Bryan Islip's Blog, page 9
February 21, 2015
The world around.
1970: Looking backwards as a 37 years old at life, fairness and justice it seems to me that, broadly speaking each of us gets roughly that which each of us deserves - i.e. that which our individual mix of talents, looks, applied energies, genetic parentage, upbringing and basic 'character' has warranted. Of course I'm not here talking necessarily about money. Whether or not we want to admit it I think we all realise that there are many rewards in this life other than the financial. I suppose I'm talking about reward equalling, or perhaps not equalling some kind of natural justice.
Of course I know all about the genii who live in anonymity and/or penury producing truly earth-moving works but for such people their genius is the reward all by itself. It is enough. Personal comfort to the truly gifted means little or nothing. Read up on your Socrates. (To do that you need to read up on his pupil, Plato, for Socrates didn't leave much if any of the written word and Plato did. I love the interchange at Socrates' trial, as reported by Plato, between himself and his prosecutor. Asked whether he considered his seditious advice to the young was because he thought himself wise, the philosopher said that, yes, he had indeed consulted the Oracle. What did it tell you? asked the prosecutor. I asked it if I was indeed the most knowedgeable, the wisest, in all Athens. It said that I was, for I was the only one wise enough to know that I knew nothing.)
Natural justice! It seems to me that the prime exception to prove the rule is not the individual but Mankind as a whole. In the sacred name of money and the stuff we imagine and are taught must come with it (comfort, security, even happiness) we - Mankind - is constantly seeking ways to take out, or attempt to take out of planet Earth more than it can possibly offer or afford.Yes, it's that classic guy up a tree sitting out on the branch he is busily cutting off. There is only one outcome; natural justice indeed.
Such thoughts have loomed large in my mind since reading Dr Rachel Carson's seminal work The Silent Spring. This is a book about the effects of the US led post-WW2 DDT fixation. In summary, if an insect eats 'our' food then let's kill it without regard to all that depends on it - and which in the end we depend on ourselves. All for the sake of what? The next dollar bill! I'm not sure if it was Plato who declared that those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
I went on to borrow from the library Dr Carson's wonderful trilogy Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. The content of these books have not and never will leave me..
So how do I reconcile such thoughts to my new position as promoter and promulgator in chief of these dreaded manmade hydrocarbon plastics? Well, I cannot, so I don't! Like everybody else I am trying my damnedest to earn a living, to accumulate (and spend) as many pound notes as possible. I have four offspring to bring to maturity and twenty five years of mortgage payments to make. My mind goes back to that party in distant Solihull, the one where a bright young Indian guy, sensing my innate radicalism, told me the only way anyone could ever change things without recourse to mass weaponry was from the very top of the heap. Work within all the rules, Bryan. Then when you get to the top, if you have enough energy left you can change the rules. I have a very long and rugged climb ahead of me. The odds against are long indeed - but not long enough to divert me from my mission.
Thinking won't do it. There are things, many things to actually do. I drain the last of my pint of beer, bid goodnight to the barman, nod to the young woman, and her friends, and go to bed.
Of course I know all about the genii who live in anonymity and/or penury producing truly earth-moving works but for such people their genius is the reward all by itself. It is enough. Personal comfort to the truly gifted means little or nothing. Read up on your Socrates. (To do that you need to read up on his pupil, Plato, for Socrates didn't leave much if any of the written word and Plato did. I love the interchange at Socrates' trial, as reported by Plato, between himself and his prosecutor. Asked whether he considered his seditious advice to the young was because he thought himself wise, the philosopher said that, yes, he had indeed consulted the Oracle. What did it tell you? asked the prosecutor. I asked it if I was indeed the most knowedgeable, the wisest, in all Athens. It said that I was, for I was the only one wise enough to know that I knew nothing.)
Natural justice! It seems to me that the prime exception to prove the rule is not the individual but Mankind as a whole. In the sacred name of money and the stuff we imagine and are taught must come with it (comfort, security, even happiness) we - Mankind - is constantly seeking ways to take out, or attempt to take out of planet Earth more than it can possibly offer or afford.Yes, it's that classic guy up a tree sitting out on the branch he is busily cutting off. There is only one outcome; natural justice indeed.
Such thoughts have loomed large in my mind since reading Dr Rachel Carson's seminal work The Silent Spring. This is a book about the effects of the US led post-WW2 DDT fixation. In summary, if an insect eats 'our' food then let's kill it without regard to all that depends on it - and which in the end we depend on ourselves. All for the sake of what? The next dollar bill! I'm not sure if it was Plato who declared that those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
I went on to borrow from the library Dr Carson's wonderful trilogy Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. The content of these books have not and never will leave me..
So how do I reconcile such thoughts to my new position as promoter and promulgator in chief of these dreaded manmade hydrocarbon plastics? Well, I cannot, so I don't! Like everybody else I am trying my damnedest to earn a living, to accumulate (and spend) as many pound notes as possible. I have four offspring to bring to maturity and twenty five years of mortgage payments to make. My mind goes back to that party in distant Solihull, the one where a bright young Indian guy, sensing my innate radicalism, told me the only way anyone could ever change things without recourse to mass weaponry was from the very top of the heap. Work within all the rules, Bryan. Then when you get to the top, if you have enough energy left you can change the rules. I have a very long and rugged climb ahead of me. The odds against are long indeed - but not long enough to divert me from my mission.
Thinking won't do it. There are things, many things to actually do. I drain the last of my pint of beer, bid goodnight to the barman, nod to the young woman, and her friends, and go to bed.
February 20, 2015
1970: love and marriage
This 37 year old husband and father of four, the newly recruited sales manager of a company with as yet no product to sell.is sitting by himself in the dark on the beach at Lee-on Solent, smoking a cigarette, watching the ships and the lights. Sounds like he was on a cushy number, doesn't it, but to him it seems exactly the opposite. Never mind about all that, Bryan Islip, he thinks, what do you make of it so far?
Thoughts come a-tumbling one over the next. Mostly good ones for the world has not yet turned in any serious way against our family unit. Of course there have been difficulties but we've managed to deflect most of them and I am / we are not in a bad position now. Some would say in a very good one. My main worry now is about Joan, my wife, the mother of our four offspring. About how worried she has become, not just since my change of employment but for a year or two before that when I had been forced (and had enjoyed) increasingly working away from home. I know she's been feeling more detached from my life and/or life in general - and more questioning about the value of her own - just as my life has by necessity become more and more detached from that of our family. As Joan's favourite song has it; You flying high in the air and me on the ground. Yes indeed; another song; Things ain't what they used to be.
Perhaps, as our family has grown and flourished Joan's life has turned inwards towards it whereas mine has turned outwards towards my career. I thought back to 1953, the City of York's De Grey Ballroom and that heart-stoppingly beautiful dancing-queen, the one in the green dress. I flicked the stub-end of my cigarette in a parabolic shower of sparks down the beach. It's not that there was any possibility or the faintest liklihood of a split. The recent arguments had always been quickly and easily terminated in a reaffirmation of love. We had been through a lot together. We loved each other. The more you go through and the more you share, the tighter the bond I thought. I thought back even further to my eleventh year, after my mother and father had split in a welter of acrimony. I'm lying in that boarding school bed after lights out night after night, possessed by such sadness, such anger, such awful thoughts. Never, under any circumstances would that happen to our children - or to me.
Sitting on the shingle I'm wondering how and why the divorce rate in my country has escalated so wildly. For me, when you make a promise, especially the one about marriage, then you stick to it 'til death really doth part or whatever else might occur. That is what I had been taught during my adolescence at Abingdon School. I believed and still at 37 do believe that the whole of civilised life, the entire fabric of human society ancient and modern depended on keeping one's word! In the beginning was the Word - and the Word was with God - and the Word was God. I am in no way conventionally 'religious' but I believe fervently that what promises mankind has made, let mo man put asunder.
Once upon a time in my teens and on holiday from school, my father had excused himself and the breakdown of his own family by referring to the cruelty of his father, my grandfather, who, he told me, had been less than happily married to my grandmother. But, father, I said, They lived and died together, didn't they? They always seemed happy to me. He agreed that yes they had, but it had been something of a sham. With evident satisfaction he went on to tell me that, at grandfather's funeral service had appeared the proverbial strange lady in black. Turned out the old bugger had been all his life maintaining two families. Ours and a secret one in London. I thought about this, about the grandfather with whom I had spent so many of my summer holidays in Hastings, the grandfather who had given me the key to his fishing tackle locker on the pier. I looked up at my father; Grandfather Islip was a good man, then, I said; He kept his word. My father was not best pleased.
I stood up, brushed myself down, crossed the road and went into the hotel's bar for a nightcap. The place was buzzing as such places always were before the drink driving laws. Sitting on a bar stool with my glass of beer I glanced left and right, catching the eye of a young woman, part of a group, in the process. She nodded and smiled.
Thoughts come a-tumbling one over the next. Mostly good ones for the world has not yet turned in any serious way against our family unit. Of course there have been difficulties but we've managed to deflect most of them and I am / we are not in a bad position now. Some would say in a very good one. My main worry now is about Joan, my wife, the mother of our four offspring. About how worried she has become, not just since my change of employment but for a year or two before that when I had been forced (and had enjoyed) increasingly working away from home. I know she's been feeling more detached from my life and/or life in general - and more questioning about the value of her own - just as my life has by necessity become more and more detached from that of our family. As Joan's favourite song has it; You flying high in the air and me on the ground. Yes indeed; another song; Things ain't what they used to be.
Perhaps, as our family has grown and flourished Joan's life has turned inwards towards it whereas mine has turned outwards towards my career. I thought back to 1953, the City of York's De Grey Ballroom and that heart-stoppingly beautiful dancing-queen, the one in the green dress. I flicked the stub-end of my cigarette in a parabolic shower of sparks down the beach. It's not that there was any possibility or the faintest liklihood of a split. The recent arguments had always been quickly and easily terminated in a reaffirmation of love. We had been through a lot together. We loved each other. The more you go through and the more you share, the tighter the bond I thought. I thought back even further to my eleventh year, after my mother and father had split in a welter of acrimony. I'm lying in that boarding school bed after lights out night after night, possessed by such sadness, such anger, such awful thoughts. Never, under any circumstances would that happen to our children - or to me.
Sitting on the shingle I'm wondering how and why the divorce rate in my country has escalated so wildly. For me, when you make a promise, especially the one about marriage, then you stick to it 'til death really doth part or whatever else might occur. That is what I had been taught during my adolescence at Abingdon School. I believed and still at 37 do believe that the whole of civilised life, the entire fabric of human society ancient and modern depended on keeping one's word! In the beginning was the Word - and the Word was with God - and the Word was God. I am in no way conventionally 'religious' but I believe fervently that what promises mankind has made, let mo man put asunder.
Once upon a time in my teens and on holiday from school, my father had excused himself and the breakdown of his own family by referring to the cruelty of his father, my grandfather, who, he told me, had been less than happily married to my grandmother. But, father, I said, They lived and died together, didn't they? They always seemed happy to me. He agreed that yes they had, but it had been something of a sham. With evident satisfaction he went on to tell me that, at grandfather's funeral service had appeared the proverbial strange lady in black. Turned out the old bugger had been all his life maintaining two families. Ours and a secret one in London. I thought about this, about the grandfather with whom I had spent so many of my summer holidays in Hastings, the grandfather who had given me the key to his fishing tackle locker on the pier. I looked up at my father; Grandfather Islip was a good man, then, I said; He kept his word. My father was not best pleased.
I stood up, brushed myself down, crossed the road and went into the hotel's bar for a nightcap. The place was buzzing as such places always were before the drink driving laws. Sitting on a bar stool with my glass of beer I glanced left and right, catching the eye of a young woman, part of a group, in the process. She nodded and smiled.
February 18, 2015
Pausing for thoughts
February 2015: I began these reminiscences at the suggestion of my son Stuart. Writing them has now become a habit, and quite a therapeutic one. In remembering (disinterring) things long consigned to the furthest recesses of my mind I have not wanted deliberately to obfuscate the facts. There's really no point in doing this thing without truth. However I have found that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is near impossible. In speaking or writing of oneself, spreading self-imagery, there are lies by omission as well as by distortion of truth, and furthermore that 'truth' believed by oneself may not always be the truth as known or believed by you or by others. Also, like love, truth can hurt and, as I have said before, nobody wants to be hurt, especially me!
Having in this blog reached almost half way through the days of my unremarkable life I am, (at least I have now), determined to carry on. That said, the only question is; should I 'publish' the ongoing memorabilia here, as previously, or should I leave these chapters from age thirty seven to eighty on my PC for someone else, some time in the future, to make that decision? (Or, more likely, leave them to disappear into cyber space and/or the waste disposal when this hard drive of mine goes the way of all things?) Obviously I am talking real life and real people. Not only will many of those real people be with us still, but they have a perfect as well as a perfectly legal right not to have someone like me raking over the ashes of their lives along with his own. Don't misunderstand me, this is not to assume that more than a handful of folk have or will ever get to read my thoughts and these words, however marvellously infinite is the internet.
Having elected to carry on, I shall not consider publishing what I write until after an interval of time. And whether I publish here, or not, I will not over-sanitise my best memory of historical reality - i.e. the facts - not even where there is obvious failure of character or failure of achievement. Such there is in all of our lives, leaving aside the lives of the saints! Those like me not saintly are taught from birth that failure of character, short of criminality, should best be gloss-painted over and forgotten and that failure of achievement is somehow shameful, therefore to be avoided in healthy communication. Bollocks that may be but it is the unhealthy reality.
In between now and when / if I carry on with the chronology I'm planning, here and for some succeeding blogs, to put myself back into the mind and experience of that 36 year old sitting on the night-time shingle beach outside the Bellevue Hotel in Lee-on-Solent, 1970. What, at that point had he concluded about life in general and his own in particular? And what at that point did he actually want out of the future?
So I shall here be detailing his thoughts (my thoughts) on such as ambition and money, on love and sex and marriage, on one's last and one's next generation, on fairness and justice, on pleasures and tribulation, of history and race, of war and peace, of the spiritual v the material v the arts - and of what he wanted engraved on his headstone. I'll begin with the latter.
I had once sat up at a bar in a public house with some business friends when one of them out of the blue asked each of us to write down on a paper napkin the words he wished to have engraved on his headstone. I wrote ...
HERE LIESDEADA MANWHO LIVEDNOT IN THE SHADOWS
Even though I now wish to be cremated rather than buried, and therefore a headstone is inapplicable, I'll stand by that. Good enough for me because, for me, it says most of everything ... But watch this space ...
Having in this blog reached almost half way through the days of my unremarkable life I am, (at least I have now), determined to carry on. That said, the only question is; should I 'publish' the ongoing memorabilia here, as previously, or should I leave these chapters from age thirty seven to eighty on my PC for someone else, some time in the future, to make that decision? (Or, more likely, leave them to disappear into cyber space and/or the waste disposal when this hard drive of mine goes the way of all things?) Obviously I am talking real life and real people. Not only will many of those real people be with us still, but they have a perfect as well as a perfectly legal right not to have someone like me raking over the ashes of their lives along with his own. Don't misunderstand me, this is not to assume that more than a handful of folk have or will ever get to read my thoughts and these words, however marvellously infinite is the internet.
Having elected to carry on, I shall not consider publishing what I write until after an interval of time. And whether I publish here, or not, I will not over-sanitise my best memory of historical reality - i.e. the facts - not even where there is obvious failure of character or failure of achievement. Such there is in all of our lives, leaving aside the lives of the saints! Those like me not saintly are taught from birth that failure of character, short of criminality, should best be gloss-painted over and forgotten and that failure of achievement is somehow shameful, therefore to be avoided in healthy communication. Bollocks that may be but it is the unhealthy reality.
In between now and when / if I carry on with the chronology I'm planning, here and for some succeeding blogs, to put myself back into the mind and experience of that 36 year old sitting on the night-time shingle beach outside the Bellevue Hotel in Lee-on-Solent, 1970. What, at that point had he concluded about life in general and his own in particular? And what at that point did he actually want out of the future?
So I shall here be detailing his thoughts (my thoughts) on such as ambition and money, on love and sex and marriage, on one's last and one's next generation, on fairness and justice, on pleasures and tribulation, of history and race, of war and peace, of the spiritual v the material v the arts - and of what he wanted engraved on his headstone. I'll begin with the latter.
I had once sat up at a bar in a public house with some business friends when one of them out of the blue asked each of us to write down on a paper napkin the words he wished to have engraved on his headstone. I wrote ...
HERE LIESDEADA MANWHO LIVEDNOT IN THE SHADOWS
Even though I now wish to be cremated rather than buried, and therefore a headstone is inapplicable, I'll stand by that. Good enough for me because, for me, it says most of everything ... But watch this space ...
February 17, 2015
At the foot of the mountain
1970: having returned from the States and after that idyllic weekend with Joan and the children* on the beach at Formby I came down to earth, driving down from Lancashire to London in my brand new bench seated, column gear change Ford Zodiac. I was to meet with my newly recruited future colleagues, assembled for the first time in Sir Julian's Jermyn Street offices: managing director Alan Watchman,ex-Unilever (their youngest yet MD); Don McNab, our production manager, ex-ditto of the giant Ever-Ready in the northeast and Richard Seaman, our hugely qualified young finance manager.
(Alan would 'leave without the option' three years later to be replaced in succession at several year intervals by three other managing directors during my seventeen years with the company. Alan was by far the best at managing and directing a manufacturing company. None of them or any other directors left us of their own volition. Donald on production would last a little longer but would be replaced by a chain of three 'imports' and two finance directors would follow Richard, who really was brilliant. They had all become my friends. They had all fallen out with the company or the company with them. Don't talk to me about industrial growing pains.)
That first get-together was something almost surreal. We had the investing partners' couple of million dollars in our bank account but no products, no machines, no factory and no employees! They were all looking at me. Which is to be our market, food service (disposable cups etc) or packaging (mainly dairy)? Alan asked, an understandable question if a trifle late in the day. I was the only one present with any first hand knowledge of the highly specific cups and containers industries. Cutting quickly here to my long-winded, well-rehearsed response; Plastic dairy packaging containers, I advised.
I had brought back from America drawings of Sweetheart Plastics Inc's magnificent extrusion and thermoforming line. I unrolled it on to the Board table. How much will that cost? was the next question. A quarter of a million dollars complete with the tooling for a single product. Second and ongoing product toolings at around fifty thousand a go. Those present appeared a wee bitty shaken. What product then, and how much of it will this line turn out, Bryan? asked Don. I said, At standard rating, a million units of a fluted 4 oz mousse or ice cream containers a day. Gasps all around. Who the hell's going to buy that kind of volume? Richard asked. There are three companies in the UK who could each buy at least fifteen millions a year of these particular containers: Walls Ice Cream in Gloucester, Lyons Maid Ice Cream in London and Liverpool and Ross Foods in Hull. We will have to get contracts out of at least two out of those three. Don and Richard looked at me and at each other, shaking their heads.
They did right to shake their heads. That machinery, loaded on to us without the option by the Shapiro brothers, had been developed for America's gigantic, highly mature markets. Sure it would give us the lowest cost base in Europe, but to what avail if we couldn't secure sufficient of the right kind of orders? So, this was gamble number one of the many, many risks to be taken by Sweetheart Plastics, (soon to be renamed Sweetheart International) as the years rolled by. All industrial, manufacturing start-ups have to take risks. Big ones. With machinery, with products, with people, with investment money. And the riskiest of these are the people.
I shall not forget Alan Watchman's next comment, calm and quiet as always; Then we'd best get busy finding ourselves somewhere to put this machinery. I have here four bundles of agents' factory details. Don, you''ll look at those to the north, I'll take the south coast bundle, you'll take the east of England Richard and Bryan, you know the Midlands best, so you'd best cover these. He grinned. Then you'd better get selling something. He handed me a file with six industrial properties therein. Re-assemble here a week today to compare notes and make the decision. Right now I think we all need a drink. And so we did, at Joule's (very expensive) Bar just around the corner. The following morning we were all on the road. A week later we re-assembled, discussed our results and Alan made his decision. There was this empty, ex-steel stockholding building down on the edge of Portsmouth harbour in a town called Gosport. Don looked at me, winked. By then we all knew Alan's passion for sailing boats.
That decided, we drove separately down to Gosport, re-assembling in Alan's choice of factory. The vast, dirty, empty space echoed to our shocked voices. It smelled powerfully of rusty metal amongst other things and such 'offices' as there were were totally derelict - uninhabitable. Don't worry about that, advised Mr Watchman, I've rented some nice offices for us up in Fareham. Fareham was four miles away. Don, you'll need to get contract cleaners in here, pronto.
Of course we would all have to move our homes. This was not going to be any nine to five, nor any five or even six days a week proposition. I spent the rest of that week exploring the area for schools and houses, phoning Joan at home up in Lancashire at frequent intervals to seek her counsel. I discovered that Gosport was a Royal Navy town. It was and is a kind of blunt, south pointing peninsula, on its eastern side Portsmouth harbour, to its south and west the Solent. Four miles away across the water you could see Ryde church steeple on the Isle of Wight.
In number forty five Raynes Road I found our new home. A couple of hundred yards from the beach it was / is a modern, four bedroomed detached with nice garage and a big enough back garden complete with empty swimming pool in much need of attention. At ten thousand pounds it was probably ten to twenty percent above the going rate for that locality but I cared not. Having signed up I went back to my Bellevue Hotel room to call home. On the phone I spoke to Joan and all the children about it, one by one in order of descending age. In spite of their all being happy and so comparatively recently sell settled in Formby there was much - and positive - excitement. Can we have a boat, Dad? Robert asked. Little did any of us realise how much of our lives would come to revolve around that question and the almighty sea. When should we think of moving down? Joan asked. I took a deep breath; Two weeks today, whether or not we've sold Longcliffe Drive, I told her.
After dinner in the Bellevue that evening I walked across the road and down on to the beach. It was a beautiful moonlit, starlit sky over the calmest of seas. The lights of a tanker were heading slowly up the Solent into Southampton. Over on the Island I could see the pinprick twinkle of Ryde and Cowes and to my left the city of Portsmouth cast its sodium orange all across the skyline. I sat down on the shingle, lit a cigarette and breathed in deep to catch that lovely, intermingled scent of brine and fish and seaweed. I had fallen in with some of the hardest, shrewdest, premier division industrialists and financiers in the world. It seemed I was was holding their newest baby. God help me if I dropped it. More importantly I was holding in my hands the lives, or at least the wellbeing of Joan and my four children. Close in to shore came the swirl and splash of a night-hunting bass.
At thirty six my life wasn't even half way through. What a great adventure it had been! What great adventures were yet to be!
* By the way, 'kids' for me are young goats, not children; certainly not our own Karen, Julie, Robert and Stuart.
(Alan would 'leave without the option' three years later to be replaced in succession at several year intervals by three other managing directors during my seventeen years with the company. Alan was by far the best at managing and directing a manufacturing company. None of them or any other directors left us of their own volition. Donald on production would last a little longer but would be replaced by a chain of three 'imports' and two finance directors would follow Richard, who really was brilliant. They had all become my friends. They had all fallen out with the company or the company with them. Don't talk to me about industrial growing pains.)
That first get-together was something almost surreal. We had the investing partners' couple of million dollars in our bank account but no products, no machines, no factory and no employees! They were all looking at me. Which is to be our market, food service (disposable cups etc) or packaging (mainly dairy)? Alan asked, an understandable question if a trifle late in the day. I was the only one present with any first hand knowledge of the highly specific cups and containers industries. Cutting quickly here to my long-winded, well-rehearsed response; Plastic dairy packaging containers, I advised.
I had brought back from America drawings of Sweetheart Plastics Inc's magnificent extrusion and thermoforming line. I unrolled it on to the Board table. How much will that cost? was the next question. A quarter of a million dollars complete with the tooling for a single product. Second and ongoing product toolings at around fifty thousand a go. Those present appeared a wee bitty shaken. What product then, and how much of it will this line turn out, Bryan? asked Don. I said, At standard rating, a million units of a fluted 4 oz mousse or ice cream containers a day. Gasps all around. Who the hell's going to buy that kind of volume? Richard asked. There are three companies in the UK who could each buy at least fifteen millions a year of these particular containers: Walls Ice Cream in Gloucester, Lyons Maid Ice Cream in London and Liverpool and Ross Foods in Hull. We will have to get contracts out of at least two out of those three. Don and Richard looked at me and at each other, shaking their heads.
They did right to shake their heads. That machinery, loaded on to us without the option by the Shapiro brothers, had been developed for America's gigantic, highly mature markets. Sure it would give us the lowest cost base in Europe, but to what avail if we couldn't secure sufficient of the right kind of orders? So, this was gamble number one of the many, many risks to be taken by Sweetheart Plastics, (soon to be renamed Sweetheart International) as the years rolled by. All industrial, manufacturing start-ups have to take risks. Big ones. With machinery, with products, with people, with investment money. And the riskiest of these are the people.
I shall not forget Alan Watchman's next comment, calm and quiet as always; Then we'd best get busy finding ourselves somewhere to put this machinery. I have here four bundles of agents' factory details. Don, you''ll look at those to the north, I'll take the south coast bundle, you'll take the east of England Richard and Bryan, you know the Midlands best, so you'd best cover these. He grinned. Then you'd better get selling something. He handed me a file with six industrial properties therein. Re-assemble here a week today to compare notes and make the decision. Right now I think we all need a drink. And so we did, at Joule's (very expensive) Bar just around the corner. The following morning we were all on the road. A week later we re-assembled, discussed our results and Alan made his decision. There was this empty, ex-steel stockholding building down on the edge of Portsmouth harbour in a town called Gosport. Don looked at me, winked. By then we all knew Alan's passion for sailing boats.
That decided, we drove separately down to Gosport, re-assembling in Alan's choice of factory. The vast, dirty, empty space echoed to our shocked voices. It smelled powerfully of rusty metal amongst other things and such 'offices' as there were were totally derelict - uninhabitable. Don't worry about that, advised Mr Watchman, I've rented some nice offices for us up in Fareham. Fareham was four miles away. Don, you'll need to get contract cleaners in here, pronto.
Of course we would all have to move our homes. This was not going to be any nine to five, nor any five or even six days a week proposition. I spent the rest of that week exploring the area for schools and houses, phoning Joan at home up in Lancashire at frequent intervals to seek her counsel. I discovered that Gosport was a Royal Navy town. It was and is a kind of blunt, south pointing peninsula, on its eastern side Portsmouth harbour, to its south and west the Solent. Four miles away across the water you could see Ryde church steeple on the Isle of Wight.
In number forty five Raynes Road I found our new home. A couple of hundred yards from the beach it was / is a modern, four bedroomed detached with nice garage and a big enough back garden complete with empty swimming pool in much need of attention. At ten thousand pounds it was probably ten to twenty percent above the going rate for that locality but I cared not. Having signed up I went back to my Bellevue Hotel room to call home. On the phone I spoke to Joan and all the children about it, one by one in order of descending age. In spite of their all being happy and so comparatively recently sell settled in Formby there was much - and positive - excitement. Can we have a boat, Dad? Robert asked. Little did any of us realise how much of our lives would come to revolve around that question and the almighty sea. When should we think of moving down? Joan asked. I took a deep breath; Two weeks today, whether or not we've sold Longcliffe Drive, I told her.
After dinner in the Bellevue that evening I walked across the road and down on to the beach. It was a beautiful moonlit, starlit sky over the calmest of seas. The lights of a tanker were heading slowly up the Solent into Southampton. Over on the Island I could see the pinprick twinkle of Ryde and Cowes and to my left the city of Portsmouth cast its sodium orange all across the skyline. I sat down on the shingle, lit a cigarette and breathed in deep to catch that lovely, intermingled scent of brine and fish and seaweed. I had fallen in with some of the hardest, shrewdest, premier division industrialists and financiers in the world. It seemed I was was holding their newest baby. God help me if I dropped it. More importantly I was holding in my hands the lives, or at least the wellbeing of Joan and my four children. Close in to shore came the swirl and splash of a night-hunting bass.
At thirty six my life wasn't even half way through. What a great adventure it had been! What great adventures were yet to be!
* By the way, 'kids' for me are young goats, not children; certainly not our own Karen, Julie, Robert and Stuart.
February 14, 2015
Going to America
When I alighted from the flight at Baltimore airport I walked straight into the salesman's dreamland. that is The United States of America. For me, it was a bit like Alice must have felt, falling down that rabbit hole.
Maryland Cup's Marketing Director - with his wife - met me at the airport. "Mr Bryan Islip please go to Information," bellowed the public address; "Dick Folkoff is waiting." The word Folkoff sounded somewhat like I wasn't too welcome! Nonetheless Dick and his lady were perfect business hosts. I remembered they took me straight out of the airport to a swanky kind of restaurant. The starter (seemingly without the option) was the local delicacy - a bucket of steaming clams. Lovely but about three parts of a bucket too much for me. 'What kinds steak would you like?' , they then asked. Already full to bursting but for politeness, 'I'll have the filet, please,' said I. (The smallest on offer by weight). Visibly worried by this, Dick whispered, 'Hey, Bryan, the filet steak's for ladies. Take the rump if you can't handle the T-bone, yeah?'That then was my first lesson in American business life; the bigger the appetite the better. Nobody - definitely no salesperson ate filet steak! Which must explain the average size of the guys with whom I was to attend the College of Product Knowledge.
Actually it was misnamed because the College of Product Knowledge was really a sales school, and a very good one. i.e. It was twenty percent what the product actually is and eighty percent what the product will do for you, Mr/Mrs customer. That is in terms of good old US dollars; more of them for you and of course for we successful salesmen!
At first I felt a bit out of place - or should that be out of rank? My 'learner class' consisted of young males, newly recruited from all over the States. I was thirty six and had already worked my way up the career sales ladder. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about paper cups and selling the things. But to those Americans no Brit could be a serious contender - too polite with all their pleases and thankyous and always excusing themselves. Plus many of my new compatriots knew little about Great Britain and, frankly my dear, cared less. In the States, competition is totally what life and especially business life is all about. All our sessions were both serious and competitive. To illustrate, with the first session assembled and seated, in walked the course tutor whereupon he stilled all conversation by pulling out what appeared to be a cowboy six-shooter and firing a shot (blank, I hope!) into the ceiling. Silence!
But individually these Yanks proved to be great fun. To me they were excessively welcoming but - just don't get in between me and my next buck, buddy, was the subliminal message.A guy called Maury Fiterman was the lead sales manager. From his sales territory in New York State Maury was said to have earned a million dollars, plus, each year for the past several years. Yes, the salesman was king of the heap there, and I was just a little bit impressed! One instance of their drive for the next sale will give you the picture. I should first explain that one of the less prominent Sweetheart USA products was a toothpick made from a very small-bore plastic 'straw'. Our class was seated in a hotel restaurant for the end of course dinner when our leader at head of table jumped up to inform us that there are no toothpicks in here! Two hundred bucks to the first of you guys getting an order for a case of toothpicks, he announced. It was like the Yukon gold rush, everyone vacating the table to find a manager with ordering authority. I went straight to hotel reception, explained the situation and presented the guy with enough dollars - say, one hundred - to buy a case of toothpicks, asking him just to give me a handwritten order for same. Now, please!!! Hey, no problem, Bryan. Consequently I was first back at the table, handed in my 'order' and, when all were re-assembled, received two hundred dollars plus fulsome praise from Mr Fiterman. When in Rome do as the Romans do, right?.
It was by no means all work and no play. I and my band of learner brothers got to know downtown Baltimore pretty well of an evening. It was, for me, all larger than life. I recall one night when several of us repaired to a bar with the memorable name of Queenie Macsteve's. You sat up on high stools to a large horseshoe shaped bar whilst one of the barmaids, clad in little more than her high heels, stepped around on top of it in time with the rock music. The fellow seated beside me (not one of us) was making very rude comments and issuing invitations of a most ungentlemanly nature to the lady, so she 'accidentally' trod on the back of his hand. When she withdrew her spiky heel I swear blood jumped two inches into the air. Everyone except him thought it hilarious.
I have mentioned before that the joint founders of Sweetheart UK were Sir Julian Salmon of the UK's J Lyons family and Henry Shapiro, multi-millionaire lead shareholder of Maryland Ciup / Sweetheart Cup in the USA. Fortunately I got on well with them both, especially the latter. Henry ran his section of the American business from an office situated slap bang in the middle of a million square foot factory in Chicago. It was really wierd, walking out of the high decibel clatter of that massive array of machinery and bustle of people into the quiet of a soundproofed, oak panelled, coal fire heated 'study'. (To see this huge expanse of factory roof from the outside, with just the one smoking chimney in the middle of it, was quite surreal). Not a piece of paper in sight. After the College I was invited to visit him. He showed me around the factory in his golf buggy. I remember at one point he stopped and pointed to a machine belching out at high speed a certain paper cup. "What's that, Bryan?" he asked. "That's a hot cup 2107," said I, proud of my newly acquired product knowledge. Henry shook his head, looked at me intently; "That machine," he announced, "Is making nothing but money."
It seems odd, looking back, how a relatively young English gentile could get on so well with an elderly Jewish-American multi-millionaire. And with his beautiful lady wife, Sorretta. Their apartment in Chicago's prestigious Lakeshore Drive was something to behold: original works by Degas and Picasso, the very finest of wines, discreet security all over the building, etcetera.
Over the next seventeen years whenever Henry came over he would stay at The Connaught hotel in London. Often I would be invited to breakfast with him; (Oh those quails egg dishes, with asparagus and bits of bacon!) Or for lunch at nearby La Gavroche. Of course he would question me about the health and the prospects for his UK investment, and he was as hard bitten a businessman as you might expect, but right up to the time when he and his brothers sold out, whilst the UK's four successive managing directors, three production directors and three finance directors came and went, I remained in place as sales director. In between MD's I once asked Mort Gilden, another US director, why I hadn't been invited to occupy the top chair. 'Because you're great at turning on the lights,' came the answer; 'We need someone to turn out the lights after you'. Mort was the man who never carried papersAt one Board meeting he interrupted the discussion by announcing, 'You guys are just shuffling smoke,' before wandering away, puffing on his usual aromatic cigar..
My first exposure to business life int he USA culminated with two weeks out in some of the midwest sales territories with the resident salesmen, then two memorable days and nights in New York City before flying home. I was allowed a whole weekend off before driving down in my new Ford Zodiac to spend my weekdays planning the business with my new colleagues in Sir Julian's Jermyn Street, London offices. But that first weekend home was one of the best of my life. We picnicked in the sunshine on the sand dunes between the red squirrel populated woodland and Formby's huge sandy beach. All the kids were doing OK at home and at school. One lovely wife very happy, if understandably nervous at what could lie ahead for us all.
How lucky can you get? I asked myself, but how relatively soon can contentment threaten to sink beneath a sea of troubles; the slings and arrows of (William Shakespeare's) outrageous fortune.
Maryland Cup's Marketing Director - with his wife - met me at the airport. "Mr Bryan Islip please go to Information," bellowed the public address; "Dick Folkoff is waiting." The word Folkoff sounded somewhat like I wasn't too welcome! Nonetheless Dick and his lady were perfect business hosts. I remembered they took me straight out of the airport to a swanky kind of restaurant. The starter (seemingly without the option) was the local delicacy - a bucket of steaming clams. Lovely but about three parts of a bucket too much for me. 'What kinds steak would you like?' , they then asked. Already full to bursting but for politeness, 'I'll have the filet, please,' said I. (The smallest on offer by weight). Visibly worried by this, Dick whispered, 'Hey, Bryan, the filet steak's for ladies. Take the rump if you can't handle the T-bone, yeah?'That then was my first lesson in American business life; the bigger the appetite the better. Nobody - definitely no salesperson ate filet steak! Which must explain the average size of the guys with whom I was to attend the College of Product Knowledge.
Actually it was misnamed because the College of Product Knowledge was really a sales school, and a very good one. i.e. It was twenty percent what the product actually is and eighty percent what the product will do for you, Mr/Mrs customer. That is in terms of good old US dollars; more of them for you and of course for we successful salesmen!
At first I felt a bit out of place - or should that be out of rank? My 'learner class' consisted of young males, newly recruited from all over the States. I was thirty six and had already worked my way up the career sales ladder. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about paper cups and selling the things. But to those Americans no Brit could be a serious contender - too polite with all their pleases and thankyous and always excusing themselves. Plus many of my new compatriots knew little about Great Britain and, frankly my dear, cared less. In the States, competition is totally what life and especially business life is all about. All our sessions were both serious and competitive. To illustrate, with the first session assembled and seated, in walked the course tutor whereupon he stilled all conversation by pulling out what appeared to be a cowboy six-shooter and firing a shot (blank, I hope!) into the ceiling. Silence!
But individually these Yanks proved to be great fun. To me they were excessively welcoming but - just don't get in between me and my next buck, buddy, was the subliminal message.A guy called Maury Fiterman was the lead sales manager. From his sales territory in New York State Maury was said to have earned a million dollars, plus, each year for the past several years. Yes, the salesman was king of the heap there, and I was just a little bit impressed! One instance of their drive for the next sale will give you the picture. I should first explain that one of the less prominent Sweetheart USA products was a toothpick made from a very small-bore plastic 'straw'. Our class was seated in a hotel restaurant for the end of course dinner when our leader at head of table jumped up to inform us that there are no toothpicks in here! Two hundred bucks to the first of you guys getting an order for a case of toothpicks, he announced. It was like the Yukon gold rush, everyone vacating the table to find a manager with ordering authority. I went straight to hotel reception, explained the situation and presented the guy with enough dollars - say, one hundred - to buy a case of toothpicks, asking him just to give me a handwritten order for same. Now, please!!! Hey, no problem, Bryan. Consequently I was first back at the table, handed in my 'order' and, when all were re-assembled, received two hundred dollars plus fulsome praise from Mr Fiterman. When in Rome do as the Romans do, right?.
It was by no means all work and no play. I and my band of learner brothers got to know downtown Baltimore pretty well of an evening. It was, for me, all larger than life. I recall one night when several of us repaired to a bar with the memorable name of Queenie Macsteve's. You sat up on high stools to a large horseshoe shaped bar whilst one of the barmaids, clad in little more than her high heels, stepped around on top of it in time with the rock music. The fellow seated beside me (not one of us) was making very rude comments and issuing invitations of a most ungentlemanly nature to the lady, so she 'accidentally' trod on the back of his hand. When she withdrew her spiky heel I swear blood jumped two inches into the air. Everyone except him thought it hilarious.
I have mentioned before that the joint founders of Sweetheart UK were Sir Julian Salmon of the UK's J Lyons family and Henry Shapiro, multi-millionaire lead shareholder of Maryland Ciup / Sweetheart Cup in the USA. Fortunately I got on well with them both, especially the latter. Henry ran his section of the American business from an office situated slap bang in the middle of a million square foot factory in Chicago. It was really wierd, walking out of the high decibel clatter of that massive array of machinery and bustle of people into the quiet of a soundproofed, oak panelled, coal fire heated 'study'. (To see this huge expanse of factory roof from the outside, with just the one smoking chimney in the middle of it, was quite surreal). Not a piece of paper in sight. After the College I was invited to visit him. He showed me around the factory in his golf buggy. I remember at one point he stopped and pointed to a machine belching out at high speed a certain paper cup. "What's that, Bryan?" he asked. "That's a hot cup 2107," said I, proud of my newly acquired product knowledge. Henry shook his head, looked at me intently; "That machine," he announced, "Is making nothing but money."
It seems odd, looking back, how a relatively young English gentile could get on so well with an elderly Jewish-American multi-millionaire. And with his beautiful lady wife, Sorretta. Their apartment in Chicago's prestigious Lakeshore Drive was something to behold: original works by Degas and Picasso, the very finest of wines, discreet security all over the building, etcetera.
Over the next seventeen years whenever Henry came over he would stay at The Connaught hotel in London. Often I would be invited to breakfast with him; (Oh those quails egg dishes, with asparagus and bits of bacon!) Or for lunch at nearby La Gavroche. Of course he would question me about the health and the prospects for his UK investment, and he was as hard bitten a businessman as you might expect, but right up to the time when he and his brothers sold out, whilst the UK's four successive managing directors, three production directors and three finance directors came and went, I remained in place as sales director. In between MD's I once asked Mort Gilden, another US director, why I hadn't been invited to occupy the top chair. 'Because you're great at turning on the lights,' came the answer; 'We need someone to turn out the lights after you'. Mort was the man who never carried papersAt one Board meeting he interrupted the discussion by announcing, 'You guys are just shuffling smoke,' before wandering away, puffing on his usual aromatic cigar..
My first exposure to business life int he USA culminated with two weeks out in some of the midwest sales territories with the resident salesmen, then two memorable days and nights in New York City before flying home. I was allowed a whole weekend off before driving down in my new Ford Zodiac to spend my weekdays planning the business with my new colleagues in Sir Julian's Jermyn Street, London offices. But that first weekend home was one of the best of my life. We picnicked in the sunshine on the sand dunes between the red squirrel populated woodland and Formby's huge sandy beach. All the kids were doing OK at home and at school. One lovely wife very happy, if understandably nervous at what could lie ahead for us all.
How lucky can you get? I asked myself, but how relatively soon can contentment threaten to sink beneath a sea of troubles; the slings and arrows of (William Shakespeare's) outrageous fortune.
February 10, 2015
Breaking up, breaking out.
By 1970, on the surface everything for me was on the up and up. But underneath, on the business front, I was becoming increasingly worried, believing the company needed drastic remedial action if it were not to exhaust the Group's patience as well as its available funding. I fully realised that one of the prime responsibilities of leadership consists of engendering positivism amongst the troops, even when things are patently negative. Nevertheless I was becoming mighty tired of warming my own and everybody else's hands in front of burning fires.
The Lily Cups tipping point for me came first thing one cold winter's Tuesday morning. I had just been telephoned by some poor coffeee bar owner in London, emotionally much disturbed, shouting and swearing about how, because of bloody Lily Cups he had nothing to sell in the way of hot drinks even after one broken delivery promise after another. At that point in walked my Director - I have to say my mentor and my friend - all fired up because he'd heard one of my salesmen talking to sales administration 'from his f...... home, Bryan! Get the bastard out on the road,' he shouted. I then did something that I might have lived to regret. Instead of biting the bullet and thinking of job, wife, fifteen and eleven year old daughters and eight and five year old sons, not to mention the mortgage and the overdraft (in that order) I said not a word but instead picked up my coat and drove my very nice company car homewards.
After arriving and revealing all to an astonished, supportive yet understandably concerned Joan I sat down and wrote an eight page handwritten letter to Sir John Foster Robinson, Group Chairman. (How often and with such yearning have I wished I had retained a copy of that letter. Although I say it myself, it was probably my masterpiece!) It took me two hours and then I at once walked over the road, bought a stamp, stuck it on and slipped the envelope into the letter box.
Now I could smell the bridges burning. I had whistle blown full blast so the upper ranks must and did close against me. Less than a week later the company chauffeur, Mick, arrived to collect the firm's car. (Yes, the near bankrupted company's chauffeur, for God's sake!) I remember him muttering something supportive as he surreptitiously slipped me a note from my pal the personnel director enclosing a cutting from that very day's jobs pages in the Daily Telegraph. (More on that later). In fact the sender broke ranks to come around to see me not long afterwards. He told me privately that the Board had convened three days after I had vacated the premises. They were to work out the correct strategy to bring me without loss of anyone's face back into the fold. It seems they had been expecting me to walk back in of my own volition, full of apologies which would then be generously accepted. Normal service would be resumed. Unfortunately it seemed that meeting was interrupted by a phone call from the Chairman and the Group M.D. Lloyd Robinson. The call was taken in private by my local MD so I shall never know what was 'discussed'!
Lily Cups and Containers (England) Limited lasted just over three more years before it closed its doors and let go everyone still remaining. I genuinely took then, and I take now, no satisfaction in reporting this fact. On the contrary I could damn near have cried about it at the time. Ten years of my life - and a good life for me and my family and my team - unnecessarily gone to hell and damnation. Five years or so later when I was staying overnight in Liverpool I was driven out to the old Lily Cups industrial site by my local guy, Alec Matthewson. Nobody stopped us entering because the factory / office gates were hanging off. All was overgrown with weeds, littered with broken glass and rubble - and with some choice graphitti on the factory walls and on the inside and outside walls of that damned directors' dining room. End of that story.
Earlier I mentioned a certain message and jobs cutting fed to me by a friend. I always had the feeling that few if any of my contacts in the trade or my new colleagues ever believed I had not been head hunted before I walked away from Lily Cups. But I wasn't! That Telegraph cutting advertising a sales manager position was in fact pure co-incidence! Sales manager of a non-existent company that was planning to produce plastic and paper cups 'somewhere in England'! Apply to Sir Julian Salmon, Jermyn Street, London W.1.. Wnthin a week of leaving Lily I entrained to London to be interviewed in his dauntingly upmarket office by Sir Julian (Of the J.Lyons Group family). Within another week I had (a) had a long telephone conversation with Sir Julian's partner and friend in America - President of Maryland Cup Corporation, Mr Henry Shapiro. (b) Endured exhaustive three day medical / psychological tests i London and Lancashire, (c) been offered the job at a higher salary than that which I had abandoned and a top of the range Ford Zodiac, etc. The following week I was on the plane to Baltimore. Something called their 'College of Product Knowledge' beckoned. Very American. More next time on that adventure.
Even more of an Americanism was the name chosen for the new UK venture; "Sweetheart Plastics." When I put down the phone on my 'acceptance speech' Joan was ecstatic. 'What's the company to be called?' she finally asked. 'Sweetheart Plastics', I responded. She hesitated for a moment, then; 'How embarrassing. Thank God you've joined in time to change the name,' she said. But I wasn't and furthermore I wouldn't - attempt to change the name. What stays in the mind first and best, I asked myself; Sweetheart Plastics or Gosport Plastics? I spent a month in the States, learning and getting to know products and people. The sheer scale of everything was breathtaking. My excitement ratchetted up. By the time I returned home Lily was but a distant and actually quite an irrelevant memory. I felt like a bright and shining new star. Of course whether or not I was remained to be seen!.
The Lily Cups tipping point for me came first thing one cold winter's Tuesday morning. I had just been telephoned by some poor coffeee bar owner in London, emotionally much disturbed, shouting and swearing about how, because of bloody Lily Cups he had nothing to sell in the way of hot drinks even after one broken delivery promise after another. At that point in walked my Director - I have to say my mentor and my friend - all fired up because he'd heard one of my salesmen talking to sales administration 'from his f...... home, Bryan! Get the bastard out on the road,' he shouted. I then did something that I might have lived to regret. Instead of biting the bullet and thinking of job, wife, fifteen and eleven year old daughters and eight and five year old sons, not to mention the mortgage and the overdraft (in that order) I said not a word but instead picked up my coat and drove my very nice company car homewards.
After arriving and revealing all to an astonished, supportive yet understandably concerned Joan I sat down and wrote an eight page handwritten letter to Sir John Foster Robinson, Group Chairman. (How often and with such yearning have I wished I had retained a copy of that letter. Although I say it myself, it was probably my masterpiece!) It took me two hours and then I at once walked over the road, bought a stamp, stuck it on and slipped the envelope into the letter box.
Now I could smell the bridges burning. I had whistle blown full blast so the upper ranks must and did close against me. Less than a week later the company chauffeur, Mick, arrived to collect the firm's car. (Yes, the near bankrupted company's chauffeur, for God's sake!) I remember him muttering something supportive as he surreptitiously slipped me a note from my pal the personnel director enclosing a cutting from that very day's jobs pages in the Daily Telegraph. (More on that later). In fact the sender broke ranks to come around to see me not long afterwards. He told me privately that the Board had convened three days after I had vacated the premises. They were to work out the correct strategy to bring me without loss of anyone's face back into the fold. It seems they had been expecting me to walk back in of my own volition, full of apologies which would then be generously accepted. Normal service would be resumed. Unfortunately it seemed that meeting was interrupted by a phone call from the Chairman and the Group M.D. Lloyd Robinson. The call was taken in private by my local MD so I shall never know what was 'discussed'!
Lily Cups and Containers (England) Limited lasted just over three more years before it closed its doors and let go everyone still remaining. I genuinely took then, and I take now, no satisfaction in reporting this fact. On the contrary I could damn near have cried about it at the time. Ten years of my life - and a good life for me and my family and my team - unnecessarily gone to hell and damnation. Five years or so later when I was staying overnight in Liverpool I was driven out to the old Lily Cups industrial site by my local guy, Alec Matthewson. Nobody stopped us entering because the factory / office gates were hanging off. All was overgrown with weeds, littered with broken glass and rubble - and with some choice graphitti on the factory walls and on the inside and outside walls of that damned directors' dining room. End of that story.
Earlier I mentioned a certain message and jobs cutting fed to me by a friend. I always had the feeling that few if any of my contacts in the trade or my new colleagues ever believed I had not been head hunted before I walked away from Lily Cups. But I wasn't! That Telegraph cutting advertising a sales manager position was in fact pure co-incidence! Sales manager of a non-existent company that was planning to produce plastic and paper cups 'somewhere in England'! Apply to Sir Julian Salmon, Jermyn Street, London W.1.. Wnthin a week of leaving Lily I entrained to London to be interviewed in his dauntingly upmarket office by Sir Julian (Of the J.Lyons Group family). Within another week I had (a) had a long telephone conversation with Sir Julian's partner and friend in America - President of Maryland Cup Corporation, Mr Henry Shapiro. (b) Endured exhaustive three day medical / psychological tests i London and Lancashire, (c) been offered the job at a higher salary than that which I had abandoned and a top of the range Ford Zodiac, etc. The following week I was on the plane to Baltimore. Something called their 'College of Product Knowledge' beckoned. Very American. More next time on that adventure.
Even more of an Americanism was the name chosen for the new UK venture; "Sweetheart Plastics." When I put down the phone on my 'acceptance speech' Joan was ecstatic. 'What's the company to be called?' she finally asked. 'Sweetheart Plastics', I responded. She hesitated for a moment, then; 'How embarrassing. Thank God you've joined in time to change the name,' she said. But I wasn't and furthermore I wouldn't - attempt to change the name. What stays in the mind first and best, I asked myself; Sweetheart Plastics or Gosport Plastics? I spent a month in the States, learning and getting to know products and people. The sheer scale of everything was breathtaking. My excitement ratchetted up. By the time I returned home Lily was but a distant and actually quite an irrelevant memory. I felt like a bright and shining new star. Of course whether or not I was remained to be seen!.
February 8, 2015
Toils and spoils - work and play
1967. As if being promoted above my peers to area manager hadn't been difficult enough, being now promoted from area manager above the other two area managers to national sales manager was even more so. Both Tom Salisbury and Brian Thomas were my friends, especially Tommy who had been my first boss in East Anglia when I'd started with the company six years earlier. The three of us had become used to meeting up here and there to compare notes every now and then. Of course such get togethers had invariably involved a round of golf and a lunch or supper with plenty of liquid refreshment. (Before the drink driving laws, remember!) No more. It was neither possible nor desirable to maintain the same relationships when I was now the one questioning the use of the sales force's time and expenses! ... Something about gamekeepers and poachers, perhaps!
This was my sales team at the first of our annual sales conference. I came up with the somewhat theatrical idea of importing a formula three (or fomula Ford?) into our Buxton hotel. Let's go. Go fast, was the message. I am second left with my foot on the car. My first boss Tommy Salisbury is in the driving seat and, in case you're wondering, the lady sitting on the bonnet is Mrs Sandy Ferguson, second in command of our design studio. Forty five years after I left the company I remember all their names. This was a truly great team. Trouble is, the car had little petrol. (Company did not produce enough, or sufficient quality product.)
My national sales manager John Williams had been promoted to the Board and I was now expected, as national sales manager, to spend most of my days at head office in Fazakerley, Liverpool 9. Therefore I had to move residence once more, this time from Solihull to a detached house in Formby, Lancashire. Longcliffe Drive was about twenty minutes daily commute. Although Joan and the family did not protest and our new home was lovely, I knew that they / we had been more than happy where we were, and moving schools is never easy for children, especially Karen who had won her way to the best secondary school in Solihull. But by this time my career had taken me, over big time - and had probably taken precedence over my whole clan, whether or not they liked it. In seven years we had gone from a furnished bed sitter to a four bedroomed detached house in a 'nice' suburb. I was told - in confidence of course- that my next move would not be long and would see me in the Dickinson Robinson Group tower block called Redcliffe Street in Bristol. ('Though that, as it happened, was not to be.)
I had become pretty good on Birmingham's parkland golf courses but I was in for a rude awakening when I tried out the ancient championship links up and down Lancashire's sandy coastline. I have a vivid memory of driving the ball over some mighty dune, hopefully towards a totally unseen green only to find it (if I was lucky) buried into the sand or into the whispy marran grass.And the sheer length of the courses! It wasn't long before Joan's oft repeated question; "Bryan, your family or your golf - which is it to be?" was answered with a sigh. "You, dear, you. I'm giving up the game." But in truth I now knew full well that I could never be a contender at that wonderful, exasperating, humiliating game called golf. From now on spectator sport would be my thing. Especially boxing but always professional golf. And over time many others - in fact almost all other sports.
When I did travel away from base anywhere in the UK it would always be to accompany a sales representative to sort out some tricky problem - or do my best to help make a breakthrough sales contract. But the ship called Lily Cups and Containers was beginning to spring leaks in an alarming fashion. It was the old problem; lack of production efficiency leading to constant short deliveries - or non-deliveries - and in consequence angry customers. At times I would almost dread getting to the office in anticipation of the irate phone calls. This was my real baptism of executive fire.
Our problem was the unions - or rather the company's relationship with the unions. Lily Cups' first managing director, the tall and imposing Bob Taylor, although an ex army colonel in WW2, had a special way with the shop floor. I had seen him grabbing a machine operator by the lapels and lifting him off his feet. But they loved the guy. More importantly they respected him and would strive to help the company out of trouble. Now we had a new M.D. called Graham Corner who was an absolute martinet, all too often idiosynchratic and distant. He seemed to do anything possible to get on the wrong side of those Liverpool workers - and not just the workers, the office staff as well. It was he who instituted a 'directors lunch'. Although not a director I was included, I have to say against my instincts. The six or seven of us 'leaders' would assenble in a specially built dining room, there to select our wine and our menu and talk about anything and everything for two hours plus except, it seemed, the business that was paying each of us a handsome salary each month. He began his posting by getting in to the office early one day and sweeping all the papers on anyone's desk or inside the drawers into the waste bin. In future we had to deal with everything before going home at night, irrespective of whether or not we knew the answers. More customer alienation. I shuddered as production fell and the inevitable air of discontent eroded morale. Our profits turned into increasing losses. The one positive thing about the Mr Corner - although trivial in the context of Rome burning - was his insistence on all the sales guys driving cars with automatic gearing. They had to arrive at customers as fresh as possible, he instructed. Nobody liked automatics. They were for old ladies, we thought. But ever since then I have driven automatic cars, except when abroad when hired geared cars were more obtainable.
I reckon I must have been a pain in the proverbial to the directors of the company. Time and again I would warn them of the impending catastrophy. Nobody seemed overly bothered. One morning John Williams said he wanted me to go develop some export sales. "Where?" I asked. "Wherever the hell in Europe you like", came the answer. "Try Switzerland for a start.". This was my first time out of the country and how I likedthe adventure. I literally disembarked from the plane in Zurich's Kloten airport with the list of possible sales targets I'd obtained from the British Embassy in London and a bagful of samples, took a taxi to the city centre, found myself a good (very good) hotel and spent the evening walking the streets, trying out the odd bar and a restaurant. (Marvellous food.) This was a habit I always maintained when arriving solo in a new city. But now, to hell with the problems in our Liverpool factory. I travelled all over Switzerland by train and rented car, very seldom having trouble with the language as everyone seemed to speak pluperfect English. Berne was my favourite place but Geneva ranked high and, of all high places, Davos. And of course Zurich and the beautiful little town named Zug that overlooked (lake) Zurichsee. I sold some good orders then, and later, on return visits - even though we couldn't supply all of them - and made some good business friends. Suddenly my international goals seemed not only closer but also highly attainable. The only trouble was that bloody factory - or rather, my bloody bosses who didn't seem able to run it properly. By then the infamous lady leader of the local print union had well and truly dug in her heels.
Back home the girls and boys were fast growing up. Formby was such a lot of family fun. Longcliffe Drive led into a beach-side woodland with red squirrels everywhere, and the adjacent flat and sandy beach was immense. When the tide ebbed there it must have extended out the best part of half a mile and when it started to flow, if you were out at the edge of the water you had to walk back in something of a hurry just to keep your feet dry. Then there were the great sand dunes, populated by that whole, nationally protected tribe of natterjack toads. I recall one evening, returning home after taking Joan out for a meal, we tiptoed in the dark into the front porch only to tread on something squishy. I switched on the light. Everywhere there were these fat and knobbly amphibians shuffling and hopping about, except the one that would never see another dawn. They'd been captured and imprisoned by Robert and Stuart. It was after midnight before I caught them all (but one) and returned them to their natural homeland.
Trouble was, I was once again spending more and more time, and I guess I have to say more attention, away from home. I was never afraid of damaging my marriage. Indeed, having been subjected in my early life to the shock and trauma of my parents' split, I never wanted anyone or anything else. But my lovely Joan - the lady with whom I had shared so very much - had begun to show signs of rebellion at my absences. Just as had I started to rebel at work. The money notwithstanding, it was no longer plain sailing in either department of my life.
This was my sales team at the first of our annual sales conference. I came up with the somewhat theatrical idea of importing a formula three (or fomula Ford?) into our Buxton hotel. Let's go. Go fast, was the message. I am second left with my foot on the car. My first boss Tommy Salisbury is in the driving seat and, in case you're wondering, the lady sitting on the bonnet is Mrs Sandy Ferguson, second in command of our design studio. Forty five years after I left the company I remember all their names. This was a truly great team. Trouble is, the car had little petrol. (Company did not produce enough, or sufficient quality product.)
My national sales manager John Williams had been promoted to the Board and I was now expected, as national sales manager, to spend most of my days at head office in Fazakerley, Liverpool 9. Therefore I had to move residence once more, this time from Solihull to a detached house in Formby, Lancashire. Longcliffe Drive was about twenty minutes daily commute. Although Joan and the family did not protest and our new home was lovely, I knew that they / we had been more than happy where we were, and moving schools is never easy for children, especially Karen who had won her way to the best secondary school in Solihull. But by this time my career had taken me, over big time - and had probably taken precedence over my whole clan, whether or not they liked it. In seven years we had gone from a furnished bed sitter to a four bedroomed detached house in a 'nice' suburb. I was told - in confidence of course- that my next move would not be long and would see me in the Dickinson Robinson Group tower block called Redcliffe Street in Bristol. ('Though that, as it happened, was not to be.)
I had become pretty good on Birmingham's parkland golf courses but I was in for a rude awakening when I tried out the ancient championship links up and down Lancashire's sandy coastline. I have a vivid memory of driving the ball over some mighty dune, hopefully towards a totally unseen green only to find it (if I was lucky) buried into the sand or into the whispy marran grass.And the sheer length of the courses! It wasn't long before Joan's oft repeated question; "Bryan, your family or your golf - which is it to be?" was answered with a sigh. "You, dear, you. I'm giving up the game." But in truth I now knew full well that I could never be a contender at that wonderful, exasperating, humiliating game called golf. From now on spectator sport would be my thing. Especially boxing but always professional golf. And over time many others - in fact almost all other sports.
When I did travel away from base anywhere in the UK it would always be to accompany a sales representative to sort out some tricky problem - or do my best to help make a breakthrough sales contract. But the ship called Lily Cups and Containers was beginning to spring leaks in an alarming fashion. It was the old problem; lack of production efficiency leading to constant short deliveries - or non-deliveries - and in consequence angry customers. At times I would almost dread getting to the office in anticipation of the irate phone calls. This was my real baptism of executive fire.
Our problem was the unions - or rather the company's relationship with the unions. Lily Cups' first managing director, the tall and imposing Bob Taylor, although an ex army colonel in WW2, had a special way with the shop floor. I had seen him grabbing a machine operator by the lapels and lifting him off his feet. But they loved the guy. More importantly they respected him and would strive to help the company out of trouble. Now we had a new M.D. called Graham Corner who was an absolute martinet, all too often idiosynchratic and distant. He seemed to do anything possible to get on the wrong side of those Liverpool workers - and not just the workers, the office staff as well. It was he who instituted a 'directors lunch'. Although not a director I was included, I have to say against my instincts. The six or seven of us 'leaders' would assenble in a specially built dining room, there to select our wine and our menu and talk about anything and everything for two hours plus except, it seemed, the business that was paying each of us a handsome salary each month. He began his posting by getting in to the office early one day and sweeping all the papers on anyone's desk or inside the drawers into the waste bin. In future we had to deal with everything before going home at night, irrespective of whether or not we knew the answers. More customer alienation. I shuddered as production fell and the inevitable air of discontent eroded morale. Our profits turned into increasing losses. The one positive thing about the Mr Corner - although trivial in the context of Rome burning - was his insistence on all the sales guys driving cars with automatic gearing. They had to arrive at customers as fresh as possible, he instructed. Nobody liked automatics. They were for old ladies, we thought. But ever since then I have driven automatic cars, except when abroad when hired geared cars were more obtainable.
I reckon I must have been a pain in the proverbial to the directors of the company. Time and again I would warn them of the impending catastrophy. Nobody seemed overly bothered. One morning John Williams said he wanted me to go develop some export sales. "Where?" I asked. "Wherever the hell in Europe you like", came the answer. "Try Switzerland for a start.". This was my first time out of the country and how I likedthe adventure. I literally disembarked from the plane in Zurich's Kloten airport with the list of possible sales targets I'd obtained from the British Embassy in London and a bagful of samples, took a taxi to the city centre, found myself a good (very good) hotel and spent the evening walking the streets, trying out the odd bar and a restaurant. (Marvellous food.) This was a habit I always maintained when arriving solo in a new city. But now, to hell with the problems in our Liverpool factory. I travelled all over Switzerland by train and rented car, very seldom having trouble with the language as everyone seemed to speak pluperfect English. Berne was my favourite place but Geneva ranked high and, of all high places, Davos. And of course Zurich and the beautiful little town named Zug that overlooked (lake) Zurichsee. I sold some good orders then, and later, on return visits - even though we couldn't supply all of them - and made some good business friends. Suddenly my international goals seemed not only closer but also highly attainable. The only trouble was that bloody factory - or rather, my bloody bosses who didn't seem able to run it properly. By then the infamous lady leader of the local print union had well and truly dug in her heels.
Back home the girls and boys were fast growing up. Formby was such a lot of family fun. Longcliffe Drive led into a beach-side woodland with red squirrels everywhere, and the adjacent flat and sandy beach was immense. When the tide ebbed there it must have extended out the best part of half a mile and when it started to flow, if you were out at the edge of the water you had to walk back in something of a hurry just to keep your feet dry. Then there were the great sand dunes, populated by that whole, nationally protected tribe of natterjack toads. I recall one evening, returning home after taking Joan out for a meal, we tiptoed in the dark into the front porch only to tread on something squishy. I switched on the light. Everywhere there were these fat and knobbly amphibians shuffling and hopping about, except the one that would never see another dawn. They'd been captured and imprisoned by Robert and Stuart. It was after midnight before I caught them all (but one) and returned them to their natural homeland.
Trouble was, I was once again spending more and more time, and I guess I have to say more attention, away from home. I was never afraid of damaging my marriage. Indeed, having been subjected in my early life to the shock and trauma of my parents' split, I never wanted anyone or anything else. But my lovely Joan - the lady with whom I had shared so very much - had begun to show signs of rebellion at my absences. Just as had I started to rebel at work. The money notwithstanding, it was no longer plain sailing in either department of my life.
February 4, 2015
Camping, fishing and prospering.
In 1961 I invested in a tent and all the necessary camping kit for our holidays. In our brand new two tone Ford Cortina Estate we tried it out early in the year - too early actually, for it rained and it rained. We had difficulty locating a farmer in Wales good enough to let us pitch in his field. Erecting the thing in the rainy darkness and sorting ourselves out for the night should have put us off camping for ever. We were not happy bunnies. But it didn't.
From then until about 1968 camping was our holiday thing, most often in West Wales at a place called Shell Island. I understand it is now a recognised and fully equipped camping ground but in those days we were one of a very few of farmer Workman's 'guests'. You could get there across a causeway only at low tide. (One trip across we noticed a damn great salmon trapped in a tidal pool. One for the pot after a good deal of splashing and crashing around with a bait digging fork.) When you knocked on the farmhouse door and checked in we would go to our usual corner of a field, pitch up and dig our sanitary hole (pitching the special little latrine tent around it). Looking back, we seemed always to arrive with very little money but very high hopes for the bass fishing. But with a lot of happiness in anticipation of joining up with the same group of families each summer.
Oh, those beach parties! We would take it in turns to tend a fire and turn over it on a spit a small pig or lamb - and/or the bass and mullet we had seine netted from the edge of the sea! Glorious. One of our good companions was a Professor Mike someone from Aston University, and his family, and then there was the unforgettable Norman Bush and his family of two. 'Bush' was right. He had the biggest, most luxurious growth I'd encountered up to then. I don't know what Norman did for a living but, sitting around the beach fire, kiddies fast falling asleep, his pretty wife would sing folk songs for us. She had, literally, the voice of an angel (or Joan Baez).. You know how it is when you experience close up at first hand something so perfect, so fine that it stands the hairs up on the nape of your neck?
As a little boy and all the way up to my first job at Boots the Chemists I had been obsessive about angling, both freshwater and sea. (Reference my prior blog, the one entitled 'Fisherboy') Now a well married family man aged twenty eight, the opportunity and the obsession re-emerged. Perhaps selfishly, for Joan had only limited interest in it, fishing went along with camping as the thing we did - pretty well exclusively - on our family holidays. There was a spot on the beach at Shell Island at the end of a range of rocks uncovered by each night-time rising tide where the bass would patrol. They couldn't resist the clam bait we dug out of the estuary mud. I can tell you one thing - for me, barbequed bass is much tastier than barbequed mullet or any fishy restaurant offering with the possible exception of pan-fried Dover sole. One summer holiday we were given the use of a small speedboat. Totally unsuited to angling but what the hell. I caught a forty pound tope (small shark) which we tried to barbeque but which proved a disastrous waste of a fine animal. Pride can be a false master. I should have let it go.
When our second son Stuart arrived on the 29th of December, 1965 , in a Solihull maternity hospital, he might as well have been born with a fishing rod in his hand. We took him, Robert, Julie and Karen to Shell Island many times. Or family friends there used to call baby Stu "Me-og" because that was his constant refrain as he toddled around looking for his miniature rod. He would stand on the pebbled beach casting his line with stone attached into six inches of seawater, gazing with total conviction in hopes of a catch.
I could occupy several chapters with these holidays and one day, should I decide to expand these blogs into a full blown autobiography I'll do so: I'll remember the wonderful sound of rain on canvas as you're snuggled together in your sleeping bag; chiselling our family name into a boulder close by 'our' site (it must still be there); being up to my fully clothed chest in the sea, spreading the net, feeling the fish hits; that first cup of tea in bed, the barefoot excitement of children running around on rain-soaked grass; the simple freedoms and the sense of adventure that went with them; seeking and finding seabirds eggs and of course those barbeques beneath the stars. All of it truly wonderful, and no less for the looking back.
There were other holidays of course; I remember South Wales and Pendine beach, Cornwall's Bude and Mevagissey, fishing the end of the pier in company with others of my obsession. There, the taste of pasties and salty lugworm. Smoking Hamlet small cigars, forevermore, for me, associated with Jacques Loussiere's Air on a G-string.
Meanwhile my career was developing as fast as my family. Girls were promising to develop into young ladies, boys from squeaky infants into angel-faced little nursery primary / nursery schoolboys. In late 1967 I was promoted from area sales manager to national sales manager. Another house move. Today the whole U.K.; tomorrow Europe and after that, the world ... why not? I thought.
From then until about 1968 camping was our holiday thing, most often in West Wales at a place called Shell Island. I understand it is now a recognised and fully equipped camping ground but in those days we were one of a very few of farmer Workman's 'guests'. You could get there across a causeway only at low tide. (One trip across we noticed a damn great salmon trapped in a tidal pool. One for the pot after a good deal of splashing and crashing around with a bait digging fork.) When you knocked on the farmhouse door and checked in we would go to our usual corner of a field, pitch up and dig our sanitary hole (pitching the special little latrine tent around it). Looking back, we seemed always to arrive with very little money but very high hopes for the bass fishing. But with a lot of happiness in anticipation of joining up with the same group of families each summer.
Oh, those beach parties! We would take it in turns to tend a fire and turn over it on a spit a small pig or lamb - and/or the bass and mullet we had seine netted from the edge of the sea! Glorious. One of our good companions was a Professor Mike someone from Aston University, and his family, and then there was the unforgettable Norman Bush and his family of two. 'Bush' was right. He had the biggest, most luxurious growth I'd encountered up to then. I don't know what Norman did for a living but, sitting around the beach fire, kiddies fast falling asleep, his pretty wife would sing folk songs for us. She had, literally, the voice of an angel (or Joan Baez).. You know how it is when you experience close up at first hand something so perfect, so fine that it stands the hairs up on the nape of your neck?
As a little boy and all the way up to my first job at Boots the Chemists I had been obsessive about angling, both freshwater and sea. (Reference my prior blog, the one entitled 'Fisherboy') Now a well married family man aged twenty eight, the opportunity and the obsession re-emerged. Perhaps selfishly, for Joan had only limited interest in it, fishing went along with camping as the thing we did - pretty well exclusively - on our family holidays. There was a spot on the beach at Shell Island at the end of a range of rocks uncovered by each night-time rising tide where the bass would patrol. They couldn't resist the clam bait we dug out of the estuary mud. I can tell you one thing - for me, barbequed bass is much tastier than barbequed mullet or any fishy restaurant offering with the possible exception of pan-fried Dover sole. One summer holiday we were given the use of a small speedboat. Totally unsuited to angling but what the hell. I caught a forty pound tope (small shark) which we tried to barbeque but which proved a disastrous waste of a fine animal. Pride can be a false master. I should have let it go.
When our second son Stuart arrived on the 29th of December, 1965 , in a Solihull maternity hospital, he might as well have been born with a fishing rod in his hand. We took him, Robert, Julie and Karen to Shell Island many times. Or family friends there used to call baby Stu "Me-og" because that was his constant refrain as he toddled around looking for his miniature rod. He would stand on the pebbled beach casting his line with stone attached into six inches of seawater, gazing with total conviction in hopes of a catch.
I could occupy several chapters with these holidays and one day, should I decide to expand these blogs into a full blown autobiography I'll do so: I'll remember the wonderful sound of rain on canvas as you're snuggled together in your sleeping bag; chiselling our family name into a boulder close by 'our' site (it must still be there); being up to my fully clothed chest in the sea, spreading the net, feeling the fish hits; that first cup of tea in bed, the barefoot excitement of children running around on rain-soaked grass; the simple freedoms and the sense of adventure that went with them; seeking and finding seabirds eggs and of course those barbeques beneath the stars. All of it truly wonderful, and no less for the looking back.
There were other holidays of course; I remember South Wales and Pendine beach, Cornwall's Bude and Mevagissey, fishing the end of the pier in company with others of my obsession. There, the taste of pasties and salty lugworm. Smoking Hamlet small cigars, forevermore, for me, associated with Jacques Loussiere's Air on a G-string.
Meanwhile my career was developing as fast as my family. Girls were promising to develop into young ladies, boys from squeaky infants into angel-faced little nursery primary / nursery schoolboys. In late 1967 I was promoted from area sales manager to national sales manager. Another house move. Today the whole U.K.; tomorrow Europe and after that, the world ... why not? I thought.
February 2, 2015
1963: thrills and spills
1963: a solo summons to Head Office could mean only one of two things; I'm either getting fired or promoted. The company was going through hard times because of its inability to manufacture anything close to its rated potential, meaning that we salesmen had to spend much of our efforts on explaining short deliveries, having taken orders in all good faith. Industrial buyer/seller relationships were extremely hard won and therefore very valuable assets in those per-internet days. Damage could be permanent. I had to be aware of the possibility of redundancy. On the other hand I had been consistently high up on the company's sales graphs and my work had often found favour with the management.
Promotion it was; I was to be the new midlands and south west territorial sales manager. At a stroke, for me life changed, and I don't mean just business life. Nevertheless in terms of the latter I can understand why large companies often have policies to prevent one from a group of colleagues being promoted over the other members of same group. Especially in a solidly results oriented team and especially when the selected one is junior in years and in experience to all of the others - and not necessarily even the leader in sales results.
Some years later I asked my boss how come the finger had pointed at me? Finger is a quite appropriate word. At one of the preceding sales conferences John Williams had invited all his sales guys to prepare a short talk on any subject of his choice. We would all congregate in the hotel conference room to watch on TV whilst in a separate room, one by one, we presented our efforts to a closed circuit TV camera. I had just read a book about the South American policeman who'd discovered and developed finger printing technology. That book and a few of my homespun illustrations had done the trick!
It took me a while as area manager to find the essential ground between being overly authoritarian and overly egalitarian with 'my' team. In this I was assisted by being seconded on to several junior management training courses at head office. In that way I got to know others of my ilk in the Group - as well as the nightlife and pub life of Bristol! I remember that, for some obscure reason one of such training courses courses was all about 'public speaking'. For a week we would be taught the rudiments and then, on the final afternoon, we would each deliver a ten minute address on any subject we chose to the Group Chairman, Sir John Foster Robinson. 'Piece of cake'?! For goodness sake, weren't all we eager young managers expert with words? But unfortunately, despite the emphasis on preparation we spent little or no time on the essential evening homework. When Friday's presentation time came around, one by one we made a bloody silly fool of ourselves. In common with all of us I found that ten minutes is one hell of a long time to talk about anything to an audience, impossible for almost everyone in the absence of specific preparation and much rehearsal. As I recall, when the last of us had huffed and blundered his way through, probably with many an embarrassing silence, Sir John stalked off, saying ne'er a goodbye.
Several things have remained fixed in my memory about our family times in Yarningale Road, mostly good things. We were very happy there for a start, although of course not always. I remember Joan's tears as we learned on November 22, 1963, via our rented TV, that President Kennedy had been killed. How, I wondered then, (and still do), could such a remote and, as we now know much flawed politician evoke such a depth of love? But we did love the man. At the time, expectations in his aftermath were a perfect and much worrying void. Anything or nothing, or nuclear disaster.
And, from major to minor, I remember my best ever figure painting - maybe my best ever painting, period. Ready for bed in a blue nightie little Julie had fallen asleep on the settee. Stupidly I sent the resultant oil painting to my father in Hastings. I thought it might inspire him to take some kind of interest in us, especially since we had named our second daughter after his wife, my stepmother Julia. I know he received it but but when I asked after it years later he denied having had it. One for the rubbish tip. Thank you, father!
Then there was that awful morning when, driving eight years old Karen and her little friend to school, upon said friend getting out, a car came hurtling down the pavement, smashing her into the open rear door. The poor girl had a piece as large as half an orange gouged out of her thigh. The out of control vehicle ended up against a crumpled street light. At the inquest I learned the elderly driver had been dead at the wheel from a heart attack. What a rotten way to leave this world.
In view of our expanded family Joan and I decided to sell our semi and buy a larger newbuild detached in nearby, upmarket Solihull. My home made 'for sale' board hadn't been up in Yarningale Road more than a day or two before a young Asian gentleman came calling. It was the oddest house sale of the four I've made since then. He hardly looked round the rooms before making a bee-line for the garage, and, after detailed inspection nodding his approval. At that we went back to the kitchen where he opened his attache case and counted out the full asking price - in banknotes! Of course the Bristol & West Building Society took the majority of it but not before I had paid it into my depleted bank account by counting it out on to my somewhat taken aback bank manager's desk. Oh, temporary wealth!
Our new home was one of the first completions on the gigantic Damsonwood Estate, situated alongside the 'Rovers' (British Leyland) test track. We furnished the house mainly on the good old HP and added a warm water fish tank to the lounge. At the rear of our back garden I created a goldfish pond, (something I did in every subsequent new house purchase). With much ceremony.Karen planted a number of acorns and introduced Sammy the tortoise, who lived happily there until our next door neighbour's lovely little dog killed and ate much of him! So many tears!
For the first time I was now to spend much of my working week staying away from home in hotels, therefore fully exposed to all the temptations of the expense account flesh. Life's focus was inexorably shifting to the heady excitement of my burgeoning career. Like any reasonably nice looking, well dressed young business executive I was beginning to notice that most heady of wonders - that young ladies were noticing me!
Promotion it was; I was to be the new midlands and south west territorial sales manager. At a stroke, for me life changed, and I don't mean just business life. Nevertheless in terms of the latter I can understand why large companies often have policies to prevent one from a group of colleagues being promoted over the other members of same group. Especially in a solidly results oriented team and especially when the selected one is junior in years and in experience to all of the others - and not necessarily even the leader in sales results.
Some years later I asked my boss how come the finger had pointed at me? Finger is a quite appropriate word. At one of the preceding sales conferences John Williams had invited all his sales guys to prepare a short talk on any subject of his choice. We would all congregate in the hotel conference room to watch on TV whilst in a separate room, one by one, we presented our efforts to a closed circuit TV camera. I had just read a book about the South American policeman who'd discovered and developed finger printing technology. That book and a few of my homespun illustrations had done the trick!
It took me a while as area manager to find the essential ground between being overly authoritarian and overly egalitarian with 'my' team. In this I was assisted by being seconded on to several junior management training courses at head office. In that way I got to know others of my ilk in the Group - as well as the nightlife and pub life of Bristol! I remember that, for some obscure reason one of such training courses courses was all about 'public speaking'. For a week we would be taught the rudiments and then, on the final afternoon, we would each deliver a ten minute address on any subject we chose to the Group Chairman, Sir John Foster Robinson. 'Piece of cake'?! For goodness sake, weren't all we eager young managers expert with words? But unfortunately, despite the emphasis on preparation we spent little or no time on the essential evening homework. When Friday's presentation time came around, one by one we made a bloody silly fool of ourselves. In common with all of us I found that ten minutes is one hell of a long time to talk about anything to an audience, impossible for almost everyone in the absence of specific preparation and much rehearsal. As I recall, when the last of us had huffed and blundered his way through, probably with many an embarrassing silence, Sir John stalked off, saying ne'er a goodbye.
Several things have remained fixed in my memory about our family times in Yarningale Road, mostly good things. We were very happy there for a start, although of course not always. I remember Joan's tears as we learned on November 22, 1963, via our rented TV, that President Kennedy had been killed. How, I wondered then, (and still do), could such a remote and, as we now know much flawed politician evoke such a depth of love? But we did love the man. At the time, expectations in his aftermath were a perfect and much worrying void. Anything or nothing, or nuclear disaster.
And, from major to minor, I remember my best ever figure painting - maybe my best ever painting, period. Ready for bed in a blue nightie little Julie had fallen asleep on the settee. Stupidly I sent the resultant oil painting to my father in Hastings. I thought it might inspire him to take some kind of interest in us, especially since we had named our second daughter after his wife, my stepmother Julia. I know he received it but but when I asked after it years later he denied having had it. One for the rubbish tip. Thank you, father!
Then there was that awful morning when, driving eight years old Karen and her little friend to school, upon said friend getting out, a car came hurtling down the pavement, smashing her into the open rear door. The poor girl had a piece as large as half an orange gouged out of her thigh. The out of control vehicle ended up against a crumpled street light. At the inquest I learned the elderly driver had been dead at the wheel from a heart attack. What a rotten way to leave this world.
In view of our expanded family Joan and I decided to sell our semi and buy a larger newbuild detached in nearby, upmarket Solihull. My home made 'for sale' board hadn't been up in Yarningale Road more than a day or two before a young Asian gentleman came calling. It was the oddest house sale of the four I've made since then. He hardly looked round the rooms before making a bee-line for the garage, and, after detailed inspection nodding his approval. At that we went back to the kitchen where he opened his attache case and counted out the full asking price - in banknotes! Of course the Bristol & West Building Society took the majority of it but not before I had paid it into my depleted bank account by counting it out on to my somewhat taken aback bank manager's desk. Oh, temporary wealth!
Our new home was one of the first completions on the gigantic Damsonwood Estate, situated alongside the 'Rovers' (British Leyland) test track. We furnished the house mainly on the good old HP and added a warm water fish tank to the lounge. At the rear of our back garden I created a goldfish pond, (something I did in every subsequent new house purchase). With much ceremony.Karen planted a number of acorns and introduced Sammy the tortoise, who lived happily there until our next door neighbour's lovely little dog killed and ate much of him! So many tears!
For the first time I was now to spend much of my working week staying away from home in hotels, therefore fully exposed to all the temptations of the expense account flesh. Life's focus was inexorably shifting to the heady excitement of my burgeoning career. Like any reasonably nice looking, well dressed young business executive I was beginning to notice that most heady of wonders - that young ladies were noticing me!
January 28, 2015
Money matters; so does life
Ever since the year 1500 the firstborn male in my family has been allotted the middle name, Henry, I was told that this explained my own middle name and that John Islip had been made Abbot of Westminster on 27 October in that year. The abbot was a close friend and confidant of both Henry VII and Henry VIII, and therefore a Privy Councillor. Abbott Islip was also responsible for the building of large parts of the Abbey, including his own 'Islip chape'l. I have fine copies of his funeral roll here, and more on the upstairs wall of Kirkhill House.
Anyway Robert Henry Islip was born in 121 Yarningale Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham on a snow-bound January 5th in 1963. Because Joan had potential problems in childbirth the other three of our children were born in hospitals. (chronologically: Newmarket, Cambridge and Solihull), but Bob was a homebirth and don't I know it, for I assisted - albeit at a distance - with him whereas with the others I kept - or was kept - well away from the action. As I say, the snow lay deep and crisp and even when Joan's time at last arrived. I called the midwife. A couple of hours later the brave lady made it to our house, having several times had to call for assistance in digging herself out - and having had to park her car a couple of roads away. By this time Joan was making the most agonised of noises.Yours truly was in serious need of much alcohol. Fortunately I didn't have any in the house! I say fortunately because the midwife instructed me to go to her car and bring back a cylinder of oxygen. I slipped and slid through the drifts and falling snow, finally finding her car and struggling back with the cylinder, exhausted. At that I was told, "No, not that one. That's the air cylinder. Take it back and bring the other one - the oxygen." Joan then increased her weeping and wailing, adding a few choice epithets as regards her stupid husband!
But soon enough the midwife called me from upstairs. "It's a boy, Bryan. Come up and meet your son." And so I did, taking with me our two little girls, six years old Karen and two years old Julie. It's a wonder all the noise and kerfuffle didn't put them off child bearing for life, but in fact they've had seven of their own offspring between them.
At this time of my life I began to paint pictures in my spare time, often working by artificial light long after the rest of the family were fast asleep. At school, thirteen years before, 'art' had been one of my best and most enjoyable subjects. I now became obsessed with the French Impressionists, using artbooks borrowed from the local library to copy, in oils on Dalerboard, well known masterpieces from Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Degas etc. Then I progressed forward to Picasso and Braque and backwards in time to the old Dutch and Italian masters such as this, ('Fall of Rome' by, I think, Carravagio) only recently rediscovered after many 'lost' years in a corner of our Kirkhill attic...
And then came my own first original ... here it is. It hangs to this day on the wall in Kirkhill House. I recall the bananas becoming blacker and blacker as my painting days (or nights) progressed...
Soon after moving from Cambridge into Kings Heath, Birmingham I opened my first bank account with a small branch of The Midland in nearby Shirley. The manager was a keen golfer and I believe I was his only client well placed enough to take the occasional time off work to accompany him for a round. I should explain that a new friend, Ron Amos, a sales executive with DRG Group based in Birmingham, had urged me out on to the Coxmoor links and taught me the rudiments of the game.Being something of an obsessive I soon became well and truly hooked. Crazy! In fact I can remember going out on the course by myself one wintery day when my ill-afforded golf balls, well-driven, just disappeared - white in white! My bank manager's name was, I seem to recall, Norman Windebank. Quite appropriate, for although we became regular golfing buddies, age difference notwithstanding, the relationship enabled my very flexible overdraft to become much too flexible!
It wasn't until just before we moved away from the area that I learned about this typical suburban bank manager's wartime. Norman had been a pilot on Mosquito fighter-bombers. He was one of those unbelievably brave souls who went to bomb German's heavy water plant in Norway, knowing they could carry insufficient fuel to get them home. He ditched in the cold North Sea. The target was essential to Germany's efforts to construct the first atomic bomb. You can imagine, 'what if ... Norman and his like had failed.'
By this time the company's sales was regularly outstripping its production. I had little or nothing to sell! So one workday morning I called head office and asked if there was anything I could do to help in the factory. John Williams was quite horrified. "Bryan," he urged, "Don't be daft. You play golf, don't you? Just get out there and improve your handicap." Lovely. I needed no second bidding.
Then came the hardest lesson in a business career; the lesson that says it's all about money, cash andcash flow, coin of the realm. I had obtained a large order from a well-spoken young guy in the entertainment industry. He was organising a giant jazz festival out at, I think, Earlswood Lakes. Nice office, big car, Oxfordian accent; solid gold new customer. The Saturday dawned sultry hot so Joan and I took our brood out to the festival. We sat on the grass, listened to the music, ate our hot dogs off 'my' paper plates, drank beer or lemonade out of 'my' paper cups. Brilliant. Free entry for us as 'suppliers' of course. On Monday my home phone rang. My company's finance director. The well promised Earlswood money had not been paid over, would I go see the man. Like, now!
I was just and only just in time when I literally burst into his office where I surprised him busily counting a huge pile of silver coins. Suffice to say I walked away with his invoice fully paid and a very heavy briefcase. Later on, I believe from a piece in the Birmingham Post I learned he had defaulted here, there and everywhere - including the poor jazz bands.
One day in 1963 I was summoned to Liverpool head office and promoted to area sales manager. New title, new responsibilities, new motor car and, very soon, new home. Oh, the giddying heights! To celebrate I brought home a fish and chips supper - just like Cambridge!
Anyway Robert Henry Islip was born in 121 Yarningale Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham on a snow-bound January 5th in 1963. Because Joan had potential problems in childbirth the other three of our children were born in hospitals. (chronologically: Newmarket, Cambridge and Solihull), but Bob was a homebirth and don't I know it, for I assisted - albeit at a distance - with him whereas with the others I kept - or was kept - well away from the action. As I say, the snow lay deep and crisp and even when Joan's time at last arrived. I called the midwife. A couple of hours later the brave lady made it to our house, having several times had to call for assistance in digging herself out - and having had to park her car a couple of roads away. By this time Joan was making the most agonised of noises.Yours truly was in serious need of much alcohol. Fortunately I didn't have any in the house! I say fortunately because the midwife instructed me to go to her car and bring back a cylinder of oxygen. I slipped and slid through the drifts and falling snow, finally finding her car and struggling back with the cylinder, exhausted. At that I was told, "No, not that one. That's the air cylinder. Take it back and bring the other one - the oxygen." Joan then increased her weeping and wailing, adding a few choice epithets as regards her stupid husband!
But soon enough the midwife called me from upstairs. "It's a boy, Bryan. Come up and meet your son." And so I did, taking with me our two little girls, six years old Karen and two years old Julie. It's a wonder all the noise and kerfuffle didn't put them off child bearing for life, but in fact they've had seven of their own offspring between them.
At this time of my life I began to paint pictures in my spare time, often working by artificial light long after the rest of the family were fast asleep. At school, thirteen years before, 'art' had been one of my best and most enjoyable subjects. I now became obsessed with the French Impressionists, using artbooks borrowed from the local library to copy, in oils on Dalerboard, well known masterpieces from Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Degas etc. Then I progressed forward to Picasso and Braque and backwards in time to the old Dutch and Italian masters such as this, ('Fall of Rome' by, I think, Carravagio) only recently rediscovered after many 'lost' years in a corner of our Kirkhill attic...
And then came my own first original ... here it is. It hangs to this day on the wall in Kirkhill House. I recall the bananas becoming blacker and blacker as my painting days (or nights) progressed...
Soon after moving from Cambridge into Kings Heath, Birmingham I opened my first bank account with a small branch of The Midland in nearby Shirley. The manager was a keen golfer and I believe I was his only client well placed enough to take the occasional time off work to accompany him for a round. I should explain that a new friend, Ron Amos, a sales executive with DRG Group based in Birmingham, had urged me out on to the Coxmoor links and taught me the rudiments of the game.Being something of an obsessive I soon became well and truly hooked. Crazy! In fact I can remember going out on the course by myself one wintery day when my ill-afforded golf balls, well-driven, just disappeared - white in white! My bank manager's name was, I seem to recall, Norman Windebank. Quite appropriate, for although we became regular golfing buddies, age difference notwithstanding, the relationship enabled my very flexible overdraft to become much too flexible!
It wasn't until just before we moved away from the area that I learned about this typical suburban bank manager's wartime. Norman had been a pilot on Mosquito fighter-bombers. He was one of those unbelievably brave souls who went to bomb German's heavy water plant in Norway, knowing they could carry insufficient fuel to get them home. He ditched in the cold North Sea. The target was essential to Germany's efforts to construct the first atomic bomb. You can imagine, 'what if ... Norman and his like had failed.'
By this time the company's sales was regularly outstripping its production. I had little or nothing to sell! So one workday morning I called head office and asked if there was anything I could do to help in the factory. John Williams was quite horrified. "Bryan," he urged, "Don't be daft. You play golf, don't you? Just get out there and improve your handicap." Lovely. I needed no second bidding.
Then came the hardest lesson in a business career; the lesson that says it's all about money, cash andcash flow, coin of the realm. I had obtained a large order from a well-spoken young guy in the entertainment industry. He was organising a giant jazz festival out at, I think, Earlswood Lakes. Nice office, big car, Oxfordian accent; solid gold new customer. The Saturday dawned sultry hot so Joan and I took our brood out to the festival. We sat on the grass, listened to the music, ate our hot dogs off 'my' paper plates, drank beer or lemonade out of 'my' paper cups. Brilliant. Free entry for us as 'suppliers' of course. On Monday my home phone rang. My company's finance director. The well promised Earlswood money had not been paid over, would I go see the man. Like, now!
I was just and only just in time when I literally burst into his office where I surprised him busily counting a huge pile of silver coins. Suffice to say I walked away with his invoice fully paid and a very heavy briefcase. Later on, I believe from a piece in the Birmingham Post I learned he had defaulted here, there and everywhere - including the poor jazz bands.
One day in 1963 I was summoned to Liverpool head office and promoted to area sales manager. New title, new responsibilities, new motor car and, very soon, new home. Oh, the giddying heights! To celebrate I brought home a fish and chips supper - just like Cambridge!
