Friendly fire
NEXT WEEK I intend to unveil my great plan to make all well at Lloyd's of London — but as a taster, I offer Lloyd's a leaf from the war memoirs of Sir Patrick Sergeant. Before he became the Grand Chain of the City pages, he was a young naval officer on a rustbucket corvette when her crew, to everyone's intense surprise, shot down a plane. Surprise took a different form when the plane turned out to be One of Ours: American, actually. Nothing in the course of the war to date, explains Sir Patrick, had suggested that a passing aircraft might be on the Royal Navy's side, but the pilot was rescued, swearing and spluttering blue mur- der until briefly silenced by a mouthful of sea-water. At this point a three-stripe naval rating addressed him, in words that Lloyd's might address to its swearing and splutter- ing members: `Laddie, you shouldn't have joined if you can't take a joke.'
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