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should feed into the computer all the information relative to task sequences and durations, specifications and quantities of material and labour required, estimated idle time, possibility or otherwise of simultaneous operation, etc. etc. and InterAct’s custom-written network program would then schedule all their work for them, time their orders, give advance warning of when they would need to draw on specialised labour, programme their payments, spot liquidity problems way ahead, and so on. Any unforeseen hitch or delay (flash welders not available for three days, interest rates up half a per cent) and the project manager need only tap in the detailson a portable keyboard to have complete rescheduling and costing of absolutely everything.
    It caught my imagination, I suppose because of the wonderful vision of life it implied (I still love network planning). All the complexities of people working together, people with different skills and temperaments, from different races and social classes, all the complications of fashioning and fitting together a vast range of heterogeneous and often obstinate materials, the hazards of shifting massive structures tens of miles across lashing seas and anchoring them to the sludge or rock of the sea bed – all this was to be controlled by one man tapping rapidly on a portable keyboard. And any snag, obstacle, inconvenience, rather than being allowed to send the whole house of cards tumbling to the ground, would simply be absorbed, analysed, and then the entire structure very finely altered, re-tuned, counterbalanced, and set on its way again, all embarrassments and dilemmas foreseen and neutralised, all interpersonal relations and moral issues rendered superfluous, nothing left to chance. It seemed a worthy cause to me and obviously profitable.
    I told them I was their man. I really was. I’d study night and day to get into it. I’d be an expert on network planning before the year was out (and it was already September). They could pay me the absolute minimum salary for the first six months and then we could negotiate something reasonable on the basis of my performance, but I really wanted this job. I gave full reign to my enthusiasm, and you’ve got to remember these were still the bad old days pre-Thatcher when enthusiasm, at least for work, was taboo. But instinctively, and the feeling was overwhelming, I knew I was doing the right thing. It’s something I’ve noticed so often since then, that when I’m outside the exhausting claustrophobia of family and intimate relationships, my personality flowers, I get so damn confident. I knew I didn’t have quite the qualifications they wanted, I knew less than zero about network planning, so rather than bluffing it I simply offered to come in at a low price and work my bum off. I was dealing with a couple of canny older guys who needed a bargain and, as I suspected,would know one when they saw it. ‘Look, don’t even bother interviewing anybody else,’ I said with a sniff of humour so as not to sound unpleasant. ‘Take me. Please. I can guarantee it won’t be a mistake.’
    In the end they picked up my soul for just £3500 a year. But I was sure I was the winner.

Perfectly Normal Behaviour
    In those days InterAct had its offices on the North Circ, just past the Pantiles Pub, on the right heading south. So coming out of the interview victorious and immensely pleased with myself, I took a bus down to Park Royal to tell Mum. She was praying with a young girl who had leukaemia. I got this info from Mavis who was watching the kind of television they will put on in the no-man’s-land between breakfast and lunch. A diagram was showing how nuclear waste is sealed in canisters, a matter of burning concern for Mavis, who, one felt, could only have improved with a little radiation.
    I waited for Mum, mooching about the poky old sitting room, savouring a feeling of detachment and maturity, examining here and there the pathetic objects that had