'When one door closes, another one opens, but we often look so long and regretfully at the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.' Alexander Graham Bell.

There is no denying it, life is hard and can at times seem very, very harsh and particularly unfair. Most of us were trained or perhaps conditioned throughout our informative years that if you work hard then you'll earn lots of money and enjoy a fruitful period of retirement. It is a bit like having a new born baby, everyone oooh's and arrrr's and tells you how blessed you are to have such a healthy baby and how cute he or she is and how lovely it will be to watch them grow up etc, etc. Nobody ever says ahhhh what a lovely baby how do you think you'll cope with the hours of lost sleep, projectile vomiting, chicken pox, arguments, moods, health scares and issues, eating of bogeys, 'chats with the teacher', diarrhoea, bloody violin practise, dead pets, car sickness, "I want that", "I want this", "I NEEEEED it!", the estimated £200,000 it'll cost you over the years and the getting up at the crack of dawn to stand on a winters touch line to watch your angel do not very much and then tell him how fantastic he was as he comes of blubbing because all the others were bemoaning his total ineffectiveness!

That, my friend, is reality. That is, as they say, true life but in general we don't look at the negative rather we seek out the positives for as a rule the human condition is prone to be one of optimism. So sure we say work hard and you'll do well in life because there is more probability that if you do so you will achieve great things. However if no one ever encouraged anyone to work hard then it is more than a mere probability that they will achieve nothing at all and live in misery.

However for most of us the rose tinted view of the idyllic outside world at some point drops away and only when we really see the world as it is can we start to adjust to all of its absolute madness. You may say that this is the point when you lose your childhood but this is not true as I look with hindsight at several school friends that were very switched on, street wise if you will,  and I can think of others well into their 50's where I still don't think they have 'become aware'.

The thing is once you can see the world for what it is then, and only then, can you start to understand whereabouts you fit into it. I actually think one of my turning points was after I had worked for a decade for Fine Fare Supermarkets and had ended up being a 'trouble shooter' Manager going into small failing branches and turning their financial performance around to one of often strong profitability. I had a good working relationship with the Chairman himself but times were a changing and bigger fish were out there swallowing up the smaller ones and so it was that Gateway Supermarkets bought out Fine Fare lock, stock, barrel and Mike too. Well I became very disillusioned with some very poor management and quickly left to work for the fairly prestigious Safeways supermarket chain. A few years later I saw a copy of my Fine Fare reference and it read:-

"After 10 years of service there has been nothing to the detriment of this employee"

And that was it.

That is all I had to show for the frequent 12 hour days the 3 hour round trip drive from Littlehampton to Oxted for several weeks to sort a problem out, the fantastic financial results from all of my stores, the daily 5am starts whenever they were needed, the verbal and physical abuse received from the 100's of shoplifters that I caught, you get the theme....
"There is nothing to the detriment of this employee".

It was then that I really saw the light and a sea change occurred. I didn't stop working hard, in fact I definitely worked a lot harder in subsequent years, but what I became aware of was the following:-

1. I should not be working for 'The Company' to whom I am just a number but I shall work for my colleagues and everything from then on was about supporting my immediate colleagues. You might think it is the same but you would be wrong for there are times when I could have written and should have written such benign references but it was for a colleague and so I gave it the time befitting someone that I had worked with as just one example.

2. That striving to get to the top of the ladder was not what life is all about. God knows I have seen any number of people from Managers right up to Managing Directors who have worked their way up the slippery pole of life knocking off anyone that got in their way only to end up sacked when their face didn't fit. It really wasn't worth it.

From this point on at least I started to enjoy the journey a bit more and it was only as my industry became less human requiring less initiative but with far more directive Management that I finally elected to leave the industry. For after 30 years, working in 40 different branches and having known several hundred Managers I was very aware that out of all those people and years I have only known 3 people of my grade or above that actually reached retirement age and all three took early retirement but two of which retired through ill health, which meant only one that actually, truly retired!  


So we make these decisions and come out of a comfort zone and it is difficult when you have been in 'corporate land' for so long, much as a soldier struggles to acclimatise to civilian life. I used to have an ex-sailor work for me once and he managed to adjust quite well except every time he would use the store pa system to make an announcement he would blow twice very loudly into the microphone. Why? Well it transpires that he had a system on the ship where he could talk through a tube to the boiler room or suchlike but to get them to come to the tube he had to blow hard twice as their end of the tube had a sort of kettle whistle attached. Old habits do die hard.

 So the reality of bringing up that baby is glossed over, it's cute, you don't need to be concerning yourself with the problems of raising the child, it's going to happen anyway so just concentrate on celebrating the positives.That is what Alison and I have done since we have been together and yes we have had challenges along the way, but the rewards are immeasurable. We couldn't be prouder of both of our children, we have had some great holidays some were more adventures than holidays, but that is cool because you can't feel that you have lived without a little 'risk' somewhere along the line.

The latest chapter in my part of the story is that I broke away from the retail world and with the help of my family we set up The Old Bakery. However it too is in jeopardy as a new challenge has been thrown at us.......

That is my story but for the same 30 years Alison has been unfolding her own story and it looks like it is reaching one of those critical chapters. Clearly we run in tandem but neither of us have ever encroached on the others work, we've advised when asked and have been a sounding bench when required but each has forged their own career from their own metal and I know that we are both very proud of how committed we have been to doing a good job.

Now it is Alison's turn for the cold knife of Corporate life to cut into her life. Blame it on the recession if you will but it is tagged as 'operational effectiveness' a euphemism for we need to cut jobs and so we are cutting 2,000 and guess what buddy your time is up and so it is that Alison is due to be made redundant after 34 years in the bank. She did take a few years out to have children but for most of the 34 years she worked for the same Bank.

In due course and in the fullness of time I am sure that Alison will tell her story but what I will say is that she (and indeed me too) see this only as a new challenge and actually a chance to concentrate on a job in an area that she would prefer to work in. It is a tough economic climate out there and The Old Bakery is still in its infancy but the one thing that will get us through this uncertain time is the knowledge that we both know we will look for the positive, we will do what we have to do, together, we will not gripe about the bank... the World owing us a living and we will get off our ever fattening arses and make it happen, because no other bugger can!





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