Letter to Kyoji

I’ve had an on/off relationship with Japan since the very first days of my working life but today it’s only continued through a Xmas card exchange with and a letter to Kyoji Ohtake.

Remembering Greece

There was a program on BBC2 last night about Crete, the Minoan civilisation and the archaeological site at Knossos and I thought ‘I’ve been there’.

5 life (career) changing decisions

Everyone’s life is the result of a mix of chance and decisions. You can’t do much about chance but it’s the decisions you make which map out your life. I reckon that there’s five decision which I’ve taken which, successively, have meant that I didn’t become an academic, a long term oil industry employee (and very possibly an American citizen God forbid), an old Asian hand, a senior Dow Chemical manager or a salary man through to retirement. 

5 business trips (which didn’t go to plan)

I’ve travelled enough so that I’m pretty adept at avoiding the pitfalls of business trips and the stresses that go with them but even then stuff happens which is outside your control and then you have to adapt. It’s happened to me several times, fortunately never catastrophically, but in today’s world the consequences of the earlier ones wouldn’t have been so easily managed.

That was 2020 that was

I generally keep a diary when there’s something special going on. That typically includes travel and special events so I’ve been keeping one over the last few days and included in it my reflections of 2020. This is what I’ve written.

We’ve had no holidays. We were due to go to Italy in May but that fell foul of Covid and we got our money back. Otherwise we had just a couple for nights at the Windmill in Linton, that’s the one near Wetherby, early in September when we went to see the Bradburys and to celebrate Sophia’s 5th birthday. Of course we’d also planned Xmas up north as well but cancelled that as infection rates began to climb.

My mother didn’t have a happy life

I don’t mean that it was uniformly unhappy but after a promising start she suffered a misfortune which, despite her undoubted mental strength and determination, was to blight the rest of her life.

Audrey Vickers was born in 1923 and as far as I know enjoyed a happy childhood in a stable and loving but fairly strict family environment. Her father was a successful butcher and the family lived ‘over the shop’ in Wepre Buildings in Connah’s Quay. She went to the same schools, and was taught by some of the same teachers as me: Dee Road Infants, Custom House Lane County Primary and then Hawarden Grammar. From school she went to teachers training college as was the norm in those days for many girls who’d made it through to the 6th form. She secured a place at IM Marsh in Liverpool.

What’s wrong with using the phone?

I know it’s already been reported that younger people don’t use the phone. It’s said that they prefer to communicate in other ways, mainly via social media and its associated messaging services. They do this because they’re all linked in and continuously online so I guess it works.

Leaders are only as good as their teams

The All Stars, Lensbury’s 2nd rugby team: I’ve always enjoyed sport, as a spectator and a participant. Unfortunately I’ve never been that good at it and in school, although I’d have happily swapped a few academic grades for a place on the school team, I never got the chance. However later on, first at college and then when I started to work, I found that enthusiasm was a pretty good substitute for ability. It wouldn’t get you into the first team but at least it got you onto a team sheet. Then I chanced on the discovery that if you would take on the chore of organising you would not only secure your position but you could even become captain, choose your position and take all the penalties! And so I became a ‘professional’ second team captain and my first shot at that was in the early 70s when I played for and captained the 2nd XV at Lensbury, the sports club of Shell in London where I worked.

5 German cities

the old town hall in Munich; it’s now the toy museum

They’re not the most interesting German cities and this is certainly not any sort of in depth profile of them but it’s the five cities which give me good memories. It helps that I spent 13 years working in the chemicals industry in Europe and of course three of the biggest chemical companies were German and there were many others besides.

5 memorable flights

I didn’t take my first air flight until my mid 20s but I’d have to admit I’ve made up for it since. It’s not something I’m necessarily proud of but in my time I’ve held gold cards with three different airline groups (British Airways, KLM and SAS) and in more recent times I’ve done interim management jobs in Spain by effectively commuting weekly between Luton or Stansted and Barcelona.