Monday, May 31, 2010

IF I WERE A RICH MAN...

In the late 1950s there wasn't such a thing as the health and safety culture. Shame that because, as a youngster, I fell headlong into a deep hole left (totally unguarded) by workmen near our Woodbine Grove, Brigg, prefab, and might well have suffocated had it not been for a friend running to fetch his mother, who pulled me to safety. Our family never got any compensation; mother had a moan at some minor official in Brigg, but that was the end of the matter. Had it happened today, you'd be talking a five or even six-figure sum.
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1 comment:

  1. Ken Harrison31 May 2010 at 21:36

    This accident must have been at the time of Billy Cotton's Band Show..one catch-phrase was 'Wakey, Wakey!!'...another, just for you, Nige. was 'Hey! You down there with the glasses!'
    In the '50's, in Liverpool, we had cocky-watchman. They presided over road works from a sentry-type box with a wooden seat. Their essential possession was a glowing brazier on which they boiled water for tea and made toast.
    Their main role was to stop scallies nicking shovels and such like, rather than for public safety,
    Any night-time illumination was a flaming tarred rag which produced like a wick from a watering can-like container.
    I don't know where the cocky-watchmen went to the toilet...and it was years before the mobile phone was invented, so if there was bother. I assume that they had to trot to the nearest phone box with their 2 pennies!
    It was also the time when kids were queueing for Flash Gordon/The Lone Ranger matinees at the local flea-pit were patrolled by a fully uniformed commisionaire.

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