Yes, work is a four lettered word and using swear words like ‘work’ should be banned!

But, it’s a subject that most of us have to get involved with at some point in our lives. As for me, a life spent in paid work has come to an end. I’ve taken early retirement from Whitsun 2014. I’m hoping that the need for part-time employment for the next 3 years will not be necessary.

So, how has my life’s work pattern panned out since July 1968? I think I left school for the last time ( hoorah! ) on the last Thursday of the month and started paid activity on the following Monday. The firm making that huge gamble of giving me that first start was ‘Egerton Electronics Ltd’ It was an off-shoot of ‘Egerton Tool & Instrument Co. Ltd, sounds grand but wasn’t. I began as the ‘boy’. At the interview, I said I didn’t want an apprenticeship because that might mean some school/college attendance and I was glad to escape from school, so hated the thought of returning to that situation. Some tea making was involved but other menial tasks were thrown in for good measure. My job title was Trainee Prototype Wireman. The purpose of a Prototype Wireman was to create a working device from a drawing or two/three.

Some of the things produced included vibrators, ( for commercial purposes obviously! ), Geiger counters and one or two pieces of test equipment for Concorde. Concorde’s stuff included the use of ‘Noddy’ brand crayons. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere. Towards the end of a year at this job my now late parents decided to relocate to ‘Adopted-Land.

Having relocated with them, Dad & I were needing new employment. He got sorted very quickly but I struggled. Within a few weeks I started at ‘Archers’ a wholesale sweet warehouse located in Heigham Road. About 9 weeks later they felt that I was a square peg…etc. Shortly afterwards I moved to the Catering Stores at the now old District General Hospital. Only a month was spent there, reckoned they were paying a ‘man’s wage’, yeh right! A new ‘District General Hospital’ has been created to replace all the city-wide scattered hospitals. It has 1 fewer bed in total. Genius at work, huh?

 

There were a number of jobs whose details escape me at this time. I’ll try and and get back later with some updates when I remember!
For a short time I was employed in a shoe factory in Fishergate. It was not something I enjoyed doing. If anything, I probably slowed the factory down, because when, for a few weeks I had assistance, everybody earned more bonus and an inquest was held to work out why.

A period of dole signing here. Christmas on the dole is not a fun time! Luckily, I was still living at home so life carried on as normal.

 

So jump forward to February 1972.

Monday 14th, Valentine’s day. I set off from home and at a roundabout less than half way I stopped but the van behind didn’t! I arrived for my first day at the new job a little late and the rear of the car reshaped! I was there as the van delivery driver at an electrical wholesaler. After a while I located inside to work in the warehouse doing all the tasks therein. I progressed to Office-Manager, yes I had to wear a suit and tie. It’s possible I would have climbed higher to become a Rep with company car and then possibly a Branch Manager elsewhere. Who knows? Whilst wearing that suit and tie, there was a young lad who was supposed to do the menial tasks in the warehouse. He made sure wherever possible to avoid doing his job and leaving it for others. Of course, when the phone rang or customers popped-in to our ‘shop’, he was there because no-one else was available.

During this time the nation suffered power black-outs and the three day week. This was very annoying at the time as one didn’t know exactly when or if the power would go off. Quite often the moment was at 9pm. This lead to choice. Sit in the gloom of torches or candles and listen to the battery powered radio if you had one, or retire to bed. Anyone who had mains powered alarm clocks were stuffed, even more so if the electricity died during the night. Another problem was food storage, fridges and those with the emerging growth of freezers were also concerned. There were many claims on household insurance for the loss of thawed food, but the insurance firms began putting clauses to limit their payouts. Those with wind-up clocks, portable radios and gas ovens/hobs and kettles were laughing. Its why I won’t have an electric cooker or kettle or electric central heating. My children and grandchildren who live their lives watching tv, using computers, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, recharging mobile phones and all manner of electric gismos will be more disrupted than I ever was at the time. If it does happen again, there’ll be another large spike in the population numbers 9 months on!

Late in 1975, I decided that having a licence to drive large vehicles might be advantageous and so set about gaining that ability. A year later, I applied for job at Eastern British Road Services. I knew a chap socially who worked there and he recommended I apply. So, on Wednesday 1st December 1976, I started on a four-wheeler TK Bedford truck delivering Pedigree Petfood products. After making a major life mistake I spent the following winter months tramping, a job I hated. Early the following year I transferred to the parcel activity trading as Roadline. At the time a state owned entity called National Freight Corporation managed all the subsidiary firms in the group. The names that I remember were; British Road Services, Pickfords, Roadline, 50% of National Carriers, 50% of Freightliner, Harold Wood Tankers, International Road Ferry, Griffith Fender and obscurely Summers the Plumbers. Following the landslide election win by the Conservative Party in May 1979 lead by Margaret Thatcher, the whole transport undertaking was sold to a consortium of its employees and pensioners.

So, yes that included me.

A number of years pass and there is a gradual sifting of the operating companies and their assets. The senior management of NFC Consortium PLC decided which were worthy of keeping and then ‘unloading’ those which didn’t fit. The entire parcel undertaking was sold off to a management buy-out financed by a ‘venture-capital’ bank. This meant there were two firms within this group who were not only competing with other carriers in the industry but also with each other. After hastily glueing the two company names together as a temporary measure, a new name was conceived. Some people thought we delivering cosmetics based on this new name. During the life of this new brand name, Lynx Express, there were three versions of the livery seen painted on the vehicles. I remember once going to a customer’s premises to change a trailer where two trailers were always available for them to load and realising all three liveries were stood side-by-side for a brief time whilst I made the exchange. I wish now I had then a digital camera in my pocket to capture this rare sight, I could have made that image available here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of the image I would have preferred to have placed here, I’ve used a ‘stock image’, one ‘I prepared earlier!’ The image shows an ex Lynx Express trailer now in UPS livery which includes the 2012 Olympics logo and a Howarth Brothers rental trailer attached to the owned DAF CF unit. At the time of the absorbtion, Lynx had a large number of these rented HB assets on the road. Since I’ve published this image the DAF CF unit has been replaced with new 13-plate automatic gearbox vehicles. The ‘gear-stick’ is a dashboard switch with 5 choices: neutral, forward, reverse, forward slow & reverse slow. An image of a tortoise is used to denote the ‘slow’ setting!

Update here: now in 2013, the Olympics logo has disappeared from the vehicles and driver’s uniforms. Gone but not forgotten! Well, forgotten by me!

 

And now for 2014. May, end of

Well, I’ve retired from this work malarkey! My life at present revolves around trains; riding and playing with, days out with a friend, Chatterbox, becoming a ‘City Host’ with Norwich-BID, a little effort in the garden, watching tv – watching and dozing in front of; drinking loadsa tea! Hey-ho, its a hard life, but someones gotta do it!

Since I’ve retired, I’ve spent loadsa wonga on trains, from 00 gauge to 7.25inch gauge. its frightening, but at the same time……fun! As someone once said, “money has no value ’til you spend it, until then, its just a pile of printed paper stashed under the bed”!

 

Now that my working life has ended and I’ve begun writing this page, my thoughts occasionally return to that moment just before school ended. I was often asked what did I have in mind to do. I did have some fleeting ideas but most people around me had some point of view as to why that particular choice was wrong ie dead-end, boring, not their choice so shouldn’t be mine, you need loadsa qualies to do that, etc. Even now I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up! Now that retirement is upon me, I’m in that position again, trying to plan some sort of pattern to my remaining life. I’ve rejoined Chatterbox, this time doing different tasks and I have become a ‘City Host’ with Norwich-BID. Two days a week I’m involved with railways and one day a week out with ‘The Old Codgers’. At the moment it still seems like a holiday. Time will tell, hey-ho!

Now, its Christmas 2014, this means 200+ days have past since my retirement began.