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Airport. The classroom was well equipped with a roller board, overhead projectors, and a sixteen-mm sound projector together with other equipment.

Naturally I asked the relevant questions related to whom I would teach and the course content. In response I was shown a large cardboard box filled with hundreds of slides and was told I would find all the information within the box! I was also informed that the first course would consist of students from the Camberley factory, and they hoped I would be ready for them in four weeks time. I was then given a tour around the factory workshop that was situated below the schoolroom. It was here that ‘Van Carriers’ were manufactured. Van Carriers were large, high, tubular vehicles, which moved on six wheels and were designed to carry ship containers between their tubular frames. I had never seen one of these before. I was then taken around the Camberley Factory where the Earth Diggers and Dumper trucks were assembled. Both these vehicles were large earthmovers with tyres that measured in excess of twelve-foot in diameter. I was given a few manuals to peruse and offered the job!

A good salary was offered and negotiated and I accepted the job offer subject to my present employers releasing me.

During my visit to Clark International at Camberley I learnt the company operated a twin engine Piper aircraft out of Blackbush Airport! I had all the incentive I needed; I was going to like this post and the prospects.

This all happened during the summer period when we had no students at the Railway College. I was therefore able to persuade my boss to release me on a month’s notice.

They were sorry to see me go at the Staff College and I had some deep regrets myself for I enjoyed the work. Pamela was obviously pleased to be moving south to be nearer our families. In one easy move I jumped from an easy-going, lazy, type of job, into the high-pressure business world. Although I had the responsibility to establish and run a school alone I had the autonomy to organise the curriculum and practical details in my own way, the only proviso being that I produced the intended results.

During my first week at Clark International, I took home the large box containing several thousand slides and soon found they were completely mixed up. There was no form of cataloguing or indexing and no explanation to enable me to sort them. I had the manuals I had been given and so I spent my free time sorting and organising the slides into some sort of order. For many years the school had been run by a good engineer but three years ago he had suffered a heart attack which took him off work for many months. During this period of sick leave the Sales team would often bring customers to the school to show them odd slides and perhaps run a sixteen-mm film of the company’s products. With nobody co-ordinating the scheme the resources gradually fell into disarray. Very seldom were the films rewound, and films were sometimes broken but never repaired. Gradually everything deteriorated into a real muddle.

The slides they showed came from sets but seldom did they get sorted or filed so from the start I had my work cut out.

Within my first week I began my travels, which had first attracted me to the position. I was sent to Germany to attend a school to learn all I could about the Scheid Roller Machine. Scheid was a company that Clark International had bought up. After the week’s course I knew something about these rollers and also how the company liked

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