Pferdeschorschi

By schorschi

Spaghetti Factory Undercover Day 2

First, let me say this is not my work but from a design company JÜTA ENTERPRISES of Zürich who went into liquidation in the late 90s and have been removed from the Swiss Company Listings. I cannot, therefore, contact them.

The contract to produce this postcard, one of a series of six in my possession, was given by my then employer Grand Metropolitan Retailing as marketing giveaways in the restaurants.
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After breakfast, taxi to Zürich airport and a flight to Geneva.

We were only going to be there for the day and were flying back that evening to Heathrow. I no longer remember if there were one or two branches in Geneva, but we took a taxi to one of them.

Again much too early for lunch and so another lazy coffee watching the staff set up for the oncoming storm. Yet again a nice clean looking place with a bit more character due to the building.

It was simply glorious outside and Peter said, right let's go for a stroll down at the lake, I want to visit the odd shop. And so we stepped out and soaked up the atmosphere and sunshine. Walking across one of the bridges he said "over there" and pointed to a very expensive looking Dunhill tobacco shop. He stroud in and up to the counter and I tried to look just as confident. I should mention, I was reasonably friendly with Chris Dunhill a few years previously at school. He was one of the heirs but the company had been sold the year before we started at school together. His family though still had some fingers in the pie.

(Just a side note as I researched Dunhill in 2018 - this is their 125th anniversary year and although no "history" yet posted on the company site, I see they are nowadays no longer in St James or Pall Mall but at 5-7 Mandeville Place off Oxford Street which for many years in the 1970s was directly opposite my office in part of the Mandeville Hotel where we lunched every day, often with the founder and owner of Grand Metropolitan Hotels, Maxwell Joseph, and the hotel was the origin of the Grand Met empire which merged with Guinness to become Diageo plc )

I digress - Peter with an assured voice asked to see a few boxes of massive fat cigars and after a bit of talk we walked out, and he handed me one of the tubes with the words "that's for after lunch, and we ain't going to another of them pasta places".  And thus we strolled along the streets, Peter looking at the diamond-studded watches in the shop windows and then at his own weighted down wrist and shook his head.

Somewhere in a very charming, very French-like narrowish lanes with one restaurant after another and the tables set out on the pavement, we sat down for at least a four-course lunch that would have blown away two months of my not insubstantial expenses budget.

I don't remember how much wine it took to wash down the meal and accompany the cigar. I don't remember the flight back either.

I have marked the map with the approximate place we ate. I didn't get to keep the bill, Peter needed it for his expenses so don't remember what it was called. Not being a company employee, he didn't need to use the standard trick of the boss getting a junior to pay for extravagant meals so that he could then sign them off himself & not have to hide the expense from his own boss.

Mission accomplished even if we had empty spaghetti plates today.

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