My Life Story

The boys addressed each other by their surnames, and there were prefects who would force any boy found running on the promenade, to spend the rest of their lunch-break staring point blank at the side of the ATC hut. I can still see the knots in that wooden cladding. The school bullies were well known, along with the easy victims, but they didn't particularly bother me, probably because I was tall. Every day started with compulsory mass reciting of the 'Lords Prayer', with no regard given to whether the boys had any religious leaning. One of my crimes was to wear illegal ankle-boots instead of shoes, and was spotted by Major B. I liked ankle-boots, because every time I got new regular shoes, I would instantly acquire crippling blisters on the backs of my heels. Not so with the boots. Even today, I mostly wear trainers, as my heels have always been very sensitive.

Each day we would be given three pieces of homework, each expected to take half an hour. Homework just makes your life a misery, and has no real benefit. It is just the school saying "We have control over you outside, as well as inside school". Don't do it, and you could expect black marks, and more caning. Do it, and you miss 'The Goodies' on TV, which by the way, never did get repeated. Homework is evil.

You go to school to prepare you for life, I thought. How could they distil life into just the seven compulsory subjects on my time-table. How did they arrive at those subjects, I asked myself? The long and the short of it, as you can probably already see, is that School X was heavy on the discipline, punishment, and respect for authority.

After being uninspired by anything School X had to offer, I approached 'O' levels with little expectation. Around this time, an art department was created at the school, in the hands of Mr Y. It was regarded by the school as somewhere to stick the 'thickoes', while the clever ones did science. I did art. I put myself down for half a dozen 'O' levels exams, including art. When he found out, Mr Y went up the wall, concerned only for his pass rate, and complained to the new headmaster Mr P. The headmaster wrote to my parents expressing his displeasure at me entering for an art 'O' level. It has to be said that weeks later when this bad boy was getting into producing drawings on his own, Mr Y had to eat his words.

Well, the exams came, after a few weeks of 'revising'. I never could get to grips with revising. If it doesn't stick when you're told it, staring at books for weeks is not going to help. The exam results were miserable. I scored passes only in 'Technical Drawing' and 'Art'. The 'failed' subjects included 'Religious Knowledge', which is a pointless subject for someone who does not have a religious bone in their body. Also 'failed' was English Literature. Well, I have a large number of books in my home. They are mostly university level technical books. I read a book when I want to know about a subject. I do not read waffle. I cannot stand it when people ask 'Who is your favourite author?', with an assumption that if you do not give an acceptable name, you must be thick. I have no Idea who wrote most of my books. I couldn't care less. When I buy a book, I flip through the chapters, to assess whether the author knows what they are talking about, and whether the writing style is digestable by me. When I have read it, I am wiser about the subject. The name of the author is of no consequence. Most importantly, I do not read waffle.

Now were clear on that, what do we do with just Technical Drawing and Art 'O' levels. Well, step 1 is to burn my school blazer in the back garden. I hated School X, and that blazer had it coming. However, the damn thing wouldn't burn. Is a person with four 'O' levels twice as intelligent as a person with two? Are exam results an absolute measure of intelligence? As miserable as they were, the exam results successfully identified that I am a creative person. Creativity did not feature strongly in School X's regime. What I did do was try to get a job. I applied for apprenticeships all over the place. Electricity board, gas board, the Royal Navy, an artex ceiling man, a wallpaper factory, a metal casting foundry, a trainee nurse, even a ladies hairdresser, all to no avail. Then my mum took me to an open evening to see if I could get into Brockenhurst 6^th form College, where my brother had gone.

The application went well, and I was heading for Brockenhurst. What a difference to School X. I had my own tailored collection of subjects. I did an Art 'A' level course, and a Design and Technology 'A' level course, plus a whole bunch of 'O' level subjects to repair the miserable results from School X. Now, most of the students were doing three 'A' levels, because that was the standard entry requirement for universities. Obviously right from the start, I would not be looking at university as my next step. One minor snag was I asked to do a music 'O' level, but the head of music Mr Munro would not allow me onto the course, as he feared for his pass rate. Hello, we've been here before. I had to take private classical guitar lessons for a year, and maybe get on the course then. I loved it there. My three art teachers, Mr Jones, Mr Watkins, and Mr Everett were brilliant, and Mr Watkins even ran a guitar making course. My other 'A' level course Design and Technology was run by Mr (Jim)Laney, who was absolutely brilliant. The course included Metalwork, Woodwork, and general industrial design, with plenty of practical projects. This was all a very creative time for me, and you know that I am a creative person.

Mr Munro did allow three others to do the music O-level in that first year, as they had already failed it once. Guess what? Two out of the three failed it a second time.

I did get onto the music 'O' level in the second year, and even got one to one tuition from a very nice lady whose name I forget. When judgement day came, I did acquire that essential clutch of 'O' levels, including music. I got that art 'A' level, but sadly not the Design and Technology. It was the first year the D&T course was run, and a lot of people failed. Mr Laney apologised to us, saying that perhaps he had misunderstood how it should be taught. He didn't need to, because just doing the course with Mr Laney was a great experience. You did good Mr Laney. None of my exam results were spectacular, with C grades across the board. I'm just no good at cramming and regurgitating, even for art history. What marks I got came from the practicals.

So where to now? I applied to Bournemouth College of Art, and on my interview day it was very windy, and I had a huge portfolio folder. It was a struggle not to get blown down the street. The interview went ok, and I was offered a place. I made another rather ambitious application to the London College of Furniture. I made one more application, and that was to join Her Majesty's Constabulary as a Police Constable, and they offered me a job.

We went on a family holiday, and I had that time to choose between Art College or join the Police. I decided the art college might iron out any originality I might have, so opted for a police career. As my training course didn't start for a few months, I took a temporary job as a labourer at a building company. Not being a driver yet, I would cycle to whatever site required me, shovel muck all day, then cycle home black bright. That was about the hardest work I have ever done.

My police career would start with a 10 week basic training course at their isolated college in the depths of Dorset. This involved communal dormitories, marching every morning, classroom theory, practical scenarios, saluting to senior officers, and lots of physical training. The PT instructor was ex-SAS, and I shouldn't really tell you his name, but he told us it was spelt B-A-S-T-A-R-D. He was very keen on everyone doing press-ups on their knuckles, or press-ups on your knuckles with your feet lodged several rungs up the wall bars. He knew my name. One trainee constable was selected for the instructor to demonstrate a neck-hold on. The victim's facial expression looked very realistic as the instructor marched him up and down, with his neck lodged under the instructor's vice-like biceps. There would be periodic multiple choice exams, which you had to pass.

One day we all got changed for a recreational game of football, and were all stood about waiting to be organised. One of the inspectors suddenly barked “Who said that?”. When no-one owned up, the inspector told us the football game is cancelled, and to get changed and back into the classroom. I thought 'hurray', because I hate football. Whoever it was, whatever you said, thank you.

The course progressed Ok until about a week before the end, when my answers to the test caused a stir. It involved a hypothetical scrap yard all locked up in the middle of the night. If an officer sees a light on and activity, does he have the right to enter the yard? I said no, because the owner has locked it up so that people can't enter. The law says the officer can enter a premises at any reasonable time, if they suspect an offence is being committed. The instructors argued that 'any reasonable time' means 'any time'. Well, I didn't make a fuss, but I did wonder to myself why the law makers put the word 'reasonable' into an act of parliament if it is to be ignored. This multiple choice 'no' interpretation in one question could hardly be seen as a career stopper.

I was told to report to the deputy commandant's office shortly after that. I duly reported there, saluted him, and stood to attention. He proceeded with trying to persuade me to resign, saying that nobody would think less of me. He kept at it for some time, whatever I said. I never got the opportunity to discuss why I was summoned, but I did understand exactly what was going on. The training centre was shared by several police forces in the region, and throughout the course there had been trainees throwing in the towel, because of the hard discipline or whatever. He was from one of the other forces, which had probably suffered more than a few trainee resignations, and was intent on levelling things up a bit.

I could have persevered, but quite independently to this, had concluded that the police force just required sets of arms and legs which do what they are told. It was a shock that this senior officer was playing such games at considerable cost to taxpayers. Now disillusioned, I gave him the resignation he sought, and that was the end of my police career, before it even got going. Nobody from my force discussed this with me, even though there were two Dorset sergeants at the training college.

A bit of an anti-climax, but I needed a job so applied to the Safeway supermarket in Bournemouth who had advertised. The manager offered me a job on the fruit and veg department, starting monday. It was interesting and enjoyable, but that department is the only one where you have to start way before dawn. I would cycle there in the dark, then unload from an early lorry, and also bring up all the produce from fridges downstairs, to get the displays ready for the 8.00am opening. Once the doors open, time flies, and you are on the go all day. The first incident happened as I checked the display tomatoes for any rotten ones, prodding a tomato which promptly squirted juice all over a lady next to me. The second incident was when a girl from my 'A' level art course came in one day. She was on a fancy university course, moving in with the boyfriend, all very grown up. There was I, without prospects, wearing an apron, and chopping the ends off cabbages, in public. I would say that was a low point.

The third incident occurred when some customers were shopping as a group, but suddenly two of the men decided they would have a punch-up in the shop, and went for each other. Out from nowhere came the Meat Manager Mr Love, who I remembered as an older boy from School X. He was only a little chap with glasses, but he stood his ground, and threw the fighting men out of the shop. The fourth incident was when the service elevator broke down in the run up to Christmas, which was bad news indeed. We had to lug all the heavy produce up and down the stairs, at the busiest time of year.

Personnel asked me how I was finding the job, after being there a couple of months. I told them I was obviously not intending to make a career out of humping sacks of potatoes, but that I would see them through the busy Christmas period. I hadn't intended to hand in my notice, but that is what I had done, and I needed to get something better. We managed without the lift for the Christmas period, and I then left having quite enjoyed it. I really ought to mention the other young assistant who I worked with, who was a total nutter, and would come at me with a kung-fu flying kick in the staff room corridor, about three times a day.

I got another job after a while, in an electronics factory, as a shop-floor assembler. My job was to assemble the sliding volume controls, that you get on recording studio mixing desks. Their proper name is 'linear potentiometers', or 'faders' to you and me. This was quite an interesting job, but I knew nothing about electronics. The manager who interviewed me asked if I knew what ohm's law was, but I just gave him a blank look. Another young chap started alongside me, at the same time, and he turned out to be a drug addict. He kept disappearing to the toilets, and not turning up on time. The faders had delicate little gold alloy spring-like components in them, which you pick up with tweezers, to fit. One false move, and 'ping', you will never ever find it. There was another chap there,who I remembered from School X, and he made some of the components that go in the faders.

It was quite therapeutic assembling things, and pleasing to see a pile of finished items. Whenever we ran out of vital components, we had to sit around waiting, which was not so good. An older chap at the bench always had a few good jokes to tell. One weekend I bought a book on electronics, to check out what ohm's law was, and to look keen about what I was doing. It was a beginner's book, with no maths, and plenty of pictures. The book was a revelation, because it showed me that you don't have to be a maths expert to understand electronics. I got through that book in my lunch-breaks over a fortnight, then bought another slightly more detailed book which explained all about valves. In a month, I had gone from zero to fairly knowledgeable, and could tell you how valves work. Oh yes, and what ohm's law was.

Around this point my mum pointed out a job advert in the paper, and I said “Ok , I'll apply!”. With nothing to loose, I put an application in. It was for a junior assistant job at the nearby government defence research establishment. They invited me to an interview, and I hoped to impress them with my new found knowledge about valves. The interview panel said they didn't want to hear about valves, as they had just spent a lot of time switching over to transistors. But I think I sold them my enthusiasm, even though I got some of their questions wrong. They said this job would be based at Malvern, but initially you would be working here. How do you feel about that? I said straight away “Sure, no problem!”.

That was the correct answer, even though I had never heard of Malvern, and had no idea where it was. They offered me the job, and I took it. My official title was 'Assistant Scientific Officer'. After all the turmoil that you have read to get to this point, this is what is known as a 'break'. Without saying too much, I was to work in an Acoustics and Digital Speech department, and was assigned to Mike.

Being the lowest of the low, I was there to fetch, carry, and assist. In return, I was working around some pretty cool things, and got free lessons from some pretty clever people. I also had to buy some driving lessons, to prepare for Malvern. After the department moved to Malvern, I lived in a large hostel associated with the establishment, along with dozens of students and apprentices. They even enrolled me into Worcester Technical College to do a day-release Technician Education Council level III course in electronics, and paid me expenses for going there. That equates to an ONC in old money. Things were beginning to look up. That was an excellent course, and with the lecturers coming from industry, just the right mix of academic and hands-on content.

Thanks to Mike, I was given a lot of excellent electronics and software design projects to work on. Some of them, even university graduates would love to get their hands on. My two-year college course was going well, so I started to think about what next. I put in some applications to see if I could get on a university degree course. With the help of a generous reference from my department, and potentially good college results, I received an achievable offer from the University of Kent to study electronics. In the year running up to university I had paid for a two year maths 'A' level evening class course, to bolster my slightly lacking maths ability. That's right, a two year course in one year. I did the first year lesson on Tuesday evenings, and the second year class on Thursday evenings. That was a bit optimistic, but worse still, my electronics day-release course included a compulsory evening class on Thursdays, which clashed with the maths class. I would miss the first half of the maths class, where the teacher talked. When I explained this situation at my university interviews, Kent were sympathetic, but at Essex University they said if you're doing an 'A' level course, you must get a good grade.

Just to complete my hatred of Essex University, I had to change trains twice to get there. It was a very long day, getting back to Worcester railway station around midnight. With no buses or trains to Malvern, and being too poor to afford a taxi, I had to walk those ten country miles in my interview clothes, in the pouring rain, in the dark.

The college results were achieved, and I was heading for Kent. My good fortune didn't end there, because I was allowed to return to my job in Malvern between every university semester, and carry on where I'd left off. There are two points worth making here. Firstly, a lot of very able university students get valued placements with the establishment, to be part of their courses. Over the five years of my association with Malvern, I think I probably got a far better deal than those students. The second point is that going from an ONC straight to a university degree course is a hell of a jump, and not the norm. Doing an ONC, then HNC, then to a degree course would be more comfortable. I would already be three years older than the other students, and with competition for places getting tighter at the time, It was now or never. I just hoped I had not bitten off more than I could chew.

The university course started well enough, and in the first year the classes were common to all natural science students, allowing people to switch courses if necessary. Anything practical to do with electronics or software, I sailed through, on the tide of my previous experience. Some of the other students were totally wet behind the ears. There was one middle-east student who had been well drilled in maths, and did that with ease, but he couldn't write a simple computer program to save his life. There were exams at the end of the first year, which had to be passed to continue, and a specific mark was required in maths. Somehow, I made it through.

The second and third years got increasingly tricky, and had split-finals at the end of each year. The computing students didn't have to do maths after the first year. But for my electronics course maths classes went on for the three years. I went to all the lectures, took all the notes, and did the course work, but when they got to something called Div, Grad, and Curl, I had lost the plot. Most of the lectures in the electronics subjects consisted of the lecturer plastering a blackboard with big equations. It seemed that maths was the language for explaining anything. If they were to give a lecture on bicycle puncture repair, it would involve the blackboard being filled several times with triple integrals, polynomials, and matrices.

One day I walked from the campus down into Canterbury to buy a computer magazine. I was just approaching the narrow entrance for the cathederal, and there was a small cluster of people milling about on the pavement. Just as I was thinking 'Get out of the way, you stupid people!', Lady Diana emerged from the entrance, in the back of a gleaming black Rolls-Royce, with large windows, just feet in front of me.

Having four consecutive lectures in a morning was very wearing, and the fourth one being 'Antennas', obviously involved the plastering of equations. This was often accompanied by a significant amount of duck quacking, through the open windows, from the Keynes College duck pond. They are called lectures, but all that happened in this one was the lecturer copied his notes onto the blackboard, and we copied them down on paper.

Come the exams, I was more than a little worried. As much as I tried, revising and me seem completely incompatible. I had the brilliant idea of getting some wall lining-paper, and writing lots of crucial equations all over it, and hanging them on my college room walls. If I can't avoid staring at it, the equations might stick. I don't think it worked. I tried going somewhere quiet, at Herne Bay, to read all my notes, but I was just going out of my mind staring at each of the pages.

To get to the punch line, I sat the exams, and scored a Pass Degree. For anyone who doesn't know, the grades are: First Class Honours, Upper Second Class Honours, Lower Second Class Honours, Third Class Honours, Pass, Fail. Of course I was disappointed at a low grade, but at the same time relieved that it wasn't worse. Looking back, I got what I deserved, and I am glad to have it. I can at least stick 'BSc' after my name, should I wish. My falling short was entirely because of not being better grounded in maths before going to Kent. Unfortunately, people regard exam grades as an absolute measure of intelligence, or laziness. You recall, I did say you didn't need to be a maths expert to understand electronics, and I still stand by that. However, you and I now know that you do need to be a maths expert to get a good grade in a university electronics degree.

So it was back to Malvern, but as the research establishment was knee-deep in PhD qualified people, my scrape of an ordinary degree was not going to impress too many of them. I did get a token promotion to scratch out the 'assistant' from my job title, but that would have happened automatically anyway, on reaching age 26, in a couple of years. It was an excellent place to learn, but I wanted to work in industry, where I might be a slightly bigger fish. Also, as I grew up on the coast, salt water was in my blood, and I wanted to live by the sea once more. I applied for a lot of jobs, and registered with umpteen agencies. The interviews came thick and fast, not least because I was cheap. At one point, I had two interviews in one day, ending in Barnstaple, then another three the next day, starting in Hastings. They often paid some subsistence and mileage, and that piled up. Perhaps I could forget working, and carve a career as a professional interviewee. The offers were a little more scarce, but I did get two good offers. One in Barnstaple, the other in Poole, and as Poole was home, I chose that.

The job was with a large telecoms infrastructure company, and I started as a Software Engineer in a team of around 20 people. I had a mature lady for a boss, and this was my first experience of producing software as an organised team, an activity which requires formal working procedures, and proper specification and test documents. I was working immediately under a younger girl. I gradually became aware that she was a bit disillusioned, as she had not received promotion, but lesser people had. She eventually left the company. As the team's project neared completion, I received a token small promotion. There was a regime of several staged small promotions in the lower ranks, to keep them interested in staying.

We had a visiting sales engineer demonstrating some fancy analytical equipment one day, so we all listened to his presentation. A design engineer from another department was in the audience and kept piping up and correcting the speaker. He was just like the character Arnold Rimmer in the Red Dwarf TV show, and just as obnoxious. I thought to myself, I feel sorry for anyone who has to work under him.

I requested to make a change, to work on electronics design, after the software project. This would give me a good mix of experience. I was assigned to a small team of 6 design engineers, and the most experienced of them left the company shortly after, and I was now the most experienced by some way. I got stuck in and made a significant contribution to the design project. We had a manager above us who didn't get too involved, then it switched to another manager, who didn't get too involved. Then it switched to another manager. This project was a bit of a hot potato, and was already late before it started. Even though it was already late, I did everything I could to make sure that it was at least done right. This third manager got moved onto other work, and horror of horrors, Arnold Rimmer became involved with doing some checking on our work. I had no problem dealing with him at arm's length, and he did have very good technical knowledge. Rimmer gradually enveloped the team, but we still had no manager above us.

After a couple of months we did get a manager. He had a senior grade, but didn't seem to know much on the technical side. I don't think he had any grasp of the work I was doing. Rimmer was still on the scene, and was sucking up to the new manager. I saw a notice on the general notice board, in the stairwell. It said 'Are you a future senior manager? If you are interested in coming on this training course, talk to your line manager'. So I went and told the manager I would like to get on this course. He said “This is for people who are going to be senior managers”. So I said “Yes, that's me!”. Then he said “Well, did you go to Grammar School?”. I was flabergasted.

Back to those staged small promotions I mentioned earlier, I had put in a lot of good work over two and a half years on this design project, and had a hand in holding it together, as the managers chopped and changed. I was overdue to receive a token promotion, and saw other mediocre people getting that promotion in much less time. I just needed to hear 'You're doing all right!', and the money was irrelevant. The manager took the view that I have to start from scratch, and earn it under him. Arnold Rimmer was only one rung up from me, and was getting increasingly obnoxious. Imagine Rimmer standing over your desk, pulling a face, and saying “So!, You refuse to work!”. Rimmer had his desk in the corner of the manager's partitioned office, and he would come out and give me a verbal prod over some trivial matter. I went in the manager's office and asked “Can you either give the whole project to Rimmer, or give the whole project to me?”, and I could see Rimmer in the corner smirking all over his face. I felt trapped under a useless manager, and easy prey for Rimmer.

One day I was walking near the managers open office door, and over-heard Rimmer inside exclaim “Ray's not as sensitive as most people”. But you know that I am an artist, and artists are sensitive. The mature lady manager I had in the software team, was also an artist, and her current office was just over the partition. She would have heard the twaddle that Rimmer was spouting.

Being rather fed up with not getting any acknowledgement, I went to make my protestations to the head man above Rimmer and my manager. He was a chain smoking workaholic, and I had to wait into the evening to get to see him. I didn't expect him to do anything, but it was the only place to appeal to. He asked 'Doesn't it mean anything that I've taken the time to see you?'. Not being one to mince words, I said 'Yes it does, but when you couple that with putting the most useless managers in charge, it doesn't mean much'. He didn't like that. After our meeting he put disciplinary hearing wheels into motion.

I was called to the personnel dept, and a couple of those guys were encouraging me to resign, or else the disciplinary hearing would proceed. I knew that getting one black mark would lead to Rimmer carrying on at me, until the next black mark, then the next, which would mean getting sacked in the space of a few weeks. I didn't deserve this treatment, so I chose to resign. I went to collect my personal things from my desk, then my manager totally unnecessarily escorted me from the site.

I registered with a couple of agencies, as that had worked before, and after a while an agent asked me to go to their offices in Wokingham. One of their clients, a well known news gathering business in London were interested, and I was requested to do a written test, which they supplied the agent with. So, I turned up and I think it was a three quarters of an hour test, covering a broad range of questions about electronics and software. I finished it a good ten minutes early, then had to wait in the office while the agent worked through it checking my answers. When he was done, he said I had the highest score that anyone had ever got.

I had another small company interested through the same agent, and an interview was arranged in Camberley up the M3 motorway. A prominent management consultant had picked me out, and was involved as a favour to his friend the owner. The company made products based around magnetic tape mechanisms, and up to that point they had relied on the services of a contractor, who was a one man company, and was in residence there. They had asked him to join the company, but he didn't want to, but the company wanted their own electronics man. They offered me the job on the spot, with good money, and I accepted.

I was then told by the agent that the company in London wanted me. I told him that I had given my word to the Camberley company. He tried his best to convince me that London was the better deal, but I had given my word, and it would be Camberley.

It was interesting to work in a small company, because you see everything that goes on. There was the boss in a little office upstairs, his wife doing the admin in the front office, the salesman in his little office, and the mechanical engineer and shop-floor staff in the main part of the unit. I was to work in a partitioned off development lab, with the contractor. We never saw directors or salesmen in my previous job. The project I worked on was a digitally controlled expandable background music system. I was to some extent dependent on the contractor, because he owned the computer and software needed to design the printed circuit boards. The contractor was a little disgruntled, because he was not consulted when I was hired. He insisted that he would layout the circuit boards on his computer, but dragged his feet wherever possible. The boss believed the contractor would assist, as he had known him some time. Add into this mix some horrendous feedback noises coming out of my circuitry, which I was told unsettled the troops.

The contractor waited until the most opportune moment, and then advised the boss that I was not up to the job, and that he should sack me. The boss was a mechanical engineer, and not able to make an informed judgement. He told me that I was sacked after just six months, and I should get a another job, where there would be someone else to ask. My problem was that the contractor just had his feet too far under the table, and he wasn't going to allow me to upset his comfortable residence within the company. He also had the most annoying habit of listening to the soundtrack of 'The Jungle Book' at full blast on his hifi, in the same room where I was trying to code my software. I should mention that I cured my feedback, my software was good, and the prototype did actually work.

So, that is two jobs lost in 6 months. How do you sell yourself, when you've just been sacked? Well, I set about job hunting again, but it was a mixture of using agents and scouring for job adverts myself. An agent came up with a job on the Isle of Wight, and I went for an interview. It was a beautiful day, and I took the hydrofoil from Southampton to Cowes. The company was an established heavy-engineering instrumentation business, employing about twenty five staff, mostly being mechanical engineers. The director who interviewed me was an electronics and software man, like me. They had some problem attracting staff to the island, but it was a perfectly good job opportunity. As I had just been sacked, good opportunities might not be too thick in the ground. I decided not to ask for too much money, and try to get an offer. He made me an offer, but I don't think he was too optimistic about getting me.

I took the job, and it proved to be very interesting and enjoyable. There used to be two design engineers in the development department, and I replaced a software man who had left, after not getting on too well with the director. Before too long the remaining engineer would be leaving, and he did electronics as well as software. I picked up some useful software tips from him before he left. The other guys in the department told me that the two design engineers didn't get on with each other. There must have been warfare left, right, and centre. My first job was to do some minor alterations to my predecessor's software, and then take it up to Cumbria, to install at the customer's site. It was a very complicated industrial computer system, which I had not used before, and there were masses of files littered all over the computers, and stacks of floppy disks. The first step you have to take in this situation, is to identify which files constitute the software project, and then go through a building procedure, to create the end product. My predecessor would not speak to the director, but we arranged to have a few beers in his local pub, so he could point me in the right direction. He had left a log book, which was very useful.

When I was satisfied that I probably had the right set of files, I went through the building procedure, and created the product. This version of the product ought to be identical to that at the customer's site. I then edited a new version of the software, with the modifications, and built that. Taking both versions up to Cumbria, I did a comparison of the untouched build, against what was on site. They were absolutely identical, which vindicated the instructions left in my predecessor's log book. I was then confident that my new modified version was not going to introduce unexpected errors.

After that, I worked on another type of industrial computer system, which I had also not encountered, which was used by the other design engineer. These two competing types of computer systems, being championed by my predecessors, were at the root of their conflict. They were also in disagreement over which programming language to use. I had to build and tailor an installation of this second system, which would be installed at the nearby oil refinery. The installation would go on a deep water jetty, where supertankers dock. It was interesting to get up close and personal with a supertanker. A few days after one of my visits, they had a fire on-board a supertanker at the jetty, killing someone.

The work was fine, but I could not get used to living on the island. When I wanted to get out of the house, and go for a drive in my car, I just had a choice of clockwise, or anti-clockwise. The few good beaches were dangerous, because of strong tides. The island residents generally went to school together, and I didn't. There was some planning dispute in the local paper, and one resident wrote in suggesting a poll of the opinions of all residents “whose families had lived here for three generations”. So, two generations, and you are still an outsider. In addition, there was the risk of there being no other work there if my job were lost. I moved back to the mainland after 18 months, and commuted by car and hydrofoil, whilst looking for another job. It was a good company, but they could have done with an office on the mainland, for 'outsiders'.

I did get an interview after a while, for a Poole company, which had interviewed and rejected me years before. A senior software man, who I will call Joe Bloggs, interviewed me at his home one evening, and I managed to convince him that I knew something about software. He offered me the job, so I accepted, and then worked my notice on the Isle of Wight. The company produced telex and fax messaging systems, and had around ten employees. It was wholly owned by a holding company, who had lodged an ex-army director Major Mike, in the top seat. My job was working on archiving of telex messages on a PC system, under Joe. There was another older software man, who did all the black magic coding of the 'Nova' based message switch. He looked as though he was struggling to remember me, but I remembered it was he who interviewed me before. A youngster joined the company shortly after, and we worked side by side. The work was not terribly high tech, or particularly interesting, and it would all be obsolete before too long. Joe, myself, and my comrade made several trips to blue-chip clients offices near London, for debugging and software updates.

There was a culture of the whole company going off to the pub, every week or two, and Joe liked a pint. Drinking several pints of beer at lunchtime does not bode well for doing any more work that day. It transpired that a significant part of the company's potential orders were from 'overseas aid' contracts. This is where British taxpayers money gets given to foreign countries, but the money never reaches that country, because British companies like ours pocket the money, in return for arguably obsolete junk. There was a big Indian overseas aid contract potentially in the pipeline, and there was a possibility that our company might go bust if we didn't get it. Things were odd, in that all money paid into our company got sucked up into the holding company, in the guise of 'management charges', and every month our salaries would count as a loan from the holding company. Our salaries were not always on time, and the writing appeared to be on the wall. Major Mike called myself and my comrade into his office to brief us on the company's plans for the future. When he'd finished talking, I said “But all of this is based on obsolete technology”. He shouted at me, but shouting could not stop it being obsolete. Shouting obviously works in the army, as any Blackadder fan will tell you, but this is industry.

For some reason, unbeknown to me, Joe decided that I had to go, and took me aside one day. He gave me a letter, which said I was given notice, because of my performance, and that I had been warned twice before. But there had been no incidents, and no warnings, and the reference to performance was very vague. It had always been 'Joe', for as long as I'd known him, but he signed the letter 'Dr. Bloggs', so that if I ever showed it to anyone, I obviously must be lying. I agreed with Joe what would constitute my work being complete, before I could clear off, and fulfilled that agreement. I didn't get paid. The job had lasted ten months.

I received notification from the receiver that the company was insolvent, and there would be a creditor's meeting. The holding company obviously didn't get the Indian contract. It was once explained to me that there was a cupboard full of worthless historic junk, which couldn't be thrown away, because it appeared on the balance sheet as having a value. The creditor's meeting occurred, where we learned that Major Mike was still driving his company car, but was now employed by the holding company. Nobody saw a penny, and the holding company appeared on the documents as being a significant creditor, but all of the figures were massaged by them anyway. The receiver asked for a volunteer to represent the creditors interests at further meetings. I had no time for that, as I needed to find a job. The only volunteer was the holding company's accountant, who was a creditor in his own right. But hold on a minute, wasn't he the same accountant who presided over the company books in the first place. The boss of the holding company was pretty arrogant, and knew exactly what he could get away with. This was at least a lesson for me in what happens when a company goes bust.

Once more I was a job hunter, and there was a bit of a recession back in 1991. I saw one job in the local paper, and applied directly for it. It was for a software engineer at a small company, who produced PC BIOS and diagnostics software. The BIOS is software which is embedded in the electronics of a PC, which has to run, in order to boot up an operating system. This was relatively high-tech stuff for a Bournemouth company. I got an interview with the main man, which went ok, and I convinced him that I had a lot to offer. He offered me the job, and I accepted. I would work on tailoring the firm's BIOS software to fit into our client manufacturer's PCs. Although the function of a PC is the same whoever makes it, the chips inside vary widely, and the BIOS needs to be tailored to those particular chips. Being knowledgeable about both electronics and software, I was quite suited to this work. There were about eight people in the company, and half were software engineers. There was the bright young whiz-kid software engineer, who had a lot of confidence in himself, and an older software engineer, who had 'been around'. I shared an office with a bright young university student, and got on well with him, because he had a sense of humour, and importantly, wasn't jealous of me.

Before too long we were all in a meeting in the boss's office, and he said to the older software engineer (who was only about my age), “I want you to manage this group”. Immediately I thought 'Aw, bloody-hell!', because I already knew in the short time I'd been there, that appointing him as manager was a bad choice. It would have been far better to not appoint anyone as manager.

The work was very interesting, and involved a lot of software debugging. Typically, our customers would buy our BIOS, and then load some version of the DOS operating system on top of it, and then install all manner of third party Application Software on top of that. When their computers then failed, they would blame our BIOS. We were left having to prove, or disprove their accusations. This was the classic needle in a haystack situation. I had one such investigation to perform, which involved a magnetic tape drive plugged into a PC. Toward the end of a lengthy installation process, of the tape drive software, the PC would often, but not always crash. Using my electronics knowledge, I was able to gather evidence which proved that it was not any software at fault, but a hardware bug inside one of the PC chips. On another occasion, a customer required my presence at their Glasgow factory, because a problem involving hard disks in their PCs was holding up production, which is very costly. I flew up there, as did an engineer from the hard disk manufacturer, and we were virtually imprisoned in their factory for a straight 30 hours investigating the problem. No hotel, no sleep, although they did furnish us with some food and drink. We proved that it was not the BIOS at fault, but software embedded in the hard disks, and there was nothing more we could do there. The customer reluctantly allowed us to leave. I also worked on designing some test software for the company's diagnostics product.

The boss had ordered that a central computer be set up to act as a repository, to store all the software files created by the company. This computer would be regularly backed up onto magnetic tape, as a safeguard. Five tapes would be used in rotation, to act as extra levels of backup, to avoid losing valuable data in a disaster. I stored all of my software files on the computer, along with instructions which anyone else might need to build that software. The others also put their files on the computer. When I was later required to build some of the young whiz-kid's software, I got his files from the repository, but found they wouldn't build. I found that his software required some files which existed only on his own computer. Another time, I went to the repository to get some of my own files, as I had to build a previous version of some software. I found that it wouldn't build, which was odd, because when I had put them there, I copied them off again and verified that they were good. My files on the repository were corrupted.

It transpired that the 'manager' was responsible for that corruption. Apparently, he had proposed installing DOS6 disk compression on the repository computer, but the boss said 'leave it alone'. Ignoring that order, he went ahead and installed the disk compression, which corrupted files all over the disk. When he realized the damage, he and the young whiz-kid restored their own files, from the backup tapes, but never even told me. The 'manager' was jealous that I had gone to university. By the time I had discovered the corruption myself, three out of the five backup tapes had been overwritten with corrupted files. Just another couple of weeks, and all of my work would have been lost. Whenever the boss was away, the 'manager' would come into the office I shared with the student, and smoke, despite there being a no-smoking company policy.

The company lost a major customer, who had just acquired a subsidiary company who now supplied them, and the boss had to make adjustments. He said I was to be made redundant, due to reduced business volume. There were more deserving candidates for redundancy. One final note, is that the boss had a habit of coming into your room, asking you a question, and then walking off, before you got three words out.

Yet again, I was a job hunter. There was a recession at that time, and it took a while to find something. I was recommended an agent by a friend from university, who just got a job through him. I contacted the agent, and he arranged an interview for me in Leighton Buzzard. It was the same company my friend had gone to, which was unexpected, as we have different skills. The company was enjoying a boom at the time, and had a highly skilled and growing workforce. They manufactured telecoms protocol conversion products. The managing director interviewed me, and gave me their standard interview written test. He offered me a job, which I accepted. I was to work on embedded software, bringing a complex chip to life in a mode which they had not yet done. This is the kind of work I am good at. There were no managers, and everyone reported to the Managing Director.

To plan my software, I needed first to understand the complex chip it was to control, and also interface with other low level software, which was in the hands of a wily older bearded software engineer. He kept his cards close to his chest. I would ask him for an 'interface specification document', but I wouldn't get it, because it didn't exist. He would instead give me just enough information to answer my immediate question, and no more. I would also need to liaise with the electronics design team, to understand how the complex chip interacted with other electronics on their circuit boards. In addition, as my software would cause the chip to operate in a manner consistent with certain communication protocols, I needed to understand those protocols. This all meant quite a bit of gathering information, and reading.

My software gradually took shape, and was essentially a chip initialisation routine, which would be invoked by other software. This job was more involved than it might sound, because the software not only needed to do the job, but it had to be proved to be reliable. The product was for setting up and routing telephone calls, so telephone numbers had to be transmitted, received, and acted upon by the software. A great deal of system proving was required under all the conditions which it would operate. Some other specialist software engineers worked on all the aspects of tone-dialling, and their software had to be proved to be reliable, when used in conjunction with the complex chip. I was the man at the heart of all this proving. To aid all this testing and proving, I wrote a fair number of ancillary DOS based diagnostic utilities. After what some might describe as too long a time, a reliable product did emerge.

When the product was used by an american customer abroad, they experienced problems, in that it worked for a few seconds, then just stopped working. Being americans, they immediately went into ass suing mode. The managing director together with his right hand golden boy decided that my software must be rubbish. I saw them at the far end of the communal office working on something, and the golden boy would occasionally come to me with a question, but they didn't tell me what they were doing. They were in fact re-writing my 'bad' software. When they had finished, they discovered exactly what the problem was, and it was absolutely nothing to do with my software. It was due to the default BIOS configuration of the PC which our circuit boards were installed into. They had made a mistake in blaming me.

When the managing director spoke with me a short while later, I made a suggestion about an unrelated matter, and he swore at me at the top of his voice in the middle of a communal office. I hadn't done anything wrong, or caused extra work for anyone else, and I knew that my software was well documented, but he had now demonstrated weakness in front of all of his staff. He wouldn't speak to me for two months. I had no work to do, was supposed to be reporting to the managing director, but he wouldn't speak to me. I was surrounded by busy happy youngsters, getting on with their jobs, and wondered how much longer mine might last. His relationship with me was always a little frosty after that. I decided to call it a day around a year later, and when I handed in my notice, all he said was “OK”. Up to that point the managing director had personally made a presentation to leaving employees, but there was no presentation for me.

So I was now looking for another job. I saw an advert in the local paper for an embedded software engineer at a company in Hamble, and applied for and got it. The company manufactured and sold metering instrumentation to British Gas, and did very well by getting a lot of repeat orders. Then when British Gas was privatised, and started to look at how much they paid for things, the party was over. The company had to be sold, or would go bust. A large american gas infrastructure company bought it, and assimilated it into their UK subsidiary. One of the former directors, who interviewed me, was obliged to stay on for a certain period. A new development manager had just been recruited, and was due to start shortly. I was to work on the embedded software in one of their products, called a PTZ corrector. I t was used to match the customer's chargeable meter reading against the varying quality of gas supplied. The embedded software was old, and had been altered by a whole string of engineers, and it was very poorly documented. Some of it was just inpenetrable.

The american overmasters decided that this ageing product could be palmed of on the russians, under a technology transfer partnership, while a new replacent product would be designed for western consumption. Russia had apparently not bothered with metering previously. We had enough difficulty in maintaining it in England, and we spoke the language that any software commenting was in. I don't think the russians stood much chance with it. To cope with being installed at some remote siberian pipeline location, it had to cope with minus 20 degrees C, while still operating. It had an LCD screen, and they do not tend to work at such temperatures. I had to research the operation of LCD screens, which was very interesting. A new screen was made using special low temperature internal fluid, and the complete product was environmentally tested in a domestic freezer. This new screen did work, but the pixels could only change between black and clear over a period of several seconds. This meant the software had to be checked for writing things too quickly to it.

Things were not going too well financially for the UK subsidiary, and the management had plans. They decided that all the company's design engineers should be made redundant, and that they would give any work to outside consultants, when the need arose. This was total lunacy, because it would leave the company without any in-depth knowledge about the operation of its own products. It was a little naive to assume that those consultants would then always be available to call on. A russian party came over to us for technical briefing on the product, and I would be a key performer. The were very senior older men, who were not really equipped to digest such technical information. If they had sent their bright young engineers, they might have done a runner. I was due to make a similar visit to Moscow, and had to go to London to obtain a visa. The russian deal must have fallen apart, because I was made redundant, just like my two colleagues.

Where now then? I got a new job up the M3 motorway at Fleet, as an embedded software engineer. It was a german telecoms company, who produced test equipment for mobile phone infrastructure hardware. I sat next to another new recruit, who was a raw graduate, and I was seen as equal to him, despite my age and considerable experience. There were two chief software engineers in the department, both far younger than me. They were still in what was their first job, after 6 years, and had risen to being chiefs because everyone else left. The software they had produced was big and complicated, but there was almost nothing written down. They had invented a scheme of using 'skeleton' specification documents, which would then get fleshed out to become the software, thus ensuring the software was documented. The scheme failed miserably, and I found whole reams of skeleton documents in the software, which nobody had ever filled in. I found that to navigate through the software, I had no option but to unravel it like a tangled rope. A very long tangled rope. I did some modifications to low level software, for the test equipment, but it was a fight every inch of the way.

It was a two hour drive each morning, and evening, every day. There were horrendous jams, and the motorway was dangerous, when crowded. I remember one day having a construction worker wave a scaffolding pole at me aggressively, from the rear of a pick-up truck, which was driving in front of me on the motorway. Another time a green wine bottle was hurled from a council estate onto the motorway, and it smashed in my lane right in front of me. The speed limit is 70mph, but people routinely exceeded that by around 10mph. On one dark evening, it was raining very heavily, on an unlit stretch of motorway, yet drivers were still doing 80mph, all round me. I was stressed out by this commuting, and my manager could see it. He chose not to make my position permanent after 6 months. After working for that german company, I can confirm that german efficiency is a myth. There goes another one.

I applied for a job located at Bournemouth airport. The company calibrated and re-conditioned aircraft cockpit instruments. They also had a contract to develop some new digital cockpit instruments for a military aircraft. At my interview, I was able to convince the Chief Engineer that I would be of use to them, and was offered a job. He asked what salary I was paid at my previous job. I told him, and he said that's what I'd get here, but he chopped that modest figure down by quite a bit for the first 3 months. I was not impressed by that, but as I needed the job, I put it out of my mind, and got on with the job. The company was only 8 miles from my home. One of his design engineers was leaving the company, when I was interviewed, and before I started the other one had given notice to leave also. I had just a couple of weeks to pick his brain, before he left. He was a software man, and had sent out the military instrument prototypes for assembly, to his circuit diagram. I immediately spotted that all the LED diodes in the circuitry were back to front, in the nick of time. There were a large number of expensive and delicate high power LEDs in the design, and they could only be fitted once, or they would be damaged by high temperatures. The electronics had already been decided upon, and my job was to bring it all to life, by designing the software. Being a military project, the customer had very specific requirements about how the software should be designed, documented, and tested.

This was the kind of work that I am good at. Writing software which requires a good knowledge of electronics. At the heart of the electronics was a single chip computer, with its own flash memory, and which had a lot of capability. It had to be programmed in the circuit itself. In short, a lot had to be got right, before even the simplest program could be run on it. Gradually, it did come to life, and the cockpit instruments operated more or less as they should. But there was still a great deal of testing and verification to do, and a little tweaking. I did get a free trip to Chicago out of it, because the maker of the equipment our instruments interfaced with were located there. When I was in Chicago debugging our two systems, I saw that a signal was the wrong polarity, and said so. Their engineer said “But your document says....”, and produced a specification document with my name on the front page, and with the signal specified incorrectly. I had not written that document, and somebody with my knowledge would not make such a glaring error. The Chief Engineer, my boss, had knocked out this document, and put my name to it.

Later on I took a couple of weeks holiday, and returned to find that a document had been produced in my absence, which included falsified software testing records. That document had been sent to the customer for approval, and I was named as the author on the front page, but I had not written it. This was the last straw. The reason for being required to properly document and test the software in accordance with the customer's procedures was safety. We were dealing with cockpit instruments, which were used only during take-off and landing, the most dangerous part of flying. In a meeting with the directors and the Chief Engineer, I raised the issue of my name being on the front of this document, and they were unconcerned. They split hairs over the meaning of words. I decided that I should resign.

Job hunting once again, I actually found a good looking job through the government Jobcentre. A very rare occurrence indeed. I applied, and got a call from the managing director. I was the first person to apply, and had an interview the next week. It was an encouraging situation, because his software engineer was leaving in weeks, and he needed a fairly good replacement, pronto. The interview went well, and I was offered the job. My rather grand title was Senior Software Executive, but this was really just to impress the customers. I would in fact be the company's entire software department. The company produced and installed electrically controlled door systems for secure establishments, such as prisons and court buildings. They had a contract to supply an elaborate entry system for an National Health Service high security mental hospital.

The system would work like this: Every hospital employee would be issued with an electronic fob, and depending on their particular job, it would allow them to open certain doors, or to unlock a particular bunch of keys from electrically controlled key cabinets. As the staff enter, or leave the building, a fixed percentage of them, would be subjected to a random physical search, with the fob system deciding who gets searched. An important aspect of the system is that it prevents an employee from accidentally taking a bunch of keys home with them. Otherwise, all those locks would need their mechanisms replacing, for security, which is very costly. Sitting at the top of this system, would be a computer database, holding all the access permissions.

The MD had the optimistic notion that we would be in and out in 3 months, walking away with a big pile of money. In reality, the specification was still under discussion, a whole year later. The customer would change their mind, at every meeting. I knew the 3 months was ridiculous, but said nothing, as I didn't want to talk myself out of a job. Enough was known though, for design work to commence. In between my being offered the job, and me starting, the MD appointed a firm of consultant engineers, to produce most of the software. There would also be a further three subcontracted companies, either writing new software, or modifying the software in their existing products. I was to be the man in the middle, responsible for bringing it all together.

I also designed a couple of programmable circuit boards, which stacked together, and wrote embedded software to make them work. These boards controlled all the electrical locks, for the different types of door, in the installation, interfaced with fob readers around all the doors and equipment, and interfaced to the main controlling software written by the consultants. Their software would in turn interface to the database. To complicate matters further, the system had to interface with an existing vehicle door system, built around other technology.

In addition, I had responsibility for a prison installation, created by my predecessor, but not yet delivered. This meant going on many trips to the prison, to debug it. It was just a single turnstile, the same fob readers as above, and a database computer. This system had reliability issues with the database, the fob readers, and the bought-in single board computer that controlled it.

The fob readers were supplied by a subcontractor, and had software produced quickly by their man, but they were not sufficiently reliable, so I took over responsibility for the reader software, and enhanced it significantly. With all the lock electronics and software, being in my hands, this meant that the consultants would not have access to the entire system. Their contract stated that they had the right to sell whatever software they produced for us, as their own product. Something that my director didn't grasp.

After a lot of work, the hospital system eventually worked as it should

I worked for this company for 6 years, which is the longest I've ever been with any company. I was valued and appreciated while the work progressed. The Managing director had his ways, but we got on well. Everything comes to an end though. They can't have made much money from the hospital contract, because those consultants were very expensive. The company had debts, which led to being in a Company Voluntary Agreement. There was a suspicious fire, which actually started in the room where I usually work. Where once my desk had stood, there was just half a desk. It was arson, with accellerant used, yet nothing had been stolen. It destroyed just about everything in my lab, and stank the rest of the place out, but because there were no windows, and closed doors, it burnt itself out. With an insurance payout, the damaged areas were refurbished. The company debts remained though, and the directors wanted to get out of this Company Voluntary Agreement. With the hospital installation ticking over, I was not valued as much as I had been previously. The directors wanted me gone. My relationship with the managing director deteriorated. They could just tell me that I'm redundant, pay me what's due, and I'd go. Either they couldn't afford to pay me off, or just didn't want to. Of course, if they sacked me, they wouldn't have to pay redundancy money. I was asked to design a circuit board, and only I would be involved with the project, but the specification was vague. It looked very much like something I might be sacked for, if it didn't turn out right. So I set out in a document, what things I needed to know, in order for the project to be a success, and gave it to the managing director. He said "I'll put it in the Ray's failed projects folder", and I never heard any more of that project.

As the year progressed, I had very little work to do, and the managing director wouldn't speak to me. The other director suggested that I might leave voluntarily. If I did that, I'd lose my right to a redundancy payment. In mid August, that director handed me my redundancy notice. At the end of August, the rest of the staff got paid, but not me (even though they were obliged to pay me). The director said that the MD was going to do it all together. So I continued turning up into September, and paying out money for accommodation to be there, and at the end of my notice period, the director said that he was prevented from writing a cheque, as the company was in receivership. Well, I knew they never had any intention of paying me. The amount owed was over £8000, altogether, but I never saw another penny from them.

The company set up earlier in the year, would become their new 'phoenix' company, and even adopt exactly the same name as the original company.

I immediately turned 50, and the Blair/Brown recession blew up in my face. This would be the longest deepest recession, in living memory. I had half a dozen interviews, for good jobs, but I didn't get picked. I would normally expect to get a job, within ten interviews. There just weren't enough interviews to be had. The years ticked by, and I got older.

I'd always used a simple strategy, which worked. First, show them that I'm excited about the subject. Second, come up with some ideas for their product. I've been there 5 minuits, and I'm coming up with ideas they haven't thought of. Thirdly, crack a joke, if I can, to show them that I'm human, and they could work with me. What worked when I was younger, though, doesn't seem to work when you're over 50. When you hit 60, you've had it.

Today, I'm knocking 63, and contemplating a new phase, to occupy me into retirement. You didn't think a trouble-maker like me, was going quietly did you?