HEMEL HEMPSTEAD

 

Jack Finedon (he of the exploding toilet seat - shades of Colonel Bloodnok in the Goon Shows) had been my predecessor at Hemel, and had taken all his office furniture to his new Luton office. He had warned me about this so I took my own executive chair, bookcase and desk with me. The last two had been made from solid oak by the carpenters at Ipswich Gas works and were much larger and heavier than those to be found in any other offices except Directors and Board Members. The office wall had to be taken down to get them into my new office.

There is an easy route from Dunstable to the Hemel Hempstead offices, over the hills through Studham and Gaddesden Row, and I was able to make the trip in twenty minutes without traffic problems. Even in snowy weather I could be first into the site, other people being held up by traffic jams.

For the first time I had a sizeable staff of reps., engineers, clerks and fitters working directly for me, instead of through other managers, and this was a great help. It wasn't quite as large as the old Tottenham set-up, but behaved in the same way.

Hemel is a New Town and all the industry there is fairly new and light, instead of the heavy industry with foundries of Ipswich, Suffolk and Essex. The satellite towns of Watford, St Albans and Hatfield were also light industrial areas, but full of high-tech. Watford itself was the centre of the Printing Industry in this country, with all it's offshoot suppliers - printing ink, paper, and the like. It was a different kind of industrial area, but I had no real problems because I was familiar with the basics of the processes.

It was the smallest of the areas geographically within Eastern Gas but by no means the smallest in terms of revenue, work load and importance.

The biggest and most immediate task was the natural gas conversion. Every Monday for several months a different sector was 'turned in', that is to say, the mains system was charged with natural gas, all the customers turned off, and all the equipment in the factories converted to burn natural gas and then turned on again and readjusted. All this had to be done so that there was a minimum loss of production or wages and normal bonuses for the factory workers. We usually managed to get about 90 of the plant back into use by the evening, leaving the problems to be dealt with during the night and the following day. The factory management were always told weeks in advance of what would be the likely problems and delays, and made plans accordingly. Sometimes the factories had their own private reasons for accepting these delays.

Arthur (Dicky) Bird, my former Boss at Tottenham, was in overall charge of the Industrial and Commercial Customer Conversion in Eastern Gas and did it so well that he was promoted to be Conversion Manager for the whole of Britain. Naturally he took some of our best men with him.

During the Centenary Celebrations of Tottenham Gas in 1947 large gas torches (Flambeaux) had been fitted on the twin towers of our Woodall House Headquarters in Wood Green, and afterwards taken down. It was decided to refit them for Queen Elizabeth's Coronation, and because I was in charge of all gas fitting work at Headquarters as well as at British Gas Headquarters in the grounds of Westminster Abbey, I went up into the towers with Dicky Bird to see what had to be done.

These towers are about one hundred feet high, and Dicky horrified me by walking round the unguarded parapets and climbing the flagpoles. "There's a lovely view up here, I can see right across London, as far as Crystal Palace. Come up and have a look." "No thanks, I said very firmly, "We haven't all been sailors."

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