Category: General

If people say to you ‘You really must come and see us!’ don’t take them at their word, often it’s lip service. My mother met a distant relative who said that, and when I was on my first leave, a little pleased with myself as a seagoing sailor, I arranged a visit. It was the height of winter, there was snow on the ground, the trains were unheated and I arrived looking for warmth. I rang the bell and was about to enter when I found my way barred by my aunt, who directed me to the tradesman’s entrance. When she open that door she instructed me to take off my shoes and leave them outside and enter in my socks, with the words ” Snow is bad for pine!”, and led the way to the kitchen. The house had won a prize for design and had a lot of interesting features, like a heated handrail on the staircase. This was one reason that I had accepted the invitation. I was taken on a tour, shown a plush lounge, plush bedrooms, and all the architect’s innovations, and then returned to the kitchen. In due course my cousin arrived, we had a meagre tea, in the kitchen, and then it was suggested that I should leave as they were going to the cinema. That was the last I saw of them for about six years when there was a ring of the doorbell of our post-war home in Belfast. Standing on the step were my cousin and his father. They said that my uncle was in Belfast on business and they thought they would call. In fact it was late evening but fortunately we were on top line, lighted fires, a fresh cake, and a welcoming smile. Later Sophie told me she was convinced that this was a sortie to see how we lived, as they had neither telephoned nor sent a card in all the years that had elapsed. We smiled, some other day they might have caught us on the hop.

A Disgraceful Superstition I helped out in a small newsagent and tobacconist shop with a man, Alec, who suffered from spinal curvature and as a result was undersized, with a severe hump on his back to torment him through life. It was alleged his sister had dropped him twice when he was tiny. In those days there were so many indignities suffered by people in that condition, from the cheeky remarks of ignorant children being funny in front of their friends, to the insensitive adults who touched his poor back, because they thought it was lucky to touch the hump of a hunchback. Alec would stand in the doorway of the shop, cigarette in hand, shoulder against the jamb, one leg crossed, taking bird-like drags on the cigarette and nodding to the regulars as they passed. All his actions had a quick, staccato movement. I don’t think everyone appreciated the pain he was often in which sometime made him fractious. I am grateful so many of these old
superstitions are no longer prevalent.

On the Contrary. The English Pub where drinking is less serious. In the first week I was instructing at Leydene three of the other instructors took me to a pub called the Jolly Sailor. As we approached the bar, the owner immediately turned and took down two silver tankards and started to fill them. He turned to me but said to the others ‘Has your friend got a tankard?’ It turned out that the regulars had their own tankards and set of darts kept behind the counter for whenever they should come. That night I had a glass tankard and borrowed darts, but the situation was soon remedied. The following Christmas, Sophie joined me and on one of the regular nights came with the others to the Jolly Sailor, where it was our pleasure to play darts and bar billiards competitively. She, not wishing to play was scoring. The owner of the Jolly Sailor came over, said to her “You must be bored with these chaps, come with me!” He went to the bar, collected a sherry, and led her to a seat amid a group of the locals, warming themselves at a huge fire, he introduced her and left her to a pleasant evening. This was a salutary experience for both of us, it was the best introduction Sophie could have had to the camaraderie of the English pub, but it also taught me humility, and the duties of a new husband and not to be selfish, all of which I promptly forgot.

The Family Call A relative who hailed from Yorkshire introduced us to a tradition of his – it was a family call. Originally I believe it was a whistle to a tune, with the first phrase being ‘ Is the old woman in?’.Allegedly called almost always by men assembling for a drink at the pub. We as a family, and later all of our close friends used this call in crowded situations to draw attention. When my children were small and we went Christmas shopping in packed shops, it was wonderful how just by calling they came running. I had an aunt who was in the hospital just beside Clapham South Station. On my way home from school I would stand outside and give the family call, within seconds, a window would open and a bag of sweets would come hurtling down to me. In our eighties, we still use the call – or whistle.

Teenage Stress Today. To some extent, auto suggestion prompts a lot of the ills of today. With the vast amount of material needed for TV, and to fill the pages of the copious newspapers and magazines on sale, editors are probably less critical than they might be of material submitted. I suppose I come into the latter category – so be it. Through their lifestyle young people in the 30s, were not open to these opinions, they were more interested in sport and their social life, not hunched over a TV, or reading magazines I would never have been allowed to bring into the house.

Prior to World War II all of us played simple games within the house and outside, and the only stress that we suffered, in general terms, was caused mainly by our schooling. There were some, like myself, single-parent children, who suffered more stress than others, but we were unaware that this was supposed to be detrimental to our psyche, and so I believe, we just accepted our lot and got on with our often unhappy lives. Sport played a great part in the lives of all children, from they were toddlers. In those days, throughout the land, areas, such as village greens, parks etc, which had previously been common grazing land, were where we all played. In many of the Commons, there were tennis courts, running tracks, and everywhere in the summer, small groups of children were playing a crude form of cricket. The older children skated in the winter at commercial rinks, and most schools played football or rugby. Later teenagers formed small groups on a regular basis to play games like tennis, football and cricket and then these developed, as they grew older, into local teams, especially football and cricket, on local open spaces.

WW2 put an end to all this, what with the Dig For Victory campaign, subsequent house building, and other reasons, many of these Commons have since disappeared with the result the young people are now thrown back on their own meagre resources, tribal rights and wars, or a more monastic life mainly spent in front of a blue screen in their bedroom. It is therefore not surprising that some of the tougher, more bolshie elements make trouble. If the money thrown away on so many government advertising projects, which do not seem to bear fruit, was used to provide more facilities for the young, we might get somewhere. At one point in my chequered career I joined a youth club. My outstanding memories were that it was an aesthetically cold place, poorly run by amateurs, that I enjoyed little, and left in a hurry. I believe that young people have a fair idea of what they want, most do not want the moon, but they do not want second-best, this is an insult and gives exactly the wrong impression. Perhaps they should be consulted. I’m not equipped to advise on what should be offered, and how it is run or how it is funded. A nationwide survey of successful clubs might be rewarding and give a benchmark for future design. Aspects I think important are, that the club should be better in every way than the homes the young people come from and therefore valued by them. Abuse and therefore banishment would really deter bad behaviour, and that respect is a two way street. I am merely making these points from the basis of my own experience, and trust
that that experience is not unique; otherwise this piece would be pointless.

Livingstone to London, Real Trauma??? The journey was long and tedious, especially from Livingstone to the Cape We were trapped in a small compartment on a very long train, all day everyday, even washing in the compartment in a hand basin that emptied by tipping the water out onto the track. Parts of the journey were on the high plateau and going up and coming down the track took torturous turns and twists, as trains do in Switzerland, so that the guard’s van passed the engine. Periodically we stopped to take on water and fuel, and at the stops we found Africans lining the route, selling food and their exquisite handmade ivory and wooden crafts, which today would fetch a fortune and then cost only a few pence. It was my misfortune that a neighbour of ours accompanied my mother and me, as far as Bulawayo. He was one of these hearty cheerful chaps who can be a bane. Prior to leaving London my mother had purchased a topee for me, that was already out of date, dull khaki, half an inch thick, as if made of dough. I was ridiculed by my peers from the day I set foot in Africa, as theirs were of smart design in thin compressed cork. I hadn’t the wit to smash the wretched thing for a replacement, with the result I tended to go bare headed and get sunstroke. It finally wore out a few weeks before departure, two years later. At eight years old, I was whiling away the journey, imagining the reaction when I returned to London with my stories of lions, snakes and crocodiles, while wearing my brand new hat. Shortly before we arrived at Bulawayo, the ‘friend’, whisked the hat I had practically been sleeping in, out through the window of the train saying ‘You’ll soon be home so you won’t need this.’ I was devastated and inconsolable. Traumatic? I can see it all now, 77 years on!

Buying 15 Having got Number 18 exactly as we wanted it, both inside and out, it was obviously time to move. Sophie saw a board outside Number 15; virtually that was that, except for the protracted negotiations. leading nowhere. Then a friend, an estate agent, suggested if we quoted another similar property, stated we were interested in vying for it, but making a firm, time limited, offer for this one, there was a good chance the matter would be closed,. We followed her suggestion, and it worked. Then fate intervened. At about five, the following morning I awoke, beset by the most frightful pain It turned out I had a severely slipped disc and would have to be on my back for sometime so the negotiations continued rather like jungle telegraph, she on the phone in the hall, I shouting instructions, and she shouting the reply. The details of the removal I found interesting The son of a well established remover, out to show his business acumen, made an offer it was difficult to refuse. He said the price was firm from our point of view but if it turned out to be otherwise, the estimate stood if he had underestimated, and if he had over estimated he would refund the difference. This left me a little open mouthed but to reciprocate I told him there was stuff in the roof space and more still in the garage. He said he had no need to see any more. OK! I thought, but backed it with a request for a written quotation with all the provisos included. It was just as well, later I found a debt collector on my doorstep, saying we owed money due to the excessive time taken. Fortunately I was able to produce the quotation, the debt collector smiled, nodded and went on his way.

The Lawnmower Caper The garden of 15 was huge, the contents of the beds had been what had attracted Sophie to the house because of the number of specimen plants she had found there. However, there was insufficient grass to allow the children a bit of freedom so I reshaped the beds and relaid a lawn at the back. I had bought a petrol mower with drum blades because I had been advised that our main lawn was class one. To avoid having to edge I decided to lay granite square sets at the edge of the lawn and then, twenty years before the cigar ad on Telly had the idea, I made the lawn like spectacles, with overlapping lenses, and in the centre of each circle I placed a two inch diameter tube which would take a wooden stake. A two inch peg has a circumference of about six inches, so, if a mower, with a twelve inch cut, no grass box, is set on the paving, the front roller attached to a rope from the stake, it will go round and round with an overlapping cut until it arrives at the peg and falls over, stopping the engine. What was more it worked, and apart from providing endless amusement to our friends when they saw it in action, it allowed me to get on with other things while the lawn was being cut. There is nothing new under the sun!

The New Kitchen The worktops at 15 required replacing, I got in touch with a builder, decided on the units that I wanted, put it all in hand, and after a year, when nothing happened I decided to do it myself. I knew a clerk of works who had been a joiner and he agreed to help me, and came one dark evening in January to assess the work. The conversation went something like this. I say conversation, it was a monologue. ‘You realise if you put on new tops you’ll have to take the tiles off the wall above them?’ I nodded. ‘You can’t take them off without stripping that wall as well, for the new tiles won’t match!’ ‘Ah!’ I muttered. ‘We’ll have to bring in new cable if we are to strip the walls and have you got a spade?’ That was certainly a switch. Mystified, I brought the spade. He hefted it, shook it a bit, as if to limber up and then struck the ceiling a couple of times until a large piece of lath and plaster fell at our feet with a cloud of dust. ‘That ceiling was bowed,’ he remarked, ‘it had to come down some day.’ With that laconic statement he proceeded, with our compliance and aid, to wreck the ceiling, pull all the tiles and plaster off all the walls, remove the sink and units leaving nothing but rafters above and brick exposed around us. When all the arisings had been wheeled into the yard he packed in for the evening, having given me an extensive list of purchases based on an ad hoc design mainly in his head.. With Tommy there were no half measures and there was no turning back. Good as his word, for a week he turned up every night and also at the weekend. We plastered some of the walls, we made the framing for the wall cupboards and units and installed the sink unit and taps, but that was as far as we got as a team. Unfortunately his father was suddenly taken ill with cancer and needed careful attention. I never saw Tommy again in any guise, either as helper or COW. The next few months were a drudgery, a hell.. How Sophie and the family stuck me, I can’t imagine, except they never saw me, I was always, either at work, asleep, or sawing, hammering or painting The quantities were so huge, especially the frustration, if I heard a voice at the door I told it to go away – I just wondered if Tommy really had to wreck it so thoroughly.

Road Engineers, a breed apart, are single minded and possessed. They learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that is their philosophy – straight to the point. They don’t go round things like sites of special interest, but do go through Granny’s 400 year old cottage – so be it. However they take stuff for granted that we Plebs need to know. It’s understandable, they are involved in stresses and drains, centrifugal forces, and strains, so simple stuff is unimportant. Have you ever wanted to get from A to B in a hurry and found you arrive, half an hour late, when the cakes and the coffee are all gone, and people are down to the nitty gritty, all because of one missing sign post. You start at A and know you get to B on the motorway, there are signposts at regular intervals saying, in effect -‘You’re on the right track.’ Then one tells you to get on an ‘A’ road, you do – more signs to B. Then you arrive at a Six Road Ends, any one could lead to B, but the Road Engineers knew the area so well themselves they saw no need to tell you. Then you were on a bet of 5 to 1 against,.

Computer Periferals operate in the same way – those faceless people who send you death messages, like ‘Error, protocol XYZ, 000779, not available,,,’ and then on for another 6 lines of gobbledegook. I’m just a bloke who makes pictures, writes, enjoys simple things like any other Pleb, and I just haven’t a clue. The damn thing waits until I am in a hurry, on my way to bed, need to go to the lav, have 7 or 8 screens running, and then pounces -, without a word from me, he starts to install some huge piece of kit I have no need of, which fouls up my email system so I can’t post to my blog. There is also a salesman who tells you your ‘Free’ antivirus programme will be out of date in a couple of months, goes into great detail in how you can sign for X Dollars for something you don’t need, – even my bank wouldn’t need it. But finding how to renew the free one is worse than the Hampton Court Maze. Having got it you are instructed to register, but then your problems start again and registration is impossible because of a glitch you haven’t a clue bout.

Then there is another salesman offering you something you would really like. It is within the budget, just right, but how in hell do you get hold of it? Suddenly there are more than one version and I have said yes and got it wrong and lost money. Actually I have only bought 4 things off the internet – 3 were wrong and I couldn’t get my money back, the 4th my daughter bought for me, it never arrived and she had to get her money back by some other means. When you go to a shop it is simple – mostly. You know what and how much! Why in heaven can’t downloads be as simple?

IT Debacles I am surprised it has taken so long for the Mandarins of Whitehall to discover there’s a limit to centralisation, but not that their failed attempts to make it work would cost billions. It is so obvious that vast, integrated computers, by their very nature, must become so complex that they inevitably become unwieldy and prone to error. The long history of departments of the Civil Service with computer problems, has been ignored for too long. Many are so impenetrable the Public is losing services and money in unbelievable quantities. Now the DHSS proposals as well as those of the Police are foundering. In the end the police woke up to the fact and gave up, not so the DHSS, an even more complex problem.

Recent reports show that delays in the new DHSS computer were partly due to the problems of converting hand written notes on to the computer. Surprise! Surprise! Even Banks have problems with centralised systems, and the numbers of accounts, staff and operations is miniscule compared with the DHSS. With a population of 60 million, doctor’s records from birth to death, references in more than one hospital, specialists, physiotherapists and also a plethora of other out-providers, such as opticians, all to be interlinked, the memory needed must be unbelievably colossal. About two years ago a very august charity was persuaded to update its operation by importing two computer systems, split into its subscriber function, and its charity one – they are now suffering as others similarly, with malfunction and record loss The proposal of such a system defeats common sense. Medical staff has managed with local systems; why not improve them at less cost and, more to the point, less risk of failure?.

Pay-by-the-mile Road Charges. Implementing without general approval produced gridlock throughout the country when applied to oil. The government leaders should bear this in mind currently, as at grass-root level there might be murmurings.

There is, rightly, concern for the loss of land to spec and council building. In the 30’s, in any industrial town, like |Newcastle on Tyne, the Black Country, Belfast, et al, you would have found street after street of ‘two up two down’ houses, bulging at the seams with people and children, at 75 to the acre, the legacy of the Industrial Revolution. In ’46 people were being housed in caravan parks and prefabs.From the 50’s great swathes of older dwellings were replaced by motorways, more modern and more comfortable housing and those not accommodated in the immediate renewal were housed on green field sites, Since the 60’s housing has been mainly built at 12 to 15 to the acre and those wealthy enough have purchased second or holiday homes, having the same effect as the renewal system. With all this expansion the infrastructure has been over stretched, and the services put under pressure. I believe nothing but an inspired, overall rethink is essential if our heritage for the future is not to be totally mismanaged.

Portnoo, Caravans And Caravanning The desire to get away ‘from it all’, is, I believe, in the genes, the ancient urge to find pastures new. Round all our coasts are caravan parks great, and small, hideous and acceptable. We were persuaded to try it. We started going to Portnoo at the behest of our friends, who had been going for generations. The attraction, apart from the fabulous beach, the fishing, the golf, the security of children without tight supervision, was the free atmosphere, the way everyone mucked in. The girls made friends and Portnoo was immediately established for all time for us. At night there was drinking until nearly dawn in the pubs and it was a regular thing to give a turn, play silly games and get sozzled. Willy Long and his version of Piddling Pete, was a regular request.

The fishing in the sea, the lakes and rivers was good. I would bring both sea fish and trout for others to enjoy as I hated fish even then. Years later, fishing on Doon Fort lake above Narin, the sun setting with an extraordinary sunset, I hooked a salmon trout. Holding it in my hand in that light, in those surroundings, knowing I would never be the one to eat the fish, with the sun bringing out all sorts of colour and resonances from the fishes’ scales, I wondered why the hell I was killing something so beautiful for sport, and have never fished since.

It was during that holiday I developed Menier’s disease of the middle ear so virulently that I actually fell over just sitting on the side of the bed. When I went into the bar in a terribly unbalanced state, no one would believe I was sober. It was also on that holiday that one dentist managed to hook his doctor friend in the ear with a salmon fly, and we were entertained with some ad hoc surgery in the bar.

Talking of dentists, my mate Ernie, a dentist in Belfast and an habitue of Portnoo, hated to meet his clients when he was on holiday and we did all we could to fend him from them. I have seen him almost hide when he thought he spied one on the horizon. On yet another wet day he, his son and wife, along with Sophie and I, were having coffee in the lounge. I was pushing a toy car across the floor to his young son who was likewise returning it when unfortunately it became bent through hitting a chair leg too hard. Repairs were effected, by the son straightening the car with his teeth. Sophie, witnessing the engineering feat said, ‘It’s a good thing your father’s a dentist.’, upon which a woman, who had been sitting behind us and who had mistaken me for the boy’s father approached me and said, ‘Oh! Are you a dentist?’ Without waiting for confirmation she went into a long detailed description of her daughter’s teeth, what she believed was wrong with them, and what she reckoned her dentist should have done to the child.. At suitable intervals I smiled, I dared not explain the mistake as not only would Ernie’s day be ruined, ours most probably would in consequence. However, my bluff was called when she said she wanted to bring her daughter for me to examine and I was forced to explain that the boy I was playing with was the son of a friend, unspecified, and she had made a mistake. I’m afraid she took it all very badly, but it brought home to me why so many doctors register as Mr on holiday.

Family values If you look at the heading to this blog, you will see it refers to ranting, and my experiences. This is not a rant, merely observation from experience. I sometimes wonder if women realise how much effect they can have on a family, alleviating problems and giving it support. I have experienced both within our extended family and in my own case, that broken homes seriously affect the psychology and outlook of the children, either at the time, or permanently. In my own family, I have seen two women, my grandmother and my wife, who were the fulcrum to the wider family, both at times of hardship, and times of joy. It was they who communicated to, and kept the whole family informed with the result that the family was banded as an entity.

Another aspect of broken families is that often, the children of a broken home can’t wait to get married. There seems to be a need for close companionship, perhaps making up lost ground. This doesn’t mean that they want to marry the first person who come along, nor that they won’t discriminate, merely that the urge to be encompassed in the warmth of a close family is paramount. I was married at 22, as a result of circumstances which meant that I would have to go away to sea for several years. In fact this draft didn’t materialise and now I have been married for almost 63 years.

I find the circumstances of cohabitation rather than marriage to be strange. I discover that others can quote similar circumstances when I raise the subject of people who have been living together for a number of years, decide to get married, and then break up shortly after. Try as I may, I cannot come up with a sensible construction for this condition. Trial cohabitation, today, seems to be prevalent, and I suspect is one of the reasons why marriages occur later in life. In my case, Sophie and I find that the great advantage, that we have over some of our friends, is that in marrying young, we are seeing and have seen three generations of children arriving and growing-up in all their stages, and the cohesion engendered is evidence of the fact that extended families give constant stimulation – providing they get on.

Food Everyone else seems to be talking and writing about food so I see no reason why I shouldn’t also . I can just imagine quite a few of you will switch off now, and understandably, I cannot believe how many programmes on television are devoted to the subject. However, as you may have gathered from things I’ve written I have had to run the house for several months now and there have naturally been problems due to ignorance and lack of planning, with the result that some of the food had, in the end, to be something quick and easy. The following dish I have only seen in two houses.

My grandmother used to make a very fast dish we called ‘egg tomato and cheese’ for obvious reasons. It has always been tasty, cheap and very quick to make. One merely opens a tin of crushed tomatoes and includes half of one of plum tomatoes, all to go later with 4 eggs. The tomatoes are placed in a fairly large frying pan, and the liquid reduced for about 10 minutes. Then one cracks the eggs onto the tomatoes and continues to cook until the whites are reasonably well cooked, then the whole top is coated with grated cheese and the pan put under a grill until it is deemed that the yolks are hard and that the cheese is thoroughly brown. The real trick is to remember where the eggs were, after they’ve been hidden by the cheese, – the handle is quite a guide. The actual proportions depend upon need and preference, the above is a meal for 2. and is so simple even I can cook it.

A little Belfast history! On the outskirts of Belfast is a range of hills in which is a layer of limestone. In Victorian times this was quarried to grind and send to the Mainland to be fed to chickens to improve the egg shells. From the quarry, right down to the docks was a bogy track on the line of a road now called the Limestone Road. When I first went to Belfast, I found a narrow street off it called Tramway Street, which puzzled me for a long time. It was there the bogeys or ‘trams’ were stored. I found all this out when I was looking for filling for Belfast Airport.

When making concrete of very high quality the stone used has to be as near cubical in shape as is possible and there was only one quarry viable. The quantities to be bought were huge. One of my jobs was to check on materials and this day I could not make the amount of concrete agree with the amount of stone we had paid for to make the concrete. As we were using a very sophisticated method of making concrete where the quantities of the various materials were accurately measured, there was no way the discrepancy of having bought some thirty percent more stone than we should have used could be accounted for. Others checked the books with the same result, – something serious was amiss. We checked the weigh-bridge which we had installed at the edge of the site, it was OK.

Stories throughout the building industry tell of lorries defeating the system. With sand it is a matter of spraying the lorry with water just near the site so the buyer is buying water at the price of sand. A certain amount of moisture is essential to stop the sand blowing during transport and this is what unscrupulous contractors sometimes play on. Then there is the old chestnut of the lorry going in one gate, being checked, going out another gate and then, after a bit, going round again to be checked yet again. It was with this in mind we set up our own weigh bridge and checking system, the site was too large to police. We filled one of our own lorries, sent it to the Town weigh bridge and then checked it on our own. It was fine. It is usual on a site to weigh the contractors’ lorries empty and to note the weight which is known as the ‘tare weight’. This saves having to weigh the lorries full and empty every trip and provided nothing has changed, the system works, except when the initial weight has been fiddled by removing all the surplus weight such as the jack, and the spare wheel and then subsequently carrying it – that can amount to quite a sum on a big job. We checked that too, then we set our boxer friend to sit near the weigh bridge with a novel, and look like someone unemployed enjoying the sun.

It paid off. The weighbridge was level in itself but had been built on sloping ground. The lorries were very long with two axles at the back. The system we had agreed was that the weigh bridge man would see the front wheels of the lorry onto the weigh bridge, go into his office and press a button, the weight would then be recorded automatically, he would then wave through the window and the lorry would slowly move forward until the back two sets of wheels were on the bridge and the front ones off. He would then weigh again and the sum of the two weights less the tare weight was what we paid for. Our boxer friend found that unfortunately this was not the case. When the bridge man had seen the lorries onto the bridge and was on his way into the hut, the lorries would ease that little bit more forward until half the back wheels were on the bridge as well as the front ones, then, when the bridge man waved, the lorry would ease forward again and the two back axles were weighed. What was happening was that we had been unwittingly weighing one set of back wheels twice.

More Lessons I Learned I learned never to say right when it could be misconstrued. It was early morning and I needed to examine the surface water system of the old runway. The chainman and his sidekick had been struggling to get an old manhole cover off and once again I forgot what had been drilled into me in my Naval days, ‘never volunteer’. I was in a hurry so I went to help them. We managed to get the cover clear of the hole and then I thought I had done all that was required of me, so I said ‘Right!’ meaning I was letting go and they were in control. Of course, like all slapstick comedies, they let go too and this huge, cast iron disc weighing nearly a hundred weight and a half fell on my foot. Instead of severing the toe, it only broke it, I was wearing dispatch rider’s boots instead of the standard wellie.

A little Belfast history! On the outskirts of Belfast is a range of hills
in which is a layer of limestone. In Victorian times this was quarried to
grind and send to the Mainland to be fed to chickens to improve the egg
shells. From the quarry, right down to the docks was a bogy track on the
line of a road now called the Limestone Road. When I first went to Belfast,
I found a narrow street off it called Tramway Street, which puzzled me for a
long time. It was there the bogeys or ‘trams’ were stored. I found all
this out when I was looking for filling for Belfast Airport.

When making concrete of very high quality the stone used has to be as near
cubical in shape as is possible and there was only one quarry viable. The
quantities to be bought were huge One of my jobs was to check on materials
and this day I could not make the amount of concrete agree with the amount
of stone we had paid for to make the concrete. As we were using a very
sophisticated method of making concrete where the quantities of the various
materials were accurately measured, there was no way the discrepancy of
having bought some thirty percent more stone than we should have used could
be accounted for. Others checked the books with the same result, –
something serious was amiss. We checked the weigh-bridge which we had
installed at the edge of the site, it was OK.

Stories throughout the building industry tell of lorries defeating the
system. With sand it is a matter of spraying the lorry with water just near
the site so the buyer is buying water at the price of sand. A certain
amount of moisture is essential to stop the sand blowing during transport
and this is what unscrupulous contractors sometimes play on. Then there is
the old chestnut of the lorry going in one gate, being checked, going out
another gate and then, after a bit, going round again to be checked yet
again. It was with this in mind we set up our own weigh bridge and checking
system, the site was too large to police. We filled one of our own lorries,
sent it to the Town weigh bridge and then checked it on our own. It was
fine. It is usual on a site to weigh the contractors’ lorries empty and to
note the weight which is known as the ‘tare weight’. This saves having to
weigh the lorries full and empty every trip and provided nothing has
changed, the system works, except when the initial weight has been fiddled
by removing all the surplus weight such as the jack, and the spare wheel and
then subsequently carrying it – that can amount to quite a sum on a big job.
We checked that too, then we set our boxer friend to sit near the weigh
bridge with a novel, and look like someone unemployed enjoying the sun.

It paid off. The weighbridge was level in itself but had been built on
sloping ground. The lorries were very long with two axles at the back. The
system we had agreed was that the weigh bridge man would see the front
wheels of the lorry onto the weigh bridge, go into his office and press a
button, the weight would then be recorded automatically, he would then wave
through the window and the lorry would slowly move forward until the back
two sets of wheels were on the bridge and the front ones off. He would then
weigh again and the sum of the two weights less the tare weight was what we
paid for. Our boxer friend found that unfortunately this was not the case.
When the bridge man had seen the lorries onto the bridge and was on his way
into the hut, the lorries would ease that little bit more forward until half
the back wheels were on the bridge as well as the front ones, then, when the
bridge man waved, the lorry would ease forward again and the two back axles
were weighed. What was happening was that we had been unwittingly weighing
one set of back wheels twice.

More Lessons I Learned I learned never to say right when it could be
misconstrued. It was early morning and I needed to examine the surface
water system of the old runway. The chainman and his sidekick had been
struggling to get an old manhole cover off and once again I forgot what had
been drilled into me in my Naval days, ‘never volunteer’. I was in a hurry
so I went to help them. We managed to get the cover clear of the hole and
then I thought I had done all that was required of me, so I said ‘Right!’
meaning I was letting go and they were in control. Of course, like all
slapstick comedies, they let go too and this huge, cast iron disc weighing
nearly a hundred weight and a half fell on my foot. Instead of severing the
toe, it only broke it, I was wearing dispatch rider’s boots instead of the
standard wellie.