Royal Flush
By Steve Sharp
I am Senior Non-Executive Director of Adnams, the Suffolk brewery and distillery which is celebrating its 150th year anniversary.
We were honoured this week by a visit from The Princess Royal who is often referred to as the hardest working member of the royal family.
At 72 she would be perfectly entitled to retire and put her feet up but shows no intention of slowing down, and indeed appears to be performing an increased number of engagements. It seems an increasing number of people are working well beyond traditional retirement age, some because of need but many because they simply want to.
Her manner, with everyone she talked to, was to put them at their ease and extract as much information as possible in a short time. A technique shared by the very best business leaders.
It was a real boost to morale.
She showed a genuine interest in the business, its place in society and recognised the consistent effort required to be the three times recipient of The Queens Award for Sustainable Development.
Adnams runs separate tours of the brewery and distillery and has recently adopted the Southwold lighthouse and will now organise tours there too. The visits will offer splendid view for your efforts of scaling the tower and finish at The Sole Bay Inn next door. As Anne pointed out it’s very wise to do it that way round!
It turns out Princess Anne is very keen on lighthouses.
She was due to arrive at the ground floor entrance hall, meet the chap from Trinity House and chat to a few of the tour guides. That part out of the way, she legged it to the staircase and shot up the 113 steps to the top, leaving her much younger entourage puffing, panting and flushed in her wake.
Steve
