A visit to Hanko Museum 25 11 13
On the day I was advised to renew my annual Museum Card for the knock down price of €79 instead of the full price of €86 beginning tomorrow...
Meaning that I had to make a second visit after failing to gain access on my first visit earlier in the year just ending. Using my current Museum card I received a year ago on the occasion of my 85th b-d. But today to my surprise I found it open, and futher that it is so much bigger than the old Hanko Museum it now replaces: in a corner of the Manner Kone Paija, an otherwise derilict building of this once much bigger concern.
Also to my surprise was the Museum Curator, a guy called Benjamin whom I had met before a long time ago I couldn't be absolutely sure it was the same "Ben", he corrected my quiry of his Christian name. When I engaged in conversation first: explaining the difficulties I had experienced trying to renew my Museum Card for its second year, because the on-line Museum App was so difficult to use.
So later after making a brief tour of the exhibits, which featured artefacts to do with Hanko's rich history, I felt encouraged to add more to his knowledge of me: my entre that I hadn't seen anything to do with the Hanko Company which was the reason I came here.
I told him how I came here first in 1978, not because I was a Sales person but because a colleague who was, had said to his Sales and Marketing Director "Why don't you take ****** with you on your next visit to the town because he used to live in Finland, speaks Finnish and has a Finnish wife." Which is what came to pass, explaining that our Sales and Marketing Director was the youngest Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy in WW II, later adding how his brother-in-law, our Chairman was a wartime Wing Commander (but failing to add who had made 50 bombing missions over Germany in WW II). But that we visited from the Stats Hotel in Tammisaari, where for the first time our company entertained the directors of Visko, with me the Master of Ceremonies. And how because i I believed it to be a one-off occasion I decided to stay a week with two days business for the Company, here and in Helsinki, where Gustav Paulig, was also a customer buying teabag paper from us. But then every 6 months for 6 1/2 years I got to repeat these week long visits, during which our market share grew from a 1/3rd to 100%.
Explaining how in the spring of this year I had occasion to attend an Open Day when I had it my mind that maybe one of my two student grandsons may have been eligible to get summer jobs with my previous employers: how when I rang up how the guy at the other end of the line failed to recognise my voice until I reintroduced myself when he exclaimed: "The legendary ****** ****!"
I perhaps at this point explained how I had visited the company with Philip, our CEO and MD, to experience one of the toughest alcoholic parties, it had ever been my good or bad fortune to experience. Quickly adding it wasn't actually so funny, because our Chairman died in the same week upon returning to England when as a life-long Polo Player, aged 62, he was thrown from his skittish horse dying without recovering consciousness in the process.
Earlier in the discussion I had acquainted him of the fact that as boy I had visited the museum in the town in which I grew up, which was full of John Kay's "Flying Shuttles". How my family had moved the 12 miles north to the town of Bury, from the city of Manchester where I was born, when my father joined the army in WW II. But how I visited the Swimming baths with my (maternal) Grandfather whose name was Kay, and the tram in the 1940's stopped outside Kay Gardens. How my Grandad had one day told me how I should be very proud of being connected to John Kay of Bury, one of its two most famous sons. (How the other famous son was Robert Peel, of Prime Ministership fame in the mid-nineteenth century for his introduction of "Bobbies" or "Peelers", the model for Police Forces later to be introduced throughout the Western World).
Giving me the opportunity to add that on this year's Spring Open Day I was surprised to hear that Visko's production had increased from the 50 Million metres pa when I first visited to 250 Mm pa today. Moreover all Visko's most wotrthwhile patents were my patents carrying my name! And how I could feel proud to be a part of this success (without adding that I had come here with a four year contract as Joint Research and Development Director) but noting how the town of Bury, once had 25 Paper Mills, the town shield, which was also my Technical School cap-badge boasting 4 industries: 3 Papyrus plants denoting Paper Making, crossed flying shuttles for Cotton Processing (Weaving) Industries, an anvil depicting Heavy Engineering Industry and a sheep for its connection to the Woolen Industry, and how I had worked in three of these industries. (On another occasion I could add that the town of Bury was also the only British town which made Paper Machinery, and how my first employer in Finland had a paper machine made in my home town, and how a neighbour across our street, a Mr Sedgewick, had come to Finland to commission it in 1936, so he once told me...
Memories Memories Memories and past successes!?!?
Footnote following my younger son's visit to the Museum in the week of his visit ending 25 12 12: Amongst other details that the Company of the Town's Cellosic Casings industry was founded in the town in 1952 but subsequently was relocated to Krogars, out of town (no doubt because of the early problems eliminating the malodourous sulphur compounds to do with the regeneration of sodium cellulose xanthate, also known as Viscose!
Meaning that I had to make a second visit after failing to gain access on my first visit earlier in the year just ending. Using my current Museum card I received a year ago on the occasion of my 85th b-d. But today to my surprise I found it open, and futher that it is so much bigger than the old Hanko Museum it now replaces: in a corner of the Manner Kone Paija, an otherwise derilict building of this once much bigger concern.
Also to my surprise was the Museum Curator, a guy called Benjamin whom I had met before a long time ago I couldn't be absolutely sure it was the same "Ben", he corrected my quiry of his Christian name. When I engaged in conversation first: explaining the difficulties I had experienced trying to renew my Museum Card for its second year, because the on-line Museum App was so difficult to use.
So later after making a brief tour of the exhibits, which featured artefacts to do with Hanko's rich history, I felt encouraged to add more to his knowledge of me: my entre that I hadn't seen anything to do with the Hanko Company which was the reason I came here.
I told him how I came here first in 1978, not because I was a Sales person but because a colleague who was, had said to his Sales and Marketing Director "Why don't you take ****** with you on your next visit to the town because he used to live in Finland, speaks Finnish and has a Finnish wife." Which is what came to pass, explaining that our Sales and Marketing Director was the youngest Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy in WW II, later adding how his brother-in-law, our Chairman was a wartime Wing Commander (but failing to add who had made 50 bombing missions over Germany in WW II). But that we visited from the Stats Hotel in Tammisaari, where for the first time our company entertained the directors of Visko, with me the Master of Ceremonies. And how because i I believed it to be a one-off occasion I decided to stay a week with two days business for the Company, here and in Helsinki, where Gustav Paulig, was also a customer buying teabag paper from us. But then every 6 months for 6 1/2 years I got to repeat these week long visits, during which our market share grew from a 1/3rd to 100%.
Explaining how in the spring of this year I had occasion to attend an Open Day when I had it my mind that maybe one of my two student grandsons may have been eligible to get summer jobs with my previous employers: how when I rang up how the guy at the other end of the line failed to recognise my voice until I reintroduced myself when he exclaimed: "The legendary ****** ****!"
I perhaps at this point explained how I had visited the company with Philip, our CEO and MD, to experience one of the toughest alcoholic parties, it had ever been my good or bad fortune to experience. Quickly adding it wasn't actually so funny, because our Chairman died in the same week upon returning to England when as a life-long Polo Player, aged 62, he was thrown from his skittish horse dying without recovering consciousness in the process.
Earlier in the discussion I had acquainted him of the fact that as boy I had visited the museum in the town in which I grew up, which was full of John Kay's "Flying Shuttles". How my family had moved the 12 miles north to the town of Bury, from the city of Manchester where I was born, when my father joined the army in WW II. But how I visited the Swimming baths with my (maternal) Grandfather whose name was Kay, and the tram in the 1940's stopped outside Kay Gardens. How my Grandad had one day told me how I should be very proud of being connected to John Kay of Bury, one of its two most famous sons. (How the other famous son was Robert Peel, of Prime Ministership fame in the mid-nineteenth century for his introduction of "Bobbies" or "Peelers", the model for Police Forces later to be introduced throughout the Western World).
Giving me the opportunity to add that on this year's Spring Open Day I was surprised to hear that Visko's production had increased from the 50 Million metres pa when I first visited to 250 Mm pa today. Moreover all Visko's most wotrthwhile patents were my patents carrying my name! And how I could feel proud to be a part of this success (without adding that I had come here with a four year contract as Joint Research and Development Director) but noting how the town of Bury, once had 25 Paper Mills, the town shield, which was also my Technical School cap-badge boasting 4 industries: 3 Papyrus plants denoting Paper Making, crossed flying shuttles for Cotton Processing (Weaving) Industries, an anvil depicting Heavy Engineering Industry and a sheep for its connection to the Woolen Industry, and how I had worked in three of these industries. (On another occasion I could add that the town of Bury was also the only British town which made Paper Machinery, and how my first employer in Finland had a paper machine made in my home town, and how a neighbour across our street, a Mr Sedgewick, had come to Finland to commission it in 1936, so he once told me...
Memories Memories Memories and past successes!?!?
Footnote following my younger son's visit to the Museum in the week of his visit ending 25 12 12: Amongst other details that the Company of the Town's Cellosic Casings industry was founded in the town in 1952 but subsequently was relocated to Krogars, out of town (no doubt because of the early problems eliminating the malodourous sulphur compounds to do with the regeneration of sodium cellulose xanthate, also known as Viscose!
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