From  2006  

A trip to Paris for another HR newcomers’ induction class. Nondescript journey until I arrived at the hotel. Went into the Renaissance in La Defense, walked up to reception and told the lady I had a reservation. She looked at me blankly. I repeated my statement. 

“Er, do you speak English please?” she said. “Sure. I have a reservation for two nights.” “Sorry,” she said, ”I am Dutch and I can’t speak French”. I was amazed that a hotel would put a non French speaker on reception in a landmark Parisian hotel.  

The course was due to begin next day, so I had a free evening. Off to my regular haunts in Courbevoie for dinner. It was an amazing night. Normally on a sunny evening in Paris the streets and restaurants are full. Tonight was a key world cup game for France. In the qualifying rounds they had played poorly and had to beat Spain (a good team) to go through. My French colleagues were not hopeful. 

The streets were deserted and the bars and restaurants mainly empty. It was like a ghost town- I had Paris to myself.  

I went to my favourite Chinese restaurant, where I was the only customer. 

I was amazed by the change in the teenage kid who served me again. You may recall from my earlier account that he was shy and diffident, but 9 months older he was taller, stockier and had acquired some Parisian swagger. 

During the meal they opened the street door because of the heat, and I heard some cheers suggesting that France had scored ( The door had been shut before so I didn’t know that Spain had scored first.) 

A great meal and this time they gave me a decorated paper fan instead of a pen. 

I walked back to La Defense with not a soul in sight. Walking through the deserted precinct of La Defense I had an amazing experience. Walking down the centre of the precinct I was a long way from the buildings and none of these were residential, but I suddenly heard a deafening cheer and a roar of celebration. I don’t know where it came from, but it seemed as though thousands if not millions of people in their homes, with their windows open, were joining in a city-wide cheer. “Guess France are winning” I thought.  

Into my hotel room and switched on the TV just in time to see Zidane, the French captain, score to make it 3-1 to France. Even with the double glazing the community roar was again palpable as it rattled the windows. 

Next day notable for subdued hungover Frenchmen and  lots of empty packets of aspirins. 

Successful class, despite day 2 where the air conditioning malfunctioned and temperatures in the room topped 40 Celsius. 

Nightmare trip to Charles de Gaulle. Maybe it’s just that I use it so frequently, but I expect to have a bad time and am rarely disappointed. The taxi driver who picked us up told us the main road to the airport was blocked due to accidents, so if we wanted to catch our flights we would have to go via a country route. Went to CdG by the most circuitous route imaginable. Double the (substantial) normal fare and it still took over an hour. Next time I’ll take the train.  

Flight delayed (this is Paris) but finally back to the UK. 

 

Next week, a trip to Dublin for a team meeting. I flew out in the middle of the day as I had a family mission to accomplish. Landed without event and driven to my hotel by a very nice lady who shared my surname (she had married into it). 

Conversation suggested that if we were related it must be very distantly as we knew no one in common. 

Unpacked and made some calls, grabbed a quick lunch and off on my mission. 

My uncle Joe was a great influence to me in my youth. He was possibly the first in the family to gain a senior role in business, though he had only an intermediate formal education. As he married rather late in life and he and his wife had no children of their own, he was a very diligent uncle taking us out on educational trips, encouraging my chess playing and also when I was older, giving me summer jobs in the department of the company where he was director. He gave it all up when his wife was diagnosed with a progressive paralysis, moved back to Ireland and became a full time carer, as well as taking in students and lodgers to supplement their income. He is a family legend for his inability to sit still for more than fifteen minutes, and his need to create a schedule even when relaxing.  

Joe is now in his seventies and has Parkinson’s disease and also increasing dementia. I had to make sure that I visited him. 

Having obtained directions from relatives, I caught the appropriate bus to the hospital and found his ward. On entering I discovered that I was outside of visiting hours, but the nurse took a very relaxed view when I explained I had come from London, and I was shown to his bed. 

Seeing Joe was a real shock. He had lost considerable weight and was now skeletal, and his speech was slurred and indistinct, a real change from the abrupt and forceful guy I remember. I had been told by my dad that Joe varied from moments of great lucidity to almost hallucinating. 

I said hello and told him who I was, and then a very strange conversation ensued. 

In the conversation Joe kept mixing me up with my dad, despite reminders from me. As we talked he told me stories and reflections about me as a teenager, as though he were talking to my dad. I tried reminding him several times that I was indeed the Gary he was talking about, but he kept losing this idea. 

It was like being in disguise and getting to hear what someone really thinks about you, because the person thinks you are someone else. (Thankfully it was mainly good!). I also learned a few (scurrilous) things about my dad. 

To try and remind him that I was Gary, I told him stories that I recall from my time working for him in the summers. One in particular was very embarrassing at the time. 

My uncle was the service director of a company that sold printing machines and part of his department dealt with spare parts for the machines. My job was to provide holiday cover for people who were away. People specialized in their own individual machines from a given manufacturer so I had to suddenly become proficient to talk to customers, who would ring up without part numbers but would expect to be able to describe what it looked like and I would translate this into an order. This was not easy when the parts manuals were often in Czech. It would take me about two weeks to become proficient on one manufacturer’s machines, at which point the regular parts expert would come back ,and I would start the process all over again on a new set of Eastern European products. (Joe said I was amazingly quick at picking up each role; my recollection is that I spent the whole time bluffing). 

It was a very mixed up office. There were Max and Vera, living proof that you should not work in close proximity with your spouse. They were very traditional, and Max could have played the part of the Hollywood caricature of a stuffy old English gentleman. The atmosphere was often quite tense in the office on some mornings, as they obviously had arguments before they came to work and came in hostile to each other and everyone else. I always had the feeling Max disapproved of me but with his English “stiff upper lip” could never show it. 

I know I really annoyed him over crosswords. Joe always read a highbrow paper called the Telegraph, and would make a photocopy of the crossword so I could also do it over lunch. Once I got the hang of it I could polish off in about half an hour, while Max (another reader) laboriously toiled over his newspaper for the entire lunch hour, usually only half completing it, and of course totally unwilling to ask help from a spotty youth. 

In addition there was Michael, a trendy guy from Zurich, (he did the East German machines as he could actually read the manuals) the Spackman brothers, who could have been in the same Hollywood movies as Max, playing the cheerful and slightly dodgy cockneys, and David R, the office joker (more of him later). 

The story began when  my uncle forwarded a call which was meant for me but which had been directed to him as we had the same surname. (At that time the use of Christian names was largely frowned upon in English business culture). “It’s no good “, Joe said “you’ll have to change your name for business purposes”. I protested that Max and Vera had the same surname. “Yes but they are male and female” said Joe. “And the Spackmans have the same name” I said. “Yes but they don’t get themselves mixed up with me. You need a new name” said Joe.  “What about using Gary instead of my family name?” I asked. Max was clearly bursting serial blood vessels at this suggestion. I might as well have suggested that we all wear punk leatherwear as dress code.  

 “I know” said David. “Seeing as he’s so good at his exams why not call him Einstein?” (I had just taken school qualifications at sixteen and achieved straight As, at that time a very unusual result. David’s suggestion was actually inaccurate as Einstein was not an outstanding scholar at school). 

“Einstein it is” said Joe. “I can’t call myself Einstein” I protested, “That would be way too stupid”. “End of debate” said Joe “Call yourself Einstein from now on.” 

So I half-heartedly told my next customer that I was Mr Einstein. We hadn’t spoken before thankfully, but he made a joke about my “name”. 

We discovered the flaw in our approach twenty minutes later when the managing director of the company came rampaging in, apoplectic with rage, shouting “Who the !*&* is calling themselves Einstein in this department? ”. I had to admit it was me. “Why are you doing that?” he said (though those were not his exact words). “Because I was told to” I replied. In our cunning plan we had forgotten to tell the receptionists of our plan. The client had realized he had forgotten an item and had rung back asking for me. 

The receptionist knew no-one of that name and got annoyed when the guy insisted, thinking he was playing a joke, and in exasperation had told the customer “There’s no *!$&*!* Einstein in this company.”  She was probably factually correct, but her manner of telling the client had him straight on to the MD in seconds. 

Anyway, I got my own name back straight away, and a new nickname for use by all the other staff in the company. 

When I reminded Joe of this story he really lit up, and we talked about the characters (David R died crashing his Mini into a tree- rather like the pop star Marc Bolan. He was way over the alcohol limit. Gave Joe a problem as they had to allocate his pension and discovered he had started more than one family, but had only been married to one of the ladies in his life). 

After a while Joe stopped and said. “It’s been great talking but you can see there are many other people waiting to see me”. I turned in the direction he was pointing to see an empty corridor. I wasn’t sure if this was poignant or a sign he had just had enough. 

Caught the bus back to the city centre and was struck (in my fairly morose state) as to how similar the North Dublin suburbs are to each other. I thought about getting off at one place to look up my aunt, who still lives in the family home, but figured that I would never find it without a map,  in a place where every neighbourhood looks very similar. 

Back at the hotel , and out to find some dinner. Past Phil Lynott’s statue (no one performing lewd acts tonight) and ate outside on a balmy night. There was quite a nuisance with people interrupting “al fresco” diners with requests for money, but I was in a reflective mood after seeing Joe so was more than usually sympathetic. 

My team started arriving in the evening so we sat in a bar and watched a world cup match. 

Next day to the office for our team meeting. In the staff restaurant for breakfast, where we found each table strewn with leaflets for a “public scalping”. Several local directors had  agreed to offer themselves up to have their hair shaved off for charity (only from their heads mind). The deal was that people pledged money for the person they would most like to see it happen to- so a kind of negative popularity contest.  

The 4 victims duly went up on stage and were duly scalped. One guy’s hair was so tough he broke the shaver, leaving himself in the interesting position of having his hair in a variety of degrees, parts of his head completely shaven, some cut short- other parts normal. The hairdresser hadn’t brought a backup. We didn’t have time to stay around to see how that one worked out. Poor guy. 

Team dinner in a trendy Italian, followed by a trip to the pub. Benoit our French colleague wanted to watch France in the world cup on the TV and we were all supporting France. A nerve racking game which France narrowly won. It was funny at half time and full time. Smoking is banned in public places in Ireland so Benoit and the others were dashing out for a quick puff. Apparently the Irish have added a word to the language – “smirting”- meaning flirting with someone while you are both smoking outside the pub. Can’t say if Benoit did any of this. 

We celebrated the French victory with champagne (what else?) and a couple of beers. With the warm night people were out drinking in the streets into the early hours- I was woken by laughter outside at 2am. Given this was Wednesday night I don’t know how they work next day. They certainly party in Dublin. 

Good second day for our team meeting.  On the trip to the airport Benoit and I were talking before the taxi arrived. We continued after we had told the driver where to take us. I was surprised when he interrupted our conversation and asked us to speak English. He didn’t speak French and  wanted to know what we were discussing. I told him we were talking about work and that it wouldn’t be interesting anyway. 

Flight back with Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline. Like many European airlines they have started emulating the budget airlines, so you have to buy anything you want. One welcome addition was the cabin crew senior member, obviously a frustrated cabaret artist, who entertained us with his announcements, and even sang to us. And blessedly, no idiots with illicit child seats and an attitude problem.