When I last visited a Rotary Club Meeting...25 3 18
I was just 20 yrs of age plus maybe 7 months. It was subsequent to the 17th July since that was the day I first stepped onto Finnish soil. 10th of August to 30th of September to be precise, the time I was employed by Kymene Ab or Kymin Oy, the one Swedish the second its Finnish name. So some time between these two dates after Engeneer Örnhjelm, the Manager of one of the two Production Plants, one for Wood Pulp Production the other for Paper Production, invited me to accompany him to their next meeting and tell something about my background.
What I told them was that I had worked at a Paper Mill, New Bury Paper Mills Ltd., belonging to the Wiggins Teape Group, for 5 years since leaving school in July 1955. A Paper Company that used Kymi's Bond Special grade of Bleached Sulphite Pulp. That I had studied Chemistry via the O.N.C. and first year H.N.C. part-time day release courses, the former the Ordinary National Certificate: in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics in the first year; Organic and Inorganic Chemistry and Physics in the second year; and the three Chemistries including Physical Chemistry in the third year. And that most recently I had taken the first year Higher National course: again comprising the three chemistry subjects. I didn't allude to the fact that in England I lived in Bury, Lancashire which was where one or possibly more of the Company's Paper Machines had been made but these people probably shared this knowledge too.
This I'm now guessing was against the background of relating how I had travelled there by hitch-hiking my third such vacation after earlier visiting Norway, Sweden and Denmark during 2 weeks in the summer of 1958 and France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, returning to the UK through France again, during 6 weeks in 1959.
Working for Kymin Oy in its Keskuslaboratorio for a Maisturi Paasonen, a Finnish speaking Finn was a very rewarding experience for a young man with my background, and when it came time to leave to return to England to continue my studies for the 2nd and final year of the H.N.C. Course I was invited to re-visit Kuusankoski again, which I did in the following years, when I returned first a year later for a second visit extending from July until September
So my career in Physics and now Chemistry progressed, as my formative years played out in the two very different cultures of England and Finland. During the year back in England after taking and passing my first year of the H.N.C. course I was fortunate to get a position as a bench chemist (trainee) at Imperial Chemical Industry's Blackley Works of Basic and Vat Dyes Manufacture in the conurbation of Greater Manchester. Its most rewarding aspect working up Copper Phthalocyanene dyestuff's intermediates which can be said to be at the opposite end of the spectrum of where I started out in the more physics-based Paper Making industry.
Thereafter after only a year I returned to the relatively higher life of once more being feted as the token Englishman in Kuusankoski where in those days each year the British Council would send new graduates from Humanities courses to teach English by way of conversations with the Company's "Officer Class": for Maisturi Paasonen he had his own specimen teacher in me. And in the following year after failing the second year of the 2-year H.N.C. course but getting a referral in only one subject, the Phyiscal Chemistry exmination, it gave me another opportunity to work in Kuusankoski and for the first time to stay over a winter when I also learned how to cross country ski.
This tooing and froing between my working class life in Northern England with its routes firmly placed in Industrial Lancashire on the one hand whilst hob-knobbing with the Bättre Folk of Kuusankoski society on the other whislt also slumming it relatively speaking with the Finnish Finnish working classes required something of a balancing act but overall I guess was on the whole betttering myself.
Not wishing to labour any of the points I make here I will conclude by saying the transition I refer to wasn't something that happened overnight but that in the fullness of time I should work a total of 2 1/2 years in Kuusankoski before returning to work in England and Scotland to use the knowledge I gained in Kuusankoski, most notably at Wigggins Teape Group Research and Development Centre in Beaconsfield where in the fulness of time i became a Project Leader and before leaving them after 3 years to top up my ONC and HNC studies with a 2 year Graduateship of the RIC (Royal Institute of Chemistry) turning down their offer of a Senior Project Leadership role, I would become in turns a Research and Development Manager for the fine paper and nonwoven teabag market, including the substrae base for the manufacture of fibrous cellulose casings when I would become the Finnish Casing Producers Oy Visko Ab's Research and Development Director for 4 years and remain with them until retirement first at age 65 and thereafter after another 3 years as a Management Consultant to conclude a number of Patent disputes in the European Patent Offices in Munich's Opposition Division when I would walk away with a 3 wins to 2 defeats for the patents i had assigned to the Company plus a dispiute with a competitor who attempted to publish a me-too applicatio.
What I told them was that I had worked at a Paper Mill, New Bury Paper Mills Ltd., belonging to the Wiggins Teape Group, for 5 years since leaving school in July 1955. A Paper Company that used Kymi's Bond Special grade of Bleached Sulphite Pulp. That I had studied Chemistry via the O.N.C. and first year H.N.C. part-time day release courses, the former the Ordinary National Certificate: in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics in the first year; Organic and Inorganic Chemistry and Physics in the second year; and the three Chemistries including Physical Chemistry in the third year. And that most recently I had taken the first year Higher National course: again comprising the three chemistry subjects. I didn't allude to the fact that in England I lived in Bury, Lancashire which was where one or possibly more of the Company's Paper Machines had been made but these people probably shared this knowledge too.
This I'm now guessing was against the background of relating how I had travelled there by hitch-hiking my third such vacation after earlier visiting Norway, Sweden and Denmark during 2 weeks in the summer of 1958 and France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, returning to the UK through France again, during 6 weeks in 1959.
Working for Kymin Oy in its Keskuslaboratorio for a Maisturi Paasonen, a Finnish speaking Finn was a very rewarding experience for a young man with my background, and when it came time to leave to return to England to continue my studies for the 2nd and final year of the H.N.C. Course I was invited to re-visit Kuusankoski again, which I did in the following years, when I returned first a year later for a second visit extending from July until September
So my career in Physics and now Chemistry progressed, as my formative years played out in the two very different cultures of England and Finland. During the year back in England after taking and passing my first year of the H.N.C. course I was fortunate to get a position as a bench chemist (trainee) at Imperial Chemical Industry's Blackley Works of Basic and Vat Dyes Manufacture in the conurbation of Greater Manchester. Its most rewarding aspect working up Copper Phthalocyanene dyestuff's intermediates which can be said to be at the opposite end of the spectrum of where I started out in the more physics-based Paper Making industry.
Thereafter after only a year I returned to the relatively higher life of once more being feted as the token Englishman in Kuusankoski where in those days each year the British Council would send new graduates from Humanities courses to teach English by way of conversations with the Company's "Officer Class": for Maisturi Paasonen he had his own specimen teacher in me. And in the following year after failing the second year of the 2-year H.N.C. course but getting a referral in only one subject, the Phyiscal Chemistry exmination, it gave me another opportunity to work in Kuusankoski and for the first time to stay over a winter when I also learned how to cross country ski.
This tooing and froing between my working class life in Northern England with its routes firmly placed in Industrial Lancashire on the one hand whilst hob-knobbing with the Bättre Folk of Kuusankoski society on the other whislt also slumming it relatively speaking with the Finnish Finnish working classes required something of a balancing act but overall I guess was on the whole betttering myself.
Not wishing to labour any of the points I make here I will conclude by saying the transition I refer to wasn't something that happened overnight but that in the fullness of time I should work a total of 2 1/2 years in Kuusankoski before returning to work in England and Scotland to use the knowledge I gained in Kuusankoski, most notably at Wigggins Teape Group Research and Development Centre in Beaconsfield where in the fulness of time i became a Project Leader and before leaving them after 3 years to top up my ONC and HNC studies with a 2 year Graduateship of the RIC (Royal Institute of Chemistry) turning down their offer of a Senior Project Leadership role, I would become in turns a Research and Development Manager for the fine paper and nonwoven teabag market, including the substrae base for the manufacture of fibrous cellulose casings when I would become the Finnish Casing Producers Oy Visko Ab's Research and Development Director for 4 years and remain with them until retirement first at age 65 and thereafter after another 3 years as a Management Consultant to conclude a number of Patent disputes in the European Patent Offices in Munich's Opposition Division when I would walk away with a 3 wins to 2 defeats for the patents i had assigned to the Company plus a dispiute with a competitor who attempted to publish a me-too applicatio.
Comments
Post a Comment