Speaker Meeting, 6.15 for 6.30pm

Our guest speaker was David Roblin (seated between Club President Steve and Vice-President Colin).

David Roblin’s entire working life was spent as an accountant.  It began in 1968 when he joined a firm in Northampton as a junior.  By the time he had reached retirement age he was working in a well-known Swindon firm which he joined in 1981.  Monahans.

David called his talk  “Is accountancy boring?”   For him, of course, accountancy definitely was not boring.   For us listening, was his talk boring?  Definitely not.   Was it amusing?  Definitely yes.

It was one anecdote after another.  Encounters and funny stories from his 50-year career.  Incidents in his office and in customers’ offices.  Recollections of  work colleagues and customers and their funny ways and eccentricities.

As for actual accounting, the first hint of the technology that would eventually bring the end of monotonous auditing work and make pen and paper redundant came within the first 3 years of David’s career.  His Northampton firm bought 3 calculators.  The boss considered them so valuable that they had to be safely locked away at the end of every day.

The introduction of computers brought new problems.  Reams and reams of continuous paper to work through for one thing, and customers’ apparent incapability of doing any sort of filing for another.

What did amaze us was David’s remarkable memory.  Not just the incidents, going back 50 years in some cases, but also the names of the people and the firms concerned.

Rotarian Colin Hornsby expressed sincere thanks to David for his interesting and fascinating talk.