[OLD STEVE] [WORLD OF THE CONTENT] [THE RE-WRITTEN LIST] [LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS] [THE THREE LEVELS]
CHAPTER 20.
Cutting a Long Story Short.
MY BIOGRAPHY.
1. Cutting another long story short, my son was born and we moved to a large house, not too far away, and my wife carried on with her business, working from home. Our social life changed, as we could then afford to do much more but we didn't forget anyone from our past. We bought a car after my wife had taken driving lessons and had passed her driving test at the first attempt. I followed on and being the better, male, driver had no problems taking my driving test THREE times before I finally passed and to this day my wife still puts ninety-nine miles out of every hundred on the clock. I am sure she would go to the toilet in the car if she could get it round the bend in the staircase, yet still is a poor passenger. So as you will gather, whenever we go out in the car together, it is taken for granted that she will drive and to this day she still remains the better driver.
2. From within the 'new firm' it was possible to learn even more, for they sponsored every conceivable course allied to their business and also some that even fell outside it, and much of it was in-house, in their own training school which had a large budget and strong community commitment. I was in my element and the prospects were unbelievable for those prepared to work for them. One of the alternatives there, was to become involved with the Union and as an active member do battle with the company over the most petty of issues and which sadly many chose to follow and in the process did untold damage. Talk about power in the hands of the ignorant, sadly that company was rife with it and on both sides of the 'fence'. Some of the management being little better than the workforce they despised and who would go to incredible lengths to cause trouble, while at the same time proclaiming their undying loyalty to the company. Hypocrites; somehow is a totally inadequate word to describe them. I quickly became aware of this situation and often fell foul of it and it certainly did not appeal to me as a means of achieving anything. But later it would play a significant part in my life when at first I would do battle on behalf of the company and then swap sides. But that is moving ahead a little too fast.
3. My responsibilities within the plant engineering environment was, as part of a large team, to keep a very large and complex factory running, to oversee expansion plans and the reconstruction and laying down of production lines. Imagine, I had never seen a boiler as big as a block of flats, never mind move one. I had never seen one hundred ton presses that shook the building when they crushed steel and had to be set by the plant engineers on floating concrete bases and then once set up proceeded to spit out components at the rate of hundreds an hour. I had certainly never been in a foundry and been splashed with molten metal, often intentionally by black faced idiots who thought it funny, or simply walked through the place and come out black at the other end. Everything was so big and it was in that foundry that two notable thing occurred while I was there, the first amusing, if you look at it that way. A large and complex pit had been dug, in the floor, in which a furnace was to be housed. The outer shuttering had been removed and a large area of the base was to be filled in. A stream of concrete wagons arrived, walls having been knocked down to allow access and the pouring began. Liquid concrete was everywhere and a dumper truck arrived on the scene and being driven a little too fast, skidded and went down the hole. It was all hands on deck to get the driver out and by the time this was achieved the dumper truck had sunk. The Plant Engineer arrived and having listened to all the eyewitness accounts went away mumbling about how he was going to account for a dumper truck that had just disappeared. On the sad side, a skip, suspended from chains, swung and hit a wall and as it did so, cut off both legs of a colleague of mine. He never fully recovered, if one can fully recover from loosing the bottom half of both legs, and died a few years later. Then just outside one of the factory gates there was a public swimming pool and it was common practice for quite a few to go in for a dip at lunch time and one of those, to go in quite regularly, and draw the crowds, was a very attractive young lady, who worked in one of the foundry offices. One lunch time several of the guys grabbed her and while swinging her, prior to throwing her in, let her slip and she broke her back on the pool side. It was tragic to see such a beautiful young woman end up in a wheel chair despite the compensation and the promise of a job for life with the company.
4. One Sunday a very large sliding, outside door was removed from the foundry in order to make the entrance larger. Something was said and I turned a blind eye and went for a cup of tea, while the old door was loaded onto a wagon and disappeared. Later I received a ten-pound note. The following Monday the Foundry Director sent for me and told me to have the door delivered to this other address for some reason. It cost me twenty pounds to buy the thing back and ten pounds to a driver to go collect it, deliver it and keep his mouth shut.
5. Before leaving the foundry and going on to tree felling let me mention one little guy who worked in there and who would turn up for work on the Monday morning just as black as he had gone home on the Friday teatime. Takes all sorts I suppose. Tree felling: this damned big house, miles away and the home of one of the Production Directors. My job was to take a team and supervise the felling of a tree that would be shown to me. I had never felled a tree in my life and certainly not one as big as this one pointed out to me and neither had anyone else. Anyhow it was decided that if it was cut from a particular side it would topple harmlessly onto open ground and so the cutting began and it began to creek and head in the right direction. But then it stopped and when it was eventually agreed and decided where it should be cut again, everyone, but the guy with the chainsaw, retired to a safe distance. I stood with the rest of the team and watched as it slowly twisted on its base and began to fall towards the house pulling the guy on the rope, who's purpose it was to 'ensure' it went in the right direction, along with it. Thankfully it was a solid gable end to the house and only the upper branches would reach and brush down it. Pity about the glass conservatory below for when we cut all the branches away it became even more evident that only the low wall, on which it had been based, had survived.
6. Open days were quite some occasion and on my first I watched all the apprentices and the more mature students as they went up to receive their prizes from the Managing Director and decided I would rather like to be part of that. Shortly after I saw the careers officer, who happened to be an Irish man and a Philosopher, and what a character. We became and remained friends, at work, for many years. He listened and asked questions about my background and academic achievements to date and suggested I work towards Production Engineering, specialising in Work Study or Time and Motion Study as it was also known, Methods Time Measurement and Materials Handling and all had 'Institutes' and recognised training courses and qualifications. That was it, eyes down and arse up, as they say. Imagine my surprise and sheer delight when the Plant Engineer called me in and said the Chief Production Engineer wanted to see me. I started with an increase in pay, which from there on would be called a salary, with the magical £5000 a year in sight, the following Monday, but not before the Plant Engineer had offered me more to stay. I thanked him and said no. I was off into to the world of my own car parking space, the staff canteen, a pension scheme, an annual bonus and best suits, or mine was at the time, and young ladies all dressed to kill. I had won a major prize and later went up to receive a more material one from the Managing Director on Open Day. Little did I realise then that very shortly after that I would be on Christian name terms with him and nearly all his fellow Board Directors. I won't bore you with the details of the job, let it be sufficient to say that I enjoyed every single minute of it, fought hard against those who held my background against me and rose to become Deputy Chief Work Study Engineer with my own office and secretary, a young lady as she was then, and a more mature one as she is now and still a great friend to this day, and married to a draughtsman colleague of mine. Did I mention my own Internal and External telephones and listing in the company Phone Book, the later being a tremendous status symbol, but didn't pay any extra, in those days.
7. Life was, to me, as near idyllic as a working man could get and I got tremendous satisfaction out of handling disputes, on behalf of the firm, with the various Unions over present and proposed working practices, policies, production disputes, pay and much more.
