Rotol Interview

Thursday, July, 9th, 1987

The interview at Dowty Rotol, Cheltenham was arranged by Barry Levoir over in Canada, I travelled down there, expenses paid, and was to be interviewed by the Chief of Stress, Richard Lang.

I had stuffed my case with the T45TS presentations, FEA plots and computer programs that I had created, examples of my written work and even a current calculations binder.

The man, Richard Lang, was a big guy, rugby player I would guess, and I felt intimidated as I followed him from the reception to his office, which funnily enough was almost a carbon copy of Bob Morris's office.

I showed him my stuff, he read through my resume and looked at a couple of FEA plots and grinned, then he gave me them back, leaned back in his chair and said "So, you're thinking about going to Canada to live, have you been there before?".

I was there for about an hour and a half and most of that was spent relaxing and discussing Canada and California, I even mentioned how my dad had the chance to go to Australia in the 1960s, but backed out at the last minute, Richard said with a smile that at times he wished that he had emigrated.

The interview ended and he gave me a form to sign for my expenses.

I asked him what he thought and he said that Canada would be an excellent opportunity for me and he was going to recommend me to Barry Levoir, I was sort of stunned how up front he was about it to me.

The journey home felt short, my head buzzing with a thousand thoughts.