"Fourteen, you know it’s not old is it, I mean it’s quite young really, I mean, ‘cos I mean, nowadays they’re not starting at work at 14 they’re at 17, 18 19, whatever, you know, well we was only young want we. Well the foreman used to tell us what to do, Stan Lovell. We used to tease him a lot and he used to tease us, and whatever. We used to start at 7 o’clock in the morning, ‘til five, half-past-five at night. We had a break, like a, ‘bout a quarter-of-an-hour tea break, and then we used to have our dinner about one o’clock. And when I was at Marston Valley, I used to come home every dinner time, bike, to me Mum’s, you know, ‘cos I was living with me mum at the time and have a dinner and go straight back to work. It was hard work lifting bricks all the time. You had to stand in one place, all day. Me fingers used to be sometimes, got all cracks in them, you know, where you’d been handling the clay bricks and everything and that. We used to wear gloves but then you used to get fed up with the gloves on and so we used to take them off and use no gloves at all. It brought me muscles up, [laughs] that’s what’s made me stronger I think, you know."
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