Lines of Communication

June, 1987

It certainly wasn't the age of the cell or mobile phone and very few of us would have an answering or fax machine, so any contact with the outside world was through the rotary dial office phones, usually on senior peoples desks, dotted throughout the drawing office.

If a fax was to be sent, or received, then it would be locally through our Technical Managers machine and fortunately for a few of us, his secretary, Jacqui, would "look the other way" although the chance of clandestine goings on being discovered was quite high and she was very sensitive to this.

Time had passed and I had almost forgotten about the head hunter call from four weeks ago.

The polite, English sounding lady from Canada called on the Stress Office phone, and the first thing she said to me was "can you talk?" and then followed a guarded one sided conversation.

The Stress office was quite small and anything like this would draw unwanted attention from the two senior guys sitting either side of the phone, so it was almost like talking in code. The guys, although not rocket scientists, would probably know what was going on as these gibberish conversations unfolded.

Valerie Davis gave me her home phone number and also asked me to give the Chief of Stress at Dowty Canada, Barry Levoir, a call. The time difference was five hours, so when I arrived home that night I called him at work in the afternoon.

It wasn't the accent I expected, it was a polite south of England sounding chap, interested of course in my work experience and qualifications, it lasted for about ten minutes and then he said that he wanted me to go for an interview at Dowty in the UK which he would arrange in the next few days.