I landed up working in an office at nineteen having survived many tedious years of education with negligible effect. Having taken after my mother in the brains department career options were limited. English and needlework were my only redeeming skills so as with others of my generation, I fell into office work. In retrospect I was quite suited to such an environment as, like my mother I was practical, organised, had reasonable communication skills, could sew up the ladders in my tights (yes, those were the days), and open to learning by experience, albeit sometimes bitter experience.
My first post was as secretary to the Managing Director of a small advertising agency. Suffice to say this was a three-year experience not to be repeated. Feel free to read about this under my ‘The First Rung of the Ladder’ piece on this website. The only consolation of this episode was that I knew that no future jobs would ever be as bad and fortunately this proved to be true.
Second time lucky
Moving swiftly on in my twenties I succumbed to a succession of secretarial posts in the university world despite my incompatibility with academia. Bearing in mind that I was student age at the time, I guess it was a little taster of what university life was like without the slog.
The first of these was in 1978 at Newcastle University Dental School, initially in an impressive but crumbling building in the centre of town, while the new purpose-built dental school/hospital was being built nearby, alongside the brand new RVI building. I worked as secretary to a couple of administrators one of whom was highly intelligent and eccentric in equal measure sporting vintage suits, using 1930s wall calendars and whose deep desk drawers were overflowing with apples! My other boss, an accountant, managed the finances for each department meticulously and methodically but this was in the days of handwritten spreadsheets, long before the miracle of computerised assistance. Each month we’d laboriously check each departments outgoings with me trying to suppress my giggles over orders for ice lollies, toffees and boiled sweets! Following receipt of large orders of dental equipment, I’d often land up distributing items to various departments including, more gruesomely, occasionally bags of bloody extracted teeth!
Electric golf ball typewriters occupied most office desks at that time, but I think there was still some messing about with carbon paper for duplicate file copies. Talking of duplication in most offices there was always the simple but robust Roneo duplicating machine for mass production of anything from lecture notes, mock exam papers, to newsletters etc. as photocopying was still in its infancy. The pre typed stencils were affixed to a drum through which ink bled onto paper. It was cheap and reasonably effective but guaranteed to leave its indelible purple ink marks on the user. It was on such occasions that ‘my uniform’, a white lab coat I’d been supplied with on my first day, made sense. The pockets were also useful for distributing bits and bobs to different departments and identified us as staff of one sort or another when we popped into the dental hospital next door.
Incredulously, I recall that we had a whole half hour for morning break and met with all the other departmental secretaries all at the same time! The uproarious Geordie laughter that reverberated from the coffee room as we gossiped about work and put the world to rights was something to behold. Woe betide any innocent member of staff, professor or otherwise, popping their head round the door to extract one of our clan from the ‘party’!
Eventually we moved to the new gleaming Dental School in Framlington Place complete with state-of-the-art laboratories, lecture theatres etc. I loved it and prospects were good, but by now I was seriously suffocating living at home and knew I had to make a complete break or was it escape?
The one who got away
On planning my departure from my hometown, I plumped for Edinburgh having visited several times over the years and been impressed by everything – the castle, the quaint streets, the history, the architecture, the buzz, good public transport. Realistically what did Edinburgh not have?
I scoured the Scotsman every week for jobs. Inevitably it was relatively easy to sidestep into another University job and that’s what I did, landing up in the Department of Architecture in Chambers Street. I shared a rather dull office with another secretary and sat next to the high window where I either froze or boiled according to whether the heater was on or off. I hadn’t anticipated any cultural difficulties but soon learnt that book was pronounced ‘bk’, Kingussie – kuhng-yoo-see, Milngavie – milgai, Culross – kuhl-ros and soon learnt what ‘dreich’ meant (dull, gloomy), as it was dreich for nine months of the year in the ‘windy city’. I got to grips with the filing of M, Mc and Mac and became accustomed to hearing Scot’s names such as Lachlan, Mungo, and of course Hamish. There was a large Irish contingent too so Brendan, Fionn, Niall, Siobhan & Niamh were all mixed in.
I worked for a team of about ten laid back architects who patiently put up with my initial ignorance until I became more familiar with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Gaudi, and Frank Lloyd Wright to name but a few. We had prominent architects coming to visit – Richard Rogers and Norman Foster though I didn’t appreciate these visitors until I’d seen their works in the flesh many years later – Roger’s Pompidou Centre and the Millennium dome and Foster’s Swiss Tower (the Gherkin), in London.
Edinburgh lived up to my expectations in many respects, but the City’s rented accommodation was grim at that time, usually in elegant but perishing archaic tenement flats with large period sash windows and high decorative ceilings. The remaining rentable available room was often the box bedroom which to anyone south of the Border, was a hall cupboard with a high slit window into the hall or lounge. With the exception of my colleagues, it took a while to make friends and don’t even mention the weather. In the first month I purchased an oilskin type mac which was rarely out of use. I was at the point of seriously thinking of moving to warmer climes when I moved from my depressing tenement into a 1930s retro block of flats (think Agatha Christie’s Poirot era) – complete with lift, two bathrooms and the luxury of central heating – bliss and my social life took off. In 1982 at the age of twenty-six, I purchased my own flat near the Meadows so I was finally properly independent, sadly a state few young people can claim to these days. I could make curtains, change a plug, cook, wash the communal stairs when necessary, wasn’t too averse to the odd mouse and so lapped up finally having my own breathing space.
The ‘doghouse’
I wanted a change and fancied a post in a hospital but didn’t seem to be able to get my foot in the door so looked for a better grade job within the university. Eventually a post popped up at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies working for a team of vets within the Small Animal Clinic at Summerhall. I had some reservations as I wasn’t really an animal lover, however it was the next notch up and sounded intriguing.
Again, I was thrust into a world I knew little about. Most of the time I was overseeing the correspondence from the vets to their clients, attempting to manage the accounts, and keeping the ancient case notes filing system under control. I worked for the Director of the Clinic, a Veterinary Cardiologist who amongst other things fitted pacemakers into Great Danes, Dobermans and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. There was also a Veterinary Psychologist who recounted amusing and not so amusing tales of odd or unacceptable behaviour primarily from dogs but stretching to rabbits and reptiles! Occasionally if we were short staffed, I’d man the reception desk. Here I reluctantly admit that some of my worst doubts were confirmed – that some clients really were only able to relate to the four-legged and not two-legged beings. I could see however, under the right circumstances a pet brought many plusses to people’s lives and so losing one was a genuine heart-breaking experience. Many a cup of tea and tissues were doled out to distraught families on such difficult days. I tried not to dwell on the cadaver house in the yard outside after a brief glance through its door on my first day had made me feel distinctly queasy.
My experience at the ‘Dick Vet’ as the Veterinary School was known, certainly broadened my knowledge of the veterinary and animal world but I knew I was barking up the wrong tree and that it wasn’t for me long term.
In 1985 I married Ken, a food scientist who worked in biscuits. However after a couple more years we were both restless to move from our respective jobs and even Edinburgh, so began to look for pastures new. Thus began the next chapter of my working life. If you want to know more see my piece entitled ‘The Right Medicine‘.
