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MY LIFE AT THE OPERA: An Autobiography

PART TWO : 1955 – 1989

By Peter M. Scott

MY LIFE AT THE OPERA: an Autobiography

PART TWO : 1955 - 1989

Chapter One: 1955 - 1971

By resigning from my post as a Superintendent Radiographer to become a sales representative with a pharmaceutical company, I had taken an enormous step. The disparities between the career I was forsaking and the one I was embracing could hardly have been greater. Since leaving school, I had been playing a vital role in the community as a member of an expert team in a well-equipped workplace, to which I made my way every day to find my work there, waiting to be done. But, in no way could the activities of a medical rep(resentitive) be regarded as making such a contribution to the workings of society. If all the medical reps in the country were one day to stay at home, who would notice? who would suffer? who would complain? Only their employers, when they found out. My new job wouldn't even exist until I had created it, and I would be working quite alone in an unwelcoming environment, encountering daily discouragement. I didn't realise this at first, of course, but I soon worked it out, during the first difficult months of my apprenticeship, and, what is more important, I realised that, if I was to survive, I had to come to terms with the reality of my situation, embrace it, and never look back.

The name of my new firm was Upjohn Ltd, and its headquarters were in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. It had been founded, in the late 19th century, by a Dr Upjohn of Quaker stock, and some of his descendants were still active in the firm when I joined. The firm's motto was “Keep the Quality Up” and its reputation in the USA was of the highest order. Some of its OTC (over-the-counter) lines were household names, selling well, and its range of exclusive 'ethicals' (medicines available only on a doctor's prescription) were widely prescribed by American doctors. My task would be to recreate this profitable state of affairs in Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield, Dewsbury, Batley, Cleckheaton, Heckmondwyke, and even distant Todmorden. How was this to be done?

Since the only way of creating a demand for my wares was to persuade members of the medical profession to prescribe them, the first part of my job was to gain access to as many doctors as possible on a daily basis, starting with the General Practitioners (GPs). Under the British National Health Service, everyone living legally in the UK was entitled to register with a GP of their choice, for which the doctor would then receive an annual 'capitation fee' whether his services were called upon or not. In those days, the vast majority of GPs were male, and most of them worked alone; there were occasional partnerships, but very few group practices.

If you wished to consult your GP, you went along to his daily 'surgery', which was usually held in his own home, where a waiting room and a consulting room had been set aside for the purpose (although some doctors held 'call surgeries' in rented premises in inner city suburbs or outlying villages), and, as there were no appointment systems, and very few GPs employed receptionists, if you wished to consult the doctor, you simply sat in the waiting room during surgery hours, waiting your turn to go in to his consulting room. And, surprising as it may seem, it was accepted practice for medical reps who wished to see the doctor to do the same.

Even more surprising, perhaps, was the fact that, while not actively encouraging it, very few GPs objected to this intrusion. In those days, however, most of these surgeries were held between 8.30 and 10.30am, lasting, in some cases, only an hour, and careful forward planning was required to identify clusters of surgeries at which it might be possible to confront a worthwhile number of prescribers in the time available. Also required was an early start, to be on the doorstep of the first surgery when the door was opened, followed by a frantic driving around the streets to access as many of the others as possible, and get into the last one before the door was closed. This meant that the bulk of my day's work would be done by 11am, by which time, I could hope to have seen at least four of the six doctors that were my daily target.

Fortunately, there were a few late morning 'call surgeries', and a small number of afternoon surgeries, usually between 2 and 3pm, to be picked off at a more leisurely pace. There were also the local pharmacists to be visited, in order to brief them about the drugs promoted to the doctors, and prepare them for the impending demand(!), and, once the GPs had been taken care of, I could turn my attention to the local hospitals, where I might hope to gain access to those consultants (and their registrars) who specialised in the conditions which my drugs were designed to treat, and whose use of them would carry great weight with the local GPs. Obviously, making these calls was absorbing work, and of vital importance to success, but it was all too easy to become so involved in clocking up the visits that the purpose of the visits was given shorter shrift than it deserved, because the most important part of the job could not be done until the rep was face to face with the doctor.

What was required, then, was a different set of skills, although planning was still involved, since this was to be a 'planned presentation', using a variety of techniques to give proper weight to every persuasive detail. We actually called it, in fact, 'the detail', and, in the USA, medical reps were referred to as 'detailmen' [I recently discovered that, in Italy, they were called 'informers'], and the GPs accepted our intrusions because the drug revolution was proceeding at such a pace, and so few of them had the time and/or the inclination to keep abreast of it by reading medical journals, that we reps had become virtually indispensable as a source of information about new developments. Nor could it be denied that the appearance round the door of the cheerful face of a medical rep could come as a welcome change from those of the sad sufferers who had preceded him. But, there would always be an acute awareness of the patients waiting outside, and the length of time granted would depend entirely on the amount of interest generated, but would rarely exceed the amount expended on the average patient, the optimum being about fifteen minutes.

So, the principal constraint on the detail was time, but, in spite of the pressures bearing down upon him, it was important for the rep to seem completely relaxed, exuding nothing but respectful bonhomie, and deliver his lines, in spite of knowing them off by heart, at a measured pace, as if minting the words afresh for the occasion. This took some doing, and the ability to give such a performance and repeat it several times a day with minor variations could only be acquired by, first, overcoming the urge to get the message across as succinctly as possible before dashing off to the next call, and, second, listening to the words as if through the ears of the audience, observing their reactions, and adapting to them appropriately. These were the techniques of public speaking, of course, and, along with their acquisition came a growing confidence that nothing could happen to me during an interview that I did not have the words available to turn to my advantage. In becoming both barrister and Thespian, I began to revel in my role, and my enjoyment of it was reflected in my sales figures.

I could not have achieved the level of expertise I eventually did without the help I was given by the firm. A lengthy induction course at a good hotel in London was followed by on-the-job training by an experienced supervisor (Frank), who assured me that he would not leave me to fend for myself until I asked him to do so; after that, frequent sales conferences, local and national, exchanging ideas with fellow reps, and acquiring fresh product information, while being subjected to little of the exhortation popularly believed to be a feature of such occasions. The accent was always on information and the techniques of persuasion. The firm took out subscriptions in my name for the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the Practitioner, sparing no expense in its efforts to provide me with the ammunition I needed to improve my sales performance.

With the blossoming of my new career, by the time our daughter, Helen, was born in May 1956, Anne and I had decided that, much as we loved our dear little semi-semi-bungalow, we needed a bigger and more conveniently situated family home. Since there was nothing now to keep us in Keighley, and most of our friends and family lived in and around Bradford, we began house-hunting in that direction, and soon found what we were looking for in the historic village of Calverley (pronounced Carveley but spelt Carverlei in the Domesday Book), lying roughly midway between Bradford and Leeds. An estate of about 200 houses was being built on a greenfield site adjoining the old village, with its ancient church, schools, shops, recreation park, large wool mill and two pubs, just off the main Leeds to Skipton Road at the narrowest point in the famous Aire Gap, and, after inspecting a 'Show House', we put a deposit on a large three-bedroomed semi, and moved in as soon as it was completed. We sold our bungalow, for little more than we gave for it, to the daughter of a neighbour who was about to get married and came knocking on the door when she heard that we were planning to sell. Our new home cost 2000 pounds and came with a 95% mortgage.

Moving into a brand new house on a new estate proved to be a memorable experience. The houses were well-designed and soundly built, but the speed with which they were being thrown up to satisfy the demand, and meet the promised deadlines, meant that the finish on them left something to be desired, [eg. lighting a fire in the lounge fireplace might produce smoke in the bedroom above] and, when complaining to the builder about these problems, we found ourselves comparing notes with our new neighbours, most of whom were couples of our own age with young families, and we were soon on friendly terms with everybody in the street - founder members, as it were, of an interactive social club, from which, when the houses changed hands, new arrivals would find themselves excluded. And ten years later when we moved into another brand new house in a new estate in Hampshire, we encountered the very same phenomenon.

From day one, our life in Calverley was filled to overflowing with activities of various kinds. Helen was only six months old when we moved in, still needing plenty of attention, and, although we had two fit and willing grandmas living barely a mile away (in different directions), we were reluctant to have her babysat until she was older. This put limits on our social life at first, but only as regards such things as dining out, dancing, and theatregoing, when invited out to friends or neighbours we could take Helen with us in a 'carrycot', which she quite enjoyed. And there was much to do on “the property”. These were the days when houses were so easy to sell that builders had little need to tempt prospective buyers with “presentational” trimmings of any kind. Inside the house the walls were simply colour-washed, and the woodwork was painted a uniform cream, so every room was waiting to be redecorated to our own taste. No problem there. We had the DIY skills. The gardens, front and back, were more of a challenge. Beneath the thin layer of cosmetic topsoil laid by the builder, there was a jumble of builder's rubble waiting to be unearthed and carted away before the ground could be prepared for the lawns, flowerbeds, paths, patios and rockeries which were to ornament our new lifestyle. I was also obliged to erect a prefabricated garage for the Company Car, since a builder-built garage was seen as such an expensive luxury, that there were only a couple of them on the whole estate.

Our friends Frank and Joyce were now closer at hand, of course, and we began to develop a relationship that was to last us for the rest of our lives with friends Gerry and Jessie, who were now married and living with Gerry's parents in their big Edwardian terrace house, which looked out, from the rear (on a smog-free day), over the municipal golf course, Myra Shay, Hanson School, and the rest of Bradford, and, from the front, at the municipal park opposite. The house had now been converted into two large flats, Gerry and Jessie occupying the first floor and Gerry's parents the ground floor. There were spacious cellars and attics below and above, with which, as we shall see, I was soon to become familiar .

Surprising as it may seem, my eccentric friend, Bob, was already a married father and living nearby, having wed the charming Margaret after inadvertently getting her pregnant during a typically tentative relationship. She seemed to be just as unworldly as he was, but wonderfully sweet-natured and even-tempered, looking at life through lovely, dreamy eyes, as if trying to make sense of it, but she was a fully-qualified nurse and midwife whose services had been much in demand before her marriage, and would be again, once her children had grown up. They lived in a smaller, but still substantial, terrace house a couple of hundred yards away from Gerry and Jessie, on the other side of the road, enjoying the same view over the golf course from the front that Gerry's parents' house had from the back. Our relationship with both these couples blossomed vigorously during our time in Calverley, bearing memorable fruit.

Gerry was the eldest of three brothers, all of whom had attended my old school, but only the middle one, Tony, as a contemporary of mine, and he had the misfortune to be in the 'A' stream – considered to be a bunch of boring swots by those of us who were lucky enough to be in the 'B' stream – so I only knew him by sight. The three of them had grown up together enjoying the sort of sibling rivalry from which respect and affection are not entirely excluded, but rarely made explicit. On the way, they had developed a number of ingenious activities of a competitive nature for their mutual enjoyment, some of which they liked to share with their friends at an annual Christmas Party. The first of these parties Anne and I attended, was unlike any other party we had ever experienced. There was the usual food and drink, of course, but we were only allowed to consume them during the brief intervals between a series of organised party games, some of a quite boisterous nature, in which we were expected to participate from the moment we arrived and were handed, not an aperitif, but the first clue in a treasure hunt which was to take us on an introductory tour of the house, only Gerry's parents' quarters being out of bounds.

In attendance were Gerry and Jessie, of course, Tony and his wife Pat (the youngest brother, John, was now living in the USA), Bob and Margaret, and three or four other couples, friends of theirs, most of whom were schoolteachers or similar, and knew that they were not there to stand around chatting and flirting, but to make fools of themselves in various ways, playing alternate sitting-down games and running-around games. A typical sitting-down game involved forming a circle round a huge hamper full of old clothes, many of which were items of outsize lady's underwear, and passing round some object until the music stopped and the person left holding it was obliged to open the basket, dip into it (without looking), extract an item and put it on. Some of the sitting-down games were more intellectually demanding, but not by much. The high spot of the evening was a running-around game called 'Paper aeroplanes' for which a large number of folded paper darts had been prepared in advance. The game had a 'fox and hounds' format requiring four 'foxes' to be given six darts each and allowed to go away and hide in some remote corner of the house before being searched for and hunted down by the remaining 'hounds' armed with two darts each. Anyone struck with a dart was 'dead'. Given the size of the house, and the extent of its attics and cellars (and the amount of cheating going on) the game could last quite a long time and be quite exhausting. Needless to say, Anne and I came away from that first party with a different understanding of the word 'party' from the one we had arrived with, and happy to repeat the experience whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Another revelation was that Bob and Gerry were founder-members of a rather unusual Debating Society, which, although it had existed for several years, meeting once a fortnight, boasted, when I joined it, only three regularly attending members. It was called 'The Taverners' because it met in a pub called 'The Barrack Tavern” which stood at the crossroads at the corner of the municipal park, only a short walk from Bob and Gerry's homes, and was, in fact, their 'local'. [There had actually been a military barracks across the road from the pub when I was a lad, but it had long since been replaced by an estate of small semis.] Appreciative, no doubt, of their regular patronage (and the amount of beer that was consumed per head at the meetings), the landlord had granted them the exclusive use of a small, inaptly named, 'snug', in the corner of the taproom bar, for their Tuesday evening meetings. The third founder-member of The Taverners was Albert, a little older (and much balder) than Bob and Gerry, but also an Old Hansonian, and 'something in the city' (of Bradford, of course) who often arrived sporting a bowler hat and wearing pinstripe trousers. I applied to join The Taverners, having no previous experience of formal debating, and not knowing what to expect, but it turned out to be, not only a good move, but a good career move, too.

I found that, in spite of our small numbers and the uninspiring surroundings, the meetings were very properly conducted, the rules of debate being strictly adhered to, and all the traditional formalities observed. At the end of each meeting, a proposition was decided upon for debate at the next meeting, and a proposer and opposer, together with their seconders, nominated – a procedure which often required all those present to become involved, although there were some quite distinguished irregular attenders. During the years of my membership, the propositions ranged from the sublime to the corblimey, no subject (other than party politics and sectarian religion) being taboo, the only imperative was that the proposition, however daft, should be seriously debatable. The Taverners' had only one rule, displayed on a piece of yellowing, beer-stained paper at each meeting, which was that the views expressed during debate should not be taken as being held outside the 'chamber'. All the speeches were delivered standing, and a vote was taken at the end of each debate, and woe betide the proposer who had come to the meeting inadequately prepared. And it never ceased to amaze me how, on a dark winter's evening, that dingy little room, so cold and uninviting on arrival, could light up, heat up, and reverberate with excitement once the door was closed and proceedings begun. Apart from enjoying myself tremendously (and drinking quite a lot of beer), I learned much from my membership of the Taverners that would be of value to me when called upon, as I would be, in my future working life, to speak frequently in public.

About half way through our time in Calverley, Gerry and Jessie forsook their makeshift flat for a newly built semi on the other side of Bradford. Since they had also, by then, acquired a small car, this move caused us little inconvenience, and I mention it only because it resulted in the development of another important friendship. Gerry and Jessie discovered, as had Anne and I, that moving into a new housing estate brought them into sociable contact with their new neighbours almost immediately, and they were fortunate to find themselves living next door to a slightly younger couple, Ron and Sue, who were to become lifelong friends of theirs, and, through them, of ours. Ron was unusual, in our acquaintance, in being an industrial worker - he was a dyer in the wool industry. He later became a master dyer and finally a company director, but his origins were as humble as mine, and, like me, he had left school at 16 to serve an apprenticeship, studying at night school to gain the necessary qualifications. Also like me, he was self-opinionated, with a well-developed sense of humour, but unlike me, he was unashamedly Tory in his political views, with aspirations (similar to those of Cliff) to become a member of the landed gentry, aspirations he was able eventually to realise, to some extent, as his earning power increased. In spite of which, he continued to speak, not only with a broad Yorkshire accent, but in the version of Yorkshire vernacular he had probably been brought up with, which rendered “On Ilkley Moor without thy hat” as “On Ilkla moor baht't'at” and “Give me something to eat” as “Gi' us summat t'eight”.

His wife Susan, a schoolteacher, was one in a million. She was very good looking, good-natured, good-hearted, good-humoured, and extremely good company. Ron and Sue joined Gerry and Jessie, Bob and Margaret, and Anne and me, to complete a magic circle of friends who would meet together, off and on, down the years, whenever the opportunity presented itself, no matter how long we had been separated, always in a golden glow of pleasure, the like of which I have never found in any other company. I wonder why? Looking at our family backgrounds, occupations, politics, personalities, and outside interests, the only thing we had in common, apart from the comfort we took from each others' company, was that we had all been born and raised in the Bradford area, although Anne and I were the only ones ever to live outside it.

At the time, however, Gerry and Jessie seemed more than willing to join Anne and me in any new adventure that we dreamed up together, no matter how unpredictable the outcome. The four of us once spent a crazy weekend camping out, on impulse, in borrowed tents on Flambrough Head near Bridlington, an experience for which we were all quite ill-prepared, and during which I persuaded them to join me on one of those early morning fishing trips out of Bridlington, which I remembered with such affection from my boyhood holidays there.

Having risen at the crack of dawn to get there on time, we sailed out of the harbour enveloped in a dense early morning mist, but our spirits remained undampened until the skipper hove to, out in the bay, to allow the customers to begin fishing over the side with the lines and bait he provided, whereupon, although the sea seemed calm, the boat began to wallow a little in the swell. A few minutes later, to my complete surprise, Jessie started to be sick over the side of the boat, and eventually so did Anne, and even Gerry began to look pale. This was something totally failed to forsee, and the worst of it was, that there could be no relief for the sufferers until the full hour had elapsed, for which we (and the other customers) had paid, before we were allowed to return to dry land. We lived to laugh about it later, but it wasn't funny at the time.

Close as was our friendship with Gerry and Jessie, however, it was put under severe strain by what was undoubtedly the most remarkable of the adventures we embarked upon together, and the episode is worth recounting because it marked an important milestone for Anne in being her very first trip abroad, an early forerunner of the many holidays we would enjoy together on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. And a very unusual holiday it was, too. A very basic 'package deal'.

In 1958, organised package holidays combining air charter flights with hotel bookings to place like Spain, were in the very early stages of developing into the huge industry they were to become, and were still beyond our financial reach at the time. One day, however, my eye fell on an advert in a magazine which gave me pause to think. It offered a 10 day holiday at a Mediterranean beach resort, with travel and accommodation included, for 25 pounds a head, which, though not the miniscule sum it seems today, was much more affordable on my current salary of 800 pounds a year (plus company car, of course) than anything else on offer at the time.

The beach resort, however, was not in Spain, but in France; the travel was not by plane but by rail; and the accommodation was not in an hotel but in a sort of holiday camp in a place I'd never heard of called Saint-Aygulf, situated about half way between Cannes and Saint-Tropez on the Cote d'Azure, 5km from the city of Frejus. I had no difficulty in persuading Anne to give Saint-Aygulf a go, once we had arranged with the Grandmas to look after Helen, who was only 3 years old at the time, and seemed happy to spend time with her loving Grandmas. As a matter of course, we discussed the holiday with Gerry and Jessie and, after due consideration, they agreed to join us.

Since 1958 was a very long time ago, in describing the holiday, I am relying entirely on my memory and the half-dozen faded photos of Anne and me (mostly her), all taken on the beach at Saint-Aygulf, which have somehow survived the intervening 55 years, so I'm hazy on the details. The package holiday began with us embarking on a cross-channel ferry at either Dover or Newhaven to either Calais or Dieppe where we boarded a train to be carried (probably through the night) right across France to our destination, a journey which I'm sure our friendly foursome survived in good spirits.

We arrived at our destination to find that the accommodation consisted of a collection of small chalets dotted among the trees surrounding a central service block housing a restaurant, cafe and bar with (I think) a dance floor. Sounds fine, perhaps, but the reality was less attractive. The amenities in the chalets were very basic, but bearable, unlike the communal toilet blocks, where the sanitation left much to be desired, and was not improved when, during the course of the holiday, everyone except me suffered, at some time, from attacks of acute diarrhoea. The French staff were unfriendly and unhelpful, giving the impression of being interested only in our money, but the upside was that the chalets were close to the beach and the beach turned out to be very satisfactory.

Although it enjoyed the same sun, sea and sand as Saint-Tropez, Cannes, and Nice the beach at Saint-Aygulf had little in common with its exotic neighbours. Judging by the large numbers of children present, the resort was popular with families, and, apart from a few parasols and deckchairs for hire, it was virtually uncommercialised. There were, I now recall, a few pedaloes shaped like swans (my first encounter with these vehicles), and, also, the occasional ice-cream pedlar. What could be better? The sand was soft, the sea was warm, and the sun shone down, and Anne and I quickly settled in to enjoy our first Mediterranean beach holiday together. Anne loved it, of course, and looked absolutely stunning, a feast for all male eyes, in a brightly coloured two-piece swimming costume. It soon became obvious, however, that, much as the beach holiday was agreeing with Anne and me, it wasn't agreeing with Gerry and Jessie at all.

It gradually dawned on me that Gerry and Jessie were totally out of their element in Saint-Aygulf. It wasn't just that they were unhappy with the accommodation, a sentiment we could share, but they didn't like the beach, the sun, and the sea, they didn't like the French, they didn't like being 'abroad' and they just wanted to go home. Nothing much was said about this, but it was all too apparent from their demeanour and behaviour, and we gradually began to go our separate ways, as Anne and I cultivated the company of kindred spirits among the other English inmates of the holiday camp.

These included two lively, and very attractive sisters, Joan and Gail from Hearne Bay, with whom we hit it off immediately and who teamed up with us for the duration. Apart from enjoying our company, they found my presence useful in discouraging the predatory attentions of the many young male camp followers, French and Italian, who were all too ready to force their attentions on any unattached young female. I remember one of these would-be Romeos seating himself uninvited at our cafe table and complaining bitterly, in mock despair, at my unfairness in keeping three lovely young ladies to myself, when he and his friends had none, pleading with me to reveal the secret of my success. Among the activities we shared with Joan and Gail were moonlight bathing on the beach, and a day trip to Monaco by bus, where we ventured into the famous Monte Carlo casino and made small bets on the roulette, which we lost, of course.

It was a long time ago, in an age before I began to keep records and mementoes of our annual holidays abroad, but one thing I remember about the return journey from Saint-Aygulf is that, once we were aboard the channel ferry, Gerry and Jessie perked up considerably. After donning sensible English attire (blazer and flannels for Gerry, frock and nylon stockings for Jessie), they grabbed a couple of deck chairs, and luxuriated, as best they could, in the pleasures of the short cruise, while Anne and I experienced that post coitem triste feeling of leaving a Mediterranean holiday behind. Happily,our friendship with Gerry and Jessie survived, and, after a brief cooling off period, normal relations were resumed.

While still in Calverley, however, other lasting friendships were being forged through my career with Upjohn. Although my daily life as a medical rep was a solitary one, I was able to socialise with my fellow Upjohn reps, at the frequent sales conferences, held locally and nationally, and invariably followed by a convivial dinner and an overnight stay at a good hotel. I found little difficulty in enjoying the company of all my colleagues on these occasions, but was particularly attracted to two of them. The first was Alex, who, to my surprise, although his territory was in North Lancashire, had been born and raised only two streets away from me in Bradford. The reason I had not run across him before was that, like Frank, he was a Roman Catholic, and had attended different schools, where he had been a near-contemporary of Frank, who had, of course, recruited him into Upjohn. He was also a qualified pharmacist, and a family man who had given up a well-established position in retail pharmacy to become a lowly medical rep, and, like me, found it very hard going at first, but survived, in his case, to become, eventually, the Managing Director of Upjohn UK.

Coming, as he did, from a large family living in modest circumstances, Alex was socially adaptable, and gave every appearance of being as gregarious as the rest of us, but I soon realised that he was, in fact, a rather private person, and probably, though giving little outward sign of it, quite deeply religious. He certainly observed high moral standards himself, but unostentatiously, and without attempting to impose them on others, always preferring to be non-committal about the shortcomings of his fellow men, rather than condemnatory. His dear wife, Rita, on the other hand, suffered from no such inhibitions, being quite opinionated and outspoken, but very entertaining and endearing, when Anne and I visited them at their home in Blackpool. Alex once said to me, while we were remarking on the domestic circumstances of a colleague whose wife (clearly more intelligent than him) gave every impression of worshipping and adoring him, ”One of the many things you and I have in common, Peter, is that our severest critic sits across the hearth from us”. The biggest personal favour Alex did me was to show me the cine films he had taken with his Kodak Brownie 8mm camera, and explain how easy it was to operate. I was so impressed that I went home and bought one for myself, and, with it, continued to record the activities of friends, family, and others for the next thirty years. It was one of the best investments I ever made.

Because Alex and Rita lived in distant Blackpool, and already had a teenage son and daughter, Anne and I had less opportunity to socialise with them, as a couple, than might otherwise have been the case, but my relationship with Alex meant that, whenever the opportunity presented itself, we would have no difficulty in picking up, where we left off, the threads of our friendly foursome. [Remarkably, Alex and Rita, started a second family shortly after we met them, producing a son who was to become a world famous pop star]. But, much as I liked and admired Alex, I had more in common with my second new friend, Dan, who was also a Roman Catholic, but a very different one from Alex, more like Frank.

Dan's territory, when we first met, was the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, where he had been working as a path. lab. technician before being recruited into Upjohn by, who else but the indefatigable Frank. But Dan was from Liverpool, and of manifestly Irish extraction, carrying the genes of forbears who had undoubtedly kissed the Blarney Stone. Although a bit like Frank, who was also of Irish descent, he took life, and himself, somewhat less seriously, and was certainly better looking (sorry, Frank), with blond hair, blue eyes, and an effervescent Irish charm which could be difficult to resist, even when profoundly disagreeing with him. And although I would subsequently maintain, for training purposes, that good salesmen were not born, but made, never was the term 'a born salesman' applied to anyone with more justification than to Dan. He simply loved to sell, but he wasn't a huckster, he could only sell goods he believed in, by convincing others to share his beliefs. His talents would eventually propel him into sales management in Upjohn UK, and then beyond, to make (and lose?) a fortune as an entrepreneur. And not the least of Dan's attractions was his new wife Anne, the only one of my friends' wives who might have given my Anne any competition in a beauty contest, which is probably why I found her lovely, dark looks so enchanting. I eventually lost count of the number of children she bore Dan. But, given the solitary and exclusive nature of a medical rep's life, how did Anne and I, first get to meet Dan's Anne, and Alex's Rita?

It was thanks to Upjohn, of course. The firm had launched its UK venture from a small suite of offices in London's Mayfair, holding training courses and sales conferences in nearby hotels, while building a permanent HQ in the 'New Town' of Crawley, Sussex, and when the new premises were ready for occupation, the entire sales force and their wives were invited to the opening ceremony celebrations, and accommodated, for the duration of the occasion, in nearby hotels. What a shindig that was! The official daytime activities were not too formal to be enjoyable, but the evenings in the hotels were much greater fun, and, apart from allowing us to meet each others' wives, the occasion allowed the wives to put a face on 'Upjohn', hitherto a distant entity, manifesting itself only through the letterbox, and seen all too readily by the wives as 'them' as opposed to 'us'. The occasion taught me a valuable lesson for the future about the importance of gaining enough of the rep's wife's good will to ensure that he would set out on his lonely quest each day with warmth towards his employer behind him rather than indifference or resentment - a benefit well worth the cost.

Meanwhile, my new career was continuing to prosper. Shortly after we moved to Calverley, Frank was promoted to Area Manager, and I was reallocated from my old scattered sales territory to work the City of Leeds and its suburbs. I could not have asked for a better deal - about 350 GPs, 150 pharmacies, 2 big hospitals, and one big wholesaler, all within a few miles of my door, and I was well-equipped to make the most of it. With my techniques perfected, and my confidence high, I was virtually unstoppable, bouncing out of bed every weekday morning, ready for action and raring to go. And my sales figures reflected it, of course. I look back on those years as a medical rep working Leeds as some of the happiest in my life. Nearly half the GPs in Leeds were Jewish and many of the others, Irish, and most of them were a pleasure to deal with. As were nearly all the pharmacists, many of whom were also Jewish, and even had their own organisation – the Leeds Jewish Chemists, to whose Annual Dinner all the Leeds medical reps (and their wives) were invited, there to be issued with paper skull caps, and regaled with beautifully cooked kosher food.

I had already, in the course of my daily activities, run across most of the other medical reps working in Leeds. The fact that we were in competition with each other and obliged by informal convention never to impose our presence on a doctor's waiting room which already contained another rep, did not preclude us from exchanging friendly words outside, and I soon made close contact with a few kindred spirits whose products were not in too direct a competition with mine. Having discovered, by trial and error, that the best value obtainable for my daily lunch allowance was at a newly opened Chinese restaurant, the very first in Leeds, conveniently situated for parking in a side street close to the Grand Theatre, I passed this information on to selected new acquaintances with an invitation to join me at Man Fang's whenever they were in the vicinity. The result was the formation of an informal luncheon club, its numbers varying from day to day, where, in addition to enjoying each other's company, we could exchange information about any changes occurring in the territory which might be of professional interest.

I got to know Leeds pretty well, of course, and to appreciate its many attractions. Throughout my boyhood in the '30s, Leeds, although barely fifteen miles from Bradford, had been a foreign country, to be visited only when passing through it, by 'sharra' (short for charabanc) on the way to Bridlington for our annual seaside holiday during Bradford's traditional 'Wakes Week', always referred to as 'Bowling Tide Week'. This was because, in those days, Leeds had nothing to offer that was not available in Bradford, except a University education and the Test Matches at the Headingly cricket ground. Even the Bradford tramlines on the road to Leeds ended at Stanningley, and the tramlines into Leeds began a few hundred yards further on, in Bramley. It was not until the formation of our dance band, The Semitones, that I had needed to go to Leeds for something I couldn't get in Bradford – the band parts for the orchestrations of the numbers we wished to add to our repertoire, which were only obtainable at a big music shop in Vicar Lane. Since then, Bradford has declined while Leeds had prospered, to become, among other things the cultural capital of Yorkshire, but how and why this came about, does not concern us here.

With Helen now old enough to be babysat, Anne and I became regular patrons of the Grand Theatre, Leeds, usually in the company of Gerry and Jessie. Unlike the Bradford Alhambra, the Grand was on the same exclusive provincial circuit as the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, round which plays and shows of the highest quality were routinely toured, and, no doubt, refined and reworked, before opening in London's West End. This meant that we had the double pleasure of, first, attending new productions featuring the top theatrical talents of the day, and then comparing our own opinions of their merits with those of the London critics when they finally opened in the West End. We saw some quite wonderful performances at the Grand, of which, alas, no printed record remains, but the one I remember best was the worst play I have ever seen.

It was called “The Last Joke” and was written by Enid Bagnold, a well-known author of previous successful plays, and featured a star-studded cast, which included John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Anna Massey and Robert Fleming. Naturally, its arrival in Leeds was eagerly anticipated and we hastened to book tickets, but not, this time, with Gerry and Jessie, because Frank, who was not of a culturally adventurous disposition (to say the least), but had listened to our enthusiastic accounts of the productions we had been enjoying at the Grand, finally asked if he and Joyce could accompany us to one of them, and 'The Last Joke' seemed to be a very suitable choice for such a venture, but this proved not, alas, to be the case. I sat through the first act of the play with growing trepidation, bewildered by the impenetrability of the exchanges taking place before me on the stage. When we repaired to the bar at the interval, Frank tried gamely to pretend that he was enjoying himself, and we all agreed that, puzzled as we were by what we had witnessed so far, all might become clearer as the play progressed. But the second act was even worse, and, at the second interval, we were forced to agree that we were not enjoying ourselves one little bit, and would be better off chatting round a table over drinks in a nearby pub. So we left, and we were.

[The only other occasion in my entire life on which I've walked out on a performance after paying good money for my seat, was thirty years later, after the second act of Philip Glass's so-called opera “Akhnaten' at the London Coliseum, when, like little Liu in Turandot, I could bear no more.]

But, walking out on “The Last Joke” left us with a problem. We knew that Gerry and Jessie had booked to see the play later in the week, so we went to great lengths to avoid being asked, by them, in advance, what we thought of it. But, once they'd been, I rang Gerry and asked him for his opinion. He said “Well, it was all right, but I thought the last act was pretty poor'. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, when “the Last Joke” opened in London, it was a resounding flop, which, given its distinguished pedigree and starry cast, caused a mild sensation in theatrical circles. I have a vague memory of, I think it was Gielgud, but it may have been Richardson, being quizzed about it on TV and saying something like “Well, you're asked to do it, you know, and you simply can't tell when you first read it, and by the time you're into rehearsals, the thing has a momentum of its own, and it's too late to do anything about it.”

Of all our visits to the Grand Theatre, the one I remember with the greatest pleasure was a performance of Puccini's “La Boheme” by a touring company from, according to my memory, Covent Garden, unlikely as that may now seem, since it was circa 1960 and it was sung in English. Whatever its origins, it was the best production of the opera I have ever seen, live, on stage, as opposed to, on video, sticking faithfully, unlike the others I have witnessed, to the original period settings and stage directions. I was particularly impressed with the second act, the Cafe Momus scene, and can still recall the genuine thrill I got when that sweeping arpeggio brought Marcello finally to his feet to sing Musetta's song back at her with such passion.

Another advantage Leeds enjoyed over Bradford, at the time, was in having an excellent purpose-built concert hall, conveniently situated inside the magnificent Leeds Town Hall, where symphony concerts were given by some of the country's top orchestras at regular intervals throughout the year. These concerts must have been heavily subsidised by the municipality (in the spirit of the age), because the tickets for them were so ridiculously cheap that I could indulge my solitary self in them with a clear conscience. One shilling and sixpence, as I recall, for the cheapest. I still have the programme for a concert given by the Halle Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli on Saturday, 14th March 1959. There were two works, first, Handel's Concerto Grosso No.18, then, after the interval, Mahler's great Symphony No.2 (the Resurrection), featuring the Halle Choir and soloists Victoria Elliot and Eugenia Zarenska. The programme (price sixpence) contains eight pages of notes about the Mahler symphony by Ernest Bradbury, giving 13 musical examples and the full vocal text in German and English, which explains why I kept it. What a bargain! The next concert is advertised for Saturday 4th April by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Andrzej Panufnik doing Bach's Brandenberg No. 6, Chopin's Piano Concerto No.2 (soloist Magaloff) and Beethoven's Symphony No.5 . All for two bob including programme.

For all its attractions, however, Leeds was deficient in one important respect. Its night life, or should I say, it's late night life was virtually non-existent. With its post-war licensing laws still in place and strictly enforced, unlike Pontefract's, it was very difficult to have a good time in Leeds after 10.30pm. Even the nude girls, who briefly graced the stage at the City Varieties music hall every night were not allowed, by the Watch Committee, to move. But, thanks to my attendance at our Regional Sales Conferences in Manchester, I found that things were different across the Pennines. Sallying forth from the Midland Hotel after dinner there, we found that the city centre was still throbbing with life, and that, waiting to welcome us with open arms, there were, believe it or not, night clubs, where one could dance and drink until midnight, and even watch a cabaret.

My own favourite, 'The Cabaret Club' was everything a night club should be. 'Members Only', of course, but easily joined, if one was of respectable appearance, at a desk in the elegant foyer for a nominal sum, then down into the well-appointed club itself which was roughly circular in shape, with bars and other amenities round the upper rim, its little tables, each with its own lamp, arranged in descending levels round a bijou glass dance floor with a shallow stage along one end featuring an excellent small dance band. There was food if you wanted it, but it wasn't obligatory with the drink. And there were no obvious 'hostesses'. All very civilised. The cabaret was pretty good, too, starting about 10pm, and usually consisting of two acts, the first a singer, often quite well-known - I remember seeing Frank Ifield performing there just before he hit the jackpot with “I remember you-hoo”. But it was the second act, that was the big attraction. It was a stripper! Gosh! A novelty at the time, if soon to become all too commonplace.

I went back home, determined to share the excitements of the Cabaret Club with Anne, knowing, however, that it would take some doing. Which it did. There was no Transpennine Motorway in those far off days, and the route from Calverley to Manchester took us right round Bradford, down through Halifax, up over the Pennines, often in wind and rain, then down through Oldham, where we could break our journey at a pub for a pint of beer and a steak-and-onion sandwich, before proceeding finally into Manchester to arrive at the Cabaret Club at about 8pm, not to leave until after the cabaret had ended, groping our way back home 'ower t'moor top', often in the most inclement of weathers. But we did it. Several times. Usually with friends, all of whom agreed that it was a Bloody Good Night Out, and, fortunately for us, the drink driving laws were not as strictly enforced, then, as they were later to be.

Another measure of our increasing affluence was my acquisition of a radiogram capable of reproducing the high fidelity(hifi), and even stereophonic, sound of the long playing (LP) gramophone records which were such an exciting novelty at the time. So wonderful was it to have a complete symphony on one side of one record, playing at 33 1/3rpm instead of salami-sliced into 5 minute chunks at 78rpm, that I immediately set about laying the foundations of a record library that was to continue growing until the compact disc (CD) appeared, 25 years later, by which time my collection was so comprehensive that I have never felt the need to buy a CD player. But, in view of the fact that this was a purely personal indulgence, I have always felt obliged to limit any strain this placed on the family finances by becoming an inveterate bargain hunter, although, I must confess that, thanks to my upbringing, it has always given me added pleasure to buy something I desire at a reduced price, and, for years I was unable to pass a bargain bin at a record shop without trawling through it. Of more importance, however, was that, with the advent of the hifi LP, I was granted new and improved exploration rights into a world of music from which I had been largely excluded by circumstances in recent years. The occasional concert can be very enjoyable, of course, but there's nothing quite as rewarding as sitting comfortably in one's own home, unravelling the complexities of works like, for example, Bartok's String Quartets, by listening to them over and over again.

But, in spite of these improvements in our lifestyle, by 1961, our best years in Calverley were behind us, although it didn't seem so to us at the time. Quite the opposite, in fact. Thanks to my achievements as a medical rep, my career had taken a big leap forward, and I had been promoted to North East Area Manager. This followed Frank's elevation, first, to Northern Divisional Manager, and then to a senior management post in Head Office down in Crawley, a development which required him to move his family Down South, where they took up residence in the charming, but rapidly developing Sussex village of Linfield near Haywards Heath, to which Anne, Helen, and I soon became occasional visitors. In the meantime, Dan had exchanged his Sheffield territory for Liverpool, his home town, where he quickly set about making a name for himself in sales, while Anne and he made the most of a Merseyside scene which was just about to become world famous with the arrival of The Beatles. Naturally, we visited them, too, for long weekends which featured, among other things, the first of the wild parties we were to attend at their various domiciles through the years. They took us, one evening, to a 'fashionable night spot' which turned out to be the cellar of a large terrace house, the walls and ceiling of which were painted black, and into which more dancing couples than seemed possible were crammed so tightly that they could do little but stay upright, sweating rhythmically on the spot, to the sound of a two-piece band occupying what had obviously been t'coal'ole'. Yes, the 'swinging sixties' were upon us.

Our visits to Frank and Joyce in Linfield introduced us to the very different world of a Sussex village populated mainly by weekday commuters to London, many of them striving to present the weekend appearance of being local gentry of independent means, playing cricket on the village green, skittles at the local pub, and patronising such traditional local institutions as the Womens' Institute and the village fete. Frank and Joyce had made friends with a couple called Derek and Betty who lived at the other side of the village and had two young sons, the elder of whom was the same age as their youngest.

We found Derek and Betty to be quite agreeable company, and although they were merely friends of friends, I introduce them because, on one noteworthy occasion, circumstances would conspire to give them a more significant role in our lives than that. Betty was a good-looking girl, handsome rather than beautiful or pretty, unusual only in never allowing herself to be seen without her full facial make-up, which was so skilfully applied that it was virtually a work of art. She was normally soft spoken and reserved in company, but could become increasingly vivacious and talkative after a couple of drinks, to a point where Derek would break in with a 'Steady on, old girl' to halt the flow. Derek was affable and easygoing, but, apart from exchanging the commonplace pleasantries of everyday life with any present company, had very little to say for himself, always smiling and watchful, concealing a controlling hand inside his velvet glove.

When we first met them, they were obviously struggling to maintain their Linfield lifestyle under tight financial constraints. Derek had a relatively lowly desk job with an international oil firm in the City of London, something to do with buying and selling bulk oil. Shortly after we met them, Frank decided to arrange for Derek and Betty and their two boys to accompany him and Joyce and their two boys up to Bradford for a weekend, to sample the delights of his home town and the surrounding Yorkshire countryside, an enterprise which resulted in Derek and family being billeted, not, as originally intended, on Frank or Joyce's relatives, but on us, at rather short notice. Typical Frank!

But this was no hardship for us, because Anne loved to entertain, and, apart from Betty's reluctance to emerge from the bedroom until fully made up, and fashionably dressed, they were undemanding house guests and the weather was good enough to take us out of doors for most of their visit. We played ball games on Bailden Moor and the kids clambered up and down the Cow and Calf Rocks at Ilkley as we explored Airedale and Wharfedale together, and got to know each other better. But, once the weekend was over, our acquaintanceship flourished only during our sporadic visits to Frank and Joyce in Linfield, from whom we later learned that Derek's fortunes had taken a sudden turn for the better when he was poached by a rival oil firm who valued his understanding of the intricacies of the international oil market more highly than did his current employer.

The transformation in Derek's lifestyle was dramatic. Instead of commuting to London, he would fly over to an office in Paris for a few days every week, to be accommodated, there, at the firm's expense, and it was the perks from this routine that would eventually be of benefit to Anne and me. But, first, in order to impress his friends and neighbours with the fruits of his new found prosperity, Derek threw a big party at which, on arrival, guests were directed into the bathroom to admire the two dozen bottles of champagne, which Derek had been bringing back duty free, one at a time, weekly, from Paris, and which were now standing, up to their necks in ice in the bathtub. What a party, that turned out to be!. Anne and I were staying with Frank and Joyce for the occasion, and the four of us went round there with our kids the following morning, ostensibly for coffee, but moving on to finish off a few more bottles of champagne. I can remember Derek saying 'Do you know, I've just worked out that the six of us have just got through one bottle each?'. What a weekend!

Derek's next big gesture was to invite Anne and me to join him and Betty for a weekend in Paris! The only cost to us, he said, would be the air fare and the food we ate, because he would arrange accommodation for us in the apartment of a colleague who would be away for the weekend. A weekend in Paris? It was an offer we could not refuse, and, leaving Helen with Frank and Joyce, off we went to make the most of this unexpected opportunity. And make the most of it we did. The borrowed flat was tiny, but eminently suitable, boasting a close-up view of the Eiffel Tower from its balcony, but we used it only to sleep in, while, under Derek's well-informed guidance, we did as many touristy things as possible in the time available. We went up the Eiffel Tower, of course, took boat trips on the River Seine, dawdled in cafes on the boulevards, watching the world go by, etc. but the high spot of the weekend, without a doubt, was our Saturday evening visit to a night club on the Champs-Elysees, called Le Lido.

As was his wont, Derek had taken care of all the arrangements, and when I walked into Le Lido, I didn't really know what to expect. I had heard of the Moulin Rouge, of course, but not Le Lido, and I was unaware of its reputation for spectacular floor shows, I only knew that the admission charge would be included in the inflated price of the champagne we would be expected to buy once we were seated at one of the tables surrounding three sides of a rectangular dance floor, overlooked, on its fourth side, by a shallow stage featuring a small dance band, of which we were quick to take advantage, between careful sips of our expensive champagne. So far, so unremarkable, but surprises were in store.

These began when fanfares announced the start of the show, and the dance floor suddenly rose up out of the ground to the same level as the existing stage, the curtains of which parted to reveal a dozen of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, wearing glittering garments of great ingenuity which left them naked from the waist up, and elaborate headdresses of enormous height. These apparitions proceeded to parade slowly round the extended stage, in time to the music, with their lovely breasts thrust proudly out before them for all to admire. Were they singing? I really can't remember. And this was just the beginning. What followed was the most amazing show I have ever seen, during which routines performed by these same young ladies, but always in different and equally revealing costumes, were punctuated by a series of top class cabaret acts of international appeal.

There was even a stand-up comedian telling jokes in French, English and German, but what impressed me most was the ingenuity of the stage machinery. I could hardly believe my eyes when, at one point, a couple of skaters appeared and launched themselves onto the apron stage which had suddenly become an ice rink. How did they do that? And the show culminated with the 'dance floor' opening up to reveal a swimming pool into which the scantily clad young ladies plunged and cavorted fetchingly, while fountains played and fireworks exploded on the stage behind them. What a show! I had never seen anything so impressive before, nor have I since. Thank you, Derek.

After Paris, Anne and I continued on our separate ways from Derek and Betty who eventually divorced and moved away from Linfield, as had, by that time, Joyce and Frank, leaving Joyce to keep in touch with Betty through the years, but I have them, episodically, on cine film, including that weekend in Paris, but not, alas, the show at Le Lido.

Meanwhile, in 1960, my father had died at the age of 64. In spite of his drinking habits, it wasn't the booze that killed him, but the 'fags'. Like so many men of his generation, he died of lung cancer, as did Anne's father, at about the same age, a couple of years later. Both of them smoked, from boyhood, the cheapest, strongest cigarettes they could buy, twenty a day, at least, making the outcome virtually inevitable. In my father's case, the booze didn't help, of course, and Anne's dad was a foundry worker, which didn't help either, but the lean, athletic physique I have inherited from my father has already stood me in better stead than it did him, by twenty years, in spite of my own more modest indulgences. As the product of a small-town Scottish upbringing in a tiny cottage with three sisters, plus active service in Palestine and France with the King's Own Scottish Borderers throughout World War I, he was not a family man, and led, in effect, a double life – Monday to Friday, subsisting among us, working to support the family and his own life style, Friday night to Sunday night, out and about when the pubs were open, coming home drunk when they closed. He was like two different people - the first, taciturn, authoritarian and irritable, but reasonable and intelligent, the second, histrionic, argumentative, aggressive and violent. He lived among us, but took little part in any family activities outside the home, and was not given to displays of affection towards, or admiration for, his children, but these traits were not uncommon in fathers at that time.

So, he was a difficult man to admire and respect, but, during my boyhood, he was the supreme authority among us, and I feared him, in the biblical sense, until his treatment of my mother, and his ostracism by both his own family and my mother's, made him an embarrassment to me, and even an enemy. We finally came to blows when I was old enough, and big enough to take him on, because he deliberately provoked me into hitting him, just as he had provoked my sister's more hot-blooded fiancee, before me. Unhappy man. I grew closer to him in his final days than I had ever been, but didn't miss him when he went, because, unlike Anne's father, who was a helpful and amiable handyman, he had played no part whatever in our married life. But, I can think about him now with some affection, because, when he was sober, he was an avid, but discriminating newspaper reader, and a regular patron of the local library, who encouraged me to be the same, my first remembered Daily Express headline being 'Lawrence of Arabia Dead'. And when he was only slightly inebriated he could be charming and amusing. He was also, I think, more intelligent, more articulate, and better educated than many of his workmates and most of his bar-room associates. All of which, together with his Scottishness, made him something of a frustrated misfit. And his years of active service in Palestine and France during World War I cannot have left him entirely unaffected. My old pal, Cliff, enjoyed his company more than I did, and often sought it out, after being demobbed from the Navy, while I was still away doing my own National Service. One thing my father taught me (if only for his own benefit) was how to play cribbage, the best two-handed card game in the world, at which we became very evenly matched. Vale Dad.

As North East Area Manager, I was responsible for the supervision of the eight medical reps covering Tees-side, the whole of Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire. But my first task was to train the new recruit who was to be my own replacement in Leeds, an individual, who, as it turned out, would become the last of the lifelong family friends to be introduced into this narrative. His name was Mike, and he was younger than me by about ten years, and taller than me by about two inches, and, if I had to choose one word to describe him it would be 'flamboyant', he was certainly somewhat larger than life, for which he had an insatiable appetite, although little of this was apparent, of course, in the respectful pupil I first met.

Mike was a qualified pharmacist, but no mere MPS. He was a B.Pharm, who had graduated from, not the local Tech, like Frank and Alex, but 'The Square', so called because The University of London School of Pharmacy was in Bloomsbury Square, and was, at that time, to English pharmacists, what Mecca was to muslims. Before that, he had been educated at the only 'public school' in the Leeds/Bradford area, Woodhouse Grove, or Woodhouse Grave as Mike always called it, showing little respect for the venerable establishment to which he had been sent by his father, who was also a pharmacist with, when we first met, a 'Chemist's Shop' in Guiseley, just a couple of miles away, but, during most of Mike's early years, had owned a shop in the remote Wharfedale village of Addingham, where secondary education was difficult to come by, but street wisdom was not. Mike was an intriguing mixture of self-confidence and insecurity - an only child, deeply attached to his mother, who had taught him to appreciate the finer things in life, but was already ailing when he joined Upjohn, and died a short while later, after which Mike became a regular visitor to our house (as did, to a lesser extent, his father) and as much a friend of Anne, with whom he had a great deal in common, as he was of mine. And a lifelong uncle to Helen, of course.

My task, as an area manager, was to improve the performance of the reps under my supervision by sharing with them the skills and knowledge which had contributed to my own success. The accepted way of doing this was to go and work with each of them in turn, just as Frank had worked with me, and offer them advice and constructive criticism, never asking them to do anything I wasn't prepared to show them how to do myself. Given the distances involved, however, I could work with only three of them from home, which meant that, in five weeks out of eight, I was obliged to spend three nights away from home, leaving on Monday afternoon and returning Thursday evening. I found this no hardship, since the distances were not great, and I was staying at the very best hotels in cities such as Stockton, Hull, Sheffield, and Lincoln. I had friendly enough relations with all my reps, and even with the wives of those who were married, since I was expected to invite them out to dinner with their husbands, from time to time. All on expenses, of course. And, thanks to my past experience as a Superintendent Radiographer and Tutor, man-management presented me with no problems at all. It wasn't as carefree as being a medical rep, but it was rewarding and enjoyable in other ways, and the future looked bright.

But, clouds were approaching from an unexpected quarter. Anne, who had shown every sign of delighting in my promotion at first, began, as time went on, to find my frequent absences from home unsettling. Child of nature that she was, she found it difficult to explain why being left alone with Helen for three nights a week, five weeks out of eight, should be taking such a toll on her, and could only say that it was as if her life was standing still while I was away. This came as a complete surprise to me, because she seemed to have coped quite well with my previous absences on business, but it soon became apparent that it was the frequency and inevitability of the absences, stretching into the future, that was weighing her down. Very much the extrovert, she had never lived alone, and was always at her best when in the company of others. I knew she'd had her ups and downs before we were married, but our lives had been so eventful since then that this was the first time her depressive tendency had manifested itself.

I tried to talk her out of it, of course, telling her that it was a passing phase, that she would soon get used to it, telephoning her every evening while I was away, asking friends to drop in on her, but to little avail. Her depression did not lift, and I could see no way of changing the circumstances that were causing it. Worse still, looking ahead, I saw that my next promotion, if and when it came, could only be to Regional Manager, responsible for the northern half of the UK, and I knew that Alex, the present incumbent of the post, was spending even more time away from home than I was. And I could see no way back. Fortunately, however, help was at hand, from an unexpected source.

Frank had found his move to Head Office a rather disillusioning experience. The esprit de corps and creative energy which he had done so much to engender in the northern sales force, seemed lacking in the southern region where management by stick and carrot, rather than inspirational example, had become the accepted norm. In the office, too, everyone was going through the appropriate motions, but carefully watching their own backs. The original Managing Director, a clever, worldly, and amusing Yank, had been replaced by a rather colourless Canadian, who, having risen through the ranks, was adequate for the job, and a good family man, but played everything by the book, and was unreceptive to any suggestions that did not emanate from Kalamazoo, where the company seemed to be going through an unsettled period, the old order changing, and new products getting scarcer.

And Frank had a weakness. Unlike me, he found it very difficult to work under anybody he couldn't like and/or admire, with the result that, not only would he try very hard to like and/or admire any individual set in authority over him, even one who was neither likeable nor admirable, but, being Frank, found it necessary, in order to convince himself of this, to persuade others to share these views with him. Unsuccessfully, in my case, need I add, particularly with regard to our Sales Manager, who was both dislikeable and inadequate. He was a dour Scot, who had been recruited by Kalamazoo, in the earliest days of their UK venture, for his pharmaceutical qualification (MPS) and the knowledge he had acquired of the British pharmaceutical industry and its regulatory framework, while working for a small Scottish drug firm. He differed from everyone else in the Upjohn management team in having had little front line sales experience. But he was very good at defending his entrenched position, keeping his mouth shut whenever his ignorance might have been exposed, and never committing himself until he could see which way the wind was blowing. He spent much of his time drawing comparisons between sales figures and call rates, and managing the company car fleet.

In spite of which, when I was being considered for promotion to Area Manager, company protocol demanded that, as Sales Manager, he should come and work with me himself in order to confirm my suitability for the post. We duly spent two uncomfortable days together, him speaking hardly a word during the doctor interviews, and very few outside, at the end of which I pulled the car over to the kerb and looked expectantly towards him, as was the custom, for words of constructive criticism about my performance. After deliberating for a moment, he said ”Well...I noticed that you stayed in third gear a wee bit longer than necessary after cornering”, and, seeing my stunned reaction, added “And you left your windscreen wipers on for quite a time after the rain had stopped”.

Desperately trying to make sense of these words, all I could think of was “This is some sort of test of whether I could accept criticism?” So I did my best to respond by thanking him for pointing these shortcomings out to me and promising to correct them in future, at which he gave me a knowing look and said “It all comes under care of car”. When I rang Alex, who was my Area Manager at the time, to inform him of this outcome, he thought I was pulling his leg at first, as did my other colleagues, but we ended up adopting “It all comes under care of car” as a catchphrase among ourselves, always delivered in a Scots accent with a knowing look, when confronted by some particularly egregious piece of useless advice from the same source. True to form, he went back to Crawley unwilling to commit himself as to my suitability for promotion, with the result that the Managing Director had to come and work with me himself – a much more enjoyable experience with a satisfactory outcome for me.

But, while the success I was enjoying in my new post was being undermined by my worries about Anne, Frank was finding it increasingly difficult to persuade himself that Upjohn was in capable hands, and that his own future with the firm was still bright. Matters came to a head when he discovered that a reputable old English drug firm called Crookes Laboratories was in the process of being taken over by a most unlikely partnership between two world-famous companies from outside the pharmaceutical industry – Philips Electrical of Eindhoven, Holland, and Arthur Guinness and Sons of Dublin, Ireland. Further investigation revealed that Philips had a research-based pharmaceutical subsidiary called Philips Duphar, which already boasted a range of quite useful ethicals, and had been active for some time on the Continent, and that, while Guinness' motives were less obvious, they, too, had a small subsidiary called Twyford Laboratories which had not produced anything useful yet, but was known to be researching the use of snake venom as an anticoagulant.

One thing seemed certain, however. A combination of Philips and Guinness could not but add up to a great deal of financial clout, and marketing know-how, so whatever their intentions were for Crookes Laboratories, they must be of an ambitious nature. It was just too good a opportunity to miss, and, with Joyce's approval, Frank decided to offer himself and his expertise to the newly formed company. After a series of interviews with the directors, he was accepted by them as their sales manager, with a brief to develop and implement a marketing plan for the new venture. Needless to say, his sudden departure caused a minor sensation in Upjohn, where such defections were seen as treasonous, but this was nothing compared with what was to follow, because Frank soon found that the task facing him in Crookes was more than he could cope with alone, so he looked hopefully to me for help, expecting to find me reluctant to exchange my winning streak with Upjohn for a leap into the unknown, only to discover that, because of my problem with Anne, he was pushing against a half-open door.

But he was careful, as always, not to push too hard, letting the attractions of joining the new venture speak for themselves, and giving me every opportunity to visit the company and meet his new colleagues before making up my mind. In the end, I was offered and accepted the post of Sales Training Manager, working under Frank at the company's HQ in Park Royal, London, at an increase in my present salary plus a very generous 'package' of entitlements, which included all the expenses incurred when moving from Calverley to take up residence in a new home in West London. At the prospect of which, Anne's mood improved remarkably.

Happily, too, before leaving Yorkshire, I contrived to attend one more opera. And what a stunner it was! Sadlers Wells were now touring the country at regular intervals, coming to Bradford, no longer to the tatty old Princes Theatre, but to the resurgent Alhambra. Due, however, to my preoccupations, both domestic and business, these visits had hitherto passed me by, but when I found that one of their new offerings was to be a double bill which included Stravinsky's “Oedipus Rex”, I could resist no longer, particularly when my new young friend Mike, expressed a willingness to accompany me to the performance, and I'm happy to report that he fully shared my enjoyment of the experience. How could he not? Stravinsky's one-act opera packs a very considerable punch in its own right, but the 1960 Michael St. Dennis staging with Abd'Elkader Farrah's designs turned my first encounter with it into an absolute knockout. So impressed was I, that I later paid the full price for the LP recording of the production, issued by EMI in 1963, but my familiarity with it did not prevent me from enjoying the whole thing again when Sadlers Wells revived the production at the London Coliseum in 1972.

It was paired off, in Bradford, with Puccini's “Il Tabarro” which left little impression on me at the time, but, later, at the Coliseum, with that other modern masterpiece Bela Bartok's “Duke Bluebeard's Castle” This would have been a marriage made in heaven, had it not been for the disappointing production of the latter by Glen Byam Shaw – no windowless castle, no keys, no opening doors, just a metal ladder hanging from the flies, and a lot of psychologising. It was my first encounter (but not, unfortunately, my last) with a production which, in presuming to re-interpret an already allegorical libretto succeeds only in diluting its emotional impact.

2

Our move to London went smoothly. When offered the job, I had been informed that Crookes would be vacating their present premises in about eighteen months time to take possession of a purpose-built office block and factory in the then New Town of Basingstoke, Hampshire, at which point all members of staff would be offered the chance to relocate in the vicinity. With this in mind, Anne and I decided that, rather than endure the hassle of buying and selling a new home in such a short space of time, we would bank the money we had left after paying off the mortgage in Calverley, rent a property in West London, and buy again in Basingstoke when the time came. This turned out to be a miscalculation, since house prices in London rose quite considerably during the next couple of years while our deposit in the bank did not, and, given that Crookes would have been footing the bill for both moves, any inconvenience we suffered would have been well worth while financially.

But we were unaware of this at the time, and quite content with the attractive modern flat we rented in the leafy suburb of Ealing, W5, conveniently situated just west of Hanger Lane on the North Circular Road, within easy walking distance of the office in one direction and of Ealing Broadway, with its shops and tube station, in another. There was an excellent school for Helen nearby, and the wonders of Kew Gardens and the wide open spaces of Richmond Park were only a few minutes drive away. Given this location, and its proximity to Central London's many attractions, we were soon entertaining a stream of visitors from the North, among them my dear mother and my not so dear Auntie Annie, and Gerry and Jessie, of course, and their daughter Vivienne, all of whom I recorded on cine film visiting Kew Gardens, Richmond Park, Windsor Castle, and the other places people visit when on holiday in London. Anne was in her element, of course, and Helen, always adaptable, quickly made friends with any kids of her own age in the neighbourhood, and I was happy with my work.

Like Upjohn, Crookes Laboratories had been founded in the late 19th century, under the patronage of Sir William Crookes, a celebrated Victorian scientist, and, also like Upjohn, had built its reputation on the quality and ingenuity of its formulations of the medicaments available at the time. It pioneered the use of colloids in prescription drugs, for instance, but was best known for its public lines, such as Halibut Liver Oil, with which the name of Crookes was virtually synonymous, and Lactocalamine Skin Lotion, both widely advertised and still selling well throughout the Commonwealth. But, unlike Upjohn, Crookes had failed to invest in the kinds of research that would have enabled it to participate in the post-war drug revolution, and by the time of the takeover was virtually moribund, steadily losing ground commercially, but keeping a stiff upper lip, as Frank and I discovered when we were piped aboard.

We found that, like its product range, the management of the company was living in the past. The Managing Director was in his late fifties, decisive, articulate, and smartly turned out, probably ex-army, good at holding the fort, but a stranger to innovation. He was soon to receive his honourable discharge and be replaced by a young blood from Guinness, of whom more later. The Company Secretary was a large, lugubrious individual who knew everything there was to know about the firm, but kept this knowledge to himself as far as possible, only parting with it when pressed. A King Log who was to become the Great Survivor.

Our Sales Director, also in his late fifties, was a fine figure of a man with a suspiciously florid complexion, whose qualifications for the post seemed to be his Membership of the Pharmaceutical Society, his years of experience in the industry (none of them in the front line, of course), and his personal charm, which was considerable. His relationship with the sales force was tenuous, but fatherly, more carrot than stick, since the reps were expected to generate sales by gentlemanly methods known only to themselves, relying on the fading glory of the Crookes name to ensure their favourable reception by Britain's doctors and chemists. There were no sales conferences, as such, but the reps were brought in to a London hotel for a couple of nights each year, together with their wives, to meet the management and receive any new information about the company and its products that was available, while the wives spent the day shopping and joined their husbands in the evening for a formal dinner and dance. This was one Crookes tradition that Frank and I decided to keep.

There was, in fact, a Sales Manager, but he was merely, in the British tradition, a manager of sales, not salesmen – a lowly position in the hierarchy, but the main channel of day-to-day contact between HQ and the sales force. He had been in the company for years and would eventually smoke himself to death in its service, but he was a mine of information about the strengths and weaknesses of the existing reps, and one of Frank's first acts was to arrange for the pittance he was being paid for his services to be increased. To complete the picture, there was a small, separate Veterinary Division, promoting its own product range, with which I would have little to do, and an even smaller Export Department with which I would have more to do than I could have foreseen at the time.

The new owners of Crookes Laboratories, Guinness and Philips, made strange bedfellows. Under their agreement, Philips held 49% and Guinness 51% of Crookes, which meant that Guinness, whose main brewery and HQ were virtually next door to us in Park Royal, had overall responsibility for the management of the company. This turned out to be unfortunate for us in the end, for reasons which would eventually emerge, but, in the beginning, we found Guinness a pleasure to deal with, if rather difficult to “read”. Whereas Philips was an open book, following accepted management practices in the development and marketing of a diverse range of products in all corners of the globe, Guinness was unusual in a number of ways. Apart from being virtually a one-product firm, it was unusual, if not unique, in being a brewery which did not own any retail outlets. This meant that it was dependant on other brewers, who owned most of the public houses in the UK, for the sales of its product, and this meant that it couldn't claim its beer was any better than anybody else's, however strong the supportive evidence might be, hence the use of the innocuous slogan “Guinness is Good for You” in a series of highly idiosyncratic and spectacularly successful advertising campaigns.

Most unusual of all, however, were its internal organisation and management procedures. It was essentially a family firm, and the head of the family, the 3rd Earl of Iveagh, chaired the Guinness board, but, by tradition, none of the members of the Guinness family, some of whom were prominent in the British Establishment, involved themselves in the actual running of the business, and full responsibility for maintaining the flow of their dividends rested on the shoulders of a Managing Director brought in from outside. Nothing too unusual in that, perhaps, but, also by tradition, the internal management structure of the firm was quasi-feudal in featuring a privileged class of 'Brewers' to whom all the other employees were ranked as inferior. The Brewers were recruited as management trainees from the Universities of either Oxford or Cambridge, having gained both a First Class Degree and a Blue, and were housed initially in some sort of mansion, serviced by a butler, a sommelier, a housekeeper, a chef and subordinate staff, where they could acquire the appropriate social graces while being initiated into the mysteries of producing and distributing the famous brew,

Or so hearsay had it, and may not be reliable, of course. But I can vouch for the fact that our new Managing Director, Michael, came to us from Guinness with a double First in maths and a Blue in squash, plus all the social graces, and a record of successful achievement in Guinness, where he had overseen the development of the revolutionary pressure kegs which had finally made it possible for draught Guinness to be drawn in ten seconds in any pub in the land, rather than the ten minutes hitherto required in the very small number of pubs prepared to install the elaborate equipment required to make even this achievement possible. Michael was very intelligent and very energetic, and a bon viveur to boot. He knew little about pharmaceuticals, but was a good listener and a quick learner, and all too receptive, unfortunately, to new ideas, since it eventually became apparent that he was weak on prioritisation. But all went swimmingly, at first, and Frank and I were able to press ahead with our endeavours to fulfil the marketing plan, enjoying his full and friendly support.

So much did we was cram into them, at both work and play, that the couple of years we spent in Ealing seem, in retrospect, to be more like five,. Our social life took off quite quickly. We had barely settled in, when we made friends with a charming young couple in one of the other eight flats in the block, who were happy to come to reciprocal child minding arrangements, and, lo and behold, who should re-enter our lives, but our young friend Mike from Yorkshire who, inspired by my example, had applied for the newly-created post of Product Manager in Crookes and, having been successful (thanks, no doubt, to his B.Pharm from 'The Square' and Frank's support), had taken up residence nearby. Soon after which, Frank, whose stressful commute to work from deepest Sussex by train and tube every day had made him envious of my proximity to the office and our relaxed urban lifestyle, decided that, instead of waiting for the move to Basingstoke, it would make more sense for him and Joyce to sell the house in Linfield now, rent a flat in Ealing in the interim, and send their sons, Steven and Michael, off to boarding school. So, they, too, were soon close at hand, and we were all well-placed to take advantage of the fact that we were living in the London of the Swinging Sixties with its Establishment Club, “Beyond the Fringe”, Carnaby street, and Biba's, that fashionable clothing establishment in Knightsbridge, all of which we patronised, along with many more of the pleasures available to us, which left, alas, no room in my life for opera at this stage.

Some of the most enjoyable entertainments available to us in London during this period were of a more traditional nature, such as the Old Time Music Hall which flourished at the Players' Theatre under a railway arch at Charing Cross, and the more exotic Raymond's Revuebar in Soho, both of them run as clubs, to avoid irksome licensing restrictions, but cheap to join. Even more memorable were the visits we paid to a pub called 'The Prospect of Whitby' down in the East End at Wapping Wall, the oldest riverside pub in London, dating from the 16th century, and still going strong. The 'Prospect' was, at that time, a 'singing pub', which meant that, in addition to its excellent beer, it provided a small band whose main purpose was to accompany the clientele as we sang our way through as many verses as we could collectively remember of the boisterous and often bawdy songs that we had learned in our youth, or in the Forces - often referred to as Rugby Songs. It was a most exhilarating experience, healthy and companionable, a wonderful way to spend an evening. There was even a small chain of pseudo-Victorian fish restaurants in the West End called 'Flanagan's' which encouraged its patrons to sing by providing a pianist and table mats with words on them. The food was good, too.

One final defection from Upjohn was to bring new friends into our circle, in the shape of George and his wife Pauline. After recruiting me and Mike, Frank was determined to avoid being accused of 'cherry picking' from his old domain, but George would not be denied. He was an ex-physiotherapist, and, as a member of the sales force in the Southern Region, a stranger to Mike and me, but he knew Frank and admired his meritocratic approach to sales management, and had become very disillusioned with his own local hierarchy. He persuaded Frank to take him on as a Crookes medical rep initially, but his talents were such that, as soon as opportunity allowed, he made his way into Head Office as a Product Manager, and, once we had all moved down to Basingstoke, he and Pauline would become firm lifelong friends of ours. George was clever, energetic, very good natured, and quietly ambitious, and his abilities would eventually take him further in the pharmaceutical industry than any of us, but, in the meantime, Frank, Mike, George, and I would enjoy the friendliest of working relationship in the office, and, together with our respective wives and families, a social relationship outside the office that would long outlast our association with Crookes.

Into which context, I must introduce one further character who was to figure largely in our future, in more senses than one, because she was quite a big girl - tall, perfectly proportioned, with blonde hair and blue eyes, gazing out on the world with unruffled calm, whatever the surrounding circumstances - the perfect secretary is what Pauline was when she first entered my life, and that is what she would have remained if Mike hadn't joined the ranks of the many other bachelor's who were taking an interest in her at the time. So, watch this space.

Meanwhile, back at Upjohn, Mike and George's defections to Crookes, following, as they did, so closely upon Frank's and mine, had given rise to a degree of paranoid apprehension. In spite of Frank's assurances, conveyed informally via Alex, that he had no intention whatsoever of recruiting any reps from Upjohn (plus the obvious fact that Crookes' current product range and its standing in the industry rendered it nowhere near as attractive as Upjohn to any ambitious medical rep), an atmosphere of suspicion as to who might be the next domino to fall, prevailed. The result was a modest salary increase all round for the Upjohn reps (for which none of them ever thanked us) and our condemnation as traitors to the cause, in the manner of “the pig that got away” in George Orwell's “Animal Farm”, but, needless to say, this did not affect my long-term friendships with Alex and Dan.

Under Frank's leadership, our task in Crookes fell into two main parts. One, to improve the performance of the existing sales force while recruiting and training such new additions to it as the marketing plan prescribed, and, two, to launch and promote the new Duphar products, while improving the sales of any of the old Crookes products that had unfulfilled potential. Needless to say, it was the existing Crookes sales force that presented us with the biggest challenge. As unwelcome intruders into their midst, we were viewed with suspicion and even alarm at first, but we had made it an article of faith that we would win them over by using remedial therapy to improve their productivity, rather than the surgeon's knife. It was a daunting task. Given the company's long history, some of them had grown quite old in it's service, a couple were approaching retirement, and there was even a father and son duo, working in adjacent territories. Only one or two were qualified pharmacists, and they all saw themselves as gentlemen of the road, cultivating their doctors and chemists by exchanging pleasantries with them about any personal interests, pastimes or hobbies which they had previously identified and noted down, before finally mentioning the benefits of their company's products.

As footsoldiers in the front line, however, they could not but be aware that the rest of the pharmaceutical industry was passing Crookes by, leaving it with a fading future which was also their own, unless something was done about it, and they could see that, finally, something was being done about it, and there were to be new products at last. Once they realised this, and that we intended to show them how to do better, rather than telling them to do better, their spirits rose, their attitudes toward the new regime improved, and they began to change their ways and integrate with the influx of new and younger reps we were recruiting and training.

The Duphar products were great morale boosters, a pleasure to promote, but not without their limitations. With one exception, an influenza vaccine, they were all unique entities, discovered and developed by Duphar, effective in action, with few side-effects, and not too expensive. The problem was that, although they were well-received by consultants and GPs alike, the market segments they occupied were not very large. In other words, the conditions they were designed to treat were neither common enough nor serious enough to ensure that the volume of sales they could generate would be sufficient to support the cost of achieving it, and, by its nature, the influenza vaccine enjoyed only seasonal sales. But these were not matters for me to worry about, initially, or even to be aware of, as I directed my energies to launching and promoting a progestogen, a vasodilator and an antispasmodic, each in turn at about two yearly intervals, fulfilling the terms of the partnership agreement between Guinness and Philips.

In marketing these products, we were aided and abetted, to the best of their abilities, by a dedicated group of Dutchmen in Duphar, who, unlike our contacts in Guinness, were quite easy to 'read', even though their aims did not always coincide with ours. They were, of course, in the same business as us, and they even spoke the same language as us, because Duphar had decided to adopt English as its internal commercial language, and they all spoke it fluently, and, due, possibly, to their country's past experiences with its continental neighbours, they all claimed to be anglophiles, admiring the English sense of humour, in particular. Whatever the reasons, our regular meetings with them were invariably friendly, and we enjoyed each others' company when off-duty.

But, companionable as they were, they were different from us, in that none of them had ever been a medical rep. They belonged to a breed of continental marketing executives who saw their role as manipulative rather than creative, dealing in facts and figures rather than ideas. They would come to our meetings armed with slide-rules (pocket calculators not yet having been developed), and George, in particular, was quick to respond to this by acquiring a slide-rule of his own, which he would throw like a gauntlet on to the table at the beginning of our meetings with them as if challenging them to a duel - an example of the English sense of humour, which they were obliged to take in good part. Their principal objective, of course, under the guise of providing us with 'helpful' information about their products and monitoring our sales performance, was to pressure us into devoting a greater proportion of our efforts into promoting Duphar products than we knew was in Crookes' overall best interests. Needless to say, these endeavours met with little success, but they could recognise a new and original sales pitch when they saw one, and they certainly got more of them out of us than we got out of them.

As part of the Philips empire, however, we were entitled to share in the paternalistic benevolence which the multinational extended to all its employees, and, as soon as our relationship with Duphar had bedded down, the entire sales force was invited over to Holland for a tour of their facilities at Eindhoven and elsewhere, an outing which included an Amsterdam canal trip and a visit to the famous tulip beds of the Koekenhof, followed by a convivial dinner, and the presentation to each of us of a souvenir gift, which is how I acquired the first of the Philishave electric razors I have been using ever since. Such visits became a regular feature of our future training courses for new reps and I pride myself on having reduced the cost of them to a minimum by using the cheap overnight ferry from Harwich to The Hook to take us there and bring us back, during which, needless to say, a good time was had by all. And, not to be outdone, Guinness arranged for us to enjoy conducted tours of the massive Park Royal Brewery which included an excellent lunch in one of the only two pubs which Guinness owned, 'The Toucan', deep in the heart of the brewery, quite inaccessible to the public, of course, unlike the other pub, which, I was told, was somewhere deep in the hop fields of Kent. I can't recall what the souvenir was that we were presented with after lunch at The Toucan. A suitably inscribed drinking vessel of some sort, I think, but my memory of the occasion is a bit hazy for some reason.

Holland was not the only foreign country I was destined to visit during those eventful years in Ealing. Both Crookes and Duphar had operations overseas, and the terms of the takeover required Crookes to market the Duphar products wherever in the world we had the means to do so. And we certainly had the means to do so in India, where Crookes had been established for so long that it was virtually an independent operation with its own factory and sales force. A complication, however, was that Duphar already had a fledgeling marketing operation in India with its own sales force, to resolve which, it was decided that the two sales forces would be amalgamated and briefed on each others products at a sales training conference to be held in Mumbai, or Bombay, as it then was, at which somebody from Duphar would deal with their products, and somebody from Crookes with ours.

After much to-ing and fro-ing about the practicalities of this arrangement, it became clear that, in spite of their local knowledge, the Crookes management out there were very reluctant to undertake this task, and when they learned that Duphar was to send an 'expert' out from Holland for the purpose, they felt able to insist that we should do the same. And, since our colleagues in the Export Department, although experts in the mysteries of c.i.f and f.o.b, knew little about the products they were exporting, that is how I came to spend ten days in Bombay. I was happy to accept the assignment, of course, because India was somewhere I had never been, and here was my chance to go there on expenses, and, since training reps was my metier, and I knew all about the Crookes products, it looked like an easy ride. It turned out, alas, to be anything but.

I encountered my first obstacle before I left the country, when I found, to my dismay, that Crookes were still marketing a range of products in India, which had long since been abandoned in the UK as being either obsolete, unprofitable, or unwanted. This was because, in those days, the early 60s, the practice of medicine in India was about 20 years behind the UK, except for the rich, of course, and even modern drugs, I was to find, were often dispensed in daily doses. This meant that I had a lot more preparatory work to do before setting off than I had envisaged. I found that some of the products had promotable features which were fairly easy to identify, since they had been effective treatments in their day, but had been superseded in the West by more effective drugs, but others were not really pharmaceuticals at all, although they had their therapeutic uses. There was a range of hospital products, consisting mostly of sterile solutions and transfusion fluids of various kinds, and these I found more difficult to get my mind round. But, I dutifully perused the text books and prepared speech notes intended to give the impression that I knew more about them than I did.

It was my first real business trip overseas, and I set foot in India, after enjoying the luxury of first class travel in a big jet plane, feeling that I was truly 'abroad' for the first time since visiting North Africa from Gibraltar fifteen years earlier, and the colourful hustle and bustle, the alien sounds and smells, the heat and humidity I experienced on the drive from the airport were all welcome evidence of this. Equally welcome, however, was the air-conditioned calm and quiet of my spacious room in the Ambassador Hotel, where I found that my first task was to visit the nearest government offices to obtain a 'Temporary Resident's Permit to possess and use Foreign liquor for personal consumption'. This was because the sale and consumption of alcohol was prohibited by law in India, and the law was strictly enforced. My Permit, which entitled me, under rule 68 of the Bombay Foreign Liquor Rules 1953, to one and a half units of foreign liquor, was an impressive document carrying an official stamp, headed FORM F.L.V. [See rule 63(8), and setting out, on Page 2, the ten conditions I would be obliged to observe once the foreign liquor was in my possession.

Permit in hand, I was directed to a 'Government Depot' which turned out to be an anonymous shop with shuttered windows and an armed policeman standing outside the door, inside the gloomy depths of which I was informed that my one and a half units would entitle me to, either a bottle of spirits, or a crate of beer. Having settled for the latter, I walked back, through crowded streets with a native porter two steps behind me carrying the beer on his head, to the hotel, where the precious cargo was delivered into the care of my floor steward, thenceforward to be served to me by him in my room at my request. There was a notice on the wall of my room warning me against allowing any other person to consume my foreign liquor unless they happened to be a foreign potentate. In the lobby of the hotel there was a solid wooden door labelled 'Permit Room' inside which, it was decreed, I could order my own foreign liquor to be served to me 'in loungelike surroundings', if I wished.

The knowledge that I was about to attend a sales conference at which no alcoholic drinks would be served, bothered me less than did the attitude towards me of the Crookes local manager, a fellow countryman of the type that could only think well of himself by thinking ill of others, the Indians around him, in particular, but anyone else who presumed to intrude into his domain, which only he properly understood. This included me, of course, in spite of the fact that he had insisted on my presence, but also those in Head Office in London who had created the present inconvenient situation. He disapproved of the Guinness/Philips takeover of Crookes, which would never have happened if he'd had anything to do with it, and he particularly resented having to cooperate with the local Duphar management, who, needless to say, did not understand India as well as he did. None of this distaste was on too overt display, however, as he went through the motions of meeting, greeting, and entertaining me in an appropriate manner, but without enthusiasm. We did not enjoy each other's company. In fact, the only people whose company I enjoyed during my visit, when I was allowed to, were the Indian reps, and the Indian Production Manager at the Crookes factory, whose hospitality I was able to return when he eventually visited England.

The 'expert' from Duphar proved to be a young doctor whose medical qualifications were more impressive than his conferencing abilities. This did not surprise me, since I was already aware of the marked difference between Crookes and Duphar in the roles played by qualified doctors in the organisation and management of the two companies. In Crookes, as in most Anglo-American drug firms, qualified doctors were employed as Medical Advisers to give, as the name implies, expert advice on medical matters to the operational departments whenever the need for it arose, and to deal with questions of a clinical nature raised by other members of the medical profession. Their most important role, in the bigger firms, was to organise and supervise clinical trials with the company's products. I don't know how typical Duphar was of continental practices, but I do know that doctors exercised more authority in their management hierarchy than in ours and were deferred to by the marketing men as the source of all wisdom about the products. Even the Managing Director of Duphar was a doctor, so who but a doctor would they send out to India to inform the Crookes reps about their products?

The conference had been organised by the local management on a 'fill-this-space-with-a-conference' basis, with me and the Duphar doctor as the star turns, and the reps as a captive audience. There were about 50 of them, all shapes and sizes, even different colours, sitting there in rows, day after day, trying to keep awake. I couldn't help sympathising with them, even as I added to their misery by trying to interest them in the bricks I was making out of products sadly lacking in straw. The Duphar doctor was even worse. Although his products were more intrinsically interesting than mine, he simply stood up and blinded them with science about them, and not very audibly, at that. I could have made a better job of them myself, but protocol did not allow this. In spite of his inadequacies, being a doctor, he was accorded much respectful admiration for his performance by the local manager who made no attempt to hide his disappointment at the inadequacies of my own efforts, until, that is, I craftily manoeuvred him into attempting to remedy my alleged deficiencies by making his own presentations in which the extent of his own ineptitude was quickly revealed.

Fortunately, when making my preparations for the trip, I had decided to take with me what I had come to refer to as my 'Selling Lectures'. These were a series of talks I had devised for the benefit of new reps on our training courses, in which I dealt with the skills and knowledge required for the job, rather than the products, and into which I had distilled everything I had learned about my craft while working my way up from Absolute Beginner to Top Rep in Upjohn. Having failed to inspire the Indian reps with my best shots on the Crookes products, I decided to try them on my Selling Lectures. The effect was remarkable. A wave of animation swept through their ranks, the like of which had not been seen in the lecture room since the conference began. It was very gratifying. Wide eyed, they hung on my every word, and gathered round me at the tea breaks questioning me excitedly. I finally got to know them well enough to invite a few of them back to my room at the hotel one evening to swap stories about our experiences with members of the medical profession and share the bottle of duty free foreign liquor I had smuggled into the country on arrival – strictly against the law, of course, since none of them was a foreign potentate. My one regret was that I never got the chance to go out and work with one of them for a day or two and get some idea of what India was really like.

The sad truth is that, although I spent ten days there, only rarely did I feel that I was in India. My days were spent in a conference room, and my evenings in an hotel, both of which could have been anywhere in the world, and the Indian reps were billeted at a much cheaper hotel some distance away. My English colleague did not invite me to his home, for which I was thankful, and the only hospitality he offered me was on our weekend rest day when he took me to the horse races which were no different from those held in the UK (and equally unexciting), and invited me to meet his downtrodden wife and children at a mainly European, Sports and Social Club the only attraction of which, for me, was a large open-air swimming pool. It was left to the factory manager, Shashi, to invite me to his home for a taste of India, cooked by his wife, but that occasion was devalued for me by the uneasy presence, also, of the local manager and his wife. I owe my one truly memorable Indian experience to one of the Indian reps who came to my rescue when I confided in him that I wanted to buy presents for my wife and daughter but had so far been unable to get to the right shops after conference hours, due to my unfamiliarity with the city.

His name was Kumar, and he was a Pathan, a warrior race, I am told, and he certainly looked like a warrior. On learning my predicament, he spirited me away, as soon as the day's business was concluded, to what looked to me like the Suk in Tangiers, a warren of unpaved, narrow streets with shops on each side. I had suggested bracelets of Indian silver, so Kumar led me to the Silver Market, where to my surprise, all the shops selling silver were grouped together. There was also a Gold Market, I was told, and even a Diamond Market. In the Silver Market, where most of the the shops were glass-fronted in the European style, Kumar picked one out, and we stepped into it, as if passing from the medieval to the modern, because there was nothing archaic about the interior. The shop was lined, from floor to ceiling, with glass-fronted display cases inside which, fashioned in gleaming silver, stood items in the shape of every kind of European household article imaginable, including, I noticed, a thermos flask. The counter was a glass-topped display case containing all manner of silver personal adornments of the kinds I was seeking.

As we entered, we were greeted by the shopkeeper and his assistant like royalty, ushered to stools at the counter, and asked what we would like to drink. When I was finally allowed to tell them what I was looking for, I was showered with a range of silver bracelets of all shapes and sizes, from which I eventually picked the ones I most admired for their design and workmanship, whereupon Kumar took over, and asked me to check them for size, which I did by trying them on my own wrist, only to find that the heaviest and most elaborate one was too big, whereupon the shopkeeper quickly produced a tool from under the counter and removed the necessary number of links to reduce it to the desired length. Next, Kumar asked the shopkeeper to quote the current market price of silver, and, once this was agreed, scales were produced and my intended purchases were weighed, and only then did Kumar start to discuss the final price of the items. It was all very civilised, but I could see that the shopkeeper was being slowly ground down by Kumar's polite persistence. The outcome was that I paid for the silver by weight plus a few rupees for that exquisite workmanship and about 10% for the shopkeeper. It was, by any standards, a bargain buy, and Anne and Helen were delighted with their silver bracelets, which have remained in active service until the present day. Thank you Kumar.

I have never been back to India since, but it wasn't long after my return before I was sent abroad again, this time even further afield, to Australia - a visit that was to be of much greater significance for my future than I could possibly have imagined at the time.

3

Crookes Australia was a modest operation, renting office and warehouse space in Roseville, Sydney, in the headquarters building of the Australian offshoot of Boots the Chemist of Nottingham, England, but not known as Boots the Chemist in Australia. Out there it was simply Boots Ltd, a drug firm, like Crookes, promoting a range of the 'ethicals' it had been developing in recent years, in a separate division of the Company, which would eventually, had I known it, play a not insignificant role in my own future. But why was there no Boots the Chemist in Australia, where flourishing urban centres would have provided fertile ground for the Boots brand of efficient, economical and reliable retail services? For the very Australian reason, I found, that the local pharmacists, fearful of the competition, had earlier banded together to 'Keep Boots out of Australia'. How did they do this? By pressuring the government in Canberra to pass a law banning any chemist from owning more than two shops in Australia. And so it remains to this day, which is why OTC remedies cost more in Australia than they do in the USA and the UK.

Since Duphar did not have an operation in Australia, my brief was to assess both the effectiveness of our own organisation there, and the future potential of the Australian market, for our own and Duphar's products. I was also asked to call on our agent in Singapore during my stopover there on the way out, and to visit New Zealand on the way back, about which, more anon. I travelled first class, of course, flights and hotels. I can remember little about my two mights in Singapore, except that the agent took me out for an excellent lunch at an authentic Chinese restaurant, which I enjoyed. He was an expat Englishman, an old Singapore hand, who may not have 'gone native', but had certainly gone to fat, and who did his best to entertain me with his chat about the local sexual mores. I spent my evenings in the hotel, having adopted the principle, that, when alone in foreign parts, however temptingly exotic, I would not go looking for adventure, but if adventure came looking for me, which, needless to say, it never did, it would not find me wanting. . I was learning that, doing business in far away places with strange sounding names, however luxurious the accommodation, is not as exciting as it may appear to be, and I couldn't wait to push on to Sydney. I have to confess that, while in Singapore, it never occurred to me to go looking for the grave of my long dead pal, Mike, in Changi cemetery.

I can recall three things about my flight from Singapore to Sydney in a Qantas Boeing 707. The first was that, as I left the plane during a brief stop in Darwin and descended from the air-conditioned cabin to the tarmac, the suit I was wearing suddenly became several pounds heavier with moisture absorbed from the atmosphere. The second was that, when dinner was being served during the onward flight, I was offered wine of a type and vintage I didn't recognise, but was assured by the steward that, since it was from Penfold's Private Bin, I would find it quite acceptable, and I did. My third memory was of being invited onto the flight deck to watch the sun rise over the 'dead heart' of Australia. Stunning.

My reception in Sydney was warm and friendly, and I experienced no difficulty in establishing good relations with any of the Australians I worked with during my four weeks' stay there, but I was to find that their attitude to me personally, and to the country from whence I came, was not quite as warm and friendly as it appeared to be, and that many Aussies had, if not a love/hate relationship with us, a grudging respect/resentment relationship, the manifestation of which could come as quite a shock when triggered inadvertently by an unsuspecting visitor from the 'Old Dart' (as the mother country was, rather ambiguously, nicknamed), who dared to breathe a word of criticism, however mild, of anything Australian. This attitude was directed, less at the Irish, Welsh and Scots, than at 'The Poms', as the English were labelled, and I came to the conclusion that it arose from the fact that the true capital of Australia was still, in those days, London, and the Aussies were, in effect, provincials, like me, but, unlike me, and my fellow countrymen from Kent, Devon, Cornwall, Lancashire, and Tyneside, they were lacking in that self-confident pride in the superiority of their provincial heritage which we enjoyed, even when directing our ambitions towards the capital. Inspired by this insight, I deliberately assumed the blunt, uncompromising manner of a Yorkshireman abroad, refusing to allow anyone to call me a Pom without expressing my own resentment of the term, and I found that this approach effectively neutralised any resentment I myself aroused. To coin a phrase, I out-provincialised them.

The personnel of Crookes Australia numbered 10. A General Manager, his Assistant, and a Secretary in the office, and, out in the field, seven medical reps – three in Sydney (New South Wales), two in Melbourn (Victoria), one in Adelaide (South Australia), and one in Brisbane (Queensland). My most important relationship was, of course, with the General Manager, Arthur, who was a qualified pharmacist, making the best of a bad job in the face of Crookes' hitherto declining fortunes. He was a huge chap, over six feet tall and about half as wide, but good-natured, even-tempered, and well-informed, and he and I got on well together. At my request, he had arranged a pretty intensive programme for me, beginning with a sales conference in Sydney attended by all the reps, after which I went out and worked with each of them in turn, for a couple of days. Since these activities involved travelling to all the state capitals, except Perth, and were intermingled with a good deal of socialising and sightseeing with the reps and their families, I saw enough of Australia, and the Australians in the time available, to conclude that, in spite of its deficiencies, it was the best alternative to England I had come across, and I could, if obliged to do so, make a tolerable life for myself out there.

As to the deficiencies. Unfortunately, my visit spanned most of January and some of February, the hottest and most humid months of the Australian year, and, in those days, air-conditioning, which was just beginning to make its appearance on the Australian scene, was not yet available in most homes, cars, offices, shops, and even hotels. To make matters worse, the British colonists had largely ignored Australia's sub-tropical climate and continued to build for the climate they had left behind them, rather than for a Mediterranean one, which would have been so much more appropriate. As a consequence, their wonderful beaches were fringed with stuffy cafes, snack bars, restaurants and other facilities that would not have seemed out of place in Bridlington or Blackpool. In addition to which, the urban dress code for both men and women was still inappropriately British. Men could wear what they liked when off duty, but, unless you were a manual worker or a tradesman, you went to work in shoes and socks, collar and tie, and a suit, whatever the temperature. Tailored shorts, long stockings, and short-sleeved shirts (with tie) were becoming acceptable in Brisbane and Perth, but not in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide where it was very unusual to see anyone in shorts in the CBD during office hours. And no respectable lady would dream of going into town, or to church, without wearing a hat and gloves.

So, I did a lot of sweating, particularly in the car, where a steering wheel left uncovered in the sun for too long, could blister the hands, and in the office, where the papers I was working on would repeatedly stick to my fingers. Some relief from the resulting dehydration was obtainable by drinking the Australian beer which was served at a low enough temperature to anaesthetise the throat and disguise the fact that it had less taste but was more alcoholic than British beer. Unfortunately, however, the beer was dispensed in public bars that were not only of Spartan aspect, but also, for historical reasons, few and far between, only one 'hotel' per township or suburb, and the licensing hours were equally inconvenient, 'last orders' being at 6pm! This led to a phenomenon known as 'the six o'clock swill', which was caused by large numbers of Australian males rushing into the nearest bar as soon as work was finished and drinking as much beer as they possibly could before six o'clock, a practice which I soon learned to avoid whenever I could, unable to see the sense of drinking so much beer so early in the evening – before dinner, even!

But it wasn't easy. On my first day at the office, I found that, since the building was too far from the nearest hotel to allow enough time for the desired amount of drinking before closing time, arrangements had been made for the six o'clock swill to take place on the premises. At five o'clock sharp, the female staff went home, but the male staff trooped down into a basement dining room, and began helping themselves to bottles of beer from cartons taken out of the refrigerator, throwing payment into a 'kitty' as they did so. This went on every evening, and was difficult to avoid without being seen as a stuck-up Pom. And, when working with the reps, it was expected of me that, come five o'clock, I would take them to the nearest hotel and buy them a beer – or two – which I did, but it was not an enjoyable experience. The bars were invariably big, bare and crowded with men, all standing in small groups, drinking and arguing about sport and politics. The noise could be deafening. To prevent the beer getting warm before it could be drunk, it was served in smallish glasses, but, because of the time constraint and the pressures on the bar staff, the groups would ensure continuity by ordering a 'round' ahead, which would often stand on the bar (getting warm) before it could be drunk. It was not unusual, when time was called, to see these groups with several rounds still standing on the bar, waiting to be disposed of in the limited 'drinking up time' allowed. Fortunately, any drink/driving laws in existence at the time, seemed to be honoured more in the breach than the observance.

I enjoyed working with the reps, of course. Their working methods resembled those of the Crookes reps I had inherited back in the UK – a deferential approach to the doctor, followed by a bit of chat about this and that, before mentioning the products – but they were receptive to suggestions for improvement. The GPs, on the other hand were quite different from those I was used to, being markedly more reserved and less colourful of character. I put this down to the fact that, unlike the British GPs, they were all in private practice, competing with each other, in effect, for patients, and could not afford to do, or say, anything, however well-deserved, or well-intentioned, that might alienate the customers. Thus constrained, their individual personalities were unable to blossom, and I found them quite difficult to differentiate, one from another, in retrospect, at the end of the day, but they were quite approachable, and would listen carefully, if somewhat non-committally, to any information presented to them. So, no real problem there.

But problems could arise if the doctor was persuaded to prescribe your product. As there was no government-funded health scheme, like the British NHS, all consultations with a doctor had to be paid for, and Arthur assured me that, whenever two or three Australians were gathered together, it would not be long before they began complaining about their doctors' charges. There was, however, a government scheme for subsidising prescription drugs, but only those drugs which had been accepted by the government, on the advice of a high-powered Advisory Committee, as being of genuine therapeutic value, and only after negotiations about the price the government would pay for them had been concluded. Obtaining this approval from Canberra could be a complicated and arduous process, absorbing a great deal of management time and effort, but was absolutely crucial to a drug's commercial success. The one question a doctor could be relied on to ask about any new drug, was, “Is it on The List?”, because, if it wasn't, his willingness to prescribe it would be limited by the patient's willingness to pay for it. And it was only very rarely that a drug obtained listing on first release, The standard practice was to release it and promote it at its market price, while gathering evidence of its cost-effectiveness, and support for its listing from the medical profession, and bombarding Canberra with this ammunition unceasingly. It was an unavoidable fact of Australian pharmaceutical life.

Working with the reps enabled me to get brief impressions of Adlaide, Melbourne and Brisbane, but, since the bulk of my time was spent in Sydney, my most vivid recollections of the trip, apart from my close encounters with koalas and budgerigars in a tourist park on Queensland's Gold Coast, are of Sydney, where Arthur was good enough to introduce me to some of the city's many attractions. I went into the surf on Bondi beach, for example, which I didn't particularly enjoy, and I took the ferry across the fabulous harbour to Manly, which I enjoyed very much, but the off-duty experience that impressed me most occurred when Arthur and his wife, Joyce, took me to dinner at an 'RSL Club' in South Sydney.

The 'RSL Club' is a phenomenon unique, in my experience, to Australia. The initials RSL are those of The Returned and Services League, an organisation formed after World War One to look after the welfare of ex-servicemen. The licenced clubs began as humble off-shoots to the RSL's generic activities, but have since developed to occupy substantial buildings in virtually every town in Australia, and, since membership is open to anyone living within a five mile radius, they play a much greater role in Australia's social life than the RSL itself, to which, however, the clubs still pay lip service by lowering the lights and playing the last post at 6pm every evening. This remarkable development of the RSL clubs has been funded by profits generated by the poker machines they have been allowed to install, all of which are ploughed back into the services they provide to members at very attractive rates.

The RSL Club in South Sydney was housed, I found, in quite palatial premises, fashionably furnished with attractive bars, lounges and a restaurant, plus, of course, a separate section for the all-important 'pokies', many of which were in use. Very impressive. But I was even more impressed by the dinner I was served, which, although a rare treat for me, was, I was assured, common fare in Sydney at the time. The first course was a dozen local oysters, and the second was a large and succulent crayfish, beautifully served with all the trimmings. And the cost of this gourmet feast was nothing like the sum I would have had to pay for it back home in the UK. My advice to anyone visiting Australia at the time became 'Eat fish and shellfish' because the steaks, though famously enormous, and famously served at breakfast, were very far from tender. Nowadays, however, things have changed, and the steaks are tender and easily affordable in the RSLs, but international demand has put he crayfish out of reach.

Having gathered all the information I needed for my forthcoming Australian Report, it was time for me to head for home, but I had one more task to perform on the way. I had been asked by our Veterinary Division to pay a service call on a firm in New Zealand which acted as agents for their products, and bring them up to date on recent developments in Crookes UK. The firm was located in the small coastal town of New Plymouth in North Island, but my first stop was in Wellington where I paid a call on our pharmaceutical distributors before pushing on. But when I went back to the  airport, a surprise awaited me. I had flown out to Australia in a big jet, a Boeing 707, flown around Australia in small jets, BAC 111s, flown across the Tasman sea in a big turboprop, a Lockheed Electra, but waiting at Wellington Airport to take me on to New Plymouth was a small, old-fashioned Douglas DC3 Dakota, a duplicate of the plane in which I had made my very first flight, from London to Gibraltar, sixteen years earlier. It was a nostalgic, but exhilarating experience, like being in a bus flying close to the ground, up the valleys rather than over the mountains, or so it seemed. As we landed at our destination, I looked out of the window, expecting to see the usual tarmac, only to find that we were landing on grass. I was later proudly informed by my local hosts that New Plymouth boasted the biggest grass airfield in the southern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, New Plymouth was also famous for its rain, which, by falling steadily for the next two days, rendered the grass airfield unsuitable for the plane to land on that was due to fly me on to Auckland, thus obliging me to make the journey by coach, which, as a tourist, I found much more rewarding. Meanwhile, I had no trouble relating to the New Zealanders I met in New Plymouth, who struck me as sweeter-natured and more pro-British than the Aussies. The agents had called their salesmen together for a mini-conference, and I gave them the benefit, as best I could, of the briefing I had received from my colleagues in our Veterinary Division before leaving England. They took me out for a drink in the evening to a pub which was no less basic than those in Australia, but seemed more inviting, featuring more sociable licensing hours, and more temperate beer. Unusually, however, the beer was served in jugs, which, having been filled by the barman from a hose pipe, were carried back to the waiting drinkers, who were standing, glasses in hand, round a piece of bar furniture of a design unique in my experience. It had a chest-high table top for the beer glasses, a shelf underneath for the jug(s), and two ashtrays, set flush into the table top with large receptacles underneath for cigarette ends. Very convenient. I remember thinking that all that was lacking was a urinal below the shelf to make it perfect. Funny, the things you remember.

Thanks to the weather, I saw little else to remember in New Plymouth, because its most impressive feature was not to be revealed to me until I made a return visit nearly three years later, but, strangely enough, hardly had I left the town behind, when the weather improved, the sun came out, and my long coach trip to Auckland became a sight-seeing tour through a beautiful country. My excuse for going to Auckland was to work with a rep there who acted as a sort of free-lance for our distributor in Wellington promoting the products of various small drug firms like ourselves, but, really, by this time, I was simply making the most of this once-in-lifetime opportunity to visit exciting places in distant lands. My last few days in New Zealand did not disappoint me.

My contact in Auckland turned out to be a charming fellow of about my own age, who quickly relegated business to the back burner, and appointed himself as my tourist guide, chauffeuring me round Auckland and its environs, pointing out its many attractive features, before taking me on to the world-famous geothermal district of Rotorua, where I was booked in for the night. I was very impressed with Auckland, not the city centre, of which I saw little, but its spectacular geographical location, and I class it with Sydney, Hong Kong and San Francisco as one of those cities which, because of their topography, are exciting places to simply be in, rather than live in. But Rotorua was, undoubtedly, the most interesting place I visited during my entire round-the-world trip. The whole area seemed to be bubbling with hot water and mud, emitting steam, and squirting geysers into the air at regular intervals. I was told that most of the houses in the town were plumbed into this cheap and inexhaustible underground source of heat and hot water. Fortunately, I had my cine camera primed for the occasion and the sun was shining. As a bonus, I was able to attend a concert given by the local Maoris. How wonderfully they sing! That open-throated harmony. Like the sound of a great organ. Brings tears to the eyes. Worthy of mention, too, is the fact that I was woken from my slumbers during the night by the furniture in my hotel bedroom shaking and rattling noisily. It was a small earthquake, which I assumed (wrongly, I was to find) to be a regular feature of the locality, and, turning over, went back to sleep.

All my business now concluded, I set off for home, travelling east round the world, via a two-day stopover in San Francisco, but, in order to get there, I had to fly from Auckland to Nadi in Fiji by turboprop Electra to catch an intercontinental Boeing 707 jet. This was because, strange to relate, New Zealand's airport runways, unlike Nadi's, had not yet been adapted to take the big jets, or so I was told. In San Francisco, where I was booked in at the famous Mark Hopkins Hotel, I gave myself as good a time as I could with only myself as company, doing as many of the things a tourist can do there as my time allowed, and I still have the cine films to prove it. After which, it only remained for me to fly on to London via Los Angeles, first class, of course, with Pan Am this time, over the North Pole. I can remember two things about the journey. The first was that the food was meant to impress, and it did. When serving dinner, for example, the steward calmly wheeled into the cabin a trolley bearing a whole roast of beef and proceeded to carve from it. The second was that, occupying the seat in front of me was the popular British film star Diana Dors, who, though justly famous for her face and figure, spent most of the journey hiding these assets under a blanket, trying to sleep. As the plane was nearing Heathrow, however, (flying South, of course) she took her early-morning self off into the toilet from which she emerged about half an hour later looking absolutely stunning, and fully equipped to radiate glamour at the photographers who were waiting for her as she descended the steps onto the tarmac after we had landed.

My own homecoming was less newsworthy, but no less welcoming, and I quickly resumed my daily routine at the office, and my leisure activities with family and friends, having been away little more than a month, although it seemed much longer. At the office, I produced my Australian Report with its Five Year Marketing Plan, which was well-received and widely circulated in both Philips and Guinness, while, on the domestic front, Anne and I continued to make the most of living in 60s London, aided and abetted, quite frequently, by the propensity of our affable Managing Director, Michael, to let no opportunity pass of combining business with pleasure over lunch or dinner at the company's expense, and to include Frank and me, and even Joyce and Anne, whenever possible. On one memorable occasion, the four of us were invited to dine with him and his charming wife Dulcie in the fashionable restaurant at the top of the recently opened Hilton Hotel overlooking Hyde Park, in order to entertain some visitors from a foreign firm we were having dealings with. In addition to the excellent food, there was a band playing for dancing, and as Anne and I danced around the floor, between courses, we found ourselves dancing past a corpulent and elderly, but easily recognisable, Jomo Kenyatta and his young and attractive partner.

Anne and I spent as many evenings out and about in the West End as we could arrange baby sitters for, and there was plenty to do and see there. It is worth recording that, among the shows we saw, were the satirically ground-breaking “Beyond the Fringe”, featuring the four remarkable young men who were to become such famous names in the future, Peter Cooke, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett, and Leonard Bernstein's musically ground-breaking “West Side Story”. We also spent an evening at “The Establishment”, Peter Cooke's notoriously anti-establishment night club, where the cabaret-spot was filled by the popular comedian, Frankie Howerd, who took advantage of the occasion to be more outspoken than he was allowed to be on TV, using several rude words to amusing effect. It was great to be in London, and our activities were not, of course, limited to the evenings. Anne, Helen and I spent a lot of time together at weekends in nearby Kew Gardens and Richmond Park, but it was usually when entertaining provincial visitors that we did all the things that provincial visitors do in London – the London Zoo, the Tower, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, Greenwich, and, further afield, Windsor Castle, to name but a few. More worthy of note, however, may be that my business trips to Holland, India and Australia were not the only foreign expeditions I undertook while in Ealing, because it was there that the foundations were laid of a family tradition that was to last until the end of the century – the Mediterranean Summer Holiday.

As every parent will know, there are few more important events in the family calender than the annual summer holiday. It offers pleasures to anticipate, plesures to enjoy, and pleasures to look back upon, but also, challenges to be met, and tests to be passed – or failed – by the family as a whole, working together, each according to their station. In addition to which, it makes exceptional demands on the family budget. So, there's a lot riding on the success of the annual family holiday, a lot of careful planning involved, and a lot that can go wrong. Once Helen had arrived, Anne and I had no difficulty in agreeing that, whatever our personal preferences, only a traditional seaside holiday would meet the requirements of all three of us for the combination of amusement, exercise and relaxation that we were looking for – although we didn't fancy patronising any of the established British seaside resorts. I soon realised, however, that, no matter how meticulous my planning, the one important factor beyond my control was the British summer weather, which could not be relied on to produce enough of its admirable qualities, during the weeks we had chosen for our holiday, to ensure that our entire investment of time and money would not be wasted.

While living in Calverley, as soon as Helen could toddle, I had organised a holiday at the seaside in the small village of Borth-y-Gest near Portmadoc in North Wales. A beautiful spot with views across the bay and a relatively unfrequented sandy beach, with the occasional dolphin swimming by; handy for Snowdonia and, best of all, for the attractive fake Italian 'village' of Portmerion, where we spent many happy hours. We 'bed and breakfasted' in a small terrace house in the main street of the village, and the weather was kind enough to let us spend most of our time outdoors, a lot of it on the beach, basking in the sunshine. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we went back to Borth-y-Gest the following year. What a contrast! The weather, this time, was most unkind, so wet and windy that we were forced to spend much of our time indoors, a lot of it in the digs, which were not really equipped for our daytime presence.

This is where those big seaside resorts came into their own, of course, by offering indoor entertainments when the British summer weather renders the outdoors inhospitable, as it so often does. But, in addition to making the holiday more expensive, this defeats the main purpose of it, which is to enjoy a complete change from the daily routine of the rest of the year by frolicking, or relaxing, according to taste, in the great outdoors from dawn til dusk. But, the only seaside holiday resorts I knew of, where the weather in summer could be guaranteed to provide sun, sand and sea in the desired quantities at the right time, were on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and beyond the reach of a family of three on an income like mine at the time. Or so it seemed.

But, help was at hand, because, among the many good things to arrive on the scene in the 1960s was the cheap 'package deal' holiday on Mediterranean shores in seaside resorts, some of which had been developed at breakneck speed from what had hitherto been small fishing villages, particularly in Spain. The basis of the package deal was the air charter flight, which made it possible for enterprising firms like Horizon and Thomson to transport planeloads of holiday makers from provincial airports in the UK to provincial airports round the Med from which they could be transferred by coach to modern, often hastily constructed hotels, within easy reach of the beach, where accommodation had been arranged for them in advance. All this under the supervision of English-speaking company representatives who were employed to deal with any inter-cultural problems that arose. There can be no doubt that the cheap package deal holiday was one of the great entrepreneurial innovations of the 20th century. Developed and refined after a tentative and sometimes shaky start, it grew into a mass-market phenomenon that completely revolutionised the British summer holiday, bringing the sunny shores and cultural attractions of the Mediterranean countries within the reach of Britain's millions.

Our first package deal, in 1962, was a very basic affair, best described, I think, as “cheap and cheerful”. It took us by prop-jet (Electra?)from Stanstead Airport to Gerona on the Costa Brava, and by coach from there to Lloret de Mar, which was in the throes of being developed from the fishing village it had been, to the overcrowded monster of a resort it was to become, where we found ourselves occupying the worst accommodation we were ever to experience in all our holidays abroad. It was called 'Los Pitins' and was, indeed, surrounded by pine trees, but was always referred to by us as just 'Pittins'. It was not an hotel, but a small, elderly auberge or hostal, featuring few of the amenities one expects to find in a modern hotel. There was nothing 'en suite' about the bedrooms, of course, and the food was not only inadequate, but its arrival on the table at mealtimes was uncertain due to the unreliability of the chef, a young Spaniard who, having spent all night out on the town, would endeavour to catch up on his sleep during the day. The manager was a middle-aged German of such sinister aspect that we decided he was a Nazi war criminal on the run. It was so bad that we began to find it was quite funny – a bit like Faulty Towers in the famous TV series. Its one redeeming feature was, Pablo, the waiter, a slim, tall, and very handsome Spaniard with whom our six-year old daughter Helen fell in love and began to flirt shamelessly, an experience which she still recalls with great pleasure to this day.

But, for all its shortcomings,'Pittins' had the advantage of being close to a beach which left nothing to be desired, and the holiday turned out to be a big success. The sun shone from dawn til dusk, the sea was calm and temperate, the evenings were mild, and the Spanish people working in the cafes, bars, shops, and beaches were trying very hard to make the tourists happy. Anne and Helen simply revelled in the Mediterranean life style, Anne looking lovely enough to attract every male eye, in spite of the competition from the many German and Scandinavian girls on the beach (whose equipment and accessories, needless to say, were far superior to those of the British), and Helen making friends with everyone wherever we went. I seized the opportunity to take them on a boat trip up the coast to Tossa del Mar, only a few miles away, and already in a more advanced stage of development than Lloret, with multi-storey hotels springing up everywhere and the narrow streets, through which the 'Boys from Pontefract' and I had wandered at will, only twelve years earlier, now thronged with tourists. The old castle was still there, of course, but so was a new seafront wall which would have made it quite impossible for our car to have be driven onto the beach, as it had been. Still there, also, was the Tossa's original single hotel, now much enlarged, but still recognisable, and still with tables and chairs in front of it on the beach, and beneath them, when I scraped away the sand, the old concrete slab on which we had danced the night away.

We returned from our fortnight in Lloret, firmly committed to spending as many of our future summer holidays on the shores of the Med as we could afford, but it was to be some years before we invested in another package deal, having decided that we might do better for ourselves by using the company car to make our own way there overland, as so many others were now doing. I came to this conclusion after discovering, when I enthused about our holiday to my colleagues at the office, that none other than our venerable Sales Director had been doing just that for years. On learning of my interest, he kindly recommended, for my future consideration, both a resort and an hotel he favoured. The resort was Sant Feliu de Guixols, not a resort at all, really, but an ancient port city, north of Tossa and south of Palamos, with a fine harbour and tourist facilities pre-dating, by at least half a century, those of the upstart fishing villages above and below it on the Costa Brava. The hotel was close to its elegant sea front, and within easy reach of the city's many other attractions, which included the so-called 'Millionaire's Beach' at S'Agaro, but it was by no means inexpensive, and was only brought within our reach, and the whole expedition made possible, when our young friend Mike asked if he could join us, sharing a car, and bringing with him his current girl-friend, Pippa, who's company we had already been enjoying for some time.

And so we embarked on the first of the three trips we were to make to the Med by road before reverting to package deals by air - Mike and me in front, taking turns at the driving, Anne and Pippa in the back, and Helen in between them, retracing the route I had taken as a passenger with the 'Boys from Pontefract', through a France which looked more prosperous than it had done then. Mike being our favourite companion, and Pippa a seasoned traveller, it all went very well. We didn't linger in France, except over lunches, making only one overnight stop, but we did depart from common practice by entering Spain, at Mike's suggestion, via the Pyranees through Ax les Thermes and Andorra, instead of via Portbou and the coast road, and the beauty of the scenery made the vicissitudes of the tortuous mountain roads well worth our while.

In Sant Feliu, we all had a great time. The hotel was quite luxurious by our previous holiday standards, and the food delicious and entirely Spanish. S'Agaro beach, with its 'Millionaire's Walk' where the holiday homes of the wealthy stood empty for most of the year, lived up to its reputation. A most unusual feature of Sant Feliu was the public dancing which took place virtually every evening on the sea front. The dance was the sardana, a Catalan circle dance, the steps of which were quite easy to learn, and in which everyone was free to participate by making up, or joining a circle. It was danced to a 12-piece band called a cobla, whose traditional line-up included an instrument I had never seen before. It were obviously a forbear of the oboe family, having the double reed, but of simpler design and larger voice, easily holding its own against the brass section and giving the ensemble its distinctive sound. The band positioned itself in front of whichever of the hotels on the seafront had hired it for the evening, and the atmosphere generated by the music, and the dancers of all ages and nationalities in the mild Mediterranean evening, was simply magical. We danced on and on until the band played the last sardana.

The journey back home, via Andorra, was unremarkable in all but one respect. We had crossed to France in a car ferry in the usual way, but Mike, having experienced the uncertainties attendant upon arriving at the ferry terminal in time to catch a return sailing, had conceived of an unusual, but, according to him, more dependable alternative. He had discovered that there was a car ferry service by air plying between Le Touquet in France and Lydd in Sussex which could carry us back more quickly and conveniently than by boat at little extra cost. It sounded difficult to believe, but he was right, and it was a uniquely enjoyable experience. Having rolled into Le Touquet in light traffic, we made our way, after an excellent lunch (moules marinere), to its quiet, provincial airport, there to be checked in for our departure on the next available flight together with another car load of passengers. The planes were flying back and forth at frequent intervals, Lydd being only about half an hour away by air, carrying two cars and their occupants each time. They were, I think, Bristol Super Freighters, and certainly the ugliest planes I had ever seen, like flying box cars with big, bulbous fronts which opened up and lowered down to allow cars to be driven in, up a ramp onto a device which hoisted the first car up to allow the second car in. The seating for the passengers was utilitarian, but adequate, and the trip quite short, since no time was wasted gaining height as we lumbered across the Channel at about 100mph just above the waves, it seemed. The landing at Lydd was comfortable and before we knew it we were driving through the quiet country lanes of Sussex on our way home. Well done, Mike.

Back in Ealing, things were happening. The day of the Company's move from Park Royal to Basingstoke was approaching, and we were all house-hunting in Hampshire. It was an experience I would wish never to repeat. Since none of the houses being built by the New Town Corporation were for sale, there was a dearth of private houses available in Basingstoke itself, so we had to look further afield, and the options seemed endless, stretching from Camberley in Surrey to Winchester in Hampshire down the notoriously inadequate A30 (there being no M3 in those days), along which we were condemned to dribble every weekend until we succeeded in finding what we were looking for. The problem was that Anne and I were looking for different things. I was looking for a house that was functional and conveniently situated, Anne was looking for a house with 'character'. What a hope!

We started in Camberley and worked our way down the dreaded A30 to Winchester looking at many different properties every weekend without success. Meanwhile Frank and Joyce, and George and Pauline were sensibly taking advantage of the building boom in the villages round Basingstoke to acquire modern dwellings within easy reach of the new factory. In the end Anne had to concede defeat and agree to settle for something similar, and we discovered an attractive small estate of four-bedroom detached houses being built in funny old Fleet, just down the road from the barracks at Crookham, where I had spent so many unhappy hours in the RAMC nearly twenty years before. After looking at a Show House and liking what we saw, we picked a plot off the plan, paid our deposit, and heaved a sigh of relief. It turned out to be the best move we ever made, although Anne was never happy about it.

Our house-hunting in Hampshire had not been made any easier by the fact that Anne was pregnant, and was finding car travel nauseating. Her pregnancy was the result of a joint decision that, however inconvenient it may be, we simply could not afford to put it off any longer. Anne had become pregnant in Calverley, when Helen was about three, but suffered a spontaneous abortion at three months, and this event had conspired with our other distractions to discourage us from trying again soon. That's the trouble with birth control, it makes having a child into a deliberate act of will, and there's always a reason for putting it off. Here we were, however, towards the end of 1964, with a new house due in Spring (the footings already laid), and a baby the following June. Everything going well, it seemed. Then, out of the blue, came a bombshell. It was delivered by Frank, who walked into my office one morning and asked me, without preamble, if I would be prepared to go to Australia for a year and take my family with me, all expenses paid. Just like that!

Since his request was the outcome of a discussions between Guinness and Philips, it had to be taken seriously, and, at any other time, I would have found it an attractive proposition. With a new house and a baby on the way, however, it could hardly have come at a worse time. But, I went home and put it to Anne, who, after recovering from the shock, and thinking about it, decided that, with the company footing all the bills, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, too good to be missed, and well worth any inconvenience her condition may impose on us. It occurred to me later that, if the offer had been made a a few weeks earlier, her pregnancy would have been, yet again, deferred. But, fortunately, it was too late now, and preparations were put in hand for our departure.

I was to be Acting Manager of the Australian subsidiary for a year, at a salary of 3,125 pounds p.a., with the general objective of initiating the recommendations I had made in my recent Report, but with a specific brief to launch the first of the Duphar product range, a progestogen called Duphaston. This latter fact was conveyed to me by the only member of the Guinness upper hierarchy I was ever to meet face to face. I had made my way, as instructed, to his office in the depths of the Park Royal brewery complex, expecting to be vetted as to my suitability for the task ahead, only to find a rather haggard-looking individual, more like an Oxbridge don than a captain of industry, seated behind an uncluttered desk, looking uncomfortable. Having exchanged a few pleasantries about the details of my forthcoming departure, I waited expectantly for him to speak. He waved a hand at me, with the air of a man at the end of his tether, and said “Just launch Duphaston. Just launch Duphaston”. And that was it! So, to paraphrase an expression I was to come across some years later in a hand-written minute on an official file, I thanked him and withdrew.

4

And so it came to pass that three and one-third members of the Scott family were sentenced to be transported to New South Wales for a year, me, to fly out in January 1965 to get down to work, Anne and Helen to follow by sea, travelling first class on P & O's SS.Himalaya. Our affairs in England - the disposal of the lease on the flat, the storage of our furniture, and completing the purchase of the house in Fleet – were to be handled by the Guinness solicitors, with Frank, Mike and George making sure that our interests were properly protected, liaising with me, by phone, as required. At the other end, our affairs were in the capable hands of the redoubtable Arthur, who was, I think, relieved that it was me, and not some unknown quantity, possibly from Philips Duphar, who was to be imposed on him. I flew out, with the customary two nights break, this time, in Hong Kong, which I enjoyed much more than Singapore. Who could not but be impressed by simply going up to The Peak and looking around. What a sight! The harbour below, teeming with craft of all shapes and sizes, a hive of maritime activity. I felt that I was standing at the cross-roads of the world. And everything seemed to be within easy reach by public transport. Unfortunately, I had chosen to leave my cine camera with Anne, giving her careful instructions about how to operate it during her five week cruise, during which she would be calling at such places as Athens and Cairo. What a mistake that turned out to be. In Hong Kong, I had to content myself with buying a new, duty free cine projector.

Once in Sydney, my previous experience enabled me to 'hit the ground running', as they say. It was hot, of course, and humid, but the beaches were handy, although I can recall one dreadful Saturday when the weather was so very hot and humid, and the sky so oppressively overcast, that even the beach proved unbearable. So I retreated to my motel cabin, drew the curtains, took off my clothes, had a cold shower (still no air-conditioning!), lay on the bed under the ceiling fan, read a book, and listened to the radio. Fortunately, such days were rare, and the worst of the heat was over by the time Anne and Helen arrived in March.

When they did, it became apparent that Anne's burgeoning pregnancy had not prevented her from having a very good time during her five-week cruise. When booking the trip, we had found that, on its outward journey, the S.S Himalaya would be a 'one class boat', and that most of the other passengers would be 'ten pound Poms', as the Australians called the British emigrants who were taking advantage of their Government's assisted passage scheme to seek a new and better life Down Under. The effect of this was to make it possible for us to secure the very best cabin on the boat (A1), for the price of the first class air fares from London to Sydney, which was our benchmark. But it also meant that, while Anne and Helen could live in luxury in their spacious suite, whenever they stepped outside it they would inhabit the same world as the second class passengers, a world in which Anne, however, was perfectly capable of fending for herself, and her lot was made easier to bear by the permanent seat she was awarded at the Captain's table at mealtimes, where her personal charms, even when nearly six months pregnant, ensured her a lot more attention, I gathered, from the ship's officers than was normal for someone in her condition. As for the cine film she was supposed to shoot, all it showed was a few minutes of on-board activity, mostly of the ship's wake against the blue sea – no Acropolis, no Pyramids. Too difficult, she said.

While waiting for them to arrive, Arthur and I had been looking for somewhere for us to live, and had settled on a small, three-bedroomed house, fully furnished, in the quiet Sydney suburb of Northbridge, overlooking the picturesque waters of Middle Harbour, of which there was a spectacular view from the front garden. To my relief, Anne was delighted with it, as was Helen, of course, and we quickly settled down to live like Australians for the rest of the year. We were fortunate in having neighbours on either side who were couples of our own age, one with a lovely little girl of three, and both well-disposed towards us in their different ways, more than they were towards each other, we found, since they were from different social classes. Oh, yes! Australia was not quite the egalitarian paradise it was deemed to be, but class distinctions were manifested more by association than by appearances and speech patterns. The circumstances under which you were born and brought up, how you were educated, and who you knew, were the basic criteria, plus, of course, how you earned your living, and how much money you had. Couple A on one side were buying their house, and both had been privately educated; he was a solicitor, she an aspiring socialite with no children as yet. Couple B on the other side were renting their house, both had attended state schools, and both were working, as I recall, at unremarkable jobs in the public sector, she part-time.

We enjoyed good relations with both couples, but they had little to do with each other, and the disposition of the properties made it easier for us to chat over the garden fence with couple A than with couple B, although their little girl was a frequent visitor. These relationships were of more importance to Anne than to me, of course, since I was out at work on weekdays, and often away interstate, and although Anne found Mrs A's social pretensions less to her taste than Mrs B's unaffected open-heartedness, Mrs A was more readily available during working hours, and happy to include Anne in her coffee mornings and lunches with her circle of friends. And Anne was deeply impressed by the casual informality with which these were arranged and conducted. Back in the UK, the idea of inviting half a dozen young wives to lunch at short notice would, in those days, have been almost impossible to contemplate due to concerns about the menu to be offered, the cost of the food and drink, and the suitability of such things as the crockery, the cutlery and the place mats. In Australia it was 'a bowl of spag(hetti) bol(ognese) in the sleep-out (a large netted-in verandah)', and 'bring a plate' meaning, not a piece of crockery, but a plate of something to go with the spag bol. The same free-and-easy arrangements obtained at the weekend barbecues which were becoming such a feature of Australian family life, with the result that the Aussies did much more impromptu entertaining among themselves than we were used to, back home, where tea parties and dinner parties, with all the formalities observed, were still the custom.

In contrast to this, however, the Australians were surprisingly conservative in some of their habits. Dress code, for example. In spite of the sub-tropical climate, men still went to work wearing jackets, long trousers, collars and ties, as did I, of course, during my time there. Only tradesmen wore shorts and open-necked shirts, except, I found, in Queensland and West Australia where tailored shorts with knee-length stockings and short-sleeve shirts, worn with a tie, were permitted during summer months. I can remember feeling unpleasantly conspicuous, once, while walking through the crowded streets of the Sydney CBD as the only man wearing shorts. The women, too, whatever they slopped around in at home, wouldn't dream of 'going into town' unless wearing stockings, hat, and gloves. A visiting British fashion model called Jean Shrimpton made front page news by turning up at the Melbourne Cup Race Meeting with bare legs and no hat or gloves. And, in the same vein, I can recall my astonishment at hearing the headmaster of the local school addressing an audience of parents on the importance of stamping out left-handedness at an early age.

We had enrolled Helen in the local school, of course, where she was judged to be bright enough to qualify for its 'opportunity class' - some sort of selective fast stream – and quickly settled down to participate in the school's out-of-hours activities, making friends with two classmates who lived locally and were soon frequent visitors at our house, as was Helen at theirs, and we got to know one of the girl's family well enough to keep in touch with them for a while, after we left Australia. They were kind enough to take Helen away with them for a few days to their holiday cabin somewhere up the coast, and she had several memorable adventures in 'the bush' there, as well as on the other family's boat which was moored below their property in Northbridge. There can be no doubt that Helen enjoyed her nine months in Australia immensely, a fact that was to have quite profound implications for the Scott family in twenty years' time.

During most of our stay in Australia, however, our family life revolved around preparing for, and coping with the arrival of our son, Paul, which took place on schedule, without complications, on June 24th at the small Kabarisha Nursing Home in the adjacent suburb of Castlecrag under the supervision of our own GP – but with a gynaecologist and an anaesthetist hovering (hopefully?) outside the door, as was the customary private medical practice of the time, in case of need. The only unusual feature of the circumstances surrounding Paul's birth was that, having been conceived at the Autumn Equinox, he was born at the Winter Solstice. Cap that! as they say in Yorkshire. But there was nothing unusual about the demands he made on the rest of us for care and attention as his development proceeded quite normally, and was faithfully recorded by his proud father on cine film. Any restrictions this imposed on our social life were minimised by the fact that Paul arrived in the middle of the Australian winter when many of the leisure activities of the local families had been put on hold until the weather got warmer, difficult as this was for me to understand.

Having been conditioned by my upbringing to react to blue skies and bright sunshine by sallying forth and walking briskly over the nearest piece of moorland, I found the winter in Northbridge rather unsettling. The only significant differences between June in Sydney and June in England was that the days out there were shorter and the nights colder, with temperatures ranging from about 20C at noon, to about 10C, at midnight, and I was to discover later that the sea temperature rarely dropped below 17C in the winter months. But there were, alas, no moors in Sydney to walk over, and no Richmond Parks to walk about in, hence my restlessness, which I sought to alleviate by buying a Spanish guitar (made in Japan) and teaching myself to play it – or should I say, to strum on it, while singing the words of popular songs composed in the first half of the 20th century, in addition to those of even older ballads such as 'Abdul Abulbul Amir' - an accomplishment which was to stand me in good stead at gatherings of friends and family on my return to England.

Another thing I discovered about the winters out there was that, by adhering to the festivals in the European calender, the Australians had condemned themselves, not only to celebrate Christmas at the hottest time of the year, but also to forgo the pleasures of the mid-winter festival with which, since time immemorial, communities in the Northern Hemisphere have celebrated the passing of the winter solstice, and alleviated the tedium of the long winter nights. Nowadays, it would be much more sensible, surely, if, instead of observing the traditions of a European Christmas at a time when soaring temperatures and even bush fires can make the cross-country journeys involved in reaching family reunions and holiday destinations quite stressful and even hazardous, the Australian Christmas could be celebrated as the Christian rite it is supposed to be, on December 25th, and the rest of the package - the parties, the shopping, the presents, decorations, family reunions, eating and drinking – moved to an official mid-winter holiday where its indulgences could be more fully appreciated, leaving the mid-summer vacation to become the welcome respite from care it is supposed to be. But it's too late for that now.

Away from the domestic scene, my working hours were filled with activities of the usual kind, most of them pleasurable, but few of them noteworthy. In addition to improving the performance of the existing sales force, the Marketing Plan called upon me to recruit and train a small number of new reps, and the most memorable of these was to be the one I found in Perth, Western Australia. When attempting to bring home to my colleagues back in England the realities of my task in Australia, I would point out to them that Perth was as far from Sydney as Cairo was from London, and this was the journey I was obliged to make in order to interview the only respondent to an advert placed in the local press who seemed at all likely to be able to do the job. He was a young Canadian from Vancouver, called Brian, who came to the interview from a building site on which he was currently working as a labourer, but he was a college graduate with an academic background that would equip him to master the craft of selling pharmaceuticals. He was also very well motivated and articulate, and typically North American in his positive attitude to the job, which I immediately offered him, and he accepted.

How Brian came to be in Perth, so far from his home in Vancouver, was a story too long to be told here, but I found him a pleasure to work with when I went back to Perth to train him, and we became good friends. He was soon to meet and marry a lovely and lively Perth girl, Janine, and the two of them would come to England later, after I had accepted him, at his request, into the Crookes sales force there, and would occasionally come and visit Anne and me in our new home in Fleet.

As for Perth itself, apart from its beautiful setting, it struck me as an attractive, but rather undistinguished, provincial town where nothing much happened after working hours. I understand that it is a very different place today, but it's so far from anywhere else, that I've never been back to find out. I did, however, enjoy two new experiences there. One evening, I attended, for the first and last time, a Trotting Horse Race Meeting, which took place on a floodlit track. I found that, once the novelty of the trotting horses pulling their riders on little carts had worn off, it was just as boring as any other kind of horse racing on the flat. I also attended, also for the first and last time, a game of Australian Rules Football, which is a cross between soccer and rugby league, a kicking, passing and marking game, played on an oval pitch with four goalposts of varying sizes and no crossbar at each end. It was a pleasant enough way of passing a sunny afternoon, but the pitch was so huge that I found it difficult to follow any action that was not taking place in my immediate vicinity, and I noticed that several of my fellow spectators were solving this problem by listening to a commentary of the match on the portable radios they had thoughtfully brought with them for the purpose.

I returned to Sydney to learn that Crookes had finally been given notice by its landlord, Boots Ltd., to vacate the premises we rented from them in their Roseville HQ building. They had been urging us to move out for some time, but suitable new premises at the rent we had been paying Boots were hard to find. The Sydney CBD was too expensive, of course, and the inner suburbs were fast becoming the same, and the whole metropolitan area was inconveniently split in two by the famous harbour which seemed to wind its way inland for miles and had to be crossed one way or the other when making deliveries from an office located in one of the suburbs on either side of it. Since the search, in Arthur's hands, seemed to be getting nowhere, I ventured to bring my outsider's mind to bear on it, and, looking with a fresh pair of eyes at the street map of metropolitan Sydney - an area almost the size of metropolitan London – noticed that one obvious point of easy access to both sides of the harbour was the small town of Parramatta, which was now a suburb of Sydney, but had been founded in the same year as Sydney, about 15 miles inland from the original settlement, at the farthest navigable point up the Parramatta River from the harbour proper.

I pointed this out to the Sydney-centric Arthur, who could not but agree that, unfashionable as it then was, Parramatta offered easier access to the rest of Sydney (and even to his own home in South Sydney) than did more prestigious suburbs, and was worthy of investigation. In the event, modern, even air-conditioned (!), offices at an affordable rent proved quite easy to find in Parramatta, and the quality and proximity of the township's amenities at lunchtime were an added bonus. On the appointed day, we moved our office furniture, equipment, and records to our new abode with our very own hands, having hired a truck and invited the Sydney reps to come in and help, and a carnival atmosphere prevailed throughout the proceedings. As it turned out, the only one of us who had further to commute to the new offices than to the old ones was me, but it was an easy drive and the end of my stint in Australia was now in sight.

Although the question never arose, I am fairly certain that, if I had applied to stay on in Australia as manager of the subsidiary, I could have done so, but I had no wish to leave the country I loved, even for one that I found quite attractive, and, while doing my best for the Australian team, I had always made it clear to them that my intentions were to resume my old life in England as soon as my year was up. The question of who was to replace me in Australia was answered from on high by the appointment of a middle manager from Philips Electrical, Australia, who had no previous experience of the pharmaceutical industry whatsoever. He seemed a decent enough chap, and was, no doubt, very capable in his own field, but I couldn't see him inspiring anything but resentment in the Crookes sales force if he attempted to improve their performance by the use of whatever techniques he had acquired in the electrical appliance industry. His first action, following my departure, was to move the Crookes offices from Paramatta back into the Philips building in the centre of Sydney.

On the domestic front, with summer upon us, and our departure looming, Anne, Helen and I tried to make the most of our sojourn in the 'sun drenched country'. But Paul, though thriving lustily, was only a few months old, and not a suitable candidate for exposure to the sun and sand, and stiff sea breezes of Sydney's famous surfing beaches. Not that we, ourselves, were too enamoured of their charms, particularly the surf, which Anne found impossible, and even I found difficult to swim in without getting 'dumped'. And dangerous too, of course, if you were caught in a 'rip'. They were certainly not as user-friendly as the beaches of our beloved Mediterranean. Fortunately, however, there was a small piece of the Med in Sydney waiting to be discovered, It was called Balmoral Beach and was tucked away from the ocean in a sheltered corner of Middle Harbour, and easily accessible, therefore, from our house in Northbridge. It was quite European in character, with grassy areas behind the beach, and shady trees, and behind that, cafes and even a fish and chip shop. The beach sloped down gently into a clear sea, which was quite devoid of surf, and a pleasure to swim about in. And doubly safe, because the most distinctive feature of Balmoral Beach was a large shark net stretching across it, about 100 yards out to sea. The reason for its presence was that the lagoon-like waters of Middle Harbour provided ideal breeding grounds for the man-eating sharks, which normally lurked off-shore, discouraged (supposedly) by the turbulence of the surf, hence the Australian adage 'never swim in flat surf'.

My final task, before leaving for home, was to pay another visit, at the request of our Veterinary Division, to their agent in New Plymouth, New Zealand. I mention it only because, during the trip, I had two memorable experiences, one of which occurred on the very first morning of my visit. I had checked into the hotel the night before, and emerged from it after breakfast to find New Plymouth bathed in sunshine under clear blue skies, and, standing on the pavement in front of the hotel, I glanced up and down the street. What I saw to the right of me was unremarkable, but what I saw to the left simply astounded me. There, beyond the end of this very ordinary city street, towering over the town, was this extraordinary mountain – a perfectly shaped volcanic cone with snow on the top, just like the pictures I had seen of Mount Fuji in Japan. It was Mount Egmont, and it had been there, of course, throughout my previous visit, but, as the locals say, “If you can see Mount Egmont it's going to rain; if you can't see it, it's raining.” And, as I gazed upon it, enthralled, I seemed to hear, inside my head, that majestic theme from Das Rheingold, with which the god Donner, swinging his hammer round his head, summons the storm clouds to clear the air with thunder and lightening - “Heda, heda, hedo'. Truly. I also experienced a powerful urge to go to the end of the street and begin walking up it, so accessible did Mount Egmont seem to be, from where I stood. No such luck, of course.

The second memorable experience occurred at the very end of my visit, while I was on the flight back to Sydney, across the Tasman Sea. Since joining Crookes I had been flying around in aeroplanes of various kinds, in different parts of the world, without feeling any apprehension whatever between take off and landing. Once in the air, I was happy to be there, relaxing, eating, drinking, or sleeping. But not on this trip. Half an hour into the flight, we ran into some turbulence, nothing serious, but there was lightening flashing around us in the dark outside, and I began to feel a sense of unease, which quickly developed into a degree of fear, the like of which I had never experienced before, nor have I since. Thinking about it after the flight had ended (without incident) I came to the conclusion that my anxiety attack was due to a combination of circumstances, but the root cause was the stress I had been under in recent weeks, balancing the demands of my job with those arising from the preparations I was making for my family's departure for home, which was due to take place very shortly after my return from New Zealand. That flight across the Tasman was all that stood between me and the goal on which all my hopes and anxieties had been focussed for weeks, and a growing realisation of this, increased my awareness of the fact that there was nothing between me and the shark-infested waters of the empty, endless Tasman Sea below, but the shuddering hull of an ancient turboprop Electra, and there was nothing I could do about it. I have never welcomed the end of a flight with such relief.

And, finally, the great day dawned. A few days before Christmas, we said goodbye to our little home in Northbridge and our temporary neighbours, and boarded the P & O Line's S.S. Orsova to begin the five week voyage to England. What an experience that was to be, and, since carefully selected moments of it were to be recorded by me on cine film (later transferred to VHS video and finally DVD), an experience we would revisit with pleasure for many years to come. We were travelling first class, of course, but not in the luxurious quarters enjoyed by Anne aboard the 'Himalaya' on the way out, since the 'Orsova' was a two class boat, and the cabins we got for our money were comfortable enough, but rather Spartan in comparison to the A1 that Anne and Helen had occupied. Not that we would need to spend much time in our cabins, since the amenities available to us, as first class passengers, outside our cabin door left little to be desired. Although we didn't realise it, we were experiencing a form of international travel that would soon be made redundant by the development of cheap, fast air travel. The era of the great shipping lines, encircling the world with their huge floating hotels, competing with each other for speed and the opulence of their interiors, was drawing to a close. But not until the Scott family had had the benefit of an Edwardian lifestyle for five weeks. [I have always regretted not keeping a copy of the cabin's laundry list, which was of unexpected length and included many items of clothing no longer in common use e.g 'Ladies Bloomers: short/medium/long']

We boarded the Orsova in a carnival atmosphere generated by the many relatives and friends who had come to celebrate the departure of their loved ones for destinations which were still beyond the reach of most Australians at that time. A military band was playing rousing tunes on the quayside, and masses of coloured paper streamers were being thrown down by the passengers lining the deck rails to the throng below. And not only paper streamers. There were ropes made from tying ladies' pantihose together until they were long enough to reach from ship to shore and be fastened, at one end, to the ship's rail, and, at the other to the dock, so that when the ocean liner finally pulled away, they would stretch and stretch until they finally broke. And a repeat performance of all this would be laid on for us in Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth as we made our way round the island continent into the Indian ocean. But nothing we saw there would compare with the spectacle around us in Sydney's great Harbour as we passed under the famous bridge, past the half-completed Opera House, and headed out to sea.

We adapted to shipboard life with little difficulty, thanks to Anne and Helen's previous experience on the Himalaya, but quickly realised that the passengers whose every need the Orsova's first class services were designed to satisfy, did not include six-month old babies. Before embarking, we had completed a lengthy questionnaire about the special items we would require for our baby's well-being during the voyage, ticking all the appropriate boxes, only to find, once on board, that P&O had promised us more than they could deliver. Not only was the range of canned baby foods on offer much more restricted than indicated in the questionnaire, but the only can-opener available to us was a personal possession of our cabin steward's, who was reluctant to let it out of his sight. But, worse than that was the discovery that the ship did not carry the promised stock of disposable nappies. Admittedly, these were a relatively recent innovation, and more expensive to use than the traditional washable white cotton squares, but they had been offered in the questionnaire, and, having ordered them, we had omitted to pack cotton nappies in our cabin luggage. As a result of which, I was obliged to descend, under escort, into the bowels of the ship where the luggage had been stored that was 'not wanted on the voyage', in order to retrieve an adequate supply of them. And, our nappy troubles did not end there. So entrenched were Edwardian traditions in the Orsova's daily routines, that the first batch of soiled nappies we sent to the ship's laundry came back starched...as stiff as boards. They were cotton, they were white, so they were starched...

The arrangements for children of Helen's age were more appropriately Edwardian, and we hardly set eyes on her between dawn and dusk unless we wanted to. A whole section of the ship was set aside for the care and entertainment of the passengers' children by an expert staff. She even had her meals there, leaving Anne and me trammelled only by the exigencies of Paul's daily routine which consisted of eating, sleeping, and sitting up in his carry-cot, gazing at whatever was going on around him or playing with his toys. No worries there, as they say. Shipboard life being new to me, I found the first couple of days on board completely absorbing. In Melbourne, we entertained the two Crookes reps and their wives on board, and we celebrated Christmas, with all the trimmings, at sea between Melbourne and Adelaide, but, unbeknown to me, Anne had been casting an appraising eye over the fellow passengers whose company we were destined to share during the next five weeks, and, finding few whose closer acquaintance might repay our cultivation, she went to the purser's office and asked to see the list of passengers boarding in Adelaide. When she found that a married couple with two girls, the eldest of whom was of Helen's age, were due to join the ship there, she arranged for them to be seated at our table for dinner on their first evening aboard.

Clever Anne. Because that is how we came to meet Ken and Verna, who were to became lifelong friends of ours, together with their two lovely daughters Amanda and Melissa, and, since most of the other first class passengers were either older than us, otherwise committed, or of unappealing aspect, our developing relationship with Ken and Verna made a huge difference to our enjoyment of the voyage. Ken was a Lecturer in Soil Mechanics at Adelaide University, who was on his way to spending a sabbatical year in England, he was intelligent, articulate, good-natured and good-humoured, a dedicated Rotarian, and one of the most unselfish and charitable people I have ever met. A truly good man, but one who didn't take himself too seriously. His only fault was a tendency to launch into lengthy, but extremely well-informed expositions on any obscure subject which chanced to come up in conversation. Verna was not quite as articulate, nor quite as good-natured and good-humoured, as Ken, but, once her instinctive reluctance to accept new acquaintances at face value had been overcome by Ken's insistence on thinking well of us, until proved wrong, she accepted our companionship in default of anything better, and we soon began to enjoy each other's company. And, fortunately, Helen and Amanda, who was a strikingly attractive girl with her father's sweet disposition, struck up an instant rapport with each other, which did not entirely exclude the younger Melissa, who was brighter than Amanda, but whose disposition was, like her mother's, not quite as sweet.

And so, after entertaining my new rep Brian and his new girlfriend, Janine on board in Freemantle/Perth we left Australia behind, and set out across the Indian Ocean, settling down to the enjoyable routine of shipboard life, a la first class P&O. Apart from eating, drinking and sleeping, there were such traditional pastimes as walking round the promenade deck (several times), and playing deck tennis and deck quoits. There was an Entertainments Officer and his staff to organise communal activities of various kinds - competitions, quizzes, fancy dress parties, water sports in the pool; there was a full-time dance band (all of whom I got to know quite well), who played for ballroom dancing, square dancing, and old time dancing, as required, in all of which activities I participated in an attempt to solve the only serious problem I was faced with during the voyage. It was the food. Not the quality of it, which was, of course, first class, but the sheer abundance and availability of it. Having been conditioned by the privations of my childhood, followed by wartime rationing, post-war austerities, and the subsequent restrictions on my pocket, to take advantage of any opportunity that came along to freeload food, or 'fill yer boots' as we used to say in the army, I found the temptations of the table on the Orsova very difficult to resist.

At breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner we were offered simply as much as we could eat, beautifully cooked and presented, and all for free. Whenever possible, lunch was served under an awning, out on deck, by an army of white-coated waiters standing behind a long white-clad table, along which we passed, proffering our plates to be heaped with delicacies of every kind – with, of course, strawberries and cream to follow. The dinner menus were so impressive that I kept a few as souvenirs, and can still wonder at them today, not only because there were so many different starters, entrees, mains, desserts and cheeses to choose from, but also because, had I been so inclined, I could have ordered the lot. Worst of all was afternoon tea – a P&O tradition which still survives today in a more modest form. It was served in the main public lounge, and featured, in addition to Ceylon, India, and China teas, an irresistible assortment of savoury sandwiches, and cakes of unbelievable richness.

In the face of all these temptations, my daily participation in every form of physical activity available to me between meals was of little avail, and I ended the voyage weighing more than I have ever done, before or since. But, by that time, I was a changed man. I had boarded the Orsova as an undiscriminating freeloading opportunist, I disembarked as a discriminating connoisseur, capable always of preferring quality over quantity. I was cured of a potentially fatal condition.

After 'crossing the Line', with all the appropriate ceremonial at the swimming-pool court of King Neptune, we called at Colombo in what was then Ceylon, where we went ashore and wandered about in the punishing heat, visiting, of all places, the zoo, where, like everywhere else in Colombo (it seemed), the precious stones for which Ceylon was famous where being offered for sale at, what we were assured were ridiculous prices. But, our brains were so addled by the heat, that we neglected to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. On leaving Colombo, we proceeded, next, to the port of Aden, which had been, until recently, a British colony, and, at one time, the second busiest port in the world after New York, and of vital strategic importance to the British Empire. By the time we got there, the troops in the British garrison were experiencing difficulty in maintaining law and order in the face of local insurgencies, and the dangers were such that the captain could allow his passengers to go ashore for only four hours, barely long enough for us to take advantage of Aden's world famous attractions, which were not of a scenic, architectural, or historic nature, but arose entirely from the fact that it was a duty free port with a large number of shops selling duty-free goods of every possible kind.

We were later informed by one of the ship's officers that, according to the purser's calculations, the passengers of the Orsova had spent something like 30,000 pounds (in 1966 money) in Aden during their brief time ashore. I myself had acquired a new cine camera of a much more advanced type than my old Kodak Brownie, and was now equipped to zoom up and down the Suez Canal and even film deck tennis in slow motion (gosh!), but we were not sorry to leave Aden and begin the more interesting part of our journey. The Orsova was probably one of the last passenger liners to call at Aden because the situation there continued to deteriorate until the British pulled out the following year, leaving the port to the uncertainties of the People's Republic of South Yemen. I wonder what became of all those duty-free shopkeepers?

For us, it was plain sailing, up the Red Sea to Suez where a large percentage of the Orsova's passengers had elected to be put ashore in order to travel by coach to the Pyramids and rejoin the ship at Port Said at the other end of the canal. Since someone had to stay on board to look after Paul, and I had been ashore, if only for a couple of hours, at Aden, it was decided that Anne and Helen would go with Ken and Verna and the girls, leaving me behind to contemplate the scenery unfolding on either side of the ship as it made its leisurely way, unimpeded by barriers of any kind, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. It was a memorable experience. The slowness of the ship's passage through mile after mile of picturesque countryside in the absence of so many of my fellow passengers gave the occasion a dreamlike quality, and the knowledge that, only a couple of years earlier, the canal had been deliberately blocked by the Egyptians, who had nationalised it, and were now running it, after being invaded by Britain, France and Israel in a failed attempt to reclaim it, made the journey even more thought provoking. But no sign remained of that crisis, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. The canal would be closed again, of course, a couple of years later, during the Seven Day War between Israel and Egypt, so, as with Aden, we had chosen our time well.

Anne and Helen rejoined the ship at Port Said, totally exhausted by the long coach journey and their hurried visits to the hot and dusty Pyramids and the seedy and smelly Cairo Museum, and very glad to be back on board. We remained in Port Said long enough for Helen to enjoy the excitements of shopping from the ship (by lowered bucket) after bartering with the local bum-boat vendors, clustering colourfully round the ship below us, displaying, and noisily extolling the virtues of, their wares. Much more fun than the Pyramids...or than shopping ashore in Aden, for that matter.

Our next port of call was Valletta, Malta, with its magnificent, historically fortified, harbour, where we all went ashore, taking Paul with us in an ingenious all-purpose pushchair/pram/carrycot we had acquired in Sydney. Since we were now in the European winter, the temperatures were finally low enough to enable us to go sightseeing without discomfort, and we took a trip to the heart of the island, to Mdina (the Silent City) the old capital, which lived up to its name, and was redolent with history. Driving through the Maltese countryside, I was surprised by its treelessness, which, I assumed, perhaps wrongly, was due to the demand for fuel created by the frequent sieges the island had endured throughout its long and troubled history.

More impressive than Malta was our next stop, Naples, not Naples itself, however, which, in the middle of January, under a pall of sulphurous smoke from Vesuvious, was not at its best, but nearby Pompeii, around which we wandered at will, unhindered by the small numbers of fellow tourists around us. Wherever I encounter them, I find the ruined remains of the Roman Empire quite affecting. They evoke a mixture of admiration and awe at the power and ingenuity of the organisation that created them, and bewilderment at the extent of its decline and dismemberment at the hands of “lesser breeds without the law”. We know a great deal about Roman society, about its movers and shakers, now long since disappeared, but very little about its clever engineers and architects, the remains of whose works we can still admire, and who could probably have done a better job of managing and preserving the empire than those set in authority over them. But it's as if the Western half of the Empire simply collapsed under the weight of its own systemic oxymorons, all services withdrawn.

With Naples behind us, a big disappointment, especially for me, awaited us at our next and final port of call, which was supposed to be Gibraltar, where I was hoping to revisit my old haunts, and display them to an admiring family. But Franco Spain, thwarted in its attempts to revive its claim to ownership of the Rock, was doing everything it could to make life difficult for the Gibraltarians, including closing the border in and out of Spain and restricting anchoring rights in Algecieras Bay to British ships, so I was subjected to the frustrating experience of being within a few miles of my goal, clearly visible, rising majestically, as it does, from the sea, but unable to renew my acquaintance with it. To make matters worse, the alternative on offer was not a visit to the cosmopolitan charms of nearby Tangiers, which would have offered some consolation for missing out on Gib, but to the seething streets of Ceuta, which held little appeal to anyone who had explored them before.

5

And that was it. After two more days at sea, our idyll was at an end. Having left a sunny Sydney in midsummer and lived in pampered luxury for the intervening five weeks, we arrived, under the grey midwinter skies, with snow on the ground, at bleakest Tilbury, where we were suddenly required to fend for ourselves. It was a very unpleasant experience, made even worse by the fact that we were returning to a house that we had never lived in, or even seen, before. Fortunately, Mike and George were there to meet us and escort us to our new home along the only available route from Kent to Hampshire, avoiding London - the notorious A25, meandering interminably through Kent and Surrey via Reigate, Dorking and Guildford, over the Hog's Back to Farnham, to enter Fleet through the back door, as it were. There were no motorways - no M25, no M3 - in those days. And after an exhausting journey, we staggered into our new abode to find that our furniture had been dumped into whichever room seemed appropriate to it, and left for us to arrange to our liking. The only bright spot was that the gas-fired central heating was working and the electric lighting was on, but some obscure regulation required our physical occupancy of the premises before the power points could be activated, so we couldn't boil water until the following day. With hindsight, of course, we should have been booked into a local B&B for a couple of nights until we'd sorted ourselves out. But it was too late for that now.

Mike and George, having been up since dawn to reach Tilbury in time to meet us, departed, duty done, with seemly haste, and we were left to gaze at each other in mild surmise. It was a surreal experience. After five weeks living on board a ship, our minds were still inhabiting the enchanted world of the Orsova, and it would be several days before they could be reprogrammed to address the realities of our new circumstances, which, once we got used to them, were by no means unsatisfactory. The house was attractive, detached, solid, brick and tile (32'x 24'), its cavity walls were lined with thermalite blocks, and its windows were designed to let in enough light, but not too much. Upstairs, there were four double bedrooms and a fully-tiled bathroom with the usual amenities; downstairs there was a spacious entrance hall, housing a cloakroom, with toilet and washbasin, plus the first flight of the stairs, and doors opening, on one side, into a kitchen with its own outside door, and, on the other, into an L-shaped lounge/dining room, the lounge area of which ran the full width of the house from front to back, ending in french windows leading out to the garden, and the dining area had a serving hatch into the kitchen. There was also, above the bedrooms, a roof space, accessible from a hatch above the upstairs landing, which contained the water tank, and could, with the addition of floorboards and a skylight be converted into a spacious attic.

The floor area downstairs was smaller than that upstairs because an 'integral' garage occupied the front corner of the building, which was accessed by a short drive in from the street. There was also a sheltered front porch of such generous proportions that some of our neighbours would have theirs 'glassed in' to create a small conservatory. Our front faced North, however, and the front garden was quite small (20'X40'), open and unfenced, except for a low ornamental chain link structure between ours and the next one. Its main feature was a mature cherry tree, which was sufficiently close to our front porch to have qualified it for removal by the builders, but we found that our new neighbour opposite had rushed across to prevent them from doing so, by assuring them, on no authority whatsoever, that the absent owners would prefer to have it left in situ. It was an inspired move, because the tree continued to flourish, producing a spectacular display of white blossom every Spring, always much appreciated by us, and our neighbours, particularly the one across the road. The back of the house faced South, and the garden was bigger, but not too big for me to manage, and for Anne to cultivate (60'X40'). It featured one small oak tree, which was to grow into such a very large oak tree over the years that we finally would have to remove it, and two elegant silver birch trees, one of which we kept, until it was blown down, taking the fence with it, during the Great Gale which savaged the South of England in October 1987

I have gone into some detail about the new house, because, contrary to our own expectations (based on past experience), and in defiance of the forces of change in the world around us, and in our own circumstance, it was to remain our home for the next 33 years, only to be vacated when we actually left the country for good. It also played a significant role in our financial well-being, such as it was, and I have often, jokingly, referred to the circumstances of its acquisition as the foundation of the Scott family fortunes, such as they are. The house cost us 6,750 pounds, of which, 6,000 was on loan from, not a Building Society, but an Insurance Company. This was because, when we had moved down from Calverley to Ealing, and made the mistake of not buying a house there, I had at least had the foresight to take out a 20-year endowment policy for 3,000 pounds, through the Medical Practitioners Union, with the Crusader Insurance Company. When the time came to buy the house, I took out another endowment policy with them for 3,000 pounds, whereupon they made us the loan against the maturity value of the policies, backed, of course, by a mortgage on the house itself.

The advantage of this arrangement was that post-war governments were so keen to encourage investment in the future, that they were granting tax relief, not only on the interest paid on mortgage loans, but also on premiums paid on approved insurance policies. Thus, our outgoings were confined to the annual interest on the loan, since the capital would be paid off when the policies matured in 20 years, plus the premiums payable on the policies, both of which would qualify for tax relief. These premiums would be increased marginally, when, shortly after taking out the loan, Crusader kindly allowed me to convert them to 'with profit' policies - a very worthwhile step as it turned out. But the real benefit was to come from the fact that the loan was at a fixed interest rate of 6%, which was about 1% higher than the prevailing mortgage rate at the time, but proved to be of considerable value in later years when interest rates rose to astronomical heights. And there was a hidden benefit for me, personally, which derived from the fact that, if ever we were to sell the house and buy another, the policies would be good for a new loan, of course, but the interest payable on the loan would be at a new and more punitive rate. The threat of this financial penalty proved to be a useful weapon when resisting Anne's attempts to persuade me to move to one of the allegedly more desirable residences which her instinctive yearning for a change every few years had led her to discover in the vicinity.

But, to be fair to Anne, that was at a time when many of our contemporaries were in the grip, it seemed, of a feverish compulsion to 'trade up' in the house market, while house prices were rocketing and estate agents making fortunes. But we stayed put. And after 20 years, the policies matured, paying off the loan, and delivering 6000 pounds in profits, free of tax, which meant that the house had cost us, per annum, 6% of 6000 = 360, minus 300 (6000 divided by 20years) = 60 pounds, less tax - plus, of course, the insurance policy premiums. In the meantime, the government had removed the tax relief on insurance policy premiums and restricted it on mortgage interest, but only for new contracts, and, after living in it for another 13 years, rent free, we sold the house for 150,000 pounds before emigrating to Australia. Ten years later, we heard that it had nearly doubled in value, but so had our house in Australia.

As it happened, the HQ Building of Crusader Insurance Company was in Reigate, Surrey, and when we drove past it on our way to Gatwick Airport, during the 1970s, to fly off to the Med for our annual holiday, I would point it out to Helen and Paul and say to them “Say 'thank you, Crusader'“, which they did, rather to their bewilderment, but not to Anne's

In spite of Anne's misgivings, the house was well suited to our needs. The only significant changes we made to it were, (i) to enlarge the kitchen by extending the garage out to the building line, moving the wall between garage and kitchen far enough forward to create a serviceable family dining alcove, and (ii) to separate the lounge from the dining room with an internal partition wall. Outside, apart from laying out the gardens to lawn and flower beds according to Anne's specifications, I created a terrace, the width of the house at the back, and deep enough to accommodate all the garden furniture we needed to take full advantage of its sunny southern aspect. I also acquired a garden hut, which I assembled myself, according to the enclosed instructions. I was getting to be quite a handyman.

The town of Fleet was also well-suited to our needs, although we had little cause, initially, to value its principal asset – a railway station, which, although small, was on the main line from London to the West, soon to be fully electrified, creating a journey time, from Fleet to London Waterloo of 45 minutes. Need I say more? Fleet's main attraction for us was that, although the small towns of Aldershot (Home of the British Army), Farnborough, Farnham and Camberley were our nearest neighbours, the cities of Reading to the north, Guildford to the south, and Basingstoke to the west were each less than 20 miles away, placing their superior amenities well within easy reach. Given its position, it was hardly surprising that Fleet would continue to expand to become, in effect, a huge dormitory suburb for all these centres of employment, providing accommodation for many of the business executives, civil servants, academics, and scientists working there – and their families, of course.

And, although Fleet would continue inexorably to encroach on it, much of the surrounding countryside would be left for us to enjoy, criss-crossed, as it was, by ancient rights-of-way, which seemed invariably to lead to ancient pubs. Of particular appeal to me was the fact that there was still a big area of Army land between Aldershot, Farnham and Fleet within walking distance of our new home. This mixture of wild heath and dense woodland was overlooked and embraced by an escarpment, which commanded extensive views towards Reading to the north, and towered over Farnham to the south. The ridge was marked on the map as 'Caesar's Camp', and, more authentically perhaps, as the site of an Iron Age settlement, but the lower slopes of it had been the site of a settlement of a different kind during the recent war, when, to house the overflow of troops from Aldershot, a small township of Nissen huts had been erected, the concrete foundations of which were still to be found among the undergrowth, when picking blackberries. The parts of this wilderness nearest to Aldershot continued to be of occasional use as an army training ground, but, for the most part, it was mine to wander freely over at will, and it boasted two particularly attractive features, one of which I would find myself sharing with fellow wanderers, the other with no-one.

The first of these, and the closest at hand, was a full sized, fully functional point-to-point racecourse, complete with buildings, housing stables, changing rooms, and the usual offices; there was even a small spectator stand opposite the finishing post. It had obviously seen better days, but was still used for race meetings by the local hunts under National Hunt Rules, and other competitive cross-country events were held in the large area of rugged terrain inside the perimeter of the track, where obstacles of daunting dimensions were laid out. Its most striking feature was a tall, brick, observation tower on a hill opposite the stand, which had been built, not for the 1948 Olympics, when the equestrian dressage and eventing competitions had been held there, but for the 1958 World Pentathlon riding event, and now served as a judge's and commentator's box for the races. Tweseledown Race Course had been created by the British Army, for its own amusement in Queen Victoria's time, and was now maintained by it, in barely adequate repair, for the race meetings and other events which were held there on a handful of days each year.

For the rest of the time, we locals were free to treat the racecourse as a recreational facility and adventure playground. There was even a small adjacent car park, which was closed on race days, of course, when those who wished to attend without paying were obliged to arrive on foot, as did we. It was all very convenient, and we became regular attenders at the race meetings, which, although small scale, were quite authentic, with race cards, a Tote, a row of bookies shouting the odds, market stalls selling riding equipment and home made cakes, and even a small bar. A very 'country' occasion, in fact. Anne loved to gamble, and we always laid small bets, each of us on a different horse, after carefully inspecting them as they were paraded round the ring, and occasionally we even won. In winter, on the rare occasions when Fleet was blessed with the right kind of snow, the slopes of Tweseldown's observation tower hill became ideal for sledges, and, since it was the only such facility close to Fleet, large numbers of bums of all ages would slide down it on a variety of vehicles, some of which had even been designed for the purpose.

But the most frequent and regular users of the racecourse were the Dog Walkers of Fleet, an intrepid band of assorted individuals whose only bond was an attachment to at least one canine friend, and for whom a circuit of the racecourse, in all but the most inclement of weathers, was an ideal solution to their common need to exercise them. I was to become a member of this fraternity when Helen finally succeeded in talking us into acquiring the required qualification in the shape of what looked like a loveley Labrador bitch, but was, in fact, one quarter collie, and, therefore, a 'golden collidor', named Bonny. It was a part-time membership, however, because, until I retired, I could attend their morning meetings only at weekends.

I soon found, however, that a simple tour of the track did not meet the needs of my own restless legs and I began to venture ever deeper into the woodlands around, going further and further up the slope until I finally came upon the rewarding spectacle of what I was to think of as 'the Land of the Secret Lakes', because, when first encountered as a delightful surprise, glistening through the surrounding trees, the lakes seemed to be natural phenomenon that had somehow escaped the notice of the outside world.

But they were not natural phenomena, and I went on to discover that the hillside above them, right up to the ridge, had been converted by the Army, at some time in the past, into a treeless water catchment area, and whatever the purpose of the two lower lakes might now be, a large upper lake still displayed all the characteristics of a fully-functional municipal reservoir, the water flowing into it from an elaborate network of ceramic channels, laid out horizontally, one above the other, round the curve of the escarpment, each feeding into the one below it. The whole area, although quite deserted, was obviously private property, but it was unfenced, and the tracks into it were not gated, so, after exploring its intricacies and extremities to my own satisfaction, I added the tree-lined tracks round the two lower lakes to my regular itinerary with a clear conscience. In the end, I had created for myself a three-mile ramble, beginning and ending on the racecourse, but going up, around, and down through a variety of attractive settings, along well-marked paths, but hardly ever meeting a living soul, other than rabbits, squirrels, foxes, and the occasional deer, and all within walking distance of my home. Was I not lucky?

On the domestic front, we were equally fortunate. We had once again moved into a new housing estate at the same time as several other couples of about the same age and social status, and, as had happened in Calverley, quickly made contact with a number of them, and, this being (still) the Swinging Sixties, were soon involved in a series of very lively and increasingly boozy parties in each others houses, from which it was easy to keep an eye on our own kids and walk home without mishap. There was quite a bit of flirting, but we never indulged in the wife-swapping that was allegedly so fashionable at the time, and practised, it was said, at parties elsewhere in Fleet, but whose locality could never be ascertained with any certainty. I seem to recall a local clergyman fulminating against the practice from the pulpit, so it must have been going on somewhere, mustn't it? But our relationships with our new neighbours, most of whom had young families, were of the more conventional sort, and our dealings with them uncomplicated and, for the most part, rewarding. The bulk of this social networking was engineered by the wives, of course, since the husbands were absent during the day from Monday to Friday, and Anne was happy to play her part in this, but she was never really comfortable with the mores of the 'Fleetites' as she called them, holding, as she did, uncompromisingly left wing views from which she was never to deviate.

6

Meanwhile, at the new offices of Crookes Laboratories in Basingstoke, I had settled back into the Sales Manager's chair without difficulty, having been spared the upheavals and teething problems caused by the transplantation of the entire firm from London to Basingstoke the previous autumn. I had also missed out on the celebrations surrounding the official opening ceremony which had been attended by bigwigs from Guinness and Philips as well as local dignitaries and celebrities, but I considered this a small price to pay for the year Down Under and the five weeks of pampered luxury we had enjoyed aboard the Orsova. Everyone seemed pleased to have me backcepred, and I was just in time to reintegrate myself into the management team as the new era, inaugurated by the move to Basingstoke, began to unfold, during which the old firm was to be fashioned anew, using 'Organisation and Management' techniques which had now become so well developed and universally accepted, that, not only were text books being written about them, but colleges were being created to teach them, and nobody was more committed to the acquisition and practice of these new skills than our Managing Director, Michael.

Although my day to day responsibilities were confined to recruiting, training and motivating the sales force, I had become part of a 'creative team', which included a newly appointed Advertising Manager and a number of Product Managers, all of whom reported to the Marketing Manager, Frank. The Advertising Manager's role was of greater importance than might have been expected, given that our 'ethical' pharmaceuticals, could not be advertised directly to the general public, but there was nothing to prevent them from being advertised to doctors, and this could be done by placing adverts in medical journals, but mainly, in those days, by direct mail, the effectiveness of which was the subject of much debate, since it was difficult to measure, and it was an observable fact that, as the frequency and volume of these 'mailing shots' grew, an ever decreasing number of their recipients found themselves with the time or the inclination to open them before binning them. But of more practical importance was the product information literature designed to be left with the doctors by the reps when calling on them, and a great deal if ingenuity went into designing items that might be retained by the doctor and remind him of a product's name, indications, and dosage.

Not quite all our advertising effort was directed towards the medical profession, however. Patients could not be approached directly, of course, but they could be reached and informed about the wonders of a drug which their doctors had the power to prescribe for them, by feeding carefully drafted items to the press about a newly developed drug for the treatment, or prevention of a disease, without actually mentioning it by name. Properly handled, this was surprisingly easy to do, since news editors were quite receptive to the free gift of a news item of likely reader interest from reputable sources. Our most frequent use of this technique was in the promotion of our influenza vaccine by ensuring that any pronouncement by the World Health Organisation about the likelihood of a flu epidemic in the approaching winter, and of the availability of a vaccine against the strain of virus involved, was widely publicised. Even today, when reading my newspaper, I find myself noting the 'news items' which I feel sure have originated in the 'Public Relations Department' of some commercial firm.

The role of the Product Managers, as the name implies, was to concentrate their attentions on individual products to a greater extent than was possible for the Marketing and Sales Managers. All ex-reps, of course, they were eventually four in number, the first two being Mike and George, of course, and there were two aspects to the job, the first was to seek out, calibrate, and investigate every scrap of information available anywhere in the world about the clinical effectiveness of their own products and also of their competitors, the second, to prepare and submit to the Marketing Manager, proposals, based on this research, for the better promotion of these products together with estimates of any increases in sales which might result.

This meant that the Product Managers were, to a certain extent, in competition with each other for the finite amount of promotional effort available, but only theoretically, since the overriding objective, shared by all, was to increase our total sales, because it was only by doing this that our wages could be justified. We were united in pursuit of a single objective - to increase the company's market share - and I feel confident that there are few more rewarding workplace experiences available than those I enjoyed during the four years I spent as part of that marketing team at Basingstoke.

It was no bed of roses, of course, and it would all end in tears, but while it lasted, it was totally absorbing, stimulating, and entertaining, even amusing, and, for me at least, untroubled by doubts about our ultimate success. To which end, we continued to promote the Duphar range with new additions every couple of years, together with any viable products from the old Crookes range, all of them effective medicaments, some uniquely so, but not, alas, against ailments which were sufficiently common to generate the volume of sales needed to support the organisation and management structure being created in Basingstoke. In order to do that, our Marketing Plan required us to find new products from other sources, for which purpose we employed a New Products Manager whose job it was to conduct a Product Search.

This was a perfectly valid strategy at the time, since the marketing of drugs by one firm under licence to another was an accepted practice. The big international drug firms, mainly American, British, Swiss and German, were well established in the UK with their own sales forces backed by their own research facilities, but there were smaller firms elsewhere in Europe who were capable of discovering, developing and marketing new drugs locally which they lacked the resources to exploit internationally. The success of our search for such products was dependent on a number of factors, not the least of which being that Crookes would be in competition with other drug firms who were also out there questing, some of them with bigger names and more resources than ours.

Obviously, any new drug already showing promise in the treatment of a commonly occurring condition would be much sought after and usually won by the firm which appeared to its patentee to be best equipped to exploit its market potential under licence. And, since Crookes, in spite of the growth in size and effectiveness of its sales force, was still in the Second Division as regards UK sales performance, we could be left with a choice between products that were less convincingly effective, or effective against less lucrative diseases, or at too early a stage of development to inspire confidence in their potential. It was ultimately a matter of judgement, and not without risk, but, as Frank was fond of reminding us, all decisions involve taking a risk, and, although market research, however much you do, can never make your decisions for you, it can reduce the area of risk.

As sales manager, I became involved in a new product only when the preliminaries had been completed, and, although all three of those we obtained under licence in this way from Sweden, Italy and Czechoslovakia, respectively, were unquestionably effective and eminently promotable, only the last one was a winner. But they all kept me equally busy. During those four years between 1966 and 1970, my workdays were fuller than at any other time in my life. Inside the office, there were planning meetings with our marketing team, with visitors from Duphar and with our new associates in Malmo, Milan and Prague, plus training courses for new reps which usually ran for a fortnight; and outside the office, there were regular national sales conferences in London, each of which was followed by a series of regional follow-up conferences, and for the organisation of all of which, I was responsible; and there were visits to Amsterdam, Malmo and Milan (I never got to Prague), and even a training course at Ashridge Management College. It was all go, as they say, but enjoyable and productive.

Other claims were made on my time, however, that were neither enjoyable nor productive. Our Managing Director, Michael, had a brilliant, but rather academic mind, which was much taken with the 'lateral thinking' that was fashionable at the time, and took it upon himself to invite other, even more brilliant minds, from his old university, to come to Basingstoke, and, for a suitable fee, examine our activities in the hope that the brilliance of their minds and the freshness of their vision would grant them insights, and identify possibilities which had hitherto escaped our notice. Unfortunately, however, before these minds could bring their brilliance to bear on our activities, they needed to brief themselves about the workings of the pharmaceutical industry, and the only way they could do this was by cross-examining experts on the subject, to wit, us, the Marketing Team, at time-consuming length.

In the end, we had to go to Michael and point out to him that, in line with our commitment to Management by Objectives, we had agreed, under the Marketing Plan, that, given certain inputs, we would achieve certain outputs, but, if the demands on our time were increased in ways which were not included in our job descriptions, and distracted us from the tasks which were, then the agreed outputs could no longer be guaranteed. Logician that he was, he had no alternative but to agree, and the intrusions, from which nothing of value had so far emerged, were discontinued, at least as far as we were concerned. For future reference, it is worth noting, here, that management by objectives can only be effective when inputs can be controlled and outputs measured.

During this period, the felicities of my working life were mirrored, to a gratifying extent, in my home life, where, in addition to getting the house and garden into shape, Anne and I were kept happily busy by the demands of parenthood and our social commitments outside the home. The only problem we encountered was with the County of Hampshire's public education system. Helen had always been, a very bright child, and the local primary school in Australia, had quickly selected her for their Special Opportunity Class, but she arrived in Fleet to find herself confronted, in her eleventh year, by a competitive selection process for admission to the local grammar school which was based, not on an aptitude test, but on an acquired knowledge test, for which the local children had been preparing themselves for years, many of them at the private cramming schools which were a feature of the county. Unsurprisingly, she failed to qualify for a place at the grammar school in Farnborough, and was assigned to the local Secondary Modern School in Fleet. This was so unfair to Helen that, against all our principles, we felt obliged to consider the options for 'going private'.

Fortunately for us, their was a small independent school for girls aged 3 – 16, and boys aged 3 – 7, in Fleet, called St Nicholas', but always referred to as 'St.Nick's'. In those days, it was housed in an assortment of nondescript buildings in the centre of the town, just off the High Street, and presided over by a couple of formidable ladies who seemed to exercise a perfectly adequate degree of control over their lively young charges without appearing to do so. They were, the headmistress, Miss Featherstonehaugh, invariably shortened to 'Feather', and her strong right arm, Mrs Hoffman, ditto to 'Hoffy'. The school had a rather makeshift air about it, but there was nothing makeshift about the teaching regimen, as Helen was to discover, and the competition between the girls to excel academically was fierce - but friendly, of course. We found that the fees were affordable, and, after giving us the once over, they agreed to accept Helen as soon as a vacancy occurred, which was due to happen, thankfully, at the end of the current term. Needless to say, Helen was very happy at St Nick's, made a lot of friends there, and left with a large number of good quality GCE 'O' Levels. Since when, St.Nick's has gone from strength to strength, and now occupies a large and very imposing building on the outskirts of Fleet, as a visit to its website will confirm.

Although Hampshire was 'foreign' territory to us, being far from our roots in Yorkshire, there were two mitigating factors. The first was that most of our new neighbours were in the same boat, and only too happy, therefore, to relate to the strangers around them. The second, and more important, was that we had, in effect, brought a circle of friends with us. Our young friend, Mike, had followed our lead and bought himself into Fleet by acquiring a bijou maisonette in a newly built block within easy reach of the railway station, where he was shortly to be joined by his new bride, none other than my ex-secretary, the lovely Pauline, who, having elected not to transfer to Basingstoke as a Crookes employee, had succumbed to Mike's ardent wooing shortly afterwards. For the next few years, Mike and Pauline were to become our closest friends, because Anne and Pauline took an instant liking to each other, and, living as close to them as we did, the four of us and our offspring were frequently in each others' company. In addition to which, our old friends Frank and Joyce were living only a short drive away in the village of Oakley, just the other side of Basingstoke, and George and his Pauline in the village of Tadley, a couple of miles north of Basingstoke. So we were seldom lacking in congenial company outside working hours, and most of our weekends were given over to entertaining friends or being entertained by them.

Our new home was sufficiently commodious also to allow us to entertain visitors from further afield, and, as soon as we were settled in, we began to invite friends and family members down for overnight stays. Gerry and Jessie became regular visitors, as did we to them, but Cliff and Rosemary paid us only the single visit which the exigencies of dairy farming allowed them, although we were always welcome to visit them. Anne's mother came, but my favourite visitor was my own dear mother, even when accompanied, as she usually was, by Auntie Annie, and I'm happy to report that she was actually present when her latest grandchild took his first staggering steps across the hearthrug to the accompaniment of loud applause from his admiring relatives.

Our forays into the outside world were restricted by Paul's needs for care and attention during his early years, but, as soon as he was a pottie-trained toddler our predilection for family summer holidays by the seaside re-asserted itself, beginning with a couple of weeks in Teignmouth at a small hotel which specialised in accommodating young children. The weather was good, if a little bracing, and the beach was bearable, and we enjoyed ourselves, but my thoughts kept turning to sunny Spain and the Mediterranean, so, the following year, I began to look into the possibility of taking our next summer holiday on the Costa Brava.

After trawling through the available brochures, I concluded that, if we travelled there by company car and rented a self-catering apartment in some less than fashionable resort, we could just about afford it. Such a resort, I found, was Blanes (Blanez), which, like San Fileu, was an established municipality with a long history behind it before the tourist invasion began. It was situated at the very bottom end of the Costa Brava, and boasted, in addition to the required sun, sea, and sand, a useful railway link with Barcelona to the south, and, not having been developed from scratch as a 'package holiday' destination, its beaches were fringed with self-catering apartments rather than multi-storey hotels.

When it became known that we were thinking of driving down to Blanes for a holiday in a rented apartment, Frank began asking questions which indicated more than a passing interest in our plans, and finally surprised me by asking if our two families could make a joint venture out of it, travelling in separate cars and renting adjacent apartments. It was a request we could hardly refuse, although Anne had some misgivings about the scheme. Frank and Joyce were close friends, but she didn't enjoy quite the rapport with them that she had with Mike and Pauline. But there were obvious advantages in having them along to share the journey and socialise with once we got there, and Helen, of course, was delighted at the prospect Stephen and Michael's company for a fortnight, so we bowed to the inevitable, and I'm happy to report that, in the event, the holiday passed off without undue mishap, but it was not an unqualified success.

There were no problems with the travel arrangements. We crossed the Channel, drove down through France, making one overnight stop at L'Auberge de la Cascade in Souillac, entered Spain at Port Bou, and arrived in Blanes to find the apartments were everything the brochure had promised - quite modern, adjacent to the Botanical Gardens, overlooking the sea and within easy walking distance of the town centre and beaches. Their one drawback was that their proximity to the Botanical Gardens exposed them to nightly incursions from the mosquitoes breeding in its ornamental pools, but there was nothing we could do about that, except keep the windows closed, and spray around. So, all the makings of an excellent holiday were in place – the weather was perfect, the sea was blue, and the beaches were golden, and all went well at first.

Frank and Joyce hadn't travelled abroad before, and found it difficult to accept the financial discipline imposed on self-catering holidaymakers by the need to survive for a fortnight in Spain without, in 1968, the support of ATMs and credit cards. Their many accomplishments did not include an ability to manage their family finances efficiently, and, in spite of their joint earning power, and possibly because of the burden of Stephen and Michael's school fees, they always seemed to be struggling to make ends meet domestically. Prior to our departure, I had given Frank my best estimate of the amount of money he would need to take with him to cover the costs of getting to Blanes, and supporting the family for a fortnight, basing it on the assumption that we would be self-catering, and spending only sparingly on restaurant meals and outside entertainment. I had not thought it appropriate to lecture him on the importance, once there, of budgeting for a daily expenditure which would ensure that his finite resources would last him until the end of the holiday. It seemed a thing too obvious to mention. But my confidence in him proved to be misplaced.

Even before we reached Blanes, it became clear that Frank was having trouble shedding the spending habits he had acquired from the use of his expense-account for business entertainment purposes back home, added to which, the presence of his two teenage sons seemed to inspire him into over-extravagant gestures, particularly when we were dining out en masse, during the journey, and on the first evening of our arrival in Blanes. Since there were eight of us of different ages and tastes to be catered for, these occasions were not particularly easy to manage, thanks to the complexities of the ordering, the length of time it took for the food to arrive, and the need to sort out the resulting bill. But Frank added further complications by ordering 'a la carte' for himself instead of 'table d'hote', which inevitably took longer to prepare and cost more, and by opting for his favourite vintage wine rather than vin du table, regardless of price. Needless to say, Anne and I made certain that these occasions were not repeated, and any future extramural indulgences of a communal nature restricted to rounds of drinks in cafes and bars.

The self-catering, too, found Frank and Joyce wanting. Not that Anne and I found it easy, since we had never self-catered in Spain before, nor even been to Blanes before, so we were feeling our way around gingerly at first, but soon contrived to get a sufficient grip on the shopping and the cooking facilities available in the apartment to enable Anne's culinary skills to flourish. Our travelling companions, on the other hand, found shopping in a foreign language and cooking with unfamiliar equipment more difficult to come to terms with, and fell back on such takeaway food as was available down in the town, like the spit-roasted chickens that were making an appearance on the European scene – not as expensive as restaurant meals, certainly, but not as economical as home cooking. Unsurprisingly, and, inevitably, Anne found it difficult to avoid cooking meals for the eight of us from time to time, which, needless to say, we all enjoyed.

Then, after a couple of days on the beach, Frank decided that it would be wrong to waste the unique opportunity offered by our presence in Spain to enjoy the authentic Spanish experience of a bullfight. He had heard me enthusing, in days gone by, about the corridas I had witnessed while serving in Gibraltar, and was keen to see one for himself. Our enquiries revealed that, while there was nothing available at the bullring in Blanes, there was a bullfight scheduled for the coming Sunday in Barcelona, which, thanks to the railway, was within relatively easy reach. The boys, of course, were keen to go, as was Helen, but my recollections of the quality of the bullfights I had attended in Barcelona in the company of the 'Boys from Pontefract', fifteen years earlier made me reluctant to incur the expense of making the trip myself, and Anne and Joyce were simply not interested. In the end, it was decided that Frank would take Stephen, Michael and Helen to Barcelona for the day to see a bullfight, and that I would pay whatever it cost for Helen. So, leaving Joyce, Anne, Paul and me to spend an nice quiet day on the beach, off they went, to return tired and hungry, but triumphant, late at night.

It became clear, however, that the expedition had only been a success, to the extent that they had reached Barcelona, seen a bullfight, and returned safely, as it emerged that Helen had become so upset by the treatment of the bulls, that she had thrown an uncharacteristic public tantrum, screaming her disapproval and bursting into tears, which had put a damper on the occasion, and, although we paid Helen's way, the expense for Frank and his two boys had been quite considerable. The cumulative effect of all this was that, by the end of the second week, Frank was running out of money, and calling for belt-tightening all round, and, being Frank, looking reproachfully at me for (a) not being in the same boat, and (b) allowing him to be in it. It was uncomfortable, but not unbearable, and Anne and I did what we could to ease their pain, but things got worse during the journey back home when , we had to start bailing them out financially, imposing economies on ourselves which were made harder to bear by their apparent inability to do the same, and tempers began to fray - Anne's in particular.

Matters finally came to a head on the cross-channel ferry when we went into the self-service cafeteria to spend the last of my money on as much food as it would buy for the eight of us. After a considerable amount of discussion, poring over the bill of fare, we agreed on exactly what could be afforded for each of us, before picking up our trays, and joining the queue, only to discover, when we arrived at the check-out, that Stephen and Michael had exceeded their agreed quota, leaving me with no alternative but to make them replace the offending items and negotiate a reduction in the bill, something which didn't go down well with the catering staff, nor did the delays this manoeuvre cause appeal to the customers in the queue behind us. It was an embarrassing shambles, and a sad end to what had been, until the last couple of days, a reasonably enjoyable holiday, which we managed to survive with our friendships intact, although it was a week or two before Anne could bring herself to resume normal service. There was a funny side to it, of course, and I shall never forget the look on Frank's face when he realised that I couldn't lend him the money to buy his allowance of duty free cigarettes.

As far as I am aware, Frank and Joyce never holidayed abroad again, but we, of course, did. The following year we cashed in on our hard-earned previous experience of self-catering in Blanes to holiday there again, this time in the company of Mike and Pauline and their three-year old daughter Joanne. There were two big differences from the previous year, the first being that we made the journey in only one car, an accomplishment made possible by a change in the Company Car Plan which had put at my disposal a vehicle of unusual size for a family saloon called a Ford Zephyr/Zodiac. Apart from being very roomy in the back, this model featured, thanks to a steering column gear stick, a bench seat in the front which could accommodate two passengers in addition to the driver. This meant that Anne and Pauline could be comfortable in the back with Paul and Joanne, while Helen sat in the front between Mike and me as we took turns at driving and navigating. The second difference was that, as a result of the previous year's scouting, we had booked cheaper apartments at the other end of the town from the Botanical Gardens, in a busy street full of shops and restaurants of various kinds but only a few steps from the beach.

These arrangements worked like a dream. The journeys there and back were no hardship at all, Mike and me sharing the driving and navigation, and Anne and Pauline spared the ordeal imposed on front seat passengers by the requirement to drive on the right in a British-made car. The apartments were cheerfully Spartan with adequate cooking facilities and fridges, and we quickly agreed among ourselves that we would eat out together on alternate evenings and each take turns at cooking a meal for all of us on the evenings in between, with the result that every meal became a festive occasion, and, since we were all on the same wavelength, nobody was required to make allowances for anybody else, and Mike and I were sufficiently confident in each other's scruples for the financial arrangements to take care of themselves. It was a wonderful holiday – the beaches were good, the sea was good, the food was good, the booze was very good, and the company was excellent, in spite of which, this was to be the last time we would holiday abroad by car.

There were two reasons for this The main one was that long distance road journeys, particularly when driving on the 'wrong' side of the road, did not agree with Anne at all, even when travelling in the back, and certainly not when in the front, and I finally came to the conclusion that this was a result of her inability to 'switch off' that remarkable acuity of her visual perceptions which was such a useful gift in other respects. If her eyes were open, she simply couldn't close her mind to the images in the passing scene which were flashing past too quickly for her brain to process them until the end of the journey, when her mind would remain in turmoil for at least a day and night. This meant that she could return from what had been a very enjoyable and relaxing holiday feeling quite 'stressed out', as they say.

So, from that year onward, we took our annual Mediterranean holidays as 'package deals', flying out, usually from Gatwick, and leaving the car behind, something for which even I was thankful, since, unlike some of my acquaintances, I have never enjoyed driving for its own sake, always regarding it as a skill to be exercised whenever necessary, taking pleasure only from doing it well. This decision to change our approach to holidaying abroad was made even easier by the fact that we were soon to be denied the use of a Company Car, an eventuality which was to take me completely by surprise.

7

Meanwhile, back in the all-important world of work, two significant developments had occurred, one very favourable, the other not too unfavourable, or so it seemed to me at the time. The former was the acquisition by Crookes, under licence, of a new product that promised, at last, to be a real money spinner, in that it was not only effective, but effective in a very large market. It was an antidepressant, and it had been discovered and developed in Czechoslovakia, then a communist country behind the Iron Curtain, which may be one of the reasons why a relatively small British firm like Crookes was able to get hold of it. Its name was Prothiaden, and, although I played no part in its acquisition, I look back on my contribution to the successful launch and promotion of it with considerable pride as being both the pinnacle, and, as it turned out, a fitting finale to my career in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

I can also derive a certain amount of satisfaction from my handling of the other noteworthy development, which was the decision by Philips to create a separate UK subsidiary for Duphar. This new entity would inherit all the Duphar products we were currently promoting and half our existing sales force. All this by arrangement with Guinness, of course, who would now assume full ownership of Crookes. Although this move came as a bit of a shock at the time, and involved me in a considerable amount of extra work, there were a number of benefits to be derived from it. For my part, I had done my surreptitious best to ensure that the reps retained by Crookes were better performers than the ones we passed on to Duphar, and the whole marketing team was relieved of the unremitting attentions of our Dutch opposite numbers, which came as a relief, because our involvement with them had always been a one-sided affair, from which we had derived little tangible benefit. And, thanks to our New Products Department, we now had a range of products of our own, on which we could concentrate our efforts, Prothiaden in particular, a development which may have contributed to Duphar's decision to go it alone. It was a golden opportunity, too, when recruiting and training reps to fill the newly vacant territories, to break with precedent and employ several young females, all of whom turned out well. I think we were the first pharmaceutical company to do so.

The marketing of Prothiaden called for a considerable amount of forward planning by the entire marketing team, and the principal problem facing me, as Sales Manager, was the one which is inevitably created by the launch of a new treatment for a disease, or condition, about which the sales force currently knows little or nothing. One of the odd things about being a medical rep is that you can become a walking encyclopaedia on the subject of certain diseases while remaining relatively ignorant about others, and, since the treatment of mental illnesses was an entirely new field for Crookes, my first task would be to educate the reps on the subject before moving on to the drug itself. The accepted way of doing this was to bring the entire sales force in for a training course, something which would have been doubly expensive, since, in addition to the travel and accommodation costs involved, every day a rep is off his territory is a day's work lost, and it says much for the ingenuity of our marketing team that between us we devised and implemented a novel and much cheaper solution to this problem.

In doing so, we took advantage of the technique of Programmed Learning, which had recently been devised by the behaviourist B.F.Skinner. The method relied for its success on presenting the student with written information in small bites or 'frames', each one ending with a searching question which the student had to answer before being directed, if the answer was incorrect, to additional information, or, if correct, to the next frame, thus providing the student with immediate feedback, both positive or negative, all the way through to the end of the programme. The big attraction for us was that this form of instruction could be undertaken at any pace, at any time, virtually anywhere, which was just what we needed. And it was remarkably cheap. We hired our own programmer, and our own clinical psychiatrist, and put them together with the product manager to form the creative team. The outcome was a three-part programme on the diagnosis and treatment of clinical depression, which, although making no mention of Prothiaden, pointed, quite logically, toward the need for a drug with its unique properties. After field testing the programme, we had it printed in three, pocket sized volumes with flip-over bindings for ease of transition from one frame to the next, and sent them out to the reps, one at a time, over the three weeks before a one-day national sales conference, with instructions to take time off towards the end of a working day (if necessary) to work through them.

For the methodology to be fully effective, however, it was important for the completion of the programme to be followed by a 'reinforcement' exercise during which the student is required to utilise the newly acquired knowledge in some way, preferably by verbalising it in discussion with another student. To this end, we arranged for the reps to arrive at the hotel early enough in the evening before the conference to be divided into small groups, each one monitored by a member of the marketing team, and spend the hour before dinner discussing leading questions about the diagnosis and treatment of depression. It was a gratifying experience to watch the reps elaborating with growing confidence, often to their own surprise (judging by the look on their faces), on matters about which they had so recently been quite ignorant. All we had to do, the following day, was tell them about Prothiaden and how to promote it.

The story of the Learning Programme did not end there, because it had been designed to serve a second purpose. So effective was it, so convenient to use, and cheap to produce, that we could afford to make it freely available to any prescribing doctor who wanted it, not by mailing it out indiscriminately, but by allowing the reps to offer it to individual doctors during their initial presentation of Prothiaden. This approach produced a gratifyingly large demand for the first volume, which could then be followed up, via the post, by the second and third volumes in mailings that were more likely than usual to be well-received, and which contained further promotional material about Prothiaden. It may have been clever marketing, but there can be no doubt that our Learning Programme on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Depression satisfied a need that was felt by many GPs at the time, since antidepressant drugs had appeared on the scene after most of them had qualified and begun to practice, and their understanding of how they could be used in the treatment of mental illness, and of the illness itself, was, in many cases, deficient.

The launch of Prothiaden was an undoubted success and, even with our depleted sales force (which I was striving to bring back up to strength with new recruits), our sales of it and our remaining products continued to increase steadily, if not spectacularly, over the months that followed. These were happy and absorbing times for me, and so pre-occupied was I with my daily duties that I paid little attention to anything going on, around and above me in the company, which didn't affect me personally, leaving all that for Frank to worry about. Thus, my recollection of what actually was going on around and above me in the company at the time, is much less than perfect and, since neither Frank nor Mike is any longer available to fill in the blanks, I must do my best to make sense of the sequence of events that led to our collective downfall.

One thing I knew for sure was that Arthur Guinness and Company Ltd. were uncomfortable with their ownership of Crookes Laboratories. They always had been, and now that they were sole owners they were even more uncomfortable. Accustomed as they were to the simplicities of brewing and selling beer, they seemed unable to get their minds round the complexities of the pharmaceutical industry. They were a company who could increase their sales by stepping up their famous advertising campaigns, or increase their profitability by improving their production and distribution methods. This and their feudal internal management structure made it difficult for us to even talk intelligently to them about what we were doing. Their incomprehension had not mattered too much as long as there was a Philips-appointed director on the Crookes board who understood the business we were in, but once he was gone, the gap between us widened. The Philips board member had been a well-qualified and ebullient individual with a strong Northern Irish accent who would pass among us from time to time, cracking jokes and gathering information for himself. He once confided that “I view any organisation I have to deal with as a black box. I don't need to know what goes on inside. All I need to find out, by trial and error, is how to put a request into one end of it that will produce the result I am seeking at the other. I have yet to find a way of doing this with Guinness”.

Another thing I knew was that our bright young MD, Michael, who was our principal link with Guinness, was becoming more of a liability than an asset This was largely due to his constitutional inability to sit still, either physically or mentally. The daily demands made on him by his duties at Basingstoke seemed insufficient to satisfy his urge to make some personal contribution to the company's performance that did not involve intruding on the domain of the marketing team, which he had no wish to do. To this end his days seemed to be spent in a constant round of meetings and lunches – mainly in London, of course – with anyone whose reputation indicated that they might be able to help. As a result of his obsessive networking, the pages of his appointments diary became scarred with so many alterations and insertions that they were virtually illegible. There is a belief held by experienced managers, that, when acquiring the skills you require to be successful, the last one you learn to exercise, when appropriate, is masterly inactivity, and it was clear to us that this was a concept to which Michael would forever be a stranger.

An additional problem was that his intellectual equipment did not include an ability to empathise with the feelings of others, or even relate to the world around him in anything but abstract terms. He was a good-natured, well-meaning man but could treat people unkindly without realising he was doing so. When it was pointed out to him that it was bad form to leave his chauffeur sitting outside, unfed, for hours, while he enjoyed one of his frequent business lunches inside, he would express both surprise and genuine contrition and make a mental note never to do it again. To quote Frank on the subject “He's like a blind man in a dark room finding where the furniture is by stumbling over it”. It was rumoured, also, that he had a private fortune, or his wife had, and that some of his energies were being expended on the stock market speculations that were such a feature of the late 1960s. Whatever the contributory factors, it became apparent, even to me, labouring down at the coalface that Guinness were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of Crookes Laboratories and with the apparent inability of the Managing Director to do anything about it.

It was all a bit worrying, but I couldn't see how it affected me. Sales were above forecast, recruiting was going well, and I even found myself promoted from Sales Manager to General Sales Manager (Home and Overseas) on the retirement of the Export Manager, who was a long-serving old Crookes hand. My only problems during the winter of 1969-70 were back at home where Anne was suffering from incapacitating pains in her back. What was causing them, we never really found out. She had the usual X Rays and consultations with the local orthopaedic surgeon, but no clear diagnosis emerged, and, in the end she was in enough pain to be admitted to Farnham Hospital for observation and treatment. There she was given a series of pain killers which seemed only to make her more distressed until finally they found the right one, and she began to respond to bed rest and physiotherapy, without the need for any of the risky surgical interventions which could be resorted to, on a hit or miss basis, in such cases.

[My examinations of the many 'bad back' patients who passed through my hands as a radiographer, plus a couple of 'bad back' episodes of my own in my early days, had long ago persuaded me of the importance of ensuring that my spinal column was maintained in a fit enough state to withstand the strains and stresses imposed on it by our 'unnatural' modern life style, and I decided that the best way of doing this would be to prevent the degeneration of the all-important rubbery discs between the 24 vertebrae of the spinal column, which might result from their improper use or under-exercise. To this end, I had devised a series of simple spine-flexing routines which I have performed every night of my life since my early thirties (wherever I am and whatever my inclination) before dropping into bed. These callisthenics take up only a couple of minutes of my time, and, after fifty years, are still having the desired effect. The best way of dealing with a 'bad back', it seems, is to prevent it from occurring]

Anne's back problem was disturbing enough on the home front while it lasted, but nothing like as disturbing as the developments which began to take place, shortly afterwards, at the office. For reasons which will shortly become apparent, my recollection of the exact sequence of events at the time are somewhat confused, but it all began with the appointment, by Guinness, of a sort of high-level 'troubleshooter', who was, I think, a member of the Guinness Board, and had probably been a 'brewer', with all that that implies. What his other qualifications were, remained unclear, but it was obvious that he had enough authority behind him to get things done. What things, we could only guess at, but, when he first came among us, he assured us that his role would be that of a company doctor (a fashionable term at the time) not a surgeon!

Shortly after his appointment, however, our young Managing Director, Michael, was spirited away to somewhere else in the Guinness empire, and was replaced, to everybody's surprise, by the elderly accountant who had been the Company Secretary when Crookes was taken over by Guinness and Philips, and was now the Finance Director, and who I have earlier described, with some justification, as a King Log who became the Great Survivor. He was certainly over-parted by the role of managing director, but we assumed this was a temporary measure, pending the appointment of a more suitable candidate for the post. And, for reasons already given, Michael's removal came as no great surprise.

Unlike the next development, which came as quite a shock, because the rationale behind it was difficult to discern. It was announced that Frank had been side-lined as Marketing Manager (Medical Division) by the appointment, over his head, of the Marketing Manager (Veterinary Division), who was, I think, a qualified veterinary surgeon, although he certainly didn't look like one. Tall, urbane, rimlessly bespectacled, and elegantly suited (never without a waistcoat), he had been a remote, but not unfriendly presence in another part of the building, with whom I had had little reason to deal direct as we ploughed our separate furrows in two very different markets.

Although in the business of selling pharmaceuticals, the Veterinary Division was smaller than the Medical Division, and had been plodding along, unambitiously, since the takeover with pretty much the same range of products as before, but in a quietly successful way, with a small sales force who dealt mainly with vets and agricultural wholesalers. So the appointment didn't make much sense to me, but so immersed was I in the daily discharge of my responsibilities for the management of the sales force and the promotion of Prothiaden, and so confident was I in the value of this contribution to the Company's well-being, that, pending further enlightenment, I simply accepted the new arrangement as a fait accompli, rearranged my company organisation chart accordingly, and went about my business as usual.

This development occurred whilst I was busily engaged in setting up the Regional Follow-up Conferences which were always held a month or so after the National Conference in order to review progress on the new detailing programme and exchange ideas about increasing its effectiveness, and I was given to understand that our new Chairman (as he was designated) had decided to take advantage of these arrangements to introduce himself to all the medical reps, in person, by accompanying me to these conferences, the first of which was only a couple of weeks away. So, when I received a call to his office, I assumed it was to discuss these matters, and made my way there, carrying the appropriate papers, expecting to do so. On entering his office, I was surprised to find him sitting behind his desk, with the window blinds drawn behind him, looking away from me with a sombre expression on his face, and when I sat down opposite him, I fleetingly noticed that there was an envelope lying on his desk in front of me. His actual words, when he began to speak, I can't remember, except they were not what I was expecting to hear, but they began along the lines of 'this hurts me as much as it hurts you' and continued until it finally penetrated my consciousness that he was giving me the sack.

To quote from the letter lying in front of me, the content of which was now revealed, 'It is with regret that we have to advise you that owing to the rationalisation of the Medical Marketing Company the position of Sales Manager will cease to exist from 1st April 1970. We regret therefore that with effect from that date you will be declared redundant.', and, as the awful truth dawned on me, my mind went into a state of shocked incomprehension. I staggered out of his office, and along the corridor to Frank's office where I deduced, from the expression on his face and the sight of his secretary weeping, that the news of my dismissal was out, but I can't remember what was said, nor, indeed, much of what I did, during my final moments in the building in which I had worked so confidently since returning from Australia. I wandered, in a daze, downstairs to my office to find my own secretary, who had also been made redundant, also in tears. There, I somehow gathered my personal belongings together and exchanged a few words with my ex-colleagues before making my way home. I probably shouldn't have been allowed to drive, because, when I began telling Anne why I was home early, I felt my knees turn to jelly and was obliged to go and lie down for a few minutes - the only time in my life that such a thing has happened.

It took me some time to recover from the initial shock, during which I strove, without success, to come to terms with my dismissal. The problem was that I couldn't make sense of it. I simply could not understand it. By any objective criteria, such as the comparative sales figures of all drug firms in the UK, as published in the British Pharmaceutical Index, my performance as Sales Manager during the past three years had been first class, and my working relationships with the sales force and my colleagues in the office had been beyond reproach – I was inundated with letters of sympathy from most of them (encouraged by Frank!), deploring the Company's treatment of me and rooting for my reinstatement. I walked round and round Tweseledown, with Bonney at my heels, day after day, churning the circumstances over and over in my mind, searching for an explanation, until one day, in virtual mid-stride, I suddenly saw that the only way to deal with my predicament was to treat it as some sort of Test, sent to me, for inscrutable reasons, by the God I didn't believe in, and to simply set about passing it. The effect of this revelation, which sprang unbidden from my troubled mind, was dramatic, bringing with it, as it did, the realisation that I still had a full-time job called 'Finding a Job', in the execution of which, putting the past behind me, I could bring all my accumulated skills and knowledge to bear.

7

I calculated that my severance entitlements from Crookes, augmented by the very modest sum they had given me, ex gratia, as 'compensation for the loss of your position', plus my unemployment benefits from the Government, would add up to enough to allow the Scott family to survive, in suitably reduced circumstances, for about nine months, possibly a year, before we would be obliged to sell the house and move on. My first step, therefore, was to 'sign on' at the 'Labour Exchange', of which there was a small branch in Fleet, catering, as you would expect, for a select group of well-dressed and well-spoken clients, some of whom I would get to know quite well in the coming months, and most of whom had, like me, put themselves on the Department of Employment's Professional and Executive Register in the hope that something useful might emerge from the lists of job vacancies it circulated among us. My main hope, however, lay in the 'situation vacant' adverts in the quality newspapers, among which my daily Guardian and weekly Observer were numbered, of course, but The Daily Telegraph reigned supreme, its Thursday edition in particular, and I set about combing through these columns and following each and every possible lead, as I had learned to do, years before, as a medical rep.

After it was all over, I calculated that I had averaged about two job interviews a week for nearly six months. During the course of my quest I travelled all over the country, even going abroad to Brussels on one occasion, and met a wide variety of potential employers, some of whom did not impress me at all. I didn't limit myself to jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, which were, at my level, very few and far between, but I did feel entitled, given my experience and past achievements, to apply for jobs in other spheres which were of a similar nature and rank to the one I had left behind, and I rarely found myself being interviewed for a job I felt I couldn't have coped with.

I soon realised, however, that the biggest obstacle to getting a job was being out of a job, and I feel pretty sure that, if I'd applied for those same jobs while still in my post at Crookes, many of them would have been offered to me. The very fact that I had been made redundant counted against me, and I was labouring under an additional disadvantage. My excellent references, backed up, as they were, by unimpeachable statistics, only served to compound my difficulty in explaining why I had been made redundant. This anomaly aroused suspicion, and I was probed about it on a number of occasions, one interviewer going as far as to ask whether it was because I'd been having an adulterous relationship with my secretary, or the boss's wife!

It was not until I'd been job-hunting for some time that I finally had the reason for my dismissal given to me, out of the blue, during the course of an interview, not for a specific job, but to explore the possibility of a job, with another drug firm. When the subject came up, the Marketing Manager, who I had known as a medical rep, and was well-disposed towards me, said, 'Oh, I can tell you why you were made redundant. It's because Guinness have been trying to sell Crookes, on the quiet, for months, hawking it round prospective buyers in the industry. Getting rid of your salary will have made the package look more attractive, and the loss of your services won't be felt until after the sale is made'. So, that was it! A stroke of the pen in the company's accounts to improve the bottom line. A simple piece of cosmetic surgery. Nothing personal. But it didn't make me feel any better.

Another drawback was my age. At 45, I was seen by some prospective employers as being over the hill - a spent force. Many of the job adverts seemed to be looking for energetic young men in their twenties with proven records of successful achievement behind them, so I was intrigued to come across an ad inviting applications from men (and women), aged between 35 and 50, to fill 'about' 40 posts as Principals in the Civil Service at a starting salary similar to the one I had been getting at Crookes. The only qualifications required were that the applicants should have managerial experience in industry or commerce, and need not have an academic degree, but could demonstrate the intellectual abilities of a good honours graduate. This highly unusual item had been placed by the Civil Service Commission, and appeared quite soon after my sequestration. Needless to say, I sent off, without delay, for an application form which arrived in the company of a good deal of explanatory information.

A lot of it was about the status and importance of the rank and duties of a Principal in Her Majesty's Civil Service, and made some reference, I think, to the fact that direct entry into this level of the hierarchy was a recent innovation resulting from a recommendation in a report by one Lord Fulton, but of more immediate concern to me was the revelation that applicants would be required to enter and pass an Open Competition of the traditional civil service type. I felt no qualms about that, but what's this? The competition will consist of a two day written exam in June, to be followed by a three day Selection Board in September, to be followed by a Final Interview in November with a view to the successful candidates starting work next January! What use to me was that? I needed a job right now, and would surely have found one long before then. But I was attracted by the idea of a competitive exam. It would fit nicely into the self-imposed regimen of mental and physical activity I had adopted to prevent my faculties degenerating during my enforced idleness, and was I not, in any case, committed to following all leads? So I filled in the application form and sent it off.

Back came, not only the details of when and where the written examinations were to be held, but several examples of recent exam papers for me to study beforehand, and I was gratified to find that, as promised, the questions required no specialised knowledge to answer, but were cleverly designed to test for comprehension, literacy and numeracy. I would later learn that about 1500 hopefuls sat the exams, which were held at several regional centres, in my case, London's Kensington Town Hall which, still unemployed, I duly attended on the appointed day. I found the experience both challenging and enjoyable, and when the results were published, was delighted to discover that, thanks to points awarded for my age, I had scraped across the line to become one of the 80 finalists invited to attend the Selection Board at premises in, of all places, Saville Row,W1., famous for its bespoke tailoring.

By the time the Selection Board was due to be held, however, I had finally found myself a job, but only after lowering my sights very considerably and applying, in desperation, for a post as a humble Medical Representative with the drug firm called Eli Lilly, which, although of American origin, and of a similar vintage to Upjohn, was of greater size and importance in the UK having been established there since 1934, long before the post-war 'Yankee Invasion'. Unlike some of these later arrivals, Lilly enjoyed an enviable reputation with the medical profession, and had developed a fully independent operation in the UK with its own production facilities and even an R & D laboratory, and, although, coincidentally, it's Head Office was in Basingstoke - an impressive building, easily visible from a passing train, quite close to the smaller, and much more recent Crookes building - the sales territory I had been awarded was, alas, in distant North Lancashire. But, as the Selection Board was to be held a couple of weeks before I was due to start work with Lilly, I was free to attend it, so attend it I did, and it would be wrong of me to deny that, after months of underemployment, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Not that it was undemanding. There were about two dozen other aspirants in my cohort of candidates and we were subjected, over the three days, individually and collectively, to an unrelenting series of tests which ranged from the classic non-verbal IQ tests through to chairing mock meetings about weighty matters, via writing reports about other weighty matters, and tests of our ability to name the occupants of various offices of state, and match the names of various individuals in the performing arts to their occupations, all of this under the watchful eyes of a panel of mentors, with one of whom I would, at some point, be obliged to debate propositions which I had been asked to volunteer beforehand – a task facilitated by the recycling a couple of my past successes at the Barrack Tavern debates of years gone by. When I told Anne about some of the tests, she said 'Oh, you should do all right then, you've always been good at party games', and she wasn't too wide of the mark. I knew that I was performing well, but, also, that the outcome could not be relied upon.

A couple of weeks later, I joined the staff of my new employer, and embarked upon a training course for new reps at their Basingstoke HQ. Given my antecedents, it was a rather surreal experience, during which I made a determined effort to keep my mouth shut, behave like a new recruit, and conform to whatever behavioural norms were expected from me. I was very grateful to Lilly for taking me in, but my loyalty to them was put seriously to the test when, shortly after the training course began, I was informed by the Civil Service Commission that I had been selected to attend a Final Interview at their offices in Whitehall on a date which fell before the course ended.

There being no possible way that I could ask to be excused from the course for such a reason, I racked my brains for a convincing excuse to offer instead without success, until, once again, the Goddess of Chance came to my aid, this time by ordaining someone else's misfortune. The husband of Anne's younger sister, Marjorie, suddenly died of a heart attack. He was only in his late 40s and it came as a big shock to everyone who knew him, because he was a very likeable chap. Marjorie was prostrated, of course, and, our concern for her well-being, plus the fact that Anne was her closest, and geographically nearest relative, provided sufficient justification for me to ask for a day off to go up to Bicester to do what I could to alleviate her distress and assist with whatever arrangements were necessary.

After cross-questioning me closely about these circumstances, my new Sales Manager reluctantly granted my request, and I did indeed go up to Bicester overnight to do what I could for Marjorie and her three boys, but the following day I was able to make my way to London in time for my Final Interview with the Civil Service Commissioners, a number of whom were grouped round an oval table, at one end of which, I was invited to sit, directly facing, at the other end, the First Civil Service Commissioner, Sir John Hunt, who was soon to be the Cabinet Secretary under Harold Wilson and would eventually become Lord Hunt of Tanworth. It was a daunting experience, but my years of practice as a medical rep enabled me to stay calm and relaxed, and to deal, in a measured and thoughtful manner, with the questions that were put to me, and even add a touch of humour at one point. I came away well satisfied with my performance, but still, of course, uncertain of the outcome.

Next day, I was back on the training course at Eli Lilly, and the weeks that followed proved very stressful indeed, torn as I was between belief that a glittering prize was within my grasp, and disbelief that such an improbable change in my fortunes could come to pass. And until it was 100% confirmed, I dared do nothing to reveal that it might. Having been assigned the sales territory of North Lancs, where I was due to start work after the end of the training course, Anne and I had gone house-hunting in the area, after putting our own house on the market, and we had already committed ourselves to a house in Preston and even found a buyer for our house in Fleet. The suspense was excruciating, and the screw was given a final turn when a letter arrived to say that I had been successful in my application to join the Civil Service and that 'subject to certain enquiries' certification to that effect would be issued shortly.

Subject to certain enquiries! I could guess what they were, and had nothing to fear from them except a prolongation of my present agony. The letter also instructed me to send my birth certificate to an official in the Civil Service Department, which was housed, at the time, in a brand new office block in, of all places, Basingstoke. This coincidence enabled me to avoid entrusting the document to the vagaries of the Christmas post, by arranging to deliver it in person. When I did so I found that the official concerned lived only a few streets away from me in Fleet, and was happy to chat about it, but what neither of us could know was that our brief but friendly acquaintanceship on this occasion would later blossom when we found ourselves regularly standing next to each other in the bass section of a local choir, and, more frequently, on the platform at Fleet station waiting for the 8.10am to Waterloo.

To the immense relief of the Scott family, the final confirmation of my appointment arrived just before Christmas, but not until Anne and I had suffered the embarrassment of accepting the seasonal hospitality extended by Lilly to all its employees, which, in our case, took the form of a Regional get-together at a first class hotel in York, all expenses paid, where we met, wined and dined with my prospective Regional Manager and fellow reps, and their wives. We still have, and use, the ladies electric shaver presented to Anne on that occasion, and I still feel bad about accepting all that hospitality and the good will that came with it, but the circumstances left us with no reasonable alternative. And, as soon as I knew that my new job was secure, I hastened to acquaint the Sales Manager in Basingstoke with what would undoubtedly come as unwelcome news to him, and to offer him my sincere apologies and a full explanation.

I felt genuinely sorry for him. He had taken a gamble by employing me as a rep, knowing that I was capable of a much better job, and would probably accept one if it was offered to me. And Lilly, of course, had already made a not inconsiderable investment in my initial training, but when I took him step by step through the protracted process which, given the odds against it, had produced such an unlikely and unforeseeable result, he had to admit that, in my shoes, he would not have acted differently. So, we parted amicably, and I went home to enjoy the sense of immense relief I felt, and savour the impressiveness of my achievement, which I still look back upon with a mixture of awe, astonishment, and pride.

But I couldn't help wondering about what was in store for me in the government department to which I had been assigned, which was not the Department of Health, nor the Department of Trade and Industry, but, rather to my surprise, the Home Office, because I couldn't recall including it in the list of the Ministries I would prefer to join, if successful, which I had been asked to provide at the start of the Selection Board. I had no friends or relations in the Civil Service, I knew nobody, in fact, who worked in it, and could tell me anything about it, all I knew was that, whatever it was I would be called upon to do, my success in the battery of tests to which I had been subjected by the Civil Service Commission must surely indicate that I would be capable of doing it.

MY LIFE AT THE OPERA : PART TWO

Chapter Two : 1971 – 89

And so it came to pass that, one fine January morning, after taking the train to Waterloo station, I walked out, along the South Bank of the Thames, past County Hall, across Westminster Bridge, up Whitehall, and through the impressive portals of the old Home Office building, to enter a working landscape which, I was to find, would have many more attractive features, and much wider horizons than I could possibly have hoped for. Having no idea of what to expect at the time, however, I was still in something of a daze as I was led up marble stairs, through echoing corridors to keep my appointment with the Principal Establishment Officer whose name was Bunker.

I found him sitting behind a desk of Edwardian vintage (as was the rest of his office furniture, including the iron grate set into the wall, in which a coal fire was burning), a smallish, unremarkable figure, wearing a dark, three-piece suit, white collar and conservative tie, and presenting, in these surroundings, the very image of the senior civil servant that might previously have sprung to one's mind whenever the subject came up, which wasn't very often. I learned later, that this setting, the coal fire in particular, was an affectation on Bunker's part, in which his rank and position allowed him to indulge. The office furniture I would encounter elsewhere in the Home Office, even that of those of Bunker's status, was of a modern utilitarian design and quality, carefully graded, of course, according to the rank of the occupant. But he was as welcoming as he could find it in himself to be, of someone of whose appointment he almost certainly did not approve.

Given the gulf of incomprehension between us, our ensuing conversation was of a rather stilted nature. I recall that, at one point I mentioned a recent newspaper article I had read, which compared and contrasted the performance, as Home Secretary, of Roy Jenkins and Jim Callaghan, to the advantage, I think, of the former, to which Bunker replied, with a sad shake of his head, 'Not a very good Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins'. My recollections of whatever else we discussed have been obliterated by the blast from the bombshell he finally dropped by informing me that my first posting as a Principal would be to the Home Office Fire Department!

It was only with the greatest difficulty that, on receiving this news, I maintained control of my features while picturing myself going home to tell my family and friends that, after fifteen years in the hospital service and fifteen years in the pharmaceutical industry, I would be dealing, in my new capacity, with the nation's Fire Brigades. My next surprise came when Bunker informed me that the Fire Department was currently occupying premises on the western outskirts of London, at Kew, a dozen miles from Westminster, to which I should now make my way and report to the Head of my new Division, F1. I subsequently learned that the Fire Department had been posted to this remote spot under circumstances, which, although not strictly relevant to my story, are worth recounting for the light they cast on the workings of the Civil Service at the time.

In addition to the venerable, but now incommodious Whitehall building complex it shared, in those days, with the Foreign Office, the Home Office occupied an assortment of pre- and post-war structures of more utilitarian design, scattered around Westminster, Victoria, Lambeth, and even further afield - the Immigration and Nationality Department, for example, was in Holborn at the time - but there was a grand plan to create a single, multi-storied office block, within the walls of which, the Home Office could be whole again. Rumour had it that the site of this New Jerusalem was to be what was then the most obtrusive bit of planner's blight in Central London, the sad collection of buildings on the other side of Bridge Street from Big Ben stretching round the corner into the Embankment as far as New Scotland Yard, and one can imagine that, given the spirit of the age, what was envisaged was a tower about half as high as Big Ben.

It wouldn't happen in the end, of course, but, before it could be built, there was a question to be settled. A further manifestation of the spirit of the age was the 'Open Plan Office', devoid of dividing walls between one employee and another, and featuring a sealed environment, fluorescent lighting, air conditioning, and little privacy, but efficient, it was claimed, in a number of ways. The question was, could civil servants function under such conditions? Also, would they accept it? Would it work? One can imagine the meetings and the minutes generated by the search for a definitive answer to these questions? In the end, there was only one way to settle it. The Property Services Agency (or was it still the Ministry of Works in those days?) would conduct an experiment by building a single floor of the proposed office block on a piece of government land beside the River Thames at Kew, on which a collection of shabby, single storey structures housing the National Record Office already stood, .

And there I found it, hanging, cantilevered over the riverside towpath, looking like some extravagant, futuristic holiday home which had somehow migrated north from the Costa Brava. With external walls of glass from floor to ceiling, the interior was Open Plan in its fullest flower – waist high partitions, wraparound desks, adjustable chairs with wheels on them (also being tested, but never to be encountered again during the rest of my service), masses of vegetation surrounding a central, coffee lounge-like rest area – all of it sealed off from the outside world by double- glazing and air-conditioning, with its so-called 'white sound' which was supposed to prevent one's conversations being overheard by colleagues in adjacent areas. Since the complement of the Fire Department was just the right size to fill this space, it had been exiled from Westminster for a whole year to take part in the experiment - quite a complicated manoeuvre, with all manner of side-effects for individuals habituated to commuting into Central London, but there were special travel allowances to sweeten the pill, and it was all in a good cause.

The only sensible way for me to get there from Hampshire was by car, and the mileage allowance for which I qualified, allowed me to pay off the sum outstanding on the second-hand Metro I had bought to replace the Company Car I had lost. So, I was to find myself, in my first job in the Civil Service, driving to the office every day by car, as I had done in my previous existence, sitting at my wraparound desk on my ergonomically designed chair, in my controlled environment, looking out of my picture window at a rather attractive stretch of the Thames, dictating by telephone to a typing pool hidden somewhere else in the building, and I need hardly add, that, hierarchy being what it is, the window positions in the open office went to the most senior officers. Only the Head of the Department, and those of its two Divisions had individual offices, and even these had walls which began and ended eighteen inches from the floor and ceiling respectively. But, in the open office, the lower the rank, the farther from the windows. Naturally.

Hardly a day went by without some party of visitors being conducted round this great experiment. The PSA, having created a masterpiece, was out for all the kudos it could get before the inevitable outcome. At the end of our stint at Kew (where the Fire Department had been preceded by, and would be succeeded by, other bits of the Home Office), each of us guinea pigs would be asked to complete a lengthy questionnaire to enable a proper assessment to be made of the suitability of the Open Plan Office for civil servants to work in. As might have been predicted, the junior ranks, all of whom had previously shared offices with others, were not antipathetic to the open office, per se, but could see little merit in being constantly under the eyes of their superiors. The senior ranks, having previously enjoyed the privilege of a personal office in which to concentrate on the weighty matters appropriate to their ranks, found even less to say in favour of sharing with their juniors.

The experimental building is still there, or was, the last time I looked, clearly visible from the Metropolitan Line as it crosses the river at Kew, but dwarfed now by the massive bulk of the new Records Office. When the new multi-storey Home Office came to be built, nearly ten years later, at Queen Anne's Gate, all its offices were cellular, and of varying sizes to permit sharing by junior ranks, and with closable doors leading out into corridors . This outcome will come as no surprise, but what may be surprising, in the present climate, is that this expensive and well-meaning experiment should ever have been conducted at all. It certainly couldn't have happened in the 1980s, by which time a political ice-cap had descended on the Civil Service, sending its benign and rather paternalistic approach to management, as characterised by the Kew project, into a hibernation which looks like being permanent. In this later era, not only would the idea of consulting the rank and file of the Civil Service about the acceptability to them of a new development in the design of their working environment, be inconceivable, but neither would there be the remotest likelihood of the money for such an experiment being made available.

As a blank page waiting to be written on, however, I was untroubled by thoughts such as these as I made my way to Kew to meet my new chief, the Head of F1 Division, an Assistant Secretary, who's Christian name was Gordon, and who was to become, although I couldn't know it at the time, one of the few close friends I made during my civil service career. He cut a very different figure from Bunker, and prided himself on doing so, being fashionably dressed and elegantly groomed, he would not have looked out of place in a board room of the industry I had left behind. About the same age as me and a fellow Yorkshireman from Sheffield, he was very sociable, a bit of a playboy, in fact, and, although he had read Classics at Cambridge ('The best upper second of my year'), there was little about him of the academic, in marked contrast to many of the others of his rank, and above, who I would later meet. He seemed completely unfazed by my unusual antecedents, or my ignorance about the workings of the Civil Service, and, together, we set about remedying this deficiency, while taking such advantage as we could, of the skills and knowledge I had brought in with me.

I was very fortunate in having Gordon to initiate me into this strange new world. The handover briefing I received from my predecessor in the post I was to fill, was, to say the least, perfunctory, and the 'Introduction to Government Administration Course' which I was supposed to attend didn't eventuate until nearly a year later. By a strange coincidence, it turned out that, a couple of years earlier, Gordon had attended the elite residential management course at the famous Henley Administrative Staff College at the same time as my old pal and ex-colleague, Frank, who Gordon remembered quite clearly for the uncomplimentary remarks he had made about the Civil Service, of which, of course, he knew as little as I did, and, in order to make sense of my position in it, and the duties I would be called upon to perform, I find myself obliged, at this point, to offer some account of its structure and function. But, where do I start, and how can I compress into a paragraph or two, what I myself took so long to learn?

One thing I learned quite quickly, however, was that the structure and functions of the Civil Service were so dissimilar from those of the industry I had left behind that it was virtually impossible to draw meaningful comparisons between them, and, with this realisation came a growing concern that I had reached the age of 45 without acquiring any proper understanding of how the machinery of government actually worked – the biggest piece of organised activity in the country, affecting many aspects of my life, and it might just as well have been going on in China for all I knew about it. And yet, I had seen myself as being fairly widely read, reasonably well-informed, and taking an intelligent interest in politics and human affairs – and clever enough, at least, to pass the Open competition into the upper ranks of the Civil Service.

Since then I have seen the Civil Service attract a good deal of critical comment, laced with more disapprobation than I think it deserves. Since the 1960s, many minds, both great and small, have addressed themselves, in public and private, to identifying its shortcomings and prescribing solutions to them, but, I have to say, that nothing I have read or heard in all that time would have come even close to making sense to the individual I was before I joined it, of the Civil Service I came to know. So concerned have I felt about this comprehension gap between the general public and the Civil Service, that, following my eventual retirement, I sought to bridge it by writing an account of the structure and function of the Civil Service that I myself might have understood before being recruited into it. Having failed to interest a publisher in this work, I have made it freely available on my own website at .au, under the title of 'On Her Majesty's Civil Servants' and from it I will extract the very barest of essentials necessary to describe the various roles I played in it.

Unlike organisations in the private sector, the purpose of the Civil Service is not to make a profit by marketing goods and services to the public, nor does it need to strive to survive in competition with other organisations. The purpose of the Civil Service is simply to serve the civil power, as embodied in the government of the day. Not, please note, to serve the public, unless instructed to do so by the civil power. Another way of putting it would be to say that the role of the Civil Service is to exercise the powers and discharge the responsibilities which have been laid upon Ministers of the Crown (usually at their own request) by Parliament, and to do this regardless of what those powers are, who those ministers are, and to which political party they belong. In operational terms, then, the objectives of the Civil Service are (i) to find out what Government Ministers wish to do, (ii) to advise them how to do it legally, (iii) to help them pilot any new legislation which proves to be necessary, through Parliament, (iv) to put the new legislation into effect, and (v) to deal with any matters resulting from this activity, which it falls within the scope of a Minister's statutory responsibilities so to do.

Not surprisingly, the pursuit of these objectives calls for several different kinds of expertise, and the traditional structure of the Civil Service was evolved to take account of this by dividing its members into three main classes: the Administrative Class, the Executive Class and the Clerical Class. To put it simply, the Administrative Class dealt with Ministers, internally (objectives i to iii), the Executive Class dealt with the public, externally (objectives iv and v), and the Clerical Class dealt with any purely routine activities resulting from this. Outside these divisions, there were other groups, or Branches, of government servants with their own career structure, known as Advisers – eg, Legal Advisers, Scientific Advisers - whose role was to offer specialist advice, where needed, not to Ministers, but to those members of the Administrative Class to whom Ministers looked for advice. There was also a Public Relations Branch staffed by Information Officers who were responsible for the release of officially approved information to the media, and for identifying, and drawing officials' attention to any news items of relevance to their work.

In 1966, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson (himself an ex-civil servant) had set up a Committee on the Civil Service, usually known as the Fulton Committee because its Chairman was Lord Fulton (a scientist), 'to examine the structure, recruitment and management, including training, of the Home Civil Service and make recommendations'. When 'The Fulton Report' appeared in 1988, one of its many recommendations was that the divisions between the classes should be modified to make class to class transfers easier, and that officers in the advisory grades should be allowed to apply for transfer into the administrative class. Another recommendation was that experienced managers from the private sector should be recruited directly into the higher levels of the Administrative Class.

I joined the Civil Service at a time when the innovations recommended by Lord Fulton's Committee, of which I had become a beneficiary, were being put into effect, but, in describing the hierarchies I found there, it makes more sense for me to use the pre-Fulton terminology which continued to be used 'in-house' for as long as I was there. Each of the Classes had its own recruiting arrangements, based on the levels of prior educational attainment found to be appropriate to the demands to be made upon the successful applicants. Entry into the Administrative Class required a good university degree, a First or Upper Second, traditionally, but not necessarily, from Oxford or Cambridge, and the point of entry was the post at the bottom of the ladder, formerly Assistant Principal (AP), but later Administrative Trainee (AT). The first upward move was no longer, post-Fulton, to Principal, but an awkward detour into the Executive Class, which I will deal with later. Thankfully, however, from Principal upwards it was all plain sailing.

The next rank above Principal (Grade 7) was Assistant Secretary (AS) (Grade 5) , but there was a Senior Principal rank (Grade 6)in between, attached to a small number of posts carrying responsibilities of a weight falling between the two. Above Assistant Secretary there was Assistant Under Secretary (AUS)(Grade 3), above that, Deputy Under Secretary (DUS)(Grade 2), and above that Permanent Under Secretary (PUS)(Grade 1), and above that, of course, the Secretary of State (S of S) assisted by a number of Ministers of State, usually referred to as Junior Ministers. The Home Office was sub-divided into Departments – Prison, Police, Fire, and so on – and each Department, into Divisions, the number of Divisions being indicative of the extent of the Home Secretary's statutory powers in that area of responsibility - the Fire Department, for example, had three Divisions, the Police Department, eight. The Division was the basic operational unit of the Home Office, the AS at its head filling a pivotal role between action and advice which carried a heavier daily workload (in my view) than any other rank above and below it....always excepting those of the fortunate few selected to labour tirelessly, selflessly, and always uncomplainingly in the Ministers' Private Offices.

The Head of a Division (AS) was supported by Principals, of whom there were usually two, but occasionally more, who shared the Division's responsibilities between them, and, depending on the extent of these responsibilities, they, too, were supported, possibly by an AT, but more probably by officers from the Executive Class. The educational requirements for recruitment into the Executive Class, about which I can speak with little confidence at this distance in time, were probably Higher School Certificate level and above, and the point of entry was as an Executive Officer (EO), the next rank above being Higher Executive Officer (HEO), and the one above that, Senior Executive Officer (SEO), but there was a post-Fulton complication at HEO level in the shape of a parallel rank of HEO(A), the (A) standing for Administration, from which there was a strong possibility, even a likelihood, of promotion, not to SEO, but to Principal, and it was through this gateway that the aspiring AT was now required to pass, in competition, thanks to Fulton, with any EO who was clever enough to qualify for the honour. To complete the hierarchical framework in which I was embedded, before considering my own role in it, the Head of the Fire Department was an AUS, above whom there was a DUS, overseeing a number, probably about three, possibly interrelated, Departments, under the PUS, of whom, of course, there was only one.

Of the Home Secretary's many powers and responsibilities, those devolving upon the Fire Department fell into two main groups - fighting fires and preventing fires - each deriving from different Acts of Parliament. This was reflected in two of its Divisions – F1, Fire Service Operations, and F2, Fire Prevention and, as one of two Principals in F1, I found myself the head of a small section, consisting of one SEO, one HEO, and one EO, with responsibilities that were clearly set out in the single most important document on my desk. This was the Home Office Directory which contained within its covers a detailed anatomy of the entire Ministry - all the Departments, all the Divisions, all the responsibilities, and the names, ranks, locations and phone numbers of all the officers currently responsible for them. And I soon found that, in the Civil Service, 'currently' meant 'currently', because the Directory required constant updating, as new pages arrived and old pages had to be discarded to keep pace with the number and frequency of staff movements, and this was one task it would have been unwise to neglect.

One of the many differences I found between working in the Civil Service and in the Pharmaceutical Industry was that my work in the former was much harder to describe to outsiders than that in the latter. The only way I could give an adequate answer to the question 'What do you actually do in the Home Office Fire Department?', was by delivering an introductory lecture about the extent of the Home Secretary's powers and responsibilities in the 'World of Fire' before moving on to the small, but essential role I played in exercising them - by which time, the questioner's eyes would almost certainly have glazed over. I eventually resorted to answering all such enquiries by saying 'Oh, I'm just pure intellect plugged into subject matter'. I will try, however, to be more, but not too much more, forthcoming here.

The responsibilities set against my name in the Home Office Directory were of varying degrees of importance and interest. The most important, but least interesting (to my mind, at least), was my role as the Secretary of the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council (CFBAC). This sprawling, unwieldy body met twice a year, under the chairmanship of our Junior Minister, to consider matters of importance in the 'World of Fire', which meant that just about every organisation with powers and responsibilities in that world was represented on it. But its main and most vociferous constituents were the local authority Councillors who had been elected to serve on it by the local authority Fire Committees of England and Wales. This was because the Fire Services, like the Police Forces, were run, and paid for, by the local authorities, although a major part of the cost was met from something called the Block Grant which was made each year by the Government via the Department of Environment (DoE), to the local authorities to augment their income. The Block Grant was that part of the Rate Support Grant (more correctly known as the Aggregate Exchequer Grant) which was left over when the Specific Grants to local authority services had been deducted.

For anyone still interested: a Specific Grant, as the name implies, was paid out as a fixed proportion of the incurred cost of a particular service. The Police enjoyed a Specific Grant, which was, in effect, at the disposal of the Home Secretary – hence the greater involvement of the Home Office in Police Forces than in Fire Services. Also, the Home Sec had a statutory responsibility for, among other things, the efficiency of the Police, something he did not have for the Fire Service, where he had responsibilities of a less demanding nature for such things as Standards of Fire Cover and Fire Prevention, as set out in the Fire Services and Fire Prevention Acts. The Block Grant, incidentally, was shared out among the local authorities by the Department of Environment using a formula of such ever-increasing complexity that, with the passage of time, fewer and fewer individuals in the country (it was said) understood it completely. Each local authority was ostensibly free to decide how its share of the Block Grant should be distributed among the various services, including the Fire Service, for which it was responsible – provided, however, that any standards, for the maintenance of which, some Minister was responsible, were observed.

A sure sign of such Ministerial responsibility would be the existence, in the relevant Ministry, of an Inspectorate, all of whose members would carry a Ministerial sanction of some kind in his briefcase. Her Majesty's Inspectors of Fire Services were housed in the Fire Department, and some of them were to became close colleagues of mine in the discharge of responsibilities, other than those for the CFBAC meetings, at which, of course, they were all present - as observers only, however, since only the Chief Inspector was an actual member, as were the two AS's and the AUS, in a room that was crowded to overflowing. My job was simply to organise the meetings, prepare the agenda, and take the minutes, ably assisted by my SEO, HEO, and EO, while taking no part, given the presence of my superiors, in the actual proceedings myself. In keeping with its name, any resolutions passed by the CFBAdvisoryC were not binding on the Home Secretary, but carried enough weight to be considered very seriously before being accepted or rejected. Needless to say, although intellectually undemanding, my involvement in the arcane mysteries of the CFBAC taught me a great deal about the workings of the machinery of government.

More demanding, and of greater interest to me personally, was my responsibility for the Fire Research Programme, but before enlarging on that, I will spare a thought for my two other minor responsibilities, if only for their curiosity value. The first of these was for 'War Emergency Planning for the Fire Services' which, since all the planning had already been completed and enshrined in something called The War Book to await implementation at the appropriate time, called for no fresh input from me, but did involve me in matters arising from the existence of the not inconsiderable material resources which had been made available for this future purpose.

Following the end of World War Two, planning for the next war had been based on the assumption that the recently developed atom bomb would replace the conventional high explosive bomb as a threat to our cities. To enable the Fire Services to cope with this appalling prospect to whatever extent might prove to be possible, a completely new fire appliance had been designed and built in significant numbers which were currently secreted in a series of Government depots, buried deep in the heart of the countryside where they were kept in a state of constant near-readiness. Because of their colour, these vehicles were nicknamed 'Green Goddesses', and their existence became known to the general public only when they were aroused from their slumbers and summoned forth to be manned by members of the armed forces when the Fire Brigades went on strike in 1977 and yet again in 2002. Whether any of them actually saw action against a fire, has not been recorded, and for all I know they may still be there, awaiting their country's next call. But it was a curious experience, eerie but, in a way, reassuring, to visit one of these rural retreats, as I did, while being initiated into my new job, to find these monsters being lovingly fed and watered in the quiet English countryside.

Although much of the planning for the atomic bomb had been rendered redundant by the development of the hydrogen bomb, the feasibility of developing new equipment to cope with this even more appalling prospect appeared hitherto to have discouraged further consideration, and the old equipment had been retained as being better than nothing. The only action I was ever required to take, wearing my War Emergency Planning hat, arose, not from the Green Goddesses, but from something called the 'Unfiltered Water Mains', but always referred to among ourselves as the 'Dirty Water Mains'. These structures were a relic of World War II, when they had been installed under central London to provide a reliable supply of water for fire-fighting purposes by connecting the River Thames to some of the ornamental lakes in the Royal Parks, such as the Serpentine. The Home Office, having inherited responsibility for them, was obliged to cope with any liabilities arising from their now inconvenient existence, while disposing of any assets they might possess.

The fact that some of the pipes were under the Royal Parks, which came under a separate jurisdiction from the Home Office, made almost everything to do with the Dirty Water Mains administratively complex, and, whenever I saw my elderly SEO, George, approaching me with the distinctively overstuffed and time-worn Dirty Water Mains file under his arm, my heart would sink. The only disposable assets in the system were its two pumping stations which occupied prime sites on the banks of the Thames, and one of these had already been sold and converted (if my memory serves me correctly) into a cafe. The other had become the subject of protracted negotiations with the Greater London Council, which were showing every sign of degenerating into a Jarndyce vs Jarndyce case (as I wittily pointed out in one of my minutes on the file). There was no doubt that the Home Office wanted to sell and the GLC wanted to buy, but what they couldn't agree on was the price, or, more correctly, on how much of the agreed price the GLC (which was a post-war creation) should actually pay, if all the past financial interactions between the two parties involving the Dirty Water Mains were taken into account, and, needless to say, every move in the game had to be cleared with our own Finance Department and then with the Treasury, to whom any proceeds from the sale would ultimately flow..

Fortunately, George was fully conversant with all the relevant facts and I simply followed his advice until the matter was finally settled at a meeting held across the river in County Hall, where I was wheeled out like a piece of antique weaponry whose purpose was more to frighten the enemy than to be used against them, to sit across the table from my equally bemused-looking GLC opposite number, while George concluded the deal with his opposite number, much to the relief of all present.

My second minor responsibility was even more of a curiosity. The entry against my name in the Home Office Directory simply stated 'The Remembrance Day Service', and, although this demanded only a few hours attention from me each year, it proved, in the event, to be quite entertaining. Along with millions of others, I had watched the annual Armistice Day Service in Whitehall on pre-war Newsreels and post-war television, taking it very much for granted, never speculating about the amount of planning required to bring it to pass. Neither had I been aware that, somewhere among those serried ranks of the nation's Armed Forces, slotting faultlessly into place before my eyes, there was a contingent of Fire Service and Police officers. It was now my responsibility, however, to ensure, jointly with an opposite number in the Police Department, that such a contingent would march into its appointed slot at the appointed time on the appointed day, the following November.

Since the arrangements for doing so had been in place for decades, this outcome would be achieved, as a matter of routine, by my own part in the complex, but well-oiled, Whitehall-wide machinery which was set in motion every year, like a giant clock, not long after the previous event, in order to deliver all those servicemen and women, ex-servicemen and women, marching bands, and distinguished visitors to the next event on time. Most of the arrangements were handled by my young EO, and the end result was that suitable volunteers from the country's Fire Brigades were brought together and appropriately accommodated in London on the evening before the service. Only then was I myself required to play a part by going up to London to meet the officers in charge of the two segments of the contingent to brief them on certain important aspects of their role.

The uniformed column was due to assemble, the following morning, in King Charles Street, down the side of the Home Office building, ready to march out, at the correct time, across Whitehall, where it would turn sharp left up Whitehall at the correct spot, and slot smoothly into its allotted space. The correct time would be immediately after the RAF contingent had marched up Whitehall, past the end of King Charles Street, and slotted into their allotted space, and, in order to get this right, amid the organised confusion unfolding all around them to the sound of martial music, my young EO would position himself as a human barrier in the middle of King Charles Street, facing into Whitehall, with the contingent marking time behind him, and remove himself only when the RAF contingent had marched past in front of him to allow the Fire and Police contingent to march out across Whitehall. As for turning left, up Whitehall, at the correct spot, the main purpose of my briefing meeting with the officers on the evening before, was to lead them out into the middle of Whitehall opposite King Charles Street (dodging any traffic), where I would point out to them a manhole cover sunk into the road surface which very conveniently marked the spot at which the column should left-wheel. This solemn duty done, I made my way home.

The following morning, I drove up to Westminster, parked my car at a convenient spot behind Whitehall, walked into King Charles Street, and, after exchanging a few appropriate words with the assembled cohort and my young EO, took up a position from which I could observe the proceedings, not only in King Charles Street but also, I found, in the large courtyard inside the Home Office building. What I didn't realise at the time was that, because the Cenotaph was directly in front of the Home Office, this courtyard was, in effect, a backstage area, which afforded a convenient access point to the ceremony for all the distinguished official participants, allowing them to walk in at the back of the Home Office and out at the front, ushered through, I later found, by several senior Home Office officials, including my own AUS, who had volunteered for the honour of performing this duty.

Realisation began to dawn on me when a very large black man, clad in the colourful garments of his African homeland, entered the courtyard via the Downing Street archway and strolled nonchalantly across to be admitted at the Home Office back door. He was followed, at intervals, by numbers of other dignitaries, all appropriately dressed, walking with measured tread, chatting quietly, sometimes, among themselves, across the courtyard, until, eventually, our very own Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson, arrived, closely followed by the Prime Minister, Edward Heath. All of them passed before me at a pace which was slow enough to allow me also to keep a watchful eye on the goings on in King Charles Street. Finally, of course, Her Majesty the Queen arrived, driven into the courtyard in her limousine, right up to the back door of the Home Office, there to be welcomed by the Permanent Under Secretary of State himself. By which time, my young EO had removed the obstruction of his person from their path, and the Fire and Police contingent had marched proudly into Whitehall, wheeling smartly left at the manhole cover to take up its appointed place. Since, the back stage pageant was now over until the following year (when I would see it repeated in eerily identical detail, like watching an old film), I walked back through the now deserted King Charles Street to my car and drove home.

By the time that first Remembrance Sunday was making its demands on me, the Fire Department, having served its sentence out at Kew, had moved back to its old home in Horseferry House in Marsham Street, opposite Westminster Hospital, behind Milbank, and I had adopted the workday routine I was to follow, with rare exceptions, for the next twenty years. I became a 'commuter' just as Fleet was beginning to develop into a full blown 'commuter town' following the electrification of the Southern Railway line which had been Fleet's original raison d'etre. Henceforward, every weekday, I would position myself amongst the ranks of my fellow commuters on the 'up' platform at Fleet Station awaiting the imminent arrival of the 8.12 to Waterloo, and, having boarded it, settle down to read my newspaper for the duration of the 45 minutes journey.

On arrival at Waterloo Station, I would walk briskly out across the footbridge over York Road, through the Shell Building, across South Bank Gardens to the riverside walk, then on, past County Hall, across Westminster Bridge Road (the most dangerous part of my journey, trafficwise), along the Albert Embankment with St Thomas's Hospital on my left and the Houses of Parliament over the river on my right, forcing my way, often, through a pack of camera-toting Japanese who had been decanted from their tour buses in Lambeth Palace Road to photograph each other in front of the famous view of Mother Of Parliaments across the river (occasionally inadvertently including myself in the picture), before crossing Lambeth Bridge into Horseferry Road and reaching Horseferry House - 15 minutes maximum. And in the evening, after 'close of play', the whole trip in reverse, with one notable difference. As the train to Fleet pulled out of Waterloo Station, a soporific silence would descend on its carriages, as passengers closed their eyes in meditation, to open them only when their station was reached. Needless to say, any disruptive chattering among casual travellers was strongly disapproved of.

Initially, like many of my fellow commuters, I relied on my wife, Anne, to drive me to Fleet station in the morning and pick me up in the evening, but the inconveniences of this arrangement offended against my sense of order, particularly since I could never be absolutely certain which train I would catch from Waterloo in the evening; and the alternative of leaving the family car parked idly all day after driving myself to the station, as many others did, was simply out of the question. So, I took a bold step. I went to Fleet's old-established bike shop, prop. E.Field, and asked if he could sell me a Commuter Bike. 'A Commuter Bike, zur' he said,'and what might that be?', 'It's a bike' I replied,'that is mechanically sound enough to get me to Fleet Station and back each weekday, but looks so old and decrepit that I can leave it propped against the railings there without fear of getting it pinched.' After a moment's thought, he said 'I think I have the very thing' and took me out into his back yard to show me a large 'sit-up-and-beg' model (as we used to call them) of such ancient vintage that it actually sported those cantilever brakes that my Dad's old bike had. But it was in sound working order, and thus did I acquire my first bike since my teens, and I am still cycling daily (if in shorter bursts) nearly fifty years later.

It may be common practice now, but, in 1971, a car-owning businessman who made routine daily journeys to his place of work on a pushbike was viewed as something of a curiosity, if not an eccentric, but, in the decades that followed, and Fleet's population grew, so many of my fellow commuters followed my example that our railway station eventually boasting the biggest bike shed in British Rail (or so we liked to think). Since the distance from my home to the station was barely two miles, featuring only one moderate gradient and two right turns across traffic, I was left with only one further problem to solve – the unreliability of the weather. For my daily routine to be foolproof, it had to be able to survive the occasional downpour, especially on the way to work, since I didn't care how wet I got on the way home. The solution, I decided, was to keep a business suit at the office, and, after travelling in more weather-proof attire, change when I got there.

But my new office in Horseferry House, while affording me the necessary privacy, contained nothing resembling the private locker-wardrobe which had been standard issue at Crookes Laboratories, only a row of pegs on the wall inside the door. When I asked the Accommodation Officer whether I could have a wardrobe, he looked at me in bewilderment. 'We don't have any of those' he said, 'but what do you want with a wardrobe?', and when I explained, he said, after a moment's thought, 'Ah, what you need is a security cabinet', and arranged for one to be delivered to my office without delay, and, once I had taken the shelves out and improvised a suspension wire for my coat-hangers, it served the purpose admirably, enabling my two-way journey by bike, train, and shoe leather to be accomplished in all but the most adverse of weather conditions, and I firmly believe that leaving the company car and the 'fleshpots of industry' behind at the age of 45, to adopt the daily routine described above, has added many years to my life.

The Fire Department's move back to Horseferry House brought other important benefits to my quality of life, but, before leaving Kew behind, one experience I had there is worth recalling. I was working at my desk, late one afternoon, after most of my fellow-occupants of the open plan office had gone home, when I found myself being approached by none other than the Head of the Department (AUS), who, at that time, I hardly knew, accompanied by an individual I didn't know at all, but who turned out, on introduction, to be his own superior, the DUS, overlord of several Departments comprising about a quarter of the Home Office at the time, who was making a rare, and much appreciated (by the AUS) visit to this outpost of his empire. He was a modest man of unimpressive appearance, apart from his eyes when they occasionally met mine, for whose abilities I later conceived a considerable respect although our paths were never to cross again in quite the same informal way they were about to.

The reason for this highly unusual visitation (I cannot recall an AUS and a DUS ever dropping in on me quite so casually, if at all, ever again) was to ask me for a small favour, but, before getting round to it, my AUS, feeling obliged to make a little polite preliminary conversation, informed the DUS that Scott here had been recruited into the Civil Service quite recently from the pharmaceutical industry as a late entrant under the Fulton Scheme. How interesting, said the Dep Sec, and we rhubarbed on a bit, the three of us, before the AUS came to the point. Had I got my car with me? Yes? Would I mind running our distinguished colleague to Kew Station? Not at all, I said. Kew Station was little more than half a mile away, a distance which the AUS covered twice a day without hardship and which the Dep Sec, who probably spent at least a week every year tramping round the Peak District, would, I felt sure, have been quite happy to stroll over. But, it was raining slightly outside, and no other transport was available. A propos of which, I later learned that the AUS did not drive at all. He was the only man I ever met, holding his kind of position, earning his kind of money, who simply did not drive. He lived in North London, owned a car and held a driving licence, but, whenever necessary, his wife drove.

Once the Dep Sec and I were in my car, en route for Kew Station, he, feeling perhaps that he was under some obligation to do so, engaged me in conversation by asking, 'Is the Civil Service living up to your expectations?'. Not, please note, the more common, 'How do you like the Civil Service?' which would have led nowhere. 'I had no expectations', I replied, 'Joining the Civil Service was, for me, like going through a door into another world. I had no relations, friends, or even acquaintances who were civil servants. I had nobody to ask about it. Other than what I learned about it during the Open Competition, I didn't know what to expect' . 'How strange' he said 'about a year ago I was considering the possibility that one of my sons might be better suited to a career in industry [not too bright academically, perhaps?], and I looked around for someone to advise me about it. I found that not a single member of my family, my circle of friends, or even my personal acquaintances was in a position to do so'.

I cannot say what the Dep.Sec. thought about the state of affairs revealed by this exchange, because we had, by now, arrived at Kew Station where he thanked me politely and got out. In my ignorance, I assumed a shared feeling that this apparent separation of the Civil Service from 'real life' was a bad thing (for the Civil Service,of course), for which an injection of dynamic, entrepreneurial chaps like me could be seen as some kind of therapy. And perhaps my assumption was correct, perhaps the Dep.Sec. did share my view; it was certainly a growing element in the common currency of belief at the time. Had it not, after all, been articulated by Lord Fulton in his report, and had not the Civil Service, as recommended in that report, set up the scheme which had resulted in my own recruitment into it? Well, not exactly. The Civil Service had set up the scheme as directed so to do by Ministers. Not the same thing. And, in the years that followed, as I gained in experience, and grew in understanding of my new world, I came to realise that, not only had my assumptions about the Dep.Sec's views been ill-founded, but, more importantly, that my own views (and those, with respect, of Lord Fulton and many subsequent commentators) on the extent to which the efficiency of the Civil Service could benefit from the importation into it of skills and knowledge from the private sector were based on premises which had not been securely laid.

In the meantime, however, there was one of the responsibilities listed against my name in the Home Office Directory, which seemed to offer some scope for the exercise of my imported managerial skills, because the Fire Research Programme, when I inherited it, was in a bit of a mess. There was plenty of money available, several million pounds over five years (Ah, those prodigal interventionist days!), but nobody had, as yet, succeeded in putting together any systematic programme of projects to spend it on. This, I would eventually realise, was because research activity in the Civil Service is normally commissioned only when required for the formulation of policy, and this programme was aimed merely at improving the efficiency of the Fire Service (for which the Home Secretary had no statutory responsibility), and was seen as innovation for its own sake. So, no Ministerial interest, no civil service interest, except, of course, my own.

I began by drawing up a series of project management procedures along the usual customer-contractor lines, and obtained approval for them, in the recognised manner, from all the interested parties, or 'stakeholders' as they are nowadays called – administrators, scientific advisers, Fire Inspectorate, and so on. Armed with these and a comprehensive taxonomy of the 'World of Fire', drawn up by the scientific advisers, I invited all the potential 'customers' to submit initial project proposals articulating, in the simplest possible terms, any question to which, given their responsibilities, it would be useful to know the answer, or any compartment of the 'World of Fire' they would like to have explored. I also set up a fully representative Fire Research Committee to pilot these proposals, step by step, through to their final approval as project definitions, for which selected 'contractors', in the private sector, could then be invited to tender. .

We soon had a couple of quite promising projects off the ground, and others processing through the various stages of my project management procedures, and my involvement in them led me to take an interest in a methodology, which was being used in some of them, called 'Operational Research' - an all-too-modest name, I thought, for such a revolutionary approach to real-life problem solving. The Yanks call it 'Operations Research' but a better name would be 'Management Science' because it involves the application of advanced scientific (usually mathematical) disciplines to human decision making. The term had its origins in World War II, when techniques were developed for calculating such things as the optimum size of transatlantic convoys to minimise sinkings by U boats. A principal spur to the development of operational research, after the war, was the arrival on the scene of computers and computer modelling, and, although I myself was a computer illiterate at the time, and by no means equipped to understand the science being applied, I could certainly appreciate the value of solving problems by asking, not, 'What is the correct answer?, but, 'What is the least incorrect answer?'.

In a world obsessed, it seems, with deciding between right and wrong, true and false, correct and incorrect, the concept of 'the least imperfect solution' appealed strongly to the Bergsonian in me, and I have often wondered why the basic principles of a method which has proved so beneficial to industry and commerce, and even, instinctively, to each of us in our private lives, when we are obliged to take decisions which involve weighing the odds for and against alternative courses of action, neither of which is without its risks, why these principles are so often disregarded in the conduct of public affairs where beliefs and opinions seem to take precedence over the objective analysis of the available evidence. I doubt whether one in a hundred of my fellow countrymen has ever even heard of operational research. But, I digress.

Although the Fire Research Programme was up and running, the Division responsible for Fire Prevention had failed to come up with any research projects at all, in spite of promises (in response to my repeated urgings) to do so. In the end, I set up a meeting with the Head of the Division to ask him, with due respect, what the problem was, and whether there was anything I could do to help. He was an experienced and well-qualified Assistant Secretary (Grade 5), in his middle years, administering an impressive load of legislation in a field which affected powerful and potentially conflicting interests in the building and other industries and generated a considerable amount of Parliamentary business of the more mundane, but no less time-consuming kind. After a certain amount of beating about the bush, apologising for not having responded to my requests and assuring me that this was not due to lack of interest, he went on to verbalise a train of thought which led, rather apologetically, to the conclusion that he could not see his way to commissioning research unless he could be given some idea, in advance, as to what the results of that research might be.

It was clear to me that he wasn't joking, but it took me some time to come to terms with this point of view, which I finally came to realise, was not as stunningly illogical as, at first, it seemed. What my senior colleague was saying, in effect, was that, as a good civil servant, he could not himself raise a question about, say, the effectiveness of fire prevention measures, the answer to which, if it were made known, might prove embarrassing to his Minister; he could not approve the expenditure of public funds on a research project, the outcome of which might create an ineluctable demand for Ministerial action, without giving due consideration to what the likely cost of that action might be. Before allowing himself to raise the question, therefore, he needed to take all these considerations into account, and in order to do that, he needed to know what the answer was likely to be.

Fortunately, research into the effectiveness of fire fighting did not encounter as much resistance as research into the effectiveness of fire prevention, and projects such as the one aimed at predicting the optimum siting of fire stations in relation to local fire risk, proceeded to a satisfactory conclusion, conferring the unexpected benefit on me of legitimate reasons for getting out of the office from time to time. When I entered the Civil Service I had assumed that I was taking on an 'office job', but, in only one of my four subsequent postings did my responsibilities confine me entirely to my desk. In the Fire Department, for example, one of the first assignments I was given by Gordon was to organise a Home Office display stand at the Trade Exhibition being held to coincide with the annual Chief Fire Officers' Conference at Harrogate. This was great fun, because it required me to co-ordinate contributions from various sources, both inside and outside the Home Office. Responsibility for the design and construction of the stand rested with a specialist unit in the Department of Trade and Industry, and I was later to become very friendly with a fellow-commuter, called Vic, who benefited from his membership of that unit by being dispatched to distant parts of the world at frequent intervals to arrange similar displays in similar Exhibitions at which Her Majesty's Government had chosen to be represented. Nice work, if you can get it!

My own more modest perk on this occasion was to spend a few pleasant days in Harrogate overseeing the resulting exhibition stand, which was inspected, one day, by the Home Secretary himself. He was there to deliver the all-important Ministerial address to the assembled Chief Fire Officers in the adjacent Conference Centre, and I still have a photograph of the Rt. Hon. Robert Carr listening, apparently spellbound, to my exposition of the display laid out before him, the principal feature of which was a scale model of the campus of the world-famous Fire Service College at Moreton―in-Marsh, Gloucester. Apart from one trip by helicopter to a gas drilling platform out in the North Sea (Firefighting at sea), a visit to a pressure chamber at the Royal Navy's Underwater Training Establishment at Portland, Dorset (Firefighting in tunnel workings), and a visit to the Royal Radar Research Establishment at Malvern where they were developing infra-red goggles for seeing through smoke, my sorties from the office in connection with research projects were usually made to the Fire Service College, the wonders of which are so well known, or so easily researched, that there is no need for me to dwell on them here. Except to mention my unexpectedly convivial experiences there.

Unexpected, because another assumption I had made, on becoming a civil servant, was that my days of wining and dining in the course of duty would be behind me. I was to find, however, that, although the hospitality dispensed at the 'dining-in nights' and 'Commandant's Invitation Dinners' which I was encouraged to attend at both the Fire Service College and the Fire Service Staff College, Dorking, were not as lavish as that I had enjoyed at their counterparts in the 'fleshpots of industry', it was by no means niggardly, and, best of all, on certain special occasions, I was invited to bring my wife along with me. This resulted in a trip down memory lane for Anne when she went to the Fire Service College for the first time, because it had been built on the site of the RAF Station, Moreton-in-Marsh where, as a member of the Womens' Auxiliary Air Force, she had done her National Service, twenty years previously, and, although most traces of the RAF occupation had been erased, the outlines of the old runways were still visible and there were even a few of the original Nisson Huts left, one of which had been used as a mess hall in Anne's day and was still in use for the same purpose, pending the completion of the new one, and, on the morning after the function we had attended, I watched Anne eating her breakfast in it, her eyes alight with pleasure, as she recalled her youthful adventures there.

With the Fire Department's move back to Westminster came the discovery that, not only had my new career preserved the the material standard of living previously enjoyed by me and my family, but, by putting the West End, the South Bank, the Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican within my easy reach outside working hours, it had opened up opportunities for improvements in my own quality of life whih I was not slow to explore. Since, also, my move to Westminster had taken place shortly after the Sadler's Wells Opera Company had transplanted itself from Rosebury Avenue to the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane, which lay within easy walking distance of both my office and Waterloo Station, it was as if all the obstacles to the indulgence of my taste for opera had been miraculously removed. Only two constraints remained – the cost of the tickets and my need for the companionship of a fellow operagoer, and the fact that Anne didn't share my enthusiasm for opera affected both of these considerations.

Although we were becoming marginally more affluent by degrees, we had lost the financial benefit of the company car and still had the expense of two children of school age, whose existence restricted, not only Anne's earning power, but also our freedom of movement, particularly in the evenings. All of which meant that, whenever we treated ourselves to an evening out together, it had to be in favour of something we could both enjoy. Since, however, my visits to the opera rarely occurred more than once a month, and no costly arrangements for my transportation to and from the theatre were required, and since none of my other spare-time activities involved me in any expense at all, Anne was happy to grant me this one self-indulgence. In return, out of consideration for the family budget, and in deference to the habits of a lifetime, I felt obliged to occupy as cheap a seat as possible, which meant, at the Coliseum, sitting in the Balcony, but, eventually, having reduced the cost by becoming a 'subscriber', in the more comfortable Upper Circle, where I remained for several years, always ensuring a front row seat by booking as far ahead as was permitted, confident in the knowledge that, in my now more settled circumstances, I was unlikely to be prevented by any unforseeable pressures of business, from occupying it when the time came.

Finding a operagoing companion called for more ingenuity, but the task was made easier by my discovery that there were many more opera-lovers among my new colleagues in the Civil Service than than there had been among those in the pharmaceutical industry. Having identified them, however, I was reluctant to presume upon so brief an acquaintance by proposing a joint booking, three months ahead, for productions which might no yet have been premiered. My solution was to take the gamble of booking an extra ticket for each performance, relying on the excellent position of the seats and the attractive price resulting from the subscriber's discount to make it possible for me to offer them for sale to selected colleagues nearer the date, with little fear of refusal. I am happy to report that this stratagem never once let me down, and, better still, that it led me eventually to find the one ideal companion with whom I have been operagoing ever since.

The fact that Lynette was young, attractive, and single, raised a few eyebrows at first, but, since we made no secret of our relationship and its motivating passion, our partnership grew to be accepted for what it was, by family, friends, and colleagues, and we have continued to enjoy each other's company, whenever suitable opportunities have presented themselves, to the present day. More to the point, however, is that this fortunate arrangement enabled me, for the next 25 years, from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, to attend virtually every opera production staged by the Sadler's Wells/English National Opera Company at the London Coliseum, plus any sung in English at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, together with several sung in English by the Welsh National Opera Company on its visits to the capital, and a few 'semi-staged' as Promenade Concerts by the Glyndebourne Opera Company at the Royal Albert Hall. And, as if this were not enough, there was another rich seam of opera within easy reach, waiting to be discovered.

Hardly had I perfected my opera-going techniques in the West End, when I stumbled across the knowledge that, to the East, in the London Barbican, there lay the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, whose curriculum required its students to exercise their talents, from time to time, in public, and that information about these performances was published at the beginning of each term. Ranging from three-act plays to poetry readings, and from chamber music to symphony concerts, they were mostly presented on the school's own premises, which boasted, among other concert facilities, a small but fully-equipped theatre, and it was here, twice a year, usually in March and November, that the students mounted a full length opera, running for four nights, and featuring two alternative casts. What a godsend that turned out to be! More than two dozen operas over the years, some of them great rarities, and, in the early days, admission was free and the programmes cost 20p, although a modest charge was introduced later and the programmes became glossier and more expensive. It was imperative, however, to book seats as soon as the information about the event was published, because the quality of the performances, and the numbers of the proud relatives of the performers, were such that the demand for them increased steadily over the years.

Many of my happiest hours at the opera have been spent in that little theatre where none of the seats was more than a few rows from the stage. It was not unlike being back in the stalls at the Keighley Hippodrome, and a far cry from the basilican spaces of the Coliseum, but there was nothing diminutive about the stage itself nor the orchestra pit, both of which could accommodate a full complement of performers in works that often featured the large casts favoured, for understandable reasons, by the school. And since, with very few exceptions, the operas were sung in English, my proximity to the performers meant that every detail of the production could be savoured, almost from the inside, as it were. On my very first visit, I was treated to the most completely satisfying 'live' performance of Mozart's 'Cosi fan Tutte' that I have ever witnessed. Other memorable occasions were Chabrier's charming 'L'Etoile, Mozart's 'forgotten' opera 'La Finta Giardiniera', Poulenc's stunning “The Carmelites', and rarities such as Dvorak's 'The Cunning Peasant' and Wolf-Ferrari's 'Il Campiello', but it would be wrong of me to particularise, since I never spent an evening there that was less than enjoyable.

Obviously, the performances were not world class, but, given the talent and total commitment of the young singers and musicians, they were never less than professional, and, since the simple aim of each production was to realise the chosen masterpiece as convincingly as the available resources would allow, the whole was invariably greater than the parts. Which is exactly as it should be with opera...and more than can be said of some of the productions by other, much more prestigious opera houses, I have since encountered. But, I'm happy to report that, at the Coliseum, at that time, dud productions were rarely in evidence among the more than 200 I attended during those golden years. A detailed account of these and any opera performances I have subsequently witnessed, together with my opinions about them, can be found in the separate book I have written since starting this autobiography, entitled 'Confessions of an Impecunious Opera Lover', which is freely available to anyone more interested in my operagoing than in my life, on my website at .au .

Easy access to the world of opera was not the only cultural benefit conferred upon me by working in Whitehall, although it was by far the most important. Apart from the evening concerts at the Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, there were frequent lunchtime concerts at St. John's Church in nearby Smith Square, and the Tate Gallery was only a short walk away, all of which meant that within a few months of the Fire Department's move back to Millbank I had settled into a very comfortable existence indeed. The Civil Service, I found, was as well-organised, below stairs, to meet the needs of its own members, as it was, above stairs, to meet those of its Masters. In addition to the 'tea ladies', wheeling their trolleys around the corridors mid-morning and mid-afternoon, many of the Government Departments in and around Whitehall boasted staff canteens, most of which had a licensed bar, and I was delighted to find that my Home Office pass gave me lunchtime access to all of them.

Although each of these establishments had its own personality, and all offered a choice of hot and cold dishes, and draught beer at affordable prices, some of them were more tastefully furnished, and featured more ambitious menus, than others, and I made a point of sampling all those within walking distance of my office, which were reported, by the self-styled connoisseurs among my colleagues, to be worth a visit, but my regular lunchtime choice was the large, well-appointed canteen in Thames House on Millbank, which was not only virtually next door, but could be reached, on rainy days, via the (?)wartime legacy of a network of underground corridors connecting the older government buildings in the vicinity to each other. If my memory serves me correctly, these canteens were managed on a non-profit basis by voluntary catering committees elected by the staff working in the building, and the only benefit they received from HMG was that the premises were rent free. There was at least one canteen where waitress service was available at a small extra cost, but the most remarkable thing about them all was the absence of any evidence of class distinction. The staff canteen was open to, and used by, all ranks – there were no 'executive dining rooms' or 'officers' messes' in the Civil Service. Which reminds me of the other differences I observed between life in my old workplace and my new one.

In the Civil Service, for example, I saw little evidence of the interpersonal rivalries and resentments, or the attention-seeking behaviour that were common features of office life in the private sector, where a good deal of individual energy was expended on seeking personal advancement by claiming credit and avoiding blame regardless of merit, while sucking up to superiors. The reason for this, I decided, was to be found in its complete transparency of hierarchical structure, which ensured that everybody in the Civil Service knew precisely where they stood in relation to everybody else, and even how much everybody earned. This left them free to devote all their energies to the job, secure in the knowledge that, for good or ill, the quality of their performance would be open to inspection by all their colleagues, of whatever rank, since any decisions they had made, or advice they had proffered would almost certainly be recorded, somewhere, on a file - and carefully preserved.

Thus, another significant difference between my old and new employers lay in the quality of their respective record keeping. Since the Civil Service was fully accountable to Parliament for all its doings, past and present, and since its day-to-day operations relied heavily on precedent, the past was more important than the future, and not only was every decision and all advice recorded and preserved, but also, where responsibility for them lay. Thus, the unspoken motto of the Civil Service was not 'Make it new!', or 'Make it better!', or even 'Make it work!', but 'Get it right!!', and the most profound insight into the workings of the Civil Service I have ever come across was provided by the Rand Corporation of America when they were hired to investigate the New York State bureaucracy and recommend improvements. They began their report by observing that 'The problem with all bureaucracies is, that, in a bureaucracy, the penalties for making mistakes far outweigh the rewards for successful innovation'. On the basis of my own experience, I can certainly vouch for the truth of this, and for the fact that, in the pharmaceutical industry. at least, the rewards for innovation far outweighed the penalties for mistakes, and also that the future was seen as much more important than the past, and, apart from the Board Meetings, very few records were kept of decisions made and advice given.

The only personal skill I was required to improve upon in my new career was one I hadn't had much cause to practice during working hours for years....my handwriting! I had used it, of course, to scribble drafts before dictating them and in private, at home, a little, but never to express my thoughts on weighty matters for the permanent record, as I was now called upon to do. This was because the main activity required of me in the new job, after sitting down at my desk, was to take the top file out of my In-tray, and find out why it had been sent to me. When I opened it, the file would reveal itself to be in two parts – on the right, all the documents relating to the matter requiring my attention – eg 'The Unfiltered Water Mains' – some going back for years, and, on the left, the Minute Sheets, on which would be recorded the (often) handwritten observations of all the officers - some of quite exalted rank - through whose hands the file had passed for whatever reason since it had been created, ending with those of the officer who had sent the file to me, setting out the the action I had to take, or the decision I had to make, and why.

In order to respond to this request, I had, of course, to read the file, and, in my early days, this meant reading all the file, which was time consuming, but instructive, because I was, in effect, reading my way into the job. With the passage of time, however, an increasing mastery of my subject, and a much quicker grasp of what was required of me, enabled me to send the file on its way, up or down the hierarchy, more expeditiously, with my own decision or advice, and the reasons for it, recorded in my own handwriting, often at considerable length, on the minute sheet above my signature, where it would be open to inspection by anyone who cared to look for it, for as long as the file existed. There was, I found, a sly sub-culture, particularly among members of the Administrative Class, to which I now belonged, arising from an appreciation of the style and quality of individual handwriting. Towards the end of my stint in the Fire Department I received an unexpected call to attend upon my new Under Sec, an individual who had, until recently, been my AS (Gordon having been posted elsewhere in the meantime, as was customary, although we still lunched together frequently in Thames House), but who, on the recent retirement of my original AUSS, had been promoted into his place. He was more typical of the genre than Gordon, but very friendly, easy to work with, and, it transpired, a fellow opera lover.

He welcomed me with his usual affability before revealing the purpose of our meeting. 'Due to my recent promotion', he said, 'I find myself in the unusual position of being both your Reporting Officer and your Countersigning Officer, so I thought I might seize the opportunity, if you so wish, to advise you about any shortcomings I may have observed in your performance to date.' Since this was long before 'Disclosure' became a feature of the Annual Reporting system (see below), I couldn't quite follow the logic of this, but hastened to accept his offer, pointing out that I had come from a world in which regular constructive criticism by one's superiors was the accepted norm, and I would be grateful for any advice he could give me. 'Well', he said, looking at me sadly from beneath his bushy eyebrows, 'Your handwriting isn't very good'.

I could hardly believe my ears, and for a brief moment my mind flashed back to those equally unexpected comments made by that useless sales manager in Upjohn about 'care of car', asking myself, again, 'Is this some sort of test of whether I can accept criticism?' But, seeing that he was genuinely trying to be helpful, I quickly dismissed such thoughts, and went on to explain that, not having been called upon to use my handwriting in a professional capacity during my previous careers I was out of practice, but had been doing my best, since joining the Civil Service, to write clearly and legibly. To which he replied 'Oh, it's not illegible. It just looks illegible'. I couldn't think what I was supposed to do about it – make it more stylishly legible, perhaps? - so I tried to look suitably enlightened. Fortunately, he showed no inclination to dwell on the subject, and moved quickly on to say something equally unexpected but, this time, a little more instructive.

'The only other thing', he said, 'is that you are inclined to be a little dogmatic'. I was genuinely surprised by this, because, although undeniably opinionated and argumentative, I have always seen myself as being essentially open-minded and tolerant. Expressing my surprise, I said that, although I may argue strongly for my own point of view during discussions, it had always been my practice to accept the outcome, however adverse to it I felt, without demur. 'Oh, that's not what I mean', he replied, 'I find that rather refreshing. It's just that you tend to think that when a matter has been decided, it's finally settled.' I looked at him in some bewilderment. 'Always remember', he said, portentously,'that, in the realm of government administration, everything is always open to reconsideration.' And so ended the first and last constructive advice I was ever to receive, face to face, in the whole of my new career – a career in which, by the end of the first year, I was feeling very much at home.

2

On the Home Front, however, back in Fleet, the quality of our family life, which had improved so dramatically with the sudden change in my career prospects, was significantly impaired, shortly afterwards, by the loss of our entire circle of close friends, when Frank and Joyce, Mike and Pauline, George and Pauline, and their families departed, not only from the locality, but from the country.

It was to be expected, of course, that, when Boots finally absorbed Crookes, members of the existing marketing management team would be obliged to find new jobs elsewhere, although, forewarned and forearmed, they would be in a much stronger position than I had been to do so. Pre-occupied as I was, however, with the uncertainties of my own fate during late 1970, I had little attention to spare for their activities until I finally got my head above water in early 1971 and looked around me. By which time, George had already got himself fixed up with a reputable German firm, located somewhere in the Midlands, and Frank and Mike were in negotiations with a Canadian entrepreneur they had contacted while searching for new products during Crookes' last days. The outcome was that Frank and Mike were persuaded to emigrate to Canada, with their families, to join a firm created by their Canadian sponsor to market the products of which he owned the patents, and George, for reasons best known to himself, applied, or was invited, to follow them shortly afterwards.

It was a great adventure for all of them, of course, and Anne and I couldn't but wish them luck as we waved them goodbye, but the effect of their departure on our own social life was quite profound, particularly for Anne. I, of course, had my working life in London, Helen and Paul had their separate lives at school, and Anne herself was on friendly terms with several of the neighbouring wives, but, in all the thirty years we were to live in Fleet, we would never form relationships, locally, that came anywhere near to matching the ones we had enjoyed with those dear departed couples - casually visiting each others' houses, sharing meals, sharing memories, even sharing holidays, we had so much in common, and knew each other so well, that we were like an extended family, taking each other completely for granted, warts and all. One of the few drawbacks to working in Whitehall was that any friends I made there, such as Gordon, who, with his wife Sylvia, Anne and I eventually got to know quite well, might live within commuting distance of Westminster, but in the opposite direction to Fleet (eg. Amersham, Bucks.), too far away to make frequent contact feasible. Even Dan and Anne, our nearest remaining old friends, were too far away in Sussex to exchange visits conveniently, and our relationship with Gerry and Jessie in distant Yorkshire was completely dependent on 'coming to stay' with each other, which we not infrequently did.

In all other respects, however, Fleet was a very desirable place to live, and would continue to develop until it became the hub of a newly created County District of Hart, and, in the future, be assessed, in social surveys comparing it for employment, health, education, life expectancy, crime rates, weather, and house prices, with other UK districts (including Tunbridge Wells in Kent, Godalming in Surrey and Amersham in Bucks.), as enjoying the best quality of life in Britain. Even in our day, it was rated as the second most affluent small town in the country after nearby Bracknell, although the only jobs available in Fleet were in the service industries, since all the other wage earners worked elsewhere. But Anne was never as comfortable as me with Fleet's middle class mores, although happy to take full advantage of its superior amenities.

It would be an exaggeration to describe our family life, in the years that followed, as idyllic, but I cannot see it, in retrospect, as being anything less than ideal, filled, as it was, to the brim with absorbing activities of all kinds, and untroubled by serious misfortune. The house was ideally suited to our needs, once minor adjustments to its downstairs interior had been made to create a dining alcove in the kitchen for our everyday use, and a partition between the dining and lounge areas of the L-shaped living room to give greater versatility of usage. With four double bedrooms upstairs, Helen and Paul could have their own rooms and still leave a spare bedroom for the use of visitors, in which, however, I could install enough video and audio equipment to keep me happy at all other times. The incorporation of an extending roof ladder into the trapdoor above the top landing gave me easy access to a roof space which a few floorboards would convert into a commodious loft where our cabin trunks and any pieces of furniture (junk) that were surplus to our current requirements but small enough to fit through the trapdoor could be stored.

Also ideally suited to our needs was the garden at the back of the house, once the hedges I had planted around it were high enough to give the illusion of relative seclusion. Facing south, it had a lawn big enough to accommodate such activities as badminton, but small enough to be mowed by me without undue hardship, leaving room around it for garden beds of sufficient size to satisfy Anne's passion for growing both flowers and vegetables, which I did not share, but willingly supported with my labour, under her supervision, as required. My own pride and joy was the broad terrace between the house and the garden, which, during the months of my redundancy, I had laid out with 'crazy paving', an activity involving both body and brain to a strangely satisfying extent. Easily accessed from the house by french windows in both the lounge and eventually the dining room, and furnished with a picnic table seating eight, the southern aspect of this terrace made it a virtual extension of the house for family meals and hospitality purposes on sunny days in all seasons.

And so, 'short a' nowt we'd got', as my mother used to say, our family story unfolded through the 70s at a pace, and in a manner largely determined by the advancing ages of our children as they made their separate ways through the local education system. By the time Paul started school, Hampshire County Council had abolished the divisive 'eleven plus' exam, which had discriminated so inconveniently against Helen, and converted its former Secondary Modern Schools into 'Comprehensives', catering for the 11s to 16s, and its Grammar Schools into “Sixth Form Colleges' for the 16s to 18s. This meant that Fleet now had two comprehensive schools, Courtmour in the southern half, and Calthorpe in the northern half, but the nearest Colleges were in Farnborough and Basingstoke. This arrangement did not please the inhabitants of Fleet, who could not see why its two existing establishments, within walking distance of each other, could not be adapted to cater for all its 11 to 18 year olds. But the collective mind of Hampshire County Council in faraway Winchester remained closed to reason on the subject.

The primary school Paul attended at the age of five was about 200 yards up the main road from the end of our street where a pedestrian crossing, serviced at the crucial times by a 'lollipop lady', traversed the road to its gates. It may be worthy of note that, from the very start, Paul made this journey quite alone (as had Helen in similar circumstances when starting school back in Calverley), and would have felt embarrassed by the presence of an accompanying parent. I am led to believe that this would no longer be seen as normal practice. The comprehensive school, to which Paul transferred at the age of eleven, was about the same distance from the house as the primary school, but away from the main road, through a couple of back streets. All very convenient, and it provided Paul with an education that was good enough to get him eventually through his GCE 'O” Levels and on to the 6th Form College at Farnborough, for his 'A' Levels - by bus, of course.

Meanwhile, at about the time Paul was starting school, Helen was leaving 'St Nick's' with a very impressive array of GCE 'O' Levels, all set to re-enter the state system and pursue her 'A' Levels. This would normally have meant attending the 6th form at Farnborough Grammar School, but, once again, her timing was unfortunate in that she was making her move just as the changes from selective to comprehensive were being made throughout the county, an upheaval which gave rise, not surprisingly, to a good deal of uncertainty and confusion among those affected by it, and this was compounded by the fact that Helen's best friend, Tina, who lived just across the street, and was never, in our view, a good influence on her, had painted such an unappetizing picture of her own experiences at Farnborough Grammar School - now a 6th Form College, of course - that Helen decided against it in favour of Basingstoke. Anne and I didn't like this very much, but, in the face of her determination, there was little we could do about it.

There was nothing wrong with Basingstoke 6th Form College, but it soon became evident that it didn't suit Helen. There were a number of reasons for this, as she later explained to me, one being that she didn't know any of her fellow students, all of whom had come from local schools and knew each other; another was the culture shock of the boisterous mixed-sex environment after the sheltered single-sex cloisters of St Nick's; another, the occasional unreliability of the trains between Fleet and Basingstoke and her difficulty in joining in after-school activities, all of which she could have come to terms with, because she was a clever and adaptable girl, but the most compelling reason was the unwelcome attentions she was attracting from her young male maths teacher, who seized on every excuse, however flimsy, such as missing morning roll-call due to the lateness of her train, to interview her privately in his room, there to engage her in increasingly intimate conversations of a non-academic nature, which the inexperienced sixteen-year-old Helen found difficult to deal with.

And, having got herself, as she so rightly saw, into this mess, by choosing to go to Basingstoke in the first place, she also found difficulty in complaining about, or even talking about it, bottling up her unhappiness inside her until, one day, a routine reproof from Anne about allowing Bonny to wander off by leaving the garden gate open, caused her to explode into an uncharacteristic rant about the way the world was treating her, and announce that she was leaving home. And leave home she did – for a few days, at least – by going to live in a 'squat' in a suburb of Farnborough called Cove with a number of other 'drop-outs', both of which phenomena were features of the burgeoning youth culture of the time. Knowing where she was, however, and given our own life experiences, Anne and I were not unduly disturbed by this gesture, and waited for her to calm down and return home, and, after some discussion, decide that she would continue her studies at Farnborough Technical College, which, given its proximity to the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the high-tech industries around it, had a good academic reputation, particularly for the science subjects, and Helen was studying maths, biology, chemistry, and English. But it also had a reputation for its rather permissive social environment.

Since Helen was an attractive, and fun-loving girl, it is hardly surprising that she found the social life that was opening up before her, not just at the Farnborough Tech, but throughout the whole of North East Hants., far more absorbing than her 'A' Level studies, although her daytime attendance record wasn't bad, and Anne and I did what we could to curtail her nocturnal activities. I can recall her indignation when I informed her that, because the entire Scott household was dependent on my earning power, and my daytime performance at the Home Office was dependent on my enjoying a previous good night's sleep, undisturbed by Anne, lying restlessly awake beside me, worrying into the small hours, the door would be locked at midnight, except on Fridays and Saturdays, whether she was home or not. 'Don't you care about what might happen to me out there,' she asked, to which I replied that, having brought her up to be self-reliant, I had every confidence in her ability to look out for herself. My guiding principles during those years were that parents also have rights, and should never allow themselves to be blackmailed by the love they bear their offspring'.

I remember driving over to Farnborough Tech, to pick Helen up after some sort of students' event, and making my way towards the sound of disco music through corridors pervaded by the sweet smell of cannabis. But everybody seemed to be behaving well, and no harm came to Helen from any of the social experiments she conducted during those extended 'A' Level years, except, of course, to her exam results, which were nothing like as good as her 'O' Levels had been. Abysmal, in fact. There were no Fs, but there were Cs, Ds and even Es, and they were barely good enough to get her into the University of her choice to read for the degree of her choice - a BSc.(hons) in Psychology at, of all places, the University of Bradford, an institution which had proliferated on the site of the old Bradford Technical College [where I had attended night-school classes in Zoology I and II during my own teens], to occupy much of the surrounding inner city area, and would continue to expand throughout the 70s and 80s. Although a recent creation, it had made a name for itself by establishing a Department of Peace Studies, the first one in the world, and still, I think, the most influential.

Realising that Helen's acceptance there was in the balance due to her poor 'A'Level grades, I took it upon myself to phone the Head of the Psychology Department from the Home Office to plead her case. I found myself speaking to a lady with a German accent, who would subsequently be referred to by Helen, always apprehensively, as 'Verdy', but who gave me a sympathetic hearing, during which I drew her attention to Helen's excellent 'O'Levels, and mentioned the disturbances resulting from the changes in Hampshire's educational system at 'A'Level time, and any other mitigating factors I could think of, but it was the 'cross-cultural' nature of the subjects Helen had studied (with my encouragement) at 'A'Level that seemed to interest her most, as there were not many applicants presenting with Maths (Statistics), Biology and English, however good their grades. Whatever the reason, the happy outcome was that Helen was accepted at a university in a city where she had close relatives and we had friends who she had known since childhood, to any of whom she could turn for help and support if ever the need arose.

Unfortunately, however, she now had only one grandmother left, because her 'Little' Grandma, my dear mother, had died in March 1973. She was only 73, but had led a full and active life until she succumbed to a fatal stroke while laughing at a comedy show she was watching on TV during her weekly visit to take tea with her sister, Auntie Annie. Never one to inconvenience others, she was as self-effacing and undemanding in death as she had been in life. And completely self-sufficient to the end. In the 12 years since the death of my father, she had continued to enlarge the circle of friends she had initiated with her Olde Thyme dancing, and about whom I knew very little, except that, judging by the photographs she showed us of their various outings and coach trips, and the numbers of them who turned up at her funeral, they enjoyed her company as much as she enjoyed theirs. Although she had played little active part in our daily lives since we had moved south, we were always in touch, calling on her during our frequent visits to the Bradford area as guests of Gerry and Jessie, and inviting her to come and visit us whenever she felt like it. As a child of her times, and a Yorkshirewoman at that, she was not given to displays of affection towards her offspring, always preferring quiet deeds to words, and she would never allow us to call her anything but 'mother' – never 'ma' or 'mum', but she was everything to me that a mother could be, and I tried my best to be a good son to her. Vale Hilda.(nee Magson).

In that same year, with Helen due to leave home, and me off to Whitehall on weekdays, and Paul to school, Anne decided that it was time to return to the workforce she had left when Helen was born. She was encouraged in this, not only by me, but also by the Government, who were attempting to boost the economy by initiating local refresher courses for married women aimed at getting them back to work on a national scale. The result was that Anne enrolled herself in a government sponsored course at the same Farnborough Tech that Helen was still attending, to emerge three months later with a certificate attesting to the fact that she had 'successfully completed a course...in the following subjects: Typewriting, Communications, Statistics, Elements of English Law, Economics, Business Organisation, and Office Organisation'. Not bad, eh? And all in three months. Judging by Anne's accounts, it was one of those 'fill this space with a course' type of courses, hastily cobbled together to give substance to the spirit of a government policy, relying on a teaching staff, who, also according to Anne, were an ad hoc mixture of the semi-retired and semi-redundant using teaching methods which ranged from the patronising to the ingratiating. But it was good enough to get Anne back into shape, and she had no trouble finding part-time employment afterwards.

In the world outside our family circle, however, the 1970s had become a turbulent time in the UK, both politically and economically, as successive governments strove to get to grips with the bleak realities of Britain's declining industrial competitiveness in the post-war world, and to cope with the strikes, walk-outs, go-slows and protest marches resulting from their efforts. But, whether as cause or effect, the dominant feature of that disruptive decade, was the soaring inflation rate. Starting at a modest 5% in 1970, it peaked at an incredible 25% in 1975. With house values following suit, the bank rate lagging behind, and wages leap-frogging prices, the most noticeable result of this in Fleet was a speculative frenzy in the local housing market as houses became 'an investment' rather than 'a home' and ambitious local 'yuppies' began 'trading up', not by moving in or out of Fleet, but by moving to bigger and better houses within Fleet. It was a bonanza time for estate agents.

Anne, who would, in any case, have preferred to move house every five years, was not immune to this infection, and even persuaded me to go and inspect a couple of 'desirable residences', but I was merely going through the motions to placate her, secure in the knowledge that, however desirable they may be, if we sold our present house, my 6% fixed interest mortgage with the Crusader Insurance Company would be replaced by something much more financially onerous. It was an unanswerable argument in favour of staying put in a house that was, in any case, perfectly satisfactory. The only adverse effect the raging inflation had on my personal fortunes was to reduce the retirement pension I had earned by my years in Crookes Laboratories to a minute proportion of its original worth, but that was too far ahead in the future for me to worry about. Not so, alas, for those of my older ex-colleagues who had already retired, and I can recall receiving a piteous letter from the retired Export Manager, whose comfortable existence had been laid waste by the erosion in the value of his pension. He was asking me to join with him in petitioning Boots to do something about it, which I readily did, of course, but what could Boots do? The Crookes pension fund was held and managed by the Prudential Insurance Company as a commercial venture on terms which did not make any provision for post-retirement inflation-proofing.

Interestingly, however, Civil Service pensions were unusual, at the time, in being inflation-proofed, and this hitherto unremarkable fact suddenly became a matter of growing, and indignant concern for sections of the press who had taken little previous interest in the Civil Service, and, consequently, for members of the public who would normally have regarded its career prospects and rewards with disdain. As a result of this, I found myself confronted at neighbourhood drinks parties by individuals who, having learned that I was a civil servant, would take it upon themselves to harangue me about the unfair advantage I had so sneakily awarded myself over more productive members of the work force such as themselves. I countered these assaults by pointing out that, by the time I came to retire, steps would almost certainly have been taken to bring inflation under control, and inflation-proof pensions may have become quite commonplace, but to no avail.

One effect of our economic security and settled circumstances was to leave us free to devote ourselves to making the most of our leisure time, and we were ideally placed in Fleet to do so. The coast was only 40 miles away, and we could drive down to Worthing, or Littlehampton, or Wittering, even Southsea, if we fancied a day at the seaside, lunching in pubs that were becoming progressively better equipped to cater for families. Even closer, in Hants, Surrey, Sussex, Berks, Bucks, and Wilts were substantial numbers of 'stately homes', many of them owned by the National Trust, which we duly joined, and all of them open to the public at weekends. And, up the A30, just beyond Camberley, were the famous Saville Gardens, at the southern tip of Windsor Great Park, which we could visit whenever we felt like it, to stroll round the lakes and admire the blooms displaying themselves at the appropriate times during the changing seasons. The M3 Motorway opened in 1974, increasing the town's amenity still further, bestowing a motorway service station on Fleet, through the back gates of which, we locals could gain access to the motorway from leafy lanes a few hundred yards from the town centre, and make our way to such places as Windsor, Hampton Court, Stonehenge, and even Bournemouth. So we were never short of things to do at the weekends when the weather was suitable during the summer months.

Failing that, a variety of indoor entertainments were available locally - at the cinemas in nearby Aldershot, for instance, and, even nearer, at the Castle Theatre in Farnham, which, in 1974, was replaced by the newly built Redgrave Theatre, of which Anne and I soon became regular patrons, spending many happy hours there, over the years, attending some remarkably fine productions by the Farnham Rep and touring companies. I can remember being particularly impressed by an ingeniously scaled-down version of Noel Coward's sprawling inter-war masterpiece 'Cavalcade' with its cast of hundreds, and there were plays by Alan Ayckborn and Tom Stoppard to name but a few. The most memorable, if not the most elevating, of the touring productions was undoubtedly 'The Rocky Horror Show' which, by the time it got to Farnham had become a cult with the nation's youth, many of whom would attend the performance in fancy dress and it had become the custom to award a prize, during the interval, for the most impressive. There was also a custom of audience participation at certain points in the plot, one of which involved squirting water about the auditorium, and, at that point, I was inspired to unfurl the umbrella I happened to have under my seat, eliciting a good-natured cheer from the perpetrators and introducing, perhaps (who knows?), another 'tradition' into future performances.

Our friends Dan and Anne were with us on that occasion, having driven over from Sussex to meet us at the theatre. They lived too far away to allow us to exchange hospitality with them conveniently, but we would arrange to meet for dinner every couple of months or so, at a pub half way between us. We would also meet occasionally in the West End to attend any musical show, such as '42nd Street', that appealed to all of us. By this time, Dan had left Upjohn to embark upon a career which led him, eventually, to become some sort of property speculator. He started by taking on a private nursing home which Anne and he ran so successfully, with the help of their numerous offspring and relations (all Catholics, of course), that they opened another one, and then another in Liverpool, Dan's home town, to be managed by one or other of their sons.

As the family business expanded, Dan's restless mind, fuelled, possibly, by his dealings with the banks over these acquisitions, and the ease with which credit could be obtained at the time, began to look around for fresh fields to explore. They acquired a new home for themselves in an impressively large and very attractive Grade II Listed building named 'Bylsborough' near Henfield complete with turrets and a stable block, standing in it's own extensive grounds, and approached along a dramatically tree-lined drive, where they continued to throw the parties for which they had always been so justly famous, and to which Anne and I were usually invited, always staying overnight when we were. Helen and Paul were also involved, whenever available, and, in later years, Paul spent a holiday with Anne and her daughter at a property they had acquired in Fuengarola, Spain. We began to lose touch with them when Dan turned his attention to Florida, USA, which Anne and he began to visit for extended periods, ostensibly on holiday, but, it's my guess that, by this time, Dan's mind was incapable of taking a holiday from his obsessive search for any entrepreneurial opportunities which might be lurking in the immediate vicinity of wherever he happened to be at the time. In later years, Anne and he would finally go off to live permanently in Florida without leaving a forwarding address, but they were a welcome, if intermittent, presence on the periphery of our lives throughout the 70s and 80s

But, eventful as our home life was, living, as I did, in the same house for over thirty years, and spending nearly twenty of those years in the same employment, makes it difficult for my memory to pinpoint exactly when some of those events took place. I can't remember, for example, when it was that Anne took up painting as a hobby, but I can recall how it happened, and I know that it was sometime after our friends Mike and Pauline had left Fleet, because Mike had left behind him, with Anne, a portable oil-painting kit, which Anne, after some procrastination, finally began to experiment with. Although gifted by Nature in many ways, Anne was temperamentally unsuited to the learning process. She was a quick learner who would rather teach herself than be taught, but she did not enjoy confronting her own inadequacies, however temporarily.

For her first attempt, she placed a single lemon on the coffee table in front of the settee on which she normally sat to watch TV, and began painting it in oils on paper. After a while, I happened to wander into the room and glance over her shoulder. I was so impressed by what I saw that I said to her,'If I could paint that lemon as well as that, there'd be no stopping me. I'd take up painting as a hobby myself' Anne did not comment, but her silence spoke volumes, and from that lemon onward, she slowly but steadily progressed, learning by doing. She began attending local painting groups, watching and listening to anyone who was better trained than she was, until she herself became sufficiently accomplished to give advice to others. Over the years, she mastered oils, watercolours, acrylics, and even pastels, producing works, eventually, that attracted buyers whenever she displayed them at local charity fairs, keeping me busy making frames for them, until a time came when their quality was such that they merited professional framing.

This talent of Anne's never ceased to amaze me, because it was so completely outside my own capabilities. In addition to her keen eye and delicate touch, she had an uncanny colour sense. She seemed to know instinctively which colours to mix with which to produce the desired result. She never painted from life, always from photographs, some of them taken, to order, by me, or from reproductions of other paintings she admired. Anything that appealed to her she would copy. And she usually did her painting sitting on the settee in our lounge room with her canvas in front of her on a low coffee table, often with the television switched on, but meticulously making no mess. She was good at landscapes and seascapes, but her speciality was flowers, sometimes in glass vases, sometimes in jugs, but always vibrant with colour and life. She sold lots of her pictures over the years, always for modest sums, and often painting the same picture more than once, but she kept the best of them, including any of sentimental significance to either of us, pictures that would continue to look down at me from the walls of our home when she had departed this life.

Back in Fleet, however, at about the time Anne was starting to paint, I was allowing myself to be recruited into a local choir. Apart from sing-songs in pubs, etc., I was totally without previous experience in choral singing, but the Fleet Choral Society was so desperate to augment its tenors and basses, who were heavily outnumbered, as in most amateur choirs, by the sopranos and altos, that they were happy to overlook this and give me a go. And I soon got the hang of it. I had a good ear, a confident baritone singing voice, a love of music, and I could even read music – or so I thought, until I found that the bass part was written in the bass clef. As a clarinettist. I was accustomed to reading music in the treble clef, and, although I sang with Fleet Choral for many years, I never came to terms with the bass clef, and often had to rely on an opening prompt from my fellow basses to get me in at the right pitch. Many of the other members had sung in church choirs, and were more accomplished than me, but some were not, and they were all very friendly. One of the tenors was the civil servant I had met in Basingstoke while being recruited, one of my fellow basses was my own GP, and there were two ex-colleagues from Crookes Laboratories.

Joining Fleet Choral turned out to be a good move. There are few activities as rewarding, or as therapeutic, as a jolly good sing once a week, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself - except when singing Christmas Carols, many of which are very boring, and, when sung one after another at a carol concert with no respite from intervening solo arias (as in, eg. Bach's St Matthew Passion), can be quite exhausting. In addition to the Christmas Carol concerts, however, the choir mounted one major public concert a year, for which we rehearsed for months in advance and, when necessary, hired professional soloists. We did Vivaldi's 'Gloria' one year, and I still find myself joining in that wonderful opening chorus when I hear it performed on the radio. We even tackled Bach's 'St Matthew', but our most impressive achievements came after our competent, but rather pedestrian, older conductor had been replaced by a much more competent, enthusiastic, and charismatic younger one, who soon began to take us into musical pastures which were new and strange. Our progress under his direction eventually led him to persuade us to help him realise what was obviously a secret ambition of his to perform Constant Lambert's 'Rio Grande', using as the piano soloist, his old tutor at the Royal College of Music, Angus Morrison, to whom the work was dedicated, and who had played the piano part at the work's first performance in 1928.

Only about 15 minutes long, 'Rio Grande' is a very complex and highly original work which 'combines jazzy syncopations, ragtime and Brazilian influences, harmonies and rhythms with a traditional English choral sound. The piano part often plays triplets against duplets, redolent of a rumba'. It is a setting of an 'atmospheric' poem by Sacheverell Sitwell and is written for alto, choir, piano, brass, strings, and a percussion section of 15 instruments needing five players, but, needless to say, the forces assembled for its public performance at the Fleet Civic Centre were not as numerous as that, although our young conductor had contrived to put together, in addition to his venerable tutor as piano soloist, an ensemble, which, although skeletal, was adequate to the task, and the resulting performance was greeted with rapturous applause and declared to be a resounding success. Standing in the back row of the choir, however, I knew only that the basses were doing their bit, and was quite unable to appreciate the wonders that were being worked elsewhere. It was, indeed, a memorable occasion, although I can't recall what we sang for the remainder of the concert.

3

The family activities during those eventful years, which I can pinpoint with the greatest accuracy are our annual summer holidays. This is largely due to the fact that I recorded them on cine film which is still available, and was carefully dated when originally archived. The family summer holiday can outrank even Christmas as the high spot of the family year by absorbing more energy in its planning and execution, and generating greater quantities of pleasurable anticipation beforehand, much of which, alas, can remain unrealised if the event turns out, as it so easily can, to be more stressful than staying at home. This never happened in our case, fortunately, because we never went camping, or caravanning, or even renting a cottage in Cornwall or a gite in France. Anne and I could never see much point in taking a holiday which entailed catering for ourselves in much the same way as we did at home, albeit in unfamiliar surroundings. Nothing less than bed, breakfast and dinner in weatherproof accommodation would suffice for us, preferably in a mature seaside resort offering a range of inexpensive indoor and outdoor entertainments suited to the four of us.

During the early 70s, as a four-member, one-income family, the tenderness of Paul's years our financial limitations, and the loss of the Company Car confined us to holidaying in the south of England, and we had a reasonably successful week in Teignmouth where we stayed at a small hotel called 'Bairnscroft' which catered, as the name implies, for small children, and where the weather was kind. The following year we did B&B&D at a farm in Croyde in N.Devon with easy access to wonderful Woolacombe beach during the day, but little in the way of family entertainment in the evenings, and the weather could have been better, and, after giving the matter some thought, I came to the conclusion that, in planning its annual summer holiday, an English family such as ours faced two problems. The first was that the English climate, excellent as it was in many ways, was, to say the least, unreliable, and a holiday taken at the height of the English summer could be either blessed with blue skies and sunshine or ruined by wind and rain. The second was the straitjacket imposed upon us by the long school vacation, when peak demand for travel facilities and accommodation sent prices soaring. And, having identified these problems, I set about solving them.

A solution to the unreliability of the English climate was to be found, as I well knew, on the Mediterranean coast of my beloved Spain where sunshine in summer was virtually guaranteed; I also knew that the only feasible way of our getting there was by taking one of the many 'package deal' holidays on offer, combining charter flights, accommodation and food with on-the-spot services of the tour operator's representatives at all times. Since our trip to Lloret in 1962, the package deal industry had continued to flourish exponentially, with the brochures of the competing tour operators growing thicker every year as new resorts were developed and new hotels were built, some of them in rather unsuitable places, but, by the 70s the demand had levelled off, competition between the firms had become fiercer, and some of the shine had worn off their wares.

There were reports of holidaymakers arriving at hotels which were not quite completely built, in resorts where sandy beaches and safe bathing were conspicuously absent, and it became increasingly obvious that a good deal of poetic licence was being used when describing the amenities available at some of the new destinations in the brochures. It was also becoming obvious that the more established resorts, such as Lloret, Tossa and Torremelenos were suffering from overdevelopment as new holiday hotels were thrown up further and further from beaches which were becoming grossly overcrowded, particularly during August.

Discerning holidaymakers had always looked down their noses at package deals as attracting members of the proletariat in unwelcome numbers to hitherto exclusive resorts, and many of them still preferred to transport their families to remote and 'unspoilt' places in the privacy of their own motor cars, there to cater for themselves in the privacy of their own rented accommodation. What Anne and I wanted, however, was a two hour flight from a nearby airport, followed by two weeks of bed, breakfast and dinner for a family of four, in a modern hotel within easy walking distance of a sandy beach lined with cafes and bars, followed by a two hour flight back. Another thing we wanted was separate rooms for ourselves and the children, so that Anne and I could indulge in undisturbed sexual congress whenever we felt like it, and all of this at a cost we could afford.

With these objectives in mind, I studied every tour brochure I could find, reading between the lines of the glowing encomiums enshrined in their colourful pages and scrutinising any photographs with great care. This was in the days before Trade Description Acts and the Internet, and there was little unbiased information available about the siting of the hotels, or the amenities available in the resorts and the quality of their bathing beaches. My enquiries would eventually lead me to discover that the local travel agents had access to an independently produced compendium in which the principal features of most of the established Mediterranean holiday resorts were described in realistic terms, with a diagrammatic street map showing the position of the hotels in relation to the beaches. etc.. This invaluable document was kept under the counter (although I seem to remember that in later years it was put on public display), but was available for inspection by any customer who knew of its existence and asked to see it. Needless to say, once unearthed, it would make my task much easier.

In the meantime, my researches unearthed the brochure of a small tour operator specialising in the island of Majorca, in which I found a small hotel in a small resort called S'Illot, which seemed to meet all our requirements, and was part of a package including a flight from Gatwick to Palma and and a coach trip across the island to our destination on its east coast. What could be more convenient. Compared with those car journeys across the Channel, crossing France and Spain to get to Blanes, it was more like travelling on a magic carpet. The airport at Palma may have been underdeveloped and struggling to cope with the increasing numbers of holidaymakers, and the coach trips across the island may have been bumpy, but that was a small price to pay for a fortnight of sun, sand, and sea, punctuated by bed, breakfast and dinner for four in a comfortable hotel that was virtually on the beach, and I am happy to report that our holiday at S'Illot was an unqualified success, the first of many package deals to come, and the start of a beautiful friendship with the holiday island of Majorca.

I had avoided the expense of the school summer vacation by taking Helen and Paul away from school during the first two weeks of July. I did this in the certain knowledge that any end-of-year exams would have been held in June, leaving the last few weeks of the term to be filled with little of academic importance, but I was careful to inform their schools of my intentions in advance. That first fortnight in S'Illot laid the foundations for a holiday routine which would be repeated (and perfected) over the years, a routine which was designed to minimise the stress of getting there and maximise the benefits of being there, leaving Anne, me, Helen and Paul, free, when not on the beach, at table, or in bed, to do our own thing. And one of the big attractions of Majorca was the safety of the holiday environment it provided. Obviously, some of this was due to the fact that, although tourists were arriving in their thousands, few were arriving by car, so the resorts were relatively traffic free, but the distance from the mainland seemed also to insulate the island from petty crime and street agro, certainly in the resorts we patronised over the years, and we had few qualms about allowing Helen and Paul to go their separate ways, even after dark – within reason, of course.

Another remarkable feature of Majorca was the number of Germans we found to be holidaying there, almost as many as the British, it seemed, and they were not young Germans either, most of them were of my own generation, and I was told that the reason for their attachment to Majorca was that, during the war, General Franco had allowed wounded soldiers from Rommel's Afrika Corps to convalesce there. It was now thirty years since the war had ended, however, and Germans and British were cohabiting in the hotels of Majorca without visible friction (except, of course, for the matter of the towels on the sunbeds round the hotel swimming pool!), without mentioning the war, or even acknowledging each others' existence, except on one memorable occasion.

That occurred during our second holiday in Mallorca which we spent in a resort we had discovered a few miles up the coast from S'Illot, called Cala Millor. Our package there included a good class of hotel which towered over a long and lovely beach, and was surrounded by shops, cafes, bars, restaurants (and other hotels, of course), all within easy walking distance, and we enjoyed our stay there so much that we returned to it a few years later. There were plenty of middle-aged Germans staying at the hotel, keeping themselves to themselves, as usual, but, although it was a matter of no great interest to me, I could not help but become aware that, midway through our stay, an event of great importance to many of my fellow guests at the hotel, and to the Germans in particular, was due to take place somewhere in Europe. It was the final of the 1976 FIFA World Cup in which Germany was to face Holland, who were the favourites to win, and it was to be broadcast throughout Europe on television, even as far as Mallorca.

In 1976, television was still a relatively recent arrival in Mallorca and there were nothing like the number of TV sets around that one has difficulty in avoiding there today, but our hotel had a single set for the benefit of any guests who could understand Spanish, and it was situated in a small TV lounge with a few chairs in it, normally occupied by Spaniards. Needless to say, on the day of the match, this viewing room was packed to overflowing with male bodies, far more than the ventilation could possibly cope with in the summer temperatures prevailing outside, and it was no place for anyone with less than a burning interest in the game. As I looked in on it, on our way up to our rooms from the beach to prepare for dinner, I could see that, although many of the inmates were German, the rest were British, and, in the absence of any Dutchmen (and for historic reasons, of course), the British were supporting Holland, and the atmosphere was tense because the teams were so evenly matched that (as I later learned) the game was going to extra time.

Up in our rooms, showered and dressed for dinner, we availed ourselves, as was our custom, of drinks from the makeshift bar I had, as usual, set up on our dressing table, and wandered out onto our balcony (about four floors up) to enjoy the view of the sea and bask in the warmth of the early evening. Only then did we notice that a strange silence hung over the town, and the streets below, normally bustling with life, were virtually deserted, but we hardly had to time to speculate about this phenomenon before there was a spectacular change. It began with a distant susurration of sound which rapidly grew in volume until its originators poured, cheering wildly, into the streets from the surrounding hotels. It was the Germans. They had won the World Cup and were mad with joy. And they continued to celebrate for the rest of the evening and well into the night.

They were so delighted with the result that, in the hotel bar that evening, the Brits could not help but be infected by their their mood, or avoid being drawn into their company, and we actually began to talk to each other, as best we could, across the language barrier, and I became quite friendly with one German who insisted on buying me drinks and refused to allow me to return the complement. After several attempts to do so, I gave up, resolving to seek him out during the days that followed to reciprocate. It was obvious that most of the Germans had seen active service during the war and, as the evening progressed, one or two of them, getting drunker, were beginning to revisit the unpleasant experiences they had suffered in defeat, but others managed to calm them down, and an atmosphere of bonhomie was maintained until we all staggered off drunkenly to bed.

The following morning I went into breakfast to find that the atmosphere had returned to normal - sub-normal, in fact, more like sub-zero, judging by the expressions on the faces of the German wives, and the hang-dog attitudes of the men. My German friend of the previous evening avoided my gaze as I passed his table, and continued to do so for the rest of our stay, making it impossible for me repay his hospitality, even though it was obvious from the reactions of the wives, that the wild celebrations after the World Cup victory had left a big hole in many German family holiday budgets, and this was in the days before it was possible to resort to an ATM with a credit card in an emergency. The amount of spending money taken on holiday to Spain had to be carefully calculated and rendered, preferably, into pesetas beforehand, since the Spanish bank charges for changing travellers' cheques were exorbitant. My own practice was to buy thousand peseta notes at the best available exchange rate from a small Banco de Espana branch in Covent Garden and fold them up until they were thin enough to fit into the groove under the zip running along the back of what looked like an ordinary leather belt, bought in Spain, of course, and still in my possession, although no longer in use as a money belt.

And it would be wrong to leave the subject of our summer holidays in Spain without mentioning one of the most absorbing of the activities we indulged in there – the search for what we came to call 'loot', but is commonly known as shopping. This was largely indulged in by Anne, since shopping was her favourite recreational outdoor activity - not just shopping, per se, but bargain hunting, because Anne derived no pleasure whatsoever from a purchase unless she could feel that she'd paid substantially less for it than it was worth. Spain's economy had developed rapidly in the 1960s, but prices there were still significantly lower than in the UK, and some of the goods on display, such as clothing, textiles, leatherwork and craftware, were of superior design and quality, and, although the holiday resorts sported the usual beechside souvenir shops to cater for the tourists, many still retained some of their original general goods stores, and every resort we ever visited mounted a huge street market once a week.

Anne was in her element, of course, and would regularly leave us to amuse ourselves on the beech while she wandered off into the back streets to look for any local shops selling shoes, clothing, drapery and even hardware lurking there, and on the day of the street market there was no question of our going onto the beach until every stall in the market had been inspected and every possibility of acquiring a bargain exhausted. I look back in amazement at some of the stuff we brought back with us over the years, wondering how I managed to get it into our suitcases, because it wasn't just shoes, clothing, tablecloths and lace, it was table lamps, pottery, wall mirrors, wine glasses, and decanters. Even today, fifty years later, looking round the house, I can identify two pairs of bedside lamps (marble and ormolu), two large table lamps (one marble, one bronze), one wall mirror, two ceramic wall lanterns, several wine glasses and a cut-glass sherry decanter, all brought back from Spain in our suitcases, all of attractive design and excellent workmanship, and all paying tribute, still, to Anne's impeccable taste and her keen eye for a bargain.

My own contribution was the ceremonial packing of the suitcases prior to our departure, a task I undertook alone, and at which, though I say it myself, I came to excel. It was the penultimate ritual of the holiday. In the heat of the final day, I would strip down to my underpants and, with the rest of the family watching appreciatively, set about the seemingly impossible task of packing the entire family holiday wardrobe, plus the loot we had acquired, plus at least one clandestine bottle of brandy, into the empty suitcases. But, such was my ingenuity that, although sweating profusely, I invariably succeeded in achieving the desired result before taking a long, cold shower. It is a tribute to my packing skills that, in spite of the fragility of some of the looted objects, we never, over the years, suffered a single breakage in transit. Packing completed, however, it was now time for the final ritual. Having discarded my socks immediately on arrival a fortnight previously, it was now time, alas, to put them back on again, and, in doing so, to symbolically mark the end of our Mediterranean idyll for another year, and this I did with all due ceremony, with Helen and Paul looking solemnly on.

After Cala Millor, we continued to refine our family summer holiday techniques at other Majorcan resorts until Helen finally went her own way, leaving us to modify them somewhat, but first, in the summer after Cala Millor, we went somewhere completely different. Minus Helen, who was now at University, we flew across the Atlantic to spend our summer holiday of 1975 in Canada as guests of the circle of our former friends, who were now established as Canadian citizens living in commodious properties in the Greater Toronto Area - Frank and Joyce in the town of Aurora, Mike and Pauline in the village of Kleinberg, and George and Pauline in Mississauga – all of which, together with their affluent Canadian life-style, we had been invited to share with them for a couple of weeks.

And very enjoyable weeks they were, too The first week seems, in retrospect, to have consisted of one long reunion party. We were billeted on Mike and Pauline, who lived in an attractive ranch-house style house surrounded by trees and boasting a private swimming pool, but we made frequent forays to Frank and Joyce's house, which was also a spacious bungalow with a large sun deck and an even bigger swimming pool than Mike's. George and Pauline's home was of more conventional design, more a mansion than a house, with several bedrooms upstairs and an atrium-like hall with an impressive staircase, but no sun deck and no swimming pool. George did, however, have a yacht, quite a large one, berthed nearby on Lake Superior. He was still learning to handle it, but succeeded in taking us out for a sail – and, more importantly, bring us back – without undue mishap, although the final manoeuvre into his berth at the marina was a bit of a nail-biter.

Incidentally, I found that, unlike modern British and Australian houses, Canadian houses usually came provided with a basement area of generous proportions which, in addition to containing the furnace powering the all-important central heating, could be panelled and furnished as, either a den for the master of the house, or a family rumpus room, according to taste. A very desirable feature, given the rigours of the Canadian winter.

After recovering from the preliminary partying. we went pleasure-seeking and sight-seeing in and around Toronto. We inspected Niagara Falls and were suitably impressed, and even took a trip to the capital, Ottawa, but the high spot of our holiday was to be a few days spent camping 'up country' with Mike and Pauline and their family. This trip involved a lot of travel by car through a lot of featureless countryside, stopping only to eat a 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' lunch (a novelty for us)) in a roadside 'diner', and, in the evening, to erect our enormous tent (two rooms and kitchen) on a rented campsite, which Mike had thoroughly zapped beforehand with insecticide, using an apparatus borrowed from the site office for the purpose, after which we cooked and ate our evening meal 'indoors', as it were, safely sealed off from the insect world outside. Yes, wherever we went in Canada, outside the inner urban areas, there were mosquitoes, and not only mosquitoes, but deer flies, horse flies and, worst of all, black flies, which we never had the misfortune to encounter, because they swarmed, we were told, in Spring, when they could be so dangerous to any human crossing their path that 'Black Fly Warnings' were regularly broadcast on the local radio in afflicted areas.

Our final destination was a campsite at the bottom of the back garden, or yard, as they called it, of a house which stood in isolated splendour on the shores of Lake Nipissing. It was the home of an elderly relative of one of Mike and Pauline's neighbours who had recommended it to us. We arrived to find that the grassy sward by a picturesque lake for which we had hoped, was a sandy outcrop, strewn with rocks and driftwood, harbouring so many hazards that, when Mike and Pauline's young son Jamie had been carried off bleeding to the house after falling over, we labelled it 'Death Beach'. Fortunately, however, there were very few mosquitoes, but we were warned by the old lady that there could be bears, so, before cooking our evening meal, we lit a huge bonfire from driftwood to keep them at bay, and also to keep us warm, because the nights were quite chilly. Needless to say, we greeted these experiences with that great good humour that our two families always generated between us, whenever we were together, and, in spite of what we endured there, we have always reminisced about our adventures on Death Beach with wry amusement. But we were not sorry to head back to Toronto and put the Canadian wilderness behind us.

Much as we enjoyed our holiday in Canada, I developed little affection for the country itself . The people we met there were very agreeable and sociable, and the culture was an attractive blend of North American and British, materialistic, perhaps, and a little bland, but easy to adjust to, as our friends had so obviously done. The climate, however, was a drawback. The summer days could be sunny and fine, but, all too often, too warm and sticky, breeding insects that were undoubtedly a pest, but this was bearable. We learned, however, that the winters could be long and harsh, and much less easy to bear - grey skies, freezing temperatures, heavy snow falls, icy roads – and, when Spring finally brought the warmth back, it also brought the midges, mosquitoes and black fly. We were told that the most enjoyable season in Canada was Autumn, or Fall, as they called it, when temperatures were still mild, humidity was low and the insects less troublesome. So, Canada does not appeal to me, but a lot of people live there and love it, and our friends gave every sign of being contented with their lot, and Frank, being Frank, never missed an opportunity to 'sell' me on the superiority of all things Canadian.

The following summer holiday found us back enjoying sun, sea, sand, and all things Spanish in Cala Millor at the same hotel as before, having solved the problem of Helen's defection by offering to take Paul's best friend, Michael, with us for the modest contribution to his fare that his prematurely widowed mother was happy to make. As usual, we had a lot of fun, and, as usual, I have the cine films to prove it. One of the regular features of our Spanish fortnights, was a boat trip from the holiday resort to an uninhabited strip of beach, somewhere up the coast, which was usually advertised as a 'Pirate's Cruise' but which we always referred to by its more amusing German name as the 'Piratenfahrt'. It started with a 30 minute cruise, under blue sky and sun on a 'wine dark sea', to reach the local 'Treasure Island', during which the Spanish crew would entertain the passengers with a well-oiled comedy routine, while passing round the first of the wine in those ingenious drinking flasks which allow the wine to be drunk by pouring it into the mouth without touching the glass – if you know how to do it! Which, of course, many of the tourists, including Paul and Michael, didn't, but were happy to give it a go.

Once ashore at the chosen beach, the crew would quickly set about cooking fish on a charcoal grill, circulating wine in plastic cups, playing guitars, singing songs and generally acting the fool, while any of the customers who wished to do so, splashed in and out of the sea. Needless to say, after eating the food and drinking the drink, the trip back to the resort, under the same blue sky, over the same blue sea, was infused with a mood of bonhomie towards fellow passengers, whoever they may be, and the world in general, wherever it may be.

The Piratenfahrt was just one example of the simple pleasures available to us during our summer holidays in Spain, and it occurs to me that it was not only the sun, sea, and sand that made these pleasures possible. The fact that the Mediterranean Sea was virtually tideless meant that its beaches were available for active use 24 hours a day, and, not only could our beech towels and parasols be sited within easy reach of the water's edge from dawn to dusk and moonlight bathing and other larks be indulged in after dark, but cafes could be built out onto the sand, placing food and drink also within easy reach at all times, making every beach a self-sufficient island unto itself. Of particular benefit to me personally was that I could enjoy the luxury of a swim before breakfast from a deserted beach secure in the knowledge that the water's edge would be exactly where I left it the day before.

Another contributory factor to our enjoyment was the Spanish people, or, at least, those we encountered during our holidays there, nearly all of whom, of course, were offering us some service or other. I have always liked and admired the Spaniards, finding them a pleasure to deal with - courteous and obliging without the condescensions of the French, or the over-attentiveness of the Italians. They were not given to false bonhomie either, always keeping something of themselves in reserve while doing everything within their power to deliver the holiday you were paying for, and always dreaming up new ways of doing this – a new type of ice-cream every year, for example. This happy combination of features ensured us a happy holiday at even the least successful of my resort choices in Majorca.

This occurred the following year, 1977, when Helen was able to join us again, and my annual hunt for the cheapest possible deal that would meet all our requirements took us to the resort of Paguera in the south-west coast of Majorca, a few miles west of Palma. The amenities at the small pension I had chosen were perfectly OK, and it was near the beach, but did not overlook it, and the beach itself was OK, but could only be reached by crossing the busy coast road. We had a good time there, but Paguera was too close to Palma for comfort, too urbanized. So, the following year, for our final holiday in Majorca as a family foursome, we went back to the North-east Coast, as far from Palma as we could get, to the attractive little resort of C'an Picafort, at the extreme bottom end of the 12 kilometre long beach which stretches down from Alcudia, round the rim of the bay. We had such a good time there that Anne and I returned for a summer holiday by ourselves nearly 20 years later, but that's enough about summer holidays for the time being. There were many of them still to come, one of them of more than passing interest, but it's time now to return to the real world, which was largely, in my case, the world of work.

4

By the time we went to S'Illot for our first family holiday in Majorca, I had served my 2 years in the Home Office Fire Department and been posted onwards into the Police Department, as was normal practice to provide the on-the-job training so essential to my civil service career. The Police Department was much bigger, and more prestigious, than the Fire Department, because the Home Secretary's statutory powers and responsibilities vis-a-vis the police were that much greater. There were eight Divisions in the Police Department, plus, of course, an Inspectorate, and my posting was to P3 Division which was responsible, mainly, for police training. My post dealt with Police Training (excluding higher training), which meant, in effect, Probationer Training, while my co-Principal was responsible for Higher Training, which meant, in effect, the more glamorous and politically sensitive Bramshill Staff College.

My new AS was a rather sour, insecure individual, who gave the impression of being unhappy with his life, but making the best of a bad job. He was conventionally professional and polite, however, and, in spite of his failure to gain further promotion (and the unlikelihood, in his 50s, of ever doing so), he was a competent administrator, and we soon established a good working relationship, something which, as I quickly found, he had been unable to do with my predecessor, Stanley, who was still there, of course, waiting to hand over to me (and give me the full story). Stanley, was one of the most unusual characters I ever met in the Civil Service. A most unlikely-looking civil servant, not only was he short and square and Jewish, but he looked very Jewish, had a Cockney accent and a brusque and off-hand manner, but he was by no means deficient in intelligence. He greeted me with practised disdain and the discouraging information that my new job was a non-job, but he began to change his tune when he realised that I was undaunted by this news and the manner in which it had been delivered, nor impressed by his humble antecedents, which were no more humble than mine, and we soon became quite friendly. This was just as well, because, Stanley, being the man he was, proved difficult for Estabs [Personnel] to place in a new job, and we were to share an office for quite some time.

There could be no doubt about where responsibility for the breakdown of relations between himself and the AS lay. Stanley was 'not a pukka Principal', to quote an expression used by my first co-Principal in the Fire Department, Harry, who was also, co-incidentally, Jewish, but much more elegant in appearance, polished in manner, and professionally accomplished than Stanley, and who used the term to describe one, who, like himself, had risen through the ranks of the old Executive Class to a level which, under the post-Fulton reforms, had allowed him to gain entry into the Administrative Class. Unlike Harry, however, Stanley had found the transition uncongenial. Prior to embarking on it, he had occupied, I think, a comfortable niche in Criminal Statistics, where he had made a name for himself as a leading expert, and where his mastery of his subject had earned him enough respect to make his surly manner acceptable. But, membership of the Administrative Class demanded different skills from the ones he excelled in, as well as requiring him to practice them in different posts, such as his present one in P3 Division of the Police Department, which didn't suit Stanley at all.

Whether it was discontent with his lot, or an inability to accept the conventions of the hierarchical system of management, or a simple clash of personalities, or even a cunning scheme to get himself quickly transferred elsewhere, or a mixture of all four, I couldn't say, but, whatever the reason, the outcome was that Stanley quickly found himself at odds with the AS and began to treat him with a calculated rudeness that the AS was quite unable to cope with - it being so foreign to all his previous experience, and he being so emotionally insecure - and, having discovered his weakness, Stanley continued to exploit it mercilessly By the time of my arrival, which was greeted with some relief by the AS (and everybody else in the Division), they were scarcely on speaking terms, and contrived to avoid each other for the remainder of Stanley's sojourn in the Division, which, as I have said, was unusually prolonged. He and I exchanged life histories until we ran out of things to talk about, and his attendances at the office grew more and more sporadic until, finally, he was offered, and agreed to accept – because he had become very choosy - another post. I can't recall what it was, but we kept in touch, sporadically, and the last I heard was that he'd taken early retirement and gone to live in Israel.

As for my new job. It was certainly not a 'non-job', but it had a low political profile and attracted little Ministerial interest, although it did bring me, at one point, into contact with HRH the Prince of Wales. The Police Forces resembled the Fire Brigades in being run by Local Authorities, but there were important differences in their funding arrangements, and, consequently, in the extent of the Home Office's involvement in the way they were run. The Fire Services were funded by the Local Authorities out of the Block Grant portion of the Rate Support Grant which they received from the Department of Environment, whereas the Police Forces were funded by a Specific Grant which was in the hands of the Home Office. Not only that, but the Home Secretary had a statutory responsibility for the efficiency of the Police, all of which meant that the Police Department had a more intimate relationship with the local authorities than had the Fire Department, and the Police Inspectorate was more closely involved with the Police Forces than was the Fire Inspectorate with the Fire Brigades.

One aspect of Home Office policy was to improve the efficiency of policing in England and Wales by eliminating historic disparities in performance between the many different local forces, and one of the ways of doing this was to ensure that every police recruit in England and Wales underwent effective Probationer Training. To this end, the Home Office had set up a number of Regional Training Centres to which all the local police forces were obliged to send their recruits for a lengthy training course, developed and administered by a Central Planning Unit. The Training Centres were at Ashford in Kent, Ryton in the Midlands, Driffield in Yorks, Bruche in Lancs, and Cwmbran in S.Wales, and the Central Planning Unit (CPU) was in Harrogate. As in so many other respects, the London Metropolitan Police had its own separate training arrangements, and the Police Authority for London, I found, was not the local authority, but the Home Secretary in person.

I found little difficulty in picking up the reins of my new assignment, since anything to do with Training was, of course, meat and drink to me, and I found much to admire in the way the Probationer Training Course had been devised and was being monitored and modified routinely, in the light of experience. Each of the Training Centres had its own secretariat of civil servants, and its own teaching staff, who were mostly police officers on secondment from local forces, but all were teaching the same 10-week training course, and their success in doing so was being tested at regular intervals by the CPU using the principles and practices of Programmed Learning. It was one of the best examples of the application of Programmed Learning techniques I ever came across, and I gave it my wholehearted support. And, once again I found myself being taken out of the office by my duties, and, once again, their were opportunities to include Anne in social activities (usually formal dinners) at the Training Centres to which I was regularly invited.

Nor did I experience much difficulty in establishing good working relations with the police officers I was required to work with, although I found them not quite as fraternal as the fire officers I had left behind. This was probably due to the professional wariness policemen acquire in a job that tends to set them apart from the rest of society. Also, there was more staff interchange between the Police Inspectorate and the Police Forces than there was between the much smaller Fire Inspectorate and the Fire Brigades. Most of the Fire Inspectors were retired Chief Fire Officers on permanent appointment, but many members of the Police Inspectorate were middle to upper ranking officers on a temporary secondment that was seen as a stepping-stone to higher things in their careers, so they were not as relaxed in their work habits as they might otherwise have been. But I had no complaints about my relationships with my two main police contacts. Both of them were Chief Superintendents, and both very accomplished and co-operative, one was my opposite number on Training (excluding Higher Training) in the Inspectorate, and the other was the Head of the CPU, which also, incidentally, ran its own in-house training course for the instructors at the Training Centres.

In spite of Stanley's fractured relationship with the AS, the system I inherited was running quite smoothly when I arrived and I quickly realised that my role would be to ensure that it continued to do so until I left, oiling the wheels as appropriate and dealing with any problems that arose on the way. Problems did arise, of course, but none worthy of mention here, and there was little scope for the sort of contribution I had made to the Fire Research Programme with my Project Management Procedures. There was, I should add, a Police Training committee on which local authority representatives confronted Home Office officials (including me) on matters relating to the operation of the Training Centres, but these were almost invariably of a nit-picking financial nature, and the proceedings of the Training Committee were of so little importance in the larger scheme of things that it was chaired by a mere AUSS and the secretary was my SEO. It was a very interesting but relatively undemanding posting, which left me free to make the most of my easy access to the pleasures available, outside working hours, in and around Central London and Fleet and only two of my experiences in the Police Department are worth recording.

The even tenor of my existence in P3 Division was disturbed, during its second year, by the departure of my friendly AS and his replacement by one who brought with her such a bad reputation that the normally mild-mannered departing AS was moved to express himself on the prospect of her imminent arrival in the most immoderate terms. What he actually said was “This will be the third Division she's followed me into. She fucked up the last two and she'll fuck up this one”. And she certainly did her best to prove him right. She was one of only two AS's out of the twelve I served under during my eighteen years in the Civil Service who were not up to the job. Both, by coincidence, were women, but this first one was a 'classic' entrant who had been 'a pukka principal' and should have been better. She wasn't stupid, just a bitter and twisted spinster who felt compelled to justify her existence by finding something to disagree with or 'improve on' in any proposal or advice submitted to her, often producing blatant anomalies that needed to be discreetly pointed out to her, usually by me. But, once I had her measure, I didn't find her difficult to work with on a day to day basis. My ministrations did not, however, endear me to her, as I found to my cost when the time came for my Annual Staff Report (ASR).

Such staff management as there was in the Civil Service, when I joined it, was based largely on an Annual Staff Report, and every civil servant had a Reporting Officer, who was almost invariably one grade above him, and a Countersigning Officer, who was one grade above that. Each civil servant was reported on once a year by his Reporting Officer, who was the nearest thing he could ever have to a line manager, bearing in mind that, in the Civil Service, one worked 'to' one's superior officer, not 'for' him. One worked, you see, 'for' the Monarch.

The ASR was a document which, during my time, seemed to grow more and more elaborate with each passing year as the Civil Service applied its collective intellect and drafting skills to what was, in my view, an exercise in making bricks without straw. In its final form it required the Reporting Officer, first, to agree a Job Description with the reportee, and then to assess his performance in every aspect of the job over the past year, and was designed to encourage these assessments in some detail by breaking performance down into as many skills as could separately be identified – penetration, foresight, drafting, etc – and mark each factor on a five point scale, with a middle point (3) representing adequacy;. It provided a short description of what the different levels of performance for each separate skill might look like, and there was a space for additional comment, enlarging upon the bare ticked box in each case. Finally, an overall marking, again five boxes – Outstanding; Very Good; Good (adequate); Not Good Enough; and Bad; then a blank half-page for a pen picture in which the Reporting Officer was invited to say something about the reportee's strengths and weaknesses, using a separate sheet if necessary!.

It will be seen that there was nothing remarkable about the existence of this document, or its design. Virtually everyone working in the private sector at the time was subjected to some sort of annual performance review by their immediate superior, overseen, if the firm was big enough, by his superior. The big difference was that, in the Civil Service, in the absence of any objective performance indicators, this assessment had to be made on entirely subjective grounds, and would, in any case, have no immediate effect on either the reportee's income, which was on a fixed incremental scale, or his job security, which, for sound systemic reasons, was virtually inviolable. There was, however, a second part to the civil servant's ASR in which the Reporting Officer was invited to pass judgement on the reportee's suitability for promotion to the next rank up – Exceptionally Fitted; Fitted; or Not Fitted for promotion. This was the really important part of the ASR, since the limitations imposed by the fixed incremental salary scales for each rank ensured that the only true measure of success in the Civil Service was promotion.

Any civil servant worth his salt could earn a Box 2 (Very Good) marking for his performance in his present grade, but how, in logic, could he earn, in his present grade, a marking for his fitness for promotion to the next grade up? How could he exhibit the skills and knowledge appropriate to the rank of his Reporting Officer by discharging the duties appropriate to his present rank? These metaphysical objections aside, however, he must somehow, perform well enough in his present grade to persuade his Reporting Officer that he has the potential to perform adequately in the higher grade.

So, this part of the ASR – suitability for promotion – was even more subjective than the assessment of present performance in the first part. Not only that, but, given the frequency of the career movements experienced by most civil servants in the Administrative Class, the Reporting Officer's assessment of the reportee's performance and his suitability for promotion would often have to be based on a relatively brief acquaintance. During my first ten years in the Civil Service, for example, I had no fewer than nine different Reporting Officers and seven different Countersigning Officers. This may, perhaps, have been due to exceptional circumstances (it was certainly nothing to do with me – I moved posts every two or three years or so, as was customary), but I estimate that, under the prevailing circumstances, par for the course would have been at least six Reporting officers and about four Countersigning Officers.

The Countersigning Officer's role, as the name implies, was to certificate (or not) the Reporting Officer's assessments. But, in the absence of any objective measurement criteria, the Countersigning Officer's ability to comment on the accuracy and fairness of the Reporting Officer's assessments would depend entirely on the extent of his contact with the reportee and/or his work during the past year. In many cases this might be very little. However, they were all, Reporting Officers and Countersigning Officers alike, conscientious, professional civil servants who could normally be relied on to bring to the task of annually assessing their juniors the same disciplines they brought to the other casework set before them - making the necessary judgements, producing the appropriate words, avoiding controversy, if possible, but facing up to it, if they must, without shirking, secure in the knowledge that (i) the views they were expressing were based, for the most part, entirely on personal opinion, and (ii) could, provided there were no internal inconsistencies in the report, be defended by reference to aspects of the reportee's performance, which, not being susceptible of objective measurement, were not unambiguously at odds with them.

On the other hand, the fact that the Reporting Officer had had no personal responsibility for recruiting, training and motivating the the reportee, and was in no way threatened, or dependant on him for his own advancement, cut both ways. Having no personal axe to grind, the Reporting Officer could afford to be as objective as possible in making his subjective judgements – or he could before 'Open Reporting' was introduced into the Civil Service shortly after I joined.

Seen by many as a good thing in itself, Open Reporting in the Civil Service was really aimed at developing a more pro-active and robust managerial stance on the part of Reporting Officers by requiring them to disclose at least their main conclusions in the ASR to the reportee, and then, if challenged, explain them to him – a procedure which had long been a commonplace of management in the private sector, where annual increments in material reward can be totally dependent on performance as measured by some objective criterion. Open Reporting is impossible to argue against in the private sector, where it is an occasion when a manager assesses the performance of an operative for whose recruitment, training and motivation he must bear some responsibility, and, having told himself the truth about the outcome, confides it, then, to the reportee. There is no escape for either of them, since the facts on which the report is based should be sufficiently conclusive to leave little room for argument.

In theory, both manager and managed have been working towards the same objective – to improve the performance of the latter – so the annual assessment is, in effect, double-edged, and the manager's own manager will be watching the outcome with interest. But the reportee is in the immediate spotlight and is entitled to expect a professional and relatively impersonal diagnosis from his mentor followed by, either an appropriate reward for achieving his agreed objectives, or expert advice on how to correct his failure to do so. It is a moment of truth which is too important to both of them for reticence or prevarication on either side. In the private sector, that is.

Little wonder, then, that, in the continuing search for greater efficiency, Open Reporting was finally imposed on the Civil Service - anything less would have been indefensible in these enlightened days of Open Government, freedom of information, and 'hands-on' management. And the good civil servants, always ready to please their Masters, hastened to replace a practice which, regardless of its merits, was difficult to defend, with one which, regardless of its disadvantages, everyone approves of. Nothing surprising in that. If, however, the question is asked 'Has the efficiency of the Civil Service been improved by Open Reporting?' the answer must be, at best, equivocal. In the Civil service, the Reporting Officer has, after all, no material interest in the performance of the reportee, having had no responsibility for his recruitment, little involvement in his training, no reliable way of measuring his performance objectively, and is unlikely to benefit personally from any improvement effected in it.

Before Open Reporting, a Reporting Officer could derive some satisfaction from his dutiful attempts to assess the reportee's performance, but was unlikely to earn kudos for pointing out his inadequacies - particularly if the reportee was past his probation period and had not been found wanting in quite the same way by previous Reporting Officers, of which there may have been several. True, the Countersigning Officer, as the Reporting officer's Reporting Officer, may have looked for some honest and fearless diagnosis in the report, and recommendations for any necessary action, but, to the Countersigning Officer, who may have seen very little of the reportees work and had no objective criteria for assessing it, the report would come into his in-tray as just another quantum of work, another 'case' for his consideration, and he would examine and judge it accordingly. 'Does it look right, does it hang together; any internal inconsistencies, logical discontinuities (mistakes!)? That kind of thing. Above all, 'If challenged, would it be defensible?' The sort of questions that civil Servants ask themselves when scrutinising any piece of work submitted to them from below.

When faced, under Open Reporting, with the requirement to disclose his assessment to the reportee, however, the Reporting Officer would now tend to avoid confrontation by producing as favourable a report as he could – and who can blame him? He would, of course, when itemising strengths and weaknesses, identify the odd weakness or two for the reportee to work on, but nothing too serious. One cannot, can one, tell a chap whose only real interest in his ASR is in the contribution it might make to his chances of getting promoted, that he has reached the limit of his capabilities? One could, of course, if one's own career prospects depended on it, but, fortunately, in the Civil service, they don't. So, one gives him such encouragement, in the way of markings, as one can, in the hope that the realisation will dawn on him, that, good as he is at his present job in his present grade, he is not going to get any further promotion, and is as far up the hierarchy, as close to the nuclear furnace of Ministerial power, as he is ever likely to get , and must soldier on at his present level of competence until retirement. Following the introduction of Open Reporting, therefore, the vast majority of ASRs in the Civil Service became either favourable or neutral

There were occasions, however, when a Box Four or even (heaven forfend!) a Box Five marking was awarded in an ASR. This was pretty rare, once the initial probationary period had been served, but it did occur – nearly always, however, in circumstances where the deficiencies of the reportee had been pretty obvious to everyone, including himself, for some time. There was usually some disintegration of the personality involved which clearly accounted for the deterioration in performance. Machinery existed, of course, for dealing with this mercifully infrequent and always unwelcome occurrence, in the event of which there were, not surprisingly (this being the Civil Service), a number of graduated procedural steps to be followed, each carefully articulated in the appropriate manual.

The inadequate performer was treated, initially at any rate, with the kind of sympathy and concern usually extended to an invalid, which, in a way, he was; he had been whole and well, but now he was sick. Often, the shock of getting a Box Four was sufficient to effect a cure. If not, the unaccustomed care and attention he was given – 'stroking', as it is called in the private sector – might do the trick. The patient was interviewed by his Countersigning Officer, who would already have interviewed the Reporting Officer about the provenance of the controversial marking, and, after that, by an officer from Estabs, of the same rank as the countersigning Officer. Everyone poked around in the entrails of the condition revealed by the ASR, striving for a consensus on the diagnosis, and hoping that, if enough concern was generated, a cure would ensue. A change of Reporting Officer sometimes worked wonders; there may have been some fundamental incompatibility there which resulted in the reportee going into a kind of tailspin. The pathology may, on the other hand, have been due to a bad patch in an unsympathetic or uncongenial post. Might not a 'career move' put that right?

Each procedural step would be carefully explored, and, almost invariably, the whole thing would blow over. When that happened, everybody stepped back from the brink with a sigh of relief and got on with their real work, from which they had been obliged to turn aside to discharge their managerial responsibilities. It is not impossible for a civil servant to get the sack for incompetence, but the fact that it happens so rarely is a tribute, on the one hand, to the effectiveness of the Civil Service Commission's recruiting methods, and on the other, to the effectiveness of the 'Management by Operant Conditioning' practised by the Civil Service, which, unlike the management styles practised in the private sector, such as Management by Objectives, or Management by Stick and Carrot, achieves its results by rewarding desired behaviour rather than punishing its opposite.

All of which, begs another question. Even if the efficiency of the Civil Service was improved in some way by Open Reporting, was it improved to an extent which justified the increase in workload resulting from it? The increase in workload was undeniable. Open Reporting, with its requirement for disclosure and discussion, occupied much more of a Reporting Officer's time than did its precurser, and this burden was in addition to an existing workload which could not be reduced to make room for it. I myself, in my final post in the Home Office was the Reporting Officer for three SEOs and the Countersigning Officer for six HEOs – a substantial commitment, even without the resulting time-consuming interviews, and, as far as I know, no attempt was ever made, by those responsible for these matters, to asses the benefits and penalties of Open Reporting in cost-effectiveness terms.

The truth is that management in the Civil Service is just another aspect of government administration. Each ASR is, in effect, a 'case' requiring the application of a set of principles to a set of circumstances, and, given that the Countersigning Officer is the Reporting Officer's Reporting Officer, the ASR can be seen as a piece of the Reporting Officer's own work, submitted by him for scrutiny and assessment, and, although this means that, in the Civil Service, as in the private sector, an ASR can be a report on both the reportee and the Reporting Officer, there can be significant differences between the outcomes.

In a private enterprise engaged in innovation and marketing, if a Reporting Officer allowed his subjective antipathies or personal prejudices to affect the accuracy of his assessment of the reportee's performance he could find his assessment challenged by both the reportee, who would have access to the relevant data, and the Countersigning Officer, who would also be making a judgement about the Reporting Officer's performance as a manager. In the private sector, if a reportee who can see that he is performing well, fails to obtain adequate recognition (and remuneration) from his Reporting Officer, he will be tempted to take his skills and knowledge (including any acquired at the expense of his present employer) elsewhere, and that would be seen as a serious management failure, and the Reporting Officer's own position might be undermined by evidence of his own inadequacy from his own hand,. But, as might be expected, given the differences between the two systems, things cannot work out quite like that in the Civil Service. The ultimate outcome for the inadequate Reporting Officer may not be too dissimilar, but the disgruntled reportee does not have the option of taking his unappreciated skills and knowledge to a rival organisation.

I cannot recall ever awarding a Box Four marking myself, although I once countersigned one in the ASR of an HEO whose lunchtime drinking habits were getting the better of him, but, under my new AS in the Police Department, I suddenly found myself at the receiving end of such a marking, when she called me into her office, one fine day, out of the blue, to inform me, as she was bound to do, that she had awarded me a Box Four marking (Not Good Enough) in my ASR - this was in the days before fully Open Reporting, when only anything worse than a Box Three had to be disclosed. On receiving this news, I expressed a certain amount of surprise and concern, but not, I fear, very much, since, in truth, I found it very difficult (and I realised later that this was a fault in myself) to treat the matter seriously. I was, after all, 50 years of age, and, given my previous experience, which included two antecedent, and not entirely unsuccessful careers, each spanning about 15 years, followed by 5 years in the Civil Service under four previous Reporting Officers, none of whom had found me inadequate, I was as well qualified to judge my own performance as someone who had come in above me after I had been filling my present post for more than a year. I simply knew that my performance during the past year, while not necessarily above criticism, certainly did not merit a Box Four marking.

The announcement of her verdict was followed by a somewhat inconsequential discussion of the internal markings in the report which failed to reveal any cogent explanation for the Box Four marking. It was her considered opinion that I did not possess the abilities required to be an adequate (Box Three) Principal, and that was that. Unable as I was to take the Box four marking seriously under these circumstances, I found it difficult to see how anyone else could do so. It seemed to me to be a clear case of reverse adverse reporting by the Reporting Officer on herself, a circumstance which, in the private sector, would have resulted in a crisis of confidence in her judgement, leading to a a confrontation in front of the Countersigning Officer with the facts on the table, followed by some cathartic outcome acceptable to two of the three parties involved – either a humiliating climb-down by the Reporting Officer (who would, in any case, have been daft to get into such a position when there are so many less risky ways of putting an uncomfortable subordinate down), or my own departure for some other, more appreciative employer. This, however, was the Civil Service; we were career civil servants, and things did not, could not, work out like that.

The next step, therefore, was an interview with my Countersigning Officer, the AUSS, who addressed himself to the problem with the same well-oiled skills he would have brought to bear on any other difficult case. It was during this interview that it began to dawn on me that, in spite of the Reporting Officer's well-known propensities in this direction (it was not, I found, the first, nor even the second time she had created such a situation), the Countersigning Officer's only concern was to find a form of words that would explain the Box Four marking without condemning or condoning it; to show, in other words, how it might have been arrived at, given my performance and the Reporting Officer's view of it. He even enlisted my assistance with this difficult task, inviting me, in effect, to volunteer an explanation – it was all quite friendly, even conspiratorial – as to how the fatal marking might have come about. One thing he could not concede, apparently, was that the Reporting Officer might be wrong. He saw little of my work, and, with no objective measurement of my performance to which we could both refer, there was little he could do but draft away at the case with a view to exporting it to the future, moving it, literally, from his In-tray to his Out-tray.

Next, I was interviewed by the Countersigning Officer's opposite number in Estabs – another AUSS, just doing his job – who took me round the loop again. He knew as well as I did what the problem was; he knew that he was dealing with an aberration in the system, but he also knew that there was nothing he could do about it, then and there, except discuss the adverse marking with me. I asked him, at one point, whether any of my four previous Reporting Officers had found my performance deficient in any significant way, and watched the poor chap go through the motions of inspecting my previous ASRs, shaking his head in apparent bewilderment at the discrepancy. He knew perfectly well that I had never had such a report before and was unlikely to get one again, unless I was very unfortunate. Nor did I ever get one again, and, by the time the next ASR came around, I had a different Reporting Officer.

This incident taught me something quite important about the internal workings of the Civil Service, something which is probably just as true today as it was then. It showed me that the 'System' cannot be wrong, or, to put it more correctly, cannot admit to being wrong. The single most important fact, in this case, was that my Reporting Officer was an Assistant Secretary (Grade5) while I was a Principal (Grade7). She was an AS because she had been promoted to that rank by the System, and to concede to me, her junior, that she was, in any important respect, less than adequate in her present grade, would be to admit that the System had made a mistake in promoting her.

So, there was no way round it for any of us, and the least imperfect solution was to close the book on my ASR for that year and look for better things the following year – change the Reporting Officer by either moving her, or moving me. A second Box Four would have been a problem, but, one Box Four was simply an unfortunate aberration, which may have lost me a bit of ground in my pursuit of the ultimate goal of promotion. Too bad – for me! The incident did the Reporting Officer no good, either, but neither did it do her positive harm. She'd made it to AS, but wasn't going any further, and everybody knew it. She soldiered on to retirement, coping as best she could with her responsibilities (she had, after all, as a 'pukka' Principal, been good enough to get herself promoted to AS), sheltering in the bosom of an organisation which was geared to making allowances for her inadequacies, and was well able to neutralise their worst effects. And what else could it do? Or, to put it another way, how else could a system of management which, lacking most, if not all, of the objective criteria of performance measurement available in the private sector, was obliged to make its management decisions on the basis of the best judgements of its best people, all of whom have got where they are as a result of the best judgements of their predecessors, and all of whom, right to the very top, are operatives first and managers second, how else could such a system deal with the occasional inadequacies of one of its individual components?

That's enough, for the time being, about the mysteries of management in the Civil Service. The other noteworthy experience I had during my stint in P3 Division was, in fact, a non-experience, in that I missed out on a well-earned opportunity to meet His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, at the Home Office Police Training Centre at Cwmbran in South Wales. Cwmbran was the only one of the Centres which had been purpose-built, and had been fully functional for some time before it was decided to take advantage of a proposed visit to South Wales by Prince Charles to invite him to officially open it, which he kindly agreed to do, and it fell to my lot to handle those arrangements for which the Home Office was responsible - a fairly straightforward task for someone who, in a previous existence, had organised as many sales conferences as I had, but it gave me a glimpse into a world that was new to me.

The visit to the Centre was to be part of a whirlwind tour of the area (mainly by helicopter) during which Prince Charles would perform a variety of duties in a number of other places where the responsibility for making the arrangements would lay in local hands, but I was surprised to find that the responsibility for coordinating the whole complicated affair rested, not with some exalted official somewhere in Whitehall or even in Buckingham Palace, but with an elderly gentleman, who, when I telephoned him at his home in South Wales, had to be called in from the garden by his wife. This was my first encounter with a Lord Lieutenant, and it opened my eyes to the existence of a hitherto unperceived and generally unappreciated network of responsibility lying dormant throughout the land until summoned into action, as on this occasion, by a wave of the royal hand.

The Lord Lieutenant, I found, was the Queen's personal representative in the locality, and there is one of his kind in every county in the country. The post is entirely honorary and is usually conferred on some local dignitary, often a retired military officer, the original duties of the Lord Lieutenant, under Henry VIII, being almost entirely of a military nature. The duties nowadays, however, are relatively light and consist mainly of representing the monarch at local functions and ceremonies, as appropriate, and keeping Buckingham Palace informed about any matters worthy of royal note arising locally, but the primary duty is to wait upon visiting members of the Royal Family, clad, often, in the uniform that goes with the job. The Lord Lieutenant has no official residence or support staff (other than his wife), and operates from home, claiming any expenses incurred as the need arises. It's all very low-key, but worked extremely well on this occasion. I was very impressed by the Lord Lieutenant's accessibility, affability and easy mastery of the details - totally unflappable, unlike some of the others involved in planning the event. Unfortunately, I never got to meet him, or HRH, because, having fully discharged my responsibilities, I was unavoidably absent on the great day due to a previous engagement. I was on holiday with my family in Canada, but my AS was there to take the credit and meet the Prince, which she was more than happy to do.

Apart from my uneasy relationship with my second AS, my working life in the Police Department was largely untroubled and quite enjoyable. I developed good working relationships with all the Police Officers I had dealings with, and encountered no problems with any of my own staff. I owe, in fact, a small but welcome improvement in the quality of my private life to my SEO, Martin, who was younger and livelier than old George back in the the Fire Department, and on a much closer wavelength to my own. I learned that Martin, who lived somewhere in Kent, was married to an Italian girl, who had enlarged his horizons in a number of ways, one of which was eventually to benefit me. She was an excellent cook, apparently, and had introduced Martin to an Italian cuisine which utilised unfamiliar ingredients, such as varieties of edible fungi which were different from the commonplace field mushroom, and which, to Martin's amazement, could be found growing wild in the Kentish countryside, if, like his visiting Italian in-laws, you knew what to look for, and where to look for them. On learning this, Martin had set about researching the subject with his customary enthusiasm and was only too keen to pass on his new-found knowledge to me.

I was interested, of course, because, during my walks round Tweseldown, while picking blackberries each Autumn, I had come across the occasional mushroom, and had noticed several colourful 'toadstools' proliferating in the undergrowth, but I couldn't recall having seen anything like the fungi in the illustrations Martin brought in to show me. I did recall, however, the sudden appearance on the Tweseldown scene, each Autumn, of a number of strangers of vaguely Central European appearance who were not picking blackberries, but seemed to be quietly foraging for something else in the woods. Inspired by Martin's revelations, therefore, I looked around more carefully while walking the following weekend, and picked a number likely looking specimens to carry into the office on Monday for Martin's inspection. Disappointingly, he rejected all of them, and continued to harp on about something called the boletus edulis but commonly referred to as 'ceps', which were highly prized by the Italians and easily found in Kent, but not, apparently, by me in Hampshire.

Finally, Martin walked into my office one morning and laid a specimen on my desk and said 'That's a cep'. I examined it carefully and said 'Well, I've never seen anything like that on Tweseldown', but, the following weekend I began to find ceps in places I had been frequenting for years and continued to find them, often in large numbers, every autumn until we finally left Fleet. The main reason I hadn't noticed them was that, unlike the familiar field mushroom and many other 'toadstools', the cap of the boletus edulis is brown in colour, and it grows close to the ground on a short bulbous stem under trees, or on the margins of woodlands, which makes it difficult to spot with an uneducated eye. Its traditional English nickname was the 'Penny Bun', and, strictly speaking, the name 'cep' applies to another member of the boletus family, of which there are many edible varieties, but it has slipped into common use for this most desirable of them. In addition to its external appearance and habitat, the cep differs from the mushroom, and other fungi, in having tiny, closely-packed tubes, instead of gills, under its cap, which are easily peeled off before cooking, but need not be.

Once my eyes had been opened to the existence of edible fungi other than the familiar field mushroom, I began investigating the subject in earnest and found that there were several other species growing in abundance on the wooded slopes of Tweseldown which were edible and tasty, such as blewits (lapista nuda), and chantarelles (cantarellus cibarius), to name but two. I even found, over the years, examples of much rarer edible species, such as the aptly named 'Horn of plenty' (craterellus cornucopiodes), the politically-incorrectly-named 'Jew's ear'(Herneola auricula-judae), and even, once, the rare St George's mushroom, so named because, unlike most other fungi, it makes its appearance, not in Autumn, but in Spring around St George's Day. So I have Martin to thank for the many rewarding hours I spent foraging for free food during my Autumn walks along my favourite downland paths.

Apart from those few foreign invaders, who usually came in small teams, sporting what I assumed to be the traditional European attire for the activity, I was the only one who appeared to be taking advantage of Nature's bounty in this way, and was regarded by family, friends and neighbours as something of an eccentric. To the native population of the UK at that time, the only fungus worth eating was the common or garden mushroom, and all other fungi were classed as toadstools, which were neither good to eat, nor safe to eat, and the myth of the 'poisonous mushroom' was a powerful deterrent to experimentation. The truth was that, of the fungi that smell good and taste good, very, very few are poisonous, and the one that is most dangerous, the 'Death Cap' (aminata phalloides), is usually picked because it looks a bit like a mushroom. Things have changed since then, of course, and by the time I left Fleet, the harvesting of wild fungi in places like the New Forest by interlopers from the restaurants of London had become a commercial venture accused of threatening the environment and the future survival of the species, by overpicking. But, in spite of this and the efforts of the celebrity chefs on TV, there was still no sign of local interest in the availability, so close at hand, of so much delicious food for free.

5

In 1976, taking with me, as a lasting memento of the Police Department, my new-found knowledge of the wild world of edible fungi, I moved to a new post in a small and relatively recent addition to the Home Secretary's empire called the Urban Deprivation Unit, which had been created to administer an Urban Programme launched in 1968 by Harold Wilson, as a sort of social experiment, to 'do something about' the problems created by the growth of pockets of material deprivation and social alienation in our major cities, often associated with growing numbers of coloured people, mainly West Indians. But, this laudable objective had not been made explicit at the onset, probably for political reasons, when the Home Secretary described the programme as 'a modest but important step to ensure that every citizen had a fair start in life and a fair opportunity'. It was certainly modest, a mere 25 million pounds spread over four years was made available for distribution to the whole country, although in 1972 the Government increased that sum by 40 million pounds for the period from 1972-76.

But that 65 million pounds was not new money. It had been subtracted from the Rate Support Grant administered by the Department of the Environment to become, in effect, a Specific Grant, administered, like the Police Grant, by the Home Office, and it had the effect of switching Government funds from the richer local authorities to those poorer local authorities designated as multiply deprived. Although one of the intentions behind the funding was to encourage local voluntary and community organisations to develop and administer projects of their own, the scheme operated entirely through local governments, whose responsibility it was to submit bids for the funding of their chosen projects in response to Home Office Circulars requesting them to do so.

Unsurprisingly, there were far more bids than there was money available, and, since the grant was for only 75% of the cost of the projects and the local authorities were liable for the other 25%, building projects, because of their greater public visibility and political sex appeal, were preferred to service projects, and the schemes put forward by the voluntary and community organisations, who were not involved in the selection process at local level, did not fare very well. A typical outcome was for nearly 95% of the money available to be allocated to local authority building programmes, and the remainder to service projects of which less than half went to the tenants' associations, community work groups, neighbourhood councils, self-help bodies and voluntary organisations which were striving to deal with material deprivation and social alienation on the ground. And a growing source of dissatisfaction was the secretive nature of the selection processes, since neither the local authorities nor the Home office would publish the criteria on which their choices were based.

The inevitable outcome was that those workers at the coal face of urban deprivation who had greeted the advent of the Urban Programme with such acclaim grew disillusioned with it. To quote one MP, 'They saw it as a local authority bran tub bonanza from which, at special seasons of the year, a benevolent Government picked out lucky numbers, giving gift tokens to the most deserving of local authorities'.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the Government had decided that the Urban Programme was more trouble than it was worth, politically, and was turning off the money tap for capital projects, and continuing to fund service projects on the current account at only the existing level. So there was no new money, but still plenty for me to do, administering what was left of the Urban Programme as head of a small team of 1 SEO, 1 HEO and 2 EOs. I can't remember much about the day to day details of what was a pretty straightforward job except that it confined me entirely to my office. There was no field work at all.

The most remarkable feature of the Urban Deprivation Unit was the Assistant Secretary at its head. He was the same Gordon Wasserman who is now, as I write, Baron Wasserman of Pimlico, Member of the House of Lords. He was then in his early thirties, elegant, enigmatic, and supremely self-assured, with a transatlantic accent, he was like something from another world, which, of course, he was, because he'd been born in Canada in 1938, and educated at McGill and Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), before joining the Home Office as an Economic Adviser in 1967, just in time to take advantage of the recommendations of the Fulton Committee and make the switch to the Administrative Class, following which his rise was, by Civil Service standards, meteoric. He was already an AS and would be an AUSS by 1981. After being spotted as 'one of us' by the Thatcher government, he became a valued advisor on, first, social policy, and then, Police Science and Technology, before departing into the private sector to pursue an illustrious career in the USA while keeping in close touch with Conservative Government circles in the UK.

He may have been a brilliant advisor, but he was an uneasy administrator, and certainly not a team player. He affected a faintly bored and detached attitude towards the Unit's daily affairs, as if his mind was preoccupied with higher things, and he showed little respect for the abilities of his fellow civil servants, treating the 'pukka' principal, who filled the Unit's 'policy' post, with a scarcely veiled contempt, which, however, was never directed at me. Thanks to my previous experience in the private sector, I quickly recognised him for what he was, and he quickly recognised that I had done so, and, on this tacit appreciation of each other's perceptiveness, we built a good working relationship, but always at arms length, during the course of which, I did him one big favour.

The Programme had run out of money for capital projects, and there was no new money available for service projects, and the time had come to convey this information to the Local Authorities by sending out the annual Home Office Circular inviting bids. But what was there to bid for? How could they be expected to respond? In desperation, having cast around, to no avail, for help from those above him, Gordon finally turned to those below. He actually came into my office one morning and asked me whether I could devise a solution (or 'wheeze', in civil service parlance), and, fortunately, I could. I pointed out that, in the absence of fresh funding for service projects, we could make a virtue of necessity by inviting the local authorities to review the projects they were currently funding (and may have been doing so for years) with a view to re-allocating those funds to new, and possibly more deserving projects, and submitting these for approval in the usual way. Obvious, really, but not, apparently, to Gordon, whose stood for a moment in furious thought, before turning on his heel, and, with a few muttered words of thanks, striding out of my office to take the credit.

My most memorable achievement in the Urban Deprivation Unit, however, was still to come, and it would see the end, alas, of my brief relationship with the future Baron Wasserman. The Home Office had always been uncomfortable with its new-fangled responsibilities for dealing with urban deprivation and social alienation, and faced, as it was, in the mid 1970s, with the sort of civil unrest it felt more at home with, it dearly wanted to be rid of the Urban Programme. Fortunately, there was another Government Department that wanted to get its hands on it. The Department of the Environment bore huge and complex responsibilities for, among other things, the calculation, and distribution of the Rate Support Grant to the Local Authorities, but the DOE had never had a Specific Grant of its own, and, small as it was, the Urban Programme grant was better than no Specific Grant at all. As a result of the consequent negotiations, therefore, it was decided that responsibility for the Urban Programme would pass from the Home Office to the DOE and that I and my team would be loaned to the DOE for a period of not more than one year to give them the benefit of our expertise in administering it.

And so it came to pass that, on the appointed day, my little band and I swapped our offices in John Islip Street, Westminster, for similar offices in Marsham Street, Westminster, about 200 yards away, in one of the three tombstone-like towers of the DOE. We were not obliged to go, of course. This being the Civil Service, we had been consulted about the move, and given the opportunity to refuse. We had also been promised a safe passage back when our time was up, so what had we to lose? I, for one, was keen to go. Experience in another Ministry was seen as a good career move, and, in any case, I was curious to know what it would be like. The other members of my team were less than enthusiastic and regarded the move as a duty to be done lest worse befall. Coming from the Home Office, they saw themselves as missionaries in a foreign country where the natives were friendly but not entirely trustworthy. The DOE canteen, however, was a very good one, and their old Home Office haunts were barely a stone's throw away.

My own impression of the DOE was that my new colleagues were less concerned with achieving the objectives of the Urban Programme than those of whichever political party was in power at the time. This was a legacy of the DOE's traditional role of dealing even handedly with the many local authorities in England and Wales while favouring those of the current Government's political persuasion. I found myself attending Divisional meetings at which I increasingly felt myself to be a passenger, and often found myself in a minority of one in speaking out against whatever course of action was being proposed, but I must admit that my recollections of those DOE days are very hazy. The one incident I can recall with any clarity occurred when the question was being considered of whether areas of social deprivation could be identified with any degree of accuracy, and I pointed out that there was an accepted correlation between social deprivation and infant mortality rates, and that the UK National Statistics published infant mortality rates broken down by municipal districts. The reaction to this observation was something like 'How would this affect Newcastle?'. But why Newcastle? I can't remember, but it was probably the Ministar's constituency.

As the year progressed, and my responsibilities were gradually assumed by my DOE opposite number, I found myself increasingly underemployed (or, in civil service parlance, 'underloaded') and tried to remedy this by enrolling, voluntarily, in a couple of the informal training courses that were on offer, during working hours, from Training Branch. All that was required for me to do so was the approval of my immediate superiors, which was unhesitatingly granted. Having decided to brush up on, first my French and then my German, I attended courses to that effect which ran for several weeks, with lessons once or twice a week. In addition to being great fun, they were very well conducted, and certainly improved my ability to speak French and German, if only for a short time, since opportunities to practice my newly acquired skills were sadly lacking. I would have preferred to improve my Spanish but no such course was available. But the most instructive experience to come my way during that 'gap' year in DOE was in my private life, and was, surprisingly, the annual family summer holiday, which, in that year, turned out to be a summer holiday like no other.

In my perennial search for the cheapest available holiday package deals that met our exacting requirements, which included, now, a separate bedroom for Paul, I was led to consider the resorts that were opening up behind the Iron Curtain on the shores of the Black Sea, and appeared to be offering all the attractions of a typical Mediterranean beach holiday at extremely low prices. The most inviting of these resorts, it seemed, was Mamaia in Romania, which stood on a narrow strip of land between the Black Sea and a large inland lake just north of the port of Constanza. After studying all the information available in all the brochures about the resort, its beaches and its hotels, we decided to take the plunge and spend our annual summer holiday there. It turned out to be the experience of a lifetime.

Since Romania was then a communist dictatorship under the iron rule of the egregious Ceausescu, I was obliged, as a civil servant, to inform my superiors of my wish to take a holiday there and ask for their permission to do so. Fortunately, my work was not considered politically sensitive enough to prevent this from being granted, but I didn't escape an intensive briefing by an officer from Security Branch about the perils that may await me on the shores of the Black Sea. I was warned that I might find myself the target of sexual seduction by attractive female persons with ulterior motives, and specifically enjoined not to accept any letter or parcel from a local inhabitant to bring back home with me. Already, it seemed, our summer holiday was turning out to be a different sort of venture.

The next unusual feature of the trip was the aeroplane we found waiting at Gatwick to take us to Romania. It was a Russian Tupolev 114(?) with four rear engines, looking like the copy of our own VC10 which many claimed it to be. Paul got quite excited about the prospect of flying in it, but Anne and I were more impressed by the fact that it was there on time, promising a prompt departure, instead of which, however, we found ourselves enduring a protracted wait, for no apparent reason, in the departure lounge, with the aircraft clearly visible to us outside. When asked about the delay, the Gatwick desk attendants simply shrugged and said 'It's always like this'. Then we noticed that all the passengers' luggage had been laid out on the tarmac next to the plane and that an individual was carefully checking it, piece by piece, against a document on a clip board in his hand. Once this inspection was completed, the passengers were asked to go out and personally identify their own luggage. Only then were the baggage handlers allowed to load it into the plane.

Once aboard the plane, however, the flight proved to be reassuringly normal. The air hostesses were dressed as Romanian peasants and the food was quite palatable. But the worst part of our journey, and, indeed, the worst experience we were ever to have on any of our many package deal holidays was waiting for us as we came in to land, under blue skies and sunshine, at Constanza airport, which, we found, was still a military base, pressed into service, with few modifications, to deal with the air traffic generated by the development of Mamaia as an international tourist resort, and where the facilities for coping with this inflow were totally inadequate. The small arrival hall quickly degenerated into a complete shambles with passengers milling around waiting for the sporadic appearance of their luggage through a hole in the wall, after which they were obliged to personally manhandle it through customs formalities which were, of course, in the hands of the military. After queueing interminably outdoors in blazing sun and high humidity, we were admitted, one by one, to individual booths to be subjected to several minutes of intensive facial scrutiny by a stony-faced soldier before being allowed to board the awaiting buses.

With this ordeal was behind us, however, we found that there was much to enjoy in Mamaia but that many of the pleasures promised by the glossy brochures were available to us only to a limited extent, if at all. It was a strangely dysfunctional world. Mamaia had all the appearances of a luxury, seaside holiday resort, the hotels were well designed, the rooms were clean and spacious, the beds comfortable and the en suite facilities fully functional. The hotel dining room was well-appointed and the food was good and plentiful, but there was a faintly institutional air about the decor, and the staff had a slightly sulky appearance. There were, however, lots of them – the lifts, for example, were manned at all hours of day and night, usually by young ladies in uniform, – and the management staff, when they appeared (which wasn't very often) looked (and behaved) a little like commissars, but the room and restaurant services in our hotel left little to be desired. The same could not be said, however, about any goods and services not included in the cost of the package deal. Even the single bar in our hotel was woefully understocked – and understaffed. The only alcoholic drink available, other than the local plum brandy, seemed to be bottled beer from various other Iron curtain countries, which sometimes ran out of stock late at night. And there were no bars to be found outside the hotels.

It was the same on the beach. The sun shone, the skies were blue, there was golden sand, and the swimming was excellent, but there were none of the friendly bars and cafes which line the beaches of the Mediterranean. Every couple of hundred yards along the beach, there was a kiosk selling cold drinks from one window and hot drinks from another, at fixed prices, with long queues of men standing in the sun, waiting to buy bottles of beer outside the former. But there was always one kiosk, I found, at which the queues were virtually non-existent, because, for some mysterious reason, its prices were fractionally higher than the rest, an anomaly which was allowed to exist, presumably, for the benefit of those West European tourists who were prepared to pay for the convenience. There was no ice cream on sale on the beach, but, once or twice a day, a supply of it would arrive at sort of mini-kiosk, whereupon a bell would be rung to summon the nearby children to come and be issued with a small block each. I think it was free, but once it was gone, that was it, until the next time. Another unusual feature of the beach was the presence, at regular intervals, of clusters of loud-speakers on tall poles playing music of a cheerful nature and issuing news bulletins in different languages (including English) from time to time. A mixed blessing, which could only be avoided by sitting out of earshot.

Adding to the feeling of unreality was the discovery that , in each of the larger hotels, there was a facility called a 'dollar shop'. This was an enclave, sealed off from the rest of the hotel into which only foreign visitors bearing foreign currency were admitted, and inside which was an Aladdin's cave of all the luxury goods that were unobtainable outside – Scotch whisky, London gin, American cigarettes, record players, electronic equipment, blue jeans – you name it, there it was, on sale, but only for foreign currency to foreigners. For young Romanians, the most desirable objects in the dollar shops, at that time, were the blue jeans, and youthful members of the staff who had accumulated enough foreign currency in tips for the purpose would approach some friendly tourist, such as ourselves, and quietly ask them to go into the dollar shop and buy them a pair of blue jeans, something which Anne and I were only too happy to do. The only items I bought for myself in the dollar shop were bottles of cold beer when the stocks in the hotel bar ran out.

I also bought some American cigarettes, not to smoke, but because they were the accepted local currency for oiling the wheels of the services which were supposed to be available free, eg medical and pharmaceutical The only genuinely disinterested service we received was from the local representative of our travel firm, a young Romanian called Nicolae (Nicci for short) who spoke quite passable English and turned out to be a beacon of truth in a sea of prevarication. He was doggedly assiduous in the performance of his duties, and made a practice of working round the restaurant tables at mealtimes at regular intervals asking his clients if they had any complaints, and answering questions. I thought, at first, he might be simply going through the motions, but a few days into the holiday he proved me wrong.

One of the features of the hotel restaurant was a large glass case, just inside the entrance, displaying bottles of all the wines available at mealtimes, together with their prices. They were all local wines, and, being a Yorkshireman, I began by ordering the cheapest, and found it so drinkable that I could see no reason subsequently to order any of the more expensive wines. On about the fourth or fifth day, however, our waitress, who was a short, square, brusque, businesslike lady, nicknamed, by us, Mrs Dracula, responded to my wine order with the words 'No have'. When I pointed out that the wine in question was still on display in the glass case, she simply repeated the words 'No have' and kept on repeating them until I caved in and ordered the next least expensive wine on the list, which was still a pretty good deal.

But I was puzzled by the anomaly, so, the next time Nicci came round with his 'Any complaints' routine, I told him what had happened, looking for enlightenment As he listened, his brow darkened, and, after a few muttered words, he marched off into the kitchen, from whence there shortly issued the sound of voices raised in heated argument, following which Nicci came marching back to our table and said 'You will have your wine'. When we got to know him better, off duty, we asked Nicci why we had been refused the cheap wine in the first place, and he informed us that a fixed quota of wines was issued to the hotels at the beginning of the season to last for the whole season, and this meant that, if people like me were allowed to make inroads into the cheaper brands there might be none left for later arrivals, hence the attempt to ration me. I would have accepted it,of course, if they'd taken the bottles out of the glass case, but they couldn't, could they? They were hoist by their own petard.

The briefings I had received back in the Home Office had made me wary of approaches made to me by the locals, but I'm happy to say that when Nicci invited us to meet his wife and young son after hours, I threw caution to the winds and agreed. It turned out to be a good move, because, not only was it an enjoyable experience, in spite of the language barrier with his charming wife, but it gave us a brief glimpse of life behind the Mamaia facade and led Nicky to introduce us to an older friend, called Cristian (Cris for short), who spoke English fluently, and was very good company indeed. At first, of course, I had my suspicions about his motives, but I quickly realised that (a) there was nothing to be gained from chatting me up, and (b) he simply wanted to practise his English on someone who could have no connection with the regime, on the subject of which he was happy to be informative, if carefully non-committal.

It was obvious to Anne and me that neither Nicci nor Cris was enamoured of the present regime, but whereas Nicci was irked by its restrictions and dearly wanted to get himself and his family out of the country, but could see no way of doing so, Cris seemed resigned to making the best of a bad job. I gathered from our conversations that he had a middle class background which had resulted in positive discrimination against him at school in the form of, eg. negative marks in exams, and also that he was working as a schoolteacher, probably teaching English. He told me that, when approached by parents, who were local party heavyweights, with suggestions that it would do him no harm to give their offspring favourable reports, he always acquiesced without demur, because, as he said 'I give them all good reports'. In his relaxed and chatty manner, Cris told me quite a lot about what life was like under Communism, none of which I had reason to disbelieve, but when I told him what I did for a living and he reacted by asking me whether I knew his friend Michael Shea who also worked in Whitehall, I could hardly believe my ears.

Michael Shea was the Queen's Press Secretary and frequently in the news as the voice of Buckingham Palace at a time when a number of important public issues involving royalty were being aired, and here was this affable nonentity sitting opposite me at a cafe table in a distant Romanian seaside resort claiming friendship with him. How could this possibly be true? And even when Cris explained to me that he had been engaged to teach Michael Shea Romanian while he was working at the British Embassy in Bucharest, I still wasn't convinced.

When I got back to England, however, I looked Michael Shea up in the Civil Service Directory, and there he was, of course, listed under Buckingham Palace with his official address and phone number which, with some trepidation, I rang, and, this being the way things work in Whitehall, soon found myself speaking to him in person, feeling none too confident, however, about my reception. But I needn't have worried. As soon as I mentioned Cristian's name and the circumstances of our meeting, he reacted with great concern, saying 'Ah, how is he?', and when I had answered his question as best I could, he confirmed that Cris had befriended him while teaching him Romanian when he was serving as a diploma in Bucharest, and even taken him home to meet his family. He also said that he had since written to Cris several times, and even sent him copies of his books (he was, as I knew, a successful novelist), but had received no response. It was obvious from my report that Cris had never heard from him, and he was very grateful to me for bringing him news of his friend.

Meanwhile, back in Mamaia, discrepancies between appearance and reality continued to manifest themselves. One evening after dinner, Cris took us to a large, outdoor cafe where the tables were already crowded with pleasure seekers chatting animatedly among themselves under the stars. It was an attractive scene, which we hastened to join by sitting down at one of the few vacant tables and embarking on conversations of our own while waiting to be served. 20 minutes later, however, we were still waiting, and I was beginning to feel frustrated. Looking around I could see that everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, but there were no waiters in sight. 10 minutes later I lost my temper and complained about the lack of service to Cris, who became very apologetic and dashed off to do what he could about it, but no waiter ever came, and nobody but me seemed to care.

On another occasion I decided to take advantage of the excellent local bus service to go with Paul into Constanza for a couple of hours, partly out of curiosity, partly because I had heard that there was a department store there, and I was hoping to buy the only item of 'loot' I could imagine that Romania might have to offer me - a pair of leather gloves - and there were no shops selling leather goods (or much else, for that matter) in Mamaia. There was a small sea-front pavilion shop which was usually closed, but opened its doors one day when a consignment of T shirts arrived. Those of us who rushed to take advantage of this bonanza, however, found that the T shirts, kept well out of reach behind the counter, were all of one size.

On our way into Constanza on the bus, I was huddled over a street map with Paul, tracing our progress through the window, when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find a very attractive young lady in a pretty frock, smiling into my eyes and saying something in Romanian. Thinking that she was offering to help us with the street map, I politely declined her services and turned back to Paul and the map, only to receive another tap on the shoulder. This time her expression was more serious and, as she spoke, she pointed to a badge she was wearing over her left breast. She was, in fact, a ticket inspector, and her unusual appearance, I found, was the result of a ticketing system that relied on passengers buying their tickets before boarding, and punching them personally at one of several small devices provided for the purpose inside the coach. Human nature being what it is, however, there was a tendency for regular passengers to avoid punching their tickets if they could, in order to use them again, and the only sanction against their doing this was the existence of a cohort of ticket inspectors, any one of whom could board the bus unexpectedly at any stop. But the sight of a uniformed ticket inspector waiting to step aboard at an approaching stop would allow time for any potential fare-evaders quickly to punch their tickets, and the solution to this was for ticket inspectors to pose as attractive young ladies wearing pretty frocks and produce their official badges from their handbags only when they were safely aboard and there was no escape for their prey

We arrived in Constanza to find a very different Romania from Mamaia, completely lacking in any kind of charm or character – narrow pavements, busy roads, traffic fumes, noise – we couldn't get out of it fast enough, but, before doing so, I succeeded in finding the department store. It was spacious and well lit and even had an upper floor, and there were shop assistants standing around, but there was little merchandise on display, and very few customers in evidence. Having used gestures to indicate what I was after, I was directed to a counter on which there were no gloves to be seen, but behind which there were two young ladies chatting to each other with their backs towards us, and after concluding their conversation, one of them drifted towards us with an inquiring look on her face. Once she had understood from my gestures, what I was hoping to buy, she opened a drawer in the cabinet behind her and produced a pair of gloves which were not made of leather and were not my size. When I pointed this out to her, she opened another drawer and and produced another pair which looked equally unsuitable, although I wasn't allowed to touch them. After the fourth attempt, I decided to abandon my quest and allow the two young ladies to resume their interrupted conversation.

Those two weeks in Mamaia were an eye-opener for me. Until then I had thought of the communist system (when I thought about it at all) as an experimental alternative to capitalism which, although applied by brute force, might eventually confer benefits which outweighed its penalties. But I came away from Romania with the growing conviction that the communist system simply did not work, and would not work in the future because, having eliminated free enterprise, it was incapable of delivering the goods and services that its citizens hanker after, once their basic needs have been met. Since, under Communism, everyone is, in effect, employed by the state, the system labours under the same constraint as that affecting the Civil Service, where, as the Rand Corporation observed, the rewards for successful innovation are far outweighed by the penalties for making mistakes. Add to that, job security at fixed salaries, and you have a recipe for the inertia, incompetence and bribery that were evident in Mamaia. Sooner or later, I predicted, the communist economies in the USSR and its satellites would collapse under the weight of their own internal contradictions. And so they have.

We arrived back at Gatwick on a fine, sunny day and set off for home. While driving through Reigate at about noon, we decided to stop for a drink at a roadside pub, and, after seating Anne and Paul in the leafy beer garden, I went indoors to be greeted by a smiling landlord who literally bustled up to the bar to take my order. I asked for a pint of bitter, a glass of cider and a soft drink for Paul, and his reply was 'Certainly, sir. Which bitter would you like, which cider would you like, and which soft drink?'. After we'd sorted that one out and he'd served me with my chosen drinks, he asked me if there was anything else I wanted. 'Three packets of crisps', I said, but when he replied 'Certainly, sir, which flavours would you like, there's bacon, cheese and onion, and chicken', I could take no more, and fell back, overcome with indecision, from the bar, not having exercised the power of choice for a fortnight.

I had no real regrets about spending our family holiday in Romania. We had enjoyed our annual quota of sun, sea and sand at bargain prices, and I had learned a lot about the realities of life under a communist dictatorship, but I came away feeling very, very sorry for Nicci and Cris. I saw them as two young lives boxed into a system, which seemed designed to prevent their individual talents from flourishing, and from which there was no escape. I tried to think of some way of helping them, but it was hopeless, and I had nothing to give them but sympathy. If only I'd packed a few desirable items, such as Beatles LPs, in my suitcase, I thought, I could have given them as presents. But, all I could do was take down their addresses, and hope for some future opportunity to present itself. I never forgot them, and ten years later, when the Ceausescu regime in Romania collapsed, I wrote to both of them to ask if there was anything I could do for them, but I received no reply.

I brought back one souvenir of Mamaia that I would rather have left behind. It was an incipient inguinal hernia, acquired, I feel sure, on the day of our arrival by the exertions involved in manhandling our luggage through customs under a hot sun in high humidity at Constanza airport. I didn't know what it was, at first, just a small protrusion in my left groin, sensitive to the touch, some sort of muscle strain, I thought, but when I finally revealed it to my GP, he diagnosed it immediately and told me that it could only get worse, and I should either wear a truss or get it repaired, but when I decided to pursue the latter course I found that, since my hernia had not yet strangulated, its repair would be classed as elective surgery and relegated to that classic NHS institution – the waiting list. Fortunately, however, after entering the Civil Service I had been persuaded by Anne to set aside my socialist principles and, for her benefit if not for mine, consider joining a private health insurance scheme, and some of my misgivings about doing so had been overcome by the discovery that there was (guess what?) a Civil Service Health Insurance scheme which offered the full range of benefits but, by reimbursing only 85% of the costs, discouraged abuse of it and kept the premiums very low. How ironic that the first and only claim we ever made on the scheme was to have my hernia repaired privately on a day, and in a hospital, of my own choosing.

In the event, I spent only two nights in a private ward in Farnham Hospital and took only a week off work, which was just as well, since I was, by then, fully involved in the work of the most interesting and rewarding post I was ever to hold in the Home Office, a post I was to fill, under five AS's and four Home Secretaries, until my retirement from the Civil Service ten years later. After my repatriation from the Department of the Environment at the head of my little band of exiles, I had been offered the post of Head of the Parole Unit in the Probation and Aftercare Department, and I must confess that I wasn't much taken, at the time, with the prospect of entering the unfamiliar world of crime and punishment, prisons and prisoners, but, since the Parole Unit boasted 3 SEOs, 6 HEOs, 12 EOs and numerous COs and CAs, it looked like a big job, and I could see no reason for refusing it. I guessed, however, that, if I was to do it well, I would have a lot to learn. And I was right.

5

Like most members of the law abiding public I had only the vaguest of notions about prisons and prisoners, all of them gained from books, newspapers, films and TV. The only prison I had ever been aware of was 'Armley Jail' in Leeds, which loomed, like some grim medieval fortress, over the main road into the city centre from Bradford. I was to find that Armley was one of several different types of prison, housing some of several different types of offenders. There were, at the time, about 120 prison establishments in England and Wales, holding 40,000+ inmates, about 1500 of them women. Apart from such institutions as Young Offender establishments, there were two main types of prison – the Local Prisons, like Armley, which everybody knew about since there was one in every major city, and the rest, known collectively as Dispersal Prisons.

Some of the Local Prisons were huge, some were small, and some were very old, but all of them were hives of activity, fulfilling a number of different functions in the prison system, and holding a number of the different types of inmate, some of whom were individuals who had been charged with crimes, and, having been refused bail, had been 'remanded into custody' to await trial, until which time they would not be subjected to the prison regime, wearing their own clothes, and occupying themselves as best the could. Those found not to be guilty would walk free from the court, but those found guilty would return to the prison, and, after sentencing, join a group undergoing an Assessment Process conducted by a variety of experts, one purpose of which was to categorise them according to their dangerousness, A,B,C and D, and decide in which of the dispersal prisons they would serve their sentences.

There were no Category A prisons, the most secure being Category B prisons within which there might be a doubly secure unit to house the relatively few Category A prisoners. Category D prisons were Open Prisons and, like most of the dispersal prisons, were buried deep in the countryside, away from the major population centres. Most of the short-sentence prisoners, however, and some of those with longer sentences would serve their time in the multi-purpose Local Prisons.

The purposes of imprisonment were said to be (i) punishment (ii) treatment and training, and (iii) protection of the public, and Rule 1 of the 97 Rules in the Prison Rules (1964) stated 'The purpose of the treatment and training of convicted prisoners shall be to encourage and assist them to lead a good and useful life'. Obviously, little could be done in the way of treatment and training for short sentence prisoners, or for longer sentence prisoners without their cooperation, but substantial resources were committed to treatment and training in all HM Prisons although the benefits were difficult to quantify.

In discharging the Home Secretary's responsibilities for the care and containment of prisoners, however, the biggest problem facing the Home Office was its lack of control over the size of the prison population, given that sentencing was in the hands of an independent judiciary,. It was a chronic dilemma, The Home Secretary was responsible for enforcing the increasingly punitive laws enacted by Parliament under pressure from the public, fanned by the press, and also responsible for housing the growing numbers of prisoners resulting from his success in doing so, but could have no influence over the lengths of the sentences awarded by the judiciary within the limits allowed by the laws.

Since there were limits to the numbers of prisoners that could be accommodated in the existing prisons, and the creation of new prisons was a complicated, lengthy and expensive process, the growing size of the prison population was a constant headache for the Home Office, and 'prison overcrowding' was frequently raised in Parliament and the press as an issue giving cause for concern. There can be little doubt, therefore, that, whatever its rehabilitative merits, one of the attractions of a scheme designed to release selected prisoners early on licence would be its downward pressure on the size of the prison population, particularly since an existing device for achieving this objective - the granting of remission of one third the sentence for good behaviour in prison - had reached the limits of its usefulness. Nobody questioned the effectiveness, as a control tool, of an administrative device which allowed breaches of prison discipline to be punished by loss of remission, but automatic remission of a third of the sentence for this purpose was seen by many (including me) as being excessive, and, as such, a subterfuge for reducing the prison population that judges had, over the years, increasingly taking into account when awarding sentences.

The parole scheme I inherited was, like the Urban Programme, a product of the socially reformist Labour governments of the late 1960s, and, since I had no part in designing it, I am free to say that it was, in my view, the most elegant and efficient machinery of its type in existence anywhere in the world at the time. The primary objective of the parole scheme was to reduce the risk of prisoners re-offending by releasing them early into the community under the supervision of the Probation Service, subject to conditions which, if breached, could result in their immediate recall to prison, and, under the legislation, all prisoners became eligible for an annual parole review after serving one year or one-third of their sentence, whichever was the longer. This meant that, when remission time and the time required for the pre-parole assessment procedures was taken into account, the minimum sentence eligible for parole was two years.

The scheme had three layers. Eligible prisoners were first considered for parole at the prison by a Local Review Committee (LRC), which was convened, as required, in panels of five, and consisted of the Governor of the prison, or his representative, a Senior Probation Officer, a member of the prison Board of Visitors (BOV), and two Independent Members who were volunteers, recruited by the Home Office from the local community. The actual size of the LRC at each prison depended on the numbers of inmates qualifying for parole, and it was important to ensure that sufficient Independent Members were available to allow each of them to be called to the panels at reasonably frequent intervals, but not too often. Each case was considered by the LRC in advance of the Parole Eligibility Date (PED) on the basis of a dossier consisting of an array of documents containing details of the prisoner's crime, criminal history, and prison behaviour, plus the prisoner's own written representations and even his oral representations which could be made, if he wished, to an Independent Member of the LRC. In view of the possibility that parole might be granted, the dossier also contained a Release Plan compiled by the parolee's local Probation Service in consultation with the prison.

Once the LRC had recommended that a prisoner was either suitable or unsuitable for parole, the dossier was sent to the Parole Unit for consideration on behalf of the Home Secretary without whose approval parole could not be granted. On arrival in the Parole Unit, the dossiers were sifted upwards through the hierarchical pyramid, EO to HEO, HEO to SEO, SEO to me, and, if necessary, me to the AS and beyond, on the basis of a number of criteria, which included the LRC's recommendation, the length of the sentence, and a Reconviction Prediction Score (RPS) devised by criminologists in the Home Office Scientific Branch, which predicted, on the basis of a number of variables in the prisoner's background, the percentage probability of his re-offending within a year of release. The principal objective of this process was to select those cases which protocol decreed should be referred for consideration to the the third layer of the scheme – the Parole Board – and leave the Parole Unit to deal officially with the rest.

The Parole Board was the public face of the parole scheme, and had been created by statute to be quite independent of the Home Office, although its members were appointed by the Home Secretary, and it had a full-time Chairman and a Secretariat of seconded Home Office officials, who occupied premises inside the Home Office, near those of the Parole Unit with whom they maintained a close, but officially arms-length, working relationship. The membership of the Parole Board was made up of High Court Judges, Consultant Psychiatrists, Chief Probation Officers, and Independent Members, drawn, ostensibly, from all walks of life, who were brought together, in random rotation, in panels of five to consider cases at all-day sessions. The first Chairman of the Parole Board had been Lord Hunt of Everest, who had introduced a number of sensible conventions, such as the use of Christian names among members, and there was an Annual Weekend Conference to which Ministers and other worthies were invited. Membership was limited to two years to prevent 'institutionalisation', and the Parole Board published an Annual Report about its activities.

To the best of my recollection, in those days, somewhere between 10 and 15,000 parole reviews took place each year, of which about 5,000 were referred to the Parole Board. This number was made up of all the longer sentence prisoners (3years+) recommended by the LRCs for parole, and any longer sentence prisoners not recommended who had a low RPS or were at 2nd or subsequent review, plus any shorter sentence prisoner about whose LRC recommendation for parole the Parole Unit had misgivings. Since all recommendations for parole required the Home Secretary's approval there were procedures in place for accepting or rejecting them on his behalf. Short sentence LRC recommendations for parole were accepted if, after examining the file, both an HEO and and his SEO agreed that they should. If there was any disagreement between them the case was referred to the Parole Board. The Parole Board's recommendations for parole were passed from HEO to SEO and then to me. If the HEO and SEO both wrote 'accept' and I wrote 'accept', that was final, but if I wrote 'reject' the file went to the AS. If he wrote 'reject', that was final, but if he wrote 'accept', the file went up to the AUSS, then the DUSS, then the Junior Minister until two consecutive ranks agreed to either accept or reject the recommendation. If the Junior Minister disagreed with the DUSS then the file went to the Home Secretary himself who had the final word. Before giving it, the S of S would hold a meeting with the Junior Minister and senior officials – AS and above – to discuss the case. I can only remember this happening once, and Willie Whitelaw decided to accept the recommendation.

Generally speaking, Ministers were uncomfortable with parole. They were, by nature, risk-averse, and parole was a calculated risk predicated on the assumption that, of the three objectives of imprisonment - punishment, treatment and training, and protection of the public - the first two could be said to have been adequately achieved when a third of the sentence had been served, leaving only protection of the public to be considered. The purpose of the parole review was to balance the benefits to the community of releasing an offender from prison under the compulsory supervision of the Probation Service, against the risk to the community of his re-offending while on licence - bearing in mind that, if denied parole, the prisoner would inevitably be released, unsupervised, into the community at the end of his sentence. Not an easy concept for Ministers to come to terms with, since there were no votes in parole and Ministers were not the only ones to feel uneasy about it.

Given the risk, it was inevitable that a number of prisoners would re-offend while on parole licence, and that some of these offences would be serious enough to attract public attention and even give rise to an outcry. There was a universal tendency to see parole as re-sentencing, a view that was shared by some of the judges, and even some probation officers who found its selective procedures arbitrary and unfair, particularly to those offenders refused parole, many of whom would petition for a 're-trial' or to be given reasons for their rejection so that they could try to improve their chances of getting parole at the next review. Unfortunately, there was little a prisoner could do, while in prison, to improve his chances of parole by reducing a perceivable risk of his re-offending (?violently) once outside, but this, too, was not an easy concept to grasp, and the refusal to give reasons for rejection continued to be seen as unjust. My suggestion that all requests for reasons should be met with a standard reply, such as, 'After taking the advice of an independent Parole Board, the Home Secretary has decided that any benefits of releasing you early on parole are outweighed by the risks of your re-offending while on licence', was not well received.

The Parole Scheme was not popular with the Treasury, either, where it was seen as merely an expensive means of marginally reducing the prison population. The LRCs were very cheap to run, but Parole Board members, other than the judges and CPOs, received substantial session fees, and all were entitled to travel and subsistence expenses. The big cost, however, was the Parole Unit, which was about 50 strong and had no way of quantifying the financial benefits of its endeavours. The sad fact was that,in spite of its superb design and good intentions, the Parole Scheme had few friends outside the Prison and Probation Services.

All this became grist to my workaday mill, once I had assumed my new role as Head of the Parole Unit, which, I soon began to realise, was a job ideally suited to my talents. My responsibilities fell under four main heads: the hard core was the casework, a steady flow of bulky files, each with a prisoner's name on it, arriving in my in-tray, inviting my acceptance, or, in rare cases, rejection of the Parole Board's recommendation for parole. In order to make my decision, I was obliged, of course, to read the dossier which contained, among other things, explicit details of the prisoner's crimes, and I was warned that I might find this experience rather disturbing at first, and I certainly did, but I soon became inured to it, and never found it boring. Arising from the casework were the usual administrative consequentials, such as Minister's Cases (letters from MPs seeking answers from the Minister), Parliamentary Questions (PQs), press enquiries, mini-debates in the House of Lords, legislative changes, legal challenges, etc., and I eventually became, and was seen by those with any professional interest in the subject to be, the world's leading expert on the Parole Scheme of England and, needless to say, this part of my job was largely desk work.

Not so, however, that part arising from my responsibilities toward the Parole Board. I had no involvement whatsoever in its deliberations, of course, although I played a humble role in assembling submissions to the S of S regarding the appointment of new members, but the Parole Board had a commitment to exposing itself, from time to time, to informal, face-to-face exchanges with some of the prisoners whose fate was in its hands, and, to this end, small groups of Parole Board members would make ambassadorial visits to selected prisons, during the course of which they would closet themselves with a number of the prisoners who had applied to meet them. Although these discussions were between the Parole Board members and the prisoners, it was necessary for a representative of the Home Secretary to be present, not to take part in them, but to supply, on request, the sort of information and advice about the workings of the scheme and its statutory framework, which was frequently required, and, fortunately, that representative was me. I say fortunately, because these visits took me out of the office at regular intervals, and introduced me, over the years, to most of the major prisons in England and Wales, and some of their most dangerous inmates. They also allowed me to make the acquaintance of individual Board members and Prison Governors over the lunches provided by the prisons' kitchens.

My personal involvement in the Parole Board's affairs reached its peak every Autumn when the Board held its Annual Residential Conference at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park, to which senior Home Office officials were invited, but only as observers (and to answer questions, when not infrequently asked to do so), and, although this event boasted a suitably serious agenda, it was really an excuse for all the Parole Board members, who normally met each other only in random groups of four or five, to get together informally and enjoy each others' company. My duties did not qualify me to spend the nights at Cumberland Lodge, but the Great Park was within easy reach of Fleet and I had no difficulty in getting there before the proceedings began in the morning, and getting home in time for bed in the evening. The Conference itself was a pretty boring affair, but the hospitality was excellent and a party atmosphere could sometimes be detected at mealtimes and after hours in the bar, as could a certain amount of discreet flirting. The Conference ran from Friday afternoon to Sunday lunchtime, and the highspot was a formal dinner on the Saturday evening followed by a speech by a guest of honour, usually a Minister, but, on one occasion, HRH Princess Anne. Of more interest to me , however, was the discovery of an abundance of easily accessible edible fungi (mainly ceps) growing in the woodlands surrounding the Lodge, just waiting to be picked during breaks in the proceedings.

My responsibilities for the LRCs were much more direct, although my only real concern was with the Independent Members, since the Committees were administered by the prisons and the other members were ex officio. The Independents were recruited locally by the Prison Governor, and my own involvement with them was largely confined to their post-induction 'training' at the residential weekend course they had agreed to attend as soon as possible after their recruitment. These courses were held twice a year at the Prison Service Staff College adjoining the large, high-security prison at Wakefield in West Yorkshire, and, like the Parole Board's Annual Conferences, ran from Friday afternoon to Sunday lunchtime, but they were more practical in construction and content, although this, and the fact that the Independents were drawn from all walks of life in different parts of the country, and had never met each other before, did not prevent the same companionable atmosphere developing at mealtimes, and, after hours, in the bar of the Prison Officers' Club, which was accessed via a door in the wall of the prison, just across the road from the College entrance, and of which we were all enrolled as temporary members.

The courses were well-attended (about 30 new members at a time) and were so popular that some of the longer serving members would apply (unsuccessfully) for a second bite at the cherry. The objective of the courses was, not to impose Home Office doctrine on the newcomers, but to inform them about the design and operation of the whole parole scheme outside their own prisons and the importance of their own role in it, stressing always that there were no 'correct' answers to the questions they were being asked, and that their own conclusions should be arrived at without looking over their shoulders and worrying about what others might make of them. The only speaker who was allowed to discuss their actual work with them was one of the independent members of the Parole Board, brought along for the purpose. In the main practical exercise of the day, they were split into small groups and given two parole dossiers to study and make recommendations about, after which, the actual outcomes of the cases were revealed to them. The cases had been carefully chosen for the purpose, and were difficult to decide and had thought-provoking outcomes. The highspot of the course occurred on Saturday evening after dinner when they were all taken on a conducted tour of Wakefield Prison.

Needless to say, I was in my element on these courses which, when I arrived on the scene, were sound enough in content, but amateurish in delivery, something I set out to remedy by, for example, replacing the clumsy overhead projector and blackboard-and-chalk presentations with the pre-prepared and permanent visual aids I had found to be more effective, in my Crookes Laboratories days. This took time, because my new AS was nominally in charge of things when I arrived, but he was soon to be posted, and his successors were happy to look to me for guidance, which I was happy to give, playing a subordinate role during the proceedings, but keeping a firm grip on the organisation and management.

The fourth element in my responsibilities as Head of the Parole Unit, the management of my large numbers of subordinate staff, was the least demanding. This was because, for the reasons I have earlier given, I found staff management in the Civil Service to be child's play compared with the private sector. Having no responsibility for their recruitment and training, no control over their inputs and no objective way of measuring their outputs, little was required of me but to give them as much encouragement as I could, in their ASRs, without being dishonest, while doing everything possible to keep my own Reporting and Countersigning Officers happy. In this, I was reasonably successful, once my first AS, who was happy to take advantage of my abilities, but reluctant to acknowledge them, had been posted elsewhere under the following rather unusual circumstances.

The Chairman of the Parole Board, at the time, was Sir Louis Petch, who, after a civil service career of great distinction, had taken over from the celebrated Lord Hunt of Everest as a relative nonentity, but had been doing a thoroughly competent job until overtaken by the ill health which was soon to hasten his retirement. The Secretary of the Parole Board was a tall and attractive young SEO called Angela, who was both clever and good natured, if a little reserved, and hailed from Tyneside, something which set her apart from the bulk of her colleagues in the Executive Class, most of whom were products of London and the Home Counties where the Civil Service was seen as a career option by school-leavers to a greater extent than it was in, for example, Yorkshire, certainly in my time. As fellow provincials Angela and I struck up an immediate rapport, which didn't prevent us from observing the formalities of our statutory arms-length relationship.

The Junior Minister responsible for parole was Lord Harris of Greenwich, who, as plain John Harris, had started life as a journalist and worked his way into a career in politics by writing for left wing journals and, after briefly becoming a parliamentary candidate, attracting the favourable attention of Hugh Gaitskill, then Leader of the Opposition, who appointed him his personal assistant. From then on, he remained active and influential, behind the scenes, in politics for the rest of his life. His talents were highly valued by, among others, Roy Jenkins, who, as Home Secretary following Labour's return to power in 1974 when Harris was created a life peer, had appointed him a Minister of State.

By the time I took over the Parole Unit, Roy Jenkins had been replaced as Home Secretary by Merlyn Rees, and, with Sir Louis' retirement date approaching, it wasn't long before the S of S was being asked to decide who should replace him. This was such an important matter that I had no involvement in it whatsoever, but it soon became apparent to me, that those above were having difficulty in persuading Merlyn Rees and Lord Harris, to come to a decision. As time dragged on, the bewilderment grew. What was going on? Then, suddenly, the mystery was solved. An announcement was made. The new Chairman of the Parole Board was to be...Lord Harris! who had obligingly resigned from his Ministerial post to make himself available. He had timed his metamorphosis very well, because, shortly after his appointment was announced, a General Election was called, which Labour lost, but the advent of a Tory government led by Margaret Thatcher could not effect Lord Harris's appointment, which he was to hold, with some distinction, for next three years, while playing an active role, off-stage, in the gestation and birth, in 1981, of a new political party, the Social Democrats, of which he became a founder member.

In the meantime, below stairs, as it were, I had discovered that, in spite of, or possibly because of, his diminutive stature and unremarkable appearance, my new AS was a compulsive womaniser. This fact was first brought to my attention during the first LRC Training Course I attended at Wakefield. The Parole Board Member on our team was an attractive and vivacious young wife and mother from the Isle of Wight, who, as an Independent Member of one of the LRCs there, had shown herself to be so competent and self-assured that the AS had been put her forward as a candidate for Parole Board Membership, a role for which she turned out to be very well fitted. During the weekend, while socialising quite affably with the rest of us, she had, not surprisingly, bestowed more of her attentions on the AS, to whom I was happily playing second fiddle, but, on the Sunday morning, following the final session, as we prepared for our departures, I became aware, dimly at first, that her demeanour had changed and her attentions were being redirected towards me. This only became noticeable, however, when we were waiting at Wakefield railway station for our train to London, and I found her standing closer to me than to the AS, whose company she was obviously avoiding, and continued to avoid as we boarded the train and she came to sit, quite pointedly, next to me.

I could see that she was not her usual self, and I was certain that her sudden preference for my company was not due to an increase in my personal magnetism, so I asked her if she was felling well. After a moment's hesitation, she surprised me by asking if I thought she was doing a good job on the Parole Board, and, after I'd expressed my surprise that she should even ask such a question, and offered her such reassurance as I could, it emerged that a certain amount of damage to her self-esteem had resulted from an incident that had occurred the night before.

At the end of the day, the AS had invited our little team (me, my HEO, and the Parole Board member) to take a nightcap with him in the small suite he occupied as Course Director, before we retired to our own bedrooms. It was all very friendly, if a little stilted. We chatted over our drinks about the day's activities, congratulating ourselves on the success of the course, until the HEO and I got the feeling that it was time for us to leave the AS and the Parole Board member to talk, perhaps, of higher things. As soon as we'd gone, however, the AS had addressed himself to lower things, and began making explicit sexual advances on the Parole Board member, and, when she vigorously rejected them, had responded angrily, claiming that she owed it to him to satisfy his lustful desires as a reward for getting her appointed to the Parole Board,. Her response had been to leave the room, slamming the door behind her.

What was worrying her, now, was not his unwelcome sexual advances, which she was perfectly capable of resisting with a knee in the crutch if necessary, but the possibility that her appointment to the Parole Board had been for reasons other than the qualities she had demonstrated on the LRC. Once I realised what her problem was, I had no difficulty in setting her mind at rest. I pointed out that, whatever else he was, the AS was a professional civil servant who would never, ever, make the mistake of recommending a candidate for appointment to the Parole Board who was unsuitable. There was nothing to prevent him, however, from proposing a suitable candidate who was also female, and sexually attractive, and taking advantage of any gratitude she might feel towards him for his sponsorship when a suitable opportunity to do so occurred – as between consenting adults, of course. The AS's mistake had been to take his reward for granted and react peevishly when denied it. I myself, however, did quite well out of the episode. Grateful for my support in her hour of need, the young lady continued to look kindly upon me for the duration of her appointment to the Parole Board.

Alerted by this incident, discreet enquiries quickly revealed that the AS, who had a wife and family living somewhere in Surrey, had quite a reputation for philandering around the Home Office, and had even be seen flaunting one of his previous conquests around the streets of Westminster during the lunch hour, so his practice of propositioning any likely female within reach had not been entirely unsuccessful. But his previous successes had made him overconfident, and, not long after the Wakefield incident he made the fatal mistake of trying his luck with Angela, the Parole Board Secretary. What happened next came as a surprise to everyone, including the AS himself, who suddenly found himself shunted to another Division in an obscure corner of the Home Office. How this came about was a matter for conjecture, but the indications were that Angela had said something to Lord Harris, who, after making discreet enquiries among female Parole Board members, had said something to someone up above, who had decided it was time for the AS to be given a career move. It all happened quickly and without fuss, leaving everyone happy, except the AS, of course, and it may be of relevance to note that, when Lord Harris retired as Chairman of the Parole Board two years later, he divorced his wife of thirty years and married Angela.

My new AS was a competent, uncomplicated and otherwise unremarkable individual, who, having satisfied himself as to my own capabilities, was content to allow me to get on with the job, giving more of his attention to the 'Lifer side' of the Division which dealt with the more politically sensitive (and therefore more prestigious) matters arising from the management and licensing of life sentence prisoners. This left me free to develop that mastery of the complexities of the parole scheme - with its ramifications into Prison Service, the Probation Service, and the Criminal Justice system - on which my reputation as an authority on the subject would eventually rest The 1980s ahead would be years of civil unrest and political strife in the world outside, but, for me, personally, they would be sufficiently settled and secure to allow me to pursue any new interest that took my fancy both inside and outside working hours.

Worthy of note, at this point, is that the Parole Unit, when I joined it, was housed in the brand new Home Office building at Queen Anne's Gate, with its many mod cons (which included a top floor canteen with panoramic views of the surrounding area) and easy access, not only to the delights of St. James's Park and the Serpentine at lunchtime, but also to the street market in Petty France and the pubs in Victoria Street. It was even closer to Waterloo Station and the West End than Horseferry House, but further from the Tate, of course. Even more noteworthy was the arrival in the Unit, during my first year, of the one who was to become my treasured companion at the many operas, concerts and plays we would attend together in future years.

When I first met Lynette, she was an HEO(A) (or was it (D)?), in her early thirties, lovely to look at and very good-natured, the most culturally compatible friend I have ever had. She would quickly earn promotion to Principal and then to AS before taking early retirement to seek pastures new, but whatever her commitments, she would always make room in them for our regular outings, mainly to the opera, but often to Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, and even plays at the National Theatre. Most of these outings would be facilitated by my membership of an institution which, for many years to come, was to make an invaluable contribution to the quality of my London life.

The Civil Service Club was a typically 'civil service' institution - unostentatiously efficient. For a modest annual membership fee, it offered restaurant, bar, bedroom and lounge facilities to past and present members of the Civil Service at non-profit-making prices, and was very conveniently situated in a small back street with the inappropriate name of Great Scotland Yard, which joins Whitehall to Northumberland Avenue behind Trafalgar Square, within easy walking distance of Queen Anne's Gate, Waterloo and the Coliseum Theatre. Since membership was open to civil servants of all ranks, it had a comfortably egalitarian atmosphere and a range of services catering for all tastes – a bar and bistro on the ground floor, a well-appointed restaurant and a couple of small private dining rooms on the second floor, and bedrooms in the floors above, where there was also a comfortably furnished lounge and various function rooms for hire.

It was a great boon to me to be able to entertain friends, relations and colleagues in such congenial surroundings so relatively cheaply in the heart of the West End, and a few years after joining the club I took advantage of the 'special offer' of a life membership at a price which was the equivalent of only few years' annual membership. It was a bit of a gamble because I had no idea where I would be living after my retirement, but it turned out to be a very good investment indeed because I continued to make regular use of 'my club' for 25 years after I retired, mostly to rendezvous with Lynette, usually for a meal in the bistro before going to the opera or whatever, but occasionally for long and leisurely lunches in the dining room with any kindred spirit free to join us. But more about that later, perhaps.

Meanwhile, back home in Fleet, my family life was also settled and secure and certainly not suffering from any neglect on my part. My evenings 'on the town' in London rarely occurred more than once a month, and other evenings saw me back home before 6.30pm, for a family meal followed by domestic activities appropriate to the season in house and garden, interspersed, not infrequently, with social activities of a more ambitious kind. Anne and I continued to be regular patrons of the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham, and, occasionally, the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, and, since it was easy for Anne to come up to Waterloo Station by train to be met by me, we also went to a number of shows in the West End, mainly musicals, with Dan and Anne. Outstanding among these, for me, was Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats', based on T.S.Eliot's poems in 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats', a copy of which I had bought, according to my inscription on the fly leaf, in Bradford in 1948! and had been amusing myself with ever since.

Helen was now pursuing a successful business career in London, but Paul was still at home, completing his schooling at the Sixth Form college in Farnborough and free, therefore, to accompany us on our annual fortnight's holiday on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Always on the lookout for new destinations that fulfilled our customary requirements, in 1980, my eye fell on what must surely be the most picturesque seaside holiday resort in Spain. Peniscola is a small, beautifully preserved, medieval fortress town rising out of the sea in a spectacular fashion on a rocky peninsula which juts out from the coast about half way between Tarragona and Valencia. It overlooks a stretch of excellent beach to the north with a few hotels scattered along the edge of it and provides all the amenities for enjoyable days on the beach and evenings on the town. Its only drawback is that the nearest airport, Reus, is more than 100k away, but Peniscola was well worth the long drive, and whenever the Hollywood film 'The Cid' is shown on late night television I always try to watch the last half hour of it - the final battle - because it was shot in and around Peniscola and some of the fighting takes place on the beach in front of our hotel.

In spite of Peniscola's attractions, the following year we chose yet another new destination for our annual dose of sun, sea and sand and went to Rosas (in Catalan, Roses), and Paul came with us again, but, for the last time, as his schooldays were drawing to a close. Rosas is the first town of any size south of the French border on the Costa Brava and has a long history as a trading port stretching back to Greek and Roman times BC, of which there is still plenty of evidence if one cares to look for it, which I'm afraid I didn't find the time to do, since we had taken a friend of Paul with us, and the two of them showed little interest in anything other than the wide range of beach activities available, which included ogling the many young ladies disporting themselves, topless, around them.

Because of its position just south of the border, in addition to the usual French, British and German families in their cars, Rosas attracted large numbers of young backpackers from every corner of Europe and beyond, all seemingly intent on having a good time without wishing to interfere in any way with the pleasurable activities of others. I remember sitting one evening, under the stars, with Anne and the boys at a table outside a bar in a square which was completely surrounded by tables outside other bars, all of them occupied by groups of mainly young people, drinking, smoking and chatting among themselves in their different languages, and thinking what a heart-warming sight it was. The square seemed awash with cosmopolitan bonhomie, an island of peaceful co-existence in a troubled world. The other thing I remember about Rosas was the cool breeze from the Pyrenees mountains that blew across the beach from the west as evening approached. Otherwise, the beach and bars were excellent, the hotel was passable, and the shopping was good, although the most attractive 'loot' was too big to take back on the plane. But the traffic was bad and the place was overcrowded. We didn't regret going to Rosas, but, unlike Peniscola, we had no wish ever to go there again.

Apart from our holiday in Rosas, the main thing I recall about my family life during that summer was making what I have come to look back on as the biggest mistake of my life. I didn't see it as a mistake at the time, of course, but as a wise decision, taken after weighing all the facts, and it certainly wasn't a controversial one. Our son, Paul, had enjoyed a reasonably successful academic career, benefiting from an education which, unlike Helen's, had been uninterrupted by moves from school to school, and unaffected by changes in educational systems. He had passed smoothly through primary and secondary schools, which were within easy walking distance of the house, until obliged to attend the Sixth Form college at Farnborough by school bus where he was looking forward to taking his GEC 'A' levels and going on to study for a University degree.

[Of passing interest as a sign of the times may be my recollections of the only two occasions when Paul's early education gave me cause for concern. The first was at primary school when I realised that, as a consequence of some currently fashionable educational theory, Paul was not being taught to read and write in the 'old fashioned' way but by a method which encouraged him to 'learn by doing'. This approach did not interfere with the development of his ability to read, but the effect on his handwriting was disastrous. When I looked into his notebooks I found that he was forming his letters correctly enough, but with no regard whatsoever for their lower and upper case characteristics, giving his b's and g's the same value as his a's and c's. When I set out to try to remedy this by introducing him to the lined notepaper of my own childhood I found that it was no longer obtainable, although remembered with affection by some of the stationers I approached. I solved the problem by resorting to the lines and spaces of musical manuscript, but Paul's handwriting never recovered from this misguided application of learning theory to the acquisition of a manual skill which needs to be taught.

The other cause for concern arose while Paul was at his secondary school. It had its origins in the chaotic economic circumstances of the 70's when inflation was booming out of control, and wages were struggling to keep up with prices, particularly house prices. Other factors were almost certainly involved, but the end result was that schoolteachers in the South East were chasing jobs in any Education Authority offering marginally better salaries and holding out the prospect of more affordable houses. The result was a mad merry-go-round of teachers coming and going at a rate which often left the pupils with no continuity of guidance in mastering the curriculum in some subjects. I remember working out that Paul had had six different English teachers in one year. But there was nothing we could do about it but take account of the situation when assessing Paul's progress, and give him as much encouragement as we could. The inflation finally died down, of course, but left house prices in Fleet so unaffordable on teachers' salaries that the local council resorted to building a row of maisonettes and making them available for rent only to teachers employed in local schools. Tied cottages, in effect. Fortunately, however, in the end, Paul's 'O'Level results were very satisfactory]

Since his academic aptitudes were greater in the Sciences than the Arts, the 'A' levels Paul was studying were in Maths, Physics and Chemistry, and, since his personal interests lay in electronics, with particular regard to their application in the recording and reproduction of sound and music (!), his first choice, when applying for post-'A' level acceptance at universities, was for the Institute of Sound and Vibration at the University of Southampton, who promptly accepted his application conditional upon his getting 'C' grades in each of his 'A' level subjects. Three 'C's ! What could be easier? We were all delighted because we knew Southampton quite well, and the Institute had a good reputation, was quite close to home, and would have been ideal from every point of view. But when his exam results came through he had achieved an 'A' in Maths, an 'A' in Physics, and a 'D' in Chemistry, which we all considered to be a quite commendable result, since Chemistry had been a 'make weight' subject which Paul had done well at in his 'O' Levels, but had no special interest in. To our horror, however, this result did not qualify as the three 'C's required by Southampton University. I pleaded with the Admission Tutor, by phone, at great length, but in vain. The rules were not of his making, and were very strictly applied, but, he said, he could certainly guarantee Paul a place the following year if he cared to let his application stand.

This was where I made my mistake. Nowadays, taking a 'gap year' off between school and university is a well-established practice, and Paul, with good 'A' Levels and a guaranteed place at the Institute of Sound and Vibration, would have had little difficulty in finding useful and rewarding temporary employment at one of the many hi-tech firms in and around Farnborough, But, back in the 80s this looked like a risky departure from a planned programme, a leap into the unknown, which Paul was uneasy about taking. We discussed it at length, and I, with no university experience of my own, was worried about his possible loss of academic momentum. I compared his position to that of a sportsman, a tennis player perhaps, who was working his way through a series of contests, and then was advised not to play at all for a year. The effect on his game, when he resumed, could be catastrophic, and I wasn't in favour of it.

To be fair to myself, Paul did not feel strongly about the Southampton option, and had geared himself up to going off to University, like his pals, two of whom had been accepted by Paul's second choice, Warwick University, as was he himself when he applied. Warwick University had acquired a glittering reputation for itself, at the time, as the very model of a modern university, engaging with the outside world in entrepreneurial ventures of various kinds, mostly in the developing field of Information Technology. It occupied a sprawling, open campus dotted with modern multi storey buildings, quite the opposite of a traditional cloistered seat of learning. It had however, a rather 'hands off' attitude to its students, and was taking them in faster than its facilities could cope with them. Paul's initial experience there was disastrous, and he never seemed to recover from it. We, at home, didn't know how bad it was, and could only go by what he chose to tell us. As far as we were concerned he was away at a reputable University studying for an honours degree. But he was to emerge at the end with a very mediocre degree, no marketable skills, a lot of bad habits, and a dismal future. Looking back, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that he would have graduated with much brighter prospects from the Institute of Sound and Vibration at the Southampton.

Blissfully ignorant, however, of Paul's future woes, Anne and I settled down to make the most of our new life as, what are nowadays referred to as, 'empty nesters'. Our social life didn't change much, and Anne was fully occupied with her part-time job, her painting, and her local wives' groups, but I found myself with spare capacity to fill. I was moving into my mid-fifties and, while fully (and happily) occupied during working hours at the Home Office, was operating well within my capabilities there, but could see that my chances of being promoted to a higher, and more demanding rank were diminishing with each passing year. I was free, therefore, to pursue those interests of my own which I had been obliged to set aside, in the past, for want of time and opportunity, of which there were two.

6

As will have been evident to readers of Part One of these memoirs, one of my great passions, prior to marrying and settling down, was long-distance walking, and, although, while we were courting, I had persuaded Anne to accompany me on a Youth Hostel walking tour of Snowdonia, it was obvious to me that she was not enamoured of the venture, and, after we were married, she was quick to inform me, during our first frank exchange of views (row!), that she didn't share my love of walking in the countryside, nor even of walking for its own sake, full stop. Since then, I had been obliged to exercise my legs whenever I could, by whatever means were available, in the interstices of my busy life, eg. my weekday commutes to the office, my weekend circuits of Tweseldown, and the annual family seaside holidays. Now, at last, I was free to do some serious walking away from home, using holiday leave not allocated to holidays shared with Anne, and I set about planning my first expedition, bringing my well-honed O & M skills to bear.

First, my equipment. I needed a rucksack, rainwear and a pair of boots. The first two I bought from the YHA shop in The Strand, and I still have them. I haven't donned the rucksack since 1998 (fifteen years ago, as I write), but the anorak still comes in handy during torrential downpours in my new country. I was careful to choose a lightweight rucksack of a size that would limit the number (and weight!), of the items I could pack into it, and I gave a great deal of thought to what those items should be. An important consideration was that I would be spending only about 6 or 7 hours a day, at most, actually walking, after which I would be heading for Bed & Breakfast in some convenient watering-hole where I would be obliged to spend the rest of the evening until bedtime, during which, more suitable attire than my walking gear would be desirable. By a process of elimination I finally arrived at the following inventory: first, at the bottom of the rucksack, a pair of the lightest plimsolls I could find, next, a pair of lightweight cotton trousers, then a long-sleeved cotton shirt, all these for evening wear, and, after that, the necessities for day wear, underwear, socks, spare short-sleeved shirt, toiletries and a small towel, and one carefully chosen paperback to keep me company in the evenings. The lightest of all possible loads.

Finally, the boots. Like many of my contemporaries, I was committed to wearing nothing but leather underfoot, and, although, the now familiar purpose-built, walking boots with their ribbed rubber soles and padded interiors had recently appeared in the shops, I thought them expensive, and viewed them with suspicion. So I bought myself a pair of handsome brown leather Officers' boots from the Army Surplus Stores and tacked a few studs into the soles. These served me well-enough for a few years, but were not ideal, the leather soles tending to become polished and slippery when walking on grass, and I eventually saw sense, and acquired a pair of proper walking boots with rubber-ribbed soles, which I still have.

So much for my equipment. But, to where should I now sally forth to stretch my legs o'er hill and dale and fill my lungs with the beneficial air of the open countryside? There were plenty of options on offer. During the 60s and 70s, the UK had become even more user-friendly for walkers, hikers, ramblers, call them what you will, than it had been in the 50s. A Countryside Commission for England and Wales had been established in 1968, and among the many blessings it was bestowing upon us were the long-distance footpaths it was creating in areas of natural beauty by linking together the traditional Rights of Way with which the English countryside was so fortunately and generously endowed. The best known of these paths was, of course, the Pennine Way, but there were others of a less demanding nature, one of which I would eventually find to be ideally suited to my needs.

Feeling my way back, as I was, into activities I had not indulged in for nearly 30 years, I was reluctant to enter unfamiliar territory, and finally found what I was looking for in my native stamping grounds in Yorkshire where a long-distance footpath had recently been put together by local enthusiasts which had not yet been adopted by the Countryside Commission, but eventually would be. The Dales Way, was 84 miles long, and ran from Ilkley, in West Yorks, to Bowness-on-Windermere, in Cumbria, across the Pennines. The first half of the walk followed the River Wharfe upstream to the watershed at Ribblehead and the second half descended through several river valleys to the shores of Windermere with easy access by public transport at both ends This allowed me to drive up to Bradford, spend the night chez our friends Gerry and Jessie, leave my car with them, and take the bus to my starting point at Addingham, having no wish to traverse the tedious miles of mainly public road from Ilkley

Before doing that, however, I had to arrange B & Bs for myself in those remote, unpopulated uplands beyond Grassington, and for this I needed to consult that indispensable source of all reliable information on the subject 'The Rambler's Association Bed and Breakfast Guide'. Having done so, I decided to book in at Yockenthwaite, about 16 miles north of my first stop, Grassington, which I knew was well-enough supplied with B & Bs for me to risk taking pot luck there, and at Dent, which was further from Yockenthwaite than I would have preferred but I couldn't see any reasonable alternative. And so, all arrangements made, off I set.

And my arrangements worked well. It was an exhilarating and truly liberating experience for me to be walking once again, alone, from 9 til 5, mind and body in perfect harmony; exactly what I'd hoped for, but it was also a learning experience, because the Dales Way was not without its drawbacks. It had been cobbled together from existing footpaths interspersed with quite long stretches of metalled road, which, thanks to the attractions of places like Grassington, Kettlewell and Buckden, were fairly busy with tourist motor traffic. Once past Buckden the traffic thinned out, of course, but I was still road-walking until I got past Yockenthwaite and found myself in a very different world. A wild wilderness of fells and ghylls without a living soul in sight, and a track that was none too clearly marked and led me eventually into an apparently endless, tussocky wasteland where the going underfoot was difficult and the only recognisable feature was the Ribblehead Viaduct, seen dimly in the distance.

I had bitten off rather more than I could chew, and arrived at my Dent B&B exhausted. The following morning, I discovered that my legs were in no fit state to carry me further, even if I had wanted them to, which I didn't. Three days may not seem like much of a stretch, but, when walking alone through changing scenery, the days seem much longer than usual, and three such days in succession could be be quite enough to satisfy my needs. The other things I learned from the Dales Way walk was to limit my daily mileage to 16 or less, and to avoid, if possible, the requirement to book B&Bs in advance. I had been very fortunate with the weather on this occasion, but if conditions had turned nasty at any point, harbouring no desire whatsoever to pit myself against the elements, or prove myself capable of doing so, I would happily have turned back, but the B&Bs I had booked in advance might have discouraged me from doing so. I returned from the Yorkshire Dales, however, well pleased with my first walking holiday in thirty years, and set about planning the next one.

The most attractive candidate for this seemed to be The South Downs Way which was quite close at hand, and, as a designated Countryside Commission footpath, well maintained and clearly signposted. About 100 miles long, it ran from Eastbourne in Sussex to Winchester in Hampshire along a chalk ridge that had provided an elevated walkway for travellers since time immemorial. Its only drawback was that, although it traversed areas of countryside that were rich in both history and village pubs, it passed through no conveniently spaced watering holes offering B&B. Fortunately, however, there was plenty of B&B to be had a few miles to the south at the popular seaside resorts on the coast, and, even more fortunately, there were local bus services available which could carry me there from wherever, on the path, I chose to end my walking day, thus avoiding the painful necessity of having to walk further long miles to find accommodation for the night after walking all day.

Work here

Starting at Eastbourne, my first overnight detour from the footpath was by bus to Brighton where I expected to find B&B without difficulty. By an unfortunate coincidence, however, I had arrived there during the one week in the year when Brighton was hosting the annual Trades Union Congress, and all the B&B singles in the town were taken. After pounding the streets on my tired legs from refusal to refusal, I finally found a vacant single in a boarding house, which, according to the visiting card I took away with me, promised its clientele 'a gay time'. It was offered to me by a young man of epicene demeanor, on the understanding that I might have to share the room with another guest, if such a one chanced to arrive later and ask for the other single bed. I am happy to report that, after accepting his offer, and sallying thankfully forth for an evening meal in a nearby pub, I returned to sleep soundly in my attic room, alone and unmolested.

I encountered no such difficulties in my next overnight stop in Worthing, nor, further on, in Bognor Regis, or was it Littlehampton? I can't remember. Even the footpath was not very memorable. The downlands of Sussex and Hampshire through which I had passed afforded some spectacular views from time to time, but were, by now, so well developed that the footpath was criss-crossed with roads of various calibres, chopping it up into short stretches which never seemed to take me far from the evidence of human habitation. But the walking was enjoyable, as were the pubs at lunchtime, and the weather was kind, and, once again, three full days of solitary walking, covering about 15 miles a day was enough to keep me happy for another year, even though, in the South Downs Way, as in the Dales Way, I had not yet found what I was looking for. So I kept on looking, and, by the following year, my efforts had been rewarded by the discovery of a long distance footpath which was to prove ideally suited to my needs and long enough to satisfy them for the rest of my walking life.

The South West Peninsula Coastal Path, or South West Way, was over 500 miles long, and was said, at the time, to be the longest footpath in Europe. It stretched from Minehead in Somerset, round Lands End, along the scenic coasts of Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset. to Poole in Dorset, and consisted, for the most part, of the ancient Rights Of Way connecting the many ports and harbours, large and small, which punctuated the coastline. In the very few places where the intrusion of private property prevented the path from hugging the sea, the National Trust was negotiating with the owners to either buy the land or obtain permission for the path to go through it. Not the least of the Path's many attractions for me was that the topography of the coast and its setlement over the centuries had ensured that, with only one exception, there would be communal habitation of some kind every 6 to 8 miles along it, featuring either a pub at lunchtime or a bed for the night, and in between these watering holes there would be hours of wonderful walking with a seascape on one side and a largely uninhabited rural landscape on the other. I would also benefit from the discovery of a series of Letts Guides to the Path, available in three pocket-sized volumes which covered (i) Minehead to St Ives, (ii) St Ives to Plymouth, and (iii) Plymouth to Poole, each page displaying, in diagrammatic form, a 3 - 5 mile section of the Path loaded with information about gradients and any other features, on and off the Path (eg pubs and B & Bs), which might be of interest to me. I still have my copies, of course, all of them showing signs of wear and tear. My only complaint about them was that they trace the Path from Minehead to Poole whereas I found it more convenient to walk it the other way round, and was obliged, therefore, to read them back to front and top to bottom, which wasn't as easy at may sound.

All this lay before me, however, when I took my first steps on the Path. Fully accountred, I left the house after breakfast on a fine Monday morning and walked to Fleet Station, where, after waving mockingly to the commuters on the opposite platform, I boarded a train going west to Bournemouth, there to catch a bus to Sandbanks, and, after a short ferry ride across to South Haven Point, set off along Studland Beach, as directed by the first of many, many fingerposts to come bearing the inscription 'COAST PATH' and the acorn logo. It was to be the start of a beautiful friendship. I spent my first night in Swanage where I had no difficulty in finding a cheap and cheerful B & B, and the following day, having taken the precaution of packing sandwiches and liquid refreshment, I set off across the only stretch of the entire Path that would not lead me to a pub at lunchtime because it ran across an Army Shooting Range rendered completely devoid of human habitation for its purpose. It was a long day's walk through a deserted coastal wilderness, but, by the time I arrived in Lulworth, where there was no shortage of hostelries waiting to welcome me, I knew that I need look no further for my future wayfaring.

I was to continue walking the South West Way for the rest of my walking life, picking it up each year where I had left off the previous year, and, when I'd finished it, walking some of my favourite stretches from the other end. The pattern I established was to leave home after breakfast on a Monday morning, and travel by train, and bus, to my chosen starting point, arriving usually in time for a few hours walking to my first overnight watering hole, walk through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and travel back home on Friday. I never booked a B & B ahead, and never failed to find one when needed, although it was a close run thing in Botallack. As a consequence, if the weather deteriorated, I could simply turn round and come home. I had started doing these annual walks of mine in the month of September, which suited my timetable at work, and seemed to be fairly reliable weatherwise, but, after encountering heavy rain a couple of times in my early years on the Path, I discovered that September was recorded as a wetter month in the Southwest than elsewhere, and switched to June, after which I never had to get my rainwear out again. I'm not sure how many years it took me to walk from one end of the Path to the other, but I know it was one of the must rewarding experiences of my life, and it continues to reward me still. Whenever a programme is shown on TV, which features, as quite frequently happens, helicopter views of the spectacular scenic coasts of Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, my eye is quick to focus on the ribbon of path which, almost invariably, runs along the clifftops, and I feel a tiny thrill of recognition, and inform anyone within earshot that, years ago, I passed that way.

It wasn't all clifftop walking, mind. The Path was always close to, and usually within sight of, the sea, but the countryside through which it passed was constantly changing in character and contour, and some of the sections were quite demanding with steep gradients up and down successive hills and coombs, climbing, in places, from sea level to high hilltop and back again, as many as three times per mile, always scenically spectacular, however, and, for most of the time, surprisingly deserted. True, it was still early days after the creation of the Coastal Path, and I was walking it out of season, but I could walk for hours, and never see a soul, apart from the occasional farmworker in fields away to my right. Since I was walking the path widdershins, as it were, the very few people I did meet were coming towards me, all of them in pairs, at least, and many of them foreigners!

I met only one other solitary walker on the whole of the Path and, although he was going in the same direction as me, he claimed to be dawdling along, and browsing places of interest - to avoid my company, perhaps? Given its length and variety, it would be supererogatory of me to enlarge upon the attractions of any particular stretch of the Path, but the most remarkable feature I encountered was the Landslip Nature Reserve (or Undercliff) that stretches for 7 miles from Lyme Regis to Seaton. One of its claims to fame is that it is now the nearest thing to prehistoric virgin forest to be found in the British Isles, and the footpath through it, which is only accessible at each end, and from which one is not permitted to stray, twists and turns through a dense, wild woodland, in which dead trees have been left to lie where they fall, in a manner that extends the length of the track substantially. So it was a long walk from breakfast in Lyme to pub lunch in Seaton, a walk from which, once committed there was no escape. But a unique experience!

Clearly, the re-kindling of my passion for long-distance walking had resulted in the addition of a healthy new dimension to my personal life, but its benefits would pale into insignificance when compared to the pleasures (and profit) I would gain from re-awakening the second of the dormant delights of my bachelor days. I had bowed out as a performer of jazz long before I got married, but my interest in it had continued to flourish, down through the years, in the margins of a musical life largely devoted to attending orchestral concerts and operas, and acquiring gramophone recordings of the same. In the absence of easily accessible live performances of traditional jazz (I could find nothing to admire in modern jazz) my continuing appreciation of the idiom had been nourished by gramophone records and programmes on the radio, but also by the fact that it was something I shared with my two oldest and closest pals, Frank and Cliff, who had no interest whatsoever in any other kind of music. But I had always hankered after the remembered delights of actually playing jazz, and, now that I had the space in my life to do so, I found myself looking around for ways and means of putting these vague longings into effect.

It wasn't going to be easy. I had no contacts with any jazz musicians in the vicinity of my home. The only thing I had going for me was that, when I had turned my back on swing banding and sold my saxophone, I had kept my beloved clarinet, although it had hardly been out of its case for thirty years. So I went out and bought a new reed for it, and began to practice. The other thing I began to do, little realising how useful it would be to me in the future, was to put together, in manuscript, a collection of the tunes I would want to play, if I ever got the chance, transposing them up a tone for B flat clarinet. One thing I remembered from my early days, however, was that, in order to make any real progress, rather than practising alone at home, I should seek out some other instrumentalists to play with.

My first fumbling attempt to do so found me volunteering to run an evening class, 'Jazz for Beginners (performers only)', at the local school, but the musical aptitudes of the handful of hopefuls who turned up for it (mostly guitarists, of course) defied my attempts to weld them into any kind of viable jazz ensemble. But my second attempt was more successful, relying, as it did, on the possibility of hidden talents among my fellow civil servants. I was vaguely aware that, behind the scenes at the Home Office, a number of leisure activities were pursued, after hours, by clubs and societies of various kinds under the umbrella of a Home Office Sports and Social Association (HOSSA). Snippets of information about these goings on was published in a Home Office Circular about staff matters, which was printed on green paper to distinguish it from all the official stuff, and into which I was permitted to insert an invitation to any member of the Home Office staff who was interested in playing jazz after hours to contact me.

The response was all that I could possibly have hoped for, and resulted in the formation of The Home Office Jazz Music Performing Society (HOJAMPS for short) which would continue to meet in private once a fortnight, and even, very occasionally, in public, until I retired from the Civil Service. Its members were drawn from all corners of the Home Office, and the most important of these was our pianist, Joe, who was some sort of Inspector for the Gaming Board. Small and self-effacing, but one of the sweetest-natured individuals I have ever known, he was a lifelong jazz afictionado and an accomplished jazz pianist.

Another pillar of strength was Fred, large and lugubrious, a man of few words but always to the point, and fluent on soprano saxophone, obviously an experienced jazzman from somewhere in the Home Counties, but he worked in the Directorate of Telecommunications (D TELS), as did his dapper sidekick, Dave, who played a very useful rhythm guitar. These three were, like me, of mature years, as was our drummer, whose name I forget, but our tenor saxophone player, Mike, was a much younger man whose day job was in the Immigration and Nationality Department (IND), and who, though master of his instrument, was still feeling his way into the trad jazz idiom.

No trumpet or trombone ever came forward, so we had an all-reed front line, but it was adequate for the purpose, and more surprisingly, perhaps, no string bass, not even a bass guitar, to complete our rhythm section, but we had a quorum, and, since HOJAMPS was affiliated to HOSSA and paying membership fees, we were allocated a rehearsal room with a piano in it (one of several said to exist in Home Office buildings around Whitehall) in Horseferry House. Our next request was for a drum kit, which duly arrived (and may, for all I know, still be in the locker we left it in, when we finally disbanded), and thus accommodated and equipped, we settled down to improvise traditional jazz of a quality acceptable to ourselves.

In such fertile soil as this, my own abilities were quick to flourish, and I soon found myself playing better jazz than I had ever done in my youth. This was not because I was older and wiser, but because, in the meantime, while in Australia (see Chapter One), I had taken up the guitar, and, in doing so, had learned to play chords made up of several notes strung together in harmony. To explain further, I must reveal a trade secret. Jazz is widely seen as the spontaneous improvisation of variations on a chosen theme, usually the melody of a popular song, but, what is not so widely appreciated is that, underlying that melody and supporting it, there is a sequence of harmonies, with which any variation on that tune must agree. These harmonies can be expressed as chords, each with its own symbol, eg. F ; Em ; D7, etc. and knowing these chords and what they are made up of (eg. the chord of C = the notes C-E-G), makes it much easier for a jazz musician to improvise a variation on the tune than knowing only the notes of the tune itself, as had I in my youth.

Fortunately, when beginning to transcribe the tunes I hoped to use in the future, I had taken the trouble to record the chord symbols, under the melody and this information now proved invaluable, not only to me, as I became increasingly adept at reading chords, but also to my fellow HOJAMPS members, particularly those in the rhythm section for whom a knowledge of the chords was essential, and I immediately set about enlarging my collection of tunes – and their chords. The orthodox way of doing this would have been to purchase the published versions of the desired tunes and transcribe them, but the list was extensive and the cost would have been excessive, so I was obliged to beg, borrow, or steal them. When all else failed, having worked out the notes of the melody for myself from memory, I would pay a lunchtime visit to the music shops in Charing Cross Road, there to seek out the published version and, out of sight of the staff, surreptitiously copy out the chords.

This practice was not quite as unlawful as it may seem, since chord sequences, unlike a melodies, cannot be copyrighted, and I resorted to this subterfuge only when I was unable to find the song I wanted elsewhere, eg. on the shelves, of the local municipal libraries, which were loaded, I found, with glossy volumes containing collections of the popular songs of eg. The 1920s, 30s and 40s, aimed at performers on the electronic organs which were becoming such a feature of the domestic scene at the time. It was by such means as these, that I continued to add to my collection of useful tunes, always carrying a list of the ones I was seeking in my pocket diary, but little realising how invaluable they would prove to be in the future. In the meantime, the HOJAMPS jazz sextet become so successful that we were occasionally invited to play at retirement parties and other private functions, and if, after my retirement, my name was remembered for anything at all in the Home Office, I feel sure it would have been for my clarinet playing.

[My interest in jazz led me, eventually, to write a book about it, 'Deconstructing Jazz', which is now freely available on my website: .au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au.au ]

7

Meanwhile, during working hours, the even tenor of my Parole Unit days was enlivened, from time to time, by developments worthy of note. The arrival on the scene, in 1979, of Mrs Thatcher and her cohorts did not portend upheavals in the criminal justice system that would be quite as spectacular as those to be visited on the world outside, but the Tories were 'the Party of Law and Order' and some change of tone was inevitable.

Many Tory voters were unhappy with parole, seeing it as simply letting dangerous criminals out of prison to re-offend, before they'd served their time for the last offence, and they clamoured for the Government to make sentencing more punitive, but the Home Secretary in Mrs. Thatcher's first government was 'Willie' Whitelaw who, while taking a hard line approach to law and order by strengthening police powers and building more prisons, was disinclined to give these sentiments much house room. This attitude did not endear Willie to the Tory rank and file, and their dissatisfaction was made evident to him when confronting them on the subject of Law and Order at some sort of ad hoc Tory Party Regional Conference in Birmingham. Since this was a party political affair, there was little official Home Office involvement, but an incident occurred there that was to ricochet around the Home Office and come to rest in the Parole Unit.

Following his speech, Willie was taking questions and exchanging views with the audience, when the TV cameras focussed on an attractive young woman who stood up in (I think) the balcony of the hall and shouted in a loud clear voice, 'I'm a member of the Parole Board at Birmingham Prison and I talk to the warders there and they tell me that what these criminals need is these' and shook a pair of handcuffs at the dumbfounded Willie. Needless to say this outburst caused a sensation in the hall and attracted applause from the audience, after which it was shown repeatedly on the television news that evening, quite overshadowing the Home Secretary's speech. Willie was furious, of course, and came back from Birmingham asking 'Who was that bloody woman?', by which time we were able to tell him that she was not, in fact, a member of the Parole Board, but, although none of us had ever seen her before, she was a member of the LRC at the Birmingham Prison, and also that she was a Conservative Member of the Birmingham City Council, and her name was Edwina Currie.

In spite of his irritation, Willie quickly realised that there was nothing he could do about Mrs. Currie. She was a party member and, as a Conservative City Councillor, a valued political asset who had not broken any rules, so Willie would have preferred to let the matter drop. Not so, however, the other members of the Birmingham LRC, who united behind their chairman in condemnation of Mrs. Currie's outburst, which they saw as bringing their Committee, and the Parole Scheme, into disrepute, and demanded, through their Chairman, that she should resign, or the S of S should sack her. Since neither of these options was acceptable to the parties concerned, and the LRC members were becoming increasingly disgruntled, something had to be done, and it was decided, after appropriate high-level discussions, that I, as Head of the Parole Unit, should go to Birmingham and hold separate face-to-face meetings with Mrs. Currie, and the rest of the LRC and, after listening to what they had to say, urge them, on behalf of the Home Secretary to work amicably together.

Thanks to my experience as a medical rep, my interview with Mrs. Currie caused me no problems. Sitting opposite each other at a small table, I listened to her make a short speech in defence of her position, and responded by assuring her that the Home Secretary's main concern was about the displeasure of the other members of the LRC, who, in their representations to the S of S had also complained about her attendance rate at LRC meetings, and, in particular, her failure, as a new member, to attend the Home Office induction course at Wakefield. With these preliminaries over, Mrs. Currie, having realised that I was underawed by her Council Chamber manner, abandoned it in favour of a friendlier approach, to which I was happy to respond.

As we went through the motions of considering the questions I had raised, I realised that her membership of the LRC had been undertaken for purely political reasons as part of her bid for local prominence, but was now so peripheral to the main thrust of her political ambitions that the duties it involved had become inconvenient and she would be better off without them. But Edwina Currie was not one to retire from the field without a fight, and she expressed her determination to outface her critics on the LRC by improving her performance and, in particular, attending the next Home Office induction course at Wakefield, and, on that note, we parted amicably.

My meeting with the other LRC members was more turbulent, but they were sensible people, who, in the end, saw reason, and when I told them that Mrs.Currie had promised to take her duties as an LRC member more seriously and attend the next available Home Office induction course for new members at Wakefield, they could not but agree to the Home Secretary's request for them to work with her as amicably as they could. My mission accomplished, I returned to Queen Anne's Gate to bask in the approbation of my superiors.

Mrs. Currie did eventually manage to fit the Wakefield weekend into her busy schedule by arriving late and departing early, but found it difficult, once there, to behave like a normal LRC member. She couldn't resist making inappropriate pronouncements about, for example, the unrepresentative nature of the LRC membership as evidenced by those present in the room being 'White, middle-class and middle-aged' whereupon a deep voice was heard to say, in a Yorkshire accent 'Aye, but some of haven't allus been middle-class and middle-aged'. The result was that the rest of the LRC members turned against her and excluded her from their off-duty socialising, leaving it to us officials – me, in particular, who she already knew, and latched on to - to keep her company in, eg., the bar of the Prison Officers' Club on the Saturday evening after the Prison Visit.

By this time the two of us were on Christian name terms, and during the course of our tete a tete, Edwina took great pleasure in telling me how events were favouring her political ambitions. She had been selected as the Conservative candidate to fight the seat of South Derbyshire at the upcoming General Election and expressed complete confidence in her ability to win it and become a Member of Parliament. I responded to this news by making appropriate congratulatory noises, whereupon she looked at me slyly, and said, 'You know, Peter, I could end up as your boss', to which I replied, after pretending to give the possibility some thought 'No, I don't think that's very likely, Edwina'. 'How can you say that? she demanded angrily, 'It's perfectly possible'. 'It's possible' I said, 'But not very likely. I'm 57 years old and due to retire at 60', and after absorbing this information, Edwina was forced to agree, albeit reluctantly, that even she would be unlikely to be elevated from new MP to Ministerial rank in three years.

[In the event, however, I did not retire at 60 but was allowed to serve until I was 63, by which time Edwina had become a Junior Minister in the Department of Health. The rest, as they say, is history.]

Not long after this incident, my second AS, Brian, was replaced as Head of Division by a third one, Alan, who was equally congenial as a colleague, but more of a live wire. As a fast-streamer, which Brian was not, Alan was generically ambitious, and anxious, therefore, to make the most of any opportunity to shine that presented itself – a little over-anxious in his case, perhaps, but not disturbingly so - and such an opportunity arose when Leon Britten replaced Willie Whitelaw as Home Secretary in Mrs. Thatcher's second term.

Leon Britten, too, was more ambitious than his predecessor, and set about making his mark by taking a more aggressive line than Willie on Law and Order. He decided, among other things, to bear down more heavily on criminals found guilty of serious crimes by announcing that he would no longer allow parole reviews for those awarded sentences of five years or more until they had served at least half, instead of the usual one third, of their sentences. This interference with the elegant machinery of the existing parole scheme caused us a number of administrative headaches, none of which was incurable, but these were as nothing compared to the burden that fell on us when two of the affected prisoners applied for a Judicial Review of the Home Secretary's action.

A Judicial Review? I hadn't heard of it at the time, but found that it was an existing procedure in English Law which allowed the courts to supervise the exercise of public power. Any individual who feels that the exercise of a statutory power by a government authority, such as a Minister, in a particular case, is either illegal, irrational or procedurally unsound for any of a number of reasons, may apply to the Administrative Division of the High Court for a judicial review of the decision and have it set aside and possibly obtain damages. The grounds given for the application in this case were that, by restricting parole for long sentence prisoners the Home Secretary had 'fettered his discretion'.

Although displaying appropriate official concern at this unwelcome development, Alan was, in fact, delighted by it. His involvement in a Judicial Review of the Home Secretary's decision to restrict parole for long sentence prisoners would put his Division in the Ministerial spotlight and allow him to shine, and I confess that I myself was not displeased at the prospect of what promised to be an interesting new experience, guessing rightly that Alan would keep me close to his side throughout the unfolding legal drama, for was I not, by now, the world's leading expert on the workings of the Parole Scheme in England and Wales?

Primary responsibility for mounting the Home Secretary's defence rested, of course, with our Legal Advisers Branch, but they looked to us for detailed information about the Parole Scheme when briefing counsel, both before and during the 'trial' This meant that I would sit side by side in court with Alan throughout the entire proceedings, enjoying a ringside seat at what was virtually a private performance of the workings of the British judicial system, because, apart from the judge, court officials, counsel, and the Home Office legal team, we were the only ones in court to observe it.

Counsel for the plaintiffs was one Stephen Sedley QC, whose modest demeanour and unpretentious delivery disguised the fact that he was one of the foremost advocates of his generation, and would single-handedly broaden the scope of Judicial Review to make it the bulwark in defence of the rights of the individual that it is today. He would also become The Rt.Hon. Lord Justice Sedley and the author of a number of influential books on legal matters, but all that was in the future when he stood up, a lonely figure, to embark upon a long and learned conversation with the judge about the extent to which the Home Secretary had, or had not, fettered his discretion, referring, on the way, to numerous documents in his 'bundle', as it was called, of which the judge had a copy. There were no histrionics, just two academics engaged in an earnest and not unfriendly search for the truth, with occasional polite interjections from a third academic - counsel for the Home Secretary - who finally had his own say, after which, the judge, after due consideration, pronounced against the plaintiffs, who immediately sought leave to appeal against the verdict, which was duly granted.

In the Court of Appeal, Alan and I sat through an almost identical performance in a very similar courtroom, but this time before three judges, all of whom gave Sedley's occasionally tortuous legal argument their respectful attention, interrupting only to ask for clarification of some obscure point. It seemed to me to be more conspiratorial than adversarial, almost as if they were looking for ways of finding the defendant guilty. At the end of the day, however, the outcome was the same, the verdict was upheld, but only by two to one, and nobody seemed surprised when leave to appeal to the House of Lords was applied for and granted.

Needless to say, when the time came for me to sit through Sedley QC's presentation for the third time in what I recall as being a small courtroom-like chamber somewhere in the Palace of Westminster, I found it less than riveting. Not so, however, the three Law Lords who listened to it with the same professional interest, as had their colleagues on the two previous occasions, but, although bored with the matter of the case, I was fascinated by the manner of its handling by the judicial system and felt privileged to be witnessing the display at such close quarters. Their Lordships voted Home Secretary 2 , Plaintiffs 1, about which Alan and I were officially pleased, but I was personally uneasy, feeling that the integrity of the Parole Scheme had been compromised, and that no good would come of it in the future.

Before these misgivings could prove to be justified, however, I managed to bring about an improvement in the scheme by proposing a way of extending parole to prisoners serving two years or less, who had hitherto been excluded from it on the purely technical grounds that a parole eligibility date of 8 months or less - a third of the sentence - would allow insufficient time for the observation and reporting procedures required to assess a prisoner's suitability for release on licence. My solution was to float the concept of a presumption in favour of granting parole to prisoners serving two years or less after they had served six months or a third of the sentence, whichever was the longer, unless an objection was raised to it by one of the reporting parties. The acceptance of this innovation was welcomed by both the Prison and Probation Services, if for different reasons, but greeted with suspicion by some members of the judiciary who saw 'a presumption in favour of parole' as being tantamount to re-sentencing, and, for all its benefits in improving the fairness of the scheme (and reducing the prison population) it would turn out, in the end, to be another nail in its coffin,

In the meantime, however, in spite of my failure to gain promotion, I continued to find my working life rewarding in a number of unexpected ways, one of which was even pecuniary. Under normal circumstances, I would, by now, have reached the top of the salary scale for my rank, and be eligible only for the annual increments to keep pace with inflation, but this was no longer the case. Mrs. Thatcher had come to power in 1979 convinced that the Civil Service needed to be made more efficient, less wasteful, and better managed. This conviction was based, not on any careful assessment of its past performance in achieving the objectives it was designed to achieve, but on an ideological commitment to a business model of competitive free enterprise, based on innovation, marketing, and performance rewards, as opposed to the impartiality, objectivity and independence of the administrative model.

Without bothering to examine the rationale behind what she saw as the unacceptable features of the government machinery she had inherited, Mrs. Thatcher set about turning the Civil Service into a giant service industry. I have dealt at length with this and subsequent attempts by Governments to 'improve' the Civil Service in my book 'On Her Majesty's Civil Servants', already referred to (see P.173), but the only one of these initiatives that affected me personally was the introduction of performance-based rewards. In spite of the inherent difficulties of measuring their own outputs, the civil servants, on being ordered by their Masters to introduce performance related pay systems based on regular appraisal interviews, set about doing as they were told.

Since virtually everyone in the hierarchy was both managing and being managed, this meant extra work all round, and, given that neither output achievements nor 'customer satisfaction' could be measured objectively, and the performance related rewards were limited to the amount of money made available for the purpose, the end result was a cross between a rationing system ('Buggin's Turn') and a lottery based on the subjective judgement of any manager with the power to recommend an award. But, aware as I was of the system's shortcomings, I had no cause to complain. The awards were a permanent addition to the recipient's salary and, thanks to my excellent working relations with, and the sympathetic nature of, my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Reporting Officers, I received as many awards as they were able to give me between the introduction of the scheme and my retirement. The long-term benefit to my retirement pension has been particularly welcome, but my performance on the job would have been just as good without them.

The most welcome of the incidental benefits I derived from my position as Head of the Parole Unit, at the time, was to my sex life. My relations with my wife Anne, both in and out of bed, had always been perfectly satisfactory, but, as a full-blooded male, I couldn't help finding certain other women who crossed my path sufficiently desirable to contemplate the possibility of having sexual relations with them, if they were willing, and if it could be done without harm to others. But adultery has been aptly defined as 5% inclination and 95% opportunity, and throughout my married life, opportunities to indulge in extramarital sex without attracting unfavourable attention and causing more trouble than it was worth, had not occurred until now. And even now,when exploiting opportunities to play away from home, considerations such as these, placed limits on the field available – no Home Office colleagues, for example, and certainly no unmarried women. But, where would I make the acquaintance of desirable married women who might be willing to share my bed if suitably risk free circumstances could be provided?

The answer lay, I found, in my dealings with the female members of the Local Review Committees and the Parole Board, and I must admit that I stumbled on the possibilities they offered me almost by chance. While deploring the ulterior motives behind the machinations of my first AS, I had recognised the benefits of recruiting the Independent Members of the Parole Board from among existing members of the LRCs. The Independent Board Members were supposed to represent the wider community, but were chosen, all too often, from among the Great and Good of the Establishment and could not be seen to be as representative as they should be. Furthermore, coming fresh to the parole scheme, they required a period of familiarisation with the process before feeling confident enough to hold their own with the Judges, Chief Probation Officers, and Psychiatrists sitting with them on the panels.

These disadvantages did not apply to experienced LRC members, whose suitability for elevation to the Parole Board could be assessed in advance, but, even so, it was purely by chance that I came across a very attractive LRC member who had all the qualifications for Parole Board membership and was willing to let me have my wicked way with her, even before I could arrange for her 'promotion' to the Board, which wasn't easy, given my relatively lowly position in a hierarchy, through which my submissions would ascend, step by carefully scrutinised step, until they reached the Home Secretary himself, and the competition for these appointments was quite intense.

Without giving too much away, I can say that I met her at the Wakefield Prison Staff College where she was attending the weekend course for new LRC members, having been active member on her prison LRC for some time while waiting her turn. Tall, slim, blond, and in her thirties, she was the most attractive female present, and, as such, the object of as much of my attention as I could spare from my official duties. During one of our chats, without being overtly flirtatious, she confessed to feelings of dissatisfaction with her lot as a provincial wife and mother, which her membership of the LRC had failed to assuage, and wondering where to look next. When I jokingly said, 'Why not take a lover?', her equally light-hearted 'Ah, but who, where, and when?' was accompanied by a searching look into my eyes which made me a quite unmistakable offer. Almost without thinking, I returned the look, and accepted the offer with a meaningful nod, and, having established the 'who', and left the 'where and when' for later consideration, we carried on chatting as if nothing had happened.

From then on, it was simply a matter of using her home telephone number and official procedures already in existence to bring about our sexual congress. The first step was to get her invited up to London to observe a Parole Board panel at work, a privilege often granted to selected LRC Members, and, while she was there, consummate our new relationship in her hotel bedroom. There is no requirement for me to go into the sorts of detail, here, that would do justice to this experience, and what it meant to me, but I can reveal that it opened up a new world of erotic pleasure, which I have always looked back on with gratitude. The next step was to get her onto the Parole Board, something I achieved with the help of my current AS, who fully supported the policy of promoting suitable LRC members to the Board, and once that was done, opportunities for our clandestine meetings were easy for me to create.

She proved to be a very effective and popular Member of the Parole Board, and there was never any question of our relationship becoming anything more than recreational sex, performed in private by intimate friends for their mutual benefit, and we continued to enjoy each others company in this way, if at increasingly infrequent intervals, after she had left the Parole Board, and even after I had retired from the Civil Service, whenever it could be arranged. In the meantime, however, having developed the formula, I proceeded to use it to attempt further seductions, but not, this time, until I had manoeuvred the objects of my desires onto the Parole Board.

Surprising as it may seem to some, on the two occasions when I put it to the test, the method worked like a charm. How did I do it? I simply put my proposal to them in a relaxed and friendly manner after contriving their appointment to the Board. I had flirted with them a little beforehand, of course, when meeting them at Wakefield, and I chose a moment when we were alone together and free from other distractions to reveal my desire to have sexual relations with them, pointing out how easy it would be for us, now, to enjoy each others' company in private without anyone else knowing about it. Neither of them reacted by slapping my face, and, after recovering from their surprise and inspecting my proposition with care (and a certain amount of amusement), they agreed to give the relationship a try.

Both were respectable middle-class wives in their thirties, and both were successful career women whose stimulating company I would have been happy to enjoy without the sexual intimacy, and whose friendship, in one case, I continue to value to this day, although distance and the infirmities of age (on my part) now prevent us from meeting for the occasional lunch. Neither of them was as sexually exciting as my first playmate, but they were better company in other respects, although one of them found our relationship difficult to handle when her marriage began to fall apart (for other reasons) and we discontinued it with no hard feelings.

The arrival in my life of these secret paramours came at just the right time for me. My loving wife Anne had emerged from the menopause with a diminished appetite for sexual intercourse, and I myself was approaching 60, and, while still feeling the urge, no longer as capable of the appropriate physical response to it as I had been since we were married. I needed the kind of active stimulation that wives of Anne's generation were not conditioned to giving their husbands, but which my young mistresses were only too willing to dispense while opening my eyes to pathways to sexual pleasure other than the one used for procreation. What a relief! Needless to say, I took the greatest possible care to keep these relationships secret and, in this, as far as I am aware, I was successful, and nobody got hurt. During these years I talent-spotted other LRC members for recruitment to the Parole Board as Independents, two of them attractive young ladies who I did not attempt to actively engage with, and everyone seemed pleased with the benefits of the policy, including the male members of the Board, the elderly judges in particular.

The normal retirement age for civil servants of my rank was 60, but it was more of a convention than a compulsion, and, when the time came, my reports were still so favourable that I was given the option of staying on if I wished. Since I was happy at my work, and had clocked up only 15 years in the pension scheme, I accepted the offer, and, as luck would have it, my next two years, with a new Assistant Secretary (Grade5) as Head of the Division, proved to be more enjoyable than ever. My working relationships with my 2nd and 3rd AS's, Brian and Alan, had been friendly enough in a conventional and transitory way, but the arrival on the scene of my 4th AS, Hugh, heralded the development of a relationship of a different and more durable sort, even though he was twenty five years younger than me.

I had first come across him after I joined the Parole Unit while he was a Principal (Grade7), like me, in the Criminal Department and I had occasional dealings with him about matters that concerned us both. He was a 'pukka' Principal, of course, unlike me, as was evidenced by his responsibility, at the time, for policy in the prestigious Criminal Department, but, on closer acquaintance, I was to find that he was not typical of the breed. Highly intelligent, of course, and very clever, but these assets were employed in a self-deprecating manner and wrapped in a cloak of affability. Even under stress, his well-developed sense of humour was never far from the surface, and he had a real talent for engaging with like-minded individuals of all social classes. When I got to know him better, I came to the conclusion that he was also a man of Christian principle, but that was another asset he kept to himself. When he took over the Division, he and I hit it off immediately.

Hugh had been given the Division as a relatively easy ride after two years in Private Office as Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, a post he acquired, I was told, in most unusual way. The post of Private Secretary to the S of S was traditionally filled by an Assistant Secretary (Grade 5), and when Britten took over from Whitelaw, Hugh went into Private Office as a Principal (Grade 7) in the post of Assistant Private Secretary under an AS who did not, for some reason, commend himself to Britten, who, as Minister, was perfectly entitled to ask for someone else, but when offered other candidates to chose from, he replied that he didn't want any of them, he wanted Hugh in the post. Since this was completely contrary to accepted practice, it was not a popular decision with the upper hierarchy, but neither could the Minister be denied, so Hugh was hastily given the appropriate rank for the job, in an acting capacity at first, until his promotion could be formalised. It was a stroke of luck of which Hugh took the fullest advantage by excelling in the post, to the considerable benefit of his future career.

My relationship with Hugh was an unusual one. Our backgrounds had very little in common and there were 25 years between us, but we worked together in complete harmony, enjoying each other's company both inside and outside the office, or should I say, I certainly enjoyed his, and he gave every appearance of enjoying mine, always seeming to welcome the opportunity of sharing the occasional convivial lunch with me, after our ways had parted, and even after I had retired from the service and he had risen to the dizzy heights of Permanent Secretary in the Department of Health and an eventual knighthood. But that's all it was, really, the infrequent meetings of two lively minds over food and drink, but I still feel a warm glow when I look back at them.

The two years of Hugh's stewardship of the Division were unremarkable in other respects, but the calm was deceptive, and the Parole Scheme I had inherited, and nurtured for so long, was drinking, as they say, in the last chance saloon. The restrictions on the eligibility of serious offenders for parole, introduced by Leon Britten had survived judicial review, but disturbed the equilibrium of the scheme by introducing an element of re-sentencing about which some of the stakeholders, including the judiciary, were unhappy. This discontent extended also to the extension of parole eligibility to shorter sentence prisoners which had increased the burden on resources. The truth was that the Parole Scheme was now beginning to look over-complicated and, worse, in the prevailing political climate, too expensive, and in 1987, the Home Secretary, now Douglas Hurd, appointed a Committee under the chairmanship of Lord Carlisle of Bucklow to review the scheme and make recommendations, which it would do, as we shall see, in the following year.

The only other event to disturb the even tenor of my working days during Hugh's watch, was the Great Storm which devastated the South of England on 15th-16thOctober, 1987. It did so by coinciding with one of our weekend Induction Courses for new LRC Members at the Prison Service Staff College, which had, by now, relocated from the grim environs of Wakefield Prison to the salubrious surroundings of Newbold Revel at Stretton-under-Fosse, near Rugby in Warwickshire, where it occupied a large, impressive building which had been, at one time, a boarding school for young ladies run by nuns, its charming, rural setting providing a rather less appropriate backcloth to our labours than had the lowering walls of Wakefield Prison next door, and the nearest railway station was much further away.

The storm swept in during the night before the Friday morning when I was due to set off from home, by car, for Newbold Revel to rendezvous with the rest of the Home Office Team and prepare for the arrival of the LRC members during the afternoon. I was alone in the house, Anne having taken the opportunity to pay one of her regular visits to her mother in Bradford via the convenient cross-country train service which linked Basingstoke to Leeds, and I slept quite well through the racket raging outside. I awoke in the morning to find that the the storm had abated and when I drew the bedroom curtains and looked out into the street I could see nothing amiss. The view from the back bedroom window, however, told a completely different story, and I gazed with astonishment at the large silver birch tree which had been standing tall and elegant in the back garden since we'd moved into the house, lying flat on the ground with its roots exposed, having smashed through the fence into our neighbour's garden and come to rest on her greenhouse.

It all worked out well in the end, of course, thanks to the insurance, which paid for a new (and better!) fence for us and a new (and better!) greenhouse for our neighbour, but it was consternation all round at the time, and my first job was to go next door to reassure my neighbour, who had recently been widowed, that everything would be taken care of in the fullness of time, including the removal of the fallen tree. After that, I checked with Anne to find that all was well in Bradford except for the TV transmissions being in emergency mode, and got myself ready to brave the devastation which my radio informed me was crippling the whole of South East and Central Southern England (thanks mainly to the thousands of fallen trees lying across roads, power lines and railway lines), and attempt to reach Newbold Revel in time to open the proceedings.

To everyone's surprise, including my own, I actually succeeded in doing so. I set off thinking that I was unlikely to get very far, but found that the main road at the end of our street had already been cleared of the one tree which had fallen across it between me and the unofficial back entrance to the Fleet Service Station on the nearby M3 Motorway, and, once on the motorway, of course, it was relatively plain sailing – no fallen trees and very little traffic. I went up the M3, round the newly opened M25 link, up the M1 to the M6, and I was there in record time. Unlike Hugh, who lived in the leafy London suburb of Dulwich SE22, where the fallen trees that were blocking streets all around, prevented him from getting to Newbold Revel until dinnertime. Since the rest of the country outside the South East had been relatively unaffected by the storm, most of the LRC members from the provincial prisons turned up on time, and others came rolling in later, although those from the Isle of Wight prisons didn't arrive until the following day.

9

Enjoyable as my working life at the Home Office, and my home life in Fleet continued to be, they no longer offered me the challenges I seemed to need to feel satisfied with my lot, and I found myself exploring other outlets for my creative energies. I had failed to achieve my early ambition of becoming a playwright, but the literary skills I had acquired in the attempt had stood me in good stead during my subsequent careers, and I now found that I had the leisure time, and the domestic circumstances, to write, once again, for my own amusement, and I also had a subject that I wanted to write about.

I had been parachuted into the higher reaches of the Civil Service at the mature age of 45 in the expectation that the managerial skills I had acquired during my business careers would be of value to an organisation which was thought, at the time, to be deficient in such skills. I had found, however, that not only had this assumption been based on faulty premises, but that any previous assumptions I myself had made about the workings of the machinery of government were equally wide of the mark, even though I had seen myself as being fairly widely read, reasonably well-informed, and taking an intelligent interest in politics and human affairs. More importantly, however, nothing I had seen in print since that time would have come close to describing the Civil Service I had now come to know, to the person I was when I joined it.

It was this comprehension gap between the general public and the Civil Service that I felt myself to be in a favourable position to bridge, starting from scratch, using an objective methodology, and drawing on my own experiences in the worlds of business and government service as appropriate. I began putting pen to paper during my evenings at home when I had nothing better to do, and soon realised that, in doing so, I was rediscovering the pleasures of a vocation I would now be free to follow for the rest of my days, but I was still feeling my way at first, and it was some time before the pieces fell into place.

The work I had embarked upon became the first rough draft of the book I would make available to the world in its final form, many years later, on my own website, having failed, in the end, to find a publisher for it, but, as the early chapters began to take shape, I was not quite sure where I was going, and baulked at the prospect of converting my longhand laboriously into typescript, resorting, at first, to using a dictaphone (borrowed from the office) and farming the tapes out to a local typing service. But changes were afoot in the world, and my leisure time pursuits were about to receive encouragement from the arrival on the scene of two new pieces of electronic equipment.

Of greatest practical value to me, was the Personal Computer, which, thanks to mass-marketing, was becoming affordable by anyone of modest means during the 1980s, and would eventually become an indispensable adjunct to civilised living, but the first PC I acquired, an Amstrad PC1517, was for my use mainly as a word processor, in which capacity it would serve me well, ably assisted by my trusty Citizen 1200 Printer, for many years to come. It is difficult to exaggerate the superiority of the word processor over the old typewriter and the benefits it bestowed on the aspiring author. They are so well known that, much as I appreciate them, I will not dwell on them here, but eulogise about the second piece of electronic equipment to become universally available and affordable during the 1980s – the videocassette recorder.

The VCR was a source of entertainment for the whole family, of course, but it was of particular value to me in fostering my interest in opera. I was currently attending all the performances of operas sung in English I could reach, but the VCR would expand my operatic horizons in two ways. First, by making it possible for me to rent, borrow or even buy the commercial videotapes of the opera performances by the famous opera houses of the world which were beginning to appear in the shops, and, second, by enabling me to record the television broadcasts of operas that were becoming increasingly common in the UK. I was a fraction slow to appreciate the benefits of building a personal library of these recorded tapes, and, even today, when viewing one of the oldest of them I am appalled to find, when it comes to the end, that I had recorded it over an earlier, but longer opera which I would dearly love to have retained. But I quickly saw the light and now sit surrounded by the results.

The most immediate benefit to me of these productions was that, when sung in their original foreign languages, they came subtitled in English, removing at a stroke the barrier that would otherwise have prevented me from enjoying them. This development opened up a world of opera that had previously been closed to me by my chronic inability to enjoy performances if I couldn't understand the words. Having been familiar with the use of subtitles in foreign films for all of my adult life, I took to them immediately, and still find them much easier to handle than the surtitles that were eventually introduced into the opera houses of the world, and they have made even the operas I had previously heard performed in English more accessible to me, since there is no denying that words when sung, particularly by sopranos, cannot always be understood.

Thanks to developments such as these, my private life continued to flourish, but, in the Home Office, the good days came to a sudden end with Hugh's inevitable departure from the Division after his 2 years' 'rest', and his replacement by the fifth, and last, of the AS's I would serve under while Head of the Parole Unit, whose appointment turned out to be the only real misfortune to befall me during my entire civil service career. Hugh would have been a hard act to follow, of course, but none of my ten previous AS's would have given me any real cause for concern if appointed as my new boss, even the two I didn't like much, because, whatever their shortcomings, they were all intellectually equipped to do the job, and understand what their responsibilities were. So confident was I that this would also be the case with the new arrival, that it came as something of a shock to find that it wasn't.

Vicci, as she preferred to be called, was of unremarkable appearance, though not unattractive, small, quite good figure, fashionably attired, Jewish, mid-thirties, hinting at a liberated lifestyle after hours. I never worked out how she got to be an AS, as it was certainly not by the normal route. I was told that she was an economist, so she may have been a post-Fulton transfer, like Gordon Wasserman, but I found no evidence that she had ever served as a Principal anywhere, and I later came to suspect that even her qualifications as an economist were not of a high order. In the light of these anomalies I have been driven to conclude that there must have been some political influence behind her promotion, unlikely as that may seem, but whatever her antecedents, the fact that she had not been trained for the rank was outweighed by the fact that she actually held the rank, which, in the Civil Service, was all that mattered.

Since she saw her job as managing staff rather than administering the Home Secretary's statutory powers, and took great pains to ingratiate herself with all her subordinates, including me, and, even more so, with her superiors, she wasn't difficult to work with on a day to day basis. Problems arose, however, when she tried to demonstrate her management skills by tinkering with the casework in ways that she thought the Top of the Office would like, but which were, in fact, inadmissible under the statutes. In the end, I was driven to put up a personal note to Private Office contradicting advice she had given in a submission of which I had chanced to see a copy. I did this only after I had checked my facts with Legal Advisers, but it was a mistake on my part.

By putting the good of the whole before the good of its parts, I had broken an unwritten rule of the Civil Service. Faced with incompetence on the part of a superior officer which did not affect me personally, what I should have done was ...nothing. After taking the measure of Vicci's inadequacies, I should have accepted them as a fact of my working life, and made no attempt to correct her mistakes, leaving it to her superiors to wake up to their consequences, which they eventually did, of course, but too late to do me any good. Vicci complained about my insubordination to the AUSS, who had no alternative but to take me to task, when the three of us met to consider the matter.

I was up against the same hierarchical inflexibilities I had encountered 15 years before in the Police Department. Any criticism of my Reporting Officer was a criticism of the system which had promoted her to the rank. To make matters worse, the intervening ten years of Mrs. Thatcher's Governments had seen increasingly desperate attempts by her Ministers to make the Civil Service more efficient by importing management practices from the allegedly more cost-effective private sector and imposing them on their obedient servants. Having commented at length on the absurdities produced by the introduction of 'Cash Limits', 'Financial Information Systems', 'Management by Objectives', and 'Annual Performance Reviews' in my book 'On Her Majesty's Civil Servants' (Pages 104-113), I will only add that, by the time Vicci arrived on the scene my Reporting Officer had become my Line Manager, and I had become a Job Holder and was being Managed, supposedly, by Objectives.

The meeting with my Line Manager and her Line Manager had a slightly surreal air about it. I was about twenty years older than either of them and had occupied my present post for nearly ten years, during the last four of which I had been recommended by my two previous 'Line Managers' for the new Merit Awards to boost my salary. I had known the AUSS for some time, having met him as a Principal on a 'Management' Course we had attended together early in my career. He was an affable, extrovert individual, whippet-thin, a keen long-distance runner in his spare time; a fast-streamer, of course, not long at his present rank. He adopted an overtly avuncular attitude towards Vicci, who had little to say for herself during the proceedings, adopting a girlish, put-upon demeanour and even squeezing out a tear when he told me that it was not my place to question my Line Manager's decisions and I responded by recalling where such a doctrine had led in Nazi Germany. The only other thing I can remember saying was when he tried to tell me that, under the present dispensation, Vicci was, in effect, my boss, and I replied that I was under the clear impression that I was working for the Queen.

There was nothing he could do to me but point out the error of my ways, leaving Vicci and me to go back to making the best of a bad job, but our working relationship, while not ill-natured, was irksome to both of us, and the circumstances dictated that it was up to me to end it, which I would normally have done by applying for a transfer to another post. I did toy with the idea for a while, but I was, by now, nearly three years beyond the conventional retirement age of 60, and although there were sound financial reasons for me to stay on, in that my pension, at that point, would have amounted to a mere quarter of my present salary and every additional year in post would have been a bonus, I knew I'd have to go by 65 at the latest. \

On the other hand, I simply could not imagine myself being in other than full-time employment, something I had always enjoyed, and of which I knew myself to be still fully capable. In the end, I realised that the time had come for me to embark on a fourth career, doing something new and different, preferably out-of-doors, which, thanks to my part-pension would not need to be highly paid. Buoyed up by the prospect of fresh challenges ahead, I decided to retire from the Civil Service, on 17 January, 1989, the eighteenth anniversary of my joining it.

The intervening months would see the publication of the Report of the Carlisle Committee on Parole, heralding the end of the parole scheme I had inherited and nurtured, and its replacement by something similar, but cruder and more 'cost-effective (ie, cheaper), its main recommendations being that:

i) prisoners serving sentences of four years or less should be automatically released on parole licence after half the sentence had been served, liable to recall for breach of licence conditions, and release could be delayed on account of bad behaviour in prison, [thus finally reconciling parole and remission], and

(ii) prisoners serving sentences of more than four years should continue to be considered for parole by the Parole Board, as at present, but only after half the sentence had been served.

By eliminating the requirement for selection in the overwhelming majority of cases, the effect of these recommendations would be to render the Local Review Committees and most of the Parole Unit, redundant, but these changes would not take place until after my departure, when the necessary legislation had been piloted through Parliament.

I left the Home Office with regret, but without ill-feeling, having had the great good fortune to be invited, at the age of 45, into a world of work that was not only new, but completely different from my previous ones, much more interesting, more intellectually challenging, less emotionally demanding, less rewarding financially, perhaps, but certainly a great deal healthier. It cannot be denied, however, that, although I had performed my various duties successfully, and, occasionally, to some acclaim, my career had been, in Civil Service terms, a failure, in that, for reasons I have noted earlier, the only objective measure of success in the Civil Service is promotion, and I had failed to gain promotion. This was so uncharacteristic of my earlier achievements, that the reasons for it are worth exploring.

The most obvious explanation was my age on recruitment. At 45, I was close to the upper end of the post-Fulton intake's age range (35-50), an age at which a conventional fast-stream entrant would have already progressed from Principal (Grade 7) to Assistant Sec.(Grade 5) at least, and possibly Assistant Undersec. (Grade 4), after serving 8 to 10 years as Principal, and 8 to 10 years as AS. By the time I had served 10 years as a Principal I was 55, and the next step up, Assistant Secretary, Head of a Division, was not only the most demanding post in the hierarchy, but also the one for which the competition among the younger Principals was fiercest. And there were other factors at play

During my working life, I had been moderately ambitious, but more 'job-orientated' then 'career-orientated', relying on the quality of my on-the-job performance to ensure my promotion to a higher rank, as it had done in the pharmaceutical industry, and, so impressed was I by the superior objectivity of the Civil Service's recruiting methods that I assumed that, if I performed well as a Principal, my promotion would follow as a matter of course. What I failed to realise was that the Civil Service had recruited me, solely at the behest of its political masters, and was under no such obligation to make the most of any special talents I may have brought in with me. I was now simply one of them, and it was up to me to make my own way through the elaborate system of Reports and Promotion Boards, 'making representations' against any perceived unfairness in my treatment, if so inclined.

Although these procedures had been developed over the years to be scrupulously fair and impersonal, I feel pretty sure that they could be manipulated from above, to some extent, in special circumstances, and if I had kicked up a fuss about my failure to be promoted, having been 'lured' into the Civil Service from a 'lucrative career' in Industry on the understanding that my special skills and knowledge would be valued highly and better rewarded, something might have been done about it.

The young post-Fulton direct entry science graduate who came in as my replacement in the Fire Department confided in me, years later, that, frustrated by his own subsequent lack of progress up the ladder, he had made representations to Estabs along similar lines to those outlined above, before being promoted (rather to my surprise at the time) to Assistant Secretary. The first job he was given, as an AS, was in the Immigration and Nationality Department, which had been out-stationed to somewhere in the Home Counties, Croyden, I think. I last saw him when he walked uninvited into my office in the Main Building in Queen Annes Gate, late one afternoon, en route, presumably, to a meeting with Ministers about some current crisis in IND (eg. Passport delays). He simply sat there for a few minutes, looking absolutely knackered, staring at me mournfully, never saying a word, before getting up and walking out. I think he was trying to tell me something.

Since I had never put the demands of my previous careers before those of my private life, and had always found the jobs I had been given in the Home Office quite enjoyable, and the pay adequate, my personal motivation to better myself was not very strong, and it may be that the failure to promote me to a more demanding rank was my employer's loss, not mine. Two of the post-Fulton direct entry Principals I knew in the Home Office did quite well for themselves, one made it to AUSS (Grade 4) and one, even to DUSS (Grade 3) but both had been recruited in their early thirties and neither was from Industry, The former, who became a friend of mine, had been an RAF fighter pilot, and the other, who I didn't know well, had been, I think, in the teaching profession. And both held University degrees, another advantage I lacked, which may have counted against me in the eyes of those above. The fact that I had been required to 'demonstrate the intellectual abilities of a good honours graduate' to join their ranks, did not, I think, make me one of them.

The time had come, however, to put all that behind me, and arrange the customary retirement party for myself. This well-attended event was enlivened by the presence of the HOJAMPS septet in which I played my part for the last time. A few days later, I walked out of the building carrying my few personal belongings, never to return, other than to attend the retirement parties of any ex-colleagues who cared to invite me.

I was embracing my new life with enthusiasm, firmly convinced that there was a new career waiting for me out there and that all I had to do was find it.

Ballina, New South Wales, December 2014

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