Hugh Anthony
FSB
Or as Don Piper the “Gentleman’s Hairdresser” of Queens Rd, Mumbles, would call me, a “Cabbage Cutter” because I was born in a tiny village on the Gower Peninsular called Reynoldson, where the main topic of conversion would be the weather, who caught the most bass, the thieving of fish from the gill nets and lobster traps, quite often by two locals from Mumbles or divers from East Wales, which I will get to describe how the treatment was meted out to them in another article, oh and potatoes and cabbage. Some of the people I may mention here I will have had their names changed as I have no wish to cause problems for them or myself. (I have had enough for two lifetimes.)
This will be the first time I have ever written something in a light-hearted manner, so I hope readers will have patience and understanding and enjoy some of the loony events I have experienced.
After finishing school at 15 with zero qualifications, I could read, add, subtract, and multiply but division for me was impossible. My spelling was horrendous but I loved reading, probably as there was no electricity, and I loved to wander around the area, the beach and mountains with my neighbour’s collie, my BIG and Best Friend.
But my break in life came when I managed to get an apprenticeship as a bricklayer and THAT’S when I started to learn. What a difference the teachers/lecturers were: by the time I finished my apprenticeship I could calculate some quite unusual shapes in construction AND I could manage trigonometry with no problems, but I still can’t use a scientific calculator, only a log book (Ed: slide rule?).
Not long after finishing my time as an apprentice I worked for RM Douglas, civil engineers, on the construction of the Baglan Bay chemical plant being built for PFIZER, the chemical giant. The whole plant has long gone and is now mainly a flat open area getting the Full Monty of the weather in winter coming up the Bristol Channel.
We had a really nice working bricklaying foreman, affectionally known as “Snowy”, as he had very white hair. He was too nice to be a foreman, as there are some hard cases on construction sites, BUT he had a bloody annoying habit of joining us on the line and, having to buzz off to sort some problem out, leaving his old worn-out sports jacket over a course of bricks already laid. One of the old sweats who had long worked with RM Douglas and Snowy decided to cure the problem: he put the sleeve of the jacket OVER the course of bricks already laid and then proceeded to lay a course over the sleeve. By the time Snowy returned, there were three courses on top, that meant he had to take down nine bricks and remove his jacket and then re-lay the nine bricks. Problem solved.
The next interesting case occurred in the town of Neath.
A bricklayer, who had served some ‘porridge’ [time] (something to do with a knife) for Her Majesty’s Pleasure, had women wilting, due to him looking like the bricklayer in Graham’s last brickie article, NOT the one with the can of beer, and this one had blond hair not black.
The site agent asked him if he could build a manhole in a different part of the site, but when Mr Porridge saw the spot, he refused as it was in “the shade.” The site agent didn’t argue as he had been warned he was a nasty piece of work. He was then found a place to work in the sun. Who in their right mind would want to be a site agent?
On the same site, the labourers used to go to the fish and chip shop with a wheelbarrow to return with the orders.
The next ‘event’ took place while working to re-line No 2 Blast Furnace at the Port Talbot Steel works earning ‘film star’ money – that’s when I bought my little Austin Healey Sprite. Very similar to the MG Midget, it had knock on wire wheels with butterfly wheel nuts for quick changes.
Getting back to No 2 Blast Furnace re-line, which was positioned in between Nos 1 and 3 BFs, one night shift we were ‘gassed off’. There was a constant check for that gas: it had no smell and you would not notice it, you generally just cashed in. So when the alarm went you dropped your trowel and dived for the entrance hatch, something like a submarine crew, only occurring on land. I forgot to mention, to get to the interior to re-line the furnace you had to walk up a set of steel stairways on the outside steelwork of the furnace, one for each landing and I think there were three landings. And then came the fun bit, you had to climb a steel ladder fixed to the outside at a very slight angle sloping inward to gain access to the entrance hatch (no good if you couldn’t cope with heights). By then you would be (a calculated guess) about 90-something feet above ground level.
With the gas warning in force we went to our cabin and just waited. Most slept, as it was a night shift, and got paid, but one night we had a bit of a wake-up call. There was one heck of an almighty explosion and a massive chunk of B furnace slag came through the roof of the cabin and smashed onto the table that was in the centre, with our team on either side on benches.
There was no panic. Just one of the bricklayers saying ‘At least the table’s ok, but they had better repair the roof: I am NOT eating my food in the rain.’ I think the cause of the explosion was hot slag coming in contact with water somewhere. With all the performance I have written about above, you can see why we were paid ‘film star’ money.
And to think I left school at 15 to work in a steel works but was later told, not long after starting there, my name was down on the list to work on a blast furnace when I reached 18. I thank God for the brickie apprenticeship and my escape from Hades.
The final laugh was when working on a new school where two bricklayers, in their rush to make money as they were on bonus, suddenly found they had bricked themselves into a store room: they had forgotten the door opening. One part of the wall had to be taken down and the jambs rebuilt plumb of course.
There are other true experiences which I hope I can put on FSB, even if it’s only to keep Graham happy up in the ‘Arctic Wastes’ [Latvia].
This article was originally published by the Free Speech Backlash.
