Opportunities Reunited
Tracy Franklin (nee Radley) has got in touch and has had a good old trip down memory lane… I wonder who else remembers Tracy?
How lovely it is to see that ‘Opportunities’ is still very much alive and looking better than ever!
I left college in 1983 and went to work at Opportunities when it was owned by Link House. It was a lovely first job and I (under the expert guidance of Dennis Dalton) progressed from Admin Assistant to Asst Administration Manager during my five years of working there. I remember those years very fondly as we were a small team working in a cramped office opposite ‘The Sun’ in Bouverie Street. These were turbulent times in the publishing world, as all around us newspaper offices were closing down and moving out to the newly developed docklands. Fleet Street would never be the same again as coachloads of victimised workers went past with grids on the windows. We became virtually an island in the middle of the desolation and noticed during our Friday lunchtime trips down to our local ‘The Witness Box’ that numbers had definitely dwindled. We moved to offices just around the corner in Tudor Street and in typical eighties fashion managed to carry anything that wouldn’t fit into Admin Manager’s Diarmuid Collacott’s brand new ‘jelly mould’ Ford Escort. (The Link House managers’ at the time were entitled to the latest in design the Ford Sierra - a true executives car!) It just wouldn’t have occured to anybody to hire a removal company, and so desks and filing cabinets were loaded or carried to our new home. We settled into our new more spacious surroundings and shared the ground floor with ‘The Countryman’ magazine; the publication ‘Punch’ was also housed in our block. We also got a Compaq computer to replace the typewriter, enabling us to sever our umbilical link to Head Office in Poole.
We were never as glamorous or sophisticated as our sister publication Exchange and Mart, we were like the country cousins. Dennis would not have had it any other way. There were four of us back then, but by the time I left to go to Cornwall in 1988 we had expanded to five. I was eventually replaced by two people. By then I had full responsibility for the distrubution list and being the only girl in the office it fell upon me to do all the secretarial work as well. When you consider the limitations of technology even as recently as the eighties it makes the mind boggle. In fact I had to finish my work an hour and a half early every evening just to back up our brand new computer system with a tape streamer which I had to feed with about 22 tapes, before running to get the train home. It seems as incredible to us now, as it would have been to us then to realise that in not too many years time the digital age would be upon us.
The publication in those days was very utilitarian and we very rarely ran colour ads. When we did it was a big occasion (well we were easily pleased back then!). It was purely made up from ads, no editorial. The setting was done down the road in Temple Avenue by a lady called Jeanette who ran a company called ’Inline’. There was always a mad scramble to get the copy to her in time. It really does seem an archaic way of doing things now but at the time I suppose it was the norm. Our office housed a massive orange machine – a very important cog in the machine which chugged along with bits of paper fed into it but I can’t remember what it was called!
We had a great relationship with the ad agencies who used to entertain us at Christmas with great parties full of media types (which we never considered ourselves to be). Also the local councils who used to contact us direct. I have no doubt that in the last twenty years the wording of ads has changed dramatically, we hadn’t heard of PC back in those days but we were just becoming aware of it particularly through some of the London Boroughs. Of course the internet hadn’t reached us by then so we used to get lots of post and the occasional teleprinter message in addition to lots of phone calls.
As well as working with Dennis and Diarmuid (the two ‘grown-ups’) I also worked with the two boys; Mark Kitchen and David Norton. We were all in our late teens and the atmosphere at times could be a bit like a classroom as we were so busy there was little time for chat, which was definitely discouraged. There was certainly none of the banter and informality I have since witnessed in other offices I have subsequently worked in. However, we made the most of it and managed to have a laugh and get down to the pub as often as we could at lunchtimes – not easy when you’re being paid £3,500 per year!
I still have very fond memories of my first job and of course will not forget the happy years I spent there. I have my commemorative mug and pen to this day and when my Mum sees it she always chants ‘Good Morning Opportunities’. I can’t tell you how many times we must have said that!
Long may ‘Opportunities’ continue to flourish.
