Day Managing Comart, leading our delegation to a regional Barclays Bank lunch and then briefing June before home to find Diana’s pregnancy a problematical breach birth
Up on time and a hair wash, shave and shower to remove the London grime of yesterday and prepare myself for today’s meetings. An early meeting with Derek Weatherby to review a few actions that he should be doing, a discussion with Derek Morgan over Kardex Storage equipment, with David Fear on Terms and Conditions of Sale, Carlton Lowe on production quantities and tour of the factory. A fairly light mail and shortage of purchase orders so far this month. Indeed a general call for the month to be extended to the 1st June to provide more opportunity to meet sales and profit targets. I then called together John Lamb and Derek Weatherby to brief them on the approach I wanted for the Bank – laid back, relaxed with impressions of quiet confidence in relation to our 3 year business plans and computer industry knowledge. Allowing us to be 10/15 minutes late to reinforce the point, the Barclays Bank Chauffeur and car arrived to collect us and we were driven off at 12.00 to the Cambridge Regional Office to meet the Regional Directors for a splendid lunch.
The lunch was hosted by Edmund Parker, the Senior Local Director who comes from an old Cambridge banking family that merged with Barclays a generation or two ago; Brian Harrison, another Local Director was present and also Adrian Davis an Assistant Local Area Director – a young, promising individual, full of confidence and humour. I was glad to see that the banks are beginning to bring their staffing policies up to date. Accompanying us was Brian George and Alan Birkenshaw of the St Neots branch and, on the way back, I diverted the party to Little Paxton and showed them Grove House so that they would be familiar with it for Derek’s financing negotiation. Back to the office by 4.00pm and an hour touching base with events and preparing my reorganisation plans for Comart Computers to accommodate the changes of premises. I work on to complete these plans and June Hamilton arrives back at 6.30pm by appointment and I take her over to The Anchor at Great Barford and brief her on all matters. She takes it all reasonably well and undertakes to help John as best she can – even finding the total changes rather exciting.
Home to find Diana in bed and so to eat a salad, watch a European Cup Winner’s Cup Final on television and go to bed. Today Diana visited the St Neots clinic for an examination and was told the baby was in the breach position. The Doctor tried but could not move it and she has to go to Cambridge for another scan and have the results in time for another examination next week. He was very reassuring on the question of dangers but also needs to see the present position of the placenta before trying to move the baby further.