Your Letters: December 2

SMILING WOMAN A GREAT EXAMPLE

It's 0730hrs its cold grey damp and miserable, I am well wrapped up and out to buy my daily read. I slog through a carpet of fallen leaves, my breath condenses into vapour. No nose bag until I get back, and so I am fractious and short tempered, in other words, a typical grumpy old man.

At the cash register the smiling young lady greets me with a happy cheerful demeanor. It's too much this time in the morning, how can one person be so damn cheerful on a day like today, this I ask the grinning damsel, and her reply restores my faith in the younger generation. "I like working here and I like my job" well, that says it all, you cannot improve on that reply, and it got me to thinking.

Back in the Stone Age when my job took me all over this little island, hitting the tarmac at dark o'clock in the morning was a normal routine, as was dragging my weary torso back to the family pile well after Constipation Strasse had finished, all of which was not conducive to my mental stability or normal happy self, and her indoors knew well in advance to say nothing, or ask questions until I had fed my face. But you say, there must have been times when you did like your job.

Yes, this is true. Like when I showed the the lady of the house, how to set up her all singing and dancing new boiler programmer, and she sees her new kitchen with many new electrical socket outlets and new lighting, the wide smiles and happy chuckles make it all worthwhile. On the commercial and industrial side, when all the faffing around high up in the cage of a cherry picker leads to a factory lighting up for the first time. A wonderful feeling of accomplishment.

Thinking back even further, there was not many times in West Germany (BAOR as was) that I felt that my efforts were appreciated, but just one in a while all the stress and anguish of military life was cushioned with little victories. Like repairing a small mobile 3-5Kw generator, that had been shunted around several field workshops, and eventually found its way back to me at 0230hrs Zulu, being dragged out of my doss bag in the middle of the Wallenberg forest by a tech sergeant, "Sparks can you have a look at this." Now having about 40 of these things in and out of my workshop back in barracks, it wasn't to hard to find the fault, found and fixed in minutes two. Much to the astonishment of the aforementioned tech sergeant. Even though I was cold, hungry, and mightily hacked off being woken up, what a great feeling. There were a few other small battles won, but that one stands out.

Thinking back to the original instigator of all this wibble, the cheerful lady in the shop. It's a great pity her mind-set cannot be bottled and distributed free on the NHS, and given out to new members of the workforce, just before they leave school, and at border cheque points to all new incomers, it might just perk up Britain's collective sullen sloth like attitude to having to work for a living.

Now, my happy feelings of small victories are when the kids turn up here at Levy Towers with "Pops, can you fix this its broken-doesn't work-needs looking at" and so donning Arkwright's cow gown, switching on the wireless, and with a mug of splosh and a plate of biscuits, I retreat into the one place that no female is allowed, my shed-workshop, and for a few hours revert to type, a happy contented retired sparky, sorted.

Tony Levy, Wednesfield

QUESTIONS OVER BAKU CONFERENCE

Some things that have struck me about our taking part in the climate change conference: