A few months ago I was contacted by Juanita Van Bakel from the Standard Chartered (sc.com) in London. She had heard about Peter through a colleague and had emailed me to see if Peter might be available to talk to the bank as part of their Disabilities and Diversity awareness raising campaign. She appeared quite surprised when I responded to her email confirming that Peter would be happy to talk but then, as we all know, Peter says 'yes' to pretty well everything!
The bank organised and paid for our travel to London and, despite the early start - our chauffeur-driven Mercedes left Suffolk at 6am - we reached the city in plenty of time. I was slightly overawed when I saw the building as I had forgotten how grand some London institutions were, being more familiar with the sight of fields of sheep, pigs and cows these days. I was grateful that the carrier bag I had grabbed from the cupboard to bring with me was a sustainable bag from Waitrose rather than the rather tatty, ripped bag from Tesco's, over which I had hesitated before selecting the Waitrose one.
Juanita was the perfect hostess and plied us with coffee and biscuits prior to the talk and then virtually force fed us salmon rolls/humous and beetroot rolls, salad and fruit for lunch.
As well as the staff in the conference room with us, the talk was also beamed to various personnel from the bank based across the globe and I could see from the screen that over 50 people had logged on to listen to Peter. Their feedback was unanimous in praise of the talk and the word 'inspirational' was bandied about with impunity.
A word for our chauffeur, Abi, from Torrens, who was exemplary. Not only was her driving first class, she was genuinely interested in finding out more about Peter and, in a wonderful act of generosity, offered to drive us to an event free of charge if we were so minded! (And we were so minded and I have already taken her up on that offer!) We all had a great time chatting away and she must be the first chauffeur that I have ever hugged at the end of the journey, although my experiences of being chauffeur driven are, admittedly, limited.
It was a long day - we got home at 3.30pm and Peter had talked and taken questions for over an hour - but as ever, I am in awe at how he found the mental and emotional energy to undertake such a long day and to deliver another articulate and insightful talk with the usual smattering of humour and self-deprecation.
"Tomorrow we rest," he said. By that I think he meant we will all cycle 50 miles somewhere...
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