A Discussion About the Falklands
During part of the Falklands War or soon afterwards, I was at an Artemis Users Conference in Denver Colorado.
After dinner one night, four of us, got together and had a few drinks. The other guys were the Project Manager of the McDonnell Douglas Harrier program, a guy with a similar position at Long Beach Naval Shipyard and a banker from New York.
The banker kept on about us needing a nice big flat-top (aircraft-carrier) with a few Tomcats and that would have dealt with the Argentines. I wanted to stand my British corner, but really didn’t know what to say. In the end the other two Americans, just let him have enough rope and then they played their card; the awful weather. One said that the weather reports from the Falklands, they’d seen, were so bad, that the only aircraft you could take-off and land back again was a Harrier.
The banker wasn’t seen again that evening,
What Have the London Marathon and the Multi-User Version of Artemis in Common
According to legend and this web site, the London Marathon was planned by Chris Brasher and John Disley in a pub; the Dysart Arms at Richmond.
So what’s different to most great ideas?
The first multi-user version of Artemis, the project management system, was designed by Richard Nobbs and myself in the Gardeners Arms at Stutton.
My Zopa Spreadsheet
I have a spreadsheet written in Excel, that documents all of my Zopa investment.
What I find about Excel is that it is so illogical and nothing is intuitive. When I wrote a PC-based version of Artemis, that was a project management, spreadsheet and a graphics program, it was way in advance of Excel today for ease-of-use. But then it didn’t have all the features.
Am I being arrogant?
No! At my age and state of health I have that luxury.
On a more important theme, is the spreadsheet telling me what I should do with Zopa?
I think so and I’ll be making changes to my lending philosophy in the next few days.
Computer Disasters Incorporated
When we were writing Artemis, and afterwards, some people asked what we would have done if it had all gone wrong.
We didn’t officially have a Plan B, but then we had organised the company, so that if we had to close it, we’d all come out with something. I can remember having a chat with the company accountant and he explained, how our system of leasing systems, meant there would always be a useful cash flow from a sale for some time.
I do remember though talking about a company called Computer Disasters Inc. Basically, it would have been a no-fix no-fee rescue company for computer systems that had gone awry. After all we had the people to sell such services and the experience to fix them.
I suspect it’s a concept that has been used successfully by others.
Do Successful Women Have a House Husband?
A news item in the Sunday Times today is headed Top women need ‘him indoors’
It goes on to discuss how quite a few of the top women in the City have husbands who are at home.
I will not answer my question directly, but talk about my relationship of forty years with C. Or more particularly our careers.
For the first few years, we were very typical although, some would say that your early twenties are too young to have children. We had three before I was 25 and C was 24. I worked hard to get on and by that time I was starting my first business. I was working at least 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we were living in a fouuth floor walk up flat in St. John’s Wood. So if you have to live in crap housing make sure it’s in a good location. Just north of Regent’s Park can’t really be better.
When I sold my first business, we moved to the Barbican and C went to UCL to do a law degree, as Politics from Liverpool, where your tutor was Robert Kilroy-Silk, doesn’t really prepare you for the world of real work.
For the next fifteen years or so, I was part of the team creating Artemis, whilst C was getting her career together as a barrister. We were both working hard and I got the financial rewards when the company was sold. C meanwhile gained a reputation as one of East Anglia’s foremost family barristers.
When we moved to Newmarket to start the stud, we started to evolve a new way of working together. We still had our individual careers and interests, but I would spend more time on other things, as C was now very much the major wage owner. It allowed me to develop ideas, some of which worked and some didn’t. And then when she moved to Chambers in Cambridge, which was very much Internet based, I became much more of her support at home.
As we didn’t have young children anymore, I couldn’t be described as anything more than home support.
So in some ways we’d almost come full circle.
I suspect our model has not been untypical and I’d recommend it. As the major wage-earner changes over the years, does it really demean the man to be the one who oooks after the house, when his wife can earn three or four times he can.
But we also did a lot of things together.
Shopping for instance. Some of my friends are incredulous, that for most of our life together we did the general shopping together too. When we were in the Barbican, we’d push the children up to Chapel Market next to the Waitrose I now use. So life has now come full circle in more ways than one.
Clothes shopping was often together too. C was better at choosing clothes for me and in many cases the reverse was true. I remember the year she died being in Zara and C was looking at a sun dress on a hanger. She said that it was awful and I then picked it up, realising that it would be just her size and style. She bought it and wore it all the summer. Remember that I am a designer and also an unusual man, who was taught to make clothes by his mother.
If I have any regrets about our relationship, it was that I dodn’t do more cooking. I taught myself in a few days after she died and like doing it.
So I would suspect that although house-husband is too strong a word for it, most successful women and successful men for that matter have a strong partner at home, who can help or even take charge of the mundane and suggest other ways in the serious part of their career. As an example in the latter, I helped in a few of C’s cases, by using my knowledge and experience to improve her arguments and in some other cases, I have suggested ways of improving her returns from the work.
And then there’s the need for a cuddle and more, that we all need!
Living alone is not a choice we would make for ourselves.
The Good Ship Artemis
The two nights I’ve been on Syros, they’ve parked a ferry called Artemis outside to make me feel at home.
The Good Ship Artemis
It left early both mornings.
Programming in the Nude
The story about Comic Relief reminds me, that most of the time I was programming Artemis at Debach and was alone, I never bothered to get dressed.
It did have its drawback, in that once I trod on a loose nail and hurt my foot. Luckily after a bit of TLC from C, I was able to carry on.
How many people, other than a few models and actors, can claim that they made their fortune without their clothes on?
The Day I Met the Queen
Turning out and weeding the files is mainly a depressing occupation. But then occasionally, you come across a little gem. I thought I’d lost this card, which was the invitation from the Palace to attend a Queen’s Award Reception.
Invitation to a Reception
Let’s say it was one of the best parties, I’ve ever been to!
The setting was msgnificent, the staff were attentive and welcoming and all in all you couldn’t have wanted for anything.
Three of us went, myself, Richard and John.
We met the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and actually talked for quite a time with the Duke of Kent. It was also one of the first receptions, that Diana Spencer attended and most of the guests seemed to spend their time trying to talk to her. It wasn’t the most edifying of spectacles and we just enjoyed the setting, the food and the wine. But not too much, as would you believe some captains of industry, did over indulge on the hospitality.
Metier won two Queen’s Awards, but you won’t find them on the Internet. If I have one secret ambition it would be to win one for technology, but I’m a bit long in the tooth and too much of a wreck now!
But then everybody who has had a stroke should look to Louis Pasteur, who did some of his best work many years after he had had several.
The Price of an Artemis 1000 System in 1984
In going through my papers for possibly the last time, I found this invoice for an Artemis system. Or at least for the hardware required.
A Metier Invoice for an Artemis System
Effectively, my recollection is that this was about the time we sold the company to Lockheed and it was for old-times sake more than anything. I have a feeling I actually bought my old development mchine from the attic. It’s still in my shed now and I suspect it is the only one left!
Winning a Queen’s Award
Metier Management Systems, the company behind Artemis, won two Queen’s Awards for Export Achievement. I think they were in 1981 and 1982. There is surprisingly little on the Internet and all I can find at present is this page from the London Gazette. There isn’t even a list in Wikipedia, which shows how much we celebrate success in the UK.
I don’t even have any photos of either the presentations or the parties at Buckingham Palace, where I met the Queen.
The Anonymous Widower 