Rocking on
July 13th 2007 22:15
While we were in Great Yarmouth today, we happened to go into the Docwras Rock Shop where two of the male staff were making rock. The shop was large (the largest in Norfolk I think they claim) and had at least fifteen staff working flat out, either producing rock or serving customers.
When I say ‘rock’ I mean that round hard sweet that’s made in various colours, often has words produced inside, and is very common in English seaside towns.
These two guys worked in wonderful harmony, knowing exactly when to do what stage of the process, and never getting in each other’s way. One of them would have been my age at least, and the other wasn’t much younger. The older was obviously the ‘artist’ but the other was no less able at what he was doing.
First they poured out a large vat of hot fluid mixture onto a metal workbench with metal ‘fencing’ around its edge. Then they worked red, blue and yellow colours into one end of the mixture and separated these off with large scissors, leaving the sections to sit under a cloth on the next bench, after they’d kneaded and rolled them flat for a while. The remainder of the mixture was broken into two halves, and put on a large machine that wove it back and forth, like the taffy machine we’d seen in the Korean airport, only a good deal larger.
Part of the red coloured mixture was kneaded strongly while the weaving machine did its work. Then the taffy-like mixture was taken off the weaving machine and laid back on the table, and the older man went to work. With immense ease he rolled it out and stretched it and made it into lengths that he cut up into shorter sections with the skill of one who’s done it a thousand times.
He took the red mixture and the taffy type mixture and began to form short equal lengths, that he fitted and moulded together in an organised way using lengths of what looked to me like wood about one inch by one square – but it may have been metal. It wasn’t easy to see what he was aiming at, but for some reason each section was formed in a slightly different way.
There was another machine that came into the process at some point here, but I wasn’t taking notes, so how it was all done is having to be dredged up from memory. This machine was like an immense grinder, shaped like a long cone. If I remember rightly it was initially used to work on the coloured mixture that had been sitting flat on the bench for a while.
Anyway, once the older man had finished with all his red and white mix, he suddenly chopped a piece off the end, threw it to one side, and then chopped off another short length, threw it end on towards the people watching, and to everyone’s amazement they found that the red within the white formed the word, YARMOUTH. The ease with which he’d done this was astounding now that you realised what he’d achieved.
Now the coloured mixture was wrapped around the Yarmouth red and white rolls, and the whole thing put in the grinder. Then the older man began pulling it from one end and extruding it onto an even longer worktable. Here two women began to roll out the thinned sections (which were now some ten foot or more long) until they were the required thickness. The older man kept on extruding the mixture until it was all used up, and there were around twenty rolls being moved back and forth by the women.
The whole process would have taken around half an hour – at a rough guess. It was hard to estimate how long, because it so was absorbing. But it wasn’t easy on those doing the work: considerable physical labour was involved, between the lifting and kneading and rolling and manipulating. Next time you eat rock, spare a thought for the men who exert all that effort to make it.
Mike Crowl is writing a travel blog while he's in England.
When I say ‘rock’ I mean that round hard sweet that’s made in various colours, often has words produced inside, and is very common in English seaside towns.
These two guys worked in wonderful harmony, knowing exactly when to do what stage of the process, and never getting in each other’s way. One of them would have been my age at least, and the other wasn’t much younger. The older was obviously the ‘artist’ but the other was no less able at what he was doing.
First they poured out a large vat of hot fluid mixture onto a metal workbench with metal ‘fencing’ around its edge. Then they worked red, blue and yellow colours into one end of the mixture and separated these off with large scissors, leaving the sections to sit under a cloth on the next bench, after they’d kneaded and rolled them flat for a while. The remainder of the mixture was broken into two halves, and put on a large machine that wove it back and forth, like the taffy machine we’d seen in the Korean airport, only a good deal larger.
Part of the red coloured mixture was kneaded strongly while the weaving machine did its work. Then the taffy-like mixture was taken off the weaving machine and laid back on the table, and the older man went to work. With immense ease he rolled it out and stretched it and made it into lengths that he cut up into shorter sections with the skill of one who’s done it a thousand times.
He took the red mixture and the taffy type mixture and began to form short equal lengths, that he fitted and moulded together in an organised way using lengths of what looked to me like wood about one inch by one square – but it may have been metal. It wasn’t easy to see what he was aiming at, but for some reason each section was formed in a slightly different way.
There was another machine that came into the process at some point here, but I wasn’t taking notes, so how it was all done is having to be dredged up from memory. This machine was like an immense grinder, shaped like a long cone. If I remember rightly it was initially used to work on the coloured mixture that had been sitting flat on the bench for a while.
Anyway, once the older man had finished with all his red and white mix, he suddenly chopped a piece off the end, threw it to one side, and then chopped off another short length, threw it end on towards the people watching, and to everyone’s amazement they found that the red within the white formed the word, YARMOUTH. The ease with which he’d done this was astounding now that you realised what he’d achieved.
Now the coloured mixture was wrapped around the Yarmouth red and white rolls, and the whole thing put in the grinder. Then the older man began pulling it from one end and extruding it onto an even longer worktable. Here two women began to roll out the thinned sections (which were now some ten foot or more long) until they were the required thickness. The older man kept on extruding the mixture until it was all used up, and there were around twenty rolls being moved back and forth by the women.
The whole process would have taken around half an hour – at a rough guess. It was hard to estimate how long, because it so was absorbing. But it wasn’t easy on those doing the work: considerable physical labour was involved, between the lifting and kneading and rolling and manipulating. Next time you eat rock, spare a thought for the men who exert all that effort to make it.
Mike Crowl is writing a travel blog while he's in England.
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