Part Two – Serious Business – Working For A Living?
7 – Across The Border
Clarky had left for BMBF in Leeds the same week I joined Bradford so I missed out on learning with a top operator but we always kept in touch. I admired the way he went about his business, even if it was a touch too single minded for some, because he got results and consistently so. I saw a lot of colleagues come and go over the years and most of them went simply because, whilst they might have had one very good year, repeating this often proved much harder.So, having experienced the motor trade for four years, when Clarky told me he’d recommended me for a job with BMBF in Leeds, I knew it was time to move on and rejoin old perma-tan man.
I had met my new boss, Macca, twice before I was actually interviewed, both in quite different circumstances. The first time we met was at Appletons when a wayward lunchtime approach shot from me on the pitch and putt course fizzed over the heads of both Clarky and Macca who were each down for a training course at the same time. Still, if you had a passion for golf you had won half the battle with Macca; he lived for the fairways and greens at Moortown Golf Club, a very prestigious course on the outskirts of Leeds, famous for having hosted the 1927 Ryder Cup which Macca still protests he did not play in. The second time I met Macca was at the foot of the stairs leading to the top deck of the old Winter Stand at Headingley cricket ground where I was watching England through the smog created by a three-litre box of plonk. I was there for the test match, had got hammered by lunch time preferring that to watching the ultimate bore Chris Tavare bat for England and promptly fell down the steps on my way to the toilets only for the first guy I saw when I picked myself up to be Macca. I think he knew there and then I was the man for him and the interview was a formality albeit somewhat rushed because I am sure Macca had a tee-time booked.
Once again Clarky would not be around for long, taking a promotion to our Birmingham office. Nevertheless, our time together in Leeds was invaluable to me as it showed me how a very good operator not only got the right results but in the smartest way possible. The oft used mantra “work smart not hard” was never ever better executed and Clarky may well have been its creator. He simply invented work-life balance and I had nothing but admiration for the way he managed to incorporate the gym into his working day plus a quick twenty minutes with the sun goggles and Speedos. I worked tirelessly to emulate this man…there was, after all, grass to be cut and wickets to be rolled. No rest though on that very first day as Macca employed his managerial skills to get me out from under his feet by immediately sending me down to Doncaster to “sign-up” a sizeable deal and chalk me up some business on the board. First day and a megabucks deal credited against me…would it always be this easy?
Ironically the deal in question proved how difficult, erratic and sometimes downright fraudulent the business we were engaged in could be just as it had been on the motor side. The customer in question was a long standing one who also banked with Barclays and held a prestigious commercial vehicle franchise; what could go wrong here? Aside from selling and servicing vehicles, the dealership operated a hire business. This required a separate fleet of vehicles bought specifically for the purpose, usually on some form of asset finance with the rentals servicing the debt. This was fine if the model worked, but in this case the debt payments had been outstripping rental revenues in an ever increasing manner. The response from the customer had been to begin an ever increasing purchase programme relying on re-financing significant elements of the fleet to several other banks simultaneously. When the “model” – a classic rob Peter to pay Paul scenario – eventually broke down and the fraud was discovered the numbers were staggering as were the lack of wholesale controls in the industry, which had allowed this to happen… aided and abetted by the downright crookedness of the customer. We were far from alone as everybody took a hit but it sent a shudder through the industry.
What was our response to counter a fraud that exceeded £10m across the industry? We all got a little rubber stamp so we could now turn up at similar customers and stamp invoices in respect of the actual vehicles we were refinancing effectively laying claim to the asset in question. Theoretically as this was the end users evidence of title to the asset in question then it should be impossible for them to refinance the same asset – illegally – with a second provider. Broadly speaking it did work, primitive as it was, although with one customer in particular this became a total ball ache simply down to the sheer number of assets we transacted at each drawdown.
My customer was a public company that funded hundreds of cars and commercials through us and had been doing so for a lot longer than the now institutionalised ex-customer in Doncaster. No matter though, because all customers came under the new regime. So, there I was, every three months, stuck in a draughty corridor with a pile of invoices, a stamp and a photocopier – plus a cup of the worst coffee you could imagine. This was courtesy of Mark, the Group Accountant I was to work with for some twenty years, so much so that I eventually gave him his own stamp, which he ceremonially returned on my final visit many years later. By then there were only the remnants of the original business left post several demergers and reorganisations seemingly with the only common purpose of generating regular eye watering fees for the “professionals”. It seemed fitting that my departure would coincide with the end of one of the most enduring business and personal relationships. The business had hit tough times; I wished Mark well and buggered off with my stamp to stamp no more
BMBF was located in Friends Provident House on South Parade and was a very different office atmosphere from Eldon Place so it took me some considerable time to feel settled there, indeed, had it not been for some special assistance from one of the office girls I may not have settled at all. It seemed a drab, cheerless place to be and there seemed much less banter, amongst the guys, especially. They were largely up their own backsides and viewed anybody from the enfant terrible that was MCC as not worthy, despite Clarky easily dismantling that myth. The office was in two parts across some four thousand square feet and connected by a kitchen where staff belonging to the various functions often appeared almost complete strangers. The office served primarily as a regional office and credit function, with sales operations in addition for the three main “disciplines” which would all disappear in time. The sales operations were Direct (us), Third Party Providers (a corporate version of MCC) and Commercial Lending (property). We also had allocated to us secretarial pools, in our case run by the Office Manageress.
Ade, who tragically passed away far too young in a freak accident several years later, ruled Macca with an iron rod and there was no doubt as with Hazel in Bradford that Girl Power ruled here. In truth Macca is one of the nicest blokes on the planet but I think it’s fair to say that when I joined the job was changing much faster than he really wanted as he entered his fifties. Having worked for the business in places as far and wide as London and South Africa, Leeds was just another stop off on the long road back across the border to his beloved Inverness, interspersed with more than the odd round of golf. When I first joined, Macca was Branch Manager, a title that basically meant bugger all – especially if you had a Hazel or an Ade to do the dirty work. Ade looked after the girls, the lads looked after themselves and Ian was free to go play golf with his great pal, the late Regional Director, Alan “Daisy” Day. Daisy and Ian were probably the last of a rare breed as the industry and the job requirements were changing rapidly for both.
My new colleagues at South Parade were an odd mix and I had only really known Clarky before I made the move to Leeds. Senior guy was the grey-haired Silver Fox – so nicknamed rather cruelly in later life because, as his sales figures got harder and harder to achieve, we likened his survival to that of a fox, – hunted down in the wilderness by the evil Regional Director. Permanently in a downbeat state – what else when you are half-Yorkshire, half-Scottish – Fox was actually a very generous, considerate guy who just got the last of his energies sucked out of him by the demands of the job. I think that his seemingly tortured family life – two marriages, four kids, the CSA and a constantly penniless state – also gave me an early insight of what I should best avoid. By the time he left, several years later, it was a mercy because it had taken an enormous physical and mental toll on him. So much so that off he went to become a green grocer ditching corporate finance for cucumbers and courgettes.
What happened to both Fox and also, not very long after, Macca, also shaped my thinking and approach to the job and the powers that be within Barclays in future years and so very early on I started to conceive an exit strategy of my own. However much they preached loyalty to the cause and postured about being a great business to work for, ultimately, you are just a number and the equivalent of a flea feeding on a very big elephant. From the mid 1990s I began to form a strategy akin to that of Andy Dufresne, the main character in the Shawshank Redemption, who eventually tunnels his way to freedom from prison. Now I am not saying Barclays was like prison and, fortunately, nobody ever assaulted me in the showers as they did in the film but there would be several occasions in later life when I did feel somewhat shafted.
As if Fox’s permanent gloom was not enough there was also Baywatch who was almost permanently on heat but equally seemed terrified of having sex with his wife because each time he did she seemed to become instantly pregnant again. “Super Sperm” as he became known, had an apparently constantly moody wife and three kids so it was not unusual to hear of him working many late nights in total fear of going home. Not that I would know, because very early on there was a bounty put on any photographic evidence of me in the office after lunchtime. Clarky had taught me well in a very short space of time…smart not hard, Grasshopper. Thank you, Master!
The final member of the team was another Scot who, whilst talking a great game, never actually seemed to do any business. He was a bit like his national football team, always promising so much but never quite delivering anything other than excuses and ultimate failure which, as only Macca could understand him, was lost on the rest of us. In those days though you could survive from job to job, nice car, nice salary, nice life and nobody ever really figured out if you produced anything of value. So there I was, starting my BMBF career with two manic depressive sperm donors and two Scots. The Dream Team this was not and in 1989 just around the corner was recession time – again- and the booby prize patch of South Yorkshire where people call a spade a spade; it’s definitely not for the faint hearted. One particular cold call, as hard times began to bite, stands out in my memory.
“Can I ask you what your capital expenditure plans are this year please?” I squeaked not yet possessing a confident, flowing patter.
“I’ll tell thee what lad, I’m not even buying a fookin’ pencil!”
There was not a lot of point going to the section in my training guide entitled: How to Handle Objections – nobody from Training Department was ever likely to contend with this guy. And so, the next couple of years proved a tough induction to the world of business finance with the economy going tits up and me, clueless trying to make my way and to establish a customer base on a patch where we were almost non-existent.
Amidst the daily gloom though there was one man that made each and every day a joy to enter the solemnity of South Parade. This was the Commissionaire, Colonel Dave, who greeted you in true military style each morning always louder and louder if he sensed you were hung-over for which he had ample opportunities. Dave put simply, was a first class nutter and whilst his claims to have been Montgomery’s right-hand man at El Alamein seemed a touch dubious, they typified the lovable insanity that is quintessentially English and maybe it was actually down to Rommel and shell-shock in the desert as he claimed? The regular Fire Drills at the office were legendary as Dave commanded these with the precision of a General replicating the evacuation at Dunkirk. Bellowing into a megaphone across South Parade, he would line up the staff and rigorously insist on full roll calls with office girls freezing their tits off having to stand to attention for this mad man.
It was pure theatre. Often dozens of staff stood shivering on the pavement; the chance of a sneaky fag not bringing them much comfort. We did not mind, most of the other offices had some seriously attractive women working for them, something Barclays seemed to omit from its recruitment strategy. Dave also ran a mini empire from his desk at South Parade, running his office cleaning business whilst also offering a car cleaning service for the privileged few who parked in the basement, including Macca and Ade. Generally when Dave could not be found at his desk a short trip down to the basement would solve it – Macca’s car would be benefiting from a full wax and shine, as were his favourite set of irons. So, as bad as those early days were, you could always rely on Colonel Dave each and every morning…he was an absolute diamond and kept us all going on the dullest of days.
I have to confess that I was “homesick” for the comforts of 8 Eldon Place and made regular visits, under the pretence of effective journey planning, en route back from the badlands of South Yorkshire as this well before the onset of home working. As I had no laptop or workstation to work from I usually just parked myself at a desk in the gaudily refurbished front office and took notes, mainly about all the new girls employed since I had left. Maybe this had not been the best of moves after all. Suddenly to compensate for the “lifers” (including one who’s thighs made a swishing movement as she walked creating a suspicion that she might combust) there were new, pretty, young things and did the old girls like this? Not one bit. One such girl’s existence became such a misery as the girls snarled at her goddess like frame and the lads could not construct sensible sentences that she left after three months. Time was running out for No 8 though and in 1991 the doors closed for good on a brutally sad day.
8 – My City of Ruins
The Wilderness Years, as I liked to view my time covering the hot-spots of South Yorkshire, were mercifully cut short by yet another office reshuffle which became a recurring theme throughout my career, often for no other reason than it was roughly six months since the last one, or that there was a new boy at the top. Although I had made some progress in South Yorkshire and we had actually established formal office premises rather than the lay-by off Junction 36 of the M1, it was a tough patch to cover and still in recovery from the demise of both the steel and coal industries, which, given their past dominance had had an inevitable impact across the local economy. Of course the new Meadowhall shopping centre had recently opened but the area was still on its backside. It was also a big patch and hammering up and down the motorway network was not my dream job as Test Match Special requires a level of concentration best aided by quiet country roads, not three lanes of crowded tarmac.
The West Yorkshire territory I inherited also had its own problems, broadly similar in nature to South Yorkshire with a declining staple industry, in this case, textiles; but at least I could now watch the cricket on telly. The parallels with South Yorkshire were many, especially how much the other sectors of the area depended on the core wealth creators. The main industries created jobs in sectors such as haulage, engineering and support services right down to the shops that fed the workers so good times and bad times went hand in hand. The new patch was essentially Bradford, Huddersfield and Halifax and it was all up for grabs because in those days we had no division between what would later be defined and segmented as small, medium and larger Business – if only to massage a few egos into believing they were better than the rest by virtue of adding a few noughts to the odd deal. The business was never as complicated or as sophisticated as senior management envisaged; it was simply about making sure you served your customer by finding a win-win for you both.
In many ways, looking back over those twenty years or so in the corporate arena, it seems very much a world unrecognisable. To offer an idea of how the corporate landscape has changed in the last two decades consider this: when I took over the West Yorkshire territory there were well in excess of twenty publicly quoted companies in the Bradford area alone. Today you can count them on one hand. In some part this can be put down to industrial decline, in others to takeovers and finally, relocations. The most dominant of the public company sector was the textile industry, although to fully define and categorise the industry was extremely complex as it had many differing areas of operations. Whilst I do not profess to be an expert here it was a sector that I found fascinating and I was extremely sad to see its eventual decline. Today there are only small, niche operators left and we are all wearing clothing produced by people paid a bowl of rice a day in far flung parts of the globe.
One of our most productive customers in the industry was a privately owned business called W & J Whitehead (Laisterdyke) Ltd who was at the front end of the production cycle, essentially one step up from the fleecing of the sheep. Basically the business was a processor of wool from all around the world. Processing put crudely, is washing, straightening and winding. W & J was representative of the industry with a combination of a rich history, a rambling mill complex (since flattened) and an adherence to doing business the “right way”. They also faced many of the issues confronting the industry, which had been caught up rapidly by the developing world and was struggling to compete in large part with low wage rates from the sub-continent.
And so it was that just as I joined BMBF, W & J embarked on a multi-million pound capital expenditure programme essentially trying to achieve the twin goals of playing catch up after decades of under investment and in so doing ward off the new low wage competitors. Clarky had worked hard to cultivate this relationship and in today’s terms the business written was significant, albeit nowhere near enough to buy a Premier League centre forward – what strange values we have. Rightly he filled his boots here before moving on and whilst there was not a great deal of business left for me to inherit and develop, I was kept constantly busy trying to placate the wonderful Company Secretary, Arthur “Mr” Bentley – a dead ringer for Captain Mainwaring from BBC’s Dad’s Army – in the face of a barrage of our Head Office administrative cock-ups. Each summoned visit to W & J, no matter what the latest idiot from head office inflicted on him, the long-suffering Mr Bentley was never anything other than a true gentleman.
Sadly, the odds were stacked against the management and when you toured the massive site it was easy to see why. Some of the equipment actually pre-dated the First World War and no matter the scale of the new investment it was impossible to rectify all the issues in one attempt and often an investment on this scale could cause as many problems as it was intended to solve. Indeed, the Finance Director at another textile business told me a true tale that on replacing some ancient weaving looms with new, state of the art models nobody had actually bothered to train the operators. The assumption being that despite the age difference, you simply switched these things on and they solved all your problems simply because they went faster. True enough but only if you knew how to operate them in the first place.
Again, whilst not claiming to be an expert, it seems criminal to me that an industry that had generated spectacular wealth over such a long period had so obviously failed to continue to invest to keep in the vanguard of technical development and had essentially been caught up by those it had taught. Much of the wealth as evidenced by the outlying areas of textile heartlands like Bradford as the inner cities struggle with decline was generated by textiles and there are probably parallels today with the way wealth creation is still short term and, often, driven by greed. That it did it so far too late in the day meant there were simply too many issues to overcome. In truth, not only did the industry have labour cost issues to confront but also a changing UK high street and retail environment.
A decade which began with the industrial landscape of Bradford being dominated by centuries old public companies such as Drummonds, Parkland, Jeromes and Listers was to end with all these companies barely unrecognisable if at all still in existence with spectacular mill buildings left empty. Now this was a bit of a blow to me. W & J were fully tapped up but I had developed some very good relationships, most notably with a very entertaining Finance Director called Mike although it took me six whole years of prospecting Mike before we commenced a very mutually productive relationship. Initially, it’s fair to say Mike was a difficult call to make – one of those you tended to put off till a Friday afternoon hoping you had missed the recipient so deferring it for another week. The business had rarely borrowed from a lender of our type and preferred to claim that it didn’t need borrowed money, conveniently ignoring things like bank overdrafts which were in clear evidence in its published accounts. Borrowings are borrowings call them what you will. And Mike could be a little bit high and mighty until you had the pleasure of really getting to know him better.
In truth, our kind of financing facility, for whatever reason, seemed to have a last chance saloon image within the textile industry in general, and when they eventually capitulated it was usually pretty close to the saloon doors closing. That said I don’t think we ever lost much money in this sector and most of the people I dealt with over the years were without a doubt highly honourable. I recall a tale where the owners of a Huddersfield textile business eventually had to call it a day. When they did, the Administrators pointed out a sizeable deficit in the company pension scheme which would cause loyal workers to lose out further. In response, the controlling family simply plugged the gap from their own pockets believing it was their moral obligation to do so. Can you imagine that happening in these days of uncontrolled corporate greed?
So, one afternoon when the sun was at its highest and I was lounging in my deck chair tucking into an ice cream from the recent visit of Mr Softee a phone call from Mike was the last thing I was expecting. Sometimes in asset finance you just needed patience, but six years was stretching it. The business produced cloth for the high street majors like M&S, Debenhams, BHS and new kid on the block Next. For a few years they also spent big, assisted by us, and yet trade remained tortuous and the promised production efficiencies from the massive spend never quite seemed to be as great as originally perceived nor enough to restore them to be truly competitive against the overseas products. They were squeezed by cheap imports at the low end of the market and the combined effects of the strength of Sterling–making imported products even cheaper – and state-supported European competition – mainly Italian – at the niche, luxury end of the market. Whilst successive UK Governments remained disinterested in domestic manufacturing, lured by the bright lights of the emerging City, it was a common gripe of Mike and his peers that their European competitors had far more sympathetic governments and much laxer regulation.
The real death knell for the industry came towards the end of the decade when M&S stated publicly that it was ending its policy of sourcing predominantly British made goods which even though it had declined in recent years still amounted to around 70% of its overall requirements. This was a disastrous blow to the local industry although somewhat unfairly, M&S was pilloried as being the cause of the end of large scale UK textile manufacturing; in truth, they had supported the industry longer and to a far greater degree than any other retailer. With the new kids on the block snapping away at their heels and a new generation of discounters on the horizon, M&S had its own problems. So for Mike and me, it seemed like a long courtship had culminated in a brief fling and a quickie divorce – and he was soon off sailing into the sunset fulfilling a lifelong ambition to sail around the Canaries and I was stuffed and again looking for new customers to fill some large boots.
9 – Working On The Highway
Every sales person needs a degree of luck along the way and I had a massive dose of my own by virtue of a visit to my parents’ house, which I always liked to do whilst suited and booted just to remind them that I had actually managed to hold down a job of sorts even if my dad probably suspected I was still on the paper round. It was around 1991 and I was passing the time of day with a cuppa and a scrounged biscuit whilst scanning that local oracle, the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. As usual the T&A was peddling its regularly repeated mythical tales about Bradford being chosen as the site for the new Wembley, a major new shopping centre and Harvey Nichols planning to relocate their London store. And then I spotted a small article about the purchase of a business called Hill Hire that was being spun out of the administration of yet another collapsed old textile group.
Hill Hire had absolutely nothing to do with textiles as its core business was the renting of trucks and trailers and the team that was buying this business from the administrator had significant experience in the truck rental sector. Tearing the page out as carefully as if it were Page 3 from The Sun – not that my mum ever bought that crap as she preferred the fanatical rantings of the Daily Mail – I resolved to do some research on Hill Hire the following day. Yes, I should have gone home straight away and done this but it was gym night and a room full of leotards always held more attraction than a set of audited accounts. Limitations on my future career development were there for all to see.
At first glance, it did not appear a great opportunity as Barclays was the lead bank for the old company so essentially the Bad Boys for pulling the plug in effect and BMBF had some old exposure via one of the other offshoots of our business to Hill Hire. Employing the nothing ventured, nothing gained approach I made the call anyway and so began an almost ten year association with Hill Hire until they were eventually sold to the Bank of Scotland at the end of the decade. The Finance Director was a great guy called Robert who would have been around about the same age as me and had worked as part of a small, highly-focused team at another much larger and more nationally spread rental business. Having sold his interest in the previous company the main man was temporarily “barred” from the industry for a period of time as is common with these deals so “Bowlsey”, as we came to know Robert, was our principal contact.
Sociable, funny and as affable as he was, I saw early on at a meeting of creditors of the old company how tough he could be. Luckily though, we seemed to hit it off very early on and, even luckier for me, Bowlsey and Macca got on like a house on fire fuelled by Bowlseys’ love of golf ; at last that Moortown membership had come good for Macca. They have been great friends ever since.
Relationships like the one we enjoyed with Hill Hire can be mutually rewarding and indeed ours was, for many years. Of course the fact that their core business required supporting by the provision of funding facilities for a sizeable fleet of vehicles meant that every finance house in the market would be chasing Bowlsey. In reality you can only accept a share of the available business from operators in these markets to keep the risks well spread and we were always on the conservative side in comparison to others. Margins, of course, were always under pressure, due to the volumes available and the amount of competition and so, hard as I tried to flog Bowlsey some weird, sexed-up, off balance sheet product fresh from the Basingstoke boffins to secretly massage up the margin, it would have been easier to flog him a Manchester City season ticket as Bowlsey was also a Manchester Utd nut.
As Hill Hire grew under its new management so did its funding requirements, leading to a partial equity sale and then a full flotation, before the eventual sale of the business at the end of a hectic decade. Throughout this, the relationship with the business and, more importantly the people never wavered. Of course there were strains at times and it was never possible to say yes to every request. Indeed Macca and I had a spectacular fall out one Christmas as during a game of golf with Bowlsey the old bugger had done a deal to use up the last of our credit facility meaning that we were full for some time into the following year unless I could get on bended knees – position to be determined by the Credit Manager – to Risk Management and beg for more facility. Given that I had had a very good year anyway I did not need this additional chunk of business and had earmarked it to underpin a fast start to the New Year. Several of us operated in this manner preferring to start the year strong using existing “pipeline” business rather than filling our boots at the year end to try and maximise any potential bonus. Far better to have a flyer in the New Year at the cost of a few quid than to risk being in danger of a slow start, an uphill struggle and risking having to juggle the upcoming test matches with work.
To explain further, all portfolios relied on existing and available credit lines that were termed as “Evergreen”, so as long as the customer was spending and you could agree terms the deal was agreed. The harder element was the pure transactional stuff which was a daily fight to find and land. Hill Hire’s facility with me was my largest by some distance but it was never a given that it would be increased the following year so using it wisely and spreading it carefully was the key. Unfortunately, the office needed this chunk of business to cover other holes and once again the short term demands of our business were highlighted for all their flaws. One large deal could cover up a myriad of cracks and so bang went my fast start for the new campaign which was crucial because come January 1st whatever you had done the previous year was an instant and distant memory in the eyes of those above.
One tradition that ran for many years was the Christmas trip out, paid for by Bowlsey. We set out in a stretch limousine with Bowlsey, Daisy, Spenner (an old mate of Macca’s) and me, touring the pubs of North Leeds where Daisy and Macca lived. It was like going out with your favourite uncles and the annual collection of woolly sweaters and cardigans sprawling from a vehicle more accustomed to transporting hen parties must have been a sight to see. Given that we normally went out on a Thursday night, the following day was granted to me as unofficial holiday as I was fit for precious little else until the following Sunday. Macca was very understanding having spent the previous evening almost inflicting alcohol and food poisoning on one of his key employees and so my presence was rarely commanded in the office post a night out with my favourite uncles.
Sadly, the decade was the beginning of the end for a way of doing business that had sustained Macca throughout most of his career. Business life was becoming ever more cut-throat and aggressive and, to my shame, I gave Macca some hard times over his lack of desire to change with the times. The truth is, as I found out myself towards the end of my career, you just lose the will to fight another battle you know you cannot win, knowing that you will get absolutely no support from those above you who work to a different agenda. As much as the powers that be chirped on about “relationship lending” and fed us course after course on how to be somebody’s best pal, sometimes, no matter how well you thought you knew a connection, price would turn out to be the key factor in a deal. Macca did business with people he liked and who liked him and the new breed of price-fixated customers were not his cup of tea. The locker rooms and the comfort of the Nineteenth hole were starting to have an irresistible pull.
10 – The Honeymooners
The loss of a key customer such as Hill Hire was not an unusual experience for me indeed the “accolade” of most productive customer for the year generally meant that I would have lost this connection by the end of the following year; it was a kiss of death. As for my customers, this happened, astonishingly, almost every year for a decade and the circumstances would always be different. For instance in Hill Hire’s case the business was sold – not always a killer, but in this case definitely so as it was to our ever aggressive competitor, Bank of Scotland aka HBoS, whose business model always seemed to me to be if you can’t win it by fair means then either do it at no margin or lie through your teeth. It was no surprise what happened to HBoS.
I also lost a marvellous relationship with the contract hire arm of old customers, JCT 600. This was particularly galling as I lost it due to it being deemed too large to service locally having established and developed the relationship to the level where the powers that be now deemed it “too big”. So off it was shipped to Head Office where they ended up with no service, a thoroughly hacked off customer, much reduced levels of business and eventually shipped off as part of the sale of that division of the business to an American bank. As I had witnessed the birth of JCT 600 Contracts way back in 1988, when I was with MCC in control of the main JCT connection, I had got to know the main people very well and had an enormous amount of respect and feeling – as you would – for the business they had built under the JCT umbrella.
As ever, the best part of the relationship was the personal side with the main contact with whom I observed the ritual of a weekly Friday afternoon “review” of the week. This audience was held with the then Sales Director, Andrew, who now runs the business although I don’t think we ever discussed business for that long. Most of the time we devoted to curing England’s batting order, suggesting new ales to try and generally lambasting the entire world from the comfort of his office. A wonderful bloke; he was funny and eccentric in the very best English way. In truth he was probably the kid at school that tried his best to avoid the torture of PE but in later life had conceded to a desire for physical fitness and as a compromise embarked on a daily ritual of eschewing the elevator to walk the five flights of steps to the office. When the office moved to single storey premises several years down the line I wondered if he had had a treadmill installed or just given in and accepted being a fat bloke for good.
I lost other key connections too. Mostly because they were taken over but also where the controlling Head Office function relocated, although I managed to keep one connection for some time, ironically from Clarky, until he rumbled that Birmingham was his patch and not mine; okay so he had a point. This was a connection with the UK arm of a multinational mining conglomerate where we had historically funded commercial vehicles to the actual owner drivers backed up by some implicit guarantee from the UK parent which was probably hardly worth the paper it was written on. Nevertheless, we wrote millions through this unique scheme which, to this day, I remain unsure of how it really worked. Suffice to say, when the business was eventually transferred to Clarky the relationship soon withered on the vine as Clarky had no idea how this worked either and had little inclination to find out as he was in the process of jumping ship entirely. As with many things over the years “if it isn’t broke…”
There was though one approach that never changed in all my years with the now newly named Barclays Asset Finance. When the man at the top changed – usually every two or three years – the new one would be desperate to make his mark, although never quite sure about what kind of mark. It was always time to strap on the helmet for another roller coaster ride and until the final days, the business was always volume driven. In supermarket parlance we were probably Sainsbury’s, not quite as cheap as some but still keen to pile on the volume and do the occasional equivalent of a BOGOF – buy one get one free – eventually we just started to say “bog off” to our customer base. I witnessed at least three cycles of this and the pattern was always the same; Newbie confirms desire to double/triple the business…chucks bodies at it no matter where from…awaits signs of failure…reverses decision…blames somebody else….gets promoted…and leaves somebody else to sort out the shit.
The theory was that the more people you had, the more business you would do oblivious to the commercial reality that there were finite numbers of actual and potential customers and that you would only choose to deal with a fraction of these anyway. Macca had a great saying – he had loads actually – along the lines of “the more you see, the more you sell” almost sung to us in a lilting Scottish accent as a breakfast mantra although Macca never quite followed this through himself, limited as he was to who he might pass up and down the fairways at Moortown. This time around though the splurge of new blood brought a couple of inimitable characters and, for some time, really brightened the office up for those wee, few hours we all spent there. The recruits were almost equally spread between internal appointees and those brought in unwittingly from the outside world.
Mark had followed a similar path to me, beginning with the MCC retail operations before convincing himself that there was a worthier life across at BMBF. In truth, in terms of the hunter/farmer split of the role then Mark was definitely more suited to the latter, largely because he rarely had the time to spend on the phone selling as he devoted most of the day to eating. The lunchtime packs that his wife prepared him each day were enough to feed the office indeed Baywatch often thought about stealing the Tupperware container and sending it off home to feed the wife and kids. One look at Mark was enough to suggest that Baywatch would be cut up and tucked away in that container should he ever try this.
Now Mark was a rugby forward in his playing days, cut short by a chronic knee injury although unrelated to his morning calorie consumption being the equivalent of a mountain gorilla’s daily allowance. Consequently he came in for a lot of stick, as most forwards do, based on the scurrilous suggestion that he was a touch “slow”. It was only safe to make these jibes whilst he was eating, secure in the knowledge that he would not leave his “kill”. He had the memory as well as consumptive capacity of an elephant, too. So a day or two later, whilst making the tea for the lads, you would suddenly get a robust clip around the ear for a jibe made some days earlier; either that or he was really thick and it took a few days for him to get it. Actually, he was a genuinely nice lad and an essential part of the blend of characters in the office. He went on to work in the invoice discounting industry, first for HSBC and then, presumably having eaten them out of all supplies, to RBS where I believe he still sits jealously guarding that Tupperware case.
Professor Taylor was another internal appointment, having previously worked for the old Area Office function in some technical role that sounded so complicated nobody really understood what he did and so never asked and left him alone to spend days doing the Times crossword. These days he pursues a career in consultancy – the ultimate art of talking bollocks and invoicing gold. The Professor was that bright he had apparently dropped out of Oxford University finding it not challenging enough but God knows how he ended up working with us. He simply had no interest in the bread and butter business that kept most of us alive, preferring to “shoot elephants” as he liked to call it, chasing high value deals and spending hours on complex cash-flows and spreadsheets whilst the rest of us sought out the Yorkshire Post. Given that Mark sat behind him perhaps it was poetic to be so close to his preferred quarry. Once again you got the impression that the Professor was just passing through, destined for things a touch more challenging.
One of our new recruits from the outside world gained various nicknames in his short stay with the business but the one that stuck – “Quarter Past” – was a legacy from his very first day with the business. Apparently Macca had told him to turn up on his first day at 9.15am to allow Macca to wind up the rest of us for our daily sales charge and get the Yorkshire Post off Mark. Duly our new recruit sauntered into the office at the appointed time and proceeded to observe this time for several more months until, Macca being somewhat perplexed, summoned him into his office. When challenged by Macca as regards his flexible approach to office hours he met Macca with the most innocent of smiles and simply said “Sir, I thought that’s what time you told me we started”. Now Quarter Past was definitely nobody’s fool, indeed he was a highly intelligent graduate simply passing through Barclays on the way to do other things in life. Macca sensed that he was having his chain yanked but given the innocence in front of him he had to accept Quarter Past’s word, even if he still never landed in the office till the appointed time. I think Macca gave up on that battle.
Quarter Past was a supremely laid back character and this began to drive Macca mad. Not that he needed any help with that but Quarter Past and his eccentricities cannot have helped. I suffered too, as I was assumed to the role of mentor for Quarter Past which was a disastrous combination given my first degree levels of obsessive compulsive behaviour coupled with the rather more laid back approach of Quarter Past. If we were going on a joint meeting it was always a good idea to factor in an extra half hour for differences in time zones – his and mine – and another half hour if we were car sharing, which was time to clean out sufficient rubbish from the passenger side of his car so a human being could get in safe from the threat of being savaged by something hiding in the litter of sweet wrappers, crisp packets and rusting cans.
Through all of this I sensed some kind of paternal devotion developing from Macca to Quarter Past. Even through Macca’s constant mutterings of “You’ll be the death of me boy!” you sense he recognised a kindred spirit. When Macca had long gone it was as if Quarter Past had lost his protector, he was not much longer for all that Barclays could offer. One afternoon I received a phone call from a colleague in the Leeds office we now shared with our bank colleagues:
“You will not believe this mate… but Quarter Past is sat here, feet up on the desk, arms across his chest and sleeping like a baby.” I offered the only advice I could, simply to make sure he was comfortable and turn out the lights when he left.
Admittedly this was taking the laid back approach a bit too far and as Quarter Past was not a fan of the liquid lunch I could only conclude that the cause may be related to either his current girlfriend, a stunningly beautiful Scandinavian air-hostess, or the fact that as with the rest of us, there were moments of pure tedium in this job that we all found hard to bare and necessitated the need to either find a lay-by or get home, neither which he had achieved. Soon there would be yet another reshuffle it was clear that Quarter Past would be happy to take the cheque and move on.
Another supremely laid back guy joined us roughly around the same time as Quarter Past. Big Jon just did not get this intense, short-term results-led business that somehow, due to his charming and likeable personality he had suddenly found himself working within. Like the rest of us he just wanted to get to the weekend, turn the phone off – assuming it had been switched on – and get stuck into his real love, rugby. Monday would bring what Monday would but no matter how many times Macca tried to discuss his sales performance Big Jon never really understood what Macca was getting so flustered about.
My most abiding memory of the most chilled out man I have ever worked with came on one of the early days out with Big Jon, trying to show him the ropes, so to speak. We had survived a few dull meetings that particular day and only had one to go. Unfortunately the customer we met had to be a contender for “Dullest Man on the Planet” award and, worse still, it turned out that the deal in question was so small as to warrant a quick “thanks very much, we’ll be in touch” and off for the day. Sadly, this guy plainly had not spoken to anybody all week, almost certainly did not have a wife and probably no friends and proceeded to speak as if this was the last conversation he would ever have. Oblivious to my attempts to get him to shut up, on he went. And then I looked sideways and there was Big Jon, head lolled forward, eyes shut and making soft breathing noises. Unbelievable. Right opposite him Mr Dull went on, allowing me to elbow Big Jon in the ribs and waken him to the reality that life was the same as it had been an hour ago.
11 – When You’re Alone
During my time at South Parade, unbelievably, we moved no less than three times across the dividing atrium, seemingly going backwards and forwards at will. Firstly, from our original, contented cohabitation with Ade and the girls, we moved across to the other side of the office to take over the space previously occupied by the now defunct Area Director’s office. This was the office where one day I found Macca, having now claimed this sizeable space as his own because he could create a putting green within, probably from the club professional. Having borrowed my mate’s young lad’s best Christmas present – a crawling, talking Action Man (why I had this at the office who knows) – I slipped it around the door, setting it free to roam across the carpet and letting off noisy round after round from its machine gun. Yet another resigned shake of the head from Macca who by now was considering a change of career as a special needs teacher.
Soon we returned back to the other side of the office, at first occupying almost all of the space we had previously vacated before shrinking timidly into the far corner. The most defining move was the first one away from the girls. All that was previously so good about our relationship vanished and never returned once we were on the other side of the fence. And so simple requests to “make the tea love” and “type this for a fourth time darling” began to fall on deaf ears…rebellion was in the air. The mood got very tense between us and the girls and something had to give as Macca was definitely not up for a conflict we simply could not win.
So Macca, ever the optimist, albeit a somewhat naive diplomat, decided to try to negotiate with Ade to restore the previous privileges and good harmony with the sole aim of getting the tea flowing again. After all, we all knew by now who controlled the show so a display of contriteness would not go amiss. Booking an appointment in his old office now held by Ade with the irony totally lost on him, Macca ventured to the territory now known as “Girl Land”. He appeared to be holding his own and concessions looked possible, until that is young Joanne got up from her desk and began to walk to the photocopier wearing a vest that Rab C Nesbitt would never have got into. This could have been office skulduggery at its finest, as Joanne had a body to die for and any hopes Macca had of getting Ade and the girls back into line disappeared in a flash as Joanne, pert as the day she was born, strode past his boggling eyes and gaping mouth.
“Would you look at that Ade” he uttered “I could hang ma coat on those wee things!” In a flash Ade had him by the scruff of his neck and frog-marched him back across to the safety of his pride and joy – us. Negotiations were never resumed and soon we were all on the tea rota. As mentioned earlier, we soon ended up back across the other side of the office, reunited with the girls albeit only briefly, as with the disbanding of several more functions – tragically in one case that I will elaborate on – the decision was taken to sub-let half the office to another company. The writing was on the wall in big bold letters…again.
The disbanding of the Commercial Lending (CL) division around 1992 was tragic in that they employed some real characters, no larger in all senses of the word than Phil, a rotund, effervescent guy who was a bag of laughs especially when laughing at his own jokes, something he did frequently with a belly shaking, high pitched rat-a-tat-tat laugh that could be heard several floors above. And it helped to be that way, given that the CL office could be a bit frosty to say the least. Sadly, this was my entire fault as sometime ago I had embarked upon a tempestuous and ultimately doomed relationship – business and pleasure definitely do not go together – with a stunning girl who was part of the CL admin team. This doomed romance began with her best mate approaching me in the kitchen at a time when, seriously unhappy with my move to Leeds, I was wondering where next in life. As fate would have it the answer to this dilemma was a beautiful brunette who wore crisp, wafer-thin white blouses, gorgeous lacy underwear and in so doing on a daily basis cheering PK, Baywatch and I up whenever she strode on past our desks leaving a fragrant aroma behind her.
And so we embarked on a highly secretive relationship that we kept incredibly managed to keep quiet for at least three months, before we were finally rumbled – albeit with a bit of assistance from me. There was a marvellous moment in the office early on in our affair when, looking particularly stunning that morning, she had walked past on the way to the kitchen. Baywatch’s tongue was drooping out further than if his beloved Leeds United had whacked six past Manchester United whilst PK simply put down his pen, looked up and said “couldn’t you just?” I looked straight across at PK, smiled and somewhat contentedly thought – I am.
Our secret had to be maintained not just because of the office politics but because she was living with an eight foot painter and decorator and the thought of walking around the office with a decorator’s pole up my arse didn’t appeal. Finally, after having had a night out in Barnsley and with my lady having the following day off, I had no choice. I had to pick PK up in Leeds en route to a meeting, before dropping her off home. As PK got in the front seat he simply glanced in the back seat, smiled and said “you lucky bastard!” And true to his nature he never said a word to anybody.
In time though, even though we survived an entire cricket season, things began to unravel. I missed my cat, Gladstone, far too much and whilst living with a beautiful if temperamental, woman artist might have been saving me on the gas bills and the Whiskas – he could fend for himself and did so almost culling the local bird and mice population – it became far too dangerous. Almost one year on and I was living again in fear of mortal wounding from a painting instrument this time in my sleep from a recently turned neurotic woman and her paint brush. We conducted our split in full view of the whole office doubtless making life very uncomfortable for many others around us and I should have learnt from my Bradford days: business and pleasure can only end in tears.
It was at this time that I met Jill, who became a lifelong friend and whose middle child, Sammy, is one of my Godsons. As if this were not enough to cope with for poor young Sammy, he is also a half-breed: Lancastrian/Australian – the portents are not good. Jill and I have been mates since the day we met and she immediately caught my eye by virtue of her being somewhat of a looker; legs up to her neck, long blonde hair and enormous boobs; Baywatch was constantly wiping drool from his mouth. Jill had been seconded from the CL office in Manchester, to work with Old Lad, who had also made the transfer from Bradford as our old office was in the process of being closed down as Barclays had sold the MCC operations in 1991 to US operation, GE Capital, leaving only six branches remaining out of around one hundred and twenty plus years previously.
Jill and Old Lad also had a winding down role to perform with their main task being that of an orderly closure of the CL book. CL lent money to a variety of pubs, clubs, restaurants and care homes to name but a few with the business largely coming through independent, commission-based brokers. With the recession of the early nineties and consequent property slump – time simply goes around in circles – the division was haemorrhaging money on a massive scale, serious enough at the time to threaten the whole business. It was a bizarre operation where any CL office could seemingly transact anywhere in the country simply by virtue of the broker relationship which might be anywhere as well. There were simply not enough controls in place and with the business having gone on an expansionist splurge – same old story – the quality controls had gone out of the window.
As evidence of this I got a call from Jill one day asking me to visit a curry house in Bradford that we had lent a sizeable sum against and where all efforts to call the owners had failed for sometime with sizeable arrears now mounting. When she mentioned the amount involved and the location of the “restaurant” I could only offer the thought that the whole street was not worth what we were owed so how we would ever get our money back from a business peddling five quid curries, God only knew. It was chaos but you may detect a picture emerging here that was to be a constant theme. The business model employed was fine in good times but once the economic cycle hardened, as it always does, then it was time to put on the tin lids for fear of falling shit. Nobody ever seemed to learn and why would they? Individual self-interest and self-promotion was always far further ahead than the wider good of the business.
Personal gain often overtook the wider good of the business and those who were destined to keep on climbing were simply more adept at seeing the iceberg looming faster than the rest and jumping ship before the damage became visible. Once at a safe distance they would be free to blame all and sundry and keep on moving up the greasy pole. Eventually there was no need for a CL team in Leeds as the remaining book was tidied up so Jill took a move to the CL Croydon office, ostensibly to sample London life courtesy of Barclays for as long as she was needed, having exhausted all that Manchester could offer. In a very short time the girls had also gone and we were corralled into this tiny space at the top of the office seemingly awaiting the inevitable itself.
With a gallows like humour we arranged our desks in a tiny corner, like Michael Caine et al in the classic Zulu Dawn film, awaiting the final attack from whence it came. Baywatch, being small, irritating and dispensable was cast away from us as the lookout desk, albeit not far enough to avoiding copping a constant barrage of paper balls peppering the back of his head, with shouts of unbridled joy each time the target was located with a “thwack!”. During the recent Chilean miner’s incident many people wondered what it must feel like to be cut off and so alone. Let me tell you, those of us that shared that small corner of Friends Provident House, South Parade, Leeds knew all too well.
12 – When The Lights Go Out
From 4,000 square feet and some sixty plus staff when I joined in 1989, by 1997 we were down to half a dozen of us, crammed pathetically into one small corner of the office we had sprawled out over only a few years previously. Everybody had deserted the ship, mainly thrown off the sides, some being washed up as part of a fashionably centralised department at the gleaming new Head Office located in Basingstoke, Hampshire. Gone, seemingly in a flash but actually over a period of a couple of years were the following departments: Area Office, Risk Management, Commercial Lending, Broker Division and Vendor. No more Phil whose annual jinks never quite surpassed his taking photo-copies of his big, fat, arse one year after an all too liquid lunch and distributing them as “Urgent” memos. And so we were back on the other side of the office again where it had all started for me with only a photocopier left from CL and given its history not much desire on the part of anybody to use it.
Why the business chose to relocate the head office functions was obvious, given the increasing costs of being in central London, which was largely historical and pre-dated Barclay’s acquisition of the Mercantile businesses in the 1960s. However, why we ended up in Basingstoke was anybody’s guess and probably determined simply by availability – what other part of the Barclays group would tolerate being shunted to a hole like Basingstoke? They might as well have relocated the whole lot to Bradford if cost was all that mattered. Obviously there were sound economic reasons to centralise a lot of the processes providing you could maintain the levels of service and this was generally where the case was weakest. Dispensing with decades of knowledge and experience as was evident across Ade’s team presented a challenge that was massively underestimated by the business, assuming they cared at all. In truth, this was the start of the long term decline of the service levels that our customers had previously enjoyed, ultimately to become embarrassing at times. Where we had stood out from the crowd previously in terms of reputation soon we were to stand out for all the wrong reasons.
And so, Head Office became Churchill Plaza, a stunningly ugly, blue glass tower emerging from this concrete mass in Hampshire, as shamelessly as an uncontrolled erection. Shortly after, there was a near tragic fire at Churchill Plaza; rumours of Macca being in town with a cause to settle were grossly wide of the mark. However, we did miss the girls and the banter and general office crack. And training courses in Basingstoke simply did not whet the appetite like those we had enjoyed in London or at Appletons, now also sold off. Indeed, in a book entitled “Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in The UK” Basingstoke actually hit ninth spot with Churchill Plaza named as the ugliest building in Basingstoke which was a fitting accolade. I am pleased to say that amazingly, Bradford did not make the list – they must have deemed it so crap they kept on driving by.
So there we were, still “led” by Macca and left, so it seemed, forgotten by all akin to a ghostly ship-wreck. Worse still, with the girls gone we had all had to learn to type our own reports, in addition to making the tea although Macca and PK were clearly lagging behind with their Pitman’s Stage One Proficiency Tests. So, as the ghost ship lurched around listlessly each day, there were the tortured sounds of tap-tap-tap-tap as if coming from a hidden prison cell in the galley. Sometimes Macca simply tapped away to see what might happen like a kid with a new video game. With the removal of the Area Credit office Macca’s new role now required him to effectively sign off our credit reports before they were shipped off down to Basingstoke to be looked at by the new Credit Department a pool of charisma free characters we lovingly referred to as the Business Prevention Officers.
Now I could not imagine anything worse than reading a five page essay from PK as to why Barclays should lend £10k to a company we had probably dealt with for donkey’s years and I am not sure Macca could either. So generally Macca simply signed your report, shoved it back across the desk and continued reading Golfing Weekly. Being young, idealistic and totally naïve I had assumed that what we were actually being employed to do was of some importance so, suspecting that Macca was not reading my polished financial critiques it began to get a bit frustrating. As a result, when the opportunity came for us to secure a sizeable deal, I decided to test whether Macca was actually getting past the first line by inserting two verses of Hickory Dickory Dock midway through the commentary about the customer’s trading operations. Sure enough it came straight back duly “Recommended” and from that day on I began to favour brevity as far as report writing went. Indeed, one of my favourite underwriters, Tatty, a gargantuan Scot with a voice and heart to match, once summed up what he wanted as follows:
“Look sonny dinnae tell me what I can already see with ma own eyes” he bellowed.”What the bloody hell am I being paid to do?”
This was a big plus because now having to type our own reports meant that brevity became the in-thing. However, we were all going slowly mad tucked into this corner. In the winter months as darkness fell – I did stay in the office the occasional afternoon for novelty value, largely to keep warm now being single again and having no bolthole to escape too with free heating – you started to be scared to make the unlit journey to the kitchen; especially as the chance to bump into one of the office girls had long since vanished.
Macca was the first to show the signs of stress and had started constantly uttering “right….right….rightttttttttt!” his head lolling from side to side and eyes displaying a manic wide eyed stare. He had actually begun speaking to himself and one day got out of his chair, walked to the window and announced to us all “Hey lads, it’s raining!” And so we all adopted this confused wailing of “righttttttt!” as our cry for help hoping somebody would remember why we were there, like stranded seals on a drifting ice flow. Meanwhile Macca became the team weather man and before a drop had hit the kerb each day we would be warned of the onset of rain or anything else.
Sadly, the days were now numbered for the Silver Fox, so long an endangered species but now hunted down mercilessly by our new Regional Director, Big Dick, a nasty piece of work whose Harvard School of Sales Management specialist subject was “How to make everybody as miserable as possible in the shortest space of time whilst deluding yourself that everybody actually loves you and thinks you are great, good and powerful”. On a quarterly basis Macca had to submit reports on Fox’s performance which was a shameful treatment of a diligent, committed and hard-working guy. Frankly, Macca clearly hated this slow death treatment as Fox was a good friend but as he once said: “When my boss shouts ‘jump!’ I ask ‘how high?’”
Fox had relied on an annual explanation for the woeful figures that were generally hard to ignore by the halfway point. Almost annually he claimed that he had had a “traditionally slow start” but by the middle of the decade the game was up as the traditionally slow start had eventually evolved into several consistently slow years. Macca had won a stay of execution for him but all attempts to ban fox hunting proved to be in vain. Such was the pressure; Macca even referred to his quarterly sales meetings with Big Dick as his “quarterly bollockings” and famously complained to his peer group that he could not control us because the office was too high on testosterone. On the occasional visit from Big Dick with Macca, keen to display a committed team, he had to constantly scurry around the office picking up the paper balls that we fired at each other all day long. The end came quicker than we all thought and, as I was to find out later in life, once he had glimpsed the light shining from above the foxhole all he could think about was his escape route to a greengrocery business. Such was the shared boredom that dreaming of fruit and vegetables was all that kept him going to the end. In truth some of our management were no better than walking, talking cabbages.
The last few years we spent at South Parade were torture. We got some new tenants in to pick up the unoccupied half of the floor space across the atrium but our half remained left standing in time. Practical jokes became the order of the day because there was simply no buzz across the office. One day we turned the office clock behind Macca upside down to see how long it would take him to notice, not anticipating it would be over a week before a cry of “you bastards!” suggested we had been rumbled. On the day several candidates came to be interviewed to replace PK, Macca had pleaded with us to try and “get oot and get some business”, only for us to insist on staying there to warn off potential newcomers. Something about the European Bill of Human Rights suggested that nobody else should be made to suffer what we were going through. Things could not continue as they were…the times they were a changing.
And then it happened – Barclays actually acknowledged that we existed and could be of some commercial benefit to them – especially if they knew who we were and what we did. So off we were again, this time out of South Parade forever, leaving Colonel Dave seemingly distraught and putting a serious dent in his car wash income. We didn’t move far, just around the corner to be co-located in Minerva House, with the main bank corporate operation. From being a stand alone business, initially acquired in the sixties’ very own credit crunch, the business was finally being admitted to the real family, albeit that we would continue to be viewed like a recently discovered tribe. Strange days indeed, and we were to have some of the best, and indeed some of the worst times ever at Minerva House just around the corner.
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