It's now the second half of 1987. I'm 38 years old and Lucy is a teenager and Gary will be one on his next birthday. Kelly is just 8 and Ross is approaching his 4th birthday. Major changes are underway at work and I'm not sure exactly how they are going to affect me. I decided it was time to take out some insurance, just in case things didn't work out for me after the big food company, Geest, took over most of the business I worked for.
After a number of interviews, I got offered a job with Rawlplug (http://www.rawlplug.co.uk/), but the position would be based in Glasgow, which would mean uprooting the family yet again - albeit back to what Jo and I still regarded as our home turf in the West of Scotland - even although only Lucy had ever actually lived there, and then only briefly as a little baby. Whilst we were swithering about whether or not to accept this offer - and with Lucy's words of just 4 years ago still ringing in my ears - all of a sudden, Rawlplug withdrew the offer, so there was no decision to make. It transpired that the present incumbent, who was due to move on elsewhere within the group, had changed his mind and would be staying in the position. (Rawlplug was then part of a large British group - was it Smiths Industries? Anyway, I notice it is now owned by a Polish company).
Now this was potentially a very awkward position for Rawlplug. They had issued the offer letter to me and could be held liable. I had gone to all the different interviews and even undergone their usual group psychological profiling/assessment. I received a difficult telephone call from the person who had appointed me and who would be my boss. His primary concern was whether I had handed in my notice or not? I could have lied and told him I had, in which case they would have been liable for any financial losses I would suffer as a result, but I didn't - I told him my present employers were unaware that I had been offered the job. There was an audible sigh of relief down the telephone line.
This brief flirtation unsettled us a little, and over the next year or so, I did keep my eye on the jobs market a bit more than previously, but I never again got to such an advanced stage of considering moving on.
Back at work, in the new Geest regime, it was clear that Bill Hazeldean still had unfinished ambitions to break away from his mentor, Dr. Francis Clark. It wasn't too long before he poured enough poison to ensure that the Doc's days with Geest would be short-lived. As with his aborted bid to buy Clipper Seafoods when Unigate had put them up for sale 3 years before, Bill had ensured that Geest only acquired what he considered to be the juicy bits of Clipper/MacFisheries - and didn't get involved with the Trading or Cold Store activities. This meant that these businesses were still owned by the Clark family, and Francis, Jnr, who was not offered employment by Geest, was left running them on his own.
When the Doc's severance with Geest arrived, he simply moved over to the Trading and Cold Store businesses and joined his son there. As soon as the Doc did that, he began to make overtures to me to come and join him. I was a little uncertain initially - I was still trying to suss out how the Geest thing would work out. Of course, Bill Hazeldean was well aware that the Doc was courting me and whilst he would, I think, have been happy to keep me, he wouldn't want my loyalty to be in any doubt - and nor would Geest.
Eventually, I was summonsed down to Geest's HQ in Spalding, Lincolnshire for a face to face with the Group F.D., who asked me outright if I was going to stay with them or not. I tried to give a bland, neutral response along the lines of it was alright so far, but it was early days and we would have to see how things went. Of course, this was seen as a less than committed response and this meeting effectively sealed my fate.
I carried on for a while, working under the Geest regime, but also doing a bit of moonlighting looking after the Doc's personal investments. In fact, I got fairly involved with the commercial side of the business, particularly on the Bowyer's account, where we were in the process of developing a new pâté product for them. Bowyer's liked what we were doing and forecast great things for the product, so we now had to consider some serious capital investment to be able to make the volume of product required. To justify this investment to the Geest management, we had to prepare the usual payback calculations etc. and, using the forecasts provided by Bowyer's, it looked like being a big profit earner.
It was at this point that I had a serious fall-out with the General Manager of the Division of Geest that we were part of. He was a fairly new recruit to Geest and was very keen to make his mark and wanted to demonstrate to the Geest Board what a star he was. He tried to strong-arm us in to vastly increasing our profit forecast for that year, partly on the back of this proposed investment in new machinery for the pâté line. We - well, I anyway - resisted, and stuck with a more reasonable forecast. Bill H. was strangely silent and let me take all the flak. It's stongarm tactics like this, that get the City a bad name. Geest were a big quoted company and the price of their shares was affected by changes in profit forecasts, amongst other things.
The G.M. - I forget his name now - David something, I think - was f...ing and blinding at me across our Boardroom table - what a looney. He was subsequently soon found out by Geest and summarily dismissed - but not before he made sure I was toast.
These shenanigans did unsettle me and I was now certainly more inclined to take up the Doc's offer and leave Geest and move over to join him at the Trading and Cold Store Divisions, which now came under the banner of Scofish Ltd. I played out the Spring of 1988, waiting for the day that Geest would pay me off. One day I asked Bill Hazeldean outright whether they had a replacement for me yet? Until then it had all been kept under wraps and nothing had been said. I think Bill was relieved that he didn't have to tell me I was being paid off by them.
My replacement was called Matt Clark - no relation to the family who had previously owned the business. He was a nice guy and I was happy to show him the ropes for a month or two before leaving. Geest had meanwhile appointed a replacement Divisional G.M., a diminutive, cigar smoker called Peter Macielinski. He arranged for the Management Team to have a get-to-know-you get-together at what was then Inverey House, a small exclusive hotel just outside Banchory - now the private home of the Mair family. Even although I was in the process of leaving, he invited me along to the do. I got on well with Peter Macielinski and, in other circumstances I would have been happy to stay on and work for him. We met several times about then and eventually he asked me outright what had happened that had caused me to be forced out? He said he would have liked me to stay on, but it was already too late for that.
My very last task for Geest was negotiating a price increase for the new pâté product with Bowyer's. The product hadn't even been launched yet but the cost of raw materials had risen substantially and so a price increase was required.
I arranged to visit Bowyer's at their headquarters in Banbury, Oxfordshire and timed it to coincide with our planned holiday to France that year. This time, we were going to try to go further south and for the first time catch the French Sleeper Train service. The logistics involved Jo driving Lucy, Gary, Kelly and Ross from Banchory down to meet me in Banbury. She managed OK in the end, despite a little off-road incident going over Cairn o' Mount.
I got the required price increase from Bowyer's, but I think this was the nail in the coffin for the product, which never really got off the ground after launch. I tried hard not to gloat, but I was at least now able to go and enjoy my holiday with a completely clear conscience.
We all drove down to Folkestone to catch the conventional ferry this time over to Boulogne. I guess it was a bit windy on top:
Our family consisted of the exact number for the French Sleeper - each compartment had three bench beds on either side, which meant the top bunk was very high indeed and there was no way we were putting the youngest up there. This photo was taken from the top bunk:
Somehow or other, we all managed to get some sleep overnight and we alighted the train at Narbonne in the Languedoc - Rousillon area of SW France. It was early morning but it was a beautiful day and it seemed we had alighted in a whole new world. In the photo above, Jo is eating the packaged evening meal provided, but breakfast was served out on the platform at Narbonne. Long tables were set out with food for the whole train - it was a magical start to the holiday.
Once the holiday was over it was back to work - a new job in a new location at Craigshaw Drive, Altens in south Aberdeen, making my journey to and from work a pretty easy one along the South Deeside Road without having to go anywhere near the city centre.
I was still running and we had upped our mileages sufficiently to take on longer challenges like the Great Scottish Run in Glasgow:
I think I entered this event twice - once it was a half marathon and once it was the longer distance of 25 kms. I suspect the above was the half marathon event. After one of these runs, my vivid memory is of me trying to drive my Mum (who had come along to watch) back to Foxbar Drive and struggling to control the steering wheel properly. I had been running for nearly 2 hours with my arms up in the usual running position (above) and it seemed they were now virtually locked there and I couldn't move them as freely as I needed to, to be able to drive properly. I think I had to ask Mum - or was it Jo? - to take over and drive.
I also recall going back to Gibson St. again for a curry that evening. John McWhinnie, who had run the race as well, of course, was there too and we were joined by Dawn and Michael at the Shish Mahal.
1988 was also the year that our Veterans' Football Group started to take shape. The seeds were sown over some post-squash beers at the Tor-na-Coille Hotel. Dave Williamson, Colin Elgie and I were commenting about how much we loved the buzz we got from playing squash, but what we all really missed was playing football - a team sport and the camaraderie that went with it. We all recognised that we were too old to start playing 11-a-side football again but we thought that maybe indoor 5-a-side would be OK for us.
We each roped in a few friends who might be interested plus several from the squash club and we started booking the school hall for a regular game. I'm pleased to see that it's gone from strength to strength since then and even although I have now had to stop playing, there's plenty who are still keeping the flame burning.
There was a winter trip to Aviemore that year as well - can't quite remember the circumstances but this blurry picture was taken up one of the mountains then:
Lucy is wearing my jacket in the above photo - the practical realities of the cold finally overcoming a teenager's desire to be fashionable at all times.
So that takes us up to the end of 1988, I think. Tales of 1989 and beyond to follow.
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