© Noel Rands 2022

Good morning everyone,
 
All the pieces I have written on here in the past few weeks have been original (apart from the one on Mother Teresa which was a revised from a private piece I wrote at the time for my own amusement). However, I am coming to the end and the following piece could be the last.
I suppose that the reason I have written them was to show to the membership that the Secretary of the British Egyptian Society has had a chequered past and that maybe he is slightly more interesting than the frenzied idiot rushing around talks and conference and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep everyone in order. As I have said before, I was hopeless at games and prancing around a stage was the alternative to hiding in a room and reading a book. Having said that, many in the audience might well have felt that that would have been a better idea than pretending to be a film actor.
When you are based in a foreign country, you have a choice between just mixing with your fellow countrymen or making local friends and connections. My successor at Midland Bank in Bombay, a Scot, spent most of his spare time with the Caledonian Society. I just found it more rewarding to mix with locals but then, if he was happy, what has it got to do with me. The office closed 18 months after I left so maybe he could have worked a little harder..

Apart from sitting in the art gallery I did try other things. A friend from Cairo days asked me if I would be interested in sourcing coke; the black stuff. So with a Chinese friend I flew to Taiyuan in Shanxi Province to meet Mr Ban Xin from Shanxi Coal Import and Export Corporation. We got on like a house on fire and worked together for some years. The Cairo friend disappeared on an overseas trip leaving me with a few debts; I was so good at finding people like this.
Coke moved onto Activated Carbon, the stuff in water filter jugs, and at one time I had one ship loading at Tianjin, another on the high seas and another unloading in Manchester for Sutcliffe Speakman in Ashton in Makerfield. Nothing lasts forever and my dream of being an International businessman vanished when my buyer was taken over by another company and that was that. A visiting art customer asked me about my background and suggested I sign up with Equifax, a company that looks into people’s backgrounds. The company provided reports on applicants for life insurance companies. I did this for years and it led onto deaths. One on occasion I had to fly to Beijing to investigate the death of a Taiwanese American who had committed suicide by hanging himself with a computer cable. Mr Ban Xin was in town and he called the police inspector handling the case. My report was very well received!
I had set up a company for friends from Delhi. One of them, an American with an Indian wife, asked me if I would fly with him to Hanoi to discuss cutting rubies. It seems the major sources of rubies are Burma (the best quality) and Vietnam. They were sold rough in Bangkok, but a cartel was keeping the price down. My colleague and I visited the Business Minister and suggested bringing in cutters from Jaipur so that they would sell cut stones instead of rough. The Minister commented that it was a good idea but against the present law. I remarked that when I was at school, I was told a government could do anything apart from changing a man into a woman (except these days I am not sure if that still holds true). The following day he said they had decided to change the law. However, a message filtered through that if I wanted to avoid a stiletto in the ribs, stay away from rubies!
On a visit to Bombay some years later, I was taken to a furniture exhibition featuring
Items copied from original works at Althorp, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales. It was magnificent. I asked my host where the items were made and he said in Portugal by Theodore and Alexander. I told him very politely that he was wrong; they had been made in Vietnam. I had opened and operated the accounts for Theodore and Alexander in Hong Kong!
In fact, I had set up two other companies as well. My American colleague, Joel, from Delhi had gone into partnership with Paul Maitland Smith, who had sold a furniture company in Hong Kong, got bored and wanted to start another in Vietnam. It was agreed that Joel would set up a companion factory in Rajasthan (his then wife was the niece of a Raja and the factory created in the grounds of his palace). It all went extremely well with both companies exporting and me in Hong Kong handling the incoming payments; phoning HSBC each morning and transferring funds to Delhi or Saigon. This worked extremely well for some time and then Joel and Paul decided to go their separate ways. I set up a new company for Joel in Hong Kong with me and an American friend of his the two Directors. Naturally Joel got greedy and started milking the company. I misread a statement and a year later discovered that my signature had been forged on US$5M of loan certificates and promissory notes. With help from friends and an expensive lawyer in Hong Kong, it was resolved. Later, Joel’s company collapsed and there was no need for this; the quality of the furniture was excellent but he couldn’t keep his hands out of the till.
 
Well, here I am today. An ex furniture dealer, art gallery manager, banker, actor, ruby dealer, death investigator and being dropped in it so many times. The schoolboy who called me “Also starring” was not wrong. I have missed the top slots and finished up, as a fellow Board member commented, as “ just a paid help” for the British Egyptian Society. However, the journey has been fraught with interest and I have met some remarkable people on the way. I like to think that the journey has not finished but who knows what the future will bring?
 
The following piece is original and touches on a few things I have mentioned in past missives. Another Noel, Coward, wrote a book called “A talent to amuse”. If I have just a little of that, surely it is no bad thing?

 
-Noel Rands
28.5.20

© Noel Rands 2022