Overview

The nineties job quest

---

Redundancies and freelancing

There is a widespread misconception among employers, the government, the News media and the general public that anybody who is unemployed for any length of time obviously lacks either the desire or ability to work and is therefore beneath contempt. While there is a growing acceptance that redundancy can strike anybody at any time, most people find new jobs relatively quickly. Indeed, I've suffered three redundancies and found work quickly (in less than a month each time) following the first two of them in 1981 and 1988.

In different ways, my first two redundancies took their toll and ultimately, but indirectly, contributed to a situation where I decided to take a complete break from work for a few months. The first redundancy forced me to go freelance. While this was a good thing in some ways, it meant that as I rely on public transport, I spent much of my time living in bed-and-breakfast establishments during the week, only going home at weekends. I hoped one day to return to orthodox employment, but when I finally secured such a job, it was with an organisation that was in trouble and the job only lasted six months. So I ended up contracting again, but there came a point where I needed a break.

A costly decision

That decision, which seemed sensible at the time, cost me dearly. At the time, I had my own house and plenty of money, all of which I ended up losing. My guess is that if I'd secured employment again within a year or two, I'd have been OK. By now, I might have paid off the mortgage and be living in a property worth over 200,000 pounds. More likely, I might have moved to a better property and still be paying a mortgage. Either way, I'd be worth a lot of money. Instead, I have no assets (even the Bankruptcy court couldn't take anything off me) and my future job prospects appear bleak.

February 1990

In February 1990, I finished my contract with Yellow Pages in Reading and took things easy for a few months. When I started looking for work again, there were not a large number of vacancies but I expected to get work again fairly quickly. How wrong I was. The recession was clearly a factor but the majority of available work seemed to be on new technology. The limited vacancies on projects utilising ICL computers mainly required experience of TPMS or Application Master, neither of which I had. Although I could learn easily enough, there was then no shortage of people available with these skills and employers did not want to consider me in those circumstances. Even when I had all the skills required for a particular vacancy, I sometimes lost out because employers wanted younger staff. I was 39 at the time. In later years, some employers set aside their prejudices, but even with 2007 legislation dealing with the issue, ageism will take a long time to eradicate.

Interviews

Here is a complete list of all the formal interviews that I attended during the nineties job quest. In some cases, I refer to them elsewhere in the blog. And yes, I really did attend two separate interviews with Experian, but I was interviewed by a different person on the second occasion.

Interviews attended

Computer programming and related jobs
10/93	British Gas	Solihull
11/95	Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council	Dudley
11/96	JBA Consulting	Studley near Redditch
12/96	Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council	Stockport
01/97	Westminster Collection	Watford
04/97	Midlands Electricity	Dudley
07/97	Experian	Nottingham
07/97	Avery Berkel	Walsall
08/97	Co-operative Insurance Society	Manchester
08/97	Stockton on Tees Borough Council	Stockton
09/97	IRS Recruitment for Systems Union	Reading Dogmersfield
09/97	IT Net at Birmingham City Council	Birmingham
10/97	Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council	Oldbury
12/97	EDS at Inland Revenue	Telford
02/98	North Tyneside Council	North Shields
02/98	Aberdeenshire Council	Aberdeen
02/98	Plymouth City Council	Plymouth
05/98	System Lynx	Walsall
05/98	Traderman	Tamworth
06/98	Experian	Nottingham
06/98	CP Computer Systems	Narborough

CP Computer Systems sold out to XKO Software, which merged with another business to become Solarsoft.

Now for the detail

The remainder of this blog explains in detail how I eventually secured a job in 1998, more than eight years after I decided to take a career break.

Next page

On the move >>

On the move

---

I sold my house

In 1992, I put my house in Basingstoke up for sale. Selling in a recession is not easy, but I finally moved out in 1993 after disposing of a lot of my stuff and depositing most of the rest of my belongings in storage. I moved initially to a bed and breakfast in Bristol, a city with which I was reassuringly familiar but which was suitably distant from Basingstoke, for three or four weeks while I figured out what to do next. During this time, I continued looking for work in the usual places and contacted all the local IT recruitment agencies. Some of them knew me from the eighties, but even they couldn't help. Though there is much to like about Bristol, and I'd be happy to return to the area if there is work for me, I felt that it was not the best base at the time for job seeking and re-training, so I moved north.

I moved to Birmingham

Though not familiar with Birmingham, I decided that it was to be my permanent base for job-hunting because of its size coupled with its central location on the rail network. From there, I could attend almost any interview in England or Wales within a day by public transport, avoiding overnight stays. An interview in Scotland would provide an opportunity to visit my Scottish relatives in Montrose and use that as a base. I wasn't expecting to attend an interview in Scotland, but when I was eventually asked to attend one in Aberdeen, my plan worked to perfection, except that I failed to secure the job. (Of course, it helped that Montrose was on the route to and from Aberdeen.) Because I had no roots in Birmingham, I knew that re-location elsewhere would be relatively easy although, like Bristol, Birmingham has enough appeal that I could live there contentedly if work were available.

Job quest stepped up

Without worries about maintaining or selling property, I was able to put extra effort into the job quest, which was relentless from then until I secured employment, albeit some periods were quieter than others. I initially moved into a bed-sit, while most of my belongs remained in a warehouse.

"Yearbook" campaign

I spent much time in the Birmingham central library working my way through the Computer users' year book, noting details of employers who might conceivably be interested in my skills. I wrote, enclosing a summary CV, to every site listed with ICL computers and with twenty or more employees, with the exception of Rosyth Dockyard. Threatened with closure at the time but eventually sold as a going concern, I knew that the dockyard definitely wouldn't be recruiting computer staff just then. The Computer users' year book, good as it was, did not list all organisations and I added one or two that I knew were missing.

I can't remember how many employers I sent my CV to, but it ran well into three figures. The response generated was disappointing to say the least, but it caused me to start thinking about alternative careers, more of which later. Even so, I still thought my best chance of a job lay in a return to computer programming, bleak as the prospect seemed at the time.

Although that campaign failed, I secured an interview through normal channels with British Gas in Solihull. Even with fifteen vacancies to fill, they did not employ me although I thought I had done well at the interview.

More moves

In December 1993, I moved to a self-contained flat so that I could get my belongings out of storage. Much had been disposed of before I left Basingstoke including the vast majority of my vinyl LP collection. I disposed of a lot more stuff (though keeping my CD collection and my remaining vinyl LPs) before I moved to a different bed-sit in June 1994, where I remained until I found work four years later. In the bed-sit, I did not bother with a telephone as I'd never received enough calls to justify the cost. Only in 1997 did I start to find its absence a serious inconvenience, but I still eventually found work without one.

During 1994 and 1995, I continued to look for jobs in the normal way, still tending to concentrate on sites that used ICL computers but also looking for jobs where cross training might be available. I also attended recruitment events when they came to town.

Dudley failure

In November 1995, I secured only my second interview in the nineties, this time with Dudley metropolitan borough council. I think that it was the third time that I had applied there including the 1993 Computer users' year book campaign, but this time I quoted as a reference somebody that they knew well from their dealings with ICL. That reference secured the interview. Unfortunately, the actual interview did not go well although they knew, as well as I did, that I could have done a good job for them. They seemed to think that I had not done enough to get back to work, so did not deserve a job. I've long forgotten the details, but if they really thought I was the best candidate, they were punishing themselves as well as me.

Next page

Search for people >>

Search for people

---

Second "Yearbook" campaign

It occurred to me that I could improve my chances considerably by finding other referees, especially as I knew there were several people who had given glowing references about me in the eighties. I went back to Birmingham public library to work my way through the Computer users' year book again, this time to target all sites, regardless of computer equipment used, of any size situated in areas where I thought former colleagues and managers might be working. I asked about vacancies at the same time. Employer reaction was sometimes hostile because of perceived privacy issues, even though I wasn't actually asking to be put in touch with anybody and I certainly didn't want to cause any problem. Nevertheless, some employers clearly wanted to help. One employer gave me the address of their pension fund, which in turn forwarded my letter to the address they held. That address may have been out of date, but in any event I never heard from the individual concerned.

Telephones and newspapers

I even looked in the Basingstoke telephone directory and wrote to somebody with a surname and initials that matched one of the names I was looking for. Having failed to locate somebody else via our former employer, I attempted to locate them by writing to the local newspaper in Guildford, the town in which I thought the person lived, hoping that the newspaper would publish part of my letter. They never acknowledged it and I never heard from the person I was looking for.

Up north

All those efforts yielded nothing, so when the Manchester branch of Computer People asked for alternative names of references, it was more in hope than expectation that I sent them a list of people who I'd met while working in the north of England. To my surprise, one of them was at the time a contractor registered with the agency. He gave them an impressive reference of me. This was brilliant, but as he'd been a colleague of the man whose name I'd given to Dudley metropolitan borough council (we'd all worked for ICL in Leeds together in the late seventies), I realised that I still needed to look for other people, especially as Computer People ultimately couldn't secure me any work.

Found in Wales

I really needed a name from the eighties. I created a CV page listing over thirty people from this period and where I met them. The list was by no means comprehensive. I did not normally circulate this page but used it to remember names. My luck improved in October 1997 when I mentioned one such name to the Bristol branch of Computer People. I'd worked with this particular person at Somerset county council in 1989, so this was by far the most recent reference that I'd secured. Furthermore, it was my last major contract as the Yellow Pages contract was only for a couple of months, so I couldn't get a more recent reference that mattered.

I didn't surf the internet

I wonder how much difference it would have made if the internet had been around then in its present form. Insofar as it existed, it was in its infancy (especially outside the United States) so it probably wouldn't have been of any help. I saw internet cafés in Birmingham but didn't know anything about how to use them. It would never have occurred to me that the internet might be a powerful search tool, and in those days it probably wasn't. If MySpace, Facebook and Google existed in 1997 (and I don't think they did), they were in their infancy. When I eventually started using the internet, Yahoo was the premier search engine. How things have changed since then.

Now I could

Occasionally, I have looked in recent years to see if I could locate any of the people that I worked with in the old days, more out of curiosity than anything else. I have two names from my job in Narborough so if a potential employer wants a reference, I'll pass on those contact details. At this distance in time, I doubt that any of my colleagues from earlier jobs could help me, but I still occasionally search for them just as a challenge, made difficult because names on the internet are seldom unique. Whether I would actually send them a message if I found one of them, I don't know, but I wouldn't even consider it unless I was reasonably sure that I'd found the right person.

Nobody's found me

So far, nobody from my real-life past has ever contacted me (if you exclude the two referees from my last job who responded to my request) despite my high profile elsewhere on the internet. Of course, they may not realise that my middle name is Durward, since it's not something I ever bothered with for most of my life. Also, except for those who know me from my time in Narborough, my former colleagues wouldn't expect me necessarily to be in Leicester, nor would most of them know about my taste in music. I learned that it was wise to keep quiet about it at the time, because my taste in music isn't usually shared by the people I meet in real life.

It may well be that a lot of former colleagues have come across my contributions elsewhere on the internet without realising that they know the author. Maybe they see my name and then think "Nah! It's not him". Even if they know that it's me, they may prefer to consign me to history, and that's fair enough. Nevertheless, given my high internet profile, I think that somebody that I worked with or for before my last job is, in general, more likely to find me than I am to find them. So far, I've identified four people from my last job on Facebook and I've made contact with one of them. In looking for earlier contacts, I found a Facebook entry that might have been for somebody I know, but he didn't respond to a message that I sent him so he was probably a namesake from the same area. Incidentally, my CV page contains enough information for anybody who has ever met a Peter Harris at school or work to decide whether I am the Peter Harris that they remember.

Next page

Detective work >>

Detective work

---

Guess the employer

Between attending recruitment events and responding to various advertisements in the specialist IT industry journals Computer Weekly and Computing, there were still long periods during which there was nothing obvious to target. I have already described two major campaigns involving the Computer users' year book, but I found another use for it. Some agencies refused to deal with me but I still looked through their advertisements. Using the clues provided therein, I looked up the Computer users' year book, guessed where the vacancy might be and sent my CV there directly.

I call it cheating

I didn't like doing this, partly because I had a long tradition of working through agencies and wished to maintain it, but also because I regard it as cheating. Furthermore, agencies can sell me better than I can sell myself if they do their job correctly. After all, I'm not a salesman but some of their staff are. For all these reasons, I only used this technique when there were no other suitable jobs to apply for, the last time being in early 1997.

Well, it was worth trying

I was not always sure whether I guessed correctly when I used the above method, but there was one occasion when I clearly did. The employer replied saying there was no suitable vacancy. On the day the letter arrived, a different letter arrived asking me to telephone a different agency from the one who had originally advertised the vacancy. When I did, I learned that there were two possible vacancies including one with the aforementioned employer. I wrote back to that employer, who then acknowledged the vacancy. Apparently, they considered me and would explain my lack of suitability if I telephoned them. I decided not to because I preferred to spend my resources, by then very limited, more productively. Of course, if I thought that there was anything to learn from it that would help me, I would have made that call, but I didn't think so then and subsequent events elsewhere reinforce my belief that it would have been a wasted effort.

Next page

Money runs out >>

Money runs out

---

Time to claim benefits

In May 1996, six and a quarter years after taking a break from work, I reluctantly signed on for jobseeker's allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit. I had survived on savings until 1993 and subsequently on the proceeds of the house sale and those of its contents before that money also ran out. I could have signed on sooner, but I did not want the aggravation of which there was plenty then, albeit miniscule compared to 2008 levels of aggravation with the expectation of worse to come.

In those days, the government largely left us to our own devices although help was available. I realised that much of that help wasn't really suitable for me (nothing's changed on that front since then) but I made use of some of it to attend subsidised training courses. One was a C computer programming course while another related to job hunting, including ideas for formatting a CV.

Betting shop vacancies

Soon after signing on, I spotted vacancies for trainee betting shop managers. With my mathematical ability and my knowledge of sport, particularly Horse racing, I decided to try. I filled in the application form and attended the open evening. I didn't get the job as I explain in Career options in call centres and retail outlets, but this first serious experience of applying for a job outside my traditional area was useful. Above all, it made me realise that I needed to completely overhaul my CV.

Many more interviews

From November 1996 onwards, I became much more successful at securing interviews, all of them for computer programming jobs. I am not sure why, because I wasn't trying any harder. The end of the recession, the C programming course, the improved CV, the impending Y2K (even though it was still three years away at the time), telephone number changes, European monetary union and greater fragmentation of the IT industry may all have been factors. For whatever reason, some agencies showed renewed interest, having previously kept my details on file but ignored me.

Next page

C programming >>

C programming

---

Not an ideal course

In August 1996, I started attending a C programming course at Kalamazoo in Northfield, a suburb of Birmingham, in which I learned to write simple programs using the C language. It wasn't an ideal course for me, being designed for people with little or no programming experience rather than for established programmers learning a new language. A lot of time was therefore taken up with fundamentals that other students needed to know but I didn't. Nevertheless, it was the only programming course available with government funding except for a COBOL course that I obviously didn't need to attend, especially as it was at a similiar level. I did all that was required to achieve a City and Guilds certificate, pictured right; click on it to enlarge.

I also helped the other students a lot. However, the basic course didn't keep me fully occupied so I used the spare time to do some little projects of my own. In this way, I learned a lot more about C than I otherwise would have done. None of these programs were part of the course syllabus. Indeed, I haven't kept any record of anything that was in the course syllabus, reflecting just how basic it was.

Numbers

My first program found all prime numbers in a given range. My second, a variation of the first, found prime factors for twenty numbers starting with a given number. These programs helped me to learn more about calculations and loop control than I could learn just by sticking to the course syllabus.

Colours

The third program was a colour guessing game, which really infuriated my tutor. He was obviously uncomfortable about teaching experienced programmers such as myself, and couldn't or wouldn't understand that this game provided the perfect training exercise for me. Sometimes known as "Bulls and cows" or "Hits and misses", it is possible that you've played this game using pen (or pencil) and paper. On paper, it is a game for two people. Before play begins, each player selects a combination of four colours (from six allowable choices) in which duplicates are allowed. Each player then takes turns to guess the other person's colour combination in the correct order. A colour in the correct position counts as a bull or hit, while a correct colour in the incorrect position counts as a cow or miss.

In my computer version, the computer takes the place of one player. There being only one player, I allow the option of solitary play, where the player simply tries to guess the computer's colour combination within a certain number of moves, or competitive play, where the player and the computer play against each other. In fact, once you get the strategy right, you can beat the computer at solitary play every time, but I set the limit on the lenient side to allow novices and less skilful players a reasonable chance. Those players who learn the best strategy should use it to compete against the computer, which I programmed to use that best strategy.

Although the tutor didn't like it, I actually learned a lot more about loop control and string and array manipulation, all of which would be essential in a commercial environment. The tutor indicated that the only way in which I could impress him was by doing a simple version of a small commercial system, but that would have involved file handling. As he only taught us about file handling at the very end of the course, there was no way I could have done a suite of such programs. In any case, it would have been less useful to me as a training exercise.

I assume that one reason for my tutor's discomfort was that he expected me to play endlessly with the game. Actually, I didn't play much, though I obviously needed to test it. Really, my satisfaction lay in getting it to work using C.

Gateshead

In fact, I originally wrote this program using COBOL in the seventies during my spare time. I incorporated it into a live system used by Gateshead social services, but there was nothing in the menu to direct anybody to the game. I occasionally played with it during gaps between work or at lunch times. Eventually, I showed it to the analyst responsible for the system, emphasising that there was no way for any user to play the game because it wasn't included on any menu. The analyst nevertheless told them anyway, with the result that the users amused themselves endlessly while that version of the software existed.

Gateshead metropolitan borough council would have upgraded to a different type of computer eventually, but by then I'd long since left to work elsewhere. I don't know if my little game was converted to work on the new system, though it would have been easy enough to do. Did it simply get dropped, to the disappointment of those who used it, or did they persuade somebody to incorporate the game into the replacement system? I suspect the former, though I'll never know. In any case, the system has probably been replaced several times given all the technological changes. Even if my program was upgraded once, I'd be very surprised if it survived all the changes.

Printing

Getting back to the 1996 course, I finally wrote a program to format off-line screen print to produce screen images on listing paper. I put this together hastily at the end of the course so that I could keep evidence from my first three programs, in case I wanted to show it to a potential employer, but no opportunity arose where it might have been relevant. Nevertheless, they proved useful when I learned Visual Basic and will also prove useful if I learn any other programming languages.

Next page

CV improvements >>

CV improvements

---

Many changes

During my years of contract work, my CV (or résumé, as Americans call it) had become very cumbersome, but agencies liked it that way and it proved effective enough. I also had my summary pages that I had designed for the Computer users' year book campaigns. From May 1996 until October 1997, my CV went through several major revisions and extensions. Out of this process came a document, "The nineties job quest" that set out in detail exactly what I'd been doing between 1990 and 1997. Nobody actually wanted to read it once I told them that it ran to five pages, but the fact of its existence sent a message to employers that I wasn't idle. I wonder if Dudley metropolitan borough council would have been impressed. They can read it now in a modified form if they wish, since it forms the basis of this particular blog.

Wide consultation

I consulted many people in deciding how to improve my CV including government agencies, recruitment agencies, training centres and other unemployed people. The complexity of my past career and the contradictory nature of different pieces of advice meant that I discarded much of it, but ever since then I have been particularly proud of the way in which I present my CV. I quite liked it as it was back in the eighties, but an unemployed person needs the very best CV that it is possible to create.

The result of all those CV revisions was that I no longer held one all-purpose CV. At the time, I had a file containing a lot of different pages that I could combine in various permutations. I also had a single page CV that I could use for non-IT jobs.

Simpler now

Many of the complexities of my career in the seventies and eighties are now irrelevant although preserved in the online version of my CV, my CV IT achievements and my CV IT technical details, which are fully comprehensive but more of a historical reference than an actual CV. These days, I'm back to a single-page CV plus (for programming vacancies only) an IT supplement.

In March 1997, I attended a recruitment workshop on careers in banking and finance, hoping to find clues to a possible alternative career but finding none.

Next page

Administration course >>

Administration course

---

Business administration course

Meanwhile, I knew that I could not rely on the prospect of a return to computer programming. In May 1997, I attended a business administration course at Interquad in Birmingham. The course covered reception, switchboard, health and safety, stock control, spreadsheets, databases and word processing. It was all basic stuff, but this was my first experience of word processing as I paid specialist typing services to do my CV.

My original understanding of the NVQ system was that one could gain recognition for successes at individual unit level but Interquad did not operate that way. Once I realised that, I knew that there was no chance of gaining a certificate. I did not mind as that was not the reason I attended, although I know that I'd improve my chances of securing a general office job if I had a certificate in business administration at NVQ level 2. As things turned out, I did better on reception and switchboard than I had expected. I still don't think I would be suitable for any job in which such duties were a major part of the work, but I would expect to gain a certificate if I were to take a similar course in future.

At first glance, I was even more over-qualified for this course than for the earlier C course, but I gained quite a lot from it. I helped other students with their computer problems. I re-worked my CV yet again and generated a number of standard letters. I gained an insight into computerised office packages. I learned about plastic wallets for manual document filing.

Most importantly of all, I revised Interquad's word processing course guide and kept a copy of it. It impressed the other students as well as my tutor, George Kakaire. George's original guide was good in its way but contained some material that wasn't used in the course while failing to mention some stuff that was used, so it was in need of revision. I relegated the stuff that wasn't used in the course to a supplement (it would have been useful in a real job) and put in all the information that was needed but missing. I also added extra comments to George's where I felt the need.

Following completion of the course, I took my CV to several agencies specialising in general office vacancies, but I had no response. I thought I might be able to get work with my newly-acquired word processing skills, but I was competing against people with substantial experience.

Next page

Wordperfect >>

Wordperfect

---

Course guide revision

Below my comments, you can see pictures of the pages from the guide that I revised on the business administration course that I did in 1997. Click on any page to see an enlarged version in a separate window.

Note that this particular version of WORDPERFECT is really old and none of the instructions make use of a mouse. It may still be possible to use modern versions of WORDPERFECT this way, but I suspect that most people prefer to use a mouse to perform some or all of the functions. Cut-and-paste, for example, is really quite tedious without a mouse. I haven't used another version of WORDPERFECT since I did the course in 1997, though I would be interested in seeing how it works now.

Remember also that I'd never used word processing software of any kind prior to attending that course, although I was familiar with a variety of text editors from my years as a computer programmer.

Page 1 contains the index, prefaced by introductory comments.

Page 2 gives instructions for starting up and for printing.

Page 3 discusses ways of aligning, embolding and underlining text as well as setting margins.

Page 4 covers spell check, cut and paste, indentations and deleting words and sentences.

Page 5 tells you about page numbering, saving documents, using a thesaurus and the help function.

Page 6 advises you about paper sizes, searching for words and creating tables.

Page 7 mentions file retrieval, directory, deleting controls and forcing new pages.

Page 8 explains scalable fonts and printer selection.

Page 9 is dedicated to page headers and footers.

Supplement page 1 describes justification, setting tabs and switching documents.

Supplement page 2 is about macros, mail merge and alt symbols. Although I didn't take a copy of the list mentioned on the page, this alt symbols list is probably better anyway.

Next page

Visual Basic >>

Visual Basic

---

Ex-colleague to rescue

I eventually decided, in the autumn of 1997, to try to contact a former colleague in Leeds to see whether he could help. Despite the fact that I'd quoted him as referee for that Dudley metropolitan borough council vacancy, we hadn't been in touch for about ten years, at which time I'd still been working. He was horrified to learn of my situation but was able to give me a personal computer (an ICL DRS M55 that ran on Windows 3.1) with Visual Basic and some other stuff on it. I practised a lot on that machine and gained my first real experience of object-oriented programming, which is a lot more modern than the COBOL programming that I'd traditionally done.

One side benefit of this newly acquired computer was that I could do my own word processing, so I no longer needed to pay specialist typing services. Apart from giving me something else to practise, this also saved me money.

Rewrite old routines

I began by writing various routines that I had written in C when I started learning that language in 1996. These included prime number manipulation and a game. I described them in detail in my page about C programming. Because I had written these programs before in other languages, they did not test my programming skills. Any difficulties that I encountered were entirely due to unfamiliarity with Visual Basic, enabling me to identify and solve any problems quickly. I also experimented with colour manipulation and many other aspects of object-oriented programming.

Add calendar

My first new routine was a calendar program, which displayed any month between 326 AD and 3999 AD. Calendar changes and likely changes determined the limits, although I catered for the 11 "missing" days in 1752. The calendar program, together with the other simple programs that I'd rewritten, gave me a sound knowledge of the fundamentals of Visual Basic, without really testing my programming skills.

Betting calculations

Despite being a huge Horse racing fan, I've never been a big gambler and when I do bet, it is almost always via single bets on individual horses. I very rarely bothered with multiple bets such as doubles, trebles and Yankees. Insofar as I experimented with them when I was younger, I realised that they were mostly a waste of good money, so I never even tried the multiple bets that bookmakers love, such as Canadian, Heinz and Union Jacks.

Nevertheless, I knew that herein lay an interesting programming challenge although the idea was simple enough. Name the type of bet, the unit stake and whether betting tax was payable, then name each of the horses, together with their starting prices and whether they won or lost. The program's job was to calculate the winning returns, deducting tax if required. Yes, we Brits still had betting tax in those days. Offshore bookmakers using the internet killed off the betting tax.

Oh yes, and if I had any doubts about the wisdom of placing a Union Jack bet, my program proved just what a mug's bet it really is. You might be lucky and get some money back with just three winners out of your nine horses, but you could be unlucky enough to pick six winners and lose the lot. If you must try this bet, you really need the horse in the central position to win to give yourself a fighting chance. It is part of four trebles. The four corner horses each contribute to three trebles, while the other four contribute to just two each.

The betting calculation project turned out to be much more complex than I originally anticipated, which pleased me because I needed something to force me to think hard. Although still not a commercial system, it used many of the techniques necessary in a commercial environment, such as moving from one screen template (form) to another, printing, string handling, graphics and multi-dimensional array handling. I used the printing option as an excuse to experiment with different font types and sizes, allowing the user to specify how the print should appear.

Flags

The betting calculation project introduced me to serious graphics for the first time, albeit by accident. Among other things, to do a really professional job, I needed to work out how to draw a Union Jack, to provide an appropriate background to the bet named after it. (And yes, I'm aware that it's more correctly called a Union Flag except when used at sea, but it is most commonly, if incorrectly, known as a Union Jack so I'll stick with that, since the bookmakers do.) I eventually worked out how to draw the Union Jack purely by programming (the normal way would be to use some kind of paint software) and realised that drawing flags would be a good way to learn about graphics.

I therefore created a program to display or print flags of various countries, together with any other flags that appeared interesting and programmable. Some flags are impossible to draw purely by programming as they include birds, animals or other features that don't fit standard shapes. The paint software doesn't interest me as I'm a programmer, not an artist. Despite the restrictions, there were plenty of flags that I could draw.

While developing the flag program, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could eventually draw some features, particularly stars, that initially seemed impossible. It took me a long time to work out how to program five-pointed stars, which are common in flags, but perseverance paid off. Eventually, I was able to draw a circle of stars with each star rotated so that the points are correctly positioned as in the real flag. The European Union flag is perhaps the most famous example of a flag with a circle of stars, but it's not the only one. The American Stars and Stripes is particularly interesting, especially when one looks back in time. Although the current flag has a fairly straightforward arrangement, there being too many stars now for fancy arrangements, there have been times in the past when the pattern was not so simple. Some of the old patterns included a circle of stars.

Like everything else I did on that computer, the flags program was a non-commercial application but many of the techniques used could be applied commercially. I had no particular interest in flags prior to writing this program, but I bought several books on the subject to provide me with pictures and other information, some of which I've reviewed on Amazon including The world encyclopedia of flags. See how the different aspects of my life interact?

Good training

By means of the above systems, I learned far more about Visual Basic than I could ever hope to do on a training course, although there are some aspects of the language that require a commercial environment in order to learn them effectively. I never did any file handling or database, because I didn't have the software to allow me to do them.

The fact that I'd been practising Visual Basic at home was almost certainly a factor in helping me back to work, even though there was no requirement for these specific skills in the job that I secured. I continued practising even after I started work, albeit intermittently, until the computer expired. Fortunately, I had kept security copies so maybe I can return to Visual Basic someday. However, any hopes that I once held of returning to commercial programming have all but disappeared, so it will probably be just a fun thing to play with during my retirement.

Next page

Success in 1998 >>

Success in 1998

---

Unable to attend course

In February 1998, I saw an advertisement for training courses in Oracle and RPG400, for which a place would be available to me. On further investigation, I felt unable to accept because the provider wanted me to agree not to look for any job by any other means, in direct contravention of rules for those claiming jobseeker's allowance. I could have cheated but that's not my style. Nevertheless, the episode showed the difficulty of getting official training that I could benefit from. I was very thankful for my personal computer and even more thankful when, a few months later, I finally secured a job.

Y2K saves me

With the impending Y2K crisis, I was getting more positive response from employers, who no doubt also appreciated my efforts to learn new stuff. Y2K created a sudden surge in demand for COBOL programmers so employers were forced to consider what I had to offer. At this stage, it is worth noting that when Y2K finally arrived, it was a huge non-story in the media only because the IT industry had done what was required; it really could have been a huge disaster. I really felt that 1998 was going to be my year but I decided to take no chances. I didn't quibble over salary and I made up my mind to take the first job offered. This latter decision may have been wrong but I'll never know for sure. In any case, my jobseeker's allowance and other benefits could have been stopped had I rejected a job and the jobcentre found out.

My decision to move to Birmingham was a good one, never better illustrated than when I attended three widely scattered interviews, all with local councils, in North Shields (near Newcastle), Aberdeen and Plymouth within a period of around a week. I believe that I came very close to landing the Aberdeen job but didn't get it. I also came close to getting a job with a local council in Sandwell, not far from Birmingham. Had I got either of those local council jobs, I would have been able to use my existing COBOL skills to begin with before re-training in more modern languages. Whether I would still be there now, I don't know, but even if I'd been made redundant, I'd have had some useful skills to take to another employer. As things turned out, I secured a job in Narborough (near Leicester) although I had decidedly mixed feelings about it even at the interview. If I'd been looking to transfer there from another job, I'd have declined politely and walked out long before the end, but I'd been out of work for over eight years and that created different considerations.

An unlikely success

I had heard a lot about the IT skills shortage, but it seems that many employers would rather leave vacancies unfilled than employ me, despite my willingness to work for a very modest salary by IT standards just to get back to work. I did some good interviews and some bad ones but when I finally secured a job, it came as a complete surprise. My interview technique is not always good although I tend to do better if I sense that my chances are good. Having done some particularly good interviews that I felt should have been successful but which failed, my confidence was low and there was nothing obvious to latch on to during the interview in question.

I was also ill that week and I'd done another interview the day before, which did not help. I was not so ill as to be unable to attend but I seriously considered postponement. However, I might have lost the interview altogether and I did not want that. I had to keep attending interviews to prevent aggravation from the jobcentre. From that perspective, it was irrelevant that they failed as long as they happened with sufficient frequency. I therefore attended the interview on the given date despite being ill.

The first person to interview me (the overall boss) clearly had his doubts, but he realised that I could probably do the job. He had interviewed a lot of clearly unsuitable people. He might well have rejected me there and then, but I made it clear that I was prepared to undergo a work trial if that was what it took to get back to work - and I was cheap. Apparently reluctantly, I was then passed to two of the people who the successful candidate would be working for. We looked at some of their programs on a screen. This part of the interview secured the job for me. I discovered that the technical aspects of the job were limited and would remain so, which may explain why the business had difficulty in recruiting suitable staff. Nevertheless, I had to accept the offer because I could not be sure that something better would come along.

Silence is golden

In these unlikely circumstances and with serious misgivings on both sides, I started work again. I can't say too much about the Narborough job because, when I eventually became redundant after working for four and a half years, I signed a secrecy agreement in return for some extra money. Nevertheless, the fact remains that I used my COBOL skills throughout my time there, with never any prospect of learning any modern programming languages. So I knew that when redundancy came (and I always assumed that it would eventually unless I was able to learn new stuff there), I would have real problems finding another job.

Nothing lasts forever

During my time in that job, I bought a contemporary PC and MS Office. I also discovered Amazon's websites, which have been a significant part of my life ever since. Redundancy came in December 2002. For a while, it seemed that I might quickly find another job as there were still COBOL jobs around, albeit far fewer than in the seventies and eighties, but in the event I didn't even get an interview. So I was into my second long period of unemployment but this has been a very different experience from the first.

Next page

This will take you into a different blog.

The politics of unemployment >>