Danielle managed to got work at Zena fashions dressmaking factory pretty quickly although the salary was low, and I looked for screen-printing work.
Eventually I got an interview with a nearby company, Planet Displays at 16a Wyndham Road, London. The interview not only involved not only questions, but also a stencil cutting test. The majority of their work was billboard posters and other large-scale work so they used hand-cut rather than photo-stencils. This involved cutting the letters and shapes into a thin layer of water-soluble glue sitting above a paper base.
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| Screen printing process |
The sticky glue section was peeled away and the remainder adhered to a framed screen with water. The paper transport layer was then peeled away. If the cutting was too shallow or too deep, then the edges of the print would be fuzzy and unacceptable.
Fortunately my cutting was good enough and I got the job. When the offered me the job a a salary of £30 per week, I balked and asked for the equivalent as in Australia, £35, to which they agreed. This caused some surprise and a little tension at home when I told them the story as they were both professionals with degrees working for the local government, and only earned about £28 a week.
Although a year later, in 1976,
London had a heat wave, the summer of 1975 was
quite hot enough . I would wear a singlet top, shorts and thongs or sandals at work while the others wore long sleeve shirts, long pants and heavy boots, and complained about the heat. We got free morning and afternoon tea in large tin mugs on the job - already complete with milk and sugar.
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| London Underground billboard map |
Possibly because I was an Australian rather than British, it appeared to me that I would get all the difficult, time consuming and high risk (of disaster) jobs. The two most memorable jobs were the London Underground map and Radio Rentals panels.
The London Underground map was a “24 sheet” billboard, made up of 12 overlapping sheets each 60” by 40”, printed in the original colours. The hardest part was cutting out the lettering for the stations - even though is was a billboard, the letters were only about 1 inch (2.5cm) high. Registration was also critical as the vertical, diagonal and horizontal lines had to match perfectly when pasted on the walls of the underground stations.
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| A similar Radio Rentals van with panels |
The Radio Rentals job was printing with vinyl inks on moulded plastic panels that would be attached to the sides of Ford Escort vans they used for delivery and TV maintenance. Not only was it difficult printing on a raised plastic panel, but there were four coloured lines that had to be printed in exact registration - for left AND right hand sides.
Normally with screen printing there is about 10% of the quantity set aside for spoilage - I had to print about 100 panels with only 2 spares for testing! I was quite sure that I was given difficult jobs like this so that if they were 'stuffed up' I would get the sack as opposed to a local employee.
Eventually I got an interview with a nearby company, Planet Displays at 16a Wyndham Road, London. The interview not only involved not only questions, but also a stencil cutting test. The majority of their work was billboard posters and other large-scale work so they used hand-cut rather than photo-stencils. This involved cutting the letters and shapes into a thin layer of water-soluble glue sitting above a paper base.
