Experts are wanted not learners

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 7 – a job does not guarantee a good future – part 2 – experts are wanted not learners – post 64 – taken from chapter 31 – a life must progress – part 1 – prospects prove elusive consisting of 8 pages from 49 to 56 (405 to 412)

Time marched on and the factory continued to grow, I found the activities so interesting I often wished I was part of the manufacturing process not a security man who had no reason to be inside watching the action. I was always poking my nose in and asking questions, and some of the men doing these various jobs became quite used to my inquisitive attitude. One of the furnaces was put onto producing thick bars of special glass which later were sawn into long curved prismatic lenses. After polishing they were collected together, then one day a large metal frame arrived into which the lenses were fitted and the end product was the enormous faces of powerful lenses destined for a lighthouse somewhere in the world. On another occasion I watched specialist glass blowers making glass sheaths for valves to be used in secret electrical equipment. The strange things we see in one life time; like the Sunday morning when I strolled into the factory to watch them stripping down one of the production lines in readiness for maintenance work and a new set up for yet another product. With the removal of the machinery beneath the furnace, the remaining molten glass had been allowed to drain out of the feed pipe and fall through a hole in the floor into the cavernous cellar below.

The engineer doing the work was the man I travelled with to work each day, so we were friendly and he asked me if I wanted to see something unusual? Of course I did, so he took me down to the cellar where the glass had dropped into a large metal wagon full of water. The column of glass must have been close to 20 feet long and at the nozzle above had congealed into a mass maybe a foot thick, which gradually reduced in thickness until it reached the water in the tub below. At its lowest extent it had reduced to the thickness of a strand of hair, and was I was told full of stress having been allowed to cool quickly. After moving well back from this unusual sight the engineer pulled a metal ruler out of his pocket and lightly tapped the slender thread of glass, then he also jumped well back to safety. The result was breathtaking, for in a moment the vibrations caused by the gentle tap had run up the column of glass and on reaching the top caused the whole thing to explode into a shower of tiny pieces. Most of it landed on the main floor above but enough had come showering down to give the appearance of a snow storm which glittered in the powerful electric lights that lined the cellar.

Another process I saw which made an impression on me was the making of blocks at least a foot thick, which varied in size, from a foot square up to four feet square. When polished they had optical qualities so good that it was as if there was no glass at all. Even more impressive was the fact that this glass contained an enormous amount of lead, and was virtually radiation proof. A steel frame was then used to fit four of these blocks one behind the other creating a window four feet thick and reducing from four feet square down to one foot square. This type of window was destined for atomic power stations, laboratories, and hospitals where radiation was used for various purposes. It was clever stuff I thought and I would have enjoyed having a part in the production of such things, but the company wanted experts not learners and people such as me were not catered for. With so many wanting a job the company could pick and choose, which is why I was not impressed when I met the man who was to represent us with the various customers who were buying these amazing windows.

The man I refer to was named Derrick Denton and let me say at the outset that he was a very likeable fellow. I first noticed him when he arrived to work in the factory as an ordinary hand in the packing department; he was a man about my age with dark wavy hair, and an ordinary appearance which did not make a big impression. Neither did his demeanour and personality which did little to imprint itself upon the memory; what did bring him to my attention was when he was moved to another department after only about a month. This change of jobs kept happening at regular intervals so I began to talk to him and ask why he was not remaining in any one job for very long. I had been thinking that maybe he was proving a failure at each job they gave him and that before long he would be out of a job all together. When he told me the truth about his situation I found it hard to believe, he was it seems destined for bigger things and the company was giving him basic training in all aspects of their work. By the time he told me this we were friendly enough for me to ask him how he had managed to land in clover this way, and he explained as follows. “My father is the manager of a subsidiary company recently purchased by Pilkington Bros and he pushed them for a good job for me.” Then I asked him what he knew about the business and he said he knew nothing, so I asked him was it a good education that swung it, and he told me it was only the fact that his father had pulled strings.

I could hardly believe it, that this ordinary bloke who admitted that he would hate to try and do my job, was going to be ‘Technical Representative and Liaison Officer’ for the purpose of advising and instructing clients on the products that they had purchased from our employers. To begin with he would be involved with the radiation windows, but later they would expand his area of operation. Is this job going to be a challenge I asked and he told me that they had assured him there would be no work to do, all he had to do was drive over to the customer ask if they had any problems and report back. If there is a problem our technical people will sort it out, all you have to do is be sociable; a sinecure for which he would be paid a big fat salary. It was hard to believe that no matter how I tried a could make no progress, yet here was a man who couldn’t hold a candle to me and he was getting a job that was undemanding, and what incensed me even more was the fact that he was going to be paid a salary I would give an arm and a leg for. I did not dislike Derrick for this he was still a very likeable person, but I did feel a sense of injustice, and it is all very well to say ‘that’s life’ but it did not make me feel any better, neither that or a hundred other sayings made it right. I had always known how life worked I suppose, but most of the time I did not let myself think about it, it was only at times like this, when I had my nose rubbed in so to speak, that I felt resentment rising.

You could say I had a job which had its ups and downs and would have been enough for most people; why was I so dissatisfied? The question was not a simple one nor was it an easy one to answer, partly it was a matter of wanting to do more, that I knew I was capable of doing more. I also wanted to be recognised as having some worth; I wanted to earn more which in turn would provide a better life. It was not a case of my job being boring or dull, though it was at times, I was not getting a sense of achievement out of it. There were moments of drama and things happened which were funny, and there was a social side which helped a little, though the social structure we lived and worked in was never far away.

For about two and half years I worked as a security officer and followed that with about the same length of time working in the Progress Control Office. There was some stress in both jobs, which you accept if you think it is worth it but not so easy to live with if you do not. Shift work did not make life easy, but at least for me I had the comfort of an office and conditions I could control to some extent. For the men on the factory floor it was worse, with heavy physical work to do in some cases, and extreme heat for the men working on the furnaces. The man that tended the furnace had the worst job of all in my opinion; he had to load a scoop with a measured quantity usually about 28 to 30 lbs and when a bell rang he had to push it in to the furnace. Then he had to quickly load the scoop again ready for the next time the bell rang, which was about every 7 to 10 minutes. The temperature on the mezzanine floor was more than most people could stand for more than a few minutes before they began to sweat and feel uncomfortable. The furnace men were in it for a whole shift, and when they approached the furnace to feed it the heat singed the hair off their chest. There was often signs of stress with these fellows and one night one of them went crazy and threw a broom at the bell smashing it off the wall. A couple of days later the same man was trying to sleep during the day, and when a window cleaner disturbed him he went berserk and attacked him. He had to be replaced and never returned to the hateful bell which had made his life a misery.

Even in these extreme conditions there were times when the men had a laugh; like the occasion when a new furnace man blew himself up like a balloon; or that is what he said it felt like. Anyone who worked in high temperatures sweated continuously so that after a time they needed to replace essential minerals and salt. They were given large effervescent tablets which they would take at least every half hour or so, dissolved in a pint of water they made a very pleasant drink similar to lemonade. The new man had been given the tablets but no one had told him how they were to be taken, so he put a couple in his mouth and swallowed them. When they hit the fluids in his stomach they exploded into action and filled him with gas; he was very uncomfortable for a while but came to no real harm. The other men on the shift thought this was the funniest thing they had heard in a long time, and the poor chap had his leg pulled for weeks; he was known from that time on as ‘Gasbag’.

The funny and the serious occurred from time to time in the usual mix that life throws at you. One night one of the production lines was producing thick bars of glass that were five or six inches square and cut into lengths of maybe two feet, they were very heavy but had to be manhandled from the extrusion point into the lehr by a couple of chaps wearing heat proof overalls and asbestos gloves. In the early hours of the morning and under demanding conditions the men get tired, and inevitably one man dropped one of the bars of glass. The outcome might not have been a serious one if he had obeyed instructions, but he was not, having on rubber Wellington boots instead of the reinforced work boots he was supposed to be wearing. The razor sharp edge of the glass landed across his foot and sliced right through his toes, with the blood pouring out his mates dare not try and remove his rubber boot, so they cut the top off it and applied a tourniquet to his leg. Then they came running for me to decide what to do next; I had the keys to a well equipped surgery, but when I saw the situation announced that he needed the hospital without delay. While they carried him out to the main gate, I went to the garage and got a vehicle; a few minutes later he was in the care of the hospital. What happened after that I never discovered; he never returned to his job so we never knew whether he lost his toes or not.

It was only outside normal working hours that I had to deal with these medical emergencies, at other times we had a nurse on duty. Not all such emergencies were serious or even urgent, for example one evening I was asked to attend to a man who had burnt his bottom; I went into the factory feeling very curious about this accident, how had he managed it? He did not appear to be badly burnt so I took him to the surgery and invited him to apply burn cream to his own posterior, asking at the same time to tell me how it had happened. When he told me I found it hard to keep a straight face, and I knew that he would be the butt (to coin a phrase,) of many jokes once the facts were known. With a face as red as his backside he explained that he was an addicted smoker, and with smoking not allowed in the factory, he and his mates were in the habit of taking a toilet break for that purpose. Locking himself in the lavatory he had been answering the call of nature while lighting up a cigarette; he then popped the match into the pan and sat down again. The problem was he had not checked in the pan which had been full of toilet paper most of which was dry, so that a moment later he found himself sitting on a bonfire. I leave the rest of this story to the imagination of the reader.

An accident that was not so amusing happened to my friendly maintenance engineer with whom I had been travelling to work for some weeks. This particular night they were changing one of the machines on one production line, and he was making some supports which would be bolted to the new machine and at the other end bolted to the floor. They always did these jobs as fast as possible to get production up and running as quickly as they could, but at times they stepped outside the bounds of safety. The supports were being made of heavy steel angle iron with an angled plate at each end through which a hole had to be drilled to take the securing bolt. Instead of securing the angle iron before drilling the holes, he decided to save time by doing the job on a vertical drilling machine; while he held the piece of iron over his shoulder he began to drill. It was a large hole about an inch across that was required, so it was to be expected that the drill would bind or jamb and it did. Snatching the angle iron from his grasp the drill swung it around with great force slashing him across the face and cutting him to the bone. I got to him quickly but could not see what the damage was because there was blood everywhere, it had to be stopped fast so I applied large dressings very tightly, and got him to the hospital as quickly as I could. On the way he said that he thought he was blind, that the steel had slashed his eyes, and if he could not see he was in a real mess. I tried to reassure him but I have to admit I was not all that optimistic myself.

On this occasion the outcome was a happy one, when the hospital had cleaned him up they found the steel had hit him just above the eyebrows and his eyes were untouched. They stitched him up and a few days later he was back at work with a nice neat bandage around his head. He could not afford time off work so he was back in quick time; as far as management was concerned it was an accident for which no one could be blamed. For my part I knew it was the man’s own fault; my report should have said this, but I knew that if I did report the facts he might lose his job, so I decided to say nothing. The way I saw it was that he was a good engineer who had been trying to save his employer time and money, and nearly lost his eyesight in the process; I thought he deserved a medal not the sack.

I consider a change of position

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 7 – a job does not guarantee a good future – part 1 – I consider a change of position - post – taken from - chapter 31 – a life must progress – part one – prospects prove elusive consisting of 8 pages from 49 to 56 (405 to 412)

In spite of the trials and tribulations of early married life, and not having two brass washers to rub together we were happy with our life together, and while we behaved with consideration towards each other all would be well. For her part Jacqueline always did behave well, she never got bad tempered or unreasonable, she never gave me reason to complain about her demeanour or her attitude. She was always a loving wife and in return I loved her totally, but I have to confess that my love for her did not always mean that I behaved fairly or reasonably. Maybe I was just not old enough and wise enough to behave with sense, or maybe the worry and responsibility of having a wife and child to provide for made me unreasonable at times. the fact is I could be difficult but when I was Jackie’s reasonable responses kept things on an even keel until I had come to my senses, well in most cases. On one occasion however it all went wrong, and it taught me a lesson I never forgot.

We were having tea one afternoon sitting one on each side of our small dinner table. We were only a few feet apart, so close in fact that I could have reached out and touched her. We were talking but I cannot remember now what about, but I recall that I began to needle her, the more I did it the more upset she became. If I had realised just how upset she was becoming I would have stopped, but I could not see it and I suppose I decided to see just how far I could push her. To put it plainly I was being stupid and did not know when to stop, and eventually she cracked and lost control. Picking up the tea plate in front of her she hurled it at me aiming for my face and it came edge on and very fast. In the split second that it was travelling through the air I just had time to bend my head forward, and the plate hit me on the top of the head instead of the face. Ricocheting off my scalp it flew on into the wall and smashed into a dozen small pieces, not that we worried about that because my head was split open and blood was rushing down onto my shoulders.

Rushing to the bathroom I grabbed a towel and pressed it to the wound to staunch the flow of blood, and returning to the front room found that poor Jackie was in hysterics at the sight of what she had done. I tried to calm her then told her that I had to go to the hospital emergency department to get the problem dealt with. By the time this incident occurred we had our own vehicle, so off I went driving with one hand while the other held the blood soaked towel to the top of my head. At the hospital I could not tell the doctor that my wife had tried to kill me, so I said that I had tripped and hit my head against the edge of a door. He accepted my explanation though I have to say that there was a look of some scepticism on his face at the time. He shaved my head and repaired the damage with a number of stitches, after which I returned home, to find Jackie somewhat recovered but very contrite to say the least. I kissed her and apologised for my thoughtless behaviour and stressed that she was not to blame for what had happened. We never spoke of it again, but I have never forgotten what happened, and I suppose she never forgot it either.

The winning photograph

At the time I never thought that we were under any stress, but I suppose we were, my main concern was financial, trying to make ends meet was a constant worry. There was one thing I could do that would not cost me anything and that was join the works cricket club, I wasn’t bad at the game having played at school, and it might help me at work as well. There is no doubt that having friends at work helps sometimes more than being good as your job or being hard working. This idea proved to be rather disappointing from a sporting point of view, senior staff had a firm grip on the club, just as they did in the golf club, and they ran things for themselves not for the employees who, would you believe, thought it was for them. The top brass arranged everything, the matches we played, who would go on the away fixtures, which were paid for by the firm, and what place you would have in the team. The opening batsmen we departmental managers, and the bowlers were all St Helens men who thought that only Lancashire men could play cricket. For the record I never got to bowl, not even in practice, and I was always just about the last man in with the bat; they thought I was quite handy as a slip fieldsman, and I usually got to go on the away games but that was the limit of my success.

This picture taken by Len Grant at his house 5 Ronaldsway, Rhyl in July 1960; Mark was 2 years and 8 months old.

With me constantly occupied at work Jackie spent much of her time with her mother, and Len would spend every spare minute with his grandson who was the apple of his eye. Len had an interest in photography and was in the local camera club, he was always taking photographs of Mark and on one occasion entered a picture of him eating at teatime in a club competition and to his great satisfaction it won. The entries we all put on display in the foyer of the Odeon Cinema in the High Street, and Len was very proud to see his picture taking pride of place as the winner.

When we went out for a trip you could be sure that Len would have his camera with him, and he took some very attractive pictures without a doubt. He also gathered together some developing equipment and taught himself how to develop and enlarge his own photographs. There was no colour film at the time so all his work was in black and white; he fancied colour as most enthusiasts did, so his next step was to get a colouring kit and try his hand at that. This picture and the preceding one are examples of his effort to produce coloured photographs.

It was about the middle of 1960 that I reached the point where I could no longer manage without my own transport. The first thing I did was work out that if I gave up smoking I could use the money saved to run a car. I was spending about 10 shillings a week and that would buy enough petrol to travel to work and a little over for the occasional trip home to the Potteries. It took me several weeks to beat the habit during which time I went to see my friendly manager at the Midland Bank to ask for a loan. He was not as confidant about my income as the Sun Life Insurance Company had been, but when I mentioned that my father-in-law would support my overdraft he finally agreed and allowed me the sum required to buy the vehicle of my choice. I had studied the problem carefully and decided that I could manage with a van which would be tax free; I had my eye on an Austin A35 van which would cost me the grand sum of £406 brand spanking new. The purchase tax on the car was another £300 which with a few extras made the cost £736 which was too much for me. The van had no side windows but it had a heater, and with a rear seat conversion it would do all the car would do and more. The suspension was stiffer and designed to carry more weight, but the ride was quite comfortable, and anyway I could do things with a van that I could not with a car. So with the arrangements made I went on the waiting list at the Austin agents at Colwyn Bay and waited impatiently for my chariot to arrive.

an interesting feature of this picture is the girl standing next to Jacqueline. This was my Brother Paul’s girl friend and the only girl I ever met in this capacity; whether he had others I never knew because I was never there to find out.

Two months before the previous picture was taken we made a visit to my parents at 69 The Parkway in Hanley. It is an interesting photograph because in is a family group with everyone present; though my youngest brother Douglas has only his head and eyes on being to low for the camera which is set on automatic.

an interesting feature of this picture is the girl standing next to Jacqueline. This was my Brother Paul’s girl friend and the only girl I ever met in this capacity; whether he had others I never knew because I was never there to find out.

These trips were very few and far between, I was still on shifts and if I was not working, I was doing chores or sleeping ready for the next session. Security at work remained very tight which was to be expected, apart from secret processes, there was also the high value of some materials that were used in the method of producing molten glass. The extreme heat involved burnt out the special fire bricks used to line the furnaces, which necessitated a shut down every few weeks so that they could be replaced. This was usually done when the type of glass being made was changed; there was a basic glass included in most of the them, and this came from the parent factory at St Helens, it was broken into small pieces called ‘Frit’ and with this was added a carefully measured amount of various chemicals that gave the finished product it’s special characteristics. These included heat proof glass, toughened glass, light proof and radiation proof glass; they made all sorts, especially optical and ophthalmic types. The heat in the process was so high that it destroyed most materials it came in contact with; the only metal that could withstand it was PLATINUM.

Today this metal is worth about £675 an ounce, so the mind boggles at the thought of how much value lay in the vault as the factory. It came in the form of sheet metal and rolls of wire, which was made into wire coils and metal pipes through which the molten glass was passed. All the way from the furnace down to the aperture from which the glass was extruded the temperature had to be controlled precisely, which called for a series of thermocouples which were made of the precious platinum. These devices we said to be worth between £700 and £800 each and I well remember a day when one went missing during work on one of the furnace lines. The whole place was shut up tight and I was ordered to search anyone who was given permission to leave the premises; when I went off duty the missing item had not been found. The next day the panic was over so I assumed all was well in the end. With enormous quantities of precious metal in constant use, security was always going to be needed, I had no need to worry about job security but what about future prospects?

The realisation that there was no prospect of promotion was of great concern to me; I was not prepared to be just a security officer which at times was no better than being a gate keeper. Some of the duties we were expected to carry out were paltry and I considered myself capable of more than that. If I was to improve my circumstances a job with possible promotion was needed and I watched for such a position determined to improve my position.

A desire for independence

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 6 – Working for Chance – Pilkington Ltd – part 5 – a desire for independence - post 62

Talking of neighbours we had a chap living two doors away from us who I knew because he had the same employer as me. He had come from the parent company in St Helens and I suppose he must have taken advantage of their generous mortgage offer and brought one of these new houses we were living in. Like his employer his name was Pilkington a man I didn’t take to particularly well, not that I knew him well, he was always working when I was not and vice versa. I mention him because of an incident in which he allowed avarice to get the better of him. He joined the company golf club which was a very posh affair with all the senior management interested members. They held a grand competition with a prize of considerable value for the winner; senior management were known to be good golfers so it was expected that one of them would win the prize. With no known golfing history my neighbour was given a most generous handicap; he was a newcomer to the game so he said, so they did this with confidence certain that he had no chance of winning. To cut the story short he did win playing brilliantly and with some skill, to say the club members were outraged would be to put it mildly. After his big killing the bosses looked into his background and discovered that he had been telling the truth when he said he had not been a regular player or club member previously. What he had not revealed was that he had been a caddie at a big golf club for many years, and knew the game and had learned to play it like a professional. From this time on the man was treated like a pariah, he had made a big mistake playing such a trick on the people he worked for.

The number of products slowly grew and it was interesting to see the new experts in action, the cutting and polishing facilities were expanded, and an extension was built so that small quantities of special lenses and other similar products could be made by hand. In the main factory the continuous production was extended to four furnaces each with their own production line resulting in an increase in the size of each shift. All these developments had been planned from the beginning, and this expansion gave me much to think about. How was I situated in all this? There was no sign that the security was to be increased, each officer had a slowly increasing volume of work to deal with, and as far as I could see there was now scope for promotion. The company made it clear that what they wanted was experienced officers who were content with the job they had, there was never any indication that there would ever be a ladder to climb, or even any increase in the amount we were paid.

Having such thoughts on my mind was sometimes a distraction, a situation that led to an amusing incident one hot sunny afternoon. I had just finished my morning shift and set off home my mind full of this problem that I had to do something about, and being hot and thirsty I stopped at the first country pub I came to with the idea that I would sit in the cool bar and ponder over a pint of beer. Walking in I took little notice of the two or three locals who were enjoying their pints, and walking up to the bar I asked for a pint of best bitter. The landlord served me without a word and with a dead pan expression, so I turned to find a seat and to my surprise I saw that the bar was not totally empty. What was even stranger the glasses were still had beer in them; it had never been known for a local to leave beer and for more than one to do it was strange indeed. After enjoying my pint I went on my way, and it was only then when I looked at my watch that the answer to the mystery came to me like a light switching on in my head. The pub should have closed at 3pm and I had walked in about 3.15pm and looking very much like a policeman in my uniform. My appearance must have convinced them that I had come to arrest them for drinking after hours; I have often wondered whether they ever figured out I was not a policeman and had no such intentions.

In this picture we were visiting an air show on Battle of Britain Day and enjoying it, but the photograph shows that Len was not far away with his camera, and the centre of his attention, for most of his pictures was of course his much loved grandson and his daughter.


In no time at all Mark was two years old and getting used to his good times being provided by his grandparents who spoiled him on every opportunity, as all grandparents do. They would include us in their trips and outings but it was apparent that our inclusion was for the benefit of their grandson and their daughter, I often felt that I was just tolerated and an annoying addition to the party. On arrival at a destination we would often split into two groups each enjoying their respective freedom from the other.
 
My comments sound ungracious I know, but these are some of my memories of that time. I was probably over sensitive about my inability to provide the good times that everyone needs to make life tolerable, but there were times when Len and particularly Ethel could not resist rubbing my nose in it, so to speak.
As soon as I could I obtained my own transport which changed everything, though I have to say that I was only able to bring these changes about with the help of Len, so he must have been sympathetic to my feelings to some degree, and if the truth be known, it was only the influence of Ethel that made him behave as he did when dictating to us regarding our involvement in their activities. These thoughts are not confirmed or supported by facts, but never the less I believe them to be close to the truth.

The christening

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 6 – Working for Chance – Pilkington Ltd – part 4 – the christening - post 61
It was easy to see how the uniform I wore could be mistaken for a police tunic, though we did not have a helmet, and if not wearing the cap we were issued with looked very much like a police officer.

New cars were hard to come by and they were too expensive for most of us anyway. One day a young lady who worked in the main office managed to purchase a new Ford car, one of those with the funny inward sloping rear window, the new model of the ‘Anglia’. Half the factory staff turned out to look at it when she drove into the staff car-park; it was a rare occurrence indeed a brand new car appearing on the scene. The company made a very big impression with their fleet of modern vehicles, they had a Morris 1000 estate car, a Morris ‘Isis’ station wagon which was a powerful beast with a 28 horsepower engine, and later on they got a smart new Austin Cambridge, but the VIP car was a Rover 90 with leather seats and all the luxuries you could have in a car at that time. I got to drive them all at different times, and for me that was one of the pleasures of the job, because I really enjoyed driving.
Most of the driving I did was local, like taking VIPs to get a train at Rhyl in the Rover 90, escorting the pay role from the bank, that sort of thing, but occasionally there would be longer trips which made a nice change. When the Austin Cambridge arrived I was the first to drive it, taking one of our salesmen to catch a train at Lyme Street Station in Liverpool.
Then there was the trip I made to our head office at St Helens in Lancashire, which turned into something of an adventure when I got lost. I was told in a vague sort of way to drive to Birkenhead, then take the tunnel under the Mersey River which would bring me out into the middle of Liverpool where I was to take a certain main road which would take me directly to my destination. Sounded simple enough but they didn’t tell me that when I came out of the tunnel in the heart of the city I would find myself in an enormous open space with roads going in every direction. The traffic was heavy and I had no choice but to keep on driving until it was safe to stop and ask for directions. When I did stop I was already in one of the suburbs of Liverpool, where I left the big Morris ‘Isis’ to go in search of someone who looked as though they might be able to give me helpful advice. A short distance up the road I found a suitable candidate and got the information I wanted, but before I left him he said: “Where is your vehicle? You shouldn’t have left it unattended in this locality they will have the wheels off it in a flash.” Hearing this I shot back to my vehicle as quickly as possible and felt highly relieved to find it still had wheels.
The company did have a chauffeur so unless there was an element of security involved he was used for most of the driving jobs, unless transport was needed outside normal working hours. Our work required us to be on the premises most of the time, and we had our little dramas from time to time, but I can recall many hours of boredom when the biggest problem was staying awake and alert. When management and day staff were absent we were there to look after the shop, so to speak, no matter what was required we were expected to take care of it. This could be a very satisfying feeling at times, but on the other hand it meant that a number of less dignified jobs came our way. For example my colleagues were never happy about having to man the canteen so that the men on their shift could use it. Usually it meant making tea for them, and taking their money if they wanted to buy anything, which I did not mind in the least. In fact I would offer to make sandwiches for the odd man who had no food of his own, and why not? If I was making ham sandwiches for some fellow I got to have some myself and free of charge of course; and I had as much free tea to drink as I wanted, for me this was not a demeaning job at all, it had its advantages. On special occasions all the goodies provided for management and the office staff, were available for the men on the shifts, such as mince pies and turkey at Christmas time. What better reason could you have for running the canteen than a free drumstick and a couple of mince pies?
It was not all fun and games in spite of my light hearted comments about the canteen, there was serious work to do as well. After a few months the powers that be decided that maybe the security staff did have time to spare, so they decided that we could be employed in processing production figures ready for the production office each day. The other officers were not happy about it at all which was understandable; there was a considerable amount of mathematics involved, and the working out of percentages and that sort of thing. What percentage of the production on your particular shift had been rejects? What was the percentage of each type of reject? What was the shifts percentage of the total production for the last 24 hours? The clerical work we now had to do was going to take up nearly every spare moment we had, and sometimes we would be pushed to complete it if other work came along to claim our attention. Maybe I am a lazy person, but I have always looked for ways to reduce the amount of work I have had to do, and this is what I did on this occasion. Some time before I had been given a small pocket sized slide rule by my father in law and my clever wife had shown me how to use it. It could be tricky with the more detailed mathematical calculations, but if I had a large slide rule it would become much easier, so that is what I did. It did not take me long to get the production figures done in a very short time, and it gave me some satisfaction to see the others struggling to get it done by the end of their shifts, when I had maybe only an hour’s work to do.


The day of the christening with my Uncle Bill in the party as a godfather and Ethel hiding behind the baby now officially named Mark Glynn.

I was determined to do my job well because I still had a strong desire to get ahead, I was making ends meet but only just and I was determined to improve things. Surely if I was seen to be good value there would be a corresponding reward? I retained this naïve idea for some years still to come, it took quite some time for me to wake up to the fact that the world didn’t work that way. In the meantime I did everything that was asked of me and as far as I know never put a foot wrong. There were times when my attitude may have left much to be desired, but that should not have been held against me, and as far as knew never was. Did I earn a black mark in someone’s book because I did not want to attend the grand opening of the factory when the Duke of Edinburgh arrived to do the honours? Who knows if I did or not, but I was not there because it was my day off and they had told me that my presence would be on a voluntary basis, if I did not want to take the trouble it would be my decision. Nothing was ever said to me and as far as I knew I continued to give satisfaction
The new house that we had looked very attractive with a concrete drive down as far as the rear of the building, and with smart double gates to allow for a vehicle, but like all new houses the garden both front and back was just a rough mess of builders rubbish. I had plenty of work to do to make it look presentable, and with no money and no tools it was not going to be easy. It always came down to money or the lack of it, I could do the work but without the ability to pay for things I could make little progress. It didn’t look as though I would have much to spend for quite a while with a new baby taking pride of place. No one was able or willing to help and as far as my in-laws were concerned I sometimes got the impression that they wanted to see me stew in my one juice. The baby and mother were very popular of course and both grandparents made regular visits to them both, usually when I was absent at work. If they could have taken them back home and have me vanish that would have been the perfect solution from their point of view, but Jackie had made her own bed and was very willing to lie in it.

The day of the christening was a happy one for all of us, but beneath the surface there were worries which we all kept to ourselves, at the time I never knew about my uncle’s financial problems, that they would be selling their business before too long, and heading off to New Zealand. They in their turn knew nothing of my anxieties about being able to provide for my family.

A happy day except it seems for the baby who did not look happy at all. It was windy day, for the baby as well as the weather maybe?

If Jackie was worrying about anything she never told me, and she appeared to be happy enough, but then she was very supportive and I do not think she would have wanted to add to my difficulties which I shared with her. Telling all and having no secrets has always been my philosophy over the years that I have been married, and it has always worked well. I may have been forced to be deceitful and keep secrets where the outside world was concerned, but I was never happy about it, and it was only the force of circumstances that made me do it. As soon as I could I became honest about my past history and it was a great relief to me when I was able to be so.
Today Rhyl has spread and Penymaes Avenue is well inside the city limits, it has been continued right through from the Glas-coed Road to the main road that come into town from Rhuddlan. In the 1950s however the few new houses that had begun the new development were the only ones and the road ran for only a couple of hundred yards before coming to an abrupt halt on the edge of open farmland.
Next door was a man in his late thirties with a wife and little daughter, we became friends with them. He was a supervisor working for one of the big petrol companies; his job was to maintain the numerous petrol stations they had in the county, and later on this proved to be a great benefit. Two or three years later our new house needed a repaint, and my friendly neighbour gave me sufficient company paint, that was no longer required, to do the job. When I finally sold the house it was a very smart green and cream, just like the filling stations and the quality of the paint was excellent.
Jacqueline and Mark, both looking content with each other in this picture; she was a good mother and an intelligent woman.

Who you know is more important than what you know

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 6 – Working for Chance – Pilkington Ltd – part 3 – who you know is more important than what you know - post 60

In a competitive world it might help to show ability, but to get ahead it is far more helpful if you know the right people. It takes all sorts to make a world, and we had a very wide selection of them at my place of work I can tell you. In my job as a security man I was well placed to observe them all and it was a never ending source of fascination to me to see some of the hidden aspects of people’s personalities. At the very top of our pyramid of importance was the General Manager Mr Pickering a small man with ginger hair and a pointed nose. He was a genial sort of man but he was seen so rarely that he was sometimes compared with the Do-Do bird and thought to be extinct. Next in line came Mr Buckley the Assistant General Manager a large slow moving man who was seen a little more frequently though he had little to do with those beneath him. He was an amiable sort of man who was considered to be harmless and a homely family man; though there were rumours that he had an eye for young ladies. For my part I know it was true, because one evening after work had finished for the day, I saw him take one of the company cars and drive his young secretary up the Glas-coed Road into the darkness of the late evening. The next day I used the same car and found stuffed under the back seat a pair of girl’s panties, which I discreetly disposed of to save embarrassment.

Other characters I could describe but I shall do so as part of my general narrative, in the meantime it is the march of time and the order of events that I strive to bring back to the forefront of my recollections. My life is one of small events so my recollections are the same, small and of little importance, but never the less they remain in my memory important to me. No one would be interested in what happened to me when I cycled back and forth to work for the best part of two years or more, but I remember it all too clearly. I can never forget that it was at least seven miles a third of which was on the motorway between St Asaph and Rhuddlan. Down the middle of the Clwyd Valley it was open and exposed, so in the morning I would face a strong wind if heading home after being on night shift. In the afternoon it would be against me if I was going to work, at night it would be have changed again and be in my face when I was going home. In fact I always seemed to be battling against a strong wind, and in the winter there was the cold freezing weather to add to the misery. There were many times when I battled winter snow storms, and one night in particular I arrived home about midnight with a solid sheet of frozen snow stuck to my chest. There were enjoyable rides especially in the summer, but it is the hard ones that you remember most of all. Like the night I was going on for the night shift, and when I was going up a hill on a road that skirted St Asaph and saved the trip into the town, a thunder storm began and I can still see the lightening striking the field about40 yards from the road, and seeing a shower of sparks shooting up from the ground. There were several strikes all around me which made my ride very exciting, I had to struggle against the gale and the hill, but I arrived at work with a feeling of exhilaration which kept me wide awake well into the night.

The hill I have just mentioned began in the valley on the edge of St Asaph where the road branched off towards Bodelwyddan, today the A55 motorway has replaced it but back in 1950s it was just a country road. The entrance to the Chance-Pilkington factory was on a junction between the Glas-coed road and Cwittr Lane, the lane was the way I would go on my way home. When the lane joined the A55 I would turn down the hill to get onto the dual carriage way running from St Asaph to Rhuddlan and Rhyl. One night just before midnight I was hurtling down this hill on a pitch black night, part way down there was a loud noise like a rushing wind and something heavy struck me on my head? I managed to keep my balance and pulled over and stopped, then a large white shape loomed out of the darkness and came diving towards me, it was a big owl that had decided to attack me though why it did I don’t know. I cannot imagine that it could have mistaken me for a mouse or a rabbit, but attack it did in a very determined fashion.

You would think that riding a bicycle to work would be the most innocent of pastimes, and the safest way to travel, but I had some excitement from time to time. After several months I began to look for a way of avoiding the strong winds along the valley on the dual carriage way which was flat and exposed. Studying the map I discovered that if I turned left on the A55 a few yards further up the hill was a small lane that weaved it’s down the valley between high banks and hedges. A short distance from Rhuddlan it debouched onto another road that crossed the valley and turning right I rejoined the carriage way a short distance from its end which was by the Rhuddlan Castle. Crossing two bridges one over the railway line and the other over the river Clwyd I would pedal my way up through the village and head off for the last two or three miles into Rhyl. If I might digress at this point the reader might like to know that work was being done on the castle which had huge holes in it, made I am told by Cromwell’s roundheads to prevent the Cavaliers from using it as a fort. The castle stood maybe 200 yards above the river on the site of an old Roman fort, and when excavations were carried out during the clean up, the stone work of a Roman quay were found which confirmed that the river had once been much bigger reaching the very edge of the castle. History had recorded that the Romans used to bring supplies up the river and land them at their fort, which presented a modern day mystery because the river was so narrow and the fort so far from its banks.

Returning to my bike riding adventures, it looked as though I had found an answer to my battle with the wind, by using the sheltered lane, and so it proved to be. Except for one occasion when fate decided to show me I was not as smart as I thought, Mother Nature could still get at me if she chose, and on this particular day she did choose. I had been on the morning shift and about midday there was a heavy storm with the rain coming down in torrents. It was about April so as it usually did at this time of the year, the storm passed and the warm spring sunshine took its place. At 3pm it looked like a lovely summer’s day so off I went riding merrily along happy to be on my way home. Using my new sheltered route I launched myself down the winding lane at a break neck speed, it was downhill all the way and no traffic ever used this little lane that went nowhere. I would have covered a mile or more when I rounded a bend and found myself riding in water, maybe several inches deep and rushing along at a brisk pace. At the same time I spotted a large gap in the high bank and realised that the stream which ran alongside the lane had swollen with the heavy rain from the storm and had breached the bank. There was no going back of course so I ploughed on through the water deriving some amusement from the situation, but it was not so amusing after another couple of hundred yards. Gradually the downward slope of the lane began to level out, and with the high banks and hedges continuing the water was trapped and so accumulated getting deeper and deeper. Soon it was half way up my wheels and I had to pedal really hard to keep the bike moving, my feet plunging in and out of the water like the paddles on an old steamer. It was not long before I could not keep the bike moving and I had to jump off; there was still no alternative to continuing so I found myself pushing my cycle through knee deep water which stretched ahead of me for an unknown distance. On I went for a further couple of hundred yards where I found a gradual reduction in the level, and finally I came to the end of it and was able to ride on. The lane remained unusable for quite some time, but I had no choice I had to keep on riding like it or not.

After a couple of winters I decided I had to find another way of getting to work, I found one of the maintenance engineers drove to work in an old Daimler car so I arranged to get a lift with him. This was better than riding a bicycle but even this was not entirely trouble free; there was one occasion when car engine began to boil before we had got out of town. We stopped and tried to figure out what the problem was, the engineer had drained the radiator the night before and put hot water in that morning, so why was it over heating? When it had cooled down we did half a mile and off it went again, this went on for most of the journey, but finally it settled down and we were running without further trouble. A day or two later the car owner who was quite a good mechanic solved the mystery, and told me that the problem was that when he had drained the radiator, water had been left in the pump which was at the lowest point of the system, and this had frozen solid. The ice in it had blocked the flow of water so the engine had overheated, and with a small aperture the hot water could not get into the pump to thaw it out. We did get to work eventually with a fellow worker in the back of the car, another casualty of the icy weather. He had been riding a motor scooter to work and with a road like a sheet of glass he had slid off a number of times, the last time in front of us on the road to Rhuddlan. He was covered in bruises so when we stopped to help him, he threw the scooter in the ditch and climbed in the car. This was all in a day’s work as they say; we accepted these things as a normal part of everyday working life.

Later on I changed transport to another of the engineers who drove an old Vauxhall car, but he was no more immune to the vagaries of fate than anyone else. One day we were just approaching our place of work between the deep winding banks of Cwittr Lane when we met on of the men going off shift from the factory. He was on a motorcycle and going quite fast eager to get home I suppose, the lane was only wide enough for one vehicle and before we could stop he hit the off side mudguard of our car, and went sailing over the top of us in a most graceful arc. Hitting the road he was knocked out cold and without a helmet he sustained a nasty gash on the top of his head. We put him in the car and drove him back to the factory where he was treated by the nurse who was on duty during normal working hours. Travelling out into the country to work had its hazards; one night one a young chap off our shift never arrived, and the next day we discovered he had been travelling too fast, being late for work, and had lost control of his flying bedstead (a pre-war German Opal) on a sharp bend and rolled through the hedge. You will realise by now that few had the money for a new car and used very old ones for their transport. I can remember one you chap, a local named Jones naturally, who came to work in an ancient Austin Ruby which was a tiny little thing like a matchbox on wheels. It was so decrepit that when he came chugging into the car park the only way he could stop it was by throwing the front wheels right over sideways and skidding the thing to a halt. It had no brakes but he had perfected this method and had it off to perfection.

Getting to know a mixed bag

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 6 – Working for Chance – Pilkington Ltd – part 2 – getting to know a mixed bag - post 59

There were those who could do their job and do it well, and there were those who were poor value and did not deserve the job they had. One I found to be of the latter ilk was my own boss Brian Love, who never did anything of value as far as I could see. He was well placed in the hierarchy and destined for higher things, after a year or two he was promoted and moved on, but I remember him as worthless and best described as a stuffed shirt. He was not a bad looking man with a good head of hair and a military looking moustache; he was always well dressed in sports jacket or a blazer and flannels, or sometimes in country tweeds. He had an upper class accent and a self assured demeanour, and that is about all you could say in his favour. On the other side of the balance sheet it should be recorded that he was arrogant, often unreasonable, and usually made a mess of things mostly because he had no interest in what he was doing. For a personnel manager he was singularly lacking in empathy for or understanding of the work force, treating most with an offhand attitude that destroyed any possible liking one could feel for him. To sum him up in one word he was a shocker.

I could describe in some detail how I came to hold this man in such low esteem, but one small incident will suffice. On duty one afternoon I was in the security lodge at the main gate when in walked a tall dark handsome man who informed me that he had an appointment with the personnel manager Mr Love. I asked him to take a seat while I phoned his office and this he did; I spoke to Brian Love who gave a terse reply and rang off. The visitor looked vaguely familiar to me and after talking to him for a short time I discovered that he was none other than the famous Frank Swift the best goal keeper the English football team had ever had. He had played for Manchester United for quite a few years and had only retired a year or two before. He was a very agreeable fellow and I enjoyed talking to him for quite some time; I can recall looking at his hands because I had once read in the paper that he was one of the few men in football that could pick up a ball with one hand. It must have been about half an hour with no sign of Brian Love, when his visitor commented on the delay and asked how long he might be. I apologized for the delay and offered to phone again, for which he thanked me and offered his appreciation for my consideration. It was a great embarrassment when I could not get a reply from Love’s phone and had to tell the visitor that he was out of his office or unable to answer. A further 15 minutes or so went by and now Mr Swift, looking and sounding very annoyed, informed me that could not spare any more of his valuable time to meet a man who did not have the courtesy to keep his appointments, and he walked out of the office. It would have been about 10 minutes later that Mr Love strolled into the office with his hands in his pockets looking for his visitor. When I told him that he had left he pulled his face and walked out again with not even a word of explanation. I shall never know why Frank Swift came to see my boss that day, but in my book the behaviour of the man who was representing the company I worked for, was totally unacceptable and shameful.

It takes all sorts to make a world, and we had a very wide selection of them at my place of work I can tell you. In my job as a security man I was well placed to observe them all and it was a never ending source of fascination to me to see some of the hidden aspects of people’s personalities. At the very top of our pyramid of importance was the General Manager Mr Pickering a small man with ginger hair and a pointed nose. He was a genial sort of man but he was seen so rarely that he was sometimes compared with the Do-Do bird and thought to be extinct. Next in line came Mr Buckley the Assistant General Manager a large slow moving man who was seen a little more frequently though he had little to do with those beneath him. He was an amiable sort of man who was considered to be harmless and a homely family man; though there were rumours that he had an eye for young ladies. For my part I know it was true, because one evening after work had finished for the day, I saw him take one of the company cars and drive his young secretary up the Glas-coed Road into the darkness of the late evening. The next day I used the same car and found stuffed under the back seat a pair of girl’s panties, which I discreetly disposed of to save embarrassment.

Other characters I could describe but I shall do so only as part of my general narrative, in the meantime it is the march of time and the order of events that I shall concentrate on in my attempt to bring back to the forefront of my recollections what transpired. My life is one of small events so my recollections are the same, small and of little importance, but never the less they remain in my memory and are an important part of my story. No one would be interested in what happened to me when I cycled back and forth to work for the best part of two years or more, but I remember it all too clearly. I can never forget that it was at least seven miles a third of which was on the motorway between St Asaph and Rhuddlan. Down the middle of the Clwyd Valley it was open and exposed, so in the morning I would face a strong wind if heading home after being on night shift. In the afternoon it would be against me if I was going to work, at night it would be have changed again and be in my face when I was going home. In fact I always seemed to be battling against a strong wind, and in the winter there was the cold freezing weather to add to the misery. There were many times when I battled winter snow storms, and one night in particular I arrived home about midnight with a solid sheet of frozen snow stuck to my chest. There were enjoyable rides especially in the summer, but it is the hard ones that you remember most of all. Like the night I was going on for the night shift, and when I was going up a hill on a road that skirted St Asaph and saved the trip into the town, a thunder storm began and I can still see the lightening striking the field about40 yards from the road, and seeing a shower of sparks shooting up from the ground. There were several strikes all around me which made my ride very exciting, I had to struggle against the gale and the hill, but I arrived at work with a feeling of exhilaration which kept me wide alert well into the night.

The hill I have just mentioned began in the valley on the edge of St Asaph where the road branched off towards Bodelwyddan, today the A55 motorway has replaced it but back in 1950s it was just a country road. The entrance to the Chance-Pilkington factory was on a junction between the Glas-coed road and Cwittr Lane, the lane was the way I would go on my way home. When the lane joined the A55 I would turn down the hill to get onto the dual carriage way running from St Asaph to Rhuddlan and Rhyl. One night just before midnight I was hurtling down this hill on a pitch black night, part way down there was a loud noise like a rushing wind and something heavy struck me on my head? I managed to keep my balance and pulled over and stopped, then a large white shape loomed out of the darkness and came diving towards me, it was a big owl that had decided to attack me though why it did I don’t know. I cannot imagine that it could have mistaken me for a mouse or a rabbit, but attack it did in a very determined fashion.

You would think that riding a bicycle to work would be the most innocent of pastimes, and the safest way to travel, but I had some excitement from time to time. After several months I began to look for a way of avoiding the strong winds along the valley on the dual carriage way which was flat and exposed. Studying the map I discovered that if I turned left on the A55 a few yards further up the hill was a small lane that weaved it’s down the valley between high banks and hedges. A short distance from Rhuddlan it debouched onto another road that crossed the valley and turning right I re-joined the carriage way a short distance from its end which was by the Rhuddlan Castle. Crossing two bridges one over the railway line and the other over the river Clwyd I would pedal my way up through the village and head off for the last two or three miles into Rhyl. If I might digress at this point the reader might like to know that work was being done on the castle which had huge holes in it, made I am told by Cromwell’s roundheads to prevent the Cavaliers from using it as a fort. The castle stood maybe 200 yards above the river on the site of an old Roman fort, and when excavations were carried out during the clean up, the stone work of a Roman quay were found which confirmed that the river had once been much bigger reaching the very edge of the castle. History had recorded that the Romans used to bring supplies up the river and land them at their fort, which presented a modern day mystery because the river was so narrow and the fort so far from its banks.

Returning to my bike riding adventures, it looked as though I had found an answer to my battle with the wind, by using the sheltered lane, and so it proved to be. Except for one occasion when fate decided to show me I was not as smart as I thought, Mother Nature could still get at me if she chose, and on this particular day she did choose. I had been on the morning shift and about midday there was a heavy storm with the rain coming down in torrents. It was about April so as it usually did at this time of the year, the storm passed and the warm spring sunshine took its place. At 3pm it looked like a lovely summer’s day so off I went riding merrily along happy to be on my way home. Using my new sheltered route I launched myself down the winding lane at a break neck speed, it was downhill all the way and no traffic ever used this little lane that went nowhere. I would have covered a mile or more when I rounded a bend and found myself riding in water, maybe several inches deep and rushing along at a brisk pace. At the same time I spotted a large gap in the high bank and realised that the stream which ran alongside the lane had swollen with the heavy rain from the storm and had breached the bank. There was no going back of course so I ploughed on through the water deriving some amusement from the situation, but it was not so amusing after another couple of hundred yards. Gradually the downward slope of the lane began to level out, and with the high banks and hedges continuing the water was trapped and so accumulated getting deeper and deeper. Soon it was half way up my wheels and I had to pedal really hard to keep the bike moving, my feet plunging in and out of the water like the paddles on an old steamer. It was not long before I could not keep the bike moving and I had to jump off; there was still no alternative to continuing so I found myself pushing my cycle through knee deep water which stretched ahead of me for an unknown distance. On I went for a further couple of hundred yards where I found a gradual reduction in the level, and finally I came to the end of it and was able to ride on. The lane remained unusable for quite some time, but I had no choice I had to keep on riding like it or not.

After a couple of winters I decided I had to find another way of getting to work, I found one of the maintenance engineers drove to work in an old Daimler car so I arranged to get a lift with him. This was better than riding a bicycle but even this was not entirely trouble free; there was one occasion when the car engine began to boil before we had got out of town. We stopped and tried to figure out what the problem was, the engineer had drained the radiator the night before and put hot water in that morning, so why was it over heating? When it had cooled down we did half a mile and off it went again, this went on for most of the journey, but finally it settled down and we were running without further trouble. A day or two later the car owner who was quite a good mechanic solved the mystery, and told me that the problem was that when he had drained the radiator, water had been left in the pump which was at the lowest point of the system, and this had frozen solid. The ice in it had blocked the flow of water so the engine had overheated, and with a small aperture the hot water could not get into the pump to thaw it out. We did get to work eventually with a fellow worker in the back of the car, another casualty of the icy weather. He had been riding a motor scooter to work and with a road like a sheet of glass he had slid off a number of times, the last time in front of us on the road to Rhuddlan. He was covered in bruises so when we stopped to help him, he threw the scooter in the ditch and climbed in the car. This was all in a day’s work as they say; we accepted these things as a normal part of everyday working life.

Later on I changed transport to another car used by another of the engineers who drove an old Vauxhall car, but he was no more immune to the vagaries of fate than anyone else. One day we were just approaching our place of work between the deep winding banks of Cwittr Lane when we met on of the men going off shift from the factory. He was on a motorcycle and going quite fast eager to get home I suppose, the lane was only wide enough for one vehicle and before we could stop he hit the off side mudguard of our car, and went sailing over the top of us in a most graceful arc. Hitting the road he was knocked out cold and without a helmet he sustained a nasty gash on the top of his head. We put him in the car and drove him back to the factory where he was treated by the nurse who was on duty during normal working hours. Travelling out into the country to work had its hazards; one night one a young chap off our shift never arrived, and the next day we discovered he had been travelling too fast, being late for work, and had lost control of his flying bedstead (a pre-war German Opal) on a sharp bend and rolled through the hedge. You will realise by now that few had the money for a new car and used very old ones for their transport. I can remember one you chap, a local named Jones naturally, who came to work in an ancient Austin Ruby which was a tiny little thing like a matchbox on wheels. It was so decrepit that when he came chugging into the car park the only way he could stop it was by throwing the front wheels right over sideways and skidding the thing to a halt. It had no brakes but he had perfected this method and had it off to perfection.

I become a security officer

Volume 2 – A new life begins – chapter 6 – Working for Chance – Pilkington Ltd – part 1 - I become a security officer – post 58

When I began work at Chance-Pilkington Ltd the new factory was just a shell, we operated from a hut which was the builder’s office. There were no official duties; all we had to do was keep an eye on the site, which was way out in the country. During the day there was at least the activity of the builders, but at night you were the only person there, and it was quite spooky to patrol around with a Tilly lamp in your hand, and a police truncheon in your pocket. After a few weeks staff began to appear and the manufacturing process began, those of us who were on security finally had some work to do. The quiet time was over and I was not sorry about that, the weeks of peace and quiet had been a drag, with only one incident I can recall during that time.

It was late afternoon on a weekend and I had been checking around the site, when I walked back to my temporary office I came face to face with a group of young men. There were about five of them, all fit looking chaps, who had decided they would look over the new factory they had heard about. Marching up to them I reached in my pocket and pulled out my note book, and planting myself in front of them I said: “Right, I’ve caught you, give me your names.” My appearance must have come as quite a shock to them, which is why they all looked alarmed and explained that they had not meant any harm, they were just having a look at the site. Telling them that they had no business being there and were trespassing on private property, I still insisted that I would take their names and addresses. I would tell their story to the man in charge, and if they were lucky he would take no further action against them. Off they slunk with their tails well and truly between their legs, and I was able to heave a sigh of relief. I had pulled off a big bluff because if they had turned nasty I would have had no chance against so many; anyway had it come to a physical confrontation I was not fit enough to take on even one man.

When the factory began to operate the main function was to be the continuous manufacture of lenses of various types, plus other products of glass. The whole process was new and highly secret, the method and equipment being obtained from the biggest manufacturer in the world, Corning Co Ltd of America, key people from both Pilkington’s and Chance’s had been sent to the USA to train, and when the first production line was set up, some of the American staff had come over to help get it started. Basically it consisted of a furnace on a mezzanine floor, which produced glass that was fed down a tube to the main floor below, there a complex machine fed gobs of molten glass into a rotary press where the lenses were stamped out before being fed into a lehr where they gradually cooled as they moved along a conveyor belt. This system would and did produce an enormous number of items a day, and it was continuous; eventually it was joined by three similar lines that did the same. Gradually the factory grew as other processes were added, and it continued to do so long after I had moved on.

It would seem very generous of the Americans to give all this new technology to the English, but it did not come free of charge. Pilkington’s had developed some new processes of their own, and they offered one of these in exchange, the Americans were benefiting equally as much as we were from the exchange. What we gave to Corning was ‘Float Glass’ which was a method of producing distortion free sheet glass. Until this new procedure came along sheet glass had been extruded from a furnace and this caused distortions and imperfections, which could be seen in most window glass. If distortion free glass was needed, for shop fronts, and that sort of thing, it had to be plate glass, which was cut from a suitably sized block, then ground and polished. This was as you can imagine a slow and costly way of producing distortion free glass, so this new process was a fantastic step forward being both quick and relatively cheap. For the technically minded I should explain that float glass was exactly what the name implied, it was made by floating molten glass on a bed of molten metal. This allowed the surface of the glass to remain fire finished and optically clear, the thickness and the size of the glass produced depended on both the temperature and the density of the metal alloy being used. The Americans were more than willing to exchange their mass production methods for our new and scientifically advanced method of making window glass.

When the first furnace fired up four shifts were created to run it and the related production line; there was a morning shift which worked from 7am till 3pm for three days, an afternoon shift which was from 3pm to 11pm, and the night shift from 11pm to 7am. After the morning shift had done their three, they had a break of 24 hours before commencing on the afternoon shift. The evening and night shifts got a 48 hour break after their three turns, so the roster included a fourth shift to fill the gaps. In addition there were day workers who performed other functions, and of course there were the usual clerical staff performing the functions they always have done. Each shift was assigned a security man who worked with them, got to know them, and looked after them, dealing with all and any problem that arose. This was my function on the shift with which I worked, but when on the day shifts there would be other duties to perform not related to the shift workers.

During normal office hours I got to know the senior man Dick Jones, though he often disappeared when he felt like it, and I never really saw him do anything useful; I suppose you could say that he was the brains of the outfit and did not need to do any work of a physical nature. The other security men I only met briefly when the shifts were changing over, they were all older men than myself, and not inclined to make friends. One was a typical type of old time bobby who did as little as possible and was expert at keeping his head down, he had his job to do and I had mine, so we had little effect on each other. Then there was a chap named Glyn Heppenstall who was a strange sort of fellow with a pencil moustache; he was always smoking and used a short cigarette holder. Again I had little to do with him and so can say we did not have an influence on each other at all.

The final man we had was a big ugly bloke who had come from a security job on one of the atomic power stations up North. He was not the sort of man you would want to make friends with, and I heard that he did not get on well with the men on his shift at all. I believe he was something of a bully, and was not all that sharp or so it appeared. He would do nothing to help anyone, which of course resulted in a similar response; I remember one day when he was given a driving job and being unfamiliar with the vehicle put it in the wrong gear and ran it into the wall near to where it was parked. This only happened because no one would tell him about this particular vehicle, and why should they when he was so obnoxious to all and sundry.

The only other man on security that I got to know a little better was the hard bitten old timer Dick Jones, who was a typical tough and cynical old time copper. I sort of liked him in a way; he often gave me the benefit of his experience and talked to me about his years in the Liverpool Police. When he was in the mood he would sit and tell me stories about his past experiences, like the time he was on a murder case and told to hold all items of evidence. These items included a very valuable 12 bore shotgun which had been used to commit the crime; Dick had felt an overwhelming desire for this beautiful weapon, so he kept it for a very long time after the accused had been found guilty and hanged. Eventually he had made it his own, taking steps to ensure that no trace of its existence remained; he seemed very proud of the fact that it was worth several thousand pounds and that he had benefited accordingly. Even more interesting in my opinion was his account of the elimination of the Liverpool Chinese Community back in the late 1920s; Dick had been a young man at the time maybe around 22 or 23 years of age. It seems China Town in Liverpool had grown rapidly to several thousand people, and one of the results had been an outbreak of gang wars with the different Tongs fighting and killing each other on the streets. With killings increasing week by week the city council and the police took the matter to the government, and the decision was made to take drastic action. In short, they decided to round up everyone of Chinese origin put them on trains that we waiting at the goods yard, and move them to a port on the East coast, it was I believe Hull or Grimsby. There they were put on a tramp steamer sent for the purpose, and summarily shipped off back to China. This was a story that amazed me at the time, and when considered in the light of present day attitudes, it seemed almost unbelievable that they were able to get away with such an extreme measure even for those days.

Dick Jones was an interesting character and pleasant enough when the mood took him, but on the other hand he could be bad tempered and if anything upset him it was best not to talk to him, you just kept out of his way until his mood improved. The fact that he left all the work to who ever was on duty did not worry me in the slightest, I was more than happy for him to leave me to it and allow me some peace. I can recall one thing about him that caused me some amusement, and that was his running feud with the company electrician a man named Harry Mason. How it all started I shall never know, but start it did and early in their association it became clear to all and sundry that Dick had made up his mind to get rid of Harry. You would have thought that for a man of Dick’s undoubted experience and inbred ruthlessness the task would have been an easy one, and there is no doubt that he gave it his best shot, and not just one shot. Having taken a dislike to the electrician my uncompromising colleague could not tolerate the presence of the man, so over the next couple of years much of his time was taken up with his efforts to remove him from his position.

Harry Mason was a man in his fifties with a look that reminded one vaguely of Adolph Hitler, I suppose it was his little toothbrush moustache that created this image. He gave the impression that he was easy going and indolent, in fact there was evidence that he disliked hard work and went out of his way to do as little as possible. At the same time he was nobody’s fool and eventually proved to be as the saying goes: ‘As cunning as a cart load of monkeys.’ Dick Jones watched him closely over a period of months catching him out in a number of minor infractions, which resulted in the electrician being on the carpet and verbally admonished each time. The problem was none of his offences were bad enough to warrant his dismissal, though the growing list of offences were beginning to bring the opinion of management around to some agreement with the obvious opinion of their senior security man.

Bearing in mind the weaknesses and failings in Harry’s character it was only a matter of time before he was caught out in a more serious offence. The day arrived when the relentless Dick Jones discovered the wayward electrician asleep in a remote corner of the factory, and hauled him before the Personnel Manager Brian Love who was both our boss and an important figure in the management line-up. When considered in addition to all the previous offences it appears our Harry was caught like a rat in a trap, we heard later that he was asked to resign or face the sack. A short time later we saw Dick Jones coming out of this interview with a face like thunder and a complexion suffused with rage, behind him came Harry with a slight smile on his face, and looking as cool as the proverbial cucumber.

You only had to look at the faces of the two men to realise what the outcome had been, but why? No one dare ask Dick Jones in his present mood, and the crafty Harry Mason was saying nothing; it was quite some time before the facts became known and spread around the work force. The facts were that when informed that he was to be fired, Harry had asked how they were going to mange to keep the factory running without his services. The answer was as you would expect that they would have no trouble getting another skilled and hard working electrician to take his place. Not possible said Harry, I did most of the wiring when the factory was built, and I did it in a way that no other electrician could possibly figure it out. Without me you would have to rewire the whole place and to do that you would have to pull it down, you have no choice in the matter you have to keep me on like it or not. There is no doubt that Harry Mason was a rascal, but he was what you would call a likeable rogue. Occasionally there would be an electrical problem and no matter what time of day or night we would be sent to get Harry, he was always obliging and easy to get along with, and he always knew how to fix the problems no matter what they were.