Page 24 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 1 - EARLY DAYS
I am a bit of a cleanaholic, besides being known as a workaholic. I thoroughly enjoy cleaning things, particularly my cars and in the latter part of my life, assisting with house cleaning chores. Daphne simply does not like me getting involved because I am a perfectionist when it comes to cleaning. To this day, I still have my 1984 Mercedes and no-one has put their shoes on the original carpet. From day one, I had carpets for both winter and summer and no-one was allowed to eat or drink in the car. The latter has also applied to all the other cars I have owned.
Eagle Star Insurance Company Limited (Eagle Star)
I started work on 21 January 1952 at the Eagle Star Insurance Company in Commissioner St. in Johannesburg at the age of 16. I was a sort of odd jobs person, literally doing everything that no-one else wanted to do. You could have described me as the “office hand” or “office boy” * doing postal services, taking messages, delivering cars, picking up people and on one occasion, I remember I picked up the ice for the Christmas party. By the way, I never had a driver’s licence as I was under age but nobody seemed to know
this.
The picking up of the ice would under normal circumstances be nothing unusual, except in those days they did not have ice in plastic bags. It was supplied in one large slab in a hessian bag which you would place in the boot of the car. However, I was driving the General Manager’s car and I couldn’t open the boot so I just placed it on the back seat of the car. You can just imagine what the car looked like by the time I got back to the office. He was unimpressed.
On reverting to the licence issue, as I said, I did not have a driver’s licence but I still drove for a couple of years unlicensed. One day I
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