Welcome back to all our members with best wishes for a Happy New Year from Vincent and Ian
Teamwork by Tony Simpson
After reading the obituary of a sailor who, when working as a diver, was obliged to cut off his fingers in order to save his life, I was reminded of an incident which occurred fifty-five years ago at Bromborough Dock in Merseyside.
As assistant to the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Westminster Dredging Company I got all the awkward and tricky jobs – which was tremendous experience. This involved ships and reclamation equipment which required a survey, a quick decision and speedy action. We had a repair and maintenance squad which comprised a collection of remarkable men. To mention a few, the Liverpool Irish mobile crane driver who was adept at loading equipment into dry docks with the back wheels just lifting off the ground. The burners and welders were thoroughgoing scousers with an incredible vocabulary. The diver was a muscular and dour Scott who could be helped into his lead-weighted heavy rubber suit with bronze helmet in a very short time. The shipwrights exhibited skill and inventiveness when they were called upon. There was still a call for riveters who were exceedingly versatile. Mixing with these people was a defining period in my true education in life. The work was dangerous, time was money and the phrase Health and Safety had never been heard of. Since time was money, I was grudgingly allowed a day off to get married – and never allowed to forget it. What forcibly strikes me now is that these men did hard, skilful and dangerous work for a tiny fraction of the rewards accorded to city Bankers.
Returning to the original motive for writing this piece, one of our large dredgers radioed us to report a propellor fouled on a steel wire rope. One of our tugs managed to berth the vessel in Bromborough wet dock because dry docking was expensive and time consuming. In order to reduce the draft of the propeller we ballasted the forepeak tank and pumped out the afterpeak tank. This trimmed the vessel by the head and revealed a mass of steel wire rope well and truly entangled around the propeller. Our diver was kitted out and put into the water with underwater burning gear and he managed to cut critical parts of the wire. The crane hook was attached to the lose wire and our Liverpool Irish driver was given the signal to haul away. Unfortunately, one of the diver’s thumbs was jammed and despite his frantic gesticulations the crane kept hauling away. He took out his diver’s knife and sawed away and blew himself to the surface. He held his hand aloft and we saw what had happened. When he got ashore the language was appalling. An ambulance whisked him away to hospital and in two months he was back at work – although not with the Liverpool Irishman. I believe they had some sort of liquid reconciliation.
The Battle of the Bells by Vincent Fosdike
I am deeply asleep when some sort of chaotic music invades my rest. I struggle to interpret what is happening. There is only this chaos no other sounds or light, no human voice, no calls of the wild from the garden. The noise is not loud, but I know it means something but can’t quite fathom out what – it demands something from me. Yes! I’ve got it, it is the front doorbell, but why at 2 o’clock in the morning? The little digital doorbell was in full song. What was more perplexing was that it was not playing the normal trusted Westminster Chimes although it had probably tried to and then given up the ghost, moving through its repertoire which included the howl of the hound of the Baskervilles and a second world war air raid siren. The technical challenge this put to my sleep-soaked brain was being pushed to the “too difficult” pigeonhole as the higher forms of consciousness pictured a wolf man or a temporarily displaced Messerschmitt pilot urgently pressing the radio linked bell push on the outside of the door. Whoever or WHATEVER was outside was not going away, I am sure we all feel more vulnerable in the small hours of the morning when our resistance is low (when police raids are often done).
It is just possible to make out shapes through the arrow slit glass in our door but not easy by the light of a streetlamp. By now I had gone downstairs and drawn level with the sound unit which spoke what I took to be a Chinese sentence in an urgent and peremptory tone. Then it stopped and the hallway reverted to silence. I crept to the door and peered through the glass, half expecting a hand to come grasping through it or at the very least to hear the sounds of a drunken man (or women, equal ops), demanding attention!
Nothing stirred. Perhaps it had been a freak radio wave. I do remember once having to request a local Taxi firm to change its calling frequency when they had strayed on to the one we used for our rescue boat. I am told it can be an atmospheric phenomenon. So back to bed! Well, what else could I do?
At the top of the stairs just as my heartbeat was approaching normal the foreign voice shouted at me again and then gave way to silence. It was like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Back down I went and took the “unit” by the scruff of its mounting and placed it on the living room table. These things do not have on and off switches only the wretched multifunctional controls. So to go for the kill it means a battery removal. My nails dug furiously around the back of it to the cover panel driving a small plastic tab under the nail and drawing blood! So it’s going to be like that is it? On the second try I got the panel open and snatched out a battery, there was a sadistic pleasure in leaving one still in situ to test its resourcefulness!
Having ensured that the Hound of the Baskervilles would have to try somewhere else I left the inquest until morning. It had been a good bell and lasted ten years and I felt a little sympathy might be appropriate in the light of its service history. Batteries in the sender and receiver were changed. Operational tests were carried out and seemed satisfactory. For a few hours all was well but by lunch time the demented playing broke out again.
Well, our bell is our lifeline. Food is delivered once a week and we MUST HEAR the door. Of course there are hundreds of replacements available with an infinite price range. So on the basis that the cheapest may be the simplest and most reliable we order one. The nearest we can get to simplest has 50 tunes and several volume settings – it’s about a tenner including battery for the bell push and it plugs into the mains for sound.
It comes; (the delivery agent has to pound on the door as per my pretty pink sticky notice)! It does seem simple. Plug in the receiver/speaker and set the bell push onto the door. Test and ding dong!! But I had to try the “play list”. Toggle through the tunes and “special effects” select one by holding down the play/test button for 5 seconds, then test with the bell push. Then repeat with the volume setting until you get what you want. After a few attempts it stopped working. Totally mute, beyond help! Need to return it! There is nothing in the box by way of envelope or return address. Back online. We have not done this before but eventually we discover how to print a preaddressed postage paid return label. Does this mean we have to go to the Post Office? No, the courier comes to the house. Sorry if you know all this but for us it was really quite a breakthrough. It only took another quarter of an hour to re-claim the credit card payment (conditional on the returned goods being received). Curiously, the return address was in Dunfermline not the Thames Estuary where the U.K. Suppliers sent it from, still Chinese super freighters need big docks but probably returned items can go on smaller ships or perhaps they never make it home at all.
Well it’s now “half time” in the battle of the bells. In the second half we must select and order a replacement. Try a different web site and different manufacturer. Better still look up the old manufacturer. Curiously, its name did not come up in the generic Google search, so they have not been talking to the right people! We only have to decide if we want one that can support several bell pushes and “synch” in with movement sensors or just the basic one that allows us to “toggle” through the 38 ring tones and will automatically remember where we stopped; without having to depress two buttons simultaneously and hold for five seconds. The small unit is Chinese and will come via America to a U.K. distributor and thence by their chosen courier as did the faulty one. Quite an achievement for £18 including delivery.
It does arrive (with more pounding on the door) and this one works. Global trade, lots of air miles, hours of endless challenging, tooth grinding fun, surely worth every renminbi, dollar and pound.
I wonder if one can still buy a small brass battery-free door knocker and fix it to a “plastic door”. Come to think, of it I have seen things that look just the job on some doors near us. Perhaps they can be found at car boot sales? No probably have to go online and have it shipped from China and it will cost more than the microchip version – but if it does go at two in the morning, don’t even think about opening the door.