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My first job was as a junior draughtsman at Newmarket Transistors, about ten miles from Wicken. I earned the grand sum of one shilling and seven pence per hour, which was three pounds nine shillings and eight pence for a forty-four hour week. Cycling to and from work each day became my chief training for the weekend grass track racing. It was quite a shock for me, straight from an all boy school to see the rows of girls on the assembly lines at Newmarket Transistors.
We had a good works social club. The main events were a Christmas party and a summer outing to the seaside with a stop on the way home for a dinner dance. It was on one of these outings that I met my wife Denise.
After some ten years with Newmarket Transistors, I left to join Caravans International as a draughtsman working mainly on the Eccles and Fairholme ranges of caravans. Caravans International became the largest caravan manufacturers in the world, at one time making a caravan every seven minutes.
Although I enjoyed my work on caravans, I missed working on special purpose assembly machinery, so I moved on to Alfred Bader Ltd where we designed machinery for assembling electric light bulbs. Unfortunately, after a year the office was closed and we were all made redundant.
After another spell with caravans, I got a job working with Precision Engineering Products at Bury St. Edmunds. It was soon after I joined PEP that I was contacted by Ken Newby, a local agent, who wanted to take on a self employed draughtsman to work at Caravans International for a short contract. That was the start of me becoming a self employed draughtsman which I have been on and off ever since.
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