Meeting Report (September 2013)

41 club report
September 2013 at Biederbecke’s Hotel
Speaker Peter Bleach the owner of Biederbeckes

Your correspondent Michael Whiteley

An entertaining evening at Biederbecke’s with our host Peter Bleach.
The meal was interesting; we later found out that we were guinea pigs for a new simple menu. We had a vegetable soup, shepherd’s pie with vegetables and apple pie with custard. I have to say that it was not to my taste but others I hear really liked it. The custard tasted OK but was a strange yellow though and reminded me of Sellafield.
Our host Peter Bleach gave us an interesting talk. He did describe his career as mundane and compared some of his experiences to accounts finding an unbalanced column or lawyers winning a case. This is not the case, Peter’s career is far from mundane The key highlight of the talk though clearly not for Peter was the details around Peter being found guilty of “Waging war on India” and serving 8 years in a Calcutta jail. It could have been longer but for Tony Blair.
It seems that Peter and his Russian partners thought he was supplying the Indian government when in fact it turned out he was being asked to drop the 4 tonnes of Kalashnikov rifles to Indian terrorists. Peter picked up on this when he was asked to deliver the rifles to a field in West Bengal via an air drop. He reported this to some part of Her Majesty’s government but that obviously did not count for much in India. I think we have a lesson here; if we are asked to deliver guns to another country, report the crime and then do not travel to that country.
Peter talked about his time in jail. He was locked up with his Russian colleagues who were let out as part of the next Russian/Indian arms deal. He was popular in prison and broke down barriers with other inmates and was even served cake on Easter Day by his Muslim fellow prisoners.
Quote of the night “I think the school dinners theme would have worked better with topless waitresses and canes”. Now that could have spiced up the evening! I guess anyone that agrees should get themselves off to Round Table’s Darts and Dominoes night!

Many thanks Mike Ed