Plumbers still earn between £16,000 and £30,000 a year on average. And, despite the large influx of Central and Eastern European plumbers, carpenters and electricians, there remains a shortage of around 30,000 plumbers in the UK, according to New Career Skills, who train mature career changers to the three professions.As for women plumbers, look no further than Lorraine Dotchin, who until two years ago was an IT manager for a large law practice. Dotchin, 49, now runs her own plumbing business."I saw a point coming when I could have a career change," she explains, "and I had some experience with installing the network infrastructure at the law firm's building, which meant working with plumbers, electricians and plasterers I always had an interest in plumbing I'm not blazing a trail or anything. I knew there weren't many women in plumbing, but that didn't put me off because I knew I wanted to do it."Dotchin looked into studying plumbing at her local college in Burnage, Greater Manchester, but found herself at the bottom of a waiting list. "They wanted me to wait six months and take a ladies' plumbing course for amateurs," she says "They didn't really get why I was there.
Once you're over a certain age, the chances of getting onto a college course are basically nil. Part-time courses in plumbing have three-year waiting lists in Manchester."The Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (IPHE), the UK's professional and technical body for all plumbing and heating professionals, blames long waiting lists for a proliferation of under-skilled plumbers trained, for instance, by franchises offering six-week plumbing crash courses to career changers or others eager to get out to work just a little too quickly. As a result, many properly qualified plumbers find the majority of their jobs involve rectifying the poor work of the inexperienced. The correct training, says the IPHE, can take anything up to three years.In Lorraine Dotchin's case, it was just over a year with New Career Skills in Southampton. "New Career Skills did all my theoretical tutoring," she explains, "and a company called Apprenticeship Training Ltd did all the practical residential training Both are based in Southampton, and properly accredited. They're flexible courses; some people do it in six months, some take more than two years."After completing the course, Dotchin didn't fancy her chances at finding an apprenticeship at her age, so she bought a van and started her own business, Burnage Plumbing.
A year later, she says, "it's thriving - we're booked up until after Christmas now, and I'm having to turn work away. The author's attitude is encapsulated when he writes: "Tchaikovsky's sexuality has long been.. a subject provoking sometimes violent dissent. I therefore leave each reader to draw his or her own conclusions." However, he does offer some insight into the composer's attraction to very young men and his extraordinary decision to marry, followed by his almost instantaneous aversion to his poor wife. Brown also slips in anecdotes that bring the composer to life. Tchaikovsky never really liked conducting, for instance, fearing that his head might fall off; so he "habitually clutched his chin with his left hand while conducting with his right".
