The fun started immediately when Malcolm went for his job interview. He was initially placed in the staff restroom and he started to notice that people were 'popping in and out' of the door just to take a look at him then passing the word round. One or two just said hello but most did not get past the door.

Installation of computers varied widely and some had funny stories attached to them. Sometimes it would be to do with the equipment that had been delivered or it could be the bahaviour of the staff in a particular office. Dealing with the unexpected also gave great satisfaction if done successfully.

At one location, one of the staff had been taking a particular interest during the time the computers were being set-up. He had been looking over Malcolm's shoulder when he was setting the password, and when it came to time for lunch, the man said that he would be able to have hacked into the computer by the time Malcolm came back. However, Malcolm had been aware of the situation and had subsequently changed the password so security was maintained and the man was humbled.

At a location in North Wales it was found that the supplier had sent Spanish language keyboards by mistake. Malcolm and his colleague continued with the installation but, in the mean time, ordered the correct keyboards to be delivered the next day. When it came time to let the staff try out their new machines, nothing was said about the wrong keyboards and when the perplexed staff mentioned that they could not understand the keyboards, Malcolm and his colleague expressed surprise. They made out that the keyboards were in Welsh but the staff said they could not speak the language despite Malcolm insisting that it should have been covered in their training course. The truth was soon revealed.

Malcolm and his colleague Sid had a job to install computers in one of the London offices during the spell between Christmas and New Year. It started to snow on the first day and by lunchtime, warnings were being put out about possible travel problems. Sid decided to go home early but Malcolm stayed on. By the time he got to Waterloo station, trains were only going as far as Basingstoke, a long way short of Southampton. Malcolm then had to find an hotel but, because many other people were also stuck, the hotels quickly filled up. He eventually he was lucky to find a cheap hotel in a backstreet in Earls Court. It was very tatty with a large gap down the side of the window which Malcolm stuffed with newspaper. The service was negligible and noises from adjacent rooms suggested they were rented by the hour.

At another London office, Malcolm had worked late in order to finish the job but when it came time to leave, he found the entrance doors locked and with no-one around to let him out. The building was somewhat of a warren so he returned to the place where he had been working then followed a route indicated by wear on the floor and found an exit several buildings away.

Malcolm and Sid had a job in Leicester. Sid had been there before and, whilst walking past a Greek restaurant in the snow, was hit by a snowball. The culprit apologised to Sid and invited him in for a free meal. Sid decided to take Malcolm there on this visit but found that the person he had met before was away that day. nonetheless, the two of them were invited in for Paella and Champage which has been laid on for Greek friends. It was grand and, because numbers were not as high as expected, there was plenty of Champagne and Sid and Malcolm were quite pickled when they returned to the hotel.

Malcolm was travelling up to do an installation in a London office when he realised that he did not have the essential password to access the system. He had done a similar installation the previous week so he decided to go to that office and find the information. However, he was not expected and did not have security access to the building. He went to the entrance door and, when a member of staff approached, he pretended to punch in the access code then said he kept getting it wrong. The other person did it for him and let him behind without question. He went to the computer and, as he had been seen there th eprevious week, no-one challenged him. He logged in and found the hidden password, logged out and left the office. Afterward, he wondered if he should advise the security department what he had been able to do but decided it might cause him some trouble.

Whilst working in an office in Carlisle one weekend, Malcolm and those he was working with returned on Sunday morning to find the building locked and no-one to let them in. After looking around, one of the group noticed that the key was still in a door at the back of the building. Being an electrician, he had a pair of long-nosed pliers and hes was able to get hold of the tip of the key and turn it thus opening the door.

Malcolm was working by himself in an office in Yorkshire one weekend having driven up from home. He was moving the computer from one building to another which meant re-establishing the network connection. Having completed his work, he had to ring a colleague in Sheffield who would enliven the network. When Malcolm rang, that person was not there as he had gone to a football match and there was no-one else who could do the work which would normally only take a minute or so. Malcolm had to decide whether to leave it until Monday and hope the person was available or put the computer back where it was so that it could be used for business as usual. He decided on the latter and had to return to do the job the following weekend.

Malcolm had to undertake a major upgrade on a computer in Sheffield head office office and had a technical colleague to do the clever stuff. It went well until late on Saturday evening when no-one else was in the building. Some of the data got corrupted so a backup needed to be loaded to replace it. The backup disks were locked away somewhere and Malcolm did not have access and he did not have a phone number for his local contact. His colleague started to panic but Malcolm started to think of a way round the problem. He searched the desk for a phone number for the contact but found nothing. However, he did find the number of someone he knew in the contact's phone book so he rang him. It worked and the contact was able to return to the office within an hour. They finished very late that night.

On another trip to Sheffield, Malcolm was given a lift to his hotel by a colleague. Malcolm thought he could remember the way to the hotel and attempted to give directions. That failed so he looked in a street map he had brought with him, however, it soon became apparent that it was very much out of date. When they finally got to the hotel, it was found that it was overbooked and they did not have a room for Malcolm. Luckily his colleague had waited and was able to take him to the alternative location.

Coming home from an installation in the north, Malcolm was being driven by a colleague who was not sure of the directions so Malcolm was telling him which junctions to take. The trouble was that the driver was slow to react and kept missing the turnings. They got onto the M40 when they should have been on the M5 so Malcolm guided him towards Oxford. However, he missed the first turning, then the second. Somewhere around Aylesbury he got off the motorway but ended up in the dervice area behind a shopping precinct. They were hours late getting back to Southampton.

On another journey home from Sheffield, Malcolm was being driven by a female colleague who became irritated by another female driver. She decided that she would not allow herself to be overtaken by the other driver so a race ensued all the way from Oxford to Winchester.

There was the embarrasing occasion when Malcolm went to the wrong Newport office in Wales, a mistake that many people have made before but still no excuse. It took him several hours to get to the correct town.

Wales was the location of other problems as well. Malcolm travelled by train to undertake some work in an office in Cardiff. His hotel was out of town so he took a bus, asking the driver to alert him to the correct stop. The driver totally ignored him and Malcolm found himself back at the railway station then thanked the driver politely as he got out of the bus. On reaching the office the next day, Malcolm arrived at the door and seeing the caretaker in the foyer, knocked on the door. He was totally ignored. Finally he rang the office and could see the caretaker take the call which meant he could no longer be ignored.

One weekend, Malcolm took his wife with him when undertaking a new installation in Harrow. They arrived only to find that the preparatory cabling work had not been done so they had a cup of coffee and a chat with the staff and came home again.

In 1993, one of Brenda's nieces was due to be married in Liverpool and it just so happened that Malcolm was due to conduct a computer transfer the same day. Brenda would like to have attended but unfortunately Malcolm was scheduled to do a another installation in Blackpool the previous day so would be staying up there. Anyhow Brenda would be working on Friday and would not be free. The job in Blackpool went so well that Malcolm was finished by lunchtime so he rang his wife and told her that he woud take her to the wedding. He drove all the way home then they both set off very early on Saturday and got to Liverpool in good time. They went to the office where the work was to take place but the alteration to the cabling was not going well and Malcolm could not do his work. He agreed to take Brenda to the wedding then return when required. He had with him one of the first mobile phones which was like a housebrick and it made a large bulge in his jacket pocket. Malcolm managed to remain at the wedding then the cabling was just getting ready when he set off back to the office. He completed the work then found his way back to the rteception where food and drink had been kept aside for him. They set off back home late that evening.

Malcolm had completed a long job in Liverpool and was coming home on the train on Friday evening. There was a major accident when the train ahead of Malcolm's collided with a train from Manchester and the lines were shut. Malcolm had no way of alerting his wife and it was likely that she would see it on television and start to worry. Malcolm's train was stuck for four hours in which time all the food in the buffet ran out and the heating was not working as the electricity wires had been damaged. Eventually the train was rescued and hauled backwards onto another line. By the time Malcolm got to London, there only just enough time to catch the last train from Waterloo but there was still a problem as it was due to terminate at Eastleigh, short of his destination in Southampton. Having explained this to the ticket guard, and in view of the special circumstances, the train was taken on to Southampton by special arrangement. Malcolm eventually got home at 2am to be received by a worried wife.

Another late arrival at home happened after Malcolm had been working late in his office. He struck a remnants of a lorry tyre on the M27 motorway which punctures his radiator. He was close to the AA depot and was able to walk there to summon assistance. He was rescued and towed back home, arriving at about 9pm.

Malcolm received a phone call from a senior database manager asking to come by appointment for a discussion. A date was arranged and the man duly arrived and was received my Malcolm. The manager was rather scruffily dressed with dirty shoes and the laces undone. A general meandering conversation took place but without and purpose. Lunchtime came so Malcolm entertained the manager after which the manager left. Malcolm never found out what was the purpose of the visit.

Malcolm was carrying out a computer upgrade in a regional office and all was going well until one of the hard disks produced an error and would not work. Each of the two machines had three interchangeable disks so Malcolm swapped them round to find a working disk but, unfortunately, he did not make a note of which was which and got into a muddle. He knew it would get sorted out in time but it was getting late and the staff there to attend on him had thoughts of going home. Anyhow, he did fix the problem and everyone was happy.

Much of Malcolm's work entailed modifying cabling in his main office and this work was carried out at weekends to avoid disruption to daily business. On one occasion, all old cabling was being stripped out and replaced with new. What was not known was that the client had installed a phone system that utilised a computer cable and they had not registered that on the cabling plans. Come Monday their phone system was not working so that entailed an emergency call to the contractor to send and engineer in immediately.

Another weekend job that Malcolm had was to replace a machine in the computer room in one of the head office buildings in London. These machine were essential to the performance of the bank during business hours. Malcolm completed his work within th etime but, being a tidy minded person, decided to shut down another machine to correct a power cable that had been laid outside the machine rack. When he restarted it, it did not recover automatically as would be expected. There was always an engineer on call for suxg eventualities so Malcolm rang him and explained. The engineer said he could fix it and told Malcolm he could go home. On Monday there was a kerfuffle as the machine had not started and it was another day before it was running again.

On a couple of occasions, Malcolm was asked at short notice to provide a demonstration to visiting senior managers the work carried out by his department without being given any specific information about who they were. On the first occasion he demonstrated the monitoring and support system that the dapartment used on a daily basis only to find out later that those to whom he was talking were high level system managers with far greater knowledge than his. The next occasion Malcolm was asked to explain the structure of his helpdesk to a visitor. He did this and was told later that the person had been very impressed. However, time also revealed that the visitors were about to take command of his department.