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"Chirstmas Jobs"


dunsbyowl1867

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Anyone have any memories of these I had a couple whilst at School & University.

i) B&C Stores on Nethershire Lane Shiregreen - bored stiff I remember long days in the Off License section collecting bottles off the shelves behind the counter as the assistant on the till was too "large" and lazy to move herself. I have never seen so many bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream sold - Shiregreen must account for 90% of there profits!

ii) Post Office Sorting Office - quite good money and a good laugh. It was amazing to see how many badly addressed letters and parcels were sent like "Richard , Sheffield" also those that clearly contained coins which had ripped the envelope and fell out. I worked for a while on the parcels which were thrown into bags on a grid - not very carefully though we all took a bit more care after a couple of letter/parcel bombs had gone off in London! lol

Anyone else?

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On 16/12/2008 at 08:23, dunsbyowl1867 said:

Anyone have any memories of these I had a couple whilst at School & University.

 

i) B&C Stores on Nethershire Lane Shiregreen - bored stiff I remember long days in the Off License section collecting bottles off the shelves behind the counter as the assistant on the till was too "large" and lazy to move herself. I have never seen so many bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream sold - Shiregreen must account for 90% of there profits!

 

ii) Post Office Sorting Office - quite good money and a good laugh. It was amazing to see how many badly addressed letters and parcels were sent like "Richard , Sheffield" also those that clearly contained coins which had ripped the envelope and fell out. I worked for a while on the parcels which were thrown into bags on a grid - not very carefully though we all took a bit more care after a couple of letter/parcel bombs had gone off in London! lol

 

Anyone else?

Just after WW2 in the week before Christmas the Sixth Forms at High Storrs Boys disappeared to become temporary postmen. It happened for several years and thinking back we didn't ask and  nobody said we could or not go either.  In 1948 and 1949  I worked out of the sorting office on Ecclesall Road just  above Greystones Road. That covered an area out to Ringinglow one way and somewhere around  Moorfoot the other. I was put with the postman who did Washington Road and  a short length of Sharrow Lane towards Highfields. Day one and we went round together. It looked straightforward, two rows of terrace houses. Wrong.  Improbably many did not have a letterbox so it was knock and wait hopefully which took the time up. However my mate had it worked out. Many had a  gap under the  door big enough to slide a hand in so in went the mail. The other technique was the knee at the edge and  push hard to warp the door  enough to slide letters in at the side. And I was to remember the one with the dog with a taste for postmen; get their mail in any way you can without the door being opened.

   Next day booking in at 7 a.m. I found the bag sorted and ready to go. As of then all postmen would be  indoors sorting so we were in at the deep end. Handful of tokens for the tram and bus

and walk to Banner Cross for the 28 bus to Sharrowhead. Down Sharrow Lane and start delivering along Washington Road on one side and back on  the other. Then I came to the  two passages with a keystones marked CT1 and CT2. I had not met Courts befoe and there never seemed to be enough doors. Fortunately there was always someone in the yard to help out. Back up to Psalter Lane for the bus back to the office. So the week passed, fairly straightforward.

Then Christmas Day, out of the house by 6.30. No trams or buses so at 7.15 we were crammed into a van with the instruction " Don't bring anything back. We're going home now so bring the bag back tomorrow if you want paying". We were delivered to our respective walks. Off along Washington Road as usual. cross over and start back. Nice fine peaceful morning,  nobody else moving. Then faint sounds of music? Round the corner comes the Salvation Army Citadel Band with songsters and banner, stop, and set up shop in the middle of the road. Two verses of "Christians Awake" and away. They stopped again, two more choruses as I caught up with them. And twice more. At Wostenholme Road we parted company. I concluded if there were any Christians still asleep they had no business to be. Then came the fun bit, a three mile walk home. It occurred to me that all week there had been more.walking to get to and from than in the delivering.  Then the SallyArmy's effort came to mind. They had managed to get to the Citadel and then march down the Moor and up to Washington Road. The breaks for playing probably came as a relief. And it was as far back as they had marched out. They went up in my estimation.

In 1949 I did better. This time it was Knowle Lane Hoober Avenue and Marsh House Road. At this time Knowle Lane was unmade past Hoober Avenue with a few houses out in the wilds on a rough track. Altogether an easier walk than the previous year. And they all had letterboxes.  Very handy to get on the tram opposite the sorting office. get off at the terminus and start delivering. It struck me as odd the number of times there would be someone waiting for me  in the doorway.

Strange how useless items stick in the mind. Every day there was a big bundle marked REDIRECTED MAIL, all for one Doctor Cuthbert Ainscough on holiday from an address in Lancashire. Every day I would be greeted with " Ah! The supernumery". As it looked as if every patient in his practice had sent hime a card I had a word for him as well. Other than that it was quite uneventful. Christmas Day meant being driven out again. This time walking home was no problem. I had been doing the same route for the previous six years.

   I didn't  have a musical accompaniment this year but you can't have everything. Recently this came up in conversation with our local postman who comes in his van, parks up delivers and goes away. He could not believe there had been Christmas Day deliveries.  Times change.

 

 

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Spent most of my Christmas, and for that matter, my Easter and Summer holidays working at the British Steel Coking and Chemicals Plant, at Orgreave. That would have been 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979. Of course, having family connections helped a good deal, but it provided a great financial help in funding my way through University. In fact, I would earn far, far more by this holiday work, than the total annual worth of my student grant. Generally, I was assigned to the 'yard staff', which of course, meant general labouring, but in reality, you were there for holiday and sickness relief, so I did get to work on the coal tipper grates, coal blending houses, coke ovens, in some of the chemical processing works, and from time to time, with the brickies, and in the Orcot Factory, the test oven facility and such. The pay was excellent, especially for a generally skint youth such as myself, and it was a fantastic insight into working life and for what was to come later. I even learned how to drive a dumper truck, fork lift truck, and tractor there. The on-site canteen served good, plain food, and their chips were a definite favourite. There where all sorts of premiums paid for working overtime, such as for a 'double-un', (sixteen hour shift), or even, a 'treble-un', (twenty-four hour shift). If you did either one of those, you got free-meal tickets.

 

The work at times could be hard, as you would expect, and today, in hindsight, some of the jobs would be deemed very hazardous. However, when that age, you consider yourself invincible don't you? If you worked in the anthracine plant, and didn't wear barrier cream, then you got an exaggerated kind of sun-burn. If you worked on the coke-oven tops, and didn't keep moving about, the soles of your boots would stick to the deck - and they didn't last that long either. The heat could be tremendous and in order to keep you hydrated, you were given these white salt tablets, about the size of a two-pence piece, which you dissolved in dilute orange juice - but it still tasted vile.

 

Most memorable moment - one dark, very wet Christmas night, about two o'clock in the morning, standing on top of the access platform above the gas pipes which carried the exhaust gases from number six coke oven battery to the condensers and scrubbers. About forty feet or so, up in the air, on a three feet wide walkway - four of us, bawling out Christmas carols very badly to the lads below, working on the 'guide bench'.

 

Another memorable moment - working on the coke grate, where the coke car dropped the quenched coke into a long, sloping hopper with row of manually operated gates at the back, which you used to feed the coke onto the conveyors which carried it over to the coke screens, for grading and loading into railway wagons. Of course, you get a lot of sulphurous gases off of freshly quenched coke - if any of you have ever doused a coal, or a coke fire with water - you will know what I mean. So, in order to mitigate the taste on your throat, you smoked a lot, and you kept your cigarettes on a 'shelf' at the back of the walkway over the coke conveyor. One night, I was working with an old hand, and I noticed that my cigarettes were going down at a rapid rate. Being young, inexperienced, and a little in awe of this old hand, I thought that I would try and be politic. So, I said, 'keep an eye on my fags will you - someone keeps coming down and nicking them'. 'Better not let me catch the b******' he replied, 'there aren't enough for three of us'.

By the time that the attached photograph was taken, 30/09/1990, number six battery, to the left-hand-side was already out of use, and the gas pipes, whose approximate route is denoted by the red lines, long dismantled. However, the 'guide bench', and coke hopper are still extant - denoted by yellow arrows.

ORG124-Orgreave Coking Plant-No.6 Battery and No.6 Coke Belt From Discharge Hopper-30-09-1990.jpg

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