Tag: factories

More little bits that stick in your mind for no particular reason.

I remember when Putin started the war with Ukraine, he said it would be over in a few days; it’s now been over four years, and it’s started to trash the economy and cost thousands of lives.

I remember when DJT started the war with Iran, and he said it would be over in a few days; it’s started to trash the economy, and the loss of lives will come later if America decides to implement a land war.

Despite my criticism of DJT, I hope he finds a way to end both of these wars; life is a precious thing that ends far too soon without any outside help.

Andy Burnham is the new Prime Minister of the UK. I wish him well and hope he can transform this country into one where we all help one another. But I have noticed that as soon as something that’s possibly good comes along, journalists try to find something that’s bad. Honey moons don’t last long; how long did yours last?

When I was eighteen and working as an apprentice at BIP Tools, Tyburne Road, Birmingham, the person in charge of the group of aspiring toolmakers was always smoking a cigarette; it never left his mouth even when he talked, and he never knocked the ash off it until it started to burn his mouth. The strange thing was that he had a really bad stutter, but the ash stayed on right to the end. A scientific miracle.

Alf Perry was in charge of the shaping section. His face always reminded me of the long, carved faces found on Easter Island; I can’t ever remember him smiling, and if someone made a mistake and scrapped a piece of metal, he would hold his head in both hands and say ‘dear mother’.

Most people in factories would stand up all day; it was difficult to operate most machines while sitting.

There was the middle-aged man on the polishing section who couldn’t keep still when you talked to him; he moved from one foot to the other completely unaware of what he was doing, but he had a lovely disposition and never stopped smiling

There were two hundred toolmakers at BIP Tools and twenty apprentices, possibly the largest group of engineers in the country at that time. And several trade union representatives; I rarely spoke to any of them until one day the main one stood close to me, obviously distressed. He talked, and I listened. ‘I was chairing a major union meeting last night. I stood up to give them the latest news and figures, and I couldn’t remember what to say; I couldn’t remember anything. It’s never happened before; I could talk all night. Got to see the Doctor next week.’ It was the first time I knew about Alzheimer’s.

BIP closed down a few years after I left, all those amazing people with stories that could fill a library, engineers with skills that have disappeared with them. Let’s hope memorise go somewhere and aren’t lost. Perhaps they head towards the stars, waiting to find a home.

Fifteen and into my second month as a Toolmaker

When you’re fifteen, you stay fifteen for what seems like forever. And most toolmakers stay in that profession for all their lives because it is all they know, and, like most professions, commitments make it difficult to leave.

It was my second month at the factory, and Bobby Moor, an apprentice two years older than me, but a lifetime ahead of me in his confidence and outlook on life, explained how to survive in this strange new world. ‘Don’t go anywhere near the women in the press shop above, go all the way round, and if they approach you, run. ‘

‘Why,’ I asked as a feeling of dread took hold of me.

He looked at me and grinned, ‘because if they can grab a new apprentice, they take his trousers down and put axle grease all over the part the trousers covered. And once they get you down, they don’t let go.’

My throat went dry. ‘Has it happened to you?’ I asked croakily.

‘Course not. I am too fast, but they have tried, and have you seen the muscles on their arms? It’s because they have to lift those heavy metal pressings.’ More like men, some of them. And I don’t think you would survive if it happened to you. Your much to skiny.

Boby Moor was one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, and very intense in the way he looked at life with eyes that almost glowed. I found out later that he was prone to having fits and, without warning, would drop to the floor and convulse. I soon learned to place a six-inch ruler between his teeth to stop him from biting his tongue. Looking back, that seems quite bizarre, and I am not sure that’s what you should do.

What it was really like to work in a factory in the fifties as a toolmaker.

I had never seen the inside of a factory apart from when I stood outside the one where Dad worked, while Mom went inside to collect his wages for the few days that he had managed to work the week before. I was about six years old and immediately took a dislike to factories.

Dad worked intermittently; years of standing in front of a grinding machine to remove the rough edges from sand castings had permanently damaged his lungs. The doors of the factory were wide open, but I struggled to see inside as it was pitch black apart from rows and rows of what I thought were Catherine wheels that briefly lit up the darkness. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I realized behind each wheel was a face. Dad told me later that these were grinding wheels, and the lights were sparks as they spun around, removing the excess metal from the castings.

It was 1957, I was fifteen years old and just finished my education at Hunters Hill Open Air School. My sister got me a job in a local factory as a toolmaker. I wasn’t very happy about it, but Dad said a Toolmaker was almost like a God. They were people who created things. So he was right, they were the same as God, I thought, because he had created the Earth in seven days. Back then, I wasn’t that ambitious.

The reality was a shock. On my first day, I was taken into a workshop full of strange-looking machines. Some of the older ones were driven by wide leather belts that spun around a long metal shaft, the same type that drove the spinning machines in the cotton mills centuries before. There were no guards on any of them. Every so often, there were clicks as the brass couplings holding the two halves of the belt together passed over the drive roller. Alf the forman, who was showing me around, said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Don’t go anywhere near them, because if they break, they will cut your bloody head off’. While I am not very keen on my head now, I quite liked it back then.

The second week I was there, Alf asked me to take some drawings up to the offices two floors up and explained how to get there. I went through two sets of doors and entered a long, dark passage. It was very narrow, and when I was halfway, a dim figure emerged from the gloom. It was a young girl, she stopped walking and put her back to the wall and said, ‘queeze past,’ but there was not enough room. I put my back to the wall and pressed as hard as I could, then shuffled sideways. It was only when I got level with her that I realized it was inevitable that my chest would touch hers.

She put her right arm out and placed it against the wall opposite, stopping me from going any further, then she did the same with her left arm. I was trapped. She smiled and said confidently, ‘You must be new here. tell me all about yourself.’ Her chest was right in front of me and seemed to have expanded substantially in size, pushing my back even further into the brick wall. I realized I wasn’t God after all, just an apprentice toolmaker.