Young aristocrats in the eighteenth century had a tradition of going on grand tours of Europe's sites of classical civilisation. Young prefab aristocrats of the twentieth century had a tradition of going on grand tours of Europe's enamel furnaces.
In 1957 my brother was taken on a visit to the enamel furnaces of Brussels and Paris. Mr Van de Zee, a generous-minded Derro Company manager (and probably the only generous-minded Derro Company manager) arranged for all their hotel and travel expenses to be paid! We pinned a map of Europe up on the bedroom and marked up the route they would take. In the eighteenth century grand tour travellers sailed from Dover to Calais. Today those heading for the grand enamel furnaces sail from Harwich to the Hook of Holland.
A red line marking the location of the 'Iron Curtain' was drawn on the bedroom wall map in order to add a touch of Cold War suspense. Everyone knew that if you ended up on the wrong side of this red line there was a risk of being dragged out of your bed and shot. (Only a few years later did we learn that this was also happening on 'our' side of the 'Iron Curtain' in General
Franco's Spain.)
Some days before the old man and my brother were due to return home from their grand tour we heard a familiar knock on the front door. There, standing in the front step, stood my brother, the old man, and a third unfamiliar presence - a massive black eye. The old man's freshly-bruised face wore an evasive "wild colonial" look. He announced that "The Grand Tour had gone rather well." Noticing the intensity of our stares at his newly-sculptured facial architecture he added that this was the unfortunate result ("cough! cough!") of a brick falling on his head at the entrance to the Derro Company office in Paris. We bided our time and waited for the beans to be spilled.
Apparently the official officials had struck yet again. The old man was quietly contemplating destiny in a dimly-lit bar when the Paris police - who are yet to be informed of Copper Jones' Queensbury Rules style of crime control - stormed in. As soonas they set eyes on the gallois furnace bricklayer they pounced. The Fourth Republic was on its knees at this time, with army generals who supported the cause of beleaguered settlers in Algeria hatching plans to assassinate the President and launch a military coup. Perhaps the lightening speed with which the old man can down his drinks convinced the official officials that this was one of the coup plotters or assassination agents they were after. The suspected foreign saboteur was taken into custody, and the old man - who never likes his contemplative drinking being disturbed - refrained from going quietly into the dark night. Fortunately trans-national capital can move quickly when one of its its key sources of profit is removed from the point of production, and the Derro Company secured his speedy release.
Although the days of the French Fourth Republic were numbered, the republic of the gallois enamels furnace bricklayer kept the Derro Company going for another two decades.