Free Dislocated to Success by Iain Bowen

states; our reception was varied, to say the least. There were very few cases where we were welcomed with open arms, especially as wild and fanciful stories started to spread. Not that there was much need for them; the very foundations of our liberal democracy are still looked on with apprehension in most of Europe. However some reacted worse than others. Spain was a particular problem; the UK could afford to ignore the likes of Parma, but Spain was one of the five big European powers and the possessor of a world wide colonial empire.
     
    To this day, we still don’t know what mitigated their series of poor decisions that lead to their utter humiliation and the Treaty of Bordeaux. It has been suggested that the leadership of the country was exceptionally poor, and that several members of it may well have not have been in the clearest frame of mind. Certainly the King of Spain, who had been placed back on the throne because of the death of his son, may not have been in the best frame of mind to resist the initial entreaties of his fanatical wife and the ultras who supported her. Opinions of medical professionals were taken on this matter, as there was a feeling that we were not dealing with a rational actor. The rejection of our new ambassador and the expulsion of our old ambassador certainly raised a few eyebrows at the time, although it was generally thought not to presage any of the later events. We had forgotten about the Jacobites - which was easy to do; in the UK they were a tiny and dormant crackpot fringe.
     

 
     
    Chapter 9
     
    Obviously, we started seeing some important people wanting to visit the UK at this time. One of the most important in the early days was Cardinal Fleury; unlike some of the others, there were no real problems with our procedures with him. We had grabbed hold of a holiday camp near Clacton for guests - temporarily, whilst proper quarantine facilities were being organised - but I suggested that we would be better having a small VIP facility. There was a bit of discussion about this, but we couldn’t have very prominent people rubbing noses with merchants, returned trans UK travellers etc. It was only used sparingly and had the same level of quarantine as the other facilities, the PM was insistent on that.
     
    Once the 48 hours was up, I was instructed to give the Cardinal a nice day tour before taking him to the Savoy; given his age, I constructed it to be able to be cut short, but he was very interested and full of questions. We showed him a fair bit of rural Essex, a glimpse at Chelmsford, a brief look at various agricultural facilities and then a reasonably fast journey into London. He was fascinated by cars and by roads, and completely stunned by the size of London; he did remark that when we said there were seven million people in the Capital he didn’t believe us, but now he did. He also remarked on the number of black and Asian people as we got deeper into the East End, and was very curious about high rise buildings.
     
    We put up the most prominent people in the River Suites at the Savoy, where we made arrangements that they should get the best available British food and without any rationing problems. We had become aware that, whilst for us, rationing meant tight belts and a hope that we could sort things out quickly, it seemed to indicate a much more desperate situation to most of Europe. Both sides were guilty of mis-signalling, but this one was one of our more troublesome errors. My personal amusement was to make sure the Cardinal had a bottle of modern French wine; he was deeply impressed by it, as were many others.
     
    I wasn’t privy to the meetings he had with the various people, but I do remember having to administer a couple of restorative drinks to him after his meeting with some of the French embassy staff. Apart from his horror at a secular republic, they had given him a brief summary of British military and industrial power; such briefings tended to be rather