FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

I’d rehearsed this bit with Jack before the meeting. So, I took a deep breath, and said, ‘Thirty grand?’ Geoff looked at the figures again, and nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. And that was that: problem solved. A new door had opened for us. I was over the moon. But my satisfaction would not be complete until I had spoken to that man at Lloyds. So, when the letter of confirmation came through from Williams & Glyn, I phoned his secretary and made an appointment in the proper manner. I took the letter with me to the meeting. I pointed to the amount, and I pointed to the date, and I asked him please to close my account and please to transfer the money as of that date. I was almost polite. That was one of the best days! I don’t want to give the impression that it is the bad people or the less successful projects that stick in the memory. At around this time, I was really struck by an excellent piece of work that we did in Canterbury. Canterbury High Street is a beautiful old street with shops dating back to the seventeenth century and earlier. Part of the street is pedestrian only, and it was under this section that the sewer had started to leak into the basements of the shops around it. Our job was to replace the sewer causing minimum disruption to the street and shops. The best way of doing this was to tunnel under the street, lay a new sewer alongside the old one, and backfill the old one with pourable concrete. The difficult part of the job was the tunnel; but I knew the man for the job. Frank Newton was a good friend of Dad’s, and had his own company, F&D Newton Construction. For work like this, Frank used an experienced tunnel-builder called Eamon who came from Neasden. The tunnel that they built, which was over two hundred metres long

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