Baptism of fire
Yesterday was Boss’s Day. Sandra remembered and I get a card from her. She has been my PA for ten years and is now much more a friend than employee. I go into the gang and say that at least one person remembered Boss’s Day. This seems to fall on stony ground, and comments like “we would only be subsidising the greeting card companies”, and what about ‘Employee’s Day’ and ‘Hard Worked Staff Day’ etc, are the only responses that probably can be reproduced here.
There has been some talk of ‘Baker Days’ in my constituency dealings recently and it caused me to wonder how many other institutions or articles in the English language owe their provenance to Ministers. Baker Days are named after Ken Baker, the then Education Minister, Short Money named after Edward Short in the then Labour Government, the Gladstone Bag, the Anderson Shelter (wartime shelters), and Belisha Beacons are others. I suppose there must be more.
I remember reading somewhere that Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he then was before he became a member of the pro-letariat, hoped that the Post Office Tower would be called Big Benn with two n’s. This was a rather rare display of vanity from a man who is actually extremely pleasant. I came up against him when I fought the Chesterfield by-election in 1984. A political baptism of fire if ever there were one!
