I left school in the summer of 1973 having failed to achieve the A-Level grades I needed to get into university, and started looking for a job. My parents had moved from Selby in Yorkshire to the village of Essendine in the county of Rutland, shortly before I was due to take my A-Levels, because my father got a job as a senior manager at a paper mill in Peterborough.
For the first couple of months I was employed in that paper mill - the name of which I have long since forgotten - as a trainee stock control clerk and general dogsbody. I used to ride my BSA Bantam 175 (similar to the illustration) everyday to work and back, which was the best part of my day (except for when it was raining heavily).
In September of 1973, however, I got my fiirst "proper" job as a stock control clerk with Allis Chalmers Engineering Ltd. at their Essendine factory, which had been established in the 1950s. Allis Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries, and when I arrived on the scene the Essendine plant was manufacturing heavy earth moving equipment and equipment for the mining industry such as pumps, screens and crushers. My job initially was as stock controller for pump spares.
By Christmas of 1974 I had obviously caught the attention of somebody in Allis Chalmers' London headquarters, because I was offered a job in the London office, which was situated in Moorgate, not far from St. Pauls, starting in January 1975. I remained there for a total of six months, after which I decided I was not cut out for London life.
My time in London was generally uneventful except for two incidents that have stayed in my memory. The first incident occurred on my first day at work, when I made the mistake of running to catch a tube train that was about to depart from the Acton Underground station, not realising at the time that they ran every couple of minutes. The doors closed unexpectedly just as I arrived, and as a result I fell down with one leg between the platform and the train. Luckily a guard saw me before the train left - otherwise, I might not be here today.
The second incident occurred three days after my twentieth birthday on 28th February 1975. I arrived at Moorgate just before 9.00 a.m. on the Circle line, and ascended to the street above to find several fire engines, ambulances, and dozens of police officers. There were hoses all over the street, which was closed to traffic, and a number of people walking around in a dazed state.
It turned out that an inbound train on the Northern line had failed to stop at the platform and had impacted the wall beyond (Moorgate was the line's southern terminus) at high speed, at around 8.46 a.m., resulting in 43 deaths and more than seventy people injured. The incident is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground.