As I have already mentioned in a number of my pieces, I travelled the world or some of it at least as a publisher´s representative. At the age of 24 I was the envy of my friends. Me with a diploma from the Institute of Linguists but otherwise no university education landing a job where universities and educational bookshops were at the forefront was strange if not incredible. Not only was I seeing the world but also meeting up with lecturers and professors in various university cities in Europe to discuss and promote the company´s latest publications. A further objective was to recruit presumptive authors although in this respect I was unsuccessful.
Basically the job was visiting people teaching introductory courses, i.e larger numbers of students, in the subjects that could be matched with the company´s publications. Forwarding the correct complimentary copy could result in sales of several hundred books. The subjects involved were not many, primarily psychology, sociology, education and medicine yet enough for me to keep to the publication´s need to know sheet. Despite this one lecturer suggested I might apply for a teaching position at the University of Bergen on hearing how impressed I was with the city when arriving on the ferry from Newcastle a few years earlier for a Scandinavian hitch hiking tour. Obviously I had represented the company well in that interview.
Pride comes before a fall they say and it was only a few days later in Oslo that I became aware of how easily it is to put a foot wrong in this world and all down to good intentions. The subject was psychology and I was really excited because the lecturer I was interviewing indicated he was toying with the idea of writing a book he could use as teaching material or something like that, I don´t remember exactly. What I do remember is that he said something about it not being boring. My spontaneous reaction was about to confirm that my company would see this not only as a plus but more or less as a pre requisite for publication. I was only 24 but had thankfully lived long enough to realize not everything is as it seems and somebody stating what might be obvious to me might just be a little more elusive. I learnt two things that day; sometimes it pays to keep your mouth shut and that Edwin G. Boring was an American psychologist.