It was 30 mins past midnight on New Years day 1987, I was sat thinking what type of year was ahead of me, I had a wife, a mortgage and two children , what I did not have was any work in front me, my work was purely domestic , which I really enjoyed, but it had dried up as it normally does around Christmas time, but I normally had work booked in for the first week in January, in 1987 I didn’t , by the 3rd January no work had materialised so in desperation I started ringing some of my contacts, I was offered some price work on a new build in Greater Manchester by a firm from the same area, they were paying 50p per metre for plaster boarding, £1 per metre for skimming the plasterboards , and £1.75 for floating and setting the solid walls, these prices included you fixing all the floating and skim beads, plus loading the houses yourself. I was teamed up with another plasterer and the days were long and hard also very cold as we had a very hard January that year, the boss would come round every Friday to measure up how much work you had produced making sure that the quality had to be maintained and paid you on what he would accept, he would always knock you back on something making sure that you did not earn very much money, I think we used to net about £125.00 each after 30% tax deduction.
Although the wages were diabolical , it was the only work available so I worked for the company until the site was finished and I got laid off, with the prospect of having no work I started looking for work when I noticed an advert in the local evening newspaper, plasterers required to work in London £275 per week, paid weekly, plus overtime transport and accommodation provided, wow I thought and without any hesitation I rang the number spoke with the site manager and he offered me a start the following Monday, the firm had a contract to refurbish several large Victorian houses in Ladbroke Grove area of London converting them into flats, he told me that they only used lads from up North and they had a coach which would pick up the lads from the bus station drive you down to London and you lived on site , during the week you had to work a minimum of forty hours, which was six hours Monday, three ten hour days and four hours Friday morning , finishing at dinner time then driving us back home, overtime was available every day, plus if you wanted you could stay for the weekend.
There was a tv programme that was very popular at the time it was called Auf Wiedersehen, Pet which was about builders working in Germany, it was a very good reflection of what was happening across Britain many builders leaving their home town and travelling either to London or Germany for work.
So Monday morning arrived my wife dropped me off at the bus station and along with thirty other builders I boarded the coach to London, not knowing anyone or what lay ahead of me, on arrival on site me along with five other men who started on the same day were shown our accommodation we were in a loft the only issue was that half of the roof had been removed for work on the conversion, all the lads slept in the same building. Our first night on site we were sleeping under a tarpaulin, which was not too bad but at Dawn we had pigeons flying around our room LOL .
Tuesday was my first full day on the site , so I thought with this type of money I am going to have to put some graft in and with my previous work which was site work ,working on price I was very fast and my work was spot on so at 8.00 am I started work on an extension which had been built onto the house, by 6.00 pm it was all finished , the ceiling had been boarded and skimmed and all the walls had been floated and set, I stood back feeling very proud of the amount of work I had done, so it was off to the pub for some of the black stuff (Guinness),
and to get to know my new work mates, unfortunately my presence on site had not gone unnoticed and half way through the evening a big joiner guy came up to me and said, if you do that again I will break your fucking arms, what I said , you heard me, we don’t work like that down here so you either slow down or you will be taking a trip to the hospital, for some reason , I never could put my finger on it, all my speed disappeared.
So the work in London continued and I got into a routine, but the lads all seemed to get a bit wise regarding the overtime, each day the site foreman would leave the site at 18.00 so the lads would book two hours overtime making it a twelve hour day, but not much longer had the site foreman left the site , the work stopped and we all went off to the pub, we used to call it going out on the black, meaning straight from work to the pub , having a meal in the pub of egg bacon and chips, then stopping in the pub all evening and often after hours , which back then were 11.00 pm, then stumbling back to the site up to the loft and crashing out until 7.45 the morning after, most of us carrying a most almighty hangover but still repeated the same routine after work that evening, showering only on Friday before we left for home, it was a very rough hard life, most nights the house we were all living in became a boxing ring , lads would have the banter all day, that would continue in the pub eventually ending up with a couple of lads slugging it out.
It was during the summer of that year the weather was nice and warm we were working outside doing some rendering, and after work off we all trotted to the pub , one particular evening I had a bit more to drink than normal, after crashing into my bed still in the loft under the tarpaulin, that I felt the call of nature, the toilets were two floors below, I thought sod that I lifted the tarpaulin and started to piss, feeling relieved I crashed out on my bed, when all of a sudden I heard the almighty shout , it was the site manager who shouted “who the fuck has been pissing out of the window”, being a bit worse for ware, or to be honest I was pissed , what I forgot was directly below us three floors down was the site managers bedroom , he had been sleeping with his bed next to the window, with the window open as it was a hot night , me pissing out of the window three floors above had landed on the window sill outside his bedroom window, bounced on the sill then landed on him, he stormed through the house screaming who has been pissing out of the window, I will fucking kill him, I was laughing to myself but when he came into our bedroom I pretended to be asleep and put my head under the covers.
The morning after he was still livid, looking for the person who had pissed on him, what made it worse was he was getting so much banter with lads asking him if anyone had pissed on him this morning, to which he replied I will fucking kill him when I find out who did it. To be fare most lads are loyal and never rat on each other , so although the lads in my room knew it was me they never ratted on me, and he never found out, a few days later after he had calmed down I went to him and said I am sorry it was me who pissed on you I was blathered, he took it in good spirits and we had a laugh, well don’t do it again he said, and guess what I didn’t.
Lath and Plaster 