Sliding doors

Many of us will have seen the film.  It’s about how chance events can have a profound impact on our lives.  For example, when I was seventeen I sailed a racing dinghy with a school friend every Sunday. One week he didn’t arrive in time for the morning race.  He’d got a puncture in his push bike tyre.  I had nothing to do for two hours, then I noticed a girl walking her dog in the dinghy park: we married three years later. If he hadn’t had a bicycle blow out … 

I can recall one or two similar, life-changing events as I look back.  One was in August 1974.  I was just married, broke, unemployed, the landlord was ringing daily and I was pretending to be out. I was desperate for work. I went for an interview for a job, for which I was not qualified, at a company I knew nothing about. I had just moved to the town and it was the only employer of any size. It was called Scotpac.  The manager was Glyn Thomas. It was my entry into the moving industry.  Glyn and I worked together after that for 20 years and remained friends ever since.  There were other applicants. He could have chosen anyone. But he didn’t.

Glyn died last week. He was 78. That chance meeting all those years ago changed my life forever. Not only did it give me a living for 50 years, and counting, it gave me a banquet of extraordinary experiences and wonderful memories. Through good times we laughed and played. When things went bad, he held me above the water, then I held him. There were times when either, or both of us, might have sunk beneath the waves, but we didn’t.

It's more than that even.  When I look back at that muggy August day, sitting in Glyn’s office sweltering in the suit I had been married in the week before, the only one I owned of course, with my shirt stuck to my back, I could not have known that today, 50 years later, almost everything I have, everything I have done and everything I am, was forged in that moment. What an extraordinary thing.

Few of you would remember Glyn Thomas now. He stepped away from the industry 20 years ago. But I do.  He gave me the opportunity to thrive.  Rest in peace my friend.