I worked at the shipyard from 1965 to 1970. First as an office boy and then as an apprentice machinist. There seemed to be thousands of apprentices wandering arround.

As part of the training you were moved every six months to a different department. Thus the foreman in a particular section rarely got to know the charges in his keep. Of course once the boys twigged to this every day was like going on your holidays.

The yard was so vast it had its own free bus services connecting the different bits. Put a rolled up plan under your arm and it was like having a visa to travel anywhere you liked: some days were spent exploring the grand canyons of the dry docks walking underneath an encrusted rusty belly of a ship in for repair or wandering through, Jonah like, the dark inside of some great tanker your senses blasted by the screeching rattle of corking chisels trimming welding in the ghostly disco blue flash of an arc welder.

"Shade your eyes boys or you will wake up blind." The engine works with the great diesel throbbing on their test bed became a climbing frame for the day. Oily blacked men boiling oily blacked tea strong enough to walk across munching down on oily blackened bread.

Then the silence when the work stopped for the day and the peace of this great cathedral as the workers sprinted out for the buses. Never a dull moment. Then the gradual realisation that I had better buckle down and learn some engineering skills to earn a few bob. But it was the sense of enquiry and curiosity that my apprenticeship really gave to me that led eventually to my joining the merchant navy and travelling the world for ten years.

It was the people skills that I honed on those oily black men that gave me a lifelong interest in talking to other people and ultimately led to a career in social work. Now instead of a rolled up plan under my arm I carry a social service diary.

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