The Summer of '93

Have car, will travel

Rhys was a friend of mine from University. We'd hung around in the same classes and in the student union. He was tall; about 5'11 and had dark curly hair and always had a fluffy beard growing out of his face precariously. He had dark brown eyes and a ruddy skin and spoke very quickly. He did have a hearing difficulty so you had to repeat yourself a lot but he was a friendly man and we had spent a lot of time together at University playing pool and drinking the only decent hot vending machine drink; hot chocolate. His claim to fame was that his sister had gone to school with Aled Jones. At times if I was honest, alone with him, he could be a bit dull, very set in his attitude for someone so young, but was well meaning and friendly enough. My mind wasn't on the job. I was daydreaming about Ali. I listened to all the dedications on the radio and wished I could pass on one for Ali. I was forty five minutes late getting to the hotel! Bed. God, I really missed him. He was very young though.

The following day I woke up, craving another night of sleep. I was up very early and it was an average day training wise; same topic, different crowd. The following day the software let me down again – the same old problem – record locking. It was wearying. I wished I could do something about it program wise. Staff would all go to look for their entry and the system would lock for a long period of time. It was very frustrating. I wandered around Caernarfon and deliberated over buying Ali a lovespoon but couldn't find one I liked under £75! I didn't reach Oxford until evening and had to set up the kit. What a long drive! I rang Mum and asked if there was anything post wise. Ali's postcard had arrived! His photo was always with me and his recent letters. If only he was too. 

This constant travelling was taking its toll. I felt so unfit. I felt that I must do something about it. Tired. Sleep. How dull work was feeling but I was glad to be back in Oxford. I thought to myself – this time next week, Ali would be in the UK!

Before I knew it, the pumpkins were in the shops for Hallowe'en and the signs for the bonfires were up. There was even a Christmas tree in a Birmingham hotel that I drove past!

When I was here the last time, before I met Ali, I had seriously considered relocating to Oxford. I had even been flicking through the Trading Standard's magazine to see what the jobs were like and looked to see if they ever had a job I could do available. I knew already I had an advantage that they knew me really well and I fitted in. I had been in Leeds most of my life and loved being in Oxford and its environs. The locality with the thatched roof cottages, and beautiful scenery, as well as the better weather was so appealing. However that said, the house prices were off the scale. I would have to live out of the centre to be able to afford a little something. I had given it a lot of consideration.

Travelling was however, becoming very tedious to Oxford; Oxford's Banbury Road was flooded and it took half an hour to travel one mile. The machines were also taking a long time to set up. I was using Wyse terminals and they would not respond. I had tested them at the office but the parity had been set up incorrectly on the server. With some configuration it was working and there were a few aspects to set up, such as namecards, the flipchart and the demonstration machine.

The first trainee had appeared for class by this time and was moaning to another colleague about what a hard life she had. Her name was Julie. She was tall, had a wave in her hair and it was raven black and shoulder length. She would have been attractive if she smiled but she was giving off a victim aura and her body was hunched and insular. Julie was moaning to anyone in the class who would listen and Pandora who was sat next to her, had clearly experience behaviour like this from her before. Although I grew later to like her, Julie had no interest in this training and felt that the class was going to be boring. 

Pandora was in her twenties and pretty with soft blue eyes,and a fresh face. She was tall with a girl next door look about her. She was very well spoken and educated but had a serious outlook, but gentle demeanour. She was very polite and well spoken with a midlands accent tinged to her voice. She had mousy brown hair that was quite curly cut like a long version of a Mia Farrow haircut. Pandora, I noticed had an awkward, angular posture. It was as though she naturally slouched to be at the same height as others. Both of the women had an undefined personally chosen uniform of skirts and fine knit jumpers. 

Julie was always voicing her opinion in class and it was usually disruptive and negative. She was the office manager. On this day she had a lot of material and at times was justified, whereas Pandora's conversation was supportive and sympathetic. As for the rest there was Margaret, James, Mark and Abid. Margaret must have been late fifties. She was a matriach figure and worked part time. Margaret was coming in full time to get the training. She had a Southern accent and she was just a caring and kind lady. Over coffee she told me that her Mum was in sheltered housing and Margaret was always waiting for the call that her Mother had fallen. Her Husband owned a petrol garage in the town and took the calls from the Public. James, like Pandora and Abid was a trading standards officer and Mark was a trainee. 

I wished the day away although I had a generally jovial bunch of trainees. I was able to leave at 1630 and went to the local careers office, that was nearby.

I was a bit unhappy with my lot as the system was causing major discontentment. The team had redeveloped this software from a system that Oxford had and Oxford was one of the three customers that this had been designed with their input in mind. Uniface was the system that the front end had been developed in, with an underlying Ingres database. The original system worked well but it was it was slow and not windows based. They wanted to make it look both modern and current. However if I got the same data record and ran it alongside the old system then the old system was quicker. If the staff went for the same record on the new system they got a deadlock. It was a failure in my eyes and one day we ran the two systems side by side and proved COBOL was faster. I wondered if anyone back in the office had thought to do that. The office back in Leeds didn't know how to fix it.