Chapter Three. Part One - It's the beginning, or something?...
I know, it's been a very long time since I last typed an odd paragraph or two of my autobiography.
Again I wonder if anybody either looks forward to, or bothers to ready any of this 'self indulgent', and maybe rambling 'drivel' to some people?!
Yes, many years have passed, over thirty years now, when I cast my mind back to those ever distant memories. One thing is certain, every year, both my memories and myself get older! If my memory is still to be relied upon? In 1980, on a cool but quite bright February sunny Wednesday morning, with some white cumulus clouds scattered across a winter pale blue sky; this apprehensive, fresh faced 17 year old youth walked along the pavement, past the entrance security box and gate, and across the only partially full car park to the entrance of Cranebank, the training centre of British Airways near Heathrow Airport.
The regular sound of jet aircraft rumbling in the background, as they took off and landed on their respective runways, greeted visitors ears, as was the distinctive smell of burnt jet aircraft fuel, drifting back and forth, blown by the gusting cool prevailing westerly winds. A visitor would certainly know that they were very close to an airport!
Following the instructions in my welcome letter from B.A., clutched in my hand; which also instructed us, with what practical casual clothes would be suitable to wear on the induction day, I vaguely remember that I was wearing my comfortable dark blue plastic sports mac, some fairly tidy blue jeans and a spare pair of my father's black industrial boots. In my letter, I was directed to the first entrance, which I seem to remember had a large sign above the entrance steps, which was appropriately labelled in black, "Entrance A - Engineering Training", on a purple background. Adjacent to it was another entrance and sign, this time in orange, labelled " Entrance B - Cabin Crew Training".
At the time, I wished I was going through the orange entrance (my favourite colour!), with it's glamorous looking staff passing by up and down the nearby steps, rather than my unattractive 1970's 'glam rock colour' looking purple signed entrance!
The other main entrance to this very large 1960's designed 'C' shaped building, was around the corner, across another car park. It was logically of course, "Entrance C - Flight Crew Training" on an emerald green sign background. So no chance of getting confused and going to the wrong entrance - everything was colour coded, and for some strange reason in the heir achy of B.A., aircraft engineers have always been 'colour coded' purple!!
It was time to take the plunge and walk up the flight of stone steps, surrounded by quite a few other people rushing to work, in the concrete and glass modernistic building, designed to process as many staff as possible through it's training regime.
The glass lined foyer with some tall leafy potted plants and the view of one of two canteens through the glass partitions on the immediate left, greeted the visitor, and it was now my time to turn right into the 'reddish' polished lino floored, fluorescent lit corridors, which lead to the 'depths' of engineering training....
To the back of the Cranebank training building, was the appropriately named River Crane, slowly meandering it's way through the unexpected small woods and fields. The fields and the chain link fence across them, with a large hole cut in it! provided the short cut home to the underground station after work, which I was later to find out!
From an engineering Instructor and another fellow engineer, who had been around longer than the building! working for B.A., I was also much later to find out, that the site of Cranebank had been originally an infectious diseases hospital for many years before, where the very seriously ill patients were sent! The hospital can't have been that successful, and it was thought obviously the best place to locate and build a training centre! I think the site must have still been infectious, because of the strange behaviour of some of the staff there sometimes!
