Job 17 Analyst Programmer, London Borough of Islington

Yet another missed opportunity. Mar 1978 &ndash Sep 1978

This page is part of my CV, Resumé or Work Record. It describes my time as an analyst programmer on contract to the London Borough of Islington, during 1978. To see this in context, look at my CV.

Islington had upgraded their mainframe to an ICL 2900 from ICL 1900. I was part of a small team brought in to verify transfer of work to the new architecture – to see that the results from the new were equivalent to the results from the old still running in parallel, and where there were differences to find out why.

I don’t remember much about the work but I remember the people, whom I liked very much, and the office was only 15 minutes walk from my house. It was very pleasant to work there and the computer operations manager wanted me to stay; come and work here he said and be my assistant. He was a large and emotional man given to bouts of public anger, equally to expressed pleasure. After one meeting where I’d said something that backed up his position he congratulated me on the landing by slapping me on the shoulders, almost knocking me down the stairs, had I not hung on I would have hurtled. His wife was as large as him and they travelled around in a Robin Reliant.

I could have carved out a career in local authorities. Maybe I threw away my opportunity, though I was a bit worried about being knocked down the stairs too often.