CITY DIARY
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
This being the season of universal generosity and goodwill . . . yes, sir, what is your question? Well, you must realise that there are conven- tions to be observed in these matters. If you would refrain from asking how good my will really is, I'd do the same for you. Besides, we must take example from our richers and betters, who have been buying presents so liberally these last weeks. Bond Street jewellers report an unprecedented rush for any trinket or odd- ment made of gold. You know those French peasants everyone is so snooty about—they don't trust currency but simply buy gold and keep it under the mattress'? We seem to have them too; but they wear Melton overcoats and Lock hats.
Where was I? Oh, yes. It occurred to me that in this season of—less noise at the back of the hall, please—I might help you on your way by putting at your disposal some reliable new means to make money. I see I have your attention. Perhaps I may first direct it to the question of grass.
Has it ever occurred to you that grass is the wrong height? Left to itself, it gets to be four or five inches tall. This is grand for ruminants, and I am the last person to wish to stop them ruminating. But for my non-graminivorous readers with lawns to mow it is an expensive nuisance. Doesn't that suggest a market? What about a strain of grass that will grow to the right length and then stop? Couldn't you sell that idea to Sutton's, say, in exchange for 10 per cent of the takings? Mr Gulbenkian lives very comfortably on a much less liberal arrangement. Or would it be simpler to go to a big maker of lawnmowers like Birmid-Qualcast, and ask for hush money?
Now, if gentlemen have quite finished stampeding out of the hall—and I can, if you wish, recommend an excellent patent agent near Chancery Lane tube station—we shall continue. Our thoughts turn, as is right and natural at this time, to liquor. What is needed here is quite simple : a service to do for pubs what Interflora has done for florists. This one you would probably sell to Bass-Charrington, who own more pubs than anyone—twelve thousand odd; but perhaps the Brewers' Society would organise a joint scheme? Consider : as you are passing the Markham Arms it occurs to you that this is the time when a friend of yours is normally in the Fleur de Lys. The merest surcharge sends a pint winging its way across the wires toward him. Or there is a knock on your door : a telegraph boy, balancing on the handlebars of his bicycle a large silver tray. `Gin and tonic, sir, with Mr —'s compliments; and'—follow this closely, because this is where the money is made—`will there be any reply?' The operating company, I thought, might be called Interbooza. No, don't bother to write and thank me: just send me a few Black Velvets when the Interbooza dividends come in.
Bass or the Brewers will be so pleased with this that you will have no difficulty in following up with my next scheme. This turns on an almost miraculous elixir, now available to approved customers from a West of England chemist who had the secret from the man who supplied the friends of King Edward VII: it is sovereign against hangovers. What is wrong with the anti-hangover trade at the moment is not the product—though the loud fizzing noise can be most painful—but the retail outlets. When one is working up to a hangover, what chance has one of finding a chemist? The need is to sell this elixir in the pubs, either by the bottle or by the glass—a little row of elixir glasses on the counter at closing time. Some- times I think that this chemist has rediscovered the secret of Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo, which (Wodehousians will remember) had 'a pungent but not unpleasant flavour, rather like old boot- soles beaten up in sherry.' I foresee a great future for it: so great, indeed, as to nip in the bud my cognate idea of setting up matutinal curative centres—darkness, silence, discreet attentions, gentle hands, cooling lotions—in our great cities.
(Wodehouse again : do you remember that hero who was going to make his fortune selling cat skins to furriers? He would run two ranches, a cat ranch and a rat ranch: the cats would be fed on the rats and the rats would be fed on the cats: he relied on the philoprogenitive natures of both species for his growth rate. Did he have something there?)
Now here's one for those of you who find that success comes most readily when you deal with public authorities (brothers-in-law. on the borough planning committee, and all that:
not that you would use that kind of technique). You will have noticed how the working day in business resembles that of the Mezzogiorno (see Norman Douglas's Old Calabria). In the morning, says Douglas, the Calabrian peasant has taken only a thin cup of nasty coffee, and consequently does not do any work. At midday he knocks off for a healthy meal—great heaps of pasta, bread and garlic, goat's-milk cheese and corrosive local wine by the litre—which prevents him from doing any work in the after- noon. The same phenomenon can be seen in the City. How else do you explain all those apple pies at Sweetings and syrup puddings at Simpsons?
Anyway, the clear need is to restore balance to the businessman's diet by giving him breakfast on the way to work; and I sug- gest that, for a start, you obtain leave to run a Pullman train on the Inner Circle. (Metro- Cammell will build you a nice one.) Anti- clockwise in the morning, with continental breakfasts available in the time taken to cover one third of the circuit—South Kensington to Mansion House, for instance. Or customers could stay on board for the complete loop and have a country house breakfast—kidneys,
kedgeree, cold grouse and four different kinds of marmalade. A clockwise service in the even- ing would offer drinks and light refreshments, such as other drinks—there would be a good lunch-time business, you could get the con- ference trade; and remember that on trains the licensing laws, so far as they provide for open- ing and closing times, do not apply. I have sometimes thought that British Railways could clear its .deficit by running special trains on Sundays through the dry counties of Wales.
So much for the big operators, who I see are, already on the telephone to their merchant banks, Now for a few smaller-scale ideas. Lord Poole is waiting at Allied English Potteries for you to bring him the drip-dry plate—silicone finish: don't bother to dry it up, just put it in the plate-rack and forget about it. Yes, I know you do that anyhow, but you aren't meant to. Or you could. save one more process by making the plates out of rice paper (Reed Group plus a smart produce broker, I should think) and eating them. Or, you could cash in on all those people forever going on about the industrial and commercial rat race by renting them controlled
conditions for racing rats. This would really earn money when you came to terms with William Hill (Holders Investment Trust), who must rate it a more suitable betting event than assessing the results of cancelled steeplechases by computer. (One hasn't had the chance to compare different computers' form over the course.) 1 don't know what a rat race-track would look like, but Alderman Rossiter of Bath once showed me his mouse racing track. I think it had a wheel, like a treadmill, which the mice had to negotiate, before rushing towards chunks of cheese at the winning post. But maybe you would have flat rats and National Hunt rats.
That, I think, is something for everybody. And if you don't like these ideas, I can only tell you that there are some very much worse ones about. Like losing £22 million on operating passenger liners and then borrowing £27 million to build another one. Or like planning a super- sonic airliner which can get from London to New York, or carry passengers, but not both. But—and I leave you with this thought—it is often easier to make money if it is the Govern- ment's money that you're making.
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