Uncle Larry.

There was a short period in 1995 that the Menasco stress office could be compared directly to the Marie Celeste. It was adrift and deserted in a dishevelled but seaworthy condition, under partial sail, with nobody on board, and her lifeboat missing.

Ok, it wasn't that bad.

Mark Clemente had jumped ship for the calmer waters of DeHavilland and another of the capable analysts, Mong Lim Shim (often referred to as Long Thin Shim) was off representing Menasco somewhere else. The chap that I had inherited the Fokker 100 work from, Steve Harding, was also off to DeHavilland and it was sort of odd that the bulk of the work was being undertaken by myself, Larry Abram and Gerry Kouverianos and a job shopper from Boeing, Gary.

It did, at times, feel like some engineering buddy movie, with often what felt like an efficient symbiosis between the "three musketeers" with Gerry and Larry playing good cop, bad cop dealing with me, to keep me hard at work, but also to keep my spirits high.

It leads me to introduce something that is fundamental to the "feel" of the Menasco Design office at that time, with a direct focus on the Stress group. The boss, Lancashire lad Larry Abram would provide comic relief at most times for most of us, although truth be told, often the tension he was alleviating had been caused by his good self in the first place.

In time, myself and new additions to the Stress Office in the years that followed, would collate the punchlines of these comic relief moments, magical statements that perhaps you would have had to be there to truly appreciate, but for those that do remember, we collected them using one common noun.

Abramisms.