Ian Parker "Cack"

Cack?

What can you say about him?, well he can work hard when he has to and he's not afraid of a bit of shovelling. May not like it, but he'll get stuck into it and plod on doing it. Now if you give him something a bit on the technical side or a bit of responsibility like being in charge then he's prone to panic a bit about it.

He will always try his best at what ever task you give him, and you cant ask for more than that in a bloke.

He obtained the nick-name years ago on account of someone calling him cack handed when he was carrying out some task, and the name stuck. Also he's well known for posessing two left feet.

A story that illustrates this occured many years ago at Kibworth, and it would have done justice to any Keystone Cops film. The gang had been working on-track at Kibworth all day shovelling on a renewals job from a previous weekend. The work for that day was completed and the gang was making their way back to our relaying bus which was situated about about a half mile down the track atop a small grass bank into which some crude steps had been hacked. Everyone reached the grass bank where the bus was parked without anything untoward happening. Then the gang started to climb the grassy bank, with Cack in the lead. Then his aforementioned left feet came into play.

As he reached the top of the bank he fell over as he's quite prone to do, anyway everyone was in close proximity to the person in front and behind, the effect was rather like dominoes. The net result was a mass of bodies rollong down the grassy bank and all ending up in a tangled heap at the bottom of the bank link some scene out of Keystone Cops. There were a number of expletives directed at Cack as everyone untangled themselves and the sound advice from the point of view of everyone was that Cack should always bring up the rear in future.

He doesn't have a bad bone in his body, and he has taken a hell of lot of stick from colleagues over the year's, not all of it justified or warranted. He still takes a lot of stick from some people which is totally uncalled for, and it is very annoying to listen to some always slagging him off all the time. Truth be told he's a far better humanbeing than some of those slagging him off.

A short video clip featuring Ian Parker.