Seeing the front page of the Times to-day with the by line ‘Sam Cam moves towards labour’ referring to the news that David Cameron’s wife is pregnant bring back to me the memory of working on a 026 punch machine at one of our customers near Tower Hill. I noticed on setting up the escapement that some previous engineer had neatly inscribed around the rim of the wheel with one letter or space for every tooth the words ‘Should conservative women be subjected to labour pains?’ I cannot to this day but wonder what frame of mind he was in to spend the time to do this.
On a lighter note it was in this same customer that a few of us returned after a very liquid lunch time celebrating the impending nuptials of one of our team. One of our group was incapable of walking unaided and was also fairly incoherent so we locked him in the engineers room out of harms way while we fixed a few machines. When we returned to the room some time later he was sitting at the desk grinning and chanting ‘ and whats more I’ve been sick in the drawer!’ When we checked the top drawer of the desk it was true so we left him to sober up and he was given the task next day of washing the contents of the drawer out and restoring it to its previous condition.
