Biography, Autobiography, Old Steve of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

1. One day, whilst sat in the Staff Canteen, on our privileged extended lunch hour, the Chief Design and Development Engineer said he had just the job for me and that it would pay more than I was currently earning. I talked it over with my Chief and he said go for it and there would be no hard feelings. I made my one and only major mistake. I took on more than I could cope with. At first it wasn't so bad as the work they gave me I could, with effort, handle and I thought it would get easier with time and experience. However my new Chief moved on, promoted to the Board and placed in a Subsidiary Factory down south. The replacement Chief, brought in from outside, treated everyone alike when it came to handing out assignments. His argument being that we were all paid the same, held the same status and therefore must handle all the work, and I couldn't. I had out-stripped myself and when it came down to the highly skilled, academic and theoretical engineering I had no chance. At the next salary review I got no increase and when I went to see my director was told, by him, that I would not be getting one and at the current rate of inflation, could not expect one for the next four years as that was where my new Chief had graded me. I had gone big and had gone in, or so I thought, with my eyes open and there was no turning back, not because I was not prepared to do so, but because suddenly there were no opportunities open to me, all had been shut off by my director. I tried to redress the situation through my own 'White Collar' Union and found it totally lacking in clout or enthusiasm as the son of our, on site, representative was being sponsored by the company to go through University and so every time we went to see the Personnel Director his opening remarks would be, 'How's your son. I hope there are no problems,' and of course there never were. I therefore became actively involved and got myself elected representative. It was great fun while it lasted and a lot of pressure came off, but no more money and no hope of anything as far as salary or a different job were concerned. I think the final straw, with the Union, came when some long haired, pipe smoking communist came from Branch Headquarters and wanted me to organise a strike in support of some office cleaner in a Leeds factory and some women sewing car sets in a Rover plant.

2. I talked to the Personnel Director and in a roundabout way let him buy me off. I told him the situation was impossible and that I had had enough and he sympathised, well he would, wouldn't he, that was his job, and suggested that if I were to resign then the company would accept it as voluntary redundancy and for that I would get well paid. He was right there and I came away with a great wad of money, my Pension Scheme, that I had decided to cash, and all my personal effects and belongings in a black plastic bag and having handed in my keys and identity/security badge, was escorted off the premises by a Security Man, with orders not to let me return. When driving out of the car park, for the last time, I stopped and looked at the large office blocks and the factory sprawled out behind them and then at the black plastic rubbish bag on the seat beside me and thought, so much for sixteen years of hard work and unflinching loyalty. I had been a part of that place or it had been a part of me and it was to end like that. It was the middle of the afternoon and, I felt, a little too soon to go home so I sat, in my car, in the car park of a Super Market and looked at the present my late colleagues had bought me. It was a large electronic, desk cigarette lighter, which I never used and years later gave away in its original box. When I arrived home and told my wife she just looked at me and carried on making the tea, or whatever she was doing at the time, and said nothing. I think she had sensed it coming for a long time.

3. They were great days and must not be left behind without the mention of one or two other notable events. During this period we had moved, not very far, into a large Victorian house, which had originally been a mill owners, in the days of the affluent textile trade, but had since been split into two and we bought the larger portion of the two. Using the expertise and much of the materials from work, we installed full central heating and there was a very large bathroom complete with shower and a separate toilet. Most of the front garden had been lost when a new road had been laid to service a new housing development further along. But there still remained the porch with its carriage lamps and the stone lion head, set in the wall, which spewed water out into a decorative pool, complete with fountain and which was filled on more than one occasion with frog spawn, by my son and his pals. To the rear was a substantial piece of land with old stables, a washhouse, outside toilet and a double garage. Along the back wall and through which it was necessary to pass to get out to the back, there had been constructed, as an integral part of the original building, a glass fronted lean-too which served to house the deep freeze, while also acting as a green house and a very pleasant place to sit and eat; ask my son about the cowboy dinners, or for the kids to play in, during the warm summer months. The backs of small cottages, originally staff and gardeners dwellings enclosed a large, stone flagged area, on two sides, in which a very large sycamore tree grew. This was a tremendous sun trap and play area. Within the house there were nine, mostly large, rooms and one, of the two, on the top floor we made into a play room for all the local kids, who were all well looked after by my wife, who was, by then, still running her business from home. She is reluctant to let me say more than to just mention that she sub-contracted from a firm of specialist clothing manufacturers, that had one or two Royal Warrants, and that she still has, somewhere, several 'thank you' notes written on headed note paper with palace crests and addresses. The second, top floor room, I furnished as an office and from there carried on with my studies and also attempted to run, not very successfully, one or two get rich quick schemes. One that I thought up: no I didn't. One that I decided to copy was a Friendship Club. A mail order dating scheme that was relatively new and novel in those days and which I thought had great potential. To raise the capital I persuaded my wife to let me sell a small Life Insurance Policy, that had come from somewhere and so with a few pounds, as that was all it was worth, away I went. It made very little money, relative to the effort that had to go into it, but was abandon after a bloke turned up at the door claiming that he had been out with one of our lady clients and she had stolen a valuable camera and what was I going to do about it. Also, about the same time, I received a letter from a woman who claimed that a guy she had met, through me, had put her in 'the family way' and then abandoned her, when he found out, and it was all my fault as I should have vetted my clients more closely.

4. Another scheme was started with a 'friend,' when I was going through another phase of money grubbing and still suffering from a life long need to get rich quick. We decided, much to my wife's disgust, to work, in our spare time, as 'bouncers' at the local Mecca Ballroom. It went OK and was certainly different to anything I had ever done before. It got us out during the evenings and Saturday mornings, if we wanted, and placed us in a very pleasant social atmosphere and although the money was not over exciting the fiddles paid well. However we soon realised that the real money lay in a different direction. When the Mecca and several other similar establishments, were desperate for casual staff, which they often were, they would use an agency and pay good money for the staff they provided. My top floor 'office' became the headquarters of a Staffing Agency: bouncers, barmaids, cloakroom staff, catering staff. You name it, we tried to provide it and did well and with a lot of effort still ran it as a spare time venture. We did so well that at one time we owned and ran, for prestige purposes, a three and a half litre classic Daimler car and we wore evening dress suits that cost a bomb. We became involved in a scheme, run by one of the largest hotels in Ilkley, whereby we converted a large cellar into what was then, one of the first 'discotheques', in the area. The whole place was painted black with 'day glow' patterns on the walls that were picked out and glowed under ultra-violet lights, as did any nylon that was mostly worn by the girls. All very naughty in it's time and very lucrative. Music was provided, at very high volume, sometimes by live groups, that we also acted as agents for, but more often than not, by a Jukebox into which the kids fed their own money. Then it started to go wrong. We were spread very thin and all that the staff was interested in was their money, little work and no responsibility. So when trouble broke out, as others decided to muscle in, we found we had situations we could not handle and the larger 'Pop Performances,' that we either promoted or staffed, at the old bus station or the Town Hall in Leeds became too much. By the time we had paid out claims for lost property and anything else that we could not insure against, we found ourselves slipping rapidly and the arguing started. But, as has been the story of my life, things were decided for us. More and more I had been home based or based at one particular regular venue, while my 'Pal' had been doing most of the running round, in the car, and checking, planning and moving staff around, as and when required. Fine and it worked well until one day this particularly attractive girl, whom we had had on our books for sometime, decided to turn up at his home and blurt out, to his wife, that she was pregnant and that they were going away together. They didn't, and I doubt if she was, but that was the end of the business, our wives made sure of that.

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