Concrete in the boot

Sir, – I had a Proustian moment reading Bill Kee’s letter about working in the Institute for Industrial Standards in the 1970s (Letters, August 3rd).

My dad was a civil engineer at the time and to my mum’s dismay, the boot of our car was always full of small cubes of concrete, carefully marked and noted, from the different construction sites and concrete pours he supervised.

These were sent in batches to the institute to be checked and then my mum would grumblingly vacuum out the boot. – Yours, etc,

TOM CONROY

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Rathgar, Dublin.