Biography, Autobiography, Old Steve of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

1. During this period my wife decided on a change of direction for herself and without going into detail we embarked on our first adventure into the world of the Self-employed. We borrowed the money and bought the lease and she ran, a run down Pet Shop. It didn't work out but was a wonderful experience and opened my eyes to the world of commerce, allowing me to practice my accountancy and administrative skills, something which much later on in life and for some unholy reason was to work against me, introduced me to income tax but not, at that time, to Value Added Tax. That came later. Having both worked all hours god sent and being burgled at home twice while absent and trying to make a lost cause work, we accepted an offer that came out of the blue, and let it go. From then on my wife set up, as self-employed and worked from home. She worked very hard and was very successful and at the same time backed many schemes, mainly mine, that were to either make or save us a fortune, and were sometimes partially successful but often were not.

2. She said nothing when I bought a kit to build a Black And White Television Set. Black and white being all there was in those days and at a time when we could not afford to buy a 'proper' set. Then having spent hours and hours failed to get it to work and while carrying out yet another minor adjustment that might have just done the trick, dropped a screwdriver into it and not only did irreparable damage to the set, but blew all the house fuses. You certainly can't get a television set for £18 today and you couldn't then but I got all the second hand parts and was prepared to make my own cabinet. A great shame it never lit up except to throw out masses of sparks prior to plunging us into darkness and leaving behind an awful stink.

3. Often when money was tight, as it regularly was, in those early days, she would suggest we shared Fish and Chips so that there was enough money for me to call in the Pub for a 'Pint' on the way to the chip shop. But on one rare night when I managed to get out on the loose, she locked me out after a pal had been sick outside our back door. I was awoken, the following morning, in agony, by the Milkman, after having slept on the floor of the outside toilet, yes our toilet was outside and at the bottom of the yard, but it had an electric light in it, because I put one in. Prior to that we used a torch at night and burnt candles in winter to stop it freezing up. But it is no fun sleeping on a cold stone floor with your head wedged between the wall and the pot. I didn't drink all that much in those days, financial restrictions I suppose, but did, on occasions, go over the top and suffered for it. Some things you never learn.

4. All told and spread over a fairly concentrated period of twelve years, I often did up to three nights a week and Saturday mornings, depending on the course in question, at various Technical Colleges and have, until very recently, though less intensively, always 'been going' for something. My quest for knowledge has not been an obsession, though it has played an important part in my life and has taken up a lot of time and money and some might question whether, overall, it has done me any good. I think it has and my recent attempts have been towards an HNC in Computer Technology and so you see that despite being well over the age of sixty and heading rapidly towards seventy, I still think, that to remain active, it is important to keep abreast of recent developments in this modern and fast moving world.

5. But where was I? Oh yes, still working as a Joiner and going to Technical College for some related subject, building. The work I was doing could be heavy, as the firm took on a wide variety of jobs, and I often found myself moving from, say, a catch on a kitchen cupboard door, in a private house, to the roof of a warehouse or factory and some of these jobs were not without their lighter moments. One day quite a big gang of us were working in an empty warehouse and were stripping and fitting it out for new owners when we came across a large bale of raw wool. This was bundled onto the wagon and sold for quite a few pounds and shared out. In the basement of the same warehouse one wall was literally covered with lead pipes and after a small hole was drilled in one and nothing came out of it, it was decided that this too could be very lucrative if it found its way to the scrap merchant. The 'Joiner' was asked to hammer up the ends, where they came through the wall, just to be on the safe side, and then a large quantity of lead was pulled out and casually taken away. The following day along came the Water Board following a report that the water supply had failed to several adjacent warehouses. They and the police where shown where it was thought the culprits had broken in during the night and taken the lead. Also I hope the people who had bought the place didn't want to use the lift as we had no idea where the two large timbers had come from, which had found their way under the lift on the top floor, or where the counter weights at the bottom had gone. On another occasion we had to own up when there were only two of us working on this house roof and a tin of white paint got spilt all down the roof tiles and when working on another job and helping the builder, the chimney pot slipped and crashed through the roof and into a bedroom. Yet another job where we were building an extra bedroom and installing a dormer window on the roof and I could see just where it was catching and so using a large screwdriver levered and then watched as the whole dormer window unit slid down the roof and disappeared. Solo performances are too numerous to mention but there was one where I was fixing a shaving cabinet in a bathroom and had cause to lay my hammer on the toilet cistern box and while holding with one hand and reaching with the other knocked it off and saw it drop, in slow motion, before it hit the bottom of the toilet pot and punched a damned great hole in it. While fixing a bed light to a wall between two beds it was necessary to drill the wall and I had forgotten to take an extension power lead with me. But that presented no problem as I had a Mason Master Masonry Chisel with me. So having established with the lady of the house, when she had enquired if I would like a drink of tea, that she had no extension leads I started to tap the wall and slowly drive in one of the holes. Some people can be quite noisy when working in a kitchen but this woman was terrible and it only stopped when she brought in the tea. A few moments later she was complaining very bitterly about the state of the bathroom, next door, and the fact that half the tiles had come off the wall and fallen into the bath. I had to agree with the foreman that it might have been as well had I checked beforehand or left the job and gone back, or rung in for an extension to be brought out to me. But what about the very large house with all the servants, where we were given a 'cup of tea' in a glass jam jar? One of the very few jobs I have ever walked off and refused to go back to. Or what about the lovely lady who always enquired how much we would earn while working for her and then would insist on doubling it as our tip. Not many of those about and I remember her telling us that she had inherited all her money and claimed that labouring in a stone quarry had killed her husband and knew what life, for a working man, was like. Just one more before I go back to and continue with the main story: just let me mention the time a gang of us had been sent to do several jobs on a seasonal, open air, swimming pool in the middle of this public park. The weather on that particular day was lovely and warm and so, you guessed it, in we went. Not long after the law arrived and we had hell on explaining that we were working there and had not broken in and that we could prove it if they would wait for the wagon with all our materials and tools to arrive. Thankfully it did and we got a caution and later a bollocking from the boss.

6. Even to this day I find it incredible that it happened but it did. I had been sent, alone, to do this job in a store room in a local school and whilst working away and minding my own business the door opened and in walked three, mature looking, girls and without hesitation one of them said that she wanted me to touch her breasts while she touched me to see what it did to me and if I didn't let her then they would say that I had grabbed hold of them and there were three of them to vouch for that. The door opening and the caretaker saved the day, as at the same time he came in, stating he had seen the girls come in and what did they want as the notice on the door said, 'Closed for Alterations,' I asked this girl to repeat what she had said. They mumbled and dashed out while I went back to our workshop and giving the foreman a laugh insisted that I took a labourer back with me.

7. Building: not doing it, but at college studying the subject and it was while there that I met a chap who worked for a very large Engineering firm in the Plant Engineers Department and it was he who told me that they were looking for someone. I got the name of the Plant Engineer and rung him and he agreed to see me.

8. I left Joinery and joined Plant Engineering in a very large company and where at that particular plant, which was one of six in the U/K and with many more subsidiaries overseas, they employed around three thousand people and manufactured, by mass production techniques, some six million components per year for the motor industry. Another world and for someone as lowly as me, the money was unbelievable and enhanced even further by the fact that the Plant Engineers were responsible for keeping that factory running day and night for three hundred and sixty five days a year, whether there was a workforce in producing or not, and therefore the opportunity for overtime and unsocial hours premiums was incredible. I started to earn almost double what I had previously been used to.

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