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Soon I had formed about 35 steady customers and from then on I did not need to advertise any more I made the rounds of my customers who kept me busy. During later years I spent most of my Odd jobs working for Chapman shoes. Mr Chapman owns five shops in different towns in and near Camberley. I would do his shop fitting, and any other work involved at the shops and I was kept busy all the time.

During these lean periods I got to know a large circle of customers who found jobs for me to do. from House painting to Electrical repairs. It was at this time I met up with Gillian and Peter Hodges. Gillian was an artist and has made many beautiful paintings

Peter was working as a technical Author with Air Log in Aldershot he suggested I do the same so I put in an application.. At the time I had my own Limited company so once I had been checked over I was taken on the Technical writers team. I signed my contract and within weeks my income jumped to a very high figure. I had made it and was now really in the money. Air Log needed someone to represent the company on the reliability committee. But nobody knew anything about the subject, and that included me but I was the new boy so got landed with the job!

An interesting episode occurred on my first meeting of the Reliability group These meetings were held once a month when all the top brass from the services would attend with the suppliers and manufacturers to review progress and sort out troubles or hold ups which might be occurring. The trouble was we were dealing with classified materials; secret passwords were given when reference was made to secret items.

The words I use here will be fictional for I am still “classified” but the committee, shall we say were concerned with shall we say delays in deliveries of a “Backdoor” and wanted to know just what was to be done to improve the situation. I was new to the situation and asked the chair if someone could explain what is this “Backdoor”? I was Bob Wallis from Air Log and did not know if my company was involved with this “Backdoor”. The meeting went quiet everyone looked at each other in horror, the Chairman turned to the secretary and said would he explain to Mr Wallis what a “Backdoor “was! He looked blank and put it to the meeting, could someone help him here. No response he directed the question to the top brass nobody knew! By now the whole committee started to laugh. The chairman said: “Well I think we all will have to buy Mr. Wallis a drink over lunch.!” They did, I was accepted into the Reliability committee!

When I had finished my contracts with Air Log. I obtained another good contract with a Swiss Boiler company who made large cast iron water heating boilers for schools and offices I took of the job to work alongside the technical staff installing and testing installations and preparing operating and maintenance manuals of the company. During periods when the work load fell off I would decorate the factory and offices inside and out. This with general maintenance about the place kept me with a steady income. But like so many things my contract come to an end but I managed to get a good contract over the Christmas period with Mainwork at Porchester writing the technical books for a new Continuous Steel manufacturing plant in Wales. As I was a limited company many of the temporary staff had to be contracted through me. A large staff was taken on for technical writing and drawing for the job was to be completed within three months.

We worked though the Christmas period, though we did break for Christmas and boxing day we worked from 8.30 am till 8.30 PM and brought in a great deal of money.

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