Open Writing

One of the hundreds of people who worked in the drawing office at Reyrolles was Bill McCoy, who played for South Shields Cricket Club. When delivering a drawing to him one day in the summer of 1950, he recognised me from practising in the nets at Wood Terrace. "We will have to have you on the drawing office team for the Department Cricket Competition. Will you play?" he asked.

I mumbled a "Yes" and made an undistinguished debut on Reyrolles cricket ground the following week. I was impressed to find another member of the team was Alex Lockie, whom I had seen playing centre-half for Sunderland during the immediate post war years.

During the summer months, in spite of the smell from the glue factory across the water, we used to play improvised cricket on some waste ground near the redundant air raid shelters on the riverside. An old oil drum was the wicket, a funny shaped piece of wood the bat, and somebody found a well-used tennis ball. The game was taken very seriously, the drawing office playing the accounts. We even had umpires and a score book etc.

Crowds used to come to watch and laugh at our antics. I recall seeing a mature, serious, dark-suited bowler from the accounts shouting, "How's that?" after a short ball hit the batsman on the upper-thigh. The umpire, also from accounts, raised his finger. The well-known batsman from the drawing office protested, pointing to where the ball had hit him. The umpire reacted by saying, "It doesn't matter where the ball hit you, if I say you are out you are out!" Fortunately the afternoon starting-buzzer cut short any further arguments.

The Cable Section was situated on the fourth floor of the main office block and had an excellent view of ship movements on the river Tyne. Swan Hunter shipyard was directly opposite, and whenever a launch took place, workers from all over the offices would come to watch. Some of my fellow messengers down in the heart of the building were very envious.

Perhaps my favourite errand while working in the Cable Section was going to the Pyrotenax Works in nearby Hedgely Road. Pyrotenax made cables and had frequent involvement with personnel in the Cable Section at Reyrolles. As a result, I was often required to take or collect parts or drawings to their factory which was about a mile away. The exciting part of this errand was that I was trusted out of work during working hours. This is not to say that I didn't sometimes make an illegal excursion to the shops in Station Road and Glen Street!

One of the sub-section leaders in the Cable Section was Alan Miller. Alan was an outgoing, hardworking individual and expected everyone to be the same. I got most of my errands from him. He was also a football referee and regularly officiated in the old North Eastern League which included teams like Sunderland Reserves and South Shields etc.

One of his colleagues both at work and in football refereeing was Bob Wood, the Production Manager for the Hebburn Works. He was a top football league referee, although rumour had it that he dare not return to Goodison Park after a certain Merseyside derby.

As the weeks went by, I noticed that Alan regularly asked me to take a book down to Bob Wood. A few days later he would ask me to collect the same. These were always new sports books, which I would have loved to have time to read. After a while I found a method. On the way down to and return from Bob Wood's office, I would disappear into the toilet and have a brief read of the book and look at the illustrations. I lived dangerously but nobody ever discovered how an office messenger turned a Reyrolles toilet into a sports library.

The work centre for the drawing office was undoubtedly the large and busy Print Room. Here, thousands of drawings were kept and copied as required by the hundreds of draughtsmen. The prints were usually required quickly and it was often my job to explain the urgency to a Mr Johnson or a Miss Byers, the supervisors in the Print Room. I never knew who was really in charge, but during the days before equality, it was very likely that Mr Johnson would be in charge of the men, and Miss Byers, the women.

Most of the Office Messengers were afraid of Mr Johnson and we usually approached Miss Byers, from whom we usually got a more favourable response to our urgent requests for prints.

Waiting for prints outside the Print Room was a time-consuming job. On the other hand, while waiting in that queue, I remember making the acquaintance of several new friends with whom I was going to work, during the next five years.

Nearly everybody in the Cable Section smoked and part of my jobs was to keep them supplied with cigarettes. This was possible because one of the women in the Contracts, named Greta, sold cigarettes and sweets. It was amazing that she had time for any typing, judging by the queue of people always alongside her desk. She used to pull open a deep drawer and expose hundreds of packets of cigarettes of many different brands. Her supervisor and colleagues must have known what she was doing. They were very likely getting a discount!

Something else I used to distribute throughout the offices was the Test Match score. The summer of 1950 was famous for the visit of the West Indies to England. Their young and unknown spin bowlers Ramadin and Valentine, amazed our experienced batsmen with their leg-breaks and googlies. Some enterprising draughtsman brought a small radio to work and every available moment, was listening to the commentary by John Arlott and Rex Alston.

When a wicket fell or runs were made, the details would be passed around the Section. I was then told to go and tell designated people in other Sections the score. A batsman might have been dismissed at Lords, but most of Reyrolles knew about it before he reached the pavilion!