Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Toooo kind

A friend has no internetwebthingy ability. This extends to his emails being opened and printed out by his secretary and the replies dictated to her, and then typed by her.
As a result I print out the blog every now and again and send him a copy.
I used to write to him direct, but as most of what I want to say is on the blog, it's much simpler just to print it out.
He is always very kind about what I write.
The only problem is that he tends to misunderstand some of my points. So, for example, he thinks Romania is utterly corrupt, that it is totally impossible to do business there, and clearly bad for my health ( I think he means the drink). He did say, how do you manage to get anything done?
I started to explain to him, but a thought struck me and I told him to read it on the blog next time round.
Many years ago, Old King Lear was having dinner with two of my Godfathers. Now you may wonder why I had two Godfathers - actually I had three. It was a business thing. One was the boss of what became British Leyland and the other was the boss of the company OKL worked for. OKL was what used to be called the Sales Director - I've no idea if such a position even exists any more. It probably has " interface" and " solutions" in it somewhere.
Anyway, the company OKL worked for made screws - fasteners for metal. The reason for the dinner was to sign the deal for umpteen million of the little blighters to be put into invarious British cars.
Now GF1 was quite a bon viveur. He had laid on what one could only describe as a viciously enormous dinner, accompanied by gigantic amounts of alcohol, and all three had stuffed themselves, and drunk well but perhaps not wisely. By the end of the meal, all three were virtually immobilised.
Just at that point, the person serving the meal brought a plate of exceptional cheeses. All three shook their heads.
GF1 raised himself a little ; " But I had it brought over specially from France! You must eat it!"
At which point, GF2 leant over to my father and hissed in his ear: " Eat the bloody cheese and get the order!"
And that's how I do business in Romania.

1 comment:

Whispering Walls said...

Like father, like son. Hurrah for the Old King Lear!