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Reader Terry Palmer claims we only brushed the surface with OBA 71’s revelations of the travails of the Spagforth work force during the post-war fuel crisis. Terry has uncovered several further examples of the ingenuity that surfaced as Spagforth staff cast aside personal hardship and put shoulder to wheel to keep the great name alive.
“I read with interest ‘Fuel for Thought’ in issue 71 and I agree the solid folk who made up the ranks of the Spagforth workers were indeed a loyal and enterprising lot. In addition to the vile but hardworking Spagforth Squitter which ferried countless number of chaps (ladies were prohibited from using this machine for reasons of personal comfort and hygiene) and the unloved Ghurkmobile Omnibus, there were several other examples of the workers’ efforts to create vehicles to reach their place of employment. One was nicknamed the Lobster Pot, and was constructed by Cecil Cumquat, who was employed in the section that installed smoke into the Spagforth wiring harnesses. Mr Cumquat was apparently possessed of a numbingly boring personality and lived alone on a small mudflat in the River Lurgie, near the Spagforth factories. By combining marker buoys purloined from local eel fishermen with a modified bicycle chassis, Mr Cumquat constructed a type of marine craft that could be safely, if slowly, pedalled from his home to the river bank, and return, each working day. It was of course necessary to wear suitable clothing, to whit, a frogman’s outfit, while traversing the river, and it was while changing from his aquatic gear into his work clothes that Mr Cumquat was arrested and charged with indecent exposure, and offence for which he was dismissed from the workforce. A further example of Spagforth workers’ determination was what became known as the Turbo-Spag, built over a two-year period in a section of the test house. The Turbo-Spag used components from a dray, planks stolen from Giggleswick Pier, oak from numerous abandoned casks that had originally been imported from Portugal to provide sherry for Spagforth directors’ meetings, and an engine from the infamous and utterly despised Spagforth Sitting Duck, a target drone that failed to ever get off the ground due to its four ton weight. To this eleven cylinder motor (which ran on sherry dregs mixed with amyl nitrate and snail killer), was affixed a giant propeller seized in the Boar War. Unfortunately the Turbo-Spag was confiscated and destroyed by police after the engine broke free from its mountings and cut a swathe through the local library. There are doubtless many other examples of the Spagforth workers’ devotion to duty, which surely stands as a model to us all, despite the desperately flawed results of their labour.”