Graham's True Stories
Number 26, A Better Man

We pick our officers for the International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society with some considerable care. For example, we obviously need an editor who is literate, a secretary with organising skills and a treasurer who knows his way around figures.

Thus, when the post of chairman came up (the former occupant was retiring abroad) I cast around for a member with sufficient dignity, composure and authority to run our meetings and represent the society to the outside world.

We had the perfect type - ex-Army officer, presently director of a large communications company and a really keen sewing machine collector. I put his name forward, he was elected, and only once since then have I doubted the wisdom of the choice.

It was at one of our annual Conventions - the North of England spa town of Harrogate. One of the lady members had devised a cunning competition by putting a quantity of cotton spools into a large glass jar and challenging us to guess the number.

In announcing the winner from the stage, I rattled on a little before coming to the point (why are you not surprised, I wonder?). I said that I had tried to cheat by inveigling the answer out of the organiser.

Getting carried away a little, I said that I'd tried to bribe her with a five-pound fruitcake. I even suggested, in hushed tones, that I had offered her my body.

At this stage the Chairman could take no more, he leant back in his chair and in a loud stage whisper said: “You might have had more luck with a six-pound fruit cake”.

Like I said, perhaps we might have picked a better man.