My working life- Act 2 ( 22 to 50 years old , working in the UK)

Act two of my working life.- In the UK - age 22 to 50

Assistant Manager, Chester Post House - 1984- 1986

Having worked for one company when I was at school and in the vacations and then during my Industrial release year it made sense to apply for their Graduate Training scheme when I left Huddersfield in 1982. Guess who was doing the interviewing? - Jane Ward, who was by then Jane Twin and Head of HR for the Inns Division. Having worked with her at 16 years old she offered me a place on the programme.

Lightfoot Hall, Manresa Road, London- where I worked in 1982

The day I left Uni I got a holiday job working for an ex-Huddersfield Graduate, Bridget Yates, running a hall of residence for the summer in London. It came with a free flat on the Kings road, one of the trendiest parts of London at the time. I worked with a great team of students and we had to look after a load of Italian teenagers who were studying English Language there. The Regent school of English there was run by Keith Short and he invited me on many of the schools social activities like a "Pub Crawl" and a "River Boat trip on the Thames" as long as we spoke English to the students! There was also another group studying called Interstudio Viaggi and my flat was always full of pretty Italian girls who had lost their key, missed their dad, or just wanted to chat! One of them, Giovanna, ended up staying there for a long time and eventually got married to my best friend from school, Robin Jackson. They moved back to Italy and I had many happy holidays with them there in Verona and by lake Garda, where her family had a home next to the olive trees.

I just found this pic of Giovanna on her Facebook page!

One day I had a call from a guy called Mark Johns who said he was to be my Training Manager at THf Hotels and he invited me for lunch in London to discuss my Training Programme. As I got out of the lift he smiled and said “Hi, I am Mark, and of course you know my wife Caroline”. I smiled and nodded and said “yes of course, lovely to see you again” and spent the whole lunch trying to work out who this Caroline was! Eventually she shared an anecdote about the Dudley hotel and I realized that Caroline Williams had become Caroline Johns! Maybe, looking back, I should have just kept quiet but I blurted out “Oh! That Caroline” causing much laughter!

The North Stafford Hotel in Stoke- on - Trent where I was a Trainee Manager in 1982 and worked with Rhodri Mitchell - who just got back in touch with me!

Mark had put together a great programme for me and I trained at the North Stafford hotel in Stoke on Trent with Joe Azzopardi who taught me so much. He was a stickler for detail and every morning when I was Duty Manager would tour the function rooms to check everything was ready. One day he was shouting at the Hall Porter, Stephen, as I was helping a lady guest to her room. The lady asked who the rude man was shouting by the lift. I smiled and said, "That's our General Manager, Madam"! With Mike Murray as Deputy, Rhod as Assistant and a little Scottish lassie as Personnel Manager we had a lot of fun there!

Vintage used English postcard of the Post House Hotel London Heathrow Airport 1980

Mark decided after 16 months in a small hotel I needed to work in a large London hotel again and he moved me to Heathrow Posthouse (where I met Jane Ward's husband, John Twin). Again I had some great experiences representing the Heathrow Hotels at various events while working in the Area Sales Office and I also worked with the Personnel and Training team.

Holiday Inn ( Chester South) which was Chester Posthouse when I was Assistant Manager there in 1984

After that I was posted to Chester (one of the many beautiful cities in the UK that I lived) as Assistant Manager (Personnel and Training) at Chester Post House. The first year was fabulous as the GM was Frank Harvey. He had a wonderful family (Hello Catherine and Lisa) who lived in a house in the grounds. I also started dating the accountant, Janet Thompson, who later moved to York Posthouse with Frank.

I had two wonderful years in Chester and met some wonderful people like Liz Logan who I took on as a waitress and who became an Area Trainer and my girlfriend for a while. The Bars Manager, Joyce, used to bring her daughter Debbie with her at weekends and we are still friends now, 38 years later!

Let us see if any of my ex Little Chef Friends recognise this one!

From Chester Post House I moved in 1986 to Forte Roadside restaurant as Personnel and Training Officer for the Western area of Little Chef. They gave me a company car and doubled my hotel salary. Then I started a long love hate relationship with the Motorways of the UK . I had many roles over my 10 years there working for a guy called Mark Johns who was then Training Director of Little Chef, He also bought in a consultant called Caroline Johns who I worked with on various projects, Small world eh!

The Travelodge at Cork , Ireland , which Stella and I opened in 1995

My roles included opening the new restaurants (and later Travelodge’s) in the UK and Ireland. We had several very memorable months in Cork and Dublin with another great friend, Stella Penfold. Eventually I became Senior Training Officer and traveled the UK spending two days with each of my training officers, many of whom are still friends to this day like Marie. I loved traveling to Scotland, with my dog Trixie, in our big red Sierra Estate car and staying for the weekend with my friends Pat and Pete in their Caravan park and later Log cabins.

Staying at the Log Cabin in 2009- see the Nokia 6210 on the table

After Little Chef I went to work as Training Manager for an ex Little Chef Director, Nigel Brabbins, at a parcel delivery company then called Business Post( Now UK Mail) . We managed to get the prestigious Investors in People (IIP) for our 62 company and Franchise owned Operations in just 18 months. This was one of the highlights of my career.

Another Business where I was UK Training Manager 1996-1998

I ran the Graduate Training scheme there and met some beautiful people who are still very much part of my life today. Dervla Gallagher, Diane and Phil Gregory (who I had already worked with in my Little Chef days) and the beautiful Pavan Shroff who was a trainee from college and later went on to work in Dubai and feature in part 3 of my life.

Princess Pav who did her OJT with me at Business Post in 1996

Feeling invincible after changing industry and getting IIP I accepted a job offer working as Training Manager for a Restaurant and Retail company in the Middle East in 2000. Then my life fell apart. My mother died and the job and Kuwait was not what I thought. Then the lady I fell in love with in my final weeks at Business Post and who left her 10-year relationship to be with me, decided she did not want to move to Kuwait! By the time I returned to the UK 6 months later Emily was married to someone else.

Emily Mullins on the left- I lived with her and her harp before I headed off to Kuwait

I got another Hotel Training Manager role with Accor UK and Ireland hotels and then moved on to work with Brian Worthington at Choice Hotels Europe. Finally, I set up my own training consultancy SSh training. After a year working with Sodexho (Mark Johns), SITA (Phil Gregory) , Northamptonshire Police ( Diane Gregory) and Charles Wells Brewery I was persuaded to join SITA full time . They offered me a job as Group IT Trainer ( ha-ha yes me ,training people on IT!) traveling the UK in a beautiful Peugeot 306 Estate ( which was regularly broken into outside hotels at night!) . It was great fun travelling the UK and working in places like Stamford and the north of England as well as their HQ in Maidenhead. I worked with Phil Gregory again and was joined by another ex Little Chef Colleague, Jo Carnachan.

My blue Peugeot Estate and one of the lovely hotels I stayed in with SITA

Finally after 2 years the then new HR Director wanted to set up an L and D team so when he found out the two IT trainers had an HR background we changed department and started traveling the UK delivering courses such as “ Managing Your people skills” . In 2005 I decided to move on again when I had a phone call to rejoin Mark Johns at another French Environmental giant, Veolia, at their Campus Veolia near Heathrow airport ( Staines)

Matthew, Paul and Matt at our shared desk at Veolia

By then I was renting a flat in Birmingham (having sold my UK house in 2004). We had 10 or so trainers (another great bunch of characters like Paul, Gus, Kevin, Matthew and Al (FAD) Kara) . I am still in touch with several to this day and visited Gus and his family in Melbourne , Australia and Doha, Qatar! Here I ran programmes on Environmental Legislation, Environmental awareness, a week long IOSH Managing safety programme and the one day IOSH safety passport

One of my highlights there was designing, getting approval for and running the IOSH Safety for Senior Executives programme which I ran for all the Board members for the Veolia companies across Northern Europe.

In 2008 I started work on the ILM programmes and designed bespoke ILM 2 programmes for Veolia Water and Veolia Transport. When Mark left Veolia, I took over running the ILM programmes for the Campus.

A third career highlight was getting the highest quality status ( DCS) for an ILM Centre from the guy that was then my External ILM Verifier, Jim McDermott!

My last Managing safety course in VES Birmingham

As Act 2 of my working life ended, I would typically leave home on a Sunday afternoon and drive two hours north to stay in a Travel Inn overnight . That way I could be at the training venue at 7 am to set up for an 8 am start. At around 4 pm I would pack up and drive two hours to the next Travel Inn, eat at 7 pm and sleep at 8 pm. The next day I would get up at 6 am to have breakfast and set up at the next venue, and so on arriving back exhausted in Birmingham on a Friday night for a Chinese takeaway as I never had any food at home!

Sometimes if I had several days training in Scotland I would stay in a friends log cabins for the weekend to save the long journey home and back. It was also a great way to unwind, walking their black Labrador, Tilly, in the beautiful Scottish Countryside.

My lovely Veolia car at Nether Craig in Scotland

If I went back to Birmingham I would sleep on Saturday, do my washing, and maybe meet up with my friend David Graham. Sadly I found out he passed away a few years after I came to Bahrain when his son emailed me after receiving a letter from me. David and I used to drink heavily in those days and I would fall into a drunken slumber . On Sunday I would drop off my clothes to be ironed by my lovely Croatian housekeeper Vaseira and head off for work with my freshly ironed clothes.

Applying for my new job in Bahrain

Believe it or not I did that for 5 years and then I saw an advert in People Magazine. The Bahrain Petroleum Company ( BAPCO) was looking for a Senior Management Development Specialist to run ILM courses in Bahrain. I applied and was flown out for an interview and accepted their most generous offer. Back at Veolia our Managing Director, Roy Fairweather, was not happy at my resignation and made me work my three months’ notice! Effectively he paid for me to travel the UK and say goodbye to all my friends. In the last week Mark Johns took me for a night out at the Hook Norton Brewery for his farewell, bringing “ He’s off” tee shirts for everyone to wear.

My farewell to the UK- a trip to Hook Norton Brewery with friends

You can read about Act 3 of my working life, in Bahrain , age 50 to 60 , in next weeks Blog!

Packed for Bahrain on 13.2.2010

Until then this is the British Kubayan, well almost! , looking back on his working life as he prepares to move to his retirement in the Philippines, one day, maybe, Inshallah!