So what do you do for a living, the lady inquired?
I was standing on a jetty at the river Thames and she poured diesel into the tank of my rented motorboat.
- Er well, I am a technical writer, I answered.
- Oh, she said and her eyebrows lifted in recognition of a true master genius being present in front of her eyes.
I shall never forget her, this was not flattery, this was true admiration of being in the presence of a real genuine master of the written word, and I who was daily reminded of the fact that I was, at best, the lowest form of biological substance in the company I worked for, and my profession was just about the most despicable waste and time consuming useless hobby that was ever invented by a lazy slob.
Working in a place where a spade was called a spade and the only passable synonym would be a f...... shovel, necessitated that I had to double, at that time, as service manager, but I soon found out that it was more pleasant to write good understandable books than to spend my time in various countries at odd hours repairing badly serviced machines for a dissatisfied customer, who complained heavily that there was no manual for the machine, as if anybody anywhere in the world wouldn't rather break an arm than read an operating manual.

The first task in my career as a technical writer cum service manager was to get something to write with.

- What do you want a typewriter for, and an electric one at that, electric typewriters are for old ladies who want to write a card for somebody once a year at Christmas time.

It was not easy, but it was fun, and the fight was on. It lasted for ten years, wars were lost and wars were won, I got my electric typewriter, and later on applied for a word processor, when that marvellous thing was invented.

- What do you want that for, why don't you just write things right the first time?

- Because your beloved R&D dept. cannot make up their chicken brains about how to design the bleeding machine and get it to work. When you order a new manual I start writing it, but in the real world they call that science fiction, and before you have finished designing the machine, it has been altered umpteen times that's why I want a word processor.

I got it, but it took me three years. Later I learned my lesson.
- What do you want a desk top - what's-its-name-now-for?

- Well, you see I am a little bored, and it has this little gadget called a mouse, and it's great fun to play with, and it's bloody expensive, and the competition has it so we look a little out of date if we don't so... but of course if you cannot afford it.

I got it in just over three months time.

There are many interesting things to do in technical writing. One day you have to change the exploded views in ten different manuals because somebody changed a 3 mm screw to a 6 mm screw, the next day you have to change a manual or two because somebody replaced an ordinary washer by a star washer and so on. Gives you a lot of variations in your daily life, doesn't it?

And then comes the time, when you believe you are safe, everybody has had their say about the manual. They all agree it was the worst piece of junk ever. However, they do not really agree with one another on how to make it better, but they definitely all want it differently from what they have, so now it is not merely a matter of design, fine writing, technical facts etc. but a case of who is where in the local hierarchy.

You send it to the printer's say a few prayers and make a sacrifice at the local temple for the success of your book and wait and wait.

The faint footsteps of an R&D engineer passing your door bears the same sinister menace as the hobnailed boots of a KGB officer at four o'clock in the morning in an apartment building somewhere in Moscow. Will those gentle steps stop outside your door, and some red-faced engineer poke his head into your office, clear his throat and say:
- Er, about this manual, you see we have had a problem...

How often have I not heard this prelude to disaster sending me to the phone screaming to the printer:
- Stop the press!

But the reward can also be sweet, for a second or two. Like once when I visited the Philippines and somebody said:
- You make the finest documentation we have ever seen. I grew from five feet eight to a little over ten feet in just those few seconds, until he continued- at least you write your books in English, we usually get it from your competitors in the German language, and we do not understand German here.

I did not elaborate on that one, because I simply did not have time to translate my manuals into German and as they were changed every so often anyway, it would just be a waste of time. But I just remembered once, during an exhibition in Germany, when one of my Swiss customers a normally very cool and smooth talking gentleman roared:
- Why don't you write all your manuals in German, you know, what my customers do with a manual when it is not written in German, he grasped a copy and hopped around on one leg with the manual in his right hand while he demonstrated, very illustratively, what his customers used my poor manual for.
Yeah, it has not always been easy, but on the other hand I have never really had time to get bored either. Today I write other things like this drivel for instance, but my old documentation and service dept. where I reigned supreme for ten years is now employing 8 people with just as many computers and a host of other high price pieces of hardware. It is wonderful to see your baby grow into maturity, and to know you started the whole thing.