My Employments (2)

 After four years in York it was then back to Croydon...

I was going to work at Vinyl Products in Carshalton in a high-pressure chemistry lab, but couldn’t bring myself to go along on the morning I should have started. (and be honest me + high temperature + high pressure + chemicals , many of them cancerous - disaster waiting to happen? )

I was sitting by Carshalton Ponds listening to one of my proverbial tiny radios when on came Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel –“I was feeling part of the scenery, I walked right out on the machinery”... and so I decided to have an alternative career- maybe social work, I thought at that moment.

But what I actually did was sign on at Manpower in West Croydon - a temp agency and for some time would arrive thee never really knew what job I would be doing that day.

The first one was working as a Kitchen Porter on the top floor of Leon House. This was in the British Sugar canteen. Not always the best hygene, if I recall but I was washing up in sinks that looked out with views all the way to Central London. I had to hack away at burnt pans day after day for a fortnight - mercifully I left just as a lift engineer's strike would have meant climbing up twenty floors of stairs with all the food and then down again with the rubbish. Just one lift was still working as I left.

Then another kitchen experience when a large group of us was driven off in a minibus. We had to try and clean up an absolutly disgusting disused kitchen in a closed Mitcham factory. Not sure we did a fantasticly good job, but could anyone?

A group of us were sent off to a warehouse conveniently just off the Purley Way. It stored all sorts of things for all sorts of people and "goods" were constantly coming in and going out. There were "cream crackered" radar sets from yachts. all sorts of other tools and instruments. Hefty radiators and worst of all Pasta. This was "handballed' off massive trucks and put onto pallets. The technique was for the Polish lorry driver to throw large boxes off the lorry and we would try to catch them. It was bad enough for fusilli and farfalle, but spaghetti itself was very dense and much heavier and could really knock you back. The best thing was being able to practice moving things on the forklift truck.

I must have been unusually competent (compared to other workers) as they offered me a full time "position" on better wages.

But I already had another offer from Manpower. I lived in Tharp Rd in Wallington at that time and they rang to ask if I could get to the traffic lights in Wallington double quick to be picked up by a Coca Cola lorry and help with the days deliveries

The truck was delivering to corner shops, Bingo Halls, and pubs - the pubs would gift us a half of bitter on each visit and I couldn't help noticing the odd bottle of spirits changing hands. I did that job for a few days, learning to hate the really big heavy bottles of Cola wrapped in plastic film that the driver called "bollock busters". 

Awkwardly at one corner shop here we were sliding bottles into the basement from a trapdoor in the street when it fell on my finger and cut it quite badly. I persuaded a reluctant driver to take me to a nearby cottage hospital - The Nelson. I didn't think much of the doctor but a very good nurse cleaned it and stuck the wound together with tape instead of stitches. 

It looked quite impressive and I actually got some government money as I couldn't work for a couple of weeks while it healed. 

Then I was lucky enough to get a few weeks of work at W H Smith again, during which I got a job at the wonderful Websters Bookshop in the Whitgift Centre, my home for the next eight years. A shop that needs its very own page - here are a few atmospheric photos.