Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979, the day I left the UK to start my new job at Shell Research in Amsterdam. I had packed what I needed for a month into my car and took the Sealink overnight ferry from Harwich to The Hoek of Holland. As the boat left Harwich, I made my way to the 1st class restaurant at the rear of the boat and looked out as the UK slowly became smaller and smaller. To celebrate I had ordered a bottle of the best red wine. I was happy.
Now just imagine someone joining me at my table and telling me what would happen to me in the 40 years to come. And this is more or less what this blog is all about, not the actual things which happened ( you can read all this in the 700 plus blogs I have written) but the context and emotions during this time. I would be living in The Hague with my Dutch girlfriend whom I had met in New York in 1974. She was a lawyer doing a Masters Degree at Columbia and I was starting my second PostDoc. We were both residents in the Kings Crown hotel, as were many other students who did not realise how expensive it was! The first thing she said to me was “I have a boyfriend” which meant we enjoyed each other’s company for a year and no more than that. She left to return to the Netherlands and I went on to California and my first real job.
My stay in California was a lot shorter than planned (see Syva blogs) and Shell was happy that I finally accepted their job offer of 1974, placing me in a UK research agrochemical laboratory and not the Amsterdam which I wanted. In 1977 my girlfriend became my girlfriend during a one week stay in The Hague on the Senior Staff introduction course. After bitching that I wanted to work for Shell in Amsterdam, they finally let me go there on a one-year exchange program. Not only that but I would be on an ex-pat salary meaning my take-home pay was about twice that of my colleagues! The only disadvantage was having to commute every day, firstly by train (Shell provided a 1st class season ticket) and later by car (after I was fed up with the train and my fellow passengers).
For four years I worked in a pure research unit, a sort of playground for academically orientated researchers such as I was with no real accountability. Eventually my boss advised me to switch to applied research if I wanted any career. My one year exchange program had been extended annually all this time and I had become very comfortable financially. In applied research I landed with a “thump” and awoke to the reality of what applied research was all about. There was a catalyst which had only 10% of the activity required to make the process economic – my job was to achieve just that. As a pure scientist I earned the contempt of all around me until the day I showed that my pure approach had delivered Shell with their commercial catalyst.
That was the beginning of the end. My bosses were relentless and made my job hell. So I quit, not something that often happened, and formed my own company which would provide industrial companies with the chemicals prepared in academic research. To make the Shell catalyst active enough, I was eventually allowed to commission a short research project at a local university to prepare a key ingredient. In pure research, I could have easily done this myself but now in the applied laboratory which did not have the right equipment. It was unheard of for one division to help another which I shall come back to shortly.
It was at this time that my long-term relationship with my girlfriend ended. She wanted to become a career diplomat and I wanted to stay in The Hague.
My new company was called Specs (Speciality Chemicals Services) and the idea was that industrial researchers could ask us to have academics prepare the materials not to be found in commercial catalogues. I had a sizeable academic network which I had built and maintained over the ten or more years at Shell but, even so , the business was simply too high-risk to make a profit. It was after 2.5 years and nearing bankruptcy that Pfizer, the American pharmaceutical giant, discovered us and the whole business model changed.
Within a year we had huge contracts to deliver random selections of very small amounts of academic research chemicals, each contract was prepaid in full and I started to build the supplier network throughout Europe and the disintegrating Soviet Union. We recruited a lot of staff, mostly fresh university graduates, and moved offices three times to absorb the growing numbers.
I had married in 1989 and we had three children (Lisa, 1990, Christy, 1991 and Guus, 1993). I was travelling the world on sales and acquisition campaigns which took me away for roughly half the year. It all seemed to be going so well which, in retrospect, it exactly the time to start worrying.
Two members of the Management Team started their own competing company taking with them the profitable supplier and customer networks. The company was forced to downsize and in 2003 I separated from my wife. This was tough on my children and I did my best to be with them when I could. I started a Foundation (Kids and Science) to inspire young people to think creatively as well as founding a new company (SORD) to collect and distribute synthetic methods, data from academic theses and dissertations. This meant working very long days, no vacations and doing all I could for my children. My wife died from a horrible cancer in 2010.
Now we skip to today. Lisa married Dylan in 2017 and in September 2018 Bobbie Martine was born, my first grandchild. In January Christy moved to Amsterdam to live with he boyfriend Diederik. Guus now has a wonderful girlfriend as well as his Masters Degree in Law. Take a look at the young happy faces in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago.
Now to context. In 1979 I was embarrassingly arrogant. I featured in a video commissioned by Shell to highlight the careers of a Department Head, a Section Head and a researcher (me). It takes a lot of courage for me to look at this video! The video crew even shot more (awful) film at my home in 1984 – do not watch this if you have just eaten!
At Specs I profited from the war between pure and applied research at Shell. What pure research had ordered a month before was then re-ordered by applied research – no way that one division would consider helping the other. I had escaped from a research facility where the Dutch Reformed Church exerted such power. In spite of this Shell went from strength to strength. The ag-chem business where I had started in 1976 was closed down not long after I had left. It contributed only 1% to Shell’s total turnover and it was a few years later that most UK research (chemicals) was moved overseas. The bean-counters kept striking.
Shell still makes promotional videos; the labs where I worked were closed and relocated to a new site, with all sorts of odd companies taking over the buildings where I once worked. The first lab I worked in was demolished to make room for the Eye Film museum. I last visited the old site a few years back and I was saddened, shaken even. Even worse, the apartments built on some of the old site have been bought by people who used to work there – how sick can you get? One of my best friends from the time I worked there is still living in Amsterdam and we meet at regular intervals and occasionally talk about the times and the people. He also became a good Specs customer. But he is one of very few; most people I forgot as soon as I could.
At Specs I learned the importance of cash-flow in surviving in business. That too is context. Times change and so do businesses. Pharma research has all but disappeared in the major companies, they buy in leads from small companies and universities. So SORD never really had a chance and, sadder still, academics were very reluctant to have us abstract their theses as a business. In fact, their moronic blindness to the real world still gets more alarming. They are happy to have the university pay millions to get their papers printed and subscribe to the larger publishers. Then, when you tell them they can buy a thesis manuscript for Euro 50 they say you are a thief.
Kids and Science also suffered in the new way of looking at education. It all became centralised and government funded, forcing out initiatives like ours because the money had already been spent elsewhere. Last year we had to admit defeat and close down the Foundation. What really hurt me as a person was having people smile and appear supportive only to do nothing for you the next weeks and months.
So in terms of context, the 40 years contains two great successes and two dismal failures. If the person at my dinner table in 1979 had told me this, what would I have done? Totally stupid question of course. As a scientist you quickly learn to be curious and analytical. In Japan, the director of the agency who sold Specs products became exasperated by my asking continuously what different things in Japan were for. Example: the three lights on the roof of each lorry cab, some alight some not. It had to have some meaning (I thought). But I never stopped asking questions.
Then the personal context. Ten years with my first girlfriend ended and I began thirteen years of marriage ending in divorce and later in the horrible death of my ex-wife. Out of all this I now have three truly remarkable children, now young adults who see the world as I saw it in 1979 – full of opportunity. Their energy and enthusiasm, and their love for me, are the kindest gifts you could ever wish for.
This is a picture from our last vacation as a family, in China in 2011. As much as possible I want them to be free to live their own lives and not to worry about me. Let’s see how I do on that front!
In the 40 years I met so many people, some wonderful and many not so (actually they were stupid). I was fortunate. The good people inspired me so that the stupid ones seemed to disappear. I have mentioned many of these in the older blogs so no need to go back and do that again. I have been cheated by people whom I trusted, I lost every penny I had earned and started from scratch again. Each year the tax man wants even more money so each year there are no vacations. But I have peace now, time to think and to be grateful. After the UK disappeared from view on that ferry in 1979, I went to my cabin and slept very well. The next day I began this fascinating journey…
dickwife 