Chapter 12: Denmark
A month later, after waving goodbye to mum and dad at the airport, I arrived at the farm to start work. I was the first of a cohort of brits who were imported to work there, but when I started, I felt very alone in a strange land, and did have a couple of bouts of home sickness. I worked, ate, and slept on the farm.
Idex specialised in small computer devices called protocol converters. The market for these appeared when IBM mainframe computers decided to invent their own way of talking to peripherals like printers. Their hope was that anyone with a mainframe would then have to buy the very expensive IBM printers as well. The Idex protocol converter changed the special IBM protocol into ordinary serial or parallel so that an ordinary, and much cheaper, printer could be used. My role was to be the mechanical designer and printed circuit board (PCB) designer.
Part of my deal was that I could fly back to the UK for one weekend every month. To enable this, I had an open return ticket from the UK. So, my insurance was that I always had my return ticket in my back pocket which I could use at any point. This was pretty cool because the ticket was business class, so my first experiences of luxury travel started at Idex.
Sometime after I arrived, others started arriving from the UK to work at the farm. I had been sleeping in a room above the office since my arrival but with new people coming some other arrangement was needed. The answer for Idex was to buy the house next door, and I moved into it as soon as the new arrivals began to appear. All together there were six of us living in the house, five from the UK and Karen, who was one of their Danish employees.
The UK guys were Nigel, who was a software graduate from somewhere in the north of England, Manouj, who was another electronics guy from London, and another guy whose name I cannot remember because it was a complicated Polish one. I was still the sole mechanical designer.
They also employed another guy from the UK called Andy, who had a severe nervous disease which meant that he had trouble walking and talking, so worked mostly from the UK, but occasionally visited us in Denmark. I liked Andy, he was an excellent programmer and a nice guy who bore his disabilities with courage and humour.
The Idex Logo
Denmark
Steen was the technical drive behind the company, whereas Stephen Bide took the sales and marketing role. Steen was 33 years old and was a tall man with mousey, thin medium length blonde hair. He lived upstairs in the farm building, which under Danish law wasn't actually allowed because it was a commercial building, so he was around all the time. He was determined to see that everyone was happy in their job, which was appreciated at times, but this still did not hide the fact that he was pretty weird. He was traditional Danish in his attitude and sometimes this would rub people up the wrong way. If you held the fridge door open for a second longer than he thought necessary, then you would get a lecture on how much energy you would be wasting. "You should decide what you want before opening the door, get it immediately, then close the door" he would say.
Steen as a young man
A typical day would consist of having a shower, then walking across the lawn from the house to the farm where breakfast was available in the kitchen. After breakfast it was straight down to work in my office in the east wing. I would work in complete silence on my own unless I needed to walk through the building to where the other guys were working when I needed more information on a project. Lunch was again laid on in the kitchen and always consisted of Smorrebrod, which was a Danish traditional open sandwich on dark rye bread. After lunch it was back to work until dinner was ready, which was about 6pm. Idex employed a local girl to come in and cook our evening meals for us during the week. After dinner we sometimes had to work on to meet a deadline, but mostly it was back across the lawn to the house, where we watched television and drank the duty free of whomever had visited home last. Sometimes during the week, we would jump into a car and go into Odense for a drink in the town centre. The centre of Odense was quite buzzy. All the Danish youth congregated in the centre of town, especially at the weekends but it was always busy any day of the week.
Idex ApS
The house next to the farm
At the weekends there would often be a trip out somewhere. There were not many options of things to do on Fyn. Once we had explored Odense we drove out to other towns, usually by the sea where we stopped for a walk around and to have a meal or a drink. Every town on Fyn was the same, nobody was on the streets and there was nothing to do. In desperation, this is when I took up fishing. None of us knew a lot about it but it meant that we could sit on a harbour wall and think fishing thoughts for a few hours. We did not have fishing rods, just lines with a hook on and some bait. Sometimes we actually caught something, but we always tried to put them back alive, which didn't always work. There was one fish that I caught that seemed to be all head and very little body. When I tried to extract the hook, it was too far into its mouth to unhook, so I pulled hard and to my horror extracted the entire insides of the fish, leaving only the outer body in my hand. This put me off fishing for the rest of my life.
Me, fishing
One of Steen's little personal projects was to import a Chevrolet van from America. It arrived complete with fluffy carpets and a metallic paint job. I helped Steen convert it for use in Denmark, for example the red flashing indicators were not allowed, so I made new lenses by combining the existing ones with some amber inserts from some spare ones that Steen had found. We also installed a fridge and maybe a new battery. In exchange for this work, I requested that I borrow the van for a trip to Copenhagen, and he agreed. The opportunity for this trip happened when Nigel was expecting a visit from a girl he knew at university. So, we bundled into the van and set off for the weekend. The only memory I have of this trip is how cold it was sleeping in a camper van without a sleeping bag. Other than that, we just bummed around in Copenhagen before driving back on Sunday.
Steens Van
The guys on the Copenhagen trip
I was still in touch with Tim Snell from Racal days, and he called to invite me to a party in The Hague in Holland where he lived with his girlfriend Kate. The party was on Saturday night, but I set off on Friday intending to make my way towards Amsterdam before going to The Hague. I ended up having to sleep in the car because I had left it too late to find a hotel for the night.
In the morning I drove to Amsterdam and walked around a lot looking at the sights. At one point a French tourist stopped his car next to me and asked directions to somewhere. I had no idea where he was going but I gave him some random directions in schoolboy French, and he went on his way looking quite pleased.
Tim was now working in the European Patents Office in The Hague as a Patent examiner. He and Kate were living in a rented flat in a nice area, which was where the party was. I worked out that the patents office was full of very clever people from across Europe, Germany, France, the UK and a few others. Everyone spoke English to each other. One of the employment requirements was to be proficient in at least three languages, so the common choice was English. I drove back the next day in about 8 hours. That was to be the last time I saw Tim.
My office on Fyn
While I was working out my notice at Racal I borrowed a Danish language course book from the library, which I then proceeded to photocopy at work. Tony Bates spotted this and announced to several people "Hey look, Jim's so tight that he's photocopying that book all to save just £175!"" The initial smiles of his audience sagged at the end, and one of them said, "That argument was great until the last bit. Sounds like a good plan to me."
I used this book, and examples in the environment around me in attempting to learn Danish. In the end I think I failed for several reasons. Firstly, everyone in the company spoke English, and some of the Danes even preferred to speak English so that they could practice and improve their own skills. Secondly, it was hard to practice Danish in Denmark in general. It seemed that everyone, including taxi drivers and random people on the street could speak English, and would immediately speak to you in English when you attempted to speak to them in Danish. In the end I gave up and threw my photocopied language course in the bin.
The kitchen on Fyn
There were a few reasons why I decided that I needed to leave Idex. The first one I have already talked about, namely the sheer boredom and bleakness of the Danish countryside on Fyn. The second was that I was not meeting anybody new, the reason for this is that I was a virtual prisoner at the farm. Because I was effectively a UK employee, and was being paid in the UK, I was not a Danish taxpayer and therefore did not have a Danish tax number, or CPR. Without a CPR number I could not open a bank account, do evening classes, or even join a gym. Due to those issues, and the fact that I was becoming increasingly homesick, I announced one day that I was leaving, but astonishingly they valued what I did and did not want me to leave, so they offered to change my location to the sales office at Royston in the UK. The new arrangement only required that I returned to Denmark for a day or two every few weeks, so I took the job.
The office in Royston was situated on several floors above some shops in the town. It was tight for space, so I found myself situated on a landing on the top of a stairwell. I could cope with this because I was back in the UK and there were plans to move to a new location on Melbourn Science Park. My accommodation was in a shared bungalow in Meldreth, just opposite the village pub. I shared this with a hairy hippy and his girlfriend and a biker who worked in some other science company in Cambridge, and quite soon Nigel joined us from Denmark. We had some good times in this house. Particularly memorable was a party we threw in the garden where we had moved all the furniture from the lounge and kitchen onto the lawn, including the standard and table lamps. It was quite surreal.
After we moved into the new offices, I started to get more calls to go back to Denmark. While I was away, they had closed the farm on Fyn and leased some offices in the western suburbs of Copenhagen. There was also a new owner of the company, Olaf Sorensen who obviously had some spare money and the company must have needed it. Initially my new home when I visited was in the old offices in central Copenhagen where I slept on a mattress on the floor. Some new faces had arrived in the company who I got to be friends with. Lars Kraak was a New Zealander of Danish ancestry who escaped the boredom of New Zealand for the boredom of Denmark, which I never understood. Henrik Larsen was an electronics engineer and a local Dane who was now part of my social group. They had also hired a new girl to work as a designer alongside what I was doing in the UK. Lene Bertilsson had worked for them before and had penned their company logo. She lived near where I was staying in Copenhagen and before too long, we were attached. She was tall blonde and pretty, of course, and quite keen on me. The problem with Lene was that she was almost completely useless at the job she was hired to do, and after a while this was noticed by Stephen Bide. Then one day Stephen called me into his office and after pointing out her perceived shortfalls he asked for my opinion. I could not lie since he knew the score already, so at the end of the conversation I thought that all we agreed was that she could do better. To my horror, that same day Stephen called Lene into his office and sacked her. He even told her that I had agreed with him. Well, that did not go down too well, and she stopped answering my calls, so that was the end of that.
On my next visit Lene had been replaced by another tall blonde girl whose name escapes me. She was just as useless as Lene but this time since I was only supposed to be there temporarily, I kept my distance to save complications. I think Stephen hired girls on their looks rather than abilities. It would be interesting if Stephen was doing this in an attempt to keep me in Denmark, but that's just idle speculation.
I hardly noticed that I was spending more and more time in Denmark until I was almost back to the old arrangement where I only visited the UK now and then. Nigel left the company, and they removed the accommodation clause from my contract in the UK. I then got myself a room in a shared house just north of Cambridge, but because of the amount of time I was spending in Denmark, I hardly ever stayed there to such an extent that, without my permission, the house owner loaded my room to other people while I was away.
There were a few weekends in Cambridge, where I did not go home for Sunday lunch from my mother. One time I cycled into town to have a look around. I was expecting a lot more of the place and was a bit disappointed. There were a few old buildings, but the crowds of tourists and the cool weather meant that I did not stay long. Many years later I found myself back in the city and appreciating it more, but that's another story.
In Denmark I was then set up in a small flat near the western office building in Albertslund because they had sold the old offices in central Copenhagen. This was a nice but small bedsit, and it was free. I don't know why they kept providing me with accommodation, I never asked for it, and it certainly did not encourage me to integrate with the culture much. If I had had to find my own place I may have been inclined to stay longer.
The Royston office
Idex office in Melbourn
The shared house in Meldreth
The new office in copenhagen with Stephen at the door.
My new office in Copenhagen
My flat in Copenhagen
Andy
Again, I do not recall what triggered it, but I think I decided that they obviously wanted me full time, but I still didn't want to be there full time, and winter was approaching, so I quit before I even had a new job to go to. I did my last month in Denmark and after a party with the guys, I flew back to the UK in the autumn of 1989, without a job but with a very healthy bank balance. For two years I had hardly spent any of my earnings, so I was flushed with cash. I could take a couple of years off and not notice it financially.
Idex lasted another year before the money ran out and the owner, Olaf Sorensen was convicted of tax fraud and went to prison, so I think I got the timing just right.
What did I learn from my time in Denmark? I learned that culture is important for me. Even though the Danes were not too far removed from the UK, they were sufficiently different for me to feel that I did not belong, which made me lonely the whole time. Even my time with Lene seemed artificial and temporary. I resolved that Europe was a great place to visit, but I prefer to live my life in good old England.
Me in one of the several good museums in Copenhagen
A typical coastal view