Cars - 1

 I thought that I might take a break from historic events and try and explain my trip through a variety of cars. This will be a simple list with a few comments about each. Although I am only up to the late 1970s with this blog, this list will come up to date.

1.  Circa 1963 - 1947 Austin 10 - brought from one of our assistant scoutmasters - the one that we called "Asm". It was a nice little car  with a registration that I would like now which was DPX52. It had dodgy brakes and variable steering and cost me £10.
   
   
   
   
   I took Valerie out in it one day and we had a bit of trouble stopping it on one occasion. I tried to insure it but that was also £10, which was more than one weeks salary for me at that time and a cost that was out of my reach so I sold it and got £10 for it!
2. Once we were in Norbury and me settled in a much better paying job, I started hiring cars for various weekends and bank holidays. The cars of choice were either a Vauxhall Viva or a Ford Capri. I have a memory of taking the cars back with a little pile of cigarette ash on the floor by my right foot! I stopped smoking not long after
3. Once I was at Woellwarth and living in Billericay, it was obvious that we needed a car. Mistakenly, I bought a Ford Escort from Roy Jarvis, one of my Spot DM colleagues. This was a converted van and was awful. Reversing out of the garage at my house, I tore the exhaust pipe off so it had to go - for scrap. It's number plate was OO 7303 - what a great one to have nowadays.

1. Brian next door had a friend that had a Hillman Imp going cheaply so that was next. It was a nice little thing in pale blue. The back seat could be folded down  but how we coped with both Sam, who was  around 3 then, and Simon who was 1 I cannot remember.  You can see Sam and me below.

1. Eventually, we decided that we should get a decent car, so we went down to Allens of Romford, the local main ford dealer and bough a 2 year old dark metallic green Ford Escort GT. Not to quick by today's standards but very snappy for those days.
2. I got very excited about the Ford Escort Mexico and fancied doing a bit of rallying if I could get one but... It only had two doors and the insurance was very expensive. Hence, I bought a brand new Ford Escort GT in a strange shade of red/pink. I took this off the road one night and bent the suspension showing Valerie's younger brother, Terry, how good it was. It had new had Pirelli tyres that didn't like a greasy road! Oh well.
3. We were moving up in the world and my salary was expanding very quickly so the Ford went quite quickly to be replaced by a Triumph Dolomite.
   
   
   
   
   SGX663L - so close to SBX it makes my head turn :-)
   
   What a nice car. What a terrible gear box. By then I already had arthritis in my neck causing issues with my left arm and this gearbox was very difficult. It went into Triumph on about 5 occasions.
4. It is now late 1973 and, in addition to our two children, we now had a fast growing Golden Retriever. Triumph Dolomite? Too small! All of a sudden, we can afford a much bigger and more expensive car.  Average annual salary in the Uk was around £1,980 per annum.  A brand new blue Volvo 245 estate? £2,499.00! I went off to Munich soon into the new year and, while I was there, I purchased a nice set of sheepskin covers for the front seats. Goodness knows why. When I came back, Mum had run the car down against Grandad's gate in Romford so there was a lovely gouge all the way down the offside of the car.
5. It turned out that, with the big petrol crisis, keeping the Volvo was quite difficult so it got swapped for another, red, Dolomite. I had some trouble with this (I should have known better after the previous experience) so it got sold off for one of the new VW Golf range. This was a nice little car for four of us and Cindy could jump in the back.
6. 1975 brought Wendy along and, once again, the car was too small. The local Volvo dealer had a high mileage 245 that was only a couple of years old and was sold with a warranty. This one was a nice dark green and ran perfectly. 
7. Inflation kept roaring away and now we had two lots of school fees to pay so, under pressure from the bank manager, the Volvo was swapped for an Austin Maxi which I could get for cash and all paid up. This was one unreliable car. We are now around 1978-9.
8. I am now working at Nordic Bank and enjoying life even though, again, we are under a little pressure. At lunch, one day, I was offered a new job that came with a company car and more money.  We now have - guess what - a dark red Volvo 245! This was a three year deal so I couldn't think about another car throughout that time. 
9. After 3 years, the car came up for renewal. We had a new, less generous General Manager so there was a tighter restriction on the cost of company cars so I had to be a bit creative. Again, I fancied a Ford RS Escort but, again, there was the issue of two doors! Hence, I got a nice bright red 1600 Ghia with wider wheels and an RS steering wheel. It was a dream after the Volvo. We had four children by now and the car was a bit cramped but Sam was now 14 and Simon 12 so they had quite a lot of other things to do as they were both active in the Scouting movement.
10. The bank closed down about 9 months later so, again, cars were on the move. I became Treasury Manager of the follow-on bank with a new company car, again! (Sorry about all the exclamation marks). There was a tight budget for a company car but Ford were just launching the Sierra and I was able to get a red Sierra Ghia which was larger than the Escort and more luxurious. The Escort went to one of the dealers from the old bank who transferred with me to the new one.
11. One last car from my banking career. I joined Banque Francaise du Commerce Exterieur as chief dealer in September 1994. I felt that it was better to be a smaller fish in a big tank than a big fish in a small talk, as it were. Again, I had to change cars and along came another Volvo 245. This time a nice metallic silver GL - a very nice car that I managed to back it up against a post outside the curry place at Gidea Park Station. (This is a sample - not my one).
    
    
    
    
    
    

I think that this is enough for now. I will continue with the next edition.

Woellwarth & Co. Personalities

 So who do I remember? I will miss out loads of people as I can't remember all their names).

Going round the room from the door -

US Deposits

Reg Winterbourne (MD)
Tony Woellwarth (Chairman)
Johnny Carlin - Finacor Paris link man (sailed in HMS Fencer during the war)
Alan Bedwell - on a trip to NY, he picked up a copy of Report from Engine Company 82 for me - I still have this.
Robert Winterborne (Reg's son).

Sterling Deposits

David Robinson  - keen on cars like me - he had a Cortina 1600E - and lived in Emerson Park.
Can't remember his colleague's name.

Canadian $ FX

Originally David Raison but he moved over the the DM section under me.
Doug - can't remember his surname

Richard  - can't remember his surname

French Franc and Italian Lire

John Williams - Manager and 100% nice guy
Dave Watson
Turner Temple

Paul Waghorn (Gerry's brother)
'Grimsdale' - not his name but a nickname given by Graham Winterbourne as he shrieked like Norman Wisdom when excited!
Eileen - no surname, sorry - she took the line to Finacor Paris

D Mark FX

Originally Tony le Ray-Cook was the manager

Replaced by Roy Jarvis

Replaced by David Lincoln

Keith McCloud - took the line to Finacor Munich
Graham Winterbourne (Reg's nephew)

Bob Davis

Me (took the line to BEG Zurich)

Linton Viney
Roger Whittle (my best man and long term friend)
David Raison

US$ FX

Reg Heath (from the Savage and Heath family - competing brokers)

Ron Strudwick - Struddie
Nigel Staughton-Harris (Ex Astley & Pearce - we had some history!)

John Lake

Steve Punkett

Gerry Waghorn (Paul's brother)

Some images

John Williams

Roy Jarvis

Bob Davis, Keith McCloud and me. Check out the silly changes to the calendar on the wall!

Bob Davis

Canadian $ - Richard smoking a cheroot!

A view of New Broad Street as it is now. Woellwarth and Co. were in a building - Friars House -  about 3 down on the right hand side. If I remember correctly, they had the 1st and 3rd floors on the front of the building

Woellwarth & Co - my personal background

 Well, you might think it strange that I should need a page to describe my personal background at Woellwarth but there were lots of things going on that would change my life quite dramatically one way and another.

HP Programmable Calculator

First off, as mentioned in an earlier post, I had started studying at the Open University. Woellwarth were very supportive in that they paid all my fees and gave me extra holiday to go on the week's summer school, where required. After the foundation course, I did two courses on electronics and then, following on, a course on programming. Now, at that time, programming meant typing out the code on a teletype and making a punched tape to save it. High tech indeed. However, things were moving on in the computer world and Hewlett Packard released a, very expensive, programmable hand calculator that had magnetic tape input so that routines could be loaded and replaced with other routines as required. I was asked to look into using on to generate forward swap prices. 

Part of the basis of forward swap rates was the relationship between the underlying interest rates. I have described this process previously but, quickly, purchasing Sterling (GBP)  using US Dollars (USD) for a date three months ahead attracts a different exchange rate from that pertaining to now. This is calculated from the relatinship between the GBP 3 months interest rate and the same for the USD. So if USD rates (at the time) were 5% for 3 months and GBP rates were 8% then anyone taking USD in exchange for GBP would need 3% compensation. This was reflected in the forward rate for GBP/USD. There was a formula in current use whereby these relationships could be obtained.

There was a known problem with the accepted formula as it became increasingly out of step as the periods became longer, or so it seemed. I felt that I couldn't use the existing formula because of this issue and worked out a solution. I wrote out all of the transactions that would be involved and then reduced these to a formula using my, long unused, mathematical ability. Doing this highlighted where the standard market formula went wrong. It seems that the formula as used had two parts whilst my formula had three. The third part, under normal circumstances, gave an extra boost to the result that was so small as to be ignored.  Unfortunately, when the numbers got bigger, so did the bit that was being ignored!

I tested this out with the French Franc team (led by a really nice guy called John Williams) and we all agreed that it was the way forward so I programmed up the formula into the HP calculator. My first live program!

Friends

I was never happy as a broker but I did have some good friends on the banking side.

First off was Peter Johnson who, if you remember, had started work at the District Bank on the same day as me and came into the dealing room as result of my recommendation. He was now trading DEM at National Westminster Bank (which included the District Bank). We got on well and, although our forward swap DEM business was never good enough for NatWest's trading volumes, we still enjoyed each other's company. In fact, we went to visit his family and he brought his wife (also ex-District Bank) and daughter over to us.

Then there was Brown Harriman and International Banks (soon to be Banque Francaise de Credit International). The chief dealer there was Arthur Whitton. We got on really well and had many a liquid lunch in the Wine Lodge in Fenchurch Street. He was quite ill at one point so I drove down to see him - he lived out the back of Southend. I had my new Triumph Dolomite. When he saw it, he was so impressed that he changed his company car for one - however, he managed to get the Sprint version which wasn't out when I bought mine. Eventually, he left and was replaced as chief dealer by Martin di Lieto (of which more later).

Lastly, we come back to old American Express days where the position keeper in my day - David Britton - was now chief dealer at Nordic Bank ( a "consortium" bank with four shareholders - DNC Oslo, Svenska Stockholm, KOP in Finland and CoCo (Kjobenhavens Handelsbank) in Copenhagen. He supported me quite well when I needed a DEM spot price and we regained our good friendship.

My salary was based on the nett performance of the company after expenses. My take was 1.1%. This generated the £2,600 bonus out of my starting salary of £3,000. Because of the success of the DEM section and the awakening of the short date GBP section under Nigel Staughton, by the time we got 4 years into my stint, my salary was around £16,000. Adjusting for inflation, this represents £168,000 in present day money - not something that you walk away from.

So, here I am earning lots of money but unhappy with what I was doing. David Britton eventually ceded the DEM desk to a German chap called Willi Bock. He came over from CoCo. Things were going fine - and I even sported a CoCo in-house tie! - then one day I was told that Willi was returning to Copenhagen soon. The bombshell was - did I want to join the bank as their DEM trader - did I!!

Negotiations worked their way through and I was left with a dilemma. Was I so desperate to leave broking and return to banking that I could cope with a £6,000 drop in salary. There was wicked inflation between 1974 and 1977 but it had eased off somewhat. As it happens my £16,000 had now reduced to a present day equivalent of £96,000 but a drop to £10,000 would leave me with £60,000 (2020). Still a decent salary but I had kids at private school and a nice detached house in Billericay with a 1st class season ticket thrown in! What I did get, though, was a subsidised mortgage rate which took the then current rate of 9% down to 2.5% which took around £1,800 out of my costs.

What did I do? I jumped at it. I know that was only time until I improved my lot as I was confident of my ability so I accepted the job and at the end of December 1977, I left Woellwarth and Co and Joined Nordic Bank.

Woellwarth & Co Part 2

 My sojourn with David Lincoln on the new Swiss Desk was interesting as David had some views as to how brokers worked that clashed quite badly with the then current standards of Tony Woellwarth and Reg Winterbourne (Chairman and MD).  It was my job to keep him in check. Unfortunately, David seemed to blame me for the situation instead of understanding that it wasn't me but the bosses that were dictating the standards. 

We had a couple of new people join us on the desk - Andy Holden and a guy from William Brandts (a then current merchant bank) - sorry I can't remember his name. He was quite a big guy and a very keen hockey player. His job was to take the line to the Swiss broker that David brought along with him. 

Eventually, David and my relationships broke down such that he asked that I be taken off the team. For a couple of days, this was a big drama for me as, in my meeting with Reg about the situation, he admitted that there was nowhere else for me to go as I wasn't needed back on the DM section. Suddenly, it was all changed because the bosses had arranged for a link to a new Frankfurt broker and the DM section was back busy again and needed me. This secured my situation because I woke up my old contacts and everything looked good. However, Kirkland Whittaker, another DEM broker, who had been in connection with this German broker for a couple of years, protested to them and forced them into stopping our link. But by then, I was back and that's how it stayed. 

By this time, they had disposed of the services of Tony le Ray-Cook and needed a new boss of the section. I was asked by Reg who I thought should run it. Me, being an honest guy, said that there was a choice. If they wanted the best manager, then they should appoint me. If they wanted the best broker then they should appoint Roy Jarvis. Guess what - they chose Roy. As I expected, a few months later, Roy left having had a minor breakdown - caused, no doubt, by having charge of the section. Eventually, the Swiss section was closed and David Lincoln was given overall charge of the DMs, which put him as my boss again. However, the DM section was my spiritual home and he could never have any complaints about my abilities.

He brought with him one of his swiss contacts - a small Zurich based bank within the European Co-operative bank group - Bank Europaischer Gennossenschafts Banken - know as BEG for short. The trader there was a guy called Arnold - Noldy for short - and it was my job to speak to him all day. You would think that I was pleased with this outcome - well, just wait and see!

Amex was fun but not for long

March 1969 found me walking down one of the tiny streets that are very common in the City of London. This one was Abchurch Lane where Amex was situation. A smart imposing building where one was confronted by a large scale model of a Wells Fargo stagecoach on display in the banking hall. It seems that, although there was a bank called Wells Fargo, the stage coach line was owned by Amex.
The dealing room as a bit on the tatty side with simple telephone equipment and a line of telex machines, as expected. However, the room appeared to be shared with the post department! It turned out that there was a new dealing room being built but not until the summer.
My job was to trade Deutsche Marks (and Canadian $ as no one else understood them) and, unlike my previous positions was mostly Money Market rather then FX. This was my first job in a trading room that didn't have a lot of built-in business so I was now expected to use my brain to make money!
My new boss was a very short man called Bob Savage - ex-Barclays Bank and very aggressive. Mind you, he wasn't overbearing in his management and was content to let us get on with our jobs without a heavy oversight. Eventually, he moved to New York and ended up as the overall boss of the American Express worldwide! I have one "amusing" story about my relationship with Bob. When we moved ingto the new dealing room, it had proper trading boards, rather than the "cheap" GPO versions. He had a line connected up to our boards if he needed ahything. One day, his light came up and both me and Alan Langley went it. I heard Bob ask if we know the address of Tradition (one of the brokers on our board). Being keen, I jumped into their line to ask them, in the meantime saying to Alan - "Why the f*** doesn't he ask them himself (f*** being a word in common usage in the highly charded atmosphere of most trading rooms). A voice came in my ear (Bob had obviously done the same as me) and said, dryly - "I am!". Nothing more was ever heard of the event- like in F1, it could be called a racing incident!
Next up was the chief dealer. Another short person, he had come from Westminster bank. He was a strange person who loved 'The Organist Entertains' - a long running BBC program about theatre organs and admitted to listening to the program whilst in the bath. As it finally happened, my brother-in-law, Terry Carter, ended up producing that program on Radio 2. Alan concentrated on our deposit books. We were always  needing to borrow sterling as most of our incoming deposits were in US dollars or Deutsche Marks  so we had to finance our Sterling book with market deposits. He had a very good relationship with a broker from Short Loan and Mortgage. This broker was unknown to me as they dealt purely in Sterling and my background at the District Bank never involved the Sterling deposit market as that was dealt with by the management on the banking side. His contact there was only ever known to me as 'Black Mac'. All I remember is that he was the brother of Bill Maclaren, the famous rugby commentator. The repartee between the two of them was extremely humorous. He was, like Bob Savage, very hands off and keen to let us get on and do our jobs without interference.
The only other dealer in the room alongside me was Alan Langley. It seems that the dealing room in Amex was a fairly recent innovation and Bob Savage had come from Barclays to get it onto a professional trading basis. To that end he brought one of his dealers with him. Alan's job was to trade the USD/GBP book which meant dealing in both the spot and the forward markets. He was a very professional dealer but had one little flaw. He always knew best and seems to regard the bank's trading rules as if they were optional. I had a conversation with him once, as we were going to lunch on the following lines: "Aren't you over the limit for leaving the room (he had taken a position in cable (see below)) for a few million and was supposed to reduce it if he was going to lunch). "Yes, but I have put the dealing slip in the draw so it hasn't been recorded!" I suggested that he couldn't win doing this. Either he would make a profit, in which case, he couldn't claim it, or he would make a loss and get into deep water. He just shrugged and admitted that it was something that he did quite regularly. Mind you, he was a very good dealer so the down side never came true!
The last person in the room was the positions clerk - David Britton. The positions clerk's job was to take our handwritten trading slips and enter them into a ledger. This way, we could keep track of what risks the bank had. This was way before computers became common in this role - and a long way before I started writing such programs! He was a quiet, confident, chap and very good at his job. We got on very well and had an ongoing relationship for quite a few years, even when we had both had moved on. More of this later.
My main role was to trade the Deutsche Mark deposit book but, because the chief dealer was covering USD and GBP, and Alan Langley was trading the USD/GBP fx book, that left pretty much everything else to me. Firstly, we got fairly regular Canadian $ activity and, guess what - I was the only one that understood its weird ways. Secondly, we had a very persistent branch manager in Frankfurt - Gerhard Tarantik. In those days, UK trading of US dollar deposits in the short term - mostly overnight maturities - were severely effected by the overnight market in New York. I will write an explanation of that later. Gerhard seemed to have some special insights when it came to overnight deposits from Thursday to Friday and also over the weekend. These were the two periods mostly affected by the NY market.  In those days, the main USD market in Europe (and still is) was London. Gerhard seemed to get a quite high volume of trades and the only way that he could lay them off was in London, which meant through us as he wasn't given any trading limits with London banks or branches. This meant that he would call often on Wednesday and Thursday for, what is known as Tom-Next.
My problem was that our limits for London banks and branches were not really big enough to handle his volumes and I was the one that had to manage our end. Because we used to run out of top quality - i.e. US branch - counterparties, my price to Gerhard got lower and lower. Eventually, one day he blew up. It was left to me to explain that he wasn't going to get any better prices all the time that he kept the volumes up. This had repercussions later in my career.
Life at Amex was pretty good. The set up worked. Bob kept out of our hair, there was no big push to make profits over and above our natural business and, being a decent sized bank, there were no problems in trading. One of the really good things that came up was the European Branch Conference in Vienna. Now, I had been overseas twice before - once to Ireland for a holiday with my parents and once with the school to Italy. Now was a chance to go, as an adult, and see a new city. We flew out on the Friday afternoon. I remember being pleased to see a road sign to Bratislava. So what? Well, at that time, Bratislava was in Czechoslovakia and, thus, in the Soviet bloc. I had a bit of time to wander around so I caught a tram to Radezky Strasse - Radezky being familiar due to the Strauss Radezky March. When I got there it was undistinguished except that there was a bridge over the River Danube. I remember this because the river was definitely NOT blue - grin. It was a very good weekend - sitting down all day discussing trading policies, none of which would be followed, getting to know everyone else and having a great evening on the Saturday at a very Viennese restaurant. Sunday morning was spent at the Schönbrunn Palace, of which I have vague memories of the facade. Of course, I got to meet Gerhard so my relationship with him got a bit more personal. I do remember embarrassing myself trying to speak German to him but only because I got my grammar wrong! My flight home was a problem. For some reason, I travelled on my own and had to come back via Paris. My flight from Vienna was delayed and had just a few minutes to get between flights. Escorted by a stewardess and both of us running full pelt, I made it but my luggage didn't. I had some long discussions with British European Airways (BEA) and was told that I would get full compensation if it was missing for more than 7 days. I could see me getting a new suit, new shirts and so on when I got a call on Thursday to say that my bag had turned up!
Valerie was pregnant when I joined the bank so it was clear that I would need some maternity leave. This wasn't codified like it is now but everyone knew that I would have to dash of sometime. Well it happened at the worst possible time because, for some reason, we had two people on holiday during the week when Valerie went into labour. This meant that it was impossible for me not to be at work. Of course, it all fell due on the Friday of the week. 7 am. Valerie tells me that the baby is on its way, I call an  ambulance, as you did in those days, and once she had gone, I went off to work. I had a very stressful day, as |I am sure Valerie did, and got to Mayday Hospital, Croydon as soon as I could. I can't remember properly but I think that she had Samantha by then. I then had some time off but not for another few days as they kept girls in for a week after giving mirth. Can you image that now?
Around that time, the British Open Golf Championship was taking place and our dealing room decided to make a book on the outcome. It wasn't something that we normally did but it went very well. We did a lot of business. I remember this particularly because the British golfer, Tony Jacklin, won. I don't remember making any money from it so maybe it wasn't that good an idea.
Samantha was born in the July and we were still living in the one bedroom flat above Auntie Margaret so things slowly began to get difficult. I was a smoker at the time and, you know how it is, if you are told not to cough, that's exactly what you have to do. Eventually, some nights |I would be sent out of the bedroom because Samantha would wake. Mind you very shortly after she was born, I was glad to be awake as I got to watch the Apollo 11 moon walk! Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface July 21 at 02:56, just 10 days after Sam's birth. Eventually, we realised that we would have to move so I had some discussions with the bank about getting a "bank" mortgage. Bank mortgages were subsidised so were really good to get. After much deliberation and a further request for clarification being sent to New York, the answer came back that |I would have to put up a 10% deposit. This was reasonable at the time but beyond our capabilites to find. My salary was £3,000 p/.a. before tax and 10% of a house was around £600. With around £200 a month coming in, I was quite highly paid but with a baby and rent, finding a deposit like that was going to be a long haul. As I was a regular Canadian $ trader, as I had been at the District Bank, I was quite friendly with the Canadian $ brokers and regularly had lunch with them. First off was Brian Bennett at Marshalls. He was the one the gave me the impetus to get a better paid job so I was quite close to him. One of the things that came up for discussion was Luncheon Vouchers. These were given out to staff on a monthly basis and we enough to buy lunch each day. At the time they were worth 2/- (two shillings or 10p in today's money). Somehow, it became known that a) Brian would buy LVs from me at a discount and b) David Britton could buy up LVs from Amex staff at a bigger discount. The good thing about this was that I had to deliver the pile of LVs each month which involved |Brian buying me lunch - and paying with those aforementioned LVs! GReat fun.The other Canadian $ broker that I was close to was David Raisen at Woellwarths. I had originally got friendly, if that is the term, with his boss, Ron Strudwick, or Struddie, as he was known. Going to lunch with Struddie involved standing at a bar off Change Alley with a crowd of his friends and drinking beer. As Struddie was in his 50s, there were always a lot of friends there so I always felt like a hanger-on! Anyway, David was more like a normal broker, albeit not as pushy as most. He used to ask we into Woellwarth's for what was known as an in-lunch - 6 bankers and two brokers starting at 12.30 and ending - well, sometime. Over one of these lunches, I was telling David about my inability to get a mortgage off the bank. He came back to me later in the afternoon, when I was back at my desk, to tell me that Woellwarth could offer me a job as a broker at a considerably enhanced salary and the loan of the deposit! In the ensuing interview, it became clear that my current £2,000 salary would be 50% higher at £3,000 and that a loan of £650 would be set up as soon as I joined. Although I wasn't keen on becoming a broker, this was an offer that I couldn't refuse. Discussions with David Raisen at Woellwarth & Co. (FX Brokers) re. problem with getting a mortgage out of the bank
Offered a job and a loan for house deposit by Woellwarth
Leave Amex at the end of March 1970
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Our first house- in Billericay

After getting a loan from my new employers, we went house hunting. It had to be in Essex as Valerie wanted to live close to her parents who lived in Romford. We went looking along the Southend line into Liverpool Street with our first stop being at Wickford. We found a nice four bedroom semi-detached house that was within our price range on a new estate being built by Moodey Homes. Unfortunately, there were none left on the plan so we had to think again. It turned out that they were also building the Bridles estate in Billericay and there were some of the same style properties available there but - what a surprise - a bit dearer! It seemed that we could still afford one of these so we put a deposit down on 2 Dunfane. The price was a handsome £6,250. Adjusting for inflation, that equates to £95,000 now. That gives you some measure of huge increase in house prices. According to Right Move, this property sold this year (2017) for £430,000 so nearly five times up on the rate of inflation!

We picked number 2 as this was going to be the first house completed.  This was important as we were still living in a one bedroom flat as part of Valerie's great aunt's house in Norbury and Samantha was growing fast. This was turned on its head when they told us that the plans had changed and the house was to be the last one to be built in the road. This meant that we waited until April in 1971 before we could move it By that time, Valerie was well on the way to giving birth to Simon. Fortunately, Simon wasn't due until July so things worked out in the end.

One problem that we had was that the Bridles estate was some way out of town and we didn't, at that time, have a car. This was quite quickly sorted by Roy Jarvis (a colleague at work) offering us his old car. This turned out to be a very suspect Ford Anglia van conversion into an estate car. Not only had it been converted from a van but also had its suspension lowered so the first time that I took it into the garage, the exhaust pipe was ripped off. The picture below is of Valerie and Samantha with Valerie's  parents and grandmother. You can see the old Anglia in the garage. Note the number plate - OO 7303. Pity I didn't keep an 007 number plate!

The house was very convenient as it had a through lounge/dining room, kitchen, downstairs toilet  with four bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Not bad for a first home. There were three things wrong with it - well, one as far as I was concerned but Valerie had other ideas. My problem was the back garden. The builders left all the back gardens as they were after building the houses. This meant that they were basically mud baths that were full of builder's rubble. When we started sorting out the garden and laying turf etc., we found huge amounts of breeze blocks and even a rusty old wheelbarrow buried! 

 Inside, we had some fun and games. First off, I had to build a new, stone, fireplace that had an extension out to the front window to place the television on.  I had no experience of bricklaying so this was a voyage of discovery. Then she came out with the bombshell. Could we move the door into the kitchen! As the house was built, there was a door from the kitchen into the living room and a hatch through to the dining room. She wanted a door to go where the hatch was and to block off the other door. Well, on the basis of "her wish is my command", it was done. I note in the floor plan as seen on Right Move, the door is still where I put it. Needless to say, I had no experience and had to learn how to use Arrow props and all the paraphernalia required to do a proper job.

Meanwhile, we were moving from a couple with two children living a wage somewhat better than most to something quite different. As mentioned, my salary went from £3,000 p.a. to £16,000 p.a. during our time in Dunfane. This, in current money, is £30,000 to £177,000!!!! Mind you, £3,000 then was probably twice the ordinary salary for someone of my age. Our lives changed quite dramatically over the 3 years that we lived in this house and I will document some of those things in the next entry.

Woellwarth & Co - Part 1

• Leave  being a dealer to be a broker - I now arrange deals, not originate them
• My Salary jumps again - £2,000p.a. to £3,000p.a. but there is a catch
• Salary is paid as £440 p.a. weekly and the rest is commission - 1.1% of the company turnover.
• 2016 equivalents = £29,500 - £44,000 - nice big jump!
• Is this a disaster in the making - first impressions, I hate broking
• They start me on Forward USD - this is a surprise
• I admit to Gerry Waghorn that I hate what I am doing but there seems to be no way back to a trading desk.
• I am a Deutsche Mark(DEM) Dealer and Woellwarth will be able to trade DEM in June so I expect to be on that desk not USD
• Eventually move to DEM desk. The team comprises Tony Le Ray-Cook, Roy Jarvis, Graham Winterbourne, Bob Davis, and me. Later, Roy brings along a relation - Keith - who takes the line to Finacor in Munich. I get sent to Munich to meet and buld a relationship with the brokers out there. It seems that the only have three customers - Bayerische Landerbank, Bayerische hypotheken and wechselbank and Bayerische Veriensbank. Not a market in depth one could say. 
• I get told from London that Tullett & Riley have BeerBahm (? spelling?) and Harlow Mueller - both top brokers in Frankfurt. It seems that all our regular traders have now left us so we have a struggle on our hands.
• Eventually David Raison joins from the Canadian $ desk and my best man, Roger Whittle joins along with another new comer - Linton Viney.
• Roger, David, Linton and I get the job of quoting DEM forward but this isn't a success
• Eventually, I go back onto the Spot Mark as we are making a success of that. 
• I decide to quote prices to the BofE - some ridicule from the rest of the team as "the BofE doesn't trade in the markets"
• I get called out to lunch to meet the dealer I have been speaking to (Richard Diggory) - plus the chief dealer - Ted Bradshaw. I am being evaluated.
• It seems that, as I can talk serious banking, then it is OK for me to quote them
• Surprise, surprise, they do trade and quite large as well. It seems that the UK has to pay the Germans for the bills of the "British Army Over The Rhine" - BAOR -  (i.e. our soldiers over there). This results in DEM20 - DEM25,000,000  every month - and I get it all.
• As commission is £75 per side per DEM1,000,000 we get £150 brokerage for every one million. I go up in the company's estimation.
• David Lincoln joins us from Bankers Trust with the intention of setting up a Swiss Franc desk. I get moved over to - as Reg Winterbourne, Woellwarth's managing director, put it - to keep him on the correct track for our company!

We have a baby!

• Well, Valerie has the baby
• I call the ambulance and see Valerie off and then I go to work!
• I manage to get to Mayday Hospital (Croydon) after the birth
• Sam is a lovely little thing but doesn't seem  very keen to eat so feeding is drawn out.
• Sam loves her black glove
• Roger and Marian (Valerie's sister) are regular visitors. Marian works round the corner from me in Mark Lane
• I get told off because I cough when I go to bed at night (due to smoking) and being told off just makes it worse
• Eventually we decide that we have to try to buy a house
• Bank says no to mortgage unless we have a 10% deposit - no chance
• Get offered new job with 10% house price loan - I take it
• Hobbies keep going. I make a Hi-Fi amplifier from a Heathkit kit and some speakers from a plan.
• I make a variety of Renwall military vehicle kits and a Tamiya Gold Leaf Team Lotus car in 1:12th scale - very large.
• Roger and I design a hugely complex war game covering the battle for the Atlantic in WWII. We spend months building the rules and only play it once!
• I am up making a feed for Sam when we watch the moon landing on TV.