previous man came out,as frantic has mentioned i have a strange sense of humour that gets me through absolutly anything,so just to be differnt i swopped places with th old boy next to me,i went in before him,sitting at his desk was the boss with a file of personell notes before him,he sat me down and gave me a very large glass of whiskey and proceeded to tell me what a loyal and trusted worker i was and that i had brought the company through hard times by my hard work and loyalty ,and that it was very sad that they had to let me go,he said it was like losing an old friend,he then got up ,shook my hand vigoursley,put his hand on my shoulder and walked me to the door,on reaching the door he took my hand again loked deeply into my now hysterical eyes and said .EXCACTLYhow long have you been with us pete,to which i smartly replied IT WILL BE 11DAYS NEXT WEEK SIR,much to the amusement of the rest of the queue waiting outside,it turned out he was reading from a pre written script ,which was fine,but he hadnt reckoned on me changing the pecking order,not to worry i had a months money in lieu of notice on to the ferry and off to ireland fishing for a fortnight,but my next job was not far away from birwelco in fact it was dead opposite at lucas s on the night shift,more later as my one finger has gone dead now,must learn to type properly
 
sylviasayers said:
Peter, dollyferret is a man - another Peter!!
Click to expand...
thanks for explaining that :)
I was getting a bit confused with the references to fishing and things :D hahaha
 
strange name i admit,but raised a few eyebrows,man of mystery eh?.dolly is the name of my favorite ferret ,sad isnt it
 
You said it!.............I've been telling everyone that your mom really wanted a girl and kept you in dresses all through school, and the habit just continued >:D
 
to think i had a barnet like yours mike,now i ;D hair on my slippers now
 
oops ,forgot to put the GOT MORE hair on slippers :idiot2:
 
Frantic,

There's nothing wrong in wearing dresses, half the kids at my school did.
 
Don't worry about it guys, most of the younger lads are practically/barnetless these days through choice. It's SEXY

071.gif
 
Oh I don't know...I think it makes them look like convicts... :( (Shayne Ward eyuk :-X)
I loved the long hair of the 70's on men...
my 16 year old son seems to be happily growing his hair...I think it's coming back in fashion...
maybe we'll get the hippy flower power days back too.
hippy.gif
 
Yes those were the days Maz. My nephew is growing his hair, looks like a muppet. My sons on the other hand, one grew his hair really long when he was in his teens and earlyl twenties, the other one kept his dead short. Now both of them have short hair. I think it suits some men with shaved heads though, like that Scottish actor who was in Prime Suspect, can't remember his name - played the father of that girl who had been murdered. Lovely! :D
 
When the fashion for young men to go bald headed first came in , I used to think to myself - oh what a shame he must be undergoing chemotherapy, but it became so commonplace I realised it was a fashion statement. I think it makes them look like thugs.
 
I do too.
It's one thing when people go bald naturally, and that tends to look natural...
but I like hair, I like it on men and women...
I've even let my hair grow long again, and it's developed a natural shape and waviness on the ends, which it didn't used to have when I kept it short in the late 70's and 80's.
(It's a right pain to wash though :( :crazy2:)
 
just read kandors post on lucas,s.i know what he means,from birwelco,i went over the road to lucas chester st,on nights there were 6 of us,foreman,chargehand,viewer,setter,and me and my mate just 2 of us who were actually making something (well for a bit anyway).
we were on capstans machining the rotors for motor bike alternators ,thats was a real soul destroyer ,six operations,each one doing a a finer cut than the last one,we were on piecework,so after a bit we had it down to 3 ,only trouble is we kept breaking the cutters,we did more damage on nights than the luftwaffe,the other bad job was magnetising them,put them on a spindle,wind em up to a specified rpm,then hit the magnetise button,soon got fed up with that,wind em up till you could feel the floor shake then do it (always imagine a biker kick starting his bikeand ending up like the black and white minstrels).about 11 30 when the other 4 thought it was safe ,they all got their heads down for the night,that was our sign to pack up,like kandor we would watch the outside world wind down,as darkness fell lights would go on,curtains would be drawn,later on we would watch as the lights went off one by one in the little houses below,there was always one that stayed on all night ,as the dawn came up ,the lights would start to come on one at a time again,and we had been there all the time staring out over brum.there was one house that was opposite our window,every morning this chap would throw open his curtains and stare into the gloomy foggy mornings as if to say *not another day ,i wish i could go back to bed i dont want to go out there*,he was regular as clockwork,so one morning we climbed down a rope that we had smuggled in down onto canal towpath crossed the cut with a huge scarecrow type of dummy ,up on his brew house and we erected this dummy right outside his bedroom window ,bang on time the curtains were flung open and the reaction was unbelievable,(i think he must have had a real fright as he fell backward and we never saw him again,hes probably still in his bed never to look out again.)The rope was our way of getting out in the night ,looking back it was almost suicidal,we must have been mad ,but you dont think of that at the time ,we would clamber down to the towpath and walkinto town,sometimes having a pint in the irish clubs that were always open as long as you said your name was mick or seamus,wander back,and do the climb back up,sometimes we would miss calculate the time the security man would do his round,he was always shutting the windows so we had to pile stuff up around our window in case we got locked out and he found the rope(every time i watch WHERE EAGLES DARE i think of that climb back up.if you are wondering how we got away with doing nothing on piecework,we would wait for the security man doing his rounds ,then leg it downstairs ,bring up what the day shift had done,we would book them in and then offer to take them downstairs for completion by the dayshift.it worked very well till the day shift got wise and started to mark their work(isnt that sneaky and very unbritish).anyway the game was up and rather kick up a fuss as they were going to close anyway ,they made us redundant,and guess what ,a months money in lieu so off to the river again.i often believe we were to blame for whole demise of lucas industries,(but i dont think so)
i can hear the gold watches hitting the floor now and the cries of disgracefull but if i could do it all again ,but this time i would have to have a stair lift fitted
 
hope you got the right pics this time di,its terribly confusing files /folders/,attach.let me know :uglystupid2:
 
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