BloggerWife commented the other day that I had left out her own recollections of the BT Training school. Karen was an apprentice for BT before they sponsored her to do an IT Degree at Salford University a few years later when they recognised her abilities.
In the meantime, she had three weeks at Stone on a training course snappily entitled “Provision and maintenance of speechband circuits”, back in the days when these things weren’t digital and needed lining up. She was allowed to stay in the lecturer accommodation as there weren’t enough girls there to warrant a female dormitory. She also remembers her tutor declaring undying love for her on the course piss-up. Funny how some girls can turn a normally sensible man’s head…
Karen did most of her training in Didsbury, although Stone is still equipped with external facilities, including a field full of truncated telegraph poles. Karen did say that being a telephone engineer in training as a girl was a challenge at times. Her first trip up a mini-pole ended in failure when she froze at the top with her safety gear on and had to be coaxed down. She also had to sweet-talk other boys on the course to carry her ladders…
