Diaries
of
PAUL K LYONS
1990
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JOURNAL - 1990 - SEPTEMBER
20 16, Friday 7 September 1990, Brighton
I have not long since put Adam to bed. B has gone to the theatre. I shall go and see the same play tomorrow night.
B is very happy in this house - 31 Tidy Street, Brighton BN1 4EL - while I am very comfortable. Life at Washington Street was a real pain, what with the shoddy furniture and the bad layout. This house, our own, has charm, and is fitted out with all our old bits and bobs; a few pieces from Aldeburgh, a few from Sumatra Road, and a few from my loft. Not this week gone by but the previous one I spent entirely here, mostly working on my project, but also helping B get things in order. At the back of the lounge, on the ground floor, there is a small room built on iron stilts. It has a small bed in, and a desk. It makes a perfect study for me, so I took it over for the week and spread my project papers everywhere. I finished a first draft at the end of that week, and have sent it off to Robin in Liverpool. No doubt we will discuss it with me when he’s back in London. I still have quite a bit to do, and must hand it in formally by the end of September. The thesis has been such a millstone around my neck for most of this year; when I came to tackle the writing, it fell out more easily than I expected. I am even secretly confident that, despite its brevity, it is quite a good thesis. I think, for example, I have come up with some original results which is not so usual in MSc theses. Perhaps, when the final discussion chapter is concluded, I’ll slip it into the journal.
During that same week in Brighton, I took Adam to the beach every day. The weather had already turned, and a wind would drive in from the sea; nevertheless I swam once, and, sometimes, twice a day. Adam would only paddle on most occasions. Once, though, when he asked to be wrapped in the towel and I refused because he wasn’t wet, he ran down to the sea and rolled about in the water. He does seem to love it on the beach, and he wiles the hours away playing with stones and looking for bits and pieces. I fixed the child seat onto the back of my Brighton cycle, having not used it since last summer in Aldeburgh, and both Adam and I took to the two-seater like we’d been riding it every day since then. It takes less than five minutes to bike down to the beach, and not much longer to go anywhere in town. I never used a bike or brought the child seat to Washington street, partly because of the hill, and partly because there was nowhere suitable to leave the bicycle at ground level. Now, I can nip off alone on the bike and a handful of errands in less than half an hour. Not that I need to go on many errands when there is almost every shop you could possibly want within a minute or two’s walk from here. It’s a really super house, in a super location.
Inbetween working on the project, I put up shelves, repotted plants, painted the kitchen, and generally tried to spur Barbara to get things done. We had another family reunion. I seem to be forever organising them. Mum came down by train on Sunday morning and stayed until Tuesday night. Julian and Sarah drove down on Tuesday morning not arriving until midday, as it happened. We all packed into J’s car to take lunch at a country pub. Afterwards we strolled around Stanmer park, but only Julian, Sarah, Adam and I went down to the beach at the end of the afternoon; and only I swam, Julian believing the water too cold. Mum and I both went back to London with Julian and Sarah late at night, and I came back by train the following day, having watered my plants, checked my mail and made a short trip into the office.
Ah! the office - what events have unfolded before my very eyes over the last few weeks. I am pleased that I bothered to record the details of my troubles in earlier journal entries. I know that there is a ghastly indulgence to much of my diary writing, and I delve too much into the nitty-gritty details of my daily life. Whenever I come to peruse my journals at a later date, it is these interminable passages of explication about the peat of life which will most bore me. The fact that I did bother to explain in some detail the turmoil at my office does, however, illustrate that I gave it a certain importance. The facts of the matter are that the administrator (did I - do I - give the characters that inhabit my working life names?), to whom I have spoken just once since this whole business begun and that was to warn her against pursuing the matter against my assistant Miriam, has now gone forever. A memorandum from Dennis today relayed the news in the most pithy of manners: ‘Anna Duhig-Reader has resigned. She no longer works for this company,’ is all it said. This is a great battle won; a far bigger one than I imagined when I first went to war. The facts of the matter are that she and her husband - who runs the agency from which we always got our temps - have been defrauding FTBI of tens of thousands of pounds for some considerable time, probably years. I offer no excuses for dwelling further on the details because I am proud of the way I handled the whole business.
Looking back at my 6 August entry, I see that I have described quite well the situation vis-a-vis the corridor talk about Anna’s petty frauds, Philip’s position and Dennis away on holiday. Having saved Miriam’s skin and having realised there was little pressure I could bring to bear over her hours because of the anomaly of her situation, there was little left for me to do. I did write another memo about her hours and about how badly she had been treated, but I did not send it, it didn’t feel right to do so. If I was to win a fair deal for Miriam, it wasn’t going to come through the pressure of logic written down in a clear and precise way (the method which had saved her bacon until then) since there was no logic that dictated her hours could/should be more than 25 hours. Rather, I would have to make a more personal, direct appeal.
Dennis duly came back from holiday and I saw him once only, in the corridor, during the week. The following week, I requested an interview to talk about Brussels. I felt I must move on that front, if anything was going to be bubbling for the autumn. I arranged the interview for the following Wednesday, a good ten days after his return. In the meantime, office gossip died down, and I arranged with Miriam to make up her pay out of my own pocket for a limited time. I explained to her carefully why it might be difficult to reverse the 25 hours decision. I didn’t hold out much hope myself. When I asked Dennis’s secretary for the interview, she rang back wanting to know what it was about, and, she explained, if it was going to be about EPAs then Dennis wanted Anna present. I told her, it was mostly about something else, but I did want to touch on the EPA situation, and I certainly did not want Anna present.
The time of the meeting came - Wednesday. It must be the first meeting at which Dennis was present on time. He wanted to talk EPAs first, and he opened up the subject so much that I was able to say every last thing I wanted to say - about Anna lying over Miriam’s hours, about her obsessive behaviour, and about the fact that there was substantial gossip in the corridors about her scams. I prefaced my diatribe with something along the order of ‘you know I don’t go around making accusations or gossiping, I just get on with my work, but this business with Anna is something else.’ Dennis said nothing, his mouth was almost agape. I suggested a contract for Miriam, and he duly wrote down a little note to himself. Two days later, Miriam was called into his office and offered a six month contract on full pay with only 25 hours written on the contract. Miriam was absolutely overjoyed. Later, other temps also got offered such contracts.
The rest of the half hour meeting I used to tell Dennis about my Brussels idea. He is immediately positive, and suggests that there should be very little problem. Rather than FTBI paying for an office, he says, it might be better if I work freelance for the other newsletters and pay my office expenses out of the freelance. Suits me buddy. He asks for a note about the idea. I let the ideas stew in my mind, and write a two-pager on the Friday, that’s a week ago, today. Next week I shall have to goad him into a response.
(‘The New World Symphony’ plays at the proms and for me through the radio. I can never hear it without thinking of R. We would often play it when making love or falling asleep.)
Back to the saga of Annagate. The fact that Miriam got her full contract on the Friday was the only piece of information I had until I came back from my week’s holiday in Brighton. When I arrived into the office on Monday morning at the beginning of this week, Kenny and Miriam were fairly bursting with the news that Anna was under investigation by Dennis. This was no secret, Dennis had begun to make a public spectacle of his investigation. Having been spurred by me, he must have then done a little poking about and come up with something fairly concrete. The next step was a critical lunch with Chris Cragg, where Cragg, it is reported, passed on some of the stories I and others had fed him. He is said to have told Dennis to do something about it. Miriam knew much because Dennis had gone as far as phoning her boyfriend - our ex-office boy and Anna’s ex lackey - for information regarding Anna’s scams and making fairly thorough examinations of paperwork. Dennis had clearly timed his investigation to coincide with Anna’s holiday. All last week she was away, some say in Bali, but then the stories that have been flying around in the last few days would have her a sister of the Krays. During this last week, Dennis has flown around showing different editors print-outs of their EPA costs. Sure enough, unknown, never-heard-of EPAs seemed to crop up with stunning regularity. One Susan Pickford was down as having been paid £294 out of my budget for one week - a week when Miriam was around and when I had no production schedule. Frank Gray told Dennis there were six EPAs on his lists for the last three months whom he’d never heard of.
Other scams reached our ears. Gerard found that £300 had been drawn on his travel budget for a trip to Holland, only he never received the money, never asked for it, and has never been to Holland. We all started looking around us and wondering about everything we saw: the stationary (why have we got fifty IBM ribbon cartridges when the IBMs are used just once a week or so - they’d last us to the next century?), the computers (why were the IBMs bought when we never needed them?), the Buxton water (is it really Buxton water inside?), and a whole host of other laugh-making suggestions. Anna came back from holiday on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week just gone and was seen in the office on the Thursday morning. Later that morning, it was reported, she left with Dennis hard on her heels; and that was the end of Anna.
All in all, I feel well satisfied, although I am not convinced that my role has been fully appreciated. My simple aim throughout this affair was to retain Miriam in her position. The fact that Anna raised the stakes meant that I too had to fight harder. Apart from my memoranda, which seemed the only way of getting logical messages across, I also, very deliberately, set out to turn office opinion against Anna. From when the business broke at a Wednesday meeting through to my third memorandum once Dennis was away on holiday, I talked to all and sundry, blackening Anna’s name increasingly. Frank was instrumental in providing me with gossip about Anna’s petty frauds which I passed on to anybody who would listen; any information I got in return I passed back to Frank knowing he was the biggest gossip who could cause the most damage. As the days went on, I began to suggest to selected people that it looked like Anna was beginning to conduct a witch-hunt against Miriam, and I repeated this more often. I did tell Philip in my one meeting with him, after Dennis had gone away, but he just called me paranoid. Then, once Miriam was no longer in danger and once the question of her hours was no longer under debate, I retreated. It was as though I had pushed and heaved a giant ball to the top of a great hill, a ball that no one else (despite a lot more concrete evidence than I ever had) was prepared to push, and once having got it just to the brink, I left it tottering there, for others to react to the threat of it running, uncontrollably to the bottom of the hill. My image, across the office in this affair, if any, I hope, is that of an editor who stoutly defended his assistant.
20 18, Monday 10 September 1990
Tired. I had meant to get up at 4, had set the alarm for then, but I woke with a start at 3 quite fresh and so decided I might as well leave for London. The roads were about the clearest they’ve ever been - though, when I do the drive in the middle of the night, it invariably takes me one hour and ten minutes. After arriving home at Aldershot Road, I slept well through till 7, got up at a 7.30 and painted the parlour through until 9. On my way into work, I stopped for an egg and bacon muffin at McDonalds - unbeatable value at 99p - and I was still in the office before Kenny or Miriam. Kenny rolled in at 10.45 yawning and claiming he had overslept. I couldn’t quite see the difference to any other morning. It is an ‘EC Energy Monthly’ week but we have very little copy. The August holidays means that very little has been happening, though a few phone calls uncover two interesting items: the Italians have put out a working document as a first step to the Community establishing a Common Position for the IPCC climate change conference in November, and the British have put out a paper on the Lubbers proposal for tying the Soviets into a European energy Community. I have asked Fiona in Brussels to try and summarise all the different developments connected with the Middle East crisis.
I find that I am already talking to different people about my move to Brussels, and asking some of them to look out for a flat. I have yet to talk to Kiley again before taking concrete steps. I think it unlikely that he will approach me, so I will have to force the issue. I wonder if he feels at all in debt to me for having sparked off the Anna investigation.
Bush has met with Gorbachev in Helsinki. The super power summit was arranged rather quickly and has proved a major success. If Saddam had been hoping for a split in the US-Soviet detente process, he was mistaken. The Soviets may have stopped short of giving the US a military carte blanche in the region but, Gorbachev is too concerned about internal politics and maintaining his own authority. Bush has bought him off, and he will offer so little resistance to Western control of the crisis that it barely matters. History may well judge that Gorbachev sold off his country’s superpower status within a matter of years, and for pennies instead of pounds.
17 39, Tuesday 11 September 1990
In the post I receive a paperback from Colin: ‘The Faber Book of Diaries’ edited by Simon Brett. On the radio, after ‘Today’, I listen to extracts from letters between some well known broadcaster and his daughter. I cannot escape the conclusion that my own diaries and writings are more interesting and more original. They are not, however, peppered with famous names I have dined with, and neither am I famous. In consequence, it goes without saying, that these diaries of mine are valueless. Valueless to the world, invaluable to me.
A thought occurs to me. I open a desk drawer and there I find a print-out of the first batch of diary entries I wrote straight onto the computer. I am shocked and bewildered. What is the date on the first one? Answer - 22 September. Ergo, I have been writing my diaries onto screen for a full year. It was only supposed to be a short experiment. This batch of entries covers the period from September until the end of the year. They are there, in the drawer, because I started to proof read them about six months ago and only got half way through. I have just spent the past ten minutes dipping into the writings; I find many entries fluent, absorbing passages about all sorts of different things; and, as often happens, I am surprised at my own ability. One of the great advantages of writing a diary is that one can boast to one’s heart’s content. The other night, lying in bed with B, I was trying to explain in detail the Annagate affair, and in doing so I was attempting to disentangle, out loud, the significance of my own role. There was a limit, though, to how obviously I could search for my own finesse in the matter, and so, at one point, I was driven to say ‘it must be boring listening to this, I’ll do the rest of my boasting to the diary,’ or something similar. B is an excellent listener, and is never afraid to massage my ego a little here and there. I am sure that in many relationships, partners positively refuse to allow each other such self-congratulation.
B rings just now. She has picked up a cold and sounds grumpy. Adam too is grumpy and little wants to speak to me. Since restarting nursery, he has tended to be more needy than was apparent during the summer, but we’ve noticed this pattern before. On the one hand, he expends much more energy at the nursery during the day (Robin Dunbar would note that social intercourse costs a lot) and on the other he is away from us and so tends to be more needy when he returns.
I must report that last weekend at the theatre in Brighton, I was victim of a bomb scare. This was an amusing incident, and probably added to the evening rather than detracting from it. B had gone to see the play - ‘Soldiers’ - at the Theatre Royal on the Friday, it was my turn on Saturday. The long play, three acts totalling three hours, fictionalises a few related events, with Churchill at the centre, in the second world war. The author Rolf Hochhuth is interested in the death of the Polish premier in exile, Sikorski, and squarely points an accusing finger at the British government; he also seeks to examine the debate about bombing of civilians. It is a wordy, almost tedious play, unafraid of indulging in certain matters close to the heart of the author. He does, however, have a high grasp of the issues, and can put realistic debate and engaging arguments into the mouth of Churchill, Sikorski, Charwell etc; no easy matter. The play never becomes crass or trivial.
Well it did become trivial about ten minutes into Act Two. Without any warning to the actors - Churchill was theorising, through his cigar and from his bed, to Charwell - when the front of house manager walked on stage and told the audience that they were to leave immediately. We all forgathered on the pavement and, every few minutes, were pushed back further and further by policemen until, finally, we were all bunched up behind a ribbon cordoning off the entire street. I could not help but think of the ignominy for the actors though I didn’t actually see them come out of the theatre at all. The main entertainment came from watching streams of people - some holding bottles of wine - emerging from restaurants along the same street having been told by the police to leave. One man resisted and was forcibly dragged along the road until pushed behind the ribbon. I was that close I could see the resentment on the man’s face as well as the combination of fear and power on the face of the policeman. While the very last of the diners were making their way towards the ribbon (for those with their pizzas just arrived on the table, it must have been a great agony to leave it behind), the green light was given somewhere by someone and we all streamed back to our respective entertainments. Brighton is no stranger to bomb attacks. Of course, the police cannot be too careful however trivial their behaviour may seem.
The carpet for the parlour at Aldershot Road arrived today - a blue/grey cord material called Conqueror - the same carpet, as it happens, as in the hall. The parlour now looks more respectable. Also visiting today was Mr Fountain, an upholsterer: to recover my wooden reclining Fireside Chairs will cost £110 each; the dark red armchair £240 plus the cost of five metres of material. Such a lot of money when the chairs must have only cost a fiver each in the first place. Yet, after years of looking I have never found any chairs I liked enough to buy. A sum of £500 for three good chairs does not seem too excessive any more as my mind moves into a more tidy and less scruffy space.
20 32, Wednesday 12 September 1990
I go to college this evening, one of the last times I suppose. On the telephone, Robin has said my thesis is good and will pass, but I need to talk to him about how to firm it up. He is rather cool and certainly avoids any praise. As seen, he says, it will get me through, but I may want to follow some of his suggestions in order to make the report more complete; I might want to do it for my own satisfaction. He is trying to tell me that there is no chance of getting a distinction. I suppose I should have put him on the spot for, in theory, he ought to be able to tell how to get better marks. I come away from the meeting with rather a sour taste in my mouth. I have never rated him as a tutor, I can’t say he has helped me very much; others though speak highly of his assistance and willingness to talk. I suppose it is the same old story with me, I like to do things too alone, and take little advice. The same is true at the office - the launch of ‘EC Energy Monthly’, for example, scarcely raised a word in appreciation from anywhere.
20 37, Thursday 13 September 1990
I must leave in just a few moments for Shepherds Bush where I will meet up with my old cronies - Andy, Raoul and probably Rosie too. Since I see the Tosh sitting here comfortably at my desk, so easy to turn on, I decide to spend a few moments writing something down.
People - Mum went to the Black Forest for a week to see Peter and Tony Piper, her first trip overseas for seven or eight years. She reports that all went well. I get a postcard from Lia in Fortaleza; the photos I sent on to her arrived OK. She reports that Elaine is in Fortaleza too, and is well. On the buses I listen to two women talking Brazilian, one of them looks like Elaine. Some of the people on the BBC soap ‘Eastenders’ have become real characters in my life. Poor old Ian Beale - finally the confrontation with Simon and Cindy takes place. I am surprised how well done it is. Clearly Simon and Cindy deserve each other and their life soon will be hell. If I were the script writer, I would find a new girl for Ian quick, and give him a reasonable trouble free life for a few years. He’s nice and normal and deserves a nice and normal life.
Melinda, my lodger, comes in from the gym, where she goes most nights. The last two evenings, she’s had a man here but has not introduced him; sitting in the lounge we do not even hear them talk.
DREAM
Kenny arrives in the office at 8.30. I don’t believe it and think the clock says 9.30. I walk along the corridor and pass by Anna who is leaving. I stare her straight in the eye. Not until she has passed me does she say ‘You little shit.’ I laugh sarcastically, and then add ‘You started it.’ I derive great satisfaction from this schoolyard exchange.
17 54, Thursday 20 September 1990
Struck down by a cold yet again. Does this mean another month out of my life. I had originally planned to go to Antibes for a week but that idea got scotched because I couldn’t find a cheap flight. Then I thought I would go walking. It took a little time to decide where, and I borrowed half a dozen books on North Wales. But now I can’t see how I am going to be fit enough to go hiking next week.
My Management Report - ‘The New Markets of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’ - has attracted a bit of attention this week. The BBC’s ‘Money Programme’ has seen the report and wants to talk to me on Monday about Eastern Europe energy; a Washington-based group, the Coal Exporters Association, has seen it and commissioned me to write a 1,500 word piece based on it, for which they will pay me £300; and one of the speakers at a Soviet energy conference this week recognised my name and told me he found the report very comforting - I think it was a compliment. Sales are up at around 220 and still climbing - a mention on the ‘Money Programme’ might help too.
Dennis asked me to look into setting up an East Europe energy newsletter but I decided a better way forward would be a supplement in ‘European Energy Report’. We already cover as much of the East Bloc news as we can (and have done since before the revolution). It dawned on me, finally, that in order for readers to realise this, to be fully cognisant of the value of my newsletter, I needed to spotlight it more. A supplement seems the obvious solution, next year, if deemed the appropriate thing to do, we could then launch the supplement separately.
Oh, I have just spoken to Miriam on the phone who tells me an inter-office memo has come from Dennis saying my supplement idea is a good one. Here we go again.
Today I lunched with Jim Trotter, my ex-boss at McGraw-Hill before I left to live in Brazil. He rang me out of the blue because one of his staff wants to travel to Brazil. Jim has always had a fatherly relationship with his employees so he felt I could be of some assistance. It was a good excuse anyway to meet up, and to swap some gossip. I rather took to the young girl he brought along, I can’t actually remember her name now. She had a pretty face, but made no attempt to adorn it with make-up or ear-rings or hair-dos. Despite her quiet and unprovocative appearance and presence she had an attractive self-possession, was not at all daunted by lunching with Jim and I. She engaged in the conversation intelligently when it was time to do so, and listened interestedly to our talk of places and peoples gone by when she had nothing to add. I don’t know what she expected from me, but I was rather discouraging. She doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t have that much money yet somehow thinks she can live out there for a year. She’s quite determined, as though she’s set herself a challenge. Her friends are becoming quite successful, and she feels she has to make her mark. At the age of 23, however, I suggested that she had no need to be in such a rush. A sojourn to Rio can be a dream or a nightmare, I told her. She thinks that by teaching English, she’ll muster by. Coming away from the meeting, I regretted not having thought of a way of meeting up with her again.
10 47, Friday, 21 September 1990
This cold is taking its toll. It is as much as I can do to write a few diary words.
Last night I met up with Andy and Raoul at the Tricycle. Every few months I organise a trip to the theatre, usually at the Bush as it’s the most convenient. This play ‘Curl up and Dye’ has come down from the Edinburgh Festival with full marks. It was entertaining and interesting. Unusually, the author - Susan Pam - also played the lead part of a hairdresser. I don’t know if it had much new to say, nevertheless it gave us a very graphic account of life in areas of South Africa where the borders (physical and metaphysical) between black and white are being broken down, and the stresses in the lives of individual people that this creates. The whole play was set in a hairdressing salon, Curl up and Dye, located in the fringe grey areas. In the course of a Saturday, the hairdresser’s only clients are her regular of twenty years, an old Afrikaaner, and a modern black nurse. The arrival of the nurse in the second half acts as a trigger to set off some of the smouldering resentments - between the hairdresser and the old black lady who sweeps and helps full time; between the hairdresser and the young prostitute and drug addict who takes refuge in her salon and her friendship; and between the old customer and the prostitute. The play is well written, giving the characters good lines and a range of action; the pace is fast and scatty giving a highly coloured image of the life of such people.
On Monday, Mum took Julian, Sarah and I to see a play at the Hampstead Theatre - ‘The day you’ll love me’. Here is another salon drama, only a drawing room salon. This too was good, but whereas the South African play chose the snapshot route to give us the picture, this Venezuelan play chose the metaphor, the allegory. The writer, Jose Ignacio Cabrujas, gave us a grown-up family of two sisters and a brother living with a younger niece in an earlier part of the century. The oldest sister has been married and deserted while the younger one espouses a radical and dreamy communism with her boyfriend. They plan to run off together to Russia. The central focus of the play is the coming to town of the most famous singer South America had seen at the time. The niece, the older sister, the brother are all captivated by the magic of such a popular hero. When this hero chooses to visit their house, the real purpose of the play becomes apparent. All the family characters are pawns in the wider struggle peculiar to South America, that between Communism and popular politicians. When it comes to the crunch, the popular hero can offer a dream or two and a touch of magic in the people’s lives, but what could Communism offer. Cabrujas had carefully worked out the characters to be representatives of a type, and as such they did not carry the colour and detail of the characters in the South African play, the arguments in their mouths carried philosophical weight but became detached at times.
THE GULF, THE GULF
There seems to be an inevitable momentum towards war. Command structures are being worked out in detail now between the anti-Iraq forces in Saudi Arabia so that there will not be any bickering once the fireworks start. The UN has extended its embargo to include an air blockade although force cannot be used to bring down a civilian plane. At the same time, Saddam says he will not withdraw from Kuwait under any circumstances. Although conditions within Iraq must be deteriorating rapidly, it is difficult to see how he could withdraw. There is too much at stake, he has made too many promises to his people. And yet, the fact that he can resolve his conflict with Iran, virtually overnight, a conflict that cost millions of lives (so that there can be scarcely a person in Iraq who doesn’t know someone who has been killed) at no gain whatsoever, and still retain popular and political support, indicates an absolutely extraordinary control over the country. The only real hope of avoiding war is if Saddam is toppled by some agent or agents that are clearly Iraqi. It is difficult to imagine a political overthrow, but an assassination by a group of hungry intellectuals whose friends have been tortured over the years is not beyond the bounds of possibility I suppose.
I sense within myself a weakening of resolve. Will it really be worth what will undoubtedly be a very bloody war? Kuwait is now part of Iraq. Iraqis are flooding into the new province and taking over the properties of those who have fled. If I sense a weakening of resolve within myself, then the general public in this country and in the US are going to have similar reservations. Time is on Saddam’s side. He has played his cards rather well so far. I wonder how the West can stoke up public opinion further. Since he let women and children go, raising firey feelings has not been so easy.
Julian tells me he has arranged a meeting with Dad and his accountant David Messiahs to talk about the future of the company. He is making a play for more complete control. I am not sure he is ready, but it is certain he won’t be ready until he tries to wrest control. He has finally taken some independent advice so he’s pulling the pieces together better. I suggested he retain me on a fat consultancy fee once he goes it alone!
Paul K Lyons
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