| Name: | Alex Wallis |
| Gender: | Male: |
| Born: | Just before the middle of last century |
| Where: | Newlyn |
| Nationality: | Cornish |
| Occupation: | Retired power engineer |
| Hobbies: | Too numerous to list |
| Aliases: | Many. Including G4DEO |
| Hair colour: | Mainly grey |
| Emblem: | The Dodo |
| Philosophy: | Keep it simple |
| Actuality: | Makes all things complicated |
| Epitaph: | I'm just a fool whose intentions are good. |
If you read all this you may feel a Phoenix would be more appropriate but...
From
1979 to 1990 I worked as a
Control Engineer looking after the electricity supply for Cornwall. We
were a team of six Engineers and six Assistants working shift with one
Engineer and one Assistant on duty at all times. Cornwallis Controlle
Dodos were semi static engineers of which the two species ie. Controlle
Engineerous and Assistantis Controlle lived only at Haylee and Poolee
centres on the island of Cornwallis.
During that time we worked ourselves out of a job by helping to
commission the computerised South Western Electricity Data Aquisition
and Telecontrol system (SWEDAT). This meant instead of four control
rooms the company could save money by centralisng on one control room
in England.
Dennis Payne, a friend and colleague, produced this poster:
Coincidental with the closure of our control room the then Cornwall
Technical Engineer took up a new job at head office. This was fortunate
for me as I managed to persuade the powers that be I was the best
person to fill his old post and so I returned to power system
protection and all things technical. Basically the same job I held
before the control room lured me in 1979.
The text reads:
When Swedatee Remotely discovered the island they hunted the trusting
and defenceless birds as fodder and their pigs and dogs destroyed the
eggs, laid only one at a time.
The Cornwallis Controlle Dodo depicted here was extinct by 1990, only
80 years after the first sitings.
The Somersetee Controlle Dodos were in fact extinct by 1988.
Then in 1992 the company reorganised and my technical job didn't exist
anymore. The Devon Technical Engineer being renamed South Region
Technical Engineer and lumbered with both jobs.
This time I got the new post of Engineering Support Manager for
Cornwall. This job lasted 2½ years until the next
reorganisation.
I got the Technical role back again until I took early retirement in
January 2000 after 36 years with the company.
So the Dodo sort of adopted me as my colleagues left the company or
moved to England and I became one of the "dying breed".