My initial reaction to the unsolicited suggestion that I should consider moving to the north east was to laugh. I lived in Kent and had no connections to the north east; my children were in good schools within walking distance of home; I was happy at the firm I was working at in London; and my principal client relationships were also based in London. I was told that the firm was Dickinson Dees and that the position it was hoping to fill was at its headquarters in Newcastle. I asked a rhetorical question, something along the lines of “… and anyway, where is Newcastle?” I knew where it was having spent two hours there about 17 years earlier; I declined the offer of a meeting.
About four weeks later I was telephoned by the same ‘head-hunter’. He told me that a couple of Dickinson Dees partners were in town and that they’d be keen to meet me at the firm’s London office. Due to pressures of work I was only able to spend a short time with them but, towards the end of a good meeting, my curiosity got the better of me when asked if I would meet them again, this time in the Newcastle office, together with the partner who was retiring and for whom they needed to find a successor.
