Statue of Victory at Hyde Park Corner. Over the weekend I have experienced a great feeling of relief that the Marketing Plan has been accepted without any (overt) opposition. I finally feel as if my future is reasonably secure (plus England beat Austria on Saturday to qualify for the World Cup).

Feeling nervous about my impending presentation

This week I finally got the Marketing Plan out of the way. I was helped by Sales Manager Frank Hunter who came over from Stevenage each day (I say “helped“, but he generally arrived about 11 o’clock, spent about an hour making calls, went to lunch, and then worked with me for a couple of hours before going back to Stevenage). So every day this week I have worked at my PC, my notes spread out over an adjoining veneered repro retro table (all the furniture in the company is of incredible quality - about five years ago the offices were fitted out with the contents of a furniture wholesaler who had gone out of business).

Occasionally I would stop to look up statistics on the internet or telephone the Bleeding Heart Partnership (our advertising agency) for some media information. Customer analysis was particularly difficult - the company is involved in so many activities, one merging into the other, that the offerings are not properly differentiated. As I worked I had the nagging suspicion that the Plan was rather superficial.

“How’s it going?” asked Frank Hunter on Friday morning, hours before the Plan was to be presented at the monthly Board meeting.

“Too many people are hoarding information” I said. “Nothing really makes sense. I feel like Hercule Poirot trying to unravel a mystery”.

Although Frank Hunter is in his mid-thirties, and has a young daughter (by a partner he is now estranged from), his behaviour is so juvenile that sometimes it is difficult to remember he is senior to me. He knows almost nothing about marketing, and when I explain very basic things to him he looks at me with round-eyed amazement, as if he were a child listening to a teacher (his eyes are a bit off-putting - they are amber-brown in colour, and have a glassy shine to them, the whites of the eyes absolutely clear and unmarked by any red veins). Occasionally he tries to pull rank, and on Wednesday we had quite a confrontation about a section of the Plan (I made him back off by threatening to involve Managing Director Marc Bottoni but afterwards I felt that perhaps I had gone too far. I won the point, but at what long-term cost?).

Friday morning, when I was rushing to get the Plan finished for the Board Meeting, I received almost a confessional from him about how worried he was about his job. “I can’t stop clenching my teeth or biting my tongue” he said, “and I take the top off my pen and put it back on again compulsively”. I didn’t know what to make of all this soul searching, since his public persona had previously been one of overwhelming self-confidence.

An awkward point came when he asked me “Are you going to have a role in deciding the marketing budget?”

I didn’t know what to say to this, since the previous day I had asked Marc Bottoni what money was available and he had told me to use the salaries of the Business Development team (who all report to Frank) as the basis of the new marketing budget. Does this mean the Business Development team (about ten people) is going to be made redundant? And since Marc Bottoni has a reputation for setting people up, will it look as if I am to blame for their dismissal?

At noon I went into the Board Room and laid out my papers, checking the laptop was connected to the projector ready for when the meeting started at two o’clock. Then I went to lunch with Frank Hunter, going across to the company’s cafeteria located in a converted bungalow near the entrance to the site. It was the first time I had had a meal at the cafeteria.

Inside the bungalow was a big kitchen and a dining room, the two rooms connected by a wide hatch (there are also two small sitting rooms hardly anyone ever uses). The dining room was crammed with tables, about ten in number, all of them occupied. There was a heavy smell in the air of fried food (afterwards I was sure my clothes smelled of chips - or was this paranoid imagination?). The noise of fifty or so people talking in the confined space, together with the sound of Radio One relayed through speakers on the walls (David Gray singing The One I Love) produced a loud racket so that it was difficult to talk properly. Frank and I queued at the hatch (I just had a mug of tea and a bowl of apple pie and custard) then went to sit down. Because it was the day of the monthly Board Meeting there were lots of managers in the cafeteria, but Frank led the way to a table occupied by six drivers. He greeted them like they were old friends but they were sullen in response.

“There’s lots of the Executive in here today” said one of the drivers. “Not many blue uniforms - we’re outnumbered. By Executive I mean those with a higher job.”

The only person at the table that I knew was Senior Driver Carl Stockton (aged about thirty, lean build, hair cropped short). He introduced trainee driver (aged eighteen) Matt Leigh. Frank Hunter treated Carl Stockton with jocular familiarity, but it seemed to me that this was not reciprocated. He seemed embarrassed by Frank Hunter’s banter about having to sleep on the lorries when on European jobs, and went red when challenged about the amount of money he gets from the customers in tips.

Feeling nervous about my impending presentation I left the cafeteria early, wanting to go across to the Board Room to check things over one more time. Leaving the noisy dining room, it was a relief to be in the fresh air again. I walked across the big landscaped car park, under the elaborate glass and steel porte cochere, through the automatic sliding doors, up the grand staircase three floors (so that I was slightly out of breath when I reached the top), through the glass-encased PA’s section, and into the inner sanctum of the Board Room…

I remember little about my presentation, which I delivered standing up, using Power Point slides. Some of the managers scribbled furiously as I talked, as if they were taking everything down verbatim (although it is possible that they were completely ignoring me and working on something else). Managing Director Marc Bottoni sat basilisk-like and unblinking, watching me intently. Beside him was the Divisional Managing Director, occasionally nodding. Sales Director Mitch Holmes, from whom I had expected some support, sat with his arms folded, looking uninterested. Only Frank Hunter seemed to react positively, looking animated and nodding vigorously.

After about an hour I finished. Marc Bottoni thanked me for the presentation and without a vote said the company would be adopting the Plan (so that was that!). He then asked me to stay for the rest of the meeting (what did that mean I wonder? Am I to be included in the “Executive” from now on?).

At the end of the meeting it was announced that the business unit had gained the Investors In People standard. The staff from the middle floor came into the Board Room and we all had glasses of fizzy French white wine and slices of a big square sponge cake (“Investors In People” in blue and white icing). Toasts were made, short speeches were given, bunches of flowers were bestowed upon Quality Manager Sue Napier and her team who had guided the unit through the Investors In People process.

I was incredibly tired after the meeting.

He was probably too outspoken to survive very long

The first of the autumn political conferences was the TUC (Trades Union Congress) Conference held at Brighton in September. This is an old TUC badge displayed on a building in Bloomsbury. Not sure why it incorporates a fasces, which later became the emblem of the fascists (the TUC is definitely not a fascist organisation, although it still has syndicalist tendencies in some of its economic proposals).

Thursday morning, and it was obvious that work placement Gerald (long-term unemployed, aged about sixty, pedantic in an funny-amusing sort of way) had left the company. “I think you can safely assume that he won’t be coming back” said Eric Morgan smugly. Eric then explained: “Gerald had a way of upsetting Mr Bottoni. I knew after the meeting on Monday he was for the chop.” Eric Morgan is the IT Administrator and company gossip, late fifties, over-weight, married to Jean Morgan one of the sales estimators (with whom he has spectacular screaming rows, often bringing the sales floor to an embarrassed halt). He is the sort of person who enjoys telling you bad news.

Gerald had originally been an accountant, but after a redundancy had found it difficult to get another job, and had been out of work for a number of years. He had joined the company on the same day as myself, which is how we had got to know each other. At that time we were both temps, but whereas my post had become permanent, Gerald had remained on a temporary work placement scheme.

The last I saw of him was on Wednesday when he came onto my floor while waiting to see the Managing Director Marc Bottoni. The tea trolley had come round at that moment and I stopped to have a cup of tea and chat to Gerald. He talked about the political conference season and revealed that he had voted for all three main parties at various points in his life.

“All parties go through cycles” he said. “They start off all evangelical and enthusiastic, and then they get into power. Then they win a second election and the scumbags start to attach themselves. You’ve got to realise that there is big sea of opportunist scumbags rolling around public life waiting to worm themselves into whatever organisation looks like it’s going to get into power. They don’t care about ideology or anything. They just want to get into power and boss people around and line their own pockets. So when someone like Thatcher came along in the seventies and against all the odds began winning elections all the scumbags jumped on her bandwagon. And eventually the scumbags took over, and dragged the whole party down. I’m talking about people like Michael Portillo.”

“Or John Bercow?” I suggested.

“And Bercow” he said.

“Or Chris Patten?” I suggested.

“And Patten” he said. “All the scumbags are interchangeable and could pop up in any party, changing their views to suit the circumstances. They dragged the Tory party down, and when it began losing elections they jumped ship. Now the Tories are going through a sort of purification process and will probably start winning again. It’s Labour that’s got a big problem now. They are the ones being smothered by the scumbags.”

“Who is the biggest opportunist scumbag?” I asked.

“Rupert Murdoch” he said without hesitation.

I liked Gerald, but he was probably too outspoken to survive very long. He had reached a stage in his life when he didn’t care about anyone or anything. He was determined to speak his mind.

It distils Texan attitudes and attributes into a specific cultural identity

(Above) James Dean on the set of the film Giant (photograph of a postcard - all images on this site are original).

Friday evening, after Newsnight, I watched the documentary James Dean Sense Memories, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the actor’s death. Big black and white talking heads (Bud Schulberg, Eartha Kitt, George Stevens) alternated with colour film clips. James Dean is such a familiar and modern figure that it is surprising to realise he would be 74 if he were alive today. The film Giant (directed by George Stevens) is one of the greatest cinematic productions ever made (in my opinion). It distils Texan attitudes and attributes into a specific cultural identity. Despite covering the span of a man’s life it avoids descending into melodrama.

Similar to the iconic impact of James Dean is that of the poet Rupert Brooke, another individual who appears to be "modern" despite his death during the First World War. Because I am so often in Cambridge I am very familiar with the village of Grantchester where Brooke lived (in The Old Vicarage). Very often I meet friends at Browns restaurant, and afterwards we either walk along Kings Parade as far as St Johns College, or else drive out to Grantchester, park by the church, and walk down as far as the mill pool. Recently I read the out-of-print book The Muse Colony which describes writing holidays taken in 1914 by Rupert Brooke with Robert Frost, Edward Thomas and other Georgian poets at the village of Dymoke in Gloucestershire. It is amazing that so many talented writers should have gathered together so casually. If it happened today it would be as a PR stunt and photo opportunity, diligently written up in The Guardian.

The Old Vicarage at Grantchester where Rupert Brooke used to live. Today it is the residence of writer Jeffrey Archer (author of First Among Equals, Not A Penny More Not A Penny Less, Shall We Tell The President - his books are well-written and extremely popular, even though it is fashionable to disparage them). As Helen B once said (adapting the words of Gibbon): "It's the ghost of literary genius, sitting enthroned upon the grave thereof."

“Meetings, bloody meetings”

(Above) very blurred photo of the painting A Lancashire Lass (reproduced on the cover of a Penguin paperback).

Friday morning I drove to work listening to the Today Programme (reports from the Labour Party Conference - an elderly refugee from Nazi Germany had been pushed and jostled by security staff for daring to disagree with the Foreign Secretary about the war in Iraq).

As I was quite early I stopped at a local supermarket intending to go into the café they have there. I parked my car and sat for a few minutes listening to the end of an item on the radio. A big new Land Rover drove into the next space (this was in an almost empty car park - it was ridiculous that the driver should have chosen the space next to me). The driver of the Land Rover reversed and went forward a couple of times so as to position his car exactly in the space, then threw open his car door. There was a loud thud as the door hit the side of my car. Immediately I got out and went round to see what had happened - I must have looked angry as the Land Rover driver (who was considerably bigger than me) began nervously trying to placate me.

“It’s okay mate, it’s okay mate” the driver said. “It just hit the handle.”

I looked at the chrome handle of my Alfa Romeo, but couldn’t see any damage. There was no sign of any damage on the car bodywork. The driver of the Land Rover looked extremely guilty. I noticed he was in the company’s uniform, so he must be one of the warehouse staff driving one of the company cars (he was not someone I recognised, although possibly he recognised me). I got back in my car without saying a word to him (there was nothing really I could say). He got back into the Land Rover and drove off without going into the supermarket.

In the office Frank Hunter (Sales Manager at the Stevenage Branch, and previously head of all the sales teams until the appointment of Mitch Holmes as Sales Director) was at my desk, sat in my chair, and made no effort to move so that I had to sit on the edge of the desk while he stretched back with his hands behind his head, asking me a rapid succession of questions about what I thought of the company. Frank Hunter had come in to Head Office to attend a Marketing Circle meeting. Marketing Circle meetings are designed to reassure Frank Hunter that he is “involved in the loop” and is not being pushed out of the company (whereas in fact being pushed out seems to be exactly what is happening to him).

The meeting was to be held in Sue Napier’s office on the floor below, and because I couldn’t sit at my desk, I went down there to wait the few minutes until the meeting started. Sue Napier’s office had been chosen, I assume, because it was “neutral” ground (there have been some loud clashes between Mitch Holmes and Frank Hunter in the past, an inevitable aspect of Mitch Holmes asserting his command over Frank’s sales teams). Although I have only been at the company a short time I have already sussed that Sue Napier is not someone to be trusted. You get the impression that she is continually looking for someone to step out of line, so that she can go upstairs to tell Managing Director Mark Bottoni about it. Trim figure, brown hair streaked with grey and worn in a short perm, powdered face set in a prissy disapproving look. Her clothes are very conservative - two almost identical trouser suits (one grey-pink, the other grey-mauve) and a succession of dark skirts worn with blouses. As well as her role of Quality Manager, she is also in charge of the Customer Complaints section (three malevolent individuals who exist in a miasma of poisonous gossip on the middle floor west). While we waited for the other attendees to arrive she asked me how I was settling in and what I thought of the company. I was noncommittal in my replies.

Next to arrive were Mitch Holmes (hearty, strapping, bursting with good health despite his silver-grey hair and beard) and Sarah Linton, supposedly his lover (I say supposedly, but there can be little doubt considering the way they relate to each other, even though there must be a thirty year age gap). Sarah Linton is in her late twenties, very good looking but not in a feminine way (she is peremptory to the point of bossiness). She always wears dark business suits with skirts, never trousers (presumably to show off her good legs). Her black hair is naturally curly, and frames a well-proportioned face with a clear complexion (no make up). Her voice is loud, but the accent is well modulated, with no regional inflection. For several weeks I kept wondering why she seemed so familiar, until one day she said “I’m a Lancashire lass by birth” and instantly the image came into my mind of the painting A Lancashire Lass by Lancelot Roberts in Manchester City Art Gallery.

“Meetings, bloody meetings” said Mitch Holmes affably as he sat down.

Last to arrive was Frank Hunter, taking off the jacket of his dark suit (revealing a label that said Cerruti).

“Right” said Mitch Holmes, “this is the second of our Marketing Circles.”

We each looked at the agenda, which listed items so vague as to be meaningless. To avoid being “confrontational” we were not sat round a table but had moved our chairs into an open space and, true to the title of the meeting, were in a circle. Frank Hunter was not sat upright but was in a sort of half-slump, his legs apart and stretching into the centre of the circle, as if he was putting on display his very smart suit, white shirt (thick cotton fabric that glistened with an expensive sheen) and tastefully decorative tie.

So although Mitch Holmes was leading the meeting, Frank Hunter physically dominated it. Opposite Frank sat Sarah Linton. They are supposed to dislike each other (obviously Sarah is loyal to Mitch Holmes) but there was a considerable amount of eye contact between the two, and Sarah often laughed at Frank’s (very poor) jokes. I began to wonder whether Frank Hunter was deliberately trying to flirt with Mitch Holmes’s mistress (is “mistress” the right word in this context? He definitely has an “official” wife he appears with at company functions).

About an hour into the meeting Frank Hunter became sexually excited - this was very obvious, even allowing for the flattering way in which the folds of his Cerruti suit peaked over his groin.
It was as a sixth person had intruded into the meeting. We went on for about ten minutes, Frank Hunter smiling and joking, Sarah Linton smirking, Mitch Holmes, Sue Napier and myself trying to ignore the situation. Sue Napier, sat next to Frank, once pointedly looked down at the upsurge of grey flannel cloth while she was talking, as if to quell Frank’s animal exuberance by the very force of her disapproval. More minutes passed and the primeval energy exuded by Frank Hunter created a tension in the room that was eventually broken by Sarah Linton bursting into snorting uncontrolled laughter. Frank Hunter, still smiling, simultaneously sat up and opened a folder of papers over his lap so that the offending sight was hidden to view.

Shortly afterwards Mitch Holmes gruffly and with little ceremony brought the meeting to a close.

No mention was made of further meetings (they are meant to be monthly) so possibly another link binding Frank Hunter to Head Office had been broken. I went with Mitch Holmes and Sarah Linton back into Mitch’s office to collect a file he wanted me to work on.

“Vulgarity” Mitch Holmes said briskly, in a tone of Yorkshire disgust. Sarah Linton said nothing. I said nothing.

Cecil B De Mille’s 1949 film Samson and Delilah

(Above) Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr.

(Above) Hedy Lamarr and George Sanders.

(Above) Eyeless in Gaza - Victor Mature as the blinded Samson, used as a beast of burden milling grain for the Philistines. The line “Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves” comes from John Milton’s Samson Agonistes. It was used by Aldous Huxley as the title of one of his greatest books (I think so anyway - I know lots of people don’t like Huxley). I have a fear, thirty years from now, of turning into Anthony Beavis from Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza (fat, boring, endlessly ruminating over a wasted life) - it is a fear that has recently made me take up exercising on my brother’s rowing machine, and consciously looking to extend my circle of friends.

(Above) Out of the strong came forth sweetness. The quote from the Bible (King James Version - Judges Chapter 14) refers to the riddle Samson set the Philistines, and has been used as a marketing tagline by sugar producers Tate & Lyle since the nineteenth century. The printed tin for Tate & Lyle’s Golden Syrup has become a classic of packaging design and incorporates an image of the lion killed by Samson. During the winter I often have “treacle pudding” - made with ginger and Golden Syrup.

Sunday afternoon I spent at Helen B’s house. Kim Blacha was also there, analysing more promotional music videos - this time Friday Hill’s Baby Goodbye, the song not released until 10th October (so how did she get the video? Do they send out review copies?). Although she was watching the video frame by frame she was actually listening to a CD of the Back Street Boys. I suggested to Kim Blacha that she put her video reviews on a blog. She looked at me steadily and said: “Do you keep a blog?” This question made my blood run cold, since were this site to be discovered all would be lost (Kim’s question proved to be entirely innocent).

While I waited (two hours!) for Helen I went into the sitting room where the main TV is located, and watched Cecil B De Mille’s 1949 film Samson and Delilah. Back Street Boys was still playing loudly, and the lavish De Mille epic took on the quality of a surreal boyband promo video. In Gaza today the descendants of the Philistines are still warring with their Jewish neighbours.

Intruding on a personal tragedy

In The Times (and also in The Sun) yesterday were accounts of the will of the late Marquess of Bristol. John Hervey, 7th Marquess of Bristol, inherited a fortune of £35 million, but by means of dissipation lost it all and died almost penniless at the age of 44. The Sun majored on the fact that his two half-sisters, so-called celebrities Lady Isabella and Lady Victoria Harvey (“it” girls), were left nothing in his will (presumably because he had nothing to leave).

It was not the sort of article I would normally spend time reading, except that I have a small personal recollection of the last days of the Marquess in Ickworth House, his ancestral home. I had been staying in Norfolk (where my brother lives) and met an assistant to the Marquess’s Secretary. We got on fairly well, and she talked about her work at Ickworth House (in the private wing, not the main house which is administered by the National Trust). It sounded so interesting that I said I would quite like to have a look if she could arrange it. I heard nothing more until June 1996 when the assistant rang me up and said that the private wing was being sold, the Marquess was moving out, and if I wanted a look around I should go over there immediately. I arranged to stay with my brother for a couple of days, and drove up to his house in Norfolk.

The next day, 3rd June 1996, I drove from mid-Norfolk down through Thetford Forest and across the county border into Suffolk, eventually arriving at the tiny village of Horringer. Turning in through wrought iron gates I drove through wooded parkland until the house came into view - huge, classical, and impractical, dominated by a massive rotunda. Driving across the main façade, I arrived at the private wing which appeared very restrained architecturally after the exuberance of the main block.

The assistant met me at the door and led the way inside. She said the Marquess was supposed to have moved out the day before, but had stayed in bed, refusing to get up (despite the fact that the house was already sold, the auction of contents only a couple of days away, and the removal men were waiting outside ready to move his personal effects). The assistant told me that as the Marquess (or Marquis as he insisted on being styled) was still there it was unlikely I would be able to look round, but she would ask anyway.

Inside the building was a long wide corridor, very high, running the length of the private wing and ending in a sort of conservatory where a bougainvillea bloomed in brilliant purple-red. Off this corridor were a series of elaborate staterooms, filled with antique furniture and paintings, the walls covered in yellow satin. Up and down the ground floor moved a multitude of people - valuers from Sotheby’s, managers from the removals company, staff from the estate.

Half-way down the corridor was a grand staircase leading to the upper floors. At the foot of these stairs stood the Marquess’s Secretary, a dazed-looking women in her mid-forties. Her day had consisted of a sort of shuttle diplomacy between the Marquess in pyjamas on the top landing and the tradesmen on the ground floor who were becoming increasingly frustrated at their inability to get on with their work. I particularly remember an obnoxious representative from Sotheby’s, a man in his twenties, referred to as Lord Henry. This individual paraded up and down the corridor with a great deal of arrogance, speaking to the other tradesmen in a very rude and insulting way. I suppose he was taking out on them his anger at being kept waiting by the Marquess.

The assistant introduced me to the Secretary, and the Secretary told me to follow her upstairs, and she would talk to the Marquess. Half-way up she asked to wait on a landing, and then continued up alone. As I waited I looked at an enormous Coronation portrait of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (wife of George III, last queen of America, first queen of Australia - the acquisition of one continent balancing out the loss of the other) and breaking all the rules I took a photograph of this painting.

The Secretary returned and said that it wasn’t possible for me to look around that day, but if I came back the next day she would show me around. “Don’t worry” she said, indicating the staterooms, “nothing will be moved until Lord Bristol has left, and that won’t be until midday tomorrow.” I went back to my car and returned to my brother’s house.

Next day I was back at the private wing at Ickworth just after one o’clock in the afternoon. In contrast to the day before, the ground floor was deserted of people. I walked along the corridor a little way and turned into a sort of office-cum-sitting-room where I found the Secretary. The Marquess had finally left less than half an hour previously (to go to the Bahamas), and she was just recovering from the trauma of that moment (she had considerable affection and respect for Lord Bristol, and I see now that she was very upset over his leaving). We sat and talked for a while, and she described better days when the house was filled with guests. Then she showed me over the place.

In the dining room she described dinner parties when the room would be lit with black candles and the table laid with black china; in one of the sitting rooms she showed me an elaborate mirror the Marquess had had made and was too big to be moved to his new house; we went through a succession of upstairs rooms (on a number of different levels) and into the Royal Suite. Finally we ended up in the Marquess’s bedroom where he had spent his last night. The room was very untidy, the bed unmade, personal effects strewn everywhere. The Secretary showed me the shower, where the tiles were decorated with imperial bees (the Marquess was an admirer of Napoleon). In one of the window embrasures was a silk-upholstered ottoman, and lying on this piece of furniture was a paperback self-help manual entitled The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches. The Secretary pointed at this book and said: “That says it all really.”

This was nine years ago and I was a lot younger then. Not just younger in years, but also less sensitive to the feelings of others. I see now that by going to the private wing at Ickworth I was intruding on a personal tragedy, and had no right to insinuate myself as a witness in someone else’s downfall.

As I left I remember noticing in the downstairs corridor a very expert copy of Poussin’s painting The Shepherds of Arcady where four or five classical shepherds are examining a tomb upon which is inscribed the words Et In Arcadia Ego (implying that death is ever-present, even in paradise).

A ferocious row

(Above) window of a political bookshop close to St Martins Lane.

There has been a ferocious row, staged as a public debate in New York, between George Galloway MP and journalist Christopher Hitchens. The shouting match was reported gleefully on the Today Programme, reviewed in the national press, and broadcast on Radio 4 over the weekend. George Galloway seems to be the only politician to effectively challenge the Government over its policy in Iraq.

Public opposition to the war has become increasingly muted since the general election. People seem bored by the whole issue. Even maverick Ken Livingstone would rather talk about cricket and the Olympics.

The Falklands war in 1981, the first Gulf war in 1991, the second Gulf war in 2003 - every ten years or so the United Kingdom has been involved in a reasonably large military conflict. Alan Nixon believes that the political elite (both major parties) has, covertly and without public debate, adopted a Nietzschean policy which regards war as the option of choice in international affairs (the power of war as an impetus to economic activity, the power of war as a counter to social decadence, the role of war in the definition of political supermen and superwomen etc etc).

I should have gone straight home

Friday, and overnight I had become ill with what seemed to be influenza, including an excruciatingly painful cough. Hardly any sleep. I have not been this ill for several years.

I thought about taking the day off work, but Friday was the day of the monthly Management Meeting. As it was my first one at the company I didn’t think I could miss it (if only I had known how boring it would prove to be!). It was due to start at 9.30, but was put back until 10.

The first thing I did when I arrived at my desk was to check my e-mails. There was a message from Mark Bottoni sent to all department heads (my department, Marketing, only has me in it!), with the comment which he repeated as the meeting began: “This will be an opportunity for you to report on how your department is doing against targets.” As I havn’t been given any targets yet this meant that I could relax. Looking round the table, I saw that others had done handouts with graphs and tables, and Chris Eakins (New Product Development) had even done a presentation on Powerpoint. When my turn came I just talked generally about some of the marketing initiatives currently under way. No-one asked me any questions.

Leaving the office at one o’clock, I should have gone straight home. However, I had made an appointment to look around the medieval church at a village about fifteen miles to the east of the company (I figured that now I was working in a new area I ought to make an effort to get to know the local history). As churches are often difficult to get into I decided to keep the appointment, and then go home (I had been so obviously ill at the meeting that no-one would question a half-day’s sick leave).

It took me about half an hour to get to the village. The area is very impressive in a bleak sort of way. You follow a winding road that is on the top of an enormous bank thirty feet or so above the fields on either side. Trees and hedges follow the road as it winds for miles but otherwise the landscape is bereft of trees. The road follows distinctly the edge of the former coastline before the marshes were drained. You come upon the village unexpectedly - a corner is turned and an enormous square battlemented tower, ashlar-faced, appears, dwarfing the rest of the church behind it. This tower has a fascinating quality, so tremendous is its bulk, like a castle keep. Close to the top of the tower is an arched niche within which is a white statue of the Virgin and Child, looking out serenely over the wide, empty, drained inland sea. The church is situated on a high bank, and is connected with a consecration in 1487 by a medieval bishop (a vigorous opponent of Wycliffe and the Lollards).

Parking the car, I looked out at the drained marshes - an expanse that stretches as far as the eye can see and is used as grazing land in summer and sometimes floods in winter. In times of severe frost it is thronged with skaters in scenes reminiscent of the Brueghel paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Through sturdy wrought iron gates and down several steps to meet the churchwarden, a chatty middle-aged lady who opened the building and showed me around. It was probably unwise, feeling so ill, to have gone into such a cold building, but the appointment had been made and I felt obliged to go on with it. The churchwarden was originally from London but had married into one of the local farming families (she was impressed when I told her my plan of writing a history of the local area).

There were many items of interest in the building, and the churchwarden told me several interesting stories, but I was really too ill to take it all in. Various bits I remember, but they float in my memory, disjointed and distorted by the effects of a subsequent fever (which lasted the remainder of the day and all through Saturday). I remember a huge Royal Arms of Queen Anne, garlanded in ermine and dated 1715. I recall being shown excerpts from the parish records including an entry dated 1748: “Mr Lawson cut a quantity of sparrow grass out of his garden which I had for supper” (mystified, I asked what sparrow grass was - it turns out to be the local delicacy asparagus). I remember discussing the parish charity called (unimaginatively) The Dole, which still has substantial reserves of capital: “The Dole’s still going” she said, “…but as there’s no really poor people in the village we give it out as grants to students.”

After about an hour I felt so unwell that I had to go home. My last question to the churchwarden was to ask why the floor of the building was so low compared to the ground outside. She told me matter-of-factly: “Oh, the church is sinking - has been for years”. We stood there, two Londoners adrift in the wilds, encased by the ancient brick and stone of the church, and slowly, imperceptibly, sinking into the marsh.

As soon as I saw him I immediately knew who he was

A small crisis this week as petrol reached £1 per litre, and reports of blockades by protest groups (protesting at the huge taxes levied on petrol and diesel) led to panic buying at petrol stations on Monday and Tuesday. As my car was almost empty of petrol I had no choice but to join the queues on Tuesday morning, waiting about twenty minutes to get to the pumps. In the queue to pay, the person in front of me said “I nearly got stranded at Birmingham yesterday. I was out of fuel, and the garage I stopped at turned me away, saying they were only serving their regular customers.” On the Today Programme an environmentalist spokesperson tried to portray the destruction of New Orleans as a kind of divine retribution for American over-consumption of fossil fuels. The interviewer (I think it was James Naughty) laughed scornfully at the environmentalist’s crude anti-Americanism.

This week I finally met Frank Hunter, Manager of the Stevenage branch and formerly in charge of all the company’s sales personnel (until the appointment of Mitch Holmes effectively demoted him). I was a little apprehensive about meeting Frank Hunter as he is someone I am going to have to work closely with over implementation of the Marketing Plan. I resolved to try and get him on my side.

In preparation for the meeting I asked IT manager Eric Morgan (aged about fifty-five, plump, grey-haired) for print-outs of statistics that I wanted. He was deliberately obstructive about giving me this information, and I had to make the request several times before, late on Wednesday, I finally got the figures. There was a sort of compliment from Eric Morgan as he handed the print-outs over, telling me: “You are the only person who has ever asked these questions.”

As well as internal data, I also managed to get some TGI research so at least my Marketing Plan will have some credible research to back it up. TGI stands for the Target Group Index, a survey carried out by the British Market Research Bureau every year, asking 24,000 people about their purchase of over 700 types of products, cross referenced with social classifications, lifestyles, and the types of media they consume. The research is then published in a series of volumes, each one of which is incredibly expensive (between £3,000 and £6,000) but if you ask enough people you can usually find someone who will surreptitiously photocopy the pages you want (my copies came from Jon Theobald at the Bleeding Heart Partnership who got them from a contact in the Display Advertising department of the Daily Telegraph).

Early in the week I talked to Frank Hunter by telephone, arranged to meet him on Thursday, and e-mailed across an outline synopsis of the Marketing Plan (I later found out that the arrival of this synopsis caused him a great deal of consternation since he didn’t understand a word of it).

When Thursday arrived I spent the morning on the Operations floor, talking to the staff on the European desk. Clare Vyse is the supervisor of the European desk (at first sight a slim mousey women in her mid-twenties, when I sat in front of her discussing the sales process I became conscious of how big her eyes were, and how dilated the pupils, so that I had the impression of falling into them - it was a disturbing sensation). Her assistant is Scott Jura, a very loud Business Studies student from Keele University, doing a one-year work placement as part of his degree (short curly hair, black suit, mostly darting about the office laughing and joking, but occasionally displaying a slouching moodiness whenever someone has upset him).

Frank Hunter arrived while I was talking to Clare Vyse, and as soon as I saw him I immediately knew who he was (so well had other people described him). Tall, muscular build, aged late-thirties, shortish brown hair with a central parting, dark suit with a faint pin-stripe, bright mauve tie, white shirt (button undone at the collar as if the strong neck had burst it open), designer stubble on his face, tawny coloured eyes looking around the room. He strutted rather than walked, moving between the rows of desks talking to the staff with a mixture of arrogance and disrespect that obviously irritated people (as if he were revelling in his reputation for being unpopular and disliked).

Eventually Frank Hunter arrived at the European desk, and I stood up as Clare Vyse introduced us. As we shook hands and exchanged conventional greetings Scott Jura larked about behind Frank Hunter’s back, making mock applause motions in the style of Wayne Rooney (professional football player sent off the pitch earlier in the week for making mock applause motions at the referee). Frank Hunter and I went into one of the glass offices around the edge of the floor, he took his jacket off (big ostentatious cuff-links) and as we faced each other over a table I thought how he seemed to be the personification of the Brother in Tennysons’s poem “Maud”: That jewell’d mass of millinery; That oiled and curled Assyrian Bull; Smelling of musk and insolence…

We talked for about an hour, and although I tried to establish a rapport I could tell he didn’t trust me. He was very animated when talking about sales, and obviously very intelligent, but when we discussed aspects of marketing he seemed to flounder. Until my arrival he had been in charge of marketing for the company (as well as his sales role - I think he was given the marketing as compensation for being demoted by Mitch Holmes). Even a casual review of past marketing activity indicates that he has wasted huge amounts of money on pointless projects. He showed me a £9,000 design quote for a new brochure, and was shocked when I said I could get it done for less than a thousand. He said he was talking to an agency about poster advertising, and became quite aggressive when I told him that posters were essentially reminder advertising, inappropriate for product launches.

The arrival of the tea trolley (an arcane ritual that seems to have survived the recent cuts and redundancies) allowed us to relax a little. He asked me where I had gone to school (a question I refused to answer since I knew it would label me) and told me that he had gone to Bretton Woods comprehensive in Peterborough. When we talked about sports he told me he was a good squash player.

After our meeting I went back upstairs to my desk. Almost immediately Marco Bottoni, Managing Director, came through the side door and asked me questions about Frank Hunter (what I thought about him, what Frank Hunter was saying about the sales team, whether his marketing projects were any good). I was non-committal in my answers, not wanting to become Marco Bottoni’s spy.

It’s a small world

On Friday I gave a presentation to a party from a local school. Normally Mitch Holmes does the presentations, but he delegated this one to me. I got the impression that he thought the tours were a waste of time.

The company likes to keep close links with the local school (a comprehensive) as it provides a steady supply of recruits - school leavers go into warehouse or transport jobs, and then work their way up into Operations and Sales. Because they join straight from school they are supposed to be more receptive to the company’s way of doing things. Recruiting from one source also reinforces the sense of community in the company (the downside is that the workforce has become intensely cliquey, and sometimes it becomes impossible for outsiders to penetrate the barriers).

The presentation was held in the Training Room. I was assisted by Personnel Manager Rod Heydon. The presentation itself comprised a slideshow on a very old-fashioned carousel projector (really should be updated to Powerpoint). The seating in the training room was set out theatre-style. The school kids (aged fifteen) arrived by coach accompanied by two teachers. The company Receptionist showed them upstairs and they took their seats. There were about twenty of them - they mostly slumped down in their chairs, arms folded, not saying a word (they had obviously been warned to behave). I went through a very general outline on how marketing works, where customers come from, how important it is that we select the right sort of employees with good attitudes that customers will respond to. The talk lasted about half an hour. Then Rod Heydon went over various job opportunities that were available (the company always takes on at least five school leavers a year). Afterwards Rod Heydon took them on a tour of the site - I went as well as there were still parts of the operation I hadn’t seen. In the warehouse David Moyle (aged about nineteen, short, glasses) showed off as we watched him use one of the fork-lift trucks to unload one of the bays - Rod Heydon told me that he had gone to the local school and had joined the company a couple of years ago.

Returning to the front offices, Dennis Keith, one of the Planners, was talking to the coach driver. Rod Heydon told me that Dennis Keith had also been recruited from the local school, whereas the coach driver had formerly been a company driver. It’s a small world.

Paternoster Square

I’m impressed by the new Paternoster Square just north of St Paul’s cathedral - the old Temple Bar (supposedly designed by Wren) has been brought back from Hertfordshire and rebuilt in a corner of the piazza. The square’s mathematical shapes and perspectives are like a scene from a painting by Piero della Francesca. You half-expect to see angels playing guitars, and renaissance noblemen contemplating the Nativity.




















The view of the cathedral above is like the approach to Petra.

The company has the appearance of being modern, dynamic and successful

I am glad that the process of getting a job is over, but I can’t help wondering if I should have held out for something better. I am slightly better paid than previously (an extra four thousand per annum); the working conditions are slightly better; my new work colleagues are, possibly, slightly worse. It is not at all the big step upwards that I had been hoping for.

My physical location changed this week. Instead of being on the first floor, with Personnel and Customer Complaints, I am now on the top floor, with Sales, IT and a small business unit that works closely with Marks & Spencer (part of the endless Chinese boxes of companies within companies that makes up my new working environment). My new desk is not new and not really mine - it belongs to one of the sales supervisors who has fallen out with Sales Director Mitch Holmes and refuses to come into the office (Mitch Holmes just told me to chuck all the stuff in the desk away, as if the Sales Supervisor was already “history”).

The top floor is a big open space, across the stairwell from the Directors’ suites. The sense of space is enhanced by the fact that there are no partitions or cubicles - just groups of desks widely separated. My desk is on its own, against the back wall, opposite a long range of ten desks for the sales estimators (deserted until late afternoon when they all come in at once and the noise level shoots up), my nearest neighbour being way over to the left, in a corner - a Marketing Manager for one of the other business units. Then there is a wide expanse of carpet and more desks over by the windows where the rest of the floor’s staff have chosen to sit. I introduced myself to the other Marketing Manager, and for a couple of days we got in well, until I came in on Wednesday morning and found he had been made redundant (his secretary-assistant, in a state of near-bereavement, going through his desk trying to work out what needed to be done urgently). This redundancy made the rest of the staff on the floor nervous, and they talked about it for a couple of days in a jittery sort of way as if they were trying to frighten each other.

The sociability of the floor is quite low. The people are superficially friendly, but this hides a wariness and sense of suspicion that is obvious in the questions they ask me (as if I had to justify myself in some way). This barely concealed hostility perplexed me until Sales Supervisor Sarah Linton explained things.

“Don’t expect people here to like you” she said. “This was a family-run company for about twenty years until the plc bought them out and began to bring in new managers. You and me are outsiders - I’ve been here over a year and I’m still not accepted” (this was true only up to a point - Sarah Linton had been a secretary in the company about six years ago, had left and made a career in sales, had come back in a senior sales role over the heads of many of her former colleagues, and had then, if rumours are to be believed, embarked upon an affair with Mitch Holmes which further consolidated her position).

Most of the week (my first official week with the company, the temp work not really counting) was spent in an extended induction that included meetings with all the senior managers: Ralph Schofield (manager of the Essex branch) very guarded and non-committal about what he said, restricting himself to answering my questions in as few words as possible; Sue Napier (Quality Manager) defensive and negative, long pauses before she spoke, all the time looking at me shrewdly, as if I was trying to catch her out; Malcom Jeffery (Senior Sales Manager) effusive, conspiratorial, telling me all sorts of company gossip, finishing our session with the loud proclamation “It’s nice to meet someone who agrees with me” (except that I hadn’t agreed with him); Ian Murray (Operations Manager) very polite, very focussed on practical issues, taking me into the Drivers’ Room to introduce me to some of the operatives and telling me “our staff are genuinely friendly and have old-fashioned ideas about service”; and finally Antonio Colaco (Planning Manager), an incomer like myself, with a gurgling sort of laugh that implied he found the whole company slightly ridiculous. It was Malcolm Jeffery who told me the recent history of the company - it had been run by Nicholas Cain, a patriarchal figure and successful entrepreneur whom staff looked up to and respected, but he had retired and his son Terry had taken over and almost bankrupted the firm by building the luxurious office block in which we were sitting, precipitating the sell-out to the plc: “This block has been known as Terry’s Folly ever since”). I held these meetings in the Board Room which I can get to easily by a little-used door adjacent to my desk (this easy access is a two-edged sword - Managing Director Marco Botoni often uses it when he wants to cross from his office to see me about something, almost always at moments when I am obviously not doing anything).

At the end of all these meetings I looked at all the paper I am accumulating on my desk and was struck by self-doubts. Do I really have the enthusiasm to put together a Marketing Plan for an organisation where morale is so low and most people, in the words of Sue Napier, are “just waiting for the axe to fall”? The company has the appearance of being modern, dynamic and successful (an image created by the office block, which is as impressive as anything being put up in the City) but in reality is very narrow-minded and inward-looking.

It was all very elegant and youssoupoffian

(Above): entrance to the Cafe Royal in Regent Street. The Cafe Royal became famous in the 1890s as a centre of literary London. Now it is mainly used as a conference centre.


Friday, and I went to the Café Royal for a committee meeting on an international exhibition the company is participating in. For obvious reasons I cannot identify too closely what the company does, but in one aspect it has international partners, and the exhibition (a first in this industry sector) is intended to draw attention to this international alliance. Having come into the planning of this exhibition quite late, it is not my place to be too opinionated on how it should be organised, but just sitting and listening to the plans I began to be alarmed at how ambitious the show was, how close the date was, and how little practical work had been done.

Mitch Holmes (Sales and Marketing Director) and I got to the Café Royal more or less on time. The meeting was held upstairs in a private suite (pale green, lots of gilding, walls covered in mirrors). About fifteen other people were at the meeting, and we had to wait about until the Chairman arrived (a senior civil servant, quite elderly: “My taxi driver foolishly got tangled up in the Changing of the Guard” he apologised).

There was an interminable session when the minutes of the last meeting were discussed, and then ritually signed off. The meeting itself comprised an endless number of agenda items with clauses and sub-clauses. Considering we were in the heart of the West End, no noise from outside penetrated the room.

Mostly I kept quiet and just listened during the meeting, only once making a contribution (there is to be a conference attached to the exhibition, and I suggested inviting a well-known columnist from the Financial Times to chair this conference). The Indian organiser of the exhibition (Mahesh Mann) gave a report on progress to date with choosing the venue. No-one seemed keen to volunteer for any of the tasks that the Chairman was giving out (he chaired the meeting in a very formal way - all remarks had to be addressed through the Chair, you couldn’t just talk to the meeting directly).

We went into an adjoining room for the private lunch. The waiter and waitress were both incompetent, but the food was very good. It was all very elegant and youssoupoffian (a word invented by Alan Nixon to describe situations where out-of-touch elites imagine they are in control of events but in fact are teetering on the brink of disaster - see Felix Youssoupoff, author of Lost Splendour).

I knew immediately what was going to happen

Once again I made the journey to the company where I am “temping”. In fact, so on-going has the work proved to be, that I have been occupied there almost full-time, and have been so busy I stopped looking for other jobs (I reasoned that there were enough projects to keep me going until the end of the year). I seemed to have slipped into a comfortable limbo where there was no reason to stay, but there was no very great reason to leave either.

The company is very different from my previous place of work. Instead of being in a suburb of a big city, it is in a small country town, being the biggest employer in that town. The journey from my home is almost exactly the same distance as before, except that it is in the opposite direction. The company is part of a big plc (ie listed on the London Stock Exchange) but has all the aspects of an independent enterprise (it had been a family-owned company until about five years ago). About a hundred people work for the company, and as well as the Head Office there are two smaller branches - one in St Neots in Cambridgeshire, the other in Southend in Essex. Most of the employees have worked for the company for many years, and there is a marked culture of resenting outsiders (I suppose that comes from being located in such a small town).

From the main road the appearance of the Head Office is deceptively low-key. A two-story range of buildings (very 1970s in appearance), with a big warehouse behind. This was the old Head Office. As the company expanded it outgrew this accommodation, and in the late-1990s a dazzling new office block was built on a field behind. Because the ground slopes away from the road you can only see this new facility once you have driven round the old buildings. I say it is dazzling, because that’s the effect it had on me. It is a post-modernist glass and brick structure, rising three storeys, big landscaped car-park in front of it, big “state-of-the-art” (as all the Operations people will point out to you) warehouse behind.

My (temporary) desk is located on the first floor (in America it would be called the “second” floor) to the left of the grand staircase that rises the whole height of the building. On Tuesday I went in as usual, a little after nine (I have become careless about my time-keeping - as a temp I can theoretically pick my own hours). I sat at my desk which is in a back corner, glass windows on two sides, tinted glass partition on another, monstrous green plants screening the side that is open. I worked through the heaps of paper I had left the evening before, made some phone calls, sent a great many e-mails. At lunchtime I drove off site and found a quiet place where I could sit and read, trying to ignore the heat (very noticeable after the air-conditioned offices - as I went out of the door a wave of heat seemed to roll over me). In the afternoon I more or less repeated the activities of the morning, in a slightly different order, and by the time four o’clock arrived I was beginning to feel bored.

It was at that point that the telephone rang. It was one of the PAs on the floor above, asking me to go up and see the Managing Director. I knew immediately what was going to happen.

The floor above (over my own floor) is reserved for the Directors. It comprises a lavishly appointed Board Room, a tiny kitchen (out of bounds to staff - it is intended to be used only for preparing Board Room lunches), a large office shared by two PAs, and beyond this two enormous (ridiculously large) offices for the two Directors of the company. I went through the PAs office (neither of them looked up from their work) and into the office of Marco Botoni, Managing Director.

Everyone says that Marco Botoni is a “funny little man”. Despite his Italian-sounding name his accent is broad Lancashire (he was born and brought up in Bolton). Aged in his mid fifties, his hair (worn a little on the long side) is still completely black with no trace of any grey. Short in stature, his face has heavy lines either side of the mouth, and when he isn’t smiling he looks very severe. I entered the office and began to cross towards his desk, but he looked up and told me to sit down at one of the four armchairs. As well as Marco Botoni’s huge desk and the four armchairs there was also a table and eight chairs, and two big glass-fronted display cabinets. All the furniture was very good quality Regency-reproduction, the luxurious style more suited to a house than an office (one of the warehousemen told me that the previous owner of the company had accepted it as part-payment from a creditor who was going bankrupt). Marco Botoni smartly shuffled some papers and left his desk and took one of the armchairs opposite me. They were grey leather armchairs, impossible to sit up in, so that we were both slouching (a very uncomfortable position in which to face a Managing Director).

He smiled at me benignly, and asked how I was getting on, and told me that he had been keeping an eye on me and had received good reports about my work. He leaped up from his chair and called out to the PAs, asking for two cups of coffee to be brought in (the door was open throughout our interview). We then began talking about marketing, and I was surprised at how agitated he started to become. At one point he told me honestly: “No-one here really understands marketing. It’s all smoke and mirrors to me. But I know we’ve got to do it.” The meeting went on for three hours, and at the end of that time he offered me a job with the company, saying that he was creating the role of Marketing Manager especially for me (there was a little haggling over the title - at first he wanted to slot me into a Business Development vacancy so he wouldn’t have to report to the plc an expansion in the headcount, but I held out for a properly-designated role).

The site was almost deserted as I left the offices and went out to my car. There was a sense of anti-climax as I drove home - since my first week with the company I had half-expected to be offered a permanent role. And I couldn’t help wondering: where will this latest episode take me?