I'd been a freelance cartoonist for just over 30 years and had sort of passed my 'sell by' date. At the time I was 58 years old and my typical day was to get the kids in the car to drive them to school or meet a friend half way, and take his, or he'd take mine. A good arrangement. David was the sales director of Severnprint, a company who I had used to print various things for me and my clients over the years. The company was based in Gloucester and had a good well deserved reputation.
One morning on the changeover of small people he asked me if I knew anyone who might be interested in a job as a salesman ( the official title was customer service manager, but we all knew it meant salesman ) I said, only half joking, "Yes I do, me!". He looked at me and asked me if I was joking, and I said, "No, I think I could do that".
"You'll have to have an interview and wear a tie", he replied. I said I promised I would and said I was happy to be interviewed. The post involved running a brand they'd called 'Sprinters' which was intended to attract business from small businesses and to compete with Kall Kwik, a sort of instant print high street operation that was doing well. Severnprint was seen as a large print company uninterested in the smaller jobs, but it was interested in any job it could get, small or large.
I went home after delivering the kids, to my studio in the house, with its dwindling work load and to grappling with my new apple Mac computer, making very little money, and discussed the idea with my wife. 'Why not?' was her response.
I got the job, wore the tie, went to work at a 'proper job' for the first time with regular money every month and paid holidays. They gave me a desk and a computer and a bloke called George to work with, in an open plan office with other, much more experienced sales and production people around me. It took some time to get used to the idea that everyone around me could hear me when I was on the phone, trying to drum up trade.
In general I liked the work, and I really liked the people I worked with. The factory, a large rambling building on an industrial estate just on the edge of the city had the sales office on a floor over the big machine room, where these huge full colour printing machines churned out sheet after sheet of printed goods. They were capable of printing thousands of sheets an hour. I loved the sound of them, and the buzz of it. In the centre of the factory the design studio and pre print people spent their days in a windowless room looking at the work that was to be printed and checking it all to make sure it would. Platemaking and pre production people got another windowless room. The man on the guillotine spent his day cutting paper, the regular thud of the massive blade chopping through the finished print, one false move could have ruined it, but I know of no times when this happened. A large area next to that was staffed by the finishing department, where they creased folded packed and got the job ready for delivery.
They even had an office staffed by ladies in white gloves who knew all about hand folding paper and doing stuff that machines could not do.
Digital print was brought in and operators trained to use them, so that short run colour print became an option for small businesses as well as the large volume work done by the big litho machines.
The accounts department next to us in sales kept the place financially viable and chased the money, with the MD, in his little glass office next to them. The only person in the building with a room to himself. Best for him, best for us.
The production department who raised the orders and planned what could go on each machine and when had an office at the front of the building, with a wall covered in colour coded charts, each machine identified and dates and little pockets where a card would be placed to indicate what was going on. This massive chart had the benefit of being able to see at a glance everything that was happening in the business. We all liked to see it full.
The van drivers at the end of the chain, there were three of them when I joined, would take the finished products to wherever the client was, and that could be almost anywhere in the South West and beyond.
In my time at Severnprint I met many people, people new to print came to me and I generally got landed with any eccentrics, and there were one or two. Like the man who lived in an old cottage hospital who wanted a personal Christmas card to send to his friends, a tiny job, then commissioned a book from us costing almost ten grand. He was difficult to deal with at times and it was only a matter of time before he went elsewhere after we upset him by getting something ever so slightly wrong. I used to haunt the Farmer's Market in Gloucester every other Friday, Small customers who could not get away from me, it cost me a few quid in some fine quality food now and then, but generally they were pleased to see me. The Pakistani Chutney maker who never gave me a single job, but whose wife always gave me a free vegetable samosa. I asked him one day what he used to do before this and he said he was the educational advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan. We gave away little jars of his amazing garlic pickle as a Christmas gift from the company one year, and he still gave me no print work! People remembered that pickle, one tiny jar would last about a year. Gold dust. I still see occasionally the father of one of my clients who farmed free range chickens overlooking the Wye Valley, we ended up printing their labels and together with Katie in the design department of Severnprint we designed their label. They are still using it today and that has to be over ten years!
I generated work for local soap makers, transport companies ( lorry drivers tend to be the most equable of people ) alternative therapy clinics ( always tense, nervy women: sweeping generalisation ) teachers and head teachers ( a strange mix there! ) Timber Merchants ( the boss was into amateur dramatics and looked like a retired pop singer ) Kitchen equipment makers, Car repair and customisers ( The tallest man I ever met ) Metal works ( like walking back a century ) Restaurants, one which had a chef who had all the hallmarks of madness, Local authority people, and one of my favourite and biggest clients: Gloucester Cathedral ( an enlightened Dean and development officer who organised a couple of large sculpture exhibitions which did wonders for the City and brought thousands of people into the Cathedral.) We printed the catalogue and the guide.
Around me at the factory were numerous behind the scenes people who brought my customers print to life. Severnprint did work for national companies as well as local ones, it was not only well respected, it was environmentally aware too, well before other printers had 'got the message'.
I was very grateful for my job there, and in my time at the company observed many people's lives pass in front of me. It was at times like a soap opera with tensions, drama, breakdown, death, and a lot of humour.
I'm very sorry to see it disappear.
The two illustrations here are from Witty's Little Red Book, something we produced at Severnprint over a few years and sent out to our customers as part of our Christmas Celebrations. It was a record taken by Mike Witt, one of my colleagues in the office of overheard conversations in the factory through the previous year.
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