Water treatment

 

 

This was a subject about which I knew very little but when I first joined Castrol it became my responsibility. It was the largest part of the companies marine chemicals business. Fortunately when Castrol bought the business they also hired Mark who was relatively experienced in the business. I was able to rely on him for a great deal of the day-to-day support.

In charge of marine chemicals sales was Tom. He was a man of vast experience nearing the end of his career. He was very matter of fact in his approach albeit slightly old fashioned. One issue which arose was wooden cabinets to house test kits on board ship. Tom was adamant that a neat contained cabinet was necessary on board ship so that the various reagents and instruments were kept neatly in one place and not strewn about and lost. Sourcing such a cabinet was left up to me. Because of the fairly specialist nature of the job it had to be a custom made cabinet. I eventually found an outfit that retrained disabled workers who took on the job. We had to buy a largish number to make it worthwhile and I caught a lot of flak from my boss because we had to pay for, and store, the cabinets until they were called for.

Tom was quite impressed that I sourced the cabinets and we became friendly. The marine business became a source of many unusual requests. Tom became convinced I could arrange most things so he decided that the marine chemicals national conference should be near my base at Hyde and that I should select the venue. Having no idea I consulted my boss who soon said marine chemical reps – I know what they will like. His suggestion was a sort of restaurant with night club attached. What I didn’t realise that it was notorious as the place where unattached ladies went to meet men. Some were indeed single ladies but some were at least semi professional. I was soon disabused on our opening night.

Firstly we met in the bar. I had a drink but the reps were drinking three or four to my one .I commented that they were drinking heavily to Tom only for him to reply that they went a bit mad when the company was paying. Then towards the end of the meal the owner was busily making introductions. Tom said this was where we retire and we did. What surprised me was that after what I presume was a very heavy night they were all bright eyed at the conference first session the morning after.

Lunching one day with Tom conversation turned to the war. Tom was in the merchant navy during Atlantic convoys. In his matter-of-fact way he disclosed he had three ships sunk under him.

 He had good contacts with the Royal Navy. We attempted sale of tank cleaning chemicals. In connection with this I went aboard a cruiser being decommissioned. This meant entering the fuel oil storage tanks which were in a claustrophobic space at the bottom of the ship. The tanks were 3 or 4 feet high but with curved sides and criss-crossed by support struts. I was relieved to leave.

For water treatment which included desalination I relied on Mark. He had a rather strange sense of humour. We had a lot of contact with central technical support in the form of Bill Dedman. We also had foisted on us the UK supposed technical support in the form of Ted Dodd. I have never encountered such an utterly useless individual who was in the habit of phoning us for the most trivial detail which he should have known. Mark entered him on our telephone list as Dead Dog saying we already had a Dead Man..

The company market for desalination was small evaporators used on ships. However there are a few arid places which practice on shore desalination on a large scale. One such is Malta. It was the company practice to join tenders for supply but probably without much expectation of winning. However one year we won the Malta contract. It was my job to source chemical, which we normally bought in small quantities, on a large scale. One component needed twenty tons of raw material. I gave the verbal order on a Friday afternoon. I subsequently found that the supplier who equally wasn’t used to such large orders ran their factory all weekend and were able to supply a tanker load of product the following week. For ever after they would contact me hoping for a repeat. We never won the tender again and my reputation slowly subsided.

One reason why Mark appreciated me as his boss was that I defended him against my boss who was a very opinionated straight laced long server. He regarded Mark who affected rather hippieish dress and lifestyle with grave suspicion. For example Mark wore trainers at a time before they were fashionable. My boss Peter would end his moans about Mark by saying “ and get him to wear some proper shoes”.  Fortunately Mark was also an excellent worker and I hope I had earned my bosses respect for standing up for him..

We were working at the Hyde, Manchester lab and factory. Most were long time employees so Mark and I were both relative newcomers. When I came to leave Mark helped make arrangements. We chose a pub just outside Handforth on the main road south. I was slightly taken aback on our recce visit to find it was solely occupied by mainly youngish men as it was clearly gay singles night. In the event my leaving evening went very well. It was a lovely summer evening and most of the time we were outside.

There was a corollary as some time later I arranged to go for a meal with Mark and our ladies. I vaguely knew that Mark had been talking to one of the ladies in the lab who was going through a divorce. I was used to seeing her in a lab coat in a work environment so when she turned up as Mark’s partner I didn’t recognise her for a moment in her going out finery.

Not long after I left Mark left also firstly to a supplier I knew, and then to work abroad where I lost track

When I re-joined Castrol at the Pangbourne Technology centre water treatment was no longer my responsibility which I was rather pleased about.