FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 2 A Change of Guard

‘There might be another way,’ he said. I asked him what he meant. His answer was unexpected: ‘Buy the business from your father.’

had regular meetings with Dad, as the owner, and he had regular meetings with me, the person who was actually running the business on a day-to-day basis. He didn’t have meetings with both of us together – that wouldn’t have been possible at that time. Jack could see there was a problem, and he could also see a solution that hadn’t occurred to me. As he described it afterwards, he knew he could help ‘not as a negotiator, more as a facilitator’. So, when I told him that I was seriously thinking of leaving, he suggested that might not be necessary. ‘There might be another way,’ he said. I asked him what he meant. His answer was unexpected: ‘Buy the business from your father.’ And how

Dad supervising a job in Erskine Road, Sutton. This picture from the late 1970s seems to sum up everything he must have been feeling at the time. With ill health, and with a decreasing amount of work coming in, the road ahead may well have seemed closed to him.

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