This introductory section was first prepared for the starting date of June 11th 2013, when my journals were due to be published day by day from that 30th Anniversary of the day on June 11th 1983 when I first started writing a daily journal, with dedication and endurance so as to last until what has become the present day. Originally, there were just a few articles in the menu to the left which reveal a little about my formative years and pre-journal life! Some five years on, it has taken on a life and style of its own!
This delay of 30 years was adopted to take account of the very explicit and personal references that take place in later writings. I first thought that 20 years was appropriate and then 25 but even then certain details and names might be withheld for a further 20 years when the time comes. These latest days are still chronicled with details of habits and activities that we seldom confess in public but are part of our culture and human experience. This venture was inspired by the supposedly-private writings of that prominent Naval administrator and private rascal Samuel Pepys whose shorthand and code was cracked to reveal the frankest ever insight into 17th century behaviour and sexual exploits. Now some 300 years on, I felt that, for reasons of social history, would be of interest in an age when writing and letters were becoming rare and comments guarded for reasons of political and social correctness. It is now probably unique in its depth, frankness and scope; revealing, as it does, the true way in which life has undergone so many challenges and changes as a result of a technological revolution for which, as you will see, I was as much to blame as almost anyone elese!
Originally blog provided the platform for publishing some early accounts of happy family boating cruises in 1982 onwards from which my love of boating and waterways stemmed. Now, I can look back and trace the development of this hobby into a pursuit and then a passion leading to subsequent epic cruises around the Northern European coast and Inland Waterways of France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands detailed in www.ladymartina.com and then latterly at http://lady-martina.blogspot.co.uk/ . These experiences directly led to the publishing of the book Inland Waterways of the Netherlands co-authored with my then partner Louise who still updates the web site inlandwaterwaysofthenetherlands.com. Becoming more of a lifestyle and duty for us as we founded the Broom Owners Club after that boat maker had still lacked an owners club after 100 years of operation and three past failed attempts. The BOC now has some 450 boats registered and thus about 900 active owning members. We then helped with the organisation of the Cruising Association as had been unincorporated since its foundation in 1908 and helped it become a company Limited by Guarantee, myself as a first Director and Council member and Louise as Web team member and HLR for The Netherlands at the time, I still now retain a role as the HLR for Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and The Broads and a member of various sections. My final boating contributions were as Vice Chair of the Broads Authority and Chairman of its Navigation Committee and now i work with others who are in more prominent roles to seek reform of that much-criticised unaccountable quango
Of course, when the journal’s publication started it could then describe my times as Chairman and Chief Executive of the Comart Group, a family of companies that I either founded or took over to eventually provide the largest microcomputer company in the UK, with interests in manufacture, hardware and software distribution, Byte Shop and Computerland retail shops, field and head office service and training which turned over £20m per year and employed some 200 people at its height in 1984 when I sold out and retired on the very same day as my youngest daughter, Daniella, was born. At the time I was on advisory computer committees for the National Computing Centre, GCHQ and on the Parliamentary Committee on IT, PITCOM and was a regular participant on conferences, chairing several and was commonly in the national and computer press responding to topical issues. One of 25 UK owned and controlled computer manufacturing companies at the time, unfair competition from US and Japanese competitors led to me forming the BMMG trade association on behalf of which I had led delegations as Chairman to Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street but at a time of huge 17.5% component tariffs, 18.5% base rates and public policies to favour their own products abroad whilst we had a political ethos here to import and favour ‘inward investment’ rather than home manufacture, we needed the political support but failed to get it. I saw what was coming and sold out and became a multi-millionaire but other friends and colleagues were not so lucky. Now, the nation that invented the computer at Bletchley Park, has no manufacturing capacity, and the car industry and the boating industry now follows this example.
From 1988 to 1992, following an interest in family history and my researches and authorship of a book on local history of my then home village, “The History of Little Paxton”, I became a local personality as District Councillor for Paxton Ward and then Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Huntingdonshire District Council and their regional Campaign Organiser but, though I was at one stage on the parliamentary list, I declined opportunities to enter national Politics for family and personal reasons but have always kept abreast of developments and had a close interest. In those days, I had links with then then Prime Minister (then our MP John Major) as a healthy political opponent but retained some family links as a fellow ‘Pony Mum’ of his wife Norma at the riding school with her daughter Elisabeth (my son’s classmate at Kimbolton School) helping my daughter Deborah with Pony Club preparations and events.
There have been various phases to my life and times and in those days brief moments of fame and what was once pioneering times commuting between Silican Fen, Cambridgeshire, and Silican Valley, California, leading innovation and application in the computing industry, or leading local politics and more recently the boating industry and then helping colleagues plan the future of an area of national landscape importance, The Broads; life has never been dull.
Add to this a very particular affinity with dancing, partying and enjoying the company and pleasures that only active younger members of the opposite sex can deliver, I hope these musings will be of interest and pleasure to those discovering them and not too distressing to those who find themselves featured a respectable 30 years on!