Normally this award would be given to the Openreach employee who most recently fixed my phone line or got my internet going again. But for August 2019 a TPAS Order of Merit (see right) has been specially minted for us to give to Wayne Firth. Wayne used to be a ringer-of-wood and laddersman trapeze artist in the alfresco world of telegraph pole inspecting. Now, though, his hands are clean and splinter-free, his collar only slightly grubby and his life a whirl of acetate overheads and powerpoint system crashes in the murky world of the office interior as he trains up tomorrow's pole rattlers.
Wayne kindly sent us the collection of photos of poles, various, that you see below. 3 pics of extremely hirsute poles, 4 photos of pole stacks - where all the different types of pole are laid out in their categories before being selected for installation and finally a pole/tree hybrid that he found out on his rounds. This is a tree that is growing completely around the pole itself.
One final thing. Wayne didn't say where he was from, but judging by the fact that every one of these photos it seems to be soaking wet from recent rain I would say he must be from Blaenau Ffestiniog.
