LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME 2018

Just annoys me when the picture starts rolling and you have to get up and fiddle with those knobs hidden around the back.
Why are those knobs not on the front of the set,(horizontal hold etc.), along with all the others.

 

My first experience of retail management at the age of 21 for the next four years, in the early sixties was managing an electrical store for a now long defunct chain in London. Each was an independent unit, with a staff of a manager, a salesman, an engineer, a cashier and a driver.
The engineer was the same age as I and we and our wives became friends for life. He was good at his job, these days they're just printed circuit panel changers.

We had a lot of TV sets out on rental. One of which was the Ultra 1775.
I've found this photo.



This had a design fault that meant that after a few months use, the picture would start to roll and the vertical hold control wouldn't stop it.

The engineer when called out to this fault would sometimes, not even bother to turn on the set until he'd changed the PCL82 valve,(it happened so often I remember it). Then turn on the set to show the customer it was OK.

I remember he told me that sometimes he didn't even bother to turn the set on before he "made as if to leave," but would make a show of reluctance to oblige, (he was 21).
The set would be found to be working. On one occasion having done that a little old lady thanked him. When he looked at the screen there was a still big gap at the top and bottom of the screen. He said he'd fix that for her and adjusted the height.
She was surprised as she thought that TV programmes had changed and were now transmitted like "wide screen" cinema films.

We did a lot of part exchange deals, offers of up to around £25 were given when customers bought certain sets. These PXs were of no value, usually beyond repair, mostly with duff tubes and were always scrapped. But he was a very good engineer and could sometimes fix them.
We had a deal going with the owner of a men's hairdressers across the road. We'd sell them to him for a few pounds and split the cash and he'd display them working one at a time in his shop and sell them to his customers.
If the picture was a bit dim, we'd drop the voltage from 240 to 220 volts, that'd brighten it up but it wouldn't last too long like that.
The irreparable ones as should all of them, he and the driver, once a month, would take to the local tip in Tottenham. They'd fill the van with them and drive onto the weigh bridge of the tip. Then drive into the tip and throw the sets out of the back of the van onto the rest of the rubbish whilst the tip workers looked on.
They then had to drive onto the weighbridge, get the van weighed and then go into the office to pay the charge. On one occasion whilst the paperwork was being completed, he noticed that one of the sets they'd chucked on the tip was up on a shelf and working! Perhaps the jolt had cured the problem.

His father was a Turkish Cypriot immigrant who married an Englishwoman.
But he was very patriotic, his Christian names couldn't have been more English, "Peter, Timothy." He'd complain occasionally about "The Bubbles," and the problems they caused locally, (Bubbles- Bubble and squeaks- Greeks). But I never experienced any, despite Tottenham being a very cosmopolitan area.

We had quite a few West Indian customers, many came over at that time to work on the buses and the tube. They didn't buy many TV's or electrical appliances. Their favourite purchase, on HP was a Blue Spot Radiogramme with the cocktail cabinet in the bottom.


They all lived in rented accommodation, usually a bed-sit with sadly very little furniture, these radiogrammes would have cost the equivalent of £2000 or more today. But they were good payers, we never had to repossess any.



Sadly both he and his wife died within a few months of each other other a few years ago. But we still swop Christmas cards with their son.

Happy days!

 

My moan is... it got dark before I'd finished One minute I was quite happily digging, then eldest required a lift into town. When I got home and I could hardly see where I'd left the fork!

 

Family will always come first I can always use a torch to find abandoned tools

 

I bought three yellow handled trowels from Wilko last year for a pound each, I can tell you exactly where they all are, one is in the shed the other two are...somewhere in the garden.

 

Tools and teenagers always turn up

 

This is true...... usually after they've left home. One of ours left home at nineteen, came back a year later, left again when he was twenty-two came back again at twenty-five, finally left home at twenty-eight. He can't come back as after he last left, I turned his bedroom into my office.