Hi!
A bit late in coming, but I thought I would share an extract with you from my forthcoming book. There will be more on the way, but this first one is from when I was a mere lad working as an apprentice electrician in Chorley. Hope you like it and that you keep coming back for more.......
'The incident that stands out above all others while I worked as a young electrician was because it was one which almost killed me. At the time I was working with an guy called Jim. Jim was a Glaswegian and on first meeting him I couldn’t tell a word that he said. But, I stuck with it and persevered to eventually become an interpreter for him. Well, we were wiring a nice big detached Victorian house in a posh area of town. The job was almost finished and all that had to be done was a bit of tidying. Jim was ordered off the job to go and start another one elsewhere. Before he went he briefed me on what was left to be done – just a bit of plastering and beneath the stairs where the fuse boxes and electric meters were, some cables coming through the ceiling had to be sunk into the plaster on the wall. In order to do this the plaster had to be ‘chased out’ with a bolster chisel.The cables then needed pressing to the wall and metal capping secured over the top of them. Finally the wall needed to be plastered flush, with the cables buried underneath. It should have been an easy enough job for me.
Jim said goodbye and disappeared out of the door. I was alone in the house. It was a big place and a lovely home. The owners, a couple in their 40s, were out at work. A coal fire burned steadily in the hearth.
I decided to do the worst job first – the sinking of the cables into the wall beneath the stairs. I took up my lumphammer and chisel. Surveyed the wall and picked my target carefully. I placed the chisel in contact with the wall. Took back the hammer. Aimed. And struck – not too hard, not too soft. The chisel went clean through the aging plaster and clean through a gas pipe that lay concealed within. Now at that time the gas in use was coal gas, a horribly smelly substance that was deadly poisonous and popular amongst those with suicidal intents. Something that I didn’t have at that time.
The force of the gas coming out of my carefully chosen and executed hole startled me as it hit me in the face.
‘God, what am I going to do ?’ I thought in a complete panic, ‘I can’t stand here with this deadly poison blowing in my face.’ (I was rather astute for my age when it came to life and death situations). ‘I know, I’ll find the gas meter and switch it off!’ (despite their best attempts St Augustine’s hadn’t sucked all of the intelligence from my head).
But, where do you start looking for a gas meter ? Round the back of the house perhaps? In the outhouse ? Underneath the sink ? Maybe in a cupboard ? I searched everywhere but found no gas meter and by now was in a state of utter panic running around like a headless chicken. I could feel the icy tentacles of death wrapping themselves around my windpipe and became convinced that the gas was going to kill me. Then I had a brainwave. I would flatten the burst pipe! Eureka! I took a giant deep breath and went back underneath the stairs. First I started to knock off the plaster around the pipe so that I could expose it before flattening it. Now believe me this isn’t as easy a task as it may sound when you’ve got poisonous gas blasting in your face – the terrible smell, the sinister hissing noise and the necessity of having to continually step back ten paces to take another breath. And I was failing dismally. I knew that I would soon be overcome by the noxious gas and would keel over limp and lifeless if I didn’t change tactics.
So, I retreated and decided to phone the shop, tell them what had happened and get them to send Jim back. I found the house phone and started dialling. Of course this took an age in itself. We forget with our modern phones how slow dialling a number was. You would stick your finger in the number of the dial and turn the disc, then let it slowly revolve back before dialling the next number. It felt like a lifetime before I got through to the office. But finally a girl answered and I told her of my plight and urged her, begged her, to send someone quickly. I could easily hear her own panic in her voice as she appreciated the gravity of my situation. She promised to send someone and I put the phone back on its hook. Then an awful thought hit me like a thunderbolt. The fire! The fire was still burning, the house was filling up with gas – explosive gas and I was going to be blown to smithereens. I had to put the fire out! I went into the washhouse, found a bucket and filled it as quickly as I could then ran back into the living room of this lovely house and threw the lot on the fire. Immediately steam and soot and cinders erupted all over the hearth and onto the rug, but the fire blazed on. Three buckets later it refused to die, crackling and spluttering defiantly as all around it gallons of black water covered the once pristine carpet. Still the hiss of escaping gas filled my ears. I had another brainwave (fear certainly makes your brain work quicker) – I would mix some plaster and plug the hole with it. I leapt into action, sweat pouring over me, tears rolling down my face as I faced my own imminent departure from this world. I took great dollops of plaster and thrust it into the hole that I had made only for it to come hurling straight right back at me, hitting me in the face. The more I tried to stick into the pipe the more I got covered in the stuff. It was my final desperate attempt to save the situation. I was close to giving up. Covered from head to foot in a curious composition of wet, sooty plaster I took up the phone again and rang the office. The same girl answered.
“ Jim is on the way” she told me, “he’ll be with you shortly”.
I put the phone down which was now also covered in plaster – all the holes in the dial were completely encrusted. I glanced into the living room and to my complete horror saw that the fire was raging vigourously, behind me the coal-gas dragon was blowing wildly. It was only a matter of time ......
‘I don’t want to die’ I thought to myself and caught the sound of my own whimper. The next moment I was walking out resolutely into the street thinking ‘if the house goes up, I ain’t going with it’. As I strode into the middle of the road I saw Jim in the distance walking at what seemed like a snail’s pace in my direction.
“Jim!” I screeched, “get a move on, quick, the house is going to blow up.”
Jim broke into a trot, passed me and entered the house, then without a hint of panic he calmly asked me “Why did’na ye turn it off Phil ?”. Standing right in the gas jet stream I could have nutted him there and then.
“I couldn’t find the meter” I replied with a tremble in my voice.
“Ye dozey wee f------ ye, it’s right under ye nose” pointing at the gas meter underneath the stairs. “Give me yer pliers Phil”. I passed him the tool and with that he turned the gas off!
I never did get to finish off that particular job. It seemed that when the owners of the house returned and saw the mess they took the decision to finish the job themselves with the strict instruction that the young lad who had made the mess could not come anywhere near their place ever again.'
Cheers for now!
Phil
