A Summer job on Bedwas and Machen Urban District Council

A photograph can have the ability to stop time. Take this one posted on a local Facebook page recently. Just one look and I'm taken back more than 50 years. 

It takes me back to 1965 and 1966 when I had a summer student job with the erstwhile Bedwas and Machen Urban District Council. I think there was 4 or 5 of us employed over June to August and we filled in wherever there was a need. Not where we had the skills, because we had none, but where there was a need for some muscle.

One such task was collecting the bins. It was exactly like the photo. Open topped lorry with sliding doors and galvanised metal bins. No plastic bins in those days and no separation for recycling - all rubbish went to landfill. Actually, that's not completely true - in lots of households, newspapers were recycled. Either as toilet paper (Yes, really), or for lighting the coal fires that everyone had.

There were rules about what could and could not go in the bins. For example, no soil or garden waste and no hot ashes. But these restrictions were more honoured in the breach than in the observation. Quite often, the bins could not be lifted by two of us, let alone just one. The ingenuity some people showed in disguising forbidden items was amazing. In a few instances, refused to take the offending bin as we just could not lift it on the lorry. As far as ashes were concerned, it was not unusual to pick up a bin that was still hot or inadvertently tip a pile of hidden ashes into the lorry and cause a local fire. Buckets of water were kept handy as a contingency. I quite enjoyed my times on the bins as the regulars were fun to work with and, typically, it was 'job and finish', meaning that we got off work as soon as the day's round was completed.

We lay curbs and paving slabs, dug road drains and sewers: we even dug a few graves (had the embarrassment once of mismeasuring the width of one and the coffin could not be lowered to the bottom, resulting in a delayed burial while we made the grave a little wider. Not our finest hour. And we got a well deserved bollocking from Mr Noel, the foreman). 

I think of all the areas I worked in whilst on the Council, my favourite were the times I worked with the stone mason, Dick (Richard) Maddocks. Building stone walls was a joy, even if digging out foundations and mixing concrete was back-breaking. And it was never less than a pleasure to work with Dick. He was a skilled worker and a socialist of considerable conviction. He had spent some time in the USA in the 1930s as an itinerant craftsman and was a very amusing raconteur. We had many discussions ("nothing is too good for the working man" was a favourite phrase of his) and he helped shape my political beliefs. I helped him build a bus shelter in Machen over several weeks. I'm proud to say that it's still there and functioning after all these years. Somewhere at the back are my initials in one of the cement joints.

Happy days that taught me a few skills that have come in useful as and when necessary. Not the least of which was how to pace myself when doing a long physical task. All that for a weekly wage of around £8 a week, delivered in cash in a brown paper envelope every Friday lunchtime.