Simon [00:00:00]: Simon Perry here in Newport on the Isle of Wight, and it is the second of April, and I’m here with
Pat [00:00:08]: Patricia Kennedy, but everybody calls me Pat
Simon [00:00:12]: Okay, and we’re here to talk about the Flame Keepers Oral History Project, which is about the Ronson factory in Newport. So Pat, is that alright? If I call you Pat,
Pat [00:00:26]: Yeah, Pat, that’s the name. That’s what everybody called me was Pat.
Simon [00:00:28]: okay, what was early years like? I mean, what, which year were you born, and where were you born?
Pat [00:00:30]: I was born in 1961 in Newport, St. Mary’s Hospital always lived in Newport all my life, apart from a little stint I’d done in East Cowes a few years ago. Now I’m back in Newport. When I was young, I was just with my parents and my brothers, went to all the schools in Newport, ended up at Carisbrooke High School. Didn’t know what to do when I left school, ah, sister-in-law said, come and work with me at Ronson’s. I thought, oh ok. So.
Simon [00:00:54]: So what were your mum and dad? What were they? What do they do?
Pat [00:01:07]: My dad worked for the Isle of Wight Council. He used to be mending all the lorries, and all … it used to be Newport borough back in the day, and then Isle of Wight Council took it over, and he worked for them. But my mum didn’t work because she had problems.
Simon [00:01:23]: You said you have brothers.
Pat [00:01:26]: Yeah, I got two brothers.
Simon [00:01:28]: Are they older or younger?
Pat [00:01:30]: They’re both older than me. Yeah, one is 72 and the other 76. I’m 65, so.
Simon [00:01:34]: Okay, and what was so, what was the early days, like you’d mentioned schools. Which school did you go to?
Pat [00:01:43]: I went to Node … I went to Nine Acres school, and then I also went to West Street School, because in them days, you had to get your 11 plus to go on to either grammar or the Priory Girls, as it would have been. But I didn’t make that because they changed it into a middle school halfway through. So, because they changed it halfway through, I ended up going to Nodehill Middle School. And I was actually one of the first, first years to ever go there, because you have to be nine when you go there. And I was nine, so, so I went to Nodehill Middle and then I went to Carisbrooke High School. So I went to four schools all together, whereas it wouldn’t have needed to be that way. It’s just that they changed. They changed it. I happened to be the changeover. It was, you know,
Simon [00:02:06]: when they introduced the middle school.
Pat [00:02:15]: yeah, now it’s gone back two way system now. So I actually went to four schools, yeah.
Simon [00:02:34]: And so what was early life like? Do you mean, what was your, what’s your memories of growing up? What was that?
Pat [00:02:39]: Um, really good. I had really good family. We lived in a council house. We had very basic living, but I was really happy. My dad was lovely. He used to take us out everywhere. My mum was quite ill, really, most of the time, so she done everything in the house, but she didn’t really come out as much because she used to want to rest. So he was the breadwinner, and he was the one that used to entertain us. He was great dad, to be honest, very good. Yeah, no, I can’t complain about any of it, really.
Simon [00:03:07]: And then, then, when you were at school, did you did you think about, I mean, I don’t think I did. But did you think about what work was going to be like?
Pat [00:03:21]: No, not really. I mean, when I was a little girl, I always wanted to be a nurse because I had a nurse’s outfit and I said, Yeah, I’m going to be a nurse when I grow up, just because you don’t realise at the time how many what you got to go through to get to it. And I was never encouraged with it. And course, once I got to 16, I was early leaving school, oh, what do you want to do? And I remember thinking, I don’t want to study or anything. I’m not into that. My mum and dad’s not really into that. They just wanted me to get a job. And my sister in law was working at Ronson, so she sugggested it, and a few of my friends I went to school with, we all went there and got a job. So there was a few of us that went, because they always took so many on anyway, every year. So that’s what I did.
Simon [00:04:04]: What, you spoke to your sister in law and said, Yeah, I’ve got to get some you know, Dad says I’ve got to get some work.
Pat [00:04:05]: Yeah, she said to me, “why don’t you come and work at Ronson’s, that’s where I work”. And she was always showing me all these clothes, all this stuff she used to buy. And I used to think, well, I want all that. I don’t want to go study. I want to buy clothes. I want to get a car, I wanted to learn to drive, so yeah, that was it, it was the money I think that drove me to it, to be honest, I wasn’t thinking about a career by then, but it’s funny how I ended up working in the NHS for 30 years later, and I always loved working up the hospital, and often used to see the nurses. And thought, I should have been a nurse, but there you go. I wouldn’t be here to tell this story. Would I, if I’d done that? Yeah.
Simon [00:04:45]: So what was the process of applying for the job like?
Pat [00:04:50]: God, I think, think you could ring up. I think you had to call up and say, look, I’d like to you know, come for an Interview. When, because you, like you, said the adverts would be in the papers, I think I might have found one of the ads. And I think I think you either had a call in or don’t think you had to write a letter. I think you had a call in which I would have had to go to a phone box to do that. I probably called in and they said, yeah, come for an interview, blah, blah. And that was it, very simple, easy. Just went in there, said a few things, yeah, you got the job. You know, that’s how quick. You didn’t have to have anything in them days. You didn’t have to prove, didn’t have to prove who you were or anything. You just got took on.
Simon [00:05:14]: Employers were hungry for people?
Pat [00:05:14]: Yeah, it was just, oh, yeah, you come from Carisbrooke High School. Yeah, that’s fine. Really easy.
Simon [00:05:33]: Can I just move that microphone? Okay, I picked a spot where it’s rubbing a little bit
Pat [00:05:47]: Oh, okay, I’m probably moving about too much.
Simon [00:05:49]: No, that’s good. I mean, move, as you like, yeah. So they, I mean, it sounds like, there’s, it was just basically rock up and you’re away.
Pat [00:05:59]: It was, yeah. It was like, What day did you leave school? While I left on there, 27th of May, I think, and they said, you want to start on Monday? And, yeah, okay, then yeah. And it was like, you went from school one day, and over the weekend, you had to transfer to doing a 40 hour a week job with older women that you’d never had anything to do with, you’re only used to going to go into school with people your age. And it was a bit of a shock to be honest. Yeah, it was a bit of a and they also said what happened? The 30th of May would have normally been a bank holiday, but it wasn’t that year because it was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and they held it back a week because the Silver Jubilee was in the beginning of June, and they let us have a week off then, or two weeks off after. So we had to work for a week then we had two weeks off, I think, to celebrate this Jubilee. And we didn’t get no money, and because it just didn’t work out, you know? But thing was, they said you can go to the Dole and get some money, if you want, for those weeks, because they couldn’t pay us for the first week until we went back, because you worked a week in hand. So it was sort of you had these two weeks. So I think, well, we don’t really want to be off on holiday. We want to be working. So they saw you can go and sign on. You know, which I did, but some of my friends weren’t 16 until the end of June or July, and they couldn’t get anything.
Simon [00:07:26]: So they then had to live on. They just had this promise of money.
Pat [00:07:29]: Yeah, they just had to be with their parents, I suppose. And they were all sort of, oh, it’s not fair. You’re getting it. I said, Well, I’m already 16, you know, there was a bit of a thing about that, yeah, yeah. I never forgot that.
Simon [00:07:41]: So that was, where were you living when you were working at the…
Pat [00:07:45]: I was living in Prospect Road, in Newport.
Simon [00:07:48]: Okay, so, and then how did you get?
Pat [00:07:50]: Bus. We used to walk up to the bus station, get the bus? Yeah, they had a bus going up there, you know.
Simon [00:07:56]: And that was just a normal…
Pat [00:07:57]: A normal bus. But mainly it was put on. There were two or three put on. It was all going to the same place. They’d go along by Gunville, when there used to be Thorns Electronics, or whatever they were called. Some of the women would get off there. The rest would be people from Dixon’s on there as well. So they’d actually pull into Dixons and Ronsons, where it was, everybody get off. Then the bus would carry on to Yarmouth. I think, I’m not sure. I don’t think it was a proper bus just for us. I think it was just general, but it was just packed with all these women.
Simon [00:08:30]: The first stop was, is that where Argos is or was?
Pat [00:08:34]: Yes, they would have stopped there, okay, yeah,
Simon [00:08:37]: Yeah, because that was then commercial space, rather than retail?
Pat [00:08:40]: Yeah, but there was, I don’t know if it was called Ultra at one point, or Thorns, or different names it’s had, we didn’t like the ladies. Don’t know, they always seemed a bit. I think there was always the thing, oh, you, oh, you work at Ronsons, oh, you work there, oh you work at Dixon’s. No, but we didn’t, nobody, well, we didn’t, but always had that impression it was a bit like that.
Simon [00:09:01]: Like a tribe?
Pat [00:09:02]: Yeah, well, they probably did, but us lot being teenagers, we didn’t want to, you know, we stick to ourselves, you know.
Simon [00:09:12]: Well, that’s, I mean, that’s interesting there you’re saying about the difference from school.
Pat [00:09:17]: Yeah,
Simon [00:09:17]: But do you have an impression of what it was like when you walked into the Ronsons for the first time, because you’ve been in familiar school classrooms.
Pat [00:09:28]: I forgot to add, actually, back in the February or March, it was you could go for work experience, and because I was thinking, then perhaps I’ll do this. And a few of my friends as well, we went for work experience for a week. I forgot about that in the February or March, I think it was, and we thought, oh, yeah, that’s okay. We’ll go for a job. And so I think that helped us get the job as well, because we’ve already done it. We’d seen what it was like. So when we walked in there, no, it wasn’t a shock, because we’d been in there.
Simon [00:09:57]: What was it like when you’re doing the work experience to go from a. classroom to, what I guess was quite industrial.
Pat [00:10:02]: Really strange but, yeah, very industrial. Sort of opened your eyes a bit. But I just thought, oh, wow, this is it. This is what we’ll be doing. So, yeah, just went along with it. I’m quite easy going really, so it didn’t, I mean, most kids these days would probably get anxiety, but I didn’t. Just went, went into it.
Simon [00:10:19]: Was it noisy there?
Pat [00:10:20]: Yeah, it was quite noisy, I suppose, talking and all the little gadgets go in and…I guess, I guess it was quite noise. They had machines, drilling machines, to put stuff on
Simon [00:10:31]: Because when you’re at school, it was silence during the lessons.
Pat [00:10:34]: Yeah, I mean, I’d probably notice it more now, but like I said, as a teenager, it goes over your head don’t it? Yeah, you just don’t worry about it. Just thought, I’ll do this, do that. When you get all the older women, they’d all be moaning about stuff and I think what are they moaning about? You know, it was that sort of thing. But that’s an age thing, isn’t it? Because if I was there now, I’d been moaning as well! (laughs)
Simon [00:11:01]: What was it? What did they get you to do when you’re doing the work experience?
Pat [00:11:05]: Then what did I do for work experience? Oh, God. I think we had like, easy little jobs to do, like sorting out valves and doing bits. And I think they showed us a bit on how you do it, if you was on line, somebody would sit with you and just show you how it’s done. And I can’t really remember, to be honest, it was just little bits, really, just to get you used to what was what. I think I’ve done a little stint on the flames. They were showing you how they done the flames. And I thought, yeah…
Simon [00:11:39]: Okay. So when you started the work there, you’d done your test, and then you left school, and then you started the work. What was that? What was the first role you had there?
Pat [00:11:53]: On the valve department. We were putting all the valves together, because you got this little stem, and then you’d have to put these little rubbers, and it was shiny, they looked like sequins but they just call them shimmies. I don’t know what the proper word was, but they used to say “you got any shimmies?” You know, had boxes of all that stuff. And these little rubber things used to have to pick out of rubber, you know, like perforated but you just have to pick them out with a little thing to get the rubber out, to put on the valve. And sometimes you get a strip that wasn’t very good. You couldn’t get them out. So we’ve done that for a bit. I’ve done that. And then they gradually put us where they thought they might need us, and train us up on other stuff.
Simon [00:12:32]: That you sort of got a box full of tiny little…gaskets
Pat [00:12:36]: Yeah, tiny little rubber things and all these little, yeah. See the little stem you had the little stem. You had the little, tiny, little rubber, and these little shimmies, like a bit like a washer, I suppose, but they were all silvery glittery.
Simon [00:12:49]: So you got three, three, boxes…
Pat [00:12:51]: Yeah, so you have to put this, pick the stem up, put the shimmy on, and then I think, you put the rubber on the top to keep it on, I think, yeah. And then you press it into like a little, you’d have a little box with pin holes in so you could put the stem in, so it’d all be stood up. So then someone would come and take them, and they take them to another valve department, I never worked in there, where they used to put them with the rest of the bits that had to go, because that stem is the actual bit the flame comes out. So they put all the rest of the bits on it for it to go. So I don’t know much about that one, but that’s what they used to do. They used to go off. I used to see them putting them in machine. So they must have gone through a machine to have something else attached. I don’t know,
Simon [00:13:34]: Because when you what you were making, there was the the comet lighters?
Pat [00:13:38]: Yeah, that was it, that is what we were doing, making the little stems, which are the little bits where the flame come out.
Simon [00:13:46]: The lighter itself went from a sort of raw material, and came out of the end as a lighter?
Pat [00:13:52]: Yeah, seems like that. I mean, they had die cast there. Which die cast, I think is like a set is like a thing you set in it, I don’t know, because I never worked in there, but I’m guessing it was all just made there.
Simon [00:14:04]: Yeah, it’s quite mad the idea that lumps of metal come in and then lighters come out the other end.
Pat [00:14:10]: I guess so but I don’t know. But then they were plasticky, though, weren’t they, a bit sort of plasticky. I mean that one I’ve got over there in my cabinet says a metal type one, but the rest of them are plastic.
Simon [00:14:12]: Some had leather covers?
Pat [00:14:13]: Yeah some did, yeah..
Simon [00:14:21]: The posh ones…Okay, so that’s interesting that they get you first on the bit that makes the flame, yeah? But you, you don’t have to, I remember later you were saying about filling them with gas, but we’ll come on to that one, I guess, won’t we? And then you lay them out on a board with a pin hole. So you then..
Pat [00:14:53]: To stack them up.
Simon [00:14:53]: I don’t know, 50 of them on there.
Pat [00:14:54]: I can’t remember, there was on a board, but you had a now, what’s it called? You’d have to do so many a day. I’m not sure what they used to call
Simon [00:15:04]: Ah, now,
Pat [00:15:05]: oh, what was that called?
Simon [00:15:07]: Is it piece rate or something like that?
Pat [00:15:09]: It was something, but if you had to do so many a day, you have to write down how many trays you’ve done in a day. And there would be a limit you used to have to do so many. Of course, to start with, we weren’t used to doing it that quick. So we didn’t make that many for a long time. Then all of a sudden we’re like, oh, I’m doing it now. I’ve done eight. I’ve done if it was 800 or I don’t know how much it was. I can’t remember, but yeah,
Simon [00:15:31]: So they from straight off, they gave you targets?
Pat [00:15:33]: Bit like, piece work, is it piece work?
Simon [00:15:35]: I think it’s something like that.
Pat [00:15:37]: And they’d have someone come around timing you as well. Time in motion, man, or something. Yeah, it was quite hard going, and you had to get on with it.
Simon [00:15:46]: Yeah, right. I remember that. I don’t know why.
Pat [00:15:50]: And if you fell back, if you were slacking off, you didn’t get so many done. I don’t think you got so much money. I’m not sure. Can’t remember now? But they let us off the new ones because they knew it would take us a while to get up speed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Simon [00:16:06]: So that was the, what did he call them?
Pat [00:16:08]: The little valves, the stems. I used to call him a stem rubber and a shimmy. That’s what I called them. You had, like a little needle thing that you’d pick the rubber out with, because it was in a perforated like a line, and you pick them up. So they were still attached to, like a sheet? Yeah, a rubbery, sort of light sheet, yeah, okay, I don’t know where they were made, or where they come from. I don’t know.
Simon [00:16:33]: And then, so what was the next role after that?
Pat [00:16:36]: Well, then once they go to that place where I said, I don’t know if it was a valve place, but they put them in machines, and they’d be having put other bits. I suppose it would be the geary bit that goes in the top.
Simon [00:16:48]: This the one that creates the spark.
Pat [00:16:50]: Yeah, I think it’s that bit that we’re putting on. And then from there, they go to the valve to shell department, because they called the outer bit of shell, Valve to shell and they’d have a drill thing that people, well, women would have this stem that now attached to other stuff, and they drill it into the shell, and then they put that on the conveyor belt. Then, I think the next bit after that, did the gas go in after that? Yeah, I think the gas went in after that. Then they put them back on the conveyor belt. Then they would buff them up on a buffer, because they’d be all white where they’d been in die cast. Oh, they used to have to go for sand blasting. That was another department, I never worked in there. So there were sand blasted. Couldn’t really tell what colour they were until they were buffed up. You think all the burgundy ones, or the black ones, or then they put them back on the line, and then we, which I got the job in the end of doing, I had to light them up. We had, like, this little ball thing we used to call, we called it a bomb. It would be filled up with lighter fluid with a little flame going all the time, so that when you opened your little thing up with your fork and your chimney to adjust the valves.
Simon [00:18:05]: What are these words?
Pat [00:18:06]: A fork and a chimney, they were called. You lift the fork up to get the stem so the gas would come out. You put it against the light and it would fire it up. So then you had a measuring stick behind this perspex screen, you’d have a measuring stick, and then you’d see how high it was measuring, and you start to take it down with your little chimney, take it down to a certain level so that when they went to adjust it properly, it wouldn’t just go phewww, because we were doing it ready to see if it was leaking and if they blow out. Because sometimes they’d just be on fire. They’d be like, Oh, they’re on fire. Chuck them in the bin, you know, the sand pit.
Simon [00:18:44]: Okay, you sort got a bucket of sand?
Pat [00:18:46]: Yeah, you had a big bucket of sand next to you. Yeah, okay. And if they wouldn’t go out, they’d be in there, and just catch on fire. And usually someone who would come and sit for you if you wanted to go the toilet, a float, I suppose, that is what she was called, I can’t remember. She come along with air extinguisher, and sshhhhh, like an air pipe thing, she put it out.
Simon [00:19:07]: So it had a little bit of gas inside it to test it?
Pat [00:19:10]: yeah, yeah
Simon [00:19:11]: And what was the height of flame that you needed to have, or it’s just a marker on the stick?
Pat [00:19:15]: I don’t know, because, I mean, when you first lit them, because they hadn’t been adjusted or anything, they’d just be right up, you know. I think we used to turn it down, turn it down really quickly, just do it quick, got used to it. I didn’t know if it have to be up to about four inches, maybe, or just under, for the girls to set it properly, with a low one and a high one. We didn’t do that that went off somewhere else. It was just to get that adjustment right so that when they went to do it, it wouldn’t be because they wouldn’t have that problem, because everything sorted before it goes there. So if it was leaking, sometimes they’d be leaking from the bottom the bit where it got filled in. That was the other thing, the top bit was done, and then the other ladies would put the bottom valve in the bottom for it to be filled up. Yeah, that was the other bit before the filling. And sometimes they, you’d pick it up and you’d be like, oh, it’s leaking from the bottom. So you used to have a little tray you could put them in, and you put them in, yeah, if they were rejects,
Simon [00:20:09]: And then they were then someone took them off and fixed them?
Pat [00:20:12]: Someone would take them off and see if they could put a new valve in them, or things like that. And if they caught fire, they sort of got a bit melted anyway, so they weren’t any good, but they all had to be accounted for. If there was one or two missing out the batch, has anybody got this one? Where is it? On the floor be looking around, has anybody dropped it? They all, everything had to be accounted for. They’d have batches.
Simon [00:20:35]: So I guess, these days, you’d say you’re making sure you’re making the most of the resources?
Pat [00:20:41]: Yeah, oh yeah, definitely. I don’t think much got chucked away. That’s the impression I got anyway.
Simon [00:20:46]: I mean, it sounds like it’s quite a tightly run business.
Pat [00:20:50]: It was, I think it was, because when you was on that belt, you just had to keep going. You couldn’t, you couldn’t stop it.
Simon [00:20:58]: And the one you’re talking about there is the flame height. Was there a name for that?
Pat [00:21:02]: Valve to shell. That little conveyor belt.
Simon [00:21:06]: Okay? And how would the conveyor belt work?
Pat [00:21:09]: There’d be a switch on the end, because there’d be four of us doing the flames, the fire would be down the middle. There’d be a person sat there. There was another one there, and one behind me. The buffer girls, yeah, buffer girls were in front. So we always be able to talk to each other, which was fine. We could do it long as we kept up and we knew what we were doing. Then sometimes, if someone got beyond we’d be like, oh, I’m getting a build up here. You just be taking them off and then the other girls would just help each other get them down a bit, you know, if you happen to get a build up, if you slacked off for some reason you couldn’t do it. You just had to keep up.
Simon [00:21:43]: Well, I was just thinking, if it’s just always coming on a conveyor belt?
Pat [00:21:46]: Yeah, it never stop. Never stop. There used to be a button on the end, which the girl on the end used to have the little button next to her. And they say to all tea break a minute Beryl, here name was Beryl. Yeah, all right, yeah. Got to the time. She’d say ‘ready, ready?’ And she’d turned it off immediately, she get up and straight down the canteen,
Simon [00:21:51]: Right, right.
Pat [00:22:01]: She used to sit there. She couldn’t wait to turn it off. She was an older lady. She used to sit there, oh it was so funny. She was funny,
Simon [00:22:13]: Like, funny, like, what?
Pat [00:22:14]: Well, she was just, she come in to say about bloody kids and her husband and something else. They’re not gonna do this. And then, oh, I don’t know, but she was funny with it. She used to make a joke about it, and we just used to laugh at her, you know, yeah, we did, because us teenagers don’t really get it, because I think actually one of her sons was my age, and she kept going on about him. And I used to think, I didn’t really get it, but I get it now because I’ve had teenagers so you couldn’t relate to it. But we used to think it was funny, you know.
Simon [00:22:45]: And everyone, I mean, the different ages got on fine together?
Pat [00:22:48]: Yeah we all got on alright. Us lot here. There was another older lady sat opposite me as well, Nora, her name was, yeah, she was, she was quite sweet. She didn’t say so much. But there was a younger girl sat behind me, and she used to talk to Beryl a lot, because you could hear them having conversations. You either joined in or you didn’t, you know. And then Carol would sit in front of me on the buffer. I always talk to her because she was, like, my age. So, yeah.
Simon [00:23:13]: So they had a different conveyor belt did they?
Pat [00:23:17]: Yeah, because after that, it would be (I’m getting a lot of posts today)
Simon [00:23:21]: They’d have a different conveyor belt?
Pat [00:23:25]: Once that got to the end of the line, all these trays of lighters they used to stack up, once they’d all been done, the float used to take them over to the water tank. And then they have through the water tanks to see if there was any leaks. And that was just around the corner, well just over the corridor from the valve to shell department. And then once them leaks were detected, right and they looked okay. They were all put back in the trays again, and they were taken over to the main bit, where they had all the components put in, you know, the little bit you put, you know, the everything, everything was put on the shiny top bit. Everything. All went down a big long, that was really long. And at the end you had the ladies looking at them and checking them out at the end and packing them up. But they still used to be taken off there as well, doing that, they used to be quality checked and…
Simon [00:24:11]: So the valve to shell that’s the die cast metal bit you’re talking about?
Pat [00:24:19]: Yeah
Simon [00:24:20]: With the…
Pat [00:24:20]: All the valve was being put in at the beginning. Then they put the the fuel in it, and then we were sorting it out
Simon [00:24:27]: For fuel leaks, water butt. So the conveyor belt literally went through the water looking for bubbles?
Pat [00:24:37]: Yeah. They put someone in the middle, and then they pick people out. And so you’d have someone on the top just filling it in. She just used to sit there doing that all day, and then it go through, I think that was double
Simon [00:24:47]: What was she doing?
Pat [00:24:48]: She’d get the trays over from us. You’d have all these big trays. I think you just get back 12 lighters on a tray. They’re like red. I think they were just like, great big trays, but just big enough for a lighter to go in. So she’d have all these trays stacked up, and then she’d be put them two at a time. There’d be one each side. I think, I think I’ve done it once, and she should sit there all day doing that. And then there’d be a couple of ladies checking them in the tank. And then at the end, there’d be two people sat at the end, and they had, what do they call these things when they blow things with air?
Simon [00:25:23]: Like pressurised air
Pat [00:25:24]: Yeah, to blow all the water out of it and get them clean, then they’d all go back in the trays again.
Simon [00:25:29]: And then what was the next stage after that one?
Pat [00:25:31]: I think it went to the big conveyor belt then where they all got put together.
Simon [00:25:31]: Wrap it in the plastic on that one already?
Pat [00:25:39]: If they were plat.. we used to do plastic ones. I never, ever done metal ones. We just done the plain, like the black, burgundy, the blue, those sort of ones. If they needed leather or anything on them, after that, they’d obviously be sent off to a different place to have leather put on. Then they’d bring back to the big conveyor belt. So I never had anything do the leather.
Simon [00:25:59]: And then the bit that, the metal bit on top, the sort of chrome bit
Pat [00:26:02]: Yeah, that bit, see, that had to be screwed on. That’s done. They turn it upside down. You put it on with a with a drill. There were drills on there and then they put that back on the conveyor back, do another one, drill,do another one, drill.
Simon [00:26:03]: Because that was one of the things that was sort of revolutionary about the Comet, wasn’t it? You could twist the top and it had a spare…
Pat [00:26:25]: Yeah, someone, someone would sit there putting the wheel, flint wheel, and the flints in. Flint wheel, flints back on the line. Flint wheel flints back… I mean, it did used to be boring a lot of the time. I used to get fed up with keep doing it, it was a boring job, to be honest.
Simon [00:26:40]: But the flint one?
Pat [00:26:42]: Well, I did have a little go at that. We’d have a little go at everything. I think, then they think, they work out what they think you’re better at doing. So I ended up on valve to shell that’s what I ended up doing. You know. I tried everything else, but they just put me down. You didn’t have the choice really what you wanted to do, I suppose, if you really hated something that you could have told someone, but I don’t know.
Simon [00:27:03]: yeah, I mean, those flints are tiny, little fiddly things, aren’t they?
Pat [00:27:07]: Can you imagine doing that every day? Just like the girl filling up the water tank. I couldn’t have done that all day.
Simon [00:27:12]: But was she then, you know, chatting away to people?
Pat [00:27:14]: No, because you’re on your own when you’re filling that up, she could speak to the two ladies a bit further up it, because it would go down to water then come back up again. So she’d be at the top, filling them up, and as they go down, they’d be checking it, it all be hot, steamy, hot water. It was very hot, they had gloves on. I don’t know why it had to be hot water. It was always steaming. It looked like, I don’t really know, but the little girl that used to stand there putting them on the front mostly, was a little Downs Syndrome girl.
Simon [00:27:45]: Oh, what to put it into the water tank one, okay.
Pat [00:27:48]: She was just put them in because they used to get little easy jobs really.
Simon [00:27:52]: Okay, yeah. I guess was that unusual in those days for people with disabilities to be employed? Or was that a usual thing?
Pat [00:28:00]: I don’t think it would have been. You never really noticed it anywhere else, or never noticed it in a shop or anything. But I did notice they did have a few people that had things wrong with them. But, yeah, yeah.
Simon [00:28:13]: And was she sort of mixing with people? It was all just sort of inclusive. Or, how did that work?
Pat [00:28:20]: She did a little bit. I mean, she used to talk to the old, the two older ladies used to talk to her, I think, but she wasn’t very chatty, I don’t know. I suppose she didn’t really get on with us lot, although we were the same age as her, that she definitely weren’t on the same level. And I mean, thinking about it, we didn’t really bother. I suppose we would speak to her if we had to, but we didn’t make friends, you know, I mean, it probably sounds a bit horrible, but I guess when you’re a teenager, you’re just getting on with your mates. Yeah, I think she, if she had a tea break, she probably sat with the ladies. I don’t know she sat with, but, yeah, sit with us. Which I feel bad now, we weren’t horrible to her, but she…
Simon [00:28:20]: And what about the tea breaks? That’s sort of something that I don’t know if it goes on these days. How did that work? You were saying that someone would say, right, we’re gonna have a tea break in a sec. And stop the. And then what would you go to a canteen?
Pat [00:29:12]: Yeah, it would have a massive canteen, loads of food, proper food, all made, all cooked there, everything. Dinners you could have what you liked. Oh, yeah. And they had a little shop there as well. At the end, when you go to pay, they had a shop there. They’d be selling boxes chocolates, cards and stuff because if it was someone’s birthday, all of a sudden you wanted to get them something, you could buy them a card, you know? Oh, so and so’s birthday. I didn’t realise, I get a card. They got sweets in there, literally sold everything in there, boxes of tissues, everything this little shop at the end of the, where you paid for your food, yeah.
Simon [00:29:37]: I guess, I mean, because where, where the Ronson factory was, it’s on Forest Road, isn’t it, which, there’s not a lot apart from you say Dixon was next door. It’s not a lot else round there. There’s Gunville.
Pat [00:30:00]: Because Dixon’s, which is now Sydenham’s, that building is still the same building, they’ve never took that down. But the Ronson’s one’s all gone because they’ve took it all up with that Island waste centre.
Simon [00:30:13]: So I guess they had to provide everything for you there?
Pat [00:30:17]: Yeah, everything, because we was there every day, like from eight to half four. And if you need your bits and stuff, you get it in this tiny little kiosky thing, that’s all it was.
Simon [00:30:27]: Yeah. So tea you paid for teas at tea break?
Pat [00:30:31]: Yeah, we used to have to pay for everything. Yeah, it was pretty cheap, though, I think, as far as I remember. Well, tea break, you’d go in and yeah, you could take your own stuff, you didn’t have to buy anything, you could take your own stuff. A lot of people did bring their own lunch boxes, like you do, you know. But they used to sell like cheese and onion rolls, bacon rolls. They do all that for tea break, or toast or you can have a cup of tea coffee, but that was up to you. You didn’t have to buy it. But dinner time, lunchtime, that’s when they done all the food.
Simon [00:31:01]: So how long is a tea break?
Pat [00:31:02]: Then it was only about 15 minutes. You had to be quick. I think that’s why I drink tea so hot. I’ve always done that. Someone says me, how can you drink tea that quick? Used to it, I suppose. You had a drink up quick and get back
Simon [00:31:17]: And then, so that was what, like 10 or 11, o’clock, something like that?
Pat [00:31:20]: I think they staggered them because where it was quite a big place, and you could only spend so long in there. It would be the first lot one end they went at quarter past 10 to half 10. Then I think the middle lot went from half 10 to quarter to 11. I think we, I don’t know something like that.
Simon [00:31:36]: And then lunch was at what sort of time?
Pat [00:31:38]: Don’t know if it was 12 or half past 12, something like that. About half an hour. That’s all!
Simon [00:31:45]: Half an hour long, right?
Pat [00:31:46]: Not long. I think it was only half an hour.
Simon [00:31:48]: People expect an hour these days, wouldn’t they?
Pat [00:31:50]: Don’t think it was.
Simon [00:31:53]: But then you did he get an afternoon?
Pat [00:31:55]: It might have been an hour, actually. Okay, yeah, we had a little tea break in the afternoon, but the lady would come around the tea trolley. So as soon as you saw her coming towards you, you could turn the belt off, then she’d do your tea, and you could sit there 10-15 minutes, and then do that. And then after your tea was done, you turned it back on.
Simon [00:32:13]: So why was that afternoon tea at the where you were working, and the other one was in the canteen, I wonder?
Pat [00:32:19]: Well, I suppose by the time they’d done the, it was all clearing up wasn’t it. I suppose they probably didn’t have dishwashers in them days, did they? So by the time they cleared up from, you know, the tea break in the morning and all the dinners, all the cleaning, the cooking, because they used cooked proper dinners, you know, it was all properly done. So that probably, and they cleaned it all up, and it was all done tidy for the next day. I guess they didn’t want no one else going back in there. You didn’t go in there in the afternoon. I’m guessing that’s why,
Simon [00:32:47]: You’re saying tea break was staggered. Was lunch staggered as well?
Pat [00:32:51]: I don’t think so, I think the whole lot closed down. It must have been an hour. It must have been, I can’t remember. I really can’t remember.
Simon [00:33:00]: Was it that idea of whistle blows everyone then stops…
Pat [00:33:04]: Yeah, that’s right,it was a bit like that. Right that it’s 12 O’Clock , time up, yeah, it was a bit like that. Yeah, okay, don’t think a siren used to go, No, I don’t think so. I can’t remember.
Simon [00:33:10]: So I guess that when everyone’s together, must be quite a noise in the canteen.
Pat [00:33:20]: Oh, yeah, it was, there’s a big canteen, loads of tables, about six chairs around each table. It was really big. But then some people go off out there, though, like, if they didn’t want to buy anything, they go and sit in their cars or sit out by the forest, like the forest bit you saw the squirrels and stuff. Lot of people, if it was lovely weather everybody used to go out, and have a walk about,
Simon [00:33:20]: yeah, yeah.
Pat [00:33:21]: So I had a bit of, yeah, I think, I don’t think lunch time was staggered. It might have been, can’t remember.
Simon [00:33:48]: And did when you were at lunch, were you socialising with the people you’re working with, or bigger groups?
Pat [00:33:54]: Well, what we used to do, because there was only two or three of us teenagers on this specific thing, we’d have all other friends on other places, and then we’d meet up with them usually, we all go and sit on the table together and start talking about stuff. And it was usually about, oh, what you want to buy, what you wear when you go out next weekend? And it was all about that, we wasn’t bothered about the place at all. Nothing to do with Ronson’s at all. Yeah, it’s all about that. What we was going to do. And it was some somebody’s hen night. We can go on a hen night. Oh, can we? All right, who’s that then? And it’d be one of the older girls, you know, get married or something. Yeah, there’s always something going on. And they’d ask if you wanted to go, and you just go along, you know.
Simon [00:34:33]: And with that, that thing about socialising outside work, then? How did that work?
Pat [00:34:41]: Well, the only time we done that is, like, say, if someone was getting married, or there was having a baby and they’d say, we’re going to go to the pub. We’re going to do is, you want to come along? If you sort of got to know them on the conveyor belt, the older woman, they’d say, do you want to come along? We’d say, yeah, all right then, and we just go out with them like that. But I think they did have, like a darts team and stuff. I’m not sure. I don’t know, because we didn’t have anything to do with that.
Simon [00:35:05]: What were you doing with your spare time then?
Pat [00:35:07]: Sleeping, probably that’s a teenage thing innit? And going out buying clothes at Etams, which isn’t there anymore, and nightclubbing. And even though I was only 16. I could honestly say I felt like an adult. I thought I was an adult. I was working 40 hours a week. Alright, we weren’t earning as much as the other ladies, because you’re always on a lower wage, aren’t you, when you’re young. Because we went straight there from school, we were all treated like adults. We had to suddenly grow up. We couldn’t be like, and if you wanted to go out with these older girls, you had to be quite grown up. So you get all dressed up and go out with them, and no one would even question whether he was 18 or not, because we just looked it and acted it. We probably did act a bit silly sometimes. I mean, when I think about some of the places we went, they must have known we wasn’t 18, but it’s only when I think back on it now, and that’s what we used to do and sleep all day, most of the day on a Sunday,
Simon [00:35:53]: And what were the night clubs you went to then?
Pat [00:36:09]: Ah loads, they had so many. Down the Boat, which was down the River Medina, the Boat, that thing that’s in bits now. Colonel Bogeys. Then we used to go to Barney’s out Brighstone and down Ryde and Carousel everywhere. Zanies. There were loads of places.
Simon [00:36:32]: How did you get to Brighstone? I mean, that’s a tough journey, isn’t it?
Pat [00:36:36]: Now, when I started going there, I’d already passed my driving test, and in them days, everybody drove to a nightclub. You either sort of allocated a driver. I was never. I used to like having a drink, but I wasn’t a major drinking person, so I’d say oh I’d drive, I don’t care. And we used to pile in my mini, I had a mini, they all used to pile in there, and we drive out there, but it was really popular, really, really popular.
Simon [00:37:05]: What, along the Military Road?
Pat [00:37:07]: Load of houses now, but that was my favourite place. And then you would still have a drink, because you could have a couple of drinks in them days. It didn’t matter, really, you only weren’t supposed to, but we did, but you wouldn’t get paralytic if you knew you were driving, and that’s what I mean, we seemed we were quite grown up. We weren’t, because coz also going back to Newport along Shorwell and all along there, no traffic in them days, you had no chance of really doing anything bad. There was never any accidents, as far as I remember. So, you know, it was all pretty safe, really.
Simon [00:37:42]: What was so good about Barney’s then?
Pat [00:37:45]: I think what it was when I went to Carisbrooke High School, I had a lot of friends that I made in Newport, obviously, going to that school, and the rest of the Island, West Wight, Freshwater, Yarmouth, went to school with everybody there. That was their local nightclub. And you’d go out there and you’d be with everybody from school and that. It used to be great. You’d say where you working now? Then what you doing and stuff like that? Yeah. So it was being like being back at school, really, I used to love it. And the Boat down the Boat as well. I loved it down there.
Simon [00:38:17]: What was the official name of the Boat then?
Pat [00:38:19]: The Ryde Queen, that’s what it is, yeah, poor old thing, yeah, rotting to bits, sad.
Simon [00:38:27]: And that was that was tied up on the Medina?
Pat [00:38:31]: Yeah? Cause that’s still there, but it’s just caved in on itself..
Simon [00:38:34]: What was it? Different floors had different…
Pat [00:38:37]: Yeah, yeah, yeah at a bottom bit, where all the, well, the youngsters used to get that other bottom bit, it was mad down there. Then had a middle floor, which was okay, you went up there, but the top floor was more, had older people going up there, which we thought… But then it got burnt down, and then it reopened again. And then you had the two floors after that.
Simon [00:38:58]: So what went on in the bottom of it then?
Pat [00:39:00]: Oh it was proper, full on nightclub, you know, yeah?
Simon [00:39:04]: What sort of era of music was that?
Pat [00:39:06]: Oh, late 70s, early 80s. Loved it. And Barney’s the same, yeah, it’s mostly disco. Yeah, I used to love my disco. Any song I hear like that always reminds me of those places or working, to be honest.
Simon [00:39:25]: Okay, and so it was dancing around?
Pat [00:39:28]: Oh, you used to dance around your handbag, yeah, it was that sort of thing, yeah. But I literally, I used to dance all night. I never used to leave the dance floor. I never used to really want to have a drink. I just used to be dancing all night. But I guess because we were sitting down all day, all week, we’d be sitting down all the time. I’ve never had any exercise. Sat down all the time at work, at weekends, we just, don’t know, we just go a bit mad I suppose.
Simon [00:39:51]: Getting, getting the bus there, even there’s no sort of walking to get to work. So yeah, so it was your energy exploding at weekends.
Pat [00:40:00]: Yeah, I suppose so, we was young anyway, whereas most I expect, all the older ladies had kids just stayed in all weekends with the kids I expect and didn’t want to go anywhere, probably, tired. They would have had different lifestyles you see. It would have been different for them.
Simon [00:40:14]: So when you, you were saying about you’d sit together at tea and chat about what your outfits were going to be?
Pat [00:40:20]: Yes or just stupid stuff, songs or something, oh, if you’re at that song by you know, that’s a thing, or just stuff like that.
Simon [00:40:28]: And the money
Pat [00:40:29]: Or the latest boyfriend of somebody met somewhere, you’re not going out with him, are you? That sort of thing, things like that, really, you know.
Simon [00:40:35]: Because you knew people, knew everyone that could go out, because you knew all the people in the West, right. And what about the money you got paid? That was then went on outfits and going out?
Pat [00:40:51]: Well, you always have to pay a bit of keep. I can’t remember how much I used to give mum and dad, because I think my first wage packet was about, don’t know if it was about 16 quid or something. We had 40 hours for that. I was at 18, something like that.
Simon [00:41:04]: But things were a lot cheaper there.
Pat [00:41:06]: Oh yeah, if I gave them a fiver, then I probably would have had loads left over. So and clothes wasn’t that expensive then, although Etams was, but it was top fashion, I guess, because sometimes I’ll buy something, and my mum would say, God, how much was that? That’s expensive. I used to think, well you know, it’s the in thing I suppose. You could probably get cheaper stuff, but we wanted all that stuff, so.
Simon [00:41:31]: Was Etam was the sort of premier shop?
Pat [00:41:33]: It was really because we didn’t have any other clothes shops. We used to have a few little independent ones, but no, everybody used to go there.
Simon [00:41:41]: Where was the Etam in Newport?
Pat [00:41:43]: It is where Specsavers is now. It was there until the late 90s, because I used to take my girls in there. They used to have Tammy Girl upstairs. I used to buy them clothes up there.
Simon [00:41:54]: Double fronted place
Pat [00:41:56]: Yeah, it had an upstairs bit.
Simon [00:42:01]: Okay. So you got paid on Fridays, cash?
Pat [00:42:05]: No Wednesdays. I don’t know why. The lady would come along with the trolley. She’d have a trolley with all these wages all lined up in columns. In brown. So where’s the wages lady, she should be here in a minute. Miss Harding, no she’s down there, she’s down by the so and so. So we couldn’t wait for it to come up, and then you just have to, have to sign to say you got it and didn’t have time to sit and look at it, though. You couldn’t look at it anyway. The only time you could look at it actually was either if you got it before break, you could look at it at break, but if you didn’t, you couldn’t really look at it.
Simon [00:42:39]: Just to check it was all there.
Pat [00:42:40]: Yeah, you couldn’t really, oh, it was always there. I didn’t have problem with it. There used to have a little wage slip in there. And then just all your money in there. Well, I just used to stick it straight in my bag and then I used to say to my mate, me and her, we’re going to Etams in a minute.
Simon [00:42:41]: On the way back from work?
Pat [00:42:44]: Yeah. And then we go home, we have your dinner like you do. But yeah, yeah. We always just get off the bus the top of town, go to Etams then walk home.
Simon [00:43:07]: I guess that’s the money burning a hole in your pocket, isn’t it?
Pat [00:43:10]: Yeah? Well I was only 16 or 17, so.
Simon [00:43:13]: Yeah, and that, what was that feeling like to have gone from school when you know you didn’t have that kind of money to having money like that?
Pat [00:43:28]: Oh, I loved it. Because I go out and do what I wanted. I didn’t have to worry about asking for money. Could do my own thing. I was buying all the nice stuff, like my sister-in-law used to have. That’s why I wanted to work there. It was just the money, because the money was good, see, compared to any other place, really.
Simon [00:43:38]: What relative to other…
Pat [00:43:39]: I would have thought, so what I could gather, that’s why so many people were up there. But you used to have to work hard for it, though, had these time and motion men, and they’d see how many you got through, you know and
Simon [00:43:51]: Were they literally there with a clipboard?
Pat [00:43:55]: Yeah, they’d be there with a little timer thing and a little, yeah. They never just really say anything to you about suppose they they just use observe it all, then they tell the management, I suppose, and if there was a problem, they’d come back and say that you’ve got to get more done, or something like that. But I don’t really remember a lot of it, but
Simon [00:44:09]: So that’s interesting. What was the sort of structure of you were there with your friends and some of the older ladies as well, and it was all women. Was it in there?
Pat [00:44:19]: Where I was working. There was one. There was one man on there, he used to fill up the gas. He worked on the gas thing because there was two gas things either side. Steve, I think his name was, yeah, he was on that department with us. But other than that, we were all women. He was the only bloke. He’s only young like us. Yeah, he was alright.
Simon [00:44:41]: What sort of, what sort of time did he have out of it? Was he the one at the butt of the jokes, or was he…?
Pat [00:44:47]: I think he used to have a laugh and a joke with us. He did used to sit there laughing. And he alright, I didn’t have a lot to do with him, but he was alright, yeah.
Simon [00:44:54]: That’s that idea of more women, then one bloke.
Pat [00:44:57]: Yeah, yeah but he was only young, like us so you didn’t.. he might have been a bit older, he might have been about 20, but, yeah.
Simon [00:45:05]: Okay. And so what was the next? There was sort of then managers that looked over those areas or how did that work?
Pat [00:45:12]: You’d see them walking about and stuff. But I don’t know, we just had our own supervisor, Betty, her name was. She’d be the head supervisor. So if you’ve had a problem with anything you saw her.
Simon [00:45:23]: So one supervisor per valve and shell
Pat [00:45:26]: Yeah, I guess so. I guess so, she’s used to be in charge of the water tank as well, because it was a link (?) So,we used to see her walk up and down doing stuff,
Simon [00:45:35]: Yeah, yeah.
Pat [00:45:36]: She was in charge. You had to do what Betty said. She was, you know.
Simon [00:45:41]: And she was friendly or not?
Pat [00:45:43]: Yeah, she was alright. She could be moody sometimes. Yeah, no, she was alright.
Simon [00:45:47]: And then there were, I guess there was another level of one those all then reported to
Pat [00:45:53]: I guess so they must have done, yeah, they must have done, I don’t really know what they used to do, but yeah, she would have said, told everything’s running okay, I suppose. And if there was a problem, she used to have sort it, I suppose.
Simon [00:46:03]: But there was nothing you weren’t conscious of that because you were just…
Pat [00:46:06]: No, not really no. She was always there, walking up and down. If she wanted to come and speak to you or something she’d say, and, you know, nothing.
Simon [00:46:10]: So these, these time and motion men, were they always men doing the timing?
Pat [00:46:18]: As far as I remember, yeah.
Pat [00:46:22]: I don’t really remember taking much… I knew they’d be around, but we just used to sit there. We wouldn’t be talking then, we be sat there doing that sort of thing, but they weren’t there for long. They’d sort of walk about.
Simon [00:46:23]: And you just sort of ignored them because you were?
Simon [00:46:30]: So do you then work faster with them there or?
Pat [00:46:37]: I think you probably did. I mean, I don’t know you probably were. You wanted to look like you were efficient, keeping up. You didn’t want to get a build up, did you, you know what I mean. I don’t know. I just don’t remember, really,
Simon [00:46:47]: okay, okay,
Pat [00:46:50]: Such a long time ago.
Simon [00:46:55]: One thing with the, you sort of saying, when you started off, of course, when you get when you do a task, you get better and better at it and then it sounded like you get so good at it, you’re almost not thinking about it because you’re so competent.
Pat [00:47:13]: I’m fairly confident, if someone could give me a lighter now, with that valve in and my little fork and chimney, I could still do it. I could actually still do it.
Pat [00:47:25]: It’s because I feel I can do it, because I…
Simon [00:47:26]: That’s mad
Simon [00:47:28]: What is that that’s sort of getting on for 50 years ago?
Pat [00:47:31]: Yeah, crazy.
Simon [00:47:34]: That’s so
Pat [00:47:34]: If I had all the equipment, I could, yeah, and if I had the whole equipment, I could take that one I’ve got in the cabinet to bits because it wants repairing and I could actually repair it, if I had all the right stuff to do it. But I haven’t got the equipment.
Simon [00:47:49]: Yeah, I’ve looked it up. You can buy stuff online to get them fixed?
Pat [00:47:51]: Okay, I mean, I did look in to get it fixed, but a lot of places said, no, we can’t do them, can’t do them. So whether you can buy bits yourself, I didn’t think of that.
Simon [00:47:59]: It took quite a lot of digging
Pat [00:48:01]: It seized up, you see, the flint wheel wants changing, and it needs it all needs pulling out, really, but then it’s having the tools as well. I mean, it’s not majorly bad, but I reckon, I’d love to get it working, and I think it probably would, but the valves might be a bit shot. They might want new valves in as well, so.
Simon [00:48:18]: So I wonder if we get together before that public event and try and have a go at fixing them.
Pat [00:48:27]: I think the little presser things, its seized up. You can’t…
Simon [00:48:31]: Well that. What does that do? Rotate the
Pat [00:48:32]: Well that presses it in, yeah, you press it in and it makes a spark, I suppose, and it lights up the gas, coming out. Clever, really?
Simon [00:48:42]: Maybe we’ll have a go at that. I’ll see if I can source the bits.
Pat [00:48:45]: Yeah, Comet, Comet bits, yeah,
Simon [00:48:50]: That would, I mean, just the idea of we could then say to people, bring along a lighter,
Pat [00:48:57]: If you’ve got one, yeah, because they also got a little bit they pressed in, it was like a little plastic bit I expect it’s in that one with two little holes in it so you could put spare flints in it, kept it inside that sort of thing.
Simon [00:49:07]: Yeah. I think that was seen as a revolutionary design.
Pat [00:49:10]: Think that’s still in there… And if you wanted one, you used to have to tip them out, to get them out. It’s like a little plastic bit, I bet it’s in that one.
Simon [00:49:19]: Yeah, yeah. So you were saying before about the roles that you had there, and you just sort of settled down to, well, this is the one that suits me the best, and stick with it.
Pat [00:49:35]: Well, I just remember being put on certain places, and all of a sudden I ended up on valve to shell, and I stayed there for rest of time. I never got moved again. So whether I think they think actually, she’s better doing that, because some people are quicker. I wasn’t always so quick I found on some of the stuff on the line, so maybe they worked out the ones that were better for certain jobs, and they just leave you there, and that’d be it. You wouldn’t get moved.
Simon [00:49:58]: And was there like seasonal changes over Christmas, you had different type of things to do or because, I guess the core of the lighter, the bit that you were doing, remained the same?
Pat [00:50:10]: Yeah, that’s the same, whether any of them come down with decking, you know, like silk screen, that’s what they used to do. They just put pictures on the front, because when I first joined there it was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. They just finished doing the batches of lighters with the Queen’s head, Silver Jubilee and the date on the front. They had them, so I wouldn’t mind getting hold of one of them. I expect they’re worth something, right?
Simon [00:50:33]: Yeah. What was that 77?
Pat [00:50:36]: Yeah, yeah. They’ve done that silk print and that, which will be done up there as well. I never done that.
Simon [00:50:47]: So were, oh, yeah, no, that’s good. I think the idea of where the men were in, there were men working at Ronson?
Pat [00:51:00]: Yeah, yeah.
Simon [00:51:01]: But where were they?
Pat [00:51:03]: They were in like, a little bit, I’d say it’s a bit like a goldfish bowl, because it was all sectioned off, all these places were sectioned off by, like, metal, sort of, don’t know, with the windows at the top, that sort of thing. And they’d all be in this middle bit, sort of I don’t know near the sort of canteen end, and they’d all be in there doing stuff, but what they’d be doing, I don’t know. I guess making all the bits up, perhaps they actually made it all from scratch in there. I don’t actually know what they did. That’s where all the men used to be, mostly. So that’s the diecasting bit, you were talking about. No it wasn’t die cast. That was a separate bit. No, I don’t know what bit, what they used to do, the men they, most of them, used to have, like, white, white jackets on. Well, I think that Ray that we wanted to speak to, I’m sure he worked in there, he used to wear a white coat. That was just their outfit.
Simon [00:51:53]: You didn’t have white coats then what did you wear on top?
Pat [00:51:54]: We could wear whatever,
Simon [00:51:55]: just normal clothes.
Pat [00:51:56]: They did have overalls. I think because a lot of people, years ago, when they first went I remember seeing old pictures. They’ve got them nylon type sort of overalls that’s got Ronson written on them. A lot of the older ladies that wore them because, I suppose they still had them. We never had them. They never gave them to us. We just used to wear what we wanted.
Simon [00:52:15]: And I mean, that’s, I guess you like that because…
Pat [00:52:17]: Yeah, we could wear what we want, so it didn’t matter.
Simon [00:52:19]: And you get a chance to show your clothes off that you’d been buying.
Pat [00:52:21]: But, I mean, there was, you’ve got the odd lady with over was on, but they were older, and they probably been there a long time, and they still had them. They obviously stopped giving them out. I don’t know why.
Simon [00:52:22]: Well, I guess also, they don’t want to get their clothes dirty.
Pat [00:52:33]: No, I guess so. Yeah, but we didn’t. We never got nothing offered like that, unless there was an option, you could ask for one. I don’t know. I don’t think we would have wanted to do that.
Simon [00:52:45]: No. I mean, you wanted to
Pat [00:52:46]: No wouldn’t have looked cool enough, would it? With the nylon overall on.. I mean, if we were given one, we’d have had to wear it but we didn’t.
Simon [00:52:58]: You were mentioning before about people getting married and then going along to there? Was there was a people, were they marrying people from work? Or how did that happen?
Pat [00:53:10]: Um, maybe some of them did marry people from work, but they were mostly just men they had as boyfriends anyway, I think as far as I can gather. I only ever knew the girls really. I didn’t really know who they were marrying. Didn’t necessarily go to their weddings. You went to the odd few, because the friend who sat behind me, she got married, I went to her wedding. Went to an odd few, but mostly you just got on a hen do, because they’d sort of know you and you just all go out, but you wouldn’t necessarily go to a wedding. So I don’t know.
Simon [00:53:41]: And that going out would be to a pub rather than to a disco?
Pat [00:53:44]: Oh, no, we go to a nightclub. Yeah, it’d always be somewhere. Where we going, oh we’re going to the East Cliff, or we’re going, we’d always, usually get a coach, hire a coach, or something. They did stuff like that.
Simon [00:53:55]: What’s the East Cliff then?
Pat [00:53:57]: That was a nightclub in Shanklin as well. I went there for my eighteenth actually, yeah, that’s a block of houses that’s not there anymore. There was so many.
Simon [00:54:07]: Overlooking the sea.
Pat [00:54:08]: Yes, so many of them. There was the Red Cliff as well on the front that place is still there. But so many nightclubs, unbelievable. Could take the pick. So many, Ruperts as well, it was another one in Shanklin. Loads.
Simon [00:54:08]: But how many do you reckon nightclubs on the Island though?
Pat [00:54:16]: God, I don’t know, at least 20. I expect there must have been, there must have been, I sit one day and count because we’ve got a few in the Ryde area as well, Carousel, Babalou, Prince Consort, just loads.
Simon [00:54:48]: Prince Consort, I think I’ve heard of that.
Pat [00:54:51]: Prince Consort. Yeah, then that become Toby’s. I think at one point, then it was Patsies in the 80s. It’s been loads of different.
Simon [00:54:59]: There’s another project there about all the nightclubs.
Pat [00:55:03]: God there could be, I’ll tell you, yeah, yeah. I’d like that one as well. That would be interesting.
Simon [00:55:10]: Yeah, probably quite a few stories from Yeah…. So as you were saying about pay, yeah, that you were getting paid less than, yeah, the other women, because you were sixteen?
Pat [00:55:23]: Well, I’m guessing they did. I think we did, because it’s still like that now innit, it’s always been that way, because we used to moan about it, and these women be saying, well, we used to have to do that, that’s what it’s like. Once we got to 18, that was, I think we got the full pay then. The first couple years, we didn’t get it, but they were pretty good, actually, because those two years you worked there, because you were getting lower money, as far as I can remember, I think you got discount off your food if you wanted it, and you also, if you were buying a bus ticket for a week, you could get your bus if you handed it in by certain time to the wages bit or some, you give it to someone, I can’t remember who used to take it and you get your money back for your bus fare or something. But that only went on to you was 18, because you went on full pay then. So I guess it’s something to do with that.
Simon [00:56:09]: Yeah, yeah,
Pat [00:56:13]: It was something like that. We did get a discount, I seem to remember, so we didn’t do that bad, really. That was to help us out, you know.
Simon [00:56:23]: When you’re talking about that idea of the sort of rivalry almost on the bus is,
Pat [00:56:30]: Well always got that impression. I never saw anything, but it was, everybody was kept theirself to theirself. The Ronson’s lot would talk and then they talk, then they get off. But especially early in the mornings, everybody always looked miserable anyway, used to get the odd person start laughing about something, but they’ll be saying something, but you’d just be sat, I think oh I’m gonna work. It’s just a bit like that. You know, wasn’t very exciting, really, used to hate it that bus ride going.
Simon [00:56:57]: So when you I mean what it sounded like that you enjoyed the time when you were there?
Pat [00:57:01]: Yeah, I did, but it was boring sometimes. Oh, boring.
Simon [00:57:06]: And then what age did you leave Ronson?
Pat [00:57:09]: I was 20 because I got made redundant.
Simon [00:57:12]: And why did you, okay that they were cutting back were they?
Pat [00:57:15]: Yeah, that’s when they were getting rid of people because eventually.
Simon [00:57:18]: What year was that then?
Pat [00:57:20]: 1981
Simon [00:57:21]: Okay, I think they closed totally in 82. So they were then closing
Pat [00:57:27]: They’d done it all in batches. They picked so many people that went at certain times the year. I don’t know why I had to finish in May 81 for some reason, some people done before, some after. I might been because where we was working, I don’t know, unless we were just randomly picked, I don’t really know.
Simon [00:57:27]: And then that what happened the next day? Then, so they said, Oh, right, we you know, well…
Pat [00:57:46]: Well you had a letter to tell you that it was going to happen. Obviously, in advance,
Simon [00:57:55]: Yeah, some sort of warning.
Pat [00:57:57]: Yeah. Then they give you a date when you would be leaving, and you just got your redundancy money and you left, that was it.
Simon [00:58:04]: And what did you do for the next job then?
Pat [00:58:06]: Well, for a couple of, I think for about three, four weeks, I didn’t have a job, so I had to go up on the, I’d go and sign on, and I was looking for jobs. And then somebody said to me, I think I bumped into him in town, oh, I’m, you know, because they were working at Ronsons they left before me, I’m working at Dixons because I don’t know if they’ve got any more jobs going. Why don’t you give them a go? It’s only next door. So I thought, yeah, could do. So I rang them up, and they said, yeah, we are taking a few more on. We’ve got a few Ronsons here ones already, because they did take quite a few on, actually. So not everybody got a job, but, luckily, I mean, I did, but a lot of them didn’t. My friend that I always hung around with at Ronsons, she didn’t get the job. I don’t know why.
Simon [00:58:47]: And was it cards they made at Dixons?
Pat [00:58:50]: Yeah, Christmas cards, birthday cards, yeah.
Simon [00:58:53]: Printing them?
Pat [00:58:53]: Yeah.
Simon [00:58:54]: okay.
Pat [00:58:55]: And actually making them, put the envelopes in the cellophane, all that sort of stuff.
Simon [00:58:58]: Yeah. And how so you had been sort of, oh, look at those, those Dixon people, different to us.
Pat [00:59:07]: Yeah? Well, it was a little bit, when we first went in there, it was a bit, yeah, ah there’s was Ronson people coming. And then once we got to know them all, it was was a bit like you, Ronson girls are so funny, we noticed you do this, you do that, I don’t know, but we all mix, we all got on in the end, it’s just a little bit of a, yeah, no, nothing bad.
Simon [00:59:23]: What’s, what do you mean? They’re so funny?
Pat [00:59:25]: Well, because they thought we were funny, because when we worked at Ronsons, I don’t even know why we done this, but if you went, if you had a if you wanted to go to the toilet, you get the float to sit in for you, right? But every time you went up and got to go anywhere, you take your handbag with you, just pick it up, take your bag with you, because sometimes you might want to put a bit of mascara on, or just, I don’t know, just, just have your bag with you. So they noticed everybody from Ronsons, every time we got up to go to the loo. Why you take your bag with you, we aint going to nick it? I said, Well, we’re not taking it because you’re not going to nick it. We’re just going to loo. Yep, you don’t have to. They didn’t get that. They just thought that was really strange, why everybody done it? And I used to think, well, I don’t know why we do it. We just do it. But in the end, I found we weren’t doing it in the end because I think they actually thought we were a bit weird. We weren’t doing it because we thought they were gonna nick something. It was just oh, so what happens if I want to put a bit lipstick on then, oh, I don’t know, not, that I ever wore a lot of makeup at work. But, well, I suppose you would sometimes see the odd person take a bag, but it was just, you know, I said, you know. And I think someone did point out, well, we are women, you know, might, we might want to see to ourselves, you know? I don’t know. I don’t know they, I don’t know there was that they thought we were a bit funny, bit weird,
Simon [01:00:44]: Yeah, but so it’s the same bus but now your socialising with the Dixon people?
Pat [01:00:49]: Bus yeah, yeah, yeah, you see. I used to see them on there, and now I know them, made friends with them. Yeah funny.
Simon [01:00:51]: It’s funny. Okay? So what about you’re saying at the beginning, there was a week that you worked, and then it was a Jubilee. So yeah, break and then, what about sick pay, holidays? What happened about all that sort of stuff?
Pat [01:01:20]: I don’t think I ever went sick, to be honest. Don’t remember going sick. Might have had the odd day if I’ve been sick or ill, I can’t remember. I don’t think you got paid. I think that’s why they’ve done it otherwise, because people would be phoning. I don’t remember, really, anybody going to sick. They probably did, but I don’t remember, everybody was always there. So maybe there wasn’t a very good policy with that. You wouldn’t want to stay away too long if you felt really ill, would you, because you wouldn’t be getting any money. I mean, say you had a sickness bug, I don’t know. You obviously couldn’t go in if you were doing that, yeah, but that would hopefully only be a 24 hour thing. I don’t really know, actually, but we would get holiday pay. But it was always a shutdown. You didn’t have a choice.
Simon [01:02:02]: How they chose when you had your holiday?
Pat [01:02:04]: It’s Easter this weekend, Good Friday. Weekend, Monday. Christmas, two weeks shut down, I think it was, you had two weeks given to you beginning of August, last week in May, as you know, they transferred it to June, because the Queen’s Jubilee that year, we didn’t get no money, yeah, stuff like that.
Simon [01:02:27]: And then what did you do during your holidays then? Knock around the island?
Pat [01:02:33]: Yeah, I think so. I don’t mean, we might have gone the odd occasion, gone somewhere, but yeah, I didn’t go anywhere. There was always, because the first week in July, in August, the second weeks, always do Cowes week, wouldn’t it? So that’s why they always done it then, because everybody wanted to go to Cowes week. And there was always carnivals going, there’s always loads of stuff going on that time of year. So I suppose we all had plenty to do really, go shopping over Southampton or something, or, you know, yeah, that sort of thing. Don’t really remember. Just used to be nice being off, you know, but you had set days. You couldn’t pick what days.
Simon [01:03:08]: Yeah, that’s mad, isn’t it?
Pat [01:03:10]: So whether, if someone was getting married or something, or some, I don’t know, you must have had to get special permission if you needed time off, I guess. I don’t know, but I never did. I just stuck what I done so.
Simon [01:03:24]: What about the, like, Christmas dos and that sort of stuff? What, what happened there?
Pat [01:03:28]: Oh, yeah, they used to have, um, well, on the last day, because you knew were finishing, I think you usually finished early. On the last day, on the last day, you’d all bring, like, food in, everybody bring drink in, and it would be a bit like that. You’d have food and drink and people get bit silly. Used to get some stupid men used to be running around, like, trying to give women Christmas kisses and stuff like that. That sort of thing. Me and my friend hated it. I didn’t like it. I sort of don’t come around here, you know. But some women love all that, don’t they? And it’s just a laugh, really. It was a laugh. Yeah, used to be really funny. We’d all have crackers, have Christmas hats on that sort of thing. And then I think it come to a certain time, you think, right that’s it, we’re all going down the pub now, so we’d all go down to Calverts or something like that, it would be heaving, because it would be usually something like 22nd or 23rd of December. It’d be heaving down there anyway. And we just used to keep going out drinking and just, yeah, and then that was it for Christmas. But I think they did used to have dinner and dances and things Christmas dinner and dances. I think they did, but we, I , didn’t go to them.
Simon [01:04:41]: It’s for the older people.
Pat [01:04:43]: I guess. So. I think I went to one towards the end the last one, think I went to that it was at the Ponda Rosa at Ryde. I went to that one, I was little bit older then it was all right, but yeah, no, we didn’t bother about that. No we didn’t do that.
Simon [01:04:59]: That’s interesting. When they got a canteen, people then brought their own food in for Christmas.
Pat [01:05:05]: Yeah, well, I suppose. Well, I think what it is, the canteen was just still open for normal stuff. It was just, no, they didn’t give you anything extra like that. No everybody. You’d all sit around your conveyor belt, you’d have it turned off, and you’d just be eating and drinking all around that, you’ve done your own thing, you know. Or you could walk around, meet your other friends somewhere else, just walk about, have a drink. Was like that for about couple of hours. And then you could go home then.
Simon [01:05:31]: Don’t try to avoid older man with mistletoe.
Pat [01:05:33]: Oh yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah, mistletoe and all that. I mean, it used to be funny. Used to be a really good laugh. Really was, good atmosphere, yeah.
Simon [01:05:35]: Everyone letting their hair down.
Pat [01:05:44]: Yeah, no, it was really good. Yeah, it was good.
Simon [01:05:51]: So one, one thing that I found, the MP was Steve Ross in 82, he was speaking in Parliament about Ronson, he mentioned Ronson and some of the other parts, other bits of industrial stuff. What seemed to happened was Saunders Roe closed. That’s why Ronson, they got tax breaks to come to the Island.
Pat [01:06:17]: Oh, I see.
Simon [01:06:18]: Because sudden shock of Saunders Roe closing, a lot of unemployment. And then what I found most remarkable about him talking in Parliament was the efficiency of the Newport Ronsons. They, you the team of people at Newport were making three and a half lighters for every other places making one and a half.
Pat [01:06:53]: Wow. That don’t surprise me.
Simon [01:06:55]: I mean, that’s extraordinary,
Pat [01:06:55]: That don’t suprise me because they did used to, but
Simon [01:07:00]: There must have been chiving everyone all the other places around.
Pat [01:07:03]: Yeah
Simon [01:07:04]: but there’s something about the Newport one.
Pat [01:07:06]: Yeah, we must have been really good at what we was good at, I suppose we just got on with it. Don’t know why that would be.
Simon [01:07:14]: It’s, it’s just a real testament to the people that worked there.
Pat [01:07:17]: Yeah, yeah, no, I’d say everybody worked hard in there.
Simon [01:07:21]: And I guess part of that my from the outside, what it seemed to be is…
Pat [01:07:25]: I mean, I don’t know how these married women with kids done it, when I think about it now, I don’t know they done that job all day, then they go and they’d have the kids, they’d have to cook dinner, I suppose, wash and cook and all that stuff. I mean, we weren’t doing any of that, so we had an easy life, but it’s not now when I think about it. Wow, must have been hard going, I don’t know how they done it.
Simon [01:07:50]: So then to do that three and a half, yeah, to one and a half is even more remarkable.
Pat [01:07:54]: Must been absolutely shattered, I don’t know how they’ve done it. But then again, I didn’t think about it at the time, but
Simon [01:08:02]: Yeah, yeah,
Pat [01:08:03]: Now that I’ve had kids of my own, and, you know.
Simon [01:08:07]: And, I mean, I guess this is another thing that you when you’re young, you don’t necessarily think about this stuff. But did you do you think that you felt valued by Ronsons there?
Pat [01:08:21]: I guess so, yeah. I never actually had a problem there at all with anything. So I guess I thought I was doing all right.
Simon [01:08:33]: Did you think about the lighters as you were making were then going distributed around the world?
Pat [01:08:40]: No, I never really thought about that and obviously, you just guess it goes off somewhere. But I never really realised it was completely worldwide. Don’t think I realised that at the time, no.
Simon [01:08:51]: I mean, that is mad, that idea
Pat [01:08:53]: It is, when you think about it, yeah.
Simon [01:08:54]: And the idea that, yeah,
Pat [01:08:59]: You think nobody hardly ever carries a lighter now, no one you know this vaping because it’s so anti social, you can’t believe all them lighters we used to make every day, 1000s and 1000s. Why they’d have all been needed. That’s why I did used to think that. I used to think, surely people don’t need as many as these, I never really, you know, just go show how much people. Because if they were made to last as well, you wouldn’t keep buying one, would you either? So I never really understood that I don’t think how there was so many and you know,
Simon [01:09:37]: That switch to disposables,
Pat [01:09:39]: Yeah
Simon [01:09:40]: I guess was a real nail in the coffin for
Pat [01:09:43]: Must have been, yeah, that would all been done in China and Japan, wouldn’t it? And I suppose stuff like that, yeah, then poeple probably stops, maybe stop smoking a bit as well. And don’t know. That was another thing everybody sit there smoking as well.
Simon [01:10:04]: at work, right?
Pat [01:10:07]: If you wanted to smoke you could
Simon [01:10:10]: Yeah. I mean, just seems alien these days, doesn’t it?
Pat [01:10:12]: Especially smoking right near a blooming gas tank as well. I mean, really, Crazy. Well, if we used to smoke in the in the Dixons as well, there’s all these reams of paper everywhere. You wouldn’t even think about it, would you now. You wouldn’t even…
Simon [01:10:31]: Well, I mean, the bit that even is, well, I guess 80s I’m thinking about is how frequent it was that people, lunchtime from work, would go to the pub and have a couple of pints.
Pat [01:10:44]: Yeah, that’s right, we do that as well for a special occasion. We used to phone up the pub that was the nearest, it would have been the Blacksmith Arms. They used to say what drinks you wanted, someone ring up. So it would all be on the bar as soon as we walked in, it’d be there. So we had time to drink a couple then go back.
Simon [01:10:47]: That was from Dixon’s,
Pat [01:10:59]: That was Ronson’s. Both of them we used to do it.
Simon [01:11:10]: How did it’s a fair way, isn’t it? How did he get there?
Pat [01:11:13]: Well, obviously somebody allocate to have (?) a few drivers. He was all pick who’s taking you in the car, and you just drive up through Betty Haunt Lane and come and weren’t far, really, then you’d go back to work, and some people would have had a few to drink, but you just Yeah.
Simon [01:11:31]: Yeah. Wasn’t thought of an unusual?
Pat [01:11:33]: No, no, definitely not. No.
Simon [01:11:36]: How often was that then the pub breaks? Do you think thats later years?
Pat [01:11:41]: No, it went on all the time. It was always on, but it was only usually something if it was someone’s birthday, or it’s a different, say it was somebody’s 21st or it was on the odd occasion it wasn’t. But I mean, it would only be certain group of people that would go because they’d all be saying, oh, I won’t see you tomorrow lunch time, we’re all going for a drink. Oh, alright, okay, so it would only be, like maybe about 12 or 15, of us that would go in two or three cars. It’d be the ones you work with. You know what I mean, that sort of thing. But went on a few of them, yeah. Mad.
Simon [01:12:10]: Yeah, funny, isn’t it? How these things that are so normal at the time? Yeah, then like..
Pat [01:12:20]: But one thing I was thinking about, though about the smoking thing. Most people used to smoke and Dixons as well. No one was stressed in them days, though. Because they were smoking, having a fag. I’ve often thought that,
Simon [01:12:39]: yeah, that’s interesting,
Pat [01:12:41]: Because you don’t. I don’t ever remember knowing anyone who felt stressed in the workplace. If they did, maybe they didn’t say. I’m not saying not everybody smoked, but a lot of them did, and I think that is like today’s society now I’ve noticed, because people don’t smoke anymore. Everybody’s stressed. But I’m not saying smoke is a good thing, yeah, but I think that took a lot, I reckon that’s why people used to smoke because it calmed them down. And, you know.
Simon [01:13:09]: And maybe also the, you were saying, I mean, we’re 400 people at Ronson. If that was today, you would imagine it would be half of that, or less than half of that
Pat [01:13:22]: Yeah it would, they’d have to go outside to have a vape or whatever, wouldn’t they, and have a smoke and
Simon [01:13:26]: Well, I was thinking about that, the demands that are put on people by employers that are greater now, perhaps than they used to be.
Pat [01:13:36]: Perhaps they were. But I’ve often thought about that. I think why was no one ever anxious or depressed or stressed, or maybe people were, but they didn’t talk about it,
Simon [01:13:47]: I guess, that’s also changed, hasn’t it?
Pat [01:13:47]: Yeah, you didn’t often think a lot of people because they smoked. I think I always had a lot to do with it. That’s why I’ve always thought anyway.
Simon [01:13:58]: Well, you know, with this thing about Ronson, 400 people being employed at the peak. That’s fair impact on Newport as a town, isn’t it? Did, do you remember what people’s reaction was if you said, I work for Ronson? Would people know what it meant?
Pat [01:14:20]: Most people did, yes, ‘where’s you, at Ronsons. Oh alright, ok,’ she says, I worked there once, or my mum worked there, or my mum works there, or just things like that, really, or, my auntie used to work there, and that was it really, nothing else.
Simon [01:14:41]: I think, I think we’ve been through the whole gamut. Is there anything that that I’ve missed out, or anything that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
Pat [01:14:51]: I can’t think of at the moment? Cos it is hard remembering stuff. It’s just little bits, little snippets that come back. Yeah, so when we used to have to get there on time. We used to have to clock in and clock out. Obviously, we’ve done that at Dixon as well. Used to be queued up. People queued up waiting to go out the door. You know what I mean, couldn’t wait. Nobody could wait to get out the door. It was that sort of thing.
Simon [01:15:29]: That was dropping a card into
Pat [01:15:31]: It’s a clunky thing, yeah, needs to put it back in
Simon [01:15:33]: They had hands on it to tell the time
Pat [01:15:35]: Yeah, the clunky thing, yeah. I used to love that noise on the way out, not in.
Simon [01:15:42]: Meant freedom,
Pat [01:15:43]: Yeah, yeah, then they will get on the bus and that’d be it, yeah, for another day.
Simon [01:15:48]: More people chatting on the bus on the way home?
Pat [01:15:50]: Yeah, I would say so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely different atmosphere on the bus on the way home, yeah.
Simon [01:15:56]: What do you say? You worked eight till four,
Pat [01:15:59]: eight till half four. I think it was.
Simon [01:16:00]: Okay. So you still got quite a bit of the day left.
Pat [01:16:05]: Yeah, yeah, by time, you’d say, if you got off the top of town, look around the town if you wanted to, or you just went straight home, you know, well, time I got home, my mum used to cook, she usually cooked dinner or done something most likely be dinner, watch bit TV, or go upstairs, put record player on, or go out and meet a friend. Most of the time, I just used to stay in all week. I was tired, I suppose, just you sit and watch telly, and then I really only went out Friday, Saturday night, you know, I didn’t really go out much in a week, don’t think any of us did, we too tired I suppose, getting up, you got to be there at eight o’clock. So, getting up, getting ready, you know.
Simon [01:16:42]: Yeah, yeah. When you think back on that, that period, after all the working life you’ve had, what are your thoughts on, on it all?
Pat [01:16:53]: I feel like I wasted most of my young life, sat in a factory.
Simon [01:16:53]: Do you?
Pat [01:16:56]: I mean, I don’t regret it, but I just think I could have done more, but I just didn’t pursue it. I didn’t didn’t think ahead, because over the last few years, that’s why I’ve always struggled to get a decent job, because there’s no … worked in a factory, worked in a shop. So I feel, in a way, it’s held you back. Because everybody I know that’s worked there, there might be the odd few, but I don’t think anybody’s ever done anything other than cleaning or work in a shop or because nobody had any qualifications, no one and it was just, and I just think I spent so much. I spent 10 years in a factory, from when I was 16 towards 26 because I left Dixon’s at 26 because I had my twins, and I worked in a factory for 10 years. And then you hear these days of these people, like 16 or 17 year olds having a gap year. And I just think, God, envious. Wish I could have had a gap year, but there weren’t no such thing. If I just said to my dad, I want a gap year, he’d probably said, What you talking about? Go get to work. It was just that totally different way of life. You just didn’t think about studying or, well, I didn’t. No one ever encouraged me to do it. So it wasn’t that option, not back in the day, unless she was a doctor’s daughter or a solicitor’s daughter, you know, something like that, they wanted you to stay on at school. They wouldn’t have let you go and work somewhere like that. So working class, I suppose it was. There was a bit of a divide. I think back the
Pat [01:18:41]: Because you wouldn’t have gone to university, and my dad would have thought I was crazy. Well, I’m not paying for that, that’s what he would have said was, people wouldn’t want to say that to a kid now, would they, they can’t they want them to do something totally different.
Simon [01:18:45]: I get that
Simon [01:18:54]: Maybe that’s changing a little bit as well now, the debt they leave with.
Pat [01:18:59]: Oh yeah. And that’s why so many women work there, because we had to leave school and we had nothing else. It was either you worked in the shop around Newport, you went to a factory, nothing else, unless you studied, you didn’t do anything else. And I always think back in the day it was always, oh, no point if you’re a girl, because you should end up getting married and have kids anyway. And that’s what most of the women did up there. So there you go. It’s only when you’re older and your kids are older, you think, Oh, well, what will I do now. Need a job. I’ll go do cleaning work up the hospital.
Simon [01:19:34]: Yeah, yeah, I guess so.
Pat [01:19:36]: I always think I didn’t take enough opportunities. That was my only thing about being in a factory, I wish I’d done something more, but at the time, I was happy, so it didn’t matter. But now I think different. I should have got out and done something,
Simon [01:19:51]: Like the nursing that you’re talking about earlier, or that idea,
Pat [01:19:55]: That’s when I was a kid and always had a thing about it, but I know once I got older to teenage, I knew I wouldn’t do it because I thought, I don’t think I’m clever enough anyway, I probably won’t pass any exams. I was a bit like that. I wasn’t never encouraged with it. I didn’t know anybody was doing it. It was just, it just went out my head. I didn’t, weren’t bothered really, at the time when I was teenager, I wasn’t bothered.
Simon [01:20:18]: So that is a big thing, isn’t it, if I don’t know anyone doing something, then you don’t know how you could do it.
Pat [01:20:27]: But when I first started work for the NHS I was 30 when I started working there, so I went back to work after I had the kids, you know, because I didn’t have any other job to do, and done cleaning up there, which wasn’t a bad job in the early 90s, it was great. I mean, it’s just rubbish up there now, but it was great at the time. And I didn’t mind doing it. And you didn’t just do the cleaning them days. You used to make cups of tea for patients, get their breakfast. I used to love all that dealing with the patients. And I could have been an auxiliary nurse. I could have done I did try a little bit, but I tried that later on, and I found I was doing the cleaning at the same time, and I started getting a bit of arthritis, and it didn’t really work out. So I didn’t mind doing that, but I I just thought, no I’ll stick with the cleaning. But yeah, I’ve always been interested, always watching what nurses are doing, and always interest me, but I never pursued it. I don’t really want to blame Ronsons for that.
Simon [01:21:27]: There’s this need to put a roof over your head and
Pat [01:21:33]: Yeah
Simon [01:21:36]: That does restrict freedom of choosing what you want to do.
Pat [01:21:39]: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. But it was just totally different back then. Things weren’t like, you know, you’re encouraged to stay on at school now they want you to do stuff. I’ve sometimes think I wish I could go back to school just for a week or so, just to see how they do things and how they would get you up. I would love that. But be fascinating. I’ll be like, well, wasn’t like this when I, you know, fascinating.
Simon [01:22:02]: Yeah. I think it’s quite tightly controlled, school now.
Pat [01:22:06]: Yeah, it is.
Simon [01:22:07]: There’s not much.
Pat [01:22:08]: I mean, saying that in a way, I suppose I wouldn’t want to change my school days, because we just used to have a laugh. A bit like a social club, really, didn’t learn nothing, no, but it didn’t matter see. It didnt’ matter which is sad, but you know.
Simon [01:22:26]: There’s a couple of thoughts here of what, what do you think about, the Flame Keepers project, if we weren’t recording this and storing it for the future, what do you think would be lost?
Pat [01:22:46]: Well, anything about the place, because most people I’d expect, if I even told people now, they probably even wouldn’t even know there was a place existed. You know, I’m sure a lot of younger people, if I said I worked in a factory called Ronsons they’d be like, where was that? I’ve not heard of that. They wouldn’t have a clue. And Dixons, so they just wouldn’t have a clue. I mean, my girls know, because I’ve told them, but I expect a lot of people, their friends, wouldn’t know, unless they had anyone who worked there, so it would all be forgotten, I suppose, wouldn’t it, so.
Simon [01:23:19]: And as you said earlier.
Pat [01:23:21]: It’d just be forgotten.
Simon [01:23:22]: It’s almost like, what’s a lighter?
Pat [01:23:24]: Yeah, what’s a lighter. And inside, the way of life was different then as well. So it wouldn’t be, you know, because that’s that’s not just working there. It’s everything. It’s just totally different.
Simon [01:23:39]: Okay, anything else do you think we should cover?
Pat [01:23:41]: Don’t think so.
Simon [01:23:41]: Well thank you very much for your time.
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