Packing porn

In between finishing university and starting a job I had a period of some 3 months. Part of that was taken up with marriage and honeymoon but there was still a good 2 months spare. I didn’t want to go and live with my parents. I was engaged to Annette and we had a convenient arrangement where she lived about a 100 yards from my bedsitting room. She had also finished her course in textile design so we looked for a job together so we could both continue living in Leicester.

We found a job with wholesaler Thorpe and Porter a few miles away.  T&P had a business supplying small newsagents with books. These were 95%  general mainly children’s books but also 5% the soft porn of the time. I hasten to add this was the softest conceivable which would be considered perhaps mildly risqué now. I always thought this was a very strange companion to the main business but presumably worthwhile.

Our job consisted mainly of packing bundles of books for dispatch and unpacking and storing returns. The pay was disappointingly small but the work was undemanding. We worked as a team with a boy and girl who were between school and university: the boy I remember was going to Bristol to study drama. After an initial trial we worked essentially unsupervised.  We got along very well together and we were quite productive.

There was another girl briefly in our team but she wasn’t at all congenial and was soon removed to another job. Not before I was scandalised that she took time off to request a bank loan so she could go on a foreign holiday. I had been brought up to think the only respectable loan was a mortgage.

Generally we had little to do with the soft porn side of the business. It is however a lasting regret that when we had “Fanny Hill in pictures” as a return I didn’t look more closely. As it was destined to go to waste paper I was welcome to take it but I missed the opportunity; I suppose with Annette by my side I was too shy and embarrassed.

When I finished university I hadn’t got a job. However science graduates were in high demand so I wasn’t worried, in fact looking back I was rather complacent. As our wedding grew nearer my prospective mother-in-law commented ever more loudly “ no job and nowhere to live”. It was a good thing we got on together and she thought well of me.

While I was with T&P I was going for interviews. Several possibilities were presented including doing a Masters degree at Battersea in London. The actual choice was rather an accident. Unilever advertised for scientific staff to work as Information Scientists at all their UK research sites. Seeing that Port Sunlight worked on adhesives about which I thought I knew something after my year with Bostik I applied there. My interview went badly but I came away hugely impressed by the work being done. Convinced I wouldn’t get the job I also applied elsewhere for similar work.

However it turned out the real interview occurred as I was being shown around the site and my casual conversation impressed and I had a job offer .  I soon found out adhesives was only a minute part of their interest which were mainly in consumer detergent products. After I accepted we went to look for accommodation.. Birkenhead on a rainy Thursday afternoon was dispiriting but we eventually took a flat at Parkgate overlooking the Dee estuary. We were to live in this flat for about 2 and a half years before buying a house. I was to work at Unilever Research for over 15 years but only the first couple as Information Scientist.