Way back when

Welcome to my new "been there done that" blog. As I get older and increasingly grumpy, I start to sound like my old man, with one exception- he left school at 14 and worked delivering coal in 56lb sacks, before getting a job on the Great Western Railway, just prior to nationalisation in 1947. He stayed with the railway all his working life, progressing from cleaner to fireman and then to engine driver. He was driving High Speed Trains when he contacted cancer and died in 1984. His story is typical, where a man would join a company and stay there throughout his working life.

Not today. And not in my case.

I can remember a familiar conversation when I was a boy. "And what are you going to be when you grow up?" I didn't know. I still don't. My father was adamant that I shouldn't join the railway and be an engine driver. I was a grammar school boy and more was expected of me. I had to get a proper job. But what job?

My first introduction to the world of work was in Hayle, Cornwall as a boy aged about ten. There was a farm next to our estate (council housing estate,that is) and one year my mother and a load of local women were offered work picking potatoes. Being the eldest, I was brought along as well. It wasn't hard work. The farmer drove his tractor fitted with a sort of pronged wheel device down the field, and lifted the potatoes. We then bent down and picked the potatoes and placed them in boxes. We had to move quickly because he'd turn around and lift the next row within a minute or two. I enjoyed the work. I enjoyed the challenge of picking every potato before the farmer returned. My friends were happier mucking about and throwing stones, but I got stuck in. At the end of the day I received 2/6d (12 1/2p), except that my mother took it to help with the housekeeping. My stone throwing friends also got 2/6d.

A few years later we lived in London, just off Ladbroke Grove. This was in late1962 and there were no supermarkets, just small grocers and corner shops. My mother heard that the local grocer needed someone to stack shelves so I went to work there after school. I recall seeing a pack of Persil on the store room shelf. It was out of date because it had the slogan "Persil 62- new as 1962". It boasted better cleaning power than ever before and promised that your whites would be whiter than white. Nothing changes, only the label.
The grocer also had a milk round, so I worked the round for a while. I was 14 and used to operate the milk float along Ladbroke Grove and the side streets in the early morning. It had a tiller with a button to switch on the motor. I'd park it on the side of the road and load up my 12 bottle milk crate and deliver milk to the various blocks of flats, running up and down the stairs. The crate was heavy and the stairs were steep, and some of the old tenements opposite Kensal Green gasworks were dark and smelly, without lighting on the stairs. I'd also have to go out on a Saturday morning and collect the money. I think I earned about 5shillings a week and it went into the family housekeeping fund.

Some time later I got a job in an off-licence on Harrow Road, near the junction with Elgin Avenue. I'd have to fill the shelves, help with the deliveries into the shop, and deliver wines and beers to customers in the area. I was 15 and too young to serve the customers, but it was a challenge to keep the bins filled, bottles dusted and faced up. Working at the off-licence cured me of Christmas, as I worked there one Christmas Day, and it was just another day. I've disliked Christmas ever since.

My only other job as a student was when I worked at Ffyffes Bananas, back when the bananas were imported on stalks and ripened and cut to order. This was in 1966/7. The process was very labout intensive. I did various jobs, loading wooden banana boxes on to a conveyor, ready for the cutters to fill them, unloading railway wagons packed full of green bananas, hooking them via chains to the overhead conveyor belt that wound around the factory. Another job involved stripping the paper from the banana bunches as they passed. If you were lucky, you could catch the paper just right and debag the bunch with one movement, If you were unlucky, you got green banana skin under your fingernails and that hurt. The belt moved very quickly and you soon found yourself waist deep in paper and plastic. Woe betide if there was a fire. There was no way out. When the bananas were unloaded, you'd bail up the paper and plastic, and then you'd discover how many spiders and cockroaches had made their journey across the Atlantic. The mostly West Indian workforce didn't worry about the big green hairy spiders with big feet. Tree spiders are harmless. Not so the little Black Widow spiders, or the occasional snake that had survived the journey. Every now and then you'd hear a commotion as they dealt with the intruder.
I learned a lot about worker relations at this job. We had no rights. There's the door and there were plenty more looking for work. Sick pay? None. Holiday pay? Just the basic wage. I asked the Jamaicans where they went for their holidays. Nowhere. No-one could afford holidays abroad and the sight of a black face or body on an English beach was a rarity. I only ever met one black person in the thirteen tears I lived in Cornwall.
I learned a lot about race relations. This was only a few years after the Notting Hill race riots that took place about a mile away from where I lived. I was a hick from the sticks so I emphasised with the black immigrants and tried to treat them as equals. Whether they noticed or reciprocated I don't know, but I was very surprised to hear the black West Indians call the black Africans highly racist and discriminatory names. The racism was between black and black. The Jamaicans called the Nigerians monkeys who didn't know how to use a toilet properly and would make monkey noises at them. I learned that racism has nothing to do with skin colour, and I believe that still holds true today.
In the summer of 1967 I got a holiday job at Fffyffes, this time in the office. I had to record the sales figures do other admin jobs. I'd arrive at work at 8.00 and be done by 9.30. I never did learn how to make a job last all day. I was bored, but I was being paid 2/6d an hour, which was better than the 2/6d a day I earned picking potatoes. That was £1 a day, £5 a week. £250 a year. And all the bananas you could eat. I ate a lot. I mean a lot. Five or six very ripe speckled bananas at a time. All day, every day. It was almost twenty years before I ate another. This was the "Summer of Love" and I'd just learned to play the guitar. My head was full of hippy music.

I'd taken my GCE O levels in 1966 and passed five. I still didn't know what I wanted to do, so did nothing. Five O levels was only average that year, so my half hearted attempt to gain a sixth form place was turned down. I decided to join the upper fifth and take some more O levels. One year later and I'd gained an O level in English Literature and an improved grade in German to go with my other passes, (French, English language, Geography, Latin and German) so I now had six O levels and no desire to continue my education. I was bored. I'd had enough, and my school had had enough of me. Not quite rebellious, just a pain. A long haired spotty dreamer.

So the world of work awaited me. What would I do?