The 81st Entry
RAF Halton Aircraft Apprentices
Sept 1955 - July 1958

ISSUE No. 6 - FEBRUARY 2006
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

The Hills Are Alive...but the telephones are dead!by Mike Stanley 681112 Engines.

In November 1974 I started with GPO Telecommunications as a cable jointer and telephone faults repairman, 'on the tools'. How are the mighty fallen!

From living high on the hog as a Programmer/Analyst I was now going to be bumping along on the bones of my bum, as The Bard of Stratford puts it (that's Stratford London, obviously) as a low ranking, and paid, Technician II B.

I worked as a ' Faultsman Jointer', in and around Cardiff and in the local valleys; Rhondda, Cynon, Rhymney and Taff. At first in a two man party but after some quite intensive, and high quality, training {including a lead plumbing course so I ended up back as a plumber!} I was sent out with my own van. My fellow workers were great, easy to get on with, and except on those rare occurrences when England beat Wales at rugby, good natured (This is going back many years, to' The Golden Age of Welsh Rugby').

For the best part of 20 years I was as happy as Larry; no two days were the same. One day working in a gutter in the centre of Cardiff, the next day high up on a distribution pole on a remote farm in one of the Valleys. There were times, with the wind swinging me round the top of a pole, rain cascading down the back of my neck and fingers numb trying to repair a cable that I questioned if I had made a correct career choice, but generally I enjoyed every day.

Over the years I was given opportunities to work in an office, the Fault Control Centre, where telephone faults were distributed to the repair force. Working in a Control was at a higher grade than out' on the tools', with a corresponding higher pay rate. Whilst I liked the bigger pay packet when working for short spells in the Control I didn't take up a permanent post. I preferred working out in the open air, with no bosses peering over my shoulder.

The GPO changed to the Post Office Corporation and then to British Telecom PLC but life went on much the same at the sharp end. Gradually however the free and easy (and let's face it, rather lax) methods of management changed. The old time inspectors, sweat stained veterans who had come up through the ranks, were pensioned off. Bright eyed graduates, with clipboards and targets, took their place. Men with sufficient years service were offered inducements to seek early retirement if they were within 7 years of the retiring age [which was mandatory at 60] but I was happy to stay on until I reached that milestone.

I had about three years left before retirement age when I realised that my ' weatherproofing ' was failing. I had been amazingly lucky with my health. A back injury had laid me up for 3 weeks but I had only been off work, with colds and the like, a couple of times over the previous 20 years, I was now coming down with colds, flu' or bronchitis more often. Time to find a nice warm billet until I retired. Of course now I wanted in there were no jobs for me!

I finally got into the Support Office, which dealt with the admin side of things, to do a task that was supposed to last 6 months. The manager of the office made it clear that he would hang onto me for as long as possible after the initial task was completed, hopefully until November 1998 when I hit 60 and retirement.

In June 1996 I started as an 'office wallah'. My brief was to update the records of the 200 or so telephone engineers in the Cardiff telephone area (all named Taff?). It was their training history and shift patterns that was my job to verify and then update, as a dodgy data base had caused chaos when a computer run job- tasking program went live, and then, swiftly, dead! That program was supposed to do away with a lot of the staff in the Fault Control Centre but of course it had only added to the numbers required.

All through that summer I sweated at the computer terminal. I enjoyed doing the type of work, which consisted of trawling through many different records, kept in various BT offices in the region, and then creating a new database with the updated information. Says it myself, as shouldn't, I think I made a half decent fist of it.

Come September and two things happened that changed it all. The office manager was promoted (I like to think partly through my efforts), and the weather turned very wet. The number of telephone faults in the area rose and senior management ordered technicians in admin posts back out onto the tools The new office manager was not bound by any commitments his predecessor had made me and so there I was, back out in the cold and wet. To say that I was aggrieved would be an understatement. I banged in for early retirement and was told I could leave in a year's time.

As it happened working out in the field for that year greatly increased my BT pension. The pension was a final salary scheme. Normal overtime pay was not taken into the calculation but Bank Holiday and Sunday working was [even if part of one's usual shift pattern], all at double rate! That particular year there was plenty of Sunday working available. By working my normal Sunday shifts (1 in every 4) and any extra I could grab I did about 30 Sundays through out that last year. I thus managed to bump up the amount of my final pension from being 'derisory' to being ' barely adequate '

I left BT in September 1997, just short of 23 years service. I was glad to go but sorry to say good-bye to ' my butties ' who I had known, and worked with, for much of those years. I was now free to do what I do best, ......................... being idle.

I did all those household jobs I had been putting off for years. I walked the dog until the poor mutt used to run and hide when she saw me with the lead. I did some evening classes ready for when I got a computer, which had been on the cards for some time. Eventually my eldest granddaughter persuaded me to buy one and then showed me how to use it. Once on the Internet I found the entry website and made contact with those of the entry who knew me, and were prepared to admit it.

To pay for a proposed trip to Canada I looked for part time work. Drew a blank at ASDA, B&Q and a few other places but finally got a cleaning job at the local Baptist church, where I'm known as ' Mikey the Mop.' They say the church has never looked so clean, [and Baptists never lie] I tell them it is down to my Halton training.

I read an article in The Halton Magazine where the writer disputes that characters were formed, or even changed, by our years at Halton. He maintains that at the age we entered Halton we already had our characters formed for life. That's as maybe but I wonder if I hadn't gone to Halton, if I had stayed in Lincoln and worked at Ruston and Hornsby, like the rest of my family {and most of Lincoln's population}, would I still iron socks before putting them away in my draw? Would I still dust and polish in those nooks and crannies only known to inspecting officers?
Well would I?