blonde poker forum

I was watching the dustbin men emptying those new stylee half-sized wheelie bins this morning. They trundle it up to the back of the lorry, pull a lever and hydraulics do the rest.

It made me think about a time when bins were carried to the truck on a man's shoulder and emptied by hand. Hundreds of them each shift. Day in, day out. It seems almost unbelievable now.


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Coalmen had a tougher job, imo.

It was fine, though, bit of graft did no harm really.


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Unusual to see drop-sides on a coal man's lorry. It's a beautiful body though. (On the truck, not the coal man. They were hand made by a company called Hawson and were a great selling point. All the Travellers loved a Hawson body.


http://www.gypsytrailercaravans.webeden.co.uk/#/albis-ford-d-series/4520543530

They had those clever little locking pins at each end of the drop-side or drop-tail.

They just dropped into place, except when the load made the sides or tail bulge, then you had to force them into place with a blunt instrument. 

What were those little locking things called? Was trying to find a photo of them recently. Don't ask.

25% of the houses on Guernsey were not connected to the sewer network and ours was one of those that had a cesspit underneath the back garden.

Once every 6 weeks or so the ‘sewage man’ came round to pump everything out. Whenever he came, we used to rush outside to sit on the wall and watch him at work - fag hanging out of the corner of his mouth, absolutely reeking to high heaven. Inexplicably the huge pipe he used to pump it all out had clear sections so we would whoop and holler, generation game style, as things whizzed past.

Here is one of the trucks. That’s one of the little ones that holds 800 gallons. This lucky customer didn’t need the extra long pipe that snaked over the driveway and right the way to the bottom of the garden.

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As jobs go, that one looked tough.

If you've not read the story of "Peggy Shitter" on Red-dog's diary I would urge you to do so immediately.

They are called anti-loose catches. I used to buy them from Hemmingways in Ecclesfield.



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I bet you can remember 1 CWT bags of cement too.

Unloaded many an 8 ton (160 bag) lorry load of them. We called cement "dust". Half a yard of 3/4 ballast & 2 bags of dust".  

Face the side of the lorry, driver (on the lorry bed) stands the sack up & leans it across my shoulder, the bag then sort of droops across my shoulder, off we go. 160 times. (We never had pallets in those days).

When the bag was "arched" over my shoulder, the upward side of the (paper) bag was stressed, & if not handled carefully, it would split, & the bag would break in half. Of course, a driver who fancied a bit of sport would deliberatly "nick" the top of the bag so that it split. A cwt of cement over you is a lotta dust.

Lorry loads of Flettons or Class A's, too.

Carlite, Thistle & Sirapite plaster was all unloaded by hand, too.

Bet I unloaded over 1,000 lorry loads. (4 or 5 per day, for a year).

Ar the time, I was an indentured apprentice, earning £5 per week, supposed to be learning my trade, & they had me unloading lorries. Best way to learn, though, & I loved it.

That's the buggers. Wonderfully simple & effective.

I bet a man wouldn't be allowed to carry a cwt bag these days.

CWT Bag was 160lbs?  51kg as near as.

Manual handling restrictions are now 25kg I believe, so no you would not be allowed to lift a CWT bag.

Guess you'd need a bunch of certificates, an induction course, training, goggles, helmet, sturdy boots, & all that H & S based stuff. Possibly correctly.

I turned up on the very first day in my brand new, £4/19/11d C & A Suit & shiny shoes & the only tie I possessed, thinking I'd be sat at a desk all day.

"Unload that lorry son, the Yard foreman will show you the ropes", & that was that.

I unloaded it, & thought that was it. 4 more lorries followed.

I did that for a year.

An odd way to be an Apprentice & be taught about building materials, but it worked, & I still have a soft spot & interest for all those products - cement, flettons, Class A's, cast iron manhole covers & frames, plaster, concrete paving slabs & half-battered kerbs, ACO drains, plasterboard, roof tiles, slates, salt glazed eartherware drainage & three quarter section branch bends, P, Q, R & S-traps, & so on.

I abandoned my Apprentieceship after 3 years, when I was poached by another company. My Dad was furious with me, it was the bravest thing I'd ever done to defy him. It still makes me wince even now.

But the offer I was made I could not resist.

"Listen Tony", said this East London based customer who I loked after - he refused to be served by anyone else, as I had a natural grasp of Customer Care, how much do you earn here?

"£6 per week." (I'd done well in the 3 years). 

Come work for me, & one day you could be earning.........£1,000 per year.

I did the sum. £20 per week?

Are you serious? I bit his hand off.

So the adventure began. Soon I was working for 3 guys in Walthamstow, East London, & that lasted about 30 years, but ended badly.

No, a cwt was 8 stone, or 112 lbs.

There were 20 cwt bags to the ton, & they came in 8 ton loads, so 20 x 8 = 160 bags.

Apologies if I explained it wrong earlier.

PS - We loaded sand, ballast & aggregate by hand, too. A yard of sand was 160 shovelfuls. Heave, 1, heave, 2, .....heave, 158, heave, 159......

Then I drove the lorry - a flatback sided Bedford TK - to the delivery address, unloaded it all by hand, & drove back to the yard.

I was never happier.

Wooden dropside panels I notice. All Aluminium nowadays. I work for the UK's largest Aluminium stock holders for the body building trade.

I can give you a good price on some antiluce fittings if any of you two gents would like any (for old times sake). I will waive the postage as a gesture of goodwill. 

I love all this stuff. Real men doing a real days work. Nowadays a days job for some feckers is walking to the job centre to get what they are entitled to.

Antiluce? Really? I'm buying it so I hope you're not pulling my pisser. I've never seen it written down before.

As Tony says though, it's so satisfying to just forget about everything and lose yourself in some hard physical labour.

We've outgrown the old turning circle at my place, so on Christmas day, my eldest daughter and I began constructing a new car park. We dug off the topsoil and moved it into the field, concreted in the edging kerbs, backfilled with hardcore and topped with gravel.

We spent a few hours every day and we finished last Friday so it took us about two months. We used no machinery whatsoever, just a pick, a shovel, a spade and a wheelbarrow. I estimate that all told we moved well over 100 tons.

I loved every minute of it, and I bet my daughter would say the same.

  
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Mrs Red & I can both remember when listening to this programme with our parents counted as an evenings entertainment.

We didn't just listen to the wireless either, we sat and looked at it.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYlrgNyGUqI

Who remembers this? (No Googling)



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Is that in Brum Red? Looks really familiar.

Nope.


This was the view from below if that helps.


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Cheers Tom, the wife and I just listened to all of that, simpler times.

Steve

Oh my word, Tom, that programme was my worst nightmare, it drove me nuts with it's sickly sweet harmonies & lyrics.

But you make the wonderful point that in that era, with no TV, or a TV that was only turned on for specific Shows, we all actually stared at the wireless when listening to it. Ridiculous.

We had a different viewing pattern for TV then, too. We only switched it on for specific programmes - & when the programme finished, we switched it off.

A few years later, TV had taken over, & killed the wireless, & my parents became TV addicts, & the TV was never turned off, no matter what was on. That was where my loathing for TV began. I think they may have topped themselves if the TV (a Radio Rentals affair, 10/- per week) ever broke down. 

Bloody Hell Steve, I had you pegged as a youngster. Now I'm guessing you go back to somewhere between Dick Barton - Special Agent and Dr Finley's Casebook.


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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/DrFinlay%27sCasebookcover.jpg/375px-DrFinlay%27sCasebookcover.jpg)

As Tony says though, it's so satisfying to just forget about everything and lose yourself in some hard physical labour.

It's been the fat end of 45 years since I did any hard manual labour, & I'd quite forgotten how satisfying it felt afterwards.

I wonder if we would see so many petty arguments & so much childish bickering on Twitter, Facebook & the like if more of us had ardous physical jobs? We have so much more spare capacity these days, physically & mentally, & I cant help but think it contributes to the aggrerssive & argumentative nature of so many of us on the internet.

tbf  I listened to it and the good lady kind of wanted it turned off after about 30 secs.

56 is young right ?

Well it's younger than me.

When I was a teenager I thought anyone over 30 was at death's door. Now 60/70 seems like the prime of life.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Phones were big.


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Having stopped working for a living nearly two years ago I have begun to tackle lots of jobs that previously would either not have been done, or we'd have 'got a man in'.

Cleared the borders in the garden and shifted a tonne of slate chippings. That's a bugger to shovel. The bag was delivered to the drive and the whole lot had to be shovelled into buckets and dragged across the lawn on my trusty garden trolley (purchased for use at Glastonbury where the car park is often a mile from where you may be camping). A great piece of kit which manoeuvres really well and gets through all ground conditions. Including the infamous Glasto mud.
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For me, the satisfaction came from completing the task, not from the labour itself.

Decorating and joinery are a different issue, there is something about the processes that fills a mental need as well as a physical one. Currently I'm in the planning stage of building a window seat/storage space for the bay in my daughter's house. Later I'll be measuring three or four times before cutting since past experience tells me that this t-shirt is very appropriate for me.

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I've got carpets to fit next week. May need to borrow that t-shirt.

Having stopped work, you wonder how you ever find time for working?

Great stuff Dave. Keep us posted on the progress of your projects, and add the odd photo if you remember to take them.

This week I have been renovating a garden shed that I bought off eBay for £15.(cost me £100 to do it up but they are >£400 new)

PS- our little 'environment' group in the village used to have one of those trolleys. It went missing the other day. According to our chairwoman, "The Gypsies must have had it".

Just caught up on this thread.  That looks like Sheffield?  Think that 'hole in the road' went in my first year at uni there.

Spot on Bosh. I used to play there as a kid.