FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 1 Early Days

When he came into the office on that day in 1976, and handed me the spread rates, it was his way of signalling a change of guard.

who was working there should have been on another job for us in Barnet. I wrote it all down, and I went into the office at Avenue Road that afternoon and told them. The office manager told me to shut up and go and do my job. So I phoned Dad in Ireland that evening, and told him something was wrong, and he needed to come back. He flew back, and we went up to the school the next day, and he sacked everyone, including the people in the office. Dad stayed on for a few months: long enough to close down the Avenue Road office, and move everything back to Ancaster Road. But he’d had enough. And that’s when he came into the office waving the bit of paper with the spread rates on it. M y father built the company out of nothing through sheer hard work and determination. He didn’t know any other way. He hadn’t been through College, or any of that. He knew his trade, and when he gave his word, then he was good for it. He had come from a desperately poor background, and he had lifted himself and his family out of it. He knew the value of money: when he had a couple of quid in his pocket, he was a rich man. Provided he had enough for a few pints, to go out and see the dogs, and maybe put a few quid on the horses – that was all he wanted. And perhaps he had achieved what he had set out to. When he came into the office on that day in 1976, and handed me the spread rates, it was his way of signalling a change of guard. The spread rates were what he knew: he could measure up a job to within a barrow-load by pacing it out with his boots. But things were changing, and he knew it. His way of working – hard work and hard play – could take us only so far.

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