The 70s

Crappy January weather.  Food shop - up to mum with her shopping and a bit of tidying up.  She is so much better, managing down at the coffee morning in the lounge and afternoon down in the lounge with the five friends she has in there.  Good to see.

With the weather wet and blowy I decided to sort out some old photos and found this one. A leaving night out in 1978.  Lorraine was a great friend who I met when went to work in Stirling with Central Regional Council in 1975.  There was six teenage girls in our room in the office with a woman called Kathy trying to keep us in some sort of order.  She had no idea how to deal with teenage girls, she didn’t have any family herself and looking back we were pretty awful at times to her, particular one girl called Irene, who I now understand had some mental health issues herself.  Some of the stuff she did was bonkers, and she used to steal from desks.  It was mostly men who worked in Woodlands, as it was the Water and Drainage Department and the Christmas parties down in the drawing office were wild - we were banned from the Torbrex Inn , local to the office, after an Christmas drinks afternoon incident when tables were overturned with drink on them glasses smashing and liquid everywhere, and me and Lorraine here were behind the bar helping ourselves to the spirits, pulling pints and giving drinks to others!  No idea where the staff were and we didn’t seem to care.  We were thrown out but then carried on the party in the office, luckily the Directors started their Christmas holidays early and weren’t  around.  Folks were throwing up, dancing on tables with the technical drawings on them, and one of the sneaky guys in the office was taking pics .  Two of the girls Lynn and Anne were having affairs with two of the married men at one of the Christmas parties and oh the drama! !  You can see looking back how they just took advantage of young teenagers.  Lynn was only 17 and the guy was in his early 40s.  I remember his name, Robert Bruce and he had a small sports car that they went out in at lunch times…

Our favourite place for any nights out was the Tap Room, near the Castle This is where this particular night out was.  They made rolls for us and the drink was cheap!  I wonder where some of these people are now ?  I am still in touch with Lorraine and another of the girls but I moved to Perth and lost touch with a lot of them.

Different times in the 70s with regard to office life.  Spent five years working in Woodlands and have some great memories.  The Next stage Work life up to retirement was never as crazy as these times though.