It was the end of the day,
the lift doors were closing,
the office commute began here.

I pulled my Portobello fur
scruff tight over my mini skirt
and yelled “hold the doors!”
He stood with elegant manner
a long finger on the button.

“Which floor?” he asked politely
as I wished I could fall through it.

Harold Macmillan, for it was he,
my companion for four anxious floors,
benign at 18-year-old idiocy.

I was hardly Krushchev or Kennedy
but he made me feel important nonetheless.

Gent-of-the-old order,
he smiled as I blushed my farewell.

Nothing much said, but never forgotten.

I started my working life in 1968 as a PA in the editorial department of Macmillans, publishers – Harold Macmillan’s family publishing company. He used to come in once a week to see how things were going. As the poem explains, I was on my way home and saw the lift doors were closing – little did I realize who was inside! Strangely enough I ended up working as a researcher on The Official Biography of Harold Macmillan written by Alistair Horne many years later.