Summer - Classical MileEnd Alpacas

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Visits to the riverbank and
fishing for sticklebacks
were irresistible. Being
wet and covered in mud
from the knees down was
difficult to explain
Although extremely
demanding it was
a wonderful way to spend
three years, not least because the job
description required me to live in the Abbey
my younger siblings attended a local
Roman Catholic primary school that
had educated the previous four or
five generations.
Apart from minor irritations like
having to be dressed as Red Riding
Hood for the Coronation street
party in 1953 my first eleven years
were relatively uneventful, centred
around my family and the local
area. Looking back, children had
more freedom then and were
trusted to be able to go off and
return home without constant
supervision – long walks with
the dog in the local parks, visits
to the library and Saturday morning pictures,
from which I was banned and they never gave
back my catapult. Having always been told
to stay away from the Thames, visits to the
riverbank and fishing for sticklebacks were
irresistible. Being wet and covered in mud
from the knees down was difficult to explain.
'Frosty' school days
Having passed the eleven plus I went off to
grammar school and it was downhill from
then. For reasons known only to herself
and never explained satisfactorily since, my
mother decided that the best place for me was
the Convent of the Sacred Heart. For those
of a literary bent who may have read Antonia
White’s ‘Frost in May’, this was my school.
She wrote the book before World War II and
I was there in the early 60’s – nothing had
changed. To cut short the sad saga of the next
five years, sufficient to say that I was expelled
not once but twice by two headmistresses or
Mothers Superior as they were known. I will
admit to bouts of truancy, brought on by a
complete horror of any type of sport, but all
other misdemeanours are best left in the dark,
even if I could remember.
Sixteen years old with 3 ‘O’ levels to my
name and having failed to fulfil all that
potential, it was pointed out to me that I
had two options – secretarial or nursing,
or possibly ‘going on the game’ although
this wasn’t offered as a possibility. Nursing
sounded more varied than endlessly typing
letters, it did have a career path and West
Middlesex hospital were prepared to offer
me a place. Training was interesting, very
thorough and quite tough with Sister Tutors
out of the Florence Nightingale school
of discipline. We were addressed by our
surnames, had to live in the nurses home,
a former workhouse building, and appear
every morning in aprons so starched it was
like wearing a bright white corset. One of
the biggest stumbling blocks for me was the
requirement to be in before midnight when
the doors would be locked and the only way
to gain access was find Night Sister, sign the
book and have the door unlocked. The only
solution to this restriction was the acquisition
of one’s own key.
Some of the skills I learnt whilst training as
an SRN have stayed with me and proved very
useful; injecting alpacas was never going to be
a problem and I’m a dab hand at enemas.
checking in
Like many other refugees from nursing I
left the caring profession and joined British
Airways or BEA as it still was. If you can
imagine Terminal 1, empty of shops, with very
few passengers,
no charter flights and check-in desks with
no queues, that is what it was like when it
opened in March 1969. Staff had bicycles that
were used to get from one end of the building
to the other – forty years ago it was the
largest building for passengers at Heathrow.
Life with BA was interesting, well paid with
a great social life and travel concessions that
enabled staff to travel anywhere in the world
for 10% of the full fare. For five years this was
all I wanted until the day I realised that I had
once had a brain and if my future was going
to consist of anything more challenging than
writing out airline tickets, before the days of
computers, I needed qualifications.
Accordingly, I left the world of airlines and,
after a couple of false starts, was offered a
place at Oxford Poly, now Oxford Brookes
University, to read Environmental Biology. The
false starts included quite a lot of time when
I did a series of jobs including car auctions,
assistant tote manager at White City dog
track, croupier and others best left in the
mists of time.
1980 was the year of change; I graduated,
bought my first house and joined IBM, all very
respectable and a bit of a shock to the system.
All of a sudden, at the age of thirty, I’d joined
the ranks of the professional middle classes,
paid my mortgage, wore a suit to work, had
a company car and carried a briefcase. As a
trainee Systems Engineer I learnt to manage
the installation of mainframe computers
that required a large room, their own air
conditioning and still didn’t have the capacity
of an iPhone.
In those days IBM had a career development
programme and offered to fund a three year,
part-time MBA at the London Business School.
My life was becoming ever more respectable
by the minute! I learnt a lot at LBS, partly what
I was meant to learn but also where I parted
from the conventional MBA student aspiration.
Accountancy bored me, project management
was what I did everyday at work and I had no
desire to become a brand manager for Kraft
or Shell. My idea of business had been shaped
in my very early years when accompanying
my grandfather; he would pull out a large roll
from his back pocket and make the owner
an offer for a houseful of furniture or a
particularly desirable antique.
Probably the most significant outcome
of LBS was meeting my partner – Miranda.
In 1984 she was on a mission to escape
the BBC and, as those of you who know
her will realise, she has managed this most
successfully and in the process contributed
greatly to the survival of BA with her frequent
flying.
things that go bump in the night
High flying, no pun intended, executive was
not to be my future and leaving IBM and the
LBS behind me I started work for the National
Trust in Devon. Buckland Abbey lies just north
of Plymouth, had been a monastery and
subsequently the home of Sir Francis Drake.
As project manager I was responsible, over a
period of three years, for the restoration of
the building and grounds to National Trust
standards and then to open the property to
the public. Although extremely demanding it
was a wonderful way to spend three years,
not least because the job description required
me to live in the Abbey and, yes, it is haunted.
Once the property was open to the public
it was time for me to move on. Becoming
the first Director of the Marine Conservation
Society enabled me to make use of my
management experience, biology degree
and love of scuba diving. Managing a group
40 Alpaca World Magazine
summer 2010 summer 2010
Alpaca World Magazine 41