An old unprepublished "TALE" remembered.

[catgate]

Many years ago, probably latish '70s, I was obliged to visit a factory in Leeds that supplied our company with some packaging materials and also did some “in house” contract packaging for us.

There had been a slight fault with a recent delivery of some of the latter and all was not 100% in the latest delivery of the former.

 

I was Quality Assurance & Tech.Services Manager with a large Multinational Co. and my secretary had arranged a meeting at the factory of the supplier in Leeds. She had also arranged for our senior Production Scheduler to accompany me just in case we needed to do some shuffling about of deliveries etc.

 

We arrived late mid morning and were shown into the office of the head of sales. His office was to say the least “novel”. His desk was composed of two beer barrels, which had bowed drawers made from the barrels themselves, with a coarse desk top, made from smoothish planks.

His chair was composed of another suitably modified beer barrel, as were the visitors chairs.

 

It turned out that the company looked upon him as an excellent salesman, who was quite safe even when slightly under the influence. Although they employed a full time driver for him. The office had been made for him as a bit of fun by the company joiners.

 

We sat down for the discussion and after getting the matter resolved and doing the traditional factory tour, a “telephone call for Mr. XXXX” rang out. He returned from the 'phone and said “Right my driver has arrived and we will go up to ***** for some lunch.”

 

Now ***** was about two miles on our return route. So this resulted in (lets call him) “Sid” being chauffeured by his driver to the most upmarked eatery on the outskirt of Leeds in his “company Daimler”. When we entered the establishment Sid was welcomed like Royalty by all the staff and we were shown to a table.

 

What we ate is now a forgotten matter. The food and wine must have been very acceptable, but the closing drink was a different matter altogether. We were just a finishing the meal when he waved at the waiter, who came running. He ordered some Flaming Sambucas . “Do you drink Sambucas?” he asked, as the waiter disappeared.

“No” “No”

“Oh you will like these” quoth he.

 

The Sambucas arrived and the waiter disappeared, leaving behind another opened bottle of something that looked very much like what was in the glasses. The three of us were sat at a table that was situated"end on" to a wall. Sid and I were sat opposite each other next to the aisle, and Jean, our senior Production Scheduler, sat beside Sid.

 

The showman reared inside Sid as he started to convert the Sambucas into Flaming Sambucas. As he lit each one he pushed it sideways, away from him. Sadly, his spacial awareness was on holiday, and as he pushed the third one away from him, sideways, the first one dived over the edge of the table, sideways, and spread flaming Sambuco gaily all over the carpet in the isle.

 

He started shouting for the waiter to come back, and caused quite a stir with the carpet smoke that was starting to spread. Whilst he was shouting and waving I went across to the table at the opposite side of the “passage” and removed the thick felt table mat and smothered the fire and poured the remnants of the water in the jug on our table on to it and walk about on it. The smoke and flames disappeared and  hush fell upon the place.

We thanked him for an entertaining morning and left him “conversing” with the landlord/proprietor/manager, and laughed all the way back to base.

[Irene]

I love your tales, catgate. 

Thank you for this one.  I am sure that others (and myself) would love to hear more. 

[AlanHo]

Flamin' eck lad - that were a great tale.

 

Let's 'ave sum mooooor