Vic, you have given me the best laugh of the day..... I'd better get practising! 

Whilst on this delightful digression....the song "your tiny hands are frozen" was a favourite of my dads, was this fron Les Miserables, or Mimi....or was that her name? Bit confused about all that....it could even have been from Madam Butterfly as that was another of his favourites.

The Desert song was a favourite of my aunties in skipton, and my grandfather was a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, so it was always "Three little maids" he sang me.

Col I never worked for best,I was once offered a job by Barry Potter but i think he was drinking heavily at the time,hehe,they were based in manchester then ,just off Rochdale rd,I think they are in Middleton now,Brook Edgely were in Batley near Leeds..

Good to see your busy Rab,dont upset the scottish jacks that begin with P,I know someone who got death threats from them,honnest,hehe....

Its good to be back Loz,glad you like the pics,now enjoy your hols and relax !!!!

Gelly that pinacle is huge,if i remember rightly theres a few of them on the cathedral,i like the one of the guy painting battersea power station on his honeymoon,hehe,good choice...

Vic ,glad your showing your friends all our wonderful pics,the're worth showing off....

Col i remeber a newspaper article about 10/15yrs ago,it was a guy with his daughter on Nelsons column,I always thought it was Beaumont,ive drank alot of Guinness since then though,it plays tricks with my memory,hehehe....

Tom got that paper cutting , it was steeple jack  Reg  Docel and  daughter Liza from Harlow Essex will try and post it but it big, yep that pinicle is huge  looked like it had a steel work to climb it   honey moon ??? tehe must of been on a price wasnt Ged was it ?? Potter the rotter? tehe ex santons man nice bloke he had a old campervan like max and paddy off the telly tehe

watch out Rab the boys from P will put you in a  steel stack base if you get greedy tehe

 nice one Stanley, hehe. yes it was common  when you had a duck egg  on the job.  it slowed things down a lot and made the job hard graft,  i sent a lad back to furse yard in cheetham hill from Oldham, wtih no bus fare or cigs. but a nice big rusty mills double fitting to keep him company. i was very nice to work with at times. hehe.

Yes common practice Stan. It's not rusty clips with us its more of, "The foreman said you wanted to see me, so he left me behind this morning" hehe . I know straight off  he's not made the grade and you can't take chances with people who don't fit in. Like I've said before you find that the Idiots if you carry them have a nasty habit of putting a good man on sick whilst they themselves walk away scot free and then you are in a mess.

It was the same when I was on my tools, you'd see them patiently awaiting the Gaffer wondering where they'd be despatched to today.........usually Box 9 at the DHSS Office. I remember one new larker who'd had a month at it saying, "Well I'm not so keen on the Demo itself but I do like it here, are there any other directions in which I can go??" So he was given a change of direction in two words, straight through the gate. 

Vic Here,

 My word!   Is it me, or has this site reached another level  ?  Loz is writing like a man inspired, --such a poetic brilliance is flowing from his pen at the present and if he keeps this up, i can see him as a contender for the Nobel Prize.  But seriously though, we are seeing some real good writing on the site , and Demo Man and Colsack  are no duds when it comes to the written word. There has been a notable absence of the --heh--heh's which do somewhat undermine the quality a little and now we await perhaps a sonnet from Bob if he is to challenge the leaders in this university challenge mode we have entered of late.

Belle, --- 'Your tiny hand is frozen' (Che gelida manina) comes close to the end of the first act of 'La Boheme'  by Puccini who also of course composed 'Butterfly'   It is a beautiful aria.

                                                                   All the best...Vic.

Vic again for Belle,

Sorry Belle, I should have said on La Boheme that  it is Rodolpho a poet, who sings your tiny hand, etc to Mimi a seamstress  who then sings her great aria, --'They call me Mimi' response.     Regards...Vic.

If I wanted to be a typist i'd wear a twin set and pearls and have the gaffer chase me round my desk shouting come on Tom you know you want it,hehehe,(minds working overtime today)...

Cant count the ammount of days over the years that ive spent in the yard on really rough days oiling clips,oiling blocks,recoiling and whipping ropes,painting ladders,sorting scaff tubes (right size and place on the racks),making lashings,but you always seem to get a bum clip on the job,a splinter from a newly painted ladder and a sqeaky block,must be the same gremlins that make socks disappear in the washing machine...