Back to Normal

July, 1984

The months drifted by, originally the company told me that I would be down at Leamington for a few weeks and then transition back to Speke "when I knew it all" which, as usual, shows the mentality of management on elevated goals that we whizz kids have no ability to achieve.

The goals of management, to obtain fancy coloured plots of components under stress, rapidly aligned with my own as it appeared that there would be no escape until I could produce exactly that. The problem however, was that even simple benchmarks of "complex" P/A and MZ/I seemed to be elusive with the new system, and of course, components in real life were loaded with some surface distribution, not a needle point.

That is all very boring, and as the FEA process turned more into a science project, any form of excitement was lost, with a yearning to return, full time, to my life in Wigan.

The two or three weeks finally ended after two months, a triumphant return to "normal" work, stalled pay restructuring negotiations and a rolling overdraft.