Does the Team think?

[Howard Wright]

I'm always amazed that few in fitting shops wore boots. Shoes were much more common, even in steam engine building shops. I recall seeing the same in my teens in the 1960s on building sites where I used to get summer holiday work as a labourer, shoes or wellingtons(with the tops turned down) were the standard wear, very few wore boots.
I saved up and bought myself some Tuff boots for about 39/11d, a whole penny short of two quid!

Hi Duncan

I was fortunate (?) to visit Bahir dar in Northern Ethiopia in the late nineties.  As part of the visit I was taken to see a new (and very controversial) power plant that was being constructed as part of the damming of the Blue Nile.  It has a British managing team and Chinese workforce.  The chief engineer was exasperated with the workers who refused the safety equipment provided and worked in flip flops. The only concession to safety was the occasional hard hat perched on top of the traditional straw hat.

When I first started teaching in Universities in the early eighties there were still a sizeable proportion of staff who wore gowns to lecture in!

Cheers

Howard