I have often reflected on my decision to leave the Munce Partnership, and while in the long run I had no reason to regret my decision, I realised that my people-participation model did not fit very well with the aggressive entrepreneurial goals of private practice. My planning qualifications had not been acquired without great cost to myself and my young family and I cherished the title of chartered planner. While my ethical standards might have been described as overly conservative at the time, Jimmy's Nietzschean approach to practice sometimes left me unnerved. When we had finished the Derry plan Jimmy had anticipated that we might somehow become involved in its implementation. To his credit he had been prepared to gamble on this and must have sustained considerable losses in producing the plan. While his time commitment and role in Derry had made him a background figure as far as the team was concerned, his advocacy at meetings and his work behind the scenes were critical in dealing with the Steering Committee and getting the plan accepted.

Nevertheless even today I find the necessary marketing aspects of private practice un-comfortable and look back with some nostalgia to what seemed to have been a time when work was earned solely on the basis of reputation. I realise, however, that this pre-fifties model is probably a chimera of my own making, and in this too I have not yet wholly succeeded in discarding my Candide-like persona. But working for the Belfast city planning department, in public service, and being placed in charge of a small office of a dozen or so staff responsible for urban design and design review for a city of approximately 700,000 seemed to be a good alternative to even the imagined vicissitudes of private practice. Also, notwithstanding the spectre of the ring road at that stage in my career it offered a more secure if less exciting livelihood. But my ability to successfully persuade private architects to take more cognizance of the context of their buildings and their social responsibilities, met with more success in contrast to the downright opposition I encountered in my dealings with the city architect's department.