Phew

The Board meeting has been and gone. As usual, I worried more about this than necessary, but the reality is I can never wholly predict which of my two, once married shareholders, neither of whom now have any day-to-day involvement in the business, will play Mr Nice and who will play Mrs Nasty (gender attributions optional in this case).

Today she was the more reasonable, all things considered. She moaned about the dividend, but the Chair did a good job in defending the fact that we were holding our own - against his experience elsewhere. My relatively modest current spending plans - with investment based more on efficiency, better people utilisation and training than big ticket items, went down will with this audience.

Her former husband was on his worst form. Rumour has it he's having girlfriend problems (a recurring theme of his life, when married or not) and so he was demanding to know when we'd be getting back to growth. I assume on occasion that he lives in some little silo apart from reality in which we are his cash-point machine. I tried to be as reasonable as possible.

And actually, to be candid, my PA, who takes notes to help out with minute preparation now (and be another witness to events, if truth be told) both wound him up and distracted him horribly. Was her see-through shirt (albeit, with undergarment, but blatantly sexy - I have to admit) deliberate? I think so. I'd not seen it before. And I'm sure her skirt was shorter than normal - but either way the ex-CEO was distracted by her, quite considerably. About which I teased her afterwards, when i got the clear impression this was an entirely deliberate strategy - and she'd much enjoyed it, partly because she thinks it so inappropriate that someone of his age should think he could go out with someone more than 20 years younger than him.

But having tried to make sure staff looked respectable my plan failed - and my PA succeeded - by looking very smart, but potentially just the opposite.

Oh well, we survived it, with nothing of any consequence to do. Should I really worry?