It should be noted that this chapter does not cover the work that I did as Technical Projects manager and is of a far more personal nature. If you have got this far and are only interested in the day to day operating of the technical side of a west-end then you have in many ways reached the end of my journey in that field. This chapter is just a brief look at the next ten years and how I lived now far outside of london and began a new life still connected with, but not really involved in the day to day running of a theatre. I had a foot in two camps now, and saw how head office, and the works department lived. A different set up and dedication entirely. I saw to a certain extent, that they both needed one another, but only to a certain degree. An awful lot of people slept well in their beds, while a very few by comparison weaved their magic through the night. It must to a certain amount, be acknowledge that one is, at the expense of the other.

I saw David in his office in Soho Square and he told me that I had got the Job starting straight away in a position that had been created for me. My title that he had devised himself, for me would be. Really Useful theatres “Technical Projects Supervisor”. My hours would be 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 6pm Monday to Friday. I had made it, well kind of, I was paid from head office and I would loose one of my six weeks of holiday. I also would now be paid monthly and not weekly. Also I would no longer get any overtime. The monthly was the worst as I would have to wait until the middle of the following month to be paid. That was six weeks away. Not only that but I was told that from then on it would be on the middle of the month and I would only get the other two weeks back when I left the company. I never did of course, but in the end this was a very small price to pay for what I now had. But it was mine. I was only the fourth person to get from the technical theatre ranks into a position in head office in over forty years. Cyril Griffis, Julian Rees, David Leach and now myself. no more week-end working, and home every evening with my new girlfriend and now our hours would be more in line with one another. In the end my hours were now more regular than hers until she should change jobs.

And so after 25 years of working in theatre most nights and week-ends I was to go into head office. By to a certain degree just like at the Victoria Palace I was the right person in the right place at the right time. The installation of the telephone system at the Lyric had proven that I was the right for the position.

Luck had played a part in it. Also Mike was in a bind having promised the board a finish date all I now had to do was carry out what I had promised. A drunken afternoon, and for once keeping Rachel waiting, and insistence that I could not be expected to be the Chief LX at the Lyric and fulfil Mike’s promise had given me yet again what I wanted. His exact words to David and myself were “make it happen”. I had a witness and I was now free to have week-ends off and be with Rachel every evening. It had been a tough couple of years but now we would be together nearly all the time. The fact now was that I would have more regular hours than her. Money was still tight and I would often go in by car with her and be picked up again to come home by car. But the days would be much shorter.

And so I had made it. I lost my 6th week holiday that I had been entitled to after 25 years working in the west end due to the Union agreement. If you work in head office you only get 5 weeks. I also no longer got any overtime and was now paid by the month. Times were as they say hard. The problem was that I now had for a while the biggest mortgage I had ever had. I had just returned from holiday and the next wage packet was now not four days away but six weeks. We had done up our house in Somerset, and had it rented it out, we knew we had to get on the south east properly band waggon or be left behind. For the first two years I worked for Head office in a way I had the worst of both worlds until I proved my worth, and so I settled into a very unusual position that both head office and I had created for me. In the first couple of years I got the Christmas gifts that The theatre staff got, and worked 40 hours a week but no overtime. Then suddenly I was down to 35 hours, and a yearly bonus. Now I really had made it! The only funny part about it was that only I knew it! None of the people I worked with did. I was one of them with them, had no power over them, and yet had much better pay and conditions. I remember them all moaning that they had yet to get their Christmas bonus one year, and I had received mine a week or so beforehand and a much bigger one too. Most of the people in head office did not seem to know or care who I was either! They just treated me like the cleaner, including the office manager(tea boy) and anyone who worked for RUG. I was once dressed down for looking through a window to count the sockets required for a job in one of the offices. But as before anonymity can be ones greatest friend. In the nights of the long knives they all went in droves and yours truly remained.

I have had four loves in my life and this book has concentrated on the very first, technical theatre, and my love of building one off gadgets for a specific purpose to solve a problem or mostly to save time, a thing we are always short off. I think I improved all the theatres that I worked in. I enjoyed improving the Royalty the most as we had the smallest crew and the least money. I did the most in the Lyric, after all I was there the longest, and was at the peak of my career then. I had learnt the most and had the longest time to apply it.

In the last ten years I worked purely on the technical side I was a very lucky guy. I was doing what I liked best across ten great London Theatres, from the tiny to the enormous. I worked mainly alone and got to go home each evening to the greatest friend a man could wish for.

The second and third loves of my life were my two wives, and the fourth was a little long haired long legged Jack Russell Terrier called Maggie. She came to us from the Appledown rescue centre in Bedfordshire, not far from where I had settled down to live with my second wife Rachel. We first met her on the 5th day of May 2011. She passed from this life 11 years to the day that we had first met her, at our home in Instow, at 5.30 in the morning. She had the kindest and gentlest of little hearts.

The first three gave me love, happiness, and companionship, and the last all the love she had.

I would be very busy over the next few months and for a while Tony P who was now back at the Lyric as Chief Electrician would have to put up with me borrowing his office work space, as I was too busy to move else where. It would not be either practical or possible to have a space actually in the Building of Head office. Bill Hoffs old work shop had been taken over by the works department and I would not want to be on that side of town anyway. The works Dept. were busy building me a space near them with out actually asking. I could see which way this was going. Every one wanted a piece of me, or at least they saw me as a resource to control ! The works department manager wanted me as part of his empire. No chance, I did not like him and wanted nothing to do with him. I picked the room at the top of the Lyric theatre, and when I had time especially over Christmas 2001 I cleared all the pigeon mess out, I painted it out, I ran power in it, and I assembled the desks, work benches and test rig bench that I would require. I had a door lock fitted to the Gallery entrance. I now had my own private entrance from Shaftesbury Avenue, I had double balcony windows looking up and down Shaftesbury Avenue, well as I say as far as I was concerned, I had made it. That first Christmas that Rachel and I spent alone in our little rented “starter home” was one of the happiest ever. We had escaped from the worry of how we had come together, and we had managed to get both Christmas day, and boxing day off. We had a superb pub just around the corner and had made a few friends in the local area.

We had our own front door, even if we no longer owned a front door as such. We had three days off over Christmas and then only a little work over the week leading up to new year. Home each evening early for a drink in our local pub the Hare in Leighton Buzzard. The first day I was in work David and Stan visited me in my new office/workshop. It was interesting that it would appear that neither had much to do and insisted on taking me out to lunch. This was a sign of the new times to come. A regime that I was to enjoy just as much when David left the company leaving only Julian, Stan, and Mike. They even invented a fortnightly meeting at midday on Fridays followed by a much more informal meeting for most of the afternoon in various  hostelries around Covent Garden.

The next two years were financially tough, not as bad as the very first two years, of theatre hours, a house to do up in Somerset , and a rental house to pay for, but still difficult. The Somerset house had been damaged by a digger crashing into it which delayed our plans and meant we had then to redecorate it again. Then less hours less money and more debt.

We realised one night just after our first Christmas alone in our little starter home that prices were increasing again in the south East faster than across the country. If we did not get on the band waggon soon we might never do so. We thought of hanging onto the little house in Somerset but the rent from it did not really cover our own rent in the south east. We did think of buying in the south west near my parents in a place called Instow. We thought long and hard. At the time holiday cottage rental prices were good but not as we thought at the time good enough. Well how wrong one can be! We thought the south west holiday cottage market had peaked. Years later we would have to add money to buy in the south west. With the holiday cottage income we would have been much better off. One of the reasons also that we probably did not was that it was a long way away, and I did not want to burden my aging parents. I think we had taken enough risks over the last couple of years and did not want to take any more.

We looked around the following week looked a 4 houses and chose the best one. It was a modern ( by previous houses) 3 bedroom end of terrace house. One could describe it as semi detached but in reality it was an end of terrace. It had a garden at the front a drive and garage at the rear and a very big garden to the side. It was priced at £125,000. We could not afford it in reality. Just as when I purchased my first house at Tring station. A similar game had to be played. We did not lie we just di not tell the truth. With my first house the cost of rail transport was not declared. In this instance it was similar, I had to travel in with Rachel as I just otherwise could not afford the transport any other way. We put in an offer of £121,000 and it was rejected. We were told there was two other couples interested. We made the full price offer on the understanding that the vendors were to deal with us only, and that this was a final offer. We got a reply later the following day (Sunday while walking home) that our offer had been accepted.

Now there was only one small problem that might raise it’s ugly little head. We would only just have enough for the deposit as long as we did not have to pay for the next months rent. Now that was alright as long as nothing went wrong with moving! If it did then we would have no where to live or at best the rent would go up. Oh and also we could not get a mortgage for such a large amount between us with out selling the cottage in Somerset that we had just rented out!

We cheated and got two separate mortgages to pay for the two houses we now had. It was a very worrying time, if the interest rates had risen at that time we would have been finished. Rachel had a buy to let mortgage on the house in Somerset. And I had a mortgage against my income to top up the rest of the amount to £125,000

It was Easter 2001 we had hung on to ready to exchange contracts on our new house. We should have paid the Rent for the next month and given a months notice. We exchanged contracts on the Thursday before Good Friday. Got the Van the following Morning, a Long wheel based transit and started one of the longest weekend ever. We had stuff in Somerset and stuff at Rachel’s parents in Bradford on Avon, plus we had to move everything out of our rented house in Leighton Buzzard and just around the corner to our new house only a quarter of a mile away! There is believe me, nothing more tiring than moving close by. You spend your entire time caring stuff and no time resting in between. After moving everything to the new house we then had to clean the old . shoot into Leighton buzzard and drop a pre dated letter quitting the house, Luckily no one would find it until the following week. I don’t think they minded, as we had been very good tenants and left the place immaculate. Far better than when we found it with mould and broken doors, plus we always paid on time. We had build a grand relationship in that little house. We had fought the good fight and come through. I think we still both had fond memories there. When you have nothing you appreciate even the smallest of little things far more than larger things when you have more.

We sold the house in Somerset six months later and we were safe. We still had a bigger mortgage on our home in Leighton that I had ever had in my life, but it was legal and we could just afford it. We had some money in our pocket. We went to America and could actually afford to go out in a modest way. We knuckled down, decorated, refurbished house number three, and four years later we paid off the mortgage and for the second time in my life I was totally debt free. We brought a little sports car of our own. One of the best little cars I have ever owned.

I would spend the next ten years working as first the Technical projects supervisor, and then after a reshuffle, and a chat with Mike Brown the operations Director who had given me my job when I needed it be allowed to have my title changed to Technical projects manager.

This new and in my opinion imposing title I finally managed to have on a 1000 business cards. I think when I left there were still around 950 of them at least. But it seemed important at the time. Looking back it was odd that the very person that quite a lot of people did not get on with should be responsible for helping me so much.

I worked on for just over 10 years finishing in the end with my grand title. Then the news came that the pension scheme was closing. It was designed to run for 35 years. I had started paying in as we were forced to at the age of 21. In those days all I cared about was how much beer I could buy and drink. Luckly there were people with wiser heads than mine at the time. Robert Ratcliffe the Theatre manager to name but one. It was a very good pension scheme built in the days of prosperity when management looked after both themselves and their workforce. As the economic climate worsened, and too many new head office personnel arrived and put too much money into the scheme eventually something had to give and it did. It closed to new employees and we were not long afterwards left out in the cold. We were enrolled in the new scheme and by comparison with the old it was just total rubbish. I was fifty one. Five years short of the required thirty five for a full pension. I had given all of my working life to the same company and they had treated me well until this point. I had had a grand time have another and to hell with tommorow and here is to the next one who takes the long walk. Then my mother died, I had just got into work at the London Palladium stage door when the stage door keeper told me that Rachel had called and I would have to return home immediately and we would have to pack pick up little Maggie (our little jack rustle terrier) and head straight down to Devon.

My Fathers mind had gone! He was one of the most brilliant men I have ever known, there was little he would not tackle. Music, carpentry, metal work, plumbing, brickwork, gardening and a fully qualified Chemist, and his mind was gone. Before loosing his wife of over 60 years his mind had been failing but now there was little left.