It was announced formally that Tilney, (its name had been shortened to that of its most senior figure Sir John Tilney a Liverpool MP and a charming man.) were to open a London office. My colleagues treated me differently. The boys in the back office were to loose their Sunday Business Houses football league ‘striker’ and they were unhappy. My peer group were obviously jealous of my opportunity but that is normal. Goerge was most supportive but I think very sad. One day full of Scotch he tried to make a speech to me, it did not come out right but I think he was trying to simply say he would miss me as we had in truth become a close team. He a 50 odd year old war veteran who hated ‘public school boys’ and me a 21 year old representing all he thought he did not like and yet on a daily basis having the sort of fun an older man can experience, if he tunes in to a different wave length.
The most difficult decision was where was I going to live. Two of my best friends at school were Tom Ollerhead who was training to be a dentist a Kings College and Stephen Smith who was studying medicine at Westminster. Tommy was in my house at school and was extremely good looking and very popular with the nurses at the hospital. Stephen Smith was probably my best friend at school, I have never met a more driven person. At twelve years of age he informed me he was going to be a doctor and sailed through every exam he took because he had a clear vision of where he was going. Does career guidance count? you bet it does. If you know were you want to go to you will find the way. Steve was fly half in my various rugby teams and a very fine player. He was also an England Public School’s Cricketer and opened the batting. His hero was Geoffry Boycott and his batting average was everything. Amazingly Steve was dropped from the school first eleven because his extreme single mindedness had apparently put his own records ahead of the team. Anyway the boys offered me a bed in their flat- it was horrible. On one of my first nights there I vividly remember Steve taking me to Westminster Hospital. I suppose it was what students did but Steve took me to see the jars of ‘human horror’, of pickled abnormalities, he even threatened to show me the morgue. However that is not all that I remember of that night because Steven asked me what I really wanted to be. I could not answer him but I do remember mentioning something about money. Steve told me he wanted to be the top doctor in his field. ‘The top man the very best’. I will not fill in the rest but if you ‘Google’ Professor Stephen K Smith you will see he made it. His younger brother Ian was another high flier and achieved many senior roles on business. They are both ardent socialists and support Man Utd.
Any way there I was in Camberwell. To begin with I would take the Monday morning train to London at 6:55. It took far less time than today and with luck I was on the Stock Exchange floor before 10 Am. The process of building a London business began and progressively our biggest deals were done by our London dealing team. It was quite bewildering at first but slowly I got the hang of it and started to make friends. On Friday evenings I would leave the office around 5 pm and head off to Euston to get the train home in order to play rugby for my club. I discovered a wonderful thing that if you sat in the restaurant car and had a meal you became a first class passenger for the journey. I would regularly have dinner on Friday night and a fantastic fry up on a Monday morning sitting with the predominantly male businessmen. After a while the arrangement for weekly commute became wearing. The OB rugby club were desperate not to loose me and the club President would slip me £25 (‘to cover your expenses’) out of his own pocket. It was huge amount of money in those days and yes it pushed the boundaries on professionalism but he assured me it was Ok and who was I to complain. At the end of the season I started spending my time in London and all sorts of new opportunities for a social life sprang up. I wrote to The Rugby Club President explaining my decision and he was most fulsome in his appreciation for all the efforts I had made. A few days later a letter arrived on my doormat. It was a game changer.
I opened the letter and quickly appreciated its significance. I seem to remember it was written in red ink, in part at least, but maybe that was not the case. At the top was the logo of a Harlequin and the the words Harlequin Football Club. In those days the Quins had very close links to Cambridge University and The City. You could not actually join the club you had to be invited. The men who had interviewed me for my job at Tilney and Co were committee members at Birkenhead Park who had a fixture with the Quins and I later found out they had written to the Halequins top man recommending me as a player of ‘outstanding ability and with excellent leadership qualities’. I was invited to join and as a first step to attend a training session.
Now let me be honest I did play a small number of times for the first team but as soon as the academic term ended a man called Wordsworth would appear from University and despite however well I or anyone else was playing he was drafted into the team. I did however play alongside many Internationals of the day (Hiller, Nick Martin, Dave Gooke, Graham Birkett Alan Wordworth The list goes on) and learned a lot about rugby but even more about life,. The Quins blazer was beyond cool, black with a silver wire Harlequin embroiled on the breast pocket. There were two ties the city tie, black with the harlequin logo, and the club tie still worn today with its multi coloured stripes. The jersey was way more complicated than today and even had a pink section in its sleeve. Trotting on to the Stoope wearing that shirt was quite a thing especially as around 6 or 7 current international players were my team mates.
On Fridays on the Stock exchange it was customary to wear ‘Club Ties or the tie of your former school’. Some might see it as a nonsense but it enabled you to meet people as the tie became a topic of conversation. I was I suppose about 4 months into my time on the London Floor when one Friday I walked into the place wearing my Quins tie. Rugby was the number one passion of the Stock Exchange and suddenly people were approaching me from all angles. Barry O’Connor was the son of a famous rugby columnist in the Daily mail and he was the Quins scrum Half. He and I were good mates and we would often meet up during the day for a chat. ‘There they are’ was the shout. We became sort of celebrities and everyone seemed to know who I was. the Stock Exchange Rugby Team was a serious affair and played around 6 games a year. They played against Lloyds of London and various other business amalgams. I was approached by the club secretary and a week or so later I was trotting out in front of a huge partisan crowd in early september in the Yellow and Black of the Stock Exchange. It was the season opener against the Honorable Artillery Company on the hallowed turf of the most expensive real estate in the world in those days, smack dab in the middle of the city. The crowd was made up of people from the floor of the house and those from the various offices around the city who were keen to watch, close up, the England flanker Tony Bucknell, our captain, Dave Mackay, the flying Rosslyn Park winger and soon to also be an international and a load of other ‘first class’ players. I suppose some came to watch the young Harlequin half backs too. Anyway behind a dominant pack and the bullet pass of a top scrum half I led the dance and weaved patterns round the field, we demolished the HAC. I was treated with a certain respect on the floor of the house after that and I came to realise that the tie I wore on Fridays would get me through almost any door. I was ‘one of the boys’ again.I am proud to say I represented the Stock exchange for around 6 years as their fly half.
Tales of a Life Well Lived 