To be an apprentice is to be a courier. I’m exaggerating but I’m not far from the truth. When you become an arpette, you run around making deliveries. I remember one impossible day. I had started shopping just after a coffee and I hadn’t stopped all day. “You go to Pierre’s, he’s on the sixth floor; then you go to Jean’s, he’s on the fifth floor; I think Yves has some parts for us, it’s on the eighth floor…”. I would go back to the workshop on the fourth floor, put the folds on and leave. I didn’t have a mobile phone at that time, but I had legs! And there were hardly any lifts in the buildings on the 9th floor. That day, I counted, I climbed a hundred floors… Memorable!
J, almost retired crimper
Velux
I remember a setter who lost a stone through the window. It was too hot in the workshop and he had opened the window to ventilate. The diamond fell on the roof of the neighbouring warehouse... Ladder, velux, it was an adventure to get it back. We didn't do...