"Watch this"!

1961

     There were eight sleepy dinosaurs sitting around the table at my final interview for an apprenticeship placing. They were all expressionless and I was very nervouse up until…

...at the suggestion of my dad, I produced my own technical drawings of model aircraft and boats I had designed and built with balsa wood.

Then, the dinosaurs suddenly became animated and swarmed all over my drawings like flies around you-know-what! They were on their feet, pointing and discussing details, asking me questions I could answer with ease and the atmosphere suddenly changed. I remember even making them laugh! Suddenly it was a great place to be and I thoroughly enjoyed that which I had dreaded.

Like a starters pistol, that day set me off on an engineering marathon lasting almost twelve years. My daily routine was: up at 5.30am, then three smoke-filled buses would get me to the factory where I would clock in at 7.30am. Finishing at 5.30pm, three more smoke chambers would then get me home again for 7pm.

     In some ways I hated it and in others I loved every daft nuance – but each day was a full one and I didn't have time for the depression that the infernal factory might otherwise have caused.

This period was certainly rich in personal growth for me; it was enlightening and disgusting in equal measure.

     With its own bus service to get from one end to the other, the factory employed over eleven thousand people which meant you met all kinds of folk with all kinds of talents… and failings. Whether you needed: a haircut, join a chess club, a watch mending, a lock picked, a course of hypnotherapy to help you overcome an addiction, or even an influence to help you acquire one! There was everything there to cater for, at least, your basic needs.

Up until then, I’d never heard a grown up use the ‘F’ word but here it was commonplace and sprinkled over each sentence like pepper and at times even forced into the middle of words in a nonsensical way: ali*gator, corri*gated iron and anti*aircraft guns were just three of the creations I noted during my first week.

     But the rich range of the characters was truly wonderful. My favourite was Jimmy the Greek – who, speaking with his unbelievably strong Greek accent, would say things like "we Georrdees must steek togetherr". There was Black Cat, so called because: if you had a black cat, he would claim to have an even blacker one, Big Ball Frank – who had a very distinctive walk (due to a very personal problem - which was about the size of a football), Silver Ward who, with shifty eyes looking out for the foreman, would take your bet… illegal then, and Nozzle Thompson so called for being a bad welder!

     During our ten-minute tea break, three women in the stores would sit all cosy around a small table and pour from a large flowery teapot. They were a cheerful threesome indeed, but that's partly because it wasn't actually tea they were drinking, it was Newcastle Brown Ale. Yes, they were all pretty chilled and good fun to be with, but you had to keep your distance if you didn't want them to trap you in the stores and embarrass you by trying to fiddle around with your bits and pieces.

I was very proud to be selected from fifty-six apprentices to be transferred from the training school to the millwrights department for a six month period. There, I would learn millwrighting from highly skilled tradesmen.

I was introduced, by a white-coated foreman, to a man in a cloth cap, shiny with grease, called Peter Imms – who everyone knew as 'Itchy Pete' due to a skin disorder that made him scratch like a baboon. 

He was very cheerful, and, as soon as the foreman left, he said "watch this", and with his right hand he picked up a two-pound engineers' ball-pein hammer. And, couching the head in his right hand, with lightning speed, spun it around his third finger and caught it again. It was over in a flash, and I have to say it was very impressive. However, I had a massive adrenalin surge when he handed it to me saying "now the first thing you have to learn when you work with me is how to do that… go on, give it a go".

On my first day I certainly wasn't expecting to be put on the spot like this, but, determined to give it my best shot, I put everything I had into mimicking his exact action, succeeding only in pelting the hammer at the floor with maximum effort.

Unfortunately for Itchy, and unlike today when factory workers have the advantage of steel toe-cap shoes, he was wearing only soft shoes as old as his greasy cap, which provided little defence against my two-pound missile.

Although I knew the situation was serious, I was too young to see it as my fault, and feelings of guilt and sympathy were easily eclipsed by the humour generated by him hopping around the factory holding his injured foot in true comic-book fashion. The only difference was that, whereas in The Dandy he would have had stars, exclamation marks and spiral shapes coming out of his mouth, that day I learned what those symbols actually meant as the profanities flew from Itchy's mouth, making my laughter uncontrollable.

Two millwrights then lifted Itchy into a big open wooden box on wheels and pushed him down to the company doctor. Had I been older I may have felt responsible for his injury… but I wasn't, and I didn't. None out of ten for empathy.

     I remember one day when I got into a discussion with my workmate Stan (a real gentleman). He told me that in his last job he was known as Group Captain Stanley Laws DFC and bar (must've been quite a career change).

He told me that he'd received the DFC for completing twenty-eight bombing raids over Germany in his Lancaster bomber without being killed. And this was referred to as a 'tour'. The 'bar' bit was for doing it all again! He said there weren't too many who lived to complete two tours – for obvious reasons.

"Was it scary with all that flack coming up at you" I asked him. "No not at all, there was a wheel on the side of my seat that raised and lowered it. When the flack started, I would use it to wind my seat so low that I couldn't see a bloody thing!"

After working in the millwright department for a couple of weeks I got to be trusted to do some jobs on my own, and one day after removing a large oil filter from a two-hundred-ton press, I ended up with having to dispose of about a pint of the thickest, claggiest and blackest oil you could ever imagine.

     It was lunch time, millwrights were sitting eating their sandwiches half wrapped in bread paper to prevent being poisoned by the oil and filth on their hands, and I was examining this tin of black mess whilst holding a small engineer's brush in my other hand. 

Before I knew it, I had painted a six-foot image of Christ’s crucifiction on the pale green steel-sheeted wall… and in the most prominent place so that everyone could see it. If I’d known right from wrong or even what graffiti was, I might have thought twice but… I didn't. I was fifteen and couldn’t see any problem. And so it stayed, the painting attracted the interest of many tradesmen and many of them wanted to talk with me about it. 

     About twelve years later, I had left the factory and was attending a friend's wedding reception where I sat by someone who still worked there. As we talked, he mentioned my painting, and when I told him that I had painted it he wouldn't believe me. But it was brilliant knowing that it was still there and still causing comment.

     The following year I accepted a payment of £300 to take voluntary redundancy and leave the factory forever. (I cried)

This, together with a similar sum received by a co-worker was enough for us to join forces and open up our own photographic shop in Gateshead. Fair to say, it was against my dad's best advice who said "unless your names are Mr Rolls and Mr Royce, partnerships don't normally work".

It took precisely one year for him to be proved right, which resulted in me opening my own photography shop in Newcastle - 'Focal point'.

The following year I won the 'Supreme Award' in Ilford's Photographer of the Year competition.