When Graham Met Marie

You will see from my work section that around 1987/88 I changed my role within ICL from delivering training courses as a lecturer, to selling training courses.  I was still based and living in Manchester, but regularly travelled to the  headquarters, a country estate called Beaumont, which was 200 miles south in Old Windsor.

Travelling to Beaumont wasn't unusual as I often spent weeks at a time there when I was delivering courses as a lecturer.  But as a lecturer I didn't come into contact with many people whose jobs were more closely associated with the sales process.

Marie worked in the Marketing area and I first came across her on my first few weeks as a sales consultant.  As part of my induction, I met with the whole team of people who I would be working with as part of my new role and Marie was one of them.

She struck me immediately as a very beautiful girl, she was about 23 at the time, and although I don't remember exactly what she was wearing, or much about that first meeting, I do remember being exited and comfortable with her.  In fact it didn't take too long before a little telephone flirting started and we would regularly talk at length on the phone, Marie in Beaumont and me in Manchester.

I probably spent too much time talking on the phone to her, as my sales performance wasn't brilliant, but adequate to keep me in the job.  I do remember a few two and three hour calls which seemed to pass in no time at all.  We would talk about everything and anything from serious relationship issues to trivial nonsense.

I would find any excuse to be in Beaumont in order to see Marie.  My manager at the time was reasonably flexible and knew that we were close and I remember a couple of occasions when he questioned my need to travel the 3 hours plus to get to Beaumont, but it really didn't matter to me.

Marie worked in a small building on the estate known as Dairy Cottage which was a rather quaint hexagonal shape with a conical slate roof and windows most of the way around.  I would walk by Dairy Cottage as often as I could and make detours in order to see if she was in the office.  It was on one of those detours walking past Dairy Cottage that I spotted her walking away from me towards the main building.  She was wearing a pair of blue Bermuda shorts and she fit them very well indeed.  The fact that I still remember them is testimony to the impact that they had, but I would also tease her about them for some time afterwards and they became a kind of talking point in our numerous flirtatious conversations over following weeks.

If I was in Beaumont and not directly involved in work,  I would be wondering what she was doing and wondering how I might spend some time with her.  Occasionally  little things would happen which I would read rather more than coincidence into.  One such occasion was when I was about to enter the post room.  The door into the post room was solid, therefore one couldn't see through to the other side.  As I opened the door to stride in who should be about to open it from the other side to come out but Marie.  Well if that wasn't fate giving me a sign that I was destined to be with this woman I don't know what was.  Coincidence ? Couldn't possibly be !!

Needless to say that over the weeks and months ahead the relationship developed, albeit at a distance, and we continued to become close.  There were the occasional times when we met up and one notable occasion when we both managed to go on a residential training course together for three days (I seem to remember that it was Effective Time Management - it would turn out to be very appropriate and come in quite useful in the years ahead !).  I remember especially the first morning of the course as I was anticipating spending some time with Marie, and quite exited at the prospect.  However by the time the course was due to start she still hadn't arrived.  Eventually and to my delight she did turn up and I was quite taken aback by her reaction when she saw me, which was to throw her arms around me and cry.  I was completely phased by this show of emotion.  Was she glad to see me, had she got some bad news for me, had something terrible happened ?  Well, a bit of everything really.  She had been speeding to the course in her lovely little yellow mini estate and gone through the traffic lights on red (she claims not of course) but a policeman had stopped her and given her a caution which obviously had a traumatic effect on her. When I learned of this I was at the same time both relieved that it wasn't anything more serious and happy to be the one to bring comfort to her troubled mind at that point.

However there were always complications, usually self inflicted, which added other dimensions to the course of events.