felt oddly shaken.
We reached the batching plant and I managed to ask the warehousemen some sensible questions about the new forklift and the revised storage bay layout. The route George and I took through the factory had been laid down since the beginning of time. After a circuit of the storage bay which took us past pallets of silica, lead oxide, litharge and potassium, we inspected the computerised batch mixer, then, after a few minutes with the batch quality control staff, we went through to the heat of the blowing room.
The dull roar of the furnaces still stirred me in some atavistic way. The transmutation of the dry amalgam into clear lava still seemed like some mysterious alchemy. The groups of schoolchildren and visitors who toured the factory on the overhead walkways lingered longest over the blowers as they ballooned and moulded the cooling lava into shape, or beside the cutters as they chased the designs into the glass, waiting in nervous delight for them to make an error and abandon the goblet, tumbler or bowl to the reprocessing bin with a crash of splintering glass. But for me the fascination had always lain here, in the unimaginable heat, in the impenetrable trembling magma that seemed incapable of any transformation, let alone the miraculous metamorphosis into a material both dense and transparent, both complex and flawless.
Bill, our senior master blower, raised his eyebrows in greeting. Many years ago when I had worked here in my university vacations, sweeping floors and wheeling bins, Bill had tried to teach me to blow the simplest shape. My best effort sat at home somewhere, a far-from-round object of uneven thickness with a trail of bubbles up one side.
The factory buzzer cut our tour short at the grinding and polishing area. Following George towards the canteen, the ideas for my speech, such as they were, seemed to scatter, and I wished I’d made more time to prepare.
As the staff gathered I greeted as many as I could by name. A few had been at Hartford for thirty years or more; some twenty; a good number for more than ten. There were two entire families – father, sons, daughters-in-law. We even had a grandmother and granddaughter on the payroll. A hundred and fifty employees in all, people whose lives were dependent on this factory, and – never had I needed less reminding – on my ability to restore its fortunes.
The moment came. George called for silence and I stepped forward, beset by strange emotions.
‘As soon as the takeover was agreed I promised to keep you in touch with developments,’ I began. ‘I also promised you that we were going to do everything in our power to get this management buyout off the ground.’ Voicing it, I felt a new weight of responsibility. ‘Well, the good news is that we’ve reached agreement with some venture capital people called Zircon. They’re going to put up about a quarter of the money. That still leaves a full half to be raised from the banks, and I won’t pretend that it’s proving to be easy, because it isn’t. We’re in the second round of talks with two banks, the Chartered and the West Country Mutual. We haven’t been turned down yet. That’s all I can tell you so far.’
I caught the eye of Madge, grader and glass washer, sitting solidly on a chair directly in front of me. She was glaring at me: a combative expression, an anxious one, or a combination of both.
‘Now, when Cumberland took us over I warned you that sentiment would play no part in their calculations. And though they’ve given us first call on buying Hartford, we still have to match the best price on offer. I have to tell you that according to our latest information they’re talking to Donington and maybe some other companies too.’
The feeling of disconnection hit me again. Without warning my brain did an abrupt shift, a sort of sideways jump, and I completely lost track. When I finally managed to speak, I stumbled, not sure if I was making sense. I heard myself
We reached the batching plant and I managed to ask the warehousemen some sensible questions about the new forklift and the revised storage bay layout. The route George and I took through the factory had been laid down since the beginning of time. After a circuit of the storage bay which took us past pallets of silica, lead oxide, litharge and potassium, we inspected the computerised batch mixer, then, after a few minutes with the batch quality control staff, we went through to the heat of the blowing room.
The dull roar of the furnaces still stirred me in some atavistic way. The transmutation of the dry amalgam into clear lava still seemed like some mysterious alchemy. The groups of schoolchildren and visitors who toured the factory on the overhead walkways lingered longest over the blowers as they ballooned and moulded the cooling lava into shape, or beside the cutters as they chased the designs into the glass, waiting in nervous delight for them to make an error and abandon the goblet, tumbler or bowl to the reprocessing bin with a crash of splintering glass. But for me the fascination had always lain here, in the unimaginable heat, in the impenetrable trembling magma that seemed incapable of any transformation, let alone the miraculous metamorphosis into a material both dense and transparent, both complex and flawless.
Bill, our senior master blower, raised his eyebrows in greeting. Many years ago when I had worked here in my university vacations, sweeping floors and wheeling bins, Bill had tried to teach me to blow the simplest shape. My best effort sat at home somewhere, a far-from-round object of uneven thickness with a trail of bubbles up one side.
The factory buzzer cut our tour short at the grinding and polishing area. Following George towards the canteen, the ideas for my speech, such as they were, seemed to scatter, and I wished I’d made more time to prepare.
As the staff gathered I greeted as many as I could by name. A few had been at Hartford for thirty years or more; some twenty; a good number for more than ten. There were two entire families – father, sons, daughters-in-law. We even had a grandmother and granddaughter on the payroll. A hundred and fifty employees in all, people whose lives were dependent on this factory, and – never had I needed less reminding – on my ability to restore its fortunes.
The moment came. George called for silence and I stepped forward, beset by strange emotions.
‘As soon as the takeover was agreed I promised to keep you in touch with developments,’ I began. ‘I also promised you that we were going to do everything in our power to get this management buyout off the ground.’ Voicing it, I felt a new weight of responsibility. ‘Well, the good news is that we’ve reached agreement with some venture capital people called Zircon. They’re going to put up about a quarter of the money. That still leaves a full half to be raised from the banks, and I won’t pretend that it’s proving to be easy, because it isn’t. We’re in the second round of talks with two banks, the Chartered and the West Country Mutual. We haven’t been turned down yet. That’s all I can tell you so far.’
I caught the eye of Madge, grader and glass washer, sitting solidly on a chair directly in front of me. She was glaring at me: a combative expression, an anxious one, or a combination of both.
‘Now, when Cumberland took us over I warned you that sentiment would play no part in their calculations. And though they’ve given us first call on buying Hartford, we still have to match the best price on offer. I have to tell you that according to our latest information they’re talking to Donington and maybe some other companies too.’
The feeling of disconnection hit me again. Without warning my brain did an abrupt shift, a sort of sideways jump, and I completely lost track. When I finally managed to speak, I stumbled, not sure if I was making sense. I heard myself
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