Site maintained by Oaksys Tech Ltd Lowly beginings. I started my working life in a Holiday Camp located in Wales. My first  job was scraping scraps of uneaten food from plates into dustbins in  the camp dining halls. There was more excitement at every meal, in  making 75 pots of tea within 4 minutes as waiters queued to take  fresh tea to tables. It was a job that most people quit within 3 weeks.  I must have been good because I was promoted to mopping the  floors before and after meals. I lasted the whole season of 9 weeks! Early days Minor official.  After the work in the Holiday Camp, I was willing to take on any job.  At the time, in Hertfordshire, the unemployment rate was 14%, times  were tough so I couldn’t be fussy. I took a job in a government  branch office where I assessed people for sickness benefit. I met all  kinds of people, but was not particularly good at the job. The local  managers saw some potential in me because they recommended  that I applied for an executive office job in the Civil Service. Maybe a  painless way to extract me? I’m not complaining though, after endless interviews, I ended up  working in the computer team on a major new government project. At  the start I wouldn’t have recognised a computer even if I’d bumped  into one. They were big boxes in those days.  Eventually the government decided I needed to be trained as a  computer professional. Not long after I worked on classified work.  Starting to move Skilling up   Into shipping and banking.  A couple of years after  professional qualification, I left  the Civil Service and moved  into the computer team of a  shipping engineer company. It  was interesting stuff, but the  organisation showed its long  history. After a few years I  moved into the banking  industry in the City of London.  The banking and broking  industry was expanding  rapidly. They were exciting  times, with impossible delivery  deadlines for uncompromising  business managers. It was a  wild ten years working in  London, European countries,  Japan and in the USA on their  front office and back office  computer systems. It was an  environment with short term  memory of successes! Travel and Security   Work with responsibility. I started to travel and work in  many countries as a senior  manager with responsibility for  a large team spread across  Europe, Asia and Africa. I was  dealing with not just  technology, but also physical  security in some risky  countries. I then branched out with my  industry friends to take on  consultancy contracts for  intelligence, physical security  and technology. It is such a  different feeling when it is your own money at risk when you  make business decisions and  recommendations!  However, during the many air  flights between meetings I  decided it was time I wrote a  book or two. I’d realised that if  I’d had good guidance as a  teenage boy I could have  done more.