Making It Happen
"We had to arrange the embassy receptions and the stadium seating plan for about 40 different countries. It was very important that we got it right. I remember my wife helping me do it on large sheets of paper on the dining room floor because it was so big. Somehow they all had to be fitted into the central 300 seat stadium and we had to try and make sure each country was equally and fairly positioned. I remember there were all sorts of minor diplomatic problems; the Egyptian representative was Admiral Latif and we could never really find out just how many of his wives or his extended family he was expecting to bring with him. Then there was a real problem with the USA. All of the participating nations would have their flag flying on a separate pole at one side of the sports ground. At the last minute we discovered that the Stars and Stripes flag they had supplied was considerably larger than all the other nations and we had to go round Aylesbury buying flags for all the others of the same size so the difference wouldn’t show." Rob, organiser