28 Car Phones and Gliders

 


In 1991 I was working for Tilbury, just before it became Tilbury Douglas. I was very pleased with myself as I was given a new Peugeot to drive and an expense float. I had a number of sites to inspect around the south west, Exeter in particular, and I felt that life was pretty good.

One day when I was working in the office my manager asked to speak to me and joked with me about there not really being a necessity for both him and me in the new department following the merger. I was quick to spot the joke, laughed, and asked if he would like a cup of tea as I was heading for the kitchen. When I returned with his tea, he expressed his surprise that I was taking the news of my redundancy so well!!  

So, I was made redundant, just before Christmas. We had enough money to pay the months mortgage and the bills, buy a very old Triumph Dolomite, but had nothing left to pay for our Christmas food.

A friend of ours was a good singer, and as I liked to sing as well, she and I decided to busk some carols in Cirencester. Shepherds Arise, Angels from the Realms of Glory etc. We did ok, but did not earn enough money to cover Christmas.

After buying necessities I had about £5 left. I bought petrol and drove into Cheltenham and set up as a solo busker spreading Christmas cheer. I did get a few strange comments, such as “oh look at that poor sod” and “what charity are you collecting for?” When I said I was singing for my own Christmas  some were sympathetic and others offended.  Either way I took home about £70 that night which was plenty to provide a nice Christmas that year.

It took a while to secure a proper job after Christmas so I filled in by working for a Safety Consultant who paid me in under-the-table brown envelopes. Literally in this case, brown envelopes under the table in a M4 service station. He wanted me to visit 3 sites a day, regardless of the problems encountered, and to leave a detailed report on site. This wasn’t always possible of course, which led to several heated arguments regarding him losing money and me telling him that I wasn’t going to rush something as important as a safety inspection just to fill his quota.

The Safety Consultant leant me a car phone, a device which in the early nineties was the size and weight of a couple of house bricks. The handset was connected to the brick by a curly cable which snapped back to its “relaxed length” if you accidently fumbled it. It was a standing joke that this car phone was worth quite a bit more than the Dolomite it was fitted into.

During this period of uncertain employment, I took on weekend work at the local gliding club where I was paid to launch the gliders with a converted bus engine and gearbox mounted on a lorry chassis, and take care of the steel cables, including learning how to splice them when they snapped, and when the splicing became too often and the whole cable needed to be replaced.

Sometimes I would be offered a free flight in a glider. I was privileged to see the fantastic Stroud Valleys from above. If you ever get the chance to fly above this countryside you should do so. 


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