Down memory lane

I'm spending the weekend having a bit of a clear out.

Or that's the idea. What invariably happens is that I spend most of the time reading old letters and magazines, and reminiscing.

For example, I've just found a press cutting from the St Andrews Citizen, dated May 22, 1976. That would have been shortly after my final exams at school, and it features a photo of the Madras College 1st XI cricket team.

Eight of the eleven were in the year below me so they still had one year left, but every face, bar one, is familiar to me and it's one of the reasons I would hate to attend a school reunion. Fancy seeing those same faces, older if not wiser, almost 50 years on, and them seeing mine. I couldn’t do it.

One thing that strikes me about the picture is what a scruffy lot we looked. Only one person – the captain sitting in the middle – looks properly equipped to play cricket, and if I remember he was indeed the only decent cricketer in the team.

Cricket in Scotland (especially at school) was a strange affair. We only played cricket during the summer term which was quite short because the summer holiday in Scotland starts two or three weeks ahead of England.

The term was also interrupted by exams so several matches were held over until the exams were finished and then squeezed into the short period before the end of term.

The unpredictable and often cold weather, even in May or June, was another issue, and matches were sometimes played on grounds that, during the winter, were used for rugby so some outfields were very uneven which made fielding a bit of a lottery.

Furthermore, if you were in sixth form, as I was in 1976, and had finished your exams, you didn't bother going to school unless there was a very good reason to, so in your head you had already left. Returning for a cricket match felt a bit odd.

Anyway, the photo below brings back lots of memories – the worst of which was when we were bowled out for 14 and I was third joint top scorer with one run.

In the circumstances I was quite pleased with myself, but I think we lost by ten wickets that day, our opponents knocking off the runs in two or three overs.

Madras College 1st XI cricket team, 1976. Yours truly is seated, far left

Another thing I didn't expect to find was an old newsletter dated Christmas 1994. It was called ICS Express and it was one of a handful I produced for ICS Worldwide Couriers.

Chairman and chief executive was a Canadian businessman called Michael Jacobson. The company was launched in 1984 and this was Jacobson's message to his workforce ten years later:

Although I much prefer looking to the future than wallowing in the past, I can't let 1994 slip away without some reference to our 10th anniversary.

Ten years ago the company headquarters was a flat in Hampstead. Eight cardboard boxes, marked with Central London postcodes, were propped up against a wall and a typical day would begin at 4.00am when I took two sacks of documents down to Smithfield meat market.

Four people on push bikes were recruited to deliver ICS packages before their working days began and we would go to a nearby cafe to sort the post.

After breakfast I spent the day making sales calls until the pick-ups began at 4.00pm. Then it was back to the flat for a couple of hours' sorting, and at four the next morning the cycle would begin all over again.

A few months after writing that Jacobson sold the business to the management for £78m and the newsletter, which was his baby, was quietly dropped.

In hindsight, though, and given that £78m valuation, I should perhaps have charged rather more than I did to produce it!

What happened to the company thereafter I've no idea. Google 'ICS' and you'll find several businesses, including a Canadian courier company founded in 1978, with the same initials so it's a bit confusing.

As for Michael Jacobson, I can find only two references to him online – a short entry in what I assume is the Sunday Times Rich List where he ranks 1100= (in 2008), and a piece in the Daily Mail in 2012 where he pops up as the 'new man' in the life of former model Lisa Butcher.

By coincidence, they are pictured ‘arm-in-arm at the private view of David Hockney’s much-vaunted show A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy’.

Fun fact: Butcher and Mica Paris replaced Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine for two series of BBC1's 'What Not To Wear' when the latter jumped ship to ITV in 2006.