Recalling a world of dots and dashes

I forgot to mention in PostScript last week that Sunday, April 27, was Morse Code Day which marks the birth of Samuel Morse, inventor of the famous communications code.

- POSTSCRIPT Roger Crutchley

The reason for my interest is that it brings fond memories of the late 1960s when I worked at Cable and Wireless (C&W) communications company in Holborn, central London.

There were about a dozen of us in our section and whenever our boss, who had his own office, wanted to summon any of us he did so, not with a phone call, but by buzzing our initials in Morse Code. It was a busy office and every day we worked to the sound of dots and dashes whizzing through the air. It was certainly more entertaining than any previous office I had worked in.

I answered to “dot dash dot” (R) “dash dot dash dot” (C) or something like that. Sometimes there was total confusion when the buzzer jammed and nobody had a clue who the boss wanted to see.

At C&W I was lucky to be working with two terrific London lads, Nick and Mick, about the same age as me. We shared a love of soul music, particularly Otis Redding who sadly died in an air crash in December 1967.

We often had lunch together, usually in the cheapest places we could find. Once a week we would treat ourselves to a large plate of spaghetti bolognaise at an Italian restaurant in Soho, a 10-minute walk from the office. It was definitely the highlight of the week.

As British actor Robert Morley once observed: “No man is lonely eating spaghetti. It requires so much attention.”

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