The 'Wilderness years'

Just a short entry about the four years that I spent away from Cardiff Bus and the difficulty I had getting back in again!

I left and went to work at a steel rolling mill for what was supposed to be better money. This was in nearby Newport and I soon found out that I would start as the lowest of the low picking up rubbish that had been discarded from the mills. I moved after a few weeks to the mills themselves and was responsible for getting the first of the rolls onto the conveyor to pass through. This was piece work and the more you pushed through the more you earned.

I was not fast enough for them and in the end I decided to get out of was a dirty dangerous job and found a job in Cardiff at a funeral directors of all things.

This job was a chauffeurs job and driving smart Daimler cars for a living was no hardship. However the company was not easy to work for and part of the job was collecting bodies from morgues and taking them to the funeral home.

You learned to live with that and I have never been bothered by the dead ever since. But some of the shifts involved staying over night in the funeral home waiting for calls from the police to collect bodies etc and I decided it just was not for me.

So I then got a job delivering fish of all things!

The company was called Snowdens and I spent three years there delivering fresh fish all over the south Wales valleys. I was well regarded there and as the job started early every day and finished by 12.00 I had a lot of time with my fast growing young son.

But in the end the smell of fish began to put me off and I thought about getting back to the buses. I went for an interview and was shown my record and that had 'NOT TO BE RE-EMPLOYED' in large letters all over it!

But the years working for Snowden's on early morning shifts had in the main sorted out my lateness and I used the 'old boys network' and got my father to have a word with the manger to see if I could get back in. He had a word with me and told me in no uncertain terms that he would have be back as a favour to my father and if I messed up then I would be out for good.

So in the summer of 1977 I was back and this time for good!