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Reg Andrews, retired carpet weaver
Chris McCann, scaffolder
Trevor Tasker, cesspit emptier
Selected Portraits
Extracts from the People’s Portraits Catalogue, published by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Lifeboatmen of Fowey
Jeff Stultiens
When they hear their pagers bleeping and the traditional loud warning bangs of two maroons, the lifeboatmen of Fowey, Cornwall, rush to their seafront station to board RNLB Maurice and Joyce Hardy, their £1,300,000 Trent class all-weather boat. With very few exceptions, all lifeboatmen around Britain’s coastline are volunteers. The exception here is Keith Stuart, their coxswain skipper, who is the one full-time and salaried member of the crew.
The crew of seven are drawn from a pool of about 20. Coxswain Stuart was a member of the lifeboat crew in Amble, Northumberland, where he was born in 1955 to a seafaring family. He worked there as a fleet mechanic, looking after vessels from other stations as well as maintaining the Amble lifeboat. He transferred to Fowey in 1982 and became skipper six years later.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s the Coastguards who decide when an emergency at sea is serious and request a callout for a lifeboat or helicopter. It happens between 40 and 50 times per year. Incidents range from kids stuck on a rock and cut off by the tide to towing in a fishing boat with engine trouble. Recently a crew member aboard a 7000-ton ship fell down the hold and badly injured himself, so we had to board the ship and give him first aid treatment.”
Trevor Tasker, cesspit emptier
Daphne Todd
Trevor Tasker was born in 1953 in Crowborough, East Sussex, where he had several jobs before the local council employed him as a dustbin man. The 22-year old found it hard work humping bins all day, but the council offered training for his heavy goods driving licence provided he stayed for two years. After that, he thought he might as well carry on, especially as his house overlooked the railway station and he couldn’t help noticing that commuters were still coming home after he had had a couple hours in his garden. He works from 7 am until 3.30 pm five days a week, plus extra hours if need be now that the workforce has been cut from six to three. It allows ample time to see his teenage son and daughter from his former marriage.
In Trevor’s experience cesspit men rarely last long into old age. Still, he has never had a serious illness or even a day off work – something to do with fumes killing off the the germs, he reckons. He’s fallen into a cesspit occasionally, but only up to his thighs. And he’s had some foul stuff in his mouth after a blockage cleared suddenly.
Reg Andrews, bread deliveryman and retired carpet weaver
John Edward
You might not be aware of it, but the chances are you have walked countless times across a carpet made by Reg Andrews or one of his colleagues in Kidderminster, “the carpet capital of Britain”. For over 30 years he worked as a weaver in the Midlands town where the carpet industry began in 1735 and is still the dominant employer among its 55,000 population. Even today, as the industry has contracted and technology has taken over many jobs, just over 5000 people are employed in its carpet factories, compared perhaps to 10,000 people 50 years ago.
Born in 1927, Reg first worked in a foundry, moulding cast iron. Knowing that it was about to close, he looked around for another job, and naturally his thoughts turned to carpet-making.
“After seven years as a loom assistant, I got the promotion I was hoping for. I was put in charge of my own loom. It was a proud moment. The factory was like a family. At one point I worked alongside my brother William on the next loom. My three brothers were all weavers, my father was a yarn sorter and my wife Christine worked as a setter putting the roll bobbins on the backs of looms.”
h1. Chris McCann, scaffolder
June Mendoza
A lot of people get a surprise when they first encounter Chris McCann several floors up in an office block. They look out of a window and see him grinning on the other side. Meet him in the pub, and he might tell you he’s a tubular structural engineer. He’s one of the best scaffolders in the business.
Working in crews of three, they start the day at 7am by loading a 20-ton lorry with 21ft scaffolding. On site, the first job is to erect the gantry, the wide platform 10ft high for people to walk under. A platform 4 ft wide, for builders and painters, is put up every storey above that. They put up scaffolding round a two-storey house, 20ft wide and 20ft high, in about three hours.
“Poles can freeze to your hands in winter and burn your hands in summer. But I love the job. The only thing I’d rather be is a Page Three photographer. Some would-be scaffolders just last a day, and others just a month. But the rest of us are a breed apart. On a sunny day, when we’re up there in our shorts, getting a tan and looking down on all those pretty women, that’s when we are masters of the universe.”