Iris the international civil servant

From the age of twenty until the birth of Guy, Iris was an international civil servant. First as contract staff for UN conferences in Geneva and Paris then as permanent staff in the OECD in Paris and for some three years on detachment to the Washington DC Office.

Often one of the few English women working among French colleagues who would very formally 'Madame' or 'Mademoiselle' each other and 'Monsieur le Directeur' their boss, Iris would break the ice and get them all to call her 'Iris' and each other by their Christian names. Very quickly under her influence, the formal 'Vous' would be replaced  by 'Tu'.

She had many successes in the USA; three of which she was particularly proud:

In the fifties main computers were treated as infallible gods. She questioned the telephone invoice of  the Company serving the Washington Office and was treated with condescending amusement: 'Our bills are computer produced, They cannot be wrong'  Using laborious manual calculations, she proved she was right, and force the provider to eat humble pie and to admit that, astonishingly, their computer had glitched.

A conference on international trade, attended by top American CEO s, was to be addressed in New York by the then Secretary of State for Commerce.  Iris was sent to New York to man the OECD booth and was told, half as a joke by G. von Minden, the head of her mission: 'Try and get the Secretary to add a word in his speech about the OECD!' As the man was walking through the lobby surrounded by his entourage, Iris left her booth, walked up to him and said: 'You may not remember me but we have met at a party at the von Minden'. She had guessed correctly that he would not remember their having met, (they had not), but that he would pretend they had. Iris was pretty and intelligent. The secretary of State kept her in conversation until the dinner was announced. As she had asked him, he added to his speech a mention of the OECD.

In Washington DC, Iris was in charge of the organisation of a dinner where key Europeans were to meet the diplomatic corps, senior figures in the Administration and the 'Blue Book' people of Washington society. Such is the pride of  Ambassadors that if one is not seated in accordance with the arcane protocol, he will pretend that his country has been insulted and will leave the table in a huff making as much noise as possible. Iris worked and worked on the seating plan until she felt sure everything was right. To make doubly sure, she asked the White House social secretary to check her seating plan She was told: 'This is perfect. Where were you trained?' She was not believed when she confessed she was self-taught.