Dear Richard
This really is a heartfelt “thank-you”. Through the years your endless patience with somebody who was, and is, at best semi-literate with computers, has given me confidence and support.
In 1974 Local Government Reorganisation Bradford saw three museum collections of very diverse social history officially merge into one, with varying levels of documentation. After about a year I realised that I could no longer hold enough data in my head to make a proper job of this, so when MODES came along I was thrilled, albeit faced with the daunting task of all that data entry at a time when one tiny computer was all that we had in the whole service. Luckily it sat on my desk as I was the only member of staff who saw this as a necessary way forward. My then superiors were universally scared of them, and some of them still are.
MODES saved me, because it was both affordable and easy to use. Countless training sessions and board meetings later I was triumphantly able to claim that our basic data entry backlog was cleared. I had estimated twenty years, and we had done it in nineteen. The many, many hours you have put in over the years have produced a program of which you can be justly proud.
I have been retired for eighteen years, but I still use MODES almost every day. Actually, I mis-use it, as it’s no longer possible to write my own formats, but it holds all kinds of non-object data which I need to have at hand. This is the best accolade that I can give. I am grateful to you frequently.
On a more personal note, retirement is wonderful if you let it be, and I am sure that you have plenty of ideas in the pipeline. You will be able to do what you choose to do, rather than what other people tell you must be done, and that freedom is liberating. I still feel privileged to watch cricket, or birds, when other people are labouring away. You will have your own choices. Make the most of them, and accept my warmest good wishes for a long, peaceful and happy retirement.
Anthea Bickley