My very first Christmas at my job, I got a bonus, we all did. I got the impression it was done every year as a ‘thank you’. The following year the company moved premises and money has been short ever since. So I have not received any more bonuses. However, all employees and their partners are taken out to dinner on the last working day of the year. The three course dinner and wine on the table is all paid for. I now organise this dinner every year and everybody goes unless they have already left to go on holiday. This year; Gilberto and his family are returning home to Brazil for 6 weeks, Salvatore and his girlfriend will be returning to their home island of Sardinia for the festive season and Courtney, who is Jamaican but whose family mostly live in Canada, is going to see them.
Not sure Jon will be there either, as any day now his other half will be giving birth to their first child and I know they will be going to his partners, home town of Manchester, at Christmas time to show everybody the baby.
I love the cosmopolitan feel at work; language is never a problem when you have lots of skilled men working with their tools on wood. Woodwork /carpentry / joinery / cabinet making are the same where you come from / go to. My father and his father were both boat builders, so I have grown up with the smell of fresh timber or wood in the boat shed and surrounded by the most beautiful tools.
Not sure Jon will be there either, as any day now his other half will be giving birth to their first child and I know they will be going to his partners, home town of Manchester, at Christmas time to show everybody the baby.
I love the cosmopolitan feel at work; language is never a problem when you have lots of skilled men working with their tools on wood. Woodwork /carpentry / joinery / cabinet making are the same where you come from / go to. My father and his father were both boat builders, so I have grown up with the smell of fresh timber or wood in the boat shed and surrounded by the most beautiful tools.
In those days, you would buy the metal part of the tool and hand work the handles, so everybody’s tools were unique to them. As part of your apprenticeship you would make your tool box. Here at work, everybody who is my age or older has a proper tool box but like everything about apprenticeships, it all changed in my generation (late 1970’s early 80’s) because parents wanted all their children to go to college. It didn’t work and now 30 years on there is a shortage of tradesmen. However, the guys who put up with the ridicule of doing a apprenticeship back then, are now doing well and tend to earn a more than decent wage.
I wanted to follow my Grandfather’s foot steps and become a boat builder ... but I was before my time and was not taken seriously, not by my family but by the boat building manufacturers. A GIRL wanting to be a boat builder, don’t be silly, we don’t take on girls!
However, I have practically always worked in the Marine Industry one way or another, I don’t now, Wiltshire being some way from the sea ... but I do work in a building, with lots of timber and just sometimes, when I leave my desk and go on the workshop floor, I help out with small jobs, which I love. To touch the rough or smoothness of timber and see it being worked into a beautiful 3-D object is still breathe taking for me.
Probably why I do the same thing with fabric, my bosses use to be at a loss with my skills at understanding, cutting lists, how to know all the requirements before setting a job. Until I explained that the only difference between woodwork and dressmaking, is the material i.e. wood or fabric and the tools to make ‘said item’.
– But I digress.
When I arrived at work this morning, this was waiting for me on the front door.
Not every secretary comes to work, and waiting for her are a brace of pheasants hanging on the door handle.
One of my bosses went to Scotland last week, shooting and as he had done very well, with enough birds to spare, he brought me two in, to take home for the family.
They are now wrapped up and in the boot of my car, ready to take home pluck, clean and freeze; I think they will be kept for Christmas time, what a treat.
And finally;
Please may I ask the person that has inadvertently borrowed my husband’s very special, extra large NASA mug. Which he has owned for 13 years, and left on the kitchen draining board at work, while he nipped to the ‘Gents’, that they put it back, where they found it because he is extremely upset and hacked off. I know; he rang me, to ‘moan’ at me, (we know this is not personal but just sometimes needs to be done in a safe environment) as soon as I got to my desk at work. I suggested that he wrote a group email, saying that who ever has taken it, must be a very brave person because this mug has never been washed properly in the 13 years of ownership and the wife now bands the mug from home!
They are now wrapped up and in the boot of my car, ready to take home pluck, clean and freeze; I think they will be kept for Christmas time, what a treat.
And finally;
Please may I ask the person that has inadvertently borrowed my husband’s very special, extra large NASA mug. Which he has owned for 13 years, and left on the kitchen draining board at work, while he nipped to the ‘Gents’, that they put it back, where they found it because he is extremely upset and hacked off. I know; he rang me, to ‘moan’ at me, (we know this is not personal but just sometimes needs to be done in a safe environment) as soon as I got to my desk at work. I suggested that he wrote a group email, saying that who ever has taken it, must be a very brave person because this mug has never been washed properly in the 13 years of ownership and the wife now bands the mug from home!
