This post started as a question about pre-wfp. I can still remember the first day I went window cleaning (about 1968/9) with a friend of mine who worked for a company called A.F. Cheese & Co.Ltd., doing all the schools in the old Inner London Education Authority.
Before we went to the first job, he took me to the warehouse,F J Tomlinson & Co in Peckham.
What a place!! It was on the first floor of a warehouse and I remember it was vast, but the thing I remember most was the smell!! New scrim and great heaps of whole sheepskins with the aroma of the leather dressings heavy in the air. Then there were the boxes of squeegees, swabs (before the T- bar came in) leather holsters and belts, buckets, spare squeegee rubbers, scrapers - all things you've all seen, of course, but in vast quantities.
It was like an Alladin's cave to a complete novice like I was.
We sorted through the piles of leathers to find the best one - I could hardly lift it! a whole skin and so thick it was a struggle to fold it. The first thing I had to do was cut it in two - it was far too heavy to wave about all day. Then I had to wash it out - bucket after bucket of water till all the dressing was gone. Then the same thing with the scrim.
By the time I'd washed then out to my friends satisfaction, I was too tired to do any work!!
Then came the real shock of the day - we went to a Victorian "three decker" school called Middle Way, after the street it was in, though I can't recall where it was.
We went up to the top floor and then my mate climbed out of the window, stood on the sill and closed the window after him
He cleaned the outside using a swab and squeegee, then opened the window and climbed back in and did the inside.
Then he said to me: "You do the next one"
Happy days
Ian