GOING UP
10:30 - 13 November 2007
It's not the highest-paid job in Leicester, but it's most definitely the highest. Cat Turnell meets two crane operators at work on the city's regeneration
The view from the top of Steve Hunt's crane stretches as far as the eye can squint. From 180ft above ground, Leicester spreads out like a patchwork of red brick Victoriana, office blocks and church steeples.
Far, far into the distance, the 38-year-old in the fluorescent orange jacket can see the sloping greenery of Leicestershire's surrounding hills and trees.
"You get to see quite a lot from up there," laughs the Doncaster dad-of-two, throwing a look that says 'You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you'.
In August, he saw a chap sprinting down Highcross Street and into the King Richard pub. That man was soon followed by the boys in blue of Leicestershire Constabulary.
"He'd done an armed robbery! All the police riot vans were outside. They dragged the bloke out with a gun.
"And," he says, a little more sagely, "you see plenty of ambulances flying about all day long. I saw a wagon smash into the back of a car at the traffic lights near the Holiday Inn not long back."
A fortnight ago, blushes Steve, as foreman Paul Jeffery shakes his head, he spotted a man on the top floor of the Shires car park playing with himself.
"You see all sorts, aye," he says.
The crane driver has been working on the Shires extension for 18 months and will be until the contract ends in August.
He is one of six men currently operating four tower cranes on the Highcross site.
In all, he spends about eight hours a day in his cabin, his short-wave walkie-talkie crackling with instructions from the all important banksman on rubble-y terra firma.
"I'll be lifting concrete skips, lifting girders, putting glass in windows. It's a job that requires a lot of patience," he adds. "It's not a tedious job because you're doing different things all the time."
At this time of year, when the sun is glaringly low over the horizon, he'll be up there wearing his shades.
With his break over and his polystyrene cup drained of tea, Steve admits he's not tried the local delicacy of Melton pork pie. "I've had too many pies as it is," he smiles, patting his belly.
The heavily-hirsute Chaz Carroll is a general foreman working on phase two of the Colton Square development in Charles Street.
The man in the white safety helmet is freelancing for Bowmer Kirkland, the project's principal developer.
Chaz was an overhead crane driver for British Steel in Lincolnshire for 10 years, before the company was sold by shareholders to the Dutch firm Korus. He knows his stuff.
"The operation of making a crane move is called banking - make sure there aren't any spelling mistakes on that one," chortles the 50-year-old, twizzling his moustache.
"Slew left and slew right are self explanatory," he says, "trolley in and trolley out, that means forwards and backwards."
Not only does the job have its own language, smiles Chaz, it also has its own take on hand jiving.
Chaz demonstrates by twirling his right hand clockwise, index finger extended, a kind of move that wouldn't go amiss in Grease. That means "lift". By repeating the move, but lower down and twirling his finger anticlockwise, it means "bring it down".
"Then there's this," says Chaz, repeatedly clenching his right hand. "That means take the strain."
Up there, 30 metres above ground, Paul Ingram is listening to Planet Rock on his digital radio.
His sandwiches and a flask lie within grabbing distance. So does a currently empty water bottle.
"I've been doing this job 19 years, it's second nature. It's not for everybody," says the 48-year-old, from Northamptonshire. "It's not a glamorous job, it's tedious, repetitive. It pays the bills, it pays the mortgage."
It takes up a lot of his time, all the travelling, and that's because he likes his own bed. But next to the other people on the building site, he reckons he's got the best deal: "To me, it's the best place to be, you're warm in all weathers, you've got your radio on and your flask."
There's not a lot of time to gaze out from the cabin and gander at the world beyond, though.
"When you're busy you're concentrated on what you're doing - you've got men's lives in your hands.
"Once the building goes up, you're blind. You're relying on the banksman, you can't see what's going on on the ground and it's down to them.
"Sometimes when you've got time to look around, you see things like accidents. I saw a road accident the other day, I've seen no end of buildings on fire from up here. You see fights, on and off-site," he laughs.
But as a crane driver, it's the gusting winds that you have to be cautious about.
"You can't go lifting big shutters," he says. "You try and pick them up at 25mph and they just take off. It will be three ton and the wind will take it like a kite. At 40mph, you're supposed to shut down.
"The jib, it looks like you can see through it, but it has a lot of restriction to the wind and you can feel the wind pushing it."
He says 2006 was a very windy year. Back then he worked on Derby's new shopping centre. This year hasn't been so bad.
Usually first on site and last off, after coming down for a quick bite at breakfast, he says he will be up there for the rest of the day. Which means you've got to think ahead when answering the call of nature.
"Basically, what you do, you take a vessel with a lid, a bottle of some kind and clean it out at the end of the day. If you want something a bit more than that," he pauses, "you have to come down."