TASHY DID - A LIFE
Hey kids, grand-kids, and any other nosey people who are reading these pages, this is for you to read now or sometime in the future. It may tell you a little
about how life was 60 or so years ago and rather more about me. Why am I doing it?
In the years after my father's death, way back in 1981, I kept thinking of things I wished I'd talked to him about. After my mother's death, just over
thirteen years later, there was less of a knowledge-vacuum because mother talked more about her past.
Just recently, my daughter and I unearthed my mother's diaries which went back to 1929, when she was just 13 years old. This reminded me of the 1998
incident with my 6 year old and I decided to put down here the story of my life so my children and grandchildren could, if they wished, read about what I had done. I would use my
memory and those diaries to build a picture from 1949 to the present day and add some personal observations.
So, here we go. Each week we will have a new year with preceding weeks being archived. In the first few years, as I will have less to say, probably, I will
add some info about your grandparents and their parents.
1978
In October of the previous year we took in a lodger from the local university and he was to stay with us, during term time, for two years. We had often taken short-term foreign students in, as many of these visits were organised by the parents of our young babysitter, who lived up the road. As of now, I can’t remember what I felt about always having a stranger in our house. Obviously he had his own room but, I think, he paid an extra amount to us and joined us for meals. In so far as I don’t remember, I have to assume things were neutral although opening up your home to another will have destroyed, even more, the coziness that had been in my dream.
A big change for me in this year is I left the GRE in May, after almost ten years, and went to work for a new employer in the same area of pensions but instead of calculating premiums and paid up schemes, I would now be handling the management and investment of actual schemes. I also moved out of working in London and in to a more rural arena. I worked about 20 miles from home instead of 60 and would leave in the morning at 8.25 instead of 7.25 and be home at night by 5.30 instead of 7.00. This would have given me an extra twelve and a half hours at home each week, an amazing amount when you think about it.
I remained in this job until the middle of 1981 when I was made redundant as computers took over and individuals, with experience and knowledge, became less important. Rather than clutter up the next years with a little bit each time, I will write about that job here. We looked after quite a few schemes but the two I had most responsibility for were both large companies, based in the Midlands. At the beginning of each month they would send us a large sum of money and we would then invest the majority of this on the money markets for 21 days. The remainder would be used for any known payouts, usually retirements as I wasn’t capable of predicting deaths, and then at the end of the month, having made all other payouts, the remaining money plus that returned from the money markets with suitable interest, would be invested in various funds. In a nutshell, I had control of literally millions of pounds each month.
It was quite a high-pressure existence but I enjoyed it. It also had a few amusing moments. Many of these employees had come over to England over the last 30 or 40 years from India and Pakistan. As such, they often had no birth certificate. The companies would use 31 December of whatever year the individual told them they had been born. This made identification more difficult and where as you might have 10 or so J Smith’s among your 10,000 employees, they all had a different date of birth. Rather too many H.Singh’s or P.Patel’s were born on the same day of the same year. In fact, when we asked for one employee to attend a medical, the company doctor reckoned the guy was over 80 and should have retired some 15 years ago.
After a while I became a section leader and, within my section, one young girl was looking after the professional cricketers’ scheme which paid out money to retired or injured cricketers. It was a nice scheme to run, we got tickets to Lord’s Test matches but, because of my love of the game, I followed cricket more closely than the other employees. A certain Sussex cricketer was being paid by us as he was injured and unable to turn out for the county. Sadly, for him, I read that he was playing some good games for, I think, Western Australia at that time. An investigation followed and I offer my apologies to the guy for being observant. I hope his back is now better and, from what it says on google, the pub is going well.
I was now able to drive to work if I wanted and, even if I went by train, it took me less than 20 minutes. I enjoyed the company of the people I worked with and we had some good fun. I remember one lady member of my section had been given, as her second Christian name, Mercia, because she was born near Mersea Island. I couldn’t resist informing her job share colleague, they did a week each, how lucky she had been not being born in Oldham; her surname was Still.
And I still had the problem that had plagued my life for the last 6 years and would continue for another 9, that is the inability of my wife and my mother to get on, indeed sometimes even tolerate each other. It is a horrible position to be in and it was only my father;s calm sanity which allowed me to cope. I am not in a position to blame either for their own characteristics but I can blame both for making my life so very hard. Add this to having to continue to cope with my anxiety attacks and you may understand how difficult I found things.
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