It happened just after I arrived in London to establish a United Kingdom branch office many years ago.
The seeds were probably sown the day I hired my secretary Elise. Elise had been secretary to former U.K. prime minister Harold Wilson when he was at the British government’s Board of Trade. And she was a real gem. No sooner had we sorted out employment details than she sat me down and proceeded to investigate me, as earnestly as possible.
As I got to know Elise, it seemed to me that the Brits did the whole “old boy” thing absolutely right. Elise, as my executive secretary, would organize the office, arrange my day, write all my letters, prepare my appointments, answer the phones and - basically - anticipate any problems and solve them before they bothered me.
My role was reduced to taking clients out for lunch.
Meanwhile, the world-at-large was changing - and fast. Newly-elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had just returned from a successful conference in Salisbury, Rhodesia. Thatcher had negotiated a final settlement in the civil war that had been raging between the minority-controlled regime of Ian Smith and rebel leader Robert Mugabe.
At the very moment I was setting up shop in London, the rebel leader was emerging from hiding and flying to London for emergency talks with the British government and other interested parties.
One of the interested parties was a certain venerable old city firm with colonial-era mineral leases in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). They had been frantically calling officials in the Foreign Office attempting to arrange a meeting with the new leader, Mugabe. They were concerned (with good reason) that the new regime would cancel their leases and foil their plans.
It was about this time that Elise picked up the phone and called the secretary to the chief executive officer of the firm. Elise had a decidedly upper-crust accent, which meant Rs were not well pronounced. And, unfortunately, she had only a fleeting notion about what we were doing. She tended to describe our situation thusly: “Mr. Mcgav’y has recently arrived in London and would like to meet with your senior executive team to discuss leases and other important matters.” The excited secretary’s response on the other end of the line can only be imagined, but when Elise suggested that “he’ll be available for a luncheon on Friday,” it was pull-out-all-the-stops.
Friday was one of those luxurious autumn days in London, crisp and brilliant. I remember humming as I rolled through the streets in my London black cab. I imagined another nice lunch, with the added benefit that it was taking place in the client’s famous walnut-panelled boardroom (at their expense). That was a switch.
The company’s offices were in a famous Georgian square in London. It was a self-contained world with vaulted gates guarding a host of classical three-storey period buildings on the perimeter of a private inner courtyard.
As I drove through the gates, I was surprised to see the yard crowded with people and even more surprised to discover giant flags draping the buildings - Union Jacks (of course) but also a very colourful new flag that I didn’t recognize.
I wondered what was going on.
Slowly, as I surveyed the excited kitchen staff in their black and whites, the technical staff lined up like school boys and a host of other office workers assembled anxiously, I began to get the drift.
Oh no, it couldn’t be!
Robert McGarvey is a Troy media columnist