Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics (7 page)

Paul & Joel

Within a year, we had at least got the basics in place – we didn’t have a kitchen for six weeks – and over the next ten or twelve years turned it into a great country residence. In those early months we had quite a few friends round to see wha
t we had purchased, and initially most thought we were quite mad to have taken it on. However in no time at all, most were searching the countryside for similar opportunities, and after a year it was clear we had made the right choice and felt settled. I had always paid a subscription to the local City Conservative Association, at least when they bothered to come round and collect it, but then felt I should formally join the Rushcliffe Association of which Barton in Fabis was a part, and take some small part in the local community and party. A Young Conservative called to see if we wanted to join, but Sally as politely as she could said that I was just a bit too old for that, but in no time at all the message had reached a great local character Norman Beeby, who promptly signed me up, and before he’d left I found myself as treasurer of the village association. Any political party with a Norman as a member and fund-raiser, would never be short of either members or money.

The year after our marriage, we took a cruise holiday around the Greek Islands on a small one class boat, the Mikonos. The purser looking at our name assumed we were, or spoke, Spanish, and sat us a small table with a couple by the name of Anatheresa and Theodoro Harmsen. They were Peruvians from Lima, who spoke good English and we struck up a friendship which has lasted until now. We met up with them many times on their trips to England, and in 1999 following the World Rowing Championships in Canada, we flew to Lima for a wonderful three weeks in that fascinating country. With Theo’s excellent relationships with the local travel agent, Wagon Lit, a great trip was organised for us, and we visited Arequipa, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and of course I had to climb the mountain that always features in photographs of that wonderful site, Huayna Picchu. Its not as difficult as it looks for there are aids for climbers, but at 68 years of age I had to sign myself in and out – they don’t like to leave visitors up there – and I entered the book with the comment that the old goat made it ! A trip over the Andes was included, and we spent a few days in a “jungle” holiday village. A guide accompanied by a local tribesman explained the medicinal properties of many of the trees and plants, and we were fascinated by what translated as the “telephone” tree. The trunk threw out solid buttresses so that by standing between two of them, you could thump the buttress which would resonate sound for a couple of kilometres and thereby communicate one’s position. Theo was the President of a major civil engineering and architect company in Peru, and he turned out to be a world authority on concrete. A few years ago at the age of ninety, he updated his textbook on the subject, to an encyclopaedia of 800 pages. I never thought there could be so much to say about the stuff. When the BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, I rang him to say that if only BP had contacted him, they might have used the right kind of concrete !

Given the size of the house, we could again play host to both rowing and political colleagues, and over the years we’ve lost count of the great names in both rowing and politics whose company we have enjoyed at Barton. Perhaps one of the most interesting rowing guests was Bob Janousek, who following the sadly aborted break for freedom by Czechslovakia in 1968, managed to be granted leave to become our National coach, and he stayed with us for a couple of weeks whilst he sought a place to live, given that the idea was to establish a squad at Holme Pierrepont, which was completed in 1971, and formally opened in 72. Having also managed to have his family join him, there was clearly no way he was going back, once the “revolution” was quelled, and because of the risks involved, he could not travel with his crews to Eastern European regattas.

We returned to Israel again in 1967 to help in some small way in what turned out to be a Six Day War. However we arrived on the Monday after the cease fire that Sunday afternoon, so they must have heard we were coming ! I’m not sure what drove that reckless decision, but it was Sally who spoke to our bank manager and asked for an overdraft since I was up to my limit. When he knew what it was for, he readily agreed, something I doubt would happen now in 2012. When I arrived home from the factory, Sally simply said, order the plane tickets, we’ll find accommodation when we get there. At the airport we met a Nottingham friend, Monty Alge, whose brother had emigrated to Israel a few years earlier, and was now a fisherman on Lake Galilee. A youngish non-Jewish man was also on our trip, but because he was over forty he was paying his own fare, for he just wanted to help in any way he could. Under forty and you could fly EL AL for free if you wanted to help them in that war. It was interesting that of all the foreign helpers, the greatest number came from West Germany.

On the first night we stayed at a small boarding house which displayed the equivalent of our Blue Plaques indicating that Menachim Begin the leader of Irgun, and subsequently the Prime Minister, had lived there. We hired a car and made our way to Jerusalem and had the chance to approach the Western Wall in the Old City, but had to follow the parallel lines of tape, for they were still setting off unexploded armaments left around on the ground beyond the tapes. As relaxed and less than religiously observant as I was, I still found standing before the Western Wall of the Biblical Temple an unforgettable and emotional experience, and can understand how Israelis will never countenance giving up their rights to Old Jerusalem.

We moved on to kibbutz Nof Genosar on Lake Galilee where our Nottingham friend’s brother had settled, and happily agreed to eat with the kibbutznics in their communal hall. Most of the kibbutznics had joined their army units, and as a result they had closed the hotel which they ran to help fund the running of the kibbutz. We crossed Galilee in one of the two fishing boats run by the kibbutz, one an old Thames tug, and the other a Swedish tug. On the far side, our host pointed out that they rarely came this far, otherwise they would risk being shot at by the Syrians from the strongholds of the Golan Heights and from the hillside overlooking the lake. We noted the UN pillbox on the shoreline, and asked what the UN role was. We were told that if there was an incident, the UN soldiers on duty would come out with their clipboards, note the incident and go back in. It was abundantly clear as to why the Israelis were so dismissive of UN resolutions. We went round to the east side of the lake and found a compound with rows and rows of captured Jordanian tanks. I pulled out my camera and took a snap, only to be arrested by a gorgeous young second lieutenant, who made clear she had to take out my film roll. Her troops promptly took Sally round to show her the tanks, and what struck us as very odd, since we’d heard of the efficiency of the Jordanian Army, was that the equipment in the tanks was still covered in the heavy factory preserving grease, and would have been in no state to have been used in battle.

We revisited the artist’s colony Ein Hod in the hills above Haifa, for we had enjoyed the statues and the paintings we’d seen there on our honeymoon, but on this occasion we wanted to know if it had survived untouched by the six day war. The curator of the museum met us, and made clear they had remained unharmed. Her husband was an officer on the Israel/Syrian border, and he’d phoned her during the fighting to see if she was alright, and was reassured that the village had seen nothing of the conflict. Driving back we were hailed down by an Israeli soldier, popping home for a few hours to ensure his family were alright. He looked just like the historical images of Darius, King of the Persians, with his dark skin and chisel beard, and sat in the back with his Uzi across his knees. His English was quite good, and explained that these brief breaks from the front were quite normal now that the situation was well under control. We only stayed for a week, and were not needed for any kind of work, but it was an experience neither of us would have missed.

Wendy Stump who was married at that time to Yuram Polani the son of a long established Jewish/Israeli family, also arrived after the ceasefire , and upstaged us by getting herself down through the desert to the Suez Canal and dipping her feet in the water. Yuram’s mother was the ninth generation of her family in Israel, and his father one of the early settlers in around 1911. He set up a citrus export business, and although Yuram was a very bright guy, sadly he took the view that he was rich enough to do absolutely nothing unless it was of temporary interest, and doubtless was the cause of the eventual breakdown of their marriage.

Our trip to Israel on that occasion, and in those tricky circumstances, caused some amusement at my rowing club. I’d been coaching our combined coxless four, and had invited the Chairman of selectors, Christopher Davidge to come to Nottingham and cast his eye over the crew. Realising I’d be away on the evening planned, my good friend and opposite number at Burton Leander Rowing Club, Pym Berry, came over to stand in for me, and he explained my absence to Chris. Davidge paused for a moment, and to laughter all round, he said “Well he always was an impetuous fellow!”

Back home, because part of our group made fleece fabrics, we were also able to move into women’s casual sports wear. Rick or Wendy came up with the ideas, and I had to find a way of bringing them into fruition. In the early sixties, we were fortunate to find and employ a terrific designer Jeremy Rangel. He had been born in Spain and had been carried as a baby over the Pyrenees into France to escape the civil war. The family were granted the right to remain, but shortly after he joined our company he realised that he had barely two weeks to get his status sorted out, otherwise he would not have been able to return to France, and as yet had no right to stay in the UK. Happily our solicitor was Victor Mishcon, later to become Lord Mishcon, and this was quickly sorted out. As is often the case with bisexual men, and they are frequently found in the fashion business, he was great fun and above all highly talented. The girls in the buying department at M & S adored him, and he could do no wrong. We could not however restrict him to just designing for the mass production trade that was our bread and butter, and allowed him two days a week to develop his own clientele in bespoke high fashion.

His sexuality expressed itself in a way I had never come across before, in that Eurasian type girls with modest breasts would turn him on, but European women more generously endowed, not only left him cold, but the women knew it and therefore suffered no embarrassment in his presence. He designed the dress with the built in bra, made famous by such stars as Fennella Fielding, Cathy Kirby, Lya Raki from the TV series CRANE, and many others we enjoyed coming through our showroom on Great Portland Street. We developed a new knitted fabric that was coated with vinyl and looked and handled like soft leather. Rick quickly decided we had to do something special with this new cloth, and wanted one of Jeremy’s more endowed ladies to model it. Jeremy persuaded Lya to model one of his “bra” dresses for us, and a series of polyphotos were taken to see how we might handle the sale of this new line. It goes without saying it was great fun ogling the collection of photos, and just as I had made some rude noise and expressed the view that they could not be real, Jeremy who had come quietly into the showroom said “Oh Martin they are real, I have seen them”. Said in his wonderful franglo accent, left us all falling about with laughter. Inevitably we lost him to the film industry, where he made a real name for himself, designing all the costumes for Maggie Smith in Travels With My Aunt.

Rick Stump and I had got on well with the founder and chairman of Readsons, Stephen Dodson, who had taken up the post war Labour Government’s scheme to close down his spinning mills and put the capital raised into something else. Knowing the textile trade, he proceeded to buy up, or buy into, as he did with us, a number of textile manufacturing businesses, covering children’s, women’s, and gent’s garment makers, knitters, dyers and finishers. In short he built a sound integrated group, but did not insist we traded within the group unless it was on a commercially sound basis. The opposite approach was followed by the then Cautaulds Group, who were locked in an incestuous relationship with their subsidiaries, and of course when trade turned down, their whole show collapsed like a pack of cards. Some years earlier Stephen had made his younger brother MD of one of the subsidiaries, and it simply hadn’t worked, and Stephen simply took him back as a main board director without any direct responsibility. Sadly when Stephen died, his younger brother Ernest took over the chairmanship, but just as with the subsidiary that failed, he was frankly never up to the task, and he bitterly resented the fact that most of the subsidiaries were successfully run by Jewish part owners or managers We were both on the main board, but when Rick Stump retired, the new chairman made his dislike very clear, so it was not long before I was off the board, and clearly regardless of results, on the way out.