Another bright breezy Norfolk winters day.
I’m officially on leave today but I am also now no longer a working man. I ceremonially switched off my Dell pen tablet ( my workhorse) for the last time yesterday.
40 years work. Done.
If I count the days at Braggers Sports&Social club, where I started sorting bottles into crates at the age of 8 (20p/hour), that’s 50 years at work. Clearly working at OS has been my life. A very interesting job for a quintessentially British thing. Almost everyone I tell about what I do/did expresses an interest in our maps. It’s been a great way to earn £££ and from the get go, I never wanted to work indoors. A strangely solitary profession but wholly reliable on interacting with the great unwashed, I think it’s been perfect for me - happy to be busy on my own, happy to have the interface with people who, by and by, benefit from what I produce. Not many folk have every thing they create, everyday, published and bought.
Towards the end of my time at OS, I sensed I was becoming somewhat cynical of the way we were being managed. I strongly believe that this cynicism was born out of experience. Too many rubbish pay awards and an overall downgrade of work conditions for no apparent reason have tarnished the last few years. Maybe these thoughts have been enhanced by my departure. Without doubt I am immensely proud of my work and proud of OS maps and the rose tinted specs will get rosier as time passes.
A lifetime of friendships, a lifetime of getting by with some you’d rather not and a lifetime of measuring things. Strange what people do to earn a living.
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