[2014]
MISFORTUNE IN THE
1980s
After the stability offered in the 1970s, by my work with IBM and family life at Molesey, the 1980s were much more insecure. Not least, in terms of home life, Sarah inevitably disappeared off to university and like others of her generation - never really came back.
That was not unexpected, it is the way of life with todays children and was just as true of me in my own time. What we had not counted on was the even earlier disappearance of Miles:
0249 Seduction of Miles
9159 Miles' Seduction 2
9259 Miles Returns
My work at IBM continued, though, with its own form of social life:
9174 Secretaries - and my (inevitably platonic) relationships with them
9048 Romantic Short Story - written much
later on this theme!
9187 Affairs - or the absence of these
Then my new boss at IBM uprooted me - both at work and, more importantly at home - by insisting I move house to the location where I had previously only in theory been based:
0296 Move to Basingstoke
9186 Basingstoke 1 - Basingstoke House
(9186T*)
9152 Basingstoke 2 - Basingstoke Life
This part of my working life culminated, a few years later, in my final, traumatic separation from IBM; which is the subject of another section:
[0299 IBM Defamation and Departure]
In any case, I have always been litigious. Sometimes I have been successful but sometimes I have been spectacularly unsuccessful, with for example my case against the Inland Revenue in the later 1990s dragging on for something approaching a decade:
9220 Litigation
0353 Complaint to the Treasury
0342 Tax Ombudsman
My forced departure from IBM, in turn, led to my setting up my own business. This was something that, like many of my contemporaries, I had always wanted to do. The only difference was that being as ambitious as I always was I tried to set up a medium sized business; with 20+ employees and a projected turnover of several millions! Yet it too proved to be a disaster, full of personal trauma:
0261 Setting Up Computerland [0261T*]
9281 Computerland Business Case 1986
0260 Building Computerland [0260T*]
9110 Computerland Brochure 1986
0184 Computerland Sales Force
0269 Computerland Salesmen
0290 Computerland Systems Support
0222 Computerland - the Road to Bankruptcy
9134 Computerland Follow-Up Prospectus 1987
Associated with this, where the dealership was in Feltham, was yet another brief - house move:
9148 Ashford House
(9148T*)
9133 Ashford Life (9133T*)
And, worst of all, it was followed very quickly by yet another period on the dole looking for work, and only finding yet another questionable job. The summary of my history up to then was:
Thus, I eventually found a temporary niche, albeit a very uncomfortable one, once more in selling:
9178 Consultancy after ComputerLand
9121 Mentor
9312 Civil Service Selection Board
* Text only versions
hits