Even before my time that. I remember scaffs not working in the rain, now every silly sod does it. I remember all scaffs having a few pints at dinner, now its unheard of. I remember having only a spanner in a home made leather frog, now everything is bought. Your eyes were your spirit level and skull was your hard hat. The site agent was always a made up time-served tradesman with years of experiance on the tools and not fresh out of college. Large sites were consisted of A site agent, a GF, tradesmen, gangers and labourers, now there are more in the office than on the tools. Some things have changed for the better, some havent.
Oh happy memories of sitting in the cabin on the cracker project at Pembroke in the late 70's/early 80's, when it was raining/drizzling, which was doing very often down there. I remember being there for 3 days on one occasion, playing cards, drinking tea, reading newspapers, drinking more tea, sleeping, drinking more tea and doing anything else that we could do to kill the boredom, with multiple trips to the loo to beak the monotony. I was even volunteering to go out and help erect rain protection for the Welders who were still working, just to keep my brain half sane, in the end !
A few pints at lunchtime was mandatory and I remember one longish term job that we were on in the centre of Cardiff, where the supervisor that we had was a stickler for not leaving site before 1 and being back by 1.30, yet we always managed 4 pints and a pie or pastie in the 20 minutes or so that we actually had in a bar, with the supervisor leading the beer fest !
We used to make our own frogs out of (allegedly),Elephant or Rhinoceros leather that one of the lads used to get a bit of occasionally. I'm not sure whether it originated from those two animals, but it was very thick and difficult to sew and rivet and was not from any cow that I had ever come across. Two spanners 7/16th and 1/2" and a separate one for a level if you had one, plus a nice thick belt, all of which you took to the pub with you at lunchtime and dumped in the corner. No one ever touched or pinched them, as they knew that they would get a good smacking if they did. Now days you would not even be allowed in with a belt and spanners like that, as they would be considered offensive weapons.
Although we never had helmets on civil sites, or for street work, we did have to at least take them out with us on the bigger industrial sites, but at Aberthaw we used to have one between the gang of three and two of the gang would hide if the HSE guy, Jim Dymond (of Scafftag fame), came around. He knew what was going on, but never got too upset when he did catch us without one on.
Happy memories !
