The author, Stanley George, describes “Please Wipe Your Boots” as follows:
“This memoir covers the hilarious adventures of a new apprentice as he experiences the incompetence, laziness, pranks and dubious activities of the GPO engineers.”
The GPO, for the uninitiated, was the General Post Office, the Civil Service department responsible for delivering the telephone service in the UK.
This is what George captures with evocative charm and humour – the wonderful characters and shenanigans of a 1960’s Civil Service workplace.
George pulls together a tremendous collection of anecdotes that will have the reader guffawing in incredulous bursts. I, myself, also worked in the Civil Service in the early 1990’s. Much of the pranks, schemes and japes that George so brilliantly describes were fading, but there were definitely echoes of them in the uniform corridors and hiding holes.
George writes in an unassuming and easily readable style and this is the perfect book for relaxing and allowing a leisurely couple of hours to drift past. A funny and sometimes moving book. Thoroughly recommended. 5 out of 5.