Didcot Remembered...

A chapter from Bob Smith's book "An Ordinary Man"

I got employment with H.A. Job Ltd as a lorry driver’s mate in 1960 age 17. Lorries and I were love at first sight, it was absolutely great all that freedom, tough satisfying work and a group of men who were as rough and tough as old boots. I knew this would be the best place I would ever work simply because I couldn’t imagine anything better. My wages were £6 10s a week, a far cry from my previous remuneration, for this we worked as hard as you could possibly imagine.

My driver’s name was Len Branch, a stronger man I have never met, he wasn't excessively big except his arms, which were like tree trunks. His development was due to the fact we unloaded full crates of milk into large fridges at the varying retail depots in different towns, these depots belonged to Job’s Dairies.

The lorry we had was an old Bedford tractor unit with which we pulled longish trailers with Scammell couplings. These trailers were loaded with crates of milk stacked six high, some three hundred weight each, the capacity for the trailer being seventy eight stacks. This was for a full load equating to almost twelve tons. We moved two loads a day dragging them on metal floors made slippery with liquid soap. Some floors were good, some bad, according to rust. The return load was empty bottles weighing approximately eight tons. Altogether in a days work we shifted some forty odd tons. As you can see in a five day week this was two hundred tons between two of us.

These wire crates are stacked on pallets to facilitate manoeuvrability by fork lift which eventually replaced the need for driver's mates

I very soon became extremely strong! Every day we went for "the burn" trying to establish faster times than other crews for the same route. I loved it. I felt as if it was the most satisfaction that could be aspired to, in any work you could possibly do. Sometimes in our rush to turn round for the next load, a driver would drop his trailer too quickly allowing it to fall the last couple of inches. There were consequences to this action, if the spring loaded plate didn’t come up and lock the hitch, the trailer would fall to its knees. Alternatively the ratchet hand brake would jump off, as our yard sloped towards the garage it was no surprise when a trailer entered the hard way. Fortunately no one was hurt.

I soon got into the swing of things. The biggest learning curve was to anticipate the wants of the driver, if you didn’t, then you were deemed as no good. The majority of the transport staff were very young, resulting in a huge amount of us going out together. It certainly made all the functions into a really good time.

Some of the characters that I worked with are worth a mention. The old chap that cleaned up the yard and emptied the cullet bins (broken glass); he would walk round with a rolled up fag forever in his mouth. His name was Jack, he allowed his nose to run, there was always a string of the proverbial to the end of his cigarette! He earned the name of “Jack The Dripper”. Another character worked in the garage mending the punctured inner tubes until it was discovered he just cut them up and threw them in the bin. He was a poor lad not quite the ticket I don’t think. Such was employment in those days, he was sacked. One I will mention is an old chap that said everything wrong. Masonic railway instead of Scenic, Kyaston road should have been Kynaston road. When he described something his sentence always started with “That thur thingy”. One of the Directors was christened Colonel Blimp because of his huge moustache and rotundity.

The actual driving force was made up from one or two of the local lads with bad reputations, largely unearned as far as I could see. There were many, many young people off the Vestas estate that I went to school with, of course all our differences were forgotten in adulthood. Many of them proved to be good friends and very nice. Each day meant biking down the Broadway early morning to the Dairy situated at the lower end of town. Once our daily toil was complete we went home, another incentive to get done as soon as possible.

One of the runs (trips) we did at work took us along the Bath road in the days of the Aldermaston marches, protesting about the Atomic Bomb. These marches had their fringe lunatics, all people ever noticed was the hippy element, dressed in their flower power outfits cavorting about, generally bringing these events into disrepute.

Work was a joy for me. I had joined the social club down the Dairy and what a social club it was. We regularly went by coach to the Adelphi at Slough where we saw quite a few top artists of the day. Adam Faith, Billy Fury, Peter Jay, etc. Wrestling was another brilliant night out. Jackie Pallow, Mick McManus and Doctor Death were the ones we loved to hate. It was all hype but we thought it was great. There was also a football team. A town and country cup was played for between the two processing plants that Jobs owned, Hanworth and Didcot. A six-a-side tournament involving all the retail branches was another highlight of the social calendar. What with a fishing club, a darts team, numerous dances, an annual ball held at Kingston-upon-Thames, not forgetting the sports day, trips for the children, (which we availed ourselves of eventually), rounded off by free dance lessons if you wanted, being a member was a must. If you know of a social club better than that then I’d like to hear of it!

Christmas parties for employee's children were an annual event at Job's Hall, Hanworth. Rosalind Fidget is second from the left but the names of the other children and parents are not known. Can anyone help us here?

There was, however a fly in the ointment. Although my wages were a damn site better than my previous employment, it was still agricultural wages and just not enough to save up for my forthcoming marriage, so I had to do something about it. I came off my beloved lorries to go into the Dairy. Before this there was one thing left to do, I had to learn to drive as soon as I was financially able , so when my chance came I would be ready.

I went into the Dairy as a holiday relief which meant I experienced all the different jobs. It wasn’t as much fun as the lorries, where some of the escapades were probably beyond the pale! You certainly wouldn’t get away with it these days because of Health and Safety. With the initiations that new mates went through, you had to have a sense of humour, if you didn’t then you would fail to become “one of the boys”. This was unthinkable for me so at first I took, then it was my turn to give.

Life “inside” wasn’t all bad. There was some pretty good old boys in there. Whether I was more tolerant when I was young or not I don’t know but there didn’t seem to be anyone who wasn’t up for the crack. Young or old I liked them all. I learned to pasteurise milk, I went into the cold store, I loaded lorries, in fact I had to be proficient in every department . The money was marginally better and at least we could save. Ann, my intended wife, was getting about £6 a week and I was on £8. Not brilliant but it was headway of sorts. Ann left Livings Bakery with much regret to work at Job's in the pasteurising room. Livings  were a family firm and had been very nice to her but unfortunately the wages were poor. We still needed to get extra money somehow, so I started to do some painting on overtime.

I have mentioned that it was job and finish on the transport and it was the same in the Dairy. At the end of the days bottling you would clean down, have a quick cuppa, clock out, instantly clock back in again in and then you were on overtime. We changed into our paint overalls, formed little gangs and set about making our dairy look nice. Some of the jobs were awful, but if you could get outside on a sunny day it was great. Sometimes you got the job of painting the roof outside, this could be precarious at times, especially when the roof was Asbestos! It was prone to give way silently and without warning and we were very wary of it. After numerous chases trying to paint each other we actually achieved our aim. Our dairy was pristine.

Bob and Ann on their wedding day

Ann and I decided we would like to learn to Ballroom dance and to those ends we joined a class held in the Job’s recreation hall on the Dairy site. Harry Sutton was a milkman and ex-dance champion and he and his wife, who had also been his dance partner in competitions, elected to teach the classes. They gave their services completely free of charge. We learned after a fashion and enough to get by, although dancing was never a passion of mine. Ann liked it more than I did.

Workwise, some of the jobs I did at Job’s as holiday relief were not that good; some were repetitive and boring. The Dairy itself was well thought out, it was  built on sloping ground alongside the railway. It meant that the back of the buildings were at ground level and the front at lorry height. Milk production is very much lorry orientated, dependent on transport for churn collection from outlaying farms and of course delivery to retail outlets. Tankers came to the Dairy to make up any shortfall, returning to take any surplus away. The churn lorries drove alongside the bank at one end of the front, while the other end was devoted to the finished product being loaded on trailers for ongoing delivery to the retail branches.

The churn lorries drove alongside the bank at Didcot plant

Christmas 1962 saw a very deep snow fall with continually cold temperatures for a few weeks. At this time I was working on the Churn Washer and getting wet constantly. My overalls would freeze on me day in and day out, making me blue with cold.

The opposite side, at the back of the Dairy was the washroom, this consisted of two huge machines that were loaded with empty bottles by hand along a rack about 24 wide. The rack tipped automatically, turning the bottles upside down into holes in a large revolving conveyor. As this conveyor travelled the length of the machine high pressure jets of hot water, then detergent, then hot water again, squirted into them, lastly, could rinse left the bottles sparkling and clean. They were inspected minutely to make sure they were okay as they travelled along another single conveyor towards the filling machines, any that didn’t pass inspection for chips or dirt, were either smashed or put for hand washing according to there level of contamination.

Back to the front of the building to the churn unloading belt. The churns were rolled from the lorry bed according to ownership and onto a belt, where they were sniffed for freshness as they travelled to a weighing point before being tipped by hand into a tank. This was suspended from automatic scales so the amount that particular farm had supplied could be measured for payment. The milk was discharged into a dump tank where it was pumped to a bigger storage tank, prior to being pasteurised. After this process it was  pumped on to the filling machines where it was discharged into the waiting bottles. The  full bottles went through a foil capping machine and after this a pneumatic grab gathered them and put them into waiting empty crates. Once full the crates travelled on into the cold store where they were stacked six high either by hand or in an automatic stacking machine. They emerged from the cold store on a conveyor belt at the other end of the bank from the churn lorries, where they were loaded onto the trailers for despatch.

There was much more to the production process than I have described but this is the gist of what went on. I worked in turn on all these functions when the person whose job it was, was away or on holiday. The other important area was the bottle bank where all the returning lorries unloaded their crates full of empty bottles brought back from the retail depots. This was the start of the main conveyor system. Here two operatives loaded the crates onto the conveyor. The crates then went through a hatchway into the washroom to start the journey I’ve already told you of.

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