Some more I’ve remembered:
Abonnement
Virement
My instinctive guess is the similarity of chaudron and cauldron, which latter word conjures up fiery images of smelting kettles full of molten iron, drawn from my old childhood 1940s encyclopaedias.
Thus I would guess at foundry-man or smelter or some such ancient trade whose name has been proudly preserved by the skilled practitioners who pass on those skills to their apprentices.
Some Norman- French words don’t call out to me at least for transliteration, they resonate historically with old meaning as they stand.
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I love the word ’ Maréchal ’ which a friend uses when talking about having her horses shod. In fact she really has to think about the English word as she never uses it having worked over here for 25 years plus in Haras ( stud farm ) and racing stables in Normandy The full name is Maréchal -ferrant.
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Well… I would be inclined to agree with you Peter but the course these apprentices are doing is metal cutting, filing, welding, pipe making etc. So cold metalwork and I think no forging. Anyway he’s having fun and been provided with a load of tools and equipment.
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It reads like an immensely worthwhile, satisfying and well-structured formation, Helen, and congratulations to your son and best wishes to him for an illustrious career wherever it leads him. 
Very much derailing the original object of this post I must say how impressed I was with our local mission de l’emploi. My son came back from studying international politics and decided to change tack. The mission de l’emploi offered him psychological counselling and options for apprenticeship courses ‘en alternance’ . They also helped him find a company to take him on.
Apparently the chaudronnier was formerly a boiler maker.
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Don’t remember the ones using wires and springs but the vacuum tubes used for sending money and order slips to the accounts department and change/invoices back I do remember.
My Mum, God rest her, used to work in the accounts department in Lefevre’s Gillingham on the accounts department end of such a system.
Lefevre’s is long gone, as it seems that its successor Debenhams will shortly be as well.
I remember Debenhams in Wigan, maybe under a different name having that system
Edward,
It was probably Pendleburys, Debenhams bought them out just after WWII. They were in Standishgate.
Grahame Pigney
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It’s been 6 years now since I had my last ‘baby’ and stopped working in the hospitals but (actually I went back for a month 3 years ago) and we use the vacuum tubes to get prescriptions / meds quickly from pharmacy to the ward. Can’t imagine it has changed. When I first started working there I was so excited I used to volunteer to go and ‘post’ the prescriptions 
Tory,
There was something both magical and sci-fi about those vacuum tubes. During the summer many, many decades ago I used to go and stay with my Nan during the holidays, once a week we would catch the bus into Gillingham to do the shopping. After she had visited the TSB to get cash (never used a cheque and cards hadn’t been invented) for the shopping we would set off down the High Street.
Often there was a stop at Lefevre’s to buy material for a dress, curtains, whatever Nan had in mind. As a 5-6 year old I would stand amazed as the lady behind the counter would pull off the required yards of material from the bolt, with a thump as the bolt flipped over with every yard. She would then put the ticket and the pound notes Nan had handed over into a shuttle and place that in the vacuum tube - woosh it was sent to some magic place where a receipt and change was produced and sent back with another woosh. It was years later that I learnt that my Mum had worked in the very same magic place (accounts department) before she met my Dad.
Each of these weekly outings ended up outside, and sometimes inside, a toy shop that had a model railway in the window. If you slid a penny into the slot you could watch the train running round. Then we would go down to the Strand for the afternoon, a trip on the miniature steam train, some time on the pedallos, a picnic that Nan had brought with her and back up to Naval Memorial where Grandad would pick us up on his way back home from the apprentice’s school at Chatham Dockyard.
It was only yesterday!
Grahame Pigney
P Help save paper - please don’t print this email unless you really need to.
P Sauvegardons la planète. Avez-vou****s vraiment besoin d’imprimer cet e-mail?
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I t would be Debenhams then on Standishgate
Jackieyyou must be as old as me!
Pintade
Crème anglaise
Crème fraîche
Bûche de Noël
Pompiers
(sure there’s more)