“We used to throw chickens in the jet engines, to test them, you know.”


I came across Harrison as he was taking pictures of passing buses on a busy interchange. He had a small note book with him, a Moleskine I think, and he was circling numbers as they were going past. He was spotting buses, and told me how the variation of the digits told you which company/route they belonged to.

“When did you start this hobby?”
“Not long after I retired. It gets me out and about, also means I can leave the wife to her shopping and I can get on with this!”

This inevitably led me to ask what he did for a living. Harrison had quite an important job it seems. He worked at Rolls Royce as an inspector, and explained how it was his job to inspect designs and blue-prints before they went onto development.

“Did you enjoy your job?”
“Oh yeah, I was there for over 35 years.”
“What was so enjoyable about it?”
“It was so varied. I never had a day where I was doing the same thing.”

We went onto talk about the engines they produced, their growing sizes, and I asked Harrison how they tested them. I should explain that the chickens they used were not live, and had to be used to test ‘bird strike’ (when a bird flies into the engine, usually at takeoff and/or landing, causing major damage).

He did comfort me saying that it was a very rare occurrence! :)


Humans of Leeds