It was, by a length and a half, the stupidest thing that I have done this decade.
And please don’t let the brevity of time available so far this decade put you off: this was really very stupid, although I do have an excuse.
The excuse first. Some 700 miles south-east of Upperton lies the un-pretty Swiss resort town of Davos, to whose 11000 population are added, each January for a week, about 3000 of the world’s great and good, if we may call them that, plus assorted hangers on. Between them, for they are busy people who value their time much more highly than I value mine, they manage to arrive in about 1500 assorted private jets, all of which I am sure fly on nothing more polluting than good intentions. For the pitiful few who can’t afford to arrive this way, there are frequent helicopter shuttles up from Zurich, from Basel and from St Gallen.
On a whim, I tried to get a quotation from a company called ‘Simply Jet’ for a private plane to take me from Biggin Hill to Davos early tomorrow morning, along with my two Jack Russells, so that I could attend the festivities. What had grabbed my attention was the eye-catching theme of this year’s gathering, namely ‘Stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world.’ Far from wondering what quality it is in the top 0.001% of the world’s wealthiest people that comes out time and again with titles like this, (last year’s theme was ‘Globalisation 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution’), I wanted to plant my flag right in the middle of it. ‘Has the Davos Forum,’ I idly wondered aloud to my dogs, ‘ever been responsible for one thing of use to humanity other than avoidable hot air?’. Neither of them cared, preferring instead to get excited about the prospect of chasing marmots, which I had been telling them about. ‘Marmots,’ they seemed to be saying, ‘are the business. Lead us to them, and we shall do the rest’.
Things only went wrong when the charter company came back and asked me about Millie and Boris’ dietary requirements, and the whole subterfuge fell apart like the budget for HS2.
It was a stupid use of an early evening, albeit with no permanent damage done. The really stupid bit was yet to come, when I eventually returned to completing my tax return which, still being a technophobe, I then walked down to the post box in the pitch dark on my way to a Parish meeting about cohesion, or something similar. Compared to Davos, our little parish has extraordinarily cost effective waffle-free meetings, so I was surprisingly excited.
The meeting was held in the pub, always a challenge in a dry January, and it was not until my colleague cleared his throat and introduced me to talk about the new parish website (£800 plus bits), that I realised with the same dry-mouthed nausea as when my backpack was nicked in Buenos Aires, exactly what had happened.
Staring down at the table to open my little green A5 notebook, which had my mini presentation in it, I saw to my horror that I was in fact looking down at the manila A5 envelope with my tax return in it. My presentation was evidently lying at the bottom of our George VI post box (collection times 4.30, Monday to Friday). It still is. And it still will be until 4.25, when I will saunter down the road to ask our Postie to hand it back to me. Clearly, the thought of the great and the good oiling up to each other in Davos over the eye-wateringly pricey canapés and sushi, pretending that they had read Greta Thunberg’s book, had got to me the previous evening, and I had forgotten which was which.
Worst of all, in common with presumably every presentation at Davos this week, mine was basically a bit of hot air fluffed up into a soufflé by a combination of pathetic optimism and appealing to everyone else’s better nature, and was no worse unscripted than it would have been had I retained the notes.
It went fine, thank you. All I have to cope with now is the cold air of disapproval from two disappointed marmot hounds.
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