A winter's tale

A seasonal story to inspire some New Year innovation (re)thinking....

I knew it was time I left. Outside the traffic was thinning out, the headlights pricking their way through a tired drizzle, the wash from the wheels of the cars reminding the rain of the cats-and-dogs fun it had been having an hour ago. When I’d taken shelter in the friendly warmth of Molloy’s Wine Bar to avoid the worst of it.

At least that’s the story I’d told myself as I pushed the glass door open. I was almost blown back by the warm blast; cinnamon-scented coffee fumes, damp wool steaming up from wet coats and festivities already in full swing. The clock above the counter said 5.30 but it felt like the celebration had been going on forever; Christmas Eve and taking no prisoners. I shuffled my way between packed tables, fending off arms clutching at me, imploring me to join in the fun. Somehow made it through the sea of siren voices, found myself a corner next to the window. Caught the sleeve of a passing waitress, ordered an Irish coffee and admitted to myself that it wasn’t really the rain I was sheltering from.

I felt in my jacket pocket, pulled out the printout of the email. I pretty much knew the text by heart after reading and re-reading it in the hours since its arrival. What a great start to Christmas. A polite message from our biggest customer, wishing us the compliments of the season and then tramping all over them by informing us that as of 31^st January they would no longer be ordering from us. Thanked us for our service over the past years (fifteen at least) and apologised because they had found a more attractive offer elsewhere.

I wasn’t going to leave it at that; spent most of what was left of the afternoon hounding them until finally I got someone senior enough to pick up the phone and explain that it wasn’t a matter of price alone. In fact the new supplier they had picked out was slightly more expensive than us; it was the wider range of product, the sophistication of the features compared to ours and the overall level of service. Put as gently as he could the story was that we were a bit tired, a bit slow, a bit nothing; they’d finally decided to make a fresh start in the New Year. He was genuinely sorry; it was clear this wasn’t a hasty decision and I imagined there’d been a fair amount of debate about it. But a part of me also had to admit that they were probably right – we had become as stale as last year’s Christmas cake and about as appetising.

Which left me now nursing the dregs of my coffee (too much coffee, not enough whisky) and worrying about the implications. I kept coming to the same conclusion. On a scale of bad to awful this one had decided to pack its bags and seek out somewhere which more fully represented just how bad things could be. Quite apart from losing our biggest customer the word would soon spread and others might soon be following their example.

It was my fault; the buck had to stop somewhere and that person was me. I’d let things drift, had tried to keep too many balls circling the air above my head; now they threatened to crash down all about me, just in time for Christmas. I was damn sure I wasn’t going to break the news to the staff today; we’d only had our Christmas party yesterday and had parted with the usual wishes for a great festive break and a wonderful start to the New Year. Which for the majority of them would now be to stare down the barrel of a springtime search for a new job.

This is a small town and we’ve been one of the big employers for a long time, ever since my grandfather set up the business. Back then he’d seen the possibilities in the post-war world; everything in ruins, buildings and families shattered, confidence low, the economy faltering. Anyone else might have joined the gloom-scrolling but he somehow saw through it, picked up the faintest glimmer of an opportunity and began his firm.

It wasn’t easy, we’d got the official company history book to tell us just how hard those early days were. I was given the job as the youngest member of the family to hand it over to him when we had our fiftieth anniversary celebrations; he was old and frail by that time but you could see the fierce pride in his eyes.

He’d built it up from nothing and had steered it through some high-risk waters to settle as a stable ship. He wasn’t too old and frail to let his drinking arm have a night out; accompanying a procession of whisky glasses he told me some of the details which hadn’t made it into the book for fear of possible criminal charges which might still raise their ugly heads. To say he’d sailed close to the wind would be something of an understatement.

And now I could feel the disappointed eyes converging on me; not just him but my father, of course, and the wider family. Never mind the families whose livelihoods depended on the business. I’d somehow failed them all; instead of steering this ship safely I’d managed to set it on course for some pretty unpleasant looking rocks. I waved my hand, trying to attract the attention of one of the girls for a replacement coffee. If I was to make it home I’d need a little Irish courage to help me.

Not that I could leave it much longer; I had promised the boys I’d read them the final chapter of the book tonight. One of our family traditions, Dickens’ Christmas carol; every year we’d begin at the start of December, our version of an advent calendar. Tonight should be the big reveal, Scrooge changing his spots and discovering his hidden self before it got too late.

I sipped the last of the dark liquid, felt the whisky kick behind the smooth warmth. And found myself musing on Scrooge. He had it easy, all he had to do was change his heart. If I was to pull us through this I’d need to change a whole business! My arm was halfway up to remind the waitress about my refill when it was stopped by someone else gripping it tightly.

‘Now then, our Jimmy. What’s all this about then?’

The unmistakeable, no-nonsense Yorkshire tones of my grandfather. Arthur Weston. Looking exactly like the figure in the portrait hanging in the lobby of the firm. Founded in 1952 yet here was the subject himself settling himself into the chair opposite. Sleeves rolled up, grease under his fingernails, and eyes that looked like they were constantly searching the horizon for a storm. I could almost smell the cutting oil and stale tobacco cloud that used to shroud him whenever he came to visit us at home.

‘You look like a man who’s on his way to a funeral. His own’.

I nodded, bitterly. Guilty as charged. Kept my head down, tried to avoid his gaze.

‘So while we’re waiting for t’hearse to arrive, how about you tell me what’s knocked you back so far? You’re almost horizontal, lad – that was never your way. I remember you as t’ brightest of my grandsons, always up for something new’

And then it all came pouring out. Like a dam bursting as the crack widened, all the accumulated problems of the past couple of years spilling out. The growing competition, especially from China, the new technologies we couldn’t get ahead of, so far from our understanding. The inexorable price rises, the regulations, the slow leakage of our customers to foreign cheaper competitors…… It was like a glacier, slow-moving but inexorable, carrying everything away in slow motion. I could taste its icy mass, felt it heavy on my tongue, couldn’t quite find the words to explain it to him.

“I think we’re going under, Grandad’ was all I could manage. Pretty lame as an epitaph to fifteen years of my supposed ‘stewardship’ of the business he founded.

He looked at me, his piercing blue eyes drilling into me. Then laughed, a dry, metallic sound.

“You think I had it easy? When I started out, they told me the whole idea was mad. I staked my house on buying up old trucks from the army, most of them half dead already, run into the ground. I didn’t build the business by doing what everyone else was doing. I built it by breaking that model to make room for something better.”

He leaned forward, tapping the table.

‘There’s always a pony – you’ve just got to dig your way through that pile of shite till you see summat glittering. That’s the gold on its bridle. Dig the bugger out, get on his back and start riding in a new direction!’

He’d told us his story often enough, I could almost give the speech for him. How he’d come home from the war with nothing but his demob suit and a handful of five-pound notes as his army gratuity. Struggling to find work, going door to door, offering to fix broken machinery, no gadget too small. His mechanic’s hands all he had to keep him going. Trying all the while to get real work in a factory but without success; the landscape he walked around was one of closures and lay-offs, the sun setting on the town’s once-great industrial history.

And then – the point at which his eyes began to sparkle whenever he told the tale – he met a man in a pub. A local butcher, someone for whom the end of wartime rationing had improved things. Now he had a shop full of meat but no-one able to buy it. What he wanted was to be able to sell his wares all across the county, a mobile shop, take the food to where it was needed rather than wait for customers to come to him. Trouble was his old van wasn’t all that reliable and anyway the long travelling times would mean his produce would be spoilt by the time he got there. What he needed, he joked, as he downed the last of his pint and was about to head home, what he needed was a cold store on wheels.

Which was the spark old Arthur needed. He’d seen something like that out in the field when he was at the transport depot in Germany. A refrigerated cabinet to keep medical supplies chilled, a simple enough fixture, hooked up to the engine to provide power to a generator. He’d helped repair a few of these and then added a few tweaks and twists of his own. His commanding officer had been impressed, told him he had magic hands, he ought to make a career out of it when the war was over.

And now he saw a way in which he might. He offered to take a look at the butcher’s van to sort out the unreliable engine. Told him he’d a notion he could knock up something so that his new found butcher friend could deliver his produce further afield while keeping it chilled and fresh.

It had worked; a year later and the butcher had a thriving business delivering all over the north-west. More important Arthur had his own business, still using his mechanic’s hands but now deploying them to convert vans and trucks to all kinds of delivery vehicles. He’d used his meagre savings, pleaded with bank managers unsuccessfully, tracked down his old commanding officer and managed to persuade him to help finance the purchase of some old army trucks at an auction.

The business began to thrive; Arthur realised that all his years of learning to fix broken equipment had given him the skills to modify and customise to the needs of a growing number of customers. His original idea for a refrigerated van was so popular he had managed to get a contract to supply a fleet of them to the new National Health Service and he’d found another market in specialised conversions for the military. He was especially proud of having managed to sell back his converted trucks to the army he’d originally bought them from – at a nice little profit!

That had given him enough to do what he’d always wanted – develop his own product. A new design for a valve, one he was so proud of when he finally cracked it that he allowed it to carry his name. Which it still did; sixty five years on and still selling despite my best efforts to prevent that.

I looked out of the window, watched the headlights of passing cars, saw the rain had retreated to a slow drizzle. Arthur was right; I shouldn’t be so quick to accept defeat. I should take a leaf out of his book, stop staring at the ground and start searching for something new. I turned back, about to ask him for advice on where to start looking.

To see an empty chair opposite. No sign of Arthur, no indication that anyone had been sitting there.

My head spun, for a moment I wondered if I was drunk but could only count two Irish coffees, one of them as yet untouched. Yet he’d seemed so real, it had felt so natural, seeing the old man, just as I remembered him. Maybe I’d just seen a ghost….?

If I had it wasn’t such a bad experience. I felt a curious calm, almost cheered for the first time that evening. Perhaps I should follow old Scrooge’s example, invite a couple of other ghostly apparitions to shed some light on my situation?

Though on second thoughts perhaps not – with my luck the next visitor would be the Ghost of Christmas Present and take the form of my father. Someone I had no desire to encounter tonight – not when I’d have to confess to the loss of the biggest customer, the one he’d worked so hard to win all those years ago.

At that moment the door of the bar swung open again, letting in a blast of cold air, the sound of traffic splashing on a rain-drenched road and a tall woman with both hands full of shopping bags. Struggling through the increasingly crowded bar and plonking herself down in front of me with a cheery ‘Hi Jim, happy Christmas!’ peck on the cheek. A wave to the waitress and a glass of wine appeared with surprising speed.

My capacity for surprise had already been stretched far enough that none of this fazed me; it seemed quite natural that Sarah should be sitting there. My old university friend and confidante, with more than a little responsibility for matching me up with my wife. Now a successful management consultant; why wouldn’t she be here? Why wouldn’t I dive in and in response to her asking how I was, explain my current situation as if meeting her was a regular Friday evening event with my personal coach and advisor. Who better, after all, to review the situation with than a professional?

She heard me out, then paused to deal with her wine glass. No delicate sips, she attacked it with a couple of gulps which lowered the waterline considerably. The same no-nonsense approach which her clients valued (and paid expensively for). And then she gave me both barrels.

‘You’re pretty much screwed!’

Another gulp of wine, a wave to the waitress for a refill and then a jab from her finger to my chest to drive home her point.

‘I can’t believe you’ve let things slip this far – you really are in a mess. I’d offer to buy you a drink to help drown your sorrows but you’ve still got that one to get through’.

She motioned towards my Irish coffee, still hardly touched since its arrival before Arthur had visited.

‘Still, seeing as it’s Christmas, I’ll give you the benefit of my expensive wisdom…’. And for the next five minutes she provided me with a painfully accurate analysis of how we’d got into the mess, the key turning points when I’d either made the wrong decision or, more common, failed to make a decision at all.

The silence when she finished drowned out the noisy bar. I reached for my coffee, wishing it contained something a great deal stronger than a shot of Jameson’s.

‘So that’s it? No magic solution, no consultant’s quick fix miracle?’

She smiled; her infuriating Mona Lisa impersonation. I pushed her, determined to squeeze some kind of response.

‘Tell me what you’d do? If it was your business just about to disappear down the tubes?’

Another few seconds of enigmatic gaze, then a sigh. I could almost see her rolling up her mental sleeves behind those bright eyes.

‘The situation’s bad but not impossible. You’d have to make some changes, fast, and they’ll need time to take effect. Your best bet is to turn up that boyish charm of yours to full volume. You’re going to need to convince a lot of people to be patient, give you some space to turn things round…’

I was impressed; she knew her stuff. Where I’d always secretly thought she was peddling bullshit I now began to see the sharp analytical mind and the tools and techniques which might just be lighting up a pathway forward. Not exactly a superhighway but a track into the darkness which might just work.

A lot of it echoed what Arthur had hinted at. Time for a rethink, reframe the whole business. Only what Sarah brought were some concrete ideas to work on.

“Your grandfather didn’t just work hard; he found something new to offer the world. But you? You’ve been making the same stuff, more or less, for twenty years. The world’s moved on. And – as you’ve noticed – it’s got bigger – there are plenty of competitors out there and they can make those valves you’re so proud of for half the price!’

‘You can’t compete as just another cheap supplier – you need to rethink. If you worked on your factory, updated your processes and equipment you could hold them off a little longer. But you need to find a new field to play on, just like old Arthur did’.

She scribbled a note on a scrap of old envelope she’d pulled from her handbag.

‘Take a look at this when you get home. It’s a press release, only just come out. If you’re quick you might just be able to catch this wave ahead of everyone else who’ll still be recovering from their Christmas hangovers. The government’s going to be offering massive subsidies for local hydrogen storage components. Your machines can’t make cheap valves anymore, but with a week of recalibration, I bet they could make high-spec hydrogen seals.”

“That sounds... expensive. And uncertain.” I could feel my old caution coming back, wanting to play for time, hedge my bets.

‘No it’s not. It’s crunch time – and you know it. You’ve got to decide; are you going to carry on trying to be a manufacturer of things, or a provider of solutions?”

She stood up, muttered something about needing to get on her way. The last couple of inches of wine disappeared in one gulp and then she was walking away towards the bar area. I assumed she was looking for the loo, would be back to continue our conversation. It was only after ten minutes that I realised that she, like Arthur, had disappeared, leaving me with plenty to think about. Including a slightly scary realisation; I was pretty certain that when I’d last spoken with her she had big plans for spending this Christmas in the Caribbean. Either her plans had suddenly fallen through – or I’d just met my second ghost.

Which just leaves time for number three, I thought. I glanced at my watch; I needed to get back to the family before I made a mess of their Christmas plans as well. Looked like it had decided to join everything else, had given up on the hard work of keeping time and sighed to a stop. The hands were still showing 5.45, just as they had before Arthur’s arrival. Either that or time was really standing still?

I definitely needed to leave, this place was doing some strange things to my head.

A young man, perhaps in his late twenties, was sat at the table opposite; strange I hadn’t noticed him before. Plus there was something familiar about him, even with his head down, absorbed in a video call. I recognized the sharp profile, the slight frown of concentration; he could almost be an adult version of my son, Tom.

I was close enough to overhear the call, sounded like they were discussing an article on a web-page open on the screen. I could just make out the headline.

A shiver ran down my spine which had nothing to do with the temperature in the bar or indeed the winter streets outside. It read “Masters of reinvention: How Westons rewrote the rule book’ and was splashed across a photograph of a factory. Unmistakeably, despite some new glass fronted buildings, my factory, the one I’d left a couple of hours ago.

His voice cut through the sea of noise in the crowded bar, lifted on a wave of enthusiasm.

‘Can’t believe we made the ‘Management Today’ feature – how’s this for a quote?’ I watched his lips move, not quite able to connect the company he was talking about with the one whose grave I had been about to start digging. Caught some of the phrases, clung to them as they drifted past.

‘… a thriving, diversified company….. a culture of continuous improvement…. new technologies integrated seamlessly…a global network of partners, not just customers’.

“Can you believe it, Dad? They’re still talking about that email, the one which nearly closed the company. And what you did to turn things round. Grandpa Arthur built the foundations, but you... you saved us from extinction!’

He looked up from his screen, the call audibly coming to an end. But as he signed off he wasn’t looking at the screen but instead across at me. He smiled, a genuine, happy smile.

“Merry Christmas, Dad. Thanks for not giving up.”

A shout from the bar; I swivelled my neck and felt a crack as the muscle knotted. Then relaxed; it was only some rowdy revellers greeting one another as if they’d only just been reunited after decades apart. When I turned back the young man had gone, the table empty.

Never mind; it had been enough. I’d just been given a glimpse of the future – or at least a future. But it wasn’t going to make itself; the clock was already ticking on our thirty days grace. I needed to get myself home. Not just to read A Christmas Carol, but to write the next chapter of my own family’s story.