As a kid in the 1950s and 60s we holidayed all over the UK, we lived in the North East of England and were among the first few in our street who owned a car.
On one holiday, in Cornwall a guy walked up to my Dad in St Ives and said to my Dad. Hello! Fancy meeting you here. He worked in the same steel works as my dad, in fact in the office next door to him.
The very next year in South Wales, it happened again, this time the guy was in Dad's gang. (He was a foreman engineer.)
Two years after that in Norfolk we turned up, pitched out tent and the guy in the next tent brought a bottle of beer over and said. 'Hi! Fancy meeting you here'. He was only my Dad's charge-hand.
Dad was a personality, fiercely loved by those he worked with and well known by everyone all over the works*. It was almost impossible to go anywhere in the UK, in the fortnight's holiday, where somebody didn't walk up, shake his hand and said; 'Fancy meeting you here!'
* On a tour of his works in my early teens he proudly showed my younger sister and I some graffiti on a huge machine in the works. It said:-
'Harry Dabbs is a Bastard!' Underneath in only slightly smaller letters was:-
'Yes, but a fair one!'
His best advice to me was this.
'Never back a man into a corner where he has no alternative. If you do he has no choice but to fight. Always give him an alternative, no matter how difficult for him to take.'
This advice has proved invaluable in my life.
!!.
