Internationality..? 17 12 1 (17) 25 1 30

The year was 1969 and I was having my morning coffee in this Research Dept. laboratory of this Transparent Paper Co, after flunking my Part l RIC exam so got to spend another year in industry before recovering it in a year end re-sit to get me back on the course for gaining my Part ll GradRIC, ultimately being accepted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry as it later became known as. 

As usual with this guy Penswick holding forth to all the lesser minions of the Research Dept. about his superior knowledge of the world in all its many facets, though in truth from the time some 15 years earlier when we shared the same class in our Technical School, he had never done anything or been anywhere, save from moving to his first and only job at TP here, where he would stay a few more months before being made redundant when the place closed down: to move a few hundred metres down the road to his next job, at another Paper Company also destined for closure. So he threw this question out which just happened to reach my ears also sitting alone at my desk in the furthest corner of the room diagonally opposed: "Just tell me of one country where a Republic works..?" To which I shouted over a lone voice in the wilderness: "What about Finland?" which met with the immediate response: "Why don't you f*ck off back to Finland?" And believe it or not I did just that, but not for a few years more...

T, a farmer’s son from Edgeworth, was typical of those north country bumpkins never to my knowledge distinguishing himself especially, and maybe typical of the type of person now happy that Britain is about to exit the EU, for it is unimaginable that such a person, who held such outrageous views as he did would ever wish to join the EU in 1973. Like my climbing nephew-in-law who recently told me the only person he knew who voted to leave the EU was his mother who when he asked her why she replied: "I never wanted to join in the first place!"

Xenophobia is a peculiar condition largely born out of ignorance and perhaps a somewhat limited intellect. I travelled much around Europe as a young man and liked what I saw visiting Scotland, Wales and Ireland before I left England for the first time for a 2½ weeks tour of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, as an 18 year old. Then a year later visiting France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France again, before returning to England and UK with an English guy, an Interior Designer who picked me up just north of Paris and took me to his home after feting me on the ferry from Calais to Dover with a sumptuous meal when I got to meet his valet and stay the night in London's Berkeley Square...

The next summer I returned to Scandinavia and that was the first of 5 years when I worked for a time in Finnish Companies spending a half of those formative years working in the same Wood Pulp and Paper Company’s Research and Development Dept. and learning about pulping and bleaching chemistry which I put to good use in a UK company upon my return… Then I met my wife in London and my love for Scandinavia where she hailed from began all over again and we tied the marital knot in 1967.

In the next years we travelled between England and Scandinavia several times as I became a full time student to top up my chemistry studies with a 2y full time University course and spent a summer vacation in another Wood Products Co who when I graduated hired me again when there were few job openings in UK.

Thereafter we returned to England where again my new knowledge served me well in British Industry as I progressed to become an R and D Manager for a specialist Paper Company for 13 years, before accepting the offer of a directorship back in Scandinavia…

Along the road to Internationalism I got a wife speaking the main Scandinavian language then a daughter-in-law speaking Scandinavia’s second language before my other son met and married his wife on the other side of the globe in Japan…so we get to share 4 cultures and have in total 4 working languages. Have a good day everyone as we get ready to celebrate the country’s 100^th year birthday in 2 days’ time.