7. The Renault 25 and Clio 16v (1992)

Description

The next couple of months were tense, as I sought out new employment, with a haste bordering on recklessness whilst at the same time trying desperately not to look too desperate.

Not an easy act to perform.

I had received a generous redundancy amount from my previous company but that wouldn’t have lasted very long at all, particularly with interest rates on the mortgage being what they were. My wife and I estimated that we had about six months (until April) before we needed to put the house on the market and put ourselves at the mercy of the estate agent as we down-sized.

Now there is something stoic in the British character that comes to the fore in times such as those and after only a couple of days of wallowing in self-pity and drinking myself to oblivion, I recovered and supported by my wife I began to get myself together. I went back out there into the Siberian wasteland that was the fickle job market of the time looking for gainful employment so that I could play my privileged role as father and husband with some restored self-pride. It was like the blitz-spirit, we were alone in the world, rejected, our future in jeopardy, but so-bloody-what we were better than the idiots who had just thrown us out on our ears. We’d show them, we’d knuckle down and we’d carry on.

Wish I’d thought to put that on a T-shirt back then, I’d be a millionaire by now!

The thought of downsizing and starting again was quite appealing actually, the prospect of dumping some of the manacles society wants you to bind yourself to was refreshing. These thoughts weren’t however deep-rooted and engrained enough to kick-start a life changing philosophy they were merely the result of us mentally resetting the materialism dials back to avoid future disappointments. As it happened, this bunker spirit was short-lived and pretty soon we were re-fuelled and back out into the rat-race again, a little wiser and a little less arrogant than before just like turning the tape over from ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ to ‘Mr. Blue Sky’.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, 1991 I signed a contract with a large American computer equipment corporation who wanted to develop their computer outsourcing business further. I would start work in January, after a long Christmas break. Timing is everything. That afternoon, my wife and I went to town (literally and figuratively) and we did our best to spend as much of the redundancy in the couple of hours left to us before Christmas Eve early closing. Needless to say, with the relief of the job and the fact that we had a few bob in our pockets we’d expected to have to save, we had a very good Christmas indeed.

This new company was altogether different from any previous company I’d ever worked for. It was a massive corporation with offices in just about every country in the world and with 10000 employees in the UK alone. It was the second largest computer manufacturer in the world and had a fantastic reputation amongst its customers and a pretty good one amongst its employees too. My job was to convert those customers from being comfortable buying our hardware and software into being comfortable buying those items but on an outsourced basis, that is as a service. The customer satisfaction was so strong that many customers quickly adopted the new outsourcing offerings.

We had a field day. It was like shooting pheasants with a blunderbuss.

The company had big company benefits and they didn’t follow the market but tended to try to make the market, therefore their schemes were seen as progressive. In particular, the company car scheme was very different from any I’d seen before. I’d been fortunate enough to know someone at the company prior to accepting the offer and had therefore made sure that I’d negotiated the appropriate grade for myself. This gave me an interesting choice of cars which I was pleasantly surprised about especially because I had purposely moved out of selling into managing pursuits on behalf of sales and delivery and therefore expected to be offered ‘less’ glamorous cars.

I could have had a number of sporty Fords or Vauxhalls which I’d have loved only a year earlier but I’d moved on and I had a family now and so I needed a bigger car. I eventually narrowed the field to the new BMW 518i SE or the Renault 25 GTS Special Edition. The BMW was a new model, it was essentially the same as the BMW I’d just given back but with a smaller engine. There’s something about me that says ‘never go back’ and this was weighing heavily on my mind, plus the fact that my bad memories of my previous employment were fresh, unhealed wounds and were bound to the BMW 5 series and suddenly something else came to mind, if the 2 litre was unpowered then wouldn’t the 1800 be even more underpowered? It now seemed important to consider these things and so I chose the Renault.

I must admit that I chose the Renault, and this was the first and last time I did this, because it had everything on it. It had leather seats, an automatic gearbox, electric everything including windows, mirrors and sunshine roof. It was huge and the seats were like armchairs. It had remote controls on the steering wheel for the stereo and for the trip computer. There was a central console that was entirely dedicated to the stereo system and its extraordinary graphic equaliser. I know it was all gimmickry, all form over function, but you should have sat in that thing at night with it all lit up. It was like sitting on the flight deck of a Boeing 747 with a million tiny lights all fingertip controlled by you, the pilot. Mine was metallic dark-red with alloys and a little spoiler. It was indeed exactly what I felt the family needed at that time. A massive family cruiser that felt more like a Gentleman’s club than a car. It had a 2 litre engine and a powered assisted steering to help manoeuvre it about. I have since read that for a big car it drove well. I do not share that recollection. I remember it driving exactly as it was: like a tanker. It felt like driving a boat, the wind played a big factor with its direction on the road. It was, however, the most comfortable car I’ve ever been in particularly when you were stationary. When it was on the move it wallowed somewhat and required you to drive in a flowing side to side manner to counteract the wallow, as if you were tacking this way and that. It also had what I’d describe as super-sensitive power assisted steering which didn’t seem to be progressive – what I mean is a 45 degree turn on the steering wheel at 20 miles per hour would take you effortless around a town bend, a 45 degree turn on the steering wheel at 70 miles per hour would have the car upside down rolling across the carriageway.

This would have been very much a bad thing.

There were two incidents in this car that are worth relating.

The first is that I had quickly settled into the new company and, as I had outsourcing experience which was at a premium, I was always busy. Pretty soon I found myself on a major project to the Benefits Agency based in Longbenton just outside Newcastle upon Tyne. I’d never been to Newcastle before but had heard what a great place it was and so relished the opportunity of getting involved. At first as the customer engagement started slowly through the various stages of the procurement cycle, the team and I would fly up on the British Airways shuttle and stay in Jesmond using taxis to go from our Newcastle office to the customer’s site at Longbenton, but after a while it became apparent that we were going to get shortlisted and that meant a paid assignment through the summer and autumn of 1992. One or two days a week would not be enough to cover the work required so we decided to base the team up in Newcastle for four days a week. To give me more flexibility I decided to drive up and down from Newcastle to Basingstoke, some 320 miles. The Renault 25 was ideal for this, stick it in drive and off you went. After a while, we settled into the Geordie way of life, using the metro system confidently like locals, eating out and drinking until late and occasionally we would go on an excursion to Seahorses, Alnwick, Bamburgh or to Steel Rigg to walk on Hadrian’s Wall before settling back into a warm and cosy pub with our ears aching from the bitter wind you get on the Whin Shelf (even in the height of a northern summer). The soundtrack of this summer for me was Sting’s third solo album ‘The Soul Cages’, this was even more poignant because song of the tracks were about Newcastle. I’d start playing ‘All This Time’ as I crossed the Tyne Bridge with the sunshine roof open, singing my heart out: “I looked out across the river today, I saw a city in the fog, an old church tower where the seagulls play”. The opening track ‘Island of Souls’ starts with the haunting melody of the Northumbrian pipes and you know that you’re in for a sad story. It is the most compelling dirge I’ve ever heard and a favourite track to this day, it demands great control of the breathing as the singer follows the melody directly syllable by syllable in a staccato fashion in great long sweeping phrases that tell the tale of the harshness of shipbuilding on the Tyne, the irony being it was very dangerous but was their lifeblood and as the work disappeared the absence of it took away the working people’s dignity and pride in their achievements.

Peter Gabriel’s follow up to ‘So’ had just come out too. ‘Us’ featured a variety of guitar driven rocky songs such as ‘Digging in the Dirt’, ‘Kiss the Frog’ together with more considered heart-felt ballads. To match the work with Kate Bush on ‘So’ here Gabriel duets with enfant terrible Sinead O’Connor on the ethereal ‘Blood of Eden’ and the pleading ‘Come to talk to me’.

Just beautiful.

This album has similarities with ‘So’ especially ‘Steam’ which I always felt was on the wrong album but overall it is more introspective and personal. I’d fiddle about with the graphic equaliser until I could get the right balance of drum power and distorted guitar turned up as loud as possible for ‘Kiss the Frog’.

The second incident was associated with my thirtieth birthday the year before. My wife had bought me a trip in a hot air balloon, but with all the pressure of the previous year I hadn’t found the time to take up the adventure. The voucher was about to expire and so I had to arrange the balloon trip at short notice and I had to take the flight from Hungerford. The flight itself was uneventful other than the misjudged descent which resulted in the basket being dragged through the top of an oak tree followed by it freefalling to the ground to be scraped across a muddy field at 45 degrees for fifty yards or so. We would later learn to describe this descent as ‘falling with style’, after all that’s exactly what balloons do apparently.

Once the balloon was packed up into the trailer, we were bought back to the field where we had parked our cars earlier. The field was enormous and I was parked right at the back where the balloon had originally taken off from. The field must have been fallow for a few years because the grass was a couple of feet high at least. As I’d driven in, I’d stuck to the grooves through the flattened grass left by the balloon team’s 4 x 4 and the cars of other adventurers. I’d noticed that if you went outside of the grooves then the car behaved as if it was on ice only there was nothing to crash into. So, I waited for everyone else to leave as I spoke to my wife on the phone thanking her for the wonderful adventure.

Near death experience.

For the next twenty minutes I had the best time I’d ever had in a car.

OK, the second best time, but the only best time that wasn’t the subject of censure.

I drove into the long grass and span the wheels, the car pirouetted then I’d try to regain control and if I failed it span. I was laughing my head off as I raced around. Sometimes, I was able to accelerate and then turn the wheel suddenly only to find that the car carried on in the same direction as if I hadn’t turned the wheel at all. I had a similar thrilling experience driving Honda Pilot mud-bikes when perversely to accelerate around a muddy corner it was often necessary to turn the wheels the other way, left to go right, and then to snap back the steering as the rear wheels aligned with the corner. All too quickly I felt I should go, especially as the amount of flattened grass could not be reconciled to the number of cars that had originally parked in the field and I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was being watched.

After six months of ownership, I was growing tired of the Renault 25 and my mind was set on getting something else. It wasn’t a bad car, indeed it was exceptionally comfortable, but it was too comfortable and it didn’t really have any driver appeal.

I set about trying to understand the car policy in this corporation and how I might circumnavigate the rules in order to get another vehicle quickly. Fortunately, it was a happy and friendly environment and from time to time a buddy had need of a big car (with folding rear seats) to transport something large or to go to a wedding and they wanted to take Great Aunt Maud in something comfortable and impressive. One such buddy had a number of needs such as these and we would frequently trade cars for the weekend. He had a Renault 5 GT Turbo in black with all the skirts. As soon as I drove it, it was evident to me why he had this as a company car. My wife, however, did not understand.

“Why did that idiot not get a proper car instead of that stupid little thing and why does he have to keep burrowing yours? I suppose no one else will lend him theirs!”

That was far from the truth, I would have been insulted if he hadn’t asked me.

The Renault 5 GT Turbo was a wonderful little car. It had small wheels at each corner that made it perform and feel like a go-cart and the 1400 turbocharged engine was a revelation. It was very perky indeed. There was just the right delay on acceleration before the turbo lag cut in and pushed you forward at break-neck speeds. Now like all Renaults it wasn’t perfect, but it had character. There was no point in racing up and down the motorways you wouldn’t have been able to hear yourself think, but on country roads it was sensational.

The only thing spoiling the whole plan was that the buddy could not be persuaded to swap on a permanent basis, that and the fact that my wife would need a helluva lot of convincing if she was ever going to be happy with such a small and sporty car.

“Just how is that supposed to be a family car?”

Just occasionally, you have to admit that that was a good question requiring guile and cunning to offer an equally convincing contrary answer.

 

The project in Newcastle was drawing to a conclusion and it was no longer necessary to take the Renault 25 up and down the motorways. In other words, the Renault 25 was very good as a motorway cruiser, but as soon as you weren’t cruising the motorways then its idiosyncrasies began to work against it and it began to annoy and feel redundant.

I was in the Basingstoke office on a Friday and, at lunchtime, a few of us decided to go to the pub which was still acceptable and something everyone did in 1993. We took a couple of cars, drove to Old Basing and parked up outside an old thatched pub.

Soon, you’ll know why I can recall some of the minute details of an otherwise mundane and commonplace event.

It was warm so I left my jacket on the passenger seat. We sat in the pub garden and enjoyed the spring sunshine over a couple of beers and a tuna sandwich. We should have been relaxed but it was one of those pubs with a manicured garden, beautiful flower beds and a lawn like the pitch at Wembley. Everywhere there were little signs, ‘No Ball Games’ and ‘Keep Children Away From The Flowers’. It was too clinical, overly proscribed and as though the house managers were only reluctantly allowing us to sit in the garden. All a little uncomfortable, no one said anything but it was interesting that we didn’t stay very long and were back in the office well before two o’clock, something quite unusual for a Friday afternoon. I parked the car outside the front of the office, took my jacket and went in. At about six o’clock, I finished work for the weekend and decided to go home. In the car park, I wandered along the cars parked at the front until I got to the Renault, only it wasn’t there! I remember thinking how foolish I was, I must have parked round the back. So I walked around the building but, guess what, it wasn’t there either. I told myself that I had clearly remembered parking at the front and so once again I went to the front and looked more carefully.

It is a curious fact that sometimes humans take longer than is absolutely necessary to face what is staring them right in the eyes.

Only a few cars remained as people were going home but in the place where I’d parked the Renault (at least where I thought I’d parked the Renault) was a space and in the left hand rear-corner of the space where my car should have been was a tell-tale smattering of glass. The type of glass fragments that you’d expect to find from scattered windscreens: little currant sized bricks.

Some thieving scumbag had stolen my car!

I rushed inside to the security people to report what I’d imagined had happened and they called the police and prepared the surveillance tapes, rewinding them back to six o’clock. The police were quick on the scene and took all the details. Together we watched the crackly black and white images of the front and rear car-parks from the video. We fast-forwarded through the tape. The camera took a still photograph once every five seconds but recorded these on a video tape. So we rewound the tape until my car appeared in the space I’d examined earlier and we then proceeded slowly to see what had happened. At ten minutes past two, fifteen minutes after I’d parked up, a man appeared at the rear of the car, then in the next frame he was in the passenger seat and another man was opening the drivers’ door. The next frame after that – the car was gone! They had smashed through the rear quarter-light opened the doors and then ‘hot-wired’ it and were away. It was now nearly six and a half hours later.

As I told the police-lady about the car, all its features, leather seats, automatic gearbox et cetera she would be humming affirmations to herself and then occasionally shaking her head with insincere empathy as she registered my disbelief and the humbling indignity I felt. I felt that I’d been violated.

“Professional job”, she concluded, “in Belgium or Germany by now. I doubt very much you’ll be seeing that car again. Not much we can do!”

And that was that, I didn’t really like the thing but that wasn’t the point, I didn’t expect to have it taken from me and now I didn’t have a motor at all!

My wife came to pick me up in her MG Metro and in the back was our son in his car seat. He was about two years old and I distinctly remember his expression of surprise that some bad men had taken Daddy’s car without asking!

Bastards.

And what’s more, the police reckon that they’d been out scouting to order and happened across the Renault 25 outside the pub and then followed me from the pub and waited for me to park up, then the car-park to quieten down a little before committing the deed.

 

Since I was now dependent on my wife’s car, at least for the weekend, until I could get a replacement car through the company, I thought it might be a good time to introduce the cars my wife had been driving since she’d given me her Renault 5. She had been given the Astra Estate as a company car and had, rather strangely, continued to drive this car for a number of years with way over 80 thousand miles on the clock. This was a very strange arrangement with her company, a small telecommunications firm in Camberley, but it suited her. Eventually, she raised the issue of a replacement and she then drove a series of Fiestas until she fell pregnant. She had already decided to leave her company and raise the children full-time (assuming that the family economics allowed this and the interest rates started to come down, of course). So we needed to buy her a car for ferrying the baby and all the baby’s equipment – not an inconsiderate amount of stuff! She had always had a soft spot for the red seat-belts in the MG Metro and I supposed that’s as good a reason as any for wanting a particular car. After all, my own subjective methods of choosing cars weren’t that much better. And so, using the second user magazines of the time we sourced one from a charlatan in Bournemouth for the bargain price of £1500. I should have known that there’s no such thing as a free lunch but it didn’t occur to me then, I just naively assumed that we’d got a good deal through superior negotiation.

The MG Metro was metallic light blue with the all important red seat belts which, by the way, never returned to the taut position on the inertia belt-reel. This was the MKII 72 bhp version with an upgraded facial and interior controls with that all important ‘MG’ badge everywhere but must notably in the middle of the steering wheel. It was not quick but it was perky although it suffered from a tracking problem which we were never quite able to make go away even after I’d replaced all the tyres and had them balanced. Pretty soon it became second nature to add a little lock on the steering wheel and then it was fine and zippy in a straight line. We’ll come back to the MG Metro, at a later date.

After the initial shock of the theft of the Renault 25 had subsided, I began to think about a replacement which the company were now happy to order because the police had said bye-bye to the Renault 25 officially, but a little too hastily – if you ask me.

What should I get next? It was a no-brainer, I’d have a Renault 5 GT Turbo please and I’d worry about the wife later. Unfortunately, the Renault 5 GT Turbo had been discontinued, but it had been replaced by the new Renault Clio 16v.

I ordered a red one straight away!

This was in no way imaginable a family car and this did cause a little friction Chez-Nous especially because my wife was pregnant with our second child by then.

See what I did there? I inferred that it was her fault that she was pregnant to try and stop me getting a sporty car. Shame on me.

The Renault Clio 16v was a small hot hatch back. It had an 1800 sixteen valve fuel injected engine that was too big for the engine compartment and so the bonnet had an ascetically pleasing, asymmetric bulge on the driver’s side – this was actually nothing to do with the engine size, it was an air intake vent to cool the oversized engine.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

The bulge in the bonnet made the car ‘look the business’ though. Inside it was Spartan, austere whilst retaining important Renault features such as the remote stereo controls and trip computer on the steering wheel. The drivers’ position was excellent and there was countless dials for all sorts of things that were only vaguely meaningful to me: oil pressure, oil temperature, oil level and probably brake fluid pressure et cetera.

My next assignment was in Norwich and I would shoot up the A roads to Norwich using the five speed gearbox to get the most power and the best engine noise from the 1800 unit. It was very quick and a lot of fun being capable of 130 mph with an appropriate amount of horsepower in a very light, mostly fibre glass car. Of course, this car was cramped with my son in the back and all his paraphernalia and with only a tiny hatchback boot, but I knew that this was only going to be a stop-gap solution. There was no way I could live with it for more than a year but in that time I was determined to have some fun. It was the complete opposite of the Renault 25 in almost every regard, but Renault seem to have a talent for matching driver whim to car and, as I’ve said before, I have a soft-spot for Renaults.

For those of you, like me, who enjoy driving for driving’s sake, you won’t be surprised that I would seek out challenging undulating roads, sharp hairpins et cetera, depending on what feature of the car I wanted to test to the verge of braking. I’d certainly try to avoid motorways because that wasn’t really the Clio’s forte. The company had a number of offices around England and I would visit some of them regularly. The Newmarket office was convenient for the work we were doing in Norwich and then I’d return to my office base in Basingstoke or Newbury to set up the solutions and the contracts teams. I particularly liked going to Newbury because the cross-country journey through rural Hampshire and Berkshire villages offered tremendous sporting opportunities in the racy Clio. There is one stretch of road which is dead straight for perhaps a mile with a mini roundabout at the end. I would accelerate as hard as possible down this road trying to get to 100 mph before I had to break at the marker which was the sign post for the roundabout. On a number of occasions I managed this, but before you start slagging me off for being an idiot, I do not have a death wish and can feel the balance and demeanour of the vehicle against the weather and the road conditions and I can therefore deduce and feel the grip levels on the road. Needless to say, I did not try this in the wet, with any passengers or when anyone else was on that road.

If any members of Her Majesty’s Constabulary are reading this then please treat the last sentence with a degree of literary licence.

I was very enthusiastic and took the cars’ qualities seriously but on occasion this would cause me problems and I twice burnt the clutch out. The first time this happened I was in the centre of Newbury and I found myself stuck in second going around one of the main town centre arterials with absolutely no idea what had happened. The clutch pedal was flapping about aimlessly beneath my left foot. I ended up driving up a kerb and stopping it on a traffic island. This was embarrassing like having the spotlight thrust upon you centre stage with your pants around your ankles!

By the time of the second clutch episode, I was familiar with the problem and managed to limb home in a fixed second gear with the hazard warning lights on.

That summer we loaded up my son in his car-seat and my pregnant wife and went off to Devon for a week. This really highlighted the problem with the Clio, it was too small for us now and would be for certain, that means even by my reckoning, when the new baby arrived.

These little problems never detracted from the excitement of driving the vehicle, but I’d had my fun and soon it was time to get more serious with cars and with the job. This was a great company where I was able to regain my footing and get back on track with, what I hear other people crowing about, my ‘career’. I’ve never had the notion of a ‘career’, I’ve only ever had the notion of surviving month to month, earning reasonable money in a stimulating job for a company that has a better than fifty percent chance of being in business the following year. I’d been grateful for the chance of re-building my confidence after the redundancy and picking up some new skills and experiences along the way. However, I was beginning to realise that I could earn more money if I moved back a little closer to sales although not wholly back in it. After two years at this company, which coincided with the extent of this chapter about Renaults, it was time to move on.

In autumn of 1993, a head-hunter, who understood my experiences, what I was doing and what I could do for others, introduced me to a large European hi-tech manufacturer. This company had major investments in information technology infrastructure and was looking to leverage its internal capabilities for external companies. In other words, it wanted to turn itself into an outsourcing services business on the back of its own three large data centres in the UK, France and the Netherlands. They had already begun to recruit sales people but were looking for expertise to help them develop and manage a supporting pursuit capability to help sales people with bid documentation, presentations and contracts. I felt that I was their man!

I set my heart on this job.

The first couple of interviews went well and I managed to build up a certain rapport with the Sales Director but then it all went very quiet – very quiet indeed. After three weeks I was getting pissed off. It is unprofessional to imply that you’ve got the job and then to disappear off the radar. I felt that I’d been led down the garden path. In sales, you can be dead sure that if your target customer isn’t talking to you then they are damn well talking to a competitor.

Had I lost the job to someone else who was, at that very moment, discussing terms?

I persuaded the head-hunter to call them to explain my predicament and get me back face to face with the Sales Director. I know that this was not easy for the head-hunter because he was a bit of a wimp really and although, he was supposed to be representing me in reality the customer relationship was more important to him. If they said jump, he would already be leaping from the bridge before he had the wit to ask ‘from where?’ However, to give him his due, he did get me another interview, but it was a breakfast meeting at 7 o’clock at the Croydon Hilton.

Cock.

To get to Croydon, to guarantee not being late, I’d have to set off by five o’clock in the morning. I tanked around the wonderfully quiet M25 in the very enthusiastic Clio and drove through a sleepy Purley to the Hilton which was opposite the old Croydon Aerodrome. I arrived at six o’clock in ample time before the meeting and started to revise my pitch.

Now it is important to understand who you are selling to. Many people don’t like the word ‘sell’ they think that to sell equates directly to the issuing forth of utter bullshit, to sleep with the Devil, to lie and to cajole, but it doesn’t. To ‘sell’ just means to put yourself or those you represent at the best possible advantage and there are ways and means that could help you that are not cheating or lying. I don’t suppose anyone would have a problem if, when selling a house for example, you made sure that there were fresh flowers in the house. The house was tidy, airy and well-lit or that you’d put some fresh coffee on only a few minutes before the prospective purchasers arrived or even that you were pleasant, you smiled, you listened to what they say and didn’t use profanities. So I was on my best behaviour but with a smidgen of nonchalant attitude. After all, it felt like I’d only begrudgingly been allotted a meeting and very much at his convenience, certainly not at mine.

This particular Sales Director would best be summed up by saying he was a pompous arse, very much like Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army – a little man with a massive chip on his shoulder. In my opinion, pompous people are like that because they have probably been promoted one step beyond their capabilities and that gives them an uncomfortable feeling so they over-emphasise their actions and instructions trying to hide their lack of competence. They are not quite comfortable in their own skins and it shows. This associates them with an air of pomposity. The seven o’clock breakfast meeting was all part of it, I presumed. I judged that this was a do or die meeting and that, when dealing with a pompous person, the very last thing I should do was defer to him. I most give the impression that I thought that the job was a little below me and that I had other ‘irons in the fire’.

Over breakfast I noted that he was watching my mannerisms, how I ate, how I held my knife and folk. My parents had brought me up well and I was well versed in etiquette and I found this quite amusing. I tried to invent little procedures that he was unfamiliar with therefore questioning his own upbringing and tutelage. I did stupid things such as moving the salt and pepper to the left-hand side of the table and telling him, after he offered the toast, that I’d rather wait until it had achieved room temperature so that it wouldn’t induce a condensation effect on the plate. He bought it hook, line and sinker.

Prick!

He seemed to have reached a momentous decision and suddenly cut out all the small talk we’d been engaged in up to that point.

“I’ve a problem,” he began, “there is another candidate who I believe has the same experience as you.”

Bloody head-hunters.

Either my head-hunter was useless for not knowing this, or worse, and quite possibly, knowing what a despicable breed they are, has two horses in the same race in order to secure an appointment regardless of whether that was right for me or the other party.

“You are very externally focussed and the other candidate is very internally focussed,” he remarked.

I was thinking carefully about which of my pre-planned statements I would use to explain how deep and unique my own experiences were when he suddenly threw my thoughts into a maelstrom.

“I could toss a coin to decide between you; it is so close,” he said.

To say that I was insulted would have been a gross understatement – I was livid. If I’d had a wood chipper beside me, I would have picked him up, turned him upside down and thrust him into it! Who the fuck was this pompous little prick with a diminished intellect, conspicuous by his sad lack of social graces and with his reptilian mannerisms, to decide my future based on a coin toss. I should have decked him. I hadn’t anticipated this, I decided I had nothing to lose and I took the moral high ground.

“OK then,” I said, pulling back my chair and standing up, “this company is clearly not what I thought it was going to be if they value an internal facing candidate over someone with customer facing experience in a sales department. So I’ll make it easy for you, I’m no longer interested in the job. Thanks for breakfast, goodbye!”

This seemed to have the desired affect and he sat upright, impressed by my conceit and decisiveness as any pompous idiot would have been.

“Wait a moment, please sit down.”

He studied me, I had taken my car keys from my pocket. I thought that was a particularly good move.

“What salary were we discussing?”

I had him where I wanted him and I began to think that even if I didn’t respect this silly little man I could work for him, especially if that bitter pill was sweetened by a salary way above what I’d originally planned to ask for. I added twelve thousand to my original number: an extra thousand a month – keeping it neat and tidy. I didn’t blink or blush or look to the floor, I stared at him.

He started to nod slowly, so I thought in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Obviously, I’d be looking for a guarantee to cover the commissions I’d be walking away from at my current employment and also to tide me over until we closed some business.”

This was very cheeky but I was still annoyed with him and as I had his two hairy best- friends in my fists, it seemed churlish not to try. A guarantee, which is sometimes also called a draw, is basically a loan against future commissions. It allows you to continue to afford your outgoings making the assumption that you will be successful once the sales pipeline has turned into closed business. In outsourcing this can take from nine months to a year. When the commission is calculated, the company take away the draw you’ve already had and give you the remainder. Everybody is happy. I negotiated another twelve thousand a year in guarantees.

So this pompous little man had cost the company he represented an additional twenty-four thousand pounds a year because he was a prime arse, maybe he would have offered a guarantee anyway we’ll never know because once the deal was done it was never discussed again.

Having decided that I was his man, he then began to apologise for the company’s car scheme, telling me that I would have a problem with it but that as we got more successful he was certain that we would change it to reflect the market and the need to secure further quality people as we grew. He went on to say that he would put me on the highest grade possible to ensure that the car would be better than the norm for the team.

“What’s the problem with the car scheme?” I asked.

“It’s diesel!”

Holy Fuck. A vehicle that runs on diesel is a lorry, isn’t it?

Diesel was the dark side of being a petrol-head, it was anathema. No amount of car allowance could recover the humiliation of turning up to a mate’s house with what sounded like a municipal dust-cart: I’d be a laughing stock. Diesels were dreadful then, they sounded like lorries and they drove like milk floats. They had lots of torque, but what the fuck did that mean? No one seemed to know, so it didn’t count.

However, this job paid well, I got paid a commission like a sales person but without the sales person’s Sword of Damocles hanging above their heads. There is an old sales adage: you’re only as good as your last sale! But I wasn’t selling, I was building a pursuit team to support the sales team. It was a great job. I’d have to suffer the diesel and pray that the car scheme would change quickly.

I accepted the job.

 

SUMMARY (6/10): The Renault 25 was stolen from me at probably just about the right time. If the truth be known, I was probably a few weeks away from hating everything about it but I never got there. I just got the ignominy of having been violated by the great un-washed who stole it from me and sold it to some prick in Belgium or Germany. As a vehicle it was really an old man’s car…I can say that now. It had all the refinements you’d ever want but with none of the panache.

SUMMARY (9/10): The Renault Clio was superb, creaky, scratchy, shaky, not particularly reliable, not particularly well built but so much fun to drive. Terrific pace and handling, a real joy. Of course, I couldn’t have lived with it for too much longer, but that was the reality of the time and, as it happened, I didn’t need to because I got a new job before its size became a real problem.

 

Next time, it’s the Peugeot 405 SDTi  (1993).