United Kingdom 1977 to 1980

I was discharged from the Danish army end of September 1977, I turned 25 that month. Before my next birthday came along, I would live in Aberdeen, Scotland, work in the offshore oil service industry again and be married as well, but of course I didn’t know all that at the time. 

As I was dismissed from the artillery regiment, where I served as a sergeant in change of our land surveying unit, the captain in charge of personnel called me in for an interview; all the conscripts were called in this way one by one. The friendly old career officer asked me if I had a job to go back to in civilian life, and of course I didn’t. He then told me to sign some papers that would allow me to qualify for a temporary wage subsidy package; this should tie me over till I found a job. But I politely declined. I have never taken welfare in my life and I wasn’t going to start now. Welfare is a trap; it is unfair to the ones who have to pay, and worse still: For the recipients it is addictive and crippling. I told the officer that I intended to live off my savings until I found something useful to do. 

I did consider driving down to Esbjerg on the Danish west coast of southern Jutland and look for work; it is only some 165 km from Aarhus where I lived. Esbjerg is the oil capital of Denmark, where the offshore service companies are based. However, there was not much going on in the Danish sector at the time. I had already ‘done’ the Norwegian sector (See ‘Norway 1974-76’ tab), it was time to move up a notch and try my luck in United Kingdom. The UK slice of the North Sea was vast and there was lots of exploration as well as some production work going on, the oil and gas sector was rapidly expanding in those years. 

The place to be was Aberdeen, Scotland, so that is where I went. I drove my car across on the ferry Esbjerg-Newcastle; from Newcastle, England it was another 400 km or so north to Aberdeen, but I loved driving at the time so that was no problem for me. To save money I would pull over somewhere nice for the night, sleep in my car and clean up the next day at a gas station. 

In Aberdeen I found a cheap B&B to stay, I lived mainly off the famous Scottish fish and chips. I found a local telephone book and did my homework … do you remember those, the telephone books? In the Yellow Pages section there was a list of oil companies and oil service companies; so from there I simply went around literally knocking on doors. With my sterling recommendation letter from Schlumberger it was just a matter of finding the right fit. I considered training for a mud engineer, and I was also offered a job for a local wireline company, but that outfit was British owned and I preferred to work with Americans. To tie myself over, till I found the right well service job, I considered working on the drilling crew, starting out as roustabout. Roustabouts are the entry level position on the rigs, from there you move on up to roughneck, assistant driller, driller etc. 

I recall visiting the offices of Bawden Drilling in downtown Aberdeen; they had lots of contracts in the North Sea at the time. I walked into the reception office and the young pretty secretary looked at my papers for a moment, then she went into another room and came back. “You can start next week”, she said, “we have crew-change every other Monday, two weeks on – two weeks off”. I was just standing there in front of her big wooden desk and said somewhat sheepishly: “Don’t I have to speak to someone, a personnel manager or something?” “No”, she said, “just be right here at 8 am, bring some spare clothes and a toothbrush, we will fix you up with work gear and take you to the helipad.” It was that simple, what a confidence boost this was for a young man. 

But I never became a roughneck. Later that week I drove out to the offices of PetroData, and I right away realized that this was the job for me. I saw the manager there, Eddie Rankin, and I liked him immediately: An honest, straight-forward Texan with lots of ideas about how to improve the field services industry with new technology, onsite computers and innovative downhole wireline tools and procedures. I had to call up the pleasant lady at Bawden Drilling and tell her I would not be coming out that Monday after all. I always felt bad about turning down those offers I got from nice people who wanted to help me. 

Eddie needed a wireline operator and trainee engineer to help him run the routine services that PetroData provided, but especially after a new service could be approved which would revolutionise DST (Drill Stem Testing) work by remotely shutting down the well with a downhole valve system installed right above the perforated zone. See ‘Norway 1974-76’ to understand what this means. Shutting down the well right above the oil-bearing zone, instead of at the surface, would allow formation pressure to build up, stabilize and be measured a lot faster, this way shorting the test duration significantly and thus saving the operator, our client, a boat-load of money. Since this service was still in the development phase, Eddie only needed me to start next year, in 1978. 

But I was ready to wait; this was exactly what I wanted to do. I went back to Aarhus, sorted out my affairs and found someone who could rent my apartment in town while I moved to Aberdeen. I spent Christmas 1977 with my family in Aarhus, then I sold off my car, and Saturday 21 January 1978 I spent my last evening at my small flat. I played my Tammy Wynette records so loud that by 2 am in the morning, the girl who lived under me tapped on her ceiling to make me stop. The next morning I emigrated, I caught the 09:15 train to Esbjerg and transferred to Aberdeen, Scotland. 

The next month I started for PetroData and never regretted my choice of work one minute; this job was everything I dreamed of. Initially I lived in a rented room south of town, the first week or two I had to share a tiny room with two other working guys, I slept on a fold-out deck chair in the middle of the room. I mention this in Be Financially Free (Marshall Cavendish, 2016), where I also add that this sort of experience instilled in me a permanent respect for the transient workers who put up with this quality of life to improve their lot. I moved to my own room later, and once I started working and had a regular income I qualified for a mortgage and bought a small apartment in Jamaica Street in the northern part of town closer to the PetroData base. I bought a 10-speed bicycle and commuted to work on that when I wasn’t offshore. I got the property purchase finalized and moved into my own place 11 April 1978.  

I started out making £85 per week, around £65 after taxes. The money made no difference to me, I would have done the work for free; I just needed a bit to survive on. My income from photographs and articles I sold at the time helped a lot, as did the annual royalties and Public Lending Right fees I got for the bird books I had written previously. One Friday our accountant at the office had gone home early and Eddie asked me if I had been paid. I hadn’t, I said it didn’t matter, but he reached into his pocket and peeled off £65 from a bundle of cash he was carrying, I doubt if that was ever recorded anywhere; I was literally just making pocket-money! That changed somewhat later in the year, I moved to a monthly salary, the offshore bonuses started adding up and I got an expense account. Gradually I did alright. 

Once I got my place painted (which I did myself of course, as well as the wiring and plumbing with tools I borrowed from our shop), visitors started arriving. My Mum dropped by for a brief visit; she always did when I had a new home: She went to the shop and met Eddie, two people I admired in one room, very different, but both great in their own right. “Oh, you are a politician; we could do with some better ones of those around here”, Eddie remarked to my mother. The UK was in political turmoil then, under the labour government, with endless strikes and squabbles; Margaret Thatcher only became prime minister a year later in May 1979 and sorted out the place a bit. Even though my mother probably wouldn’t have approved of Eddie’s free market libertarian views, she kept a straight face; she was a very tolerant and loving person who respected all peoples and their backgrounds and opinions.  

In May, my on/off girlfriend from Germany, Doris, came and stayed for two weeks, 29 April to 12 May. I took her out to see my colleagues at the office; 10 May we saw Charlie Pride in concert with some of my friends from work; Charlie Pride died recently, in December 2020. I should have stuck with Doris, she was a beautiful person and I treated her like a jerk. Well, hindsight is 20-20, as they say. 

Instead I made a fateful decision to get married to a Danish girl I got to know later that year. I had to go back to Denmark to pick up some of my furniture and stuff from my apartment in Aarhus; the apartment was rented out to a friend of my sister’s. In June I rented a 3.5 tonne Ford Luton van and drove it across via Newcastle and Esbjerg to Aarhus and collected my personal stuff, I left a bit of furniture in the place and continued renting it out for a while. It was hard to manage from abroad though and I sold off the apartment towards the end of 1980, when I moved to Singapore. I bought it for DKK100,000 and sold it four years later for DKK280,000, a pretty good investment. 

Anyway, back in June 1978, the girl who stayed in my place at the time ended up going with me back on the ferry to Aberdeen. She helped me hang curtains in the new place and we became an item. Two things of monumental significance happened in September that year: I got married, and shortly afterward, on 16th that month, I saw Tammy Wynette perform live in concert. I had bought two tickets for that concert as soon as it was announced in March 1978, front row in the middle. At the time I didn’t quite know who I would invite to go with me, but I ended up going with my wife. Seeing Tammy Wynette so close up in person live was one of the highlights of my life, and it always will be. 

I am sorry to say that I was never much of a ladies’ man. Of course ‘us kids’ fooled around in high school and when bar-hopping during my Army days and such, but I didn’t find the right one. I was too reserved and didn’t know how to connect up with the glamorous ‘good girls’ out there. The bad girls, who came on to me, I didn’t really care for all that much. Maybe I was also not quite comfortable with committing and living together with anyone; I liked my own company fine and I didn’t want to settle down. When I found that job and apartment and life in Aberdeen, I was ready for marriage. 

The next year, in March 1979, my company, PetroData, based in Fort Worth, Texas, decided to consolidate most of their North Sea operations at their base in Great Yarmouth, England. It was not a big company, but three of us and our families made the move down south: Richard Wise, Robert Smallwood and me. I forget how many times I drove up and down from Aberdeen to Great Yarmouth; we rarely flew because we were always carrying loads of equipment and stuff; it is 860 km according to Google maps, and the trip took a whole day, luckily I loved driving back then. Also in 1979, PetroData got bought out by the much bigger wireline service company, Gearhart-Owen Industries, which was growing rapidly at the time. Gearhart-Own themselves got bought over by Halliburton, but that was much later, after I left the industry. 

I rented a house in Gorleston-on-Sea, near the beach just south of Great Yarmouth and sold off my Aberdeen apartment soon after, making a tidy profit on the sale. Although I had a car by then, I would still bicycle to work every morning when I was not working offshore. I met Susan there, she was the most gorgeous woman I have ever known; pretty is an understatement, charming and sweet as well – the whole package; I should have stuck with her, but I treated her like a jerk as well and stayed with my wife; I should have known by then that it wouldn’t last. 

By September 1980 I had everything a young man could hope for: A nice house, I rented it but it was up for sale and well within my budget. A great job with lots of advancement opportunities, in an exciting and booming business. I didn’t always see eye-to-eye with my wife, but she was active, fun, social and adventurous and certainly not boring. I had a yellow Ford Mustang V8 in the driveway. No one asked me to leave. But I thought to myself: There has to be more to life than this! So I quit my job! What sane person would do something like that? Well, me for one! 

I packed up the Great Yarmouth house; I was working offshore the day we had announced a garage sale, but my wife was there to help. Everything was for sale: My considerable book collection went for £1 per book! A nature book collector came by and said he felt so embarrassed to buy my beautiful bird book collection at that price. I didn’t care; I just wanted to be rid of all this stuff. At that time, Eddie had gone back to Fort Worth; my new boss Joe McKinney from Midland, Texas bought my Mustang for his wife – appropriate since it had originally belonged to Eddie’s - my former boss’ - wife! 

In September 1980 I took some time off between jobs and went to Barcelona and Ibiza, Spain for a week’s holiday, then via Valencia up to Stavanger, Norway to see my Dad. All the while I was looking for another job, another challenge; I bought books on reservoir engineering and studied in my spare time. The oil price had recently tripled to US$36 and the industry I loved was booming. I was homeless however and just stayed with family and friends during this period, living out of a suitcase like I have done so many times before and since. 

I found that next adventure I was looking for when I met Warren Farley with Core Laboratories; in fact, I went down to see him 2 August in London while I still lived in Great Yarmouth. CoreLab was originally mainly a core analysis company, i.e. they tested and reported on the rock samples collected during the drilling process. But they were aggressively expanding their services into wireline surveys and well testing, and they were looking for people with exactly my skillset. I liked Warren right away, an Australian geologist who worked as a kind of personnel manager/headhunter for CoreLab at the time. He had work for me immediately in Egypt; Algeria also came up, commuting out of the UK. But my wife at the time had heard that Singapore was nice and urged me to find an assignment there. 

So I stayed in touch with Farley on the phone now and then, and in October an opening for me in Singapore emerged. I was up in Norway at the time completing an oil well drilling and completion course for roughnecks, so 11 October my wife and I traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to sort out our affairs and say goodbye to family. My mother was a Member of Parliament and kept an apartment in the city where we could stay. 23 October I traveled to Aberdeen where Farley was at the time and we sorted out the details and signed an employment contract. I rented a car and drove down to Great Yarmouth one last time to see my former colleagues; I stayed with Richard Wise and his family. 30 October I drove down to London, picked up the air tickets at the CoreLab office and handed in the car at Heathrow Airport. 31 October 1980 my wife and I arrived at Singapore Paya Lebar Airport. A new chapter in my life had begun.  

I grew up with classical music, jazz and later the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. I still like all that stuff. But inspired by my oil-field buddies, my brief honky-tonk lifestyle and my life experiences, I took a liking to 'okie music' as my Alaskan friend Bill called it. 

In 2013, a son of mine asked me why I listen to country music. 

It is hard to explain your preferences, but I will try with this rhyme: 

If you haven’t seen Merle Haggard play his sad songs in Dallas

Or heard ‘She ran off with a Nigger’ at the Crystal Palace

If you haven’t sat in the middle, on a front row seat

While Tammy Wynette sang her songs ever so sweet 

If you haven’t seen an oil platform go up in flames

Or played some of life’s other dangerous games

If you haven’t shot a 7.62 at 600 meters

Or been stupid enough to drink by the liters

If you haven’t been arrested on the road, by some old fart

Who pointed a 9 mm right at your heart 

If you haven’t been filled with anger and doubt

Then you won’t know what this poem is all about

If you haven’t had a sports car with chrome and with glitz

Or made love to a dumb-blonde with beautiful … bits

If you haven’t worn a suit to a fancy convention

Or shoveled pig-shit on a farm in another dimension

If you haven’t seen your name on the cover of a book

Or found a nugget of gold in a remote mountain brook

If you haven’t seen the peaks of the Andes or the lows of Death Valley

Or completed a grueling marathon rally

If you haven’t crossed Iceland on foot, north to south

Or flown in a glider over a New Zealand river mouth

If you haven’t seen the rainforests, the mangroves, the coral reefs

The penguins, and elephants feeding on leaves 

If you haven’t been decorated, put down and dumped 

Or impressed and mystified, amazed and stumped 

If you haven’t lost all of your cash in a brainless investment 

Or tripled your money in a lucky assessment 

If you haven’t buried your mother on a cold December day 

Or seen a bright-eyed son of yours play

If you haven’t been cheated on, lied to and beaten up by life’s strife 

And if you haven’t lived long enough to find the love of your life

If you haven’t done all this thru flood and thru drought 

Then you won’t know what country music is about

I added this verse later that year, after passing my finance tests and sent it to Daniel, who had just completed his Masters. I wrote it partly to give some credit to him, getting formal qualifications is also a character-building accomplishment: 

If you haven’t sat for a vital exam

And survived, squeezed thru, moved on

Then you won’t know the delight of getting out of a jam

And you might as well not have been born