Having decided to leave my publisher´s representative job for McGraw Hill in Germany, Gunilla and I moved to the small town of Arboga. Extensive travelling from a home in Sweden for one publisher to be replaced by extensive travelling from a home in Germany for another publisher was somewhat of a status quo for me and definitely not an improvement for Gunilla. A newly born added to the pressure of getting things right. Gunilla had done some of her student teacher training at a school in Arboga so we were quite familiar with what to expect when she got her first teaching job in a village school close by. Looking back I am always overwhelmed as to how decision making never seemed to cause us much of a headache. As I do not consider myself a reckless person I suppose it will have to be put down to ”being young”
Now the boot was on the other foot, with me a newly baked dad out of a job in a foreign country. Problems are there to be solved, not least self inflicted ones. It didn´ t bother me at all, well at least not until I actually had to start solving them. Problem number one was that I suddenly found myself in charge of a six month old baby. Not just for a few minutes of coochie coo and tickling under the chin before handing her back to Mummy but for most of a working day. Talk about a crash course in how to be a Mummy. (These days it´ s called how to be a parent) I was a complete novice and Gunilla had a thing or two to say about the way I handled things. Number 1 (girls two and three were to become later additions to the family) and I both survived however. I say both because apart from the more conventional chores of baby care I had to deal with behavior normally associated with BamBam. Never turn your back or something will come crashing down, drawers will be emptied on the floor or the dog will get his tail pulled. If there had been such a thing as a baby crawling competition I would have entered her at the drop of a hat. Needless to say I was completely exhausted by the time Gunilla came home. To add insult to injury I distinctly remember her once asking me, ”is that what you do all day, sit and stare at the child?” I think I just gave a tired shrug and explained that I had actually taken her for a push chair ride in the park together with all the other mothers. (Things would change but in 1975 I was definitely a pioneer in the field)
Problem number two was me being out of a job. As Gunilla was making enough money for both of us, problem number two would therefore perhaps not have been of such importance had it not been for problem number one, at least as far as I was concerned. Even if Dads at home were still considered a bit freaky, two working parents was not unusual even in the mid 1970s, so for me to start looking for a job would hardly have been frowned upon.
No sooner said than done found me sitting in front of a careers advisor at the local employment agency. I had filled in a form with a list of previous experience backed up by a knowledge of four languages, two fluent and two wobbly ones with Swedish as one of the latter. His exact words have eroded over the years but were to the tune of, ”sorry, but we have no jobs available to match your qualifications.” This didn´ t come as too much of a surprise to me and I explained to him as such, adding that I was prepared to accept any sort of job, like working in a council parks department of which I had previous experience. It soon all boiled down to him admitting he had no jobs available at all. To this day I am not sure whether he didn´ t like the cut of my jib, didn´ t actually have anything to offer or had fixed a job for himself that he couldn´ t handle. That afternoon my suspicions were confirmed although I was no closer to identifying the reason. I had invested in a copy of the local newspaper and finding an advertisement looking for workers at the local paper mill had called them immediately. After a quick interview that same afternoon I found myself in work.
I have never really liked factories or at least the kind that spring to mind at the mention of the word but this paper mill was of a different calibre. My job as it turned out was raw labour and apart from having to adjust to a shift system I was far from unhappy.
Basically all I had to do was stand in front of what can best be described as a gigantic automatic toilet roll dispenser where the paper is unravelled and automatically cut into large sheets and deposited in front of me to be picked up at the correct batch size and placed in a criss cross fashion onto a nearby pallet. Maybe I should mention that each batch weighing anywhere between 10-20 kg depending on the order, was to be aired by holding it up and compressing the sides allowing air to enter between the sheets.
This is the closest I have ever been to what nowadays is called a workout. Mine was not glamourous but I was getting paid and the results would easily have matched any present day bench-presser.