If you read my blog you’ll know that I’ve been on a mission recently to get back in contact with guys I worked with 40 years ago. I did see some of them 16 years ago, but there are others with whom I’ve not had contact since we finished our apprenticeship in 1972. It’s a fascinating exercise. We’ve got one left to find.
However, long before I started hunting for these guys, I was trying to trace an old mate of mine, Jeff Thomson, who I worked with in IBM (I suppose that should read – with whom I worked in IBM ???). When I got my first sales territory my boss said ‘right Tom – you’ve got the left hand side of Scotland, and there’s a guy called Jeff in Edinburgh who’s got the right hand side’. Real scientific stuff – eh ?
Anyway, a few weeks later I met Jeff and we were buddies from that moment on. We used to tell each other about our respective clients. He had the Cairngorm Ski Lift Company which meant a rather long, cold trek up a mountain whilst I told him about my new client, a major government office, 10 yards from IBM’s back door who employed a bunch of girls who insisted on partying, partying, partying and thankfully, clients who insisted on spending, spending, spending. A marriage made in heaven if ever there was one.
It wasn’t long though before I found that for Jeff, IBM was merely a vehicle for keeping him occupied during the week – he was really a member of the Edinburgh gentry, taking part in all sorts of country pursuits each weekend and making sure the office was fully stocked with everything the earth could supply. Bags of potatoes would litter the 16th Century IBM Edinburgh office’s narrow corridors. Pheasants would be hanging in his office waiting to be collected by willing customers, but the worst thing was when he was delivering fish and shellfood to his mates – what a stink!
Occasionally, we had to do work together, and on one such occasion having spent a rather rumbustious couple of days in Aberdeen, we were heading back down the A9 to his house in Perthshire where I had left my car. As we passed some tiny fishing village, Jeff drove his car down onto the keyside where he started talking to some ‘fishing trawler’ types. A couple of minutes later a couple of baskets of huge, live crabs were loaded into his boot, some money changed hands and off we sped southwards.
At his house in Blackford, he asked me if I wanted some crabs and as I had an English mother-in-law at the time, I said I’d take some. I had no receptacle in which to keep the crabs so Jeff just dumped about six of them into my boot and off I set. A couple of hours later I stopped outside my house in Glasgow, opened the boot to get the crabs, which I was sure would be dead by now and there was – nothing! They’d crawled into every conceivable crevice. Getting a torch from the house only helped in that I could spot their beady eyes well back into the voids in a car boot that most people don’t even know exist. By now, a crowd of nosey, but well-meaning neighbours had gathered, all offering advice about how to get the crustaceans from their new, dry lairs. After about an hour of viciously poking them with sticks (the crabs not the neighbours) they’d all given up and were heading for the pot. I watched in a sadistic sort of glee as my mother-in-law popped them into the large pan, switched on the heat and then had to hold the lid down as they battled to escape.
Thanks Jeff !
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