From 1974 to 1976 I worked at Warwick University, living in Leamington Spa most of that time. In 1977 I worked at GEC Computers Ltd in Borehamwood, then from 1979 to 1980 I worked in a company in Mayfair, London, called Cocking and Drury Ltd. In 1980 (more or less overlapping with the Elim church "eruption") I met the brother of a friend from Cambridge days at the college graduation of his sister. For three years I was to work for him. However, notwithstanding that he was a leader of a church in North London, I would confidently say that he was the most dishonest person I ever met in my life. In September 1983 I went on a boating holiday with two friends, Christians, also from Cambridge. They knew the guy I was working with and when I shared my difficulties had no hesitation in persuading me to leave his tender clutches and work on my own. They suggested that the first thing he did which was a resigning matter, I should leave over. As it happened, when I returned to work after the holiday, this took about half an hour. A customer came in and bawled me out because he had been promised something (which he had paid for) by midday that day and I had only just started to work on it.
Butterfly and Crow
The guy did not take kindly to my leaving. He put all kinds of legal obstacles in my way to stop me leaving and I had to consult a lawyer. I have to say that I got absolutely no help and support from the church. At round this time I had been chatting to friends, again Christian, of the people I'd been on the boating holiday with who worked together in Oxford and I went to dinner with them in early October 1983. I explained the situation with the guy and the legal obstacles he was erecting to my departure and they gave me some helpful advice. The wife of one of the people went upstairs to see her two daughters to bed. When she came down, she apologised for interrupting, but she said that she wanted to tell me something her elder girl of about 6 had said. Apparently the girl was into having visions and when I had come in she had apparently had one. This concerned a butterfly stuck in a cage which made beautiful things. Hovering round the cage all the time was a crow which snatched for itself all the things. In the vision someone chased the crow away and released the butterfly. She said that she had not heard much of the conversation, but she wondered if that was relevant. Of course it seemed incredibly relevant. Indeed all the more so, because the guy, or rather one of his associates, made a crucial legal mistake. Innocently I asked him for a "P45", which he made out and signed. (For non-UK readers a "P45" is a tax form that your employer is supposed to make out when you leave a company with details of the salary and tax payments to date. "Getting your P45" is more or less synonymous with "Getting fired" although you still get it if you just quit). The signature on the form, according to lawyer, was legal acceptance that I'd been fired. So I was free! And even if no one in the church cared, so it seemed, God organised a 6-year old girl to help. A couple of weeks later the guy I had been working for invited me to lunch at his parents' home near Cambridge. The whole of his family were there, his brother and two sisters. His father launched a tirade at me about how foolish I was being leaving him. When he had finished, the guy himself again stated how he wouldn't let me go, but I responded with the fact of the P45 form and that I had had legal advice that that constituted acceptance of my resignation. For just over two years I worked as a "self-employed software writer". The overnight tripling of my income rather suggested to me that I had done the right thing! Meanwhile a guy called Matthew Hart had joined the church. I'd known him at GEC Computers and he was keen to set up in business and I had developed the first versions of my software products in 1984 and 1985. So at the beginning of 1986 we incorporated Xi Software Ltd, working from my back bedroom. The name was very much pulled out of the air with "Unix", "X-Windows" and things starting or ending with "X". Luckily we got a really interesting contract (to write a "C" Compiler and port Unix on a new processor) straightaway, so we made a flying start.
Return of the Crow
Alas there was competition in obtaining the contract, from the guy whose clutches I'd left nearly three years before, and before I knew it he had discovered about my obtaining the contract and proceeded to cause trouble with the company concerned. It looked as if the matter would turn into an ugly legal fight in court. Oddly enough, at around the same time Alan Vincent's son-in-law, Gordon Hickson had a legal fight himself. He had been working at a recruitment agency and he decided to set up an agency on his own, under a very similar name. Naturally the company he had been working for sued, but in his usual way Alan Vincent saw this as a massive spiritual attack and organised prayer meetings over it. At one of them, I asked Alan Vincent if he would pray for my situation, but he refused. Perhaps it was as well they didn't pray for my situation; Gordon Hickson lost his legal battle, but I eventually won mine. Sometime later I read that the "Crow" had been sued for a huge amount of money over some falsified accounts which he'd used to get a venture capital investment, and his company subsequently went bankrupt. Nevertheless the refusal to pray for my situation, which was as much a "Christian Business" as Gordon Hickson's, left a bitter taste in my mouth. I saw the church ever more as serving the interests of the Vincents and their family only. This of course just preceded the battle over the school. (Also, it has created a long-lasting prejudice against recruitment agencies, not enhanced by what was to happen a year later!)
Matthew Hart departs
Alas, all was not to last with Matthew Hart. The company had been set up with me owning 90% and him and his wife owning 5% each. Initially this was seen as fair because I had invested personally in two computers, desks, cabinets and so forth, and had written the software products. However as time went by, this grated with him, and there was a huge argument in September 1986. During this, he brought up all sorts of purported offences dating back to when I worked at GEC 8 or 9 years before, making all sorts of "spiritual points" about how selfish I was. We went to see a church elder, Pete Byers (the one who was to be chucked out three months later), who moderated a little in the discussion, saying that it wasn't a place to make such points, and we should just part. So he departed in October 1986 and I worked mostly on my own, however a Sue Jackson, whom I'd known from the church, came and helped me for a couple of years a couple of days a week. Under UK Company law, you have to have more than one person to have a company, and Pete Byers and a certain Peter Theobald, also from the church, became directors but had no real involvement at that time. However that would change.