First year of my apprenticeship was full time at a engineering training centre in Bedford. At home time around 30 2 strokes raced up the road, creating a blue fog. Haven't seen anything like that for a long time.
Bit like club racing in the early '80s. Sometimes 40 plus 2 strokes on the grid all push starting when the lights went out and suddenly a mass of screaming smoking engines plus the odd one or two that wouldn't start and away we all would go. Proper balls out racing with usually just 5 laps unless on a short circuit when you might get 6. Not much time to recover if you didn't get away well.
I started my apprenticeship a year late, so while most of my work mates were 16 and on peds, I had a GT250 and won all the road 'races' for a while .
We were all banned from riding our bikes during lunch hour as there were too many casualties on a few of the local roundabouts
I picked up my first bike from a Suzuki dealer 15 miles from home, it was the first time I had ridden on the road.
Still got mine & Kempes engineering yearbook. Good to see machines you can actually use, safety officers with no idea of how a machine shop works. Cover machine tools with guarding, to such an extent as to make them unusable.
Who needs guards. A lump of metal embedded in your face or losing fingers was a perk of the job in the old days...
My old man had all his toes smashed in before steel toe caps were law, his brother was blind in one eye off a lathe with no protection, his mate had a flat thumb that he left in a 100 ton press and lots of the old guys had fingers missing....good old days?
When we were apprentices, an old boy was working on a bevel gear driven roller conveyor, that carried tractor cylinder blocks. Each roller had it's own bevel gear, off a common driven shaft. Anyhoo, he got the operator to start it up with the guards off. It dragged him in by his boiler suit, which then minced his tackle off. He was left with ragged meat and some tubes. One of my mates, who was an apprentice had to finish the repair and found material and minced meat still in the gears..
A mate in a drape shop, all soft material in the film game, had a huge roll of material delivered, scaffold tube down the middle onto two axle stands so they can pull off whatever they need, guy on the forklift let it down as he was adjusting the stand, finger gone,between the tube and the stand, found it a few moths later, I have a picture but it will haunt you, not pretty.
Didn't see it, but where I did my time someone took their hand off on a brake press.If you're of a sensitive disposition don't look for the Essex boys murder pics, close range shotgun discharge to the head makes quite a mess.
I witnessed a wages hold-up right in front of my eyes, shotguns, nylon stocking masks the lot. Turned out that the gang were mates I'd been working with for the past year. Ahhhhhh them were the days!!!
HAHA, I was witness for the prosecution at Winchester Crown Court when they got sent down to the pokey so I guess it was even steven.
