My most
recent ‘small world’ experiences took place in 2019. I was at the Leander Club
‘Lensday Lunch’ at Henley-on-Thames. At the lunch I met John Pilgrim-Morris. I
had met him in 1969 at the Colombo Rowing Club when he was rowing for the Royal
Air Force team from Singapore. Also, I met, at the Financial Services Expo,
Beth Cazalet, whose husband’s uncle, Julian Cazalet, I had met in the 1990s when
he was Chairman at the City University Club.
A few years ago, at the Leander Club, I discovered that the Club Manager had rowed in the
Henley Royal Regatta as a schoolboy when I was rowing in the Regatta for
Downing College, Cambridge in the Ladies Plate.
My late
father Jayantha ‘Jumbo’ Perera, used to box. One of his fellow boxers, Chris De
Saram, captained the Oxford University boxing team. When I was a boy, my
father used to speak to me about his various boxing matches. He told me about
his opponents including Vernon Dickman. Over thirty years later I married
Vernon’s daughter Romie.
I got married
at St Margaret Lothbury in the City of London. When speaking to the vicar, Tom
Farrell, about the arrangements, I found out that he had been a hurdler. I
mentioned that Duncan White who had been a silver medallist in the 1948
Olympics hurdles was known to my father and father-in-law. Tom said, ‘I knew
him well – he trained with the British Team’. I had met Duncan at the Ceylon
University Grounds where my father took me to practice long jump. One day when
I was at the grounds, my father saw Duncan and introduced me to him.
But perhaps
the most ‘small world’ experiences I have had have taken place at the City
University Club – a lunch Club in l that I went to in Cornhill from the mid-1980s
until 2018 when it moved to Crutched Friars – where I still go from time to
time. I have noted already, meeting Beth Cazalet, whose husband’s uncle is former
Chairman, Julian Cazalet.
I first came
to the Club under a reciprocal arrangement with the Oxford and Cambridge Club.
As I was using the Club regularly, I decided to join. The member who spoke to
me about membership and finding a seconder and the necessary six supporters,
was David Crockford. He had been at Sandhurst with Tony Anghie who had been at
the same school as my father at the same time. I had met Tony when I was a boy.
Years later I met Tony when my father-in-law was entertaining some friends.
I read
Engineering at Downing College, Cambridge. After I graduated, before going on
to Imperial College, London for further studies, I worked in the Cambridge
department store Joshua Taylor’s. Another person working in the store, who was
going up to Downing later that year, was Anthony McWhirter. Years later, I
provided some technical assistance on financial regulation to Debevoise and
Plimpton, the firm of fellow Club member and Club Table diner Jeremy Hill. I
met Anthony again as he was working for Debevoise. We had lunch at the Club and
I gathered that his father had boxed for Cambridge when my father’s classmate
and boxing friend Chris de Saram was boxing for Oxford.
Also whilst
working at Joshua Taylors, I sold a pair of trousers to Group Captain Leonard
Cheshire. I knew of him as I had seen the film ‘The Dam Busters’, read the
book, and had studied the work of the Cheshire Homes. When I was a
non-executive director of Syndicate Asset Management plc, a relative of his
(nephew I think), was the Chief Executive – Mark Cheshire.
At the Club
Table at the City University Club, I got to know Peter Battle who worked in the
Lloyds Insurance Market. We had spoken with each other for may years. In 2012
when I mentioned that I was coaching Downing Boat Club, he noted that he had
rowed against Downing when he was at Bedford School. I recalled that I was in
the Downing Crew that Bedford School had rowed against that year.
Also at the
Club Table, I spoke with a reciprocal member from the Travellers Club – Dr
David Hay. He asked me a lot of questions about myself. When he got up to leave,
he said ‘Your father worked for my father’. His father had been Ewan Mackenzie
Hay – Managing Director of Vavasseur Trading Company.
Another
Travellers Club reciprocal member also asked me about my ancestry. He then told
me that my grandfather, T D Perera CMG had arranged for Lord Mountbatten’s
headquarters to be set up in Kandy, Ceylon, during the war and for a crate of
wine for Lord Mountbatten’s to be delivered regularly by train from Colombo to
Kandy.
When I worked
for Price Waterhouse Management Consultants, I came to know that the Price
Waterhouse Senior Partner, Sir Jeffery Bowman's forbears had resided in
Baddegama, Ceylon (where I grew up). When doing some consulting work for
Charterhouse Bank, I came across his brother John who was a senior executive
there. Years later I met John's son Charles, who had been Mayor of the City of
London.
When I worked in Citibank, Securities Services (my focus was Global Custody) a colleague, who later went to work for Citibank at 1 Wall Street was Antony P Jenkins. Later he became CEO of Barclays Bank. Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary reported to me when I worked in the FSA.
