Britbike forum Forums General discussion The Rod and Tappet Dad’s Small Heath memories

I do chat to my dad about his doctor’s practice which was for thirty years on the Golden Hillock Road from the late 60s to the late 90s. .

Amongst his many unusual jobs, he mentioned to me that he’d cover for the Small Heath factory doctor for BSA/NVT when he was on leave. He said the factory doctor’s office was very well equipped and even had decorative wooden panelling. I asked what industrial injuries he had to deal with. However , there were none: he was instead writing out sick notes for workers too hung over to safely operate machinery !

Hard to get sick notes these days. I think they are now called fit notes!

What a fabulous place the BSA factory must have been! The Ford plant at Dagenham was enormous , too. I was impressed that they had their own blast furnace to make steel. Iron ore in one end and Cortinas out the other.

Dave

Cortinas and Anglias were two of my favorites.

I wondered why you are a Triumph fan when you father had his practice near the BSA factory.

That might explain it...

Maybe he got a few glimpses of the shop floor and all that WW1 era machinery?

In my experience, many fabrication workshop workers and construction workers were "under the influence of alcohol" at work during the 1970s and 1980s. Three or four pints of session beer at lunchtime wasn't that unusual.

I worked in utility construction (sewer lines, water lines, plants, etc.) in the 70-80s. Most of the labor was either Spanish or Portuguese.They all drank wine or beer at lunch. And not small amounts either.

Ed from NJ

In the early 70’s, I worked summers and evenings over several years at Continental Can Corporation in Paterson, NJ, while also attending college. The plant produced hundreds of thousands of beverage and food cans every shift. It was an era when bars were practically on every block around industrial and manufacturing areas, some offering free lunch if drinks were ordered.

A group of workers in the factory did not need to have alcohol, before, during, or after work. A few of the unfortunates worked in the upper-level spray coating and oven baking section, where the inner parts of cans were sprayed with lacquer, which was then baked off at high temperature. A few minutes in the section and one got a buzz, followed by a hangover later. I felt sorry for the regular shift workers in the section, because they walked around like zombies all the time. The fume exposure was considered normal, but the plant did have an around-the-clock medical office to treat the cuts and bruises gotten from razor sharp sheet steel and stamping equipment.

In the 60s I worked for a large engineering company in Coventry UK.
Everybody was paid weekly at Thursday lunchtime.
Thursday evening everyone went to the pub.
The hangovers were not due to lunchtime drinking but Thursday evening drinking.
Thursday evening you would go out at 6 p.m. and drink until closing time at 11.
It was normally reckoned that you drank 3 pints an hour.
And these are Imperial pints (20 fl.oz) not US pints (16 fl.oz).
And normally strong English bitter beer.
15 pints in an evening.
The morning after (Friday) lots of guys were still drunk and the quality of work done was very poor.
The big car companies in Coventry (Jaguar, Morris, Triumph etc) had a special warranty category which was "Friday morning car" where parts were missing, not assembled properly etc etc.
Sounds horrendous by todays standards but--- let me tell you--- it was great fun!

Fridays were POETS day.

I worked as a theatre tech and in the 70’s about the only place to get a decent lunch/ dinner was in a pub.
Lunch was a couple of pints, dinner was 6-7 normally and 3 pints.
Then back to work at height or shift reasonably heavy objects.
If you were on a follow spot you’d get a couple of pints ordered for the interval to get your fluids up.

15 pints a day!!! that's a lot of wobble-pop and not that fairy-pee 'lite' stuff either i bet the your-a-nary systems of those chaps got a serious workout no enlarged prostates need apply!

Pints? Tyros.
We did yards.

It wasn't unique to the UK.
The best improvement in reliability for the Ferrari race cars was stopping the
crews from hitting the vino at lunch time.

Yes, but we all know about American beers.

I know all too well about American "big name" commercially-produced beers.
You might do better just ordering a pint of WATER. It's free, and with about the same effect as the big "brand-name" stuff.

It's German, Czech, Belgian or Polish beers for me, and British dark porters and ales.

(American local-brewed "craft beers" are generally good, though.)

"I'm IRISH, of course I'll have a beer! It's expected of me!"

Ah, the "good ol days" of alcohol (and drugs) at work, eh?

My 2 careers have been in construction & entertainment. Back in the 70s & 80s, on commercial construction sites, had anyone inplemented drug testing, a large portion of the work force would've been suddenly missing.

Things have changed in construction now with insurance companies demanding less risk of their insured, but entertainment flies largely under the radar. I think at least some of that is because we technically are W2 employees- but "outside" employees not subject to corporate rules of order & we dont reap any benefits that "regular" employees get. We are working under a contractual labor agreement- paid directly via whatever organization owns or operates/manages each venue- so nobody really has their eyes on us. That said OSHA has spent some years studying our industry and now there's an entertainment-specific OSHA 10 course.

During my travels I developed a liking for this

so much that some survived the home with me, stashed in the riding gear bag!


And then Rich B gave me a taster of this plus other nice things he had in his bag of goodies :)_


And there was this at the home of Tom aka RichochetRider and the delightful Miss C.


However, long time ago while working overseas I did get some stuff resembling nanny goat piss at various US outposts. Best forgotten about

Yuengling products haven't reached Illinois, but I was introduced to them at the AMCA meet in Wauseon, Ohio about 15 years ago.

They are TOP QUALITY beers.

If they ever get as far west as Illinois, I'll be a customer!

When I started drinking UK pub hours were
10.30 am to 2.30, 5.30 to 10.30 M-S. with 11.00 on Friday and Saturday nights
12 to 2.00 and 7-10.30 on Sundays

They were from WW1 to ensure that Arms manufacturers had relatively sober workers who tended to blow themselves up while pissed.
The rules only changed in the late 80’s, maybe early 90’s.

Pre changes, remember that a few places still had 10.30 closing on Fridays and Saturdays, while a pub 100 yds down the road in a different licence area were open to 11. There was a stampede at 10.45 to get down the road for a last pint.

Certainly in the 60s there were also variations from shire to shire.
For example I lived in warwickshire but just by the border with Northamptonshire.
In the week Warwickshires closing time was 10.30 p.m. but Northamptonshires was 11.00 p.m.
So at about 10 p.m. we would ride a few miles down the road into Northamptonshire and drink until 11 p.m.!
And remember -- in those days no helmets!
And then at 11.10 p.m. (because they always allowed 10 minutes of drinking up time) it was on the bikes and back to a fish and chip shop in Warwickshire!
And of course sometimes with a good crowd in the pub the pub landlord would lock the doors at closing time.
If you happened to be inside then the pub became a private party and the licensing hours did not apply!
Happy Daze!

The only place I worked with a drinking problem was when I was a stage hand. We would go out on lunch break and knock down a 12 pack or two.
I always thought that if I had a break truck selling nothing but beer, cigarettes and breath mints I could retire in a year.
Most every other place I worked you had only 1/2 hour break, ate your sandwich in the break room, had a smoke and went back to work.
At one place I worked in the late 80s rumor had it that they were going to start drug testing. I think the company realized that they would lose some of their best employees (including me) and their entire maintenance crew. They settled for testing new hires.

We had 30 minutes as well.
Ernie would have 2 trays of draught waiting.
The reason you salt beer is to neutralize the carbonation.
Then you open your throat and pour...

Put salt in beer?! Surely salt is for chips?

i been swigging the YingaLing Oktoberfest stuff it's really tasty 3 or 4 of them and i am 'relaxed'

Good beer if you can find it. I like their Porter, but must settle for the Black & Tan. I'll never understand their distribution strategy, six packs of tall cans sell for less than six packs of bottles. The cans don't taste quite as good, but I always pour them into a glass.
The only Yuegling I didn't like was a Chocolate Porter, too sweet.