Tales from the dark side

I began my 'tales from the rooftops' at the top - that is, from the highest roof that I actually worked on. Being pretty scared of heights, I'm glad it wasn't the first roof that I actually had to climb on to, but neither was this escapade (in spite of the fire) the most dangerous of all the roofing exploits that we 'got up to' (so to speak.)

A week or so before the Bowaters incident, we were dispatched to a rather gruesome old building in Rutherglen which housed one of the British Ropes factories. We never did get to see inside the building, nor can anyone now, as the building was long ago demolished. This is one reason why the photograph above is not of the building in question.

The picture is, instead, of the oldest house in Glasgow, the so-called Provand's Lordship. (I visited it again recently with our Korean guests.) This particular building dates from the 15th century, so I am sure that if its stones could speak they would have many an interesting tale to tell, and most of them more interesting than mine.

However, I uploaded the photograph for two reasons:

one, because I like the picture, taken from the vantage point of the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life on the other side of the road,

and, two, because it may help you to imagine the building I am about to describe and whose roof I was sent to work on.

The British Ropes Factory was an ugly building whose slate roof was roughly 80 feet high (that's more than 25 metres by the way) - probably high enough to reach terminal velocity if you should slip from it. And there was nothing at the edge of the roof to prevent this from happening should you begin to slide. We, expendable students, with absolutely no training on how to walk on roofs, and with absolutely no safety equipment to anchor us to the roof (something which would now be required by the Health & Safety Executive) had to trust in our own sense of balance and good luck.

Where the roof of the the British Ropes factory differed from the roof you see above is that along its length were large "roof lights" (i.e. windows.) They were rather crucial to the activities going on in the factory below as they were virtually the only source of daylight. But there was a problem. Around the edges of all of these roof lights were strips of lead, or at least there had been until thieves had stripped the strips of lead from the roof. (In those days you could get a good price for second-hand lead.) It meant, of course, that whenever it rained the windows now leaked and the rain dripped on to the factory floor 80 feet below. Not pleasant for those trying to make ropes for a living.

Although the lead had been replaced more than once, this had just provided additional supplies to the lead thieves, who were happy to return and repeat the process as often as they could.

So, we were called in.

Our mission?

... to paint non-drying, anti-vandal paint in a one-metre strip all around every roof light. I guess the theory was that if a lead thief were to step on that one-metre strip he would immediately slip... and the roof lead would be safe... though it is unlikely that he would be. Of course, as this anti-vandal paint gathers dust it becomes pretty much invisible, hence making the trap all the more effective.

Can you believe this stuff??

I'm not sure who the bigger criminals were - the lead thieves, or those trying to stop them.

Anyway, we simply had to do what we were told, which meant being especially careful not to put a put a foot on any of the non-drying paint that we had already laid down. A bit scary, even if I had not been afraid of heights in the first place.

We worked away, each of us with a bucket of paint in one hand and a long-handled brush in the other. It took us about a week to complete the job. Then we went on to the Bowaters job.

While we were working on the paper factory roof the weather was especially warm - and that was before the fire. What we didn't realise was that back in Rutherglen our beautifully painted window-surrounds had begun to melt with the heat of the sun, and this tarry-black non-drying paint had started to run down the glass and give to the roof lights a less-than-attractive brown tint. In fact the amount of daylight reaching the factory floor had been cut by 50%!!

So we were sent back - this time with buckets of diesel oil and long-handled brushes- to wash off the non-drying paint.

And, this time, it took two weeks.

To risk your life doing something that is totally futile and meaningless... ah! those were the days.