STEPPING BACK IN TIME


AN INDEPENDENT REMEMBERS PART 46


Our independent retailer looks back to a time when the government’s Youth Training Scheme offered school leavers the chance of a job and caused local businesses to compete for what they saw as ‘cheap labour’.


I 12)


t was 1984 and finally we had an apprentice and I would see that look on the boss’s face as he pondered the


boy’s actions. It was the very same look I had been subjected to only five years earlier, and any feelings of sophistication I’d acquired due to my new-found seniority were somewhat tempered with some memories of my unfortunate escapades, such as when I set fire to the boss’s car on shop premises (part


and almost


a finger (part 18). Yes, if he was anything as dangerous as me, then I would need to keep a keen eye on him.


Youth training dream In those days there was the Government’s Youth Training Scheme, or YTS. Many people called it the ‘YTS scheme’, when in so doing they were actually saying ‘Youth Training Scheme scheme’; a bit like ‘PIN number’ when they’re


saying ‘personal


identification number number’. Run by the Manpower Services Commission, it was for 16-17-year- old school leavers and replaced the Youth Opportunities Programme (or ‘YOP programme’ – okay, no more, I promise!). For some time I had suggested that we apply for one of these people. The advantage was that they were paid by the Government – well, for a year – and we would provide the training. I’d trained people when I worked in the bank, so that shouldn’t be too far out of my comfort zone. I could teach him/her how to count money at bionic speed and spot the differences between signatures. All good stuff. We weren’t,


of


prepared to place (for us at any rate) a sizeable order for Bosch power


tools, including multi-


gizmoed hammer drills, routers, jigsaws, sanders and the vacuum cleaner that we named R2-D2, and for ordering over 20 items there was a free book of mouth-watering DIY projects, all set to do using the power tools.


It was such a prized item, these severed


were strictly limited to only one per stockist, wrapped in a Bosch carrier bag with catalogues and product leaflets. So we were pretty satisfied with it (I’m including a photo of ours, which I still have) and the extra discount enabled us to take advantage of some of the other offers such as, I remember, Arrow staplers.


Just as we were queuing for


course, supposed to mug these trainees around by having them sweeping up and dusting; oh no, such mundane endeavours would purely be for the delectation of the senior staff. So, not being greedy,


I wanted


just one such YTS trainee. The boss was suspicious, fearing we might get a girl and they weren’t much good at humping 25kg bags of concrete mix. Well, he was from a former era. And after enquiring I discovered, to my delight, that there were something like eight such placements in our little town. Fantastic. But they were all taken, by one shop: Random Hardware, our competitors on the edge of the town centre. These were the clowns (you could call people names back then) who had bought the ancient ironmongers, with whom we had been working alongside


“It amazes me how many times I see into the past and get a really sharp image of something we used to sell, like, for instance, Polycell Versatile”


24 DIY WEEK AUGUST 2020


for decades, and turned it into a flash set-up with whom we would forever be in direct competition. I


suppose we could simply


have joined in, but the boss and I didn’t want to wear woolly caps like they did. Never let it be said that I harboured bitter thoughts. Anyhow, this hapless pair had taken the lot, and suddenly many of the horror stories we’d heard about that shower made sense. The same thing happened a few years later when the local demolition locksmith was able to train his own sons at the taxpayers’ expense. That’s another story. We sorted our own vacancy by giving the job to the motor engineer’s son.


Booking it


Soon the date for the Curtis Holt Spring Show (or similar title) came along and four of us (including the motor engineer’s


daughter)


attended the extravaganza. Housed in two massive marquees, I remember that the food was very satisfactory, and then there were the superb displays manned by the tool manufacturers. We had gone


coffee before setting off back home, a group of teenage lads came shoving through, rowdy and drinking the gratis lager. Adrian, our apprentice,


recognised them


as Random Hardware’s prize YTS gang. And each one of them was carrying a Bosch carrier bag.


Red squares in the sunset It amazes me how many times I see into the past and get a really sharp image of something we used to sell, like, for instance, Polycell Versatile. I even remember the shelf display stand that held bottles of the stuff. Or were they boxes? You see, the image is becoming misted. Basically, it was a way of tarting up the tiles by painting the aged grubby grout.


It came in a plastic bottle complete with sponge, and there may have even been a cheap brush (but don’t quote me on that) and in a range of attractive (Polycell’s words, not mine) colours such as blue, green, and the most outstanding one – red. I can see the TV advert now; it looked so easy. Brush it on, sponge it off, leaving you with white tiles, lots of red squares, and a room looking like a set from a Hammer film.


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