Making Ends Meet - A Working Life Remembered

John Cooper's second book takes us on a fascinating journey through the ups and downs of a career spanning nearly half a century of constant change and upheaval beginning with the industrialisation of Vauxhall Motors where he was employed as a young apprentice in the austere post-war years. He recalls the trepidation that was felt as National Service beckoned, shares humorous reminiscences of the daily 'square bashing', the torturous PT sessions and the overwhelming sense of relief and pride when the Passing Out Parade was finally over - to be followed by the bleak, wilderness years of the late 1960s, times of repeated redundancy and unemployment as the 'last in, first out' policy applied. With the dawning of the 1970s came apparent security and job satisfaction as a quantity surveyor in his father-in-law's practice, only for this idyll to disappear in the apparently inevitable pattern of job losses. Lacking both job and prospects but with a steely determination that anything was acceptable to help 'make ends meet', the author embarked on a number of low-paid positions, with disastrous and often hilarious consequences. At long last the break came that would determine his occupation for the next ten years, an opportunity to work at the prestigious Building Research Establishment, where he remained happily until retirement enabled him to make a nostalgic return to the workplaces of a working life spanning almost fifty years.