I have selected a couple of stories involving cricket and our early time in hospitality when we were very much ‘hands-on’. Also some non-commercial memories from my export days.
A cricketing memory from about 1964 – this was a Priory Park 2nd X1 away game at Wisborough Green. I had gone in at No3 joining the surviving opener Vic and we began to score freely.
I hit a boundary at the end of one over and on the change of ends, Vic was about to face the first delivery of the new over when there was a sudden burst of applause from the pavilion. We batsmen exchanged bemused glances and then Vic decided to stroll up the pitch waving his bat, grinning and nodding in acknowledgement.
It was only afterwards we discovered that the scorer had been a little slow in declaring my final boundary at the end of the previous over had also been my 50 – so Vic had acknowledged the accolade for my half-century. My father loved to recount this story. Another feature of the game was a spectacular diving catch by Rich Keighley.
Some non-commercial memories of exporting days:
- Being roughed up in a Belgian farmers’ demo inside the Gervais-Danone HQ in Paris c1974
- Dinner in a Barcelona palace with white-gloved waiters and sten gun-armed militia patrolling the grounds.
- Signing a barrel-end in a huge sherry warehouse in Jerez with other VIPs – Churchill had signed the adjacent barrel.
- Boardroom in Madrid – a stuffed eagle in a glass case behind every chair.
- South Chicago visit with a distributor to an ‘Irish’ club with IRA – promoting murals.
- Huge bar in Houston, again with a local distributor, drinking Heineken and noticing news item on back-bar silent TV. The barman said ‘some guy called Pope got shot’.
- Minus 26C near Borlange Sweden – advice ‘Cover your ears and don’t run or breathe too hard’…’OK’
- Hostility in Coca-Cola HQ in Essen and a refusal to speak English
- A massive and quite unnerving tropical downpour in Bermuda
A story from the early days in Hospitality when very much hands-on:
My wife Patricia and I worked very hard to get our first place up and running. It involved the establishment of entertainment – Folk/Jazz/Disco club nights – also the growth of the wedding reception side which provided an essential additional source of income.
On this one occasion we arranged a reception, the highlight of which was a special feature cake made by a relative of the bride’s family – a professional patisseur. It was a multi-tiered job – each tier of which had this delicate tracery icing decoration, fanning outwards in thin fronds. This we had to store overnight and display the next day.
I was naturally nervous and carefully removed it to a spare bedroom. The night before the wedding a note from our 14 year-old daughter saying ‘Sorry – Goodbye’.
I leapt up to the room – she had moved the cake – the tiers were still entire, but the fan tracery had been 75% damaged.
Getting in touch with a patisseur friend and using up all favours, he arrived at 6 am on the morning of the wedding. The cake was transferred to the 1st floor restaurant and he worked for two hours to reproduce the original delicate fronds in the correct pastel shade – a work of art – mighty sighs of relief all round.
We eventually found our daughter on the fire escape in tears, but safe and well.
An hour before the guests were due to arrive, our niece and part-time waitress was hopping around on one leg changing her socks – bumped into the table – breaking many fronds clean off the cake – Horror of horrors.
I managed to carefully stick them back on with dashes of superglue – you could see the joins so I assembled the cake in the main reception room, carefully positioning it under a downlight and removed the bulb – thus creating subtle shadows – dappling the joins. We then awaited the arrival of the family with some trepidation – would they notice?
All was not lost as the best man – already thankfully well-oiled – arrived and immediately barged into the cake table – all collapsing in a broken heap.
The family were very philosophical – ‘All part of the fun’.
It was around this time that I ceased to find Fawlty Towers amusing!
Jim Snelgrove (1957-1964)