Looking for work

Image via WikipediaIt may or may not have been fortunate for me that the sixties were a period when jobs were relatively easy to acquire. At this time the transport system in Coventry was run by the City Council and the main bus garage was only 200 yards from where I was living at the time. I was interviewed at the Council house and was offered a job as a Cash Clerk in the cash office of the corporation bus company at Harnall Lane. The manager when I started was Norman Brown. When he retired Peter Jones took over the reins. He is now retired but writes a weekly Ex Services column in the local daily 'Coventry Telegraph'.

The job involved mainly counting the daily bus takings and there was 8 or 9 people employed to do this. When I started to work there counting was done manually, but machinery was introduced which was able to count coins when separated into silver and bronze.
I was nineteen when I started to work there and the youngest employee. One of the older workers was Mrs Millie Moorcroft mother of David Moorcroft a well known international athlete and world record holder at 5000 metres.

I stayed in this job for 8 years mainly because a) it was virtually on my doorstep and b) when I moved to my present address, the free bus pass that all employees were given.
When I decided to move on it was into the tougher world of manufacturing. I applied for and was given a job at Massey Ferguson, at the time one of the best employers in the Midlands.
This is another story.

Leaving De La Salle

Image via Wikipedia

 After spending a year as a student teacher at Our Ladys in Birmingham in 1960 I was all set to go to the next stage. During this period I was staying at my aunt Alice's house in Stockton Road as a sort of paid lodger. In her favour she did not always take the weekly monies, however it may have been better if I had found somewhere else to stay. Shortly after I started in the Training college in Manchester I was requested to return to Coventry to attend court as a witness. My aunt and her second husband, both now deceased, were having some problems over their daughters custody. The details are sketchy but there was some sort of assault, which happened while I was still there, which explained why the case went to court. (If I had been elsewhere I could not have been called as a witness and I would possibly still have continued to finish the teachers course, instead I decided to return to Coventry and look for work).
These major changes are the ones which determine the future for generations to come, yet are initiated by relatively minor events.