Well I remember working in the Signal and Mining relay shop and
the '71 and '72 apprentices were always playing pranks on each other and
the rest of the staff.
I had my toolbox screwed to the floor on one occasion, was it Viv was it
Keith or was it Rob Alford, I never did find out.
There used to be a chap called Tommy Gribble in the relay shop and at
the time he was working on relays with large capacitors, these were
supplied in boxes of around twenty.
Anyway Tommy was working away one day when he suddenly fell off his stool with a scream and lay unconscious on the floor, the first aiders were called and Tommy soon regained consciousness. Every one thought that he had suffered a heart attack.
However it turned out that the capacitor he had picked up was charged (they never had keepers on them in '72) and the shock threw him off his stool. Well all the apprentices got the blame and we were severely reprimanded, but they never found out which one of us did it (no it wasn't me).
I also remember a lad called Kim Smith who bought Speedy's Bonneville,
only for it to break a conrod at 41,000 miles. I had the same model and
said to Kim, I hope mine doesn't do that (it did shortly afterwards). We
rebuild our bikes at the same time and swapped notes (I still have the
same Bonneville and I still use it).
