OK, it's back. Due to overwhelming popular demand and an inordinately long hiatus, the blog makes a much awaited & triumphant return. (cue fanfare, drum rolls etc...)
So, the reason for my sudden & unexplained absence from the blogosphere for the past 3 years is largely due to my studies into all things neurolinguistic. In short, after a lot of hard, mental graft, and endeavour I am now a fully qualified, certificated Clinical Hypnotherapist. I know, I know... is there no end to this guy's talents.
Any road up, along this journey I met a lot of fantastic people, learned much about the Human mind, and have been fortunate enough to practice my newfound skills with some astounding results.
The other reason for not giving these pages the attention that they deserve is simply down to my tendency to procrastinate. So, enough with the digression; let's get down to the grist...
A long, long time ago, but not too far away from here, I was a buyer in a metal reclamation processing plant (a scrapyard, basically). Fresh out of college and into the real world, I was young, and looking back now, I guess still a bit wet behind the ears. It was a tough old environment, and within the space of a few months of working there I'd quickly shed what was left of my innocence and naivety.
My duties entailed assessing, grading and pricing loads of scrap metal that came into the yard via a weighbridge. My clientele was much varied and diverse: Scrap metal processors, vehicle dismantlers, engineering firms, demo men, tatters, pikeys, ronkers, didicois, and rag & bone men; a macrocosm of the most hard, often bent, very smelly, sometimes dangerous, and undoubtedly evil looking fuckers you would never wish to meet.
The gypsies were often the most likely to cause grief. Most of these guys couldn't read or write, but they could peel and count notes from a donkey choker at lightning speed and with an expert hand and eye. They knew every scam in the book and would never miss up an opportunity to try one out.
It didn't take me long to wise up to the tricks of the trade, and pretty soon I had an impressive list of dead eyes that I'd banned from the yard. But I'd made enemies and had to be careful which local pubs I frequented.
To say they were all 'wrong uns' would be unfair... no. hang on, it would be totally fair; it's just that some were worse than others, and the others tended to be what you would call 'loveable rogues'. The strokes that they'd try to pull ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Deception in the form of stupidity and genius came across my weighbridge in equal measure.
One day a pickup laden with a dozen scrap metal lockers appeared on said weighbridge. Metal lockers would have been classed as 'light iron', and back in the day would have been priced at somewhere between ten & fifteen pounds per tonne. Twelve lockers would have barely weighed half a tonne, so the payload would have been no more than six or seven quid. The vendor, a snidey looking traveler, who looked as if he'd never been introduced to soap & water, was edgy as I came out to inspect the load. He was keen to get weighed and tipped & wasn't too interested about haggling a price as was the norm.
'Have yez weighed it? I'll tip it in der usual spot shall I?' he asked impatiently.
'Hang on, mate. Let's have a look what you got.' I replied casually.
'Ah, it's just a load of old lockers. Yer'll give us a good price now, won't yer, fella?'
As I paced slowly around his battered pickup my intuition told me something stank, and I don't mean the niff of halitosis, grease and back axles coming off the pikey that was invading my nostrils. Everywhere I went the guy was up in my face, trying to prevent me from getting a good look at the load. I managed to sidestep him, banged a fist against a locker and tried to give it a rock. They obviously weren't empty.
'What's in 'em, then?' I enquired.
'Nutten, as far as I know.' he lied.
'Open one up. Let's have a gander.'
'Ah, I can't do that now, see as they're all locked. Dat's how I picked 'em up. Gawd's honest truth.'
I bounded back into the weighbridge office and came out brandishing the crowbar that I kept for protection. The bloke's eyes widened. 'What der hell yer going' to do with that, now?' he asked in alarm. Without a word I proceeded to show him. A deafening metallic clatter rang around the yard as I lay into the side of the nearest locker with my crowbar. After no more than thirty seconds of this treatment the locker door flew open and out tumbled a distraught pikey shielding his ears with his hands.
'What der fuck...' he exclaimed. With crowbar still held aloft, I gave him a manic grin, that in turn sent him scrambling off the end of the pickup and crashing to the floor at the feet of his co-conspirator.
'Tell the rest of 'em to come out now or they get the same treatment.' I banged loudly on the next locker just to let them know it was no idle threat. Slowly, one by one the doors of four other lockers opened. four pair of ronker eyes peered warily out of the gloom, unsure as to what was going to happen next. 'Stay where you are,' I shouted, suddenly realising that I might be outnumbered by half a dozen disgruntled scutters. 'Right,' I said turning to the leader while trying to look menacing by tapping the crowbar into the palm of my opposite hand. 'Get this thing off my weigh bridge and get out of here now. Yer barred - the lot of yer.'
Ronker number one spat at my feet and went to the cab muttering inaudible threats and oaths. The guy with the perforated ear drums scrambled to his feet and followed his boss while flashing me a glare. Lucky for me the commotion had alerted some of the lads from around the yard who had been watching the unfolding drama with interest, so I confess to having some reserve back up to go with my bravado.
Now, some of you might be wondering what exactly was the scam? Well, by weighing that load with let's say ten unseen blokes at fourteen stone each. That's 140 stone, which is roughly 890kg gross weight added on to the weight of the lockers. Before they tipped the load, the hidden pikeys would have evacuated the lockers and jumped over the perimeter fence, so when the lead pikey weighs back out with his empty wagon (known as the tare weight), the actual weight of the load can be determined. In effect he would have got paid out for 890kg. of scrap he didn't actually have.
Another simpler and more common trick was for the driver to try and craftily edge a wheel off the weigh bridge without the operator noticing, thus making the tare'd wagon lighter than it actually was. But the most ingenious scam of all was successfully executed by a guy who used to weigh in his non ferrous on a Saturday morning. Non ferrous items such as lead, copper, brass etc. were usually weighed on the smaller scales sited inside the non ferrous department, but sometimes larger loads had to be weighed on the weigh bridge. During that period of the mid to late seventies, a lot of the old Mills and associated engineering works were closing down, and we had a large influx of heavy gearings that were made from phosphur bronze and gun metal. This stuff fetched a really good price, up to £1,500 per tonne at its peak. So, every Saturday this particular dude would weigh on with his vehicle and large trailer laden with these "precious metals". He'd then go and empty his trailer in the non ferrous shed, weigh back out and I would pay him a sizeable amount of cash as dictated by the printed weigh docket. Now the yard I worked in was muddy. Very muddy. In fact for the majority of the year the place was a bloody quagmire. On one particular Saturday morning during the height of summer, the yard had largely dried out and in places looked like a dust bowl. So, fella-me-lad drives onto the weigh bridge, gives us his usual cheery greeting. I punch the docket and wave him on his way to the non ferrous shed. Twenty minutes later I've served him up another donkey choker of cash and bid him farewell.... And then I noticed something. Where his trailer had been parked just outside the NF shed, a large puddle of water had appeared. Because the rest of the yard was dry, this stuck out like a sore thumb. I immediately ran down and alerted Billy the NF manager. We both stood there and looked at each other with the slow dawning of realisation on our features.
The following week I weighed and waved our man off the scale with mounting intrigue. Now ours was a busy yard, wagons and pickups were flying around all over the place, and as was usual for a Saturday morning the Non ferrous bay was awash with people and vehicles. I paged down to Billy that our man had weighed on and we kept a concentrated but discreet eye on proceedings. I watched the guy casually spark up a rolly while walking to the front of his trailer. He made a few furtive glances around him before crouching down between trailer and motor and opening up what must have been a valve or tap. It had rained during the week, so from where I was I couldn't actually see what was going down, but Billy could. He appeared out of nowhere, and he confronted the guy caught in the act.
It transpired that a large tank had been cleverly fashioned and disguised to to look like it was a part of the trailer. Each week our ingenious friend would fill the thing with water and once weighed he would simply turn a tap underneath the tank and allow it to drain away into the wet and the mud before unloading his wares and weighing back out.
We had no idea how long he'd been doing it, but we guessed it must have cost the company thousands.
Ours wasn't a discriminatory yard. We would buy scrap from virtually anyone who pulled onto the weigh bridge. From the demo men in their thirty-two tonners to pikey Joe with his horse and cart. I liked pikey Joe. He was a quiet, unassuming young ronker who used to weigh in regularly with his meagre load of bike frames and washing machines, never haggled a price, took what you offered him without a fuss, never smiled or said much. He carried a demeanour that showed he'd reluctantly accepted the cards he'd been dealt in life. And in pretty much the same way as people say owners resemble their pets, his horse bore the same burden - life was shit, nothing you can do about it, just get on with it - I often felt sorry for both him and his horse as they lumbered up the yard, slowly swaying from side to side, heads bowed low. He was the type of kid who induced great pity, so much so that if I found one of his washing machines filled with house bricks I'd probably turn a blind eye.
As I mentioned, ours was a busy yard, so it wasn't till after a couple of months I noticed his absence. He'd been a regular punter. You could have set your clock by him, so his lack of patronage had me baffled. Had he got a better price for his scrap elsewhere? Had he met with an accident? Had a wheel come off his cart and couldn't afford to fix it? With a shrug of the shoulders I thought no more of it until one day Billy came up from the non ferrous shed brandishing the evening edition of the local rag. He excitedly stuck it under my nose and stabbed a finger at the headline. "Local youth sentenced in bestiality trial" read the banner. 'You know who this is, don't you?' urged Billy. 'No', I said while trying to speed read the details. 'It's him." He uttered the 'him' with extras emphasis. I looked up from the print still non the wiser. 'Pikey Joe,' he exclaimed. 'It's him.' With a look of incredulity my eyes went back to the print. " The upshot of the story was our traveller friend of no fixed abode had been caught in a sexually compromised position with his equine companion. Of course, for reasons of readership sensitivities and moral decency exact details had been omitted, but it didn't prevent me, Billy or the rest of the lads in the yard from using our over creative imaginations on this, and i might say gleaning plenty of dubious mirth and gutter humour for days on end. Billy said he'd spotted an ad in Horse and Rider magazine: "Good home wanted for well loved, skittish and slightly nervous horse. Owner going away forces reluctant sale"
Pikey Joe and his horse never crossed my weigh bridge again. Wether or not it was from the sheer social embarrassment, or perhaps they had parted company over a lovers tiff, we'll never know.