Singer Sewing Machines – The Irish Rover

Those were the days, my friend

London & Frankfurt, 1969

Until 1969, I had been muddling along in the ‘old technology’ of Quantity Surveying or Estimating, as it was known in the US and Canada. It was Singer Sewing Machines in London that gave me my opportunity to enter the relatively new world of computer programming. And I have never looked back.

Our office was in West London, on the Uxbridge Road, in Ealing Broadway. and it was there that we did our program design and coding on paper. As a recently inaugurated European division, we did not have our own computer; for program compilation and testing, we went to the UK Guildford office. I spent as much time in Guildford as I did in Ealing Broadway. And it was there that I first met Bob Baylis and ‘almost’ met Mark Samuels; our paths were to cross again in 1978, at P-E International, where Bob was employed and when Mark was the Managing Director, but that is a story for another day.

Now I won’t attempt to explain the intricacies of programming in the 1960’s; our world was one of coding sheets, punched cards and tapes, large air-conditioned computer rooms, and one or perhaps two compilations or tests a day. For the successful programmer, acute attention to detail was mandatory.

I thrived in the environment and was part of a small team sent to Germany in the summer of 1969, to test and install our new inventory system in the German head office in Frankfurt, near the central station and a few minutes stroll from the river Main. Our hotel was between the office and the station. The red-light district was adjacent; it took us perhaps one hour to completely orientate ourselves.

We could only have access to the German computer systems after daily production had been completed, so we started late afternoon and worked to very late every evening, rarely finishing before midnight. We usually met for lunch in a nearby restaurant and on the first day the waiter recommended a local white wine from Rüdesheim. It was #28 on the menu and we soon learned to order additional bottles of achtundzwanzig. It was delicious, and day after day, it contributed greatly to the eventual success of our project.

On one weekend, we decided to go to the source of achtundzwanzig. We took a local train from central station to the nearby river Rhine, and then travelled on a boat down the river to Rüdesheim. After ample ‘refreshments’, we took the local gondola to Niederwald. Almost silently gliding over the vineyards, gradually ascending, was an experience I will never forget. I was in love with life; nothing new there.

At the summit was Niederwalddenkmal, a patriotic monument, 38 m tall and finished in 1883. The view across the valley was stunning and the weather was idyllic.

330px-Niederwalddenkmal_ohne_Personen

The Niederwalddenkmal

On one of our last nights in Frankfurt, when the project was almost wrapped up, we went to a nearby striptease show called ‘The Dolly Bar’. It was luxurious, compared to the normal seedy dives that I had previously experienced in Toronto, the US and London. The girls were stunning, but what struck me most was experiencing the wall-to-wall sound; I had never heard such wonderful acoustics before. And it was the first time that I had heard Mary Hopkin singing, ‘Those were the days’.

That was 1969, and the sun had arisen and set many times before I was once again back in London; it was late-1984 and I was on my way to the wedding of my good friend, Laín Burgos-Lovece, in The Wirrall, south of Liverpool. I had a room in a hotel on Half Moon Street, just off Piccadilly.

That evening I went around the corner to an old familiar pub in Shepherd’s Market, a pub that I had frequented many times over the years. I bought a pint and sat in my usual corner. I had not been there since those bitter sweet days of the summer of 1978; bitter, because my personal circumstances at that time were a mess, but sweet, because I had been deliriously happy with the prospect of an exciting new relationship.

And then the juke box started to play…

Gleneldon

We arrived in London in early December 1968; we had been travelling for more than three months since we left Toronto. It was the era of ‘Europe on $5 a day’. I had even bought the book. It weighed almost as much as my meagre luggage. After carrying the wretched book for a couple of weeks, I put it in a bin. At the time, five dollars a day seemed rather extravagant to me. Of course, with inflation, today a coffee in Paris can cost more than that.

After having spent a few days in New York, completely failing to understand why anyone could possibly rave about the city, we sailed in the bowels of the Queen Elizabeth to Southampton, via Cobh and Cherbourg. It was a cold and stormy crossing, one of the last voyages of the liner, and there were few passengers. Not very long after, it ended up on the bottom of Hong Kong harbour.

RMS-Queen-Elizabeth-PC-1 — The Queen Elizabeth approaching New York harbour (picture from internet)

But once back on dry land, we had almost three months of glorious weather. We wandered around south-west England and Wales, a visit to Dublin and my parents in Ulster, then through France, Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and back through France to England.

For the first few weeks, we hitch-hiked, eventually as far as Biarritz. We survived on my schoolboy French, but with no basics of Spanish, Italian or German, we took to the trains, mostly in third class wherever we could.

Once back in London, we had to decide: to go back to Toronto, where work was easy to come by and we had lots of contacts, or to stay in London in the unknown, at least for a time. It was not a hard decision to make. We bought the evening newspaper and looked for a room for rent.

We were staying in a cheap ‘bed-and-breakfast’ near to Victoria Station, so we concentrated on finding accommodation on the main-line into Victoria. On the first day we noted three rooms that we could afford. When we arrived at the first room, it was already taken. At the second, there was an obvious sign stating that no Irish need apply. And at the third, we were met by a rotund Jewish gentleman, with whom we quickly felt totally at ease. We signed a lease there and then, paid the deposit and the first month’s rent, and left with the keys.

The ‘apartment’ was a large room on the ground floor, with a high ceiling and a partitioned kitchen, that also contained a bath. The toilet? That was on the first floor and each ‘apartment’ had its own toilet. And electricity and heating were paid for by inserting coins in a box on the wall. In Toronto, I only used to have a tiny room and a shared bathroom. I felt as if I had arrived!

The room was on the ground floor of 2, Gleneldon Road, Streatham

But now we needed to find employment and soon, for our reserves were getting alarming low. Sandra was soon employed. She was a beautician by training and found a job with a salon at the corner of Oxford and Dean streets, removing unwanted facial hair, using electrolysis. Most of the clients were West-end showgirls, but it was Sandra’s boss who took care of hair removal from the client’s private parts!

In the meantime, I went to the Institute of Quantity Surveyors, just up the street from the Houses of Parliament. I left the meeting with the feeling that I had little chance of finding employment; construction in England was suffering a severe recession and the unemployment queues were long and there were no quantity surveyor jobs advertised in the evening papers. What a contrast to Toronto, where construction was booming at that time. So, it was ‘back to the drawing board’.

I quickly found a temporary job, selling potatoes, door to door. It lasted one day. I have never aspired to be a salesman and there are limits as to how many doors being slammed in my face that I could take, often coupled with expletives. I soon realised that being Irish in London was no advantage.

Then I found a temporary job distributing leaflets, door-to-door, for a carpet company. I had to note every address and a salesman called soon after. It was a success, at least for the company. But I soon ran out of addresses within a feasible radius to leaflet, although I loved the walking.

Just before New Year, I spotted an advertisement for an ‘Institute’ training Cobol programmers, with a guarantee that the training would continue until one found a position. Their office was just around the corner from Hector Powe’s main store on Regent Street. My father’s best friend worked for Hector Powe and I took that as a good omen. I signed up for the training and paid the fee. It was a gamble on my part, for by then I had little money left. Sandra earned enough for the basics, but not enough to cover the rent.

The first two weeks of the course were an eye-opener for me. I found that I had a natural talent for programming and at the end of the second week the tutor took me aside and told me that a friend of his had just called, looking to hire a junior programmer. When he asked if I would be interested, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.

The interview was on the following Monday and the company was Singer Sewing Machines, in Uxbridge, west of London, about two hours travel from our little apartment. I met Robin Nicolson, was offered me the position, and needless to say, I gratefully accepted. I started the next day.

I have never once since looked back.

Omelettes

I grew up on a poultry farm. My father was a specialist breeder of Light Sussex and Brown Leghorn stock. I was raised on eggs, but I never ate chicken, at least not if I could avoid it. I clearly remember when I was small and poked my head around my mother at the kitchen sink, just as she was up to her elbow in a chicken, removing its entrails, before she burned them on the kitchen fire, always causing quite a stink; that was the first of my many vegetarian moments on the farm.

istock_000008148786_medium — A Brown Leghorn rooster (photo from internet)

I never had an omelette when I lived at home. They were not a part of my mother´s standard cuisine; she was a traditional Irish woman who deferred to the narrow culinary demands of my very traditional English father. Omelette would have been a bit too French for my father. Six years of WW2 left him with some indelible prejudices.

I had my first omelette in Paris in 1969. I was working with Singer Sewing Machines, installing a new computer system in their French head office. My good friend and Australian colleague, Geoff Rich met me for breakfast. He ordered an omelette with bread and coffee and so did I, not knowing what it was. Delicious it turned out to be. And he played ‘Lay, lady lay’ by Bob Dylan on the jukebox. The haunting lyrics and melody still recall Paris to me. To others, it may seem rather corny today, but those were magic moments for me.

Some years later, in 1978, omelettes came back into my life in Nigeria. It was on my first day of a short-term contract in Lagos. I went to the canteen, presented my plate and received what appeared to be the greater part of a goat, with a few steamed vegetables on the side. The meat was not for me and for the rest of my stay in Nigeria, I lived on beer, cashew nuts, bought by the bottle from street vendors, and omelettes in a French restaurant near to the office, or in the Ikoyi club.

When I was later based in Paris in 1998-2007, I frequented a nearby bistro, La Frégate. The Maitre d´, Patrick, would always read out the short list of specials, ending with resignation, ‘omelette au fromage o salade mixte?‘. I really liked Patrick and I miss his conversation . A very good man and an enthusiastic rugby fan. He always said that if he could not be French, he would elect to be Irish.

In recent years, I have spent a lot of time in Spain and South America. There, the traditional omelette is called tortilla francesa to distinguish it from the Spanish version, tortilla española. The latter is in a cake-form and includes potatoes, onions, garlic in the basic version and other ingredients in regional variations. It can be served hot or cold and on cocktail sticks as tapas or in slices, usually accompanied with fresh bread. With a glass of red wine, the latter usually serves as a meal for me.

375px-Tortilla_patatas — A typical *porción* or *trozo* of tortilla (photo from internet)

And here in Cape Town I have my local bistrôt, Cafe Extrablatt, that serves a generous omelette, french fries, toast and wine at any time of the day. And super-friendly staff that never fail to feel one at totally home.

It is indeed a hard life that I lead… 🙂

Moon Landing

It was on October 04, 1957, that Russia successfully launched the first Sputnik into orbit. It was the first artificial Earth satellite and it weighed 84 kg, with a diameter of 58 cm.

The Sputnik took about 100 minutes to complete an orbit, and with favourable conditions, was reportedly visible with the naked eye. I never saw it, nor did I ever know anyone who had seen it, although I did go out one night to try to spot it. Having a clear sky on the north coast of Ireland can be a relatively rare event.

sputnik_asm

The launch of the Sputnik was the starting pistol for the space race between Russia and the United States.

Less than four years later, on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gargarin became the first human in space. He was a small man, only 1.57 m in height, and was probably chosen for the mission because of his stature and weight. He died six years later in a plane crash.

yuri-gargarin

Most people can remember what they were doing on Monday, July 21, 1969. It was at 02:56 UTC that the first human set foot on the moon. I was fast asleep at the time in a hotel room in Frankfurt.

What was I doing in Frankfurt in July 1969?

At that time, I was employed as a junior programmer with Singer Sewing Machines. I was based in London, in a team developing an inventory control system for Singer’s European companies. We were writing programs using the COBOL language. Input, instructions or data, was via punched cards and punched tape, for an IBM 360 model 30.

In the photograph below, one can see a typical computer room, housing an IBM 360 30, like that we used in Frankfurt.

ibm-360-30

Also in the photo one can see disc drives, tape drive, central processor and printer, with the operator sitting at the system console. Not only can one observe how bulky everything was, but the system had to be housed in a cold air-conditioned room, with a raised floor to accommodate the plethora of cables connecting the equipment.

And the power and capability of such a system was miniscule, when compared to the most basic smart phone of today.

The same basic smart phone has infinitely more capability than the computer systems that managed ground control, the different stages of the rockets and the landing module of the moon landing in 1969.

Of course, comparing the computer systems of 1967 to the smart phone of today is like comparing the plane of the Wright brothers to the Boeing Dreamliner. Both fly, but that is about the limit of the comparison.

I am, however, constantly amazed that man could progress from launching the first satellite in 1957 to landing men on the moon less than 12 years later.

It was an amazing feat.