Life And Times At Lowe Electronics
My neighbour is crashing around in the greenhouse, not a happy bunny at all. She used to love gardening, then she had the chance to turn pro. Her hobby became her job and now she does not know what to do to relax. The thought of looking after her own garden is now a form of unpaid overtime. Hence the crashing around in the greenhouse. As a radio lifer, when the chance came to move to Lowes, I jumped at it. In twelve years there, I never found another hobby except my attendance in the local pubs increased dramatically. You can't treat drinking as a hobby. It is, of course, a vocation.
We were all very professional up at Matlock, but with that tiny amount of anorak that came with the job, we needed to get out more.
Every spring, a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of antenna maintenance. Up at the crack of lunch, bench technicians unused to the light would be dragged kicking and screaming into the sunlight. Outside of work, they were keen rock-climbers, a hobby that's part of the spec for living in Derbyshire. Base camp would be established somewhere near the Goods Entrance. Your writer, a man who gets vertigo in thick socks, stayed firmly on the ground. One second the lads are on the ground next to me, the next they are up on the roof. I never saw a ladder.
The Bentley Bridge home of Lowe Electronics is just over 1000ft above sea level. I remember this as I was cornered one lunchtime by a map reading bore who announced we are actually 1053ft ASL, easily memorised as that was the AM frequency of Radio 1. It's Talk Sport now, but he was right. Every time I drive by the place, I remember this. The psychological damage has been done. I think GPS will have proved him wrong anyway.
Being that high up, the first frosts of winter killed the vegetation around August Bank Holiday and the permafrost would soften enough to bang in an earth spike around the summer solstice. Winters like this took a toll on the aerials, hence the crew on the roof. What could be saved was saved, the rest was plastered in ScotchKote, an industrial sealant we found necessary to apply very thickly. Nothing to do with the fumes that could drop a moose at thirty paces. You got a real hangover using this stuff; sight and judgement were impaired. And they layered it on three storeys up.
JW would come back from his fact-finding missions in the foreign with all manner of esoteric antennas. The crew on the roof would lovingly attach them to their end of the coax, while those of us with vertigo would carry out Meaningful Measurements at the Workshop end. If the aerial was a good one, it would be switched between the Showroom and The Workshop. We would try to convince the Showroom staff that vital monitoring work was being done in the Workshop and that the new aerial must be switched over to us at all times. What we were doing was practising air-guitar solos to LASER 558. You take the classic Clapton stance for the end guitar break on The Walker Brother's No Regrets and the Showroom switches the aerial over for a demonstration. To think that selling radios paid the wages, not a hobby at all.