Among other names people often refer to me as ‘the old school plasterer’ I think this means brought up through the hard school of knocks, the building sites in the early 1970’s were like the wild west, health and safety did not exist, no such thing as job security, and it was a case of survival of the fittest.
So after getting sacked from my first job as a plasterer, called a cowboy and told I will never make a plasterer as long as I live, I went from a cocksure young plasterer to a scared young lad, I managed to get a start for a local building firm working on new builds , so I turned up on a Monday morning with my tools in a sack on my back and introduced myself to the site Forman, he took me to the house that I would be working on and said this is Louie the plasterer you will be working with, Louie was older and bigger than me and he spoke with a very strong Scottish accent, The best way to describe him was a very intimidating guy with Tourette’s on steroids , every word began with either an F or C, his first words to me was you had better work Fucking hard I want my bonus kid.
So I starting mixing up some backing plaster, in a tin bath , loaded my spot board and started to put the backing plaster on my first wall, all was going good and I was starting to grow in confidence, when I heard a referee’s whistle being blown very loud, I froze, what was happening , all of a sudden Louie came rushing into the room I was working in , Fucking twat he said, I looked up startled, who I said, that fucking site foreman, I fucking hate him, twat, he blows that fucking whistle all the fucking time , when to stop for a brew, when to start back , when to stop for dinner and back, same in the afternoon and he blows the fucking thing at the end of the fucking day , C**t . I will fix that twat he said.
The second day I arrived on site at eight o’clock sharp, Louie was already there working hard, when he saw me his face lit up with a big grin and he said “ well kid today we are going to have some fucking fun”, then from his pocket he produced a referees whistle, I have managed to get into the foreman’s hut so I have nicked his fucking whistle , the normal brew time was 10.00 am , so around 9.45 Louie opened a window in the house we were working put his head out of the window and started blowing the whistle, the lads on the site stopped work and went to the brew shed for their morning brew , the foremen could not believe what was happening , so it continued all day, and the day after with Louie blowing the whistle to take the piss, none of the lads knew what was going on, the foreman was furious, but he never did find out who had nicked his whistle although he did have his suspicion’s , outcome result the foreman never used a whistle again LOL
Because of Louie’s strong accent and his Tourette’s on steroids language Louie was referred to on site as Louie the Lip
We completed plastering the first house and moved into the next house to be plastered, hey Kid he said as he always referred to me as kid, the first job is get “your fucking tin snips”, “why I said” , “I will fucking show you he replied”, he then went off into a rant about the sparkie (which is a nickname for an electrician) he went from room to room saying I fucking hate these sparkie twats and went to every electrical backbox in the rooms that had cables coming out and had not been tucked away inside the boxes and started cutting off the cables making sure to cut them short, that will teach the fucking twats a lesson he said, I just stared on in disbelief of what he was doing.
A couple of days later we had nearly completed the plasterwork and the site sparkie turned up, as soon as he walked into the house Louie said to him “hey sparkie I have cut all your fucking tails off you twat, that will teach you a fucking lesson” and started laughing , the sparkie looked in panic at Louie and ran from room to room , you fucking twat he said to Louie and ran out of the house to the foreman’s hut, five minutes later the sparkie and the foreman came rushing into our house, what have you done shouted the foreman, at which Louie replied I have cut all his tails off that were coming out of the backboxes”, “why have you done that the foreman” said, “because he is a fucking twat and a fucking rat” Louie replied. Louie picked up his plastering trowel and threw it at the sparkie shouting “you fucking rat”
All hell then broke out, Louie decked the site foremen, the police arrived and arrested him for assault and I got moved to another site
So I arrived at the new site, the usual formality of going to the foreman’s hut, I think news of what had happened with Louie had arrived before I did, as the foreman was not very friendly from the start, ok I will put you with a gang of plasterers who were screeding the floors of the new builds, (back then the plasterer had to not only do the plasterwork both internally and externally but also screed all the floors, mainly using a mixture of semi dry sand and cement).
The gang of plasterers were busy laying the floor screed so I joined in, at brew time the lads in the gang where totally pissed off with the foreman, as no price had been sorted out for the floor screeding, the foreman refusing to sort out a price, just saying get the floors down and we will talk about the price.
Ok the leader of the gang of plasterers said, so they wont negotiate a price we will force them to, it was decided the next day we had to start screeding another house so this is what we will do, we arrive as normal get set up and start to bring the mix into the house, but instead of us laying the screed we will just put all the mix into a big pile in the centre of a room, then we will go and get the foreman, if we don’t get the price we want the material mixed will stay in the centre of the room.
So that’s exactly what we did , then the leader of the gang went to get the foreman, to say the least he was not very happy , we got a good price and made plenty of bonus , but once all the screeding was done he sacked us all LOL .
Lath and Plaster 