22. Electrician extraordinair

John Van Der Bosch worked at Radios Limited as did brother Lea.  Lea was supposed to service the electrical counter selling electrical appliances. However most of his day was spent across the store selling records. This entailed escorting customers to curtained off booths where they were able to listen to records before purchasing them...a kind of audio ‘test drive’ so to speak.

John Van Der Bosch was Radio Limited's in house electrician who maintained and repaired electrical goods. John was also into rock 'n roll and came to most of our sessions and is probably best known, among The Chequers that is, for coming up with what can only be described as a health and safety nightmare.

The band was fed up with plugging all the amplifiers and sound equipment into a single socket via a tower of double adapters. 

                          an example of our over use of double adapters


                                                                    Kamfinsa hotel

                           note the tower of adapters on the wall next to my head

At some point during our ‘sessions’ someone would deliberately or otherwise, kick, knock or cause the tower of double adapters to be ejected from the wall socket. Sparks would fly, power would be terminated and on rare occasions fuses would blow and have to be replaced. No big deal really, but it irked. 

What we needed was a ‘junction box’ known today as a ‘power strip’ or ‘power board’.

John Van Der Bosch, electrician extraordinaire, said he would knock something up for us and true to his word he did.

Now most, if not all, junction boxes consisted of a rubberized electrical cable with a three point plug at one end which would be plugged into the mains to source the power. 

The other end of the cable was attached to a box with a row of sockets into which amplifiers could be plugged removing the need for any double adapters.  The reason I said most, if not all, was because I know of one junction box which didn't adhere to this design. The 'John Van Der Bosch model'. To be fair it did incorporate a long twenty foot length of rubberized electrical cable with a three point plug attached, to plug into the wall socket to source the power, but at the other end of the rubberized cable, instead of the junction box with the row of sockets, he had attached ANOTHER THREE POINT PLUG which in turn plugged into the junction box to fire it up.

Time after time one of us would take out the plug from the junction box leaving the other end of the cable  still plugged into the wall socket. One of us would pick up the plug not realizing it was live and ZAP!!!! we'd be thrown across the stage. 

I for one suffered that extremely painful fate on a number of occasion as it did the rest of the band. 

Why we never thought of taping the plug to the junction box and eliminating all danger is beyond me, but we never did.