Wow love those stairs I have always wanted a house with a stairs that go off to either side There is something nice about a good stairs
Youre welcome - goes for me too.....my job is one of the easiest to make someone look stupid - (usually me) as theres a million different ways to do a million different things. If i dont know something i just say...
Wow - just a lowly sys admin....im like the mechanic that never drives the car....just fix stuff for people....scripting for me is non existent (let alone coding)....i tend to use other peoples stuff and then plagiarize til i get it to do what i want it to and even then half the time it doesnt work!!
I struggled with scripting until I used Labview, a graphical programming tool if you’ve not heard of it, and found it easier to understand after that.
Engineering stuff....my brother uses LabView all the time.... I think scripting needs a structured mind which i dont have..!
Sadly my Rostrum skills were nothing as exciting as Ken morse. I used it to make slides (remember them) from artwork and duplicate other transparencies. We also used to use it to drop a photo into a graphic slide, scanners were too complicated and expensive in those days. Ken Morse would shoot footage from stills, so if you wanted to zoom and pan across a still photo For a tv show you used the camera to make a kind of stop frame animation. The camera could move up and down, zoom in, and there was a ‘compound table’ which you could move left to right and up and down. This was all manual but eventually they added motors. Once Computer graphics and the processing and software improved then they were redundant. I paid £5,000 for the camera and eventually had to pay the council to take it away...
Used to work with a photographer in my first job....his explanation for ASA.... 400 Asa for taking a picture of your granny. 1000 Asa for taking a picture of Idi Amin in your basement.
School didn't go so well for me, though I really enjoyed it, especially secondary school. I was categorised as "gifted" but I also was mischievous and so was constantly in trouble, mostly for being the class clown, winding up the teachers and getting into fights with kids who thought they could cure my sharp tongue with blows to the head. It didn't help matters that my mum was a teacher at the same primary school, so I learned to look after myself. I was supposed to go to a grammar school in Liverpool but given that none of my mates were going there and they still had the cane, which with my behaviour would have probably resulted in me being beaten to death within a year, I refused to go and in a rare moment of parental latitude, my mum and dad agreed. I spent almost all of secondary school on report, 2 years of it on isolation and at 16 left to go to 6th Form, from where I was expelled just before Xmas in Upper 6th, but they let me back in to take my exams. An ex gf who was a clinical psychologist and my brother who is a senior psychiatric nurse both independently concluded that I probably had/have ADHD, but of course in the 70s and 80s there was no such thing and you were just a naughty little shit. I had always wanted to be a rock star, a fighter pilot or a barrister, and as I had been playing guitar for several years I thought I would try my luck at the first career on the list down south. I needed to pay the bills so I got a job at a bio tech company in Slough making a hormone called "EPO" but resigned after a year on principle as I learned they were purposely stockpiling it in order to drive up unit cost and their share price. Got on an Earth Sciences degreed at a northern uni but had to drop out after a few months because I didn't get a full grant and due to its countryside location there was no work to be had so I ran out of money and moved back to my mum and dad's. Worked at the Glaxo factory in Liverpool where they make flu vaccine for 9 months. I was supposed to be doing some sort of science role, but after it turned out that the person I'd told that I would have preferred cleaning oil rigs with a tooth brush was my manager's manager, I got sent to bottle washing. I loved that job, as I was left to my own devices to wander the site collecting bottles, bell jars and test tubes to be autoclaved while listening to my Walkman and chatting up any young ladies I met en route. I was also playing in a band playing Jimi Hendrix covers by now and fancied myself as quite the axe man so I upped sticks again and moved to Windsor to share a house with a group of lads I had met when working together in Slough. Played in various bands for a few years and also worked for a while as a metalworker/welder in a company owned by one of my bandmates and I can still go around London and point at balustrade, catwalks and fire escapes on landmark buildings that I helped make or erect. The lads I was living with had to move and I could no longer crash on a camp bed in their dining room, meaning I ended up homeless for a few months and after a few days on the street I ended up in a windowless room in what was basically a bail hostel full of junkies and headcases which soon became intolerable, so I lived in a tent on a camp site until I got myself sorted out. By my early/mid 20s I found myself part-owning and running a recording studio and supplementing the income from that by buying and selling cars. That went bust in 1999 and so not really fancying the idea of bombing villagers from 35,000ft, I decided to skip to #3 on the list and I got a place to study law at the LSE......only for my now ex-wife to be to discover that she was pregnant, so that was the end of that. I decided I needed a proper job and one of my clients got me a start at his dad's surveyors/lettings business in Tottenham, which was basically like a letting agent version of the tv show Desmonds. After a while it became clear that the business wasn't making any money, mainly because the owner just used the office as a refuge to get away from his shrew of a wife and to watch cricket and drink rum with his mates. After about a year I got a job in another agency and because I now had kids to provide for and I couldn't afford to give up work to go to uni, so with a bit of a sigh I resigned myself to a normcore 9-5 life. But.....then in 2001 I discovered you could study part-time/evenings only 3 hours before the deadline for that year's applications, so I applied to do an LL.B there and then and started my degree the week after 9/11. Worked in/helped run the agency during the day with uni in the evening and then 2 years working while doing part-time weekend Bar Exams (couldn't afford the fees but thankfully got a scholarship) and I was called to the Bar. Got pupillage (sort of apprenticeship) at a really good set of chambers but despite doing very well I wasn't taken on, basically because I wasn't posh enough. Did a very hard 11 months "squatting" and earning almost no money at a very good criminal set but the day I was interviewed for tenancy by the head of chambers who is now the DPP, the govt announced £330bn of cuts to legal aid and so he was like "We're all doomed" and with such an uncertain future they couldn't take me on. Thankfully, he felt I was worth the time and effort for him to phone around other sets and he found me a fairly new set that was willing to interview me for tenancy (membership) without the need to "squat" (ie: do a 6 month job interview) first. Got interviewed, got taken on, still there 10 years later. In my time as a barrister I have been involved in some amazing work - the 7/7 Suicide Bombings Inquest (incredibly gruesome and the only case that ever gave me nightmares), murders, the biggest insider dealing case taken on by the FCA, have represented or have been up against some household names (including the Labour Party), had my work and my name in the papers and TV, and have met, worked with and become friends with some truly remarkable people. But even the most mundane cases are fascinating windows into peoples' worlds albeit unfortunately at probably the worst time of their lives. All in all, I have seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like… tears in rain..... What next? Not sure. I have never really had chance to travel much and like Jules at the end of Pulp Fiction, I want to walk the Earth and get in adventures, so the girlf and I are thinking of becoming "digital nomads" and taking our show on the road in our motorhome for a while. After that? Who knows. Part of me wants to do something which involves less pressure and I have long had a real hankering after working in a motorbike shop. I also fancy studying cosmology, so who knows.....
Love a good staircase especially when you can see just how much craftsmanship goes into the end result
Yeah, a few. I’ll get some together and put up links if you like. Most famous one of all was Hello Boys. I never got the credit for it. Mind you it came from Mae West, like some of the other early Wonderbra headlines; such as ‘or are you just pleased to see me.’
Didn’t enjoy school much, I just wanted a laugh at school, my report always read “Nigel is easily distracted, Nigel can do better” career advice at the age of 16 went something like “what do you like? I like cars, you’ll be a mechanic!” Tried that on a YTS for a year or so but it didn’t work out, (spent a fortune at the time on Britool spanner’s which I still have today) so got an electrical apprenticeship with a neighbour who was starting his own business, worked in the ceramic drying industry and pharma industry all over the world, 21st birthday spent working in Abingdon Illinois in a sanitary ware factory commissioning drying equipment. Fell out of love with dusty hot work environments and fell into a sales engineering role with a company called James Walker selling mechanical seals into industry, I’ve worked for various businesses along the way, mainly electrically associated including GEC and Schneider electric, never moving to a competitor company and maintaining my credibility, now manage a key account sales team looking after UK, Ireland and Sweden for an engineered surfaces business with responsibility for £20 million t/o. My imminent move to Sydney with my wife’s new promotion gives me the opportunity to “semi retire” I now have 12 working days left of a sales career spanning 32 years. Will do something down under but not sure what and only part time
I had a job as a saturday boy in the local little bakery while I was at school, just washing up and cleaning tins etc . Didn't know what I wanted to do when i left school so ended up working in the bakery full time as a trainee, making bread/cakes etc . Did it for 25 years in a few small bakeries, the last place in our local high street for 16 years . I still enjoyed it but was working more and more hours for no more money in the last 6 years I was there . My best mate at the time ran a building/glazing company with his brother and asked me if I wanted a job driving the van delivering stuff and tidying up sites etc . It was a major carrer change at 40 years old with quite a pay cut, but I now work 40hrs a week instead of 60+ at strange times of night etc . Been doing it for 6 years so far and still enjoying it . The money isn't great, but the wife earns double my wage, so happy days!
Started working as a paper boy while in school at 12 to have some pocket money for cider... my parents had no money so was my only option. Always liked cars and bikes .. so switched from cider to saving and bought myself a 50cc Honda at 16 CB50J in Green... followed by an AR50.. Built a rally cross car for the local school after I finished my exams at 16.. worked on that from May to End August - completely rebuilt a car... from 3 scrap minis... rebuilt engine - transmission... new brakes.. all good fun. Started Engineering Apprenticeship at 16. First year in College - Welding / Fabricating / Machining / Fitting Did ONC and HNC in Mech Engineering During this left home - rented an old cottage - no heating - outside toilet - 2 up 1 down - old stone sink... lived there for 2 years... Water running down walls... but it was mine (my space) Stayed with the company I did my apprenticeship for initially as a Draughtsman (on the board) then Production Engineer, Then Project Management and Production Engineering.. it was a 200 person Aerospace company... so you learned to do things the right way.... Liked the company... but like everything... companies and people changed... and I decided after 11 years to move on. Worked for a German Moulding Company for 4 months... Terrible place... knew within a week I had screwed up. Changed and went to work as a Production Engineer in a connector company.... that was great... they were so bad at what they were doing it was easy to make huge improvements and look good... Managed building a new extension for them and fit out ... bought lots of automation.. that's what go me started on machines.. I put in all the systems, spares and documents that after 2 years my life became easy.... So my MD sent me to do my MBA part time... I worked there another 2 years, finished my taught part of my MBA and then moved on as I had 2 kids by now and needed more money. I then went to my current company... Automotive Component Supplier as Senior Engineer... I started buying automation and equipment and spent 50% my time abroad - Mainly Germany for the first year... then in the second year... continuing that but working on a downsizing and relocation project for the business that eventually turned into a closure and relocation. As I was part of the team doing all this before the announcement.. I started looking else where for a job and turned in my notice.... Then I fell into the next role My boss who was fit and healthy had a stroke ... due to the stress of the closure (still not announced).. so even though I was working my notice I covered his position, working late nights and weekends .... this must have got me noticed.. because I was offered a job working for the Global Manufacturing Team ... to work on business rationalisation and improvements. So I took that role and stayed with company, closed and relocated the business and started travelling 48 weeks a year (home most weekends)... when I started .. it was just going to be for 2 years.... but as the money was good and by that time the family had got used to it.. I stayed doing it. So a further 18 years later still doing the same job.. still travel the world now Leader of the Global Manufacturing group for the last 9 years - now a much smaller team than before, looking after 11 plants around the world. I manage the major projects / Capital / Customer / Rationalisation myself and have my small team to support me and personally manage between $5 and $10 million of Capex projects a year. After working in Engineering for 36 years... working 16 hour days... extensive travel... looking forward to retirement in 3 years... (assuming my Pension recovers from Covid)... finding a part time job to keep busy... more time with the grand kids and my dogs.... And never want to see a plane or hotel again....
