Ahhh...memories. Along time ago (in a Galaxy far, far away) in between leaving school and not going to University---I eventually settled for Art College---Biglorryblog used to put up fences for a living. And this neat bit of 'post & rail' caught my eye as much as the smart red Mitsubishi Fuso Canter that has joined C&W Fencing. According to the blurb C&W’s vehicles are expected to stand up to plenty of punishment. And the Canter is clearly up for a spot of bother which explains why it's the third Canter the Essex company has bought within the last four months.
“What I like about the Canter,” explains C&W Director Andrew Warren to Biglorryblog, “is that it’s a lorry which has been shrunk down to 3.5 tonnes, rather than a van that’s been stretched.
Our trade is not at all kind to vehicles – we go onto some pretty rough sites and will dump concrete posts and all kinds of other rubbish on them. But with its ladder frame chassis the Canter is tough and durable enough to take the abuse.”
That certainly sounds like how yours truly treated the vehicles that he drove for Jack Miles Fencing Limited---whose fleet included a Bedford HA, a Morris Minor van (with a dodgy fuel pump that conked out at traffic lights and needed a tap from the handle of a wooden screw driver to unstick itself) and a Commer cabover dropsider.
Now click through here to find out where you can see the lasting legacy of BLB's work as a fencer in the UK.
Most of the work I did was erecting pedestrian crash barriers around Pelican crossings or roundabouts and you'll see plenty of my handiwork in Slough, Archway Road and various bits of North London. We also worked on new housing estates so unless the wind has blown it all down, I did a fair bit of feather-edge boading on various sites around Cambridge and Harlow too.
Putting up pedestrian crash barriers up (at the princely sum of 50p a panel--good money in the early seventies when you could do 30 in a good day) meant lifting the paving slabs and hammering your way through the concrete edging of the kerbstones with a big iron bar....although occasionally me and my mate Dennis hired a road drill if the digging was really hard. Working in Highgate one day we discovered we'd inadvertently drilled through a cable. 'I wonder what that does?' I asked Dennis innocently. Seconds afterwards came the answer with a screech of brakes, a clamour of various road vehicles' horns and a few pithy anglo-saxon epithets from the nearest set of traffic lights.
Naturally we did the only thing possible. (Filled in the hole quickly and b#ggered off for tea). Still it was our first o-fence...
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