The first thing to say about being back in England was the excitement of it all. Here I was in April with the daffodils all out, and  a bright cold wind blowing from the north. We both returned overjoyed at being together again, and we went from Tilbury through London to see Mother briefly, driving  our grey MG Magnette car with bright  red seats back to Oakley  near Basingstoke and meeting up with the children, who had stayed with Ma nearby. All the heavy packing cases were put into store until such time as we could have a new home. Everything was in in a state of flux. First we were without a living in a strange country which although I had been  educated here, was now foreign in the sense that I had no connections and knew hardly a soul. In Ceylon I was known by everyone and could walk into any good bar or jungle resthouse and there was always someone somewhere who knew me, and my family. Here there was virtually no one. But then that was the challenge and we had set our mind on going farming, and we were determined to do it. My first point of call was at  the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation whch was a long term institution set up by the major banks for Farming Finance. I made an appointment and two days later was interviewed in the City and £40,000 was made available on the strength of my degree in Agriculture  and letters from George Steuart in Ceylon. Great apologies were made though, that I was six months too late to get a good rate of a fixed loan at 4 1/2 %. now regretably the rate would be 6 1/4%, but anyway I agreed. I next went back to Reading University to see my Agricultural Economics tutor to ascertain the likely profitability of various aspects of farming particularly dairy cows. This refresher discussion was most valuable as it gave me  the  likely business parameters to work within. And finally the next step was to buy a farm of at least  150 acres and preferably a bit  larger.  Each week I would buy the Farmers Weekly and other farming magazines and scour the pages for likely farms on good land. Endless journeys were made viewing various places, and I was helped also by my good friend from Reading, Antony Parkin, who  had just tragically lost his young wife almost a year before from a stroke. With his help I eventually  found a nice farm in Herefordshire, a bit on the high side at 600 ft but with beautiful rich red  soil. I had made up my mind that the limit that I could go to at the auction was £30,000 which was reckoned to be on the high side, and in the event I actually went up to £33,000 and fell out with the property going for a £1,000 more. I often wonder what my life would have been had I got it, but it was not to be. Later that summer I was offerred the tenancy of a large farm that was being bought as an investment in Sussex, by a solicitor, but at the last minute he was gazzumped and that fell through and after wasting six months and moving to different rented accomodation, I eventually decided to apply for a job.
The trauma of change from the certainties of Ceylon were aggravated by the sudden and sweeping changes that were taking place in the country. The old hierarchical system and orderliness was being swept away by a new brash irreverent youth culture. New music, new attitudes, long hair styles were all around. The old time quickstep and waltz was being replaced by the Twist,  and the steady timed beat of music was replaced by a looser interpretation which yielded to start with the most delightfully catchy tunes. Performers such as Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, The Beatles and the irrepressable Millie with her song ‘My boy Lollipop’ were all the rage and gave a wonderful lilt to the air. Women found that coat and skirts and full dresses were out of fashion, to be replaced by mini-skirts and a fashion centred on Carnaby Street. In government Harold Wilson had become Prime Minister to establish firmly “the white heat of technology” in the running of the country. Scandals such as the Profumo affair and Christine Keeler had finally done for the Macmillan Government and later Sir Alec Douglas Home, and all now expected great things to happen from the new Labour Cabinet. Meanwhile the rebuilding that had slowly commenced after the war was now gathering pace with new Lego Style office blocks sprouting up everywhere. It was an  exciting time to be in England, young vigorous and full of energy  as there was a sense of optimism everywhere,  and I  felt eager   to participate in all this action and to become a part of the economic life of the nation, providing one could find the right niche.
Each week I scoured the Daily Telegraph Appointments page and eventually got interviews and job offers from two companies Esso, and Associated Fisheries. It was a hard choice to make and I finally settled on AF as it meant working with a small unit at their Head Office at Queen Annes Gate overlooking St James Park, quite one of the nicest offices in London. I joined in November 1964 working for a small unit of about half a dozen under the academic eye of our mentor Jack Griffiths who was an ex- Nigerian civil servant  from Cambridge. He in turn reported to our new Chief Executive Mr  Wormald  who had been recruited from Fisons and who was determined to make AF into a major company. Wormald was an abrupt man, a keen gardener and he had a vision and an intellect that one could either call brilliant or on another day crazy. He had set up the forward planning unit with Griffiths who had recruited half a dozen men, myself included, all with overseas experience and with an academic or technical qualification so that we could view problems with no preconceived ideas. Two had maritime experience, one a young ex-submariner, and another from the merchant navy, were put to work on problems associated with the trawling division. AF had the largest and most up to date deep water trawler fleet in Britain for fishing off Iceland, the Barents Sea, and the Grand Banks of Canada. The rest of us were put to work, on commercial activities in Britain. I had two close colleagues one from also a Cambridge MA and from Fisons in India, and the other an ex District Commissioner from Kenya both of similar age as myself. There were also two young crazy left wing economists to guide us and an accountant to help with financial matters. For the first  two months we were put onto an induction course travelling all over the country to meet the heads of all the various companies that were involved in everything from Trawling, fish merchanting, cold stores, specialist firms making smoked salmon and dealing in caviare etc. It was fascinating seeing from the inside how business worked and I recollected that at my interview when I was being taken on by Wormald he growled at me “ Well at least in this job you should learn  just what makes a company tick if nothing else!”
I was at AF for three years and quite honestly they were the most dispiriting days of my life. I found it very hard to adapt to the life of a commuter ,and to have to catch a train at a certain time to }be in the office on the exact point of 9 am,whereas in Ceylon my office was a hundred yards away at the bottom of the garden. Also I had to be well dressed in a suit instead of the freedom of just shorts and a shirt, and here I was worst of all just a small cog in a vast machine. Having said all that however, the three years that I spent  there  were exactly like returning to University. The whole aura and ambience of the job, was very intellectual, and new projects were examined strictly on their  intrinsic commercial merit and my colleagues were all pleasant. Whereas In Ceylon I was an expert in running an enterprise most efficiently, here instead I was learning how to utilise capital assests, and look at and assess a whole range of enterprises and  companies,  and the  personnel  needed in running them . Things like reading an balance sheet, return on capital employed, and discounted cash flows, as well as most important of all, assessing the true worth and the character of the various directors of companies that we were interested in purchasing.   All became a second nature and in future were to stand me in good stead.

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