Today’s a very special day for me – probably the most significant day in my life for many years, really. After twelve and a half years – virtually my whole working life – I’m moving on today.
In 1994 I came to work for the Countryside Commission, earning £6,400 per annum (gross), and on a four month contract. Things became permanent, as these things sometimes can if you try to make it happen.
In 1999, a merger took us into the Countryside Agency, and in October of last year, another reorganisation of the rural side of government gave birth to Natural England.
There have been one or two changes over the years, aside from salary. In 1994, our offices in Cheltenham were state of the art, running some lovely old computers with Pentium 486 processors, which did amazing things like run Wordperfect and even Lotus 123 spreadsheets. We emailed each other (internal ones only – the outside world contact didn’t come until 1997) and by 1999, we had access to the internet!
Since 2002, I’ve been commuting into Manchester by bike, and according to my records have covered about 27,200 commuting miles in that time. I’m not sure what the carbon saving I’ve been making is, but it’s pretty reasonable. I’ve been going through chains, brake blocks, gears and tyres quite a bit though.
I’m off out for some beers and bites with all my friends here this evening. Very much looking forward to that bit !
I’ll be working from home from Monday for Reverse Delta. More of that to come soon…..
. One drawback was that I forgot to take my camera, so you’ll have to makedo with a few snaps from my phone cam.
