During the first half of the year I was mainly involved with pre-sales work (for Singer Business Machines) and the production of quotations for prospects. One such quotation was really a data-processing application, and my wife (Anne - then at Nestle in Croydon) felt that she could do the job more quickly by writing in COBOL for the IBM 370. As a result, I designed and wrote a little translate-then-interpret language for the 1500, called CRUMBOL (like COBOL and I worked for CRM Software!), but little use was found for it immediately.
When the hard-disk 1500 came out (1.5 megabytes of data online!) I wrote a very early system using it for Martini, all done in assembly language. The idea was that pubs could be looked up ONLINE! to ensure that the entered data for delivery and billing was accurate while the customer was still on the phone. This was installed and worked fine.
As a 1500 assembler programmer (there weren't many of us about) I was often consulting to Singer, and on one occasion went to Stevenage to test a new optical mark reader that had been interfaced to the 1500. This all worked fine, so I then wrote a demonstration for Cow and Gate Babyfoods to show that it was possible to enter data by writing in pencil on an OMR form, then reading it directly into the computer. This worked (after a fair amount of sweat and midnight oil) and I then had the job of converting it into a fully operational system. This system was duly accepted and installed at Cow and Gate Babyfoods near London Road, Guildford.
In the meantime CRM had recruited a university friend of mine Nick van Gemeren, who was producing applications for the 1500 in CRUMBOL, which he and I had enhanced to use the disk by then.
There was one month that was very quiet on the 1500 front, so I was used by CRM to do a little Singer System Ten work at Clifford and Snell just south of Croydon.
I was living in Carshalton, and working mainly in the Singer Business machines office in Blackfriars Road, London, where I was treated pretty much as a Singer employee.