Loading...About The Speaker...
I am a 60 something retired Architect. I spent 71/2 years training, gained my RIBA and then spent two years replacing all the toilets at Paddington Station. My career with British Rail was brief. I was one of the fortunate ones. In 1978 there were no mobile ‘phones, no faxes, no emails. The RIBA gave us five days to respond to any reasonable request for information. Email reduced that to 5 minutes, the mobile to 5 seconds. I learned to draw using pen & ink, with drawing boards of teak, propped up on brick samples, chipped T-squares , not quite square set squares, and stencils. The foreman would call my “sir”, probably spelled “cur” . This is a Portrait of the Architect as a Young Man. The early years of my career, 1978 to 1984 before AutoCad, in-car-telephones, “Design & Build” and “Project Managers”. It was just SO MUCH MORE FUN
About Their Talks...
This is a rip-roaring rib tickling absolutely NOT Pevsner on the Medieval Architecture of Hampshire , journey down my memory lane, punctuated with the funny, the dotty and the downright ridiculous.
The construction industry is full of characters, clerk of works who “go native” and start driving the dumper truck, Project Managers who couldn’t manage a bun fight in a bakery, quantity surveyors with the skills set of a wizard who could work magic on the “final account”, structural engineers who doubled the size of everything “so that they could sleep at night” and others whose contribution was some kind of dark art. And helicopters. Don’t forget the helicopters.
Fee:
I don’t charge a fee,
I expect a donation proportionate to the number of people in the room multiplied by the number of laughs. Everything I bring in ( less reasonable expenses) goes to Macmillan Cancer Support. They supported me from the beginning of my “cancer journey” and continue to do so. The salary of my oncology nurse and psychologist is paid by Macmillan. Be generous! I try to use public transport where ever possible and charge transport at cost.
