Richard Lyon NDA 70/72

Richard Lyon NDA 70/72

My update on what's been happening to me over the past 50 (?) years.

After leaving College in 1972, I went back to the 500-acre family farm near Doncaster. Dad passed away in 1986 and I continued farming in partnership with my mother until she passed away in 2001. I reached 67 before I decided retirement was on the horizon and with no family to pass it on to, the farm was sold to a friend who had sold 100 acres of his farm to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster; well worth a visit if you're in the area. We moved over the border into Lincolnshire to an ex-livery stable with 5 acres of grass paddocks. As I was always into cars, the more cylinders the better, I decided to convert the indoor arena into a Classic Car Storage facility for fellow enthusiasts to have somewhere secure and warm to store their vehicles. We installed a ground-sourced heat pump which keeps everything warm and dry, even over winter.

Many years ago, in the early/mid 1980's, myself and two friends got into Drag Racing. We progressed from an old Ford Capri 3lt to eventually running a Dragster which we called Ol' Timer

We managed to win the RACMSA National Championship twice in 1989 and '90.

For various reasons, shortly after that, our fun was put on hold and eventually became permanent. The car sat there, dismantled and unloved for the best part of 25 years until I was contacted by one of the two men who originally built the car, way back in 1967, Rex Sluggett. He and Dennis Priddle were two Cornishmen who got together and built what at the time was the first Dragster that looked like one of the American ones, seen in the magazines of the day. They only ran the car, named Tudor Rose for one year, 1968 but during that time, they won many races, including in Sweden and also set the World Record for the two-way standing start quarter mile at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire at 8.29 seconds.

Ol Timer Stanta Pod Pits

Ol Timer Gas Station

Rex wanted to buy and restore the car, but I didn't want to sell it. (I had bought out my two partners some years previously, with a view to restoring the car.) We reached an agreement to share the cost of restoration and Rex flew over from the States where he had lived, ever since a big fallout with Priddle after that one year of running the car.

After 5 long years and with the help of Dave Riswick of John Woolfe Racing, Bedford, the car has just this year been unveiled, back in its 1968 guise with a Supercharged Methanolburning 426 cu in Chrysler Hemi powering it.

Rex came over again in June for the first fire-up of the car in its restored form.

Unfortunately, it is no longer eligible for competition but will be shown at various Drag Race meets around the country and we're especially hoping to be at Dragstalgia at Santa Pod next July.

My own collection has grown to include a '57 Chevy Belair, a '63 Chevy Impala among others and more recently, an E-Type has been added to the stable. We've recently had to put up another barn to house both mine and customers cars.

Any ex-Shutts people in the area are welcome to call in for a coffee and look round the collection. 07710 795322.

Rex Sluggit with the restored car outside Richard's barn

Barry Shears. NDA 1970-1972

In response to the latest request for content for the forthcoming issue of the Old Students magazine I write the following:

I left Shutts at the end of the course to join the local grain merchant, Sidney Banks, as a sales rep and grain buyer which I thoroughly enjoyed. At the same time I joined the local marriage bureau, aka, the Young Farmers club. I became chairman of Biggleswade YFC and met my future wife, Denise who was the social secretary of Bedford YFC at the time. The three years of experience I accumulated in my first job led me to apply for another in Dagenham with a company called May & Baker. So I left Bedfordshire to join this company on the edge of London in 1975. There I started to learn more about international trade as the company, amongst many other things, had

a considerable business in the sugar cane crop protection industry. It was there that I had my first experience of dealing with clients based in Nigeria. This required many visits to the country where there were several sugar cane estates in development. Oil had been discovered a few years previously and, I think it is fair to say, the country was slowly descending into a state of anarchy and lawlessness but business was growing, thankfully. Denise and I married in Bedfordshire in 1976. We moved to Chelmsford and then to Writtle. A year after moving to Writtle (1980) we left the UK to join Rhone Poulenc in Lyon. Whilst it was not generally admitted, May & Baker had been acquired by the French multinational some years previously. I joined as a member of a small team of Corporate Product Managers and specifically responsible for rice (Ronstar) and oil seed rape (Pradone Plus) herbicides. This took me all over the rice growing world to promote and advise on the use of the product. A wonderful experience which allowed me to manage every phase of the development, manufacturing and sale of crop protection products. Both our children were born in Lyon where we became Christians, made many friends and where we enjoyed the skiing, the food and the culture. We became fluent in French. However, this was not to last. The newly elected socialist government nationalised RP and it was made very clear that the jobs were only for French citizens. So the few British expats that worked there left. After a short spell in the UK working for Velsicol (dicamba in case any one remembers Banlene etc) the company was bought by Sandoz and I was offered a post in Basel, once again working with a small Corporate team of international product managers. We stayed there for nearly four years, with the five year horizon looming on the work permit I had which allowed me to stay and work in Switzerland for that period. Our children were now fluent in German and the local dialect so obviously well prepared for the transfer to Spain! We arrived in 1990, two years before the Olympic Games in Barcelona. It was absolutely chaos as buildings were bulldozed, roads rerouted and general mayhem prevailed. I took on the role of Marketing Manager for the country. We stayed for nearly fourteen years until Sandoz and Zeneca merged in Spain. Not wanting to move to Madrid I took voluntary redundancy and, after a two year sabbatical, we decided to sell the house and return to the UK. By now we were all fluent in Spanish. Both Daniel and Joanna decided to stay in Spain although a little later our daughter later joined us in England. (A country she had only lived in briefly)

I left the crop protection business completely and chose a new career path. We bought a Care Home in Devon and have been running it for the past twenty years. Our daughter and husband joined us eight years ago and they are now running it full time. At last we can semi-retire I thought at the time. But, as we found out, running a Care Home is like farming. You never retire!

Thanks Barry.