Mal's Memories 11

DO YOU remember apprentices?

All kinds of jobs provided apprenticeships, including the printing industry. Apprentices received a superb training in their chosen trade, but one of the downsides was that they started at the bottom of the ladder and were the butt of all kinds of jokes.

One of the favourite wheezes in print shops was to send the poor unfortunate out to buy, or borrow, a left handed hammer. Of course, when they came back, they were told: “This is no good, it’s right handed. You’ll have to go back and get the proper one.”

This could go on for some time, until someone gave the game away by bursting into laughter.

Apprentices were also expected to make the tea, and to run errands on demand. And they also got all the dirty and boring jobs to do. But they learned first hand from the tradesmen they worked with and there was no better training.

In newspapers the apprenticeship lasted up to seven years, and the role of the typesetter and compositor was considered a highly skilled occupation.

The advent of computers has changed the entire production process for newspapers and it is now journalists who key the stories and design pages on screen.

Another tradition in the composing room was “banging out”, involving a noisy ceremony to mark the end of an apprenticeship.

Unfortunately for the “victim” the ceremony also included the liberal daubing of certain parts of the anatomy with printers’ ink. They tell me it was the devil’s own job to get it off.

Perhaps that’s why I chose journalism instead of a career as a printer!