Many of my 'Round Robin' victims (all ten of them smiley_by_mistralassociates-com_ani.gif) have on occasions suggested that I write a book. I cannot. I neither have the time nor do I possess the essential skills to do so.

I have never been a fatalist, or superstitious, or religious. Definitely not the latter. However there have been so many strange and inexplicable coincidences throughout my whole life. Some with fortuitous, positive results. A few though portents of disaster. I am not about to bore you with lists of either.

Except for a couple of strange events. The first, purely by accident and definitely not out of choice, Once, through a series of calamitous corporate take-overs, I ended up employed by the one single corporation out of billions in the world, that my late Father, and along with others, had been put in charge of a strategic mission to destroy in WWII enemy Germany. From the air, piloting a lead Lancaster bomber 'Pathfinder' late in WWII. Along with 500 or so of his brave young compatriots he very nearly succeeded. The company finally bankrupted due to ruthless but grossly incompetent, hopelessly nepotistic management, half a century on.

The second story is about the relatively small but highly successful company I, along with a couple of business colleagues, founded in 1984, 34 years after my Father's death in 1950. I stumbled upon marketing names for the company's software products and all names of which are still in use today. Very successfully, even if I say so myself. All names end with the four letter text string 'wind'.

Such as 'Coldwind' for example. Referencing 'cold' as in refrigerated cold stores, without which modern civilisation could not possibly exist. 'Wind' as in the cold wind of the Mistral, our company name. Finally 'Wind' as in the stem of Microsoft's Windows ubiquitous computer Operating System. A sort of triple whammy then. Mistral's registered product names all work well for us. Mistral presents more than a dozen such 'wind' suffixed product names throughout the entire world (with the exception of China and North Korea).

How is it though that it took me more than seventy years to discover that the four engine, heavy lift freighter aircraft my late Father bought new, and in which he was ultimately killed in April 1950, had been given the name 'Northwind'? world_air_freight_ltd_handley_page_halton_g-ahdx.gif   left_arrow_18x15.gif   Scary! spacer_transparent.gifchris_sig_mono_small.gif chris_latham_smith_75.png

Mistral's commitment:
Bringing benefits of computerisation to our RAC industry - without the commonly associated problems.

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