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"What do they call you?" he asked, friendly-like. "Ron," I replied. "You call me sir, or Mr. Dodds." He paused for a reply. As there was none, he continued, "Come with me, Ron." We stepped out of the office and walked a short distance to a large shanty hut where other apprentices were waiting. When Mr. Dodds ducked his head under the doorway and entered, the chattering ceased. Apparently, I was fortunate enough to be among the first consignment of boys at the start of the woodwork side of things. Mr. Dodds resumed from where he had left off before my arrival: "As I was saying, I will not tolerate insolence, laziness, or shoddy workmanship after I've taught you how to do a thing! If you're not sure, ask. Now you won't be needing tools to begin with." Nevertheless, arrangements were made for small batches of tools, new and second-hand, to be made available from time to time, and we were allowed to pay for them weekly.
"Right. The rain
has stopped. By the way, nobody works in the rain," he said, "We'll go back outside, and I'll show you how to set out and fix a roof," he said. We followed him out enthusiastically. As we walked across, he said: "We haven't any stools yet, so I want a pile of bricks stacked here." He then pointed to a spot at one end of a huge stack of timbers. "Get a couple of planks," he said. We returned with them, four sharing each plank. "And put another stack of bricks to form a bench, about here," he said pointing, as we fell over each other, eagerly trying to impress. "Right. I want one straight length of 3" by 2" as a pattern rafter. And these timbers here will be for this house when the brickwork is ready." All we could see in the field were a few concrete bases laid at a level just above ground. "We're going to cut and fix a roof, temporary, on wall plates, on this base. Then we'll disassemble it and stack it ready for fixing later, when the brickwork is up." We nodded. Then he brought out of a canvas bag a very large steel square.
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