FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

A Change of Guard 2

T he following year, 1977, was a struggle. We came to the end of the Cathall Road job, but we were saddled with debts, and we only managed to get through thanks to the odd job that we picked up here and there. The office had moved back to Ancaster Road. The space, which had seemed cramped a few years before, was now quite sufficient for the few of us that were left. There was myself, Brian Cook (a supervisor), and my sister, Annette, who had just joined us. We took on one new person at the end of 1977, John Corcoran, who came in as the Hire Manager for Penge Plant Hire. In 1978, Mavis Paterson came to work on the Sales Ledger. But the truth of the matter was that, in those days, we all mucked in to do whatever was needed – which is why we had such a job to make heads or tails of it all, as our new accountant Jack Basch always liked to remind me. Jack was right, of course. But things were much simpler in those days. Not only did we all know everything that each one of us got up to (in our private lives as well as our lives at work), but we also knew everything that our competitors were getting up to. On Friday afternoons, we would leave the office (smelling strongly of fish and chips – we always got fish and chips for dinner on Friday, from Marlowe Road) and we would troop over to ‘The Railway’ at West Wickham. And there, of course, we would talk about work. One of our main topics of conversation was how much money the business had (or hadn’t) made that week: a matter of vital concern to all of us at that time. By the end of the evening, we had generally worked out to within a pound how much our turnover was. It really wasn’t complicated in those days. So, although our office systems certainly needed to be improved,

‘The Railway’ at West Wickham where we spent many a Friday evening going over the events of the past week, estimating the money coming in versus the money going out, and making plans for the future.

38