NOTES ON
1966 -
Summer employment, the laboratory of L & P Plastics, Aylesford
http://comp.uark.edu/~dsears/photos/1966
L&P/
I felt the need for summer
employment, not just for the money, but also for the sense of growing up. Roger had a job at L & P Plastics, in
Alyesford, and he suggested I tried. I
was hired to be a laboratory assistant in their R & D / quality control
lab. I was there two summers, 1966 and
1967. In 1967 I tried working on the
factory floor, but the foreman found me reading a textbook on psychology
instead of watching the machines and I was moved upstairs back to the lab.
There were not many of us
in the lab. It was a friendly, low-stress
place, except when the laboratory “boy” broke some expensive glassware. We performed routine tests on PVC and
polypropylene fixtures and pipes. Some
seemed very simple, like dropping weights from a fixed height, or putting in an
oven overnight. I was tasked with
developing a new solvent weld cement for the PVC fittings, but management
rejected my formula as too expensive.
There was a beautiful
short rail trip between Aylesford and Maidstone West, which I loved to take
every day. One hot summer’s day I
missed the train so in desperation I went into the pub next to the station and
ordered my first half-pint of beer.
Then I understood the worldwide love of beer.