Like many Texas cities, the lights stood out against the darkness of the vast countryside. The headlights of the rush-hour traffic on the Interstate motorway added to the picture of a modern-day yellow brick road. I picked up my hire car, turned on the radio to Lone Star 92.5 for some classic rock and followed the signs to the I-35, where I became part of the ‘yellow-lit road’ heading out of Dallas on the 4-hour drive to Austin.

It was getting late, and so after a couple of hours’ drive, I was feeling sleepy and hungry. I also needed to stretch my legs, so when I saw the neon Burger King sign, I pulled over.

The car park was pretty empty. The restaurant was quiet with just a couple of tables occupied. I used the restroom, read the menu and went up to the counter. I was greeted by a lady behind the counter. Probably in her late 40s, she was wearing the regulation Burger King outfit: a synthetic grey polo shirt with orange trim and black trousers. She had slightly permed brown hair, rounded off with a BK visor. Most importantly, she had a regal Burger King crown logo on her shirt.

She looked friendly but tired, in a way that someone probably holding down a couple of minimum-wage jobs can.

‘Hi, how y’all doing today? What can I get for you?’ She said with a smile.

‘I’d like a large Whopper meal, please, with a Diet Coke.’

‘Now that’s not a local accent, I’m hearing. Where are you from, Sugar?’

‘England,’ I replied.

‘Wow, you’re a long way from home. I’m Elizabeth. What’s your name?

‘Michael.’

‘And your last name?’

‘Trup. That’s T-R-U-P, not Trump, in case you were wondering,’ I quipped, returning her smile.

I was surprised that, in a fast-food place, the server was so keen to chat. I looked around. There were no other customers queuing, so I was happy to continue talking whilst waiting for my meal.

‘That’s an unusual surname. Where’s it from?’ she asked, whilst raising her eyebrows.

‘Russia, my grandparents left there around 1910.’

‘My grandparents were Russian, too. They left around the time of the revolution. I did some research, and I am almost certainly related to the last Romanov Princess, Anastasia. She escaped from the Bolsheviks.’ She replied improbably.

‘I’m studying history part-time at community college. I’ve been researching my roots, and I’ve done a lot of research. In fact, I have a son who is a haemophiliac. It’s a very rare genetic disease. Did you know that the son of Tsar Nicholas and Alexandra died of haemophilia? That’s why I know I am almost certainly related to Anastasia.’

She paused to check my order and handed me the tray with my Whopper, fries, and a cup. ‘The drinks are over there, Hun. Have a great day.’ She smiled again, turning away to deal with another customer, as though our exchange had just been another everyday conversation.

‘Thanks. You too,’ I replied. ’It’s been nice chatting.’

I wolfed down my burger and got back into my car for the last hour of the drive to Austin. Despite the warnings I had as a child, I do love talking to strangers. If I didn’t, I might have had a boring journey. Instead, it had been memorable. I had seen Oz, though not the Wizard, and had been served a Whopper by a descendant of a fabled Russian Princess. Now those are things that don’t happen every day!

After three days in Port Harcourt, it was time for me to catch the plane to the next stop on my business trip: the city of Benin. I arrived at the airport to catch the noon flight from Lagos, which was scheduled to continue to Benin, Jos, Kaduna and finally Kano. I had a ticket and a reservation, so: “No problem!”

Despite its newness and multiple ceiling fans, Port Harcourt Airport was even hotter and steamier than usual. There was hardly any room to stand, let alone wait. It turned out that instead of five flights scheduled per day, there had been none for three days. The airport looked like a refugee camp, with some 500 people — all with tickets and reservations — waiting to get on the next 100-seater plane in the vague hope it might take them nearer their destinations.

Despite technically becoming an international airport soon, there was no attempt to manage the situation. Apparently, Nigeria Airways had been taught customer service by Charles Darwin. The first 100 people to get on the next plane would fly; the rest would either wait and hope for better luck whenever another flight turned up or perhaps find another way to travel — not easy in a country almost twice the size of France, with a terrible road network and almost no train system. In any event, having issued tickets and reservations, Nigeria Airways felt its job was done. The rest was in God’s hands. God, let me tell you, is a lousy travel agent.

Suddenly, the crowd in the waiting room heard the roar of plane engines growing louder. The whole waiting room rose as one. People grabbed bags, children, chickens and anything else they were travelling with, pushed past the gate staff waving their boarding passes, flung the security doors open and started running after the plane as it was landing. I did not know what to do, but decided to follow the locals’ lead and run.

The scene of crowds trying to get on the last US helicopter from the embassy in Vietnam seemed like an orderly queue compared with the throng chasing after this plane down the runway.

When you see African marathon runners in the Olympics, they are invariably tall, lean men. Even so, I would sooner compete with them than the Market Mammies hurtling down the runway — large women in colourful traditional dress, many with babies strapped to their backs, who were leading the pack whilst also carrying multiple bags and suitcases. Somehow, they were near the front of the crowd without ever seeming to break into a sweat. Lord help you if you were caught by one of those swinging forearms.

I was young, fit and travelling light, and somehow managed to stay near the front of the pack. By the time we got to the plane, some passengers were coming down the folding steps as we were forcing our way up. In Nigeria, possession is 100% of the law. Get in the seat and do not blink in the face of protestations, petitions, threats or tears. I found a seat and sat in it. I had made it — or so I thought.

After a while, the mob that had not made it onto the plane headed back to the terminal. The rest of us sat back, feeling proud of having secured a seat and confident that if the plane was going anywhere, we would be on it — and in Nigeria, that is as good as it gets.

Then the captain made an announcement: “Will all passengers travelling only as far as Benin City please disembark?”

The crowd had gone back to the terminal. About 20 of us went down and stood on the tarmac next to the cockpit. The pilot rolled down his cockpit window — I had never known they could do that — leaned out and declared: “I have heard from Benin that there is no fuel at the airport. If we land there, we will not be able to take off again. Instead, we will fly direct to Jos.”

A voice from the crowd shouted, “This is Port Harcourt, the oil capital of Nigeria. Surely there’s fuel here?”

“Yes, there are millions of gallons in tanks beneath the runway. Unfortunately, the pumps don’t work,” explained the pilot.

The crowd muttered for a while, and then one man shouted, “Buckets! We can form a chain and fill the plane’s tank with buckets.”

This was Nigerian problem-solving at its finest. The men, happy with the proposed solution, immediately rolled up their sleeves to form a human chain and refuel the plane with buckets in the middle of the runway, in about 40-degree heat and 95% humidity.

“Stop! You cannot fill a jetliner with buckets,” shouted the pilot.

The throng paused and fell quiet. Still leaning out of the cockpit window, the pilot spent 30 minutes trying to convince the persistent and sceptical crowd that it was not possible to refuel a 100-seater plane with buckets. Reluctantly, the crowd accepted his view.

Yet we still insisted on going to Benin City. We refused to move from in front of the plane unless it flew to Benin — what happened after that would be someone else’s problem. So there we were: a mob of passengers arguing with the pilot on the runway of a major airport about where to go next. It was a stand-off, and probably fortunate that no other scheduled flights wanted to land whilst we resolved it.

Eventually, the pilot sighed loudly. “I will talk to air traffic control.”

After a further ten minutes, he told us all to get back on the plane — he would fly to Benin after all. We duly climbed the staircase, the door was closed, the engines restarted and we took off.

An hour later, we landed safely in Benin, disembarked, and watched the plane take on more passengers before departing for Jos.

The next day, I watched the news and read the Nigerian papers, but there was no mention of a crash or any drama, so I assumed the flight had landed safely. I still do not know why the pilot was so reluctant to fly to Benin. Was he avoiding a mistress? Or was the plane genuinely short of fuel? In Nigeria, both seemed equally possible.

What I did learn was to follow the locals and remain calm, flexible and persistent. In Nigeria, reality was always negotiable.

It was during this political maelstrom that I returned to my parents’ birthplace to both live and study politics and economics. As the new Chairman of the local Union of Liberal Students, I was put in touch with Maurice Caplan, a new local Party activist.

I had arranged to meet Maurice one dark winter evening at the council flat he shared with his mum. It was a bleak, badly lit council estate behind Mile End Station. Crime was endemic. The maisonette was in a low-rise part of the estate. In the semi-dark with many streetlights not working, I eventually found my way past the empty bottles and street litter to Maurice’s front door. I knocked. His mum answered, a friendly, portly lady with a Polish-Jewish accent and said ‘Mo is up in his room. She guided me past her sewing machine in the front room and past the familiar smell of chicken soup to the staircase.

I knocked on his door and was welcomed by a medium-height man in his early 20s with frizzy hair and mutton-chop sideburns, wearing a cream-and-brown vintage Western cowboy shirt with a floral-patterned collar and brown flared trousers. On his wall were an acoustic guitar and a black-and-white poster of a Country and Western star I did not know. It turned out that alongside politics, Elvis was very much ‘in the building.’

I had been a political activist in Camden for 3 years, but nothing about Maurice fitted my stereotype of a ‘young Liberal.’ We quickly bonded over our mutual passion for liberalism and social change.

I soon found out that Mo (as his mum called him) worked as ‘a man from the Pru.’ He sold life insurance from Prudential door-to-door, signing up customers and collecting their weekly or monthly payments. Door-to-door sales were a thing then, in an age when many poorer people did not have phones at home. Thanks to his job, Mo already knew far more about selling and facing rejection than I ever did.

As co-founders of the local Liberals, we knew the first step was to recruit a hardcore of activist supporters. We had to start door-to-door. There was no shortage of deprivation and dissatisfaction with Labour, but the strong tribalism of class War made it difficult for Liberals, based on freedom for the individual and community action, to even get a hearing. Mostly, we were told to ‘Eff off’, have the door slammed in our faces before we had even spoken or be threatened with a dog. In many cases, perhaps the door mat should have said ‘Beware of the Owner’.

After a few weeks of failure, Maurice redesigned our approach. Instead of trying to evangelise our cause at the doorstep, which immediately evoked hostility from people who claimed they were ‘Labour through and through,’ he developed a survey script. The dialogue now went something like this:

Hi, I am from your local Liberal Party and want to ask you five quick questions. The promise of quick questions was enough to get an opening.

Do you know the name of your local Councilor? The answer was invariably ‘No.’ Has he ever done anything for you? ‘No,’ came the answer again.

Do you know the name of your local Member of Parliament? ‘No.’ once more.

Has he ever done anything for you? The reply would yet again be ‘No.’

Finally, he would then ask an open question, ‘Is there anything you are unhappy about locally that you would like to see fixed?’

Just by asking questions, he had completely undermined most of the residents’ objections and ingrained beliefs. At this point, they would often volunteer one or more grievances. These were often very fixable issues. Suddenly, they were being consulted, and as such, we were starting to be on the ‘same side.’ The prior questions had undermined their tribalism and focused their mind on how they were being treated by their Labour tribe. It had opened the door and kept it open.

Once a conversation had started, he would often sign people up as Liberal Party members on the spot in return for a small donation of a couple of pounds. This helped strengthen the relationship: once people had made even a modest commitment, they often became supporters of the local Liberals. He would then ask them to deliver our campaign newsletter in their street each month. That further commitment gave them a sense of involvement, influence, and belonging.

Over a two-year period, Mo and I built up a base of over 100 Liberal activists undertaking deliveries and many more members delivering a local monthly newsletter with a circulation of 10,000. Though we both moved on, we laid the foundations which would eventually lead to Tower Hamlets becoming a Liberal Council.

Despite our different backgrounds and interests (I am a classic rock music fan myself), Mo and I became firm friends. I also learned some key lessons from him. Firstly, I learned not to ‘judge a book by its cover.’ To look at it, I would never have thought of him as a socially conscious campaigner or a likely friend. Secondly, he taught me how to sell and communicate by asking questions, especially when someone strongly disagrees with you. This became one of my business and politics ‘superpowers.’ Finally, I learned, despite the outfits, Elvis was a damned fine entertainer!

I, along with 199 other delegates from around the world, was enjoying the hospitality of the Yugoslav government for three months while they explained the virtues of their ‘middle-way’ version of socialism. Scattered among us, impoverished academics who could hardly refuse a freebie scholarship, were some likely spies. Of the four lecturers from the Soviet Union, one of whom was a former Olympic boxer with a broken nose and cauliflower ears who never spoke, but merely followed the other three around. The Polish and Hungarian delegates confirmed my suspicions about the Russians. This gossip was also reinforced by the Finns, who spoke Russian and English

The US delegation of seven included a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Florida with a German surname who had emigrated to America from Argentina. He spent most of his time asking those of us from Western countries about our political opinions and also attempting to get into the knickers of the Bulgarian professor.

After a day of talks and discussions, dinner at the hotel was always a set menu. It was an unhurried affair, at least on the part of the waiters, who typically gathered on one side of the dining room like a bunch of schoolboys at their first dance — except they showed no interest in the guests whatsoever. We were poor academics. What possible incentive did they have to interrupt their gossip and bring us food?

On evenings when I could not find any of the other delegates I liked — probably because they were drunk in a bar somewhere, sleeping together, or both — I would linger in the lobby and attempt to chat with the very few paying guests in the hotel. One evening my eyes fell upon a very attractive and elegant American woman. She looked like a classic femme fatale from an old black-and-white film. We started talking, and I soon discovered she claimed to be the Eastern European Arts correspondent for the New York Times, living in Paris and regularly travelling to Belgrade. She evidently spoke Serbo-Croatian, or at least some Slavic language. Was she genuinely a journalist, or something rather more interesting? Who knows?

After a couple of drinks in the hotel bar, she told me she was going to see a famous Yugoslav dissident poet perform and asked whether I would like to join her. I must confess to an almost total lack of interest in poetry. I am a bit of a philistine at heart, but I was bored talking to academics. She was attractive and charming, so naturally I replied with an enthusiastic, “That sounds great!”

It was a dark, rainy evening in downtown Belgrade. We left the hotel and initially walked through broad modern streets past militia guards outside various ministries, before turning into dimly lit cobbled alleys. It all felt faintly reminiscent of The Third Man: a few figures walking purposefully through the rain, heels clicking on wet stone, but very little traffic or noise. As we approached Skadarlija, the old bohemian quarter, the street life began to grow.

Suddenly, my companion said, “We’re being followed. There is a cinema nearby. We can go in and lose him. I looked around but saw no one.”

A few hundred yards later, we stepped into a local fleapit cinema. She bought the tickets, and we went inside. The place held perhaps 200 people. There were no numbered seats, just hard wooden seats covered with a token must fabric on a flat floor. The air was thick with smoke from cheap Soviet cigarettes. We shuffled in and found places to sit. The film had already started long before we arrived.

I looked up at the screen for the first time, and there was Marilyn Monroe, framed against the backdrop of Niagara Falls. The film was shown in black and white despite having been shot in Technicolour. The soundtrack was in English but had Serbo-Croatian subtitles. I do not know what film I had expected to see in the cinema, but Marilyn was certainly not on my list. Apparently, the ideological tug-of-war was also taking place on the silver screen.

We stayed and watched for perhaps half an hour before my companion leaned across to me and whispered, “Go to the gents’ toilet, then use the emergency exit next to it and meet me outside in a few minutes.” She left separately a few minutes later through a different emergency exit next to the ladies’. Given the poor lighting and thick smoke inside the cinema, this manoeuvre apparently succeeded in losing our tail. We resumed our walk through the cobbled alleys and old street lanterns until we arrived at a small restaurant.

We entered quickly. The place was packed with locals. She went up to the bar, where she seemed to know the owner and whispered a few words to him. After a brief exchange and several furtive glances, we were ushered behind some floor-length curtains and up a narrow staircase into a candle-lit garret filled with seedy-looking artistic types drinking Slivovitz — the plum brandy that passed for the national drink of Yugoslavia — and smoking cheap cigarettes. There was a small crowd of about thirty listening intently to a local performer passionately reading aloud. I didn’t understand a word.

The evening was already well underway. I was warmly welcomed despite being a non-smoker. Not wishing to appear unfriendly, and despite being only a light drinker, I accepted a glass of Slivovitz … and then another … and despite my protests, the glass somehow kept refilling itself. Every few minutes, a local would smile at me, raise a glass and indicate I should engage in a toast.

I eventually found somewhere to sit and proceeded to become very drunk to the dulcet tones of dissident Serbo-Croatian poetry performed as high art. I have absolutely no idea how long I remained there, nor did I have the faintest recollection of how I eventually returned to the hotel. In fact, I never saw my femme fatale again.

I learned three important lessons that day. Firstly, my mum was right about not talking to strangers, though with the caveat, unless you want an adventure. Secondly, I confirmed that I really am not a poetry fan, especially in a language I don’t speak. Finally, Yugoslavia had a very effective memory-washing drug called Slivovitz.

It was 1978, the Cold War was at its height, and I had just finished a postgraduate degree in politics and had no clear idea what to do next. While sipping some truly dreadful staffroom coffee, I happened to glance at the old cork noticeboard. There, pinned rather forlornly, was a single notice inviting applications for a three-month course in communist Belgrade, Yugoslavia. As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The next thing I knew, I was on my way across Europe in an old-fashioned wooden train compartment: two musty benches facing each other, seating three on either side. In theory, it was a 40-hour journey, following the old Orient Express route from London, across Europe, through the Alps, and on to Belgrade.

I was the only constant in my compartment. Passengers arrived, chatted, ate, slept, and departed—day and night—like a play with a revolving cast. I spoke English, schoolboy French, and a smattering of other words picked up from war films, comics, fleeting tourism, and Italian restaurants. With this eclectic linguistic portfolio, I attempted conversation with my fellow travellers, a few of whom spoke some English. I even had a little dusty Latin, which might have sufficed for ecclesiastical debate, but was of limited use when it came to directions, food, or train timetables in Italy.

The final long stop before Belgrade was Trieste, a border town between Italy and Yugoslavia that had changed hands several times over its long history. Border towns have a particular atmosphere—a blend of cultures, languages, and eras—often accompanied by a faint sense of ambiguity, where rules feel negotiable and permanence uncertain.

At Trieste, my compartment’s cast changed completely for the last time. Five new passengers replaced my latest assortment of tourists, guest workers, and assorted vagabonds. This time, they were all stocky, grey-haired Slavic women, dressed in black, with colourful floral headscarves. It seemed to be the uniform of old age—and perhaps widowhood—across much of southern and eastern Europe.

We shared no common language beyond smiles and nods, which should have been sufficient for the remaining half-day journey.

About an hour later, however, the train slowed abruptly and pulled into a siding with a hiss of brakes and a sharp judder. We were at a small junction station in the middle of nowhere. Armed Yugoslav soldiers lined the platform.

Panic flashed across the faces of the women. Their eyes widened and—startlingly, given their apparent frailty—they leapt to their feet. In a moment, their solid, immovable presence transformed into something quick and agile. Hands disappeared beneath black jumpers, and, like conjurors producing rabbits from hats, they pulled out bundles of brand-new Levi’s jeans.

They gestured urgently at me, wide-eyed, asking if I could hide the jeans in my bags. I understood immediately but pointed at my already overstuffed rucksack and shrugged apologetically. “No room.”

This was clearly not their first smuggling expedition. With impressive efficiency, they redistributed the contraband—behind folding seats, beneath cushions, under layers of clothing—before settling back into position. Arms folded. Bags placed firmly on laps. Expressions hardened into stern, immovable resolve.

When the soldiers entered the compartment, the women transformed again—this time into indignant grandmothers. Their body language spoke volumes: Surely you are not going to ask tired, respectable women—who have seen off the Nazis, no less—to move for inspection?

The young soldiers hesitated, then backed off.

I, meanwhile, as a 22-year-old Western student, possessed no such dignity. I cheerfully emptied my rucksack and bag for inspection. It seemed to satisfy the soldiers, who were apparently more concerned about weapons following a recent terrorist incident than about illicit denim. My compliance gave them a way to complete their search with some sense of purpose before moving on.

And so the Levi’s remained undiscovered. No bribes, no drama. Just the quiet triumph of experience—and, perhaps, age-based profiling.

Several hours later, the train resumed its journey and continued towards Belgrade.

We arrived six hours late, at 2 a.m. The city was silent and eerily empty, apart from armed patrols. To me—a scruffy, exhausted student with no Serbo-Croat and only a written address—they were intimidating. Fortunately, they simply pointed me in the direction of the government hotel where I was to stay.

Eventually, a weary receptionist directed me to my shared room. As I entered, my assigned roommate groaned. He turned out to be a middle-aged politics lecturer from Staffordshire Polytechnic, who muttered sleepily that I was six hours late and that we would talk in the morning.

Looking back now, from the Long View, I took two lessons from that journey.

First, we tend to think of governments as temporary and countries as permanent. History suggests otherwise.

Second, never underestimate the power and resourcefulness of little old ladies. They made a film about Men In Black, but in Eastern Europe, it’s Women In Black who call the shots

My flat was a student house-share in a 1930s tenement in one of the roughest, most deprived parts of East London.

We quickly finished our drinks and set off on the short walk back. As I reached the end of my road, I could see two ominous Black Maria police vans, a dog unit, and a couple of panda cars with blue lights flashing.

I shared this four-bedroom council flat with three other students. Graham, who looked a bit like a hippie, was also a member of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Marion was from Sierra Leone and had a strong Cockney accent. The fourth—and most unlikely—sharer was Mary, a recent addition: a keen Christian from an upmarket part of the Home Counties who went home every weekend to fulfil her role as a Girl Guide leader.

Waiting for me at the flat was a large plainclothes detective from Scotland Yard’s Drugs Squad. This was no local bobby. Ironically, the police had arrived mob-handed, clearly expecting a major bust. From his tone, I could tell he already suspected he’d been conned. As far as he was concerned, this had become Operation Face-Saving.

He asked which room was mine and told me to unlock it.

He pushed the door open and stared aghast at the mess. The council supplied no furniture, so there was just a second-hand desk covered in books, random papers and wrappers, an unmade mattress on the floor, and clothes strewn everywhere. He stepped in warily. The only things not on the floor were the precarious piles of books and stationery on the desk.

“Christ, where do I start?” he muttered.

He made a token poke at some papers, his expression one of distaste. He looked exhausted by the whole futile exercise.

“Have you got anything?” he asked in a resigned tone.

“What kind of thing?” I replied.

“Drugs.”

“Afraid not,” I said, almost apologetically.

He sighed. “OK,” and left the room.

They had found a small joint in Graham’s room and some remnants in an ashtray in the lounge. As Mary was away guiding, they had to force entry into her room. It was the last to be searched. To their surprise, her windowsill was full of small plants. After a moment’s confusion, they bagged them up for analysis.

At this point, the detective seemed keen to justify the operation. “You know, this isn’t the sort of thing Scotland Yard sends a Drugs Squad out for in force. I’ll have to hand it over to the local coppers so we can show something for our efforts… But if you’re interested, we got a tip-off from someone with a Scottish accent.”

He gave me enough detail for me to recognise him immediately—the Scottish bloke from the neighbouring block, a National Front supporter whom I had recently confronted for racially abusing Marion.

Scotland Yard departed, and we were escorted out in handcuffs by the local police and loaded into the back of a Black Maria. We were cheered and waved off by residents lining the communal balconies. They weren’t fond of students, but their enemy’s enemy was their friend—at least for the evening. We finally had some street cred.

It was about ten o’clock when we arrived at the police station. We emptied our pockets, removed our belts and shoelaces, and handed everything to the desk sergeant. Then we were separated and placed in individual cells.

When I heard the steel door slam shut, my heart sank. I felt a surge of panic—I’m slightly claustrophobic. It was a long seven hours before they came for me. I later discovered the others had been strip-searched and questioned. I presumed I got off lightly, perhaps because I didn’t quite fit their idea of a “wrong ’un”.

We were told we would be released pending analysis of the joint, the remnants, and the plants. The desk sergeant returned our belongings.

I was last. Having just been paid from my part-time job, I was carrying a fair amount of cash. The sergeant accidentally dropped it on the floor and apologised.

“That’s OK,” I said. “They’re all forged anyway.”

It was a foolish, nervous attempt at humour.

I could see him hesitate, weighing whether to inspect the notes or hand them back and risk looking foolish if a memo appeared the next day about forged currency. He chose not to bother.

We were released at 5 a.m. and walked home.

A few weeks later, we were told only Graham would be charged. It would have been too complicated to charge all of us for the remnants in the lounge. Mary never got her watercress back and left shortly afterwards for a nicer neighbourhood—and, no doubt, better-quality flatmates. Not long after, someone painted “POLICE INFORMER” on the Scottish bloke’s wall. In that neighbourhood, that didn’t go down well, and he soon disappeared.

A few months later, Graham’s case came up in the magistrates’ court, sandwiched between a robbery with violence and two grievous bodily harm cases. The magistrate glanced at the docket, raised an eyebrow—as if to question why the court’s time was being wasted—and fined him £10.

I learned three lessons. First, I never wanted to spend another night in a cell. Second, always remain calm and polite with the police, no matter how you feel. It pays off. And third, if someone wrongs you or someone you care about, don’t get mad, get even.

I’d watched children’s TV shows like Supercar and Thunderbirds, cartoon mice and cats flying rocket ships into space, and even the first episode of Star Trek shown on UK television. “Space, the final frontier”, suddenly didn’t seem so final. I never wanted to be an astronaut. I wasn’t brave enough and was too claustrophobic to be confined in such a small space. Regardless, it inspired me to become a huge science fiction fan in my 20s. For so many in my generation, space travel seemed like it might become a reality.

Just 18 years later, I was flying at twice the speed of sound, Mach 2, as it’s called, at almost 60,000 feet. This was twice the speed and altitude of a typical airliner. I was on Concorde with 99 other passengers, and it was magical.

When we broke the sound barrier, there was a digital speedometer display for passengers to watch. The pilot announced, “We have just gone through Mach 1, the sound barrier.” On the ground, there would have been a sonic boom, but on the plane, there was silence. It wasn’t noisy at all; it was eerily quiet, simply because we were travelling faster than the noise of our jet engines. Minutes later, the pilot broke the quiet, “We are now at Mach 2.” The higher we climbed, the smoother the ride became. As we passed 50,000 feet, the aircraft felt almost motionless; the air was so thin that resistance was minimal.

I looked out of the small window beside me. The clouds were far below. The sky was glowing, the colours sharper. We were so high that the distance between us and the clouds felt almost as great as the distance between the clouds and the Earth. The sky formed layered shades of blue, with a bright yellow sun in the background. Most stunning of all, I could see the curvature of the Earth. Perhaps this was a glimpse of what astronauts might have seen from a spaceship. Wow again!

At 33, I wasn’t flying to the moon, but I was getting a taste of space. My journey to New York took three and a half hours. I was in a suit, not a space suit, drinking champagne and eating caviar rather than liquidised space food. I remembered my childhood, staring into space, and thought, “This is my kind of space travel.”

The plane landed in Lagos and the aircraft doors opened. It was time to the familiarity of a British Caledonian plane for who knows what! I exited the plane. The 100% humidity made me feel like I was being hugged by a very sweaty wrestler in a sauna, then pushed through a car wash as the heat and sweat rapidly soaked into my clothes. Entering the airport building itself made little difference. Familiar with sanitised European airports, nothing had prepared me for the steamy chaos of Lagos’ Murtala Mohammed Airport. It appeared modern, having been opened just a year earlier. However, the air conditioning had quickly lost its battle with the realities of equatorial life and Nigeria’s general lack of interest in maintenance of things mechanical.

My first hurdle was the complex collection of documents I needed to present to immigration: a visa, a return ticket, evidence of funds, a hotel reservation, and several vaccination certificates. I had been warned that compliance failure was not a total bar; it would just increase the Dash I would have to pay. In Nigeria, ‘ Dash’ is both a noun and a verb. Technically, it is a bribe, but it is not just the cost of doing business; rather, it is the cost of doing almost anything. It is often even the cost of entry to the country, or worse still, leaving the country. (But that is for a later story.) The immigration officer carefully scrutinised my documents and quizzed me. Much to his apparent dissatisfaction, he couldn’t find anything wrong with my papers and reluctantly stamped my passport and waived me through. Perhaps he would have more success with the next traveller?

I followed the signs to the Baggage Claim Hall. I was shocked. It seemed like I had found a giant African indoor market. It flowed with both travellers and locals, in voluminous, colourful Agbada robes, wide Kaftans, women with crying children strapped to their backs, and, above all, deafening hubbub. There was no uniform insight, so it was impossible to tell who was an official and who wasn’t. I eventually found the carousel, with the bags from the London flight.

Baggage areas in international airports are usually for the exclusive use of passengers and uniformed staff. Not in Lagos. It was like a lucky-dip jumble sale of suitcases, open to all. Plenty of locals seemed to be doing their best to join the ‘suitcase lottery.’ By just grabbing a random bag and taking it somewhere without its owner. Stressed and confused, I pushed and tried to ease my way through the crowd to try to find my suitcase before it disappeared forever.

Suddenly, I heard a booming voice through the cacophony. A tall, red-faced, stout, white-haired Englishman in his 60s bore down on the pile of suitcases. Striding through the crowd like Moses, he pointed at one of the many young men who was looking for a suitcase to appropriate. ‘You!’ he shouted. The Nigerian looked panicked. ‘Yes, you!’ he said again. The crowd parted like the Red Seas and hushed. ‘Take my bags,’ he waved at a couple of suitcases from the pile. ‘Follow me.’ The stunned teen thought for a moment, decided he’d better do what the big stranger said, without really knowing why. Meanwhile, sighting my bag, I seized the moment of calm to grab my own case and head to the Customs area, before the hubbub resumed.

I could see that the white-haired traveller was firmly in command of both the young man and his suitcases. He marched them purposefully past the customs area as if they weren’t there, through the airport exit, into the night and into a waiting taxi.

I later found out that many years ago, my fellow traveller had been an officer in the colonial police force. Despite Nigeria having gained its independence 20 years earlier, he absolutely was not making any concessions to the new reality. In fact, his self-certainty was so strong that it cast a temporary spell of doubt on the mob. They apparently felt perhaps they should obey him, just in case they had imagined independence. So that’s how a little island ran a huge empire: bluff and bluster, I thought.

Meanwhile, a large, cheerful Nigerian customs officer greeted me and my suitcase with the words, ‘Ah, my friend, what have you got for me?’ as though I was his long-lost friend. I’d been forewarned by my landlord to pack a half bottle of whisky in my suitcase to Dash me through customs, as otherwise it might be long and stressful. I put my suitcase on the counter and opened it. The officer smiled even wider, taking the bottle out. Wishing me welcome again, he waved me through. This process could have taken several stressful hours without lubrication. I negotiated a taxi to my hotel and, after a few hours of Lagos traffic gridlock, or “Big go-slow,” as the Nigerians call it, I arrived exhausted.

Several weeks later, I was sitting in the lounge of the Federal Palace Hotel, enjoying an evening drink of Star beer, with some other long-stay travellers, when I heard a familiar booming voice across the lounge. ‘Where’s the duty manager? I demand to see the duty manager! He was thumping the apparently empty reception desk. Eventually, a sleepy and somewhat confused staff member emerged from his napping area beneath the reception desk and, in a quiet, sleepy voice, asked the former colonial police officer what the problem was.

‘The telephone in my room doesn’t work.’ The receptionist assured him it would be attended to in the morning, finishing with the words ‘No problem. He’s coming.’Within a day of arriving in Lagos, I had already discovered that these words in Nigerian meant the exact opposite of their English version. If someone says either of these phrases to you, the reality is, you very much do have a problem, and, no one is expected to arrive in any kind of useful timeframe. After a few protests, the demanding guest duly went back upstairs, and the receptionist returned to his nightshift under the desk.

My friends and I looked puzzled. It was the early 80s in Lagos; no one’s phones worked, not just in the hotel but in the whole of Lagos. Everyone knew it. It was one of the reasons for the almost constant Big go-slow. As phones didn’t work most of the time, everyone was busy driving to meet people in their offices, on the off chance that they would be there. In fact, almost everyone was stuck in traffic, trying to meet others. Trying to do business meetings in Lagos was like sitting in a giant waiting room of cars in the vain hope you might find someone useful to meet. It’s why every business trip took 3 times longer than planned, and if you were lucky, you only achieved a fraction of what you had wanted.

Despite many subsequent stays in Nigeria, I never found a formula that worked for me when arranging business meetings or dealing with any of the realities of life there. Being young and shy, I could not emulate my colonial friend, who refused to make concessions to life in Lagos. His strategy of refusing to recognise a new, unacceptable reality sometimes worked (at the airport), sometimes not (when trying to make a phone call), but he persisted. He was British after all, and it was therefore a matter of principle! The best I could manage was to be resilient and philosophical! I thought about writing a book, ‘Zen and the Art of Doing Business in Nigeria.’

One day, word came down from ‘on high’ that we were going to get a visit from Donald Regan, a former CEO of Merrill Lynch Inc. He was also the former Secretary of the Treasury and now President Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff. Consequently, he was then the second most powerful man in the world. He was in London on an official visit, but was still closely connected with Merrill and wanted to visit the offices and ‘glad hand’ the team.

If you are familiar with the Disney cartoon of Alice in Wonderland, you will inevitably remember the song ‘Painting the Roses Red.’ The gardeners sang this because the Queen wanted red roses, and they had planted white and were worried for their heads. The evening before the scheduled visit, frantic scenes of the equivalent cosmetic action took place to impress our honoured guest. Paintings were straightened, toilets were cleaned (by the Operations Manager), and a strict dress code was enforced. We all wore suits and ties in those days. Makram emphasised that jackets should be buttoned at a single button, and ties should be properly Windsor-knotted. Desks should be spotless with no papers on them, just our Reuters monitors and the landline phones. Consequently, on the arrival of the honoured guest, the office looked like nobody did any work.

Makram escorted Don Regan from immaculate desk to immaculate desk, shaking hands with the mannequin-like brokers in turn. It all seemed more like Madame Tussauds Waxwork Museum than a brokerage house.

Being the somewhat perverse soul I am, I decided to break with convention and make a call! I was talking away on the phone when the honoured guest finally reached my desk to shake my hand. I promptly held up my hand in a stop sign and indicated that I was busy mouthing that I would be with him in one minute. He smiled and said quietly that taking care of the clients is the most important thing, and that it was fine. I could see my Makram gritting his teeth behind him, glaring at me. I kept him waiting for about 3 minutes and told the person I had called that I would handle their order right away and would call them later to update them.

I then stood up, shook Donald Regan’s hand, and apologised for keeping him waiting. He smiled and reiterated that it was good that I was busy and that business and clients came first. He and his entourage then left the office and a collective sigh of relief passed as business as normal slowly resumed.

Donald Regan was clearly under the impression that I was taking care of client business. I saw no reason to inform him otherwise. Actually, I had been talking to my mum and seeing if she needed anything for dinner tonight. The order I took on the phone was for a salt beef sandwich on rye, with mustard and a new green pickle. In my perverse mind, it was:
Big Corporation 0, Little Man 1.