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I was good at programming ... very good. The first computer I worked on was a Honeywell 200 mainframe with a massive 16k of memory! It filled a room. Working in COBOL and an old Honeywell language called Easycoder I soon progressed into Systems Analysis and I was even better at that. Working with computers in those days was fun and I was at last enjoying myself a bit. Unfortunately I wasn’t so good at socialising but did discover that there was a girl in the ‘Punch Room’; we used paper tape and punch cards in those days; who fancied me. I plucked up the courage and asked her out. Although I was 21 and she was just 17, she was far more ‘street wise’ than me, but we seemed to be getting on well and I asked her to marry me. Amazingly she accepted and it looked like I was on the path to a great future. In 1968 we married and that’s when it all went wrong. Eight months later we were divorced and I had hit rock bottom. I can never forget what she said, ‘I’d like you as a sister but I don’t want you as a husband any more.’ How observant was that! My work suffered and I hit rock bottom. I was passed over for a promotion I should have got and I decided to leave and look for another job. It was easy and I soon got a better job at a higher salary as a Systems and Methods Analyst with Rank Leisure Services. It was a nice small department and we all got on well, but it didn’t last. They decided to close down the department and we were all made redundant. Fortunately they were generous with their redundancy terms and I soon found another job.