How times have changed 😕

[harrycatcat1]

I have been thinking about some of the comments recently on different topics with regards to health and safety and doing risk assessment and stuff. It brought me round to thinking what type of jobs do members of PW do or did you do? After leaving school at 15 I went to a garage as an apprentice mechanic then shortly after I went working at a pit for nearly treble the money.

These pictures show the environment that we worked in until the pits shut so forgive me if some of the stuff folks mention about safety don't worry me as we were taught to look after ourselves and everyone else down the pit. Don't get me wrong I don't take safety lightly it's a matter of course.

 

Sometimes, from going down the pit we would have an hour and a half travelling each way, mainly walking. We would then have to crawl 300m up and down the coal

 face. Sometimes we would spend 15 hours a day underground 7 days a week and regularly didn't see the sun for weeks.

 

Do you think the young uns would do it today?
 

 

[Walker570]

On failing to get into a uni to do a design course I spent two years working on my Grandfathers farm for no more than food and lodgings. I remember climbing along the fuel tank of the old Fordson tractor to tip the front forks full of yard muck which had stuck. The forks came down across my wellies and trapped my toes.  How I lifted that up to free my foot I don't know but I limped badly for a week or more. Had a few more near misses in those years.  Then went into the animal feedstuffs before joining the police force in 1962.  No health and safety back then short of your own judgement and common sense. The most dangerous thing I did was propose to my one and only on New Years morning after a serious shindig at a Scottish mates home drinking stuff imported from the Western Isles. She is still with me 59 years later.   Did 28 years in The Job fourteen of that as a member of the tactical firearms unit and the last four driving an instant response car..    Looking back it has all passed by in a flash.  I cannot get my head around I have been retired three years longer than I served.

Believ me guys the older you get the faster time goes...well it does for me.  I have said before, it ain't a rehearsal, get out there and don NOT waste a second of it.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Walker570

[B725]

I left school in the summer of 76 aged 15 to work on a large farm down south but all I was doing was working so came home and stumbled into a commercial heating company. We repaired and or replaced a large range of coal boilers ( Beeston boilers ) H& S would not allow us to do it now as it was all man handled and you had to have the a huge amount of trust in your fellow worker's, it was extremely hard and dirty work but enjoyed every minute and made some friends for life sadly only one of the original fitters is still alive . I stayed in heating right up to last year H&S and petty politics of working for a local authority made. me hate it in the end so I retired . Over the years I've always  helped virious farmers and still do today.

[enfieldspares]

My father went to work at age twelve in 1919. He was started in his father's (my grandfather's) worsted mill mending the drive belts. Alongside the Grand Union Canal in Leicester. These came down from a shaft running along the ceiling that ran the full length of the two spinning floors. Over two hundred plus machines in total on the two floors. He said that they didn't stop the shaft just because one belt had broken. You mended it and put it back over the drive wheel with the shaft still running. If you got it wrong it would take your fingers off. He said he hated it and complained to the man put over him to train him how to do it. He recalled the reply "Your father has told me you're to do it and so you are to do it." You drive past the mill today and not one brick now stands upon another. All has been gone, flattened, and executive "waterside homes" are being created. Still not all bad for him was 1919. He also got this, below, as a twelfth birthday present from his father. And I still have it today

Edited April 6, 2022 by enfieldspares

[Scully]

1 hour ago, harrycatcat1 said:

I have been thinking about some of the comments recently on different topics with regards to health and safety and doing risk assessment and stuff. It brought me round to thinking what type of jobs do members of PW do or did you do? After leaving school at 15 I went to a garage as an apprentice mechanic then shortly after I went working at a pit for nearly treble the money.

These pictures show the environment that we worked in until the pits shut so forgive me if some of the stuff folks mention about safety don't worry me as we were taught to look after ourselves and everyone else down the pit. Don't get me wrong I don't take safety lightly it's a matter of course.

 

Sometimes, from going down the pit we would have an hour and a half travelling each way, mainly walking. We would then have to crawl 300m up and down the coal

 face. Sometimes we would spend 15 hours a day underground 7 days a week and regularly didn't see the sun for weeks.

 

Do you think the young uns would do it today?
 

 

I genuinely can’t think why any ‘young uns’ would want to do it. 
You made the choice to do it and fair play to you for that, but it’s not something I’d want for my kids. 
I did various jobs after leaving school, consisting of dumper driving on a building site at the age of 16 ( ‘go on lad, you’ve got to learn sometime’ ) to sawmill work at 18 where we occasionally had reason to run along gantries and dive off them into piles of sawdust as the enormous bandsaws found a piece of shrapnel embedded in a tree from range work during WW2, causing 2” long teeth to shatter and fly off in all directions. No one knew what a ‘hard hat’ was, nevermind PPE. 🙂 I’d never heard of a ‘permit to work’ until about 1995. 

 

 

[harrycatcat1]

11 minutes ago, Scully said:

I genuinely can’t think why any ‘young uns’ would want to do it. 
You made the choice to do it and fair play to you for that, but it’s not something I’d want for my kids. 
I did various jobs after leaving school, consisting of dumper driving on a building site at the age of 16 ( ‘go on lad, you’ve got to learn sometime’ ) to sawmill work at 18 where we occasionally had reason to run along gantries and dive off them into piles of sawdust as the enormous bandsaws found a piece of shrapnel embedded in a tree from range work during WW2, causing 2” long teeth to shatter and fly off in all directions. No one knew what a ‘hard hat’ was, nevermind PPE. 🙂 I’d never heard of a ‘permit to work’ until about 1995. 

 

 

You are correct it was my choice and I loved it, the reason that I loved it is that it was good money and that was the reason that I went to work.

[Scully]

28 minutes ago, harrycatcat1 said:

You are correct it was my choice and I loved it, the reason that I loved it is that it was good money and that was the reason that I went to work.

Nephews mate is ‘down the mines’ at a Gypsum works locally. He’s 24 and following in his Dads and Grandads footsteps. He loves it too, or rather he loves the money. 🙂

[welsh1]

Joined the Army at 17, health and safety,well that was for other people, playing with explosives, running over bridges on the weekly run in Germany just because we could, and lots of other things that would make a h and s bod pass out these days lol.

[nobbyathome]

I got chucked out of school just before I was 15 I got home and told my dad and his words were you had better get a job tomorrow then and start paying the rent in the morning down to the job centre got an interview for a butchers shop went the same afternoon and started the day after worked in the butchery trade for 9 years then the bottom dropped out of it moneywise so got a part time job as a motorcycle courier and started to do the knowledge to be a black cab driver  did a few things wrong and got thrown off of that then came into the office as a controller for motorcycle couriers in the same courier company changed companies twice and still doing it 39 years later 

[marsh man]

Looking at the working conditions in Harry's first post I would say he was worth every penny he earnt and many more on top of that , no way could I do that type of work , we had a holiday in Wales many years ago and one day we were going to get the train that go up Snowdonia but we didn't know you had to book up the day before , so while we were there we went down a slate mine which was now a tourist attraction , one short day was more than enough and I looked at a roofing slate in a different light every time I used one .

Strangely enough the estate I worked on had several woods that were often thinned out , now and again I helped the woodmen and a lot of the Pine trunks we hauled out were used as pit props , a million miles apart from getting them out of the woods in the Norfolk countryside to using them down the coal pits or the mines to stop the coal or whatever collapsing on the poor guys working underneath .

[London Best]

My Grandfather was a miner. Died of emphysema weighing 5 1/2 stone.

I would not go down a mine even just for a look round.

[discobob]

First generation not to work in the mining industry in my family. My Dad and my Grandad worked at the pit but not down the pit - not sure about Greats' but know my Paternal line have been involved for a number of generations.

Joined up at 17 in the 80's - loved my time (13 years) and sometimes miss it like hell

Then I remember Flying Falcon 87 and that brings me back to reality. -27C with only temperate issue clothing!! One of the MT drivers lost 8 toes to Frostbite 😞

 

[Mice!]

16 hours ago, harrycatcat1 said:

Do you think the young uns would do it today?

It's surprising what people will do for good money,  imagine telling kids who aren't smart in a modern manner ie computers or office based work that you can earn say three times the minimum wage going down the pit, I'm sure there would be takers then.

But imagine the costs and time it would take getting the pits up and running again,  especially when you added in modern H&S and not having the old guys already there.

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, I spent many years working in a power station many years ago, good money but very lacking in health and safety, 

[Scully]

I noticed at Crabtree yesterday that the lad whom I paid for the number of clays I shot, used a calculator to work out how much to charge me. Nothing wrong with that admittedly, but when he told me it was £16.50 and I handed him a twenty, he used the calculator to work out how much change I was due. 
£3.50 I said, as he pressed buttons. 
We both smiled, but when I mentioned it to the OH, she said that it was amazing how many of a school age didn’t know how to ‘count up’ when giving change. They’ve never needed to do it as the till does it all. Weird how little things change also. 
The bosses son in our unit couldn’t tell the time on a clock face, only a digital display, and apparently there are kids in schools who already don’t know how to use a computer mouse! 🙂