Portland, 1998 –
As usual, a useless unaccommodating half turn and …….. nothing.
Why was it regularly the case that when I slotted the key into the padlock it failed to turn, let alone open? Mind you, there were no significant indicator marks displayed anywhere on the surfaces of the padlock. It looked the same from every angle and the key looked the same from every angle too.
Everything felt slightly different this morning. The light wasn’t the same, for this time of year at any rate. It was still 15 minutes before 6:00 am and yet …….. there was something unusual.
Not being exactly comfortable whilst stood there on the fixed ladder arrangement, leaning over the top rung, I gave up trying to open the lock. Temporarily anyway. I fiddled with the padlock key before withdrawing it and slipping the key ring over my finger for safekeeping, leaving the padlock where it was in the locked position.
The padlock was an annoying addition to the failed lock on the door.
In the starry lit up night sky the general aura had me confused, that was for sure.
Grabbing hold of the hand rails, I pulled myself as I trod my way up the rungs to the platform above the top rung.
Standing on the platform; which acted as a walkway around half of the cab of this formidable front end loader quarry digger machine, I leaned against the hand rail with my back against it so that I was facing the cab layout. Silently I was voicing a desire to be in the cab rather than stood outside of it.
I loved this machine. Mind you, I loved all quarry machines. I was a machine person. I was sure this was my forte in life – machines.
Taking stock, I then squatted down to try at the padlock again.
It was a funny but sensible door arrangement. With its obvious design being for access purposes, in effect though it was only half a door. This meant that the door handle was on the same base level as the platform because the platform was actually waist high to me when I was seated on the inside. The foot pedals were lower than the platform.
It had to be that way; with the arrangement of various equipment bolted to the outside of the machine wherever it would sensibly fit saw some of it fitted at levels affecting the entry door, for obvious reasons.
From squatting to kneeling on the platform, trying again with the padlock and key I started to lose patience a bit.
There was that strange feeling again. It was quiet here tonight. I was distracted by it. A weird feeling of being in a different place than I should have been. Or somewhere I was not supposed to be.
It shouldn’t have been this quiet, realistically. It was unusual. When aligned with the star speckled night sky the general atmospherics as a whole felt different.
Well thank the stars I stopped when I did. That fiddly padlock was my cue to focus my attention elsewhere.
I didn’t and couldn’t hear anything other than ordinary night stuff. Out here on this craggy island, that equated to nothing anyway. This was about as remote as you were going to get in the quarry industry, at least in this part of the country.
Huh, but then little did I know, I was partially deaf to start with. The company had sent me for a medical after I had started here and proved one thing without doubt. I’d failed the hearing test at the medical. I was still unaware of the importance of that; it being the first hearing test I had ever taken.
There was me insisting that if I’d known in advance that it was going to be a camouflaged speed test I would have fared better. I ended up making excuses for a lack of hearing which was not fully comprehended by myself.
Not that the company worried. They provided me with hearing protection which I regularly wore when driving the quarry machines.
To me, when it was loud it was loud, and people in general didn’t talk loud enough.
Today it was utterly quiet.
Frustration was creeping in. I hadn’t got the door open yet and by now I’d wanted the engine running to warm things up a bit. It was important to let the turbo idle away for a while. And ok, this was the same as every morning; lock didn’t open, get annoyed, try again, and so on.
Except it wasn’t.
From my kneeling position on the platform and with the padlock still in place locking the door to the framework, I once again stood up and turned to face away from the machine this time.
Now I was leaning against the cab itself. Grabbing hold of the hand rail at the same time allowed me to stretch my arms and legs whilst pushing my body weight against the cab.
Time to relax a bit. Draw breath, chill. Try to ignore the time wasting and irritation caused by an annoying padlock.
The lack of staff turning up for work sounded faint alarm bells within my mind. Why weren’t they here yet? At least one of them should be here by now.
I was well known for being the first to get to work, even though I had the furthest to go to get here.
I was one of only two that lived on the mainland. All the others lived on the island itself. I still had the furthest go from the two of us that didn’t live on the island. But time was ticking by and still only me here at the quarry.
All these minor thoughts registering and going around in my mind at the same time as contemplating the padlock that failed to open.
And the idleness of some people these days. Unbelievable! OK, so getting to work early isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But come on. I’d been there for quite some minutes fiddling with this troublesome padlock.
Where’s the respect these days?
Stood there looking into the night sky, I had great cause to be thankful, not only for withdrawing the key from the padlock when I did, but also for being the only one at work today.
In fact, looked like I was the only one awake today judging by the stillness in the air. Literally nothing. No moving lights, no cars driving on the road, no sign of life at all. It was an eery feeling. And because of the zero light pollution and lack of anything moving what-so-ever, all the more so it was that this was to became a very valued moment.
There was no other way of describing the experience. Seeing is believing.
Maybe I was the only one.
***
I couldn’t have bagged a better job if I had tried. It stands to this day as my favourite all time job. For that I feel lucky. Lots of folk hate their jobs.
No doubt about it, for me – working on Portland was the best.
If it can be experienced in life that you can have and have worked somewhere you love and you love doing that job at the place you love, it doesn’t get any better than that – workwise.
To most people (who really don’t know), working on Portland is about as far from desirable as can be.
It had never been on my bucket list to begin with. And I was glad of that. When added to various possible reasons; like such things as travel, where working on Portland for me was twenty miles from home and all uphill too, there were other things that I may have considered in the past that would always have played a part in a sway against Portland as a venue for making living, such as for instance – what sort of job was there for me on Portland anyway? I’d never taken the time to investigate.
If I’d really, really tried to get a job at Portland over the years before actually getting one there, I may never have succeeded.
Also, Portland had a funny local fingerprint. It was fully loaded with tales of strange occurrences such as bunny rabbits that could eat their way through solid stone. And other such weird and wonderful ………….well, fairy tale type stuff I guess.
In the end, the pieces had just fallen into place.
I’d had to get a job and this one had come up when I had needed it.
To the best of my memory, at the time I hadn’t ever known of, or more precisely bothered to look into any job being on offer there on Portland before.
I knew even before having been accepted and consequently starting the job that it would be a big wrench having to motorvate to work. The distance and the hills meant cycling to work was going to be impossible.
Yeah, that was something that I was well used to doing: cycling to work. I would have to give that up overnight.
Throughout the interview process in order to secure this job, and as a later found out snippet of information, I was rightly proud that out of a list of people numbering thirty six in all, I was the one who landed the job. If I’d known that in advance I might not have approached the interview in such a carefree manner.
The interview had gone like clockwork and there was a phone call waiting for me after I returned home from it, telling me I had the job.
What a result.
I hadn’t been able to contain my excitement when I took the phone call. It was like the saying goes: ‘all my birthdays come at once.’
One thing felt absolutely for sure, the fact that Portland was even involved would somehow in my mind be like getting a job on planet Mars.
What about working on Portland? How’s that for a job? I’d always dreamt of site work, or working abroad, or somewhere else other than the site of business normally employed at. And here it was now, that dreamed of job.
OK, it wasn’t abroad. And it wasn’t away from its site of business. It wasn’t site work either. But that’s my point: it felt like all of them put together.
Mind you, I’d been there and done that before in a way. Bestwall had been a classic example.
And well into the future there was a lot more of that to follow.
But this was Portland. Everything about it seemed surreal – in a good way. Not only was I given the job, I was given a start date of the coming weekend – on a Saturday. It was unbelievable. This job kept on delivering and it hadn’t even started yet.
The recruitment vacancy had my name written on it from the start. And that is an intense feeling of something in the stars.
It would be an experience.
***
I love Portland.
That’s it in a nutshell. Portland delivers, Portland delivered for me, and Portland is magic.
Now I had achieved the greatest of the greats in terms of career advance. At least for me in my own little world.
To some that would sound ridiculous. It was only after all a machine driving job. That said, it wasn’t just any machine. This was a beast of a machine. Not only was the machine a vehicle that had to deliver, day in and day out, so did the driver of that machine. And that was me. I was the driver.
I loved this machine.
This quarry had it all in terms of unusual. New machines, old machines, familiar machines, weird machines, status, and history. In effect, I was becoming a part of history by working on Portland.
In the lifetime of Portland as a stone producing enterprise (and it’s not finished yet, here in the twenty first century in 2020), only a certain number of people will be able to say that their efforts were truly recognised by the masses, even if the masses didn’t know why and where and by who exactly.
Is it not well known for instance that St Paul’s Cathedral in the city of London is made from Portland stone? Is it also not well known that the United Nations building in New York, America, is faced with Portland stone? Buckingham Palace is made from Portland stone.
The London library is faced with Portland stone. Many buildings in London are built using Portland stone. The most famous bridge in the world – London Tower Bridge, faced with Cornwall granite and Portland stone. I could go on. And to this day, Portland stone is valued as one of the greatest natural limestones in the world.
The early seventeenth century marks a time when Portland stone extraction, as an industry, began. Even though it was known to be used in Roman times.
I was a part of the Portland stone journey. I’m rightly proud of that. It matters not only for the fact that it’s kind of special, but somehow (and due to my perception of things) it must have been written in the stars.
Was it also written in the stars then, I wonder, that I had had to leave my previous quarry job to facilitate even being able to go to Portland. As a stroke of luck and good fortune even. After all, I hadn’t left my previous quarry job because I had wanted to. Not really.
Portland calling was on the cards. I just hadn’t known it.
***
My career as such, wasn’t one which was accelerating forwards and upwards before Portland, at least not as seen by myself.
Prior to my beloved job on Portland, I was involved in sand and gravel extraction. These of which were the type of quarries were the most prevalent in Dorset.
Working in sand and gravel quarries was low grade. Dangerous and overlooked. Yes, I had the standing of working for a big company. But no, it wasn’t career focused; more like a fairly secure job.
The term ‘career’ in this instance has to align with following a pathway to success, or following a pathway to job security in that field by being good at it, and then by promotion, I suppose. Loyal staff retainment in its most basic form isn’t really a career in the strictest sense of the word. It was just a job. Mind you, working in sand and gravel quarries in various parts of Dorset it was as close to a career as I thought I would ever get. And for two very specific reasons too. Firstly I wasn’t actually aware of any other type of material quarried throughout Dorset.
Secondly, I’d already progressed in the sand and gravel side of business by opting for a location move within that sector in very short space of time from starting out in quarrying. That to me was something quite special – at the time. In itself that was as good as a career move.
Warmwell, pathway to Tatchell’s, 1989 – 1997 –
The Tatchell’s quarry job had been a good one. It was one that I thought I was good at. And if truth be known, I did feel good, as if feeling right to be doing it.
My capabilities easily suited the remit of the job. I was fairly sure of those when it came to the operation of quarry machinery
Unlike some other folk in the same industry whose ability in the use of and seeming inability (if you like) to use the same machinery only went to highlight their uneducated approach in being unable to operate a machine as a machine would like to be operated. Basically a sloppy attempt at getting the machine to work at all.
It’s not being big headed. The signs were there with some people. They didn’t have the ability to understand hydraulics.
Speaking for myself, I adjusted my mindset to be in line with the issues of hydraulic valves and alike. It’s not difficult. It’s a simple process of being able to define the difference between an electrical operation and a hydraulic operation. My way was simple. Some others couldn’t do it. That’s my opinion.
***
Quarry or bust –
Working in the quarries had been a fluke move by myself at the very start of it all. The quarry journey had to start somewhere. Something had to budge following a flat and irksome period on the farm of where I was working at the time.
Leaving the farm to work in a quarry was only supposed to be a six week summer fill in job. The short term vacancy would provide for some labour where and when it was needed in that quarry.
In my own mind there was a clear advantage to changing from farm work to quarry work for what turned out to be a six week stint. It would be a generous offer from myself to be temporarily absent in order to give some relief to my boss on the farm. He couldn’t find the work for me during a strange period of inactivity on that farm. I simply found other work so that he didn’t have to.
As is sometimes the way, not all plans work out. Somewhere along the line something changed. The quarry short term fill in vacancy had by now run its course for the short amount of time that it was only ever going to be for. When I returned to the farm to carry on as before ……………….. nothing, basically. The boss man was happy to carry on without me there so I leave to find work elsewhere. That was the end of the farming for me.
***
As far as a ‘in the stars’ thing is concerned, I’d like to give credit to horoscopes and alike. Could my pathway have been determined as far back as the ….. beginning maybe? As far back as before all of those events: the summer fill in quarries job and other stuff. The farm job too, even. If the stars are involved, possibly even further back.
Although the jobs I had been involved with since leaving school, i.e building site labourer and farming apprentice, didn’t have the prospect of career longevity and the benefits that large companies offer, they did on the other hand allow me to offer my best in the way I could do that.
A damn good induction to working life. Do things the hard way to begin with.
Mid-eighties farming on small scale farms gave me the ability to pitch in at basic agricultural levels. I felt at ease behind the wheel of a tractor without comforts. I loved the fitness related issues of working on the farm. Lots of physical work required. Pitch forks, bale string, straw, hay, hot, cold, wet, long hours. Constantly on the go. Tractors without cabs and without proper noise control. No creature comforts there.
So after the release from the farm and the quarry short term fill in job done, a few years go by and I’m involved with anything that can earn money. Initially the girlfriend’s dad took me on in his building business, until he sold it.
At the same time as labouring on the building there’s a business going on in the background whereby elder brother, dad, and myself import motor caravans from Germany. A business which went great guns for a while, until that went tits up.
We can blame the Deutschmark for that. Or more specifically the currency exchange rate. Back in those days there actually was such a thing within Europe itself. There were even country borders operated by customs control. We should know, we had to deal with both all the time whilst bringing motor caravans back from Germany.
Sadly the Pound slid and slid from around 3.5 Deutschmarks to the pound to practically one to the pound. In a nutshell the business couldn’t handle the drop in exchange rate, what with all the factors thrown in such as transport costs and alike. Profits slumped and business stopped.
Also there was a huge slump in country economics at the same time.
There were good years and there were bad years.
I reverted back to groundworks and landscape stuff that literally anyone could do. Strangely the work came pouring in for about twelve months or so. I made the best of it and couldn’t believe my luck, until the work stopped pouring in.
That’s when I decided categorically that if work didn’t just come in, then I was in the wrong business. It wasn’t as though I didn’t advertise anywhere.
***
Out of the blue, I wondered up to the quarry where I had vacancy filled for a summer six week stint a few years earlier. I enquired about jobs.
Why would I do such a thing as to openly drive into a quarry and ask at the office about jobs vacancies?
Something made me. It wasn’t something physical either. It was a weird premonition kind of thing. My whole self, body and mind, was on a wavelength aligned with going to that quarry and enquiring.
And also because in those days that was what you did to get jobs – sometimes.
And yes, was I lucky that day? They offered me a job straight away.
I took it.
I spent the weekend peeling sign writing off of the sides of my van. I didn’t want to turn up at work looking as though I was there for other reasons.
In a strange subconscious approach, I had made my mind up. Fuck self-employment and fuck free estimates and fuck waiting for money on bills issued. I’d rather go and work for a firm.
***
1989. The right move –
As a defining year, this one had it all in terms of sensibility. Well …….. specifically related to the jobs front at any rate. The personal relationship thing in my life at the time seemed to be on the other end of the scale, but that’s a different story.
Out with the old and in with the new. Jobs are jobs and terms are terms. So far I hadn’t had a job with terms and conditions. These were something new to me. And it would be all too easy to ignore the benefit they offered in favour of a fast buck.
But I’d been there and done that.
It had helped that others who had chosen the self-employed path became very successful very quick, because I was one of those that didn’t, or couldn’t. That was one of the ideals that eluded me. Money coming in quick and fast for one year is simply not good enough to base a lifetime of earnings on.
Being in the quarry industry gave me a big sense of pride. The job was like making a difference. A real tangible difference. And that was show working for a big firm presented itself. Being one amongst hundreds, or even thousands, was surely an indication of being required. Maybe even valued.
My full time employment in the quarry industry was a game changer. Purely as a result of my previous summer stint there, I was now at the same quarry in a permanent role. This allowed me an exciting entry to a world where the machine thing just never stopped. It got better and better. Being introduced to machinery from yesteryear, as well as modern, hit the sweet spot without shadow of doubt.
Starting work at the quarry firm there was the usual beginners nerves and stuff. For me it was nerves about working with people of all things. Was that normal? I wasn’t sure. I just knew it was for me. That said, being employed to do a job wasn’t about getting on with people, was it? I’d had my fill of people trouble in the building firm. I wouldn’t want that again.
Here in the quarry, I was given a machine to operate. All day long was spent in that machine. The minor worry about mixing with people was largely negated by that fact. In theory.
It was however, always in my mind. Most of my working time had been spent working with very few people, if any at all. I liked it that way. I was used to it that way.
There was no doubt about it that this new quarry experience had turned out to be an incredibly lucky break.
Looking at the country as a whole it was hard to ignore the appearance of economic decline. The country was changing.
Nationalisation was brilliant as a business strategy, but now the government of the day had decided to scrap all that. Privatisation was the new way forward as far as they were concerned. And it affected everything.
My situation therefore was an envious one. There would have been many that would have swapped places.
So I changed tack. A decision made in order to follow a direction that I was going to have to get used to – working with people. Like it or not.
Whilst seemingly everything was changing, that would also have to include myself.
In the beginning I think I was quite surprised how I was apparently accepted, there in the quarries. I’d approached the working with people concept as an almost alien notion. How was I to know what the score would be? My best experiences at work were as being on my own.
Looking back now, the period of time spent at Warmwell sand and gravel quarry was the longest twelve months I can remember.
At the end of twelve months I began to question my approach to just being there. Things changed. I felt alienated just for being me.
Funny thing is, I don’t know why. I never did find out why. To this day my understanding of what went wrong is unresolved.
A lot, if not most of the staff there had been there for years and years and some of them had been there since school. Well into their 30’s and 40’s may have been justification if any were needed to look at me differently.
Because of the fact that I was by then a dumper truck driver with the truck being loaded by an excavator driver, or a drag line operator, I had to adapt my approach to meet theirs – possibly. If I turned up for a load too quick, that was frowned upon. I had to time it so that I turned up for a load at just the right time. That meant driving slowly everywhere.
This newer version of work was just something that I would have to get used to. I was here for the duration as far as I was concerned.
Funny though, it’s hard to completely change. I never could resolutely be that different from what my inner self was. Why should my work ethic be challenged by a bunch of employees who on the face of it had had it too easy for too long.
There was good as well as bad at that quarry. Not all people are the same.
At Warmwell a few things went on that were simply unbelievable. It seemed to me as though a select few were intent on trouble.
But in those twelve months, I thankfully built a couple of solid working relationships and it was those that helped to get me through the weird times. I didn’t use that colleague working relationship in any way that would constitute relying on another person to help, but rather in just knowing that I had a better relationship with others just helped all by itself.
In time, I was sure that the tide would, or could change. And in time it was one of those invisible crossroads in life that appeared from out of the blue which allowed the tide to change.
The invisible crossroads is what I call it. It’s more a pathway that appears from nowhere in different guises. And then it becomes a choice that could be made because it was there.
Turning up for work one day it was of great interest to me that another job should be on offer in the ECC quarries. And not this quarry either.
In the fairly recent (at the time) past, and previously also from this same quarry here at Warmwell, staff had been offered a vacancy role in another quarry in the same county once before. One member of staff had taken it on and moved job.
Here again, another job opportunity was on offer in that same quarry elsewhere that had seen that member of staff move to.
As a collective group in the office upon arrival in the morning that day, all staff were offered the opportunity to fill this new job role on offer. Just to be fair. No advertising going on here. Purely in-house.
All heard of it at the same time and all had the opportunity to take up the offer and move to the other quarry.
Since the staff here were well fitted into their own little job and had no intention of leaving it for working elsewhere, the chances seemed slim that any one of them would jump at the chance. I mean looking at the facts, where else do the staff get transported to work in a company vehicle at company expense. The only other place where I knew that happened was at the local nuclear reactor facility whereby hundreds of staff were bussed in on double deckers.
This rabble of staff at the quarry were spoilt by the company in being offered free transport to work. That was worth a lot in itself. They wouldn’t want to lose that.
There were others as well that didn’t live in the area where the free transport was used. They had their own reasons for staying put. One of those was surely the fact that they all knew the staff member who had moved the previous time.
Speaking later with some of them it became apparent that the guy who had moved on was now acting manager at that other quarry and this lot had no intention of working under his ownership.
I felt like I had a good chance of being allowed to move on. From my perspective it would mean leaving this lot behind. And I didn’t think any single one of them would miss me.
The foreman talked through the job requirements and mentioned the name of the quarry and which town it was nearest to.
The only important thing to me was where the quarry was at. The mention of a local forest as being its geographical location left me in pretty much no doubt as to my intended pathway right then.
I was interested. I did the maths and the distance to the other quarry from where I lived at the time was the same distance as I was travelling daily right then, but in the opposite direction.
Christ almighty, it was almost a no brainer.
I put my hand in the air straight away.
No one else followed suit.
It made sense for the company to offer the job in such a way. And following a little talk in the office I was accepted for it.
For me, it was opting to work at another local quarry rather than for opting to work alongside another bunch staff.
It was within cycling distance of home except it was in the other direction from home.
And more than that, as I never had before, I viewed it as career progression. This was after all as much a career as I was ever going to get, I supposed at the time.
***
I am going to liken the whole quarry episode to destiny. My outlook was simple really. I’d tried a lot of things before entering the quarry industry and overall (as a package) none of them worked. They kind of did, but viewed with a long term vision they didn’t.
I’d grabbed opportunities as they had presented themselves to me. These were the invisible crossroads that appeared from time to time. Crossroads that when there, allow a choice of pathways.
I was moving on.
***
Tatchell’s sand and gravel –
I could sense soon after arriving at Tatchell’s that I wasn’t what, or who they had in mind for joining them on the team there.
I guess I wasn’t their preferred choice. I certainly wasn’t known to them.
And this is where the people experiences thing continues. Just by being there I could sense something weird.
So that was funny in my mind. I hadn’t asked back there at Warmwell to be in the running. It had only been by default that I was.
That said, I was as good as the next person, surely?
Still, I could sway opinions easy enough, I felt sure of that. A strong work ethic wouldn’t go amiss anywhere to my mind.
Tatchell’s made perfect sense for me as a career move. Get out from the weird ways of those at Warmwell. Start a fresh somewhere else.
I settled in to the job role quickly and got up to speed. It was all pretty much straight forward.
Luckier still and not known about at the time, (with Tatchell’s being geographically located where it was), it became a stroke of good fortune that neighbouring it a few miles down the road was located another ‘soon to be’ gravel quarry.
The parent company here had recently bought a patch of land adjacent to the town nearest Tatchell’s. This new land acquisition brought with it some of the company’s future. That was why they bought it in the first place. As a bonus, it’s close proximity to Tatchell’s itself would lend itself well to some kind of job security for a fixed amount of time.
The soon to be new gravel quarry would conveniently act as a buffer within government strategy to create a production source and consequently maintain an aggregates surplus for some time to come.
I could hardly put it into words. Here was I, moving on in the quarry business. I’d only been in the business for twelve months and a pathway had appeared. One that was too good to turn down.
With twelve months of people experience under my belt, anything similar to the Warmwell quarry, dealing with folk was, (I felt sure) unlikely to present itself in the same way all over again.
I’d ridden it out with those strange folk there at Warmwell. There had been some nasty incidents and leaving that all behind to go elsewhere in the same environment would make for a refreshing change.
Initially the outlook here in this new environment was favourable. There had to be a good working relationship to be developed with the existing staff. As there was only a total of three members of staff the outlook appeared easy.
Gradually though, things started to fall apart.
***
The nation wasn’t in the best situation as far as expanding big business was concerned back then. Companies getting bigger and bigger dealing with more and more products and services and every which one added was different from the previous one.
Big companies with multiple products and services appeared to be having trouble managing all of them, as opposed to managing just an essential one or two. At least that’s how it was explained to us when senior management paid a fleeting visit one day to purposefully drop a bombshell out of nowhere.
With that in mind, and because at present the local quarries expertise was centred around sand and gravel, as a company it was about to undergo a separation.
Although the quarry business as we knew it was only a few types of aggregates i.e. sand and gravel, for ECCQ it was far more. Their quarrying interests included other types of material like stone for instance; not quarried down in this part of the world. Specifically though, clay was the ECCQ core product. Known as Kaolin in the industry, the product used by everyone but known by no one. At least those not involved with its production.
To enable some stream lining to take effect, the explanation which was delivered was that the parent company wanted to separate all other types of their industry from clay. We would become a part of a newly formed company, one which would be known as Camas
In a clever guise the quarries that we were involved with would still be an ECCQ company, but trading as something new.
To be fair to the parent company, they had included everyone to feel as valued as the next and had gone to all the trouble of offering a competition prize to rename the aggregate side of the business that we were involved with.
The why’s and wherefores of the naming of the new business are completely irrelevant seeing as that little episode didn’t include any of us by virtue of the fact that none of us won that offered competition.
It was worth at the time though to consider that merely having the opportunity to be possibly one who was chosen to name a new company was in itself quite an incentive to feel positively involved. Alone, that inclusion would stand out as a clever bit of staff involvement and ultimately loyalty in a way.
Therefore, as a part of that stock market trading, the inclusion within it as an employee of a firm that was changing its name and identity was personally a kind of a life experience for myself.
So within a few years of starting in the quarry business I had even been a part of company name change. I could now say I had worked for two quarry companies.
That was a fitting start to a quarry career. I viewed that as part of the journey.
Other directions would later appear at random and allow me to cover a whole spread of one industry by sheer chance.
In more ways than one the inclusion within company trading was raised several times into the future.
***
I was just a machine driver. I exercised those skills that were needed to deliver the best results possible with the clapped out machinery that had been allocated for myself to drive.
There were several machines located at Tatchells, two of which were front end loaders: one new machine and one very old machine. The machine allocated to me was the very old one. But I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to be the best at what I did.
The processes at the quarry were three fold. One was static plant loader, one was mobile plant loader and the other was digging and hauling.
I was primarily static plant loader.
Given that task it made all the sense in the world to manage it as efficiently as possible.
I also did everything else too. We had to be multi-skilled.
Covering all the processes increased the value of the job in my mind. It was good. I liked it. I could view myself seeing this place out for the duration. Basically there wasn’t anything that I didn’t do.
As a destiny thing this felt right to me. The quarry industry suited me. What’s more, I had accomplished the jobs move into quarrying in a rash moment of decisive change; which in itself encouraged me to think that as a destiny thing, this was right.
So here I go and everything is looking good. It was hard to believe that within twelve months of starting this job in the quarry business I was already heading off in another direction.
***
Plus and minus –
Tatchells turned out to be six long hot summers and six years of people experiences that would prove frustrating.
The people experiences were an interesting insight to the different approach of others. Some dealings left me flabbergasted that anyone had the cheek to behave in such a way and others left me flabbergasted that as a person I could encourage anyone to behave in such a way – just by being me.
Negativity seemed to follow me around when it came to people. I never wanted to get on the wrong side of other members of staff at the same quarry. It seemed as though it was they who wanted to get on the wrong side of me.
Throughout my time there, some instances played out wrongly. It’s only in later years that I can imagine as to perhaps why some things just didn’t work out.
It’s not so unusual I guess for someone to be singled out. For whatever reason it definitely happened there at that quarry. There was no question that I felt as though the responsibilities of others were neglected by themselves in favour of aiming blame elsewhere if things didn’t work out as they should have. So if something went wrong it always seemed to be pointing at me, regardless of what was going on.
Rather than individualise incidents by the bucket load it’s best to just generalise. Having been in that type of environment its fair to say that there’s good people and there’s just downright awkward people. The good ones such as Andrina Electra got the bad. The bad people seemed to get the better deal.
As someone who respects good and true values it was encouraging to have at least one person on my side who obviously had a similar outlook.
She came out of nowhere. She was the face of Tatchell’s in many ways. She was the image that presented itself in a trip to Tatchell’s. A much respected and much liked girl from the Tatchell’s depot. She was the girl everyone wanted to be in the company of.
She was out of my league. I largely had ignored her presence on site for three reasons: one due to that very fact, another due to the fact that I was married, and thirdly because my involvement on site was for a different company and therefore there was no reason for us to cross paths in a personal way anyhow.
To this day I regret a lot that was involved with my handling of this developing situation. The things I should have and could have done differently.
Being asked to date a member of staff from the other company that shared the quarry premises was incredible. Unexpected.
Actually it was more than that. It was mind blowing.
I’d gotten myself into a loveless marriage, only to find out that there were people out there who saw me differently.
With the wrong person I’d been led to believe that I was pretty much worthless to be honest, and here I was seeing that there were real people out there who saw things differently than I had been led to believe.
Andrina Electra deserved better.
At the time I was guided by the values that my position found me in. As a recently married person, the offer of a new relationship hadn’t occurred to me let alone expected to be offered.
In retrospect I would happily have dumped everything to be in that offered relationship if only my own approach would have allowed me to.
But vows were vows. Being in a marriage that was a humiliating dud left me wondering at what I could have been a part of.
Turning down something that could and would have been entirely different was soul destroying. There was an offer on the table and meanwhile I was in a hapless marriage that was going nowhere.
I would regret that very much over the fullness of time. Not only because a divorce has to run its course. Although not envisaged at the time, it inevitably did happen.
But also because Andrina Electra did end up steady with someone else fairly quickly.
Thirdly, and with the greatest of sadness, after a few years of me leaving Tatchells she was gone.
We (that is Andrina Electra and I) had come close to being together. It didn’t ever seem to quite get there. And now I’m torn by the leaving of the one person who showed me belief in myself.
Worse for me was that later, after I had by then left Tatchells and had lost contact in the same way with the people that I had gotten to know, I was left to innocently discover details that had escaped my notice.
Not even aware that Andrina Electra had died.
Of course, no one had thought to let me know. Why should they? Most folk who worked at Tatchell’s knew that Andrina and myself had flirted and almost made it together.
No one had thought to let me know. I feel shamed with guilt because I could have been a part of her life and she had wanted that. I had wanted that too. Certain barriers however were always in the way.
I regularly wonder whether my intervention, and moreover the lack of it, was anything to do with her not being here anymore. Whether if I’d been a part of her life would have meant she would have avoided that which killed her.
Probably not is the answer.
It’s a haunting experience knowing that I could have changed someone else’s life for the better, but due to honouring true values in a marriage; which from the wife at the time meant the sum total of nothing, I was never able to do so.
That makes me feel very sad. I feel like I let Andrina Electra down. My own wife at the time dishonestly clung to a marriage made up of affairs from her side and values from mine, whilst at the time I could have shown true feelings to someone who would really have appreciated them. And I have always wanted Andrina Electra to know how I, as a person, feel she was a remarkable lady with real spirit and that her efforts were not completely in vain. She made an impact on me that came from the heart.
She had been admired by everyone. Anyone and everyone who stopped at the weighbridge in the quarry at Tatchells made time for her. She was the weighbridge clerk so she was the face of Tatchells. But time spent by countless folk in her company was more along the lines of being in her company than from a weighbridge aspect. This made it all the more flattering that I would ever get a consideration, not to mention an offer that sadly could not be accepted, but would have liked to have been.
The assertion that she left a lasting impression on me is, and always will be overshadowed by the fact that she is no longer here. If she were still here now it wouldn’t be for me to wonder how things could have been back then. Instead though I feel like I wasn’t there when I should, or could have been.
***
Another dimension –
I once read a snapshot biography of a famous person who underwent a life changing event. He apparently went over to the other side during a hospital operating procedure after crashing a motorbike whilst not wearing a crash helmet.
a recovery period interrupted by a bizarre change in personality, he found he had changed in ways he couldn’t explain.
The written column micro biography goes on to say that he came back from that other side with so called messages that he was unaware of before. These messages would be spelt out from words; which without any element of actual effort by himself, just do then spring into his mind. Now able to interpret words into meanings that the word itself fails in a defined way to determine. For instance he reckons truth stands for ‘Taking Real Understanding to Heart.’
I don’t suppose this perceived dimension is limited to just this one person either. Cases of similar other worldly influence have been expressed before. For instance, also read somewhere was a case whereby a person came back from the other side after a brief existence there, now being able to play the piano from a life of not being able to do so before.
Other instances involve people speaking a different language – fluently.
A bold statement follows this describing it as a transformation from one dimension to another. And such a thing would be no different from that which many people may pronounce. The difference being that this certain bloke swears by his experience and stands by it.
Conversely this was just his way of looking at it. It’s a big claim to be proud of knowing, that’s for fucking sure.
For him, the words he describes are spiritually profound, (usually), so Faith becomes: Fantastic, Adventurous in Trusting Him. Hope becomes Heavenly Offerings Prevail Eternally.
I read this biography and for some reason I thought about Andrina Electra.
That was a tragedy. There’s no question.
But was it of my doing?
No, how could I be to blame for something that years later did not involve me at all?
I’m frustrated and angry with how I couldn’t have gone along with the flow back then. It’s an inner conscience thing. I feel guilty. The guilt is two-fold. I wanted to be a part of her life. And if I had have been she would have maybe had a different destiny herself. The approach which was stopping me at the time wasn’t worth the effort that I had put in.
I don’t know where all this fits into destiny. I don’t know where all the people experiences then and into the future fit into destiny either. I’m just fairly convinced that they do.
***
Rubbish tips –
Government policy with regard to aggregates supply nationwide was to have a ten year buffer; designed so that enough aggregates would be on offer at any one time.
Those types of buffers were great decades ago.
Sand and gravel extracted from the ground meant that buffers of multiple years would be harder to come by in the future. Not including dredging from the sea of course.
A good policy when devised. But as with any natural material, there’s only so much to begin with unless it can be planted and grown.
Alongside the quarrying of sand and gravel, and also other materials in other parts of the country, the general industrial process would be to backfill any created hole in the ground and re-landscape to reflect the surrounding countryside. That meant landfill.
And so it was the case at Tatchells.
As far as Joe public was concerned, Tatchell’s was a rubbish tip.
But the backfilling with rubbish was not always the case with all quarries. Such was the impact in some cases that landfill could not be factored in. Maybe it would have been too much of an encumbrance on infrastructure at whatever designated site that didn’t go on to include landfill. Or, for instance, as in one case nearby, the gravel field ran alongside an existing main road.
Warmwell had been a rubbish tip. A really bad one too. A hole in the ground full of tyres and other assorted junk is just about as bad as it can get for ignorance of environment. Following some management failures to comply with anything at all, a burning collection of tyres underground proved to be the death knell for Warmwell as a rubbish tip. The future roadmap of that location then changed to that of something different.
Such was the size of Warmwell that the rubbish tip could easily be then segregated from the rest of it and partitioned off, as it were. This would allow for what was left of the enormous hole in the ground to one day become an attraction of some sort. Some of it (with some creative thinking) had already been reconstructed into a holiday chalet destination.
A classic similar example would be for instance the Eden project in Cornwall where the quarry was not backfilled with rubbish.
Good can come of quarries once exhausted, with the right imagination.
Tatchells though did include landfill. Those particular backfill operations were fulfilled by the other company that shared the same facilities as Tatchells. A waste company.
For them it made perfect sense to share the site as it would be their business which would fill the hole in the ground that the extracted sand would create.
***
Bestwall gravel quarry –
Extracting gravel from sites where ever it could be found was part of the government buffer idea. There would always be local opposition and months if not years of negotiating to arrive at the best solution to be able to get at it. Unless completely non-viable, the companies would find a way to extract it.
Basically, in a nutshell, there had been discovered a layer of gravel at a site of multiple acres at the back of Wareham – the new site to be known as Bestwall.
The name Bestwall itself referred to the house and its gardens.
Bestwall in its original form was a time capsule. Unfortunately it probably isn’t the same anymore. A period house of large capacity, complete with décor and some fittings from the time when it had been a grand house for a grand family.
Unbelievably the house was standing empty at the time so the company lodged the Tatchell’s manger there for the duration of the dig to ensure some occupancy.
All kind of irrelevant, but relevant at the same time because once the gravel quarry was finished, the house would obviously be sold on as a separate entity from that of the surrounding ground.
Surveys had determined gravel to be quite deep for acres and acres around Bestwall. The adjacent fields were therefore paved with gold.
Camas bought that whole site.
And so it came to be that the outlaying fields and grounds were turned into a new gravel quarry.
The new quarry would therefore be known as Bestwall. The dig would only ever be gravel fields as opposed to a deeper quarry that would inevitably have involved sand below the gravel. The chances of a deeper quarry so close to town were outlawed.
Therefore, once the gravel would have been all dug out, the sub and top soil that was periodically stored in huge heaps would then be replaced back where it came from, only at a lower depth.
The plan to finish and reconstruct (once the gravel had all been extracted) was to create a wildlife haven with a lake in the middle; which was in itself – the lake being the subject area where the depth could be lower to ensure that there would be enough soil to phase the edges into the surrounding perimeter.
The neighbouring location of Bestwall as a gravel quarry then kind of allied itself to Tatchell’s as a sort of a twofold enterprise. With less than five miles between the two, the gravel coming out of Bestwall would be hauled up to Tatchell’s, stored, processed, and stored again. From there it would be sold on.
The extraction process at Bestwall had been (from the outset) outsourced to contractors. Basically the contractor was in a win, win situation for the next ten years. Guaranteed work, guaranteed source of income.
Completely because of Bestwall, and head company’s (Camas) nominated choice of contractor, the winds of fortune would surely come into play, as it turned out. There’s a lot to be said for a little bit of give and take to further good relations and create flowing dynamics.
A new job role, short term vacancy would soon be on offer.
Not too long into the dig, the contractors at Bestwall found themselves to be short of a much needed member of staff. It turned out that their main excavator driver had to leave work for an extended time (on a temporary basis) for personal reasons.
Eventually, that position was offered to myself. The contractor didn’t have the spare capacity to fill that space and seeing as there was only a couple of us there at Tatchell’s who could be offered the role, it was only ever going to be me who would volunteer for it. The other guy would fear for his own role at Tatchell’s too much to consider giving this opportunity a go. He turned it down, I got the job.
This new role involved digging out the gravel from Bestwall. As the regular driver would be absent from work for three months or so, it made sense to draft a regular guy from the quarries to fill the vacancy, especially as it would only be for a limited time. And anyway, the quarry company pulled the shots in a way, after all it was their quarry. So it made sense for the contractor to loan out his machine with an already sourced driver from the main quarry.
Great partnership dynamics.
There was undoubtedly and absolutely some good to be had there. This offer could be filed away into my lifetime curriculum vitae history.
There were always going to be some challenges with this role. It meant driving equipment that belonged to a contractor. Not only that, I was to load contractors lorries all day long. Day in, day out.
On the other hand, this role was meant for me. It had my name on it.
I had encouraged a lot of negativity back at Warmwell because I was seen as regular staff working at contractor’s speeds.
Back at Tatchell’s there followed with me the same type of negative vibes. I was unable to pin point why. Here at Bestwall though I had the chance to fit into my mindset and work to a speed that suited me.
With a calculated ten year dig at Bestwall, the job prospects at Camas were not so bad.
Chuck into that mix a three month or so fill in vacancy to replace the guy who was off sick. I was up for that. The new role may even go for longer than the three months that I was asked to do.
It was just so weird. Fill in job vacancies were becoming a repeat process in my life.
An unusual coincidence of moving on.
Following the allocation of the new the job role offer to myself, I would then be off to work elsewhere locally for the next three months or so. My own position at Tatchells was therefore filled by someone else from Warmwell. And yeah, that made sense I guess. Rather than recruit someone new, just bring someone else over.
What I can’t accept is negativity without justified cause. Throughout life I have discovered that people have their own agendas. Up until this point I had been fighting negativity from certain staff and learnt to live with it. Bringing someone over to replace me effectively started that whole scenario all over again.
***
I was happy once I had started the gravel dig at Bestwall. Left to my own devices, the quarry and the constantly evolving roadways there were entirely managed by myself. I was justifiably proud of having created this quarry and its traffic layout.
I almost felt like the quarry was mine. The roads were smooth, the dig continued as it was supposed to.
My focus was to achieve the targets and keep the lorries moving. I loved every second of it.
The machine did me proud and never missed a beat of its own doing. I added it to my list of machines driven throughout my quarry working time.
From that point of view things just got better and better. The list of machines was impressive – I thought. Adding this type of digger to the list just made it a whole lot bigger.
At Warmwell they had all sorts of machines and I had driven a lot of them. The brands and types tallied up like a bucket list in my mind.
I could say I’d driven this and I’d driven that, but actually, who cared.
It only mattered to me.
Working the contractor job at Bestwall as an employee from elsewhere and amongst the contractors themselves was a lonely existence in some ways.
Again followed by this horrible trail of negative vibes due to some spoilt idiot of a boy whose father just happened to own the contractors firm.
The boy – turned lorry driver, did all he could to incite trouble. From what angle I’ll never proper know. To be honest I couldn’t find one despite much mind searching, except for one only possible entry. Jealousy.
That’s always a reason to consider from whatever angle it comes. Which was good for me to come to some sort of conclusion, but for the reasons why was another whole subject again.
Who knows and who gives a flying pig.
The boy created an unbelievable trail of nuisance making.
I would always be glad to see the back of that horrible waste of space who in his quest to look for trouble then planted the seed of doubt in the minds of the management back at the main quarry.
But that never bothered me. As soon as I hit on the answer as being jealousy for a possible and credible cause, (although for what proper reason I don’t know), I had already won. If I was to accept that as the reason then the rest was easy. He had already lost in his own little mind war. He simply couldn’t win. And that was an intoxicating gem of positive energy.
Although whilst digging at Tatchell’s the only trouble was from one angle; another source of problems was from my replacement back at the main quarry who used my absence to gain an unfair foothold.
As a result of all the trouble caused by the son of the contractor boss back at Bestwall, I didn’t appear to those back at the main quarry as a hard working compliant person. More like a bad driver. Worse still a driver who had a few unlikely problems with the machine which were just unbelievable. Problems that however and in whatever way they were viewed, couldn’t ever happen – without a little bit of persuasion: otherwise known as sabotage, would be a fair guess.
***
Machines don’t have brains –
I wasn’t proud of the fact that the main jib arm on the four wheeled excavator that I was driving at the time started to disconnect itself from the secondary jib whilst in the process of loading gravel. Luckily for me it happened just as I was smoothing a load on the back of a lorry.
That jib disconnection issue doesn’t just happen. As a matter of mechanical fact it can’t happen. By design and manufacture process, and more specifically the fact that it ever could happen, had been totally negated by the addition of a retaining pin assembly by and in design.
Driving someone else’s machine required at least some kind of dedicated approach to attention. I made sure that I greased that machine on a daily basis at the end of each day. I ensured that the machine would deliver and if it failed it would be a machine issue rather than a sloppy driver issue.
Those connecting pins only come out if the retaining device is removed – and I sure as hell didn’t remove it. In fact when I had greased it up the previous night there had been nothing out of order.
After some nervous quick thinking as the event unfolded, there soon appeared a reasonable and (although seemingly unrealistic) possible cause. In fact, there could only be one explanation to such a random and unlikely event.
This event had all the hall marks of that trouble making boy who was the contractor boss man’s son. As he was the contractor firm owner’s son he was then able to have access to all his father’s equipment at any time of day – including at night. That pin retainer had been forcibly removed and he had had access to it without any suspicion from passers-by.
He had a bee in his bonnet about me for whatever reason and from all my time spent in his company: be it loading his lorry, or just in visual distance for that matter, he was trouble coming my way.
So with that machine issue; word of which soon spread itself all the way back to the main quarry at Tatchell’s, and the other issue of having been substituted there at Tatchell’s, I was fast on my way out. All that was required was a few niggling issues back at Tatchell’s once I was finished at Bestwall and the rest would be history.
At the time I’d always considered myself a little unlucky that I was side-lined with problems during my time at Tatchell’s. That said it was a pathway to get to the next step.
Looking back it was a good thing. It was good because it included Bestwall – for starters. Bestwall rates with myself as being one of my highlights. I loved all of it despite the issues that did occur. I rose above those issues and just as destiny undoubtedly unwinds, so also did divine intervention surely play out a role in saving me the embarrassment of having an excavator machine literally fall to bits whilst I was at the controls.
Yes, the machine did become disconnected at a joining point. But no, it didn’t fall to bits literally, because for one I had been lucky enough to have the arms of that machine flat on the load of a lorry with no pressure exerted at the time and for two, I noticed something out of kilter at the exact right time to immediately stop all further operations.
I can view that as divine intervention occurring at the precise right time. Had those jib arms been anywhere else at the time, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.
That horrible bosses son, idiot boy, went on to upset a lot of people over a period of time and eventually was seen as the trouble maker that he was. Men and woman alike, he upset everyone he came into contact with and it was all his own doing. Sadly for him he could never work out why. He was a living time bomb whose trigger he pulled himself. A disowned and disliked spoilt person.
What a useless jerk; is all I can think really.
Unfortunately for him he never had the ability to consider that maybe the other person who he was in a personal war with at the time had more than the measure of him.
Once I knew, or suspected the crux of his problem then there is a way to get the better of him. That happened in more ways than one for me.
He did fail in his attempt to destroy a machine of his father’s owning whilst it being in the hands of someone who he had a problem with. And of that I was sure he was the culprit. There was no other explanation to fit.
Secondly, as he drove one of the lorry’s that was being loaded by myself, I’m sure it must have crossed his mind how great it would be if the excavator machine fell apart somewhere very near to his own lorry.
With the unfolding drama that had played out and because of the circumstances, it didn’t take a scientist to work out the details.
His father wasn’t stupid.
Anyone who believed that the machine issue was of my doing was surely as stupid as the boy himself.
The owner of the contractor firm was more than happy for me to carry on driving his machine once the repairs were complete.
He knew. He was a respected business man who didn’t get where he was by being thick. For sure he worked it out and he probably had the answer long before I did.
‘How to make yourself look stupid’, would have been a good question that boy could have asked himself if only he had had the sense to do so.
***
The year zero, give or take –
Along the journey was like treading the yellow brick road in a way. It had been an eye opener. The whole Tatchell’s episode had included Bestwall.
There was more to follow. One particular source of humiliation for that lorry driver boy was genuinely of national interest for many others.
It’s not every day that uncovered historical artifacts hit the headlines.
Whereby the fields were paved in gold at Bestwall, in that the gravel below the surface at Bestwall was worth the effort to extract, the fields were proper paved with actual gold.
One whole week following my repatriated role back at Tatchell’s and the once again full time contractor’s excavator driver had resumed his role back onto the machine at Bestwall, the gravel fields gave up their secrets in allowing for the unearthing of a true pot of gold.
A cache of Roman gold coins was unearthed by the excavator driver. A cache that I had been one week away from unearthing myself. A cache also that the value of was to be shared by the museum and land owner and the driver that unearthed it. Or in whatever combination was the final decider. I could never have been sure how the value of it was eventually spilt, only in that the excavator driver did do very well out of it.
The gold marked the start of the archaeological dig, of which a part of the Bestwall complex would then become.
And the boss man’s son would never be a part of that.
But I was.
I didn’t care that the spoils of the coins would be shared with the driver of the excavator. Amusingly for me was that the boy would never benefit from it. And he would have to carry on working alongside the driver who did.
It didn’t matter to me either that I was so close but so far from unearthing a genuine time capsule. It did on the other hand matter to me that the boss man’s son would not be the beneficiary of something that I had laid the pathway to. It mattered because he didn’t deserve to be.
Positive energy for sure.
The single most eventful prospect about Bestwall itself (not including the fact that it became a gravel supply for roughly ten years) was that it became an archaeological dig as well as a gravel dig. For Bestwall as a site, that was the icing on the cake. And for me it was in my destiny to be a part of uncovering that.
The fact that I had spent three months on a pathway to uncovering it but to end up short of uncovering it by one whole week was, although not favouring me exactly, never-the-less a justifiable cause for me to be happy.
Although no one would know or care, I slotted myself into the history timeline of that place.
My time at Bestwall had included some issues that I had risen above. Whilst there I had seen good and bad. I’d improved myself as a person by being a part of the whole contractor thing at Bestwall. Maybe without realising it I had always wanted to be a part of that.
I had been the mainstay in creating a quarry. Not many people can say that. For me this was the single most bang for your buck point to be proud of. Bestwall had been mine. No one else in those three months did anything in creating that quarry. It was all down to me.
And I can’t forget after a whole three months what a fantastic way it was to piss off that idiot boy. To be told where to put his lorry by me so that it could then be loaded by me most definitely made me smile every time he arrived for a load.
And every time once loaded, also glad to see the back of him.
Following the Bestwall gravel dig, I returned to a very different Tatchell’s. My role there had been covered by the member of staff drafted in to substitute for me. Whilst that wasn’t an issue in itself because I just slotted right back in where I left off, what was an issue was the disturbingly bad vibes that I had to deal with from him.
I didn’t care about him one jot. I did care though about how I was made to look by him.
Some people are too interested in themselves.
Largely I have come to the conclusion that they must be missing something in their lives to go to all the trouble of altering the natural flow of things.
The good and unusual things that were either witnessed or took place whilst at Tatchell’s were never undermined by the eventual end game there.
Leaving Tatchell’s was the Tatchell’s end game. The Tatchell’s end game was always going to happen. The good and unusual stuff was an added bonus.
If I could absorb the benefits of witnessing the good and unusual; which I did, then I had surely grabbed all that was possible from the Tatchell’s journey. I absorbed it and stored it for later. It’s all a part of my story.
***
Memories are gold –
There was a lot of memorable things for me to recount. I can proudly say for instance that I was witness (whilst at Tatchell’s) to one of nature’s most powerful acts, fusing with one of man’s own created sources of equal power, or force.
During a thunderstorm whilst in a dumper truck at the time; having the ability to witness a lightning strike onto the top of one of those major metal electric pylons not fifty yards away is a vision you don’t forget in a hurry.
For the duration the lightening held in place on top of the pylon the paint burnt off of it in a cloud of smoke. It was a sizzling flash of magnetised natural electric connecting with man-made electric.
The dumper truck experiences don’t end there either.
Being able and fortunate enough to witness a grass snake swimming in the river at Wareham during a kayak trip was awesome in itself.
Watching a grass snake swimming in and coming out of the silt pond at Tatchell’s right under the vehicle step I was stood on at the time was another one of those close encounters of which are not every day normal. Standing on the foot rung that enables entry into the door of the dumper truck so that I could get as close as possible, the snake carried on its normal life directly below where I was stood, oblivious to me watching it from just above.
Stuff like that to me is much valued.
***
Machines with personalities –
And then there’s the machines. How could it be possible, surely, that a machine can have such relevance in a life direction?
Well…. they did. One of them did anyway.
Machines figure highly with me. It may never have been a determined quest to associate so closely with them, it did though turn out to be a recurring feature.
Tatchell’s had its share of machinery for a small quarry. I was proud to be associated with all of it. I enjoyed the proximity to a machine and its core purpose. As though the machine did have a brain and I wanted to interact with it.
Over time I watched the efforts of some other machinery drivers and whilst there was some positive attributes to other folk, surprisingly to me there was so much misunderstanding with aspects of machinery workings. I could never understand why robotics in its jerky basic form seemed to be the favoured way of some. Almost like squared off edges as opposed to rounded off edges. Some drivers stopped at the end of each movement before continuing with the next.
In my mind machines were supposed to look like super fluid hydraulic smoothness in motion. And to be honest it was a lot easier to operate machinery in the smooth manner than it was in the articulated jerky manner; the style I witnessed regularly. It just didn’t make sense to me.
My way would be different. I would be seen as the smooth operator. I would make that machine dance. That was my way.
Little was I to know that the more machine experiences I had under my belt, the more in good stead would they stand me in the future, and beyond Tatchell’s.
I loved driving all excavators. Especially the rusty old vintage and visually clapped out Ruston Bucyrus. It was a true powerhouse of a machine.
Far from sounding like a bit of a geek, I feel included in progress just to have driven one. Not only do I have a big sense of proudness to have been associated with such a powerfully bare and capable machine, I have many happy memories of just sitting in the driver’s seat operating it as it was designed to be operated – and not breaking it, as I had witnessed many times at Warmwell quarry.
This machine was top level. Proper engineering. Laid bare without any of the accoutrements of modern additions. No radio, no pedals, no sound proofing, no Q cab, no soft furnishings or spoils of comfort.
This machine was the single most stand out of them all for me.
And Tatchell’s inherited that machine from Warmwell.
Once at Tatchell’s it became a used workhorse on many occasions by myself and I loved every minute of it. I used it in a manner different from that of which I had witnessed during its time at Warmwell.
Of course, I never thought that the appearance of this particular brand of machine could be replicated anywhere. This machine wasn’t the type that you would see at a typical construction site so with that in mind was therefore not seen as a typical excavator. It was a proper quarry machine, built to go quarrying.
It also didn’t seem likely (to myself), as a contender for popular use in quarries at the time either, seeing as it was fairly old technology. This machine was a relic in terms of machine years.
For me it was a case of respect and use with care. These machines were a thing of the past. And it was brilliant.
If things happen in three’s, as the saying goes, then Ruston Bucyrus was one of those.
Into the future that particular machine figured once again and I would be the beneficiary of its appearance and intended purpose.
How could it be possible to be followed around by the one machine that for me was the single most stand out tool in the quarry industry.
***
Time and tide –
As time went by the tides of change were making their mark. I eventually left Tatchell’s under the impression that some people will stop at nothing to gain very little. And it initially mattered that I had to pay the price.
But destiny is a funny thing. I guess some people won’t see it. Destiny doesn’t figure in their lives. At least not consciously.
Eventually, I saw it a different way.
There had to be a reason for it.
***
Portland calling –
Ahead of me, following Tatchell’s, was this period of time. A gap before my next full time job.
I did spend time working jobs on a self-employed basis and I did complete some other jobs that had been in the waiting for ages. For that I had been grateful.
This space of time also gave me the correct access route to successfully apply for what for me was always going to be my most favourite job of all time. A job which I was and always will be rightfully proud to have been involved in – as if Bestwall wasn’t enough.
As a fact then: if I hadn’t left Tatchell’s the next phase doesn’t work.
I was surprised to happen across the job that appeared from nowhere. Advertised in a local paper it stood out to me as being a lucky find from the outset.
Having been involved directly in recruitment with big firms when starting my quarry journey and having an idea how the hurdles were managed sometimes, some aspects of it become accepted as normal. There’s power in who you know as opposed to what you know.
And if that was not the reasoning behind filling vacancies, it seemed that an internal fill certainly was another more common approach.
It seemed odd then that a massive national firm like ARC chose to advertise in the local paper to fill a vacancy on Portland.
Geographically sited further from home than I had been used to getting to and from didn’t matter. It was more about the job than how far away from home it was. Right then I needed to sort out some sort of full time work.
Cycling had been my preferred option for getting to work and back. Had been for years. That would have to change if I scored with this newly found job.
I had been beginning to wonder whether I would ever get another full time job at the time of securing it. And what a job it was too. It could never be matched.
Will never be matched.
Even a further move at a later date elsewhere; which would round up a fair spread of materials worked with to add to my own repertoire of career moves in the quarry industry, couldn’t match the job that after applying for and following the interview for, fell into place like dominoes.
Considering the interview process had been more like a day out for myself (and Troy) at the time, it had been an unexpected windfall of a bonus to secure it following a pretty carefree approach if I’m going to be honest.
The circumstances involving the job find and the subsequent approach to it were not exactly equal to the enormous benefits it carried. Like I didn’t give it the credit it deserved on the day of the interview.
If I had to sum it up in one word, I was lucky.
My thoughts at a later stage would be along the lines of: if I had really tried, the outcome may well have been different.
I considered it was strange that this massive national firm had placed an advert in the local press to start with. Stranger still that I had plucked it out from the back pages.
Rather than tripping down to the job centre, instead relying on whatever appeared in the local newspaper. That in itself was a pretty careless approach. Or carefree maybe.
Following the process involved in securing that job, I would ask myself why had I been so lackadaisical in my approach. Whichever way I viewed it, I should have maybe been a bit more dynamic, I suppose, in my quest there. Something I would learn from and stick in my back pocket for another time.
On the other hand, it might not have worked if using a more dynamic approach, or what in my mind came over as more assertive. If things happened for a reason then my way was the right way. I just didn’t know it at the time.
***
Portland stone, under the company name of ARC, had been sold off whilst I had been there. None of us saw it coming. There again, why should we have.
It had been a kind of a local gossip, stroke rumour mill piece that stone from Portland was becoming harder to get at.
Portland stone had clout though. If any high class project anywhere wanted quality limestone like no other, then this was where it was.
But it wasn’t all about Portland stone as a material. There were processes in place that were becoming more difficult to justify.
To get to the building stone there were two options to consider. The options about how to get at it became more of a consideration than the stone itself – in a way. And that’s where we came in.
We, as in the small team of staff that I formed a part of, were the crushing gang. Our role was to remove the various layers of material above the solid limestone itself.
Whilst that particular process could be easily considered – (and then discounted by the ill-informed), it remained a hot topic for the limestone industry and locals alike.
Using high explosives for blasting was a disruptive process. During the three years that I had worked at that quarry, blasting was the only method by which to get at the stone below the layers above, in this particular quarry.
Industrial explosives don’t have the same appeal the closer you get to neighbourhoods.
In short, the industry was going to have to change.
Looking back, I don’t know whether the change of company name was anything to do with the future sourcing of Portland stone. It probably had nothing to do with it and we were just carried along on that wave.
We went from ARC one day to Hanson the next.
Selling out on the stock market maybe wasn’t all about that; the stone extraction and stuff. Maybe it was more about being taken over by another company, simple as.
Frankly, I didn’t care. To be involved with companies twice in a row that had been rebranded somehow became an added tick in the box for my CV. I was by now quite proud of that very fact. It put me in an unusual position. I became one of a select few. This alone would be another feather in the cap which might look like something worth mentioning one day. You never know.
And for sure there was a destiny thing playing out here. I could mess with the natural flow and upset that, I guess. And maybe I was doing just that.
The following move yet to come rated as one of those invisible crossroads that appear from time to time. It could be the right move or it could be the wrong move.
There was a choice.
Before I’d move on from Portland I would be doing myself a massive injustice not to reminisce some of the unbelievable and even more tick in the box events that I was to be a part of.
Of great historical value to any old timer local Portlander would be the railway which isn’t there anymore.
Yes, a railway which isn’t there anymore. And why that would be we can only blame the government of the day for being so profoundly fucking short sighted as to destroy some of the heritage that this island created.
Back in its heyday, Portland was an industrial power house. The stone extracted over the years was put to good use in more ways than building some of the most iconic landmarks of the UK.
To enable this and facilitate an enhanced method of transportation, the Portland railway was built. Designed to form the transport link to the mainland as a quick and reliable method to move the stone around the country. A railway that used Weymouth as a last stop before the final leg that then wound its way across the causeway over the water between the mainland and the island itself.
Due to some idiotic thinking on the part of some useless waste of space bureaucrats, the thought process involved in removing the railway link never went on to consider the reason why it was ever there in the first place.
Back in old times before the railway existed, the stone was loaded onto trailers hauled by steam engines. Not being the most practical of machinery for hauling heavy loads down the very steep and very long hills; which formed the access onto Portland that stands at 400 feet above sea level to locate the quarries, on occasions were known to lose their authority on the haul process whereby the stone’s weight would simply override the status of the engine and cause a crash.
Easily done when looking at the steering methods on a steam engine. A chain connected from the wheels to a winding pivot, operated by a turn wheel was unprecise and subject to excessive lateral movement that would simply be unmanageable by anyone.
In effect, the railway was decades ahead of its time.
Getting traffic off of the roads was what later governments of many, many years into the future, wished for but never had the ability or common sense to be able to do. In the old days they had managed it successfully. Instead of slapping unhealthy amounts of road tax onto trucks or engines, they built a railway; which instantly solved the problems. A railway which to this day could have been a major tourist attraction with real history, if in later years they hadn’t destroyed it.
But that wasn’t to be.
***
At a later date, well into the future, there was some tidying up to be done along the old route that the railway once took.
The location of that railway is lost to the casual visitor to the island. In fact it may even be lost to a lot of the folk living there.
A bridge spanning a width of road through Easton on Portland would go by unnoticed, I’m sure, by most folk using that road.
Being the crushed stone loader driver, the old railway tidy job was mine. The machine allocated to me was the one with the teeth.
My machine, my job. That was show they had viewed it. And lucky old me too, from my point of view.
The idea being to clear up from the mess that it was left in from years gone by.
It’s too late to recreate that railway. There have been too many changes in the landscape to enable it to happen.
But I now know. I know of its whereabouts and I have effectively worked on it. I am aware of its history. Anything I had to do with it was only for the better.
I wonder sometimes how it came to be that during my time at Portland was when all those unique jobs that took me away from crushed stone production happened to turn up.
Seen as a fill in task when production had to alter for whatever reason, those unique jobs were once in a lifetime only jobs.
The over stocking of crushed stone wasn’t a new process after all. It was one that altered the daily production of crushed stone though.
So, I could say that I had knowledge of the Portland railway and I had been a machine driver directly used in conjunction with it. And that little number had all been the result of production change.
I could also say that a coastal protection project not that far away also included myself as being a part of that project.
The coast at Ringstead will never be the same again. And one construction project that again I felt justifiably proud of being a part of.
My role included the loading of all the large boulder stone from disused quarry areas, onto lorries that would take that stone to create a sea defence wall which would become the Ringstead coast preservation project.
Also of which would go unnoticed by anyone and everyone.
In some ways that was the best part of those jobs. I was a part of it, but unknown to anyone else.
And who really cares? It’s a minor thing to be involved in.
But it’s a big thing for me to know. I like it when I’m involved with projects that make a difference but no one cares about.
Another proud achievement on my quarry journey through life.
***
Contract work –
And moving forwards it was satisfying to know that in being a part of this establishment would allow me the opportunity to take part in one particular project. The specifics of that project required us on the crushing gang at Portland quarries to sign up to a fairly demanding contract.
This would be a crushed stone only contract.
As a conscientious type, I felt fully qualified with the requirements that this task deserved. The full throttle approach was my kind of thing.
The contract would ultimately involve the work involved to supply all of the material for what would amount to the entire unseen infrastructure for a highway. Not just any ordinary highway at that. This one would become probably Dorset’s most appreciated dual-carriageway in the history of road building.
To be known as the Puddletown bypass it didn’t have the grand name that it deserved. Yes, it did bypass the village that it was to be referred to as a bypass for, as well as another one. However, the actual importance of it largely unknown to a lot of people.
To have used the road in its previous guise before the new super highway only highlighted how good it is now as a successor to the original road.
Serving as an arterial route from East to West and West to East in order to take the traffic away from two small villages, and because of its construction benefits meant taking it through the open countryside, immediately gained it the reputation as the place to go to in order to run a car, or bike at full chat for the pure fun of driving on that brilliant road. Illegal or not.
For me it is proudly comforting whenever driving along that road. I had been an instrumental part in the construction of it.
Prior to the new highway being mentioned as a reason why; for a newly drafted contract, there had been some opposition in the quarry there (amongst some of the crushing gang staff) to having that contract shoved in our faces with but only two fairly obvious options.
Speaking for myself, knowing that I had been encouraged to sign a contract to the effect that I would be prepared to work twelve hour days for five days a week and a six hour day on the sixth day of the week for a whole twelve months made it all the more better to boot for myself, upon consideration. It was kind of like take it or leave it.
However, there was something tangible in knowing that.
We had just become a very valuable resource. Because in order to facilitate that production requirement then in itself enabled the building of that road. Looking at the times set down, the seriousness of it wasn’t to be taken lightly.
In short, that meant another twelve months of job security.
Consequently, in the course of the following twelve months and with due diligence and hard work, the road was constructed and completed in that required set time, and on time.
We did it. We dug and loaded all that stone.
What a result, as far as I was concerned.
On reflection, the quarry business was becoming a capricious industry to be involved in as a direct worker. As an original concept and that of being a certain amount of job security involved with quarry work, years down the line had become anything but when looking at how work was sourced and timescales aligned to that.
Times were always changing.
Once that project was finished it was a weird feeling reverting back to normal work times. Those previous work times were just a distant memory.
So there we are. That was another unusual and invisible project for me to highlight. It was becoming something of a trait of mine to conduct projects or jobs of value that no one else would be aware of let alone credit to anyone, or even care about.
***
Ruston Bucyrus forever –
You know how it is. People with common sayings or references. Old one liners, short anecdotes and stuff like that.
I know, I’ve heard it all before. People saying things like ‘me and this car is going to get old together’, and stuff like that. People like to form a partnership between themselves and machine.
I’m no different.
As a quarry worker, machines figure nowhere more highly. My forte as far as I was concerned had already been aligned to them.
I think I would be doing myself an injustice not to remember one truck that turned up at our quarry. A very British truck that I feel honoured to have been in, let alone to drive and use for its intended purpose. Whoever heard of a Heathfield?
Made in Newton Abbot in Devon of all places. As a trade name they didn’t last long, but only because as a company it was taken over by another bigger firm who obviously recognised the value of the machines produced there.
Light years ahead of its time in design and more than a match for any modern day machinery of equal comparison.
These days it’s all about CAT and Terex and Volvo etc. So mention Heathfield to any quarry worker these days and it wouldn’t be recognised.
Never would I have expected to have worked in and with so many varied machines in one small quarry. I’d thought Tatchell’s had delivered on that score. It did, at the time.
Portland though was a magnet for the weird and wonderful. Some machines I’d never heard of before, others I had.
Amazingly, to be repatriated with the one machine over the years that I had previously become familiar with from elsewhere was a coincidence that could be written but not imagined.
In my given role at Portland, I was lucky to have an allocation of more than one machine to use regularly. Not only did I load crushed stone from the digging face, I also had the task of breaking very large boulders into a size fit for the on-site crusher to deal with.
Throughout my working years at Portland it was worth wondering if it could actually get any better. Portland was outrageous.
In later years I knew (after eventually leaving the stone quarries) that I would never get another job that would provide me with so much satisfaction.
I’d actually been there and I’d actually done it. I was one of those who could at the time actually say ‘I’m a blah, blah and I love my job.’ That’s rare.
Of both the tasks allocated to myself, they were so good that there wasn’t a single second of it that I didn’t love.
I’d become familiar with the hydraulic stone breaker at the controls of the Fiat Allis. Otherwise known as a pecker; was a moniker name given to the hydraulic stone breaker.
But I’d be blown away to find another Ruston Bucyrus turn up on site. Although not exactly the same one as I knew from years gone by, it was exactly the same type of machine that I had used frequently back at Tatchell’s.
Seeing this machine turn up at Portland for my use was the icing on the cake. This was my favourite of all machines.
And here it was, on Portland. In the same quarry where I was working and it would be the main machine for the pecker after and following the demise of the Fiat Allis following a fire related issue in the engine compartment.
Unbelievably, I would work with that favourite machine of mine all over again in a different quarry performing a different task. It was brilliant. This powerhouse of a machine coupled to the pecker became a most used piece of equipment by myself to the point whereby I inherited the stone breaking job too. Frankly I couldn’t get enough of it.
I had the best two machines in the quarry.
Although the pecker was originally fitted to a Fiat Allis when I arrived at Portland, the transfer of that tool to the Ruston Bucyrus when it turned up at the quarry was like another coming home for me.
The Ruston Bucyrus episode had a strange kind of reciprocating journey as of myself. It was sort of mirror image in a way.
Three times our paths cross. Three times in three different quarries.
The first time as introduction where I watched as it was misused and mistreated. The second as well suited together and bonded like man and machine together. The third as having had the best out of and on the way out.
In career terms and that of my progress through the quarry journey, the same could be said – in a way.
***
It was sad to see whilst during my main role as front end loader driver, that during times when I was operating the loading job I could see the Ruston excavator misused and mistreated by one particular and hopeless, uncaring and irresponsible so called driver. The machine that I had lovingly treated with care and attention, went on to be destroyed eventually. Destroyed by a fool.
Unfortunately it fell into disrepair. I watched it on its way out, the same as I had watched the Ruston Bucyrus misused at Warmwell.
The same as I was on my way out of another quarry. On my way out of Portland.
A weird and reciprocal image of a machine that I felt at home with.
It’s a wonder how I crammed so much into such a small space of time on Portland.
I couldn’t reach higher than the heights for career highlights that my time at Portland provided. So good as to be worth writing about.
For me they were anyway.
***
Time and tide –
I saw Portland quarries lose its grip slowly. It was a massive thing being the proudest guy on the planet to get a job working for ARC, one of the biggest construction firms the country had ever known.
Then we shifted to Hanson. They were one of the biggest aggregate companies the country (or world even for that matter) had ever known.
It was an even more massive thing having worked for both of them. Plus of course, I’d also worked for ECCQ; which in itself was the biggest quarry company in the UK. Not only that it had a history too. A company that originated in Cornwall and had spread its wings to occupy the whole of the UK, and globally too.
My pathway had a repeating effect on the face of it. Quarry to quarry, machine to machine, company to company.
Unfortunately the stone industry related to Portland became a victim of its own success. There was only ever so much stone to be extracted from Portland and it had been going on for hundreds of years as it was. There was less and less of it available by employing the techniques we were used to, as a company in that quarry, i.e: by using industrial high explosives to blast a whole seam of top lying stone for crushing, dig it, crush it, then drill the stone out from beneath it.
Any decent stone quarried previous to the modern age of extraction (as shown above) was done so by using the techniques of the day. Going way back that would have meant a team of quarry men with hammers and chisels opening the stone at seams. That itself created pockets of ground that were only really half dug, but due to civilisation in general and development of roads and houses etc, is always how those areas will be. Sort of redundant areas now because it was just too awkward to get at anything below.
Hanson had trialled mining techniques with some cutting gear brought in.
There was constant whisper on the grapevine. The perimeter of the quarry was contracting. People were going to lose their jobs, I could see it coming.
Whilst they down the road (we weren’t the only quarry company on Portland), did have a different approach for extracting stone than ours, theirs proved better than ours.
They mined their stone whilst we blew the place to pieces to get to the stone we extracted. Obviously by using high explosives there was then more than one type of stone to retail at the end of it, as opposed to just mined blocks of solid stone.
Their method attracted the compliance and good will of literally anyone, whilst ours was destructive. People didn’t like it.
They were out of sight, out of mind. We were in your face and noisy with the use of what would be seen as an unnecessary process.
Whilst the perimeters of the quarry were contracting; in effect they were closing in on neighbourhoods locally. So expansion meant smaller areas to justifiably use our company’s methods.
We (the crushing gang) were not here for the long haul anymore. It would be mining or nothing in the future. That was how I saw it.
And that appealed to me massively. But would it include me? that was the question I had to ask myself. The old saying of last in first out was a well-used terminology in those days.
***
So, in recognition of having been involved with probably the world’s most famous stone, there had been I, happily working in a stone quarry – and not just any stone either. Portland stone carried with it a world famous heritage.
Three years of stone extraction had seen me be involved with some pretty awesome projects that I can proudly attest to being a part of.
Still, when the writing was on the wall it was plain to see.
Jumping ship from Portland stone back to EECQ (English China Clays Quarries) was like going back to where I started.
That’s where I had started all my quarry experience and career.
Warmwell had been an ECCQ quarry.
Weird!
Except maybe not. Would be reasonable to ask why I would do such a thing as leave my most favourite job of all time. After all, wasn’t Portland stone the best job I had ever had? Didn’t quarrying at Portland knock the living daylights out of all other quarries as far as I was concerned?
Yes it did. Without a shadow of doubt.
***
Trains –
I had an application posted whilst at Portland. An application to be a train driver.
Hanson ran trains in the Mendips and being an employee of Hanson I had been aware of this job vacancy from within.
I did get an interview.
I wasn’t successful. There again, I never thought I would be. What did I know about trains? Anyway, travelling to Shepton Mallet every day would be a complete embuggerance for sure. It was probably for the best that I didn’t get that job.
It was a vacancy worth applying for all said and done. I would have loved to be a train driver.
Having had the task of train track left overs clear up on Portland it was a fitting tribute in my mind that a train drivers job should present itself and that I should apply for it. It was like a slingshot attempt at becoming something bigger in the scale of rail when all the time the chances of ever succeeding were minimal to none at all. Much the same as the Portland railway that I did get involved with.
The train driver wasn’t the only application I had in the post at the time.
Looking more locally, there had been a vacancy at a clay mill just the same distance from home as my previous job at Tatchell’s.
I applied for it.
Anything had to be considered. After having applied many times for a civil service job that just happened to be on the doorstep at home, and having gotten nowhere, the consideration to apply for the clay mills job was a no brainer. If I got lucky with that one I could cycle to work again.
It would be a rash decision for sure.
Theoretically, and if the guarantee of work had been there, I could have worked on Portland for a lifetime and love every bit of it.
Except within, I felt it the right time to make a move. This was one of those invisible crossroads that appear from time to time.
***
Clay –
Three years down the line from ARC on Portland and here was I involved with a different product again. A different product and a different process
I felt like I had conquered everything there was to conquer in the quarry industry, short of mining.
And to add to my own accomplished list of quarry materials worked with, this next one was a bit like coming home too – in a way.
It appeared a bit rash to abandon that much favoured job on Portland for another quarry related job with a bit of a difference. Looking from my jobs repertoire point of view, the next job I applied for was well out of sorts. Because although it was dealing with quarried materials, it’s specific process didn’t involve the procedures that I was used to.
Another job vacancy, another interview. This one had to count. There was unease at Portland. I decided to make a move on a job before a move was made on me.
I wasn’t a Portlander, I wasn’t a local. I couldn’t see how I would get any preference.
I could see how I would be subject to some kind of discrimination possibly, or bad feeling should a local have to leave his job over me.
I would take the decision out of their hands and make it for them. It would be far better to have something in the bag.
And as a pathway, a route through destiny, I had a lot to be grateful for. I’d put my faith in making the right decisions at the right time and so far things had worked out alright.
I could hold my head high and say – ‘I’d worked for Portland Stone. I had been a part of that historical journey. And I had loved it. I’d had my job whereby I could say ‘I was a blah, blah and I love my job.’
Fair enough?
Yeah, for sure it’s fair enough. My destiny, my choice. I’d grabbed it when it was there for me.
Now I was up for something different. In fairness to myself it was a massively generous decision on behalf of myself to quit the Portland job and apply for another, therefore allowing those left on Portland to sort things out amongst themselves when the axe fell; which it would.
Not that anything at all felt right about the interview for the next job, which would again be at a ECCQ facility. A job that frankly I wasn’t at all sure about from the beginning and had no confidence in being able to secure it.
Torrential rain and unusual questions in the forthcoming interview put me on the back foot. There didn’t appear to be any good omens present that day.
Dejectedly, I walked away from that interview full of self-doubt. Walking out into the pouring rain felt like a pretty hapless attempt at moving on at a time when I considered it the right thing to do.
Sometimes though, it’s just best to go with the flow.
***
The missing link –
ECCQ did come knocking back on my door. Wasn’t even worth bothering trying to work out where I did things right.
I left Portland and walked straight into the clay mills. The move was with mixed feelings. It was the right time to change. But I was leaving a job I loved.
Settling in at the clay mills took some time. Some of the jobs were ideal, some were a bit of a challenge. Still, with the right training it all measured out in the end. I came to enjoy most of the tasks and favoured some above others, such was the variety of jobs allocated there.
A lot of the jobs there included the use of farm tractors.
It was like coming home to the beginning. The very beginning. The farm tractors and everything.
Generally speaking, working at the clay mills opened windows into a facility that had in a small way been left alone throughout the mists of time.
An amusing assortment of local folk to mix with that whilst working with left me feeling like I was a bit of an imposter. Coming in on their little world was almost alien like.
As work goes, I did get used to operating the mill on night shifts. Night shifts were part of the working pattern there. Other tasks were also involved overnight.
***
The clay mills was ok. It wasn’t however a lifelong career move.
Looking at the philosophy of destiny, this place just had to be in it. There as part of the journey. If I was to work things out for the right reasons then ECCQ clay mills was just another step along the way.
Strangely, as it turned out, the company running it at the time was another victim to another trade re-branding.
Who would have thought at the time that working for ECCQ originally, (ten years previously), would see me return to ECCQ ten years later. Including having slotted in a couple of other companies along the way that also due to the stock markets had then been traded and rebranded.
Upon reaching this point in time with ECCQ at the clay mills, here we were again. Being traded for a different company.
Weirder still was that at Tatchell’s, we became Camas because ECCQ wanted to concentrate on their core product, which was clay. Now here, at Furzebrook clay mills – under the company name of ECCQ and operating with their prescribed core product, they were to be taken over and sold to Imerys.
I had therefore then seen ECCQ offload us to Camas so they could put all their efforts into the one product that I end up working with on their behalf, only to be handed to the French in a takeover and lose their grip on their own core product.
As a follow on from that I would then leave this industry myself and leave behind the one company that started it all for me in the same way that they were leaving us all behind to be a journey with a different outfit.
Overall, it didn’t matter to me at all. In fact, I don’t think a single one of us working there gave it much thought as Imerys came along and bought ECCQ clay mills.
Going from ECCQ to Imerys seemed if anything another repeating instance along the way. Everywhere I went the company that I worked for changed hands. Eleven years in the quarry industry having worked for six different companies in three different set-ups.
It’s a record!
Yeah, not much of one though. Just something weird along the way.
Imery’s was a small snapshot in time that would allow me a vision into a world that a lot of people won’t see. And of course (well possibly anyway), yes, it was even destined to be that way.
At the time I wasn’t to know how my long term outlook appeared. I now had the job and it was this or nothing. Learning the job was par for the course. There was lots to be grateful for being there. Some nice little jobs, some messy jobs. Take the good with the bad.
And there was definitely some good to be had there.
I’d crammed a lot in to a period of time which was unexpectedly to be cut short. Not because I wanted to leave for any other reason than looking to be involved with that civil service company that may better serve my purposes in the long run.
***
Wild side of life –
Fitting wildlife into talk of a job appeared a regular occurrence. Some unexpected gem of the natural world seemed to pop up at unexpected times.
Was it because I had a love of wildlife that on some occasions it definitely was a case whereby I was in the right place at the right time. And that I could be bothered with it. I wanted it in fact. The desire to observe wildlife as a passer-by was magical. I viewed that as something which another passer-by may miss.
Because strange as it may seem the job at the clay mills allowed me a little bit of a window into fairly unique wildlife observation.
I’d been quite lucky as it goes, to see some unexpected wildlife observations at a few of the quarries that I’d worked in.
***
There was one particular job at the clay mills which required the use of the bowser tanker on the back of the tractor. A bonus job as far as I was concerned.
In dry weather the dust on the main road outside the mills had to be dampened down. In order to facilitate this the objective was to haul the bowser onto the nearby heathland whereby water from a natural source was then sucked into the bowser to be then spread onto the road.
For the heathland to open up its secrets it therefore was important to be at the right place at the right time. But not just anyone is going to know about that piece of land. The track to get to the water source wasn’t a public footpath, or bridleway, or anything like that.
It did though allow for us the use of it in an access way that was out of bounds to anyone else. With that came access to whatever else happened to be there at the time.
I don’t see ever repeating the scenario played out there on the heath one day. Whilst the moment was incredible and unbelievable, it also wouldn’t be easily accepted by a casual listener. It would sound like an exaggerated story to tell like the one about catching a fish. Not that it matters to me whether people choose not to believe it. I was there so I know.
There had been a lot of sightings I’d experienced along the way that when recounted sounded far-fetched, so why should this one be any different.
For instance, there was the UFO sighting. Although there was no material evidence to back it up, there had been plenty of other folk who had reported a UFO sighting in the same area on the same day at the same time. My own encounter was a true rendition of a sighting that made no sense. Whose going to believe that one?
And the sighting of the black Panther size cat on Portland. What about that one then? I’d actually seen it. I even had pictures of a large cat footprint in the rock dust as evidence. I can’t imagine any one listener going along with that one. But I had seen it. And there was a rumour mill on Portland that gave credence to the spotting of a big black cat.
Then there’s the pot of Roman gold in the gravel quarry. That sounds even more like the one about catching a fish.
I can tot up the sightings with other stuff like the electric lightning strike on the electric pylon. The grass snake swimming in the silt pond, and so on.
Being able to get real close is a bit of a buzz.
The heathland surrounding Imerys could also deliver. And Imery’s being in the industry that they were, did by default allow for tractor driving jobs on that heath land.
Tractor driving jobs were a pleasure as far as I was concerned.
I had my instructions on this day: to go and wet the road.
Sucking water into a bowser out there on the heath was a good time to take in the surroundings whilst waiting for the pump to fill up the tank. The usual procedure for water procurement applies; sink a hose into the water source, throw a few levers on the tanker and stand around for a while whilst the machine does the work. Couldn’t exactly go for a wonder because there was a job to do here. Nothing wrong with gazing around though.
So I’m playing this out one day. It’s a nice sunny day. And I’m, as usual, talking to myself. Talking turns into a bit of a sing.
‘Tum tee tum, tum tee tum, tum …….. just shove the hose in there, throw this lever back there, and wait while the ……… Hang on a minute, that bit of ground looks interesting over there. It might be hiding some secrets. I’ll just go for a little wonder after this thing is full and have a look see. Won’t take longer than a few minutes.
OK, tanker’s full now, so let’s just incapacitate the process and have a little look.
And, I’ll just have a little sing to myself whilst I walk over – ‘doo dee doo, doo dee doo’…………..and ………oh, yeah, OK, it wasn’t that interesting after all. Nothing really unusual there.’
No secrets there! Why did I even think to take a wonder there? It’s just another piece of heathland, the same as the rest of it.
Funny though. There’d been an urge to do that. An urge to take a look.
‘Wow, I can’t explain that one. How many times had I been here doing exactly this? Loads, that’s how much. That piece of ground was the same as the last time I was here.
Turn around, go back. You haven’t wasted any time.
Huh, well I’ll be ….. That was the strangest thing. Almost a paranormal incident. It feels like that anyway.
I’ll just have a little sing to myself again while I walk back. Tum tee tum, tee tum’ ….. ….. shit.’
I can’t believe it.
Now I’m not walking see. I’m not singing either. I’m stood bolt still.
I’m quiet, but pensive. The words flow, all be it silently. At this stage I let my mind do the talking here.
‘Look, I’m stood still. Not moving at all.
Heh, you, …………… yes. You over there, what’s on your mind, big boy?
It was only a harmless wonder. It’s OK for me to do that, you know, a harmless wonder is what I’m talking about. Now I’m just going to stand here stock still. I’m not going to move a muscle.
Look at me big boy. Do I look harmless?
Yes, course I do.
More to the point, do I look like I shouldn’t be here?
OK, this is not my patch. Not my territory. There again, I’m different from you.’
I know, let’s use positive thinking here. I am what I am. I am where I am.
‘So what is on your mind, big boy.’
Stunning! That’s what I thought. And not just the imagery ahead, what about the mere chances of this.
‘Look at you. You’re amazing.’
It’s a tough one. Finding the words to express. ‘Is this …….a connection, or a battle of wits, big boy?’
A slingshot of wildlife experiences raced through my mind at a hundred miles per hour.
The Adder snake who’d been up for a fight on the scrubland at the back of the quarry at Tatchell’s that time. Rearing up like a Cobra. I hadn’t even realised that an Adder snake could do that.
Fuck! I just remembered. That nest of Vipers at Ringstead which I unwittingly uncovered. Lots of wriggling little Vipers and one big fuck off mother fucker of a Viper with them. I’d been lucky that time to get away without a major incident.
The Grass snake too. I’d actually witnessed a Grass snake swimming across the bows whilst I was in a Kayak. As if? for goodness sake. It actually had happened. But not only that, it was a monster, or one of them was. Or both of them were. I saw it again – either the same one or a different one at a local garden centre just down the way from the river incident, wondering about under a load of bamboo. It really was ‘that big.’
I’d had some shit to deal with throughout life. And then I’d also had some of the best experiences possible. But I had to be me to consider them the best. And I did.
This one had to go right up there.
‘What are we going to do, big boy? It’s your call. I’ve got nowhere to hide. And do you think I’m scared?
Well yeah, if you want to know. I’m fucking petrified actually.’
This was as real as it gets. Now it’s occurred to me that I can’t show feelings. Just as in the way a dog can sense emotions in a person, I wouldn’t want to bet against this guy being able to pick up my emotional state right now. I’m going to assert some bravery here. I’m going to go face off. Face to face, and balls to it. What else could I do?
‘I don’t mean you any harm, big boy. Far from it. You’re beautiful.
We’re just going to stand here, fifteen feet away from each other, head to head.’
My mind is crystal clear. It was this way or no way. If I get rammed by an angry stag, well, at least I had made a stand. It felt like David versus Goliath.
I didn’t have a plan, other than just stand there.
‘Heh, you, over there, you need to try and read my mind correctly. I’m no threat. I mean, I don’t even have a weapon, whilst you’re stood there squaring me up and you’ve got some seriously dangerous looking antlers right there.’
I did see an albino male stag deer twice before. Once here on the South coast and once in a forest in Wiltshire. That was awesome on both occasions. And that was from a distance.
Bloody hell, my heart rate just went up. I can feel it. I’m not showing scared, I can’t. How long can I keep this up?
‘One of us is the lesser, and it isn’t you, big boy.’
In the past I’d come up with a process for similar situations to this. Processes known as a plan. I guess we all did it sometimes. Come up with a solution off the cuff. And I’d had a good plan once, on one occasion whilst in the Land Rover one time. A bad situation which had to be rescued. It was called plan ‘Save ass.’
I didn’t have a similar plan right now. The only plan I’ve got is to stand here in a face off and don’t move. If I turn and walk, I might have to run – fast.
Could I make it to the tractor and tanker in time?
Hell no. That just wasn’t doable. This animal is going to outrun me.
There’s no choice. I stand, I wait. We stare at each other.
My thoughts are all complimentary and colourful. I’m hoping for thought transfer, a sort of telepathy between us.
He is one beautiful, full grown stag deer. And here I am looking square into his eyes. And he’s reciprocating. Are we bonding? I wonder. I really hope so. Because if this doesn’t work, everything goes pear shape.
I would like to know what that stag was thinking, because he must have been thinking something. We just happened across each other by mistake. Both walked into the oncoming path of each other. We must have had our heads turned down at the time. Both as surprised as each other. Both realised simultaneously that we should be looking where we were going instead wondering around heads down.
Stag to ground control –
And now it’s the stags turn.
There’s me thinking that something is going through his mind. Whatever language stag’s use, he’s silently talking his own way through this. It looked like :
‘Oh! ……………….It’s OK mate, well, yeah, I’m just going to sniff the ground right here. Hoof it around a little bit. I’m no walkover see. On the other hand, I’m not sure about you so I’m just going to well…….. just head off this way I suppose. Yeah, I’ll just wonder off as if nothing happened. Easy really.’
Well, that’s stags for you.
It’s exactly what he did do.
I was left rooted to the spot. Watching as he ambled away slowly.
He didn’t look back. That means something doesn’t it? I’d heard that if someone looks back after an encounter whereby each walk away from each other, then there’s an interest of some sort. But this stag didn’t do that. He didn’t look back at me.
Fucking hell! That was amazing. That was the most awesome encounter with a wild beast. A one to one with a creature whose mind I can’t interpret. Not like a pet cat or anything.
Of course, I’ll never forget being pinned against a tree whilst a herd of rampaging deer trampled their way past us from one place to another. Evangalisa and I had been out for a walk in the middle of a national reserve. That galloping mass of thundering hooves is right up there for one off experiences never to be repeated. There must have been up to thirty of them in that herd that time. That had been unreal too.
This though, this was like nothing else. I think we might have bonded.
***
Back at Imerys clay mill, I was yet to experience the delights of working under the stars on the coldest night of the year dressed in T-shirt, overalls and no jacket. With no way of warming up by the job itself. I was,( to put it bluntly), bloody freezing that night. The only out there experience which quickly taught me the benefits of buying some thermals to wear to work on a cold night shift.
Mind you, I’d had to be in the right place at the right time to benefit from the unexpected and legendary type of experience to follow whereby on the way home in the morning I chose to go home the scenic route.
I mean, why not? I had, after all, just finished a night shift. Going home in the morning was just like going home after a normal day shift job in the afternoon. Just go home, no hurry. The main difference was that the sun was rising, and with that comes the promise of something new.
I’d altered my work routine to suit – and it was unlike other folk who worked night shift. That meant that I would stay up for about six hours or so before going to bed.
This particular morning was fantastic, weather wise. The early morning sun was shining its rays out in all directions between choppy cloud formations in the sky. It was going to be a lovely day. The sky in-between the cloud was bright blue.
I was driving deliberately slowly the scenic way home. Couldn’t have wished for a better drive locally. Through the Purbeck countryside and over the hills which boundary the rest of the inland from the coast.
Fantastic. Couldn’t have been doing it in a more appropriate vehicle either. I loved my Land Rover 90. I was sitting high. Had it not been for that I would have missed the herd of deer romping across a field to my passenger side. Loads and loads of them. It wasn’t normal.
Yes, I’d been in the mix of it during a deer stampede at a national park once. But no, deer just weren’t seen in such large numbers on the gallop, as a rule. I’d never seen it before out in the open.
So there I was, in the right place at the right time. And all because I’d chosen to drive the scenic way home after a frustratingly cold night at work, just so that I could appreciate the feeling of being comfortable again.
***
Portland heights –
The right place, right time? ……………… ugh! No, hang on a minute – the wrong place at the right time.
No, it’s the r………………
Or, the wrong place at the wrong time. Yeah that’s right. Or maybe the right place at the right time was right first time?
One of those, has to be.
Considering it further, there’s another option. Which sounded wrong when I thought about it because I had to be here at this time, otherwise it would have been the right place at the right time; which would have been definitely wrong.
Whichever one, I couldn’t have been better placed than at Portland.
Standing on the platform balcony to the side of the cab of the machine that I drove for a living these days, the sense that something wasn’t quite right wouldn’t go away. It was so quiet. And dark too. Last week when I had turned up for work like normal it had been lighter.
Now I’m stood here cussing the padlock that was always fiddly to open.
It wasn’t usual for me to give up so quickly. The key just wouldn’t work today, for some reason, and I .. OK, just relax, chill, stretch, breath deep.
I’ll say one thing about this machine, it’s got this lovely platform arrangement halfway around the cab. I can stand on it and admire the scenery. I’m just going to stretch those irritations away as I ponder what isn’t right about today. …. …..
…… ‘FUCK! What the ………..?
WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW…
COMET BABY.’
That’s all that came to mind.
I talk to myself all the time. It’s one of those things. It’s what makes myself me. I’m stood there and with raised voice shout – ‘COMET BABY.
Yeeaaahhhhhhhh, go baby go.’
What is that thing? Christ almighty, it’s as big as the moon itself.
It’s almost unreal. If I hadn’t been right here, right now, pissed off with this frustrating padlock.
Out there, in the night sky. An asteroid, or comet. No, not a comet, a meteorite maybe, or shooting star. So big too. A fiery ball of light with a trailing tail behind. The ball itself like a cloudy projectile.
Jeez-us, look at that thing go. Wasn’t like anything like I’d ever seen before, and I’d seen many shooting stars in the night skies before now.
I was mesmerised. It was really happening. It was right there, in the sky in front of me and I’d been watching purely because I was taking some time to stretch and calm my irritations away.
I can’t believe the luck involved here.
Was there anyone else who saw it?
Well not here there wasn’t, because as I was stood there gazing in astonishment, I just figured it out.
Hang on though, it couldn’t have been a comet. I remembered Halley’s comet from around ten years or so before. That thing took weeks to pass us by in the night sky. And as an appearance, or vision in the sky, it hadn’t been moving, it was just there. That’s why it took weeks to pass us by because out there in the vastness of space at 39 million miles away and travelling super-fast at 150000 miles per hour, you’d have thought it would be gone in a flash, but no, space is so big is why it took weeks.
Well, further on and afterwards, scientific information gathering by myself proved one thing for sure. That comet baby out there couldn’t have been space dust. I could rule that one out for definite. Space dust, or small particles of space debris are the usual reasons for a shooting star.
It wasn’t a shooting star, it was too big. Those things are generally tiny specs in the night sky, super bright and proper quick. And they’re always closer than they appear.
In the night sky a shooting star looks as though it’s millions of miles away in interstellar space.
It’s not. To be a shooting star it has to be burning up. It is travelling at an insane speed and it is in our atmosphere a mere one hundred kilometres away.
On the other hand, that comet baby out there was a kind of shooting star because it was out there burning up in the atmosphere.
It could have been an asteroid. Whatever it was it was close. It was big and close.
It could have been a part of a comet, a part that had disconnected itself from mother comet and wondered off on its own. I’d heard that on an astronomy programme on the telly once.
That thing I saw was as big as the moon. It was huge, it was super-fast and it was trail blazing. It was burning up as it went.
Right now, it’s like I’m the only person on planet Earth. No signs of life anywhere. I am the only person in the quarry that’s for sure.
Of course, but then I would be wouldn’t I. Theoretically I shouldn’t have been there at all.
I’m still mesmerised. I just witnessed something out of this world. No one else saw it. It wasn’t a comet, therefore it had to be something else, something random. Because it was random no one else would have been expecting it.
There wouldn’t have been some geeky astronomer out there somewhere with a telescope trained on the night sky looking specifically for it.
That thing was unexpected.
It wasn’t visible worldwide, couldn’t have been, The horizon is curved so beyond the curve at so far away the night sky would look completely different. Different stars, different layouts, different constellations, different everything.
I’m the only one. No one else saw that thing in the sky.
How lucky was I?
If I hadn’t taken this job because I had had to leave my previous quarry job. If those idiots back at Tatchell’s hadn’t pissed me off so much. If I hadn’t spotted this job in the local newspaper when I had. If Troy and I hadn’t treated the whole interview thing as a day out on an island. If I hadn’t been the one person out of a list of thirty six who had struck lucky in an interview.
All those things. More besides.
Mind you, I was in the right place at the wrong time.
Just what are the chances? How could it be that I forget to set my alarm clock an hour backwards and this happens. It’s literally odds against by probably billions to one.
That’s what happens at British Summer Time. Spring forward, fall back, as the saying goes.
I was at work a whole hour earlier than I should be.
The clocks went back at the weekend and I forgot to reset my alarm clock.
Right place, wrong time.
***
Girl’s name from ancient Greece – Andrina Electra. English translation: Daring, shining, radiant.
Of legends are us.a as a 