The 7 ages of
Frank Selkirk
It was whilst working in the vending industry that I met Sheena. She had been recruited not to deal directly with the machines, but to help set up the associated activity of supplying ingredients to feed the machines. But also there I met John Fletcher, of whom more later…
One of the reasons I had been brought into the Vending division was to establish an export market for the machines. This did not prove too difficult, since I continued to be allowed to be what all salesmen should be: communicators between the customers and those on the shop floor - who far too seldom were even allowed to see where they fitted into the whole industrial picture. As a result by the early 1970s a review of statistics showed that our firm were by then the biggest exporters of such machines in the world.
I felt that without the restrictions imposed by senior management (and their advisers) we could progress even further. Thus I itched to get out and go solo - or semi-solo. (There was the added excitement of Sheena’s pregnancy). I found a lady who appeared keen to help, but after a couple of months for a variety of reasons the venture folded.
The next stage in fact had a significant link to another of the things I had been up to in my private life. I had around 1970 decided that I ought as a citizen to involve myself in politics. Finding that I was in the Brierley Hill parliamentary constituency I duly wrote to all 3 parties to see if I would gel into one of them.
Before I moved to the next stage however I found that the constituency boundaries were changing and that henceforward we would be in Wolverhampton South-West whose M.P. was J. Enoch Powell. Being frightened by his apparent racialist statements I did the only thing I thought I should: joined the local Labour party. Within a couple of years I was the vice-chairman of the party. Sheena also joined, and was prepared to stand for the Council: but was barred since she was not in a trade union!
Anyhow, to get back to looking for work. Well, as I had involved myself in European activities both within the Labour party and directly in the European Movement (I had stayed in the National Liberal Club where the European Movement had its headquarters) I was asked by the Director if I would be interested in taking on the job of organising the campaign in the West Midlands for almost-certainly-forthcoming referendum campaign on the subject of British membership of the EEC (as it was then known)
A change of career was nothing new to me, so I jumped at the chance and duly set up an office in our house. A few months into the campaign and one of my voluntary “Assistants” used one his directorships to get us an office in New Street, Birmingham. The cross-party, cross-industry (etc) nature of the task enthused me enormously (I could never be one of those who “always voted at his party’s call”) and duly on 5th June 1975 the referendum was held. I stayed in my office most of the day with our 11-month-old son accompanying me in his travel cot!
Having duly won with a convincing 2/3rds majority my task was over. Accordingly I had to look for an alternative career, and after a very few weeks in deciding that conventional life assurance sales were not for me I looked further afield. In more ways than one, since we had sold our Wolverhampton cottage and had found a house in Broseley, Shropshire where we to live for the next 30 years. (See web site)
I juggled around with seeing if fee-paying life assurance “sales” was a good idea but as ever I was nearly 40 years ahead in my thinking! I had done a fair amount of statistical work in my research, so when I was asked if I was interested in doing a few hours of work of book-keeping I jumped at the chance. After a few weeks I was asked if I could also do the firm’s accounts, and I immediately said “yes” even though I had never had any experience in such. But it was obvious that a little reading and sense would enable me to do such, and so commenced a 30-year stint of being an accountant.
I was working in the coachman’s room in the stable block which had been crudely part-converted into a garage. The previous owner had used “my” room to make picture frames. A day or two after I moved in I was struck by the sound of pigs squealing and then sudden silence. A slaughter-house was in the next-door’s garden! To get up to my room I had to go up some very narrow dark stairs and bend almost double to get into the other upstairs room: it had been the hayloft, and there was never meant to be access between the two.
Over the years I was there the roof was adjusted to make the upstairs fully usable, new oak stairs put in, the garage scrapped and finally an extension built so that there were 4 good offices together with entrance hall and a store/filing room.
To start with all my accounts had to be typed on the electric typewriter, but then I decided to “computerize”. Quite a venture, since the only experience I had of computers was a mainframe computer which took over the top floor of a substantial office block. At very considerable cost I bought an Apple II+ computer with 48k of usable memory, an upper-case only “facility”, a green and black screen monitor and a dot-matrix printer. But how did it work? It needed “software” I was told. I borrowed some, but found as far as I was concerned the accounting ledger system was about as efficient as my using a quill pen! Fortunately I located a sixth-former who could make programmes to my requirement, so I was on the way! But sixth-formers tend to move on to universities, so I had to take over programming myself. Things moved ahead, and a colleague who post-retirement from local government was starting his own business used my programmes too. So they can’t have been all that bad.
Computer technology also was moving ahead rapidly, so I changed over to Atari computers with huge 4 mb memories! With the help of another 6th former to get me started everything was then reprogrammed, and as I was getting busy 2 colleagues joined me firstly as sub-contractors and then as members of a cooperative which I formed: known as “Frank Selkirk & Associates” and as “1 for 1” – the latter since a Yellow Pages entry stating “Frank Selkirk: the one-man accountant for one-man businesses” worked so well.
By that time, of course, Duncan & Logan were both around, growing up, schooling and finally getting to university and beyond.
The accountancy practice did indeed work very largely for one-man – or one woman – businesses and both of my colleagues (Diane Shinton & Geoff Bowers) had their own clients. It worked very happily for many years until it came near the time for me to retire when, alas, it broke up with some misunderstandings and unwanted acrimony. I’m afraid we had not used the lesson we taught others: unless you regularly talk to each other about all your plans and fears things never succeed as they ought to!
Finally as our house was being reformed and sold off I moved my office and a colleague joined with the intention of his taking over the business. That was progressing smoothly and I had mainly removed myself from active accountancy work - and was firmly based in Spain - when suddenly he let me know that he was going to train as a teacher instead. I had to scurry back and find some firm who I hoped would treat my clients as I had to take over. I found someone I already knew, but unfortunately I do not think I made the right choice. Ah, well, all is past…
And yet! Work continues..
