David joined the GPO as an apprentice telephone technician in 1966.

His memoirs of the thirty six years he spent with the company are a revelation.

From the gentle workplace of the sixties to the cut and thrust of the nineties.
Liberally spiced with amusing anecdotes this is an absorbing account of a bygone era.

Detailing his journey through apprenticeship, life as an external planning engineer and subsequent promotion into management.

His career progresses into the world of senior management where he has a significant effect on the performance of the company and the effects of the liberalisation of the telephone network.

Taster follows.

For the past two years I had been studying at the Ipswich Civic College for my GCE ‘O’ levels but by mid June 1966 this was coming to an end. Examinations had been taken, although the results were not expected until mid August, and I was filling my time volunteering as a porter at the St Helens Chest Hospital on Foxhall Road, now the site of the St Elizabeth Hospice.

Since sitting the examinations my thoughts had turned to my future employment. I know it was a bit late but I had first considered joining the police force, then I thought perhaps banking seemed to be a reasonable option. The reason for my vacillation was, as ever, my mother. Since secondary school I had nurtured this hankering for something to do with electronics but mother had set her heart on me following in my father’s footsteps to seek a career in the building trade. Building houses for the next fifty years didn’t appeal to me one bit but I was under pressure not to resist the maternal edict.

Against what was expected of me, I had applied for three apprenticeships and was fortunate enough to be offered an interview for each. The first interview was with the Gas Board and I must have instilled in them the impression I would be an asset because they had offered me a job as an apprentice in gasworks management. Oh those halcyon days of gasometers and gasworks before the development of North Sea gas. It was certainly an option but not one that overly fired my enthusiasm.

The second string to my bow had been with the Electricity Board, where I had been granted both an interview and an aptitude IQ test, with a view to becoming part of their accounting centre. I was successful with the interview but sadly in their opinion I failed the IQ test. How do they know I failed it, that’s what baffles me? The questions and mind games were so off the wall that, although my answers were different to the ones they were seeking, I still felt mine were the correct ones and it was in fact theirs that were wrong. It seems I could not effectively discern which cup would remain empty when a load of balls were thrust into a pyramid of cups. The thought of a ‘load of balls’ remained in my consciousness long after that mental challenge was over!

Anyway ‘agree to differ’ was my way of off-setting the slight disappointment of failure, and, as far as I was concerned, it was more their loss than mine. A career sitting within a group of boring bean counters didn’t fire my imagination any more than managing gas, so ‘ya boo sucks’ to them!

Now, on the morning of July tenth I was about to face my final interviewing challenge, this time with the General Post Office, with the aim of becoming an apprentice telephone engineer. This was the closest I could realistically get to an electronics career without a specific qualification in Physics. When I entered the college two years earlier I had erroneously enrolled for a general science GCE ‘O’ level course and not a science based course. The latter would have had separate qualifications for chemistry, biology and the all important physics. Never mind, by now it was water under the bridge and all that.

I was rather excited at the prospect of securing an apprenticeship to become a telephone engineer. As I said earlier, I had always had a bit of a hankering for a career involving electronics but was astute enough to want a job that, whilst being interesting and fulfilling, also provided job security and carried a decent pension for when I eventually reached the ancient age of retirement; the GPO seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

I had prepared carefully for the day’s ordeal, in fact much more than I had for the other two interviews if I am honest; I even shaved the fluff off my chin and checked my appearance in the full-length mirror in the hallway, for the umpteenth time, before leaving home, in plenty of time, to make the interview at the Ipswich Telephone Exchange. I knew appearance and punctuality were extremely important factors with which to make a favourable first impression, after all you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

What immediately struck me, when first I entered the building, had been the smell; an aroma that I later discovered was unique to telephone exchanges, a beautiful, oily electric smell. I discovered later it was the unmistakable odour of ‘Dag’ oil, the oil used to lubricate electro-mechanical switches in exchanges, which were affectionately referred to by engineers as clockwork exchanges. You need to remember this was a lifetime before the advent of digital communications.

Anyway I digress; as I entered the atrium I noticed a broad staircase rising in front of me and just to the left was a small wooden table with a doorman sitting behind it. He smiled at me.

“Here for an interview son?” he called out cheerily, his voice echoing off the hard surfaces.

“Yes, ten o’clock.” I replied as I strode confidently toward his desk.

“What name?”

“David Charles.” I answered and watched as he studied the clipboard in front of him, finally scribing a big tick against my name.

“Just wait here and I’ll take you up when they’re ready.”

I seated myself and waited anxiously to be summoned. Nervously I rubbed my polished black shoes on the back of my trouser legs, adjusted the collar of my crisply ironed white shirt, fiddled with my conservative tie and palmed my hair, yes I had some hair then, rather a head-full actually!

At ten o’clock on the dot his telephone rang, my attendance was finally requested. He led me up the staircase and along a narrow corridor, his rubber shoes squeaking on the dark brown linoleum flooring. Indicating a small interview room, he left me to face my verbal examination. The door stood open and I was invited to enter and seat myself opposite two inquisitors. One introduced himself as Cyril Pilgrim, the training manager for the Colchester telephone area. The other gentleman’s name has, I’m afraid to say, been lost in the mists of time.

The interview went well, at least I thought it did, I was able to answer all of their questions in a confident manner; I was likewise able to explain to them the basics of how a telephone instrument worked, thanks to the physics module of my ‘O’ level general science, although I did make the mistake of saying the magnet in the receiver was an electro-magnet. Cyril took the cover off the receiver of the telephone on the desk in front of him and pulled the diaphragm off, when released it flew back with a sharp click.

“It’s a permanent magnet.” I corrected myself, smiling nervously and Cyril beamed back at me with a reassuringly, friendly smile. Then he picked up a bunch of coloured wires and held them out toward me. My heart sank; I was certain he was about to ask me the resistor colour code. I had dabbled in radios and televisions with my Saturday jobs at Curry’s electrical store and a local television repair shop, but I had never managed to learn the code off by heart.

I waited nervously for the inevitable question.

“Can you tell me what these colours are please?”

The euphoria of a reprieve swept over me, I quickly rattled through them in case he changed his mind.

“White, red, blue, mauve, orange, green, brown and grey.”

“We actually call it violet not mauve, and slate not grey,” he smiled affably, “but that was fine.” We just wanted to make sure you were not colour blind!”

The penny dropped, now I understood.

Once out of the interview room I breezed down the steps, feeling most confident, and, with a casual wave to the doorman, headed for my motor-cycle. The journey home felt good, I could hardly wait for the two weeks to pass before I was to receive their decision. I did so hope that I had done enough.

Two weeks later, to the day, I sat by the door waiting for the all important letter to arrive. The postman came and went leaving only an electricity bill. I was crestfallen, surely I had not failed. The following day the postman whistled his way up the road, turned into our driveway and headed for the front door. I felt excitement as a flurry of white envelopes burst through the flap and slapped onto the coconut doormat, and there in the midst of them was a buff envelope with GPO OHMS plainly printed in big black letters across the top. Nervously I picked it up, ripped it open and gave a whoop of delight when I read the word ‘accepted’. Quickly I read on to find that I had been offered employment as a ‘Telecommunications Technician Apprentice’; I was invited to report to the assembly room, Woodbridge Road Technical Engineering Centre Ipswich on Monday thirteenth August at 9.00 for a two day induction course. My starting pay was to be £7-19s-6d a week (£7.97p in today’s money) All of a sudden I felt rather grown up.