Taking a break

Most people don't know what's going on behind the hoardings of a construction site. People I speak to think that a couple of hundred blokes turn up on site, start work and turn out an engineering masterpiece.

Of course, it's more complicated than that. There is order and planning. But there are also odd rituals. Take the half-hour lunch break. "Half an hour? You can't do anything in half an hour." No matter how many times you explain to people about breakfasts, tea breaks and long hours, no one can understand the half-hour lunch break.

What it means is that there's no point in leaving site, everyone lives their spare time with everyone else and what some people do in their own time is just incredible.

Own space
Some need to find their own space. Mick is a lanky ganger, and at one o'clock every day he takes his mug of tea, sandwiches and paper and leaves the company of the canteen to find some quiet space on his own. That's not unusual. However, Mick's preferred dining place is the chemical toilet.

Even in the height of summer that's where he eats his food. Bad enough, but what no one on site understands is how he actually finds it in any way relaxing. Not with the constant fear that while he is porta-lunching the toilet might be tipped over, covering him with its contents - which has happened on three separate occasions. To Mick those precious peaceful minutes are obviously worth the risk.

Others chose an 80s-style power nap to get away from it all. Some trades have been masters of the power nap for generations, especially digger drivers and electricians.

Electricians always sleep together. It's like an unwritten union rule. From the ages of 20 to 60, find three sparks sitting together and they'll be out in seconds. But on one site where I worked for a major housebuilder, everybody power-napped. Absolutely everybody would leave site on the stroke of one and head for their cars. A walk along the adjacent road two minutes later would reveal 30 cars parked end to end, filled – without exception - with bodies, pillows and duvets.

Some people need to find their own space. That’s not unusual. However, Mick’s preferred dining place is the chemical toilet

I sadistically looked forward, rather like a regimental sergeant major, to rapping on the car windows at 1.25.

It's not often that a site manager gets into napping on the job, but one older chap I met, demonstrating a pre-retirement confidence I dream of, would at lunchtime lock the door to his office. He'd take the phone off the hook and unplug the fax. And anyone, whether it was a client, HSE or director, would be told exactly where to go if they turned up and knocked at his door. When a director once did turn up, he was, unbelievably, more angry at himself for mistiming his arrival than at the obscenities from the site manager.

Lunches aren't always about solitude. Sometimes it's all team bonding and sharing. On one memorable occasion, the whole site joined together to help an unfortunate steel fixer. During breakfast this poor chap was absent from site. Instead, he was in the park next to it crawling around on his hands and knees. People of course asked what the matter was, and despite being clearly distressed, he revealed that he'd lost his wedding ring and that he was pretty sure it was in the grass in the park.

Unrecovered ring
The steel fixer was worried that his wife was going to kill him. At lunch everybody forewent their own rituals and helped search. It was funny in a bantery, laddish way - the site on its knees, cracking jokes - until someone asked how he'd managed to lose it. To his credit, the fellow didn't lie. He explained that the night before he had taken his ring off before pulling some girl and had enjoyed a romp in the grass during which he reckoned he'd lost his ring. We never found it.

The last little story I've got involves a really nice brickie. He always came to work with the sandwiches his wife had made for him.