SLIDING DOWN

They asked me to speak at the annual conference of the Scottish Charity Finance Directors’ Group last Thursday.  There was nothing in it for me – no fee, no kudos, limited networking opportunities. I did it because I have lost the power to say ‘no’. “Could you speak for 45 minutes?” Irene Cameron asked. “That’s half of a football match” I cried, aghast, “Unless you’re Manchester United, who normally manage to stretch it to 55.” “You can do it,” Irene said.  “Where is it?” I asked. “Teacher’s building, St Enoch”, replied Irene.  “Why should teachers need their own building?” I asked.  “Shouldn’t they be in school?” “Teacher’s whisky”, she retorted.

The chosen subject was something tepid about my profession, guaranteed to send delegates into the arms of Morpheus in about ten minutes.  I did a lot of work over the weekend, ending up with 27 Power Point slides.  I reasoned that if I spoke for two minutes on each, I would overrun and then there would be no time left for awkward questions – questions which I may not have been able to answer. 

At last the great day dawned and I was ready.  I couldn’t face a fried breakfast at the hotel, so ate cereal instead and then walked the two miles into the city.  It was a glorious day, cool but sunny, and Glasgow was buoyant.  I was an hour early as usual, so slipped into what used to be the above-ground railway station booking office at St Enoch’s, now a Caffe Nero, and drank some coffee.  I went over my slides for the hundredth time.  I could think of absolutely nothing new or original to say.  I could feel that old tightening of the throat, those pesky butterflies flapping away at my chest cavity, and my tongue getting so dry that I ran the danger of it sticking to the roof of my mouth.

Outside, the Christkindlmarkt was in full swing.  The glorious smells of the Gluhwein merely turned my stomach over.  I had no choice but to go in and make a fool of myself.  The room was a state-of-the-art lecture theatre, with a huge screen at one end, a lectern with microphones, and several rows of tiered cinema seats, covered in plush velour.  It turned out I had met the chairman before, many years ago, so that relaxed me a little. When I stood at the lectern the bright beam of the projector shone right into my eyes.  Perhaps this was a new form of ‘Ve haf vays of making you talk’.  

Irene gave me a gizmo about the size and shape of a kazoo with a little knurled wheel on one side.  I noticed the wheel was fitted for a right-handed person.  “Turn it clockwise and you move to the next bullet-point, turn it anti-clockwise and you go back one.  It’s really that simple”.  It might have been simple had I remembered which way clockwise was.  The wheel was so tiny and delicate and my hands are like hams, so several times I turned it too far and four bullet-points flew by, and then I over-corrected and went back six.  It was like playing snakes and ladders. 

I had decided that I would try and get a few laughs early on.  Trouble is, all the Directors of Finance I have ever met, whilst being fast hands with budget projections, cash flow and fiduciary issues, have the sense of humour of a hungry badger and so it proved.  I led with the Glen Campbell line from his last concert: “It’s good to be here; it’s good to be anywhere. Upright and breathing”.  Nothing.  Not a cheep.  Then I launched into my favourite anecdote about starting life as a buyer by accident, 40-odd years ago, in the ship repair yards, working for Atkinson, whose wavy hair looked like it had been set in Airfix and who always issued instructions over his shoulder as he was leaving the room, so it was a speedy person who could follow him quickly enough to understand whatever he was talking about. Stony faces greeted me.  I thought I was at the Nuremberg trials.  Then I seamlessly worked in the Manchester United joke, and a woman seated at the front, with henna’d hair and a face like a walrus, pursed her lips in disapproval. 

One of my slides dealt with ‘Mutuals’, that is, in short, groups of charities and third sector organisations that provide services to the general public and which provide much of the ideology for David Cameron’s idea of the ‘Big Society’.  The word always makes me laugh, because I remember that episode of ‘The Prisoner’ (1967) in which Number 6 is described by a very portly Number 2 as ‘an Un-Mutual’ before he turns the tables on said gentleman and has the fat No 2 chased out of the village by people in blazers wielding striped umbrellas, not the most obvious or effective form of weaponry imaginable. I attempted to work this story in, but it was perfectly obvious that not one of the assembly had ever seen, or even knew, the remotest thing about ‘The Prisoner’.  It was as if I had suddenly lapsed into speaking Serbo-Croat and the sense of torpor of the delegates turned into a sense of bewilderment as I pressed on, like Captain Ahab. 

Finally, I had had quite enough.  I sped through the last eight slides in six minutes, laid down the kazoo and my glass of water and readied myself to slip away whilst they were preparing to go for coffee.  “That was…interesting” said Irene and the Chairman, though they said it through gritted teeth. I waited ages for a smattering of applause and when it came it was like two leaves hitting each other in mid-air.  

Outside, a breeze had started up but the fresh air felt delightful on my face. I could safely put the slides away until the next time, if there was ever going to be a next time.