I cringe inside when I think of the risks I took back in the day
Or the risks I got the lads who used to work for me do!
On one job (still doing it to this day, WFP now though, charge more and what took 4 of us up to 5 hours now takes just me less than 3 hours
) we had to hire a 40ft plus huge triple to get to the 4th floor, cobble stone floor and surrounded by quaint shops & tea shops....people sat outside sipping tea's & munching on scones...nice eh?
So as the new guy (name of Lance Dunster, and boy, do I have some stories about him!) had only been with me a few days we sent him up to do the highest window on the job, ladder fully extended and a full audience sat at various tables enjoying their tea & scones.
Lance after some forceful persuasion dutifully starts climbing the ladder...but at about 35ft or so he freezes, shouting out that he can't go any higher.
No amount of further cajoling can get him to even move his deathlike grip on the ladder - let alone lift a foot up to the next rung - and now he's shouting out at the top of his voice that he's stuck...
The audience is now engrossed in the proceedings, cups halfway to their mouths. little fingers daintily cocked.
Snickering at his predicament we tell him to come down...but he's so frozen with fear he can't move a muscle (visions now of the fire brigade turning up with ambulance in attendance
)
Our audience' tea's & coffees are all going cold, but I don't think they are bothered
:
So I climb up the ladder to "talk him down"
I look down at a sea of faces and try to tell the muppet to stop shouting! It's embarrassing innit? But he just gets louder and louder (thank god mobile phones with cameras hadn't been invented!) it took me a good 15 minutes to talk him down, I even had to prise his hands of the ladder stiles to get him moving...he clung to that ladder like a limpet all the way down...I felt like taking a bow to our audience once I'd got him down!!
On the same job (different occasion) another lad was up a ladder that was on a balcony, so he could get to a 3rd floor (counting the ground floor) window...except the floor was covered in the seeds of a Virginia creeper, the bottom of the ladder shot out, wedged in the far side of the narrow, but long balcony, top of ladder smashed through what from the ground would be a first floor window, Jon's leg had gone down between the rungs of the ladder and he was trapped and in agony at the height of the balcony railings, and yep, sigh, there was yet another engrossed audience enjoying their tea & scones :
One of my guys came to me (I was around other side of the building) panicking and telling me Jon had fell of the ladder!
By the time I had got around there, Lance (yes, Lance) was up on the balcony with him, how the hell he got up there I didn't know, his ladder was at least 20ft away. - He had shinnied up a drainpipe and got up there that way apparently - Jon was screaming in agony, he thought his leg was broken, Lance was just scratching his head with a puzzled look on his face (Lance wasn't the bright of sparks)
So I got the ladder Lance was working off and used that to climb up to the balcony.
Quite a crowd has now gathered, the cobbled court yard was filling up
I stand in a way that Jon can grab hold of me to lift himself up onto my shoulders...ably assisted by Lance who grabs the injured leg to help heave him up...You should have heard the language! Once Jon had stopped screaming out in mortal agony that was! Lance actually looked affronted, his leg looked all-right to him (Jon was in shorts and his leg looked a mess from knee to groin)
Once I'd carried him down we were surrounded by do-gooders, one being a nurse, who went on to praise me, telling me I must be so strong to have lifted Jon onto my shoulders like I did
Much to Jon's disgust, I didn't do anything, it was Jon who did that, all I did was the fireman's lift bit...I was of course going to correct her...but the moment passed
Fortunately his leg wasn't broken, although with torn this and ripped that, he was still off work for a week or two.
Can you imagine the poo I'd be in if either of those two incidences happened today? Yet at the time we just got on with things...
As I said at the beginning of my...er...overly long post, when I look back on some of the things I did, I cringe inside...
It been a while since I had a good waffle on here
Ian (who can't sleep)
