Christmas Party

On August 5th 1991, I had joined Inchcape plc or more exactly the car division Mann Egerton Ltd as Audit Manager for Europe, based from home in Munich. One of my former bosses at Grand Metropolitan, Martyn E,  had recruited me. He was Mann Egerton's Finance Director.

Businesses included 5 x BMW dealerships in Germany, Toyota & Suzuki in Luxembourg and then loads of French car dealerships, mainly in Paris but also VW in Nice and Toulouse. Paris included Rolls Royce, Lotus and BMW. I have probably forgotten the majority. Always found the dealerships, all in very central Paris to be "different". Very small showrooms and 90% of activity took place underground. Lunches were always very good and long!

Today was the French dealers Xmas party with the European MD, based in the UK, being the host. Kindly they invited me and as with all others, partners were also invited. So Angie and I had set off the day before by car and had spent the evening before in Paris wandering around. I don't remember which hotel we had been booked in to but it was in Boulogne area of Paris.

Christmas dinner was at a restaurant on the other side of the Seine in a part called Meudon and in forest parkland. Didn't get to see much of it as it was very dark!

I think the restaurant "La Terrasse de l'Etang" is supposed to be rather good and I'm sure it was a very good dinner but I didn't get to enjoy too much of it. I guess we were about 20: two Brits (MD and myself), one German (Angie) and the rest French. My French dreadful, Angie's zero and 15 French seemingly unwilling to speak much English, except with the MD of course.

To make things worse, especially for Angie, the seating order was pre-planned and was done to separate husband & wives. Very luckily for Angie, she got to sit next to the Luxembourg GM whose wife sat opposite them - for those who don't know, almost all citizens of Luxembourg can speak French and German (and English and various types of Belgian and probably Dutch). So she got through the evening but I could see she didn't feel relaxed with either the food or talk.

By the time we left, she was a bit distressed and we took the trip back in the Luxembourg GM's Lexus, the two wives in the back. Angie has a problem sitting in the back, she has a very big problem when the road is quite curvy, she has an enormous problem when she has drunk more than half a glass of wine. Luckily she was able to utter a "please stop" and get a foot out of the car as she deposited all the wonderful dinner on the edge of the road.

Back at the hotel something went wrong with the room key and that took ages to sort out and´so she wasn't too happy by the time she hit the pillow.

Could only get better, we then were to drive over to the UK as I had a Mann Egerton Finance conference on 19th and also had to make a presentation - bilingual in English & French! Just hoping the ferry crossing is smooth.