British Steel paid for my education

British Steel paid for my education. I got a better deal than they did.

My parents weren’t that well off. I wangled a full grant (after year one anyway). University education was financed differently then and sometime in the 5^th  (maybe even the 4^th, I don’t remember clearly) form I noticed that there were companies who were prepared to “sponsor” you to go to college. I applied to everybody who was remotely relevant to the courses I wanted to do. It was excellent practice at filling in application forms and going to interviews (the companies always paid for the travel too. I finished up with an sponsorship from British Steel (General Steels Division, Cleveland).

It was an excellent deal from my point of view. BSC paid me the princely sum of 5 quid per month during term time, which doesn’t sound like much, but it was the maximum they could give me without affecting my grant. You have to consider that I paid 5 quid a week for my slum bedsit in my final year. Mild Ale was 22p per pint in the Students’ Union bar. I was flush!

BSC provided me with 3 months of relevant paid work (including 2 weeks paid vacation, which they insisted I took) during the long vacation 1^st and 2^nd year, and there was an almost guaranteed job offer at the end of my course. BSC called me a “Student Apprentice”. The result was a sort-of self-organised sandwich course, but in 3 years, not 4.

I loved it! BSC put me on a round-the-departments programme shadowing people. I was there in 1979 when BSC “blew in” what was then the largest blast-furnace in Europe (Redcar, since closed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWgsINl8SWw ). I worked in some terrible places too. The coke-ovens at Consett were an experience which I do not regret but would not want to repeat. Everyone knew that plant was doomed.

British Steel were flexible and tolerant. They allowed me to fiddle with the computers (FORTRAN and BASIC) in the evenings. For a several weeks 2^nd Year vacation I would do my job (08:00 – 16:00) at the power station, clean up, walk to the sinter plant, where the “Coordination” computer (ICL 2900 series) was located and then spend 3 hours writing and running heat-transfer simulations. After that I would catch the bus to Middlesbrough, eat a take-away, drink several pints and repeat the following day. Only a 20-something-year-old can live like that.

When I graduated in 1979 I joined BSC and planned to spend at least several years there. “Events dear boy” intervened. In 1980 there was the Steel Strike ( https://steelvoices.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/the-1980-steel-strike-thirty-five-years-on/ obviously left-wing etc but factually correct). I worked through that (I’ve crossed more picket lines than most people). Another experience I would not particularly want to repeat. After the strike was over, my “posting” was to an obsolescent blast furnace plant, and my task was to work out how to shut down the steam distribution system safely. Obviously “the writing was on the wall” so I looked for another job, and found one with a company that designed boilers. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/32859789@N02/7074725003 I was based at the Power Station in this picture)

Ironically (unintended pun), the plant which I was supposed to help to shut down lasted much longer than anyone expected. There were 5 blast-furnaces on the site and 2 of them continued in operation making ferro-manganese alloy metal. They ran until ? and weren’t demolished until 1994 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DnXcPouT0k ).  The coke ovens on the same site continued in operation until 2015! (http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/tears-shed-final-batch-pushed-10095955 )

My first job (as a bottle-washer)

Just recently the great and good have been telling people on LinkedIn about their first day at work. I don't want to feel left out, so I thought I share what I remember about my first day at work. Actually, I've had several starts, all in different locations and under different circumstances. If you like, this is the "first, first"!

The job was supposed to be a fill-in while I retook an exam to improve on the grades which I needed to get into the university course I wanted . I remember that I had been given no notice of the interview - quite literally I had been asked "Can you go NOW?" and I'd gone - THEN! I had been unkempt and unshaven. The interview was on a Wednesday or Thursday and I must have said the right things, because they asked me if I could start on the following Monday.

The job was as a lab assistant in a small research laboratory. My responsibilities were to be quite varied, basically: do as you're told by your superiors (which meant almost everyone else!). I thought of it as being "bottle-washer".

On the Monday, the post arrived as I was about to set off for work. It contained an unconditional offer for the university course I wanted. They said they thought I could cope with the grades I had. So, I turned up on my first day at work and handed in my notice!

In fact, I told my new employer that if they preferred, I would "not start at all" and we could call the whole thing quits. They were really decent about it and said that I could have the job until I was due to go to university. Excellent I thought: relevant experience and two months of pay. Just the start I needed.

My job really was "washing bottles", and test-tubes and beakers and flasks and all the other paraphernalia of a chemical laboratory. I had to learn pretty quickly that we had some real nasties. I spent at least some of my time working with chromic acid which is really not good to come in contact with. One of the things we worked with was ion exchange resin which came as tiny polystyrene beads. I had to be really careful not to spill any of the wet beads on the floor because when they dried they became like little ball-bearings and on a hard lino floor the effect could be really quite dangerous.

Some pleasant memories are:

• Being told off because "I walked like the lab manager" and the sound of my footsteps made some of my colleagues uneasy (to this day, I don't know what they were up to). 
• Playing cricket in the park opposite the lab during lunch break. The wickets were old retort stands and the bat was kept in one of the equipment drawers.
• And playing cards with the other workers on the wet lunch breaks.

Less pleasant memories are:

• Doing seemingly endless titrations to get the "break-through point" on a sample ion exchange resin,
• And the smell of the Amination Room where we kept the fume cupboards and unpleasant materials.

It was a good start!