Bear with me - it’s a long read!!
At 16 when still at school I got a job in the Dundry Inn collecting glasses and washing up/waiting. When I turned 18 I also worked behind the bar and started my ‘proper’ working life as a clerical temp in the office of WD & HO Wills (Imperial Tobacco) in their office in Hartcliffe before joining Pattersons in Redcliffe St. That didn’t work out and after about 6 months I went full time at the Dundry Inn as Assistant Manager. I worked there for a couple of years but at the age of 20 I managed to land another clerical job at Gateways in Cater Rd. I got on really well there and just after I got married at 21 I managed to get into their Computer Operations department working on their IBM Z mainframe and AS400 mid-range (for you techies). I worked my way up to Senior Op and Gateway became Somerfield and moved to their purpose-built office building in Whitchurch. After being passed over for promotion several times the penny dropped and so I left to join Allied Dunbar in Swindon as a Senior Op. Once I’d settled in I absolutely loved it. When Mrs R&W also got a job in Swindon (Deputy Head of a large Comprehensive school) it seemed crazy for us both to commute so we moved up here. We sold our house in Bishopsworth and I bought 3 Buy-to-Lets here as a side business.
Allied Dunbar became Zurich and became a crap place to work almost overnight. I had moved from shift operations to Ops Analysis, writing and fixing JCL and designing (and fixing) processing schedules.
I was made redundant from Zurich in 2003 and trained as a schoolteacher for a bit, based in Cardiff but absolutely hated it. That was the lowest point of my life to-date and I was deeply depressed. We had to sell one of the B2Ls to clear some debt but got stung for Capital Gains so with hindsight I should have tried to keep hold of it. An expensive and stressful lesson.
Luckily in 2004 I managed to get a job as a Software Engineer working in Reading for German company Beta Systems. Although I really didn’t like the job or the people it got me back into the IT industry which is where I felt comfortable.
I left there, taking a pay cut, to join a very well-known financial service provider at their HQ back in Swindon - back as a Shift Operator again - coming full circle. I found the step back very difficult and I don’t think the shift managers liked the fact that I’d held a more senior role before and they made my life rather difficult.
In 2007 I managed to escape from the Shift Operations and took a secondment to IT Transitions - which became permanent.
Since then my role has expanded - I retrained as a Project Manager, passing my PRINCE2, APM and ITIL exams, had several promotions and am now in a Lead role with several line reports. I really love my work again, but despite this I am now grazing my days out hoping to be made redundant before I retire in 3 years time.
2 years ago when Mrs R&W retired, we used her retirement lump together with remortgaging our home to buy a flat in Gibraltar. Our plan is still to sell here and buy a place in Marbella where we will live and run the Gibraltar flat as an AirBNB - this would allow us to have all our finances based in Gibraltar which would give us access to the free healthcare of the GHA and also as Gib pensioners we wouldn’t have to pay income tax.
Whether we can do this largely depends on the Brexit negotiations that have been dragging on since that awful day back in 2016. We are hoping that Gibraltar will somehow become a member of the Schengen zone so we won’t be subjected to the 90 day rule, but that remains to be seen. It’s in the lap of the politicians (God help us).
That’s more or less my life story!!
