I have always admired those great souls in the world who re-invent themselves. The ones who triumph personally over circumstance and bend the world to their shape. Those who disregard convention and what is considered decent behaviour and forge an identity completely their own. I am drawn to these people: the Richard Burtons of this world. The Michael Caines. The Vito Corleones. The Ari Onassis. Onassis was half shade, half light. He enjoyed both facets of his character. It is what makes him so fascinating as a man and so attractive to so many women. He welcomed that duality, that Janus faced humanity and was shameless about it. He would say that he was a mere peasant so must be forgiven for his outbursts and vulgar speech. This disarming honesty was also charming and sexy – here was a man so self-confident he could be totally honest about who he was.

For those on the wrong side of his business dealings, it made him scurrilous, untrustworthy, sly. It also made him shrewd, sharp and cunning in search of a deal and profit – two things he was legendarily brilliant at creating. For those on the wrong side of his egocentricity, he was faithless, cheating and selfish. But he could also be thoughtful and caring – a regular guest on his iconic yacht, Christina, was Winston Churchill, then in his incontinent dotage. Ari looked after him and his needs personally and welcomed him aboard whenever the Great Man wanted a voyage.

Onassis stories are legion. He has been depicted in film and attracted controversy and headlines in both serious national newspapers and in the celebrity gossip magazines. He married the heiress to another shipping fortune – and lost that wife to his arch shipping rival, Stavros Niarchos, after she tired of his affairs. He pulled off the marriage coup of the C20th by convincing JFK’s widow, Jackie, then the most eligible woman in the world, to become Jackie O. Perhaps unwisely as her spending habits shocked even this paragon of generosity. And the great love of his life was La Divina herself, the American born Greek soprano, Maria Callas.

But my favourite story about Onassis is not about women. It is not about business. It is about the nature of the man. His approach to those who opposed him. Much of his business life and all of his relationships were characterised by huge drama. The anti-Trust suit brought against the Onassis shipping line by the US Government; the failed deal of the century struck with the Kingdom of Saudi that went sour; the controversy over his rapacious and indiscriminate whaling activities in defiance of the law. His troubled relationships with his children and the seemingly loveless mismatch with Jackie Kennedy – was she just a bauble to signal acceptance by the establishment? I don’t envy him any of these heartaches, even though – a mark of the man – he shrugged them all off stoicly and even revelled in the notoriety some of them brought. And I certainly don’t envy him having to bury his beloved son, Alexander, who died at the controls in a plane crash – a tragedy the tycoon never recovered from and which broke his heart.

No. None of these stories.

I like this story, the story about Onassis buying the Monte Carlo Casino. The casino in Monte Carlo is famous. Not just because James Bond plays there. In its heyday, it was the most glamorous place in the world. The Czarina of all the Russias brought the Imperial Russian Ballet to dance whilst she gambled and an aggrieved patron lobbed a hand grenade on to one of the tables after losing at roulette. There is even a song about the place: The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

As I walk along the Bois de Boulogne
With an independent air
You can hear the girls declare
“He must be a Millionaire.”
You can hear them sigh and wish to die
You can see them wink the other eye
At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo

Fred Gilbert 1892

Onassis wanted offices in the Mediterranean and he had struck up a friendship with Prince Rainier, the ruler of Monaco (Onassis pretty much paid for Rainier’s wedding to the movie star Grace Kelly and the after party was held on Onassis’s yacht). Naturally, he turned to Monte Carlo as the intended location. The Societe des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Strangers (Sea Bathing Society and Foreigners Club) controlled the casino and about a third of all land in the principality, but they rejected Onassis’s request to rent office space. So Onassis bought them. And moved in.

How brilliant. How magnificently one up. Churlish. Vain. Couldn’t make it up. Revenge against the establishment’s snobbery and antipathy to an outsider. But also, good business and very good new business – Ari used his connection with Ranier to stitch up the deal behind the SBM board’s back. He out established the establishment. He had better allies than they did and totally outmanoeuvred their Machiavellian ruse. It is the stuff of movie plots, of third rate novels, and yet, like so much of Onassis’ larger than life life, it happened. Onassis was, for real, the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Ari had homes in Paris, New York, Montevideo and Antibes. But his home was a converted Canadian Navy anti-submarine frigate which had protected North Atlantic convoys in the war and also been at the D-Day landings: the Christina O. She was converted by Onassis to be a combined pleasure palace and office and she represented his character more completely than any of his other hideaways. With 17 cabins she could handle parties for over 150 people and had some breathtaking innovations: a Roman mosaic tiled swimming pool which had a floor to conceal the pool when the space was needed for entertaining and a bar where the stools were covered in whale foreskin. Onassis delighted in telling his female guests that they were now sitting on the largest cock in the world.

It was this coarse vulgarity that both attracted people to him and repelled them. The man himself just laughed, whatever the reaction.

Onassis did life superbly well. He witnessed everything he knew go up in flames as a boy and arrived from Anatolia in Turkey to Athens in Greece as a refugee. He learnt to speak seven languages fluently. He was diminutive in size but his presence and influence were immense. He partied and joked and flirted and fucked, collected art and artefacts, spoilt his children and consorts, amassed wealth akin to Roman Emperors. He counted the good and the great as personal friends and had everything at his fingertips and whim. But he also worked like a demon, in the wee small hours, labouring through the night until dawn after all his guests had partied out and gone to bed. He was inexhaustible. He was alive with life. He was all that a man is – both the terrible rage and ruthlessness as well as the fun and light heartedness. His command of details was ferocious and even if he was bettered, he would usually turn setback to his profit – if not financially then karmically.

I like largesse. I like flamboyance – when done stylishly and without having to be the centre of attention personally. These were Onassis’ qualities. A barrel chested force of nature. Brilliant. Unstoppable. International. Fast. Impatient. Wily. Terrific company. An enjoyer. Entirely self-made. Scion of Greece. A Greek. A man. Aristotle Socrates Onassis. Hero.

Rail travel is dull… commuters, routine and suburbs. Travel on the night train is exotic, dangerous and laden with possibility. Who will you meet in the dining car? What might happen as the locomotive screams through the night time? What strange goings on will happen in the homes flashing past the speeding express? What will the guard find in cabin 42 when he goes to wake the occupant with a tray of tea? What nightmares will haunt the sleepers as they lie in troubled conscience unconsciousness? And who shall we follow as the merry band of passengers disperse to the new day upon reaching the final destination?

It is gripping stuff.

The inherent drama and pregnant expectation within the closeted universe of the night train was captured beautifully in W. H. Auden’s poem Night Mail which was turned into a lovely piece of advertising for British Rail by my old agency, Lowe Howard-Spink.

Sleeper trains have played a big role, not just in the movies but in my life, too. ‘My life – the movie’ definitely features one famous sleeper: The Cornish Riviera Express. Less 1920s flapper dresses, DJs, silver service and Russian Grand Duchesses with their Lady’s maid in tow. More refugee cross Channel ferry bar stewards in crumpled uniforms, a packet of Bourbons and a solitary tea bag in a NAAFI tin tea pot rattling along the decrepit West Coast line.

The Night train – the Sleeper service – departs from Platform 1 at Paddington station at a quarter to midnight every night, except Saturday. It covers a distance of just 253 miles in six hours. It is an old school way to travel. By way of comparison, a flight from London Heathrow airport to JFK in NYC is 3,443 miles. It takes one hour less than the sleeper train. But on the night train, you get your own cabin, a proper bed and a it takes you direct into the heart of town.

You can board and enter your cabin from 1030pm. Between 2006 and 2013 I used it once a week each way, give or take. When we moved to Penzance from Clapham, my original plan had been to learn to fly, take a part share in a small aeroplane with some other London refugees and fly up and down from the airstrip at Land’s End. That plan, as they say, never really took off. And so, along with many other Cornish-based business folk, the Night train was my lifeline. I used to drop my bags in the cabin and then wander off back into Paddington for a pint or two at the Fountains Abbey pub on Praed Street. Or a nice steak and a few glasses of Malbec at a favourite hotel brasserie near the station. I doubt you can do that now – its just waiting for a novelist to set a terrorist attack on the train – as it would be easy to check in (no ID is required, just a ticket), drop a bag off with a bomb inside it and scarper.

I used to enjoy going along to the lounge car where you can sit in comfort (sleeper ticket holders hold the status of First Class), get a night cap (whisky being mine), watch the drama of the whistle blowing and the train pulling out of historic Paddington station, and sip your drink contentedly as the locomotive picks up speed through the window-lit suburbs of London until the darkness of countryside descends. The staff became familiar faces and occasionally you find yourself sitting opposite a famous person: I remember striking up a conversation with the lovely Eddie George, who lived in Bodmin in Cornwall, and had just retired as Governor of the Bank of England. He was just returning home from Hong Kong, where he had delivered a lecture on the future of the world economy for an exorbitant fee. Ensconced together for an hour as we departed London, I got the benefit of his thoughts for free.

From dawn, as the train enters Cornwall, the carriages resound to the sharp, metallic rap of the stewards giving passengers early morning alarm calls. As we stop at stations various – Plymouth, Liskard, Bodmin and Truro – passengers open the latch of their now well used cabins, extract themselves and their baggages and belongings, and shuffle, bleary eyed, along the corridor to the doors. The train spills its passengers onto the platforms, the doors shut noisily in a slam of percussion, and we head off again towards the last stop: Penzance. Threading through railway embankments, past gorse bushes with their tight, bright yellow flowers , scattering horses from their slumber with the noise of the engine, we huff and puff through the landscape of Cornwall until, at last, we emerge from our long night’s travel, to the coast and the magnificent sight of St. Michael’s Mount rising out of Mount’s Bay.

The train has slowed to a crawl now, tired and done for the day, and we limp, tired, into end of the line station. You can hear the sigh of the engine and the tic-tic-tic rhythm of the train as it stops and settles at journey’s end. All who remain, come to ground off the carriages and quietly move towards the taxis and town – home for some, holiday for others. Ready for rest. I always went straight to bed on getting home and straight to my room in London after arriving in Paddington – you need more sleep after the jolting and bumping journey. In truth, the train doesn’t deliver a great night’s sleep. It’s more the Dozer than the Sleeper service.

Often, for me, the night train was the start or end of a longer adventure, overseas. It started me on my way to Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore. Or west to America. Or south to Cape Town. Or north to Moscow. Or simply back home from all those distant lands. But whichever way I was travelling, once I got on board, adventure lay ahead. Either the adventure of new places and new people or of the glorious Cornish beaches and my two favourite people on the planet.

It may not be the Orient Express, but it’s a train you don’t want to miss.

When I lived in Cornwall, Pedn Vounder was my office. If you calculate my life in numbers during the years we lived in Cornwall, you will see why. In the years between 2006 and 2013, when I left to go and live in Brighton, I ran my consulting business, Caffeine, from Penzance. We jokingly described it as ‘Caffeine West Coast’, as if we were a business with a base in California. Being in business worldwide when you are based a six hour train journey from London – from where my business world started (there was no real business to be had in Cornwall itself) – means I travelled a lot. A lot a lot. My commute was the Cornish Riviera Night Train, a crawling, quaint service between Penzance and Paddington station which covers the 306 miles between 10pm and 0530am every night except Saturday. It chugs along, occasionally breaking down, through fair weather and foul, delivering people like me from Truro, Bodmin, Plymouth and Exeter ‘up the line’ (as the Cornish refer to anywhere beyond the county’s border). On this train, I travelled most weeks, clocking up the equivalent distance of going around the world five and a half times. That’s some 600 journeys or 137,500 miles. And that’s before I set off for anywhere else – that was just to get to Heathrow airport.

From my office on the beach, I could look up and see but not hear all the planes as they departed UK airspace for destinations all over the world. And when I was on that beach, it meant that I was at home – either just returned from a mega-journey overseas and recuperating (decompressing as I call it) or storing up sunshine before embarking on another marathon. So looking up, I would always say a muttered prayer to thank God I wasn’t on that plane.

I lived on planes. My passport from those days is a tapestry of stamps and visas. Cambodia, Turkey, multiple USA entry stamps, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, China, Singapore, Japan, Thailand. The long haul trips were usually 10-21 days, often two or three centres, running courses and workshops and training programmes. In the 2006-2013 period, I clocked up some 400,000 air miles, or another 15 times around the world. No wonder I needed a rest.

And when I got home, I crashed, often for two or three days. The jet lag, for one thing. The exhaustion for another – each gig demanded a lot. When you are running workshops or making speeches at conferences back to back it takes a lot out of you. You are on your feet all day. You are also thinking on your feet all day, too. You are giving huge quantities of energy all day to keep the workshop lively and the audience stimulated. And you are often working at night to be at dinners or planning the next day or writing the next proposal to keep the plane in the air. So landing at Heathrow and then schlepping back on the train all the way to Penzance was often a 20 hour journey.

Once home, the beach beckoned. And it was always Pedn. Although I never joined the intimate beach cabal that was the nudist colony, I did strip off. The sand was warm, the soundtrack was waves and gull song and the days I went were always hot – this beach doesn’t do for dour weather. Treen, the nearest village, is two miles away and that’s where you park your car, so you need to travel light: a backpack, shorts, shirt and shoes. Easy to carry, easy to take off. The walk is down a track and eventually you dog leg left at the big rock formation and walk down the side of the cliffs. The last part is a scramble over rocks and a short slide down the rock face on to the beach. It’s not lazy-friendly, which is why it doesn’t get crowded – the tourists stay stuck in Porthcurno.

The tidal reach isn’t huge but that’s a bonus for when the tide is out and the beach is stretched before you, there are ankle deep lagoons that get left by the sea and you can walk from one end of the beach to the other. I occasionally promenaded to the far rocks naked. It is liberating to wander and feel the breeze. And it feels surreal to bid good morning to people as you pass each other’s gaze. It gives you strength when you are wearing only a smile. “I have nothing to hide” it says. “Here I am, and I am fearless.” Swimming is also a joy and as you emerge from the water in the warm sunlight and back across the sands to your towel, you feel renewed.

Looking up and seeing the plane 35,000 feet above me, imagining myself looking down from the window seat at the last of the land disappearing from sight, I feel smug. All that hard work, all that hard travel, affords me the opportunity to do this. My phone goes. It is a client. She can hear the gull cries and says it sounds beautiful. “You should see it”, I say. I tell her I am on the beach. “Do you want me to call back later?” she asks. “No, no. It’s fine. I work from here all the time”. This is part of the image I like to create in my clients’ minds because people equate beaches with leisure and people who spend lots of time on beaches must be either very lazy or very successful. Most people fill in the gap with the latter rationale. I do not disabuse them of this conclusion. It helps me keep my prices high.

I am naked and my eyes are closed with my face turned to the sun. I picture my client in her stuffy City office surrounded by computer terminals and people in suits. I plug in my earphones, give a little wave to the aeroplane above and think God, how lucky I am.

Bryan didn’t respond. Very deliberately he put down his newspaper on his lap and reached for his boarding pass – lodged conveniently in his shirt breast pocket. Ostentatiously he took it out and checked it. Inclining his head up in order to look down his nose through the half moon spectacles at the boarding pass, Bryan smiled politely. With the quizzical assuredness of one who knows he is in the right, Bryan showed his boarding pass to the the stewardess and then to the American. B21.

“This is ridiculous”, bellowed the American. “He’s in my seat – they gave me this seat at check in. My secretary booked this seat. I always have a window seat.”

The stewardess looked at Bryan’s boarding pass and at the one the increasingly irate American was brandishing in front of her face. ” This shouldn’t be happening”, the man pointlessly pointed out. “I guess I should expect it from British Airways.” He spat out the insult, letting the implication that no self respecting US carrier would make such a slip up. He rumbled on – now the centre of attention for all the other passengers who watched the unfolding saga over their magazines. “I have to be in New York for a very important meeting. It’s imperative I get there on time.”

Bryan remained calm. Possession being nine tenths of the law, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, however imperative this man felt it was for him to arrive in New York. The stewardess poured verbal balm on the situation and said to the American that she quite understood and that she was terribly sorry there had been a mix up.

“Mix up! Is that what you call it?” the American boomed. “Look, I’ve had about of much of this as I can stand. What are you going to do about this? This man is in my seat. I demand he vacates it. As I have said, I need…”

“…To be in New York for a very important meeting. Yes sir, I do appreciate that. ” Her face was a model of smiling charm. Her voice was the quintessence of British iciness. She turned her gaze onto Bryan and instantly changed from sub zero to radiant sunshine.

“I happen to know this flight is full so I cannot offer either of you gentlemen an alternative seat. I do apologise. Given this unfortunate situation, I have to ask if either of you gentlemen will give way and I will endeavour to get you on the very next flight leaving for JFK?”

The American was almost beside himself. “I already told you, I booked on this plane for a reason: I want to be in New York, I need to be in New York in the morning. ”

“Mr. Endrell?” she entreated Bryan with her eyes and gave him her most brilliant smile.

“Well”, began Bryan, ” I might be able to rearrange a few things if it makes things easier for everyone.”

“Oh, thankyou, sir”. The stewardess beamed. The American looked victorious.

“If you would like to start gathering your things, Mr. Endrell, just give me a moment and I will call Flight and see what we can arrange for you. Bryan folded his glasses and put them in their case. Slowly, very slowly, he collected his papers, his bits and pieces and started putting them away. As he did this, the large presence of the American businessman slowly simmered in frustration, impatient to get into his seat, which, apparently, was still so obviously occupied by this stuck up Brit.

The stewardess returned. “Mr. Emsell. Have you got everything? Would you like to follow me? I’ve got you on Concorde. “

Bryan rose from the seat. As he pushed out in to the aisle, he smiled at the American. “Enjoy your flight” he said.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It pays to be nice. It pays to show grace. And you’ll probably get there quicker, too.

Flight takes you away. And parting is such sweet sorrow. On the one hand, I was leaving my little family behind and whilst that isn’t too terrible on short haul excursions, it was painful for the sort of three week extravaganzas I had when we lived on the Western tip of Cornwall and I earned my living as a consultant in far flung locations. On the other hand, it is always easier for the departing for they have exciting adventures ahead of them whilst those left behind just have ordinary existence with which to entertain themselves.

In my heady days working for the advertising group Omnicom (2000-2007), a Gold BA Executive Club card came with the job. Before that, I had only worked in London agencies with predominantly domestic clients, so air travel was rare other than for the odd flight to Dublin or European HQ in Paris (before Eurostar) or for family holidays. I did once fly to New Zealand on a TV commercial shoot for Irn Bru where the client insisted on attending and, as the Account Manager on the business, I was forced to go in order to keep the client away from the film crew so he couldn’t interfere. Luckily, he got bad sun stroke on day 1 and was in bed for the next 8 days, so I got to go diving with dolphins, whale watching and exploring whilst he nursed his beetroot coloured face in his bedroom. And there was a nice car shoot in Nice, a speech in Helsinki. And a training course in Chicago. But apart from that, it was mainly road trips up the M1 to Luton or flights to Manchester and Edinburgh. Nice, but no cigar.

The cigars started in earnest when I started at Omnicom. On day 3 of my new job I was flown to NYC for the annual Omnicom golf day at a country club in Connecticut. At Heathrow, I deposited my car at valet parking – your PA pre-books, you drop the keys off at a special location and walk into the terminal. When you arrive back, your car is waiting and you drive off home. I made my way to the Gold Executive Club checkin (there is only one run higher and that is First Class and Concorde), waltzed through Fast Track security to the Executive Lounge and tucked in to the free booze and newspapers. When we were called to our gate, I enjoyed the thrill of turning left onto the plane – Business class. In my seat, always window (BA log your preferences) I was offered Champagne and I settled in to my entertainment. I felt like Hunker Munker in Beatrix Potter’s tale Two bad mice, like a house breaker who shouldn’t be there carried away with excitement at the prospect of all this luxury.

At JFK we were picked up in a Lincoln, the sort of plush American automobile they use for executive chauffeuring Stateside, by a besuited Omnicom driver. Mineral water in the back, padded leather seats and aircon.

A drive into Manhattan and the New York Palace Hotel in Midtown. Forty stories of Madison Avenue Mad Men living beckoned as the huge doorman opened our car door and bellowed “Welcome to the New York Palace, gentlemen”, for which he palmed a $5 tip from my colleague. I love New York, I remember thinking. It was like plugging yourself into the mains electricity – a charge of raw voltage you get nowhere else on Earth. Check in and then the express elevator to the thirty second floor. The suite was huge. You could have landed a plane in it. Two double beds. Window overlooking Rockerfeller Plaza and the skyscrapers of the City with a marbled bathroom and plush carpet. I had clearly arrived.

The day before the golf day we had a Board meeting in the Omnicom boardroom. The furniture was all French polished wood and dark mahogany – what passes in corporate America for classy. The chairs looked like they had been inflated by an overenthusiastic body builder – they were so plush that my feet literally didn’t touch the ground. It was like being back at school on your first day when your uniform is two sizes too big and so is everything else. Before the meeting, my British colleague took me to Delmonico’s down the road from the hotel for a foil wrapped bagel with cream cheese and bacon, a gourmet coffee and a fresh juice. It was a proper American breakfast. I returned to my room with it and devoured it, revelling in the executive lifestyle that was now so clearly mine.

The following day we were ferried up to Westchester Country Club for the golf tournament. A lot of WASP men smoking stogies vied for the attentions of the CEO, whose club this was. It was the nearest thing I can imagine to what it must be like in Hollywood when you go to a party and people are curious to know who you are – you’re a fresh face after all – and then drop you the moment they find out you’re not important at all. A few people turned their back on me that day. That’s ok. I remember who they were. That kind of information always comes back to be helpful.

And so on. NYC was a regular trip. I must have travelled there forty times. Twice a year we took our roadshow to Milan, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Munich, Brussels and Frankfurt, always first class travel in a first class way. But turning left at the gangplank got serious when I started travelling for Caffeine, the business consultancy I started with Chris Cowpe and Andy Milligan in 2007. My first gig was Cambodia. Then Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Goa, Cape Town and Jo’burg, Shanghai, NYC, LA, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Istanbul, Bahrain, Dubai, Jeddah, Beirut, Bangkok and Macau. It was heady.

Always the client forked out for business class travel and turning left became a lifestyle. A lovely lifestyle. I got used to metal cutlery and linen napkins, to Wedgewood China and smiling service. I got blase about comparing the standards and expressing a preference for Singapore Airlines over Cathay or Virgin over BA. I caught up on films with the in flight entertainment as I drank fine Bordeaux or Rioja and ate my rare steak. I never said no to a top up. It never lost its thrill but it didn’t do to show too much excitement. It became my right. My just desert (and the desserts were good, followed by a little cheese).

This way of travelling became the norm. But even by these standards, the iconic BA001 flight was exceptional. In 2020, BA retired its all business class flight to NYC on the A318. I flew this route just once, one way, but it was magnificent. Flying from City airport in London, you fly to Shannon in Ireland where the plane refuels and you go through US customs so that you arrive in NYC as a domestic flight. This saves oodles of time in immigration as the line in Shannon isn’t quite as long as in JFK. I flew the Westbound leg in 2012 and even got to sit in the pilot’s seat and wear his cap – an impossible feat in today’s air security conscious world.

Turning left is habit forming. There was an old ‘suit’ in the legendary agency Collett Dickenson Pearce called Nigel Clarke who only ever turned left. God alone knows what his driving was like. I got the habit. But those days are gone. Of course, there are other ways to fly, when flying returns. Private jets are a different proposition altogether and I do know a couple of people who indulge this luxury. They are both utter dickheads. And easyjet pioneered the era of very cheap air travel, with none of the bells and whistles I like. When the dot com bubble burst and all the jet setting, high fallutin’ travel junkets changed, the Omnicom CFO issued a memo inviting people to sit at the back of the plane in economy. “If I’m on the plane, you’ll definitely be more comfortable there”, he wrote, menacingly. We obliged. It was a foretaste of what was to come with the crash of 2008, but no one saw the near terminal Covid effect on flight coming. Flight will return, but it will likely as not never return to the excesses of frequency (taxi service) and take-it-all-for-granted luxury that I enjoyed. So I raise my Martini and drink to ‘Turning left’ – one of the nicest, if not the only, ways to travel.

When you drive through fog you drive differently. In normal conditions, we often multi-task as we drive, thinking of that meeting coming up, listening to the radio, talking to our passengers, vaguely aware of the instrument panel and generally but not specifically aware of the current condition of the vehicle. When conditions are benign, we proceed on auto-pilot and at speed. When it’s foggy, we kick into manual control, we focus our attention and prioritise the most important actions. We progress slowly, deliberatively and focus on getting to the next place we can see in a rolling sequence of increments. We operate smoothly – no sudden movements – but always alert to the need to react very quickly. Background noise (music, chatter) goes off. We attend exclusively to the task at hand – staying on the road and avoiding any collisions. We heed the instrument panel much more than we would ordinarily – all data and information is assimilated to help navigate through the fog.

Running a business in this climate is a lot like driving in fog. There is virtually no visibility of what lies ahead. The landscape keeps changing – every increase in Covid cases throws in a new bend in the road. Businesses have to concentrate very hard and proceed slowly – not something that comes naturally. The worst thing we can do in such circumstances is to go helter-skelter in one direction, work out that doesn’t work, about turn and charge off in another direction. In this foggy environment, we need to drive slowly, consciously, thoughtfully, considerately, alertly, carefully. We proceed tactically and we prioritise only that which is vital – all other distractions go on hold. All that matters is to get to the next place we can definitely see and proceed from there. In this respect, the recent signing of the trade deal with Japan is very timely. Japan is well known for making decisions slowly and consensually. In Japan they will sacrifice speed for surety. They also define speed differently: as ‘moving slowly but in the same direction’ (think tortoise rather than hare).

Those businesses that move slowly but in the same direction, which prioritise and operate tactically whilst remaining wide awake to the possibility of reacting very fast to circumstances, will trade through this situation. Those which spread their attention across too many tasks, dilute their focus or which continue to go too fast will have a hard time of it in the coming 18 months.

In 2007, on the eve of the last cataclysmic economic depression, my clients in a large French investment bank were tearing their hair out in frustration with their highly risk averse bosses because they were closed out of deals happily being made by competitors such as, er, Lehmans. The French bank weathered the crisis without a government bailout. One of the only major banks in the world to do so. We all know what happened to the other firm. Worshipping at the altar of speed isn’t always the way to wealth. The trader mentality shouldn’t always hold sway; the slower, more deliberative, consensual, analytical, tactical style works better in recession. The watchwords for now are: prioritise and behave tactically. The fog will lift. For now, we just have to get through it without incident.

He influenced our taste as a nation, both with what we eat and what we surround ourselves with at home, in the office and when we go out on the town. Conran’s philosophy of design insisted that objects should be ‘economic, plain, simple and useful’. He was, he said, “a Bauhaus-educated chap”, and everything he created was true to their principles – form followed function, resources were used cleverly and materials were ‘true’.

As a nation we owe him a lot. He inverted the worlds of Upstairs Downstairs style, making the simplicity of Downstairs design and materials the sign of a modern outlook in life. He liberated the post-war generation from swirly carpets, dark, heavy mock Georgian furniture, chintzy curtains and elaborate wallpaper, and replaced them all with stripped wooden flooring, light wood, pull blinds, paints and exotic textures. He introduced Britain to the duvet – which radically transformed the nation’s sex life. You are probably sitting on a Conran inspired chair as you are reading this article.

Conran’s design ethos is a good metaphor for how business could be done better in this austere, Covid economic climate. Our business landscape is bleak at the moment – grey, difficult, uncertain, post-war-like.

We are facing the largest economic depression in history. We need to reset the world of work to generate revenue. We need to forge new ways of doing business more appropriate to our changed circumstances. We need to be less wasteful and use precious resources more sustainably. How should businesses go about this task? For inspiration, we can look to Sir Terrence. Conran design is accessible, simple, utilitarian, economic and colourful. Vibrancy, energy and quality are built in. It chimed with a society ambitious for new solutions and a more egalitarian future. Nothing is fussy, nothing is over-engineered. Everything is stripped back – his was a philosophy of utility and beauty.

For businesses now, the same principles must apply. Keep things simple. Focus only on that which is necessary. Do not compromise on quality. Anticipate what customers have a hunger for, even if they don’t know it yet – trust your instincts and try. Conran discovered people were ready for his aesthetic by experimenting. He created a brand new market.

Conran was also a colourful character. So much of business has become bland and grey. Mired in jargon, a culture of spreadsheets and arse-covering. We need colour, bravery and imagination now more than ever. Most of all, Conran made good taste accessible to everyone. He won’t be remembered for a specific piece of furniture, kitchen implement, seminal chair or recipe, but he created a vision that was both exciting and democratic and which transcended the contribution of more elite designers. He was a visionary, and if we need anything right now, it’s visionaries. Let’s hope his legacy inspires the visionaries out there to take the platform he created and build a future that works for all of us.

My notes from those three days increase the yearning I have for real life immersive experiences. The physical location, the atmosphere, the frisson of bumping into different people, the food, the smell of the sea and the grass and the heat, the feel of a cooling breeze, the free exchange of ideas. New faces, new voices, new conversations. Communal laughter. The touch of another human’s hand as you greet. The visual feast of the setting and the stages set up for discussion groups, the conversation starters stencilled onto the walkways; the swish of the swaying palms as you talk in their shade and sip your cooling juice. All of these create an environment where conversation and ideas flow, where the brain wakes up, where minds are changed and where the serendipity of human connection can occur. I don’t know about you, but I really miss that in the current, comparatively sterile, super-efficient online era. It’s difficult to get truly involved in a virtual event – just look at the Democrat and Republican conventions from last week. TV isn’t the same as a live event. Live events and workshops rely on all the senses being engaged at the same time – including the sixth sense. That’s why they’re so stimulating.

STREAM is really impressive. The whole thing, apart from flights, is all paid for. You don’t have to put your hand in your pocket for anything. The programme is packed and everything runs on rails. By the time I got there, this event had been running for a decade and they have it down to a well oiled machine. This is what inspires me: this is where I feel stimulated and alive with ideas – where there are meaningful conversations about the vast array of issues, opportunities and problems facing the world, ideas around solving them and exposed to the passions of people. I miss immersive experiences – those where you are wholly involved, body, mind and soul.

Such idea-fests change the conversations you have with others and with yourself – they give you new perspectives, often as a result of entirely coincidental exchanges. They transport you mentally because they put you in a unique environment with stimulating people for a finite period of time, which is intense – and all the more memorable and affecting for being so. By contrast, too many business conferences and workshops have the same effect as fast food: they fill a hole but leave you empty, unsatisfied and wondering why you didn’t do something more worthwhile. Whereas these events demand something of you in order to work. You participate in them rather than simply spectate, and you do so for an extended period so the experience is more engaging, the debate extended and the learning endures.

STREAM’s agenda is put together entirely by the delegates and each event is led by volunteers from the invitees. Yossi is the Michael Eavis of STREAM – its originator. I ran in to him on my first day and had a notion he was someone important “should I have heard of you?”, I asked. “Why should you have heard of me?” he replied, twinklingly. He had a name badge and the title of the company was DLD, which I think was as near as he could get away with to OLD. He told me he had wanted something else, something the team wouldn’t allow him to have. He exemplifies the spirit of STREAM: sharp minds, un-pompous people and alive with energy.

The stars of the event are you, the invitees. On the first night they run IGNITE. The volunteer speakers get 15 slides of 15 seconds’ duration each slide to speak about something they feel passionate about. It was exceptional. The standard never wavered even though the styles were all unique. There are some really fine communicators at STREAM – easily as good as TED talkers. We had talks on climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, genetics and how science is disproving racial difference, the inequality faced by women. I particularly enjoyed the Iranian guy who kicked off with: “I’m Persian, so it’s nice to be back in Marathon after all these years…” which got a big, knowing laugh from the historians in the crowd. Every time one speaker went off I felt sorry for the one that had to follow…only to have the new speaker raise the bar even higher. It is another example of what true performance looks like and how ‘being there’ and feeling the entire audience reaction, not just your own, is so enlivening. 

When you arrive at the campus, you are invited to participate any way you want to. You can volunteer to help the organisers. You can do a cooking shift. You can team up and participate in the live pitch for a project they run. You can be an IGNITE speaker. You can be in the cabaret and do a turn on stage. You can help with film screenings. You can host a debate, which is what I did. The meritocracy kicks in: there are huge white boards marked with time slots and venues – mainly outdoor venues set up with chairs and tents and flip charts. You put up the title of the debate you want to host and all the delegates sign up to whichever sessions appeal to them. Simple. Some people ran them as lectures, others said a little to get the ball rolling and then open it up to the floor. I attended talks on subjects as diverse as the role of cities, the workplace of the future (no one anticipated this scenario), wellbeing and mindfulness, propaganda, is democracy dead and making hats. The best one I attended was hosted by a super bright police inspector. She was a refugee from McKinsey who had worked out that the career opportunities were far greater in terms of social impact and rapid promotion if she joined the Metropolitan Police instead of pursuing management consultancy. That insight clearly paid off – she was the youngest inspector on the Force. It was a tour de force of a presentation.

I love events like this and I am indebted to Jon Steel for swinging an invitation for me. It was amazing to be amongst such vital, vibrant, intelligent people and be part of a community for three days which made me feel a part of the debate rather than just a bystander. What music festivals are for the spirit, immersive events like STREAM are for the brain. The current health crisis facing the world has put paid to such joy. Such joy, such stimulation on such a scale is not replicable online. We crave community – the community of ideas, of common, collective and shared experiences. Of immersion in all the senses, not just the visual and aural. For now we must be cautiously optimistic and patient: we lovers of the ‘live’ must wait, but our time will come again. There has never been more to debate nor more need for the collective ingenuity of bright, motivated, vibrant people coming together to create ideas and solve the issues facing us all. Let’s hope we can all get together again soon, because un-conferencing in the real world beats conferencing in the virtual world hands down if you want to change the conversation.

We sat. We waited. We looked at the menu but we knew what we wanted. I looked at my watch. No one had come over or acknowledged us sitting down at the table. My temperature rose ever so slightly. Still nothing and no one came over. My silent wariness escalated to Defcon 3. I was on edge. I wanted my coffee. Where was the waiter?

The garcon appeared from the interior, tray balanced on his flat palm; he did that half run, half walk thing they do so well. Over to the table…of another customer. He was thirty feet away and over to the left. I raised my hand in a gesture signifying insouciance with a hint of mild irritation. Not a glance. He disappeared and then quickly re-emerged from the dark interior. And arrived, order pad in hand…at a table over in the right hand corner of the cafe’s boundaries. He smiled and nodded at the customers, an elderly couple. Regulars. Order taken, back into the cafe. He glanced over at us. I raised my hand and my eyebrows again. Nothing. Ignored. Invisible.

Six minutes elapsed. My arms were clamped to the sides of my chair and about to hoist my hungry form to a different cafe when the waiter walked towards us, .

“Vouse etes Americaine?”, he accused.

“English. London. “I replied.

“Ah” , he sighed.

“You sink I do not see you, waving your arms up like zis?” He gestured with his arm, fully extended, waving left and right in a ruthless parody of my attempts to get his attention a few minutes earlier.

“I am a professional. I see you. I see you sit at the table. But you are in France. Zere is a way to do sings ee’air. Ea’air, we take our time. Relax. Settle. I ‘ave seen you. I will come. Read ze menu. Decide. You ‘ave time. Zer is no rush, no..” and with that, his arm went up again in the mocking pastiche of my frantic, attention-seeking.

That was me told.

When I tell people this story, most say “well, I would have left – the cheek – typically French”. To which I say he was right. He is right. In the UK, we tolerate any behaviour, however loutish, rude or ill considered. In France, there are rules. Ways of doing things. Protocols built up and refined over centuries. Especially around the manners regarding restaurant etiquette. This wan’t the first time I have been told off for being Anglo-Saxon. The first time was in an Alpine ski resort when I walked up to the proprietor of an open air mountain restaurant and, in my best French, bowled in with: “Bonjour. Avez-vous une table pour six personnes a une heure et demi, s’il vous plait?”

The proprietor took my arm. He walked me back to the wooden perimeter of the open air dining space. I clumped along with him, struggling to keep up in my ski boots.

“‘Ere in France, we start with “Bonjour, monsieur. Ca va? We do not leap straight to ze request for a table. I ‘ave a table. But lentement – slowly. Now. Try again.” And he retired back to where he had been.

Patronising? Yes. I felt patronised, humiliated and…fascinated. He took me off guard. The Brit inside me wanted to stand on my dignity and flounce off. But you can’t flounce anywhere in a pair of Salomons, and you usually trip over your dignity even if the boots don’t get you. I swallowed my pride.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” I smiled. “Comment t’allez-vous?”

“Tres bien, merci, monsieur. Et vous?”

“Moi aussi, merci Monsieur. Est-il possible de reserver une table pour six personnes cet apres-midi a une heure et demi, s’il vous plait?”

“Bien sur, monsieur. Sur le balcon ou dans l’interior?”

“L’exterior, s’il vous plait.”

“De rien. A plus tard.”

“Bonjournee, monsieur.”

Lesson learned.

Another lesson. When you go into a shop in France – a baker, a hard-ware store, a fruitier or bookstore – it is polite to greet the person behind the counter as if you were entering their home. (You often are.) Not to do so runs the risk of being regarded as rude and ignored. Brits tend to behave on holiday as if they owned the place. They rarely stop to consider that Brit rules don’t hold sway here. Where it is perfectly usual in the UK to scramble for a table and sit down immediately in a busy cafe before the staff have had a chance to clear the detritus from the previous customers, in France, people wait until the waiter has cleared, cleaned and re-set the table. They are shown to the table. The waiter knows they are there and everything is just so, the way it is supposed to be. Everyone can relax. The waiter can do his job; the customers can do theirs and enjoy themselves. Smooth and simple. Rules make it work.

“Attendre!” is the single word cry from parents that most French children are brought up with, and which conditions them to behave patiently and not to demand attention in that thrusty, American-British way. It is why French children sit quietly at table and don’t have to be “entertained” by being glued to an i-pad screen. It is how they learn the art of eating what is in front of them (not just nuggets and fries) and how to converse (because their parents involve them in conversation or they hear grown-ups having conversations). “Wait” is a word we think is an insult in the UK. “Why should I wait? What for? Says who? I am too self-important to wait for anyone.” We have a culture of ‘the customer is always right’; in France, the person who knows the way it should be done is the one who holds sway, who is in charge.

I am an unashamed Franco-file. I love France. I think the French have life right. Righter than most. Righter than anyone, in fact. I want to live in France. Yes, the cussed Englishman in me baulks at being told what to do; but I also admire a culture that has found the best way to do something and brings up generation after generation in that tradition. In our shopping obsessed, screen-nannying, over-indulged, selfish, snowflake society, where no one is allowed to say this is right or that is wrong, where anything goes and rules are scorned, where a paralytic girl vomiting her guts up on the pavement at midnight is a badge of honour, where table manners are a thing of the past, eating is mainly done mindlessly and on the move and where a child’s every want is pampered to obese levels, it is worth a telling off every now and again to be reminded that there is a better way to be.

Leur mode de vie. C’est pour moi.

I am not saying you cannot work from home. Many of us will build much more home working into our professional lives from now on. But only when the kids have returned to school and we can get some space to think and concentrate. Without space and the ability to focus for more than twenty minutes, without having to cook a meal, fetch a snack, play a game, read a book, mark some homework, help with an essay, go to the playground, tidy the house, well, it’s hard to make any progress. So I, for one, can’t wait for term time to start. I can’t wait to get the kids out of the house. I can’t wait to put into operation all those initiatives I have begun during the last six months. And there are a lot of them.

The only way to get anything to do with work accomplished has been to rise at 0500 hours and focus, undisturbed, until the first morning stirrings from the family. These vary. On a good morning, I am left alone for three full hours. On a bad morning, my daughter comes and sits on me after just an hour and a half. The difference is anywhere between a thousand and two thousand words. Broken concentration kills what I do. From then on, it’s back to being CEO of Flat 5. Only recently have I been able to negotiate getting out of the house and disappearing to my usual, pre-Covid 19 haunt for a full, uninterrupted 8 hours. (It is bliss.)

During the lockdown, my early morning starts bore plentiful fruit. I have written a book of 70,000 words (Catalyst – using personal chemistry to turn contacts into contracts, published in 2021), created two new businesses start ups – Forthwrite (how to write more persuasively in business) and Bounceback2021 (to help businesses kickstart their growth post-pandemic) – and one new cultural coaching offer for executives moving to the UK – Livelikenatives. Plus, I have created this blog site and written an entire website for our holding company. Oh, and I did manage to work in normal hours whilst my usual consultancy work disappeared down the proverbial, by re-inventing myself as a teacher. I taught 150 hours of lessons on Zoom in four courses invented from scratch – an introduction to creative writing; an advanced creative writing workshop; the power of your image (to help 15-21 year olds how to write a resume, ace an interview and communicate properly in the adult world) and a course for adult immigrants coaching them how to understand Britishness.

Now I want to bring them all to life.

In the past, I have often wished that the world would stop so I could actually think and get some stuff done. Well, it did stop. And now I can’t wait for it to start again. Not just to fill up the personal and corporate coffers but also to get some intellectual stimulation for my brain. To get a bit of adult conversation. To get the buzz of dialogue and getting things done again. I have missed it all. I am sure I am not alone. The question is, for businesses and business people, how do you go about re-galvanising your business in the biggest economic downturn in history?

We can take a lesson from evolutionary biology. For living organisms, there are only two survival strategies: r selection and K selection. R selection is for those species that produce many “cheap” offspring and live in unstable environments. K selection, for those species that produce a few “expensive” offspring and live in stable environments. In case it has escaped anyone’s attention, we are living in a highly unstable environment. Which means that, by chance, or instinct or luck, I have happened upon precisely the right strategy for these conditions – namely, to use the r strategy and set as many things in motion as possible. Now all I have to do is get the word out there to as many other people as possible.

Anyone listening?