In the late 1960s my growing family was outstripping my income, so I decided to search for better paid employment. No internet to trawl so good old fashioned newspaper vacancy columns to be scoured. Three job opportunities caught my eye.

No 1 Welder required in a Zambian copper mine.

No 2 Fabricator welder required in the Congo.

No3 Welder required on the SEDCO 703 in the North Sea.

I wasted no time sending off my CVs and waited in anticipation. Three whole months went by without a response and I resigned myself to being an agricultural welder in Lincolnshire forever!

The next day a letter arrived inviting me to an interview for the Zambian job and would I attend an interview in London? I telephoned the company and discovered that as an expat worker my children would have to remain in the U.K and attend a boarding school. This, my wife informed me, was not going to happen so job No 1 off the table. The following day I received a phone call from the Congo with a very desperate Scotsman begging me to come out to thr Congo post haste but as he begged I swear I could hear gunfire in the background, so I politely declined job No 2. The same evening the phone rang again and an American H.R. person invited me to travel to Aberdeen, undergo two weeks firefighting and survival training prior to becoming the welder on board the SEDCO703. And so it was that I became a worker/sailor in the American merchant marine.