As it turned out, I lasted only four days of unemployment after I left the insurance office. All that time while I secretly read books, chatted with people, or simply disappeared back down the my sanctuary, the storeroom. I was learning something about myself that I would never imagined to be true - that I was a person who needed to be busy and to believe that whatever I was doing was important. I can still remember the agony of those four useless months and it amazes me that I survived. These days I tend to panic if confronted with a ten minute period in which I have nothing to do. I multi-task furously, just to make sure that that never happens. But I was a different person in those days. But, as it happened, I applied for just one job, and got it. It seemed the airline business had a liking for people with a military background.

Callan was a superb British series with Edward Woodward as a conscience stricken hitman. The episodes probed deeply into his psyche, as it often did into his victims, marrying them into a strange symbiotic relationship.
    He was supposedly killed at the end of the first series, when the murderer bumping off the regular supporting cast, including his boss Hunter, turned out to be Callan himself, brainwashed by the KGB when he was captured in an earlier episode. His offsider, Toby Meres, had to shoot him.
    But he was revived for the second series, got a new supporting cast except for the sole survivor Meres, and went from strength to strength.
    The series was written by the brilliant James Mitchell.