During my school time I wanted to be a forensic pathologist (Creepy right) so my GCSE's were ok and i went back to 6th form to do the BTEC national science. 6 months in to a 2 year course I got a little bored of going over the same stuff I had been doing at GCSE level, I was having football trials with a very poor Wigan side too at the time, so I looked around at various other jobs and ended up on a NVQ in Marine electrical engineering. It was during this time working on the historic warships in Birkenhead that I got chatting to an ex RM/SBS guy who was as mad as a box of frogs (always wore beruda shorts, even in winter on the docks) who used to tell some of his wonderful stories of time in the Navy. Non of this made me want to join by the way, but as luck would have it, one day I was shopping in Liverpool and the train station was across the road from the recruiting office, I was intrigued so in I went, some guy sat me in the office and put a video on of some tanks blowing stuff up and the rest they say is history, that was me clad in black coveralls and blowing stuff up for 17 years.
I was burned out after 11 years so got out for a while and did some bits and bobs like private security, door work and some site labouring and it was whilst I was hoovering puddles on a building site in Selby I thought hmmm H&S seems like a good idea, anyways the company got a new labour manager in who promptly fired anyone on more than 12£ an hour (which was me cos i had FA and JCB tickets) and i ended up on the dole, and low and behold a quick phone call and BANG! I'm blowing stuff up again in a big metal can.
6 years later and the redundancies start kicking off, and because i was a rejoiner i wan't exactly top of the pile for promotion any more (I had 8-10 years on my peer group) so I was going nowhere fast I decided it would be better to just bite the bullet and get out with a few bob and retrain.
I knew I was going to do H&S this time around as last time i didn't take any resettlement i just left. So I used my resettlement grants to enrol on a NEBOSH Suite of courses, probably the same course as CTJCRM, probably at the same venue with the same tutor and passed them all with flying colours. I then spent 7 months trying to break in to the industry with little to no experience and it was solid, i'm not going to lie, i didn't get one call back from at least 350+ applications over that time period and thought i was back to square one, the money i had put aside as savings had been chewed through keeping the family going (should have got any old job....hindsight) until i got a call from an agency saying she had seen my CV online and would i attend an interview for a H&S consultant.....I know right....no experience....Wrong! I attended the interview with my current company on the Weds afternoon and the agency lady called me the very next morning to offer me the job (she said they called her as soon as i left to give it to me)
And that is where I have been since March last year, I still don't consider myself to be a full blown H&S Consultant Per se as I am still learning stuff myself every single day I am out and about, but I am doing my Diploma (failed unit A in Jan)
but taking unit A and B in July as sometimes you just gotta leap.Anyways thats me, hope you haven't got a numb bum from the sandbag!
![[smilie=dweeba20.gif]](./images/smilies/dweeba20.gif "dweeba20"){kind=small}
my next door neighbour is a bootie and it gets a similar reaction
