'A Grandfather's Tale: Memoirs being mainly concerned with service in the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service in India and the Persian Gulf from 1932-1947' [‎54v] (108/118)

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In January 1951, just after I had formally resigned from the Colonial
Service, I was to my surprise offered a job as a temporary Principal in e
Colonial Office, on their interviewing and recruiting side. This pa i.
appointment had been held by a retired officer of the Ceylon Civil Service
for twenty years, as a " temporary Principal", and he had gone home one Friday
night and simply not woken up the next morning. I was very pleased 1,0 accept
the job, rashly assuming that though "Temporary" it would go on indefinitely
as it had for my predecessor.
However, towards the end of 1951 there were econoay outs in the Staff
of the Colonial Office and my job was abolished, its duties being snared out
amongst half-a-dozen of the permanent officials. This was a sad blow, not only
because I had enjoyed the work and liked my companions but also because we had
iust bought a house in Warlinghara, Surrey, with the proceeds of my Indian
gratuity, and both children were settled at school, Christopher back at
Alleyn Court Preparatory School, Westcliff-on-Sea, this time as a boarder,
and Elizabeth at day school in Woldingham only two miles from where we lived.
Had we not bought the house just three months before I was declared redundant,
I would almost certainly have returned to Northern Rhodesia, where, despite
my resignation, the then Secretary for Native Affairs was still trying to
persuade me to go back. In the end Jane and I decided that having made our
decision to stay in England, mainly for the children's sake, we must stick to
it.
Eventually, after lying fallow for some time I went to work in the
City of London for a small Investment Company, which was engaged in trying
to place people such as myself, with a little capital and a lot of energy,
in small private companies which would welcome both. I had originally gone
to the Company as a client, but in my own case I had found that if the
financial side of the company suggested was sound, the directors were
uncongenial, or if the people were pleasant their finances were haywire. I
accordingly suggested to Mr. R. A. Hadrill, the founder Chairman of the London
Commercial Investment Company, that he should take me on his staff at a very
modest salary, and to this he agreed. In two years I graduated from Office-
boy to Company Secretary, but by then I had had enough of the City and
realized that just making money for the sake of making money was not enough,
and I had never, during that two years, succeeded in finding a job in any of
our client companies which attracted me.
It was now 195^- and by the autumn of that year I was appointed as the
Financial and Administrative Secretary of the Universities' Mission to
Central Africa, then responsible for looking after half a dozen dioceses in
Central Africa, including that of Northern Rhodesia. The fact that I was the
son of a parson, had been a District Commissioner in Northern Rhodesia, and
had also acquired recent financial experience in the City, all helped in my
appointment, and I had six very happy years in Great Peter Street and became
thoroughly acquainted with the mysteries of Church Finance and Administration.
By 1960 I felt that I had done all I could to put the U.M.C.A.
finances on a sound basis, and wanted to find a job which was less heavily
concerned with finance.