Geoffrey Howe
TO avoid risking a rupture of relations with Ruritania I have thought it prudent to pick a horror story with a UK setting. Chairing as Chancellor a meeting of the EC Finance Council is a serious business, and doing so on a Monday means a Sunday spent working on briefs and travelling to Brussels. Or it should.
So when on a dark Sunday in 1981 my plane failed to take off as heavy mid- afternoon snowfalls closed Gatwick (and Southern Region) I knew at once what to do: 'Overland to Dover', I cried, and we set out at 10 m.p.h. on the trackless waste of the M25. And when the blizzard blocked the Canterbury road my Private Secretary too knew what to do: seizing a spade he was instantly converted into a white Yeti by the close-range attentions of Kent's largest snow-blower. Our midnight wel- come in the empty ferry at Dover was warm if astonished; a car met us in Dunkirk at 4 a.m.; and we got to Brussels only 15 hours after leaving London.
Our pride of achievement was dented only slightly when others from London turned up in time for the council, having caught the first Monday plane from a re-opened Heathrow. After all, we had travelled hopefully: they had only arrived.
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