It’s never too hot …

Having showered and changed it was time for me to go off to the ‘Cocktail Reception’ at the beginning of the conference. This may sound like fun, but the reality is that it is a pretty boring affair with lots of people excited about the conference the next day and chatter about … data centres. Ok, so it was nice to meet up with a few old friends that I don’t see so much anymore. My friend Bernard – a slightly bonkers but generally nice Frenchman – was there celebrating his 80th birthday, so that made it slightly more bearable. There were quite a few others who I hadn’t seen for a while and it was good to catch up, but generally I do not find small talk around data centres to be that exciting! What I did discover was that Moroccan rosé wine is very good and, with all this dreary talk around me, I sampled quite a bit of it. The evening passed and finally it was ready to make my way back to our digs. Captain Clarke was invited to the cocktail party, but declined. He never gave a reason but I suspect it may have had something to do with the topic and the people in attendance! So, as I made my way back to our digs I discovered that the ground was not nearly as even as when I went to the cocktail party. It was rather wobbly underfoot too! I got back to our digs and Captain Clarke was ready for his dinner. I suggested we could go downstairs to one of the restaurants (there were three in our hotel) but did make him aware that most delegates for the conference were also staying in the same hotel. That put him right off and he immediately suggested we had room service.

Taking room service rather suited me as I did feel a little unsteady on my feet. I can only put it down to the change of air! So, room service was procured, Captain Clarke had steak in pepper sauce with chips which he rather enjoyed (thank goodness!) and I had a burger. It was actually very good, so we were fed and I was definitely watered. We watched a travel programme with Sandi Toksvig called Extraordinary Escapes and the episode with Eddie Izzard which was very entertaining. We retired to bed as I had an early start ready for the conference proper the next day. We got up the next morning and I got ready to go off to the conference. It wasn’t exactly a long commute, the Es Saadi has two main residences; the Es Saadi Resort Hotel (where we were staying) and the Es Saadi Palace (where we were definitely not staying as the price was about three times what we were paying). To walk between the two takes all of two minutes and the conference was in the palace. There was nothing wrong with our digs – it was a bit SBD (seen better days) in places, but it was comfortable and the staff were friendly and attentive enough. The Palace has a lot more pomp about it and clearly that was also where the maintenance budget was being spent!

So, the conference began and I had a relatively relaxed first couple of hours. I wasn’t on until 12:00, so I mostly sat and listened to the early part of the conference. I do this for one main reason, it isn’t that I am desperately interested (although some things are more interesting than others) but it is so that I know what has been talked about prior to me doing my bit. The reason I do this is that I never – and I do mean never – rehearse a speech or have any slides to rely on. I have been to way too many conferences over the years and watched as poor presenters talk from their slides and basically read what I am perfectly capable of reading myself! The organisers generally like my style as I can simply pick up on things that have been said earlier and comment/refer to them. It does carry with it a bit of jeopardy for the organisers because they don’t know what I am going to say, or how controversial it might be, but it certainly keeps things lively!! Following on from my little rambling, I was chairing a panel discussion on ‘How growth in digital infrastructure in West Africa can be sustained’ – not a topic I know a huge amount but I had five panelists, so all I had to was guide the conversation in the right direction. Correction, I should have had five panelists – one dropped out on the evening before the conference, one dropped out on the morning of the conference and one simply didn’t turn up – I had just two panelists which made things a bit more challenging! Thank goodness I had listed to the earlier sessions, I was able to talk with some confidence about the digital infrastructure in West Africa and the reason that the West African countries were more stable than elsewhere being that they had decided to peg the CFA (West African Franc) to the Euro which gave it some stability.

Whilst I was ‘doing my bit’ Captain Clarke went off to visit a garden. The ‘Jardin Majorelle’ is a garden that was developed over a period of about 40 years by a well known French artist called Jacques Majorelle. The garden, however, proved costly to maintain and develop and, in the 1950s, Jacques Majorelle was forced to sell it. The garden and house fell into a state of disrepair. It was rediscovered in the 1980s by the fashion designer Yves Saint Lauren who, along with his partner, Pierre Bergé, restored both the house and garden to their former glory. The pair owned the house and garden until Yves Saint Lauren’s death in 2008. After his ashes were scattered there, the house and garden ownership was transferred to Foundation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, a French not-for-profit organisation. Pierre Bergé was the director of the garden’s foundation until his death in September 2017. Lunch at the conference was not great but it was mass catering for a conference, not fine dining! Following his visit to the Jardin Majorelle, Captain Clarke found a nice restaurant to have lunch in which was, apparently, excellent! A chicken tagine with lemon and olives I am told. This was followed by a dessert which Captain Clarke, being the diabetic that he is, forgot to mention to me!

After lunch the organisers of the conference approached me and said “we have a bit of a problem, can you help?”. That is generally the point at which one should escape with a polite “must dash, urgent call to make”, but I really like the people, so I asked what I could do to help. The host for the afternoon and the rest of the conference could no longer host, so would I host instead. This is not onerous but does mean that you are tied to your seat for the rest of the day apart from when you are standing up to thank the last speakers and introduce the new ones. The most important thing is to keep the sessions to time. Too many people like the sound of their own voices and often risk over running. So, I sat there holding up five fingers when they had five minutes to go, two fingers when there were two minutes left and then, finally, making a zero from my thumb and forefinger to tell them that they were out of time. Since I have been in the industry for a very long time and am quite well known, it is widely accepted that if they run out of time and try to go on for longer, I will just stop them, thank them politely and ask them to leave the stage “after such an interesting discussion, we could have listened all day, but we have other sessions coming up”. When the conference came to a close it was time for the presentation of the ‘Celebration of Peers’ which are accolades awarded through nominations to a ‘Council of Peers’ of which I am a member. In Africa, we needed an African Chair but for the ‘Global Celebration of Peers’ later this year, I am the Chair. However, I was asked to remain on stage with the Chair and, when I asked why, I was told “Oh, you are going to do stuff”! It transpired that they wanted me to present the awards after they had been announced by the Chair. All went well and, following another short Cocktail Party we all went off to our various digs.

To be perfectly honest, that isn’t quite true. Everyone else went off to their digs, I nipped back to our room, got a quick shower and then returned to the Palace where both Captain Clarke and myself had been invited for dinner with Philip and his team (the organisers). During the course of the dinner it slipped out that that day, 22nd June, was the anniversary of when Captain Clarke and I had first met … 35 years ago!! Philip generously bought us dinner (which was excellent – phew!) and we had a small toast. Conference over, day over, Captain Clarke and I returned to our digs. Sadly, despite being indoors for most of the day and despite keeping to the shade whenever I was outside, the 35 degree heat had taken its toll on me. I woke at 02:40 feeling rather unwell. Fortunately I recognised it for what it was, a lack of hydration, got up and started drinking water. I have had heat stroke in the past and it is not pleasant! Having recognised it early enough, I was able to recover relatively quickly and, apart from having virtually no sleep, several bottles of water later, I was feeling much better. We got up on Friday morning and decided not to go for breakfast. This was for two reasons; firstly, we were going to try and find a restaurant for lunch and, secondly, we did not want to bump into any of the conference delegates who had stayed over. We had to check out by late morning anyway and we had already asked if a late checkout was possible but the hotel was full. We were able to leave our luggage there though as our flight wasn’t until early evening and we wanted to go for lunch.

We did go off to find a restaurant. Captain Clarke had found a particular street that he would like to visit so we set off. When he had looked it up in our digs, it had appeared to be a 15 minute walk away. After we had been walking for about 10 minutes, he looked again and it was a 35 minute walk away. Now, you will rarely hear me complain about the heat – I hate being cold! – but the temperature was just over 40 degrees in full sun. Keeping in mind that I had only just recovered from a bit of heat stroke, I did not fancy another 35 minutes of walking in 40 degree heat. We had passed a reasonable looking restaurant a few minutes earlier so we decided to go there. The meal turned out to be not too bad … chicken satay for Captain Clarke and Penne Arriabata for me. We washed it down with an Orange Pressé each which was both welcome and refreshing. Having had lunch we returned to our digs, changing in the changing rooms by the spa and procurred a taxi to the airport. Moroccan taxi air conditioning is basically driving with the windows open so we were quite glad that it was only a short drive to the airport. We made our way in and waiting a short while for the check-in to open (we knew we were early but we equally knew that the airport is air conditioned!). Once check-in opened we were able to check our bags and make our way to security (only four levels in Marrakech, there are seven levels in Casa Blanca as I found to my costs when I was there on business last year!). Now, as I have meantioned previously, you do not fly to Morocco unless you are flying Business Class. This is particularly true when leaving Morocco. As we sailed through security, passport control, passport checks, more security and through the duty free lounge, I pointed out to Captain Clarke where you queue if you are not flying business class. There are little windows in the wall separating business class from economy and you can see where, on average, it takes 3 hours to get into the departure lounge!

As we were flying business class, not only did we qualify for fast track security, but we were also entitled to use the lounge. British Airways do not have a lounge in Marrakech but there is a lounge dedicated to business and first class passengers. If I were to be totally honest, it isn’t great, but it was somewhere to sit, there was power for charging and, as Captain Clarke said, they had gin! Neither of us would have dared try the food, it looked like it had been sitting there a very long time and did not look at all appetising! So, we sat in the lounge until our scheduled departure and then made our way to the gate. We had to wait a few minutes as the incoming aircraft had arrived a bit late and we could see the passengers disembarking. Once we were given the all clear to board, we made our way to the aircraft and took our seats. The Captain introduced himself and apologised for the short delay but said we would be departing shortly. We sat for another few minutes and then the Captain explained across the tannoy that the plane had developed a fault. They had called some engineers and were going to re-boot the plane (yes, really, re-boot the plane!) which would hopefully clear the fault. This meant that the air conditioning on board would be turned off for a few minutes but they would endeavour to get it back on as soon as they could. Aircaft rebooted, the air conditioning did, thank goodness, come back on. I sat there idly watching an easyJet flight arrive, unload, re-load and depart. Eventually after just over an hour sitting on the tarmac we were informed that we would be leaving. Apparently, the fault had been due to the extreme heat!

We had watched aircraft come and go and were now definitely ready to leave! We flew back to Gatwick airport with, what I must say, was the best British Airways service I have experienced for quite a number of years! The crew were attentive, helpful, friendly and professional. The meal was excellent – yes, I really did just say that about a British Airways meal – and the whole flight was really quite enjoyable. Words one rarely uses nowadays about flying anywhere and with any airline! We eventually arrived back into Gatwick just over an hour late. By the time we had collected our bags and made our way out of the airport we had missed a train to Redhill which we were planning on taking to get a taxi home from there. We had seen reports of Gatwick Airport Cars charging outrageous amounts like £130 to Oxted, so we planned to get a train and then a taxi from Redhill. The next train, however, was not for another hour and it was late. I told Captain Clarke that I didn’t care how much a taxi cost, I was going to get one home! We were allocated a taxi within 2 minutes of arriving at the taxi desk. Total cost of taxi home … £47! I would pay that anytime to avoid all of the hassle of bags, trains and airports! We arrived safely home in Godstone just before midnight, crept through the door, as our house sitters had already gone to bed, and were greated by a very excited but thankfully quiet, Golden Retriever who’s tail was wagging so hard it looked like it would fall off! So, it turns out that the phrase ‘It’s never too hot …’ is not quite true! 40 degree heat is too hot for humans and too hot for aircraft. Now it is time for Rudy to return to his slumber so that life can return to normal. Clearly, there are times when it really is too hot … it’s RudyMenTerry!