One of the privileges of being Chief Executive of Thomson Reuters is that I get to meet some very interesting people and have access to events and places that I don't flatter myself into believing would be available to me otherwise. One such event was an invitation to lunch this past Sunday with Gordon Brown and his family at Chequers, the country retreat of British prime ministers.
So, my family and I dutifully drove out of London into the Buckinghamshire countryside. We had received quite detailed directions from 10 Downing Street; however, either due to our own navigational incompetence or the mysterious windings of English country lanes, we found ourselves totally lost and running late in the vicinity of Chequers. Overcoming for a moment my usual male reluctance to ask anyone for directions, I thought I had hit upon a brilliant plan. I stopped a nice looking Englishman in high Wellies walking his golden retriever and asked for directions to "Chequers . "
The man cheerfully responded that we were truly in luck. He said that he happened to work at Chequers and proceeded to give us incredibly detailed directions to the location. As we followed them precisely we kept congratulating ourselves on our perspicacious choice of guide and soon arrived at "Chequers."
Unfortunately, the place to which we were sent was not the Prime Minister's baronial country home, but the "Chequers Inn", a quaint pub some five miles further away. It turned out that our guide was not on the Prime Minister's staff, but rather the local barkeep.
We then embarrassedly retraced our route and, after a further few inquiries, found our way to the real Chequers more or less on time. Given the weighty issues the PM and his staff must grapple with these days, I was happy to bring a bit of American navigational levity to the occasion.