On leaving College in 1969, I got a job as “Estimating Engineer” in Hull with a company called Richard Sizer and Co. Ltd. It was a desk job involving a lot of contact with suppliers and customers, but was a total desk job which was not well paid. During this time I undertook a 4.1/2 year thick sandwich degree course Lanchester Polytechnic, (now Coventry University). The course was a hard one but I survived and got my BSc Engineering degree, but only received it through the post, because the ceremony that had been planned to be held in Coventry Cathedral was cancelled after the Birmingham pub bombings.
In 1974, I got a much better job with the Ford Motor Company at their Research and Engineering centre, located at Dunton in Essex. The job was that of “Test Engineer” and involved solving problems, designing test rigs, writing procedures, so that our Fitters could run the rigs and each project ended with me writing a report on the component under test. Each new project was different, taxed my brain in different ways and involved contact with different sets of Component Engineers, so I enjoyed it. I had intended to make sufficient money to return to Yorkshire and start my own business, but I decided to stay with this enjoyable job and did so until I retired.
In my personal life, I became a Director of the Daimler and Lanchester Owner’s Club Limited. This involved a lot of travelling to the monthly board meetings and I gave this up when I was recovering from a major operation.
I also got into politics and stood for election to the Brentwood District Council on a lot of occasions. By hard graft, I gradually increased my vote until I was within 150 votes of overtaking the opposition, so I had high hopes of winning the next election. That was not to be. The party authorities also saw the statistics and wanted to parachute an outsider into the council. My up and coming ward was chosen for this and, at election time they flooded the ward with outside workers and won the seat. I retired as Ward Chairman, which freed me to move away when the time to do so came.
Retirement from Ford Motor Co. came unexpectedly early, although it was my choice to do so. I had previously bought a holiday house in the Old Town area of Scarborough and I intended to retire to Scarborough in due course. I liked the Old Town, but few houses had garages, as the street plan was laid down in the year 1125 when no-one needed garages. I have a collection of Lanchester, Daimler and other motor cars, so I wanted garage space to house some of them. One house and its six-car-garage fitted the bill and that house came onto the market in 2010, a full five years before I was due to reach my retirement age of sixty five.
One of the street residents telephoned me to tell me that “the house, which I had been drooling over for the last fifteen years, was for sale”. I made enquiries, decided to sell my Brentwood home, buy the house with the large garage, move everything to Scarborough and then live weekdays in rented accommodation in Essex until retirement. I put this plan into place, then thought again and applied to Ford Motor Co. for early retirement. This was granted so I retired and moved here. It is a more pleasant place to live than Brentwood in Essex, although I do miss my old friends and my ex-colleagues.